To all the Ladies and Gentlemen who made this all so probable...

Without my friends,
I've got chaos.
I'd be off in a beam of light.
Without my friends,
I'd be swept off high by the wind.

- Alex Chilton, "Thank You Friends," 1974.

Happy Thanksgiving from all your friends at the Boogie Woogie Flu.

Download:

"Thank You Friends (demo)" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1974.
available on Keep An Eye On The Sky

*********
BONUS:

"Be Thankful For What You Got" mp3
by Yo La Tengo, 1997.
available on Little Honda

"Thank You for Sending Me An Angel" mp3
by Luna, 1996.
available on Luna EP

"Thank You" mp3
by The Remains, 1966.
available on The Remains

top photo:
Alex Chilton, New York City, 1985.
© Ted Barron

A Cheap Holiday In Other People's Misery

In October of 1977, The Sex Pistols released their fourth and final single on their third label, Virgin Records, after being dropped from EMI and A&M for being a dangerous liability. The single, "Holidays In The Sun" was inspired by a two week trip the band took to Berlin, and would be the lead track on their one and only LP that came out a few weeks later.

Singer Johnny Rotten recalls:

"Being in London at the time made us feel like we were trapped in a prison camp environment. There was hatred and constant threat of violence. The best thing we could do was to go set up in a prison camp somewhere else. Berlin and its decadence was a good idea. The song came about from that. I loved Berlin. I loved the wall and the insanity of the place. The communists looked in on the circus atmosphere of West Berlin, which never went to sleep, and that would be their impression of the West."

The Pistols were about to implode a few short months later after the release of Never Mind The Bollocks, Here's The Sex Pistols and an ill-fated tour of the US, where they skipped most of the cities (New York, for instance) that might have understood what they were trying to do. I guess that was the point. The unsuspecting public was not ready for them in places like Dallas and Tulsa, and Listening to this record today, it sounds a good deal tamer than it did in 1977. Then, it sounded ferocious, and like nothing before it.

Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I thought about what to post in honor of this important and historic event. I considered some Kraut rock, maybe Iggy or Bowie's excursions to Berlin. Lou Reed's Berlin was an obvious choice. I've opted for this instead, a record that blew my mind as a precocious 12 year-old who had a vague knowledge of the Berlin Wall, and whose life was changed both by the existence of the Sex Pistols and Punk Rock, and ten years later by a visit to East Berlin on a day pass from Kreuzberg that opened my young and naive American eyes to the ugliness of life behind the Iron Curtain in a series of events worthy of a spy movie. I'll tell that story another time.

Here's the Sex Pistols...



Download:

"Holidays In The Sun" mp3
by the Sex Pistols, 1977.
available on Never Mind the Bollocks Here's the Sex Pistols

****************

The Walking Dead

... Eyewitnesses say they are ordinary-looking people. Some say they appear to be in a kind of trance. Others describe them as being misshapen monsters. At this point, there's no really authentic way for us to say who or what to look for and guard yourself against. Reaction of law enforcement officials is one of complete bewilderment at this hour. Police and sheriff's deputies and emergency ambulances are literally deluded with calls for help.
The scene can be best described as mayhem.

Radio Announcer, Night of The Living Dead
directed by George Romero, 1968.

Download:

"Walking Dead" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1975.
available on Lost Decade




Happy Halloween!

Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac died forty years ago yesterday.

... Dizzy or Charley or Thelonious was walking down the street, heard a noise, a sound, half Lester Young, half raw-rainy-fog that has that chest-shivering excitement of shack, track, empty lot, the sudden vast Tiger head on the woodfence rainy no-school Saturday morning dumpyards, "Hey" and rushed off dancing.

Jack Kerouac, from "The Beginning of Bop"
originally published in Escapade, April 1959.

*************

Download:

"Fantasy: The Early History of Bop" mp3
by Jack Kerouac, 1959.
available on On The Beat Generation

"México City Blues - Charlie Parker" mp3
by Jack Kerouac and Steve Allen, 1958.
available on Poetry for the Beat Generation

"Poems from the Unpublished Book of Blues" mp3
by Jack Kerouac with Al Cohn and Zoot Sims, 1958.
available on Blues and Haikus

*************



"Salt Peanuts" mp3
by Dizzy Gillespie and his Orchestra, 1945.
available on Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948



"Melancholy Baby" mp3
by Charlie Parker and his Orchestra, 1950.
available on The Complete Verve Master Takes


*************

"Medley: Jack & Neil / California Here I Come" mp3
by Tom Waits, 1977.
available on Foreign Affairs


*************

Photograph: Jack Kerouac, c. 1962.
by Robert Frank

The Real Epiphanic Glow, or What We Talk About When We Talk About Jazz

Prior to the advent of the portable tape recorder, naturalists struggled with descriptions of sounds--a thoroughly unsatisfactory procedure as most investigators realized. One frog is decsribed as having a call "like the loud purr of a cat, with a metallic sound of grinding gears." Other authors described the same calls as "a low toned tirr-r-r-r," as "a loud crah-crah-crah," a resonant yeow," or "a snore-like cry." It is manifest that these descriptions convey almost no meaning.

Charles M. Bogart, from the liner notes to
Sounds of The American Southwest, Folkways Recordings, 1959.

***************************

You mean that sound that sounds like the cutting edge of life? That sounds like polar bears crossing Arctic ice pans? That sounds like a herd of musk ox in full flight? That sounds like male walruses diving to the bottom of the sea? That sounds like fumaroles smoking on the slopes of Mt. Katmai? That sounds like the wild turkey walking through the deep, soft forest? That sounds like beavers chewing trees in an Appalachian marsh? That sounds like an oyster fungus growing on an aspen trunk? That sounds like a mule deer wandering a montane of the Sierra Nevada? That sounds like prairie dogs kissing? That sounds like witchgrass tumbling or a river meandering? That sounds like manatees munching seaweed at Cape Sable? That sounds like coatimundis moving in packs across the face of Arkansas?

"The King of Jazz" by Donald Barthelme, 1977.
from Sixty Stories


***************************

Specifically, I embarked upon a career in writing blithely undismayed by the fact that, as a writer, I was primarily interested in that which writing obliterates: in the living atmosphere of all that is shown, seen, touched, felt, smelled, heard, spoken, or sung. I knew this was a peculiar obsession, of course, but I thought writers were supposed to be peculiar. I thought it was just a "problem," that it could be solved, and that, once solved, the enigmatic whoosh of ordinary experience would become my "great subject"--that I could then proceed to celebrate the ravishing complexity and sheer intellectual pleasure of simply being alive in the present moment forever after. I thought.

"Air Guitar" by Dave Hickey, 1997.
from Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy

***************************

I've been wanting to and trying to find something useful to say about Johnny Hodges' "Passion Flower," since the early days of this blog. It's a recording that moves me deeply--depending on the day--from somewhere above my knees to right up the back of my spine.

I've aborted previous efforts, because frankly, I find it difficult to describe Jazz records that I love so intensely, and feel somewhat fraudulent insomuch as my technical vocabulary for this type of thing is limited. And, I'm not much interested in that type of writing anyway.

I could tell you that Hodges was a star in the Duke Ellington band from 1928 onwards, taking a brief solo hiatus in the 1950s and then returning to play with him until his death in 1969. And, like most other great horn players his sound is rooted in his tone, and it's a tone on ballads such as this one, that possesses a quality that is both haunting and otherworldly. The band on "Passion Flower" is made up of a small core group of Ellingtonians including Duke himself in an understated role as pianist and sideman heard only in the beginning and end of this beautiful rendition of the Billy Strayhorn composition.

Several months ago while I was pondering the difficulty of describing a sound, I ran into a friend of mine on the street who is a saxophone player. I asked him what he would say about Hodges' tone. He said, "It's almost obscene. He played as if he was trying to get laid every night."

I couldn't have said it any better.



Download:

"Passion Flower" mp3
by Johnny Hodges and his Orchestra, 1941.
available on Johnny Hodges: Passion Flower 1940-1946

Autumn in New York

Download:

"Autumn In New York" mp3
by Billie Holiday, 1952.
available on Lady in Autumn

"Autumn In New York" mp3
by Charlie Parker, 1952.
available on Charlie Parker with Strings

"Autumn In New York" mp3
by Johnny Hodges, 1954.
available on Used to Be Duke


Photograph: © Ted Barron, 2009.

Jim Carroll

I fucked up. I sit here with my liver and kidneys vibrating inside from uncertainty in every direction. Poetry can unleash a terrible fear. I suppose it is the fear of possibilities, too many possibilities, each with its own endless set of variations. It's like looking too closely and too long into a mirror; soon your features distort, then erupt. You look too closely into your poems, or listen too closely to them as they arrive in whispers, and the features inside you--call it heart, call it mind, call it soul--accelerate out of control. They distort and they erupt, and it is one strange pain. You realize, then, that you can't attempt breaking down too many barriers in too short of a time, because there are as many horrors waiting to get in at you as there are parts of yourself pushing to break out, and with the same, or more, fevered determination.

Jim Carroll, "The Price You Pay"
from Forced Entries © 1987 Penguin Books

Download:

"Catholic Boy" mp3
by The Jim Carroll Band, 1980.
available on Catholic Boy

"People Who Died" mp3
by The Jim Carroll Band, 1980.
available on Catholic Boy



"A Peculiar-Looking Girl" mp3
by Jim Carroll, 1984.
from Better An Old Demon Than A New God
out of print: via UbuWeb

top photo: © Ted Barron
Jim Carroll, New York City, 1983.

Nine

This is the squalid, or moving, part of the story, ... and the scene changes. The people change, too. I'm still around, but from here on in, for reasons I'm not at liberty to disclose, I've disguised myself so cunningly that even the cleverest reader will fail to recognize me.

J.D. Salinger
"For Esmé - with Love and Squalor" 1950.
from Nine Stories Little Brown and Company © 1953.


Download:

"Nine Pound Hammer Is Too Heavy" mp3
by The Monroe Brothers, 1936.
available on Anthology Of American Folk Music Volume 4

"Blue Yodel No. 9" mp3
by Jimmie Rodgers, 1930.
with Louis Armstrong
available on Jimmie Rodgers: Recordings 1927-1933

"Apartment No. 9" mp3
by Keith Richards, 1977.
Out on Bail (and out of print).

"Number Nine Train" mp3
by Tarheel Slim, 1958.
available on Fire/Fury Records Story

"Riot in Cell Block No. 9" mp3
by the Robins, 1954.
available on Smokey Joe's Cafe

"Love Potion Number Nine" mp3
by the Coasters, 1971.
available on Down Home

"Cloud Nine" mp3
by The Temptations, 1969.
available on Cloud Nine

"If 6 Was 9" mp3
by the Jimi Hendrix Experience, 1967.
available on Axis: Bold as Love

"Revolution 9" mp3
by the Beatles, 1968.
available on The White Album

Neptune's Car

by Doug Gillard

In 1980, Doug Morgan was about to begin a short run as touring bassist for Human Switchboard, and had just released a collaborative 7" with Charlotte Pressler under the name Pressler-Morgan ( "You're Gonna Watch Me"/"Hand Piece" - Hearthan Records, 1979). He formed Neptune's Car with Pere Ubu/Home and Garden drummer Scott Krauss, guitarist John Freskos, and bassist Brian Cox, and went into Cleveland's After Dark studios to churn out the jarring avant-pop found on this single.

This 45 epitomizes the best of Northeast Ohio's short-lived "post-punk underground" sound. It comes from a time when men weren't afraid to use chorus pedals - not the smooth Roland JC sound of the mid-80's, but the off-phase, piercing, early chorus pedal sound. The record also benefits from the co-production of The Mirrors' Jim Jones, then just forming the great band Easter Monkeys. Both of these tracks were thankfully included on the Pere Ubu box set Datapanik in the Year Zero, on the included CD Terminal Drive- Ubu-related Rarities. (Geffen/Cooking Vinyl, 1996)

"Baking Bread," with its semi-ska drunken sailor intro led by a repeated Krauss fill, quickly gets into the meat of its angular modern garage pop. Morgan's slightly Verlainian vocals overlay chiming guitars not given to typical strumming or chord voicings. Okay, it's a little like Television, but takes that approach a step further; a little more obtuse.

"Lucky Charms" is almost as strong as the A-side. Propelled by Krauss's forward leaning straight-4 beat, this faster, danceable rocker exhibits the same unexpected chord changes, along with some nice, quirky guitar improvisations along the way, not too far removed from the likes of what Pylon was doing in Athens at the same time. Krauss's beat style here is consistent with the flavor he demonstrated in Pere Ubu and would use in the future with Home and Garden. The guitar parts Morgan devises to fill holes between vocal lines are ever-interesting, never typical.

Neptune's Car changed its lineup and carried on another few years, with Gary Lupico (ex-Kneecappers, pre-Dr. Bloodmoney & California Speedbag, and inventor of the name "Dead Kennedys") coming in on guitar, and Jeff Benik (pre-Ca. Speedbag, The New Ceasars, more) replacing Krauss.

Morgan moved to New York, formed/quit some bands, moved back to Cleveland, and in the 90's formed the New Caesars. Koolie--in fact, Morgan's own label--compiled and released the EP Peter Laughner in 1982.

I saw a later version of Neptune's Car in '82 at an outdoor college radio festival when I was 16, not knowing I would play in some capacity with its members in a few separate outfits years later. (Gary Lupico, Brian Cox, Doug Morgan, Jeff Benik)

In 1996, Doug Morgan was living back in Cleveland and asked me to record 2 songs with him in what would come to be called the New Caesars. "Flame" and "Lou" were 2 very different songs, but have Morgan's melodicism and gift for well thought-out lyrics. Practicing the songs with Doug and the band was fun, and I stayed late those couple nights at a studio in the Flats adding backup vocals and extra guitar. One night after recording I found my car window smashed by a thief who tried to get the crappy radio/cassette player inside. It was worth it, of course, because the songs came out great! You can hear the New Caesars stuff HERE.

(Dedicated to the memory of Gary Lupico and Jim Jones. Thanks to Mike DeCapite and Brian Cox)


Download:




"Baking Bread" mp3
by Neptune's Car, 1980.
Koolie 240
out of print



"Lucky Charms" mp3
by Neptune's Car, 1980.
Koolie 240
out of print


top photograph © Ted Barron
Doug Morgan, Grand Street, Brooklyn, circa 1990.

World Boogie Is Coming

On the inner groove of Beale Street Saturday Night, amongst the various engravings that exist on old LPs, are four words in quotations: "WORLD BOOGIE IS COMING." This was a saying of Jim Dickinson's, who died on Saturday. His contribution to American music puts him in the company of men like his mentor Sam Phillips, about whom he said: "...God created all men equal. I think God gave Sam just a little extra." The same could be said about him.

I never met Dickinson, and always just took it for granted that someday I would. I saw him play a few times in intimate surroundings here in New York: first at the Lakeside Lounge, accompanied by Eric Ambel (who wrote a fine tribute to Dickinson HERE) and again at Joe's Pub a few years later. Sometime in the late 90s, I was in Memphis, and went to meet writer Robert Gordon for lunch at a midtown deli. As we sat there eating our sandwiches, Robert looked up and out the window. "Is that Dickinson?" he said. He paused for a moment, as we watched him amble across the street and past us. "He must be coming from the bank...Dickinson takes care of a lot of things, but himself is not one of them."

Apparently, there was a lot of truth to that statement. He loved the Bar-B-Q--maybe a little too much-- and earlier this year Dickinson underwent heart surgery, and never made a full recovery.

In Gordon's book It Came From Memphis, Dickinson recalls his early education in suburban Memphis:

"Everybody learned it from the yardman." says Dickinson. "Alex Tiel taught me everything he thought was important to teach a nine-year-old white boy. How to shoot craps, how to throw a knife underhanded--the important lessons in life. When it came to something he didn't know, he brought in an expert. He wasn't a musician, but he sang as he worked, unaccompanied, and when he realized I was interested in music, he brought in a man who taught me this technique that I learned to play from."

And so Dickinson's piano lessons began.

James Luther Dickinson went on to play in numerous bands in Memphis. In 1969, when the Rolling Stones were recording in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, he went down to hang out, and ended up playing piano on "Wild Horses" --apparently Stu couldn't play minor chords on the piano--he was also present and (probably) helped with the arrangement of their version of Mississippi Fred McDowell's "You Got To Move" which was also recorded that day. In the early seventies, with a group of fellow Memphians--The Dixie Flyers-- he went to Miami, as the backing band for countless Atlantic Record sessions; played on and produced Ry Cooder's first records, and later a handful of soundtracks (including Paris, Texas); recorded his own record, the classic Dixie Fried in 1972, following it up late in life with a string of great solo LPs. As a producer, he worked with Alex Chilton as a solo artist, and helped craft the collection of songs known as Big Star's Third. Later, he produced The Replacements, Toots Hibbert, Green on Red, Chuck Prophet, Amy LaVere, and many others including his sons, The North Mississippi All-Stars. In 1997, he played keyboards on Bob Dylan's Time Out of Mind, and when Dylan received a Grammy for the record, he thanked his "Brother," Jim Dickinson. His accomplishments are far and wide, and it's doubtful there will ever be anyone quite like him again. The world is a different place, and a better place for him having been a part of it.

Flags in Fluville are flying at half-mast.









Download:

Beale Street Saturday Night, 1978.
out of print

TELL ME MR. JOHNNY,
IS YOU GOT MY MONEY?
or
BOOLA BOOLA
liner notes by Stanley Booth


Both sides of this LP are presented in their entirety,
they are long continuous tracks.

Side One: mp3
Side Two: mp3




***************

Here are some of Dickinson's great recordings, as a frontman, multi-instrumentalist sideman, producer, arranger, and recording artist. This is really just the tip of the iceberg.

"You'll Do It All The Time" mp3
by Jim Dickinson And The New Beale Street Sheiks, 1964.
available on It Came from Memphis, Vol. 2

"Cadillac Man" mp3
by the Jesters, 1966.
available on Sun Records 50th Anniversary Collection

"Back For More" mp3
by Lawson & Four More, 1966.
available on It Came from Memphis, Vol. 2

"Uptight Tonight" mp3
by Flash And The Memphis Casuals, 1966.
available on It Came from Memphis

"Where Is The D.A.R. When You Really Need Him" mp3
by Jerry Jeff Walker, 1970.
with the Dixie Flyers
available on Bein' Free

"Your Own Backyard" mp3
by Dion, 1970
with the Dixie Flyers
available on King of the New York Streets

"Have You Seen My Baby?" mp3
by the Flamin Groovies, 1971.
available on Teenage Head

"Boomer's Story" mp3
by Ry Cooder, 1972.
available on Boomer's Story

"Casey Jones (On The Road Again)" mp3
by James Luther Dickinson, 1972.
available on Dixie Fried

"Kangaroo" mp3
by Big Star, 1975.
available on Third/Sister Lovers

"Fight At The Table" mp3
by Chris Bell, 1975.
available on I Am the Cosmos

"Rock Hard" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1979.
available on Like Flies on Sherbert

"Red Headed Woman" mp3
by Jimmy Dickinson & The Cramps, 1984.
available on Rockabilly Psychosis and the Garage Disease

"Tina, The Go-Go Queen" mp3
by Tav Falco's Panther Burns, 1985.
available on Sugar Ditch Revisited

"Tossin' N' Turnin'" mp3
by The Replacements, 1987.
available on Pleased to Meet Me

"Hard To Handle" mp3
by Toots Hibbert, 1987
available on Toots in Memphis

"Power To The People" mp3
by Mud Boy & The Neutrons, 1993.
available on They Walk Among Us

"Dirt Road Blues" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1997.
available on Time Out of Mind

"JC's NYC Blues" mp3
by James Luther Dickinson, 2002.
available on Free Beer Tomorrow

"Somewhere Down The Road" mp3
by James Luther Dickinson, 2006.
available on Jungle Jim and the Voodoo Tiger

more on Jim Dickinson at The Hound Blog

Elvis Museum

As the rest of the world celebrates the 40th anniversary of Woodstock, today we'll do as we always do here in Fluville on August 16th, and pay tribute to the passing of the King. Elvis Presley died 32 years ago today, and his legacy has been enshrined by the almighty Elvis Presley Enterprises, making his former home, Graceland, one of the biggest tourist attractions in the USA.

There are also some smaller fan based attractions like Graceland Too, in Holly Springs, Mississippi, pictured above and run by tireless fan, Paul McLeod, who has turned his home into a museum and shrine to the King-- covering nearly every square inch of his home with memorabilia; the more campy 24 Hour Church of Elvis, in Portland, Oregon; and a nameless place, sweetly remembered in today's musical selection: "Elvis Museum," by Brooklyn's Maynard and the Musties.

Joe Maynard recalls the inspiration for the song:

"When I was 12 or so and spent the summer at my Dad's house in Lebanon, Tennessee, about 20 miles east of Nashville, he got a country club membership so we could go swimming. The bike ride was about 3 or 4 miles past the edge of town where it just started to turn into farms. About a 1/2 mile from the gate to the country club was this Elvis museum. They had a regular farm house, but as the song says, to the side was an airstream trailor and a billboard of sorts over the top. Everyone in the South waves at each other, and after a couple trips we just decided to check it out. I think she charged us 50 cents a piece, or a dollar. I don't remember much of what was inside, to tell you the truth... I just made up what I thought was in there for the song (sorry if it spoils it for anyone!)"

Long live the King.


Download:

"Elvis Museum" mp3
by Maynard and the Musties, 2009.
available on So Many Funerals

Ryan Adams plays piano and lapsteel

top photo: Graceland Too, Holly Springs, Mississippi, 1997.
© Ted Barron

Mississippi Fred McDowell

by Pete Simonelli

Mississippi Fred McDowell: Live at the Gaslight
Recorded: November 5th, 1971, New York City

Several years, and many miles, after his discovery by the great (and sometimes controversial) Blues musicologist, Alan Lomax, Mississippi Fred McDowell’s two sets this night in New York City proved to be the culmination of a long and rich career.

Born in Rossville, Tennessee, McDowell settled in Como, Mississippi in the early 40s, working as a plowman and cultivating his distinct style of slide guitar in local picnics and dances in the region known as The Hills: an area just north of the Mississippi Delta, noted for its own brand of Blues that hewed closer to the African tradition of repetitive rhythms, or “vamps.” He was taught to play slide guitar by an uncle, gradually using a beef rib bone before turning to a pocket knife and, later, as his style and gift were fully developed, a more common glass side he wore on his ring finger. Lomax arrived in 1959 and found McDowell and his wife on their porch, “looking like a couple of hungry blackbirds.” A questionable allusion today, but Lomax said Fred was, understandably, “eager to record.” In his highly acclaimed book, The Land Where the Blues Began, Lomax continues, “We recorded outdoors after dark, by flashlight. No wind was blowing, and the katydids were out of season, so we could take advantage of the living quiet of open air and the natural resonance of the earth and the trees….The sound we captured made us all deliriously happy.”

That same kind of sensation comes across in the intimate setting of the Gaslight. Greeted by an eager and excitable crowd, McDowell takes that energy and works off it throughout the entire recording. People gleefully heckle and cheer him on, entirely in love with him. It goes on like this throughout the show, McDowell being a consummate showman and kindly host, peppering his tuning breaks with explanations of how the Blues, “and Spirituals, too”, are conveyed to him and thus onto his listeners. He never flaunts his authority over the music, never condescends or rhapsodizes the crowd with hollow banter. Instead, he relies on a convivial and sympathetic approach. And as the songs unfold in alternating bouts of grief and redemption, sorrow and joy, the easy, fluid mastery of his playing--- and by extension, his personality--- is undeniable.

Given the palpable sweat and heat that reaches out of this recording, you’d never think that winter was fast approaching outside the Gaslight that night. But it was in fact an approaching cold that would settle over the world when, just a few short months later, Fred McDowell would die of cancer in 1972. Listening to these songs, accompanied by the late Tom Pomposello on bass (who also provides the liner notes and some fond, insightful memories to the collection), is an intimate and sometimes chilling experience when considering the proximity of McDowell’s death. He never recorded again, and to hear these songs unfold is easily one of the greatest listening pleasures any music lover could have. It’s not essential to be a fan of the Blues; this music resonates with such force and authenticity it would be hard not to feel instantly moved by McDowell’s singular ability to make his music stand out and be heard. As he so often said, the Blues “is a feeling, you understand,” and to hear his playing is to understand and capture not only the root of Blues music but what music in general can do for the soul of the listener.

A lofty sentiment perhaps. But if you go straight to the end (yes, straight to the end) of this double CD set, to “Get Right Church”, I think you’ll see what I mean. Granted, it is a haunting number that could unsettle the fainter heart, but the virtuosity of the playing and how McDowell’s plaintive voice combines with the hair-raising, get-right-to-the-bottom-of-the-well tone of his guitar is something beyond explanation. I’ve listened to this song repeatedly for years and my addiction to it is hopeless. I take to it like a dog to an ass scratch; all physical surroundings are lost; I succumb to the feeling.

When the song ends I turn around and play it again, thinking the only approximation to this kind of performance can be found in the likes of Son House or Skip James (each of whom are welcome inspirations to McDowell). There’s an ethereal, transcendent quality to the performance. Pomposello holds a grinding rhythm as McDowell luxuriates over the top of it, sometimes falling in with the bass line for a beat or two before he winds out of it and lets the guitar punctuate and/or finish the lyric. Many bluesmen---from Blind Lemon Jefferson, Charley Patton, Sleepy John Estes on down---substitute notes for the voice and finish a lyric; I realize it’s nothing new. But to hear it so closely (due to the great mastering of the recording) and with such acoustic density is truly akin to watching the show along with all the other fortunate folks who were there that night. You just have to close your eyes.

Another notable song, “Red Cross Store”, can also be found on the second of the two CD’s (track no.7). To call this number anything other than an indictment would be wrong. Even more so, this particular take is a variation on the original lyrics. Instead of a man taken to task by a woman, McDowell counters that idiom with a stirring version about a man looking to feed his family. Encountering the sheer rejectionof an otherwise charitable organization--- “Go ‘way, boy, you know times got hard.”--- the song veers between an urgency and a telling narrative built on the era’s social injustice that isn’t found too often in McDowell’s catalogue. Though the driving rhythm is a signature style and serves up much of the tune’s anger, a resentful McDowell tells us from the outset: “Well I ain’t!/ gwine back!/ to that!/ Red Cross!!/ store no more // ain’t gon/ na let my baby go back (to that) Red Cross/ store no more.” This is the verse that gets me, the opener, because you know something’s terribly wrong (the delivery tells us as much) and he’s not having it. When followed by the vow that he won’t let his baby go back either, I hear the conviction of a loving and righteous soul who won’t let anyone else suffer the way he already has.

By the third and fourth verses he’s laid out the story for us: boll weevils in the meat, (corn) meal, and lard, and there’s absolutely nothing to show for anybody’s work. The very people who have tended to the food--- sowed it, reaped it, and slaughtered it--- are suddenly told that it’s not available to them; it’s tainted, and there’s not a damned thing anybody’s going to do about it. The Blues, indeed.

On a lighter note, listen for something really cool at the very opening of the song. After a short tuning, McDowell slowly, almost cautiously, begins the song, letting it find its swing. Just as it starts to ramp up, a woman in the audience cuts loose and screams right into the song. It sounds like she’s launching it to fruition, and it’s the kind of enthusiasm that makes any great set a little more memorable. I sometimes go back to “Red Cross Store” just so I can hear her again.

This is standard-bearing work and shows us an artist, poet and farmer in one of his finest hours. Lomax would go on to lament Fred’s preference for electric Blues, believing that he’d lost one of his golden boys to the bright lights and flashy suits, but there’s really nothing lost at all. The porch is just New York City now.

Download:

“Get Right Church” mp3
"Red Cross Store" mp3
"Someday Baby" mp3
"When The Saints Go Marchin' In" mp3
"You Got To Move" mp3

by Mississippi Fred McDowell, 1971.
available on Live at the Gaslight

this photograph:
by William Eggleston,
Untitled, 1972.

top photograph:
by Lee Friedlander
Fred McDowell, Senatobia, Mississippi, 1960.

Billy Lee Riley Needs Your Help

This notice originally appeared on the Rockabilly Hall of Fame site:

Billy Lee Riley, one of the remaining original Sun Records artists is in VERY bad need of help! Billy has had his share of health problems, and is now battling Stage FOUR bone cancer.

Although MusiCares is helping with house payment, car and such, He and Joyce are totally out of money and can barely afford to eat. This is a CALL FOR HELP to all musicians and fans. Please remember, twenty bucks from all of us would make a HUGE difference in Billy's life! What if this was you? Let's all get together and send something today to Billy and Joyce and show them that he means alot to us. If you have a website, a facebook or myspace, please post this need for help on it! We can't save the world, but it will mean alot in Billy Lee's life!

His Address is:

Billy Lee Riley
723 Crest Drive
Jonesboro, Arkansas 72401

Or Donate via PayPal to bob@rockabillyhall.com

Download:

"Flying Saucers Rock n' Roll" mp3
by Billy Lee Riley, 1957.
available on Red Hot: The Best of Billy Lee Riley

"Red Hot" mp3
by Billy Lee Riley, 1957.
available on Red Hot: The Best of Billy Lee Riley

"Wouldn't You Know" mp3
by Billy Lee Riley, 1958.
available on Red Hot: The Best of Billy Lee Riley

via The Hound Blog

Freedom

Download:

"Freedom" mp3
by Alan Vega, Alex Chilton, Ben Vaughn, 1996.
available on Cubist Blues

"Freedom Part 1" mp3
by Charles Mingus, 1962.
available on The Complete Town Hall Concert

"Freedom Part 2 (Clark in the Dark)" mp3
by Charles Mingus, 1962
available on The Complete Town Hall Concert




"Freedom Blues" mp3
by Little Richard, 1971.
available on Rill Thing

"Freedom Train" mp3
by James Carr, 1969.
available on The Complete Goldwax Singles

"Freedom Street" mp3
by Ken Boothe, 1971.
available on Freedom Street

"Everytime I Think of Freedom" mp3
by Karen Dalton, 1962.
available on Cotton Eyed Joe

"Chimes of Freedom" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1964.
available on Another Side of Bob Dylan

top photo: © Ted Barron
Washington Square, New York City, 1984.

Body and Soul

by Chris O' Leary

It’s the first and only record I ever heard of that all the squares dig as well as the jazz people, and I don’t understand how and why, because I was making notes all the way. I wasn’t making a melody for the squares.

-Coleman Hawkins

“Body and Soul,” jazz standard of standards, turns eighty years old in 2010. It is jazz’s benchmark, warhorse, rite of passage, litmus test: I can’t think of a single major jazz musician, post-1930, who hasn’t taken it on, from Roy Eldridge to John Coltrane to Anthony Braxton, from Billie Holiday to Sarah Vaughan to Betty Carter, from Art Tatum to Thelonious Monk to Sun Ra. The fecundity, the sheer number, of its interpretations is staggering--in 1980 Gary Giddins estimated that some 3,000 versions of “Body and Soul” had been recorded, and likely at least a thousand more have come in the decades since.

Still, “Body and Soul” is a strange breed of eternal. It’s an odd song, with a melodramatic, sometimes clunky lyric (“my life a wreck you’re making”), a steeplechase harmonic structure with a wide range and a knotted string of key changes (the bridge alone is dizzying, starting a half-step above the home key of D-flat major, then dropping to a half-step below before it wends its way back to the chorus), and a ghost of a melody which sounds upon hearing it that you’ve dreamt it somewhere first.

The 22-year-old composer Johnny Green debuted the song in a 1930 Broadway show called “Three’s a Crowd”. The producers at first considered “Body and Soul” a dud, cutting it from a few tryout performances, while Robert Sour and Edward Heyman dashed out a series of lyrics in a bid to resuscitate it. (Frank Eyton, an arranger at the song publisher Chappell & Co., is also credited as a songwriter, though he’s there mainly for business reasons.) The final lyric, including the soon-to-be-altered line “my life a hell you’re making,” even got the song banned from a few radio stations in the early ‘30s.

Libby Holman made “Body and Soul” famous in “Three’s a Crowd” and the song’s dark, obsessive sentiments seem keyed to Holman’s brutal pageant of a life. A stage singer with a taste for younger women and men (including Montgomery Clift), Holman may have killed her husband, an heir to the Reynolds tobacco fortune. She first claimed he shot himself, and later that she had been so drunk she didn’t remember anything; she was indicted for murder but skipped sentencing because she was pregnant. After another of her husbands killed himself with barbiturates, she toured the world, sponsored Martin Luther King’s trip to India and befriended and bedded, respectively, Paul and Jane Bowles. One day in June 1971 her servants found her slumped in the front seat of her Rolls Royce, dead of carbon monoxide poisoning.

Holman’s recording of “Body and Soul” was one of many first-wave versions rushed out during the last months of 1930, along with those from flapper singer Annette Hanshaw and Paul Whiteman’s and Ozzie Nelson (Ricky’s father)’s big bands. Louis Armstrong’s take, cut at the same time, was released two years later, where it served as the first of many revivals of the song. The Benny Goodman Trio’s elegant version from 1935 did the same.

Making Notes All the Way

It’s possible that “Body and Soul” would have faded over time, in the way Johnny Green’s other standards like “Out of Nowhere” did, into a cult song occasionally dusted off by an enterprising jazzman. And then on 11 October 1939 Coleman Hawkins reincarnated “Body and Soul” as a masterpiece of pure improvisation.



"Body and Soul" mp3
by Coleman Hawkins, 1939.
available on Body and Soul: The Complete Victor Recordings 1939-1956 Master Tapes

Hawkins’ version is a two-chorus tenor saxophone improvisation that discards the original melody after the first few bars, and some 100,000 copies of it sold in the first six months of its release. Hawkins recorded it in one take, having come into the studio after playing all night at the NYC club Kelly’s Stable. He later said doing ‘Body and Soul’ hadn’t even crossed his mind:

“That tune was the least of my ideas. There were other tunes I preferred…when I got back to America, maybe once in a while in the middle of the night I would play ‘Body and Soul.’ Every time I played it different and people seemed to like it enough.” Told that one of the label execs had heard him do “Body and Soul” live and wanted Hawkins to record it, Hawkins agreed to do one take. He took a swig of Cognac and told the pianist Gene Rogers to play an introduction. No rehearsal, no charts. Off he went. “I didn’t even have an arrangement on it,” Hawkins said. “I didn’t want to play it at all, so I just played it through once and made up the ending when I got to it. The ending, as it turned out, was one of the funniest things I ever played in my life. Like the way the horns came in on the last chord.” (From John Chilton’s The Song of the Hawk.)

The first time Hawkins heard his “Body and Soul,” on a jukebox in Harlem’s Fat Man Charlie Turner’s Rib Place, he was surprised at how good it sounded. His contemporaries were stunned. Chu Berry told Hawkins he was playing “the wrong notes” on the record, while Thelonious Monk couldn’t grasp its appeal to squares and “old folks” (“I could understand if you played melody, because that’s what they like. [But] there’s no melody in there, what are they listening to?” he later told Hawkins). Nat King Cole dragged people into a dive bar on Central Avenue in Los Angeles to hear it on the jukebox. The young John Coltrane played the disc over and over, trying to figure out Hawkins’ arpeggios. Randy Weston tried to work it out on his piano, breaking the solo down note by note.

After Hawkins, “Body and Soul” had two lives. Subsequent generations of jazz players took Hawkins’ cue and used the genetic material of “Body and Soul” for their own ends, as the basis for a series of extravagant self portraits. Some of the finest include Jimmy Blanton’s 1940 take, a phenomenal bass solo that is first bowed and then, after a Duke Ellington piano interlude, plucked as if Blanton had adamantine fingers; Boyd Raeburn’s fusion--part Schoenberg, part Science Fiction movie soundtrack--from 1946; James Moody’s wistful dream, from 1949; Serge Chaloff’s baritone sax reverie, recorded while Chaloff was in a wheelchair due to spinal paralysis in 1955; Sonny Rollins’ a cappella bravado from 1958; Monk’s spiky, burrowing take from 1962, in which he seems to be trying to test the patience of the “old folks” that bewildered him years ago; John Coltrane’s stately version from 1960; Dexter Gordon’s multiple charges up the mountain. Hawkins himself recorded a tune called “Rainbow Mist” in 1944 which uses the same chord sequence of “Body and Soul”; it’s the closest he ever came to doing a sequel.



"Rainbow Mist" mp3
by Coleman Hawkins, 1944.
available on Rainbow Mist

The singers, however, kept up “Body and Soul”’s parallel existence, as a torch ballad that seems to disregard the basic rules of romantic songs. The singer doesn’t seem to really care about his or her lover except as an object of obsession—the singer is reduced to offering only physical release, and doesn’t seem concerned whether the lover responds in kind, saying only that they will keep up the pursuit until they’re satiated or something worse happens.

Its ominous, moonstruck sentiments were captured by singers like Sarah Vaughan, who recorded an elegant trio version in 1954, or Holiday, who took it on twice, a honeyed love song in 1940 (listen to how sweetly she sings a line like “my days have grown so lonely”), and a weary reminiscence in 1957, or Frank Sinatra, whose 1947 take offers the song in its purest form.

Why has “Body and Soul” captivated so many for so long? Perhaps it’s not as much of a mystery as it may appear. Musicians can’t get enough of that melody, and there’s so much bounty in Johnny Green’s elaborate composition that one can tap it for a long time without going dry. And perhaps it’s finally become a self-generating machine—the more the finest jazz players take it on, the more their ambitious successors try to best them at it. A fractured ray of moonlight, a stalker’s set of artless sentiments, “Body and Soul” has persisted far beyond the ambitions of its distracted makers. Listen to the tracks here, revel in them, and know that you’ve scarcely scratched the surface.

Download:

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Louis Armstrong, 1930.
available on The Big Band Sides 1930/32

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Benny Goodman Trio, 1935.
available on After You've Gone

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Django Reinhardt, 1937.
available on Django Rheinhardt Anthology 1934-1937



"Body and Soul" mp3
by Billie Holiday, 1940.
available on Lady Day: The Master Takes and Singles

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Duke Ellington and Jimmy Blanton, 1940.
available on Complete RCA Victor Recordings

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Charlie Parker, 1942.
guitar: Efferege Ware
available on Bird in Time 1940-1947

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Ben Webster, 1944.
available on Tenor Men: Titans of the Sax



"Body and Soul" mp3
by Roy Eldridge, 1944.
available on After You've Gone

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Lester Young, 1945.
available on The Complete Aladdin Recordings



"Body and Soul" mp3
by Boyd Raeburn, 1946.
vocal: Ginnie Powell
available on Boyd Meets Stravinsky

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Frank Sinatra, 1947.
available on A Voice in Time: 1939-1952

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Sarah Vaughan, 1954.
available on Swingin' Easy

"Body and Soul" mp3
Sonny Rollins, 1958.
available on Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Charles Mingus, 1960.
available on Reincarnation of a Lovebird

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Eric Dolphy, 1960.
available on Candid Dolphy

"Body and Soul" mp3
by John Coltrane, 1960.
available on Coltrane's Sound

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Sun Ra, 1960.
available on Holiday for Soul Dance

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Thelonious Monk Quartet, 1962.
available on Monk's Dream

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Dexter Gordon, 1970.
available on The Panther!

"Body and Soul" mp3
by Anthony Braxton, 1974.
available on In the Tradition, Vol. 2

"Body and Soul" mp3
Charlie Haden, 1986.
available on Quartet West

**************************************
For more versions of the standard, visit the always formidable and awesome Locust Street. [ed.]