Boogie Woogie Flu

Billy Lee Riley Needs Your Help

2009-07-08T23:08:00.001-04:00

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

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

2009-07-04T12:13:00.007-04:00

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

2009-06-27T04:35:00.014-04:00

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.]

Weegee Speaks!

2009-06-22T00:57:00.019-04:00

"It's like a modern Aladdin's lamp. You rub it--in this case, the camera-- you push the button and it gives you the things you want"

Today's mp3s come courtesy of my friend Laura Levine, fellow photographer, artist, and proprietor of Homer & Langley's Mystery Spot Antiques. Recently, Laura purchased a collection of 15,000 LPs to sell at the shop, and among them was this very rare and curious gem, Famous Photographers Tell How. Below you can hear Weegee talk about picture-making. It's interesting to hear his voice, which is one of those accents you don't hear so much in New York anymore: part Austro-Hungarian immigrant by way of the Lower East Side and part Elmer Fudd. Peter Sellers based his accent in Dr. Strangelove on Weegee's voice after Weegee visited Kubrick's set. One of my favorite things in Weegee's classic 1945 book, Naked City is the last chapter called "Camera Tips" where he gives away some of his tricks of the trade. Dated or not, I learned a tremendous amount when I first read it, about picture taking, and about Weegee.

Download:

"Weegee" mp3
by Weegee, 1958.
from Famous Photographers Tell How
out of print

"Now the easiest kind of a job was a murder, because the stiff would be laying on the ground. He couldn't get up and walk away and get tempermental and he would be good for at least two hours."

Arthur Fellig adopted the name Weegee or "Weegee the Famous," alluding to the Ouija board and his knack for being first on the scene is in his days as a roving news and street photographer. It wasn't an accident or any supernatural pre-disposition that he was there first at the fires, murders and general mayhem that he recorded in Gotham. Weegee was the first photographer to have a police scanner (originally in his one room tenement flat across the street from NYC police headquarters and later getting another for his Buick). His photographs of New York from the 30s and 40s are iconographic images of the city and it's inhabitants (both high and low) and important photographs, whether he intended them to be or not. It's been suggested that he was naive, and not a sophisticated photographer, but I don't really believe it, and it doesn't really matter. These pictures are as real as it gets, and great works of art. (see Atget) Later in his career, when he got the idea that he was an artiste is when the pictures became less interesting. (see Richard Avedon)

"I will walk many times with friends down the street and they'll say 'Hey, Weegee. Here's a drunk or two drunks laying on the gutter' I take one quick look at that and say 'They lack character.' So, even a drunk must be a masterpiece!"

A few weeks ago, my friend Chris was in town visiting and we spent part of an afternoon walking around downtown and looking at some of my old favorite places in the city. We came up through Chinatown, and on towards the old police headquarters on Centre Market Place. I told him "Weegee used to live right here, you know." We proceeded up the street, and looking for the John Jovino Gun Shop that had been there since at least the time of the Weegee (he lived upstairs) and I realized it was gone. I found out later that it actually moved around the corner, but something felt strange, like so much of this city that has disappeared in its post-Giuliani homogenization. I've been thinking about it a lot recently as I've been digging through my own archive of photographs that I made in my early days here in New York. I wonder what Weegee would think of the new niceness of his city. He didn't love the misery that the tenements that he grew up in bred - and no one should - but the drama and street theater of New York that he thrived on has been altered in ways that probably wouldn't please him.

Weegee was seltzer, sour pickles, and pastrami.

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

BONUS:

Download:

"Henri Cartier-Bresson" mp3
by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1958.
from Famous Photographers Tell How
out of print

Another segment from Famous Photographers Tell How with
Henri Cartier-Bresson. Eloquent, dry, and French like the great philosopher/mathematician image maker that he was.

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

This record and thousands more, as well as interesting curios of old from near and far are available at Homer & Langley's Mystery Spot Antiques, located in downtown Phoenicia, New York. Tell 'em I sent you.

Fluville Gazette Vol. 3 No. 28

2009-06-14T02:15:00.013-04:00

Hello friends. It's been quiet here, I know. But that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about you. I've been busy with some other stuff, and I'll try to bring you up to speed on a few of the exciting developments here in Fluville.

Did I say Fluville? That's funny. It seems I came down with some strain of the flu myself last week, and had to take myself to hospital. Yes, I feared that maybe I had come down with the Boogie Woogie Swine Flu.

I let the experts sort it out.

After an annoying few hours of coughing up my lungs in a hospital waiting room, my crack team of doctors, fearing that perhaps I had become stricken with the Rockin' Pneumonia, took a few x-rays of said lungs to reveal that it was only an infection. They sent me on my way. I got my prescriptions filled, did a boogie woogie in the middle of the street, and spent the next few days in bed.

The bad news is, I had to cancel a trip to attend my son's 10th birthday party. The good news is, here's here with me now for the summer, and I've been teaching him to play the guitar. He likes the anglo-rock of the 60's and 70's, and the other day I taught him how to play this song:

"Substitute" mp3
by The Who, 1966.
available on Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy

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

Before I got sick, I went to see the re-united original lineup of X at one the three shows they did at the Bowery Ballroom. I was reminded again, of why they were so great and so important. Let's pause and listen to a few of their songs:

"Hot House" mp3
by X, 1983.
available on More Fun in the New World

"How I (Learned My Lesson)" mp3
by X, 1982.
available on Under the Big Black Sun

"In This House That I Call Home" mp3
by X, 1981.
available on Wild Gift

"The World's A Mess, It's In my Kiss" mp3
by X, 1980.
available on Los Angeles

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

Okay, so now you might be be wondering about that picture of Guitar Slim at the top of this post, and what it's doing there. Well, I'm gonna tell you now. I wrote a little piece about him for Perfect Sound Forever, and you can read it HERE. Here's a few of the songs that I reference there.

Slim's theme song, was co-opted from Gatemouth Brown:

"Gatemouth Boogie" mp3
by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, 1947
available on Dirty Work at the Crossroads 1947-1954

"New Arrival" mp3
by Guitar Slim & His Playboys, 1951.
(Huey Smith on Piano)
available on 1951-1954

Slim recorded it again for a Specialty session:

"Guitar Slim" mp3
by Guitar Slim, 1954.
available on 1951-1954

...and he recorded another Gatemouth Brown number at his last recording session for ATCO:

"My Time Is Expensive" mp3
by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, 1949
available on Dirty Work at the Crossroads 1947-1954

"My Time Is Expensive" mp3
by Guitar Slim, 1958.
available on Atco Sessions

Here's his rare single from the J-B label:

"Certainly All" mp3
by Eddie (Guitar Slim) Jones, 1952.
available on 1951-1954

"Feelin' Sad" mp3
by Eddie (Guitar Slim) Jones, 1952.
available on 1951-1954

And a cover of it by Ray Charles.

"Feelin' Sad" mp3
by Ray Charles, 1961.
available on The Genius Sings the Blues

Ray Charles played on and produced the session that yielded these recordings:

"The Things I Used To Do" mp3
by Guitar Slim, 1953.
available on Sufferin' Mind

"Story Of My Life" mp3
by Guitar Slim, 1953.
available on Sufferin' Mind

Slim had a lot of influence on others, as a performer and guitar player. Here's a few versions of his songs done by others:

"The Things That I Used To Do" mp3
by James Brown, 1965.
available on The Singles, Vol. 3: 1964-1965

"It Hurts To Love Someone" mp3
by Earl King, 1992.
available on Hard River to Cross

"Trouble Don't Last" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1987.
available on High Priest

"I Don't Mind At All" mp3
by Doug Sahm, 1980.
available on Hell of a Spell

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

When I was In New Orleans in April, I had the opportunity to spend some time with recording engineer Cosimo Matassa and talk with him a bit about Guitar Slim as I was preparing to write the article for Perfect Sound Forever. The video here was shot with the intention of capturing the audio of our discussion, but I've edited some highlights for viewing. Cosimo was present for many of the most important recording sessions of the mid 20th century in New Orleans (or anywhere for that matter) at his fabled J&M Studio. It was an honor to meet him and spend some time hanging out with him. The interview took place at his office above the Mattassa Grocery in the French Quarter.

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

A few weeks back, I did a post called Bob's Record Collection (again). In it I posted some of Dylan's source material from World Gone Wrong. There were a few things that I didn't post. For all you completest folks out there, I offer them to you here and now.

"Jackaro" mp3
by Tom Paley, 1953.
from Folk Songs From The Southern Appalachian Mountains
out of print

"Two Soldiers" mp3
David Grisman and Jerry Garcia, 1991.
available on Grisman & Garcia

Also, an interesting bit of ephemera HERE.

Okay, that's it for today, I hope I've made up for some lost time.

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

In case you haven't seen it, I'm also posting some of my vintage photographs of New York City, along with a few choice mp3s at East of Bowery. It's a collaboration I've been doing with novelist Drew Hubner for the last several months. If you live in New York City, we will be doing a multi-media performance version of this in collaboration with musicians Jim Coleman and Kirsten McCord, TONIGHT June 14th at the Bowery Poetry Club.

More information: HERE.

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

Photograph of Me And Cosimo by Jacob Blickenstaff © 2009

Photograph of Lincoln Barron by Ted Barron © 2009

Jay Bennett 1963-2009

2009-05-25T19:18:00.008-04:00

Sad news. Jay Bennett, multi-talented producer, arranger, and multi-instrumentalist, who played with Wilco, during their rise from 1995-2001, died in his sleep yesterday. He was 45 years old, and the cause of death at this time is unknown. His departure from the band and rift with bandmate Jeff Tweedy was (guardedly) documented in the 2002 film, I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. Bennett's pop sensibility and taste for the baroque, as well as his knack for Beatles/Beach Boys melodies and arrangements are highlights of his recordings with the band. His tasty guitar solos were frequently acknowledged by Tweedy from onstage. It's a drag writing obituaries here, and a double-drag when they are for your acquaintances and contemporaries. Here's a few highlights from his tenure with Wilco.

Flags in Fluville are flying at half-mast.

Download:

"Magazine Called Sunset" mp3
by Wilco, 2001.
available on More Like The Moon EP

"Cars Can't Escape" (demo) mp3
by Wilco, 2001.
unreleased

"I Am Trying To Break Your Heart" (alternate) mp3
by Wilco, 2001.
also available on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

"Ashes of American Flags" mp3
by Wilco, 2001.
available on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

"A Shot in the Arm" mp3
by Wilco, 1999.
available on Summerteeth

"When You Wake Up Feeling Old" mp3
by Wilco, 1999.
available on Summerteeth

"My Darling" (demo)
by Wilco, 1999.
also available on Summerteeth

"100 Years From Now" mp3
by Wilco, 1999.
available on Return Of The Grievous Angel

"California Stars" mp3
by Billy Bragg & Wilco, 1998.
available on Mermaid Avenue

"Monday" mp3
by Wilco, 1996.
available on Being There

"Forget The Flowers" mp3
by Wilco, 1996.
available on Being There

"Burned" mp3
by Wilco, 1996.
available on I Shot Andy Warhol

photographs: © Ted Barron
Wilco at the Mercury Lounge, New York City 1996.

Bob's Record Collection (again)

2009-05-24T15:37:00.014-04:00

In the liner notes to Bob Dylan's 1993 record, World Gone Wrong, he gives a play-by-play look and commentary into it's ten songs. Well, sort of. In a few pages of a CD booklet he divulges his sources and interprets the meaning of the songs - mostly traditional folk and blues tunes, all old, and for the most part pretty dark - all the while riffing a free association into a look at something that Greil Marcus called "the old, weird America."

Here's a sample. Dylan's talking about a Civil War ballad, called "Two Soldiers."

"... physical plunge into Limitationville, war dominated by finance (lending money for interest being a nauseating & revolting thing) love is not collateral. hittin' em where they aint (in the imperfect state that theyre in) America when Mother was the Queen of Her heart, before Charlie Chaplin, before the Wild One, before the Children of the Sun - before the celestial grunge, before the insane world of entertainment exploded in our faces - before all the ancient and honorable artillery had been taken out of the city, learning to go forward by turning back the clock, stopping the mind from thinking in hours, firing a few random shots at the face of time."

The fluidity and elasticity of time is an interesting subject.

On World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You from the previous year, Dylan re-grounded himself by going back to songs he had heard and learned in his early days in New York, and recorded them quickly and simply (voice and guitar) in his garage studio at home. He is, in essence, "firing a few random shots at the face of time." I love these records, and while the record company was probably less than thrilled to get a couple of records of covers - from the songwriter - they serve as stark precursors to his next two records, Time Out Of Mind, and Love and Theft. Dylan, who once said, "don't look back," is without nostalgia, doing just that, and looking forward all the same.

World Gone Wrong, is a collection of murder ballads, songs about gamblers, desperate men, working women, ghosts, trains, soldiers, heartbreak, vigilantes, and essentially - America. Here we have the songwriter as curator in the museum of American Song. So, in celebration of Bob Dylan's 68th birthday, we once again take a look at Bob's record collection, and it's a pretty good one.

Here are Dylan's sources, as best as I could find them. I've made a couple of substitutions: "Jack-A-Roe", he learned from Tom Paley of the New Lost City Ramblers, It appeared on two Elektra collections of Appalachian folk songs from the 1950's, but I've been unable to find a copy. Instead we get an acoustic version from the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia, learned this probably from the same record, and also taught "Two Soldiers" to Dylan, which I've substituted for a better version by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard which Dylan also references in the liner notes.

Download:

"The World Is Going Wrong" mp3
by The Mississippi Sheiks, 1930.
available on Stop and Listen

"Love Henry" mp3
by Tom Paley, 1964.
from Who's Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot?
out of print

"Ragged and Dirty" mp3
by William Brown, 1942.
available on Mississippi Blues & Gospel: 1934-1942 Field Recordings

"I've Got Blood In My Eyes For You" mp3
by The Mississippi Sheiks, 1930.
available on Stop and Listen

"Broke Down Engine Blues" mp3
by Blind Willie McTell, 1931.
available on The Definitive Blind Willie McTell

"Delia" mp3
by Blind Willie McTell, 1940.
available on Complete Library of Congress Recordings

"Stackalee" mp3
by Frank Hutchison, 1927.
available on Anthology Of American Folk Music

"Two Soldiers" mp3
by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, 1973.
available on Hazel & Alice

"Jack-A-Roe" mp3
by The Grateful Dead, 1981.
available on Reckoning

"The Lone Pilgrim" mp3
by The Doc Watson Family, 1963.
available on The Watson Family

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

There's a handful of outtakes from the World Gone Wrong sessions. These are two of the songs he recorded that didn't make it on the album. "32-20 Blues" came out earlier this year on Tell Tale Signs.

"Hello Stranger" mp3
by The Carter Family, 1938.
available on Volume 2: 1935-1941

"32-20 Blues" mp3
by Robert Johnson, 1936.
available on The Complete Recordings

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

Also recorded in Bob's garage at these sessions, is a version of The Duprees' "You Belong To Me," which is on the soundtrack to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. On the soundtrack album there is an annoying monologue by actor Woody Harrelson over an instrumental break in the song. Fluvillian resident Jesse Jarnow has provided this mp3, to which he has applied a little cut and paste to get rid of the monologue.

"You Belong To Me" mp3
by The Duprees, 1962.
available on The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2

"You Belong To Me" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1993.
also available on Natural Born Killers

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

Buy: World Gone Wrong
by Bob Dylan, 1993.
Columbia Records

top photo: by Douglas R. Gilbert, 1964.
John Sebastian, Bob Dylan, and Ramblin' Jack Elliot

Wolfmoon

2009-05-22T23:46:00.005-04:00

I'm not really sure about the details of who Wolfmoon were, except that it is some type of consortium of Swamp Doggery on the Fungus record label. Rule of thumb: when buying records, if it's on the Fungus record label, it's probably a good one. "God Bless." and "My Kinda People," were both written, produced and arranged by Jerry Williams Jr., AKA Swamp Dogg.

This record is unusual in that they are both answer songs to two of Swamp Dogg's earlier compositions , or more precisely - clarification songs . On Swamp Dogg's classic LPs, Total Destruction to Your Mind and Rat On!, there are two numbers called, "God Bless America for What" and "These Are Not My People." Perhaps, the Dogg, not wanting to come off on a negative tip, decided to clarify things with this record, where he proclaims God's love through a child's bedtime prayer for, among others, Deputy Dog, Huckleberry Hound, Elmer Fudd and Mother Goose. On the flip side, he praises the down-home and kind kind of people that make a better kind of world.

These are the liner notes from the LP from which this single was taken:

Win with Pride and Glory, Lose with Style
and Grace and remember no matter how
good you are you can always be replaced.
WOLFMOON IS A MOTHER!

-SWAMP DOGG

God bless Swamp Dogg.

Download:

"God Bless" mp3
by Wolfmoon, 1973.
available on Blame It on the Dogg

"God Bless America for What" mp3
by Swamp Dogg, 1971.
available on Rat On!

"My Kinda People" mp3
by Wolfmoon, 1973.
out of print

"These Are Not My People" mp3
by Swamp Dogg, 1970.
available on Total Destruction To Your Mind

Happy Mother's Day From All Your Friends At The Boogie Woogie Flu

2009-05-10T15:01:00.011-04:00

Download:

"Mother Popcorn" mp3
by James Brown, 1969.
available on Star Time

"Answer to Mother Popcorn" mp3
by Vicki Anderson, 1969.
available on Mother Popcorn: The Vicki Anderson Anthology

Del Reeves

2009-05-08T02:38:00.007-04:00

It's time to salute the late great Del Reeves. Sure, he's responsible for signing Billy Ray Cyrus, but I think Del regretted that long before he died. Franklin Delano 'Del' Reeves enjoyed a long and storied career as a member of the Grand Ole Opry, hosted his own TV show The Del Reeves' Country Carnival, where he frequently carried on like a Hillbilly Dean Martin, and he also cut two of the greatest truck driving records ever. Both of them are featured here, as well as some tracks from his long out of print live LP recorded at everbody's favorite North Hollywood Honky-Tonk, The Palomino Club.

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

Download:

"Looking At The World Through A Windshield" mp3
by Del Reeves, 1968.
available on His Greatest Hits

"Girl On The Billboard" mp3
by Del Reeves, 1965.
available on His Greatest Hits

"Belles of Southern Bell/A Dime At A Time" mp3
"Lonesome Rubin/Going Down The Road Feeling Bad" mp3
"Trucker's Paradise" mp3
by Del Reeves, 1974.
from Live At The Palomino Club.
out of print

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

BONUS:

"Lookin' At The World Through A Windshield" mp3
by Son Volt, 1996.
available on Rig Rock Deluxe

Handful of Dust

2009-05-03T20:37:00.005-04:00

by Paul Abruzzo

In the early 90s I rented a ludicrously small room in an apartment on Amsterdam Avenue near Columbia. I was drinking constantly, working as a waiter in a glorified diner in midtown, ensnared in self pity, remorse, and depression. I wrote bad, dark poems, and as I went to sleep I prayed into my pillow for the mercy of death to take me in the night. I was supposed to be writing a master’s thesis on the Antifederalists—people opposed to the ratification of the U.S. Constitution—but I hadn’t even started. Volumes of their political tracts lay on my desk like an accusation.

Mostly, I went to a bar a few blocks down from the apartment called Starry Night. A print of the Van Gogh painting hung over the register, a forever-crooked brass light illuminating it from above. A jukebox sat directly across from the bar, its base lit up with the bright colors of Italian ices. The music on it ranged from “This Is Where I Belong” by The Kinks to “Rock Box” by Run D.M.C. I loved that jukebox.

A fat man who called himself San Juan sat at the end of the bar, resting his pudgy arms on the banister-like lip, insinuating himself into every overheard conversation. He sweat prodigiously, particularly late in the night, when he hustled out into the streets on cocaine runs for regulars in exchange for skimming a few bumps. About once a night he’d play Prince's “Sexy M.F.” on the juke, standing to holler a self-referential version of the chorus, “You sexy FAT motha-fucker!” while hula hooping his rotund midsection, the flabby underside of his chin bringing to mind bags of goldfish I got as a kid from the street fair.

I played the jukebox every night, starting with Neil Young’s “Mr. Soul,” from Unplugged. The first line always put me at ease, “Well hello Mr. Soul I dropped by to pick up a reason.” There’s something particularly charismatic in Neil’s voice in this rendition, like the way he annunciates the word “better.” No one in recorded history ever sang a better better. The riff is a graceful rephrasing of “Satisfaction” by the Stones, proving that in music, as in all art, there's infinite space between simple parameters.

One night I fell for an adorable blond. She had green eyes and a white t-shirt and I bought her a beer in a green bottle. She asked me what I was up to. “I’m working on my thesis,” I lied, “and waiting tables.”

“What do you make a shift?” she asked, touching my forearm, sending a warm feeling up to my head, and then down into my heart.

“I don’t know. About 60 for lunch, maybe 120 for dinner.”

“Shit!” she implored. She shook her little pale fist, “that’s what I was making when I did it years ago. It’s so unfair. Why does it never change—ever?”

“Oh, please,” I said, “everywhere you turn there’s a new injustice to make your head explode.”

She laughed.

We discovered we lived across the street from each other, she over the bodega where I went for my cigarettes. I dug my fingernail into the soggy label on my bottle. The air-conditioner over the door droned and rattled. She had the smallest hands and tough, black boots, which intensified my crush. I felt the rush of hope. I felt like my whole life was about to change.

It was quiet. “I’m gonna play music,” she said, and went to the juke. I ordered and drank a shot of scotch. She came back. A song started. I didn’t know it.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Lucinda Williams,” she said, raising her eyebrows and smiling.

“Never heard it,” I said.

“What?” she slapped her palm to the forehead. “She’s a genius.”

The song playing was “Six Blocks Away.” She said, “I broke up with a guy and he lived exactly six blocks away and I listened to this song over and over.”

“I like it,” I said. Then Lucinda’s “Pineola” came on, a dark tale of a suicide. It gripped me right away. I learned later that the character “Sonny” in the song is based on Frank Sanford, a poet Lucinda knew who took his own life by shooting himself three times in the heart.

The fiddle remains quiet while the narrator sings, but then cries a lament at the end of each verse. There’s something very brave about this song in its attempt to put into words emotional states which can’t be put into words.

When Daddy told me what happened
I couldn't believe what he just said
Sonny shot himself with a .44
And they found him lyin’ on his bed

I could not speak a single word
no tears streamed down my face
I just sat there on the living room couch
staring off into space

The drums are silent until after the line, “Sonny shot himself with a .44,” when the snare cracks as if a bullet shot. The chorus is only sung once, which adds to the drama of the narrative. The last two lines are a repetition of “I think I must have picked up a handful of dust and I let it fall over his grave.” The “I think” in that line is a clever comment on how shock and fear hamper memory. The “handful of dust” is ultimately from the Bible, but more specifically from a famous line in the first section of T.S. Eliot’s “Wasteland” called “The Burial of The Dead.”

I will show you fear in a handful of dust

The song ends with a rather long musical interlude, led by a fiddle dirge, emphasizing the reduction of the narrator to speechlessness, and the sadness of walking away from someone you have just put into the earth.

“What an amazing song,” I said.

“Yes,” she said, slapping the bar, “amazing.”

Then, after a tad, I got real drunk. Too drunk. I’d been drinking fast, and the scotch pushed me over. Also, my blood rushed from nerves, and my head was whirling from the dark beauty of “Pineola.” I began slurring. She abruptly said she had to go, to meet her boyfriend. “Boyfriend!” I thought, “how did that happen?” I was destroyed. I nearly puked on her. She said goodbye, turned and was gone. Her empty green bottle sat there on the bar, patches of foam slowly creeping downward.

In the week or so that followed, I would stand at the living room window in my apartment and try to catch sight of her in one of the windows over the bodega, but never did. I couldn’t get her out of my head for a while, how I’d fucked up an opportunity. I went nuts for Lucinda Williams after that. I ran out and got her records, and whenever I played “Pineola,” or “Six Blocks Away,” that whole night came back to me, that little pale hand and those green eyes.

I met girls in the Starry Night all the time—mostly unkempt lunatics. One was a stripper in a place near Port Authority, a stunning girl with beautiful black skin, enormous round eyes, and hands that never stopped moving. I spotted her standing near San Juan, parrying his sweaty coked-up advances with half-hearted politeness. She wore a ridiculous hat. I walked right over. “I love your hat,” I lied. She called herself Kellie, but that wasn't her name. She asked after my ethnicity. I told her my father's from the Sicilians, and my mother from the Jews, and she lit up.

“I only go out with Jewish guys,” she said, adding bluntly, “my father hates them.” I took her home.

She also loved the jukebox. Her favorite tune on it was The Beastie Boys’s “So What’cha Want.” I introduced her to Tom Waits. I played “Frank’s Wild Years,” from Swordfishtrombones.

“Listen to this,” I said, “listen to the lyrics.” She laughed to the ceiling, gave me a soggy, crumpled dollar.

“Play it again!” she hollered.

After a few nights with her I realized she was basically homeless, carrying all her possessions in a red duffle bag out of which she pulled all kinds of sex toys, contraceptives, and tawdry underwear. One morning I got up and found her at the kitchen table eating a Butterfinger for breakfast, peeling back the paper bite-by-bite with her nervous fingers while mouthing lyrics to a song in her head. My two Latin American roommates—both studious squares—stood in their neatly-tied flower aprons making brunch, quieted and terrified by Kellie, looking to me for help as soon as I came in.

I broke up with Kellie later that night in the bar, when she came in after her shift. She cried briefly, scrounged around in her bag for lip gloss, went to make a phone call, ordered a sweet red drink, shot a game of pool, and had a new boyfriend way before last call. They left together and I was relieved and jealous at the same time. Next time I saw her I nodded over toward him as he chose songs on the juke, “I see you're with that guy now.”

“Yeah,” she said, “it's good. Jordan. He's Jewish.”

I was thinking, "Look at that face: how could I have let her go?” Then Jordan played Lightnin' Hopkins's “Come Back Baby,” one of my favorites. I’d brought a girl along, Beth. I’d met her in a bagel shop on Broadway a couple of hours before. She was a cute, plumpish Jewish girl studying journalism at Columbia.

“You’re with her?” Kellie asked, gesturing with her head over at Beth, who was chatting with the bartender, flopping her hands around.

“Yeah,” I said. She looked Beth up and down.

“I don’t like her,” she said, and walked away. I never saw Kellie again.

I moved. I sobered up. I finished my thesis. I got a real job. I got a lovely, relatively sane girlfriend. I quit the job, then the girlfriend. I drank again. I sobered up.

Then, a remarkable thing happened one night years later. I met a guy and he wanted to fix me up with an old friend of his, Jennifer. I agreed. It was cold, winter. We were all bundled. She looked vaguely familiar as we met on the street and shook hands. We three got in a cab, me in the middle. We went uptown and came to a stoplight on Amsterdam. I realized where we were and pointed over at the white iron grillwork cage laid over the door of my old building.

“I used to live there,” I said.

“Where?” Jennifer asked, shocked.

“Right there,” I said, pointing.

“I live right there,” she said, turning and pointing to the other side of the street, over the bodega. I froze. I looked at her face again to make sure.

I waited until we got out of the cab and walked a few steps. “Jennifer,” I said, “I know you. We've met.”

She looked at me quickly, her eyes narrowing. “When?”

“Oh,” I said, “about…six years ago, in the Starry Night.”

“Really?” she said.

“Yeah, you played Lucinda Williams’s ‘Six Blocks Away,’ and said you broke up with a guy who lived—”

“—Oh my God,” she said, putting her pale little hand up to her open mouth.

A few weeks later, one night, Jennifer and I went over to the Starry Night. The jukebox was gone, and it broke my heart. Some young guy I didn't recognize was working the bar. He had an iPod hooked up to the sound system. The music playing was stuff you’d expect to hear in a mall in Michigan. The place was empty but for two girls in their 20s who shot pool. No San Juan. No Kellie. These were clearly different times, and I felt sad, nostalgic. I had the unreal demand that the Starry Night be exactly as I'd left it.

“Hey listen,” I said to the bartender, “you have any Lucinda Williams on that iPod?”

“No, sorry,” he said, “What is that—country music?”

Jennifer put her hand on my forearm. She smiled.

“Let's go,” she said. I nodded. We walked out into the night, this time together.

***********

Download:

"This is Where I Belong" mp3
by The Kinks, 1967.
available on The Kink Kronikles

"Rock Box" mp3
by Run D.M.C., 1984.
available on Run-D.M.C.

"Sexy M.F." mp3
by Prince, 1992.
available on The Hits 2

"Mr. Soul" mp3
by Neil Young, 1993.
available on Unplugged

"Six Blocks Away" mp3
by Lucinda Williams, 1992.
available on Sweet Old World

"Pineola" mp3
by Lucinda Williams, 1992.
available on Sweet Old World

"So What'Cha Want" mp3
by The Beastie Boys, 1992.
available on Check Your Head

"Frank's Wild Years" mp3
by Tom Waits, 1983.
available on Swordfishtrombones

"Come Back Baby" mp3
by Lightnin' Hopkins, 1946.
available on The Complete Aladdin Recordings

***********

Photograph: © Christian Patterson
Memphis, February 2005 (Lamplighter Jukebox)

Sound Affects by Christian Patterson available at Photo-Eye

Get Your Mau Mau's Out!

2009-04-20T20:47:00.002-04:00

by Scott Schinder

On April 28 and 29, the House of Blues in New Orleans will host the eighth edition of the Ponderosa Stomp, the annual marathon throwdown that showcases the surviving originators of R&B, soul, rockabilly, garage-rock, swamp pop and country. Since 2002, the Stomp—the brainchild of Big Easy anesthesiologist/music fiend Ira "Dr. Ike" Padnos, kingpin of the shadowy Mystic Knights of the Mau Mau—has hosted performances by a dazzling array of vintage cult legends, forgotten geniuses and one-of-a-kind visionaries, many of whose careers stretch back more than a half-century.

Now in its third year at the House of Blues (following a long run at the vibier but worse-sounding Rock 'n' Bowl and a one-year post-Katrina exile in Memphis), the Stomp's 2009 lineup may be its most impressive and diverse to date, offering a typically tantalizing mix of old favorites, regional heroes and timely rediscoveries.

Along with such Stomp regulars as blues harmonica titan Lazy Lester (whose eponymous 1966 instrumental provided the Stomp's moniker) Louisiana rockabilly legend Joe Clay, R&B/blues guitar masters Li'l Buck Sinegal and Classie Ballou, '60s soul auteur Bobby Patterson, garage pioneers ? and the Mysterians and Bo Diddley's guitar-slinging distaff sidekick Lady Bo, the 2009 bill includes trailblazing rockabilly queen Wanda Jackson, Boston garage legends the Remains, resurgent '60s soul standard-bearer Howard Tate, blues iconoclast Jerry "Boogie" McCain, Detroit rockabilly exponent Johnny Powers, influential Motown session guitarist Dennis Coffey, durable New Orleans vet Robert Parker, pioneering outsider-country space cadet the Legendary Stardust Cowboy and the brilliant Memphis songwriter/producer Dan Penn.

One of the Stomp's most endearing features is Dr. Ike's knack for unearthing obscure and/or long-missing-in-action performers and coaxing them back to the live stage. Among this year's promising rediscoveries are California rock 'n' roller Roddy Jackson, Sun Records cult fave Carl Mann, fabled boogie-woogie pianist Little Willie Littlefield and Lil Greenwood, the former Duke Ellington Orchestra vocalist who also recorded numerous memorable R&B solo sides.

As is often the case at the Stomp, the backup bands are as stellar as the featured performers. For instance, Hi Records' fabled '70s studio combo, led by guitarist Teenie Hodges, will reunite with soul stalwart Otis Clay, while seminal rockabilly guitarist James Burton will accompany his former boss Dale Hawkins. In one of the fest's most eagerly anticipated sets, beloved slop-rock anti-geniuses the A-Bones will do backup duty for Flamin' Groovies founders Roy Loney and Cyril Jordan, who haven't played a full set together since Loney exited the Groovies three and a half decades ago. The A-Bones will also back Texas R&B/rockabilly hybridist Ray Sharpe. Also providing quality support will be ace retro-country-rocker (and frequent Stomp presence) Deke Dickerson and his ace combo the Eccofonics, Memphis soul instrumentalists the Bo-Keys, and Mississippi soul traditionalists Wiley and the Checkmates. And it's not unusual for the likes of Alex Chilton and original Fats Domino sideman Herb Hardesty to turn up as Stomp sidemen.

As if all of the above wasn't enough to keep music nuts occupied, the Stomp is also sponsoring a daytime music conference on April 27, 28 and 29 at the Louisiana State Museum's Cabildo museum in Jackson Square. The conference will feature interviews and panel discussions with such figures as Dave Bartholomew, Dr. John and an impressive roster of behind-the-scenes movers and shakers, along with some music-themed exhibits and screenings of new documentaries about Bo Diddley, the Remains and Wanda Jackson.

Download:

"The Dark End Of The Street" mp3
by Dan Penn, 1994.
available on Do Right Man

"Heart" mp3
by The Remains, 1966.
available on The Remains

"Yesterday's Numbers" mp3
by The Flamin' Groovies, 1971.
available on Teenage Head

"Geronimo Rock 'n' Roll" mp3
by Jerry McCain, 1955.
available on That's What They Want

"Hey! Pardner" mp3
by Classie Ballou, 1958.
Excello 2134
out of print

"I'm A Lover, Not A Fighter" mp3
by Lazy Lester, 1958.
available on I'm a Lover Not a Fighter

"Long Blonde Hair, Rose Red Lips" mp3
by Johnny Powers, 1958.
available on Long Blonde Hair

"Up, Up and Away" mp3
by Jivin' Gene and the Jokers, 1959.
available on Breaking Up Is Hard To Do

"Trying to Live My Life Without You" mp3
by Otis Clay, 1972.
available on Hi Masters

"The Midnight Hour Was Shining" mp3
by Little Willie Littlefield, 1953.
available on Going Back to Kay Cee

top photo: Bobby Emmons and Dan Penn © 2009 Jacob Blickenstaff

Record Store Day 2009

2009-04-18T02:25:00.009-04:00

Today is the second annual Record Store Day. This is a day for music lovers. Sure, the economy is shot. The record business is too, but that was started long ago by the creeps running record labels who have increasingly become not music lovers, but businessmen with bad ideas. There are exceptions of course, but not enough of them.

This is what I had to say last year and I think it's worth repeating today:

Record stores, while rapidly diminishing are still a great source of pleasure for music lovers everywhere. They have a smell. Downloading is easy, but it's impersonal. Even though most of you are here to do just that. Instead of plying you with a bunch of compressed mp3's, I urge you to go out and buy something today. Something that you can hold in your hands, with writing on the back and pictures or a booklet with all kinds of information and artwork to peruse while you listen to it. Go to a real record store, not Walmart or the Virgin Megastore if you can help it. Go somewhere and look around. Buy something on a whim. Buy something because you like the cover. Buy something because someone told you it's good or it has a funny title. Take a chance. Go buy one of the records you heard here or somewhere else. I can tell you where I bought most of the records in my collection, because record stores are fun...

Record stores are important too. People that run them and work in them know stuff that you don't. There are celebrations and instore performances taking place everywhere today.

If you are in Phoenix, Curt Kirkwood of the Meat Puppets is playing at Zia Records. In Nashville, Charlie Louvin and Del McCoury are gonna be at Grimeys. Jay Reatard is at Goner in Memphis. Mark Olson and Gary Louris from the Jayhawks are at Waterloo in Austin, I'm gonna go listen to a preview of the new Dylan record at Other Music in New York City today. Bill Callahan is playing there later too. In St Louis, the Bottle Rockets are playing at Euclid Records, one of my favorite places, and they're also unveiling the latest of their exclusive 7" singles by none other than NRBQ's Terry Adams. Make sure you tell Euclid owner Joe Schwab happy birthday. John Paul Keith & The One Four Fives are at the Disc Exchange in Knoxville, and Wilco are gonna be there signing autographs. There's tons of shit happening everywhere, plus it's spring and you should get away from your computer anyway and enjoy the beautiful weather. For more info on Record Store Day, go HERE.

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

I wasn't gonna post anything to download today, but I do have one thing to offer up. This is an unlikely collaboration between Swamp Dogg and friend of Fluville, Ben Greenman. Ben is a writer at The New Yorker, co-proprietor of Moistworks, and the author of several books. His latest novel, Please Step Back, is the fictional story of a soul singer named Rock Foxx, troubled and living San Francisco in the late sixties and early seventies. Ben wrote some lyrics to an unrecorded Rock Foxx song for the novel, and asked Jerry Williams (AKA Swamp Dogg) if he would like to compose some music and record it. And he did.

Here's what Ben had to say about it...

"The song is pretty important in the book because it's all about verticality. He gets high often because, well, he has a problem, and he's always seeking ground -- solid ground, and personal rootedness. But in the song, he's trying to make sense of it. It's all about gravity and bounce and birds. Things that affect the vertical. As Swamp Dogg was making his song I also made a horrendous 30-second version myself, which was how I imagined Rock Foxx would sing it -- slow, draggy, and druggy. Since I can't sing and there were no instruments, it was a super-raw demo. I destroyed it immediately. I'm glad I did, because it was horrendous, but I have it somewhere in my head, and it helps me see what a great job Swamp Dogg did with the song."

For more of the backstory on this great and unusual collaboration, go to Largehearted Boy.

Download:

"Please Step Back" mp3
by Swamp Dogg, 2009.
via Largehearted Boy

Okay, now go out and buy a Swamp Dogg record. I suggest Total Destruction To Your Mind or Rat On! Buy anything that tickles your fancy. Just get out and support your local record dealer. Have fun, and if you feel like it, let me know what you picked up today in the comments below.

If you live on the West Coast, Ben Greenman is going to be reading at some of the finer bookstores out there in the next few weeks. We'll save the dilemma of bookstores for another post.

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

top photograph: © Ted Barron
Del-Pen Market, St. Louis, Missouri, 1986.

Going Down Slow

2009-04-15T20:08:00.017-04:00

"Going Down Slow" mp3
by St. Louis Jimmy, 1941.
available on That's Chicago's South Side

"Going Down Slow" mp3
by Howlin' Wolf, 1961.
available on Moanin' in the Moonlight

by Jason Gross

Every song has a story and this blues standard is no different. It began life with James Burke Oden (1903-1977), a blues pianist who bounced around from his native Nashville to St. Louis and eventually to Chicago, following fellow keysman Roosevelt Skyes. In the windy city, he picked up the nom de plume St. Louis Jimmy and began cutting sides for Bluebird, an RCA subsidiary which specialized in blues and jazz (aka "race music").

In late '41, the 38-year-old musician recorded an original song, which would become the B-side of another original, "Monkey Face Blues." Heard in this first version, "Going Down Slow" sounded more like an R&B ballad than a blues tune, except when you listened to the lyrics: the original label itself classified it as "blues singer with instrumental acc." Oden is heard with just his piano and a bass backing him up. In the five verses, he sings in a nasal tone, speaking of his own demise, getting more and more desperate as the song goes along. He starts out with a rollicking piano intro as he passively accepts his fate, singing "I have had my fun/if I don't get well no more." You could say he's comforting himself in his last hours here. Then, when he can't soothe himself anymore, he comes out and faces down his miserable condition. " My health is failin' me/And I'm goin' down slow."

Any amateur M.D.'s wanna make a diagnosis here? Oden doesn't give you many clues or symptoms and we're left to wonder what's killing him. Maybe it's just life in general doing him in. But the fact that we can't pin it down adds a universality to the song and makes it a prime piece of suffering (masochism?) that would attract many other artists to the song.

Meaning and form change up in Oden's second verse:

Please write my mother
Tell her thee shape ah'm in
Pleeeeeeease write my mother
Tell her thee shape ah'm in
Tell her to pray for me
Forgive me for all my sins

He wavers between a soulful shout (on the 2nd 'please') to a labored recital of his words ("thee shape ah'm in"). Here, the words are revealing too as he asks for a letter to his mom, which makes sense for a guy like Oden (and later Wolf and many other bluesmen) who left his family in the deep South to make it up north in Chicago. These last two lines match up with what he told us at the start- his 'fun' is ultimately 'his sins.' It's that religious burden which lays out the rules where you pay hard if you play hard (you're going to hell for partying it up). This might also give us a clue about what's killing him also, related to his 'fun'- liver damage, alcohol poisoning, social disease, attack by a jealous lover. It's all divine punishment for his wicked ways. As we'll see, all of this becomes clearer and more vivid in Wolf's later version.

Oden's third verse lays out how desperate things are for him now:

Tell her don't send no doctor
Doctor can't do no good
Tell her don't send no doctor
Doctor can't do no good
It's all my fault Didn't do the things I should

There's no hope for him that he can see as he ends up blaming himself, again knowing that his partying ways left him as one hurtin' mutha. Religious guilt is a bitch, ain't it?

The fourth version doesn't provide much comfort either:

On thee next train south
Look for my clothes home
On thee next train south
Look for my clothes home
If you don't see my body
All you can do is moan

Oden labors "the" in the first line here but he's also so fucking delirious by now that he's already imagining his corpse being freighted back to his family. His clothes might make it back there even if he doesn't. What can do you, he shrugs. Moan and miss him. Pretty dire stuff and as we'll see, a little too dire for some admirers of the song.

Thoughts of his family return in the fifth and final verse:

Mother please don't worry
This is all in my prayer
Mother please don't worry
This is all in my prayer
Just say your son is gone
And out of this world somewhere

You figure that his words of comfort to his kin might be part of that letter he mentioned before and he's assuring them that he's trying to make good with God now, which he hadn't been doing before. He even tells them what to say about him after it's over - he's just a ghost drifting around now. With the song done, the suffering's done too and we can only hope that he's found peace though the torment we hear in the five verses makes you wonder.

(Oden would later re-record "Slow" for two other labels. For his 1955 version on Parrot Records, he did the song as an R&B trio with bass and a Chuck Berry-like guitar juicing up the later verses. For a 1960 Bluesville Records version, he did the song as a languid trio with Wolf/Muddy sideman Otis Spann on piano and Robert Jr. Lockwood on guitar - Oden skips the train verse there and Spann does an extended solo near the end).

Now let's zoom ahead twenty years from the original to 1961. Mississippi native Chester Arthur Burnett (aka Howlin' Wolf) had been recording for a decade and become a staple of Chicago music alongside Muddy Waters, his old friend and rival, with both of them signed to legendary blues label Chess. A bit of a late bloomer into his music career, Wolf's now 51 years old. Alongside him is guitarist Hubert Sumlin who was 20 years younger than Wolf and playing alongside him for over six years.

Earlier, Oden had recorded for Aristocrat Records (a Chess precursor) with Muddy playing alongside him. He was now peddling his songs to artists, looking for some more royalties. It's little wonder that "Goin' Down Slow" would fall into Wolf's lap then.

Another important figure here is Willie Dixon. Eventually, he'll get his due as one of the top American songsmiths of the 20th century alongside Rodgers/Hammerstein, Dylan, Hank, Biggie, etc. but for now, he's got another role to play. Like Muddy, Wolf had made his career at Chess by cutting many of Dixon's songs- for Wolf, this included such immortal and well-trotted tunes as "Evil," "Spoonful," "Back Door Man," "Wang Dang Doodle" and plenty of others. For a December '61 session, he had another pair of great ones for Wolf to record - "I Ain't Superstitious" (later covered by the Yardbirds, the Grateful Dead and Jeff Beck) and "You'll Be Mine" (also done by Stevie Ray Vaughan and Dr. Feelgood).

But there was another song that they did for the session, which happens to the one in question here. Wolf and Dixon (who was Chess's house producer, not to mention its session bassist) transformed "Going Down Slow" radically. Not only did they make it their own but they also fleshed out meaning in it that Oden couldn't. As many later versions would do, they chopped out lines but while most of the other covers dropped a verse, Wolf/Dixon performed some radical surgery here- they cut out the last three verses and then added two of their own. If that wasn't enough, neither of the two new verses were sung- instead, they were recited. Such a radical transformation could have nabbed them a co-writing credit but they left it with Oden.

Where Oden's original had the air of languid R&B, Wolf's cover is done at a much slower, deliberate pace, adding heft to the struggle and pain we hear about in the song. The desperation of the words is finally matched by the music, much the same way that the bubbling funk of Sly Stone's original single version of "Thank You" compares to the deadly, zombified version on There's A Riot Goin' On.

Alongside Wolf, Dixon and Sumlin, there were other Chess Record regulars on hand for the "Slow" recording session: guitarist Jimmy Rogers (a recording artist in his own right and a member of Muddy's band), pianist Henry Gray (who'd also spent years working with Wolf) and drummer Sam Lay (who would later play with the Butterfield Blues Band and with Dylan at his fateful Newport Festival appearance four years later and on a little record called Highway 61 Revisited).

Wolf's version of "Goin' Down Slow" doesn't even start out with Wolf himself. Instead, we hear Dixon talking the first few lines, which was rare for these kind of sessions. In Dick Shurman's notes to the 1991 MCA Records, Howlin' Wolf box set, he speculates that there might have been tension in the studio between Dixon and Wolf over who'd do the quieter verses but one wonders how Wolf could have provided the right contrast there (later, we'll see how that went when he did try that in a live version).

In any case, it's Dixon we hear at the top, in this new first verse, speaking in a mellow, unhurried tone:

Man... you know I've enjoyed things that-
kings and queens will NEVER have 
In fact things kings and queens can't never get
 And they don't even KNOW about it
And good times? Mmmmmmmmm-mmm

While there's calm reflection in Dixon's voice, at the same time, he's also bragging and, as we'll later learn, trying to ease his own pain by remembering better days. Also, you gotta love how he savors the last line there, saying more in his "Mmmmm" than he could if he described his fun in detail. This intro also extends Oden's emotional turmoil, making it more gripping and descriptive, especially when Wolf comes in next.

Needless to say, Wolf doesn't take his verse calmly, instead applying his unearthly groan that he was famous for. The second verse here was the first verse in the original tune but now with some important differences. Wolf's voice finds the horror that Oden's words were only trying to convey, especially the way he belts out the last few words.

I have had my fun, if I never get well no more
I have had my fun, if I never get well no more
Whoa, my health is fadin'
Oh yes, I'm goin' down slow.

Along with Sumlin applying a wonderful rubbery guitar for the first two lines, Wolf (or Dixon) has some lyrical touches to add. Where Oden fretted about "if I don't get well no more," Wolf claims the more emphatic and final "never get well no more." Also, instead of having his health "failing," Wolf has it as "my health is fadin'," making for a much more rich, mysterious image and more downhome too.

The contrast and back-and-forth between Dixon's meditations and Wolf's death spiral is a stark one, repeating itself one more time in the song. In the third verse here, which is also a newly-penned one spoken by Dixon, he goes on to explain himself from the first verse, also ignoring the harrowing details of the second verse that just ended (maybe purposefully to avoid the pain of it).

Now looky here 
I did NOT say I was a millionaire 
But I said I have spent more MONEY than a millionaire
'Cause if I had a kept all of the money I've already spent, 
I'd would have been a millionaire a loooong time ago 
And women...? Greeeat, Googly Moogly...

The first few lines draw an important distinction. Dixon's character hasn't tucked away enough money to be rich but he's spent more money than a rich man. In other words, he's basically your average American consumer, tossing away money frivolously- something we now suffer through in our current economic woes. The last line about his lady friends is again a way to brag and comfort himself from the misery we hear in Wolf's verses. The contrast is stunning, considering that the two men are actually just talking up the same guy's grizzly fate from different angles.

Wolf's last verse (the 2nd verse of the original tune) brings us back to down the dire state of the narrator, buoyed along by Sumlin's guitar in the second line

PLEASE write my mama
Tell heeer the shape I'm in
Please write my mother 
Tell heeer the shape I'm in 
Tell her pray for me 
Forgive me for my sins

Note that instead of "mother," Wolf calls her the more informal "mama" the first time. Also, when heard after Dixon's previous verse, we get more context here about what exactly "my sins" are- not just the wasteful spending but also "Great, Googly Moogly..." letting our imagination roam with how many skirts he's chased and cherries he's popped. But one place that Oden does have it over Wolf is in the last lines where the original did sound remorseful and sad about what he's done where Wolf's more powerful voice sounds almost like he's making demands - it's his mom's problem to get him right with God than any worry of his.

(Wolf's mom was indeed very religious and didn't approve of his fame, saying that he was playing the 'devil's music,' according to The Howlin' Wolf Story DVD)

And that's where Wolf and Dixon left it off. Nothing about the train, the doctor or comforting his mother. But in the way that they shuffled, cut, pasted and mashed up the original like a Frankenstein creation, they transformed the song. Oden had created a great blueprint for something that took on a life of its own. Where he served up a tasty morsel, Wolf and Dixon fried up a juicy steak.

But being a standard, "Going Down Slow" didn't end there. Even before Wolf sank his teeth into the song, it caught the ear of another famous singer. Ray Charles covered the song in 1949, renaming it "I've Had My Fun" (which sounds more upbeat, right?) and skipped the 4th verse, about the train. Like Oden, he also did it in a piano trio format, releasing it as a B-side to his single "Sitting on Top of the World" on the L.A. indie label Swing Time records.

But it was Wolf's version that spread the word and made the song more popular than ever, after it came out in 1962 as the B-side to "You'll Be Mine." For her Atlantic Records debut in 1967, Aretha Arives, the queen of soul did a nice bluesy version, using Oden's original lyrics but asks to write her father instead of her mom, skips the 4th/train verse and redoes the last verse. For a 1974 live album For the First Time...Live, with B.B. King, Bobby Bland also sticks close to Oden's original (nothing about "failin''' or 'mama') in a wonderful, soulful gut-wrenching version. For the 4th verse, Bland and King fight over who's singing it but then cut out the last verse.

Even Wolf himself would revisit the song, making it a concert staple. Heard on Rockin' the Blues- Live In Germany, 1964 (recently reissued by Acrobat), he takes all the verses of his own version himself, trumping Dixon. But even with Sunnyland Slim's lively boogie-woogie piano livening up the proceedings, Dixon's vocal absence is felt though he's still on stage playing bass- Wolf doesn't have the subtlety of Dixon so the contrast between the verses is missed. And though he skips the third (doctor) and last verse, he does tip his baseball cap to Oden by reviving the 4th verse, about the train. He also improvises some of Dixon's original dialog. Most significantly, right before the verse about writing his mom, Wolf says "I can't go home, I treat my mama wrong." Where before it sounded like he had to write to her because he moved to Chi-town for work, here he draws a different picture- just like in real life, Wolf's the errant son who doesn't have a place back home with his mom, at least until he's ready to be buried. But in the song, and the verse he ends with here, he warns that he might not make it back there when he does pass on.

He sounds so convincing that you really wonder if Wolf should be worried that he won't make it back South when he's ready to be laid to rest. Sure enough, he didn't make it back there in the end - even though an annual festival honors him near his Mississippi hometown, his gravesite remains in Chicago.

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

"Goin' Down Slow" mp3
by St. Louis Jimmy. 1955
available on Complete Works, Vol. 2

"Going Down Slow" mp3
By Howlin' Wolf, 1964.
available on Rockin' The Blues: Live in Germany 1964

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

"I've Had My Fun" mp3
by Ray Charles, 1949.
available on The Complete Swing Time & Down Beat Recordings 1949-1952

"Going Down Slow" mp3
by Aretha Franklin, 1967.
available on Aretha Arrives

"Goin' Down Slow" mp3
by B.B. King & Bobby "Blue" Bland, 1974.
available on Together for the First Time...Live

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

"I've Had My Fun" mp3
by Little Walter
available on The Complete Chess Masters (1950-1967)

"Going Down Slow" mp3
by Guitar Slim, 1955.
available on Sufferin' Mind

"Goin' Down Slow" mp3
by Otis Spann with St. Louis Jimmy Oden, 1960.
available on Walking the Blues

Fun With The Old Testament

2009-04-08T01:02:00.002-04:00

Blood, Frogs, Gnats, Flies, Pestilence, Boils,
Hail, Locusts, Darkness, and Death.

Happy Passover!

Download:

"Matzoh Balls" mp3
by Slim Gaillard & His Flat Foot Floogee Boys, 1939.
available on Laughing in Rhythm

photograph: © Ted Barron, 2009.

Duane Jarvis: 1957-2009

2009-04-05T02:10:00.003-04:00

Guitarist Duane Jarvis died this week after a long battle with cancer. I met him around 2002, when he was touring with my friend Amy Rigby, and they stayed with me and my wife at our Brooklyn loft. I can't say I knew him well, but we did spend one memorable evening together listening to records and talking about music. I made him a copy of a Don Covay record that I was obsessed with at the time, and he gave me a copy of his then current release, Certified Miracle. The songs are good and soulful, and have caused me more than once to do a double-take and check out what was playing when they came up in my itunes shuffle. He was a gifted guitar player and songwriter, who played with many artists, including Lucinda Williams with whom he wrote, "Still I Long For Your Kiss."

Download:

"Still I Long For You Kiss" mp3
by Duane Jarvis, 2001.
available on Certified Miracle

"Intoxicate Me" mp3
by Duane Jarvis, 2001.
available on Certified Miracle

"Last Time You Cried" mp3
by Duane Jarvis, 2001.
available on Certified Miracle

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

"Til The Wheels Fall Off" mp3
by Amy Rigby (with Todd Snider), 2003.
D.J. lead guitar
available on Til the Wheels Fall Off

Amy has written a nice remembrance of D.J. HERE

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

also...

by Laura Cantrell

Duane Jarvis was someone I knew by reputation before I actually met him in person. He was in Lucinda Williams' band when I saw her a few times in New York, at the Mercury Lounge and maybe Tramps. She would introduce the song they wrote together, "Still I Long For Your Kiss," with a shout out to DJ. He was a low key presence on stage, and very approachable in person. I got to know him a bit back in Nashville, where he played with Amy Rigby and Tim Carroll and a lot of folks who had migrated down from NY. When I was finally starting to play on the UK/Europe alt country circuit, we crossed paths a few times and had a lovely show together in Edinburgh at Queen's Hall in 2003. Backstage at that gig, I got to tell DJ a story about hearing his music in a funny context. At the time I was still working on 57th street and one of my mid-day refuges was Bendel's department store on 56th Street and 5th Avenue. For several months that year, every time I was in the store I would hear DJ's song "A Girl That's Hip." I would sort of look around at the fancy ladies oblivious to the soundtrack of their shopping, and hope that DJ was getting some revenue from the spins. Hearing the song was also a little encouragement while I was trying to balance two totally different worlds, making my living in a big corporation and playing my own music whenever I could. So I got to tell DJ that his song had popped up a few times to lighten my mood, and we shared a nice smile over it backstage in Edinburgh. He was a very sweet guy.

Download:

"A Girl That's Hip" mp3
by Duane Jarvis, 1998.
available on Far From Perfect

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

"Still I Long For Your Kiss" mp3
by Lucinda Williams, 1998.
available on Car Wheels on a Gravel Road

top photo: Jenine de Shazer © 2006

SXSW

2009-04-02T13:24:00.001-04:00

by Scott Schinder

In its 23-year existence, the Austin, Texas-based South by Southwest music festival/industry gathering has always mirrored the mood of both the mainstream music biz and the alt-rock underground. So it wasn't surprising that the vibe at that this year's SXSW carried an undercurrent of unease over the perilous state of the recorded-music business, even as a horde of young and/or unsigned acts were in town attempting to launch their careers by bypassing traditional business models.

While the seismic shifts in the music biz are undeniable, music continues to play as essential a role in people's lives as ever, a fact that's affirmed by SXSW's ongoing vitality in these hard times. For me, the most significant thing about the festival is the sheer quantity of music that descends upon Austin during SXSW week. During the four days and nights of the music fest proper, one can't take more than a few steps on Austin's club hub of 6th Street, or on the booming hipster drag of South Congress, without being assaulted by all manner of live music. The fact that much of that music is mediocre-to-downright-terrible is beside the point; the overkill is exhilarating and inspiring all the same.

SXSW's reputation as a venue for buzz bands to be discovered, and for rising and established recording acts to launch new products, is well deserved. But attendees who focus exclusively on seeking out new talent are in constant danger of being disappointed, considering the multitude of unremarkable acts who regularly manage to stir up a SXSW buzz. Perhaps it's just because I live in New York, but I long ago stopped relying on SXSW as a vehicle for discovering new music. Of course, it's always a thrill to stumble upon something unexpectedly great, and I inevitably do on multiple occasions during the festival. But rather than spending SXSW seeking out the next big thing, I generally make an effort to sample the best of the festival's embarrassment of far-ranging musical riches, along with the countless unofficial events that take place within the festival's orbit, allows one the potential of seeing something great, or at least really good.

One early SXSW highlight was swamp-rock godfather Tony Joe White's riveting set on Wednesday, the festival's opening night. Four decades down the road from his signature hit "Polk Salad Annie," the Louisiana-bred singer/guitarist/tunesmith made some of the most raw and most compelling music of his storied career on last year's Deep Cuts. That album tricks out some of the artist's classic tunes with oddly appropriate electronic elements, creating a bracing mutant-blues stew that carries his iconoclastic style into exciting new sonic territory. The modified approach really comes to life on stage, where, accompanied only by a keyboardist and drummer, White's sublimely funky guitar work reaches new levels of funky inspiration.

Less inspired was resurgent psych-punk cult icon Roky Erickson's two-song mini-set the same night at the Austin Music Awards. Erickson's mere presence on stage, after decades of mental illness and musical inactivity, is miraculous in itself. But, after a run of inspired comeback shows with his '80s combo the Explosives, recent attempts to team Erickson with younger, hipper bands have been less satisfying. Tonight's pairing with talented Austin neopsychedelicists the Black Angels, must have seemed like an inspired concept on paper. But Roky tends to get lost in unfamiliar territory, and the Black Angels (like worthy Austin outfits Okkervil River and the Summer Wardrobe before them) weren't up to the task of keeping the erratic icon focused. After Erickson missed his cue on an otherwise promising reading of his 13th Floor Elevators classic "Splash One," the performance went off the rails and never regained its momentum.

More enjoyable was the awards show's paean to Roky's equally seminal contemporary, the late roots-rock godhead Doug Sahm, to celebrate the release of the largely excellent various-artists disc Keep Your Soul: A Tribute to Doug Sahm. Led by Sir Doug's son Shawn (whose effusive stage persona eerily recalls that of his old man) and featuring Sahm's longtime keyboard sidekick Augie Meyers and a one-song guest spot by Alejandro Escovedo, the four-song set maintained the sort of loose but insistent groove that Sahm helped to invent.

One of the best bands I saw on Thursday—Michael Hall's current combo the Savage Trip—wasn't even playing an official SXSW showcase. Hall, a matter-of-factly elegant songwriter whose much-loved combo the Wild Seeds was a leading light of Austin's '80s alt-rock boom, has been making consistently excellent records (the most recent being 2006's The Song He Was Listening to When He Died) ever since. The Savage Trip, comprised largely of longtime Hall cohorts, was a subtly powerful vehicle for the artist's evocative songcraft, and it's a shame that the band rarely performs outside of Austin.

Also trading in literate, infectious jangle are England's Blue Aeroplanes, whose SXSW sets marked the band's first U.S. appearances in nearly two decades. In that time, the band's personnel has turned over completely, with the exception of frontman/lyricist Gerard Langley and his drummer brother John. But the current lineup (joined here by local ringer Steve Collier, late of Doctors' Mob and the Rite Flyers, standing in for the band's rhythm guitarist, who'd been refused a U.S. visa) do right by the Aeroplanes' longstanding mix of punchy folk-rock and barbed beat poetry.

Unlike Hall and the Aeroplanes, ex-Mavericks frontman Raul Malo, actually had a new release (the fine Lucky One) to promote, and did so with effortless class and passion in his SXSW showcase. If there's a better male vocalist than Malo in contemporary American popular music, I'd like to hear him.

On Friday afternoon at the Yard Dog folk-art gallery, venerable indie roots-rock label Bloodshot hosted its popular long-running SXSW bash. Swell performances by '50s R&B innovator Andre Williams, postpunk rockabilly visionary Dex Romweber and Florida cowpunk pioneer Charlie Pickett showed how much the label's vision has expanded in its decade-and-a-half existence. And a typically rousing closing set by Bloodshot's flagship band the Waco Brothers—an Anglo-American sextet co-led by Mekons member and multimedia renaissance rabble-rouser Jon Langford, whose multi-band work ethic has long made him one of SXSW's busiest performers—demonstrated how the Wacos have evolved from alcohol-fueled diversion to protest-song juggernaut.

Friday night's Ponderosa Stomp revue offered a scaled-down version of the annual New Orleans-based festival of the same name, which every April offers a dizzying assortment of the underappreciated greats of early rock 'n' roll, blues, R&B, rockabilly and garage-rock, with an emphasis on vintage performers from the Gulf Coast region. This year's SXSW mini-Stomp offered a typically riveting array of talent, including such regulars as blue-eyed-soul wildman Roy Head, guitar-slinging soul queen Barbara Lynn and the great Louisiana guitarists Classie Ballou and Li'l Buck Sinegal, along with some of the never-thought-you'd-live-to-see-it rediscoveries that that the Stomp is so adept at providing. The latter group included memorable performances from fabled Dallas rocker Floyd Dakil, whose energetic set included his garage-compilation standards "Dance Franny Dance" and "Bad Boy," and Texas rockabilly original Huelyn Duvall. The latter pair received expert, unfussed backup from Austin semi-supergroup Eve and the Exiles.

Although they've never played an official SXSW gig, Houston's Allen Oldies Band is as much a SXSW success story as any act. Led by irrepressible frontman and vintage Top 40 fanatic Allen Hill, the Allen Oldies Band plays vintage AM pop hits with a transcendent fervor that belies the group's cover-band status, and their long-running marathon outdoor sets during the convention have won them a loyal following of SXSW registrants. Meanwhile, the group's instrumental expertise has won them a sideline backing vintage artists in their hometown and elsewhere. This year, the Allen Oldies Band was so in-demand that they managed to pack five sets in the space of six hours on Saturday. The marathon began with the band's annual 10AM throwdown at the Continental Club, followed by a noontime set across the street at Jo's Coffee (in between, Hill sat in on bass with German country-rock wiseacres the Twang). After Jo's, the band rushed across town to play behind the aforementioned Barbara Lynn and Roy Head at an outdoor neighborhood party, then returned to the Continental to back Andre Williams, after which Oldies multi-instrumentalist David Beebe walked down the street to play bass with Jon Langford at Yard Dog. Although none of these adventures was officially sanctioned by SXSW, it's this sort of thing that keeps the festival fun and exciting, and a big part of what keeps me coming back year after year.

Download:

"Roosevelt And Ira Lee (Night Of The Mossacin)" mp3
by Tony Joe White, 1969.
available on ...Continued

"Every Little Thing" mp3
by Michael Hall, 1994.
available on Adequate Desire

"Yr Own World" mp3
by The Blue Aeroplanes, 1991.
available on Beatsongs

"Sugar Shack" mp3
by The Allen Oldies Band, 2005.
available on Live and Delirious! on WFMU

"Dance Franny Dance" mp3
by The Floyd Dakil Combo, 1964.
available on Pebbles, Vol. 1

"Oh, Baby (We Got A Good Thing Goin')" mp3
by Barbara Lynn, 1964.
available on The Jamie Singles Collection 1962-1965

"Just A Little Bit" mp3
by Roy Head, 1965.
available on Teeny Weeny Bit

all photographs: Jacob Blickenstaff © 2009

April Fool's Day

2009-04-01T00:01:00.003-04:00

by Mike DeCapite

April is here. When I got home from work on Friday my room was shadowy and the sky was bright above the alley. I set an ashtray on the windowsill, put my feet up on the desk, and listened to a record I’ve had since I was fifteen. One night Luke and I walked into one of the mall record stores where a harmonica was playing and I looked up as though I were in church. You know how you look up, by reflex? The record——I later found out from the words but I heard it instantly in the music——was about the road. It was about a life lived from place to place, person to person, job to job, but ultimately alone. It was about being honest rather than good. It accepted the nature of time and change, and imagined life as a series of episodes and entanglements which add up to an idea. The harmonica poured its heart out and the music glittered like sunlight on the spokes of a wheel or the surface of a stream. That moment was one of those recognitions of how things are, and are going to be, and the song has been like a church to me ever since.

Springtime always brings me back around to this record, which is about the presence of the past as much as anything else. On Friday as I leaned back against the bookcase, the music opened a window on the past. The past was a room I was looking into, and I was in that room, and it was the same room as the one I call the present. The things of this room are from the past, the same as my reasons for being here, all of which——the books, the trunk, the room, my reasons——are of the present, too. The past exists on the same plane as the present, with its wives and friends who come and go and the difficulties of communication and the permanence of impermanent relations and vice versa. I haven’t spoken to Flo since I left New York. A few weeks ago I had a tough conversation with Kitty, one of those conversations in which you can hear how things are and how they’re going to be. It’s five years since we split up, five years since I moved into this room. There are scenes and utterances which will be with me for the rest of my life. I undermined both marriages by drinking, which is a way of hanging onto a moment that’s already gone. I undermined my second marriage with guilt about the first, which is another way of hanging on. The guilt I’ve gotten past. I couldn’t carry that guy anymore, with all his ideas about things. What’s still standing, what’s hardest to accept, is the minor tragedy that all of us are right. There’s no turning back. There’s no help for it, there’s no one to call about it, there’s nothing much to say about it because it just is. And it’s always now.

When the record was done I swept and straightened the room and stacked some books on the bare floor. Then I went to a party which the warm weather had engendered as naturally as it brought forth the buds, walking quietly through the dusk, inhaling jasmine so sweet it was almost sour, and gardenia, and other things I couldn’t name. I didn’t want to go. I had nothing to say, I didn’t want to talk, or listen to others talk. The sky was emptying out. A bright pink contrail, which looked as permanent as a scar, had disappeared without a trace when I looked again.

At the party, everywhere I turned there were a bottles of liquor and wine and mixers and olive spears and fruit, and everyone was mixing and sipping delicious-looking and civilized martinis in cold metal shakers and Campari-&-sodas with orange slices and bourbons on the rocks, but my momentary temptation to have a drink was an ember easily stamped out, because it’s been a long time already and I have, hopefully, a long way to go.

It frightens me, the awful truth of how sweet life can be...

On Saturday morning I folded up the bed, made a pot of tea, did a little writing. Then I went to the racetrack.

I rode the train to the East Bay and got off at North Berkeley. There I left the station and crossed the road to where a cab driver was standing under a tree. There were three riders in his taxi, waiting for a fourth. I squeezed in and off we went, handing money over the seat——two-fifty each——the usual silent citizen with slicked-back hair in a blue windbreaker who rode up front, a shrunken man in a suit and turban, and a sizeable woman who said that if she won she was going to buy a new pair of shoes. Berkeley’s warmer, a month further into spring. We rode through streets of bungalows and yellow flowers in overgrown lawns, under the freeway to the bay.

At the curb we wished each other luck and went our separate ways. I took a Form, program, and coffee to the grandstand. The morning was spread below me with the Berkeley hills beyond. Sprinklers arced on the infield grass, which was mown in stripes. Slow tractors overturned the dark earth of the track, followed by the water trucks, which cooled it all down.

I had a bad day out there. In my first race I got shut out of a horse that won and paid $50, and then I had two out of three horses in the next five trifectas. Pete showed up and we caught a small trifecta which brought me halfway back. On our way out he wanted to watch them come around again, so we stopped and waited by the rail. I leaned on the fence, watching a bumblebee hovering above its shadow on the dirt. Funny how quiet it is when they come around. All you hear is the horses’ breathing, and now and then a whip...

Today, Sunday, I stood in the back door. Blazing sunlight had chosen a white flower and filled it with light, more light than it could hold, before moving on. Around 3:30 I took my laundry around the corner. The shadows were shot with sunlight, and the cool air carried the sun’s warmth. Everyone on the street looked a little blinded by the light, like they didn’t quite know what to do with themselves and they were waiting for it to die down a little...

It’s taken me five years to see that I live on the prettiest street in San Francisco. The trees won me over, the eloquent double row of elms in both directions...

After many months bare, the trees hang fully leafed now, slaves to life like everyone else.

Download:

"Tangled Up In Blue" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1975.
Available on Blood on the Tracks

"Simple Twist Of Fate" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1974.
available on New York Sessions: Blood On The Tracks

"Up To Me" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1974.
available on Biograph

"Call Letter Blues" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1974.
available on The Bootleg Series, Vols. 1-3 (Rare & Unreleased) 1961-1991

"You're A Big Girl Now" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1974.
available on New York Sessions: Blood On The Tracks

"Buckets of Rain" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1975.
available on Blood on the Tracks

"April Fool's Day" from RUINED FOR LIFE! © 2009 Mike DeCapite; originally published in somewhat different form, by angle magazine in 2004.

Mike DeCapite's long-out-of-print novel Through the Windshield is now available as a Kindle book via Amazon.

Photograph: Folsom Street, San Francisco, CA. 2008
© Ted Barron

Sonny and the Sunsets

2009-03-27T16:47:00.011-04:00

I don't usually review new releases here (or even write reviews, for that matter) but today when I opened the mail and found this brand new 45 by Sonny and the Sunsets sent to me from Soft Abuse Records in Minneapolis with a note asking me to write a review and a crisp $100 bill attached, I changed my tune.

No, that's not true, let's start over.

Sometime in mid 2007, I got an email from Sonny Smith saying he was enjoying the Boogie Woogie Flu, and singling out a post with music from Alex Chilton's Like Flies on Sherbert, in which I included original versions of songs, by The Bell Notes and Troy Shondell, that Chilton covered. Sonny explained that he found the blog through a friend of mine. We exchanged a few emails, and then I heard some of Sonny's songs which won me over almost immediately.

His record Fruitvale, is a collection of songs about the singer's neighborhood, populated by pimps, transvestites, drug dealers, vigilantes, good folks and bad cops as well as some lovely melodies and harmonies. It has elements of Lou Reed, Ray Davies and Eliot Smith's songwriting without really sounding like any of them or anybody else in particular.

Sometime that summer, Sonny was in New York and played a gig at the Lakeside, backed by the able rhythm section of Tony Maimone and Steve Goulding. During the set he performed a new song that bared an uncanny resemblence to "I've Had It" by the Bell Notes. Afterwards, we talked a little and he confessed that he had taken the riff from that tune that he first heard here. I invited him to come over while he was in town to listen to some records, and later that week he and our mutual friend Mike DeCapite came over and we listened for hours late into the night to mostly 45's. When going through my boxes of singles, I realized that I had two copies of "I've Had It" (one was cracked) and I bestowed my extra copy on him. I remember Sonny walking out the door later holding the damaged styrene single like it was some kind of sacred object.

Last spring Sonny and I hung out one night in San Francisco. We walked around the Mission and ended up a sitting at a broke-down, slightly picturesque, but undeniably depressing bar drinking sodas and commiserating with one another about our respective troubles. We were both in the middle of some serious shit. Sonny, at the time, was living apart from his girlfriend and young son and trying to figure out which way to go. I was experiencing a confluence of events in my life that were presented to me like a cosmic mind-fuck. Misery loves company, and there we were, two sober guys, prattling on at some dingy bar like a couple of drunks.

What am I gettng at here? The interconnectedness of things, I guess - a friend, a record, an idea, or any number of variables or coincidences that can present themselves to you like a dirty trick or a wondrous gift. Sonny has taken them to be a gift. This cool little single is the debut of his latest incarnation, Sonny and the Sunsets. It comes accompanied by a faux religious tract penned by Sonny and lovingly illustrated by Sunsets drummer Raphi Gottesman - a humorous chronicle of a spiritual crisis, and the road to redemption and reinvention.

Download:

"Strange Love" mp3
by Sonny and the Sunsets, 2009.
available on Love and Death 7"

"Stranded (on Planet Earth)" mp3
by Sonny and the Sunsets, 2009.

"I've Had It" mp3
by The Bellnotes, 1959.
available on I've Had It: The Very Best of the Bell Notes

"Curtis on the Corner" mp3
by Sonny Smith, 2007.
available on Fruitvale

"Good Folks Bad Folks" mp3
by Sonny Smith, 2007.
available on Fruitvale

Love and Death cover art by Chris Johanson
This single is limited to 300 copies and is available HERE

What Me Worry?

2009-03-20T11:12:00.010-04:00

My apologies for the silence of The Flu. I've been in a state of suspended digiflux - stuck between the digital world and my analog ways. I've been switching my computers and my cameras - and in my line of work, that's a major hassle - grappling with the elusive ones and zeroes that control our modern lives. That, and the timely crash of my server has kept things static. I'm still working out the bugs. I'm writing this and posting today because I care - really I do - despite what today's selections may otherwise suggest.

"I Don't Care" mp3
by Reigning Sound, 2001.
available on Break Up Break Down

"I Don't Care" mp3
by the Ramones, 1977.
available on Rocket to Russia

"Careful" (I Don't Care) demo mp3
by Television, 1975.
available on Double Exposure

"Do You Think That I Really Care?" mp3
by the Rolling Stones, 1978.
available on Place Pigalle Vol. 1

Technical Difficulties

2009-03-15T12:08:00.004-04:00

My server is down - both here and at my website - and apparently has been for a couple of days. The mp3 links are currently not working. This will hopefully be fixed shortly and I'll be back with a new post.

***UPDATE: 3-19

Links are again active, we are back on the air, and will return with a post very soon.

Scratchy 45s

2009-02-24T01:54:00.002-05:00

by Pete Wingfield

I wrote and recorded "Scratchy 45s" in 1976, as a tribute to the New Orleans R&B that I loved then, and still do. The idea was to cram in as many crafty musical and lyrical allusions as possible, while still ending up with a proper original song! I’m sure fellow BWF-ers, being true cognoscenti, will have no trouble spotting them all. Yeah, I know the tempo is a bit too fast and the groove is hardly authentic, but hey, give me a break - it was 33 years ago, I was still kinda green behind the ears, and we were recording in the cool of the Cotswolds in Oxfordshire, not some steamy Louisiana backwater. At least my heart was in the right place. One thing though - had I known then about Bobby Marchan’s reputation as a female impersonator, I maybe wouldn’t have chosen to rhyme “Marchan” with “he’s my man”!

The track actually came out as a single (in the US only), but sank without trace – one of a number of failed attempts to follow up my hit "Eighteen With A Bullet." However, I have it on good authority (Mac Rebennack himself) that the record was heard and relished by some of the musicians that inspired it – I guess they appreciated any glimmer of recognition at a time when the New Orleans music scene was in the doldrums and the city no longer a recording hub. So this Mardi Gras time, wherever you are in the world, why not raise a glass to the timeless, unquenchable spirit of the Crescent City, and as the song says, ‘to the glory that is gone’…

Thanks to Ted for allowing me in as guest host on his esteemed blog, one year on from 2008’s “Super Fat Tuesday Mix”.

Pete Wingfield
Feb 2009

Download:

"Scratchy 45s" mp3
by Pete Wingfield, 1976.
available on Eighteen with a Bullet: The Island Recordings

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Similar symptoms to the Rockin' Pneumonia - in fact, some doctors find it hard to tell them apart. It'll make you feel so.... unnecessary!

"Tu-Ber-Cu-Lucas And The Sinus Blues" mp3
by Huey 'Piano' Smith and the Clowns, 1959.
available on Having a Good Time

Typically idiosyncratic Fess workout, cut in '58 for Joe Ruffino's Ron label.

"Cuttin' Out" mp3
by Professor Longhair, 1958.
available on Fess: The Professor Longhair Anthology

I couldn't resist including both sides of this primeval classic, from 1960 on the original orange Minit label.

"Ooh Poo Pah Doo pt 1" mp3
by Jessie Hill, 1960.
available on Finger Poppin' & Stompin' Feet

"Ooh Poo Pah Doo pt 2" mp3
by Jessie Hill, 1960.
available on Finger Poppin' & Stompin' Feet

I don't have "Barefootin'" on 45, so this lesser follow-up will have to do!

"Everybody's Hip-Huggin'" mp3
by Robert Parker, 1967.
available on The Wardell Quezerque Sessions

Not the original pressing sadly, but still on Imperial in their "Golden Series".

"It Will Stand" mp3
by The Showmen, 1961.
available on It Will Stand

Licensed from Imperial of course, and on the UK London-American label, repository of all things exciting for British baby-boomer R&B fans. This wonderfully languid groove, Fats and Dave Bartholemew's take on a song by Bobby Charles, was on the 'B' side of "Tell Me That You Love Me", from 1960. Haven't I heard those horn riffs before somewhere?

"Before I Grow Too Old" mp3
by Fats Domino, 1960.
available on Walking to New Orleans

An original pressing of the late Ernest Kador's smash from 1961, with Benny Spellman doing the responses. I learnt that piano solo by heart!

"Mother-In-Law" mp3
by Ernie K-Doe, 1961.
available on Here Come the Girls!

From 1961, the only big hit from Harold Battiste's organization AFO (All For One), his ill-fated attempt at establishing a Musicians' Cooperative. What - socialism, yet?

"I Know" mp3
by Barbara George, 1961.
available on I Know

From '66, on the Mojo label, specialist R&B offshoot of UK Polydor - licensed from Atlantic.

"Thank You John" mp3
by Willie Tee, 1966.
available on Teasin' You

Meters keyboard man in early crooner mode, song written by the ubiquitous Toussaint under his 'Naomi Neville' nom-de-plume. Never a national hit, but still by all accounts a local favorite.

"All These Things" mp3
by Art Neville, 1962.
available on The Very Best of Aaron & Art Neville

A charming, little known and punningly entitled 1968 revisit to "Java"-style MOR territory for the ever-saintlier éminence grise of New Orleans music.

"Hands Christianderson" mp3
by Allen Toussaint, 1968.
available on What Is Success: The Scepter & Bell Recordings

The wartime Navy gunner, undefeated lightweight boxer, body and fender repairman, father of 11 and prolific hitmaker with his first national breakout, for Bobby Robinson's Fury label. Again, on Sue in the UK - in '65, a full four years after its US release. No, for once that's not Toussaint on piano - it's one Marcel Richardson.

"Ya Ya" mp3
by Lee Dorsey, 1961.
available on Holy Cow!: The Very Best of Lee Dorsey

Some definitive New Orleans funk from 1970 on Josie, licensed to CBS / Direction in the UK.

"Look-Ka Py Py" mp3
by The Meters, 1970.
available on Look-Ka Py Py

top photo:
Nicholas Hill's Juke Box, Brooklyn New York, 2008.
© Ted Barron

Valentine

2009-02-14T14:27:00.001-05:00

Valentine's Day is here, and for the romantic sort (of which I consider myself) I can only say that It's proved time again to be the source of the greatest humiliation and bitterest of feelings in past relationships. Why is this? Great expectations and diminishing returns. I guess that's my problem.

The good news is, I'm single this year, and I don't need to set myself up for any Hallmark induced hysteria. Don't get me wrong. I believe in love, but do we really need to set aside a single day of the year to express it?

Nope. I think not.

Love is a wonderful thing, it's "a walk down Main Street," but it's also troublesome and dangerous business. Valentines Day can make matters worse. What do you do when you find out that your true love is a liar? Here's a couple of songs that speak to this problem. Paul Westerberg sings about the age-old dilemma of trying to hit a moving target with Cupid's arrow. It's bittersweet, like a shitty chocolate heart. Bobby Bare Jr. takes a more proactive stance and murders the object of his affection. There's some supplementary listening material here too.

Tell someone you love them today. No, tell someone you love them everyday.

Happy Valentine's Day.

Download:

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"Valentine" (demo) mp3
by The Replacements, 1987.
available on Pleased to Meet Me

"Valentine" mp3
by Bobby Bare Jr., 2004.
available on From the End of Your Leash

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"Love Is Lies" mp3
by The Buzzcocks, 1978.
available on Love Bites

"Love Hurts" (alternate) mp3
by Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris, 1973.
available on The Complete Reprise Sessions

"Your Love is Like Las Vegas" mp3
by The Thrills, 2003.
available on So Much for the City

"Love Comes in Spurts" (alternate) mp3
by Richard Hell and the Voidiods, 1977.
available on Blank Generation

"L.O.V.E. (Love)" mp3
by Orange Juice, 1982.
available on You Can't Hide Your Love Forever

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"Did Somebody Make A Fool Out of You" mp3
by Beth Orton, 2006.
available on Comfort of Strangers (Bonus Disc)

"O Foolish Heart" mp3
by Tom Verlaine, 1984.
available on Cover

"Nobody's Fool" mp3
by Dan Penn, 1973.
available on Nobody's Fool
out of print

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"All You Need Is Love" mp3
by Echo and the Bunnymen, 1984.
available on Crystal Days: 1979-1999

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True Love / I Smell Trouble

2009-02-13T18:05:00.003-05:00

Consider this is a prelude to Valentines Day, or a Friday the 13th post depending on how you feel about it. Little Johnny Taylor on this two sider explores the dichotomy between love, and bad luck and troubles, with the intricacies of canine sensory from a juke-joint mystic.

Download:

"True Love" mp3
by Little Johnny Taylor, 1964.
available on Galaxy Years

"I Smell Trouble" mp3
by Little Johnny Taylor, 1964.
available on Galaxy Years

My 45's

2009-02-12T23:37:00.005-05:00

by Will Rigby

My vinyl-to-digital conversion arrangement never worked very well and is at the moment completely nonexistent. However, back in the good old days of 2005 I transferred a handful of 45s to digital.

"Are You Glad To Be In America?" mp3
James Blood Ulmer
Rough Trade (1980)

This is one of the most ferocious and wonderful pieces of music ever committed to tape/vinyl, and is very hard/expensive to find. It pulls off the feat of being joyous, melancholy, avant garde, and danceable all at the same time. I have been unable to find an mp3 of it elsewhere, so this post is a public service. A must-hear for everyone. Amazing singing, guitar, two drummers, arrangement.

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"Talkin' 'bout My Friends" mp3
A. C. Reed (1966)
Nike Records

Reed was a sax player with artists like Earl Hooker and Albert Collins. He appears as a member of Buddy Guy's band in the film Festival Express. I don't know much about him, but this record (that I don't even remember buying) is one of my favorites. Some of the most down-home singing I've ever heard.

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"Tandoori Chicken" mp3
Ronnie Spector
Apple (1971)

Produced by Phil Spector, written by George Harrison and Phil Spector (a chore that couldn't have taken more than a few minutes), and an illustrious member of Phil's tradition of non-LP B-sides (of "Try Some Buy Some"). Sounds like it didn't take very long to record.

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"Uptown Top Ranking" (mono)
Althia and Donna
Sire (1978)

This was a #1 UK hit by a teenage duo from Jamaica. There are other versions of this, one with other instruments added to this version, and a completely different (apparently re-)recording that sounds more 80s. This is the original, mono single version.

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"The Mumbler Strikes Again" mp3
Clark Terry
Mainstream (1966)

Legendary jazz trumpeter Terry made a few of these mumbling tracks, but this is the only one I've heard. Very scratchy—the full 45 experience.

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