Click On The Title To Link To A YouTube Film Clip Of Woody Guthrie Performing This Land Is Your Land.
CD REVIEW
Note of Hope: A Collaboration In Words And Music-Woody Guthrie and Rob Wasserman, 429 Records, 2011
Although this space is mainly dedicated to reviewing political books and commenting on past and current political issues literary output is hardly the only form of political creation. Occasionally in the history of the American and international left musicians, artists and playwrights have given voice or provided visual reminders to the face of political struggle. With that thought in mind, every once in a while I have used this space to review those kinds of political expression.
This review was originally used to describe several of Woody Guthrie’s recordings. This review takes an end around look at some previously unknown, if not hidden, work from the 1940 and 1950s that were not songs, but poems, reflections, and “speak-outs” that came to mind when Woody he had his lucid moments. And best of all, best of all for those, like me, who worry about the future of folk music as the generation of ’68 dwindles these works are recreated here and put to music (including producer Rob Wasserman’s fatalistic bass, yes, bass work) by some younger artists who will carry the torch forward.
My musical tastes were formed, as were many of those of the generation of 1968, by Rock & Roll music exemplified by The Rolling Stones and Beatles and by the blues revival, both Delta and Chicago style. However, those forms as much as they gave pleasure were only marginally political at best. In short, these were entertainers performing material that spoke to us. In the most general sense that is all one should expect of a performer. Thus, for the most part that music need not be reviewed here. Those who thought that a new musical sensibility laid the foundations for a cultural or political revolution have long ago been proven wrong.
That said, in the early 1960’s there nevertheless was another form of musical sensibility that was directly tied to radical political expression- the folk revival. This entailed a search for roots and relevancy in musical expression. While not all forms of folk music lent themselves to radical politics it is hard to see the 1960’s cultural rebellion without giving a nod to such figures as Dave Van Ronk, the early Bob Dylan, Utah Phillips, Joan Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie and others. Whatever entertainment value these performers provided they also spoke to and prodded our political development. They did have a message and an agenda and we responded as such. That some of these musicians’ respective agendas proved inadequate and/or short-lived does not negate their affect on the times.
As I have noted elsewhere in a review of Dave Van Ronk’s work when I first heard folk music in my youth I felt unsure about whether I liked it or not. As least against my strong feelings about The Rolling Stones and my favorite blues artist such as Howlin' Wolf and Elmore James. Then on some late night radio folk show here in Boston I heard Dave Van Ronk singing Come All You Fair and Tender Ladies and that was it. From that time to the present folk music has been a staple of my musical tastes. From there I expanded my play list of folk artists with a political message.
Although I had probably heard Woody’s This Land is Your Land at some earlier point I actually learned about his music second hand from early Bob Dylan covers of his work. While his influence has had its ebbs and flows since that time each succeeding generation of folk singers still seems to be drawn to his simple, honest tunes about the outlaws, outcasts and the forgotten people that made this country, for good or evil, what it is today. Since Woody did not have a particularly good voice nor was he an exceptional guitar player the message delivered by his songs is his real legacy.
And now we have a second legacy for the ages from the hard-edged American populist. Stick outs here include Lou Reed (yes, that Lou Reed from the Velvet Underground) on The Debt I Owe, Voice by Ani DiFranco, I Heard A Man Talking by the late Studs Terkel and Jackson Browne on You Know The Night. All backed up exquisitely by Brother Wasserman. A tip of the hat to Woody and Rob.
This Land Is Your Land-Woody Guthrie
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I've roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said "No Trespassing."
But on the other side it didn't say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
Showing posts with label folk revival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label folk revival. Show all posts
Tuesday, December 27, 2011
Saturday, October 8, 2011
Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By-Buffy-Sainte Marie’s “Universal Soldier”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Donovan performing his cover of Buffy Sainte-Marie'sUniversal Soldier.
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
********
Markin comment on the lyric here:
While I have always considered this a very good anti-war song the tone of the lyrics leave me a little off-put these days. There are, in this wicked old world, some just wars, the Northern side in the American Civil War, The American side in the struggle for independence, The Irish side in the struggle against the British on Easter, 1916 and so on. Thus, until we take the guns away from those cruel oppressors of the mass of humanity we had best keep our own guns at the ready-and our class struggle soldiers prepared. Then someday this song will be an interesting relic for archeologists to uncover and laugh about the follies of primitive humankind.
Universal Soldier-Buffy Sainte-Marie
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.
In this series, presented under the headline “Songs To While Away The Class Struggle By”, I will post some songs that I think will help us get through the “dog days” of the struggle for our communist future. I do not vouch for the political thrust of the songs; for the most part they are done by pacifists, social democrats, hell, even just plain old ordinary democrats. And, occasionally, a communist, although hard communist musicians have historically been scarce on the ground. Thus, here we have a regular "popular front" on the music scene. While this would not be acceptable for our political prospects, it will suffice for our purposes here.
********
Markin comment on the lyric here:
While I have always considered this a very good anti-war song the tone of the lyrics leave me a little off-put these days. There are, in this wicked old world, some just wars, the Northern side in the American Civil War, The American side in the struggle for independence, The Irish side in the struggle against the British on Easter, 1916 and so on. Thus, until we take the guns away from those cruel oppressors of the mass of humanity we had best keep our own guns at the ready-and our class struggle soldiers prepared. Then someday this song will be an interesting relic for archeologists to uncover and laugh about the follies of primitive humankind.
Universal Soldier-Buffy Sainte-Marie
He's five feet two and he's six feet four
He fights with missiles and with spears
He's all of 31 and he's only 17
He's been a soldier for a thousand years
He's a Catholic, a Hindu, an atheist, a Jain,
a Buddhist and a Baptist and a Jew
and he knows he shouldn't kill
and he knows he always will
kill you for me my friend and me for you
And he's fighting for Canada,
he's fighting for France,
he's fighting for the USA,
and he's fighting for the Russians
and he's fighting for Japan,
and he thinks we'll put an end to war this way
And he's fighting for Democracy
and fighting for the Reds
He says it's for the peace of all
He's the one who must decide
who's to live and who's to die
and he never sees the writing on the walls
But without him how would Hitler have
condemned him at Dachau
Without him Caesar would have stood alone
He's the one who gives his body
as a weapon to a war
and without him all this killing can't go on
He's the universal soldier and he
really is to blame
His orders come from far away no more
They come from him, and you, and me
and brothers can't you see
this is not the way we put an end to war.
Tuesday, August 30, 2011
Out In The Be-Bop 1960s Night-"What Folksinger Dave Van Ronk Stole"
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Dave Van Ronk performing Fair and Tender Ladies.
What Folksinger Dave Van Ronk Stole
“Hey Joyell, good news Dave Van Ronk is playing at the Club Morocco over in Harvard Square next Friday night, do you want to go?” Phil Kiley asked over the telephone, the late night telephone as was his habit in dealing with Joyell, Joyell Davidson. While he waited for an answer he thought about how he had started making these late night calls. Reason: well two reasons really, Joyell worked at the Eden Café in Kenmore Square as a waitress most week nights for a few hours for pocket change to be among what she sardonically called the “proles,” and what she called part of a proper education, a sociology degree-driven education, about how the other half lived. Of course, the so-called proles were other girls from the university, some whom Joyell knew from her classes, who were also seeing how the other half lived, more or less, although some may have actually needed the pocket change.
This Eden Café, by the way, catered to nothing but university students, mainly university students who had fathers who had dough like Joyell’s (her father was some rich stockbroker in New York City and, from what Phil gathered, she hardly needed to work), so the whole bourgeois-prole combination running its commentary through every 1960s college was rather comical every time Phil, a real prole, a real son of the working poor at university on a partial scholarship, went into the place. Went in to see or pick up Joyell, not to eat. Too expensive for him, he tended to eat at Timmy’s Irish Pub down near Fenway Park where the “eats” was cheap, and plentiful.
But that Eden Café “experience,” or more the idea behind it, is what drove Phil toward Joyell in the first place. That "bourgeois slumming" make him desire her even more ever since they met last month at the beginning of school in Professor Sharpe’s Modern Social Theory seminar. And one thing led to another and now they were at the talking stage, talking over the phone or after work as he walked her to her apartment that she shared with another girl, a decidedly bourgeois non-slumming girl, down Commonwealth Avenue toward the Boston Common. And that was the second reason that Phil made his late night calls. He was just flat-out scared that anything he said to Joyell, a New York City girl, a Hunter College High girl, and a Jewish girl (or mostly Jewish according to the way that she described her family’s genealogy, but enough Jewish to satisfy the Israelis is the way she put it) might be taken the wrong way.
Sure Phil had plenty of girls, plenty of kind of interesting girls back at North Adamsville High a couple of years back, but they were all cookie-cutter Irish Catholic girls of varying degrees of virtue who mainly thought about marriage, white picket fences, and more than he would like to admit, girls who wanted to have many kids to honor Jesus, jesus. But Joyell talked of thing that he had not heard of like the ballet, the opera, the opera for christ sakes, and Broadway (and, more often, off-Broadway off-beat plays). Phil had read a ton of modern plays, O’Neill, Brecht, Tennessee Williams, and so on but he had never actually seen a Broadway play, just some hokey high school production of Chekov’s Cherry Orchard and stuff like that. But the saving grace was Joyell’s fantastic interest in the burgeoning folk scene-the one that had developed right down the street from her (so to speak) in the Village (Greenwich Village in New York City for the greenhorns).
This interest mirrored Phil’s own fascination with roots music, first with rockabilly before rock ‘n’ roll got stale, country blues, then city blues, and now going through folk traditional and protest songs, especially the protest songs. Joyell actually knew people who knew the likes of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and other folk names the reader might not recognize but that Phil spent many a Sunday radio night listening to for hours on the local folk station. And, back in North Adamsville High days, he developed an intense interest in the music of folksinger Dave Van Ronk. Not just of his vast knowledge of the American songbook but his very gritty-voiced (and professional) renditions of those songs. He heard Van Ronk's version of Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies first and flipped out. That is the one that he, timidly, sang to Joyell when they were comparing notes about folksingers. Strangely, as important as Van Ronk was to the behind- the-scenes New York (and general) folk scene that was working west to San Francisco and north to Boston (although Boston, with the Club 47 in Harvard Square and the like, of starting out Joan Baez and whiz Eric Von Schmidt, could stake its own secondary claims to importance) he was not that well-known. So when he heard that Van Ronk was coming to town he was beside himself fretting away the hours to ask Joyell for their first "date."
“Sure,” answered Joyell, “I hope he is all that you have cracked him up to be. If I don’t see you before then come by around seven o’clock and we can walk over if it is a nice night and save the cab fare. And if you get a chance come by Thursday to the ‘Eden’ and you can walk me home, okay?”
(Another funny Joyell "prole" thing, she thought taxis were too, too bourgeois although she didn’t say it exactly that way, Phil thought afterwards. She never mentioned taking the bus, the bus from Dudley that almost passed her apartment. He also found out later that everybody, everybody with the price of the fare, and tip of course, took cabs in New York City).
“Okay,” was all Phil could say, "and I will try to come by Thursday but I have to work that night myself." (Phil, no prole status -craving student looking for pocket change had a job driving a truck around the city delivering boxes, of this and that, to stores and factories a few nights a week depending on demand.)
As it turned out Phil had to work that Thursday night and so did not see Joyell until he showed up at her door around seven o’clock that Dave Van Ronk Friday night. Melissa (the non-slumming bourgeois roommate) opened the door and pretty much ignored his existence after that, although freshman year they had had a couple of classes together and she sat a few seats away from him then. But Phil hardly noticed the snub, if it was a snub, and not just Melissa’s problem with men, or something like that because he was hopped-up, not drug hopped-up if that’s what you think, but maybe more sexual promise hopped-up if anything but mainly just excited to have a date with such an exotic flower as Joyell.
Then she came out of her room looking, well, looking fetching with a peasant blouse (expensive peasant blouse if that is not an oxymoron), the de rigueur jeans of the folk scene, sweater on her arm against a possible cool weather night, black hair gleaning, eyes flashing, laughing eyes he thought. God’s own gypsy princess. On seeing her then he got even more hopped-up, if that was possible.
And his luck had held, that night was a clear, fall-ish October night, big moon, big promise, and perfect for walking over the Massachusetts Avenue bridge (pavement smoots and all) through Central Square to the edge of Harvard Square where the Club Morocco’s lights beckoned all to come and eat, drink and be merry. Of course Phil was also hopped-up on talking about Dave Van Ronk, like somehow keeping the talk on him was a magic mantra to ward off their social differences (although pro-prole Joyell seemed to like him well enough his insecurities as well as his lack of social lacks some times got the best of him, especially with her). As he analyzed the situation later this over-hype was probably decisive in what happened later.
But, except for that nervousness, things went along okay, maybe better than okay as Joyell suddenly displayed a great deal of knowledge about mountain music, a staple of Van Ronks’s play list. She rattled off some stuff about the British musicologist, Cecil Shape, who had “discovered” that Fair and Tender Ladies song that Phil was always harping on down in the hills and hollows of Kentucky in 1916 He was impressed (and was still impressed later, but for another reason) when he found out that trying to impress him she had gone, as he had and many others as well, to Sandy’s Records on Mass Ave where she got the “skinny” on lots of folk information).
You knew, if you have been to Harvard Square anytime between the landing of the Mayflower and 1963, that the Club Morocco was not so much a coffeehouse, the vital core of the folk revival existence, as a be-bop jazz club. Moreover they sold liquor, liquor by the glass, as Phil’s Irish-born grandmother used to say when his father and his cronies hightailed it over to North Adamsville’s Dublin Grille to toss down a few (well, more than a few) rather than a sober (lesser, really) amount at home, so naturally Phil and Joyell were carded at the door to make sure they were twenty-one. No problem, no problem either in finding some seats near the front to hear Mr. Van Ronk better. While getting seated, they half, or maybe quarter-listened to the front performer twanging away on some sing-along thing that was suppose to get everybody in the spirit of the thing. (Why, Phil wondered, did they always have some lame, half on, half off-key local “coming folk star” to warm up the audience when you came to see, see exclusively that night, the main performer. And the front guy, and it was usually guys, was never heard from again, usually.)
More importantly, Phil noticed Dave at the bar drinking a couple of shots (whiskey shots, he assumed) straight-up. Well anything to fortify you Phil thought. Probably will help to get that gravelly voice razor-edged. Then Dave tossed another as Phil turned to give his undivided attention to his gypsy princess. Damn she looked, well, fetching was the word that came to his mind, at least for public consumption, although if Phil was was honest with himself he was just hopped-up, sexually hopped up.
The front man finished up to lackluster applause, as he should have expected except for his sing-along rendition of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land always a crowd-pleaser, especially late in the night. The MC announced Dave to hearty applause; aficionados were clearly in the house for this performance. Phil noticed that as he came away from the bar Dave tossed another straight-up whisky down. He got slightly nervous never having heard any rumors about a drinking problem but also knowing, first hand-knowing, or rather observing, that several straight-up drinks were not a good sign. Moreover Dave had what Phil thought at first was a water bottle (or soda, although he had always been taught at home to call it tonic) but on closer inspection looked much more like a flask on his hip. Dave took to the impromptu stage, taking the steps steadily enough, introduced himself, and after the applause died down, started in right away on his Fair and Tender Ladies version, sounding a little tinny in the process. And sipping from the flask.
Another song, Cocaine Blues, followed. And then the axe. Well the axe for Phil, anyway. Dave literally mumbled the old time traditional song Railroad Boy. Joyell had had enough by then. As she explained while they were walking out the door she was no “purist” but she wasn’t going to spend the night listening to a drunk, a drunk that she could have listened to on the street outside to better effect. Out the door she spied an MTA bus, the one to Dudley that went right by her apartment, and told Phi that she was going to take it home. Home alone. And that was what Dave Van Ronk stole from one heart-broken Phillip Francis Kiley.
What Folksinger Dave Van Ronk Stole
“Hey Joyell, good news Dave Van Ronk is playing at the Club Morocco over in Harvard Square next Friday night, do you want to go?” Phil Kiley asked over the telephone, the late night telephone as was his habit in dealing with Joyell, Joyell Davidson. While he waited for an answer he thought about how he had started making these late night calls. Reason: well two reasons really, Joyell worked at the Eden Café in Kenmore Square as a waitress most week nights for a few hours for pocket change to be among what she sardonically called the “proles,” and what she called part of a proper education, a sociology degree-driven education, about how the other half lived. Of course, the so-called proles were other girls from the university, some whom Joyell knew from her classes, who were also seeing how the other half lived, more or less, although some may have actually needed the pocket change.
This Eden Café, by the way, catered to nothing but university students, mainly university students who had fathers who had dough like Joyell’s (her father was some rich stockbroker in New York City and, from what Phil gathered, she hardly needed to work), so the whole bourgeois-prole combination running its commentary through every 1960s college was rather comical every time Phil, a real prole, a real son of the working poor at university on a partial scholarship, went into the place. Went in to see or pick up Joyell, not to eat. Too expensive for him, he tended to eat at Timmy’s Irish Pub down near Fenway Park where the “eats” was cheap, and plentiful.
But that Eden Café “experience,” or more the idea behind it, is what drove Phil toward Joyell in the first place. That "bourgeois slumming" make him desire her even more ever since they met last month at the beginning of school in Professor Sharpe’s Modern Social Theory seminar. And one thing led to another and now they were at the talking stage, talking over the phone or after work as he walked her to her apartment that she shared with another girl, a decidedly bourgeois non-slumming girl, down Commonwealth Avenue toward the Boston Common. And that was the second reason that Phil made his late night calls. He was just flat-out scared that anything he said to Joyell, a New York City girl, a Hunter College High girl, and a Jewish girl (or mostly Jewish according to the way that she described her family’s genealogy, but enough Jewish to satisfy the Israelis is the way she put it) might be taken the wrong way.
Sure Phil had plenty of girls, plenty of kind of interesting girls back at North Adamsville High a couple of years back, but they were all cookie-cutter Irish Catholic girls of varying degrees of virtue who mainly thought about marriage, white picket fences, and more than he would like to admit, girls who wanted to have many kids to honor Jesus, jesus. But Joyell talked of thing that he had not heard of like the ballet, the opera, the opera for christ sakes, and Broadway (and, more often, off-Broadway off-beat plays). Phil had read a ton of modern plays, O’Neill, Brecht, Tennessee Williams, and so on but he had never actually seen a Broadway play, just some hokey high school production of Chekov’s Cherry Orchard and stuff like that. But the saving grace was Joyell’s fantastic interest in the burgeoning folk scene-the one that had developed right down the street from her (so to speak) in the Village (Greenwich Village in New York City for the greenhorns).
This interest mirrored Phil’s own fascination with roots music, first with rockabilly before rock ‘n’ roll got stale, country blues, then city blues, and now going through folk traditional and protest songs, especially the protest songs. Joyell actually knew people who knew the likes of Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs, Joan Baez and other folk names the reader might not recognize but that Phil spent many a Sunday radio night listening to for hours on the local folk station. And, back in North Adamsville High days, he developed an intense interest in the music of folksinger Dave Van Ronk. Not just of his vast knowledge of the American songbook but his very gritty-voiced (and professional) renditions of those songs. He heard Van Ronk's version of Come All You Fair And Tender Ladies first and flipped out. That is the one that he, timidly, sang to Joyell when they were comparing notes about folksingers. Strangely, as important as Van Ronk was to the behind- the-scenes New York (and general) folk scene that was working west to San Francisco and north to Boston (although Boston, with the Club 47 in Harvard Square and the like, of starting out Joan Baez and whiz Eric Von Schmidt, could stake its own secondary claims to importance) he was not that well-known. So when he heard that Van Ronk was coming to town he was beside himself fretting away the hours to ask Joyell for their first "date."
“Sure,” answered Joyell, “I hope he is all that you have cracked him up to be. If I don’t see you before then come by around seven o’clock and we can walk over if it is a nice night and save the cab fare. And if you get a chance come by Thursday to the ‘Eden’ and you can walk me home, okay?”
(Another funny Joyell "prole" thing, she thought taxis were too, too bourgeois although she didn’t say it exactly that way, Phil thought afterwards. She never mentioned taking the bus, the bus from Dudley that almost passed her apartment. He also found out later that everybody, everybody with the price of the fare, and tip of course, took cabs in New York City).
“Okay,” was all Phil could say, "and I will try to come by Thursday but I have to work that night myself." (Phil, no prole status -craving student looking for pocket change had a job driving a truck around the city delivering boxes, of this and that, to stores and factories a few nights a week depending on demand.)
As it turned out Phil had to work that Thursday night and so did not see Joyell until he showed up at her door around seven o’clock that Dave Van Ronk Friday night. Melissa (the non-slumming bourgeois roommate) opened the door and pretty much ignored his existence after that, although freshman year they had had a couple of classes together and she sat a few seats away from him then. But Phil hardly noticed the snub, if it was a snub, and not just Melissa’s problem with men, or something like that because he was hopped-up, not drug hopped-up if that’s what you think, but maybe more sexual promise hopped-up if anything but mainly just excited to have a date with such an exotic flower as Joyell.
Then she came out of her room looking, well, looking fetching with a peasant blouse (expensive peasant blouse if that is not an oxymoron), the de rigueur jeans of the folk scene, sweater on her arm against a possible cool weather night, black hair gleaning, eyes flashing, laughing eyes he thought. God’s own gypsy princess. On seeing her then he got even more hopped-up, if that was possible.
And his luck had held, that night was a clear, fall-ish October night, big moon, big promise, and perfect for walking over the Massachusetts Avenue bridge (pavement smoots and all) through Central Square to the edge of Harvard Square where the Club Morocco’s lights beckoned all to come and eat, drink and be merry. Of course Phil was also hopped-up on talking about Dave Van Ronk, like somehow keeping the talk on him was a magic mantra to ward off their social differences (although pro-prole Joyell seemed to like him well enough his insecurities as well as his lack of social lacks some times got the best of him, especially with her). As he analyzed the situation later this over-hype was probably decisive in what happened later.
But, except for that nervousness, things went along okay, maybe better than okay as Joyell suddenly displayed a great deal of knowledge about mountain music, a staple of Van Ronks’s play list. She rattled off some stuff about the British musicologist, Cecil Shape, who had “discovered” that Fair and Tender Ladies song that Phil was always harping on down in the hills and hollows of Kentucky in 1916 He was impressed (and was still impressed later, but for another reason) when he found out that trying to impress him she had gone, as he had and many others as well, to Sandy’s Records on Mass Ave where she got the “skinny” on lots of folk information).
You knew, if you have been to Harvard Square anytime between the landing of the Mayflower and 1963, that the Club Morocco was not so much a coffeehouse, the vital core of the folk revival existence, as a be-bop jazz club. Moreover they sold liquor, liquor by the glass, as Phil’s Irish-born grandmother used to say when his father and his cronies hightailed it over to North Adamsville’s Dublin Grille to toss down a few (well, more than a few) rather than a sober (lesser, really) amount at home, so naturally Phil and Joyell were carded at the door to make sure they were twenty-one. No problem, no problem either in finding some seats near the front to hear Mr. Van Ronk better. While getting seated, they half, or maybe quarter-listened to the front performer twanging away on some sing-along thing that was suppose to get everybody in the spirit of the thing. (Why, Phil wondered, did they always have some lame, half on, half off-key local “coming folk star” to warm up the audience when you came to see, see exclusively that night, the main performer. And the front guy, and it was usually guys, was never heard from again, usually.)
More importantly, Phil noticed Dave at the bar drinking a couple of shots (whiskey shots, he assumed) straight-up. Well anything to fortify you Phil thought. Probably will help to get that gravelly voice razor-edged. Then Dave tossed another as Phil turned to give his undivided attention to his gypsy princess. Damn she looked, well, fetching was the word that came to his mind, at least for public consumption, although if Phil was was honest with himself he was just hopped-up, sexually hopped up.
The front man finished up to lackluster applause, as he should have expected except for his sing-along rendition of Woody Guthrie’s This Land Is Your Land always a crowd-pleaser, especially late in the night. The MC announced Dave to hearty applause; aficionados were clearly in the house for this performance. Phil noticed that as he came away from the bar Dave tossed another straight-up whisky down. He got slightly nervous never having heard any rumors about a drinking problem but also knowing, first hand-knowing, or rather observing, that several straight-up drinks were not a good sign. Moreover Dave had what Phil thought at first was a water bottle (or soda, although he had always been taught at home to call it tonic) but on closer inspection looked much more like a flask on his hip. Dave took to the impromptu stage, taking the steps steadily enough, introduced himself, and after the applause died down, started in right away on his Fair and Tender Ladies version, sounding a little tinny in the process. And sipping from the flask.
Another song, Cocaine Blues, followed. And then the axe. Well the axe for Phil, anyway. Dave literally mumbled the old time traditional song Railroad Boy. Joyell had had enough by then. As she explained while they were walking out the door she was no “purist” but she wasn’t going to spend the night listening to a drunk, a drunk that she could have listened to on the street outside to better effect. Out the door she spied an MTA bus, the one to Dudley that went right by her apartment, and told Phi that she was going to take it home. Home alone. And that was what Dave Van Ronk stole from one heart-broken Phillip Francis Kiley.
Sunday, July 24, 2011
A Voice From The 1960s Folk Minute Is Down- Singer-Songwriter Jesse Winchester Is Ill- Be Well “Yankee Lady” Writer.
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester performing his classic Yankee Lady. Ya, we all had our yankee ladies (or men) then.
From The Jesse Winchester Studio website-http://www.jessewinchester.com/index.html
I'm sorry to announce that I'm canceling my shows for July and August. I have been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, and will have to undergo treatment for the next couple of months. I'm very sorry if any plans have been disrupted; I do hope to see you again soon, and we'll pick up where we left off.
Markin comment:
One of the damn things about growing older is that those iconic figures, in this case one of those iconic music figures, that got us through our youth, continue to pass from the scene. News has just arrived via his website that the singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester is ill. Jesse had a very promising career cut somewhat short by a little thing called the Vietnam War. He felt, as others did at the time, that it was better to be a war resister and go into Canadian political exile, than be part of the American imperial military machine. While I would disagree, in retrospect, with that decision I still personally respect those who made a very hard choice. Harder, much harder, than most kids today have to face, thankfully.
But it was the music that he made, the songs that he wrote, that made many of our days backs then. A song like Glory To The Day set just the right tempo. Better still, Yankee Lady, better because we all had our yankee ladies (or men) back then, or wished for them, whether they came from Vermont or Texas, for that matter. Ya, the “old lady,” rain pouring off some woe-begotten roof, a little booze, a little dope, and a lot of music wafting through the room as we tried to take our places in the sun. Tried to make sense out of a world that we did not create, and did not like. Be well, Brother Winchester, be well.
********
Yankee Lady
I lived with the decent folks
In the hills of old Vermont
Where what you do all day
Depends on what you want
And I took up with a woman there
Though I was still a kid
And I smile like the sun
To think of the loving that we did
She rose each morning and went to work
And she kept me with her pay
I was making love all night
And playing guitar all day
And I got apple cider and homemade bread
To make a man say grace
And clean linens on my bed
And a warm feet fire place
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me
An autumn walk on a country road
And a million flaming trees
I was feeling uneasy
Cause there was winter in the breeze
And she said, "Oh Jesse, look over there,
The birds are southward bound
Oh Jesse, I'm so afraid
To lose the love that we've found."
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me
I don't know what called to me
But I know that I had to go
I left that Vermont town
With a lift to Mexico
And now when I see myself
As a stranger by my birth
The Yankee lady's memory
Reminds me of my worth
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me
©1970 Jesse Winchester
From the LP "Jesse Winchester"
From The Jesse Winchester Studio website-http://www.jessewinchester.com/index.html
I'm sorry to announce that I'm canceling my shows for July and August. I have been diagnosed with cancer of the esophagus, and will have to undergo treatment for the next couple of months. I'm very sorry if any plans have been disrupted; I do hope to see you again soon, and we'll pick up where we left off.
Markin comment:
One of the damn things about growing older is that those iconic figures, in this case one of those iconic music figures, that got us through our youth, continue to pass from the scene. News has just arrived via his website that the singer-songwriter Jesse Winchester is ill. Jesse had a very promising career cut somewhat short by a little thing called the Vietnam War. He felt, as others did at the time, that it was better to be a war resister and go into Canadian political exile, than be part of the American imperial military machine. While I would disagree, in retrospect, with that decision I still personally respect those who made a very hard choice. Harder, much harder, than most kids today have to face, thankfully.
But it was the music that he made, the songs that he wrote, that made many of our days backs then. A song like Glory To The Day set just the right tempo. Better still, Yankee Lady, better because we all had our yankee ladies (or men) back then, or wished for them, whether they came from Vermont or Texas, for that matter. Ya, the “old lady,” rain pouring off some woe-begotten roof, a little booze, a little dope, and a lot of music wafting through the room as we tried to take our places in the sun. Tried to make sense out of a world that we did not create, and did not like. Be well, Brother Winchester, be well.
********
Yankee Lady
I lived with the decent folks
In the hills of old Vermont
Where what you do all day
Depends on what you want
And I took up with a woman there
Though I was still a kid
And I smile like the sun
To think of the loving that we did
She rose each morning and went to work
And she kept me with her pay
I was making love all night
And playing guitar all day
And I got apple cider and homemade bread
To make a man say grace
And clean linens on my bed
And a warm feet fire place
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me
An autumn walk on a country road
And a million flaming trees
I was feeling uneasy
Cause there was winter in the breeze
And she said, "Oh Jesse, look over there,
The birds are southward bound
Oh Jesse, I'm so afraid
To lose the love that we've found."
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me
I don't know what called to me
But I know that I had to go
I left that Vermont town
With a lift to Mexico
And now when I see myself
As a stranger by my birth
The Yankee lady's memory
Reminds me of my worth
Yankee lady so good to me,
Yankee lady just a memory
Yankee lady so good to me,
Your memory that's enough for me
©1970 Jesse Winchester
From the LP "Jesse Winchester"
Friday, July 22, 2011
In The Time Of Your Parents'(Ouch, Maybe Grandparents') Folk Moment, Circa 1955-“Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three”
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Harry Belafonte performing his version of the Banana Boat Song (ho, hum).
CD Review
Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three, various artists, Eric Records, 1999
Yes, Freddy had heard it wafting through the house, through the Jackson household as background music back in the early 1950s. He knew he had heard folk music before when June ("June Bug" when they were younger back in Clintondale Elementary days but that term no longer held sway now that they were high school juniors, and she had not been his June Bug for a while, now being Rick Roberts’ june bug) asked him whether he had heard much folk music before Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind had hit town and had bowled all the hip kids, or those who wanted to be hip (or beat, depending on your crowd) over.
Yes, now that thought of it, he remembered having more than one fight, well not really a fight, but an argument with either Frank Jackson, dad, or Maria Jackson (nee Riley), ma, whenever they turned over the local (and only local) radio station, WJDA, to listen to their latest, greatest hits of World War II, World War II, squareville cubed, even then when he was nothing but a music-hungry kid. You know that old time Frank Sinatra Stormy Weather, Harry James orchestra I’ll Be Home, Andrews Sisters doing some cutesy bugle boy thing, or the Ink Spots harmonizing on I’ll Get By (which was at least passable). Yes, squaresville, cubed, no doubt. And all Freddie, and every other kid, even non-hip, non-beat kids, in Clintondale was crazy for was a jail-break once in a while-Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee anybody under the age of a million who knew how to rock the house, how to be-bop, and if not that at least to bop-bop. He lost that fight, well, lost part of it. In the end, after hassling Frank and Maria endlessly for dough to go buy 45s, they finally, finally bought him a transistor radio with a year’s (they thought) supply of batteries down at the local (and only) Radio Shack.
But he had lost in the big event because if they weren’t listening to that old time pirate music they were swinging and swaying to stuff like Lonnie Donegan trebling on Rock Island Line making a fool of what Lead Belly was trying to do with that song, Vince Martin and friends, harmonizing on Cindy, Oh Cindy in the martini cocktail hour breezes, The Tarriers try to be-bop the Banana Boat Song at the ball, Terry Gilkyson and friends making a pitch, a no-hit pitch, to Marianne, and Russ Hamilton blasting the girlfriend world to the first floor rafters with Rainbow. Squaresville, cubed. And you wonder why when rusty-throated Bob Dylan came like a hurricane onto the scene with Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are A Changin’, angel-voiced Joan Baez covering his With God On Our Side, or even gravelly-throated Dave Van Ronk covering House Of The Rising Sun or Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies we finally go that pardon we were fighting for all along. Enough of folk musak.
CD Review
Hard To Find 45s On CD: Volume Three, various artists, Eric Records, 1999
Yes, Freddy had heard it wafting through the house, through the Jackson household as background music back in the early 1950s. He knew he had heard folk music before when June ("June Bug" when they were younger back in Clintondale Elementary days but that term no longer held sway now that they were high school juniors, and she had not been his June Bug for a while, now being Rick Roberts’ june bug) asked him whether he had heard much folk music before Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ In The Wind had hit town and had bowled all the hip kids, or those who wanted to be hip (or beat, depending on your crowd) over.
Yes, now that thought of it, he remembered having more than one fight, well not really a fight, but an argument with either Frank Jackson, dad, or Maria Jackson (nee Riley), ma, whenever they turned over the local (and only local) radio station, WJDA, to listen to their latest, greatest hits of World War II, World War II, squareville cubed, even then when he was nothing but a music-hungry kid. You know that old time Frank Sinatra Stormy Weather, Harry James orchestra I’ll Be Home, Andrews Sisters doing some cutesy bugle boy thing, or the Ink Spots harmonizing on I’ll Get By (which was at least passable). Yes, squaresville, cubed, no doubt. And all Freddie, and every other kid, even non-hip, non-beat kids, in Clintondale was crazy for was a jail-break once in a while-Elvis, Chuck, Bo, Little Richard, Jerry Lee anybody under the age of a million who knew how to rock the house, how to be-bop, and if not that at least to bop-bop. He lost that fight, well, lost part of it. In the end, after hassling Frank and Maria endlessly for dough to go buy 45s, they finally, finally bought him a transistor radio with a year’s (they thought) supply of batteries down at the local (and only) Radio Shack.
But he had lost in the big event because if they weren’t listening to that old time pirate music they were swinging and swaying to stuff like Lonnie Donegan trebling on Rock Island Line making a fool of what Lead Belly was trying to do with that song, Vince Martin and friends, harmonizing on Cindy, Oh Cindy in the martini cocktail hour breezes, The Tarriers try to be-bop the Banana Boat Song at the ball, Terry Gilkyson and friends making a pitch, a no-hit pitch, to Marianne, and Russ Hamilton blasting the girlfriend world to the first floor rafters with Rainbow. Squaresville, cubed. And you wonder why when rusty-throated Bob Dylan came like a hurricane onto the scene with Blowin’ In The Wind and The Times They Are A Changin’, angel-voiced Joan Baez covering his With God On Our Side, or even gravelly-throated Dave Van Ronk covering House Of The Rising Sun or Come All Ye Fair And Tender Ladies we finally go that pardon we were fighting for all along. Enough of folk musak.
Tuesday, May 24, 2011
Those Oldies But Goodies- Folk Branch- Bob Dylan’s Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues- In Honor Of His 70th Birthday
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Bob Dylan performing his classic Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues in 1966.
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you.
Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got.
Sweet Melinda
The peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon.
Up on Housing Project Hill
It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you
And man they expect the same.
Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost.
I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough.
******
“United States," answered Fritz Taylor to the burly “la migra” U.S. border guard who was whip-lashing the question of nationality a mile a minute at the steady stream of border-entering people, and giving a cursory nod to all but the very most suspect looking characters, the most illegal Mexican- looking if you want to know. Yes, American, Fritz thought, Fritz John Taylor if they looked at his passport, his real passport, although he had other identification with names like John Fitzgerald, Taylor Fitzgerald, and John Tyler on them, as he passed the huge "la migra” U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at El Paso on the American side across from old-time Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, a city in passing that March, 1972 day that looked very much like something out of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, except the automobiles were smaller and less flashy and the graft now more expensive, and not longer guaranteed to grease the rails, the illegal rails; drugs, women, illegals, gambling, fenced goods, you name it. But just then he didn’t want to think about greasing any rails, or anything else illegal for that matter.
Fritz thought again, this time with easier breathing, whether "la migra” had looked at his passport or not, he was glad, glad as hell, to be saying his nationality, his American, gringo, Estados Unidos, call it what you will citizenship, something he never thought possible, not after Vietnam, not after all the shooting and killing of his thirteen month tour of hell, except these last three weeks down south of the border had been almost as bad, and no more profitable, Fritz profitable. Now that he breathed gringo air, American air he could tell his story, or tell parts of it because he was not quite sure that parts might not still be inside the statute of limitations, for him or his former confederates. So some stuff was better left unsaid.
Ya, it started in ‘Nam really, Fritz thought, as he traced his life-sized movements back in time while he started for a bus, a gringo bright yellow and green El Paso Transit bus that would take him to a downtown hotel where he could wash the dust of Mexico, wash that clotting dust of the twenty hour bus ride from Cuernavaca off his body, if not his soul. Hell, he confessed to himself, a thing he would be very reluctant to mention to others, others impressed by his publicly impervious persona, if it hadn’t been 'Nam, it could have been any one of a thousand places, or hundred situation a few years back, back when he first caught the mary jane, ganga, herb, weed, call your name joy stick delight habit, tea was his favorite term of rite though. Or, maybe, it really started in dead-end Clintondale when he graduated from high school and with nothing particular to do, allowed himself, chuckling a little to hear him call it that way now, allowed himself to be drafted when his number came up. And drafted, 1960s drafted, meant nothing but 'Nam, nothing but 'Nam and grunt-hood, and that thirteen months of hell. And maybe, just maybe, it was even earlier than Clintondale high school days, and the hard fact that he grew up, grew up desperately poor, in the Clintondale back alley projects and so had spent those precious few years of his life hungry, hungry for something, something easy, something sweet, and something to take the pain away.
But mainly he was looking for something easy. And that something easy pushed him, pushed him like the hard fates of growing up poor, down Mexico way, down Sonora way, mostly, as his liked to hum from a vaguely remembered song on any one of his twenty or so trips down sur. Until, that is, this last Cuernavaca madness, this time there was no humming, no sing-song Mexican brass band marching humming. But stop right there, Fritz said to himself, if he was every going to figure what went wrong, desperately wrong on this last, ill-fated trip, he had to come clean and coming clean meant, you know, not only was it about the get to easy street, not only was it to get some tea delight to chase the soul pain away, but it was about a woman, and as every guy, every women-loving guy, even honest women-loving guy, will tell you, in the end it is always about a woman. Hard-hearted Irish Catholic Cecilias like he knew, backwards and forwards, from kid time or some other combinations foxed out later but a woman, no question. Although not always about a woman named Juana, his sweet Juana. Although, maybe the way she left him hanging by his thumbs in Mexico City before the fall, not knowing, or maybe caring, of his danger, he should be a little less forgiving. Ya, that’s easy to say, easy off the hellish now tongue, but this was Juana not just some hop-head floozy.
Jesus, he could still smell that sweetness, that exotic Spanish sweetness, that rose something fragrance she always wore (and don’t tell her if you run into her, and you will if you are looking for grade A dope for sure, drove him as crazy as a loon), that smell of her freshly-washed black hair which got all wavy, naturally wavy, and big so that she looked like some old-time Goya senorita, all severe front but smoldering underneath. And those big laughing eyes, ya, black eyes you won’t forget, or want to. Yes, his thoughts drifted back to Juana, treacherously warm-blooded Juana. And it seems almost sacrilegious thinking of her, sitting on this stinking, hit every bump, crowded, air-fouling bus filled with “wetbacks,” sorry, braceros, okay, going to work, or wherever they go when they are not on these stinking buses.
Ya, Juana, Juana whom he met in Harvard Square when he first got back to the world and was looking to deep-six the memories of that 'Nam thing, deep-six it with dope, mope, cope, and some woman to chase his blues away. And there she was sitting on a bench in Cambridge Common wearing some wild seventy-two colored ankle-length dress that had him mesmerized, that and that rose something fragrance. But that day, that spring 1970 day, what Juana-bonded him was the dope she was selling, selling right there in the open like it was some fresh produce (and it was). Cops no too far off but not bothering anyone except the raggedy drunks, or some kid who took too much acid and they needed to practically scrape him off the Civil War monument that centered the park and get him some medical attention, quick.
See Juana, daughter of fairly well-to-do Mexican “somebodies,” needed dough to keep herself in style. Fritz never did get the whole story straight but what was down in Sonora well-to-do was nada in the states. She needed dough, okay, just like any gringa dame. And all of that was just fine by Fritz but Juana was also “connected,” connected through some cousin to the good dope, the Acapulco Gold and Colombian Red that was primo stuff. Not the oregano-laced stuff that was making the rounds of the Eastern cities and was strictly for the touristas, for the week-end warrior hippies who flooded Harvard Square come Saturday night. So Juana was to good tea like Owsley was to the acid scene, the maestro.
Fitz thought back, as that rickety old bus moved along heading, twenty-seven-stop heading, downtown trying to be honest, honest through that dope-haze rose smell, that black hair and those laughing eyes (and that hard-loving midnight sex they both craved when they were high as kites) about whether it was all that or just the dope in the beginning. Ya, it was the Columbia Red at first. He was just too shattered, 'Nam and Clintondale shattered, to know when he had a woman for the ages in his grasp. But he got “religion” fast. Like every religion though, godly or womanly, there is a price to pay, paid willingly or not, and that price was to become Juana’s “mule” on the Mexico drug runs.
To keep the good dope in stock you had to be willing to make some runs down south of the border. If not, by the time it got to say some New York City middle man, it had been cut so much you might as well have been smoking tea leaves. He could hear himself laugh when she first said that tea leave thing in her efforts to enlist him. But Fritz had religion, Juana religion, and he went off on that first trip eyes wide open. And that was probably the problem because it went off without a hitch. Hell, he brought a kilogram over the border in his little green knapsack acting just like any other tourist buying a cheap serape or something.
And like a lot of things done over and over again the trips turned into a routine, a routine though that did not take into consideration some of the greater not-knowing, maybe not knowable things, although he now had his suspicions, things going on, like the cartelization of the international drug trade, like the squeeze out of the small unaffiliated tea ladies and placing them as mere employees like some regular corporate structure bad trip. But the biggest thing was Juana, Juana wanted more and more dough, and that meant bigger shipments, which meant more Fritz risk, and later Fritz and Tommy risk (rest his soul down in some Cuernavaca back alley). And on this last trip it mean no more friendly Sonora lazy, hazy, getting high off some free AAA perfecto weed after the deal was made and then leisurely taking a plane (a plane for christ sakes) from some Mexican city to Los Angeles, or Dallas, depending on the connections. And then home.
This time, this time the deal was going down in Cuernavaca, in a church, or rather in some side room of a church, Santa Maria’s Chapel, in downtown Cuernavaca, maybe you know it if you have been there it's kind of famous. Fritz didn’t like the switch, but only because it was out of the routine. What he didn’t know, and what his connections on the other side should have known (and maybe did, but he was not thinking about that part right this minute) was that the Federales, instead of chasing Pancho Villa’s ghost like they should have been doing, were driving hard (prompted by the gringo DEA) to close down Cuernavaca, just then starting to become the axis of the cartels further south.
And what he also didn’t know, until too late, was that Juana, getting some kind of information from some well-connected source in the states, had fled to Mexico, to her hometown of Sonora he heard later. So when the deal in Cuernavaca went sour, after he learned at the almost the last minute that the deal was “fixed,” he headed Norte on the first bus, first to Mexico City and then to El Paso. And here he was, now alighting from that yellow green bus, ready to walk into that fresh soap. And as he got off he staggered for a minute, staggered in some kind of fog, as he “smelled”, smelled, that rose fragrance something in the air. Fritz said to himself, ya, I guess it's still like that with Juana. If you see her tell her Fritz said hello.
Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues Lyrics
When you're lost in the rain in Juarez
And it's Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don't pull you through
Don't put on any airs
When you're down on Rue Morgue Avenue
They got some hungry women there
And they really make a mess outa you.
Now if you see Saint Annie
Please tell her thanks a lot
I cannot move
My fingers are all in a knot
I don't have the strength
To get up and take another shot
And my best friend, my doctor
Won't even say what it is I've got.
Sweet Melinda
The peasants call her the goddess of gloom
She speaks good English
And she invites you up into her room
And you're so kind
And careful not to go to her too soon
And she takes your voice
And leaves you howling at the moon.
Up on Housing Project Hill
It's either fortune or fame
You must pick up one or the other
Though neither of them are to be what they claim
If you're lookin' to get silly
You better go back to from where you came
Because the cops don't need you
And man they expect the same.
Now all the authorities
They just stand around and boast
How they blackmailed the sergeant-at-arms
Into leaving his post
And picking up Angel who
Just arrived here from the coast
Who looked so fine at first
But left looking just like a ghost.
I started out on burgundy
But soon hit the harder stuff
Everybody said they'd stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to bluff
I'm going back to New York City
I do believe I've had enough.
******
“United States," answered Fritz Taylor to the burly “la migra” U.S. border guard who was whip-lashing the question of nationality a mile a minute at the steady stream of border-entering people, and giving a cursory nod to all but the very most suspect looking characters, the most illegal Mexican- looking if you want to know. Yes, American, Fritz thought, Fritz John Taylor if they looked at his passport, his real passport, although he had other identification with names like John Fitzgerald, Taylor Fitzgerald, and John Tyler on them, as he passed the huge "la migra” U.S. Border Patrol checkpoint at El Paso on the American side across from old-time Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. Juarez, a city in passing that March, 1972 day that looked very much like something out of Orson Welles’ Touch of Evil, except the automobiles were smaller and less flashy and the graft now more expensive, and not longer guaranteed to grease the rails, the illegal rails; drugs, women, illegals, gambling, fenced goods, you name it. But just then he didn’t want to think about greasing any rails, or anything else illegal for that matter.
Fritz thought again, this time with easier breathing, whether "la migra” had looked at his passport or not, he was glad, glad as hell, to be saying his nationality, his American, gringo, Estados Unidos, call it what you will citizenship, something he never thought possible, not after Vietnam, not after all the shooting and killing of his thirteen month tour of hell, except these last three weeks down south of the border had been almost as bad, and no more profitable, Fritz profitable. Now that he breathed gringo air, American air he could tell his story, or tell parts of it because he was not quite sure that parts might not still be inside the statute of limitations, for him or his former confederates. So some stuff was better left unsaid.
Ya, it started in ‘Nam really, Fritz thought, as he traced his life-sized movements back in time while he started for a bus, a gringo bright yellow and green El Paso Transit bus that would take him to a downtown hotel where he could wash the dust of Mexico, wash that clotting dust of the twenty hour bus ride from Cuernavaca off his body, if not his soul. Hell, he confessed to himself, a thing he would be very reluctant to mention to others, others impressed by his publicly impervious persona, if it hadn’t been 'Nam, it could have been any one of a thousand places, or hundred situation a few years back, back when he first caught the mary jane, ganga, herb, weed, call your name joy stick delight habit, tea was his favorite term of rite though. Or, maybe, it really started in dead-end Clintondale when he graduated from high school and with nothing particular to do, allowed himself, chuckling a little to hear him call it that way now, allowed himself to be drafted when his number came up. And drafted, 1960s drafted, meant nothing but 'Nam, nothing but 'Nam and grunt-hood, and that thirteen months of hell. And maybe, just maybe, it was even earlier than Clintondale high school days, and the hard fact that he grew up, grew up desperately poor, in the Clintondale back alley projects and so had spent those precious few years of his life hungry, hungry for something, something easy, something sweet, and something to take the pain away.
But mainly he was looking for something easy. And that something easy pushed him, pushed him like the hard fates of growing up poor, down Mexico way, down Sonora way, mostly, as his liked to hum from a vaguely remembered song on any one of his twenty or so trips down sur. Until, that is, this last Cuernavaca madness, this time there was no humming, no sing-song Mexican brass band marching humming. But stop right there, Fritz said to himself, if he was every going to figure what went wrong, desperately wrong on this last, ill-fated trip, he had to come clean and coming clean meant, you know, not only was it about the get to easy street, not only was it to get some tea delight to chase the soul pain away, but it was about a woman, and as every guy, every women-loving guy, even honest women-loving guy, will tell you, in the end it is always about a woman. Hard-hearted Irish Catholic Cecilias like he knew, backwards and forwards, from kid time or some other combinations foxed out later but a woman, no question. Although not always about a woman named Juana, his sweet Juana. Although, maybe the way she left him hanging by his thumbs in Mexico City before the fall, not knowing, or maybe caring, of his danger, he should be a little less forgiving. Ya, that’s easy to say, easy off the hellish now tongue, but this was Juana not just some hop-head floozy.
Jesus, he could still smell that sweetness, that exotic Spanish sweetness, that rose something fragrance she always wore (and don’t tell her if you run into her, and you will if you are looking for grade A dope for sure, drove him as crazy as a loon), that smell of her freshly-washed black hair which got all wavy, naturally wavy, and big so that she looked like some old-time Goya senorita, all severe front but smoldering underneath. And those big laughing eyes, ya, black eyes you won’t forget, or want to. Yes, his thoughts drifted back to Juana, treacherously warm-blooded Juana. And it seems almost sacrilegious thinking of her, sitting on this stinking, hit every bump, crowded, air-fouling bus filled with “wetbacks,” sorry, braceros, okay, going to work, or wherever they go when they are not on these stinking buses.
Ya, Juana, Juana whom he met in Harvard Square when he first got back to the world and was looking to deep-six the memories of that 'Nam thing, deep-six it with dope, mope, cope, and some woman to chase his blues away. And there she was sitting on a bench in Cambridge Common wearing some wild seventy-two colored ankle-length dress that had him mesmerized, that and that rose something fragrance. But that day, that spring 1970 day, what Juana-bonded him was the dope she was selling, selling right there in the open like it was some fresh produce (and it was). Cops no too far off but not bothering anyone except the raggedy drunks, or some kid who took too much acid and they needed to practically scrape him off the Civil War monument that centered the park and get him some medical attention, quick.
See Juana, daughter of fairly well-to-do Mexican “somebodies,” needed dough to keep herself in style. Fritz never did get the whole story straight but what was down in Sonora well-to-do was nada in the states. She needed dough, okay, just like any gringa dame. And all of that was just fine by Fritz but Juana was also “connected,” connected through some cousin to the good dope, the Acapulco Gold and Colombian Red that was primo stuff. Not the oregano-laced stuff that was making the rounds of the Eastern cities and was strictly for the touristas, for the week-end warrior hippies who flooded Harvard Square come Saturday night. So Juana was to good tea like Owsley was to the acid scene, the maestro.
Fitz thought back, as that rickety old bus moved along heading, twenty-seven-stop heading, downtown trying to be honest, honest through that dope-haze rose smell, that black hair and those laughing eyes (and that hard-loving midnight sex they both craved when they were high as kites) about whether it was all that or just the dope in the beginning. Ya, it was the Columbia Red at first. He was just too shattered, 'Nam and Clintondale shattered, to know when he had a woman for the ages in his grasp. But he got “religion” fast. Like every religion though, godly or womanly, there is a price to pay, paid willingly or not, and that price was to become Juana’s “mule” on the Mexico drug runs.
To keep the good dope in stock you had to be willing to make some runs down south of the border. If not, by the time it got to say some New York City middle man, it had been cut so much you might as well have been smoking tea leaves. He could hear himself laugh when she first said that tea leave thing in her efforts to enlist him. But Fritz had religion, Juana religion, and he went off on that first trip eyes wide open. And that was probably the problem because it went off without a hitch. Hell, he brought a kilogram over the border in his little green knapsack acting just like any other tourist buying a cheap serape or something.
And like a lot of things done over and over again the trips turned into a routine, a routine though that did not take into consideration some of the greater not-knowing, maybe not knowable things, although he now had his suspicions, things going on, like the cartelization of the international drug trade, like the squeeze out of the small unaffiliated tea ladies and placing them as mere employees like some regular corporate structure bad trip. But the biggest thing was Juana, Juana wanted more and more dough, and that meant bigger shipments, which meant more Fritz risk, and later Fritz and Tommy risk (rest his soul down in some Cuernavaca back alley). And on this last trip it mean no more friendly Sonora lazy, hazy, getting high off some free AAA perfecto weed after the deal was made and then leisurely taking a plane (a plane for christ sakes) from some Mexican city to Los Angeles, or Dallas, depending on the connections. And then home.
This time, this time the deal was going down in Cuernavaca, in a church, or rather in some side room of a church, Santa Maria’s Chapel, in downtown Cuernavaca, maybe you know it if you have been there it's kind of famous. Fritz didn’t like the switch, but only because it was out of the routine. What he didn’t know, and what his connections on the other side should have known (and maybe did, but he was not thinking about that part right this minute) was that the Federales, instead of chasing Pancho Villa’s ghost like they should have been doing, were driving hard (prompted by the gringo DEA) to close down Cuernavaca, just then starting to become the axis of the cartels further south.
And what he also didn’t know, until too late, was that Juana, getting some kind of information from some well-connected source in the states, had fled to Mexico, to her hometown of Sonora he heard later. So when the deal in Cuernavaca went sour, after he learned at the almost the last minute that the deal was “fixed,” he headed Norte on the first bus, first to Mexico City and then to El Paso. And here he was, now alighting from that yellow green bus, ready to walk into that fresh soap. And as he got off he staggered for a minute, staggered in some kind of fog, as he “smelled”, smelled, that rose fragrance something in the air. Fritz said to himself, ya, I guess it's still like that with Juana. If you see her tell her Fritz said hello.
Sunday, May 8, 2011
From Out Of The Blues In The Night- The Centenary Of Blue Master Robert Johnson's Birthday- Ya, Hellhound On His Trail
From Out Of The Blues In The Night- The Centenary Of Blue Master Robert Johnson's Birthday- Ya, Hellhound On His Trail
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UVgH9JqSnQ
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of blues master and birthday boy Robert Johnson performing his classic Hellhound On My Trail.
Markin comment:
I have noted in previous entries that I, unlike many others, am not a particular devotee of Robert Johnson. I prefer the likes of Skip James, Son House and Bukka White nevertheless I understand and support the notion of Robert Johnson as a key blues master. No question. Just personal preferences. Happy Birthday Brother Robert.
*****
Reposts On Robert Johnson
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
*The "Mac Daddy" Of Modern Blues- Robert Johnson
DVD REVIEW
Hell Hounds On His Heels- The Legendary Robert Johnson’s Story
Can’t You Hear The Wind Howl?: The Life And Music of Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson and various artists, narrated by Danny Glover, 1997
I have recently spent some little effort making comparisons between old time country blues singers. My winners have been Skip James and Son House. Apparently, if the story behind the Robert Johnson story presented here is right I am in a minority compared to the like of guitarists Eric Clapton and Keith Richards. So be it. After viewing this very informative bio, complete with the inevitable “talking heads" that populate these kinds of film efforts I still have that same opinion, except I would hold Johnson’s version of his “Sweet Home, Chicago” in higher regard after listening to it here. Previously many other covers of the song, including the trendy Blues Brothers version seemed better, a lot better.
The producers of this film have spend some time and thought on presentation. The choice of Danny Glover as expressive and thoughtful narrator was a welcome sign. Having Johnson road companion and fellow blues artist, Johnny Shines, give insights into Johnson’s work habits, traveling ways, womanizing, whiskey drinking and off-center personality make this a very strong film. Add in footage of Son House (an early Johnson influence) and various other Delta artists who met or were met by Johnson along the way and one gets the feeling that this is more a labor of love than anything else. For a man who lived fast, died young and left a relatively small body of work (some 20 odd songs)this is a very good take on Robert Johnson. I might add that if Johnson is your number one blues man this film gives you plenty of ammunition for your position.
Note: As is almost universally true with such film endeavors we only get snippets of the music. I would have liked to hear a full “Preacher’s Blues”, “Sweet Home, Chicago”, "Terraplane Blues” and “Hell Hounds On My Heels” but for that one will have to look elsewhere.
"Terraplane Blues" lyrics-Robert Johnson
And I feel so lonesome
you hear me when I moan
When I feel so lonesome
you hear me when I moan
Who been drivin my terraplane
for you since I've been gone
I'd said I flashed your lights mama
your horn won't even blow
I even flash my lights mama
this horn won't even blow
Got a short in this connection
hoo-well, babe, its way down below
I'm on hist your hood momma
I'm bound to check your oil
I'm on hist your hood momma mmmm
I'm bound to check your oil
I got a woman that I'm lovin
way down in Arkansas
Now you know the coils ain't even buzzin
little generator won't get the spark
Motors in a bad condition
you gotta have these batteries charged
But I'm cryin please
please don't do me wrong
Who been drivin my terraplane now for
you-hoo since I've been gone
Mr Highwayman
please don't block the road
Puh hee hee
ple-hease don't block the road
Casue she's restrin (?) a cold one hindred
and I'm booked I gotta go
Mmm mmm
mmmm mmmm mmm
You ooo oooo oooo
you hear me weep and moan
Who been drivin my terraplane
for you since I've been gone
I'm on get deep down in this connection
keep on tanglin with your wires
I'm on get deep down in this connection
hoo-well keep on tanglin with your wires
And when I mash down your little starter
then your spark plug will give me a fire.
******
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
*The "Mac Daddy" Of Modern Blues- Robert Johnson
CD REVIEW
Martin Scorsese Presents; The Blues, Robert Johnson, Sony Records, 2003
I have heard the name Robert Johnson associated with country blues as long as I have been listening to the blues, and believe me that is a long time. I would venture to guess that if an average blues (or just music) fan was asked to name one blues artist the name that would, more probably than not, come up is Robert Johnson. Partially that is because his influence on later artists has been nothing short of fantastic, particularly the English blues aficionados like Eric Clapton. That said, Brother Johnson’s work leaves me cold. While I can appreciate some of his lyrics his guitar playing is ordinary, his singing can be tedious and his sense of momentum over the course of an album is very mundane.
His contemporaries, or near contemporaries like Charlie Patton, Howlin’ Wolf or Son House, to name just a few, are better in one or all these categories . Needless to say there is an element of subjectivity here but when the occasion arises I am more than willing to gush over a talent that makes me jump. Brother Johnson just does not do so. The source of his fame as an innovator is centered on his role of breaking the pattern of country blues established by Son House and other and giving the first hints of a city blues idiom, particularly as a forerunner to the Chicago blues. Okay, we will give the ‘devil’ his do on that score. Still, on any given day wouldn’t you give your right arm to see and hear Howlin’ Wolf croon "The Red Rooster" (and practically eat the microphone) or any of his other midnight creeps rather than Johnson on "Sweet Home, Chicago"? Here I will rest my case.
So what do you have to hear here? Obviously, “Sweet Home, Chicago". Beyond that “32-20 Blues” is a must listen as is his version of “Dust My Broom” (but isn’t Elmore James’ slide guitar souped-up version much better?) and “Hellhound On My Trail”. Keb’ Mo' (who I will review separately at a later time) does a nice cover here of “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”.
Lyrics to "Dust My Broom"
I'm gonna get up in the mornin',
I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)
Girlfriend, the black man you been lovin',
girlfriend, can get my room
I'm gon' write a letter,
Telephone every town I know (2x)
If I can't find her in West Helena,
She must be in East Monroe, I know
I don't want no woman,
Wants every downtown man she meet (2x)
She's a no good doney,
They shouldn't 'low her on the street
I believe, I believe I'll go back home (2x)
You can mistreat me here, babe,
But you can't when I go home
And I'm gettin' up in the morning,
I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)
Girlfriend, the black man that you been lovin',
Girlfriend, can get my room
I'm gon' call up Chiney,
She is my good girl over there (2x)
If I can't find her on Philippine's Island,
She must be in Ethiopia somewhere
Robert Johnson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UVgH9JqSnQ
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of blues master and birthday boy Robert Johnson performing his classic Hellhound On My Trail.
Markin comment:
I have noted in previous entries that I, unlike many others, am not a particular devotee of Robert Johnson. I prefer the likes of Skip James, Son House and Bukka White nevertheless I understand and support the notion of Robert Johnson as a key blues master. No question. Just personal preferences. Happy Birthday Brother Robert.
*****
Reposts On Robert Johnson
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
*The "Mac Daddy" Of Modern Blues- Robert Johnson
DVD REVIEW
Hell Hounds On His Heels- The Legendary Robert Johnson’s Story
Can’t You Hear The Wind Howl?: The Life And Music of Robert Johnson, Robert Johnson and various artists, narrated by Danny Glover, 1997
I have recently spent some little effort making comparisons between old time country blues singers. My winners have been Skip James and Son House. Apparently, if the story behind the Robert Johnson story presented here is right I am in a minority compared to the like of guitarists Eric Clapton and Keith Richards. So be it. After viewing this very informative bio, complete with the inevitable “talking heads" that populate these kinds of film efforts I still have that same opinion, except I would hold Johnson’s version of his “Sweet Home, Chicago” in higher regard after listening to it here. Previously many other covers of the song, including the trendy Blues Brothers version seemed better, a lot better.
The producers of this film have spend some time and thought on presentation. The choice of Danny Glover as expressive and thoughtful narrator was a welcome sign. Having Johnson road companion and fellow blues artist, Johnny Shines, give insights into Johnson’s work habits, traveling ways, womanizing, whiskey drinking and off-center personality make this a very strong film. Add in footage of Son House (an early Johnson influence) and various other Delta artists who met or were met by Johnson along the way and one gets the feeling that this is more a labor of love than anything else. For a man who lived fast, died young and left a relatively small body of work (some 20 odd songs)this is a very good take on Robert Johnson. I might add that if Johnson is your number one blues man this film gives you plenty of ammunition for your position.
Note: As is almost universally true with such film endeavors we only get snippets of the music. I would have liked to hear a full “Preacher’s Blues”, “Sweet Home, Chicago”, "Terraplane Blues” and “Hell Hounds On My Heels” but for that one will have to look elsewhere.
"Terraplane Blues" lyrics-Robert Johnson
And I feel so lonesome
you hear me when I moan
When I feel so lonesome
you hear me when I moan
Who been drivin my terraplane
for you since I've been gone
I'd said I flashed your lights mama
your horn won't even blow
I even flash my lights mama
this horn won't even blow
Got a short in this connection
hoo-well, babe, its way down below
I'm on hist your hood momma
I'm bound to check your oil
I'm on hist your hood momma mmmm
I'm bound to check your oil
I got a woman that I'm lovin
way down in Arkansas
Now you know the coils ain't even buzzin
little generator won't get the spark
Motors in a bad condition
you gotta have these batteries charged
But I'm cryin please
please don't do me wrong
Who been drivin my terraplane now for
you-hoo since I've been gone
Mr Highwayman
please don't block the road
Puh hee hee
ple-hease don't block the road
Casue she's restrin (?) a cold one hindred
and I'm booked I gotta go
Mmm mmm
mmmm mmmm mmm
You ooo oooo oooo
you hear me weep and moan
Who been drivin my terraplane
for you since I've been gone
I'm on get deep down in this connection
keep on tanglin with your wires
I'm on get deep down in this connection
hoo-well keep on tanglin with your wires
And when I mash down your little starter
then your spark plug will give me a fire.
******
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
*The "Mac Daddy" Of Modern Blues- Robert Johnson
CD REVIEW
Martin Scorsese Presents; The Blues, Robert Johnson, Sony Records, 2003
I have heard the name Robert Johnson associated with country blues as long as I have been listening to the blues, and believe me that is a long time. I would venture to guess that if an average blues (or just music) fan was asked to name one blues artist the name that would, more probably than not, come up is Robert Johnson. Partially that is because his influence on later artists has been nothing short of fantastic, particularly the English blues aficionados like Eric Clapton. That said, Brother Johnson’s work leaves me cold. While I can appreciate some of his lyrics his guitar playing is ordinary, his singing can be tedious and his sense of momentum over the course of an album is very mundane.
His contemporaries, or near contemporaries like Charlie Patton, Howlin’ Wolf or Son House, to name just a few, are better in one or all these categories . Needless to say there is an element of subjectivity here but when the occasion arises I am more than willing to gush over a talent that makes me jump. Brother Johnson just does not do so. The source of his fame as an innovator is centered on his role of breaking the pattern of country blues established by Son House and other and giving the first hints of a city blues idiom, particularly as a forerunner to the Chicago blues. Okay, we will give the ‘devil’ his do on that score. Still, on any given day wouldn’t you give your right arm to see and hear Howlin’ Wolf croon "The Red Rooster" (and practically eat the microphone) or any of his other midnight creeps rather than Johnson on "Sweet Home, Chicago"? Here I will rest my case.
So what do you have to hear here? Obviously, “Sweet Home, Chicago". Beyond that “32-20 Blues” is a must listen as is his version of “Dust My Broom” (but isn’t Elmore James’ slide guitar souped-up version much better?) and “Hellhound On My Trail”. Keb’ Mo' (who I will review separately at a later time) does a nice cover here of “Last Fair Deal Gone Down”.
Lyrics to "Dust My Broom"
I'm gonna get up in the mornin',
I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)
Girlfriend, the black man you been lovin',
girlfriend, can get my room
I'm gon' write a letter,
Telephone every town I know (2x)
If I can't find her in West Helena,
She must be in East Monroe, I know
I don't want no woman,
Wants every downtown man she meet (2x)
She's a no good doney,
They shouldn't 'low her on the street
I believe, I believe I'll go back home (2x)
You can mistreat me here, babe,
But you can't when I go home
And I'm gettin' up in the morning,
I believe I'll dust my broom (2x)
Girlfriend, the black man that you been lovin',
Girlfriend, can get my room
I'm gon' call up Chiney,
She is my good girl over there (2x)
If I can't find her on Philippine's Island,
She must be in Ethiopia somewhere
Robert Johnson
Wednesday, May 4, 2011
The Answer Ain’t Blowing In The Wind- "Maria Muldaur: Live In Concert (2008)- A Film Review
Click on the headline to link to a YouTube film clip of Maria Muldaur with Jim Kweskin and the Jug Band back in the days for a little nostagia treat.
Maria Muldaur: Live In Concert, Maria Muldaur and other artists, BCD, 2008
The name Maria Muldaur has been no stranger to this space over the past few years. I have spilled a fair amount of ink in reflecting on my youthful musical interests. Those interests included an appreciation of jug music, one of the folkloric forms in vogue in the early 1960s urban folk revival centered on such places as the Village, Harvard Square and Berkeley. And Maria, along with then husband Geoff Muldaur and band leader Jim Kweskin (both who have also come in for a fair amount of ink here for their later efforts as well) were the central driving forces of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band that reigned supreme in those days, especially in Harvard Square
For those not familiar with the jug band tradition it stems, mainly, from a more rural, more poor boy, earlier time in America when dough was scarce (or non-existent) out in the hinterlands and hollows. But Saturday night was still Saturday night and the eternal need for entertainment was in the air. So, good old boys (and gals, but less so) got together with what was at hand, a guitar, almost always a fiddle, and then whatever else could be gathered up: wash tub, wash board, wash tub and broom to make a bass instrument, whistles, kazoos (Geoff is a master kazooist, if that is the right term), harmonicas, hell, pot and pans if that’s what it took. Oh ya, and a jug.
And they made music for the folk. But then as America became more urbanized this stuff, this poor boy stuff, fell off the radar until roots music-crazed young people, mainly students, with some musical talent and a desire to break out of the Tin Pan Alley pabulum of the late 1950s ”discovered jug” along the way. Groups formed, and reformed, for a while digging up old Memphis Jug Band, Mississippi Sheiks, Arkansas Sheiks (and sheiks for other locales as well), country blues, and whatever else they could find. And guys, like this writer, could go to places like Harvard Square on any given weekend night with a date, stop at one of the eight zillion coffeehouses that dotted the landscape of the place and hear jug (or other forms of folk music: mountain, traditional ballads, some ethnic stuff, contemporary folk protest a la Dylan, Baez, Ochs, etc.) for the price of a cup of coffee and, maybe, dessert. Cheap dates for modern day poor boys, praise be. But that cheap date coffeehouse weekend scene too passed as fickle youth moved on to other musical forms, and other social concerns, for a while.
Maria (and Geoff and Jim, for that matter) , however, driven by that sound in every true musician's head kept up her musical career, mainly after the break-up of the Kweskin Band as a solo artist backed up by various bands, and other configurations. For the last decade or so she has immersed herself in a thorough going and deep revival of the music of old-time barrel house women blues singers. Names like Sippy Wallace, Bessie Smith, Ida Mack, Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, and Victoria Spivey long lost are now resurrected through Maria’s voice in three CD compilations (whether more are coming I do not know). When the legacy of Maria Muldaur is mentioned this work may very well be her musical monument. And rightly so.
So now we come to a review of this Maria Muldaur: Live In Concert DVD, a concert done in the heart of the period of her blues revival work (2008) although it is mainly a concert in support of her CD featuring the love songs of Bob Dylan. And after all this build up about Maria’s musical roots, her place, righteous place, in blues history, and the rest this concert was an extremely uneven effort, particularly the first half. No question many people have covered Bob Dylan songs, including love songs, very well and have become standards on their own. One thinks of Ritchie Havens’ masterful version of Just Like A Women, for example. However the somber, jazzy, low-key renditions here, and their delivery were, well, ho-hum. Buckets of Love can serve as an example. Dave Van Ronk has, to my mind, done the best cover on this one with his grainy voice (I am being kind here) and wistfully bitter-sweet rendition. Frankly, until about a minute into the thing I did not know Maria was singing that song. And so it went for the first half.
But talent is talent and so it rose to the occasion in the second half with a great rendition of Cajun Moon and others, ending with a very nice version of Ride Me High, including Maria on fiddle. But Maria I hear Alberta Hunter calling. Bob has many people willing and able to cover his work but those old time blues singers need a voice, your voice.
.
Maria Muldaur: Live In Concert, Maria Muldaur and other artists, BCD, 2008
The name Maria Muldaur has been no stranger to this space over the past few years. I have spilled a fair amount of ink in reflecting on my youthful musical interests. Those interests included an appreciation of jug music, one of the folkloric forms in vogue in the early 1960s urban folk revival centered on such places as the Village, Harvard Square and Berkeley. And Maria, along with then husband Geoff Muldaur and band leader Jim Kweskin (both who have also come in for a fair amount of ink here for their later efforts as well) were the central driving forces of the Jim Kweskin Jug Band that reigned supreme in those days, especially in Harvard Square
For those not familiar with the jug band tradition it stems, mainly, from a more rural, more poor boy, earlier time in America when dough was scarce (or non-existent) out in the hinterlands and hollows. But Saturday night was still Saturday night and the eternal need for entertainment was in the air. So, good old boys (and gals, but less so) got together with what was at hand, a guitar, almost always a fiddle, and then whatever else could be gathered up: wash tub, wash board, wash tub and broom to make a bass instrument, whistles, kazoos (Geoff is a master kazooist, if that is the right term), harmonicas, hell, pot and pans if that’s what it took. Oh ya, and a jug.
And they made music for the folk. But then as America became more urbanized this stuff, this poor boy stuff, fell off the radar until roots music-crazed young people, mainly students, with some musical talent and a desire to break out of the Tin Pan Alley pabulum of the late 1950s ”discovered jug” along the way. Groups formed, and reformed, for a while digging up old Memphis Jug Band, Mississippi Sheiks, Arkansas Sheiks (and sheiks for other locales as well), country blues, and whatever else they could find. And guys, like this writer, could go to places like Harvard Square on any given weekend night with a date, stop at one of the eight zillion coffeehouses that dotted the landscape of the place and hear jug (or other forms of folk music: mountain, traditional ballads, some ethnic stuff, contemporary folk protest a la Dylan, Baez, Ochs, etc.) for the price of a cup of coffee and, maybe, dessert. Cheap dates for modern day poor boys, praise be. But that cheap date coffeehouse weekend scene too passed as fickle youth moved on to other musical forms, and other social concerns, for a while.
Maria (and Geoff and Jim, for that matter) , however, driven by that sound in every true musician's head kept up her musical career, mainly after the break-up of the Kweskin Band as a solo artist backed up by various bands, and other configurations. For the last decade or so she has immersed herself in a thorough going and deep revival of the music of old-time barrel house women blues singers. Names like Sippy Wallace, Bessie Smith, Ida Mack, Ethel Waters, Alberta Hunter, and Victoria Spivey long lost are now resurrected through Maria’s voice in three CD compilations (whether more are coming I do not know). When the legacy of Maria Muldaur is mentioned this work may very well be her musical monument. And rightly so.
So now we come to a review of this Maria Muldaur: Live In Concert DVD, a concert done in the heart of the period of her blues revival work (2008) although it is mainly a concert in support of her CD featuring the love songs of Bob Dylan. And after all this build up about Maria’s musical roots, her place, righteous place, in blues history, and the rest this concert was an extremely uneven effort, particularly the first half. No question many people have covered Bob Dylan songs, including love songs, very well and have become standards on their own. One thinks of Ritchie Havens’ masterful version of Just Like A Women, for example. However the somber, jazzy, low-key renditions here, and their delivery were, well, ho-hum. Buckets of Love can serve as an example. Dave Van Ronk has, to my mind, done the best cover on this one with his grainy voice (I am being kind here) and wistfully bitter-sweet rendition. Frankly, until about a minute into the thing I did not know Maria was singing that song. And so it went for the first half.
But talent is talent and so it rose to the occasion in the second half with a great rendition of Cajun Moon and others, ending with a very nice version of Ride Me High, including Maria on fiddle. But Maria I hear Alberta Hunter calling. Bob has many people willing and able to cover his work but those old time blues singers need a voice, your voice.
.
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