Tom the Piper's Son

Pierre and Queen Nefertari

2009-05-15T17:58:00.000-07:00

Master guitarist Pierre Bensusan has a lovely, lyric little masterpiece of a tune called Nefertari.

Nefertari, whose name means, variously. "beautiful companion", or "most beautiful of them", was the favorite queen of Pharaoh Ramses II way back in circa 1290-1250 BC.
She was uniquely loved by her husband, as, at his time, most royal marriages were made and kept solely for political reasons. Nefertari was 13 when she was betrothed to the 15 year old Ramses. From his numerous wives he is said to have fathered 100 children but Nefertari remained the favorite companion. She is oft depicted in paintings of the era as the same height as Ramses which was an unheard of violation of Egyptian representational protocol! Ramses built a temple for her and the god Hathor at Abu Simbel, and she is seen on the walls there as a companion of the goddess Isis.
Nefertari apparently took an active role in negotiating peace between the Hittites and her husband, and there are surviving cuneiform tablets from Turkey that contain correspondence from Nefertari with the king and queen of the Hittites.
Poems written by Ramses to her filled her burial chamber, and in one he says;
"My love is unique—no one can rival her, for she is the most beautiful woman alive. Just by passing, she has stolen away my heart."
She is pictured below playing senet, a boardgame that, when skillfully played, insured smooth transition into the afterworld.

Pierre Bensusan has long been a favorite guitarist of mine. I discovered his Pres de Paris record in a Santa Cruz shop in the mid-70's and was bowled over by his solo fingerpicked renditions of the Irish jigs Cunla and Merrily Kiss the Quaker's Wife. On those tunes, much like Martin Carthy or the bluesman Mance Lipscomb, Bensusan propels the beat with a dampened, often monotonic bass on the low strings while the intricate melodic line rides on the high strings. He makes liberal use of open strings in the melody and this gives the tunes a harp-like singing, suspended sound. His placement of open string notes is tastefully and expressively executed; without the excessive "open-tuning" drone style of most American "folk-style" players and, on the other hand, it creates a resonance that would would be lost in most "classical" guitar renditions which are stultified with precise clipped notes.

Inspired by Bensusan's example as well as similar ventures by Carthy and John Renbourn I went through 2 years of playing almost exclusively in the tuning DADEAD (sometimes used by the latter two) and concentrating on Irish/Celtic instrumental tunes and my own material before it dawned on me that I was digging myself into a pit of obscurity and would need to return to standard tuning if I wanted to interact at ease with other musicians. Pierre, plays solely in DADGAD - the "Davy Graham" tuning - but has the technique and versatility to, doubtlessly, adapt to any musical situation.
Here , Pierre plays two Irish tunes

Krishnamurti Thought

2009-05-14T06:54:00.000-07:00

I habitually read a daily "meditation" from J. Krishnamurti's The Book of Life - one can take it or leave it, but I usually take it. He was just the sort to get teed off if you accepted anything he said without question and I greatly admire that.
here's the entry for today, May 14.

Remain with a Feeling and See

What Happens

"You never remain with any feeling, pure and simple, but always surround it with a paraphernalia

of words. The word distorts it; thought, whirling around it, throws it into shadow, overpowers it

with mountainous fears and longings. You never remain with a feeling, and with nothing else: with hate, or with that strange feeling of beauty. When the feeling of hate arises, you say how bad it is; there is the compulsion, the struggle to overcome it, the turmoil of thought about it....

Try remaining with the feeling of hate, with the feeling of envy, jealousy, with the venom of ambition; for after all, that's what you have in daily life, though you may want to live with love or with the word love. Since you have the feeling of hate, of wanting to hurt somebody with a gesture or a burning word, see if you can stay with that feeling. can you? have you ever tried? Try to remain with a feeling , and see what happens. you will find it amazingly difficult. Your mind will not leave the feeling alone; it comes rushing in with its remembrances, its associations, its do's and don'ts, its everlasting chatter.

Pick up a piece of shell.

Can you look at it, wonder at its delicate beauty, without saying how pretty it is, or what animal made it? Can you look without the movement of the mind? Can you live without the feeling that the word builds up? If you can, then you will discover an extraordinary thing, a movement beyond the measure of time; a spring that knows no summer."

912 Toulouse St. with Ramblin' Jack

2009-05-12T21:33:00.000-07:00

912 Greens is the title of a song Ramblin' Jack Elliott recorded on his album Young Brigham in 1968. It tells the story of a trip Jack made to New Orleans in 1953 to visit a banjo player named Billy Faier who lived at 912 Toulouse Street. The song is not sung, but a "talkin'" narrative with Jack accompanying himself with a flatpicked handful of repeated chords ornamented differently each time they cycle around; sometimes lingering and ruminating on one chord in that hypnotic flowing style that Jack had.

His idol and friend Woody Guthrie, (Woody's son Arlo too), had some talkin songs, as did Bob Dylan, who early on was referred too, not entirely in jest, as Ramblin Jack's son.
Jack's talkin narrative in 912 Greens has some similarity to those of the aforenamed but there is a distinct mixture of humour and sad resignation to this one - it's never quite one or the other and it's an odd mix of ordinariness (just friends sitting around getting acquainted) and absurd - "a lady that had once been ex-ballet dancer" dancing in the rain around a banana tree amidst the courtyard of the fenced in apartment pads that Billy and other musicians lived in.

This little sojourn is encircled with a kind of hobo fairytale magic; as far as Jack knew the only entryway to Billy's pad was though a back alleyway and over a fence. The two weeks Jack spent there were entirely under rain and rainclouds; he never saw the light of day in New Orleans and he hadn't returned since. It's the kind of tale told by campfire, or waiting out the rain huddled neath an awning in a train station between ramblers and drifters - and miscast poets - who may never see one another again.

Jack continued (and continues, to this day!) to sing the tune and it changes everytime. But I tend to believe this, the first recorded version of 912 Greens, is closer to the truth - if there is one.
Uh yes, if you listen to the very end you will hear the only sung lines in the tune, which add to ramblinesque proceedings:

"Did you ever
stand and shiver
just 'cause you were lookin'
at a river?"

* To understand better what the ramblin of Ramblin Jack is all about have a look at "The Ballad of Ramblin Jack" a documentary made by Jack's daughter Aiyanna.
A must-see, but, I would hope you listen to this song first.

Let the Right One In

2009-05-10T07:06:00.000-07:00

Just a quick "thumbs up" to a movie that is catching a bit of underground buzz, the Swedish-made "vampire" film Let the Right One In.

Having read that there is likely an American version in the works, I am urged to get this recommendation out before this small masterpiece is summarily crapped upon.

I'm not much on gore for gore's sake, but I do like suspense and mystery. Though I generally avoid modern vampire depictions - Shadow of the Vampire with Willem Dafoe is about the only one I've intentionally seen twice - I also think there's something primally attractive to the dilemma and myth of the vampire which appeals to the experience of all of us as suffering beings, caught up in attachments and curses that seem beyond our control.

Let the Right One In moves at a contemplative pace without dragging, and builds the suspense with a "show, don't tell" approach. The viewer must come to his own conclusions as to the why and wherefore but these questions arise naturally rather than as an intellectual game to be solved. The movie, though mercifully avoiding Hollywood cliches, does not leave us hanging in the non-sequitur, "ok, just another weird slice-o-life" state that many independent or "art" films favor; it has a conclusion that is both liberating and disturbing.
While necessarily tagged as a "vampire" movie Let the Right One In is also a "coming-of-age" story, about friendship and loyalty and, yes, romance.

Rather than detail the plot I submit this link to the allmovie.com synopsis and review.

*Be sure and have the Swedish audio voice/soundtrack with the English subtitles - which are, at least in the version I secured, rendered very clearly.

Abercrombie's Backward Glance

2009-04-30T08:08:00.000-07:00

John Abercrombie is one of the instantly recognizable jazz guitar stylists. His sound and conception have a pastoral elegance attuned to Indian Raga or Persian modal improvisations as much as it does to his precursors in the jazz world such as Bill Evans, Jim Hall, and Miles Davis.

Characters is the only completely solo record Abercrombie ever made, and my personal favorite of his many releases. It was recorded for ECM by Manfred Eicher in Oslo, Norway in November of 1977. The album is distinguished by Abercrombie’s blend of acoustic guitars – primarily as chordal background – with melodies overlayed by the electric guitar, and occasionally, electric mandolin. Together, the acoustic and electric never sound crowded but complement one another like entwined branches of a vine.

The songs, all Abercrombie originals, are at once lyrical and harmonically daring, reminiscent of compositions of Evans like Blue in Green; they seem to be heading for a familiar resolution but pause to take another sidepath that opens out into something else.
Backward Glance from Characters

...(listening now, my take on it)

letting go
the handles
a bicyclist rounds a street corner
dream messenger
scent
voice and touch of fingertips
remembrance of pathways in sunken cities
steps winding down always to a new door
light filtered by waves above
from tears of a thousand burning suns
of long gone galaxies
and curtains of persian night

forgotten the way back

awakened slow
eyelid blinks
flutter of wings
murmur of the heart

Abercrombie in the 70's

* Here is an interesting (at least to the explorative musical types) youtube clip with Abercrombie recently demonstrating the art and discipline of improvising on one string. By restricting the sonic "palette" to a narrower range, the musician finds resources to break out of the box of mechanical playing and away from licks that habitually "fall under the fingers". John starts with a basic Lydian modal thing and then uses the same approach against the chord changes to "Stella By Starlight".

Oleo, June 1954

2009-04-21T06:19:00.000-07:00

The melody for Oleo was, at least partially, composed on the spot by Sonny Rollins for this Miles Davis session, now issued on "Bag's Groove" (this version of the song not to be confused with that on the later Prestige session, "Relaxin").
According to Davis, Sonny would tear off scraps from paper found in the studio to write down his ideas, which also included two other songs that became jazz standards, Doxy and Airegin.

This song, as composition and in this particular performance, broke new ground somewhat analagous to the concurrent infusion of Zen thought and poetry into "Beat" culture. Here, a direct simplicity is achieved by paring down to essentials.

Oleo ia played over I Got Rhythm chord changes, as were countless compositions of the bop era. In most cases the melodies for the typical bop "heads" based on these changes were close to improvisations themselves, but with slight adjustments for compositional continuity. Rollins' melody, by contrast, is based on a shorter offbeat rhythmic "burst" motif, an urgent telegraph popping up from the melody stream - an energy pocket, a musical photon carrying an electromagnetic force. The improviser - or listener - uses this seed motif to fuel his own storyline. There are echoes of the deceptive simplicity of Monk and also the "cool" compositions from Davis' own Birth of the Cool sessions - check out "Deception" (Miles' revamp of George Shearing's "Conception") from there.

Oleo, rhythmically, bears some similarity to Charlie Parker's
Relaxin' At Camarillo - composed and performed not long after his release from the California state mental hospital of that name. Parker's tune, built on blues changes, also carries a threaded rhythmic motif that propels the tune along.

The arrangement of Oleo is also unique; the only constant is Percy Heath's spry walking bass line. In the statement of the "head" Miles Davis' Harmon-muted trumpet and Sonny's tenor in play unison over the bass-line with Kenny Clarke's understated drums and Horace Silver's melodic chordal comping coming in for the bridge. During the solos this arrangement remains basically the same although Clarke's drumming comes in, subtly, during the A sections and with a little more panache in the B.

Miles' solo is a gem of understatement - the first few bars are dashed off like a child's rope skipping song with a brilliant sweeping bop line here and there; predominately on the turnarounds.
While Miles's phrasing is already sparse and punctuated by empty bars, in Sonny's solo the phrases are more explosive but, in his first chorus, he leaves as much 2 or 3 bars empty. In the second chorus, after short, abstract jabs he pauses in and gathers himself before jumping into an extended line punctuated with accented peaks; picture a childlike figure cut at odd angles on paper folded in layers and then suddenly unfolded, a neo-bop daisy chain with sunlight pouring through each section differently.

Blumenschein's Lake

2009-04-13T07:50:00.000-07:00

The Lake - Ernest Blumenschein

I live about three blocks from the Phoenix Art Museum and you would think I was a frequent visitor. Alas, it's a case of jaded convenience; already a procrastinator, I am comforted by the proximity of the Museum and set my intended visits upon the enormous heap labeled, "Things That I Really Want to Do That Can Always Be Done Later".
However, when I do get around to it, I love to go to the permanent collection and ritually soak up the "rays" from a few favorite paintings. One of my favorites is Ernest Blumenschein's "The Lake". Blumenschein captures the mystical, dramatic beauty of the Southwest - in his case New Mexico - but brings a decorative
element to the scene. Decorative, in the sense of using design elements suggested by the natural scene that are not there but that bring a unifying and personal element. Often Blumenschein has a shimmering detail - as of the reflection of the land and sky on the wind-stirred ripples that rake a watery surface - in the foreground and then a kind of sculptural, blocky, background of clouds or mountains that seems art deco.

Eagles Nest Lake

Presently, the Museum is showing a complete exhibit of Blumenschein's work and I have been blessed to see a great many works I never knew of. Though his paintings of Native American figures are impressive in their execution and color, I always have the nagging feeling that this caters to a kind of Eastern tourist fascination of the time. This may have not been Blumenschein's intent but I, as a resident of Phoenix, have seen quite enough of this sort of thing. It's the Blumenschein high desert landscapes, especially the water scenes therein, that speak to me and seem to be entirely unique and non-traditional.

Blumenschein was very fond of fishing, and though he later tended to move away from portrayals of the human figure as his landscapes came to the fore, he often punctuated his lake and river scenes with tiny figures of fishermen, either solitary or in groups.

Before taking up a career as an illustrator and then fine artist, Blumenschein was a musical prodigy on violin. Beginning musical studies in his native Ohio, Blumenschein moved on to New York City to study painting at the Art Students League.
To support himself, he took on a position as first violinist in the New York Symphony, conducted at that time by the great composer, Anton Dvorak. The story goes that Dvorak immediately hired the young Blumenschein for the first violin chair merely after hearing him play a D minor scale!
As Joan Carpenter Troccoli puts it in her masterful, "Painters and the American West; the Anschutz Collection"
"...his paintings seem analogous to music in their rhythm and repetition. One might even say the roundness of tone sought by musician's echoed in his sculptural forms."

Frank Godwin and Treasure Island

2009-03-31T11:53:00.000-07:00

The story goes that Robert Louis Stevenson was on holiday in the Scottish Highlands and one rainy day came upon his stepson Lloyd, applying watercolors to a map he'd made of an imaginary isle. Lloyd described Stevenson's attention;

"....as I was finishing it, and with his affectionate interest in everything I was doing, leaned over my shoulder, and was soon elaborating the map and naming it. I shall never forget the thrill of Skeleton Island, Spyglass Hill, nor the heart-stirring climax of the three red crosses! And the greater climax still when he wrote down the words "Treasure Island" at the top right-hand corner! And he seemed to know so much about it too —— the pirates, the buried treasure, the man who had been marooned on the island ... . "Oh, for a story about it", I exclaimed, in a heaven of enchantment ..."

Stevenson, who had been in a writer's block of late, dutifully hunkered down and blazed through the creation of Treasure Island.

My father had a hard-bound copy of Treasure Island in the house and it was the first novel I ever read. It bore the signature of my grandfather on the inside cover "From Dad, To Edmund J. Clohessy Jr., - Christmas 1930".

- thanks, Matthew for scanning the book-cover!

By the time the already-worn volume fell into my hands I must have seen the famous 1934 movie version with Wallace Beery as Long John Silver, Lionel Barrymore playing Billy Bones, and Jackie Cooper as the boy Jim Hawkins. My father and I were very fond of such bygone silver-screen gems, and his breadth of knowledge about the stars and their signature roles was a tantalizing thread that fueled my imagination. But, the fact that my father had read the book prior to, even, the 1934 movie version added to the intensity of interest he conveyed to me, to whom, like many 6 or 7 year old boys, a fine tale about pirates and lost treasure was as gasoline tossed on the fire.

As in all things, bookwise, artwise - lifewise - "Hunger is the best appetizer".

The book had but 4 colored - painted! - illustrations by Frank Godwin. Godwin is much lesser known than Howard Pyle and N.C. Wyeth whose names are synonymous with vivid swashbuckling scenes of the classic pirate books. Nonetheless, he stands on his own with graceful

rendering, exquisite coloring, and fine characterizations. Godwin also did outstanding work on Stevenson's Kidnapped and Hagedorn'sThe Book of Courage as seen below.

Four illustrated plates from Godwin were just enough to drive me round the bend, imaginatively speaking, and supply my own inner scenery.

to add some music to the proceedings, and forge a link to the previous post, here is a pirate-themed musical sketch ( i couldn't get a copy of his Henry Martin) of Donovan's taken from a live performance;Moon In Capricorn

Donovan, in Her Majesty's Service

2009-03-22T11:55:00.000-07:00

Following on the trail of recent posts about the songs of Donovan Leitch by my pal Relative Esoterica I I want to urge listeners to check out one of his lesser known, though one of my personal favorite, recordings - HMS Donovan. This was recorded after the birth of his first child in 1970, and like "For little Ones" is simultaneously for children but also should appeal to any adult with an ear attuned to poetry set to exquisite melodies and guitar playing with Donovan's particular twist on the folk tradition.

The record is lesser known than most of his others and had poor sales, despite one song that got a good deal of airplay "Celia of the Seals". This has some to do with a change in management and lack of promotion but also with the fact that it does not fit neatly into a "package" theme as some of his records. I personally think that Donovan's pop records at the time were not up to his usual snuff and the "people" were out of phase with him.
For the sake of brevity I include here a summary review of the record I posted in amazon back in 2000 - apologies in advance for my usual overflowery writing;

"While 'For Little Ones' is an intimate journey through the child-like looking glass of Donovan's Scottish Isles, 'HMS' is painted with a broader brush. This is more the loving stumble into childhood via an attic of musicboxes and half-crumbled story books with turn-o'-the-century color leafs. Some things we've outgrown and some things we should never forget.

Some unparalleled, great stuff here: 'Seller of Stars', 'Queen Mab", and 'Henry Martin' - lovely melodies w/ haunting guitar accompaniment somewhere between Bert Jansch and Ramblin' Jack.

The guitar throughout this recording is particularly crystalline and as full as harps in ancient halls. 'The Voyage of the Moon' - who else, I ask you, possesses the musical legerdemain to make you feel the slight pause of the moon with her sail of gauze? 'Song of the Wandering Aengus' - an ending that fades seamlessly into Yeats' celtic Twilight and your heart skips a beat. After hearing Donovan's version it will probably remain the only famous poem I can recite at will. Donovan is the undisputed master when it comes to reviving the vague stirring children have that there IS another world just past the trees and under the hills. (Am I completely nuts on this?) I respectfully differ with Markmatts [here i'm referring to another review] opinion of 'The Walrus and the Carpenter'. For those uninclined towards "folk"-type material, I play this cut first as bait by establishing our man as a visionary in sound. The response is invariably amazement. I find it endearingly Felliniesque - the song of the oysters is a gem and you'll not forget their little legs trotting on..."

"Henry Martin" is a traditional English song about one of Donovan's favorite themes,
piracy, and he employs a wonderful rolling - like the sea - modal pattern on guitar while using his voice to imitate a jew's harp or a hurdy-gurdy; much as one might hear on a sailing vessel of the 18th or 19th century or in some seedy port-of-call. The effect is trance-like and somewhat East Indian.

Here I include his version of the The Song of the Wandering Aengus, the famous Yeats poem set to words that is featured on HMS. In a past post "Hazel Wands, Wells, Wise Fish and Other Irish Fancies" from March 16th of 2006, I wrote a bit about the poem itself which might be of interest.

Many of the songs Donovan plays here are children's poems set to his own, or traditional melodies; here is the Thora Stowell poem, The Seller of Stars

Thanks again to Elizabeth for her fine posts on Donovan!

From Coleman to Cantors

2009-03-15T07:05:00.000-07:00

Sometimes a confluence of events in our lives is like a prophetic dream, preparing us for a new revelation or a forgotten treasure newly revealed. Or, maybe it's just like seeing a color in someones hair and then noticing it everywhere.

I had been reading a biography of the composer Harold Arlen and noted with some interest that his father was a cantor; dictionarily defined as, applicable in this case, "in a synagogue, the person who chants the liturgy and leads the congregation in prayer" - really a "singer" of Jewish liturgical song. I had a strong emotional pull towards this type of song, and a vague memory of it stirred inside of me, filed within as "things I've got to look deeper into one of these days".

The night after I had read that passage about Arlen's father, I was having a break at the bar of a restaurant where a group of us play a kind of experimental jazz, not so much songs as "happenings into song" or "sound evolvements" or, (as it may appear to some) how about "mindless doodlings"?

Steve Jansen, one of my musical cohorts, who creates "soundscapes" from odd items, is also a journalist who has interviewed a fair number of jazz artists. We got to chatting about Ornette Coleman, whom we both dig musically, and the absolutely unfathomably perplexing explanations and declarations that come out of his mouth. I remarked that it would be interesting to "loop" some of these statements into a creative musical patchwork as they stand alone as wondrous ciphers. I mean, what does one make of;
"It's impossible for you never to have existed at all, because when you didn't know that you existed, you did exist." ? And so forth...
Ornette

At work in the library the following day I happened upon a book by Ben Ratliff called "The Jazz Ear" , a series of his ruminations and interviews with jazz players and composers. This book was of particular interest because Ratliff asks the artist to choose some recordings - not their own work - to play and discuss at the interviews.

In the book I found an interview with Ornette Coleman. Curious about the records Ornette would choose, I was pleasantly surprised that he had asked Ratliff to bring something by Cantor Joseph "Yossele" Rosenblatt. Ratliff brought a 1916 recording of Rosenblatt singing "Tikanto Shabbas" a psalm put to song. Also, what Ornette had to say was, for him, very direct.
Ornette on Rosenblatt;
"I was once in Chicago, about twenty-some years ago. A young man said, 'I'd like you to come by so I can play something for you.' I went down to his basement and he put on Joseph Rosenblatt and I started crying like a baby. The record he had was crying, singing, praying, all in the same breath. And none of it was crossing each other. It was all separate. I said, 'Wait a minute. You can't find those notes. Those are not "notes" They don't exist." Yossele Rosenblatt

As I listened to Rosenblatt myself, (this recording and others are available on youtube and elsewhere), I remembered where I had heard a cantor's song that moved me to tears and had sown the seed of curiosity about this music; it was in the Italian movie The Garden of the Finzi-Continis, based on a novel by Giorgio Bassano, and brought to fruition on film by Vittorio De Sica in 1970.
The story centers on the story of two Jewish families in Ferrara (the movie was filmed on location), Italy who have very different views on the events surrounding the rise of Mussolini, Hitler, and the fate that awaited them with the advent of war.
It was De Sica's last major film. Having been lauded early on for the "neo-realism" of The Bicycle Thief, and Umberto D he subsequently had fallen out of grace with critics for his "lighter" work and, after almost 15 years, The Garden was agreed to be a fine, though different, return to his former glory.

Unavailable from any existing cd recording, on youtube I was able to find on a trailer clip (?) for "The Garden of the Finzi-Continis" the beautiful, incomparable recording of Cantor Sholom Katz singing "El Male Rahimim" or "Keil Molei Rachamim" It comes in about 52 seconds into the clip and should not be missed!

From SaveTheMusic.com I did find this bit about Sholom Katz, acknowledged as one of the greatest recorded cantors;

"Sholom Katz was born in Grosswardein, Hungary. At an early age he was already displaying his unique ability before vast audiences. When he was only twenty years old, he won the post of cantor at the famed Kishinever Shul, with a three year contract. His next position was in the Hecker Shul where the renowned Shlomoh Zalmon Razomne once officiated as Cantor.
In 1942 in a Nazi concentration camp, Sholom was among 1600 Jews scheduled for mass execution. He received permission to sing the Keil Molei Rachamim (Prayer for the Dead) while the prisoners were digging their graves. The Nazi commandant, impressed with his voice, spared him to sing for the officers, and the next day he was allowed to escape, the only one of 1600 spared a brutal death."(italics are mine)

What can one say after that?

* The picture at the top of the page is of the Synagogue in Ferrara, Italy.

I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues

2009-02-27T22:37:00.000-08:00

Billie's version * of I Gotta Right To Sing the Blues was waxed on April 20,1939 for Commodore Records.

Billie's singing here typifies all that I love about the early years of her recording career; when speaking of her voice/tone as a trumpet this is not to take away from her humanity - she conveys the lyric sentiment perfectly but she brings to it the beauty of something purely musical. You can feel the blues for her but you can enjoy the ride as you accept that certain things in life are a given.
Where most singers would have "torched it up" with Billie you've got a subtler resignation that doesn't deny the pain - as if to say, "Life is a bitch - so, what else is new? I gotta find a way to live with it."
While the rhythm section lays down the beat in Basie style, heart-beat SOLID (one can imagine the strums of guitarist Jimmy McLin springing OFF the beat, buoyant, like Freddie Greene) Billie floats over it all like a golden cloud.
To quote drummer Specs Powell;
"She was one of the first singers that did not emote, no bouncing around, sang very quietly, snapped right hand, holding it close to her side. Snapped her fingers and tapped her feet very quietly, head tilted slightly to one side. The opposite to most jazz singers [of that time], who seemed to be choreographed. Her whole attitude was very cool."

The song has a wonderful stoptime bit at the end of a verse; she sings on beats 1 and three with band answering on 2 and 4 "All I SEE...FOR...ME...IS...MIS...ER...Ree-EEE!" and when they all lock back in to the solid time it's total swinging joy.

Frankie Newton with Billie at the session

A fine addition the record is Tab Smith's wail of a solo on alto sax; I would have personally preferred someone like Lester Young or even Kermit Scott on tenor or Irving Fazola on clarinet, but I must admit that Smith's rather ornate 20's style glide upward gives a nice contrast to Billie's even swing.
To my ears, the high point of the record is Frankie Newton's muted trumpet obbligato
entwining Billies vocal. The more I hear it the more I'm amazed at the choice of notes that seemed to push Billie's phrases to the fore rather than merely ornament.
Newton was an anomaly, more of a Miles Davis for the swing era, with minimal lyric solos.
"Frank" as he preferred to be called, made an auspicious debut with Bessie Smith in the early 30's but virtually dropped out of the recording scene by the mid 40's; apparently his independent spirit was at odds with the music business. An avid reader, and painter who loved to play tennis he nevertheless continued to play the odd gig in Boston and remained a legend to those who recalled him. Jazz writer Nat Hentoff befriended Newton in his youth and relates how the older, athletic, father-figure walked protectively behind him and his girfriend through a dicey neighborhood to make sure he wasn't "jumped".

Frankie Newton with Sidney Bechet

The band for the session was the house band for the newly opened Cafe Society Uptown club on 58th Street between Park and Lexington in Manhattan. Barney Josephson, a jazz lover, was the son of Latvian immigrants, and had witnessed better treatment of black performers in Europe. He opened the club, partly to provide an integrated environment and also to showcase black performers as well as cabaret and comedy. It was Josephson who introduced Billie to her most famous song "Strange Fruit" - the thinly veiled portrayal of racist lynching in the south. The irony is that it was recorded at the very-same session as "I Gotta Right..." and would lead Billie down a very different road.
I would agree she became typecast in the following years as a "hard-luck" tragic chanteuse as much for this song as for the sordid details of her growing addiction to heroin and abusive men. Ironically (a situation much like Lester Young's), as her voice deteriorated, she was able to make more records under her own name - it always saddens me that so many listeners are ONLY familiar with the latter-day (of the 50's and late 40's) recordings and have no inkling of the golden-toned Billie.

Finally a word of praise should go out to the composer/melodist Harold Arlen and lyricist Ted Koehler who wrote "I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues". The stunning array of melodies written by Arlen include Over the Rainbow, Let's Fall In Love, Stormy Weather, Get Happy, I've Got the World On a String, One For My Baby, Come Rain or Come Shine among others!
No accident that Arlen was the son of a Jewish cantor who also loved secular music; especially operatic singers like Enrico Caruso and John McCormack. Harold Arlen stepped beyond his family phonograph and enveloped himself in the sounds of ragtime, jazz and the powerful blues of Bessie Smith - Billie Holiday's prime influence along with Louis Armstrong.

Harold Arlen >

For a fascinating in-depth comparison of Billie's "I Gotta Right..." with Louis Armstrong's equally wonderful take from 1934, see Lori Burns' Feeling the Style: Vocal Gesture and Musical Expression in Billie Holiday, Bessie Smith, and Louis Armstrong.

* Billies "I Gotta Right .." can be found by scrolling down to the bottom of the link page - next to The Complete Commodore recordings.

The Best Things In Life Are Free

2009-02-22T20:03:00.000-08:00

"The moon belongs to everyone
The best things in life they're free
Stars belong to everyone
They cling there for you and for me

Flowers in spring
The robins that sing
The sunbeams that shine
They're yours and they're mine
Love can come to everyone
The best things in life
Are free."

Times being what they are, it's only fitting to pull out an old nugget that has been given fine, if very differing, treatments by two of my favorite musicians, singer Jo Stafford and tenor saxophonist Hank Mobley; The Best Things in Life are Free. Of course, the sentiment of the lyric is timeless in hard times or good times. Furthermore, one can drop the lyric - though the sentiment bleeds through - and just enjoy the music.

This tune was penned by Bud De Sylva, Lew Brown, and Ray Henderson (who also composed the melody for Bye bye Blackbird) for the musical Good News back in 1927 when Babe Ruth was slamming 60 home runs on a moderate regimen of beer and hot-dogs and without steroids, flappers were flapping, The Jazz Singer with Al Jolson opened at the movies, bootleg whiskey fueled the Jazz Age parties, and Bix Beiderbecke was in full swing with his golden toned cornet recording Singin the Blues and Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.
Either side of the road was the Sunny Side of the Street.

Jo's version from 1948:
Jo always stays close to the melody and lets the band swing it behind her but each phrase is HER phrase and is, when she's got a good song, almost always THE phrase that fits the song.

From Chris Albertson's interview with Lester Young, the poet of the tenor saxophone who spent the bulk of his listening time digging singers.

ALBERTSON Jo Stafford is your favorite singer?
YOUNG Yeah, and Lady Day [Billie Holiday]. And I'm through.
ALBERTSON But Jo Stafford does not sing jazz, does she?
YOUNG No, but I hear her voice and the sound and the way she puts things on.
Enough said.

Hank's version - 1961
Hank has always taken a backseat to Coltrane, Rollins, Getz and the other great tenor players of his generation..... and yet -
When the song was right (and he was right) he does something else, a certain flow and a subtle warm tone that no one can touch. Along with This I Dig of You and Remember I think of this solo, especially the first chorus, as a prime example of what he was all about; the way he rolls off of the the intro break unfolding in a gentle bop wave to come out like Errol Flynn, sword in hand down the staircase, cutting and jabbing, eliminating all obstacles to deliver the beautiful line and win Olivia de Havilland's hand; or at least secure some bread for the Merry Men.

Alone Together, Dancing In the Dark

2009-02-09T06:01:00.000-08:00

Arthur Schwartz, self taught on piano, was encouraged by Larry Hart and George Gershwin, to ease out of a career in law, follow his passion, and become one of the greatest "Broadway" composers - these days lesser known than Porter, Kern, Rodgers and Gershwin etal; well loved, nevertheless, by singers and jazz instrumentalist artists alike.
Schwartz created elegant song melodies in minor keys that also intimated sunlight and exuberance, and melodies in major keys that allowed more than a few rainclouds over head and reveries of loss.

William Zinsser (who wrote On Writing Well, a wonderful book extolling direct, uncluttered writing that I obviously had more fun reading than ingesting!) gets almost rhapsodic on Schwartz in his book Easy To Remember The Great American Songwriters and Their Songs:
"Nobody wrote melodies as sensuous as 'Alone Together' and 'You and the Night and the Music', with their rich minor-key coloring, or 'Dancing in the Dark' and 'I See Your Face Before Me'. They are grandly constructed songs, soaring at exactly the moment when they need to take flight and then returning to earth, all musical issues resolved."

Appropos of flight-taking, soaring, and returning (serenely) to earth - in this case to a horse drawn cab of Central Park - is this famous scene from The Bandwagon where Fred Astaire and Cyd Charisse provide lyric flight to the orchestrated Dancing in the Dark"
Again, seductive shifts of major and minor move under the basic motif.

Schwartz' perfectly matched lyricist partner, Howard Dietz, sets the layered emotions of the song in the first lines:

Dancing in the dark Till the tune ends,
We're dancing in the dark and it soon ends,
We're waltzing in the wonder of why we're here,
Time hurries by, we're here and gone;

"Haunted Heart" is another gem from Schwartz. Closing my eyes to listen I climb up through mountain paths, through trees covered in mists that open out finally into a clearing looking west over the ocean where a woman gazes out, singing as the sun begins to set (whaddya mean, I'm living in a musical?); once again subtle shifts laid out by the chord changes. Here sung by the immaculate, subtle and warm Jo Stafford (that must be her singing to the setting sun) - someone said she was Lester Young's favorite singer and that says much considering how he felt about Billie Holiday. Many thanks to Elizabeth of
Relative Esoterica for introducing Jo to me via her informed and passionate litanies!

"You and the Night and the Music" has been a longtime favorite of jazz musicians. Here is a great hard-swinging jazz version of the song by Anita O'Day. I completely flip hearing Anita, in the song's final go-round, taking a complete downward dive off the melody path and climbing back up singing a walking bassline in the final verses. Utterly Anita-esque devil-may-care drop-dead swinging.

Bill Evans does another great version of this tune on "Interplay" with Freddie Hubbard, Jim Hall, and Percy Heath, capped off with the wonderful drive of Philly Joe Jones on drums.

There is one "kick" Philly Joe delivers on the head statement that I always anticipate with delight. One of those definitive moments in jazz history!

Last but not least I offer you guitarist Pat Martino's take on "Alone Together" from The Visit, re-issued as Footprints.

Martino gives a hint here of the formative influences of Johnny Smith, Wes Montgomery, but soon enough, hold on to your hats and hear a true original. He starts off the melody statement with a loping swing enhanced by Billy Higgins and Richard Davis and then the tsoulful, tentative descending line
in the pick-up break and he's off and running. With Martino, no matter what the speed here, every line is a pearl.

In his book Singers and the Song Gene Lees offers this reminiscence;

"One day I was descending from the ASCAP New York office in an elevator. A tall, dark-haired, and strikingly handsome man in - I later realized - his seventies struck up a conversation with me. We got on to the subject of songs, and as we left the building found we were both walking north. The conversation continued. The man was elegant, poised, vigorous, articulate, and spoke with a voice of such gorgeous baritone resonance that I can still hear it in my head.
Finally, as we waited for a stoplight to change, he asked my name and i told him. He put out his hand and said, "I'm Arthur Schwartz."

John Martyn - "Every Bird that Sings is Born to Fly"

2009-01-30T06:20:00.000-08:00

One Day Without You
I was saddened to hear of John's passing yesterday - but even then the thought of him brought a smile and "for-the-life-of-god!" shake of the head. I was glad to know he'd made it this far and hope he was content with his legacy; he certainly he lived wild and hard and brought some great music into the world.

I first saw John Martyn perform at the Troubadour in LA back in the 70's. My friend Alan and I had come to see the featured act -Incredible String Band - whom we had long admired and seen previous but they were in the midst of personnel and style change; Martyn however was an unexpected delight and, for me, a life-changing influence.
May You Never

It was the perfect intimate venue for him to play, accompanied by only his (predominately) acoustic guitar and warm smokey voice. It took about 20 minutes to comprehend what he was singing about, and chattering on exuberantly about through the thick lilt of a Glaswegian accent. The paradox of him was that most of his songs were unchecked soulful and emotional outpourings, in that sense very much like Van Morrison, and his music layered with gorgeous altered minor ninth chords and lovely intricacies but his in-between chatter was hilarious, self-deprecating, and bubbled forth with spontaneity. I think most of us were savvy enough to know exactly what he was singing about whether or not a few decipherable words swam their way to the surface.

A live rendition of You Can Discover on John Peel's BBC show. One of my favorites in the sweet melancholy twilight that John dished out.
Here another later live, less nuanced, version of the same tune but entered here for a taste of John's between-song rambles.
John would often cap off a set encore with one of these snippets of classic old-time American popular song:
Singin in the Rain
and Glory of Love

Though his major influences were recognizable - Davy Graham, and Skip James amongst others - John had a unique guitar style. He had a popping, slapping/dampening technique that he would often lay down on beats 2 and 4 that gave his tunes a jazz-like lift. He chose a variety of tunings but never played with the droney cliches many oft settle for but he also equally held forth expressively in standard tuning - it was all about the song.
One more I always loved - live with Danny Thompson;
Sweet little Mystery

Whenever and wherever I went out to see him I managed to say hello and he always had a humble but eager thanks to offer in return. He is still transmitting through the ether!

The following clip has John paired together with his friend and collaborator, the double-bassist Danny Thompson. The two were, seemingly, not always the models of sobriety; once they dared one another to do a concert set in the buff and followed through. Another tale of the road has Thompson, after a night of inebriation, nailing a hotel rug over Martyn while he snoozed oblivious on the floor. I'm sure John awakened thinking he was either buried alive or had finally met his Judgement.

John, we Couldn't Love You More

I can't resist one more simple favorite, as a goodbye. I like to blow some floating tenor sax lines over this one....
All For the Love of You

"You Must Remember This"

2008-12-30T04:33:00.000-08:00

Some nights ago I was out in my capacity as Volunteer Luminaria-lighter for my block, finally getting the knack of lighting the tips of little candlewicks ensconced in the sand at the bottom of the white paper bags. As I glanced back at the neat rows of light trailing off into the distance I recalled reading from Jeff Kisseloff's marvelous oral history of Manhattan, "You Must Remember This" an old woman's childhood recollection of watching the lamplighter come down her street to illuminate the evening on the Upper West Side of Manhattan circa 1899.
Olga Marx was born in 1894 and would have been roundabout 90 when Kisseloff interviewed her in the mid-1980's:

"When the lamplighter came in the summer, that usually meant it was bedtime. I loved to wait for him on the stoop (of her home on 77th St. and Columbus Ave.) On mild evenings you'd bring down a chair and sit out there, although my mother thought it a little vulgar to visit back and forth between neighbors.
One mild evening she said to me, 'Instead of just sitting on the stoop before you go to bed, I want to show you something.' She told me to look up and there was a sky full of stars. It was the first time I had consciously seen just a lot of wonderful stars."

An oral history of Manhattan is going to be singular because so much change would have been witnessed by those around long enough to have seen it and yet enough of the old buildings, streets, parks and so forth remain to aid the imagination in transporting us back in time.

Following the "sky" thread somewhat, here another recollection from Olga:

"We also loved to play on the meteors which were then out in front of the Museum of Natural History (on the edge of Central Park)
I remember saying to my fraulein, (her German nanny) 'Look, I'm standing on a star.' But she was so prissy, and she said, 'Get down immediately. I can see your panties.'"

Olga Marx, who later graduated from Barnard and became a poet and writer, was obviously from the "better-offs" but Kisseloff also interviewed Bullets Brennan who, though he also lived on the Upper West Side not too far off from Olga, came from from a poorer Italian immigrant family and lived out much of his childhood on the streets.
"In the summertime, we never wore shoes, Most times we went barefoot. We'd be jumpin' around the rocks near the river in bare feet. When there wasn't any work (school not being an option), so many kids just hung around the corners or in the park, or went swimming off the dock at 75th Street, Bare-Ass Beach."
Like many kids on the street Bullets became adept at stickball - baseball's street-worthy cousin.
"A guy like Howard Cook, who was a big gambler, he'd buy the balls, and he'd watch. They all went for that. Sometimes they'd bet cash on the games. They might play for a barrel of beer."

Kisseloff (the full title of his book is "You Must Remember This: An oral history of Manhattan from the 1890's to World War II") covers all of the major neighborhoods of Manhattan in his interviews from the Lower East Side and Chelsea up to Harlem and points north.
He manages to find surviving witnesses to the Triangle Fire, sheep meadows in Central Park, the old New York Giant baseball games at the Polo Grounds, and Fats Waller at the piano in Harlem.
I found the reminiscences of the Dakota Apartments on the West Side intriguing. Bullets Brennan recalls his ragamuffin pals serenading the high class occupants at Thanksgiving. The Dakota was home to well-to-do music publishers like the Schirmers and parties were held there with literary guests like Mark Twain, and Stephen Crane as well as musical luminaries from Tchaikovsky, to -later on-
Gershwin gazing out at Central Park.
By the way, my friend Steve Hinders notifies me that our modern-day luminary, John Lennon, chose residence at the Dakota because the architecture reminded him of places in Liverpool.

Skating in Central Park with the Dakota as background circa 1890's

Anyway, I highly recommend "You Must Remember This" by Jeff Kisseloff for those who admire oral histories. It is on a par with Lawrence Ritter's "The Glory of Their Times" and any number of the Studs Terkel books.

* a note on the meteors Olga Marx played on in front of the Museum of Natural History.
Quite possibly, one of these was the famous 15.5 ton Willamette meteor (from the Willamette Valley in Oregon) purchased by heiress Mrs. William Dodge for a tidy sum around 1904 from it's owners and turned over to the Museum. The meteor was held to be sacred by the Clackamas Indians of Oregon who referred to the meteor as a "being" called Tomanowos who arrived from the moon. I'm sure that little Olga would've loved to know that.

Davy Graham: Nov. 22, 1940 - Dec. 15, 2008

2008-12-18T09:50:00.001-08:00

"A traveling man who made the journey down to Tangiers when the rest of us had our sights on Brighton Pier" - John Renbourn

Guitarist Davy Graham grew up in an immigrant section of London, with a Scottish father and a Guyanese mother. His skin-tone had a tinge of color from his mother which reminded him of his "otherness", and he was blind in one eye...

In the laissez-faire bohemian world of beatnik moving into hippie, Davy was an immaculate dresser sporting tight-cropped short hair, who early on made a conscious decision to be a heroin addict, and originally chose to feature a large block of Moroccan hashish as the centerpiece of his "Folk, Blues, and Beyond" album cover.
His version of Good Morning Blues here
He played jazz in London supper clubs and busked on the streets of Paris, studied the Koran, the musical forms Southern India and Western Ireland. He brought the crowd to it's feet with his version of Muddy Waters' "Im Ready" when I saw him at the Cambridge Folk Festival in 1974....

His original guitar tune "Anji", has a simple lilt and swing that the more well-known, virtuosic versions by both Bert Jansch and Paul Simon do not.
I would have loved to have sat down and had tea in an English garden with him...
She Moved Through the Fair

de Nuncques: Unseen in the Seen

2008-12-15T05:04:00.000-08:00

"What is line? It is life. A line must live at each point along its course in such a way that the artist’s presence makes itself felt above that of the model.... With the writer, line takes precedence over form and content. It runs through the words he assembles. It strikes a continuous note unperceived by ear or eye. It is, in a way, the soul’s style, and if the line ceases to have a life of its own, if it only describes an arabesque, the soul is missing and the writing dies."-Jean Cocteau

"To make a painting, all you need to do is to take some paints, draw some lines, and fill the rest up with feelings." -William Degouve DeNuncques

Being a musician who uses up any "remains of the day" at home in the creating and practicing of music, in my spare time at my day-job I am lately driven onto a differing but somehow parallel path - drawing and pastel work. Or, at the least, thinking about it! Oil painting would be my first choice but requires more set-up and a larger space to make a larger mess. So, circumstances encourage me take the path of the "smaller mess" - pastels.

Curious to know what other artists have done with pastels - particularly those who, like Degas, also worked in oils - I came across someone unknown to me, the Belgian painter-pastellist, William Degouve de Nuncques. His pastel of a city park with lanterns as pictured above is hardly distinguishable from his paintings in oil. Our man Nuncques (as i'll call him!) is thrown in with that odd sliver of turn-of-the-century-and-beyond artists, The Symbolists.
It happened that the young Nuncques married another painter, Juliette Massin, and was introduced by his wife to Symbolists - both poets and painters. My guess, based on the scarce available biographical material, is that Nuncques was more of a "natural" Symbolist, and no follower of doctrine. His scenes, to me, derive more from a feeling than conveyance of a thought or principle.

Seeing Nuncques' pastels and paintings I immediately felt a thread connecting them. His style is simple and almost book-illustrative and not so boldly individual at first glance as, say, that other noted Symbolist, Redon. However, there seems to me something very strongly "internal" about them. An unlikely light is often juxtaposed against darkness and at times even a brightly lit daytime scene glows from within. Here the internal light of the unseen worlds seap through the seen; a ghost figure lingering as if to say "well, I'm going to take you part way there, and if you're drawn inside you'll find your way to the rest." Ultimately, the witness to this art is the invisible strand of light that seals the delicate haunting by his own intimations.

I introduced my lengthy Cocteau quote at the top of the page to these slender notes, not to call attention to the linear style of Nuncques' paintings, which are not particularly linear (in the way of Ingres or Picasso) but because I'm taking Cocteau's "line' to be something closer to the sense of it as a thread - something essential woven through an individuals work that connects it all with a subtle signature; not always overtly a "style".

The painting at the right is called the "Pink House" and was an influence on another Belgian, Rene Magritte, whose "L'Empire De Lumieres" takes similar delight in lights emitting mysteriously through the darkness.

Nuncques spent a great deal of the early 1900's traveling with his wife Juliette and painting in various locales. They settled for some years in the Balearic Islands off Spain where he painted the picture at the very top as well as the grotto scene. When she died in 1919 Nuncques was devastated and lost the use of his right hand for almost a decade. When, in the last years of his life, he remarried a woman who helped through his crisis, his facility was born again and he turned out a number of snow scenes from Stavelot, Belgium where they lived. His touch of the "unseen" remained.
The photograph of William Degouve de Nuncques seems to reveal someone, perhaps with a touch of madness, who has endured much and remained steadfast in his art. Interesting that his sometime roommate and fellow-painter, Henri De Greux, used him as a model for a painting of Christ. The photo of Nuncques suggests a Dostoeyevskian take on a Christ-like character.

Paul Caponigro: Hearing Through the Eyes

2008-08-07T11:23:00.000-07:00

"Simplicity is the final achievement. After one has played a vast quantity of notes and more notes, it is simplicity that emerges as the crowning reward of art."
- Frederic Chopin

Paul Caponigro is my favorite photographer. I know little about the analysis and technical aspects by which great photos are judged but I am always compelled to linger over his images. There is a stillness and mystery simply portrayed in his photos, which are largely black and white (silver tones) and devoted to landscapes, arrangements of natural objects, or ancient remnants of man now subsumed into landscape.

Caponigro was born in Boston and was strongly affected by jaunts with his family to the woods and shores of New England. He later traveled and absorbed the particular
landscapes of California, Arizona, Ireland, Britain and Japan. In the 40's and 50's he received formative, personal instruction from Ansel Adams and, especially, Minor White; retaining aspects of their approach in his own work but forging a different style.

He was also a musician; well-trained as a classical pianist since early youth who chose not to follow the rigors of classical performance and training which were not aligned to the intuitive and mystical bent of chance-taking that photography provided him with. However, music remains a parallel love that would seem to permeate his work.
The musical thread surfaces in many of his own thoughts regarding his work: for example, "At the root of creativity is an impulse to understand, to make sense of random and often unrelated details. For me, photography provides an intersection of time, space, light, and emotional stance. One needs to be still enough, observant enough, and aware enough to recognize the life of the materials, to be able to 'hear through the eyes'."

Caponigro cites a lesson from his piano teacher that guided him in his art, "...that the effort, diligence, and care required in practicing must be quickly suspended when pressure coming from anxiety or a desire for fast results causes them to degenerate."

Paul Caponigro describes photos as "dreams locked in silver.", that grant us admission "if only for brief moments, to sense the thread which holds all things together."

To enclose the circle and exit the proceedings with gentle flourish, I offer up (courtesy of myspace) a recital of Chopin's Grande Polonaise Opus 22 A

*I am much indebted to the fine photography site, Soul Catcher Studio for quotes and a wonderful selection of his pictures.
* Please note that Paul Caponigro is not to be confused with his son John Paul Caponigro, who is also a talented photographer working in digital-based color imagery.

Whiskey Before Breakfast

2008-07-14T09:04:00.000-07:00

Noticing lists of summer listenings by some of my fellow blogposters, I can't help but indulge myself in the same.
What I have here is a list (with a bit of rumination) of 7 songs that I keep playing OVER AND OVER again.

Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams, Lady In Red - Stan Getz (April 14, 1950 NYC)

Getz (tenor sax) Tony Aless (piano) Percy Heath (bass) Don Lamond (drums)

The 23 year old Stan Getz was already nicknamed "the Sound" for his incomparable tone. Getz was a tempestuous personality who ironically, at the time of this recording, oft played with a gently diaphanous, high-register, detached sound, like an angel flitting about on Cloud 9 removed from worldly cares. On these two tunes he introduces a more varied, full-bodied, though still light-in-weight, sound, that dips more frequently than usual into the lower registers.

More importantly these cuts have a quality of utter effortlessness and swing. The beginning of "Wrap" has Stan floating right in on Cloud 9 with a round fogtone reminiscent particular recordings his his idol Lester Young did on one of his brief reunion sessions with Basie, in 1944, that featured Lester Leaps Again and After Theatre Jump.

To my ears, Getz rarely sounded so naturally melodious, spinning continuous, flowing, thread after thread and I can't conceive of ever getting enough of these tunes!

Here is a soundclip of Stan Getz playing There's a Small Hotel from earlier the same year, demonstrating the same qualities as the above tunes. Here he is playing with the rhythm section he was sharing with Charlie Parker at this time; Al Haig on piano, Tommy Potter on bass, and Roy Haynes (still very active today!) on drums.

Dixie Chicken, Fat Man in the Bathtub Little Feat (1973)
Guitarist Lowell George was a gifted slide guitarist and songwriter with a soulful voice, now enshrined as a "rock-star casualty" legend for his early demise. He formed the band Little Feat which was notably off the beaten path, forging a style as portrayed in these particular tunes, that fell somewhere in between New Orleans funk and rhythm and blues, and slide-driven southern roots rock. George was a bit of a Renaissance man of the musical world having early on mastered harmonica, flute, oboe, and baritone sax (he was even in on some Frank Sinatra recordings playing the latter two) before mastering the guitar. The Rolling Stones and Jimmy Page were both ardent admirers and Bonnie Raitt said she moved out to California solely to meet and hang with George, whose slide-guitar work she so admired.
"Dixie Chicken" and "Fatman" are great examples of Lowell's impassioned vocals, songwriting, guitar-playing and - with hats off to his bandmembers including New Orleans percussionist Sam Clayton - infectious New Orleans groove.
Here is Dixie Chicken.

Whiskey Before Breakfast, Under the Double Eagle
Norman Blake (1976)

On a recent visit to NYC I was delighted to find a small record shop in the East Village that had a cd version of one my favorite long lost lps, Norman Blake's Whiskey Before Breakfast.
Blake is one of the premier flatpicking guitarists on the planet. He is the epitome of taste, never resorting to lightning pyrotechnics unless they lend themselves to the musicality of the piece.
Blake, a native Tennesseean, was longtime accompaniest to June Carter and later a longstanding meember of Johnny Cash's touring band. Subsequent to that he drew "mainstream" attention for his work on Bob Dylan's Nashville Skyline. More recently he caught some attention, not for his flatpicking but for his nofrills vocal rendition of "You Are My Sunshine" featured in the Coen Bros., "O Brother Where Art Thou". He is not an exceptional vocalist but an unaffected and, upon gradual familiarity, pleasing one.
The tune "Whiskey Before Breakfast" has Irish origins (shocking, I know) and Blake delivers it here with Appalachian panache minus the TV hillbilly hokum. Another favorite of mine is his version of "Under the Double Eagle". In fact the whole album is a great listening experience for anyone with a liberal musical ear; no need to be a hardened bluegrass fan.
Here is a youtube clip of Norman playing Under the Double Eagle from Whiskey Before Breakfast

Rain and Snow The Be Good Tanyas Blue Horse(2001)

The Be Good Tanyas are an endearing, engaging, multi-instrumental, multi-vocal trio of gals out of Vancouver who play what i would call for the sake of convenience Old Timey American Root and Original music.
Rain and Snow is an old-time traditional tune that I first encountered as a regular set-piece at the Grateful Dead concerts c. 1969-1972 in Sunny California. Yes, as many of us are tired of repeating and many are tired of hearing, you had to have been there and see them live to know what the fuss was about, (I don't even mention this any more to the uninitiated because, well...); as I believe David Crosby said "there is nothing like the Dead on a good night!" - and, before you roll your eyes, chemical reinforcement was not necessary - trust me!
In any case, here the Tanyas deliver a this tune with their own unique spin and groove. Here is a myspace recording of the Tanyas doing Rain and Snow.
Here is a youtube soundclip of the Be Good Tanyas playing one my favorite of their tunes Ootischenia

Burne-Jones and the Sleeping Princess

2008-06-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

A few weeks back I slipped into my local Art Museum, intent on (at the least) seeing the three Edward Burne-Jones paintings that were part of the "Passages To Europe" exhibition passing through.

The Burne-Jones pictures featured in this exhibit were three paintings comprising his 1st series of "Briar Rose" illustrations. They portray 3 stages of the Sleeping Beauty story as inspired by an Alfred Tennyson poem.

Since childhood I'd been drawn to Burne-Jones, having come across his "King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid" in a massive hard-bound book of Art Masterpieces of the World that my father had round the house and that I had been concurrently using as the base for some imagined medieval fortress.

Burne-Jones is a master of exquisite subtle color and flowing line and I don't give a
hang as to whether the pictures are decorative, over-romanticized, dated, over-literary irrelevant Victorian fluff, or whatever epithets (sometimes justifiable) are available for the tossing.
< King Cophetua and the Beggar Maid (1880-4)

Arthur Ruskin encouraged and, in fact, initially paid for Burne-Jones to journey to Italy in the 1860's to bring back studies and sketches of the masters for him. Burne-Jones gradually became quite smitten with the Italian Renaissance painters - in particular Botticelli - and subsequently made journeys to Italy of his own accord to immerse himself in the art. He would soak up the linear rhythms and coloring of the Botticelli paintings; it was nothing for him to devote a whole session sketching the the flowery patches of ground from the Primavera in the Uffizi gallery. Coincidentally, Burne-Jones' father was a gilder and carver and Botticelli apprenticed with a goldsmith and their attention to textured delicacies of detail may be linked back to the fine craftsmanship they were exposed to in youth.
Burne-Jones himself sheds light on this influence, saying,

"I love my pictures as a goldsmith does his jewels. I should like every inch of surface to be so fine that if all but a scrap from one of them were burned or lost, the man who found it might say whatever this may have reperesented is a work of art, beautiful in surface and quality of color."

detail from Botticelli's Madonna of the Magnificat

The Briar Rose/Sleeping Beauty painting, seen at the top of the page, is not the one I saw at the exhibit which dates from 1871 but from a later series (completed in 1890) based on the same composition. The earlier version, that I saw - which seems to be unviewable on the net due to copyright issues- is somewhat softer and dreamlike with a twilit blue tone to it (I would liken it more to a blend of Correggio and Fra Lippi) while the later version is more detailed and jewel-like with warmer colors.
Gazing long at the 1871 Sleeping Beauty painting (which was about 1" by 4") in the museum, I marveled at both the precision of the tiniest pink rose set against the cloth folds as much at the perfect balance of the whole scene; the eye following the lines of the the sleeping maids at the foot of the bed flowing into the supine Beauty and then down to the maid sitting at her side, head bowed in sleep, hands resting in fallen and withered petals. In the later, 1890 picture the hands of the maids are more expressively modeled, Botticelli-like, and the eye seems to finally rest on hand of the seated maid on the far right, resting on the ground, palm opened, like a flower awaiting a drop of rain.
I recommend to anyone a close inspection of the details of these paintings. either in person or through a decent reproduction. As David Corbett puts it in his excellent - aptly titled :) - short book, Edward Burne-Jones,

"The paintings use the rich textures generated by combining different media -

gouache, shell gold and platinum paint - to create a scintillating surface that marries

precision, in its description of fabric, flesh, and angel's wings, with an extreme assertion of the capacity of these media themselves to attract and seduce the spectator's eye.

Burne-Jones' works often perform this double process - on the one hand the detailed and evocative description of an imaginary world, and on the other the concrete realisation of imagination itself in the form of pigment, color, and line. "

* Corbett's book features excellent color reproductions of both the earlier and later
Briar Rose Sleeping Beauty paintings.

The Strand: Postscript Word Trip

2008-06-03T06:20:00.000-07:00

From the first entry for the word "strand" in the Oxford English Dictionary:

strand (straend) sb [OE. strand = OFris. strond, MLG strant(masc), ON. strond (strand-)fem. border, edge, coast (Sw., Da. strand).]
1.a. The land bordering a sea, lake, or river; in a more restricted sense, that part of a shore which lies between the tide-marks; sometimes use vaguely for coast, shore. Cf. SEA-STRAND. Now poet.., arch.. or dial.

Going back to 1000, the OED then cites various quotes using the word "strand", in the above sense, in English.

For instance, from Chaucer in 1386;
"Thanne longenfolk to goon on pilgrimages. And Palmeres for to seken straunge
strondes."
Then later, a poem of Shelley's in 1817:
"On the bare strand
Upon the sea-mark a small boat did wait."

The love of a person, place or thing is a layering of many parts and threads; when any one of those parts and threads is singled out and examined closely they become less and less significant in isolation, losing the drawing power of the whole, and (to drag out the oft-used physics simile) like subatomic particles under microscopic view, utterly lose materiality, or rather, their materiality appears and disappears in waves. On the other hand, more threads may be revealed; an endless road of them. Knowing this, if only intuitively, my inclination is to lay back with an attitude of acceptance or gratefulness - content not to see or comprehend the whole picture, enjoying the detailed pathways and detours, but accepting the "mountain obscured by mists".

For me merely the sound of "strand" resounds, by a myriad of associations, with a feeling of refuge and repose, stretches of sand and tide to walk along.

In America we generally associate the word "strand" with the condition of being stranded, "he was stranded on a desert isle" or "I was stranded in traffic", and to a lesser degree, strands of hair.
In England up until the 1600's a "strand" usually signified a beach or shore. Those words gradually supplanted "strand" which was retained in placenames and poetic usage.

The shoreline of the Thames lent its name to Londons's Strand Street and district - once the site of vaudeville and "serious" theatres. Sherlock Holmes was first featured in stories published by The Strand Magazine.

In Ireland however, to this day "strand" retains its old meaning and commonly refers to a beach, shore, or a riverbank.
In the case of Ireland the usage of the word is more likely to come directly from the Danish and Norwegian vikings who gained a foothold there beginning in the early 800's. As they took a liking to the estuaries and coastal harbors reminiscent of their Scandinavian homeland the enterprising Norsemen proceeded to found what became the major Irish towns; Dublin, Cork, Limerick, and Wexford to name a few. Scandinavian words connecting with sea travel and trade thus entered into the Irish language. Eventually the Norsemen and later the "conquering" Normans (descendants of Danish vikings themselves) were absorbed into the culture and bloodlines of the Irish; leaving not but the towns, castles, surnames (Macmanus and McAuliffe from the Norse; Fitzgerald and Burke from the Normans) and a few words like "strand".

When I hear the word I also think of the lovely irish jig "The Lark On the Strand".

There are many varied samplings of it to be heard on youtube and trad Irish records. My favorite on youtube is this one, a rendition by the young harpist Michelle Mulcahey. The Lark on the Strand is the second tune of the two jigs. This is the clearest and most fluent, affecting version in my mind and I enjoy watching the movement of her hands on each side of the strings, weaving the melodic line.

The Strand

2008-05-21T06:25:00.000-07:00

We pass one another on the library stairs from time to time, each of us heading in opposite directions, up or down, to or from one of the 5 floors of the building. Although I don't know this young woman's name we have exchanged pleasantries. We work in different departments, with different hours; but this occasional ritual passing is an island in time, like seeing a blue heron or a shooting star. Why? Because she always carries an orange canvas bag that says:

new york city

THE STRAND

b o o k s t o r e

Whenever I get to Manhattan I make a point of going to The Strand bookstore on the corner Broadway and 12th St. It has been there since 1956 and was previously, beginning in 1927, on 4th Avenue amongst "Book Row" where there were once 48 bookstores.

The Strand is in some ways the antithesis of the modern-day corporate store; mostly used books in an atmosphere of some disarray it is a browser's paradise. For those that love books and are happy to come across a forgotten or obscure surprise it's a place to get lost in.

A week ago, my friend and co-worker Rebecca and I were in the library lobby at closing when she espied the Lady With the Orange Strand Bag. When I mentioned The Strand connection with the bag Rebecca pointed out that Joyce Carol Oates had a short story about two young girls in The Strand.

I promptly read "Three Girls" in the Oates collection "I Am No One You Know". In the story set in March of 1956 two teen-aged self-anointed "girl-poets", NYU students, and seeming lovers, are browsing in the store. One of them notices a conspicuously familiar woman reading in the stacks and notifies in a whisper to her pal, who narrates, that she should discreetly take a look.

".....I perceived an individual in the aisle, pulling down books from shelves, peering at them, clearly absorbed by what she read.....in a man's navy coat to her ankles and with sleeves past her wrists, a man's beige fedora hat on her head, scrunched low as we wore our knitted caps, and most of her hair hidden by the hat except for a six-inch blonde plait at the nape of her neck and she wore black trousers tucked into what appeared to be salt-stained cowboy boots. Someone we knew?....I was about to nudge you in the ribs in bafflement when the blond woman turned, taking down another book from the shelf (e.e.cummings' Tulips and Chimneys - always I would remember that title!), and I saw that she was Marilyn Monroe.
Marilyn Monroe. In the Strand. Just like us. And she seemed to be alone.
Marilyn Monroe, alone!"

The girls follow Marilyn's every move in the store - torn between their own rapture and the need to protect and preserve her anonymity. When Marilyn finally begins to approach the counter with her pile of books, the narrating girl approaches her and offers to intercede and buy the books to save her from being recognized. When they hand her the books outside, Marilyn pulls out a copy of the Selected Poems of Marianne Moore from her bag and hands it to them before disappearing down the street.

The photographer Eve Arnold took a picture of Marilyn right around this time. She is seen in an untypical pose, reading a copy of James Joyce's Ulysses. according to Arnold this was not a concocted pose (speculation, predictably rampant, about her reading the sexual monologue of Molly Bloom near the book's end). Marilyn told her that she had been reading bits of it every day and though she found it tough going at times enjoyed reading passages out loud.

I was pleasantly diverted to know that Marilyn, in the story had given the girls a book of Marianne Moore's poems. Marianne Moore first came to my attention when I heard she was a great baseball fan of the New York City baseball teams; the Brooklyn Dodgers in particular - she lived in Brooklyn herself. She knew the poetry of the game and graced the page with it now and then.

Moore's poems absorb me like mysterious and beautiful puzzles; like Marilyn with Ulysses perhaps, I can never quite get the meaning, but the sound and rhythm and imagery and the little glimmer of knowing are enough to keep me coming back.

here is a short poem from her early years:

Emeralds

"It arouses my indignation that they should be so rare,
Yet I think I should be as willing to wear green
Sapphires as I should be willing to wear
Emeralds, the point of the thing's being, not to make people stare
But to have to wear, what keeps life from becoming a parcel of
uniformities -

What prevents its deteriorating into a bugbear:
To have what makes it start from its rut like the horse seen
Showing its might in the book of Job, where
The dramatist watches it leap like a locust in the air,
And swerving neither to the right nor left, bore its way
up into the heart of the breeze."

Voices Through the Crackle

2008-05-16T06:38:00.000-07:00

Once upon a time back in the 1960's a poet-singer from South Dakota named Tom Rapp fronted, what they would call now, a "psychedelic folk" group known as Pearls Before Swine.

During that time, prompted by a song of "Pearls" I liked called "Drop Out!" (a directive for which i needed no prompting, attitude-wise) i picked up a copy of their 2nd lp Balaklava. Balaklava didn't have "Drop Out!" but i loved it anyway. This record was described as an anti-war record, but there was no shouting rhetoric or catchy obscenities ala Country Joe; in fact i don't even remember if the word 'war' was mentioned. An apocalyptic, world-weary tone was prevalent but there was a glimmer of hope that some how love would save the day or at least make the "last days" bearable.

What really riveted my attention and moved me in a way that protest might not, even more than the original songs, were some slivers of early archived wax cylinder recordings Rapp slipped in to color the proceedings.

The album opens with an actual recording of "Trumpeter Landfrey" made in London in 1890. Emerging from a crackling background, Landfrey (really Landfried) introduces himself as the surviving trumpeter at the Charge of the Light Brigade who sounded the fateful call to arms at the battle of Balaklava in the Crimean War. Through a "strategic miscalculation", the cream of the British cavalry was mowed down by Russian forces in a suicidal charge on October 25, 1854. This recording of Landfrey was made and distributed by a Fund to benefit remaining veterans of the war and inform the public about the bad straits and neglect fallen upon them.
In the recording, Landfrey, now an old man, concludes by lifting his trumpet and somewhat shakily sounding the charge from that day.

Later, on Balaklava, Rapp includes a another recording, made for the same benefit, this of Florence Nightingale who served so bravely as a nurse near the scene of the battle; fighting to bring better treatment and environs for the wounded.
She spoke this in her brief message on the wax cylinder, July 30th 1890, 36 years after the disastrous charge:

"When I am no longer a memory, just a name, I hope my voice may perpetuate the great work of my life. God bless my gallant comrades of Balaklava, and bring them safe to shore,
Florence Nightingale."

* postscript;
The wax cylinder recordings would seem to have inspired a song on the record composed by Tom Rapp called "Guardian Angel". With similar ancient crackle and hiss in the background Rapp delivers the fragile vocal as if through a megaphone, accompanied by a string quartet, and indicates fancifully on the album notes that the recording was made in Guadeloupe, Mexico c. 1929!
Easy to envision Rapp as the bespectacled expatriate proto-hippie poet, hand jittery from gin and cigarettes holding up his crumpled lines to the microphone...

"You say that the sky people don't even ask you your name
If it's you or another, it doesn't matter, to them it's all the same
But we live suspended in each other's mind
A bullet-proof sanctuary cathedral of eyes
That I offer you
that I offer you."

Boudin, Le Roi Du Ciel

2008-02-28T15:21:00.000-08:00

Now, with the last of winter tumbling into spring, the two seasons share a common space and the skies reflect the push and pull between them.

It's a time when I appreciate Eugene Boudin - the 19th century French painter to whom the master of the poetic landscape, Corot, proclaimed one day "You are king of the skies!".
Boudin,who was born in Honfleur in Normandy, spent most of his life painting in this vicinity, where the winds off the English Channel hit the seashore resorts of Deauville and Trouville. Here he loved to counterpoint his skies against the shoreline where the crinoline-clad ladies and top-hatted gentlemen, children and umbrellas, were all scattered and grouped across the horizon like so many colored stones or nestled villages.

Only on occasion would he venture abroad, notably to the emerald coast of Brittany where he met his wife, then in later years to Venice where he captured the calmer skies and watery reflections.

Though early in his career, he barely scraped out a living (at times facing starvation and contemplating suicide) he was already applauded by fellow artists and poets of renown. Baudelaire, as was his fashion, (at least with a chosen few) waxed rhapsodic after seeing a showing of Boudin's work.

"At the end, all these clouds in their fantastic and brilliant forms, these chaotic darknesses, these suspended and added the one to the others green and pink immensities, these gaping volcanoes, these firmaments of black or purple and crumpled, rolled or torn satin, these horizons in mourning or flowing of melted metal, all these depths, all this magnificence went up to my brain as a heady drink or as the eloquence of opium...."

I believe Baudelaire was referring, here, to some of Boudin's watercolors which were looser than the early oils. His oil renderings of the skies were not so much
spectacular in themselves but subtly suffused and enfolded the landscape beneath in the embrace of their delicate whims and dramatic moods.

Like Daubigny, Courbet, Corot, Whistler, and even to some extent Edouard Manet, Boudin was a godfather to the Impressionists; revered and even sharing exhibitions with them but always on the periphery of the movement. He never quite gave himself over to (and I'm personally relieved at this) the overriding absorption with light and color - "impressions" - that his early admirer Monet became noted for. Boudin retained a solidity of form and composition that was a remnant of an earlier time, despite the free flowing strokes that formed his skies and seas.

Giulietta, Lo Spippolo

2008-02-22T17:54:00.000-08:00

Today is the birthday of Giulietta Masina, the Italian actress noted for her roles in the most well known of Fellini's early films, La Strada and Notti Di Cabiria. She also happened to be Fellini's wife for 40 some years until they passed away within months of one another; he in October 1993 and she in March of 1994.

Despite the close connection between the two, creatively and as polar personalities and physical opposites, Giulietta was a great talent regardless, winning accolades and awards as a supporting actress before appearing in her husband's films.

Giulietta had the natural whimsical grace of a mime and dancer and was often referred to as the female Chaplin in Europe. At a little under 5ft. she had waif-like appearance that made her a comic natural and an amusing counterpoint to Anthony Quinn's strongman, Zampano, in La Strada.

Fellini's own nickname for her was Lo Spippolo which is a slang word meaning "any small thing that inspires tenderness".

Early in life she displayed musical talent but with fingers that were to small to progress at the piano, she had more success at the violin. Her appearance on the dancing stage appeared comic or limited by her appearance and so, she was, in a sense, derailed into the theatre and radio where she found her niche preceding her film roles.

For myself and many others, the culmination and fulfillment of her screen talent was in the role of Cabiria, the resilient but perennially ill-fated prostitute in
Le Notti Di Cabiria
My favorite scene featuring Giulietta in this movie occurs when "Cabiria" wanders into a vaudeville house where a hypnotist ( masterfully; dare I say "hypnotically"? What the hell!) played by Aldo Silvani, is performing, taking volunteers from the audience. After he brings up the local jeering louts onstage and transforms them into amusing buffoons, he manages to convince Cabiria to "go under". What follows is a wonderful scene, a tribute to both Giulietta and Fellini at their poetic best.

see it here
.. i don't think you have to know Italian to appreciate it!
Andiamo amici!

* thanks to blitzey's posting on youtube for this marvelous scene!

Wardell at One O'Clock

2008-02-18T10:44:00.000-08:00

The scene is the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, April of 1948. On the stage are gathered a collection of jazz luminaries; Benny Carter, Howard McGhee, Red Callender and Vic Dickenson to name a few.

The pianist, Arnold Ross, takes an intro and kicks into a medium-up swinging blues, One O'Clock Jump and the Basie-style rhythm sections falls in, a sandy soft-shoe chug-a-chug chug train leaving the station, for the piano's two choruses in the familiar key of F concert....
then, in a surprise shift, there's a turnaround to the key of Db just as the thin-as-a-rail young tenor player, Wardell Gray, steps up to the microphone, signals his entry with a descending diminished triad, lands back up on the Db, and proceeds mow everyone down for 18 choruses of the swingingest jazz tenor solo ever taken.

Throughout the proceedings, on this live recording, a man in the background - I don't know if he's a fan or someone in the band - is clearly heard relentlessly inciting Wardell, like the crackle of kindling fire "Go! Go! Go!". Rather than this being the annoyance that it might be to the hi-fi connoisseur (who is already doubtlessly derailed by the roughness of the recording), I am RIGHT THERE with him, exhorting Gray to let it rip.

This solo is from a peak-time in Wardell's career; fresh from his sessions with Charlie Parker but still swinging in the Lestorian mode and playing with that gorgeous round bell tone that would gradually give way to a slight vibrato-buzz in the 50's before his untimely death in 1955.
This solo on One O'Clock is the longest on record from Wardell (his take on Blue Lou from the same performance, I believe, is another delightfully extended one) and I can only pine for the one's that got away.

An interesting, if brief, interview with clarinetist Buddy DeFranco was conducted by Abraham Ravett for his documentary on Wardell called Forgotten Tenor. Buddy played alongside Wardell in one of his short stints with the smaller version of the Count Basie band in 1949-1950. Here he has some insightful remarks regarding Wardell's playing and the rhythm of the Basie band:

"Wardell's ability to swing musically, maybe even now, I don't know what the younger musicians talk about but we used to talk about swing, whether swing isn't on top of the beat, behind the beat right on the beat, but I think swing has nothing to do with behind the beat, in front of the beat, or on top of the beat or on the beat. I think it has everything to do with the combination of the inherent gut or soul of the musician playing. In other words, I've heard some very intense players and if you analyze for instance, the great John Coltrane, some of his ballads especially, where he would play a million notes across a very slow four, none of the notes would be on the beat or off the beat at any given time. It would be on, off, late, forwards, and yet the pulse, the inherent pulse from the soul of the player was there, of John Coltrane. And Wardell had just a natural way of swinging and he could play, he could fool with the time, he could play behind, or forward or on it and make certain statements but there, the way he made certain statements is the way that made him swing so to speak.

I know so many school bands throughout the United States that say we're going to play like Count Basie, so our ensemble is going to play behind the beat, which is basically how Basie's band operated. The rhythm was steady and the ensemble played behind the beat. However, it's not so much that they played behind the beat, as they inferred that they were behind the beat and that the soul, the feeling was from the depth of the organism. Late, of course, behind, a little bit behind but you couldn't put it into a computer and say here's how far behind the beat Count Basie's band played. You see? There were a lot of times where they played right on the money though, maybe a couple of times they might have gone ahead a little. So sum it up, swing is like feeling, it's like the feeling of Jazz. Swing is the ambiguous mysterious element, it's either there or isn't there. And Wardell had it."

This from Ravett's interview with Jimmy Lewis who played bass behind Wardell and Buddy in the same basie line-up:

"He used to seem to create as he went along, you know?, on his solos. You can always tell when something new pops into his mind while he's playing, because he'd always smile, you can see him smiling while he's playing his horn.

You know I'd like to see him featured in a film, where he could really show off his talent. Really show it off, say, it was just the band playing in the background, and put him out front. I think, when I was with Basie in his big band, and Wardell was featured on a tune, Wardell he gets out and he plays the first chorus, and right in the middle of the thing he says, come on, let's play, let's play now. Now this is right while the recording was going, and he played that thing, he played his heart out man, he just played and it looked, he gave the whole band a lift because he had so much to offer you know? He tried to put everything in his tunes, so Basie would say let him go, he wasn't supposed to have maybe one or two choruses and he ended up playing five or six choruses of the same tune you know?"

At the end of Wardell's solo on One O'Clock, I swear that I can hear our "inciter" saying to him, "Do it again, do it again!"

I highly recommend the website for Abraham Ravett's Forgotten Tenor. Aside from numerous interviews there is an excellent biography, discography, and a wonderful live clip of Wardell taking a chorus on "I Cried For You" with the pared-down Basie Band. Incomparable (except for Prez, of course!)

The above mentioned recording of Wardell on "One O'Clock Jump" can be found on
Wardell Gray on the Giants of Jazz label.

Charles Daubigny

2008-02-16T09:46:00.000-08:00

Today commemorates the birthday of Charles Daubigny (1817-1878), a painter of the French "Barbizon" school.

Daubigny is one of those artists who are a link between the "plein air" painters of the Barbizon school and the Impressionists. Though he was invited to exhibit with the Impressionists, he remained independent of the "movement" and though his style became looser and more atmospheric he never quite abandoned himself to the effects of light over matter, continuing to remain comfortable with both.

In 1857 he bought a 29 foot houseboat for himself, called "Le Botin", converted it into a studio, and for much of the remainder of his life sailed up and down the rivers Meuse and Seine basking in the world of the riverscape.

I've often mused on the river-barge life. John Renbourn, the English guitarist who has been a longtime idol of mine, once lived on a houseboat in France, traveling about leading the young bohemian musician's life on the river.
Myself, though quite relishing the familiarity of a neighborhood and the rhythm and ritual of familiar friends and haunts, can well imagine traveling down the river; painting, playing guitar, stopping now and then to play saxophone in a local jam session, sell a painting to get by for awhile, and reconnect with the human race - knowing full well that the boat and the watercourse always would be there, waiting for me to come back to my senses.

Slow Light of Atget

2008-02-12T21:07:00.000-08:00

Today, almost passed, marks the birthday of the French photographer Eugene Atget.

The great irony of Atget's life is that he considered himself merely an artisan, recording, first "documents for artists" and then, almost exclusively, the streets buildings, parks, vendors, prostitutes and ragpickers of his beloved "Old Paris" which was passing away into memory with the advent of cars, cinema, and advertisements. When his neighbor, the American surrealist, Man Ray asked him if he could include some of his prints in an avante-garde journal, Atget demanded that his name not be mentioned.
Yet, as it appears to the legion of great artist/photographers that revered him, it was the very innocence and denial of his personal "specialness" that allows his photographic subjects to speak through him, as if through a dream.

Atget used an old bulky, 36 pound, large format wooden bellows camera that favored slow, extended exposures and gave his photos a twilit, somnambulist air. When Man Ray offered to secure a more advanced up-to-date camera Atget demurred, saying that this model would be too fast for the slower workings of his mind. Atget had likely gone through too many years, taking an early morning train out to the suburbs, or arriving at a scene somewhere in the sprawling center with his old mechanical companion, the two of them poised for that just-right ephemeral afternoon light.
Many of his favorite subjects were to be found on streets just around the corner from a bustling crowded avenue that would have registered as so many blurs. In fact an occasional blurred figure will appear, ghostlike, in front of one of his shop-front or stairway scenes, unexpectedly and unavoidably captured, like a prehistoric firefly in amber.

In his youth Atget had worked as a sailor and actor in a traveling theatrical troupe. It was in this group of repertory players that he met, in 1886, the woman who was to be his lifetime companion, Valentine Compagnon. When she died in 1926 Atget soon followed suit, passing away on August 4, 1927. Berenice Abbott, the young American photographer who was an assistant to Man Ray, befriended him in his last years and she took a photograph of him only two days before he died. He never lived to see this photo, nor did he live to see the acclaim his photos would gather due to the tireless archiving of his works by Abbott who was to become a photographer of renown. Her photographs of New York City in the 30's are works of reverence much like Atget's prints of Paris.

Ora Cogan

2008-02-09T05:44:00.000-08:00

Just a quick note for those of you enamoured with the likes of Jolie Holland, the Be Good Tanyas, Alela Diane, and Mariee Sioux; Ora Cogan is a Vancouver-based songbird (as are the Tanyas), who shares some of the appealing qualities of the above while striking out on her own musical path.

Although, like the aforementioned, she is immersed in the "old-timey" Appalachian, southern blues, and gospel stylings there is a gentle mystery about her songs that sets her apart and her guitar style underlines this. She also plays a very expressive fiddle that touches perhaps on her ventures into experimental music with other cohorts.
Like Jolie, she conjures the warm, clear, tones of the early Billie Holiday rather than her later style, which is evident in Karen Dalton's voice, and more overtly in Madeleine Peyroux and others. I don't know if it's just a coincidence or direct influence; whether "early" or " late", both Ora and Jolie list Billie as prominent among their influences.

I must admit I was struck by her picture; wondering what sort of ethnicity she arose from. Like Billie Holiday she has a Creole look; then I think "no, definitely Native American or maybe some oriental or Algerian...howabout Adzerbaijani?" Conclusion: forget about it! However, I did glean from a radio interview there is a definite Israeli connection and her father (Uri, a photo journalist) and mother (Susan, also a musician) met in Israel.

Ora hails from Salt Spring Island in the Gulf Islands grouped off the west coast of Canada; lying north of Washington's San Juan island and east of Vancouver Island. Descriptions of the place evoke a beautiful setting, consciously preserved, and a cultural environment that nurtures those "off the beaten path".

On hearing Ora I can only offer a grateful toast to such places and the people therein.

Ora's songs can be heard off her myspace site, here
and her website: www.oracogan.com

Les Feuilles Mortes

2008-01-31T08:09:00.000-08:00

Jacques Prevert in Paris, with friend

"I like spring,but it is too young, i like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because it's tone is mellower, it's colours are richer,
and it is tinged with a little sorrow."
- Lin Yutang

"It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life"
- P.D. James

February at last, and here I'm writing something autumn-related!
Yes, I'm a little slow on the uptake at times; it's just that I came upon an upcoming birthday notice (February 4, 1900) for the French poet/lyricist, screenwriter, and - here's the tie - purveyor of the "original" Autumn Leaves lyric, Jacques Prevert. Of course the original title in French for the song was "Les Feuilles Mortes", the English translation resonating with a thud as "The Dead Leaves". those of us with a musical ear, would have hoped for the melodious and visually attractive French word "automne" in the title; not to be! At this point, I would add that the English version of the lyrics, written by Johnny Mercer, are, though exquisite, quite different.

Here, with the introductory verse and the refrain - which accompanies the gorgeous melody known to all, of Prevert's musical collaborator Joseph Kosma - is the French "Les Feuilles" followed by a fairly literal translation into English by Chuck Perrin:

Oh! je voudrais tant que tu te souviennes
Des jours heureux oů nous étions amis
En ce temps-la la vie était plus belle,
Et le soleil plus brűlant qu'aujourd'hui
Les feuilles mortes se ramassent a la pelle
Tu vois, je n'ai pas oublié...
Les feuilles mortes se ramassent a la pelle,
Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi
Et le vent du nord les emporte
Dans la nuit froide de l'oubli.
Tu vois, je n'ai pas oublié
La chanson que tu me chantais.

C'est une chanson qui nous ressemble
Toi, tu m'aimais et je t'aimais
Et nous vivions tous deux ensemble
Toi qui m'aimais, moi qui t'aimais
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment
Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit
Et la mer efface sur le sable
Les pas des amants désunis.

Oh I wish so much you would remember
those happy days when we were friends.
Life in those times was so much brighter
and the sun was hotter than today.
Dead leaves picked up by the shovelful.
You see, I have not forgotten.
Dead leaves picked up by the shovelful,
memories and regrets also,
and the North wind carries them away
into the cold night of oblivion.
You see, I have not forgotten
the song that you sang for me:
It is a song resembling us.
We lived together, the both of us,
you who loved me
and I who loved you.
But life drives apart those who love
ever so softly
without a noise
and the sea erases from the sand
the steps of lovers gone their ways.

Unlike his more intricate screenwriting work (eg. my longtime favorite, the brilliant Les Enfants Du Paradis), Prevert's poems were very simple, often reading like surrealist laundry lists or the guileless word-collage of a child; simple sentiments delivered with a twist. In "Feuilles", the rake gathering leaves juxtaposed against the lost love is a very Prevertian touch - an ordinary utilitarian object with no romantic "charge", together with an intangible sentiment - connected by, the more obviously metaphorical, leaves.
My favorite musical version of "Autumn Leaves" is the Miles Davis / Cannonball Adderley take from Somethin' Else. The misterioso introduction, ending vamp and Miles' bare and elegant solo. Most "poetic" of all, his choice to resolve the line on the 6th (E against G minor) of the chord in the 7th bar, rather than the expected minor 3rd. I like to think Prevert tipped his hat to that.

one more poem by Jacques:

Paris at Night

Trois allumettes une à une allumées dans la nuit
La premiére pour voir ton visage tout entier
La seconde pour voir tes yeux
La dernière pour voir ta bouche
Et l'obscuritè tout entière pour me rappeler tout cela
En te serrant dans mes bras.

Three matches one by one struck in the night
The first to see your face in it's entirety
The second to see your eyes
The last to see your mouth
And the darkness all around to remind me of all these
As I hold you in my arms.

Here is a lovely version in French by Yves Montand that starts with a reading of the verse.

Sonny's Lists

2008-01-28T21:32:00.000-08:00

Browsing through amazon.com today, I came upon the "Amazon Earworm" section which features lists created by celebrity musicians/performers, of music, books, or movies they recommend.

I was delighted to find lists by one of my idols, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins who is now 77 years old and still performing with great intensity and clarity - witness the show I caught last year.
I had an inkling of some of his choices, having read many interviews, including an exceptional NPR radio interview he gave Teri Gross back in the early 90's - but there were some surprises. Here are his lists of recommended music and recommended films, with some brief commentary by him.

Sonny Rollins' List of Music You Should Hear

1. "The Man I Love" from Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Coleman Hawkins by Coleman Hawkins
The Great Hawk, and a masterpiece.

2. "Afternoon of a Basie-ite" from The Complete Lester Young on Keynote by Lester Young
This is Lester Young and all he represents.

3. "Cotton Tail" from The Best of Ken Burns Jazz by Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
The Duke Ellington Orchestra in one of its many unforgettable recordings and, of course, the mighty Ben Webster up front.

4. "I Can't Get Started" from I Can't Get Started by Bunny Berigan
There’s something about this record that gets to me. I can’t explain it beyond that.

5. "Unforgettable" from The Very Best Of Nat King Cole by Nat King Cole
My favorite singer and a good enough song.

6. "Lover Man" from Ultimate Billie Holliday: Lover Man by Billie Holiday
I’ve been told that that is Budd Johnson playing the tenor solo. A great arrangement to cuddle the lady.

7. "Billie's Bounce" from Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948 by Charlie Parker
Here is the Bird out of Kansas City, and listen to the genius of young Miles.

8. "Ballad for Americans" from Ballad for Americans by Paul Robeson
The great voice, the great man, and again, the great message of this song.

Sonny's List of Movies you Should Watch:

1. Casablanca
Everybody’s favorite for the usual reasons, but Dooley Wilson’s band sealed it for me.

2. Cabin in the Sky
Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Ethel Waters. . . You get the idea.

3. Swing Time
I saw it when I was 6, and Jerome Kern’s music stayed with me.

4. The Third Man (50th Anniversary Edition) - Criterion Collection
Austria after the war. Intriguing plot, and that great zither music.

5. Foreign Affair (1948)
Berlin just after the war – a great cast, a great story, and Billy Wilder.

6. Laura (Fox Film Noir)
Who can resist Gene Tierney as Laura? The song isn’t bad, either.

Like many great improvisers, Sonny plays a fair bit of standards from the "American Song Book" - but he is also notable for playing many tunes from the the standard repertoire that are infrequently played by the majority of jazz musicians.
Things like "Count Your Blessings", "The Most Beautiful Girl In the World", "To A Wild Rose", "I'm An Old Cowhand", "The Last Time I Saw Paris", and "How Are Things In Glocca Morra" come to mind.

It amuses me that many jazz musicians, and fans, seem to be in denial about Rollins' love of those standards made popular in the great movie musicals of the 30's and 40's. I heard one musician cohort claim that "Sonny is just kidding us when he plays those tunes. He isn't serious." I also recall one young musician writing to Sonny's website, complimenting him on "destroying" such and such a tune.
Get a clue people, Sonny loves this stuff! I recall Sonny telling an interviewer that he had amassed a fair collection of bygone musicals and was currently in awe of the dancing performance of Joan Leslie opposite Fred Astaire in "The Sky's the Limit". I always felt that Rollins' best improvised lines danced and continued to dance in the head and steps down the street long after the initial hearing.

The mind of the greater creative musician is not confined to the narrow box of "hipness" that many lesser mortals find comforting.
End of sermon.

Madame George

2008-01-14T07:05:00.000-08:00

Down on Cyprus Avenue
With childlike visions leaping into view
The clicking clacking of the high heeled shoe
Ford & Fitzroy, and Madame George.

Marching with the soldier boy behind
He's much older now, with hat on, drinking wine
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
on the cool night air like Shalimar oil

And outside they're making all the stops
Kids out in the street collecting bottle-tops
Gone for cigarettes and matches in the shops
I’d be taken Madame George

That's when you fall
Whoa, that's when you fall

Yeah, that's when you fall

When you fall into a trance
A sitting on a sofa playing games of chance
With your folded arms in history books you glance
Into the eyes of Madame George

And you think you’ve found the bag
You're getting weaker and your knees begin to sag
In the corner playing dominoes in drag
The one and only Madame George

And then from outside the frosty window raps
She jumps up and says Lord have mercy I think it's the cops
And immediately drops everything she gots
Down into the street below

And you know you gotta go
On that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row
Throwing pennies at the bridges down below
And the rain, hail, sleet, and snow.

Say goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George

And as you leave, you'd be laughing, you'd be
dancing, music goin all around the room
And all the little boys come around, walking away from it all
So cold

And as you're about to leave
She jumps up and says Hey love, you forgot your gloves
And the love to love she loves to love the love
to love to love she loves to love the love to love.

To say goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George
Dry your eyes for Madame George

Say goodbye in the wind and the rain on the back street
In the backstreet, in the back street
Say goodbye to Madame George
In the backstreet, in the back street, in the back street
Down home,

down home in the back street….

Say goodbye, goodbye
Get on the train

Get on the train, the train, the train...
This is the train, this is the train...
Whoa, say goodbye, goodbye....
Get on the train, get on the train...

Van Morrison sings out the first line of Madame George and, with the descending phrase that tumbles down and curls up with "Avenue", I'm transported to a place not quite physical but voiced into being verse to verse a narrative that gradually disassembles into feeling; and looking up from the street below a flash of a woman pausing in the third floor window frame, before closing the drapes on a scene that flickers in the mind of a man looking back in his memory with longing and regret, upon an event that will never be quite digested because the coincidences of time that brought him to that place will never be retrieved.

Madame George carries a mystery; no one can quite fathom who Madame George is. Lester Bangs, best known for his in-depth reviews in Rolling Stone Magazine, wrote a compelling piece about Morrison's Astral Weeks, focusing in particular on Madame George whom he, naturally with a line like "caught up in a corner playing dominoes in drag, the one and only Madame George", deduces to be a drag queen. He starts out;

" 'Madame George' is the album's whirlpool. possibly the most compassionate piece of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I'll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too."

Van Morrison, in various interviews, denied the drag queen theory:"Oh no. Whatever gave you that impression? It all depends on what you want, how you want to go. If you see it as a male or female or whatever, it's your trip." Later he said,

"Madame George was about six or seven people who probably couldn't find themselves in there if they tried."

Perhaps Cyprus Avenue itself is a way station in Van's memory for a number of people and happenings that he gives form to in this song.

The writer Tom Nolan recently wrote an article in Wall Street Journal (a likely place!) positing that Morrison's Madame George was actually "George" Yeats (originally Georgie Hyde Lees) the wife of William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet. "George", who was about 30 years younger than W.B. when they married, was a psychic medium and fellow member with her husband-to-be of the mystical Order of the Golden Dawn. Most importantly, she introduced Yeats to automatic writing. If the assumption of George Yeats as our "Madame" seems too loopy to consider, especially given the setting of the song, there are some odd connections, if only coincidental.

Consider Morrison's further descriptions of the song in an interview:

"The original title was 'Madame Joy' but the way I wrote it down was 'Madame George'. Don't ask me why I do this because I just don't know. The song is just a stream-of-conciousness thing, like 'Cyprus Avenue'.

It may have something to with my great aunt whose name was Joy. Apparently she was clairvoyant...that may have something to do with it. Aunt Joy lived in the area mentioned in connection with Cyprus Avenue. She lived on a street just off Fitzroy Street which is quite near to Cyprus Avenue."

"Madame George" begins with the simple 3 chord turnaround pattern that Morrison uses for the duration of the song. The singing commences together with Richard Davis' jazz double bass line which grounds the proceedings while Connie Kay on drums, John Payne on flute, and a violinist float in and out - an unconventional line-up that gives it a feel that defies labels.

I'll give the final word to Van the Man himself:

"I didn't even think about what I was writing. There are some things that you write that just come out all at once....'Madame George' just came right out. The song is basically about a spiritual feeling."

While somewhere out there or in the hereafter "six or seven people" are wandering about in a state of unknowing as regards their contributions to the person that is Madame George, I'll be kicking back and relishing this song again and again just i did that first day some time in 1969. I leave the solving to some other sleuth, admitting that really, like a great jazz improvisation or beautiful painting, there's no need for a solution.

* For those who haven't the record I've copied a clip from youtube which I've posted here
The video has nothing to do with the tune, and my version keeps stopping about a 2 or 3 minutes near the end (which is an area that shouldn't be missed) , but I'm grateful, nevertheless, that the poster posted it!
There is another earlier, still formative, version posted of it from hitherto unreleased tapes but i heartily do not recommend it.

* there is a nice myspace site on the album Astral Weeks that has some complete versions of a few great songs . check it out here

Mexican Blue

2008-01-04T07:33:00.000-08:00

My favorite song in the universe is...... (drum roll please, Jo Jones....)

Mexican Blue, as written and performed by Jolie Holland on Springtime Can Kill You.
The song is dedicated to Samantha Parton of the Be Good Tanyas. Jolie started out with the Tanyas in Vancouver but left to due to creative "differences" and moved to San Francisco where she started her solo career and resides to this day.

I don't profess to know the exact relationship of Jolie to Sam but doubtlessly this about the most affecting love song I've ever heard. Perhaps, a plea for her friend to simply take care of herself and not let hard times to press her down.
The song begins simply, stepping lightly, with Jolie's voice and a simple 4 chord sequence that continues to cycle through to the end. As it moves along, the underplayed coloring of the drums and bass fill it out and the magnificent tonal colors of Brian Miller's guitar bring just the right touch to the mood. Jolie's verses shift from poetic allusions to direct plea and back again and she rearranges the melody to fit the pictures her words paint; reaching high and plaintive or warm and settled.
If nothing else the song offers the listener an opportunity to relish, intimately, the beautiful glowing tones of Jolie's voice and the way she takes a word and ever so slightly draws it out and spins and flutters it, and let its melt off her tongue. Just the way she says, in her lovely drawl, "hydrangeas" is enough for me to hop the nearest train to SF and lay bouquets at her door. Ahh, but one must let go of what can never be and appreciate what's been given!

The song is the last on the album; number 12, and i wouldn't doubt that those flicking about, perusing the cuts, might never make it that far. Here is the Jolie recording of Mexican Blue as posted on myspace - thanks to the poster and long may it stay!

You're like a saint's song to me

I'll try to sing it pure and easily

You're like a Mexican blue

So bright and clear and pale in the afternoon

I saw you riding on your bike

In a corduroy jacket in the night

Past the hydrangeas that were blooming in the alley

With a galloping dog by your side

When I was hungry you fed me

I don't mean to suggest that I'm like Jesus Christ

Your light overwhelmed me

When I lay beside you sleepless in the night

And when you dreamed my guardian spirits appeared

And the moon stretched out across your little bed

They said they'd started to get worried about me

They were happy we had finally met

We had finally met

A mysterious bird flies away

Seemed to be calling your name

And bounced off the top of a towering pine

And vanished in the drizzling rain

There's a mockingbird behind my house

Who is a magician of the highest degree

And I swear I heard him rip the world apart

And sew it back again with his fiery melody, melody

When you were mad at me I didn't care

And I just loved you all the same

And I waited for the wind to push the hurricane

Out to sea, and the sun could shine again

Oh I don't mean to give you advice

Its just like Delia said, "oh, Jesus Christ"

Just don't get so high you leave the ground

Everything is so much better when you're around

Just don't float so high you drift away

Stand tall, with your feet on the ground

I love your songs, I love your sound

Everything is so much better when you're around

When the moon is as clear as an opal

And the amethyst river sings a song

I'll remember all your dreams and the mysteries

You have borne in your crystalline soul

That you sing from your golden throat

That you shine from your sparkling eyes

That you feel from the goddess in your thighs

You're like a saint's song to me

I'll try to sing it pure and easily

You're like a Mexican blue

So bright and clear and pale in the afternoon

In the afternoon

The Candle is All Flame

2008-01-02T20:54:00.000-08:00

One late spring day around 1934 Jan Yoors, a Belgian boy of twelve, overcome with curiosity from his father's stories, wandered up to the grassy periphery of a gypsy camp on the edge of town. Boys from the kumpania approached him, and engaged him in conversation, showing him their horses. Though they barely could understand a word between them, a natural ease set in - they were at an age when such things were possible. Jan would gradually realize that he had freely slipped through a door between cultures rarely traversed and if he had been older or much younger, there wouldn't have been the ghost of a chance.

The pull was so strong that Jan seemingly forgot that he had a warm,well-furnished home and two loving parents to return to - one night with the gypsy kids out under the stars led to another and soon he was accepted by the elders and traveled freely with the caravan. It took a great deal of time for Jan to shed the veneer of "civilization", and adjust to the constancy of travel:

"On a few occasions I was distressed when we left a particularly pleasant or convenient camping spot...Rupa chided me for this, in her gruff way; she said I would, by losing it, cherish the memory of this place even more, with the tenderness reserved for incompletely satisfied longings. She said in time I too would learn to possess the single passing moment more passionately, more fully, without regrets. She tried to tell me that the Rom lived in a perpetual present: memories, dreams, desires, hungers, the urge toward a tomorrow, all were rooted in the present. Without now there was no before, just as there would be no after.
She said that 'to the Lowara (their Gypsy branch) a candle is not made of wax, but is all flame'. In the stories they told, the Rom praised extravagant lavishness and most of them practiced this all consuming generosity, at times to the extreme of outright squandering. In their language thriftiness, or any other word denoting carefulness, was translated as stinginess. They strongly disapproved of saving, with the result that between red-letter days, worthy of legend, there were hollow ones, more frequent than bargained for."

Fortunately, his parents were a liberal-minded pair; his mother Magda, a human rights activist and his father Eugene, a renowned stained glass artist. When Jan finally returned home they reached an agreement that he could live with the Rom half the year and live at home, attending to his studies.

Yoors wrote "The Gypsies", describing his life with the Gypsies and also a connected book "The Crossing" which deals with his work - in tandem with the Gypsies - as a resistance fighter in World War II. He was arrested twice and narrowly escaped execution by some paperwork foul-up by the Nazis. A majority of his dear traveling companions were less fortunate, and perished in the death camps.

Amongst the companions lost to him was his Gypsy "father" Pulika.
This from Jan's son Kore's reminiscences of his father's stories in the introduction to "The Heroic Present: Life Among the Gypsies" a compilation of Yoors photos and writings:

"One day in the 1930's, as winter approached and Jan was preparing to return to his parent's home, he asked Pulika to pose for a photo. Pulika asked, "Why do you need a photo of me? Are you going to betray me to the police?" Jan replied that he wanted the photo to remember him by.
Pulika responded, "If you need a piece of paper to remember me by, forget me!"

Jan Yoors is the tall, very white, teenager second from left in the top photo.

Tear-Water Tea From Poetry

2007-12-20T10:13:00.000-08:00

One of my favorite reading pleasures is the children's series consisting of Frog and Toad Together, and Owl (alone) by Arnold Lobel.
I never read them as a kid but as a grown-up father to my daughter Laurel; no matter, I can pick up one now on my own and while away the contented....minutes!

Owl at Home consists of 5 stories featuring the logically challenged, somewhat obsessive homebody, Owl. I especially like the one entitled "Tear-Water Tea". On a frosty night, Owl gets a hankering for tear-water tea; but to get it he must provide his own tears. So he thinks of sad things like "mashed potatoes left on a plate because nobody ate them.", "a beautiful morning that nobody saw because they were sleeping." and, for me, the topper: "spoons that have fallen behind a stove and are never seen again." Eventually, Owl works up enough tears to get a decent batch which is then boiled and enjoyed in quiet contentment.

While at my day job at the library in the periodical section, I often am reminded of the "spoons fallen behind the stove" but in my version it's "literary or poetry journals that never get read because most people prefer to read about Britney's twisted childhood in US Weekly and the like, while waiting to get on a computer.". So I take it upon myself to peak into them whenever I can and read at least one poem all the way through.

Tuesday i found this poem by Tony Hoagland in the November "Tri-Quarterly". As a jazz musician and lover of words and (reasonably) accessible poems, i thought this to be a find. It also has some invisible, etheric thread of relation to Tear-Water Tea!

Jazz

I was driving home that afternoon
in some dilated condition of sensitivity
of the kind known only to certain heroic poets
and more or less almost everybody else

the sun of the six pm glaring orangely through the trees
as through the bars of some kind of cage
and the poor citizens of Pecore Street waiting for the bus
with their sorrowful posture and bad feet-

I admit when I'm in one of those moods I find it
a little too easy to believe the trees are suffering
to see the twisted branches as arthritic hands,
and the Spanish moss dripping from their scabby limbs
as parasitic bunting.

Someone had given me a jazz CD
he had thought I would enjoy
but the song unfurling on the stereo that day,
it seemed a kind of torture music,

played by wildly unhappy musicians
on instruments that had been bent in shipping,
then harnessed by some masochist composer
for an experiment on the nature of obstruction.

But of all the shrieking horns and drums
it was the passionate effort of a certain defective trumpet
to escape from its predetermined plot
that seemed to be telling a story that I knew:

veering back and forth, banging off walls,
dripping a trail of blood
until finally it shattered through a window and disappeared.

For some reason I didn't understand,
it had to suffer before it was allowed to rest.
It was permitted to rest before being recaptured.

That was part of the composition.
That was the only kind of feedom
we were ever going to know.

A Few Drops of Lubitsch

2007-12-09T07:13:00.000-08:00

Ernst Lubitsch began his career in Germany as a comic actor and later took up directing, developing an international reputation by the the 1920's. Mary Pickford brought him to the US to direct her and he soon became a citizen of Hollywood. His "ouevre" in these years had moved from historical epics to "relationship" dramas and musicals with a certain flair for irony and whimsy.

Although the "Lubitsch Touch" seems to have been a Hollywood studio-concocted catchword it began innocently enough, describing flourishes that introduced a "continental" touch counter to the heavyhanded American approach.
Here, an early description derived from a now-lost movie:

"'Kiss Me Again' has many deft and delightful touches, the outstanding one being where Mr Lubitsch depicts a rain shower in a natural way. The average director resorts to a deluge after a glimpse of darkening skies torn by streaks of lightning.
Mr Lubitsch craftily shows a few spots on the pavement, and even when the shower comes, it is pictured as ordinary rainfall and not as a cloudburst."

Another Lubitsch "waterscene", this from "Forbidden Paradise", caught some attention in 1924. Under the moonlight, two lovers meet by a pond:

"You see the reflection of the two heads in the water as the lovers gaze into each other's eyes. Slowly, very slowly, their lips approach and just as the kiss is about to be given, a dawdling fish shatters the reflection."

As Lubitsch films progressed into the talkies new dimensions of expression came naturally to him, and he continued to find ways to say more in the new medium with elegant economy.

In "Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Miriam Hopkins (Lily) and Herbert Marshall (Gaston), masquerading in Venice as world-weary "nobility", are not aware that each is actually a master thief. They arrange a dinner rendezvous and over the polite chit-chat and relishing of the cuisine (Lily is perhaps gobbling it down a little too enthusiastically for a countess!) they gradually voice their suspicions that the other one is not what they seem. Meanwhile, their fascination for one another begins to steam up the screen as mutual "pickpocketing skills" become evident. Roger Ebert likens this scene to a kind of strip poker game (on a higher level of course!)

Lily: I like you, Baron.
Gaston: I'm crazy about you. By the way, your pin. (He returns her brooch pin - after appraising it.)
Lily: (after suddenly noticing she's missing it) Thank you, Baron.
Gaston: Not at all. There's one very good stone in it.
Lily: What time is it? (She allows him to search for his pocket watch before looking startled. She hands it to him from her purse - after resetting it.) It was five minutes slow but I regulated it for you. (He pockets the watch with a smile.)
Gaston: I hope you don't mind if I keep your garter. (She checks her leg, under the table, and then Gaston holds the garter up high and kisses it to prove his expertise.)
Lily: Darling! (excitedly, she rises and kisses him, flinging herself into his arms) Oh now, darling. Tell me, tell me all about yourself. Who are you?
Gaston: You remember the man who walked into the Bank of Constantinople, and walked out with the Bank of Constantinople?
Lily: Monescu.
Gaston: Gaston Monescu.
Lily: Gaston!*

Unable to hold back any longer, Lily and Gaston are on their feet and in each other's arms. He leads her to the couch and declares his undying love, in the smoothest Marshall tones:
I love you. I loved you the moment I saw you. I'm mad about you. My little shoplifter. My sweet little pickpocket. My darling.

As Lubitsch dissolves the scene we see an empty couch in dimming light and a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door.
Only Lubitsch could carry off such a scene with the ABSOLUTE seamless ease despite the absurdity - no technological gimmickry or slapstick needed. He has the viewer poised in the palm of his hand.

Like a Lao Tzu description of the Tao, many could recognize the "touch" when they saw it, and it was undeniable that there was such a thing, but no one could conclusively define it much less pass it on or possess it.
The director Billy Wilder (along with Preston Sturges, and later, to some degree Peter Bogdanovich and Woody Allen) was much influenced by Lubitsch and had even worked with him in the 1930's.
Wilder on Lubitsch, "You know, if one could write Lubitsch touches, they would still exist, but he took that secret with him to his grave. It's like Chinese glass-blowing; no such thing exists anymore. Occasionally, I look for an elegant twist and I say to myself, 'How would Lubitsch have done it?' And I will come up with something and it will be like Lubitsch but it won't be Lubitsch. It's just not there anymore."

In Scott Eyman's wonderful book on Lubitsch* he includes an interesting commentary on a Wilder film related by Lubitsch's long-time scriptwriter,Sam Raphaelson. Again, a waterscene conveys the "touch".
"When Sam and Dorschka Raphaelson went to see Love in the Afternoon, they watched a scene wherein a water truck, dousing the early morning streets of Paris, soaks a pair of young lovers who fail to notice. Raphaelson leaned over to Dorschka and said,'What a mistake! Now if I were doing that scene with Lubitsch, we would have first shown the truck spraying water moving toward the lovers. But when the truck gets to them, the water shuts off. After it passes them, then the water starts up again. Now, that's the Lubitsch Touch'"

quotes above were gleaned from:
Dirks, Tim "Trouble In Paradise" see Tim's ABSOLUTELY MASTERFUL description of the movie at http://www.filmsite.org/trou.html
Eyman, Scott "Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter In Paradise".
Thompson, Kristin "Herr Lubitsch Goes To Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I"
Hall, Mordaunt "Appealing Touches In Film Directed by Mr. Lubitsch"

Ragtime Nightingale

2007-02-26T05:36:00.000-08:00

Joseph Lamb was an anomaly among the ragtime composers; the son of Irish immigrants, growing up in an environment (Montclair, New Jersey and rural Canada) totally devoid of "ragtime" culture, he somehow flourished in a musical world of his own making and rose up like an exotic flower from a sidewalk crack.
Lamb was an intuitive pianist who had little formal training. His primary exposure to ragtime was through sheet music acquired in music stores and he was greatly enamoured of Scott Joplin's compositions. Prior to age 20 he began composing ragtime tunes inspired by Joplin but with a touch of his own originality.

Lamb frequented John Stark's publishing house in Manhattan where he unsuccessfully submitted a few original compositions.
In 1909 he walked in to Stark's and, according to his own reminiscence, "There was a colored fellow sitting there with his foot bandaged up as if he had the gout, and a crutch beside him. I hardly noticed him. I told Mrs. Stark that i liked the Joplin rags best and wanted to get any I didn't have. The colored fellow spoke up and asked whether I had certain pieces which he named. I thanked him and bought several and was leaving when I said to Mrs. Stark that Joplin was one fellow I would certainly like to meet. 'Really,' said Mrs. Stark. 'Well, here's your man.' I shook hands with him, needless to say. It was a thrill I've never forgotten. I had met Joplin and was going home to tell the folks."

Joplin asked if Lamb would care to accompany him for a walk and a chat, and subsequently invited him to come by the boarding house where he was living near Times Square the following week. Lamb played him some of his pieces and Joplin was very impressed with "Sensation - A Rag" calling it "a regular Negro Rag" - the ultimate compliment for Lamb. Joplin offered to add his own name on the title page of "Sensation" as an arranger to help sell the piece to Stark and the public. This thoughtful gesture placed Lamb's foot in the door and Sensation was the first in string of his rags published in the next 10years.

Considered today as one of the "Big Three" of Ragtime composers, along with Joplin and James Scott, Lamb did little to promote himself and disappeared into obscurity at the onset of the 20's when passion for jazz began to supersede ragtime.
In his words; "I wanted to keep my music in my private
life. I didn't want to make any money on my
things. I only wanted to see them published
because my dream was to be a great ragtime
composer." He rejected any suggestions to commercialize his music wanting to remain free to express himself without compromise.
He lived the remainder of his life near Coney Island in Brooklyn, quietly raising a family of 5 children, and working as an accountant for the same import firm from 1911 until his retirement in 1957. His wife recalled nights when Joe played the piano after dinner with one foot on the bassinet rocking the baby asleep.

When there was a revival of interest in classic ragtime in the late 40's and early 50's, many thought that "Joseph Lamb" might have been a pseudonym for Scott Joplin.
Although there were similarities their styles, one notable difference was that Lamb's compositions tended to be built on 8 bar phrases as opposed to Joplin's 4.

Relying on the handwritten address marked on one of Lamb's last published pieces, revivalist
Rudi Blesh found Lamb through a Brooklyn phonebook and interviewed him. Encouraged by a newfound interest in his work, Lamb began composing again. Just prior to his death in 1960 he was visited by Sam and Ann Charters who wanted to document his work. Ann (known now for her writing on Jack Kerouac and the beat poets) played and recorded Lamb's compositions and coaxed the old man to play a number himself for posterity.

*Searching online for good representative soundclips, the best i've found is off "Perfessor" Bill Edwards ragtime site http://www.perfessorbill.com/index2.htm
The Perfessor plays Lamb's rags beautifully in an elegant style. Check out "A Ragtime Nightingale"
Especially to be avoided are renditions in the cheesey speeded-up honky-tonk style inappropriate for Lamb's rags in particular and generally toxic to an true appreciation of great classic ragtime.

The Phantom City of Coney Island

2007-01-18T13:10:00.000-08:00

I was a five year old in 1958, holding tight to my dad's hand as we were ushered into the ROCKET TO THE MOON at Disneyland.
It was a darkened ampitheater with seats that surrounded a large screen on the floor ensconced by a scant barrier, like the portal of a vast glass-bottom boat. Looking down from above, we rocketeers watched the orange-tinted moon grow larger and more luminous until we were hovering over the craters. I was moved to go down to the edge and peer down at the mountains and blue-shadowed "seas', shuddering at what would become of me if I fell overboard and became a lunar castaway.

Back in 1901 at the Buffalo Exposition, similar wonderment gripped those voyagers embarking on the TRIP TO THE MOON; suspended in an airship moving through starlit darkness as they beheld the approaching moonscape. Upon landing they met up with spiny haired Selenites in subterranean grottos and moon-midgets offering them green cheese.
Though the Exposition's organizers intended a cultural edification of the masses, the TRIP TO THE MOON, off the midway, was the runaway hit. George P. Tilyou, who ran Steeplechase Park at Coney Island by the sea in Brooklyn, was there to see the TRIP and offered it's creators, Thompson and Dundy, a spot on his grounds. The partners moved to Steeplechase, then capitalized on the ride's popularity by throwing all the earnings into a new park next door - to be called LUNA PARK after Skip's sister Luna in Bayonne Park, New Jersey.

The gates of LUNA PARK opened at 8:00 on the evening of May 16,1903. The curious masses waiting on Surf Ave. blinked, and suddenly an oriental OZ of minarets and towers switched on with 250,000 incandescent lights, illuminating lakes and dazzling promenades lined with arches.
The Brooklyn Eagle reported the next day,"..it seemed that huge mantle of light had been let down from the sky to disclose the domain of an unknown world."

Unlike Disneyland, Luna Park was not designed for "kids" or even "kids of all ages" -the turn of the century was a new era where people had come to the end of their rope with "reality". The working class, middle class, leisure class were all ready for fun and getting "out of this world." Frederic Thompson, the artist/designer of the Luna Park partnership, also designed the sets for "Little Nemo In Slumberland", now a very successful Broadway musical taken from the comics. Transport via dream to the moon, planets, and beyond came along at the right time.
Thompson wrote, "Straight lines are necessarily severe and dead. In building for a festive occasion there should be an absolute departure from all set forms of architecture. One must dare to decorate a minaret with Renaissance detail or to jumble romanesque with Art Nouveau, always with the ideal of keeping his line varied or broke and moving..."

Day and night people flocked to LUNA to ride Chute the Chutes waterslide, new-fangled elevators, gyroplanes, weave down the Helter Skelter, enter the Dragon's Gorge or the 20,00O Leagues Under the Sea submarine or any number of small circuses, sample exotic foods, and delight to historical tableaux, naval battles, clowns, acrobats, trick elephants, a village of genuine Phillippine tribesmen, oriental dancers, men shot from cannons; the whole works - and of course, the TRIP TO THE MOON. Sexual mores were changing and any amusement that could bring men and woman (even strangers) within touching space for a dime was a new pleasure.

Between 1903 to 1911 Luna Park, Steeplechase, and a new neighbor park, Dreamland reigned supreme together on Coney Island.
Then in 1911, Dreamland burned down,and soon after, Thompson went bankrupt, and Tilyou died and World War 1 was on its way. Slowly Coney Island slipped away from the singular realm of the fantastic and back into the Carnival it emerged from - still a thrill to the end, but much like the thousands of amusement parks that sprouted up around the world.

Ric Burns and Lisa Ades released "Coney Island: the American Experience" in 1991, a landmark, beautifully filmed and choreographed "documentary" history of Coney Island from the beginning to present, but largely focused on Luna Park. It includes commentary from contemporary writers, actors and vaudevilleans from Coneys past as well as readings and reminiscences of Henry Miller and other writers long gone. The soundtrack, old film footage, photographs and interviews make it a well-rounded feast of the senses.

One image haunts me most; footage of Luna Park at night as if seen from offshore; a spectral city of floating lights flickering together with the shimmering decay of the film and sparse notes of Harold Budd's "White Arcade" marimba/bell tiptoeing over a wash of nocturnal hum making the soundtrack.
Maxim Gorky wrote of his visit to Luna Park:

"With the advent of night, a phantom city of fire rears itself skyward from the ocean. Thousands of glowing sparks glimmer in the darkness. Threads of golden gossamer tremble in the air, weave translucent patterns of fire, hang motionless, in love with the beauty of their own reflection in the water. Fabulous beyond conceiving, ineffably beautiful is this fiery scintillation."

* to read about Luna Park and Coney Island i highly recommend Amusing The Million by John Kasson, and The Kid of Coney Island: Frederic Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements by Woody Register

Mystery of Licorice

2006-12-31T06:26:00.000-08:00

Way back in the early 60's Robin Williamson, Clive Palmer, and Bert Jansch were sharing a flat and running a folk club in Edinburgh. The folk club served primarily as a place to perform their own music, which was taking "folk" down new, unpegged roads. Edinburgh was a hothouse flower bed of beatnik folk/jazz/blues with a sliver glint of psychedelic color beginning to tinge the brownstone street rain puddles.
Bert left and went on to a solo career, eventually joining up variously with Anne Briggs, or John Renbourn, and finally Pentangle. Robin and Clive hooked up with another Scotsmen, (from Perthshire) Mike Heron, and formed the Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band evolved from a kind of Celtic East Indian Old Timey Jug Band playing a mix of traditional tunes and originals to something even more defiant of record bin placement. Clive moved on and Mike and Robin added their girlfriends Rose and Licorice to the mix; tentatively with the release of 5,000 Spirits Or the Layers of the Onion and full on with The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. Dylan's head was already bent by Robin's "October Song" (from their first record) and "First Girl I Loved" from "5000 Spirits" became a classic covered by many. Stevie Winwood's praises and inspiration were manifesting in Traffic's first record and Paul McCartney named "Hangman's" his favorite record of 1967.
Still, for various reasons, the String Band remained way on the outer fringe of the public ear. They were no virtuoso vocalists, and their lyrics ranged from absolute gems, to simpleton or arcane, circuitous, and precious annoyances. Increasingly, every record was a crapshoot with a guaranteed masterpiece (or three) in the crackerjack box.

I first saw them at the Aquarius Theatre in LA when I was about 16. Subsequent shows were memorable but this one was the capper. They came out on the stage in exotic clothes and beads, onto an Indian rug with nigh on 30 instruments scattered about like a stoned gypsy royal court and proceeded to tune it all up for what must have been 10 minutes. Others in the audience might have been fidgeting and leaving the premises to have a smoke - but I was in heaven. It was a slow, beguiling ceremony for what turned out to be a mesmerizing evening of great songs.

I confess that my teenage heart reserved a very warm space for Robin's girl Licorice (I'm sure he understands). I suppose, in a Jungian anima way, Licorice embodied the ideal hippie/folkie/psychedelic brownrice-eating girl-goddess that i was looking to project on some unsuspecting and unattainable female.
With the group Licorice played a bit of harmonium, guitar and such but mainly contributed a childlike angel voice to the oft ragged proceedings. You can hear her voice adding harmony to "Painting Box", announcing "amoebas are very small" on "A Very Cellular Song" from "Hangman's" and contributing the lovely solo part in "Fair As You" from I Looked Up.

According to Wikipedia Christina "Licorice" McKechnie (also called "Likky")was born in Scotland in on October 2nd, 1945.

Here's the mystery:

As time went on, Rose left the group and Robin and Licorice broke up - amicably it seems as she remained with the group for a few albums. Licorice settled in Los Angeles, was briefly married to guitar-player Mike Lambert and still played a bit of music here and there - along with a stint of waitressing and other quotidian enterprises.
I'd heard she did a bit of collaboration with Chick Corea but nothing came of it.
The String band as a whole had been involved with Scientology midway thru their career, but apparently Licorice was the first to become disillusioned. We might assume that would discount any connection with what happened next.

Licorice was last seen hitchiking through Arizona in 1987, although her older sister Frances, reports having received a letter "certainly sent from Sacramento" in 1990.
I sincerely hope that she is still on the planet, having started a new life but I have to accept the possibility of a sadder or darker ending. Peace be with her.

This letter from a former friend of Likky's courtesy of the "Likkie Shrine" site
http://www.angelfire.com/biz3/ISB/likkie.html
From: David Evans:

"I knew Likki and her husband Brian Lambert in about 1980 in Los Angeles. She was not in the music business at the time, but still incredibly talented and musical. She and I made some attempts at writing together.

I took guitar lessons from Brian. Likki still had Robin's nylon string painted guitar he had written many ISB songs on. I offered her every cent I had but she wouldn't think of parting with it. At a party at her house in the Hollywood Hills, she sang a song called Old Songs And Cottages which was so amazing I had to learn it. She felt so close to that song that she refused to teach anybody how it goes. I still remember the first two chords and have been playing with them for the past 18 years. She was incredibly sweet."

* aside from the Likkie Shrine site there is a little youtube soundtrack/video clip with pictures of Licorice, and the song "On the Banks of Italy" with a taste of her singing http://youtube.com/watch?v=011w7n_-EY8

* the sound of most of the clips of the ISB on youtube is fairly crappy but there's one fairly decent one of Robin and Mike in 1968 performing "The Half-Remarkable Question" on the Julie Felix Show in England. Julie sings with them on "Painting Box", and you can get a glimpse of the painted acoustic guitar that Licorice inherited from Robin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZYNO6SteaU&NR

* for some excellent full-length renditions of the String Band from their records go to myspace.com and check out
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=54203671

Anita O'Day On A Summer's Day

2006-12-01T06:39:00.000-08:00

A brief hats off to the great Anita O'Day who passed away this past Thanksgiving morning at age 87.

Over and over I've been watching her set at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival as captured by film-maker photographer Bert Stern in Jazz On A Summer's Day.

I can't recall when I've ever derived so much from a performance of two songs.

Anita displays all so eloquently what jazz, not just jazz-singing, is all about here.

Of course her oddly hip attire and demeanor are an exclamation mark on a stage littered with a day-long parade of, sometimes elegant, sometimes "another day at the office" jazz-suits - but the baraka she gradually transmits to the listener comes from her vocal phrasing. Not blessed with an incredible vocal range or stamina, Anita's power lies in knowing what it is to dance and play with the beat by phrase placement; off the beat, on the beat, balanced but without symmetry, pushing, pulling, and cajoling it until it SWINGS!

...and this all with complete nonchalance - as if it was just happening of itself, which it is. This the outcome of a natural sense and 20-some years of long nights performing together with some of the great improvisers.

*youtube has a clip from the movie with Anita doing Sweet Georgia Brown and also Tea for Two.

There are also clips on the anitaoday.com website which are very clear visually although shorter in length.

Thanks to Sharon for informing that Anita had died and also turning me on the NPR broadcast of Terri Gross' interview with Anita..

Fools on Primrose Hill

2006-11-22T23:02:00.000-08:00

One foggy morning in November 1966, almost 40 years ago to the day, the Rolling Stones. manager Andrew Loog Oldham, and photographer Gered Mankowitz piled into 2 cars from Olympic Studios at dawn and drove to the top of Primrose Hill, the vast public park in Northwest London.

The Stones had been up all night putting the finishing touches on their new record, Between the Buttons, and the plan was to breathe the fresh air and take some photos for the cover.

Between the Buttons was a quirky departure from the usual R&B and Blues driven fare the Stones dished up; these tunes had a Kinkish, vaudevillean/music hall whimsy, sprinkled with some driving rockin rhythms with just a touch of Charlie Watts' subliminal offbeat jazz drumming that evoked the diaphanous pop-flash of moddish swinging London. "Connection", "Amanda Jones", "Yesterday's Papers", and "Backstreet Girl" were some of my favorites - now little heard on the radio by Stones fans generations removed, and forgotten by all but the hard-core fans from the era.

The record was notable for the almost complete disappearance of Brian Jones from half of the numbers; he was embarked on a more precipitous slide into the vapor of stonedom. However, here he surfaces as "colourist" on the tunes, adding marimba, recorders, flute, trumpet, piano, harmonica, organ, sax, and sitar in just the right places.

That morning when the gang arrived on Primrose Hill they chanced on a bearded hippie flute-player poised on one foot and oblivious to the celebrity status of the Stones. Mick Jagger offered him a joint and he accepted it offhandedly, with a mere "Ah, breakfast!".

Gered Mankowitz took a number of pictures that morning in the mist and added to the atmosphere by rubbing a bit of vaseline on the camera lens. He recalls Brian Jones as being a difficult subject; burying his head in a newspaper or mugging in the group photos. Nevertheless, the resultant photos carry on the distinct flavor of the Stones as five individuals; Watts and Wyman craggy, calm and indifferent, Jones cocooned in impenetrable mischief, Jagger (open-mouthed of course) and Richards off to the left somehow in motion towards the future- albeit Richards in a hazed motion, fully immersed in the the vaseline sector of the lens.

A few months after the Stones photo-shoot, Paul McCartney, along with pal Alisdair Taylor and his sheepdog Martha, drove up to Primrose Hill around sunrise. McCartney often brought Martha for walks up there and was delighted that other dog-walkers recognized him only as one of them and freely chatted on about their dogs.

That morning as the sun rose McCartney and Taylor were commenting on the beauty of the view, and even waxing philosophical about the existence of God when Paul noticed that Martha had gone missing. He turned around and there. as if out of nowhere, stood a middle-aged man in a stylish raincoat. They exchanged greetings and the man commented on how beautiful the view of London was. Paul, again, looked out but when he looked back seconds later the man was no longer there. Taylor was also witness to this and they were perplexed as to where the man went as they were in an open area and the nearest trees were too far to have been reached in a few seconds. (Of course Martha returned, lest we forget "Martha My Dear" on the White Album)

They continued to talk about this incident the rest of the day and were resigned to the fact that people would assume psychedelics were involved - not the case here.

That day McCartney began working on his song "Fool On the Hill". Some months later, when he and Lennon were working on "It's Getting Better" (a phrase that came to him on another Primrose Hill walk) McCartney played John a sketch of "Fool" on the guitar. John said it was a great song and encouraged him to write it down immediately.

Micheal O'Domhnaill 1952 -2006

2006-11-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

I was saddened to hear that a longtime idol of mine, much beloved by all who follow Irish music, Micheal O'Domhnaill, had passed away this July ( I hadn't heard until a week ago) as the result of a fall at his home in Dublin.

Micheal was a singular guitar stylist as well as a fine singer, often in Gaelic, of little heard traditional tunes passed down from his family who hailed from the gaelic-speaking sector of Donegal.
His great gift was to accompany virtuosos such as Tommy Peoples, Paddy Keenan, Paddy Glackin, Matt Molloy, and Kevin Burke and make them sound even better. He strummed with a subtle drive that propelled the melody forward like a polyrhythmic wave rather than a steady predictable chunk-beat. His choice of chords was almost modally jazzlike - minor 11ths and 9ths derived from DADGAD tuning and others that would have bent the ear of a Ravel or Bill Evans - but it was accenting and painting the tonal backdrop of the melody of the tune that was his priority.
He was also a soft-spoken and considerate person, an excellent foil for the laconic wit of his story-telling fiddler par excellence partner of years past, Kevin Burke.

I've a very fond memory of briefly meeting Micheal back in 1980 when he and Kevin came to came to Santa Cruz Ca. on their tour of the States (they soon made Portland their home for many years).

They were to play in a church/venue that night. Sheryl, myself and our 1year old daughter Laurel were in a long line outside waiting to get in. Micheal and Kevin, themselves, came up alongside us and asked where they might find (what else?) a pub within walking distance for a quick drink and we pointed them in the right direction.
Just before the doors opened, the guys came back and they were very appreciative. Micheal said there were actual "cowboys" sitting next to them at the bar and described their attire wide-eyed as if he'd seen the Second Coming of Hopalong Cassidy.

Inside, they took to the stage and tore down the house. This audience was already hip to these guys and their former stardom with the Bothy Band (and this was way before Riverdance and other near collisions with utter Celtic schlock)and they were so taken by them it seemed they wouldn't let them go; the encore was like another show unto itself.

When we started Subterranean Jazz back in 1997 (?) I'd been thinking about improvising off of trad irish tunes for some time. In particular, I'd been greatly inspired by the jazz-like arrangement O'Domhnaill and Burke made of the slip-jig tune Promenade from the same-titled album from 1980. I fooled with merging Promenade (with different chords) and another slip-jig, Kid On the Mountain, and we all threw together a tune called The Irish Kid that made its way to our recording, Subway Sonnets; at the very least, a sapling transplant from O'Domhnaill and Burke sprouting up from the Great West home of gunfights and rugged trails.

* here is a recent recording of Micheal O'Domhnaill accompanying Paddy Glackin on fiddle found on youtube. You also get to hear a bit of gaelic spoken after and some playing from the group Altan who were also there.

* above, an early picture of Micheal (in the bright shirt at top right)
with the Bothy Band circa 1976. Kevin Burke far left, Donall Lunny, Paddy Keenan with the pipes, Matt Molloy with flute, and Micheal's sister Triona O'Domhnaill at the top.

Walks with Bud and Dexter

2006-11-04T09:43:00.000-08:00

Bud Powell's mumbles from the piano chair on Our Man In Paris are audible throughout the record and I love it. They are part of the in-the-moment risk and ABANDONEMENT that is jazz. They should be sampled, I think, and stand as art.
Though considered to be past his prime by some, hollowed-out and cast upon shores of oblivion by drugs, electro-shock, and police beatings, Bud emerges here triumphant in raw brilliance.

Francis Paudras reminisces from (again) Dance of the Infidels about this period when Dexter Gordon and Bud were staying with him in Paris:

"If we left together, we would go for long walks through the silent streets. Sometimes Dexter Gordon came with us and I can remember his warm and resonant voice echoing through the streets. he walked on one sidewalk and Bud on the other: while I took the middle of the street.
Dexter didn't speak to Bud. He sang, in a perfect imitation of Billy Eckstine's langorous vibrato. Bud laughed til he cried. We wandered aimlessly. Time didn't matter. I remember those moments as something unreal. Dexter was blessed with eternal youth. Even close to death, nothing ever eroded his natural good humor.
Bud's and Dexter's language, like their music, had a special sound, a kind of swing based on an inner tempo. They had recorded together very early. I owned the records of the Savoy sessions of January 1946, and I had listened to them until I wore out the grooves. It seemed inconceivable to see them there together, like two kids, strolling through the night."

* pictured above, Bud Powell

Our Man In Paris

2006-11-04T06:59:00.000-08:00

Dexter Gordon made this record in Paris in May of 1963, using a rhythm section that featured two American jazz legends, long since expatriated to France, pianist Bud Powell and drummer Kenny Clarke, along with the French bassist Pierre Michelot.

The first cut on the album signals the proceedings, laying out in clear terms what lies ahead so you can strap in for the ride or clear out.
After the humorous intro to Scrapple for the Apple where Dexter plays the riff from
Dragnet (? doubtless a reminder of scuffles in the Big Apple), he plays the jaunty Charlie Parker head. Here immediately; the paradox of a lighthearted but solid melody, stated by a saxophone sound that can barely contain itself within the allotted notes, breaking at the edges, and gnawing like a wild animal at the cage bars to have at it.
When the melody has been stated, and one expects the usual intricate bop lines, Dexter starts out like a sonorous taxi with the horn of a train, driving everyone from the intersection to state his case, beating/telegraphing out single notes as if to say "don't worry yet about the fancy licks, HERE IS THE SOUND and i am in LOVE with the SOUND!". Once the sound has been revealed, he proceeds to unfurl his graceful exuberant lines, and tears the tune to shreds.

Tales of Prez

2006-10-27T13:38:00.000-07:00

Another Lester Young anecdote.....

Francis Paudras wrote Dance of the Infidels a wonderful, intimate account of his friendship with the troubled-genius bop-pianist Bud Powell. Powell lived with Paudras and his family in Paris for some time in the latter part of his life. Bernard Tavernier's film 'Round Midnight, starring tenor "saxOPHonist" Dexter Gordon as "Dale Turner", was based on Paudras' reminiscence of Powell melded together with the life of Lester Young, also a friend, who spent a great deal of time in Paris during his final years.

Paudras' has this bit about Lester in his book:

"Lester was one of those people who couldn't pronounce ten words without interjecting two or three juicy curses. People from the south of France have a reputation for swearing a lot, but even they are no match for Lester. In situations where decency compelled him to avoid such words, he would express himself by savory turns of phrase that bordered on the surreal.....
Ray Brown relates that during a bus trip with Jazz at the Philharmonic, some prankster had hidden the bottle of whiskey that Lester always kept in the overhead baggage rack. When he noticed the disappearance of his precious brew, he went through all the racks with a fine-tooth comb. Then he sat down without a word and announced in a quiet voice: 'Whoever it is who swiped my bottle, I want him to know I am an intimate friend of his mother!'"

* pictured above, Lester being serenaded by a flautist at a Paris street cafe.
* thanks to Honkytone for a soundclip of Prez playing "These Foolish Things" made after his army discharge, with Nat King Cole on piano and Buddy Rich - doubtless on elephant tranquilizer - accompanying on drums.

Radio Day 2: Thirteen Moons

2006-10-24T07:37:00.001-07:00

Got into work the other day and turned on NPR in the back room. They announced an interview coming up in an hour with Charles Frazier about his new book,
Thirteen Moons, on Diane Rhem's show.

I'd read Cold Mountain twice - a rare feat for me in these years exiled from idle youth; nowadays every hour an opportunity - or scramble - to get something done. Now his second book was out after 9 years. No freakin' way was I going to miss an interview with Frazier, so I concocted a "switch" in my work schedule which enabled me to work in the backroom and listen to the radio.
Weeks before this, strangely enough, I found out that an acre of land had come down to my cousins and I from my mother's side of the family - that lay very near Cold Mountain. My mother Leora, and her brother Hugh, had lived in a cabin there for a short time with their grandmother as kids in the 1920's.

I was pleased to hear that Frazier's speaking voice was easy on the ears and his responses as deliberated and detailed as his writing; unassuming, polite, and natural in the southernly-at-best manner. For a guy with an 8 million (!) advance on Thirteen Moons (following his success with Cold Mountain) he sounded like he would be a considerate conversationalist if you met him at a cafe. You might even hit him up for an extra shot...

The idea for Thirteen Moons came about while Frazier was working on Cold Mountain, which is primarily set in the Civil War years. While doing some research through old North Carolina newspapers circa 190O he came across an article about a white man that had recently died in an insane asylum speaking only Cherokee. Frazier put a bit about it on a notecard but left it aside as he realized it wouldn't have a place in the Cold Mountain story. Sometime later he was thinking on it and came across his notes on the same lone card buried among a number of blank cards.
This man turned out to be a historical figure known to quite a few Carolinians. Frazier adapted much of his life to serve for his main character, Will Cooper - with a dose of other stories, lore and history to alter our hero's path.

In Thirteen Moons, Will, a mere fledgling teen, is sent off (sold into service by his uncle) to run a trading post on the edge of Cherokee hill country. On the way there he finds himself in an all-night card game with drunken half-breeds, hillmen, and Cherokees. Will comes out of it having won the hand of a girl his own age from her father, a renegade Scots-Cherokee Chief. They meet alone for a few brief minutes - before William has to run for his life. What follows next is his gradual immersement in the Cherokee culture.

A page out of the book:

"On dark nights when I lay on my pallet listening to the sounds outside the window, I tried to match the names of creatures Bear had taught me to their various calls and signals. The peeps and creaks of insects and amphibians, a lone night roaming skunk or possum crashing through the bushes as loud as a family of bears or panthers. Night birds in the trees. Martens and minks and other dark-goers stepping crinkly in leaves. One word bothered me especially. 'Yunwi-giski'. Bear said it denoted a cannibal spirit, an eater of men. Bear's people had lived here since some dim elder time and knew this place with an intimacy and depth that could not be improved upon. Why would they bother having such a word if there were no such things as cannibals in the immediate vicinity? Example in point: they had a word for a hog bite. Not two words, one word. Satawa. My opinion was that if hogs are biting you so often that you have to stop and make up a specific word for it, maybe lack of a vocabulary is not your most pressing problem. The other thing that struck me is that this was a language with little interest in abstractions but of great particularity in regard to the things of the physical world. If they had a word like 'Yunwi-giski', how could there not be its physical correspondence out roaming the night woods hunting for the meat of people?"

"But at such times, it always calmed me to remember the girl with the silver bracelets, to think of her scent, the way she stepped inside my big wool coat and shivered against me. Two forlorn children finding comfort with each other. More than once I went and buried my face in the coat's lining, and every time the smell of lavender was fainter than before. As if the girl who had stood within its compass was fading from the world".

* above; a view towards Cold Mountain today.

Radio Days

2006-10-12T07:27:00.000-07:00

I had to bring my car into the "tire shop" last Sunday morning before heading off to work at the library. There wouldn't be time enough for me to hang out in the waiting room, smelling the rubber treads on display, soaking up the tv football reruns, with my head in an Us Weekly while they determined how they effed-up their tire diagnosis the first time and made amends.
There being no courtesy shuttle service from the shop, and no timely bus to catch on Sunday, I stepped outside and called a yellow cab so as to get to work in 15 minutes.
Standing there on the corner, the perennial grumble-loop that runs through my head in such situations began rolling; "...goddam glorified slurpie-slurpin suburban hick-tropolis waste of my freakin life..."

The cab pulled up and an extraordinarily ordinary gent behind the wheel who looked to be a retired hardware store owner was listening to Broadway musical selections on the radio. Turned out it was a syndicated show that ran for only two hours on Sunday
and my driver was storehouse of Broadway history and a passionate admirer, in particular, of Lerner and Loewe. I was able to throw in a bit of trivia he didn't know - that in the movie of My Fair Lady, "Freddie", Eliza's boyfriend, was played by Jeremy Brett who later became the quintessential (in my opinion) Sherlock Holmes on British mystery TV. We had a quick, exclamatory gabfest about the great Broadway composers
we loved and agreed that the output of the last 40 yrs sucked.
When I alit from the cab it was a beautiful, breezy day and there was a spring in my step.
I skipped the elevator and tap-danced backward up the stairway....

Begin the Beguine in Martinique

2006-10-07T09:56:00.000-07:00

Jimmy and I were rehearsing for an upcoming gig with our pal Daniele who is, primarily, a gypsy-jazz style player native to Italy but more recently residing in New Orleans prior to Katrina. We were talking about rhythms in Latin and New Orleans music when he mentioned that the Caribbean island of Martinique was a place where many of these styles had remained in their "original" state.

We were playing Cole Porter's "Begin the Beguine" that night; high up on my long-time favorite list and a favorite of jazz musicians from Django Reinhardt to Charlie Parker. After our session I was doing a little research and I was surprised to find (serendipity, baby!) that the "beguine" was a dance/rhythm originating in Martinique. The dance is described as close to a rhumba; "It is characterized by the rocking back and forth of the hips while the girl throws her arms around her partner's neck. His arms loosely clasp her about the waist. The steps have been incorporated in both the Haitian Merengue and Calypso."

During the late 20's and early thirties the beguine music and dance became a great craze in Paris where a number of black "Martiniquais" musicians had settled (Martinique being a longtime French colony). The beguine was typically played in small combos with clarinet, trombone, violins and sometimes banjo and a "shakebox" for percussion. Improvisation was a prime ingredient and this lent the music something of a New Orleans flavor.

Cole Porter wrote Begin the Beguine in 1935. The are a few differing versions of the song's origin. Here is one of his likelier takes;
"I was living in Paris at the time and somebody suggested that I go see Black Martinquois, many of whom live in Paris, do their native dance, the Beguine, in a remote nightclub on the Left Bank of the Seine. This I did quickly, and I was very much taken by the rhythm of the dance. The rhythm was that of the already popular rhumba but much faster. The moment I saw it i thought of "Begin the Beguine" as a good title for a song, and put it away in my notebook, adding a memorandum as to its rhythm and tempo...." "About 10 years later while going around the world we stopped at an island in the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the west of New Guinea...A native dance was started for us, of which the melody of the first four bars would become my song. I looked through my old notebook and found again, after ten years, my old title 'Begin the Beguine'. For some reason the melody that I heard and the phrase that I had written down seemed to marry. I developed the whole song from that."

His co-lyricist Moss Hart recalled Porter working on the tune at the piano in his cabin while sailing for the Fiji Islands. The song is an astounding 108 bars in length (!) and Hart had thought it had come to an end halfway through. However, despite its length, Hart "was much relieved that our chief love song was not to be about koala bears or a duckbilled platypus which he [Porter] had found entertaining."

"Jubilee", the Broadway show it was featured in, was a bit of a flop but "Beguine.." caught enough ears to become a tremendous hit subsequently by Artie Shaw (swing version) and all the big bands at the time.

For many, the high point of the tune's life was its placement in the Fred Astaire/Eleanor Powell film musical "Broadway Melody of 1940" where it provided the background for a famous tap-dancing routine featuring Fred and Eleanor on a mirrored floor. Paste up this link and check it out! Great stuff...(go to the bottom).
FredandEleanorBeguine

One of the interesting versions of this song was performed by Pete Townshend, who, taking a break from a rollicking good smashing of his guitar onstage, covers it on a "Happy Birthday" album (c.1969,that also features Ronnie Laine from the Small Faces) dedicated to his guru, the mystic Meher Baba, who claimed Beguine the Beguine to be his favorte tune! Those hippie survivors of the 60's may recall a card with a worn picture of Meher Baba captioned with "Don't Worry, Be Happy!" often plastered on head-shop walls and VW vans, etc.- later to be copped by Bobby McFerrin.

My own personal number-one version is that rendered by alto saxophonist Art Pepper on his mid-50's record, "The Art of Pepper" just prior to an extended prison stay (almost a decade) for narcotics. With the rhythm section laying down the perfect surf-ride, Pepper weaves in and out of the melody, positively BURNING on this cut, and just when he seems on the verge of being consumed by his own flames he returns to the gorgeous melody like a lover to the beloved...

* pictured at the top; "By the Seashore" painted by Paul Gauguin in Martinique c. 1887

just above, song sheet from "The Broadway Melody of 1940"

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Feast of Feist

2006-09-30T16:01:00.000-07:00

Ok, now a personal rave about a musician who is QUITE UNdisintegrating and has actually made this particular KNOCK-OUT punch In One Round (cause for seein' stars, angels, boi-oi-oingin bedsprings, bells, and tweety birds circlin around the head of the floored-in-the-best-sense-of-the-word listener) record in 2004 and is still touring under the snowballing rep from it.

I'm talking about Let It Die by the chanteuse canadienne Feist otherwise known as Leslie Feist. Feist, now living in Paris, is accompanied by her musical partner, Chilly Gonzales, a veritable WIZARD of restrained electronica and together they serve up something rare. The record evidences how much can be done with the deft placement of a DJ style record scratch, or acoustic guitar juxtaposed with claps, and simple keyboard grooves that shift in shape and tone - all seducing the ear with surprise. When you find yourself at the end of the record you've been guided by a voices and whispers through a house of colored rooms accessible through sliding doors, staircases that disappear behind you, liquid mirrors, and hidden locks. You're out the back door into long grass of the yard, giving the dog a pet and ready to head back in the front door and do it all over.
This is one of those records I play in the car and then circle around the neighborhood - at a suspicious, curtain-lifting 10 miles an hour - because I don't want to get home quite yet...

Every song is an unpredictable variation of Folk-Pop-Trip-hop-R&B originals and re-workings - if you need to nail it with a label. Despite the forbidding title, Let It Die is largely a euphoric feast but no piece of fluff emotionally.
Feist has a gorgeous voice and delivery that has drawn a slew of comparisons but my first take on it was a taste of Dusty Springfield. In past musical configurations Leslie was heavy on the screaming and 'threw out' her voice. During her sabbatical from singing she practiced guitar and slowly worked her way back into - well, fuhchrissakes, you really gotta check it out!

* i like this live clip of her singing Secret Heart on youtube
FeistSecretHeart

I'm Only Sleeping

2006-09-21T14:09:00.000-07:00

- charcoal/watercolor by Henri Matisse

"When I wake up early in the morning,
Lift my head, I'm still yawning
When I'm in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream ......"

Up for auction at Christies a year ago, were some scribbled lines in blue felt pen on the back of a car "radio-phone" bill sent to John Lennon by the post office in April of 1966. They were to become the lyrics for "I'm Only Sleeping", a mysterious wisp of a tune which, a week or so later, commenced recording on the UK version of Revolver.

That song has always stood apart, off the beaten road, in the unmapped place. It captures that twilight sliver just between sleep and waking where the dreamer KNOWS he's dreaming and doesn't give a hang about the pressing issues of the waking world.
The only other song that Lennon wrote that gives me a similar feeling is "Julia" - not, as some might expect, "Strawberry Fields", which is really a different alteration of mind-place altogether.

In my head, the lyrics of "Julia" and "Sleeping" meet and blur as one:
"Her hair of floating sky is shimmering, glimmering,
In the sun" and
"Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time"
become that place where the shadows of clouds on a rainy day flicker against a storefront window or puddle in the street - again, the omnibus-shuttle service between waking and dreaming.

When mentioned at all, "I'm Only Sleeping" is referred to as the song where "the backward guitar' of George Harrison makes it's debut. In the fascinating memoir of Beatle sessions by participating sound man Geoff Emerick, "Here, There, and Everywhere", much is made of the exasperatingly long time spent by Harrison getting mere 4 bars or so of guitar just right. Apparently George composed a melody, had it recorded backwards, and then learned it in its backwards form to be played "straight" on the recording. Hard to believe it's "live" in the recording but my hat's off to George for carrying it off. Any artist knows that the absorption in a creative conception, obliterates time (or sleeping, eating, and paying the phone bill as well), so 14 hrs for 20 or 30 seconds of recording is a trifle. Paul too, was caught up in the the backwards guitar bit and the resulting "duet" with George at the end of "Sleeping" is a gem - a bouquet of sonic nerve-end tendrils that suggests bagpipes, hurdy-gurdies or the South Indian shehnai.

Strangely enough for the Beatles, this song always seems on the verge of, or down-right dipped into, the realm of jazz. Paul's walking bassline (with passing tones!)and John's melody give it the lilt of swing. I spent a long walk thinking of an ideal "put-together" jazz quartet to do the song justice - with as little "alteration" as possible; no diminution of the melody by bullshit jazz cliches, just cool and crisp blowing with a sense of breathing space. I'd have Miles Davis circa 1954 on muted trumpet (ala Solar or If I Were A bell) - or maybe Tony Fruscella on straight trumpet - then Jimmy Jones on piano (Sarah Vaughn's brilliant accompaniment for many years) and a straight-forward but swinging rhythm section; Percy Heath on bass and Conny Kay on drums.

"Please don't wake me, no
don't shake me
Leave me where I am
I'm only sleeping

Everybody seems to think I'm lazy
I don't mind, I think they're crazy
Running everywhere at such a speed
Till they find, there's no need

Please don't spoil my day
I'm miles away
And after all
I'm only sleeping

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time

Lying there and staring at the ceiling
Waiting for a sleepy feeling

Please don't spoil my day
I'm miles away
And after all
I'm only sleeping

Keeping an eye on the world going by my window
Taking my time

When I wake up early in the morning,
Lift my head, I'm still yawning
When I'm in the middle of a dream
Stay in bed, float up stream

Please don't wake me, no
don't shake me
Leave me where I am
I'm only sleeping"

- John and music critic Ralph Gleason in 1966

*thanks to Jimmy and Steve for mention of Geoff Emerick's "Here There and Everywhere"
- also of interest to UK "Revolver" fans:
"Every Sound There Is" edited by Russell Reising - a compilation of writings about the "Revolver" sessions.

Sky of Orange Whispers

2006-09-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

HALF NOTE

since poetry is the only nightclub
where anything can happen
let's take a look at it

if you go to the right you're wrong
if you go left you're incorrect
if you go straight you're a fool

poetry is a swimming pool

no it's a diving board
this drink is so good I could dive right into it

you've got to avoid
......................the ice cube

- Howard Hart from "The Sky of Orange Whispers"

mr. hart
jazz drummer
mentored by kenny clarke
left for paris in '46 and met django
who asked him to audition but howard let it slip as
he found baudelaire's flowers of evil at a kiosk by the seine and wasted the hours
in epiphany then and there poetry was as important to him as music
returned to nyc in 47 studied composition with mills and bernstein
hung with charlie parker and delmore schwartz
roomed with and read alongside kerouac and lamantia
wrote plays
wrote poems
blew some wigs
shuttled twixt coasts
between arts
passed through worlds in 2002
over to the other side

Howard Hart wrote poems of unusual subtlety and color and I'm having trouble putting down
"The Sky of Orange Whispers" which is in a slender pocket-size volume that i take everywhere
check www.emptymirrorbooks.com
amazon.com and your local inter-library loan to get hold of his others

Jazzpoets at Blue O'Clock

2006-09-17T07:59:00.000-07:00

late in the game photo of poets Howard Hart and Bob Kaufman in the basement of City Lights Bookstore circa 1980

Howard Hart and Bob Kaufman were the among last unsung poets influenced by jazz idiom and cadence. They were contemporary with the likes of Jack Kerouac and Ted Joans back in the 50's and migrated from New York to longtime residency on the "Left Coast", North Beach, San Francisco.

Bob Kaufman, in particular, was steeped beyond the others in the sound of jazz. "Crootey Songo" featured "meaningless" words created as one would blow a jazz solo over a rhythm section; not the "oobie-doobie la wah doo-bah" of scat singers but more along the lines of;

DEEREDITION, BOOMEDITION, SQUOM, SQUOM, SQUOM.
DEE BEETSTRAWIST, WAPAGO, LOCOEST, LOCORO, LO.
VOOMETEYEREEPETIOP, BOP, BOP, BOP, WHIPOLAT.

However most of his poems were accessible and spoke immediately to the listener/reader;

SLIGHT ALTERATIONS

I climb a red thread
To an unseen existence
Broken free, somewhere,
Beyond the belts.

Ticks have abandoned
My astonished time.
The air littered
with demolished hours.

Presence abolished
I become a ray
From the sun
Anonymous finger
Deflected into hungry windows
Boomerang of curved light
Ricocheted off dark walls
The ceiling remembers my face
The floor is a palate of surprise
Watching me eat the calendar

(from a Kaufman compilation called "Golden Sardine" supposedly found on brown wrapping paper rolled up and found in his room)

Kaufman was born in New Orleans of mixed heritage. Touring the world as a merchant seaman he ended up in NYC and then San Francisco where he became a mainstay on the North Beach poetry scene. Styling himself a Buddhist and incapable of self-promotion, he
performed his poetry from memory and only reluctantly, on his wife's insistence, wrote anything down. His most famous haunt was the Co-Existence Bagel Shop on Grant Street where devotees would flock in the hopes he would show for an extemporaneous "reading".
He became more reclusive as the 60's ended; taking a vow of silence during the War - although friends would point out, with some levity, that he would break it occasionally to ask "Got any speed?"
Worn down and ailing from years of drug addiction, police confrontation, and shock therapy, Bob passed away in San Francisco Jan 12, 1986.

Though he was published by New Directions and City Lights, respected and held in awe by his peers, "the hidden master of the beats" never quite fit in to the beat movement or any any movement - an individual to the last;

'...i know of a place in between between, behind behind, in front of front, below below, above above, inside inside, outside outside, close to close, far from far, much farther than far, much closer than close, another side of an other side...it lies out on the far side of music...that darkling plane of light on the other side of time...it begins at the bitter ends..."

Bob Kaufman in younger days

* thanks to dear pal Sarah of Waterville for sending me some Kaufman just when the soul needed it most!

check out Bob Kaufman's poetry books:
Golden Sardine
Ancient Rain
Solitudes Crowded With Loneliness
Cranial guitar

P-celts and Q-celts

2006-09-15T07:33:00.000-07:00

A strange happenstance in the story of European language that continues to fascinate me and 12 other odd souls in the world;
The division of the Celtic Languages into those who will use a "P" sound for the same word that another Celt will use the "Q" (or more modernly expressed hard "C" sound).
So, on the P team we have the Welsh, the Bretons, and in days gone past; the Cornish, Cumbrians, the Gauls (for the most part), the Lepontic Celts (Northern italy) and a few other stragglers. The Picts in Scotland are thought to have spoken a Pre-Celtic language that was later melded with. or superseded by, a P-Celtic dialect
On the Q Team we have the Irish, the Scots, the Manx, and in days gone by; the Celtiberians of Spain - now represented by the Galicians, Asturians, and to some extent, the Portuguese (presently, respectfully, speaking dialects of Spanish and Portuguese influenced by their former Celtic tongues).

as an example;

four and five in Welsh are "pedwar" and "pump"
in Irish they are "ceathair" and "cuig"

son in Welsh is "map"
in Irish it's "mac'

"head" or "headland" in Welsh is "Pen" - thus a large number of place names beginning wwith "Pen"
in Irish it's "Ceann" - ausually anglicized into "Ken" or "Kin" (thus Kenmore and Kintyre, etc.)

.....and so it goes. No one knows for sure how, why, and when the division began.

What is even more interesting is that a similar division occured within the Italic languages (Latin was a "Q" language and the long-gone Oscan-Umbrian languages "P").
The division was also evident between Latin and Greek. Thus prefixes for five derived from Greek use "penta-" (ie. pentagon, pentacle) while Latin uses "quinta-" (think of quintuplets and quincunx).
There is some postulation that the P-Celts on continental Europe lived in areas near the P-group Italics and Hellenics and there was some exchange of language pattern.

We know from Pre-Roman inscriptions that the Celtiberians of Spain spoke a Q-celtic language and this may give credence to the ancient Irish oral tradition that claims a major Celtic settlement via the sea from Northern Spain some 2500 or more years ago. A friend of ours from Galicia is fond in pointing out that her family could easily pass for Irish.

* now, for an almost unrelated diversion; I've heard it said that some scholars claim that "the eeney, meeny, miney, moe" of "catch a tiger by the toe" is derived from the Pre-Celtic language of Britain. Then there is the old language of the tinkers in Ireland and Scotland...

Epistle To Derroll

2006-09-06T10:51:00.000-07:00

Epistle To Derroll - Donovan

Come all ye starry starfish
living in the deep blue sea
crawl to me i have proposition to make thee
would you walk the north sea floor
to Belgium from England
Bring me word of a banjo man
With a tattoo on his hand.

The spokesman of the starfish
spoke as spokesman should
"If’n you met our fee then
certainly we would,
If you cast a looking-glass
upon the scallopped sand
You'll have word o' this banjo man
with a tattoo on his hand."

"Come ye starry starfish
I know your ways are caped
maybe its because your astrologically shaped,
Converse with the herring shoals
as I know you can
Bring me word o' the banjo man
with a tattoo on his hand."

The eldest of the starfish
spoke, after a sigh,
"Youthfull as you are young man
you have a 'Wisdom Eye';
Surely you must know a looking-glass
is made from sand?
These youngfish are fooling you
about this banjo man."

"Come then aged starfish
Riddle me no more,
for news I am weary
and my heart is sore;
All on the silent seashore,
help me if you can,
Tell to me if you know
of this banjo man."

"All through the seven oceans
I am a star, most famed,
Many 'leggys' have I lost
and many have I gained,
Strange to say quite recently
I've been to Flemish Land
And if you are courteous
I'll tell you all I can."

"You have my full attention"
I answered him with glee,
His brother stars were twinkling
in the sky above the sea
So I sat there with rapt
attention, on the sand,
very anxious for to hear
of the banjo man.

"I have seen this tattooed hand
through a ship port-hole,
Steaming on the watery main
through the waves so cold,
Heard his tinkling banjo and
his voice so grand
but you must come to Belgium
to shake his tattooed hand."

"Gladly would I come oh
gladly would I go,
Had I not my work to do
and my face to show,
I rejoice to know he's well
but I must go inland,
thank you for the words you brought
of the banjo man."

I walked along the evening sand
as charcoal clouds did shift
revealing the moon shining
on the pebble drift
Contemplating every other word
the starfish said
whistly winds they filled my dreams
in my dreaming bed.

(below, a little about the man behind my favorite Donovan song - off of "For Little Ones" in 1967)

Derroll Adams was one of those peripheral legends whose name was threaded in and out of the music and commentary of some of the musical idols who really turned me around to playing and composing (yes, even in the jazz realm)- notably Bert Jansch, John Renbourn, and Donovan Leitch.
Derroll came over to Britain in the 1950's on tour with his pal Ramblin Jack Elliot -and together they really had an impact on the British folk scene.

Derroll wrote a famous song much covered in the folk world "Portland Town". He had a deep singing voice, a magnetic stage presence, and a simple but original, "up-picking" banjo-style that even guitarists like Donovan and Bert Jansch were drawn to and incorporated into their guitar styles. On his 2nd record, Bert Jansch actually recorded his only solo banjo tune, "900 Miles", which he learned from Derroll.
Derroll remained in Britain throughout the 60's and 'retired' with occasional appearances to Antwerp, Belgium where he lived til his death on Feb 2,2000.

* kind readers -as someone said, Derroll's life reads like a full-length Wallace Stegner novel - and i wouldn't know where to begin to pick up all the bits and pieces.
here are some nice links.

www.wizzjones.com
A must-see video clip of another legend, English guitarist/ singer Wizz Jones singing and playing (with a bit of Derroll's influence on guitar) a tribute to Mr. Adams
a simple and affecting song "The Man with the Banjo"

http://www.theessink.com/en/photos/derroll/derroll01.html
The site of the incredible Belgian blues and roots musician Hans Theessink featuring plenty of great pictures of Derroll Adams. Hans contributes some great renditions to "Banjoman: A tribute to Derroll Adams" which also features Arlo Guthrie, Donovan, Ralph McTell, and even Dolly Parton among other luminaries!

http://corporate.skynet.be/welec/songs.html
discussion and soundclips regarding Derroll's banjo style and songs.

www.derrolladams.com
...is currently under revision; as I remember seeing it many months ago, very impressive.

* special thanks to Hans Theessink for the picture off Derroll and his "tattooed hand" featured above

Hotel de Lauzun

2006-09-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

In the 1840's, the Hotel de Lauzun, on the Ile de St Louis in the heart of Paris, rented out rooms to the Club De Hashiscins. The Hashischins counted among their members some the most respected novelists, painters and poets of Paris of the time.
Theophile Gautier, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Gerard de Nerval, Eugene Delacroix were regulars but Gustave Flaubert and Balzac dropped by.
Charles Baudelaire was the most notorious member, although he was not a frequent "paricipant" he rented an apartment in the building and worked on his famous "Artificial Paradises" book which described (more from observation and conversations with the "Club" members than his own experience) the effects of hashish intoxication.

Gautier recounts his initial experience at the Hotel:

"One December evening..I arrived in a remote quarter in the middle of Paris, a kind of solitary oasis which the river encircles in its arms on both sides as though to defend it against the encroachments of civilisation. It was an old house on the Isle the Ile De St.Louis the Pimodan hotel built by Lauzun..."
Gautier comes to room where, "several human shapes were stirring about a table, and as soon as the light reached me and I was recognised, a vigorous shout shook the sonorous depths of the ancient edifice. 'It's he! It's he!' cried some voices together; 'let's give him his due!' "
In their rooms at the hotel, the "Club" would don Arab clothing. Before dinner they would drink a strong coffee laced with hashish. Called 'dawamesk" by the Arabs, this concoction, featured a mixture of hashish, cinnamon, cloves, nutmeg, pistachio, sugar, orange juice, butter and cantharides. Hash smokers must take note that in this "paste" form the drug was far more potent.

"The doctor (Jean-Jacques Moreau, a founding member)stood by a buffet on which lay a platter filled with small Japanese saucers. He spooned a morsel of paste or greenish jam about as large as a thumb from a crystal vase, and placed it next to the silver spoon on each saucer. The doctor's face radiated enthusiasm; his eyes glittered, his purple cheeks were aglow, the veins in his temples stood out strongly, and he breathed heavily through dilated nostrils. 'This will be deducted from your share in Paradise,' he said as he handed me my portion..."
Dinner follows and then the hashish begins to take effect. Gautier notices the others appear "somewhat strange. Their pupils became big as a screech owl's; their noses stretched into elongated probosces; their mouths expanded like bell bottoms. Faces were shaded in supernatural light....a deadening warmth pervaded my limbs, and dementia, like a wave which breaks foaming on to a rock, then withdraws to break again, invaded and left my brain, finally enveloping it altogether. That strange visitor, hallucination, had come to dwell within me."
What then transpires in each of the participant would depend on whom one asks...

Baudelaire introduces his comments in Les Paradises Artificiel by what now appears to be common knowledge, that the hasheesh eater "
will find in hashish nothing miraculous, absolutely nothing but an exaggeration of the natural. The brain and organism on which hashish operates will produce only the normal phenomena peculiar to that individual - increased, admittedly, in number and force, but always faithful to the original."
Baudelaire's personal experience was fascinating and otherworldly but ultimately nightmarish, as if he had been reading nothing but Poe for a decade.
Balzac, who claimed to have heard celestial voices and beheld divine paintings remained a loyal unadulterated coffee-fiend: he was known to drink 20 or more cups a day.
Gautier's love affair with the drug was short-lived, and he quit "after trying it some ten times or so,... not that it hurt me physically, but because a real writer needs no other than his own natural dreams, and does not care to have his thought controlled by the influence of any agency whatever."
Amen to that!

..and yet, wouldn't I like to venture down to the local time-travel rental on a foggy evening, tear out of the 21st century lot, and make my way (my vehicle now transformed to a horse and carriage), down the avenue Quai d'Anjou to number 7, the Hotel de Lauzun, adjusting my fez as I wend up the staircase and take a corner chair in the dark? Sipping on strong coffee, of course...

* thanks to the ever-eloquent persephone2u for reacqainting me with Baudelaire and De Quincey.

William Carlos Williams; Song

2006-08-26T15:29:00.000-07:00

beauty is a shell
from the sea
where she rules triumphant
till love has had its way with her

scallops and
lion's paws
sculptured to the
tune of retreating waves

undying accents
repeated till
the ear and the eye lie
down together in the same bed

Serge Chaloff: Body & Soul, April 4, 1955

2006-08-26T13:36:00.000-07:00

The standard ballad “Body and Soul” has long been a common musical podium where jazz improvisers step up to make their own signature testament – not necessarily with that intent, but certainly with an awareness of the different takes on it that have come before.

My personal favorite is baritone saxophonist Serge Chaloff’s version from his “Boston Blow Up” record. As I see it, Hawkins, Rollins, Coltrane and the rest need to step aside for this one.

Chaloff’s statement; alternatively tender, raw and harrowing – like someone suddenly overcome with memories of a love affair long put aside in the interest of “carrying on”.
Serge stood apart from other baritonists (ie. Mulligan, Pepper Adams, Cecil Payne etc.) in that he consistently chose to play the full range of the instrument high to low. The varying textures in different registers give drama to the change in dynamics and emotion in his “story line”.
There are times when he moves too suddenly from a gentle line to a harsh, blasted note. Having heard this version a thousand times over 30 odd years, I now anticipate it and prepare myself, but in the totality of the song it makes perfect sense – it almost breaks from “music” and becomes a voiced, unpremeditated confession.

Serge tops off his masterpiece, ending the with a short a cappella cadenza: he descends deftly down a stony stairway after having made his statement on the windy heights and jumps headlong into the bottom Bb – disappearing into a jazz eternal night, leaving naught but the ripples.
(did I just say that?)

* 2 landmark records of Serge have been released in one cd package by Definitive records out of Spain: his masterpiece, Blue Serge – with Sonny Clark, Philly Joe Jones, and Leroy Vinnegar; together with Boston Blow Up (with a stellar cast of Boston bebop players of the time), not as great in its totality but worth it just for Body and Soul

Three Nines for Mr. H.

2006-08-18T08:51:00.000-07:00

Nine Liverpool Streets

Fearnside
Fazakerley
Lapwing Court

Ash Crescent
Combermere
Rymers Green

Pimbley Grove
Penny Lane
Bootle

Nine Emanations of Favorite Byrds Tune

She
She Don’t
She Don’t Care
She Don’t Care About
She Don’t Care About Time
.......Don't Care About Time
................Care About Time
........................About Time
..................................Time

Nine North Carolina Rivers

Swannanoa
Hominy Cree
Nolichucky

Nantahala
Great Pee Dee
Roanoke

Shalotte
Roaring
French Broad

* pictured above; liverpool ladies cleaning doorsteps, 1954
and graffiti from Bologna, Italy - photo by Aly Artusio-Glimpse

If I Could Only Remember My Name

2006-08-17T08:48:00.000-07:00

An apt-titled record if there ever was one...but not only in the,"If you remember the 60's you weren't there" sense you might think.
The solo album of David Crosby from 1970-71 still cycles round to my playing lists after lengthy sojourns, like a long-lost friend who travels the world. No amount of obligatory prattle about Crosby's personal-life excesses will budge me an iota from marvel at his musical accomplishments here. In homage to Crosby, who just had a 65th birthday a few days ago, I recall the aphorism of some grizzled Indian seer, "What cares the lion about the croaking of frogs?"

The review of the record by a fan like Scotty Ryan leaves me laughing but eloquently strikes a chord;

"If every speck of weed were to disappear from the planet tomorrow, it would still be possible to get stoned just from this CD. (Strictly speaking, you wouldn't even have to listen to it; you could pick up a contact high just from holding it in your hand.)"
and....
"If the first thirty seconds of "Tamalpais High (At About Three) doesn't leave you stunned and transfixed, then you and I aren't from the same home planet -- and I don't especially want to visit yours."
Now, I might tarry a little longer on some of these planets than Scotty but...
In the spirit of the proceedings I might add, taking first a swig from my own poteen, "In the last 30 seconds of 'Song Without Words' the Guitars of Garcia, Kaukonen, Crosby, and Casady, gently collide and collapse into harmonic shards...there is a silent pause and then the
acapella voices of "Orleans" knead the already realigned cranium into starry-eyed humility. If this doesn't move you, I'll be the first to put a dollar in the jar for your soul transplant."

The record was produced by Stephen Barncard at Wally Heider Studios in San Francisco, while he was simultaneously working "American Beauty" with the Dead. Barncard still speaks with amazement at the focus and inspiration of Crosby at these sessions, but his own contribution - free of the later over-kill of 70's rock/pop records - really makes for a sonic milestone.
"If I Only..." has a cast of thousands of Cosby's musician friends, but the steady- core group that really gives the record its character consists of Crosby on guitars and vocals (sometimes harmonizing with himself), Garcia on lead guitar and pedal steel, Lesh on bass, and Kreutzmann on drums (all from the Grateful Dead), with the addition of Jorma Kaukonen sharing the leads with Jerry, and, also from the soon to dissolve Airplane, the great Jack Casady on bass.
The stellar cast doesn't crowd and jostle the proceedings, which are far more intimate and elegant than the works of their "home" bands. What I would've given to see this ensemble make a few more records.

Master-touches of the session:
Garcia's understated but majestic pedal steel solo on "Laughing" - enhanced seamlessly by Barncard's sound chamber.

The harp and (?) dulcimer of Laurie Allan weaving around Crosby's vocals and guitar on "Traction in the Rain"

The chordal vocal harmonies of Crosby and occasionally Nash on "Tamalpais High", "Song Without Words", the title track at the end, and "Orleans" - the borrowed french folk-song melody sung in french - which turns out to be a mere list of cathedrals....(some residual memory of the Byrds and "Bells of Rhymney"?)

The idosyncratic guitar tuning that Crosby uses on "Tamalpais.." and "Song.." - EBDGAD - the same which lent uneathly beauty to "Guinnevere" on the 1st CSNY session.

Last but not least, Crosby's use of silence to great effect. An oft-forgotten musical
element.

* thanks to Scotty for his kind permission to use his quotes

Jean Dufy

2006-08-14T22:41:00.000-07:00

Back in the wayback I hardly gave a wink at Raoul Dufy's paintings. I'd take a peripheral glance and decide that they were just naive, superficial cottony fluff that must have dashed off his brush while he was mincing about in his pajamas and munching on a pink ice cream bon-bon.

Some time later, in the early 80's I saw quirky movie shot in black and white with some surrealistic premise. Now I don't remember the name of it but I do recall Bill Murray had a cameo role as a bus driver who(don't ask me how) took tourists on a jaunt to the moon. One of the main characters was a young artist who was obsessed with Raoul Dufy. Somehow this got me round to looking a little closer at Dufy's work and i wasn't displeased. But, I didn't pursue it further.
(By the way, if anyone out there has seen this movie and knows the name, I'd be grateful if you'd let me know because I've scoured cinephile brains in vain)

Then about 4 years ago I saw a major collection of diverse painters at the Phoenix Art Museum - when I came into the room with the large Raoul Dufy painting of his studio, I was transfixed and had to continually return and bathe in the holy light of it.
Then and there he finally reached me - the lines and colors were so simple but filled with grace and light like a breeze from another planet.

So what does Jean Dufy have to do with it? Well, I kind of blundered across some of Jean's paintings while looking through a catalog of Raoul's. Of course Jean was a younger brother of Raoul and he revered him as a master teacher - among others - and, at first glance there is little to distinguish Jean's paintings from Raoul's. After awhile, a subtle difference can be seen.
Interestingly, though Raoul's paintings were often musically inspired Jean actually was a musician; he played classical guitar and jazz bass.

So in honor, of guitarists, jazz bassists, painters, and - perhaps - lovers of pink ice cream bon-bons, I dedicate this blog to the littler-known Jean Dufy.

Jean and one of his paintings above....

La Vie En Rose

2006-08-13T21:53:00.000-07:00

Edith Piaf's La Vie En Rose is a song that has been popular long enough, far and wide enough, to be a cliche and fodder for amusing parody, while retaining the soul to still sneak up, unsuspected, at just the right moment and pierce the heart.
For the French who lived through the German Occupation Edith Piaf songs have a special emotional pull because of her efforts to help the Resistance and prisoners of war.
Edith Piaf was essentially a child of the streets, rising up from a near homeless existence, singing as a sideshow to her sidewalk-acrobat father. She managed to educate herself, reading on the fly, amid a torrid, mixed-up life. When she died in 1963 "her funeral procession drew hundreds of thousands of mourners onto the streets of Paris and the ceremony at the cemetery was jammed with more than forty thousand fans. Charles Aznavour recalled that Piaf's funeral procession was the only time, since the end of World War II, that Parisian traffic came to a complete stop."
So it is doubly affecting to note that, basically, she herself came up with the melody and lyrics.

Many Americans have only heard the English version of the lyrics, as sung by Louis Armstrong and others:
"Hold me close and hold me fast
The magic spell you cast
This is la vie en rose...." and so on
Actually the original lyrics are quite different, though similar in sentiment.
Here is the begiining of the French/Piaf version - the intro in the first paragraph and the familar melody beginning with "Quand.."- and a very literal English translation after:

Des yeux qui font baisser les miens
Un rire qui se perd sur sa bouche
Voilà le portrait sans retouches
De l'homme auquel j'appartiens

Quand il me prend dans ses bras
Il me parle tout bas
Je vois la vie en rose
Il me dit des mots d'amour
Des mots de tous les jours
Et ça m'fait quelque chose

The eyes that make mine lower
A laughter that gets lost on his mouth
There is the portrait unretouched
Of the man I belong to

When he takes me in his arms
He speaks to me low
I see life in pink
He tells me words of love
The every day words
And that made me something

* at the top, Raoul Dufy's painting "La vie En Rose"

Orvieto: Slow City

2006-08-10T09:02:00.000-07:00

We came to the Italian hill town/city of Orvieto in western Umbria on our jaunt to the coast. It was one of the "unscheduled" delights of the trip - winding medieval streets with walls bedecked with flowers, shops, bars, bookstores, restaurants, young people dressed in everything from solid colors, punkish, scarved, or neo-hippie threads all in an an unassumingly elegant styl, (sprezzatura, again);everywhere friendly laid-back people, patient with my earnest but creaky italian, who went out of their way to guide and give directions.
Beneath the city, dating from Etruscan times, lies a "subterranean city", a staggering maze of paths, cellars, grottos and shelters, carved from the resilient volcanic tufa stone that is the base of the town's buildings.
We left with a contented mellow buzz, reflecting, even now, on our luck. As we left we gazed back at Orvieto from a distance through the rolling hills of fruit trees and cypresses, looking like a town from a fairy-tale, nestled outside of time, high on the steep cliffs.

It was only after we got back to Arizona that I found out that Orvieto was a Slow City , one of some 50-plus Italian cities belonging to the "Citta Slow" movement. The Cittaslow grew out of the "Slow Food" movement which still thrives and was, essentially, a reaction against the burgeoning fast food "americanisation" of Europe. Cittaslow encourages an appreciation of the individuality of place rather than quick-fix global, corporate, sameness running roughshod over the unsuspecting. At the same time, it acknowledges the use of 'green' technologies and does not intend to step aside from the modern world and turn these towns into quaint tourist museums.

Quoting an article from The New Internationalist magazine Mar 2002,
"The Slow city program involves enlarging parks and squares and making them greener, outlawing car alarms and other noises that disturb the peace, and eliminating ugly TV aerials, advertising posters and neon signs.
Other priorities include the use of recycling, alternative energy sources and ecological transportation systems. The movement rejects the notion that it is anti-progress and holds that technologies can be employed to improve the quality of life and natural urban environment."
Of course "indigenous" traditional crafts, and cuisines are encouraged, and support of local growers.
Though obviously a tourist draw, these cities are managing to use the influx to benefit the continuity of local culture. Many younger 'exiles" of these towns are returning to work in the revived economy. If anything, a shortage of available workers has been a concern.
There are still a lot of kinks to work out but the movement seems to be gaining ground, slowly...

for more info on Cittaslow;
http://www.slowmovement.com/slow_cities.php
www.slowfood.com

Joe Gould's Poem

2006-08-09T17:45:00.000-07:00

Saw the movie "Joe Gould's Secret" last night (with Ian Holm as Joe), the homeless NY writer of "The Oral History of the World". There's a great scene in the movie where Joe and Joe Mitchell from the New Yorker magazine enter a Greenwhich Village poetry reading. When the proprietor sees Joe enter, he mutters in disgust something about Joe, "..only coming in for the food". A rather stodgy elderly woman is droning on with a reading as Joe is in the rear, back turned from the podium, scarfing up a storm at the snack table, mumbling disparaging remarks in between bites. Joe's running chatter grows more disruptive; pandemonium ensues as the proprietor and outraged patrons try to usher Joe out the door. Joe breaks free and runs to the front of the room. "I HAVE A POEM!" Things seem to quiet a bit, as people stare in disbelief....

In the winter
I'm a buddhist

In the summer
I'm a nudist!

(actual picture of Joe above)

Lester leaned....

2006-08-01T20:13:00.000-07:00

Found a Lester Young story i hadn't heard in the (updated) Jazz Anecdotes: Second Time Around by (bassist) Bill Crow - published by Oxford University Press -

Lester went into a jazz club to hear some friends play. He didn't bring
his saxophone. He just wanted to listen. he intentionally sat in a dark
part of the room, hoping not to be recognized, but someone noticed him
and he heard them whispering, "Wow, that's Lester Young!""Maybe we can
get him to sit in!" Lester leaned over to the table and whispered,
"i don't dig being dug while I'm digging."

Browning Versions

2006-07-25T07:57:00.000-07:00

Pete Browning was Tod Browning's uncle. Neither seemed to have any relation to the poet Robert Browning - that would've been too much on the odd juxtapositions meter.

Pete Browning was one of the greatest batters in 19th century baseball. He had a lifetime batting average of .341 - the 4th highest of any righthander in history. More famously - though there is some dispute about it - Ol' Pete was known as the original "Louisville Slugger". His moniker adorns the most famous type of bat in baseball, made by Hillerich and Bradsby. Pete gave Biblical names to his bats and "retired' them when he felt they'd exhausted all the hits fate had allotted them - only fitting that baseball's most famous bat was initially (it is conjectured) made for him.

Pete was not "running on the beaten path" shall we say...a severe case of mastoiditis left him almost entirely deaf since childhood. This condition indirectly lead to pain-numbing alcoholism (a flask of whiskey habitually tucked in his baseball jersey, and one local paper continually addressed him as "Pietro Redlight District Distellery Interests Browning"), a reputation as a bumbling fielder, and the adoption of a defensive position that involved standing on one foot and sticking the other outward in the air - Monty Python Ministry of Silly Stances? No, he was defending himself against oncoming runners or fielders whom he wouldn't hear.

Now on to the nephew, Tod Browning (pictured at the top, and note the Browning ear similarities), who lived 2 houses down from Pete in Louisville.
Under the spell of a "side-show queen" Tod left home to join the carnival and shine in such roles as the Hypnotic Living Corpse - he was put in a trance and "buried alive' on the carnival grounds to be miraculously disinterred 3 days later. From there it was on to vaudeville, movie-acting, and finally, behind the camera, as an assistant to D.W.Griffith. He struck out on his own and teamed up with Lon Chaney, "the Man of a Thousand Faces", to make a series of bizarre and incomparable films - long on improbable plots and high on the atmospheric. The Unholy Three,West of Zanzibar, and The Blackbird are still raved about in silent film circles.
If Tod Browning is remembered by J.Q.Public at all today it is as the director and creative force behind Dracula(with Bela Lugosi) and Freaks (which was altered to be a more of a "horror" film than he intended, by the studio heads).

I don my rose-colored spectacles, and like to remember Tod as the nephew of Ol' Pete and I imagine they tossed a few balls around and shared some stories. Of course there's no record of it....

Lord Buckley; Post-Trip

2006-07-24T12:35:00.000-07:00

Came across an article in an Utne Reader about the early, pre-hippie days of LSD research.
Psychiatrist Oscar Janiger was funded by the Sandoz Corp. to administer the drug to a variety of personages in the Los Angeles area in the late fifties and report back their experiences. Among a fair assortment of artists, writers, and performers selected for the "sessions" was the great -attempting here to describe the ineffable-"beat monologist/comedian" Lord Buckley.

After his first "trip", Buckley reported the effect in relation to events of the following day: (some familiarity with the singular voice and countenance of Buckley is proper requisite for full impact of this vignette)

"I was opened up to the beauty in people who had never seemed beautiful before. The next morning at the Pancake House, I walked up and bowed to four nuns. I had never spoken to nuns before - i couldn't penetrate their cloak of reverence. I walked up to them, and loved them, and they were sure I owned the place, and gave me their orders for breakfast. When the waiter came and I sat down at my table, it shook them.
But i spoke to them again and told them i saw them as Sisters of Beauty. They tittered and giggled and blushed, well-pleased."

Sara Tavares

2006-07-19T13:41:00.000-07:00

I just stumbled across a very cool record, "Balance" by singer/songwriter, Sara Tavares. Sara is from Portugal hailing from second generation Cape Verdean immigrants. Her music is a mix of Cape Verde and Portuguese styles with the modern sounds of Soul, Bossa Nova, and Funk. Very gentle, but it kicks.
Check out the nice little videoclip of Sara doing the title track at
http://www.worldconnection.nl/wclayout/index.php?site_id=25
(scroll down to the bottom of the page)

Tops of the Pops: July

2006-07-16T20:12:00.000-07:00

Ok, a break from my Italy raves -
Here are my top song rotations for the last 2 Weeks;

I'm Waiting For the Man - Velvet Underground from
The Velvet Underground & Nico 1967 -
I gotta hear this one continuously. Wish the whole record was like this,; I'm guessing this cut in particular was an influence over many.

Night and Day - Joe Henderson from Inner Urge -
Joe is really talking through the horn here and playing the tune in a lower key (sonorous for him) than normal. Exquisite Elvin jones laying down the carpet. Its rare carpet from the Mountains of the Moon.

With A Song In My Heart and Time On My Hands -
from Sonny Rollins (various titles) 1951 -
I live with this record ALL year round; these 2 tunes in particular. Sonny's sound and feeling here are like bread, water, air, rain...and wine.

Bruce Cockburn; The Instrumentals -
A friend compiled this for me. Cockburn has a great original guitar style and is always a delightful surprise.

The Tarot Garden

2006-07-13T08:34:00.000-07:00

The Tarot Garden of Niki De Saint-Phalle lies just off the coast of Tuscany in a wooded area connected to an old quarry.
Niki De Saint-Phalle was initially inspired by the Park Guell of Gaudi in Barcelona which she visited as a child, as well as the fabulous garden of Bomarzo outside of Rome. With the help of many artisans and laborers from around the world, Niki spent 18 years planning and constructing the sculptures of the Garden - basing them on figures of the Tarot. For a time she lived inside of the giant Empress figure - known also as the Sphinx - designing and supervising construction. Her husband, the artist Jean Tinguely, assisted with much of the work and built kinetic sculptures that are motion activated by your strolls in their proximity.

The Garden was must-see goal of our trip to Italy and we drove many miles from Assisi to see it one day. We stopped in the old Umbrian hill-town of Orvieto on the way and, as the hours drifted by, we realized we were "cutting it close"! It was almost 7pm when we made it to the coast and, after despairing of finding the place at all, we arrived at the Garden parking lot nestled in at the end of a country lane. I bounded up the hill and jumped for joy to see that we still had a half-hour before closing!
Wow!

To visit the website of the Tarot Garden, go to www.nikidesaintphalle.com
There are many books on the work and life of Niki. Notably, Niki De Saint Phalle:
My Art, My Dreams an autobiography with assistance by Carla Schulz-Hoffman, and
Pierre Descargues

Venezia

2006-07-11T19:09:00.000-07:00

Summer in Venice took me quite by surprise. I thought I'd been there enough in my mind after a lifetime of cliched gondola-and-canal imagery. It wasn't like that. I was surprised that the anomalous beauty of the place almost made me forget the hordes of summer tourists.

The buildings and bridges in winding pathways and along the water lie suspended between forms finely crafted in simple lines or oriental arabesques by human hand - in an array of colors never repeating - and patterns of time and decay making a meal of the material world. This, set against the milky green canals and the lagoon, turning different shades by the hour.

In his "The City of Falling Angels", John Behrendt captures arrival there in a nutshell:

"I had been to Venice a dozen times or more, having fallen under its spell when I first caught sight of it twenty years before - a city of domes and bell towers, floating hazily in the distance, topped here and there by a marble saint or a gilded angel."

"On this latest trip, as always, I made my approach by water taxi. The boat slowed as we drew near; then it slipped into the shaded closeness of a small canal. Moving at an almost stately pace, we glided past overhanging balconies and weatherworn stone figures set into crumbling brick and stucco. I looked up through open windows and caught glimpses of painted ceilings and glass chandeliers. I heard fleeting bits of music and conversation, but no honking of horns, no squealing of brakes, and no motors other than the muffled churning of our own.
People walked over footbridges as we passed underneath, and the backwash from our boat splashed on moss-covered steps leading down into the canal. That twenty minute boat-ride had become a much-anticipated rite of passage, transporting me three miles across the lagoon and five hundred to a thousand years back in time."

Bologna, Italia

2006-07-07T21:49:00.000-07:00

Me in front of a poster of Lyda Borelli (aforementoned Italian silent film actress) in the Piazza Maggiore, Bologna c. June 19.
I may look pensive - wandering down a philosophical backroad - but what i'm really thinking is, "I reckon I'd like to have some more of them fried fritters."

Quoting Caravaggio

2006-07-07T13:40:00.000-07:00

While in Italy I was reading "The Lost Painting" by Jonathan Harr. It's a true story presented as an "art detective-style" thriller (if such things thrill you) centering on a painting of Caravaggio's thought to be lost, "The Taking of Christ". I finished the book on the plane from Venice to JFK and, fittingly, "lost" it somewhere along with a journal I'd kept - probably in those damn pocket-pouch things that swallows up my stuff. (It was one of those "couldn't put it down, but when i did....." books)

Only in recent years has Caravaggio achieved his placement high up in the pantheon of classic Italian painters along with Raphael, Da Vinci, Botticelli, Titian, Michelangelo et al.
His neglect for centuries is due partially to the unconventional subject matter and style of his paintings. Though he was paid stupendous sums by his patrons, late renaissance and early baroque Italian art critics were not ready for him. It fell to the Dutch painters of the 17th century to carry his torch. Many appreciated and adapted his chiaroscuro, and dramatic natural style; most notably Rembrandt, through his teacher Peter Lastman.
During his lifetime and soon after his death Caravaggio was condemned for using prostitutes and street people as models. His combative personality was another strike against him.

Caravaggio left very little in the way of documentation about his personal life. After hearing the documented quotes of artists writing to their patrons, ie "I have completed the 10 cherubs on the border and, as you desired, included the gold leaf inlay on the robes..." - I take perverse enjoyment in relishing one of the few quotes attributed to Caravaggio. Apparently he was accosted by police for a carrying a dagger and sword. After presentiing his permit for them, he shot back in Italian, "Ti ho un culo!" - "Shove it up your ass!".

Morandi

2006-07-06T20:00:00.000-07:00

Sent my friend, poet David Chorlton, a postcard from Bologna, Italy after i visited the Museum of painter Giorgio Morandi there 2 weeks ago. Early yesterday morning, having returned to Phoenix, I heard something drop in the mailbox and found this poem hand-delivered from David...

Postcard from Bologna

with thanks to Tom

A postcard arrives from the province of Morandi
whose borders are the walls
of the room with a population of one
and whose army consists of bottles
standing to attention in coats of grey paint
applied by the man who directs them.

He invents a horizon, places an arrangement
before it, and dresses his imagination
in camouflage. Morandi is the minister
of interior space, discipline,
defence, and modesty. His daily routine

is to declare peace by wrapping
simple objects in light from a bulb
that hangs on a cord
from the sun at the center of his ceiling.

- David Chorlton

David Chorlton's poems and paintings can be glimpsed at
http://www.geocities.com/evmanak/chorlton.html
and www.howlingdogpress.com

Lyric Nitrate/ Lyda Borelli

2006-06-12T07:57:00.000-07:00

11 years before Decasia, Dutch film-maker Peter Delpeut released Lyric Nitrate , a poetic, personal tribute to silent film, assembled from movies and clips (spanning 1905-1915) long hidden in the attic of an Amsterdam moviehouse, where the noted collector, promoter, and distributor of old movies, Jean Desmet, had gathered them together for reasons only known to himself.

Like Decasia, Delpeut's film is made up of old nitrate footage in various states of decay - where it differs is that while Morrison's Decasia seems to focus on the interaction of decay with the figures of the film intensified by the mod-minimalist soundtrack, Delpeut takes a subtler route; choosing to linger over "intact" meditative, or dramatic, hand-tinted sequences before the final scenes that dissolve and flare into absolute abstract decay - with colors suggesting a high-speed flight across the surface of Jupiter.

Quoting movie critic Vincent Canby, "'Lyrical Nitrate' is the kind of homage that is best appreciated by people who are at a loss for words to express their appreciation for silent movies."
"By speeding up or slowing down the rate atwhich the clips are projected, he effectively deconstructs the original images, removing their meanings, in order to call attention to the delicate beauty possible, it seems, only with nitrate stock."
Using carefully selected musical pieces, and scratchy recordings of arias sung by Caruso (as does Woody Allen in "Match Point", come to think of it), interspersed with silences, Delpeut deftly underlines the sentiment, longing, and mystery of the scenes.

Among the most mesmerizing sequences assembled by Delpeut are scenes from the long lost Italian film (tinted in twilight blues) Fiore Di Male made in Italy in 1910. This movie features the opera singer/diva turned actress Lyda Borelli (pictured below), who pauses dramatically or moves with a natural physicality, as if she feels the scenes "musically"; sensible for an opera singer, and, in any case, silent movies were often filmed with a string quartet there on the set. There is a long sequence where Borelli falls to her death from a stab wound - Delpeut slows down, hold still the images, and starts again the film to accentuate her movements.
Delpeut was, in particular, moved by these Italian diva/films enough to later "assemble" another film from various films featuring Borelli, Pina Menichelli, and Francesca Bertini called Diva Dolorosa.

The Inverted Fountain

2006-05-31T08:42:00.000-07:00

As the Arizona summer settles in and turns the brain to custard, I think on days and nights back in Los Angeles spent sitting in and around the Inverted Fountain at UCLA.

The Inverted Fountain sits on the far east side of the campus.
The fountain's architects/designers (I believe, primarily, Howard Troller of Jere Hazlett)were challenged to come up with a fountain that departed from the usual water-shooting-upward format. Howard Troller was inspired by the potholes and hotsprings in the bubbling waters of Yellowstone Park;
"Unlike traditional fountains, the water of the Inverted Fountain flows inward across a bed of mutli-colored rocks, handpicked by Troller in Claremont, Calif. The current then meets at an off-center well, creating a miniature waterfall plunging into a 12-foot wide, 5-foot deep center that recirculates the water at 10,000 gallons per minute. The water’s movement adds a natural, yet distinct, sound to the south end of campus –that of a flowing mountain stream." (this from http://www.uclahistoryproject.ucla.edu/Fun/ThisMonth

On the periphery of the fountain was an inset area that was perfect for sitting and letting the water wash over you. That fountain was a nourishing source, vivid to this day, that I, and I'm sure countless others can at least return to in their imagination.

Decasia

2006-05-16T22:26:00.000-07:00

Decasia is a creative film montage meticulously and passionately assembled by Bill Morrison from a wide variety of early 20th century silver nitrate films in various states of decay and deterioration. Many of these films are (or were) poised on the brink of an obliteration that, in its final stages, curls them up into a donut-like goo before turning to dust.
Initially, Morrison happened upon old documentary films from the Fox Film company, archived and forgotten in Columbia, South Carolina - but as his project took shape, and film archivists were impressed by his devotion, he gained access to films from the Library of congress and MOMA.

While putting the film together, he found a partner traversing a somewhat parallel path in the music world, composer Michael Gordon. Using deterioration, distortion, de-tuning of sounds together with a variety of ethnic, and even rock directions, in a layered, minimalist fashion Gordon created a soundtrack for Decasia that intensifies Morrison's vision but leaves enough ambiguity to let the listener's imagination and emotions run wild.

Among the images... breaking waves, a hand-driven ferris wheel, dervish dancers, nuns walking through a convent, light comedies (one featuring Pearl White), rocket ship rides at Luna Park in Brooklyn, geishas, boxers, butterflies,
court room scenes, baptisms, parachutists, a man saved from drowning, volcanic craters, newborn babies - all intertwined with the blotches, globs, pustules, explosions, dots like black swarms of insects, melting acid fireworks like bioluminescent sponges from the depths of the sea that are the emblems of the decaying film.
In one scene a boxer is sparring with a shape created by the decay that twists and turns into an amorphous, bubbling, curtain of glitter.

Part of the spell the film casts, is an interplay between the intention and innocence of the original films and the inevitability of decay, dissolution, and death inherent in everything that moves and takes form. Unknown to them, decay dances around the living people, the streets and palaces, never repeating itself in particulars; at times it seems to consciously follow a shoe or a face, it shimmers backward and forward between positive and negative exposure, radiating eerie lights, transforming the springtime frolic of lovers into shadow dancing figures in a haunted masque ballroom.

By all means, go straight to www.decasia.com and (on the second page, at the bottom)
select "footage". you can watch and hear two 5 minute clips from the film which runs more than an hour in its entirety.

Sprezzatura

2006-05-12T04:29:00.000-07:00

Stumbled across this Italian word the other day. Its one of those words that are idiosyncratic to a language, ie. panache in French weltanschuung in German and maybe or maybe not quite translatable into English....

"Sprezzatura" (pronounced 'sprehts-ah-TOO-ra') was first used in print by the Renaissance Italian statesman Castiglione, who describes it as a style of behaviour in which every action,"conceals art, and presents what is done and said as if it was done without effort or virtually without thought."
More simply put, i've heard it elsewhere described as "performing something difficult in effortless and nonchalant manner".

The unassuming seamless bravado of Zen Swordsmanship or, in Hollywood terms, Clint Eastwood taking care of business in Wild West.

Come to think of it, there should be a word like "contra-sprezzatura" that defines actions by the likes of Mr.Bean: getting dressed in the morning or taking a civil service exam (or myself trying to
work a VCR/DVD...well, actually this is not acting). In other words, an easy action requiring little skill made to look incredibly complex and difficult. Hmmm...the implications are staggering.

Tops of the Pops

2006-05-06T23:57:00.000-07:00

Time for a quick one;
My most-listened-to list for the past month;
Springtime can Kill You (Dig) - Jolie Holland
.....her most dreamlike and weathery in tone, as in the edgier tonalist painters like Inness and Ryder but with a whiskey tinge, in that kind of New Orleans ghostroom Appalachian funky gypsy hobo-beat on the front porch in the mist kinda way she has. Fave-wise it's "Mexican Blue" out in front by a longshot, followed by "Crush In the Ghetto", "Stubborn Beast" head to head, "Springtime Can Kill You" and "Moonshiner" burning up the track not far behind...(On Spike Jones' record it's "Cabbage" by a head...followed by "Bee-eetlebaum!").

Fuchsia Swing Song Sam Rivers
....chord changes but Sam plays with such a free and liberating feel. Thanks Jimmy, for reminding of "Conference of the Birds" again.

Birds of Our Neighborhood - Innocence Mission
....Karen Peris is an angel on this earth. Not my fave album of their's (Glow and Befriended take the cake) but i play 2 songs from it over and over day after day. "Lakes of Canada" and "Snow".

The World of Nat King Cole - you know who
...On the Street Where You Live...gotta hear it every day

Caitlin Tully

2006-04-24T18:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday night we went downtown to see the symphony. Somehow I got hold of cheap 3rd row seats for 5 performances this year (I'm thinking they mixed me up with someone else!) This has been a real blessing - a chance to watch the performers up close and pick up on the body language and sometimes the real emotional response of the players to the music itself. I've seen a violinist break down in tears after a recital of Strauss's
last songs (the modern one), laughter at humorous passages, the vocal humming and growling of a guest pianist, the looks that said "I wonder what's to eat when this is over?", "My shoes are too tight", as well looks of transport out of this world...
I didn't know the details of Saturday's program until I sat down. The 2nd of the 3 offerings was to be Prokofiev's Violin Concerto No. 2. featuring an 18 year old violinist as guest soloist.

The symphony players tuned up, adjusted and settled in their seats.
Out walks a slender girl with light auburn red hair and a coppery red strapless gown who smiled and took a deep bow before beginning. With no music in front of her she closed her eyes and swept herself, and everyone, into the music. Her face had a kind of Irish babyfat look but with fine features nevertheless - with a little exagerration she could have been tweaked into a Tim Burton version of a Dr. Seuss story - but what struck me was the asymmetrical furrows of concentration that would breeze across her, as if she was being possessed by some ancient soul or, at least, the vestigial memory of one of her teachers.
I'm no judge of classical violinists but her tone just sang and she just breezed through intricate, modern chromatic passages that i imagined 10 years of confinement to a Tibetan monastery couldn't achieve. The looks on the faces of the symphony members seemed to confirm that my dazzlement wasn't entirely bumpkin.

After the show I looked up everything I could find about Caitlin Tully. She was not, as we had thought likely, born to musician parents. Her folks noticed her unusually strong attraction to the sound of the violin before she was three. Well-meaning, they bought her a keyboard and she got mad. When they got her violin next Christmas she was in joy and began lessons - eventually leading to lessons with Itzhak Perlman, public performance at 10, and its been steadily upward from there.
I was relieved to hear that she has understanding, non-interfering parents and a wide range of interests beyond the violin. She enjoys composing - working on a children's opera for which she composed the libretto and designed the clothing - studying languages, competing in 10k races, paragliding, and unicycle riding.

Yehudi Menuhin, famous violinist and child prodigy himself, said of Caitlin "She plays with more integrity than any young violinist I have heard."

Meanwhile - I sez to my 53 year old self - I want to get some practice in...

Kaleidoscope's Taxim

2006-04-22T17:49:00.000-07:00

While corresponding with my guitarist/percussionist friend Matt about improvisation in Arabic music - the word "taqsim" came up which is roughly equivalent to "improvisation" as in jazz. However ( as mentioned in the article "Arabic Concepts For Improvisation , By: Daniel Schnee, Canadian Musician, 07089635, Nov/Dec2005, Vol. 27, Issue 6)
it differs from "traditional" jazz forms in that "An Arabic taqsim is organized on the inverse concept. There is no fixed rhythmic form in bar scheme, time signature, or pulse. Because of this, it may seem that a taqsim sounds kind of random or formless, without what we would call 'direction' in the West." It actually has a definite direction, similar to the ragas in Indian music where certain notes and sequences are emphasized and expounded on to it give each piece its unique flavor.

When I read "taqsim" a bulb was lit and I was somersaulted back to the late 60's and "Taxim" a lengthy instrumental tune played by Kaleidoscope - just your typical underground, eclectic/ethno-jug-blues-psychedelic string band based out of LA..
"Taxim" starts slow and meditatively with Solomon Feldthouse on saz and Lindley on harp-guitar and builds steadily almost from formlessness to form.

Jimmy Page was very impressed by them. He'd heard them at the Avalon Ballroom in San Francisco back when he was with the Yardbirds. His quote;“They’re my favorite band of all time—my ideal band.” came at time when he was looking to incorporate some of the Middle Eastern and Celtic influences he was picking up from Davy Graham and Bert Jansch - touched upon in his instrumental feature back then "White Summer".

In the 70's after the demise of Kaleidoscope I was unknowingly blown away by the performances of Solomon Feldthouse - both in Santa Cruz and at the Novato Renaissance faire where he played with a gypsy style/flamenco dance and music troupe and later a belly dance troupe. He was calling himself Sulyman and I thought he was some kind of wild gypsy living in the hills - until somebody mentioned that he'd been in Kaleidoscope. Turns out he was born in Idaho but moved to Izmit, Turkey when he was 10 “I started playing while I was over there…Greek, Turkish and Persian music, ‘coz that’s what I heard every day. My mama used to like to go to Istanbul on the weekends sometimes…She ran into this gal from Spain that worked there [the singer Pepita Lerma] who was half gypsy, from Madrid…She gave my mother some records to give to me and I went berserk. We went to visit her in Madrid and she bought me my first guitar and showed me some of the stuff…I got a terminal disease from that.” He returned to the U.S. after 6 years and eventually began gigging in solo folk flamenco and belly dance situations.

David Lindley - another multi-instrumentalist who continuously grows and explores and has gained notoriety playing with Jackson Browne and countless others.
I don't know much about the rest of the guys except that they too came various backgrounds with a tilt towards jazz and bluegrass. There has been a recent reunion minus Lindley.

The basic line-up for the Beacon From Mars lp that contains Taxim gives you an idea of their sound:
David Lindley- banjo, fiddle, mandolin, guitar, harp-guitar and 7-string banjo
Solomon Feldthouse- saz bouzoukee, dobro, vina, doumbeg, dulcimer, fiddle and 12 string guitar
Fenrus Epp (AKA Chester Crill)- violin, viola, bass, piano, organ and harmonica
Chris Darrow- banjo, mandolin, fiddle, autoharp, harmonica and clarinet
John Vidican- percussion

some related links to check out: a site dedicated to Kaleidoscope;http://www.pulsatingdream.com/index.html
http://www.sirocco-music.com/ - Solomon's longtime band in the Santa Cruz area
http://www.hamzaeldin.com/ - The site of Hamza El Din, my favorite Middle Eastern style instrumentalist. Traditional roots, creative outcome. An inspiration to me since his Vanguard records in the late 60's and in live performance.

Poems in the Lestorian Mode

2006-04-19T23:26:00.000-07:00

Dexter Gordon grew up in Los Angeles and recalled young hipsters in the '30s on the street corner laying down rhymes to the tenor saxophone solos that Lester Young spun out for the Basie band.
The Beat writers and poets yet to come also dug Lester; Allen Ginsberg, speaking about his poem "Howl", said, "I depended on the word 'who' to keep the beat, a base to keep measure, return to and take off again onto another streak of invention..." (blowing, jazzlike) "Lester Young, actually is what i was thinking about...'Howl' is all 'Lester Leaps In'. And I got that from Kerouac."

When off-duty from his gig as poet of the tenor saxophone, Lester Young himself spoke, if he spoke at all, in phrases, metaphors, of is own invention -'takes' or improvisations riffed off the changes life handed him. Lester's poetic language was like a code, sometimes a playful way to conceal his true thoughts from the "unhip" but often a total puzzlement to his fellow musicians.
The pianist Jimmy Rowles, who composed the lovely jazz standard "The Peacocks", played with Lester for a few years and recalled, "You had to break that code to understand him. it was like memorizing a dictionary, and I think it took me about three months."

The keys on the piano or horn were "people", "left people" the fingers of pianist's left hand. The bridge of a tune "George Washington". If Lester was on the bandstand and wanted the bass player to take a solo
he would look over at him and say, "Put me in the basement". Drummer Roy Haynes was asked by Lester to join his band; "He didn't just come out and say 'Do you want to join my band?', Instead he said, 'Do you have eyes for the slave?'."
If Prez liked or was digging something he'd say "eyes!" and in some cases "bulging eyes!" or "Catalina eyes!" or "no eyes" if he didn't. If he was happy to see someone it was "bells!". "How are your feelings?" was a greeting - not a tough one...A new girlfriend was "a new hat" - then there were variations; "mexican hat dance", "skull-cap", and "homburg". A particularly good-looking woman was a "pound-cake". "Bing and Bob" (ala Crosby and Hope) were the police.
If there was an unpleasant person on the scene, rather than use "m-fer" Lester would say "Tommy Tucker is here" or another word similar in rhyme. Someone that would be a bringdown was "Von Hangman".
He'd punctuate his phrases with some Slim Gaillard jive like "oodastadis", "vout" and "oreeney". Something inordinately expensive was "chandelier". I picture Lester, at the counter of today's corporate coffeehouse with his long braided hair under the porkpie hat, all in black, and spats purchasing a latte and muffin;
"That will be 8 dollars,sir"
"Chandelier!"

His longtime fave drummer Jo Jones has this memory; "I saw Lester across the street in New York one day with one of his children - very young, you know. So i crossed over and asked him how he was doing. Now what he wanted to tell me was that he didn't mind if the child wet itself, but he didn't want to clean up any shit. So what he said was, 'I don't mind the waterfall, but I can't take the mustard!:

Thirty-some years ago listening to an early Billie Holiday/Teddy Wilson record in the dark, I heard a horn come in during the break of "Sun Showers" - it was the coolest/warmest swingingest little 8 bar phrase in a sound so voice-like and direct-it was like a being from out-of-this-world world that just materialized, drawn to the euphoric smoke-cloud of the session to give everybody just a taste enough...it was Lester and it was just a taste enough for me vow to learn the tenor sax one day if only to play something just close to a few notes of of what I'd heard.

Lester Young discography:
note: Anything before 1945 is Lester at his peak. The irony is that as Lester's health problems began to severely effect his playing (beginning after his return from the army in the 40's) he finally was able to make recordings under his own name. The upshot of this is that the novice listener comes across these later recordings more readily and assumes - scratching his head - that this is the Lester Young that inspired Charlie Parker, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Stan Getz, Miles Davis etc... Not so, his early work was what turned the direction of jazz around, although once in awhile a gem that echoed the facile brilliance of the early days pops up in the later years.
the good stuff....
Easy Does It: 1936-1940 (a lot of his solos with Basie and some great samll group sessions)
The Lester Young Story (box set from the UK)- a great well-rounded set.
The Keynote Sessions
Alladin Sessions (from 1942 and 1945)
Spirituals to Swing; Carnegie Hall 1938
(my favorite Lester is in relaxed, groovin' small group sessions and this set features some fantastic quartet/quintet numbers with Lester and Charlie Christian)

Best books:
A Lester Young Reader - edited by Lewis Porter
You Just Fight For Your Life - Frank Buchmann-Moller

Born To Kvetch

2006-04-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

"If the Stones's '(I Can't Get No)Satisfaction' had been written in Yiddish, it would have been called '(I Love to Keep Telling You that I Can't Get No) Satisfaction (Because Telling You that I'm Not Satisfied Is All That Can Satsify Me)." - Michael Wex Born To Kvetch

I grew up in West Los Angeles with close friends of Jewish heritage. Though their families were far from orthodox, there was enough Yiddish bandied about I could return from a pal's house and realize what a tsuris I'd gotten my self into at school, bemoan the mishuganeh drivers on Santa Monica Blvd., and say "oy gevolt!" when i hit a baseball through a parked car window.
I was particularly taken by the Jewish-Hungarian dishes, served with selzer water, of my friend's mother and grandmother and how my sanity was questioned when I wouldn't go beyond three helpings.
In my teens I had a Jewish girlfriend - if I'd been fluent with Yiddish, here I would've answered my friends "Iz zi sheyn? is she beautiful? Mayne sonim zoln zayn azoy miyes My enemies should be as ugly (as she is beautiful)" I went to her house for the first time and recalled not a word from her mom but in a flash an unforgettable warm plate of kasha was put before me - nothing like the pseudo-macrobiotic stuff i'd been making that my friends lovingly referred to as "gruel".

Born to Kvetch - Yiddish Language and Culture in All of Its Moods is one of the few books i've recently been unable to put down. Admittedly, it helps if the reader is a bit of a language nut, but there are some laugh-out-loud moments throughout. Interspersed with Talmudic interpretation and syntactical gymnastics, Wex cites incidents of Yiddish phrases in Three Stooges movies, comparisons with Twilight Zone episodes, analogies to songs by ? And the Mysterians, and Albert King.

In a nutshell the "kvetch" is portrayed not just as a complaint but as a kind of pre-emptive strike against those forces of evil and mischief that would love to pounce upon compliments or other admissions of joy and acceptance. Thus, the tradition of breaking glasses at the start of a wedding - those spirits that would seek to ruin the joyous occasion are somehow appeased by these acts of symbolic destruction. As with the phrase I mentioned earlier, complimenting the beauty of the woman is not enough when the praise can double as a curse against one's enemies.
I enjoy the way Wex seems to reach out personally to the reader, suggesting that if the going gets rough, skip ahead to another chapter. I followed his advice and relished the delicious lists of Yiddish curses, ie.;

You should lose all of your teeth but one, so that you can have a toothache

Doctors should have need of you

Your brain should dry up

May you have a calamity in your flanks

A maniac should be crossed off the register of madmen and you should be inscribed in his place

Hours of fun, this. If you happen upon this wonderful book, Mazl Tov!

Van Lingle Mungo, Mr. Frishberg, Anita O'Day

2006-03-22T10:18:00.000-08:00

Van Lingle Mungo was a fireballing, fiery-tempered, pitcher for those perennial losers of 1930's, the Brooklyn Dodgers. He also has the oddball distinction of being the subject of a jazz bossa nova composition with music and lyrics by Dave Frishberg.
The verses of "Van Lingle Mungo" are made up entirely of baseball players names, ie.

"Whitey Kurowski,
Max Lanier,
Eddie Waitkus,
Johnny VanDerMeer,
Bob Estallela,
....VAN LINGLE MUNGO"

and so forth.

To quote Frishberg, who was interviewed by the Baseball Almanac; "The only other guy from the song I ever met was Mungo himself, who arrived from Pageland, South Carolina, to be on the Dick Cavett show and listen to me sing the song. This was 1969, when Cavett had a nightly show in New York. Backstage, Mungo asked me when he would see some remuneration for the song. When he heard my explanation about how there was unlikely to be any remuneration for anyone connected with the song, least of all him, he was genuinely downcast. 'But it's my name,' he said. I told him, 'The only way you can get even is to go home and write a song called Dave Frishberg.' He laughed, and when we said goodbye he said , 'I'm gonna do it! I'm gonna do it!' If he did it, The Baseball Almanac doesn't mention it."

Frishberg wrote some well-known jazz comically-tinged lyric gems such as "My Attorney Bernie" and "Peel Me Grape". "Peel Me Grape" has gained recent notoriety due to Diana Krall's version - but, with all due respect to Diana, Anita O'Day's version back in 1958 is the tops.
Anita is one of my favorite female jazz singers - she hasn't the range and finesse of Sarah Vaughan, or smoothness of Ella Fitzgerald but she's swings like crazy and has a sass,(without cliched "sexiness") exuberance, instrumentalist's sensibility, and nuance of emotion that at times surpasses the greats. You can get a taste of her live in the classic movie "Jazz On a Summer's Day", filmed at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1958. She comes out in her signature black dress, wide-brimmed black hat and gloves and lays it down. Anita led a tough life, recently chronicled in her autobiography "High times, Hard Times" - co-authored by George Eels.

Hazel Wands, Wells, Wise Fish and Other Irish Fancies

2006-03-16T09:14:00.000-08:00

Here's the famous W.B.Yeats poem "Song of the Wandering Aengus";

I went out to the hazel wood,
Because a fire was in my head,
And cut and peeled a hazel wand,
And hooked a berry to a thread;

And when white moths were on the wing,
And moth-like stars were flickering out,
I dropped the berry in a stream
And caught a little silver trout.

When I had laid it on the floor
I went to blow the fire a-flame,
But something rustled on the floor,
And some one called me by my name:
It had become a glimmering girl
With apple blossom in her hair
Who called me by my name and ran
And faded through the brightening air.

Though I am old with wandering
Through hollow lands and hilly lands,
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass,
And pluck till time and times are done
The silver apples of the moon,
The golden apples of the sun.

This is the only poem I ever voluntarily memorized. It rolls nicely off the tongue and is a great bit of a story as well.
The Irish - Scots and Welsh just as much - were particularly enamoured of hazel trees. Hazel wood was sacred to poets and forbidden to burn in any hearth. The nuts of the hazel tree were considered to store great wisdom. Oftimes a sacred well or pool was ringed with hazel trees. When the nuts from the trees would fall into the waters below to be gobbled up by the fish (salmon or trout) those fish would be endowed with great wisdom. In Ireland, spots on these fish are indicative of the amount of "wise hazelnuts" swallowed by them. According to the oldest legends, both the goddesses Sinann and Boand broke taboo and obtained wisdom from these waters and fish but paid the price of drowning from the waters therein. These waters overflowed to become the two great rivers of Ireland; the Shannon (Sinann) and the Boyne (Boand).

Over in merrie England hazel woods became synonymous (likely an Anglo-saxon term of derision towards the native Celts and their fanciful beliefs) with "idle fantasy". In Chaucer's poem Troilus and Crysede there are a few phrases like "Ye haselwodes shaken!" meaning, perhaps "What a miracle you're coming up with!" and "Thou sitest on hasel bou," meaning "you talk idly". (this from a fascinating article by Martin Puhvel of McGill University).

Singers from the folk world have been fond of the poem. My favorite musical versions of the
"Song of the Wandering Aengus" are Donovan's on HMS Donovan and Jolie Holland's on Catalpa

D'Gary and the Lemur

2006-03-08T21:57:00.000-08:00

Tonight at the library where I work in Phoenix I went down on my break and checked out (for the umpty-umpth time) the first recording of the Madagascarian guitarist D'Gary. By some cosmic collision (if only in my own billiard-busting skull) at the end of the worknight, a co-worker from telephone reference came down the stairs asking me if i heard anything about a lemur loose in the building. In the gathering of those leaving the building I picked up bits and pieces and the logical conclusion was that it was some sort of desert ring-tail cat and not a Madagascar Lemur gone for a stroll in the park, taking a detour through the open door of the library....

From a small village in Madagascar, D'Gary has evolved an intricate, flowing finger-picked acoustic guitar style that is out of this world. The fact that Malagasy people are largely of a mix of African and Indonesian origins hints at the unusual chemistry of these sounds - obviously inspired by western recordings as well.
D'Gary has adapted to guitar melodic lines that roll with ease off of native instruments of his people; the valiha - a tubular harp, the marovany - a box zither, and, among others, the kabosy - which combines characterists of the mandolin, guitar and dulcimer.

A little about Madagascar from the liner notes of this record:
"80% of the plants and animals of Madagascar are endemic, they exist only there. In terms of biodiversity it is one of the richest lands on the planet. This is due, perhaps to the island's early separation from the mainland some 160 million years ago and to the fact that Madagascar was one of the last places on Earth to be settled by humans (around the 7th century AD).

The record is called "Malagasy Guitar: D'Gary: Music from Madagascar" and is available from Shanachie records. It was produced by Henry Kaiser and David Lindley -innovative and diverse guitarists in their own right - in 1991.

Lost photos of the Titanic

2006-03-03T05:51:00.000-08:00

I was out in front of a bookstore one night talking with a friend while leafing through a coffee-table photo book of the Titanic in the sale bins. A young woman overheard our conversation and told us that her great-uncle had been on the Titanic; he was traveling alone - I believe she said he was a Basque from Spain - and met his death in the icy sea that night, April 15, 1912, at 2:20 am, along with 1500 others. I can't help but hope that he at least made some friends on board or somehow made peace with his fate.

I always wondered if any photos were taken on board those last days that have yet to be found. I don't mean the famous last photos taken from her final departing point in Queenstown, Ireland; I mean photos - or film - taken during the voyage by either survivors that remained unspoken of and in the family's possession, or some film that went down with the ship and might be recovered intact.
There were some photographic plates found in the wreckage but all material was obliterated.
Incredibly, when the Lusitania (sunk 1915) was salvaged in 1982, a reel of film called Carpets of Baghdad was found and sections of it were restored and viewable. Is it possible something of this sort survived on the Titanic?
There happened to be a well-known cinematographer aboard the Titanic, William Harbeck. He was noted for his documentary filming of the days folowing the San Francisco Earthquake among others. There is some speculation that he was invited to take footage aboard the ship and it seems definitive that he intended at least to film the arrival in New York; employing a smaller boat to view it before docking.
There is a mystery surrounding his relationship with a young French woman, Mademoiselle Henriette Yrois. Although Harbeck was married it seems likely that Yrois may have traveled with Harbeck as his wife (as younger unattached females were likely to be chaperoned in those times). One of the survivivors recalled:
"In the opposite corner are the young American kinematograph photographer and his young wife, evidently French, very fond of playing patience, which she is doing now, while he sits back in his chair watching the game and interposing from time to time with suggestions. I did not see them again."

We will never know the truth of it as both Harbeck and Henriette perished in the sinking. Harbeck's body was found, apparently clutching a bag that belonged to Mlle. Yrois. Her body was never recovered.

A great site for information and discussion about the Titanic: intelligent contributions from writers, naval experts etc., extensive biographical articles about most of the passengers and crew;
www.encyclopedia-titanica.org

Traversata

2006-02-20T07:32:00.000-08:00

I lived in Santa Cruz for about 6 years in the 70's; a middle California coastal town of rolling hillsides and inlets, whose overcast mornings only a hardcore surfer or devoted brussels sprout farmer could love. Formerly a turn-of-the century boardwalk resort it was still a tourist getaway with the San Lorenzo River flowing down from the redwoods into town winding along the (then) funky remnants of the beach hotels, victorian houses, and emptying beneath an old roller coaster into the Monterey Bay. During my stay, the place was saturated with students, foodstamp-funded street-people, retired hippies, crackpots, writers, a gamelan orchestra, bright orange banana slugs, laidback dreamers, idealists, feminists, LA escapees, former mental patients on the street directing invisible traffic, and an older layer of fishermen, loggers, and ordinary cranky oldtimers who'd seen it all and had enough. Oh yeah, and a great crepe place whose memory still sets me to slobber.
I spent way too much time in Cafe Pergolesi (lost to the earthquake of 1989), hanging out and listening to some great live traditional musicians in league with the espresso steam bursts. There were Irish bands, uillean pipers, and an old saw-player in a black bowler hat and suspenders who had been a Wobblie back in 1919 named Tom Scribner.
In particular, there was an older Italian gentleman who played traditional mandolin accompanied by his long-haired son (?) on guitar. After I left town, for years I tried to recapture that particular sound, looking for a good recording of Italian music on mandolin but I usually came up with some kind of over-orchestrated schlock-fest or something vocally dominated.
...and now at last!

Traversata: Italian Music In America is a collaborative musical effort by Carlo Aonzo, David Grisman, and Beppe Gambetta featuring exclusively mandolin, mandola, and harp-guitar. Sto da favola!
Traversata comes from the Italian term for "ocean crossing" used at the turn of the 20th century when immigration and travel to and fro in search of opportunity was at its peak.
.
The record is a mix of trad, popular, and classic Italian and Italian-American music that was either composed for, or is ideally suited to, mandolin, mandola, or harp-guitar. Besides works by virtuoso native Italians who visited America, there is (my personal favorite) the lovely "Oh Mio Babbino Caro" from Puccini's Gianni Schicchi that seems to have been created for this version. Another favorite is the Godfather's Waltz that Nino Rota composed for the famed film. The version is pared down from the original orchestration to the absolute, haunting essentials.
The cd is supplemented with evocative pictures and well-researched liner notes describing the music, the composers all of whom had a simultaneous link to America and Italy.

highly recommended!

Nino Rota

2006-02-19T20:20:00.000-08:00

I was watching Fellini's Le Notti Di Cabiria (Nights of Cabiria) many years back and marvelling at the "color" in the musical soundtrack. There was a haunting melody in particular that might have been straight from the shores of Sicily or Calabria: it had a touch of an Arabic scale, echoes of Scheherezade - minor-sounding but with a twist of ginger that rescued it from somberness, wistful without sentimentality. Aside from this tune there were other odd musical turns; a bit of mambo, jazz, circus, and operatic overture all of which enhanced the tragi-comic, bittersweet tone of the movie.
Though Fellini's movies have been a hit-or-miss affair for me, my favorites like Amarcord, Cabiria, The White Sheik, and La Strada were very much enhanced by the musical scores. After finding out that these films were all scored by Nino Rota, I was all a-fire and off on an information/recording rampage - got hold of a cd "Omaggio a Fellini" which is a collection of themes composed by Rota for Fellini during his career as the maestro's musical-director-in-residence from 1952 to 1979. This record has been a popular food-prep, party, what-have-you "background" cd in our household for years - i'm sure the Italian-circus-sophisticated/numbskull mix has been "harmonious" with the environs.

Rota is more famously known here in the States as the composer of the Godfather soundtrack for Francis Ford Coppola. At least one of the melodies has passed into a popular kitsch theme when gangsters are referenced but, even the most jaded of listeners has got admit (i chance it) that this is a gorgeous melody nevertheless. The same could be said for Rota's soundtrack to Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. The Love Theme has gained elevator music status, and yet, listening to the original Rota orchestral version....a palms up, eyes heavenward, shrug is all I can come up with. What can I say, the guy's a genius. If you're in doubt, forget the Love Theme and check out "A Renaissance Timepiece" from the same score. Beautiful! THATS what i'm talkin about!
Rota was, aside from a composer for film, a prodigious serious composer of operas ballets and instrumental works. He was born in 1911 in Milan and was a child prodigy, studying piano, and soon composing at the age of 8 as well as conducting soon after! He studied renaissance music in depth and it is a thread throughout his film scores.
As described in a bio; "Well acquainted with new musical developments from his youth (during which he enjoyed a long personal friendship with Stravinksy), Rota followed a quite different path in his own music, retaining the supremacy of melody, a tonality free of harmonic complexity, established patterns of rhythm and form, and a concept of music as spontaneous, direct expression." His lifelong passion seemingly knew no bounds and his death in 1979 has been attributed to 20 hour workdays.

Aside from Fellini, Zeffirelli, and Coppola, Rota was the author of scores for Visconti's The Leopard and even Lina Wertmuller's Love and Anarchy.
Coincidentally, yesterday I was in a to-remain-anonymous "restaurant" having a bite of the unmentionable while I poured, Italian dictionary in hand, over some Italian text about Rota that I'd copied from a website about him. After finishing, I got into the car and turned on NPR and lo 'n behold the very first thing I hear is (it's a Radio 360 interview with award-winning film composer Rachel Portman) an interviewer asking, "Are there any scores that you particularly look to as the 'Gold Standard' for film music?"
answer from Portman "I'd have to say Nino Rota's music for the Godfather....it's music that stands on its own, really not 'background music' at all".
...please maestro, cue the Twilight Zone theme!

a brief Nino Rota discography:

Omaggio : A Homage to Federico Fellini (actual excerpts from the movies)
Film Music of Nino Rota - piano arrangements by Rota of much of his film music
The Essential Nino Rota Film Music Collection - performed by the Prague Philharmonic Orchestra
Amarcord Nino Rota - a collection Rota's themes from Fellini movies played by a variety of stellar jazz musicians. The most effective and evocative of Rota's spirit are the solo or near-solo performances by pianist Jaki Byard and vibist Dave Samuels

...and last but not least, a great record called;
Traversata - featuring mandolins of Carlo Aonzo and David Grisman with harp-guitar by Beppe Gambetta. It contains one not-to-be-missed piece of Rota's, The Godfather's Waltz....more on this later