Run, Kinky, Run!

A recent article in the New Yorker (yes, the New Yorker!) profiled Kinky Friedman - a musician, author, and raconteur who is currently running for governor of Texas. Since it has been already demonstrated that a half-wit asshole can govern Texas (and be President, no less), this is more than a quixotic gesture on the part of the Kinkster who's already practicing his tone of command with his old friend and band-mate, Jewford (example: "The governor wants more beer!").

The article inspired me to dig out another worthwhile tribute album, Pearls In The Snow. This collection of songs from the Kinky Friedman songbook by a group of country artists (plus Tom Waits, who lives in category all his own) gives a good view of Kinky's work both with and without his old band, The Texas Jewboys, and is worth having just for Willie Nelson's sensitive and tender cover of Kinky's take on Jewish history, "Ride 'em Jewboy". But it also offers solid versions of "Rapid City, South Dakota" by Dwight Yoakum (which someone called the only pro-choice country song), Lyle Lovett's version of "Sold American", and an inspired "Wild Man From Borneo" done by Guy Clark. For those who have never heard the Texas Jewboys, the guys do a medley that includes two of my favorites - "They Ain't Makin' Jews Like Jesus Anymore" and the raucous "Homo Erectus". And Tom Waits - who marches close to the head of my all-time favorites list - does "Highway Cafe", a song which would have fit on his own Nighthawks At The Diner without much editing.

It's well worth a listen, both for those who know Kinky and those who don't - so go out and buy a copy and throw a few cents in his direction. Why, with your help, the Texas Jewboys could become the official band of the state of Texas!

Stacks of Wax

When I was in kindergarten back in the early 1950's, I remember bringing in some old 78's one day. We put them in a big bowl of hot water, and they became pliable enough to fashion into candy dishes that we brought home for our parents to admire.

Joe Bussard had a better idea, and starting collecting 78's when he was in his early teens. Today he has over 25,000 of them – a virtually inexhaustible library of American commercial music from the 20's and 30's. For those born too late to remember them, 78 rpm platters were the dominant medium for recorded music until they were replaced by 45's for discrete singles (longer pieces were still sold in multi-record 78 editions) and finally, LP's which killed 78's once and for all. They were heavy, scratchy, and shattered when dropped. My very first record purchase on my own was a 78 of Buddy Knox's hit recording, "Party Doll", but soon thereafter it was all 45's with the big holes.

Joe Bussard's collection is focused on roots music – old time and early country, blues, bluegrass, jazz, and gospel. You can go to his website, www.vintage78.com, put together your own mix from his catalog, and have it burned to a cassette(!) for a reasonable fee. You can also listen to some of his radio broadcasts on the same site, and you can search out the documentary about him, Desperate Man Blues (which I've got TIVO'd, but haven't had a chance to watch yet).

Or you can do what I did last week and pick up the first compilation of tracks from his collection, Down in the Basement: Joe Bussard's Treasure Trove of Vintage 78s 1926-1937. This is a great overview of the richness of Bussard's collection. It includes numbers by such important figures as Uncle Dave Macon, Blind Gary Davis, and Big Bill Broonzy along with more obscure musicians like James Cole's Washboard Four and the Stripling Brothers. My favorite cuts so far are a transitional syncopation-to-swing big band piece by Luis Russell & His Orchestra – "The (New) Call of the Freaks" – and an upbeat white gospel song, "Give The World A Smile", by the Corley Family. That song, which talks about serving Jesus with a smile as if you were a middle-aged waitress slinging hash in some celestial truckstop, has a sophisticated vocal arrangement featuring a male baritone harmonizing with what I'd guess is a 5 year old kid (can't tell whether it's a boy or a girl), singing about 4 octaves apart over additional family members singing back-up.

The collection is matched by excellent production – the music is clear and clean – and the thick accompanying booklet tells Joe's story and provides commentary on each track. The whole project is clearly a labor of love. So thank you, Joe, and the Old Hat label, for what I hope is the first of many volumes to come.

The Night Before the World Ends...

...everyone's in this bar, dancing and drinking like there was no tomorrow, which there isn't. It's smoky and dim and loud; there are lines outside the bathroom and lines inside, too. There's a band playing hard enough to stay well on top of the noise even though the sound's a little muddy. They've got an ambisexual frontman with a mouth that stretches beyond the possible and an angular body in constant motion; he's spewing out the songs like a human volcano – you can hear about every third word clearly. There are two guys playing guitar; the lead guy looks like he died about two years ago and the second guy looks about to follow him down, but they play blues-rock like they invented it; probably because the lead guy did. On the hard numbers, the drummer edges the beat ahead by a millisecond a measure; on the slow ones he sits on the beat like a king on a throne. You can't see the bassist's face, only his back – but he rocks steady and never loses sight of the bottom. Some singers wander on and off, and some hornmen add backs and breaks when the feeling's right. There's a piano, too, with a couple of guys alternating spots on the bench. The music is blues, rock, country, r&b, gospel. It pumps you up, cools you off, and speaks to the better angels of your nature and the worse; then it sends you off into the final night with a benediction and a prophecy.

It's rock at its best, the Rolling Stones' masterpiece Exile On Main St. I've been listening to it at work for 2 days now, and I just might keep it here for one more. This time around, I find myself focusing on the licks Keith and Mick Taylor toss into the mix on "Ventilator Blues", the cover of Slim Harpo's boogie, "Shake Your Hips", Jagger's vocals and blues harp on "Turd On The Run" and the Chuck-Berry-in-a-blender-with-sax-breaks drive of "Rip This Joint"; then I play it again and something else - some other moment - reaches out and grabs me. I got hooked on this album when it was first released, and I go back to it whenever my Stones jones acts up. On my desert island short list, it makes the top 5.

Classically Cool

When I was in college in the early 60's, there was plenty of music around. There was pop and Motown, the last years of doo-wop, the rising tide of folk, the emergence of the Beach Boys and the Beatles – and jazz, lots of jazz. The post-bop cool was king, including West Coast types like Gerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck, Miles pre-Bitches Brew and more. Even preppies and fratboys who didn't really dig jazz had to be able to talk about it and the issue of Playboy that contained the annual Jazz poll was valuable info, passed around even if someone had already removed the centerfold. My school had several "big weekends" each year and one of the features was a major act on the college circuit. We had people like Ray Charles, Maynard Ferguson w/band, and the unusually far-out Roland Kirk (who always got Playboy props for playing the stritch and the manzello, sometimes simultaneously). And one weekend we had the coolest of the cool, the impeccably tasteful and elegant Modern Jazz Quartet.

Yesterday's listening was their combination of original blues compositions and takes on the music of JSB: Blues on Bach. I don't know of any other jazz quartet better suited for adapting Bach's compositions to their own style; there's a baroque aspect to the MJQ in almost all their outings (especially pieces like John Lewis' "Golden Striker" on the No Sun In Venice set), perhaps due in large part to Milt Jackson's vibes. The vibraphone's limited dynamic and tonal range makes it like a harpsichord in its role in ensemble playing, and Lewis' piano is never overbearing (he also actually doubles on harpsichord), seconding Jackson much of the time.

It's a fine, tasty set; the quartet bridging blues and Bach on alternating tracks. They don't demonstrate a natural link between the two (and I don't think that was their goal); what they do show is that when you're really cool, you can tune in to coolness in unexpected places, like 18th century Germany.

Wake Up Call - 8/15

I mentioned Bob Brozman in my post on Hawaiian music. He's featured on this week's wake up music selection, along with fellow virtuosi Mike Auldridge and David Grisman. These artists have put together an album dedicated to the sound of the great steel and resophonic instruments - Brozman is best known for his work on the classic National Steel guitars, Auldridge for his mastery of slide styles (particularly on Dobro), and Grisman for his command of the mandolin. The set consists of traditional and original material all designed to show off the sounds of a collection of magnificent looking and sounding guitars, ukes, and mandolins; most are steel-bodied or have steel resonators or amplifying cones built in. Selections range from "Honolulu Nights" and the "Kohala March" to steel versions of "St. Louis Blues", "Great Speckled Bird" and "It Happened in Monterey". No matter which cut plays, it's a joy to wake up to. The name of the CD is Tone Poems III, and it includes a gorgeous booklet that documents the specific instruments used on each cut.

Slackers

Why do we like the things we do? Always a tough question, and I doubt there's an answer. Sometimes you eat something or hear something or see something and you just like it, right then and there. We bought a few things on the road this trip, and we saw many examples of some of the kinds of objects we ultimately purchased (like jewelry and pottery - and t-shirts!) – but the ones we did buy had something about them that made them speak to us in a way that the others of their kind just didn't and that really can't be explained clearly to someone else. Attraction is that way, in my experience, on all sorts of levels. I have learned over time, for example, to not bother trying to figure out what binds a couple together. Attraction just can't be rationalized.

It works the other way, too. There are musicians and other artists whose work and talent I respect without liking it. Take Sinatra, for example. I understand his appeal and ability, but he just doesn't do it for me (Tony Bennett does, though, and early Bing Crosby).

Traditional and slack key Hawaiian music, on the other hand, I've liked since I first ran into it on – that's right, folks! – a Ry Cooder album, Chicken Skin Music, which featured the late Gabby Pahinui, a Hawaiian musician who reinvigorated slack key. Today's listening is Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar Master Collection Vol. 2 (just acquired; I've owned Volume 1 for some time); two of Gabby's sons, Cyril and Blas, appear on it and one one track Cyril performs with acoustic steel guitar virtuoso Bob Brozman. The slack key finger-picking style was developed back in the 1800's when native Hawaiians encountered the Spanish guitar – then gut-stringed, now nylon. It's called "slack key" because of its use of open tunings, and it's a mellow, melodic style in predominantly major keys that makes for very relaxing listening, perfect for a Friday. It's not the Don Ho sentimentalized music, loaded with treacle, that many folks think of when they hear "Hawaiian music" – that and ukuleles (which can be cool in their own right) - and most of the vocals on this set are in Hawaiian (and one that isn't, a track on which George Winston's piano intrudes, should have been cut), a melodic tongue which is musical in and of itself, the way Italian - say - can be. All in all, while you don't exactly smell the tropical flowers or hear the surf breaking on the shore, the music brings you close enough.

If you're interested, the two Slack Key Masters volumes are on the Dancing Cat label; either one will give you a good introduction to the style. For a more complete overview of Hawaiian musical styles, the Rough Guide to the Music of Hawaii is excellent (and will probably show up here one day).

Authenticity

Two weeks ago, we spent the day in Tombstone, Arizona. Mrs. DJStan and I were both children in the fifties, and grew up immersed in Westerns. This included TV shows like Wyatt Earp and Tombstone Territory as well as western movies old and new, including My Darling Clementine and Gunfight at the OK Corral. So for us, Tombstone was a kind of a mecca. In fact, we rerouted our road trip by several hundred miles just to make sure we got there. Bottom line? We had a great time. The town is a mix of a few original buildings from the 1880's and a lot of more recent ones. It's got a stagecoach tour of town, wooden sidewalks, guys walking around packing six-guns (totally legal in Arizona if not concealed), various displays of varying historicity (such as a recreation of the Epitaph newspaper office but housing authentic equipment). The original site of the gunfight between the Clanton/McClaury gang and the Earp/Holiday gang is part of a tourist-driven complex that includes the "Tombstone Historama", a combination film/department store Christmas window type display that tells the story of the town (narrated by Vincent Price). There's a recreated gunfight staged nearby every day. We went, of course. And then there's Boot Hill, the famous Tombstone cemetery. It's been renovated (the original one slid into disrepair) with fresh signage and cactus, but it's a real cemetery with the bodies of the deceased buried where indicated (including the McClaurys and Billy Clanton; they were the losers in that gunfight).

So is Tombstone "authentic"? Well, yesterday an article in the NYT discussed the question, which has come up since the National Historic Register is considering removing the town from it's list of sites. Personally, it's authentic enough for me, if not for a historian. The townsfolk could be more upfront about what's real and what's replicated (no T-shirt stores in the original town, I'm sure), although the sites that are genuine take pains to say so, and one friendly and informative fellow who does tintype photographs explained clearly what was authentic about the corral site and what was not. But authenticity is a funny thing, and some people can easily get bent out of shape over the fact that the Crystal Palace saloon, with its restored bar, passively passes itself off as "authentic" when it's not the original building at all. Yeah, they should be clearer, but it's a knock-out old bar and there's a guy sitting up front in a old school cowboy outfit who'll explain the game of Faro to you (pro gambler Wyatt Earp ran a Faro game in a Tombstone saloon, BTW).

And what does this all have to do with music, anyway? My work CD yesterday was While Passing Along This Way, a set of traditional and traditional-type songs performed by Norman and Nancy Blake. These two acoustic musicians create a sound which looks and feels "authentic" – like the way an old timey musician would have performed had he Norman's incredible chops and Nancy to accompany him in a perfected supporting role. Their voices are pleasant and always on key, and Norman's in particular has a hillbilly twang (not a Southern one like Lucinda Williams', say - he's from Tennessee), but are flat in affect and without vibrato – folk voices from the Harry Smith collection. While most of the songs they perform are arrangements of traditional vocal and instrumental pieces, they also write songs in the same genres as they mine, and those songs are hard to separate from the "authentic" material. Their instrumentation too, which occasionally includes Nancy on cello or Norman on Hawaiian guitar, sounds traditional even when it is not. Incidentally, if I didn't mention it, these are first-class musicians, and I own several of their albums (and some of Norman Blake's equally fine solo work – he's just about the cleanest guitarist I've ever heard and some of the runs he pulls off are worthy of Doc Watson).

The Tombstone thing also reminded me of Steve Earle's terrific The Mountain CD, recorded with the Del McCoury band (not the McClaury band!). The album, which sounds like a collection of "authentic" bluegrass songs, was written entirely by Steve.

Bottom line for me is that there are times when I want to hear the real, original sound – even if it's scratchy and plagued with hard-to-hear moments. But at other times, a solid rendition of traditional genres in compatible styles, even if not truly "authentic", works just fine. Like I said, we had a great time in Tombstone, walking the streets where Wyatt Earp and Doc Holiday once sauntered (even if the wooden sidewalks were rebuilt decades after they were gone).

And we each bought an authentic Tombstone T-Shirt.

The Desert Songs

The other day I came across a series of articles on Slate about traveling in Mali; in one of them, the writer talked about the Festival in the Desert at Essakane and specifically noted the one in 2003 in which Robert Plant was one of the few non-African performers (others included a terrific French folkrock/worldbeat group named Lo’Jo and a Navajo punk rap/First Nations group, Blackfire). Now it happens that I am a fan of Malian music, particularly kora master Toumani Diabate and the well-known Ali Farka Toure (who among other things recorded a terrific Africa/Blues set, Talking Timbuktu with – that’s right folks, Ry Cooder!), and that I have the 2003 CD of performances at the Festival in the Desert (which is the name of the CD).

So, since we’re just back from the Sonoran desert (not the Sahara – more scrub than sand - but common themes of heat, aridity, huge open expanses of time and space, and the fierce tenacity of life - prevail), the article triggered my last two days of work music for the week – the Festival In The Desert CD itself, and the Roswell Rudd/Toumani Diabate collaboration, Malicool.

Festival is a great introduction to contemporary interpretations of Malian music, including some interesting fusion sets with French and Italian musicians, as well as some Mauritanian performers. The music has strong beats, sometimes like galloping camels/horses, over which are often laid call-and-response vocals, typically unison voices where only the octaves vary (e.g., not much harmony). This style of Malian music has a very a North African sound (other side of the desert), and reminds me of Algerian Rai dance music.

The other side of Malian music is represented by the lyrical plucked sound of the Kora, the West African harp, and the light percussive beats of the balaphon and the smaller djembe drums. Although Toumani Diabate is not on the concert recording, his occasional duet partner, Ballake Sossoko, makes lovely music in performance with Italian pianist Ludovico Einaudi.

A neat album, documenting a festival that I’d like to attend one day (it’s still an annual event), although reading about Mali, Essakane, and Timbuktu make it clear that it’s not like spending a week-end in Newport. If you’re a interested in African music, this is an excellent intro to some of the sounds of West Africa, and the musically fertile country of Mali in particular.

The other album, Malicool, is an unexpectedly successful venture featuring free jazz trombonist Roswell Rudd, and the aforementioned kora artistry of Toumani Diabate, accompanied by guitar, bass, balaphon and djembe. It’s great fun, with Roswell’s seemingly totally out of place trombone clearing a spot for itself as a griot-style voice, dancing around Diabate’s flowing lines with swagger and brassiness (I love it when figurative expressions turn out to be literal!). Even a take on Monk’s “Jackie-ing” (Monk is in my personal pantheon) works well, occasionally slipping eccentrically into a Malian rhythm and simple major chords before veering back into Monk’s universe; like all good interpretations, it adds insight to the piece while maintaining its original integrity). A fine CD for jazz fans, worldbeat fans, or anyone who’s looking for music by skilled players and improvisers that’s inventive, playful, and not the kind of thing you hear everyday.

Indicidentally, I was going to call this entry "Good Golly, It's Mali!", but even I have my limits.

Country (and Western) Matters

While we were on the road, we picked up a couple of CD's for the car; we were looking more for the sing-along kind than kickass driving beats. Since we were driving through country & western territory, we added Country Goddess Emmylou Harris to the Eagles (that Winslow thing) and for good measure, bought Willie Nelson's new Countryman release.

Mrs. DjStan and I are both Willie fans (we saw him in concert at the Beacon on NYC's Upper West Side a few years ago – I think every Texan in the city turned out for that one), and I often get into the car humming "On The Road Again". The new album, ten years in the making, is mostly a collection of Willie-ized reggae standards and reggae-ized Willie standards. With few exceptions (nice versions of "The Harder They Come" and "Sitting in Limbo"), it's not great reggae and it's not great country - the arrangements and production don't support the songs very well, and I don't think producer Don Was ever really gets Willie's way of singing over, under, around, and through the beat. But Willie is just about always good company, and it made for some nice traveling/singing moments. Thankfully, he also resisted the temptation to record the gazillionth version of "Rivers of Babylon".

The album was released with two covers, depicted above. The first – and the original one – depicts a marijuana leaf. The second, the result of Wal-Mart's refusal to carry the first, shows a palm tree (although I also saw the palm tree cover in a Borders in Phoenix). Yup, a palm tree - the plant that always comes to mind when you think of Jamaica and/or Willie Nelson. They might as well have just stuck a tulip on the cover and been done with it. You know - Jamaica, land of wooden shoes and windmills.

On the road trip we also scanned for radio stations while driving through Arizona, and picked up plenty of country. The top-40 Nashville sound is - in general -incredibly sentimental and overblown for the most part (which is why I prefer the c&w music generally referred to these days as alt.country or traditional country or even "Americana"), but some of it is so goopy it's funny. Take the Andy Griggs song, "If Heaven", which includes the line "If heaven was a pie, it would be cherry". That one had us spinning lines beginning with "If heaven was…" for a day or two. On the other hand, we did get to hear "Pencil Neck Geek" on the same station, which made up for it.

By the way, it is the opinion of Mrs. DJStan that if if heaven was a hotel, it would be the Arizona Inn. I concur.

Back in the Saddle Again

One of the earliest records I remember having was a 78 single with a picture on it of a cowboy playing the guitar by a campfire in the moonlight. The song was "Oh Bury Me Not On The Lone Prairie". Ever since then, I've liked western songs, especially cowboy ones. This was reinforced by a childhood saturated with TV westerns and western B-movie reruns on the local channels. I had a cowboy outfit and cap guns and a bed-cover with western figures and cacti all over it (on the roadtrip that just ended, I found myself with unexpectedly taken with the saguaro cactus – I just realized that this was the type depicted on my bedcovers!).

Our 2005 Roadtrip took us from John Ford Point in Monument Valley, Utah, (where he shot the stagecoach rolling past the awesome buttes and mesas) all the way south to Tombstone, Arizona, one of the highlights of the vacation for both me and Mrs. Djstan, another big fan of westerns. There we sashayed down the studiously maintained wooden sidewalks, visited the Crystal Palace saloon where Wyatt Earp ran a Faro game, checked out the official gallows at the 1882 county seat/courthouse, walked among the graves on Boot Hill, and – of course – went to the OK Corral where there's a daily re-creation of the famous shoot-out.

So now we're back East, and to ease the transition I've been playing cowboy music for the past two days. A few years ago, I was gifted with the Rhino Songs of the West box set, a 4 CD collection that's a gem for fans of the genre. The first volume - and yesterday's listening choice – is classic songs like the Sons of the Pioneers' "Tumblin' Tumbleweed" (another peak moment – tumbleweed rolling across the road in Chinle, AZ), Patsy Montana's "I Want To Be a Cowboy's Sweetheart", Rex Allen's "The Last Roundup" (there's a Rex Allen museum in Wilcox, AZ), and Tex Ritter's "Wayward Wind". Gene Autry opens the set with "Back in the Saddle Again" and it's closed by Roy Rogers & Dale Evans singing "Happy Trails". The only song I'd add is Vaughn Monroe's hit version of "Riders in the Sky", which I remember being totally spooked by in my childhood.

Today's set is volume 4, which consists of themes from western movies and TV shows, including a snippet of Elmer Bernstein's superb score for "The Magnificent Seven", Frankie Laine's "Rawhide", Tex Ritter's "Do Not Forsake Me" from "High Noon", Johnny Cash singing "The Rebel - Johnny Yuma" and Hugh O'Brien's rendering of "Wyatt Earp". It's missing "Bat Masterson", "Yancy Derringer", and Randy Newman's theme from "The Three Amigos" (let alone the Singing Bush), but it satisfies nonetheless.

By tomorrow, I'll be ready for Lou Reed's New York and a stroll down the dirty boulevard, but for today, I'm still riding out there in the sagebrush with the dogies, keepin' an eye out for rustlers. Yeeeha!