DONE: ANOTHER GOOD MAN DONE GONE

 I think it probably the garbled syntax that attracted me first to this song, having always a love for the vagaries of language and how it can devolve. (Yes, devolve.) Especially in the southern states of the US, where there seems often gratuitous joy in treading roughshod over any concept of grammatical fluency. But it seems I am wrong to poke fun or criticise, as the good folk of Yale have looked into all of this, and more, in some depth. I give you the Yale Grammatical Diversity Project, which addresses the use of english in north America. Done gone is what is called a "perfective done". Good, innit!? And I refer and recommend you to the whole of the rabbit warren that clicking on that site can open up, but not right now, we have a song to discuss.........

You may know this song from other versions, which may be touched on, but it is hauntingly and stunningly gaunt in this presentation, a lone voice of lamentation that burns through any need for accompaniment. The singer is one Vera Hall, she acknowledged as, if not the author, certainly the owner, via possession being  9/10 of the law. For, when John Avery Lomax, the ethnomusicologist began collating the songs of America in the 1930s, it was Hall he wooed more asiduously than many, recording as many songs as she could sing for him. This is the one that stuck the hardest, with it being recorded for the Library of Congress in posterity. Lomax's son, the slightly better known Alan, who continued in the same stock of trade, later presented her in concert at Columbia University's American music Festival of 1948. 

But what of those other versions? Perhaps the most well known is that by Johnny Cash. In a spare call and response with Anita Carter, his sister in law, it remains a striking call to arms, solitary vocal tracks drenched in echo. So what or why was the subject done gone? It seems the song refers to the death of a man, a black man, on a chain gang, the unsaid implication that his presence in said chains was down to some trivial misdemeanour, such as within the context of such times. (Such times? This article opens a not so distant eye to the practice I had thought long since, along with Paul Muni, been confined to history.) Still, my new year resolution is be to avoid outraging myself as much I can, so, rather than progressing this as any diatribe, have another, final version, this time with backing.

In 1974 Jorma Kaukonen was probably still better known as the shit hot electric guitarist in Jefferson Airplane, although he had dropped stellar hints around his fabulous acoustic technique as well, courtesy the Hot Tuna side project he and JA bassman Jack Casady set up five years earlier, and which still survives, if only from time to time. Quah was a solo album he dropped that year, nominally in cahoots with his friend, Tom Hobson on additional guitar and occasional vocals. 45 years on it is a record to which I frequently turn, the pervasive mood of melancholy something I find uplifting. His picking and the spectral hollowness of his voice is just perfect for this song.

And that's all I done got to say.

Done Vera, Done Johnny and Done Jorma (a later live version).

Sinking & Falling: Free Fall

Dixie Dregs: Free Fall
[purchase]

One of my minor pleasures is when I get to write about a band that I like, but which has never been featured here. The Dixie Dregs fit that bill. And speaking of Bill, the only time I saw the Dregs was, inexplicably, in a dive bar in Kingston, New Jersey in August, 1981, with some fellow WPRB staffers, including my friend Bill Rosenblatt. (Inexplicably, because setlist.fm shows that a couple of months before that show, they played Pier 84 in New York, a fairly large venue, the night after playing the Mann Music Center in Philadelphia, another large venue, and a couple of weeks later, they played the Lakeland, Florida, Civic Center, which holds 8,000 people.)

My memory of that show is basically limited to the fact that they were incredible, especially in a place the size of a large living room, and that I was able to talk with them, go “backstage” (the kitchen, if I remember) and drink their beer. Bill’s more detailed memories of the evening can be found here. We did promote some other shows at the Tin Lizzie, but this was the only “big name” that I remember being there (although the Internet has evidence that Jorma Kaukonen played there about a year later, after I graduated).

It is also fun to be able to follow my first post in this theme, about a ska-punk song, with a sunny, fusion song. The Dixie Dregs were one of the best fusion bands of the 70s and early 80s, and as is my habit when someone else has written something better than I could, I’ll quote Rosenblatt:

The Dixie Dregs were a band from Georgia that played jazzy instrumental rock in a style that sounded sort of like Kansas without the vocals, or Lynyrd Skynyrd meets Mahavishnu Orchestra.. . .Their leader was guitar virtuoso Steve Morse, who would later join Kansas and Deep Purple when those bands reached their “playing the zoo” stages. 

Although they were mostly from Georgia, they really came together as a band at the University of Miami, at a time when musicians such as Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny (and future members of his band, Dan Gottlieb and Mark Egan) and Bruce Hornsby were studying and/or teaching there. After self-releasing an album of demos, they were signed by Capricorn Records, the Allman Brothers’ label, and released their first official album, Free Fall. The title track, which leads off the album, is a good example of their music—generally upbeat, complex but not annoyingly complicated, impeccably played, and with a southern twang. And no vocals (until an early 1980s bad experiment with guest vocalists…..). I found a review of the album that refers to the song as "a jazz-country-funk breakdown with a digital synth alien laser beam effect solo, whilst a footstompingly good delay-drenched electric violin follows up with a pentatonic jam." 

The Dixie Dregs (briefly officially shortened to The Dregs late in the game) continued to release a string of similarly excellent albums, despite some turnover in personnel, until 1982, without much commercial success despite critical acclaim and a few Grammy nominations. Because instrumentals are a hard sell anyway, and certainly during the 80s. There were a few reunions in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but basically, the band has been quiet. Until now—a tour of the Free Fall lineup has been scheduled, and it doesn’t look like they are playing any place like the Tin Lizzie.

leftovers (Light): I am the Light

purchase [I Am The Light of the World] 

There's something about guitar finger picking for those who play the guitar (as opposed to strumming, "flat picking" or solo-ing). The Travis pick is the first thing I asked to be taught when I picked up guitar playing: the "roll" of the notes and fingers kindles something in me. I know it as a style where you alternate/"roll" between the bass and treble. I always assumed it had something to do with a man names Travis - maybe Merle. But I don't see any Intertube link to the two, so I might be wrong. For some reason it equates in my mind to Peter, Paul and Mary (yes - that far back in my memory).

Fast forward a couple of decades ... well, maybe only one decade - to the date when Quah came out. (So much developed in the framework of rock/pop between 1960 and 1970 that it ought to boggle the music lover's mind!)
Delve back into musical history again, and we have the Jefferson Airplane. JA here because Jorma Kaukonen joined the band pretty early on: he was playing with them back as early as the mid 60s. The record states that it was Jack Casady, the bass player for the band, who brought Jorma to the band and then went on to produce the album whence this song comes.

There are numerous aspects to "I Am the Light ..." that turn me on - not just the finger picking. The entire conceit: I am a light/I light the world ... or however you want to interpret the lyrics ... turns me on (light again?) The finger picking (and it may not be Travis per se) is tight. And the song - overall - is ... er ... classic. 

Water: Water Song/Hot Tuna

Hot Tuna: Water Song
[purchase Water Song from Burgers]

Water: at the same time powerful and soft. It flows gently around your toes and ankles at the beach. It roars, surges and tears apart the largest, strongest edifice that man can build.

The therapeutic value of music is more or less established: you know, "music soothes the savage beast".

In fact, early practitioners of the art of medicine made use of the sound of water to heal the ill: there is plentiful archaelogical evidence that doctors at the ancient Greek city of Pergamon (Bergama) made use of the sound of running water to heal their patients. The Pergamon ascelepium (various spellings) was a medical center designed so that ran water past the hospital rooms.

G.F. Handel gave it a try back in 1717. Handel's <Wassermusik> flows almost like water - but that is easier accomplished with classical music and acoustic instruments than with electro-rock (not to detract from Handel's composition skills: and it's not just Wassermusic that flows like water - listen to the Messiah, and it's like listening to water therapy.)

Incorporating the sound of water in rock music is no mean feat. Yes, rock/music can soothe the soul, but the pump and beat of rock almost defies the relaxation that the sound of water signifies: imagine waves quietly lapping the shore of your summer retreat. Now imagine the sound of the Jefferson Airplane. Doesn't quite match up.

However, Jorma Kaukonen and Jack Cassady of the Jefferson Airplane came pretty close to conveying the sound and emotion on Water Song from their 3rd Hot Tuna album, 1972's Burgers.

There's a ripple to the notes. There's the rolling repetition of Kaukonen's finger picking style that makes the music come close to the sound of water. I loved it back then and am even more impressed to see this version, when the gentlemen are in their 70s and still going strong.

Let it flow.

Light: I Am The Light of The World

Rev. Gary Davis: I Am The Light of the World
[purchase]

Many people just listen to music as background noise, or something to sing or dance to, and there’s nothing wrong with that. But those of us who consider music a hobby, or an obsession, aren’t satisfied with that. We investigate. We try to learn more about the songs and the artists we love, and in that effort are often rewarded with deeper knowledge. Or, at least, more knowledge. Much of what I know about the blues comes from investigating covers by musicians that I already knew, and that is consistent with the blues tradition of artists learning traditional songs, or original songs (or original songs thought to be traditional) from recordings or performances by others.

I first became aware of Rev. Gary Davis through listening to Jorma Kaukonen’s performances of his music, solo and with Hot Tuna. And I learned about Davis’ influential finger-picking style that had an impact on Jorma, and others, including Jerry Garcia, Bob Dylan, Ry Cooder, David Bromberg, and many, many more. I learned that he was born in South Carolina in 1896, was blind since infancy, and was an actual Baptist minister. That he played and recorded music into the 1940s to niche success. But that the folk and blues revival of the 1950s and 1960s catapulted him to greater fame, performances at the Newport and other folk festivals, and led to covers of the songs he wrote or popularized by popular artists. I learned that Davis generously taught many of these younger musicians how to play in his style, and his songs, and that he died on the way to a gig in New Jersey in 1972. And I discovered that while many of Davis’ songs were religious, he also wrote secular songs.

“I Am The Light of The World” is a religious song, based on the Gospels, and steeped in his faith. I’m not a religious person, in the sense of believing in a god or anything like that, but I do believe that humans have an obligation to try to do right by each other and, in the best of situations, help each other to do right. And while I suspect that Reverend Davis would disagree with me in the particulars, I think that he would, ultimately, focus more on the deeds than the beliefs.

Now, I am far from perfect. I’ve committed all seven of the deadly sins, and more of the less lethal ones, over my lifetime. Not to mention, I’m a lawyer. But one thing that I am comfortable in putting on the good side of my personal ledger is my 20 years as a volunteer with AYSO, the American Youth Soccer Organization, which I have written about before. We are a soccer organization, but one that tries to focus more on enriching children’s lives than a team’s won-loss record. For a number of years, I have been involved in training volunteers in management—not only the nuts and bolts of running a program, but in the AYSO way of doing things.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to help instruct at Regional Commissioner training. RCs, as we call them, are the leaders of local programs. I was one back at the turn of the century, and it was one of the most important things that I have ever done. RCs work incredibly hard, spend countless hours making sure everything is done right, and are all volunteers, as are all of the board members who help the RC, and all of the coaches and most of the referees. People say that it is a “thankless task,” but I found that many people thanked me, and in turn I tried to thank all of the RCs who followed me, and all of the other volunteers, not only explicitly, but by continuing to assist the organization locally and nationally.

A few years ago, pressed by some very smart and committed staff and volunteers, AYSO decided to put together a weekend of training for RCs from around the country, usually at its office in California. The weekends are instructional, but they are more. They create relationships, act as therapy sessions (there are tears!), and help the RCs, some who are brand new, and even others with experience, recognize the support that they have both from the staff and the volunteers around the country. And the constant message is that it is the RCs’ mission to provide a good environment for the kids, and a positive experience for the volunteers. It is an inspirational weekend, not only for the students, but for the instructors as well. I got to see a group of nearly 40 strangers, from all over the country, with different racial, educational and financial backgrounds, varying political beliefs and very diverse lives, bond, learn, interact, socialize, act crazy, marvel at magic tricks, and, at the end, have an enormous group hug as a new AYSO family.

What does this have to do with our theme, and this song? Each of the RCs who were trained at this session will go back home, to Alabama, Idaho, Illinois, all over the hand that is Michigan, Nevada, California, Tennessee and Hawaii, and be the light of their soccer worlds, and bring the light into the lives of thousands of children. And when those kids’ smiles light up their faces, into the lives of their parents.

Farming: Woodstock and the Jewish Catskills

[purchase the Woodstock box set]

I was only 8 when the original Woodstock festival took place about 75 miles from my home, and I have no recollection of it at the time. Of course, a few years later, I had seen the movie and listened to the album over and over again, and I had a sense of the importance of the event to the culture. And despite all of the great music, one of the most memorable things from the soundtrack was the little speech that Max Yasgur, who owned the land where the concert was held, gave to the assembled masses (see the video above). Yasgur started off with the phrase, “I’m a farmer.”

At the time, Yasgur, the New York City born son of Russian Jewish immigrants, owned one of the largest dairy farms in the area (and had studied real estate law at NYU). After other sites for the proposed concert fell through, Yasgur agreed to lease his farm in Bethel to the promoters for $10,000 (which he hoped would cover the cost of hay he needed to buy to replace what had been damaged by the summer rain). Interestingly, Yasgur was a registered Republican who supported the Vietnam War, but was also a believer in free speech and tolerance. He not only took an enormous amount of heat from his neighbors for allowing his farm to be used for the concert, he ended up providing as much free food and water as he could to the concertgoers. Although the family sold the land in 1971, and part of the property was later turned into the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, Yagur’s son Sam still lives nearby and is currently the Sullivan County Attorney. Max Yasgur died in Florida at the age of 53 of a heart attack.

The stereotype of the Jewish immigrant to New York is the Lower East Side tenement dweller, packed into tiny apartments on densely populated, pushcart lined streets. Of course, many of the immigrants did come from cities in Europe and were happy to be city dwellers in America. But many of the Jews came from farming backgrounds—think Tevye—and a number of them bought land to farm, often in upstate New York (or, like the ancestors of Woodstock performer Jorma Kaukonen, in Connecticut). By 1910, somewhere between 500-1500 Jewish farmers were in the Catskills’ Sullivan County, constituting 30% of all American Jewish farmers, mostly in the eastern part of the county. Yasgur moved his family’s operations in the 1950s to the western part of Sullivan County, where he encountered anti-Semitism.

Back in eastern Sullivan County, Jewish families like the Kutshers, Grossingers and Winarick/Parkers began renting rooms on their farms before creating the famous Borscht Belt resorts that catered, initially, to their vacationing co-religionists. By the time of Woodstock, though, the heyday of the Borscht Belt was already over, as the rising affluence of the local Jewish population, the increase in low cost airfare and the end of restricted resorts opened up more travel options. The era of Dirty Dancing, reportedly based on Kutsher’s, was on its way out.

When my father arranged for me to get a job working as a busboy at Kutsher’s during the summer of 1979, I really didn’t know what to expect. I knew I’d work hard and I knew that I’d make money, but other than that, I was in the dark. My parents drove me up, and the hotel, although no longer shiny and new, was large, and looked relatively prosperous and comfortable. My living quarters, though, were not—I had a room, in a building that was maybe—maybe—a half step above a sharecropper shack. I had a single bed with an old, crappy mattress, a dresser and a moldy bathroom. I’ve later been told that my mother left in tears, my siblings were horrified, and my father kept driving away and returning, before deciding to let me deal with the situation on my own.

It was quite the learning experience. I learned such important skills as lying, cheating and stealing. There were never enough bagels, or coffee cups or forks to go around, so you had to do what was necessary to serve your customers, and to hell with everyone else, because you needed the tips to make it worthwhile. I learned to deal with difficult people—my waiter, the veteran Dick White, who was demanding and had little sympathy for the college boy he was stuck with for the summer, the insane kitchen staff and most of all, the entitled diners, many of whom took the concept of “all-inclusive” to mean trying a taste of everything on the menu. I learned that the crazy amount of food being ordered meant that I could ask Dick White to order an extra steak or roast beef, and stash it away to eat after the meal, since the staff food was not so great. I learned that if I casually dropped the fact that I went to Princeton to the guests, I got treated better. I learned that it is possible, and maybe even preferable, to serve people when you are stoned, and that there were other people who did so, with varying degrees of success, on harder drugs. I learned that adults played Simon Says. I learned that if you steal a goblet or wine glass every few days, you can have nice things to drink from in your dorm room when you returned to college. I learned that if you don’t chain things to your bed, they will get stolen. I learned that I could survive this Lord of the Flies environment, and even that I could return for the Christmas to New Year’s period, freeze my ass off, get little sleep, and walk away with a big chunk of money.

I also learned that the Catskills were no longer what they had been. Back in the day, when the resorts were basically seasonal, most of the staff came up for the summer, and a large number of them were college kids. But when I was there, the hotel was a year-round operation, with full-time staff, many of them Latino immigrants, who cared little for the Anglo summer staff that augmented their numbers during the busy period. I learned that the social aspect of the summer consisted mostly of going to bars, getting drunk and smoking weed, and competing for the few women (unsuccessfully, on my part) before passing out for a few hours so that you could get to the dining room early enough to get a full allotment of bagels. Or sneaking into the Starlight Ballroom’s projection room, getting high and watching the actually pretty decent comedians and middle of the road singers that still performed at the hotel. I also read War and Peace that summer in attempt to keep my mind sharp. All I remember about the book, though, is what former Kutsher’s performer Woody Allen once said: “It involves Russia.”

When the time came to decide whether to return for another summer, I decided to find other opportunities. Although I have no regrets about my experience there.

The big Catskill resorts desperately tried to hold on long enough to see casino gambling be legalized in the area, and continued spiraling down through the 1980s into the 2000s, relying on their golf courses and other gimmicks, such as Kutsher’s hosting the All Tomorrow’s Parties rock festival. Kutsher’s is considered to be the last of the big resorts to throw in the towel, and it is the subject of a documentary. Here’s a little video about the hotel, and here are some pictures of its post-closing decrepitude. The hotel is being demolished as I write this, and the new owner, Veria Lifestyle, is planning to construct a health and wellness destination. Where, I suspect, you won’t be able to get stuffed on pickled herring, matzo ball soup, kasha varnishkes or pastrami.

Hotels and Motels:Songs About the Chelsea Hotel

Jefferson Airplane: Third Week in the Chelsea
[purchase]

I am willing to bet that there is no other hotel or motel in the world that has inspired more songs than the Chelsea, located in the lower Manhattan neighborhood of the same name. Recently purchased and closed for renovations, the hotel has long been identified as a place for artists, performers, writers and musicians to live and work, which probably explains its popularity in song.

Wikipedia lists 22 different songs referencing the hotel, and one of them, Leonard Cohen’s “Chelsea Hotel #2” has been often covered. You could create a pretty credible cultural Hall of Fame consisting just of residents of the Chelsea, which for years was a residential hotel, including Bob Dylan, Charles Bukowski, Janis Joplin, William S. Burroughs, Tom Waits, Leonard Cohen, Patti Smith, Jasper Johns, Claes Oldenberg, Iggy Pop, Arthur C. Clarke, Allen Ginsburg, Diego Rivera, Mark Twain, Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, Stanley Kubrick, Uma Thurman, Jane Fonda, Alice Cooper, Larry Rivers, Christo, Julian Schnabel, Alejandro Escovedo, Jimi Hendrix, Willem de Kooning, Robert Mapplethorpe, Gore Vidal, Jean-Paul Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Dennis Hopper, Thomas Wolfe, Elliot Gould, Elaine Stritch, Edie Sedgwick, and many, many more. And, of course, Sid Vicious’ girlfriend, Nancy Spungen, was found dead at the hotel, as were Dylan Thomas and Charles R. Jackson, the author of The Lost Weekend.

Cohen’s song has been discussed previously on this blog, here, and a cover by Lloyd Cole is discussed here, Dylan’s “Sara” was mentioned, if briefly, here, and a post about Joni Mitchell's "Chelsea Morning" is here. But there are many, many others to talk about.

My favorite is “Third Week in the Chelsea,” the second song from Jefferson Airplane’s Bark album that I have written about (which is pretty interesting, considering that it is generally considered a pretty mediocre album). It was written by guitarist Jorma Kaukonen, and it is a beautiful song, filled with sadness and resignation about the impending demise of one of the great bands of its era. It is a classic of the “leaving the band” genre, right up there with Peter Gabriel’s “Solsbury Hill.” Although the whole thing is great, this stanza always kills me:

All my friends keep telling me that it would be a shame 
To break up such a grand success and tear apart a name 
But all I know is what I feel whenever I'm not playin' 
Emptiness ain't where it's at and neither's feeling pain 

Because, when it is time to go, it is time to go. Luckily, he had Hot Tuna to fall back on.

Leonard Cohen’s song, which we really aren’t going to discuss, was about an (oral) sexual encounter at the hotel with a woman he later acknowledged was Janis Joplin. Jeffrey Lewis, a New York singer/songwriter, wrote “The Chelsea Hotel Oral Sex Song” which is both about and not about Leonard Cohen’s song, and has a certain shaggy dog charm of its own (and no actual oral sex):



Dan Bern, who is often compared to one time resident Bob Dylan, because they are both Jews from the Midwest who have raspy voices, play guitar and write interesting songs (making the comparison somewhat plausible), also wrote a song about having sex at the Chelsea. This version was recorded at the Turning Point in Piermont, New York, just across the Tappan Zee Bridge from my house, which gets surprisingly good acts, considering that it is about the size of a small living room. And it has a trumpet solo.



And, finally, here’s Okkervil River’s “Bruce Wayne Campbell Interviewed On The Roof Of The Chelsea Hotel, 1979.”



Campbell was the real name of the former Chelsea Hotel resident, singer Jobriath, who is considered to be the first openly gay rock musician signed to a major label, as well as one of the first well known musicians to die of AIDS.

The song appeared on Okkervil River’s The Stand Ins album, which is filled with songs musing about celebrity and pop culture. Jobriath, whose albums received generally good reviews (and had both Peter Frampton and John Paul Jones contribute to his glam-rock, very David Bowie-esque music), found his career derailed first by excessive hype by his management, then his disillusionment with the industry, and finally by his illness. He apparently did an interview from the roof of the Chelsea in 1979, but it was different from what Okkervil River sang about. Although not directly related to the hotel, here’s one of his songs, “Take Me I’m Yours,” about S&M, which certainly could have happened at the Chelsea Hotel.

The Other Guy(s): Jefferson Airplane

Jefferson Airplane: Chauffeur’s Blues
[purchase]

Obviously, I like this theme, so I’m back with a third entry. And to pile it on, it is about two “other guys,” one of whom isn’t a guy.

When I was in high school, my friend Chris and I worked our way back from the then-popular Jefferson Starship through the discography of the Jefferson Airplane. I remember hours spent in the cutout bins at Korvette’s in Nanuet flipping through records to find their music. If you are a casual fan of the band, you know about Grace Slick’s powerful vocals, and maybe even Marty Balin’s blue-eyed soul singing or Paul Kantner’s folkier sounds. Or maybe you are a fan of their interesting harmonies, or the few songs that Jorma Kaukonen sang before moving full time to Hot Tuna. Four vocalists is pretty good for a single band, and these days it is rare to find a popular group that allows more than one, or sometimes two, singers to take regular lead vocals.

But the Airplane had even more singers. The Jefferson Airplane discography (not including live albums, solo projects and compilations) consists of 7 albums released between 1966 and 1972 (plus a reunion album from 1989). And although Kantner, Kaukonen and bass player Jack Casady were constants, Slick joined after their first album, Balin was there at the start, but left before the sixth album was done, and there were a number of drummers and other members that played with the band.

So, before Grace Slick, there was Signe Toly Anderson (no relation to previous “Other Guy” subject Jon). In the early days of the band, and on their debut record, Jefferson Airplane Takes Off, her role was mostly to sing backup and harmony. She left the band in 1966, following the birth of her daughter Lillith (and possibly because other members of the band didn’t get along with her husband.) On October 15, 1966, the Airplane played the Fillmore, and at the end of the show, Balin announced that Anderson was leaving the band. Anderson’s farewell to the audience is a classic Sixties statement—“I want you all to wear smiles and daisies and box balloons. I love you all. Thank you and goodbye.” The band then played “Chauffeur’s Blues,” with Anderson on lead vocals, followed by one more song. The next night Slick performed with the band.

Anderson returned to Oregon, where she raised a family and sang with a jazz band before suffering from a number of health problems. She has made occasional appearances at reunion shows, with the KBC Band (Kantner, Balin, Casady), and with later incarnations of Jefferson Starship.

Jefferson Airplane: Pretty As You Feel
[purchase]

Fast forward to 1970, when the Airplane were recording the followup to their last great record, Volunteers. Drummer Spencer Dryden, who had joined the band after the first record, had left, ultimately to end up in the New Riders of the Purple Sage.  He was replaced by Joey Covington, a self-taught drummer who had played with Hot Tuna, in unrecorded performances. Then Balin left the band, and they were looking to replace his material on the album, which became Bark. Covington was jamming one night with Kaukonen, Casady, Carlos Santana and percussionist Michael Shrieve on a piece that was given the working title of “Shitty As You Feel,” and little was expected of it. But the engineer, Pat “Maurice” Ieraci thought otherwise, and the title was changed to something more printable. Slick and Kantner overdubbed vocals, Papa John Creach added some fiddle, and a good song emerged. “Pretty As You Feel,” with Covington’s lead vocal, was released as a single and hit 60 on the Billboard chart, the last charting single for the Jefferson Airplane.

Covington left the band in 1972 for a relatively obscure solo career and as a sideman, and passed away last month at the age of 67 in a car accident.

Holiday Transformations:Holiday Marmalade

Jorma Kaukonen: Holiday Marmalade

[purchase]

I grew up a secular Jew celebrating Hanukkah, and I think that the limit of my celebration was putting a couple of ornaments on a friend’s tree one year. Christmas was really no big deal to me, and the Christmas Industrial Complex had not yet become so ubiquitous. There were a few TV specials, and decorations, but I don’t think that there was such an overwhelming holiday craziness. No radio stations playing holiday music 24/7. No obsessing over “Black Friday.” And certainly no “Cyber Monday.” In fact, my most memorable Christmas was, I think, 1980, when my friend Eric and I split the entire day of programming at WPRB. He did classical, I did jazz. He started off the rock show, we shared the studio for a while, we ordered Chinese food like good Jews, and I closed down the station. We were pretty loopy by the end of the night.

My personal holiday transformation began in 1987 when I attended my first Christmas celebration with my future in-laws. After that first Christmas, it quickly became one of my favorite times of the year, and why shouldn’t it be—I drank, ate, napped and got presents. For a long time, we celebrated with my wife’s aunt, who had converted to Judaism, and her Jewish uncle and cousins, so there was always a number of tribesmen and women on hand. It was never about religion, but about family, and good times, and over the years, the celebration transformed—we started to share cooking and cleaning duties, we added latkes to the traditional ham, we changed locations and participants. And, pertinent to this music blog, I started to take increasing control over the music we listened to.

My in-laws love classical music, like jazz, and are generally ignorant about popular music. They lived in Africa in the early 1960’s, and somehow missed rock n’ roll. I (and my wife) began to include folk and rock Christmas music (and the stray Hanukkah song), until we pretty much took over the playlist completely. Luckily, my in-laws are good sports, and in this respect, are willing to indulge us.

When Jorma Kaukonen released his Christmas CD in 1996, I was all over it. I’ve been a fan of his work in Jefferson Airplane, Hot Tuna, and as a solo artist, and Christmas immediately became one of my favorite holiday discs. I usually throw it on when I am cooking, and invariably, one of my in-laws will remark about how much they like it—as if they hadn’t heard it every year since 1996. It remains one of their charming quirks.

“Holiday Marmalade” is an 11 and a half minute jam (get it? Marmalade….) with searing blues guitar based loosely on “Silent Night.” It is far from a traditional holiday song, but it somehow works. I find it exhilarating every year.

Interestingly, Jorma has gone through a religious transformation of his own. He is half-Jewish, on his mother’s side, and celebrated Jewish holidays as a child, but that whole 1960’s rock lifestyle pretty much distanced him from his religion (although the first guitar he played in the Airplane was bought with Israel Bonds that his grandmother bought him). His return to Judaism came through his wife, who was born Catholic, but was attracted to Judaism. She converted, Jorma went through a “reaffirmation” process and they both practice, in some form. More details can be found here: —it is a fascinating and personal story.  Jorma’s Jewish ancestors were, among other things, tobacco farmers in Ellington, Connecticut, about 30 miles from where I celebrated my first Christmas.

Despite the constant uproar from the Fox News crazies, there is no War on Christmas. As Jon Stewart pointed out recently, Christmas is doing just fine. Even if you don’t believe in the religious part of the holiday, the universality of its underlying message gives all of us the opportunity to transform the celebration, or recognition, or whatever, into something personal and special. Or you can spend too much money, fight with your family and be angry. I don’t judge.

Nine Lives: Tom Cat Blues

Jorma Kaukonen: Tom Cat Blues (orig. Jelly Roll Morton)

[purchase]

No, it's not a cover of Tom Scott title cut Tom Cat - it's a cover of a Jelly Roll Morton tune from singer-songwriter Jorma Kaukonen.

Though he once made his name on the electric scream of the sixties, the Jefferson Airplane/Hot Tuna alum has become a well-deserved staple of the modern contemporary acoustic set in his old age thanks to a mellow, fatherly voice, a campfire wizard's hands on the strings, and a penchant for Piedmont style acoustic blues fingerpicking.

His transformation of Morton's ragtime protojazz, off 2002 roots radio chart-topper Blue Country Heart, features fellow heavyweights Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas on Mando and dobro, respectively; the track, like the rest of the album from which it springs, is effortless and epic, proving that the man's still got the stuff. Kudos, Kaukonen.

Four-Legged Friends: Police Dog Blues

Jorma Kaukonen and Tom Hobson: Police Dog Blues

[purchase]

This old "Blind" Arthur Blake tune, first recorded in the early days of the country blues, tells a pretty typical tale: rambling man meets Tennessee girl, girl passes him up because she doesn't like his tie, guy drops the issue before her crazy "police dog" can take a bite out of his pants. Irony alert: the dog's name is Rambler, too...

Blake was king of the ragtime guitar; this acoustic blues version from Jorma Kaukonen and Tom Hobson is a whole mess whiter. Still, the early stuff from these bluesfolk princes has a gentle, bittersweet soul of its own.

PS: I've been on an acoustic blues kick lately; if you like this sort of stuff, why not ramble over to Cover Lay Down for more?

Postage Paid: No Mail Today

Blind John Davis: No Mail Today

[purchase digital only]

We're off to a slow start this week, but that's okay: mail doesn't come on Sundays, and it doesn't usually get delivered on bank holidays, either.

Still, here's something light and bluesy from the back of the dusty stacks, in recognition of the day off from school that so many American schoolchildren and teachers are enjoying. And a bonus cover from a subsequent generation, a bit more folk-blues than Chicagoan Blind John Davis' original boogie woogie jazz lament.

Jorma Kaukonen: No Mail Today

[purchase]