Little/Few: A Little Less Conversation

 

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I particularly like a good cover. To the extent that more than once, I have shone a light on musicians most of us have never heard of, but whose music has shown up in a YouTube search.

I've never given Elvis Presley much love or credit but do realize that he was incredibly influential. One of my posts here includes a clip of him doing Little Sister (but it would have been the Ry Cooder version that sparked that post (and of course means that that "little" is off limits.) 

Belatedly, it seems to me that if you don't give Elvis P. credit, you are denying an awful lot of history. The number of people who end up being internationally known by a single name are few. Ghandi, Stalin..need I go on? Equally curious is that our Seuras chose this time around to focus on "the other Elvis" who, although not commonly known by one name, comes a close second when this name is mentioned.

As I read read the somewhat improbable history, I am a little amazed at the progression Elvis followed: numerous setbacks, unlikely advances, timely appearances on TV shows like Ed Sullivan that propelled his rise and then spiraling disintegration ending in his early death.

A Little Less Conversation came out of a 1968 movie and didn't reach terribly high on any music charts. The 2001 remix by Tom Holkenborg (aka Junkie XL) did considerably better, reaching the number one position in several countries.

In Memoriam: Three Vaguely Prog Musicians

Jon Hassell/Brian Eno: Chemistry
[purchase] 

Kansas: Cheyenne Anthem
[purchase]

Brand X: Nuclear Burn
[purchase] 

Part of it, I guess, comes from the fact that prog rock era musicians are getting to that age, but it seems like almost every year at about this time, I’m writing about some of them. This year, I’m taking a broad view of the genre, with one musician probably best known for ambient music, one for a distinctly American take on prog, and one who is more from the fusion world, but I like to do group In Memoriam pieces, and this is the best excuse I could come up with to write about these three artists together. And for no real reason, I’ll discuss them in the order that they passed. 

For some reason, I assumed that trumpeter Jon Hassell was European, but he isn’t. He was born in Tennessee in 1937, but did study serial music in Germany, where he befriended the future founders of Can, before returning to the US, where he performed on Terry Riley’s first recording of In C. He also was part of LaMonte Young’s Theater of Eternal Music (which also spawned John Cale) and also studied Indian music. 

I first became aware of Hassell when he collaborated with Brian Eno in 1980 on an album called Fourth World Vol.1: Possible Musics (and he also played on Eno’s 1982 album Ambient 4: On Land). Hassell used the term “Fourth World” to describe his work as “a unified primitive/futuristic sound combining features of world ethnic styles with advanced electronic techniques.” Hassell used lots of electronic processing and effects on his trumpet, leading to strange, otherworldly sounds. He also appeared on the track “Houses In Motion” on Talking Heads’ Remain In Light, on Peter Gabriel’s Birdy and Passion soundtracks, along with a bunch of solo and group recordings, and guest spots with artists as diverse as David Sylvain, Jackson Browne, Ani DiFranco, Ry Cooder, Tears For Fears, Lloyd Cole and the Commotions, and k.d. lang. 

Hassell had been in bad health for about a year before dying on June 26, 2021 of natural causes. 

I’d argue that Kansas was, during their strongest period, the best American prog rock band (I also love Happy The Man, but most people have never heard of them). Kansas fused the mostly European prog sound with American music, fitting for their origin in the country’s heartland. Most reviews of the band refer to them mixing prog with “boogie,” and I’m not sure I can really describe what that is, but you know it when you hear it. Their albums Leftoverture and Point of Know Return were staples of FM radio during my high school years and one key to the band’s sound was violinist/vocalist Robby Steinhardt. 

Steinhardt was born in Chicago in 1950, but grew up in Lawrence, Kansas, where he started violin lessons at age 8, and was classically trained both in the US and Europe. In 1972, he joined a band in Topeka, White Clover, which eventually became Kansas. Steinhardt was mostly known for his violin work, but sang harmony on most of the band’s songs, and lead on more than a few. He also acted as the “MC” during live performances. 

I started losing interest in Kansas after 1979’s Monolith, after which the band turned toward a strong Christian influence and began to splinter. Steinhardt left the band in 1982 for “personal reasons,” although one article I read referred to his substance abuse during this time. He was part of a band, Steinhardt-Moon, and performed with other acts until rejoining Kansas in 1997, but tired of the pace of touring, and left for good in 2006. In 2013, Steinhardt suffered a heart attack and underwent quadruple bypass surgery but began making guest appearances with Stormbringer (which had formed from Steinhardt-Moon). 

In 2020, Steinhardt began work on a symphonic prog-rock project that included contributions from, among others, Ian Anderson, Steve Morse, Billy Cobham, Patrick Moraz, Chuck Leavell, Liberty Devitto, Pat Travers, and Lisa Fischer. Unfortunately, the album, Not In Kansas Anymore, was not released until October, 2021, a few months after Steinhardt died on July 17, from complications of acute pancreatitis. 

Back in 2014, I wrote a short piece about Brand X for our “Side Projects” theme, because it was, for Phil Collins, a side project from Genesis. But one of the few consistent members of that band, and one of its founding members, was guitarist John Goodsall. Goodsall was born in 1953 in England and picked up the guitar at age 7. He went pro at age 15, touring with a few bands, including Atomic Rooster (which also included drummer Ric Parnell, who later played Mick Shrimpton in This Is Spinal Tap, the drummer who spontaneously combusted, and then toured with the Tap as Mick’s twin brother Rick). Brand X performed and recorded from 1975-1982, and to my ear produced a great deal of interesting music. 

Starting in 1979. Goodsall moved to Los Angeles, and also worked as a session musician, appearing on albums with Peter Gabriel, Bill Bruford, Bryan Adams, and yes, even on Toni Basil’s hit “Mickey.” He was a member of Zoo Drive in the mid-1980s, and after that, the Fire Merchants, before reforming Brand X in 1992. Later, he appeared with various combinations of musicians and recorded music as a leader and session musician. According to Wikipedia, Goodsall appeared on a few soundtracks, ranging from mainstream films such as No Small Affair, Can’t Buy Me Love, and Point Break, and the somewhat less mainstream Anal Intruder 9. 

Goodsall died on November 11, 2021, possibly of complications from pneumonia.

Walls/Obstructions: If Walls Could Talk

 

purchase [ Paradise and Lunch  ]

I find myself pre-disposed to prefer the Ry Cooder version of this because that's where I first heard it (and the version I, myself, play in open-D tuning). And because I have posted again and again and again and ... songs by Ry Cooder. My first SMM guest post as a possible SMM writer included a reference to Ry.

Ry Cooder fully credits Bobby Miller (of course he would) on his '74 album Paradise and Lunch, but I never dug deeper into the story of the song. Now that I have, I see that there was much that I missed. I knew that Ry regularly focuses on music that is at the roots of contemporary pop/rock. But without that exploration, I have been missing some great music.

Miller, known as a producer and songwriter, doesn't appear to have left a recording of himself performing the song. Me, I find it hard to imagine that a songwriter didn't also play the song in some version himself, but we'll have to rely on the version he first produced for/with Little Milton back in the '60s. I assume it was what he himself might have played - if in fact he played an instrument. I can also see what might have attracted Ry Cooder to come up with his own rendition. "It's the same old song .." but with a different beat. The original Little Milton version was released on the Checker label, a subsidiary of Chess records.

The notion behind the lyrics is certainly not new. What goes on behind closed doors that the walls could tell us about if only they could speak is a theme as old as ... well... the hills that could also tell a lot of stories. There's a peepin' tom side to it as well as an element of eternal truth about the human condition.

Geraint Watkins and the Dominators have a version

as does Koko Taylor

Here's a version by Dr Feelgood

And another from Duke Robillard that harkens back kind of to the original by Little Milton (at least in the strumming intro)

Oh, yes, and there's also a band of the same name

Pandemic Holiday Songs: Why You've Been Gone So Long

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This is a year where Christmas is very much what you and you alone make of it.

Yeah, I managed to get the tree and lights up. I even managed a couple of wrapped gifts under it. No mean feat. We are under some serious restrictions over here: No one is allowed out all weekend. It's been this way all December and for New Years, the lockdown runs from Thursday through Monday morning. I'm also in the "over 65" category, which means that even Monday-Friday, I am only allowed out on the streets between 10AM and 1PM. Makes it hard to shop for gifts.

Add to that the fact that Christmas is not much of a thing in this Moslem majority country. So... Christmas music? Not much. Even in the best of years (which this has most certainly not been).

But that's fine. We've called the theme Pandemic Holiday Songs for a reason. And as I said, Christmas is what you make of it. That goes for my music choice here as well: a song that I find myself listening to again and again, kinda like I might have been doing with the Christmas favorites. Maybe I'll get to those on the day itself.

But for now: a pandemic holiday song (instead of the usual). It really has absolutely nothing to do with End of the Year Holiday - except in my current frame of mind (allowed under the "whatever fits this season"):

As you saw last week, I've been on a Clarence White binge. Digging around I found that session at the top that he recorded with Ry Cooder (and you know that Ry's my #1) It appears to have been one of the last recordings Clarence made (Summer, 1973), part of a solo album. It appears to be his brother Roland doing the backup vocals and although I'm sure I hear a pedal steel in addition to Ry's slide (could it be Sneaky Pete?)

And then I came across this "cover" of the song that - to me - equals the vibe of Clarence and Ry's version. They are more or less my neighbors!!

Christmas? Not really - unless you consider the lyrics: a time where we can't go home to our families (gone so long). And of course, there are lots of other versions of this song credited to Mickey Newbury: Tony Rice, Carl Perkins and more if you do a Youtube search for the title.

As I said, not Christmas, but hey ... it brings me some holiday cheer and hopefully to you, too.

ALONE: ALONE IN THE DARK/JOHN HIATT

John Hiatt is just terrific, one of the best, if not in sales, certainly in terms of influence and output, up there, in my book, with Neil Young and Bruce Springsteen. When he's good, he's very, very good and when he's bad, well, I haven't encountered that yet. And Bring the Family, the album from which this song comes, is possibly one of his best, positively enhanced by the backing band on hand. Backing band? O, just Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner. And yet it was born out of near desperation, a banknote or so away from ruin. Alone in the Dark, the feature song of this piece, epitomises the tight but loose feel of the disc, and is often overlooked amongst some of the other goodies on board. The lyrics may reflect a differing loneliness and a differing dark from these dangerous days, but the mood sure fits.

Ahead of this time, Hiatt had been a slogging workaday singer-songwriter, starting his career as a pen for hire. When Three Dog Night hit the top 40 with one of his, a recording contract beckoned, although, over the ensuing seven discs, scattered across various labels, more money came from royalties recouped, as the likes of Roseanne Cash and Willie Nelson recorded his songs, than he made from his own originals. Even the mighty Geffen label tried and failed to break him. This was arguably not helped by Hiatt being a drunken cuss who hadn't endeared himself to label bosses. So, newly sober, with a bunch of songs he had lost faith in, straits were indeed dire. Luckily the maverick UK label Demon still believed in him, and could offer a threadbare budget to record them. (The story of Demon makes for interesting reading, established by the earlier team behind Stiff records, Radar and F-Beat.)

Bring the Family, released in 1987, is a joy, from start to finish, the four musicians laying down a lean muscle honed from their collective road and studio experiences, Hiatt's holler a celebrant to his limited range: who needs more notes when you can do this much with these? Plus the songs, ten gems that can crack open a smile just from memory. Even if you don't know them, you know them, and even if you do, even over know them from the myriad cover versions of many, the freshness and vitality of the originals stand head and shoulder over most of those. It is hard to believe the whole project took only four days, Lowe sharing a motel room with Hiatt to keep costs down, Cooder delaying his departure a few hours as the final song was hastily written.

Neither the schedules of the four musicians, nor, then, the budget could allow this line-up any time on  the road. True, Hiatt rounded up some likely culprits, including perhaps the only man who could reasonably ever deputise for Cooder, bayou slide master, Sonny Landreth, and they hit the trail.  Following in the slipstream of Bring the Family, this crew, the Goners, produced a second deal breaking LP for Hiatt, Slow Turning, only a whisker away from being as good as its predecessor, being merely excellent. Hiatt was on a roll, with these and his next seven records all making substantive waves in the Billboard chart.

But the dream team were not done. In 1992 the diaries of Hiatt, Lowe, Cooder and Keltner finally realigned, and they went back into the studio. This time a band, Little Village, also the name of the sole studio offering, having ditched the earlier, and better, working title of Hiatus, and this time a pooling of resources, rather than just a backing band for Hiatt. The songs were all co-writes between the four, and whilst Hiatt sings the majority, Lowe took lead on two, Cooder on one. Perhaps there was too much hope, but the lightning failed to strike twice, and it was a deeply disappointing set. Nick Lowe later said they were given too much time. The subsequent tour was a little better, live sets testifying to that, allowing a presentation of some Bring the Family favourites, as well as scattering of Cooder's solo repertoire. One could sense a simmer of "sibling" rivalry, maybe some resentment that Hiatt was drawing more focus over Cooder's own sense of entitlement. It all ended, apparently, in tears.

Hiatt remains on the road, as do his former compadres, occasionally sharing a bill with one or another, all now senior statesmen and rightly so. Hiatt's recent work is, in my opinion, still of top quality and can stand close to the height of this period. Give him a go.

Spirit: Spirit

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Someone has to do this: there was once a band named <Spirit> and it seems wrong not to include them in this theme.

You must have heard the name Randy California - a prime example of re-branding (Randy Wolfe becomes Randy California). Incidentally, the grape-vine believes that the Randy Calıfornia moniker was bestowed by Jimi Hendrix. (see the California Wikipedia entry for more). If you follow music history, you may also have heard of Ed Cassidy (known by his bald head, RIP 2012)(I learned as a result of this research, that Cassidy also played with my man Ry Cooder in a band called Rising Sons in the mid/late sixties) The relationship between California and Cassidy is worth noting: Cassidy was California's step-father (which may possibly have been part of the idea behind their "The Family That Plays Together ..." album name.

Spirit essentially came out with one song that made the charts: "I Got a Line on You". But the band also made headlines when (it appears) Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page may have "borrowed" most of "Stairway to Heaven"s guitar work from Spirit's "Taurus".

Until California's death in '97, the band went through a number of permutations and come-back attempts (none particularly successful). But the name and the spirit lives on.

Slide: Slide Away

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The <slide> theme was deliberately left nebulous enough to allow for slide guitar entries or some pedal steel, and if you happen to follow my personal tastes, you'll know that my favorite musicians include masters of that style: Ry Cooder, David Lindley, Bonnie Raitt, Lowell George.

As I often do, I scratched out a couple of starting lines heading down that path with the intention of letting the idea stew for a couple of days before settling on one of the slide masters. As we are now at the end of the <Slide> theme calendar, it looks like that one will have to wait for our traditional November <Leftovers> theme because (Baby, Baby, Baby ....) I'm out of time.

Yet, as that idea sat on the desktop, I also began work on a song or two with <Slide> in the title. This would have been last week, some time before the Video Music Awards earlier this week. Pure coincidence, since I had no way of knowing the song list for this week's Video Music Awards.


Bono, Oasis, The Verve, Noel Gallagher ... they've all got songs named <Slide Away>. Bono doing the vocals on a Michael Hutchence composition. And Oasis doing the Noel Gallagher song of the same name. And then Miley Cyrus this past week. And then, as a last minute bonus, yet another Slide Away from a group on Muzai Records called Sunken Seas. There's probably more out there.
Not knowing much of anything about any of these, I guessed that they were likely variations/covers of someone's original.

I can't think of too many other song titles of exactly the same name that are distinctly different songs. At the same time, you could surmise that the conceit behind the song name is obvious enough that any could hit on the title for an original: I guess it shouldn't come as too much of a surprise ... how often does love end in one party slip/sliding off down a different path? Slide Away is a quite natural occurrence - whether as an act IRL or as a title for a creative work. The song stories are all "love songs" in one form or another. The Gallagher/Oasis and the Verve's are more centered on sliding away together; Cyrus' and Hutchence's are more about being away.

The Verve:

 

Oasis:

Hutchence/Bono:

Cyrus:

Sunken Seas:

Base/Bass: Ry Cooder's Chavez Ravine

purchase  [Chavez Ravine]

File under: Songs that reference baseball

Ryland P Cooder has always gone out of his way.
Gone out of his way to promote music that most others would not. See his JAZZ album that includes non-traditional instruments such as: cimbalo, tuba ...  See various songs from Into the Purple Valley, Paradise and Lunch, Chicken Skin Music, Bop Till You Drop

Gone out of his way to bring back music that others forgot. Hawaii, Carribean ...

Gone out of his way to speak up for others who had only a small voice. (How's about Down in Hollywood, for that perspective?) Then there's the Buena Vista Social Club project that -  in and of itself  -revived an entire genre of music.

Among the issues he has raised (because raising issues through his music is what he does) is the <Chavez Ravine> story.

Now .. you're about to ask what the relation to the theme is?
<3rd Base, Dodger Stadium> is about BASEball, because the Chavez Ravine area was torn up by eminent domain in order to build the baseball stadium, and its mostly Latino residents were left out in the open - the land eventually ending up as the ball park.

Cooder's song highlights one of the displaced residents who eventually ends up with a job tied to the new ball park venue: parking cars around the stadium. (His house was 3rd base, folks!)  But, at least in Cooder's version he takes it with a grain of salt, without the kind of chip on his shoulders that you and I might have had...                                      

The song relates how his home was located at the spot where 3rd base ended  up. He lost his home, but found work right there all the same.


Muy Fifi from that album:

Speak/Talk: Let's Give Them Something to Talk About

purchase the whole album! [Luck of the Draw]

There are few living that can play a slide guitar the way Bonnie Raitt does. She's played with them all: Clapton, Duane Allman, Ry Cooder, Lowell George and a number of others. But it isn't just her slide guitar - there's <something to talk about> in her vocals.


Without getting too deep into the #MeToo issue, you can assume that Bonnie Raitt has seen it all. She seems to have weathered it fairly well - I don't see her personal remarks about her man-handling over the years. Yes, she's been the subject of various public broadcasts, but mostly stayed (rightly) UN-affected. Let's Give Them Something to Talk About has gained some notoriety:

I have to note that the song was written by Shirley Eikhard, who you might want to explore, since she's written songs picked up by the likes of Anne Murray and Cher (in addition to Raitt).


Jennifer Love Hewitt

Rae Solomon

Brittney Spears

Cher

KT Tunstall & Daryl Hall

Punk: Radio, Radio

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I'm not particular about the genre of music I pick - kind of the opposite of the Ry Cooder line, "I used to be particular ...".  And I can generally classify what I hear as being in one or another of several major categories, but there are some labels that seem arbitrary: Pop-Rock? Folk-Rock? Where do you place Springsteen? And does it matter?

I confess I never really <subscribed> to punk. Maybe it's the connotations I ascribe to the word: "punk" sounds pejorative for some reason. If you had asked me a week ago, "Do you like punk?" I would likely have said, "Not especially. Never really paid it much attention."

Checking out one online list of all time best punk hits, I see that there are many that I (inadvertently) enjoyed without having them labeled as punk.

There are equally many bands in that top list that I never (wrongfully) paid much attention to: the Sex Pistols, Blondie, the Ramones ... all certainly known to me (as in "they exist and make profitable music") but I still couldn't tell you much about them.

But among that top <punk> hits list I was working off, one stuck out partly because I had never pegged the band as punk (but as a result of this awareness, can now sort of profess a better sense of what is punk/what punk is)... and that is Elvis. Costello, that is.

His outre look -a sort of  <I don't give much of a f*** about what you think I look like... my lyrics are my lyrics and make of them what you will>...and music that may come across as discordant (but isn't). I think that partially describes the punk genre.

And I love/loved Elvis. The lyrics always seemed to vie with the best (as in Bob Dylan). The music? - not at all as monotonous as your standard I-IV-V. And catchy - many of the Costello songs got stuck inside my head to the point that they "ran" all night through my sleep. Kept me away going round and round.

Incompetent/Can't : Can't Stand the Rain

purchase [I Cant Stand the Rain]



Maybe we have had enough of the rain. Maybe some of the news pundits are right about how the main stream media tried to make the most of the Carib weather - to the extent that it has surpassed overload and caused unnecessary fears. And maybe J David is right that we have exceeded the "Can't" threshold when we could have been looking at other aspects of the Incompetence/Can't theme.

If you are a regular here, you likely know I have an enduring affinity for the slide guitar, as embodied in such impresarios as Mr Ry Cooder, Ms Bonnie Raitt, Mr Duane Allman and Mr Lowell George. (There are others, but these are among my main staples)

As JDavid pointed out, there are various avenues one can pursue from a theme of Can't - primarily personal incompetence.  I don't think that <I Cant Stand the Rain> falls into this category - the weather is beyond our control, and most likely the lyrics transcend the weather, rather, here, a metaphor for other aspects of the singer's life. You know ... rain is wet and sad and brings you down, especially if you get caught out in it unprepared like...

In my ignorance, I had assumed that this was a Little Feat original. No small amount of their output was original. However, not this.

The song is credited to someone I had never heard of before: a certain Ann Peebles. And while I was only aware of the Little Feat version, there are all sorts of others who have done theirs and you can find many of them at YouTube.

A few of them:

Steel: Gordon Lightfoot/Steel Rail Blues

purchase [Sit Down Young Stranger]

Steel strings on a guitar take a lot out of you: they're harder to depress and they end up putting calluses on the tips of your fingers. You need to keep at it on a daily basis. For this reason, I more or less  gave  up playing steel string guitars a few years back. It may be because I can't afford a decent guitar (better quality = less effort), but it may also be on account of all that metal - it cuts into your fingers something bad. I'm now a nylon man - with a lot of respect for thems that bend the steel around.

It looks like the only other time SMM has mentioned Gordon Lightfoot is back in 2008. Away back in 2008 Paul -no longer an active SMM contributor- included Lightfoot in a post about a <History> theme. 

Myself? Gordon Lightfoot's 1970 "Sit Down Young Stranger" was a favorite. No ... more: a starting point for a budding guitar player. Someone to emulate.  As I look back over the song list from the album after many years away, there isn't one that doesn’t bring back memories - a most powerful album (and his best-selling one). He's got Ry Cooder, John Sebastian, Van Dyke Parks and Randy Newman with him on the album. The Wiki says that maybe Kris Kristofferson also contributed. Pretty impressive. 

I guess (among all the good ones) it is the title song, Sit Down Young Stranger, that rings best: the steel strings are obvious here. The story is poignant. The quality of the vocals fits Lightfoot's folk-rock style. I read somewhere that Dylan thought this was Lightfoot's best - there are certainly a number of parallels: guitar style, vocal style and - to some extent, the lyrical/poetic message.

But I have chosen a different Lightfoot song to more closely match our theme and it's from a different album - his 1966 "Lightfoot!". If you look closely at the "Steel Rails" clip, you'll see that he has picks on his fingers - perhaps the true sign of a steel string player - if you want to make the strings ring, you kind of have to add some additional steel. Oh, and he's doing a variation of the "Travis" pick I mentioned earlier.

The steel rails, as per the ticket the girl sends, are the railroad tracks - made of steel. A bit thicker than the strings on his guitar, but made of the same material, capable of singing their own song.

Middle: Smack Dab in the Middle

purchase [ Chicken Skin Music ]

I only know of Charles Calhoun/Jesse Stone from digging through the  Internet. Maybe if I had held on to my vinyl 33's, I could have gone back and looked at the jackets for track details, but like most everyone else, I shifted away - in fact, I gave my rather large collection of maybe 700 LPs to a local radio station. For free, in the hopes that they would make better use than myself (sitting on a shelf for 20 years)

"Chuck" Calhoun (you'll need to search for Jesse Stone as well), seems to have had a pretty long life (1901-1999). What he did with that time is even more impressive:
He is credited with writing this post song: "Smack Dab in the Middle", but is  also the author of "Money Honey" - another Ry Cooder "hit".

It looks like Calhoun got around in the 30s and 40s - his songs were performed by Duke Ellington, Guy Lombardo, Benny Goodman and more - no wonder Ry Cooder came across his music: he's hard to miss if you do a little research. His version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" appears to have been a chart topper that lead to "Rock Around the Clock"

Charles Calhoun (aka Jesse Stone) appears to have also been the first black musician to join Atlantic records - via Ahmet Ertegun (and that  leads us back to my home city of Istanbul, Ertugun being Turkish)

Other version of possible interest:

 

The above claims to be the man himself in 1955, I can't verify, but it seems to fit.

and then, there's .. Ray

 

and the Deep River Boys:

 

and on and on the list goes. You want more? Do a YouTube search for the title .. Looks like there could be 50 or so there.

Frozen: Cold, Cold, Cold

purchase [Cold Cold Cold]

Frozen is cold - as in Little Feat's song of the same name.

There are many other Little Feat songs that rank higher for me. Almost too many, in fact: How about Fool Yourself, or  Time Loves a Hero, or All That You Dream, but Cold... has a special place in my list. Yes, it is a classic example of Lowell George slide guitar. And the rest of the seminal band's skills (keyboards by Bill Payne and 2nd guitar by Paul Barrere, who took over lead guitar after Lowell George's death)

Other songs may rank higher, but there are few slide players that rank higher. I list Ry Cooder, Bonnie Raitt and Lowell George at the top of the list of slide guitar players from my time (check my previous posts)

I could have sworn that Bonnie Raitt must have had some input on Cold, Cold, Cold: it sounds too much like her style and  she and Lowell George seem to have had something going on at one time. However, Bonnie Rait appears to have only joined up about an album later (on the 1973 Dixie Chicken). I didnt know, however,  that Nicolette Larson figured in. Should have guessed: tributes to her include everyone in that same orbit (and most of my main favorites from a previous generation). Including Bonnie Raitt.


It may be that I relate most to the lyric line:
<turn your clock back woman when you see me coming around>
This past week, I hit Seattle, WA for 3 days, Princeton, NJ for another 3 and then back home to Istanbul, TR: lots of clock turning, but almost no Frozen.

POLITICS: FDR's Secretary of State

purchase [ FDR in Trinidad]

I would have preferred to post this 24 hours earlier: hate to be accused of tilting the votes one way or another.

Rather than ramblin’ off on a tangent about how the state of the poor in the US is a result of politics and dragging Ry Cooder into the whole business, I might have gone directly to some Cooder politics in my previous post.

An article published via NPR a while back noted that Barack Obama was only the 2nd US president to visit Trinidad. He was preceded by FDR. To follow up on FDR's visit, Atilla the Hun composed a song.

To me, Cooder's <Into the Purple Valley> is about the time he solidified what I see as his style: crisp guitar of a semi-jazz style, assertive vocals, unusual backing bands and song-choice/themes that bring (musical) history to life.

Several others have taken up the song (van Dyke Parks and Ry among them).

The NPR story noted that FDR's Secretary of State received a certain amount of credit in the song (it was Cordell Hull), and the article continued by asking if Obama's Secretary of State (at that time) would have gotten as much credit today (need I tell you who that was?)

Now, we know a little about Obama’s musical taste - see the various artists he has invited to the White House, and we know that FDR became a fan of calypso following his visit to the island. But how much do we know about his Secretary of State’s (AT THAT TIME) musical preferences? Hope the results wont skew your votes either way!

Politics: Ry Cooder

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Politics is very muchly on my mind these days. Mind you, I'm not talking about the US elections (I am assuming that is a forgone conclusion). My focus has been on the materials I have used for my work/lessons for many years:

As part of my DigitalCitizenship computer lessons, I direct my students to the WayBack Machine - part of the Internet Archive (archive.org). Aside from the millions of legally free video and music files they host (woohoo! Grateful Dead!!), the WayBack Machine offers a look back to the early days of the Internet - you can call up the Facebook site in its earliest incarnations. The point I try to make to my students is that there is always, somewhere, a copy of that SnapChat photo.

But on to politics... As you might well imagine, a mirror on the past might upset some of the powers that be: we humans may forget that so-and-so said such-and such 30 years ago. The WayBack Machine can prove it one way or another.

And so, to my great  disappointment, this year, as I head into the "Your Internet Footprint" unit, I discover that the local <powers that be> have blocked access to archive.org - I dont know why, but I can surmise that there is information there that might not be ... er ... in our favor.
Music-wise, aside from his "chops", perhaps the thing I most bow down to is Ry Cooder's academics - the way he researches his music. From the very first album, his selections have shown a respect and understanding for the historical perspective: rock music is rooted in its antecedants (IE: cotton field music, which in turn has its roots ....)

As noted above, more often than not, perspective allows one to take a backward look with more information than we previously had. We once thought one way, but now see another: Jim Crow, LBGT, ...

Ry Cooder frequently zeroed in on songs about the poor: dustbowl farmers and such. Often his first albums included songs from previous stars like Woody Guthrie or relative unknowns like Blind Wilie McTell. Much later, he worked to give due credit to the Cuban Buena Vista Social Club. But behind each oevre, there is an academic approach: learn, teach and share. Subtle politics, but political in nature all the same.

Cooder's  repertoire is extensive, but we'll go for a few.
Way back when, Johnny Cash came out with Get Rhythm - a song filled with references to working conditions for African Americans. A few years ago, Cooder upgraded the song

 

first Cash, then Cooder

Way back when, Woody Guthrie sang about the plight of the dustbowl farmer, Ry Cooder upgraded that one too.

Politics? Not directly, but there are commentaries in the lyrics about the man who votes and why he votes the way he does. Politics all the  same ...