Blank And Blues: The Homo Habilis Blues

The Soundtrack of Our Lives: The Homo Habilis Blues

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The Soundtrack of Our Lives rose from the ashes of Union Carbide Productions in 1995 and released The Homo Habilis Blues EP the following year. 1996 also saw the release of their highly, acclaimed Grammy-winning debut album Welcome To The Infant Freebase.

Amazon.com describes the album as following: "Debut from 1998 for Swedish rock outfit includes 20 tracks of dark, dramatic rock 'n' roll echoing the majesty and ambitions of classic albums past. Their sound recalls everyone from The Doors to Pink Floyd to Led Zeppelin, however avoiding the pitfall of nostalgia."

Apart from getting the year wrong and failing to also mention Love and The Rolling Stones, they were dead on. Welcome To The Infant Freebase is timeless and absolutely brilliant - one of my top 10 favorite albums of all time.

Blank and Blues: All Blues

(Image by Wayne Potrafka)

Miles Davis: All Blues

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Corey Christiansen, Jimmy Bruno, Vic Juris: All Blues

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Miles Davis' tune All Blues is a jazz arrangement of a 12-bar blues. It first appeared on his 1959 Kind of Blue, which is on about a zillion Top Ten Jazz Albums Like Ever lists. The reasons for this are twofold: the tune itself is a intricate, lengthy improvisation based solely on chord scales, giving the musicians great freedom, and the players themselves were terrific artists at the top of their game. Let's see. Miles Davis, of course, on trumpet. Bill Evans on piano. Two stellar sax players: Cannonball Adderley on alto and the incomparable John Coltrane on tenor. Paul Chambers on base and Jimmy Cobb on drums. If I were to pick one single jazz song to play for curious alien visitors, this would be the one.

You know which musicians reaaally love to cover this? Guitarists! I'm looking at my not-all-that-extensive collection and even then, I've got covers by Larry Carlton, Pat Martino, George Benson, Stanley Jordan, Kenny Burrell, and Jim Hall. But the one I've chosen to share is by three - count 'em – three guitarists. I like this version because it's got that bluesy slide guitar intro that echoes the 12-bar blues origin of the song. Corey Christiansen is a professor of music at both Utah State and Indiana Universities, and he drops in to my town to play every so often. He's truly gifted and a nice guy to boot.

Blank and Blues: Chord Organ Blues

Daniel Johnston: Chord Organ Blues

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Daniel Johnston, perhaps the best songwriter the world has seen. The Beatles mixed with Randy Newman, carefully blended with a mental illness or two and topped off with an enthusiasm few can match.

The latter is to me a key component to his brilliance, and the main reason I prefer his earlier material from the first half of the 80s to his later work when he was still a hyperactive kid brimful of youthful exuberance recording ditties inbetween bouncing off the walls. There's just something about the unbridled energy of his earliest recordings I can't resist. 100% envigorating and life-affirming, despite the often bleak themes.

The lo-lo-lo-fi audio quality of these early recordings, his yelping, lisping voice and penchant for pouncing the keys of his chord organ so hard you can barely hear the notes he's playing are an acquired taste for sure, but anyone with a soft spot for classic pop with great hooks needs Daniel Johnston in their life.

Blank and Blues: Tom Traubert’s Blues

Tom Waits: Tom Traubert‘s Blues

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In the mid 1970s, I hated strings. They were all over the place, sugar-coating songs that didn’t need it and would have been better off without it. I didn’t forgive some of my favorite artists for doing this, notably Jackson Browne on his album The Pretender. But there were two artists whose string arrangements were as lush ad romantic as anyone’s, but who I did forgive. Randy Newman really orchestrated his songs, and showed how creative string arrangements could be. And then there was Tom Waits, and especially Tom Traubert’s Blues.

Waits has always been the troubadour of the unfortunate. His characters have been brought low before we meet them, and now they seem to live on discarded cigarette butts and cheap whiskey. Most people walk through a city, and there are these people, begging for what ever they can get, and most people ignore them as best they can. Tom Waits has the gift of seeing them, and seeing fellow human beings with hopes and dreams. And Waits has the further gift of being able to bring these people to life, and making us care about them. The strings here help carry those dreams to the stars, while Waits’ gravelly voice and evocative lyrics remind us of whose dreams these are. This is a delicate combination, and it makes this song almost impossible to cover properly.

Tom Traubert’s Blues incorporates the traditional Australian song Waltzing Matilde for two reasons that have nothing to do with the meaning of the original song. First, as rendered here, Waltzing Matilde sounds like something a person might sing in a drunken stupor. And second, Waits is remembering meeting Danish singer Mathilde Bondo. They apparently had a night on the town together, winding up very drunk in his hotel room. Bondo later acknowledged this meeting in an interview.

Blank and Blues: White House Blues

John Renbourn: White House Blues

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It's the anniversary of President William McKinley's death, so forgive me if I cannot help but post a favorite version of White House Blues which I had kickin' round the ol' hard drive. The tune has been covered plenty, with classic versions by Charlie Poole and others on the list of greats, but I've always liked Pentangle founder and acoustic stringmaster John Renbourn's take, with it's slightly jarring harmony vocals rising like a ghost to haunt the otherwise gentle folk performance from Faro Annie, the British guitar wizard's 1971 LP of mostly traditional folk tunes.

For comparison's sake, fellow folkblogger Matt of A Truer Sound has three more great versions from Bill Monroe, Muleskinner, and Scott H Biram, plus a much more cohesive look at both the history of the song and the unfortunate events surrounding McKinley's assassination.

Blank and Blues: Red Dog Blues

Michael Fracasso: Red Dog Blues

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Coming up with something to post this week has been a difficult task. Not for the lack of songs but the past few days we've been experiencing our own personal blues. One of our dogs, Sam, is fighting for his life battling kidney failure. We hope he pulls through, but as of this writing it's touch and go. Back during Four-Legged Friends week, this song was on my short list.

Blank and Blues: You Blues

Juliana Hatfield: You Blues

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When thinking of this theme, the answer of what to post was staring me in the face, quite literally. The above poster, for the album this song is featured on, hangs on the wall a few feet away.

Juliana has a tendency towards melancholic lyrics as it is, so having a song about being down isn't really new for her, but this song gives it a more general feeling.

Blank and Blues: Stormy Monday Blues

T-Bone Walker: Stormy Monday Blues

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I love blues music, so I’m very happy about this week’s theme. Yes, I know that song titles in other genres can end in “blues”, and I have at least one of those in mind. But to me, the only way to get started is with this classic.

T-Bone Walker is credited with having been the first blues artist to play an electric guitar, which he started doing in 1935. This version of Stormy Monday Blues starts with a great dialog between the electric guitar and the piano, and later the horns really make the whole thing complete. This electric guitar/ piano dialog would later show up in the work of Chuck Berry among others. The overall sound of this song was a clear influence on B B King. So T-Bone Walker created the vocabulary of electric blues, and those who followed after refined it. Stormy Monday Blues, a classic for a reason, is a fine example of why Walker’s music was such an inspiration.

Incidentally, Stormy Monday Blues became a signature song for Walker, and he recorded it at least several times. The version I have chosen comes from a collection of blues by various artists, and that is what I have linked to in the purchase link above. If anyone knows where this version can be found on an album of just T-Bone Walker’s music, please share that information in the comments.

Blank and Blues: Hesitation Blues

Holy Modal Rounders: Hesitation Blues

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Growing up in midwestern America, I listened to a lot of music that everyone else was listening to as well. There was AM radio where I absorbed my share of the rock and roll culture. There was the tiny cache of my parents' vinyl albums (Mom's taste ran to Andy Williams, Johnny Mathis, and Mr. Acker Bilk; my dad liked Boots Randolph). There were my sister's Beatles albums.

It took leaving home and going to college before I heard anything like this kind of music.

I first heard the Holy Modal Rounders through a boyfriend who loved blues of all sorts. Their songs were nothing like the music I knew. The lead singers both have voices that undoubtedly caused their tearful mothers to beg them not to aim for clearly hopeless musical careers. The guitar and fiddle sound straight from a West Virginia holler, not New York City where it actually originates. And the lyrics? What is this "psychedelic" of which they sing (remember, this was way back in 1964)?

Luckily, my love affair with distinctive music like this has lasted much longer than the one with that boyfriend.

Late / Blank and Blues: Late For School Blues

Rita Coolidge: Late For School Blues

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This week's transitional post is a slightly silly kiddie blues number from "The Delta Lady", aka multiple Grammy winning vocalist Rita Coolidge, who can make pretty much anything sound funky.

Worth noting: for most of us, the blues isn't a genre, it's a state of mind. After all, my kids get it all the time, and they sure as heck can't tell the Piedmont from the Delta.

Late: The Late, Late, Late Edition

Billy Jonas: Late

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Susan Werner: Born a Little Late

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Todd Snider: Age Like Wine

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As soon as this week's theme was announced, I knew I wanted to present the Billy Jonas song of the same name, which illustrates a very good reason for being late - then when Anne submitted her post, it made me think of Susan Werner's Ode to the baby boomer. BWR's offering sparked my remembrance of Todd's tune - then it just made me smile that we are truly a collaborative blog, in every sense of the word... :-)

Late: Born Too Late

Steve Forbert: Born Too Late

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Steve Forbert is one of those artists whose early career is a case study in major label mismanagement. His debut album in 1978 was Alive on Arrival. The album revealed a young man full of optimism who had hooks galore and played a sunny brand of folk-pop. He was also a talented songwriter who had a gift for evoking a sense of place, and whose songs radiated warmth and good humor. Jackrabbit Slim, the follow-up, showed production that was somewhat more heavyhanded, but the same essential qualities shone through, and Frobert had a hit with Romeo’s Tune. But there was trouble brewing even then. I saw Forbert during the Jackrabbit Slim tour. He was playing with an all-out rock band, and many of the best qualities of his songs were buried under a wall of volume. Forbert’s third album, Little Stevie Orbit, came out in 1980, and it failed to yield another hit. In fact, the album did not sell in anything like the numbers the label wanted. And then, nothing was heard from Forbert for 12 years.

Eventually, it came out that Forbert had spent that time fighting to get out of his contract. I believe it was the usual litany of problems. Forbert was upset at the total lack of support from the label. They wanted him to take his music in a direction he didn’t want to go. Finally, Forbert reemerged in 1992 with the album The American in Me on a new label. The sunny optimism was gone. Some of the songs showed lingering bitterness. Born Too Late reflects some of the old sound, but the song reflects on missed opportunities. Forbert had been away so long that the efforts to market him had to start over. And he would never again reach the level of popularity he had so briefly known. But he remains a talented songwriter with an unmistakable voice. These days, he controls his career and makes the music he wants to make. It is well worth seeking out.

Late: It's Too Late x 3

The Small Faces: It's Too Late

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Derek And The Dominos: It's Too Late

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The Streets: It's Too Late

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Nope, not Carole King covers. Geoviki has already taken care of that.

These are three completely unrelated songs that just happen to share a title.

Late: It's Too Late

Isaac Hayes: It's Too Late

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One of the saddest songs of the 70's is Carole King's ode to lost love, It's Too Late. It was the first of three #1 hits from her enormously popular album Tapestry (I Feel the Earth Move and You've Got a Friend were the other two), and was Grammy's 1972 Record of the Year.

There'll be good times again for me and you
But we just can't stay together
Don't you feel it too
Still I'm glad for what we had
And how I once loved you.

A song so popular must have a bushel of covers, right? Right! Here's one by soul/R&B singer Isaac Hayes, recorded in 1973 at the Sahara Tahoe. Isaac knew about breakups, apparently: he married four times.

Late: Gotta Get Up

Harry Nilsson: Gotta Get Up

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I was a latecomer to the work of Harry Nilsson, mostly because I'm not as old as I look, and because my house was totally bereft of his albums when I was growing up. But songs like Gotta Get Up prove the man's undersung status as both songwriter and arranger.

The rich melodic cacophony of sound that builds to a peak in just a few lines - the piano, the guitar riffs, the heartbeat drum, the horn section, the Lennonesque "la la la la la" voices - aptly paints the frantic urgency of middle age, the late night desperation that sours the party lifestyle when daybreak is imminent and the responsibility of workaday life looms large. The cartoonish accelerated endcap captures the same rush of panic-fueled urgency I remember from my own fading youth when the subway hit the sunrise and I knew I wasn't going to make it in on time. And that loose, lascivious sailor's accordion when the nostalgia kicks in? Pure genius.

Late: Born Too Late

The Poni-Tails: Born Too Late

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When I thought of songs about being late, this was the first that came to mind. When I was younger I loved to listen to oldies from the 50's and 60's with my parents. We used to have the oldies station on in the car and often in the house, so I knew those songs as well, if not better, than I knew the hits of the day. I liked them so well that my mom teased me that, like the girl in this song, I was also born too late, since I seemed to love the music from this era so much. But in the song the girl is lamenting her love for an older boy who won't even give her the time of day. Most of us have been there before.

The girl group The Poni-Tails had a few other singles, but none did as well as "Born Too Late", which wasn't even originally a single, but a b-side that the DJs took a liking to instead of the A-side. I'm glad they did, because this song is a little gem and always been a favorite oldie of mine.

Late: Too late to die young

Dan Bern: Too Late To Die Young

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You can be late for a bus, late for a party, or late for an appointment. Although it may be a slight perversion of the intent of this theme, you can also be too late to die in your youth. Iowa native Dan Bern laments the slow death of Elvis and envies those who crashed and burned.

Late: Traffic Jam

James Taylor: Traffic Jam

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Damn this traffic jam
How I hate to be late
It hurts my motor to go so slow
Damn this traffic jam
Time I get home my supper'll be cold
Damn this traffic jam

In a bit under 2 minutes, James Taylor's syncopated vocal and percussive instrumentation explore the sacrifices (punctuality, warm food, auto performance, health and fuel efficiency) incurred by gridlock - little did he know in 1977 how much worse it would get!

And, thanks to boyhowdy, here's an amazing cover from one of my favorite a cappella groups:

Da Vinci's Notebook: Traffic Jam

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Late: Yours Forever Blue

Steve Earle and The Del McCoury Band: Yours Forever Blue

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Talk about late! Here’s a guy who loses the woman he loves, and that’s when he decides to be faithful to her. It doesn’t sound like she’s coming back.

The song is by Steve Earle. Usually, Earle is not afraid to speak his mind. But his album The Mountain showed a different kind of fearlessness. The entire album is a collaboration between Earle and the Del McCoury Band. McCoury was and is one of the big names in bluegrass music. My first reaction, and many other people’s I’m sure, when I heard of this project was, “huh?” Earle does not have a typical bluegrass voice, to put it mildly. But he set his mind to doing this album, and doing it right. I remember reading how Earle had to basically relearn how to sing for this. The results? Earle still doesn’t have a typical bluegrass voice, but somehow it works. He does have an unmistakable talent for writing in this style. The Mountain was an album I knew I would either love or hate. It has become a favorite.

Late: Wake Up Little Susie

Grateful Dead: Wake Up Little Susie

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Here's a song about suddenly having to contemplate the consequences of being late. It may seem a bit out of character to hear the Grateful Dead covering it, but their influences were always larger than the general public gave them credit for.

This particular recording comes from a performance at the Filmore East on February 13, 1970, and features just two members of the Dead--Jerry Garcia and Bob Weir--in an acoustic setting. It was released three years later on the album History of the Grateful Dead, Vol. 1: Bear's Choice.

The song was written by Felice and Boudleaux Bryant, and of course the Everly Brothers had a big hit with it in 1957. Thirteen years later, when the Dead covered it, it was already an "oldie", and that was forty years ago! But the song is as fun to sing along to today as it was then.