Category: Americana

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Ramblin’ Charles Adnopoz

At a book giveaway hereabouts the other day I did snag me a copy of Dave van Ronk's memoir, The Mayor of MacDougal Street. I'll have to dig into it one of these Saturday nights and pull out some tunes that you've never heard before.  In memory of the Mayor, here is his version of Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now." And here is his "Hang Me, Oh Hang Me."

David Dalton, Who is That Man? In Search of the Real Bob Dylan, Hyperion, 2012, p. 65:

As Dave van Ronk pointed out in his autobiography, many of the people involved in the first folk revival of the 1930s and '40s were Jewish — as were the folkies of the '60s. Van Ronk reasoned that for Jews, belonging to a movement centered on American traditional music was a form of belonging and assimilation.

[. . .]

"The revelation that Jack [Elliot] was Jewish was vouchsafed unto Bobby one afternoon at the Figaro," Van Ronk recalled.  "We were sitting around shooting the bull with Barry Kornfeld and maybe a couple of other people and somehow it came out that Jack had grown up in Ocean Parkway and was named Elliot Adnopoz.  Bobby literally fell off his chair; he was rolling around on the floor, and it took him a couple of minutes to pull himself together and get up again.  Then Barry, who can be diabolical in things like this, leaned over to him and just whispered the word 'Adnopoz' and back he went under the table."

Ramblin JackLacking as it does the proper American cowboy resonance, 'Elliot Charles Adnopoz' was ditched by its bearer who came to call himself 'Ramblin' Jack Elliot.'  Born in 1931 in Brooklyn to Jewish parents who wanted him to become a doctor, young Adnopoz rebelled, ran away, and became a protege of Woody Guthrie.  If it weren't for Ramblin' Jack, Guthrie would be nowhere near as well-known as he is today. 

 

Pretty Boy Floyd.  "As through this life you ramble, as through this life you roam/You'll never see an outlaw drive a family from their home."  No?  An example of the  tendency of lefties invariably to  take the side of the underdog regardless of whether right or wrong.  

Ramblin' Jack does a haunting version of Dylan's Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues.  It grows on you. Give it a chance. Here is a Dylan version with a good video. See if you can spot Phil Ochs.

Cigarettes and Whisky and Wild Women.  Take a lesson, kiddies.

Soul of a Man. 

Dylan's unforgettable,  Don't Think Twice. 

Here is Jack with Joan Baez, Leonard Cohen, Buffy Sainte Marie singing the beautiful, Passing Through.

At 1:41 Baez starts a great Dylan imitation.

Dylan on Baez. 

Not Dark Yet

 Tomorrow, Bob Dylan turns 81.

Can one get tired of Dylan? That would be like getting tired of America. It would be like getting to the point where no passage in Kerouac brings a tingle to the spine or a tear to the eye, to the point where the earthly road ends and forever young must give way to knocking on heaven's door. The scrawny Jewish kid from Hibbing Minnesota, son of an appliance salesman, was an unlikely bard, but bard he became. He's been at it a long, long time, and his body of work is as vast and as variegated as America herself. We old fans from way back who were with him from the beginning are still finding gems unheard as we ourselves enter the twilight where it's not dark yet, but getting there. But it is a beautiful fade-out from a world that cannot last.

A tip of the hat to Bro Inky for sending me to Powerline where Scott Johnson has a couple of celebratory pieces with plenty of links to Dylan covers. Here's one and here's the other. An excerpt from the first:

In his illuminating City Journal essay on Pete Seeger — “America’s most successful Communist” — Howard Husock placed Dylan in the line of folk agitprop in which Seeger took pride of place. Husock’s essay is an important and entertaining piece. Dylan is only a small part of the story Husock has to tell, however, and Husock therefore does not pause long enough over Dylan to observe how quickly Dylan burst the confines of agitprop, found his voice, and tapped into his own vein of the Cosmic American Music. Looking back on his long career, one can discern his respect for the tradition as well as his ambition to take his place at its head.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: More Americana

Tim Hardin, Lady Came from Baltimore

Arlo Guthrie, Percy's Song. Dylan's 1963 original

Byrds, Pretty Boy Floyd

Marty Robbins, El Paso

Bob Dylan, Red Cadillac and a Black Moustache

Bob Luman, Let's Think About Livin'

Charley Ryan, Hot Rod Lincoln, the original.  Before Johnny Bond, before Commander Cody. 

Dave Dudley, Six Days on the Road

Red Sovine, Phantom 309. Tom Waits' cover. YouTuber comment:

I don't know what it is about this particular Tom Waits song. Out of all the music I've heard, this is the only one that tears me up from the first chord. I'm a big boy, all grown-up. But I'm helpless to stop those tears. I've seen my fair share, and more, of pain and suffering and death, and so should be fairly immune to such sentimentality. Many songs are supposedly more tear-jerking, . . .  but NOT ONE moves me like this. Maybe because I used to hitchhike a lot? Maybe because I've seen, and been involved in, several car accidents? Maybe because a trucker friend was drowned when the ferry he was travelling on sunk? I don't know. I've always appreciated, and liked a lot, Tom Waits' compositions and performances, and yet this one song captures me completely, emotionally. Perhaps I'm turning into a softy. More likely, I'm just getting too old for this life. Answers on a postcard, please… (Tom Foyle)

Yes, one can get too old for this life.

Such Sweet Sorrow

Part of what makes "parting such sweet sorrow" (Shakespeare, Romeo and Juliet) is the realization that one may never see the beloved again alive. Death presides over all of life; in leave-taking he steps out of the shadows. You see the glint of his scythe from the corner of the eye.

In the twilight glow, I see her
Blue eyes crying in the rain;
As we kissed goodbye and parted,
I knew we'd never meet again.

Love is like a dying ember,
Only memories remain;
Through the ages I'll remember,
Blue eyes crying in the rain.

Now my hair has turned to silver,
All my life I've loved in vain;
I can see her star in heaven,
Blue eyes crying in the rain.

Someday when we meet up yonder,
We'll stroll hand in hand again;
And in a land that knows no parting,
Blue eyes crying in the rain.

Blue eyes crying in the rain.

Written by Fred Rose and first recorded by Roy Acuff in 1947. Numerous covers.

A little known version by Ramblin' Jack Elliot.

Happy Thanksgiving!

The last two horrible years make my annual Thanksgiving homily ring somewhat hollow, especially the penultimate line:

And don't forget the country that allows you to live your own kind of life in your own kind of way and say and write whatever you think in peace and safety.

Still and all, we have much to be grateful for.  But we will have to redouble our efforts to preserve the objects of our gratitude, in particular, what remains of our liberty, and our "sweet land of liberty."  Patriots are waking up to the depredations of 'Woke' and there is reason to be hopeful. So be of good cheer, do your bit, and long live the Republic!

Thanksgiving Happy

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Route 66 and Kerouac’s Favorite Song

Route 66Jack Kerouac in a letter from 17 January 1962: "Everybody is making money off my ideas, like those "Route 66" TV producers, everybody except me . . . ." (Selected Letters 1957-1969, ed. Charters, Viking 1999, p. 326; see also p. 461 and pp. 301-302.)  Here is the Nelson Riddle theme music from the TV series.  And here is part of an episode from the series which ran from 1960-1964.  George Maharis bears a striking resemblance to Jack, wouldn't you say? And notice Maharis is riding shotgun.  Kerouac wasn't a driver.  Neal Cassady was the driver.

Now dig Bobby Troup.  And if that's too cool for you, here is Depeche Mode.  Behind the Wheel for good photos of the Mother Road. Chuck Berry, the Rolling Stones, Dr. Feelgood,  and others such as Asleep at the Wheel have covered the tune.

Jack's Favorite Song

Ellis Amburn, Subterranean Kerouac (St. Martin's 1998), p. 324:

One night he [Kerouac, during a 1962 visit to Lowell, Mass.] left a bar called Chuck's with Huck Finneral, a reedy, behatted eccentric who carried a business card that read: "Professional killer . . . virgins fixed . . . orgies organized, dinosaurs neutered, contracts & leases broken." Huck's philosophy of life was: "Better a wise madness than a foolish sanity." They drove to a friend's house in Merrimack, New Hampshire, and on the way, Jack sang "Moon River," calling it his favorite song. Composed by Henry Mancini and Johnny Mercer, "Moon River" was the theme song of the popular Audrey Hepburn movie Breakfast at Tiffany's. Sobbed by a harmonic, later swelling with strings and chorus, the plaintive tune's gentle but epic-like lyrics describe a dreamer and roamer not unlike Kerouac.

Indeed they do. A restless dreamer, a lonesome traveler, a dharma seeker, a desolation angel passing through this vale of tears and mist, a pilgrim on the via dolorosa of this dolorous life, a drifter on the river of samsara hoping one day to cross to the Far Shore. 

Another 'river' song in the same plaintive vein is Chase Webster's Moody River from 1961. It has been covered by such artists as Pat Boone, John Fogerty, and Doc Watson.

Bob Dylan at 80: A Sober Assessment

Graham Cunningham:

It pains me a little to say it, given my own past devotion, but some cold perspective is needed here. Bob Dylan was—from 1962 to the early 1980s—an extraordinary singer-songwriter and, in terms of quantity of great material, simply without equal. For the last 40 years, though, he has mostly been trading on the reputation he built in those years. There are exceptions to this judgment, yes, but not many: the 1983 Infidels album, a few tracks on the 1997 Time Out of Mind, and “Things Have Changed” from the soundtrack of the 2000 film Wonder Boys, for example.

Did Dylan deserve the Nobel Prize for Literature that he won in 2016? I’m not sure; he’s probably not sure, either. He was consistently good for about 20 years, an amazingly long time for a rock star. And he can take credit for spawning a whole musical genre. Many other songwriters in the same musical territory, such as Paul Simon or Bruce Springsteen, have, at their best, been as good or almost as good—but not nearly so often, or for so long.

The truth is, Bob Dylan, now 80, will never get “back on form.” Aging rock stars don’t do that; no one does. One of the most quoted lyrics of “Murder Most Foul” informs us that “It’s 36 hours past Judgment Day.” Dylan has been unquestionably the most influential songwriter of his era; no one can take that away from him. But as a long-time fan, I can’t help but wish that he had hung up his songwriting boots decades ago. His musical stature could then have remained closer to that of artists who die young, unsullied by the inevitable failures that must come to all careers—even one as extraordinary as his.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Torch Songs

"A torch song is a sentimental love song, typically one in which the singer laments an unrequited or lost love, where one party is either oblivious to the existence of the other, or where one party has moved on." (Wikipedia)

Sarah Vaughn, Broken Hearted Melody.   YouTuber comment: "Late 1959. I was in 4th grade, listening to KFWB Los Angeles."  Same here. Same year, same grade, same station, KFWB, Channel 98! Color Radio! My favorite deejay was B. Mitchel Reed.  I learned 'semolian' and 'mishigas' from him. His real surname is 'Goldberg,' which means mountain of gold. I will say no more lest I provoke my alt-Right correspondents.  

Timi Yuro, Hurt. When I first heard this I was sure she was black. I was wrong. She's Italian, and her real name is Rosemarie Timotea Auro. What pipes!

Billie Holliday, The Very Thought of You

Roy Orbison, In Dreams

Peggy Lee, Oh You Crazy Moon 

Ketty Lester, Love Letters 

Etta James, At Last  

Lenny Welch, Since I Fell for You

Sentimental you say? What would life be without sentiment? You say it's overdone? You suffer from an excess of cool. It's Saturday night, punch the clock, pour yourself a stiff one, and feel. Tonight we feel, tomorrow we think.  About sentimentality and everything else under the sun.

Happy Thanksgiving

This annus horribilis of 2020 makes my annual Thanksgiving homily ring somewhat hollow, especially the penultimate line:

And don't forget the country that allows you to live your own kind of life in your own kind of way and say and write whatever you think in peace and safety.

Still and all, we still have much to be grateful for.  But we will have to redouble our efforts to preserve the objects of our gratitude, in particular, our liberty, our "sweet land of liberty."

Thanksgiving-images

The Self-Reliant Don’t Snivel

Louis L’Amour, Education of a Wandering Man, Bantam, 1989, p. 180:

Times were often very rough for me but I can honestly say that I never felt abused or put-upon. I never felt, as some have, that I deserved special treatment from life, and I do not recall ever complaining that things were not better. Often I wished they were, and often found myself wishing for some sudden windfall that would enable me to stop wandering and working and settle down to simply writing. Yet it was necessary to be realistic. Nothing of the kind was likely to happen, and of course, nothing did.

I never found any money; I never won any prizes; I was never helped by anyone, aside from an occasional encouraging word – and those I valued. No fellowships or grants came my way, because I was not eligible for any and in no position to get anything of the sort. I never expected it to be easy.

It is very difficult these days to explain the classic American value of self-reliance to 'liberals,' especially that species thereof known as the 'snowflake.'   Not understanding it, they mock it, as if one were exhorting people to pull themselves up by their own boot straps, which, of course, is impossible.

Sometimes we need the help of others. When we do, we should not be ashamed to ask for it. The self-reliant, however, seek the help of others only after they have exhausted their own resources. 

I am slightly embarrassed to say something so obvious. But in these times of national melt-down, when the miasma of mass delusion overspreads the land, the obvious needs to be stated and repeated.

L'Amour whisky

POTUS at Rushmore: A Great Speech

If you agree with the speech, you are either an American or appreciative of American values; if not, a hate-America leftist.  The speech could be taken as a test of where one stands.

There was nothing "dark and divisive" about it. Trump is not a divider, but the Great Clarifier. He is not a divider because we have long been divided.  Part of what he has accomplished is to make clear the division and to give a forceful voice to the American patriot.  A patriot is neither a chauvinist nor  a jingoist; a patriot is one who loves his country with an ordinate love, a love consistent with criticism of country and its government.

If you complain that Trump cannot unite us, that is certainly true; no one can. Unity is possible only under the umbrella of shared principles, and Left and Right do not share principles. To invert the metaphor, the citizens of the USA no longer occupy common ground.  Will the Left give up its illusions and lies and come to our side? No chance of that, as little as any chance that we will give up our cherished principles for lies and illusions.

Here:

But as a statement of America’s founding principles, Trump’s Mount Rushmore speech was as eloquent and powerful a speech as any elected official has made in a long, long while, precisely because it contained, at its core, the emotional truth every immigrant holds to be self-evident: Knowing that it’s here and only here that accidents of birth can be transcended with relative ease and the full bloom of one’s genius allowed to flourish precisely because the cultural soil is so rich and so varied and contains multitudes.

[. . .]

To reject this vision as dark is to turn your back on America’s foundational covenant, the same spirit that animated anyone from George Washington to Martin Luther King Jr., which, sadly, is the case today among so many of the guardians of our institutions.

And here:

Donald Trump did not launch the latest culture war: The left-leaning press, political foes, Marxist-believing activists, and corporate and educational institutions did. When President Trump stood before a patriotic crowd on Friday night, under the watchful eyes of our country’s greatest presidents, his pronouncement that the silent majority will not retreat or surrender our founding principles was not divisive. It was American.