It transpired 50 summers ago, this June, the grand daddy of rock festivals, two years before Woodstock, in what became known as the Summer of Love. Your humble correspondent was on the scene. Some high school friends and I drove up from Los Angeles along Pacific Coast Highway. I can still call up olfactory memories of patchouli, sandalwood incense, not to mention the aroma of what was variously known as cannabis sativa, marijuana, reefer, tea, Miss Green, Mary Jane, pot, weed, grass, pacalolo (Hawaiian term), loco weed, and just plain dope. But my friends and I, students at an all-boys Catholic high school that enforced a strict dress code, were fairly straight: we partook of no orgies, smoked no dope, and slept in a motel. The wild stuff came later in our lives, when we were better able to handle it.
I have in my hand the program book of the Festival, in mint condition. Do I hear $1,000? On the first page there is a quotation from Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice:
How sweet the moon-light sleeps upon this bank! Here we sit and let the sounds of music creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night, become the touches of sweet harmony.
Ah yes, I remember it well, the "sweet harmony" of the whining feedback of Jimi Hendrix's Fender Stratocaster plugged into his towering Marshall amps and the "soft stillness" of the The Who smashing their instruments to pieces. Not to be outdone, Jimi lit his Strat on fire with lighter fluid. The image is burned into my memory. It shocked my working-class frugality. I used to baby my Fender Mustang and I once got mad at a girl for placing a coke can on my Fender Deluxe Reverb amp.
On the last page of the programme book, a more fitting quotation: the lyrics of Dylan's The Times They Are A'Changin', perhaps the numero uno '60s anthem to youth and social ferment. (Click on the link; great piano version. Live 1964 guitar version.) Were the utopian fantasies of the '60s just a load of rubbish? Mostly, but not entirely. "Lately it occurs to me, what a long strange trip it's been."
Tunes and Footage:
The Who, My Generation. I hope I die before I get old."
This brings me to Bob Dylan who was recently awarded the 2016 Nobel Prize in Literature. Now I've been a Dylan fan from the early '60s. In the '60s I was more than a fan; I was a fanatic who would brook no criticism of his hero. And I still maintain that in the annals of American popular music no one surpasses him as a songwriter.
But the Nobel Prize for Literature? That's a bit much, and an ominous foreshadowing of the death of the book and of quiet reading in this hyperkinetic age of tweets and soundbites.
I might have added that Dylan is important in the way Kerouac is. But is Kerouac a great novelist? Obviously not. I have enough literary sense to realize that my own love of Kerouac is largely determined by my own quirks and generational affiliation.
Ron Radosh, whom I respect highly, thinks that Dylan deserved the prize. But David P. Goldman, 'Spengler,' whom I also respect, takes a harsh line:
And so it is with Bob Dylan, parodist, satirist, scammer and snake-oil salesman par excellence. He never hid from us what he had in mind: he's been playing with our heads since high school, finding the lever that loosened our tears, and our wallets. He caught a wave in the early 1960s with the folk revival movement, itself a hoax. We Americans are not a "folk," not in the sense that Johann Gottfried Herder used the term. We do not have the deep memory of autochthonous roots that characterizes European cultures, the hand-me-downs of long-lost pagan experience. We are a people self-created by religious and political impulse.
[. . .]
Of course, it was all a put-on. Woody Guthrie was a middle-class lawyer's son. Pete Seeger was the privileged child of classical musicians who decamped to Greenwich Village. The authenticity of the folk movement stank of greasepaint. But a generation of middle-class kids who, like Holden Caulfield, thought their parents "phony" gravitated to the folk movement. In 1957, Seeger was drunk and playing for pittances at Communist Party gatherings; that's where I first met him, red nose and all. By the early 1960s he was a star again.
To Dylan's credit, he knew it was a scam, and spent the first part of his career playing with our heads. He could do a credible imitation of the camp-meeting come-to-Jesus song ("When the Ship Comes In") and meld pseudo-folk imagery with social-protest sensibility ("A Hard Rain's a' Gonna Fall"). But he knew it was all play with pop culture ("Lone Ranger and Tonto/Riding down the line/Fixin' everybody's troubles/Everybody's 'cept mine"). When he went electric at the Newport Festival to the hisses of the folk purists, he knew it was another kind of joke.
Only someone who was not moved by the music of that period could write something so extreme. No doubt there was and is an opportunistic side to Dylan. He started out an unlikely rock-and roller in high school aping Little Richard, but sensed that the folk scene was where he could make his mark. And so for a time he played the son of Ramblin' Jack Elliot and the grandson of Woody Guthrie.
In his recent Nobel Prize lecture, Dylan mentions early influences. Let's dig up some of the tunes that inspired him.
I think it was a day or two after that that his [Holly's] plane went down. And somebody – somebody I’d never seen before – handed me a Leadbelly record with the song “Cottonfields” on it. And that record changed my life right then and there. Transported me into a world I’d never known. It was like an explosion went off. Like I’d been walking in darkness and all of the sudden the darkness was illuminated. It was like somebody laid hands on me. I must have played that record a hundred times.
It was on a label I’d never heard of with a booklet inside with advertisements for other artists on the label: Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, the New Lost City Ramblers, Jean Ritchie, string bands. I’d never heard of any of them. But I reckoned if they were on this label with Leadbelly, they had to be good, so I needed to hear them. I wanted to know all about it and play that kind of music. I still had a feeling for the music I’d grown up with, but for right now, I forgot about it. Didn’t even think about it. For the time being, it was long gone.
Sonnie Terry and Brownie McGhee, Key to the Highway. Just to vex London Ed who hates Eric 'Crapton' as he calls him, here is his Derek and the Dominoes version with Duane Allman. Sound good to me, Ed!
By listening to all the early folk artists and singing the songs yourself, you pick up the vernacular. You internalize it. You sing it in the ragtime blues, work songs, Georgia sea shanties, Appalachian ballads and cowboy songs. You hear all the finer points, and you learn the details.
You know what it’s all about. Takin’ the pistol out and puttin’ it back in your pocket. Whippin’ your way through traffic, talkin’ in the dark. You know that Stagger Lee was a bad man and that Frankie was a good girl. You know that Washington is a bourgeois town and you’ve heard the deep-pitched voice of John the Revelator and you saw the Titanic sink in a boggy creek. And you’re pals with the wild Irish rover and the wild colonial boy. You heard the muffled drums and the fifes that played lowly. You’ve seen the lusty Lord Donald stick a knife in his wife, and a lot of your comrades have been wrapped in white linen.
I had all the vernacular down. I knew the rhetoric. None of it went over my head – the devices, the techniques, the secrets, the mysteries – and I knew all the deserted roads that it traveled on, too. I could make it all connect and move with the current of the day. When I started writing my own songs, the folk lingo was the only vocabulary that I knew, and I used it.
Talk of 'cultural appropriation,' as knuckleheaded leftists use this phrase, is bullshit. But bullshit is the stock-in-trade of the divisive and destructive Left.
Finally, with all due respect and gratitude, give a listen to Robert Johnson.
………………
London Ed responds:
No problem with ‘cultural appropriation’, which is the way all culture has been transmitted for millennia. Note Robert Johnson wore a pin stripe suit. And played an instrument that originated in Spain.
Re Clapton:
(1) Guitar. Page captures nicely the quarter tones of the Delta Blues, see e.g. the opening bars of this. Clapton follows more closely the Western diatonic classical scale so it’s not authentic sounding blues for me.
(2) Voice. Johnson sings from the dark depths of the soul e.g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yd60nI4sa9A 0.55 onwards ‘standin at the crossroads, tryin to flag a ride .. aint nobody seem to know me, everybody pass me by’. Compare Crapton https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtLhPeLB9bA on the same verse around 1.10. Elevator music. Particularly ‘everybody pass me by’ which somewhat lacks the despairing alienated spirit of Johnson’s version, no?
BV: Ed touches on an interesting set of questions that I don't have time to tackle at the moment. But just to add to the data set: Charles Adnopoz, Robert Zimmerman, Michael Bloomfield. Three Jews from comfortable backgrounds who sought authenticity in the music of the down and out and dispossessed.
Admittedly, Clapton is not singing from the dark depths of a tormented soul. And if you saw Clapton at a crossroads flagging a ride, you'd pick him up for sure; if you saw someone who looked like Robert Johnson, though, you'd probably pass him by.
Bob Dylan finally gave his Nobel Prize for Literature lecture. I'm impressed. Besides his musical he mentions his literary influences. He cites many of the books I read as assigned readings in high school, books he claims to have read as assigned readings in grammar school! I'm talking about some serious tomes: Moby Dick, Ivanhoe, A Tale of Two Cities, Don Quixote, Robinson Crusoe, and others.
Audio here. Dylan's comments on Moby Dick are from 6:27-12:30.
A BBC article with some of the text. Full text at first link above.
Mattie Earp was the first common-law wife of Wyatt Earp. She is buried in the Pinal Pioneer Cemetery a little east of where I live. I located her gravesite a few days ago and took the picture to the left. 'A. T.' abbreviates 'Arizona Territory.' More photos and commentary later, perhaps.
Rosalie (Rosie) Hamlin of Rosie and the Originals died at age 71 on March 30th. A one-hit wonder, she will be remembered for her Angel Baby from 1961. John Lennon loved this song and recorded a version of it. But of course nothing touches the original.
Cultural appropriation and an egregious insult to cats!
Canned Heat, Catfish Blues, circa 1967. I forgot how good and distinctive Henry Vestine's guitar work is on this cut. From their first album, Canned Heat. I bought it when it first came out. Mint condition still. Not for sale! Heard 'em live at a club called the Kaelidoscope in Los Angeles and at the The Monterey Pop Festival 50 years ago this June.
There is a lot of unsung talent out there in the Land of YouTube. Check out the 'classic' covers by this cutie who goes by the name of Sayaka Alessandra:
The Wanderer. A creditable version of the feminist anthem. Dion DiMucci's original. It takes a wop to sing this song right.
A Teenager in Love. Dion and the Belmonts' original. They guy has amazing staying power. He still looks and sounds good at 70+. I Wonder Why (2004). Wop, wop, wop, wop, wopwopwop. Is that why they call it 'do wop'?
We raise our glasses tonight in tribute to the unsung session players who added so much to our Boomer soundtrack. Back in the '60s we assiduous readers of liner notes came across the name 'Bruce Langhorne' again and again. The mood of so many of those memorable tunes by Dylan, Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Richard and Mimi Farina, Carolyn Hester and others was made by his unobtrusive guitar leads and fills. With his passing at age 78 last month, Langhorne (on the far left) is unsung no more. Here are some tunes which feature Langhorne's work and some that don't.
Joan Baez, A Hard Rain's A Gonna Fall. The voice of an angel, the words of a poet, and Langhorne's guitar. The incredible mood of this version, especially the intro, is made by Langhorne and the bass of Russ Savakus, another well-known session player from those days. I've been listening to this song since '65 and it gives me chills every time.
Carolyn Hester, I'll Fly Away. Dylan on harp, a little rough and ragged. Langhorne on guitar? Not sure.
Joan Baez and her sister, Mimi Farina, Catch the Wind. Fabulous.
Dave van Ronk and the Hudson Dusters, Clouds (Both Sides Now). This beautiful version by "The Mayor of MacDougal street" goes out to luthier Dave Bagwill who I know will appreciate it. Judy Collins made a hit of it. And you still doubt that the '60s was the greatest decade for American popular music? Speaking of the greatest decade, it was when the greatest writer of American popular songs, bar none, Bob Dylan, made his mark.
Kai Frederik Lorentzen points us to Weather in My Head by Donald Fagen of Steely Dan. Good tune!
Dave Bagwill sends us to a clip in which van Ronk talks a bit about the days of the "Great American Folk Scare" and then sings his signature number, "Green, Green, Rocky Road."
Lynn Anderson, Red River Valley. A very satisfying version. Stevie Nicks' effort is a bit overdone. A spare Woody Guthrie version. Classic Americana. No Woody, no Ramblin' Jack Elliot, no Dylan.
Render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's . . .
Have you stateside readers settled accounts with the Infernal Revenue Service? If yes, order up one scotch, one bourbon, and one beer and enjoy this live version of Taxman featuring Harrison and Clapton. Stevie Ray Vaughan's blistering version.
. . . and render unto God the things that are God's.
Herewith, five definite decouplings of rock and roll from sex and drugs.
Clapton and Winwood, Presence of the Lord. Why is Clapton such a great guitarist? Not because of his technical virtuosity, his 'chops,' but because he has something to say.
April Fool's Weekend found me in a fool's paradise, LaLaLand. So I'm seven days late and several dollars short, but here for your auditory amusement are some tunes in celebration or bemoanment of human folly the chief instance of which is romantic love. Who has never been played for a fool by a charming member of the opposite sex?
Old age is the sovereign cure for romantic folly and I sincerely recommend it to the young and foolish. Take care to get there. Philosophers especially should want to live long so as to study life from all temporal angles.
We have it on good authority that the unexamined life is not worth living. To which I add that the examination ought to be of every age from every age.
Ricky Nelson, Fools Rush In. "Fools rush in/Where wise men never go/But wise men never fall in love/So how are they to know?" Sam Cooke, Fool's Paradise. Sage advice. Heed it well, my young friends. A version by Mose Allison. I heard Mose live a number of times back in the '70s, most memorably at The Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach, California. Sadly, he died last November. But he made it to 89. Elvin Bishop, Fooled Around and Fell in Love
