Category: Music

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Varia

Simon and Garfunkel, The Dangling Conversation.  A lovely song, if a bit pretentious.  Paul Simon was an English major.

Beatles, We Can Work it Out.  Listen for the time signature change from 4/4 to 3/4.

Smokey Robinson and the Miracles, You Really Got a Hold on Me

Barbara Lynn, You'll Lose a Good Thing.  Her moves and appearance are reminsicent of Jimi Hendrix — or the other way around.  Check out how she strums that left-handed Telecaster.

EmmyLou Harris, Save the Last Dance for Me.  That's one big guitar.

Marty Robbins, Blue Spanish Eyes.  What a wimpy guitar!

Dalida, O Sole Mio.  Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan!

Melina Mercouri, Never on Sunday.  Ditto!

Nana Mouskouri, Farewell Angelina.  One of Bob Dylan's most haunting songs.

Freddy Fender, Cielito Lindo.  Tex-Mex version of a very old song.

Marty Robbins, La Paloma.  Another old song dating back to 1861. 

Whittaker Chambers on Beethoven

Whittaker Chambers (Witness, p. 19) on the Third Movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:

. . . that music was the moment at which Beethoven finally passed beyond the suffering of his life on earth and reached for the hand of God, as God reaches for the hand of Adam in Michaelangelo's vison of the creation.

Well, either the adagio movement of the 9th or the late piano sonatas, in particular, Opus 109, Opus 110, and Opus 111. To my ear, those late compositions are unsurpassed in depth and beauty.

In these and a few other compositions of the great composers we achieve a glimpse of what music is capable of.  Just as one will never appreciate the possibilities of genuine philosophy by reading hacks such as Ayn Rand or positivist philistines (philosophistines?) such as David Stove, one will never appreciate the possibilities of great music and its power of speaking to what is deepest in us if one listens only to contemporary popular music.

Ron Radosh on the Woody Guthrie Tribute Concert

Good music, dreadful politics.  Excerpt:

Unfortunately, the entire event was marred by the hard Left narrative particularly voiced in the most offensive manner by two artists, Tom Morello and Ry Cooder. At least Cooder is a real musician, but that does not excuse his behavior and his leftist rants delivered both in asides and in the rewriting of Guthrie’s lyrics. Cooder sang a little known Guthrie song written towards the end of WW II about how the fascists would all lose. Cooder commented, to great applause from the leftist audience, that we won that fight, but the fascists were still here, and he knew they would be defeated on election day. Singing Guthrie’s “Vigilante Man,” about hired thugs of the coal companies in the early 20th Century, Cooder changed a lyric to make it about the Trayvon Martin case.  He could have grown up to be President, he said, “but he was killed by a vigilante man.” Then he sang a new verse about how those in the audience should not tell anyone that they attended the concert, or they too might be killed!

Does Ry Cooder really believe that paying an average of $100 for a Kennedy Center concert could lead anyone to be harmed, not to say murdered? Doesn’t he know that by now, Woody Guthrie is a celebrated national hero, honored and revered by many, and no kind of danger to anyone who sings his songs?

How Cooder could be such an idiot is beyond me, but then he is not atypical.  Artists, actors, and musicians hang with their own left-leaning ilk and are never exposed to conservative or libertarian points of view.  They reinforce each others' prejudices.  Denouncing bigotry in others, they exemplify it in excelsis.  Masters of psychological projection, they cannot face what they project into others.  They can emote in all sorts of creative ways, but they cannot think.

Play Ry, play.  But shut up about politics until you learn something.  Two favorites of mine: Yellow Roses. He'll Have to Go.

Radosh reports that Arlo Guthrie is a registered Republican and libertarian.  At least he has his head screwed on Right.  City of New Orleans.  A great piece of Americana.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Three Who Didn’t Survive the ’60s

1970 was the last year of the 'sixties, and these three died in September and October.

Alan 'Blind Owl' Wilson of Canned Heat.  Date of death: 2 September 1970.  Cause: "acute accidental barbituate intoxication."  I saw him live with Canned Heat in 1968 in a club named  Kaleidoscope on Sunset Boulevard  in Hollywood.  Wilson's high-pitched voice drew jeers from some members of the audience.  On the Road Again.  Going Up the Country.  On the bill with them when I saw them at the Kaleidoscope was an obscure psychedelic band name of "Fever Tree."  They were damned good as witness The Sun Also Rises and San Francisco Girls and Nowadays Clancy Can't Even Sing.

Jimi Hendrix.  Date of death:  18 September 1970.  Cause: unclear.  In '67 I heard him play The Wind Cries Mary at the Monterey Pop Festival. Third Stone from the Sun.

Janis Joplin. Date of Death: 4 October 1970.  Cause: heroin overdose. She was at Monterey too.  My favorite  is her rendition of Kris Krisofferson's Me and Bobby McGee.  Otherwise, I didn't much like her vocal stylings: too screechy and screamy.  Dead 42 years, she's been dead longer than she lived.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Youth, Fast Cars, and Death

JamesTomorrow is the 57th anniversary of the death of James Dean.  When the young  Dean crashed his low slung silver Porsche Spyder on a lonely California highway on September 30, 1955, he catapulted a couple of unknowns into the national spotlight.  One of them was Ernie Tripke, one of two California Highway Patrol officers who arrived at the scene.  He died  in 2010 at the age of 88.   But what ever happened to Donald Turnupseed, the driver who turned in front of the speeding Dean, having failed to see him coming?  His story is here. In exfoliation of the theme that "speed kills" I present the following for your listening pleasure:

Jan and Dean, Deadman's Curve (1964).  But it is not just boys who are drawn to speed, little old ladies have been known to put the pedal to the metal.  Case in point: The Little Old Lady From Pasadena.

Johnny Bond, Hot Rod Lincoln (1960)

James Dean, Public Service Announcement

James Dean, The 'Chicken' Scene

Beach Boys, Don't Worry Baby

Ike Turner/Jackie Brenston, Rocket 88 (1951).  The first R & R song?  With footage of Bettie Page.

Billy Joel, Only the Good Die Young


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Saturday Night at the Oldies: Forgotten Folkies

The Highwaymen were a 'collegiate folk ' outfit that had a big hit in 1961 with Michael Row the Boat Ashore.  Listening to it now after many years, I had forgotten how beautiful it is.  1962 brought them their second hit, Cotton Fields.  The tune is a Leadbelly cover and has been covered in its turn by the Springfields, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Beach Boys, and others.

The Springfields were how Dusty Springfield got her start.  Silver Threads and Golden Needles is another great tune they did.  It is a Wanda Jackson cover and was covered in its turn by Linda Ronstadt.

And while we're on the topic of implements of sewing, we can't go wrong with Jackie De Shannon's Needles and Pins (1963).

If you remember Joe and Eddie, There's a Meetin' Here Tonight, I'll buy you a bowl of menudo at Tres Banderas cantina, Apache Junction, Arizona. Meet me there in an hour. 

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.  I loved this song when I was nine and I love it today.  The guitar fills are just right: simple, tasteful and unobtrusive.

Ketty Lester, Love Letters

Roy Orbison, In Dreams

Lenny Welch, Since I Fell for You

Timi Yuro, Hurt

Billie Holliday, The Very Thought of You

Etta James, At Last

Gogi Grant, The Wayward Wind (1956).  Made the #1 Billboard position.  The tune has haunted me since I was six years old. 

Toni Fisher, The Big Hurt (1959).  Made the Billboard #3 slot.  The first verse hints at the origin of 'torch song':

Now it begins,
now that you've gone
Needles and pins, twilight till dawn
Watching that
clock till you return
Lighting that torch and watching it burn.

Is this the first recording to use a phase shifter?  Pretty far-out for the 'fifties.  While we're on the topic
of special effects, the first fuzz tone occurs as far as I know in Marty Robbins' Don't Worry About Me (1961).

Saturday Night at the Oldies: September Songs

September again.  A lovely transitional month leading from hot August to glorious October.

Lotte Lenya sings Kurt Weill, September Song.  A Liberace-Jack Benny spoof.

Dinah Washington, September in the Rain

The Tempos, See You in September

Carole King, It Might as Well Rain Until September

Antonio Vivaldi, "The Four Seasons," Autumn.  Newcomers to classical music — some will say 'real music' — are well-advised to start with Vivaldi and with Pachelbel's Canon in D major.

Ron Radosh on Woody Guthrie at 100

A very good piece that ends like this:

Poor Woody Guthrie. He never expected to see the day when the newsmen, the photographers, the media as a whole would proclaim singers like Bruce Springsteen, Tom Morello, and Ry Cooder geniuses because they are leftists, and although like all good millionaires and billionaires, they use their money as Bruce Springsteen does — to buy homes all over the world and race horses for his daughter to compete with. If Woody was alive, he at least would be honest, and would have squandered his money and given it to the CPUSA.

So go and honor Woody — he was in so many ways a bard of those who were dispossessed and down under in the years of the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, and in his best works, he echoed their concerns and their lives. In his worst, he became a prisoner of the Communist movement he joined, who forced him to adopt political correctness on behalf of evil causes, and to write songs on their behalf better forgotten.

Remember this if you’re attending any of the concerts coming up. And if Tom Morello sings and I’m there, I’ll remain sitting, won’t applaud, and if you hear someone booing, it might just be me.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Scott McKenzie, San Francisco, Summer of Love

Nostalgia time again.  Scott McKenzie, famous for the 1967 anthem "San Francisco" penned by John Phillips of The Mamas and the Papas, is dead at 73.  Gen-Xer Mick LaSalle gets it right in his commentary:

The thing about that song is that . . . however naive and even sanctimonious it might be, it is so clearly a true expression of a mindset, of a vision, of a moment in time, of a generation, of an aspiration that, even if it is singing about a San Francisco that never happened and a dream that never came true and never really had a chance of coming true, and that had only a scant relationship with reality . . . it’s a precious thing.  It’s a document of a moment, but more than that, a perfect poetic expression of that moment.

It was not MY youth, but I can recognize in that song and in the purity of McKenzie’s vocal something that is as unmistakably honest, in its way, as Gershwin playing the piano, or Fred Astaire dancing, or Artie Shaw playing the clarinet.  It is youth finding itself in the world and saying the most beautiful thing it can think of saying at that particular moment. You can’t laugh that away.  You have to treasure that.  Really, you have to love it.

Speaking of the Mamas and Papas, here are some of my favorites:  Dedicated to the One I Love (1967), a cover almost as good as the Shirelles original.  But it is hard to touch the Shirelles. 

Twelve Thirty.  Creeque Alley. California Dreamin'.

And then there's Eric Burdon and the Animals, San Franciscan Nights from '67.

The so-called Summer of Love transpired 45 years ago. (My reminiscences of the Monterey Pop Festival of that same summer of '67 are reported here.) Ted Nugent, the guru of kill and grill, and a rocker singularly without musical merit in my humble opinion,  offers some rather intemperate reflections in a WSJ piece, The Summer of Drugs. Excerpts:

The 1960s, a generation that wanted to hold hands, give peace a chance, smoke dope and change the world, changed it all right: for the worse. America is still suffering the horrible consequences of
hippies who thought utopia could be found in joints and intentional disconnect.

[. . .]

While I salute and commend the political and cultural activism of the 1960s that fueled the civil rights movement, other than that, the decade is barren of any positive cultural or social impact. Honest people will remember 1967 for what it truly was.

Although I am not inclined to disagree too strenuously with Nugent's indictment, especially when it comes to drug-fueled self-destruction, Nugent misses much that was positive in those days. For one thing, there was the amazing musical creativity of the period, as represented by Dylan and the Beatles above all. This in stark contrast to the vapidity of '50s popular music. Has there been anything before or since in popular music that has come up the level of the best of Dylan?

The '60s also offered welcome relief from the dreary materialism and social conformism of the '50s. My generation saw through the emptiness of a life devoted to social oneupsmanship, status-seeking, and the piling up of consumer goods. We were an idealistic generation. We wanted something more out of life than job security in suburbia. (Frank Zappa: "Do your job, do it right! Life's a ball, TV tonight!")

We were seekers and questers, though there is no denying that some of us were suckers for charlatans and pied pipers like Timothy Leary. We questioned the half-hearted pieties and platitudes and hypocrisies of our elders. Some of the questioning was puerile and dangerously utopian, but at least we were questioning. We wanted life and we wanted it in abundance in rebellion against the deadness we perceived around us. We experimented with psychedelics to open the doors of perception, not to get loaded.

We were a destructive generation as well, a fact documented in Peter Collier and David Horowitz, Destructive Generation: Second Thoughts About the '60s. But the picture Nugent paints is onesided. Here is Dylan's "Blowing in the Wind" which was one of the anthems of the Civil Rights movement. Or give a listen to the Youngblood's Let's Get Together.  This song captures the positive spirit of the '60s, a spirit not much in evidence nowadays.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Midnight and Moonlight

Eric Clapton, After Midnight

Thelonious Monk, 'Round Midnight

Jack Kerouac, Old Angel Midnight

Allman Bros., Midnight Rider

Rolling Stones, Midnight Rambler

B. B. King, et al., Midnight Hour

Maria Muldaur, Midnight at the Oasis  (This one goes out to Mary Korzen)

Patsy Cline, Walkin' After Midnight

Joey Powers, Midnight Mary.  A one-hit wonder.

Kenny Ball, Midnight in Moscow  One of many memorable instrumentals from the early '60s.

Rolling Stones, Moonlight Mile

Doors, Moonlight Drive

Anne Murray, Shadows in the Moonlight (This one goes out to K. P.)

Ludwig van Beethoven, Moonlight Sonata.  A part of it anyway with scenes from the great Coen Bros. film, "The Man Who Wasn't There."

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Time Signatures

4/4 is the most common time signature, and 3/4 is fairly common.  James Ray's If You Gotta Make a Fool Of Somebody (1961) is a good example of 3/4 time.  Another beautiful example is Dylan's "Farewell Angelina," here sung by Joan Baez.

Dylan's Mr Tambourine Man is in 2/4 time  — 1-2, 1-2, 1-2 — but the Byrds cast it into a danceable 4/4.

The Beatles' A Little Help From My Friends is in 4/4 time, but Joe Cocker covered it in 3/4.

Probably the most popular tune in 5/4 time is Dave Bruebeck's aptronymic Take Five from 1959.  Jethro Tull's Living in the Past (1969) is also in 5/4 time.

You can guess the time signature of Cannonball Adderley's 74 Miles Away. I like McCoy Tyner's version of this even better, but couldn't find it.

Peter Gabriel's Solsbury Hill is also mainly in 7/4 time.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: James Burton, Master of the Telecaster

James Burton is the legendary sideman responsible for those deceptively simple but perfect guitar solos on such early  Rick Nelson recordings as Hello Mary Lou and Travelin' Man and It's Up to You.

Here Burton trades licks with Bruce Springsteen under the watchful eye of Roy Orbison.  By the way, "Pretty Woman," blending as it does the Dionysian with the tender is a candidate for the office of perfect R & R song.

Playing "Johnny B. Goode" with E. P.

Working Man's Blues