Music – Page 33 – Maverick Philosopher

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Sitar in Popular Music

The sound of the sitar played a prominent role in the soundtrack of the '60s. To George Harrison, student of Ravi Shankar, goes the credit of having introduced it to Western popular music. Light a stick of sandalwood incense and enjoy these great Beatle songs that feature its use:

Norwegian Wood

Love You To

Tomorrow Never Knows. "Turn your off your mind, relax, and float downstream. It is not dying, it is not dying. Lay down all thoughts, surrender to the Void. It is shining, it is shining. That you may see the meaning of within. It is Be-ing, it is Be-ing . . . ." The depth and creativity of a song like this surpasses anything in popular music since.

Within You, Without You

Across the Universe

Following the Beatles, everybody and the brother of his monkey's uncle got into the sitar act. The Rolling Stones for example. No, I'm not going to link to "Paint it Black." I'll link to something obscure: Richie Havens, Something Else Again.

By 1970 or so, the sitar's popularity in Western popular music had subsided. Its resonance belongs to those far-off and fabulous days of the '60s.

Ravi Shankar Dead at 92

What would the soundtrack of the '60s have been without Shankar's sitar? Here is the Shankar I heard at the Monterey Pop Festival in '67. Here is an extended performance at the 1971 Concert for Bangladesh.

Here is an obituary.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Dave Brubeck

Dave Brubeck has passed beyond time signatures and time itself, ending his earthly sojourn last Wednesday a day shy of his 92nd birthday. My old college buddy Monterey Tom writes,

I don't think that you have to be either a Jazz aficionado or a musician to note Brubeck's importance in both the music world itself and in the broader culture of the 50's and 60's. His compositions, and those of his alto sax player Paul Desmond, inspired other musicians to experiment with non-traditional time signatures and tonal structures. Ironically, by performing often in college auditoria instead of night clubs and by clearly connecting his music to classical music, he put a coat-and-tie respectability to Jazz and thereby made huge numbers of young Americans aware of both the broader worlds of Jazz and modern art in general. His music was often as charming and soothing as chamber music, as joyous as that of the 1930's swingers, and as intriguing as that of the supposedly more serious innovators of the 20th Century.

Tom is much more the jazz aficionado than me, but we were both and still are Kerouac aficionados. Here is a 30 second reading, "Dave Brubeck," from Kerouac's Poetry for the Beat Generation. That's Steve Allen on piano.

The title of Take Five alludes to its 5/4 time signature. It was from the 1959 album Time Out. Wikipedia: "While "Take Five" was not the first jazz composition to use the quintuple meter, it was one of the first in the United States to achieve mainstream significance, reaching #25 on the Billboard Hot 100 and #5 on Billboard's Easy Listening chart in 1961, two years after its initial release." I remember hearing it in '61 from my brother-in-law Ken's car radio somewhere in the Mojave desert. Old Ken liked it. Who could not like it?

Also very accessible is Blue Rondo à la Turk in 9/8 and 4/4 time, also from Time Out. Based on a melody Brubeck heard in the streets of Istanbul.

St. Louis Blues

Legacy of a Legend

Brubeck composed sacred music and became a Roman Catholic in 1980.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: 1956

Mickey "Guitar" Baker died this last week at age 87. He is perhaps best known as one half of the Mickey and Sylvia duo whose Love is Strange was a hit in 1956. Also from '56:

Johnny Cash, I Walk the Line

Gogi Grant, The Wayward Wind

Elvis Presley, Love Me Tender

Doris Day, Que Sera Sera. It was a different world, muchachos.

Big Joe Turner, Corrine, Corrina. I don't remember hearing this in '56. Hell, I was only six years old. I remember the tune from the 1960 cover by Ray Peterson. Youtuber comments, which in general are the worst in the whole of cyberspace, on this one are good. There is a lovely version by Bob Dylan on his second album, The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan, under the slightly different name, Corrina, Corrina.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Fortune

Carl Orff, Carmina Burana, O Fortuna (With Latin and English). Better performance without lyrics.

Joan Baez, There But For Fortune. The best rendition of a song written by Phil Ochs. Ochs' version.

I agree with this analysis of Ochs:

The short, triumphant, tragic career of Phil Ochs illustrates one of the harder lessons of American popular culture: that audiences are moved far more by mystery than by commitment. Of all the artists of the 1960s folk-music boom, only Bob Dylan understood that in his bones, and only Dylan became a superstar. Ochs, by contrast, was the bright class president of the Greenwich Village scene, reeling off powerful, didactic protest songs in an earnest tenor. He was direct and defiantly uncool, and it doomed him.

He Was a Friend of Mine

John F. Kennedy was assassinated 49 years ago today. Here is The Byrds' tribute to the slain leader. They took a traditional song and redid the lyrics. The young Bob Dylan here offers an outstanding interpretation of the old song.

I was in the eighth grade when Kennedy was gunned down. We were assembled in an auditorium for some reason when the principal came in and announced that the president had been shot. The date was November 22, 1963. I remember it like it was yesterday. I was seated behind my quondam inamorata, Christine W. My love for her was from afar, like that of Don Quixote for the fair Dulcinea, but at that moment I was in close physical proximity to her, studying the back of her blouse through which I could make out the strap of her training bra . . . .

By the way, if you want to read a thorough (1,612 pages with notes on a separate CD!) takedown of all the JFK conspiracy speculation, I recommend Vincent Bugliosi, Reclaiming History: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy.

It was a tale of two nonentities, Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby. Both were little men who wanted to be big men. Oswald, acting alone, shot Kennedy. Ruby, acting alone, shot Oswald. That is the long and the short of it. For details, I refer you to Bugliosi.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘End’ Songs

Skeeter Davis, The End of the World

Traveling Wilburys, End of the Line

Floyd Cramer, Last Date. Skeeter Davis' version.

Bob Dylan, It's All Over Now, Baby Blue. Dont' like Dylan's voice? Try Joan Baez's angel-throated version.

Roy Orbison, It's Over

Beatles, The End

George Harrison, All Things Must Pass

Bob Dylan, Not Dark Yet (but It's Getting There).

The Doors, The End. "The West is the best."

Bonus tracks:

Ramblin' Jack Elliot, Just Like Tom Thumb's Blues. This'll grow on you if you give it a chance.

This one goes out to General Petraeus: Bob Seger, The Fire Down Below. In its grip, they'll throw it all away.

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.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Halloween

Screamin' Jay Hawkins, I Put a Spell on You
Howlin' Wolf, I Ain't Superstitious
Bobby 'Boris' Pickett, The Monster Mash
Mannheim Steamroller version

Alexandru Andries, Dracula Blues. This one goes out to Peter Lupu.
Lightnin' Hopkins, Black Cat Blues. The one goes out to Max and Manny, the brothers Black.

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.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Marital Advice

Before you even think of getting married, make sure you have plenty of Money. Then Shop Around. Consider who will become your Mother-in-Law. If you want to be happy, don't worry too much about physical beauty. If she has a cheatin' heart, hit the road, Jack.

But then again you might be better off without a wife.

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 20^th 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

Tomorrow 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

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.