tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-68089906214487502602023-11-16T01:55:09.917-05:00Blind William Can't TellThe blue light was my baby.BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.comBlogger83125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-18734129048829096652011-07-24T06:53:00.007-04:002011-08-06T10:09:10.158-04:00A Whole Nother Devil<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
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</div><div style="text-align: left;">It's a thesis song and it speaks for itself. "The whole concept of this video is to basically show how the two worlds collide. I have a street background coming from The Clipse, the Re-Up Gang. Tyler comes from this independent subculture. I think people would not expect for us to be able to make a record that's so fundamentally hiphop sounding." Got it.<br />
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We have no need to write on the self evident and we don't work on our fresh in these pages, but there's so much blue devilin' in the track, we thought we'd drop a couple of footnotes on you.<br />
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We begin 97 years ago, w/ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_M._Jones">Richard M. Jones</a>, the ancestor who conjured one of the dominators of the 20th c., "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trouble_in_Mind_(song)">Trouble in Mind</a>," in 1924. It's a song so familiar that it's gruesome ending, when the narrator commits suicide by letting a train crush his head, has become inaudible. Did I hear someone holla "<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XSbZidsgMfw">Yonkers</a>" nearly a century later? We thought we heard something from the back of the club. Satisfy my mind, ya dig?<br />
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It's easy to take Jones's tune one way, as a variation on the worried blues theme. As many covers as there are to the song there are very few real versions on it; the take is pretty standard. <br />
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Then we got worry's opposite: "So much trouble on my mind. I refuse to lose." <br />
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This back and forth puts Ralph Ellison's first rule of the blues into of our mind. The blues don't stay where you thought you put them. The blues swings front, back and side to side. Ellison tells us that the blues is "an impulse to keep the painful details and episodes of a brutal experience alive in one's aching consciousness, to finger the jagged grain, and to transcend it, not by the consolation of philosophy but by squeezing from it a near-tragic, near-comic lyricism." This is the rule we'a play by when we spin Pusha T and Tyler through the night, when we spin all of the trouble songs that come before and will come after, 'til the breakadawn.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
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So we got the worries, but then we got the menace, the lyrical otherside of worry, knowhatimsaying? And you got the tragedy and the comedy all mixed up, too. They're <i><a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2010/09/ibeji.html">ibeji</a></i>, y'all. Just like in the video. But now we're writing about the self evident, so we should step out.<br />
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Here's a clip of troubles. Load your Mac w/ 'em and play on, kingz and queenz.<br />
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</div><ul></ul><div style="text-align: left;">Thesis: The Worried Mind</div><ul><li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/3557839642/05_Trouble_In_Mind_Blues.mp3">Trouble in Mind Blues</a>," Thelma La Vizzo, featuring Richard M. Jones, piano (1924).</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/3367629213/08_Trouble_in_Mind.mp3">Trouble in Mind</a>," Chippie Hill, featuring Richard M. Jones, piano, and Louis Armstrong, cornet (1926). Reference version. Surprising how close the covers stay to the spirit of this one.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/3572009069/42_Trouble_In_Mind.mp3">Trouble in Mind</a>," Dinah Washington (1952). There is no better blues singer. Female Muddy Waters.</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/2409008165/01_Trouble_In_Mind.mp3">Trouble in Mind</a>," Lightnin' Hopkins (1977).</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/3945789686/11_Trouble_In_Mind.mp3">Trouble in Mind</a>," James Blood Ulmer (2003).</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/937989511/So_Much_Trouble_In_My_Mind_Pt1.mp3">(I've Got) So Much Trouble on My Mind</a>,"Sir Joe and Free Soul (1972). Funky retake of the old worried blues. "Give me the strength, 'cause everything I've got is gone."</li>
<li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/219863291/13_Trouble.mp3">Trouble</a>," Shinehead (1992).</li>
</ul><div style="text-align: left;">Antithesis: I Refuse to Lose</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/1253280414/03_I_Refuse_To_Lose.mp3">I Refuse to Lose</a>," James Brown (1976). Ellpee version.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/826729926/01_Wanna_Rock__LP_Version_.mp3">Wanna Rock</a>," UTFO (1989). Flips Sir Joe into a boast. </li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/3629446183/05_Welcome_To_The_Terrordome.mp3">Welcome to the Terrordome</a>," Public Enemy. Huge, wild insertion into the tradition. Runs loose over the whole business. </li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/4222910406/Trouble_In_Mind.mp3">Trouble in Mind</a>," Natalie Gardiner (2003). Wild and sexy retake, adding both menace and confidence to the bluesy mix.</li>
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</div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: left;">Synthesis: Whole Nother Devil, Dig?</div><ul><li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/2345142368/01_Trouble_On_My_Mind__feat._Tyler__The_Creator_.m4a">So Much Trouble on My Mind</a>," Pusha T, featuring Tyler the Creator (2011).</li>
</ul></div></div></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-56523626824539568762011-06-25T09:15:00.004-04:002011-06-30T07:01:11.030-04:00Softly Asking Over and Over Its Old Question<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgef4LexsMD6AbDjmEiIrTmygrfanzSqe5w4LpDdv-x3eO3Z-l4uzCLixkU7Cj4-Ac0r925adVLIUuRj-bdO5RcWrBNsEC2-5ESj97r2B1mkR7LAsrhXxU-zWIfaLnHwpkZq3BVgfrHVXg/s1600/1996.71_1b.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgef4LexsMD6AbDjmEiIrTmygrfanzSqe5w4LpDdv-x3eO3Z-l4uzCLixkU7Cj4-Ac0r925adVLIUuRj-bdO5RcWrBNsEC2-5ESj97r2B1mkR7LAsrhXxU-zWIfaLnHwpkZq3BVgfrHVXg/s320/1996.71_1b.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">:: pours the rum in a circle ::</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">:: scatters red beans ::</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">:: lights cigar ::</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">:: reads the tracings ::</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">"Again the old 'Hesitation Blues' against the trills of birds..."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We approach <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Ask-Your-Mama-Moods-Jazz/dp/0394415639">ASK YOUR MAMA: 12 MOODS FOR JAZZ</a></i> slowly. Because the poem breathes so deep, conjures so much, we take care w/ each step, like a woman walking on softboiled eggs.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Before we begin, let us remark, tho,' about how much <i>AYM</i> means to professional readers of Langston Hughes. Those professors label the poem w/ heavy terms -- classic, epic, masterpiece. They use it as a basis to compare Hughes to T.S. Eliot, Wallace Stevens, William Carlos Williams and Hart Crane. We have big love for those brothers, but we think the Book of Langston is (obviously) composed on its own terms, a vocabulary distinctive because the author's interesting approach to both audience and multiple media. We note this now, even as we have made this <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/search/label/Langston%20Hughes">point before</a>, because we believe this is one of the big points in the Book of Langston, and that many readers just plain miss it because they are reading for the wrong thing. The poet laureate of Harlem, just like the King of the Zulus, just means more than most of us currently realize. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">And so we start our what we have to say about <i>AYM</i> by remarking that it is conceived as a language experienced both visually (on colorful, carefully crafted pages -- not the first time Langston played for book as object) and as a musical performance* (and as we <a href="http://blindwilliamscommonplace.blogspot.com/2011/06/hardest-part.html">have been noting</a>, this is an effort in his career that he returns to from beginning to end). In fact, if we think <i>AYM</i> as an LP (thought for a later post), complete w/ tracklist and liner notes, we have a third and highly timebound and mediated take on both of the first two approaches -- Langston knew how to play w/ the dialectic, dig? We always take <i>AYM</i> as all of these experiences and make the most of them to understand it.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Like that great ancestor, W.E.B. DuBois, Langston's has made the visual rendition of music one of the first things the reader sees.† The score stands at the beginning of the book like a veve, conjuring the drinking gourd to guide the book forward.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vachel_Lindsay">Vachel Lindsay</a>, an ancestor who has fallen to disrepute even tho' he got the jazzy groove and played with the materials of the age as well as any more acclaimed modernist, Langston gives stage directions to guide future performances. The dancers got to know what they're doing when they improvise. There's a limit to everything. Dig?</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">So will all deliberate speed (ask your Mama about this), we take up Hughes's first direction:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>The traditional folk melody of "The Hesitation Blues"</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>is the leitmotif for this poem. In it and around it,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>along with other recognizable melodies employed,</i></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><i>there is room for spontaneous jazz improvisation...</i> </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">We've been unable to establish a reference version of this tune. In fact the opposite, it's one of those jes' grew tunes that the tin pan alley gangstas (people like Smythe, Middleton and Gillham or Handy who made it, or not, stackin' bundles in the early 20th c. song dealing game) tried to line up property rights to their bankaccounts. From the beginning of rekkids, there's "Hesitation" and "Hesitating." The versions were kicking around dancehalls, vaudeville, the fields and anywhere else cratediggers went looking for their fresh back in the day. The different versions develop different takes on the impatience, but both come around to the question, "Can I get you now, or must I hesitate?" We think this undetermined origin is part of what Hughes wants us to think on, and that the tug of war between different authors for ownership creates a legacy of consequences he wants us to think on, too. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">As Handy remembers it in his indispensable <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Blues-Anthology-W-C-Handy/dp/1557095213/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1308995614&sr=8-3">Blues Anthology</a></i>, the early versions of the song are salacious. "Le me be yo' rag doll till yo' tidy come,/If he can hear me raggin,' he got to rag it some, ma honey,/How long has I got to wait?/Oh, can I git you now, or must I hesitate?" Ask your Mama whether the blues starts w/ something sexy. Can we say it again? Good God, y'all. It goes on and on and on and on. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Desire is desire. Delay is delay, the thief of time. So all the wise owls say. It's high time to stop putting off. Tomorrow isn't today. And it is easy for us to go from here to the dream deferred because it is where the poem takes us, and because the deferred dream takes such powerful place throughout the Book of Langston. The song reminds us that we're tired tired of the procrastination. Obviously, bro,' obviously, then as now, we want our freedom and we want it sooner, not later. Ask Max Roach. So we mark this. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Then we mark that there's more. The same book teaches us much about taking and remaking, taking and crossing over, taking and getting a piece of the pie, just as the blues song does, even from the beginning. In this slang rap democracy, however, we're always making new out of old, and we're always moving forward by taking things from the past and fashioning them to new purposes. Paradox? Ask your Mama. We can see from here to freedom in this movement -- stealing from that sexy bandit Jes Grew so you can BMF on copyrighted material, and then bootlegging from the copyrighted material to make collages of future freedom. Like a bird in orbit, mayn. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Here's the formula the poem proposes against the constant delay: Put the tradition to work. Make it out of the things from the past that help reframe the present, so you can see more clearly what is right going forward. Make it out of what what you find. When we take something from the past, even when it is not ours for the taking, and make it into something of our own, we propose our freedom, even when we are not fully free. And because we can propose our freedom, we make visible the limits on it. That's what Handy did, and he was more free for doing so. And even though Smythe, Middleton and Gillham (unbound by the just plain old evil of Jim Crow) were more free than Handy to do so, they made 'Merica more free for freely indulging in one of the true sources of 'Merican originality and putting the people to work on the dancefloor with it. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">So it is. With every new take on the song, we get another little piece of what's ours back, and make a little piece of what is ours to be in the future. Let's begin reading from <i>AYM </i>w/ these notes in mind. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">Here's a clip w/ hesitatings, hesitations, a procrastination and how longs, each one a give and take in the dialogue that begins with the same question:</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">I. Early Big Band -- maybe our favorite renditions because they show what was at stake in the early slangrapdemocracy days of the 20th century. Sh*t is on the run.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/1544571639/20_The_Hesitating_Blues.mp3">Hesitating Blues</a>," Prince's Band and Orchestra (ca. 1915).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/4132371913/Hesitation_Blues.mp3">Hesitation Blues</a>," The Victor Military Orchestra (1916).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/184261935/23_Hesitating_Blues.mp3">Hesitating Blues</a>," James Reese Europe's 369th U.S. Infantry "Hell Fighters" Band (1919). We have big love for this version. Dr. Europe's arkestra rules the old school.</li>
</ul><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">II. Hestitatings. We put these down closer to versions closer to W.C. Handy's: a slightly more organized song w/ some drama: Phone line's down & can't reach my baby. My baby's left on the evening train. Shouldna hesitated. Shoulda said yes yes.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">"Hello, Central! What's the matter with this Line?"</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/2033400339/13_The_Hesitating_Blues.mp3">Hesitating Blues</a>," <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esther_Bigeou">Esther Bigeou</a> (1923). A nominee for the reference version, for sure. It has all of the W.C. Handy song in one place and Esther is a wonderful singer.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/4072651539/06_Hesitating_Blues.mp3">Hesitating Blues</a>," Lena Horne (1962?). Earns a namecheck in the <i>AYM</i>.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/3655755069/04_Hesitating_Blues.mp3">Hesitating Blues</a>," Eartha Kitt (1959). "DELIGHTED! INTRODUCE ME TO EARTHA."</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/1904468354/10_Hesitating_Blues.mp3">Hesitating Blues</a>," Louis Armstrong and his All Stars. In his way, Pops flips the tune and flips it again. It's a duet. He's trynta get in touch w/ his girl. She's regretful that she's lost her beau. He's willing to take his place. You see Pops, like Langston, was really never gonna wait. This is the masterpiece of mid20th c. attitude that they both conjured. Each in their own way called on Ogoun, the ironman politician, and made impatience out of patience. </li>
</ul><div>III. Hesitations: These are more like the Smythe, Middleton and Gillham versions, but they remind us that the song cleaves to the principle of "incremental repetition" we hear Zora talk about <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2011/04/but-this-will-bring-you-back.html">elsewhere</a>: "It's one of these things that's grown by incremental repetition until it's one of the longest songs in America." There is a press shuffle logic in the versing and chorusing. <br />
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<ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/2274051079/2-16_Hesitation_Blues.mp3">Hesitation Blues</a>," Jelly Roll Morton (1938). "I kept the sheet music where nobody could see it." We are more than a little fond Jelly to the Roll's patter about staying one step ahead of the copywriters @ the beginning of this joint. and then he leans into the song all gentle and singsongy: "If I was whiskey, and you was a cup, I'd dive the to bottom and never get up." </li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/867611001/16_Hesitation_Blues.mp3">Hesitation Blues</a>," Leadbelly (tracking down the date, but from the Rounder version of the LoC recordings). </li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/1984006899/07_Hesitation_Blues.mp3">Hesitation Blues</a>," Sam Collins (1927). We love every track lined and laid down by Sam Collins, but this one, w/ its haunting, sassy vocals has a special place in our hearts: "My gal grinds her meal at home."</li>
<li>"Hesitation Blues," Taj Mahal. Strangely, we have no date on this. Nevertheless, the song introduces a thought we cannot quite find in others -- that the hesitation was a dance step. </li>
</ul></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;">IV. "Procrastination is the thief of time..."</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin: 0px; text-align: left;"></div><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/283505506/2-15_The_Hesitating_Blues.mp3">Hesitating Blues</a>," Big Maybelle (?). She takes the tune to the bridge and stays there, making it something else. She gets a namecheck in <i>AYM</i>, too. </li>
</ul><div>V. "How long, babe, how long has that eveining train been gone?" Here's where we go from incremental repetition to speculation, but, as Eric Lott is quick to remind us, this is a world of love and theft, and Leroy Carr's been known to take a little bit of what he loves and flip it into a moneymaker of his own. Each of these tunes, which takes another step into the distance from Handy and Smythe, Middleton and Gillham, come back to the same deferred desire. No longer the subject of Langston's namechecks and stage directions, though, they prove the point that incremental repetition is a step in the direction of freedom, the dialectic that Langston plays over and over, on and on.</div><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/2935787293/02._Leroy_Carr_-_How_Long_-_How_Long_Blues.mp3">How Long -- How Long Blues</a>," Leroy Carr (1928). We have no reason to dispute the speculation that Leroy Carr, always the opportunist in an opportunistic mode of production, took both the evening train and the lonely chorus of this song from one or another version of "The Hesitating/ion Blues." No big, tho,' because as we already noted, he was stealing from jes' grew, which isn't like stealing chickens from a rich man. Carr's his own versionologist and he incrementally repeated (took from and made new) "How Long -- How Long Blues" five more times before he died. As the years pass, his versions begin to address the hard times -- greenbacks hard to see in the depression. (We must recognize: <a href="http://www.elijahwald.com/rjohnson.html">Elijah Wald</a> is the teacher, blues is the preacher in this case. We benefit from much science about Leroy Carr and the pre-war blues business from <i>Escaping the Delta</i>.)</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/1695000671/02_How_Long.mp3">How Long</a>," Frank Stokes (1928). No evening train, but no loving since his baby's been gone, too.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/2592219204/22_My_Road_Is_Rough_And_Rocky__How_Long__How_Long__.mp3">My Road is Rough and Rocky (How Long, How Long)</a>," Sam Collins (Before 1932). Now a straight, no chaser blues song, 'cept three's someone chasing. "Chickens on my back and hounds on my track."</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/4233090321/How_Long_How_Long_Blues.mp3">How Long How Long</a>," Kokomo Arnold (1935). The looming future regret caused by deferring the dream. "Some day you're going to be sorry you done me wrong."</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/999536468/1-05_How_Long.m4a">How Long</a>," Sister Ola Mae Terrell (1948). Desire for love now flipped into desire for salvation. "How long, you gonna live in your sin, great God, how long?"</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/3374544773/04_How_Long__Betcha_Got_A_Chick_On_The_Side_.mp3">How Long (Betcha Got a Chick on the Side)</a>," The Pointer Sisters (1975). Flipped again. Desire deferred is a woman's right for suspicion. "It might hurt me for a while, but of one thing I am sure. I'll get over you."</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/1599774045/10_How_Long_Jah__Extended_.mp3">How Long Jah (Extended)</a>," Trinity (1976-78). The chorus is still really the same thing we've been working on the whole time. But the song is now full of the ironman's fire: redemption and salvation are part of the same political/spiritual passage. AND THE TOLLBRIDGE FROM WESTCHESTER/IS A GANGPLANK ROCKING RISKY.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/2546040293/06_how_long_do_I_have_to_wait_for_you_.mp3">How Long Do I Have to Wait for You?</a>" Sharon Dap and the Daptones (2005). Flipped more gently than the Pointers, and very much reprising a version of the old hesitating blues.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/133601846/01_How_Long_Can_U_Front.mp3">How Long Can U Front</a>," Kool Keith & 54-71 (2009). Flipped out. Because it takes on the recession, signifying on the hardtimes blues of Leroy Carr, we could not help but keep it in the clip.</li>
</ul><div><div style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">-----------</div><span style="font-size: xx-small;"><span style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;">* See <a href="http://www.ronmccurdy.com/about_hudges_project.htm">The Langston Hughes Project</a>, whose effort to perform <i>AYM</i> should be brought to disc.</span></span><br />
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</div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-71791279417290812172011-06-04T06:50:00.002-04:002011-06-05T06:19:35.750-04:00Out of Yesterday's Night<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPzN0JPcDqQ3GpG4GkL047IXwi7gx3RsmxplARyboL1NuykPK-6h7_Vk659qteZ3rGgkP-jbSTEJgE_VMkBOq4sxieeS1JjcKA9OBIwn6jISOvkKHOiQyjngCTTHFoVBVaQ7XD8l-cAIQ/s1600/RW1964-uhuru-banned617.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPzN0JPcDqQ3GpG4GkL047IXwi7gx3RsmxplARyboL1NuykPK-6h7_Vk659qteZ3rGgkP-jbSTEJgE_VMkBOq4sxieeS1JjcKA9OBIwn6jISOvkKHOiQyjngCTTHFoVBVaQ7XD8l-cAIQ/s320/RW1964-uhuru-banned617.jpeg" width="259" /></a></div><br />
<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: center;">:: lights cigar ::</div><div style="text-align: center;">:: offers smoke ::</div><div style="text-align: center;">:: scatters five plus five iron nails ::</div><div style="text-align: center;">:: reads ::</div><br />
It is commonplace in the book of Langston to find him conjuring the light of hope from the fire of politics: Ogoun's way of peace, dig? <br />
<br />
It is from this same hot iron that he worked w/ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Randy_Weston">Randy Weston</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melba_Liston">Melba Liston</a> and an all star band* to record Weston's act of orchestral syncretism, <i>Uhuru Afrika</i>. The opportunity came to Weston after he made a deal worthy of Robert Johnson: he agreed to record showtunes from <i>Destry Rides Again</i>, a slab his record company thought would sell more, for approval of the nationalist suite. We got the crossover move working in all directions here. <br />
<br />
Weston was, if not a a kind of muse to Langston, than at least a frequently chosen accompanist. Langston almost dedicated <i>Ask Your Mama</i> to him, before he realized that it would be better to dedicate it to someone born July 1, 1900. Later he invited Weston to arrange and perform the music for his funeral service, so he could sound good when he went back across to glory and joined the ancestors.<br />
<br />
R& throws <i>Uhuru Afrika</i> into the crate of projects celebrating African/Afro-American liberation that includes Max Roach's <i>Freedom, Now!</i>, and Sonny Rollins <i>Freedom Suite</i>. Willard Jenkins tosses in another four "albums addressing the African-American social landscape included Art Blakey’s <i>Africaine</i>, John Coltrane’s <i>Africa Brass</i>, Oliver Nelson’s <i>Afro-American Sketches</i>, Dizzy Gillespie’s <i>Africana</i>." We must begin by recognizing that these records are no "small memory."† They are part of a powerful aesthetic political action that deserves it's own entry here @ <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/">the blue light</a>.<br />
<br />
But when we think of <i>Uhuru Afrika</i> as a page in the book of Langston, rather than an album by Randy Weston that paid a few of Langtson's bills, we draw three more conclusions:<br />
<br />
The first, one we've been drawing now for several entries here @ <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/">the blue light</a> and over @ the <a href="http://blindwilliamscommonplace.blogspot.com/">red light</a>, is simple. Langston is a multimedia artist and his musical legacy needs to be reckoned with as a musical legacy, not the musical dabblings of a writer. I am sure there is fine secondary work on Langston's musical efforts. But we do not find his discography in the back pages of R&'s fine bio lined up as column of work next to his bibliography. <a href="http://www.discogs.com/artist/Langston+Hughes">His credits over @ discogs</a>, another fine resource offered through the collective wisdom of the internets, are also way underdeveloped. (We must add, too, that we yearn for his videography, too. There's not a single frame of primary material boasted visibly to the internets in any of the archives, and YouTube offers only sad tertiary sources for the most part.)<br />
<br />
The second, is that <i>Uhuru Afrika </i>is a project that takes its place in the book of Langston alongside of his late 50s and early 60s political poetry. This body of work is caught up in a utopian exchange that goes back and forth freely (can we say that enough) across the Atlantic (& we're coming back to this in a ¶). <br />
<br />
The lyrics Langston composed for the introduction is a simple invocation. The invocation is then doubled in a second language that wishes for a single, unifying language:<br />
<br />
<br />
Africa, where the great Congo flows!<br />
Africa, where the whole jungle knows<br />
A new dawning breaks. Africa!<br />
A young nation awakes! Africa!<br />
In his own tongue, Kiswahili, Sanga salutes the new Africa, Uhuru!<br />
The freedom wind blows!<br />
Out of yesterday's night Uhuru –<br />
Freedom! Uhuru! Freedom<br />
<br />
<br />
The lyrics he composed for the suite's second movement is a sequence of two statements, both address the "African lady," who is part muse, part metonymic vessel for holding as many wishes as the two speakers can place within it.<br />
<br />
African Lady<br />
<br />
<br />
<i>female voice</i><br />
Sunrise at dawn,<br />
Night is gone –<br />
I hear your song.<br />
African lady.<br />
The dark fades away,<br />
Now its day,<br />
A new morning breaks.<br />
The birds in the sky all sing<br />
For Africa awakes.<br />
Bright light floods the land<br />
And tomorrow's in your hand,<br />
African lady.<br />
<br />
<i>male voice</i><br />
Goddess of sun<br />
And of sea,<br />
My lovely one,<br />
African lady,<br />
Your eyes softly bright<br />
Like the light<br />
Of stars above.<br />
Smile and the whole world sings<br />
A happy song of love.<br />
Dark Queen! In my dreams<br />
You're my Queen!<br />
My Queen of Dreams,<br />
African lady!<br />
<br />
Both poems speak with a bright optimism of the era's liberating moment. For the bookbound who are looking for the similar, we urge you to put this work alongside "Africa," "Envoy to Africa," "Dixie South Africa," "Angola Question Mark," "Lumumba's Grave," "We, Too" "Drums," "Emporer Haile Selassie," &c. Moreover, we imagine we're missing much from his prose from the same years. This is a coherent body, whose purpose it is to conjure one out of many, to make a unity. <br />
<br />
The third conclusion is drawn from the powerful trope of crossing over. It is a bright thread in the musical and poetic fabric of <i>Uhuru Afrika</i>. It is also a magic thread that all but possesses the soul in the book of Langston. In the eyes of the small-minded, crossing over is divisive, selling out, leaving behind. And that nearly goes without saying, whether we're talking about the rap game or the more horrible passage that followed the sun west across the Atlantic. But the crossing over is never in just one direction, no matter how hard the small-minded would have it so. <br />
<br />
Crossing over makes a bigger world, a "we too" to "rise with you." The ancestral genius that inhabits the book of Langston knows this. That spirit inhabits Langston and becomes his genius, too. It is and always will be a cosmopolitan genius, one that declares affirmation in negation and fashions self out of everyone else. That's how it did. <br />
<br />
Read this, now, and ponder all of what Langston means when he crosses over:<br />
<br />
"Old Walt"<br />
<br />
Old Walt Whitman<br />
Went finding and seeking,<br />
Finding less than sought<br />
Seeking more than found,<br />
Every detail minding<br />
Of the seeking or the finding.<br />
<br />
Pleasured equally<br />
In seeking as in finding,<br />
Each detail minding,<br />
Old Walt went seeking<br />
And finding.<br />
<br />
The is the back, forth and side to side, and not just moving in one way. It's the what Ogoun calls for when we try to start a movement. Dig?<br />
<br />
Here's a clip of bullets documenting the primary source. Play on, Player.<br />
<br />
<ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/747370958/01_Intro__Uhuru_Kwanza.mp3">Intro</a>," Randy Weston Orchestra (1960).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/3840871997/02_1st_Movement__Uhuru_Kwanza.mp3">1st Movement: Uhuru Kwansa</a>," Randy Weston Orchestra (1960).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/13465163/03_2nd_Movement__African_Lady.mp3">2nd Movement: African Lady</a>," Randy Weston Orchestra (1960).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/175162107/04_3rd_Movement__Bantu.mp3">3rd Movement: Bantu</a>," Randy Weston Orchestra (1960).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/4291474347/05_4th_Movement__Kucheza_Blues.mp3">4th Movement: Kucheza Blues</a>," Randy Weston Orchestra (1960).</li>
</ul><div>We've got so much more to say. Look forward to posts on Langston's Simple musical, his gospel plays, his recorded children's books and his operas, especially his operas w /Kurt Weill.<br />
<br />
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</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">* Randy Weston Orchestra </span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Randy Weston piano</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Clark Terry trumpet, flugelhorn</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Benny Bailey trumpet</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Richard Williams trumpet</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Freddie Hubbard trumpet</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Slide Hampton trombone</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Jimmy Cleveland trombone</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Quentin Jackson trombone</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Julius Watkins french-horn</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Gigi Gryce alt sax, flute</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Yusef Lateef tenor sax, flute, oboe</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Sahib Shihab alt sax, baritone sax</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Budd Johnson tenor sax, clarinet</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Jerome Richardson baritone sax, piccolo</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Cecil Payne baritone sax</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Les Spann guitar, flute</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Kenny Burrell guitar</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">George Duvivier bass</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Ron Carter bass</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Max Roach drums, percussion</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Charlie Persip drums, percussion</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Wilbert G. T. Hoggan drums</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Candido congas</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Michael Babatunde Olatunji percussion</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Armando Peraza bongos</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Martha Flowers vocal</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Brock Peters vocal</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Tuntemeke Sanga narrator</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Melba Liston arrangements</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Langston Hughes liner notes</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Teddy Reig producer</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;"><br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">† I have this</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Strange small memory</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">Of death</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: xx-small;">And seven trees</span></div><div><br />
<br />
</div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-45851433034837351262011-05-28T10:27:00.001-04:002011-05-28T10:37:48.101-04:00Did You Hear That? An Ensemble Riff: Langston's Long Page<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9meR5bduuzOUVe0xofvM0Su7-D6XXUNEbP8MwkR8k7GO-6x4EMiCpnZIRScoR6acIrEAdwIrK7NQOaJdWLUThdx1MQ5bHWEOicFG2EDH6sa5n9V3NA_Gz-Q-eq_CVTZzVQNWZd41BAtQ/s1600/Hughes+-+Story+of+Jazz+LP+-+001.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9meR5bduuzOUVe0xofvM0Su7-D6XXUNEbP8MwkR8k7GO-6x4EMiCpnZIRScoR6acIrEAdwIrK7NQOaJdWLUThdx1MQ5bHWEOicFG2EDH6sa5n9V3NA_Gz-Q-eq_CVTZzVQNWZd41BAtQ/s320/Hughes+-+Story+of+Jazz+LP+-+001.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
The more we read from the book of Langston, the more we are compelled to add to the public record.<br />
<br />
First, like <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/search/label/Louis%20Armstrong">Pops</a>, he exceeds critical efforts to describe him in terms of genre or media. Langston Hughes worked opportunity, not "the novel," or "poetry," or "autobiography." It is in this light that we should make a conscious effort to explore all of the objects in the archive. You can see this, as we have noted <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2011/04/why-not-take-all-of-him.html">before</a>, in R&'s most excellent record of the poet's life, where apparently trivial tasks, like making the musical <i>Simply Heavenly</i>, spill way more ink on his pages than making the book <i>Montage of a Dream Deferred</i>." We are averse to aesthetics (much room for misjudgment), and therefore leave it to others to determine which project deserves more attention and love." But we care deeply about the ways we remember our ancestors, and therefore will make every effort we can to document these projects as thoroughly as possible.<br />
<br />
Second, we take note of the fact that Langston left behind so many efforts at an historian. "History's long page/Records the whole vast/Prelude to our age." We should assume someone as practiced as he his has a working historigraphy, and that it is worth our attention.<br />
<br />
Thus, third, we take up with interest this project he whipped up for Moses Asch. Under no circumstances should work that contains the line "with them came their rhythms" be passed over as a trifle. Although much of his version of the jazz story bends under facts we have had the privilege to learn since the record was made, we are convinced by nothing more than the power of his voice when he creates the story of "the Mississippi, mighty river, bearing cotton, and music and dreams." He establishes jazz as ultimately but not originally 'Merican, and blends it with more than just the drums of west African and the blood of slaves, but also with the French, Spanish and West Indian roots it owns, too. <br />
<br />
Langston rewrote the word 'Merican from an identity into multiple identities throughout his career, and this is one more time he makes that rewrite sound like child's play, an understatement that intentionally belies how profoundly true the statement is. Langston's gift for understatement needs to be more fully explored. When he says "The people of New Orleans heard all of this music," he is not reciting a fact, or an assumption that passed from one mouth to another, from one page to another in jazz historiography. He is reciting a cosmopolitan creed. "They began to put it together into a music of their own, always syncopating the rhythms a little bit more, always a little bit more, influenced no doubt by the congo drums." <br />
<br />
He acted on his cosmopolitan beliefs and asked others to do the same throughout his career. It is the source of his impulse to put into writing the words of the blues again and again. And it is the source of his advice to Nicolás Guillén and Jacques Roumain to write down what they heard. It is an impulse he knows that he is not making up, but passing on from one person to another in the same way that Louis Armstrong takes the blues from "traces of the work songs, field hollers and plantation cries of the deep south."<br />
<br />
It is not a simple childish act to imagine that "Maybe one hot day a man was working in a rice field, and a song came to his head, then out of his mouth." Nor is it a simple declaration of origins. Remember, on this record, Langston makes up one origin after another. It's Langston's own artistic ontology, packaged up into a little project by Moses Asch. It's also an historiography of compound re-origination. Later in the rekkid he tosses off another sentence, one about how white players taught themselves to play like the New Orleans players who followed the money and the soul north, "They tried to learn to play as they played." Ripped out of context, this sentence gives us so much more. It's almost as if Langston imagines the economy of influence, but without Bloom's anxiety. "People listen to jazz for fun, dance to jazz for fun and play jazz for fun." In the end, its "Boys making up their own music, just like the old timers did. Improvising, just for fun."<br />
<br />
Here's the rekkid. Make more of it than you are at first tempted to. There's much more there.<br />
<ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/458787140/01_The_Beginnings.mp3">The Beginnings</a>," Langston Hughes</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/458787138/02_The_Blues.mp3">The Blues</a>," Langston Hughes</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/458802155/03_Characteristics.mp3">Characteristics</a>," Langston Hughes.</li>
</ul><div><br />
</div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-20880576284040038312011-04-17T08:10:00.006-04:002011-04-18T06:43:15.430-04:00But This Will Bring You Back<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguDUGdHfo2woxOOTlbh7YaqJ6zVXqwW16p7S621NyplCW40JK5C43z3ycpC33MH7rySTTx60WnLwRU0qIZ8pWmsQXc3po_LDUISfV2-ZWr5aekmQb-toZJXqUjGkSkWeWldKjr2TO0ERE/s1600/3d02210v.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="257" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEguDUGdHfo2woxOOTlbh7YaqJ6zVXqwW16p7S621NyplCW40JK5C43z3ycpC33MH7rySTTx60WnLwRU0qIZ8pWmsQXc3po_LDUISfV2-ZWr5aekmQb-toZJXqUjGkSkWeWldKjr2TO0ERE/s320/3d02210v.jpeg" width="320" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We make no claim to have opened the book of Zora in a serious way. All we have is the necessary reverence for <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Their_Eyes_Were_Watching_God">Their Eyes Were Watching God</a></i>. We promise that we'll take up the the book, but we fear that when we look Zora's work full in the face, it will take full possession of our soul. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">How do we know of this power? We were strumming through the Library of Congress's dusty files looking for artifacts of Langston Hughes. Instead we found ourselves in a file folder of <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/florida/">depression era field recordings from Florida</a> (and we commend the whole folder to you). Tucked inside, like someone meant to lose them, was a small treasure of Zora Neale Hurston recordings. For the last two days we have found ourselves dazzled outta listening to Langston's big crossover project <i>Street Scene</i> by this string os shiny objects. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">What we're hearing: Zora's doubled up, on the one hand herself is digging the crates of her own memory and the street for material and on the other she's been a hand working in the field for the documentating anthropologist. She's both subject and object on both ends of the verb "to record." And then, to redouble, she makes a record of her voice. Now keep this trouble in mind. She does this long before some idle listener conjuring the past from the internets can anticipate that her voice will be one we want to carry the aura of the original. Of course we can chalk this up as the drudgery of the anthropologist who cannot anticipate the magic of the fieldworker. All they were doing was filling the ledger w/ obsessively kept records of the soon to be lost past work songs. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">In keeping, this pocketful of songs carries all of the dutiful anthropologist detailing, including snipe hunting patterns and more true sources. There's card playing songs and track lining songs, references to the sawmills and geechees and the jukejoints, all of the places the unnaground places that A&R men go hunting for the next act to appear @ SXSW and coachella, right? </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px; text-align: left;">In "Mule on the Mount," you can listen to Zora in dialogue w/ the anthropologist riff up the whole theory of the tradition out of partial answers. This is how it really happened. How it came back and became the biggest song in America. In response to the sourceseeking questions she patiently develops a reply that tells much more of a story than the questions imagine they are asking for. "[The song] has enumerable verses and whatnot about everything under the sun.... There's nowhere you can't find parts of this song.... The tune is consistent. But the verses you know, in every locality you find new verses.... I'm gonna sing verse from whole lotsa places.... Yes, sometimes they sings thirty and forty verses.... It's one of these things that's grown by incremental repetition until it's one of the longest songs in America."</div><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">Zora, tho,' can take this quest for cool and turn it back on itself. As you work through the material and get to songs like "Uncle Bud," and "Mule on the Mount" and "Po' Gal" there is no helping yourself. The spell has been fully cast. These are beautiful songs because Zora knows them the way she knows them and sings them as beautiful as she can. And we are hypnotized by the beauty. But there's more. We are also hypnotized because now her historical grandeur outsizes the sum of the recordkepping and the beauty of the source and her beautiful take on it. The conjure power is as much because it is <i>Zora's</i> voice, carried back from the past, even as it carries back these tunes from a further past. This is the twice Lazarussian true record of the unnaground coming back, Orpheus coming back from the Orpheus story w/ the true music back from the dead. </div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;">We lined these records up into smaller clips. Take 'em to church. Shout 'em to the congregation. Call for the resurrection.</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812486/Georgia_Skin.mp3">Georgia Skin</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937). They lose money to the drop of a card.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812484/Let_the_Deal_Go_Down.mp3">Let the Deal Go Down</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937).</li>
</ul><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812285/Wake_Up__Jacob.mp3">Wake Up Jacob</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812488/Description_of_lining_track.mp3">Description of Lining Track</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812330/Shove_It_Over.mp3">Shove it Over</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937). The captain's got a pistol. He's tryn to play bad, but I'm gonna take it if he makes me mad.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812428/Let_s_Shake_It.mp3">Let's Shake It</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812429/Gonna_See_My_Long-Haired_Babe.mp3">Gonna See My Long Haired Babe</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937).</li>
</ul><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812489/Dat_Old_Black_Gal.mp3">Dat Old Black Gal</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937)</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812386/Mama_Don_t_Want_No_Peas__No_Rice.mp3">Mama Don't Want No Peas and Rice</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937)</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812485/Halimuhfack.mp3">Halimuhfack</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937). Hoodoo, hoodoo, hoodoo working.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812430/Crow_Dance.mp3">Crow Dance</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937).</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812487/Evalina.mp3">Evalina</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937). You know the baby don't favor me.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812287/Tilly__Lend_Me_Your_Pigeon.mp3">Tilly Lend Me Your Pigeon</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937).</li>
</ul><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812384/Oh_Mr._Brown.mp3">Oh, Mr. Brown</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937). See all of the versions. Stuff for a future post.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812332/Oh__the_Buford_Boat_Done_Come.mp3">Oh, the Buford Boat Done Gone</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937).</li>
</ul><ul><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812286/Uncle_Bud.mp3">Uncle Bud</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937). It's one of those juke songs.</li>
<li><div style="margin-bottom: 0px; margin-left: 0px; margin-right: 0px; margin-top: 0px;"></div>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812385/Mule_on_the_Mount.mp3">Mule on the Mount</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937). There's nowhere you can't find parts of this song.</li>
<li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/457812331/Po__Gal.mp3">Po' Gal</a>," Zora Neale Hurston (1937). </li>
</ul><div><br />
We'll see you when your troubles get like our'n.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
</div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com18tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-71067690416265398062011-04-12T07:32:00.145-04:002011-04-16T08:55:38.381-04:00The Darkness, the Song and Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPba_Ll1KHWIyYPVzqsMK4webU1-OOrabUPSVcmanuc7aMZTqALobZ2bioq66kMAxvByfROnhTo2M4g7KdTrmMtxLkcQ9z-eQerJYahd8YHCf99k_SqYgnfgUfesgiU4gWZe4p9DTJuRo/s1600/original+MGM+LP+label.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="319" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhPba_Ll1KHWIyYPVzqsMK4webU1-OOrabUPSVcmanuc7aMZTqALobZ2bioq66kMAxvByfROnhTo2M4g7KdTrmMtxLkcQ9z-eQerJYahd8YHCf99k_SqYgnfgUfesgiU4gWZe4p9DTJuRo/s320/original+MGM+LP+label.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
<br />
We've been working our way through the book of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langston_Hughes">Langston</a> for about <a href="http://blindwilliamscommonplace.blogspot.com/2011/04/what-were-reading-book-of-langston.html">3 months, now</a>. And as always, there's so much things to say that for now we'll only one or two: Like <a href="http://blindwilliamscommonplace.blogspot.com/search/label/Louis%20Armstrong">Pops</a>, Langston runs past our expectations, no matter how high they are, no matter how low they are. He doesn't get penned up neatly in a book. As he moved from from one project to another (like the troubador), he defied those who's expectations would have him a poet, or a novelist, or a communist, or a gospel songwriter. We are compelled to say that he is none of these jobs -- lines of work -- because he is all of them. So high you can't see over it; so low you can't get under it.<br />
<br />
W/ this job defying tendency in mind, we have been looking up the word music in the book of Langston. Yes, yes. We find Langston, blues poet, Langston, poet of song, Langston, poet teacher encouraging his spanish language colleagues to do the same; Langston, pop songwriter, Langston, maker of musical theatre, Langston, maker of historical operas, Langston, jazz performer, Langston, jazz historian, Langston, groove theorist. His trick is to be all of this. <br />
<br />
How does Langston play this trick? We don't know. That's why it's a trick, we figure. The devils are in the details. Not a little bit here and a little bit there, but in the details everywhere. This morning we're'a call up a spell to Papa Guéudé and ask him to help straighten out what we know about Langston, 'cause he's the one we ask about the ancestors when we need to keep them straightened out. We want his guidance when we're trynta leave true memories behind. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://english.stanford.edu/bio.php?name_id=102">R&</a> gives us the prompt. He tells us that Langston worked the Village Vanguard w/ <a href="http://mingusmingusmingus.com/Mingus/index.html">Charles Mingus</a>/<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phineas_Newborn,_Jr.">Phineas Newborn</a>, and later Ben Webster, and later w/ Randy Weston @ the Village Gate. He catches the ups and downs of Langston's views from an interview w/ the Toronto <i>Star</i>. "Jazz gives poetry a much wider following and poetry brings to jazz that greater respectability people seem to think it needs. I don't think jazz needs it, but most people seem to." We want a piece of this action. There's ideas running in every direction, and we need help so we don't overstand this. <br />
<br />
So this morning, we offer up <i>The Weary Blues and Other Poems Read by Langston Hughes</i>. Really, it's two sets in one, both produced by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Feather">Leonard Feather</a>. The first is w/ dixieland elder <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Allen">Red Allen</a> (tp) and veteran sessionmen <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vic_Dickenson">Vic Dickenson</a> (tb), Sam Taylor, Al Williams, Milt Hinton (b) and Osie Johnson (d). It's easy for the afficianado to write off this session as Langston and the moldy figs, but we're long over that distinction, and we find a number of the performances, especially "Testament," to be full of Langston's bigsoul. We have no date on this session , except we infer from the date in the Mingus discography that this one takes place in the same year. The second, recorded March 18, 1958, includes <a href="http://www.google.com/search?q=Charles+Mingus&hl=en&prmd=ivnslo&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=3tSmTbbHJMbL0QHUl4H6CA&ved=0CD8QsAQ&biw=1892&bih=1003">Charles Mingus</a> (b), Shafi Hadi (ts), Jimmy Knepper (tb), Horace Parlan (p, who gets leader credit on the album jacket), and Kenny Dennis (d). We cannot live on tomorrow forever. We need to take up the past and make a new present understanding. Take it on the download and listen hard. You may remember your ancestors straight.<br />
<br />
<br />
<ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206212/01_Hey__Night____Too_Blue___Ballad_of_the_Fortune_Teller.mp3">Hey (Night)/Too Blue</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206211/02_Note_on_the_Commercial_Theatre.mp3">Note on Commercial Theater</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206210/03_The_Weary_Blues.mp3">The Weary Blues</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206209/04_Blues_at_Dawn.mp3">Blues at Dawn</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206208/05_Six-Bits_Blues.mp3">Six Bit Blues</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206207/06_Morning_After.mp3">Morning After</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206206/07_Could_Be___Bad_Luck_Card___Bad_Man.mp3">Could Be/Bad Luck Card</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206205/08_Life_is_Fine.mp3">Life is Fine</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206204/09_Hey_Hey__Morn_.mp3">Hey Hey</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457206203/10_Testament.mp3">Testament</a>," Langston Hughes w/ Red Allen, etc., (1958)</li>
</ul><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207700/11_Consider_Me.mp3">Consider Me</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207699/12_Warning__Augmented.mp3">Warning: Augmented</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207698/13_Motto___Dead_in_There.mp3">Motto/Dead in There</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207697/14_Final_Curve.mp3">Final Curve</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207695/15_Boogie__1_a.m..mp3">Boogie: 1 AM</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207694/16_Bed_Time.mp3">Bed Time</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207693/17_Daybreak.mp3">Day Break</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207692/18_Tell_Me.mp3">Tell Me</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207691/19_Good_Morning___Harlem.mp3">Good Morning/Harlem</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207690/20_Same_in_Blues___Comment_on_Curb.mp3">Same in Blues/Comment on Curb</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/457207689/21_Democracy___Island___extract_from_Warning__Augmented___Jump_Monk.mp3">Democracy/Island</a>," Langston Hughes w/ The Horace Parlan Quintet (March 18, 1958)</li>
</ul><br />
All this makes us wish for more recordings. Those Mingus nights, those Webster nights, they must've been, as the kids say, dope. There must be tapes boxed up at <a href="http://www.library.yale.edu/beinecke/ycaljwj.htm">Yale</a> or <a href="http://www.nypl.org/locations/schomburg">Schomburg</a> or the <a href="http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/browse/ListSome.php?category=African%20American%20History">LoC</a>. You won't be finding them be in the old or the new Smithsonian collections, and they won't be in <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/Collected-Poems-Langston-Hughes/dp/0679764089">The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes</a></i>, or even the three volume version. The details. This is what we hear when we listen to Allen Lowe asking us to listen to <i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B000F1IOGG/ref=pd_lpo_k2_dp_sr_2?pf_rd_p=486539851&pf_rd_s=lpo-top-stripe-1&pf_rd_t=201&pf_rd_i=1931388008&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=15KCH50JYAEQFHQEA0QV">That Devilin' Tune</a></i>. And that's certainly what we wanna hear. <br />
<br />
So we ask The Baron to help us find the devils. They'll get our ancestors straight. The Devils? Could be. Must be.BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-14334438793891272642011-04-10T08:11:00.001-04:002011-04-10T08:13:39.656-04:00Do You Remember?<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwbOvHIEIQKMiOi3mXomMvuwCvjdG_H5r9ICyfoY_iFkZY9XZrk7YBL-T9AkgCtdVMCy1mz8ZfXQu2RYLh7QlCi3crlVf_mMDv_7OXS5BMzAY_3N9YV6BoboPXduElK-DbI6llkO3nUlc/s1600/R-1349077-1211771439.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"> <br />
</a></div><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5589081844815944274" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgphBaQtMu4ofeUkVvHhmwNMw1dGY-sfWBYBt8gqD3m-qnoVukgiYR1bPxfSPRu4XbCM4Isy9EcobfXggsjBo_FHQsKLHzwEKomWEkLZ398n6TYVbL4SP9ujdU4qjH5FEkK0gpBtkgJEhg/s320/skeleton+dance.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 240px; margin: 0px auto 10px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /> <br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
Through thickest glooms look back, immortal shade,</div><div style="text-align: center;">On that that confusion which thy death has made.<br />
<br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">-- Phillis Wheatley, "On the Death of Dr. Samuel Marshall 1771"</div><div><br />
</div><div>When we say the <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2011/01/what-fcking-family-picture.html">dubscience is a conjuring way</a>, we're telling neither secrets nor lies. Dub fulfills the wish of turning making and remaking into one and the same action. It's a way to get more out of nothing, the old surplus value sleight of hand. It's a way of tying together the loose ends, looping the full circle of the root and the branch, the unnaground and the business, the remembered and the forgotten, the dead and the living.</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEicYeppseY-cOxQnnR8SSLV0S5Neqpg9YAeg2qjtxQ068RwC8DAGqevAMiWLVeL9SZSe6s0iIkbq0d7RAIanhYHgTn0K333DMk82lFiVpXf-MdtNeceqVWwEDlVCHpIvZqswUTN6xVU6uM/s1600/MarcusGarveyA20081001.jpeg" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"></a><br />
<div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><u> <br />
</u></span></div><div style="text-align: left;">In this way we find ourselves possessed by Burning Spear's albums <i>Marcus Garvey</i> and <i>Garvey's Ghost</i>. They are simple albums based on each based on a simple concept: the first is a set of 10 songs that invoke the importance of Marcus Garvey to the young Jamaican; the second, a song for song echo of the first. The first is an assembly of a-side versions, the second, its b-side twin.* The back and forth casts the spell of the most powerful purpose: bring back the dead, forgotten leader, who, in new form, might lead us across the water where we can see a new land, a new way of life.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">From the first track, it's a simple spell. It takes the form of a lesson (the subject is history) that comes with <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2010/09/ibeji.html">twin</a> prospects: the threat of further struggle, even harm, on the one hand, and the promise of relief, even redemption on the other. "Marcus Garvey" is recast into "The Ghost." The a-side begins with the powerful incantation, "Marcus Garvey's words come to pass" in the face of hunger and deprivation, "Can't get no food to eat. Can't get no money to spend," and makes a private offering to the listener, "Come little one, oh let me do what I can for you, and you alone." The b-side is groove alone, fading horns and dubbed piano repeating in the distance against a churning rhythm section, ghostly give and take that does all it can to enact the album's first important proposition: "He who knows the right thing/and do it not/shall be spanked with many stripes," which turns into the plea, "Do right. Do right. Do right Do right. Do right." The a-side is the conjure word; the b-side the the conjure word becomes conjured deed. Now gone in the first breath, it is true to say that "Marcus Garvey's words come to pass" in the form of a ghostly echo.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Together, the twin albums do this gesture ten times over. "Slavery Days," turns to "I and I Survive." "Jordan River" turns to "Dread River." "Resting Place" turns to "Reggaelation." Taken together they create a simple back and forth, a call and response that creates unity among those who have been separated. I and I survive? Yes. Even with the turn from the first title to the second, the next spell is cast, the next lesson is learned. It is a way that makes future from the past, and makes new dreams out of old dreams. And in this way, the dead come back to life.<br />
<br />
Here's a clip of sacred bullets for the double barrel, kingz & queenz. Humble yourself, my little ones. Humble yourself. Wa da da.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/454655580/01_Marcus_Garvey.mp3">Marcus Garvey</a>," Burning Spear (1975).</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/454655582/11_The_Ghost.mp3">The Ghost</a>," Burning Spear (1976).</li>
</ul><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/455734254/02_Slavery_Days.mp3">Slavery Days</a>," Burning Spear (1975).</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/455734253/12_I_And_I_Survive.mp3">I and I Survive</a>," Burning Spear (1976).</li>
</ul><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/454655584/03_The_Invasion.mp3">The Invasion</a>," Burning Spear (1975).</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/454655581/13_Black_Wa-Da-Da.mp3">Black Wa Da Da</a>," Burning Spear (1976).</li>
</ul><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/455734250/05_Give_Me.mp3">Give Me</a>," Burning Spear (1975).</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/455734249/15_Brain_Food.mp3">Brain Food</a>," Burning Spear (1976).</li>
</ul><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/454763347/06_Old_Marcus_Garvey.mp3">Old Marcus Garvey</a>," Burning Spear (1975).</li>
<li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/454763349/16_Farther_East_Of_Jack.mp3">Farther East of Jack</a>," Burning Spear (1976).</li>
</ul><div>------------</div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">* See:</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"> <br />
</span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span">a.) </span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591346858647889394" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwbOvHIEIQKMiOi3mXomMvuwCvjdG_H5r9ICyfoY_iFkZY9XZrk7YBL-T9AkgCtdVMCy1mz8ZfXQu2RYLh7QlCi3crlVf_mMDv_7OXS5BMzAY_3N9YV6BoboPXduElK-DbI6llkO3nUlc/s320/R-1349077-1211771439.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></span></div></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> <br />
</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span">b.) </span></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="color: black;"><span class="Apple-style-span"> <br />
</span></span></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5591346766169464914" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibuORT0tlVaji5bgK3FSMCaN4ec8YXh703UzxtaIpUU6tcVqRfP1gpYJ4TefZ0N950DE-sVIvN7LNm0-h1LbA-RgkcnhUqpnE-_yeAMAKbCeBSdZPS7s2zL1ImgqXt9UayKrnT8avSsLw/s320/R-1349077-1211771458.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; display: block; height: 320px; margin-bottom: 10px; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; margin-top: 0px; text-align: center; width: 320px;" /></span><br />
<div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="-webkit-text-decorations-in-effect: underline; color: #0000ee;"> <br />
</span></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-33978236359085789132011-02-26T08:22:00.008-05:002011-02-27T08:21:52.430-05:00Damballah's Divine Graces and Favors<div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiScyGMQQPx5wQjMvD5Ok7Sr4vtSr1HyWfzg9Rc-kDG9YD_agMXcpLQzwgEJcPJfpWJXnQEppKvxmaxCvmPInwetQSPpbc_KjoxU81obipc0wivZ8jvdHt5_5l2wrTSWygzEs5aQ5a40J4/s1600/armstrong4.jpeg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 315px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiScyGMQQPx5wQjMvD5Ok7Sr4vtSr1HyWfzg9Rc-kDG9YD_agMXcpLQzwgEJcPJfpWJXnQEppKvxmaxCvmPInwetQSPpbc_KjoxU81obipc0wivZ8jvdHt5_5l2wrTSWygzEs5aQ5a40J4/s320/armstrong4.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5577991017989510514" /></a></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We were listening to Pharoah Sanders last week, and we were pulled by the gravity of the <i>Karma</i> album to shuffle up all of the version's of Creator Plans we could dig out of the crates. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">This tune is basically a gospel/spiritual collage, a prayer to glue together the loose scraps of the world -- it's past and present, it's eastern coast and its west coast, all of its opposites -- into something satisfying. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Pharoah's reference version is above all a musical comfort, less raucous than <i>A Love Supreme</i>, even though it's grounded in the same groove and the same aesthetic, and above all it is about the resolution of all of that screamin' and hollerin.' </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The versions that spin out are all versions of the same comfort, some with more surprises to resolve than others. We find the pared down simplicity of the earlier live quartet in many ways more forceful. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">And we find the Leon Thomas/Louis Armstrong take more than a freaky amusement. Pops is dying when he takes up the mike, and yet his voice fills the room with the same depth and volume it does when, say, he steals the show from Ella Fitzgerald in their duet of "Summertime."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">More than once in this here place we have written about the power of the version, the conjure and reconjure that makes up tradition. This clip of bullets remakes point again, different.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/449929044/01_The_Creator_Has_a_Master_Plan.mp3">The Creator Has a Master Plan</a>," Pharoah Sanders (1969).</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/450082303/02_The_Creator_has_a_Master_Plan.mp3">The Creator Has a Master Plan</a>," Pharoah Sanders (1968).</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/449928483/01_The_Creator_Has_a_Master_Plan.mp3">The Creator Has a Master Plan</a>," Leon Thomas w/ Louis Armstrong (1970).</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/449929045/08_The_Creator_Has_A_Master_Plan.mp3">The Creator Has a Master Plan</a>," Don Cherry (1972).</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/450082410/13_Quayshaun_-_The_Creator_has_a_Master_Plan__1993_.mp3">The Creator Has a Master Plan</a>," Quayshaun, produced by G-Clef Da Mad Creator (1993).</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/450082655/02_The_Creator_Has_A_Master_Plan__Original_Album_Version_.mp3">The Creator Has a Master Plan</a>," Brooklyn Funk Essentials (1994).</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/450082528/02_The_Creator_Has_A_Master_Plan.mp3">The Creator Has a Master Plan</a>," Elouise Burrell (2010).</li></ul><div><i>Bonus</i></div><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/449929626/06_The_Creator_Has_Other_Plans_For_Me.mp3">The Creator Has Other Plans for Me</a>," Nicole Mitchell's Black Earth Ensemble (2007).</li></ul></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-16066646932871859602011-01-29T08:14:00.010-05:002011-01-31T07:25:34.212-05:00"What a f*cking family picture"<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijxIwSMVTANRazvWXeUJT7Xiog_iCm42eAjDEZaLhHXdJfSTluUFx-rWRooUPb_T1n-SYSiPZP-Qp9-TP3VSn5Q7JwPNCQOPRc8YWUfHF2hSXti7ScrG6jHRwxVbSqUdMTK-wU_oiHkj8/s1600/ander_Attaway__Beinecke_Library__Yale_Univ__.jpeg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 219px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijxIwSMVTANRazvWXeUJT7Xiog_iCm42eAjDEZaLhHXdJfSTluUFx-rWRooUPb_T1n-SYSiPZP-Qp9-TP3VSn5Q7JwPNCQOPRc8YWUfHF2hSXti7ScrG6jHRwxVbSqUdMTK-wU_oiHkj8/s320/ander_Attaway__Beinecke_Library__Yale_Univ__.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5567595584530742178" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">When we say dubscience, the science we talk to is a conjuring way. It steals the lost from where they were, brings them back transformed. We have nothing to write today about the greatness of the island dub, though ('xcept indirectly we will, because how can we avoid it really -- that's the power that takes over and fills our fingertips with someone else's words). Instead we write about William Attaway, who rises again through the juju of Lil Wayne. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><div style="text-align: center;">:: lights cigar ::</div><div style="text-align: center;">:: mixes vodka w/ a spritzer ::</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Attaway">William Attaway</a> wandered his life up into a story that has been ignored by biographers. Literary types think of him as a two novel footnote. Brovah gains no mention, for instance, in the 8 volume <i>Cambridge History of American Literature</i>. No matter how infrequently we say his name, there is an accumulation of wisdom in what he left behind when he walked off this earth in 1986. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"> His second novel, <i>Blood on the Forge,</i> is built on the rock foundation of the blues, and is most famous for being misremembered by Ralph Ellison for its failings, when its strengths are partly in its single-minded failing to rise up with more than the world offers to those who are displaced. In <i>BotF</i>, you wake at four, you piss on a rock, you hate your boss, you lose your woman, you lose your land, you lose your strength, you lose your sight, you lose the will to sing, and you find yourself going away with no place in mind in the company of blind men who are hearing things. Ain't no transendence to a greater humanity. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">On his journey, Attaway collected calypsos and children songs. He wrote for early tv. And he gave Harry Belafonte the words the words of the dawn, "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song.)"</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Harry Belafonte is another misremembered one, because of our problems w/ authenticity. Today's ear places him far from the street. That's a mistake. Like Attaway, he's a rover and holds the gift of crossover, a power much admired by the loa. The one who brings him back needs to remember much, including his genius for funding the early civil rights movement. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We forget that <i>Calypso</i>, a creole masterpiece, was as big as Michael Jackson in the early days of the ellpee. It's centerpiece, "Day-O (The Banana Boat Song)" is tossed into the crates w/ the novelty songs, samples for sports chants and other negligibles. We should hear it the way we do, of course. But we should be wondering it's constantly returning power, like the smell of honey. And we should think of the juju that created that power. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">"Dayo" is a work song. Tally my bananas, Mr. Tallyman, I want to go home. You'll hear that song over and over again when you thumb the pages of <i>BotF</i>. And you sing it yourself at quittingtime, whether you want know it or not. But Attaway and Belafonte whip up a homegoing that is about more than just the end of the day. Like all of the great sorrow songs, this one is about leaving the world and going back across the water to find the old family, the one lost when we were displaced. It is the full tragic joy of the song, a melody and lyrics we wish we could remember more from, because then we'd be home once and for all.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">So when we spin Lil Wayne's "Six Foot Seven Foot" and we hear the track dubconjure up a groove out of "Day-O," we hear all of Weezy's juju in full effect. On the one hand, it's the standard self assertion at the heart of the blues. "Tell them b*tches I say put my name on the wall./I speak the truth, but I guess that's a foreign language to y'all." Wayne is always capable of taking the form up higher, though, crossing over "like a subject and a predicate."</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">But then watch how he do:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">You don't want start Weezy, 'cause F is for finisher.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Mo misunderstood, but what's a world without an enigma?</div><div style="text-align: left;">Two b*tches at the same time, snchronized swimmers.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Got the girl twisted 'cause she open when I twist her.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Never met the b*tch, but I fuck her like I missed her.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Life is b*tch, and death is her sister.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Sleep is her cousin, what a f*ckin' family picture.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Now he's working the other hand. This is more than the stuff of workingstiff battlerap. Weezy's f*cking w/ the two most powerful women, life and death, synchronized swimmers of the large sea. By the end, all the Guédé are around him and he's in the center. And he's crossing back and forth in a fully breathed exercise of death and fertility that brings Attaway's work back across the water in new form. Work it, bruh bruh.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Daylight's coming.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It can't stop. And it won't stop. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">That's what we mean when we say 'til the breakadawn. Ya dig?</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here's the bullets for this clip.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><ul><li>Harry Belafonte, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/445143169/01_-_Day-O__Banana_Boat_Song___Digitally_Remastered_1992_.mp3">Day-O</a> (The Banana Boat Song)." 1956</li><li>Lil Wayne, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/445143254/6_7___Ft._Cory_Gunz_.mp3">6 Foot, 7 Foot</a>." 2010</li></ul></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-62306805882936819312011-01-17T05:36:00.015-05:002011-01-23T13:31:22.546-05:00Ain't No Telling<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi25DgCI9HlLXEHx9HqOIOqZQV94edM3p3hwACm01abmHsGUD67RffS2TqJUXRPscUjX7H0UuAVTl-jf26rJZZNebA8FwdiBm4v3JpBMGpdomcNhMkpNGL9-XIehr9MImCACbxj2PXnKdU/s1600/+Candy+Man+Blues+-+album+cover.jpeg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 308px; height: 313px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi25DgCI9HlLXEHx9HqOIOqZQV94edM3p3hwACm01abmHsGUD67RffS2TqJUXRPscUjX7H0UuAVTl-jf26rJZZNebA8FwdiBm4v3JpBMGpdomcNhMkpNGL9-XIehr9MImCACbxj2PXnKdU/s320/+Candy+Man+Blues+-+album+cover.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5565366592354174898" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">:: lights cigar ::</div><div style="text-align: center;">:: pours a little liquor on the ground ::</div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We blew the dust off some John Hurt songs this morning, and were struck over and over by the way Hurt's soft spoken approach to the blues mixes up w/ the gangsta sh*t he sings about. </div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">By the end of "Got the Blues (Can't Be Satisfied)," he's done some damage:</div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I said, "Baby, what makes you act this a way?"</div><div style="text-align: left;">I said, "Baby, why did you act this a way?"</div><div style="text-align: left;">Says I won't miss a thing she gives away.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Took my gun and I broke the barrel down.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Took my gun and broke the barrel down.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Put my baby six feet in the ground.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">I cut that joker so long deep and wide.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Cut that joker so long deep and wide.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Yet got the blues and I can't be satisfied.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><meta charset="utf-8"><div style="text-align: left;">When we think dissatisfied, we think the full-throated "I feel like snapping a pistol in your face" hollered by Muddy Waters. John Hurt's soft droning on the guitar and sweet, near whisper make an understated haunt, not the usual volume that cuts a a backdoor man deep and wide. You can make up a catalog of this quiet violence when you dig through the Hurt stacks.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">He delivers it the same way he delivers the much more matter of fact.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The way I'm sleepin,' my back and shoulder's tired.</div><div style="text-align: left;">The way I'm sleepin,' Babe, my back and shoulder's tired.</div><div style="text-align: left;">The way I'm sleepin,' my back and shoulder's tired.</div><div style="text-align: left;">Gonna turn over try it on the other side.</div><div style="text-align: left;"> </div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Hurt mixes the sweet and everyday in his menace. It sticks in our mind because we can't reconcile it. It's like killing someone because he took your hat. It's also not the voice of someone whose seen trouble all his days. It's the voice of someone who puts trouble after trouble behind, as easy as you can flirt w/a mermaid. But the more we listen, the more we think that's the all about it. It leaves us uneasy in an at ease way. Are you feeling it? Turning around is about the turning, not the next new direction you strike. All directions carry you to your grave. Turning around is the move of the most powerful loa. It's John Hurt's move.</div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's in this sense that we understand "Spike Driver Blues."</div><div style="text-align: left;">
<br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">With that in mind, we turn back and restudy John Hurt. With each turn we find ourselves satisfied. So we're loading the clip with some John Hurt bullets:</div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/444105363/09_Got_The_Blues__Can_t_Be_Satisfied_.mp3">Got the Blues (Can't Be Satisfied)</a>," 1928.</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/444105365/06_Big_Leg_Blues.mp3">Big Leg Blues</a>," 1928. Rambling because he's tired of a leg over his in the morning. </li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/444105364/08_Candy_Man_Blues.mp3">Candy Man</a>," 1928. In anticipation of the candy shop, where you can get a lollipop f/ 50¢. "It don't melt away. It just gets better, so the ladies say."</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/444108806/12_Blue_Harvest_Blues.mp3">Blue Harvest Blues</a>," 1928. Dread when there should be none. </li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/444105362/13_Spike_Driver_Blues.mp3">Spike Driver Blues</a>," 1928. Turns John Henry into a reason to quit altogether. "Take my hammer and give it to the captain." Jyeah.</li></ul><div style="text-align: left;">Gonna make it to my shanty 'fore day.</div></div><meta charset="utf-8">BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-76433825956520311972010-12-05T10:52:00.005-05:002010-12-05T11:03:23.220-05:00What We're Hearing<div style="text-align: center; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihraj_SZC0108iXn1k5fH3Q4cBAEblu7IJP9OKabUAZ8c_ek5hBlEMr8g2ytABQOh60gNDlNisHYs5iWqQ4phyphenhyphenr5cRc0lC_U5RDAyL1CjWhUfiORjZs43FVDoUcsYgqQhjWaahdjVzTAk/s1600/R-352213-1258584886.jpeg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihraj_SZC0108iXn1k5fH3Q4cBAEblu7IJP9OKabUAZ8c_ek5hBlEMr8g2ytABQOh60gNDlNisHYs5iWqQ4phyphenhyphenr5cRc0lC_U5RDAyL1CjWhUfiORjZs43FVDoUcsYgqQhjWaahdjVzTAk/s320/R-352213-1258584886.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5547223604591072658" style="cursor: pointer; width: 318px; height: 320px; " /></a></div><div style="text-align: center; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; ">In his review of a different chapter of Jay 2 tha Z's ongoing autobiographical/autoentrepreneurial project, <a href="http://www.robertchristgau.com/">the dean</a> makes the following persuasive observation:</div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><i><a href="http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=Jay-Z">Sean Carter isn't the first crime-linked hitmaker with a penchant for kicking broads out of bed at 6:15 in the morning. Frank Sinatra beat him to it. Right, Sinatra never boasted about his own callousness--not publicly, in song--and that's a big difference. Jay-Z has too many units tied up in playing the now-a-rapper-now-a-thug "reality" game with his customers, thugs and fantasists both, and only when he lets the token Amil talk back for a verse does he make room for female reality. </a></i></span></div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; ">The connect b/t the business, man and the chairman of the board is an obvious one, but merits mentioning nevertheless. A different member of the VV diaspora (the best faculty a music and movie loving boy could want in the 80s), Gary Giddins might take it further. He'd draw the line b/t Sinatra and Der Bingle, Der Bingle and the minstrel circuit, the tricky bidness of makeup and voice. He might take us then to Bert Williams, one of the true kings of the 20th c. That would then give us a route back to really understand the business, man. </div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; ">Get it: We are at the crossroads again. And we're on our knees.</div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; ">Take this and put it in context:</div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; "><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/435066095/06_D_evils.mp3">D'Evils</a>," Jay-Z (1996).</li></ul></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-77289342566853978562010-11-27T07:38:00.009-05:002010-11-27T07:57:53.267-05:00What We're Hearing: Pops Alone and Together<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyJd6-TQONuHsNTlMEMA-mNdznDWHxdxdowJfJrLOAwNsjq0t99ejih3BuG22O3xg_jJSHwdFIycFtUluKcOJdr8acwQhMpBL9g1iZPW1x2GitEF5v789Wdt10Oe3fhR4m55qPuy-8A_8/s1600/Potato+Head+Blues+-+Louis+Armstrong.jpeg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 242px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgyJd6-TQONuHsNTlMEMA-mNdznDWHxdxdowJfJrLOAwNsjq0t99ejih3BuG22O3xg_jJSHwdFIycFtUluKcOJdr8acwQhMpBL9g1iZPW1x2GitEF5v789Wdt10Oe3fhR4m55qPuy-8A_8/s320/Potato+Head+Blues+-+Louis+Armstrong.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544208033514416578" /></a></div><br /><br />The more we hear this piece, the more we hear a before and after story about ensemble playing.<br /><br />There is one approach to the ensemble at the beginning, one where the melody is owned collectively. The ensemble rolls for foaty seconds w/ the 4 piece rhythm section, making a deep bottom. It's all for one.<br /><br />Then there's a cornet/banjo break, followed by the clarinet/banjo break, really just set ups for the drama of the big pops solo moment that gets all of the attention. (Johnny Dodds squallers his response in contrast to Pops' first break, which is short, dynamic and versatile, and we don't knock it, but because it comes after, it sounds like he's just trynta shout over Pops' imagination, especially in the first two or three bars of his second run through of the chorus.)<br /><br />And we don't argue the fact that from about a minute and fifty to about two and thirtyfive, pops the soloist is all there is, maybe all there is in the universe -- Emerson's transparent eyeball. We all already know that that's why we call him Pops: he fathered the 20th century by being all of it and by giving it all of his being. So when <a href="http://www.jazz.com/music/2009/8/10/louis-armstrong-potato-head-blues">Ted Gioia</a> or Terry Teachout* make their appropriate and now canonical claim that this is the moment when he's 'venting modern jazz, they are stating a matter of fact.<br /><br />But our attention is drawn to the one for all final chorus, the last 25 seconds of the song. The melody is reframed, and it makes a new sense, not because of the solo runs leading into it; they are just drama. Rather because Pops owns the whole thing and the ensemble is hanging in w/ his every not making groove groove, making the song really sing.<br /><br />We're not certain this is modern vs. old NO any more than it is Pops vs. the band. We think it goes a different way. We think Hot 7 had to make a song out of those solo choruses, a song w/ enough drama to take back the hearts and minds of the audience after the solos. And in this case they did so by exceeding themselves as soloists, as difficult as that may seem in hindsight.<div><br /></div><div>We also think this is part of the essential knowhow that Pops brings to the game when he is on his best. He uses the solo and the ensemble, the one for all and all for one, to great dramatic purpose. We don't need to strum our fingers over the body of his work. We just need to press play on "Struttin' with Some Barbecue." It is a scientist's simple lesson on the interplay between individual and group making the most memorable drama. </div><div><br /></div><div>Take it. Take it.<br /><div><br /></div><div><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/433435660/05_Potato_Head_Blues.mp3">Potato Head Blues</a>," Louis Armstrong and His Hot Seven (1927).</li></ul><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVXAfZiMu7UPaLAV8nlWdisylIu_c56wWq4K7DAk0X0D26ShsUCMJl60T2eYku0te2Q4t8XqmtM3RYlfnHQby7bQb2lGTaei-LL4wEWudrL2MZ49WVhXkaCSSHIdF8USFTj1AGT57OnWY/s1600/potato-head.jpeg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVXAfZiMu7UPaLAV8nlWdisylIu_c56wWq4K7DAk0X0D26ShsUCMJl60T2eYku0te2Q4t8XqmtM3RYlfnHQby7bQb2lGTaei-LL4wEWudrL2MZ49WVhXkaCSSHIdF8USFTj1AGT57OnWY/s320/potato-head.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5544210306560249538" style="cursor: pointer; width: 224px; height: 224px; " /></a></div></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;">-----------</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">* "However 'Potato Head Blues' came to be, it is one of the greatest solos recorded by a jazzman, a landmark of modern music that long ago achieved iconic status, both music and cultural."</span></span></div></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-8772705577194828402010-11-07T08:56:00.016-05:002010-11-07T16:19:33.233-05:00Erzulie, Make Us Reach in the Files<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_qx9UP-Ajv3sAc7SryGcA2Y67MhgQMn5ONaCGKdW7VjHV4vmiWmpOgoHRKjDXkwl0s45mHgfqGjqBItaNj_KYsyiyokLfIZtXcTEyYoJ8W6baGVeo7QXhexdjg3BOutsEQO-6Mwu8QOM/s1600/File:SnakeInTheMonkeysShadowBig.jpeg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 222px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_qx9UP-Ajv3sAc7SryGcA2Y67MhgQMn5ONaCGKdW7VjHV4vmiWmpOgoHRKjDXkwl0s45mHgfqGjqBItaNj_KYsyiyokLfIZtXcTEyYoJ8W6baGVeo7QXhexdjg3BOutsEQO-6Mwu8QOM/s320/File:SnakeInTheMonkeysShadowBig.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5536811206562022642" /></a></div><div><br /></div><div>The trick in ancient to future is to be in more than one time at a place. Like Erzulie, who's both rada and petwo. It's the old tricky like this, tricky like that manuva. Chea.</div><div><br /></div><div>A weekend ago, the VV threw us a clue in this direction and asked us to<a href="http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-10-27/music/greg-nice-is-for-the-kids/"> pay attention to Greg Nice</a>. We took it up like a gift left on the roadside, and started digging though the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nice_%26_Smooth">Nice and Smooth</a> crates. Cause this is how we take.</div><div><br /></div><div>As we lissened, what we found was a profound betweenness to their work. It was more than the dang diggy dang wordplay of the late 70s, and it had more than the odor of the streets that rap took up quick in the first new school. There was a love of the dancehall, a love of the battle, a love of the streets and a love of the afrofuture in egypt jewel of the nile. It's all packed in the titles, lyrics and music of two songs, "Old to the New" and, even moreso, "Same Old Brand New Style (I Can't Wait)." These two mouthfuls would feed a supperful of hungry posts here at the redlight. To paraphrase, We are always impatient for the recurrence of the old in the definitively new. Always for the first time, and for the first time, just like always. Ahh, effervescence. </div><div><br /></div><div>In fact, just like when you call on the loa, you get more than you ask for. And it was then that we heard Dewey Redman, Don Cherry, Charlie Haden and Billy Higgins, the masters of conjurng the old and the new. Can't wait, you dig?</div><div><br /></div><div>So let's cite the bullets</div><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/429406566/06_Old_To_The_New.mp3">Old to the New</a>," Nice and Smooth</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/429412871/10_Same_Old_Brand_New_Style__I_Can_t_Wait_.mp3">Same Old Brand New Style (I Can't Wait)</a>," Nice and Smooth</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/429406926/06_Old_And_New_Dreams.mp3">Old and New Dreams</a>," Old and New Dreams</li></ul><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">While we're on this, let's mark again: we have much to say about Smooth's verse in Same Old. Brovah calls a lotta names, but finally gets to this:</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">I'll beat you like Bruce, when he turned into Cato.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Who be the winner, the snake or the monkey?</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Hard to tell, but this beat, this sh*t sure is funky.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">We are not sure what's going on here, but this is what we mean when we say, you see? Sh*t made us break out the Harold Courlander (you know, the new school remake of the prewar sociology and anthropology, and an old school folklore author) and ask all about the snake and the monkey, cause it's one of those things that makes you go hmmmm... while you're walking to the library. And we found some good stuff 'bout gold weights and such, but nothing that stuck the snake in a tangle w/ a monkey. So we asked the internets and we got a reference to some razzledazzle, and even if it has nothing to do w/ snake and monkey proper, we're gonna call it.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">That's the way Lady Erzulie would call it, too, in the in between of the in between.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: 16px; "><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9-e5dAv_B8Eo3eAadqKGwSXvbMLkYNOy4fBqN5u807ZE1AJKGzIDuzlcqnMwwhXrT9gpLce2MjbQ1SfFqSyT7InCKfbo3pkvwYpDTCcvlUcxGcJT2KAdD_q9n71FnfPbBb59K9NiHpgw/s1600/Erzulie.gif"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9-e5dAv_B8Eo3eAadqKGwSXvbMLkYNOy4fBqN5u807ZE1AJKGzIDuzlcqnMwwhXrT9gpLce2MjbQ1SfFqSyT7InCKfbo3pkvwYpDTCcvlUcxGcJT2KAdD_q9n71FnfPbBb59K9NiHpgw/s320/Erzulie.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5536833664408133026" style="cursor: pointer; width: 141px; height: 161px; " /></a></span></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Rock on. Shock on. Get on. Get on.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small;">Rock on. To the breakadawn.</span></span></span></span></span></div></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-70175237586604236242010-10-09T06:14:00.004-04:002010-10-10T06:22:28.438-04:00Don't You Want to Go?<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw4J3tqPS8s6caDEtEqhHujlSgicRTRnHqvBLglmpw8YDKjT-z_so0bkpwXqufFVTO34QCapYr3l0ns1hDuEbqFvqcCti2jRvyl0q3WSNB1VIzC-9GzI_UwTfaUUnSKEiNtA87zx12h0g/s1600/File-Sweet_home_chicago_78.jpeg"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 194px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiw4J3tqPS8s6caDEtEqhHujlSgicRTRnHqvBLglmpw8YDKjT-z_so0bkpwXqufFVTO34QCapYr3l0ns1hDuEbqFvqcCti2jRvyl0q3WSNB1VIzC-9GzI_UwTfaUUnSKEiNtA87zx12h0g/s320/File-Sweet_home_chicago_78.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5517452762573574978" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">For those displaced (and that's all of us -- we are all out of the place we are meant to be), home is away, out of reach. For that reason, moving on is as inevitable as the arithmetic of footsteps: you know, "One and one is two." Just as inevitable is a sense of longing, the sense that loss can be restored, that it is possible to leave this mean old place and return to a better one, the place you come from. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Call it Eshu's paradox: He who stands at the crossroads urging you on, is the same who walks by you when you travel home to your final resting place. How is it that in the blues about being homesick, "Ever time de trains pass/I wants to go somewhere"? Langston goes on to capture the emotional paradox. "To keep from crying/I opens my mouth an' laughs." And there, with both ends of the equation in his hands, he's conjures Eshu.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">It's a temptation to try to get more meaning out of a blues song than it offers. Brovah <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2007/03/elijah-wald-is-right.html">Elijah Wald</a> is probably the best teacher on this subject. The song is nothing more or less than where it stands in a jukebox, a record company's ledger, and the variations from one version to the next. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Before it was a thesis/anthem that demanded a crackerrock antithesis/antianthem about, of all places, Alabama, "Sweet Home Chicago" was nothing more or less than a simple rambling song. It marks itself with cryptic references of places too distant to imagine (California, Des Moines Ioway, and Chicago). And it cries a lonesome wail inviting companionship on the ramble ("Baby, honey don't you want to go?" -- a question asked in a way that leads the listener to wonder whether Johnson is begging her because she's saying no). Going home? Rambling? Alone? Together? Eshu will tell us these cannot be separated, anymore than laughing and crying.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">As we listened, we began hearing the variations more clearly. There's Kokomo and the original that comes 6 years later. There's "Sweet" by a bunch of other names, like "Don't You Want To?" You can go to Chicago or the country. You can go home or you can leave home forever. Eshu knows that when you are on your knees at the crossroads your are always coming and going. So we're reloading a clip of bullets for your own exercise in versionology: </div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/419927849/01_Kokomo__Blues.mp3.html">Kokomo Blues</a>," Scrapper Blackwell (1928).</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/419927985/Old_Original_Kokomo_Blues.mp3.html">Old Original Kokomo Blues</a>," Kokomo Arnold (1934).</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/419927919/16_Mr._Freddie_s_Kokomo_Blues.mp3.html">Mr. Freddie's Kokomo Blues</a>," Freddie Spruell, accompanied by Carl Martin (1935).</li></ul><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files%20419364098/1-04_Sweet_Home_Chicago_2.mp3.html">Sweet Home Chicago</a>," Robert Johnson (1936).</li><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/424010919/14_Don_t_You_Want_To_Go_.mp3">Don't You Want to Go</a>," Walter Davis (1940-1946)</li><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/424011063/07_Baby__Don_t_You_Want_To_Go.mp3">Baby, Don't You Want to Go</a>," Tommy McClennan</li><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/424011256/13_Sweet_Home_Chicago.mp3">Sweet Home Chicago</a>," David "Honeyboy" Edwards</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/419364195/09_Sweet_Home_Chicago.mp3.html">Sweet Home Chicago</a>," Pyeng Threadgill (2003).</li></ul><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/419928166/12_Going_up_the_Country__Don_t_You_Want_to_Go.mp3.html">Going up the Country, Don't You Want to Go</a>," The Lapsey Band (1954).</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/419928124/5-01_Going_Up_To_the_Country.mp3.html">Going up to the Country</a>" (Version 1), Jessie Clarence Gorman (1969).</li><li>"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/424011417/04_Going_Up_To_The_Country__Paint_My_Mailbox_Blue.mp3">Going up the Country/Paint My Mailbox Blue</a>," Taj Mahal (1968).</li></ul><div style="text-align: center;">* * * * *</div><div style="text-align: center;"><ul><li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/424012722/07_Come_On__Don_t_You_Want_To_Go_.mp3">Come On, Don't You Want to Go</a>?" I.C. Glee Quartet</li><li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/424012987/16_Don_t_You_Want_To_Go_.mp3">Don't You Want to Go</a>," Arizona Dranes</li><li style="text-align: left;">"<a href="https://rapidshare.com/files/424013087/20_Don_t_You_Want_To_Go.mp3">Don't You Want to Go</a>," the Soul Stirrers</li></ul></div><div><div style="text-align: left; ">We're uncertain about any direct line between any of these songs, 'cept perhaps the line drawn by Wald between Kokomo Arnold and Johnson's original retake. Pure sharkbiting. This is a roots maneuver and we've got nothing more to say about this kinda trickery but that you better think it's still going on all over the panhiphop tradition, and has been from ancient to future. In this way, we can take up all the retakes, from Johnson's own to Pyeng Threadgill's, and we can trace a line of longing, a longing to get back home to you name it: the people we want to be with; the people we lost; the slow groove of good loving that we been missing; you name it.</div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; ">But there's more to the tradition that working the repeater pencil to draw a line between your audience and your pocketbook. There is something about coming and going that is more than just passing a coin from one hand to another. </div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; ">There is the temptation to go back. When we we're studying up for this piece we read through the primitive liner notes of musicologist Frederic Ramsey, Jr., who anthropolgized the Lapsey Band's approach to Albert Ayler. He gave voice to this temptation. "As a tentative but not binding objective, we hoped to tap as many sources as possible that would lead us back to the music and the story of the period 1860 to 1900." But the Laspey's are pure ancient to future, music from the spaceways. We give Ramsey props for his diligence when we say he's got the direction wrong. Home is away, not back.</div></div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; ">This is why we our soul stirs when we hear the line drawn between Johnson, who's pact w/ the devil is the stuff of movies by the Coen Bros, and Arizona Dranes, or even more, the I.C. Glee Quartet. That's the home: the place we can only wish for after we've lost it.</div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: left; ">Eshu's a homesick loa, and he knows that is a joyful disease because it promises the slow groove of return.</div><div style="text-align: left; "><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn6WjE8CCj2Uoeqz5fihNSWTW3c17e9zEVrBHsGjECL9JKRWxFbLPyyiC5jFZHe-U6iXSuIk_-MhMx7_zbZ-7S1XUH4YX7OiNy4WGBQGbkbUyj4OBiAR3dexnDx6NZOMp35tuM8YYJml4/s1600/mlw_0001_0002_0_img0070.jpeg"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn6WjE8CCj2Uoeqz5fihNSWTW3c17e9zEVrBHsGjECL9JKRWxFbLPyyiC5jFZHe-U6iXSuIk_-MhMx7_zbZ-7S1XUH4YX7OiNy4WGBQGbkbUyj4OBiAR3dexnDx6NZOMp35tuM8YYJml4/s320/mlw_0001_0002_0_img0070.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5526011671850981986" style="cursor: pointer; width: 221px; height: 320px; " /></a></div></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-54583811009686255962010-09-11T06:02:00.007-04:002010-09-12T09:21:04.070-04:00Ibeji<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAai87U6AFNA6Xs1SnBTXPsrmCfWDtVKyWDOvzyj3hXB_xw28ZJdWsQbx44wS80cbG6X-muFTnf3qNVaOfdzHJ_UvmkRbN0Bl0c3C1XzuqIrYwgn7wepUQOtl52ZFgsYz_gFujGf7SySM/s1600/Miles+and+Wayne+Shorter,+London,+1967+(Val+Wilmer).gif"><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 310px; height: 225px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiAai87U6AFNA6Xs1SnBTXPsrmCfWDtVKyWDOvzyj3hXB_xw28ZJdWsQbx44wS80cbG6X-muFTnf3qNVaOfdzHJ_UvmkRbN0Bl0c3C1XzuqIrYwgn7wepUQOtl52ZFgsYz_gFujGf7SySM/s320/Miles+and+Wayne+Shorter,+London,+1967+(Val+Wilmer).gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5515610869531903730" /></a></div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">A week past now, we were thinking on the power of <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitches_Brew">Bitches Brew</a></i>. Something about 40 years brought us back. From there we travelled a dusty road to S<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sonny_Sharrock">onny Sharrock</a>. The next fork took us to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wayne_Shorter">Wayne Shorter</a>'s <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Nova_(Wayne_Shorter_album)">super new</a>, then back, as you might expect, first to <i>Bitches Brew</i> and then to its precursors. We say ancient to future, and it is paths like this we represent. The crossroad where the past crosses itself with the new and the new crosses with the past.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Here we fell down on our knees, the weight of the pondering upon us. Gazing in all directions we heard an echo, from the time before Miles plugged in, and the time when, after Miles plugged in, he and his fraternal twin brother Wayne, decided to part. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">We offer this clip for your own pondering. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The brothers laid the tracks down once together in June 1967* as ensemble pieces. It's the great Columbia quintet on these tracks, and they are in fine form. The compositions, all Shorter's, are developed as relaxed duet melodies, played by both brothers in unison, and long solos developed over Tony Williams' steady glide, and Ron Carter's reminder that there is beat that holds it all together. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The later versions were laid down in August 1969, as Miles and Wayne were in the middle of <i>Bitches Brew</i>, and though the musicians walk across from the one session to the other, the tracks on <i><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_Nova_(Wayne_Shorter_album)">Super Nova</a></i> are Wayne's tracks. They are the tracks of a single leader, separated from his brother. He's switched from tenor to soprano. The band is no longer the standard quintet, but a rhythm heavy line up w/ two guitarists, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_DeJohnette">Jack Dejohnette</a> (who rocks the house whenever he find the place), and additional percussion (<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chick_Corea">Chick Corea</a> on drums?).</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">The separation is not complete. The brothers play together into the early 70s. Wayne describes the motivation as shared: Well, I had a time limit for myself in a sense. Five years with a band -- like with Art Blakey -- that's enough. With Miles it was a little more than five years... Miles was saying [whispers]: 'Don't you think it's time for you to get your own band?' And I had so many ideas, and the music was coming out like water and everything, and I said, 'Yeah. I think it's time. I think it's really time.'"† But the separation is underway.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;">Listen:</div><div><ul><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/418394762/04_Water_Babies.mp3.html">Water Babies</a>," Wayne Shorter (ss), John McLaughlin (ac-g, el-g), Sonny Sharrock (el-g), Miroslav Vitous (b), Chick Corea (d, vib), Jack DeJohnette (d, per). August 29, 1969.</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/418394850/01_Water_Babies.mp3.html">Water Babies</a>," Miles Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b), Tony Williams (d). June 7, 1967</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/418395365/05_Capricorn.mp3.html">Capricorn</a>," Wayne Shorter (ss), John McLaughlin (ac-g, el-g), Sonny Sharrock (el-g), Miroslav Vitous (b), Chick Corea (d, vib), Jack DeJohnette (d, per). August 29, 1969.</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/418395132/02_Capricorn.mp3.html">Capricorn</a>," Miles Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b), Tony Williams (d). June 13, 1967</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/418395832/02_Sweet_Pea.mp3.html">Sweet Pea</a>," Wayne Shorter (ss), John McLaughlin (ac-g, el-g), Sonny Sharrock (el-g), Miroslav Vitous (b), Chick Corea (d, vib), Jack DeJohnette (d, per). August 29, 1969.</li><li>"<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/418395914/03_Sweet_Pea.mp3.html">Sweet Pea</a>," Miles Davis (tp), Wayne Shorter (ts), Herbie Hancock (p), Ron Carter (b), Tony Williams (d). June 23, 1967</li></ul></div><br /><div>We approach September 26, the feast of the twins. The loa remind us that the twins are the most ancient, and tricky, and that they have power over water and healing, as well as separation and reunity. </div><div><br /></div><div>After Wayne left Miles, they both had plenty of 'splaining to do, as much to themselves as any. One of the ways Wayne tells the story is <a href="http://hepcat1950.com/footprin.html">here</a>,† and perhaps the most noteworthy portion is doubled down over @ <a href="http://blindwilliamscommonplace.blogspot.com/2010/09/pure-person-does-not-know-what-defenses.html">the red light</a>. Miles worked heavily between conjuring muses and conjuring doubles, before and after his work with Wayne. </div><div><br /></div><div>After listening and pondering at this crossroads we think we should prepare to consult the <i>jumeaux</i> and ask their help. We walk in separation from so much more than our lost brothers. We want their aid with those blues.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWkNk5oFq3vkticPVM6WNQ4OkbI8SjQVo8l6drNT26EWS9vXmW6IV47mBQawqUnDj7nsxZRYbWG3AOKktyfCdo8ylogmrEzHrUIcsT9l1geJQiWX0jGTpA7MJducMxzjdD6ARVBf8Nw8Y/s1600/lwa_jumeaux.gif"><img src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgWkNk5oFq3vkticPVM6WNQ4OkbI8SjQVo8l6drNT26EWS9vXmW6IV47mBQawqUnDj7nsxZRYbWG3AOKktyfCdo8ylogmrEzHrUIcsT9l1geJQiWX0jGTpA7MJducMxzjdD6ARVBf8Nw8Y/s320/lwa_jumeaux.gif" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5516014929736477298" style="cursor: pointer; width: 233px; height: 320px; " /></a></div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">* We have much respect for the brovahs @ t<a href="http://www.jazzdisco.org/">he Jazz Discography Project</a> for making the chronology of an era more visible to mere mortals.</span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br /></span></span></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">† Wayne Shorter is usually generous in his interviews, and this one is along those lines. </span></span></div><div><br /></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-24564205408778504102010-08-22T07:46:00.006-04:002010-08-22T09:53:23.497-04:00Make a Change: A Little Archeology on Broom Dusting<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimeDJkqq3WMUuanfB7LG07GqlhuG9pDn03YENk38VtJifqRJ2VlfgT2iAZgWQpN8hFshVWihfmBL4f7CX80qzcYqZRZ_NQ1RsFo9TjBlw1sIi12wpU5UsaJnZc89hNUxIW9Kul1njEf9U/s1600/File:Image.78+robert+johnson+3.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 315px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimeDJkqq3WMUuanfB7LG07GqlhuG9pDn03YENk38VtJifqRJ2VlfgT2iAZgWQpN8hFshVWihfmBL4f7CX80qzcYqZRZ_NQ1RsFo9TjBlw1sIi12wpU5UsaJnZc89hNUxIW9Kul1njEf9U/s320/File:Image.78+robert+johnson+3.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5508202075447744050" /></a><br /><div>As <a href="http://blindwilliamscommonplace.blogspot.com/2010/08/robert-johnson-toolkit.html">already noted over @ the red light</a>, we've been lissening to Robert Johnson, and it has prompted us to think about the transactions that make up the tradition we're working. It is a tradition of, among other things, leaving and returning, rambling and coming home. And that powerful metaphor builds both content and form. The constant revision of songs, and the constant reversion to earlier songs are part of the same motion (and the same emotion of loss and reconciliation -- should we second this?).</div><div><br /></div><div>And as we've been hearing Rob't, we've been hearing the echoes of things past and present. So we thought we would load up a clip of those echoes for you.</div><div><br /></div><div><ul><li>Leroy Carr, "<a href="http://www.blogger.com/Leroy_Carr_Vol._5__1934__Leroy_Carr_07_I_Believe_I_ll_Make_A_Change.mp3">I Believe I'll Make a Change</a>." </li><li>Kokomo Arnold, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/414415150/11_Sagefield_Woman_Blues.mp3">Sagefield Woman Blues</a>." </li><li>Kokomo Arnold, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/414415288/Sissy_Man_Blues.mp3">Sissy Man Blues</a>."</li><li>Robert Johnson, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/414415400/1-03_I_Believe_I_ll_Dust_My_Broom.mp3.html">I Believe I'll Dust My Broom</a>."</li><li>Roosevelt Sykes, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/414416873/22_Mr._Carl_s_Blues.mp3">Mr. Carl's Blues</a>."</li><li>Elmore James, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/414415547/05_Dust_My_Broom.mp3.html">Dust My Broom</a>"</li><li>Ike & Tina Turner, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/414415639/36_Dust_My_Broom.mp3.html">Dust My Broom</a>" </li><li>Pyeng Threadgill, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/414417488/06_I_Believe_I_ll_Dust_My_Broom.mp3">I Believe I'll Dust My Broom</a>."</li></ul></div><div>There's really no revelation here, is there? The first few bullets are drawn in part from ElijahWald's close reading of the body and soul of Rob't Johnson's work, <i>Escaping the Delta</i>, a book for which we have much proper respect. The last three are versions we have been unable to forget. The cumulative story is nothing but that of persistent creolization of the same material. But as it moves, the material absorbs again and again its own opposites. The major themes are straightforward: leaving at the end of something bad and getting a fresh start. They are deep in nuance, too: the broomsweep has hoodoo resonance; the tension between giving up and getting started again has sweet promise and sad consequence on both ends -- both plea and curse in the same step. There is no one pattern of right and wrong: there's plenty of wrong doing and quitting going on, and in enough directions to make a good soap opera. The big, restlessmaking horizon calls from faraway, but the call may also to be return home like the prodigal, giving up on the taking business for something more generous. But if the themes are straightforward, they are turned and turned again in the retelling.</div><div><br /></div><div>======</div><div> </div><div><br /></div>In the last four months, we shoulda been here more, but it's like that, so we have nothing more to say about our absence. We are just glad to be back. We'll come back to the unfinished work, too, especially the big opus on OB4CL. The force of the work is to great to put it down forever. <div><br /></div><div><br /></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-66875353347200408652010-04-10T08:33:00.001-04:002010-04-10T08:35:06.042-04:00Body and Soul: Hawk Reversions Himself<object width="480" height="360"><param name="movie" value="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x14vz9"><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"><param name="allowScriptAccess" value="always"><embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" src="http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/video/x14vz9" width="480" height="360" allowfullscreen="true" allowscriptaccess="always"></embed></object><br /><b><a href="http://www.dailymotion.com/video/x14vz9_body-and-soul-coleman-hawkins_music">Body and Soul Coleman Hawkins</a></b><br /><br /><div>Just because he dropped the reference version, doesn't mean the Hawk would leave the tune alone. Rather he deviled and re-deviled it. we're pretty sure his primary point is that he can do it again and not be the same. The desperate exchange of body for soul, the Faustian heartbreak in the song, is easy to lose when this is the approach. Therefore, it is interesting how he brings the heartbreak back into all three versions. Lissen for it.<br /><br /><ul><li>Coleman Hawkins with Billy Byers and His Orchestra, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/374246476/01_-_Body_And_Soul.mp3 http://rapidshare.com/files/374246476/01_-_Body_And_Soul.mp3">Body and Soul</a>." We're not sure Hawk gentles himself into this smoothjazz ensemble, but then maybe that's the point. By the end, its his voice alone, not even against the orchestra.</li><li>Coleman Hawkins, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/374244938/07_-_Picasso__Hawkins_.mp3">Picasso</a>." Here all w/ both accompaniment and melody dropped, Hawk takes on blues and the abstract truth. We believe this bullet ranks w/ Armstrong/Hines "Weather Bird" as an intellectual exercise, even if it lacks the zing the two duelists put into their piece. It is, of course, about the breakdown that occurs when you are alone. That's the point. It's after the tragic ending of the reference version, "an echo of a tale that's been told."</li></ul></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-45267174990083782782010-04-04T06:34:00.000-04:002010-04-04T13:30:50.349-04:00Working Through OB4CL: P R O S P E C T<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ4fS8OlgHyfkvsqAYLKx8Fy_WgxR6m9SyJwUPsYVWFbsgpwImQ0e2oJsiiZtx0Q25WnpwsKbaAIXl-1dsnSlPIjoW_FEzO0rQRy1yZaeCJJRJy2BZaI9Q5RnEbZtEFp8pAZpyHwdWtHw/s1600/%5BScarface+(1932)%2B%5BDVDRip.Dual%5D.Sirimiri.avi_002135600.jpeg"><img style="display:block; margin:0px auto 10px; text-align:center;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgQ4fS8OlgHyfkvsqAYLKx8Fy_WgxR6m9SyJwUPsYVWFbsgpwImQ0e2oJsiiZtx0Q25WnpwsKbaAIXl-1dsnSlPIjoW_FEzO0rQRy1yZaeCJJRJy2BZaI9Q5RnEbZtEFp8pAZpyHwdWtHw/s320/%5BScarface+(1932)%2B%5BDVDRip.Dual%5D.Sirimiri.avi_002135600.jpeg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5456298007244991378" /></a><div><div><br /></div><div>There's no way we will start at the beginning, because the crossroads is always the middle of more than one thing. And that's the way. Word to your moms.</div><div><br /></div><div style="text-align: center;">:: makes a small circle of gunpowder on the ground ::</div><div style="text-align: center;">:: centers a bottle of henny in the circle ::</div><div style="text-align: center;">:: scatters pepperflakes ::</div><div style="text-align: center;">:: bows head ::</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br /></div><div style="text-align: left;"><ul><li>Wu Tang Clan, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/371946266/05_Can_It_Be_All_So_Simple.mp3">Can It All Be So Simple</a>" is the emblem of both what comes before <i>OB4CL</i> and the wish for a better time before. It is, therefore service to the lwas in the form of ingnition, match to the ring of gunpowder.</li></ul><div>And so we begin.</div><div><br /></div><div>We begin making a small altar that places <i>OB4CL</i> at the foot of the tradition, knowing that there are those who, when they come by, will take up pieces, and leave other pieces behind. And that's the way. Word to your moms.</div><div><br /></div><div>And this because in its own way, <i>OB4CL</i> is itself an ilé, a shrine that looks in all directions at once. Up. Down. Side to side. </div><div><br /></div><div>What we will do here is locate our ilé making project to think through the slab. What we build here, then, is a shrine to a shrine, which will serve as a call to those who want to hear it.</div><div><br /></div><div><i>OB4CL</i> then. Seven threads, then, that run through it.</div><div><ol><li>Movement: "We gotta migrate."</li><li>Collage: "poisonous paragraphs."</li><li>The damning (oppressing) and redeeming (liberating) power of business: "slang rap democracy."</li><li>Clan and Gang and Family: "this rap wonderama team got drama"</li><li>Secret knowledge: "It's manifested. The gods work like appliances."</li><li>Secret identity: "a.k.a."</li><li>Crossing over: "Chef may resign to boat across the Verrazano."</li></ol><div>Each of these threads is pending, and each starts in the full fabric of the tradition. We will work them back into the tradition, but leave them still pending. And that's the way. Word to your Moms.</div><div><br /></div><div><div><div><div>When we hear Rae tell the fellas in OutKast, "We handling the earth right now," we take his word as bond. We cannot get past this statement without thinking first of Nas and the more than brilliant "The World is Yours." Yes, yes y'all. We think on that view @ the beginning of the first <i>Scarface</i> that is the omega of Tony Montana's dream to get out. We read Rae different, though. We think that he's telling us that he's already there. "It's the pot of gold right here man. This is it, man, this is glory." We think he's not signifying here. Nah. He's representing.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here, hit this Henny. Fuse is already lit. </div></div></div></div></div><div><br /></div></div><div><br /></div></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-12449098680318924092010-03-20T06:14:00.005-04:002010-03-21T06:30:48.036-04:00Body and Soul: Art Tatum<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfXG53JjgEX4Z9g6Rs3HN3XELF00FdjrSWfAsJwl5vwef6nfLmnGtSoF71XnGJ5bdrDXEETn_fGWohiMOwV_sicJxqCe0p92noYpul3HiK2-Zc1JLnETz3x0i5J7jn16ldlTL7u1iHbik/s1600-h/piano+five+finger+techniques+.gif"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 152px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhfXG53JjgEX4Z9g6Rs3HN3XELF00FdjrSWfAsJwl5vwef6nfLmnGtSoF71XnGJ5bdrDXEETn_fGWohiMOwV_sicJxqCe0p92noYpul3HiK2-Zc1JLnETz3x0i5J7jn16ldlTL7u1iHbik/s320/piano+five+finger+techniques+.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5450671980686487474" border="0" /></a><br /><div>When we reconcile the song to the solo, we find more confusion in the pianoed versions of B&S than either the vocalized or tenorized. It may be that Hawk's footprint is so large he leaves room for nothing but gravity, but we don't think so. It may just be that the too many piano renditions come at the song with a lightfingered musical approach, which isn't bad initself, but something that leaves at least this lissener wondering where the song's torch went.</div><div><br /></div><div>One exception to this rule the Art Tatum solo version that he dropped in that legendary two day blast for Norman Granz in the early 50s that produced 8 volumes of the good sh*t. <br /><br />His take on B&S begins lagging, teasing sadness from the melody. Even as Tatum's imagination takes over the song, he resists the temptation to pep it up, as he does earlier in the disc (we gots no session records at our grasp, so we can't tell whether it really comes first) with his take on "Love for Sale." It's in the second chorus, though, when he proves how subtly he conceives of the song. There he interpolates a sweet passage from "Nobody Knows...," making the bluesy connection from pain to salvation. Which is the song's all about it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Here you go:</div><div><ul><li>Art Tatum, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/365795828/03_Body_And_Soul.mp3%20http://rapidshare.com/files/365795828/03_Body_And_Soul.mp3">Body and Soul</a>," Solo Masterpieces <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Art-Tatum-Solo-Masterpieces-Vol/dp/B000000XNA">Volume 1</a>.</li></ul></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-49213345665662365792010-03-14T08:42:00.021-04:002011-06-30T06:31:00.884-04:00Is There Confusion?<div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg2gtbBVNogYY4NLkmt3t4erAcVIbjfimzEXPazLV7m8YPPIb3NSXdHBxdQ4sTaWOPs7qQEzhTzNzcsg5n2W6diM5iR_Bml978PCVqQkVBLIZZ2DRoQG1oVHLOgd-8s3iSLksaK6C2C_k/s1600-h/File-VeveBrigitte.png" onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5448572916027755266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgg2gtbBVNogYY4NLkmt3t4erAcVIbjfimzEXPazLV7m8YPPIb3NSXdHBxdQ4sTaWOPs7qQEzhTzNzcsg5n2W6diM5iR_Bml978PCVqQkVBLIZZ2DRoQG1oVHLOgd-8s3iSLksaK6C2C_k/s320/File-VeveBrigitte.png" style="cursor: hand; cursor: pointer; height: 267px; width: 200px;" /></a></div><div><br />
</div><div><br />
</div>A friend asked us to throw down some recommendations on <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betty_Davis">Betty Davis</a>, an easy enough task. We'll load up a clip in no time. <br />
<div><br />
</div><div>But she's left us some devilishly difficult 2ns, and we hesitate to throw such things into anyone's field of vision without offering a few prayers of our own. </div><div><br />
</div><div style="text-align: center;">:: <i>pours a little liquor on the ground</i>::</div><div><br />
</div><div>In Betty's work there's the groove, the voice and the visuals. And then there's sex (as in m/f) and beauty (as in aesthetics). They pile up all over Betty, just as she wanted, but, if the record (as in public, and as opposed to rekkids, slabs, 2ns or the whathaveyous we use to refer to the work in the tradition) tells us anything, it is that we treat her work as a ball of confusion.</div><div><br />
</div><div><a href="http://www.lightintheattic.net/">Light in the Attic</a>'s rediscovery of Betty Davis was not only inevitable, but long overdue. Erudite cratediggers shoulda, coulda, woulda found their way to her stuff in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thriller_(album)">Thriller</a> era 80s, instead of waiting 'til the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lady_gaga">Lady Gaga</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shakira">Shakira</a> era* 00s if they were brave enough. There must have been business hurdles they couldn't jump, or her sh1t woulda been loose again in the market before <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rick_James">Rick James</a> was smoking crack.</div><div><br />
</div><div>When <a href="http://www.discogs.com/artist/Betty+Davis">Betty's albums</a> first hit the racks there was no shortage of demand for groove. For those of us lissenning so late in the game, the trick is to distinguish it from all of the lofty precursors assigned in hindsight to Betty's list of influences. She's got deepsoul in her biography: the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimi_Hendrix">Jimi Hendrix</a> boo rumor, the <a href="http://www.milesdavis.com/">Miles Davis</a> husband portion of her biography, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregg_Errico">Greg Errico</a> connection to<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sly_Stone"> Sly Stone</a> and the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Larry_Graham">Larry Graham</a> connection to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham_Central_Station">Graham Central Station</a>. But we gotta call her sh1t her own. She shakes it fast, and right in front of us. She's not hanging behind it, waiting for us to find her lurking.</div><div><br />
</div><div>Her voice has more to do w/ <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gil_Scott_Heron">Gil Scott Heron</a> or the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Last_Poets">Last Poets</a>, than <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaka_Kahn">Chaka Kahn</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patti_LaBelle">Patti Labelle</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marva_Whitney">Marva Whitney</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vicki_Anderson">Vicki Anderson</a>. The listed queenz all have something to tell us, but Betty is working hard to teach us a lesson on top of it. This expressly didactic tone in her voice sometimes feels, at least after the fact of nearly four decades, like a lecture on how to get the whole sexual power thing right. The too easy thing to do today is to call her ahead of her time. There is something much more fair to her than to call her the forerunner of a sexual revolution that is now over. She's only as good a singer as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Ulmer">James "Blood" Ulmer</a>, but that's the point. And that is why she sounds more right to lissenners versed in hearing <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ma_Rainey">Ma Rainey</a> or <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missy_elliott">Missy Elliot</a>. </div><div><br />
</div><div>Then there's her body of visual work†, prolly the biggest source of distraction for fans and detractors. It's not surprising that someone who began her career doing fashion spreads for girls magazines has an eye for her own appearance, and a strong sense of how to push people around using that media. Her visual rhetoric, a move she busted the streets 7 years before <a href="https://www.lotusflow3r.com/th3b0mb.html">Prince</a> delivered his <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dirty_Mind">Dirty Mind</a>,‡ is an outmoving spiral of irony and sincerity. It doesn't stop being one or the other. Just like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince_(musician)">Prince</a>, Betty uses sex to write checks she can't fully cash. Just deal and move on. There's no point in averting your eyes, even if it won't free your ass when you keep on staring.</div><div><br />
</div><div>So, like <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marvin_gaye">Marvin</a> says: "Come on, get to this":</div><div><ul><li>Betty Davis, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/363216646/03_Anti_Love_Song.mp3">Anti-Love Song</a>," <i>Betty Davis </i>(1973).</li>
<li>Betty Davis, "S<a href="ttp://rapidshare.com/files/363217588/01_Shoo-B-Doop_and_Cop_Him.mp3">hoo-B-Doop and Cop Him</a>," <i>They Say I'm Different</i> (1974).</li>
<li>Betty Davis, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/363219534/02_He_Was_a_Big_Freak.mp3">He Was a Big Freak</a>," <i>They Say I'm Different </i>(1974).</li>
<li>Betty Davis, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/363240380/06_They_Say_I_m_Different.mp3">They Say I'm Different</a>," <i>They Say I'm Different</i> (1974).</li>
</ul><div>These bullets are more than Brechtian exercises in drawing the lissener into a trap of desire x guilt = historical consciousness. They are an articulation of a tension the harsh voice of the day today and the sweet voice that promises something better that made <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillis_Wheatley">Phillis Wheatley</a> make a fetish of looking to the east (as in back across the Atlantic) to a creole dawn.</div><div><br />
</div><div>About 60 years before Betty Davis invited us to meet her at these crossroads to witness her conjure a Black Madonna, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jessie_Redmon_Fauset">Jessie Fauset</a>, who's now a sister of Maman Brigitte, invited us to pray to another angel, Sojourner Truth:</div><div style="text-align: center;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">Symbolic mother, we thy myriad sons,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Pounding our stubborn heart on Freedom's bars,</div><div style="text-align: left;">Clutching our birthright, fight with faces set</div><div style="text-align: left;">Still visioning the stars. </div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;">This is Betty's tradition. This is our tradition and we're happy to join her there. So high you can't get over it. So low you can't get under it. It goes on and on and on and on. To the break of dawn.</div><div style="text-align: left;"><br />
</div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">* We got nothing bad to say about these followers of Madonna. They are well-educated and offer a theory of action. There's just so much more things to say.</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">† </span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIXnXGVBFUTA9y741HGgFIsXfqEmv2UnQle5cnDB2eOljkG0vJTn-7pHmdEif_fJlpTpK4XzxFNZPlUgyYfODfVp3Sw520q2lY0vjyV_AXH6LUdqGLgzN2mGLeE0c5kzGZzVff11ajJSs/s1600-h/Betty+Davis.jpeg"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5448575942812590802" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIXnXGVBFUTA9y741HGgFIsXfqEmv2UnQle5cnDB2eOljkG0vJTn-7pHmdEif_fJlpTpK4XzxFNZPlUgyYfODfVp3Sw520q2lY0vjyV_AXH6LUdqGLgzN2mGLeE0c5kzGZzVff11ajJSs/s320/Betty+Davis.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 241px; width: 320px;" /></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">, etc.</span></span></span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><br />
</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;">‡</span></span></div><div style="text-align: left;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br />
</span></span></span></div><div style="text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKppS7fG5RF19qTB5vEpT65jUBsB1_XLW9JTrd-pLM8yujrtSKQvsofftX3RaKWawbf8wWcnXuPeKkx0kl-xpZuYp0f3oeH9kHrHebIIf9l6AnMqRvxQrAzYoQtx616uZqsKuJ7kZWIrU/s1600-h/R-162666-1264786700.jpeg"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><img alt="" border="0" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5448577081835031986" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKppS7fG5RF19qTB5vEpT65jUBsB1_XLW9JTrd-pLM8yujrtSKQvsofftX3RaKWawbf8wWcnXuPeKkx0kl-xpZuYp0f3oeH9kHrHebIIf9l6AnMqRvxQrAzYoQtx616uZqsKuJ7kZWIrU/s320/R-162666-1264786700.jpeg" style="cursor: pointer; height: 318px; width: 320px;" /></span></a><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: x-small;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: arial;">, etc.</span></span></span></span></span></div></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-24107491174908197762010-03-07T11:01:00.002-05:002010-04-04T11:21:12.183-04:00Working Through: P R O S P E C T<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYmBlXSaXpq2m0iPVaCnIOcb3YllVq9jZgEhA5DK6zpgeqauQzGvNJZ-27iiDnIvS4K8YBX5bSnz6PsHcHd_d2JcPiGN_-W-aEfR7Um13JmVJOB-NxWS2VM6AsfKYt0yS9fyRckkYsEiE/s1600-h/images-3.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 137px; height: 66px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYmBlXSaXpq2m0iPVaCnIOcb3YllVq9jZgEhA5DK6zpgeqauQzGvNJZ-27iiDnIvS4K8YBX5bSnz6PsHcHd_d2JcPiGN_-W-aEfR7Um13JmVJOB-NxWS2VM6AsfKYt0yS9fyRckkYsEiE/s320/images-3.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5445915341779533298" border="0" /></a><br />Now that we are moving our quicker thoughts, glimpses and lissening notes over to the red light, the blue light becomes the place for our longer thoughts only. <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/search/label/body%20and%20soul">The Body and Soul Project</a>, still underway, is the best and maybe the only example of what we gonna be up to.<span style="font-style: italic;"></span><br /><br />In upcoming weeks, we'll be working through extended exercises that we will call working through. The all about will remain the same, though. We're gonna make the fabric of what the AEC called ancient to future out of other peoples' threads.<br /><br />Five starting points:<br /><ul><li>James Weldon Johnson<span style="font-style: italic;">, The Book of American Negro Poetry</span></li><li>Devilin.' This thinking was given to us by Allen Lowe, a heroic anthologist, who proves there is salvation at the crossroads between what we know and the new details we learn.<br /><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></li><li>Raekwon, <span style="font-style: italic;">Only Built 4 Cuban Links</span></li><li>Goodie Mob<span style="font-style: italic;">, Soul Food<br /></span></li><li><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"><span style="font-style: italic;"></span></span></span></span>OutKast, <span style="font-style: italic;">Aquemini</span></li></ul>There's plenty of other threads, and we expect to work them in as we go. The last three are, obviously, an indulgence in the love massive we have for a body of hiphop that takes its place in a history it enacts.<br /><br />In the mean time, we'll keep elaborating on the threads we're already playing out:<br /><ul><li>Life and Times of <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/search/label/Marvin%20Gaye">Marvin Gaye</a> (what ever happened to that one, anyway).</li><li>Body and Soul</li><li>Versionology. The psuedoscience that the old world likes to label variation on a theme (to be confused w/ fugues and fugue states, conditions it treats with escalating gravity, hoping to cure it w/ copyright and other controls.).<br /></li></ul>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-30464336065299285252010-02-27T10:10:00.000-05:002010-02-27T22:07:59.764-05:00Body and Soul: Vocal Approaches/Lyrics<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGoAmSOPRpRDjOqRnO4JpiM-SbYF7_49kUVktALP1dD_1B9dGp-p0JukfFZuWt_wJkaK-XqJqQ_dANipnxDDCKuLRkG0wYtMAKk5SOslG6aOyzX9pdNXMXnALuQHEr8Gc4rSyE_hYePcg/s1600-h/220px-Billie_Holiday_Lady_Day.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 220px; height: 275px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjGoAmSOPRpRDjOqRnO4JpiM-SbYF7_49kUVktALP1dD_1B9dGp-p0JukfFZuWt_wJkaK-XqJqQ_dANipnxDDCKuLRkG0wYtMAKk5SOslG6aOyzX9pdNXMXnALuQHEr8Gc4rSyE_hYePcg/s320/220px-Billie_Holiday_Lady_Day.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440890028306775810" border="0" /></a><br />By now, we've laid out one of those pictures with two sides.* On one side we have "Body and Soul" the framework for heroic solo instrumentalism.† On the other, we introduced a foundational post, where the song stands up in its earliest versions as a singer's tune.‡<br /><br />The singers remind us that it's a song w/ lyrics, not just <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnny_Green">Johnny</a> <a href="http://www.jazzbiographies.com/Biography.aspx?ID=44">Green</a>'s work, a torchy melody wrapped around some tough chord changes that have lured the mighty tenors of the 20th c. into a titanic struggle with one another.<div><br /></div><div>First, a couple of bullets:<br /><ul><li>Frank Sinatra, "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/B-SFrank">Body and Sou</a>l" (1947). Another <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2010/01/body-and-soul-reference-version.html">reference version</a>. Blue-eyed soul worth knowing by heart. </li><li>Louis Armstrong and His New Sebastian Club Seranaders, "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/B-SLouisA">Body and Soul</a>" (1930). We <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2010/01/body-and-soul-prehawk.html">already cited this masterpiece as the beginning of the jazz versions</a> of the song. Listen for Lionel Hampton on the vibes.<br /></li><li>Sarah Vaughan, "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/B-SSarahV">Body and Soul</a>" (1954). From the extraordinary slab, <span style="font-style: italic;">Swingin' Easy</span>, which sports John Malachi on piano, Joe Benjamin on bass, and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Haynes">Roy Haynes</a> brushing out an elegant and gentle groove on drums.</li><li>Billie Holiday, "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/B-SBillie">Body and Soul</a>" (1940). Includes some soulful bars at the intro and the break by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roy_Eldridge">Roy Eldridge</a>, as well as a solid combo composed of Jimmy Powell and Carl Frye alto sax, Kermit Scott tenor sax, Sonny White piano, Lawrence Lucie guitar, John Williams bass, and Harold "Doc" West drums.</li></ul><div>Today, though, the words of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Heyman">Edward</a> <a href="http://www.jazzbiographies.com/Biography.aspx?ID=57">Heyman</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Sour">Robert</a> <a href="http://www.jazzbiographies.com/Biography.aspx?ID=107">Sour</a> and <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Eyton">Frank</a> <a href="http://www.jazzbiographies.com/Biography.aspx?ID=33">Eyton</a> draw us. If we discard the bad latinate grammar ("for you I sigh" or "my life a wreck you're making"), the song starts our sad and gets sadder. Rejected, the singer must offer more and more of themselves to prove their devotion. Loss yields surrender, and surrender escalates with more loss. It's excruciating. Each of the first three versions cited above turn on the third verse:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">My life a wreck you’re making.<br />You know I’m yours for just the taking.<br />I’d gladly surrender<br />Myself to you body and soul.<br /></div><br />Sinatra's version just plays the loser's version straight. Armstrong's ends with the heartbreaking grunt. Sassy's grows torchier with every verse.<br /><br />But no one suffers in song like Billie Holiday. For all others, "Body and Soul" is a about giving up it up after it won't matter. Lady takes a sad song, flips one word -- "wreck" goes to "hell" without the author's permission -- in the first line of the third verse, and makes it one of spiritual loss.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">My life a hell you’re making<br />You know I’m yours for just the takin’<br />I’d gladly surrender<br />Myself to you, body and soul<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">She's giving up her soul, not her body. In other versions it the other way around. And where others foreshorten the song, lyrically, she drags out Heyman, Sour and Green for all its worth:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">What lies before me?<br />A future that’s stormy<br />A winter that’s gray and cold<br /><br />Unless there’s magic<br />The end will be tragic<br />And echo a tale that’s been told<br />So often<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">With her recast version, we can almost re-read the entire song, line by line, as a version of "<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_Road_Blues">Crossroads Blues</a>." In the face of a stormy future (no one sings about bad the promise of bad weather better than the Lady), she begs for a spell to stave off the too familiar sad ending.<br /><br /><div style="text-align: left;">Due to this dubscience, the final verse takes on its own totally new meaning:<br /><br /><div style="text-align: center;">My life revolves about you<br />What earthly good am I without you?<br />Oh I tell you I mean it<br />I’m all for you, body and soul<br /></div><br />Earthly good? None. The tossed away remains of this Faustian bargain have no heaven, only hell. All for you, body and soul.<br /></div></div></div></div></div></div><div><br /></div><span style="font-family:arial;"><span style="font-size:78%;">* </span></span><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:78%;" >Maybe it's a 7" rekkid, which the people have mislabled a "single" even though it's got an A side and a B side.<br />† Stop <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2010/01/versionology-body-and-soul.html">here</a> and <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2010/01/body-and-soul-reference-version.html">here</a>.<br />‡ Stop <a href="http://blindwilliam.blogspot.com/2010/01/body-and-soul-prehawk.html">here</a>.</span></div>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-59128888763715232512010-02-20T13:08:00.007-05:002010-02-27T20:14:16.776-05:00School of Ragtime<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7hPylxw6Aqh47RzKttE_vkT2Snv25V22C4qpUClZhiSRvWZGCEWZfY11ynvq_yb9XP7KoqkcITyugkYOIn0ZusjKU1FDMafNaQ4KRBXZVRuRgkUUF2ksJMfoele_sqp9MAVj4ESyPcAw/s1600-h/200px-RagtimeDanceJoplinCover.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 264px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7hPylxw6Aqh47RzKttE_vkT2Snv25V22C4qpUClZhiSRvWZGCEWZfY11ynvq_yb9XP7KoqkcITyugkYOIn0ZusjKU1FDMafNaQ4KRBXZVRuRgkUUF2ksJMfoele_sqp9MAVj4ESyPcAw/s320/200px-RagtimeDanceJoplinCover.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5440397649292581698" border="0" /></a><br />We're in a 'nothering field again, kings and queenz. We enter w/out as much preparation as we should, really just playas. But we're moved to come off of the wall and enter, even tough we're not ready.<br /><br />But as we enter we find some of the same things, even if they're arranges differently: You start w/ the darktown swells, raising the standard*; then there's the wild creole style; there's the sexy allure of dance step instructions†; there's the tension between the old world and the new; and then there's the accusations about paving the road to hell.‡ Finally and never to late, there's a buncha scholars who think they missed it, so they go back to find their way back to the roots.<br /><br />Here's a couple of bullets in the clip for you to marinate on.<br /><br /><ul><li>Scott Joplin, "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/dancejoplin">Ragtime Dance</a>."</li><li>Air, "<a href="http://rapidshare.com/files/353413359/01_The_Ragtime_Dance.mp3">Ragtime Dance</a>." We've been lissening to this one since it was an unnaground hit in the vinyl days. Best drum solo in the 70s, a real shoe tickler.◊</li></ul>You must learn.<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">* Take partners do the "rag two step", I know you are enjoying yourselves, </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> You are representatives </span><i style="font-size: 10pt; color: rgb(102, 0, 0); font-family: arial;"></i><span style="font-family:arial;"> of dark town's wealth. Stop where you are!</span><br /><br /><span style="font-family:arial;">† Ev'rybody now "form a line", Dance nothing but the real ragtime. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Do your best, "forward four steps", you are all very fine. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> Let me see you do the "back step prance", Be graceful at ev'ry chance. </span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> You are now enjoying the "ragtime dance". Ev'ry body sing.</span></span><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;"><br />‡ The hall was illuminated by electric lights, It certainly was a sight to see;</span><br /><span style="font-family:arial;"> So many colored folks there without a razor fight... 'Twas a great surprise to me.<br /><br /></span></span><span style="font-size:78%;">◊ </span><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">Notice. To get the desired effect of "stop time" the pianist will please <span style="font-weight: bold;">stamp</span> the heel of one foot heavily upon the floor at every word "stamp." Do not raise the toe of the foot from the floor while stamping. Author.<br /></span></span><br /><span style=";font-family:arial;font-size:130%;" ><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);font-size:10;" ></span></span>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-47409508663150456562010-02-08T09:35:00.004-05:002010-02-09T08:23:07.690-05:00From Terence's Library<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU0z_-KRumJdaYKs464mR8LkqkeLGcZNL07jXsNyLMs26Ildl0NOGUMO37rmyTaIx5sItxI0EoEcN7h6fpLy42dDb3ujP31brp0Y8eyGaGJyTHsIEXZSjBYeq8uj7wlpQZdwWwc-HS2_w/s1600-h/800px-Kente_Weaver.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU0z_-KRumJdaYKs464mR8LkqkeLGcZNL07jXsNyLMs26Ildl0NOGUMO37rmyTaIx5sItxI0EoEcN7h6fpLy42dDb3ujP31brp0Y8eyGaGJyTHsIEXZSjBYeq8uj7wlpQZdwWwc-HS2_w/s320/800px-Kente_Weaver.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5435878747790036338" border="0" /></a><br />At the risk of being labeled a repeater pencil, what we're all about here is pulling together the threads into a fabric. Fact is there's so much things to say, that we are opening <a href="http://blindwilliamscommonplace.blogspot.com/">another store</a>, one where we pull our loose and stray threads out before we weave them together here. It's mainly a copybook, but you may want to drop by to find out what we're working on.<br /><br />P E A C EBlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6808990621448750260.post-82040150619515374132010-01-31T08:07:00.007-05:002010-01-31T10:23:00.263-05:00Body and Soul: Prehawk<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyd3i_Xa5M1nZWWWHqacUSNFzdQLYdkeURGEsiTYf7bxqtpvyW-4RaXWkUQl2pqmT-FPV4HQagw1ElWkJwrVKIirpsW9Aav_yN0Wl9qOrAT4AX6PcFpPcwlWo3rJREtH5bZJPDWBO3FH4/s1600-h/Body+And+Soul.jpg"><img style="margin: 0px auto 10px; display: block; text-align: center; cursor: pointer; width: 302px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyd3i_Xa5M1nZWWWHqacUSNFzdQLYdkeURGEsiTYf7bxqtpvyW-4RaXWkUQl2pqmT-FPV4HQagw1ElWkJwrVKIirpsW9Aav_yN0Wl9qOrAT4AX6PcFpPcwlWo3rJREtH5bZJPDWBO3FH4/s320/Body+And+Soul.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5432890463209319954" border="0" /></a><br />We've put a tied up a coupla knots in this B&S thread already. Let's now get to the start.<br /><br />"Body and Soul" is a pop tune, from back in the day when pop tunes came from musical theater. It was a feature song in <span style="font-style: italic;">Three's a Crowd</span>. The versionologist to takes it from the stage, samples it, makes it new by putting it into the tradition. Again and again. That's how we begin.<br /><br />To this end, let's load a crowd of bullets in the clip from 1930. It's a straightforward case:<br /><br /><ul><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruth_Etting">Ruth Etting</a>, "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/ettingb-S">Body and Soul</a>." Etting was not above living the blues. Check that portion of her bio where her husband shoots her lover and gets a year upstate.</li><li><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Whiteman">Paul Whiteman</a> and His Orchestra, "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/whitemanb-s">Body and Soul</a>." The vocal is by <a href="http://www.jazzbiographies.com/Biography.aspx?ID=209">Whiteman</a>'s trombone player, <a href="http://www.jazzbiographies.com/Biography.aspx?ID=156">Jack Fulton</a>. No need to tell you that <a href="http://www.redhotjazz.com/pwo.html">Whiteman</a> was the Elvis or Eminem of his day, grinding hits that more proper people wanted curbed 'cause they were creating bad habits among the youth. But that's all in the tradition, too.</li><li>Louis Armstrong* and His Orchestra, "<a href="http://tinyurl.com/armstrongb-s">Body and Soul</a>." Odd man out. Here's where the story begins.</li></ul>J Y E A H<br /><br /><span style="font-size:78%;"><span style="font-family:arial;">* We have so much things to say about the man. We'll be back at it. He basically made the 20th century up from mud and straw in the streets. We're still living under that spell.</span></span>BlindWilliamhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14529744868538142382noreply@blogger.com0