Lefty's curls

When Lefty Frizzell was still a teenager trying to sing his way out of picking cotton for a living, he played 15 minute spots on KGFL in Roswell, New Mexico and fashioned himself as “a boy with a wave in his hair and a curl in his voice.” It wasn’t long before Lefty hit it real big on the national country charts with his “If You’ve Got the Money, I’ve Got the Time” and “I Love You a Thousand Ways.” In the liner notes to the two-disc set Look What Thoughts Will Do Frizzell is quoted as saying “...I get tired of holding high notes for a long time. Instead of straining, I just let it roll down, and it feels good to me.” Thank the country music gods it felt good to him, for no matter the reasons for his mellifluous vocal style, Frizzell sweet-voiced his way through many classic country tunes and deeply influenced a number of other future country music legends. It’s tough to pick one song to highlight Frizzell’s way of singing, but I’ll throw “You Can Go On Your Way Now” out there. (And is it me, or does that pedal steel sometimes sound like a lazy zither?)

Lefty Frizzell - You Can Go On Your Way Now [buy]

BeepBeep

While most of my recent listening time has been devoted to honky-tonk tunes and Billie Holiday, this psych-pop rocker by The Beep Seals is too much fun to not pass along. Looking forward to hearing their new album Things That Roar. Unfortunately, it appears that the band has played its last show.

Rated O

Last night I followed the sound advice of my pal Tim and somehow found my way to Outside the Lines Studio in Medford to watch the rarely seen Oneida rearrange some synapses. You don’t have to spend too much time in the realm of Oneida to hear “best band in the world” claims dropped on you. I’m not going to wade into that particular naming contest, but what does have to be said is that any band this mad-hatter ferocious yet mesmerizingly subtle deserves even more people making large critical claims about them. Please take yourself over to the the band’s website, enemyhogs, and see what these Brooklyn (plus Roslindale!) fellows can do for your state of mind. (And thanks, Tim.)

Rain Again!?!

It is yet another (!) rainy summer day in Boston, and this morning I need some help convincing the eyes to open up. Thankfully, The Ruby Suns volunteered for the job. This is from their bouncy new album Sea Lion. You can stream more songs at their website. So get to it!

The Ruby Suns - Tane Mahuta [buy]

Just A Carefree Gal

Photo from Patsy Cline fan site

Early in her career Patsy Cline was a regular on the Town and Country television show. Considering that she became what we might call the first feminist of country music -- asserting much more control over the financial and musical aspects of her career than her contemporary female country singers and being known for not taking any guff from men -- the casual ogling by the show’s host and musicians before Patsy tears into “I’m Walking the Dog” seems particularly pathetic. Turning the gender tables on this one, Cline relishes “painting the town” and living the single life with “no one to tie me down.”

Patsy Cline - I'm Walking the Dog [buy]

La Blogotheque and Take Away Concerts

Yesterday I had the good fortune of stumbling into the wonderful world of La Blogotheque. My French isn’t so good, but those skills aren’t needed to enjoy the blog or the mini-concerts they are staging with excellent artists.

Here’s how the folks behind the site describe their “Les Concerts a Emporter”:

Every week, we invite an artist or a band to play in the streets, in a bar, a park, or even in a flat or in an elevator, and we film the whole session. Of course, what makes the beauty of it is all the little incidents, hesitations, and crazy stuff happening unexpectingly. Besides, we do not edit the videos so they look perfectly flawless, instead we keep the raw sound of the surroundings. Our goal is to try and capture instants, film the music just like it happens, without preparation, without tricks. Spontaneity is the keyword.

So when you get a chance, click your way over to the site and enjoy some live tunes by Fleet Foxes, REM, Vic Chesnutt, and many others.

And if you took six years of the Francais and actually retained some of the language, then you can read this post about Lady in Satin era Billie.

Billie Sunday, no.2

Billie & Basie -- 20 years after their first recordings together
Image from the Sidney Mishkin Gallery, Baruch College

Billie Holiday toured with Count Basie and His Orchestra from early 1937 to early 1938. This was one of those matches made in jazz heaven, for Basie’s band -- featuring (among the many great players) Lester Young (ts), Herschel Evans (ts), and Buck Clayton (t), with the Count keeping the keys busy -- could swing you right out the damn building if they wanted to, and Billie was already known for her righteous sense of rhythm. With Basie’s band she would become known as “The Lady Who Swung the Band.” Sadly, this collaboration only produced three recordings: “Swing, Brother, Swing,” “They Can’t Take That Away from Me,” and “I Can’t Get Started.” The reasons for Holiday leaving the band are disputed (and you can find thorough discussions of the split in two essential Billie bios: Donald Clarke’s Wishing on the Moon and Robert O’Meally’s Lady Day: The Many Faces of Billie Holiday), but the reason for the lack of records made is not: Basie and Billie were signed to different labels, ruling out the possibility of studio work together. But those three sides! I’m going with “Swing, Brother, Swing” for this post. Billie practically sets the house on fire, singing like a woman who knew exactly what she wanted and wasn’t wasting any time on “foolish prattle” getting there.

Billie Holiday & Count Basie - Swing, Brother, Swing [buy]

When He Felt Like It

A.P. [Carter] was always prone to distraction, and his behavior during rehearsals and even during concerts became increasingly erratic. "They'd be singing and he'd walk around, look out a window, come back, and put in a word now and then,' June Carter Cash says. "He always reminded me of a musical instrument. Just came in when he felt like it."

From Nicholas Dawidoff's In the Country of Country

With His Elvis Presley Hair

Cueing-up Leon Russell’s rollicking “Shootout On The Plantation” to start the weekend. One of the many standout tracks (“A Song For You,” “Hummingbird,” “Dixie Lullaby”) on Russell’s self-titled 1970 debut album, “Shootout” is supposedly based on a true story about two men battling it out over a woman. Leon surveys the scene and finds it frightfully bizarre.

Oh, Oklahoma's lonesome cowboys are turned on in Tinsel Town
I knew there'd be some cameras rolling if Andy was standing around.

Leon Russell - Shootout On The Plantation [buy]

Hearing People Say

For no other reason than it's been a gorgeous day in the Hub and I dig this song.

Moby Grape - It's A Beautiful Day Today [buy]

Billie Sunday, no. 1

No, this isn’t a post about that Dead song with Billy Sunday (and “the shotgun ragtime band”) in the lyrics. And it’s definitely not one about Billy Sunday, the anti-booze Christian crusader. Instead it’s the first in what I hope will be a series of last-day-in-the-week posts on Billie Holiday. When the thought first arose of doing this blog, I knew that I wanted to have a regularly-scheduled “feature” on an artist I love. And perhaps more than any other musical artist I’ve had the pleasure of listening to, Billie encapsulates the (desperate) hope articulated in the Dylan lyric used for the title of this blog. For while it sometimes seems that her life went from “bad to worse,” in her music Lady Day’s virtuosic singing provided her a space of personal control and power and provided for her audience, especially during her first phase which coincided with the great depression, a rapturous moment of escape and an enactment of bodily fulfillment.

I claim no special knowledge of Billie (or jazz in general), certainly not an exhaustive knowledge. She produced, while working with the greatest jazz artists of her day, a large body of work -- look here, here, here, or here -- and I’m going to use this blog as a means of deepening my understanding and love for her accomplishment. (And I promise that all the posts won’t be this long!)

The kick-off song (and my personal favorite), “I Must Have That Man,” from 1937 was recorded during the first phase of her career. Here we find her in the company of close friend and simpatico tenor saxophonist Lester Young (whom she gifted with the nickname “Prez”), clarinetist Benny Goodman (whom, somehow, she was romantically involved with!), Buck Clayton (t), Teddy Wilson (p), Jo Jones (d), Freddie Green (g), and Walter Page (b). All the musicians here are in top form, with Young, Clayton, and Goodman putting-in masterful performances. As with many other songs associated with her, this is a tale of sexual longing for a man who may not treat her quite right but still possesses so much charm (“a lady’s not safe in his arms when she’s kissed”) and other skills your mother didn’t tell you about, that the singer simply can’t live without him. There’s so much to say about Billie’s performance here, but I’ll just mention two things. What strikes me about Billie’s interpretation of the “it’s just unlawful how that boy can cheat” line is her worldliness. She’s singing about a man cheating on her, yet with her generous understanding of human foibles and “the ways of men” (and much more than that) Billie sings the line with a knowing smile. Some might want to quarrel with her acceptance of a cheating-man’s ways, but one of the supreme achievements of Holiday’s art is its containment of ambiguity. The line reads one way, but her interpretation grants it a whole new meaning. And then when Billie growls low (Bessie Smith style) that “he’s only human if he’s to be had,” we get a a bit of bluesy-poetry on the sly, earthy pleasures of incarnation. Oh Lady, Sing.

Billie Holiday - I Must Have That Man

Well, Can You?

Image from Skybucket Records

I'm a Southerner living in Jamaica Plain, MA. Every so often I do get a bit peeved when, after hearing me talk, someone from here says "so where are you from?" with a tone in their voice which signifies something other than genuine curiosity. From now on when some clown tries to ruin the party with their smirky question, I have little doubt that the brain will press play on the Dexateen's defiant "Can You Whoop It" (from their must have Singlewide). And I'll smirk right back.

Dexateens - Can You Whoop It [buy]

Electric Jed

When I first read that Levon Helm was going to cover the Grateful Dead’s “Tennessee Jed” on his new album, Electric Dirt, I couldn’t wait to hear what the Funky Drummer from Woodstock (via Arkansas) did with it. As described by Jerry Garcia, the feel of “Jed” comes out of his listening to and being influenced by the “rhythmically hip country and western style....Memphis more than Nashville.” Anyone who has listened for but a brief moment to The Band knows that Levon preaches “rhythmically hip” whenever he settles in behind the drum-kit. With the Levon Helm Band horns adding some extra spice, we get a fine version of a song whose main character could have easily come out of one of The Band’s albums.

Levon Helm - Tennessee Jed [buy]

Against All Odds

With "In Spite of Ourselves" John Prine and Iris Dement take a wry, warts-and-all look at life-long love -- and find it worth the price of admission. I can't say as I agree with them, but any song that articulates the mixed-up-confusion of marriage with such bawdy good humor should give everyone a bit of hope.

John Prine & Iris Dement - In Spite of Ourselves [buy]

Spend the 4th with the Dead

Image from Dead.net

On a blisteringly hot late August day in 1972, the Grateful Dead dropped-in on the Old Renaissance Faire Grounds in Veneta, Oregon to play a benefit concert for the Kesey family Springfield Creamery. Tagged by many as the greatest Dead concert ever, this is a glorious 3-set plus encore show to spend the Fourth of July weekend with. Enjoy! (And one more thing about this show: dig the fire truck spraying everyone down with lsd, nah, just kidding, water from the creek to help them cool off under that hot hot sun. The community feel on this recording is special.)

Set 1:
01 Promised Land
02 Sugaree
03 Me & My Uncle
04 Deal
05 Black Throated Wind
06 China Cat Sunflower > I Know You Rider
07 Mexicali Blues
08 Bertha

Set 2:
01 Playin' in the Band
02 He's Gone
03 Jack Straw
04 Bird Song
05 Greatest Story Ever Told

Set 3:
01 Dark Star
02 El Paso
03 Sing Me Back Home
04 Sugar Magnolia
05 Casey Jones
06 Saturday Night


This and other splendid Dead shows may be streamed more easily at your friendly GD Archive.org


Here's a clip from Sunshine Daydream, an unreleased film of the day.

One tiny spark

Not that Devendra Banhart's achingly lovely "The Body Breaks" needs any help to keep your attention, but this stop-motion animation piece has charms of its own.