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Now
H-Bomb Ferguson, one of the
last of the blues shouters, died this week. Some say he was 80.
Some say he was older. His music, though, still sounds fresh.
This is urban blues, music with swagger and swing--Wynonnie Harris
with a heart. Among other achievements, Ferguson may have been
the first blue singer to pen a song about spousal abuse, the
classic "Love Her, Don't Shove Her." My favorite H-Bomb
song? It's gotta be "Winehead." Soak it up. The fallout
from this H-Bomb is good for you.
Here is Duke Ellington on the
other side of 70, leading a quartet with Joe Pass on guitar,
Ray Brown on bass and Louis Bellson on drums. His playing on
these blues numbers is as sharp and swinging as ever. And new,
too. The Duke wasn't merely shrinking down an old sound for a
small group setting, but exploring fresh terrain with talented
young players with post-bop pedigrees. Ellington is America's
Chopin, except Chopin could only envy Duke's versatility. Duke
could play and compose any kind of music at the very highest
level and never break a sweat.
This is unadulterated Cajun
music from the heart of the swamp lands. I have no idea what
"Hack a Moreau" means or the significance of the "Bathtub
Song," but both of them make you want to dance, which is,
after all, the prime directive of Cajun music.
Is this live recording of a
1964 Lincoln Center concert the most under-rated Miles Davis
album? Not by those who understand the revolution in music it
helped spark, as the teenage Tony Williams kicked the tempo into
over-drive and the band reinvented the sound of Davis standards,
such as "So What" and "Walkin'." This isn't
rock or even fusion, but the music burns just as hotly as the
MC5 at their most frenzied. This the end of bebop and the beginning
of something new.
The Mexican-American singer
Perla Batalla spent many years on the road as a back-up singer
for two artists with grating voices: K.D. Laing and Leonard Cohen.
Here Batalla steps to the front and her many-hued voice revives
some of Cohen's best songs. If you've seen the excellent film
on Cohen, "I'm You're Man," you'll recall Batalla as
the dynamic back-up singer with the lush halo of hair who steals
the show when she is called forward to sing "Bird on a Wire."
I think you'll agree that Batalla deserves a much wider
audience.
Jeffrey St. Clair's music writings (as well as CPers Ron
Jacobs, David Vest and Daniel Wolff) can be found in Serpents
in the Garden. He can be reached at: sitka@comcast.net.
Tom D'Antoni
While waiting for Rick Rubin
to offer O.J. Simpson an album deal:
You can't cross the street
without engaging a cello these days. At least that's the way
it seems. Keating, a tall woman with stalks of wild red hair
and an international following has cooched up her cello with
electronics, loops herself, plays percussion on it, and sounds
like a one-woman string quartet with self-percussion.
Matter of fact, she even calls
it "layered cello." And even though if you say that
aloud, it sounds like some kind of dessert, it is the cello equivalent
of "prepared piano." Of course, given today's technology,
prepared piano is a quaint concept. This isn't quaint.
If I were writing for a MSM
publication I might have to tip-toe around and mew shit like,
"this is very modern but it's totally accessible."
Well I don't give a rat's ass if it's accessible or not. It's
accessible to me, and this is the stuff I'M listening to. On
the other hand, this album made it to #2 on iTunes classical
chart at one point, so she's certainly well-known.
This is gorgeous, it's exciting
and irresistible. She is getting a new cello in a few months.
He current cello has been with her since she was twelve. She
is all excited about it. She'll continue to travel with the old
one, but if you see a new studio album in the future, it will
be with the new one. She is all excited about it. She is recording
live in Portland, Oregon at Mississippi Studios in December with
the old one.
He's the quadriplegic nationally
syndicated cartoonist with a dark sense of humor that twenty-somethings
only dream of having. There is something to be said for a bad
attitude coming from a person who actually earned it.
A few years ago videographer/editor
Greg Bond and I made a music video of one of Callahan's songs
for a TV show we were working on. It was "Portland Girl."
Few knew that Callahan was a song writer or a singer at the time.
The song was oddly sentimental. Sentiment is not something John
is known for.
Guitarist Terry Robb produced
this album and John did the illustrations for its brilliant packaging.
The songs are not happy ones,
sentiment aside. They come from the depths but are not the whining
of someone just out of puberty who never grew out of teen-angst.
These are adult, sarcastic; sometimes funny, sometimes pathetic.
It includes a recording taken
from Callahan's voice mail of Tom Waits singing one of Callahan's
songs to him.
Callahan's voice is soft and
fragile, sometimes reaching for notes. Every time he reaches
you want him to make it.
Although "Purple Winos
In the Rain" is the title tune, and the most promotable
for the title if nothing else, the key song is "Touch Me
Someplace I Can Feel." You'll have to make that journey
on your own, dear reader.
You're going to be hearing
about this soon. Remember you heard it here first.
3.Bob Dylan "Theme Time Radio-Food"
Dylan's radio show on Sirius
has evolved from his playing recordings of other people and
either cracking wise or obviously reading (stiffly) copy it sounded
like someone else had written about the subject of that show.
These days, he sounds much
more relaxed, is quipping and making those bad jokes he has become
known for in his later songs, and has added audio clips from
other songs, radio commercials and other ephemera. His show has
gone from a curiosity to a treasure of great old tunes that Dylan
finally sounds like he's having fun with.
There have been thrity-one
of them at this writing. You can find them online at http://www.whitemanstew.com/
It will lead you to the shows.
The Safeway Waterfront Blues
Festival in Portland, Oregon is one of the best in the country,
and perhaps the only one booked by a working musician. Two years
ago saxophonist Patrick Lamb, best known for his "smooth
jazz" recordings, wanted to get back to his R&B roots
and put together an all-star Portland band to pay tribute to
Ray Charles.
The result is this album, and
it's a powerhouse. New star vocalist Liv Warfield does a duet
with harmonica virtuoso and singer Paul DeLay, soul/blues diva
Linda Hornbuckle sings on two cuts, veteran vocalist Sweet Baby
James Bentonswings, and Wildman Lee Garrett takes the band to
outer space.
Solos by ex-New Orleans great
Reggie Houston, by Lamb himself, pianists D.K. Stewart and Janice
Scroggins, and out of the blue, Eddie Martinez comes out of nowhere
on guitar.
A couple of solos on this are
poignant to jazz fans in the Northwest from fiery trumpeter Thara
Memory, a force of nature for a long time here. He is currently
in a wheelchair, a victim of diabetes and is in bad shape. It
is lovely to remember him as he was here.
I bought the single new. I
was partial to jungle drums and wild R&B. Little did I know
that "Bunker Hill" was actually Dave Walker who had
just come from singing with the Mighty Clouds of Joy, and after
a brief solo career would rejoin them.
Nor did I know that the musicians
behind this song and all of his recordings as Bunker Hill, was
none other than Link Wray. Matter of fact the line up on this
out-of-control gospel-party-out-of-church is as follows: Bunker
Hill - vocals, Link Wray - guitar, Vernon Wray - piano, Doug
Wray - drums, Shorty Horton bassnot that I can hear any
guitar. You can listen for yourself on the MySpace page.
Hill (Walker) had been a professional
boxer in D.C. Legend has it that he was 18-5-5, with many of
his fights on TV. Billboard Magazine even said the he had been
Archie Moore's sparring partner, but who knows what the truth
is?
The real truth is that I keep
playing this over and over. I did when I bought the single, and
I continued after I discovered it on this great CD collection
(which includes the Sparkletones' "Black Slacks," and
Noble "Thin Man" Watts' "Hard Times (The Slop)."
I even put "Hide and Go Seek" on my own MySpace page:
www.myspace.com/tvdpdx. I have never gotten tired of it.
Walker (Hill) had written "You'll
Never Know," one of the songs on the Mighty Clouds of Joy's
first album and sang lead on it. His career as Bunker Hill was
something he kept separate and concealed, as much as possible.
You can hear the gospel influence
as Bunker Hill, and the devil's too. He hooked up with Link Wray
in D.C. He wanted to remain anonymous. Link and his brother wanted
to call him "Four H. Stamp," but settled on Bunker
Hill.
When "Hide and Go Seek"
was released in 1962 (in two parts-both sides of the single)
it made Billboard's Hot 100, stayed there for thirteen weeks
and got up to #33. At a time when Rock n Roll had turned into
pop drivel people like Bunker Hill and Gary U.S. Bonds kept the
flame alive.
After his next few records
stiffed, Walker (Hill) went back to the Clouds. He is said to
have died in Houston in the 1980s. But even the most fanatical
website can't confirm this. Most of the facts above were taken
from such sites. You think I KNEW this shit?
What is this song about? Who
the fuck knows? I just can't stop playing it. I'm STILL not ready!!!!
(Listen and you'll
understand.)
From 1964, on Verve, I group
this with his two Impulse! albums "Out of the Cool"
and "Into the Hot." He was a total individual then,
and his work remains equally unique.
The personnel on here are astounding.
On two of the cuts he uses THREE bassists, Paul Chambers, Richard
Davis and Ben Tucker on one and Milt Hinton, Paul Chambers and
Richard Davis on another. Ron Carter and Paul Chambers are on
yet another tune.
Horn players? Only Eric Dolphy,
Steve Lacy, Jerome Robinson, Wayne Shorter and Johnny Coles among
others. Elvin Jones is the principal drummer.
Many familiar Evans classics
were recorded here first, "The Barbara Song" and "Las
Vegas Tango" for two.
There is beauty here that was
unparalleled at the time it was released, and which has lost
none of its adventurous luster. And it sounds so good on vinyl.
You want to have some fun?
Get this album. These girls (and one guy) play old-timey music
with great speed, passion, humor and virtuosity. The three women
are unique, strikingly unique personalities. In performance you
don't know who to watch. In recording, these personalities blend
and balance and compliment each other.
Nann Alleman, who fronts her
own group, Spigot, has one of the most unforgettable voices in
the history of voices. Lisa Marsicek, the fiddler and leader
keeps everything from spinning off into outer space. Rachel Gold
banjos up a storm.
CounterPunch
Speakers Bureau Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid?
CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair
are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues,
as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call
CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org.
