One album I will always, always listen to is Anita Sings the Most, starring the scintillating Ms. O’Day and Oscar Peterson, who both supports her winningly and constantly challenges her (she’s more than equal–the proof’s in the pudding) throughout the 33:59 of the 1957 recording. It’s brief, but packed with radiant music.
Anita is at her sassy, mischievous, inventive, joyous best here–it’s the LP I’d recommend first to listeners dark to her genius–and it’s telling that she’s listed as co-producer with Norman Granz. She’s in control, from the song selection, tempos, and drummer, her longtime telepath, codependent, and partner in rhythm John Poole. The band is essential Peterson’s group, with Ray Brown on bass and Herb Ellis, frequently sounding teleported, on guitar, but Anita could always count on Poole to turn the sharp corners she made in her interpretations.
Where to start? Where else but the beginning! Anita Sings the Most explodes out of the gate with two minutes and fifty seconds of quicksilver Gershwin: “‘S Wonderful / They Can’t Take That Away from Me.” There’s something about the heart-quickening pace and instrumental magic that makes her delivery of “You can’t blame / For feelin’ amorous” even more irresistibly fetching:
And it’s not just the sheer speed that’s exciting here. You can hear Anita ache, wince, and steel herself as she feels her way through “Love Me or Leave Me” and (especially) “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered”:
If you jazz diva channel only features Billie, Ella, Sarah, and Dinah, consider adding Anita to your programming. Anita Sings the Most is a sure convincer.
Short-shrift Division:
Bettye LaVette: Things Have Changed–Bettye sounds forced into some selections of this all-Dylan program, and her voice at times sounds on the verge of shredding, but she nails the title song, wears “Ain’t Talkin'” like she’s Alida Valli at the end of The Third Man, and wrests “Do Right to Me, Baby” out of Dylan’s grip, and Christendom’s.
Fellow music enthusiasts: have you ever just been wrong about, been deaf to, a great album? It’s happened to me many times, as I suspect it has to you. On this day, I received a comeuppance.
Nicole and I and our dear friends Janet and David spent a day in Fulton, a town we’ve been frequenting and growing very fond of. We introduced them to The Fulton Café, an establishment specializing in Cuban cuisine already written about glowingly on this blog. We visited the National Churchill Museum on the campus of Westminster, where Churchill delivered his “Iron Curtain” speech and where stands proudly and appropriately a colorful extant segment of the Berlin Wall:
The museum’s been wonderfully revamped and, peeking into a room behind the chapel’s pulpit I spied…bongos? Yes, bongos!
$7 cocktails in pint glasses and $5 cans of beer + a shot
Free chicken chili
Pool table and pinball
A ebullient bartender and owner, Verrell
TWO JUKEBOXES stocked with goodies and free for the button-punching!
We enjoyed several dranks as I played all of the several Ronnie Self selections and sat gobsmacked and stumped at the garage/rockabilly covers of Jessie Hill’s “Whip It on Me” and Bobby Hendricks’ “Itchy Twitchy Feelings.” Verrell himself couldn’t help because he hadn’t written the performers’ names on the list, and we forgot to ask Fulton Café impresario and Milton’s staff member Jimmy, who mesmerized us with stories from his past in Kansas City. We’re going back to Milton’s, ’nuff said.
So…about this record I’d snubbed? We landed at Janet and David’s upon returning from Fulton, and apropos of nothing, and without announcing the selection, David put Kenny Burrell’s Guitar Forms on the box. My defenses were down, I was in a wild rockin’ mood after my jukebox jolt–when Burrell’s guitar leaped out of the speakers and began slashing me exquisitely with 1,000 elegant cuts. On top of that, Gil Evans’ settings immediately forced me to consider that the album was a perfect companion for Miles’ and Evans’ Sketches of Spain. I just flat-out luxuriated in a record I’d a decade ago dispensed with because it sounded too tasty, too guitar-nerdish! SAY WHAT???? Had I been out of my goddam mind? And I’d played it multiple times back then, trying to shake the greatness out of it and failing miserably. Sometimes, I’m not just deaf, I’m dumb–and it makes me wonder what other masterpieces I’ve been numb to. If you’d like to be spellbound, wait til it gets a bit late, pour a glass, mute all distractions, and apply Guitar Forms liberally.
Short-shrift Division:
After the last track of Guitar Forms ended, we hit the stacks and pulled out some work by another great arranger, Bill Holman’s Brilliant Corners: The Bill Holman Band Plays Thelonious Monk, which I’ve always loved. Here’s a taste:
Now, as I said, I’d always loved that. But I turned to David and muttered, a tad unfairly perhaps, “Monk and bombast…not that great a combo.”
One never steps into the same record twice, do one?
I am pleased as punch to see the inspiring Alice Bag back on the scene with her new album, Blueprint. It’s her second solo album in three years (with a rare 45 squeezed in between), after beginning her trouble-making career with The Bags’ “Survive” 45 in 1979 and spending most of the ensuing four decades advocating for women, children (she’s a fellow teacher) and Latinx culture. She wrote a memoir I’ve heard from reliable sources is captivating, Violence Girl, that I just moved up on my massive stack after sampling her new record last night. I can’t write about Alice’s new record in great detail, as I was reading, but “77” (see above) and “Turn It Up” kicked my ass–I was needing a hardcore punk rock injection, and I have a soft spot for the West Coast variety. The rest of the album sounded fine–I’m going back to the well soon, and I suggest you drink from it yourself. A brave Chicana feminist school teacher and activist who’s about to turn 60 and hasn’t slowed down a millisecond is one of the many things we need right now.
Short-shrift Division:
Julien Baker came to my attention vaunted by humans far smarter than I, but my first impression was that she was hitting me squarely in one of my deafest spots: I am quite immune to heart-on-the sleeve outpourings, especially those sparely accompanied. I’m a bit stoic myself, and I don’t trust self-indulgence of any kind very much. However, I’d snagged Baker’s recent Turn Out the Lights in a moment of weakness (I was dying to burn up some trade credit, and someone had begged me to give her a listen), then I found it she was from Memphis (an entirely different weak spot I can never resist scratching), then my favorite writer of the moment, Hanif Abdurraqib, singled her out for powerful praise recently in The New York Times. So I listened–and she shook me by the lapels. Her writing and singing go uncomfortable places, and I don’t mean gushing emotionalism–I mean universally human struggle and pain. Reminded me of another Memphis thang: Big Star’s Third. It doesn’t sound like that dark musical night of the soul, though it often feels like it.
So…hmmm…not so short shrift. Take that as a recommendation.
“…someone is trying to satisfy you / He don’t know you’re wild and you’re blue.”
“Wild and Blue,” written by John Scott Sherrill and performed most indelibly by John Anderson in 1982, is one of my very favorite songs. It’s a wicked Cajun-styled waltz, easily memorized and yelled along with, and Anderson, a singer of immense warmth, makes it extremely real. It’s a sad tale of honky-tonk heartbreak, but it’s also a masterpiece of compressed meaning.
“Wild and blue”: simple, it seems, but as one listens beneath the phrase, it signifies several possibilities about the song’s subject. Her wildness, explicitly tied to sexual adventurousness, seems the by-product of rejection-triggered desperation and self-loathing so profound “satisfying” her is out of the question. It’s a sad–and scary–situation. Her blueness? So deep-hued the song’s persona imagines it won’t lift until she dies.
And that persona: is he the lover she needed all along, suffering in silence as he watches her campaign of romantic wreckage, knowing there’s no stopping her, in exquisite unrequited pain visualizing her with her mind made up and someone’s shades pulled down–and extending her compassion and understanding? Despite being a witness, heart ripped to shreds by her downward spiral, offering her shelter? Wow. Just wow.
The persona just as easily could be the woman’s mother, or her best friend; imagine it sung by Loretta, or Dolly, or Rosie Ledet. “If you know he ain’t home / Why do you keep callin’?” A sisterly life-rope, thrown out, even if likely in vain.
Thinking about The Mekons’ very nice cover version, sure, Sally Timms and Jon Langford have long loved honky tonk, and maybe that’s all their run at it amounts to: it’s too great not to sing yourself (do I understand that!). But considering the band’s political outlook, the wildness and the deep blue mood of the protagonist might just as well be existential. Hard to argue, right? How much of the deep desire in living is futile to hope to satisfy?
Also, when you hear this song, do you remember anyone you’ve known who was this wild and this blue? I do. Several.
One closing thought: as I was preparing this in my head on a neighborhood walk, I was thinking it had been written by Sanger Shafer, the man behind many a Lefty Frizzell classic. As much as Anderson’s masterful singing and stylistic similarity to Frizzell would make such a dream unnecessary, I’d love to have heard Lefty sing it. It’s his meat ‘n’ taters.
Short-shrift Division:
It’s a remakes album is all it is, but on Side 1, The Possum, plumbing uncharted depths of pain and finding new vocal nooks and crannies after almost 25 years, renders all previous versions mere trifles.
This was a slow music day–music isn’t the end-all be-all (he sez to himself)–but in honor of the piquant writer Luc Sante’s great essay on the subject for Pitchfork, I thought a lot about Something Else by The Kinks. That album was the centerpiece for a mini-unit series that was a regular part of my practice as a teacher of British literature at Hickman High School. As a way to ease reluctant students into the process of literary analysis, I would guide them through a quick study of the work of notable songwriters from or associated with the British Isles. I’d give them some brief background and guiding questions, provide them a packet with selected lyrics, play each song, then solicit their observations, gradually pulling my own back. The Kinks’ Ray Davies couldn’t have been a more perfect writer for such a lesson: his command of voice, tone, characterization, ambiguity, irony, and droll humor ensured students would walk out knowing more than they did coming in, and that many would leave big fans–especially after “Waterloo Sunset,” which closed the class. That’s a classic example of a song that means far more than its author and most critics have claimed for it–or so my students would annually prove to me.
Please sample the album, linked above, and check out Mr. Sante’s reconsideration of its quality import.
As far as the post title’s concerned, since things are slow, it’s a good time to reflect on how this blog, which I resolved to rejuvenate on New Year’s Day, is faring.
A) I was largely trying to break out of writer’s lethargy, and I’ve posted 86 straight days. Check.
B) My concept was to simply keep a diary of my listening, which I mostly have unless I’ve repeat-played something over several days, which I occasionally do. This was a way to triumph over a fear of having nothing of worth to say, which is largely true, but I’ve surprised myself at least four times, mostly because the unpredictability of daily circumstances has interceded. Still, though, most of the entries are just gussied-up shares of links. Check-minus.
C) It’s become clear to me that embarking upon this undertaking is a way to replace something that’s been missing in my life. I am honestly pissed and sad that the evolution of technology has rendered my making mixtapes pretty superfluous. For probably 25 years, I was often the only person many folks knew who had access to a ton, and a wide range, of music. From party-people pals to students, enough humans sought me out for musical grab bags and commissioned projects that I started taking great pride in fulfilling their needs. I invested many hours and much cogitation, crate-diggin’, taping and erasing, and creative labeling during that quarter-century–then poof! All gone. Should have seen it coming! I mean, it’s not like I couldn’t occasionally find a way to spend a couple hours in my old favorite way–like, recently, providing filmgoers a specially selected Rahsaan Roland Kirk CD to accompany their viewing of the great Adam Kahan Kirk doc The Case of the Three-Sided Dream–but even then, hell, they could’ve Spotified it for themselves. And now I only have 15-25 students a year, as opposed to 125, to whom to preach the gospel. SO–writing these posts at the very least creates the delusion that I’m still playing that old role, which I deeply savored. Check-minus?
D) It’s nothing profound, but as I approach 60, I think about being gone more frequently than I ever have, and, well…these posts proved I walked the turf, and a cornucopia of sounds lightened my step. Check-plus.
E) I was in New Orleans at the beginning of the year, and thus was frequently annoyed at having to knock the early entries out on my smartphone. Would it be easier on my ol’ desktop! Surprise surprise, but I’ve gotten so used to single-finger tapping, I prefer writing them on my phone, though my editing isn’t as careful. Check? Hmmm…
F) I did hope a few friends and other humans might read it. And I am thankful they have. Big check.
G) I have enjoyed this. At least five times, I almost decided to take a day off, usually for a seeming lack of real subject matter; each time, an idea formed that I had to seize upon. Whether it’s teaching, being married, sitting in solitude, or writing into a yawning digital chasm, I have always been driven to embue my activities with…FUN. For me, at the very least. So, a final check.
See you tomorrow, and thanks to Scott Woods, Rex Harris, Kevin Bozelka, Alfred Soto, and Hardin Smith, Expert Witnesses who each gave me a spark to get this going, and to my wife Nicole, who has been living with me and listening for 28 years. It’s not like I won a damned award, but it feels like it, just writing every day.
Sad to say, but most of my friends who are within 10 years of my current age (56) or older are settled comfortably into their musical preferences. Most. This is not to say that the yout’ can’t be fixed in their earways; I teach 19-year-olds that will not venture out of Harry Styles’ circle. Nonetheless, I associate aural adventures with the 15-to-35 set (no science there). And it’s why I’m inspired by my best buddy Mike, who’ll join me at cincuenta e seis in a little bit.
We met at a house party in Springfield, Missouri, in the mid-Eighties and were talking Minutemenese within minutes. Later in the decade, we also shared a bachelor pad, a structure that was a church for beer and the guitar. He was a groomsman in our wedding, and we’ve continued to be Brothers of the Rock to this day.
BUT…Mike struck out earlier this decade into a full-on later-in-life Bob Marley walkabout. It was splendid to hear him enthuse over the phone about Nesta magic he was hearing with fresh ears that I’d not noticed in multiple listenings of the same piece. Marley led him to Fela–no surprise, and as deep, if not a deeper well–which led him one day to engage me in another exaltation-laced phone conversation (mid-February ’17, Trump taint in the air) that then led me, post-call, to drop a good chunk of cash through Bandcamp for new-to-me Kuti cuts. I thought I was on top of the man’s discog, but Mike’s research revealed I’d not fully or properly tapped the source. On top of it, my expense was donated to the ACLU. Here’s what I got, and I’ve worn ’em out:
Now Mike’s ranging further across and around Africa, and a few weekends ago he tipped me to the great Ghanaian musical master Ebo Taylor. He flat-out told me to listen to this album, which I did yesterday, and now I’m not just telling you to, I’m making it convenient:
Thanks, Mike, and, like Malcolm X strove to do, may you continue to refine your music magic detector and share the results with me, to keep me on the path!
Short-shrift Division:
Miguel: War & Leisure–Can’t believe this dude is already 33, but he’s got a big bag of tricks and–don’t take this too seriously, but I am serious–if you miss Prince, this might bring temporary surcease of sorrow. As will its predecessor, Wildheart. Also, he makes a little sumpin’ sumpin’ of the title pairing.
Willie King: Jukin’ at Bettie’s–I’m still raiding the appendix of Robert Gordon’s new essay collection Memphis Rent Party, and this Prairie Point, Mississippi, live recording by an Alabama boogie practitioner put me deep in a hypnotic blues mood. Not as eccentric as North Mississippi hill country trance music, but it finds the itch that just begs a half-hour scratch.
Music often plays a part in the Overeems’ social gatherings, and over time I have finally learned not to try to exert control over the hangout playlist. I mean, I am obsessed, my knowledge base is wide and deep, and honestly, if you ever notice me sitting silently in contemplation, I’m probably not contemplating the nature of existence. I am more likely wondering, for example, who played that great guitar on so many Joe Tex hits (note: probably Jimmy Johnson). Seriously.
Last night, we spent some deeply pleasurable time with our friends Janet and David. We picked them up, drove to one of our current favorite getaways, Fulton, Missouri, ate delicious Cajun food at Fontenot’s, and came back to their place to sip maple syrup Old Fashioneds. Main topic of conversation: ol’ Adolf’s single testicle. However, the really weird thing was, I didn’t make a single musical suggestion or try to take over Spotify in the car, and the results couldn’t have been better:
On the way to Fulton:
The full album, containing this, chosen by Nicole.
This house favorite (and several others), streaming over Fontenot’s sound system:
This delightful and fascinating classical composition, proffered by David, an expert in such things (he also, generous man that he is, gave us a copy):
This splendid Carmen McRae live album I’d never heard of, chosen by David to demonstrate his $16,000 turntable that looked like something a cat burgler’d need a glass cutter just to operate:
And these two ol’ chestnuts, demanded by Janet when David returned to Shostakovich and would not let us be (always the Russians these days!):
All very satisfying to me, and I didn’t raise a finger or voice a request. I might even place myself under Russian influence again today.
Short-shrift Division:
Early in the day, Nicole, our friend Denise, and I participated in Columbia’s iteration of the national March for Our Lives against gun violence.
Sometimes you don’t have to a play a song; it just plays in its entirety in your head. From us, to the heroic Emma Gonzalez:
Our anniversary celebration continued as we witnessed a dynamic, playful, and moving performance by the great Chicago saxophonist Chico Freeman and his band. Freeman performed at Whitmore Recital Hall at the University of Missouri’s School of Music (where over 20 years ago we’d heard his legendary father Von); with him were Kenny Davis on bass, the impish young drummer Mark Whitfield, Jr., and a pianist whose name escapes me (as it briefly did Freeman) but who played smartly in the absence of Anthony Wonsey, who was snowed in on the east coast. The show was part of Columbia’s “We Always Swing” series, and earlier in the day Freeman had dedicated the series’ jazz lending library, which is named in his father honor. The elder Freeman, unfortunately passed from this plane, was himself a majestic and original saxophonist of great skill and wide influence.
If you’ve not chanced to hear him play, Chico Freeman regularly captures the same moody, searching tone Coltrane gets in songs like “Equinox.” Like any graduate of Chicago’s Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, he’s a heckuva writer, too, and in the AACM tradition, his set, with the exception of one standard that he took apart Rollins-style and introduced with a magic cadenza, the tunes were either his or other jazz players’. The highlights of the show both tapped into the Coltrane legacy: Freeman’s own “Elvin,” an emotional tribute to that giant of drumming, and a set-closing trip through McCoy Tyner’s “African Village.” The concert was engrossing, and we thank Mr. Jon Poses, the mastermind behind the quarter-century-old series, for working tirelessly to bring jazz geniuses like Freeman to mid-Missouri.
The complete set list (w/links to other performances of the songs by Freeman):
Morning: I celebrated my liberation unto Spring Break 2018 by giving some blood then stirring up what I had left with some more saxophone music, this time courtesy of the Swedish maniac Mats Gustafsson and the band ZU, whose new record, intriguingly titled How to Raise an Ox, is one of the year’s best jazz records. It is not for the faint of heart.
Afternoon: I sampled, on a Xgauvian tip, the new electronic-y Monk tribute by Tim Conley (aka MAST) called Thelonious Sphere Monk. I’ll give anything Monk-oriented a spin, and I did kinda like this–in the right mood I’ll put it on again–but it did smooth out the inventive angles that are one of the many wonders of Thelonious’ music. In a related development, it also makes these famous compositions ideal for occupying a social background–a place they’ve always stubbornly resisted, in my experience. I dunno. Not giving up on it yet.
Evening: After a few margaritas and tequila shots, Nicole, finally freed herself from the grip of public school teaching, and I drove carefully around our neighborhood YELLING THE ENTIRETY OF THE BEATLES’ CLASSIC ALBUM BEATLES FOR SALE AT THE TOP OF OUR LUNGS! Try it some time–it’s good for the soul!
Today was the second and final day of my pop music / comp students’ informal research presentations. From what I already knew about the subjects of the research, I was uncertain if my personal enjoyment level would match Tuesday’s class, but I was pleasantly surprised.
Kathleen Hanna
I assigned Ms. Hanna to one of my very best writers, who’d asked for one rather than chosen her own. Kathleen “does a lot of yelling and uses vulgar language,” she told us, “but after you let it sink in, it’s very interesting.” The kid’s a Joan Jett fan, and she chose a perfect song for us to think upon:
Guiding Question: Where do you think feminism has gone since this song was released in the early Nineties?
Answer: It didn’t really get answered, but some of the other students were able to connect it to personal styles that “are more accepted today.” Yeah–I think so. Plus the presenter enlightened us a bit on fourth-wave feminism!
Whitney Houston
I will admit freely I have never been a fan of the late Ms. Houston, but the student who’d chosen to research her (who earlier in the semester had turned me on to a great metal band) did an amazingly thorough and passionate job of arguing for her. She chose to have us consider two performances, and damned if I didn’t actively enjoy both:
The sweat, soul, grit, and green outfit caused me to yell “Uncle!”
Guiding Question: Actually, the presenter, who will be a great teacher one day if she chooses to try it, asked us a pretty full stylistic analysis that I can’t express as a simple question.
Answer: Well, she answered for us, quite accurately–in general, arguing that her vocal power and dynamics, as well as her facial expressions and gestures, sold the songs. Yep!
Aaliyah
Guiding Question: How would you describe her vocal style?
Answer: “Mellow.” Alluding to a comment made by a student during Tuesday’s class, I added, “That song isn’t about a boat, is it?” I hadn’t heard it since it was forced on me by my middle school students back at the time of its release, and I’d not ever paid attention to the lyrics. The more you know. Please tell me R. Kelly didn’t produce and direct the video…
Pat Benatar
Here is one research subject I was hesitant to approve, because I wasn’t sure how far the student could get, but she was sure she could make a feminist / personal fulfillment argument so I surrendered. The following was difficult to watch stoically after the passage of three decades:
Guiding Question (not my favorite): So how is love a battlefield?
Answer: It’s hard. Well, yes. I wanted to offer that it’s hard to tell if the love referred to is parental or romantic or both, but I chose to remain mute.
Stevie Nicks
The student who’s researching La Nicks can take her study several different interesting directions, and I can’t wait to see which way she decides to go. The young lady presented sans PowerPoint, which won her some minor brownie points with me as she delivered the goods. Her song choice?
Guiding Question: How does “landslide” function as a metaphor?
Answer: like an avalanche, love can overwhelm you. As can research…
Living To Listen 