Tag: Sid Selvidge

Good to My Earhole, February 5 – February 14:Walking the Negro Streets at Dawn

Highlights of my last week’s listenin’, in the truck cab and elsewhere, rated on a spin-the-bottle 10-point scale (w/a special touch). Also, I am deliberately diggin’ out dustbin doozies; please recall the Roger Price maxim, “If everyone doesn’t want it, nobody gets it!”:

ARE YOU FROM DIXIE: GREAT COUNTRY BROTHER TEAMS OF THE 1930S – 15 – Having trouble finding your way into old-timey music, seekers? Do it like I accidentally did 28 years ago, and dig up this can’t-stop-won’t-stop RCA comp. Across a single disc, the choices meet Harry Smith’s ANTHOLOGY even-up: you jake-walk on bad whiskey, chuckle along with your salty dog, get a line and go fer crawdads, stomp away an intoxicated rat, shoulder a nine-pound hammer, try to get your baby out of jail, and cozy up to someone ELSE from Dixie. It’s magic. Also: it needs a reissue. Extra bait: the Monroe Brothers, playing at punk tempos, inventing bluegrass as they go.

Catheters/STATIC DELUSIONS AND STONE-STILL DAYS – 9 – Best Stooges album since RAW POWER, not sure it’s been topped since its ’02 release, probably because these kids weren’t trying. Critically, only Greil Marcus gave a shit, and he was correct.

Julius Hemphill/JULIUS HEMPHILL PLAYS THE MUSIC OF ALLEN LOWE – 8.8 – I have sung the praises of Allen Lowe here multiple times, and if I ain’t convinced you yet, let the long-gone-but-not-forgotten sax master and arranging ace Mr. Hemphill do the honors. The record saunters through more rhythmic moves than has a cat on an easy chair (stole that from Roy Blount, Jr.), and closes up shop with the funky, greasy “Sleepless,” which justifies its title. (Note: there’s no tracks available via YouTube, so enjoy Hemphill’s amazing DOGON A. D. as a teaser. AND: grab the release from Bandcamp here, cheap!)

Mudboy and the Neutrons/NEGRO STREETS AT DAWN – 8.7 – Few but the likes of ‪#‎JimDickinson‬ (“The Pope of ‪#‎Memphis‬ Music”) could get away with the title reference/conceit, because he could put together the players. Chuck Berry-nugget opener, Sid Selvidge-crooned Southern stroke, surrender to capitalism loaded with subversive sermon lead off–sometimes I think they coulda topped ZZ Top if they’d cared.

Shaver/TRAMP ON YOUR STREET – 8.5 – Natural-born honky-tonk chronicler with hot-shit guitarist son as sidekick–some might call it schtick, but it’s by-God real. “Old Chunk of Coal,” “The Hottest Thing In Town,” and “Georgia on a Fast Train” are already playing a floor below Leonard Cohen’s in The Tower of Song. And closer to the ground floor is better.

Sun Ra/LANQUIDITY – 9 – Already in possession of 20+ “Sun One” records, I thought I’d heard all I needed. This late ’70s release almost goes disco–almost–without compromising the vision that kept a team of jazz aces together through five decades. Blaxploitation music with a more exalted vision–I dunno: YOU listen and YOU describe it. You will be better for it, whatever the outcome.

Early Recording by Unsung Memphis Master Demands Your Full Attention!

Selvidge-Cold-Of-The-Morning-CD-and-LP

Sid Selvidge: The Cold of the Morning (Omnivore Reissue)

Mississippi-raised, St. Louis-honed, and Memphis-tested, Selvidge was a true rarity: a white singer who could expertly interpret classic blues (here, “Judge Boushe”and “East St. Louis Blues” via Furry Lewis, the happily nasty “Keep It Clean” from Charley Jordan) without a hint of minstrelsy, a folkie with a great voice who could deliver material without sounding, in the words of Allen Lowe, like he had a napkin folded in his lap, and a catholic music-lover who could shift styles and genres without strain (from “Danny Boy” to “Po’ Laz’rus” to “The Great Atomic Power” is some mileage). Selvidge passed from cancer in 2013, and this recording, along with his Elektra Twice-Told Tales from the early ’90s, is a great way to get caught up. Bonuses: Selvidge’s stellar picking (learned at the foot of Lewis) and a batch of cuts where he’s backed by the eccentric rhythms of Mudboy and the Neutrons. How to explain Sid to the benighted? His baritone is as flexible as George Jones’, and, if you’d agree that Hank and Lefty were at the heart of The Possum’s vocal art, well, Tommy Johnson is the at the core of Selvidge’s. You may have to look that one up. Let’s hope Omnivore reissues the rest of Sid’s Peabody rekkids, which are very, very hard to come by.