What are you listening to?

[Eddie Teach]

Rare Earth- I just want to celebrate

[Eddie Teach]

Everglow- Adios

[Malthus]

In a nostalgic mood, so I was listening to Madness - One Step Beyond.

[Savonarola]

Dick Justice - Henry Lee

This is the first song on the Anthology of American Folk Music; and, fittingly, a murder ballad.  The English ( ) and especially the Scots () loved their murder ballads and the tradition spread to Appalachia () (and beyond "Frankie and Johnny" is probably from New Orleans.)

Dick Justice (yes, his real name was "Richard Justice") was a coal miner from West Virginia who recorded about a dozen songs in the early 1930s.  Unusual for a white man at that time and place he was heavily influenced by black music.  In my opinion his best song is Cocaine, an upbeat remake of Luke Jordan's Cocaine Blues.  Each verse seems to deal with a hardship the narrator is suffering (having to have his woman steal food, his love interest gets arrested, then all his furniture gets repossessed) but then ends with the upbeat "I'm simply wild about my good cocaine!"  Unfortunately some of the lyrics are a product of their times, but otherwise it's a simply marvelous song.

[Savonarola]

Complete & Unbelievable: The Otis Redding Dictionary of Soul (1966)

I didn't know "Try a Little Tenderness" was a Tin Pan Alley standard (first recorded in 1932 by the Ray Noble orchestra.)  Still, I think it will always be an Otis Redding song.

I read that ""Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa (Sad Song)" came about because Otis had a tendency to sing along with the horn line.  It's funny that Arthur Conley chose that for his "Spotlight" in "Sweet Soul Music."

I think there's a few more duds here than there were on "Otis Blue," (especially his cover of "Day Tripper"); but overall a great album.  He was obviously becoming more comfortable as a songwriter at this point; and other than "Try a Little Tenderness" the best songs are the ones he collaborated on.

[Savonarola]

Nelstone's Hawaiians - Fatal Flower Garden (1930)

Another from The Anthology of American Folk Music, this is a variation on the anti-Semitic ballad "Sir Hugh."  In the original a little boy throws his ball over a wall into a flower garden.  A Jewish woman entices him in with apples, a gold ring and a diamond and then, after he enters the house, she chops him up.  In this version it's a Gypsy woman and the grosser details of his dismemberment are left out.  I think I was in high school before I learned that Gypsies really existed and weren't just from story books.  From the standards of the late middle ages in England (when scholars think the ballad originated), Jews would have been similarly fantastic - they had been expelled in the first half of the 13th century.

The song reminded me of one of my favorite skits from The Muppet Show.

Nelstone's Hawaiians were actually from southern Alabama.  The "Hawaiian" in their name refers to the Hawaiian style of steel guitar they played.  They're best known for writing the rockabilly standard "Just Because."

[Savonarola]

The Butterfield Blues Band - The Resurrection of Pigboy Crabshaw (1967)

Paul Butterfield leaved Chicago for Detroit? 

For this album The Butterfield Blues Band expanded to have a horn section; giving it a jazzier R&B influenced sound.  The opening track is indeed a Motown song: Marvin Gaye's "One More Heartache."  It's a good cover, Gaye's version sounds like a ripoff of his own "Ain't That Peculiar;" Paul Butterfield manages to make it his own song.  There's some psychedelic influence as well, notably "Droppin' Out" and "Tollin' Bells."  They do have a version of "Born Under a Bad Sign," but it's not as memorable as Cream's version.

[Savonarola]

The Lovin' Spoonful - Greatest Hits

I didn't realize that "Creeque Alley" featured the Lovin' Spoonful so prominently.  The "Sebastian" in the lyrics refers to John Sebastian and "Zal" is Zal Yanovsky the founding members of the Lovin' Spoonful.  They had been in The Mugwumps with Denny Doherty and Cass Elliot.

[Savonarola]

Clarence Ashley - The House Carpenter (1930)

A variation on the Scottish () Ballad "The Daemon Lover" about a woman who forsakes her husband (a house carpenter, hence the name) and her child for her former lover.  They go off to sea and then drown.  In many versions (though not this one) it's made explicit that the devil is her lover and they're headed to hell.

Ashley was a singer from Appalachia, who has the distinction of being the first to record "House of the Rising Sun."  He had performed in coal mining camp and worked as an entertainer in medicine shows.  When the Depression hit (and the government started regulating what could be sold as medicine) he ended up as a trucker.  Fortunately he lived long enough to be rediscovered during the folk revival.

Ashley played his banjo "Clawhammer" style (that is all strings are strummed downward) giving it a distinct style.  He has a really good version of "The Cuckoo Bird" on the Smithsonian collection "Classic Mountain Songs."

[Josephus]

Rush

All weekend

[mongers]

Rush

All weekend

Yeah, a good idea.

Maybe I try and listen from the first album onwards?

[Savonarola]

Coley Jones - Drunkard's Special (1929)

Variation of the Scottish () Ballad "Our Goodman" and one in which no one dies.  That alone qualifies it as a cheerful song by Scottish standards.  The ballad is actually a humorous one (it might have originated in Ireland or England): a drunken man returns home and discovers evidence of his wife's infidelity; for which she offers far-fetched excuses.

Jones was from Texas and most of his work (or at least all the rest that I could find) was talking blues.  Late in his career his band included a young T-Bone Walker.

[Savonarola]

The Byrds - The Notorious Byrd Brothers (1968)

They fired David Crosby midway through; they went through drummers as quickly as the Spinal Tap; and they discovered the Moog ().  Yet despite all that they managed to make a decent (if somewhat brief) album.  The songs and the sound are more consistent than on "Younger than Yesterday".  I prefer the singles on "Younger than Yesterday"; but there's also no crap like "Mind Garden" on this one.  The album sounds like The Byrds shot at making their psychedelic masterpiece.  The next album, "Sweetheart of the Rodeo," also released in 1968 must have been quite a shock to their fans.

Weirdly there are no Bob Dylan covers on the "Notorious Byrd Brothers" (a staple on every other album except "Fifth Dimension"), but there are two Goffin/King songs ("Going Back" and "Wasn't Born to Follow.")

[Savonarola]

Miles Davis - Nefertiti (1968)

Davis's last acoustic album; you can hear the fusion sound starting to emerge, but it's still mostly bop (or it sounds like bop to me; I'm hardly a jazz expert.)  There's some weird ideas on this one, particularly the opening track in which the horn section constantly repeats their line and the rhythm section solos.

[The Minsky Moment]

Nefertiti is a post-bop album - the players are improvising freely without regard to chord changes, but while keeping within a recognizable blues structure rhythmically and tonally.  So it's not really bebop anymore but it's not completely "free" either. 

As you notice in the title track, the rhythm section and horn section switch roles - with the horns providing a steady rhythm over which the rhythm section (mostly Tony Williams on drums) improvises.  In a way this is a bit of throwback to the 30s era Basie era "head arrangements" where the horns help establish the rhythm with a repeating melodic riff, although the Davis quintet goes well beyond this.

ESP is an earlier album by the same quintet but a little less ambitious and more listener friendly.  One of my favorite Miles albums.