My Desert Island Jukebox

1983, Age 11. "Overkill," by Men at Work, from Cargo.

I'm a regular listener to several music podcasts. One of my favorites is from Chicago Public Radio, Sound Opinions. The hosts, Jim DeRegotis and Greg Kot, write about pop music for the Chicago papers. Like most rock critics, they suffer from occasional pomposity and seem to favor a lot of tuneless indie rock (the type I wrote about here), but it's fun listening to them. Also like most rock journalists, and critics in general, they never tire of making lists, a weakness I share. One of my favorite occasional features of theirs is the Desert Island Jukebox, where they take turns adding single tracks to a hypothetical . . . well, I don't really need to explain that, do I?

The charm of the conceit is that they don't have to commit to entire albums. We've all played the game at parties (or on Facebook) about your Top Five Desert Island Records. I've given mine several times and while the list changes slightly from month to month, there are no real surprises there: John Coltrane's A Love Supreme, Pablo Casals' recordings of the Bach cello suites, Aja by Steely Dan, the last set of master takes of Charlie Parker with Strings, and Songs in the Key of Life would probably go in the steamer trunk if I had to pack right now. (I know there's no country/bluegrass/old-time on the list, but I'm not sure I want to listen to "There's a Tear in My Beer," until the Professor can rig those palm trees into a raft.) The game has gotten sillier since Apple has announced the new 42 Bijillion Gig iPod the size of a nickel. Let me take my iPod and no phone and I'll sign up for the desert island excursion right now. But back when we had to limit ourselves to five albums, it could be a tough call. I mean, I love Pet Sounds, but I couldn't hum the melody to "Let's Go Away for Awhile" right now. Could I really afford to use up that vinyl real estate for a less-than-memorable track?

The "Desert Island Jukebox" anticipated the type of listening many of us now do on our iPods. I have all kinds of single tracks by artists whose entire opus I neither know nor particularly care to know. I also find myself listening to playlists almost as often as albums. I've never become a big fan of the shuffle mode, but I have friends who only listen to their iPods on shuffle. The other thing is that it doesn't really limit your choices. Just like our iPods, jukeboxes come in all sorts of sizes, but they all hold a bunch of songs.

So I thought I'd share a "Desert Island Jukebox List" with anyone who cares to read. I've set just a few guidelines for myself.

First, the tracks on this list are ones that I don't associate with their albums. For example, "Wanna Be Startin' Something" is a great song that is probably on five playlists I've made in the last year, but I listen to Thriller from start to finish fairly frequently, so it's a no-go. Likewise, you won't find "Eleanor Rigby," "Just Like a Woman," "If I Was Your Girlfriend," or "Just the Two of Us" on this list either. I would highly recommend, however, you go immediately listen to Revolver, Blonde on Blonde, Sign o' the Times, and Winelight, if these have inexplicably escaped your notice.

Second, this is not a "best of" type of list. It's a jukebox - no need to figure out for our purposes here which are the best five or ten or twenty-five tunes. In the interest of keeping this blog to something like a reasonable list though, I'm going to limit it to ten selections. Not the best ten, mind you, just ten totally listenable tracks that I wouldn't mind listening to while I wait for some stray aircraft to notice the "SOS" I've scratched in the sand.

Last, and related to the previous point, I thought I'd use this as an opportunity to talk about a few favorites that I probably can't fit into any other posts. I'm not going to limit myself to also-rans and one-hit-wonders, but honestly, when will I get another chance to write about Hurricane Smith?

Enough with the rules. Here's the list. And yeah, I'd love for you to add a tune or two in the comments.

"Oh Babe, What Would You Say?" by Hurricane Smith. I heard this song first sung by my oldest brother when I was very small; I actually thought he made it up. I heard the original recording about three years ago for the first time and can say that my brother gave a very faithful rendering of the the vocal, though I hadn't imagined the strings. The saxophone solo sounds like it could have been played by Zoot, from the Muppets (that's a compliment, by the way). Smith was actually Norman Smith, who had engineered The Beatles' early records for EMI and produced the first few albums for Pink Floyd. This song was #3 on the pop charts in the U.S. in 1972 and Smith's biggest hit. To me, it sounds like English dance hall music and demonstrates Nick Hornby's premise that British kids never really rebelled against their parent's music

"Brown-Eyed Handsome Man" by Chuck Berry. One need not justify including a song by Chuck Berry in the desert island juke box, I suppose, but this may seem like an odd choice. Like most Berry classics, this one just rocks and rollicks, but the words really send me. The sly play on racial tensions of the time, including fears that white women would be attracted to black men, are subversive yet fun. The verse about Venus de Milo losing her arms in a wrestling match makes me smile every time.

"Que Sera Sera" by Pink Martini. Have you ever heard a song that you've known your entire life covered by someone new in a fresh way and it made you finally realize what the songwriter intended to say? For most of us, I can imagine that Doris Day's original just sounds like a bright bachelor-pad waltz; you can almost taste the champagne cocktails. Pink Martini's rendition is melancholy, perhaps even a little bitter. The instrumentation - which shimmers at first, then bellows, then shimmers again - coupled with the pedal tones through the verses give a creepy edge. This is music to drive children to alcohol.

"All the Young Dudes" by Mott the Hoople. David Bowie's gift to Mott was their biggest charting hit and became an anthem for the glam-rock era. The song takes swipes at the peace-love generation and their idealism and has more than a just a dark tone to it. I dig the guitar intro especially and it has one of the best rock lyrics of all time, in my opinion: "Television man is crazy, says we're juvenile delinquent wrecks. Ah man, [why do] I need t.v. when I got T. Rex?"

"Game Is My Middle Name" by Betty Davis. Somewhere between Prince, Macy Gray, Sly Stone & Lady GaGa, Betty Davis was one of the wildest wild children of funk. Mrs. Davis, née Mabry, was Miles' one-time wife and a New York fashion model. She was the cover girl for her husband's Filles de Kilimanjaro and even lent her name to one of the tunes, but her eponymous debut album is gritty, dirty funk. Davis was noted for her sexual bravado, as in this track, and her outrageous style. Her voice is gravely. Her delivery is almost conversational, but fierce. She's not the best singer, but that doesn't make her any less compelling as a performer. The band of studio musicians includes Neil Schon, later of Journey, who acquits himself nicely in the company of musicians from Sly & The Family Stone, Graham Central Station, and Tower of Power.

"If I Were Your Woman" by Gladys Knight & The Pips. It's difficult to say what makes this song so compelling to me. The theme is a well-worn, though universal, sentiment; the lyric is obvious ("Life is so crazy, love is unkind"). Even the melody, which is fine, is not particularly memorable. But Gladys' vocal is striking. When she sets to pleading, you can hear all the heartbreak, all the anguish. Alicia Keys re-made the ballad years later (released as "If I Was Your Woman") on her sophomore album The Diary of Alicia Keys paired with "Walk On By." While Keys does an admirable job, the best thing about her version is that it points listeners back to one of soul's most important singers. This is my favorite pop ballad of unrequited love.

"I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues" by Elton John. Let me start by saying that I am not an Elton John fan. I think "Benny & The Jets" is just plain silly and when I hear "Candle in the Wind" it makes me want to stalk and kill celebrities. Having said that, I love this song. Like, play-it-five-times-in-a-row love. Like, sing-along-loudly-even-when-people-can-hear-me love. "Dust out the demons inside" - what a great line! And when he gets to "Rollin' like thunder - under the covers" I like to add a little extra growl on the word "rollin'" (just ask for a rendition next time you see me). Great melody with classic chord changes and a lyric that is mercifully not sentimental ("Between you and me, I can honestly say that things can only get better"). I'm surprised I've not heard a cover of this one.

"Overkill" by Colin Hay. Like "Que Sera Sera," I heard this song for years before I even thought about it. It took Colin Hay, the lead singer of Men at Work, remaking his own song before I gave it a second listen. This version, recorded for the television show Scrubs, is pared down to acoustic guitar and Hays voice. Maybe stripping away those layers of production highlights the angsty lyric. Maybe Hay's delivery is just more reflective, informed as it is by 20+ more years of experience. Or maybe it's just my own ears that are ready to hear what he's saying. I get hooked from that very first scale ("I can't get to sleep") and when he finally begins the final verse, sung an octave higher than the first two, all my own anxieties are ready to make my heart burst.

"All I Could Do Was Cry" by Etta James. There are just so many songs of this era that are neither offensive nor memorable for any real reason, and taken by itself, this is one of them. Or, it would be if Etta James wasn't singing it. Like "If I Were Your Woman," this ballad tells the story of one woman's love for a taken man, only in this one she . . . wait, can you guess? Etta is BRILLIANT and this is another I occasionally listen to several times in a row. I would take this one to a desert island just to hear the way she sings the word "rice." Good, good stuff.

"Show Me Your Teeth" by Lady GaGa. I had to include something new to play while I wait for Hurley to get back from the bunker with dinner. I must confess that I'm not entirely sure what this song is even about. Well, it's about sex, I got that much. Like, something kind of dirty even. But beyond that, I'm not so sure. Like most of GaGa's output, it's hooky and completely danceable. It's also a little scary. The spoken intro ("Don't be scared. I've done this before.") reminds me of Prince's "Computer Blue," and the hook ("Take a bite of my bad girl meat") hits pretty high on the freak scale. Lots of people can do dirty though. GaGa makes it groove hard.

There's my first installment. Care to put in a quarter and pick a tune?

John Holmes, King of the Delta Open Mic

(Originally published July 8, 2009)


1985, Age 13. “Voodoo Child,” by The Jimi Hendrix Experience, from Electric Ladyland.


Once in a while, as a listener, you have those experiences that help crystallize your love of music. Sometimes they happen when you are listening to a record, but more often, it seems, they happen while you are listening to someone create music live. Philosophers in music education refer to these as "peak experiences" and they believe that these are central in creating a real love of music in the listener or performer.


I have had many of these in the course of my life and I would guess that you have, too, especially if you are anything other than a casual fan of music. My first peak experiences with live music probably happened at church, though I don't really remember. I can remember a very important formative experience playing with the marching band for the very first time in 7th grade. I'm sure that our musicianship was far from flawless, yet it had a deep emotional impact with me. That's one of the interesting things about music. You can listen to a technically flawless performance sometimes and be left cold, while inexpert renditions can, on occasion, be intensely moving. I’m not sure why that is, but it’s true.


I guess that most of the vacations I take are in search of these peak musical experiences. They tend to be quite successful, which is why I keep coming back for more. Some of the most memorable over the years include hearing a “cultural troop” perform on Aran Isle, watching Carmen in Prague, and several shows by the Soul Rebels in New Orleans. My most recent vacation has certainly been focused on this search. We arrived by plane in New Orleans, then drove to Memphis and back, traveling through the Mississippi Delta on renowned Highway 61, including a one night stay in Clarksdale, MS. On this trip, we heard funky brass music in New Orleans (including the Soul Rebels and Big Sam’s Funky Nation); blues on Memphis’ Beale St. and in Clarksdale; New Orleans’ blues legend Little Freddie King; and performances at the Essence music festival by John Legend, Salt N Pepa, En Vogue, Beyoncé, Teena Marie and Al Green. It has been an exceptional time listening to music.


Sometimes the most memorable moments are quite unexpected. You go into a club or stop by some street performers not expecting much and you get totally blown away. Or maybe you just see something really surprising, but the effect is the same. I had one of those moments on this trip. If you stop in Clarksdale, MS, there might not appear to be much going on. It’s a slow-moving Delta town with a population under 20,000. There are no crowds downtown. Most of the town, in fact, seems to be a museum to the music that was born here. You can visit the birthplaces of Ike Turner, Sam Cooke and W.C. Handy. You can see the spot where Muddy Waters was “discovered” in 1943. You can drive by (or even stay) at the hotel where Bessie Smith died after a car accident (Ike Turner supposedly rehearsed the seminal rock-and-roll song “Rocket 88” in the basement of the hotel before going to Sam Phillips’ studio in Memphis to record it). Then there is the infamous crossroads of Highways 61 and 49, where Robert Johnson supposedly sold his soul to the Devil (it’s actually Highway 161 now, but does that really matter?). And no visit would be complete without a stop at the Delta Blues Museum, which houses the cabin Muddy Waters lived in on Stovall Plantation, along with lots of other blues paraphernalia.


If you want to be close to downtown, there aren’t many options about where to spend the night. Most of the chain hotels lie on the highway outside of town. One option you have is to spend the night at Ground Zero Blues Club. Ground Zero is a club owned by Morgan Freeman and it looks like a more authentic version of House of Blues. The building itself is a former cotton house and the word that most readily comes to mind when you see it is “ramshackle.” They have apartments above the club that you can rent nightly, which are really convenient if you don’t want to risk a post-midnight trip by the crossroads after the club closes. We stayed there on a Thursday night, which is especially convenient as the club has about the only show in town on most Thursdays. The night we were there, they were hosting an open mic, emceed by one “Razorblade,” a Clarksdale resident who came complete with pin-stripe suit, pork-pie hat and two-tone shoes. He sang a full set with the house band (all of whom seemed like they might attend Clarksdale High School). As the club gradually filled to near-capacity of about 150, we heard not just blues, but soul, country, southern rock – the whole fare from the region. Several of the performers seemed like “characters,” not just Razorblade. There was the enormous cowboy in a black hat who sang Alan Jackson songs. There was an older British man who was doing his very best to look and sound like Eric Clapton. There was a man named Tater who sang in a manner very reminiscent of Clark Terry’s “Mumbles,” though after hearing him speak afterward, it was apparent that that was his normal diction. Then there was John Holmes.


We had noticed this man earlier, maybe just a little younger than us, making his way around the club with a sort-of gimpy shuffle, not so much a gangster lean as a grandpa in house slippers. He had long hair which was pulled back into a bun (!), two-tone shoes (apparently the most popular footwear in Clarksdale), khaki pants and a greenish-yellow long sleeve shirt. He also kept the earbuds of his iPod in his ears, even as the band played. After the first break, he made his way to the stage; he was apparently the first name on the open mic sign-up. The first real sign of something going on was when he asked the sound man to tune his guitar for him.


When the break was over, Razorblade mounted the stage, took the microphone and said, “We’re gonna let this gentleman play for you – for just a little while. Maybe five minutes. Please welcome: John.” I suppose I thought this was an unusual way to introduce him, but then I guessed that perhaps there was a five minute limit on each of the performers. After that introduction, the man removed the earbuds from his ears, took his red Ibanez electric in hand and walked to the microphone.


“Some people call me selfish,” he said with a smile. “Some people call me strange. Some people call me ‘Mr. Holmes.’ Other people don’t call me at all.” I began to sense that we were in for something really special. “If you think I suck,” he continued, “just watch my muscles flex.”


At this point, John Holmes took off his dress shirt to reveal a gray undershirt of the “wife-beater” variety. His biceps and forearms were tattooed and he was indeed, rather muscular. He hung the shirt on the back of a chair placed center-stage and then sat in the chair. Though the other performers of the night would opt to perform with the house band, John would be performing solo.


When he began playing, it was without any discernible sense of pulse. The guitar’s tone was cleaner than is typical for electric blues and Mr. Holmes’ technique was not what one would call “practiced.” Upon hearing him, in fact, one might have guessed that he had been playing for about one week, practicing maybe twenty minutes a day. He wandered around the fret board of the instrument, through several keys, executing patterns that seemed familiar to neither the audience nor the performer. There were no scales, no arpeggios, no familiar blues licks that every adolescent guitarist learns within an hour of first touching the instrument. At one point during the improvisation, for I am assuming that is what it was, there was a very brief quote of the lead riff from “Voodoo Child,” inexpertly executed but clearly discernible, the only real suggestion that the guitarist had even a passing familiarity with the blues canon. John Holmes continued in this manner for perhaps three minutes, ending as inauspiciously as he had begun, concluding with neither a grand pause nor a cadence typical of any known style of music.


What was most striking about the performance, however, indeed the thing that rescued it from being anything other than a bizarre joke, was John Holmes’ utter dedication as a performer. It was clear that however strange his phrasing, however unusual his melodic choices, he was committed to this moment. One could easily imagine that this was, perhaps, an exercise by a Zen master who was dedicated to unlearning what he had known about music. Far from another studied and predictable rendition of “Mustang Sally,” Mr. Holmes played with a freshness and exuberance that one hears on Muddy Waters’ early recordings done on Stovall Plantation. He kept his eyes closed throughout and bobbed his head in accompaniment to the guitar.


When he had concluded, applause rippled through the room, from politeness or habit it was difficult to tell, and John Holmes walked again to the microphone.


“I’m sorry if I wasted your precious time, I’ll give it right back to you one of these days,” he said, misquoting Hendrix for the second time that evening.


“One more thing,” John Holmes said as he looked out again with that mischievous smile.


“Rick Springfield – eat your heart out!”


Eat your heart out, indeed.

What Is Hip?

(Originally published June 6, 2009)


1995, Age 23. “What Is Hip?” by Tower of Power, from the album Tower of Power.


Let’s begin with first principles, things that we can all agree on; those truths that are beyond all dispute and the foundation of what reasonable people believe.


Firstly, being a musician is the hippest thing a person can do, vocationally or otherwise. Now, while there are exceptions to this truism, the general principle still holds. It may be true that Philip Marlowe is hipper than a violist in the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra, but private detectives outside of the world of fiction are generally more poorly dressed and exhibit less sardonic wit. James Bond has a higher cool quotient than the average 7th grade bassoonist but again . . . we’re dealing in fiction there. While sports stars are (rather inexplicably to me) held in high regard in our culture, you’re much more likely to see a hip 50-year-old guitarist than a hip 50-year-old running back.


Next, we should make sure our terms are well-defined.


I’ve already muddied the waters a little by mixing two different, though closely related, terms: hip & cool. Hip, as has been noted by John Leland and other writers, has something to do with enlightenment. It may even relate to a West African word (Wolof, according to Leland) meaning “to have one’s eyes open.” Cool, on the other hand, denotes a detachment from strong emotional involvement. In my mind it is closely related to black musicians of the forties and fifties who were producing works of exceptional quality and insight, only to be treated as 2nd class citizens in the culture at large. Their public face was cool, whatever their feelings about their treatment were. Blue (and blues) is the color of cool, the very opposite of “hot under the collar,” i.e., “red-necked.”


In practical terms, at least as far as music is concerned, the two terms are often used interchangeably, and rightfully so. Miles Davis’ music is some of the hippest there ever was. Each of Miles’ developments predicted a major shift in the music. But he is also responsible for midwifing The Cool. Hip is almost always cool, though they are not the same thing.


What hip does not mean is “good” or “excellent.” There are plenty of musicians who are technically excellent without being hip. Whoever didn’t get voted off the island this week on American Idol is probably a technically excellent singer. He or she is almost certainly not hip. I love Brahms’ First Symphony; but I doubt anyone will put up much of case for Johannes being a hipster. Hip is often excellent, but excellence is not hip’s essence.


So . . . what is hip? Or, for my purposes here, who are the hippest artists in music? Who are those artists that are not simply trend-setters, but musical seers? Who are those musicians who are agents of change and open the eyes of their fans? Who are the enlighteners, the musical lamas and yogi who point their listeners to yet unchartered corners of the musical map and say, “Go”? My opinions will not be particularly unique or unexpected, but here are my top five. And let me reiterate: these are my top five of “hip,” not my top five of all time.


Since his name has already been introduced, I guess I should start with the most obvious: Miles Davis. Miles is to hip what Abe Lincoln is to honest. If one were to begin a record collection with the sole purpose of collecting the hippest records of all time, it is hard to imagine that there wouldn’t be at least three or four of Miles’ records among them. The great thing about loving Miles’ is that you get the whole package: not only are 90% of his records timeless classics that were years ahead of their time, Miles himself is the epitome of cool. He is easily the most quotable jazz musician of all time. “Don’t call me a genius,” he once said, “just call me ‘Miles Davis.’” (On a related note, I would highly recommend Miles’ autobiography for anyone interested in music or American culture generally. It is an eminently readable book . . . unless you have a strong aversion to the word “motherfucker.”) His gravely whisper, his sleek sense of fashion, his brooding facial expression . . . Miles is the acme of hip.


Even his album titles are hip. Kind of Blue is the largest-selling jazz album of all time for good reason, but one suspects that more than one neophyte jazz fan has walked out of the record store with this disc because of the title alone. The record itself is flawless, with perhaps the greatest (not to mention hippest) ensemble in the history of the style: Miles himself, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb and Bill Evans (with Wynton Kelly replacing Evans on one track). Every track is a commentary on the blues (hence the title), and the blues are, of course, the psychic protoplasm out of which all things hip are made.


Kind of Blue, though his magnum opus, is not Miles’ last word on hip. Birth of the Cool (again . . . I hope someone got a fat Christmas bonus for that title), In a Silent Way, Bitches Brew, Jack Johnson, On the Corner, etc. It’s almost impossible to go wrong with one of Davis’ records. My personal fave is probably Filles de Kilimanjaro, an under-appreciated record from his “transitional” period. Sending it over the edge is the cover, featuring Miles’ then-wife, Betty Davis (née Mabry), herself a pre-eminent hipster and future funk cult star who introduced Miles to Jimi Hendrix.


It might be equally impossible to imagine “hip” without Charlie Parker. His heroine addiction and early death make him something of a hipster saint/anti-hero, though not to me. Bird’s ability to transcend the expectations of his most ardent devotees may be his most admirable quality. I have written elsewhere of my love of his work with strings, which was rejected by fans and critics at the time it was released and after his death. Bird referred to these sessions as his personal favorites and for me at least, it is easy to see why. He was not bound by either critical expectations or public opinion. What is hipper than that?


Charlie Parker’s entire output was hip, of course. I have listened to the alto break on “A Night in Tunisia” several dozen times and think it nothing short of brilliant. “Now’s the Time” may be the very best solo ever played over a twelve-bar blues. The blistering runs on “Kim,” the tortured (and yes, drug-induced) melody on “Loverman” . . . it’s almost impossible to come away from Bird without at least a touch of enlightenment. For jazz fans of a certain age, Bird was the pinnacle of hip. Terry Southern wrote of two hipsters deciding what record to spin next. One suggests either Charlie Parker or Bartok. The other answers, “Bartok, man . . . where do you go after Bird?”


I was relatively late in my awareness of the genius of James Brown. Had I been ten years older, I would have grown up knowing just how “super bad” the Godfather was, but those of my age probably most associated Soul Brother #1 with Rocky IV, a movie that was only hip if you were ten years old. He was legendary, sure, and everyone knew “I Feel Good.” What you didn’t know about (necessarily) if you were born after 1970 was “Mother Popcorn,” and getting’ on the good foot, givin’ the drummer some, tellin’ Maceo he’s “got to blow,” being black and proud, etc. I didn’t even know who Maceo Parker was until I was in college, let alone Fred Wesley, Bootsy Collins, and all those funky drummers.


Well, for all of the uninitiated out there, let me hip you to the truth: there ain’t nobody bad like James Brown. There is a reason he is the most sampled artist in hip-hop. There is a reason T.O.P. is still diggin’ on J.B. Let’s be clear about this. If there were no James Brown, there would probably be no soul music; there would definitely be no funk. There would be neither Prince nor Parliament. No hip-hop. Nothing.


So what made the Hardest Working Man in Show Business the Hippest Working Man in Pop Music? Single-chord, riff-and-rhythm-based jams; punchy horns; chicken-scratch guitars; hard-grooving bass lines; and fat, fat, PHAT drums. Rapping before there was rap. Inexplicable grunts and indecipherable shouts of ecstasy punctuating every line. Then there was the dancing: spinning, ass-wiggling and foot-shuffling. And the clothes! Loud colors, tight pants and capes! J.B. took the blues and made them serve the rhythm. The result was greasy, southern-fried funk.


That last comment betrays a bias I have. I have a deeply-held conviction that about 95% of anything interesting in American music has its roots in the South. King may have been in Cincinnati, but James Brown was from Augusta, Georgia. Likewise, the Chess studios were on 2120 S. Michigan Ave. in Chicago, but Muddy Waters was from Rolling Fork, Mississippi.

I had heard the name “Muddy Waters” for years before I had ever actually heard a Muddy Waters record. I am young enough to have missed his “revival,” so most of my knowledge of him was limited to what I had heard from The Rolling Stones. Actually, most of my knowledge of the blues was second hand. In my early musical snobbery (something that seems endemic to youth), I believed blues to be inferior to jazz. Blues singers seemed like hillbillies compared to jazz musicians. I knew that jazz had its roots in the blues, but no one had suggested to me that Howlin’ Wolf was as fly as Sonny Rollins.


In college, two of my friends joined a blues band, partly to pay for school. They were mostly jazz players, so they had to immerse themselves very quickly in the music to keep up with what was expected on the band stand. I remember walking down two doors to their apartment one Saturday morning while they had Muddy’s Hard Again album on the stereo. They must have played the opening of “Mannish Boy” for me ten times in a row. They were particularly thrilled by the opening lines as Muddy sang, “Everything . . . everything . . . everything’s gonna be alright this morning’,” and Johnny Winter screamed back, “Yes I know!” There was a thickness in the sound that I hadn’t expected. To me, blues sounded like somebody’s grandpa picking away feebly on a ten-dollar guitar, but this was really powerful, sexual even. It was unexpected and vibrant. I had heard the term “electric blues,” surely, but to me that just meant they used electric guitars. This was something else. Even the singing was electric.


That record is still one of my favorites and I like this version of “Mannish Boy” better than the original. I know that sounds blasphemous to blues purists, but I can’t help it. Over the next couple of years I would “discover” the rest of the canon: “Can’t Be Satisified,” “Got My Mojo Workin’,” “I Just Want to Make Love to You,” “Hoochie Coochie Man,” etc.


Muddy Waters was hip in a way that almost no one else has been since. He had such an intrinsic sense of hip that anything he did became cool. I remember listening to an interview with his daughter who said he used to eat black walnut ice cream and drink grape soda-pop and thinking, “Man . . . I gotta get me some of that.” He is one of the progenitors of hip – his music, certainly, especially his voice, but also his sense of style, his cool demeanor . . . even his name for crying out loud! It would be harder to come up with a hipper moniker.


Steely Dan may have the hippest band name in pop music history, though, based as it is in a William Burroughs novel. (For those of you who don’t know the origins of the name, I will let you explore that one on your own. Suffice it to say that the story is a little less “PG” than I like for my blog.) The duo of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen are slicker than most. Their blend of rock, R&B and jazz was more sophisticated than anything on radio at the time or, in my opinion, since.


I was introduced to “The Dan” in college, too, this time by my friend Marty. He was a senior saxophone major when I was a freshman. He walked into my practice room one day, uninvited, and asked, “You wanna go fly a kite?” I thought that must be a euphemism until I saw that he was, indeed, holding a brightly-colored nylon kite in his hand. So, I packed up my horn and we got in his car and drove across the street (yeah, I know – but it seemed like a long walk at the time) to the parking lot of the Coliseum at West Virginia University. He had a tape playing in his stereo and he said, “You like Steely Dan?” I told him I’d never of them and he informed me that all good musicians like Steely Dan. I guess that was all it took to convince me.


I think I was ready to dismiss them when I found out that the band was really just two guys and a whole bunch of session players. But then I looked at the names of those “session” players. Tom Scott. Lee Ritenour. Patti Austin. Joe Sample. Michael Brecker. Wayne Shorter. Wayne Shorter, for crying out loud! He had played with Miles in the 60’s and here he was, an established jazz presence at the height of the popularity of his band, Weather Report, doing session work on a rock album.


Steely Dan knows how to build a sophisticated groove; none of this silly little straight back beat for them. They open up room for solos – real solos – right in the middle of the song. But it may be the lyrics that send Becker and Fagan into the red on the hipness scale. Sly, esoteric and ironic in the extreme, half of the words are indecipherable and the other half are cryptic. It took me five years to realize they were singing, “The Cuervo Gold, the fine Columbian” on “Hey Nineteen.” They name-check bebop musicians, Chinese acupuncturists and avant-garde opera singers. Lyrics about the Guernsey Fair, drinking the German liqueur Kirschwasser from a shell and the Moonie enclave of Barrytown, NY, are mixed with themes concerning the darker side of human nature. This is rock-and-roll for the literate, but it still grooves hard.


I’d be interested to hear others’ “top fives” in this category, but if these wouldn’t make your top twenty, you better keep listening. Honorable mentions go to Prince, George Clinton and the P-Funk mob, Hank Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Elvis Presley (yes, Elvis Presley, jungle room and all). Oh, and the Tower of Power, who first made me ask, “What IS hip?”

Why Can't White People Sing Anymore?

(Originally published April 26, 2009)


2007, Age 34. “Love Is A Losing Game,” by Amy Winehouse. Acoustic version of song from Back to Black.


Why can’t white bands sing any more? When did matching pitch with one’s voice become this esoteric skill that was lost to descendants of Europeans? Has singing itself become so passé that bands can’t be bothered to attempt it – even the lead singers?


I was listening to a music podcast the other day where the topic of conversation was favorite singers who can’t sing. I imagine a sports show where the anchors discuss their favorite quarterbacks who can’t pass or their favorite swimmers who can’t swim. And yet here was this group of thirty-something music writers (I picture them wearing horn-rimmed glasses and Lucky Charms t-shirts) huddled around a microphone talking about this phenomenon as if it were normal. The strange thing about it was, indeed, how many relatively successful contemporary bands they were able to name who cannot carry a tune.


Mind you, I cannot remember the names of any of these bands, I simply must take the word of these arbiters of hipster taste that these are successful, popular bands in some milieu. I do not listen to any of these groups. I don’t say this to be a music snob or anything, it’s just that one of my prerequisites to listening to vocalists is that they possess the ability to sing. I routinely get irritated listening to these shows as they slag off one of my favorite bands or singers knowing that their sole reason for doing so has to do with the singer’s musicianship.


I remember listening to one critic have a go at Amy Winehouse’s Back To Black record when it came out. I could just hear the condescension in his voice: “Sure she can sing, if that’s why you buy records.” Yes, yes it is, as a matter of fact. It is at least a major factor. When I read those end of the year “Best of” lists it is evident that there is a bias against good singers. I thought Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings 100 Days, 100 Nights was one of the very best records of 2007, but it made almost no showing on anyone’s “best of” lists, I am convinced, because Sharon Jones has a set of pipes that make you want to screw in church when you listen to her. End of the year lists are instead dominated by skinny white-boy bands with ambient angst that are backed either by guitars that sound like they’re being played through 10-watt amps or else an ironic combination cello and steel drum.


One of the especially ridiculous things about these critics is that they seem to recognize great singers of the past: Aretha, Otis, Etta. But let someone carry on in that great tradition now and suddenly it’s cliché or too “done.” As a consequence the zines and radio shows are filled with praise for tone-deaf, whiny mumblings from bed-headed, hipster douche bags.


I blame two things, or more properly one person and a musical genre: Bob Dylan and Punk.


Let me say from the outset that I accept Bob Dylan’s artistic genius. I didn’t always, but I’m a convert. Big fan. Highway 61 Revisited? Love it. Blonde on Blonde? Like it lots. So none of you angsty superfans need to get up in my grill with your collectors’ editions of The Basement Tapes: I get it.


Dylan made it fashionable for pop music to “say something,” and he really did have a lot to say. Of course, this presupposes that pop music hadn’t really been saying much till then, but that’s just not true; it’s just that it was using the music to do the “saying” more than the words. R&B and blues singers had, for decades before white singer-songwriters burst onto the scene, used phrasing and melodic ornamentation to give a presence to their lyrics. Black songwriters used innuendo and double-entendre to shade the meaning of their words. Singers would tease, spit, bark, coo and coax each phrase. It seems that all the white teenagers who started making rock and roll in the fifties never really realized what all those Big Joe Turner and Howlin’ Wolf songs they were singing were really about:

“I had a little red rooster too lazy to crow for days,
I had a little red rooster too lazy to crow for days,
Keep everything in the barnyard upset in every way.”

There is no reason they should get them: they were just teenagers. But as the decade turned, their understanding of that music doesn’t seem to have especially deepened. Instead, they began looking for songwriters who could express all that pent-up anger these young adults were feeling.


White artists of the sixties made explicit in the lyrics those themes that were more subtly expressed by black artists of the forties and fifties. Of course, black music was changing at the same time. Social issues were no longer the sole province of so-called “folk” singers like Odetta or Ledbelly: Sam Cooke was singing “A Change Is Gonna Come” and James Brown was black and proud. Yet black music of the sixties was still mostly driven by exploring relationships between men and women. Black music had always taken a decidedly more adult viewpoint. Black records were marketed to adults with jobs and bills, not teenagers with college funds and time on their hands.


I’d like to think that Dylan has never viewed his vocal inabilities as an asset. Certainly he is well-versed in the recordings of many able vocalists. I will also admit that there is an immediacy to his singing that is in itself expressive. It is almost as if there is such an urgency in his songs that he simply has to be the one to sing them. That’s not quite the same thing as a general scorn for good singing though. Also to his credit is the fact that Dylan’s singing seems to have noticeably improved over the years. I don’t know if he ever did something so pedantic as hire a vocal coach, but I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that he occasionally uses phrases like “vocal folds” and “facial mask.”


The problem in the world of pop music is that so many artists of lesser brilliance than Dylan and with much less to say have used their vocal inabilities to mask their artistic sterility. Where musicians previously used technical virtuosity to hide their lack of imagination, today’s artists feel that creative impotence is best disguised by technical incompetence. Maybe I’m being too hard on Mr. Zimmerman, but I think he bears a fair share of the blame. Too many of today’s tuneless navel-gazers cite him as a primary influence. The rest of them cite punk.


I’m probably not the first to note that many bands of punk’s first wave did have a general scorn for good singing and for musicianship in general. That was the point wasn’t it? “Learn three chords and ruin the neighborhood” or however that went. The punk ethos was supposed to be something about capturing the raw nature of early rock and roll. This does seem to fly in the face of convincing aural evidence to the contrary: no one is going to mistake “That’s Alright Mama” for “Anarchy in the U.K.” Even the axiom regarding punk’s cacophony seems to be truer of some punk bands than others, most notably the British. The Ramones sound downright melodic at times (e.g., “Do You Wanna Dance?”) compared to their counterparts across the pond. Although a fair amount of lip service was given to musical ineptitude, it is evident while listening to Blondie or Patti Smith that they are not devoid of pop sensibility. Yet punk’s second, third and fourth waves – which split into myriad subgenres with mystifying names like “terrorcore” and “oi!” – relished bad singing more and more.


The burgeoning grunge scene of the 90s and the whole alternative movement seemed to be built on vacillating instances of nasal-toned whining and screaming. Even though I was in college during the early 90s, I couldn’t bring myself to listen most of what was on college radio. Perhaps the lyrics were insightful and ironic and all, but I could not get through the terrible singing. I remember the first time I heard someone refer to Kurt Cobain as a “musical genius.” “That guy who just sort-of moans tunelessly? And then screams a bit? The one in the flannel?” (On a side note: I was, unfortunately, influenced by so-called “grunge fashion” in the early 90s, as flannel shirts were seemingly the only casual wear available in stores.)


That leaves us where we are today. I actually think many of today’s rock writers are too scared to note the poor musicianship of the bands they hear. They have been fooled into believing that great artists would never bother learning to sing. It’s a classic case of the emperor’s new rock band and the joke is on the independent music press. They have become so reactionary against the “American Idol” phenomenon that they have lost any sense of taste they may have had.


Well I say, “Critics be damned!” Go ahead and put on those records by good singers that you want to hear. Put on some Aretha, some Otis, some Etta, some Ray, some Gladys, some Chaka, some Curtis, some Solomon, and some Wilson. And while you’re at it, go ahead and put on Angie Stone and Jill Scott and John Legend and Sharon Jones. And if there is enough time, save room for those white people still dedicated to the art of song. There may not be many of them, but they’re worth listening to.

Threnody

(Originally published April 19, 2009)



2009, Age 36. “Balm In Gilead,” by Sweet Honey In The Rock, from the album Sacred Ground.


I went to a funeral earlier this week of a friend – more of an acquaintance really, someone I had worked with professionally for a number of years that I really admired and respected. It seems I’ve been doing that a lot more lately, which I guess is what happens. The strange thing is that I seem less capable of dealing with death as the years go by, and that afternoon found me nursing a beer and seeking the comfort of my iPod. The songs I want to hear when someone has died, or when I am thinking about death, are an unusual mix of the uplifting and the outright morbid.


Do you know that scene in High Fidelity where Dick and Barry discuss their top five songs about death? The list they generate is both amusing and profound: “Leader of the Pack,” “Dead Man’s Curve,” “One Step Beyond,” “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” etc. It’s one of my favorite scenes in the movie and I always wish I was having that conversation with them. In spite of its association with The Big Chill (as Dick notes), “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” by The Rolling Stones is one of my favorite rock songs about dying. I love the incongruous boys’ choir intro and weird narrative and the unusual imagery (I’ve tried figuring out “in her glass was a bleeding man” since first hearing the song). “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald,” is another favorite and perhaps the only song by Gordon Lightfoot that I have ever really appreciated. I love they way the melody ascends at the end of each verse and the lyrics are old-fashioned and heartrending all at once: “Does anyone know where the love of God goes when the waves turn the minutes to hours?” Good stuff.


It will come as no surprise to anyone that the first pop song that made me think about death was by The Beatles. It wasn’t “She Said She Said,” however; it was “In My Life.” Much more profound than the typical paean to undying love, Lennon and McCartney set up their pledge with a verse about the nature of change and decay:

“There are places I remember
All my life, though some
have changed.
Some forever, not for better,
Some have gone and some
remain.”

I get pensive just typing the words today, because they are so true. You know the song is somehow about death before it is even mentioned, because what is death but a very great change? Still, the next bit seems a little unexpected:

“All these places have their moments,
With lovers and friends I still can recall,
Some are dead and some are living,
In my life I’ve loved them all.”

The mention of the dead seems jarring, especially from a voice so young. The reminder that even in the midst of love and youth, death is never far away, keeps the lyric from meandering into the saccharine dullness of most teenage love songs.


When I was very young and heard this song, I used to mentally tick off the dead that I knew personally. The list was short then and easy to remember. It takes me longer now, longer than the two minutes and twenty-eight seconds it takes The Beatles to finish singing.

“Fire and Rain” was one my favorites in college. All of the urban legends surrounding James Taylor and the meaning of the lyrics made it intriguing. I especially remember listening to it in the days following September 11 and finding it strangely appropriate: “Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground.” But my favorite lyric in the song has to be:

“Won’t you look down upon me Jesus?
You’ve got to help me make a stand,
You’ve just got to see me through another day.
My body’s aching and my time is at hand –
And I won’t make it any other way.”

The way he pleads . . . it does seem to be a prayer. The more death I know as I get older, the more certain I am that I will feel exactly this way one day. Hopefully not too soon.

Geoffrey O’Brien’s book Sonata for Jukebox revealed the true meaning of the words and the identity of the song’s “Suzanne.” She was a friend of O’Brien (and Taylor) who suffered for years from depression and spent time in a mental institution. She committed suicide and the song is partially James Taylor’s reflection on that. (The “flying machines” in the title are a reference to the break-up of J.T.’s first band “The Flying Machine,” not, as we all speculated, a reference to an actual plane crash.) The truth is more poignant to me now that I am older than the legends were when I was 19. I don’t listen to much James Taylor these days and I think it’s a little weird that I can hear such a dark song in the grocery store. Still, it’s a nice song.


Of course, “Fire and Rain” seems like a Disney tune compared to the darkness of “Death Letter” by Son House. The scope of that song amazes me every time I hear it. The sheer range of emotions surrounding the death of a loved one – nonchalance, powerful grief, real fear – make me shake a little. It starts so simply with a repeated bottle-neck slide figure that seems to grow more ominous as the song builds. House’s voice, one of the rawest in the blues, begins casually:

“I got a letter this morning, how do you reckon it read?
It said, ‘Hurry, the gal you love is dead.’”

It may be one of the most brilliant opening lyrics of all time. The imagery throughout the first stanzas is more powerful in its understatement, from seeing his dead lover on the “cooling board;” to the 10,000 people standing around the gravesite; till the moment the singer says he didn’t know he loved her “till they began to let her down.” He mentions judgment day twice, once promising her he’ll see her then.


From there, it just gets creepy.


“You know I didn’t feel so bad till the sun went down,” House sings, and one begins to wonder if he misses his unnamed woman or if there is something perhaps more sinister at work. “It’s hard to love someone [who] don’t love you,” he continues and it’s difficult to tell who’s who in this scenario. Is he saying she didn’t love him? Didn’t he say he didn’t know he loved her until she was dead? And then you start wondering how she died anyway . . . The last verse (in the recorded version I have anyway) is the one that gives me the chills:

“Oh – hush! I thought I heard her call my name!
It wasn’t so loud, so nice and plain.
Yeah . . . ”

His voice is urgent in its delivery and foregoing the normal repetition of the lyrics, he moans “mmmmm . . . ” to the end of the song.

I listened to this one with students in my music history class a dozen times and we discussed it repeatedly. The students were convinced the narrator had murdered the woman, hence his indifference at seeing her dead body. He knows he’ll see her on judgment day because she’ll stand as his accuser. He begins to regret the deed, at first, because he realizes he loves her; then, because he hears her voice whispering his name once the sun goes down. And when she whispers it, it’s not “so nice.”


After I told them that Son House had spent 15 years in prison for killing a man, any further doubts about the song’s mysterious meaning were removed.


“Death Letter” fits fairly well in the tradition of Southern Gothic song-writing where the murder of a loved one or their unquiet grave is a prominent feature. Southerners both black and white have written more than their fair share of macabre music and the traditions extend into the old worlds of West Africa and the British Isles. There are all the Child Ballads of the “Barbara Allen” variety, where true love leads to a broken-hearted death. There are all those unfortunate young ladies named “Pretty Polly” or “Omie Wise” or a dozen other quaint names who find that spurning a lover’s advances may lead to a shallow grave. There are all of those songs about hellhounds and the devil by Robert Johnson, et al, just reminding us that a painful, unpleasant death may not be the worst of it for some of us. There are the ghostly “Unquiet Graves,” etc., where the dead speak to comfort a loved one or accuse the murderer. There are plenty of songs about dead children and dead mothers; deaths from sickness, fire, childbirth, flood, war . . . the list goes on. Then there are the almost endless religious treatments of death from the joyous (“I’ll Fly Away”) to the bone-chilling Calvinist variety (“O Death”). There are those who find this fascination with death in southern music repugnant, but I am not one of them. Maybe it’s some type of catharsis; I don’t know. My personal favorite in the genre might be “What Did the Deep Sea Say?”


Of course, macabre music is hardly a purely southern phenomenon. Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday” has, for years, been the subject of urban legend and has even been called a “haunted song.” The song, which was written by a Hungarian pianist and originally sung in Magyar, is about lost love and the contemplation of suicide. There were supposedly dozens if not hundreds of suicides inspired by the song, some after only one hearing. Most of those stories are completely unsubstantiated, though the composer, Rezső Seress, did commit suicide in 1968. I find the melody not particularly gloomy at all and the lyric actually a little banal, especially compared to “Strange Fruit,” Holiday’s gruesome and grisly indictment of southerners’ indifference to lynching. No surprise that one didn’t make the Hit Parade.


These days though, I find myself in need of something more. I find that my faith is sometimes shaken in ways I didn’t expect when I was younger. I’m not so brave about dying as I was when I was younger, which is why I suppose they send young men to do all the killing and dying that needs to be done. My friend Cori, now 20, was 19 when she had a near-fatal car wreck. Her insouciant attitude about her extraordinary survival is inspiring, but I must confess that it is something I don’t share. I still get a little sick thinking about the phone call I got telling me she had been in an accident. I am truly thankful to God that she lived. At the time I remember hoping that I wouldn’t be mentally ticking her name off the next time I heard “In My Life.”


So this week, on that afternoon after the funeral, I was looking for comfort. Music does that, too, doesn’t it? Its hymns, mostly, that help. I don’t know what people do for comfort if all they have are pop songs. I mean, they definitely serve a function, sometimes even helping express all the complex emotions one feels looking at death. But there is something in those old hymns especially; words written by long-forgotten authors who have since joined the choir invisible themselves . . . those are the ones I want to wrap myself in like a blanket of sound. I want to hear them sung by heavy, powerful voices, those voices that sound like they believe those words they are singing. Songs like “Amazing Grace” of course, and “Precious Lord, Take My Hand” and “Abide With Me”:

“When other helpers fail and comforts flee,
Help of the helpless, O abide with me.”

Or Horatio Spafford’s achingly beautiful “It Is Well,” written after the drowning deaths of his wife and daughters, that begins:

“When peace, like a river, attendeth my way,
When sorrows like sea billows roll . . .”

An image that could seem overused and tediously Victorian is instead rendered eloquently and dignified further with Philip Bliss’ near-perfect melody.

Sometimes, though, you hear a song you’ve known for years like it was the first time. When that happens, the words and melody flood your mind and soul and seem to speak to you in some timeless way, like the Ancient of Days. So I found myself listening repeatedly that afternoon to “(There Is A) Balm In Gilead,” sung by Sweet Honey in the Rock. I’ve known the hymn for years, but it came to me fresh and potent and almost overwhelming. All female voices, mature and rich in timbre, singing a cappella in free tempo . . . it sounds more camp-meeting than funereal, yet death is in it, too.

“There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole,
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.
Sometimes I feel discouraged,
And I think my work’s in vain,
But then the Holy Spirit,
Revives my soul again.
There is a balm in Gilead to make the wounded whole,
There is a balm in Gilead to heal the sin-sick soul.”

The voices blend in harmony that is more vibrant than sweet. They rise and fall in gospel melismas at key words in the phrase. The verses make no mention of Death by name, though his co-stars, Sin and Sickness make cameo appearances. The soloist and the quintet in turns forbid the listener from disconsolate grieving. “Do not mourn as those without hope . . . there is help for the dejected and the sinner such as yourself.”

I pushed the play button on that song three or four times that afternoon and I’ve come back several times since. Maybe it’s that I’ve felt more wounded and sin-sick these days. Maybe it’s just that I find myself going to more funerals than I used to. Maybe it’s that I need an answer to Gordon Lightfoot and James Taylor and Son House. After all, death is never far away.

Dr. Jazz or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Saxophone

(Originally published April 2, 2009)


1985, Age 13. “They Can’t Take That Away From Me,” from The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 2: April In Paris. Parker With Strings.


I started playing saxophone when I was 11 years old and in the 7th grade. The previous year, the band director from the junior high school had come to speak to our sixth-grade elementary classes about joining the band. He brought with him a group of students to demonstrate each of the instruments. They each took a turn playing a short melody and were met with appropriate “oohing” and “ahhing.” I don’t remember what the saxophonist played, but I remember what she looked like: red hair, green eyes . . . cute. Her name was Pam.


It was a foregone conclusion on my part that I would play the saxophone. My chosen career path at that point was “rock star,” and learning to play the saxophone seemed like a sensible educational decision. You couldn’t play guitar or bass in the band and I didn’t want to play drums, so there you go. Plus it just looked really cool. I was pretty sure it would be a good way to meet girls.


I didn’t know the names of any saxophone players, at least any professional ones. Both my older sister and my mom had played saxophone in the band, but I hadn’t ever actually heard either of them play. I knew that Bowie had played some saxophone on his records, but in my mind he was a singer. I had heard plenty of saxophonists on pop records, but these were sidemen and I hadn’t yet learned to value them for what they were.


The first year with the horn was a drag. Maybe it’s because the first year in junior high school is a drag for everyone. The main memory I have of the year is the sense of dread that seemed to follow me. I dreaded the locker room in gym. I dreaded leaving the locker room to see what mockery was planned for class that day. I dreaded seeing Randy Legowski or the Reddens, Shady Junior High’s resident terrorists. I dreaded math. Some days I dreaded going home. I guess I dreaded band class, too. Mr. Jones was not what most people would have called a “congenial” teacher. We had regular playing tests and we were assigned chairs depending on how we did. There were five saxophones in the class; I often sat fifth chair. I think I was first chair one time, but that was because someone was sick.


The horn didn’t help much, either. It was a used Bundy II with rubber pads and – I didn’t know it at the time – a warped mouthpiece. (Someone had given it to us, a family member I think. I had boiled the mouthpiece to sterilize it on the advice of friends, not considering what the effect might be on plastic.) The thing was leaky and cheap and Mr. Jones regularly told me what an inferior horn it was. We turned in practice sheets on Mondays to show that we had practiced the required half hour each night. I’m not sure I ever practiced a half hour for the whole week. I hated being with the thing. The Universe, not content to fill my life with teenage sadists who ridiculed me in the school hallway, had now provided me with an inanimate object whose sole purpose seemed to mock my musical ineptitude.


Mr. Jones was old school. He taught through intimidation and drill and his methods had thus far produced admirable results. While no one at school would have described the band as “cool” (I seem to remember “band fag” being a favorite moniker), everyone knew they were good. The marching band won every competition they attended and they had more members in the All-County band than any other school. Whatever else you might say about him, Mr. Jones knew what he was doing.

In addition to our regular forays in the Belwin Elementary Band Method, Mr. Jones would occasionally pontificate on a variety of subjects. One of his favorites was the subject of “listening.” One day toward the end of the school year, he turned to a clarinetist who was struggling to make an acceptable sound on her instrument and said, “Do you know what that instrument is supposed to sound like? Have you listened to any professional clarinetists?” The student stared back with a mixture of fear and mystification. It was clear that she had not even considered the possibility of such a thing as a “professional clarinetist.”


Mr. Jones continued to press the student: “Can you name any professional clarinetists?” The girl’s face went blank. He turned to the class and said, “Each one of you should be able to name musicians who play your horn. How do you expect to sound good if you don’t even listen to your instrument?” We all knew what was coming next.


He looked at a one of the girls holding a flute in the first row. “Can you name any professional flautists?” She didn’t even venture a guess. Then he looked at me.


“Jack, can you give us the names of any famous saxophonists?”


“David Bowie?” I ventured. Now it was his turn to look mystified. He walked to the board.


“Get out a sheet of paper,” he said.


Mr. Jones gave us a short list of musicians on each of our instruments that we should all be listening to. We dutifully copied these lists onto our paper.


I don’t remember the entire list Mr. Jones gave us, but I do remember one name: Charlie Parker. I remember that name because that night I went to the public library and saw a Charlie Parker record in one of the bins marked “JAZZ.” I decided to check it out. The record was an LP called The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 2: April in Paris. Parker With Strings. As best as I could tell, they didn’t have The Genius of Charlie Parker, Vol. 1.

I was a big fan of the public library. I always had half a dozen books checked out and when I discovered you could check out records, I was there almost every week. Since the library held only a small collection of pop and rock records, most of the items I checked out were folk or classical music. I remember checking out autoharpist Brian Bowers’ View From Home and a collection of Sousa marches. (Yes, I checked out a record of Sousa marches. On a side note, I had Brian Bowers as a guest in my middle school classroom years later. He’s really allergic to cats and refused to even shake my hand when he found out I had three at home.) The only pop record I ever remember getting was The Beatles’ White Album and that was on cassette.


The Charlie Parker record was a compilation on Verve and had this blurry casual photo of Bird on the cover that had been colored. On the same visit I decided to see if I could find some other saxophone records and I grabbed the only one I saw featuring saxophone that wasn’t jazz. It was called Winds of Change and it was a recording of the Northwestern University Wind Ensemble. One of the pieces they played was the Ross Lee Finney Concerto, featuring alto saxophonist Fred Hemke.


I’m not sure that I’ve ever had an experience that could properly be called “an epiphany.” Maybe it’s that I am a slow learner or that my revelations come more by drips than floods. Listening to Bird for the first time wasn’t an epiphany, but it may be the closest thing I’ve ever had. All the “jazz” records in my parents’ collection were mostly pop and swing tunes from the 30s and 40s: Glen Miller, Tex Beneke, Tommy Dorsey . . . all the usual white suspects. This record was different. I played just enough saxophone at this point to be amazed by the long, melodic flights he took on his horn. It was so unlike anything else I had ever heard. The record was a perfect introduction to jazz for me. He was playing a lot of tunes I had heard from my parents before like “I’m In The Mood For Love” and “April In Paris.” The solos were essentially developments of the heads of each tune with Bird weaving in and out of the string section. I loved it from the first time I put it on.


The back cover had a photo of Charlie Parker in session with the orchestra, led by Mitch Miller (yes, that Mitch Miller, he of bouncing ball fame). Since that time I have heard numerous critics and even fans dismiss this record as a fancy of Bird’s that obscured his genius. A lot of jazz purists hate it. Charlie Parker himself said that those sides were his favorites of everything he had recorded. I taped a copy of it onto a Maxell 90 minute cassette and played it a few hundred times over the next five years or so. It was the tape that I played for my first date with my future wife. I bought a deluxe edition of the album on CD when it came out and then bought the album on 78s from eBay years after that. It remains one of my favorite records for all sorts of listening and I recommend it to absolutely everyone with even a passing interest in music.


The other record I picked up – the one with the Northwestern University Wind Ensemble – had a big influence, too. It was my first foray into contemporary art music and I was astounded by what I heard, especially from Fred Hemke’s saxophone. He played far above the normal range of the saxophone – the liner notes informed me that this was called the instrument’s “altissimo” register – and I was probably more impressed by Hemke’s technical virtuosity than Bird’s.


So, one trip the library, two records and a complete change in the direction my life would take, although I didn’t yet know it. Before the summer break, I asked Mr. Jones if I could borrow a tenor saxophone that belonged to the school and he said, “Yes.” It wasn’t a great instrument, but it played better than my alto. That summer I pulled the horn out more and more often and hated it less and less. I made more trips to the library and listened to other saxophonists: Coleman Hawkins, Gerry Mulligan, Johnny Hodges. I was no prodigy on the horn, but I became a reasonably respectable junior high school musician. I started taking lessons after school, first with Mr. Jones and then with a college saxophone player who was home the next summer. I took lessons with a music professor at a nearby college who had a license plate that said, “DR JAZZ.” I picked up a baritone saxophone for a while and had fun with it, too. Eventually my parents bought me nice tenor – a Selmer – and I didn’t have to worry about all the mechanical problems I was having with the horns from school. I got an alto in high school, too. I also heard my first Coltrane record, Blue Train, though this one came from the record store instead of the library. I even made the All-State Band on tenor one year in high school. Several of my best friends were saxophone players – some of them a lot better than me. I even dated a girl who played saxophone.


When it came time for college, I knew what I wanted to do. The saxophone was integral to my identity. With it, I felt less insecure and more like the person I wanted to be. My edges seemed a little less blurry with the saxophone; it was easier to tell where I began and everything else ended.


I enrolled as a music major at West Virginia University in the fall of 1990. My studio teacher David Hastings had been a student of Fred Hemke – the saxophonist I had heard on that record back in 7th grade. Mr. Hastings even remembered when the record was made. I went to grad school studying saxophone with a couple of other hip players, Curtis Johnson and Paul Scea; one reminded me of Cannonball Adderley and the other of Eric Dolphy. Then I married that saxophone player I dated in high school, though she now had a square job as a lawyer. Four of my five groomsmen were saxophonists, too. Even the ring-bearer played saxophone when he was a little older.


That pretty much brings us up to date. These days I don’t get to play saxophone as much as I want or practice as much as I need; that’s one of the paradoxes of being a music teacher. Still, I take the horn out as often as I can and I listen all the time. I guess I have Mr. Jones to thank for that. Mr. Jones and Charlie Parker.

Starman

(Originally published March 31, 2009)

1975, Age 3. “Starman,” by David Bowie, from The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars.


I don’t have children. It’s not that I don’t want children; I just don’t want them yet. I’ve thought a lot about raising children, about the best way to not screw them up for life. I’ve wondered about what music I will play for them when they are very young. My friend Eric, who is also a musician, intentionally played a great variety of things for his kids when they were small: Stevie Wonder, Ornette Coleman, Gustav Mahler. When my twin sister had her first son, I bought CDs for him: John Coltrane, Beethoven, Jean Ritchie. Nowadays, people think about these things. The Baby Mozart and Bach for Babies CDs are big sellers. Parents hope that by playing this music for their children they will have high SAT scores.


My dad was born in 1931 and my mother in 1939. They each came from big families in coal mining communities in southern West Virginia. I am the youngest of five children. My parents didn’t think about these things. They thought about mortgage payments and grades and new tennis shoes. They even thought about music: piano lessons and band instruments and church choir. But they didn’t worry about playing the “right” music for us when we were small. If I could go back and pick the first record I would ever hear, it would probably be John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme. Strike that: no probably to it. It would definitely be Coltrane. When I have children I will make sure that the opening gong and Trane’s arpeggiated answering phrase from that record will quickly follow the sounds of their parents’ voices. I suppose they won’t remember though. Memory is like that. Augustine wrote about it. Paul Simon, too: “First thing I remember I was lying in my bed – couldn’t-a been no more than one or two.” I doubt he remembers being one and probably is stretching it if he expects us to believe that at two he remembers the “radio – coming from the room next door.”


I was three. I am sure I had heard records around the house. There were lots of records, especially from my siblings. Who knows what I heard played in our house in those first years. The first record I remember is easy though. It was “Starman” from David Bowie’s seminal glam rock album The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars. It’s funny to think about that. I’ve read interviews with musicians who talk about hearing their parents playing Charlie Christian records or their brother listening to Miles Davis or whatever. The first recorded sounds I remember were from an androgynous Brit-rocker singing science fiction lyrics. That’s OK. I still really like the album. It seemed that they played it a lot when I was very young. My brothers lived in basement bedrooms. My father had built our house just a few years prior and the basement was the first finished floor. They had the back two bedrooms, rooms probably typical of 70s teens. I remember Corvette posters and the smell of incense. And music. T. Rex, Mott the Hoople, Led Zeppelin, Santana, Alice Cooper. But Bowie seemed to be a special favorite.


I think that at even a relatively young age the song seemed mysterious to me. The introduction opens quietly with an acoustic guitar rhythmically strumming a Bb chord with an incongruous E natural, while Bowie sings a couple of phrases incomprehensibly. When he begins the song proper, he almost whispers the lyrics:

“Didn’t know what time it was, the lights were low-oh-oh,
I leaned back on my radio-oh-oh,
Some cat was layin’ down some . . . rock-and-roll,
‘Lotta soul,’ he said . . .”

The image of some teenager staying up late and listening to rock music on the radio seemed exotic to me, though that’s exactly what my brothers were doing almost every night of the week. I wasn’t sure how one leaned back on a radio – our radios were all alarm clocks and small transistor jobs – but I loved the idea of “some cat” “layin’ down” music for an elite audience of knowing rock-and-rollers.


“Starman” has the power to evoke a particular time to me. Most songs lose this power after hundreds of listenings, yet this song retains it after 30-plus years. To my ears it sounds like blacklights and platform shoes. It is the sound of traveling to visit my grandparents. It reminds me of indoor/outdoor carpet and wood paneling and being small. There is something to do with swimming pools and cousins hitch-hiking in there, too.


But beyond specific memory, it brings up a recollection of a feeling: what it was like to be very young with the promise of more music to come. This is, no doubt, largely due to the lyric. For the uninitiated, I will try to synopsize the plot. A starman has come to earth and he has a message for us: let the children boogie. I’m leaving out a few details, but not much really. How great is that? Forget all that “give peace a chance” and “what the world needs now is love” crap of the 1960s. The 60s are over and the kids of the world want to shake a tailfeather again. They have heard legends, no more than rumors by 1972 really, that rock-and-roll music used to be fun and that kids used to dance to it. Now a man from space, from a more advanced and civilized culture, has come to restore order, to return the job of running the place back to the grown-ups and to ensure that children are given an allotted period of time each day for boogying.


Don’t get me wrong. I enjoy “message” music and I think pop songs have the power to say something important. But I am glad that the first song I remember wasn’t “Ball of Confusion” or “Revolution” or “The Times They Are A-Changin’.” Your first few years in this world are traumatic enough without immediately inheriting the previous generation’s emotional baggage. There will be time enough for that later. Yet let me hasten to add that I am equally glad that the first song I remember wasn’t by Barney or The Wiggles. I don’t mean anything by it if yours were, it’s just that I’m not sure I would have ended up loving music as much as I do. “Starman” made me feel happy to be alive, happy to be listening to music and sure that things were going to be . . . well . . . really cool if this song was any indication.


When you are young, or when you want to feel young, nothing does it better than those songs that take us out of ourselves for three or four minutes. I have a long list of songs that do that for me and most of them are pure rock-and-roll: “Rock and Roll Is Here To Stay,” by Little Richard; “Brown-Eyed Handsome Man,” by Chuck Berry; “Everyday,” by Buddy Holly; “You Can’t Hurry Love,” by The Supremes; “Should I Stay Or Should I Go,” by The Clash; “Do You Wanna Hold Me?” by Bow Wow Wow; “Hey Ya,” by Outkast; you get the picture. Mostly it’s guitars, a grooving (or maybe pounding) bass, and drums – they all have drums. Throw in a honking saxophone or someone banging the hell out of a piano and it’s even better. But they don’t have to have any of these. Songs like these are like alchemical potions and their practitioners only know that they work, not necessarily how. Mix powdered unicorn horn, a handful of scarab beetles and a powder-blue early model Stratocaster and listeners are transformed into columns of electric, vibrating particles. For those few minutes you are not simply above yourself, you actually are the music.


“Starman” was a great initiation into this power that music has. It’s not quite as exuberant as the songs on the list above, but it’s hard not to feel pretty hip just listening to it. There’re guitars. There’re strings. The chorus sounds like “Over the Rainbow.” There’s a “la-la-la” section over a guitar solo. Bowie sings with this fey British accent. He rhymes “lose it” with “boogie.” Did I mention it’s about space aliens?


I should say at this point that I am a big fan of space alien music – songs, concept albums, alternate personalities, the whole bit. I’m sure some doctoral student somewhere has explored the history of this phenomenon and the artist as alien metaphor, etc. Actually, I would really like to read something about that. Bowie is one of the most well-known examples, but certainly not the only one. Sun Ra, George Clinton and Parliament-Funkadelic, Bill Haley and The Comets, T. Rex, Jimi Hendrix . . . the list goes on. My childhood seems filled with space aliens. Star Wars was out when I was four or five, followed by a quick succession of space-related movies. I wonder if anyone ever asked George Clinton to do the soundtrack to Close Encounters?


My teenage rock-and-roll fantasies often involved singing the music of Bowie, in full glam make-up and spandex of course, to an adoring crowd of my classmates for a talent show in the Shady Spring Junior High gym. The most popular band at my junior high was, in fact, AC/DC. Now-a-days I am really glad my junior high never had a talent show.


That’s the other thing about this song and other space alien songs though. They are great for anyone who has ever felt like an outsider – which is really everyone. That feeling that I guess most of us had when we were adolescents, that sneaking suspicion that we were not like everyone else because we dressed differently or thought different thoughts or listened to different music, Bowie picks up on that perfectly. “Is there life on Mars?” You may have gotten a wedgie in gym class that day, but you put on the headphones and subliminate all that: “Here am I floating round my tin can, far above the world . . .”


Music for aliens trapped in teenage bodies. Music to make them feel groovier. Music to reassure them that the day is coming when they will be liberated, returned to their people and spend their nights in booty-shaking bliss. It’s no wonder that space themes return again and again in pop music.


These days, David Bowie appears in sit-coms and video games, full of self-deprecating wit. He’s married to a supermodel who sells knock-offs of designer jewelry and clothes on the Home Shopping Network. He’s one of Britain’s wealthiest entertainers and lives a rich-and-famous lifestyle. Kudos to Ziggy. As for myself, I am more well-adjusted than I was as a teenager, though I suppose that’s not saying much. I don’t need an alien rock-and-roll messiah to take me away from my life. I’m actually kind-of happy with the way things are going. Yet there is sometimes this creeping suspicion: Are these really my people? Is this really the life I’m supposed to be living? Sometimes I say to myself, “This is not my beautiful house! This is not my beautiful wife!”


When those moments come I know just what to do. I get in my spaceship, roll down the windows, cruise down the highway at something approaching light speed. Then I put on a little rock and roll – a little hazy cosmic jive – and turn it up. I want to be ready just in case. The starman may be waiting in the sky and I don’t want to blow it. La la la la etc.