#899: ry cooder - tattler (live at the record plant, 1974)
this year, i’m thinking of making a series of sentimental ry cooder-themed valentine’s day cards. “true love can be such sweet harmony… if you do the best that you can!” the first one will say, underneath a drawing of ryland in his mid-70s hawaiian shirt and ponytail. the kids will love that! it’s my ticket out of this godforsaken town, i can feel it. all kidding aside, ry cooder’s guitar playing can beat up yours.
maybe most readers of the super groovy music video spectacular don’t know what i look like: dexter gordon is a pretty good approximation. sometimes people stop me on the street and say, “excuse me, dexter?” and i have to smile and explain their mistake.
this week i spent all my free time reorganizing my old records—because, really, why anyone would spend their open hours doing something else is totally beyond me—and found things like two charlie christian albums i hadn’t heard in a year. “time removes fads,” barney kessel once said. “shakespeare today is no less than he ever was; so charlie christian stands up.” barney was right.
friends: listen to 1971’s true philosophy.
and 1974’s ilo abu chi. and ndu ka aku from the same year.
and 1975’s ejim nk’onye.
then praise celestial celestine.
last night 89.9 fm played an s.e. rogie song i’d never heard. it sounded like a very faraway planet where there’s no gravity but a lot of lemongrass, toads, cognac distilleries, skirts, suns, oranges, and lasciviously long hugs, and so i called the disc jockey at the wkcr station to ask what album it was from. the palm wine sounds s.e. rogie, he murmured.
get it here, quickly.
and see and hear more s.e. rogie right this way.
everyone knows that mick jagger is very good for sunday evenings, and absolutely anyone who’s anyone knows that the ramblers dance band is just perfect for sunday mornings. but only the savviest of ideal weekend-music connoisseurs know that when you combine them you get nigeria’s miki jaga & his dance band, and miki jaga is what you want for your sunday afternoon. even i didn’t know it, believe it or not, until i met him on the the mysteriously well-informed ghost capital.
for more very convenient weekend service announcements on essential album-posting music bloggers, see august 14’s on chris goes rock, august 7’s installment on global groove, or july 10’s on electric jive.
dirty funky no. 3 (after no. 2 and no. 1): chris goes rock also taught me that the band’s rick danko and its producer john simon recorded an album with dr. john (bless his soul) and bobby charles, who i’d just known as the swampy-voiced guy on the band’s last waltz.
it sounds exactly like what you want mud to taste like when you’re a kid, especially the tennessee blues, which i thought had been written by tracy nelson, whose version has at several times in my life been my single favorite country song, but which turns out to be by mr. charles. his album is called bobby.
six proposed names for my new sidney bechet appreciation society:
1. sid’s kids
2. bechet? a-ok
3. clarinet? yes you bet.
4. the enormous yes*
5. the natural noise of good*
6. the sidney bechet appreciation society**
*stolen from philip larkin’s outrageous poem for sidney bechet
**here is some sidney bechet from 1932-1952, so you can appreciate him, too.
#789: richard and linda thompson - i want to see the bright lights tonight (1981, a little night music)
some important things to know about richard thompson, not in order, are that (a) he is one of the best guitarists who’s ever lived, because for example
(b) his twangy electric guitar on the first song on nick drake’s first album, five leaves left’s time has told me, more or less beats all the things that followed in nick drake’s totally wonderful body of work, though more importantly
(c) around the same time richard thompson was in a band called fairport convention, which is the one band you’d choose if for some reason you could only listen to folky english late-1960s rock for the first of your life, and
(d) even though it had the perpetually beautiful and drunk and upsetting sandy denny, plus well-named and exceedingly good musicians like dave mattacks and dave pegg, he was the best fairport convention member, but
(e) after the band broke up he made gorgeous albums with his wife linda thompson, like the one that’s called i want to see the bright lights tonight—named for the song above, although
(f) the album version, without the accordion but with a giddy brass section, is my favorite richard thompson recording, and even then
(g) at their happiest they still sounded like a couple whose eventual breakup would result in one going mute for years because of hysterical dysphonia
(h) which is exactly what happened
(i) i think even by 1981 they weren’t on very good terms, which may be why they don’t seem to be very intimate in the above video. fun!
so here’s that nick drake album, here’s that richard and linda thompson’s album, and here’s my favorite fairport convention album, liege & lief, one of my favorites in the whole wide world (although unhalfbricking is something else, too.)
arizona dranes and i would like to wish a good good friday and a triple-good easter to our christian brothers. “bye and bye,” said arizona, “we’re going to see the king.”
if you happen to find these very heavy and tar colored skies a little bit oppressive, take refuge in the only immaculately wonderful florida-related archive in the world, which i stumbled into accidentally an hour ago trying to find jean ritchie albums to download.
the sunshine state’s official archives includes something called the folklife collection, it turns out. for starters it has full, free, exceedingly well organized and hilariously beautiful recordings from the florida folk festival, going back to 1954. (the 15-cent program covers are included too, somehow.)
and to make things even easier the wise and kind florida archivists—bless your souls, you floridians—made five complications from the years and years of the festivals:
—shall we gather at the river, which has gospel groups whose names sound like fake bands joanna newsom would go under for secret shows, like the florida-alabama progressive seven-shape note singing convention.
—where the palm trees shake at night, with lots of creaky and astonishing guitar playing (especially from someone named emmett murray).
—look a-yonder comin’, which closes with his holiness norman blake singing about the elbow room in heaven, with his wife.
—the straightforwardly titled music from the florida folklife collection, which has at least two jaw-in-the-basement songs from children: the carver elementary school singing and clapping about a “sissy in the barn,” and 11-year-old little benny cox with the suwannee river jamboree boys complaining about marriage.
—and then more music from the florida folklife collection, which might be my favorite, on account of it having the jean ritchie song i was looking for in the first place, plus bill monroe, the stanley brothers, doc watson, and, best of all, a couple named richard and lillie williams, whom i’d never heard of before. they beat everyone else.
stephane grappelli makes sunday nights sweeter: his violin sounds like pollen, honey, and cufflinks. but also resin and gin. even looking at the man’s jowls feels good. these are recordings with django reinhardt, right before and after world war ii.
if you like the way ry cooder or ali farka toure or joseph spence play trembly little love songs, not necessarily softly or gently but just like every note had been baptized—or if you’re just in the mood to listen to something that will rush you away from a weekend that’s been cold and very grim—these four old, small, perfect songs from the seychelles islands are for you.
(ripped straight from the decca records vinyl by ghostcapital.)
new year’s resolution no. 1 on 1.1.11: listen to a really huge amount of lap steel king sol hoopii, especially master of the hawaiian guitar vol. 1: 1926-1930 (which i know about thanks to the very holy blog holy warbles). he was a ukulele player by age 3, an ocean liner stowaway by 17, and by then he was playing the steel guitar with a kind of tipsy silkiness that would’ve made django reinhardt blush. it’s the sort of music that dilates pupils.
