The time I didn’t hear him when I intended to. At JazzFest.
As I’ve written many times over, one of the cool daily rituals during Fest has been the krewe gathering in the evening for some sumptuous meal, pulling out our cubes from the day and playing a friendly battle rock & roll one upsmanship.
How each of us would lord over the other some band we heard the others didn’t. How much they missed. Knowing of course they were hearing something just as special.
So that night when I’m looking at my schedule, marked with whom I heard and whom I intended to, I broke out laughing. and couldn’t stop.
My companions looked at me quizzically, as if to say, “Whaaaaaa?”
“Oh, nothing much. I blew off Ray Charles today. Didn’t realize it until now.”
Fortunately, I had heard him other times. Including another time at JF, if memory serves.
When I mentioned recently to a fellow rock & roll addict that I’d spent my early morning during breakfast revisiting the great 1987 documentary, “Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll,” he wondered how that came about?
A long and winding road for certain.
Serpentine. As my thought processes tend to be these days.
Briefly. Or as briefly as I am capable of.
I came upon an article in the New York Times, listing 13 transcendent Beatles covers by black artists.
One incredible tune I had frankly never heard before — or if so, didn’t recall — Al Green covering “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” I’ll imbed the video down below.
On the list was Ray Charles’s brilliant and soulful — Duh! — cover of “Eleanor Rigby.”
Which morphed into my memory of hearing him do it in the 80s at that summer “jazz” festival they’d put on at Riverfront Stadium in Cincy. I also went down the rabbit hole of the times I heard Ray Charles through the years, which I might write about at a later time.
So with Charles on my mind, I ventured to a conversation I had at Mosca’s once with Taylor Hackford, the director who fashioned the Ray Charles biopic with Jamie Foxx. And his talking about what it was like to work with Charles input.
Then I got in touch with how I’ve rued that I didn’t chat him up about working with the notoriously difficult Berry on the documentary he directed. So I tracked down an interview with Hackford about that experience, of which he has few fond memories of dealing with Berry.
I shall end up with a reveal of my favorite cameo in a rock & roll song, promise.
But it shall take some meandering to get there.
For context, and certainly appropriate for today’s date, let me start here, with what for me is an indelible if just imagined image.
The morning after the plane crash in ’59, Dion DiMucci learning the news, sitting forlorn somewhere in or near frigid Moorhead, Minnesota staring at Buddy Holly’s guitar. Which the tour headliner had given him for safe keeping because of weight restrictions for the plane that took down Holly and Richie Valenzuela and J.P. Richardson.*
*Sidenote. The continuation of that tour was the first rock & roll show produced by long time Louisville concert promoter Martin Cohn.
I’ve always sensed a bit of melancholy in Dion’s voice, along with his reverence for rock & roll’s origins and the days of his youth on the New York streets.
The romantic in me believes that perceived hint of sadness comes from the moment with Holly’s guitar.
Though, given my open obsession/ addiction to rock & roll, many people have asked, so sure in their minds that I had to have been there.
I was at Atlanta Pop II in ’70, the ill fated (and ill named) Celebration of Life the following summer, plus a great one day festival at the ballpark in Evansville somewhere back around then.
Along with hundreds, oh thousands of shows through the decades.
But, no, I was never at Woodstock.
But the day the movie first showed in Louisville remains indelible.
And I thought of it recently when hearing the original version of what for me was the most gobsmacking performance, among the many in the documentary.
If memory serves — and it is becoming more unreliable with each passing day — Michael Wadleigh’s concert flick opened here sometime in May or June of ’70. (The official release date was in March, but as often happened back then, it took awhile for flicks to get here.)
I do recall it was on the day of my last law school final. Which was set for something like 6:00 in the evening.
I was not going to miss the first showing of the concert flick that afternoon, whether my future might have been altered or not.
Sat in the center of the third row, transfixed. Stone mesmerized.
The sequel to “This is Spinal Tap” is not as good as the original.
It happens.
There’s only one “Godfather 2.”
Only one “Astral Weeks.”
Only one “Guernica.”
That settled, next question: Should there have been a sequel?
After all, the original is a masterwork. It essentially invented the category of Mockumentaries. It is hilarious, and nails the big rock scene. It holds up four decades on.
Michael McKean, Christopher Guest, Harry Shearer, and Rob Reiner are all quick witted, very clever improvisers with a reverence for rock & roll along with affection for its and foibles. So too their brilliant supporting cast. The original (and the sequel) are love letters to the music and culture that sustained my generation.
It was all there. Crank it to 11. Stonehenge. They’ve taken on new meanings in pop culture vernacular. Read the rest of this entry »
Screen door slams/ Mary’s dress sways/ Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
It is the opening line of the opening tune of Bruce Springsteen’s 1975 masterwork of an album, “Born To Run.”
A collection of eight short stories no less relevant and seminal than Salinger’s “Nine Stories,” or Joyce’s “Dubliners.”
“Thunder Road.”
My firm belief — subjective of course, not an absolute — it’s the singular greatest teen rock & roll anthem.*
*For Dylan, it’s “A Teenager in Love.” Like I said, subjective.
Which, because rock & roll at its essence is the chronicling of teen angst, a time to begin figuring things out, a longing to escape, a fantasy of hitting the road for new life changing adventure, a meeting THE ONE, a get out of jail card for preternatural high school loneliness, means the song is the great rock anthem.
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely/ Hey that’s me and I want you only
I was thirty when the album and song were released, remember exactly where I heard it for the first time. At my next door neighbor Johnny C’s apartment in the Triangle.
I recall that the spare less than orchestrated opening of the album version gave clearance for the resonant lyrical poesy to hit me like a shot to the solar plexus. Read the rest of this entry »
As I was taking care of errands, motoring about the other afternoon, it was a poetic spring day.
Sunny. Short sleeve warm. Not too humid.
And, oh my, that sky.
Azure to infinity.
Lazy billowy Cumulus. Layered. Textured.
The sort of visual, like the Pacific at Big Sur, the verdancy of Cherokee in full bloom, or an August field of tall sunflowers in the Périgord which causes you to stop and marvel at the beauty of Spaceship Earth at rest in its natural state.
And figuratively.
I’m at the stage of life that while savoring the day, I had successfully completed two of my triad of medical appointments last week. Not that many over the norm for an octogenarian. Good news at both. Blessings. All that’s left is annual eye checkup. Easy peasy.
So, it would have psychologically been a boffo day even were Mark Weinberg on the telly huffin’ and puffin’ about some rotation hovering over my condo.* Read the rest of this entry »
In the nature of rock & roll acknowledgment, it is a mistake, an egregious omission of the highest order.
A travesty.
For those like me obsessed with such matters, it is difficult to swallow. Thus, I hardly give a glance to the annual induction announcement from the institution that ostensibly is the chronicler of excellence in the genre.
I choose to ignore.
Until I can’t.
Yesterday, while putzing around my hacienda, I pulled Time Loves A Hero off the shelf.
As I was taking care of my tasks, bouncing around with a boogie beat to the syncopated rhythms, mesmerized as always with the masterful musicianship, smiling bemusedly at the astute clever lyrics, listening in wonder at the truly unique eclectic stylings, that cloud hovered.
As I am wont to do, I thought, even uttered out loud with disgust, LITTLE FEAT IS NOT IN THE ROCK & ROLL HALL OF FAME!
How can this possibly be?
How can this iconic band, comfortably in the conversation contemplating the best outfits of the Rock Era, have slipped through the cracks?
The R&RHoF inductee list is full of charlatans, unworthies. So many, to name but a few would be an injustice.
Back when, you know, in the day, there would be more than occasional Saturdays that arrived without evening plans.
So, they began at the record store.
Karma.
ear x-Tacy.
Looking for somebody to flirt with.
Knowing some similar music obsessives would be there to chat up, maybe with knowledge of where that night’s action was.
Thumbing through the racks you’d thumbed through oh so many times before. Pulling out albums you hadn’t chosen in the past, giving them one more consideration.
How many times did I pull out the Velvet Underground Nico album, the one with the Warhol banana on the cover? A lot. Never bought it. A hole in my resumé I suppose.
Before leaving I’d always have two, three, four under my arm. If one’s good, ya know, more is better.
Soon enough, maybe even that night if no intriguing destination was to be learned of, I’d sit down to listen, hopefully savor.
Paying attention with total focus. Unless of course there’d be knock at the door. A pal dropping by, maybe with a new Moody Blues release, “I had to hear.” Probably toting some exotic herbal repast.
Anyway, often an album would get glossed over. I’d just give a quick glancing listen and if it didn’t immediately grab me, put it on the shelf. Read the rest of this entry »
How it is an integral part of the most immersive of art forms.
And there are two specific instances where movies allowed me to rediscover what are easily two of my favorite Doo Wop songs ever.
Both original artists and both are one hit wonders. Though in one case, the elegiac tune has been covered any number of times through to the now.
My favorite doo wop tune of ever is “I Love You” by the Volumes.
Oh the harmonic swoops and swirls of teen longing.
The group is from my birthtown Detroit. Though I didn’t learn of that connection until years later.
The song was released in ’62.
My remembrance is that I only heard it once, maybe twice during my high school years.
It faded into some nook and cranny of my mind.
At a point in the 70s surely, I recall a record store somewhere along the Frankfort Ave corridor. The owner prided himself on how many hundreds of oldies he had taped. Packed on reel to reel, if I remember correctly.
During a visit, somehow the Volumes tune came to mind. I hadn’t heard in who knows when, around the time of release for sure. When he found and played it, chills froze me.
I want to say literally, but not really. Figuratively, oh yeah.
One who has for all the bounty I’ve enjoyed in life been somewhat desperate of soul. An outlaw of sorts once upon a time.
Just as a descriptor, it is a sonorous word, with which I’ve been fascinated.
It’s use in two totally different tunes is something I’ve been meaning to write about for a long while. Years actually.
But, I’ve been somewhat of a missing person, if you will a desaparecido — another play on that term — when it has come to actually sitting down at the keyboard and doing what I am at this moment.
Because the reasons for putting it off are how closely I relate to some of the lyrics.
Desperado, why don’t you come to your senses?/ Come down from your fences, open the gate/ It may be rainin’, but there’s a rainbow above you/ You better let somebody love you/ (Let somebody love you)/ You better let somebody love you before it’s too late
So, yeah, the otherwise insufferable* Don Henley and partner Glenn Frey’s lyrics cut through like a machete.
(* Why do I use that adjective to describe the obviously talented and successful Henley. Two reasons. One, the Eagles have been famous for not liking each other for decades, taking separate limos from hotel to venue. Rubs me the wrong way. But, his arrogance caught me from the get go. The first time I heard the band, they opened for Yes at Louisville Gardens. As was often the case, much of the crowd was milling about before the headliner, not really listening. At some juncture, Henley, annoyed at the inattention, brayed into his mic, “What’s wrong with you people? Don’t you know who we are? We’re the Eagles!”)
Still it’s a great damn song, a bracing use of imagery. Best rendered by the incomparable Linda Ronstadt, who stole the tune.
Damn, Linda, shred me apart why don’t ya?
* * * * *
Then, there’s Guy Clark with a totally different tale, also a brilliant use of the imagery.
About his relationship with an old man.
About how life evolves with its inevitable conclusion.
I know nothing about playing Moon and Forty-two.
But I look in the mirror and I’m pushing 80, an old man.
Conscious that not too far off that sumbitch is comin’.
The story’s been told before.
When I mentioned recently to a fellow rock & roll addict that I’d spent my early morning during breakfast revisiting the great 1987 documentary, “Chuck Berry: Hail! Hail! Rock & Roll,” he wondered how that came about?
I shall end up with a reveal of my favorite cameo in a rock & roll song, promise.
The lede shall not be buried.
Screen door slams/ Mary’s dress sways/ Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Triple entendre, that.
In the nature of rock & roll acknowledgment, it is a mistake, an egregious omission of the highest order.
Back when, you know, in the day, there would be more than occasional Saturdays that arrived without evening plans.
I am a desperado.