Joan Baez's Birthday Bash

Joan Baez cannot hit the high notes any more but she can still pluck your heart strings.
This contradiction made for a sometimes awkward, sometimes touching 75^th birthday concert which aired on PBS’ Great Performances last week. The show (also airing online at www.pbs.org/wnet/gperf/joan-baez) featured what we used to call a Cavalcade of Stars (who could say no to Joanie?) and they performed the songbook of our lives as well as hers.

It featured everyone from Stephen Foster (Hard Times with Emmy Lou Harris) to Lennon-McCartney (Black Bird with David Crosby).  The casting was impeccable (Mary Chapin Carpenter on Donovan’s Catch The Wind and  Mavis Staples on Aint Gonna Let Nobody Turn Me Around)) but the execution showed more rust than diamonds.

It was hard telling what made this into a somber, funereal procession rather than a music party. She wore a black tuxedo and everyone seemed to have gotten a costume memo to wear black also. Song selections didn’t help. From God is God by Steve Earle, it was the mournful Phil Ochs’ There But For Fortune and even Freight Train seemed downbeat.

Mary and Emmy Lou, who are still in full voice, seemed to hesitate to take lead roles in their duets so they, along with Judy Collins, often struggled to find sync with Joan. 

After reminding people how she once sang Swing Low Sweet Chariot to awaken Dr. Martin Luther King from a nap (and performed it again at Woodstock) Joan chose to render it as a lullabye that must have caused some people in the Beacon Theater to nod off. You were hoping the stage curtains would part to reveal The Rebirth Brass Band to kick the song into high gear.

Mavis Staples tried to pick up the tempo but The Indigo Girls stayed in the background.

Richard Thompson was the next to genuflect on She Never Could Resist a Winding Road.

Queen Joan has certainly earned her title to folk-rock royalty with her voice and her undying devotion to political causes. No one has more battle stripes from singing on behalf of the poor and oppressed around the globe. Was there a civil rights or anti-war rally in the 1960’s and 1970’s (and most subsequent decades) that she did not headline?

Would there even be a Bob Dylan without her?

Jackson Browne got the party going with a touching, After The Deluge and Nano Stern surprised everyone with a rollicking, Gracias a la Vida.

Then Joan hit her stride when Paul Simon arrived (“We are talking serious legends department now, “ she quipped).  Their voices blended smoothly on “The Boxer,” and the crowd came alive as they sang:

And I am older than I once was

And younger than I’ll be

But that’s not unusual

No it isn’t strange

After changes upon changes

We are more or less the same.

Lie-la-lie…lie-la-lie…lie-la-lie

Guy Clark's Golden Hooks

Guy Clark was the songwriter who could whip out three words and leave you in a cloud of dust. You could also taste that west Texas dust in almost every song and there never seemed enough whiskey or wine to clear your throat.

It was Ohio State's Woody Hayes who famously extolled football's winning formula: three yards and a cloud of dust. Sometimes it took Guy more three words but he always won you over. The best way to pay tribute to him is to simply replay some of those phrases. He pretty much defined the "Outlaw" in modern roots music:

Desperadoes waiting for a train...

If I can get off of this LA freeway without gettin killed or caught.

And all that I learned from a Colt 45
Was to curse the smell of the black powder smoke
And the stand in the street at the turn of a joke

Then of course there were those fascinating, mesmerizing women

And the blues had a way with her smile
And she had a way of her own
Like prisoners have a way with a file

He always said that heaven 
Was just a Dallas whore

Hill Country, Honky Tonkin'  Rita Ballou
Every beer joint in town has played the fool for you
Backsliding, barrel riding Rita Ballou
Ain't a cowboy in Texas would not a ride a bull for you

Oh me, oh my how she makes that bow hair fly
How she hangs that music in the air

Then there was the company he kept. Townes Van Zandt, Lyle Lovett, Joe Ely, Rodney Crowell, Vince Gill and Jerry Jeff Walker and Rickey Skaggs among others. They are among many who would say to Guy Clark: Thanks for the songs.

VINYL The Book

One of the best parts of the HBO series “Vinyl” is the opening credits in which the mechanical cutting of grooves and the pressing of wax records are presented in slow motion close-ups worthy of Stanley Kubrick. No matter how often I have watched that or read about the process, I could never quite fathom how sound goes from electronic recording to wax grooves and back to sound waves created by a stylus and a turntable.

Then again I never appreciated how that process had driven the art of making music until I found the coffee table history, VINYL The Art of Making Records by Mike Evans (Sterling  Publishing). It is both a labor of love and a thing of beauty created by Evans, who started in Liverpool’s Cavern Club as a musician and has produced more than sixty books on music, movies and fashion.

If this were only a collection of album covers, it would be illuminating.  David Bowie’s foreshadowing of his sexual persona on Diamond Dogs.  Frank Zappa’s send up of Sgt. Pepper on We’re Only It For The Money.  Alice Cooper’s School’s Out as a wooden school desk (with the disc wrapped in panties). Rolling Stones’s Sticky Fingers (they had to unzip the fly because it was scratching the vinyl during shipment).

Evans starts with Marconi and takes us to the gold plated “Sounds of Earth” attached to the Voyager space craft (Mozart and Chuck Berry on the A-side) and into the current vinyl revival symbolized by Jack White.  The book is organized by decades with sidebars that include eye-popping Turntable Treasures, segments on live albums and features on major music events.

It is fascinating to learn how the push for long playing discs (33 1/3 with some 40 minutes of playing time) was driven by record companies who wanted to release classical performances on something more convenient than a stack of 78s (about four minutes to a side).

The first concept album? In Evans' view it was from 1955: Frank Sinatra’s In The Wee Small Hours.

The first double album? Bob Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde.  The idea of four different canvases ignited a revolution in cover art while giving the musicians twice as much recording time.

Motown’s first chart topping LP?  The 12-Year-Old Genius, the first of many hits for Stevie Wonder.

Mixed in with the rich history of blues, rock, rap and punk is an endless supply of trivia. LL Cool J is short for Ladies Love Cool James. Bill Haley’s Rock Around the Clock, which Decca released in 1954, sold an estimated 25 million copies. Sgt. Pepper took 129 days to make and was one of the first albums to print all the song lyrics.

Opening this volume is like uncorking a bottle of Chateau Margaux. You can’t decide whether to devour it all once or savor it sip by sip.

Bonnie Raitt: Gypsy in Me

Bonnie Raitt’s audience is aging but she isn’t. Between songs before a sold out Kennedy Center Concert Hall this weekend, she joked about her past and expressed amazement at still having fun making music.

“When I started doing this at 21, I never thought I would still being doing it at 66. But then I never thought Donald Trump would be running for President.” To that, a fan shouted: “Bonnie for President.” It would have been a landslide.

Raitt’s nearly two-hour concert was a walk down memory lane with side trips to songs from her new album, “Dig In Deep.” Against a Hotel California set, she rocked, crooned, mourned lost loves, played the blues, celebrated gospel music and kept up a running commentary. Recalling she was last at the Kennedy Center for an honors tribute to Buddy Guy, she noted, “Definitely not a juke joint this place.”

Her greatest hits seemed as fresh as the DC Cherry blossoms (which she had toured earlier): Something To Talk About, Working on a Love Letter, Right Down the Line, and a nearly acoustic version of Angel from Montgomery that sent chills down your spine.

After doing a similar lament from her new album, Undone, written by Bonnie Bishop, she quipped, "It was a lot of pain there. But I have learned after all these years I don’t  have to live every lyric.”

Raitt is one of the few performers who can segue smoothly from Sippie Wallace’s, I’m A Mighty Tight Woman to a Zimbabwean spiritual, Help Me Lord I’ m Feeling Low.  Often her transitions are respectful memories of songwriters and performers. Or she has a statement to make: “Money and politics so pissed me off, I had to do this one: Ain’t Gonna Take It. Then Shake it, Shake it, Shakin, carried its anti-nuclear power plant refrain: “Oh it makes me tremble.”

Her bandmates, including George Marinelli on guitars, Mike Finnigan on Hammond B-3 and piano, James Hutchinson on bass and  Ricky Fataar on drums are so good they distract your eyes from the star. That is, until, you hear this rippling riff and you realize: Whoa, that’s coming from Bonnie’s bottleneck guitar, of which she is a master. After all, she explained,“I did learn from John Hammond.”

This area has become a favorite of hers, thanks to the boost she and groups like Little Feat got from progressive radio station WHFS. “In DC people came to see us whether we had a Grammy or not.”

Her encore set captured the conflict of her music and everyone’s emotional roller coaster. I Can’t Make You Love Me (which of course we did) followed by That’s Just Love Sneaking Up On You.  With that the Gypsy Lady was on back on the luxury bus for the summer tour.

Mick Jagger's "Vinyl" Valentine

When I started writing this blog five years ago, I had no idea that listening to music on vinyl was about to be catapulted from a thing of the past to a wave of the future. For me it was chance to wander through my record collection enjoying a few gems that had gathered too much dust while I went from cassettes to CDs. My trips down memory lane were prompted in part by a belief that the sixties and seventies were a golden age for rock and roll and the recent spate of books and movies about musicians and their music would seem to confirm that.

But I never expected that vinyl would become the mega-trend in music that it has. I have a relative who sells albums on the internet from Front Royal, Virginia. My friend John (who lives in Marin County...the Sun City for retired music people) sent me a story this week about the grand opening of a record store in Billings, Montana. The owner figured it was the only way he could clean out his basement with a clear conscience.

http://lastbestnews.com/site/2016/02/old-technology-aging-rockers-gather-at-new-vinyl-store/

Other friends have sent me stories about how the demand for vinyl records has brought the pressing machinery out of mothballs. The New York Times did a story on Luis Vuitton travel bags that included a box built specially for carrying LPs. Its profile of Sir Elton John reports that his vinyl collection has reached 3,000.

The next tidal wave in this trend will break on February 14 when HBO premieres a new series, "Vinyl," co produced by Mick Jagger, who has been working on the concept for more than a decade.

HBO is bringing out the big guns for this one. Martin Scorsese directed the two hour pilot episode and the show runner is Terence Winter who did "Boardwalk Empire" and produced for "The Sopranos." Set in the 1970s in New York City, the show promises, in the best HBO grittiness, to capture all the sex and money and drugs that went into fueling the rock and roll juggernaut.

No doubt there will be extensive analysis about how accurate this portrayal is; but it seems that HBO and its producers have made a major commitment to recreate the music of the era. The Times reports that there is a soundtrack album for each episode.

In other news about those rockers who came up in the '70s, the Indiana General Assembly (not usually known for its good works in recent years) has a bill pending to rename a section of Interstate 65 as "John Cougar Mellencamp Highway." The sixteen miles runs from Austin north to John's hometown of Seymour. The Indianapolis Star is sending a reporter to look for Little Pink Houses along the route.

Dylan, Elvis, Otis & Sam's Stories

If I am finally too old to rock and roll (at least without risking major joint replacement), I can still celebrate the glories of musical yester-years thanks to the printed word. If 2015 is not the year of the book in music, it comes close. It might be easier to list the aging rocker who has not had a biography published than it is to itemize the new ones.

Recent arrivals have come from Tom Jones, Carrie Brownstein, Chrissie Hynde, Carly Simon, Tom Petty, Kim Gordon and Elvis Costello. Patti Smith has three volumes in rotation: Her award-winning memoir, “Just Kids,” a book of collected lyrics and a new personal history, “M Train.”

Dylan gets this year’s prize for the biggest volume. “Bob Dylan: All The Songs” by Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guersdon may be the definitive encyclopedia (the story behind every song) but you will need to build a bigger coffee table to support it.

 It follows others this year, “Dylan goes Electric,” “61 Highways Revisited” (the albums), “Dylan Disc by Disc” and “Time Out of Mind.”

 If you are a fan, there is a book for you that adds some history and certainly extends the brand, if not the musical repertoire. I have a couple on my to-read list for the New Year. One is Mark Ribowsky’s biography of Otis Redding, “Dreams To Remember” with a chewy subtitle: Otis Redding, Stax Records and the Transformation of Southern Soul . Next is a holdover from last year, the strange saga of “Jerry Lee Lewis: His Own Story” by Rick Bragg.

Topping the list is Peter Guarlnick’s latest with what may be the most presumptuous title ever. “Sam Philips: The Man Who Invented Rock and Roll.” But wait, there is more: “And how he discovered Howlin’ Wolf, Ike Turner, Jerry Lee Lewis, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley, and how his tiny label, Sun Records of Memphis, revolutionized the world.” Not many besides Guarlnick can make that stick but from what I have heard (NPR’s Fresh Air) and read (The New Yorker), he has the interviews and anecdotes to back it up. What’s even better is the book comes with a companion CD so he’s put his spin on which of these classic songs were lighting the fires of music revolution.

Finally the other eminent historian of this genre, Greil Marcus, issued a two-pack this year: On the 40^th anniversary of the classic “Mystery Train,” he has a new edition. That was followed by the paperback release of “The History of Rock & Roll in Ten Songs.”

It’s nice to have a New Year’s Dilemma: Do I read?  Or listen?

Ricky Skaggs' & Ry Cooder's Master Class

On their current tour these virtuosos have taken on new roles: Master Gardeners charged with preserving and protecting American Roots Music.  All their years of laboring in the  vineyards of country, bluegrass, and gospel have produced a vintage sound that was on display at the Birchmere in Alexandria, VA this week.

A set list that began with the Louvin Brothers’ The Family Who Prays  and ended with the Stanley Brothers’ Over in Gloryland might have foreshadowed a fire and brimstone tent revival. And at one point Ricky looked across the stage and asked “Ry, when you were growing up in Santa Monica did you think you’d end up playing bass in a gospel quartet?”  “Yes I did,” Cooder deadpanned.

But there was too much fun to be had on this trip down memory lane for anyone to feel pressured into baptism.  As they played and sang, it became clear that the longing for love and the need for spiritual sustenance are only separated by a few chords and a chorus.

They moved from Merle Travis (Sweet Temptation) to Hank Williams (Mansion on the Hill) to Stanley Brothers (Cold Jordan) effortlessly as changing guitars.

At one point, Cooder picked up what he called “a 100 lb guitar” that he had never played on stage before. The result was a rollicking duet with Skaggs’ mandolin on  Hold Whatcha Got with the audience singing along to the chorus:

Don’t sell the house, don’t wreck the car

Stay there, honey, right where you are

Hold whatcha got, I’m coming home to stay.

Cooder was similarly self-effacing when he strapped on a banjo that he said once belonged to Mike Seger and that he learned how to play it by watching You Tube videos.

Skaggs, his wife Sharon White, and Ry often suggested the audience turn to You Tube to hear the originals of the songwriters they were highlighting.

The legacies of Hank Snow (Now and Then There’s a Fool Such as I) and Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs (Gone Home) are in good hands as these ‘young’ legends add their own lustrous versions to the country-gospel canon.

Rounding out the troupe was Sharon’s sister Cheryl on vocals, her father, 84-year-old Buck, on piano, Mark Fain on bass and Ry’s son, Joaquin Cooder, on drums.

When the road is called up yonder this band will be ready.

As for me, I heard the spirit listening to Ry Cooder’s solo intro to Tennessee Waltz. It is still ringing in my ears.