Not swing.
Swing.
By the way, this is a funny “greatest guitar solo”, which starts closer to four minutes in than the 3:40 as advertised. But also fun, and swinging.
Tres Hombres
When we did our Top 50 albums of all-time a couple years ago, I’m sure this was on my list. Drove around to it today, reinforcing its greatness.
ZZ Top is sort of like AC/DC in that the early stuff (pre-MTV beards, spinning fuzzy guitars and electronic drums) is so superior to the just passable later stuff. The good/mediocre dividing line for AC/DC is Bon Scott.
Tres Hombres as a unit proves a fine example of the abomination of playlist shuffle.
Here’s an underrated classic. Try driving around to this and not drumming the steering wheel. Peter talks about swing a lot and this song has it.
Song of the Week – Ditty Wah Ditty, Ry Cooder (w/ Earl “Fatha” Hines) & Weather Bird, Louis Armstrong w/ Earl “Fatha” Hines
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
The first time I was introduced to jazz great Earl “Fatha” Hines was when my cousin Tom V. (an excellent guitarist and contribution to SotW) played Ry Cooder’s recording of “Ditty Wah Ditty” from the album Paradise and Lunch (1974) for me. This is a version of the Blind Blake composition, not the song by Willie Dixon and Bo Diddley that shares the same title (although many spelling variations exist). Hines duets with Cooder on this track.
Hines was over 70 years old when “Ditty Wah Ditty” was released. Still, his playing was impeccable. His improvisational runs and glissandos are a thing of beauty.
I would be remiss if I didn’t also give you something to listen to from Hines’ early, influential recordings with Louis Armstrong from the late 1920s. My selection is “Weather Bird.”
The liner notes to The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz call “Weather Bird” a “mounting, unencumbered duet… the fullest statement on record of the encounter of the trumpeter (Armstrong) and pianist Earl Hines.”
Hines’ duets with Armstrong are cited as some of the most important jazz recordings ever pressed. Hines is credited with inventing the piano style known as the trumpet-style. Its main characteristic is a right hand that plays chords that were typical of horn sections of the day. Hines was a major influence on Art Tatum, another pianist that many jazz aficionados consider one of the greatest ever.
Enjoy… until next week.
Van Gets Even
One of my favorite Van Morrison albums is his 1991 double CD Hymns to the Silence, which is admittedly uneven but is also eclectic and lovely and swinging, religious and profane, too. And that’s what the best of all Van Morrison’s work is.
Hymns wasn’t on any streaming service and my version of it is vinyl, so I hadn’t listened to it for a long time, but Steve’s post prompted me to look for it again and there it is now on Google Music. But that’s not today’s story. While looking for Hymns today I found a record called The Infamous Contractual Obligations Albums of 1967, which consists of 30 songs, not one of which is more than a minute and half long.
The title is relatively new. The record was originally released as The New York Sessions ’67, and the story is complicated, involving contracts, hatred and death. You can read the whole thing here, at Dangerous Minds.
The writer there ponders the question of whether there is musical merit in these dashed-off tunes, a Minutemen-colored version of Van the Rocker. I’m not sure about merit, but what is cool about listening to the album through is how elemental the chord progressions of these “songs” are. Many refer to other hit songs, like Hang On Sloopy and Twist and Shout, but others are just clever enough to stand as underdeveloped bits of rock ‘n’ roll with goofy lyrics.
This is more derivative than some, more rockin’ than others. Go ahead, try out the whole thing. It’s fun.
Good Or No Good?
There’s a lot of Springsteen love on this site and I figured this might be something them lovers ain’t heard, since Bruce didn’t let Kevin Rowland include this on his album of covers (that infamous album with Rowland in crazy drag) due to Rowland’s lyrical changes.
Found this while searching for Janis Joplin at Hellacopters gigs.
My apologies to all the other Remnants for not commenting (posts have been extra interesting and comment-worthy lately), but my comment tool is broke – no kidding – and Peter is working hard to fix it.
Mark E. Smith Has Fallen.
Over the years I’ve listened to a lot of The Fall records, and liked all of them. But I never was a fan. There is probably a conversation to be had about that.
Mark E. Smith, the singular head of The Fall, the constant amidst constant change over 40 years, died this week. The first video of them I found was this, which doesn’t seem typical, but does kind of get a vibe going.
The younger Fall is what I remember better. And it isn’t that different.
Watching that Totally Wired clip I could imagine why I would fall in love with this band, this guy, this poet. But that wasn’t a connection I made. At the same time, I was totally down with the Fall as a great band. Why? Because of a Barbara Manning song. Her endorsement meant everything.
It Was Reet Petite
We’ve discussed Kevin Rowland and Dexys here before, maybe too much. This is fucking bizarre. The high-stepping bass player, the worried accordion player, the fiddler who just won’t sing with enthusiasm, Bob Geldorf on acoustic guitar. . .
In typical backwards fashion, I’ll confess that Too-Rye-Ay led me to Moondance.
I Can’t Get No Satisfaction, 1969
The subject applies to so many things these days, but of course the subject is the name of a song. A Rolling Stones’ song.
It is a Rolling Stones’ song from the days of Andrew Loog Oldham, Brian Jones, and Nanker Phelge, attributed to Jagger-Richards. Recorded in 1965, it was the Stones’ first No. 1 hit. Mick Jagger said the song is the one that made the Stones different than other bands. He’s surely right, at least up to a point a few years later.
So it isn’t amazing or anything that the Stones played this song at their 1969 shows at Madison Square Garden. These shows became the meat of Get Yer Ya Yas Out, one of the great live albums of all time.
But what I found tonight was the video of the Stones playing the song at the Garden during those Ya Yas shows, mostly because I was looking for Janis Joplin things and she was standing beside the stage that night.
The original is a riff-based song where the music totally propels the satirical lyrics.
This live version introduces Mick Taylor to the band, and the results are not surprisingly magical. What is old becomes new. This doesn’t diminish the brilliance of what Mick and Keith started, and Brian Jones arranged, but how awesome to add lovely guitar solos!
I hadn’t heard this before. If you have, please be patient. I’m not saying it’s the best version. But it is a fantastic version by a band operating at peak effect.
And Janis Joplin, how I got here, is standing in the crowd.
Roxy Music
We’ve talked about them but not enough. They’re every bit as good the Beatles and the Stones and the Dolls and Howlin Wolf. The truest mark of greatness is that it keeps revealing. As it happens I have a dead speaker, which means I only hear one channel. Listening to Roxy with only one channel is amazing. What a band, including every single bass player, and there’s a different great one on every album. I mean, check out the bass on this, not to mention everything else. I also believe that Ferry writes lyrics to match anyone’s, including this song if only because he’s “growing potatoes by the score.”
Song of the Week – Epistle to Dippy & Barabajagal, Donovan
IGNORED OBSCURED RESTORED
My appreciation for the music of Donovan (Leitch) has been somewhat of a roller coaster ride.
When I was a kid I was captivated by some of the early hits by Donovan. “Sunshine Superman” reached #1 and “Mellow Yellow” came close, stopping at #2, both in 1966.
As my taste in music became more mature, I looked back on those hits as novelties and moved on. That caused me to ignore future hits like “Hurdy Gurdy Man” (a weak Dylan rip off) and “Atlantis.”
But several years later I learned that he wrote a Judy Collins song I liked, “Sunny Goodge Street,” and “Season of the Witch” that was the highlight of the Kooper/Stills/Bloomfield Super Session album.
More importantly, I learned that Donovan went with the Beatles (my heroes) to Rishikesh, India in 1968. While there he taught Lennon and McCartney a finger picking guitar style that they soon employed on several White Album songs, like “Dear Prudence,” “Julia,” “Mother Nature’s Son” and the lovely evergreen “Blackbird.” That earned him some mega cred in my book.
So I did more digging and discovered this credibility and respect carried over to a long list of rock royalty… which brings me to the SotW.
“Epistle to Dippy” features Jimmy Page on guitar. Actually, Page played on numerous Donovan songs including the aforementioned “Season of the Witch” and “Sunshine Superman.”
This track “only” reached #19 in the US. The lyrics of “Epistle…” are written in the form of a letter to a friend that joined the army. In subsequent interviews Donovan has shared that he hoped is friend Dippy would hear the song and contact him. He also claims to have “bought” Dippy out of his service enlistment, apparently something you could do in England back then.
In 2008 the ithinkihatemy45s blog wrote:
The non-LP “Epistle to Dippy” is one of the best from this period, a lysergic, almost Barrett-esque single with sproingy guitars, sawing cellos, and a harpsichord break. Even though some of the lyrics are, uh, dated (“Look on yonder misty mountain / See the young monk meditating,” “Elevator in the brain hotel,” etc.), give it a pass for its great arrangement, great spaced-out vocal, and great melody; this is easily in the same league as killers “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and “Sunshine Superman.” Donovan’s psychedelic pop – “Dippy” in particular – seems to be the reference point for the Rolling Stones’ strange attempts at the form in 1967: “Dandelion” and “We Love You” take more from records such as this one than they do any, say, Beatles disc.
Another great Donovan song is the title track from the album Barabajagal (1969).
On this one, Donovan is backed by the Jeff Beck Group – including Beck (guitar) Ron Wood (bass) and Nicky Hopkins (keys). They rock out while at the same time giving the cut a jazzy feel. The blue chip trio of woman background singers — Lesley Duncan, Madeline Bell and Suzi Quatro – adds a special spark to the recording.
The lyrics are incomprehensible – mostly nonsense syllables – but fun to sing and listen to.
So I vote that you take Donovan seriously (if you don’t already) and give his back catalog a listen. You won’t be disappointed!
Enjoy… until next week.