Tarnished Angel RIP: George Jones

I’ve been so wrapped up in life’s ‘important things’ this past week I’ve not seen the news or read the paper. So imagine the profound sadness I felt when I saw an old headline from a week ago…George Jones, King of the Honky Tonk, Dies at 81.

I am in no way able to put into words the influence this giant of the 20^th century has had on everyone from Merle Haggard to Elvis Costello and Keith Richards.  Indeed, here is the Rolling Stones' living fossil’s statement issued last Friday.

George Jones has left us. We have lost one of the most individual singers of all time. I cannot express the emptiness I feel.

George was as country as it can get, but he was beyond any bag you want to put him in. He was pure American music without ever waving a flag – you can hear a million imitations on the radio every day – but there was, and ever will be, only one George Jones.

He possessed the most touching voice, the most expressive ways of projecting that beautiful instrument of anyone I can call to mind. You heard his heart in every note he sang. Sinatra called him the second best singer ever. (The number one obviously being Frank!). I would contest that.

I truly loved 'the possum.' He was a crazy as me, and just as free… and, oh boy, could he hang.

For a full obit on the man they called the Frank Sinatra of country music, click here.

In a rush I’ve put together a mixtape of some of my favorite George Jones gems.

Rest in bloody peace, George!  You’ve touched us all!

Track Listing:

01 He Stopped Loving Her Today

02 You And Me And Time (With Georgette Jones)

03 Ain't Your Memory Got No Pride At All

04 If Drinkin' Don't Kill Me (Her Memory Will)

05 Big Fool Of The Year

06 Cold Cold Heart

07 Relief Is Just A Swallow Away

08 Half A Mind

09 All Fall Down (feat. George Jones)

10 I Always Get It Right With You (With Shelby Lynne)

11 The Race Is On

12 Yesterday's Wine

13 A Good Year For The Roses

14 The Old Rugged Cross

15 Accidently On Purpose

16 Once A Day

17 Why Baby Why

18 Developing My Pictures

19 In The Garden

20 Amazing Grace

21 She Knows What She's Crying About

here

Ghost of India Hollow: Hindugrass

The experimentations of jazz musicians with Indian classical (Hindustani and Carnatic) music is a well established chapter of contemporary music.  Indian garage bands began making rock ‘n roll in the mid-60’s; today the rock, hip hop and electronica scene is alive, innovative and well across India.  Indian musicians have appropriated all sorts of Western instruments from the saxophone and violin to the mandolin and guitar to make beautiful and authentic South Asian music. 

From time to time I have let my mind run wild and tried to imagine what a fusion of Hindustani music and bluegrass would sound like. I can hear the horrified gasps coming from both Varanasi and West Virginia. How dare you! Perish the thought!  Are you mad? 

And while I acknowledge the cultural dirt in which bluegrass thrives is very different from the Ganges mud and Himalayan snow that has nurtured Hindustani classical music for millennia, I could not help but thinking that there was some common ground that deserved to be explored.

 

Hindugrass

So imagine the joy I felt when I stumbled upon a band called Hindugrass! An outfit of scarily talented and deeply credentialed American multi-instrumentalists based around Chapel Hill/Durham, North Carolina Hindugrass’ music comes out of Appalachian bluegrass country.  But it is most definitely not something Bill Monroe or the Stanley Brothers would recognise as the music they popularised.  Various members of this unusual band have studied tabla, sitar, sarod and khyal singing in India and (amazingly) like me have dared to dream about the fertile soil of both countries.  Unlike me (obviously) they have done something about it, namely make a self-titled album of Indo-Appalachian fusion!

I must say that just as this is not bluegrass it is not Hindustani music.  It is genuinely something new and different and yet the twin spirits of ancient India and not-so-ancient Appalachia are surely present. Like some sort of ghost haunting the mountain hollows, Hindugrass’ music is ethereal and hard to pin down.  Yet unlike that ghost, entirely pleasure inducing.

Fools gold this is not.

            Track Listing:

            01 Drive

02 Mi Ne Mie Kplo Fa Do

03 Bhairavi

04 Appalachistan

05 Headwaters

06 Yamuna

07 Velavali

here

Love's Many Splendours: John Hiatt

John Hiatt

Love, in many of its infinite guises, is explored on Bring the Family like on few other contemporary albums. John Hiatt’s last chance masterpiece from 1987 is in many ways the best and most complete exposition of that four lettered word ever put to tape.  I know that’s saying a lot but I’ve not yet come across another record where each song is a precise and concise sermon on LOVE.

Starting out with Memphis in the Meantime, (which needs to be played LOUD to appreciate the song’s full joyful impact) Hiatt treats us to the love that can only be found dancing with your sweetheart in a sweaty honky tonk, then shows us love betrayed by cowardice (Lipstick Sunset), lost love (Alone in the Dark) and the kind of love your lover provides when you’re feeling weak (Have a Little Faith in Me). And which one of us haven’t felt eternal gratitude for our unbelievable luck in finding the love of our soul mate/saviour (Thank You Girl).

And so it goes.  It is hard to believe that Hiatt, who in 1987 was a washed up, broken down, dropped-by-his-record-label ex-drunken underperforming musician, when he and some mates (Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe, Jim Keltner) scrounged enough cash together for a half a week’s studio time to put together a final attempt to get the industry’s attention. This does not sound anything like a man out of ideas. Each song is an eloquent extolling of this Thing Called Love every bit as pithy and quite a bit more succinct than Shakespeare’s celebrated sonnets.  

Tip of My Tongue in which he Hiatt regretfully rues the wounded love he’s created ‘with three angry words’ is absolute perfection. Every word is essential as is every world weary note played by Ry Cooder. There are so many great songs on this record. Take Stood Up, which is review of how he sobered up, and ‘stood up.’ 

I don't know about you

But there's a lot of things

I never stood up to

Even as I turned and walked away

I guess that's why I'm standing on my own

two feet today

Unlike almost every other love rock ‘n roll love song in history, Stood Up is a giant unabashed song of love to himself. The album wraps up with the fantastic Learning How to Love You. What man has not wanted to sing this song to his wife, girlfriend or lover? 

From the first kiss in the schoolyard
Til the last heart broke in two
I didn't know it would be so hard
Learning how to love you
There was a life that I was living
In some cracked rearview
Where no future was given
To a heart untrue 

Still I thought that I was so strong
That my will could force me through
I didn't know it would be so long
Learning how to love you 

Bring the Family is quite simply one of the best American records of the last 30 years.   It is fun, full of music of the highest calibre and a genuinely honest, warts and all, mature, vulnerable, irascible telling of love’s eternal story.

Track Listing:
01 Memphis in the Meantime
02 Alone in the Dark
03 Thing Called Love
04 Lipstick Sunset
05 Have a Little Faith in Me
06 Thank You Girl
07 Tip of My Tongue 
08 Your Dad Did
09 Stood Up
10 Learning How to Love You

here

Of Prophets and Disciples: Bill 'Ravi' Harris and Chitti Babu

Oh, East is East, and West is West, and never the two shall meet,
Till Earth and Sky stand presently at God’s great Judgment Seat;
But there is neither East nor West, Border, nor Breed, nor Birth,
When two strong men stand face to face, tho’ they come from the ends of the earth.

[Rudyard Kipling]

Say what you will about the imperialistic, macho poetry of the British Raj’s great apologist, but buried within the sentiment, faux-chivalry and smugness lay some cracking lyrics. The one that opens tonight’s post is not necessarily the best of Kipling’s nuggets but it is, arguably, the most widely quoted.

And in some weird way it encapsulates the purpose of this early, hot, autumn Friday evening post. East and West try to meet. Two strong men (with their retinues of Prophets and Disciples) stand face to face, ready to do battle. Not with sabres or bandooks but armed with sitar and veena.  

The Washerman’s Dog will leave to you to pronounce judgment whether either of these men have been able to prove Kipling wrong and blend East and West.

Bill ‘Ravi’ Harris has a day job. He produces very groovy R&B records for the likes of Sharon Jones and the Daptones on his Daptone Records label. As a teenager Gabriel Roth (Bill’s day-job name) had two loves: James Brown and the sitar.  The combination was bound to end in trouble one day. And that day resulted in a weirdly wonderful recording called, not unexpectedly, Funky Sitar Man. With a couple of Hindu erotic sculptures (could be from Khajuraho) swinging their hips on the cover, Harris gets encouragement for his sitar-funk curry from a couple of Prophets: Mike Wagner on bass and on drums, Philippe Lehman.

The record covers songs by Harris’s hero James Brown, The JBs and a very cool version of the original Afro-funk hit, Soul Makossa.  I’ve heard many attempts to fuse the sitar with Western music but never did I think I’d be tapping my foot to Sex Machine!  

Sounds like a novelty and I suppose in some sense, the record is. Certainly, its a bit of personal indulgence; Harris is having fun for sure.  But put all that aside, the music is good. While he’s no Ravi Shankar, his sitar playing is not at all bad, and with the Prophets providing a funky rhythm, the overall sound is very much worth repeated listens.

Funky is not a word normally associated with the ancient Indian instrument, the veena. But Telegu musician, Chitti Babu, is certainly nothing if not cheeky. Famous for being one of India’s most talented veena players, he also had a knack for making records with wild, rather contextually inappropriate covers.  Indeed, it was the cover of tonight’s second record that attracted me to the music of Chitti Babu. Looking like a rural playboy, lounging in his very own ‘love den’, his voluptuous veena nestles next to him like his darling lover.

The record is called The Musings of a Musician and is performed by Chitti Babu and His Disciples.  In English that sounds hubristic. Even Messianic. But in Indian English and coming from a recognized master of classical music, the serious-looking men on the back cover, are indeed disciples. The structure and tradition of Indian classical music, Hindustani  or Carnatic, is built around the relationship between the Pandit/Ustad (master) and the shishya/shagird (student) which over many years of association takes on the tone and tenor of discipleship.

The music (and clearly, the cover, too) is aimed at a Western audience.  Side 1 is fairly straightforward-a medley of several ragas.  But Side 2 is a frank bid to make music along non-Indian lines.  With titles like Rendevouz and Fairy Tale the tracks are truncated and never really get off the ground.  But that being said, the record is worth listening to for its audacity and creative vision.  India had rock bands and jazz bands that played music that was immediately recognizable as ‘rock’ or ‘jazz’. It was jazz that just happened to be played by Indians.  But this record is one of the few made by purely classical Indian musicians (Ravi Shankar, and L. Subramaniam, being the most notable) who tried to make  Western, or Western-themed music with traditional Indian instruments.  And for that Chitti Babu deserves to be recognised.

So, two strong men, from the ends of the Earth, refuse to buy into Kipling’s fatalistic vision. One tries to recreate his beloved sexy soul music on a foreign sitar. The other uses his native instrument to make music that foreigners can dig.  

Wah! Cool!

Track Listing (Bill ‘Ravi’ Harris)
01 Path Of The Blazing Sarong
02 Gimme Some More /Hotpants Medley
03 Soul Makossa
04 I Dream Of Gina
05 Ravi's Thing
06 Cissy Strutt
07 Look A Py Py
08 Lost Dragon Of The Sahara
09 Pass the Peas /Sex Machine Medley
10 Funky Sitar Man
11 Same Beat
12 Escapism
here

Track Listing (Chitti Babu)
01 Raga
02 Rendevouz
03 Old Memories
04 Fairy Tale
05 Rhapsody
06 Royal Salute
07 Solitude
here

Friday Night Double Act: The Crusaders and Steely Dan

The Crusaders
BB King
Steely Dan

Without trying to sound like a disc jockey on the local oldies station, I must say I’m very excited to announce: it’s a double disc Friday!

First up, Royal Jam a hot, jazzy album featuring The Crusaders and B.B. King live at the Royal Festival Hall in London.  The Crusaders epitomised the slick, dinner-club jazz sound 1970s. Formed by keyboardist Joe Sample, and trombonist Wayne Henderson in Houston in the early 1950s, the group saw several other giants of modern American jazz such as flautist Hubert Laws and guitar whiz Larry Carlton spend considerable time in the group.  Their sound was driven by the fluent keyboard runs of Sample and the clear melody lines of Wilton Felder on tenor sax and summed up the dying stages of the years of American confidence. When the world still thought America not only had something of value to add to most conversations but indeed, was the last word on most conversations.  A time when hope and a broad and bright horizon, rather than gritty resolve and slow crumble, defined the United States.  Crusaders music was bright, up-market and spirited. And very catchy.

The Crusaders version of popular jazz not only added funk and finesse to many recordings beyond their own, but kept the very notion of a non-rock style of music alive and somewhat in the public sphere. This was a time when ‘jazz’ was about the slowest selling genre in American record stores and several years before Wynton Marsalis stormed the scene with his revivalist fire and trumpet flare. This record was made in 1981 and features The Crusaders in top form before an adoring British audience. Chief guest, Mr. B.B. King, adds an extra layer of grooviness, which together with the smooth strings of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, make for a heady, swoony atmosphere. You can just about feel the very velvet of the band’s lapels!

The next selection is a stone classic from the same era.  Aja was the best selling album made by Steely Dan and the one that increased their gravitas several times over. Its tone and atmosphere was spare. The music featured several members of The Crusaders (Joe Sample and Larry Carlton) as well as a whole roster of the Good and Great of American music including Bernard Purdie, Wayne Shorter, Clydie King, Michael McDonald, Steve Gadd and Tom Scott just to identify a few.  Aja is considered to one of those albums that did much to keep a jazz sensibility, if not jazz itself, alive in a time when it was on its deathbed.  In 2011, the album was deemed by the Library of Congress to be "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important" and added to the United States National Recording Registry for the year 2010.

Sophisticated pop. Slick jazz.  Enjoy your Friday evening.

            Track Listing (Royal Jam):

            01 Overture (I'm so Glad I'm Standing Here Today)

02 One Day I'll Fly Away

03 Fly With Wings of Love

04 Burnin' Up the Carnival

05 Last Call

06 The Thrill is Gone

07 Better Not Look Down

08 Hold On

09 Street Life

10 I Just Can't Leave Your Love Alone

11 Never Make a Move Too Soon

here

            Track Listing (Aja):

            01 Black Cow

02 Aja

03 Deacon Blues

04 Peg

05 Home at Last

06 I Got the News

07 Josie

here