Southern Bookman

Farewell, Jerry Jeff Walker

Jerry Jeff Walker's "Viva Terlingua" remains fresh and vital after all these years.

The 1973 album brought a new sound to aspiring Southern hipsters like me, making Austin as cool as San Francisco and New York.

Recorded with the impromptu Lost Gonzo Band, Walker's insouciant album defied both the refined Nashville sound and progressive rock pretensions. The feeling of a bunch of guys jamming on a front porch derived from a deceptive artistry

With era-defining standards like "London Homesick Blues," "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers," "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" and "Wheel," the album set the stage for Willie Nelson, Waylon Jennings and Jimmy Buffett.

Walker, who followed the country tradition of career-destructive drinking, drug-use and not showing up for concerts, died Friday at age 78 of throat cancer. Long sober, he kept performing and recording, inspiring younger singer-songwriters striving for artistic independence.

His good-ole-boy persona hid the sensitive performer who wrote one of the era's most beloved songs, "Mr. Bojangles," a poignant portrait of an aging street performer Walker said he met in the New Orleans drunk tank.

Walker and the Gonzo Band's performance of Clark's "Desperadoes Waiting for a Train" shows artistic depths reached with little rehearsal.

The novelty "Up Against the Wall Redneck Mothers," hastily finished by Ray Wylie Hubbard for the album, consciously answers Merle Haggard's political anthem "Okie From Muscogee." As with Haggard's song, listeners interpreted "Redneck Mothers" on different levels, from satire to a perverse ironic pride.

"Viva Terlingua's" most masterful work, "London Homesick Blues" was written and sung by Gary P. Nunn, a member of the band.

Telling the story of a Texan in London feeling homesick for his native state, the song has the authority of a short story or film, evoking the essence of both places.

The band's rowdy honky-tonk performance, with Walker singing harmony, provides effective Texas-flavored counterpoint to the wistful, gloomy portrayal of London.

Walker was one of those American originals who made a lasting influence. For me and others of my generation, "Viva Terlingua" will always bring back that time when our youth was almost gone and we didn't want the music to end.

 

 

 

 

Dolly Parton brings healing touch to wounded America

I nominate Dolly Parton for the Nobel Prize.

Watching the country star discuss her new book, "Storyteller: My Life in Lyrics" on "The Stephen Colbert Show," I realized that she's had a songwriting and singing career equal to that of Bob Dylan, who won the Nobel Literature Prize in 2016.

As the book's title reflects, Parton's songs tell stories of love, faith, humor and endurance. Many of her songs give voice to her mountain culture, struggling to hold on to its traditions in the contemporary world. Like Dylan, Parton has created great poetry.

Recalling her mother singing old folk songs to her when she was a child, Parton made Colbert cry with a spontaneous a cappella performance of the Carter Family classic "Bury Me Beneath the Willow." Parton's work shows the authenticity of those timeless folk songs.

Parton touched my heart by looking back on beginning her career on "The Porter Wagoner Show." When I was an adolescent boy, I had a crush on the shy young Dolly from watching Wagoner's show on Saturday afternoons. I liked old Porter, with his shellacked pompadour and wild Nudie suits, but Dolly's talent glowed on a higher level.

She's gone on from that modest start to fashion one of America's greatest musical careers. Her majestic achievements have been matched by Loretta Lynn, who rose to stardom from a similar childhood in the impoverished Appalachian Mountains. Like Parton, Lynn with "Coal Miner's Daughter" and other songs has achieved great literature.

As Parton discussed with Colbert a new Christmas album that features a guest appearance by another major star, Willie Nelson, I hoped that Parton would record again with Lynn. They put out an album several years ago with the late Tammy Wynette. A new Lynn-Parton endeavor would be a wonderful gift to America and the world.

 

 

 

Ella Fitzgerald's "The Lost Berlin Tapes" brings echoes of history

Ella Fitzgerald's "The Lost Berlin Tapes" restores a vanished slice of time.

Fitzgerald on March 25, 1962, performed at West Berlin's ancient Sportpalast as part of her producer Norman Ganz's Jazz at the Philharmonic tour of Europe.

Ganz recorded the concert on reel-to-reel tapes, but they were lost for years until recently rediscovered in the archives of Verve Records, which Ganz founded to produce albums by Fitzgerald.

The recently released "Lost Berlin Tapes" album comes from Ganz's recordings, digitally remastered with high-tech software.

The recording captures one performance in an exhaustive European tour that also featured trumpeter Roy Eldridge and legendary saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, according to Stuart Nicholson's liner notes. Fitzgerald's trio, pianist and leader Paul Smith, bass player Wildred Middlebrooks and drummer Stan Levey, would play before Fitzgerald came out for an hour-long grand finale.

Under Ganz's punishing schedule, the musicians often gave a performance at one city beginning at 6 p.m., then traveled hundreds of miles to another city for a midnight show.

As the "Lost Tapes" reflects, Fitzgerald generated energy from the relentless pace. She's ebullient, witty and effervescent in interacting with the Berlin audience, which responds with thunderous applause after each number.

Built in 1907 as a hockey arena, and the site of speeches by Hitler and Goebbels, the 14,000-seat arena had been retrofitted for musical concerts. In a place where rock groups would later blast the walls with electric instruments, Fitzgerald captured her fans with an acoustic trio, a microphone and her fabulous voice. The arena was demolished in 1973, nearly 20 years before the end of the Cold War.

As Nicholson notes, Fitzgerald's performance includes songs not in the American Songbook mainstream.

While she delivers dynamic interpretations of classics like Irving Berlin's "Cheek to Cheek," which she recorded with Louis Armstrong, the Gershwins' "Someone to Watch Over Me" and "Summertime," and Jerome Kern's "I Won't Dance, Don't Ask Me," she displays her virtuoso stylings on obscure numbers like "Jersey Bounce," "Clap Hands, Here Comes Charlie," and her signature novelty "Mr. Paganini."

She turns the unorthodox songs into stirring vehicles for her famous "scat" singing. Her voice swoops and soars with a range of innovative sounds, as if she's invented a new instrument.

In more straight-forward performances, she gives resonance to the haunting "Angel Eyes," the vibrant "C'est Magnifique" and the jaunty"Mack the Knife," a reprise of her hit record from a 1960 Berlin performance. In a nod to the rock generation, she swings on Ray Charles' "Hallelujah, I Love Him So."

The recording brings haunting historical echoes. The audience's rapturous applause made me wonder about their lives in the shadow of the recently built Berlin Wall.

Fitzgerald's voice is that of freedom.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Farewell, Eddie Van Halen

Eddie Van Halen didn't seem to take himself too seriously, as if his talent were as much of a surprise to him as anyone else.

Despite his image as a decadent rock star, the guitar virtuoso was dedicated to his playing. As a heavy-metal musician, he set a standard comparable to that of a classical pianist or violinist. His death Tuesday from cancer at age 65 was noted in a front-page New York Times obituary.

When I was trying to master acoustic guitar, Van Halen inspired me with a guitar magazine article on practicing. I made progress by following his advice to build technique one or two notes at a time.

I wasn't a big fan of his music, but admired his technique and guitar innovations. He was my unlikely model; I wanted to play like Eddie Van Halen.

 

Ella Fitzgerald's "The Lost Berlin Tapes" brings back 1962 concert

Ella Fitzgerald forgot the words to "Mack the Knife" during a 1960 concert at Berlin's Deutschlandhalle.

That didn't dissuade the singer, who stands alone with her artistry. Fitzgerald brilliantly improvised the lyrics, referencing Bobby Darin and Louis Armstrong's hit records of the song and winning over the audience with her infectious delivery.

Her impromptu performance was so dynamic that a recording made of the concert was called "Mack the Knife" by Norman Ganz, Fitzgerald's producer and the founder of Verve Records. The concert album won two Grammy Awards, and Fitzgerald's rendition of the song was lauded as a classic.

At the height of the Cold War, Fitzgerald returned to Berlin two years later. Granz also recorded that concert at the divided city's SportPalast. But the high-quality reel-to-reel recordings, done in mono and stereo, were lost for years until recently rediscovered in a box, held together by Scotch tape.

Using new software, the tapes were digitally remastered to better highlight Fitzgerald's voice. In the jazz event of the season, an album called "The Lost Berlin Tapes" was recently released to widespread critical approval.

As with the previous album, Fitzgerald's swinging quartet was led by her pianist and musical director, Paul Smith.

Jazz is known for live recordings that give listeners the sense that they were there at that moment. "The Lost Berlin Tapes" will stand as a classic to pair with Fitzgerald's previous Berlin recording.

 

 

 

 

National Gallery of Art, other museums blasted for delaying Philip Guston exhibit

A major Philip Guston retrospective hasn't been canceled, yet. It's been impounded for three years.

The National Gallery of Art and three other museums delayed the Philip Guston Now exhibition until 2024 out of fear that Guston's cartoonish depictions of hooded Klansmen would be too controversial in today's racial climate.

Already delayed by Covid-19, the exhibition of 125 paintings and 70 drawings was to have opened at the Tate Modern in London early next year and continue at the National Gallery and the Boston and Houston Museums of Fine Art.

Those bastions of free artistic expression believe that Guston's art needs further buffering before it can be safely shown to the public and that racial conflict will disappear before 2024.

The museums in a joint statement said they will seek "additional perspectives and voices" on presenting the work without upsetting anyone.

An open letter in the Brooklyn Rail signed by 100 black and white artists condemned the delay. "But the people who run our great institutions do not want trouble," the letter said. "They fear controversy. They lack faith in the intelligence of their audience."

The decision also drew strong criticism from critics Jason Farago in The New York Times and Eric Gibson in the Wall Street Journal.

Gibson pointed out that National Gallery Director Kaywin Feldman supported the Whitney Museum's decision to continue displaying Dana Schutz's "Open Casket" when black artists demanded the removal of the work depicting Emmitt Till in his coffin.

Although Guston was Jewish and sought to ridicule Klansmen, the museums apparently believe the paintings could be misinterpreted as supporting white supremacy and bring them criticism. The 100 artists claim that the museums' fear the exhibition will give attention to their own white privilege.

Gibson blasts the museums for their timidity in seeking further explanatory material, pointing out that the exhibition's catalog has already been printed and interpretations of the work already gathered. What more is needed?, he asks.

Guston turned from abstract expressionism to figurative paintings later in his career to express his progressive political commitment. Critics like the conservative Hilton Kramer attacked Guston for the shift. Guston's figurative work receives strong admiration from younger artists.

After several major retrospectives since Guston death in 1980, including one at the Museum of Modern Art, the four museums are now afraid to let his work speak for itself.

 

 

 

 

Epix's "Laurel Canyon" looks back at creative music scene of late 1960s

The rock musicians who wrote songs, smoked dope and had sex with other in Los Angeles' Laurel Canyon lived in a bubble during the late 1960s and early '70s, photographer Nurit Wilde says in the Epix's "Laurel Canyon"

The two-part, three and a-half hour documentary looks back on the rock idols' gilded hippie lifestyle, which flourished from 1966 through 1972.

Directed by Alison Ellwood, the film uses home movies, interviews, vintage concert film and photos to evoke the era in which guitars rang from the hills in a continuous party.

Along with Wilde, photographer and musician Henry Diltz is the primary storyteller, the keeper of the flame. Their photos of the young stars 50 years ago drip with baby-boomer nostalgia.

As Vietnam War protests raged and the civil rights movement progressed, the musicians turned their attention to the outside world, with songs like Stephen Stills' "For What It's Worth." But the documentary depicts a group of self-entitled, hedonistic young people adored by fans and despised by "the Silent Majority."

Revered Mothers of Invention leader Frank Zappa began the rock musicians' migration to Laurel Canyon.

The easy-going rustic scene close to Los Angeles' entertainment district attracted David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Gene Clark, Chris Hillman, Stills, Neil Young, Richie Furay, John Phillips, Cass Elliot, John Phillips, Michelle Phillips, Joni Mitchell, Graham Nash, Jim Morrison, Peter York, Micky  Dolenz, and Arthur Lee. A second wave brought Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Glenn Frey, J.D. Souther, Lowell George, Bonnie Raitt and Don Henley.

The documentary traces the changing fortunes of the Byrds, the Buffalo Springfield, the Doors, Love, the Mamas and Papas, Little Feat, the Monkees and the Eagles. Moving freely among each other's houses, the doors never locked, the young stars wrote songs and performed together.

Clubs like the Troubadour launched the performers' careers. As the musicians' success grew, they pursued more opulent lifestyles. Professional and personal jealousies rose.

Prominent stories include the formation of Crosby, Stills and Nash, later joined by Young, and the creatively fertile relationship of Nash and Mitchell. The good vibes are belied by conflicts roiling the Mamas and the Papas, especially the volatile marriage of Michelle and John Phillips.

After John Phillips discovers Michelle's affair with the Byrds' Gene Clark, he kicks her out of the band.

To rejoin the group, Michelle has to humiliate herself before Phillips, bringing a tortured reconciliation. As she reflects, male rock stars didn't believe free love encompassed women.

While Stills, Young and Furay's Buffalo Springfield fall apart, the Byrds survive the exit of Crosby by turning toward country, led by Gram Parsons. While the addition of Clarence White is not mentioned, the virtuouso guitarist also fueled the success of the Byrds' "Sweetheart of the Rodeo."

The documentary details Parsons' later success with Hillman in the Flying Burrito Brothers, but ignores his solo albums with Emmylou Harris.

Nor is Parsons' death by a drug overdose mentioned, although Morrison and Elliot's deaths are fully examined.

Elliot is remembered as the prime den mother of the Laurel Canyon bacchanal. Morrison's rise and fall as the leader of the Doors is the documentary's most tragic story.

In the second segment, the young Jackson Browne and Linda Ronstadt take center stage, along with the rise of the Eagles. The band's founders, Glenn Frey and Don Henley, got their start playing in Ronstadt's band, and she encouraged them to form the group. Browne and Frey co-wrote one of the band's early hits, "Take It Easy."

The popularity of the Eagles, who along with Crosby, Stills and Nash and Ronstadt began playing in stadiums, marks the end of Laurel Canyon's cozy scene.

A facile marketing scheme for the band’s “Desperadoes” album in which they pose as Old West gunfighters reflects the rise of contrived self-indulgence and decline of spontaneity.

Manager David Geffen and his partner Elliot Roberts are shown at the start of their careers, which brought them immense wealth. When established companies refuse to give their clients contracts, they form Asylum Records.

"Laurel Canyon" strikingly contrasts with Epix's other summer documentary, the six-part "Helter Skelter: An American Myth," which revisits the Charles Manson Family's murderous rampage in the summer of 1969.

Manson failed to achieve the rock star lifestyle carried out in Laurel Canyon, and the ebullient musicians fostered the family spirit that he defiled.

The Manson Family makes an appearance in "Laurel Canyon," with Love's Arthur Lee describing a visit from Manson follower Bobby Beausoleil, a  former bandmate.

Beausoleil, given a life sentence for the murder of Gary Hinman under Manson's direction, tells Lee about living at the Spahn Ranch. When Lee expresses an interest in visiting, Beausoleil warns him not to because of Manson's racism.

The murders ended Laurel Canyon's free-spirited way of life, putting a pin into the bubble, one resident recalls. Crosby remembers buying a shotgun after hearing about the crimes.

Other pressures closed in. The music's soaring popularity and big money made groups unwilling to share their songs. Cocaine was a destructive force after marijuana and LSD, which the film sees as benign. Soon after Woodstock, the peace and love ethos crashed with the violence at Altramont inflicted by the Hells Angels, hired by the Rolling Stones to provide "security" for the rock festival.

Plus, the scene got old. In the film, Michelle Phillips recalls how happy she was to leave Laurel Canyon for Bel Air with her husband, John Phillips, despite their volatile marriage. Michelle says they were still hippies, but rich hippies. She adds they were now part of the establishment.

 

 

Pete Hamill's death brings sorrow for lost era of American literature

Pete Hamill, who died this week at age 85, was the last lion of a great age of American literature.

Hamill and other writers who emerged in the 1950s and 1960s were known for their "new journalism," in which novelistic techniques were employed in the reporting of actual events. But they also wrote novels, short stories and essays, following Gore Vidal's dictum that writing is writing, and a good writer should be proficient in every genre.

The era brought abuses; New Journalism stars were accused of inventing scenes and dialogue in presenting situations believed to be factual. But, overall, the era raised journalism to a high literary level, and energized the novel.

Hamill, and his sometimes competitor, sometimes colleague Jimmy Breslin, raised the literary quality of New York newspapers, especially the now struggling tabloids The New York Post, founded by Alexander Hamilton, and the Daily News. Before owned by Rupert Murdoch, who ousted Hamill as editor, the Post was a literary liberal daily, owned by Dorothy Schiff. 

Before writing for New York tabloids, Breslin was a star of the old broadsheet Herald-Tribune, which despite its star writers succumbed to the New York City newspaper strike of the 1960s. That strike killed off a number of New York papers. For years a bastion of liberal Republicanism, the Herald-Tribune gave beneficial competition to The New York Times.

I was amazed at reading in Hamill's obituaries that he published short stories in The New York Post and Daily News, like Isaac Bashevis Singer contributing Yiddish stories to the Jewish Forward.

While the New York Times sometimes publishes fiction, it's hard to imagine a writer today finding a steady outlet for short stories in a newspaper.

Along with Hamill, like Breslin best known for his newspaper columns, the era gave us New Journalism pioneer and Herald Tribune stalwart Thomas Wolfe, novelist and ground-breaking journalist Norman Mailer, cultural critic Dwight MacDonald, jazz critic and free speech champion Nat Hentoff, political journalism chronicler Timothy Crouse, columnist Murray Kempton and the satirical gonzo malcontent, Dr. Hunter S. Thompson.

Along with courageous reporting on the Vietnam War, racial discrimination, economic inequities and American and international politics, a dazzling group of rock critics emerged: The Village Voice's Robert Christgau, Lester Bangs of Creem and Rolling Stone, and Rolling Stone co-founder Ralph J. Gleason who shifted from jazz to rock, especially covering the San Francisco psychedelic scene.

Along with Thompson and Crouse, Rolling Stone developed writers like Joe Eszterhas, Cameron Crowe and P.J. O'Rourke, who evolved into a compelling conservative/libertarian critic.

The scene was hetero-male-dominated, but Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Mary McGrory, Eve Babitz, Vivian Gornick, Ellen Willis, Jill Johnston and others broke through the boys' club.

For those of us longing for literary glory in stifling Southern towns, magazines and newspapers from New York City were like oxygen tanks sent to those drowning beneath the sea.

Harold Hayes' Esquire, Jann Wenner's Rolling Stone, Willie Morris' Harper's, Clay Felker's New York magazine, Dan Wolf's Village Voice, I.F. Stone's Weekly and George Plimpton's Paris Review allowed us to claim membership in a hip, urban community.

While my conservative alma mater LSU swung to frat parties on football weekends and a general complacency, it offered outlets for European films, avant-garde music and literature beyond the bounds of our English course curricula. (My French teacher, a nice Southern lady, was shocked when I asked about Rimbaud.)

Vietnam Moratorium Day brought out a surprisingly large crowd, filling the Parade Grounds where compulsory ROTC cadets drilled in years past. Withstanding the taunts of flat-topped frat boys, many held small wooden crosses in support of anti-war speakers.

Even after the slaying of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, and the election of Richard Nixon, those writers gave us hope for a better America. My sadness at Hamill's death is intensified by the knowledge that those dreams crashed. But even in these dark days, the heroic life of Hamill inspires us to keep the flame alive.

 

 

Jazz pianist Bill Charlap returns to performance

A New York Times article about jazz pianist Bill Charlap's return to live performing left me longing for the pre-pandemic days of open culture.

Charlap after canceling a full summer schedule decided to give a solo concert at the rustic Deer Head Inn, "the oldest continuously running jazz club in the country," according to its web site.

After initially declining to perform at the Deer Head Inn, Charlap decided to travel to the hotel in Delaware Water Gap, Penn., in the Poconos Mountains near the Appalachian Trail. The club, which has drawn a stellar list of jazz artists, boosted Charlap's career when he started out.

Charlap performed alone  and wore a mask throughout his two sets. His audience was more than six feet from the stage, and practiced social distancing. But Charlap still took a risk in returning to live performance.

John Marhese's article stirred my nostalgia for the days when we could attend concerts, plays, movies and art exhibits without fear. In that now vanished era, my wife and I saw Charlap's trio perform at the Atlanta History Center in the spring of 2019 during the Atlanta Jewish Music Festival. Earlier, we saw Charlap's wife, Renee Rosnes, play at the Village Vanguard in New York City.

We also saw one of Charlap's most notable musical partners, Tony Bennett, in concert at Atlanta Symphony Hall in February, which turned out to be our last public gathering before the covid-19 shutdown. We had been scheduled to see Wynton Marsalis and the Atlanta Opera's "Porgy and Bess."

Such public events appear more and more distant as the virus surges across the country, and the Trump administration gives little hope of controlling the outbreak. The Times also had an article about the Boston Symphony's canceling of its Tanglewood  summer concerts, a New England tradition.

Unlike in the United States, Western Europe has reopened without a resurgence of the coronavirus. Here, events like Charlap's Deer Head Inn performance appear increasingly endangered.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Jazz will live again at Village Vanguard, with live-streaming of Billy Hart Quartet

Music will return to the Village Vanguard, through live-streamed performances by the heralded Billy Hart Quartet.

The acclaimed drummer and his group will perform at the Village Vanguard beginning at 7 p.m. June 13 and 2 p.m. June 14 , the jazz cathedral announced. While the small club's packed seats will remain empty, a worldwide live-streaming audience will share in the Vanguard's storied ambience. Tickets cost $7.

Other New York City mucic clubs closed by the coronavirus pandemic also are live-streaming performances, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Hart, who will perform along with tenor sax player Mark Turner, pianist Ethan Iverson and bassist Ben Street. told the WSJ that when he comes to the Village Vanguard, he feels the presence of past performers. That aura will inspire his performance, he said.

Such live streaming offers a promising model for cultural events after the pandemic ends. The Metropolitan Opera, which recently announced the cancellation of its fall season, shows productions on movie theaters around the country, a model not yet followed by Broadway shows. Live-streaming would make cultural events available to a much wider audience.