Southern Bookman

Charlie Brown holiday classics headed to public TV

A bit of good news emerged amid Trump's scorched earth exit and the raging Covid 19 pandemic.

The beloved Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Christmas specials will be shown on public television this year as well as Apple's subscription-based streaming channel.

Broadcast on commercial networks for years, cartoonist Charles Schultz's TV classics were to be shown only on the Apple + channel until public outcry resulted in Apple reaching a deal with PBS to broadcast the shows.

The Thanksgiving show will air on PBS Sunday, and the Christmas special featuring Vince Guaraldi's haunting jazz score Dec. 13. The shows will also be offered on Apple +, including times of free viewing.

Alas, the agreement arrived too late for the Charlie Brown Halloween special and the Great Pumpkin, absent from the public airwaves this autumn. Maybe next year, big boy.

Charlie Brown's Christmas includes a Bible verse and the singing of "Hark the Herald Angels Sing."

But the widespread love for the show likely will head off any protest about it being shown on a channel partially funded by taxpayers.

We only hope that PBS avoids any temptation to carry out pledge drives.

 

 

Luc Sante recalls days on New York City's gritty Lower East Side

Luc Sante delivers vintage Lower East Side nostalgia in "Maybe the People Would Be the Times."

The collection of musical, literary and art reviews, profiles, autobiographical essays and fictional meditations looks back at Sante's days in the gritty New York City neighborhood during the 1970s and 1980s.

Before gentrification conquered the area, it was home to avant garde artists, poets and writers and punk musicians who loved the rank air of freedom on the crime-ridden streets.

While some of the pieces bog down in self-indulgent, meandering prose, Sante gives a fresh take on often covered subjects such as Patti Smith, CBGB, David Wojnarowicz and Rene Ricard.

Sante shines a light on obscure bands, albums and songs. His jazzy, insular language evokes the era's gauzy, dreamy atmosphere.

Nostalgia for the times and the ravaged neighborhood is a flourishing subgenre. Sante's hip writing will be treasured by his dedicated fans. Despite its narrow focus, the book offers pleasures for a wider readership, even at its most experimental.

Farewell, Billy Joe Shaver

We're losing musical legends at a distressing pace.

Soon after the death of Jerry Jeff Walker, supreme country songwriter and performer Billy Joe Shaver died Tuesday in Waco, Texas of a massive stroke at age 81.

Willie Nelson acknowledged Shaver as the best songwriter in Texas, and Shaver compositions like "Old Five and Dimers Like Me" go beyond country conventions to achieve poetry.

Shaver's wrote 10 of the 12 songs on Waylon Jennings' groundbreaking "outlaw country" album, "Honky Tonk Heroes."  The title song, written by Shaver, is one of Jennings' signature numbers.

While Shaver never made it big as a performer, his songs were recorded by an all-star cast including Nelson, Emmy Lou Harris and Elvis Presley.

Like Hank Williams, Jimmie Rodgers, Merle Haggard and Nelson, Shaver possessed the gift of expressing universal emotions in memorable lines. Fans at concerts sang along with his words, as if they had written them.

Shaver really lived on the edges, battling alcoholism, drug abuse and violent bar-room encounters.

His raffish personality masked a songwriter of rare sensitivity and subtle language. He also had a gift for simple but unforgettable melodies.

Jerry Jeff Walker and Billie Joe Shaver gone in one week. They survived a lot of good times and hard times, and left us beautiful music.

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.

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

After Hurricane Laura's devastation, Lake Charles the latest Gulf Coast city with broken dreams

My home state mourns another Louisiana city devastated by a hurricane.

Before Hurricane Laura pummeled Lake Charles just after midnight Thursday, the hometown of Tony Kushner and Lucinda Williams was already hurt by the Covid-19 pandemic and the oil industry's decline.

As often happens when hurricanes strike, terrible aftershocks kept coming. A chemical fire spewed toxic smoke Thursday morning as daylight revealed the horrifying extent of the damage.

Like other mid-sized Louisiana cities, Lake Charles pursues educational and cultural aspirations beyond its roughneck economy of  oil refineries, fishing and gambling. The city is the home of McNeese State University, and boasts an excellent symphony and local theater. The Calcasieu Parish school system pursues quality education for its students.

At the western edge of Louisiana's Cajun culture, the last Interstate-10 stop in Louisiana before Texas' petro fiefdoms Beaumont, Nederland, Orange and Houston, Lake Charles is one of those places where different cultures fuse.

Bracketed  by Lafayette and Lake Charles, the area's music mixes Cajun dance tunes, Western swing, country and western, and rock. The predominantly Cajun cuisine also embraces Mexican and black flavors, and Texas barbecue.

The city has inspired art: Kushner's musical "Caroline or Change" is set there, and Williams dedicated a song to her native city. Lake Charles is the setting of the Band's "Up on Cripple Creek."

Say a prayer for Lake Charles, a striving, ambitious town that must rebuild.