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Thursday, March 02, 2023

NOTES FROM THE WEB :: Eric Dolphy, John Waters on Tennessee Williams, Johnny Cash, Lightning Hopkins, Bruce Barthol R.I.P., George Harrison, Janis Joplin on Leonard Cohen, Jimi Hendrix

 


Some musical notes from t’interweb

photo Francis Wolff, 1964 ★

ERIC DOLPHY

One of the great tragedies...

"It would be enough to listen to his version of "Round Midnight", one of the most beautiful compositions in the history of music written by the great Thelonious Monk, wonderfully rendered ,with the arrangement of George Russell, by an amazing Eric Dolphy who gives an interpretation that leaves you breathless, giving this melody a new light. If only this recording remained of him, it would already be enough to place him among the greatest and most original musicians in the history of jazz. And, listening to him, it is even sadder to remember his tragic death which interrupted his young life and his musical journey too soon.
Jazz musicians have always encountered widespread racism, but Dolphy's case takes it to a whole different level, as such stereotypes literally left him to die. In 1964, during a tour in West Berlin, Eric Dolphy fell into a coma, due to the diabetes he had suffered from for years, and was taken to hospital. But the treating doctors thought that, as a jazz player and black to boot, Dolphy must necessarily be a drug addict, and so he was left in a hospital bed with the usual overdose treatment without even having his blood sugar checked, so much so that it never came out from a coma and died all alone in that hospital bed. And to think that Eric Dolphy was a teetotaller and always had a negative view of drugs.
A person of proverbial sensitivity and meekness enough to push Charles Mingus, with whom he had collaborated for a long time and instead famous for his irascibility, to tenderly describe him as "a man who absolutely does not feel the need to hurt”.

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portrait of Williams at Tor San Lorenzo by Paolo Di Paolo, 1955.


“Tennessee Williams saved my life … Yes, Tennessee Williams was my childhood friend. I yearned for a bad influence and Tennessee was one in the best sense of the word: joyous, alarming, sexually confusing and dangerously funny. I didn’t quite “get” “Desire and the Black Masseur” when I read it in One Arm, but I hoped I would one day. The thing I did know after finishing the book was that I didn’t have to listen to the lies the teachers told us about society’s rules. I didn’t have to worry about fitting in with a crowd I didn’t want to hang out with in the first place. No, there was another world that Tennessee Williams knew about, a universe filled with special people who didn’t want to be a part of this dreary conformist life that I was told I had to join.” 


/ John Waters reflecting on the influence of literary hero Tennessee Williams in his book Role Models (2010) 




Williams died on 25th Feb  40 years ago: my all-time favourite playwright, Tennessee Williams (25 March 1911 – 25 February 1983). In retrospect, it’s miraculous he lasted as long as he did. As detailed in John Lahr’s mammoth, juicy biography Mad Pilgrimage of the Flesh, the brilliant but self-destructive William’s gargantuan, obliterating intake of alcohol and drugs would have stultified a horse! In the sixties Williams turned paranoid, convinced his then-boyfriend was putting ground glass in his vodka bottle. The delusions were a symptom of his drug habit: “The pills … included barbiturates and “fire-shots” – injections that could include amphetamines, painkillers, vitamins and human placenta – doled out by Dr Max Jacobson, a purveyor of speed to the rich and famous whose nickname was “Dr Feelgood””. Other recipients of the corrupt high society doctor’s “miracle tissue regenerator” shots included Marlene Dietrich, Truman Capote, Nelson Rockerfeller and John F Kennedy. To be fair, Jacobson warned Williams not to mix the injections with liquor – which the alcoholic Williams ignored. Now we know the inspiration for Liz Taylor in the 1968 film Boom! screaming out for “My injection!” 


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Photo by Barrie Wentzell


Remembering Johnny Cash 

(February 26, 1932 – September 12, 2003)

"There was a lot of great country music in the early 1950s, and great blues, too. The blues were everywhere, and that was fine by me. I loved going to Home of the Blues, the record store. That's where I bought Blues in the Mississippi Night, the great anthology of Delta blues singers recorded by Alan Lomax, which is still one of my favorite albums (I borrowed a good song title there, too). I loved driving into Orange Mound, the black part of town, to sit on Gus Cannon's porch and listen to him sing and play the guitar.Gus wrote ”Walk Right In,“ which later became a big pop hit for the Rooftop Singers, and I thought he was wonderful even if he didn't buy a refrigerator (nobody did; they couldn't afford one or anything else I had to sell, and I didn't want to fool them into thinking they could). I loved Dewey Phillips's radio show on WHBQ, ”Red Hot and Blue,“ which mixed everything up together—hillbilly, pop, blues, gospel—without regard to what anyone but Dewey had to say about it.."


- Cash: The Autobiography

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LIGHTNING HOPKINS



Photo by  David Gahr


"What distinguished Lightnin’ Hopkins was his virtuosity as a performer. He soaked up what was around him and put it all into his blues. He rambled on about anything that came into his mind: chuckholes in the road, gossip on the street, his rheumatism, his women, and the good times and bad men he met along the way. In his songs he could be irascible, but in the next verse he might be self-effacing. He prided himself on his individuality, even if it meant he was full of inconsistencies. He often poured out his feelings in his songs with a heart-wrenching pathos, but it could be hard to tell if he was truly sincere. He peppered his lyrics with few actual details about his own life, but he was at once raw, mocking, extroverted, sarcastic, and deadly serious. Most of the time, Lightnin’ appeared to trust no one, yet he knew how to endear himself to his audience. While he voiced the hardships, yearnings, and foibles of African Americans in the gritty bump and grind of the juke joints of Third Ward Houston, he could be cocky and brash in his performances for white crowds at the Matrix in San Francisco, or at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, or a concert hall in Europe, where he was in complete control and was adored."

Lightnin’ played both acoustic and electric guitars and was steeped in the Texas country blues tradition. From Blind Lemon Jefferson and Alger “Texas” Alexander, Lightnin’ absorbed stylistic and repertoire elements that included a melismatic singing style rooted in the field holler, mixing long-held notes with loose, almost conversational phrasing.3 Musically, “Short Haired Woman,” which Lightnin’ recorded for the first time around May 1947, established the signature sound that he used in just about every song, whether it was a fast instrumental boogie/shuffle or a slow blues. In his guitar playing Lightnin’ had an open and fluid style with his right hand, using a thumb pick and his index finger. He kept his right hand loose so he could move from playing sharp notes near the bridge to playing wider open chords up near the fingerboard."

-  Lightnin’ Hopkins : his life and blues / Alan Govenar.



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Another sad loss

Bruce Barthol, Original Bassist for Country Joe and the Fish  -  1947-2023  -  Ave atque Vale


https://aquariumdrunkard.com/2021/10/06/country-joe-the-fish-section-43-live-at-monterey-pop-festival/



Country Joe and The Fish - Section 43 - Monterey Pop 1967


Country Joe and The Fish - Not So Sweet Martha Lorraine - Monterey Pop 1967

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Remembering George Harrison (25th  February 1943 – 29 November 2001)

First and foremost, George Harrison was a guitarist. He was a rock and roll, rhythm and blues junkie, with influences ranging from Fats Domino and Carl Perkins to Curtis Mayfield and The Impressions. Starting out in music it was all about the guitar, he didn’t fancy himself a singer or songwriter; though in the end he managed to keep up with Lennon and McCartney at both. From early on in The Quarrymen, 15-year-old George’s guitar playing began to be recognised. On In Spite of All the Danger he was given equal writing credit with Paul after writing and playing the guitar-solo. George was not a flashy guitarist by any means, but I still consider him one the best of all time. What he had was an amazing tonality, melodic sense and rhythm. He wrote lines that may seem simple, or tastefully restrained, in order to elevate whatever the music happened to be. 

He was incredibly methodical when it came to recording. Many an Abbey Road engineer were left pulling out their hair as he would do take after take, until he felt like it was perfect. That’s just the way he worked. George was arguably the biggest gear-head of all the Beatles; he liked to collect and would change his main guitar for each Beatles LP. A small part of this collection included a Gretsch Duo-Jet, Selmer Futurama, Rickenbacker 360 Deluxe, Gibson SG and Les Paul, and a particular Sonic Blue Fender Stratocaster, the latter being an important part of the development of his legendary slide technique and touch. He first recorded slide guitar on Strawberry Fields and it has since become an integral part of what’s recognised as the George Harrison sound. He will always be remembered first as the Beatles’ lead guitarist, but he was also responsible for driving the group’s creativity forward by introducing the others to new music and ideas. George’s interests and influences changed, as they do, from rock and roll to classical Indian and Bulgarian choir - from the guitar to ukulele, sitar and the Moog synthesiser. 


Abbey Road Studios 




The eighteen year old teddy boy, George 1961, March, Rabenstrasse Stop, Hamburg, Germany. Photo by Jurgen Vollmer.

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JANIS AT THE CHELSEA HOTEL


One late night Janis Joplin stepped into the Chelsea elevator with a professorial-looking man with a hangdog look—thirty-three-year-old Leonard Cohen. He would later memorialise the tryst that followed in two variations of his “Chelsea Hotel”—#1 and #2—with #2 featuring these lines about their sexual encounter: “You were talking so brave and so sweet / giving me head on the unmade bed / while limousines wait in the street.” Janis’s view of their encounter was less tender. The following year, during a session with acclaimed photographer Richard Avedon, while being interviewed by his assistant/writer Doon Arbus, Janis spoke about the ups and downs of her sex life. “Sometimes… you’re with someone and you’re convinced that they have something… to tell you,” she confided. “Or… you want to be with them. So maybe nothing’s happening, but you keep telling yourself something’s happening. You know, innate communication. He’s just not saying anything. He’s moody or something. So you keep being there, pulling, giving, rapping.… And then, all of a sudden, about four o’clock in the morning, you realise that, flat ass, this motherfucker’s just lying there. He’s not balling me. I mean, that really happened to me. Really heavy, like slam-in-the-face it happened. Twice. Jim Morrison and Leonard Cohen. And it’s strange ’cause they were the only two that I can think of, like prominent people, that I tried to… without really liking them up front, just because I knew who they were and wanted to know them.… And then they both gave me nothing… but I don’t know what that means. Maybe it just means they were on a bummer.” Leonard Cohen, it turned out, observed more than “nothing” about her. In his song’s lyrics and wistful melody, composed in the months after her death, Cohen captured her wit and lifelong, tortured relationship with beauty, writing: “And clenching your fist for the ones like us who are oppressed by the figures of beauty / You fixed yourself, you said, ‘Well, never mind we are ugly but we have the music.’ ”


George-Warren, Holly. Janis: Her Life and Music 

Janis Joplin At The Chelsea Hotel 

Photo by David Gahr


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JIMI HENDRIX ON AXIS BOLD AS LOVE


Jimi Hendrix on Axis: Bold as Love: “I just thought about the title. There might be a meaning behind the whole thing: The Axis of the earth turns around and changes the face of the world and completely different civilizations come about or another age comes about. In other words, it changes the face of the earth and it only takes about 1/4 of a day. Well, the same with love; if a cat falls in love or a girl falls in love, it might change his whole complete scene: Axis, Bold as Love . . . 1-2-3 rock around the clock.”


“To people who are not listening very much, our last LP will put them to sleep right away. When I first saw that design I thought ‘It’s great,’ but maybe we should have an American Indian. The three of us have nothing to do with what’s on that Axis cover. The LP came out unplanned. All the songs on it are exactly the way we felt right then. It was recorded eight months ago and two of the songs on it are a year old; “If Six Was Nine” and “She’s So Fine.” We recorded this album right after the first one. It was the next session after the first. It represents us then, but we’ve got prettier songs.”


-  March 9th, 1968 issue of Rolling Stone. 


Jimi Hendrix caught mid guitar-break during his performance at the Isle of Wight Festival, August 1970.Evening Standard/Getty Images


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People forget that ZZ Top started off with many more members, brothers and friends



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