Phonographic Revivalism

Note: I'm trying to get something right in the chapter I'm working on, and sometimes it helps to lay it out in a few paragraphs here, so, here:


As a musical form, the blues is often defined and discussed in terms of authenticity.  There is the blues, the real blues, the deep blues, and  the real deep blues.  There is the race-haunted question of whether white folks can really play the blues, which could also be a way of asking of only black folks can play the blues, a questions which may have started out as the assertion that black folks could only play the blues, since early record producers considered blues the only viable commercial form for African American musicians, and usually refused to record the full repertoire of early "blues" artists.  And of course there's pianist Henry Thomas's assertion that "Although they call it the blues today, the original name given to this kind of music was 'reals.'  And it was real because it made the truth available to the people in the songs."  Thomas is voicing here both a feeling felt among black musicians and audiences, and part of the ethic that has made the blues an attractive form to write about for progressively minded academics.  He's also performing some signifyin' on the fact that many musical pieces widely considered "blues" were actually called "reels" by their original audiences.

For all of this concern with realness though, the history and historiography of the blues is largely and loudly defined in relation to recordings, aural mediations of "real" performances.  As noted above, commercial recording practice shaped the basic parameters of the genre.  When John Hammond Sr. went looking for the recently deceased Robert Johnson in 1938, and couldn't find him, Hammond played Johnson's records at Carnegie Hall instead, an act of near-literal phonographic revivalism that I'd argue qualifies Hammond's From Spirituals To Swing concerts as the beginning o of the blues revival.  Two decades later, decades in which documentarian recordists like Alan Lomax compiled field recordings of blues players as part of his folklore studies the Robert Johnson LP King of the Delta Blues Singers became an integral artifact of the early 60s blues revival, and played no small part in the establishment of the name "Delta Blues" as a generic term, whose history fused documentary and commercial recording practices.  And, three decades after that, the release of Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings as a CD boxed set inaugurated another blues revival, one marked by the emergence of festivals, tourist destinations, and of course, the "Million Dollar Juke Joint" House of Blues Franchise.  If we want to, we could even continue to pin blues revivals to advances in consumer recording and replay technology by noting that 2003, the congressionally mandated "Year of the Blues" was marked by the release of several blues films, including of course Martin Scorsese presents The Blues, a 7 film series whose title should remind us of the canon-making power that these advances in duplicable media hold, particularly when presented by a prestigious interlocutor like Scorsese, or Lomax, or Hammond.

Martin Scorsese present The Blues premiered on PBS and was, later in the year, released in a handsome DVD boxed set.  Several other blues films released in 2003, like Robert Mugge's Last of the Mississippi Jukes, and the re-released Deep Blues also by Mugge, The American Folk Blues Festival Series, You See Me Laughin', The Howlin' Wolf Story, and more, went straight to DVD.  This allowed consumers to mark the 100th anniversary of W.C. Handy's encounter with "the wierdest music I ever heard" in a Tutwiler train station, from the comfort of their own homes.  it also marked an early high point in the distribution of such films via physical discs, as that format soon began to receive intense competition from streaming video.  Perhaps there will be another blues revival soon, to mark this new form, thopugh it really hasn't been very long since the last one.

All of this-the notions of documentary authenticity, of a blues and a past that is always vanishing, ineffable and barely and imperfectly preserved, the fascination with the obsolete, the vernacularization of commercial media, and especially the need to mediate old and ever-disappering forms of mediation in new formats, comes to bear on a video like this:

"Please don't make me face my generation alone!"

Is that a great line or does it just sound like its supposed to sound like one?  It works just fine in this song:

 Is this band (fun.) huge?  They seem like they should be.  Watching this video, I'm struck by the way that,for me (and I imagine other members of generation video ground zero), the pleasures of watching a music video include a nostalgia for the unsatisfying.  This video is filled with images--like the band performing (for who?)* in the warehouse or the chase through the streets--similar to ones which I remember thinking ranged from cheesy to almost working when I watched them in the afternoons after school in 1983, but which now, at least when well executed and combined with a song I like, elicit a thrill of recognition: "yes, that's how you do that."

*They're playing just for themselves, that's how you know they really mean it.  It's just what they'd be doing anyway, acting out exactly what you need to feel right now.  No, they don't even need a sound system.

Anyway, my rock and roll friends can laugh, but I think this band is kind of amazing.  Here's a few more cuts: first a live version of that song, "All the Pretty Girls."

One thing that's interesting, watching this performance after the studio video: Part of the reason that the band is playing in the warehouse, for themselves and for the viewer's pleasure, which become one and the same, is that its actually very hard to film and record a live musical performance of a pop or rock band in such a way that reminds people effectively of the live experience.  For a variety of reasons. The in-studio style performance, as in the radio station video, has its own aesthetic, and I can't comment on it effectively because I am so fond of it.  In such a situation, a well recorded sound will also sound a lot like what you would hear in the room; bands will be relaxed but still honestly in performance and doing so in a room that is supposed to contain recording equipment; you can hear what's going on in the songs, etc.

And then there's this song, "Be Calm."  The epic.  The studio version is here.  More than worth a listen.  Below is a live performance in front of an audience, filmed by an audience member.

The last one is interesting.  I think that its power depends on both the poor production values, and its attention to the performance itself, which puts the viewer in the position of enacting the filmmakers engagement with the performance, an engagement whose verisimilitude is underscored by the shaky camera, the tiny sound, and the clear focus on that singer.  There's a few videos I've found like this, and down the road I want to look at a few of them together.

Tonight we'll finish up with one more from fun., their Christmas song:

Union Man

Well, Labor Day, or as Barrett calls it, "fake May Day" is almost over, but I still want to say something about a certain song.  "Union Man" by the Cate Brothers, from their 1975 album, Cate Bros. (pronounced "Cate Brothers"), produced by Steve Cropper, who also plays guitar on several tracks, including this one.  Here's the the songs, before we get much farther in:

 Its easy, in the first couple of verse, to hear just the narrator's skepticism about what the Union Man has to offer, his doubts about paying dues and going on strike. Since at least the 1980s that's the kind of sentiment that we expect from a narrator who declares "It's six A. M. and I'm out on the job/working like a fool for my pay" when he introduces himself.  Certainly that's all that blogger/DJ JB hears, as he encounters the song on an archaeological dig through the May 22, 1976 broadcast of Casey Kasem's American Top 40. But there's more to it than that, and the third verse and chorus are critical to what I'm convinced is a conversion narrative. first, lets pick up the last verse before the break, where, at the end, Ernie declares: "All the money, that I'm getting paid/Looks like I'm bound to lose!" which is as concise a summary of the the wage worker's place in capitalism as you'll find on record.  That's followed by a middle section that's all about point and counterpoint, including a guitar duel between Earl and Steve Cropper.  Then, his doubts resolved, at least temporarily, the narrator declares "hey hey Mr. union man, thank you for the helping hand/hey hey Mr. union man, so glad you understand."

The doubts in those first two verses always made me hear that last line as sarcasm, but I'm sure that's not the case now.  There's very little sarcasm or cynicism in any of the songs that make up the 4 Cate Brothers albums from 1975-1979.  In fact, until 1979's Tom Dowd produced Fire on the Tracks, every song is sung as a first person, narrative, and usually a heartfelt one.  That doesn't mean that that the narrator of every song is Ernie or Earl, but it makes it easier to get to know the narrators they speak through. And the narrator of this song is, by the end of the song, sincerely happy to take a "helping hand" from someone who "understands" even if getting to that point is a challenge to what he believes he's supposed to be doing to feed his "hungry family."  Not simply a pro-union song, its a dramatization of the conflict between unionism and the ideological disposition of much the southern working class.  Its instructive.

In many ways, "Union Man" much less ambivalent about the unionism than the song "King Harvest" by the Cates' friends, The Band.  If you're not familiar with the relationship between these two groups, here's some background.  Interestingly, Robbie Robertson, a voracious reader, has said that he wrote "King Harvest" after hearing about and reading about The Southern Tenant Farmer's Union.  In an interview last year, Earl said that they wrote the song after reading a book about the STFU, and I've been wondering since if it was, this one?  Earl and Ernie both also said that the song was originally slower, that Cropper wrote the opening like and sped it up, which explains his co-writing credit on the tune.

Since I've started this, its past labor day, but hardly time to put aside the value of work.  The Cates kept working long after those 4 albums, and even after "retiring" in 2006, they still work a lot.  Here's a more recent performance of "Union Man" from the slightly surreal locale of the Cherokee Casino in Siloam Springs.  Thanks for listening.

Manteca/Media/Memory

This is just a note, as much to myself as to the world. Since I've been working on music from the 40s-60s I've used Youtube as a source for performances and recordings that I have a hard time finding otherwise. It's been very helpful and I've been reminded of Mike Albrecht's talk at the IASPM conference last year about youtube as the last repository of all popular music. I wasn't convinced then but I am more so now, though that's not my main interest today.

One thing I am finding more and more interesting are videos like this one:



This raises all kinds of interesting questions for me. I think that it says something about the uploader's feelings not only about the music, but about the technology that plays the music back. One thing that jumps out is the way that technology, which we often think of as perpetually forward-moving, is itself a repository of memory and feeling as well as having the ability to reproduce content which triggers memories and feelings. And these are feelings that the uploader expects to be shared to some degree, and which I think are shared, given the number of videos of LP records of various speeds and sizes that you can find on Youtube.

I wrote a little about this in my Nat Cole chapter, tho there i mainly focused on the comments that people post on videos and the opposition usually constructed in such comments between Cole's music and "all that noise they call music today." I think this has to be some kind of genre: videos of records on turntables or in jukeboxes playing old songs, often with model numbers specified and sometimes with information about the digital transfer. It's analog authenticity, which is ironic if you think about the meaning of the word "analog."

It's unlikely that this will come up to a great degree in the Gillespie chapter, but I think that it will in the Ronnie Hawkins chapter, as there I will specifically dealing with media forms in as part of the story of the invention of Americana and the search for the great bootleg in the sky.

I salute You, Brother.

when I met my friend Billy in 1985 he had a cassette tape of the Jim Carroll Band playing this song, "It's Too Late" on Fridays. he'd recorded it by holding his cassette player up to the TV speaker. That cassette was/is like a holy relic to us, or at least to me and I think to him. Despite what some might think, it isn't any less so because can go fetch the audio and video from all three songs that Jim and his band played that night, and stick them up here. That's what we wanted, after all, and that wanting, to hear this throbbing, snarling, slashing performance at will, is what made that cassette so special.

Jim Carroll died yesterday. I suppose that it's a wonder he made it to 60, but it's still sad. I've seen "People Who died" posted alot, but thanks to my friend Billy, this song has always been the one I remembered from the performance on Fridays that we'd both seen at the same time in different places. "Day and Night" from the Fridays show is up on Youtube as well, and it's also a great performance. There are also some homemade videos from Dry Dreams, the Jim Carroll band's second and I think best LP.

I'll post something tomorrow so this doesn't just turn into the RIP blog.

Cates on video

Ok, so since i've brought the Cate Brothers up a few times here, I thought I'd post these videos that I found on Youtube. The first one is from an AETN performance. it's the newest lineup of the band, but the song,"Start All Over Again" is an oldie. There's a version on one of the two Cates Gang albums, from 1970, and another one on the second Asylum album, In One Eye and Out The Other in 1976.


and here is a video montage that some dude ("Music Mike" put to Union Man, from the 1975 self-titled LP. I psted some thoughts awhile back regarding this song, whether it;s anti-or pro union. I hold by my revised take: that it's about a southern working man putting aside years of previously held predjudices and facing the fact that he can't face down the bosses by himself.