Category Archives: Music

Paul Brady: An Irish Bard

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Paul Brady was 67 this month. Here’s a tribute.

Bard: A tribal poet – singer skilled gifted in composing and reciting verses of satire and eulogy on heroes and their deeds.

‘Craftsmanship names an enduring, basic human impulse, the desire to do a job well for its own sake’. (Richard Sennett)

‘Some guys got it down …. Paul Brady …. Secret heroes’. (Bob Dylan)

Paul Brady harbours and husbands extraordinary talents. He is a great singer of traditional ballads in the Irish and American traditions able to breathe life into ‘set texts’ through his exquisite instrumental and vocal control and his natural discretion.

These craft skills allow him to reveal the often buried wit, vigour, romance, tragedy and flat out strange power of those remarkable works composed by the great ‘Anon’.

He is also an accomplished guitarist with the quiet unflashy discipline of the skilled accompanist who can anchor a tune setting a virtuoso fiddler like Andy McGan free to fly.

He also has driving rock ‘n’ roll chops learned through ingesting whole the riffs and rhythms of the Shadows and Chuck Berry as a youth.

As far as traditional ballad performance goes Paul Brady’s version of Arthur McBride is rightly regarded as an enduring triumph.

It was wholly appropriate that he performed it at the recent Dublin memorial evening for the late keeper of the Irish word hoard, Seamus Heaney.

Heaney would have understood how the seeming ease of Paul Brady’s performance of Arthur McBride was based on a deep understanding of the ballad form and hard hours spent honing his instrumental and vocal craft.

It takes a great artist to make the artful seem artless.

The song is an Irish tall tale featuring protagonists Arthur and the unnamed narrator encountering a military recruiting party led by a bumptious sergeant as they take the early morning air one Christmas day.

The Sergeants blandishments and promises of glory, riches and female favours are satirically shown to be counterfeit coin by Arthur who though he chooses not to join the army would clearly have been a first class barrack room lawyer had he chosen to enlist.

Arthur and his friend turn the tables on the sergeant and the unfortunate little drummer boy leaving them bloody backed on the beach and the boys then merrily continue their seasonal stroll.

The drummer boys instrument, his ‘rowdeydowdow’ having been made a playful football bobs uselessly in the tide. The song represents a victory for the native over the coloniser, of hedge school wit and satire over the prepared script. Brains beats bullshit.

Paul Brady’s performance of the ballad as shown here is peerless. Nothing is pushed too hard, the song virtually seems to sing itself with Brady as the pilot who knows every ripple of the tide and currents as he steers the song home.

Now he allows a little drift, now he touches the tiller, now he adjusts the tempo and volume to bring out the full salty tang of the song. His guitar playing throughout is astonishingly deft and alert to every nuance of feeling.

Arthur McBride is a big song filled with lovely sly dramatic touches which Paul Brady inhabits with unshowy assurance.

Listening to the song you naturally follow the arc of the narrative and feel yourself drawn in to the world it presents. In traditional song Paul Brady wears the bards cloak teasing out the shape and character of the song sure in its proven potency to cast a spell over its audience.

As a contemporary songwriter he has at least two hatfuls of wonderful songs and he is the author of two certifiable classics; the euphoric ‘Crazy Dreams’ and the heart rending ‘The Island’.

He has also found himself in demand as a supplier of quality material for artists of the calibre of Tina Turner (Steel Claw, Paradise Is Here) and Bonnie Raitt (Luck Of The Draw, Not The Only One).

Paul Brady’s songs are imbued with deep feeling set within satisfyingly well carpentered structures. They are the product of inspiration shaped by a craft won through a thorough musical education.

Paul Brady’s songs are built to last and last they will.

This is not a matter of tricks or sleight of hand but of a deep understanding in his mind, in his heart, in his hands and fingers and in his voice that real songs truly speak to and of the lives we lead both above and below the public surface.

To produce these songs he draws upon traditional practice and the craft techniques of which he is a master. He is then free to follow his inspiration wherever it leads and to choose the right tools for the task at hand.

Like his Irish near contemporary Van Morrison he can mesmerically summon the spirits to open up the terrestrial and mystical landscapes of Ireland. Like Van he is a canny songsmith finding the particular combinations of lyric, melody, rhythm and vocal attack needed to make a song take off on record and in performance.

A perfect example of this is, ‘Crazy Dreams’ one of the great ‘leaving my hometown’ songs where he lights out for the territory to find out if his those dreams of independence, of self realisation in a new world, can be made to come true.

The song has a thrillingly heady melody and a rhapsodic rhythm always flowing forward like waters heading for the falls.

Paul Brady’s vocals achieve tremendous excitement for the listener because of the way he maintains his setting at intense simmer rather than boil.

You can feel the gathering impulse to follow the dream in every second of the performance. Ringing, dazzling guitars and shimmering keyboards surf atop drums which drive the dream forward.

He’s leaving behind the Joycean snow falling on the Liffey, the fog of familiarity that shrouds his true identity as he packs his suitcase filled with his own dreams not those of his city, his friends and his family.

Now is the time for one last look back – closing the door on the hesitations of the past before turning definitively to the future.

Now is the time to drink champagne with your darling companion until you both fall down. Tomorrow the dream comes alive.

This is a journey we all have to take for someone elses’s dreams get you nowhere.

The Island is a miraculous piano centred meditation on the pain and futility of civil wars yoked arfully to a deeply tender love song. In this song Paul Brady incandescently evokes a triumph of love over hate.

As an Irishman he knows the power of death fixation (the young boys dying in the ditches) yet he hymns the nurturing power of another love which finds its expression in lovemaking by the healing waters of the ocean.

His vision for his neighbours rejects a future built on slogans, tombstones and twisted wreckage. Rather, it looks to a future illuminated by the simple dreams we all have for ourselves and our families.

Our children deserve to inherit a country not mired in the hurts and traumas of the past. In so doing Paul Brady willingly takes on tne role of the holy fool opposing the zealots who are willing to sacrifice anyone and everything to achieve their utopian goals.

The simple message of the song is choose love – be prepared to be a fool for love.

Paul Brady’s sublime vocal in this song is filled with bruised tenderness. Who would not want to go to the Island when the invitation is sung with such alluring enticement?

Throughout the song the prayerful piano piano (by the late Kenny Craddock) invokes the redemptive balm of the love of one person for another.

If that’s a foolish faith so be it.

Paul Brady’s performance of this wonderful song makes that faith affectingly real and welcoming.

Paul Brady is a great musician whose work has firmly placed him in the front rank of the the bardic company of Ireland.

An Irish Bard is something to be.

Recommended listening:

Paul Brady has never made a bad record. Here are a few of my favourites with key tracks in brackets.

Paul Brady/Andy Irvine (Mary And The Soldier)

Welcome Here Kind Stranger (The Lakes Of Pontchatrain, Paddy’s Green Shamrock Shore)

Hard Station (Crazy Dreams, Busted Loose, Nothing But The Same Old Story)

True For You (Helpless Heart)

Trick Or Treat (Nobody Knows, Trick Or Treat)

Back To The Centre (The Island, The Homes Of Donegal)

The Missing Liberty Tapes a 1978 live recording stands as a high peak of Irish acoustic based music making.

Footnote August 2014:

Thanks to the man himself for reading this post and setting up links from his twitter and Facebook accounts. This post has become the most popular to date in the history of the blog!

Bob Dylan: When You’re Lost in The Rain in Juarez … Tom Thumb’s Blues

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All’s Well That Begins And Ends Well

A record exists between two silences.

The silence before the song starts is one of expectation and anticipation. Sometimes the silence after the song has finished is one of satisfaction, resolution and even joy.

When that happens you have a record that enters your personal pantheon – one you will return to over and over again.

Good beginings set the emotional mood of a song and should intrigue the listener ; beckoning them to lean forward and open up their hearts and minds.

Good endings deliver on the promise of their beginnings and close a song like a ship after a long journey safely docking in its home port – ready to sail again.

Dylan’s Tom Thumb’s Blues is the first from my own pantheon (more to come later!). It seem to me to begin and end exceptionally well.

Feel free to comment suggesting your own favourites.

Nobody tells stories like Bob Dylan.

This pearl comes from his mid 60s golden period when miracles emerged from his mind with machine gun rapidity leaving everyone else breathless in his rear view mirror.

Neither he nor any one else has ever caught up.

 

The song opens with entwined burnished mid tempo rolling piano and guitar lines evoking a journey to a humid landscape where unknown fevered delights and dreads lie in wait for the traveller as he voyages through the enervating, sticky exotic heat.

Dylan delivers the opening lines with his patented, langorous, half-past one in the morning, half a bottle of tequila to the good, come – hither charm.

‘When you’re lost in the rain in Juarez
And it’s Eastertime too
And your gravity fails
And negativity don’t pull you through’

Now, tell me you don’t want to know what happens next?

Some five minutes later we have have been treated to a magic lantern show spotlighting Rue Morgue Avenue, the legends of the mysterious St Annie and the entrancing Sweet Melinda, watched Angel being picked up, avoided the cops and sweated the booze and drugs out.

Tom Thumb, of course, remains unmet and unmentioned.

Throughout the song the band provide a supporting magic carpet of sound that allows Dylan to spin a narrative where he is simultaneously in the thick of the nightmarish action and serenely floating above it all.

The peerless Paul Griffin plays piano with wonderful rhythmic assurance while Mike Bloomfield’s guitar glistens throughout like liquid poured gold.

Al Kooper’s organ provides the aura while Bobby Gregg’s railroad drums provide momentum for a song that in all other respects seems to have escaped temporality.

As the song concludes we come to understand that either the singer will have to go home or he will die a lonely exile’s death.

Bob Dylan, no stranger to Homer, knows that all Odysseys must end.

The weary hero has to return home – even if he’s not exactly sure what kind of welcome awaits him there.

Everyone said they’d stand behind me
When the game got rough
But the joke was on me
There was nobody even there to bluff
I’m going back to New York City
I do believe I’ve had enough

In Bob Dylan’s life, though he has criss-crossed the globe pursuing his vocation, all paths eventually lead back to New York ; the city where Robert Zimmerman truly became Bob Dylan and where he was launched into artistic immortality.

There are several epic live versions of the song. You should seek out two in particular.

The song was a staple of the astounding 1966 tour. The Manchester version features Dylan’s spectacularly swooning, surely he’s going to fall over now stoned vocals where syllables are seemingly stretched to infinity. Garth Hudson’s provides the all enveloping organ which seems to lift Bob to the heavens, if he wasn’t high enough already!

There is a further deeply committed and intense performance that occurred on Dylan’s return to New York City soon after 9/11.

Uncharacteristically, he precedes the song with a spoken introduction acknowledging his debt to the city – a debt he and the band discharge to the full in a performance that has a glorious ragged grandeur that electrifies the Madison Square Garden crowd.

Immortal Jukebox A4 Bernard Cribbins “Right Said Fred”

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‘In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will … It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.’

(Karl Marx)

‘Those who best know human nature will acknowledge what strength light hearted nonsense gives to a hard working man.’

(Coleridge)

‘So Fred said, ‘Let’s have a cuppa tea
And we said, ‘Right – oh’

(Myles Rudge/Ted Dicks)

There have been innumerable ethnographic, sociological, psychological, political, historical and even psycho-geographic studies describing the nature and peculiarities of the English working man.

Some of these have even been readable by people not chained and bound in the salt mines of academia.

I plead guilty to having a few feet of shelf space dedicated to the subject myself.

However, I would advise anyone looking to gain an acute insight into the character and mores of said working man to look no further than Bernard Cribbins classic, forensically brilliant examination of the subject in his 1962 recording, ‘Right Said Fred’.

‘Right Said Fred’ belongs to that now rare and frequently derided genre – the comedy record. Fair enough – most comedy records are only funny in the deluded imaginations of their creators and even those that are mildly amusing barely warrant a single repetition let alone an honoured place on the Immortal Jukebox.

Right Said Fred is the exception that proves the rule.

This song, written by Myles Rudge and Ted Dicks and performed with perfect comic panache by Bernard Cribbins is laugh out loud hilarious and has me smiling and laughing every time even though I must have heard it a hundred times or more over the last 50 years.

It is also the kind of song that makes you feel good about your fellow man – who turns out to be just as clueless as you. It is a song that makes you glad to be alive.

Context: English life and working practices in the pre Beatles era were openly structured around universally recognised, if not universally accepted, class and status divisions.

Everyone knew their place even if they detested the whole system and were actively planning to subvert it.

Most people, especially blue collar workers, didn’t think too much about how the system came into being – instead they wanted to play the system for their own advantage, to win small battles every day and put one over the bastards who would grind you down if you gave them half a chance.

Here’s the situation out of which the chaos and comedy of good intentions gone awry proceeds. Three workmen; Fred (the Foreman), Charlie (the Charge Hand) and our unnamed narrator arrive at a house to move a large piece of furniture, which though never formally identified, is probably a piano.

This is an awkward, beligerantly heavy thing that will test the limits of their strength, their willpower, their know – how, their patience and their camaraderie. And, the structural integrity of the house itself.

Ted Dicks provides an easy to whistle, all-together now, nudge-nudge, springy music hall melody set to an ironically bouyant rhythm.

Sound effects – heaving labour, creaking stairs, boinging springs and collapsing walls and ceilings were furnished by the record’s producer, George Martin.

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in his pre – Beatles incarnation as the boss of Parlophone Records and a comedy specialist already having logged hits with Peter Ustinov, Peter Sellers, Rolf Harris and Charlie Drake.

Myles Rudge, the lyricist, provides a narrative that is economical and full of clever, acute comic details using a propulsive, instantly memorable rhyme scheme which in concert with his partner’s musical hooks virtually guarantees the song will lodge deep in your brain.

The song is then delivered by Bernard Cribbins, a wonderfully droll comic actor rather than a singer, as a shaggy – dog story using alternate tones of baffled irritation and relaxed nonchalance.

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As each verse progresses Cribbins in virtuoso style subtly ups the tempo and rhythmic attack to mirror the enfolding disaster. Let the mayhem begin!

Obviously, they begin by trying to lift it but, despite Fred and our narrator, one on each end, striving might and main together they, ‘couldn’t even lift it’. Oh dear, they could be in for a long day here!

So, planning, strategy, and tactics will be required – and you can’t begin to address such weighty matters without the essential fortification of English life, the elixir that punctuates all activity and transforms the perception of all situations – a cup of tea!

One of the first things you learn when joining any group of working men is that the tea-break is a sacred rite and not to be trifled with on any account.

In an increasingly atomised society drinking tea remains one of the only pursuits shared by virtually the whole population. Something like 100 million cups of tea are downed by the English every single day of the year!

Fred, restored by his first cup of tea, decides that reinforcements are required – so Charge Hand Charlie is called up from,’the floor below’ and noisily ascends to join his fellow workers.

However, Charlie’s presence and further straining, heaving and of course complaining prove of no avail. They were getting nowhere. Only one thing for it – another cup of tea!

Charlie, refreshed, has a think (always a dangerous thing) and suggests that all the handles need to be removed and moreover, in an inspired phrase, ‘the things what held the candles’. Sadly it did no good.

Our narrator sagely reflects that, ‘he never thought it would’. The English working man has always expected that the best laid plans of his supposed superiors will inevitably end in dismal failure even as he carries out these plans with shrugged shoulders.

The ‘I told you so’ or, ‘There’s a surprise’ is generally uttered only under the breath or mimed to their mates via a barely raised eyebrow.

They proceed to take the feet and even the seat off. That should have got them somewhere but no it did not! Time for another cup of tea. Energised, Fred realises that if they are going to shift the, ‘so – and – so’ they will have to take a door off.

They succeed with this despite the bad twinges they experience taking off the hinges (having a bad back is virtually a badge of honour for the English working man). Sadly, this too got them nowhere and so they down another cup of tea.

Fred is now begining to get exasperated and declares with warlike intent, ‘that there wall is gonna have to go’! But, even with it all down they were no further forward. They retreat and have another cup of tea.

At this point Charlie has another think and in a seemingly inspired brainwave opines that he has got a sort of feeling that if only they could remove the ceiling it would only be a matter of using a rope or two and they could solve all their problems and, ‘drop the blighter through!’.

Fred, and he will come to bitterly regret this, agrees to Charlie’s madcap plan with electric enthusiasm.

Before you can draw breath Fred equipped with a crowbar is climbing up a ladder and laying into the ceiling with many a mighty blow!

Oh dear, Oh dear, Oh dear. Inevitably, a half of ton of rubble falls on top of Charlie’s unprotected dome.

What state Fred is then in and what his hopes for recovery are we never learn.

Charlie and our narrator decide the piano will remain unmoved and, pausing only for another cup of tea, they go home.

As they saunter homeward our narrator wryly notes that Fred has a tendency to be hasty and that you, ‘never get nowhere if you are too hasty’. The piano will just have to be left amidst the dust and rubble on the landing.

No doubt the whole saga will make for a lengthy anecdote down the pub where mugs of tea will be replaced by pints of beer.

Cheers!

(Warning and Disclaimer: Fred and his crew flagrantly breach many health and safety regulations during the course of the song. DO NOT try to follow their example at home!).

Scorecard:

Pianos moved: 0

Doors removed: 1

Walls removed: 1

Ceilings destroyed: 1

Serious injuries: 1

Houses trashed: 1

Cups of tea drunk: 6

Notes and Comments:

‘Right Said Fred’ reached No 10 in the UK charts in July 1962. It followed a previous hit, ‘Hole In The Ground’ also written by Rudge and Dicks which had gone one place higher in February of the same year.

The latter song again mined the seam of chippy working class humour: detailing the confrontation between a hole-digging workman and a snooty bowler-hatted official who observed that, ‘you are digging it round and it ought to be square’.

The workman after taking a drag on his cigarette replied that his hole was fine and he just couldn’t bear to dig it elsewhere. The song concludes with the workman noting with quiet satisfaction that the hole is now gone; the ground is smooth and beneath it is the bloke in the bowler hat!

The whole story is brilliantly told by Bernard Cribbins in well under two minutes.

Noel Coward, a connoisseur if there ever was one of the comic song, chose,’Hole In The Ground’ as one of his ‘Desert Island Discs’. It has also been suggested that the Count Basie Band heard the song when touring the UK and became great fans.

Rudge and Dicks:

Myles Rudge (1926 – 2007) was an all purpose post-war entertainment professional having worked as an actor and scriptwriter for radio and TV. He had a particularly productive working relationship with Kenneth Williams.

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His only other hit song with Dicks was the children’s song, ‘A Windmill In Old Amsterdam’ which is not recommended for listening by anyone over the age of 5.

Ted Dicks (1928 – 2012) had an art school and theatre background. In addition to his work with Rudge he wrote film and TV theme songs. The most notable of these was for the cult children’s TV series, ‘Catweazle’ – another beloved baby boomer classic!

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Bernard Cribbins has now attained the BAFTA clutching status of,’national treasure’ in British life.

On TV he has appeared in everything from, ‘Dr Who’ to, ‘The Wombles’ and, ‘Jackanory’.

On film apart from three of the Carry On series he has appeared in two classic comedies with Peter Sellers, ‘Two Way Stretch’ and, ‘The Wrong Arm Of The Law’.

He also had a key role as Perks the railway station assistant in Lionel Jeffries’ family film masterpiece, ‘The Railway Children’.

His name in any list of credits is a very welcome sign and a virtual guarantee of pleasure.

The Great Gigs : Graham Parker & The Rumour – A Triumphant Comeback!

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You really should have been there!

Shepherds Bush Empire London October 2013

Thirty years since their last gig in London!

‘…Mr Lawrence! Mr Lawrence! A man come through!’. (Van Morrison)

‘ Love is lovelier the second time around’. (Cahn/Van Heuson)

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Passion is no ordinary word.

Graham Parker, even in the doldrums of a thirty year plus career in music, has always written and performed his songs with shattering commitment.

And, especially when partnered (not supported) by the astonishingly resourceful and committed group of musicians known as The Rumour, he made records and played concerts between 1975 and 1981 that will stand as peaks of rock excellence in the passionate tradition of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison.

Parker, a scrawny Englishman with electric energy, has generally punched above his weight as a singer and performer – always reaching out for the perfect dramatic expression of the emotions and narratives contained within his extensive songbook.

His ace to play is a thrillingly soulful voice which can plead for, pledge, and command love.

Parker ‘s vocals lend colour, weight and dynamism to his songs whether in his tender yearning ballads (‘Fool’s Gold’) his wide screen technicolour story epics (‘Watch The moon Come Down’) or in his helter- skelter, jump-on or be run over rockers (‘Soul Shoes’).

A Graham Parker vocal at his best has instantly recognisable authority (you know he really means it!) without sacrificing his vulnerability or sense of wonder.

The Rumour: Brinsley Schwarz (guitar), Martin Belmont (guitar), Bob Andrews (keyboards), Andrew Bodnar (bass) and Steve Goulding (drums) combine impressive musical chops with the rare ability to really listen to each other and their lead singer.

So, the songs they play have an organic texture that allows them to breathe, build and bloom into flesh and blood life. This is a band committed to each other and their craft.

It’s no accident that they took their name from a song by The Band – the ultimate exemplars of co-operative built to last music making in the rock era.

In their heyday Parker and the Rumour were a match for any live band in the world and their classic albums – Howling Wind and Squeezing Out Sparks – were astounding examples of rock songcraft.

In reaction the hip critics raved, the cogniscenti queued and fellow artists like Bruce Springsteen listened hard. However, lacking irresistible hits, a clearly defined commercial image and extensive radio play the great British and American publics and the music moguls were never convinced.

Eventually the grind of endless touring without commensurate reward took its inevitable toll.

Graham Parker relocated to the Woodstock area and settled down in every sense proceeded to record a series of intelligent and well wrought albums that satisfied his audience without troubling the mass market.

Almost every one contained a song or two most songwriters would have killed for and all featured singing that could lift or break your heart.

The Rumour went their separate ways and found niches that satisfied their varied needs for full time involvement in music.

And that’s where the story might have ended. Another band, much loved and fervently recalled, that as time went by became more of a myth and less of a reality.

Until, out of the blue, a crowd funded documentary led to a one off reunion for Parker and some of the band and a decision that a reunited GP and The Rumour would record another album – now known as, ‘Three Chords Good’.

To add to the twilight zone like sense that, ‘something weird is happening here’ it turned out that the actor/director Judd Apatow, a longtime fan, thought he might usefully cast Graham Parker as a once revered rocker beloved by the mid-life crisis hero in his movie ‘This is 40’.

In the movie the hero gets his favourite band together. So, through the magical power of Hollywood Graham Parker and the Rumour after a thirty year lay off trod the boards together again and found that they still had the elusive chemistry that makes a band really special.

They might have gained a few pounds and gone grey hair but musically they still snarled and burned and perhaps now had more control and swing – better able to know when to push and when to throttle back.

New songs were written and recorded for ‘Three Chords Good’ which emerged as a set of beautifully conceived and played songs worthy of the band’s history.

Given all the above – why not tour again and see if the old soul shoes could still tear up the dance floor?

So, conscious of my own grey hair and how desperately I wanted GP and the Rumour to be once again the great band who had often made an in concert reality of the challenge presented in taking on Sam Cooke’s ‘Let’s Have A Party’ I took my seat in the Shepherd’s Bush Empire with no small amount of nervousness.

From the first, everything’s in place, burnished opening chords of the endlessly yearning ‘Fool’s Gold’ it was obvious that this was a band and a singer that were not simply leaning on memories of former glories.

Rather, here was a band of brothers who were, almost anazedly, finding that they could still make their songs come freshly alive as new creations.

You could see old friends in the audience turning to each other with face-splitting grins mouthing ‘My god they really still have got it!’

Their mojo was definitely still working and song by song they burned up the stage and lit up our night. Particular highlights included a scorching take on Howling Wind featuring Brinsley Schwarz’s barbed wire guitar and Bob Andrews just this side of crazed keyboards alongside GP’s anguished vocal.

A new song ‘Snake Oil Capital of the World’ showed Parker’s vocals could still have sarcastic bite and that the Rumour could keep him on his toes through the controlled intensity of their playing.

During ‘Discovering Japan’ Steve Goulding and Andrew Bodnar showed what a potent rhythm section they were with the former’s powerhouse drumming especially impressive.

The expressionist drama of ‘Watch the Moon come down’ captured the whole outfit in magesterial form switching from relaxed vamping to all out attack with fluent ease – the theatre seemed bathed in spectral moonlight.

Martin Belmont, a giant figure who always looks as if he is just about to start a fight, played throughout with lyrical beligerance and on a swooningly intense ‘Local Girls’ his guitar rang out to the rafters.

The showstopping ‘Dont Ask Me Questions’ proved, if proof were needed, that Graham Parker does have a heart full of soul and the vocal graces to arouse shivers in his audience.

His songs can also summon whole audience to passionately sing as his ragged but righteous chorus. No-one left the gig without having been moved and delighted at witnessing a true renaissance.

Looking back, the concert acted as a series of triumphant demonstrations of Graham Parker and The Rumour’s passion, skill and sheer determination to do honour to themselves, their heritage, their new songs and their audience.

Not that this audience needed much winning over. I have never felt such waves of such pure affection travelling between an audience and the stage. Indeed at times the band seemed taken aback by the overwhelming reaction their heroic playing produced.

There was a real sense that the Empire was filled with people on and off stage celebrating the good times of old and deliriously happy to be creating, not recreating, new peaks of experience.

Graham Parker and The Rumour have weathered their storms, come to terms with the rollercoaster of good and bad fortune and come through into a new world.

Sometimes, although you properly never believe this in youth, love can be lovelier the second time around!

Jesse Winchester 1944 – 2014 : The Parting Glass

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Jesse Winchester died at the age of 69 in April 2014.

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I first heard him in the mid 1970s on Charlie Gillet’s rightly legendary radio show, ‘Honky Tonk’ which became my open university course on 20th century popular music.

Jesse Winchester was a highly accomplished songwriter and an affecting singer who could hush a room with the intensity of his performances.

He was recognised by fellow songwriters of the calibre of Elvis Costello, John Prine and Ron Sexsmith as a master of their calling.

Bob Dylan, surely the dean of Songwriting, said that you could not talk about the best songwriters in the world without including Jesse and he paid him the compliment (granted to few of his contemporaries) of playing one of his songs on his wonderful radio show, ‘Theme Time Radio Hour’.

Jesse was born in Memphis and always carried with him a southern courtliness and a very strong sense of place.

When he wrote about a state or a town, say Mississippi or Bowling Green, he brought it to life with such arrestingly vivid imagery that you really felt you had spent time there with him as your home town guide.

There was an elegiac, black and white photograph quality to many of his best songs. I often went to the prints of Walker Evans or Dorothea Lange, who shot so many evocative documentary images of the pre-civil rights era south, to find a visual companion for his work.

It seems to me that his songs emerge into the air like photographic prints blooming into rich detailed life from the developing fluid of his imagination.

Jesse Winchester’s songs were mature crafted works: the product of a highly intelligent and sensitive man with an acute sense of the power of the memories we accumulate as we move through a life.

Memories of our communities, our families, our friends and lovers, our contempories and the times we were together in.

Inevitably, recollections of victories and defeats, of love we held onto and love we threw away.

He had the will and the artistry to closely examine those memories and to clothe them in story songs illuminated by powerful sensory images.

Listening to the best of his songs is a rich immersive experience which can feel like a dream that stays with you long after you have woken up and which you know will reurn to haunt you.

My favourite Jesse Winchester song is, ‘Mississippi You’re On My Mind’ a wonderful almost archaeologically rich presentation of the sights, sounds and ambience of life in the rural heartland of the real and mythological state of Mississippi.

Like all the great Jesse Winchester songs this song does not shout at you, rather it beckons you to lean forward and listen to a master storyteller. A master who is so relaxed he seems to be singing the song while rocking back and forth on his front porch with a glass of bourbon at hand.

The instrumentation is simple – plucked guitar, atmospheric shimmer piano, stirring strings and a swelling vocal chorus supporting Jesse’s sweet, molasses filled vocal.

The song paints a swooning picture of an unhurried life lived in a cotton country backwater.

You are made aware both by the lyric and the melody of the humidity of the south, of the sun that blazes from the sky wrapping everyone in an angry oven heat.

This is a land that has seen times of plenty – when the price of cotton was high. It is also a land that has felt the disdainful stamp of an invading army, neglect following painful defeat and economic depression.

Jesse Winchester paints in the details which make a scene come alive – the rusted barbed wire fence, the lazy creek, the tar paper shack.

This is a land where one crop was king so you see the field specked with dirty cotton lint and in the background the characteristic sound of a John Deere tractor.

Meanwhile the air is suffused with the cloying smell of the honeysuckle vine, the barks of hungry dogs and the rustle of grasshoppers. Only the snakes coiled up in the thick weeds and the old men are asleep.

‘Mississippi You’re On My Mind’ is a loving recreation of a physical and emotional home place, a lullaby and a love letter to the past.

The song is touched with greatness.

The land described in the song is at one level Mississippi – on another level it is of course the land of childhood; that Eden we all ache to recover but never can except through the alchemy of art.

It is the land of lost content which Houseman once memorialised as the blue remembered hills. In the song Jesse Winchester has brought this land to poignant shining life.

Jesse Winchester had a good heart and pursued his vocation as a songwriter and singer with all the resources at his considerable command. He leaves an enduring legacy. May he rest in peace.

Recommended listening:

‘Jesse Winchester’ his superb debut album containing stand out songs such as the wistful, ‘Yankee Lady’, the ruminative, ‘Biloxi’ and the transcendent, ‘Brand New Tennessee Waltz’

His second album, ‘Third Down 110 To Go’ (often available as a twofer with the above) has two classics in the gospel drenched, ‘Isn’t That So’ and the quiet wisdom of ‘Dangerous Fun’ which contains the immortal couplet:

‘It takes patience to walk and spirit to run
But nothing to pity yourself
But it’s dangerous fun’

The twofer of, ‘Learn To Love It’ and, ‘Let The Rough Side Drag’ in addition to the masterpiece of, ‘Mississippi You’re On My Mind” has the maturely romantic, ‘Every Word You Say’, the lazy swooning ‘Defying Gravity’, the philosophical, ‘How Far To The Horizon’ and a brilliant take on the Amazing Rhythm Aces country pop classic ‘Third Rate Romance’.

All the rest of his output has sprinklings of glorious songcraft and winning vocals.

Look out in particular for the songs, ‘Bowling Green’, ‘A Showman’s Life’ and the emotionally overwhelming, ‘Sham-A-Ling-Dong-Ding’ which only a songwriter with a full heart and a steady head could bring off (see the YouTube clip below of his appearance on Elvis Costello’s TV show ‘Spectacles’ which demonstrates the effect he could have on his peers).

A trawl through his catalogue will find you arguing that I have missed out many of your favourites.

Arthur Alexander : The Poet of Melancholy – In The Middle Of It All

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The Immortal Jukebox A3 : 

Arthur Alexander – In The Middle Of It All 

‘The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation’.

(Henry David Thoreau)

‘Now I ache, with heartbreak and pain and the hurt that I just can’t explain’

(Arthur Alexander)

Imagine you are the manager of a blue collar bar in a tough small town.  You work long hours making sure everybody has a good time and that nobody’s good time winds up leaving someone else on their way to hospital.

You know who not to serve, who to share a joke with, who to warn off and who to throw out for their own good.

You keep a weighted pool cue just out of sight from the floor within your reach – just in case.

You stock the jukebox and make sure that there’s old and new favourites: something that counts as a home town anthem; several that are fast and loud for the boys from the base; plenty to dance and sing along to for the girls with the faraway looks in their eyes; and, some for everyone to openly or quietly cry over.

The night, though long, passes quickly for you and you don’t realise how tired you are until the door’s been shut on the last, loud, lonely drunk.

You look around and sigh thinking of the work needed before the whole cycle starts again after you wake up in a few hours.

Time to pour yourself a more than generous measure of premium whiskey and play one last song.

Only one will do.  Arthur Alexander, the patron saint of stoical fortitude.

I can’t go on, I can’t go on – I’ll go on.

‘In The Middle Of It All’ tells the story of a broken man surveying, with an eerie calm that almost amounts to existential detachment, the shattered ruins of his life : ‘It looks like my life is about to fall’.

Like all the great Arthur Alexander songs – ‘You Better Move On’,  ‘Anna’ and ‘Dream Girl’ – it’s the song of a grown up man; a man who has experienced joy and pain, the ecstasy and despair brought on by love and it’s loss.

Though Arthur’s songs are suffused with intense feeling they are in no sense hysterical – the besetting sin of so much pop music.

The record opens with a beautiful elegaic guitar figure that seems to glisten and shimmer in the background throughout the song.

It then flows on at a stately, magisterial ballad mid tempo with the swooning melody and instrumental backing acting as a cushioned support for Arthur Alexander’s deeply affecting and entrancing southern country soul voice.

Arthur’s vocal charm owes nothing to stylistic tricks rather it is founded on the ageless attraction of hearing the sound of a man’s open, if broken heart.

A sound that we can all recognise when it is authentic and true.  Arthur Alexander’s proud and wounded vocals once heard will echo on in your own heart.

While listening to the song it seems as if you have pulled up your bar stool next to a pleasant looking though downcast guy who with no fanfare or needy plea for sympathy tells you, if you want to hear, why it is that night after night you can find him resident at this bar and why, night after night, no matter how much he drinks he does not get drunk.

During the course of, ‘In The Middle of It All’ the drummer seems to beat out a steady purgatorial pilgrim’s tempo while Arthur’s exquisite vocal lays out the extent of his lonely and desolate emotional landscape.

His love for his girl which was, ‘Really, really real’ remains true even though the house and home their love had built together is now a reproachful ruin he occupies alone.

The place where they had been so happy, as far as he can recall, now has the rain steadily and dreadfully falling all around it.

What he once thought were the certainties of love and loyalty have vanished like some cruel mirage as his world, ‘Just came down one day’.

The song seems to summon up this heart and soul assaulting rain as the strings swell and the chorus of backing singers join Arthur in his examination of regret and loss.

You can feel the southern heat and humidity of Alabama where the song was recorded in every breath of Arthur’s vocal and in every beat of the music.

The wonderful piano playing provides arpeggios of insistent pain and a sense that, in this vale of tears, no shield of love or faith can ever be proof against the truth that a love which seemed so sure can, in an instant, crumble into mere dust.

Arthur Alexander’s singing throughout this song is filled with an aching tenderness as he caresses each word into bruised breath and life.

It is as if by singing with such scrupulous care he can somehow make whole his shattered heart or at least prevent it’s final destruction.

His singing remains controlled and conversational even as it grows in the depth of pain it examines.

Perhaps this is because the song, for this singer, even in such a situation is not a resentful scream but rather a tragic lullaby that tries despite all his trials to shore up a ruined life.

There is no escape from the realisation that all of us must sooner or later confront the inevitability of death, loss and failure.  For as the roman poet Virgil and Arthur Alexander knew living a clear eyed life involves coming to terms with the terrible truth that there are tears in things, ‘Sunt lacrimae rerum’.

If you want someone to hold your hand when this truth becomes real in your own life it’s hard to think of a better soul companion than Arthur Alexander.

‘In The Middle of It All’ is one of those rare songs that seems to live on in the silence after it has finished and after the record arm has returned to its cradle.

Sometimes for me that silence feels like the silence between two sobs.

Forty years ago David Bowie in ‘Young Americans’ uttered an anguished plea: ‘Ain’t there one damn song that can make me break down and cry’.

Well David, wherever you are tonight, here it is.

It has always worked for me.

Notes, credits and further listening:

It seems that Arthur Alexander recorded ‘In The Middle Of It All’ four times in his life.  The version discussed above is the second 1962 version.

Arthur Alexander recorded some 120 songs during his recording career for a variety of labels.  His initial career featuring many of the songs he will always be remembered for  began at Dot Records and includes some of the premier recording at Rick Hall’s FAME  studio in Muscle Shoals.

From 1965 he recorded for Sound Stage 7, a Monument subsidiary and in 1971 he recorded a lone album for Warner Brothers.  In 1975, out of the blue, he recorded the marvellously fluid and typically affecting single, ‘Everyday I Have To Cry’ which incredibly made the US top 50.

Finally and most poignantly of all he recorded the lovely low key, Lonely Just Like Me’ album issued by Elektra in 1993 some three months prior to his death.

This was later reissued by Hacktone Records with the addition of live performances and also with some hotel room demos which have some of the 3am in the morning, death on the horizon mood, shared with the New York Demos recorded by Buddy Holly prior to his untimely demise.

The ever alert Ace Records have issued two essential compilations covering the Dot and Monument Years.  The other albums have also been reissued.

A welcome tribute collection, ‘Adios Amigo’  came out under the Razor and Tie imprint and features Nick Lowe’s tender cover of, ‘In The Middle Of It All’ (indeed Lowe’s career in this millennium might be seen as the largely successful attempt to pare his songwriting and recording style to their essentials in emulation of Arthur Alexander).

A relatively small investment will furnish you with the heartbreakingly magnificent catalogue of one of the greatest singers and songwriters in any genre and you will surely find that the songs and performances will become treasured fixtures in your life.

They were certainly a fixture in the life of John Lennon who had clearly listened closely to Arthur Alexander as evidenced in The Beatles cover of, ‘Anna’.  The way that the famously acerbic Lennon could bring a wounded tenderness and discretion to ballad performances also betrays Artur’s influence.

John Lennon kept a jukebox filled with his favourite records to fortify him against the madness of the world that had grown up around him: prominent on his own immortal selection were records by Arthur Alexander.

Arthur Alexander was born in Sheffield Alabama in May 1940 and died in June 1993 in Nashville.  He was only 53 years old.

Despite recording several classic songs and having some of these covered by The Beatles (Anna) and The Rolling Stones (You Better Move On) he never really made much money from his songs.

Sadly, he was also prey to alcohol and mental health problems.  Disillusioned and depressed he was for many years largely estranged from the music business and spent long spells working as a janitor and school bus driver.

There is a heartfelt biography by Richard Younger, ‘Get A Shot Of Rhythm And Blues: The Arthur Alexander Story’ published by the University of Alabama.

Arthur Alexander might be said to be the epitome of the, ‘Country Soul’ style of music.

The movement as a whole is warmly evoked and intelligently discussed in Barney Hoskyn’s book, ‘Say It One Time For The Broken Hearted: Country Soul In The American South’ (Fontana/Bloomsbury).

Musicians growing up in a deeply segregated society were nevertheless heir to musical traditions that, principally through the medium of radio, effortlessly crossed the racial divide.  Mucians and singers recognised great songs whether they were played on country or ‘Race’ music stations.

The constellation of wonderful musicians and songwriters who worked at Stax, FAME and Muscle Shoals studios were artistic freedom riders shattering barriers within the sanctuary of the recording studio even if they had to step carefully once they emerged into the heavy heat of the Southern mainstreet.

Booker T and The MG’s, Dan Penn, Chips Moman, Spooner Oldham and their brothers and sisters in rhythm made records that were recognisably southern and spoke eloquently of the lives shared by black and white alike.

There is a website ‘The annotated Arthur Alexander’ which is a very valuable resource for anyone seriously interested in delving further into Arthur’s recording career.

Crying In The Rain : Phil Everly (1939 – 2014)

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… A time to rise and a time to fallPhil Everly

Come fill to me the parting glass

Goodnight and joy be with you all.

There is a magical moment during the Everly Brothers celebrated and triumphant reunion concert at The Albert Hall in 1983 which goes some way to explaining the source of their enduring appeal.

After opening with a heart warming , ‘Bye Bye Love, a rocking Claudette, the magesterial, ‘Walk Right Back’  a forlorn, stately, ‘I’ll Do My Crying In The Rain and the knock-out punch of, ‘Cathy’s Clown’ the band, which featured England’s guitar legend Albert Lee, took a momentary breather.

The two brothers briefly smiled at each other knowing now that a decade apart had in no sense diminished their power as performers.

Reassured, they leaned their heads close together and began to sing acapella :

‘These are the words of a frontier lad who lost his love when he went bad.’

The opening lines of, ‘Take A Message to Mary’.

As their two voices entwined in a rich fraternal harmony of heartbreakingly vulnerable perfection you can feel the whole audience catch their breath as countless personal memories are evoked.

Memories of the passing years with all their freight of love, joy and loss.  Memories of friends, lovers and family happily present and memories of those now separated by distance, time and mortality.

Looking around the auditorium it was clear that few popular music figures have ever burrowed so deep into their fans emotional core or repaid that loyalty and affection with such tender grace.

Simply put the Everly Brothers were the greatest duet singers and brother act in the history of popular music.

It will remain a mystery as to why the sibling relationship and consanguinity combined to supercharge the emotional resonance of Phil and Don’s harmony vocals and how this mysterious power could survive and endure for virtually all their lifetimes as brothers – whatever the state of their personal relationship.

It was surely a mystery to them as much as to anyone else.

Phil Everly’s life began in Chicago but he was in every other sense a son of the South.  His parents were Kentuckians and musicians.

From the age of six he was singing on the radio with elder brother Don and his parents.

The songs they sang were country songs or those weird and wonderful folk songs as Dylan put it about, ‘Roses growing out of people’s heads’.

From the get-go it was clear that these two brothers, influenced by other brother acts like the Delmores and Blue Sky Boys, had a uniquely potent mystical chemistry that made their arousing and keening singing able to thrill and also to pierce the hardest heart.

As they grew older the cute boys became handsome young men, accomplished guitar players and confident performers.

They were thus in prime position in the late 1950’s to shoulder their jet black Gibson guitars ready to ride and help drive the runaway rock ‘n’ roll train as far as it could go.

Settling into their recording career at Cadence Records and supplied with a string of classic teenage angst songs by the likes of Felice and Boudleaux Bryant (‘Bye Bye Love’, ‘Wake Up Little Susie’, ‘All I Have To Do Is Dream’) the Everly’s took up residence in the hearts and memories of a generation.

Phil himself wrote one of their signature teenage classics, ‘When Will I Be Loved’.  Up until the advent of the Beatles led British invasion the Everlys were reigning rock ‘n’ roll royalty enjoying massive chart success and the esteem of their fellow artists.

They were also enormously influential – The Beatles, Simon and Garfunkel, The Hollies and The Beach Boys all freely acknowledged their admiration and desire to emulate the wonder of the brothers’ harmony singing.

Of the two brothers Phil was by all accounts the more outgoing, sensible and grounded of the two.

Though the younger brother it seemed that he was the one looking out for the more mercurial and vulnerable Don.

Don, whose voice seems able to cleave your ribs and pull your heart apart generally took the lead part while Phil intently, watchfully, with a brother’s love and care, held everything together with poignant poised harmony.

Together they made a sound that has rarely been matched for longevity of emotional impact.

Phil had some notable successes as a solo artist including recording the excellent, ‘Star Spangled Springer’ album (1973) which contains the wonderful tracks, ‘The Air That I Breathe’ and ‘Snowflake Bombadier’.

He also worked fruitfully on the soundtracks of the Clint Eastwood  movies, ‘Every Which Way But Loose’ and, ‘Any Which Way You Can’.

Genuine though these successes were they are minor in comparison to the luminous body of work he created with his elder brother.

They were great country singers, great rock ‘n’ roll singers and great pop singers.

Their body of work is sure to provide emotional sustenance and solace long into the forseeable future.

For people will always fall in and out of love and always carry the scars of past hurts even as they embrace new hope.

There will always be an Everly Brothers song to turn to.

Bill Withers – The Better Angels (Lean On Me)

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The Immortal Jukebox A2 – Bill Withers:  Lean On Me

 

‘A good man out of the treasure of his heart bringeth forth good things’ (Matthew)

‘Lean on me when you’re not strong and I’ll help you to carry on’ (BIll Withers)

Bill Withers stuttered painfully as a boy and young man which meant he didn’t say much.

What he did do was listen carefully and thoughtfully to the people around him in his family and his community.

Bill was  born and brought up in poor blue collar West Virginia mining communities where every day was a struggle with the constant background threat of injury and disaster.

In such communities loyalty, mutual reliance  and co-operation were not painted storybook virtues but living realities.   People worked with and for each other so that everyones burden would be a little lighter and thus more bearable.

Bill was and is a proud working man who knows the labourer is worthy of his hire and worth listening to.

After leaving home at 17 Bill spent 9 years in the US Navy where once again you learned that if you wanted your back covered you had to perform the same service for your comrade – buddy or not.

Your life literally was often in your brother’s hands.

He also listened with intent and attention to the songs he heard in church and on the radio. His imagination became infused with the enduring resorative grace of gospel, the energising pulse of rhythm and blues and the sweet balm of soul music.

Bill was storing wisdom and treasure in his heart and when the stuttering stopped his voice came through loud and clear.

Bill Withers would draw from a deep well of resources to write and perform songs that would always be fresh and relevant because they addressed fundamental questions about how our lives were and should be lived.

Which is to say that in many senses Bill Wither’s vocation combined that of a songwriter and singer with that of a preacher ministering to his community through the uplifting medium of music.

The prolific country songwriter Harlan Howard defined the essence of a great song as three chords and the truth and that’s exactly what Bill Withers offers us in his wonderfully vivid songbook.

Lean on Me is a simple song that tells an eternal truth.

We all have pain, we all have sorrow : we all need someone to lean on.

It opens with plain repeated piano stabs calling the listener to attention – listen up I got something to say!

The melody and rhythm echo the tradition of a gospel service: state your theme, tell your story through examples we can all recognise from our daily lives then call on the audience to respond.

Invite your listeners to testify that the seemingly unbearable can be borne if you call out to your brother or if your sister calls out to you – ‘I’ll help you carry on’.

Show that we can all be the leaning post for our brother or sister in need .. ‘I’m just right up the road, I’ll share your load if you just call me.’  For, as long as the moon lasts we are all bound to stumble and fall in this life.

It’s just a question of who falls when and how far and whether a helping hand and load bearing shoulder will be at hand to help you up and lead you on.

The foolishly proud always think they can stand up alone while the wise now that with help we can all make it through today’s troubles to tomorrow.

Lean on me acknowledges, indeed celebrates our weakness and vulnerability but also our strength.

We are supplicants but we are also enablers, uplifters and  restorers.

Yes, life will batter us and nobody walks in the sunshine all through their life but if we are honest, admit to our difficulties and failings and call for help we can be amazed that others are ready to come to our aid.

Family, fraternity and faith in each other will get us through.

Of course, where a song is concerned having good intentions and a good moral to impart does not mean that the song will live. And, if a song does not live, get up and walk by itself on its own merits, then you won’t capture your audience, won’t get them to listen once – let alone sing along and punch that number on the jukebox.

Lean on Me passes this test easily: it’s a wonderful up and walking living song!

First and foremost Bill Wither’s warm, supple and alluring voice commands your attention and wins your allegiance – you want to listen to what this man has to say.

This is the voice of a strong, mature man with hard miles over rough ground on the clock.

Yet, it’s the voice of an optimistic man ready to roll up his sleeves and face unafraid whatever challenges the next day will bring.

So, when Bill Withers sings you listen and when he calls out for you to respond you find that before you’ve realised it you’re singing :

‘We all need someone to lean on’

The song proceeds at a stately pace like a great powerful train allowing lolly gagging passengers plenty of time to get on board – confident they are in safe hands and will arrive at the right destination at the appointed time – the driver clearly knows what he’s doing.

As,’Lean on Me’ develops in come the most primal musical accompaniment of all – handclaps.  These are organically perfect in context: a song addressing our common humanity using the, ‘instrument’ even the most musically illiterate can at least assay when enthused.

On record Bill uses the handclap as a propulsive encourager of the spirit of the song, ‘Come on! This way’.

In concert it is unimaginable that the bands handclaps aren’t swelled by all of those in the audience.  By now everybody is on board the train and seeing themselves as one body – whatever seat they happen to be in.

As the song moves forward the strings come in to emphasise the swelling strength that acknowledged common vulnerability can unlock – ‘Call on me brother’ and we will get through, we will get through – together.

This is a song, without doubt as time has proven, an anthem, that proclaims our individuality and our community membership should not be warring forces but aspects of a natural, nurturing whole.

That’s what Bill and, ‘Lean on Me’ are – nurture for our humanity.

The greatest ever political leader once put it this way a century or so before Bill, ‘We are not enemies but friends. We must not be enemies.’. That is how we will find the better angels of our nature.

Abraham Lincoln said that. Or to put it another way:

‘You just call on me, brother, when you need a hand

We all need someone to lean on.’

Bill Withers said that.  I doubt that popular music has ever had a truer or more passionate guide to our better angels than Bill Withers.

Notes, Comments and further listening:

Lean on Me was written and produced by Bill Withers and recorded in 1972.

The musicians featured were James Gadson on drums, Ray Jackson on keyboards, Benorce Blackman on guitar and Melvin Dunlap on bass.

Lean on Me was a Number One record on both the R&B chart and the Hot 100 Billboard US charts.

Bill Wither’s catalogue is filled with powerful melodic songs and taut performances.  His first two albums, ‘Just as I Am’ and ‘Still Bill’ are essential components of any record collection.

Songs like the warm, witty and wise ‘Grandma’s Hands’ and the gloriously evocative and consoling, ‘Aint No Sunshine’ are undeniable classics.

‘Bill Withers at Carnegie Hall’ is among the very greatest live records with superlative singing and musicianship responding to an audience that is thrilled to celebrate in his company.

Sony have recently reissued the complete Bill Withers catalogue which is widely available at a ridiculously cheap price given the eternity shale it contains.

The Parting Glass: George Jones RIP – All Dressed Up To Go Away

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…. A time to rise and a time to fall

Come fill to me the parting glass

Goodnight and joy be with you all.

Hard to admit but the only page in the newspaper that I always read is the Obituaries.

I frequently discover histories of fascinating people I surely should have known about who led lives of extraordinary achievement and colour.

Of course, the older I get the more I realise that there are no such things as ‘ordinary lives’ for every life contains miracles and marvels if we but took the time to hear all those unrehearsed and untold stories.

Perhaps God alone performs that service for us.

I also frequently find myself strongly disagreeing with the perspective of professional obituarists when they memorialise the lives of men and women whose lives I actually knew something about or who had an emotional impact on my own life through their work or character.

The Parting Glass will be a strictly amateur enterprise with few dates, lists of honours or details of former spouses. 

Instead The Parting Glass will be the reaction of someone who reacts to a particular death with a sense of loss and a desire to celebrate with wonder how lives near and distant in place and time can resonate and echo with my own.

No 1 George Jones

He was born in Texas in 1931. 

From his father he inherited a taste for the bottle and from his mother the hope of salvation. 

The world and his own nature offered up the simultaneous allure and spectre of sin, guilt and damnation.

From some higher power he was blessed with a singing voice that could express with enormous authority and impact the whole damn bone and blood gamut of emotions we’re all forever chained and in thrall to throughout our lives.G Jones

A voice that was never unrestrained even when plumbing unfathomable depths of pain and loss. 

George’s voice had to be controlled even under the most crushing spiritual and emotional pressure because it was his, and our, final defence against defeat, depression and madness. 

Sing one for me George! 

George could sing gospel with a repentant sinner’s fervour and in his youth with the tempo cranked up to hot rod levels he could almost sound like a rockabilly singer. 

But, he lived and died as the greatest country honkytonk balladeer who ever lived. 

If you want your heart pummelled and wrenched (and sooner or later we all do) no-one can perform emotional/emergency cardiac surgery like good ol’ George.

I won’t list all the hits – there are several fine compilations, easily available, where you can soak yourself in his genius for mining and assuaging in song the travails, tragedies and travesties of life, love and death. 

What more do you want?

Take a few minutes now to listen to ‘He Stopped Loving Her Today’. 

When George recorded this he was a wreck of a man almost destroyed through drink and dissolution. 

The writers, Bobby Braddock and Curly Putnam, gifted him a morbid son of a bitch of a song that needed a singer who could emotionally outstare the tragic story of a life stalled for decades because of lost chances and lost love. 

A life only released from the stasis of loneliness and pain by the release of death. 

George was more than equal to the challenge.  He was well acquainted with loss and he knew what it was to be half crazy.

Knowing this as a man helped the artist to sing the song with startling tenderness – with the tone of a man who has been so blasted by the storms that have assailed him that he has surrendered all his rage to accept gratefully the consolations of bare humanity.

Hear the dignity he gives to the wonderful line ‘All dressed up to go away’ describing the funeral bound body of the song’s protagonist. 

Hear how he allows the swelling instrumentation of the chorus to lift him as he reveals with power but without undue drama why, finally, the man at the centre of the song has stopped loving her today. 

Not many really deserve to have angels sing them to their rest.  For the rest of us we could do no better than settle for the immortal tones of the sinner’s friend – George Jones.

George Jones died on April 2013 in his 82nd year.

God bless you George!

You really should have been there! Bob Dylan at The Albert Hall 2013

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Sometimes, you just know.  There is literally something in the air.

A sense of gathering fevered anticipation as the crowd assembles and the air becomes charged with faith and hope that this will be one of those nights.

The ones that you will relive in memory and recount proudly a thousand times to those who didn’t have the foresight, the cash, the sheer luck to be in that town on that night when everything clicked, when the energy built and built arcing from person to person, from stalls to gallery and flashing from the stage until we were all swept up and away into an ecstatic realm for those few hours on that one night that you will never forget and never be quite able to recapture.

All you can do is call for another drink, smile that distant smile and say with a regretful tone  ‘You really should,have been there.’

Concert reviews under this heading will appear from time to time – starting below with my review of Bob Dylan’s most recent concert in London.

SW7 Revisited

‘Let us not talk falsely now – the hour is getting late’.   Bob Dylan

‘The thing about Bob is that he is and always will be Bob’. Jeff Lynne

I discovered and fell headlong into obsessive allegiance to the music and persona of Bob Dylan as a callow fourteen year old in 1969.

Up to that night, when I incredulously listened to the epiphany of Desolation Row on a French language radio station I had been largely dismissive of contemporary pop/rock music.

Much as I liked the vitality of the Beatles and especially the Kinks I was not thrilled and transported by their records in the way that I was when reading the works of D H Lawrence or Chekhov which seemed to open up whole new worlds of sensation and understanding.

The Dylan I discovered that night was like the elder brother I never had – someone cleverer, more assured and knowing than me who yet leaned over to tell me all the secrets he had learned with a nod, a wink and a rueful grin.

He would continue to fulfill that role throughout the following decades.dylan3

So, when I saw him in concert in November 2013 at London’s Albert Hall I was moved to reflect on all the years and miles we had travelled since he had last been there.

At the Albert Hall In 1966 when the last notes of an  epochal, ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ that sounded like nothing less than an electric typhoon faded into the night air Bob Dylan walked off stage a fully realised genius.

In the previous four years he had created a body of work that would have, even if he had never recorded again, made him the single most important artist of the second half of the century.

However, he was also swaying on the precipice of a physical and emotional collapse. This was brought on by an impossible workload of recording and touring only tolerable through the fuel of a teeming headful of ideas and an increasingly dangerous reliance on ever more powerful drug cocktails.

He had once said that, ‘I accept chaos – I’m not sure if chaos accepts me’.  Now he was learning to his cost that chaos was indifferent to his acceptance – chaos swallows and destroys.

He was saved from permanent burn out and death by the happenstance of a motorbike accident that gave him the opportunity to clean up, rest, recuperate and find a new way of working allowing for some form of future and family life in the haven of Woodstock.

Over the next 47 years he would never again attain the heights of inspiration achieved through to 1966 (neither would anyone else!) but he would continue, in an unmatched way, through craft, cunning and sheer bloody mindedness to write, create and perform works that honoured the traditions of American song while being thoroughly modern, post modern and finally timeless expansions of and additions to that tradition.

bobdylan1So, when he returned to the Albert Hall as Thanksgiving approached in November 2013, as he looked around at the grand old venue he might have been excused the quizzical smile that had become his trademark expression.

Much like Ishmael returning after an age to the Nantucket waterfront he carried with him the knowledge of how hard survival could be and how that knowledge was every bit as much a curse as a blessing.

In 2013 Bob Dylan could be more reasonably compared to an old testament prophet (Jeremiah? Isiah? Micah ?) than to any of his ‘peers’ within the entertainment industry albeit a prophet who doubled as a song and dance man.

A song and dance man, walking and gliding through a blasted landscape, who while not dismissive or disrespectful of his classic creations, primarily chose to mine the new seam of the songs collected as Tempest.

In this he was aided by a road tested band, alert to his hair tigger mercurial nature, who artfully melded blues, rockabilly and sly swing to embody and illuminate the songs.

Upfront, the man himself settled either into a seafarers stance when centre stage or bobbed like a sparring boxer when stationed behind the piano.

His voice, a bare ruined choir of its former glory, though still uniquely distinctive, adapted its tone to the demands of each song – variously knowing, bewildered, threatening, regretful, cajoling and doleful.

Somehow his totemic harmonica playing still manages to encompass all these qualities and more and audibly thrills the warmly affectionate audience.

Bob Dylan has, not without cost, become what he set out to be all those years ago – a hard travellin’ troubadour, with a lifetimes worth of songs, something for every occasion, in his gunny sack, always on the way to another joint.  Always looking at the road ahead not the road behind.

I can’t help but feel that up ahead the shades of Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, Whitman and Rabbie Burns are waiting to welcome another to their company.

Well they can wait a little longer – this troubadour has more miles to go before he’s ready for the final roadhouse.

May god bless him and keep him always.

Thanks to Karl-Erik at Expecting Rain for posting this article on his wonderful site.