Category Archives: Tributes

Peter Green, Lonnie Mack, Gatemouth Brown – Guitar! Guitar! Guitar!

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When we are children we spend much of our lives dreaming of the future. A future in which we will be fearless captains of storied lives. What wonders we will accomplish! Idly staring out of windows at home or at our school desks, seemingly in a daze, we lay out scenarios of heroic movies in which we are the writer, producer, director and multi Oscar winning star.

A lot of young men dreams swirl around images of themselves as the epitome of cool at the wheel of a gleaming, glamorous car (a Chevrolet Corvette or perhaps an E type Jaguar) which will make all their male friends envious and all the girls of their acquaintance, especially the girl of their dreams (there’s always a luminously lit girl in these dreams) stop, stare and ask – ‘Can I have a ride?’

Others disdain these petrol head reveries. Instead, their dreams see them on stage wowing the audience (and their fellow musicians) with the virtuosity of their six string genius. Doodling on their school notebooks they picture themselves strutting their soon to be recognised stuff elegantly armed with a Fender Telecaster or Stratocaster, a Gibson Flying V, Firebird or a 1959 Les Paul.

They just know that one day like Johnny B Goode their name will dazzle the night in neon lights as people come from miles around to hear them make that guitar ring, ring, ring like a bell.

Often these dreams vanish into the ether only to be recalled when the dust covered yearbook is once more brought into the light. But, but, there are always those who through determination, application and sheer willpower realise those dreams of childhood and as is the way of these things provide models for another generation of dreamers.

Today the Jukebox features three Guitar heroes who dreamed those dreams and who then burned those dreams into vinyl masterpieces in the 1950s and 1960s which continue to provide dreamscapes for aspiring axe-men to this day.

The Jukebox needle drops first on, ‘Okie Dokie Stomp’ a joyously swinging 1954 Peacock Records Rhythm & Blues gem by a guitarist, Clarence Gatemouth Brown, who defined Americana long before the term was invented. Gatemouth was from Orange Texas and man oh man could he cut a rug whether he was playing the blues, Zydeco, Rhythm & Blues or Country music! Like the man said he played American and World music – Texas style.

The version above was recorded at Radio City Music Hall in February 2003 and can be found on the highly recommended DVD, ‘Lightning In A Bottle’. The sharp eyed among you will recognise that behind the drums is the great Levon Helm from The Band.

Levon lays down a killer beat urging Gatemouth on as he magisterially wails through his signature tune. The fine horn section issues hot blast after hot blast lifting Gatemouth to ever greater instrumental heights on guitar.

The whole version puts me in mind of The Texas Special streamliner train as it flashed through the night on its way home to San Antonio. Gatemouth’s guitar style was full of fleet flair but never needlessly flashy. His sweetly stinging solos are those of a professional going enjoyably about his business with dexterous skill.

I’m delighted that I met Gatemouth at London’s 100 Club in the mid 1970s on one of his frequent European tours. He was quite a sight to see in his trademark black outfit featuring a feathered hat, pointed cowboy boots and studded Western shirt. To top it off when not on stage he smoked a pipe!

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With the enthusiasm of youth I waylaid him as he walked back to the stage for his second set and near begged him to play, ‘Okie Dokie Stomp’. To my eternal delight two minutes later he announced, ‘Here’s one Tom over there says I just have to play’ before launching into a blistering take on Okie Dokie. What a tune, what a musician, what a man!

While Gatemouth was laying down, ‘Okie Dokie Stomp’ in Houston in the heartland of unfashionable rural Indiana a young man born to play guitar, Lonnie Mack, was practicing obsessively while absorbing and incorporating influences from rock n roll, rockabilly, the blues and crucially gospel music.

On the family farm while there was no electricity there was a battery powered radio – usually tuned to The Grand Ol’ Opry. Keen eared Lonnie could hear that Merle Travis was a great player and when his parents went to bed he could tune the radio into black stations and hear T Bone Walker and other bluesmen and dream of a style which would marry Merle and T Bone’s imaginative fluency while adding an intensity he had heard in Ray Charles and the Blind Boy gospel groups.

In 1958 Gibson issued the distinctive Flying V guitar and teenage Lonnie who had been working the Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio roadhouse circuit since he was 13 got himself the 7th Flying V off the production line. And, boy did he put that guitar through its paces!

Wow! I think that bears repeating, Wow! And that was what practically every guitar player who heard, ‘Wham’ in 1963 said as they played the record over and over again trying to figure out how a chubby kid from the sticks could come up with such a sound that seemed to be savagely wild while being perfectly contained and controlled. With wonder most realised that if it came to a musical, ‘cutting contest’ there could only be one winner – Lonnie Mack.

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Lonnie Mack’s guitar playing here and throughout his stunningly brilliant 1964 LP, ‘The Wham Of That Memphis Man’, recorded for Fraternity Records in Cincinnati, has the overwhelming onrushing power of a field shredding tornado as it cuts a swathe through your brain cells while you desperately try to keep up with his prodigious invention.

Soon, guitar vibrato bars were popularly called Whammy Bars in tribute to the astounding sounds Lonnie coaxed and commanded from his own Bigsby vibrato tailpiece.

Lonnie’s admiration of Gospel music is reflected in the intensity of his performances and the way he thrillingly builds and releases tension to hold and lift both his audience and his fellow musicians. Using techniques borrowed from the blues, bluegrass and gospel Lonnie can fit blindingly fast licks and choruses into a finely judged musical structure and still shift into overdrive to guide a tune to its breathless conclusion. Once heard I’m telling you that you will not be able to get enough of the wham of Lonnie Mack.

While these American giants were scorching their groove into guitar history a generation of fanatical young Englishmen swore undying devotion to the Blues and dreamed that they too might capture and discharge lightning in their playing just like Elmore James, B B King or Buddy Guy.

The mentor and bandleader for many of these guitar tyros was one of the key figures in British Blues history, John Mayall. From 1963 onwards he led a series of bands called, ‘The Bluesbreakers’ who became an amalgam of finishing school and military academy for would be bluesmen – especially guitar players.

As most will know Mayall’s first great guitar slinger was none other than Eric Clapton who showed on the 1966 LP, ‘Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton’ that Britain had produced its first guitar player who could genuinely be considered to be on the level of the Chicago scene masters.

So it was genuinely shocking for producer Mike Vernon to learn as he set up the studio in 1967 to record Mayall’s LP, ‘A Hard Road’ that Eric had left the band. It was even more shocking to be told by John Mayall not to worry about that as the new lead guitarist, Peter Green, was even better than Eric! How could that be?

Well, heretical though it may be in many critical circles, I agree with John Mayall’s 1967 bravado. To my mind in the three years or so from 1967 to 1970 before his musical genius was effectively crippled by over indulgence in drugs, LSD especially, and mental instability, Peter Green was the most brilliant and extraordinarily affecting guitar player on the planet.

In later posts I will write about his career at some length. Today I will limit myself to some general observations about his sound and present in illustration his wondrous performance on, ‘The Supernatural’ from the, ‘Hard Road’ LP. Here, Peter Green and his, ‘Magic’ 1959 Les Paul will take you to places few guitar players can even imagine let alone reach.

Perhaps the simplest way to comment on that incredible performance would be just to quote someone, B B King, who knew a little bit about guitar playing – ‘He has the sweetest tone I ever heard; he was the only one who gave me the cold sweats’. Amen, B B, Amen!

‘The Supernatural’ was the first recorded evidence that Peter Green had a very special quality as a musician: he had a feeling for the shivering essence of music. The critic Greil Marcus talks about the, ‘Yargh’ when trying to pinpoint the veil piercing quality of Van Morrison’s voice.

I think we could use the term, ‘The Touch’ to identify the same quality found in the voice of Peter Green’s guitar. Through an inspired use of vibrato, sustain and controlled harmonic feedback he conjures up soundscapes that open up such deep interior realms of feeling that listening to him can be a deeply emotional experience.

I have always thought that Peter Green and his Les Paul worked together like two brave but vulnerable living creatures voyaging into terra incognita when he took his guitar solos. It’s the mixture of musical daring with emotional vulnerability and depth that distinguishes Peter Green for me from all his contemporaries.

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Peter Green in his searching songs and performance seems to offer reports back from dark reaches within himself and I suspect all of us. In his playing we can come to recognise both the embracing warmth of those sub conscious depths and perhaps also their chill threat. The timber of humanity is always twisted and knotted and Peter Green’s guitar brilliantly illuminates that truth.

A great writer, Franz Kafka, once gave his view on what the function of a book should be and I think it holds up just as well for music:

‘ I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound or stab us. If the book we’re reading doesn’t wake us up with a blow to the head, what are we reading for? … Good Lord, …. we need books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply, like the death of someone we loved more than ourselves, like being banished into forests far from everyone …. A book must be the axe for the frozen sea within us’.

Listening to Peter Green I feel that the axe has indeed split the frozen sea.

Notes:

Gatemouth Brown died at 81 in September 2005 in his childhood home town of Orange Texas having just escaped the ravages of Hurricane Katrina. In a macabre twist his coffin was floated away from his burial site by flooding caused by Hurricane Ike in September 2008. Happily, he was later reinterred securely in Orange’s Hollywood Cemetery where his resting place is properly marked by a fine headstone and a plaque from the Texas Historical Commission.

Gatemouth made many fine recordings. I recommend the original albums:

1975 Bogalusa Boogie Man (Barclay)
1979 Makin’ Music (with Roy Clark) (One Way)
1981 Alright Again! (Rounder)
1982 One More Mile (Rounder)
1999 American Music, Texas Style (Verve/Blue Thumb)
2001 Back to Bogalusa (Verve/Gitanes)

For compilations:

1987 Texas Swing (Rounder) Rounder recordings
1990 The Original Peacock Recordings (Rounder) Peacock recordings

Lonnie Mack:

‘The Wham Of That Memphis Man’ should be in every collection – if you haven’t got it order it today!

In addition to his staggering guitar playing Lonnie is also a wonderfully intense singer who brings a gospel grace and intensity to his country soul vocals. The combined qualities are well captured on his Elektra albums, ‘Glad I’m In The Band’ and, ‘Whatever’s Right’ from 1969. His live, rampaging roadhouse blues sound is showcased on, ‘Live At Coco’s.

Two albums on Alligator Records from 1984 and 1986 are also well worth investigating, ‘Strike Like Lightning’ (extensively featuring Stevie Ray Vaughan) and, ‘Second Sight’.

Peter Green:

Everything Peter recorded with John Mayall and with Fleetwood Mac should be a mandatory purchase!

I happen to be a Swede myself – Sweden, Ingrid Bergman and Billy Bragg

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We are spending two weeks of our summer vacation here in the delightful ancient university town of Lund in Skane, Sweden.

With its squares, cobbled streets, army of bicyclists and plethora of book and coffee shops Lund inescapably reminds me of my own Alma Mater, Cambridge.

Like Cambridge Lund empties out in the summer as students return home or fill backpacks for exotic travel. Meanwhile the more well heeled professors pack their Volvos and head for their southern European Villas, Trulli and Gites.

As we stroll around the delightful Statsparken listening to the strains of a tango ensemble drifting over from the bandstand my mind, in holiday, ‘powering down’ mode idly rambles around my memory bank searching under the tags of Sweden.

The first outputs, unsurprisingly given my interests, are the names of a series of actors, writers, sports stars and musicians. First out was Ingemar Johansson who was briefly World Heavyweight Boxing champion in 1959/1960.

I chuckled as I recalled that his,’ send the opponent to sleep’ right hand was variously christened, ‘Toonder and lightning’, ‘Thor’s Hammer’ and, my favourite, ‘Ingo’s Bingo!’

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I’m sure millions of Swedes, listening on the radio to his first fight with reigning champ Floyd Patterson, must have let out a mighty multiple chants of Bingo! as Ingemar decked Floyd seven times in the third round to bring boxing’s premier crown home to Sweden!

Moving onto a somewhat more elevated intellectual plane my memory numbskulls next presented me with a series of powerful images attached to the name of Ingmar Bergman. I remembered that when programming the Sixth Form film club in the early 1970s I had insisted that we show Bergman’s intense masterpiece, ‘The Seventh Seal’ to balance out contemporary cult classics. Bergman was also my go to Auteur to demonstrate to prospective girlfriends that I was a deep thinker!

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I was a little chastened to think that the next Swede in my memory download had not been the first – Raoul Wallenberg who was surely one of the great heroes of the twentieth century. Through a combination of bravery and immense resourcefulness he was principally responsible, as Sweden’s special envoy to Nazi occupied Hungary, for providing the means for tens of thousands of Jews to escape their inevitable fate in the Death Camps.

His own fate, still in some measure mysterious, was to be captured, imprisoned and executed by the Soviets. His name and the light of his life will live forever.

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Of course being a devotee of Scandinavian noir fiction and film I fairly quickly brought to mind Henning Mankell and his moody, brilliant and affecting detective Kurt Wallander. Our family devotion was proved by taking the highly enjoyable, recommended, vintage fire engine borne tour of Ystad the scene of so many of Wallender’s cases.

That said my favourite Swedish detective remains Martin Beck the complex, introspective hero of ten magnificent novels by Maj Sjowall and Per Wahloo. I also affect that when I wear my finest Saville Row overcoat that I cut a figure not dissimilar to that of the actor Mikhail Persbrandt when playing the role of Beck’s maverick sidekick, Gunwald Larsson.

I remain convinced that to be a poet is the highest calling in literature. So I soon thought of one of my own, ‘lifeboat poets’ (see forthcoming series!) Tomas Transtromer. His poetry deals might and main with life in all its human complexity.

So he is a nature poet, a religious and mystical poet and a poet of everyday life. This is highly charged poetry creating a force field of words to capture essential truths. It takes a poet to say:

‘Every abstract picture of the world is as impossible
As a blueprint of a storm. Don’t be ashamed because you’re human – be proud!
Inside you vaults beyond vaults open endlessly
You will never be finished, and that’s as it should be.’

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Tomas Transtromer died in March this year. Following the earlier death of Seamus Heaney it feels to me as if the tent poles of poetry have been felled.

Turning to the arena of music a plethora of names crowded into my mind each crying out for my attention. Jazz greats like saxophonist Lars Gullin and pianist Bengt Hallberg recorded music fully the equal of their American counterparts in the 1950s and they were the role models for a marvellous Swedish film about the jazz life, ‘Sven Klang’s Combo’.

This is some seriously cool music. I suggest you pour yourself an Akvatit and lean back in your easiest chair with eyes closed and let Lars and Bengt illuminate your spirit with their Northern sounds.

Ann Sofie von Otter is a mezzo soprano with a wide stylistic range stretching as far as a collaborative album with Elvis Costello!

It would be remiss of me not to mention ABBA – surely no one alive in the 1970s hasn’t lustily sang along to, danced along to and said (even if sotto voce) thank you for the music to Bjorn, Benny, Agnetha and Anni – Frid. If you’re too hip to appreciate the pop perfection of Abba I have to tell you buddy you’re too hip!

I should add that Agnetha’s 2004 album, ‘My Colouring Book’ filled with beautifully sung, heartfelt covers of 60s classics is a largely overlooked gem of a record you are strongly advised to investigate.

But, the song that kept bobbing to the top of my consciousness was not by a Swedish artist but a song about a Swede – ‘Ingrid Bergman’ a recording of a ‘lost’ Woody Guthrie lyric with added tune by Billy Bragg from the album, ‘Mermaid Avenue’ also featuring Americana kings, Wilco.

I should, in confession, say now that I lied when I said the first Swedish name that occurred to me was Ingemar Johansson. No, in truth one name kept flashing like a lighthouse beam illuminating my mind – Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman.

As her name and a succession of images of Ingrid played in my mind the soundtrack accompaniment was provided by Woody Guthrie’s lovely, sensual love letter to Ingrid touchingly performed here by Billy Bragg. Play it one time Billy!

Under two minutes long but expressing a world of emotion. Sitting in thrall in our cinema seats gazing at the vision of the soft, womanly, beauty of Ingrid Bergman generations of boys and men fell irrecoverably in love.

In our dreams we would all have manned the oars willingly and set sail to the island of Stromboli oblivious to the risk of catastrophic volcanic explosion!

Ingrid benefitted from the genius of the great lighting cameramen and cinematographers so that her naturally fresh and intoxicating beauty literally glowed from the screen. However, for me, Ingrid in addition had a rare earthy quality that gave all the characters she played an approachable humanity who could combine moral strength with vulnerability.

I never thought of Ingrid Bergman as a ‘Goddess’ but simply as the loveliest, most heart and soul affecting actress to ever grace the silver screen.

‘If you’ll walk across my camera
I will flash the world your story’

Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman, Ingrid Bergman. Here’s looking at you kid.

Now the reach of this blog might not encompass the entire world (though over 150 countries so far is a good start) but it does definitely cover Britain and Sweden and I hope this short tribute from a Brit to Sweden and Swedes finds favour in both nations. We will definitely be coming back to Sweden.

Tak sa mycket Sverige. Vi kommer att se dig snart igen.

Note – in case you are wondering where the, ‘I happen to be a Swede myself’ phrase comes from I can tell you it was the typically disorienting reply from Bob Dylan in 1966 to Swedish broadcaster Klas Burling’s simple question, ‘Do You know any Swedes?’

Elvis listened closely yet the world barely knows him : Junior Parker!

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Given the machinations of the music business, the powerful currents of cultural and social history and the mysteries of public taste it is entirely possible to be a magnificent singer, to have written and recorded some classic songs covered by giants such as Elvis Presley and to have made wonderful records at every stage of a two decade career (‘Mystery Train’, ‘Next Time You See Me’, ‘Feelin’ Good’, ‘Driving Wheel’) and yet remain a shadowy figure usually referred to only with regard to figures of more popular note.

My Lords, ladies and gentlemen and music lovers everywhere I give you an artist you’ve been longing for – if only you had known he was there – Junior Parker!

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Born in 1927 and growing up in West Memphis, Arkansas in the 1930s and 1940s Junior Parker was exposed to a thriving Blues and Rhythm and Blues scene. He learned to play the harmonica at the feet of Rice Miller (the second Sonny Boy Williamson) and in his teenage years he befriended and played with Johnny Ace, Roscoe Gordon, B B King and the mighty Howling Wolf. He also hooked up with bandleader/talent spotter/musical fixer Ike Turner who got him his initial shot at recording with Modern Records in 1952.

However, as with so many artists, it was after he met one of the most significant figures in twentieth century cultural history, Sam Phillips, and recorded at his Memphis Sun Studios that Junior Parker’s extraordinary talent as a singer, writer and performer first blossomed. Sun 187, ‘Feelin’ Good’ issued in 1953 and a sizeable R&B hit is Junior’s calling card showcasing his brilliantly controlled vocal style which combines supple variety with graceful flow.

 

Backed by guitarists Floyd Murphy and Pat Hare, pianist Bill Johnson and John Bowers on drums Junior takes a John Lee Hooker template and fashions (no doubt with the aid of the sharp eared Sam Phillips behind the desk) a record that pulses with energy and life. The hard wood floor sprung rhythm and the heart lifting guitar lines seem to clear a path for Junior to demonstrate the virtuosity of his singing.

He seems to gloriously glide and pirouette through the song ; now almost whispering hoarsely, now soaring into full throated release, all the while driving the song forward. Every time I hear this record I’m impelled to echo Junior, ‘Well I feel so good – Woooooooh!

Junior brought a song of his own, ‘Mystery Train’ to his next Sun session – one that would go on to be an epochal classic when covered by Sam Phillips’ greatest discovery, Elvis Presley. Junior’s version evokes an almost eerie atmosphere of a train slowly pulling its way in sultry heat through hazy southern fields.

Elvis, Scotty Moore and Bill Black (taking their cue from the urgent, ‘Love My Baby’ the flip side of Junior’s Mystery Train) up the tempo and energy level to evoke a streamlined locomotive blurring past astonished bystanders. Elvis sings with bravura élan and on the spot brings to life the sound of Rock ‘n’ Roll that Sam Phillips had so fervently been searching for. Junior’s version can’t match Elvis though it’s fair to say no one on earth has ever managed to either!

As Sam Phillips, for obvious reasons, concentrated on promoting the careers of Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis and Carl Perkins, Junior found a home from home at Don Robey’s Duke Records, Memphis’ premier black music label. During his time with Duke Junior made a string of excellent records while relentlessly touring on the, ‘Chitlin’ Circuit’ for the black communities throughout the nation.

Junior benefitted in these live shows from a fine band that had attack and colour through a well drilled rhythm team and a punchy brass section. This combination is shown to advantage on the wonderful, ‘Next Time You See Me’ from 1957. This one made the Hot 100 at 74 as well as top 5 R&B.

Essentially a blues shuffle, ‘Next Time’ establishes itself as an irresistible standard from the first few notes. You are swept along by the exhilarating licks and riffs traded between the brass section, the guitar and the piano.

Junior’s vocal has regal command as he tells the old, old story’s folk wisdom – ‘If it hurts you my darling – you only have yourself to blame.’ Junior never seems to strain for effect: his thoroughbred vocals have power in reserve allowing him to cruise through the song while effortlessly stirring the audience.

My next two selections illustrate Junior’s versatility and ability to inhabit the heart of a song to illuminate its overt and hidden dramas. For, ‘I Need Love So Bad’ he draws on the song writing pen of Percy Mayfield, the peerless poet and professor of the blues, and produces a performance that glows with passion.

I’m awestruck by Junior’s vocal here. Listen to the way he wraps his voice round Percy’s melody and lyric in a tender loving embrace. The song is one of those 3am in the locked bar blues expertly anatomising the never plumbed depths of male despair and angst (not to mention self-pity!). Junior manages to sing in a manner that suggests a man who is exhausted and world weary though not, yet, wholly defeated. It’s a wondrous performance that slays me no matter how often I hear it.

Contrast that performance with the almost Sam Cooke like elegance (there is no higher praise for a singer) that he brings to, ‘Someone Somewhere’.

Junior, here, shows what a great soul singer he would have been if he’d followed that path. While the horns mistily wreathe around him and the guitar glistens Junior’s vocal traces beautifully delicate emotional patterns that linger in the mind long after the record has ended.

Perhaps one of the hallmarks of a great singer is the way their voices enter and find a home in our hearts; imprinting themselves on our consciousness ever more deeply as we replay their songs on our turntables or in our waking and dreaming imaginations. Junior Parker belongs in that hallowed company as a singer.

I’ll close with Junior showing how he could take a hoary blues standard and reveal new depths. Eddie Boyd’s, ‘Five Long Years’ has had hundreds of covers but I doubt any have had the deeply affecting power of Junior’s version below recorded soon before his death.

I would call that chamber music blues – relaxed, intimate, exquisitely paced, deeply felt. Though Junior’s vocal seems wholly natural and spontaneous it conceals the craft of an absolute master.

Junior Parker was a great singer who, without grandstanding, artfully achieved total control of his instrument – his glorious voice. Though his life was cut short his legacy will be long lasting. Do yourself a favour and investigate his catalogue. Trust me you will not regret it.

Further Listening:

Junior Parker’s recorded legacy is desperately in need of an expertly curated box set. In the meantime look out for compilations of his Sun material and 2 MCA compilation of his Duke sides. Hard to find but wonderful to listen to are the, ‘Lion in winter’ recordings he made in 1970/1971 for Groove Merchant and United Artists.

Doug Sahm: San Antone, Adios Mexico – Bringing It All Back Home (To Texas)

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‘I wanna bring up one of my really old buddies, Doug Sahm! Everybody knows Doug and we go back a long way … ‘ (Bob Dylan welcoming Doug to the stage in 1995)

‘You just can’t live in Texas if you don’t have a lot of soul’ (Doug Sahm)

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Doug Sahm was a walking, talking, totally, ‘Texas Texture’ kind of a guy. A Texan’s Texan. Texas is a very, very, big place and is home to a staggering variety of music which is nourished in beery roadhouses, sprung floor dance halls and honky tonks heavy with the aroma of marajuana.

Music there is avidly listened to, played and danced to by a knowledgeable audience who know which songs are the best to two-step to, which are the best to slow dance to and which are the best to get you ready for a first class fist fight.

Doug Sahm growing up in a largely black section of San Antonio in the 1940s and 1950s absorbed the music blasting out from the radio and the clubs and stored it away as the treasury he would draw on, honour and add to for the rest of his life. You name it Doug Sahm knew it, loved it and could play it with the affection of a true devotee.

Doug was your man if you wanted to hear honkytonkin’ country, some gritty R&B, gutbucket or romantic blues, a Cajun two step, a once round the floor again polka, western swing or Tex-Mex border ballads. And, you could hear all these styles in one night and dance till you dropped! Whether you were a redneck or a hippie, a fan of Willie Nelson, The Grateful Dead or T Bone Walker, Doug had just the groove you were looking for.

Doug has been a boy wonder musician playing fiddle, steel guitar and mandolin on radio from the age of 6 – he was never anything other than a working musician until he died at the tragically young age of 58 in 1999.

Though Doug was widely known in Texas where he had played paying gigs before he turned 10 (once sharing the stage with the great Hank Williams) he first came to wider notice in 1965 with a fabulous record, ‘She’s About A Mover’. This was issued under the name The Sir Douglas Quintet as legendary producer Huey Meaux hoped buyers would assume the band were members of the all conquering British Invasion.

The subterfuge couldn’t last long once it was noticed that two of the band were clearly of Mexican heritage and they all had rich Texas accents. No matter, radio play was duly delivered and once heard, ‘Mover’ was an unstoppable hit!

Doug and the boys had managed to blend Ray Charles, The Beatles and a Texas two-step rhythm into an addictive confection which still has the freshness and impact of a classic song (Texas Monthly No 1 Texas tune of all time!). The Quintet lock into the rhythm as the magnificent Augie Meyers adds bite, colour and texture on the Vox Organ.

Front and centre Doug shows what a marvellously soulful, warm and winning singer he was; always true to the spirit of the song he was singing, always connecting with his fellow musicians and his audience. As I might have said in 1965 – it’s a gas! An absolute gas!

Doug was launched into a career which featured national TV spots and tours with James Brown, The Rolling Stones and The Beach Boys. There was never a major hit follow up to, ‘Mover’ but the initial version of the Quintet produced albums with gems a plenty including, ‘Mendocino’ and, ‘Nuevo Laredo’.

The next Doug Sahm record I want to draw your attention to is the Jerry Wexler produced album, ‘Doug Sahm And Band’ on Atlantic from 1973.

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The record is notable for extensively featuring Bob Dylan who at that time was still largely in reclusive mode. More importantly it is one of those records which has such a consistently attractive musical character and personality that it seems to glow in your imagination as you listen to it. And, believe me as someone who has listened to this record hundreds of time its charm never palls.

It’s one of those records like Van Morrison’s, ‘Moondance’ which alters your mood for the better every time you hear it. One of those records that just as you are about to put it back in the sleeve you decide with a smile that you should play again, just one more time!

Every track has been my favourite at one time or another. Doug, the Cosmic Cowboy, assisted by musicians of the calibre of Dr John, Flaco Jimenez, ‘Fathead’ Newman, David Bromberg and his indispensable musical brother Augie Meyers cooks up a richly flavoured Texas stew which continually whets and satisfies your musical appetite.

There is a glorious sense of relaxed enjoyment in making music, a sense, listening , that we are neighbours of Doug’s dropping in on a house party that will last for days, each song suggesting another, as everyone is having so much damn fun! It’s Texas blues, Texas country, Tex-Mex and 100% the magic of Doug Sahm.

Forced to choose one song to play here I’ve selected his anthem for his hometown, ‘(Is Anybody Going)To San Antone’ which features Dylan on guitar and harmony vocals. This song, like so many on the album and throughout Doug’s career, conjures joy out of thin air – which will do for me as the definition of what music at its best can do in our lives.

Doug was always touring, always making music whether he was in or out of fashion. Mind you, he was always in fashion with fellow Texas musicians and musicians and listeners everywhere who appreciated a man who talked a mile a minute, wore his heart on his sleeve and was always ready to play one more song.

Doug made a lot of records featuring wonderfully productive collaborations because he put the music first not his ego. He brought a lot to any group venture but he knew that it’s the combination of flavours that makes for the tastiest meals.

The ideal example of the above is the glorious series of records he made with his friends, Flaco Jimenez, Freddie Fender and Augie Meyers under the banner of The Texas Tornados. Listening to these albums offers a feast of pleasures as they carry you through a loving history of Texan musical culture. A few days spent with these wonders virtually guarantees you a PhD in Texas Studies!

To give you a sense of the prowess and generosity of Doug as a bandleader here’s a deliriously enjoyable clip of him with the Tornados featuring a properly rowdy version of, ‘Adios Mexico’ followed by a lovely take on Butch Hancock’s exquisite ballad (Number 1 in my Texas pantheon), ‘She Never Spoke Spanish To Me’. If you’re not up and dancing at the first and crying after the second there’s no hope for you.

Doug Sahm lived every day with a smile on his face. All over the world from Stockholm to San Antone, from London to Lubbock his music made him friends and followers. When you dig a groove as wide and deep as Doug did it can never vanish. I usually like to recommend selected records to illustrate an artist’s career. But for Doug Sahm I would simply advise you to buy as many as you can.

Adios compadre. Vaya con Dios.

 

Thanks to Cheryl Sahm, Doug’s daughter for approving this post.

 

Fathers Day : Paul Simon, John Gorka, Seamus Heaney, Slievenamon & My Dad

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Fathers and Sons. Sons and Fathers. Sons carry their Father’s in their bloodstream, in their mannerisms and gestures and in the echoing halls of their memories. No matter what you do in life, no matter how radically you roam from where you started you remain in some part of you (in more parts that you usually like to acknowledge) your Father’s son.

The process of becoming a man might be defined as honouring and taking the best from the experiences of your Father’s life while finding through your own experiences the kind of man and Father you want to be yourself.

Coming to terms with your Father, the Son you were and are and the man and Father you have become is the work of a lifetime. A story that’s always unfolding, always being rewritten as you learn more about the man you are and understand more about the man your Father was. Sons, schooled by the abrasive tides of life, sometimes learn to have a certain humility about the easy certainties of their youth as to who their Fathers was and what made him that way. It’s easy to be a Father until you become one.

‘What did I know? What did I know of
Love’s austere and lonely offices?’ (Robert Hayden)

Sons writing about Father’s is one of the great themes of all literature and songwriting because that story is always current, always unfolding, always full to the brim with all that is human in all its bloody and terrible glory. No two stories of Fathers and Sons are the same though most will recognise something of themselves in every story.

Here’s a cry from the soul. Paul Simon’s, ‘Maybe I Think Too Much’ from his aptly titled, ‘Hearts And Bones’ record. Fathers and Sons – Hearts and Bones, Hearts and Bones. Sons never know when they will need to call for their Fathers to appear in their dreams.

‘They say the left side of the brain dominates the right
And the right side has to labor through the long and speechless night
In the night my Father came and held me to his chest.
He said there’s not much more that you can do
Go Home and get some rest.’

The song about Father’s and Sons that grips my heart every time I hear it and which calls to me in the middle of the night is John Gorka’s, ‘The Mercy Of The Wheels’ Forgive the initially muffled sound.

‘I’d like to catch a train that could go back in time
That could make a lot of stops along the way
I would go to see my Father with the eyes he left behind
I would go for all the words I’d like to say
And I ‘d take along a sandwich and a picture of my girl
And show them all that I made out OK’

I miss my Father. My Dad.

I miss the smell of Old Holborn tobacco as he smoked one of his thin roll your own cigarettes.

I miss the days of childhood when I would buy him a pouch of Old Holborn for Father’s Day.

I miss getting up in the middle of the night with him to hear crackly radio commentaries on Muhammad Ali fights.

I miss the early Sunday mornings when we walked to a church two parishes away because he had been advised to walk a lot after his heart attack.

I miss hearing him roar home Lester Piggott as he brought the Vincent O’Brien horse into the lead in The Derby with half a furlong to go!

I miss hearing him say, ‘There’ll never be another like him’ as Jimmy Greaves scored another nonchalant goal for Spurs.

I miss hearing him say, ‘That was a complete waste of electricity’ as he glanced at the TV screen as some worthy drama concluded.

I miss sharing a pot of very, very strong tea with him well before six o clock in the morning – because as anyone with any sense knew the best of the day was gone before most people bothered to open an eye.

I miss sitting with him in easeful silence.

I miss him always expecting me to come top in every exam while always expecting me not to count on that.

I miss his indulgence in Fry’s Chocolate Cream bars.

I miss him saying, ‘You’ll be fine so ..’ whenever I had to face a daunting new challenge in life.

I miss him calling out the names of the men who worked with him on the building sites – Toher and Boucher and O’ Rahilly with me double checking the spellings as we filled out (creatively) the time sheets accounting for every hour of effort in the working week

I miss watching him expertly navigating his way to a green field site not marked on any map to start a new job and then watching him get hopelessly lost a mile from home on a shopping trip

I miss watching his delight as David Carradine in the TV show Kung Fu, unarmed, took on another gang of armed swaggering bullies and reduced them to whimpers in a few moments – ‘You watch he’ll be catching bullets next’.

I miss hearing his wholly unexpected but wholly accurate estimation of Bruce Springsteen’s cultural importance when seeing him featured on a news special when he first came to England: ‘He’ll never be Elvis’

I miss the way he remained a proud Tipperary man and Irishman despite living for more than 40 years in England.

I miss his quiet certainty that there was an after life – a world where Father’s and Sons divided by death could meet again.

I regret not being able to introduce him to the beautiful woman who, amazingly, wanted to be and became my wife.

I regret not watching him watch my Daughter and my Son grow up into their glorious selves.

I regret not watching him enjoying the pleasures of retirement and old age.

I miss alternating between thinking I was nothing like him and thinking I was exactly like him!

I miss the shyness of his smile.

I miss the sound of his voice.

I miss the touch of his leathery hands.

I miss the way he swept his left hand back across his thinning scalp when he was tired (exactly as I do now).

I miss the sound of my name when he said it.

I miss my Dad.

My dad lies in the green pastures of his beloved Tipperary now under the sheltering slopes of Slievenamon (he would never have forgiven me had he been buried anywhere else!) You can almost hear this song echoing in the silence all around him.

I walked many roads with my Father. I’ve walked many miles without him by my side now (though I sometimes feel his presence). I hope I have many miles to walk until I join him again. As I walk I will lean on him as I face the twists, turns and trip hazards ahead, accompanied by the words of
Seamus Heaney:

‘Dangerous pavements … But this year I face the ice with my Father’s stick’

Chris Smither – Killing The Blues on Desolation Row

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‘Somebody said they saw me, swinging the world by the tail,
Bouncing over a white cloud – killing the blues’. (Roly Salley)

‘I been left for dead before – but I still fight on
Don’t wait up – Leave the light on, I’ll be home soon’. (Chris Smither)

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In the late 1950s and early 1960s groups of earnest, intense young men in the great academic institutions of America began to develop what can only be called an obsession with Afro-American blues music which had been recorded in the pre war period.

Names like Son House, Mississippi John Hurt and Skip James began to take on a hallowed and mythical status.

As they endlessly played the few records they could find of these mystery figures from the 1920s and 1930s (to the despair of their room and dorm mates) they wondered: could it be that some 30 or more years after these wondrous sides had been made that these legendary musicians might still be alive and just waiting to be discovered by enterprising young blues scholars?

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Scouring record sleeves and song lyrics for clues it occurred to Dick Spottswood and Tom Hoskins that Mississippi John Hurt’s, ‘Avalon Blues’ from his epochal 1928 sessions must surely refer to Avalon Mississippi.

Maybe Mississippi John was still living there!

Entirely oblivious to the esteem he was held in by highly educated white men young enough to be his grandsons.

And, miraculously John Hurt was still living in Avalon and though he had long left the life of a professional musician behind he was delighted to be, ‘Re- Discovered’ and given the chance to bring, ‘Frankie’ and, ‘Candyman’ to life again in coffee houses, the gleaming halls of Harvard and festival stages where the riveting gentleness of his songs, his guitar playing, his vocals and his personality won him tens of thousands of devout new admirers.

An LP of his 1963 Newport performance was issued and this record along with others like Lightning Hopkins, ‘Blues In The Bottle’ became sacred texts for aspiring white bluesmen who practiced the guitar stylings until their fingers bled.

Some of these blues apprentices were able to produce note for note recreations of their heroes great works. However, it soon became clear to the acute among them that just being able to play all the right notes in the right order at the right tempo did not make you a Bluesman.

No, really being able to play the Blues called for a cultural immersion, a sacramental devotion; a process of virtually religious formation that was beyond the desire, the will and the capability of almost all those who imagined that they could walk the walk, talk the talk and play the guitar like those old men had done and it seemed in many cases could still do.

However, there are always exceptions to every rule and always some acolytes who indeed have heard a true call, who have a vocation they are willing and eager to commit themselves to no matter how difficult the path.

The artist celebrated on The Jukebox today, Chris Smither, over a 45 year long career has proved that the call he heard as a teenager in New Orleans was indeed inviting him into a new baptism as an authentic musician who can play the blues or any blues related music with complete authority.

Here he is with his take on Mississippi John’s ‘Frankie and Albert’. The visuals of this live version are shaky but the sound is fine.

It’s charming that Chris starts this virtuoso performance by parodying the stumbling steps of a novice setting out to follow the footsteps of a master.

As you listen it’s clear that Chris Smither has now attained master status himself as he marries thumb, fingers and stamping foot to attain and maintain a grove, the Groove, which will win and hold the attention of the audience as the eternal tale of faithless love and its terrible consequences unwinds.

Chris Smither’s first instrument was the Ukelele and perhaps that goes some way to explain his fleet fingers and fluid touch as he plays the guitar. Add in his bedrock bass lines provided by a calloused thumb and the accents provided by his Italian loafers (thin soled, heavy heeled) stomping on a wooden board and you have a one man orchestra!

As, ‘Frankie’ progresses I hear a Super Chief locomotive speeding through the waving prairies sending light and sound streaming into our eyes, our ears and our hearts.

Chris Smither a fine songwriter himself with a wry, laconic style has throughout his career taken songs from his contemporaries and illuminated their depths through the scrupulous attention he brings to their strengths and a commitment to finding his own key to the heart of a song in his guitar style, choice of tempo and vocal tone.

Listen to him here take on one of Bob Dylan’s most extravagant masterpieces, ‘Desolation Row’ and make it his own with this gorgeously sardonic, rheumy eyed version.

Desolation Row might be described as a tour d’horizon of the madness of America in the mid 1960s or a glimpse into the head full of ideas surging through Bob Dylan’s brain at the time (lots of room for overlap there!).

Chris Smither strips away the bravura of Bob’ s performance and sings the song like a long time resident on Desolation Row who knows Cinderella well, has suffered the nightsticks of the riot squad and is used to the sounds of the ambulances echoing in the night.

Chris Smither is a troubadour who lives his life on the road travelling light from town to town bringing a treasury of song in his knapsack.

He’s a great live performer because he is able to surrender himself to the songs he plays trusting that all the hours of living with the material and his instrument will allow him to just play and let the work flow.

Watching Chris Smither play amounts to a seminar in the psychological concept of flow. The emotional heart of the songs he plays are channeled and directed, released in all their vibrant energy to touch his audience.

Time seems to be suspended, speeded up or slowed down according to the demands of the song in hand. Meanwhile his hands, thumb and fingers go where they are meant to go, where they must go, without any seeming effort or glances in the mirror.

The sorrow, the joy, the wisdom and the rapture locked in great songs are released to bloom in our imaginations.

Below, you’ll find yourself holding your breath as Chris suspends time as he performs Peter Case’s wonderful song, ‘Cold Trail Blues’.

I love the way Chris begins the song at the slowest possible ambulant tempo. The whole songs proceeds like a dream like serenade where the everyday rules of time no longer apply.

The guitar lines and the vocal seems to be like smoke drifting into the sky towards a bright but cold and distant moon. The very act of playing the song seems to be a demonstration of that hope against hope that all hope is not lost.

Perhaps, just perhaps, the chances of love and a life worth living again have not been absolutely left too far, too far behind.

Chris Smither has had his struggles with life. For much of the 1970s he was mired in alcoholism and is thus no stranger to the physical and emotional ditches by the side of the broad highway of life.

Returning, chastened, to that highway he has written songs imbued with hard won, though never bitter wisdom. Many of his songs are honest, measured reports from the emotional battlefields we all visit from time to time.

In, ‘Leave The Light On’ he hymns the lure of home as only a man who has spent half his lifetime absent from home can.

The song offers reassurance that we can learn from the defeats and the self inflicted wounds of this bruising life and find a kind of blessed peace if we pay attention.

Perhaps this last song, Roly Salley’s ‘Killing The Blues’ most aptly demonstrates Chris Smither’s ability to play a song in its platonic perfection.

This is surely one of those songs handed to its writer directly from the heavenly home of the songwriting muse. How else to explain a song so immediately a truthful discovery as well as a reminder of a truth we have all always known.

There have been many fine version of this song song but none anywhere near Chris Smither here. The song in this performance flows sweetly and surely like an an ancient river to the endlessly welcoming sea.

Chris Smither casts spells and enchants us. One of the great tasks of a musician using rhythm, melody and line is to take us out of our everyday world and take us to a place, a still space, where we can realign our hearts and minds and find again our true direction. That’s a task Chris Smither has carried out with devotion and distinction.

Finally to show the measure of Chris Smither’s vocation as a musician here’s his answer to the question, ‘Do you remember learning (Mississippi John Hurt’s) Candyman?

‘I’m still learning it!’

Recommended Recordings:

There are enormous pleasures contained in every record Chris Smither has ever made. My personal favourites are:

‘Another Way to Find You’ (Live)
‘Live As I’ll Ever Be’ (Live!)
‘It Ain’t Easy’
‘Small Revelations’

There is an excellent tribute album to Chris, ‘Link Of Chain’ featuring Mary Gauthier and Dave Alvin among many other roots music luminaries.

Chris Smither is well represented on YouTube and I especially like the ‘Extended Play’ clip.

Louis Prima : Buona Sera, Just A Gigolo – Let’s Have A Party!!

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You know him. We all know him. You know who I mean. The Guy. That Guy. You met him at school, at college, or you met him at work or at what in your glory days was your favourite bar. He might have been your uncle or your dad’s best buddy – call him Eddie or Tom or Mike. That guy – the walking, talking, laughing, crying, joking, catalytic, charismatic, party starting Guy! Yes, that Guy.

Might be years since you’ve seen him but you can still remember and spin the stories: ‘What about the time he … And would have got arrested if the cop hadn’t had him singing at his wedding!’

Well, Show Business and the music industry is heavily populated with those Guys – it comes with the territory of exposing yourself by getting up on stage for an audience to judge just how good you are or indeed if you’re any good at all.

And, of all those Guys, of all those Guys, the Guy who stands out for me as the most catalytic and charismatic; the most guaranteed to start the party you can never forget was Louis Prima. Let’s have a Party!

To start the party a recording from Louis’ great period with Capitol Records in the late 1950s when he produced a fountain of hits that had crowds jumping, jiving and wailing all across the world (but most especially in Las Vegas where he had legendary residencies at the Sahara and the Desert Inn).

Well, that has all the fun of the circus! Louis sells this operatic paean to love under the moon and stars of Naples with a mixture of genuine romanticism and sheer show biz pizazz. Often in Prima performances he seems to wind up like a baseball pitcher deciding, seemingly in the moment, whether to throw the fastball, the change up or the curve according to his own mood or the mood he senses coming across the footlights from the audience (and even in the studios Louis Prima always played to the audience).

The distinctive shuffle beat that is at the heart of Louis’ 50s sound is augmented by a wailing sax curtesy of bandleader and right and left hand man Sam Butera and by an assortment of hortatory foot stomps and handclaps. Now that I think of it Louis Prima may just be the most musically hortatory performer who ever lived!

I imagine that among the audience listening to this song will have been many former WW2 GIs who had indeed found love under the moon and stars of Naples. Some who brought brides home must have smiled at the memory of those Mediterranean nights and some who decided to return to the sweetheart waiting at home must have smiled more ruefully as they remembered the girl they left beside the beautiful Bay of Naples.

Louis Prima started out in New Orleans imbibing the spirit of Jazz in the cradle of the music. But, like so many others it was in the Big Apple in the mid/late 1930s that his career took off both as the dynamic live performer who could sell out theatres in both the white and the black communities and as a recording artist. It was in New York in 1936 that he wrote and recorded, ‘Sing, Sing, Sing’ which in the version by Benny Goodman would become an iconic Jazz standard.

Louis, notwithstanding Italy’s Axis status during WW2, continued to record and have hits with songs celebrating Italian-American life during the course of the war. ‘Angelina’ may well have introduced many rural Americans to terms like,’Pizzeria’ and ‘Pasta’. Few, however would have needed dictionaries to get the point of, ‘Please No Squeeze Da Banana’ or ‘Bacci Galupe (Made Love On The Stoop).

Post war Louis struggled to maintain a big band along with his stable of horses and alimony payments to a string of ex-wives. Key developments that would lead to his renaissance as a big league performer were his meeting with the 17 year old singer(and soon to be wife number 4) Keely Smith in 1948 (when Louis was 37) and his hiring of Sam Butera as band leader and arranger for his Vegas residencies and for his recordings with Capitol. Buttera, a fluent, no nonsense tenor sax player had a great instinct for songs and arrangements that would suit Louis Prima’s crowd pleasing genius.

It was Sam Butera who had the inspired idea to mash-up the songs, ‘Just A Gigolo’ and, ‘I Ain’t Got Nobody’ to create a matchless vehicle for Louis Prima’s overwhelming ebullience. The live version below features what can only be called a burlesque performance with Louis clowning and mugging like a solid-gone hep cat. The band and the sometimes bewildered Keely do their best to keep up and echo their leader as he plays with the song, them and the audience.

Louis could tone things down on record as you can hear in his and Keeley’s hit duet on Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer’s evergreen romantic classic, ‘That Old Black Magic’ which won a Grammy Best Song in 1959. I still think you can insert an imaginary exclamation mark after every line sung by Louis but it does not to my mind distract from a fine recording which showcases a cool Keely vocal.

The late 50s and early 60s were golden days for Louis (despite splitting with Keeley in 1960) as he hit peak form as a live performer while recording several excellent sets for Capitol. He was, of course, hit by the tsunami of The Beatles appearance on the scene and it might have seemed that his days as an artist of note were numbered. Louis reacted by continuing as a considerable live draw and by setting up his own record label.

Then by one of those quirks of fate beyond all analysis Louis found himself right back in the spotlight with an enormous hit through the unlikeliest of collaborators – Walt Disney! Louis had recorded Mary Poppins and Robin Hood LPs and a Winnie The Pooh theme before he scored a great triumph with his movie stealing performance of the Sherman Brothers’, ‘I Wanna Be Like You’ as the voice of the Orangutang, ‘King Louie’ in the film, ‘The Jungle Book’.

With the assistance of Phil Harris, voicing the character of Baloo the Bear, Louis lays down a classic performance that still stirs young and old some 50 years after it was recorded. I love the way the song builds slowly, beginning almost drowsily and the way Louis takes such care in enunciating the lyric.

I remember first hearing this song as an 11 year old at the cinema and being thrilled by the abandon of the characters to rhythm, to the beat! I also remember that even on the way out of the cinema some bright sparks had already memorised the song and gave stentorian performances with exaggerated simian antics to puzzled passers by going about their Saturday morning shopping. That defines an instant classic pretty well for me!

Louis Prima never gave up performing – how could he? It was oxygen and ambrosia for him. Louis died, after three years in a coma on 24 August 1978. He had lived a big-hearted, generous, big life. Louis packed an enormous amount of music and joy into his 67 years.

SING UP LOUIS! SING UP!

Louis Prima! Now that was some Guy!

Recommended Recordings:

‘The Wildest’ (Capitol 1958)

‘The Widest Comes Home!’ (Capitol 1962)

‘Lake Tahoe Prima Style’ (Live on Capitol 1962)

There is also a valuable film documentary, ‘The Wildest’ from 1999 which shows Louis in unstoppable full flow.

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On The Bus with The Beatles – Helen Shapiro (Walking Back to Happiness)

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Featuring : Walking Back to Happiness, You Don’t Know, I Walked Right In

Sometimes cultural earthquakes and revolutions, like their political equivalents, can turn the world upside down with staggering rapidity.

Looking around after the initial shock new figures, previously hidden, become prominent and established seemingly impregnable careers and reputations may lie buried or broken in the settling dust.

The emergence of The Beatles, in 1963 in Britain and the following year in America, as joyous rock ‘n’ roll revolutionaries, signalled that the times really were a changin’ and that all our maps would need need to be hastily and radically redrawn to reflect a new reality (if you want to be fancy a new paradigm).

Today’s tale on The Immortal Jukebox concerns a British early 1960s pop phenomenon, Helen Shapiro, now largely forgotten- except by faithful greybeards like me.

Yet, this is an artist with a thrilling and wholly distinctive voice who began recording at the age of 14 and whose first four four records included two British number 1 smashes and two further top 3 hits (as well as once grazing the Billboard Hot 100 following two Ed Sullivan Show appearances).

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An artist whose first pre-teenage group included the future glam rock star Marc Bolan (T Rex) and who headlined The Beatles first British nationwide tour in January/February 1963 (they were fourth on the bill!).

An artist who inspired Lennon and MacCartney to write, ‘Misery’ and who recorded, ‘It’s My Party’ in Nashville before Leslie Gore had ever heard the song.

Despite all this Helen Shapiro was overtaken by a cultural tsunami and was effectively spent as a pop star before she was old enough to drive a car or vote!

Perhaps, additionally she was a victim of, ‘Shirley Temple Syndrome’ whereby the public’s fickle support is withdrawn from a child star when they inevitably grow up and are no longer the incarnation of, ‘cute’.

On a personal note I should add that her, never to be forgotten once heard, 1961 signature hit, ‘Walking Back To Happiness’ (below) is among the first songs I ever remember begging my parents to buy for me and probably the first pop song I could enthusiastically sing, word perfect, as the vinyl spun around at 45 revolutions per minute on our treasured Dansette record player (Helen Shapiro’s parents didn’t even own a record player when her first single was issued!)

If you can screen out the dated backup chipmunky ‘Yeh Yeh Yeh’ background singers you will hear an astonishingly confident and powerful singer singing her heart out and generating emotion at power station levels.

‘Walking Back To Happiness’ is pure pop champagne – bubbling over with fizzing life every time it is played. Listening to it since invariably rekindles the ecstasy I felt as a 6 year old hearing it for the first time.

That’s quite a gift and one I will always be grateful to Helen Shapiro for.

The material and production on many of Helen’s records too often reflected the safety first, by the music business play book, of old school pre rock ‘n’ roll professional Norrie Paramor.

It was probably deemed not sensible for Helen to risk her moment(s) of fame by recording songs by, ‘unproven’ writers and in styles not yet fully appreciated (or heard) in Britain. S

o this fine voice rarely flew unfettered.

Astonishingly, Helen’s management did not take up the offer to record The Beatles, ‘Misery’ and become the first artist to cover a Lennon/MacCartney original composition.

This was compounded by the later failure to issue her take on, ‘It’s My Party’ as soon as she had recorded it!

Still, as you can hear in her number 1 hit, ‘You Don’t Know’ there was always a quality of poignancy and direct emotional heft in Helen’s voice which still reaches out across the decades.

In all her records, from every era of her career, you can detect an artist who simply loves to sing, to make songs come alive for the audience as she becomes more alive singing them.

It is important to remember that the Britain that Helen toured with The Beatles in 1963 during one of the coldest winters for many centuries was emphatically not the, ‘Swinging Sixties’ Britain that would bloom later in the decade.

Though the nation was finally, after more than a decade of post war austerity beginning to enjoy economic uplift it would be a country unrecognisable to my own children: as alien in many ways as a distant planet.

In common with many working class families of the time I lived in a monochrome world of Without!

Without a telephone, without a car, without central heating, without a bathroom (I bathed in a tin bath), without a refrigerator.

Crucially we did have a radio and a tiny black and white TV with a 12 inch screen that seemed to work best when firmly disciplined by means of heavy slaps to the frame.

Through the TV and the radio I became dimly aware there was a wind of change stirring and that it was likely I was young enough to be a lucky recipient of its transformative power.

The TV and radio also introduced me to records that sketched out new vistas of emotion and identification for me. I then bought my records (more accurately had them bought for me) from a stall in the street market that literally took place outside our front door.

The riot of colour and glamour that would characterise the,’Swinging Sixties’ was still securely stoppered in the genie’s bottle as Helen, The Beatles and 9 other acts boarded the coach in early February 1963 to visit Bradford, Doncaster, Wakefield, Carlisle and Sunderland on the first leg of the fourteen date tour they shared.

The Beatles had just issued, ‘Please Please Me’ and they were yet to record first LP. That would happen on 11 February during a break on the tour.

The impact of that LP would change everything and turn a raw bunch of provincial rockers into world wreckers.

You can see something of the joshing elder brother/adoring kid sister relationship The Beatles and Helen Shapiro developed on the bus in a clip (sometimes available on Youtube) from the TV show, ‘Ready, Steady, Go’ from October 1963 when Beatlemania was an established reality.

By 1964 Helen Shapiro was effectively an ex pop star.

For many that would have been a devastating and embittering fate.

Not for Helen Shapiro.

Helen Shapiro’s truest ambition was never to be a pop star. She had a vocation as a singer so when the caravan of fame passed on she was not emotionally defeated rather she carried on singing – carrying out what she came to regard as her god given vocation.

A careful comb through her record catalogue yields a number of, ‘how that did that one get away’ gems and displays her passion and versatility as a singer.

Among those the one that holds my heart is, ‘I Walked Right In’. It makes you wonder what would have happened if Helen had been born in Brooklyn rather than Bethnal Green!

Helen Shapiro was always a lot more than the cute teenager with the Beehive hairdo, the gingham, the lace and the train-stopping voice.

In the half century since her 60s supernova moment Helen has continued to honour her gifts.

This has included playing the role of Nancy in the musical, ‘Oliver’ and a dozen years or so proving her jazz chops live and in recordings with the wonderfully swinging Humphrey Lyttleton Band (Humphrey, a true gentleman maintained no prejudices except one in favour of real talent for which he had an unerring eye and ear).

These days Helen’s gifts are directed through gospel outreach evenings in the service of her faith which became central to her life from 1987.

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Even in this context she still sings, ‘Walking Back To Happiness’ though now as a mature reflection rather than youthful impulse.

She has certainly earned that right.

Notes :

Helen Shapiro’s career is in need of a Box Set!

Until EMI let me loose we will have to make do with the following discs which all have their merits :

‘The Essential Helen Shapiro’ which collects the A and B sides of 15 singles.

‘The Ultimate Helen Shapiro’ which has a more varied selection and,

‘Abbey Road 1961-’67’.

 

Van Morrison : Carrickfergus (Elegy for Vincent)

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The Unfinished conversation:

‘There you are …… ‘

‘Grand, Grand ….’

‘Isn’t there a fine stretch in the evenings now’

Aye – there’s a fair dazzle of daffodils over the old road’

‘Did you hear that McCoy’s retiring! And didn’t he drive in a 14/1 winner, at the front every step of the way, at his last Cheltenham.’

‘Sure, many a time I’ve seen him near lift an animal over the line to get a winner’ – we will not see his like again.’

‘If you had to guess who, in their seventies, would record an album of songs associated with Frank Sinatra and pull it off who would you pick?’

‘Not Bob! But after the Christmas record who could ever be surprised again!’ We will not see his like again’

‘You’d hardly recognise the lad now – he’s up to my shoulder’

‘God bless him – isn’t it natural. Before too long it’s you that will be looking up at him’

‘Well I can see you need to be on your way. I’ll see you further on up the road’

‘Aye, but take your time, take your time – there’s plenty of road.’

In memory of my friend, Vincent Roche (RIP) who was one of nature’s gentlemen.

A craftsman, a scholar of music and horseflesh and a man of wry humour and quiet dignity.

Vincent was a proud Irishman from Foxford in the County of Mayo.

We often traded lines from the great ballads of the Irish tradition as opening salvos or payoff lines in our conversations:

‘… And we made a football of his rowdy-dow-dow’

‘… He never tried to go railing from Ennis as far as Kilkee’

‘… One star awake as the swan in the evening moved over the lake’

‘… Down by the sally gardens my love and I did meet’

‘… The pale moon was rising above the green mountain’

‘… And I said let grief be a falling leaf at the dawning of the day’

Today, in his honour, I feature a luminous performance of, ‘Carrickfergus’ by the greatest singer Ireland has ever produced, Van Morrison, accompanied by the legendary Chieftains who provide the sympathetic melodic and rhythmic ground against which Van weaves his profound magic.

Van makes emotionally real the knowledge we have in our bones that our relations and dearest friends are all bound to pass on like the melting snow.

Treasure them while you share the same stretch of road.

Wherever we wander most of us keep an image in our hearts of the home place and all of us are mesmerised by the waves of the salty sea ebbing and flowing as they have done for millennia before we were born and as they will do long after we are gone.

P.S. Those of you interested in my more literary efforts and Ireland might like to look up the, ‘Once In A Blue Moon A Poem’ post below.

RIP Dave Mackay: The noblest Hotspur of them all!

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‘To each his day is given. Beyond recall man’s little time runs by: but to prolong life’s glory by great deeds is virtue’s power’. (Virgil, The Aeneid)

‘Nor have I seen a mightier man at arms on this earth .. He is truly noble. This is no mere hanger-on in a hero’s armour’. (Beowulf)

‘If he had served in a war he would have been the first man into action – he would have won the Victoria Cross’. (Bill Nicholson)

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Dave Mackay who has died at the age of 80 was by acclamation the finest player ever to play for Spurs, the finest player ever to play for his first club, Hearts and he would be certain to be selected as a member of Scotland’s best ever team.

He was an inaugural inductee to the English and Scottish Football Halls of Fame, a Footballer of the Year and he rightfully graces one of her Majesty’s postage stamps!

Yet no recitation of the many honours he won can serve to capture what made him such an admirable player and man.

For that you have to consider his granite character.

I have reached the age when the heroes of my youth are becoming fixtures on the Obituary pages and all too often I reluctantly realise that perhaps those heroes, for all their accomplishments, had, like most of us, feet of clay.

Yet, with Dave Mackay it is clear that the term hero is entirely justified.

He really did fill every unforgiving minute with sixty seconds of distance run and anyone examining his career and wider life will have to agree that here indeed was a man in full.

Dave Mackay’s qualities of bravery, modesty, loyalty and honesty applied under the glare of public pressure show manhood at its best.

Dave Mackay as a player combined complete physical and mental commitment with extravagant skill.

With Hearts his pre-match party piece was to run out into the centre circle and then to back-heel the ball into the net on the half volley. At Spurs he would volley ball high into the stratosphere as he came out and then nonchalantly perfectly trap it as it came back to earth.

Once the game started it was a very foolish opponent who imagined that they could intimidate Dave who could tackle with the force of a JCB.

Once the ball was won with his head up and barrel chest out he could see the pass that would open up the opposition and then deliver it with casual aplomb.

As a captain he led by example – Dave Mackay never left the pitch without having given every ounce of effort possible and he demanded nothing less from his team mates. But, his leadership was not merely a matter of fist shaking exhortation: his greatest attribute as a captain was that all the players he played with wanted his good opinion.

To have Dave Mackay pat you on the back and for him to say well done as he lifted a glass with you after the game was treasure far beyond the roar of the crowd.

Dave was a footballer’s footballer the canniest judges of a players worth, his fellow professionals, all knew that he was a very special player.

All time great players such as George Best, Eusabio and Spurs own Jimmy Greaves all spoke with head-shaking wonder about Dave’s range of football talents and the physical presence and impact he brought to the game.

To be on his team made you feel inches taller while to see him leading your opponents out was a sure signal that today your mettle was really going to be tested!

Dave Mackay was a winner.

With Hearts in the 1950s he won the League title, the Cup and the League Cup.

With Spurs he was a member of the immortal 60/61 double winning side which set a standard for thrilling excellence that has rarely, if ever, been matched in English football.

A team which included the sublime skills of John White, the canny, pulling the strings of the game intelligence of Danny Blanchflower, the blistering pace of Cliff Jones and the battering ram belligerence of Bobby Smith made for an irresistible attacking force.

What Dave Mackay added was tempered steel as well as silky skill.

Any team with Dave Mackay in it would never lack for heart and there could be no such thing as a lost cause while the final whistle was yet to be blown.

With the addition of the genius of Jimmy Greaves Spurs became a team of all talents. FA Cups and the first European trophy for a British side filled the White Hart Lane Trophy cabinet and the memories of the glory of that side will never tarnish.

Though Mackay faced broken legs and the frailties of increasing age as the 60s ended he took the opportunity offered by Brian Clough with Derby County to show that his football brain and charisma made him the perfect mentor for a team filled with youthful burgeoning talent.

Roy McFarland and his colleagues were treated to master classes in what it meant to be a footballer in every training session and in every game they learned under Dave’s watchful eye how to apply those lessons in the heat of battle.

Dave later won a league title as a manger with Derby and that team reflected his continuing belief that football was a Man’s game to be played skilfully with whole-hearted commitment .

Dave Mackay through his talent, his character and his achievements gave dignity and honour to the profession of football.

He knew that he was blessed to play the game he loved at the very highest levels and he repayed those blessings in the fullest measure.

We shall not see his like again.