Category: Music

Does Rotary Connection mean something? The innertubes won’t tell me. Is it about phones—rotary dials were still big in 1969. In 1966 the Rolling Stones did a song titled Connection on the record Between the Buttons—I think I should be able to connect the dots, but I got nothing.

Minnie Riperton was great, the band on the record was very good. What were the folks at Chess/Cadet thinking when they were producing this? I don’t think Respect needed another cover version in 1969. It was the band’s fourth album, so they must have sold some. There’s a lot of the ‘60s that is hard to explain.

This record is a mix of old folk tunes such as Jack o’ Diamonds and De Kalb Blues, for example, and some topical songs von Schmidt wrote, one of them using the U.S. space program as a metaphor for sex. I read the liner notes, finding that von Schmidt was an accomplished painter and won a Fulbright. Two songs that were on earlier posts—Roy Acuff did Titanic and Tal Mahal did Ain’t Nobody’s Business, essentially the same as Champagne Don’t Hurt Me, Baby.

I did some quick poking around in Discogs. I have four versions of Reason to Believe and of Hey Joe. I bet the most frequently recorded song will be a blues classic.

Hutto was one of the most renowned slide guitar players of his generation, hence the ‘slide’ in the title. He was a devotee of Elmore James, and Hutto passed it down to his nephew Lil’ Ed Williams, front man for The Blues Imperials. Wikipedia says Jack White plays the same model guitar that Hutto did. Something about blues music inspires stories about passing down. After Hound Dog Taylor died, Hutto fronted for Taylor’s band, the House Rockers.

I picked this clip of Hutto’s performance for the hat as much as the music. That hat is in a black and white photo on the back cover of Slidewinder. I think it is even more majestic in color.

I love this record. Broonzy endorsed having a good time, and when I play his music, I have one as well. In Good Liquor Gonna Carry Me Down he makes the case that nothing will stop his drinking—not a 16-year-old’s promise of sex, not his doctor’s threat of transplanting monkey glands, not his current girlfriend’s threat that some other man would carry Broonzy’s business home.  That is a man who is dedicated to his drinking. It is the only song reference I know to monkey glands, a belief from about 1900 that an old man could be rejuvenated by transplanting pieces of chimpanzee testicles into his scrotum. It didn’t work. There were rumors that Yeats had the procedure, which made stories about relationships with Maud Gonne and her daughter much more interesting.

Hip-Shaking Strut has the earliest example of an elephant joke I’ve found. What did the rooster say to the elephant? How about you and me not stepping on each other? (That’s funny, says me.)

It is a 15th-anniversary compilation of some of the performers on Electra. Twelve artists, a song each: Long John, Tom Rush; So Early, Early in the Spring, Judy Collins; Linin’ Track, Koerner, Ray, and Glover; Girl of the North Country, Hamilton Camp; 900 Miles, Dick Rosmini; The Last Thing on My Mind, Tom Paxton; Born in Chicago, Paul Butterfield Blues Band; Fair Beauty Bright, Kathy and Carol; White-Winged Dove, Mark Spoelstra; Blues on the Ceiling, Fred Neil; Rompin’, Rovin’ Days, Bruce Murdoch; Power and Glory, Phil Ochs. Record labels loved to put out samples of their product. Back when the Dillards records were hard to find, I bought Breck Hair Presents a Hootenanny on eBay because it had two of their songs.

Some things don’t change: A young man born in Chicago in 1941 was told to get a gun. Something that did—Elektra said simply 15^th anniversary, relying on the schools to have taught its customers that ‘annus’ was Latin for year. The cardboard album cover is long gone. The picture in Discogs features a photo of each artist; I guess Rush, Collins, Ochs, and Paxton were selling the most records because they were in the top row. The Elektra logo is on a blue background in the first ‘O’ in Folksong.

My favorite song of the bunch is by the Butterfield Blues Band.

He was quite a star. Wikipedia almost ran out of words to praise his works: He had prolific output in Piedmont Blues, gospel, country blues, and songs of social protest. He expanded his repertoire to include urban blues, jazz, and traditional folk songs; he was on radio and the Broadway stage as well as in many movies.

‘One Meatball,’ his biggest hit, was the first million-seller for a black artist in the U.S. He sang for FDR in the White House in 1941. He sang at the 1963 March on Washington. He was friends with Bayard Rustin. Discogs has 201 of his records. Sadly, there isn’t anything remarkable about this one. I bought it from my roommate who made sure he had some Lightnin’ Hopkins and John Lee Hooker as well. Man, Hopkins has over 300 records and Hooker nearly 800. I’ll see what’s on streaming.

I bought this record, which was a cut-out, used in 1981 or so because WXRT had played Taj Mahal’s Nobody’s Business But My Own frequently enough to make me want to have it. He did a wonderful job of imitating Wolfman Jack saying Ain’t this XERB, baby. I saw this copy in Philadelphia and got.

Turns out it was the only song I was glad to hear. Kris Kristofferson and Joan Baez singing Hello In There is fine, but not better than John Prine. I like to hear Kristofferson sing Me and Bobby McGee, but here the vocals included the entire festival.

It was California in the good old days, I guess. The organizer wanted to keep the crowd and the ticket price down. Wikipedia says that one year when the festival sold all the tickets, people listened from the highway instead of crashing in. That wasn’t like the Newport Folk Festival or Woodstock. Wolfman Jack was a mysterious figure until American Graffiti came out in 1973. In Ohio in 1970 the folks who had heard of him argued about his age, size, and racial/ethnic heritage based on his raspy voice. Having a black performer (Taj Mahal) put on a black voice to imitate the Wolfman helped to maintain the mystery.

The New York Times asked for help to make a mix tape about autumn. I know the number one song for autumn—heck, it’s probably number 2 and 3 as well, and the best song for wedding receptions, first dates, and anything else you play music for: Moondance by Van Morrison.

Also good are King Harvest by The Band [it even has harvest in the title] and Hazy Shade of Winter by Simon and Garfunkel to cut the sweetness of Moondance. Yes, I was in high school in 1968.

Another record that is much better than I remember (or perhaps ever knew). The lyrics of rock and roll, blues, and folk have a simple goal—don’t get in the way. These songs—the epitome of singer/songwriter skills–are poetry. She rhymes barter and martyr in Roses Blue. In the Gallery, the artist she addresses says don’t love me now, I am dead. Then he says Please love me now, I am dead. That’s a lot artier than You Really Got Me.

There are some red clouds at sunset on the album cover; otherwise the clouds are only in Both Sides Now. I know I’ve changed my mind about that song. It’s probably plenty to recall life’s illusions rather than, say, get smacked over the head with a 2 by 4. I love Bob Seger’s line—I wish I didn’t know now what I didn’t know then. Knowing is overrated.