converselyspeaking

In some typefaces, L7 looks like a rectangle. That’s close enough to ‘square,’ as in fuddy-duddy, dull, conformist, fussy, and excessively conventional to prompt Rick James to leave and not look back. The song Bustin’ Out is a catchy tune, says me, and the phrase is repeated enough to work its way into my head without trying to move in. The rest of the album is okay.

I loved James’s music since the first time I heard Super Freak. It was on the punk rock show on the student radio station at Penn in 1981. The DJ played Super Freak twice because it was the best new music that week. I went out and bought all his albums.

There’s a mistake in the lyrics printed on the liner sleeve. James does a little tribute to Patti Labelle, including the most famous line in her big hit, Lady Marmalade. ‘Voulez-vous coucher avec moi?’ is about all the French I know. Someone typed the line how it sounded: Vous le vous couchez avec moi?

I’ve played this more than any other record, I think. Let It Bleed started with a lead, but I don’t care much for Midnight Rambler anymore. American Beauty was my favorite for a long time, but over the years it got too damn melodic for a rock record. As evidence of the power of Workingman’s Dead, it is what I played last time I chased an earworm away.

I used to think Uncle John’s Band had too many questions in it. When I was in school, I had to answer more questions than I wanted, so when the Dead asked ‘how does the song go?’ I said if you don’t know I won’t help you. Now I just think of it as entry-level existentialism and laugh it off.

The only way I can claim to be like Sam Cooke is that I don’t know much biology either, but I have never believed a dire wolf would weigh 600 pounds. ‘Six hundred pounds of sin’ is a terrific and terrifying image, but that would be bigger than most tigers. Just now I read the entry in Wikipedia for dire wolf (I didn’t know it used to be a thing)—it topped out at 150 pounds. I still don’t want one at my window.

I enjoyed making mix tapes (before I started working too hard) and this compilation had some obscure songs. I liked Seven Little Girls Sitting in the Back Seat by Paul Evans—surprisingly chaste. Stranded in the Jungle by the Cadets is very odd. The singer rides atop a whale from Africa to his local lovers lane in 12 hours.  The Bobbettes had a hit with Mr. Lee, so someone thought of trying I Shot Mr. Lee (I shot him in the head, whoa oh).

I had a mix tape of trashy oldies drawing on those and others like them that was a big hit at parties.

The first time I watched Saturday Night Live was in December, 1976, when Frank Zappa was the musical guest. He played I’m the Slime, The Purple Lagoon, and at about 2 a.m. Peaches en Regalia. I must have been in a grumpy mood—I didn’t laugh at the show. I decided it wasn’t a good investment of my time and bought the record. I’d heard Willie the Pimp and Hot Rats and liked them. I didn’t know the rest of the record was jazz instrumentals.

After the instrumentals by Gary Davis earlier this week, I checked my collection for records without anyone singing. There are more than I thought—about 80 of 700. Most of those are jazz, featuring John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, and Art Tatum. A few are classical; there’s a fair amount of comedy. At least one is Dylan Thomas reading A Child’s Christmas in Wales and Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night. It’s 20 below here and I’m ready to hear about the wolves in Wales. (If it doesn’t warm up, I can play Dire Wolf by the Grateful Dead. That mentions a harsh winter. I wonder how many songs mention wolves?)

I have four albums by the Rev. Mr. Davis; I thought I picked the one with his singing Death Don’t Have No Mercy. I didn’t see that this record is all instrumental. I like Candy Man and the Maple Leaf Rag on this record too. Davis played a wide variety of music on the streets of New York City for years.  

The liner notes complain about the college kids recording folk music and keeping the royalties. Davis’s Wikipedia page says that performers including Peter, Paul, and Mary, the Grateful Dead, Eric von Schmidt, Bob Dylan, and the Rolling Stones shared credit (and royalties) with Davis; the income allowed Davis to buy his house and live in comfort.

The comments on YouTube for Candyman rave about Davis’s technique.

The songs were recorded between 1952 and 1960, but I didn’t see any evidence that this was a reissue. The first sentence of Little Walter’s Wikipedia article says he was a revolutionary like Django Reinhardt, Charlie Parker, and Jimi Hendrix. Me, I was just going to say that every harmonica player since Little Walter sounds like him. The article also said he got into fights and even had some run-ins with the police. His picture on the cover of the record shows a scar on his forehead that looks as if the wound had been sewn up with monofilament fishing line.

I like his Key to the Highway. I’m fascinated (and stumped) by Mellow Down Easy. He says his baby jumps, shakes, wiggles, then mellows down easy before she blows her top. I have no idea how the kids on Bandstand would to that. The online lyrics providers didn’t listen very closely to Blue and Lonesome. I can clearly hear ‘I’m going to cast my trouble, yeah/down into the deep blue sea/let the whales and fishes have a fuss over me.’ Most of the sites have ‘I’m going to cast myself into the deep blue see [sic].’ That’s about the opposite meaning.

He had some hits after this collection: Mannish Boy, The Blues Had a Baby and They Named It Rock and Roll, and Champaign and Reefer with the Rolling Stones. Despite those not having those later arrivals, this is great record.

When my roommate played it for me in 1969, he said the line in I’m Ready was ‘Hope some schoolboy wants a fight.’ He made a crack about the backlash against hippies. I have better speakers now, and I say it is ‘screwball.’ There weren’t any schoolboys in blues clubs in the 1950s to punch. The line before that is a favorite—‘I’m drinking TNT, I’m smoking dynamite.’ I said that when I was slamming down bar gin, and no one ever stepped back. It’s the singer, not the song. In Hoochie Coochie Man, Muddy said he had $700; that’s $8000 today. Can’t say I’ve tried that in a bar.

Muddy wasn’t the kind of guy who expected an exclusive relationship with a lover. In Honey Bee he says ‘I don’t mind you sailing/but please don’t sail too long.’ In Still a Fool, he says, ‘I been crazy, oh, all my life/well, I done fell in love/with another man’s wife.’ In I Just Want to Make Love to You, he says ‘I don’t want you to be true/I just want to make love to you.’ Also: ‘I don’t want you because I’m sad and blue,’ good to know before you get serious. In Standing Around Crying, he says ‘Oh baby, I ain’t gonna be riding you around in my automobile/you got so many men/that I’m afraid you may get me killed.’ Me, I’d have given Muddy Waters the Nobel in Literature.

McTell is notable for playing 12-string guitar in Piedmont fingerstyle. He never had a hit, but he played on the streets of Atlanta into the 1950s. Jack White’s Third Man Record has reissued four LPs of McTell’s work. Bob Dylan wrote a song about him. McTell played a lot of kinds of songs, but you can recognize them all. If you listen to one old bluesman, you can do a lot worse.

One side of this record is mostly religious songs/spirituals. You Got to Die is a version of Pascal’s Wager—you don’t know when you are going to die, so you should live according to Christian doctrine to make sure you are ready.

The other side is more about the pleasures of life. Broke Down Engine Blues contains ‘I went down to the praying ground/and dropped down on bended knees/I ain’t crying for no religion/Lordy, give me back my good girl please.’ He also says he loved his woman because she could really do the Georgia crawl. I couldn’t find it in my Dictionary of American Regional English, but I’m sure it’s sex.

Not a snappy title for a great record. As Doc Watson put it in one of his songs: Did you love John Hurt? Put me in the group voting yes. Hurt always had a beautiful sound from his guitar (people like to call it gentle) to go with his sweet voice, and his lyrics had plenty of sex and violence. What’s not to like. He did plenty of spirituals, too. His I Shall Not Be Moved is outstanding. My only complaint about the material he left us is that he wasn’t able to record much when he was young.

This record’s version of Oh Mary Don’t You Weep has one of my favorite phrases from a spiritual—Moses stood on the Red Sea shore/smote the water with a 2 X 4. That’s not how Charlton Heston did it in the movie. Wikipedia says the song predates the U.S. Civil War and that 2 X 4s became a thing about 1915, so some clever soul worked the joke into an old song.