Walkin' After Midnight

The Blues Brothers, on arriving to play a gig out in the sticks, are told "We got both kinds [of music]. We got country *and* western."  Not to Jake and Elwood's taste, but they give it their best.  It's not to my taste either: I'm not ambivalent about it, I don't like country music.  And yet, sometimes we come across specific instances that make a nonsense of our prejudices based on generalisations.


Some years ago I was pointed in the direction of the Cowboy Junkies, and in particular their breakthrough album, The Trinity Session, which starts with this track.  Well, the "Cowboy" in the band's name notwithstanding, I listened and I was won over.  Find it, listen to it, it is a modern classic.  And that's the closest I have come to liking country music (and part of me still says the Junkies are not real cowboys).


Now the closing track of The Trinity Session is "Walkin' After Midnight", originally recorded by Patsy Cline.  As you can see, you can't get much more country than Patsy (or should that be western?), and as she sings it, it is pure C&W.   But hold on, even in Patsy's take, is there a hint of a bluesy feel there?  A note that flattens by a semitone in bar 3 of the melody ("out in the moonlight"), coupled with that strange lyric that tells of obsession.  Perhaps this tune can stray a little too, go out walking to some different places:

• Madeleine Peyroux taking a jazzy approach with a voice which has more than hints of Billie Holiday.
• Or this from Imelda May.

All of which leads me think about the labels we like to place on musical genres, and ask if these are simply lazy assumptions that may be keeping us from richer experiences. By saying "I don't like that sort of thing", I might be filtering some good stuff from my experience.  After all, music has always been about cross-fertilization and as ever, the most interesting places are always edges and boundaries.

Other versions of "Walkin'" that I found along the way and liked:

• Analog Velvet (she has a great great voice for this song).
• The Kentucky Headhunters (nice "rollin'" rhythm - hint of Rawhide - and a rare male vocal)

and

• Melissa Lauren Pisarzowski (the upload post makes my point "Patsy Cline tunes are great to sing on a gig. Sometimes we do them really bluesy, sometimes really country...")

But of course, I always have to come back to the Cowboy Junkies version: Margot Timmins' dreamy, floaty voice over that muscular, somewhat grungy guitar, laid back but still insistent.

And of course, I'm fooling with this on my tenor sax, and, well, here's how it's going ...

Mannenberg

Deep inside me are the rhythms and cadences of South African Jazz.  I grew up in South Africa in the depths of the apartheid era, and I have very early memories of hearing the music from the "black" radio stations (even radio was segregated).  Only much later did I discover the genius and subtlety of much of this music, the distinction between kwela and marabi and mbaqanga and the rest, and learn about the heroes of SA Jazz (Abdullah Ibrahim, Hugh Masekela, et al).  Even now my knowledge is only sketchy. But however much or little I have learned, the foundation on which this later knowledge has been built is that deep emotional "feel" of the local jazz:  the relaxed, easy, sprung rhythms, and the yearning quality of the melodies.

It's difficult to write about this stuff: it's so close that it is hard to see in the round.  Like so many others, I left South Africa a few years after I finished university.  And like so many others, my experience is that Africa clings to you in surprising ways: tastes, smells, colours, but especially music.

To hear an iconic piece like Abdullah Ibrahim's Mannenberg is to undergo an internal shift.  Go on: click the link and start listening:  when I hear those opening piano phrases it takes me to a different place.  Those easy rolling rhythms become the rhythms of walking down a gently curving road, in the cool of the early evening, with home waiting at the end of the day's work.  The call and response of the piano and sax are saying "it's ok - life is hard, but this is a time for peace, this is home".  There is deep sadness but also joy: the music is a solace.

I feel that this music has a "rightness" about it.  It has a quality of inevitability.  Perhaps it's just familiarity, but for me, every phrase in that sax solo seems irreplaceable: gently building, telling a story, drawing you in.

Now, no one could say that my life was hard: I have comfort and luxury and  opportunities that would be unthinkable to 90% of the world, and unimaginable to someone even 50 years ago, at the time when those rhythms and sounds were imprinting themselves on me.  My life is easy. And yet...

And yet there are feelings of loss, and regret, and sadness, and a sense of time passing and things passing from one's grasp and one's view.  And there is anger, at time wasted, and opportunities missed, and moments that have slipped by with insufficient appreciation.  And these are some of the feelings that come when "Mannenberg" starts to play.  There is the ache of being away from home, from a time and place long gone and out of reach.  But the music seems to say "it's ok, this is your  home, this music".  And maybe it is ok.  Maybe if that music calls and resonates so strongly within one, it really is ok.

All this reflection is prompted by the arrival in the post yesterday of "Cape Jazz Collection" a book of sheet music of original tunes by South African composers.  I've been picking out some of the tunes on my alto, searching for that quality that draws out these strong emotions.  And it's unmistakeably there: "Bo Kaap" by McCoy Mburatha, "Umlazi" by Basil Coetzee, "Cape Town" by Merton Barrow are the pieces I will start with.  In each of these, I find that hook, that pull that says "homecoming".  Perhaps intellectually I will learn what it is, perhaps it will remain elusive.   All I know, for now, is that my musical adventure has taken another step, I feel the bittersweet emotions of that music: hardship, yearning, and yet filled with joy and acceptance.

King Louie

Funny how information sneaks into your consciousness and then, one day, several pieces fall into place, and you know stuff you never knew before ...

When my eldest son was still very little we used to watch "The Jungle Book" on videotape.  And of course everyone remembers the Orangutang "King Louie" singing "I wanna be like you".  I had always assumed that the name "King Louie" was a tribute to Louis Armstrong.  Well of course I was wrong...

Listening to BBC Radio 4 "Saturday Live" program some years ago, the burlesque artist Immodesty Blaize was on the "Inheritance Tracks" segment, choosing music from her youth that had influenced her.  Her choice: Swing Swing Swing (which the BBC attributed to Benny Goodman).  Well of course the unforgettable performance of that piece is by Benny Goodman, with Gene Krupa et al at Carnegie Hall.  But Benny didn't write it ...

Then there was a band called "Fat Man Swings" at the Trowbridge festival in 20?? They played "Buona Sera Senorina".  Every time I go to one of these festivals I am enthused enough about some band to buy a CD, and almost always it gets NO play time back home.  Not this one, it has been a firm favourite ever since, and especially "Buona Sera".

What's the common factor? Louis Prima.  He wrote and performed "I wanna be like you", he wrote "Swing Swing Swing", and "Buona Sera" was a hit for him.

For me all these King Louie factors fell into place a short while ago: what a great performer this man was!  Such fun, such energy, such verve.

Want some others?  Just a Gigolo, Night Train, O Sole Mio.

And that leads us on to Sam Butera .... but that's another story.

The Times They Are A-changing

Ever since a weird friend of a friend left some behind some cassettes of Eno albums and his alien melodies got under my skin, I have watched Brian Eno's career with awe.  His music, his involvement as producer with Bowie, Talking Heads, U2 and others, his contribution to the "Long Now" project, collaborations with the likes of Jah Wobble, and his Oblique Strategies project ... all have been pitch perfect contributions to modern music and other culture.  He was profiled in The Guardian listings magazine this weekend, and one comment he made struck a chord with me: "It's insane that since the Beatles and Dylan it's assumed that all musicians should do everything themselves."   


Now, my generation grew up in that world where the overwhelming majority of pop tunes and more ambitious  rock pieces were clearly identified with specific bands or artists, and cover versions were somewhat ... shall we say ... sneerworthy.  I am now learning that this was in fact at the time a new thing, that pre-60's it was much more common for artists to perform songs written by others, Sinatra being a good example.  The best of these tunes from, roughly the first half of the 20th century are now the standards beloved of jazz bands everywhere:  these songs had the resilience to support adaptation by wildly different artists and still to retain their own character.


The performer/songwriter model that followed coincided with the flourishing of the recorded music industry as big business.  This industry has failed to navigate the digital revolution, and the way in which music is made and consumed is changing for good.  Technology means that the closed world of music creation and distribution has been opened to the masses.  There is no longer one pop music market, everything is fragmented and niche, and musicians make a living, if at all, increasingly from performance, using recordings for promotion.  Everyone can make music now and record and distribute it.  But not everyone who can perform half-decently has the skill to craft a good tune.

Over the decades, if anyone has known which way the wind has been blowing, it's been Eno. And now the Guardian tells us that [Eno has] "largely lost interest in the idea that singer should be at the centre of music and that pop music itself is somehow autobiographical".   Could this mean a new era of performers who feel free to pick and choose their material, and no longer feel obliged to write it themselves?  The answer my friend, is blowing in the wind ....

I Got Rhythm

I could never hold a beat.  As a teenager trying to dance, I had two left feet.  My sisters would try to coach me in dancing to 60's pop, saying "listen for the heavy beat, move to that beat".  No good.  Things would drift, I would get lost and nearly trip over my toes.  I loved the music, I sang it in my head, I knew the tunes and lyrics, but dance ... no hope.

When I was forced to join in marching at school and in doing national service, if I could find the pace at all, I  would find it slowly drifting away.  Luckily I learned the trick of changing one's step by using one foot to kick the heel of the other.  Bafflingly, sometimes I found I was still out of step.

When I started learning to play my sax, my teacher would say, "feel the pulse, tap your foot".  Guess what, I found I couldn't even tap my foot.   He said "play with a metronome".  Nothing did more to put my time out, and I froze, terrified of coming in at the wrong time, so even playing the first note was a challenge.  Left to my own devices, I could pick out the notes ... in my own time ... which was the wrong time.

Then things slowly started to change; things seems to be coming together now.  When I played at the jazz camp in San Diego this year I was complimented for my sense of timing.  What changed things?  I reckon two things: firstly, I started making and playing to backing tracks.  Unlike the harsh, insistent metronome, Band-In-A-Box gave me a warm, swinging, organic sound to play against.  It was actually good to listen to, even without playing a note, and when I did attempt a few tentative notes, they sounded gooood against the pulse of the bass.  And the second thing that changed flowed directly from that.  I started to move.  Not just tapping my toes, but starting to dance, to let the music flow through my body.  These days the toes tap at the slightest hint of swing.

Now I have a long long way to go: I make mistakes aplenty, both in reading the music and in placing the notes.  I struggle with phrasing, some passages are just too swift for me.  But, hey, on a good day, I Got Rhythm.

Reflections

It seems presumptuous to write about Thelonious Monk.  He baffles the brain.  His playing can seem disjointed, halting, spikey, unpolished (like this).  His pieces are full of strange harmonies and jumps.  In some way they can seem uncomfortable - especially if you're trying for the first time to turn those dots on the page into something with a shred of musical sense.

In "Jazz", Garry Giddins and Scott DeVeaux tell us that Monk is the second most widely performed jazz composer, second to Duke Ellington.  Consider though, that Ellington wrote over 1500 pieces: Monk wrote around 70.  What is the something that keeps performers coming back and back to those strange and beguiling pieces?  If you go and look at the leadsheet for "Reflections" you'll see just 32 bars sparsely sprinkled with notes. Yet this musical DNA, in the hands and minds of talented artists, gives rise to a whole family of musical offspring, each different, each resonant with Monkishness. Try Reflections enigmatically from Donald Fagen & Steve Khan, or quirkily from (anonomous ukelelist) or smoothly, beautifully from Wynton Marsalis.  Seems you can even  dance to it (if you have to).  

I don't have the musical theory to know why this is so: why Monk's DNA, his musical memes, are so fruitful.  I just rejoice in them, and in that feeling of triumph when somehow, from the jagged jumpiness of the notes on the page, I manage to get something that briefly reveals that flow and that Monkish feel.  Which of these many versions inspires me most?  Why, this one: Caleb Curtis's dreamy, beautiful rendition.

Oh, and Thelonious Monk's middle name was Sphere. Really.  How cool is that?

Aristotle Sings The Blues

"In Our Time" on BBC Radio 4 is, for my money, the most intelligent broadcasting there is.  In January Melvyn Bragg and his guests discussed Aristotle's "Poetics" (link here).   As ever, there was much to learn, but these two ideas got me thinking:.

"Poetics" concerns itself with drama, and specifically tragedy (the work on comedy is lost).  Aristotle discusses the purpose of drama, part of which is to achieve "catharsis" (used with the meaning of "cleansing").  So the audience gets to experience tragedy by proxy, and a playwright and players of sufficient skill and artistry will involve us so deeply in the action that we will actually experience the emotions of the characters, albeit in a diluted form.  As if it were a vaccination, we experience this cleansing or catharsis in a safe and controlled way, and thereby deal with some of our own emotions that we bring with us, almost as a form of therapy.

The other striking idea was this: that the drama can actually educate the audience in appropriate responses to situations that they may not have experienced.  In this way we can prepare ourselves for times of loss or grief, by seeing how others have responded and knowing what is appropriate.

This articulated so clearly some of  my own half-formed thoughts about the tunes I have been playing.  Old blues and jazz standards, with lyrics carrying strong emotions of love and pain and loss.  But these songs are not about giving in: we know somehow that the blues are all about surviving tragedy, and enduring the pain.  In a word, catharsis.  (like this)

They say that before you can sing the blues you must have lived the blues.  Maybe so.  But maybe it works a little the other way round also: that by singing, playing or even hearing the blues, we can educate ourselves emotionally.  Isn't this one way how we as teenagers developed an emotional vocabulary, and prepared for life?   So now, when I manage to play a blue phrase on my sax that twists in just the right way, and wrings the heart just a little, I feel am connecting with the main flow of humanity, stretching back, yes, as far as Aristotle.