Jody Stecher - An Introduction

"Jody Stecher is one of the very great singers alive today."
- Martin Carthy

There are many great instrumentalists in the world, and as many great singers. But rarely do they come together in the same person. There are plenty of great singers who can hold their own on guitar, and guitarists whose technique is so breathtaking that you can ignore the faltering faults in their singing. Maybe they even have a good voice. And there are even some who are good, or really good at both. And notable singer-arrangers (Geoff Muldaur, Sam Cooke), instrumentalist-composers (Fahey, Mingus), singer-songwriters, etc. People who could deliver an a capella song that would raise your hairs, and pick an instrumental that would set them on fire. But very few GREAT singer-instrumentalists.

In the field of blues you have Blind Willie Johnson, Son House, Skip James, Bukka White, Lonnie Johnson, Robert Johnson and a handful of others. Bluegrass has Bill Monroe, Doc Watson, Ron Thomason, Peter Rowan, and others who are equally great but less distinctive. Anglo- and Celtic music has Dick Gaughan, Andy Irvine, and Nic Jones (and almost Martin Simpson). In the world of Folk music you have Dave Van Ronk (yes, he was a great singer, despite a raggedy voice), Leadbelly, Jazz has Chet Baker and, um, probably others (I haven't heard enough of Nina Simone's piano-playing or Fats Waller's singing to judge). Leon Redbone sits comfortably in-between the genres, and underplays his greatness considerably. Rock and Pop music have had a handful, probably beginning with Fats Domino (though I don't know that I'd call him really GREAT), and Jeff Buckley probably would qualify if he'd lived long enough to develop his guitar prowess just a bit more. Indian Classical music has Z.M. Dagar. And there are others from Africa, Cuba, and elsewhere that I'm not familiar with. (Feel free to inform me of others you think should be on the list!)

There are two who are great singers and multi-instrumentalists who also span most of the genres listed above. One is Tim O'Brien, and he'll get a post later. The other is my favorite musician of all time.


What can I say about Jody Stecher? Superlatives come up short. It would not be enough to describe his instrumental capacity, though he can make every instrument he plays sing like morning birds. He sings with such emotional authority, restrained power, subtlety, and unassuming humanity, that every song he covers becomes indelibly associated with him. You don't need to hear any other versions once you hear Jody's. But descriptions really do no good. Even professional reviewers find themselves at a loss of words:

Biography by Don Stevens
Jody is one of the finest musicians in the world. He has recorded with Alasdair Fraser from Scotland, Krishna Bhatt from India, and with many of Americas best traditional musicians. Kate has played with many west coast groups. Jody plays mandolin, guitar, fiddle and banjo. Kate plays banjo and guitar. Both are terrific vocalists, and as a duet are unbeatable. When Ron Thomason is at a loss of words to describe the beauty of their playing and singing, how can a mere mortal attempt to describe it. Buy Blue Lightning. Listen to it, and read Ron's liner notes. There is nothing I can say to add to that! You won't quit until you find all their recordings.


Yes, I too have the feeling that when Jody gets up in the morning, he has Music for breakfast. I've never met him, but from everything I've read he seems like an amazing human being as well. And I think I know how he approaches music, and why his approach is so much deeper than everyone else's. You see, in the late 50s and early 60s city people began to discover 'folk music', and latched on to it because it was so much more vital and exciting than the schlock that had become their musical diet. But for the most part, they just butchered it, because they cleaned it up, set it to straight, bouncy tempos, and they never noticed all the small notes hiding in between the big notes. The instruments were mostly used to provide pitch-reference and rhythm. And you never got the sense that any of these people actually understood a word of what they were singing about.

But there were a few good ones, and when they were broadcast on the radio it woke up young Jody to the wonders of folk and bluegrass and cajun music, and made the world a better place. Of course, Jody didn't stop there. Like Fahey a decade before, he went to the source. He discovered the real roots, the depth and breadth of American music. And not content to stop at that, he went on to discover Indian classical music, Celtic music, Cajun music, and a host of traditional musics around the world. He learned as he listened, starting on fiddle, mandolin, guitar and banjo pretty much simultaneously at the age of 11. Later he learned Oud, studied the Sarod under Ali Akbar Khan, and finally mastered the Sursingar (a cross between a sarod and a veena) under the tutelage of the late master of Dhrupad, Z.M. Dagar. And he studied the old singers in depth, until he could hear and sing all the microtones that you'd hear in a Texas Gladden ballad or a Hindustani vocal raga. And he always learned the tradition of what he was doing, so that he could approach it in a holistic and respectful manner rather than an exploitative, touristy one. And he played all the styles and all the instruments, and mixed things here and there but always made it sound natural, rather than exotic.


His tone is universally sweet, no matter what instrument he's on, and I have the sneaking feeling that he intentionally plays a hair behind the tempo to help you hear his work without making it flashy (the opposite of the Earl Scruggs style, which pushes in front of the tempo). He has pioneered a number of techniques such as Clawhammer Guitar and Flatpicking Celtic guitar, but perhaps more astounding is the way he'll slip an Indian rhythmic pattern into a bit of guitar or banjo accompaniment without anybody noticing. He (together with his musical partner Kate Brislin or his various bands like Perfect Strangers) rehearses tirelessly, trying every arrangement until he finds the right one and it becomes integrated into his subconscious and his body memory. And then, then he drops it completely and just improvises! So the arrangement always sounds just perfect, impossible to improve upon, and yet it lives and breathes, and never gets stuck in the uninspiring dead stasis of so much technical perfection. His playing is proof that tone and timing are ultimately more important to music than speed and flash.

And then there's his approach to the songs themselves. Like Ron Thommason, Jody never sings a ditty. Whether its joyful or mournful, every song is a testament to the depth of human experience. That's part of why most of the songs he sings are old, traditional songs: all the extraneous elements have fallen away, only the essential and universal (though never generic) remains. And like Martin Carthy, Jody does his research. Sometimes he physically goes out and makes field recordings (the fantastic set The Real Bahamas, featuring Joseph Spence and the Pinder Family, was his work - learn more here). He listens to as many versions of the song as he can, particularly the old versions, and then - and this is what makes his approach so special - and then he inhabits the song, until he is living in it and singing from the point of view of the protagonist or songwriter. And this is what gives his singing such humanity. It's not just that can make his voice quiver as it slides up, or make his voice draw inward while projecting out like an opera singer, but he knows WHEN to do it, so that each vocal inflection corresponds to an emotional state. And then of course, having immersed himself in tradition and story, he forgets all of it, just sings from his heart and above all has fun! In this way, all the facets of life come through Jody's songs, and you have the rarest of rares, a complete art.

Even though you've likely not heard about him, you can bet that other musicians have. David Bromberg once said, "Jody Stecher was basically my teacher. He opened my ears to more beautiful music than anyone else ever did... more than I ever knew existed. He is also one of my favorite musicians on Earth to play with. I have never known anyone so intensely and completely enveloped in music. It's my suspicion that if you drained all the music out of Jody, you could carry what was left around in an eye dropper." His recordings have served as a primer for a large and diverse group of musicians, including Jerry Garcia, David Grisman, Peter Rowan, Martin Simpson, Seldom Scene, Laurie Lewis, Kathy Kallick, and the group, Hot Rize. In other words, they listen to him and say "Holy Shit! What an amazing song Jody's unearthed!" and then they make a version of it, which usually doesn't quite hold water compared to Jody's version, but they spread it to many more people, so I suppose it's good.

Of course, Jody would probably feel a little bit queasy with me lumping so many praises on him. Because another quality that emerges from his music is humility. He gets so into the songs and the music, his ego almost totally disappears. There's no separation between him and the music, and he never draws attention to his considerable skills. And when you listen, you undergo a similar transformation (especially if you sing along, which you'll almost certainly want to do). [after writing this I found out that he is in fact a very nice guy and a practicing Buddhist. So my theory of music-to-remove-ego holds true! See what you can learn by listening closely?]


And I haven't said much about his wife and musical partner Kate Brislin, but let me just say that she has a voice like an angel and a musical grace to match (do angels play banjo?). Her high, crystalline voice is the perfect foil for Jody's robust tone. Together they make music that will last for centuries to come as a high watermark of American traditional music.

Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin - bio by John Lupton
"Our favorite music is from the time when old-time music was becoming bluegrass." When he wrote those words for the liner notes of A Song That Will Linger, the 1989 debut Rounder release by him and his wife and duet partner, Kate Brislin, Jody Stecher probably didn't expect that the next decade would see four more albums that would establish them as the preeminent old-time country duet singers on the scene, but that's pretty much how it turned out. Although both Stecher and Brislin would likely disagree with that assessment, preferring to point in the direction of friends and colleagues like Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, or Kay Justice and Ginny Hawker, the '90s saw them carrying the beauty and simplicity of vintage old country music to a wider variety of folk music stages and audiences than probably anyone else. To some, it seemed as if they appeared on the scene out of nowhere, but both had been involved in folk music for several years prior to their meeting in the mid '70s. To paraphrase the old one-liner, if there's a dictionary with the term "music junkie" in it, look it up and you'll find Jody Stecher's picture next to it. Like many of his fellow New Yorkers born in the '40s and raised in the '50s, Brooklyn native Stecher was caught up as a teenager in the so-called Great Folk Music Scare of the '50s and '60s. After getting his first guitar at age 11, and a banjo at 12 (after hearing Dock Boggs on record), he signed on with his first bluegrass band, the New York Ramblers, in 1963, while still in his teenage years. (That band also included Winnie Winston and David Grisman). From bluegrass, he progressed to blues, Irish, Bahamian music and whatever else caught his fancy -- even an ongoing fascination with Indian sitar music under the tutelage of Krishna Bhatt. Along the way he made a number of albums, both solo and with others, and in 1974 he found himself playing in a Seattle-area band called Houseboat Music, while working in the Folklife department of the World's Fair in Tacoma. Also employed at the fair was California native Kate Brislin, who was familiar with Stecher's recently recorded first album of old-time music, and trying out a few songs together off-stage one evening, they found they clicked right away, beginning a musical association and friendship that eventually led to their marriage but not right away. As Stecher would later write, "We circled each other for years." During those years, Stecher continued to tour as a solo act, as well as with people like Bhatt and fiddler Hank Bradley. Brislin joined the Any Old Time String Band, moving on later to join the Blue Flame String Band. Stecher did ask Brislin to sing on his next two albums, along with notables such as Peter Rowan, Mary Black, Jerry Garcia and the Watersons. In 1985, they began getting serious about singing old-time duets of the classic songs that were the bedrock of bluegrass and country music -- "Lover's Return," by the Carter Family, for example, and Stephen Foster's "Hard Times." As one album led to another during the Rounder years, they also delved into interpretations of material that wasn't quite so old, such as Jean Ritchie's "Blue Diamond Mine," or the title track of their third Rounder release, Iris DeMent's "Our Town." Instrumentally, both Stecher and Brislin were classic examples of the advantages of timing and tone over sheer speed. Whether on guitar, banjo or mandolin, both were always tasteful and careful to never allow the instruments to overshadow or diminish the fragile beauty of a mountain ballad. It was a trick they were also able to pull off nicely with the vocals. The delicate and direct quality of Brislin's voice was a near-perfect match to the plaintive yearning of Stecher's. It has been said by some that the old country and mountain music of the American south (and points beyond) is as worthy of the description "soul music" as anything that's come out of Motown over the decades, and there's precious little better evidence of that than the music of Jody Stecher and Kate Brislin.


there's a few interviews on the web, all very revealing.
Read Michael Parrish's interview for Dirty Linen, 1991

and an interview on Jody's take on Indian music from 2006

And read Jody's memoir for Z.M. Dagar

[and this account of his trip to China as an ambassador of American music. awesome photos]


This is a music for all ages; those who are young and excited by life will enjoy it no less than those who are old and weary of it. Perhaps the cynical will dismiss his music because of the apparent romantic, nostalgic or devotional aspects inherent to the traditional songs he sings. But even cynics may find, if they allow themselves to listen openly and without prejudice, sympathetic strings resonating within themselves, responding to the encompassing love and deep, holy solitude that carries those romantic, nostalgic, and devotional lyrics. Their album of Utah Phillips' music made me cry on 4 out of 10 tracks. And I'm a Pirate! Like Gadaya, "every time i listen to [Leela, Leela], it makes me want to sing and dance and go live in an ashram". And I'm a PIRATE!

But even I didn't 'get' his music at first. I downloaded the 'Going up the Mountain' cd as part of a bluegrass torrent. I'd never heard of him before and the music didn't seem too distinctive at first. But I was hooked on his version of Turtle Dove, the song introduced by the Georgia Sea Island Singers, which my dad sang on many occasions. So gradually I listened to the cd more, and it really grew on me. I discovered Heart Songs: the Old-Time Country Music of Utah Phillips at my local library, and got it despite the too-sweet-looking cover (his dumb grin and balding head are the antithesis of the 99% of musicians who try to look 'cool' on their albums). Then I couldn't stop listening. And I went and bought and sought every other recording of his that I could find (see, piracy can be good for the music business), and he basically singlehandedly made me start learning how to sing. And hopefully, the same will happen to you. But if it doesn't grab you at first listen, give it a few more spins in the weeks to come. Something will awaken, I promise.


Snake Baked a Hoecake - An Introduction to Jody Stecher
Year: 2009
Label: Irate Piratunes

This is a little compilation I put together to give you a taste of his work. It took me months to narrow it down to 80 minutes… every song was too good, I hated to leave any of them out. I intentionally left off the songs from Rasa, his collaboration with Krishna Bhatt, which you can find at Times Ain't Like They Used To Be. Gadaya has more recently posted Jody's first album, also called Snake Baked a Hoecake, which I wasn't aware of when I compiled and named this cd.
If you like what you hear you can check out related projects such as Fred Sokolow's Bluegrass Banjo Inventions and The Delta Sisters.

Anyways, it's a labor of love. Enjoy!

Tracks:
1. Turtle Dove
2. Oh the Wind and Rain (version 1)
3. Red Rocking Chair
4. The Bramble and the Rose
5. Blue Diamond Mines
6. The Freize Britches
7. Henry and the Machine (composed by Jody!)
8. Country Blues
9. Rhinordine
10. The Hills of Isle au Haut
11. Queen of the Earth and Child of the Stars / Roving Gambler
12. Love Farewell
13. Paul and Silas
14. Miner's Lullaby
15. Snake Baked a Hoecake
16. Leela
17. Golden Mansion
18. Oh the Wind and Rain (version 2)

[oh. right. the download link.]
part 1 | part 2
mp3 | >192kbps vbr | w/ cover | 67 + 58mb

Now I want you to understand something as you download and listen to this beautiful music.
Jody Stecher is tragically under-recorded. Because his music isn't flashy or exotic, and because it's too eclectic to be pigeon-holed. He had some success in the 90s playing old-time bluegrass with Kate Brislin, but there are so many other facets of his music that he hasn't recorded because it's too hard to market. This sampler will give you a glimpse into some of those facets; others you can hear in Gadaya's posts. Now, like Max Ochs, Jody will be playing music for the enjoyment of it, for his dog, whathaveyou, probably till the day he dies. But if you want him to shell out for the recording expenses so that you and the rest of the world can enjoy and grow from this music, then we'd better shell out and find some way to support him. I don't think you could find a musician more deserving. If you know music promoters, record shops, libraries, collectors, or just plain open-minded people, spread the word. I've noticed there's hardly anything on him on the internet. You folks can blog, twitter, e-review, etc. Spread this post around. Or if you want to support him the old-fashioned way, you can buy his records from CD Baby, Acoustic Disc, and Rounder.

[Or, as Gadaya points out, "You could add maybe a word about his instuctionnal videos he made for Stefan Grossman's guitar workshop, really some great things to learn for guitar players... "]
check them out here
Or preview on youtube

some thoughts & Max Ochs

I recently came across this interview with Max Ochs (brother of Phil Ochs, and featured in that American Primitive Guitar comp). He says a lot of cool things, including this perspective on the contemporary state of music accessibility:

Touching on the access that recorded music allowed to the other genres that influenced you back in the ’50s, what do you think of the current state of digital music, and the unprecedented access that the Internet has allowed?

I think it’s wonderful, and I think it should be free. I have lots of cassettes of myself playing at a coffee house, of me playing at somebody’s house or at a gig, or at bar, or just sitting in the living room with a bunch of guys and somebody turns on the tape recorder and made a copy for me. And I have a ton of homemade music that I would love to post to a Web site and be like Radiohead, you know, what they did with their last album where they said to download and pay us whatever you think it’s worth. If you wanna take it for free, if you wanna give me a dollar, fifty cents, whatever, it’s fine. And I would really be quite content to do that.

As far as musicians making a living off of selling a record is concerned, do you think that particular model of digital distribution is a good direction for music to be taking?

People are going to get their music one way or another — they have a hunger, an appetite for it. They’re gonna find music and there’s so much of it now. I mean, the Beatles are never gonna disappear — Beethoven, Bach, Blind Willie Johnson, John Fahey — they’re never gonna disappear, they’re here for the rest of civilization’s existence. So it’s a cumulative thing, new musicians will come up and find ways to get their stuff on iTunes that can be downloaded.

But people say, “Don’t you wanna get money for your CD’s?” Well actually, I would be happy if people were listening to my music, at least to the extent that people would invite me to come play at a concert. But even when I wasn’t playing at gigs or at venues, I was still sitting in my kitchen playing for my dog, or on my back steps — I just love to play. I’m not worried about the music industry, it will find a way, it will sort itself out. There will be ways for musicians to make money, you’ll get played for playing when you go to a gig, and the musicians will sell their records at the gigs, and maybe musicians will adopt that Radiohead mode where they put it on the internet and if people want their music, they can download it and pay what they think is fair to pay, what they think it’s worth.

But here’s the other thing: You’re talking to a non-typical musician. Most of the time when you interview a musician, they’re doing it for a living, they’ve committed themselves full-time and they’re really brave leaping into that experience where they’re going to try to see if they can make it as a musician. I never had that much faith in myself, that I could be that competitive in the market. I play just because it brings me great joy, and I’m just grateful that people like to listen. I worked in the anti-poverty agency at a steady job and when I could find the time I would practice my music and write a song, and if I was lucky, I would get a gig. That’s how I bumbled through decades, and all this that’s going on now is wonderful and interesting. It’s like now I’ve been validated to the extent that it seems people enjoy listening to me, and it’s amazing, and great, and I’m so happy that they do.

...

which pretty much sums up how I relate to it, as a musician as well.

Max has a new album out. It's called Hooray for Another Day. The guitar pieces are very unique. And there's some poetry, somewhat in the vein of The Microphones. I'm not nuts about his singing, and you're not going to be blown away by his technique, but the album's definitely worth hearing for the individuality and humanity in the guitar-playing. And in that spirit, you can either buy it from Tompkins Square or pinch it here.

and read this interview with Max at Tompkins Square

cool beans!

VA - American Primitive Guitar

Shawn David McMillan

". . . The New Age people call it Folk; the Folk people call it New Age, but it is really neither. It's transitional. The style is derived from the country blues and string band music of the 20's and 30's, however much of the music is contemporary. Fahey referred to it as 'American Primitive' after the 'French Primitive' painters, meaning untutored." - Peter Lang

I'm sure most everybody here is fairly familiar with John Fahey and the musical form he begat: American Primitive Guitar. But if you're not, here's a couple mini-essays collected about the web and an introductory album for you:

BASIS OF THE FORM
American Primitive Guitar is grounded in our complex melting-pot American musical traditions. Hymns, rags, folk songs, jazz, classical, opera, eastern rhythms, contemporary tunes, and a galaxy of other musical sources contribute to this diverse form.

Technique is based on using the multiple strings of the guitar to present the melody or theme supported by harmony and bass tones played simultaneously. Alternating bass is a regular feature, used in many forms to create a synchopation to support or contrast with other elements of the pieces. Varied tunings of the guitar enhance the instrument's tone, the playing of open strings reinforcing root tones and making multi-string techniques more accessible.

John Fahey's music has been a major influence on the creation of my own style and technique. It's combination of historic references in many styles and tunes, unusual syncopations and application of "primitive" techniques create stark and beautiful textures for the guitar. I highly recommend his many early recordings on Takoma as a unique source for inspiration in this form.

GUITAR DISCOVERY The following passage is quoted from a John Fahey essay on guitar composition and arranging:

"During practice sessions - I usually would sit from four to six hours, and I still do - strange things would happen, and suddenly I would have an entire song or a significant fragment.... If you make yourself play the guitar except for breaks - cigarette, bathroom, whatever - for four to six hours, I can guarantee that you will come out of these sessions with something new: a composition, an arrangement, a fragment. This is the way the mind works. In order to conquer boredom and chaos, you cannot avoid coming up with something new."

In my own sessions I've often found this wondrous miracle occurring, where following the known paths in extended repetition finds something completely new and unforseen, snatches of serendipity which can often be manipulated into something completely new and rewarding. Recording of these extended sessions helps keep the wily phrases from escaping back to the ether and allows you to bask in the glow of discovery as you continue to flow with the musical spirit.

Brad Barr

TECHNIQUE AND COMPOSITION
Again in the words of Mr. Fahey:

"While technique is important, it is only part of the story. Music is a language - a language of emotions. The worst possible way to play these songs - and I am not only talking about my own compositions - is in metronome time at a uniform volume. Another terrible thing would be to play any composition the same way every time, or to feel that you have to play it exactly the way someone else, such as myself, played it or said to play it. A good technician must also be creative. Even if a person is not a composer, he can interpret and and arrange, and these skills are as important as technique in making a performance interesting. I rely heavily on both technique and interpretation, and I think of myself as a very good composer, arranger, and plagiarest for the solo acoustic guitar"

The great challenge in playing the guitar is the creation of flowing and ethereal entities from the complex mechanics of the instrument. As our guru notes above, our goal should be to make each piece of music our own personal moment, shaping it with our own unique abilities and experiences. A unique path to enlightenment and harmony evolves from our strong emotional involvement in the performance of music as the mysterious connection between our ear and mind stimulates primeval and exotic vistas while the strings vibrate beneath our fingers and the soundbox resonates against our ribs.

by Les Weller for American Primitive Guitar

and this delightfully irreverent, grapewrath-style (though with greater profanity) piece:

• On the term "American Primitive Guitar":

"American," because what it boils down to is that you're in America listening to American music and so the first thing you rip off is American music, and because America is really a smorgasborg of influences, a melting pile of mushrot, you're really ripping off everybody somehow in the process, one way or another. Common practice is to plagarize obscure sources - no art evolves from a vacuum.

"Primitive," because by any stretch of the imagination you don't really know how to play. Once you overcome this you and The Ear become your own teachers, and you might sit down and watch other people play, but nobody tells you where to put your thumb, nobody shows you sheet music, your knowledge of theory is broken and you piece together how this shit works bit by bit. No books, perhaps, but the big no no is No Teachers. They'll just fuck your head up trying to convince you that you shouldn't do certain things which by all primitive means you should try doing anyway. What matters for the primitive is the expression of the primitive. If you want to call it emotion I don't care, go ahead, nothing stops people from talking about the emotional content of Will Ackerman Yanni John Tesh Kenny G Mozart, why should you think twice about it. To quote Becket on this matter, "If we can't keep our genres more or less distinct, or extricate them from the confusion that has them where they are, we might as well go home and lay down." Go home and lay down with your guitar.

Fahey used the term primitive for a few reasons. One was to separate himself from those he considered volkists, primarily the Seeger family, but also other operators in the "Folk Revival", something he mistrusted and possibly despised. Fahey's roots were in white western music, not the blues or folk forms that he would work within during his acoustic career. He considered it a lie or at least a great misrepresentation to call music made by white middle class suburbanites "folk".

The term primitive was also brought in to draw the distiction between his folk and classical sources, because he was drawing from blues, classical and folk musics, as well as any other viable soundhole (the experimental, le avante guarde). Designated American because he used above all else American musical references in his compositions. He was not classical, he played variants of traditional fingerstyle on a steel string guitar, but he was not folk or blues, they were mearly part of his diet. He borrowed melodies and progressions from Vaughner and Gershwin, he covered rock ballads, he recorded sound collages, and he wrote/played/didhisthing occasionally in atonal and serial structures. The practice of his music was primitive in comparison to classical music, it existed on the same plane as folk and blues but did not evolve from a distinct enclosed culture. It had traditional ties but not traditional boundaries. It was primitive - because it was new, it was unruly, and it was uncivilized.

"Guitar," get a box, get a stick, tie string(s) from the base of the box to the end of the stick. Make music.

Jack Rose

• Composition. I personally advocate Fahey's method of composition, which consists of 4 to 8 hour stretches in a dark room with some intoxicating substance at hand, and an instrument. Remember a melody, find the melody on the instrument, procede until boredom forces your mind to break out of the box or break the box. If you break your guitar, go find a day job, otherwise go purchase either a rusty recording instrument or some paper. Invent notation, write down what you're doing. If you have a tuner it's your own funeral, you might as well call it quits, because the only crap you'll produce is western music, presuming you bought a western tuner, which is good as far as it goes, but you're no longer composing primitive, you're composing western. An A in the west is not neccessarily an A elsewhere, and really there's no reason for you to even know what the fuck an A is in the first place: ignorance is a telltale sign of clear thinking.

• Performance. One of two things generally fuck the musician up. They become obsessed with technical issues, or they become obsessed with the audience. In primitive exposition, 1) Ignore and play through mistakes. Better yet, play with mistakes. There are no mistakes. There is only the Primitive. It may be benificial to come to an understanding that there are only "mistakes" when mistakes are accepted. Mistakes are the monsters under your bed, the bogey man in your closet. Somewhere along the line you were taught to believe that the word had meaning, and that lesson was a lie. Mistakes are the boogie man, and he has his dancing shoes on. 2) Ignore the audience, if rapport will come it will come through the primitive which is delivered through the music, if they don't enjoy it, well fuck them, everybody is not for the primitive, and your primitive is not for everybody.

• The primitive as genre: This is total cocksmut. It's thrown out at parties by pricks getting their jollies off in public spaces. Assholes. Primitive is a congenital directive, it is a compositional hypothesis. "American Primitive" is a genre, or genreless because it depends on the American idioms the individual composer borrows from, as well as being strictly limited by the locality of the artist - what culture and folk music he has come into contact with, and the degree of the artist's separation from those cultures. And essentially, single cultures and folk are properly considered constructs, avenues towards art. They are helpful but not necessary. It is necessarily possible to reach the primitive, a stripped down and barren primitive, through pure grunt force, or how else would the primitive exist in the folk. The primitive is a choice. The primitive draws sounds from the native and finds the patterns and in the patterns finds the emotive, and in the emotive the primitive finds the music. Yadda yadda yadda. The urban is just as native to some as the sticks and grass are native to some, the primitive is not geographically prejudiced, though geographies may be prejudiced.

Sandy Bull

• Stop theorizing. Stop reading this, stop listening to me. The only thing primitive about me is my cockwhoring on the weekends. But for when I'm out of my head delirious with booze or drugs do I hear the cojoling insubordination occuring at the pit of my brainstem. Because I spend too much time debating cultural semantics rather than feeling around for my primitive, because I spend too much time thinking my bass runs are too stale, or my progression too parallel. The one time I came close I found out that it was a sunshine five year old running on the green and yellow dead lawn in the nude.

• Recording. The recording is the feedback loop. It is the worst kind of critic because it misrepresents the truth with the facts.

• Forgetting. You must learn all this, then you must forget it. This is what they will tell you when you major in performance or composition at the University. This is what Chet Atkins will tell you. Listen to Chet. The primitive must start by forgetting. Avoid the crutches of scales, standard tunings, chord progressions. These were designed to stop you from composing, they're shortcuts to music. If you take that path it will be years before you are able to compose music. If you follow the primitive you will compose now, and it will be years before you will make music. What determines success is more a matter of luck and effort than personal genius. Buck up, life is going to suck anyway.

--Josh Buermann

VA - American Primitive Guitar

This release seemed fairly straightforward when I got it through the high seas... but further inspection revealed nothing but a mystery. Since no information on this collection can be found anywhere on the web, I'm betting it's someone's personal compilation. All the tunes are available elsewhere, many from the excellent Imaginational Anthem series released by Tomkins Square, which is the label doing the most for this kind of music right now.

But apart from discographical curiosity, the music's really good. So enjoy, beloved audiomoochers!

Tracklist:
1. Max Ochs - Imaginational Anthem
2. Jack Rose - Cross the North Fork
3. Sean Smith - What Once Was Will Be
4. Harry Taussig - Blues for Zone VII
5. Brad Barr - Bouba's Bounce
6. Peter Walker - Celebration
7. Shawn David McMillen - The Lawn
8. Robbie Basho - Kowaka D'Amour (live)
9. Matt Baldwin - She Was a Girl, She Was in Love
10. Sandy Bull - Untitled

a melting pile of mushrot
(note: 2 distinct links: 'melting pile' and 'mushrot'. i do this from time to time; keep your eyes sharp!)
mp3 vbr | w/ cover | 2 parts | 55 + 9 mb
(this is in 2 parts because i forgot to upload the 2 of the tracks at first)

oh, and though he hasn't posted much recently, ejg's blog grown so ugly has a wealth of related material, and he's put on an exploratory guitar festival for two years running.

And what a fine jape it was!

I am, of course, referring to my previous post, the larkable April 1st post on Mary Jane Kelly. If you hadn't figured out by now that it was in jest, then you either didn't listen to it or didn't read the comments. But of course, like the best hoaxes, it wasn't too far from the truth. The crime scene photos are of Mary Jane Kelly, and the murder is true; though it was performed 40 years previously, in London, by the notorious Jack the Ripper. The other photos are another Mary Kelly. John Fahey did in fact find Ishman Bracey, but that meeting led to the rediscovery of Skip James, not Randal Gatz. The Randal Gatz is in fact a band, and this album is named Mary Jane Kelly. It was googling Mary Jane Kelly that I came across all the JtRipper stuff and saw the possibility for prankdom. The real cover for the album is that image at the bottom of the post.


If you like the music, check out their myspace page. They offer their demo albums for free download, so I don't think they mind me posting here.

Randal Gatz and Mary Jane Kelly - Complete Recorded Works

It's not every day you come across as music that will rip flesh from bones, bring tears to your eyes as it tears the walls from your ears. It's not every day you come across music that makes John Fahey's 'Lion' pale in comparison. Get ready folks, it's the revolt of a real dyke brigade!

Randal Gatz and Mary Jane Kelly were the first male-female guitar duet ever recorded, and they were one of the best. They issued their first 78, Red Cap in the OK / Slotty Spoons, on the Bluebird label in 1926. According to the records, they were initially quite popular and recorded another dozen sides. Unfortunately, most of these records have not survived. For years they were known just by the one record, but the power in that one record was enough to create a fanatical passion amongst collectors when it was rediscovered in the early 1960s. While he was looking for the old bluesman Ishman Bracey, John Fahey uncovered another record by Gatz & Kelly: the mysterious "Smut Eulas" and its B-Side "Edly". He used the latter as a launching point for his unreleased masterpiece "Requiem for Blind Thomas". It stands head and shoulders all other early guitar music, for power, mystery and sheer brilliance, and in an odd way, it sounds almost avant-garde, in a very primitive way. Indeed, you can hear echoes of these early sides in not only the country-blues duets of Weaver & Beasley or the haunting slide work of Blind Willie Johnson, but also in the more modern sounding guitar soli and even hints of it in heavy metal and thrash music. It's amazing, actually, that it was recorded at all, considering how challenging it must have been given the cultural climate; but then again, those were the early days of recording, when executives were willing to give any weirdo hillbilly a shot just in case there was a market for it. This is real roots music: like somethig you would probably hear in the hills somewhere before recording technology ever existed. Except that instead of a banjo is a shotgun of a guitar, and instead of vocals, there's a diving duck, dead.


Fahey's obsession with this music, from hitherto-unknown names, propelled him to track down the former recording engineer for Bluebird, then in his 90s, working as a janitor in an ice-skating rink in Minneapolis. He quizzed the old man, one Elijah P. Lovejoy (who would later contribute remarks to some of Fahey's liner notes), asking him if he could remember any other master takes from Gatz & Kelly. Together they tracked down the original masters and found a previously unissued track, "Skull to the Balls," withheld due to profanity, as well as some tracks containing snippets of studio dialogue. Then they discovered something totally unexpected: the reason that so few Gatz & Kelly records survived is because most of them were intentionally recalled and destroyed. The reason behind this has to do with the murder and mutilation of Mary Jane Kelly, and a supposed curse that was imprinted in the record if you played it on reverse (this preceded all the hype about playing Beatles records backwards by 40 years). Randal Gatz joined a Dixieland jazz band soon after the event, but they all disappeared soon afterwards, never to be seen again.

The doctor's report following the discovery of Kelly's body was written as follows:

"The body was lying naked in the middle of the bed, the shoulders flat but the axis of the body inclined to the left side of the bed. The head was turned on the left cheek. The left arm was close to the body with the forearm flexed at a right angle and lying across the abdomen.

The right arm was slightly abducted from the body and rested on the mattress. The elbow was bent, the forearm supine with the fingers clenched. The legs were wide apart, the left thigh at right angles to the trunk and the right forming an obtuse angle with the pubes.

The whole of the surface of the abdomen and thighs was removed and the abdominal cavity emptied of its viscera. The breasts were cut off, the arms mutilated by several jagged wounds and the face hacked beyond recognition of the features. The tissues of the neck were severed all round down to the bone.

The viscera were found in various parts viz: the uterus and kidneys with one breast under the head, the other breast by the right foot, the liver between the feet, the intestines by the right side and the spleen by the left side of the body. The flaps removed from the abdomen and thighs were on a table.

The bed clothing at the right corner was saturated with blood, and on the floor beneath was a pool of blood covering about two feet square. The wall by the right side of the bed and in a line with the neck was marked by blood which had struck it in a number of separate splashes.

The face was gashed in all directions, the nose, cheeks, eyebrows, and ears being partly removed. The lips were blanched and cut by several incisions running obliquely down to the chin. There were also numerous cuts extending irregularly across all the features.

The neck was cut through the skin and other tissues right down to the vertebrae, the fifth and sixth being deeply notched. The skin cuts in the front of the neck showed distinct ecchymosis. The air passage was cut at the lower part of the larynx through the cricoid cartilage.

Both breasts were more or less removed by circular incisions, the muscle down to the ribs being attached to the breasts. The intercostals between the fourth, fifth, and sixth ribs were cut through and the contents of the thorax visible through the openings.

The skin and tissues of the abdomen from the costal arch to the pubes were removed in three large flaps. The right thigh was denuded in front to the bone, the flap of skin, including the external organs of generation, and part of the right buttock. The left thigh was stripped of skin fascia, and muscles as far as the knee.

The left calf showed a long gash through skin and tissues to the deep muscles and reaching from the knee to five inches above the ankle. Both arms and forearms had extensive jagged wounds.
The right thumb showed a small superficial incision about one inch long, with extravasation of blood in the skin, and there were several abrasions on the back of the hand moreover showing the same condition.

On opening the thorax it was found that the right lung was minimally adherent by old firm adhesions. The lower part of the lung was broken and torn away. The left lung was intact. It was adherent at the apex and there were a few adhesions over the side. In the substances of the lung there were several nodules of consolidation.

The pericardium was open below and the heart absent. In the abdominal cavity there was some partly digested food of fish and potatoes, and similar food was found in the remains of the stomach attached to the intestines."


Transfixed by this account, and compelled by the murder was conducted by the same person who waxed such haunting guitar lines (namely the late Kelly's partner), Randal Gatz became the model for John Fahey's 'Blind Joe Death'.

These recordings are extremely rare, only released by Document and Mississippi Records, and seems to have disappeared off both of their official discographies. So I'm assuming it's out of print, perhaps recalled due to the same superstitions that destroyed most of the original records. The files were given to me by a fellow Fahey-enthusiast, which prompted my research into this cryptomortological story.


Randal Gatz and Mary Jane Kelly - Complete Recorded Works (1926-1929)
Label: Document
Year: 1994

wonder, wallow, weep.
mp3 128kbps | with cover | 11mb

Dave Van Ronk - Inside Dave Van Ronk

One more from the Mayor, walkin up Beale St.. Mr. Fancy-Fret Screaming Kingboy. Mr. Bob Dylan slept on my couch and then stole my arrangements and took all the credit. Mr. I hate to leave New York, and one time when I finally did they left my guitar on the friggin airport runway. Bastards. He's been a good old wagon, and he'll tear this building down. Mr. Long John, he's dead and gone. But he was a friend of mine. No stranger to whiskey either. Mr. I'm not a folksinger, which was a lie. Mr. Noah, he has a hard time when his mother is gone. He buried him a little dog and He never came back. Shortiga hortiga thymiga thu, shortiga hortiga thymiga thu, shortiga hortiga thymiga thu. Baralith mahegash mehi housemenadine, I'll marry you both and sleep in the middle says Brian O'Lynne.

I was sitting in the back yard sucking on a Good Humor
Along comes a Doc, says my wife has a tumor
And it was malignant

Now the AMA and the medical highers
They don't agree with Liggette & Meyers
They say smoking is bad for you
Hell of a cough, too

Well, there is cancer of the liver; there is cancer of the lung
Cancer of the lip, the throat, the tongue
There's 17 malignant tumors in one filter tip king size
Now light up

Well, a cigarette was needed that was relatively clean
They come out with filters, low tar & nicotine
All that research gone to waste
No harmful ingredient, no cigarette taste

Well, the companies panicked, they had to find an answer
They increased the tobacco strain and everybody's getting cancer
Look what I got free with these cigarette coupons
A chest X-ray

Well, the hashish interest in Mexico
Has found a way to redouble their dough
Let's all get the habit, marijuana's here to stay
So if you want a treat and you don't mind the treatment
Smoke pot! It's the thinking man's cigarette

And then he went and died.
Poor Lazarus.
Bastard.


(if you want to hear my real commentary, check out my first Van Ronk post)

and some snippets from elsewhere:
Van Ronk refused for many years to fly and never learned to drive (he would use trains or buses or, when possible, recruit a girlfriend or young musician as his driver), and he declined to ever move from Greenwich Village for any extended period of time (having stayed in California for a short time in the 1960s. Van Ronk's trademark stoneware jug of Tullamore Dew was frequently seen on stage next to him in his early days.

Robert Shelton described Van Ronk as, "the musical mayor of MacDougal Street, a tall, garrulous hairy man of three quarters, or, more accurately, three fifths Irish descent. Topped by light brownish hair and a leonine beard, which he smoothed down several times a minute, he resembled an unmade bed strewn with books, record jackets, pipes, empty whiskey bottles, lines from obscure poets, finger picks, and broken guitar strings. He was Bob's first New York guru. Van Ronk was a walking museum of the blues. Through an early interest in jazz, he had gravitated toward black music -- its jazz pole, its jug-band and ragtime center, its blues bedrock.....his manner was rough and testy, disguising a warm, sensitive core. Van Ronk retold the blues intimately....for a time, his most dedicated follower was Dylan."


Five years older than Dylan, Van Ronk was one of the few native New Yorkers among Village folkiedom's big names. After departing "Our Lady of Perpetual Bingo" in the staidest corner of Queens, Van Ronk turned anarcho-Marxist out of orneriness and common sense. Initially a Dixieland banjoist who doubled on foghorn vocals, he was an interpreter who mastered blues and kept going. His repertoire encompassed not just his mentor Gary Davis and the Harry Smith canon but old pop, jazz, and vaudeville material, a few self-penned gems, and, soon enough, the cream of the singer-songwriters he insists were folk only by loose-thinking association. He was an ace guitarist who made up in practice what he lacked in dexterity and a brainy arranger whose book was raided on his protégé Dylan's Columbia debut.


Dave Van Ronk - Inside Dave Van Ronk

Year: 1962 & 1964 (rec); 1990 (reissue)
Label: Prestige (original); Fantasy (reissue)

Review by Richie Unterberger:
Somewhat confusingly titled, this CD reissue includes both the 1962 album of the same name and the Dave Van Ronk, Folksinger LP (recorded around the same time), encompassing 25 tracks in all. Anyway, this is certainly Van Ronk's most enduring work, and indeed one of the few relics of the early-'60s traditional folk boom that holds up well today. With the possible exception of Bob Dylan (whom Van Ronk and his wife helped immensely when Dylan was a struggling unknown in New York), Dave was the finest interpreter of traditional folk tunes of that time, with a big bear of a voice that was both anguished and tender. One of the few white folkies who could sing acoustic blues without embarrassment, Van Ronk was also an accomplished acoustic guitar picker; instrumentally and vocally, he brought an intensity to his covers that made the songs his own. Of the two albums brought together on this CD, Inside has the edge because of its more varied instrumentation, including 12-string guitar, dulcimer, and autoharp (Folksinger only has Dave's vocals and guitar). Dominated by classics like "Motherless Child," "Silver Dagger," "Poor Lazarus," and "Fixin' to Die," this also has an arrangement of "He Was a Friend of Mine" that Van Ronk learned from Dylan, who apparently claimed the traditional song as his own at the time. [WRONG! Bob Dylan stole Van Ronk's arrangement of the traditional song and recorded it before Van Ronk could, even though VR had explicitly asked him not to. This is after little Bobby Zimmerman slept on VR's couch for months and VR had introduced him to the ways of fingerpicking and surrealist writing.]

Tracks
1 Samson and Delilah - Traditional - 2:35
2 Cocaine Blues - Jordan - 4:16
3 You've Been a Good Old Wagon - Henry - 2:19
4 Fixin' to Die - White - 2:52
5 Hang Me, Oh Hang Me - Traditional - 3:07
6 Long John - Traditional - 2:08
7 Chicken Is Nice - Traditional - 2:30
8 He Was a Friend of Mine - Traditional - 3:29
9 Motherless Child - Traditional - 3:48
10 Stackerlee - Traditional - 3:35
11 Mr. Noah - Traditional - 1:26
12 Come Back Baby - Davis - 3:49
13 Poor Lazarus - Traditional - 5:08
14 House Carpenter - Traditional - 3:30
15 The Cruel Ship's Captain - Traditional - 1:55
16 Sprig of Thyme - Traditional - 2:35
17 Talking Cancer Blues - Rhodes - 1:45
18 I Buyed Me a Little Dog - Traditional - 3:59
19 Lady Gay - Traditional - 3:40
20 Fair and Tender Ladies - Traditional - 5:40
21 Brian O'Lynne - Traditional - 1:15
22 Shanty Man's Life - Traditional - 3:20
23 Silver Dagger - Traditional - 2:20
24 Kentucky Moonshiner - Traditional - 2:35
25 He Never Came Back - Traditional - 2:10

run all round my brain.
m4a (AAC) 128kbps | w/ cover | 75mb

original album covers:

Southern Journey Vol. 6: Sheep, Sheep, Don'tcha Know the Road?

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road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road?

Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha

know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep,


Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road? Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road?

Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]
Sheep, Sheep don'tcha know the road?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]

Do you know the road by the breakin' of the bread?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]
Do you know the road by the breakin' of the bread?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]

Do you know the road by the sharin' of the smile?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]
Do you know the road by the sharin' of the smile?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]

Do you know the road by the wavin' of the hand?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]
Do you know the road by the wavin' of the hand?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]

Do you know the road by the lovin' in your heart?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]
Do you know the road by the lovin' in your heart?
[Yes, Lord, I know the road]


Alan Lomax Collection - Southern Journey Vol. 6:
Sheep, Sheep, Don'tcha Know the Road? - Southern Music, Sacred and Sinful

Release Date: 1/1/1997
Label: Rounder

Product Description:
A voyage of the road and the mind, pioneering the use of stereo recording in the field, Alan Lomax's Southern Journey is a 13-volume series of original recordings evoking the musical world of the rural South and an era before radio, movies and television. In 1959 and 1960 Alan Lomax returned to the South to rediscover the still-vibrant traditions of our country. For this album sin and salvation are celebrated in the rhythms, harmonies and lyrics of the many-faceted musical traditions of the South. Artists include Bessie Jones & the Sea Island Singers, Hobart Smith, Estil C. Ball, Fred McDowell, the Bright Light Quartet and others.

Review by Richie Unterberger:
"Southern music, sacred and sinful" is what this volume is subtitled, gathering 16 songs that either extol the holy (the sacred) or warn against/describe evil temptations (the sinful). This has some of the more renowned performers of the Southern Journey series, such as Fred McDowell, Almeda Riddle, Estil Ball, Hobart Smith, and Neil Morris, though they don't necessarily overshadow the other performers. As always, the diversity is the most attractive element of the package, encompassing Georgian Sea Island groups, fiddlers, Delta blues, and church congregations. Willie Jones' down-home "You Got Dimples in Your Jaws," the same song as John Lee Hooker's "Dimples" (one of the blues great's most famous early recordings), seems a bit uptown in the Southern Journey context, though its inclusion is hardly upsetting. Estil Ball and Lacey Richardson's "Tribulations" is a close-harmony highlight that will appeal to anyone who likes the Louvin Brothers or the Delmore Brothers.

Tracks
1 Sheep, Sheep, Don'tcha Know the Road - Bessie Jones and the Sea Island Singers
2 The Juice of the Forbidden Fruit - Neil Morris
3 Devil's Dream - Hobart Smith
4 You Got Dimples in Your Jaws - Willie Jones & Others
5 Drunken Hiccups - Hobart Smith
6 You Done Told Everybody - Mississippi Fred McDowell
7 The House Carpenter - Almeda Riddle
8 Straighten 'Em - Bright Light Quartet
9 Corn Dodgers - Neil Morris
10 I Wished I Was in Heaven - Fred McDowell/Denise Gardner/Mattie Gardner
11 Tribulations - Estil C. Ball/Lacey Richardson Ball
12 No Room at the Inn / The Last Month of the Year - Vera Hall-Ward
13 My Mother Died and Left Me - James Shorty & Fred McDowell
14 Buttermilk - Miles Pratcher/Bob Pratcher
15 The Prayer Wheel - Bright Light Quartet
16 Guide Me O Thou Great Jehovah - Ike Caudill & Congregation of Mt. Olivet Old Regular Baptist Church

sheep go to heaven, goats go to hell.
mp3 160kbps | w/ covers | 72mb

David Grisman & Svend Asmussen - Svingin' with Svend

Another fine contribution from IncaRoads:

Now that you're all acquainted with the roots of gypsy jazz, I'd like to present a contemporary shoot of it. There are thousands of "Gypsy Jazz" or "Jazz Manouche" bands playing these days, and 98% of them are pale shadows of the Quintette du Hot Club de France, always aspiring to but missing the mark of Django and Stephane's legendary collaboration. Then there's 1% who's better technically than Django (sniff about Stochelo and Jimmy Rosenberg) but still generally working out of the same ideas. Then there's that very special 1% who's taken Django & Stephane's innovations and used them as a stepping block to something greater - something original. John Jorgenson, Grant Gordy, and David Grisman are a few of those rare innovators. They can draw upon Django and in the same breath draw upon Milt Jackson (who himself drew upon Django, on a totally different instrument), and weave these strains together with bits of Americana, blues, classical, klezmer, whathaveyou. They're keepers. They'll keep you listening, keep you on your toes.

David "Dawg" Grisman is probably decently familiar to readers of this blog. If not, he ought to be, and further posts may correct that lack. He's probably best known in the bluegrass/newgrass field, in which he is a pioneer (see the Muleskinner album in the archives). While he is always respectful of tradition, he is never a mere revivalist of it. He takes the tradition, values it, and then runs it through his brain full of jazz and classical and world music and contemporary life... and whatever comes out always bears his stamp: DAWG. He can play hot as well as cool, and he's a generous collaborator. More on him later.

I hadn't heard of Svend Asmussen before hearing this recording, and I'm shocked that he escaped my watchful ear for so long. Not only is he great, he's a legend in his own time, with a legendary history, and yet nobody seems to know about him. I guess there can only be one Scandinavian jazz musician in the public eye at one time, and Jan Garbarek has been hogging the throne.

Following is what the interweb yielded to my inquisitive efforts:

Biography:
Svend Asmussen may be the finest little-known jazz performer in the world.

A bit of a child prodigy, Asmussen's recording career spans more than 60 years. As a young man, Svend was something of a novelty performer, beginning to excel on the violin, but also performing on vibes, and other instruments, as well as being a vocalist.

As a more mature performer he explored and recorded in a wide variety of styles, including that of the Indian subcontinent. Now, as an elder statesman of the instrument, his jazz violin virtuosity takes a back seat to no one, including his contemporary, the much better known Stephane Grappelli.

Perhaps the primary reason that Asmussen is not well known in the United States is that he has preferred to make his native Denmark the headquarters of his operations and has made only infrequent appearances in the U.S., most notably at the 1967 Monterey Jazz Festival "violin summit" with Ray Nance and Jean-Luc Ponty.

The story of Asmussen's life would make a pretty good movie. In the late 1930s, Svend worked in Denmark with touring artists such as Fats Waller, The Mills Brothers, and Josephine Baker. In 1939 he was quite a hit in London, Hamburg, and Paris. But the outbreak of war in Europe postponed other proposed tours and projects.

The Nazis hated American Jazz. At one point Asmussen was arrested and incarcerated in Berlin. After the war, he became the most popular entertainer in Denmark, if not all of Scandinavia. At that time, his popularity extended beyond jazz, as he was perceived primarily as a club, vaudeville, and radio performer. There were also many film appearances and credits, some of the details of which may be found on a separate page.

His early influence was Joe Venuti, but it was a visit to Denmark by Stuff Smith that rekindled his interest in jazz. He certainly had the opportunity to be better known abroad. On more than one occasion, he turned down invitations from Benny Goodman to join the clarinetist's famous group. Apparently, he was comfortable to remain a big frog in a little pond. This is too bad, as it makes one's mouth water to imagine what the fabulous "small groups" might have produced if Asmussen had been added to the likes of Gene Krupa, Teddy Wilson, and Lionel Hampton. Svend has, in fact, recorded with Hampton, but the details are unknown to me.
-from http://www.yodaslair.com/dumboozle/svend/svendex.html
Biography by Scott Yanow:
It seems strange that Svend Asmussen is not better known in the United States, for he has been a top swing violinist since the mid-'30s. He started playing violin when he was seven and, in 1933, made his professional debut. Always based in Scandinavia (hence his obscurity in the U.S.), Asmussen made his first records as a leader in 1935 and has been consistently popular in his homeland ever since. He played with the Mills Brothers and Fats Waller in the 1930s when they passed through Denmark, but when Benny Goodman tried to get him in the mid-'50s for his small group, strict immigration laws made it impossible for him to work in the U.S. Asmussen recorded with John Lewis (1962), Duke Ellington (as part of a 1963 violin summit), Toots Thielemans, Lionel Hampton (1978), and on a few occasions with Stephane Grappelli, in addition to many dates with his own groups.

David Grisman & Svend Asmussen - Svingin' with Svend
Year: 1987
Label: Zebra

Matched with the great veteran swing violinist Svend Asmussen, Grisman holds his own on one of his most jazz-oriented dates. With guitarist Dimitri Vandellos, bassist James Kerwin and drummer George Marsh completing the quintet, Grisman and Asmussen jam on the title cut, two of the violinist's originals, "It Don't Mean a Thing," "Jitterbug Waltz," Milt Jackson's "The Spirit Feel," and a pair of Django Reinhardt-Stephane Grappelli tunes. Highly recommended.

Tracks:
1 Svingin' With Svend 4:02
2 Nadja 6:24
3 Lap-Nils' Polska 8:24
4 It Don't Mean a Thing 6:35
5 Swing Mineur 6:38
6 Jitterbug Waltz Maltby, Waller 6:20
7 The Spirit-Feel 9:29
8 Nuages 6:02

on your toes! part 1 | part 2
mp3 320kbps | w/o covers | two parts; 123mb total
*out of print

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