Somewhere in the (recent) tumultuous moments of my life — ". . . waiting for / the catastrophe of my personality / to seem beautiful again. . ." (Frank O'Hara) — I received an embassy from John Paul Carillo. May you be so fortunate as to receive an embassy from John Paul Carillo. He came calling as a representative of his band, Joy on Fire. Scant weeks earlier, I had witnessed Joy on Fire batter two buildings to pulp: An die Musik and The Crown, both in Baltimore. I have written about this experience. What else can I say but when you hear the thing you've always wanted to hear, two outcomes are possible. The first is: nothing further transpires (but you have the memories!) The second is: you're invited to write lyrics — and deliver them. Meet You at the Jazz Corner of the World is a two-volume live album recorded by the Jazz Messengers and their leader, Art Blakey, in 1960. The sets are phat, and this version of the Messengers that graced the New York jazz club Birdland — Blakey, Morgan, Shorter, Timmons, Merritt — was perhaps the finest in that band's storied history. I love the title of those volumes. And Joy on Fire would describe themselves, in part, as jazz. Noisy, counter-punching, and full of late-day sunlight, the band is also punk, metal, and alternative. In comparison to a musician like Wayne Shorter, Anna Meadors has thoroughly established her tone on the bari and alto saxophones. Chris Olsen, drums and percussion, rattles the buildings across the street. And John shreds his bass guitar strings — bass guitar — as if he were Duane Eddy playing the Sex Pistols songbook. In the song, "Fizzy," Sleaford Mods front-man Jason Williamson howls, "I fuckin' hate rockers / Fuck your rocker shit / Fuck your progressive side, sleeve of tattoos / Oompa Loompa blow me down with a feather / Cloak and dagger bollocks!" I think I can speak for the others when I say that we admire those blokes and that sentiment. I say "we" because together, we are recording works that will become an album (hopefully albums) and I will be appearing with the gang on a mini-tour that begins December 14th at Mooselab in DUMBO, Brooklyn. On December 21st, we'll be at Champ's in Trenton, and on December 22nd, we'll be at Rhizome in D.C. Therefore, I will see you at the Joy on Fire Corner of the World. Come join us.
Suddenly, the future is Jazz Punk. Hoy hoy!
References: "Mayakovsky" by Frank O'Hara, from his collection Meditations in an Emergency (Grove / Atlantic 1957). Meet You at the Jazz Corner of the World, Vols. 1 and 2 by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (Blue Note, 1960). "Fizzy" by Sleaford Mods off their album Austerity Dogs (Harbinger Sound, 2013).
“No one will believe that I like country music,” writes
James Alan McPherson, in the first sentence of his Pulitzer-winning short story
collection, Elbow Room. Who is ‘no
one?’ we might wonder. The speaker’s wife, Gloria, can endorse blues and bebop
but not “hillbilly stuff.” The speaker, an African American man, establishes his
fondness for the stringed sounds of banjos and fiddles. “But most of all,” he reveals,
“(I) like square dancing — the interplay between fiddle and caller, the
stomping, the swishing of dresses, the strutting, the proud turnings, the
laughter.” The title of the story, “Why I Like Country Music,” prepares the
reader for a defense, a quiet rebuke ostensibly aimed at the speaker’s wife.
The story travels to the South Carolina of the unnamed
fellow’s childhood, an infatuation with “a pretty, chocolate brown”
fourth-grader named Gweneth Lawson. Even as his rival Leon Pugh threatens to
monopolize Gweneth’s attention, the speaker triumphs by dancing with the girl
at the best moment, at a school-wide square dance in celebration of spring. Yet
the ‘no one’ might include a larger swath of skeptics. Surely, square dancing must
be the province of Appalachian whites. Upon witnessing the celebration by the Black
schoolchildren, the fictional superintendent of schools states, “Lord, y’all
square dance so good it makes me plumb ashamed us white folks ain’t takin’
better care of our art stuff.”
That statement may not signal an attempt, by the superintendent,
to gerrymander the estimable history of the square dance. To the contrary, it implies
that both groups—Blacks and whites alike—had been performing the dance for
quite some time. According to scholar Philip Jamison, enslaved Black fiddlers
played music at white dances in the late 1600s, and throughout the tens of
decades of their servitude. In an article published in The Journal of Appalachian Studies, Jamison describes the arrival
of European dances and dance figures—allemande, quadrille, dos-a-dos, cotillion,
promenade, and others—in the early years of the fledgling republic. Enslaved people
not only served as musicians for these dances, but began to dance these steps
themselves, alongside their own traditions. Jamison writes that cotillions,
quadrilles, the Virginia Reel, and African dances “co-existed at plantation ‘frolics’
during the first half of the nineteenth century.” Many were performed in “squares.”
The Bog Trotters
Band, photographed in Galax, Virginia in 1937 (Unknown
photographer,
courtesy of Lomax Collection at the U.S. Library of Congress).
The Mississippi ex-slave narrative of Isaac Stier not only
chronicled that men on his plantation “clogged and pigeoned,” but called the
dances as well. Stier recalled that “I use to call out de figgers: ‘Ladies,
sasshay, Gents to de lef’, now all swing.’ Ever’body lak my calls an’ de
dancers sho’ moved smooth an’ pretty. Long after de war was over de white folks
would ‘gage me to come ‘roun’ wid de band an’ call de figgers at all de big
dances. Dey always paid me well.” Referring to the callers of square dances, Jamison,
in his article, asserts that the first callers were African American and that
dance calling was common in black culture before it was adopted by whites and
became an integral part of the Appalachian dance tradition. Perhaps it followed
naturally from the call-and-response convention of African drum music, with the
response, in this case, being the dance steps themselves.
According to a variety of sources,
including Jamison, JStor Daily, and Smithsonian.com, the standard imagery of
white farmers engaging in country or “contra” dances, reels, and other social jamborees,
doesn’t often credit African American and even Native American musicians, who,
collectively, played banjo, fiddle, bass, and bugle, and struck the tambourine
with “terrible energy” while “crying out the figures.” Numerous historical accounts
situate African American enslaved people as well as free African American musicians
calling or “prompting” square dances in the pre-war South and Southern Appalachian
regions, yet other accounts situate similar events in the Great Lakes, New
England, Canada, and England. Eventually, white musicians adopted square dance
calling, which included instructions to the dancers and an element of
improvisation. The “caller,” once a fiddler himself, eventually became an emcee
without instrumental duties, one who would explain the movements to the
dancers.
Even as recording technology developed in the early twentieth century,
few traditional African American square dance callers dedicated versions of
their craft to cylinder or vinyl. Some recorded examples of square dance calls,
however, can be found. Father and son duo, Andrew and Jim Baxter, recorded “Georgia
Stomp” on the Victor label in 1929. Andrew (father, fiddle) and Jim (son,
guitar, vocals) notably performed with a white band, The Yellow Hammers, in
1927, which represents one of the first examples of integrated recordings in
Georgia. Another musician, Henry Thomas—featuring “voice, whistle, and guitar”—recorded
“The Fox and the Hounds” on Vocalion in 1927. Samuel Jones, also known as Stove
Pipe No. 1, and billed as “one man band with singing,” recorded “Turkey in the
Straw,” on the Columbia label in 1924. Pete Harris, one of the so-called “Black
Texicans,” recorded “Square Dance Calls (Little Liza Jane)” in 1934, a tune
that was collected by folklorist John Lomax. [Nota bene: There’s America’s
favorite poor gal, Liza Jane, once again; please note the publication of my book Poor Gal: The Cultural History of Little Liza Jane, which does include some square dance content.]
“Ho didy ho / Your
baby just come from Kokomo.”
Other Black recording artists
carried notable square dance recordings into the mid-twentieth century. Look
for Long John Hunter’s “Old Rattler” on Yucca (1961) or Magic Sam’s “Square
Dance Rock, Part 2” on Chief (1960). Above, you can listen to Buddy Lucas’ “Ho
Didy Ho,” which appeared on Savoy in 1956. Lucas played tenor saxophone and
harmonica throughout his career. In addition to leading some memorable sessions
of his own, he turns up as sideman on quite a few stellar tracks and albums: Little
Willie John’s “Fever” (1956), Nina Simone
Sings the Blues (1967), Albert Ayler’s New
Grass (1968), The Blue Yusef Lateef
(1968), and Count Basie’s Afrique
(1971).
Many years before McPherson published his story, “Why I Like
Country Music,” the great Ray Charles released his crossover album, Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music
(1962). Charles, a celebrated African American pianist and singer, reinvented
twelve tunes typically associated with country artists, including “Hey Good
Lookin’” by Hank Williams. By then, perhaps, Charles had taken hold of a style
that had been influenced by both African American and white communities, maybe
more than once. It’s worth remembering that much American folklore and
mythology is precisely that—American, with far-ranging influences drawn from
numerous quarters. In an era when America is noteworthy for its divisions, we
ought to remember that call and response has influenced hillbilly tunes, and so
forth. In “Why I Like Country Music,” the schoolteacher, Mrs. Boswell, attempts
to deconstruct the aversion that the speaker initially professes, with respect to
square dancing. “The worse you are at dancing,” she says, “the better you can
square dance.” Representatives from each culture will blame the other for this
sentiment. Either way, the record player croons, “When you get to your partner
pass her by / And pick up the next girl on the sly.”
Howard University students square dancing in 1949 (Smithsonian Institution)
I love poets, because they’ll phone me from a TJ Maxx
dressing room—the muggy lighting, yes, the discarded sundresses, the sheer,
sheer hosiery—only to imply that my leftist politics nevertheless don’t equal
their own tilted-beret Marxism. I love poets, because they’re always crashing
at my apartment, stealing turns in the shower, and pooping out odd little evergreens
into my toilet, but never acknowledging our friendship after they return to
their academic jobs, or their NYC jobs, or their mysterious positions grooming
information for dubious conglomerates. They are gymnasts, these poets, they
leap onto dangerous ledges, their frigid synapses medicated against the
pervasive societal forces that would otherwise embrace them gently or roughly
as the case may be. They are beautiful and handsome alike, they copulate in
ways that mimic the backstroke or sidestroke or how people ride a two person
(or three person) bicycle.
I love poets, because they equate anti-Trump Facebook postings
to “taking a stand” even as this passive behavior contributes to the “white
noise” that obscures Trump’s gateway fascism. Nobody is more qualified than
poets when it comes to judging—arbitrating—the truth of a flawed system, and I
love them, the poets, because we need them (finally, definitively) to scold us,
to scald us with the righteousness we cannot perceive via our own faculties. They
are poets, they compose poetry after all, it has rhyme and abstraction and non
sequitur and metrical brilliance (at least what they dictate into a smartphone
does), and after an appropriate interval, presses bind these poems into
sheathes. Reluctantly, they read from these sheathes, they chant from these
sheathes in a doldrums known as ‘iambics’, but don’t mistake their casual
modesty at first, no, the poets aspire to give us readings, they are libraries unto
themselves, they whip us with their oratory.
I love poets, because they’re the culprits behind a pattern
of larcenies: the tip jar money, the vintage jacket, the autographed Tina
Brooks album on Blue Note. They weep, the poets, while seated within the expanse
of musty leather armchairs, the armchairs are endowed, they are named for other
poets who wept in other armchairs, they wept, did the forebears, and they weep,
do the contemporaries, for themselves, for their minimalist, pointillist dramaturgy,
they weep until they are comforted by an administrator. There’s nothing like a
repentant poet, simply put, since there are no repentant poets, only the word
repentance, the sound of which approaches, curiously enough, the sound of the
word “serpents.” I love poets, though, notwithstanding their record-setting
selfishness, but because no other group of people can emerge from the cellars
of isolation, after thirty minutes of exertion, wielding the high voltage of impregnable
verse, and if I’m lucky, I should like to become just one such impossible
person, a poet.
This Posts Is Part of New Home California Day.
Also See:
Of all the alleged disparities between the two seashores—East
Coast stout, West Coast stout—East Coast political outrage, West Coast political
outrage—East Coast romantic suspense, West Coast romantic suspense—East Coast
brooding, West Coast brooding—East Coast potato dish, West Coast potato dish—and
so forth, I am here to report that my beard, modest as it may be, appears to be
growing according to universal patterns of bearded development. This is
noteworthy, since I have grown a beard, modest as it may be, both on the East
Coast, where I formerly resided, and on the West Coast, where I currently
reside.
The corner turret
If you care to know, I am situated most often at longitude
40 degrees, 52 minutes, 14 seconds North, latitude 124 degrees, 5 minutes, 11
seconds West, in the corner turret. Currently, me and my beard are looking out the
corner turret at 88 degrees East toward the Arcata Community Forest. Currently,
me and my beard are drinking a West Coast stout, Deschutes Obsidian Stout, oh
yes, we heartily recommend this fine brew, do me and my beard. Afterwards,
technically, we are both “beered” as the kids say. East Coast puns, West Coast
puns: they’re all pretty dreadful in the end. But the forest is not dreadful.
The forest is tall, quiet, cathedral, sage, vigilant.
East Coast beard
I am assimilating among the peoples of the West Coast, which
is all to say that I am engaging in comparisons (as you can tell). If you live
on the East Coast, then we must traverse great distances in order to keep company,
but we shall, traverse great distances and keep company, you and I. If you
reside on the West Coast, then the distances to traverse aren’t so great, and
let us traverse them, you and I, for my abode might house you if you might need
housing, and my abode might feed you, if you need nourishment, and my abode
might uncork the wonders of song and drink, if you need merriment, and you do.
The door is always open, friend.
This Posts Is Part of New Home California Day.
Also See:
Students of international affairs might recall a famous
example of American ‘expertise’ when it came to educating local farmers in a
distant country on how to expand upon their own endemic traditions. These
farmers were, simply put, growing an array of crops on rocky surfaces, even as
these rocky surfaces climbed up and down a remote landscape. They had been
farming this way for decades, perhaps centuries. At the invitation of the
distant country’s ambitious leadership, American engineers arrived with
blueprints, and heavy machinery, and advanced agrarian know-how. They bulldozed
the rocks, did the Americans, they smoothed the earth, they sowed the seeds,
they clapped the local farmers on the back. “It’ll be so much better,” they
promised. “You’ll be able to feed your families, your village, and your
countrymen.” But the crops did not grow. According to the textbook where the
famous example appeared as a cautionary tale, the engineers attempted to remedy
the situation by churning up the soil again and again, applying fertilizer,
installing an irrigation system. But the crops would not grow. Eventually, the
befuddled Americans returned home, but the local farmers, who didn’t have the
resources to relocate, could never farm there again. Who knows whatever
happened to them.
In a moment, we shall describe a similar scenario that has
played-out over the past couple years in Wales at Swansea City Association
Football Club, where the Swans, once nearly purged from the professional
football leagues altogether, not only regained their stability, but climbed all
the way to the top tier, the English Premier League. In 2014-2015, Swansea’s
fourth consecutive season in the Prem, the Swans defeated Manchester United
twice and Arsenal twice en route to an eighth place finish on 56 points. At
that juncture, the Swansea City ownership included a Welsh-led consortium of
individuals as well as the Swansea City Supporters Trust, a grassroots
organization which held a 21 percent stake in the club. Collectively, this
ownership structure was responsible for rescuing the club many seasons earlier
when its former owner might’ve fleeced it, misplaced it, and fled. Garry Monk,
the team’s former captain, had managed the Swans to these 56 points. Yet scant
months later, Swansea sacked Monk as punishment for the club’s tepid start to
the 2015-2016 campaign, setting in motion a trend that would see managers and
caretaker managers alike—Curtis, Guidolin, Curtis again, Bradley, Curtis
again-again, Clement, Britton, Carvalhal—arrive and be nudged aside in short
order.
The appointment of Bob Bradley, former manager of the U.S.
Men’s National Team, is emblematic of how American ‘expertise’ would come to
educate a Welsh football club on how they should expand upon their own endemic
traditions. Bradley was installed by Americans Jason Levien and Steve Kaplan a
short spell after they assumed majority ownership of the Swans. At the time,
Swansea were entrenched in the relegation zone. Bradley had no experience in
the English football leagues. An American—probably for good reason—had never
managed a Premier League side. The appointment was a massive blunder and club
legend Alan Curtis stepped in again-again as caretaker, before the English
manager Paul Clement improbably pulled off a “great escape” and led Swansea toward
another year at the top flight. And yet Clement himself would be sacked a few
months into the 2017-2018 Prem, but this time, the team’s panicked squirming
wouldn’t produce a survivor. Even before Swansea City suffered relegation into
the second tier of English football they had already lost their possession-based
playing style, their status as a community-owned team. They were adrift,
lacking soul. They’d lost the incalculable gift of their identity, and the
American owners, through their cold corporate aloofness, compounded the
problem.
Swansea City supporters cannot heap blame entirely on the
American owners. They must also scrutinize the figure of Huw Jenkins, the
chairman who guided Swansea from the Vetch Field to the Liberty Stadium, and
eventually to the top flight. He’s demonstrated greatness and great misjudgment
alike, he’s a curious fellow. We could recite the list of dud managers and dud
players, but we could also remember the brilliance we’ve all witnessed, in
recent-enough managers like Roberto Martinez, Brendan Rodgers, Michael Laudrup,
and Garry Monk, and in recent-enough players like Michu, Wilfried Bony, Gylfi
Sigurdsson, and Garry Monk. We should probably say Ashley Williams, too, and of
course, we should say Leon Britton, but to label Leon “recent-enough” would be
to understate his lengthy devotion to the Swans. I can’t ‘un-witness’ Michu’s
two goals at Arsenal, for example, or Bafetimbi Gomis celebrating as the Black
Panther, or all the blank sheets kept by Michel Vorm and Lukasz Fabianski, or
the life-affirming defensive touch by Garry Monk in the playoff win versus
Reading, or the argument between Michu and Nathan Dyer over who would take the
penalty when the Swans beat Bradford City at Wembley. Jonathan de Guzman ended
up scoring from the spot. In the end, I return to the managers and to the
players, who I can support under any regime.
What if the American engineers had listened to the
indigenous farmers, rather than bulldozed their traditions? Last year, the
Swans sold a captain, Jack Cork, and the leading goal-scorer, Fernando
Llorente, and the club’s best all-around player, Gylfi Sigurdsson, without
adequately replacing them. Those sales brought in tens of millions but where
did those pounds go, exactly? Forgetting the sale of those players—where are
the other resources for vital recruitment efforts? What if the American owners
weren’t so cold and aloof? What if there were information-sharing and
transparency? I don’t know much firsthand about the Swansea City Supporters
Trust, but it has the word “Trust” in its title. I’ve watched a few
documentaries about Swansea, including Jack
To A King, and I recollect that the members of the Supporters Trust collected
coins at the gate to the stadium. It would do the owners and the chairman good,
to get out into the community like that, and establish some Trust. Luckily for
them, and perhaps as a sign of hope, there appears to be a manager, Graham
Potter, who cares about reestablishing the Swansea Way (of playing) and a cast
of young players who appear hungry to reestablish this system as well. So yeah,
because of them—the gaffer and the boys—I am still Swansea. It may be a little while
before we beat Arsenal again, but I’ll be wearing the Swan on my chest when we
do.
This Posts Is Part of New Home California Day.
Also See:
Anna Mae Winburn (R) led the integrated, all-women International
Sweethearts
of Rhythm—and other incarnations of the same band—for nearly twenty
years.
Son House fretted his guitar with
metal. He played “Death Letter Blues” between the frequencies of urgency and
painfulness, an alarming sorrow that hadn’t yet been communicated. He thumped
the earth with a perfect percussive heel. His prophetic approach would
influence others on this list, notably Robert Johnson. We classify Son House as
a Prophet and Robert Johnson as a Technician but we don’t establish the
importance of Prophets above the importance of Technicians. That distinction,
Dear Reader, we leave up to you.
The classical impulses of Dave
Brubeck may inform some of our decision-making when choosing him to appear
within this framework, yet his ability to conquer intricate time signatures,
the “ebonies and ivories” of 5/4 time, for example, ultimately places him among the Technicians.
We suppose that Technicians can sound prophetic, perhaps owing to the great relationships
they had with their instruments, the nonpareil mastery. “Ella Fitzgerald,” you
may remark, “a Technician?” Oh yes. The voice.
The addition of Bill Evans helped soften the sound of the Miles Davis sextet, and
steer the group towards Kind of Blue, one of the greatest albums in music history.
Imagine Billie Holiday standing
in the spotlight, singing the prayerful “Strange Fruit” while every other sound
vanished, or Lester (“Prez”) Young first equating “bread” with money and “ivey
divey” with cool, all the while cocking his “baby doll” (his saxophone) to the
side, underneath his porkpie hat. The Poets forged new language, true, and in
truth, they wobbled audiences with their beauty and outrage, with the emotional
content of their assertions and their mannerisms. Bud Powell, searching for balance,
perishing from tuberculosis. . . .
If you care, and you will, the
Poet Bill Evans and the Prophet John Coltrane, early in their careers, joined
Miles Davis (plus others) to create Kind
of Blue, one of the greatest achievements (of any kind) in world history. Who
presides over personnel, and the many intervals of creativity, and the virtuosity
of their own abilities but the Emperors or Empresses? Ellington hiring
Strayhorn, Ellington hiring Hodges, Ellington playing with Louis, Ellington
playing with Trane, Ellington in Europe, Ellington at Newport; Duke Ellington led
an Empire for 50 years.
Emperors & Empresses
Owing to his
virtuosity as a trumpeter, band-leading, and gravel-sweet singing,
nobody has had a greater influence on American music than Louis Armstrong.
1. Louis
Armstrong
2. Duke Ellington
3. Miles Davis
4. Bessie Smith
5. Anna Mae
Winburn 6. Sun Ra
Prophets
Known for his bent horn, raspy singing, and puffy cheeks, Dizzy Gillespie
helped to
pioneer bebop and toured the world as
a Jazz Ambassador for the State Department.
1. John Coltrane
2. Charlie Parker
3. Thelonious
Monk
4. Son House
5. Charley Patton
6. Dizzy
Gillespie
7. Art Tatum
8. Sidney Bechet
9. Ornette
Coleman 10. Rev. Gary
Davis
Poets
Art Pepper’s 1979 appearances at the Village Vanguard
presented the ultimate tone-poems
that informed his life as a heroin addict, San Quentin prisoner, and magnificent saxophonist.
1. Nina Simone
2. Billie Holiday
3. Lester Young
4. Bill Evans
5. Mississippi John
Hurt
6. Jelly Roll
Morton
7. Lead Belly
8. Bud Powell
9. Art Pepper 10. Buddy Bolden*
(*See comments, below)
Technicians
Lightnin’ Hopkins bangs away at “Had a Gal Called Sal”
(1954).
1. Count Basie
2. Coleman
Hawkins
3. Sonny Rollins
4. Lightnin’
Hopkins
5. Eric Dolphy
6. Clifford Brown
7. Ella
Fitzgerald
8. Robert Johnson
9. Charles Mingus 10. Dave Brubeck
Also considered: Art Blakey (E), Benny Goodman (E), Lionel
Hampton (E), King Oliver (E), Albert Ayler (Pr), Anthony Braxton (Pr), James Reese Europe (Pr), Steve Lacy (Pr), Max
Roach (Pr), Pharoah Sanders (Pr), Wayne Shorter (Pr), Cecil Taylor (Pr),
Rahsaan Roland Kirk (Po), Ma Rainey (Po), Paul Desmond (T), John Lee Hooker
(T), Wes Montgomery (T).
“You
said,” you say, but I didn’t say, and you reply, “You did,” but I didn’t do. Where
does this leave us, but in love? And what’s love but a neighborhood of stoops
(crumbling) and (artisanal) aimlessness.
A
kid ran out of the park at 3:00 o’clock in the morning only to strike a taxicab.
The kid bounced, without a shirt, the rent fabric of his breath in the freezing
air. A passerby gave him socks. It wasn’t unkind, exactly, but ill-fitting,
emblematic of the post-industrial wasteland that saddens our generational
critics.
There
sat the kid, untying his shoes (still shirtless) beside the flashing hazard
lights of the taxicab, tossing his own socks into the gutter, and replacing
them with the warm, sweaty cottons from the donor. I had little to do but watch
beneath a loud lamp. I’ll never forget the bunch of agitated blue jays, four or
five of them, stabbing the cold with the metallic tone of their vocabulary.
“Word,
comma, your mama.” Did you clarify? Yes, you clarified.
We
were never happier (you and I) than when we were lying to each other. You
texting me selfies on windy afternoons and me pretending to receive them an
hour later. If I stood somewhere other than where I purported to stand, I did
so out of fear, and in losing you, okay, what I lost was this:
[…]
the bus stop is empty when the bus arrives. Instead, a worker sweeps old leaves
into a dustpan. Why is the sinoatrial rhythm of our hearts keyed to the murmurs
of thunder?
I spend about two hours on the rooftop of my building every morning,
writing and singing. Most of this activity must (by necessity) remain
mysterious, as it will appear (fully realized) with a rock ‘n’ roll band. Let
us call this enterprise “Orchestra + Vocal.” You shall be hearing more about “Orchestra
+ Vocal” over the summer, dear reader. Please
stay tuned.
Some of the time, however, I sing to a mockingbird. He is
the dominant bird in my neighborhood. If you hear twenty birdcalls (and siren)
coming from the same beak, it’s him: the polyglot. I especially like it when he
speaks blue jay and nuthatch. I say “dominant” because he’s so loud. He perches
on ladders, smokestacks, the crowns of gigantic trees, rooftops, ledges, et
cetera.
I have been trying to teach him the bebop song, “Salt
Peanuts,” which is usually credited to Dizzy Gillespie. Dizzy played the tune
with Bird, but by that, we mean Charlie Parker. I’m not aware of any wild fowls
who scat “Salt Peanuts,” except for maybe this feller. Listen to him. Am I
right? For a few glittering moments, this mockingbird might’ve been a real hep cat.
This
is part of a double issue. If you don’t like songs, you might like a story. Seewhat I lost was this:
If I slept two or three restless hours on the night of
Sunday, March 4, 2018, I don’t remember. All sorts of unsettling scenarios kept
nagging me every time I began to drift—nobody would show up, the historic windstorm
would double back, I would improbably fail my partners Emily and Erich with
some horrendous oversight—until I threw myself out of bed at daybreak and began
hoofing toward the Capital Fringe Trinidad Theatre in Washington’s H Street
Corridor. I carried in my backpack what any good co-producer would carry: a couple
of four-terabyte hard drives and ten home-made (hand-crafted!) sandwiches.
A little back-story: After reading my research-post on the
song “Li’l Liza Jane,” Emily Cohen contacted me last July. She and I had
collaborated on several earlier projects, but hadn’t spoken in a couple years. We
both declared that we required something else in our lives, something bigger than
ourselves. After a typical Emily-Dan conversation (okay: sometimes we quarrel, we’ve had
some classic donnybrooks, but it’s very productive!) we decided to embark upon
a documentary film project. We would call it Li’l Liza Jane: A Movie About A Song. Around Thanksgiving, the luminary
cinematographer Erich Roland joined the team as Director of Photography and we began
planning the production of a fundraising trailer. In time, we settled on the
Trinidad Theatre space and the date, March 5th. Everything would happen there
and then.
A couple days before my night of tossing and turning, a
severe windstorm with hurricane-force gusts pummeled the D.C. area, upending
trees and power lines. It spared the Trinidad Theatre, however, and it spared Emily,
who lives in Wyoming, and who made it to D.C. after enduring a few frustrating air-travel delays. The crew—including Andrew Capino (Assistant Camera) and
Lenny Schmitz (Sound Engineer)—had already begun to load-in a copious amount of
gear when I arrived. Emily and her personal assistant (her father Mike) arrived
with coffee. Our featured musician Phil Wiggins brought a bag of thirty harmonicas to the filming session.
Our featured interviewees Faye Moskowitz, Bobby Hill, and Elena Day appeared,
and all four of our people-to-be-filmed brought their A games. So did the fabulous
Capital Fringe staffer, David Carter, who assisted us throughout the
day.
Phil kept a harmonica in each hand and played both interchangeably
as he cycled through his stirring rendition of “Li’l
Liza Jane” again and again. Faye surprised us not only by singing, but singing “Liza Jane”
lyrics that nobody had ever heard before. Bobby emphasized that African
American people didn’t always have a chance to describe their plight, and so,
told their stories in song. Elena emphasized that, at the heart of “Li’l Liza
Jane,” stands an independent woman who would be an impressive person, now, during
an era when women are empowering themselves. As opposed to the worst happening
(as when I panicked, sleepless) the best had happened, instead. Each person put
her or his stamp on the session.
Check out our trailer [click here] if you haven’t done so
already. The amount of effort and professionalism on display speaks to the great
affection we have for music, for one another, and for the support of a good
cause. The full story of America’s favorite poor gal, Li’l Liza Jane, will be
told, and with any luck, this trailer will be helpful in attracting funders
to the project. Emily and I will be following every lead, tirelessly, in the
days to come. By doing so, and by eventually endowing the film with adequate
resources, we hope to reward the trust of all the crew members and interviewees
who helped us to create this preview. Notably, we want to think of the men and
women—dating back nearly 200 years, enslaved people and hardscrabble fiddlers alike—who recited some
of the original versions of the tune, as well as Li’l Liza Jane herself. . . .
.whoever, and how many different women, she may be.
Trailer Day Trivia
Varieties of sandwiches: 3
Renditions of “Li’l Liza Jane”: 2
Number of fog machines: 1
Crew members: 5
Number of temple oranges: 7
Cans of sparkling “Refreshe”: 12
Number of microphones: 3
Guide to the Photographs
1. Phil Wiggins
2. Emily Cohen, Erich Roland, Andrew Capino, and
Phil Wiggins
3. Faye Moskowitz
4. Tape
5. Elena Day
6. Bobby Hill and crew
7. Emily Cohen and Dan Gutstein
Still photography by Mike Cohen
(1, 3, 4, 5, 6) and Dan Gutstein (2, 7)
