Music
A View of Resistance from a Detroit Record Shop Life: James Brown (and ’67 Sounds) to Now!
Marsha Music née Battle hears the music of Detroit as the soundtrack of struggle in her hometown and she’s aware (as one of her neighbors once declared) “the city is the black man’s land.”
Thionne Ballago Seck R.I.P.
Thionne Seck—perhaps the purist vocal talent in an extraordinary cohort of male Senegalese singers that includes Youssou N’Dour, Baaba Maal, Omar Pene and Ismael Lo—died on March 14th.
Choosing Sides (A Song for Safe Harbor Day)
You probably might not remember/You really put on a show
You don’t have to surrender/You’ve just got to go
Stanley Crouch Faces the Music
Stanley Crouch died today. We hadn’t been in touch much the past few years. I’d heard he was sick. I don’t know the ailment. I’m sad and shocked. Sad. I always liked him. We got along. I don’t know why. People like you, and you think okay, I like you too.
Stanley Crouch & The All-American Skin Game
Late in his life Amiri Baraka once mused that he knew he was old because he’d begun to feel sad when his enemies died. Their obits reminded him of passionate struggles in his past and made the present seem like a diminished thing. Baraka didn’t outlive Stanley Crouch but I bet he’d’ve felt bummed to know another one of his contras had split. In the case of Crouch, though, Baraka’s sadness might’ve been deepened since Crouch offered him more than an olive branch before both of them departed.
Not that cultural powers-that-be took that in…
On Verra Ca: Balla Sidibe R.I.P. & Orchestra Baobab’s Legacy
Balla Sidibe—one of the original front men of the legendary afro-pop band Orchestra Baobab—has gone to see what’s coming for all of us. You can watch the late Sidibe sing lead (and dance) here as Baobab does a charming version of a song that dates back to the 70s, “On Verra Ca.” 2020 is the 50th anniversary year of the band’s founding.
This next song is another Baobab classic. It’s the track that got me on board their train to heaven.
Paul’s Epistle on “Key West”
Your editor asked Wallace Stevens’ biographer, Paul Mariani, to comment on Bob Dylan’s new song “Key West”…
Notes on Being Down But Not Out with Hip-Hop
The author of this piece wrote it before the killing of George Floyd. (See his postscript on that score below.) Osborne notes “recent real-world events take precedence over bitching about good or bad rappers.” Your editor takes Osborne’s point but his act of imagination isn’t out of time. His refusal to buy into ugly images of black men is, in its sweet way, a contribution to the struggle against real killer cops.
Rip it Up (W.T. Lhamon Jr. on Little Richard)
What follows is an excerpt from W.T. Lhamon Jr.’s Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a Cultural Style in the American 1950s (1990). Thanks to the author for giving First permission to reprint his revelatory writing on the lore of Little Richard.
Long and Winin’ Road: Jelly Roll Morton and Little Richard
Jelly Roll Morton’s “Winin’ Boy Blues” from the famous Alan Lomax Library of Congress sessions seems to belong somewhere in the rootsy back story that W.T. Lhamon dug up above. In his account of Little Richards’ rise, Lhamon notes Richard was shy about singing gay sexy lines in his original version of “Tutti Frutti” to the lady lyricist who helped him clean them up (a tad). The history behind that shyness is hinted at in Jelly Roll Morton’s recitation before singing “Winin’ Boy Blues” which, as Morton explained, was part of a campaign intended to forestall any doubts about his own sexuality: “Of course, when a man played piano, the stamp was on him for life–the femininity stamp. And I didn’t want that on, so, of course, when I did start to playing, the songs were kinda smutty a bit. Not so smutty, but something like this.” (I should add that Jelly’s rough and rowdy ways co-existed with a genteel side; he asked Lomax to have the lady stenographer who was transcribing his words leave the room before he did his dirty work of genius and lust.)
Still Bill
Damn near everything you want to know about the late singer/songwriter Bill Withers’ music is in the following line from his bio: he was born July 4th, 1938 in Slabfork, West Virginia.
He Gotta Go Now
Per Bob Dylan: “Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree… If I had to pick one song of his, it might be ‘Lake Marie.’” (There’s a great live version here.)