Vintage Weekend Listening

Here’s some gorgeous listening: Emmylou Harris and Ricky Skaggs, their sublime duet vocals, a well-chosen selection of country and bluegrass songs, and minimal acoustic accompaniment. When two singers are this brilliant, this emotionally raw, who needs anything else?

Ten Records That Changed My Life

Why does this feel so ... soul-shriving?

Anyway, the list is chronological to the best of my recollection. It begins when I'm 15. It ends in August of 2018. I'm probably forgetting some things. It's been a long time.

Copland: Rodeo/Billy The Kid; New York Philharmonic; Leonard Bernstein, conducting: We were rehearsing selections from Copland's Rodeo in youth symphony. This marked the first time I ever heard a recording of a piece I was rehearsing (God bless my hometown library). The very idea that I was playing music that Leonard Bernstein had conducted was unimaginably powerful. Suddenly, music, which had always been exhilarating was serious business, too.

Thank You, Music Lovers; Spike Jones: I have my dad and, once again, the La Habra Library to thank for this one. A record that, in effect, was the obverse of the Copland, with serious musicians doing unabashedly-silly stuff without ever abandoning classical rigor.

Roses In the Snow; Emmylou Harris: My dad was country. My mother was not. After a 16-year middlebrow reign of terror, during which country music was banned on our stereo and tolerated on the great god, television, this is the record that reminded me I like things twangy af.

Clannad; Self-titled: 1983. On a drive through Mendocino, a friend popped this cassette into the player, and I was instantly smitten. As the reviewer says, I've grown out of this record in favor of stuff that's at once more traditional and more experimental, but this is where my love of Irish folk music began.

Without Clannad, I wouldn't have seen The Chieftains in concert twice, wouldn't have tuned in to Thistle and Shamrock every Saturday night for years. And I wouldn't have understood nearly as much about bluegrass going in.

Sun City; Artists United Against Apartheid: Despite being born into a conservative family, I've been a liberal for as long as I can remember.

My particular brand of liberalism never extended to corrupt charitable efforts, however; the rampant misuse of the monies collected for the No Nukes campaign left me wary of vanity charities. Did they know what they were talking about? Did they care?

A few years later, conservative acquaintances tried to get me to abandon my commitment to Live Aid by sharing stories of foodstuffs left rotting on the docks at Addis Ababa, thanks to self-satisfied rock star incompetence.

It wasn't until years later that those stories were not only proven false, but politically motivated, as well.

When the Sun City record premiered, I hung on to my money, went once again to my local library, and read everything about South Africa I could get my hands on. I satisfied myself that I had a reasonable grasp of the issues, albeit primarily from the perspective of literary and liberal South African whites. You see, apartheid extended to the arts, too.

Armed with this knowledge, I began cautiously to listen to what Artists United Against Apartheid had to say. I devoured every excerpt of this documentary that MTV cared to televise. At last, I satisfied myself that they knew what they were doing, and were fully committed to getting it done. I bought the vinyl and the VHS. I believe my money was well spent.

Whenever some rebel with a cause comes calling, this is, now and forever, how I handle it.

The Peace Album; Paul Horn: I was burned out on music. I would see local bands on stage and go home just-below-boiling jealous. Thank God I had the maturity to ask myself just what I would do up there if I had the chance.

I had no idea.

Then, I heard this record, and got excited about music -- about performing -- again. This kind of choral singing with flutes was what I wanted to do.

So, I tracked down a Conn Multivider just like Paul Horn used -- only to discover that I'd have to drill holes in my flute to connect the thing.

Yeah, no.

i conferred with fellow musicians who were infinitely more tech-savvy than I. Did I really have to risk ruining the flute I'd had since fifth grade to get this sound? They concurred that I did.

Yeah.

No.

I had a funeral in my mind. I'm still not over it.

Roll In My Sweet Baby's Arms; Jimmy Martin: This and the next two records hit me like a ton of bricks. They brought me not only to bluegrass, but back to my musical self. This one had the high lonesome sound, and the punishing bluegrass technique, but it had something more: rock 'n' roll energy. You could do that?

Turns out you could. Music that came up in around the same time frame as my dad did, could be dangerous.

Wait A Minute; The Seldom Scene: This bluegrass wasn't dangerous -- unless you were the kind who stole lunch money and beat up younger kids.

Written by banjoist and L.A. session stalwart, Herb Pedersen. "Wait A Minute" was 70s-sensitive and classically precise (Tenor vocalist, John Duffey, had picked up a few vocal tricks from his dad, who sang in the chorus of the Metropolitan Opera). Just what I, a die-hard fan of 19th century Russian classical music, needed in order to remember myself in the midst of the vernacular.

Tiny Broken Heart; Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerard: In spite of everything, I felt something was missing from bluegrass. I had no idea what it was until I heard this song. Then and now, bluegrass is at its best when it is sharing the stories of forgotten and downtrodden folks.

All Or Nothing; The Small Faces: A record that simultaneously brought me back to rock 'n' roll, and reminded me of the energy and emotional truth I first heard in bluegrass. Just what I needed after 12 years of forsaking all others for the love of Bill, Ralph, Jimmy, and The Scene.

My standards are exacting, but I do best when my palette is big and varied. Since the Small Faces were virtually unheard of in the States, their music satisfied my urge for discovery. And soul.

I should end things here with some kind of summarizing paragraph. Trouble is, it's not over yet. #Sagittarius

The Old Hippie Who Gets Bluegrass Right

You know, for an old hippie, Peter Rowan has made some of the most genuine, heartfelt bluegrass music you'll ever hear. He's one second-generation picker who knows that bluegrass works best when you keep the blues in it.

In this clip, however, it's Emmylou Harris and The Nash Ramblers — a band that includes Sam Bush and Jerry Douglas — doing the pickin' and sangin'.

They're covering a song that Rowan wrote with Bill Monroe, and the intensity speaks for itself when two lovers are separated by “The Walls of Time”.

30-Day Music Challenge: Day 23

EDITOR'S NOTE: In the summer of 2017, I answered the 30-Day Music Challenge on this blog. I'll be reupping the best of those posts from time to time, starting with this one.

23. A song that you think everybody should listen to.

You've probably heard them all -- done badly on some vocal competition show. Let's get the ones you've probably heard, in their original versions, out of the way. Then, I'll tell you about one I think you probably haven't heard, but should.

Ready? Here goes:

Blue Moon Of Kentucky, Bill Monroe
Man Of Constant Sorrow, The Stanley Brothers
Hoochie Coochie Man, Muddy Waters
Smokestack Lightning, Howlin' Wolf
Boom Boom, John Lee Hooker
Hound Dog, Big Mama Thornton
Jailhouse Rock, Elvis Presley
Johnny B. Goode, Chuck Berry
Satisfaction, The Rolling Stones
Dancing In the Streets, Martha and the Vandellas
Good Vibrations, The Beach Boys
R-E-S-P-E-C-T, Aretha Franklin
Bridge Over Troubled Water, Simon and Garfunkel
Let It Be, The Beatles
I Heard It Through the Grapevine, Marvin Gaye
You've Got A Friend, Carole King
Won't Get Fooled Again, The Who
Good Times, Chic
We Will Rock You/We Are the Champions, Queen
New York State Of Mind, Billy Joel
Billie Jean, Michael Jackson
Welcome To the Jungle, Guns 'n Roses
I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For, U2

You can keep "Stairway To Heaven". Bruce Springsteen isn't as universal as East Coast rock critics think he is. Even though I can't stand her as a person, Sheryl Crow's "Safe and Sound" should be on this list.

What about the one you may not have heard yet?

It lacks the obvious universality of the others. In these days of niche marketing, and identity politics on both sides of the fence, there are those who would actively hate it, making all kinds of assumptions about the women singing it and What They Really Mean. The sad thing is, everybody's been through this.

You might not see it at first, couched as it is in metaphor. Why on God's green earth are these singers rooting for the downfall -- perhaps even the physical death -- of a lone circus performer, even as they remember, with great fondness, her youth and her youthful genius?

The girl's story is not a happy one:

Well, some guy broke her heart and her heart it did ache
So she went to the tent and the lady of the snakes
Who gave her a potion and she drank it in
After that her heart never ached again
After that her heart never ached again.

Still, they can't wait for her to flop:

Yeah, one of these nights, the old girl's goin' down.

On and on they sing the girl's story, shedding their hearts' blood in the verses, then chanting that woeful, prophetic chorus.

By the time they get to the coda, they're singing at the tops of their lungs. And the word they are singing is "Hallelujah" -- literally "Praise God".

Louder and louder they stretch it and shape it -- an arrow, a battering ram, a boulder arcing through the air. With every volley they crush and crumble stone walls three feet thick. Everything must go in this battle -- everything phony, self-insulating, and self-congratulatory.

As the battle winds down, the singers' voices get softer, slower, more hesitant, and more than a little afraid of what they've done as they gaze down from their lofty perch in the stands at the tiny, crumpled thing on the floor below.

Is it the "old girl", or simply her old self?

The final "Hallelujah" feels like the best funeral oration they could give -- elegiac, with the tiniest flicker of hope.

Of peace.

This is Patty Griffin and Emmylou Harris with "Trapeze".

30-Day Music Challenge: Day 1

1. A song you like with a color in the title.

How did she do it? How did she dare?

I mean, sure, this record sounds raw, vulnerable, and true, and everybody uses those words to describe art.

It's another thing altogether to do them -- to live them -- in public. This is what blue, in its alternate meaning sounds like, feels like, hurts like.

It takes guts.

There are those who would shun these expressions from a loved one in an effort to be reasonable. Avoid such people. It should hurt when your partner has to leave.

This is Emmylou Harris, complete with cracks and pops, singing "Blue Kentucky Girl".

Ronstadt, Parton, and Harris, Live

Dolly Parton, Linda Ronstadt, and Emmylou Harris collaborated on more than one occasion to make musical magic. This is one of their earliest efforts.

Dolly Parton had a TV show back then, and this clip comes from that show. It’s an old Carter Family favorite called “The Sweetest Gift”.

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Happy spring, tinged with a little sadness, as befits bluegrass music.

Here’s Emmylou Harris with Sam Bush on fiddle. The song is “Roses In the Snow”.

An Influential Album

Some bluegrass purists scoff at Emmylou Harris’s groundbreaking 1979 album, “Roses In the Snow”, but like The Nitty Gritty Dirt Band’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken”, it introduced bluegrass musicians, singing style, instrumentation, songs, and songwriters to an uninitiated audience — through mainstream country radio at that.

“Roses In the Snow” remains one of my favorite albums. I have owned it on vinyl, cassette, and CD. I still remember trying to nail down Ricky Skaggs’s Stanley-style melismatic vocals. I learned how because of this record.

Here are Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt, and Ricky Skaggs from a 1979 tribute to Mother Maybelle Carter, with the final track from “Roses In the Snow”. This is “Gold Watch and Chain”.