As the urban legend balloon busters work to
confirm or deny post-Katrina horror stories from New Orleans, let us
take a good look or, in this case, listen, to the New Orleans too
which we are bound by love of good music, good food, productive
cultural intersections and happy acceptance of hedonism. The mortar
in any comeback is memory. Let us look for happy reminiscences of
the Crescent City with which to begin restoration.
Yellow Dog Records just released as good and
authentic a collection of new New Orleans music as one could want,
recorded last May in the Bywater District, rooftops and drowned car
tops of which we’ve all seen a sad documentary quantity. These
fourteen songs, five M. Flower originals and nine known numbers from
yesteryear arranged by Ms. Flower with that perpetual freshness that
always marks New Orleans music, do a good job of taking the listener
down there.
Though possessed of the relaxed humor and
innate, funky rumba rhythm of New Orleans music, Mary Flower sounds
like a serious student of the music, too. Her guitar, lap-slide
guitar and vocals are a little too dead on, as if authentic because
she’s researched and practiced and researched some more, but
that’s okay, as her familiarity with the sound she seeks here,
whether it comes from nature or nurture, has let her put together a
great tune list.
“Blues My Naughty Sweetie Gave to Me,”
probably best known from the Jim Kweskin’s Jug Band
treatment three plus decades ago and far different here, begins a
set that remains syncopated and lively for the length of the CD,
even through E.Y. Harburg’s “Brother, Can You Spare a
Dime.” The jangle piano bounces off the scraping, heavy
strings of her guitar, recorded way out in front of the horns,
organ, bass, drums, washboard and/or accordion that all contribute
highly individualistic facets to the songs.
Just the way it’s supposed to be in New
Orleans. Just the way it’s been. Just the way we want it
again.
Every generation frets about its progeny.
Socrates railed against the effete youth of classical Athens. Tom
Brokaw’s “Greatest Generation” caused their
parents sleep by their addictions to jazz, automobiles, malt shops,
chewing gum and movies. Essentially, as a minor extension of our
incessant, annoying and absurd demand for flawless, “philosopher
king” gods and leaders, we want flawless children who will do
what we want them to do and like what we want them to like.
This is the silly, unfulfilled, unfulfillable
wish that makes us happy when perfectly respectable, adult musicians
of our own or previous generations record and release music for
children. This is why there was a market for the children’s
disco collection that came out not enough years ago, and for
ex-convict/murderer Huddie Ledbetter’s excursions into the
nurseries of the nation late in life, and even, I swear, for
collections of children’s songs sung by the Rat Pack. Thirty
years ago, Dean Martin-adoring parents wanted to envision themselves
living with their children and their children having some Dean
Martin records around, and so they were susceptible to Dean Martin
recordings of children’s songs, hoping to make their children
start liking that music very early in life.
Today, indulging similar fantasies, we are
susceptible to buying our children and grandchildren this set, which
includes such “gottahaves” as Dr. John’s version
of “Toyland,” Billy Preston’s “Clementine,”
Taj Mahal’s “If I Had a Hammer” and,
for some reason, Cybill Shepherd’s take on “Toora
Loora Loora.”
So it’s a set based on our hope that we
will have something in common with our children and grandchildren.
It’s not so unbearably saccharin that adults accustomed to the
voices on these recordings won’t be able to stand them, which
is a good thing, because we wouldn’t want Rosemary Clooney’s
version of “Fuzzy Wuzzy (Wuz a Bear)” to be
unbearable, would we? Little ones like it too, based on several days
observed play in the Pediatrics Department of a local hospital.
Hey, they’re going to listen to
something. Make it something you can listen to, too.
It stays fresh, like Django's. The offbeat
syncopation, filtered through violin accompaniment, sounds novel,
time after time, and the evergreen tunes selected for Reinhardt
treatment here are wholly recognizable, though in a far different
frame than their composers' original concepts. One could go far
without finding jazz better defined than it has been by this family.
Among the fourteen cuts, Ismael's three originals are worthy,
consistent inclusions.
As always, ARC gives us the highest standard of
recording, and this release comes across as as much of a treat for
one's stereo equipment as for one's ears. The only problem with the
release is finding a CD good enough to play after it.
As they've aged, rock and pop
artists have been dipping into blues and jazz standards for a couple
of decades now. That's nothing new. What is interesting with this
one, a collection of beloved blues numbers delivered by the guitarist
from Def Leppard, is that the aging rocker is so-o-o-o-o young that
the blues influences that come across on the record are from a
different generation. Certainly, blues is about tradition, and most
of its classics are at least half a century old(Robert Johnson's
“32-20 Blues,” among the 12 cuts here, is nearing
70), but style of delivery has undergone some major changes, as when
Muddy Waters invented electricity. Campbell's homage here is more for
Foghat and Savoy Brown than for Robert Johnson.
That's not a bad thing, mind
you. Nothing done this well is a bad thing, and who's to say the sped
up crashing cymbal and smoking amplifier approach of the third
generation British blues rockers (First generation: Alexis Koerner,
Long John Baldry, John Mayall, second generation: Rolling Stones, The
Animals, Them) doesn't deserve to be revisited? It got a form of
blues onto FM radio and a lot of bandstands and into a lot of minds.
Weekly blues society jams around the world would be impossible
without the influence of that generation of players on some mainstay
regular jam participants. Music that was easy to listen to and
difficult to sit still for was a good thing then, and it still is
now. This critic has now talked himself into leaving the computer to
go listen to Two Sides of If” again.
Sweet Betty
Live & Let Live
Music Maker MMC058
musicmaker.org
First of all, readers are encouraged to please
visit musicmaker.org to learn about what they're about. On to the CD
itself, Sweet Betty, AKA Betty Echols Journey, went from youthful
interest in gospel to introductions to established blues musicians
to, most recently, growing worldwide attention and international
performance offers.
She's broadminded, not rooted to any one
subgenre of blues, and adept at all, though patently rooted in heavy
backbeat soul gospel. There are some heavyhanded studio elements on
the record. Those who prefer that songs sound as if they were
recorded in real rooms and with all the instruments in the same room
may question the degree to which effects are used on this CD. In
short, Sweet Betty is good and will, inevitably, get better.
