Say Hello to Andy

Happy New Year, friends. I couldn't think of a better way to start GCB's 2016, than by introducing you to Andy Clingempeel...a good friend and a gifted artist, who passed away in Novemebr 2015. Paco Malo, I know you would have loved this guy. He was brilliant, like you, with a boatload of talent and a fine appreciation for all art. Check out the music videos I put together using his images....and check out, the tribute...this is all right up your alley.

Toots & The Maytals - "Pressure Drop" / The Slickers - "Johnny Too Bad"

The Harder The Come Soundtrack (1973) 

Toots and The Maytals

Here's a couple of cuts from The Harder They Come soundtrack that turned me on, in the early 80s, to the real deal -- reggae straight from the source: the isle of Jamaica. When it comes to my favorite deep album cuts from this record, Pressure Drop blew my mind the first time I heard the track and still gets me out of my chair to this day, over three decades later. 5 stars with a bullet!

The second cut, from The Slickers, has, to my ear, a whole different feel. And it still get 5 stars from me. Enjoy! 

"Knockin' on Heaven's Door": Eric Clapton's Reggae Cover (1975)

Composed by Bob Dylan for the soundtrack of Sam Penkinpah's 1973 western drama Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid, Knockin' on Heaven's Door has gone on to become a folk rock classic. As the Wikipedia contributors note, "[t]he song describes the collapse of a deputy sheriff, dying from a bullet wound; he tells his wife 'Ma, take this badge off me; I can't use it anymore.'" Here's my favorite cover, a reggae influenced version by Eric Clapton from 1975, released as a single and on later compilations.

Townes Van Zandt , "Dead Flowers" (Jagger, Richards; 1971) (live)

As Keith might say, 'I think you may know some of this one.' Iconic Texas singer/songwriter Townes Van Zandt tackles the Stones country classic. Townes' cover ends up closing out, brilliantly, the Coen Brothers The Big Lebowski (1998).

Townes' demons got the better of him and he's passed on. His influence most certainly has not.

Jimi Hendrix Would Turn 71 Today

I rewatched Jimi Hendrix perform the currently definitive cover of The Star Spangled Banner in the original Woodstock (1970) documentary recently.

I wondered, would the high regard for Jimi's cover hold up over time? My money is on Jimi holding onto the lead regarding the national anthem. He shifted gears and, for those willing to take the ride, will continue to bring war back in a war poem.

Rest in peace, Jimi.

"The Dude Abides."

"The Dude Abides."

"... No, I don't belong to her, I don't belong to anybody ...."

The master tapes for this formerly unreleased Dylan treasure were given to the film's director Todd Haynes, after a frustrating search, by Neil Young. Personally, that tells me something about the quality of the song. Originally an outtake from The Basement Tapes (recorded 1967; released 1975), this song appeared for the first time on the I'm Not There Soundtrack (2007). I'm relishing it.

And here's another Basement Tapes gem that shines in the film. I'd never heard this song and now it's a favorite of mine; Jim James and Calexico give us a great cover.

I may have more to say about the two disc soundtrack to Haynes' film when I've better absorbed this wall to wall AAA set of covers that were the film's starting point. For now, dig these treasures reborn.

Emmylou Harris - "Plaisir d'Amour" from "Stumble into Grace " (2003)

Emmylou Harris - Plaisir d'Amour 

(traditional; The McGarrigle Sisters, harmony vocals)

This traditional French song turns up twice in classic cinema of the late '40s and '50s -- once "performed by" Montgomery Clift and once by Deborah Kerr, brilliantly in Tea and Sympathy. Emmylou's is by far the definitive interpretation.

"Desperately in Need, of Some Stranger's Hand, in a Desparate Land"

Lieutenant Colonel Kilgore (Robert Duvall): 

"You know, one time we had a hill bombed, for 12 hours. 
When it was all over, I walked up. 
We didn't find one of 'em, not one of those stinkin' dink bodies. 
But the smell, you know, that gasoline smell -- the whole hill. 
Smells like -- victory. 
{Kilgore pauses to reflect} 
Someday this war's gonna end."

Director Francis Ford Coppola chooses The End by The Doors to open his Viet Nam war epic, Apocalypse Now Redux (1979, 2001). I can't think of a more powerful use of an existing song to set the mood for this reworking of a screenplay, originally titled "The Psychedelic Soldier", to a film interpretation -- set in the Viet Nam war -- of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness (1902).

But I'm open to suggestions. Take the dream sequence ride in the clip below; tell me what you think.

"Money's Tight, Nothin's Free, Won't Somebody Come and Rescue Me; I am Stranded, Out in the Crossfire"

"Everyday takes figuring out all over again how to fuckin' live."

-- Calamity Jane

Stevie Ray Vaughn
(sings the title quote like he understands what it means)

Sullivan's Travels (1941; dir. Preston Sturges)

(film the Coen Bros. tipped their hat to with O Brother Where Art Thou)

[Written May 2012 through November 2012]

In the place where you are born and grow up, you begin to learn the things all men must know. Although they are the simplest things, it take a man's life to really know them. And if you are to be a writer, the stories you [tell] will be true in proportion to this knowledge of life that you have ... [of] the good and the bad, the ecstasy, the remorse, the people, the places, and how the weather was. (Except from narrative introduction in the 1963 film Ernest Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man (dir., Martin Ritt) (Introduction by E. A. Hotchner -- 1968).

 When, despite your best efforts to keep things in balance, the money runs out and your Seven Spanish Angels are away for an audience with the Man with the thunder, changes simply must come.

My offline financial exile shattered my attempt to keep things fresh over the past five years of writing and editing Gold Coast Bluenote.

Here are of few of the treasures I've enjoyed during my break from the online life:

- Steve Earle Live From Austin TX (DVD of an Austin City Limits gig from 1986, New West Records, 2004) .... [with The Dukes]. Steve and his band turn in a crack performance that made one friend of mine wonder why he "didn't make it big." Whatever the answer to that question, the full Austin City Limits concert is first class -- what Gram Parsons would call "cosmic American music."

- The Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way (CD, 2006). I've written about this album here before, so I'm going to reprint part of one of two GCB posts on the record:

A friend of mine put on an album the other night, one I hadn't written about since it took home five Grammys and tore up the charts in 2006. The Dixie Chicks' Taking the Long Way still sounds great these five years later.

As an aging hippie, the idea that a band would stir up so much controversy by exercising an artist's right to criticize American foreign policy from overseas is more than a little disconcerting. I grew up at the height of the era where protest music and musicians speaking their minds were badges of honor. But judging on the first decade of this century, a band now puts its future on the line by stepping out of line. As I think about it, I guess its always been risky to oppose those in authority.

The Dixie Chicks are still thriving with a smaller fan base, having lost many of their more conservative, mainstream country fans. But they are still going strong, and their cathartic album Taking the Long Way stands as one of the decade's most important protest records.

- Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie and George C. Scott in The Hustler (DVD, 1961; dir. Robert Rossen). You will find a full post on this film here.

- Joel McCrea and Veronica Lake in Sullivan's Travels (1941; dir. Preston Sturges)

- White Shadow by Ace Atkins (historical novel, 2006). It's a vast over-simplification to say that White Shadow is Tampa, Florida's The Godfather. This noir novel is drenched in local color and the Mafia-drenched world of Tampa and Havana, Cuba in the mid-1950s. 

I was born in '57. Nobody talks anymore about the history this book is filled with, from the Latin and Sicilian mobsters who ran the city's underworld to the task faced by honest Tampa cops of trying to chip away at a granite mountain of corruption and decadence. Atkins takes the Pulitzer Prize nominated research on an unsolved mob murder in the fifties and spins an accurate, engaging tale of the darker side of life in my hometown. It's one of the finest historical novels I've found since discovering Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.

Deadwood: The Complete Series (DVD set, copyright 2004, 2006, 2007; created by David Milch)

 As reader's of Gold Coast Bluenote would expect, there was a good deal of rock 'n' roll that matters on the home jukebox while I was offline. Let me mention a few of these classics that were in heavy rotation:

Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs, Derek and the Dominoes (1970; produced by Tom Dowd)

Exile on Main St, The Rolling Stones (1972, produced by Jimmy Miller)

The Chess Box: Chuck Berry, (3 DVD compilation, 1988)

The Bootleg Series, Vol. IV, The Royal Albert Hall Concert, Bob Dylan (the acoustic side, 1966). Especially Dylan's live version of, arguably, one of the greatest songs ever written, Visions of Johanna.

 If these albums, DVDs, or books are gathering dust in your collection or you haven't acquired the more recently released archival material, well, double clutch your mojo back into gear and let the good times roll. A little time offline did me a world of good. To quote Chuck Berry:

"C'est la vie, say the old folks, it goes to show you never can tell."

"I'm Back in The Saddle Again" - Gene Autry

Home from a long trip through the Carolinas searching for imspiration and respite. Now, dear readers, I'm back in the saddle, again.

See you very soon with a brand new post.

For now pards, "Happy Trails!"

Jimmy Cliff: "Many Rivers To Cross" (1972)

Here's the incomparable Jimmy Cliff performing a definitive studio version of his classic Many Rivers to Cross, from the soundtrack album of the reggae break-out film The Harder They Come (1972).

The soundtrack album changed my life in more ways than one. When I dragged my first wife to see the film, I loved it and she hated it. You can't changed your taste, but wives, well, let's just say I still love the album and she's long gone.

So here's Many Rivers to Cross, a heavily gospel influenced song Cliff wrote in 1969.

"Get Low" (2009): A New Classic Film from Robert Duvall and Company

You want to see a contemporary film masterpiece you haven't seen: check out "A True Tall Tale" of a real American in 1938, Get Low (2009), starring Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek -- a new addition to the canon of great American films.

A colleague, the Paullinator, recommended the film to me for the music by The Steeldrivers, Alison Krauss, and Jerry Douglas -- as well as the film itself. Robert Duvall was one of the producers, working with Dean Zanuck, the third generation of the Zanuck family film production dynasty. Bill Murray and Lucas Black co-star in fine supporting roles.

The story is loosely based on the real life tale of Appalachian eccentric Felix Breazeale --"Felix Bush" as played by Robert Duvall -- who wants to have his funeral "party" before he dies, for a very special reason. The film left me entertained and spiritually moved to tears. A female friend of mine was was equally moved, identifying strongly with Sissy Spacek's character Mattie -- a strong woman who in maturity must recalibrate her life's compass because of past events and a lost love surging to the surface of her life.

Indeed, I've talked to 4 people about this film and all were deeply moved. As the Paullinator put it, "What I think is refreshing about the film is that it deals so frankly with the human condition – with humility." Another couple was not only spiritually moved but also mystified as to why this film had never made it big at the box office. In my view, Get Low will certainly find its audience with it's good word-of-mouth and stirring, heartfelt themes.

This film is everything a classic should be -- entertaining, rich is detail right down to the visuals, excellent writing and acting, incredible music, and it's stirring, understated themes. In short, a new essential with a moving story that will move most anyone with a heart.

Cab Calloway and The Nicholas Brothers: "Jumpin' Jive" (from "Stormy Weather")

My fellow member Joe over at Golden Age of Hollywood posted this clip there recently and I can't get it off my mind. I'd seen it once long ago and then more recently at a friend's house in the film Stormy Weather (1943).

Cab Calloway, his band and the Nicholas Brothers dance team put on an incomparable performance. If you haven't seen it, do yourself a good deed and check it out. Music and dance in film doesn't get any better than this.

And that goes for Stormy Weather in general. As Wikipedia put it, the film is "a time capsule showcasing some of the top African-American performers of the time, [a time] when black actors and singers rarely appeared in lead roles in mainstream Hollywood productions, particularly of the musical genre."

I can't put it better than that.

Solomon Burke Covering Van Morrison's "Fast Train"

When I wrote recently about the HBO series The Wire, after seeing season one on DVD, I had no idea my enthusiasm for the show was going to turn into addiction. I just finished watching season three and I'm thoroughly hooked. But rather than throw superlatives at you about just how good, just how innovative this series is, here's the tune the show's creative team uses as the soundtrack -- a very rare thing for this show, soundtrack music being very sparse -- of the season three closing montage.

I heard this Solomon Burke track for the first time yesterday. I hope you dig it as much as I do. Now I've got to finish watching some additional material that comes with the final disc for season three. Then I can get it back in the mail to Netflix and feed this monkey on my back; the first disc for season four should be here by Wednesday.

"Memo from Turner"

This clip from the 1970 film Performance foreshadows the music video format to come years later. And the music here is raw rock 'n' roll at its finest.

In the clip Mick Jagger acts out the second of the two dramatic personae of his film character Turner. Earlier in the film he establishes Turner as a petulant, reclusive but seemingly harmless rock star. Here we see Turner shifting identities, now a rock-star-as-psychedelic-gangster personifying corruption and decadence.

The song would have disappeared into the void of Stones-related cult material but for Martin Scorsese placing a slice of Memo from Turner right in the heart of a cocaine binge sequence in his acclaimed film Goodfellas (1990). While very few people will ever see Performance, Scorsese brings Ry Cooder's searing slide guitar work on Memo to a wider audience. My hat's off to Mick, Ry, and Marty.

(A version of Memo from Turner with better audio quality is near the top of the red jukebox at left.)

Townes Van Zandt , "Dead Flowers" (Jagger/Richards)

I've always loved this song. I heard it first on The Stones' 1971 classic Sticky Fingers and learned it on guitar by playing along with the record. I loved the speeded-up version on 1995's Stripped. But then I spent a lot of time only hearing myself play it.

Cut to 2004. Out of nowhere, over a bowling game closing The Coen Brothers' The Big Lebowski, I hear iconic songwriter Townes Van Zandt performing Dead Flowers to close the film's superb soundtrack. Though I love the Stones versions, Van Zandt brings a Texas soul authenticity and converts it from an almost-country song into a real one.

But great country songs don't get written by accident. It's a credit to Keith and Mick that Townes put his stamp of approval on this little number. As far as the sparse video above is concerned, just think of yourself listening to the song on a long road trip.

Crazy Heart

Don't miss this one when it eventually comes out on DVD. Seriously, Jeff Bridges and T-Bone Burnett score major successes.

Addendum (22 Jan 10): Since I put up this tiny post, Jeff Bridges won a Best Actor Golden Globe, prompting the films distributors to put up a little cash for advertising and a wider initial release.

Go Crazy Heart go!

"Goin' to Acapulco, Goin' On The Run."

I've raved about Todd Haynes' I'm Not There (film) as an instant classic. (If you click on the album cover above, you'll see the soundtrack CD is even broader than the music that makes it into the film.) Here's an example of the power of the film for me: a Dylan song I've never heard of, covered by a band I barely know, lands among my top five music segments from the film.

Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid are loosely woven through this new hide-out myth of Dylan's late sixties brief escape from the rock n' roll world. The surreal town of "Riddle" becomes the target of development (in this quasi-old-west tale (the railroad's coming right through the secluded valley) and the morality tale driving Dylan's outlaw-in-hiding persona a little farther down the road. Other interpretations welcome.

In the clip below -- (16 May 2010 update: My apologies, Web Sheriff has yanked the clip below because of a copyright claim; you will just have to trust me and rent the DVD) -- Jim James with Calexico give a spine-tingling, poignant performance. It's representative of such dramatic moments in the film, a film always reaching to grasp the multidimensional Dylan.

*****

*****

In Memoriam: Cyd Charisse

Cyd Charisse and Gene Kelly in the film: Singing in the Rain
(released in 1952)

We lost Cyd this year, she has gone on to a better place. Ms. Charisse, truly, you are the best dancer I ever hope to see perform. Your passing touches me.

Requiscat in Pace.