The Jook Joint

[Jim Boylston]

While maybe not for purists, one of my favorite albums of last year was "Bronx in Blue", by Dion (yeah, of Belmonts fame). It was a solid collection of acoustic blues covers that featured great vocals and a minimum of production, usually just Dion's voice and guitar with a little occassional percussion. It stayed on my playlist all year.
Last week, the follow up was posted on iTunes. "Son of Skip James" features the same mix of blues chestnuts, covers, and Dion originals with a little more instrumentation (mainly some B3 and bass, and some understated drums), but retains the groove and great singing that made the last album so enjoyable.
I've already played it a lot, and I'm sure it'll be in heavy rotation for a long while.
Worth a listen.
Jim

[TRK]

I haven't heard anything from Dion in a while. How's his voice holding up, Jim? Nice title, "Son of Skip James." Does he try to reach for that almost falsetto sound, or is he alluding to something else?

[Jim Boylston]

His voice sounds better than ever...he's a great R&B singer, and has a real feel for blues. He's no slouch on guitar either, but his skills are more noticable on the "Bronx in Blue " set because the recording is so sparse.
He does a version of "Devil Got My Woman", but wisely doesn't attempt to duplicate James' haunting falsetto. Dion wrote a song for the album called "Son of Skip James", which is more an allusion to the prophetic vision in Skip's material and Dion's (and Dylan's) penchant for the same type of thing. It might also refer to the spiritual/hedonist dichotomy that all these guys share as well.
I know a couple of guys that have spent some time with Dion, and I've been pleased to hear what a genuinely nice guy he is. He's been through a lot in his life, including serious herion addiction, but has managed to come through it all and still makes good records to boot.
Jim

[TRK]

I may have to check out some of this recent Dion stuff. And as for his guitar chops, he merited a signature Martin guitar a couple of years ago, so that's something.

I love Skip James and that high, lonesome voice. That was a guy who was equally good on piano and guitar. "Crow Jane" is one of my favorites. The Derek Trucks Band did a nice version of the song on their album "Songlines."

[Jim Boylston]

I love Skip's stuff too. Did you ever see "Ghost World"? It's a quirky little film that Terry Zwigoff made a few years ago, but it features "Devil Got My Woman" as a part of the soundtrack, and as a pivotal plot device. Interesting choice, but not too surprising, considering Zwigoff was a member of Robert Crumb's Cheap Suit Serenaders...big proponents of pre-war music.
Jim

[Allen Wiener]

I've always loved this guy and have a lot of his older albums, with and without the Belmonts. The last album of his that I picked up was the CD "Dream on Fire," which was enjoyable and I was glad to see he hadn't lost anything. I'll have to check out both of these blues albums -- maybe on iTunes. Blues and Dion sounds like a great combination.

Do you regard some country & western singers as blues artists too? I'm thinking mostly of Hank Williams, who was in his own league, but there are others. I was always impressed with Elvis's ability to sing blues when he chose to (even more impressed with his gospel stuff). I'm thinking of "Tell Me Why" or even his version of "Merry Christmas Baby."

AW

[Jim Boylston]

Absolutely, Allen. I love the crossover points like Jimmy Rogers, country guys who were really bluesmen as well. Dock Boggs is another one who is ostensibly an old-time or country artist, but qualifies as a blues singer too (for me, at least).
The Harry Smith "History of Folk Music" box set is almost one long example of how these styles merge.
I'm also a big fan of Western Swing, which features a mind-bending convergence of styles. Bob Wills is one of my all time faves, but I like a lot of the more obscure artists as well.
As for the Dion blues records, so far the new one is only available on iTunes, as far as I know. It's not out yet on CD. "Bronx in Blue" came out on iTunes first too, and there's an accompanying EP on iTunes called "If You Wanna Rock and Roll" that has an updated acoustic version of "The Wanderer", unavailable elsewhere.
I've recommended "Bronx in Blue" to a lot of people, and so far no one's been disappointed. It was nominated for a Grammy last year, by the way. Speaking of Hank Williams, Dion does a killer version of "Honky Tonk Blues" on "Bronx in Blue".
Jim

[TRK]

Jim, Zwigoff's film sounds interesting, and the R. Crumb connection is good credentials. Of course, the Martin Scorsese series "The Blues" highlighted Skip James and the song "Devil Got My Woman" in one of the episodes. Am I correct that James influenced some of the latter-day north Mississippi guys like R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough? Those are two guys I need to study.

Allen, some C&W guys are fairly deep into the blues, like Jimmie Rodgers, one of the founders of "Country Music." A lot of blues artists have credited him as a heavy influence. Merle Haggard, Willie Nelson, Delbert McClinton (who was marketed as a C&W act around 1976-77 but is really R&B), Charlie Rich, Johnny Cash, Billy Joe Shaver, Hank Jr., and countless others have had that blues sensibility. I think Jimmy Reed was a big influence on lots of country guys. Elvis was pretty believable when he sang blues, like Arthur Crudup's "That's Alright Mama," Lowell Fulson's "Reconsider Baby," and "Mess of Blues" and "Little Sister" by those old blues guys, Mort Shuman and Doc Pomus ;o) Hank Williams was surely blues-influenced and was tutored by a street bluesman in Montgomery called Tee-Tot, but curiously, he repeatedly referred to himself as a "folk singer."

Not really Country & Western, but those old Western Swing fellows like Bob Wills were more blues than anything else...largely Kansas City-style blues. And if you study the early bluegrass guys, particularly Bill Monroe, there's a wide streak of blues in there: blues and gospel.

You know the old saying, Country Music is nothing but white man's blues. True up to a point.

[Jim Boylston]

Jim, Zwigoff's film sounds interesting, and the R. Crumb connection is good credentials. Of course, the Martin Scorsese series "The Blues" highlighted Skip James and the song "Devil Got My Woman" in one of the episodes. Am I correct that James influenced some of the latter-day north Mississippi guys like R.L. Burnside and Junior Kimbrough? Those are two guys I need to study.

I think those guys were more influenced by John Lee Hooker (or maybe Bukka White). James' playing is a lot more nuanced, in my opinion, and a lot more chilling.
I saw T Model Ford open for Keb Mo a couple of years ago, and thought he was a big yawn. He's another of those guys from the Fat Possum stable, and he basically stayed on one chord, in one key, all night. Keb was a lot more entertaining, but a lot of people don't consider him as "legit", but Brownie McGhee caught the same kind of criticism, and I like him a lot.

Some of those Western Swing guys lived hard too. Check out Spade Cooley's life story for a real dose of some hard core blues.

Jim

[Allen Wiener]

Yeah - a lot of 'em sure lived hard, or not for very long, like Hank Williams.

Speaking of Jimmy Rodgers, have you heard the early blues stuff Gene Autry laid down before he became a big recording star and movie star. He sure wasn't wearing a white hat on some of those racier numbers. I once did an article on Gene for "Goldmine" and was really knocked out by his early blues, where he was clearly trying to copy Rodgers, yodels included. Autry cut three different versions of his "Do Right Daddy Blues" early in 1931, a typical tribute to macho braggadocio, and more risque than most of his blues. Make what you will, for example, of the lyric, "you can feel o' my legs, and you can feel o' my thighs, but if you feel o' my legs, you got to ride me high." In the end, however, his girlfriend dumps him, and Gene threatens to drown himself. A far cry from "Back in the Saddle" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer"!

A friend of mine did a book on the great rock producers and his interview with Sam Phillips is really revealing. I think it becomes almost impossible at some point to sort out the various musical genres, how they influenced one another, or what the deuce you're actually listenting to at any point. I think it's like that judge who ruled on pornography -- I may not be able to clearly define rock, blues, folk, country, etc., but I know it when I see/hear it.

Phillips made special mention of Rodgers and how much more influential he was on later artists than he's usually credited with. He specifically mentioned "Waiting for a Train," which may be known under other titles. I lost track of all his numbered "Blue Yodels."

I hadn't thought of Reed's influence on Elvis, but you're right. However, I think Elvis really emersed himself in all of the music flowing through Memphis at that time and it all sort of percolated inside of his head and came out as rockabilly. Once he hit it big, anything Elvis did was considered rock & roll and he came to personify rock in the press and mainstream America, regardless of what he actually may have been singing.

AW

[Jim Boylston]

I don't have a lot of Gene Autry, one of the Columbia collections and one of the discs from the "Songs of the West" box set. I could see how his early stuff would be blues based, though.
I agree that Elvis drew on a lot of these early influences as well. They might be more noticable on some of the early Sun sides, but I think you hear them throughout his career, even though they were glossed up a lot on later recordings.
I'd always thought that Elvis should have stayed closer to his roots, but a bio I read about him some time ago mentioned that Elvis was hoping to emulate Dean Martin musically, which I guess explains a lot. It wasn't all the Colonel's fault.
Jim

[Allen Wiener]

Early on he emulated Martin or admired him, but he moved on from that once he started recording. He would occassionally find a good songwriter, like Leiber & Stoller, but the Colonel chased away anyone who might be getting close to Elvis, which pretty quickly confined him to a lot of crap. Colonel also wanted him to record only songs published by Hill & Range, since he had a deal with them that brought him royalties. Finally, once he got into thost ghastly movies the songs he was stuck with were just awful.

I did a lot of interviews with Elvis's various bands and others who worked with him and I got the distinct impression that Elvis was very much aware of all of this, but nearly all his life just could not bring himself to speak up in his own best interests. He would bitch all the time to his bandmates, and they'd tell him to just complain and that he was a big enough star that they would do anything for him. He never did it. His is a tragic story in many ways.

I think, once he got working, all of the musical influences came out in him, but his commercial output was often lacking in any of that kind of feeling.

I do love those Sun tracks and even "Million Dollar Quartet" for a real feel for those musical roots.

AW

[TRK]

Allen, did you ever get to interview James Burton, Jerry Sheff, Glenn Hardin, or Ronnie Tutt, from Elvis' latter-day band? Musically, IMO, those guys walked on water. One of the top guys in my musical pantheon, Gram Parsons, also thought so: he dug deep into his pockets to hire them as backing musicians on his two solo albums.

Scotty Moore and Bill Black were no slouches, either.

You can't beat Elvis' Sun output. I'd stack up "Baby, Let's Play House" with most anything in recorded history. And I like much of his RCA material up through the late-50s, early-60s cuts, like "Big Hunk of Love," "Little Sister," and such. He did well with Lieber & Stoller material like "Jailhouse Rock," but for my money, the songs Pomus and Shuman pitched him fit him like a glove.

And, as I believe you said last night, Allen, gospel was where Elvis' heart really was. You watch the concert footage, even into the 1970s, and see the passion and enthusiasm he had, even when appreciating what one of the guys in the backing group The Stamps was singing during one of his songs... or listen to his gospel cuts over the decades, and it's plain to see that Elvis was one of *the* great gospel singers of all time.

[Jim Boylston]

I love those Gram Parsons records too, and that TCB band was great.
Did you hear the live stuff Elvis Costello recorded with them? Smoking.
Jim

[TRK]

Live stuff Costello recorded with them, Jim? I'm familiar with the "King of America" sessions with Tutt, Sheff, Burton (and Hardin), but wasn't aware there were "magnetic memories" of any live dates. 'Course, that same core group served Emmylou Harris well as the basis of her early Hot Band.

I wonder if Glenn Hardin still alive and kicking? I haven't heard anything about him in years.