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RE: Big Mamas & Johnny Otis
Jerry Wexler's autobiography ('Rhythm and the blues'), that's a book I don't own, but would love to. Atlantic Records was the place for R&B.
Jerry Wexler's autobiography ('Rhythm and the blues'), that's a book I don't own, but would love to. Atlantic Records was the place for R&B.
Worth looking out for on Amazon, though it's not so cheap; picked mine up from a library sale years ago. A terrific read, going right from his New York childhood through to 1993, when he'd just produced an Etta James record. Ray Charles, Big Joe Turner, Wilson Pickett, Solomon Burke, King Curtis, Dr John, Prof Longhair, Donny Hathaway, Dylan, on and on - guy worked with them all. The stuff about the 'I never loved a man' Aretha sessions is one of the highlights.
@shortcut mentioned you to me, btw, and the fact that you write for all about jazz.com. I sent him the draft of the book I've been researching and writing for the last 3 years on the PREhistory of jazz. I've had to park it because the money ran out and the crypto market (having got in at the top) has so far failed to be my salvation.
Keep it coming. Good to know there's some genuinely interesting music content on the platform. Hope to be adding to it myself soon - just nosing around at the moment, finding my feet.
Thanks, glad you're here on the platform. I did an in depth interview with Jerry Jemmott (Atlantic session bassist) and asked him about J. Wexler -- I'm a huge Duane Allman fan, so Jerry W., Thom Dowd and those guys are people I kept up with.
BTW, I wondered if you noticed in the interview clip with Johnny Otis he mentioned where that "shave, and a hair cut" beat came from. I always thought that was a Bo Diddley invention, but although Johnny gave Bo credit, he mentioned that he heard guys on the chain gang back in the 1930s doing a slower version of that beat.
Good luck with your book too!!
Checked you out on All about jazz − your profile and that Jerry Jemmott interview. The people that guy has played with! How cool is the picture of Duane and Jerry with Wexler sat between them? You should definitely get hold of the Wexler book, sounds like it’s right up your alley; Tom Dowd looms large, for instance. I should maybe clarify that I don’t pretend to be very knowledgeable about the whole Southern blues / rock thing (Butterfield, Bloomfield et al), but as an amateur musicologist there’s nothing I don’t regard as grist to my mill, so I have a working knowledge of a vast amount of stuff from 12th century organum to Ariana Grande. Your own tastes are clearly pretty eclectic: saw you namecheck Debashish Bhattacharya, who your average rock journalist mightn’t know. I liked your story about Duke's open-mindedness: what a dude he was. Miles, though usually thought of as closer to rock/pop, didn't show the same tolerance in his autobiography.
Love the bits in the interview about how it went down at Muscle Shoals, which echo some of the stuff in Wexler. Like how they’d give something their all but still have someone like a young Jerry Jemmott standing by to try and provide the missing ingredient if they couldn’t make it happen, all just working it out between them with no charts or even preparation. Also the racial stuff, with these black and white musicians co-operating and bonding right when the Civil Rights movement was beginning to play out. Sickening to think how some people in the US are quite happy to jeopardize the progress that was made at that time, playing games for votes and dollars. But let’s not go there.
Yes, that rhythm. The Wiki article is quite interesting: https://tinyurl.com/y84ycf43. Wouldn’t be at all surprised if it didn’t originate with Bo. It seems, as the mighty Ned Sublette hints there (and I discuss this in my book), that anything so strongly syncopated can probably be traced to sub-Saharan Africa and likely got to the US via the Haitians who were exiled on Cuba during the revolution before being kicked out and pitching up in New Orleans, doubling the population, circa 1808, to be developed (though this is pure speculation) in the great Sunday gathering in Congo Square. But it was one thing for the habanera / tango kick to be one of the motors for so many clave-pattern latin dance rhythms, quite another for Bo to isolate it, emphasize it and electrify it. It was all he ever needed. As Jerry Lee Lewis said, “if he ever gets outta the chord of E he might get dangerous”.
I’d be happy to email a draft of the book if you like – purely for interest. In the meantime I look forward to you bringing us more hidden gems.
I'm glad you had a chance to check out that interview with Jerry, kind of amazing that he was close to Jaco Pastorius and Duane Allman -- not to mention all the other greats.
I don't really known too much, but preparing for interviews did expand my knowledge base a bit -- it also allowed me to understand just how little I do know :-/
BTW, I paid tribute to Bo Diddley on my previous car ;-)
I totally agree with your sentiment:
To me what is going on now is the polar opposite of what MLK was striving for, but like you wrote, let's stay positive.
PS Have you considered adapting you book to a couple of years worth of posts on Steemit?
Amazing, sure, but he's something of a great himself - just not so well known as those others. If Jaco looked up to you, it says more than a place in some hall of fame, I'm sure you'll agree.
The more we learn, the more we discover how much there is to know, that's for sure. Doing this book was also a case of 'everything you know is wrong', many of the stories about the origins of jazz, dating from the 30s when people were beginning to write but almost nothing was known, being wishful thinking or guesswork. Sceptically examining these myths and legends is one of my running themes.
Yes, I fully intend to cannibalize parts of the book, though they will need adapting to a different context and audience. Same goes for my Stockhausen book (https://tinyurl.com/y8v9kyw2) and some of the writing on my site (https://tinyurl.com/yc4xkdrr - some of the earlier links don't work following a hack).
There's a good reason that the nickname "Groovemaster" stuck ;-)
Slayer of Legends, :-) I must admit I love the fanciful embellished legends.
Aesop's "Familiarity breeds contempt" is probably more like a natural law than an adage.
I'm not doing any slaying, I should make clear, just reporting the slaying that's gone on in recent years. It's still the legend that gets printed. It'll take more than Elijah Wald's book showing Robert Johnson to have been a huge Jimmie Rodgers fan and a polka hound, who let's say 'borrowed' all his songs, to convince people Robert Johnson was anything but a semi-mystical original operating in isolation, his gifts deriving from a pact with the devil.
The written word is always getting me into trouble. When people speak to each other it's so much easier to pick up on attempts a humor. I was totally kidding about the legend slaying, hope I didn't offend you. I do, however, cop to being a sucker for tales about music and musicians.
Of course the more info we have about our legends the better. That Robert Johnson info you mentioned above is fascinating.
Finding the truth in the haze of the distant past must be a real challenge. One can find two musicians who will have widely divergent memories about the same thing. Sometimes even a single musician can have contradictory accounts.
For example, Paul McCartney on writing Balckbird. Wiki has an article about it:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackbird_(Beatles_song)
I remember having a bootleg of McCartney and Donovan taking turns playing for each other in a studio back when the Beatles were still together. It's now on YouTube and about 4 minutes in he says originally it had nothing to do with a black girl
Be later when he published a book of his lyrics and he gave a much different version that involved being motivated by the race struggle in America at the time.
In any case, I can see you're going to have a bunch of interesting posts to share and I'm looking forward to reading them!