Tom Ardolino, drummer for NRBQ, died on Jan 6, 2012 after his health gave out. He and I were friends for twenty years, and the loss of his brotherhood and musicality has me in a bad way. I have no idea where I'd be without his influence. Aside from the obvious effect of him playing in my favorite band, the band that most shaped my view of what a great band is, the role of improvising, and the dangers of imposing categories on music, he was also a guy who turned me onto so many life-changing records. That's not hyperbole. He introduced me to things that stopped me in my tracks, and, in his memory, I'll play you a few. Tom was forever making compilation tapes (then later CDs) for his friends, and his amazing taste and fanatic's love for finding beautiful, obscure music was a constant, as was his encyclopedic memory for ever record he'd ever heard. And his musical generosity was legendary. Along with Milstein, Matt Goldman, Byron Werner, and Wayno, his tapes exerted a lot of influence on a bunch of us. A few highlights:
It might seem strange, but this little trifle (the b-side of Patience & Prudence's "Tonight You Belong To Me") blew me away. Patience and Prudence were a sister singing duo (11 and 14 respectively) whose father was the pianist on the Chipmunks singles, among other things. "Tonight" was a big hit in '57, they had one other hit, and then kinda faded from view. But this record was to me -- and Tom -- just perfect and mysterious in its own right, and we both wanted to know all we could about it and them. I wound up doing some detective work, which has subsequently become a loose but affectionate friendship with Patience. Slightly before I was to be in NRBQ for a few shows in 2001, she found a stash of photos and sheet music. I had her autograph some for him, and I gave them to him when I arrived to meet the band in Louisville. Her generosity blew him away.
Tom compiled the LP Beat Of The Traps, a collection of some of his favorite "Send us your poems! We'll set them to music!" records, mostly oN the MSR and Prevue labels, mostly sixties to the early seventies. The mastermind behind a great many of these sessions was the then-myserious Rodd Keith. After doing some research around the Hollywood Musicians Union (AFM Local 47), I found out he was one Rodney Keith Eskelin, whose union membership had lapsed in about 1974. I knew only one other musical Eskelin -- Ellery Eskelin, the brilliant tenor saxophonist playing in my friend Joey Baron's trio. I asked Joey if he knew anything about this, and he said, yes, this was Ellery's father, and did I by any chance have a way to get in touch with anyone from the band NRBQ. It just so happened... Phil Milstein wound up taking up the task of documenting the history of song poem records, and he has done a breathtaking job. Also, there is a terrific documentary called Off The Charts, which covers the subject real well and has Tom (as well as Ellery) talking on camera about song poem records.
Tom was the first person to tell me about Joe Meek, the English record producer whose work in many ways is the bridge between Les Paul and Phil Spector. He was England's first great independent record producer, and he cut his hit stuff in his apartment, including "Telstar", the first record by an English artist to top the American charts. Meek's records were theatrical, dramatic creations that were at once rockin' and slightly sinister. In 1967, he shot and killed his landlady, then turned the gun on himself.
Anybody who ever exchanged tapes with Tom experienced the Nutty Squirrels. I don't know why this held so much appeal for him, but... At some point, he and Hal Willner had intended to do an antho of the Squirrels, but it fell through.
No joke -- this song was a guilty pleasure we shared. While I was with him and the Q in Louisville, we walked from our motel to the Barnes and Noble, and he said something about "the doldrums of my dreary dreams", and I stopped him and said "Mardi gras?" and he lit up and said "You dig Gino!" It was one of the best moments ever.
I will never meet anyone like Tom again. And I'll miss his playing and his generosity.
My pal Mark Saleski posted a blog about his ten favorite guitar players. It was a great list, mostly not what I'd have chosen, but it was a great and imaginative list. He asked would I do the same. So here you go, in no order.
Chamin Correa (of Los Tres Caballeros)
In the last three or four years, Chamin has become the guitar player I listen to most often. To me, he's like a more interesting version of Django Reinhardt. He was Django's harmonic sense and attack, but his rhythms are less static and more imaginative. Even abrupt. Where more of the great Mexican trio guitarists -- most notably the wonderful Alfredo Gil of Los Panchos -- veered to a lyrical style with faux flemenco flourishes, Chamin went for the jugulay, kind of juxtaposing this slashing thing across the sides of those great harmonies. If you told me Johnny Guitar Watson dug him, I'd totally believe you.
Al Anderson
Generally, I wouldn't walk across the street to see some guy (or girl) spew out 12 bar blues on electric guitar. In the case of Al, I'd walk across town to show you where he played in 1992. I must have seen NRBQ thirty times (not counting the shows I played as a member), probably twenty with Al on guitar. I saw him play songs he'd been playing for decades, and he rarely repeated himself. No guitarist could more represent what I thought was the best aspects of our art and craft nearly this well. The depth of his lines, the richness of his harmonies, his endless well of melody, and the fact that -- Big Sandy excluded -- he's the best live singer I've ever seen/heard, and one of the best songwriters. He is a best-case scenario. All the stuff people think they "have down" -- Big Al is beyond it and back.
Hank Snow
After I hung up my electric guitar, Hank Snow became my role model. I've been a fan of him all my life (my grandmother had a few singles, which I loved) for a lot of reasons. I love the way his voice and guitar are clearly of the same musical mind. His solos are really smart, efficient, and sharp. And -- big one -- he doesn't make that stupid fucking guitar face. The idea of his singing and guitar style being the focal point that leads the band, the idea that songs speak for themselves -- big deal to me. He's up there with Mose Allison for me as a human "how to".
Curtis Mayfield
If you want a course of how to play less, make every note warm and meaningful, and be the mortar of a rhythm section whether funky, lyrical, whatever, Curtis is the all-time. The Bill Evans of rhythm'n'blues, his chord voicings have a full, deep, rich quality, his rhythms just drop right in deep, and his sound is both fat and minimal. A best of all worlds musician. And his songs, singing, production, arranging made him one of the most important rhythm'n'blues figure of the sixties and seventies, alongside James Brown, Issac Hayes, and Stevie Wonder.
Doc Watson
Doc is how bluegrass guitar went from just rhythm to a soloing instrument. I can't say enough about this wonderful man and the scope, quality, and dignity of his playing. None of what he does is tricks -- these are honest notes. There is no posturing, nor gratuitous moves, no guitaristic affectation whatsoever. Instead, there's tone, swing, impeccable time, phrasing, and drive. And a bottomless well of songs. He's cut "Black Mountain Rag" several times over the last five decades, and he seems to pare it down, distill it, find ore to leave out. With anything he's cut several times over decades, his growth tends toward how to do less with notes and more with nuance. A true great, as irrefutable as anyone who ever played this instrument, right up with Segovia, Christian, Van Halen, and Blake (Norman and/or Blind).
James Honeyman Scott
Product of the new wave 1980s that I was, I loved a great many of the guitarists. A lot of guys (and a few gals) played a few solos I loved, but there were relatively few guys who swung for the fences and delivered grand slams as a rule. Elliot Easton (who has become a friend) was sure one, as were Glen Tilbrook (Squeeze) and Andy Partridge (XTC) were among the heaviest hitters of a generation. But if I had to pick one solo of the genre, James Honeyman-Scott's solo on "Kid" is it. He was always perfect anyway, but every note of guitar playing on this is primo, and, when the solo enters, it lifts an already great song (with one of Chrissie Hynde's best vocals)to a whole next place, followed by the rentry of the vocal over almost no guitar (just muscular drums and bass. The rolling, open string entry of the solo was one of the guitar highlights of my high school record buying days.
Cliff Gallup (Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps)
I discovered Gallup when I was in ninth grade via a Gene comp called The Bop That Just Won't Stop, and it really broke me up. Although he was only in Gene's band for 1956, he thew down a full-on body of guitar liteature that has set the standard for rockabilly since, even though the stuff he's on sold less well than Eddie Cochran, Buddy Holly, Elvis/Scotty Moore etc, he and Paul Burlison (on the Johnny Bunette records) are cornerstone players. Without Gallup, Brian Setzer's style becomes inexplicable. I learned every Gallup solo by the time I was in tenth grade, and I can still pull them out of my back pocket at will. He meant the world to me.
Roy Nichols (Merle Haggard and the Strangers)
Haggard's body of work might well be the greatest in country music history, both for quality and sheer volume of recordings. Hag's voice, songs, and band (he recorded with his own bands, not session guys) conspired to make canonical music. Guitarist Roy Nichols was the ad hoc music director for the Strangers through from the late sixties to the eighties, and had a sure a hand as Hag himself in shaping together this unimpeachable body of music. His guitar playing, whether on acoustic or electric, was always perfect. He never did obvious stuff, but what he played sounded inevitable. "Always Wanting You" has always been a favorite of mine. Hag wrote it about Dolly Parton. The opening has a longing, unsentimental tone that sets the scene for a great lyric about a love that can't be. Nichols' nylon string opening -- spare and straight -- is met by a twangy bass string response that says, "This is a man speaking, not a Hallmark card."
Nichols is one of the most well-rounded and multi-dimensional guitarists I know of. He's a great western swing jazzbo, a virtuoso of fake steel parts, a chicken picker nonpareil, and a rhythm section anchor without equal. The bluegrass banjo player Sonny Osborne told me once "If you heard Roy Nichols do it, you heard it done right." Yessir.
Lowman Pauling (5 Royales)
Another guy I discovered around ninth grade. The 5 Royales were one of the great rhythm'n'blues acts of the early fifties. The two hits for which they are best known -- "Think" and "Dedicated To The One I Love" -- have been covered by all kinds of different acts fom James Brown to the Mamas And The Papas. Lowman Pauling wrote those (and the bulk of the band's material) and sang lead. He was truly great. As a singer and songwriter, he was a staggering talent, and as a guitarist, he was one of the champions of doing more with less. His snarling, swaggering short bursts or shrapnel guitar never fall short of their mark, and his barbed-wire tone as delivery system... Yeah. He's one of the pinnacles. Unfortunately, despite his writing songs and making records that other people drove to the bank, Pauling wound up woking as a janitor at a synagogue. He died with a mop in his hand, age 47. Heart attack.
The Beatles
Where saying "the greatest" or "the best" is generally cheap hyperbole, The Beatles are worthy. As a guitarist, I look at their work with awe. I spent the summerbetween sixth and seventh grade learning this song (not knowing it was George and Paul playing together at once, not George playing both parts in real time on one guitar). John, Paul, and George each and together are so intensely embedded into the tradition of guitar that we can't really estimate pop music without looking to them the way oceanographers look to water. I don't trust any musician (or listener) who dismisses them. Or for that matter prefers the Stones. The Beatles were did something almost no other card-carrying rockabilly act ever got to do (the Everly's being the notable and astonishing exception) -- they grew up on record. They formed a style that starts in Sun rockabilly, and moves through country, rhythm'n'blues, early ska, music hall, and into psyche, world music, folk, and more... only to find its way back to Chuck Berry and Elmore James. They might not have done it all fist, but they did it all and did it great.
It has been a year of extravagant packages. Hell, the damn Beach Boys SMiLE box lights up, literally. It anthologizes every sound syllable of a legendary work, and thank you very much. I still think it would have been less good than Pet Sounds. And all the Pet ounds box really told me was that I could listen to every inch of tape, learn what was done, and that you'd have to be Brian Wilson to have the ideas in the first place.
(But it lights up and has an impressive book.)
You wanna know what made my knees freeze and my bladder spatter?
(Sorry, it's Little Richard's birthday.)
I'd never heard of Rev Johnny L. Jones. Philly had enough local and near-local gospel that I never had to look for much. It wasn't my primary focus, and you couldn't knock over a dead cat in a thrift store without knocking over records by the Famous Ward singers, Shirley Caesar, Clarence Fountain etc etc etc. Jones put out a few albums for the Jewel label, out of Shreveport, LA (as did Fountain and quite a few other great gospel artists). But he recorded all his church services from 1957, and Dust To Digital went through a heroic amount of music, coming across with The Hurricane That Hit Atlanta, a set that collects sermons, songs, and even commercials into a kind of document of the life of this performer and his congregation. This is true music. It was not made with any sort of eye to a marketplace. This is social music in its element. This is really the true vine.
There's no video expressly for Songs For he Jewish American Jetset: The Tikva Records Story 1950-73, which anthologizes a low budget Jewish music label who put out more really good records than you might imagine. The label had never been given the benefit of a formal discography. Nobody who made records for Tikva gave interviews to speak of. Yiddish music as a rule went into a black hole until Henry Sapoznik's pioneering scholarship in the 1970's. And even those years back, much had been lost and many of the great musicians of the boom period had passed away, most notably Naftule Brandwine and Abe Schwartz. Researching the labels themselves was no easy task, and we've been left with a whole new diaspora to where the recorded history of Jewish music is spread to the four winds. The Idelsohn Society seeks to correct this by making a life study of Jewish records, and their anthologies and reissues have been a mitzvah to anyone seeking to know more about a type of roots music the Blasters might not have covered. This and their Jewface volume are staggering.
The Tompkins Square label has gotten most of its recent accolades for putting out Frank Fairfield's records, but they've put out so much of the best underground roots music that I am immediately curious about stuff I never before considered just because they put out a two disc set of it, and there's never a bad cut. To What Strange Place : The Music of the Ottoman-American Diaspora, 1916-1929 covers a subculture that is even more in the past than Yiddish. This stuff fascinates me.
For those less internationalist, the label's two antho's of postwar indie underground gospel singles is truly staggering. Fire In My Bones and This May Be My Last Time Singing have each spent weeks at a time in my CD player. They're comprehensive but not academic, and liner notes literally open us up to a music world here in our country that most of us never bother to ask about.
Elder Roma Wilson is intense.
Soundman Shots: The Downbeat/Caribou Story was an impulse buy. I'm a sucker for that transitional time in Jamaican music. These two Jamaican labels were owned by the same guy, and he licensed rhythm'n'blues and some jazz for the downbeat label, and late mento-into-ska on Caribou, Which means that we get more mento-era Lord Tanamo than has ever been issued in one place before (which is a very good thing). Thing is, as you can hear, he had fantastic taste, so both discs ran by faster than a scared rabbit.
So I don't really have a Top Ten for the year. Big Sandy is still my favorite singer, Nick Lowe's The Old Magic and Randy Newman's Songbook Vol 2 were my two favorite albums of the year, and Allison Anders' Don't Knock The Rock rock on film series at the Silent Movie Museum was my favorite fall-back every week, and I saw more good music on film -- everything from the Seattle funk of the 70s capped by Wheedle's Groove to Elvis On Tour. Aside from LA, my home, Tucson was kind of my favorite city, not least of Al because of Al Perry, songwriter/performer/genius local treasure and musicologist whose hospitality has opened the town to me. Favorite new movies I saw was the George Harrison doc, and Errol Morris' Tabloid.
This year was more fun than last, but there's room for growth. Here's hoping...
I love great songs, but I don't usually make lists of "best this" etc. However, I am coming up on my 31st anniversary in the show business, and my 19th as a recording artist (Fallen Hand Of Love came out 11/92). So I figure this is as good a time as any to reflect on what has lived with me the most in the world of songs during these 19 years.
10. Wayne Hancock -- "Thunderstorms And Neon Signs"
I saw him do this in a play called Chippie, which featured Joe Ely, Terry Allen, and Joe Ely, back I guess in 94 or so, and it ripped me open. I went back a few times, and it was the show-stopper in a play made up of notable songs. Wayne was at that point a comparative unknown, but he was the moment in that show, and this song was the star.
9. Chris Gaffney -- "The Man Of Somebody's Dreams"
Gaffney's Loser's Paradise album is a sad reminder of what an immense talent we lost a few years back. Probably Dave Alvin's best work as a producer, too. This song was in some ways Gaffney's ultimate moment, not least of all because it was his most perfect "tough guy/soft heart" moment, and because he was the most powerful quiet singer you could imagine, Peter Rowan notwithstanding.
8. Richard Thompson -- "Cooksferry Queen"
Lotsa guys write songs about being a musician, but this is the one. And the line "The people speak my name in whispers/What higher praise could there be?" is an unbeatable line.
7. Dave Alvin -- "From A Kitchen Table"
It's hard to imagine anything better than Dave when he has his fastball. Despite the public favorites being his big anthems, he has always really been his best and most human when he writes small, from "Border Radio" to "Leaving" and on out, his most real moments are when he's up close and personal. This is in my mind his best song, certainly his most compassionate and well-told. Chokes me up, even now.
6. Van Dyke Parks -- "Orange Crate Art"
This is pulled from the Brian doc I Just Wasn't Made For These Times, where a great many rock persons were talking about all this beautiful music Brian had in him. When the film got to this song, it seemed to say "like what Van Dyke writes". "Orange Crate Art" is an art song in the sense of what classical composers recognize, a pop song of a very high order, and a truly loving and lovely piece of Californiana on par with any. While Van Dyke's gifts can oftenbe elusive as they are formidable (and boy are they), "OCA" distills the very best of a very beautiful musical mind.
5. Steve Earle -- "Texas Eagle"
I might think Steve Earle is the most overrated songwriter since Gram Parsons. That said, "Texas Eagle" is a shot of true greatness. He's written a three chord song about something he truly understands and feels strongly about, and it's a tape measure grand slam that won the series. The Del McCoury band is eating this with a spoon, too. If he could be at his best as often as, say, Dave Alvin or Graham Parker, I'd be devoted. That said, you only have to be this good once to have been this good.
4. Tom Waits -- "I Don't Wanna Grow Up"
Not every real emotion is attatched to romantic love or the Springsteen-esque working class. At the risk of sounding corny as hell, for all the acclaim attatched rightfully to Rain Dogs, this song is profound. The idea of a kid laying in bed and listening to his parents arguing and going through it all in his head... Pretty much as good as it gets.
3. Nick Lowe -- "I Trained Her To Love Me"
Nick's ascendancy as the greatest songwriter of the post-Pistols world (even if he was pre-Pistols) seems to have started with 1994's The Impossible Bird, specifically with "The Beast In Me", which is as perfect a song as any, but I kind of prefer this one as an example specimen, because it has everything -- perfect pop melody and hook, dark evil lyric, and an overall sensibility that can;t be described, except to say that it might be the intelligent person's answer to "To All The Girls I Loved", which goes down in history as the worst lyric ever written by the greatest lyricist of a generation, the otherwise unimpeachable Hal David.
2. Bob Dylan -- "Mississippi"
Bob Dylan has never not mattered. These last few albums have given us a handful of his best songs, and picking one is nearly impossible. But few have been as mythical as "Mississippi", which is actually about me and this girl from AZ I knew. I know Bob didn;t really write it about me and her, but he write it about me and her.
1. Randy Newman -- "Losing You"
I'd have to give Randy Newman the ultimate nod, the way I give it to Roger Miller or Johnny Mercer. He's a songwriter in the classical sense, and -- like far too few of the post-Dylan luminaries -- his songwriting takes in the full range of life, and not just one segment. He has been at turns mean, funny, romantic, philosophical, loser-ly, etc -- and he's always been the right guy for the job. Again, as with Dave Alvin, his most affecting moments are when he takes a turn to the small. "Losing You" is for me the most powerful thing I've heard in so many years, and it explains why I'm a lifelong advocate of the guy.
PS Honorable mention to Big Sandy for "Between Darkness and Dawn", Stan Ridgway for "Fork Lift", and the late, great Walter Hyatt for "Where The Blue Begins".
If Louis Armstrong distinguishes himself as the first jazz soloist in the modern sense of the term, Coleman Hawkins is in some ways the first soloist with a style listeners today would recognize has modern. Had he lived, he would be 107 today. He died in 1969, half a year shy of his 65th birthday.
he joined Mamie Smith and her Jazz Hounds in 1921, then left a couple years later for Fletcher Henderson's band, before Louis Armstrong joined. He seems to have first recorded in 1925 (with Fletcher). From Wikipedia:
In the late 20's, Hawkins also participated in some of the earliest interracial recording sessions with the Mound City Blue Blowers. During the time with Henderson, he became a star soloist with an increasing amount of star solos on record. While with the band, he and Henry "Red" Allen recorded a series of small group sides for ARC (on their Perfect, Melotone, Romeo, and Oriole labels). Hawkins also recorded a number of solo recordings, with either piano or with a pick-up band of Henderson's musicians in 1933-34, just prior to his European trip. He was also featured on a landmark Benny Goodman February 2, 1934 session for Columbia, which also featured Mildred Bailey as guest vocalist.
It was by the mid-30's that Hawkins was the undisputed star of saxophone, and he was invited to join Jack Hylton's band as a star soloist. Hilton was sort of England's Paul Whiteman. The pay was large, and so Hawk went to London. Lester Yound took his place in Fletcher's band before ascending to true greatness in the Basie band, and he more than made a mark on the literature of tenor saxophone.
Hawkins came back to the US in '39, playing mostly in small groups in MYC. On October 11, he cut a very significant recording of "Body And Soul". What Wagner's Tristan and Isolde is to 20th Century Music, "Body and Soul" is to bebop: a prototype that at once belongs to its time and the future. Hawkins' command of subsitute chords, passing chords, and other structured dissonances was masterful, and "Body and Soul" became to tenor saxophonists what Eddie van Halen's "Eruption" would become to a later generation of stadium rock guitarists. It is an expressive masterpiece as well as an intellectual one:
A recently unearthed radio transcription from 1939 of him playing "Body" is mindboggling. A lot of what he's playing is advanced to the point of sounding as if he'd been listening to 60's Joe Henderson. Except that it's about 25 years before Joe Henderson.
By 1944, Hawk was among the earliest cutting full on bebop, and became the first bandleader to record Thelonious Monk, heard here. Funny to hear Monk so unapologetically fleet-fingered.
Hawk was an Old Lion, but the style he had put forth on "Body" kept him both contemporary and tied to tradition. Here his is with Charlie Parker.
Through the fifties and sixties, he cut with older players like Pee Wee Russell, with younger guys like Sonny Rollins and Monk, cut great modern(ish) records as a small group leader, did some (not enough but more than most) TV, and passed away leaving an incredible legacy.
"Body and Soul" was his signature, and here he is playing it in 1967. Humble yourself:
I had a lot of jobs in record stores back in Philly, in a lot of different kinds of places. Each store had its own personality, and its own boss from hell. But each also provided its own education.
"Move Right Now" was something I heard often when I worked at Sound Of Market St. A couple of the older ladies who worked the register would play gospel records when the doors were finally locked behind the Friday (payday) customers. I worked there about 1988 or so. This was one of the best selling gospel records of the time, and I always thought the bass player on this cut was Ungodly.
The most fun record store I ever worked was South St Record Exchange. Bob Dickie and Jacy Webster shaped my musical taste when I was a young punk rock type. They originally ran the record department at a used bookstore called Booktrader, and it was there they played me some of the stuff that changed my life once a week: Cecil Taylor, No New York, Beefheart, Raymond Scott, and more. All that stuff you hear about record stores being impromptu gathering places where you got your musical, political, and social education, where older music fanatics spread the disease to younger music fanatics. I learned about everything from Ornette Coleman to the Communist Manifesto, Fellini movies, comic books, and all the good stuff. Except girls. Girls back then were generally more interested in Duran Duran than in The Fall.
Bob and Jacy radicalized me. And they turned out to be great bosses.
I worked one day a week at SSRE. I worked four days a week at Third St Jazz and Rock, the best record store with the worst boss ever, who actually fired me for working four hours a week at SSRE.
Third St was as legendary a record store as there ever was. Everyone who worked there really knew his shit fifty-eight ways to Sunday. But the shaman of the joint was the guy who ran the stock room, Alan Edwards, who knew every aspect of pop music from the sixties onward. He was a really a finishing school for me, and it was he who turned me onto NRBQ, mostly by handing me a pile of live Q cassette bootlegs he'd made himself. These wee life-changing documents for me. They proved once and for all that I wasn't the only person who felt the way I did about music.
Those of you down with the Philly lore know that Sun Ra and his band lived in Philly, and that they pressed up and sold their own records. Third St was their most loyal retail outlet. Every so often, a couple guys from the band (I never saw Sun Ra himself in the store) would come in, sometimes in stage gear, with boxes of records and give the boss (a pig of a human for whom I have no love) a sales pitch you'd have to see to believe, including "You MUST stock this! This record is the TRUTH! But the vibrations it will unleash will have reprocussions! You must beware!"
Bosshole would Gentile them down to a ridiculously low price per copy, pay 'em cash, and send the Arkestra guys packing. I loved those guys. "Authentic" doesn't cover it.
Working in record stores was one of the best things about growing up in music in Philly. How else were you gonna hear Linton Kwesi Johnson and the LA Mass Choir in the same room on the same day?
There are so few record stores today, and few of those provided the community services of the places where I got a huge education and even made a little money.
