Fats Domino (1928-2017)

There’s always been a special place in my affections for Fats Domino whose music never fails to lift the spirits. It’s especially sad that his death has been announced today – tonight’s movie will be “The Girl Can’t Help It”. In my early teenage years the price of an LP was well outside my spending power but an EP (Extended Play) with 4 tracks playable at 45 rpm was just about affordable. The first EP I ever bought, some 50 years ago, was Be My Guest by Fats Domino.  This was my introduction to New Orleans Rhythm ‘n’ Blues and a voyage of discovery that would lead to Professor Longhair, Huey ‘Piano’ Smith, Ernie K-Doe, Chris Kenner, the Meters, the Showmen and Dr John over the next few years.  The Domino method of dancing your blues away was an unusual strategy to find favour with one whose dancing days gave rise to rather more mirth than admiration. Two qualities stand out. First, the irresistible rhythms unique to New Orleans and second, the joyous sound of massed horns, for which credit must go to the arranger, Dave Bartholomew (who will celebrate his 99^th. birthday on Christmas Eve). Both features became essential parts of the musical vocabulary of Jamaican Ska. Domino was raised in the Roman Catholic church and thus was never exposed to the visceral power of the gospel traditions.  Musicologists argue that African musical traditions survived more strongly in Southern Louisiana than anywhere else in America.  The rhythms and vocal styles were closer to African originals than elsewhere.

The process whereby African-American music was neutralised and cleansed for a white audience was described to perfection by Chip Taylor in his 1971 recording, (I Want) The Real Thing. The UK music business was very active in this process churning out a succession of records in which the passion and spirit of the original recording was systematically eliminated by a mediocre and enfeebled performer.  Domino’s recordings escaped this treatment for the simple reason that their appeal depended entirely upon a quality of delivery and personality that could not be replicated. It was impossible to dilute something so intense and be left with anything remotely worth listening to.  The few attempts to cover Domino hits in the UK sank without trace. In the US there’s a role of infamy headed by Pat Boone, Ricky Nelson and Teresa Brewer all of whom profited from hi-jacking Domino material and draining it of vitality.

In New Orleans there was no place for the dark and down-home, hard times, lyin’, cheatin’ and dyin’ crapshootin’ blues from the Delta.  There was no great audience for the smooth toned supper club and coffee lounge blues styling of the likes of Nat King Cole.  There was a positive, optimistic, up-beat and life-affirming defiance in the air that found expression in a refusal to submit to the iniquity of racial segregation and a denial of the subservience that the white establishment attempted to impose.

Rick Coleman’s biography, Blue Monday, is a fascinating account of the way that Domino’s concerts in the 1950s became the focus of a long sequence of riots and civil disturbance.  There was nothing in Domino’s performances to incite the crowds other than the music. The principle provocation came from the police whose heavy handed attempts to enforce racial segregation were calculated to incite resistance.  Alcohol fuelled aggression and inter-racial conflict also played a part. The irony of this is that the Domino songbook was exclusively dedicated to good-time music with not a trace of insurrection or subversion.

Domino became one of the great survivors of his generation of R & B performers.  Despite the excessive consumption of alcohol and an addiction to gambling Fats continued at the top of his game while his band members and close associates perished in their numbers from drug and alcohol related illnesses.  His touring days ended in 1995 enabling him to retire his infamous hot-plate and cooking pot in which he brewed up decades worth of pigs’ feet in creole sauce with which to feed himself and his band. Famously he survived Hurricane Katrina in 2005 at the age of 77 when a rescue boat plucked him and his family from the second floor of his home in the Lower Ninth Ward.  He went on to perform at Tipitina’s in New Orleans in May 2007.  He retained a reputation for geniality and modesty despite occasional episodes of seriously grumpy behaviour, marital infidelities and a chronic failure to turn up for scheduled appearances.

Ramblin’ Man

Hank Williams travelled his Lost Highway and Chuck Berry searched for The Promised Land but only Lemon Jelly captured an Englishman’s passage through the wider world in the sublime Ramblin’ Man. It’s the loose-footed Psycho-geographer’s Anthem with a litany of place-names, famous and obscure, in sober tones redolent of Wilfred Thesiger or Patrick Leigh Fermor. Later this week I shall visit two locations from Lemon Jelly’s list. Last month we added another verse to our own list:

Chorleywood
Sheffield
Kingston upon Hull
Chalfont St Giles
Youlgreave

The task is to match each photo to a location – the only prize is a sense of self-satisfaction.

Sheet-Metal Memories

Each time that Bob Dylan, 70 today, passes a milestone there’s a tidal wave of commentary and hagiography. The ten best tracks, the ten worst tracks, the five worst movies, the ten best concerts, the five worst interviews, the ten best cover versions, the five worst put-downs, send him a birthday present, buy him a book, send him a recipe, choose him a tie, boil him an egg, shine his shoes, tell him a joke, paint him a picture, peg out his clothes, wash his car, crawl out of his window. Despite all this I must confess that I’ve been a dedicated follower of the Bob Dylan route-map along the Great American Highway of Song for more than 40 years. The trip passes some familiar landmarks such as Woody Guthrie, the Harry Smith Anthology, the Delta Blues and the world of Gospel, Doo-wop, Bluegrass, Country and Vaudeville and some that are less familiar such as Western Swing, Honkers and Shouters, Brother Bands, Minstrel Shows and Hellfire Preachers. All these threads and more are woven together in his recordings before being taken apart and presented to us in the sublime Theme Time Radio Hour. Railroad trains run through the Dylan songbook on an intensive timetable – if you miss the “D” train the “Double E” or the Danville train won’t be far behind. Or you can take a ride on board the unique “D for Dylan” subway line from the cool clear air of Bear Mountain to the lost souls and insomniacs on Desolation Row.

Charlie Louvin (1927-2011)

Like many others I came to the music of the Louvin Brothers by way of Gram Parsons and Emmylou Harris in the 1970s. The Louvins were the last of the pre-Rock’n’Roll brother bands and when Charlie Louvin died last week one of the last living links was gone. There’s a fine obituary in yesterday’s Guardian written by Tony Russell. Brother acts enjoyed great popularity in American music from the 1930s onward and the Louvins came at the end of a long line of close harmony groups that included the Blue Sky Boys, Johnnie and Jack, the Delmore Brothers, and the Stanley Brothers. Only Ralph Stanley survives.


What made the Louvins compelling was the world they described in song – a Southern Gothic universe where the struggle to lead a righteous life was constantly undermined by the temptations of Satan. Alcohol abuse, adultery, and gambling thrived in the poor Southern white sub-culture and the prospect of economic ruin and family breakdown was all too real. This strand in their work climaxed with the 1959 album, Satan is Real that despite a somewhat camp sleeve design (a standard feature in any anthology of cheesy album artwork) was saturated in the language of sin, death, damnation and redemption delivered with terrifying authenticity. Impassioned vocals and spoken monologues invoke the desperate fear of sliding into eternal darkness. Charlie’s brother, Ira was a troubled soul who wrestled with the demon drink and was subject to sudden and violent rages – they were singing from personal experience. The brothers themselves were responsible for the sleeve design – the rocks came from a nearby quarry and the flames were created by burning discarded auto tyres. Ira designed the 12 foot high figure of the devil and had it cut from plywood and painted.


The other side of the Louvins was a rare ability to write and record the sweetest of ballads delivered via heartfelt harmonies that transcended any note of sentimentality. The ballads proved more popular with later interpreters of their music and had a defining influence on the sound of the Everly Brothers when they piloted close harmony singing into the Rock’n’Roll era with enormous success. The Louvins finally cracked under the strain of coping with Ira’s erratic behaviour and broke up in 1963. Ira and Charlie pursued solo careers until Ira died in a car accident two years later in 1965. Charlie continued to perform and lived long enough to become a country music institution in the afterglow of renewed interest in the music he made with his brother. He maintained an impressive rate of productivity releasing six new albums in the last four years of his long and distinguished life.

Louvin Brothers Top Five
The Angels Rejoiced Last Night
When I Stop Dreaming
Stuck Up Blues
If I Could Only Win Your Love
The Christian Life

Charlie Gillett

Those of us who take pride in the excellence of our musical tastes do well to remember that our preferences are formed out of a dialogue with family and friends, disc jockeys, promoters and cultural critics. Of all these influences on my personal choice of music none was stronger than Charlie Gillett. In the 1970’s his Honky Tonk programme on BBC Radio London was essential weekend listening – an hour of respite from the self-indulgent excesses of over-paid and inebriate rock stars. The playlists were eclectic and crossed genres that might have seemed on first inspection to be mutually incompatible but Charlie’s encyclopaedic knowledge enabled him to make links and draw comparisons that transformed my understanding of popular music traditions. Gospel, Country, Urban Blues, Tex Mex, Southern Soul, Reggae, Rockabilly, Uptown R’n’B, Bluegrass, Cajun, and Honkers and Shouters all shared airspace and Charlie demonstrated with unassuming erudition how they all belonged in the same musical jig-saw. Hank Williams and Hank Ballard were all part of the same musical continuum. There were interviews, more like conversations, with the likes of Dr. John, Ry Cooder, Emmylou Harris, Dave Bartholomew, Lowell George and Roy Brown that were always enlightening and enriching. Authenticity was a badge of honour amongst blues purists and employed to create narrow and exclusive categories. Charlie liked his music to sound authentic but for him it meant that it was unpretentious, respected its roots and traditions without being constrained, valued musicianship, avoided artifice and came from the heart. The sheer pleasure of making music took priority over achieving fame and fortune.


I bought a copy of The Sound of the City in the early Seventies and marvelled at how smart he had been in doing a post-grad at Columbia in New York and acquiring such detailed understanding of the incredibly complex origins of Rock ’n’ Roll. The Jive Five, the Louvin Brothers, Chris Kenner, Jesse Stone, Merle Travis, LaVern Baker, Prince Buster, and Claude Jeter all appear in the index of a book that remains the best overview of this critical era in music. A few years later he published the pioneering Making Tracks, a history of Atlantic Records and its enormous success across almost all the genres of American popular music. He wrote with great authority for Let it Rock magazine and once featured my personal Ten Best in one of his columns thus earning my undying gratitude.


In recent decades he became the great promoter and populariser of World Music. It became possible to listen to his shows online and remarkably the broadcasting style was utterly unchanged from the early days. Gently conversational, wonderfully informed, wryly humorous and near enough 100% correct in every recommendation he ever made to this listener. John Peel became a national treasure for his open mind, good humour and boundless musical enthusiasm while Charlie Gillett, in possession of exactly the same qualities, plus a large body of published work of lasting value, enjoyed no more than modest public recognition. He has been described elsewhere as self-effacing but he could never conceal his personal warmth, the generosity of his comments or the immensity of his respect for all those who made music good and true. Sadly, Charlie Gillett died last Wednesday after a long illness, leaving behind an impressively large number of admirers for whom his presence in their lives is simply irreplaceable. To read some of the many tributes to this fine man, please follow this link.

Texas to North Devon

We set the compass for the Plough, packed our dancing shoes and took to the road. The ancient and compact town of Torrington in North Devon was an unlikely venue for Austin, Texas quartet The Hot Club of Cowtown to display their mastery of Western Swing and Hot Jazz with some cocktail lounge standards on the side. This was the last but one engagement in a four week UK tour and they could be forgiven if a little fatigue set in but the energy levels and enthusiasm showed no sign of dipping. The musicianship was superb and the fiddle and upright bass in particular were slapped, bowed, plucked and picked with terminal velocity. Guitar and drums were unobtrusive but played a vital role in knitting it all together. Bob Wills and Johnny Gimble both got name-checks and were honoured by pulsating versions of Sally Goodin, Bubbles In My Beer and Ida Red. The band showed an impressive ability to switch with speed from playing music for lounge lizards and sophisticates to music for oil riggers and cowhands. Other highlights included Dev’lish Mary and Jack Guthrie’s Oklahoma Hills. If the magic of Western Swing eludes you, the book to read is Lone Star Swing: On the Trail of Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys by Duncan McLean.

Joseph Spence

These two dapper gentlemen are Joseph Spence (left) and Raymond Pinder, photographed in Nassau in 1978 by Guy Droussart. Joseph Spence (1910-1984) was a Bahamian guitarist and vocalist whose career took him from the island of Andros to New York and California, where in his fifties, he performed his simple repertoire of sacred and folk songs to enthusiastic audiences. Raymond Pinder was Spence’s brother-in-law and fellow vocalist. Sam Charters, famous folklorist was the first to record Spence on his own back porch in 1958 and an album was released on the Folkways label in 1959. His eccentric and relaxed vocals and a hypnotic but melodious acoustic guitar style produced heartfelt and beguilingly unaffected music. An improvised, semi-coherent chuntering growl from Spence is an almost constant accompaniment and his vocals slide in and out of the background. Lyrics were diced and chopped and re-sequenced, while the rhythm was supplied by energetic foot tapping. The end of each tune was marked by a sequence of crashing chords and a brief explosion of joviality and a little gentle repartee with his fellow performers.


The Folkways recordings attracted the interest of Californian musician Ry Cooder who included songs by Spence on several albums. Others were quick to respond to the freshness and distinctive quality including the Grateful Dead for whom the song I Bid You Goodnight became something of a signature. Most of Spence’s available recordings were made in and around his home on Andros and have a corresponding rural feel to them. Andros is the largest island in the Bahamas but has a small population of less than 8,000. Nowhere on the island is more than 20 miles from the sea and song lyrics reflect this with an abundance of maritime imagery. The lack of tourist development helped greatly to keep local traditions alive and the sense of uncomplicated lives, lived at an unhurried pace, pervades Bahamian music.


The special flavour of Bahamian music is due to a number of factors. The African population tended to be more tribally homogenous than elsewhere in the Caribbean leading to unique musical forms. Another factor was the influx of loyalist settlers from the Carolinas, accompanied by their slave populations who brought another distinctive musical tradition. Alan Lomax made the first field recordings in 1935, when Spence was a young man of 25, and was followed at intervals by other musicologists with the result that there is much raw material for the researcher to examine. Lomax’s recordings are still available on the Rounder label.


The 10th. anniversary of Spence’s death in 1994 was commemorated with the release of a tribute album, Out on the Rolling Sea, on Green Linnet Records. A wonderfully diverse range of performers interpreted selected items from the Spence discography with flair and sensitivity. The Nassau Guardian published a lengthy account of Spence and his music to mark the 20th. anniversary of his death in 2004. March 18th. 2009 was the 25th. anniversary and it shouldn’t pass without some recognition of this remarkable musician and the modest but enduring contribution he made to the richness of our musical heritage.

Big Joe Turner (1911 – 1985)

He had all the confidence, all the style and all the panache that one man could need. He commanded the stage with effortless ease and his rich baritone had the power and lift to simply soar above the loudest of bands. His movements were minimal but his presence was massive. The voice flowed on and snapped to the beat delivering some of the most lascivious lyrics ever recorded. Gritty but fluent arrangements, superb musicianship and perfectly drilled horn and rhythm sections drove the music along like a freight train. For that we must also thank Doc Pomus, Jerry Leiber, Mike Stoller and Jesse Stone (under the name, Charles E Calhoun) for writing them, and Jerry Wexler and Ahmet Ertegun for recording them on the great and wonderful Atlantic record label.



It’s impossible to improve on what Nick Tosches wrote (in “The Unsung Heroes of Rock ’n’ Roll”): His voice, oceanic and commanding, resonant with that rumbling deep down in the ground which is the sound of the Devil chaining his third wife down, is a voice of power. Not in all of rock ’n’ roll has there been another singer quite like him.



For me his greatest recordings were the ones he made in his forties for Atlantic. The 1950’s was a golden decade for Atlantic Rhythm ’n’ Blues with classic recordings from Ray Charles, Ruth Brown and Lavern Baker but for sheer energy and drive even these giants were surpassed by Big Joe Turner. Perhaps his finest hour in the studio came on November 3rd. 1955 when he recorded “Boogie Woogie Country Girl”, one of the most irresistibly rhythmic recordings ever made. Superb piano playing from Vann “Piano Man” Walls and drumming by Connie Kay, the latter to achieve fame in a very different musical genre with the Modern Jazz Quartet. Other musical greats who played alongside him included King Curtis and Elmore James (“TV Mama”). He had a deceptively casual approach to the whole business of performing that somehow made his work especially memorable and I never tire of listening.

Ira Tucker (1925 - 2008)

By a trivial coincidence I bought a CD of “The Best of the Dixie Hummingbirds” on Tuesday, the very day on which Ira Tucker, lead singer since 1938, died after an astonishing 70 year career with the same gospel group. To read his obituary in the New York Times, please click here. The Dixie Hummingbirds caught my attention in the early Seventies when their voices were heard on a Paul Simon album. The vocal work was impassioned and the harmonies were as gorgeous as the name was exotic to English ears. This powerful music was instantly accessible to someone with a music sensibility conditioned by exposure to Sixties Soul and I have caught up with their back catalogue over the years. There is a quality of wit and humour present in their work of a kind not often found in the gospel genre. The song entitled ‘Let’s Go Out To The Programs’ (1953) written by Ira Tucker is a sequence of subtle parodies of their competitors on the gospel circuit, part of a tradition of songs about other performers and inspired by ‘Juke Box Saturday Night’ by the Modernaires. A later fine example of which is Sam Cooke’s ‘We’re Having A Party’. To complete the circle, the first group to be name-checked in ‘Let’s Go Out To The Programs’ is the Soul Stirrers (lead vocalist, Sam Cooke).



Ira Tucker will be remembered for three great contributions to the Dixie Hummingbirds. Many of the wittiest and cleverest compositions were his and his innovative vocal style created the essential sound of the group. But above all, his electrifying on-stage theatricals, hurling himself to his knees in prayer, leaping from the stage and running at speed through the aisles blazed a trail for others (James Brown, Solomon Burke) to follow. My admiration for gospel music has led some of my acquaintances to suspect that I may be on the point of a twilight conversion to born-again Christianity. To which I have to say that, as far as I know, it is not essential to be a Christian to appreciate the majesty of the Ghent Altarpiece, or the mystery of Mantegna’s ‘Agony in the Garden’, or the dark tragedy of Rubens’ ‘Descent From the Cross’. Jerry Zolten’s book, ‘Great God A'Mighty!’ is a detailed and fascinating account in which the career of the Dixie Hummingbirds is viewed in the wider context of African-American music and culture. At the opposite end of the spectrum from Ira Tucker’s frenzied stage-craft stands the substantial and imposing figure of Big Joe Turner, about whom there will be a future posting.