Fluville Gazette Vol. 3 No. 28

Hello friends. It's been quiet here, I know. But that doesn't mean I haven't been thinking about you. I've been busy with some other stuff, and I'll try to bring you up to speed on a few of the exciting developments here in Fluville.

Did I say Fluville? That's funny. It seems I came down with some strain of the flu myself last week, and had to take myself to hospital. Yes, I feared that maybe I had come down with the Boogie Woogie Swine Flu.

I let the experts sort it out.

After an annoying few hours of coughing up my lungs in a hospital waiting room, my crack team of doctors, fearing that perhaps I had become stricken with the Rockin' Pneumonia, took a few x-rays of said lungs to reveal that it was only an infection. They sent me on my way. I got my prescriptions filled, did a boogie woogie in the middle of the street, and spent the next few days in bed.

The bad news is, I had to cancel a trip to attend my son's 10th birthday party. The good news is, here's here with me now for the summer, and I've been teaching him to play the guitar. He likes the anglo-rock of the 60's and 70's, and the other day I taught him how to play this song:

"Substitute" mp3
by The Who, 1966.
available on Meaty Beaty Big and Bouncy




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Before I got sick, I went to see the re-united original lineup of X at one the three shows they did at the Bowery Ballroom. I was reminded again, of why they were so great and so important. Let's pause and listen to a few of their songs:

"Hot House" mp3
by X, 1983.
available on More Fun in the New World

"How I (Learned My Lesson)" mp3
by X, 1982.
available on Under the Big Black Sun

"In This House That I Call Home" mp3
by X, 1981.
available on Wild Gift

"The World's A Mess, It's In my Kiss" mp3
by X, 1980.
available on Los Angeles

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Okay, so now you might be be wondering about that picture of Guitar Slim at the top of this post, and what it's doing there. Well, I'm gonna tell you now. I wrote a little piece about him for Perfect Sound Forever, and you can read it HERE. Here's a few of the songs that I reference there.

Slim's theme song, was co-opted from Gatemouth Brown:

"Gatemouth Boogie" mp3
by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, 1947
available on Dirty Work at the Crossroads 1947-1954



"New Arrival" mp3
by Guitar Slim & His Playboys, 1951.
(Huey Smith on Piano)
available on 1951-1954

Slim recorded it again for a Specialty session:

"Guitar Slim" mp3
by Guitar Slim, 1954.
available on 1951-1954

...and he recorded another Gatemouth Brown number at his last recording session for ATCO:

"My Time Is Expensive" mp3
by Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown, 1949
available on Dirty Work at the Crossroads 1947-1954

"My Time Is Expensive" mp3
by Guitar Slim, 1958.
available on Atco Sessions



Here's his rare single from the J-B label:

"Certainly All" mp3
by Eddie (Guitar Slim) Jones, 1952.
available on 1951-1954



"Feelin' Sad" mp3
by Eddie (Guitar Slim) Jones, 1952.
available on 1951-1954

And a cover of it by Ray Charles.

"Feelin' Sad" mp3
by Ray Charles, 1961.
available on The Genius Sings the Blues

Ray Charles played on and produced the session that yielded these recordings:

"The Things I Used To Do" mp3
by Guitar Slim, 1953.
available on Sufferin' Mind

"Story Of My Life" mp3
by Guitar Slim, 1953.
available on Sufferin' Mind

Slim had a lot of influence on others, as a performer and guitar player. Here's a few versions of his songs done by others:

"The Things That I Used To Do" mp3
by James Brown, 1965.
available on The Singles, Vol. 3: 1964-1965

"It Hurts To Love Someone" mp3
by Earl King, 1992.
available on Hard River to Cross

"Trouble Don't Last" mp3
by Alex Chilton, 1987.
available on High Priest

"I Don't Mind At All" mp3
by Doug Sahm, 1980.
available on Hell of a Spell


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When I was In New Orleans in April, I had the opportunity to spend some time with recording engineer Cosimo Matassa and talk with him a bit about Guitar Slim as I was preparing to write the article for Perfect Sound Forever. The video here was shot with the intention of capturing the audio of our discussion, but I've edited some highlights for viewing. Cosimo was present for many of the most important recording sessions of the mid 20th century in New Orleans (or anywhere for that matter) at his fabled J&M Studio. It was an honor to meet him and spend some time hanging out with him. The interview took place at his office above the Mattassa Grocery in the French Quarter.




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A few weeks back, I did a post called Bob's Record Collection (again). In it I posted some of Dylan's source material from World Gone Wrong. There were a few things that I didn't post. For all you completest folks out there, I offer them to you here and now.

"Jackaro" mp3
by Tom Paley, 1953.
from Folk Songs From The Southern Appalachian Mountains
out of print

"Two Soldiers" mp3
David Grisman and Jerry Garcia, 1991.
available on Grisman & Garcia

Also, an interesting bit of ephemera HERE.

Okay, that's it for today, I hope I've made up for some lost time.

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In case you haven't seen it, I'm also posting some of my vintage photographs of New York City, along with a few choice mp3s at East of Bowery. It's a collaboration I've been doing with novelist Drew Hubner for the last several months. If you live in New York City, we will be doing a multi-media performance version of this in collaboration with musicians Jim Coleman and Kirsten McCord, TONIGHT June 14th at the Bowery Poetry Club.

More information: HERE.


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Photograph of Me And Cosimo by Jacob Blickenstaff © 2009

Photograph of Lincoln Barron by Ted Barron © 2009

Bob's Record Collection (again)

In the liner notes to Bob Dylan's 1993 record, World Gone Wrong, he gives a play-by-play look and commentary into it's ten songs. Well, sort of. In a few pages of a CD booklet he divulges his sources and interprets the meaning of the songs - mostly traditional folk and blues tunes, all old, and for the most part pretty dark - all the while riffing a free association into a look at something that Greil Marcus called "the old, weird America."

Here's a sample. Dylan's talking about a Civil War ballad, called "Two Soldiers."

"... physical plunge into Limitationville, war dominated by finance (lending money for interest being a nauseating & revolting thing) love is not collateral. hittin' em where they aint (in the imperfect state that theyre in) America when Mother was the Queen of Her heart, before Charlie Chaplin, before the Wild One, before the Children of the Sun - before the celestial grunge, before the insane world of entertainment exploded in our faces - before all the ancient and honorable artillery had been taken out of the city, learning to go forward by turning back the clock, stopping the mind from thinking in hours, firing a few random shots at the face of time."

The fluidity and elasticity of time is an interesting subject.

On World Gone Wrong and Good As I Been To You from the previous year, Dylan re-grounded himself by going back to songs he had heard and learned in his early days in New York, and recorded them quickly and simply (voice and guitar) in his garage studio at home. He is, in essence, "firing a few random shots at the face of time." I love these records, and while the record company was probably less than thrilled to get a couple of records of covers - from the songwriter - they serve as stark precursors to his next two records, Time Out Of Mind, and Love and Theft. Dylan, who once said, "don't look back," is without nostalgia, doing just that, and looking forward all the same.

World Gone Wrong, is a collection of murder ballads, songs about gamblers, desperate men, working women, ghosts, trains, soldiers, heartbreak, vigilantes, and essentially - America. Here we have the songwriter as curator in the museum of American Song. So, in celebration of Bob Dylan's 68th birthday, we once again take a look at Bob's record collection, and it's a pretty good one.

Here are Dylan's sources, as best as I could find them. I've made a couple of substitutions: "Jack-A-Roe", he learned from Tom Paley of the New Lost City Ramblers, It appeared on two Elektra collections of Appalachian folk songs from the 1950's, but I've been unable to find a copy. Instead we get an acoustic version from the Grateful Dead. Jerry Garcia, learned this probably from the same record, and also taught "Two Soldiers" to Dylan, which I've substituted for a better version by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard which Dylan also references in the liner notes.


Download:

"The World Is Going Wrong" mp3
by The Mississippi Sheiks, 1930.
available on Stop and Listen

"Love Henry" mp3
by Tom Paley, 1964.
from Who's Going to Shoe Your Pretty Little Foot?
out of print

"Ragged and Dirty" mp3
by William Brown, 1942.
available on Mississippi Blues & Gospel: 1934-1942 Field Recordings

"I've Got Blood In My Eyes For You" mp3
by The Mississippi Sheiks, 1930.
available on Stop and Listen

"Broke Down Engine Blues" mp3
by Blind Willie McTell, 1931.
available on The Definitive Blind Willie McTell

"Delia" mp3
by Blind Willie McTell, 1940.
available on Complete Library of Congress Recordings

"Stackalee" mp3
by Frank Hutchison, 1927.
available on Anthology Of American Folk Music

"Two Soldiers" mp3
by Hazel Dickens and Alice Gerrard, 1973.
available on Hazel & Alice

"Jack-A-Roe" mp3
by The Grateful Dead, 1981.
available on Reckoning

"The Lone Pilgrim" mp3
by The Doc Watson Family, 1963.
available on The Watson Family


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There's a handful of outtakes from the World Gone Wrong sessions. These are two of the songs he recorded that didn't make it on the album. "32-20 Blues" came out earlier this year on Tell Tale Signs.

"Hello Stranger" mp3
by The Carter Family, 1938.
available on Volume 2: 1935-1941

"32-20 Blues" mp3
by Robert Johnson, 1936.
available on The Complete Recordings


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Also recorded in Bob's garage at these sessions, is a version of The Duprees' "You Belong To Me," which is on the soundtrack to Oliver Stone's Natural Born Killers. On the soundtrack album there is an annoying monologue by actor Woody Harrelson over an instrumental break in the song. Fluvillian resident Jesse Jarnow has provided this mp3, to which he has applied a little cut and paste to get rid of the monologue.

"You Belong To Me" mp3
by The Duprees, 1962.
available on The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2

"You Belong To Me" mp3
by Bob Dylan, 1993.
also available on Natural Born Killers

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Buy: World Gone Wrong
by Bob Dylan, 1993.
Columbia Records

top photo: by Douglas R. Gilbert, 1964.
John Sebastian, Bob Dylan, and Ramblin' Jack Elliot