Tag Archives: Bob Dylan

Two Dylans, Two Films

It’s a few days before Father’s Day and I’m thinking about Bob and Jakob Dylan newly released films as I sit at a long wooden table at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, on the grounds of Lincoln Center. A 16-acre campus of theaters and concert venues, it is the center for our city’s ballet, philharmonic symphony, and opera, along with extensive programming and educational community outreach for all sorts of other musical genres, from jazz to blues to Americana and beyond. My oldest son seems to spend much of his time here researching and writing, and often suggests that I might enjoy a visit. It is indeed a nice quiet space, and I’m enjoying the feeling of being surrounded by thousands and thousands of books, manuscripts, sheet music, and recorded music.

I have given myself two hours to write this week’s column, as I have a ticket for Rolling Thunder Revue: A Bob Dylan Story by Martin Scorsese at the center’s film theater. Playing at only two theaters in Manhattan, it’s also now available to stream on Netflix which I had planned to do first thing this morning. But the lure of a bigger screen and a much better sound system was enough to reel me in. And it shall be the second of two films connected to the Dylan name that I’ll have seen in as many days.

As a columnist and music news aggregator I usually spend a few hours each day surfing for articles to post, or threads of ideas that might inspire a writing itch I’ll need to scratch. It’s a hobby and it is as enjoyable as collecting baseball cards, doing woodcraft, or working in the garden. And while I can’t tell you Babe Ruth’s stats, what a lathe does, or even how to choose a ripe melon, I can tell you that Dylan and his son Jakob own the internet this week with hundreds of articles, stories, reviews, and social media posts about the above-mentioned film and Jakob Dylan’s work with Andrew Slater on the mid-’60s Laurel Canyon documentary Echo in the Canyon.

Echo is from an independent company and not in widespread distribution. In what is called the specialties market, it has grossed over $260,000 at the box office in 14 days. That’s a far cry from the $46 million that The Secret Life of Pets 2 took in over one weekend or Rocketman‘s $50 million in two weeks, but nevertheless it held its own in just 43 theaters compared to the thousands where the top dogs are playing.

I attended a late-afternoon showing of Echo just north of the city, and was one of only five people in a theater with a hundred seats. I’d been enjoying the soundtrack of cover songs from 1964 through 1967 since the release a few weeks ago, and broke my own rule by reading about a dozen reviews, so I knew what to expect. When you’re armed with too much information it can dampen and shape the experience, yet it’s a joy and blessing when the event exceeds your preconceptions.

While it’s Jakob’s interviews with folks like Tom Petty, David Crosby, Roger McGuinn, Michelle Phillips, and others from that era that have garnered the most press, along with criticism that they excluded Joni, Love, and The Doors, trust me when I say that those writers have gotten it mostly wrong. It’s the music that’s the center of attention, performed live in concert and in the studio by one of the best groups of session players I’ve ever heard along with a number of guest vocalists and players. While most of the players weren’t even born back in the era the film explores, they capture the music and magic of the time with impeccable performances. If you enjoyed seeing McGuinn and Hillman perform the Byrds’ songs last year with Marty Stuart and his band, you’ll love this film.

As far as the Rolling Thunder Revue, the film critics have said it’s great and there’s no reason to doubt that. (Pondering if I should edit this column before turning it in to tell you I was absolutely blown away, the full house sat still and glued in their seats until the credits finished rolling, and we all applauded before filing out. No, I’ll save that for another day.) If you love Bob Dylan, you’ll love this, and even more so since you can stream it endlessly on your iPad while lying in bed next to a snoring and wheezing significant other.

If you’ve made it this far you and aren’t feeling as if you’ve got your money’s worth, I’ll leave you with a couple of thoughts.

The 1960s and ’70s are to the baby boomers what the Depression and World War II was to my parents. What sets these generations apart is that while there was little nostalgia in poverty and death, my generation is still alive and kicking, and some folks have disposable income to be drenched in nostalgia at any price. That’s not a bad thing at all, but it also holds the door open for a certain level of commercial exploitation. On the flip side, Dylan’s 14-disc set of the Rolling Thunder Revue was priced on Amazon today for only $110 on CD and merely $75 for all you vinyl fanatics. It’s almost heresy not to buy it. The only problem I can foresee is the ability to carve out the amount of time it’ll take to actually listen to it, what with all of the baseball card collecting, woodcraft, and gardening y’all got planned. But I guess it’ll look good sitting on the coffee table.

The second and final point: ever wonder what Father’s Day at the Dylan household was like? There has always been a level of privacy within this family that I have truly respected, especially in the era of sharing every moment of our lives. This morning as I surfed for a little of that inspiration I spoke of earlier, killing time before watching Rolling Thunder Revue, I discovered a 2005 interview with Jakob Dylan by Anthony DeCurtis for the New York Times. Intimate, respectful, and loving, it seems about right to share a bit of it for all fathers and sons.

“If people want to talk about Bob Dylan, I can talk about that. But my dad belongs to me and four other people exclusively. I’m very protective of that. And telling people whether he was affectionate is telling people a lot. It has so little to do with me. I come up against a wall. I still go into a restaurant and people say, ‘I love your dad’s work.’ Yes, he was affectionate. When I was a kid, he was a god to me for all the right reasons. Other people have put that tag on him in some otherworldly sense. I say it as any kid who admired his dad and had a great relationship with him. He never missed a single Little League game I had. He’s collected every home-run ball I ever hit. And he’s still affectionate to me. Maybe he doesn’t want people to know that, but I’ll tell you, because it’s my interview.”

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana and Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email address is easyed@therealeasyed.com.

Talkin’ Bob Dylan’s First Album Blues

US National Archives

I was crawling around the concrete floor downstairs in the basement of The Strand, the massive indie bookseller just south of Union Square on Broadway in Manhattan, looking for nothing in particular when I came across a worn paperback about Gerde’s Folk City written by Robbie Woliver and published in 1986. The story he weaves goes far beyond Mike Porco’s small nightclub that became one of the top venues for Greenwich Village’s folk music roots scene. Bringing It All Back Home is an oral history told by the people who lived in the neighborhood, listened to rural music in Washington Square, performed for coins in the basket houses, came and went, rose and fell, and witnessed a constantly changing landscape and rotating cast of characters.

While Bob Dylan plays a large role in the eventual popularity and monetization of traditional folk music, he was simply one of hundreds who carried their instruments down the narrow streets in search of an audience. But he was also the one who broke out of the scene first, signing to Columbia Records in late September 1961 during a string of concert dates at Gerde’s, where he opened for the Greenbriar Boys. Music critic Robert Shelton wrote a review for The New York Timesthat was published the day after Dylan signed his contract and, although he knew about it, Shelton kept the deal out of the story at Dylan’s request.

“A bright new face in folk music is appearing at Gerde’s Folk City. Although only twenty years old, Bob Dylan is one of the most distinctive stylists to play in a Manhattan cabaret in months.

Resembling a cross between a choir boy and a Beatnik, Mr. Dylan has a cherubic look and a mop of tousled hair he partly covers with a Huck Finn black corduroy cap. His clothes may need a bit of tailoring, but when he works his guitar, harmonica or piano and composes new songs faster than he can remember them, there is no doubt he is bursting at the seams with talent.”

Over three afternoon sessions in November, John Hammond Sr. took Dylan into the studio where he produced his first self-titled album and paid him the union scale wage of $402. In discussing the difficulty of working with Dylan in the studio, Hammond told biographer Clinton Helin “Bobby popped every p, hissed every s, and habitually wandered off mike.”

“Even more frustrating, he refused to learn from his mistakes. It occurred to me at the time that I’d never worked with anyone so undisciplined before.”

Bob Dylan was released 56 years ago this month, on March 19, 1962. Of the 13 songs, only two were original: “Song to Woody” and “Talkin’ New York.” Along with a few folk standards, he included songs written by Jesse Fuller, Blind Lemon Jefferson, Bukka White, Curtis Jones, and John Laird. For two traditional tunes he lifted the arrangements from Dave Van Ronk and Eric von Schmidt.

Considered by many as “Hammond’s Folly,” the record wasn’t well received and was Dylan’s only album that never charted in America, although it did rose to number 13 in the UK charts three years later, in 1965. Mitch Miller, Columbia’s head of A&R at the time, said that in the US only 2,500 copies were sold, but Hammond defended Dylan vigorously and was determined that Dylan’s second album should be a success.

Recording for the second album began in April 1962, and continued for over 12 months, with eight separate studio sessions. Dylan was committed to including more of his own songs, and in a July session he recorded a song that he had debuted at Gerde’s Folk City in April, built on the melody of the old spiritual “No More Auction Block.” He called it “Blowin’ in the Wind.” The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan was released on May 27, 1963.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website.

Bob Dylan’s ‘Forever Young’: An Unintended Eulogy to Murder in Parkland

Daily Mail UK

There are weeks I want to read and write about music, and weeks that I couldn’t care less about who is going on tour or what new albums are being released. Like many of you, I was deeply upset hearing the news of another school shooting, along with the subsequent expected finger-pointing and politicization. We are a divided nation with a serious gun fetish, led predominantly by older white men of wealth and power who are committed to using fear and manipulation to maintain a status quo that not only allows murder but encourages extreme violence by virtue of doing nothing to stop it. While I don’t know if the voices of the young survivors will rise loud enough to make a difference, even if it’s simply a series of incremental hollow victories it is encouraging.

I should note that I wasn’t able to reach Bob to ask if he minded if I used his lyrics. They were originally published in 1973 by Ram’s Horn Music, and have likely been transferred to another company over the years. Written as a lullaby to his baby son Jakob, and covered by dozens of musicians, Time magazine nevertheless called it one of his ten worst songs. I respectfully disagree.

Seventeen people were confirmed dead as the United States endured another horrifying school shooting at the hands of a teenage gunman armed with an AR-15 assault rifle. After initial reports of a shooter, officers surrounded the campus, directing the evacuation of hundreds of students from the scene, while other teens hid inside closets and under desks to stay safe. Students later told reporters that they at first thought alarms in the school were a fire drill, until they heard gunshots in the hallways. (The Guardian)

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you

The heavily armed man arrived at the school in an Uber at 2:19 p.m., shortly before dismissal time. According to authorities he shot people in the hallways and inside five classrooms on the first and second floors. He eventually discarded the rifle, a vest, and ammunition in a stairwell, and blended in with fleeing students to get away. After leaving the school, he walked to a Walmart and bought a drink at a Subway, according to authorities. At 3:41 p.m., he was arrested by the police as he walked down a residential street in Coral Springs, just a few miles from the school. (The New York Times)

May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay
Forever young

The suspect in the school shooting was a member of the school’s rifle team and represented it in marksmanship competitions. The 19-year-old was described as “very good shot” by members of the Army Junior Reserve Officer Training Corps program at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School. The JROTC, which receives funding from the NRA gun lobby, used air rifles special-made for target shooting, typically on indoor ranges at targets the size of a coin. Former cadets say they were surprised the awkward teen they remember from a couple years ago now stands accused of slaughtering students and staff. But, in retrospect, there were signs of trouble. The executive officer of the JROTC battalion said Cruz spoke about guns and knives incessantly and liked to wear military-style clothing to school. He was also said to have bragged about shooting animals for fun. (The Telegraph)

Forever young
Forever young
May you stay
Forever young

After each massacre, survivors and witnesses have echoed the words “no more” — yet mass shootings have continued to plague the U.S. In fact, shootings only have continued to increase over the past few years. The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School is the third deadliest shooting in modern U.S. history to take place within the past five months. It’s also the 25th fatal shooting at a U.S. elementary, middle or high school since — and including — Columbine in 1999. (Fox News)

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you

The teenagers of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland have emerged as passionate advocates for reform, speaking openly of their anger in the hope of forcing a reckoning on guns. But in certain right-wing corners of the web the students are being portrayed not as grief-ridden survivors but as pawns and conspiracists intent on exploiting a tragedy to undermine the nation’s laws. Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist behind the site Infowars, suggested that the mass shooting was a “false flag” orchestrated by anti-gun groups. Rush Limbaugh, on his radio program, said of the student activists on Monday: “Everything they’re doing is right out of the Democrat Party’s various playbooks. It has the same enemies: the N.R.A. and guns.” (New York Times)

May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
And may you stay
Forever young

The survivors of the shooting are fighting for change and vowing “never again.” They’ve also been unrestrained, and at times brutally direct, in calling out hypocrisy and challenging their critics. They’ve fought back, often on social media, and doubled down on their message: make the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School — their high school — the last. Students have called out the NRA and the politicians who accept funding from the group. On Twitter, Sarah Chawick wrote “We should change the names of AR-15s to ‘Marco Rubio’ because they are so easy to buy.” (Vox)

Forever young
Forever young
May you stay
Forever young

Gabe Glassman: “I’m a sophomore at Douglas. At the time of the shooting, I had to hide in a closet for an hour and 20 minutes and get evacuated by a SWAT team. This is my life now. If I’m not at home, I’m in grief counseling, speaking at a rally or visiting memorials in the park. Then I go on social media to check my posts about gun control.”

Douglas High School senior Ariana Ortega is part of the activism, too — and she can’t believe how fast everything has changed. “Two weeks ago, we were all going prom dress shopping, sending each other pictures. All of those things seem so insignificant now.” Now, Ariana says, “We have many group chats, where we have students speaking about legislative stuff, emotions, plans, everything.” (NPR)

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift

Children have periodically played leading roles in social and political movements. With #NeverAgain, some of the students who survived the shooting this month in Parkland have organized effective social media campaigns in favor of greater gun control. So far the American public is paying attention. Children are effective messengers because they are difficult to convincingly attack. It’s easier to forgive their excesses and their mistakes, and they are not constrained by having full-time jobs. The very fact that children are doing something attracts news coverage. If even a child sees the need to speak out, we all should be listening; they of course have the greatest stake in America’s future. (Bloomberg View)

May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
And may you stay
Forever young

A slew of companies are ending their ties to the National Rifle Association in the wake of the massacre at a Florida high school that left 17 dead earlier this month. United, Delta, Enterprise Holdings, First National Bank of Omaha, Symantec and MetLife were among the first to call it quits after a #BoycottNRA hashtag started to pick up steam online last week. The gun rights group’s chief executive Wayne LaPierre openly criticized gun-control advocates and the media for its coverage of the shooting. “They don’t care about our schoolchildren. They want to make all of us less free.” (Fox Business)

Forever young
Forever young
May you stay
Forever young

Dick’s Sporting Goods, one of the largest sports retailers in the U.S., has announced it is immediately ending its sales of military-style semi-automatic rifles and is requiring all customers to be older than 21 to buy a firearm at its stores. Additionally, the company no longer will sell high-capacity magazines.

CEO Ed Stack announced the decision on ABC’s Good Morning America on Wednesday, the same day that survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School are returning to class. Stack said the 19-year-old gunman allegedly behind that massacre, which claimed 17 lives and wounded many more in Parkland, Fla., had purchased a firearm from the retailer last November. While that the weapon — a shotgun — was not used in the shooting, the CEO said the revelation deeply affected him and his colleagues at Dick’s.(NPR)

Last week the Stoneman Douglas High School drama club performed “Shine,” a song they wrote in the wake of the shooting at their school. May they remain forever young. #NeverAgain

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #10

Photo by Nathan Copely/Pixabay License

Easy Ed’s Broadside column has been a fixture for over ten years at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music’s website. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

How Many Times Can You Write Isbell In Two Paragraphs?

The 2017 Americana Music Awards‘ nominees announcement ceremony included special performances from the Milk Carton Kids, the Jerry Douglas Band, Caitlin Canty and more — but it also featured one particularly special moment: Jason Isbell and the Drive-By Truckers‘ Patterson Hood and Mike Cooley coming together for an acoustic performance.

Isbell, Hood and Cooley sing “Outfit,” originally from the Truckers’ 2003 album Decoration Day. Written by Isbell alone, the song is one of two songs that the then-24-year-old penned for the album; the other, also written solo, is the record’s title track. Earlier this year, in late January, Isbell — now, of course, a solo artist — reunited with his former bandmates during a Drive-By Truckers show at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. (From theboot.com)

https://youtu.be/2aoopYxLlyM

Speaking of the AMA awards, I was taken aback by the announcement of Van Morrison receiving a lifetime achievement award for songwriting. No disrespect: Van is indeed The Man, and we know that the organization loves to recognize those from the UK (Richard Thompson and Robert Plant were past recipients), but I just don’t get it. Although I know this guy probably doesn’t give a damn and wouldn’t show up anyway, I think he might be deserving of anything with the tagline ‘Americana’ in it.

When In Doubt, Turn Your Lovelights On

The folks over at Pitchfork have published a User Guide to The Grateful Dead that focuses not on their studio work but rather the gazillion of live tracks that are out there. Which reminds me…Jerry Garcia and Robert Hunter…a songwriting team that deserves acknowledgement from the Americana cabal. You know, since the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame people are often slapped around for missing folks like Gram Parsons and The Flying Burrito Brothers, the AMA might be moving into their elitist territory. Sad…to quote the POTUS.

Rest In Peace: Jimmy LaFave

By now you’ve heard about the sad passing of Austin singer-songwriter Jimmy LaFave. Local radio station KOKE-FM published the statement from his label and family, and you can find it here. And No Depression co-founder Peter Blackstock covered LaFave’s Songwriters Rendezvous for the Austin American-Statesman, and I think it’s a beautiful piece of writing. Click here to get there. This video was recorded at SXSW in 2011. Rest in peace.

How Many Ways Can One Love Pete Seeger?

“Every day, every minute, someone in the world is singing a Pete Seeger song. The songs he wrote, including the antiwar tunes, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “If I Had a Hammer” and “Turn! Turn! Turn!” and those he popularized, including “This Land Is Your Land” and “We Shall Overcome,” have been recorded by hundreds of artists in many languages and have become global anthems for people fighting for freedom.” So begins a story of Pete, and how we keep his spirit alive.

Writer Susanna Reich and illustrator Adam Gustavson have produced a book dedicated to that objective. In 38 pages of text, paintings and drawings, Stand Up and Sing! Pete Seeger, Folk Music, and the Path to Justice provides a wonderful portrait of Seeger, focusing on how his strongly-held beliefs motivated his music and his activism. The book introduces children to the notion that music can be a powerful tool for change. As Reich notes, Seeger saw himself as a link in “a chain in which music and social responsibility are intertwined.”

Read more about Pete and his music in this wonderful article posted at Common Dreams.

Otis Down In Monterey

This year marks 50 years since Otis Redding died. He’d ignited the crowd at the Monterey Pop Festival in the summer of 1967; later that year, he and his band were en route to a show in Madison, Wisc., when their plane hit rough weather and crashed in an icy lake. Redding was 26 years old. Half a century later, Redding’s influence as a singer and spirit of soul music remains. Author Jonathan Gould, who’s written a new biography called Otis Redding: An Unfinished Life and you can read more about it here.

https://youtu.be/xcOfz21MbMA

Bruce Langhorne: For the Benefit of Mr. Tambourine Man

Bruce Langhorne, Carolyn Hester, Bob Dylan and Bill Lee. September 29, 1961

To those of us who were around the folk music scene of the sixties and to either academic or armchair ethnomusicologists, guitarists both old and young of the past and present, Bruce Langhorne is not unfamiliar. And should you not know the name, you know the man.

Born in Harlem in 1938, Langhorne was a regular at Gerde’s Folk City in Greenwich Village, where he accompanied many of the musicians who would perform at the hootenannies. He developed a unique style of fingerpicking and would sometimes attach a soundhole pickup to his 1923 Martin 1-21 and run it through Sandy Bull’s Fender Twin reverb.

By 1961, he was in the recording studio as a hired gun, first with the Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem, followed by Carolyn Hester, and then he contributed to several tracks on The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. He’s likely the guitarist on “Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right” and “Corrina, Corrina,” though in the deep dark world of the Dylan defenders of mythology, that’s been disputed.

Occasionally at performances or recording sessions, Langhorne would play a large Turkish frame drum that had small bells attached to the interior. He used it mostly on the Vanguard albums by Richard and Mimi Fariña that he is featured on, and it inspired a young Bob Dylan to write a song about him. Recorded by The Byrds and serving as an introduction to a wider audience, “Mr. Tambourine Man” has undoubtedly kept the Nobel Prize winner swimming in a steady stream of royalties.

“He had this gigantic tambourine,” wrote Dylan in the liner notes to his anthology Biograph, identifying Langhorne as the inspiration for “Mr. Tambourine Man.” It was, like, really big. It was as big as a wagon wheel. He was playing, and this vision of him playing this tambourine just stuck in my mind.”

On Jan. 14, 1965, Langhorne was called to Columbia’s Studio B along with a full electric band to back Bob Dylan for his fifth album. With no rehearsal, they worked on eight songs and in three and a half hours and came away with master takes on five of them. The next day, most of the same musicians were back to knock out the rest of Bringing It All Back Home. Although the album was originally recorded with a full electric band, Dylan decided to use only half the songs from those sessions and re-recorded the other half acoustically, with Langhorne playing countermelody on his amplified Martin. You can hear his lead guitar featured along with the full band on this iconic video of “Subterranean Homesick Blues.”

I found a profile of Langhorne published in August 2016 on the Acoustic Guitar website, written by Kenny Berkowitz. I’ll let him pick up the story:

“For years, it seemed as though Langhorne had played with everyone. Before and after those Dylan sessions, he recorded with Joan Baez, Harry Belafonte, the Chad Mitchell Trio, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, Richard and Mimi Fariña, Hugh Masekela, Odetta, Babatunde Olatunji, Tom Rush, and John Sebastian. He was at the epicenter of change in the folk world, back at a time when session guitarists simply showed up ready to improvise, and an album could be recorded in a single day, or even in a few hours.

He recorded a few songs on his own, but they never materialized into an album, and as folk-rock turned into rock, Langhorne went on to score soundtracks for Peter Fonda’s The Hired Hand(1971), Idaho Transfer (1973), and Outlaw Blues (1977); Bob Rafelson’s Stay Hungry (1976); and Jonathan Demme’s Fighting Mad (1976), Melvin and Howard (1980), and Swing Shift (1984).

But despite a long list of accomplishments, Langhorne has largely been forgotten, living out his days in Venice, California, too ill to walk along the beach. He hasn’t played guitar since having a stroke in 2006.”

This Gordon Lightfoot song was covered by Peter, Paul and Mary back in 1964, and it prominently features Langhorne’s guitar work. I was a little too young to know who he was at the time, but I’ve listened to this song hundreds of times.

It was a message from my oldest son that prompted me to write this column. He works for an organization promoting concerts of experimental music in New York and through guitarist Loren Connors he learned of a new album being released in February titled The Hired Hands: A Tribute to Bruce Langhorne.

Dylan Golden Aycock, with Connors and his partner and collaborator Suzanne Langille, compiled the project, which pays homage to Langhorne’s work and specifically to the soundtrack he composed for Fonda’s film. Here’s how they explain the concept:

“The goal here was to ask artists to cover or reinterpret a song of their choice from the soundtrack. No rules on whether the music should be derivative of a certain song, if the soundtrack inspires a mood, then the artists use their intuition.

Bruce has come on hard times in recent years, having suffered a stroke that prevents him from playing the guitar. He’s currently in hospice care awaiting his final curtain call. A large percentage of profit go to Bruce and his family.”

I linked it above, but if you click here you can preorder this handcrafted set of music from some of todays finest players, some you may know and others you don’t. It’s available both as a double CD with extensive liner notes from Byron Coley (reprinted on the Bandcamp page), and a digital download. There are also nine tracks you can stream for free right now.

Bruce was placed in hospice care in late 2015. Friends, as well as people who only knew of Bruce by reputation, came from near and far to pay their respects and, often, play some music for him. The huge outpouring of love boosted his spirit (and his body), and he was upgraded to palliative care. (Several months after this story was published, Bruce passed away on April 14, 2017)

“Yeah, he was a wizard. My part is pretty basic on ‘Urge for Going,’ but he was the one who did those triple pull-off things, the diddey-bump kinda lines. He’s in California. He had a stroke, and he can’t play much anymore which is really a shame. He was such a good player. Actually as a kid he had blown off most of his thumb and first two fingers on his right hand with fireworks, which got him out of the draft because they figured if he didn’t have a trigger finger, he couldn’t fire a rifle. So, of course, he became a guitar player, and then decided he was going to be a piano player later in life. Since his stroke he doesn’t play much at all. He’s supposedly the guy who inspired ‘Mr. Tambourine Man,’ Dylan’s song, ’cause he also played tambourine and just about anything you can imagine.” Tom Rush, April 2015

Postscript: For another look at Bruce’s story, check out The Perlich Post‘s article.

This article was originally published as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column over at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music.

Many of my past columns, articles, and essays can be accessed here at my own site, therealeasyed.com. I also aggregate news and videos on both Flipboard and Facebook as The Real Easy Ed: Americana Roots Music Daily. My Twitter handle is @therealeasyed and my email is easyed@therealeasyed.com

Easy Ed’s Broadside Outtakes #2

Photo by Sandy Dyas

Easy Ed’s Broadside weekly column has been a fixture at No Depression: The Journal of Roots Music for over ten years. These are odds and ends, random thoughts and fragments never published.

New Music Rising

It doesn’t seem all that long ago when hardy music buyers and fans would get in line late on a Monday night outside their local record store. At midnight the doors would be unlocked and the Tuesday new releases were put out for sale. The bigger titles would have been advertised in the Sunday papers, there would likely have already been reviews printed in magazines or other print media, you may have heard a tune or two on the radio and for at least that week you’d get a reduction off the regular price.

These days, the ‘official release date’ that the music industry uses is Friday, but that has little meaning anymore to most consumers who hear about new music online at infinite points of origin. A click here, a click there…and you can pretty much learn about new stuff and hear anything at anytime. There are exceptions, but not often.

So with that, there seems to be a revised definition to this term ‘new release’. With an annual pipeline of almost a couple hundred thousand albums released, something is new when you first hear about it. Yeah…there is still this mini-factory assembly line that a lot of musicians follow trying to get the word out in a short burst for maximum impact…but that makes sense for the one percenters, not necessarily every single title.

With that in mind, here’s something new to me that was released back in February from Alligator Records. I love me a good tribute and anthology, and God Don’t Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson fills the bill.

blindwillie-compressed

The project originally began as a Kickstarter campaign, and features crazy-great performances from Tom Waits, Lucinda Williams, Sinéad O’Connor, the Blind Boys Of Alabama, Cowboy Junkies, and more. Listen to the full stream via Pitchfork and here’s the man himself, filmed in 1927.

Every Picture Tells a Story

Sandy The image at the top of this page was shot by my long-time-we’ve-only-met-online friend Sandy Dyas, who is a visual artist based in Iowa City that I’ve written about often. You can visit her website here and check out her work, books (buy them…really) and blog. And more of her images can be found on this site….including this one I originally published back in January 2014 at No Depression dot com.

Long Before N.W.A. There Was Country Music Straight Outta Compton

Back in 1951 a weekly country radio show was broadcasted live from Town Hall in the Los Angeles suburb of Compton. Within two years it had been picked up as a TV program by NBC and local station KTTV, there were 39 syndicated shows taped for Screen Gems and it had a damngood run, with it’s final show in January 1961. Had a few different names, but mostly it was either the Town Hall Party or The Ranch Party. There’s a good wiki page here on details.

Hosted by Tex Ritter, the list of weekly guest stars included pretty much anybody you might think of back in those times…Lefty Frizzell Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins, Patsy Cline, Merle Travis, Gene Autry, Sons of The Pioneers, The Collins Kids, Johnny Bond, Smiley Burnette. To our good fortune, many of the shows and individual performances are available on You Tube. Try this search link if you want a shortcut.

The 10-piece Town Hall Party band featured Joe Maphis, Merle Travis, the superb female steel guitarist Marian Hall, Billy Hill and Fiddlin’ Kate on violins, PeeWee Adams on drums, Jimmy Pruitt on piano, and other excellent musicians who created a Town Hall Party sound also heard on many country sessions produced by Columbia Records in Hollywood in the 1950s. Thought I’d share this one with you.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TXmNdRJ1E_Q

What Exactly Did Tony Visconti Say at SXSW Music 2016?

Acclaimed American record producer Tony Visconti, famous for his many records with David Bowie (including his final album, “Darkstar”), Marc Bolan, Paul McCartney, Badfinger, Iggy Pop, Morrissey and others, briefly choked up onstage last week during his South by Southwest keynote talk at the Austin Convention Center as he finished reading a fictionalized account of the grim future of the record industry. (Story here.)

The story ended with a jaded record executive jumping from the balcony of his skyscraper residence to his death. The dapper 71-year-old producer threw down his prepared notes and had to compose himself afterward.

Couple of thoughts from Tony:

-The vast amount of music being uploaded on to YouTube is “clogging the arteries” of the music business; unmediated and unfocused.

-“With the population doubling how come we can’t sell records? The record labels now are not giving you quality, that’s why you’re disenchanted, that’s why you don’t buy records.”

-Fans “used to put a vinyl record on a turntable” and play it hundreds of times. “None of that goes on today. There are great people all around us – the next David Bowie lives somewhere in the world, the next Beatles, the next Springsteen but they’re not getting a shot, they’re not being financed.”

-Our music industry is one “where singles all sound the same, where sales aren’t that great, where people are streaming and if you get 20 million [plays], you get enough for a nice steak dinner”.

-“I’ve always had black kimonos. I’ve always loved black kimonos. I know I’m rambling on. I’ll get to the point where I met David Bowie.”

Mixed reviews, but Vulture wrote: “By catering to cultural curiosity, excavating his early career, and using both his platform and the room’s rapt attention to strike while the iron was hot with a cautionary tale, Visconti did better than a sentimental speech. He casually played with prophecy, a move his much-missed friend would certainly appreciate.”

Bob Dylan’s 25 Musical Heroes

This list was assembled and published a few weeks ago over at The Telegraph and I found it a quick interesting read. Here’s just a couple of my fave quotes, but do go take a look for yourself at the whole enchilada.

Boy, I love them . . . the Flying Burrito Brothers, unh-huh. I’ve always known Chris Hillman, you know, from when he was in the Byrds, who had a distinctive sound. And he’s always been a fine musician. The Brothers’ records knocked me out.

John Prine’s stuff is pure Proustian existentialism. Midwestern mindtrips to the nth degree. And he writes beautiful songs. I remember when Kris Kristofferson first brought him on the scene. All that stuff about Sam Stone the soldier junky daddy and Donald and Lydia, where people make love from ten miles away. Nobody but Prine could write like that. If I had to pick one song of his, it might be Lake Marie. I don’t remember what album that’s on.

Karen Dalton is my favourite singer. Karen had a voice like Billie Holiday’s and played the guitar like Jimmy Reed and went all the way with it.

I Just Sold My Newport Folk Festival Ticket and Won’t See Joan Shelley.

It ain’t easy to get a 3-day pass to Newport because they do this email notification thing through Ticketmaster, and you gotta act fast. I did, and bought mine a couple months ago. It was just around $200, which I think is a bargain for what you know will be an amazing musical weekend of exploration and discovery. You don’t even know yet who’ll be on the program, as only about a dozen folks have been announced, but its hardly a leap of faith to know it’ll be great. Joan Shelley will be there…knowing I’ll miss her is a disappointment. Her music speaks to me.

My one and only time at Newport was in 2014, and although I held tickets for last summer a ‘life happens’ moment forced a pullout. I was pretty sure I would be good-to-go this year until I sat down and worked on the details. A sad-assed vertigo sufferer, the train seemed like a better mode of transport than my Civic, and there would be some ground transportation needed to get to town from the station. Once there, moving around is pretty easy. Walking, boat shuttle, taxis. But where to stay…oh my. With an average lodging cost of about $300 per day…camping not an option…that’s what did me in. I couldn’t find a way to make the whole thing come in at much less than a thousand bucks, and although I love music, I’m a man with a budgetary restriction. So not this year…sorry.

By the way, Ticketmaster has a pretty neat way for you to take a ticket, put it up for sale through them, and in less than a week it was sold to someone else and my dough was re-deposited into my account. I think I lost twenty bucks or so in fees, but its an easy way out.

On Sharon Jones: A Favorite Story from Oxford American

Homecoming Queen by Maxwell George was published on January 19, 2015.

North Augusta Baptist Church is a humble house of God, steepleless and cast in brick, with a pair of squat towers flanking the stained-glass black Messiah on its façade. Last summer, I got my picture taken next to the marquee out front, which advertised an upcoming Youth Revival weekend—fitting enough, since my being there related to a former young congregant. In the mid-1960s, soul singer Sharon Jones gave her first public performance here, as a singing angel in the Christmas pageant when she was in the third grade. (Click here to continue.)

Videos You Wouldn’t Know Existed, Unless You Found Them By Mistake.

I aggregate and post daily on my Twitter feed:@therealeasyed and Facebook page:The Real Easy Ed: Roots Music and Random Thoughts. My every other week Broadside column is published at No Depression.

Sony Music Pushes Bob Dylan Over the Edge

Sandwiched between the daily news of murder, mayhem, and politics, comes a media blitz and social network Bing! Bing! Bing! that Sony Music Entertainment will be releasing not one, not two, but three variations of the latest in Bob Dylan’s never-ending studio outakes excavation. The Cutting Edge 1965-1966: The Bootleg Series Volume 12 will be released on November 6, in the St. Nick of time for the holiday gift giving season.

To break it down: you’ve got your basic run-of-the-mill Deluxe Edition of six discs (or the digital equivalent), and a cheapo-cheapo two-disc “best of” variation that will also be offered on 180-gram pure, virginal, black-as-night vinyl. But the excitement really builds for the Collectors Edition Box Set pictured here, which gives you 16 alternate versions and four master track mixes of “Like A Rolling Stone,” along with multiple variations of a few dozen other songs that were originally rejected for one reason or another. Retail price: $599.99.

The Big Bambino of Bobby’s Box Sets will be peddled only via Dylan’s website, and it comes to mind that this investment opportunity — a keepsake for your family to both enjoy now and to pass down through generations — not only has the look and feel of one of those 1980s K-Tel Records’ AS SEEN ON TV commercials, but the ad copy sounds like it as well:

Limited, numbered edition of 5,000 units world wide!
Every note recorded by Bob Dylan in the studio in 1965/1966!
379 tracks on 18 discs!
170 page hardcover 11” X 11” book!
Certificate of Authenticity!

I have to admit, I’ve added the exclamation points for emphasis. But wait! There’s more! Buy now while supplies last, and you get these SPECIAL BONUS FEATURES!

Hotel room recordings from London, Glasgow and Denver!
The original nine mono 45 RPM singles released during the time period!
A leopard skin printed spindle! (Seriously … it’s just too good to make this stuff up.)
A strip of film cells from an original print of the Don’t Look Back film!

Perhaps for the uber-Dylan fanatic and completist — or a hedge fund manager who will buy everything under the sun simply because they can — spending well over $600 (there’s sales tax and shipping charges to be applied) might seem like an easy choice. For the rest of us who live in the real world, and have bought and owned at least six various configurations of every major album that Dylan has put out, it’s likely to not even make a blip on the radar screen of things we can’t live without.

Should you think I’m not a fan myself, you’d be wrong. My collection includes original mono recordings, stereo mixes, remasters, greatest hits, compilations, oddities, live shows, unauthorized vinyl, and countless books. At the moment I’m coming within striking distance of the final chapter of Elijah Wald’s Dylan Goes Electric, which I’ve found to be an exceptional read. When I’m in the mood for a little Dylan these days, it’s often the Bootleg Series that will draw me in, as I find most of the volumes to be a welcome and refreshing additive. But after last year’s six-disc Basement Tapes Complete, I’m just done. There isn’t enough time, interest, willpower, energy, or money to pay this release one iota of attention. (Except for this one rumination.)

Before I let you go, it seems that it might best to offer an opposing view. Here’s what Randy Lewis of the Los Angeles Times says about this project:

Record companies are often justly criticized for strip-mining their catalogs out of desperation for cash because it’s become so difficult to break new artists. This, however, appears to be an example of legitimate exploration of the context out of which three of rock music’s most important albums emerged a half century ago.

We’ll stay tuned for a more in-depth report on this project.

As we eagerly await Randy’s further investigation, heed my advice and don’t fall for the hype. Neither Dylan nor Sony needs the dough. You can stream it for next to nothing, and box sets just add clutter to your home and get really dusty. If need be, I’d be willing to come over to your house, bring my guitar and harps, and personally perform the entire 1960s repertoire for you in exchange for a simple hot meal and travel expenses. Lucky you.

This was originally published at No Depression dot com, as an Easy Ed’s Broadside column.