The Sound Of Dobells – The British Record Shop Archive.

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Tony

In August 2012 the British Record Shop Archive was set up online by Leon Parker to save the history of how we found, listened and bought music. For the last four years ‘Record Store Day’ have grabbed the media’s attention remind us of the value of record shops. As this happens just one day a year there is a need for something that truly celebrated the classic record shop as a great British institution. That is how Leon came up with the idea of putting on an exhibition about an iconic record shop.

Dobells
Until 1989, when Dobells finally became another victim of rent rises and redevelopment, Dobells had been a Mecca to music lovers for more than four decades. Dobells was one of the first record shops outside the US to stock Jazz, Blues, Folk, World, Latin and African music. It was also a meeting point for a remarkable network of different people — musicians, both the famous and the forgotten, anarchists, politicians, doctors, dancers, dockers, writers galore, union officials, eminent academics, film stars, journalists. school kids still in uniform and bankers (not to mention some distinctly dodgy Soho characters) — all rubbing shoulders drawn by a passion for music into a cramped, smoke-filled and frequently alcohol-fueled record shop in Soho.

Dobells was the first port of call for visiting American musicians. Many would come to Dobell’s from Heathrow and buy records before they found a hotel room! BB King loved Dobell’s while once Janis Joplin dropped in with a bottle of Southern Comfort. You could find Roy Eldridge, Ben Webster, Red Allen or half the Ellington band shopping and gossiping. It acted as a fertile learning ground for the youngsters who went on to lead such legendary British bands as the Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Fleetwood Mac, Cream and from Belfast Taste. The listening booths were research libraries to a whole generation and on Friday afternoons wage envelopes were torn open for rare Blue Notes, Riversides, Topics Folkways and Blue Horizons.

And Dobells is where Bob Dylan spent a lot of his time during the long winter of 1962 when he lived and performed in London. Dylan even recorded in Dobell’s basement as Blind Boy Grunt. Goal.

The Dobell’s exhibition will be the first ever free exhibition of an independent record shop and will celebrate how this shop played an important role in the development of Britain as home to much of the world’s greatest popular music.

If you want to commemorate the crucial, still-ongoing role of Dobell’s in the cultural and musical life of Britain, or celebrate the great record shops of old, or if you were a Dobell’s customer, then please donate whatever you can and sponsor this unique exhibition about a truly unique place.

All those making a donation will have their name posted on British Record Shop Archive website to acknowledge your support and thanks.

Click here to visit the website, make a donation or find out more information.

Posted in 45 rpm, 78rpm, Americana, Blues, Books, Cassette, Compact Disc, DVD, Film -TV, Gospel, Jazz, Magazine, Rare Records, Rhythm & Blues, Rock & Roll, Roots, Soul, Uncategorized, Vinyl, Website, You Tube | Leave a comment

The Eagle Has Landed

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Tony

Roger Eagle with Howlin’ Wolf, mid 1960s.

Take a listen to this BBC radio programme broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on December 31st, 2012 at 4.00pm. Presented by Mark Radcliffe, it looks at the life and work of DJ, promoter and sometime R&B magazine editor Roger Eagle.

For the back story click here.

To listen to the programme and to see some great period photographs by ace music photographer Brian Smith  click here.

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Ex Mother Ray Collins RIP

Posted on December 28, 2012 by Tony

Ray Collins, a founder member of the Mothers of Invention with Frank Zappa died on December 24th after being admitted to the hospital a week earlier after a heart attack. He was aged 73.

Collins hailed from Pomona, California and started his music career singing in the Soul Giants an R&B cover band.

He met Frank Zappa in 1961 after seeing him perform at the Sportsman Tavern in Pomona.

Zappa later joined the Soul Giants after Collins fired the guitarist Ray Hunt. the band had also featured drummer Jimmy Carl Black (“The Indian of the group”) and Roy Estrada.

Zappa transformed the group and they began to perform original material, written by Zappa. The Soul Giants changed their name, first to ‘the Mothers’ and eventually to the Mothers of Invention.

Ray Collins sang lead on the Mothers of Invention’s first album, ‘Freak Out!’ in 1966 an on its follow-up ‘Absolutely Free’ (1967). He quit the MoI shortly after claiming that “I wanted to make beautiful music. I was raised on Johnny Mathis and Nat King Cole. I didn’t like doing that stuff onstage. Too much comedy, too much making fun of stuff.”

Collins reunited with Zappa several more times over the years, including on the 1968 classic album ‘Cruising with Ruben & the Jets’.

In recent times Collins was reportedly living out of a van in Claremont, California, where he was frequently seen on sidewalk benches.

He’d worked as a taxi driver in Los Angeles and a dishwasher in Hawaii, receiving Social Security checks, some royalties from ‘Memories Of El Monte,’ a doo woo ballad he and Zappa wrote for the Penguins and had “modest” settlement from Zappa.

“People will ask why it’s been 40 years since I’ve been onstage. I don’t know,” Collins admitted. “If you just enjoy life, it’s conducive to not being successful. You know what I mean? I just enjoy life.”

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St. Louis R&B Diva Fontella Bass RIP

Posted on December 27, 2012 by Tony

The legendary St. Louis soul and R&B singer Fontella Bass,  died on December 26th at the age of 72.

Fontella was the daughter of gospel singer Martha Bass (a member of the Clara Ward Singers) and sister of soul singer David Peaston who died earlier this year. She was best known for the 1965 worldwide R&B hit ‘Rescue Me’ which spent a month on the top of the R&B charts and made number 4 on the US pop charts, selling over a million copies.

At five years of age she provided piano accompaniment at funeral services and was singing in her church’s choir at the age of six. At the age of nine she began singing with her mother on US tours.

In her teens she began singing in local talent contests and fairs and she began her professional career at the Showboat Club in Missouri.

In 1961, she auditioned for a carnival show and was hired to play piano and sing in the chorus for two weeks, making $175 per week for the two weeks it was in town.

She was heard singing by blues star Little Milton Campbell and bandleader and producer Oliver Sain.

Bass played eventually piano with Sain’s band and she was soon given her own vocal spot in the show. When Milton and Sain split Fontella joined Sain’s band along with soul singer Bobby McClure – billed as  ‘The Oliver Sain Soul Revue featuring Fontella Bass and Bobby McClure’.

She is reported to have recorded with Tina Turner as early as 1960. During the early 1960s Fontella cut a number of sides for Bobbin, Sonja and Prann Records (some with with Ike Turner) before joining Checker Records, (part of the Chess stable) waxing duets with McClure. In 1965, they hit with ‘Don’t Mess Up A Good Thing’ (credited to Oliver Sain) followed by ‘You’ll Miss Me (When I’m Gone)’ which made the R&B Top 30.

Returning to the studio, she cut her own composition ‘Rescue Me’ which hit the charts in late 1965 – eventually becoming a world wide R&B and pop hit. The song was issued on Chess in the UK.

She followed up with ‘Recovery’ which made number 13 (R&B) and number 37 (pop) in early 1966. The same year brought two more R&B hits, ‘I Can’t Rest b/w ‘I Surrender’ and ‘You’ll Never Know’.

Her album  for Checker called  ‘The New Look’, sold  well, but she became disillusioned with Chess left them in 1967 claiming that Len and Phil Chess had cheated her out of royalties for ‘Rescue Me’.

In 1969 she and husband, the jazz sax player Lester Bowie, moved to Paris in 1969, where she cut two albums and appeared on a number of her husbands records.

In 1971 she joined Paula Records and cut a fine album for them called ‘Free’ although it failed to chart. She cut a 45rpm for Epic in 1977.

‘Rescue Me’ continued to be a staple of oldie’s radio and was used on TV adverts. She sued American Express for its “unauthorised use”, eventually winning a $50,000 settlement.

She eventually retired from music, only occasionally returning as a background vocalist on several recordings. During the 1990s she hosted a short-lived Chicago radio talk show, and returning to the church, she released several gospel records on indie labels.

She was inducted into the St. Louis Hall Of Fame in 2000.

A series of health problems started in 2005  and she suffered a heart attack earlier this month.

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Inez Andrews, Gospel Diva, Dies at 83

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Tony

Inez Andrews, one of the last of the great gospel divas died on December 19th in Chicago. She was aged 83. “She was the last great female vocalist of gospel’s golden age,” said Anthony Heilbut, author of “The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times”  issued in 1971.

Ms. Andrews was known as the “High Priestess,” Heilbut said, ranking among the likes of Mahalia Jackson, Marion Williams, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and Clara Ward.

Ms. Andrews became a national star in 1958 with The Caravans, the Chicago gospel group led by Albertina Walker which also nurtured such stars as Shirley Caesar, the Rev. James Cleveland and Bessie Griffin. That year she was the lead singer for what became two of the Caravans’ biggest hits. One was “I’m Not Tired Yet,” the other was “Mary Don’t You Weep”.

Inez McConico, was born in Birmingham on April 14th, 1929. Inez was a teenager when she married Robert Andrews. By the time they divorced, when she was 18, she was the mother of two children. She worked in menial jobs and sang in church.

Ms. Andrews began her career with in Birmingham, Alabama, with Carter’s Choral Ensemble and as a stand in for Dorothy Love Coates in the Original Gospel Harmonettes. By the mid-1950s, the Harmonettes were one of the nation’s top gospel groups.

In 1962 Inez Andrews left the Caravans to start her own group, Inez Andrews and the Andrewettes. They toured Europe as part of a touring gospel show with the Five Blind Boys of Mississippi and Bishop Kelsey, scenes of which (filmed in an empty German Church!) were released on DVD.

By 1967 she was touring as a soloist, and in 1973 scored her biggest hit, “Lord Don’t Move The Mountain”, produced by Gene Barge.

During her career Ms. Andrews recorded for many labels, among them Songbird, Savoy, Jewel, Malaco and others. She often performed at reunion concerts with the Caravans. In 2002 she was inducted into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame.

“Even in songs of rejoicing, her voice has a somber undertone,” Jon Pareles wrote in The New York Times in 1990, “and when she takes on supplicating songs like the mid-tempo ‘Lord I’ve Tried’ or the glacial minor-key blues of ‘Stand by Me’ — both of which rise, verse by verse, to a near-scream — Ms. Andrews can sound desperate, on the verge of hysteria. Her’s is a gospel of terror, and of the relief faith provides.”

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The Story Of Border Radio

Posted on December 23, 2012 by Tony

The term ‘border radio’ refers to the American broadcasting industry that sprang up on Mexico’s northern border in the early 1930s and flourished for half a century. High-powered radio transmitters on Mexican soil, beyond the reach of U.S. regulators, blanketed North America with unique programming.

Mexico accommodated these ‘outlaw’ media operators, some of whom had been denied broadcasting licenses in the United States, because Canada and the United States had divided the long-range radio frequencies between themselves, allotting none to Mexico.

Though the ‘borderblaster’ transmitters were always in Mexico, studios (especially in the early 1930s) were sometimes in the United States, and the stations were often identified by the American town across the border. For instance, in his classic poem, ‘Clem Maverick, The Life and Death of a Country Singer’, R. G. Vliet has Clem reminisce: “We was on the radio at Del Rio.” Early on, hillbilly music proved to be one of the most effective mediums for pulling mail and moving merchandise; in turn, the border stations played a significant role in popularizing country music during the genre’s crucial growth years before and after World War II.

The stations also familiarized American listeners with Mexican and Mexican-American artists. Lydia Mendoza’s future husband first heard the ‘Lark of the Border’ from Piedras Negras station XEPN in 1937. “The highlight of the XER program, for me,” recalled a South Dakota listener in 1995, “was the beautiful voice of the ‘Mexican Nightingale’ Rosa Domínguez, especially when she would sing ‘Estrellita ‘— this farm boy thought that must be how the angels would sound in heaven.”

The first border station, XED, began broadcasting from Reynosa, Tamaulipas, in 1930. Owned for a time by Houston theatre owner and philanthropist Will Horwitz, XED hosted occasional performances by Horwitz’s friend Jimmie Rodgers. Horwitz, who dressed up as Santa Claus each year and distributed Christmas presents to Houston’s underprivileged children, was sent to prison by the U.S. government for broadcasting the Tamaulipas state lottery over XED.

Dr. John R. Brinkley, originator of the ‘goat gland transplant’ as a sexual rejuvenation treatment, opened XER (later called XERA) in Villa Acuña, Coahuila, in 1931. Brinkley later bought XED, changing the name to XEAW.

In 1939 he sold XEAW to Carr Collins, Dallas insurance magnate and owner of Crazy Crystals, a laxative product derived from the fabled Crazy Water in Mineral Wells. According to Collins’s son Jim, Texas governor (and later U.S. senator) W. Lee ‘Pappy’ O’Danielqv was part-owner of the station. The Mexican government confiscated XERA in 1941 and tried to confiscate XEAW shortly thereafter, but Collins moved his equipment north of the border.

Engineer Bill Branch and businessman C. M. Bres operated XEPN in Piedras Negras in the 1930s. Iowan Norman Baker, whose experimental cancer treatments made him a controversial figure, broadcast from his station XENT in Nuevo Laredo. Texas governor Miriam ‘Ma’ Ferguson once dispatched Texas Rangersqv to Laredo to arrest Baker on a charge of practicing medicine without a license, but the defiant broadcaster could not be lured across the Rio Grande.

Border station power generally ranged from 50,000 to 500,000 watts. Sometimes listeners claimed to hear broadcasts without a radio, receiving the powerful signal on dental work, bedsprings, and barbed wire. American network programs were often lost in the ether when a Mexican border station was broadcasting near an American station’s frequency.

Hank Thompson, who grew up in Waco in the 1930s, said the American-Mexican stations on the Rio Grande “were about the only ones where you could hear country and western music most all the time.” Later, as a navy radio engineer during World War II, Thompson piped border-station programming through his ship on the high seas.

Thompson and other listeners heard Cowboy Slim Rinehart, Patsy Montana, the Carter Family, the Pickard Family, the Shelton Brothers, the Callahan Brothers, the International Hot Timers, Pappy O’Daniel’s Hillbilly Boys, Roy ‘Lonesome Cowboy’ Faulkner, Shelly Lee Alley, and countless others. Performers broadcast live and via transcription disc, sometimes syndicating a show on several of the maverick stations. Border radio pitchman and ad executive Don Baxter, known as ‘Major Kord’, recorded many artists with this technology in San Antonio. Later, many of the transcription discs were used as roofing material for homes in Acuña and other border-station towns.

Continue reading →

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Jimmy McCracklin RIP

Posted on December 21, 2012 by Tony

The above video is of Jimmy McCracklin with Ry Cooder and Wayne Bennett  performing Erskine Hawkins’ ‘After Hours’ at the Village Music Anniversary Party, August 5th 1991. Jimmy had already performed this number in his set, but did it again after Wayne had joined him and Ry finally showed up – because his wife in the audience “always wants to hear that same tune over and over again.” By Lee Hildebrand – SFGate.com

Jimmy McCracklin, one of the most prolific blues singers and songwriters of all time, with a recording career that spanned 1945 to 2010, died Thursday (20th December) at Creekside Healthcare Center in San Pablo after a long convalescence. The Richmond resident was 91 and had diabetes, hypertension and other health problems.

“He was the face of Oakland blues,” said promoter Tom Mazzolini, who presented Jimmy McCracklin several times at his long-running San Francisco Blues Festival and took him on a tour of Japan in 1984. “He was probably the most important musician to come out of the Bay Area in the post-World War II years.”

Jimmy McCracklin had been making records for more than a decade when he finally scored a national hit, “The Walk,” for Checker Records in 1958. Recorded in Chicago, where he and his band, the Blues Blasters, had been stranded, the self-penned dance-inspired tune reached No. 5 on Billboard’s pop singles chart and led to an appearance on Dick Clark‘s “American Bandstand.”

It was the first record by a Bay Area artist to place in the pop top 10 during the rock ‘n’ roll era. The Beatles later recorded a brief, impromptu version of the song during their “Get Back” sessions, but it was never released, except on bootleg albums.

“His song ‘The Walk’ has been incorporated into many rock songs,” said Bay Area blues singer-songwriter E.C. Scott. “Some of those people that used that riff don’t even know it came from Jimmy McCracklin.”

One tune that utilizes the song’s distinctive rhythm guitar riff, originally played by Mr. McCracklin’s sideman Lafayette “Thing” Thomas, is the now-standard Freddy King guitar instrumental “Hide Away.”

“He disguised those sexual overtones,” Scott added. “In ‘The Walk,’ he makes you think it’s physical ed.”

Other McCracklin hits placed high on the R&B charts between 1961 and 1966, including “Just Got to Know,” “Shame, Shame, Shame,” “Every Night, Every Day,” “Think” and “My Answer,” all of which Mr. McCracklin wrote. His most lucrative composition was “Tramp,” written for his friend Lowell Fulson. It was a hit three times – for Fulson in 1967,Otis Redding and Carla Thomas, also in 1967, and for the hip-hop trio Salt-N-Pepa in 1987 – and has been widely sampled, by Prince and numerous hip-hop artists.

Jimmy McCracklin was born James Walker on August 13th, 1921, in Helena, Arkansas. He moved to St. Louis at age 9 and as a teenager fell under the musical spell of Walter Davis, a friend of his father’s and one of the most popular blues singers, pianists and songwriters of the 1930s.

“I remember,” Mr. McCracklin said in 2003, “my dad asking Walter, ‘How do you put all these truthful and lovely songs and good feelings about a human being together?’ The words he spoke to him I will always remember. He said, ‘I don’t put ’em together because of something that happened to me. I look at life in general. I notice other folks. What I write, I put the truth in there because I want to tell about what happened to me could happen to you or what happened to you could happen to me. This is the way I put my lyrics together. It’s real life.’ “

After graduating from high school, Mr. McCracklin joined the U.S. Navy, probably around 1938 before he was 18. “My mother had to sign for me to get in Navy,” he said. She had taught him to cook, and he worked in that capacity while in the service.

After World War II, he divided his time between singing and boxing in Southern California before moving north to Richmond in 1947 . “I saw what was going on up there, and clubs was better to get jobs in,” he said.

In 1992, Mr. McCracklin showed a Chronicle reporter his scrapbook, which included a letter from friend and former world light heavyweight boxing champion Archie Moore. In the letter, Moore offered his praise of McCracklin’s musical career, “You wear your success with great dignity.”

American blues artist Elvin Bishop mentioned the influence that Mr. McCracklin and his contemporaries had on his work in a 2005 Chronicle story.

“I followed my old blues guys’ example – Lowell Fulson, Jimmy McCracklin, Percy Mayfield – to write about what’s happening in your life, “ Bishop said at the time. “They just put it out there.”

Mr. McCracklin made one of his last appearances in 2010 at a 90th birthday celebration at Biscuits & Blues, where he was saluted musically by Bishop, Craig Horton, Scott and Bobbie Webb, among others.

He was preceded in death in 2008 by his wife of 52 years, Beulah McCracklin, and is survived by his daughter Linette Susan McCracklin and her children, Jimmy and Sarah Busby. Funeral arrangements are pending.

Lee Hildebrand is a freelance writer. E-mail: datebookletters@sfchronicle.com

Read more: http://www.sfgate.com/music/article/Bay-Area-blues-legend-had-65-year-career-4136929.php#ixzz2FgtOzTtQ

 

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Respected record collector and researcher George A. Moonoogian passes

Posted on December 19, 2012 by Tony

George Moonoogian – at the deck.

It is sad to report the death of the well respected record collector, R&B expert, writer and DJ George A. Moonoogian of Haverhill, Massachusetts. George passed away on 17th December. 

George was an English teacher and began collecting records in the 1950s, buying R&B, Blues, Gospel and Doo Wop 78s, 45s, LPs and memorabilia in thrift and dime stores and record shops, amassing a large record collection – with many rarities, one-offs, demo’s and highly collectable discs.

George was also a writer and researcher. His work appeared in ‘Goldmine’, ‘Record Exchanger’, ‘Record Collectors’ Monthly’, ‘Out Of The Past’ and ‘Whiskey, Women, And…’ producing in-depth and pioneering research on R&B artists such as Cecil Gant, Amos Milburn, Joe Turner, Doc Pomus, Helen Humes, Van Walls and pianist Sammy Price.

He co-produced a number of reissue albums for Jonas Bernholm’s reissue labels allied to Jonas’s Route 66 stable.

George was also an accomplished blues and boogie pianist and he hosted his own R&B record show on a radio station WJZ in Haverhill as DJ ‘GM Hooker’.

In recent years he had suffered from a brain aneurysm. which meant he couldn’t keep contact with the world of R&B record collecting, although long term buddy and co-founder of ‘Whiskey Women And…’ Dan Kochakian said that he ‘talked blues and R&B to George only two weeks ago and he was still sharp’.

Condolences go to George’s wife Dianne and the family.

Posted in 45 rpm, 78rpm, Blues, Compact Disc, Jazz, Rare Records, Rhythm & Blues, Rock & Roll, Roots, Vinyl | Leave a comment

A Van For All Seasons

Posted on December 8, 2012 by Tony

On a recent visit to Liverpool I picked up a copy of  Low Down – The Definitive Liverpool Listings Magazine, an excellent publication. The main feature was an edited interview with Van Morrison, who’s new album ‘No Plan B’ has been a regular visitor to my my deck and is on the HD in the car. The interview with Van was quite candid as you can read here – nicked from the Low Down website. Hope they don’t mind……

An incredible career spanning over six decades, six Grammys, a Brit, an OBE, induction into both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame and he’s still releasing records. ‘Van the Man’ is one of the most enduring legends of popular music.

John Bennett met Van Morrison at the Culloden Hotel in Belfast and asked him about his new album ‘Born To Sing/No Plan B’ – Blue Note Records/EMI).

Van, ‘Born To Sing/No Plan B’. That has been the working-title, as I understand it, right from the start of the album. That’s the one you have settled on. It’s going out as that then?

Yeah, but I don’t really want ‘No Plan B’ to be a distraction or a red herring. It seems that people have a lot of questions about that. There isn’t really any question. ‘Born To Sing/No Plan B’. It is what it says it is. There’s no hidden meaning or anything. I don’t know why people are always looking for hidden meanings or something else. It is what it says on the tin.

Elaborate on that a bit. How do you mean there is no plan B?
Well that’s my profession. Singing is my profession. There is no plan B. Maybe there might be one later on? I don’t know! There could be a plan B later but there isn’t one right now.

You were born to sing, do I take that literally?
Yeah, well I think so.

Even from when you were going to school?
Well apparently before that. What they tell me is that I was singing in the pram. That’s what I was told.

At what age were you aware then that this was going to be your livelihood?
I wasn’t really aware until I was looking at the Alan Lomax Folk Guitar book, do you know that one? I didn’t really know until that point because I was trying to work out, you know, what Leadbelly was doing on a 12 string, on a 6 string, so I didn’t really know until then because before then I wanted to be a vet.

A vet?
Yeah.

I don’t know why I should feel that that’s strange but given that you are now a singer, the two?…
(Interjects) Well they didn’t think it was strange in school. When the teacher went around and said, ‘Well, what do you want to be when you leave school?’ and ‘What do you want to be?’ I said ‘a vet’ and the teacher didn’t think it was strange at all. He said ‘Oh yes, jolly good!’

Do you have an affinity with animals? Do you like animals?
Well yeah of course I do, yeah.

Well not everybody does?
I didn’t know that, I thought most people did. I didn’t know that.

So at what stage did your veterinary aspirations give way to the music?
Well, when I heard ‘Irene Goodnight’ by Leadbelly, the version with Sonny Terry on harmonica. When I heard that, that was it. Everything else went out the window I suppose.

Leadbelly playing an accordion

Just incidentally, what do you think of The Weavers version of Irene?
I don’t like it. I don’t like The Weavers version because I had heard the original by Leadbelly. Leadbelly actually did several versions. The one I like best is the one with Sonny Terry on harmonica and there is also one he did with Paul Mason Howard on zither, I like those two versions best but there are other people that have covered it, like Little Richard. He did a version that is interesting too.

‘Born To Sing/No Plan B’ it is then. I have to say Van, listening to the album, it took me on the almost proverbial journey through a lot of my emotions but I suppose as an artist, whether you’re a visual artist or a musical artist, that’s the idea, to push as many emotional buttons as you can?
Well its all about doing what you’re meant to do and no frills, like Mose Allison said about me, if you want to look it up, ‘There’s no smoke or mirrors, there’s no lights. It is what you get.’ That’s basically what you get. I’m not a tap dancing act. It’s just singing and songwriting.


As I, and as most fans, would have expected it is an eclectic mixture and, going back to the emotions, I found myself listening to some of the tracks and I was uplifted by them. In some of them I was agreeing with you when you were having a go at materialism and how the bankers and the world elite are ruling us and then in other ones?…
(Interjects) Well I’m not really having a go. It’s like, as Lenny Bruce said. ‘It’s observation baby!’ It’s not having a go. It’s just observing what’s going on.

But if you put it as powerful as you do in your music, that surely constitutes a protest, would you not accept that?
A what? A protest? No, it is just observation. It’s just what’s around you on its most mundane level. If you turn on the box you get it, if you turn on the radio you get it. It’s money, money, money, money for several years now non-stop.

I take your point. Coming back to my point, if you show this discrepancy or the way this thing operates and you show it patently in your music people are going to assume, rightly or wrongly, that you are making a protest and they are going to label you, I think it’s a label you would fight against strongly, they are going to label you some sort of protest singer are they not?
No. So that means everyone that talks about financial crisis and how people are getting screwed and losing all their money is protesting? Is a protestor? Is that what you’re saying?  So that means that everybody that comes on the news or reads out the news is protesting?

But they are not putting it in as powerful a medium as you might be doing with your music? That’s the point I’m making.
Well it all depends on your viewpoint but I don’t see it as protest. I just see it as song writing. It’s simply observation. You can write an essay about this or write a piece about it or a journalist can write about it. Journalists write about this stuff so say Stephen Glover is writing for whichever paper, is he protesting?
No, he’s not protesting. He’s just writing a piece, so I don’t think it’s protesting.

Coming back to the album, I suppose if you were to follow the template of commercialism and you wanted to make a lot of money out of it you could simply put out 10 clones of ‘Brown Eyed Girl’ and almost be assured of it being a success?
Well I’ve ‘been there, done that’, but that’s not what it’s about. You start off young and then you get older and then hopefully along the way you gain more experience and you kind of absorb stuff and then you regurgitate that as songs. You’re not going to be the same as when you started out, no one is. Also, why would you want to clone ‘Brown Eyed Girl’?  That already exists and, on a different track, it’s not easy to clone ‘Brown Eyed Girl’s anyway, even if you wanted to because songs are unique within themselves. Some of them become more popular but you just can’t clone another one of those because there’s only one of them, you know what I’m saying?
So later on I got into writing more about my experiences because the songs I learned to write were the songs that were written during say, the 50’s, early 60’s period. They were usually kind of love songs so I learned to write from listening to those old fashioned love songs, you know, 2 verses, middle 8, verse, instrumental solo, go back into the bridge. I learned songwriting from the stuff I heard when I was growing up and listening to my fathers record collection and stuff like that and listening to Folk, people like Leadbelly, a lot of the blues singers, although the blues singers didn’t usually use middle 8’s, very rarely, they just used 12 bar but there was a lot of poetry in blues, so that was my kinda MO (modus operandi) for song writing and they were usually blues type of songs.
Blues, well that is more protest than anything if you think about it? Black guy singing about what he’s going through? They are real protest songs in the real sense of the word.  So I learned to write from that point of view, Sam Cooke, that type of thing. They are mainly kind of love songs, so later on then I started to write more about all the shit that you have to go through just to be and exist and keep doing what you are doing, which is more philosophical.

Can you isolate a point Van along your career, or maybe even along the chronological track of your albums, where you ceased to imitate the template of the 50’s and 60’s and when you became Van Morrison the singer/ songwriter doing his own thing?
Well, I’m always doing my own thing. I still use the 50’s template to write songs, even now.

But was there a point when you started actually putting your own experiences into the songs?
Well that’s what I’m getting to. That started later on with… I don’t remember the exact date… I think more going into the 90’s.

Was there one album that maybe started this trend?
I think there is one in particular with about 6 songs on it. I think it’s ‘What’s Wrong With This Picture’ but it probably started before that. There were a couple of songs before that, a song called ‘Fame’ (fame, they’ve taken everything and twisted it), so somewhere around there.

Eclectic is the word that comes to mind when I describe your albums, or have done in the past, and this one isn’t any exception. There is soul in there, blues, it’s jazz, it’s a Van Morrison collection, so you have?…. I don’t know if resisted is the right word, but you haven’t been channelled into any one direction along the way?
No, you see I was lucky because Ray Charles was like my role model and he always said he did everything. It’s all music and he did everything and he reinvented a couple of things too while he was at it. And there were guys like Bobby Darin who did everything, I mean Bobby Darin was song writing before anybody even knew what that was but he could also do other stuff. He could do folk, he could do Frank Sinatra, you know, so there’s people like that who covered all the bases.

I suppose one of the dangers of writing your own songs and putting your own thoughts, you call them observations, the danger might be Van that you leave yourself vulnerable to people saying ‘Ah well that’s what he actually feels at this moment’, that’s him honestly saying ‘This Is Me’. Is this fair? Can I accept that what you’re portraying in this album, these are your thoughts at this moment?
No, it’s not this moment, but that moment. Continue reading →

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Giants of Mali Music Now Banned By Islamist Fighters

Posted on December 7, 2012 by Tony

Islamist fighters who have taken over Niafunke, in Mali, 100km south-west of Timbuktu have now introduced a strict social code: Women and girls must be covered, young men cannot wear loose trousers and all forms of music are banned.

Reports are that two young men were recently whipped last month after they were caught smoking tobacco.

Ali Farke Toure is perhaps the biggest music star in Africa and who turned music into one of Mali’s best known exports after teaming up with Ry Cooder, to produce the Grammy-winning album ‘Talking Timbuktu’ in 1994 has had his music banned by people who want to live in the middle ages.

Toure was ranked by Rolling Stone magazine as among the 100 great guitarists of all time and starred in the Martin Scorsese documentary, ‘Feel Like Going Home’, which traced the roots of the blues back to West Africa.

The Islamist militants have banned everything they deem to be against Sharia, or Islamic law.

“They are destroying our culture,” says one Mali’s most famous singers, Salif Keita. He is currently in Mali, preparing for a world tour to accompany the release of his latest album.

“If there’s no music, no Timbuktu, it means that there is no more culture in Mali,” he adds, sitting in the grounds of his home on the small island he owns on the river Niger outside the capital, Bamako.

Keita is referring to the destruction in June of the ancient shrines in Timbuktu’s mosques. The buildings were Unesco World Heritage Sites but considered by the Islamists to be idolatrous.

Dozens of musicians have fled south since the crisis began, among them Khaira Arby “the Voice of the North”. “Islamists have jammed radio airwaves,” she says. “They’re even confiscating mobile phones and replacing ringtones with Koranic verses,” she laments.

From Timbuktu to Gao, telephones have become the only way to listen to music lately. Those who have risked turning a stereo on have immediately attracted the attention of the Islamist police. Their equipment would be either seized or smashed.

Now mobile phones with memory cards are the main target for Islamist militants bent on banishing music.

Giants of Mali’s music whose music is now banned

  • Ali Farka Toure: Guitarist and singer
  • Salif Keita: Singer and guitarist
  • Amadou and Miriam: Blind singers and guitarist
  • Rokia Traore: Singer
  • Cheick Tidiane Seck: Singer and keyboards
  • Mory Kante: Singer and kora player
  • Toumani Diabate: Kora player
  • Djelimady Tounkara: Guitarist
  • Oumou Sangare: Singer
  • Tinariwen: Tuareg former rebel singers and guitarists
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