“I Hear The Train A Comin’. . .” : The Johnny Cash Show

Posted on October 3, 2014 by ManRoy Music — 1 Comment

I just got back from a trip to Nashville and Memphis. The musical legacy of there two cities is so immense that it’s just ridiculous. One of the high points of my trip was the Johnny Cash Museum. I’m a big Johnny Cash fan already but the museum made me even more aware of how truly awesome this man was. One of the many cool things Cash did was “The Johnny Cash Show. It ran on ABC from June 7, 1969 to March 31, 1971 and was taped in front of a live audience at the Ryman Auditorium in Nashvile. Besides featuring members of his regular touring show (which included the legendary Carter Family and the amazing Carl Perkins), he also would showcase fellow country music greats like Merle Haggard, George Jones, Waylon Jennings, Tammy Wynette and Bill Monroe. He would also have performers not associated with country music, both classic and contemporary. These included people like Bob Dylan, Louis Armstrong, Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, James Taylor, Linda Ronstandt, and in what I believe to be their only videoed performance, Derek & The Dominoes. Whew!!
Given that the U.S was in the middle of a “generation gap” culture war, Johnny Cash’s decision to feature artists such as these is a great testament to the man’s courage. It also demonstrated that Johnny had a trait that I believe to common to great artists: he was open to new sounds, new sights and new ideas and didn’t care where they came from, as long as it was good.

Dylan appeared on the first episode of the Johnny Cash show. Dylan was being treated like the new messiah at this time so this was a big thing. His appearance coincided with the release of Nashville Skyline so in context it make perfect sense. Those fans who were expecting an apocalyptic revelation a la “Desolation Row” were no doubt disappointed but the years gone by has only shown how timeless these performances are.

Bob Dylan – I Threw It All Away

Bob Dylan & Johnny Cash – Girl Of the North Country

For a study in contrasts, here is Johnny’s duet with Joni Mitchell on the same song, Girl Of The North Country.

Joni Mitchell & Johnny Cash – Girl Of the North Country

When Neil Young appeared on the Johnny Cash show, he was preceded by a clip of Johnny talking to students of Vanderbilt University about a variety of topics, including drugs. This serves as a fitting preamble to Neil Young’s performance of Needle And The Damage Done. That and the next tune, Journey Through The Past, were newly written by Neil. It was while in Nashville for the taping of this show that Neil decided to record his next album there. That record was Harvest, one of Neil’s true masterpieces.

Neil Young – Needle & The Damage Done/Journey Through The Past


As I said previously, I believe this to be the only performance by Derek & The Dominoes on video. They do the old Chuck Willis ballad, “It’s Too Late” (which they did on Layla) followed by a kick ass version of the Carl Perkins tune “Matchbox’ with the man himself, Carl Perkins. Perkins and Clapton each take a chorus and they both solo together on a third. Carl is throwing down some rockabilly flash while Clapton sounds like he’s channeling some serious Chuck Berry moves. Classic.

Derek & The Dominoes – It’s Too Late/Matchbox w/ Carl Perkins and Johnny Cash

What can you say about the genius that is Ray Charles. Here he is doing his own version of Johnny Cash’s Ring Of Fire. To say that he totally remakes it into his own is a understatement. Here, he rearranges the original chords of the verse to a bluesy two chord vamp before going into the chorus. Dig how he ends the song literally on a whisper.

Ray Charles – Ring Of Fire

Finally, Johnny Cash and the great Louis Armstrong recreating Jimmy Rogers’ Blue Yodel #9,  which Armstrong played on originally. Jimmy Rogers (one of country music’s first superstars), Johnny Cash and Louis Armstrong. So much history and greatness intersecting here. This performance occurred on October 28th, 1970, less than a year before Armstrong passed away. Cash was said to be especially proud of bringing Louis Armstrong to the stage of the Ryman Auditorium, where Armstrong was previously barred from playing due to Jim Crow segregation laws. A country music star like Cash didn’t have to do things like that but he did. Actions like that underscore what we can hear in the man’s music: his innate decency. A model for us all.

Louis Armstrong & Johnny Cash – Blue Yodel #9

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Posted in Classic Rock, Music Appreciation and Analysis

The Mother Of All Funk Chords: A Brillant Video from Kutiman

Posted on September 20, 2014 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

I have previously featured the work from the artist Kutiman when I showcased his video “My Favorite Band”. With that video, Kutiman took up to 80 You Tube videos of assorted musicians doing Led Zeppelin’s Black Dog and edited them together to create a great mashup cover version of the Led Zep tune. This time I want to feature another video of his that uses a similar method but this time to create an original song. Once again, Kutiman takes snippets of seemingly unrelated musician videos and layers them together to create a new beast altogether. It strikes me that this is not unlike the sampling of old vinyl records to create a hip-hop or dance music track but here it’s someone using You Tube videos as the source material, creating not just a new song but the song’s video as well.
The video itself is awesome. As the “My Favorite Band” video shows the ubiquity of Led Zeppelin for rock musicians, this one demonstrates the pervasiveness of the one chord funk jam (and yes, they all inevitably seem to be based on the E9th chord). I’ve been involved in more of these than I care to remember and I’ve instigated more of these than I am willing to admit. Some of them were great fun. Others seemed like they would go on forever and yet they never seemed to go anywhere at all. The virtual one presented here is definitely one of the fun ones. Enjoy.

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Posted in Classic Rock, Music Appreciation and Analysis

Live-Evil: Miles Davis Deconstructes The Blues on Sivad/Honky Tonk (1970)

Posted on September 14, 2014 by ManRoy Music — 3 Comments

Sort of continuing the Miles Davis theme from my previous post, I want to discuss one specific piece of Miles from the early seventies: “Honky Tonk” (a studio recording on the album “Get Up With It”) or “Sivad” (as the live version is called  on the album “Live-Evil”). Sivad (Davis spelled backwards) was the first thing I ever heard of Miles. I had been reading about Miles Davis and his record Bitches Brew in Rolling Stone and was already curious about this music when the magazine gave a great review of Live-Evil. So on my 13th birthday I went to Alexander’s Department Store on Fordham Road in the Bronx and bought Live-Evil (along with “Third” by Soft Machine – a topic for a future post for sure).
I have to admit that of the two records, Live-Evil took me longer to appreciate. Miles really clicked for me when I heard “Right Off” from Tribute To Jack Johnson (once again, another topic for a future post) but there was something I heard in Sivad/Honkey Tonk that always intrigued me. Eventually it came to me: this is Miles breaking down the Blues to it’s most basic form and rebuilding it into this new thing that certainly doesn’t sound like your 12 bar blues but to me still retains that essence of the blues.
Honky Tonk was first recorded on May 19th, 1970. According to Paul Tingen’s excellent book, “Miles Beyond: The Electric Explorations of Miles Davis, 1967 – 1991”, the personnel was Miles – trumpet, Keith Jarret – electric piano, Herbie Hancock – clavinet, John McLaughlin – guitar, Gene Perla – bass, Billy Cobham – drums and Airto Moreira – percussion. This was Jarret’s first session with Miles. The tune starts with the clavinet through a wah-wah pedal, followed first by Jarret on the electric piano and then McLaughlin on guitar. McLaughlin is justly famous for his blazing lead work but I was always knocked out by his rhythm guitar playing with Miles. Here, he’s stabbing out chords like Jimmy Nolan mixed with Martian DNA (also check out his playing on the previously mentioned “Right Off”). After about a minute of them dancing around each other over one chord, you begin to hear the main chord sequence and at 1:10, the bass, drums and percussion enter, establishing the stop start rhythm that defines the tune. That main chord sequence is basically just two chords, a I7 – IV7 progression, one used by many a rock band. It’s also the heart of the blues. It’s like he took the first two measures of a 12 bar “quick change” blues progression (where the first 4 measures are I7/IV7/I7/I7) and built it from there. There’s a lot of space in that start and start groove and it allows the listener to hear the musical conversation between Hancock, Jarret and McLaughlin (along with those weird sounds from Airto’s percussion). It’s one of the many reasons why I like this tune so much.  It then throws another curve at you at the 1:55 mark when McLaughlin goes into a old school Blues rhythm guitar groove over that I7 – IV7 progression. So at this point you have the band sounding like they’re playing at a bar on Chicago’s south side mixed with this funky but strange clavinet and these even stranger sounds from Airto (playing the cuica) that evoke the Amazon jungle. And this is when Miles enters. But almost as soon as the bar band groove settles in, the band is back to the stop start rhythm, but now with Miles playing these cool blues inflected lines and McLaughlin slashing out chords. Then it’s back to the blues shuffle groove briefly and then once again to the stop start approach. This see-sawing between the two different settings provide a sense of tension and release as well as textural variety to the song. This is vital to the success of the piece which would otherwise soon sound boring due to the repetitive nature of its harmony. The song ends with a reprise of the intro of clavinet, electric piano and guitar.

Though the live version of Honky Tonk was recorded after the studio version, on December 19th, 1970, it was released well before the studio version. Titled Sivad, it was the first cut on the Miles album Live-Evil (released November, 1971 while the studio version Honky Tonk was released as part of the album Get Up With It in November, 1974). Sivad is actually a post production constructed medley comprised of three components. The beginning is an excerpt of the tune “Directions”, recorded at the Cellar Door in Washington D.C. on December 19th, 1970. At the 3:27 mark, the intro from the studio version of “Honky Tonk” is edited in. Finally, at 4:15, you hear the live version of “Honky Tonk”, also from December 19th, 1970. The live version has the return of Jarrett, Airto, McLaughlin and obviously Miles. The rhythm section is now Michael Henderson on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums along with Gary Bartz on sax. The absence of Herbie Hancock’s clavinet open up the sound considerably and as a result, you hear the Keith Jarrett’s electric piano much more prominently as well as Airto’s squawking percussion sounds (and unfortunately his occasional vocalizing). Around this time, Miles began using an electric trumpet, played though a wah-wah pedal. Here is using it to add shading to his tone, similar to how other trumpeters used a plunger to color their sound. At about 8:04, Miles switches from the electric trumpet to the regular trumpet  and begins going in for some high note power trumpet playing.
In contrast to the studio version, McLaughlin’s rhythm playing is much more subdued but here he is given a decent amount of solo space. For a long time, I wasn’t particularly thrilled with McLaughlin’s solo. I felt that his sound here was thin and dry. McLaughlin was not a regular member of Miles’ touring band and the decision to have him play was made that morning. He got there that halfway through the evening, a situation that no doubt played a part in his less than stellar sound. But in listening again to his solo, I realized that he is playing some seriously sick stuff. Jarret takes a brief solo that features some interesting sparing with DeJohnett before Miles returns with some more high note playing before the tunes abruptly fades out.

To borrow a phrase from the Art Ensemble of Chicago, this is blues, Ancient to the Future. Miles does indeed run the voodoo down.

Miles Davis – “Honky Tonk” from Get Up With It

Miles Davis – “Sivad” from Live-Evil

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Posted in Blues, Jazz, Music Appreciation and Analysis

A Different Kind Of Blue: A Video Transcription of Miles Davis’s “So What”

Posted on September 5, 2014 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

Miles Davis. Kind Of Blue. This is one of those seminal moments in the history of 20th century music. In jazz, this was certainly one of those before/after things. Many of the concepts popularized by Kind Of Blue were not new, but after this record, they immediately began to be adopted by many other jazz musicians. It’s impact on music beyond jazz is also far reaching. I don’t think it would not be incorrect to say that without Kind Of Blue, there would be no Dark Star or Whipping Post or even Free Bird.
Kind Of Blue was recorded in March and April, 1959. The video below is from a television broadcast entitled “The Sound Of Miles Davis”, that was made right in the middle of the time that Kind Of Blue was recorded, April 2, 1959. The band here is slightly different from the one on the record, most notably the use here of pianist Wynton Kelly instead of Bill Evans (the large orchestra you see in the video is really a non-presence on “So What” and were used more prominently on the other pieces played on the program).
The really, really, really cool thing about this video is the transcription of the music and the way it is synched to the recording. Obviously, music is primarily an audio experience but people largely process information in a visual manner. So I always find it fascinating to follow music with a score or transcription. As you follow the transcription with the music, you can see the contour of melody as well as hear it. I also thinks it helps one visualize the use of space in a solo. With that in mind, you can see the difference in how Coltrane and Miles used space. In Miles’ solo, you’ll often see there are whole measures where Miles plays nothing or is just sustaining a note from the previous measure. Also notice how Miles often is just repeating one note but it sounds cool because that note swings. Coltrane’s solo is much denser. It doesn’t take long before you can hear and see the runs of 32nd notes that just seem to cascade out from his horn. If Coltrane was a contemporary guitarist, he would definely be labeled a shredder.
Needless to say, this video transcription also gives one the chance to cop some great lines from some of the true masters. And don’t forget to check out the playing of Wynton Kelly. The vast majority of jazz nerds identify “So What” with the brilliant Bill Evans from the classic studio recording but Wynton’s playing here is great. More blues inflected than Bill Evans, less floating and more “old school” swinging than Evans’ solo. This transcription only has Wynton’s right hand melody lines (mislabeled “left hand only”) but it’s definitely worth examination.

 

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Posted in Improvisation, Jazz, Music Appreciation and Analysis

“Summertime Done, Come And Gone, My, Oh, My. . .”: Happy Labor Day

Posted on August 29, 2014 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

Wishing everyone a happy Labor Day weekend. Here in the United States, Labor Day is the psychological, if not actual, end of summer. This leads me to the clip below. A video of the Grateful Dead playing U.S. Blues as the encore of a show at Duke University in Durham, N.C. on April 4, 1978. While never a big favorite of mine, U.S. Blues can be a fun song and that’s the best way to describe this performance that luckily was captured on video.
Garcia was apparently in a real good mood. You can see it from the way he’s bopping along from the very start of the song. The way he sings “I’m Uncle Sam, how do you do?” in the first verse or the way he belts out “Steal your wife” later on. I have never seen him this animated. By the end of the song, Jerry is doing rock star moves that should inspire the air guitarist in many an old deadhead. “My, oh my” indeed.

Grateful Dead – U.S. Blues (encore) , 1978-04-12, Duke University, Durhan, N.C.

 

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Posted in Classic Rock, Grateful Dead, Jam Band, Music Appreciation and Analysis

“Bing, Bing, Bing, Bing”: The Awesome Guitar Of Charlie Hunter

Posted on August 22, 2014 by ManRoy Music — 2 Comments
I’m just saw Charlie Hunter this past week. I’ve lost count of how many times I seen him but the number is in the double digits easy.
I first heard about Charlie Hunter in a Guitar Player magazine article as someone who will “change jazz guitar”. I tend to view such statements with a fair degree of cynicism but when I saw that he was playing in a free concert that was part of the JVC Jazz Festival, I figured it was worth checking out. So yeah, the magazine was right, he changed jazz guitar, at least for me. This was 1995, he had just released his first album for Blue Note records, “Bing. Bing, Bing, Bing”. First off, he was playing the guitar part and the bass part simultaneously. Charlie wasn’t the first person to play jazz guitar in a contrapuntal finger-style manner but the practitioners of this style (Joe Pass, Tuck Andress to name a couple) usually employed this technique in a solo guitar format. Here, it was being done in a group format. And not only was he playing basslines that actually sounded like a bass, he was playing fluent solo lines at the same time. Before this, I had never heard a guitar played with that degree of separation between the solo lines and the accompaniment.
Technical Note: At that time, Charlie Hunter was playing a custom 8 string guitar with the bottom three strings are tuned E, A, D, like the lower three strings on a bass and the top five are tuned A, D, G, B and E, as on guitar. The signals of the bass string group and guitar string group were sent to separate amps, allowing for the sound of each string group to be processed differently. This is one factor in explaining the distinction you hear between the bass part vs. the guitar part. Of course, the other (big!) factor is his amazing technique.
The thing that impressed me even more was the sound of the group. It brought to mind a very hip, modern take on the classic soul jazz organ trio with Charlie Hunter’s 8 string guitar taking the place of the Hammond B3 organ (this made sense since I subsequently read in interviews that Charlie was heavily influenced by organ players like Larry Young, the similarity to the organ being made even more pronounced when he would use a Leslie organ speaker simulator pedal). These were great tunes that grooved in a loose natural manner, vert different from the stilted airless feel of “smooth jazz”. Hunter’s songs were funky but not in a hokey way. They also had great melodic appeal. They were singable but not insipid. I also dug how the sax was integrated into the group sound. During Charlie’s solo, the sax would play lines that would reinforce the harmony. It’s a simple bit of small scale orchestration that I think makes a big impact on the music.
The following group of clips are from that period (1995 – 1996), featuring the same trio (with tenor-saxophonist Dave Ellis and drummer Scott Amendola) and songs from “Bing. Bing, Bing, Bing”. These two clips feature Charlie Hunter originals and demonstrate what I was talking about: head bopping groove, cool melodies, great solos.

Charlie Hunter trio – Thursday the 12th
Charlie Charlie Hunter trio – Funky Niblets

This third clip showcases another great facet of Charlie Hunter: his great choice of covers. Here he is doing a version of Nirvana’s “Come As You Are”. There has always been a tradition of using popular songs as jazz vehicles. That’s how songs like “All The Tings You Are” or “Night And Day” became jazz standards. But I had never heard a jazz take on an alternative rock song before this and it didn’t sound contrived. It was cool. Dig the recasting of the time signature from 4/4 to 6/8. Also the way he takes a riff very reminiscent of the intro of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and incorporates it into main vamp section.

Charlie Hunter trio – “Come As You Are”

Another great Charlie Hunter jazz cover, this is from 1997 when the group (now a quartet) released an album covering the entire Bob Marley record “Natty Dread”.Charlie Hunter Quartet – “Lively Up Yourself”

Since that time, Charlie Hunter has released more that 20 albums, in formats ranging from solo guitar to quintets. It seems every couple of records he has to change things up. Lately, he has been playing in either guitar/drum duos or solo (as I saw him this past week). Does he sound as awesome playing solo as he did in the groups you heard above. I think so. Here are two clips of him in a solo guitar format as Exhibit A and Exhibit B.

Charlie Hunter (solo guitar) – Oakland

Charlie Hunter (solo guitar) – Recess

If you are a “guitar nerd” (or you’re interested in great music), you owe it to yourself to check him out.

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Posted in Jazz, Music Appreciation and Analysis

Bass Is The Place: How Being A Bassist Made Me A Better Musician

Posted on August 14, 2014 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

I play several different instruments but in the capacity of an actively performing musician, I am primarily a bassist. And like many bassists, I started out as a guitarist. I had been playing guitar for about five or six years and in that time I had already dabbled with several different styles of guitar playing: electric and delta blues, finger picking, bluegrass flat picking, slide guitar, fusion and straight ahead jazz guitar (talk about your Attention Deficit Disorder).  I had been getting heavily into the Grateful Dead when I met another guitarist who was farther along in playing their music and we decided we should start a band. At that moment, I decided I would play bass rather than guitar. I figured that there were always enough guitarists around and it would be much harder to find a bassist. I also thought that since I had a good knowledge of the fretboard and of music theory that it should be relatively easy to pick it up. Hell, Phil Lesh (the bassist for the Dead if you didn’t know and the obvious model for my leaning the bass at that point) started as a trumpeter/modern classical composer before becoming a bassist and at the very least, my dexterity on the guitar would transfer to the bass. And so the Long Strange Trip began (sorry, I couldn’t help myself).

Side Bar: Lesh’s style is very far from the norm of bass playing and, as much as I love his playing, he would not be the best bassist to emulate when beginning to learn the art of bass playing (unless you plan on only playing Grateful Dead). This was a GD tribute band so playing in such a style was an obvious requirement. It did however, get me started playing bass and that led to playing in a lot of different people and styles. So I started as playing complicated “out” stuff and eventually learned to simplify my playing lines as the situation required.  If you don’t adapt your playing to best serve the music, you’re not going to keep your bass gigs.

Becoming a bassist made me a better guitarist. It made me a better musician. How? First, learning to play bass meant really learning scales and arpeggios in every position of the neck. You really need to know exactly where you are on the fretboard in relation to the harmony of the song. Guitarists can (and often do) play over the harmony. As a bassist, you need to play in the harmony. Second, to play bass means you also must become a team player. I like the analogy of being a offensive lineman on a football team. You open up the running and passing lanes so the singer and guitarist can be like the quarterback or running back and make “the big play” (and, as in football, you’ll usually only appreciated by “students of the game”). Third, playing the bass makes you more conscious of the rhythmic value of the notes you’re playing. When playing bass, I became much more aware on how things like playing a eighth note instead of a quarter note affected the groove. Even more importantly,  it made me aware of how not playing a note made an impact.
Ultimately, the bass ties together the three cornerstones of music: rhythm. harmony and melody. You are defining the rhythmic framework of the harmony in a melodic manner. That’s pretty heavy stuff when you think about it and maybe that’s another reason why the bass is so cool: the true virtuosity of the bass isn’t in the execution of what you play, it’s in the conception.

I will be discussing specific bassists in more detail in future posts but for now I want to call your attention to an amazing but unsung bass performance. The cut is “Texas” by Buddy Miles from the album “Electric Church”. It’s a great example of what I was talking about. It’s a walking bass on a slow blues but it provides the forward motion that allows the vocals, guitar and organ to strut their stuff. It’s a textbook example of playing a slow blues groove that’s simple, supportive and also incredible melodic.
The bassist is Bill Rich. He also played on the early John McLaughlin album “Devotion”, an under appreciated classic of jazz-rock. Ever hear of him? Didn’t think so. So goes the life of the bassist.

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Posted in Bass, Improvisation, Music Appreciation and Analysis

Stick Theory: The Continuing Adventure Of The Chapman Stick Guitar & Me

Posted on August 7, 2014 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

My wife suggested that I move the material I have on my Chapman Stick Guitar page to a post on my Home page so it gets seen by more people. I agreed but felt this was a good opportunity to update and elaborate on the topic.

The Chapman Stick was developed by Emmett Chapman in the early 70’s. I think it can best be described as a hybrid guitar/bass instrument. Instead of using one hand to fret the note and the other hand to pluck the string, you play the note by tapping the string at the fret, requiring only one hand. This means that you now can use both hands to play independent part, like a piano.
I remembered reading about the Chapman Stick in Downbeat magazine when they first came out and even seeing someone play one at Sam Ash Guitars at 48th Street, NYC but the thought of actually playing one was well outside my ambitions at the time. However, sometime around 2010, I read an article by Stickist Steve Adelson about the instrument and immediately saw the possibilities it offered for my own music. After experimenting with different configurations, I am now playing a Chapman Stick Guitar in what is referred to as Dual Guitar tuning. It makes the Stick Guitar the equivalent to a double neck guitar played on one wide fretboard. Playing it is like being a one man guitar duet. Cool!

cropped-sg-12-chapman-stick2.jpg

The biggest challenge by far is developing hand independence. I always envied how a keyboard player can improvise freely with the right hand over a accompaniment part in the left. That’s what drew me to the Stick. I have to say that my attempts to develop this skill has given me a lot of respect for the keyboard players who pull it off. It’s hard! My goal is to be able to play improvised lines with the right hand while doing things like playing a walking basslines with the left. For now, I find that my left hand parts tend to be bass note-chord, bass note-chord. It’s something that transferred naturally from my guitar playing except now I tap the the pattern with my left hand instead of plucking the strings with my right hand thumb and fingers.

To demonstrate, here (again) is a video of me playing a couple of choruses of Stormy Monday on the Chapman Stick Guitar:

It’s a start but every time I practice (I try to get in an hour or more a day) I am reminded of how far I have to go. But my continuing adventures with the Chapman stick guitar have reminded me of two of the most important things required to master an instrument (or nearly anything else) : persistence and patience.

If you want to learn more about the Chapman Stick, go to http://www.stick.com/.

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Posted in Chapman Stick, Music Appreciation and Analysis

“Hey, Hey Mama”: Cover Versions Of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”

Posted on August 7, 2014 by ManRoy Music — Leave a comment

I became aware of this video from the website OpenCulture.com. It’s a combination of 80 different YouTube video covers of Led Zeppelin’s “Black Dog”. I guess it shows how getting your Led Zeppelin riffs down is a rite of passage for playing rock music. I love when it goes split screen and syncs up multiple videos but the very best moment occurs at 2:23 when Grover (of that classic hardcore outfit Sesame Street) rocks the house.

For a different take on “Black Dog”, I give you Dread Zeppelin. I think these guys are hilarious. They did reggae versions of Zep songs and were fronted by a Elvis Presley (late Vegas version) impersonator. Talk about high concept. These guys were a total goof. The members had names like Ed Zeppelin, Jah Paul Jones and Tortelvis. But what makes it all really cool is that on a musical level, it works. The arrangements are inventive and listening to Tortelvis, you realize the influence Elvis Presley had on Robert Plant as a vocalist. Sometimes the shtick gets a little heavy but I think they’re great. I knew someone who hated them and thought they were insult to the legend of Led Zeppelin. I say lighten up (jah mon).

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Posted in Blues, Classic Rock, Music Appreciation and Analysis

“A Friend Of The Devil Is A Friend Of Mine”: Jerry Garcia’s Birthday

Posted on August 1, 2014 by ManRoy Music — 1 Comment

Jerry Garcia would have been 72 years old today. I want to avoid going on about the usual stuff that has been written about Jerry and the Grateful Dead but I want to hit these points:

No one sounds like him. You can recognize his guitar playing almost immediately. Guitar players in that category are few and far between.

The breadth of his music is vast. From Appalachian folk ballads to honky-tonk country to R&B to outer space. He went down many different roads and took us with him.

Many of the songs he wrote with Robert Hunter are things of beauty. “Wharf Rat”, “Comes A Time”, “Ripple”, “Brown Eyed Women”, “Friend Of The Devil”, “Uncle John’s Band”, “The Wheel” and there are many more. His songs feel like they are part of a tradition yet at the same time, move that tradition forward.

His music served as a portal through which I became aware of John Coltrane and Bill Monroe, Charles Ives and Jimmy Reed, Bobby Blue Bland and Miles Davis. Wow!

The clips below are from the Merle Saunders album “Fire Up”.  This album preceded the “Live At The Keystone” record and because it was billed primarily as a Merle Saunders album featuring Jerry Garcia and Tom Fogerty, it didn’t get that much attention. It’s also a pretty uneven album but when it’s good, it’s smokin’. . .
First up is a instrumental take of the Soul Survivors’ song “Expressway To Your Heart”. I think this is some of Garcia’s best guitar playing in a studio setting. Ever wonder what Jerry would sound like in a funky soul jazz combo? Well, here you go.

Next is their cover of the Ray Charles tune “Lonely Avenue”. There is a fierceness to his playing that should dispel the naysayers. Great vocals from Jerry as well.

Finally, a really cool interview with Jerry that was done for the mini-series “The History of Rock ‘N’ Roll”.

Happy Birthday Jerry. Thank you.

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Posted in Grateful Dead, Jam Band, Music Appreciation and Analysis
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