Stanley Booth Red Hot and Blue: Fifty Years of Writing About Music, …

Red Hot and Blue: Fifty Years of Writing About Music, Memphis, and Motherf**kers
Stanley Booth
2019: Chicago Review Press
400 6X9 pages.

Author of the excellent collection of blues- and jazz-related pieces, "Rythm Oil," Stanley Booth, has another compilation of mostly blues- and jazz-related pieces in this new book (In addition to chapters on such folk as Bobby Rush and Phineas Newborn Jr, there is a piece on photographer Williams Eggleston). To say Booth is opinionated is an understatement, but to give a minor sense of the flavor of his writing there is this quote from the opening article, "Blues Dues" about reading a galley about a book on blues whose publisher sought his endorsement:

"So, finally, I picked up one of the proofs to look it over. I hadn’t read far before I came upon these words: “The weekend I was in Memphis …” Unlike many before him, who’d simply bought a lot of blues records, listened to them, and written a book, this writer had made the extra effort of going to the blues museum in Clarksdale, Mississippi, passing through Memphis on his way there, thus becoming an authority. I, who lived in Memphis twenty-five years, going in the course of my research to the city and county jails as a guest more times than I cared to remember, found it hard to restrain myself from hurling the galley all the way back to New York. …

There’s the blues, an emotional state, and there’s the blues, an art form, or a group of art forms. Believe me, when you’re in the Memphis jail, city or county, you got the blues. When you’re in your cozy room, listening to Robert Johnson’s plaintive tunes, you’re hearing the blues. Two different worlds. But some people, people from Berkeley, or Boston, or wherever, are so highly imaginative that they make a leap of funk and become Spokesmen of the Blues. No, really, they make a living this way. People in Dublin, London, Kyoto, Amsterdam, and Lower Slobbovia read them and feel somehow enhanced, enlightened, end manned by the blues.

I never intended to have anything to do with the blues. They came into my life through my bedroom window when I was a child. It wasn’t a matter of choice. What I learned, I paid for in experience at the school where they arrest you first and tell you why later."

There are brief portraits like the one on King Oliver (that ends "Oliver died two months later, on April 10, 1938. His sister used her rent money to bring his body north and gave up her plot in Woodlawn for him. But there is still no headstone on the grave of one of the true founding fathers of jazz.") and a lengthier one on Ma Rainey which includes a brief history of minstrel shows and development of music to the blues before chronicling her life and career and another one on Blind Willie McTell with its detailed chronicling of McTell's Library of Congress recordings and the account that McTell was allegedly paid ten dollars for the session.

There are two chapters on Furry Lewis that are based in part on the close relationship between the two and tell Furry's story and gives a glimpse about how good Booth's writing is. "Furry put the candle down and leaned back in his chair. 'When I was eighteen, nineteen years old, he said, 'I was good. And when I was twenty, I had my own band, and we could all play. Had a boy named Ham, played jug. Willie Polk played the fiddle and another boy, call him Shoefus, played the guitar, like I did. All of us North Memphis boys. We’d meet at my house and walk down Brinkley to Poplar and go up Poplar to Dunlap or maybe all the way down to Main. People would stop us on the street and say, ‘Do you know so-and-so?’ And we’d play it and they’d give us a little something. Sometimes we’d pick up fifteen or twenty dollars before we got to Beale. Wouldn’t take no streetcar. Long as you walked, you’s making money; but if you took the streetcar, you didn’t make nothing and you’d be out the nickel for the ride.'"

Then Booth describes Furry's life today. "Furry has been working for the City of Memphis Sanitation Department since 1923. Shortly after two o’clock each weekday morning, he gets out of bed, straps on his artificial leg, dresses, and makes a fresh pot of coffee, which he drinks while reading the Memphis Press-Scimitar. The newspaper arrives in the afternoon, but Furry does not open it until morning. Versie is still asleep and the paper is company for him as he sits in the kitchen under the harsh light of the ceiling bulb, drinking the hot, sweet coffee. He does not eat breakfast; when the coffee is gone, he leaves for work."

There are chapters on Elvis, one on Elvis in 1967 and one on the aftermath of his death and what happened to Elvis' Doctor who became a scapegoat for some after Elvis passed away who believed (contrary to the autopsy which said Elvis did not die of drugs) the Doctor was responsible and pictured as a pusher. A chapter on The Memphis Soul Sound takes us to The Bar-Kays funeral; Otis and Steve Cropper working on and recording "Sitting At the Dock of the Bay"; Issac Hayes and David Porter working up a song; a visit to American Studio and Donald Crews and Dan Penn; and WDIA's annual Goodwill Revue including Carla Thomas story. Booth notes that the next night after the Goodwill Revue Otis Redding and most of The Bar-Kays would be dead.
In his history of Beale Street, the chapter "Beale Street's Gone Dry," he writes, "In 1959, having graduated from Sidney Lanier High School for (white) Boys in Macon, Georgia, I moved with my family to Memphis. I knew little about the place other than that it was on the Mississippi River and had an association with the kind of music I liked. I soon learned that Memphis was, if anything, even more “Southern” and puritanical than Macon, with no liquor served by the drink and almost no integration. Restaurants, taxis, hotels, parks, libraries, movies, all were segregated. Blacks still sat in the back of the buses. Whites who wanted to hear black music went to an all-white club called the Plantation Inn across the river in West Memphis, Arkansas, and listened to a singing group called the Del Rios or to Loman Pauling and the Five Royales. My first experience on Beale Street was being thrown out of a Ray Charles concert at the Hippodrome for sharing a table with some black classmates from newly integrated Memphis State University. There were tables for blacks and tables for whites, but no mixing allowed. 'What you mean, pattin’ these nigger girls on the ass?' a cop asked me. 'I haven’t patted anybody on the ass yet, sweetheart,' I said, finding myself seconds later face-to-face with the gravel in the alley. Living in Memphis, off and on, for twenty-five years, learning the blues, I would come to know those alleys, that downtown gravel, well."

Then there is a piece he wrote about Phineas Newborn, Jr., that ended up being an obituary in the Village Voice, where he traced the Newborn family history, including the father, drummer Phineas Sr. and brother, guitarist Calvin, as well as Phineas Jr.'s life and brilliant career, not ignoring the psychological issues this piano genius experienced. "Phineas Newborn, I would learn, was to some people a living symbol of African American genius, the ultimate product of a tradition whose roots are mysterious and deep. His family life and American music were one and the same, with a cast including Elvis Presley, B. B. King, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, Charles Mingus. His style resembled that of Secretariat, or the young Muhammad Ali. He could think of things to do that no one else had ever done, and then he would do them. He had, another Memphis pianist once observed, “a boogie-woogie left hand, a bebop right hand, and this ... third hand.” But it was not simply unsurpassed technique that made his work so affecting: his music derived power from its own emotional range—the outer-space comedy of 'Salt Peanuts,' the nostalgic humor of 'Memphis Blues,' the rhapsodic sadness of 'The Midnight Sun Will Never Set,' the majesty of 'The Lord’s Prayer.'"

The article on Bobby Rush brought much about Bobby that went way beyond his musical persona, but assesses his stature as a major blues artist. "In the following account, I try to avoid invidious comparisons between Bobby Rush—it’s a stage name, and he likes it used in full—and great historical figures like B. B. King and John Lee Hooker, who have not made an exciting recording in years. Bobby Rush, in his mid-sixties, continues to make first-rate R&B records and to have the best stage show since Ike and Tina broke up. If my friend Mick Jagger were hip enough and wanted to revive his career—instead of endlessly dragging his scrawny ass around the planet regurgitating his greatest hits—he would cut Bobby Rush’s 'Jezebel.' But he’s not hip enough, nowhere near as hip as this senior citizen from Houma, Louisiana, southwest of New Orleans, within spitting distance of the Gulf of Mexico. Not Houma proper but a farm near there. Bobby Rush is the real thing, as country as a tree full of owls or a passel of possums. But he’s also at least as up to date as Kansas City."

There is a brief appreciation of Marvin Sease and extended one of his friend, the celebrated photographer William Joseph Eggleston. The closing chapter, which gives this volume its title is on legendary Memphis disc jockey Dewey Phillips and takes us from his heyday, through his fall and his funeral with Elvis and Priscilla there. This chapter, like practically everything in this superb collection of Stanley Booth's writing, authoritative, evocative, informative, and compelling reading.

I received a download to review from a publicist. Here is a video of Phineas Newborn.

The Great Jazz Guitarists - The Ultimate Guide
Scott Yanow
Backbeat Books

Scott Yanow, who has possibly reviewed more recordings than any other individual, has a new guide to a segment of jazz that by it nature should appeal to more than simple jazz afficiandos. Backbeat Books has just released The Great Jazz Guitarists - The Ultimate Guide, which focuses on 342 great guitarists, many of whom are still living, along with brief chapters on 44 Historic Guitarists; 175 Other guitarists On the Scene and They Also Played Jazz Guitar (discussing 36 other individuals who are known primarily for playing other instruments). There is also a selected list of Jazz Guitarists on DVD (and some tapes not yet released on DVD) and a brief list of other books on jazz guitarists. The book also contains a brief history of the guitar in jazz as an introduction.

The coverage is pretty broad covering many I had never heard before in a variety of styles and places of origin. Still there are several omissions I observed on quick perusal. Mickey Baker, whose pioneering instructional books on jazz guitar are still used today and made countless recordings as a session man and a leader (he is best known for being the Mickey of Mickey and Sylvia), isn’t even mentioned in They Also Played Jazz Guitar. In a communication with me, Mr. Yanow did mention he omitted Baker because he primarily was a blues player, although there are clips of him with Coleman Hawkins on the internet that show off his jazz credentials.

Other omissions include Mel Brown, who recorded several albums on Impulse before becoming Bobby Bland’s guitarist, the versatile Calvin Keys, and the brilliant Ronnie Earl (he is mentioned in an entry on Duke Robillard). They do not even have a short entry in the Other Guitarists section such as accorded Bill Jennings and Calvin Newborn. Undoubtedly other readers will find other players they believe should have been included or given more prominence. Such omissions, of course, are inevitable in a publication of this nature.

I noticed one factual error while reading the entry on Everett Barksdale that repeats the erroneous allmusic.com assertion that Barksdale played guitar on Mickey and Sylvia’s Love Is Strange. Yanow’s repeating this shows how erroneous information gets repeated and accepted as true. It also shows the difficulty authors like Yanow face in putting together books like this in this age of wikipedia and the internet. In any event, it is a small “erroneous’ background fact in the Barksdale entry.

These criticisms should not minimize the substantial merits of this guide. The entries contain biographical overviews that include influences, major musical associations and achievements. What is helpful is that a number of the individuals discussed answered a questionnaire relating to personal information and quotes from these are quite valuable. Yanow is quite lucid, whether writing about well known names like Wes Montgomery, Django Reinhardt, Jim Hall, Pat Metheny, Joe Pass, Bucky Pizarelli, Charlie Christian, Bill Frissell and Grant Green along with lesser known names such as Duck Baker, Bill Harris (of The Clovers who recorded perhaps the first jazz solo guitar album), Jamie Rosen, and Izzi Rozen. Traditionalists like Chris Flory find their place along with avant garde stylists like Elliot Sharp.

Along with the overview, there are recommended recordings and in some cases (out-of-print) recordings to seek out. Yanow also provides websites for artists where applicable. If an updated edition comes out in the future, this is one area the guide could be improved in. For a number of artists he lists a number of recordings and it would really be helpful if he separated out one or two specific recordings to highlight for that particular guitarist.

This is a very useful addition to the jazz literature with particular interest to guitarists and fans of guitar music. I have used Yanow’s recommendations to purchase a couple of recordings.

I received my review copy from a publicist.

A Drive Down The Blues Highway

Catfish & Cotton: Driving Down The Blues Highway by brothers Luc & Marc Borms is a self-published, wonderfully illustrated account of their journey to the heart of the delta blues culture through their experiences visiting Delta landmarks and their interviewing artists, merchants, scholars and others involved in the Delta Blues scene today.

The Borms brothers, both blues musicians from Belgium, made this Trans-Atlantic trek to the area that is the heart of the music that has so engrossed them as they (among other things) spent two days in Clarksdale; went to Hopson’s Plantation where Jon Gindick conducts a harmonica camp; visited the grave of Sonny Boy Williamson II; stayed at the Riverside Hotel; spent night’s at the juke joint, “Red’s Lounge”;visited the Delta Blues Museum and Cat Head and had a beer at the Ground Zero Club; Helena, Arkansas; Memphis and Beale Street: Oxford, Mississippi; Leland Mississippi; and Avalon Mississippi.

The brothers interviewed Jon Gindick, who has become well known for his harmonica instructional material to describe the camp he holds; Frank ‘Rat’ Ratliff, owner of the Riverside Hotel which was a hospital prior to becoming a hotel; Roger Stolle, who operates Cat Head , a store of folk art as well as a record label, Broke & Hungry; Heidi Hockenhauer, MC of the Delta Family Gospel Festival held in Helena; Blind Mississippi Morris, blues harmonica player and singer; Laurie Montalnaro, staff member of the Memphis Rock’n’Soul Museum; ‘Sunshine’ Sonny Payne, longtime host of the King Biscuit Time Radio Show; Cristen Craven Barnard, painter and mural artist; Adam Gussow, harmonica player and educator; Bill Abel, guitar builder and player; Randy Magee of the Highway 61 Museum; Eddie Cusic, Delta blues musician; Super Chikan, blues musician and others. I was particularly pleased to see the interview of Cusic, who I myself interviewed in 1991 when I saw him life Festival at the Smithsonian FolkLife Festival who is such a strong performer of classic Delta blues.

This book is wonderfully illustrated by the brothers’ photography of various blues landmarks, persons and some performance shops. Illustrations and inserts give information on towns and cities, landmarks including Hopson’s Plantation; the Riverside Hotel Cherry Street in Helena; Sonny Boy Williamson II’s grave; the Homemade Jamz Band and more. I was particularly moved by pictures of Pat Thomas, including one of him holding a guitar and singing while sitting in front of the grave of his father, James ‘Son’ Thomas. And they weave their narrative in which the interviews, and other materials are placed. 

The layout of all this material is quite attractive and reading is enhanced by the layout and use of 4 column text where text is printed. It will be valuable as a guide book for places one might wish to visit when one travels in the Delta as well as a document of the music today and the community in which it persists and thrives in. It is a marvelous book that will appeal to anybody with an interest in the blues and the land from which it sprung.

I became aware of this book from participation in The Real Blues Forum, a Facebook Group that Marc participates. The link for this book is www.catfish-and-cotton.com, which will take you the brothers store on lulu.com, the website that allows books to be self-published. The brother’s store link is http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/infoatcatfishandcottondotcom and can choose from a standard Black and White Edition, or the more expensive Deluxe Edition which is published in color. It is a 184 page, perfect bound book, 9 inches wide by 7 inches tall. I purchased the more expensive paperback edition. I have included for this blog a couple of the sample pages that you can view at lulu.com website for this book.

Here is a little clip of Eddie Cusic & Luc Borms filmed during the Catfish & Cotton tour.

Gypsy Jazz Provides Fascinating History of Django Reinhardt and His Legacy

Gypsy Jazz: In Search of Django Reinhardt and the Soul of Gypsy Swing

by Michael Dregni

Oxford University Press

Michael Dregni, who authored the highly regarded biography, Django: the Life and Music of a Gypsy Legend, and co-author of Django Reinhardt And the Illustrated History of Gypsy Jazz, adds to the literature on the Gypsy Jazz tradition that emerged from Django’s innovative music with Gypsy Jazz: In Search of Django Reinhradt and the Soul of Gypsy Swing. Its a historical chronicle of the music that was founded by Reinhardt and which thrives today with musicians still inspired by Django and extending his music today with his modern musical descendants being as exhilarating and original as Reinhardt was seventy odd years ago.

Dregni centers the book around Django and his biography but weaves in the world he was raised in and how that world changed as he grew up. We are taken to the Gypsy Caravans, the world of Gypsies and their music and musicians, and the musical scene of Paris and France dominated by the accordion based musette. Django’s biography is set forth as we are to the luthiers of Paris and the guitars that Django and his contemporaries used and the Pigatelle which is where many of the bals and dance halls were. The threads of his life are presented from his learning violin, banjo and then guitar, as he worked in the Russian cabarets, and the dance halls, his early exposure to jazz and the near fatal figure that left his left hand disfigured and scarred and where he had only use of the index and middle figures and had to learn new fingerings and chord forms.

There is the meeting with Stéphane Grappelli, the jams that led to the formation of the Quintette du Hot Club de France and the recordings under the auspices of Charles Delauney, first rejected by a major label because they were viewed as too modern. He traces how the Quintette became a sensation including a triumphant European tour cut short by the Second World War, and how music was Django’s salvation during World War 11, as his fellow Gypsies, like the Jews, were carted off to the death camps, as he played what the Nazi propagandists labeled ‘degenerate music.’ A new quintette was formed with clarinet replacing violin and a drummer added and in the midst of the horrors of the war, Django waxed two of his most famous recordings, the impressionist Nuages, and Les Yeux Noirs, or ‘Dark Eyes’. After World War II, Django was affected by the new harmonies and rhythms of bebop and continued to evolve musically. He toured America with Duke Ellington, and in 1953 he died of a cerebral hemorrhage and his singular musical voice was stilled.

As Dregni makes quite clear, the story of Django Reinhardt was not the only story of Gypsy jazz. There were contemporaries of his that were working along similar lines in the era of what was revolutionary musical changes. And he introduces us Django’s contemporaries such as his brother Joseph ‘Nin-Nin’; The Ferret brothers, Baro, Sarane and Matelo; legendary guitarist Tchan Tchou; Lousson Baumgartner (Django’s son from his common-law wife); accordionist Gus Viseur (who made pioneering recordings with Baro including Swing Valse); and their musical descendants including Les Freres Ferré, Jean-Jacques Boulou’ and Elié ‘Elios’, Stochelo Rosenberg, Birelli Lagrene, Dallas Baumgartner, Angello DeBarre, (Django’s great-grandson); David Reinhardt (Django’s grandson), and the American gypsies such as Johnny Guitar and Danny Fenders (google his name and you will come across a you tube video that the author posted that will blow your mind).

This volume is far more than a litany of performer bios. Dregni brings the performers and their world to life. He takes us into their world, catching them at performances as well as welcomed into their caravans. He vividly describes the annual pilgrimage by the gypsies at Les Saintes-Marie-de-la-Mer with annual religious rituals and celebrations. He provides the cultural history and beliefs underlying this annual celebration which also provides a period of fervent musical cross-pollination by different musical traditions brought together along with a certain craziness.

Dregni describes a lesson in Django’s style that David Reinhardt teaches him and takes us to a performance by Danny Fender and His Band of Gypsies at San Francisco's Palace of Fine Arts Theater. In meeting Dallas Baumgartner, he is taken to the caravan of Dallas’ grandmother, Madame Rose. There is the touching moment when he is sharing family pictures of Django (that had been collected by Charles Delauney) with, Madame Rose, who had never seen photos of Django as a young man, and when she sees him at 18 with Madame Rose’s mother, Bella, and Rose has tears in her eyes as she had never seen a picture of her mother as a young girl. Dregni leaves the photo with her.

The author’s passion for his subject can be infectious. This writer purchased Django Reinhardt And the Illustrated History of Gypsy Jazz after reading this pre-release copy, as well as a number of recordings that Dregni recommends here. A remarkable work that serves as a marvelous entrance into this fascinating and exhilarating music.

I received a pre-release copy from the publisher. This review originally appeared in the April 2008 Jazz & Blues Report (issue 303). Inspiration to run this review at this time was provided by a performance of the Django Reinhardt All Stars featuring Dorado Schmidt at the Kennedy Center on October 29.