Number 8
28 December 1976
Howard Devoto goes ba-dum ba-dum and saves punk rock from itself

Humour in music

Two words. Noel Coward. There was a time when music could be both clever and humourous. Blues, jazz and folk musicians knew the benefit of adding humour to their music if they wanted to keep an audience entertained rather than scratching their chins. The classic lyricists of Broadway and Hollywood wrote songs that combined cleverness and wit in equal measure. From the 1960s onwards there came a separation into serious and humourous artists. The serious musicians sometimes attempted humour with disastrous results (witness "Yellow Submarine" or Cream's "A Mother's Lament"). Humourous musicians were not taken seriously (tragically so in the case of the Bonzo Dog Band's "The Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse"). Popular music and its fans became increasingly po-faced. As always, there are exceptions to this but let's focus on earnest young men with beards and flares rather than Ian Anderson in a codpiece and Rick Wakeman in a cape performing on ice.

Music had to be heavy (to achieve heaviosity as Woody Allen had it). Either in its sound or in its meaning. Artists were either heavy or pop. Led Zeppelin were heavy. Dylan was heavy. Neil Young was heavy. Mud and The Sweet were pop. The new groups that came in the wake of The Sex Pistols were to replace this artificial divide with music that was both serious and fun. But at the outset it was not apparent that this would be the case. The initial punk groups out of London like the Pistols, The Damned and The Clash were deadly serious and earnest. The good-time groups, Ramones copyists and bandwagon jumpers like The Vibrators, The Lurkers and The Stranglers, even when they were pretending to be dumb, were not funny just stupid. UK punk rock was angry and raw but nothing more than that.

Howard Devoto

In 1976, Brian Eno-lookalike and Bolton Institute of Technology student, Howard Trafford (who was to rename himself Howard Devoto), wrote some songs together with fellow student and krautrock fan Peter McNeish (who renamed himself Pete Shelley). They had arranged for The Sex Pistols to play in Manchester and Trafford and McNeish wanted to form a band so that they too could play at The Sex Pistols concert. And obviously they needed some songs to play.

Trafford and McNeish had already travelled to London to see some of the punk groups play so they were familiar with the short, sharp nature of the music. It would have been easy for McNeish to produce facsimile copies of the London music as so many other groups were later to do. However, McNeish was a fan of experimental music and managed to produce tunes that were compositionally and melodically interesting. In particular, one song was based on a recurring riff combined with a two note guitar interlude that sounded like something the German experimentalists Faust were producing two or three years earlier. All it needed was for Trafford to sling a few angry phrases together to shout over the top and, presto, another song.

Boredom

Nowhere. Boredom. By the time Jamie Reid used these as destinations for the buses on the back sleeve of The Sex Pistols "Pretty Vacant" single in July 1977 they were already signifiers of punk cliche (although Reid had first used them in 1972 and the Pistols in December 1976). The punks were bored. The Adverts sang about "Bored Teenagers". The Clash said that London was burning with boredom. Punk dilettantes Snatch sang "When I'm Bored". "How Much Longer" moaned Alternative TV like bored kids in the back of the car. Boredom became a pose. Punk bands adopted being bored as a pose, like The Saints on the cover of "(I'm) Stranded".

The (bored) Saints, yesterday

When Howard Trafford wrote a song about boredom his lyric satirised this pose. The scene is hum-drum. London groups complained of being bored yet they lived in London. Imagine studying at Bolton Tech in 1976 if you want to experience real tedium: "I just came from nowhere, and I'm going straight back there".

The one thing punks craved to alleviate their boredom was excitement. Specifically excitement in music. And they were not above adopting rock cliches if they thought this would help. McNeish's music for the song that would become "Boredom" by Buzzcocks contained natural pauses after each refrain. McNeish had a plan for a thrilling, imaginative guitar solo in the middle of the song. Trafford filled the early pauses in the tune by calling out the title of the song. When it came time for McNeish's guitar solo, Trafford had the chance to up the ante and come up with a thrilling rock style statement.

Trafford was an Iggy Pop fan and Iggy had put forth his own thoughts on boredom some years earlier in "No Fun" and "1969" by The Stooges. Imagine what Iggy would have done with a space in the music to be filled by something. A strangulated yelp like in "Down on the Street". A gutteral howl like in "TV Eye". Or that weird cut-off "shdumd" sound he makes into the microphone at the end of "1970". Or all three.

Instead, Trafford makes the crucial move of intoning "Ba-dum ba-dum" in place of "boredom" and introduces wit and humour into punk. It is humorous because it is unexpected. It is playful, substituting a soundalike for the title of the song, for the meaning of the song. It cuts through the expected angst that one anticipates from bored, disaffected youths and harks back to the "Hey-ho" insouciance of childhood. The power to accept the things that you cannot change, la-di-da, fiddle-de-dee, ba-dum ba-dum.

The impact was immediate. The audience understood the ramifications of what Trafford had done. He had greatly expanded the emotional palette of the music. It could be simultaneously angry and funny, clever and dumb. It could pinprick pomposity and posing and other stupidities. It could draw on older and more varied inspirations. Like Noel Coward.

            "The Grand Duke was dancing a foxtrot with me
            When suddenly Cyril screamed "Fiddle-de-dee"
            And ripped off his trousers and jumped in the sea,
            I couldn't have liked it more."

Get bored with The Buzzcocks here.

 

 

Number 7
1967
Bob Marley and the Wailers record "Selassie is the Chapel"

Mortimer Planno

Haile Selassie and Planno 1966

Mortimer Planno was a key figure in developing the rasta faith as a sophisticated response to the situation that the African diaspora, particularly those in Jamaica, found themselves. A preacher, teacher and social activist, he led the establishment of a rasta commune in Kingston separate from that already developed in the hills at Wareika. Planno seems to represent something of an intermediary between the Jamaican establishment and the rasta rebels in the hills. As an outsider himself, originally from Cuba, he may have been better suited to get along with the establishment. Either way, Planno got himself included on an official delegation to visit Ethiopia in 1961 and was part of the reception committee when Emperor Haile Selassie visited Jamaica in 1966, helping to calm the huge crowds that had gathered at the airport.

I do wonder whether Planno, an intelligent man, ever thought to himself what this faith needs is a charismatic, young advocate to take the message to a greater audience. Did he recognise such a prospect when Robert Nesta Marley knocked on his door later that year? Or did he think, here's another chancer looking for a distraction. Either way, Planno sent Marley away with the distinct impression that he did not think Marley had what it took to join the faith.

Bob Marley



Bob and Rita 1966

 Bob Marley had begun recording in 1962 before forming a vocal trio

 with Bunny Wailer and Peter Tosh. His early recordings dealt with 

 matters like cups of coffee and not judging others, before having a

 huge hit with "Simmer Down" in 1964. In 1966, Marley moved to the

 United States for a short period to be near his mother. When he

 returned to Jamaica later that year he was searching for a more

 spiritual purpose to his life, one that he could align with the

 revolutionary fervour that was rising up inside of him. The rasta faith seemed to provide that combination of spirituality and revolution.

So it was that in 1966 Marley called upon the Ras Tafari encampment in Trenchtown set up by Mortimer Planno and enquired about learning more about the rasta faith. By all accounts, Planno had his doubts about Marley's commitment. In order to prove otherwise, Marley determined to record a devotional song to demonstrate his seriousness.

Selassie is the Chapel

"Selassie is the Chapel" was written by Mortimer Planno. It is an adaptation of "Crying in the Chapel" recorded originally by Darrell Glenn in 1953 and then covered by a wide range of other artists including the best known version recorded by Elvis Presley in 1960 and released as a single in 1965. Prior to Elvis, one of the biggest selling versions of the song was by The Orioles in 1953 and a rerecorded version in 1959.

Planno's rewrite of the song explicitly affirms the divinity of Haile Selassie. It is a clear challenge to those who would seek to portray Selassie as a representative figure, as standing for the divine. It asserts Selassie's place in the Trinity as the born-again Christ. A more direct affirmation of faith by Marley would be difficult to imagine.

The recording

The recording is very basic. Unlike Marley's previous releases, it eschews a band accompaniment. Just Marley's guitar and some rasta drums accompany the vocals. The echo on Marley's voice indicates that a professional studio was used but otherwise it sounds like it could have been recorded in a church hall or a living room. The arrangement is considerably slower than many other versions giving it a hymn-like quality.

The Wailers' usual harmony vocals are different on this recording. Bunny Wailer was in prison at the time so it is Rita Marley who joins with Peter Tosh on harmonies. This gives a different, higher sound, almost keening, happily in keeping with the subject matter.

Marley's lead vocal follows the path laid out by Sonny Til of the Orioles. He delivers a sweet and tender invocation of the words free from any strident proselytising. There is a deeper quality to some of his notes not replicated in other parts of his work. He engages briefly in some melisma but otherwise appears to be singing within himself. In fact, he is taking care to make sure that the focus is on the beauty of the melody and the meaning of the words rather than on himself as the performer. It is an act of devotion, of supplication, both to Selassie himself and, by implication, to Planno.

"All the world should know". Marley would take the rasta faith around the world, to Europe, Africa and America. This small sect of Jamaican dissenters and contrarians would see their faith acquire widespread adoption and acceptance. But Marley and Planno's challenge remains. Rasta is not just a cultural signifier or a philosophical system but a set of religious beliefs focussed on a black saviour. And as such, it demands devotion and supplication from its followers as Marley and Planno demonstrate here.

 

 

 

 

Number 6
1965
Maureen Craik records "A U Me Hinny Bird"

In 1860, Édouard-Léon Scott de Martinville recorded himself singing "Au Clair de la lune". After that point, all music could be recorded and played back. What did music sound like before it could be recorded? In 1665, a young girl sings a song about the things and places she knows. 300 years later it gets released.

Why no-one listens to folk music

Fair Isle sweaters, finger in ear singing, beards, real ale, hey nonny, fol de rol, The Spinners, morris men, this...

 

Folk fans

Alexei Sayle used to do a folk song parody beginning "I'm a computer programmer". It's another world and you have to accept some stylistic peculiarities, a bit like reading a 19th century novel or Elizabethan poetry.   

For a music which is supposedly the voice of the people, very few of the people want to listen to it or to sing it themselves. The folk revival created a larger audience for this music. For a brief period in the '60s and '70s it became trendy to sing about being an old plowhand or washer woman or whatever. The Spinners got their own BBC TV show as did Julie Felix. Its decline matched the arrival on the scene of comedy folk artists such as Billy Connolly, Mike Harding and Jasper Carrott and gradually the comedy took over from the songs.

At the same time as becoming all round entertainers, folk singers began writing their own material and turning into singer-songwriters. The line blurs between material that is traditional and that which is composed. "Flower of Scotland" is not a traditional song but was written by Roy Williamson of The Corries in 1967. "Lord of the Dance" was written by Sydney Carter in 1963. It is a truism, of course, that all songs get composed at some point. What makes songs traditional is that there is no identified composer.

A U Me Hinny Bird

Sandgate yesterday

"A U Me Hinny Bird" was first published as a tune in 1812 with the words written down later. It uses Newcastle dialect to describe defining characteristics of certain areas in and around Newcastle. So we learn that Sandgate is the place for old rags and Gallowgate is where you can get your trolly bags (which means intestines, either in the form of tripe or black pudding). South Shields, meanwhile, is the place for soot. The song has no deeper meaning. There is a slight journey down the river Tyne in the list of places described. The song starts in the west of the city in Benwell before going through the Quayside, Castle Garth and Sandgate. It then travels out to the coast via the descriptive names, rather than place names, of the north shore and the Gateshead hills and arriving at Cullercoats, Tynemouth and North Shields on the north side of the river and then Westoe and South Shields to the south. It then travels back north up to Holywell, Seaton Delaval and Hartley Pans, which is an old name for Seaton Sluice. Unfortunately, this smooth flow is interrupted by diversions to the west and north to Denton, Kenton and Longbenton before ending up in Bedlington. This assumes that these names refer to places in their present situation, of course.

To complicate things further, the above is the route as set out in the verses contained in Conrad Bladey's "A Beuk o' Newcassel Sangs" published in 1888. But Maureen Craik transposes the third and fourth verses to make Sandgate come after Tynemouth etc which cannot be right.

Benwell lasses

Although it starts off with a description of the canny lass of Benwell, it does not go anywhere with this. Possibly this is a result of its composition by the addition of verses by unknown singers actively adding to its creation. Perhaps natives of each of the places described added their own tribute to their local area. It is a song for singing rather than taking apart, sung perhaps as the accompaniment to work activities. The Benwell lass herself sounds like an ideal woman in combining physical appeal with nurturing qualities, being both long-legged and mother-like. Perhaps this is a song she could have sung while raking up the dyke (meaning a hedge).

The title of the song is a mystery. Possibly the singer is singing to an actual bird, one that could fly over the areas described on its journey to the sea. Or maybe hinny bird is the singer's pet name for a lover. Or maybe it is a lullaby sung to a sleeping bairn like "Dance to Your Daddy".

The People

Maureen Craik

As far as I can tell, Maureen Craik only recorded six songs at the age of around 20 or 21. She sounds timeless and artless. Her recordings were made when the Beatles and the Stones were all the rage but she could be a 17th century girl singing to herself. Singing to yourself - surely that is the very definition of folk music.      

Westoe lies iv a neuk here

 

 

Number 5

13 October 1965
The Who have a fifth go at detonating the atom bomb

Excitement in music

There were exciting records before The Who recorded "My Generation". Records whose sole purpose is to generate excitement. Earlier I discussed "Roll 'Em Pete". Jazz musicians have for a long time experimented with atonality and squeeks and squonks in pursuit of a rising fever. The early recordings of Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis are based on beat and enthusiasm. Not to mention Elvis and his "let's get real gone for a change". "Crawdaddy Simone" by The Syndicats is a meaningless song rescued by a raucous finale sounding like the band are attacking their instruments with hammers and throwing them down the stairs (The Syndicats were Steve Howe's first group and I was happy under the delusion that it was this most gifted and precise of players who took part in this aural destruction but unfortunately it was recorded after he had left the group). What was needed now was a group that would literally attack their instruments and throw them down the stairs.

The song

"My Generation" is a clean break with the past because, in my view, it is a song which only has meaning in its performance, in its deployment of electricity. Earlier songs had used electricity to enhance them, to give them additional power and impact, to embellish and emphasise or merely to give additional novelty. The Beatles put feedback at the start of "I Feel Fine" because they could. "You Really Got Me" by The Kinks generates much (though not all) of its thrill from the sound of the guitar - the actual thrill comes from the key changes creating tension leading to a final resolution. "My Generation" has key changes but they are an adornment rather than an intrinsic part of the song. The song would work just as well without them. In fact, I am not sure that I altogether like them. I cannot think of any song before "My Generation" which could not reasonably be performed solely on acoustic instruments. "My Generation" is a song that is created for electric performance.

I do not know but I imagine that Pete Townshend created "My Generation" out of his longstanding fascination with the works of Mose Allison. Allison was a stylist, creating laidback piano jazz alongside the projection of a cool, detached demeanor.

Mose Allison, yesterday

The Who were later to cover his "Young Man Blues" in a decidedly non-detached manner. It is typical of Townshend to want to ape Allison's style. A lot of Townshend's art comes from his expression of his desire to be something he is not and of the ensuing frustration at the realisation that his desires exceed his personality. He wants to be the smooth hipster who comments on the world but is not a part of it. It is hard to think of a more engaged artist than Townshend operating in music. He is passionate and excitable. He wants to be the hard man who lives an unexamined life and responds intuitively to his experiences and who is attractive to women (or is what he perceives as attractive to women). Yet he is conscious of the fact that he is not even the hardest man in his own band and that he cannot stop himself from examining his own experiences and is beset with doubts and questioning. He wants to win admiration with his fists but realises that he is too intelligent. He is an intellectual who wants to slum it with the hoi polloi. He wants to be the ace face but lacks the requisite charisma.

Part of Townshend's genius lies in realising his own shortcomings in achieving his desires and also in recognising that, through his fellow musicians, he can give expression to exactly these sentiments. He cannot be Daltrey, the hard-case sheet metal worker with the confidence and the swagger, but he can put his words into Daltrey's mouth and undercut the hard man swagger with otherwise unexpressed uncertainties and conflicts. He was also to come to realise that Daltrey was a far more sensitive soul than others recognised, Daltrey included. Daltrey's beautiful delivery of Townshend's later material prove this. Like "Being John Malkovich", Townshend enters into the hard man's head and makes the hard man consider the world he is in and his responses to it.

Initially, that response was of frustration that the character lacks the means to give expression to his thoughts and feelings. Delightfully, Townshend's first fully fledged artistic work was called "I Can't Explain" and the themes of inarticulateness and confusion have remained the cornerstones of Townshend's art. Inarticulation is most famously expressed through the speech impediment built into the lyrics of "My Generation". The voice of the song is in a rage, he is furious about something which remains unexpressed (unlike, say, "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" where Jagger proceeds to list things that he is dissatisfied with before revealing that ultimately it is because he cannot get a shag). The rage in "My Generation", although ostensibly aimed at older people, is in fact directionless, purposeless. It is an existential rage aimed at the condition of being young and powerless. It is purposelessness itself that the rage is directed at.

This purposeless rage is suitably mirrored by the music. The band take a fairly standard blues form and amp it up to the ninth. The slow menace of blues, the mature threat of hoping some schoolboy wants to start a fight, is replaced by the adrenaline excitement of the schoolboy wanting to fight. The riff is hammered out as fast and as loud and as aggressively as they can manage. The variations are subtle and slight and add to, rather than detract from, the main thrust of the backing track.

The form

The song follows the form of a two note riff combined with a blues shuffle on the "talkin' 'bout my generation" refrain and with pauses to give impact to the lyrics. Following a repetition of the riff, the first stanza of the lyrics is accompanied by a repeat of the riff by the bass guitar only along with syncopated handclaps. The rhythm is slightly different between the band playing the riff and the solo bass part. The band play the riff in 4/4 time while the bass is in (I think) 5/4. The second stanza is sung over just the handclaps and without the bass. The remaining stanzas are sung without any accompaniment. After the pause while the lyrics are sung, the instruments are reintroduced usually preceded by a single beat of the snare drum. Occasionally, there are two skipping beats played on the snare; and after the final section of the bass solo and the third stanza of the verses after the first key change the drums crash in with no metre or rhythm at all before they are rejoined by the rest of the instruments. As noted above, there are three key changes during the song ending with a coda comprising a free-form noise section over the top of two chord changes and then a reiteration of the "talkin' 'bout my generation" refrain.

The instrumentation

The bass carries the weight of the song supplying both the rhythm and a good part of the melody. It is also the reason for the four previous failed attempts to record this song. Apparently, John Entwistle wanted to use a Danelectro bass

Danelectro bass

for this recording as this guitar used thinner strings and enabled the player to move around the neck more easily. Clearly, Entwistle was aiming for a really flashy solo. However, the combination of thin strings and Entwistle's aggressive playing style proved incompatible and he kept breaking the strings. Spare strings for this instrument were apparently difficult to source and Entwistle found it easier to just buy another guitar. After three failed attempts (and three Danelectro bass purchases) Entwistle opted to use a Fender Jazz bass.

 

Fender Jazz bass

The bass plays the main riff with the band and the syncopated parts identified above. The exception is the bass solo and also one point where the bass mimics the blues shuffle part. I assume that during the coda part of the song the bass maintains the two note riff but it is difficult to tell what the bass is playing during this part of the song.

 

 

The lead and rhythm guitar parts blur into each other. Initially, the guitar plays the riff and blues shuffle parts but then moves to playing lead lines over these elements using standard blues phrasing. Sometimes the guitar plays the riff by descending two frets and sometimes by ascending two frets moving from G to F, the first time using E shape chords, the second using an E shape and then a D shape for the F chord. This gives variation to the riff and added excitement to the music.

It is the drums that are the lead instrument in this recording. They are not tethered to any set metre or rhythm beyond stopping and starting in the right places. Unlike many other drummers, Keith Moon tends not often to use cymbals as emphasis but rather as part of the overall sound. The ringing of the cymbals at the end of each riff and being faded by Moon's hands is part of the overall ambience of the recording. During the coda he plays quick, repetitive rounds of all the drums for the duration providing a rolling undertone to the electronic score.

The vocal performance is not one of my favourites by Daltrey. The initial impassioned yelp of "People" in the "People try to put us down" line is effective but the delivery of some of the other lines are overly shouty for my taste. The most important parts of the delivery are in the stutter and in the pauses. Both of these are well judged and well delivered. There is speculation about what led to the decision to include a stutter - whether it was a conscious artistic decision, a spur of the moment affectation by Daltrey, or simply a trick effect to make old folks think the "Why don't you all f-f-f-f" line was going to end in something other than "fade away". In fact, Townshend's demo recordings show the stutter was always an intrinsic part of the song. It serves to heighten the tension of the performance by cutting against the otherwise steamroller rhythm of the rest of the band.

The lyrics

I do not want to spend too long on the lyrics as this is a piece about performances rather than songwriting. But it is noticeable, as implied above, that the target of the singer's ire is never given specific form. Although apparently the song was inspired by the Queen Mother demanding that Townshend's car be towed away, there is nothing quite so specific in the song, giving it an everyman appeal. Significantly, the other major contemporary UK youth protest song "Satisfaction" (recorded a few months before "My Generation") identifies the dissatisfaction with a sole individual ("I can't get no satisfaction") as befits the arch-individualist and egotist Jagger, whereas the collectivist Townshend from the off identifies his experience with that of his peers ("People try to put us down"). It is only with the song's most famous line that Townshend introduces the first person in order to give impact to the singer's conclusion after having testified to the bad experiences of his generation ("I hope I die before I get old").

The rest of the lyric I find somewhat prosaic. The singer complains that people put us down just because we get around. This is songwriting by numbers and is surprising coming from this most unusual and surprising of lyricists. Compare the by-rote stanzas of "My Generation" ("things they do look awful cold" is not how British people speak) with the more inventive, specific and colloquial lyrics of "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere" and "Substitute" - the singles that respectively preceded and succeeded "My Generation". In these songs Townshend comes up with original descriptions of the condition of British youth. But that is, I think, part of the point. Townshend deliberately uses hackneyed, archaic blues cliches to tie in with the blues musical stylings of the song but he deploys them archly. Whereas such lyrics would usually be accompanied by a stylised, musically accomplished performance highlighting the performers' skill in deploying blues variations, Townshend has the band play a manic, simplistic two chord thrash.

The Atom Bomb

That is why this recording is the musical equivalent of the detonation of the atom bomb. The combination of old styles and aggressive performance changes everything and says away with the old and welcome to the brave new world. Townshend wants to destroy everything - not just cold, old people but anyone who is not engaged, anyone who wants merely to watch in a cool, detached manner. The sort of people who want to observe the world instead of trying to change it.   

Like the big bang, "My Generation" starts and then immediately accelerates producing an impactful and accessible rise of excitement. The lingering patina across the whole sound is the buzz of electricity. The instruments breathe and moan and creak and crash under the attack of the musicians. At the end of one of the riffs Entwistle lets his hand slide down the bass strings to produce a sighing, moaning, dying effect. The sound becomes a composite, blending all elements into one. At one point, during a key change, the combination of instruments and vocals produce a cocktail party effect where I can hear my name being called. So clear is this that in the past I have turned the track off at this point and shouted out to whoever I thought was calling me. There is a gorgeous accumulated sustained feedback over part of the coda that never comes fully to the fore.

The lyrics have no sophistication, they are a raw howl from the bowels of the earth and the accompanying barely controlled racket stays just the ordered side of chaos. This is important. The song never lapses into the complete breakdown that is the end of "Crawdaddy Simone" nor does it effort the free-form instrumental break in The Who's own "Anyway, Anyhow, Anywhere". It is the potential for chaos that sustains the excitement to the end. An abandonment of form would not last. Instead the hammer hits the nail.  

 

Hear the bomb go off here.

 

Number 4
October 1962
Otis Redding records "These Arms of Mine"

Johnny Jenkins was a sparsely recorded blues musician who played left handed and was said to be an early influence on Jimi Hendrix. Jenkins had a group called the Pinetoppers, which sometime included the extraordinary Wayne Cochran playing bass guitar. 

 

Wayne Cochran, yesterday.

Coming out of Macon, Georgia, the Pinetoppers had a moderate hit with an instrumental called "Love Twist" and had acquired a new manager, Phil Walden, who suggested that the group record a follow up at the Stax studios in Memphis accompanied by the session musicians that comprised Booker T and the MGs. As Jenkins could not drive, he used a chauffeur to drive him to the session.

Steve Cropper, the guitarist with the MGs, later recalled how he noticed the big guy who was driving Jenkins, get out from behind the wheel and go to the back of the truck and start unloading equipment. The Pinetoppers' session proceded in an unremarkable fashion and finished some forty minutes early. At this point, the big guy driving the truck asked if he could sing a song. The keyboard player for the MGs had already left the session, so Cropper sat down at the piano, which he normally only played for purposes of composition. He asked what should he play and the truck driver said "Just those church things". Cropper then established that he meant triplets. "What key?" said Cropper. "It don't matter" came the response. The truck driver then took a breath, opened his mouth and began.

According to Cropper "man, my hair stood on end. Jim [Stewart, co-owner of Stax] came running out and said, 'That's it! That's it! Where is everybody? We gotta get this on tape!' So I grabbed all the musicians who hadn't left already for their night gigs, and we recorded it right there. When you hear something that's better than anything you ever heard, you know it, and it was unanimous. We almost wore out the tape playing it afterwards."

The truck driver was Otis Ray Redding and those first few notes sung unaccompanied are the birth of modern soul music. The sound of the Georgia pines let loose and untrammelled. Years later, in the duet "Tramp", Carla Thomas would tell Redding that "you straight from the Georgia woods", to which he would answer "that's good". Although Ray Charles and Solomon Burke had a strong early influence on singing that was affected and emotional, that made use of call and response, repetition and exultations to generate an impact, Redding's singing here was a new style of intimacy, of fragility that teetered on the brink of emotional instability, that could shatter into a breakdown, yet was also controlled. Far from the "sock it to me" shouter he later became, Redding's style here is nearer to the close-miked intimacy of Bing Crosby. However, Redding was not a smooth technician in the style of Sam Cooke. The feeling is conveyed almost entirely through the sound of the vocal rather than the meaning of the words.

The image of the burly truck driver stepping forward to deliver a seminal recording finds its modern counterpart in the You Got Talent showcase of a shambolic looking imbecile delivering a blistering vocal performance while Simon Cowell stares open mouthed. With accompanying You Tube video strapline of the "They thought he was an idiot but you will not believe it when he starts to sing" variety. These modern myrmidons of mellifuousness are sometimes desribed as giving a soulful performance but their belting over-vocalisations lack the balance, subtlety and control of Redding's performance.

Typically, of course, the story of Redding's recording here is only partially true. Redding had already made records in the belting Little Richard style such as "Shout Bamalama" and was, in fact, the featured vocalist with the Pinetoppers. although they were primarily an instrumental group. He had won talent contests (another parallel with the world of You Got Talent) and even replaced Little Richard for a period when that latter singer got one of his periodic doses of religion.

 

Jenkins, Redding and the Pinetoppers
 

"These Arms of Mine" was not even the first song recorded at that session. They had already recorded "Hey Hey Baby", a more typical Little Richard impersonation with Redding stretching a rasping vocal to emulate that earlier stylist. Nevertheless, it is impressive that Redding was able to transition into the more sympatico style of the ballad. In fact, his exertions on the previous song add to the slightly breathless, almost rubbing quality of his vocal sound.

Further, "These Arms of Mine", has an arrangement, albeit simple in structure. They cannot have launched straight into the song. Probably, Redding ran through the song and a head arrangement was sketched out before they began recording. Additionally, although Cropper claims he played piano other accounts state that Jenkins played piano. After the first verse, a guitar appears that sounds very much like Cropper's style of playing. It is possible he overdubbed this, of course, but why bother if Jenkins could play piano.

The song itself is a near perfect example of a soul ballad in that it is built around those classic soul elements of tension and release. The acapella intro walks the notes from fifth to first typical of country music songs (as exemplified by Johnny Cash's "I Walk the Line") only slowing it way down to make the listener wait for that resolution which one knows is coming in the commencement of the instruments at the word "mine". After this rising melody, Redding makes the melody descend on the word "yearning" before it rises again. Yearning is the key theme of the song and the musical structure reflects this. The way Redding lets the note fall away at the end of words, his choice of phrasing is impeccable and unique in how he selects which words to emphasise and which to elongate. It is both natural and highly contrived - the model of the soul style. The introduction of the staccato guitar lines emphasise the tension as does the frequent repetition of key phrases and words, chiefly the title of the song. Tension and release, rise and fall, these would become the very building blocks of the soul ballad.

Phil Walden ditched the Pinetoppers and took over managing Redding who would record many other classic ballads, accompanied by Booker T and the MGs. Some 18 months after recording "These Arms of Mine", he recorded "Come to Me" during which he sings the phrase "Days are getting so lonely, nights are getting so blue" and he elongates the second "so" to make the greatest rising note in the history of sound. Seriously. Now that's soul.

Hear Otis yearning here.

 

Number 3

30 December 1938
Pete Johnson and Joe Turner record "Roll 'em Pete"

Boogie Woogie

From North East to West Texas, from lumber and turpentine camps to train yards, the sound of boogie woogie was a long time in gestation with a brief flowering of popularity. Mimicking the movement and the revolution of the trains that took the music north across America, reaching Chicago and then New York. Adopted then abandoned by urban sophisticates in favour of more sophisticated (read, more tamed) piano styles. At its zenith, in the playing of Albert Ammons, Meade Lux Lewis and Pete Johnson, it was fast, rhythmic, propulsive, almost manic in its intensity but allowing for significant variation in both left and right hand patterns. Even more than its ragtime predecessor (which seems to share some characteristics with European piano music of the likes of Debussy and Satie), boogie woogie was a uniquely American, uniquely black form. 

Now seen more as a style or technique than a genuine form of piano music, no-one, to my mind, has carried it further than the three great stylists of the thirties and forties. Possibly only Jerry Lee Lewis perpetuated the form, albeit by combining it with western swing and hillbilly boogie piano styles of the likes of Moon Mullican. Boogie woogie fell victim to its perception as a novelty music, with technicians using it to demonstrate prowess rather than invention, and with an increasing reliance on formula and automation. It came to smell too much of working men and roughhouse Saturday nights for the highball nightclub crowd.

From Spirituals to Swing

For a while, though, boogie woogie possessed all the shock of the new as it tore out of Texas on the rails heading north. In 1938, John Hammond asked the pianist Pete Johnson and vocalist Joe Turner to perform at Hammond's seminal From Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall alongside Lux Lewis and Ammons as well as Count Basie, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry and others. The idea was to showcase black American musical forms going from choral spirituals through to big swing bands. Because it featured black performers appearing before a non-segregated audience, finance was difficult to access until the American Communist Party stepped in. Their appearance at this concert earned Johnson and Turner a recording session for the Vocalion record company in New York in December 1938.

Johnson and Turner

Pete Johnson and Joe Turner were from Kansas City and began appearing together in the 1920s. It is easy to imagine their raucous style being developed to make sure they could be heard in the less than sedate clubs of the time. Turner worked as a barman and chucker-outer and would occasionally vocalise to Johnson's accompaniment. The other masters of boogie woogie tended to work more as soloists than Johnson.

Success for Johnson only lasted until the end of the 1940s when boogie woogie fell out of fashion. Turner was to have more success, going on to record a hit version of "Shake, Rattle and Roll" in 1954.

Roll 'em Pete

The recording of "Roll 'em Pete" (note: there is no comma after 'em, rendering the title grammatically incorrect, and it is described as a fast blues on the record label - it was not described as boogie woogie until its later reissue on Columbia) is an engine designed to generate and to communicate excitement. It is its raison d'etre. Johnson sets off at a furious pace which he maintains for the 2 minutes plus duration. Witnesses recall Johnson and Turner performing this song for up to half an hour at a time but this could be an exaggerated memory. Certainly the piece does lend itself to improvisation for as long as the performers' imagination and endurance last. The recorded version truncates any extended improvisation and condenses the piece so that it is over before one has a chance to work out properly what is going on.

It is an instrumental with vocal accompaniment rather the other way round. As its title indicates, the point of the song is to demonstrate Johnson's speed, power and dexterity of both performance and imagination. He produces a succession of accompanying phrases that vary with each verse before unleashing a solo of demented perspicacity. The repetition and the variation within repetition are sublime. Johnson, and Lux Lewis and Ammons, had achieved peak boogie. The only way to go beyond their playing was, as Conlon Nancarrow found out, to have a machine do it (a player piano in Nancarrow's case).

Turner meanwhile performs his supporting role well. The lyrics are effectively meaningless being a succession of blues phrases from other songs, chosen for their rhythmic cadence and their fit for Turner's staccato delivery. The standardness of their form means that they do not detract from the purpose of the piece: the focus on Johnson. Lots of people like to imbue art with meaning, especially painting and music. In order to enjoy and appreciate a work of art fully it is felt necessary to understand the work's meaning. "Roll 'em Pete" is a work without meaning. It defies meaning. It is the thing itself and has no meaning beyond this. It has no repercussions once it finishes playing and seeks neither to elevate not improve. By the end, Turner has given up on words and has resorted to syllables and parts of words, which he could just as effectively have done from the start. The Italian futurists from the early 1910s praised the modern age with its rapid forms of transport. Marinetti's free-word poetry sought to liberate words from the constraints of typography and syntax. Just like Big Joe Turner does here. Russolo used acoustic noise generators to control dynamics and pitch of sound. Twenty years later, Johnson and Turner give us the real art of noise.

Hear the art of noise here.

Number 2 

20 June 1937
Robert Johnson records "Hellhound on my Trail"
 

The Myth

No one knows where Robert Johnson came from. There is no record of his birth and early life. When he was 18 years old he wanted to be a musician. Other musicians laughed at his primitive, rudimentary ability on the guitar. One night, Johnson went to the crossroads outside of town and waited for the Devil. When the Devil appeared, Johnson sold his soul and the Devil tuned Johnson's guitar. Johnson was now a master musician, able to play any tune on a first hearing. Those other musicians were astounded by his abilities. Johnson was a star and a great hit with women who could not resist him. Johnson was immensely shy. Too nervous to play in front of other musicians, he faced the wall when making his recordings rather than be watched. He made a number of recordings which were very popular across the Southern states. Johnson was a wealthy man, travelling between gigs in a Hudson Terraplane automobile. One year to the day after his trip to the crossroads, the Devil came to take his due. Johnson died crawling on the floor howling like a dog, his stomach wracked in agony. No one knows what happened to his body. There are no photographs of Johnson.

The Man

Robert Johnson was a real person, who lived and breathed in the Southern states of America from about 1910 to 1938. He made 29 recordings in two sessions, one in 1936 and his last in 1937. Twenty-four of his recordings were issued at the time across twelve 78rpm discs. His records sold few copies and he was not particularly popular as a recording artist, although he was sufficiently well known for John Hammond from New York to try and locate Johnson for Hammond's Spirituals to Swing concert at Carnegie Hall in 1938 only to find that Johnson was dead.

A Hudson Terraplane, yesterday

Robert Johnson did not sell his soul to the Devil. He got to be a phenomenal guitar player and performer the old fashioned way - practice. He was 27 or 28 when he made his recordings. There is a fair bit of knowledge about his life including where he was born and where he lived and died. He earned his living travelling around the South (not in a Terraplane) playing for drinks, food and accommodation at roadside shacks. He was an entertainer and certainly not shy.

Johnson was murdered, possibly by a jealous husband after Johnson had been coming on to his wife, possibly by poisoning. Johnson's body was buried quickly to cover up his murder.

Robert Johnson enjoying a cigarette

There are at least two photographs of Robert Johnson.

 







The King of the Delta Blues Singers

Johnson's recordings first achieved a degree of recognition in 1961 when Colombia issued an lp collecting several of them. With a self-actualising title of King of the Delta Blues Singers, the lp sought to place Johnson as the greatest of the primitive (meaning untutored, rather than un-complicated) blues performers. This lp had great appeal for young white aficionados looking for someone expressing existential angst rather than dealing purely in the realities and specifics of life in the Mississippi delta in the 1920s and 30s. They identified with and related to Johnson's expression of joy, lust, desire, fear and dread which did not have to be siphoned out from some of the more confusing affectations of other performers such as Charley Patton or Skip James.

More specifically, the recordings of many blues artists showcased their performances as entertainers. They made records with a view to achieving and sustaining popularity and were not afraid to write and sing about contemporary, local events and to shriek and howl and emphasise their exaggerated mannerisms. Many of their records are pure entertainments with no search for a deeper meaning. Johnson's music was intense, offering no concession to entertainment. Some would record more thoughtful material but the King of the Delta Blues Singers presented Johnson's recordings as a uniform body of work with consistent themes recurring between songs. It seemed as if Johnson had consciously planned only to record his most intellectual material. Rather than a random collection of songs recorded at different times and in different places and addressing different subjects, Johnson's lp presented homogeneity of time, place and action combined with a thematic unity.

A later volume of King of the Delta Blues Singers repeated this effect with more songs

expressing some core thoughts about life, love and death. Johnson is now regarded as the apotheosis of the existential rural blues performers, the John Clare of the Mississippi Delta.

Johnson comes at the end of the train of rural blues performers in its classic form of a singer accompanying himself on a guitar and performing semi-improvised songs more often than not expressing an existential state. Performances become refined over time and recording techniques improve. Johnson learned from performers such as Son House and brought his own innovations to their style. His recordings possess a degree of self-possession and clarity absent from many earlier performers, helping to make him more palatable to modern ears.

 

A hellhound, yesterday

The Hellhound

"Hellhound on my Trail" has a striking title. The image of the hellhound was not unheard of in blues songs, though rarely does it take centre stage. In fact, Johnson's song is actually about restlessness. The singer cannot relax even if today was Christmas Eve and tomorrow Christmas Day. He has a rambling mind every old place he goes ("rambling mind" in the sense of having a desire to move on rather than a mind that cannot fix on any topic, though that image too is pleasing and relevant). His woman has sprinkled hot foot powder all around his door - he cannot enter into his own house. He has hot feet and must wander. The concoction also acts as a hex to ward off the singer but perhaps also to ward off something more sinister.

The song, and the performance, is permeated with foreboding, with a dreadful anticipation that something wicked this way comes. The leaves are trembling on the tree, the wind is rising and the blues are falling down like hail. These images may be taken as metaphorical rather than meteorological. As a consequence of the metaphysical storm that is brewing, the singer has to keep moving. The days keep worrying him. All he needs is some female companionship "to pass the time away".

Is the hellhound real or is it a metaphor? And if the latter, then for what? Interaction with evil is a feature of Johnson's songs. In "Me and the Devil Blues", Satan knocks upon Johnson's door and tells him its time to go. He and the Devil are walking side by side. In "Steady Rollin' Man" he is howling down on his bended knees. He has a "Kind Hearted Woman" but she studies evil all the time. The otherwise benign "Malted Milk Blues" contains the couplet:

            "My doorknob keeps on turning, it must be spooks around my bed.

            I have a warm old feeling and the hair rising on my head."

Strange occurrences abound. The cow's milk turns blue and the blues are seen abroad walking upright like a man. There is frequently violence both inflicted on Johnson and by him. He is going to beat his woman until he is satisfied, then he is going to shoot her with his 32-20 (a type of cartridge originally used for shooting game). 

Types of cartridge including 32-20

In "Phonograph Blues" Johnson asks "What evil have I done?". Retribution is coming. Johnson finally finds himself at the mythical crossroads. Unable to flag a ride as everybody passes him by, the sun begins to go down and he fears being stranded in the dark with what the dark might bring. Sinking to his knees, he cries out to the Lord above "Have mercy, save poor Bob". The hellhound has come to claim his own.

Of course, it's a metaphor. The singer is dissatisfied, restless. He has to keep moving or he prefers it that way and claims there is no alternative. As an itinerant musician, Johnson had no choice but to keep moving to the next engagement. As a working musician, failure to do so would mean an evil fate. Not crime and prison but something far worse - work. There is a recent essay on the internet claiming that fear of lynching may be an inspiration for the song's metaphorical movement. It is an interesting essay but I do not agree with it's premise, that Johnson's song is rooted in a specific incident. Johnson's songs avoid specific incidents or commentary on current affairs, unlike many of his contemporaries. I think that Johnson is aiming for the universal truth of human experience and relating that to his audience. If he wanted to present truth in the form of a lynching ballad he is enough of an artist to present us with clues. I detect none in "Hellhound on my Trail".

Life in pre-WWII Mississippi for poor black people was, I assume, tough. Physical labour would be available for the men combined with low wages, segregation, zero public standing and zero respect. Black men would be expected to tote that barge and lift that bale, to be respectful and, preferably, invisible. Any black man with a bit of spirit would have to either suppress it or find some other outlet - either entertainment or crime. Similarly, any black man who did not fancy a life of back breaking work had better find some alternative source of income. Johnson the entertainer has to keep on moving because he is pursued by the hellhound that is digging a ditch for the rest of his life.

The recording

"Hellhound on my Trail" was recorded by the American Record Company in Dallas. Although Johnson recorded two versions of most of his songs at his recording sessions (common practice in order to have a safety copy should anything happen to the master), he only recorded one version of "Hellhound on my Trail" (or at least only one that has been found).

Johnson may have preferred singing facing a wall. He was being recorded in a big empty room. His recordings have an intimacy and intensity to them and Johnson, familiar with the recordings of other bluesmen, may have wanted to avoid having to project outwards into empty space, having to over-emote to get his song across.

Guitar-wise, this song is a good example of how Johnson combined playing lead parts with accompaniment parts, i.e. playing lead parts underneath his vocalising rather than singing and playing separately. This can lead to slight dissonance in his playing owing to him making mistakes. But this is more than compensated for by the drama of the delivery and the performance. There is a high-pitched, keening edge to Johnson's voice and this is matched by his playing solo lead lines with his slide high up the neck.

This music is tense, nervous. Chords are intermittent and only the one pattern repeats. Each pass is played differently and sometimes the bass and the lead strings sound out together. This could be one of the performances that Keith Richards was thinking of when he said that he could hear two guitar players on Johnson's records.

This is not Johnson's best song or performance. I think the extraordinary "Stones in my Passway" is a better song and the stunning "Crossroads Blues" a better performance. But "Hellhound on my Trail" stands out for its succinct stating of some of Johnson's key themes, for its compelling title and for its almost suffocating air of sadness. And it is this air of sadness that led me to choose it for this list. In the second verse the singer offers the thought that if today were Christmas Eve and tomorrow were Christmas day "oh, wouldn't we have a time, baby". If good times were in the offing, then the singer and his "little sweet woman" would make the very most of it. Even to the extent of the singer no longer needing his bit on the side to pass the time with. The singer's life is so empty that he has casual, meaningless encounters with other women purely to pass the time while waiting for the void to engulf him.



Robert Johnson
 (note ghostly image
over his left shoulder)

I keep coming back to the if it were Christmas image. The singer is not just promising a wild Saturday night but the best night of the year and what a time they would have. Note Johnson's use of the conditional - he does not say when it is Christmas we will have a great time but that we would have a great time if it were Christmas. The implication of this choice is that it will not be Christmas and no great time will be had. And it is Johnson's wistful, gentle delivery of the, possibly improvised, "oh, wouldn't we have a time, baby" line that undermines the expected blues boast of a hot time in the old town tonight. This is the great recorded moment, the creator speaking to his audience and declaring that there will be no good times because they are not living that sort of life, the sound of an artist signalling his outsiderhood from the world and the creative milieu he has just become king of.

 

Celebrate Christmas with Robert here: