John Lee Hooker Centenary

“The Official Website” thinks that John Lee Hooker (JLH) was born in 1917. Wikipedia, with some research links in the footnotes, says that he was born in 1912. Both agree that he died on June 21st in 2001.

Although today is the 16th anniversary of his passing, whenever, whatever, no excuse is needed to offer a compilation of his music, some by him, some by those he inspired, and some with those he inspired.

John Lee Hooker & Van Morrison – Baby Please Don’t Go

That song’s history goes back to the 20s and 30s with blues singers such as Huddie ‘Leadbelly’ Leadbetter, Tampa Red, and Charley Patton recording variants, as did Lightnin’ Hopkins in 1947. The Muddy Waters’ Chicago blues version first released on Chess records in 1953 infiltrated the music awareness of British teenagers as they gradually got fed up with the British ‘cloned’ rock ‘n’ rollers with names changed to reflect their supposed anti-social status: Fury, Steele, Storm, Power et al.

Personal note: my Sunday School teacher cried all through Sunday morning service: she’d been ‘jilted’ by Reg Smith, aka Marty Wilde.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s Chris Barber was largely responsible for arranging the first UK tours of blues artists Muddy Waters, Big Bill Broonzy, Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee and Sonny Boy Williamson (the 2nd). This, with the encouragement of local enthusiasts such as Alexis Korner and John Mayall, sparked young musicians such as Peter Green, Eric Clapton and the Rolling Stones. It was rhythm and blues which powered the British invasion of the USA charts in the 1960s.

The Belfast group Them, fronted by the then 19-year-old Van Morrison, recorded Baby Please Don’t Go in 1964, and the groups’ (mimed) appearance on TV shows such as Top Of The Pops (video  ) captured the imagination of the British generation just getting used to beat groups because it was raw and loud. Van Morrison had heard and felt “something really unique and different [with] more soul” about John Lee Hooker’s version on the 1959 album Highway of Blues. (He’d first recorded the song in 1949.)

And, yes, although I’m not a musician, Them’s hit single lead me down a path of music exploration I often return to.

So this is today’s download.

01. John Lee Hooker – Please Don’t Go (1949)
02. Them – Baby Please Don’t Go (1964)
03. The Amboy Dukes – Baby Please Don’t Go (1968 – USA)
04. Baptism of Uzi – Baby Please Don’t Go (2012 – Aus)
05. John Lee Hooker – Boom Boom
06. Alan Price – Boom Boom (ex-Animals)
07. Long John Baldry – Dimples
08. John Lee Hooker – House Rent Boogie
09. John Lee Hooker & Bonnie Raitt – I’m In The Mood
10. John Lee Hooker & Ry Cooder – Crawling King Snake
11. Ry Cooder – John Lee Hooker For President
12. Hugo Race & Michelangelo Russo – Hobo Blues (2017 – Aus)

Music for Mudik

It’s very quiet around Jakartass Towers at the moment, and that’s unusual for a Tuesday. However, next Sunday is Hari Raya Idul Fitri, the day which celebrates the end of Ramadhan, the Muslim fasting month. That means that the mass exodus from Jakarta known as mudik, and pulang kampung (going home), which happens every year, has already started.

Of the over 10 million residents of Jakarta, not including the wider built up area of satellite cities known collectively as Jabodetabe with some 20 million residents, many of whom commute daily into Jakarta, the majority are from elsewhere in the archipelago.

There is an official week’s holiday allowing folk to return to their home towns and villages, a tradition some save up all year for so they can reconnect with the families and friends perhaps unseen since the previous year. Presents are handed out, children are given crisp bank notes, and a lot of mum’s home cooking is enjoyed.

Non-Muslims may well take the opportunity to take holidays too, and every year it is advisable to book trains and boats and planes up to three months in advance. Some workers may be able to use the free transport laid on by companies and local authorities, although it seems that the family motorcycle is the most popular conveyance. But whatever the means of transport, the roads are hell.

My compilation is about the anticipation, the journey and the final homecoming.

Download

Going Home – theme from Antonín Dvořák’s Symphony no.9

If you prefer jazz, there’s a compilation with the same theme here.

Indonesian 60s Pop

Michael Vee has a blog he calls 60s (mostly) Uncomped . What he does is dig out tracks from the 60s, mainly beat and pop, which haven’t been released on other compilations, i.e they are “uncomped”.

His compilations do have a theme, e.g music for belly dancing, instrumentals, but what intrigued me was that although some have a general geographical nature, his reach is wide. That means that in several compilations there are a couple of tracks from Indonesia. These I have sifted out for you.

You may recognise some of the names, such as the Koes Brothers, but I am certainly not familiar with most of them.

Download

Notes
– The Quests were from Malaya’s Borneo, and are not the Singapore group from the same era. Fans of John Peel may understand why I included it.
– re: Arulan. Sjachrul G. Bajumi was the group’s ‘architect’; there’s a five page profile of him (in bhs. Indonesia) here based around the fact that apparently he has the world’s largest collection of Fender guitars.

Ragas 2 Riches

A raga (rāga; also raag or ragam; literally “coloring, tingeing, dyeing”) is akin to a melodic mode in Indian classical music. Each is an array of melodic structures with musical motifs, considered in the Indian tradition to have the ability to “color the mind” and affect the emotions of the audience.

The relaunch of 1967’s Sgt. Pepper has brought some attention to George’s Harrison’s Within You, Without You.

However, that was by no means the first ‘Indianised’ track by a British group. In 1965 George Harrison had played the sitar on Norwegian Wood  which  was on The Beatles’ Rubber Soul album. Also, have a listen to the Rolling Stones’ Paint It Black from 1966.

About the Compilation

01. Gabor Szabo – Paint It, Black
Recorded in 1966, so obviously Szabo was seeking to be with it, man
02. Blue Cheer – Babaji (Twilight Raga)
A hippy band formed in Haight-Asbury, San Francisco in 1965.
03. Kalacakra – Raga No.11
Two German guys having fun in 1972 on their only (excellent) album
04. Peter Walker – Rainy Day Raga
Influential American folk guitarist noted for dexterous instrumental pieces, esp. ragas
05. Thurston Moore – Dirt Raga
Played on tribute album A Raga for Peter Walker …
…as did …
06. Steffen Basho-Junghans – Blue Mountain Raga
German so influenced by Robbie Basho, he adopted the name
07. Robbie Basho – Rocky Mountain Raga
Influential American folk guitarist noted for dexterous instrumental pieces, esp. ragas
08. Harry Manx – Raga Nat Bhariav
Canadian musician who blends blues, folk music, and Hindustani classical music.
09. Jimmy Herring – Within You Without You
Talented rock guitarist plays a Beatles number
10. Joe Harriott & John Mayer – Raga Piloo
Recorded Indo-Jazz Fusions in the 60s
11. Jai Uttal w. Don Cherry – Raghupati II
Two ‘world’ musicians recorded Footprints, an album worth seeking.
12. Wolfgang Dauner’s Et Cetera – The Love That Cannot Speak Its Name
A German jazz group with Eberhard Weber in early 70s
13. John Abercrombie – Raga Rag
American jazz guitarist with German Rainer Bruninghaus and Indian Trilok Gurtu

Download

Red-Eyed and Rowdy

A couple of days ago I posted a compilation of music which reminds me of my childhood. Here’s a compilation of what my co-author  Derek Bacon had to put up with.

If you like country music, which, in general, I don’t, then this is for you.

Ulozto / Zippyshare

01. Kitty Wells – Ring Of Fire
02. Dean Manuel & The Blue Boys – Ace In The Hole
03. The Willis Brothers – 40 Acres
04. Brenda Lee – I Wonder
05. Bill Black – Heart Of Stone
06. Bob Willis – My Shoes Keep Walking Back To You
07. Pete Drake – Satisfied Mind
08. Roger Miller – Poor Little John
09. Hank Williams – Men With Broken Hearts
10. Kitty Wells – Busted
11. Roy Acuff – Today My Love Came Back To Me
12. Kitty Wells – Cold & Lonely
13. Walter Brennan – 19 Men
14. Walter Brennan – Cool Water
15. Hank Williams – Moaning The Blues
16. Bob Luman – Interstate 40
17. Johnny Cash – Ring Of Fire

Nagging Memories

“Because ignorance of your culture is considered uncool”

Gordon Skene ruminates “on the temporary nature of Popular Culture – how none of it lasts forever, or stays the same. Maybe it’s the evolution of things that makes it possible for the ones not yet born in [19 – name your year] to form their own memories, have their own places and their own points of reference. I think that’s the nature of being on the planet – we get to have our own set of experiences to look back on – things that I find strange today will most likely bring a flood of wistful memories to someone twenty years from now. That’s just how life works and part of the continuum. It’s just that way.”

Not all is wistful, Gordon. As you get older, the popular music heard on the radio when you were a child may pop up unexpectedly and remind you that it was mostly crap that you had to listen to because that was all that the medium wave radio or your parents’ record collection had to offer.

Patti Page – How Much Is That Doggie In The Window? (pre-MTV)

Mediafire / Zippyshare

1955. Caterina Valente – Malaguena
Was that the year? Apparently so, although I liked it because of the singing.
(The lyrics were of little meaning to me then, or come to think of it, now.)
1955. Frank Sinatra – Love and Marriage
The song which taught me that trite lyrics need to rhyme.
1956. Danny & Dena Kaye – Laugh It Off Upsy Daisy
1956. Danny & Dena Kaye – Little Child (Daddy Dear)
My parents had the 78rpm of these two tracks.
1957. Peter Sellers – Any Old Iron
The first of a whole series of ‘comedy’ recordings which resonated with me.

1958. Max Bygraves – You Need Hands

1959. Bernard Bresslaw – You Need Feet
An answer to Max.
1959. Lonnie Donegan – Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On The Bedpost Overnight?)
1959. Flanders & Swann – Hippopotamus Song
1960. Lonnie Donegan – My Old Man’s a Dustman
I would have included Lonnie Donegan’s Tom Dooley, but for a more recent memory.
1961. Tommy Cooper – Don’t Jump Off The Roof Dad

1961. Dario Moreno – Brigitte Bardot
1961. Ray Charles – Hit The Road Jack
These two tracks were pervasive on my first exchange visit to France.
And yes, I passed GCE ‘O’ level in French.
And thanks to Ray and images of BB I was weaned off ‘children’s songs’ …

—
… and have done as Ray suggested.

Bonus track: Robert Wyatt – Little Child (released 2003)
Presumably the 78s were in Robert’s home as well.

Not included:
Alma Cogan – In the Middle of the House
Danny Kaye – The Ugly Duckling
Michael Holliday – The Runaway Train
Mandy Miller – Nellie the Elephant
Max Bygraves – listen to ‘Pink Toothbrush‘ and you’ll understand why one Max track is enough!

Bird Songs

This has absolutely no connection with that wonderful sixties group, The Byrds, and I wasn’t going to mention the Fleetwood Mac instrumental Albatross until I came across this video.

And I obviously had to include Mighty Sparrow singing about ‘The Queen’s Canary’ … but didn’t!

The genesis of this post was an interview with this question: Do Birds Respect Human Musical Scales?  But what if humans respected birds’ musical scales? The interviewee, zoomusicologist Emily Doolittle is no relation to Hugh Lofting’s famous Doctor who could talk to the animals. However she does does listen to them and then composes music, often on a commission basis.

You can hear samples here.

“I transcribed a blackbird song and wrote a piece, which arranges the ideas in the way a blackbird might, and gradually becomes more human like in the arrangement. …  I’ve written a number of pieces since then which use animal songs but I also became interested in looking at whether sounds made by animals can actually be classified as music.

“One scientist has argued that the sounds of certain birds actually have remarkably similar characteristics to the same practices you or I would adhere to when picking drunkenly picking up the acoustic guitar at a half empty house party.”

That’s true: this canary (budgerigar?) is apparently singing dubstep, whatever that is.

I found that while looking for a short YouTube of bird song as an illustration for a selection of human music featuring genuine animal sounds. It seems that most of what’s available stretches way over an hour: the one I quote from below, lasts one and a half hours yet is supposed to be a recording of “birds singing at sunrise“. A sunrise that lasts that long? The cuckoo in the background is enough to drive anyone, well  …, cuckoo.

But not everyone?

“We had a ring-necked dove fly into our picture window and then couldn’t fly.  We kept it until he could fly again and while he was here we played this for him to keep him feeling connected to his outdoor life. He loved it. We sure miss him!”

Being inspired by nature should be  … erm … natural, so if you yearn to get away from urban noise pollution check out Lang Elliott who is currently Celebrating the Voices of the Natural World somewhere out there.

There’s quite a selection of birds layered over cheesy music at Whistling Records.  If you just want to listen, then there’s a stream option, but if you want to download, you have to become a ‘member’ and pay. However, if you really want to add, say, Johan Dalgas Frisch’s Symphony of the Birds to your collection, I just happen to have it in my archives, and now it’s downloadable from Zippyshare.

Perhaps better musically speaking were ‘bird warblers’, such as Percy Edwards, seen here with Morecombe and Wise. Others may prefer Ronnie Ronalde, the yodelling whistler, singing If I Were A Blackbird  but my choice is the pre-WWII Alec Shaw.

Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony has ‘imitation’ sounds of a nightingale, quail and cuckoo at the end of the Second Movement. But he was deaf, so how did he know?

Although I posted a bird compilation last month, I still found 20 more bird songs and instrumentals in my archives which I hadn’t included. So I’ve bundled into them all together to be downloaded from here or here. There are several swan songs, but not mine …

As you wait for the compilation to arrive, here’s a short sample of a loon joining in some lounge jazz.
And if you’re a loonie, here is an hour’s worth.