On Topic

I’m a bit late to mention the 70th anniversary of Topic Records, almost certainly the oldest independent record label in the world. Its catalogue of folk music, particularly English folk music, is unrivalled. I was lucky enough to catch Martin Simpson playing at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London as part of the birthday celebrations – with luminaries such as Danny Thompson, Andy Cutting, Jon Boden and B J Cole joining him on stage.

Topic Records was a creature of the 1930s, evolving out of the Workers Music Association, which was founded in 1936, becoming Topic Records in 1939. The secret of its longevity seems to be that it has never set out with the intention of making money, instead recording music it thought worthwhile and keeping it in print.

MD Tony Engle put it like this in an interview:

“The idea is to make records that are, if not instant classics, then records that will be here for as long as we have the medium to make them available. The music industry, by and large, wants to make money. It’s a business, and thinks relatively short term. I always think long term.”

Its statement of aims and objectives – what might be called a ‘mission statement’ these days – which were formulated soon after Topic was formed, is perhaps the best clue to its longevity:

• to present to the people their rich music heritage
• to utilise fully the stimulating power of music to inspire people
• to stimulate the composition of music appropriate to our time
• to foster and further the art of music on the principle that true art can move people to work for the betterment of society.

The picture is of Three Score and Ten, a 7-CD box set (an utterly fabulous collection of music which includes Topic’s very first release, “The Man Who Watered The Workers’ Beer”, by Paddy Ryan, as well as more recent material by Martins Carthy and Simpson, Richard Thompson, assorted Watersons, June Tabor, Ewan MacColl, and a whole body of Scottish and Irish and international (mostly American) music, including Pete Seeger and Paul Robesen – track list and review at Musical Traditions), and a book about the label issued to mark its anniversary. On my Xmas list.

Birches

The best song I know about age and ageing is ‘Birches’, by the American folk singer Bill Morrisey, which popped up on my iShuffle the other day.

It is a perfectly encapsulated moment; a three minute short story that Raymond Carver (or his editor) would be proud of, in which a disagreement between an elderly couple over whether to burn oak or birch in the stove becomes an exact metaphor.

There’s a performance by Morrissey on youtube, of course, at the top of this post, although it’s not as good as the version he recorded.  The words are here. There’s more recent work as you go into his current website.

Ramblin’ Jack and the country blues

It seems that Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, sometimes described as Woody Guthrie’s musical heir, should be in his 90s by now. But Woody died young and it turns out that Ramblin’ Jack is only 78, which is, it also turns out, the very best age for making a record of country blues songs.

In other words, A Stranger Here, released earlier this year, a collection of classic country blues songs from the ’30s. Not any old blues songs, but ones chosen by the producer, Joe Henry, to resonate with the present times. And written by some of the great bluesmen, from Blind Lemon Jefferson, to Son House, to Lonnie Johnson, to Furry Lewis (“when Furry signs the blues” sang Joni Mitchell on Hejira.)

If Elliott has a great producer, he is also blessed with a fine band, which includes Van Dyke Parks and David Hidalgo (of Los Lobos), and the overall effect is, well, to underscore the timelessness of the songs. Elliott admits on the sleeve notes that the musical selection was made by Joe Henry; he sang the songs he was presented with.

The first track, Blind Lemon Jefferson’s “Rising High Water Blues”,  continues a theme in Henry’s production work of music which evokes the flooding of New Orleans by Hurricane Katrina. Henry’s recent productions include Elvis Costello’s collaboration with the New Orleans pianist and songwriter Allen Toussaint, A River In Reverse, and of Toussaint’s more recent solo record The Bright River, which both have the spirit of New Orleans embedded deep in them. My own favourite on A Stranger Here is Elliott’s version of Soul of a Man, by Blind Willie Johnson, which could easily have given the record its title.

By chance I also recently read an essay by Geoff Dyer, “Blues for Vincent”, in his collection Anglo-English Attitudes, in which – among other things – he reflected on the blues. Dyer’s essays are so rich that reading one is like drinking a glass of dessert wine – slowly, in small quantities, a thing to savour – and this passage helps explain why:

The message of the blues is simple: as long as there are people on earth they will have need of this music. In a way, then, the blues is about its own survival. It’s the shelter the black man has built, not only for himself but for anyone who needs it. Not just a shelter – a home. No suffering is so unendurable that it cannot find expression, no pain is so intense that it cannot be lessened – this is the promise at the heart of the blues.

My related posts:

Singing the blues

Highway 61: Dylan’s blues record

Lost in exile

I’ve been listening to Christy Moore’s song Missing You (written by Jimmy McCarthy) and realise that it is – in some ways – a reworking of the traditional Irish song Carrickfergus (versions here by Van Morrison and Bryan Ferry), about the pain of exile and the impossibility of returning home. In Carrickfergus, “I’m drunk today and I’m seldom sober”, and home is simply too far away: “But the sea is wide and I cannot swim over/ And neither have I the wings to fly”.

In Missing You, the singer is a building labourer, closer to home in England, and the song captures the casual discrimination of the sites in one fine stanza:

To where you’re a Paddy, a Biddy or a Mick
Good for nothing but stacking a brick
Your best mate’s a spade and he carries a hod
Two work horses heavily shod.

The singer can’t afford the price of the flight home, but in any case. sleeping rough, “I’ll never go home now because of the shame”.

Both songs are cautionary tales about the losses of exile, but in Carrickfergus there’s still some of the delusions of the blarney (he’s still “a handsome rover from town to town”). Missing You, in contrast, is bleak; almost too bleak, in that it is a song with a rich melody which the lyric strips of hope.

Brecon jazz

It was my good fortune to happen to be in Brecon on the first evening of this year’s Brecon Jazz Festival, twenty five years old but pulled out of the ashes of receivership at the last moment by its larger neighbours, the Hay Festival. It was the festival that nearly didn’t happen.

So I took the opportunity to take in both the Stan Tracey Octet and the folk player Seth Lakeman, in quick succession, at opposite ends of town. (I could have gone on to see Sarah Jane Morris afterwards, but didn’t quite have the ears or the stamina.).

Stan Tracey is 82 now, but is still playing with authority. I’m fond of big bands (here and here), and an octet comes close; big enough to swing, big enough for different parts of the band to play off against each other. The line-up: two tenor saxophones, one alto, one trumpet, one trombone, bass, drums (Clark Tracey), and Stan, of course, on piano. I don’t have the names of the rest of the players, in the absence of a programme, but Jazz Review seems to have filled the gap in hindsight. Sometimes the whole brass section played together, riffing against the piano, sometimes the saxes played call and respopnse with the brass. Tracey’s arrangments made the most of the line up, and the soloing was universally excellent, especially the trumpeter (I think Guy Barker), which made me wonder if there were other disciplines where the most technically accomplished were to be found in the most marginal of genres.

There is a review on Jazz Mann.

Seth Lakeman has become one of the stars of English folk music since his Mercury Music nomination three years ago, and watching him it’s easy to see why. Good songs well played, and with some attack and lots of energy, with his own compositions clearly rooted in the folk tradition. Lakeman himself has a good voice and his violin playing, when he does it, is electrifying. (But not electric: the instrumentation is all acoustic, if amplified.) He was in the Brecon Market Hall rather than a more conventional concert venue, and seemed to be enjoying himself, along with his band. As was the audience. Review here, and pictures here. And a review of quite a lot of the Festival by Damian Rafferty here.

The picture of Stan Tracey was taken by Damian Rafferty of flyglobalmusic.com, and is borrowed from the Flicker photostream of flykr, where there are lots of Brecon jazz photos.

Highway 61: Dylan’s blues record

You never quite know what you’re going to get with the American music writer Greil Marcus, although I’m a fan: Mystery Train re-shaped the way I thought about American music when I was younger, and Lipstick Traces is a work of genius,  one of the great books of the 20th century. Some of the rest is more patchy, although in all of his writing there are virtuoso passages of improvisation which are worth the cover price.

So it proves with Like A Rolling Stone, which uses the song as a way into the moment when Dylan re-invented himself as a performer, and also, Marcus suggests, when American culture was also on the turn. For me the improvisation is a section – only a few pages – which links the song and the record, Highway 61 Revisited, to the American blues tradition. Other writers (such as Michael Gray) have demonstrated Dylan’s deep knowledge of country blues, and when I went back to listen to the record I realised, I think for the first time, that the very obvious blues-inflected songs on there (Tombstone Blues, It Takes A Lot To Laugh, for example), aren’t easy fillers but are about setting the tone. The guitarist Martin Simpson has made this connection brilliantly in his ‘medley’ which links the country blues “Highway 61″ and “Highway 61 Revisited“, and which is worth nine minutes of anyone’s time over on You Tube. And of course Greil Marcus takes us on a lively detour along this iconic American road, the ‘Blues Highway‘.

Some aspects of the “Rolling Stone” session are worn smooth with repetition. Al Kooper sometimes resists questions about how at 21 he inveigled himself into playing keyboards on it (well, when the facts become legend…). It does seem clear from Marcus’ appendix that there was really only one good version in the fifteen or so takes, and on another day the song could easily have become one of those well-bootlegged ‘interesting failures’ of Dylan’s career.

There are other curiosities too. Tom Wilson, the producer, was fired by CBS after the Rolling Stone session for reasons which remain unclear, but may have been to do with colour, and his place taken for the rest of the recording by Bob Johnston. Johnston seems to had a fair deal of propriety, certainly by the standards of the music industry; when the first sleeves came back Wilson was not credited as the producer on Like A Rolling Stone, and Johnston sent the sleeves back so this could be corrected (his name is still there on the latest CDs). Is the sound different on the other  songs? Marcus thinks so – Johnston pursued a more ‘ensemble’ sound, whereas Wilson looked for clarity between the instruments, and going back to the record afresh it is possible to imagine that Johnston made the tonne of the record ‘dirtier’ – in fact, more bluesy.

Together, Wendy, we can live with the sadness

I’m a Bruce Springsteen fan, or at least I have been. Hearing him in the mid-1970s was a wonder, and I’ve done my time, though not recently, queuing for ‘Bruce’ tickets. But I’d tried (on TV) to avoid his appearance this  year at Glastonbury because – and this sounds like one of these old retread type of conversations  about rock – watching him and his patched up band go through songs that were electrifying thirty years ago was too dismal.

And I sort of failed. On my way home today, post-Glastonbury, I stopped in a bookshop which normally plays jazz, and they were playing Born to Run, CD and track (“I’m having a Glastonbury sort of a day” said the bookseller) and while I was at the counter it hit that long extended moment in the middle of the song, that pause where he counts ‘1-2-3-4′ before the East St Band kicks in to the last section, about the broken heroes on their last chance power drive. And looking for some post tennis stuff this evening on the red button, after Murray’s five-setter against Wawrinka, I got myself into a Springsteen-at-Glastonbury loop the BBC had cunningly inserted into its interactive service, Steve Lamacq asking some questions, Bruce playing some songs, clever use of the red button and those extra channels.

But but but. I like Bruce Springsteen, and Steve Lamacq asks him about turning 60 (soon) and he gives one of  those honest but practised rock star answers (yeah, it’s no big deal, and on the day I’ll hit the bar, but on stage it’s only about – wait for it – 1-2-3-4), and then they cut back to Bruce playing Born to Run, and which producer wouldn’t make the connection between the interview answer and his most famous on-record count, and I’m thinking, I’m glad that in my work I don’t have to reprise things which I did thirty-five years ago. And much though I like Bruce, and know that he’s done some great unexpected things (like help rehabilitate Pete Seeger and his music) I’m also glad that I don’t have to make this choice for myself. It gives a sudden respect for those artists who, in that great phrase in Hay,  (or hey?) by the Irish poet Paul Muldoon,

All great artists are their own greatest threat
As when they aim an industrial laser
At themselves and cut themselves back to the root.

The picture is from the ‘Serenity Through Haiku‘ blog, which makes the same point I’ve just made, but a lot more concisely. Really: a lot more concisely.

Remember him this way

The death of Michael Jackson, the same age as the label, seems emblematic in this year of the 50th anniversary of Motown – the sound of Detroit – and the bankruptcy of its biggest company, General Motors. And the comparisons – good and bad – with Elvis Presley seem inescapable: the distressed childhood; the long sad period of decline, overwhelmed by fame and celebrity; and, in between, a long moment, a sustained burst of creative energy, in which each found a new way to combine black and white music that shaped popular music for most of a generation. I’m of an age to remember the surprise, the sheer exuberance, of Off The Wall when it came out, and I’ve had my vinyl out this evening to remind myself of that moment. Don’t stop…

Jazz drummers

There’s a showbiz joke, probably put about by guitarists, about the groupie who was so dim she went home with the drummer. But the joke is about rock drummers, and as we know, jazz drummers are a different creature entirely. They can do in their sleep things which rock drummers can only dream of. This, at least, was my train of thought while I watched Dave King, the drummer with the trio The Bad Plus, as they opened for the Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra at the South Bank on Saturday.

King was an astonishing presence on stage, completely at the heart of the band’s sound, sometimes driving it along with a complex mix of rhythms and sounds, sometimes amplifying the mood by adding particular percussive effects, sometimes doing all of this at once. The musicians’ position on stage underlined the importance of all three members of the trio, all at the front, rather than the rhythm section supporting the pianist from the back.

In jazz, unlike rock, drummers are honoured – as in the affectionate (and tongue in cheek) tribute by Pete Atkin and Clive James, recently reissued, “Wristwatch for a drummer“:

The Omega Incabloc Oyster Accutron 72
Without this timepiece there’d have been
No modern jazz to begin with
Bird and Diz were tricky men for a drummer to sit in with

Max Roach still wears the watch he wore when bop was new
Elvin Jones has two and Buddy Rich wears three
One on the right wrist, one on the left
And the third one around his knee.

Jazz drummers have led bands and recordings – and still do (one thinks of Seb Roachford and Polar Bear). Not surprising that drummers such as Bill Bruford and Charlie Watts returned to jazz after doing time in rock bands.

The clip below shows Dave King doing a breathtaking solo introduction to The Bad Plus’ version of Smells Like Teen Spirit, where he manages, deliberately, to be out of time with himself.

Eight horns and a rhythm section

The line-up of the Charlie Haden Liberation Music Orchestra is: three saxes (two tenor, one alto), two trumpets, a trombone, a french horn, and a tuba. And bass, guitar, drums, and piano. The core of the band, of course, is the bassist Charlie Haden and Carla Bley, who plays piano and arranges. The drummer Matt Wilson and sax player Tony Malaby have been touring with this edition of the band for a few years now. But or last night’s show at London’s Royal Festival Hall, part of Meltdown, it became clear early on (as Haden was reading out their names) that most of the horns were an English ‘pick-up’ band, although John Paricelli, on guitar, is a previous Carla Bley collaborator.

Perhaps for this reason, the first couple of songs were a little stiff, as the band betrayed a few signs of nerves. But Carla Bley’s arrangements are tight, lyrical, and free-wheeling, and the musicians quickly found their feet, a reminder of what fine musicians good jazz players are. Although Haden said at the start that they’d be playing tracks from all four Music Liberation Orchestra records (dating back to the Nixon era) much of the set was from the most recent, Not in Our Name, recorded in opposition to the Iraq war, which is like an oppositional conversation with American music. it has versions of Amazing Grace, Samuel Barber’s Adagio, and part of Dvorak’s New World Symphony, as well as a rich and complex interpretation of America the Beautiful. During this the wraith-like figure of Bley flitted from piano stool into the shadows of the stage and out again, emerging to make sure the band finished the songs cleanly.

Somewhere in the middle of this Robert Wyatt rolled on the stage – to huge audience applause – to sing in Spanish a Cuban song and also his lyrics to Haden’s own Song for Che, from the first Liberation Music Orchestra record. The end of the concert got a little bit chaotic – Haden hoped that Ornette Coleman, the director of this years’s Meltdown festival would join them on stage on the final weekend of the festival.

The pair share a 50-year history but Coleman missed his call at the hotel while Haden chopped the running order around (and extended We Shall Overcome with some improbable solos) to push America The Beautiful – their version incorporates the Coleman composition Skies of America – to the end of the programme in the hope of squeezing in a surprise appearance. In the end we had to make do with an emotional hug on the stage between the two musicians as the house lights went up.

The you tube performance at the top is of the Bill Frisell composition Throughout, from the 2003 tour of Europe. Tony Malaby is the sax soloist.

I’ve posted before about the Liberation Music Orchestra and Ornette Coleman.