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Friday, February 1, 2013

February is Champion Jack Dupree Month

New Orleans barrelhouser.  Spyboy.  Boxer.  Expatriot.  Mickey Baker collaborator.  Babs Gonzales translator.  Middle-finger-to-blues-scholars-giver.  Jiver.  Junker.  John.  Stroller/walker.  Mother-in-Law hater.


February is Champion Jack Dupree month.  But Jack Dupree wants us all to take the weekend off and get up to really shameful antics so we can talk about them ruminatively while we play a slow 12 bar blues and stomp our feet.  Be prepared for vamps 'til Monday.  Lord knows CJD knew how to vamp.




Wednesday, November 14, 2012

Apologies From Orson And The Ichiban In Exile Team

Photo by Dr. Filth

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Happy Birthday Dr. Filth!



Big thanks to Dr. Filth for saving the day and keeping Ichiban streaming after we lost our main server at WFMU. We hope to be back up and running this week! In the meantime, let's wish Dr. Filth a Happy Birthday! Eat some cake and raise a glass. Thanks.

Monday, July 30, 2012

Michoacan part 2 - KIM FOWLEY INTERVIEW!

When I posted about the mysterious Sir Douglas Quintet single "Michoachan" earlier in Doug Sahm month, I didn't realize there was going to be so much back story.  I decided I would go to the source and discuss it with its co-writer, legendary songwriter/singer/producer/A&R man/svengali/pied piper/raconteur/garbage man Kim Fowley. The original blog post can be found here.


Kim Fowley (in the Western shirt) with among others
Del Shannon, Bruce Johnston and Gene Vincent. From his website.

Interviewing Kim Fowley means staying out of Kim Fowley's way, so I just tried not to interrupt him, since every time I did he went skidding on some new fascinating tangent. 

KIM FOWLEY:  Michoacan was written by Atwood Allen and [myself].  Atwood Allen was the Electric Ice Man from San Antonio, and his grass that he cultivated and blended and rolled into joints was apparently legendary. I don’t smoke dope so I have no idea if it’s true, but according to gravevine legend Bob Dylan smoked some of Atwood’s blend and thought it was Doug Sahm’s blend and then liked Doug Sahm’s music more than he normally would, because he thought his abilities as a tobacconist cum blender of psychedelics gave him a different status. And then when he found it it was Atwood Allen’s, possibly he didn’t like Doug Sahm as much. Now, this is just a story that floats around ballrooms in Austin. It is possibly untrue. It’s possibly true. I’m not in an Austin ballroom and I wasn’t there when the rumors started. Have you ever heard that rumour before?
from left: Ernie Durawa, Doug Sahm, Atwood Allen (click here for photo source)
DR. FILTH: I read somewhere that “michoacan” is a codeword for really good marijuana.

FOWLEY: Well, I know that it grows there. In Michoacan itself. Apparently that’s the Carolinas of marijuanadom. I’ve never been there. I remember, I walked into Tom Ayres’ home and this Atwood Allen said, “Hey, buddy – you want a joint?” And I told him I didn’t smoke.  So he said, “Hey Tom, I thought you said this guy wrote lyrics. I want to write a song about Michoacan, and I’ve got the music but this motherfucker doesn’t know shit about dope.”

So I said, “Hey motherfucker, I had a lesbian mother and an opium addict father to contend with so I understand your shit.  I was there when Robert Mitchum got busted for marijuana. My father was trying to score opium in the same house. Don’t fuck with me, motherfucker, I can write the shit!  I wrote shit for the Byrds and I grew up in a criminal household!” Something to that effect.

Tom Ayres bio here
DrF: So he decided that you guys could work together.

KF: Yeah, just to shut me up, probably. So he started smoking dope and I said, “Play your shit” and about ten minutes later it was done. And he said, “My god, this guy’s like a redneck!” And I said, “Look, I produced Gene Vincent. And he was on morphine! And I understood that guy, so I can understand your tiny little drug habit.” So about 10 minutes later the thing was done and Doug Sahm showed up later in the evening when I wasn’t there and Atwood sang it, and he called him “hoss” and “bro” and “dude” and he learned the fucking thing, and there was a movie called Cisco Pike being made - the original title was The Dealer, which would have been a better title than Cisco Pike. Did you ever see the movie?

DrF: Yes.

KF: It’s a really good movie isn’t it? Kris Kristofferson’s first starring role. It was supposed to be the second coming of Easy Rider. And this song was going to be the new “Born to Be Wild”. But it didn’t at all become “Born to Be Wild”. I saw the movie and it sounded like mariachi horns. 


KF: The song was covered four times. I covered it as a producer with Scorpion, on MNW records in Sweden, later purchased by Universal. 

Swedish psych/prog band does a German polka version of Tex-Mex
song with lyrics by a California freak. The mind reels.
KF: And then Atwood Allen had a thing called Atwood Allen the Electric Iceman, Bossier City was the b-side. [I have so far been unable to uncover a copy of this 45 - anybody got one?] And then there was Rocky and the Border Kings, doing "Michoacan". The b-side was "Gulf of Mexico", which I thought was an amazing song. Rocky was Jimmy Stallings, who was also J.J. Light, who also was a member of the Quintet for a minute. Did you know that?


DrF: No.  I mean, I knew that J.J. Light was in the Quintet, but I had no idea that he was Rocky. I love that J.J. Light LP.

KF: He was from Farmington New Mexico. He had a Mexican mom and an Anglican dad and he worked in a laundry there. The Hollywood Argyles found him and brought him back to LA in 1960 or 1961. He became Gene Thomas – he was a funny Gene Thomas. Gene Thomas had “Sometime”, which was another Chicano-kind-of-San-Antonio record, but no one knew what Gene Thomas looked like here, so we passed him off as Gene Thomas.

J.J. Light - lost Chicano psych classic!
Gene Thomas - NOT J.J. Light!
Doug Sahm sings Gene Thomas
KF:  So the fifth version of the song was Kris Kristofferson – he did a live album in Cuba or some weird place. It’s a blue album cover, and it’s the only live Kristofferson album. And so he did it, but he changed the lyrics – naughty naughty shame on you – and so I thought, “well, he’s a great songwriter”. But his words were worse than mine. He didn’t take credit but he still changed them.Is that five versions? Read them back.

I was unable to verify the Cuban live album, but here's
the studio version from  Shake Hands with the Devil
Dr.F: Kristofferson, Rocky and the Border Kings, Atwood Allen, Scorpion, Sir Douglas Quintet.

KF:  And not one of them charted. I think the Kristofferson album charted. Nothing else charted. It’s probably a hit song, and someday someone will do a new version of it, some new Tijuana brass thing . .

Dr.F: Tijuana dubstep.

KF:  Yeah! Why not? They’ll hear it, and people will smoke dope and say, “Shit! Where did this come from?” I mean, there’s something great about it.  It’s like my song “The Trip”. God, that thing has been covered and used and banned just about everywhere.

Joe "King" Carraso and the Crowns

KF: At one point Sahm was going to produce Joe "King" Carrasco and the Crowns, and I met him in the bathroom of the baseball game they always have on Sundays at South by Southwest. They end the conference and everybody goes and plays baseball.  Doug Sahm was the coach.  And so I said, “Here’s Michoacan and some other shit for Joe "King" Carrasco.” And he reluctantly took it, but he probably threw it in the trash, because Doug never understood how I was able, as this West Coast moron, to write authentic shit that he could sing. Because he was a great songwriter and he didn’t cover too many people.

DrF: He did not cover too many contemporaries, no.

KF: No, he wanted to find some toothless black guy from 400 years ago and give him a shot.

This interview expanded to include several other topics, and we will see more of it in the very near future. Kim Fowley would like to let you know that he has just recorded a new release with Snow Mercy called Live in Overdrive. "We did it in an hour. It's one of the dumbest records you've ever heard. It's STUPID. Which is the key word in rock and roll.  It's really stupid, and if you guys are smoking dope, jacking off, or robbing cars, this is the record to do it to. Everything good about Paul and Paula and Dale and Grace, you will find on this piece of trash, on steroids. Be sure and check it out.  It's on iTunes."




Tuesday, July 24, 2012

Doug Sahm Month: Ramblers - Funky Side of Your Mind/Hello Amsterdam/Sir Doug's Recording Trip/One Too Many Mornings

Here's (sort of) three more from the Rough Cuts LP.  As requested, the tale of the Sir Douglas Quintet's trip to Amersterdam, and for historical purposes, "Sir Doug's Recording Trip".  But perhaps most interestingly, we're also bringing you "Funky Side of Your Mind".  Expect this post to ramble like a five minute mid-tempo Sir Douglas Quintet song.


As I've said in earlier posts this month, once Doug got to writing songs, some of his favorite topics were Lone Star Beer, Texas, and his own personal history, which sure did wig him out when he thought about what went down. No one could romanticize his own life in as charming, goofy, and wonderful way. "Sir Doug's Recording Trip" is his personal history, from being on record from the time he was five years old, to hooking up with the Quintet, to meeting Huey Meaux in Houston, to
having some chart success, to the moment of recording "Sir Doug's Recording Trip".

1-2-3-4-BINGO!
Sir Doug and Huey Meaux on a recording trip
taken from http://theragblog.blogspot.com*
"Hello Amsterdam" picks up the story where "SDRT" leaves off, with the Quintet really getting ready to go to Europe from their base in San Francisco. He sounds dissatisfied with the late 60s California scene and it sounds like maybe he's thinking about living on the "Urpean Cont'nent". He would of course settle for going back to Texas.


Is anybody going to Amsterdam, or maybe Barcelona?
Apparently the sessions that eventually made up the Rough Cuts album were, um, rather loose.  Many of the cuts fade up and fade down - arrangements created on the fly, minimal repeat takes, the usual crazy-artist-in-the-thralls-of-his-own-muse-at-the-expense-of-professionalism wondrousness.

One cut that features both a fade up AND a fade down is "Leaving Kansas City", a remarkably evocative (particularly for a lifelong Texas boy) ramble about getting out of the middle of America for stranger pastures. When I first discovered this song I had just "left Kansas City" (actually Columbia, MO) after 30 years, "bouncing around in space until I found my place". Sir Doug and I share a birthday, and considering his own love for zodiacal connectivity, I'm going to go a little hippie on y'all and admit that I've always wondered if it wasn't that shared birthdate, among other things, that connected me to his music so strongly.

You can hear Doug call out changes and instructions throughout the song as it lilts along over particularly strong and compassionate ("Crossroads" worthy!) DS vocal. But they obviously don't have an ending for it. I think that Augie Meyer must play the second guitar on this recording, since there's no piano or organ to be heard. On Rough Cuts the song fades after its little whistling coda, and that's that, a perfectly wonderful farewell-to-Mercury-records-last-song-on-the-album kind of a thing. But there's a full version of the take, or fuller, that is as far as I know only available on the Edsel She's About a Mover: The Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet Crazy Cajun Recordings CD (I think there's a one-and-two CD version) that continues past the fade, and into an otherwise unreleased pounder called "Funky Side of Your Mind".

FUNKY SIDE OF YOUR MIND
Sometimes CDs are good for something
As "Leaving Kansas City"'s chord changes go on and on and the band tries to find its way home, it sounds to me like drummer Johnny Perez has a sudden inspiration, as he switches from a country backbeat to a straight up pounding rock doubletime. He calls for the song "Funky Side of Your Mind", to which Doug responds, "Nah, man."  But Perez insists. "It'll work!" And into it they go, rocking out acoustic, and Doug fully commits, bringing his big "She's About a Mover" bellow out and transforming the wistfulness of "Leaving Kansas City" into a sudden rush of fiesty defiance, which to me sounds like the sort of thing he was looking for when he decided to "leave Kansas City" in the first place.

All-in-all a great lost look at the interband dynamics of the Quintet and one of the best SDQ recordings of the 70s.

And, what the heck, to wrap up and because I mentioned the whole shared birthday thing (and because it's kind of the same song anyway) here's one I never fail to play on November 6, wherever I am - from Together After Five, the "One Too Many Mornings/Got to Sing a Happy Song" medley. While it's always nice to think of all the time I've wasted (and it's not wasted) with Doug Sahm, it's the verse that starts at the 4:00 mark that always gets me.

One Too Many Mornings/Sing a Happy Song

One too many songs in this post?
*anyone interested in the multi-faceted and troubling story of Huey P. Meaux is directed to the Ragspot for a complete bio. 

Wednesday, July 18, 2012

Sir Douglas Quintet: Michoacan

Since Greg G sent Doug south of the border in an earlier post today, I thought this was an appropriate time to take another excursion down there, this time in the form of a single-only song from the Kris Kristofferson film Cisco Pike, "Michoacan".


I guess that working with the Crazy Cajun Huey P. Meaux wasn't quite enough crazy for Sahm, because "Michoacan" was co-written by the king of crazy, Kim Fowley.


Sir Doug actually appeared in Cisco Pike, which features a PRIMO cast of 70s performers, from Karen Black to Harry Dean Stanton to Antonio Fargas, and is almost sure to be playing at a Fool's Paradise double feature near you in the near future.  As a teaser, here's Doug's scene (about three minutes in), talking about how much he hates complicated California psychedelic music and prefers to keep it simple.  He also, unsurprisingly, needs some weed.



The song itself is such a crazy, happy goofed up bounce, and the scene in the studio is so positively loco, that for a while the word "Michoacan", divorced from any geographical context or even an upper case letter, became a code adjective among me and my friends for a messed up but kind of awesome situation, as in: "That party last night was pretty michoacan." This has of course taken on darker meanings since Michoacan became one of the central spots of south-of-the-border drug cartel violence. Surprised this number has not made it into "Breaking Bad". 

Speaking of pretty michoacan, check out this photo of Doug Sahm, Steven T. (aka Venus of Venus and the Razor Blades), Question Mark, and Kim Fowley.  If that's not the essence of michoacan, I dunno what is.


Next stop Nuevo Laredo?

Thursday, July 5, 2012

Sir Douglas Quintet: Blue Norther


The flipside of the Tribe single "The Tracker" is an eerie minor key rocker called "Blue Norther". The term "blue norther" itself is Texan for a cold front that drops the temperature suddenly and brings a storm, usually followed by a period of blue skies and cold weather. With its menacing rhythm guitar, spooky backups and ominous Augie Meyer organ, this song evokes that sudden chill very effectively, signalling a uniquely Texan rock and roll band with deeper regional and musical roots than your average teenage combo.

While it's easiest to find "Blue Norther" on Tribe, the song was actually the flipside of the very first Sir Douglas Quintet single, released on Pacemaker in '64 (the topside was the Cajun stomper "Sugar Bee"). It's the same version as the Tribe version but has an earlier fade.




Wednesday, July 4, 2012

Doug Sahm Month: Tracker, Tiger, Jagger, Sahm


Sir Douglas's 2nd 45 on Tribe was fronted by this great "Searchin'" styled stalker stomp, here reproduced live on Shindig in July of 1965.  Let's take a moment to note that Sir Douglas and the Quintet all have their headcoats on.

When I first came across this song, it was on the Tribe "Best of the Sir Douglas Quintet" album (which I think we'll all agree is a fine way to title your very first LP). I didn't bother to check the song titles when I'd spin it, and I thought that the lyric was "I'm a Tiger". I guess I thought Sahm was hunting this object d'affection down to gobble her up. Certain lines really had to be twisted to get the verses to follow my delusional chorus. When I finally realized that he was saying "I'm a Tracker", the whole thing made much more sense. Thing was, my wife thought it was "I'm a Tiger", too.

Shortly thereafter, a couple of friends, newly married, came to town, and we were driving around the area with a Doug Sahm comp. tape blasting away. This song came on, and was playing for a while, when the bride in the back said, "Why does he keep saying 'I'm Mick Jagger?!?'"

This made even less sense than "I'm a Tiger" but was way funnier.

My thumbs will be her jail!

Happy 4th!


1963 dancin' holiday from the good lovin', tater mashin' slop stompers.

Wednesday, May 30, 2012

James Brown Month: James Brown Says It Loud pt. 3 - Tell Me That You Love Me

Wrapping up our series on the loudest, craziest, least-in-control James Brown numbers ever (which, as you may recall, I have designated a subgenre all its own, "Free James Brown"), we arrive at the top of the heap, the apex of insane, the single wildest track JB ever laid down on wax. It's the B-Side of "Don't Be a Drop Out", "Tell Me That You Love Me".


It's a live cut, and if you lop off the 10 second intro, it's about a minute and a half long. A wild two guitar duel opens the show, and then the band and James come in, playing as fast and screaming as loud as they can possibly muster. There is no structure, a sudden stop in the middle eats up another couple of seconds, and the track fades out on just about the craziest scream JB or anyone ever screamt, which I believe might just be a loop of the crazy scream he screams right before the stop.  All in all, crazy. 

Apparently cobbled together from some live tapes by Bud Hobgood, Teo Macero style, this track is guaranteed to clear the floor of all but your bravest dancers while everyone else runs away holding their ears in pain.  SO GREAT.



Tuesday, May 29, 2012

James Brown Month: Can I Get Some Help? - Give It Up or Turnit Loose

Here's a (to me) previously unknown, "Funky Drummer"-ish, instrumental version of "Give It Up Or Turnit Loose". I found it on an Iranian three song EP on the Top 4 label, and it's credited to the James Brown Band. The EP also has the standard versions of Sly and the Family Stone's "Thank You Falettin' Me Be Mice Elf Again" and Bill Moss's "Sock It to Me Soul Brother", so I assume that it was a fairly standard licensing deal, if there was any deal at all, that resulted in this record's release.  I have been unable to find any reference to it elsewhere. I don't, however, have absolute knowledge of every obscure Brown-involved cut ever recorded, and as far as I know this might just be tucked away on the corner of some obscure or not-so-obscure album or 45 I have overlooked, maybe under a different name.  The sound on this is slightly dim, typical for a 45 with about six minutes on a side. Would love to find a fuller sounding version. Anyone out there know of this version's appearance on a record other than this one?





Monday, May 28, 2012

James Brown Month: RJ Smith Interview Part III

The final installment of our interview with The One author RJ Smith.


ICHIBAN: How in the world did James Brown have time to do everything that he did for himself AND produce the number of records he produced for other people? Do you have any insights on how involved he was in productions, or was it more of a brand name thing?

RJ SMITH: My sense is those numerous productions happened every way possible – some were cut without him being anywhere NEAR the studio. Some were built on ideas he had talked out with the musicians, or with JB stopping by the studio without being much invested in the moment. And some happened with JB at the center of the action. Then again, as Jim Dickinson once told me, sometimes the guy who brings the coffee is the one who really produces the session – you never know what is going to be the catalyst. It’s a mystery.



"Needs more . . ."
ICHIBAN: You posit in the Dancer chapter of The One that Brown was a dancer first and had to make up music to go suit his movements. Do you think that this was a conscious or unconscious process? Also, are you aware of how much Brown was exposed to African music in the 50s and 60s? Was his piling of polyrhythms something he picked up from somewhere or was it kind of instinctively sui generis?

I think Brown got the attention he craved, and the sustenance he needed to survive, first from dancing, and a little later from singing. He learned he had a mastery over audiences first by moving to a rhythm.

An amazing thing – and maybe in the end, the most amazing thing – about Brown was how he carried the lore of the African diaspora as fully as anybody ever did. I think he was listening to everything, and was influenced by all kinds of things (I’m struck for instance by how every time he was coming to LA in the late 50s/early 60s, he seemed to get paired with a mambo band. Wonder what he took from that!) I suspect he heard a lot more African sounds coming through the Cuban and Puerto Rican music – boogaloo! – around him in the streets while he was living in NYC in the ‘60s than from whatever Afro pop itself he might have heard. I think his piling of poly-rhythms has everything to do with being a profoundly responsive African-American from the South – and not just any part of the South, but South Carolina, with a very particular role in the slave trade, and a very specific and rich slave culture. The mystery of the guy is how he became this clear channel signal for the culture of the slave south – it was fragmented and outlawed during and after slavery, yet James Brown put it all together and made America feel it. I bet he didn’t even totally know how it happened – I’m sure he never would have talked about it, because his most comfortable line on Africa’s influence on him was that while, sure, he heard some overlaps, he wasn’t playing African music, he was playing James Brown music! He wasn’t going to acknowledge anything beyond his own innate genius.



JB working a postage stamp


In this age where everything is recycled from the past, how in the world is it that JB's amazing TV show Future Shock is not available as a DVD box set?

You speak wisdom. I thought the film and whatever documentation of it were in the posession of Ted Turner, who apparently would sometimes come in from a night of Atlanta partying and hang out with Brown on the set. But someone recently suggested that CNN now owns the recordings as part of the deal that Turner signed over. It kills me that this stuff is not on DVD, accompanied by a deluxe booklet with notes by Pete Relic and Questlove. Not right.



somebody hook a doctor up


What, to your mind, is the last great James Brown recording/single?

One day when I was sitting in court in Aiken, SC listening to lawyers and family members arguing about who should get what, they started complaining about the alleged disappearance of a number of masters found in Brown’s pool house. Among them was a master recording of Johnny Paycheck! How the heck could that be? Since then I’ve wondered if JB and JP did some kind of thing together. Maybe THAT’s the last great Brown recording. 



Mind. Blown. GET READY YOU MOTHERS, FOR THE BIG PAYCHECK!
One of the great JB divas who does not make an appearance in The One is Lyn Collins. Did you hear any good stories about her?


Regarding Lyn Collins, I recall her complaining in an interview in a British magazine that Brown had installed a telephone, like a hotline, in his house so that he could be in constant communication with her and know her every movement. She said dating him was like being in prison.


I've also seen lots of claims, which may have some accuracy, that Brown would paradoxically put out those records by proteges like Lyn and Marva [Whitney] and Bobby [Byrd], but should they start to take off, he'd start calling radio stations and tell them NOT to play the records. In other words, he was pretty okay with these folks feeling indebted to him, by putting out their records, throwing them some money. But if their records started stealing attention from him, he would have to intervene/knock them down - and being the producer, distributor and erstwhile check payer for various folks, he had lots of means at his disposal . . . But I have heard claims specifically about Lyn's version of "Think About It", that when it started heading for the top ten (r&b, I guess), JB began working the phones, calling his DJ connections and telling them to cool their action. How you prove that I don't know, but it seems somewhat plausible.


"I don't care how good it's doin'! I've got
money - now I need love! Shut it down!"
And, lastly, is there a particular song that you wanted to fit into The One that for one reason or another didn't make the cut, and what do you want to say about it?


I wrote out several thousand words on "The Grunt" [a 1970 JB produced instrumental by the Collins kids' version of the JB's], particularly its relationship to 18th and 19th century Cincinnati and how that town was known as Porkopolis. The abundant slaughterhouses used to dump trucks full of spare ribs into the river because they didn't know they tasted good. Wild dogs used to own downtown Cincinnati at night, wild dogs with pieces of meat in their maws scaring the shit out of visiting European ladies and forever shaping their impressions of Ohio and America. I couldn't find the right place for it in the book, but anyway "The Grunt" launched that particular jag. Something about "The Grunt" just leaves a man to thinking about pig flesh and wild dogs. It's that good. 




Special thanks to Mr. Smith for taking the time to chat with us about Soul Brother #1. The One can be found at the usual retail and online outlets, for instance here.  

Sunday, May 27, 2012

James Brown Month: Honky Tonk . . . POPCORN! Bill Doggett


This slammin' floorfiller bears the distinction of being the first James Brown production to feature Bootsy & Catfish Collins, Frankie "Kash" Waddy, Philippé Wynne, Robert McCullough, Clayton Gunnels and Darryl Jamison - they were called the Pacesetters at the time, but one night in Columbus, Georgia, on zero notice, after James had fired his entire band for wanting more money, they became the core of the JB's.


Friday, May 25, 2012

James Brown Month: RJ Smith Part II

Continuing our interview with JB biographer RJ Smith.



ICHIBAN: JB's stints in prison serve as symbolic bookends to his career . . . you hypothesize the first was what gave him a great deal of his discipline and drive. How do you think that his second sentence changed him?

RJ SMITH: The second prison trip made him more of a bluesman than he had ever been in his life. It seemed to make him sadder, older. It was a thoroughly humiliating experience, and one he could never conquer, because he could never engage with the root reason he was in there: his addiction to PCP. He could never admit he had a problem, and in his mind his incarceration was some sort of punishment by God, or crucifixion, ultimately he processed it as a sign of his martyrdom. It’s sad, too, that in his time of need, few seemed to want to visit him. Lee Atwater did, and Strom Thurmond probably kept him out of harm’s way; I think Brown came out of the South Carolina prison with a feeling of gratitude to some extremely conservative SC pols.



ICHI: A couple of months ago I wrote about the James Brown/Joe Tex feud. http://wfmuichiban.blogspot.com/2012/02/amazing-story-of-joe-texjames-brown.html.  Do you have any interesting tidbits about the Joe Tex/James Brown relationship?

RJ: That feud with Joe Tex continued, though possibly without firepower. Brown had a public beef with Joe over “Skinny Legs and All,” which Brown felt was disrespectful to women. And in 1969 Brown wrote an elliptical column in Soul magazine in which he pretty much says that Joe Tex should just shut up and be content with being Number Two, there’s no dishonor in being second best. If only Joe could admit it, Brown says, he could help him! I think Joe’s likeability and his clowning really got under Brown’s skin.



apparently he had no such issues w/
"Ain't Gonna Bump No More w/no Big Fat Woman"

Let's talk about Bobby Byrd.  He was there from before the beginning to after the end, and I don't feel his importance to the entire James Brown story can be overstated.  How do you see Byrd in terms of being one of the major cogs in the wheels of the James Brown machine?

No Bobby Byrd, no James Brown. It’s approximately that simple. I mean, Bobby’s family gave JB a way to get out of prison, by letting him live with them. Then Byrd sort of gave Brown his band, or JB took over Byrd’s crew and Byrd was cool enough with it to stick around afterwards. Byrd knew the show, and knew how James liked things, and was constantly there to help bring James' vision and wishes into reality. I think Bobby Byrd was a very good guy, the kind of nice guy that Brown pushed around until they finally pushed back. For Byrd that would mean leaving, or taking JB to court as he did in later years to get money he felt he was due. But Bobby was always grounded enough to see the big picture; he kept his ego in check, and was there, on and off, for much of the ride. 



I Need Help! (I Can't Do It Alone)*
You spend several pages discussing the long version of "There Was a Time" on Live at the Apollo Volume 2  - it's almost the most wordage spent on any particular performance in the book. What was it about that song/particular version that made you want to delve so deeply into its guts? 

That performance of “There Was a Time” is amazing. The way he name checks dances from the African American tradition, and then introduces the ultimate dance, the one at the end of the line: The James Brown. He makes you see how a whole music, and a variety of traditions, telescope into him. He never sounds as in control of an audience and in charge of the moment as he does there. And there’s something bottomless about the way Clyde and Jabo play off the beat – one a hair in front, the other just behind – and pull time apart. 



"Well I'll be ----!"

As a follow-up to that question, how did you decide which songs and performances to write about, aside from their historical importance? And how big a challenge was it to convey what is actually going on in those songs? 

With music there is so much to talk about, so many ways into a discussion, it’s hard to stop. Sometimes you talk about how a song was written or recorded, sometimes you talk about what it means, or what it meant to the one who made it. And sometimes folks wonder how you could possibly miss “Pass the Peas” or “Funky Drummer” or “Santa Claus go Straight to the Ghetto” – there’s so much to cover. And I have to save some room to talk about “I’ve Got Money”: ALWAYS gotta save room for that. I tried to pick songs and performances that would keep the momentum moving forward – rather than end a thought or line of discussion with a song or show, I hope I used them as often to keep moving us forward in time.



keep moving forward in time!


In the late 60s, JB's opening act was a white instrumental band called the Dapps [they also back James up on "I Can't Stand Myself" and released several singles JB produced]. If there were some issues with certain audience members on there being a white player or two in Brown's band in the late 60s, as you mention in The One, what was the reaction to an all-white opening act? 

It was a core of nationalists and some Islamic groups that had a beef with the whites in Brown’s band, not so much the average ticketholder. They were also incredibly incensed that Brown was still processing his hair and would not go with the Fro.  Of course, any pressure Brown got for having Caucasians onstage just made him double down. Maybe that’s the real reason why he recorded with the Dee Felice Trio: how you like me NOW, Eldridge Cleaver?



JB with the Dapps
Be back on Monday with the thrilling conclusion of this interview, wherein Mr. Smith talks Lynn Collins,  JB's production techniques, "the Grunt", and . . . Future Shock.

*all credit and praise to the original gif animator for that bit of internet wonderment. I found it here.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

James Brown Month: RJ Smith Interview part 1

RJ Smith's James Brown biography, The One, was published in March by Gotham Books. James Brown's life is so large and complex that making sense of it is a lot like staring directly into the sun (which is why we've taken such a scattershot approach to celebrating it this month on Ichiban) but Smith manages to hit all the major points (the music, the ego, the dancer, the ego, the politics, his disturbing relationships with women, the ego, his dictatorial relationship with his bands, his worldwide social impact, the drugs, the ego) in a compelling and fascinating way.  In this e-mail interview Smith discusses some of the more obscure parts of the book and some of the events and people from JB's life that there was just no room to fit into The One. The interview ran longer than a JB single from 1969, so we're splitting it up into three parts, just like Hot Pants.  Catch the first flipside tomorrow!


ICHIBAN:  What inspired you to spend this much time writing about James Brown? Was there an initial point of revelation that connected you to him as a subject matter? 


RJ SMITH: The first connection I had with him was when I was growing up in Detroit in the late 60s and early 70s. That of course was Motown country, and Top 40 radio was laced with bubblegum, “The Sound of Young America” and local garage rock and then ... you encountered ... the scream. That scrofulous shout that just shredded everything on the air. I don’t even remember what song I heard first, or any song at all, I just remember the noise of his voice, and I was interested.

After that, well he just seemed more interesting, and confusing, and larger than life than about anybody else I can think of in life. I mean this guy just talked and talked and talked, and he kept getting more mystifying while he kept speaking these deep truths in broken poetics. What kind of life was this? If you are gonna live in somebody’s head for four or five years, may it be as interesting as this one.
talkin' loud and sayin' somethin'
ICHIBAN: Your technique of grounding the various eras of James's bands by focusing on the drummers really tied the disparate elements of his career together. When did you decide this was the way to go?

RJ SMITH: There were so many amazing musicians in that band, how do I give them credit without overwhelming the story I’m trying to tell? You need this CNN crawl across the bottom of the page flashing all these folks names as you read about the records. But then, if I start naming people, it’s hard to do it part way, there will be reader’s who quite rightly ask, where’s Sugar Pie DeSanto, where’s Country Kellum, where’s the Dapps, right? Reasonable questions, but there’s so many great players – they need their own book. I started thinking about the drummers as a way to at least symbolically nod in the direction of the whole unit, and then the more I thought about rhythm at the core of his sound, and Southern-if-not-New Orleans rhythms in specific, the more reasons I had for focusing on the drums.

Give (some of) the drummers some!
Jabo Starks, Clyde Stubblefield, Melvin Parker, Clayton Fillyau
How do you view JB's artistic career arc?  Modern consensus seems to make the 60s a long slow build to the apotheosis of the early 70s with the Bootsy version of the band, and that was the artistic peak. But in the 70s, critical consensus put his peak more in the late 60s, but this was before the importance of funk music was really understood.  I guess my question is: Is, say, Sex Machine a more radical artistic breakthrough or amazing piece of music than, say, Live at the Apollo?  

Probably – this is the baby boomer divide with JB, whether you think Live at the Olympia is better than Live at the Apollo. That early 70s outpouring with Bootsy and the other iterations of the JBs and assorted projects of this era is singular. Those funk records are so deep, and Brown was just popping them out like beads of sweat, it’s pretty unprecedented. It was this whole new genre of sound for a while that mostly had only itself to refer to, and then it started touching other musics. We still haven’t gotten to the bottom of this era. I sure would love to hear rehearsal tapes, or to have been a fly on the wall when the JBs got together in the studio – how did they talk to each other, how did they establish a bass line, etc? It seems so complicated and hard to assemble, but they had to be laying it down pretty quick and on the fly.

or 
What says you, Ichibunnies?

Syd Nathan [head honcho of King Records and frequent JB financial sparring partner] and James Brown would have probably made one of the great comedy duos; their relationship seems so contentious and codependent.  I was surprised to learn that Brown was a pallbearer at Nathan's funeral - were they closer than their antagonistic reputation lets on?  Did they have a genuine friendship or was it strictly business? And did Nathan EVER like anything JB did, besides make him money?

There’s a great story Syd’s nephew told me about James putting a Mezuzah around his neck whenever he had to get something from Syd, because who knows, it might help somehow. Syd never totally saw talent on its own terms – money shaped his view of a great many things. But I am sure he understood how special James was. He had to have. Syd liked the way “No” sounded, but at some point he learned that telling James “No” lead to great things down the road. Doesn’t a great comedy team need contrast? These two were like Redd Foxx and Slappy White together, but with two Redd Foxxes! They were so much alike, I think they totally UNDERSTOOD each other and fed off the mirror image they found in their competitor.  Part of what encouraged Syd to stick it to James every chance he got was that he felt he had to keep the guy in check. When Charles Spurling told me he was hired in the late ‘60s at King (besides his considerable musical value) to be pure thug muscle to push back at James, it totally made sense.


SYD NATHAN: Give the drummer some . . . money!

The stories in The One about tent show culture and its influence on Brown in the 50s was very interesting, particularly the contrast between the Daddy Grace religious version of a travelling tent show and the Esquerita/Little Richard nascent drag-queen version.  Do you have any more anecdotes about either or both of these traditions and what JB took from them? 

Hats off to The Hound there – he’s really blazed the way in chronicling the whole gay tent show masquerade culture in the South. I keep telling my academic friends there’s a lot to write about here, but so far nobody’s dug in. I wish I understood better the sexual identity dynamics of this phenomenon. How did James Brown become not quite a part of this scene, but cognizant of its stars – Billy Wright, and of course Little Richard, probably others too – and how did he think about the queer undertow (and text) of this scene? The “Man’s Man” dressing like Little Richard, and walking down the same streets of Macon. How did that play itself out in daily life, and what did people say about Brown, and what did Brown do when he heard it?

As for Daddy Grace, any chance I can take to write about him I will totally go for it. The guy is one of the great American stories, and I am convinced he had a crucial imprint on funk (through the drumming and bands in his church) that has yet to be fully understood. So many cool things happen in tents, we definitely need more tents in America today. 

Sweet Daddy Grace - GIVE THE PREACHER SOME!
Tune in tomorrow for James in jail, the Dapps, Bobby Byrd, "There Was a Time" and the return to the Ichiblog of Soul Brother #? - Mr. Joe Tex!



Tuesday, May 22, 2012

James Brown Month: GODFATHER in the GARAGE - Papa's Got a Brand New Trash Bag

While "Out of Sight" is probably the number one garage/frat/show band JB cover, and there's no shortages of "Try Me", today we're featuring a trio of versions of "Papa's Got a Brand New Bag."
  

First up is this lo-fi live version from Mike St. Shaw & the Prophets, found on the Audio Fidelity (of all things) release Where It's At: Cheetah, in 1966. Cheetah was a dance club in New York, on the sight of the old Riviera Ballroom at Broadway and 53rd. It's a weird Audio Fidelity release, in that there is little fidelity to the audio, and not all the material is ace, but Tucson, AZ based St. Shaw and the Prophets perform a ripping medley of Good Lovin/Papa, the papa portion presented here.  

papa's got a brand new hump!

The Invictas version is pure snotty teenage thrust, which is appropriate from this band of Rochester, NY humpers. 


The slickest, floor-fillingest version of the lot comes from future Redbone stars Pat and Lolly Vegas, from their At the Haunted House LP. The Haunted House was located in Hollywood, and while I doubt the album was recorded live, it's an excellent California rock 'n' roll party record with a  great guitar/bass sound. 

Special thanks to Greg Cartwright for the loan of the Invictas and Pat & Lolly records.  More from the Cart-chives in the next couple of weeks.

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