Turning weird, old music into pop gold

In the last post, I shared my enthusiasm for what I call weird, old American music: fiddle tunes, blues, early country, bluegrass, western swing, and all sorts of music that refuses to be categorized. It’s an adventure to search out this music, give it a listen, and try to understand the people, attitude and culture that produced it.

Over the decades, this musical quest has led me to some talented musicians who have made music that shows a lot of passion, humor, fun, anger, sadness and general humanity. The music may be sound quaint or odd to our ears. The recording quality may be poor (not surprising, if it’s 70, 80 or 90 years old), but a lot of this music still has appeal, even for ears accustomed to radio-friendly current pop, country and hip hop music.

But there’s the thing: Sometimes today’s artists are creating their art by drawing DIRECTLY from weird, old American music. Here are a few examples of pop gold made out of weird old music. Okay, some of it isn’t exactly pop gold. It’s only gold to NPR listeners or Americana fans. But these are thoroughly modern and contemporary recordings made out of source material from weird, old America:

First up, Lily Allen channels Professor Longhair. Here’s Allen’s song, "Knock ‘Em Out:"

Here’s Professor Longhair’s song “Big Chief," from which the piano part was lifted in its entirety:

One could argue that Professor Longhair’s music isn’t as old and weird as, say, Gid Tanner and the Skillet Lickers. But one thing’s for sure: he’s utterly unique, and his life story is compelling. If you’re not familiar with “Fess,” learn more here: http://www.allmusic.com/artist/professor-longhair-mn0000369270/biography

Next up, for you Boomers, "I’m So Glad" by Skip James:

"I'm So Glad" by '60s power trio Cream, with Eric Clapton on guitar:

"John Henry" by Woody Guthrie:

An electronic version of the song by a band called Snakefarm:

Finally, "Crossroads" by bluesman Robert Johnson:


Like Professor Longhair, Robert Johnson maybe shouldn't be lumped in with some of the more obscure "old, weird" artists. As one of the key forefathers of rock 'n' roll, and a bluesman who died under suspicious circumstances, he's become a legend. But this is a great illustration of how a decades-old song, which was obscure at the time, was made modern and turned to gold. Here's the same song by Cream, with a fresh opening riff by Eric Clapton:

And about 10 year’s later, Steve Miller appropriated Clapton’s guitar lick for his song "Jet Airliner:"

 Does that make Steve Miller the musical step grandson of Robert Johnson?

Weird, old American music

For me, one of the joys of being a music lover for more than four decades has been exploring music from weird, old America. Beyond the well-defined genres and Top 40 playlists, there’s another universe of music that sounds strange to ears that are used to modern, polished pop creations. But once you give the music a chance, it proves to be infectious, passionate, happy, profoundly sad, spiritual, profane, full of wisdom, full of nonsense, and above all utterly original.

If experiencing new music could be compared to going for a drive to look at the scenery, discovering this music is like leaving the paved highway, traveling for miles down a gravel road until it turns to dirt or a trail through a pasture, and finding that it leads to the most beautiful canyon, lake, or meadow ever – something that’s just not visible from the main highway, and if it were somebody would build a McDonald’s there.

A big slice of weird, old American music can be heard in the Anthology of American Folk Music, a six-album collection assembled by filmmaker and music collector Harry Smith and issued in 1952. This set of 84 folk, blues and country songs hugely influenced Bob Dylan and many other folk musicians of the 1950s, ‘60s and beyond. Aside from its influence on a number of influential icons of the folk and rock eras, the Anthology of American Folk music offered a glimpse into a musical expression of a weirder, older, wilder country. The compilation was divided into three two-album volumes: "Ballads", "Social Music", and "Songs." 

Anyway, here are a few songs that fall in the “old, weird” category for me. Some of these artists had recordings on the Anthology of American Folk Music, but I believe that none of these recordings were on the set.

Charlie Poole, If the River Was Whiskey:

Cannon’s Jug Stompers, Walk Right In

Gid Tanner and The Skillet Lickers, Soldier’s Joy:

 Elizabeth Cotton, Freight Train:

Rev. Gary Davis, Candyman:

Mississippi Fred McDowell, Shake ‘Em On Down:

Still relevant after all these years

Forty years ago, singer-songwriter Jackson Browne sang about life as a twentysomething in the hit song “Take It Easy.” He was “standing on a corner in Winslow, Arizona” and what did he see? “…  a girl, my lord, in a flatbed Ford, slowing down to take a look at me.”

Zoom ahead to 2014 and Browne, now 66 years and 1 week old, is singing about “Leaving Winslow.” That’s the title of one tune from his new album “Standing in the Breach.” But he’s not looking for love anymore: “… I’ll be on this train and I won’t be back again,” he sings.

After 42 years and 14 albums, Jackson Browne is still singing. But it’s a different song, unlike some of his contemporaries who are making a living retreading old hits. Browne is still relevant. His easy-rolling mixture of folk-tinged pop, political awareness and personal insight still shines with intelligence and heart. But he brings a middle-age perspective: often weary, wavering between acceptance and resignation, but still hopeful for the future. Rolling Stone reviewers gave “Standing in the Breach” 4 out of 5 stars. Allmusic.com 3.5 stars.

Any desert-island list of music of my life would include a couple Jackson Browne albums. I charted my emotional growth in my 20s according to Browne’s songs. And on several of his recent albums, I find his music still rings true for a fiftysomething guy who’s been around the block but holds on to bits of idealism and hope for the future.

Browne is not coasting into his golden years by rehashing golden oldies, like some of his contemporaries. In fact, he’s far from alone. A number of other singer-songwriters of his generation are still committed to making music of substance. Some iconic names come to mind: Paul Simon, Neil Young, and Bob Dylan. Dylan has recorded several absolutely essential (and fun) albums in the 2000s and in November will issue “The Basement Tapes Complete,”  a fresh version of legendary 1967 home recordings made with The Band and first issued in the 1970s. The new release is mastered from the recently found original tapes and is said to include all the songs that were recorded.

But beyond the megastars, a lot of artists who are highly respected but not household names are still making meaningful music, 30 or 40 years into their careers. And their music reflects the concerns and perspectives of people of a certain age. Of these artists, several who come to mind are John Hiatt, Lucinda Williams, Rosanne Cash, Rodney Crowell, and Richard Thompson.

Which of your favorite artists from earlier years are still making relevant music?

Browne and his band performing “Leaving Winslow” on Late Night with David Letterman in early October: 

The Fan I Am, Part 3: Going digital, from CDs to hard drive and streaming music

This blog is about music, not technology. But please bear with a discussion of gear for one post, while I describe the technology I’m using these days to store music and play it back. It’ll be painless, I promise, and you might find it useful if you still have CDs but want to get rid of them.

There comes a time in life for many people when they’re ready to own less stuff. My wife and I reached that point a year or two ago. The closets, kitchen cabinets, garage, basement – all seemed to be full of things we hadn’t used in years, didn’t fit, or were out of date. Our kids are grown and out on their own. We have garage sales every couple years. But still our four-bedroom house is mostly full.

So it’s time to get serious about divesting ourselves of several decades’ worth of accumulated stuff. But among the useless things are some precious possessions, like my collection of 2,000 or so compact discs. I’ve spent a lifetime collecting music. I can’t part with the music, but I’m also unwilling to pack and move boxes and boxes of CDs the next time we move. The solution, of course, is ripping the CDs to a computer hard drive, so they can be played on my home stereo system (remember those?) or some other type of player. Then I can sell or give the CDs away. This process has entailed months of research and decision-making.

The initial chore is to rip the CDs to a storable audio format and save them onto a hard drive. This decision was actually the easiest. I already had decided that the CDs would be converted to FLAC, a lossless audio format with sound quality equal to compact discs. Lossless means that the audio file doesn’t lose any sound quality when converted. A much more popular audio format is MP3, which also allows a smaller file size. iPods and smart phones play MP3 files, and Amazon and iTunes sell them for download. But MP3 audio files use lossy data compression – they lose quality when converted. FLAC files take more hard-drive space, but sound better.

What made the choice of ripping and storing technology easy was the availability of an out-of-the-box, plug-and-play solution known as the Vortexbox Appliance. Sold by Small Green Computer, (http://shop.smallgreencomputer.com) , the Vortexbox appliance comes in several different configurations with several sizes of hard drive, from 1 to 4 terabytes. Each terabyte of memory will hold about 3,000 CDs. These devices run Vortexbox, an open-source software that rips songs from CDs, tags them with the appropriate information, adds them to a database, and stores them as FLAC audio files. The Vortexbox appliance is connected by Ethernet cable to our home wireless router.

Choosing the playback system took a lot more time and research. I ultimately chose Sonos (http://www.sonos.com), another plug-and-play solution that is as simple to set up and use as the Vortexbox appliance. And the two are compatible. Sonos is a wireless speaker system that also is a self-contained player. In other words, a single Sonos unit will replace your CD player, AM-FM receiver, and speakers, all with no wires to connect – just a power cord to plug in.

Sonos makes a number of models of different sizes, from one-speaker units up to five. Mine is a $400 Sonos Play 5, with five speakers: a 3.5-inch woofer, two 3-inch midrange speakers, and two tweeters. Each speaker is individually powered by a dedicated amplifier. The Play 5 fits well on a bookshelf, at 8.5 inches tall, 14.5 inches wide, and a little less than 5 inches deep. If you want stereo separation, you can pair two of them. Sonos also makes several smaller models, the Play 3 and Play 1, as well as a subwoofer, home theater speaker bar, and several other devices. You can put a Sonos in any room in the house (or every room). Each speaker can be set to play independently of the others or in sync with them.
  

The Sonos speakers are controlled by an app installed on a desktop, smartphone, or both. Anybody who uses iTunes or other music software can handle this app. The Sonos system plays back music files from any computer or storage device connected to your home wireless network (like my Vortexbox appliance). It also plays streaming music services, including iTunes Library, Amazon, Google Play, Songza, Spotify, Pandora, Hype Machine, Beats Music, and Sirius XM internet radio. It will also play streaming signals from radio stations, both local and anywhere else in the world.

To my ears, the Sonos sounds very nearly as good as my home stereo system, an NAD 50-watt receiver driving a Cambridge Soundworks speaker system with subwoofer. The bass probably isn’t as strong, but a Sonos subwoofer would cure that.

Before choosing Sonos I also considered several other playback systems. One was the Logitech Squeezebox, which will play music from network-connected computers or storage devices over an existing home stereo. The other was Bluesound, a wireless system similar to Sonos in some ways, but with a better audiophile pedigree. Bluesound is a pretty new product, but the Logitech Squeezebox has been around for awhile and has many adherents on various internet discussion forums.

I also briefly considered several different models of small, all-in-one player and storage units. These look like a CD player and connect to speakers in place of a CD player and amplifier. But compared to Sonos or Bluesound, they tend to have smaller hard drives, clunkier user interfaces, and don’t play streaming music services.

In the end, Sonos got the nod because it is extremely easy to set up and use, plays a wide variety of music and radio sources, and sounds very good in my home. I probably would have been happy with the Logitech or Bluesound systems, too. 

The next challenge is getting all the CDs ripped onto the Vortexbox appliance. In five or six months, I’ve managed to rip about two-thirds of my collection. I slip discs into the device while I’m eating breakfast or lunch, or while I’m hanging out around home during the evening. With any luck, I’ll be finished by the end of the year.

Question: Has anybody else made the conversion from CDs? How did you do it?

The Fan I Am, Part 2: Finding New Music

This is a great time for music lovers whose tastes extend outside the boundaries of Top 40 Radio, or wherever the hits are played these days. Any fan who goes in search of music outside the mainstream can find it easily, with a little help from Google, YouTube, and other web sites and blogs that specialize in particular musical styles or genres, or whose mission is exposing new and unknown music to the public.

A 10-second search on YouTube will easily turn up gems like this 1966 performance of “Devil Got My Woman” by Skip James, a Delta bluesman who first recorded in 1931s, was rediscovered during the 1960s folk revival, and whose songs inspired such rock icons such as Eric Clapton:


(By the way, standing on the right side in the foreground of the video is Howlin’ Wolf. If you’ve seen a Viagra TV ad, you’ve heard Wolf’s music.)

It would have been difficult to impossible to find an album by Skip James or Howlin’ Wolf when I was a teen-age music fan, growing up in the 1970s in small-town Nebraska. It was tough to find ANY music that wasn’t at the top of the popular or country music charts. AM radio played the hits. FM radio hadn’t even reached the area yet. Nor did television showcase very much rock music, outside of the biggest or safest (from a parental standpoint) hits. We didn’t have cable yet, just ABC, CBS and PBS. There were a few musically adventurous TV shows, like the Johnny Cash Show and the Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour, where a person might hear Bob Dylan, Joni Mitchell, John Hartford, or other folk, bluegrass, or other roots music artists as well as rock greats like the Who or Donovan. Somehow, when these shows were on the air I wasn’t yet interested in some of the great music they featured. So I missed performances like this gem:


Aside from these short-lived shows and a few other exceptions, the main media outlets pretty much ignored the kinds of music that had intrigued me, music who I’d been exposed to when friends of mine or my brothers’ shared record albums. For a kid in small town Nebraska, Rolling Stone Magazine was one of the few places to read record reviews, profiles and interviews with musical artists. I could satisfy my curiosity about artists like Jackson Browne, the Allman Brothers, the Grateful Dead, and others who were outside the playlist of small-town AM radio.

My mind and musical tastes were further expanded by college and new friends with varied tastes in politics, culture, recreational activities, and music. The friends I made at college in Lincoln in the 1970s turned me on to some soon-to-be greats who were still under the general public’s radar at that early date (Bruce Springsteen in 1974), artists who traveled the musical backroads and would never be on the broad, paved road of superstardom (Ry Cooder) and truly out-there artists (Captain Beefheart). There was live music that was truly exotic to these ears – blues, bluegrass, western swing, and the like. And people who worked at record stores like Dirt Cheap had a cool factor and musical tastes that were unimpeachable.

This mix of musical influences left me with an appreciation of a broad roster of genuinely great artists, many of whom would never come within shouting distance of the Billboard Top ten: Richard Thompson, David Lindley, Little Feat, John Hiatt, among others. And I liked it that way. It was a point of pride that the general public would never have the good taste to like my favorites. Thirty or 40 years ago, my friends and I were hipsters before hipsters were invented.

We also followed artists who had the occasional hit record, but spent most of their careers putting out quality music even when they were outside the public eye. We were willing to share them occasionally with the unwashed masses. And of course there were the artists that created the classics of our era. They were both universally popular AND universally cool: the Beatles, the Stones, Willie Nelson, Sinatra, Bob Marley.

This is the short version of how I became a music lover with tastes broad enough to include Skip James and Willie Nelson. But here’s the thing: Discovering new music never satisfied, it just made me burn to find even more new music.

Forty years down the road, I still keep an ear out for great music. It might be new artists – if you haven’t heard John Fullbright, give him a listen – or it might be another amazing player of old, weird music who influenced somebody who influenced Jack White. So the search continues, only these days my sources are different. The record stores are gone, there’s not much live music where I live, and most of my college buddies aren’t as interested in music (but a few still are!).

These days, I have my kids; Rolling Stone and a few other music magazines that are still around; and the internet. I visit some sites regularly to find new music. Here are a few of them:

• Popmatters (http://www.popmatters.com/): This site covers not only music, but also film, TV, books, comics, and multimedia. Popmatters has regular reviews, columns, blogs, and features. Upcoming releases are listed every month. They cover a broad range of musical genres.
• All Songs Considered, a blog by NPR Music (http://www.npr.org/blogs/allsongs/): All Songs Considered covers new artists as well as new releases by established artists. One of the best parts of this site is the Tiny Desk Concert, a series of video mini-concerts in the NPR offices. This is a great way to get a feel or artists who are new, or else just new to you.
• For Americana, alt country and roots music, there’s Country Standard Time (http://www.countrystandardtime.com/countrymusic.asp) a good source of album reviews and feature articles.
• For all-around research, and to look for reviews of new albums I might here about, there’s Allmusic.com (http://www.allmusic.com/)
• Rolling Stone is available both in print and on-line, and other music mags have on-line versions, too. One that I often peruse for its reviews is the Uncut (http://www.uncut.co.uk/music), a British rag that covers a lot of American music as well.
• No Depression is a highly regarded magazine that covers alt country and other roots music. Its print version folded, but the online version lives on: http://www.nodepression.com/ 

 Question: What are your favorite on-line sources of information about music? Share some that I should know about.

The fan I am

Music and I, we go way back. I can trace our serious relationship back to junior high years, when I first heard a first Simon and Garfunkel album that belonged to a friend of my big brother. The relationship is still going strong 45 years later. I have a collection of 2,000 compact discs and I’m always on the lookout for something I haven’t heard yet.

But like any long-term relationship, things change as time goes by. One or both parties grow and evolve; expectations shift; and the world around us never stays the same. The bottom line: I don’t listen to music in the same way, with the same expectations, as I did when “Sounds of Silence” first caught my ear.

(My other log-term relationship is analogous. I’m not the same 22-year-old man my wife married all those years ago – to which she would undoubtedly say, “thank God.”)

Here’s the quick version of what happened between me and music: 

A few years into the relationship I wanted to take things to the next level. I wanted to go deeper, to know all I could about the music I was hearing. This was before rock ‘n’ roll had parental approval or corporate sponsorship. There was no internet yet and rock wasn’t covered by newspapers. The only information available to a small-town kid was newer, countercultural sources like Rolling Stone Magazine (at that time, less than 10 years old). So I subscribed. Rolling Stone’s articles and record reviews turned me on to many artists and a lot of music. But there was a down side: Relying on rock critics for all my info left me with an elitist, snobbish attitude. The critics often disdained the most popular music because it lacked substance, and this left me with a misguided tendency to abandon some great artists after they became megastars, even though their music still had substance (Elton John, for one).

What made me recognize this toxic attitude? That old relationship changer, having children. My own son and daughter inherited my love for music and some of my particular tastes (Paul Simon and Jackson Browne), but also grew up with their own music and developed their own tastes. (They’re also both talented and gifted musicians themselves, but that’s another blog). Children have a way of paying back their parents, and mine have given me a new willingness to listen with open ears and without prejudice, especially prejudice against hugely popular music. Sometimes millions of fans are actually right.

Not only have my own children influenced me, but also my daughter-in-law, whose broad musical taste encompasses the most popular hip hop, pop and folk, as well as obscure jazz, blues and old-time fiddle and banjo music. And she can teach me a lesson or two about jazz. Two years ago she took me to the Village Vanguard Club in Greenwich Village, which has been showcasing live jazz since 1957, giving exposure to the likes of Thelonious Monk, Miles Davis, Bill Evans, Charlie Mingus, and Stan Getz.

   

Looking back on the relationship, I can trace another change or two in the way I listen to music. I used to try to fit music in genres: country, rock, country-rock, bluegrass, blues, zydeco, Cajun, swing jazz, bebop, cool jazz, modern jazz, classical … you get the idea. I overlooked some great music because I couldn’t see how it fit into a genre, or else it didn’t sound like anything I’d heard before. I have learned somehow to take to heart Duke Ellington’s observation that there are only two types of music – good music and the other kind. 

Have the way you listen to music, and your attitudes, changed over the years?

Here's a song by Paul Simon about HIS relationship with music: