Now Reading: The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax by Andrew Cartmel

This is the first mystery I've read in a very long time, and especially one that kept me reading, page after page, wanting to learn what happens next.

The Vinyl Detective: Written in Dead Wax by Andrew Cartmel (Titan Books, 2016) is the first volume in an ongoing series that currently numbers four -- and I already have book number 2 on order.

Recently, I seem to be selecting books to read that have received a starred review in Kirkus. Those familiar with Kirkus know that even being reviewed by this publication is indeed rare; receiving a starred review nearly requires cosmic intervention.

For those not of the vinyl record persuasion, the "dead wax" of the title refers to the area on a record between the end of the last track and the label. Typically "matrix" information is provided in this runout area, sometimes stamped, sometimes etched, occasionally both: alphanumeric information that pertains to that pressing of the record. Often the only way to tell a first pressing of an album from a reissue is by the matrix runout information.

I was relating some of the story to my wife and I couldn't remember the protagonist's name -- the Vinyl Detective of the title -- so I picked up the book and leafed through what I had read at that point, and realized that his name is never given! Even when he meets up with friends or talks to friends on the phone, no one addresses him by name. He picks up a nickname or two along the way, but we never learn his real name. That I found quite intriguing. I'll have to see if Cartmel's "no name" quirk continues into the next volume.

As to the story: years ago, our protagonist, a rather unassuming record-collecting geek, had handed out business cards at record stores, pubs, and dj gigs. The business card simply read "Vinyl Detective" below his name and address. So much time had passed that he actually forgot about those business cards. Now, years later, one of those cards results in a knock at his door -- and an offer to hire him to track down an extremely rare jazz album from the 1950s, of which only a few hundred were pressed at the time.

This album, as it turns out, is one of fourteen different titles that the record label produced during the course of only one year, before the owner of the label committed suicide and the label ceased production.

Of course, beatings, murders, and mayhem ensue -- this is a mystery, as I said. But, as the subtitle suggests, the secret to the mystery is written in the dead wax -- and to learn that secret, our Vinyl Detective must actually track down all fourteen of those albums.

"An irresistible blend of murder, mystery and music... our protagonist seeks to find the rarest of records – and incidentally solve a murder, right a great historical injustice and, if he's very lucky, avoid dying in the process."

—Ben Aaronovitch, bestselling author of Rivers of London

"Crime fiction as it should be, played loud through a valve amp and Quad speakers. No digital writing here, it's warm and rich. Every delicate pop and crackle adding character and flavour. Witty, charming and filled with exciting solos. Quite simply: groovy."

—Guy Adams, critically acclaimed author of The Clown Service

"The Vinyl Detective is one of the sharpest and most original characters I've seen for a long time."

—David Quantick, Emmy Award-winning producer of VEEP

I haven't had this much fun reading a mystery novel in a long time.

You can find The Vinyl Detective at your book store of choice or via Amazon.com.

[As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. If you use an affiliate product link, I make a commission.]

The Final Excerpt: Chapter 22: The Universal Tone by Carlos Santana

I have to hope I'm not dulling the senses with all these excerpts from Carlos Santana's autobiography, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light.

Chapter 22 deals with the making of the album Supernatural. Unfortunately the pages are too numerous to excerpt, so if you've read -- and enjoyed -- the excerpts I've posted so far, then please do snag the book for yourself. You won't be disappointed....

At this point in Santana's career, he and the band were still under contract to Island Records, with two albums remaining on that contract. Carlos met with Chris Blackwell, of Island Records, for lunch and simply asked him to release him from his contract. Carlos felt something special was brewing, and Island Records was not the label to be with. Much to Carlos's surprise, Chris agreed, and with no strings attached. (Chris could have made Carlos pay for the remaining two albums, he could have asked that Carlos's next label buy out the contract, etc. but he didn't -- he simply let Carlos go.)

This allowed Carlos and Santana to team up again with Clive Davis, now with Arista Records. Clive was formerly the head of CBS (Columbia Records) in 1968, and he was instrumental in the production of the first Santana album. Clive put together the entire Supernatural album, bringing together all the singers and musicians who performed with Santana on that album. Clive Davis wanted to put Santana back on the radio!

Excerpt from Chapter 22:

It's really hard to describe how it feels when something [Supernatural] hits that big, all around the world, and you're in the middle of it. It's like being that cork floating on a big ocean wave—how much am I controlling, and how much is controlling me? Every day the ego games have to be checked, and you have to find your balance again.

In February of 2000, Clive told me that Supernatural had been nominated for ten Grammy Awards. Deborah started calling me a new name even before we got to the show. "So, Mr. Grammy, how many do you think you'll win?" The kids were like, "Yeah, Dad, how many?" I was feeling that I'd be lucky and happy with one. That's why, when I won the first one during the event that takes place in the afternoon, I thanked everyone I could— Clive, Deborah, my father and mother and the kids. When I won the next one, I was thanking my siblings and the musicians and songwriters. By the time of the evening event, which was on TV, I felt like one of those dogs playing fetch with a Frisbee, and it became something to laugh about: winners in other categories, such as classical music and country, started thanking me for not doing an album in their genres.

The whole thing was a blur, really. The two things that I was most proud of were playing "Smooth" onstage, with Rob Thomas singing and Rodney Holmes [the drummer] bringing everything he had. I hit that first note, and everyone in the whole place jumped to their feet. My other favorite moment was when Lauryn Hill and my old friend Bob Dylan presented the Album of the Year award—that was the eighth and last Grammy that Supernatural won. They opened the envelope, and all Bob did was point to me—no words. I got up to accept it, and suddenly it was clear what I had to say.

"Music is the vehicle for the magic of healing, and the music of Supernatural was assigned and designed to bring unity and harmony." I thanked the two personal pillars who first came to mind: John Coltrane and John Lee Hooker.

The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story to Light is available from your bookstore of choice as well as Amazon.com.

[As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. If you use an affiliate product link, I make a commission.]

Chapter 20 Excerpt: The Universal Tone by Carlos Santana

If you haven't been keeping up on my blog post excerpts from Carlos Santana's autobiography, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light, then here's a few significant points about the book:

The book was published in 2014 by Little, Brown and Company. NPR (National Public Radio) named The Universal Tone one of its Best Books of 2014. It received a starred review in Kirkus (and anyone who knows Kirkus, knows that it's nearly impossible to even get reviewed by Kirkus!). And the book went on to win the American Book Award in 2015.

So, why aren't you reading this book already?

From Chapter 20:

In a funny way, my life has always been local—everything that happens comes from where I am. John Lee Hooker was living in the [San Francisco] Bay Area at this time. He was the Dalai Lama of boogie. Shoot, he should have been the pope of boogie as far as I'm concerned. We got to know each other. A lot of times we'd be playing, and he'd say, "Carlos, let's take it to the street," and I'd say, "No, John, let's take it to the back alley," and he'd say, "Why stop there? Let's go to the swamp." I miss him so much.

A John Lee boogie pulls people in as strongly as gravity holds them to this planet. He is the sound of deepness in the blues—his influence permeates everything. You can hear him in Jimi Hendrix's "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)" or in Canned Heat's boogies. That's nothing but John Lee Hooker. When you hear the Doors, that's a combination of John Lee and John Coltrane. That's what they do; that's the music they love.

...

In '89 John Lee was local to the Bay Area. He was living not far from me, in San Carlos, which is near Palo Alto. We met a few times and talked, and at some point he actually invited me to his house for his birthday, which was the first time I really hung out with him. I brought a beautiful guitar to give him.

When I walked in, I saw that everyone was watching the Dodgers on TV, because that's John Lee's favorite team. He was eating fried chicken and Junior Mints. No kidding—Junior Mints. He had two women on the left and two on the right, and they were putting the mints into his hands, which were softer than an old sofa. I stepped up and said, "Hi, John. Happy birthday, man. I brought you this guitar, and I wrote a song for you."

"Oh, yeah?"

"It sounds like the Doors doing blues, but I took it back from them and I'm returning it to you and I'm calling it 'The Healer.'

John Lee chuckled. He had a slight stutter that was very endearing. "L-L-Let me hear it."

I started playing, and I made it up right on the spot—I knew how he did the blues, how he played and sang. "Blues a healer all over the world..." He took the song, and when he recorded it, he added to it in his own way. I said, "Okay, we've got to go to the studio with this, but I just want you to come at one or two tomorrow afternoon, because I don't want you to be there all day, man. I just want you to come in and just lay it. I'm going to work with the engineer—get the microphones ready, get the band to the right tempo. You just show up."

"Okay, C-C-Carlos."

When John Lee showed up we were ready. I got the band warmed up—Chepito, Ndugu, CT, and Armando—no bass, because Alphonso didn't make that gig. John Lee and Armando were checking each other out like two dogs slowly circling each other—they were the two senior guys there, and you could really tell that Armando needed to know who this new older guy was. He was looking at him slowly, all the way from his feet up to his hat. Just sizing him up. John Lee knew it, but he just sat there, tuning his guitar, chuckling to himself.

Armando threw down the first card. "Hey, man, you ever heard of the Rhumboogie?" He was talking about one of the old, old clubs on the black music circuit in Chicago, opened by the boxer Joe Louis back before I was even born. John Lee said, "Yeah, m-m-man. I heard of the Rhumboogie." Armando had his hands on his waist like, "I got you now." He said, "Well, I played there with Slim Gaillard."

"Yeah? I opened up there for D-D-Duke Ellington."

I saw what was going on and stepped in. "Armando, this is Mr. John Lee Hooker. Mr. Hooker, Mr. Armando Peraza."

We did "The Healer" in one take, and the engineer said, "Want to try it again?"

John Lee shook his head. "What for?"

I thought about it and said, "Would you mind going back in the booth, and when I point at you, would you be so gracious as to give us your signature—those mmm, mmm's?" John Lee chuckled again. "Yeah, I can do that." I said okay. That was the only thing he overdubbed that day—"Mmm, mmm, mmm."

"The Healer" helped bring John Lee back for his last ten years. He had a bestselling album and a music video—everything he deserved. We started to hang out more and play together. I would see him in concert, too. He had a keyboard player for many years—Deacon Jones—who used to get up onstage and say, "Hey! You people in the front—you might need to get back a little bit, because the grease up here is hot. John Lee's about to come out!" I have so many stories like that as well as stories about John Lee calling me—sometimes during the day, but, like Miles [Davis] did, mostly late at night.

I remember John Lee opening for Santana in Concord, California, and we had finished our sound check and he'd been waiting for me on the side of the stage. We were done, and he started talking to me while we walked away. The soundman came running up. "Mr. Hooker, we need you to do a sound check, too."

"I don't need no sound check."

"But we have to find out how you sound."

John Lee kept walking. "I already know what I sound like." End of discussion.

"The Healer," John Lee Hooker, featuring Carlos Santana:

Chapter 19 Excerpt from: The Universal Tone by Carlos Santana

I've been gracing this blog with excerpts from Carlos Santana's autobiography, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light, published in 2015 by Little, Brown and Company. There is so much rich material in this book that I'm actually having difficulty deciding what to post since I don't want the publisher (or Carlos himself) chastising me for quoting too much material! But if you enjoy the music of Santana, if you enjoy autobiographies, if you enjoy reading about a person's spiritual journey, then this is the book for you.

From Chapter 19:

In 1987, when Sal [Salvador, Carlos's son] was just four, I was jamming in the studio with CT [Chester Thompson, keyboard player] when one of those magic moments happened. But the engineers were still messing with calibrating something, and we wanted to record what we were doing right then. "Hit RECORD right now! Get this on tape, man — I don't care how you do it" So we got it on a two-track reel-to-reel — one track for CT, one for me. Just as I played the last note and it faded, the tape ran out — flub, flub, flub. Years later I found out that one of Stevie Ray Vaughan's blues was recorded exactly the same way — suddenly, on the spot, on a two-track reel-to-reel. And just as he played the last lick, the same thing happened — the tape ran out. The really weird thing? It was the same engineer both times — Jim Gaines.

I have to say a word about Jim and the other engineers Santana has been blessed to have in the studio and sometimes on the road. Fred Catero, Glen Kolotkin, Dave Rubinson, Jim Reitzel — they've all been instrumental in our success through the years, and I feel they all need to be honored. Jim Gaines worked with so many great artists, from Tower of Power to Steve Miller to Stevie Ray Vaughan, before he came to us. He brought a really earthy quality to the sound and did what he did without any ego — he was a pleasure to work with. He was with Santana just as things were going from analog to digital, so he helped with that transition and was as great with the computer as he was with the knobs. Recording technology was up to thirty-six tracks at that time, before Pro Tools came around, but he was really patient and knew what to say and when to say it in a very gentle way that would help make the music a lot more flowing.

After that jam with CT in '87, Jim gave me a cassette of it, and I left it in the car. The next day Deborah [Carlos's wife at that time] went shopping in that car, and when she came back she asked me, "Why don't you play like that?" There was that question again, the one she asked after the Amnesty International concert — sometimes she'd say that and I'd have to think, "What does she mean?" Before I said anything she was already asking me the name of the song on the cassette.

"What song?"

"You know, that song you played with CT. I heard it and couldn't drive. I had to pull over."

I decided to call it "Blues for Salvador," not only for Sal but also because San Salvador was going through some hard times then, with an earthquake and a civil war. That song inspired my last solo album as Carlos Santana. I love it because it has Tony Williams on it, and more of Buddy Miles's singing, and that band — CT, Alphonso, Graham, Raul, Armando, and the rest. I dedicated the album to Deborah, and the song "Bella," for Stella [Carlos's oldest daughter], is on there, too.

"Blues for Salvador" won a Grammy as the year's best rock instrumental performance — the first Santana Grammy, but not the last.

Please feel free to scroll back through my blog posts for previous excerpts....

Another Excerpt from: The Universal Tone by Carlos Santana

And yet another excerpt from The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light, an autobiography by musician Carlos Santana.

From Chapter 9 yet again:

I remember one time in 1988 I got into Chicago around five o'clock and was checking in to an airport hotel. The phone was already ringing in my room when I put the key in the door—it was Buddy [Guy]. "Hey, Santana! Listen, Otis [Rush] and I, we're waiting on your ass here. You got a pen? Write down this address and come on over."

The address was that of the Wise Fools Pub, and I didn't waste any time. I got there early enough, when the place was only half full— Otis hadn't actually showed up yet, so Buddy and I took some solos, and we were just killing it. Then suddenly I saw that cowboy hat and toothpick come out of the shadows. It was like a scene in a movie. Otis looked around and walked through the crowd like he was in no hurry at all. This was his turf. He grabbed his guitar and stepped into the single spotlight, which hit his face in a very dramatic way. He leaned into the microphone and said: "Give them a hand, ladies and gentlemen!" Then quietly, almost to himself, he said, "Stars, stars, stars..."

It was like Otis was saying, "Oh, yeah? You think these guys were good?" He plugged in and didn't even sing—he just went straight into round after round of an instrumental blues that showed us who the star really was. He was in the middle of a solo and hit a lick that had Buddy and me screaming like shrimp on a Benihana grill. We couldn't believe what he was able to get out of each note. It was like getting a real long piece of fresh sugarcane and peeling it with your teeth to get into the middle, where the sugar is, and the sound it makes when you suck the sap out of it and the juice starts running down your chin and onto your hands. That's what it was like when Otis was hitting those notes—nothing sounds or tastes better than that!

Over the years I've gotten to know Otis and let him know how important his music is to me. He's not one for compliments, though—the first time we met at the Fillmore, I told him how incredible he sounded. His reply was, "Man, I got a long way to go." What—you? The guy who made "All Your Love (I Miss Loving)" and "I Can't Quit You Baby"? I think he's just one of those brothers who has a hard time validating his own gift, who's distant in his mind from his soul—except when he's playing. Not long ago Otis had a stroke, and he can't play anymore, and I make it a point to stay in touch, send his family a check twice a year, and let him know how much he's loved. He was never really one for words, but he'll still get on the phone and say, "Carlos, I love you, man." What can I say? He changed my life.[1]

---------------

Footnote:

[1] The Universal Tone was published in 2014; blues legend Otis Rush passed away on September 29, 2018.

More from: The Universal Tone by Carlos Santana

Still reading -- and thoroughly enjoying -- the Carlos Santana autobiography entitled The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light.

Here's yet another excerpt, this one from Chapter 9:

At Woodstock, I think Santana played a great show, but I do not think Santana was responsible for all that happened afterward. That's like a cork floating on top of a wave in the middle of the sea, bobbing up and down and telling itself it's controlling the entire ocean—that's an ego out of control.

There were a lot of things that nobody planned at Woodstock but that made it work for us. If we hadn't stayed in the town of Woodstock for the week before the festival, we probably would have gotten stuck in traffic and showed up late or not made it at all. And if some groups hadn't been late getting up there, we wouldn't have gone on early in the day and we could have gotten caught in the rain later that day and had our show messed up or even been electrocuted or forced to quit. And if any of that happened, maybe "Soul Sacrifice" would not have made it into the Woodstock movie and nobody would have seen us.

There were a lot of angels stepping in and making a way for us—the more time goes by, the more I can say that with clarity and confidence. I'll say it again: the one angel who deserves the most credit is Bill Graham. He got us the gig when nobody had heard of us. We had just finished our first album, but it hadn't been released. When Michael Lang, who was producing the festival, asked Bill for his help, Bill told him, "Okay, this is a big endeavor. I'll help you with my connections and my people. They know how to do this. But you need to do something for me—you need to let Santana play."

"Okay, but what's Santana?"

"You'll see."

Still Reading: The Universal Tone by Carlos Santana

Continuing from my previous blog post on Carlos Santana's autobiography, The Universal Tone: Bringing My Story To Light....

From Chapter 7:

...I had been so excited to see [B. B. King] for the first time in February of 1967. Finally, the teacher I had started with and kept coming back to was coming to the Fillmore! The first time I had heard his music was in Tijuana at Javier's house—all those LPs on the Kent and Crown labels.

B. B. was the headliner after Otis Rush and Steve Miller. Another great triple bill. I was there for the opening night. Steve was great, Otis was incredible, and then it was B. B.'s band onstage, vamping. (Later on, I learned what his close friends call him—just B.—but in my mind he will always be Mr. King.) Then B. walked onstage, and Bill Graham went up to the mike to introduce him: "Ladies and gentlemen, the chairman of the board—Mr. B. B. King!"

It was like it had all been planned to build up to this. Everything just stopped, and everyone stood up and applauded. For a long time. B. hadn't even hit a note yet, and he was getting a standing ovation. Then he started crying.

He couldn't hold it in. The light was hitting him in such a way that all I could see were big tears coming out of his eyes, shining on his black skin. He raised his hand to wipe his eyes, and I saw he was wearing a big ring on his finger that spelled out his name in diamonds. That's what I remember most—diamonds and tears, sparkling together. I said to myself, "Man, that's what I want. This is what it is to be adored if you do it right."

Gregg, Carabello and I saw B. in concert when he came back in December of '67, and I was able to study him almost in slo-mo, waiting for him to hit those long notes of his. I was thinking, "Okay, here it comes—he's going to go for it. There it is. That note just freaked out everybody in the place, man." People were in the hallelujah camp. I noticed that just before he would hit a long note, B. would scrunch up his face and body, and I knew he was going to a place inside himself, in his heart, where something moved him so deeply that it was not about the guitar or the string anymore. He got inside the note. And I thought, "How can I get to that place?"

Now Reading: The Universal Tone by Carlos Santana

Subtitled "Bringing My Story To Light," this is musician Carlos Santana's life story. His life began in Autlán, Mexico; he came of age in Tijuana; eventually ended up in San Francisco; and now he inhabits the entire world.

The Universal Tone was published by Little, Brown and Company in 2014. It's a massive book, totaling 536 pages, and that's not counting the numerous pages of photographs, dating back to Santana's childhood. The book was one of NPR's Best Books of 2014 and winner of the 2015 American Book Award. The Universal Tone also received a starred review in Kirkus (and anyone who knows Kirkus knows that it is nearly impossible to even get reviewed by Kirkus, let alone receive a starred review!)

Here are a few select excerpts from the book; these all focus on Santana's music influences and learning:

From Chapter 3:

The blues is a very, very no-nonsense thing. It's easy to learn the structure of the songs, the words and the riffs, but it's not like some other styles of music—you can't hide behind it. Even if you are a great musician, if you want to really play the blues you have to be willing to go to a deeper place in your heart and do some digging. You have to reveal yourself. If you can't make it personal and show an individual fingerprint, it's not going to work. That's really where you find the magnificence in the simple three-chord blues, in the fingerprints of blues guitarists like T-Bone Walker, B. B. King, Albert King, Freddie King, Buddy Guy, and all the cats from Chicago—Otis Rush, Hubert Sumlin.

There's a lot of misunderstanding about the blues. Maybe it's because the word means so many things. The blues is a musical form—twelve bars, three chords—but it's also a musical feeling expressed in what notes you play and how you play each note. The blues can also be an emotion or a color. Sometimes the difference is not so clear. You can be talking about the music, then the feeling, then what's in the words of a song. John Lee Hooker singing, "Mmm, mmm, mmm—Big legs, tight skirt / 'Bout to drive me out of my mind..." It's all the blues.

From Chapter 4:

Charlie Parker said, "If you don't live it, it won't come out of your horn." I began to live my life, and my own sound began to come out of that closet and out of my guitar. It took a while—lots of gigs in Tijuana and in San Francisco. Lots of life experiences—growing up, leaving home, and coming back. Then, ultimately, leaving home for good.

When you take your time and listen to the real blues guys, you discover that each one has his own sound and you can recognize them by things they do, all while realizing that they don't repeat themselves. When you really dig into a blues it's like riding a horse bareback in the night under full moonlight. The horse takes off, and he doesn't throw you off. You go up and down and flow with the rhythm of the ride, go through all these changes, and never repeat yourself.

Also from Chapter 4:

I started to learn about phrasing, mainly from singers. Even today, as much as I love T-Bone or Charlie or Wes or Jimi, it's singers more than other guitar players that I like to hang with. If I want to practice or just get reacquainted with my instrument, I think it's best to hang with a singer. I don't sing, but I will put on music by Michael Jackson and I'll be right there with his phrasing, like a guided missile—I'll do the same thing with Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin. Or Dionne Warwick's first records—my God. So many great guitarists play a lot of chords and have great rhythm chops, and I can do that. But instead of worrying about chords or harmony, I'll just try matching Dionne's vocal lines, note for note.

I began to really learn about soloing and respecting the song and the melody. I think too many guitar players forget that and get stuck in the guitar itself, playing lots of notes—"noodling," I call it. It's like they're playing too fast to pay attention. Some people thrive on that, but sooner or later the bird's got to land in the mist and you got to play the melody. Imagine if the song was a woman—what would she say? Did you forget me? Are you mad at me?

I still hear what Miles Davis used to say about musicians who play too much: "You know, the less you play the more you get paid for each note."

Now Reading: Rythm Oil by Stanley Booth

Stanley Booth is a writer, a researcher, a journalist, a chronicler of an era of music...Each of the chapters in this book were previously published in various magazines, including Esquire, Saturday Evening Post, Playboy, Rolling Stone, Atlantic Weekly, and the Village Voice, to name a few. One chapter on Elvis Presley, however, contains an opening paragraph that was not safe for publication in Esquire back in 1976, and thus held back from the original article (and probably wouldn't be safe for publication today, either).

Rythm Oil is subtitled "A Journey Through the Music of the American South": In addition to Elvis, there are chapters on old bluesmen Furry Lewis and Mississippi John Hurt, Otis Redding, Rufus Thomas and daughter Carla Thomas, The Flying Burrito Brothers, the Janis Joplin Revue, and more (I haven't finished the book yet!).

"What became Stax records began in 1958 with a one-track tape recorder owned by a white brother and sister, Jim Stewart and Estelle Axton [1], and located in Brunswick, Tennessee, behind the Satellite Dairy, a take-out ice-cream parlor. Estelle was a grammar-school teacher and Jim was a bank teller and a country fiddle player. They had little knowledge of what they were getting into, but they had incredible luck. For one example, Estelle's son Packy rehearsed on weekends at the Dairy with the Royal Spades, a rhythm and blues band of white Messick High School students that would develop into the Mar-Keys, the Stax house band. For another, in 1960 they found an empty movie theater that rented for $100 a month – the Capitol at 926 East McLemore – in a black South Memphis neighborhood. And Rufus Thomas brought the first hit to Stax. Thomas, who had started out on Beale Street at the age of six playing a frog in a show at the Grand Theater, had been a Rabbit's Foot Minstrel, MC at the Midnight Rambles, half the dance team of Rufus and Bones, a local radio announcer, and the first person to have a hit on the Sun label, 'Cause I Love You,' a regional sensation sung by Rufus and his daughter Carla, was followed by the first national hit on Stax – 'Gee Whiz' – a solo by Carla, who had written it when she was about fifteen....

In October of 1962 Stax released its first Otis Redding record, made in half an hour at the end of a Johnny Jenkins session....

There was a feeling in the air that summer [1967] – the summer of Monterey, of Sergeant Pepper, of LSD – that people were coming together, red and yellow, black and white, in peace and love.

In December Otis Redding would record 'Dock of the Bay.' None of us knew what was coming.[2]

In the wake of Martin Luther King's death, the climate for an integrated business in a black neighborhood changed, even on East McLemore Avenue. The front door of Stax, which had always been left open – Carl Cunningham, the Bar-Kays' drummer, had come in one day with a shoeshine kit and stayed to become a musician – was locked. Then one day it was locked for good. Today Stax is a crumbling shell. It was as if Stax had such good luck in the beginning that when at the end the bad luck came it was annihilating."

— Stanley Booth

Rythm Oil was published in 1991 by Pantheon Books. The hardcover edition is out of print, but the book is readily available in trade paperback from Amazon or your bookseller of choice.

---------------
Footnotes

[1] Stax is an acronym formed from the first two letters of Jim Stewart's and Estelle Axton's last names.

[2] Otis Redding died in a plane crash on December 10, 1967, along with the five teenage members of his backing band, the Bar-Kays.

Now Reading: Bob Dylan by Anthony Scaduto

"Highway 61 Revisited was at that time—and may be still today—one of the most brilliant pop albums ever made. As rock, it cut through to the core of the music—a hard, driving beat without frills, without self-consciousness. 'Like A Rolling Stone,' 'Tombstone Blues,' among the finest rock ever recorded. As living poetry the album demonstrated that Dylan's talent had matured to the point that it seemed capable of expressing in word-rhythms the depth of his visions. Despite what the literary keepers of the esoteric flame may say, no matter how much they sneer, Dylan's works are poetry: 'Desolation Row,' for just one example, amply demonstrates that. It is a decent into a modern Inferno, an eleven-minute freak show that portrays a world of alienation ruled by madmen, a world in which humanity has been estranged from its own possibilities, a world in which man's once free mind has been so totally suffocated by the one-dimensional society that it accepts lies as truth and beauty, permits creativity and naturalness and Eros to be perverted by the social 'reality.' Not since Rimbaud has a poet used the language of the streets to expose all the horrors of the streets, to describe a state of the union that is ugly and absurd."

– Anthony Scaduto

A Secret History of 1968 by Ryan H. Walsh

The title of this blog post is actually the subtitle of this book. The actual title, Astral Weeks, probably wouldn't have intrigued you, snagged your attention, unless you were a huge fan of musician Van Morrison's early work.

Published just this past year in hardcover (357 pages) by Penguin Press, Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 may be one of the most mind-boggling, and weird, books I've read in quite some time.

All the events of note take place in 1968 in and around the city of Boston. I spent some time back in the day in Boston and its surrounds: used to hang out in Harvard Square; ate regularly at a grinder shop in Kenmore Square, while watching all the addicts (in the shop!) nod off; when I couldn't snag a bed at the only youth hostel in town, I would kill time all night in a Dunkin' Donuts, buzzing out on coffee after coffee, until the city came awake in the early morn. Made many a hike from Beacon Street across the Mass Ave Bridge -- and back again -- just because....

Some of the "characters" in this book include Jim Kweskin, of the Jug Band fame, who gave up the band for a place in Mel Lyman's Fort Hill Community (aka commune) in Roxbury. Did you know that Lou Reed and the Velvet Underground, though from New York, played the Boston Tea Party (music venue) a total of 43 times between 1967 and 1970? The VU cited the Tea Party as their favorite place to play in the whole country! Others in the book include Jonathan Richman (of the Modern Lovers fame) and, of course, Van Morrison, who, at the time, was living in Boston to avoid certain Mafia connections to his music label in New York!

In fact, it was the Velvet Underground who taught Jonathan Richman to play guitar, as detailed in this excerpt:

"Jonathan, can you make this curve with your ring finger? VU guitarist Sterling Morrison asked Jonathan Richman.

     Richman had brought his bingo-prize guitar to the Tea Party and lingered in a corner of the dressing room until members of the band offered him something in the way of lessons. "They physically taught me how to play," he recounted. "That's where I got everything."

     The band eventually took to their sixteen-year-old mascot. "Occasionally, I drove them around in my father's car," Richman recalled. "I would go to some of the parties they'd go to. I was part of this crew."

Then there was T. Mitchell Hastings, a 1933 Harvard grad, who, in 1954, invented a transistor radio to work in an automobile. Hastings loved classical music, and set up a string of radio stations for classical music; eventually, all the stations failed, except one: WBCN in Boston. Hastings, who kept the station open only during business hours, was talked into renting out the graveyard hours (midnight to 6am) to Ray Riepen, who planned to broadcast free-form rock music during those hours. The very first song played was by Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. Within two months, Riepen took over programming of the entire station -- and thus FM rock radio was born.

And interwoven throughout the book, and throughout these many events, is the story of musician Van Morrison and the writing and recording of his classic record album Astral Weeks

On April 5, 1968, one day after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., cities across the country were like powder kegs, just waiting for the fuse to be lit. In Boston, city officials were brainstorming ideas to keep people off the streets that evening. Singer James Brown was in New York that morning filming a TV special, and he was to perform at the Boston Garden later that evening. Someone proposed:

What if the Brown concert was broadcast live on television? It was an audacious, nick-of-time proposal. Each home viewer would be another person not on the street. WGBH was the obvious choise....

Boston's Mayor White agreed to cover Brown's lost earnings from concert tickets (more money than the city even had in its coffers!), and the show went on.

As rioting in DC came a few blocks from the White House, James Brown took the stage in front of approximately 1,500 souls and launched into "If I Ruled the World," a vision of a better life for everyone.

....

Reports started rolling in from police officers all around the city: Boston was a ghost town. "The city was quieter than it would've been on an ordinary Friday night."

All in all, 1968 -- in Boston, at least -- was a very good year.

Michael Bloomfield - If You Love These Blues: An Oral History by Jan Mark Wolkin and Bill Keenom

"Michael Bloomfield was so much more than a great guitarist. Raconteur, musicologist, renaissance man, mensch, painter, ultimate appreciator are some of the words used to describe him. I've heard it said often that if you knew Michael, you were changed by him, and that when he walked into a room, his charisma and energy made it difficult to focus on much else."

–Bill Keenom

Last summer I read a book entitled Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero by Ed Ward, and wrote about it briefly in a blog post dated July 10, 2018. I've been a fan of Bloomfield's music for decades, and after reading this book, I knew I needed to read more.

The search took me a while, but eventually I tracked down a copy of Michael Bloomfield - If You Love These Blues: An Oral History by Jan Mark Wolkin and Bill Keenum. My hardcover copy was missing the compact disc that is supposed to accompany the book. The paperback edition doesn't have a CD, but the publisher, Hal Leonard, provides a URL on the back cover so that the reader can access the music online. One problem: The URL is not valid. I've written to the publisher about this, but so far, a week later, I have not received any response.

The subtitle of this book is "An Oral History": the entire book consists of excerpts from interviews with Bloomfield's bandmates, producers and promoters, roommates and friends, and family (including his ex-wife). And, of course, the guitarist himself. The majority of these interviews were conducted by the book's authors, but some, as in the case of Bloomfield, were from prior interviews as the book was published in 2000, and Michael passed away in 1981. But what makes this book unique is that the interview excerpts are provided in chronological order, with excerpts from two or more individuals regarding specific events so that the reader can experience this from multiple viewpoints.

I just counted the markers -- nearly 20 of them -- I placed on various pages in the book denoting quotes that just had to be shared when I wrote this post. Obviously, far too many, but I'll see what I can do about narrowing them down to a very important few.

"When I came back through Chicago in '62, [Michael] took me down to the South Side to hear some music. He said, 'Man, you've got to meet Muddy.' So we go to Pepper's Lounge, and Michael walked right up to the bandstand and said, 'Hey, Muddy.' Muddy says, 'Hey, Michael, how're you doing?' And Michael says, 'I'd like you to meet my friend John Hammond.' I felt like I was going to fall down. And then, in the middle of Muddy's show, he calls Michael up to play with him. I was mind-boggled. And Michael was great. He knew all the details of cool stuff. He was a wonderful guy. I valued his friendship more than I can ever say. He was just a terrific person."

–John Hammond Jr.

"...There were other musicians, but Michael was the first one that I befriended and who befriended me. He was a Chicago guy, I'm a New Yorker, and we hit it off, personality-wise. Michael was quick and very witty. And we were able to jabber on easily....[Michael] always had somebody that he was pushing. It if wasn't the Staple Singers, it was Albert King or B.B. King or Otis Redding or Howlin' Wolf. He, more than any single musician, kept bringing me records and mentioning groups to me. Prior to 1965, I knew nothing. I wasn't in the rock & roll world. It wasn't part of my private life. I'm a Latin music fan, a jazz fan of sorts, but I never listened to blues much or rock & roll at all. I think the music industry owes Michael far more than they realize. Besides being a very special musician in what he brought out of the guitar and how he made people feel. I don't know if I would have been that successful early on if it wasn't for Michael, his knowledge and his awareness and his prodding me to bring these artists to the Bay Area. So, as great a guitar player as Michael was, he was really a teacher."

–Bill Graham

"When Michael first came to San Francisco, for some reason, he befriended me. I had just started to play with the Jefferson Airplane, and I'd never played electric guitar before, really. He showed me how to bend notes, and to feedback and sustain things, and I was really thrilled. Because in those days some of the East Coast guitar players were very guarded about their secrets and the way they did stuff. I knew guys who used to turn away from you when they played so you couldn't see how they were doing it. Michael was a really sweet guy and a brilliant guitar player, and he was really instrumental in getting me into being an electric guitar player."

–Jorma Kaukonen

"Around December 1968, Michael and Nick Gravenites helped Janis Joplin set up the Kozmic Blues Band. Janis had left Big Brother. She was very frightened about what she was going to do about putting a band together....They came in, and Michael took the time to make everyone feel good, and they whipped that band together really quick. He was kind of like an A&R man. He selected the tunes—a lot of them were Nick's—and then he went on and made sure everyone could play them. We had other music directors who were really unessential. Michael was really the one who put it together. Michael played on a few of the Kozmic Blues tracks. I still get people come up to me, if they're real sharp, young guitar players, and they'll say, 'Was that you playing on "One Good Man"?' I'll say, 'No, that was Michael,' and they'll go, 'I knew it! I knew it!'"

–Sam Andrew

"When I was 17, I thought I was good enough to gig in black places and hold my own. You had to hold your own. If you shucked, then you had no business being there. You'd not only be a white kid, you'd be a fool. You'd be a punk and a fool....Several guys took me to be almost like I was their son—Big Joe Williams, Sunnyland Slim, and Otis Spann. They took me to be like their kid, man; they just showed me from the heart. They took me aside and said, 'You can play, man. Don't be shy. Get up there and play.' What I learned from them was invaluable. A way of life, a way of thinking, a whole kind of thing—invaluable things to learn. I used to hear Elmore James, Sonny Boy, Little Walter, Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Albert King—way before they were known anywhere but the ghetto....I was interested in it from a musicological standpoint. I was trying to discover where the old blues singers lived. I met cats like Washboard Sam and Jazz Gillum and Tommy McClennan and Kokomo Arnold. I used to have a band with Big Joe Williams....By then it was a scholarly thing. Like Paul Oliver and Sam Charters, I wanted to know the story of the blues, and the best way for me to learn was to actually meet the guys."

–Michael Bloomfield

"In 1969, I produced the Fathers and Sons album. We brought in all these great players: Muddy Waters, Otis Spann, and this great band—all in the Chess studio. I had Michael, Paul Butterfield, Buddy Miles, Duck Dunn, Sam Lay, and every blues musician in Chicago. Michael named it. He said it should be called Fathers and Sons, because that's how he related to Otis Spann and Muddy. He gave me that title, and he insisted that that's what it be."

–Norman Dayron

In my previous Bloomfield blog post, I state that the guitarist died alone in his car from an apparent cocaine and methamphetamine overdose: two drugs that Michael would never touch. So the question remained: Why?

In this book, through interviews with Christie Svane, Michael's girlfriend at the time of his passing, I learned what may have driven the guitarist further into the darker realms of loneliness and despair. And Norman Dayron speculates as to why cocaine was found in Michael's system after his death, a drug that Norman knew Michael absolutely refused to use. Again, it's all speculation, but indeed quite plausible.

Michael Bloomfield - If You Love These Blues: An Oral History by Jan Mark Wolkin and Bill Keenum (Miller Freeman Books, 2000, 280 pages).

Got a Revolution! The Turbulent Flight of the Jefferson Airplane by Jeff Tamarkin

Here's a trivia question for you: Who was Jefferson Airplane's first female singer?

So I was reading the recently published (August 2018) autobiography Been So Long: My Life and Music by Jorma Kaukonen, founding member and lead guitarist of both Jefferson Airplane and Hot Tuna -- and the book was fairly boring, focusing more on Jorma's drug abuse and marriage problems than I would have preferred. So I sought what I hoped would be a much better read and found it in Got a Revolution! by journalist and music critic Jeff Tamarkin (Atria Books, 2003, 408 pages). The subtitle, "The Turbulent Flight of the Jefferson Airplane," truly sums up the career of this band: in-fighting, relationships, drugs, arrests, etc. -- but unlike the Kaukonen book, the music was always the focus.

To answer the trivia question above: Signe (pronounced "Sig-nee") Anderson was the first female singer in Jefferson Airplane. She appears on the first Jefferson Airplane album, Takes Off, released in 1966 by RCA Victor (catalog number LPM 3584 (mono) and LSP 3584 (stereo)). However, her husband was having ongoing conflicts with other members of the band, so when Signe became pregnant, she decided to leave the band to raise her family.

The band The Great Society had opened for Jefferson Airplane during many of their concert appearances. The band members included Grace Slick, her husband Jerry Slick, and Jerry's brother Darby Slick. Marty Balin, one of the founding members of the Airplane, was intrigued by Grace's singing and stage presence, so when Signe left the band, Marty asked Grace to join -- and she said yes immediately. (Note: Two of the Great Society's band members had recently left for India to study Indian music, so the band was essentially defunct anyhow.)

Grace brought with her two songs: "Somebody to Love" (written by Darby Slick and originally titled "Someone to Love") and "White Rabbit," written by Grace herself. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Jeff Tamarkin, on the band's recording of their breakout album, Surrealistic Pillow (RCA Victor, LPM-3766/LSP-3766, 1967):

...The next session that day was for the other song Grace imported from the Great Society, "Somebody to Love." With that group, Darby Slick's composition was played almost as a midtempo shuffle. The first change the Airplane made was to virtually double the tempo, cranking it out at a breakneck pace that remains nearly static from verse to chorus. The Airplane version is tightly reined, placing Grace front and center and leaving no slack...

The second change was lyrical, a reference to "in bed" being softened to the more radio-friendly "in your head."

All told, it's a tour de force performance and, upon its release in early 1967, it would become, along with "White Rabbit," one of the defining recordings of the era.

Surrealistic Pillow was a tight, in-your-face, commercial endeavor, which may be difficult to comprehend considering this was the Jefferson Airplane, one of the premier psychedelic San Francisco bands. The average song length on the album was approximately 3 minutes, with only one song tracking in at just over 5 minutes. Where the band stood out, however, was during their live performances, when Jorma, Jack Cassidy (electric bass), and Spencer Dryden (drums) would get into a groove that could last for 10 or more minutes. This Jefferson Airplane can be heard on their first (and best) live album entitled Bless Its Pointed Little Head (RCA Victor, LSP-4133, 1969).

But getting back to the song "White Rabbit"...in the book, Jeff Tamarkin details how Grace Slick wrote the song:

Inspired, Grace sat down to write a new song of her own. Drawing on her love of all things Spanish, she fashioned a snaky bolero rhythm. Then, thinking back on her childhood fantasies, she suggested a correlation between the mystical worlds of those timeless tales and the quests that she and her fellow seekers were undertaking as young adults:

One pill makes you larger and one pill makes you small
And the ones that Mother gives you don't do anything at all
Go ask Alice when she's ten feet tall.

There had never been another song like "White Rabbit." Originally called "White Rabbit Blues," it was Lewis Carroll meets Ravel meets Sketches of Spain [Miles Davis]. Electric guitars and snare drums piled atop one another, blatant drug allusions crossed paths with bedtime stories, all climaxing in a smashing crescendo, a bellowing Grace inventing a catch phrase for her generation, "Feed your head! Feed your head!"

Throughout the book, Tamarkin also covers the side projects -- solo albums, bands, book projects, etc. -- of each of the Airplane members: the original members as well as the band members that followed in each of the band's later incarnations, including Jefferson Starship, Starship, and Hot Tuna. For example, in 1987, Paul Kantner spent time with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua in support of their revolution. He self-published his experiences in Paul Kantner's Nicaragua Diary (Little Dragon Press, 1987, 113 pages). His other band members had refused to journey with him to Nicaragua at the time because they felt it was too dangerous.

And, drummer Spencer Dryden eventually joined up, in 1982, with bassist Peter Albin (Big Brother & The Holding Company), guitarist John Cipollina (Quicksilver Messenger Service), guitarist Barry Melton (Country Joe and the Fish), and keboard player Merl Saunders (Jerry Garcia) to form the band Dinosaurs. Their first self-titled album was released on the Relix Records label (RRLP 2031) in 1988.

"Go ride the music...."

Now Reading: And on Piano...Nicky Hopkins by Julian Dawson

I've been reading And on Piano...Nicky Hopkins by Julian Dawson (Plus One Press, 2011). Actually, this is my second read-through this year alone of this "extraordinary" biography of "The Extraordinary Life of Rock's Greatest Session Man." That's the subtitle of the book, by the way, and as I read about Nicky Hopkins, I can only shake my head in wonder and awe at the mark this incredible musician has made on the history of rock music.

But I wouldn't be surprised if readers of this blog post have never even heard of Nicky Hopkins. And though you may not have heard of him, I have to believe that if you listen to rock music regularly (not dance music, not R&B music, not metal or electronic music, but ROCK music), then you have, indeed, heard him.

Let's see...Do you recognize any of these songs? The Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and "Street Fighting Man." The Beatles' "Revolution." John Lennon's "Imagine" and "Happy Xmas (War Is Over)." George Harrison's "Give Me Love (Give Me Peace on Earth)." Jefferson Airplane's "Volunteers" and "We Can Be Together." And Joe Cocker's "You Are So Beautiful."

As you may have guessed, Nicky Hopkins was behind the piano on each of these best-selling singles, just a few of the hundreds of singles, and albums, on which he appeared. In fact, at the end of the book, the author presents a Nicky Hopkins Discography -- 28 small-print pages listing all the albums, singles, live performances, and film soundtracks on which the pianist performed.

Here's a YouTube vid of the man at work:

In the book, Julian Dawson shares a story: while Nicky was touring outside the U.S. someone began impersonating him at various recording studios. Once word got out about this impersonator, session producers learned to ask "Nicky Hopkins" to play his song "Edward," which would reveal soon enough if this person was indeed the real Nicky Hopkins. This is an audio-only vid featuring the song "Edward (The Mad Shirt Grinder)," which Nicky wrote while a member of Quicksilver Messenger Service, for their album Shady Grove (Capitol Records, 1969) -- however, this vid is a live performance of Quicksilver at Stony Brook College, New York, in 1970. A studio recording can always be overdubbed, etc., but one can't overdub a live performance:

Nicky was born in Middlesex, England, on February 24, 1944, during an air raid! He suffered throughout his entire life with health issues, most likely caused by an undiagnosed (at the time) case of Crohn's disease. In fact, at age 19, he spent more than a year in the hospital, recovering from a life-threatening illness from which the doctors never expected him to survive. And, sadly, he passed away at the age of 50, on September 6, 1994, in Nashville, Tennessee, from complications from that life-long battle with the disease.

John York, formerly with The Byrds, from the book:

"I gave [Nicky] a ride to a Jack Bruce session and when we got there Ginger Baker was just leaving. The engineer asked [Nicky] to go in and get a sound and Nicky started playing...and we all sat there and listened to him playing. It was when he was working on music for films and it was like listening to Rachmaninoff or something; at a certain point Nicky stopped, took a last drag on his cigarette, put it out, and said, "OK, mate," and then started playing like some 65-year-old Black guy from the Delta. It was unreal."

Julian Dawson, from the book:

Nicky delivers one of the most elegant and perfectly conceived performances of his career on Let It Bleed's quietest track, "You Got the Silver." Keith Richards' love song to Anita Pallenberg was his first outing as sole lead vocalist and his heartfelt singing, acoustic slide and guitar tracks are perfectly underpinned by Nicky's understated organ and gentle piano. Over the years Nicky often referred to the song as one of his top five favourite performances, a sentiment echoed by Keith and others...."

And one last, albeit lengthy, quote from Julian Dawson:

"Imagine the voodoo groove of the Rolling Stones' 'Sympathy for the Devil' without its driving piano, 'Angie' or 'She's a Rainbow' without their gorgeous fills; the Beatles' 'Revolution' without its perfectly formed solo or the Who's explosive first album without its breakneck keyboard accompaniment. Picture Joe Cocker singing his hit 'You Are So Beautiful' alone and a capella, or try to imagine the strident call-to-arms that is Jefferson Airplane's 'Volunteers' without its keyboard riffs. Imagine...well, 'Imagine' stripped of its beautiful piano work; Lennon's 'Crippled Inside' without the perfectly tailored honky-tonk flourishes or 'Jealous Guy' without its haunting and delicate piano decorations. These are just a handful of classic tracks all played by one man's hands."

Now Reading: Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards by Al Kooper

This book was originally published in hardcover as just Backstage Passes in 1977, covering the years 1958-1968. You may think, What could Al Kooper have done, between the ages of 14 and 24, that demands an entire book?

Al Kooper scored his first professional gig at the very young age of 14 as a guitarist in the band the Royal Teens. He later joined the avant-garde blues-rock band Blues Project as a keyboardist in 1965; and after leaving that band, he then formed his own band, Blood, Sweat & Tears, in 1967. And let's not forget the Monterey Pop Festival, also in 1967, and something called Woodstock in 1968....

Let's see, what else: Al Kooper co-wrote the #1 pop song "This Diamond Ring," recorded by Gary Lewis and the Playboys when, I believe, he was just 20 years old. When Bob Dylan went electric in 1965 at the Newport Folk Festival, that was Al Kooper on the stage, playing Hammond organ in Bob's backing band. Kooper had just finished working with Dylan on the recording session for his iconic song "Like a Rolling Stone," so Dylan asked Kooper to join his backing band at Newport.

Following the festival, Kooper then went on to play on the sessions for the rest of Dylan's highly successful album Highway 61 Revisited. Al Kooper was 21. (Note: During those recording sessions, Al Kooper met guitarist extraordinaire Michael Bloomfield; the two later recorded together the albums Super Session and The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper, both in 1968.)

Speaking of the recording session for "Like a Rolling Stone," Al Kooper actually bluffed his way into that session -- he had never previously played a Hammond organ until then. Here's just a bit of what he writes about that experience:

"Imagine this: There is no music to read. The song is over five minutes long, the band is so loud that I can't even hear the organ, and I'm not familiar with the instrument to begin with. But the tape is rolling, and that is Bob-fucking-Dylan over there singing, so this had better be me sitting here playing something. The best I could manage was to play hesitantly by sight, feeling my way through the changes like a little kid fumbling in the dark for the light switch. After six minutes they'd gotten the first complete take of the day and everyone adjourned to the control room to hear it played back.
...
If you listen to it today, you can hear how I waited until the chord was played by the rest of the band, before committing myself to play in the verses. I'm always an eighth note behind everyone else, making sure of the chord before touching the keys...."

So, what do you think? Is that ten-year span sufficient to fill a book? And though I've mentioned just the cursory points, the author goes into depth on the bands and musicians, the songs, the sessions, the cities and the places, and the events of the day.

Twenty years after this book had been published, and long since out of print, Al Kooper found a new publisher willing to reprint the book as a trade paperback. But, the author chose to revise those first ten years (with more pointed detail) as well as adding his personal experiences over the next thirty years. And with the reprint came a new, more descriptive title: Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards: Memoirs of a Rock 'N' Roll Survivor.

But wait, there's more! The book was reprinted yet again, in 2008, to cover additional years from 1998 through 2007. Al Kooper had to deal with some very serious health issues by this time, which he faced with aplomb.

According to Wikipedia, Al Kooper had a sixty-eighth birthday celebration at the Regatta Bar in Cambridge, Massachusetts, on February 4, 2012. And, I assume, Kooper is still performing to this day.

"...The other amazing thing about cutting that album [Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde] was the firsthand knowledge that you were making history. After I cut the Highway 61 Revisited album, I heard those songs everywhere. I will probably hear them all my life, anywhere I go. They were instant classics because they were prime Dylan. Imagine how it felt playing on a session where, by virtue of the fact that you had already done it once before, you knew that whatever you played would last forever. That's a heavy responsibility for a punk from Queens. Thank you, Bob, for giving me that opportunity."

–Al Kooper, Backstage Passes & Backstabbing Bastards

Here are a few album recommendations for those who might like to pursue the music of Al Kooper -- most, but not all, should be available on CD (and again, I can't speak to streaming as I prefer the physical media). By the way, this list is excerpted from a full eight pages of Kooper's body of work.

As musician–

• The Best Of The Blues Project (Rhino Records, 1989)
• Blood, Sweat & Tears - Child Is Father To The Man (Columbia, 1968)
• Al Kooper - I Stand Alone (Columbia, 1968)
• Mike Bloomfield / Al Kooper / Stephen Stills - Super Session (Columbia, 1968)
• The Live Adventures Of Mike Bloomfield And Al Kooper (Columbia, 1968)
• Soul Of A Man: Al Kooper Live (MusicMasters, 1995, 2-CD)

As producer/arranger–

• Lynyrd Skynyrd ‎– (Pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd) (MCA/Sounds of the South, 1973)
• Lynyrd Skynyrd ‎– Second Helping (MCA/Sounds of the South, 1974)
• The Tubes (A&M, 1975)
• Nils Lofgren - Cry Tough (A&M, 1976)

I would have included some of Al's more recent works but, sadly, they saw limited release and are currently out of print. His last (so far) solo album, White Chocolate (A Minor Record Company, 2008), would certainly have been on this list.

Now Reading: This Wheel's on Fire by Levon Helm with Stephen Davis

He was born Mark Lavon (yes, with an "a") Helm on May 26, 1940, but somewhere along the way, once he started touring and playing music, he became "Levon" (pronounced "Lee-von") Helm. The subtitle of This Wheel's on Fire is "Levon Helm and the Story of The Band." If you have to ask, "What band?" then you don't know your classic rock music, and you certainly aren't a fan of Bob Dylan's body of work.

Then again, if you are a moviegoer, you just might have seen Levon in the role of the coal miner, Ted Webb, in the 1980 screen adaptation of Loretta Lynn's autobiography Coal Miner's Daughter. He also played the role of Captain Jack Ridley, friend and fellow conspirator of Chuck Yeager in the film The Right Stuff. [I have watched this movie on numerous occasions (still have it on a double VHS!) and absolutely never realized that Ridley was played by Levon Helm....]

But back to the music: This is the story of how five musicians -- four Canadians and one Arkansawyer, multi-instrumentalists all -- came together over a span of years and endless road touring to eventually form The Band. To be honest, they never called themselves "the band" as they always thought this to be too pretentious: they were five individual musicians, each of whom went by their own name. But, while living in the Woodstock area of New York, the townfolk would simply refer to them as "the band": "Oh, he's in the band." And when their first album, Music From Big Pink, was released, they became The Band.

What motivated me to finally [see next to last paragraph] pick up this book and actually read it straight through? Believe it or not, this year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Music From Big Pink (gawd, 50 years?), and the remaining two members of the band have opted to release a 50th Anniversary edition of this seminal work: a box set as well as a newly remastered (from the original analogue tapes) double-LP on pink vinyl.

Levon Helm writes:

"We wanted Music From Big Pink to sound like nothing anyone else was doing. This was our music, honed in isolation from the radio and contemporary trends, liberated from the world of the bars and the climate of the Dylan tours. We'd grown up with Ronnie Hawkins [Ronnie Hawkins and the Hawks], playing that quicker tempo of tunes. Now we cut our tempo, our pulse, right in half. The sense of teamwork and collaboration was incredible. Robbie [Robertson, vocals, guitar] was writing stuff that evoked simple pictures of American life. Richard [Manuel, vocals, keyboards, drums] was writing beautiful songs like 'In a Station' and 'Lonesome Suzie.' Garth [Hudson, keyboards, accordion, brass and woodwinds] took a great song like 'Chest Fever' and composed an organ prelude. Rick's [Danko, vocals, bass, fiddle, trombone] playing and singing were amazing, and that blend of the three voices -- Richard, Rick, and me -- sounded really rich after we'd worked with John Simon [producer] for a while."

And the reviews for Big Pink, to use Levon's own words, were "pretty good." Al Aronowitz, in Life magazine: "With Big Pink, the band dips into the well of tradition and comes up with bucketsful of clear, cool country soul that washes the ears with a sound never heard before. Traditionalists may not like it because it's too original. Pop faddists won't like it because it's too traditional." And in Rolling Stone, Al Kooper wrote: "I have chosen my album for 1968. Music From Big Pink is an event and should be treated as one....This album was recorded in approximately two weeks. There are people who will work their lives away in vain and not touch it."

I could go on and on with reviews of Big Pink as well as their follow-up album, simply called The Band, but I'd rather not overwhelm you with facts and opinions, but simply recommend a few albums if, indeed, you are not familiar with the music:

• Music From Big Pink (1968)
• The Band (1969)
• Bob Dylan/The Band - Before the Flood (1974)
• Bob Dylan & The Band - The Basement Tapes (1975)
• Northern Lights - Southern Cross (1975)
• Levon Helm - Dirt Farmer (2007, Grammy Award for Best Traditional Folk Album)
• Levon Helm - Electric Dirt (2009, Grammy Award for Best Americana Album)

I've been reading the 1993 hardbound edition of this book, which I've had in my library, well, since 1993(!), but while looking the title up on Amazon I have learned that Chicago Review Press published a trade paperback edition in 2000, and then a "Revised Edition" in 2013. If you are intrigued by my post and decide to pursue your own reading copy, try to snag the 2013 revised edition as it contains an additional chapter as well as an afterword, neither of which are in my copy. Levon Helm passed away in 2012, so these additions may include the last words we'll every hear from him.

"They were grown men who had climbed the mountain together, spoken to the gods, and returned to the valley, where they once again became mortal."

– The Philadelphia Inquirer

Now Reading: Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero by Ed Ward

"The music you listen to becomes the soundtrack of your life. It may be the first music you made love to or got high to or went through your adolescence to, went through poignant times of your life—well, that music is going to mean a lot to you. It's going to take on much more import than just the sound of the notes, because it's the background track for your existence."

– Michael Bloomfield, in an interview with
Tom Yates and Kate Hayes, February 13, 1981.

At 11:00 a.m. on February 15, 1981, Michael Bloomfield was found slumped over the steering wheel in his parked car, keys still in the ignition, in a part of San Francisco in which he never frequented. The pathologist ruled the cause of death as cocaine and methamphetamine poisoning -- very odd, considering that Michael never touched cocaine, and as a lifelong insomniac, why would he intentionally take two drugs that keep one awake? Questions, sadly, that will never be answered.

Fortunately, we still have his music....

When Bob Dylan went electric at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, Michael Bloomfield was on that same stage, backing Dylan on guitar. This was three days before Michael's twenty-second birthday. Here's what Ed Ward wrote about that performance:

"During 'Maggie's Farm,' Bloomfield becomes Dylan's second voice. He sits so hard on top of the beat that it screams, and what he plays amounts to a sardonic running commentary on Dylan's song. Bloomfield approaches atonality in a couple of places, but his playing on 'Maggie's Farm' sits squarely within the blues tradition. It's not hard to understand why some people in the audience were confused, because what Bloomfield gave them on the evening of July 25, 1965, was the future of rock guitar."

Following Newport, Bloomfield then played on the Dylan recording sessions, along with Al Kooper who also played at Newport, for the album Highway 61 Revisited, released by Columbia Records later that year.

In addition to Highway 61 Revisited, here are a few "must have" albums that showcase Michael Bloomfield's work. I assume most, if not all, of these albums are available for streaming, but that's not my thing. Personally, I want the physical media, and the larger (i.e. vinyl) the better:

• The Paul Butterfield Blues Band self-titled album (1965)
• The Paul Butterfield Blues Band - East-West (1966)
• The Electric Flag - A Long Time Comin' (1968)
  
• Mike Bloomfield, Al Kooper, Steve Stills - Super Session (1968)
• The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper (1969)
• Michael Bloomfield and Friends - Live at Bill Graham's Fillmore West 1969
• Nick Gravenites - My Labors (1969)
• Muddy Waters - Fathers and Sons (1969)

Michael Bloomfield, to Ed Ward, on why he chose not to tour with Dylan following the release of Highway 61 Revisited:

"With Bob, I'd have no identity. I didn't even know that [at the time]. All I knew was that I didn't understand what was happening....So I told Albert [Grossman, Dylan's manager], 'Man, I'm a bluesman. I'll go with Butterfield.' And I played with Butter and didn't play with Dylan, and we were cookin'. We wailed from then on."

Michael Bloomfield: The Rise and Fall of an American Guitar Hero by Ed Ward (Chicago Review Press Inc., 2016, Revised Edition).