LEVON HELM: WHEN I GO AWAY

I've been thinking about Levon ever since the news came out that he was about to die. Today I put together a disc with oddities, including Levon doing Short Fat Fanny with the Max Weinberg 7 on Conan O'Brien in 1993. He wasn't out of my thoughts much all day, and I wondered what I might want to say when he did move on. This is what came out...

I remember it as one of the nicest surprises I'd ever had. First day of my second year of college, and one of my roommates, Winsor H Watson III, arrives and presents me with a copy of The Band's second album, titled, appropriately enough, The Band. I'd turned him on to Music From Big Pink the year before, when there weren't many of our freshman class playing 'Chest Fever', and he was returning the favour I guess. So I carried my primitive stereo up to the roof and we listened to it there, and now, more than 40 years later, I still can't decide which of those two records I like more.

 

The feel of the second one was nicer, more solid and serious. John Simon, who was already my producer of choice, got his props, and the group and their functions were laid out properly. But what I'd always loved about Big Pink was the photo on the album's inside of all the families and friends—just average people like our own families, a reminder that not every rock musician had to make his audience by rebelling against everything, that there was much to love and cherish and hold on to in the old while bringing in the new.

 

Levon Helm was at the core of that. The Band themselves were like a family, and at times you might like one of them more than others, but Levon was the one who seemed like the musical anchor, the one with the country voice, the dance-beat rhythm, and the love of throwing the football around the yard of that house in the Saugerties. If you were going to be in a rock band, you'd want to be in one with Levon.

 

You can argue about what happened after The Band broke up, who had the best career. Robbie went on to movies and some good solo albums. Richard, whose voice could make you cry, killed himself, tired of pretending on the road. Rick, the good time guy, died too—a couple of his last records are really good. Garth continued to be the enigmatic musical genius—showing up on odd records, and making one beauty of his own. They toured as The Band without Robbie and with the Cate Brothers; they toured without Robbie and Richard with some good Woodstock players but it was never the same.

Levon was always there. He did the faux Band tours, and I really like the Crowmatix disc I've had for years. But he was also with the RCO All-Stars, and with Ringo's All-Starr band—good time collections of great players who seemed to have a hell of a lot of fun doing the same great songs over and over again. And he too hit the movies, as an actor, and a damn good one—not just the roles you remember, but look for his wasted body in Shooter, or In The Electric Mist, where he plays General John Bell Hood, or his ghost, which is about the best casting I can think of. Bertrand Tavernier loved him, as a musician and as an actor. And then, after temporarily beating his throat cancer, he put together another band, went back to the roots, and won Emmys and new fans, and became an Icon—if you hang around long enough in America and keep smiling you're bound to get wide acceptance.

 

Go through You Tube and watch some of the Levon videos from the last few years and see if you don't smile as you see the big names lining up to play with him. There are so many versions of The Weight it will take you a sombre evening to get through them...but watch for Donald Fagen's verse on the organ, and Howard Johnson's on tuba in the concert with Wilco, followed by Levon croaking out the third verse. I know 'I Shall Be Released' is about prison, but I guess we can look at it as being about life too—not that it's a prison, but all of us have someone who's 'put me here', and all of us will be released. RIP Levon.

GARY BURTON AND AL KOOPER: Irresistible Targets June Playlist

There has been a nostalgic theme to Irresistible Targets lately, and when, inspired by John Harvey to think about my 'playlist' for the month of June, I realised that the two new discs which have been spending all the time in the scanner are both by musicians I've been listening to for at least forty years, I thought it worth indulging tha nostalgia just a little bit more. I realised too that, in the wake of the Michael Jackson death-circus, they both took me back to a time when I really got caught up in music for its own sake, rather than caught up in the multi-media cult of the artist, even though the cults in those days were nothing like the marketed hype of today. And both of these discs play consciously with their roots in that time, though in different ways. And it was only while thinking about these two discs that I realised there was a direct, if tenuous, link between Gary Burton and Al Kooper, a link constructed by the way in which I pursued associations in the music I loved.

Gary Burton's Quartet Live sends you right back to the Sixties because it's packaged in a cover by none other than Peter Max. Of course, as it's a CD and as I've been wearing glasses for the past few years, it doesn't have quite the impact it would have had as a LP jacket, but my generation has learned to live with that. It always amazes me, in the world of digital downloads and Ipods, how much impact LP covers had on their audience; I can think of dozens of records whose covers caught my attention before some information on the sleeve caused me to give the record a try or discard it.

It's a summertime record, and it's been playing through the current British 'heat wave', the kind of music that accompanies sitting at the desk with sunshine and breeze blowing through the window, and I've been feeling that way about Gary Burton's music ever since I was in college. I don't remember whether I was drawn to Burton by Larry Coryell, the guitarist in his original, 1968, quartet; I remember I used to play Coryell's Lady Coryell incessantly, despite my roomates' complaints about the awful vocals, and nowadays people look at that as one of the first 'jazz-rock' albums (I'll be writing more about this when I cover the David Sanborn concert I saw the other night). But since I think my first Burton album was 1969's Throb it's more likely I was drawn to it by the presence of fiddler Richard Greene, from the last incarnation of Kooper's Blues Project (and there's the link) which became Sea Train. He'd played with Bill Monroe and also played bluegrass with the Blue Velvet Band, and the idea of his joining a vibraphone-led jazz band must've seemed strange. But this was the time of Herbie Mann's Memphis Underground, when Kooper was producing records by the Don Ellis Orchestra, and of course the Electric Flag and Kooper's own Blood Sweat & Tears issued their first records, which are still two of my favourites. Throb's title track is a haunting piece composed by Mike Gibbs, who contributed three other tunes. The only member of the original quartet still around is bassist Steve Swallow, drummer Bill Goodwin replaced Roy Haynes and Coryell gave way to Jerry Hahn, from the rock band The Serfs, who also produced the great keyboardist/singer Mike Finnigan.

Although Quartet Live has the feel of an anniversary album, it's not. Guitarist Pat Metheny Metheny first joined Burton in a two-guitar quintet (along with Mike Goodrick) for Ring (1974) which also played Eberhard Weber's bass off against Swallows. Metheny played on two more records, Dreams So Real and the classic Passengers, again with Weber, before going on to the huge stardom he now enjoys. But he's already done two 'reunion' albums with Burton; Reunion (1990) and Like Minds (1998, with Haynes, Chick Corea and Dave Holland). In fact, Quartet Live opens with 'Sea Change', a Corea composition Burton's done with the pianist many times. There are afew other familiar tunes revisited, most notably Metheny's lovely 'B&G(Midwestern Night's Dream)' but the range of writers includes Swallow, Burton (never a prolific composer), Keith Jarrett, Carla Bley, and Duke Ellington's 'Fleurette Africaine'. What Burton, with his four-mallet playing, and Metheny, with his speed, have in common is a sense of weaving the many notes they play; never displaying virtuousity for its own sake (well, OK Metheny, on his own work, sometimes does). Swallow fits this layered approach perfectly, and the addition of Metheny's current drummer, Antonio Sanchez, is perfect because he provides a rhythmic drive, in fact, reminds me much more of the muscular Haynes than of other more gentle Metheny drummers like Bob Moses. It's a record that's more fun than its cover.

Al Kooper's White Chocolate is a sequel of sorts to Black Coffee, but appears to have been released only by Sony Japan (and through Kooper's own website), in 2008. It was the disc that was getting the most playtime in my office during those wretched rainy weeks of June, when you ask yourself why you're living in Britain and you listen to music that makes you think of home. I go back with Kooper all the way to the Blues Project, 1966 or so, and this record has some of the eclecticism that made the Project so good when they were good. In fact, it's very much a valedictory work, with a lot of familiar (by other people) material. The piece that will get the most attention is probably a slowed down version of It Takes A Lot To Laugh (It Takes A Train To Cry), the Dylan song Al did with Steve Stills on Super Session. Of course Al is today remembered primarily as the guy who slipped into the organ chair and added the riff on Dylan's 'Like A Rollin Stone'. As he said in a piece about White Choc written by Mark Gould, 'Ahhhh, it's just great to be remembered for something other than bombing the World Trade Center or shooting Jack Ruby.' Yes, I know, nobody shot Ruby, but you get the point!

But there are also covers of the classic 'I Who Have Nothing,' Fred Neil's 'Candy Man' (a huge hit for Roy Orbison), Otis Redding's 'I Love You More Than Words Can Say' (written by Eddie Floyd and Booker T Jones), and two Kooper kollaborations with Gerry Goffin, apparently done by email. There is also a eulogy to Stax, one of the kind of songs Stax themselves used to do so well, which features Booker and Duck Dunn and Steve Cropper and allows Al the chance to yell 'play it Steve' just like Sam Moore did on Soul Man (by the way, when I do write that Sanborn piece I will be mentioning Sam's singing with him). Al's voice is weaker than it was (he's 65, and has suffered a number of serious illnesses, including a brain tumour and a near-loss of eyesight) but since at his peak he was once described as sounding like a soulful asthmatic, it may not have quite the pop the song demands, but it is great fun and sounds great behind him, and since Stax was always the inspiration behind his horn charts, it makes sense.

The record features vocals by the exquisite Catharine Russell and Sherryl Marshall, who go all the way back with Al to Child Is Father To The Man that first BS&T album, which may still be my favourite rock record of all-time. Russell, a true soul diva, even gets to sing lead on Hold On. Like almost all Al's albums, it's uneven; he's too indulgent of his own cleverness to simply pay to formula, and some of his favorite quirks don't always hit the right note, but there are far more hits than misses. And yes, one of the songs sounds an awful lot like on of the ones of Black Coffee, but I won't say which. But there are also a couple of touching takes on growing old, Al originals, 'You Never Know Til You Get There' and '(I Don't Know When But) I Know That I'll Be There Soon', both featuring Al Gorgoni on acoustic guitar, another of those session guys who popped up on Al's album credits and very few others. It may sound like I'm off on a nostalgia trip, but I played and replayed this record with immense satisfaction, and you tell me how many records you can say that about today?

Irresistible Turntables: The June Playlist:
Gary Burton 'Quartet Live' (Concord 2009)
Al Kooper 'White Chocolate' (Sony Japan 2008)
Jack DeJohnette's Parallel Realties 'Live' two-discs from Philadelphia, 1990, on the semi-bootleg German Jazz Door label, with Metheny, Herbie Hancock, and Dave Holland. Harder driving than the studio albums, this one really moves.
for the Summer Soulstice, June 21st:
Taj Mahal The Real Thing, the phenomenal 1971 Columbia live album with a four-tuba horn section. Key track: 'Ain't Gwine Whistle Dixie (Any Mo')' for its solos by three guys less celebrated than they should be: Howard Johnson (sax), John Hall (guitar) and John Simon (piano—producer of that first BS&T album, as well as the Band's first two).
Stax Soul Power (Mojo 2/07) on 21/6, especially William Bell's 'I Forgot To Be Your Lover'
Baby Washington (pictured right) I've Got A Feeling (Stateside 2005) a great best-of compilation which includes the best cover of I'm On The Outside (Looking In)

Isle Of Wight/Glastonbury /Hyde Park displacement therapy:
Neil Young (Reprise 1968), that first solo album, of which I've still got the rare, title-less LP cover, isn't really solo since its mostly-unbilled players include Poco's George Grantham, Ry Cooder, Jack Nitzsche, and Jim Messina, along with the wonderful Brenda Holloway leading a great chorus. To stay in that 40-year old groove, Sugar Mountain (Reprise 2008), is the 1968 live Canterbury House solo concert, which is Neil at his most vulnerable, and sounding very much in, and of, that time.