Sad news yesterday on NPR that Leonard Skinner, former Robert E. Lee High School (Jacksonville, Fla.) gym coach, died at the age of 77. In the late 1960s, Coach Skinner sent Gary Rossington & a few other budding rockers to the principal's office for violating school policy by wearing their hair long. In mocking tribute, they later named their band Lynyrd Skynyrd, (1973 debut album: "Pronounced Lehn-nerd Skin-nerd").
A Sinatra fan who considered most rock 'n' roll noise, Mr. Skinner nevertheless allowed the band to use a photo of his real-estate company sign for the inner sleeve of their third album. He came to regret it after receiving many late-night calls from drunken Lynyrd Skynyrd fans. Members of the band once jammed at Skinner's bar, The Still, on San Juan Avenue.
His son, Leonard Skinner Jr, told "All Things Considered" yesterday that his father enjoyed the notoriety he'd gained & that he particularly dug Skynyrd's song "Gimme Three Steps." When I met retired Skynyrd guitarist (& co-writer of "Sweet Home Alabama") Ed King in Nashville last winter, he called that band's singer/frontman, the late Ronnie VanZant (1948-77, died in a plane crash while on tour for the "Street Survivor" album), a poet.
But Ed grew up in the LA area, so he hadn't been subject to Coach Skinner's old-school Southern discipline. Rest in peace, Coach Skinner! Lynyrd Skynyrd lives!
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Chris Hillman on American Culture in the '70s & Today
Chris Hillman, multi-talented co-founder of The Byrds & the Flying Burrito Brothers, one of the seminal figures in LA's country/folk-rock sound, had this to say about the 1970s in the book Laurel Canyon: The Inside Story of Rock and Roll's Legendary Neighborhood by Michael Walker (2006): "The whole decade I find is a complete waste in all facets of American culture. There were some good things, don't get me wrong. But that wasn't a good time for me. I lost a lot of people [including Gram Parsons, who overdosed in 1973]."
Things have not improved, from Hillman's point of view: "Look at what we're dealing with now - the end game: American Idol." You can hear more of Chris's opinions on Internet radio this Wednesday, September 29. Hillman is scheduled to appear by telephone on Bill Malone's Back to the Country show on WORT (89.9 FM - Madison, WI), where I volunteer. Bill tells me that Chris Hillman should be on the air around 11:00 a.m. You can hear it anywhere in the world via the Web at: www.wort-fm.org (listen live or via Archive). Enjoy!
Things have not improved, from Hillman's point of view: "Look at what we're dealing with now - the end game: American Idol." You can hear more of Chris's opinions on Internet radio this Wednesday, September 29. Hillman is scheduled to appear by telephone on Bill Malone's Back to the Country show on WORT (89.9 FM - Madison, WI), where I volunteer. Bill tells me that Chris Hillman should be on the air around 11:00 a.m. You can hear it anywhere in the world via the Web at: www.wort-fm.org (listen live or via Archive). Enjoy!
Monday, September 20, 2010
Bob Mould, Jackson Browne, John Lennon & Me
I just learned - via factoid on WXRT-FM's (Chicago) website - that Bob Mould was born on October 16, 1960 (eleven days after me), albeit in Malone, NY & not Heidelberg, Germany, birthplace of me & Jackson Browne. Bob's band Husker Du (sorry, no umlauts handy) was born in the Twin Cities, of course, where Mould attended Macalester College. John Lennon is another October Birthday Boy. Librans seeking balance?
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
Next Stop: Vietnam!
This morning the wise & warm country-music expert Bill Malone hosted one of his best shows ever on WORT-FM, a 3-hour special on Vietnam-era country & folk music. You can hear it via a link at www.wort-fm.org (click on Archive & search for Back to the Country, Sept. 15th).
His guest was UW professor & Vietnam veteran Doug Bradley, who culled excerpts from a new 13-CD UW Archives collection, The Next Stop Is Vietnam: 1961-2008 (available from the cool German label Bear Family Records, see www.bear-family.de). The boxed set includes North Vietnamese pro-surrender propaganda broadcasts by Hanoi Hannah as well as American pro-war propaganda by Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger.
Here are a few of highlights from the show, which ranged from the ridiculous ("Goodbye High School, Hello Vietnam") to the sublime (Jimmy Webb's gorgeous "Galveston" - popularized by Glen Campbell):
* Johnny Cash's "Singing in Vietnam Talking Blues" - a tale of his eye-opening trip with June Carter to entertain U.S. combat troops, featuring a support-the-troops message with a protest spirit (the last word of the song is "peace").
* Merle Haggard's "Fightin' Side of Me" & "Okie from Muskogee" - Merle once admitted to an interviewer that he was more ambivalent about the counterculture than the latter song's lyrics suggest, noting "The only place I didn't smoke [pot] was in Muskogee." Lefty folkie Phil Ochs picked up on the redneck satire, performing "Okie" & praising Haggard on his weird Gunfight at Carnegie Hall (1970) live album.
* "Sam Stone" by John Prine, who'll probably perform it Friday (9/18) at the Overture Center in Madison. The chorus, from the junkie/vet's kid's perspective ["There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes / and Jesus Christ died for nothin', I suppose..."] always moves me.
* Several angry tunes by U.S. Vietnam veterans, including the defiant Agent Orange victim Jim Wachtendonk & compassionate bluesman Watermelon Slim.
We seem to live in the age of perpetual American warfare. Our nation's misadventure in Afghanistan feels a lot like Vietnam to me - 9 years & counting. Bring the troops home already!
His guest was UW professor & Vietnam veteran Doug Bradley, who culled excerpts from a new 13-CD UW Archives collection, The Next Stop Is Vietnam: 1961-2008 (available from the cool German label Bear Family Records, see www.bear-family.de). The boxed set includes North Vietnamese pro-surrender propaganda broadcasts by Hanoi Hannah as well as American pro-war propaganda by Nobel Peace Prize winner Henry Kissinger.
Here are a few of highlights from the show, which ranged from the ridiculous ("Goodbye High School, Hello Vietnam") to the sublime (Jimmy Webb's gorgeous "Galveston" - popularized by Glen Campbell):
* Johnny Cash's "Singing in Vietnam Talking Blues" - a tale of his eye-opening trip with June Carter to entertain U.S. combat troops, featuring a support-the-troops message with a protest spirit (the last word of the song is "peace").
* Merle Haggard's "Fightin' Side of Me" & "Okie from Muskogee" - Merle once admitted to an interviewer that he was more ambivalent about the counterculture than the latter song's lyrics suggest, noting "The only place I didn't smoke [pot] was in Muskogee." Lefty folkie Phil Ochs picked up on the redneck satire, performing "Okie" & praising Haggard on his weird Gunfight at Carnegie Hall (1970) live album.
* "Sam Stone" by John Prine, who'll probably perform it Friday (9/18) at the Overture Center in Madison. The chorus, from the junkie/vet's kid's perspective ["There's a hole in Daddy's arm where all the money goes / and Jesus Christ died for nothin', I suppose..."] always moves me.
* Several angry tunes by U.S. Vietnam veterans, including the defiant Agent Orange victim Jim Wachtendonk & compassionate bluesman Watermelon Slim.
We seem to live in the age of perpetual American warfare. Our nation's misadventure in Afghanistan feels a lot like Vietnam to me - 9 years & counting. Bring the troops home already!
Monday, September 13, 2010
Ramblin’ Jack Elliott: Gentleman, Rebel, Joker & Folksinger
“I shook the hand that shook Woody Guthrie’s hand!” exclaimed the 20-something guitarist for the Drunken Catfish Ramblers outside the Stoughton Opera House on a warm Saturday evening. The San Diego-based musician, whose string trio is busking their way across America - traveling by thumb & freight car, no less - had good reason to be excited. It was September 11, 2010, a sad anniversary for the USA, but a fine night for music in southern Wisconsin. He was referring to Ramblin’ Jack Elliott, who was in town to entertain us with songs, stories & jokes honed over 6 decades of performing & recording.
The son of a Jewish doctor, Jack was born Elliott Adnopoz in Brooklyn (NY) in 1931. He ran away from home at age 15 to join a rodeo, but soon reluctantly returned home. In 1950 he met the legendary Woody Guthrie, who sealed Elliott’s fate as a roaming trickster-style folksinger. He established his reputation as a performer & recording artist in London (England) in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s, Ramblin’ Jack had matured from a Guthrie protegé to a mentor for Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs & other more obscure folkies around the New York scene. He still gets around, having played a Blues Festival in Oslo (Norway) just before his gig in Stoughton, Wisconsin, a town south of Madison settled mainly by Norwegian immigrants.
Stoughton also happens to be the birthplace of the show’s opening act, Miss Meaghan Owens. A talented young Americana singer-songwriter, Owens’s sweet girlish voice, percussive fingerpicking & enthusiastic stage persona provided a good contrast to Jack’s crotchety seated performance. Dressed in a fancy white-and-pink cupcake dress above cowboy boots, the petite redheaded Miss Meaghan played 5 songs, mostly from her new CD Gun Shy of a Kiss (available at her website, www.missmeaghanowens.com). Owens seemed nervous & a bit awed by the grand venue, but the crowd encouraged her with generous applause. She remarked on the contrast between the hushed, gilded Opera House & the loud, dirty honky-tonks where she usually plies her trade. The highlight of her set was its opener, “Saturday Girl” (co-written by Nashville veteran Bobby Hicks), a catchy melody with plaintive lyrics about a neglected lover’s yearning. Owens will open for Junior Brown at Shank Hall in Milwaukee on September 25th.
Ramblin’ Jack took the stage almost shyly, despite his rather flamboyant outfit: pink cowboy shirt, brown kerchief, blue jeans, boots & a broad-brimmed hat. Warming up with “San Francisco Bay Blues,” he played his guitar - which featured a longhorned steer painted below the sound hole - in his customary flatpicking style. He paused between numbers to tell funny stories about some of his famous pals (Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Townes van Zandt, Willie Nelson, et al.) as well as various roadies & broncobusters he has befriended. He interjected a tall tale or two, including a claim that his husky/sheepdog mix Caesar could drive a car. He embellished the story by noting that the unlicensed canine “was the best road manager I ever had.”
At age 79 Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s tenor may be shaky & strained, but his repertoire is deep & wide. The songs he performed in Stoughton ranged from cowboy ballads (“Buffalo Skinners”) to talking blues (“Talkin’ Sailor Blues”) to Carter Family classics (“Engine 143”), to Woody Guthrie protests (“1913 Massacre”) to cosmopolitan country (“Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain”) to old-timey tunes (“Rakin’ & Ramblin’” - made famous by North Carolina banjoist/folklorist & lawyer Bascom Lamar Lunsford) & even pop hits of the 1960s (Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter”).
A solid interpreter of others’ compositions as well as a purveyor of ever-evolving folk songs, Ramblin’ Jack is refreshingly modest & self-deprecating. He can also play the cagey put-on artist à la Dylan. “I’m not a music lover,” he told us with a deadpan expression. “I just do this for cat food and diesel fuel.” I only wish his LA record label hadn’t neglected to supply him with CDs to sell at his concerts. After apologizing about that & complaining that the label had “dropped the ball,” Jack took it in stride. “It’s only money,” he said stoically, “it’’ll show up soon.”
Polite, snow-haired Jack doffed his cowboy hat several times during the concert & thanked us all for coming. A rebel as well as a gentleman, Mr. Elliott may have disappointed his parents (who’d urged him to be a doctor), but he rarely disappoints an audience. In fact, he’s a kind of alternative healer, bringing the medicine of laughter & the wonder of music to stressed souls well into the 21st century. Long may he continue to ramble!
The son of a Jewish doctor, Jack was born Elliott Adnopoz in Brooklyn (NY) in 1931. He ran away from home at age 15 to join a rodeo, but soon reluctantly returned home. In 1950 he met the legendary Woody Guthrie, who sealed Elliott’s fate as a roaming trickster-style folksinger. He established his reputation as a performer & recording artist in London (England) in the mid-1950s. By the early 1960s, Ramblin’ Jack had matured from a Guthrie protegé to a mentor for Bob Dylan, Phil Ochs & other more obscure folkies around the New York scene. He still gets around, having played a Blues Festival in Oslo (Norway) just before his gig in Stoughton, Wisconsin, a town south of Madison settled mainly by Norwegian immigrants.
Stoughton also happens to be the birthplace of the show’s opening act, Miss Meaghan Owens. A talented young Americana singer-songwriter, Owens’s sweet girlish voice, percussive fingerpicking & enthusiastic stage persona provided a good contrast to Jack’s crotchety seated performance. Dressed in a fancy white-and-pink cupcake dress above cowboy boots, the petite redheaded Miss Meaghan played 5 songs, mostly from her new CD Gun Shy of a Kiss (available at her website, www.missmeaghanowens.com). Owens seemed nervous & a bit awed by the grand venue, but the crowd encouraged her with generous applause. She remarked on the contrast between the hushed, gilded Opera House & the loud, dirty honky-tonks where she usually plies her trade. The highlight of her set was its opener, “Saturday Girl” (co-written by Nashville veteran Bobby Hicks), a catchy melody with plaintive lyrics about a neglected lover’s yearning. Owens will open for Junior Brown at Shank Hall in Milwaukee on September 25th.
Ramblin’ Jack took the stage almost shyly, despite his rather flamboyant outfit: pink cowboy shirt, brown kerchief, blue jeans, boots & a broad-brimmed hat. Warming up with “San Francisco Bay Blues,” he played his guitar - which featured a longhorned steer painted below the sound hole - in his customary flatpicking style. He paused between numbers to tell funny stories about some of his famous pals (Guthrie, Cisco Houston, Townes van Zandt, Willie Nelson, et al.) as well as various roadies & broncobusters he has befriended. He interjected a tall tale or two, including a claim that his husky/sheepdog mix Caesar could drive a car. He embellished the story by noting that the unlicensed canine “was the best road manager I ever had.”
At age 79 Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s tenor may be shaky & strained, but his repertoire is deep & wide. The songs he performed in Stoughton ranged from cowboy ballads (“Buffalo Skinners”) to talking blues (“Talkin’ Sailor Blues”) to Carter Family classics (“Engine 143”), to Woody Guthrie protests (“1913 Massacre”) to cosmopolitan country (“Blue Eyes Cryin’ in the Rain”) to old-timey tunes (“Rakin’ & Ramblin’” - made famous by North Carolina banjoist/folklorist & lawyer Bascom Lamar Lunsford) & even pop hits of the 1960s (Tim Hardin’s “If I Were a Carpenter”).
A solid interpreter of others’ compositions as well as a purveyor of ever-evolving folk songs, Ramblin’ Jack is refreshingly modest & self-deprecating. He can also play the cagey put-on artist à la Dylan. “I’m not a music lover,” he told us with a deadpan expression. “I just do this for cat food and diesel fuel.” I only wish his LA record label hadn’t neglected to supply him with CDs to sell at his concerts. After apologizing about that & complaining that the label had “dropped the ball,” Jack took it in stride. “It’s only money,” he said stoically, “it’’ll show up soon.”
Polite, snow-haired Jack doffed his cowboy hat several times during the concert & thanked us all for coming. A rebel as well as a gentleman, Mr. Elliott may have disappointed his parents (who’d urged him to be a doctor), but he rarely disappoints an audience. In fact, he’s a kind of alternative healer, bringing the medicine of laughter & the wonder of music to stressed souls well into the 21st century. Long may he continue to ramble!
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