"A Left Hand Like God": Recommended Boogie Woogie Website

The Prof loves barrelhouse piano and has been fascinated with its culture ever since reading Peter J. Silvestri's book on the subject years ago. Want to find out where his evocative title phrase came from and what it has to do with boogie woogie? Then bring that mouse-like object to this link to the Boogie Woogie Foundation' site run by Nonjohn (scholar John Tennison). Marvel at John's mastery of the minutiae of train lore. Thrill to his crusade to get boogie brothers George and Hersal Thomas admitted to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. Deepen your understanding of the wonder that is Meade Lux Lewis' "Honky Tonk Train" by clicking on the link to a PDF of an academic paper on its sources and meaning. In short, beat me daddy eight to the bar, cats and kittenheads.


Recommended soundtrack to boogie browsing:
The French Fremeaux label is a good place to start exploring the sounds born on the rail and turpentine camps of the Piney Woods. Their first volume rumbles around the Prof's den on a regular basis. (Amazon UK has the better deal). Seventy years ago, Alfred Lion started Blue Note Records by recording his boogie faves Meade Lux Lewis and Albert Ammons. That session is still out in a bargain cd "The First Day." Jasmine records has compiled a swell anthology of big band numbers that trace the boogie craze, "Bands That Can Boogie." The generically titled "Boogie Woogie" is an awesome ten disc box that has no documentation but plenty of rolling thunder and is a steal at under $20.

The Prof leaves the final word to John Lee Hooker in ?Boogie Chillen":

"One night I was layin´ down, I heard Mama and Papa talkin´,
I heard Papa tell Mama: Let that boy boogie woogie,
´cause it´s in him and it got to come out!
Well, I felt so good, and I went on boogie-woogie´n´ just the same..."

Jingle Jammin' Begins! : Featured Cut: Merry Christmas, Baby

Prof Pals are well aware what the Prof will be doing in the next few weeks aside from saving the brains of the youth of America--burning Xmas mixes! Yes, cats and kittenheads, he's up to volume 46 of the customized "Jingle Jammin'" CDRs and will attempt to reach a half o' hundred by New Year. So the Prof herewith initiates a series within a series, featured cuts and albums from his humble estimation of the bestest of Kringlepop music. (That's ol' Fezziwig above gettin' down at the archetypal holiday office party just to get you in the mood. The illustration is by John Leech from the first edition of A Christmas Carol. You can check out a cool site dedicated to the book and other Dickens by clicking your mouse (a creature that isn't stirring, I guess.)

We begin with one of the biggies, the number which is probably the first R & B Christmas composition, written by Lou Baxter and Johnny Moore and first recorded in 1947 by Moore's Blue Blazers with an assist in the studio by Johnny's brother Oscar, guitarist for Nat Cole's trio.
The track begins with bluesy arpeggios wrapped around the chords of a celesta (suggesting the jingling season subliminaly) and leads into the smoky vocals of the keyboard player Charles Brown (photo below), who switches to piano a few measures later. Brown and Moore keep it simple and urbane so that the music glows with its easy good-time feel and Moore gets in a jazzy Jingle Bells quote that spirals back down into the blues.

The lyrics are iconic American secular Xmas good-times hipness-- the first verse evokes the bling (she gave him a diamond ring so he's "livin' in Paradise," no, not that Paradise), the second verse gets all self-reflexive (he's feelin' mighty fine coz there's good music on the radio), and the last provides a good-natured gag about not drinking but feeling all lit up like a Christmas tree (they did call what Johnny and Charles and Nat and Osacar did cocktail music, after all).

This formula proved so potent that Brown recorded the song at least a dozen more times (and the Prof has interlarded them throughout his Xmas Mix), most notably in a duet with Bonnie Raitt. Brown also became a specialist in Yuletide piano blues--as we shall see later in this series.

A durable blueprint for so many great versions:

1950 Lionel Hampton Orchestra with a blistering vocal by Sonny Parker in the jump manner of Wynone Harris.

1960 Chuck Berry sliding some twangy chords that influenced snake around Jimmy Johnson's classic Chess Chicago-style fills that update Johnny's and Charles' original conception.

1964 Ike and Tina Turner burn up the Yule log with a choogling version that ends with Tina screaming "Jingle all the way!"

1968 Otis Redding Kicking off with a "dashing through the snow" riff by Booker T on the organ and cushioned by the jubilant Stax horns, this version features an exultant O at his best. You can hear him grinning through the whole track.

1971 Elvis Presley stretches out and gives it his all changing the last line from "I'm livin' in paradise" to "I'll play it through Al's mike." He plays an electric guitar solo as D J Fontana urges "Play it dirty." El is one bad Santa, know what ahm sayin?

Sherry Coben at Movie Smackdown

The Prof spent most of last Sunday afternoon reading pieces by Sherry Coben at Movie Smackdown, the site that promises "Two films! One review! No holds barred!" The format is revelatory, the referees deft and witty, and Sherry's the best writer there. Click and enjoy.

Afropop Extravaganza I: Mambomania in Another Continent

From the Honest Jon's label two compilations of Afro-Latino cuts that the Prof can't stop sneaking back to the player.

The first chronicles the Congolese love affair with Cuban rhythms and recordings just before the rise of the local style known as Rumba (a style which would develop into soukous by the end of the 70s and conquer the rest of the continent in popularity). The disc seems to capture the ineffable moment when folk styles metamorphose into "pop." You can hear the various indigenous forms in the acoustic strums and tentative vocal style meeting Cuban son montuno (itself an folk music form come into the city and turned into a virtuoso small-band format that influenced the Latin big band crazes to come from "El Manisero" ("The Peanut Vendor") to mambo mavens such as Miguelito Valdez, Machito, and beyond).

Two examples from guitarist Adikwa Depala make this mix clear. The plaintive tune of "Akei Cimetiere" would have been at home in a bolero-son you might hear from sextetos or septetos from the 30s and 40s in Cuba. But where the vocals there would be keening and penetrating, here the voice is more falsetto and even breaks in a few spots. The accompaniment by a raspy fiddle seems a rural throwback in a music now playing in Havana and imitated here in the urban explosion of Leopoldville (later Kinshasa) and Brazzaville.

In his excellent liner notes, Gary Stewart, author of Rumba on the River:A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos, evokes the sights and smells and sounds of a city night's Saturday entertainment beautifully. His comment on "Moni" serves for the other example from Depala:

"Local musicians swapped the Spanish of the originals for Congolese languages like Lingala or Kikongo. In his version of Peanut Vendor, included here, on top of his musical changes Depala replaces the seller's cry of 'mani', or peanut, with a lovelorn lament for a woman named Moni — a neat encapsulation of one step in the evolution of Congolese music."

Every track reveals a group of young musicians trying to create an appropriate soundtrack for their new environment, and they cobble it together from local traditions, newly imported styles from the immigrants from the coast, and the beloved Latino forms they'd been playing on 78s.
There are a whole handful of percussion instruments--shakers, claves, tambourines--flutes and whistles, and even kazoos! Throughout it all run guitars that haven't quite reached the assurance and intensity they'll have when the rumba craze arrives, but you'll probably feel you don't quite want it to come as long as you can keep playing this blessedly sweet CD.

(Here's the label's own blurb, most of it excerpted from Stewart's liner notes.)


Or that's what I thought all through the summer as I played The World Is Shaking over and over, never suspecting that October would bring the next volume, Africa Boogaloo.

"The Road" Directed by John Hillcoat

The anti-buzz on this film has already begun, but the Prof avers that it is a Good Film based on a Good Book. The "it's a literary zombie" meme has surfaced in half a dozen reviews I've read and the "Cormac McCarthy's prose is untranslatable to the screen" meme is right behind it. The book was a page-turner where you were so afraid of what might come next that you wrestled with the turn-urge, and the movie had me hunkered down tight in my seat. McCarthy stripped down his vocabulary and untangled his thorny syntax for this one and Hillcoat's staging is direct and simple in its translation to screen. The cinematography by Javier Aguirresarobe (Vicky Christina Barcelona and (gasp!) Twilight: New Moon) washes a muted color scheme across the characters' quest--eerily beautiful and dread-filled. Kodi Smit-McPhee is surprisingly good as the boy, even in the crucial moments where he confronts his father with what may be an outmoded morality. Viggo Mortensen inhabits the character of a decent man without being self-conscious heroic, a kind of a post-apocalyptic Henry Fonda. The star cameos by Charlize Theron, Robert Duvall, and Guy Pearce are unobtrusive and apt (and Garret Dillahunt is excellent, as usual). The audience I saw it with hated it--what a downer, they thought.
The Prof recommends it.

Update: Mr. Pink informs the Prof that he has been reading the buzz differently, and because the Prof is notoriously inept at predicting anybody's taste, let alone the American public's, he defers and wishes the flick well.

RIP H. C. Robbins Landon

We're nearing the close of the bicentennial for Haydn's death and the Prof hasn't gone a rant about the beloved Papa Franzjosef...yet. Today comes the news of the passing of the great musicologist who rescued most of Haydn from oblivion in the last third of the twentieth century.
Read the NYTimes obit for an account of an unusual man.


The Prof is something of a fanatic about Haydn, especially his string quartets. He has been obsessing this morning on the neglected three quartets of Op. 54, checking out recordings by the Tatrai, Angeles, Festetics, and Amadeus Quartets. (He desperately wants to hear the Salomon version again, but doesn't know where he put it a few days ago!) The Lindsays are closing in on the Prof's faves in this work, the Pro Arte quartet, whose version is still fresh, exciting, and, in the slow movements, meltingly lovely nearly eight decades on.

More on Haydn recordings and the Mendelssohn bicentennial in posts to come. And the dawning of the Chopin and Schumann bicentennial is only weeks away...

(Below--a photo of the Pro Arte Quartet.)



It's almost turkey time, cats and kittenheads, but the Prof is pausing long enough to update as he turns to North African guitar-slingers. New updates and more catching up ahead, especially with Afro-pop popping out all over. Before he heads out the door to visit folks and friends, the Prof may also post about a new flick. Stay tuned.

Catching Up IV: PAFA and Azuka Theater at Drexel University

"Public Treasures/Private Visions: Hudson River School Masterworks from the Metropolitan Museum of Art and Private Collections" (on view until May 15, 2010--see here for more).

"Barkley L. Hendricks: Birth of the Cool" (If you want to know more, you know what to do with the mouse, cats and kittenheads.)

Drexel Theater

Not the cast member we saw, but one of the same puppets below.