MUSIC: AUGUST

Ray Charles: MODERN SOUNDS IN COUNTRY AND WESTERN MUSIC, VOLUMES 1 & 2

(Concord Records, 2009)

Ray Charles and that gravelly, country-road voice of his, is so oddly comforting. Roy Blount, Jr., once wrote in our pages that Ray Charles was a better singer than Frank Sinatra, the end. Most people aren’t so clear, or gutsy, in their opinions. As much as we love Sinatra, it’s impossible to shake off Blount’s words. Backing-up Blount is Sinatra himself, who once said that Ray Charles is “the only true genius in our business.” If you weren’t familiar with the cowboy originals that RC covers on these two Modern Sounds albums (collected by Concord Records on one CD), and if you ignored the lyrics, you’d be hard-pressed to hear anything suggesting “honky tonk.” That’s because a careful arrangement of lilting, wafting strings and muscle-packing horns melds with a heavenly choir. Ray would come closer to an overall “purer” country sound on some of his recordings from the ’70s and ’80s. Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volume One and Modern Sounds in Country and Western Music, Volume Two (both originally released in 1962) were Ray Charles albums, not country albums. (Country music bended to Ray, not vice versa!) Besides the swinging, consistently pleasing vocals, Ray also won theoretical victories here. He signified that the future would happen and that fusion would take place in that future (here he fuses white country with black r&b, something that more or less hadn’t been done for a full album). He also let it be known that races come together, naturally, smoothly, cosmically, to serve music—not the other way around. Genius.

Hear this! “Careless Love” by Ray Charles:

(For more info about Modern Sounds, please visit Concord Records.)

Wendy & Bonnie: GENESIS

(Sundazed, 2009)

The first thing you have to deal with is that the person on the cover who catches your eyes looks like a boy. But no, that’s Bonnie Flower, the drummer for Wendy & Bonnie. Wendy Flower is the blond girl in profile on the cover and the guitarist and main singer (Bonnie sings in a supportive role). Wendy and Bonnie were sisters from the Bay Area. And they brought forth one record together, this one, Genesis, which came out in 1969 on a label, Skye Records, that died shortly after the release of Genesis. The Flower sisters? They make beautiful music together.

The other thing you have to deal with is that on the surface this music sounds like Muzak, like Lawrence Welk’s idea of “rock and roll”: i.e., soft and square and syrupy with sweet sister harmonies. Do not sweat in public!—seems, more or less, the message. There is an electric guitar in the mix but it only asserts itself during solos. Otherwise, it’s quiet. (That’s Larry Carlton playing guitar! And Jim Keltner on drums!) In the liner notes, the great Irwin Chusid writes that the album “betrays a few period clichés, minor flaws that, with forty years’ hindsight, seem charming.” (For those of you who like weird music but have never visited Irwin Chusid’s website, we recommend a visit: www.keyofz.com)

Beneath the Skye surface lurks a suggestive, strangely concrete underworld whose soul is different from what is being packaged. That said, the genius here is how closely the Wendy & Bonnie underworld (their truest dreams, their multi-colored desires....) resembles, but is not, the surface packaging, the sheen.

In other words, the more you fight this music, the softer, and longer, it holds your hand.

Hear this! “The Winter Is Cold” by Wendy & Bonnie:

(For more info about Genesis, please visit Sundazed.) 

Various: WHEEDLE’S GROOVE: SEATTLE'S FINEST IN FUNK & SOUL 1965–75 

(Light in the Attic Records, 2009)

There are dangers to immersing in Southern music. One is that you can think so much about Southern music that you’ll neglect the richness of other “scenes.” We never knew, for example, that a hot-to-trot funk & soul scene once tripped along in Seattle, Washington. But this record establishes that just such a scene existed. We aren’t funk & soul scholars...but we listen to this stuff as much as we can. At its best: funk & soul is: raw, grooving, happy, charged, calming, liberating, inspiring, communal, loving....

Besides Motown and Memphis and Alabama and New Orleans (and Miami), soul scenes apparently took place pretty much everywhere.... How’s that for a helpful map? We are not yet sharp enough to say, precisely, or in musical terms, how one soul scene differed from another. What we can tell you is that the Seattle scene represented on this comp is a little rougher and less polished than we, for some reason, assumed West Coast soul music would sound like. (We thought it only got dirty down South.) What we can also tell you is that we found deliverance on Wheedle’s Groove....

P.S. The wealth of American music might be limitless. And it’s not just Southern music lovers who inevitably and inadvertently neglect rich “scenes.” We recently returned from a visit to the West Coast where one hip, friendly, enlightened record-store owner could not, at first, stop himself from thinking that Southern music consisted solely of “country music.” He got over it, though. As Jeeves was wont to point out, where there is life, there is hope. We take solace for ourselves in that kernel....

Hear this! “Bold Soul Sister, Bold Soul Brother” by Black and White Affair:

(For more info about Wheedle’s Groove, please visit Light in the Attic Records.)

Diana Jones: BETTER TIMES WILL COME

(Proper American, 2009)

Here’s how Diana Jones brings to mind Iris DeMent, a now clichéd comparison: Sometimes there is a similar huskiness to the singing—and a similar spare arrangement of acoustical instruments. They also seem to share a certain frayed optimism and maybe even a bittersweet indulgence in comfort lyrics (think: comfort food). Beyond that, they are both utterly distinctive and perhaps that is the sharpest, most tangible connection. Jones’s penchant is for intimacy. The novelist Ann Patchett said it well: “Diana’s music has a kind of honesty to it that almost makes you want to look away.” An artist to track. Or just enjoy.

Hear this! “Better Times Will Come” by Diana Jones:

(For more info about Better Times Will Come, please visit Proper American or Diana Jones.)

Various: MORE MUSIC FROM M FOR MISSISSIPPI: A ROAD TRIP THROUGH
THE BIRTHPLACE OF THE BLUES

(M for Mississippi, 2009)

In this Sarah Palin age of suburban sprawl, self-generating iPods, and mundane cloning, it would make sense if the blues were dead. Think of the scene from Ghost World where a sticky-haired, young-white-boy leader of a generic bar band introduces a song by saying: “All right, people, are you ready to boog-gie? We’re going to play authentic, way-down-in-the-Delta blues. Get ready to rock your world!” Rock-godding his guitar, Orange County blondie, in an Abercrombie pre-torn shirt, growls: “I’ve been plowin’ a hundred mules, son/Picking cotton all day long.” This workaday spectacle prompts Seymour (Steve Buscemi), the 78-blues-record-collector geek (hey—why, hasn’t there been a sequel?), to say: “Now I remember why I haven’t been anywhere in months.... It’s simple for everyone else. You give them a Big Mac and a pair of Nikes and they’re happy. I can’t relate to 99% of humanity.”

But against all odds and obstacles, “authentic, way-down-in-the-Delta blues” still exists. Clarksdale, Mississippi, has earned fame for its musical progeny (Ike Turner, Sam Cooke, Willie Brown, John Lee Hooker, et al, and those like Son House and Muddy Waters, who were born just down the road apiece). Left standing is a strange, mystical town that continues, despite struggling, to contain unexpected depth and life. Thin, bespectacled Roger Stolle, a Yankee white man (Ohio), runs a hip record shop/art shop/information center in downtown Clarksdale, and a record label, and books bands for Morgan Freeman’s Ground Zero Blues Club, etc., all of which feeds into and off his crusade to document and celebrate the living blues of his new hometown. Team Stolle’s (Roger plus co-producers Kari Jones and Jeff Konkel) 2008 documentary, M for Mississippi, chronicled various on-location recording dates with various around-town blues musicians. At times, M for Mississippi was overeager, awkward, and pushy—minor flaws that dwindled in the shadow of its achievement: a time capsule of blues vivacity for the future—and present. The eponymous soundtrack, simultaneously released, likewise pleased. And now this, even more precious sounds. You could say a Big Question still nags: How long will the blues last? But that’s like asking how long a great restaurant or a great song will last. And anyway, one lonesome, moonlit, steamy night, we rolled our crystal ball into a side-street gutter.

Hear this! “Evil” by Mississippi Marvel and Lightnin’ Malcolm:

(For more info about M for Mississippi, please visit the movie’s official website.)