Cruisin' Into a Perfect Saturday

Like a Turtle, I'm Withdrawing Into My Carapace
And I am'a cruisin' into this perfect Saturday, and it is, folks, at least here in billionaire heaven called New York City, a perfect day and, yes, it is Saturday, sweet Saturday. It's like 69 right now and the millionaire teevee weather phonies are screeching it's gonna be cool as a jive cat today but BEWARE there's a horrid hot spell coming (like Jesus is always coming)...there's always gotta be a BEWARE in this teevee bullshit I watch 'cause somewhere back in one of my live-alone lives teevee's presence became my only friendly WINDOW on a world of living beings--this time I'm really thinking about what happened when I found myself left totally alone, without even a car, on a 42-acre farm on a bend in Catskill Creek in Upstate New York just outside the burg of Freehold in a farmhouse they swore was built in the 1740s by the woman-who-lives-in-THAT-log-cabin-thar--and that was a problem with my buying the property that F-ing log cabin--and the property was cheap, 42,000 smackers, in the '70s, which comes out to a thousand bucks an acre--for a creek-encircled property with mostly woods and deer parks and an old railroad roadbed and the remains of an old railroad bridge the locals told me had been the scene of one of the worst train wrecks in early US railroad history--a passenger train (a day-trip train taking rich NYCitians up to their summer homes and the spas in the Catskill area) jumped off the tracks on that tressle (rr bridge) behind my farmhouse and something like 30 folks drowned right down there in that big wide bend in Catskill Creek, which was a tributary of the Hudson and was like a river, especially at the point where that train had wrecked and drown all those folks who, of course, according to the locals still ran screaming and crying through my woods at night--and that bend was right out my bedroom upstairs window, off through the thick woods in the pitch darkness of the night--and Richie Havens the entertainer lived up on the high road that ran around my property north and partied every night, the noise of his parties rolling down off the high road and right into my bedroom upstairs other window--I was told Boz Scaggs was up there a lot--so I thank Richie for driving those ghosts away, even though that damn place left me so depressed when I finally got the hell out from under the lease agreement and got the hell out of there I swore I'd never live out of a big city ever again--F the country, F the woods, F the varmints: the snakes, the spiders, the ants, the scorpions, the ticks, the fleas, the mosquitoes, the F-ing deer, the opossums, the F-ing raccoons, the G-D squirrels (one of their sports is sliding down tin roofs all night long), the cute little F-ing field mice, F-ing field rats (yeah, they got 'em), the GD moles, the filthy muskrats, the GD weasels, the wild dogs, the god-damn wild cats (ferrule cats, yeah, they're all over the Catskills), and especially the GD people--the hunters (what a gang of heartless thugs hunters are), the GD snowmobilers (whoever invented that beast deserves to be hanged till he's dead and if he's already dead, then dig his ass up and hang his rottin' bones anyway), the F-ing Hell's Angel bastards, and last but not least the snooty displaced New York Citians. F the country for me; give me the ruthless city; at least I know my way around in this jungle.

Teevee became my only companion up in that civilized jungle of the Upstate, upriver, New York world--naw, that's not the world for me...but that's not the world I'm going back into my shell to get away from either. Naw.

I'm listening to the wonderful Jimmy McGriff (I know, Who?)--I don't even know who gave me this CD, but it's Jimmy and Hank Crawford (I know, Who?)--it's from the way-back days of the funky organ and the cool hip rhythm (guitar, drums, the organist is the bass player) sections with the blaring, glaring, brightly shining wailing of Hank Crawford on his alto saxophone melodizing with Jimmy--a hard saxophone to control just right though Hank wields it with the smooth gear-shifting action of an almost-Charles-Parker, Jr-smoothness (almost; never really; you can't ever top Charles Parker, Jr., for playing the alto saxophone)--out of the swingers's school of deep-down-soul blues--of course, I hear Bird in every alto player I hear--Lester Young heard himself in all these guys and I think that included Bird and Bird did very well know Lester Young and who the hell in Kansas City back in Charles's knee-pants days didn't know Lester in his heydays first with Basie and the Blue Devils and then eventually to blow the lead in all those wonderful Basie (the Moton Band originally) Band sides and Basie brought Lester to New York City and up here Lester certainly knew Charlie Parker when he was still a young pup (and Lester Young said they were all Young pups)--and later even lived in the same building with Bird in Harlem...I'm flying off the point--Hank Crawford's horn brings me back into my shell here--damn this music is soothing but it is so NOT in these days. You put this music on the box and shit the whole room disappears. "Oh, not that old blues shit. Man, the days of slavery are over, dude, get with it." Yet these same sons of bitches fall to their knees praising the Lard when this same music is played in a church with a good gospel choir and ORGANIST, with drums--and now Jimmy McGriff is using the trombone stop on his B-3--an organist can be a one-man band. Jimmy McGriff used to carry his big B3 around in an old truck--Jimmy Smith had 5 B3s stored around in the cities he played most in, like NYC, Chicago, L.A., San Francisco--and Brother Jack McDuff carried his B3 around in an old refrigerator truck--a meat truck--like baloney, salami, those kind of meats--a musician's favorite meats--"Just slap me together a 'loney sandwich--put a little brown mustard on it, please--yeah, white bread's fine...and can I get a shot of Remy Martin with that." Except Lester Young; his favorite food at times was sardines and ice cream--mixed together I would assume.

But the funky organ boys were led into jazz by first Milt Buckner and then Wild Bill Davis and finally into popularity by Jimmy Smith, the Philadelphia pianist who one day decided to play the organ. Jimmy was the most successful of all these guys--Baby Face Wilmette, McGriff, McDuff, Richard "Groove" Holmes, Shirley Scott (yep, a lady), Big John Patton--all the funky organists--and they led to Charles Earland and Lonnie Liston Smith (still around, creaky, but still wearing his turban like a good organist is supposed to wear--anybody remember Sabu the Indian organist who used to wear a turban with a big jewel hanging down in the middle of it?).

There are organists still making the rounds today. I don't remember when the organists got into the blues but today there's at least one B3 playing making his living as a blues artist--though he is also considered a jazz organist, too, I think--but after the Allmons and those Southern bands that all used B3s and the Ray Charles Band--and Brother Ray played the B3 on one of his own Tangerine albums (Ray's own label)(it has Percy Mayfield's (I know, Who?) haunting "River's Invitation" on that album) and then Brother Ray discovered Billy Preston and here came the organ into r and b and Southern rock and the blues. B.B. King's Band started using an organist in the 70s. I myself cannot recall the name of one organist--oops, I forgot about Booker T and, of course the Mexican r and b bands in Texas had organs (you know, more sophisticated than the accordion, which is the Mexican national instrument and man you can't touch one of those Mexican accordionists (ie, Flacco Jimenez) for brilliance on the keys and the buttons--and of course the greatest blues accordionist ever was Clifton Chenier and certainly the accordion being Frenchie you know it's prominent in Cajun (Acadian) music and since Mexican music is basically derived from Mariachi (French Marriage Music), it's prominent in most Mexican musics whether ranchero, Nortena, or the truly wonderfully big mariachi band music you find in Mexico City, like the mariachi music of Mariachi Vargas--who was my favorite when I lived in Mexico City and wore white linen suits, a plantation style Panama hat (from Estado de Sonora), carried a gold-tipped malaccan cane, wore Florsheim of Mexico handmade shoes with real Cuban heels (a stack of hard cowhide pressed into a solid as a rock heel that made you sound especially cool when you walked down long hallways) and I used to take my bamboo flutes (three of them, one a bass flute, then a tenor flute, and finally a picolo flute) down to Garibaldi Square in Mexico City and sit in with as many of the Mariachi bands that would let me--Senor Gringo--El Gringo del Norte--Senor Tito Gringo (crazy gringo)--and then one day one of those companeros called me "Hermano"--and I learned every damn mariachi song ever written--always having to know "Guadalajara," the one mariachi song that I guarantee you will have every true Mexicano in tears at the dramatic, always dramatic ending to that wonderful old Mexican ballad--I mean, the singer has to really show a lot of macho (and men in Mexico love to sing), I mean the singer has to exceed himself in tagging the ending on that song..."Guada-lah-jahrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-ah (breath) Guada-lahhhhh-jahrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr-ah"--and then the tag, boom-boom-boom-Ta-Ta (usually ending with a wonderful grito from the band's best gritoisto).

So why am I going back into my own shell with music? Because my music is now passe. Young people especially have no traditional interest in the music of my generation or the generations afore and after me. Of course, you know my anglophobia forces me to say the traditional music of my generation was murdered in 1964 by the American racists recording company executives, and suddenly London recording companies started buying American labels, like Capitol, and flooding our music channels with Brit American copycat bands, the biggest, of course, the Beatles, the one who did the most damage, not wanting the black inventors of my generation's music to succeed at it--like Little Richard, Chuck Berry, Ike Turner (not Tina--Ike made Tina Tina--she couldn't sing or act for shit when Ike took her in), B.B. King, Snooks Eaglin, Johnny "Guitar" Watson, Johnny Acea, Sam Cooke--oh NO, the racist recording companies couldn't allow these guys to be the chartbusters in this country--and in 1963-64 winter Billboard charts--there's Elvis ( the white boy who wanted to sing the blues like Arthur "Big Boy" Cruddup and Jimmy Reed and Bobby "Blue"Bland but who old Sam Phillips, a redheaded racist, knew Elvis was a big find--he was a white boy who sounded like an "N" word, as old Sam put it, and so Sam sold Elvis on the auction block to the highest bidder, RCA, and made enough money, $56,000, to start the Holiday Inns--and they made Sam rich not Elvis, and RCA went on to turn Elvis into a clown, a clown who even the Brits rejected--though when they let Elvis just do his thing on that special he did where he's wearing the tight leather suit that he says is hotter than hell and just pickin' and grinnin' with a bunch of songwriters and guitar pickers, like Jerry Reed--and what does Elvis do? Why he does blues after blues--even doing Jimmy Reed's Let It Roll--"You got me peepin'/you got me hidin'/you got me peep hide hide peep/anyway you wanna let it rollllll...."

And Aretha Franklin was the female chartbuster--at her prime, she and her sister writing all those great songs--the daughter of the preacher from Detroit--Reverend C.L. Franklin who all little Texas boys my age then used to listen to faithfully on the big Mexican 100,000 watt radio stations like XERA or XELO (equis e leo), one of which was co-owned by my very best friend's father--and occasionally the Reverend let his teenage daughter sing--there's a great recording of 14-year-old Aretha singing "Precious Memories."

And another of my points I eluded to hundreds of words-around-the-barn ago was that the inventor of Gospel Music was Thomas Dorsey--originally a successful blues singer--a lot of old blues singers (Son House is one) found Jesus while playing the blues, deemed "the Devil's music" by both whites and blacks in them thar days--and it still is even now. I find it ironic that Christian rock nowadays is simply the Devil's music with "Jesus" substituted for "Baby" or "Mamma" or "Honey"--the please, please, please (most blues are begging for freedom) now not begging for some good sex (the meaning of life) but begging for permission to go to this fabulous place they call Heaven and live for F-ing ever.

All church music is is singing your blues up to your Lard. Even Islamic music is the blues. Salsa is the blues. Afro-Cuban music is the blues. Jazz is the blues. R and B is the blues. Motown was about the blues. Shit, so why don't we have the blues today?

I give up, the musical wolf in me gives up (and there are a lot of Wolves in the old blues, the most famous and deserving of all Chester Burnett who called himself The Howling Wolf--and Chester knew what the howling wolf meant--Chester was always "howlin' for his darling" (freedom)--howling for the pleasure that has to come after a good hunt, a good kill, a good feast--then it's time to howl). I'm going back up into my shell--my musical shell--I'm descending into my own world of my own music--still writing--trying to weave the chordal genius of Charles Edward Ives into my type of rhythm-ing, my type of "trinkle tinkle," my type of respect for my Elders--those improvisationalists in whose solar plexus bloomed from the seed of the African drum, from which comes the original blues (see Duke Ellington's Madame Zzaj ) into the polytonal wonders that turned into ragtime, blues, jass, boogie-woogie, swing, jump, re-bop, be-bop--and that's all I am even as a writer and thinker, an improvisationalist--a user of WIT, one of the most important characteristics a person can have.

I don't want to be a cynic, but what choice do I have?

thegrowlingwolf
for The Daily Growler