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- The Retrographer, Issue 27 (February, 2 0 1 7)
The Retrographer, Issue 27 (February, 2 0 1 7)
Khalid, Calvin Harris, Dirty Projectors, Nick Hakim, Lana Del Rey, Julie Byrne, Tinariwen, Future, Yaeji, the Feelies, Professor LonghairThe Retrographer, Issue 26 (February, 2 0 1 7)
Bulletins
February SuperHits
Ten Songs for February, 2 0 1 7
“American Teen”, Khalid (Spotify / YouTube) – Young black man, out of El Paso, singing like Rufus Wainwright, singing about the freedom of being young in America, singing he’s proud to be an American, even though it lies and leaves you with nowhere to go, singing at all.
“Slide”, Calvin Harris, Frank Ocean, and Migos (Spotify / YouTube) – The first Summer jam of 2017 comes out on an unseasonably warm Friday, a gross simulation of guilty pleasure. And yet, here we are, sliding our way to the apocalypse.
“Little Bubble”, Dirty Projectors (Spotify / YouTube) – I deduce Dave Longstreth listened to a lot of Motown ballads making this song - the sort of stuff the younger Jacksons would get assigned as an album cut, to sing about heartbreak they’re too young to really know. But Longstreth isn’t.
“Bet She Looks Like You”, Nick Hakim (Spotify / YouTube) – I caught Hakim at the Mercury Lounge with my friend Craig, who knew the drummer. The crowd wasn’t much to note but he hopped off the stage with his Tom Waits hat on to schmooze and charm mid-song anyhow.
“Love”, Lana Del Rey (Spotify / YouTube) – I’m not a LDR guy, but I’m writing about this song while watching the Oscars, and the idea that this song isn’t even associated with a movie, let alone nominated with something, seems wrong. We know Lana’s an act, but she plays to it now.
“Follow My Voice”, Julie Byrne (Spotify / YouTube) – Like Cass McCombs or Sibylle Baier, Byrne’s music pours out like cigarette smoke, and then sticks to you, permeating long after the song is done. Her voice, by the way, is deep and warm, even despite its obvious pain.
“Imidiwàn n-àkall-in”, Tinariwen (Spotify / YouTube) – These Tuareg musicians repatriated Mali from Algeria after the rebellion. Now, somehow, they’ve cut a record with Dave Longstreth that features Kurt Vile. Still, their songs are of resistance and overcoming, which they have.
“Mask Off”, Future (Spotify / YouTube) – Future is known for his moments of massive productivity; releasing two full-lengths in the same week fits that category. His efforts peak here, opiating pan flutes and lamenting his vices while indulging in them. You know, typical Future.
“Noonside”, Yaeji (Spotify / YouTube) – Yaeji is tiny and spooky. Her “New York ‘93” was one of the deeper cuts from last year’s roundup. She stays dark here, but lets some light glimmer in, like a sunlight colored strobe at a rave.
“In Between (Reprise)”, The Feelies (Spotify / YouTube) – The Feelies have always been associated with words like “jangly”, but on their new excellent record, they’re more scribbled, in the way a great demo should feel jotted down at the precise moment of inspiration.
One Album for February, 2 0 1 7
“It felt like there were people representing different parts of music that we held in high respect.” The Band’s Robbie Robertson said recently in a press tour celebrating the run up to the 40th anniversary of his group’s classic concert film The Last Waltz. “Who’s going to represent the music of New Orleans? We’ve got to get Dr. John in here.”
But Robertson's goal wasn't to represent the music of New Orleans. He was aiming to represent the music of his era, the 60s, a time of innovation and self-realization and cross-pollination and deracinating appropriation, in the last moments of its waning light. "It felt like the end of an era," Robertson said. "Something needed to be brought to a conclusion, in everything. Around the outskirts of what we were bringing to a conclusion, it felt like there was another kind of revolution stirring: Of hip-hop, and punk."So sure enough, early on in that classic rockumentary, Dr. John walks out onstage, foppish and pimpish in a beret and pink bowtie. Hirsute with a Cheshire grin, “The Doctor” squawks out a gratitude and and begins to tell of a starry tryst in his cajun accent. As the song comes to a conclusion, Dr. John, whose real name was Malcolm Rebennack, launches into a an extended musical joke: Tying together ending after ending after ending into a miniature suite of outros: Cliche and familiar musical culminations anyone would recognize from the canon of American blues music. Then, it finally does end, dissipating in a gauzy billow of antebellum strings. He stands, glinting in a spangled coat, and bows to thunderous applause.
Growing up in New Orleans, Mac Rebennack naturally gravitated to music, and to Henry Byrd, the town’s legendary pianist. Byrd was an institution in New Orleans from the time Rebennack was born, and went by the name Professor Longhair. Rebennack remembers meeting Byrd, who he idolized, and whose friends called him ‘Fess, as a kid: “I was also fascinated that he was sitting out there in a turtleneck shirt with a beautiful gold chain with a watch hangin' on it, and an Army fatigue cap on his head,” He remembered. “And I thought, ‘Wow, I never seen nobody dressed like this guy.’ Just everything about the man was totally hip. And he had gloves on him, too, beautiful silk gloves. I'll never forget this.”
He certainly didn’t. Rebennack sponged up the culture and identity of New Orleans and then took it to L.A., where he rolled it out for everyone from Frank Zappa to Sonny & Cher. He found an equation between the psychedelia of the late 60s with the voodoo mysticism of his hometown, and The Night Tripper was born. He could market it nicely too – he first went by Professor Bizarre, co-opting Longhair while exoticising him. But then he picked another honorific and another pseudonym, and became Dr. John. When the Band moved to L.A. to make their unimpeachable second album, everyone music scene knew Rebennack for his madcap stories of his hometown and his fabulous dress. So when The Band wanted a taste of the Bayou, that’s who they called.
About a year after The Last Waltz was filmed, but before it was released in 1978, Professor Longhair, who had never “crossed over” like Rebennack seemed so easily to, opened a club in New Orleans called Tipitina’s. The club was named after a song he wrote that was later added to the National Recording Registry for its cultural significance. That’s where Robbie Robertson finally got to meet Longhair, New Orleans’ most important jazz pianist after Jelly Roll Morton. None of Longhair’s recordings had made it far out of New Orleans in their time, so the opening of Tipitina’s, and its establishment as one of the city’s preeminent juke joints, helped get the word out.
Longhair recorded for almost three decades before any of his work was put together into an album, New Orleans Piano, 1972’s compilation of his singles made between 1949 and 1953. For three decades, he represented New Orleans’ odd musical amalgamation: Creole, jazz, zydeco, soul, rumba, boogie-woogie, even when he was out of sight, or thought long dead. These were sounds he picked up tap dancing on the street for snake oil salesmen, studying under Champion Jack Dupree and especially Tuts Washington, or sneaking into bars with a mustache drawn on to fake his age.
Even by New Orleans’ standards, Longhair’s piano playing was a hard-to-categorize mix. He learned boogie-woogie from watching local musicians’ hands, but when he played himself it he leaned further ahead on the beat so it sounded more like latin music. No one really knew what to call it, other than New Orleans piano, which is what it was.
New Orleans Piano is bawdy and colorful, full of priapic metaphors like “Ball the Wall” and “She Walks Right In”. His band sets the roadhouse standard later aped by Nicky Hopkins and Bobby Keys on Exile on Main Street. But no instrument is more powerful, not even his multilingual fingers, than his voice. Every song sounds a bit like he’s hitting on someone from the bandstand, and just how he describes in “In The Night” – “In the wee wee hours between midnight and day.” Byrd’s randy, winking baritone, like a bassy Groucho Marx, turns into yodels on “Tipitina” and “In The Night” – goofy, yes, but not shtick, or at least not for the purpose of getting on TV. “Hey Little Girl” and “Willie Mae” both rise from Longhair’s boiling gut and climb up to a raspy peak.
Longhair’s “Bald Head”, which isn’t on New Orleans Piano, had made it to #5 on Billboard’s R&B charts in 1950. But it did little for the man; That chart had been renamed the previous year, when it was called the “Race chart”. There was no money in it, and the only likelihood of commercial crossover belonged to white artists copping it. He got screwed on record deals too: By the 60s, he’d switched careers from pianist to professional card player. By the late 60s, Longhair had disappeared and was thought dead. A group of teenagers set out to find him in 1970, and did, where he sweeping up in a record shop. He hadn’t played the piano in years.
A new interest in cultural archivism gave birth to the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival, and by 1971, Byrd was performing in front of thousands in his hometown. In 1977, Paul McCartney hired Fess to play a yacht party he was hosting; Byrd had no idea who McCartney was. He got to enjoy mounting fame and appreciation until his death of a heart attack in 1980. He was supposed to tour opening for the Clash that year.
Longhair hardly made it out of New Orleans himself. But thousands joined the second-line for his funeral. His “Go To The Mardi Gras” is a staple of the yearly carnival – “as common here as holiday carols.” He became New Orleans, even if he’d never be its emissary.
And yet: When Robbie Robertson wanted to represent New Orleans, he called Mac Rebennack. This isn’t bad, inherently. There’s nothing to suggest that Dr. John’s a fake, or an undeserving songwriter. But it was wrong, incorrect. Dr. John didn’t write the music New Orleans parades to all year long. He didn’t stir its manifold soul with styles that were new and old. He was it's emissary, not its doctor. He still holds some association with our imagination of New Orleans’ music, maybe because he was chosen to represent its music at a moment and on a stage where its image in popular imagination was asserted. When the whole history of New Orleans' music was advertised, who was under the spotlight? And who got to make that choice? Maybe Rebennack got called up when someone else deserved to. The tragedy is that person was back in New Orleans for just a little while longer. But the miracle is that he'll be there forever, too. Don't expect him to come represent itself. Go to the Mardi Gras.
Best-Of Playlists
Though these playlists are all on Spotify, not every song (including many of my favorites) is available to stream.
To see what tracks are missing, go to "Preferences", scroll down to "Display Options," and then switch on "Show unavailable tracks in playlists."