The Many Voices of Bob

Dear Occasional Reader,

I need to take some time in the future and talk to you about Merle Haggard's mid-life crisis record, Serving 190 Proof (I think I misquoted it as Serving 150 Proof in the previous entry), and how I think it's the perfect album. I also need to discuss what a pleasure it is to listen to the vinyl of Tom T Hall. I suppose a person could get away with one of the comprehensive CD collections of his best songs, but it's nice to have the complete albums such as In Search of a Song. In fact, I order you to track that one down--it's just been released on CD for the first time, so you have no excuse!

Today's entry, such as it is, is devoted to Bob Dylan's Greatest Hits Volume II, which is where we're alphabetically at on the CD's. It sure is a strange hodge podge of Bob stuff, from "A Hard Rain's a Gonna Fall" to unreleased stuff from the early seventies when he was "floundering." It's the first sustained Dylan listening I ever did in my life. My mother got a vinyl copy of this two record set from the Columbia House record club. These recordings, sung in various Dylan voices, from Woody Guthrie, Jr. to Electric Self-Mocking Bob to Nashville Smoothie to Head Cold Bob with no respect for chronological recording order become a sort of post modern pastiche of Bobbery. I know it's heresy to say, but I love this collection, even if it's not really what you'd call his best stuff (some of it, maybe). My favorite tune is the sloppy live version of "The Mighty Quinn" in which Bob's vocal phrasing throws off his backing vocalists Rick Danko, Richard Manuel, and Levon Helm, so that they lag behind him on the verses. A wonderfully ramshackle performance from Dylan and The Band (from the Isle of Wight Festival, I think?). It sounds like they'd been enjoying libations before the gig...

The Fightin' Side of Merle the White Negro

Well, music fans, we've finally reached the "H's" in the vinyl listening project (we're on Bob Dylan in the CD's). We're currently trolling through some of Merle Haggard's impressive catalogue. My Merle collection largely consists of his sixties output, although I've got some of the seventies stuff, too. Obviously, that's the bedrock that his career rests upon.

Holy shit, Merle is great. Although I think George Jones is the greatest male singer in the history of country music, I think Merle is pretty close, and anyway, he's my favorite. His voice has roughened over the years, but it's still bluesy and expressive. His voice was obviously purer when he was younger, and man what an instrument it was. It just reaches into your guts and squeezes. And dang, can he write! You may know the sixties classics--"I Threw Away the Rose"; "Swinging Doors"; "Mama Tried" (we'll get to "Okie from Muskogee" in a sec), but check out his midlife crisis album, Serving 150 Proof for all the mournful trevails of turning forty one. Something I know something about.

If you can ever entice me into a karaoke bar, I promise I'll sing you "Okie from Muskogee." Who knows how serious Merle was when he wrote that song. The Psychedelic Eskimo and I watched him perform it on this late sixties music show called "The Music Seen." Merle was surrounded by dozens of American flags and a hound dog (or am I imagining that part?), singing the song as deadpan as could be for this rock and roll audience (the "irreverent" comedy skit before the song featured two truck drivers holding hands---Hilarious!). Anyway, how seriously was Merle taking his own song?

But weirder still is Merle's very un-PC composition, "I'm a White Boy," which you can find on A Working Man Can't Get Nowhere Today." In no way is it one of Merle's best songs, but it's a fascinating tune. As the great Peter Guralnick writes about this song, "he fights his racial confusion to a draw." Interestingly, sung as a blues, Merle (or his persona) claims that he's a hard working fella, his name isn't "Willie Woodrow" he wasn't "born in no ghetto," and furthermore he "ain't black" and he "ain't yella." But apparently it's okay for his protagonist to bum around from town to town. Free to be a white bum, I guess. Thou doth protest too much, Merle!

A more palatable side of Merle is the fact that he's always had a great swinging band that takes in the honky tonk, blues, western swing, and Dixieland elements of country and western music. I'll just make this probably offensive observation (but I've been reading Norman Mailer, ya see), but I'd say that Merle Haggard is a White Negro! There, I said it!

Al Green Is Love

I know it's been a while since I've posted. I've been "busy" working on my hippie memoirs and taking my cat to the vet (600 bucks and counting so far this summer). I've been making slow but steady progress with the listening project--in the vinyl area, at least. Over the past week it's been Al Green vinyl, all that classic Hi stuff from the 70's. Embarrassingly, I don't own Al Green Explores Your Mind, the one with "Take Me to the River" on it. But that aside, I think I own all the "secular" records from Al Green Gets Next to You to Truth 'n Time. I say "secular" because if one takes in the Rev Al's entire recording career you have to note the dime-thin difference between his secular and spiritual records. In some ways, his secular records are better spiritual ones than his tame gospel ones.

Of course, the most fascinating vinyl document of Al's secular/spiritual struggle is The Belle Album. As you probably know, with this one A.G. separated from his longtime producer Willie Mitchell to make less pop-centered records. In the title track "Belle," Al bids goodbye to his female fans with the line, "It's you that I want but it's Him that I need." It's one strange record. Rather unproduced next to the the classic trilogy of albums he made with Mitchell (Love and Happiness; Call Me; Still in Love With You) but compelling and mostly listenable as all get out. Kind of Rev Al's combined What's Goin' On and Let's Get It On.

My 2 "sleeper" Al Green records are: 1 the aforementioned Al Green Gets Next to You. Funky and tough. He and Willie Mitchell haven't refined the classic sound just yet. Check out the horny "I'm a Ram"; the equally horny "Can't Get Next to You"; and a daffy but great "Light My Fire." "All you gotta do is stick a match in my fire!"
2: Al Green is Love. A love theology record featuring "The Love Sermon"; the bizarre "Love Ritual"; the nonsensical "Rhymes." The sound of a man at the end of his rope. And the back cover photo says it all: a stoned looking Al wearing a process, a satin orange shirt with big collars and a hideous cream colored suit coat with a brown plaid design.

When I listen to the classic A.G. trilogy, I always get annoyed by the fact that I bought the late 80's vinyl reissues that for some reason have the Motown imprint. Obviously Motown owned Hi at that point. Anyway, in a case of dubious advertising the imprint on the cover says, "Motown Classic Vinyl." Lies!

Good shows this past week: Jim White and the Pernice Brothers (why is Joe Pernice turning into a David Grisman lookalike?); Robbie Fulks (a national treasure); Teenage Fanclub (they're so professional that they sounded good even though they were obviously fatigued and just wanted to get through the show--played three encores!)