I was in the same room with Rupert Murdoch more than 20 years ago when he said his ultimate goal was world domination of media. He meant it as a joking aside, but we all took it very seriously at the time. That comment eventually became part of the script of a James Bond movie.
This weekend, Murdoch, still on his quest, sounded off about the White House's rejection of SOPA and PIPA, the controversial anti-piracy bills currently being debated in Congress.
"So Obama has thrown in his lot with Silicon Valley paymasters who threaten all software creators with piracy, plain thievery," he wrote on Twitter. "Piracy leader is Google who streams movies free, sells advts around them. No wonder pouring millions into lobbying."
Murdoch has lobbied aggressively for the bills, which amounts to all out web censorship. On Saturday, the White House announced that they would not support the legislation.
Google is one of the most vocal opponents of SOPA and PIPA. Co-founder Sergey Brin has said that the bills "give the U.S. government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial)."
NRBQ Drummer Tom Ardolino died on Jan. 6 at age 56, according to the band's website.
I photographed Tom on a cruise ship in New York Harbor on Aug. 19, 2010 when he was backing the great guitarist Hubert Sumlin, who also recently died.
Ardolino joined NRBQ (for New Rhythm and Blues Quartet) in 1974 and played on 15 studio recordings. Though the group had limited mainstream followers, it had major music figures in its fan base, including Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Bonnie Raitt and Elvis Costello.
I took this picture at Bob Dylan's Rolling Thunder Review in Gainesville, Florida on April 25, 1976. Dylan is pictured with Joan Baez. I had no camera at the time and paid a fellow sitting next to me $10 to borrow his camera and to purchase one roll of film. Well worth it, I think!
It was the late 1980s and I was living in Los Angeles. From time to time, I worked on projects with the late Paul Rothchild, producer of The Doors, Janis Joplin, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, the Paul Butterfield Blues Band and many others. He introduced me to the Urb Brothers, a duo who had won notoriety in Estonia during the Soviet era there and had defected to the United States.
The Urbs had an amazing story. Tarmo Urb once spent five years in and out of Soviet jails in an effort by the government to silence his voice. It was only when younger brother Thomas (who, during Tarmo's incarceration, had made his mark as an actor in the Soviet film industry) wrote a pleading letter to then President Gorbachev that Tarmo was finally released...only to face an assassination attempt by the KGB, an attempt that failed when the operation's chief officer became a fan of the Urb's music and message, allowing the brothers to defect by the skin of their teeth.
Urbs in 1971
I visited with the Urbs on Venice Beach and actually pitched one of them to act in a movie I was then trying to get made at the time, “Cradle Will Rock.” I remember them as being really nice guys and sounding a bit like Simon and Garfunkel. But I was soon to move to New York City and—for whatever reason—Paul passed on producing the Urbs. Stuff and life happened and I’m sorry to say I forgot about the Urbs.
That is until the Sunday before Christmas. I was invited to a Ann Ruckert’s home to hear an “amazing” duo from Estonia produced by Geoff Gillette, an LA producer who has moved to New York City. At first I didn’t recognize the brothers or really get the name “Urb.” But as I listened to their story, a got a strange sense of deja vu. Finally, I blurted out “do I know you guys from LA?” “Yes, I think you do,” answered Thomas Urb, who had the same slow recognition.
Then, the pieces fell together. What are the odds we’d meet again after more than 21 years in a city on the other coast of the country? I can only say it happened. The brothers now have six albums and have recorded a lot of music since I first met them. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.
Tarmo Urb told me the story of meeting his “personal” KGB agent and being warned of his pending death. Here’s Tarmo on video with the story...
Here the Urbs sing “Nightingale,” a song they wrote after seeing a small nightingale in some tattered bushes near where they lived. Tarmo said I kept asking myself why is this little bird singing in such an ugly place—it has wings, it could fly anywhere. “Then it dawned on me, you could be a nightingale wherever you find yourself,” Tarmo said. “We musicians are what we are, wherever we find ourselves.”
Hubert Sumlin, 80, guitarist for the legendary Howlin’ Wolf from 1954 to 1976, died of heart failure on Sunday in a hospital in Wayne, New Jersey. One of the world’s most influential Chicago blues guitarists, Sumlin’s playing was characterized by “wrenched, shattering bursts of notes, sudden cliff-hanger silences and daring rhythmic suspensions,” said Guitar World magazine in naming Sumlin one of the 100 top guitarists of all time.
With the aid of an oxygen tank due to removal of a lung in 2004, Sumlin played frequently, especially around the New York City area. One of the more pleasant venues were his summer Rockin' the River cruises through New York harbor. The last, in 2010, he played with guitarist Jimmy Vivino, singer David Johansen and John Sebastian of Lovin’ Spoonful fame.
Hubert Sumlin with David Johansen
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Born in Greenwood, Mississippi, Sumlin first met Howlin’ Wolf by sneaking into one of his performances as a kid. When Wolf relocated from Memphis to Chicago in 1953, his long-time guitarist Willie Johnson chose not to join him. In 1954, Wolf invited Sumlin to relocate to Chicago to play with his Chicago-based band. Sumlin became the primary guitarist in Wolf’s band, a position he held almost continuously (except for a brief spell playing with Muddy Waters around 1956) for the remainder of Wolf’s career.
Sumlin shined on Wolf’s classic songs Wang Dang Doodle, Smokestack Lightin', Back Door Man and Killing Floor with his ferocious guitar work. He first recorded with Wolf at Sam Phillip's Sun Studios in Memphis in 1953. As solo player, his last record was About Them Shoes, released in 2004. It featured performances by Keith Richards, Eric Clapton, Levon Helm, David Johansen and James Cotton and was nominated for a Grammy.
“We were like father and son, although we had some tremendous fights,” Sumlin said of the bonds between he and Wolf in a 1994 interview with Guitar World. “He knocked my teeth out, and I knocked his out. None of it mattered; we always got right back together.”
Sumlin was a member of the Blues Foundation Hall of Fame. In 2044, Mojo magazine named him the third greatest guitar album of all time. Last month, Rolling Stone named him the 43rd greatest in a list of 100 players. He frequently joined Jimmy Page, the Rolling Stones, Elvis Costello, Eric Clapton and the Allman Brothers on stage in performances. Jimi Hendrix was said to be influenced by Sumlin's use of distortion on recordings from the late 1950s.
“You try to tell a story, tell it right, you live the story,” Sumlin said of his guitar style. “It may be a little faster or a little classier, but it comes down to you playin’ the blues or you ain’t.”
All photos by Frank Beacham in 2010 on the NYC Rockin' the River Cruise
The past week has been an exciting time in New York City. We have seen a popular uprising grow and expand—aided by a tin-eared billionaire mayor and a violent and over-zealous police department dedicated to protecting the wealthy. As with many of the dictators that have fallen around the world recently, these New York officials are as lost and isolated as Gadhafi was in Lybia or Mubarak in Egypt.
There is a global trend at work and it’s in reaction to the huge and growing disparities in wealth and political power throughout the world. Today’s government leaders have hit bottom—enabling and supporting a culture of shallow commercialism, intellectual bankruptcy, corporate corruption and phoniness in everyday life that is crushing ordinary people.
Honest, objective news media has evaporated, entertainment is becoming no more than corporate-created fluff and public education has come down to brainwashing a generation that the best life offers are financial deals that make money.
Art, music and the creating of anything that enhances human life is minimized in today’s over-commercialized culture. All that matters in the short term is a soul-killing chase for bucks and the drudge work that usually goes with it.
Today, the rich actually “make” very little. Manufacture of goods is done offshore at poverty wages. The wealthy today essentially create shady schemes to shift money around and charge the masses for their efforts. Those that aren’t devious enough to find success at that—and that is most of us—are left out.
I, for one, am sick of it. I want a different life. I want different values. I want out of a system that has created fiendish values and meaningless work that pays little and does nothing but enhance the lies perpetrated by the wealthy drones and the two political parties.
So what’s next? I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately. It is clear that both the Democrats and Republicans offer zero for the future. Both parties are bankrupt of ideas and controlled by lobbyists for the wealthy or right-wing whackos that are now self-destructing.
Before this election cycle, I would have said that third parties had little chance of getting elected in the United States. But times change and I think the day has arrived that a third-party candidate could be elected president. I also believe that most Americans side with Occupy Wall Street, despite what fraudulent institutions like “Fox News” or its pundits say.
The problem is who would run? It would be need to a strong, Ralph Nader-like progressive. Elizabeth Warren comes to mind, though she is already running for the Senate in Massachusetts.
I came out of the 1960s and realize the major fight ahead is for a younger generation. For so long I worried they didn’t care or weren’t energized. Now that has changed and the corrupt power structure has done all the right things to magnify their efforts throughout the world. This now must be translated to political action that can have a lasting effect in the world. The street protests are fine, but the movement needs to grow.
What’s needed is a presidential candidate with all the charisma of a Barack Obama, but this time with the spine to carry the things out that need to be done and not collapse to the interests of the wealthy and special interests. We also need progressive members of Congress to support this new president. That's a big order, but the time is certainly right.
Against the backdrop of Occupy Wall Street in New York, there couldn’t have been a better duo to echo the history and connections of today’s protests to those of the 60s.
Joan Baez, 70, who appears ageless and whose voice is every bit as powerful as 50 years ago, joined Kris Kristofferson, 75, the outlaw songwriter, actor and political activist in concert at the Beacon Theatre in New York City.
Baez dived into her early works, doing one of her best concerts in years. She sang two songs by Bob Dylan—Don’t Think Twice, It’s All Right and With God on Our Side—doing her crowd pleasing Dylan imitation on the first song.
She also posed a question to the audience. Did Dylan ever sleep with Janis Joplin? Then, she mentioned she was asked to tell a secret on a recent radio show, and asked the same question about herself. Did she herself ever sleep with Joplin? She never really answered but said she was kidding, leaving some in the audience wondering.
Baez wandered through the civil rights era, telling of the time she was sent in to wake up a sleeping Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., who was late for a speech. She sang to him, gently waking him. She did her classic Diamonds and Rust, the song about her relationship with Dylan, ending it with the statement that she’d take the diamonds over the rust anyday.
At the end of the show, she joined Kris Kristofferson on stage, who she said “they don’t make 'em like that anymore” to sing two of their hits. First they sang Kristofferson’s Me and Bobby McGee, and ended the evening with The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down. Though written by Robbie Robertson and first recorded by The Band, the song was a major hit for Baez.
Jimmy Norman at his last public appearance on Oct. 29. Photo by Frank Beacham
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Jimmy Norman was not only a personal friend, but a window into the music of my youth. He told me hours of great stories about the music legends I had grown up with and humanized them for me. He knew and worked with them all, especially Bob Marley and Jimi Hendrix. He was on the road with Soloman Burke and played with Ricky Nelson at his famous “Garden Party” at Madison Square Garden.
Jimmy took me with him to Harlem to clubs where I would have never gone alone at 4 a.m. We were always treated like royalty, because Jimmy WAS royalty to his many fans who always honored him.
I had the pleasure of knowing Jimmy for more than a decade. When I first met him in 2001, his health was very poor. He’d had a heart attack and had been forced to retire after three decades of singing with The Coasters. Even though he was always sick, his very best work lay in the years ahead.
By sheer luck (many of his later songs were rescued from notebooks in a trash bag on the street by the Jazz Foundation of America) to Jimmy’s improbable pairing with producer Kerryn Tolhurst, a series of random events led to the making of Jimmy’s last two records. I was honored to assist Kerryn, Jonny Rosch and the other musicians who played on Jimmy’s last two records. It was a wild ride.
The first recording was Little Pieces, released in 2004, and the second was The Way I See It, released earlier this year. Both records wove together Jimmy’s unique musical background of country, gospel, blues and jazz. He had tossed the songs aside, but later realized they were among his best work.
Jimmy’s last public appearance was on October 29 at a Loft Party for the Jazz Foundation of America. Jimmy’s last song was fitting, Time is On My Side, a work for which he was well known as co-writer but which never generated a penny of royalties for himself.
I have always been enamored of great floods—mostly because of the way they alter human history in unforeseen ways. Just as Katrina is still re-shaping modern New Orleans, the Mississippi River Flood of 1927 had a huge effect on American culture that we can only measure today through the remarkable impact it had on our music.
Bill Morrison, the filmmaker, and Bill Frisell, the musician, collaborated on a new project called The Great Flood, which uses archival film of the flood of '27 and a newly composed suite of music to tell the story of that natural disaster, the worst in American history. The live music and film got its New York City premiere Friday night at Carnegie Hall in New York City.
In the spring of 1927, the Mississippi River broke out of its earthen embankments in 145 places and flooded 27,000 square miles. As a result, there was a forced exodus of displaced sharecroppers, who left plantation life and migrated to northern cities, adapting to an industrial society with its own set of challenges.
What they don’t teach us in school is the great migration to the north fueled the rise of acoustic blues. This included artists who survived the flood, such as Charley Patton and his High Water Everywhere, as well as Memphis Minnie with her When the Levee Breaks, which was reworked by Led Zepplin and became one of the group's biggest hits. Bessie Smith, Barbecue Bob and Kansas Joe McCoy also wrote songs about the flood. William Faulkner's short story Old Man was about a prison break from Parchman Penitentiary during the flood.
Several decades after the flood, Randy Newman wrote, Louisiana 1927, Zachary Richard wrote, Big River, and Eric Bibb wrote Flood Water. The artistic output since the flood has been significant.
Just as important, the flood also helped create electric blues bands that thrived in cities like Memphis, Detroit and Chicago. This incubated modern jazz, rhythm and blues and eventually, rock & roll.
Morrison used actual nitrate film footage of the 1927 flood, including source material from the Fox Movietone Newsreel Archive and the National Archives. Nitrate film stock is highly volatile and features many imperfections, including burn marks. As great artists do, Morrison fixed nothing, but used the pock-marked and partially deteriorated film as an artistic device and window into history.
As Frisell’s score plays, the mind wanders through the silent film, suggesting different levels of reality. As the program put it, “the bubbles and washes of decaying footage are associated with the destructive force of rising water, the footage seeming to have been bathed in the same water as the images depicted on it. These layers of visual information, paired with Frisell’s music, become contemporary again. We see the images through a prism of history—but one that dances with the sound of modern music.”
Frisell’s music is magnificent and perfectly matchs the film as it tells the story. It is a parade of Americana music, from roots to jazz to modern rock. A crowd pleaser was a is scan of a 1927 Sears Roebuck catalog—one where you could buy anything from to a full orchestra of musical instruments to a full-sized house.
Frisell knows this territory well. For over 35 years he done more than 250 recordings, with film scores from the original Buster Keaton films to the work of mid-century rural Arkansas photographer Mike Disfarmer. Frisell collaborated earlier with Morrison on The Film of Her and The Mesmerist.
Morrison is a master of combining archival material with original footage to create unique visual tapestries that are set to contemporary music. He has collaborated with John Adams, Laurie Anderson, Gavin Bryars, Dave Douglas, Michael Gordon, Henryk Górecki, Vijay Iyer, Jóhann Jóhannsson, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, Steve Reich and Simon Christensen. Morrison first met Frisell while working in the kitchen of the Village Vanguard in the early 1990s.
During the performance, Frisell teamed with Ron Miles on trumpet and cornet; Tony Scherr on bass and guitar; and Kenny Wollesen on drums and vibraphone.
It is very rare these days that I discover a new recording artist that I really like. I’m handed dozens of demo CDs, but must admit the listening experience is usually deeply depressing. Then, suddenly, magic happens!
I knew Kristen Bussandri as the music student of a friend before I had heard her music. When she e-mailed me about her new collection of five songs, called Diamonds to Dust, I listened and was floored by the high quality of her compositions and music. It was a complete and total surprise that came out of the blue. Yes, Virginia, great work survives!
Kristen, who now lives in Montreal, has worked hard over the years on her music and it shows. She studied with Ann Ruckert in New York, before returning home to begin a well thought out career.
Her style is “country soul,” a term that describes “a lot of mixing of 60s influences including R&B, blues and gentle country.” She likes the description because it brings together diverse parts of her music. “It’s important to have a description of your music. Everything I do and love is in the scope of Americana music — soul, blues and country,” Kristen told me.
The first thing about Kristen that jumps out is her beautiful voice. She really has the vocal chops. She is also an excellent songwriter. The country flavor of her songs lend themselves well to her tales of break-ups and heartbreak, along with the journey to finding her way into young adulthood. Her themes are universal in appeal.
Kristen was influenced by Dusty Springfield, Neil Young, Linda Ronstadt and one of Canada’s greatest poets, Leonard Cohen. “Cohen’s writing is so profound and literate. That's had an impact on me. I always put the words first. That's a big goal. While my music is structured like pop and is very catchy, there has to be a tremendous depth and soul there.”
My favorite of Kristin’s songs is Diamonds to Dust, a beautiful showcase for her voice that apparently was a rewrite of another song. It just goes to show you how recycling lyrics can become gold. If You Don’t Love Me, You’re Wrong came out of a break-up and a defiant phrase used by Ann Ruckert in one of her classes. Like any good songwriter, Kristin took it and ran. Each of these songs is strong and the total comprises an exceptional package.
In her early 20’s, Kristen has an amazingly mature take on the music business. “Music isn’t a choice, it’s a calling,” she said, perhaps explaining her singular tenacity in a very difficult profession.
“In general you have to have a mixture of extreme determination and detachment,” she continued. “It’s the most competitive industry in the world. You are always fighting against your own demons. You are always pushing yourself to practice longer and harder to write a better song.
“You also need a sense of detachment, because if your entire self is wrapped up in getting somewhere in the music business your self esteem is going to go up and down like a yo-yo. So I have resolved to get joy out of the striving.”
Check out Kristen’s collection on all the usual download sites. Visit her website. And watch her new video below. It was part of Tiger of Sweden - Dressing Room Sessions, a promotion by Tiger of Sweden Jeans featuring eight of Montreal’s best bands and shot in a dressing room.
The true story of the Ku Klux Klan’s violent attempt in South Carolina in the post World War II years to stop dirty dancing and kill the emerging black music behind it—rhythm & blues. E-book in all platforms.
On the morning of Sept. 6, 1934, in the tiny town of Honea Path, S.C., friends and neighbors came to blows in a labor dispute. When it was over, seven people were dead and 30 others wounded. The bloody riot at the town’s cotton mill shaped the lives of two generations to follow—not because of the shock of what was known, but by what was unknown. E-book available on all platforms.
