Folk – Page 3 – Rock Salted

Bridget St John – Songs for the Gentle Man

Bridget St John – Songs for the Gentle Man Dandelion DAN 8007 (1971)

Bridget St. John’s Songs for the Gentle Man is frequently compared to a number of other folk/rock artists of the late 1960s and early 70s. The most common is that she sounds like a combination of Nico and Nick Drake. Others cite Judy Collins‘ work with Joshua Rifkin on albums like In My Life. One could even throw in Vashti Bunyan. The Nico comparison is mostly right with respect to tone and timbre of their voices, especially when comparing Nico’s debut album Chelsea Girl. Both had a husky, deep voice; hardly identical, but Nico is still the closest comparison among reasonably well-known folk/rock singers of the era. Nick Drake combined folk and orchestral arrangements, but he had a surprisingly different approach, with melancholy that is scarcely present with St. John — it’s a somewhat strained comparison. Judy Collins is the most important reference point. She pioneered a type of folk that was kind of the obverse of Joan Baez. Baez made music that combined bel canto singing (with shrill, heavy vibrato) with homespun folk guitar playing. Collins instead used elements of showtunes to shape a singing voice that was still based in homespun folk music, then added refined Euro-classical orchestration (by Rifkin). The problem was that Rifkin was inconsistent, and, sorry to say, operating somewhat at or beyond the limit of his abilities. St. John took a similar baroque sensibility, through orchestration by Ron Geesin and John Henry, and applied it over homespun (yet adept) vocals and guitar. Unlike Baez, who often seemed to compromise the folk elements to the dictates of established operatic pop forms, St. John (like Collins) tries to keep each sphere intact. The strings add sophistication without diminishing the expressiveness of the vocals. And the arrangements and orchestration on Songs for the Gentle Man are uniformly excellent. This style of orchestrated folk would slip away in a few years, as the rock music came to dominate folk music. Then the approaches of Paul Buckmaster (with Shawn Phillips, etc.) and Tony Visconti (with T.REX, etc.) would make similar strides in combining orchestration with rock, albeit in a very different way.

Speaking about the song “City-Crazy,” St. John said that she “sometimes felt not ‘stop the world I want to get off’ but ‘slow the world down, I want to stay on!'” It reflects the entire album as much as that one song. This interest in a slower pace of life is a bit like Vashti Bunyan’s musical portrayal of radical rural simplicity. But St. John has a more urban sensibility, just slower than the bustle of actually existing urban life.

Songs for the Gentle Man was not a revolutionary album, but it took ideas that were percolating in the folk/rock scene and perfected them. This is not a particularly immediate album. It may take a few listens to appreciate fully. But there are few better listening choices for a bright summer morning or afternoon (this is definitely not nighttime listening material).

Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left

Nick Drake – Five Leaves Left Island ILPS 9105 (1969)

Nick Drake’s debut album Five Leaves Left was a rather unique recording that didn’t seem enmeshed in any sort of widespread movement. Fans often remark that his music seemed to come from “nowhere”. He never achieved much commercial success before his early death, partly due to his limited efforts to tour or promote his recordings. Still, his renown has grown tremendously since his death. Nick Drake is the sort of musician who came along ahead of of more widespread efforts to render a feeling of failed promise, which is to say failure to live up to potential. This is very inward-looking artistry. Extroverts may appreciate Drake from a distance without really warming to him more intimately. His music is somewhat elitist. Its lyrics are informed by the sort of poetry studied in “classics” courses in elite universities, and the orchestral treatments and delicate guitar playing (Drake was an impressive guitarist) pay homage to Euro-classical compositions. Yet these are pop songs, which underscores the way the music has a familiarity with highbrow culture but turns away from it, if only slightly. It is the devastating earnestness of Drake’s songwriting and performances that keeps this from being pretentious. This album leans toward the counterculture, but from a privileged place that manages to satisfy every criterion of dominant culture. More than anything, that was Drake’s real achievement. He managed to hold together seemingly incompatible forms in a way that never for a second seems like a juxtaposition at all. The stark, flawless Pink Moon may well be Drake’s finest album, but Five Leaves Left is great too, and hardly a step back at all (saying so is a matter of splitting hairs).

Bob Dylan – Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid

Bob Dylan – Pat Garrett & Billy the Kid Columbia KC 32460 (1973)

One of the least interesting of Dylan’s pre-Desire albums. The opener “Main Title Theme (Billy)” is fairly good, and there is the classic “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” (though Television‘s live version on The Blow-Up is probably superior). The rest of this mostly instrumental music, well, offers very little. Dylan is surprisingly winsome and even new-age in his sound. It really doesn’t work. Sometimes soundtrack music is worthwhile only in the context of the movie. Sadly, this didn’t even work there.

Jim O’Rourke – Bad Timing

Jim O’Rourke – Bad Timing Drag City DC120 (1997)

If you followed what Jim O’Rourke was up to with Gastr del Sol, his fascination with John Fahey so evident on Bad Timing should come as no surprise. It’s a decent album, perhaps a bit bland. The thing is, why not just listen to a Fahey album instead? Anyway, O’Rourke would go on to bigger and better things in the next few years, particularly the magnificent Halfway to a Threeway and Insignificance.

Nick Drake – Pink Moon

Nick Drake – Pink Moon Island ILPS 9184 (1972)

Nick Drake was an overlooked but extremely talented individual. Pink Moon is his most intense and ultimately best album. Sweet pop melodies and deep, intelligent songwriting are Drake’s trademarks. His refreshing approach moved far beyond simple love songs, with breathtaking but sad results.

The interaction between a man, his words, and his expression are profound. Gone are the lush strings and grand arrangements of his past work. Yet Pink Moon is incredibly expansive for just a singer with an acoustic guitar.

Where his previous release, Bryter Layter, looked towards better days ahead, Pink Moon begins by evaporating all hopes of happiness and grasps a bleak reality. The title track signals the break from his earlier work, and is the only track featuring piano. “Place to Be” then settles into blind depression. The brilliant guitar work on “Road” fills up space. While others may dream, Drake can only continue his static existence. He struggles just to understand his situation.

Drake is powerless to change himself or his world. On “Which Will,” he is a pawn held under someone else’s control. The instrumental “Horn” breathes a lingering sigh. He has not yet reached the point of acceptance. Side one ends with the cold observations of “Things Behind the Sun.” From a detached viewpoint, he collects thoughts and experiences.

Side two represents Nick Drake’s dawning awareness. “Know,” with just four lines of verse, evidences a new approach to life. The self-hypnosis of his guitar and chanting demonstrate his commitment to change. “Parasite” is one of the most gripping songs on the album. He finally opens his eyes wide and finds his place in a larger order. True to character, Drake portrays himself like an infection dragging failure to foreign places. Passing through a self-imposed exile, he sinks deeper into sin and despair. “Free Ride” is a plea for help, but “Harvest Breed” finds Drake freed to exist as an isolated oddity. He calmly stands in the face of his insecurities.

Concluding with “From the Morning,” Drake looks back on his travels. He takes his lessons on a final journey. His story ends in wry reflection. Nick Drake died a few years later, only 26, from an overdose of anti-depressants.

Pink Moon is a choreographed dance. A brilliant autobiography of genius, this was Nick Drake’s last gasp. Falling squarely between a comedy and a tragedy, in the classical sense, Pink Moon is ultimately an unassuming fragment of universal truth. It would be hard to say any other singer/songwriter ever produced such an immaculate album.

Odetta – Odetta Sings Dylan

Odetta – Odetta Sings Dylan RCA Victor LSP-3324 (1965)

When Odetta covers these Dylan songs, she seems to make extra effort to change the songs around and, especially, sing everything to completely new rhythms and phrasings. It gets very, very tedious. She’s also very theatrical in her vocals. What it reminds me of is singing songs in school or church when I was a small child. In school there would always be some teacher who considered herself a good singer, and would sing loudly, and sometimes a box of instruments, like an “african fish” (it was kind of like a wooden washboard with a stick dragged across ribs on the side to make a rhythmic, percussive sound) would be brought out for accompaniment. Similar things happened in church, though there was usually a skilled organist for accompaniment. In either case the showy, self-important manner of singing louder and more prominently than everybody else was the key. That’s what this recalls to me. That, and amateur theater productions my mom was in when I was young, when she would take me and my brother to rehearsals. I think I’m reminded of those times from childhood because this music feels like what you give to children because it’s safe, or whatever, and the kids just don’t relate and get bored immediately. It’s like a gravely mistaken kind of pandering that turns out to be more about imposing the performer on the listener than trying to flatter the listener.

The Incredible String Band – The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter

The Incredible String Band – The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter Elektra EKS 74021 (1968)

Imagine a hippie commune in the late 1960s. What music is being played? Maybe something like The Incredible String Band (ISB)?

There are a few things that mark basic political differences. One of the most fundamental is respect for traditions of inequality versus change in the direction of egalitarianism. This is the best way to look at ISB. There should be no doubt that they fall on the side of change. But they argue for change by playing all sorts of traditional music.

The vocals tend to sound completely improvised — with Robin Williamson especially, but with Mike Heron too. It is like they just read the words off a page and came up with whatever melody they could, on the spot. That impression gives way to carefully harmonized choruses. That of course gives lie to the idea that this is all haphazard. The instrumentation is eclectic, to the extreme. One minute there are references to Indian classical music, another to christian hymns. The epic “A Very Cellular Song” epitomizes the jumps between styles — one prominent segment is a rendition of the Bahamian hymn “I Bid You Goodnight (The Christian’s Good-Night).” It is obvious how the jumps place all the pieces on an equal footing, subverting the sort of rigid hierarchies that go with any one sort of musical tradition. So a strange thing emerges. This is music simultaneously drawing from tradition and subverting it. There is no hint of irony in the use of the traditional elements. Yet there is no doubt that ISB repurpose those traditional forms for entirely different ends.

The Hangman’s Beautiful Daughter is one of the band’s most well-regarded albums. But this also came along in 1968, just as it seemed like the counterculture was going to transform the world. ISB played Woodstock the following year — in an off performance. Of all the hippie-dippy music made in that era, this album is one that really pulls it all together wonderfully.

Of course, this is kind of a middle class rebellion. It escapes oppression by turning to simple folk musics, an approach summarized as “people wanting to scale back in order to live more balanced lives[.]” This sort of presupposes the means to break away and create a separate space for this kind of rebellion and escapism. One reason that the music has an experimental feel that suits the music so well is that the experiments provide “useful models for things that could then be generalized in altered conditions.”

In some ways the follow-up Wee Tam & The Big Huge is a more likable album — perhaps more epic too. But this is still a great one, from a time when it seemed like a real possibility that the world would really, really change and the good guys might lead that charge. It may be anachronistic today. Forty years later that hippie commune — more likely an entirely new one, because that one from the 1960s didn’t survive — would probably be playing the more dystopian psychedelic folk of an outfit like Sunburned Hand of the Man. Yet ISB is still a shining example of how positive and hopeful music can be that reflects a totally alternative outlook on the world. Maybe that has lost favor but it is still a compelling vision on its own terms.

Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home

Bob Dylan – Bringing It All Back Home Columbia CS 9128 (1965)

The first side, where Bob Dylan makes his first real attempt at rock music, feels like a mere warm-up for Highway 61 Revisited. That side is good — very good even — but not great. Side two, with a more familiar folk sound, is better, truly achieving greatness with “Mr. Tambourine Man” and “It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding).”

Van Morrison – His Band and The Street Choir

Van Morrison – His Band and The Street Choir Warner Bros. WS 1884 (1970)

Van Morrison was really something in his prime, and His Band and the Street Choir came right in the middle of his prime years. He drops the mysticism of the last records almost entirely. For some, that makes this fare poorly by comparison. Yet, setting aside the fact that both Astral Weeks and Moondance are some of the best albums of the era, His Band is a wonderful record all on its own. It feels a little more extroverted, alternating between sort of a bar-room soul/R&B sound (“Domino,” “Give Me a Kiss,” “Call Me Up in Dreamland”) and more intimate folk (“Crazy Face,” “Gypsy Queen”), and a few tunes that fall somewhere in between (“If I Ever Needed Someone,” “Street Choir”). So much of this is so good-natured, fun and impassioned, still with touches of poignancy, that it should be easy to love. Some fans find a way not to love it — making it a black sheep in Morrison’s early discography. Their loss. This one is pretty great.

Paul Robeson – Spirituals

Paul Robeson – Spirituals Columbia Masterworks Set M-610 (1946)

Possibly Robeson’s best album. There are few singers with a voice as capable of commanding of attention as Paul Robeson’s. His deep, resonant bass-baritone is so iconic that the man’s portrait should probably appear in dictionaries next to the word “dignity”.

The recording of “John Henry” included here is one of Robeson’s very finest. The Legend of John Henry is an old neo-Luddite folk tale, based on a real historical person (or amalgam of many real persons) working to build a railroad line, probably as convict labor after the Civil War, about a poignantly suicidal triumph of labor over the technology that owners of capital wield to destroy the means of workers’ support and dignity. John Henry defeats a spike-driving machine in a one-on-one competition, only to die of exertion. Lawrence Brown‘s somber piano provides deftly understated accompaniment. Brown plays in response to what Robeson sings, in the black tradition of call-and-response. The way Robeson sings is amazing. He uses controlled vibrato, just as any trained opera or bel canto pop singer would. His enunciation is impeccable. Every word is booming yet unmistakable. But he sings the song with non-standard diction. This places him halfway between vernacular music (true folk “spirituals”) and the ordained and accepted music of society’s ruling classes (“hymns” in the religious context). Spirituals came after Robeson’s political radicalization, and it is easy to look back at it and see how his approach to performance injects the vernacular into dominant forms as a kind of bottom-up revolutionary act, as performed by a black man in Jim Crow America who sings so well and with such unmistakable facility for bel canto pop music that he cannot be dismissed as an untalented ruffian making a bunch of mere noise.

Michael Denning‘s book Noise Uprising chronicled the revolution from below made possible from 1925-30 by the advent of electrical recording technology — before the Great Depression collapsed the global market for such records. Paul Robeson represents a different sort of revolutionary stance, though not necessarily an entirely different one. Robeson took advantage of electrical microphone technology to capture his voice in ways never before possible (his record label recorded him with the very latest technology). He also balanced the expectations of the powerful with the interests of the downtrodden. And he did so very, very well. His use of vernacular elements was more limited though, focused on more precise, subtle mobilizations in his vocals. Take “Balm in Gilead,” which slurs the words “there is” to sound a bit like “dere is” in a line otherwise enunciated with stately exactitude. These effects let you know which side Robeson is really on. He can sing in accordance with all the rules the powerful insist upon, but he carefully deviates from them, to inform the audience that he is choosing to do so, for purposes that are manifestly not dictated by the powerful.

On “Nobody Knows de Trouble I’ve Seen” Robeson sings the last line “glo_ry, Hallelu__jah” with an abrupt shift in his intonation of the last syllable of the word “Hallelujah” to express a kind of release and hopeful promise that stands in contrast to the somber weariness of the rest of the song.

Lawrence Brown sings accompaniment too. On “Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho” he adds responses to Robeson’s leads. Brown’s higher pitched voice, and quicker, less noticeable vibrato are counterpoints to Robeson’s booming voice. The tempo is much faster than most of the songs on the album too. It is followed by another duet song, “By an’ By.” Brown’s lines are phrased in a heavier vernacular, though one that comes across as slightly studied and academic — in other words, staged and inauthentic. This places Robeson is a kind of hero role, making his voice sound more commanding and impressive.

The albums wraps up with three tour de force solo vocals: “Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child,” “John Henry” and “Water Boy.” The last two songs are part of Robeson’s standard repertory. He performed those songs in most concerts and recorded them multiple times. “Water Boy” uses melisma to the maximum. Robeson’s use of vibrato is also a thing to behold. He carefully controls the vibrato over long, sustained notes to match the rhythm of his vocal phrasing. Much like “John Henry,” “Water Boy” is a kind of hero tale, framed as (presumably) an adult boasting to a “water boy” of his strength and capabilities as a worker. It is at once a celebration of labor and a vehicle perfectly suited for a black man in the Jim Crow era to demonstrate prowess as a singer.

If all this makes Robeson seem too much of an activist, when all he was doing was singing, then it is worth considering what happened to him in the following decades. His passport was illegally denied and he was blacklisted. His son also alleges that the CIA surreptitiously conducted “mind depatterning” on him as part of Project MK-Ultra (probably with LSD). The powerful knew that Robeson and his music were indeed a threat to white supremacy and other forms of oppression. It is a bit difficult to walk away from hearing a Robeson recording like Spirituals without some degree of respect, if not awe.