Rhinestone in the Rough: Don Cooper

I dug this LP out the other day when mining for some new WW&W fodder and I'm sure glad I did. A few years back I stumbled upon this record, "The Ballad of C.P. Jones" his third LP I believe, at a Salvation Army and having no idea who Don Cooper was I was about to bypass it . . . but a quick glance at the back informed me that this apparent singer-strummer-songwriter was being backed up by the cream-of-the-crop of NY session players, such as Bernard "Pretty" Purdie and Paul Griffin, among others. I snatched it up and when I got home I fell in love with the standout track "Rhinestone in the Rough" because of its unusual combination of folky elements with an R&B backbone. You can really hear Purdie doing his thing on this track.

I kinda left it there and until a few days ago I had nothing to say about the rest of the album. I'm still "digesting" the other 11 tracks, but I can already say this guy is/was great! I think allmusic has it spot on with Don - had he been on another label, such as Columbia or Elektra, he could have been at least semi-big like a left-of-cheesy Gordon Lightfoot or inheritor of the Fred Neil crown. Sadly, he lingered on Roulette for four albums and nobody's heard much from him since then. I'm now on a mission to track down the other three LPs. It's always a tricky balance to have a really heart-felt song without letting the delivery and production sabotage it with schmaltz and Cooper pulls this off better than most.


















Don Cooper - Howlin' at the Moon
Don Cooper - Rhinestone in the Rough

Perfectly, a search for Don Cooper took me to the blog Vinyl Treasures which has the other three Don Cooper albums available for download. I'm still working my way through the one I have, but so far it is an excellent disc without any weak songs.

Me & My Jack of Diamonds

Sure, I have some Grateful Dead songs on my iTunes and you'd have to be a hippy-hater to not like their classic album "American Beauty" but there's a funny thing that happens when "The Dead" and music dorks intersect. Nobody ever really dabbles in "The Dead". It's as if you're a "Dead Head" or you can't stand the band. Until recently I was closer to the latter, but I think I'm beginning to feel the Darkstar tractor beam pulling me in . . .

I tend to approach musical behemoths in the same way. I resist dabbling until I can perceive a crack in their monumental veneer, an opening that allows me to understand and appreciate their work, and then I dive in and rarely surface until I've devoured a majority of their catalog. So you can see why I'm trepidatious. Well, that and I'm not sure that I'm comfortable with the "dead head" moniker.

not me, but the other guy looks like a bigger, fatter version of my uncle (seriously)

My "in" in this case is the John Phillips composition, "Me & My Uncle" otherwise known by the title "Jack of Diamonds." I'm a big John Phillips fan and picked up the compilation by the name "Jack of Diamonds" that pulled together a random assortment of rarities and odds n' ends from the 1970s. There are two versions of the tune "Jack of Diamonds" on the CD and strangely enough the "alternate" version is the more conventional of the two. I've selected the regular version, which has an extremely relaxed and dare I say druggy vibe - I mean, this is John Phillips we're talking about here.


John Phillips - Jack of Diamonds
The story goes that Phillips wrote the song during an all night drinking session accompanied by Judy Collins, Stephen Stills and Neil Young, among others, in 1963. At the time Phillips was a member of the folk group, The Journeymen, and Stills and Young had yet to make it to L.A. to form The Buffalo Springfield. Collins was the only one in the group of partiers with an active recording career and so unbeknownst to Phillips, Collins recorded the song for her Judy Collins Concert album. You can listen to the full song here (it might ask you to download the rhapsody widget thingy, but it doesn't take long and its well worth it). The most interesting thing about the song, is that Phillips woke up the next morning with absolutely no recollection of writing or playing the song and story has it that, "John used to joke that, little by little, with each royalty check, the memory of writing the song would come back to him." This version comes from the early 1970s after Collins, The Dead and a few others had already made it a classic. Phillips wanted to put his own stamp on it and switched around the lyrics a bit and re-titled it. To me it has a bit of that Steely Dan "Do It Again" slick rock shuffle.

We need to stop a second because who knew that there was more to know about Judy Collins?!? I have two previous associations with Collins: 1) my very un-hip step-grandmother liked her, and 2) I heard that she was Stephen Stills' cougar back in the 60s and that Suite Judy Blue Eyes was written about her. Next, we get to the other versions of the song, most notably when The Grateful Dead started working it into their live repertoire around 1966.

I guess if I'm going to ease my way into the dead, I might as well start with the song the Grateful Dead played more than any other, cover or original, all the way from 1966 to 1995! according to this very thorough website.

A relatively brief searcheroo on Soulseek unveiled about a half dozen live versions of the tune and I tried my best to select the ones that I thought really stood out and actually sounded different from each other. I swear it wasn't intentional, but the versions I selected came from the successive years of 1969, 1970 and 1971.

















The Grateful Dead - Me & My Uncle (Live in Santa Rosa 6/28/69)
The Grateful Dead - Me & My Uncle (Live at Fillmore East 2/14/70)
The Grateful Dead - Me & My Uncle (Live at Fillmore East 4/29/71)

Of Canoes and Tall Buildings . . .

John Hartford is one of my alltime favorite artists and an early inspiration for creating a separate country-ish blog in "Weed, Whites & Wine." I chanced upon this songwriter and renowned instrumentalist through his most famous song, "Gentle On My Mind." Of the hundreds of versions out there, it was Elvis' version from his Elvis in Memphis sessions that initially won my heart. While some might roll their eyes at this pop-country staple, to me it was new and the lyrics were extremely vivid, simple and honest - all three things speak to Hartford's musical legacy. Hartford wrote and sang about what he loved: freedom, boats, the Mississippi river and love.

I'd been meaning to get around to doing a post about some Hartford tunes so when this Monday morning rolled around and I struggled to face another week, I thought of one of my favorite anti-corporate anthems and no, we're not talking about a Rage Against the Machine song. We're talking about Hartford's, "In Tall Buildings." This song hit me back when I had just moved to New York City and I was working at a great job on the Upper East Side. As I got ready for work one morning, I put on a record as I often did while getting dressed. As I wrestled with my neck-tie the words of the song sank in:


Someday, baby, when I am a man,
and other's have taught me
the best that they can
they'll sell me a suit
and cut off my hair
and send me to work in tall buildings

and it's goodbye to the sunshine
goodbye to the dew
goodbye to the flowers
and goodbye to you
I'm off to the subway
I must not be late
going to work in tall buildings

now when I retire
and my life is my own
I made all the payments
it's time to go home
and wonder what happened
betwixt and between
when I went to work in tall buildings

and it's goodbye to the sunshine
goodbye to the dew
goodbye to the flowers
and goodbye to you
I'm off to the subway
I mustn't be late
going to work in tall buildings

Damn! I nearly quit my job that same day. I kept the job and eventually upgraded to one that didn't require a suit, though I still find myself rushing to the subway. I think of this song often and how Hartford managed to have his cake and eat it too, leading a particularly unconventional life.

As the story goes, Hartford rode the post-Dylan wave with a run of solo albums on RCA in the late sixties that yielded his biggest hit and one of the most recorded songs in history, "Gentle on My Mind." Hartford was known to say that that song bought him his freedom. With this freedom he took some time off and got his license to be a riverboat pilot. This pretty much sums up Hartford from the biography on his website, "Summer days might find him piloting the Julia Belle Swain on her afternoon run, before entertaining the passengers at night. During festival season, his amazing instinct for single-handedly captivating an audience would often have him leaving the stage and leading a processional of joyful dancers through the grounds, like a fiddle-playing pied piper."














I've picked two songs to showcase today, the second being "In Tall Buildings" and the first being the title track from his mid-80s album, "Gum Tree Canoe". Above is a picture of John and his wife in their own gum tree canoe. I feel like the two songs combined present a picture of how I, for one, would want to rank my personal priorities in life and live them out in the spirit of John Hartford. RIP.

John Hartford - Gum Tree Canoe
My dad has always had a canoe and I grew up with these simple, yet elegant boats on every summer camping trip. In fact, we're in the midst of planning the next one for this summer and I can't stop thinking about taking the canoe out in the early morning before the rest of the campers are awake.

John Hartford - In Tall Buildings
Wouldn't it be nicer to say:
hello to the sunshine
hello to the dew
hello to the flowers
and hello to you . . .





Both of these songs as well as my favorite version of "Gentle On My Mind" are collected on an excellent compilation of Hartford's Flying Fish sides, called "Oh Me Oh My How The Time Does Fly."

The Ballad of Tony Joe White

A quick post here to pass the time as it's been awhile since I lasted posted to WW&W. I was in Sacramento last weekend and picked up some great records, one of which was the last missing piece of my Tony Joe White collection, titled "Tony Joe" on Monument from 1970. This might just be my favorite album of his as he really stretches out in his swamp blues style and seems to be unconcerned with hitting the charts even though many of these songs are quite good.

I've been a fan of Tony's since I don't even know when and I can't really remember how I chanced upon him, but I soon acquired the great Warner Archives Best Of set which covers most of his late 60s and 70s output - his best years. I soon started tracking down his original albums and they're all pretty good, but few really stand out as solid listens all the way through, that is except for this one and his Warner Bros. debut, "Train I'm On."

I've also had my eye on Rhino Handmade's complete Monument Records set, but seeing as I have all the studio albums now, I'm not sure I want to shell out $80 for some out-takes and live cuts. I'm a fan, but not a super-fan. The thing about Tony Joe is that his style is so personal and direct that when it hits, it's like the best song you ever heard - think of his classics like "Polk Salad Annie", "Willie & Laura Mae Jones" or "Rainy Night in Georgia". Those songs were covered by just about everybody, because they were just THAT good. But, TJ also put out some embarrassing crap, too and in his personal style they just fall flat, really flat. He is kinda like a grittier Elvis (who covered Polk Salad Annie on some live sets) without the marketing machine to steer him towards success and make even his crappier songs sound at least passable.

That being said, I'm excited to share two of my favorite songs from this new acquisition (both songs are on the Best Of set) and they really show Tony Joe at the peak of his intimate and spellbinding storytelling style.

Tony Joe White - High Sheriff of Calhoun Parish
One of Tony Joe's great story songs. Looking at pictures of Tony as a young man, you could imagine him getting into some trouble with the ladies . . .

Tony Joe White - Stockholm Blues
This is my favorite non-hit that Tony Joe's done. I just love the opening bluesy lyric, "I got ants in my sugar bowl, boll weevils in my cornmeal . . ."

Arthur Russell in the Country

Arthur Russell's body of work continues to grow long after he left this world thanks to the good people at Audika Records. If known at all, Arthur's usually referred to in hushed tones by left-field disco enthusiasts for his David Mancuso Loft Party inspired jams such as "Go Bang" or "Is It All Over My Face" but his musical output was far broader than that excellent, but narrow slice of avant-pop. Arthur died of AIDS in 1992 and was creating music up until his final passing, but much of that output has yet to be heard by the public. Thanks to Audika records some of these recordings are being released and fans like me are eager to hear whatever comes out.

The latest release is "Love Is Overtaking Me" and collects recordings spanning his entire recording career from the early 1970s until 1991. What I like about this set of tunes is that they focus on more acoustic arrangements and the songs are shorter and more traditional in their pop song format with choruses and hooks, etc, but they are still distinctly different than most anything you'd ever hear on the Top 40 radio. Arthur's personality transcends any genre distinction and comes through in most everything he recorded.

These four songs are cherry-picked for their acoustic and country elements specifically for WW&W. They are also my favorites from this compilation, though there are many other great songs with more pop orientation and some synthesizers here and there. Listening to these tunes I can't help but compare Arthur's songwriting and vocal delivery to another fragile country boy who left us far too soon, Gram Parsons. The latter two songs also have a real country-soul feel with those horns much like some of Gram's cover tunes from the first Flying Burrito Brothers album.

Arthur Russell - Close My Eyes
Arthur Russell - Love Is Overtaking Me
Arthur Russell - I couldn't Say It To Your Face
Arthur Russell - Nobody Wants a Lonely Heart




If you are even vaguely moved by these songs or have heard of Arthur and wanna know more, I urge you to see the recent documentary, Wild Combination. It's a really touching tribute to this lost genius and an entertaining and compelling story. I particularly liked the parts with his heartland Iowa parents who still referred to him by his given name Charlie and who honestly admit they didn't care too much for his music while he was alive.

The Other Gallagher (& Lyle)

The REAL Gallagher & Lyle are an unlikely pair of pop musicians and their success and fame didn't really manifest itself until more than a decade into their careers. I honestly don't know too much about them as my introduction to their work was through their participation in the first incarnation of Ronnie Lane's band "Slim Chance." Benny Gallagher and Graham Lyle have gone back and forth from being a duo to joining larger bands to being a duo again and their incorporation into Ronnie's band was after their second stint as a duo.

The album featured here is from 1972 and is the one right before they joined "Slim Chance." If you know Ronnie Lane's work, you'll recognize some of his style, or vice versa, in Gallagher & Lyle's self-titled album from 1972. The music is based in a country-folk format with a strong British (or should I say Scottish) sensibility and like Ronnie, most of their best songs have a fragile and melancholy vibe.



These guys are best known as songwriters (for Art Garfunkel and Tina Turner, among others) so their vocal chops are not always the most steller, but I kinda like the way they strain for the high notes in Broken Wings. These are the kind of songs that sound better around a roaring fireplace than they would on stage at a proper venue.

Gallagher & Lyle - Comfort & Joy
Gallagher & Lyle - To David, Charlie & Ian
Gallagher & Lyle - Great Australian Dream
Gallagher & Lyle - Broken Wings

Talkin' Blues and Greens

My very good friend Josh has a dad who happens to live with his wife (and Josh's mother) in my very own hometown of Portland, Or. I met David and Diane just once at Josh's wedding in New York City and we deduced that their favorite delicatessen in Portland is the very same one that my dad worked in after graduating from Reed College back in the seventies.

Another crazy coincidence is that my fiance, Jamie, grew up in Grass Valley, CA whose sister-city, Nevada City is the home of the well known and loved independent radio station KVMR. David used to have a show on the very same radio station, so its not unthinkable that a young Jamie might have heard the tunes and voice of today's guest blogger.

Latelty, I've been benefiting from David's wealth of musical knowledge after Josh sent him the Michael Nesmith post on WW&W and since then we've occasionally exchanged musical tid-bits, Blossom Dearie for one. Josh suggested I pick David's mind about some tunes for WW&W and this one was the first (of maybe more?). Here's what David has to say about Ramblin' Jack Elliot's "912 Greens":

Ramblin' Jack Elliot - 912 Greens

I first heard Ramblin’ Jack Elliot’s song 912 Greens on one of the early free-form FM radio stations like KSAN in San Francisco, and although I barely knew what a “talkin’ Blues” song was, I knew what I liked, and this was it. This, and similar Dylan songs, and around the same time, Tom Rush’s take on the Bukka White song Panama Limited and ... and... well, there was a lot of stuff of this ilk to choose from, once you started looking. The title 912 Greens is a play on the address of the place Jack says he stayed in in New Orleans, 912 Toulouse Street. He says the song was a blues song, so he was going to call it 912 Blues, but for some reason he liked 912 Greens better. Anyway. This song has one of the best lines ever written by a white folksinger for a Talkin’ Blues song: “There was this girl there, who had once been an ex-ballet dancer”, which sets up a circular logic of staggering dimension. In the recording, it sounds natural, just a charming verbal faux pas, but he uses the phrase verbatim to this day when he performs this song.

Tom Rush - The Panama Limited

Ramblin’ Jack was a self-made cowboy from New York City who changed his name and persona in the early 1950’s and left for the open, bohemian, Woody Guthrie Cisco Houston Allen Ginsburg Jack Kerouac Road, singing, busking, telling lies and performing (and recording) with virtually every singer-songwriter of note in the latter half of the 20th century. His discography is staggering in its breadth and depth, although he very seldom, at least so far as I can tell, recorded songs with women. I don’t know why that is, it just seems to be so. He seems to love women; he has been married several times.

Anyway, this song, 912 Greens, perhaps the only one he was ever credited to have written, formed a secret, hidden soundtrack to a secret hidden life for me that was never to be. If I were to participate in the online game Second Life, my avatar would live out the life I always imagined from this song, travelin’ and singin’ and drinkin’ and stonin’ and profligatin’ and cowboyin’ and tellin’ stories and little harmless lies to any and all who might listen. And droppin’ every final “g” in the bargain. Jack Elliott, a truly self-made cowboy, entertainer, raconteur, singer, and original American Man. God bless him.

A biographical Documentary was made in 2000 by a daughter: it is called: The Ballad of Ramblin’ Jack. It’s worth viewing.