Tag: Rebirth of the Cool

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Rebirth of the Cool: Grown So Ugly

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Back to the blues we go for this installment of Rebirth of the Cool.

The story of Robert Pete Williams echoes the story of many of the great bluesmen: born in Louisiana in 1914, Williams grew up poor and uneducated. He was discovered in Angola prison, while serving time for killing a man, by a pair of ethnomusicologists who pressured the parole board for a pardon. He played the 1964 Newport Folk Festival alongside the likes of “re-discovered” greats like Skip James, Son House and others, heralding the height of the 1960s blues revival.

“Grown So Ugly” is probably Williams’ best-known song, thanks to the next two acts we’ll talk about. Williams had a percussive style of guitar-playing and his singing style could call up the grit of Howlin’ Wolf one moment and the haunting falsetto of Skip James the next.

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In 1967, Captain Beefheart brought his Magic Band and his husky yelp to the song and turned it into a jazzy cry.

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The version recorded by the Black Keys in 2004 is, essentially, a cover of a cover, taking their cues from the Beefheart rendition. The Keys, of course, add a lot of low end to the song, bringing out a darkness that can easily be overlooked in the original and the Beefheart version.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nThv8ZLWCLk]

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Rebirth of the Cool: Wolf Like Me

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Moving forward in time for this edition of Rebirth of the Cool, our origin song of the day is “Wolf Like Me” by the incredible TV on the Radio. This was one of the first TVOTR songs I heard (along with “Providence” and “Dry Drunk Emperor”) when a savvy friend recommended them to me back in 2007. It was love at first listen.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apAqPlcQVqo]

(Sidenote: Kudos to Jimmy Kimmel for bringing the feel of an intimate concert hall into the studio, thus encouraging better performances.)

Local H – whose cover of Britney Spears’ “Toxic” helps me feel less guilty about liking that song – took a crack at “Wolf”. They imbue the song with their characteristic immediacy and bring the emotional center of the song from the hips up to the chest.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3aBl3bnRv3g]

Then along came Dulli. Greg Dulli has long been a purveyor of fascinating, gorgeous, twisted covers, from Paul K. and the Weathermen’s “Amphetamines and Coffee” to “The Temple” from Jesus Christ Superstar to Al Green’s “Beware” to Prince’s “When Doves Cry” to all sorts of others in between. His take, with the Twilight Singers, of “Wolf” strips it down to its raw core.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZq-8Tiiey4]

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Rebirth of the Cool: Ring of Fire

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It’s a story known far and wide by now, how June Carter, the clown princess of American music royalty the Carter family, and Johnny Cash, who would eventually become known as the Man in Black, fell in love while married to other people. The first fruit of that relationship, as far as the music world is concerned anyway, was the classic song “Ring of Fire”.

The song was written by June with Merle Kilgore (who was also friends with Hank Williams, Sr., and his family) and given to June’s sister Anita to record.

 

 

But, of course, it was in Cash’s hands that the song came to life, perhaps due to the personal insight Cash had into the song.

 

 

“Ring of Fire” has become a favorite to cover, and, indeed, Wikipedia lists over 60 cover versions. The artists who have gone down in the burning ring range from Kitty Wells to Grace Jones to Bob Dylan to Blondie. I once had a small but substantial collection of Ring covers on mp3, and my favorite remains the heavily-synthed and characteristically idiosyncratic version by Stan Ridgway and Wall of Voodoo.

 

 

Bonus: Ridgway, in this 1982 television performance, Dean Martin-ing it up.

Johnny Cash would have been 78 years old today.

 

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Rebirth of the Cool: John the Revelator

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This is the first installment of what may become a regular feature focusing on covers or different takes on a single song.

One of the much bandied about cliches of modern music is that the devil gets all the good music. But anyone who has delved into the different forms of sacred music knows that that is a very arguable statement. (There is some damn fine gospel music out there, and the gospel influence can be heard in some of today’s more exciting bands, like The Builders and the Butchers.)

I would posit the theory that the best music is performed by those whose ultimate fate (if one is given to beliefs of the spiritual) remains in question. Take the blues classic “John the Revelator” as an example. The first noted recording of the song was recorded by Blind Willie Johnson in 1930. While he played in the blues style and has been covered by artists such as Led Zeppelin, the White Stripes and Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, all of Johnson’s lyrical content centered on the sacred, and he was known to preach to anyone who might listen.

 

Blind Willie Johnson - John the Revelator

 

While Johnson’s take on this old call-and-response field song is compelling, due in no small part to his gravelly voice, the song became a different beast in the hands of Son House. House held early dreams of becoming a preacher, but was ulitmately more compelled by the blues music that the church stood firmly against. He served time at Parchman Farm prison for murder and was later publicly berated by Howlin’ Wolf for his problems with alcohol. House’s version of the song is haunting, especially in this filmed performance.

 

http://youtu.be/9GgkvFJ–G8

 

In his 2007-2008 live shows, A.A. Bondy travelled his own road with “John the Revelator”. While the use of religious imagery in Bondy’s songwriting is often cited, his take on the Revelator steers the story in a more secular direction. Yet, in Bondy’s version, the apocalyptic side of the Book of Revelation seems closer than ever.

 

AA Bondy - Live at The Waldron - 8/12/08