Take Five: Creativity, elegy and industry
Curiosity and connections led me to Terence Blanchard, Danny Gatton, Mick Ralphs' work with Mott the Hoople, the murals of Diego Rivera, and, yes, yet another Beach Boys tune
“Take Five” is posted each Friday, and offers five things I spent some time with over the course of the previous week. No criticism, no in-depth analysis, just a few things I think you might be interested in checking out. When the spirit moves me, I’ll post other things at other times.
Posting this as I’m cueing up Bruce Springsteen’s new Tracks II box set that gathers seven previously unreleased albums from over the past 40 years. Yes, I’ll be sharing my thoughts here next week.
1. Terence Blanchard — ‘The Source’
Jazz pianist Aaron Parks has an interesting new Substack, Always Beginning, where he writes about his music and things he is consuming culturally. He wrote this week about a recent duo performance with trumpeter Terence Blanchard, remarking on the fact that it was Blanchard who gave Parks his start when the pianist was just 18 years old. He goes on to note that it has been 20 years since Blanchard's album, Flow, that featured Parks on piano, praising the leader for making it “clear that he trusted our potential and imagination, while also offering a seasoned presence that usually manifested as nonverbal guidance — mostly, he led by doing." This manifested itself in allowing his younger bandmates1 — who also included Lionel Loueke and Kendrick Scott — to contribute songs to the album. I planned to write about Parks’ tune, “Harvesting Dance,” but I kept coming back instead to “The Source,” a Scott tune that features piano from the album’s producer, Herbie Hancock. Parks was wise to cede the bench to the master on this tune, as Hancock turns in a stunning solo, sparring with saxophonist Brice Winston before leaving him behind to venture across the keys with all of the verve of his younger days. It may be Blanchard’s album and Scott’s tune, but both exist in Hancock’s world for these eight minutes.
2. Danny Gatton — ‘In My Room’
I came across a mention of Gatton while reading a piece about the post-rock trio The Messthetics as it cited Gatton’s guitar playing as an influence on the band’s Anthony Pirog, who says of Gatton that he “combined rockabilly, jazz, blues, country… basically all popular guitar music up through the ’80s.” I remember seeing Gatton's 1991 album, 88 Elmira St., on the wall of Iowa City record stores when I was in college. If memory serves, it was heavily discounted, his label hoping to convince listeners to take a chance on this eclectic collection of instrumental guitar music. I didn't, and so it was another three-plus decades until I heard Gatton’s playing. It is indeed eclectic, and virtuosic. Gatton’s playing is much less bluesy than I assumed it would be, which was the main reason I never bothered to check him out. The standout for me here is a gorgeous version of the Beach Boys’ “In My Room,” a twangy, elegiac take that is more surfy than the original, Gatton’s guitar more than ample reward for enduring a vocal-free Beach Boys cover. The album also features an odd run through “The Simpsons” theme song, but otherwise the novelty is kept in check. Gatton, who died in 1994, was clearly the real deal, and I’ll definitely check out more of his sparse catalog.
3. The Beach Boys — ‘Girl Don't Tell Me’
Yes, I know the Beach Boys have been over-represented here of late, but this will probably be the last time for a while as I finished David Leaf’s book about SMiLE and the Jokermen podcast covering their catalog has drifted into the ’80s doldrums. But a recent dip into a bootleg of the sessions for the Boys’ 1965 album, Summer Days (and Summer Nights!!) revealed a new mix of “Girl Don't Tell Me,” a Brian Wilson tune that was his response to the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride.” In his first memoir, Wouldn’t It Be Nice, Brian writes that he originally intended to submit the song to the Beatles. By that point they didn't need the, um, help, and so we'll never know what might have been. The tune does have a similar feel to what the Fabs were doing at the time; it's actually more Beatlesque than Beach Boys-like given the lack of backing vocals, and this new mix2 emphasizes that all the more. One could imagine the Shins’ James Mercer singing this on Chutes Too Narrow, though it would be hard to compete with Carl Wilson’s sweetly vulnerable vocals.
4. Diego Rivera — The Detroit Industry Murals
I had a meeting in Detroit earlier this month, and part of the jam-packed schedule was a brief visit to see Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry Murals at the Detroit Institute of Art. It is a massive room with floor-to-ceiling art, and I could have used several more hours to fully experience the work. Rivera painted the murals in 1932, capturing industry and technological and scientific advancements in 27 panels of varying size. It's overwhelming, and I found myself drawn to individual panels. The way Rivera drew contrast enhances the storytelling of the overall piece. For example, smaller panels on the north wall show the manufacture of poisonous gas bombs on one end and vaccination, pharmaceutics, and commercial chemical operations on the other. One obviously depicts science finding ways to efficiently kill, the other celebrates finding ways to prolong life. Now, nearly 100 years later, one wonders what would be celebrated and what reviled. The murals were controversial. A 1933 editorial in the Detroit News described them as un-American, and the writer called for them to be whitewashed. Sound familiar? If this is at all of interest, take a few moments to more fully explore the murals3, and if you’re ever in Detroit, be sure to visit DIA.
5. Mott the Hoople — ‘Rock and Roll Queen’
Most people probably thought of Bad Company when they heard that Mick Ralphs had died. Makes sense, as that was where the guitarist and songwriter saw his greatest success. But as much as my teenaged self loved cranking up the cassette of 10 From 6 in the car on a weekend night, today I prefer Ralphs’ earlier work with Mott the Hoople. He may have left that group just as its star finally caught thanks to the patronage of David Bowie, but there is plenty of gloriously ragged crunch to be had in the band’s early albums with Ralphs, perhaps nowhere more than on the Ralphs-penned “Rock and Roll Queen” from the band’s self-titled 1969 debut. It may not be the most politically correct lyric, coming out of the gate with, “Listen, woman, you needn’t look so stupid/ When I call your name out loud,” but any song that follows with the odd praise of “everybody thinks you're a sweet-smelling girl with intelligence” has more going on than first meets the ear. All of that tends to get lost to this listener behind the proto-Stones4 riffing of Ralphs’ guitar. No matter the band or the song, Ralphs’ inventive riffs were quintessential rock ’n’ roll. He passed before Bad Company’s November induction to the Rock ’n’ Roll Hall of Fame, but at least he lived long enough to hear the news.
I feel ancient reading contemporaneous reviews noting that Blanchard was consciously tapping into a younger feel with this combo. Sure, Parks was only 22 at the time, but Blanchard was only 43. Even now, knowing he is 63, I don’t think of him as being that old. I suppose it’s all relative.
Credit to Scott G, or “Jiggy,” who has created these wonderful new mixes and so many others on various Beach Boys projects, all housed at his blog, Alternate Albums and More!
A special shout out to the Iowa City Public Library. After seeing the murals, I wanted to learn more. The museum sells a comprehensive book about them, but my interest wasn’t quite $50 worth. I assumed I could do an inter-library loan and get it from somewhere and finally started looking this week. I was pleasantly surprised to see this 25-year-old book was still on the shelves of my local library.
In a later interview, Mott singer Ian Hunter pointed out the similarities between “Rock and Roll Queen” and the Stones hit, “Bitch,” recorded less than a year after his band’s album was released. (Neither to be confused with Mott producer David Bowie’s “Queen Bitch,” which followed the other two onto the airwaves in 1971 (and sounds like neither).