(# 399) Earl Hines – In Paris (1971)
If Hines has a place at all within today’s pop culture consciousness,
it would no doubt be due to the presence of a gig poster of his that adorned the
staircase wall of the Malibu beach house set of Charlie Sheen’s character in
Two And A Half Men. Hopefully, its
spurred some souls into investigating his music. Hines is one of the great jazz pianists
having fronted his own orchestras, played with other acts, solo or in small
combos. This album is an example of latter
and was recorded relatively late in his career.
It is a brilliant set of jazz instrumentals, the most known of which is
the George and Ira Gershwin Foggy Day.
My copy of the album is a 2004 reissue that also includes the standard Almost
Like Being In Love in which Hines also contributes vocals.
By the time this ended I was in need of a caffeine fix. As I was sourcing this, I came across a copy
of The Age and discovered that the former leader of Yothu Yindi, Mr Yunupingu, had
died aged 56 of kidney disease brought about by alcohol misuse. His death was not a shock;
his recent poor health had been widely reported and, unfortunately, his death
is still typical of the health fate that still awaits a significant proportion of
Australia’s indigenous population.
But what stunned me was a statement that Yothu Yindi’s
famous track Treaty in 1991 made them the first Aboriginal musicians since
Jimmy Little in the 1950s to have made the Australian music charts. (This doesn’t mean that Aborigines didn’t
chart at all in the interim. The boxer
Lionel Rose, for example, charted in the 1970s with his song I Thank You, but I
suspect he did not meet the definition of musician.) However, the song only charted when the track
was remixed as dance music by white Australian DJs.
Nevertheless it was
the first song in an Aboriginal language to ever chart. And it has helped in registering in the minds
of white Australians that there were (and still are) barriers between our indigenous
and non-indigenous populations that require bridging. Certainly Yothu Yindi showed that music is a
tool that can bring this about. The only
time I saw them live was when they supported Santana at Rod Laver Arena in
April 2003. In addition to their support
set, they later appeared alongside the headliner for a spirited and deeply felt run
through Bob Marley’s Exodus which incorporated snatches of Treaty and I think
One World One Voice.
But the irony remains that their success was aided by the
DJs who somehow were able to make the song “palatable” to the white mainstream. It’s also an illustration of rock music’s rather
complicated relationship to race relations.
This is also something it shares with jazz. Music essentially developed by black people
that was embraced by the white population.
Popular jazz musicians like Earl Hines got to experience this first hand
especially when his orchestra was the first major black one with sufficient
popularity to tour the Southern States.
And it was this factor that guided my listening – in the
absence of any Yothu Yindi on my iPod – for the rest of the day, starting with
the recordings by the man whose voice really shook things up:
(# 400) Elvis Presley
– The Sun Sessions (1954/5 released as album 1976)
One of the most famous quotes in the history of rock belongs
to Sam Phillips, the owner of Sun Records and Presley’s first producer. It went something along the lines that he
would earn a million dollars if he could find a white man who could sing like a
black man. It’s a sentiment I cannot
even begin to comprehend. Music is
something that is heard and felt; how the skin colour of the person performing the
music can influence that feeling is mystifying, particularly in the 1950s when
most people’s discovery of music would have still been over the radio. Does this mean that some of the basic rock ‘n’
roll texts found on this compilation of his recordings at Sun, such as Mystery
Chain, That’s All Right, Baby Let’s Play House and Good Rockin’ Tonight, would
never have been embraced by the white audience if he were black?
(# 401) Led Zeppelin –
BBC Sessions [disc 1 only] (recorded 1969/released 1997)
In the late 1960s there were plenty of British acts that
paid tribute to American black and, mainly Chicago, blues acts. Whereas The Rolling Stones have been
portrayed as middle class white boys displaying an enthusiasm for the genre, an
act like Led Zeppelin were reviled for essentially doing the same thing. The key point here seems to be that Led
Zeppelin was thought to not grant appropriate song writing credits
to the black acts whose music they were revamping.
(Although one should never rule out the influence of their late manager
Peter Grant here.) But all that the early
Stones did was to cover tracks by
black artists and thus the attribution of songwriting credits was an easy task. Led Zeppelin were trying to create original
music in a genre that recycles basic riffs, etc. This disc shows evidence of their earliest
work, comprising in studio BBC sessions recorded during 1969. (Disc 2 is a live show from 1971). It effectively
distils the essence of the first two Led Zeppelin albums and contains all of
the key tracks. Yet the criticism of Led Zeppelin becomes supremely ironic for
two reasons. First, even if they were guilty
of misappropriating credit on these tunes, how different would such a practice
have been when compared to how the black acts were treated by the companies for
which they recorded? And even more
ironically, Led Zeppelin’s songs, alongside that of a number of similar pioneers,
were to create a form a music – hard rock/heavy metal – that is noticeable in
part for its failure to be embraced by black audiences.
(# 402) Living Colour
– Time’s Up (1990)
Ask most people to mention a black hard rock or heavy metal
act and chances are they will cite either The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Bad Brains or
Living Colour. The latter is a superb
band, with a stand out guitarist in Vernon Reid, that is adept in playing a
range of styles. This is their second, and probably
best, album containing the slamming title track, the hit single Love Rears Its
Ugly Head and the brilliant rocker Type. But the standout here is Elvis Is Dead. On this they quote from Public Enemy’s Fight The Power and twist a line from Paul
Simon’s Graceland to read “I have a reason to believe that we all won’t be
received at Graceland”. On top of this
Little Richard delivers a rap pointing out that a black man taught him how to
sing only for the band to point out that essentially died as a [black] slave
strung out on those interminable dates in Las Vegas.
(# 403) Eminem – The Marshall
Mathers LP (2000)
In my opinion, Eminem is the current day version of Elvis
Presley, being the artist most responsible for opening up rap music to the American
white population. He did this by proving
that white boys could rap and was then clever enough to strike a chord with those
that shared the same poor backgrounds as himself. Forget about the skits and the foul language;
this is a howl from the streets from a man hell bent on communicating with
his, mainly fellow Americans, that all is not well and that for some people
even satisfying personal relationships are impossible let alone glimpsing the
American Dream. And for people like me
who have never experienced the type of upbringing or lifestyle he sings about, there’s
also the brilliance of Stan and The Real Slim Shady to keep things interesting
musically.
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