RIP Glenn Cornick

Sad to learn this morning of the passing of Glenn Cornick (aged 67) who having played with Ian Anderson in the John Evan Band, went on to play a significant part in the formation of Jethro Tull. He then played on the first three Tull albums before departing in 1970 to form Wild Turkey.

To me, the appearance of Glenn with his long dark hair held in place by a headband, was as much a feature of early Jethro Tull as the histrionics and tramp-like garb of Anderson and I saw them live more during those years than any other.








RIP Glenn.

Listen here to him kicking off the Jethro Tull single 'Living in the Past'

Messages at the church of Ayios Ilias

On a rocky outcrop 100 metres above the towns of Protaras and Pernera stands the tiny Orthodox church of Ayios Ilias. 

The temperatures even in the late afternoon may have been over forty degrees, but the climb of over 100 steps was still worth it to experience not just the tranquillity of the church....








.... but also to admire the spectacular views.




I would have liked to have learnt more about the church and its history but sadly have been unable to do so.







Nevertheless I spent some time there just taking in the scenery.

Not just outside, but also in the welcome cool shade of the church interior.

The trees outside were festooned with ribbons and cards on which had been written messages and prayers.

Two in English caught my eye. Tom had written, "Dear Grandad Brian. I hope you are having a nice time in Heaven. We miss you."

His brother Jack however, had more earthly things on his mind. He wrote, "Dear Grandad Brian. You should have seen the size of my pork chop and I ate it all. You would have been proud."

Books #15 - Into The Wild by Jon Krakauer

Having been in Cyprus to attend the wedding of my eldest son, Shaun, it seemed appropriate that the reading matter for my journey and quieter moments in our hotel should be a book recommended and given to me as a birthday gift by Shaun.

'Into The Wild' tells the story of a young American, Christopher Johnson McCandless, who gives all of his savings away to charity, abandons his car, burns the cash in his wallet and turns his back on family and friends to venture into the wild, forbidding landscape of Alaska. Three months later his emaciated body is discovered by other, better equipped travellers. 

Since these events occurred in 1992, people have tried to make sense of what he did and why he did it. Various theories have been propounded including that he meant to commit suicide, that he starved to death or that he was poisoned by eating the seeds of wild potatoes. Author Jon Krankauer, who first brought this story to public attention through an article in 'Outside' magazine, attempts to unravel this mystery by revealing the background story of McCandless through interviews and correspondence with family, friends and people that McCandless met on his numerous travels.

I found it a fascinating story and one which is very thought provoking. While I would not regard myself as brave (or should that be reckless?) as McCandless, there is part of me that admires his quest for total freedom. How many of us I wonder would be willing to turn our backs on all material possessions and emotional ties to attain such a level of freedom? In one correspondence with an eighty year old man he has befriended, McCandless makes compelling arguments as to why the old man should make changes in his life and reject the security, conformity and conservatism that holds so many people back. I read the correspondence (pages 57-59) several times and found that the feelings resonated with me, YET there was also a part of me that considered McCandless to be a selfish arrogant fool. How dare he inflict such pain, worry and suffering on his innocent parents, let alone his siblings and friends? How would I feel if either of my sons decided to follow his example? And therein lies the wonder of this book. As I said at the beginning of this paragraph, it is a thought provoking read. 

In 2007 the book was made into a Sean Penn directed film. I have not seen it yet but mean to do so though whether I will find it as interesting as the book remains to be seen. I recommend that you read the book and make up your own mind about Christopher McCandless. Or perhaps you already have. Either way, I would be interested to hear your views.

Fare Thee Well Blues by Joe Callicott

I'm heading off to Cyprus to attend the wedding of my eldest son, so won't be blogging for a week or so.


It seems appropriate that I should leave you with this great blues song recorded in Memphis on 20th February 1930. Mississippi Joe Callicott accompanied Garfield Akers on his recordings but regrettably was only allowed to record two of his own songs at the session. As a result of the great depression, the demand for records fell and Callicott never got the chance to record again during that period.

Thankfully he lived into his late 60's and during the 1960's blues revival, Callicott was rediscovered and allowed to record at more length.

From 1930, this is 'Fare Thee Well Blues' .

RIP Robin Williams

I was devastated to hear the news this morning of the apparent suicide of actor and comedian Robin Williams. Absolutely tragic.

There are so many actors who to my mind merely repeat the same role over and over. That could never be said of Williams who appeared as such a diverse range of characters from the manic DJ Adrian Cronauer in 'Good Morning Vietnam' to the sensitive and thoughtful John Keating in 'Dead Poets Society'. A remarkable talent indeed.



He left behind many great quotes but one of my favourites concerned the fact that in England the police do not carry guns. If you commit a crime, the police will say, "Stop or I'll say stop again!"

Priceless!

RIP Robin.

Searchin' For Geeshie and Elvie (Geeshie Wiley & Elvie Thomas)

In the award winning 1994 documentary film 'Crumb', director Terry Zwigoff delves into the life and experiences of celebrated artist, Robert Crumb (usually just known as R. Crumb). As both subject and director are self confessed addicts and collectors of old blues music, it is fitting that the soundtrack to the film should be devoted to this genre.

Just over nine minutes into the film, we see Crumb in a room in which hundreds of 78 RPM records are lined up on wooden shelves. He selects one particular record and very carefully places it on the spinning turntable. Briefly, the viewer is able to see that the disc displays the name and logo of Black Patti. This just happens to be one of the rarest and most sought after record labels in the history of recorded music, but therein lies another story.


Through the crackles familiar to anyone who has ever played these old shellac discs, emerges a song that provides a backdrop to a montage of some of Crumb's illustrations. The sequence lasts for just over three minutes and is totally mesmerising, though curiously, the song that plays was released on Paramount and not Black Patti. The song is 'Last Kind Words Blues' by Geeshie Wiley.




It is a blues ballad but quite unlike any other I have heard. For example, Wiley does not use the standard 12 bar blues structure. It is in fact 11 measures and at the start of each verse, she teases out different notes so that each verse sounds different to the one preceding. Her voice is eerily beautiful and the guitar phrases add to the unsettling feeling, or is it the other way round? I really don't know. What I do know is that the whole thing works wonderfully and to me it is an astonishing performance. As Greil Marcus has said, if this was her only contribution to blues, "she would never be forgotten".

But who on earth was Geeshie Wiley?

The story of the blues is full of mysterious characters and sometimes it is impossible to decipher the legend from the true story. Take for example, Robert Johnson who, it is claimed, attained his talent on the guitar through selling his soul to the devil at a midnight meeting at the crossroads. Also there is confusion as to how he died in August 1938. Was he really poisoned by a jealous husband? Such tales abound in the Mississippi Delta where the blues were born, yet no character appears to be quite as enigmatic as Geeshie Wiley, of whom we know next to nothing.

What we do know is that she recorded for Paramount in 1930 and possibly again the following year. In all, six tracks across 3 discs were released from these recordings; 'Last Kind Words Blues' / 'Skinny Leg Blues', 'Motherless Child Blues' / 'Over To My House' and 'Pick Poor Robin Clean' / 'Eagles On A Half'. Then after that, there was nothing.

On the last four songs, Wiley is co-credited along with Elvie Thomas who wrote 'Motherless Child Blues'. To avoid confusion, I should add that there were two blues songs with that title, one by Elvie Thomas and the other by Robert 'Barbecue Bob' Hicks, the latter being the one adapted by Eric Clapton for his album 'From The Cradle'. Delving more deeply into the background of Elvie Thomas, we find that she is almost as enigmatic as Wiley.

Searches for a Geeshie Wiley prior to the recordings prove fruitless though Geeshie (or more likely Geechie) is almost certainly a nickname. Geechie is actually a Gullah word (derived from Angola) so she may have been descended from West African slaves. We will never know. Sadly no photographs exist of Geeshie to offer us any clues. 

*************************

Musicologist and folklorist Robert 'Mack' McCormick is now in his eighties and has spent the best part of his life gathering data on a host of people involved with jazz and blues music. The 1991 UK documentary film 'The Search For Robert Johnson' was loosely based upon his endeavours yet, despite the volume of data he has acquired, he has regrettably never produced a book of his findings. In the early 1960's he interviewed a musician in the Acres Homes neighbourhood of Houston, Texas. Mention was made of a woman who lived and attended church there, who sang and played guitar in the 1930's. Her name was revealed as L.V. Thomas. Could it be possible that L.V. Thomas was none other than Elvie Thomas? 

McCormack must have sensed something as he went on to conduct a couple of interviews with Thomas in June and November 1961. By then she was about 70 years old as she revealed that she had been born in Houston in August 1891.  Her name at birth was simply L.V. Grant. She began playing guitar when she was 11 years old and blues became part of her repertoire until she joined the church in 1937 and thereafter she gave up the blues and confined her singing to within the church congregation.

But what happened in between? Was L.V. Thomas the very same Elvie Thomas who wrote 'Motherless Child Blues' and performed on recordings with Geeshie Wiley?. 

According to writer John Jeremiah Sullivan who met with McCormick and somehow (by fair means or foul) came upon the transcripts of the 1961 interviews, L.V and Elvie were indeed one and the same person. In an excellent piece for the New York Times Magazine, Sullivan revealed his findings which include revelations not only about Elvie Thomas, but also Geeshie Wiley. And they make for fascinating reading.

Thomas claimed to have hung around with a girl named Lillie Mae Wiley who she affectionately started calling Geetchie. Arthur Laibly a salesman with the Wisconsin Chair Company that had almost as an afterthought evolved into Paramount Records, visited the pair in 1930 and invited them to Grafton, Wisconsin where as L.V recalled they recorded "dozens of songs" over four afternoons. Somehow whether deliberately or by accident, her name L.V. was transcribed as Elvie. So Geeshie and Elvie were born.

Previous stories have indicated that the first session took place in 1930 and was followed by another the following year. Thomas disputed that and claimed that after 1930 there were no more recordings. By 1933 the pair had separated and never saw each other again.

So, the trail for the real Geeshie Wiley at that point goes cold. Apart that is for an unsubstantiated story that Wiley may have murdered her husband Thornton Wiley in 1931. It was said that he died from a knife wound between his collarbone and his neck, a wound inflicted by Lillie Mae Scott. If this was Geeshie Wiley, it would make the final words of her 'Skinny Leg Blues' rather prophetic:

"I'm gonna cut your throat baby
Gonna look down in your face.
I'm gonna let some lonesome graveyard
Be your resting place".

*************************

Of L.V. Thomas, a little more has been revealed thanks to the efforts of Sullivan. Knowing that she was a member of her local church, he was able to track down church members who recalled 'Sister L.V. Thomas' or 'Mama Thomas'. She had died in Houston on 20 May 1979 and a simple stone marks the site of her grave but some church members had memories of her bringing a young boy to attend services. This turned out to be her nephew Robin Wartell AKA 'Jukebox'. He was able to provide Sullivan with a photograph of L.V. Thomas shortly before she passed away.

One of the older members of the family, John D. Wilkerson who went by the name of Don, knew L.V. better than any other living person. When asked about L.V. he responded, "You want to talk about Slack?" To anyone unfamiliar with the songs of Geeshie and Elvie, this would have meant nothing. However the song 'Pick Poor Robin Clean' begins with a spoken dialogue between Wiley and Thomas. It goes like this:
Thomas: "Hello there Geetchie"
Wiley: "Hello there Slack".
Thomas: "What are you doin' down here?"
Wiley: "Oh I'm just down here tryin' to play you boys a little hot robin"
Thomas: "Well let me hear it then."

Wilkerson himself also recorded a song called 'Low Down Dirty Shame' which begins with the line "It's a low, it's a low low, it's a low down dirty shame", delivered in exactly the same way as the first line in Geeshie & Elvie's 'Eagles On A Half'.

There may still be many frustrating gaps in the story of Geeshie Wiley and Elvie Thomas, but thankfully we do have their six remaining songs available to us. We must remember that the original 78 RPM records are extremely scarce (just one or two surviving copies of each), so the very fact that there are any playable copies is in itself something of a miracle. Thanks to a handful of passionate collectors the songs have been transcribed onto CD and are available on the following collections:-

American Primitive Vol 2 Disc 1 features 'Skinny Leg Blues' and 'Pick Poor Robin Clean'
American Primitive Vol 2 Disc 2 features 'Last Kind Words Blues', 'Over To My House' and 'Eagles On A Half'
Mississippi Masters: Early American Blues Classics 1927-35 features 'Last Kind Words Blues', 'Pick Poor Robin Clean' and 'Motherless Child Blues'
The Stuff That Dreams Are Made Of Disc 2 features 'Skinny Leg Blues'
When the Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues Rare Cuts Disc 1 features 'Last Kind Words Blues'
When the Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues Rare Cuts Disc 2 features 'Motherless Child Blues'
When the Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues Rare Cuts Disc 3 features 'Over To My House'
When the Levee Breaks: Mississippi Blues Rare Cuts Disc 4 features 'Skinny Leg Blues'
Before The Blues Vol 2 features 'Last Kind Words Blues'

There may well be other versions available that I am not aware of but I assume all six songs will feature in Volume 2 of 'The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records' which should be released by Jack White's Third Man Records later this year.

I will end with the Elvie Thomas song, 'Motherless Child Blues'  a tender and poignant blues song which begins with a single plucked note that is left to hang, immediately drawing the listener into the performance. Thereafter this tale of a broken-hearted woman who wishes she had heeded the advice of her dying mother, is delicately sung by Thomas with sensitive guitar accompaniment from either her or Geeshie Wiley. To my ear, it is absolutely wonderful!

If anyone can fill in any gaps in the story's of Geeshie Wiley or Elvie Thomas, then I would dearly love to hear from you.

Do Not Sell At Any Price - Revisited

As a coda to writing about my enjoyment of the book 'Do Not Sell At Any Price' concerning the group of people who obsessively collect 78 RPM records, I wanted to report that the hunt and the success continues.

For example only a couple of years ago, a Paramount record by Blind Blake titled 'Miss Emma Liza / Dissatisfied Blues' was discovered in a flea market in Virginia. This was the only one of 42 recordings by Blake between 1926 and 1932, that had not previously been found following the 2007 discovery of another pairing, 'Night and Day Blues / Sun to Sun'.

Here for your enjoyment is the remastered version of 'Night and Day Blues'

Hopefully it won't be too long before we are able to purchase and hear the latest find although it is currently available to all who choose to purchase the 2014 Blues Calendar from record collector John Tefteller. Besides the calendar which features previously unseen images of blues artists, purchasers also receive a 2 CD set of rare blues tracks. Here is a link to John's website, Blues Images.

The 1931 Paramount recording of 'Devil Got My Woman' by Skip James is immensely collectible as there are only three or four known copies of which two are in bad condition. Nevertheless this recording is available to us thanks to the efforts of collector Richard Nevins who owns one of the good quality originals. Despite the fact that the masters no longer exist, it is easy to obtain a CD or digital copy from somewhere like iTunes.

OR you can just listen to 'Devil Got My Woman' by clicking here.

Wild China #5 - The Stone Forest

The fact that the BBC are re-showing their superb documentary series 'Wild China', plus the tragic news about the recent earthquake in southern China, has prompted me to continue with these occasional reports on my visit to the country a couple of years ago. Indeed it so happens that the earthquake occurred just north of the scene of my latest report, the city of Kunming in Yunnan Province.

We made an early start from our hotel in downtown Kunming and were soon in countryside that appeared a little different from what we had previously encountered in China. If it hadn't been for the abundance of road signs and advertising hoardings in Chinese, I could have sworn that we were in a mountain region in southern Europe. Our journey took us 75 miles (120 Km) to the dramatic limestone formations that are known as the Stone Forest.

Not that the journey was uneventful as on route we experienced some of the truly wild side of China. By that I mean the driving! Although we always felt relatively safe in the competent hands of our own driver, we saw some pretty awful driving and no fewer than three accidents. Thankfully none of them looked too serious.

Our visit coincided with yet another festival. This time it was the turn of the Yi minority group who were having their torch festival in the park. The disadvantage of this was that the entrance to the park was awash with people but the advantage was that we witnessed some wonderful brightly coloured ethnic costumes and of course the festival atmosphere. 

The 'forest' is so named because of the way the limestone peaks rise up from the ground like stalagmites with many of them having the appearance of petrified trees. Some have been given quite imaginative names though occasionally a good deal of imagination is required to recognise the likeness. 









Nevertheless this area of 400 square kilometres is rich in natural beauty and wandering around we found that we soon left the crowds behind and were able to take in the astonishing scenes around us.

Unlike our visits to Beijing and Xian where the skies had been grey with smog, here we experienced truly fresh air and beautiful blue skies.

In places, artificial lakes have been created allowing the reflections to further enhance the views.

And in strategic places, some welcome shade had been provided.



After several hours of wondering around this magical place, and managing to avoid getting lost, it was time for us to take our leave.

It had been yet another unforgettable day.

My thoughts at this time are with those who have been affected by this most recent earthquake.

Books #14 - Do Not Sell At Any Price by Amanda Petrusich

No sooner had I finished reading George Gissing's 'New Grub Street' than I commenced (and very quickly finished) music journalist

Amanda Petrusich's 'Do Not Sell At Any Price'.

As the book cover tells us, this is the story of "the wild, obsessive hunt for the world's rarest 78 RPM records". And a fascinating tale it is too; hence me finishing it in under a week.

I should perhaps first explain my own albeit brief association with these thick but brittle discs. As a youngster aged about 11 or 12 I would occasionally be taken by my mother to visit an elderly aunt. It wasn't a visit I relished as frankly there was little for me to do apart from listen to older people talk about things that were of no interest to me. In short, I was bored. That is until I discovered a strange contraption in a back bedroom that has once been occupied by an older female cousin who had since married and left home. This was a wind up gramophone and in the cabinet below were stored a pile of 78 RPM records in their quaint, paper covers. I played them all and soon selected my particular favourites which I played over and over again. Suddenly my visits to the elderly aunt became a joy simply because we did not even have a record player at home so the only music I could listen to came from the radio - or as we called it back then, the wireless.

Among those favourite records were 'Dimples' by John Lee Hooker on the Vee-Jay label, 'A Handful of Songs' by Tommy Steele (on Decca) and rather embarrassingly now,  'Look Homeward, Angel' by Johnnie Ray on Philips. I loved the colourful labels, I loved the smell and the feel, I even loved having to wind the machine up when the turntable began to revolve too slowly. And of course I loved the sound and a passion for recorded music began then and has never waned.

So what became of those records? Well sadly my sister who is ten years younger than me decided one day to test her new found walking skills and toddled into the bedroom and right across the records that I had left lying on the floor. I don't think that they were all shattered but certainly some of my favourites were. The experience at least taught me never to leave my own records in the vicinity of my sister.



To return to the book in question in which the author sets out on a quest to track down and meet some of the small band of obsessive collectors of what we generally just refer to as 78's. I almost inserted the word 'old' in there but as production ceased in the early 1960's, the word is somewhat superfluous. Nevertheless there exists a group of people who are prepared to devote their lives, and an awful lot of cash, on tracking down very rare examples of this format of music reproduction.

So, Ms Petrusich discusses the well known figure of Harry Smith who curated and edited the famous and wonderful collection entitled 'The Anthology of American Folk Music'. Smith died in 1991 but among those who are, or have been carrying on the quest for this rare music, are John Heneghan, Christopher King, John Tefteller, James McKune, Nathan Salsburg, Joe Bussard and the only female in the bunch, Sarah Bryan. I confess that with the exception of Smith and Joe Bussard, none of these names meant anything to me.

The fact that there is only one female listed, confirmed one of my stereotypical thoughts, that this is a male dominated area. I also carried mental pictures of middle aged or elderly men with long hair and beards, who were predominantly single. For the most part, my views were confirmed, though there were obvious exceptions.

As to why people become so obsessed with collecting generally is dealt with and provided me with a fascinating, though not always comfortable insight. At times the descriptions were just a little too close for comfort as I recognised some of the behavioural tendencies in people I regard as friends and, dare I say it, even in myself. The thing that concerned me about some (and I stress, some) of the characters in the book, was the compulsion to collect, yet with little or no intention of ever playing the items collected. Personally I have never understood that mentality as for me the music is everything. Why pursue a piece of music for years, pay a fortune for it and then never actually listen to it? Thankfully some of the characters were of like mind and Ms Petrusich described how the collectors expressed delight and excitement upon hearing certain pieces of music.

Through this book, I rapidly came to realise that without this group of people, a great deal of music originally released on 78's would now be lost to us. As the format was replaced by vinyl records, cassettes, CD's and MP3 files, the use of these fragile, shellac records has diminished and consequently thousands of them have been consigned to rubbish bins or to languish in dark corners of attics or basements. Also most of the original metal master discs have been lost or destroyed so there remains only one way of preventing the music disappearing into history. Find a copy of the record and reproduce it onto a more durable format that can be enjoyed by current or future generations.

And this is exactly what has been happening. Take for example a collection that I own entitled 'Down in the Basement (Joe Bussard's Treasure Trove of Vintage 78's)' which, as the title suggests, was sourced from 78 RPM records collected by Bussard over the past 50 years. Besides other rarities, this album includes the track 'Original Stack O'Lee Blues' by Long 'Cleve' Reed and Little Harvey Hull, a track that would have been lost to us all but for Bussard's one copy. A sobering thought!

Thanks to Bussard, we can now all enjoy this great blues piece. Click here if you don't believe me.

The book also references other collections that I own or am familiar with. For example the superb collection, 'The Rise & Fall of Paramount Records Vol 1' which was issued last year on Jack White's Third Man Records. Ms Petrusich even made a journey to view the site of the Grafton, Wisconsin factory where the records were produced and in the least interesting part of the book, describes her preparation, training and subsequent scuba dive into the murky Milwaukee River to try to recover some discs which may or may not have been dumped there when the plant closed. (I did tell you that these people were obsessed).

Perhaps the most poignant part of the book deals with a collector named Don Wahle who appears to have ended his days in squalor but left behind a huge record collection. Collector Nathan Salsburg rescued those that he could and subsequently compiled a collection along the same lines as 'The Anthology of American Folk Music', where the songs are sorted into different categories. This three disc album was issued through Tomkins Square in 2012 and covers music from 1923 to 1936. It is called 'Work Hard, Play Hard, Pray Hard' and since release it has deservedly garnered great reviews. This may well be a subject I return to in my occasional 'Box Sets' series. 

For now from this collection, I leave you with a fascinating track recorded in 1930 in two parts (one on each side of the 78 record). The track is 'Flat Wheel Train Blues' as recorded by Red Gay (fiddle) and Jack Wellman (guitar) and is a train blues with a difference, being the most evocative version of this genre I have ever heard. Listen particularly to part two in which a mule standing by the side of the track attempts to outrun the train. As Salsburg describes it, "It is hilarious and beautiful and melancholy'. 

I hope you enjoy it as much as I do.
'Flat Wheel Train Blues'

The book 'Do Not Sell At Any Price' is published by Scribner and I highly recommend it.