The Basement Rug

Ok folks, here’s one last download for your patio parties before I head off on my summer vacation. This LP is straight out of Trinidad. I am not sure of the exact date of this Joevan (JVL1004) release, but I am guessing early to mid-1960s. It’s a bit noisy, but worthwhile I think.

Track Listing:

1) One of the Boys
2) Twisty
3) Jerry Dance
4) Michelle
5) Dachron
6) Sangre Grande
7) El Toro
8) Joey Saga
9) Yvonne Smile
10) Pint O’Wine

Joey Lewis and His Orchestra:

Joey Lewis - piano, organ
Felix Corbie - 1st trumpet
Earl Bernard - flugelhorn
George Boucaud - alto sax
Monty Gomez - tenor sax
Renol Boucaud - guitar
Dennis Spence - bass
Earl Rudder - drums
Junior Lewis - timbales
Carl Lewis - tumba

In the 23 July 2000 edition of the Sunday Express, Caldeo Sookram called Joey the King of Saga Calypso:

Joey Lewis takes credit for introducing some new things in local music. His band started off in the 1950s, an era when saga boys ruled the town. Lewis quickly took note of that and one day while plucking the strings on his guitar, he came up with a new beat, which he called the “Saga thing”.

The emphasis of the beat was based on a unique style of strumming the guitar, says Lewis. The beat picked up, and a Saga thing dance soon arrived in the dancehalls around the country. Party-goers stepping onto the dance floor started pointing their index fingers towards the sky. The rest were just natural movements in true Trini style.

Saga thing took the country by storm. Top calypsonians were singing to the beat. Other bands were soon embracing the saga thing. Every guitarist was trying to strum like Lewis and, according to him; those who couldn’t play the beat were booted out of their bands.

“Some guitar men lost their work because they couldn’t play the saga thing beat,” says Lewis.

He started playing music at the age of ten, with his elder brothers Sonny and Randolph. They had their own separate bands.

On his first public engagement with Sonny’s band he played the piano. He recalls that the party was held in a house. “The party was swinging and the floor was sinking under the weight of human beings. They grabbed me out to safety otherwise it would have had a different outcome.”

But things changed after a few years. Sonny decided that he didn’t want any little boys around in his band. He fired Joey.

That only inspired young Joey, then aged 16, to form his own band. With a bunch of friends, Lewis being the youngest, a new band was launched in 1954. The band comprised Joey Lewis on the piano, Johnny Bristol, trumpet; Horace Henry, alto saxophone; Jeffery Jordan, tenor saxophone; Horace Gordon, bass; Alvin Cummings, drums; Noel Proute, congas; Billy Greene, timbales and Ernest Guerra, bongos.

They called the band Joey Lewis and the Teenagers. Playing for a gentleman named Maurice Richards, the band’s first engagement, they received a tidy sum of $16, Joey Lewis remembers.

In those days John “Buddy” Williams was the heavyweight on the music scene, says Lewis, who recalls a musical shootout with Buddy in 1956. “We played four tunes and Buddy played four tunes. The judge Pat Castagne declared a draw. We played another rounds and so did Buddy. The judge again declared a draw. The prize money of $50 was shared between both bands.”

Lewis said people felt his band had won the contest, but the judge told him later that he couldn’t allow a youth like him to beat a top brass like “Buddy” Williams.

Joey Lewis was the first youth band to hit the scene in the 1950s. after them came the Dutchy Brothers, Clarence Curvan, Boyie Lewis, Vin Cardinal and Ed Watson, among others.

Competition was fierce, he says, and his band had to hold tight to survive. But most importantly, Lewis says that to stay in the business successfully for more than four decades, he learned to compose and arrange his own music. “When I opened my band I was forced to learn to write music, because when you have to pay a man to compose and arrange, then that is a big bite off the band’s earnings.”

It was while playing with his brother Sonny that Lewis learned to write music. He admits that he wasn’t accurate in his placings of the crochets, minims, quavers, bars and chords.

But he kept working hard at it and during some of his overseas trips he bought music books, from which he learned a lot. “From what I’ve learned, I was able to teach my brother Boyie and he in turn was able to teach Ed Watson,” says Lewis.

But there’s one musician whom Lewis holds in high esteem - Frankie Francis. “I learned a lot from Frankie. Whenever I turned to him for help, he willingly assisted me. He is one of our greatest musicians.”

Over the years the band made several changes, with new instruments replacing old ones. The name changed too. Known today as Pal Joey Lewis and his Orchestra, the leader explains that many years ago, his friends saw a movie with Frank Sinatra. In that movie there was a business place with the sign “Pal Joey” written at the front of a building. “My friends invited me to see the movie. We all enjoyed it.

“After that they started calling me ‘Pal Joey’. Well, the name sounded nice so we adopted it for the band.”

Today the band has ten members. “One of my sons Jerry Lewis has been playing keyboard for the last 19 years. Another member George Boucaud, an alto saxophone player is still with the band after 44 years.

“After my first alto saxophone player Horace Henry left to go abroad, I was looking around for a good player. I remember Roy Cape came and auditioned, but he couldn’t just make it. You see I was looking for a now-for-now player. Then George Boucaud came and fitted in with the band. He has been here ever since,” says Joey.

“It was real tough in the early days,” recalls Lewis. I remember we got six flat tyres while going to play in a fete at Mayaro. “That was only a little piece of adventure.”

He has travelled extensively throughout the Caribbean, North America and Europe. He remembers meeting a lot of celebrities, among them jazz greats Buddy Taylor and Dizzy Gillespie at Carnegie Hall. He remembers Dizzy’s advice to him in 1965: “If they (musicians) selling oranges, you sell apples Joey.”

“I did exactly that and it has kept going to this day.”

Pal Joey has done recordings with top calypsonians like Sparrow, Duke, Terror, Shorty, Chalkdust and Singing Francine. He has performed on Scouting For Talent, won Brass-o-Rama in 1979 and the Best Playing Band on the road for Carnival. For 20 years his bad has brightened up the streets of Port of Spain for Carnival.

He has among his collection of instruments the first semi-solid guitar to arrive in Trinidad and Tobago. “That is now a piece of antique,” he says.

For his life-long contribution to music Joey Lewis was presented the key to the city of Port of Spain last Thursday. In fact, that day was declared “Joey Lewis Day”.

Let’s take a trip back to 1977.

Music is in a state of upheaval again. Jazz has moved to Europe. Disco pollution is everywhere. Progressive/art rock has overstayed its welcome. The most talented musicians have been lured from lonesome bars and wayward places to go hibernate in recording studios as session whores, with copious amounts of drugs, electronics, and the worst of music industry swine: producers.

The fever of the 1960s is finally breaking, but it has left the masses in a weakened state. Many are sucked further into the abyss,  but a few remain hopeful and begin the task of rediscovering their roots. The rock and roll diaspora are packing their bags and heading for home.

Like a phoenix rising from the ash and cinders, rock and roll makes yet another attempt to complete the revolution it started just over 20 years before. From the remnants of swing, rhythm & blues, rockabilly, skiffle, boogie-woogie, and jump jive comes a new force to be reckoned with.

In England a hopeful mix of revival, punk, and pop emerges, but many bands are so focused on the politics of smashing the state and sticking it to the man, they forget that their first job is to make music.

The U.S. has its own scene going on, but it is fighting a losing battle against the pop machine, which ironically, is killing the American dream it claims to uphold.

Pop will eat itself we are told, but I am still waiting.

Then along comes David Wilcox in Canada and George Thoroughgood in America.

While the rest of the music scene is moving into arenas and stadiums, putting on ever more grand spectacles, these two bar-flies take mojo back down to ground zero - at the local pub.

Imagine that? Bar bands that actually play in bars.

Thoroughgood’s band plays the pub scene with such intensity that a fan takes on a promotional campaign that ends in a deal with Rounder records.

After cutting his teeth with The Great Speckled Bird (Ian and Sylvia Tyson), Wilcox signs with the independent Freedom label in Toronto and releases his solo debut: Out of the Woods in 1980. After grinding his axe for a few years in the local clubs, he signs with Capitol/EMI, and Out of the Woods is re-issued in 1983. A handful of popular albums follow, but just as he is gaining momentum, Wilcox is run over by the grunge scene.

I got to see Wilcox a few times at his peak in the mid-1980s and those memories are indelibly stamped upon my brain.

The biker crowd loved him, and one night his mojo drove them into a drunken frenzy, and they rushed the stage of the Ontario Place Forum during a smoking performance of Hot, Hot Papa.

The forum (which was replaced by the Molson Amphitheatre) had this unique rotating stage that played into the round, so everyone had a chance to view the band up close.

Wilcox liked to dip into the sauce himself, and so the scene was a mutual fanfare. The bikers were literally hanging off of him while he was playing, but he took it all in stride, adding new lines to the song about the unfolding scene while scanning around for security.

In those days, the forum had only a small security staff and a few hired police officers working overtime, so removing the two-dozen bikers proved to be a bit difficult. Worse still, Wilcox had asked the stage hands to set the stage rotation to its maximum speed, and so the apprehension of the staggering, lumberjacket-laden-biker-lumpen became a full circus act.

As soon as the police had removed one biker from the stage, another one would magically appear. The slapstick just made the crowd go even wilder, and Wilcox and his band were feeding off the melee:

“Ah ooh, ah ooh….. yeaaaaah…..c’mon!”

The tracks below from Out of the Woods are available on CD, but I decided to rip them from the original Freedom label LP so that you can hear the mojo they way I heard it so many years ago. It’s really impressive the way this recording has stood the test of time. It’s the closest thing to a live Wilcox performance of those days.

Hot, Hot Papa remains one of my favourite rock songs of all time. When I hear that opening run on the guitar something just gets switched on inside me. It’s stripped down and utterly furious, with an attack that’s razor sharp, lightning quick, and ready to rumble - mojo on fire!

But despite David’s Fender firestorm, it is the drums that are really cooking on this tune. He’s giving us the full monty and then some. Countering off each other, these two elements create a rhythmic crossfire that just screams:

“I can sip hot lead and spit out rivets!”

I can listen to this song 20 times in a row and it is still as fresh as the first time I heard it 25 years ago.

That’s what real mojo is all about.

MP3 Downloads:

Winton Marsalis’ Jazz at Lincoln Center radio show is now podcasting in mp3 format, so as well as listening online via an M3U stream, you can also download shows to listen to on your personal mp3 player. Unfortunately, the JALC.org archives do not feature direct mp3 links, but I managed to figure out the mp3 URLs and have posted the most recent shows below:

Richard Galliano | Jeff Tain Watts | Kenny Barron | Essentially Ellington | Jazz and Art | Guitars Galore | Brad Mehldau | Dianne Reeves | Monty Alexander | Trumpets and Trombones | Wynton and Willie: True Blues Celebration | Stand up for Jazz: Bill Cosby and Nancy Wilson | Bossa Nova: Half a Century and Still New | Brazilian Rhythms: Today and Tomorrow

[CBC] - As Debbie Harry sang Heart of Glass at live performances over the last eight years, Clem Burke kept the beat on drums behind her, while a monitor measured the beat of his heart.

Burke, who drums for the veteran band Blondie, was taking part in a long-term study of the effects drumming has on the human body.

A sneak peek at the results was released Thursday, and they’re a surprising vote of confidence in drumming as a way to keep fit.

Sport scientist Steve Draper from the University of Gloucestershire, one of two U.K. universities that took part in the study, said drummers have as much stamina as elite athletes.

“The most startling thing for us was when we first got heart rate traces from Clem’s concert … we looked at them, and they could have been a premiership footballer,” he said.

Burke and other rock and jazz drummers agreed to wear wires monitoring their heart rates and other physical signs at concerts over the last eight years.

Burke, who has played with Bob Dylan, the Ramones and Iggy Pop, isn’t just using his hands — he’s also moving his feet and putting energy through the rest of the body to keep the performance lively, researchers said.

His heart rate could hit 190 during the peak of a performance, equivalent to that of a top athlete.

He also lost about two litres of fluid in a 90-minute show, similar to fluid loss by an athlete running 10,000 metres.

Rock fans that remember drummers such as Keith Moon, the infamous Who drummer who self-destructed in 1976 at age 32, may not link drumming with a healthy lifestyle.

Moon was known for his exuberant style, as was Led Zeppelin drummer John Bonham, king of the drum solo, who also died when he was 32 years old.

But the demons associated with drugs, hard living and touring are separate from the effects of drumming itself, which is a cardio workout, researchers said.

Dave Rowntree, the drummer for British band Blur, told scientists he lost weight whenever he went on tour.

Some rock bands even train before they tour to make sure they are up to the physical challenge.

“There is a clear link between fitness and performance,” said Dr. Marcus Smith, of the University of Chichester. “Musicians need exceptional stamina to sustain optimum output, especially when on tour.”

The research could help encourage children or youth who don’t enjoy sports to take up drumming as a fun way of keeping fit, he added.

The full results of the Clem Burke Drumming Project, dedicated to “the dissemination of information leading to increased enjoyment, health and well-being of all participants involved in drumming,” according to the project website, will be unveiled on Monday.

Flute - Hari Prasad Chaurasia
Tabla - Zakir Hussain
Oriental Records Ltd. (1995)
download 320 kbps mp3

Track Listing:

1) Raga: Bageswari Rupaktal
2) Raga: Manzh Khamaz Teental
3) Dhun

Biography from hariprasadchaurasia.com:

Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia got his start at 19 playing for All India Radio, Cuttack, Orissa, and within five years he was transferred to their headquarters in Bombay. There he got the additional exposure of performing in one of India’s cultural centers and also studied with Shrimati Annapurna Devi, daughter of Ustaad Allauddin Khan of the Maihar School of Music.

He has collaborated with several western musicians, including John McLaughlin and Jan Gabarek, and has also composed music for a number of Indian films. He has performed throughout the world winning acclaim from varied audiences and fellow musicians including Yehudi Menuhin and Jean Pierre Rampal.

BANSURI

The Bansuri flute is one of the three original forms of rendering Indian Classical music according to ancient scriptures - Vaani (Vocal), Veena (String) and Venu (Flute). According to Hindu mythology, it is the instrument of Lord Krishna and is thus very popular for playing folk music. The introduction of the flute in modern Indian Classical concerts has been rather recent however, and the late Pandit Pannalal Ghosh has been widely recognized for this achievement.

Pandit Hariprasad Chaurasia further enhanced the bansuri playing style, with his innovative fingering and blowing techniques and took bansuri music to yet higher level.

The Hindustani bansuri flute usually consists of a blowing hole, six fingering holes and one tuning hole (though in some cases, flutes do not have tuning hole). The pitch of the bansuri varies depending on the length and diameter of the bore. The longer the flute, the deeper its pitch. However, longer flutes are also difficult to blow and finger. To balance this tradeoff, most Hindustani bansuri players tend to choose bansuri with pitch E (safed teen) and this flute is approximately 30″ long.

Naturally, the bamboo suitable to make bansuri is not available freely. In its entire length, the flute bamboo should not have a node. If you think about it, it is not common to find a bamboo that is thin, straight and yet does not have a node for 30″. Such bamboo species are only found in the jungles of Indian states of Assam and Kerala. Before making the flute, the bamboo is seasoned so that the natural resins strengthen it. It is then blocked with a piece of cork or rubber stopper from one end. Holes are then burned into it as drilling holes often breaks the bamboo. The proportions between bamboo length, bore, diameter of each hole and the location of stopper cork are extremely critical for getting the tuning of the bansuri right. Strings are then tied around the bamboo for both decoration and protection.

The Bansuri is a versatile instrument. It can easily produce all basic elements of Hindustani music variation such as meend (glide), gamak, kan. Versatile bansuri players also produce emotions in their music through variations in blowing style.

The Bansuri is a very simple instrument. Unlike string instruments, it does not need tuning once it is tuned by the flute maker. However, as Hariji puts it, it is Krishna’s instrument and the Lord has made it deceptively simple. To become adept in the bansuri, one needs many months of practice.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I grew up listening to country music. My mother grew up in New Brunswick, listening to many local country artists like Stompin’ Tom Connors, Ned Landry, Maurice Bolyer, Wilf Carter, and Hank Snow. A few years before I started high school, one of my mother’s brothers came from New Brunswick to live with us and I recall him mentioning that he was a big fan of a country singer named Orval Prophet. My mother collected country music songbooks, magazines, and records while she was growing up, but I don’t ever recall seeing anything by Orval Prophet.

My uncle died recently and now whenever I hear “old school” country recordings I am reminded of him. He was the first thing that came to mind when I found this Point Records pressing (P219) of The Travelin’ Kind (Decca, 1963) at a local Goodwill store. Point Records was the Canadian distributor of Decca and was manufactured under license by Compo Company Ltd. in Lachine, Quebec.

The Travellin’ Kind was a lost classic until it was re-issued by the German Bear Family label in 2001. Bear Family specializes in re-issuing Canadian and American lost classics and is worth checking out online at Bear-Family.de.

The CD re-issue comes with 13 bonus tracks that should cover all of Orval’s recorded material:

1) The Travellin’ Kind
2) Don’t Trade You Love For Gold
3) The Judgement Day Express
4) Another Day
5) (I’m Going To) Birmingham
6) Forget Me Not
7) Molly Darling
8) Tears On The Bridal Bouquet
9) Crown Of Thorns
10) I’m Gonna Sink Your Boat
11) Wild Fire
12) Goodbye Katie, Bar The Door
13) Tired Little Mother
14) My Heart’s On The Borderline
15) With God’s Hand In Mine
16) Beautiful Bells
17) as JOHNNY SIX
18) Tennessean Rollin’ Rollin’ Home
19) Mademoiselle (My Used To Be)
20) Half A Heart
21) Town Of Memories
22) Forgotten Dreams
23) Over In That Happy Land

The following biography was compiled from notes by John Henderson, Mark Miller, and Rick Jackson:

Ronnie Prophet’s second cousing, Orval William Prophet, dubbed “The Canadian Ploughboy”, was a self-taught guitarist born in Edwards, Ontario on 31 August 1922. His first professional job as a musician was in 1944 singing with Bill Sheppard’s country band as part of CFRA’s ‘Fiddler’s Fling’ travelling radio show in the Ottawa Valley. This stint lasted until 1949 with Prophet also moonlighting as part of Mac Beattie And The Ottawa Valley Melodeers after which fellow Canadian Wilf Carter discovered Prophet and invited him to tour the Ottawa Valley.

On Carter’s recommendation, Prophet was pushed toward a contract with Decca Records in the U.S. that resulted in the release of his first single as Orval Rex Prophet, The Canadian Ploughboy called “Going Back To Birmingham” in March of 1951 followed that same year by “Judgement Day Express”. He would then record with Grady Martin And The “Nashville Sound” before offers from The Louisianna Hayride and The Big D came pouring in, but he refused to leave Canada because of his devotion for his girlfriend.

Following a suggestion by BMI’s Harold Moon, Prophet recorded for a while under the name “Johnny Six” (1957-1961) which led to the hit single “Mademoiselle”. The success of his new identity finally convinced him to make his way down to Nashville in 1958 with his own radio show on WWVA in Wheeling, West Virginia. An offer to do radio for CBS was tabled but never panned out.

He also toured extensively throughout North America including a stint with Johnny Cash in Canada where he returned by 1959 to take up permanent residency in his birthtown of Edwards, Ontario.

He continued a long and successful career releasing singles and albums and making appearances on CBC-TV and CTV. In 1966 he recorded a tribute song to Hank Snow called “The Traveling Snowman”.

In 1967 Prophet signed a new recording deal with Caledon and the first single for that label was “Human Nature”. Prophet’s schedule began to slowdown following heart surgery in 1970, but in 1971 he released one of his biggest singles ever called “Mile After Mile”. He received a Big Country Award for ‘Outstanding Performance By A Male Singer’ in 1978.

His last live performance was was at The Hitching Post on December 31, 1983. He died four days later while clearing snow from his home driveway January 4, 1984. Prophet was posthumously inducted into the CCMA Hall Of Honor that same year and later the Canadian Country Music Hall Of Fame in 1989.