That's all right, Big Boy!

Because of the mention in Nat Hentoff's "American Music Is," I thought I'd post my entry on Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup from "MusicHound Blues: The Essential Album Guide." It was a work-for-hire, so the copyright belongs to Visible Ink Press, which has gone out of business. I'm not sure if its parent company, Gale, which publishes many reference works, kept the rights to MusicHound or sold it off elsewhere. Near as I can tell, a revised version of "MusicHound Blues" was published in 2002 by G. Schirmer Books, and that company's reference book division has been sold to Gale.

The MusicHound entries had a set format, starting with a bio, moving into "must buys" (What to Buy), the next most desirable (What to Buy Next), the clunkers (What to Avoid), the rest of the artist's works (The Rest), rarities worth seeking out (Worth Searching For), and influences. The item on the artist's influences was called Rewind and the one about who the artist influenced was, what else?, Fast Forward. Ratings were given as number of bones, with 5 bones being the best.

This item has not been updated since it was published in 1998, so the recommendations are likely not current.

ARTHUR "BIG BOY" CRUDUP

Born: Aug. 24, 1905 in Forest, Miss. Died: March 28, 1974 in Nassawadox, Va.

Arthur Crudup was a 30-year-old farmworker in rural Mississippi when he learned to play guitar in an effort to pick up some extra money playing house parties. In near poverty, the guitar he was forced to learn on had a broken neck bound together with wire. As a result, he learned only a few basic chords and riffs. By 1940, Crudup had headed north, spurred by the stories of good jobs in the big cities. Instead, life was hand-to-mouth. However, the move to Chicago wasn't wasted, because soon afterward Crudup signed to Bluebird Records. Although this didn't bail Crudup out of a life of hardship -- he was slickered into selling most of the rights to his music. He made a modest living, but should have been entitled to more. Eventually, he moved back to the South, returning North only for an annual recording session that produced a half-dozen or so songs. This went on until 1954, when a discouraged Crudup gave up in despair of ever making a good income. (He had recorded under pseudonyms for Chess and Trumpet records.) In 1960, he was coaxed back into recording for Fire Records, and in the late '60s until his death, he recorded for Delmark. Although Crudup seemed hampered by stage fright during the first phase of his career, the Delmark years found him an enthusiastic performer. None of it would have mattered, if he hadn't written such evocative images and if his high, clean voice didn't sound so forlorn in songs of lost love. Crudup also indirectly changed the course of pop music, having been a major influence on Elvis Presley. Presley's hopped-up version of "That's All Right, Mama" was his first regional hit on Sun Records, and the catalyst of the rock and roll explosion of the '50s.

What to Buy: That's All Right Mama (Bluebird, 1992, 4.5 bones) is the definitive collection of Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup's music, hitting the major highlights from his Bluebird years (1941-'54), starting with the rural Delta sound of "If I Get Lucky" and ending with the proto-rock and roll of "She's Got No Hair." Listen to him croon "She cries, 'Ooo-wee, I believe I'll change my mind" on "So Glad You're Mine" or hear the smile in his voice in "Shout, Sister, Shout" and you'll have had a heaping serving of Crudup's charms. Even so, there's plenty more here. Another That's All Right Mama (Relic, 1992, 4 bones) documents Crudup's return from retirement for the Fire label in the early '60s. His remakes of many of his classic tunes have much of the power of the originals, and there are a few new tunes as well. The collection supplants Mean Ol' Frisco (Collectables, 1988, 3.5 bones), which contains fewer songs from the same sessions.

What to Buy Next: Meets the Master Blues Bassists (Delmark, 1994, 4 bones) is the only reissue on compact disc from Crudup's late '60s Delmark years. He records with long-time bass collaborator Ransom Knowling, and with Willie Dixon. Crudup seemed virtually unchanged nearly 30 years after starting his career.

What to Avoid: It's not hard to avoid some bad Crudup releases since they haven't made it to CD yet, but leave Roebuck Man (Liberty, 1974, 2 bones) and Star Bootlegger (Krazy Kat, 1983, 2 bones) alone if they ever come out in a jewel box. They're not all right, mama!

The Rest: Complete Recorded Works, Vols. 1-4 (Document, 1994, 3.5 bones) collects all of Crudup's Bluebird sides. In chronological order, the collection waters down the impact of Crudup's best sides. Still, it is complete and therefore offers many good numbers not found in other collections of this often-anthologized performer.

Worth Searching For: Crudup's Mood (Delmark, 1969, 3.5 bones) and Look on Yonder's Wall (Delmark, 1969, 3.5 bones) might still be around on crackling vinyl. Crudup proved he was a sturdy soul in these late '60s recordings.

Rewind: Robert Johnson, Big Bill Broonzy

Fast Forward: Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan

By Salvatore Caputo

My own horn

Pardon me if I sound breathless. One of my writing heroes forever and ever is
Nat Hentoff. An editor at Downbeat in the late 1950s and for many, many years a
columnist for the Village Voice, he wrote many volumes on jazz, music in general
and on diverse subjects such as religion and First Amendment rights.

Yesterday, I found out via a Google search that he quoted me in his 2004 book
"American Music is." It's just a few words, but it's incredible to me that Nat
Hentoff read something I wrote and that it stuck with him enough to have it be
the keystone for a point he made in one of his books. I always
figure I just churn it out and hope that somebody will notice. Well, I guess
somebody really did.

The quote comes from my article on Arthur "Big Boy" Crudup in the long
out-of-print "MusicHound Blues: The Essential Album Guide"(Visible Ink Press,
1998).

To see Hentoff's big quote, click here.

Copyright © 2009, Salvatore Caputo

Two kings

The Michael Jackson circus continues, and I'm jumping belatedly into the ring. It's sad to see a talented person die, especially when he peaked so early and suffered such a long decline.

Sure, Jackson was a pop star from an early age, and one of the few to become more popular in his adulthood than in his youth. He didn't suffer Frankie Lymon's fate.

However, there's no question that his best work was in the early 1980s with the mega-selling albums "Off the Wall" and "Thriller." They were his first two albums after becoming free of Motown, and most of the rest of his career was spent trying to figure out how to top (or even match) that opening salvo's creativity and excitement, but whether he recorded with producer Quincy Jones (who in addition to "Off the Wall" and "Thriller," also produced "Bad") or with producers like Teddy Riley in an effort to update his sound -- there was always a sense that the subsequent albums were retreads of "Thriller."

And what's the reward anyway for creating the best-selling album of all time ("Thriller"), being an eye-popping dancer, and elevating the music video from a clumsy promotional item to an opus in its own right?

Life in a bubble.

To be fair, Jackson had no real childhood, working from well before he became a star at age 11. Perhaps his family could say "no" to him, but once Jackson was on his own, he was surrounded by functionaries who had to say "yes." He never could visit a supermarket or a movie like you or I could. Fans would surround and demand.

Jackson's story is a lot like his former father-in-law's -- Elvis Presley. Presley got his privacy at "Graceland," surrounding himself with his "Memphis Mafia," while Jackson's bubble was "Neverland." Did he see himself ironically as Peter Pan or did he romanticize Peter Pan's never growing up? We'll never know because no one asked what he actually thought about anything. The questions were all about life as a celebrity.

Presley was known as "The King" -- short for "The King of Rock and Roll" much to the bemusement of folks like Chuck Berry -- but Jackson claimed even bigger ground, being crowned "The King of Pop," of which rock is only a subset.

The success of both depended on the complex history of race relations in America. Elvis' initial popularity was based on his being a white man who sang like a black man. Jackson proved that a black man singing like a black man could be even bigger than The King. It was a sign of how times had changed.

Both Presley and Jackson had hits with songs that dealt directly with race: Presley with "In the Ghetto" and Jackson with "Black or White."

"Black or White" is the more interesting of the two because of Jackson's changing complexion. He claimed his skin lightened because of vitiligo, a disease in which the skin's pigment slowly disappears. Generally speaking, vitiligo creates patches of pale skin. The Mayo Clinic says, "Medical treatments for vitiligo aim to even out skin tone, either by restoring color (pigment) or by destroying the remaining color." Jackson denied that he did the latter, but it's very unlikely that vitiligo would have left him with such an even skin tone over his whole face. So if he did whiten his skin, did he really believe "it doesn't matter if you're black or white"? It may be the most interesting and personal question posed by his songs, which lyrically are as impersonal as his performance and music was passionate.

He didn't have life experience outside the bubble, and it shows in the paranoia of "Billie Jean" and "Beat It." "We are the World," which he co-wrote with Lionel Richie, when you get down to it is little more than a commercial jingle. It's anthemic, yes, but doesn't say much. The single was a sensation because of all the performers who joined to sing on it, including icons Stevie Wonder, Bruce Springsteen and Bob Dylan, and because the cause of providing relief to famine victims in Ethiopia was so compelling. It also made charity another form of American instant gratification: Buy a record and end world hunger. (By the way, the USA for Africa Foundation still exists and is still fighting poverty and hunger.)

Although Presley had various co-songwriting credits through contracts that his manager, Col. Tom Parker, foisted on songwriters through the years, Presley admitted that he could not write a song. Depending on outside songwriters helped pierce the bubble and let Presley tackle songs about a variety of scenarios that were outside his experience, like "In the Ghetto."

Presley was 42 when he died in 1977, and Jackson was just 50, which some say is the new 40.

Allegations that doctor-assisted use of prescription drugs that may not have been necessary and may have helped cause their premature deaths are similar. In both cases, the stories suggest the doctors had a murky sense of ethics or were unable to say "no" to their famous patients. (Looking at medical ethics statements issued by the American Medical Association over the years actually hints that the relationship and service offered by a physician is much more complicated than most people believe and that a physician may ethically say "yes" depending on their judgment of the situation.)

It's unclear from the historical record whether Jackson dubbed himself the King of Pop or whether it was a name imposed on him. But when he married Lisa Marie Presley, it seemed clear that he understood the iconography of American pop and that he wanted to create a dynasty, lending legitimacy to his reign as the King of Pop by marrying the King's daughter.

Jackson also named one of his children Prince Michael. If that seems odd to you, think about this, it's a combination of George Foreman naming his children after himself (Jackson's daughter is Paris Michael) and taking the name of another pop star, Prince, into the dynasty. Prince is Prince's actual first name (he was born Prince Rogers Nelson on June 7, 1958, so he had just turned 51 when Jackson died).

Prince was also the only serious challenger to Michael Jackson's rhythm and blues throne at the time when Jackson was at his peak. Prince's "1999" and "Purple Rain," released during "Thriller's" long run on the pop charts were outsold by Jackson, but nonetheless, "Purple Rain" was a 10 million seller, and only a few recording artists besides Jackson have hit such a sales milestone.

Who knows how the dynasty will continue? However, much like Elvis' posthumous career, Jackson's will feature a ton of repackagings of already released material, rehearsal material for the shows he was planning to put on in London (like Elvis' posthumously released final tour film) and who knows how many rarities and unreleased recordings landing in the marketplace over the coming months and years, making Jackson, like Elvis, one of the hardest-working dead men in show business, for sure.

Copyright © 2009, Salvatore Caputo

Positively official: Bob Dylan 1966

I was in my freshman year of college, which I hate to admit was in 1970-71, when I picked up the best rock concert album I've ever heard. Nobody since, not the Sex Pistols or the Stooges, Nine Inch Nails or Kiss, has outdone the teetering-on-the-abyss urgency of Dylan's Royal Albert Hall Concert.

Now, 27 years later, long after I wore out the cheap plastic of the bootlegged double album, called Zimmerman in this particular pressing, I get to hear it without Like a Rolling Stone running out in mid-song.

The album was tucked away in the back row of a run-down record store just off campus. I had no idea what the two-LP set contained, other than it was a Dylan bootleg. I thought it would be outtakes from studio sessions.

Instead, it was a live album of what we know today was a performance by Bob Dylan at the Free Trade Hall in Manchester, rather than his Albert Hall concert from the same tour.

Savvy pirates

These bootleggers were smart. The concert was in two parts -- acoustic and electric. Dylan played the acoustic part first, but the bootleggers labeled the electric part as the first disc. Good move, because as emotionally charged and wondrously sung (well, compared to the way Bob sings these days) the acoustic part was, the electric part was even more so.

Dylan and the Hawks (you know, the guys who became the Band) played the most outrageous noise ever made, before anyone made up the rules for outrageous noise. To hear himself over the noise of the band, Dylan shouted the lyrics in a manner completely different from the acoustic set or from the way he sang before. (This was the beginning of the blenderized vocals he offers these days.)

The lyrics were always the point with Dylan, but his melodies usually were more than workable. He threw all that out when performing with the Hawks behind him. Instead they played the chord progressions and Dylan bent and twisted the melodies, making mincemeat of the intellectual meaning of his words.

The boy can rage

So what? The emotional intensity of the performance carried the weight of betrayal he wrote about in I Don't Believe You (She Acts Like We Never Met). The guy was definitely feeling it on stage.

This was a mean noise, but the beat, the volume, Robbie Robertson's stinging guitar leads and the undertone of Garth Hudson's organ, made it a liberating, joyful experience too.

The bootlegged copy of the concert I bought so long ago is hard to interpret. The tension between Dylan and the audience is indecipherable. Without being able to hear the audience, I though Dylan was putting the audience on when he screamed, "I don't believe you! You're a liar!" before he went into his closing song, Like a Rolling Stone. That's one reason the belated CD version that he finally released as The Bootleg Series Vol. 4: Bob Dylan Live 1966 -- The 'Royal Albert Hall' Concert is great. Listeners can hear the fuel for Dylan's furious performance.

The second side of my bootlegged LP was so crammed with music that the bootleggers couldn't fit all of Like a Rolling Stone onto it. Rather than fade the song out, they just let the groove run into the label, sending my needle skating across it and cutting off the music in mid-rage. The complete version of the CD is better, offering a chance to hear what would become Dylan's anthem, when it was fresh and without any inkling of the warhorse it would become.

Dylan has made way too many official concert albums of fairly mediocre shows. Only After the Flood, from his "comeback" tour with the Band in 1974 comes close to the fire of the 1966 tour. (Although the short set he did on Concert for Bangla Desh shows off the gentleman farmer Dylan of the early '70s to good effect.)

Regardless, Live 1966 is the only Dylan concert album you have to have.

Copyright © 1998, Salvatore Caputo

Scribe of rock's 'unruly history' gravely ill

I'd always wanted to be a writer. As a kid, I wrote plays, short stories, a science fiction novel and comics (that I also drew). I didn't think about writing journalistically until I started buying records. Now, journalism is not the first thing that pops into my mind when somebody says, "records" (unless we're talking about public records and that's a whole 'nother ball of boredom). However, I didn't start looking for non-fiction writing about anything until I developed an extreme interest in pop. When I started buying records, I started wanting to read about them. I anxiously awaited new issues of Cheetah in 1967, and Eye in 1968. I still have copies of Circus from about that time, and Creem, Crawdaddy and Rolling Stone from the early '70s. The combination of the writing and subject matter got me excited. I wanted to do the same thing for a living. The interesting writers among them, the ones with a sensibility that made their stories more than just pro forma celebrity interviews or consumer-oriented reviews -- juiced things even more. Whatever you think of them individually, Nick Tosches, Ed Ward, Langdon Winner, Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, Jon Landau (before he hooked up with Springsteen), Robert Christgau and a host of others, made it fun to read about the music. The writing Palmer Robert Palmer -- No! Not the Addicted to Love singer! -- also holds a high place among pop-music writers (at least as far as I'm concerned). Never shrill, Palmer has calmly and eloquently traced the trails of American music that mattered to him. He has the understated fervor of a professional detective trying to unlock a mystery. His most well-known achievement has to be Rock and Roll: An Unruly History. The project spanned a PBS TV series and a companion book. Particularly in the book, Palmer's wide-open intellect challenges much of the conventional thinking about rock and its origins, while still reporting most of the same historical information to be found elsewhere. (Palmer's account of being accepted into the dark, secret world of nightclub musicians -- and barely avoiding a shootout -- at the beginning of the Unruly History book is a hoot.) Palmer is one of the pioneers as far as rock writing for mainstream newspapers goes. He was the New York Times' first full-time rock writer and chief pop critic (1976-88). I was a rookie journalist in 1976 living and working in New Jersey, and Palmer's writing in the Times became a staple of my pop reading diet. The underlying intelligence of his analysis was the winning element. It wasn't just that the stuffy Times catered to "intellectualism." Palmer never stooped to academic formalism in his writing. Instead, he wrote for that paper with a grace and passion that undercut the Times' stultifying style. He made the Times a fundamentally more human paper. Palmer needs help Palmer is seriously ill, and at last word I have, was to undergo a liver-transplant operation. The medical expenses have been enormous, about $150,000 so far, and he could use some financial help. For information on a tax-deductible fund set up in Palmer's name, contact the National Music Critics Association at NMCAssn@aol.com. Copyright © 1997, Salvatore Caputo

Elvis has wrecked the building

"I haven't seen anything like it since Eleanor Roosevelt died." Bemused, Don Rubincam, entetainment editor of The Courier-News, snuffed out another cigarette, and with a very little help from me, set about the task of piecing together the small-town daily's package on the death of rock and roll icon Elvis Presley. The newsroom was in quite a furor, although many of the reporters were my age, leaned toward the Eagles and just didn't get Elvis. I was what they call a "news clerk," trying to write my way out of obituary, weather and police-report duties and into full-time work on the entertainment desk. Just a few months before, Rubincam had read some reviews and previews I'd written and asked our managing editor if he could use me part time. I was supposed to help Rubincam with clerical duties, filing and the like, but Don had me writing more than he had me filing. I wasn't about to argue. I was by no means savvy about the entertainment business or how to find out information. I spent the better part of the summer trying to figure out where Elvis Presley would be playing. Not nostalgia for the old folks It wasn't nostalgia that was driving me exactly. Sure, I had strummed my air guitar in the back yard at age four and shouted the lines: "You ain't nothin' but a hound dog!" I did it for what seems like hours (but was probably just a few minutes in adult time). I still remember the white Elvis t-shirt with the king caught in mid-swivel before a big black record. However, I wasn't pining for these things. I'd been getting deeper into the roots of the music that interested me, and from reading some other writers' reflections on the early days of rock and roll, and some things John Lennon had said about Elvis, I wanted to see if Presley held up. It hadn't been that long since National Lampoon had spoofed him with a cover that portrayed the one-time rocking Adonis as a big, button-popping, washed-up lounge lizard. So I had picked up The Sun Sessions in the early summer of '77. What a thunderclap of raw energy! The Sun Sessions was everything that the emerging punk-rock scene wanted to be but wasn't. From top to bottom That's when I hit on the idea of doing a feature for Rubincam that compared Presley's first album with what was then his most recent one, Moody Blue -- his first and last album. (Hey! I was young!) I was in the middle of writing that up when Presley died, and Moody Blue truly became his last album. What a dung heap of misplaced energy! Moody Blue with its insincere, by-the-numbers parodies of rock and roll and its heavy emphasis on overly histrionic ballads, was everything the punks never wanted to be -- but were in their own way. (There were some good numbers here, but the stench of death was about the project from the beginning.) Rubincam didn't outlive Elvis by much, and when he died I got my first promotion. (If it wasn't such an understatement, I'd say that life is very weird sometimes.) Anyway, the Presley piece was the first high-profile article I wrote in my pro career. People seemed to like it, and I felt like I'd arrived. Who would have thought that 20 years later the news media would be full of pro forma coverage of the anniversary of the guy's death? Forgotten in the coverage of the disciples who think that Elvis is God or, at least, the Silver Surfer, is that it all started with records and a guy trying to sing something a little different from what anybody else was singing. Copyright © 1997, Salvatore Caputo