Fast: Fast Car

Tracy Chapman: Fast Car
[purchase] 

This is my third piece in a row focusing on a Black woman. I’m not sure why, but I realized the other day that my wife and I have, over the past few months, watched five movies/TV shows (it is hard to tell the difference these days) about legendary Black women singers—Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom, Aretha, The United States Against Billie Holliday, Tina, and Mahalia. (Plus One Night in Miami, in which one of the main characters is a Black male singer). How much of the fact that so many fine films featuring mostly Black casts is a result of the agitation about the whiteness of the Oscars? And how much did the fallout from the George Floyd killing, and the other killings of Black Americans over the past year, convince studios to release, and people like me to watch, films like this? 

So, once again, I’ve forced potential readers to wade through a paragraph that is, basically, unrelated to the song I’ve chosen to discuss. Maybe that’s why I write these things for fun and not money (not that anyone’s offering), because it allows me to go off on tangents. Like I just did there, again. 

But let’s get to the meat of the topic. Tracy Chapman’s 1988 song “Fast Car,” from her self-titled debut album is an amazing song on so many levels. It is so good, in fact, that one writer declared that it “essentially revived the singer-songwriter movement.” I’m not sure I’d go that far, but it didn’t hurt—and the fact that Chapman was Black, which was unusual in a genre that had become pretty white by that point, was another reason that the song was noticed. 

The song also has a great “discovery” story. Shortly after her debut album was released, Chapman was part of a megastar-studded bill for the Nelson Mandela Birthday Concert in 1988 at Wembley Stadium. She had completed a three-song set and cleverly stuck around. When Stevie Wonder went to perform, he discovered that the hard disk for his Synclavier was missing, and he walked off the stage in tears (he did, eventually, return using borrowed equipment). Chapman was asked to go again, and she agreed, doing two songs, including “Fast Car.” It went over big. 

But the real reason that the song became a hit (No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100), and got a Grammy for Best Female Pop Vocal Performance (and another for Chapman as Best New Artist and the album for Best Contemporary Folk Album) and MTV Video Music Award nominations, is that it is an incredible piece of songwriting, delivered brilliantly by Chapman in her rich contralto voice. 

“Fast Car” is, however, a pretty depressing song. The first stanza describes the singer’s desperation: 

You got a fast car
I want a ticket to anywhere
Maybe we make a deal
Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero, got nothing to lose
Maybe we'll make something
Me, myself, I got nothing to prove 

We learn why she wants out in the next few stanzas—she’s working at a convenience store, had to drop out of school to care for her alcoholic father after her mother left him. But it’s not only the car—it’s the owner, who when they drove, made her feel like she belonged and could be someone. It’s a dream that dies all too quickly—she works, he stays out late, drinks and ignores their kids—and she sees no future. And in the last stanza, she lays it out: 

You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way 

Anybody want to wager on whether or not they left?

DOUBLE ENTENDRES: ICE CREAM MAN/MARY COUGHLAN

As I read Jordan's last piece, erudite and informative, it got me a'thinking around the other taboo subject in popular song, seemingly equally common a subject matter as rumpy pumpy, namely drugs, the paths of blues and jazz as awash with as much reliance, if not more, upon uppers, downers and in-betweeners as more recent times. The censor was seldom enthusiastic about such, and remains still a little averse today, worried about the corruption of young and fertile minds. Thus the need to disguise in simile and metaphor. (Here I feel I should add, having delved deep into the subcultural yearnings put my way over 50 plus years of enjoying the devil's music, never have I felt it necessary to partake, give or take the odd jazz cigarette as a teen and young adult. Never did anything beyond make me cough, together with a need to poo (TMI), however many times I listened to Paul McCartney.)

The BBC were notoriously eagle-eared for references, frequently banning anything that could be possibly construed as smacking of, well, smack or, indeed, anything else. So as well as the ex-Beatle's paean to hot air ballooning, so too were songs by myriad other acts struck from air-play. So alongside anything overtly sexual, anything that contained the name of a commercial product, the list of presumed drug songs deemed unsuitable included other, earlier songs involving the very same perverter of the young, Paul McCartney*. None of these could really be classed double entendres, as, bizarrely, colour your reference in the imagery of food or, more commonly, candy, much as with sex, and you could take the arbiters of taste on quite a trip. Or references to literature, the classics being drug free zones, right?

Ice cream is frequently invoked as a euphemism for narcotics, and has been since forever. In part the idea of a special treat and part the network of delivery outlets. For, as well as being for sale in shops and restaurants, there is the time hallowed ice-cream man in his, or her, ice-cream van, bring his product to a curb side near you. I used to think this purely a British phenomenon, but John Carpenter and Jonathan Richman have taught me different. (Richman's Ice Cream Man, despite the lyrics, a give away in any other hands, is arguably one of the few where you can feel some confidence that it really is a Mr Whippy he sings about.) 

Heroin has been a scourge of the central belt of Scotland for decades, the combination of grim concrete estates, with populations transplanted from slum squalor to out of town desolation, built with little thought of leisure and recreation factored in by town planners. Add the Scottish love of sweet things and, particularly of ice cream, no Scottish town without a family of Italian emigres, with cafes and ice-cream emporia, resident since the early part of the twentieth century, and any business brain can begin to see a hole in the market. For the hole in Daddy's arm every bit as much as the hole in his kids tummy. Even genuine ice-cream vans initially became subject to vicious turf wars, but it wasn't too long before the rinky dink tone of Greensleeves  denoted that something else was there for the buying.

Mary Coughlan is a terrific singer, with a smoky voice at as much ease in folk and blues as she is in rock and jazz, ploughing her idiosyncratic fare for 35 years. I see I wrote about her in 2013. The featured song for this piece comes from her second album, Under the Influence, in 1987. That title too might be a broad hint, but my suspicions and her admissions point to towards her own poisons being largely booze. But there are two songs about ice-cream, two in a row, tracks two and three on side one. OK, the second is a brief instrumental, but the first, by Johnny Mulhearn, is sung through the eyes of a housewife, hooked on the scag brought to her and the other women on the street by the same van selling cones and wafers to her children. Based on a both a true story, one with a happy ending, in that the dealer was arrested and imprisoned, with a good deal of anecdata from The Glasgow ice-cream wars, as mentioned above. She mentions the song in this interview.

Still so keen on that 99?

*I know, literary extension...

Double Entendres: Squeeze Box

 

purchase [ The Who By Numbers]

When I purchased my own first "stereo" back in '71, the merchant included a copy of "Who's Next" in the deal. I have mentioned this before here. Andy La RayGun has also brought it to our attention

Always a fan of the Who/Pete Townsend, I have tried to keep up as he has done side gigs, the NFL Superbowl (however difficult with the group at that age) and more.

The album <The Who By Numbers> includes this piece that might fit the current theme: Squeeze Box.

Ostensibly, a squeeze box is an accordion: you know, the player pulls and pushes/squeezes the box to produce the musical sounds. That doesn't  appears to be the actual subject of the song:

Mama's got a squeeze box she wears on her chest

 .. [daddy] never gets no rest

Yes, the accordion usually rests on the players chest. But more:

She goes in and out and in and out ... [Hmm...meaning what?]

... Come on and squeeze me ...come on and tease me ... [Hmm.. tease the accordion?]

The album studio version is a lot better:

Sheryl Crow does it too

Double Entendres: My Butcher Man

Memphis Minnie: My Butcher Man
[purchase] 

There’s a long history in music of songs with double entendre lyrics. Now, Cardi B. and Megan Thee Stallion can go on network TV and sing about their WAP (although it appears that they bleeped out the word “pussy” at the Grammys), and that song, and other sexually explicit ones, are played on the radio, streaming, and wherever popular music is found. But there was a time when sexually explicit songs had to be couched in innuendo and double entendres. 

The benefit of this approach is that the song could get wider distribution, those who got the references, felt that they were in the know, and the artist could feel like he or she got over on authority. I understood this well back when I contributed to halftime shows for the Princeton Band, which were censored by the University, and we used to joke that if we ever wanted to play a particular famous folk song, we’d have to call it, “She’ll Be Arriving Around The Mountain When She Arrives.” So we slipped a lot of references past the censors—the first joke I wrote as a freshman was about freshman male social life, and had the band form a shower with water shooting from the spout, as we played "He’s Got The Whole World By The Hand." It was fun, we had lots of laughs, and eventually got in trouble with both Princeton and the United States Army… 

This theme, like many I’ve suggested here, was inspired by a song I heard in the car. This time, I had on the B.B. King’s Bluesville station and I heard “My Butcher Man,” by Memphis Minnie, with her then-husband, Kansas Joe McCoy. It became pretty clear that Minnie was not really singing about the man’s butchering skill. The song includes lines such as: 

I’m going to tell everybody I've got the best butcher man in town
He can slice your ham, he can cut it from the fat on down

He slice my pork chops and he grinds my sausage, too
Ain't nothing in the line of butcherin' that my butcher man can't do

Butcher man, in the morning, won't you please stop by my house
I've got enough butcherin' for you to do if you promise me you just only hush your mouth? 

And finally, if the references weren’t clear enough:

If anybody asks you, "Butcher man, where have you been?"
Show 'em that long-bladed knife, tell 'em you been butchering out in the slaughter pens
Let's go, butcher man, for me 

Memphis Minnie was born Lizzie Douglas in 1897 in New Orleans, She ran away from home at the age of 13, and started playing on street corners, eventually moving up touring with the Ringling Bros. Circus and then as a singer and guitarist in the Beale Street blues scene. She was, by all accounts, a tough, street smart woman. One observer remembered: ”Any men fool with her she’d go right after them right away. She didn’t take no foolishness off them. Guitar, pocket-knife, pistol, anything she get her hand on she’d use it.” Apparently, the blues business wasn’t sufficiently lucrative, so Minnie’ reportedly subsidized her income with prostitution, charging the relatively large sum of $12 for her services. Minnie also gained a reputation for partying and gambling. She was an early adopter of the electric guitar, and didn’t shy away from guitar contests against the likes of Big Bill Broonzy, Tampa Red and Muddy Waters, sometimes winning. 

Minnie recorded over 200 songs, and wrote many of them, including “My Butcher Man,” “Me and My Chauffeur Blues,” (another song filled with double entendres, originally credited to someone else, and was later recorded by the Jefferson Airplane, who credited yet another different person), and “When The Levee Breaks,” (with Kansas Joe, later re-worked by Led Zeppelin, who actually gave Minnie a writing credit without litigation). 

This genre of music was sometimes called “Dirty Blues,” and often featured double entendres. In researching this piece, I found a fascinating article written in 1927, a few years before “My Butcher Man” was written, by Guy B. Johnson, a white “scholar of black culture and longtime advocate of improved race relations,” as his obituary in The New York Times stated when he died at 90, in 1991 (and whose last name, itself, is a double entendre….). One of Johnson’s observations was 

that the majority of the expressions in the blues relating to the sex act are sung from the point of view of woman and are mostly concerned with the quality of the movements made by the mail during coitus. 

He then goes on to describe many examples, proving clearly that academic writing, even about sex, can be bone-dry. 

Johnson concludes, 

Double meaning in secular song is after all nothing new. Folk song students know that many standard folk songs have come up out of the slime. But it is doubtful if any group ever has carried its ordinary vulgarities over into respectable song life so completely and successfully as the American Negro. And the ease with which the Negro has put this thing over leads one to suspect that the white man, too, enjoys seeing “the other meaning.”

DOUBLE ENTENDRES: IF I SAID YOU HAD A BEAUTIFUL BODY........

 ....you'd probably barf, that certainly being also my reflex response to this nadir of kitsch, a song so ghastly I cannot bring myself to say the whole title out loud. So, then, the Bellamy Brothers, what can you possibly say, how can you possibly defend this massively selling worldwide hit, a Billboard country chart topper in 1979, and 39 in the entire reckoning? Hell, it hit a national number 2 in the UK, seemingly on the back of it's initial success amongst the record buying public of Northern Ireland. Apart from offering your gratitude, that is, to all of those with such execrable taste.

Harsh? Well, maybe, but please understand where I was at the cusp of the 1970s into 80s. I was possibly alone amongst my chums in having a penchant for country music. By which I mean country-rock, I should explain, never "& western", not that dreck, no sir. So the Burritos, Pure Prairie League, New Riders, Poco and all their kindred steel-tinged spirits. And my friends and family would know that, themselves suspicious and wary even of whenever Bernie Leadon took centre stage in the Eagles, who were as country as their mainstream ears could ever stray. A little beyond, in truth. But, bless them, they would look out for me and point me in the direction of where they construed my taste to lie. Which meant the fecking Bellamy Brothers. The chances were that they would themselves like it, the o so witty play on words, the clever chat up line to trot out at the disco's close. They would make an exception to the genre on that occasion, maybe thinking I wasn't so strange after all. No, no, no. 

It was only as I recalled my full unadulterated hatred of this song that I remembered there had been a time when their name had not led me to rage, with their earlier and other hit single, 1976's 'Let Your Love Flow', a pleasant enough ditty, if a little anodyne. So they weren't necessarily all bad, although I discover today that song was written not by them, but by one of Neil Diamond's roadies, something that would have, had I known then, immediately flagged up another of my instant red flag prejudices. You can stuff  Diamond's reappraisal and Rick Rubin helmed rehabilitation. Still irredeemable nonsense. But, it set me to thinking, given the theme of this piece, and the brothers appropriation of the, in his hands, mildly amusing Groucho Marx line, who knows how they could have taken the title themselves? Eeeow, Richard Hell, eat your heart out.....

Of course, I know nothing much about the Bellamys, and am sure they are decent enough coves. Indeed I suspect they are still going, with a no doubt popular move into Christian music along the way, possibly necessitating a humble apology as they drag out the old warhorse, with sly and knowing glances being exchanged across the probably line dancing audience. I hope they promise, beyond that ill-considered lapse in taste, part of their hot-headed youth, and to stick to more wholesome fare, and to single entendres. Like this:

So, fast forward forty years, and I find myself quite liking the "& western", classic Grand Ol' Opry being now something I can derive pleasure from, especially mawkish country weepie duets. Of course, I still love all the old stuff I did back then too, and also keep my ear to the ground for newer flavours of country, from banjo jam band fusioneers like Leftover Salmon to sassy songstresses like Margo Price. I guess you are expecting me now to now offer my respect, grudging or otherwise, to the Bellamy Brothers and similar "Hat" acts? 

Not. 

A. 

Bloody. 

Chance.

If I said your song was a crock'o'shite, would you hold it against me?

If only.

PASSED OVER: PASSED ON

 Yup, can't resist, the elephant in the room, or rather the dead elephant in the room, as passed over always has me reaching for the reflex, however thoughtful or thoughtless, sorry for your loss. It isn't a phrase that sits neatly in my lexicon, smacking of euphemism and a coy avoidance of the reality. So and so has passed over, so and so has passed on, all of that. To where says the passive-aggressive agnostic inside me? The other side isn't exactly helpful and arguably is also somewhat unrealistic. Mind you, I'm not keen on rest rooms or comfort stations either, and you can blame my earthy medical anglo-saxon roots for that, where folk die and go to the toilet, or even, sometimes, even  the other way round. 

Death songs then, a surprisingly large and popular canon from time immemorial, the annals of trad. arr. littered with maidens killing and being killed. But that's too easy, here I want to explore those songs written from the viewpoint of the slain. I love 'em. Here are five of the best.

Long Black Veil has to be one of the best, the happy little tale of how the honour of the canoodling was preserved, the song's protagonist taking the rap for a murder, as his only alibi would have to have been his paramour, his neighbour's wife. So that's all right then, is it? She gets off scot free, if then still leaving the neighbour wondering quite why, or where, his wife gets the penchant for going out of a rainy night, dressed in black and howling at the moon. One of many versions, this one, by the Band is the best, the lead vocals, all of the exquisitely ragged vocals for that matter, sounding distinctly of the grave. Which, sadly, is indeed now the case.

To follow, a beautiful song, set within a glorious string setting, coming from John Wesley Harding, aka Wesley Stace, initially a skinny tie "noo wave" singer, with hints of Costello in his style and timbre, to, now, an increasingly folky solo troubadour, an artist I have much time for. The song weaves a story of come uppance with a real sting in the tale and stunned me to silence the first time heard it. A warning to any uxoricidal maniacs out there, it certainly gave me pause for thought.

The sort of song perhaps older readers will remember from their parent's collection, the old Marty Robbins chestnut, with The Old 97s giving it a good kicking, providing a bit more of the adrenaline that a real gunfight might provide, the momentum giving credence to that apparent sense of disbelief that seems to arise after a wound sustained in the heat of skirmish.At least, that's what happens in films. The Old 97s have an intrinsic knack for polishing up old tropes and giving them a modern sheen.

Neither a judiciary death nor a killing, is this one about a natural death? Of course, with the way Elvis writes his songs, the whole thing may be an allegory. But irrespective of such musing, I like the way it is the first to offer a view of the life beyond the threshold. Rather than a wraith stranded here on this earth, here the protagonist offers a description of a disappointed creator, rueing his creation. Am I alone if feeling some hope in that? It is certainly preferable to the burning pit of hell, but is it heaven? Costello has always struck me as a man who thinks deeply about the human condition, his songs often offering the sour aftertaste of catholic guilt.

Hell, you say, you mean like this? And you can always trust the Pet Shop Boys to offer an acerbic and wry view of proceedings. So maybe this song doesn't, as actually did neither the last, overtly explain how the observer came to be where they were, and in this one there is even no reference per se to anyone dying. But, surely, any accurate reportage would require the ability to be there and even Bill and Ted had to die to get there, yes? So I have to assume the witness is deceased, my column and all that. Ex-journalist Neil Tennant effortlessly lists the names of the mad, the bad and the dangerous to know as being the main occupancy, which I suspect is a little hopeful. My hell would be full of people I know.

As would my heaven.

I'm sorry for my loss. In taste.

Band, Stace, 97's, Costello, PSB.

Passed Over: Aretha Franklin/Amazing Grace

[purchase the Complete Recordings]
[purchase the DVD of the film] 

My wife and I just finished watching the eight part NatGeo (!) series, Genius: Aretha Franklin. Season 1 was about Einstein, and season 2 was about Picasso, which puts Franklin, deservedly, into pretty lofty company. The series tells the life story of Franklin, who was notoriously private during her lifetime, and how she was able to deal with the benefits and burdens of her prodigious musical talent. It isn’t always a pretty picture—her father, well-known minister C.L. Franklin, was a controlling, philandering probable alcoholic who took Aretha out on the gospel circuit as a young teenager and appeared to have let her run around unsupervised, leading to two pregnancies at 12 and 13, and who himself impregnated a 12 year old. Aretha herself could be both cruel and supportive of her two sisters, Carolyn and Erma, fine singers in their own right, whose solo careers paled in comparison, but who regularly worked as background singers (and songwriters) for their sister. And she also made career judgments that, in retrospect, seem suspect. On the other hand, her singing, piano playing and arranging (despite not being able to read or write music), were extraordinary, and her ultimate insistence on producing credits and control over her music, was groundbreaking. Definitely worth the watch, and Cynthia Erivo’s performance as Franklin, is great. 

In 1972, coming off of one of her most successful albums, the politically charged Young Gifted and Black, Franklin suggested a return-to-her-roots gospel album. Ultimately, it was decided that Aretha would perform in a church, featuring the Southern California Community Choir, led by James Cleveland, the great gospel musician and singer, who had, in Aretha’s youth, led the choir at C.L. Franklin’s church. The TV series shows C.L. firing Cleveland because Cleveland failed to tell him about Aretha’s second pregnancy, and thus made Franklin’s decision to perform with him, and not at C.L.’s church, a deliberate slap in her father’s face. I don’t know if that is true, but it did make for good television. 

They decided to film two performances, and hired Sidney Pollack, still relatively early in his career, but with an Academy Award nomination under his belt, to direct. The performances, mostly by Franklin, but also by the choir and Cleveland, were incredible, and the word spread so that the second night became an event, and was attended by Mick Jagger and Charlie Watts, who were in Los Angeles working on Exile on Main Street (and the gospel touches on that album are often attributed to their attendance that night). C.L. Franklin showed up, too (uninvited, according to the show), and sermonized a bit. 

But when they went to get the film ready for release, a failure to use the traditional clapperboards made it impossible to synchronize the sound with the video under with the technology of the time. So, the film was put in the vault. An album including excerpts from the two nights, also named Amazing Grace, was released to both massive commercial and critical success. 

In the early 1990s, Jerry Wexler, the producer who essentially navigated Franklin to stardom after a lackluster start at Columbia Records, told a staff producer at Atlantic Records, Alan Elliott, about the footage, and they eventually discussed it over a period of years. Pollack, who was dying of cancer in 2007, encouraged Elliott to finish the movie, and he bought the rights from Warner Brothers and began the painstaking process of using digital technology to sync the music and film. It was scheduled for release in 2011, but Franklin sued to prevent its release without her permission. A few years later, the original contract that Franklin signed was found, and another release was scheduled, but Franklin sued again to prevent release. Whether her reluctance was based on a demand for money, or because her bad health prevented her from promoting the film, or out of her frustration over not ever having an acting career, or other reasons, it wasn’t until after Aretha’s death in 2018 from pancreatic cancer that Elliott was able to get her estate’s permission to release it. 

My wife and I had a chance to see the movie in 2019 at the great Jacob Burns Film Center in Pleasantville, back when people still went to movies, and it was mind blowing. It is, in many ways, very minimalist—there is no narration to speak of, no talking heads, just music (and a little preaching). Franklin is literally a force of nature, as she leaves nothing behind in singing songs that clearly have deep meaning to her, which you can see not only from her effort, but from the sweat pouring from her face

You can hear the 10 minute plus version of “Amazing Grace” in the video above. It is pretty much unbelievable. What you can’t see in the video, and you really should watch the movie--it is streaming on Hulu as this goes to press—is how the music affected everyone in the church—Franklin, the audience, the choir and the other performers. As described in an NPR piece about the movie: 

Near the end of the song "Amazing Grace," for which Cleveland has been accompanying Franklin on the piano, he slides off the piano bench, giving his space to [Alexander] Hamilton [the assistant choir director], and surrenders to shoulder-heaving sobs, rocking himself back and forth in a congregational seat. He's not the only one — by this point, audience and performers alike are wiping tears from their faces — and when Franklin herself sinks down into a seat at the song's conclusion, she well may be weeping, too. But her face is so sparkling with perspiration, it's impossible to tell for sure. 

And when they recreated a portion of it in the TV show, Erivo’s version was powerful enough to move us to tears, which is pretty amazing when you think about it.