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Aereo-Plain

Taking the Steam Powered Aereo Plane to that desert island

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The last album in my review of top five albums to take to a desert island may be my all-time favorite.  I’ve long loved John Hartford’s quirky, hippy-bluegrass Aereo-Plain album.   So it was only fitting that last night, as I was returning from a dinner in Nashville with a long-time friend, I turned on Del McCoury’s Hand Picked show on XM Radio’s Bluegrass Junction and what was coming out of the speakers but Steam Powered Aereo Plane.  Damn, Del has great taste in music!  I was reminded all over again of why this album is on my list.

What do I love about this album?  Let’s start with the cover.

My mother hated this cover when I was a teenager and my wife hates it still.  I loved it so much that I had the father of a high-school friend who was a commercial artist do a charcoal drawing of Hartford with his shaggy beard and aviator glasses.  (My friend Judy’s father had a side business of doing spot-on drawings of photographs from 1970s record albums.)  Mother never wanted to see it and Candice makes me hang it in the closet…but how could a scruffy 17 year old guitar player who was getting into bluegrass not love a picture of a scruffy, hippie, banjo picker who had just made a fortune as the writer of the monster Glen Campbell hit Gentle on My Mind. 

Then there are the songs.

The first thing you hear is a gospel quartet led by Hartford singing a snippet of  A.J. Brumley’s Turn Your Radio On.  This morphs into a set of the most amazing mixture of original Hartford tunes he’s ever produced.  Steamboat Whistle Blues recalls his days as a riverboat pilot.  Back in the Goodle Days has a bunch of old-timers lamenting the end of bluegrass and old-time music and has the great preservation line, “It looks like a ‘lectric shaver now where the courthouse use to be.”   That’s followed by the infectious Up on the Hill Where They Do the Boogie, which my friend Ben Jamison and I sang at a Baptist talent show (with slightly cleaned-up lyrics) and brought down the house.  The next tune is simply titled Boogie.  Its about sex and may be the weirdest tune this side of Revolution #9.  I was going to tell you what it features, but this is a family blog.  First Girl I Loved and Presbyterian Guitar are two very sweet and simple tunes that showcased Hartford’s guitar playing.   Side two began with Vamp in the Middle, as Hartford describes how his fiddle tune “with a vamp in the middle” got the girl.  Fiddler extraordinaire Vassar Clements plays a mean vamp.  After a short instrumental (Symphony Hall Rag) followed by an even shorter ditty entitled Because of You, Hartford launches into the best tune on the album and the title track Steam Powered Aereo Plane.  (Yes the spellings are different for the song and the album title.)  Then since this was the early 70s, there’s a song about drugs (Holding), a preservationist’s lament (They’re Gonna Tear Down the Grand Ole Opry) and the traditional fiddle tune Leather Britches played as a fiddle/banjo duet by Vassar and John.  Hartford’s vocal take on radio station announcers (Station Break) then leads into the reprise of Turn Your Radio On.

You may not believe this, but I love the production values of Aereo-Plain.

David Bromberg, who is a pretty fair picker in his own right, was the album’s producer.  Hartford has said he gave Bromberg almost total authority in putting this record together, and the choices were inspired.  Bromberg had the band play everything live, and it was all completed in a few short takes.  There were many more songs recorded during the sessions, but Bromberg stuck primarily to the originals and produced the entire album with a freshness and originality that one didn’t see in albums from the period.

Finally, I love the players.

Besides Hartford on banjo and guitar, Aereo-Plain featured Norman Blake on guitar and mandolin, Vassar Clements on fiddle, Tut Taylor on flat-picked dobro, and Randy Scruggs on bass.  They were among the best in the business and here they were on top of their game.   I’ve heard their playing on Aereo-Plain compared to that of a jazz quintet.  It is hard to believe that both Hartford and Vassar Clements are no longer with us.*

For so many people who played acoustic music, Aereo-Plain gave them permission to try new things.  Sam Bush has described it as a seminal recording for the newgrass movement.  Hartford simply showed how to mix a hip, youthful sensitivity with a love for bluegrass music.

There’s been some great stories and reviews written about the album through the years.  Here’s one on Amazon that hits the nail on the head;

“Aero-Plain” has been called the “Revolver” of bluegrass. This 1971 release by John Harford, preceded the Dirtband’s “Will the Circle Be Unbroken” (presumably the “Sargeant Peppers”), by well over a year. “Aero-Plain” is a song cycle which celebrates the rise and fall the old time music subculture. Ironically, Hartford’s coda to bluegrass was premature, as “Aero-Plain” found a hip young audience. As a result, bluegrass began to morph into “new-grass” and “progressive” variations for 30 years. Producer David Bromberg had as much to do with the success of “Aero-Plain” as Hartford. Bromberg, a fellow traveller in folk circles, resisted efforts to do second takes, or embellish the tracks with overdubbing. Bromberg captured a pristine sound quality with the freewheeling ambience of a back-porch picking session.

On the same site, another reviewer wrote about the impact on musicians:

Well, many here have said it more eloquently than I, but I was a friend of Hartford’s, and spoke off and on to many musicians over the past 30 years and every one, including myself, point to this recording as Life Changing. After we all heard this, we stopped being afraid. It’s that simple. Sam Bush, Tim O’Brian, Pete Wernick, Tony Trischka, everybody that ever played progressive Bluegrass or New Grass points to this Album as the shining beacon that inspired them to take the risks that lead them to where they are today. I’m still trying to imitate what Vasser was doing on this album 30 years later… It’s one of the few Perfect recordings of all time that I can genuinely recommend and say if you don’t like it, I’d be absolutely amazed.

Here’s Hartford and a group of all-star acoustic musicians (including Clements) playing Steam Powered Aereo Plane.  Go back to the Goodle Days, do the Boogie, and enjoy…

More to come…

DJB

*Since this was written, both Tut Taylor and Randy Scruggs have passed away – the latter much too early. Norman Blake is the only member of the original group still with us as of May 2020.

Five Albums for a Desert Island – Sgt. Peppers

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Sgt. Pepper'sThere’s not a lot you can add to all the words that have been written about Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.  The Wikipedia entry for the album is one of those that drives people who hate crowd sourcing to rants, because it probably runs longer than the Wikipedia entry for World War II . (I haven’t actually checked that out, but it makes a good line so I’m sticking to it.)  If you want to read about the echo effects, the engineering, the late night recording sessions, even how that great, thunderous E chord at the end of A Day in the Life was produced – you’ll find it all there on Wikipedia.  And that’s just one of countless articles and books written about the Beatles and this music.

Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band has been a source of endless fascination since it was released, and I was certainly smitten as a young teenager.  This is probably on my list as much for what it represents about my youth as for the album itself.  The Beatles were constants in our house growing up, because my brother and I listened to them all the time.  My first record purchase was the 45 I Want to Hold Your Hand and Steve and I collected countless Beatles albums and 45s through the years.  In some ways, I like the last half of the second side of Abbey Road better (beginning with You Never Give Me Your Money), but for an entire album’s worth of music, it is hard to argue with what Rolling Stone listed as the greatest album of all time in 2003.

At this point you have a right to ask, “David, have you listened to any music that was made after 1976?”  And the answer would be yes, but like those editors of Rolling Stone my favorites tend to come from my formative years.  And for my generation, the Beatles influence was pervasive.  Sam Bush, the great mandolinist and band leader, has cited the Beatles as an influence in his branching out away from bluegrass into newgrass and beyond.  From the other side of my musical heritage, I sang with an eight-person vocal group called Canticum Novum for about ten years in the Shenandoah Valley, where we did everything from Jan Sweelinck to  Benjamin Britten.  So imagine my surprise when our director – a wonderful woman named Carol Taylor who is married to George Taylor of the world-renown Taylor & Boody Organbuilders – mentioned one night that she loved to listen to the Beatles sing.

Anyway, enough of this rambling.  I always enjoy listening to this album and it is one of the few that I won’t put on “shuffle” mode on iPod.

As for the video, the Beatles, of course, didn’t make any videos around Sgt. Peppers.  So you’ll have to make do with this version of Paul McCartney and U2 singing the title song live.  (This, incidentally, is how my kids came to know the song and the album.)   Bono is not quite John Lennon, but enjoy this version anyway.

More to come…

DJB

 

Time Out – For More Albums for a Desert Island

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Time OutThis is album #3 that I’d want on my iPod on a desert island (see the earlier two posts below), and it is the only pure jazz album on my list.

Growing up, my brother Steve was the jazz fan and my father had always enjoyed Teddy Wilson (one of the two pieces he could play on the piano was “Body and Soul” in the Wilson style.)  I grew up  listening to rock and then gravitated to acoustic folk which led me to bluegrass, Celtic, Americana, blues, and the like.  I wanted to listen to music I could play, and I never stayed with the piano or guitar long enough to be a jazz player.  But I’ve always enjoyed the music and have a healthy sampling on my iPod – everything from a lot of Miles Davis to a lot of Oscar Peterson.

Time Out was the first jazz album that really caught my ear, and that’s the reason it is on my top five list.   I was captivated by the changes in time signature and rhythm.  It all sounded so effortless and so cool.  Paul Desmond was a wonderful soloist, and even my untrained ears could hear that he was special.

Amazon.com’s Essential Recordings has this to say about Time Out:

Boasting the first jazz instrumental to sell a million copies, the Paul Desmond-penned “Take Five,” Time Out captures the celebrated jazz quartet at the height of both its popularity and its powers. Recorded in 1959, the album combines superb performances by pianist Brubeck, alto saxophonist Desmond, drummer Joe Morrello and bassist Gene Wright. Along with “Take Five,” the album features another one of the group’s signature compositions, “Blue Rondo a la Turk.” Though influenced by the West Coast-cool school, Brubeck’s greatest interest and contribution to jazz was the use of irregular meters in composition, which he did with great flair. Much of the band’s appeal is due to Desmond, whose airy tone and fluid attack often carried the band’s already strong performances to another level. Together, he and Brubeck proved one of the most potent pairings of the era. –Fred Goodman

 

The album was recorded when I was four years old, but the fact that I found it some ten years later – not to mention the fact that it is still in print and available – speaks to its staying power.

I found this great black & white video of the band playing the signature Take Five.  Enjoy.

More to come…

DJB

Good Food, Good Friends

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Clancy'sI’m in Louisiana for work and took the opportunity to meet one of our volunteer leaders and his wife for an early dinner in New Orleans.  Jack and Mimi are incredible preservationists who enjoy life…and especially the part of life that involves good New Orleans food.  What could be better?

They took me to a neighborhood restaurant named Clancy’s.  It has been a favorite of Mimi’s family for decades and Jack sent along the following review to let me know where we were headed:

Classic New Orleans restaurants fall into three basic categories: Originators, Innovators and Upholders. Originators have been around as long as the trees and specialize in dishes of the same vintage. Stimulated by the originators’ example, innovators create food that in some instances barely resembles its inspiration. Upholders are the bridge between the two. They are created by restaurateurs and chefs who express their passion for traditional New Orleans cuisine by giving diners another outlet for enjoying it. In the process, these restaurants develop specialties. Some are personalized versions of established regional classics — shrimp and grits, say, or crawfish etouffee. Some are house originals such as fried oysters draped in melted brie or cold-smoked fried soft-shell crabs. All are dishes you can find at Clancy’s, an Upholder whose central premise is described above. The restaurant is essentially the sum of the personalities you find in it, from the loosened-up establishment crowd and tuxedoed floor staff to institutional fixtures like long-tenured chef Steve Manning, owner-vinophile Brad Hollingsworth and maitre d’ Nash Laurent, a man whose hand seems to be permanently clasped around that of a good customer. There is no official timeline that marks the spot where a great New Orleans restaurant becomes a classic. Whatever the line is, Clancy’s has crossed it.

Upon Mimi’s recommendation I had the fried oysters covered with melted brie cheese for an appetizer.  Oh my!  How can you describe delicious?  But then it got even better, with a fried soft shelled crab covered with lump crab meat. 

My Southern roots are kicking in.  Thanks to friends like Jack and Mimi for sharing such special places.

More to come…

DJB

Five albums for a desert island: The Circle Album

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I still remember coming home sometime in 1972 — I was a junior or senior in high school — and putting Will the Circle be Unbroken on my stereo. I had started focusing on acoustic music (such as James Taylor) a year or two before, but I was soon exploring more of the roots of folk, which led me to the record bin on that fateful day when I found this record with the funny looking cover by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band — a country-rock ensemble I had recently seen in concert. There was a little patter to start the record, which was unusual in and of itself in that era of over-produced rock albums, with Jimmy Martin commenting on John McEuen’s banjo kick-off by saying, “Earl never did do that….”  But then Martin, the Dirt Band, and their musical guests were off with a rollicking version of The Grand Ole Opry Song. Decades before O Brother Where Art Thou?, there was Will the Circle Be Unbroken when some long-haired hippies and rockers took country, bluegrass, and mountain music on its own terms and showed how wonderful it could be.

Mother Maybelle Carter was next after Martin, singing the classic Keep on the Sunny Side. Then Earl Scruggs (who invented three-finger-style bluegrass banjo in the 1940s) and the Dirt Band’s McEuen played a terrific double-banjo version of Scruggs’ Nashville Blues. With each song, and the informal talk captured between takes, I was drawn in further and further. I know that it didn’t take all six sides of this 3-disc LP to hook me as a life-long lover of this music.

In fact, I suspect that the first two songs on side two clinched the deal. I had heard a bit of the blind singer and guitarist Doc Watson over the previous year or two, but no one — before or since — quite captures the beauty of Doc’s guitar and the wonderfulness of his spirit the way producer William McEuen did on the Circle album. Side Two opens with Doc doing a terrific version of Tennessee Stud that became a signature piece for him for many years. Then he follows it with a version of Black Mountain Rag, where Doc flatpicks the old-time fiddle tune on guitar and shares the solo spotlight with master fiddler Vassar Clements. By the end of that track my jaw had dropped and I was hooked.

Doc and Vassar were just two of the stellar musicians who were introduced to a much larger audience through the Circle album. Norman Blake, Merle Travis, Bashful Brother Oswald and more were either stars (Travis) or guests sidemen (Blake and Oswald) who were part of the project.

I could go on and on about this album (since it does cover six album sides and was reissued as a double CD set), but just a few highlights in an album that the Allmusic review rightly notes, “Doesn’t have a strained or false note anywhere among its 37 songs”:

  • Lonesome Fiddle Blues by Vassar Clements has been covered a million times, but it has never sounded better than the original version here on the Circle album.
  • Merle Travis sings Dark as a Dungeon with all the depth and understanding of one who came out of the coal fields of Kentucky. Many years later at a workshop, I heard songwriter extraordinaire Guy Clark play this tune in a session entitled, “Songs I Wish I’d Written.” It is a classic that never grows old.
  • Doc, John McEuen, and Vassar tear up an instrumental called Down Yonder that begins with Doc saying, “How does it go, Vassar?” and then we all find out.
  • Allmusic says that the conversation between Doc and Merle Travis, where Travis tells Doc his guitar “rings like a bell” and Doc replies, “It’s a pretty good old box — a Mr. Gallagher down in Wartrace, Tennessee made it” is worth the price of the album alone. I have a 1977 Gallagher guitar that I bought from J.W. Gallagher and his son Don as a new guitar. I’ll see Don in a few weeks at Merlefest and we’ll pick right up on our conversation although it has been a couple of years.  “Nuff said.
  • Jimmy Martin — the King of Bluegrass — knocks ’em dead on both Sunny Side of the Mountain and My Walking Shoes Don’t Fit Me Anymore. 
  • Scruggs and McEuen, along with bass player Junior Huskey, fingerpick and clawhamer respectively a definitive version of Soldier’s Joy.

The album was all recorded on the first or second take, and there’s a freshness and presence that is impossible to recreate with multiple takes and overdubs.

This video from YouTube is actually just the audio of Nashville Blues, but you can hear the great production work by William McEuen and the musicianship of players that many would dismiss simply as “country.” No less an authority than John Hiatt once listed Will the Circle Be Unbroken as one of five albums he’d take to a desert island. It landed him a guest slot on Circle II and simply confirmed that the man knows great music.

Enjoy.

(For Part I in this series, see yesterday’s post)

More to come…

DJB

Five albums for a desert island

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Facebook is full of lists – 25 Random Things About Me just being the best known of a recent flurry.  When I was on Facebook tonight, I saw a friend’s posting of Five Favorite Albums and thought, “Now that’s a list I could enjoy compiling.

It took me less than 3 minutes to come up with five albums that I’d want on my iPod if I were stuck on a desert island.  But the Facebook application doesn’t let you say much about the choices.  So I’ll turn to More to Come… and over the next few nights will tell you about:

  • The David Grisman Quintet
  • Will the Circle Be Unbroken
  • Time Out
  • Sgt. Peppers
  • Aereo-Plain

The David Grisman Quintet’s self-titled debut album blew me away the first time I put needle to vinyl back in the mid-70s and I still love to listen to the amazing musicianship of Grisman, Tony Rice, Darol Anger, Todd Phillips, and Bill Amatneek.  The cover of the album (see above) told you this record was all about the instruments and their players.  It looked like a bluegrass-influenced album, but from the opening notes of E.M.D. the listener was quickly dispelled of that notion.  Grisman, Rice, and Anger – taking the leads – were playing a type of string jazz influenced by gypsy, blues, and bluegrass  music that had a beauty and clarity I certainly hadn’t heard before.  At the time it was so unique that it was jaw dropping in its inspiration.  Now, 30+ years later every acoustic musician worth his or her salt can work their way through similar tunes, but the originality of Grisman’s vision in the 1970s reminds me of the breakthrough of bluegrass when Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs joined Bill Monroe’s Bluegrass Boys in the 1940s and a whole new American music was created.

CD Universe actually has a pretty good review of the album and its impact:

“David Grisman’s first album as a bandleader comes flying out of the speakers from the word go, crackling with the excitement of a group of musicians heading somewhere nobody has ever quite been before. Grisman’s band may have looked something like a bluegrass group but was modeled on Stephane Grapelli and Django Reinhardt’s Quintet of the Hot Club of France. Just as Reinhardt hired one or two other guitarists to beef up a drummer-less rhythm section, Grisman has Todd Philips here on second mandolin to add snap to the grooves.

Guitarist Tony Rice had been around for a while, as had Grisman himself (most notoriously as member as member of Old And In The Way alongside Jerry Garcia). But this record was as much a coming-out for Rice as it was for Grisman. Rice’s application of flawless bluegrass technique to more jazz–inflected material sets high standards for the “new acoustic” guitarists who inevitably entered his slipstream over the next decade. Most of the tunes here are Grisman’s, and they are noteworthy for their balance of detail and simplicity. He makes elegant ensemble statements yet leaves room at times for everyone to just play.

The following video is of E.M.D., the opening track of The David Grisman Quintet.  This version is not played by the original Quintet, but instead is a quartet.  Grisman and Rice handle the mandolin and guitar respectively, but Mark O’Connor who played both guitar and violin at various times in The DGQ is featured here in a truly hideous outfit playing some very nice violin.  The bass player in this version is long-time Grisman bassist Rob Wasserman.  Enjoy!

More to come…

DJB

A Night of Baseball Geekdom

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Tonight I put everything on the back burner and wallowed in a night of baseball geekdom.  Yes, it was the annual pre-season visit to Politics & Prose bookstore by the editors of Baseball Prospectus.  And it was a night of VORP (Value Over Replacement Player), BQS (Blown Quality Starts), BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play) and other incomprehensible acronyms and statistics.  It was also a night for a long soliloquy by co-editor Steven Goldman on why the Yankees will be facing a huge decision in 2010 on Derek Jeter, when they predict his bad glove, age, slumping hitting, and a chase for 3,000 hits will all come together the year his contract expires.  As they note,

…famous-player milestones sell tickets and merchandise, but as veterans of the Astros’ “Biggioquest ’07” can tell you, subjugating team goals to the greater glory of a fading star isn’t conducive to winning.  By 2010, Jeter’s glove won’t play in the infield and his bat won’t play anywhere else.  His 3,000th hit will have zero benefit to the winning effort.

As you can see, these guys aren’t afraid to make a prediction.  In fact, its what they do very well.  As the book cover screams, Baseball Prospectus ’08 correctly predicted the Rays franchise-wide reversal of fortune, the tumble of veterans like Tom Glavine, and the house of cards that was the 2007 Florida Marlins.  As much as I enjoy reading the predictions, what I really love is the writing.  Let’s give an example from our home-standing Washington Nationals:

Like the crystal egg from “Risky Business,” the leg lamp from “A Christmas Story,” the tablets in “The Ten Commandments,” or wind in a Kevin Smith movie, Nick Johnson always gets broken.

Priceless.

When I spoke afterwards with editor Clay Johnson and asked if there was anything to like about the Nationals, he said, “Well, I do like Jordan Zimmermann.”  But everyone around me agreed that the Nats could blow it by making this pitching prospect throw 220+ innings.  Given the Baseball Prospectus’ bashing of former Nats General Manager Jim Bowden (printed before his resignation), I suspect the editors would add that his replacement is likely to be an upgrade.  And they like Manager Manny Acta (as do I) but worry that the Nats will never give him a team worthy of his skills.  Let’s hope that the Lerners and Stan Katzan are reading Baseball Prospectus and are determined to prove the editors wrong.  I hope so.

Check out the Baseball Prospectus website for stats, stats, and more stats throughout the year, and enjoy.

More to come…

DJB

Searching the Internet and Finding…The Music’s Over

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This is another of those “look what I found on the Internet” postings. The other day I was searching for information on Clarence White and found this cool blog called The Music’s Over…but the Songs Live On.  What a labor of love.  The blogger writes about musical artists who passed away on that day in history, and he’s putting together a great archive of American music in the process.  He’s also covering just about every musical genre imaginable.  So you’ll find your bluegrass guys right up there with the punk rockers.

On this date – March 16th – in 1975 the great blues guitarist T-Bone Walker passed away.  As noted in The Music’s Over:

Electric Blues starts with T-Bone Walker. No T-Bone Walker? Then possibly no B.B. King, Pee Wee Crayton, Clarence “Gatemouth” Brown or Stevie Ray Vaughan. From his recording debut in 1929, to his passing from an earlier stroke in 1979, T-Bone Walker dazzled his audiences with a guitar style that was, well electrifying. And when he decided to actually “plug in” in the early 40s, the music world never looked back. Many more recordings and tours followed which likely led to the musical birth of a whole new generation of such young guitarists that included Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page and Keith Richards.

Here’s a great video that captures Walker’s style.

More to come…

DJB

Sweet Love

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Candice and I were out at a party on Capitol Hill last evening and had a nice time with friends old and new.  However, when I climbed into bed last evening I knew I’d best set our alarm or we’d miss our obligations at church this morning.

My iPod has a playlist I entitled “Quiet Time” which we listen to as we fall asleep and then which is what we hear as our morning alarm.  We may wake to a Gregorian Chant or Anonymous 4, some Miles Davis or Bill Evans jazz, or perhaps a quiet New Age guitar piece from Will Akerman or Al Petteway.

This Sunday morning we slept a little later, due to the party.  But the wake-up music set the tone for an introspective day that worked well with the gray and rainy weather.

The first thing out of my iPod this morning was John Gorka singing this wonderful Kate Wolf tune entitled Sweet Love.

John Gorka has one of the most distinctive voices in folk music.  I can listen to him sing anything.  But several years ago he took part in a compilation of songs by the late California folk singer/songwriter Kate Wolf entitled Treasures Left Behind that gave him material much better than the proverbial phone book.

Sweet love, don’t deny me just a hand to hold;  I may not always be the one who sees.  I find myself blinded from time to time, reaching out for someone who can take the lead.  And in my weariness I’ve tried to cry.  Although my eyes are dry, I’ve cried inside.

Sweet love, let me lay myself beside you and listen to your breathing ’til it slows.  Long enough to dream a vision of my life wrapped up in the gentle wind that blows.  A vision of a life lived long ago – I see it, though the lights are low.

Sweet love, like the leaves that fall; the scenes go drifting by my eyes.  And I remember holding you, telling you that it would be all right.  You know the road looked straight ahead from far away, but it turned into a blind curve and I’ve lost my way today.

That’s one of those songs I recommend for downloading.  And if you haven’t heard John Gorka, here’s a video from a number of years ago where he sings The Gypsy Life with Kathy Mattea.  A youthful Mark O’Connor adds the violin solo.

The original video posted on this page has been dropped from YouTube, but we’re fortunate in that there is a recent posting of the late Kate Wolf singing Sweet Love. So enjoy that instead.

More to come…

DJB