Levon Helm: Electric Dirt

Levon Helm & John Hiatt: the Weight (Live)

“Today, in conversation, Helm can sound worrisomely hoarse at times, but he says that his voice is now more than halfway back to what it was. And he sounds great on Dirt Farmer, which mixes up comparatively new songs, such as Steve Earle’s 1999 ”The Mountain,” with a clutch of tunes he was taught by his parents. Helm is also enjoying a Tinseltown renaissance. He made a cameo in this year’s Mark Wahlberg actioner Shooter, stealing the movie clean away from the onetime Funky Bunch overlord. Meanwhile, Helm’s old pal Tommy Lee Jones cast him in his 2005 big-screen directorial debut, The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada, and the pair will also appear together in next spring’s thriller In the Electric Mist. ”He plays the ghost of General John Bell Hood, Texas cavalry,” says Jones. ”He brings an air of authenticity to whatever he does.”” Clark Collis, EW

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“The opening track, a cover of the Grateful Dead’s little gem “Tennessee Jed” is a fun number that features acoustic guitars, horns and, of course, Helm’s wonderful backwoods vocals. Larry Campbell’s production works well here — as it does throughout the album — giving the song a feel that’s a little bit “Dixie Chicken”-era Little Feat, but without the L.A. gloss that somewhat distracted from Feat’s studio work.

And with “Tennessee Jed” setting the scene, we’re off on a trip through an America that might be hard to find in these days of corporate homogenization — or might not even exist at all anymore — but we’ve all known it or can feel it if we listen down into ourselves.

Helm’s take on Happy Traum’s “Golden Bird” is beautiful, stark, elegiac … and a treat for those whose only exposure to Traum has been through folk-guitar instruction books.

Lightening the mood after “Golden Bird,” is a delightful cover of Muddy Waters’ “Stuff You Gotta Watch,” that tosses away all the conventions of Chicago blues and reworks the song as a back porch sing-along complete with accordion breaks. Helm does the same thing with the album’s other Waters cover, “You Can’t Lose What You Ain’t Never Had,” that showcases Helm’s always tasty mandolin work alongside some really first-rate, understated acoustic slide guitar.

Also nice is Helm’s take on Randy Newman’s tip of the hat to New Orleans, “Kingfish.” With a horn arrangement by New Orleans legend Allen Toussaint and Helm’s crack band driving the song along, this thing is pure chicken grease … the tasty kind.

Adding a little flavor to the mix is producer Campbell’s “When I Go Away” which features some fine white gospel vocals. A simple song, but there’s a lot going on with those vocals. Catchy. One of those songs that invite you to join in on vocals … even if you can’t sing a lick.

Helm seems to spin all this out effortlessly. The songs picked for the album are all smart choices and the arrangements are masterful. The acoustic instruments never get lost in the mix, the horns are punchy and tight, and the drums are always in the pocket.

Credit has to be given to Campbell’s production. While he did an amazing job, it never screams out, “Look at me!” and remains an unobtrusive constant on which Helm can showcase what he does best.” Michael Louis Albo. Sonic Boomer

The Best Muscle Shoals Tracks by Jason Isbell

Rod Stewart: The First Cut is The Deepest

“Here, then, are 10 of my favourite records to have come out of Muscle Shoals – from soul to rock’n'roll.” Jason Isbell, The Guardian

Muscle Shoals Keyboard Legend Barry Beckett in His Own Words By Barney Hoskins

Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section members Roger Hawkins and David Hoo.

When it got to Paul Simon, that’s when it really developed. That was the first time we cut a true pop act. Of course the reason he came down was to get a black sound. He liked what we got on the Staples’ ‘I’ll Take You There’. We cut ‘Mardi Gras’ in thirty minutes, so he pulls out six more songs and asks which ones we wanna cut. We said, ‘This is it, if we don’t jump on this one, we’re losing our chance.’” Barney Hoskyns, Sonic Boomers

Originally Published: 06/15/2009, Rock’s Backpages

Barry Beckett R.I.P.

Tribute To Barry Beckett (Bob Seger: Down on meanstreet)

“As a studio musician in the 1960s, Mr. Beckett played in the band affiliated with Fame Studios, the production house that turned an unlikely Southern town, Muscle Shoals, Ala., into a center of indigenous American popular music. The band, known as the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section and also called the Swampers, split from Fame in 1969 and, helped by the producer Jerry Wexler, created its own studio, the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, in nearby Sheffield.

Either with the Rhythm Section — which also included the guitarist Jimmy Johnson, the bassist David Hood and the drummer Roger Hawkins — or on his own, Mr. Beckett played behind a remarkable list of performers. They include Aretha Franklin, the Staple Singers, Percy Sledge, J. J. Cale, Boz Skaggs, Paul Simon — he played the organ solo on Mr. Simon’s “Kodachrome” — Bob Seger and Leon Russell. The Swampers were immortalized in Southern rock ’n’ roll when the band Lynyrd Skynyrd tipped hat to them in the 1974 hit “Sweet Home Alabama”” Bruce Weber, New York Times

Jimi Hendrix murdered by his manager?

Jimi Hendrix: Hear My Train A Comin’ (Acoustic)

“The rock legend Jimi Hendrix was murdered by his manager, who stood to collect millions of dollars on the star’s life insurance policy, a former roadie has claimed in a new book.

James “Tappy” Wright says that Hendrix’s manager, Michael Jeffrey, drunkenly confessed to killing him by stuffing pills into his mouth and washing them down with several bottles of red wine because he feared Hendrix intended to dump him for a new manager, according to a report in the Mail on Sunday.

In his book, Rock Roadie, Mr Wright says Jeffrey told him in 1971 that Hendrix had been “worth more to him dead than alive” as he had taken out a life insurance policy on the musician worth $2m (about £1.2m at the time), with himself as the beneficiary. Two years later, Jeffrey was killed in a plane crash.” SADIE GRAY, The Independent

Jim Jones Revue: Princess and the Frog

Jim Jones Revue: Princess And The Frog

I’ve seen the future of the rock…. and it rocks and it roll again.

Bob Dylan Interwiev at LA Times

Bob Dylan: Love Minus Zero/No Limit

“Some writers sit down every day for two or three hours, at least, to write, whether they are in the mood or not. Others wait for inspiration. Dylan scoffs at the discipline of daily writing.

“Oh, I’m not that serious a songwriter,” he says, a smile on his lips. “Songs don’t just come to me. They’ll usually brew for a while, and you’ll learn that it’s important to keep the pieces until they are completely formed and glued together.”

He sometimes writes on a typewriter but usually picks up a pen because he says he can write faster than he can type. “I don’t spend a lot of time going over songs,” Dylan says. “I’ll sometimes make changes, but the early songs, for instance, were mostly all first drafts.”

He doesn’t insist that his rhymes be perfect. “What I do that a lot of other writers don’t do is take a concept and line I really want to get into a song and if I can’t figure out for the life of me how to simplify it, I’ll just take it all — lock, stock and barrel — and figure out how to sing it so it fits the rhyming scheme. I would prefer to do that rather than bust it down or lose it because I can’t rhyme it.”

Themes, he says, have never been a problem. When he started out, the Korean War had just ended. “That was a heavy cloud over everyone’s head,” he says. “The communist thing was still big, and the civil rights movement was coming on. So there was lots to write about.

“But I never set out to write politics. I didn’t want to be a political moralist. There were people who just did that. Phil Ochs focused on political things, but there are many sides to us, and I wanted to follow them all. We can feel very generous one day and very selfish the next hour.”

Dylan found subject matter in newspapers. He points to 1964’s “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll,” the story of a wealthy Baltimore man who was given only a six-month sentence for killing a maid with a cane. “I just let the story tell itself in that song,” he says. “Who wouldn’t be offended by some guy beating an old woman to death and just getting a slap on the wrist?”

Other times, he was reacting to his own anxieties.

“A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall” helped define his place in pop with an apocalyptic tale of a society being torn apart on many levels.”Robert Hillbum, LA Times

When the Rolling Stones Discovered The Blues

Howlin’ Wolf & the Rolling Stones: Little Red Roosters

Q:On making a No 1 out of Howlin’ Wolf’s Little Red Rooster

Keith Richards: We must have been wearing brass balls that day, when we decided to put that out as a single. I think we just thought it was our job to pay back, to give them what they’ve given us. They’ve given us the music and the friendship, and let’s stand up, be men, and give them a blues, and it went to No 1. Mr Howlin’ Wolf, he didn’t mind at all. It was maybe a moment of bravado, in retrospect, but it worked. We have been blessed by the music that we listened to, and let’s see if we can actually spin it back around and make American white kids listen to Little Red Rooster. You had it all the time, pal, you know. You just didn’t listen.”  The Guardian

(It’s edited extracts from an interview with Keith Richards for Blues Britannia: Can Blue Men Sing the Whites?)

Island Records Celebrates 50th Anniversary

Bob Marley & the Wailers: Concrete Jungle (1973)

“Bob Marley was a gamble. I gave him £4,000 up front to make the first album. Everybody said I was mad and I’d never see the money again. The Wailers had a reputation for being total rebels and being sort of impossible to deal with. It was simply because they had been treated unfairly. I took the risk and trusted Bob and it paid off many times over. They took me to the studio and played me some of the songs – “Slave Driver”, “Concrete Jungle”. I was looking for rebel, militant music. Reggae at that point was known as novelty music. I wanted to work on the record to make it more palatable for the rock audience. Jimi Hendrix was a model, I felt Bob could be that big. I moved things around, I added rock guitar, synthesisers, and expanded into solos. I needed to polish it to bring in the rock audience and to get them accepted as a black rock group. “Catch A Fire” only sold about 14.000 copies in its first year, but got great reviews.”" Chris Blackwell

“Island is now part of the Universal Music Group but retains such a cachet that its logo still adorns releases by Amy Winehouse, Keane, Scott Matthews and Paul Weller. Next month, Island celebrates its 50th anniversary with a week of concerts at the Shepherds Bush Empire in London, the publication of Keep On Running – The Story of Island Records, a coffee-table book edited by Chris Salewicz, and a photo, artwork and memorabilia exhibition in London, prompting its former supremo to comment: “It was always my intention at Island to make records that stood the test of time, and I’m proud that Island is still a potent force in music 50 years since that first release.”"Pierre Perrone, The Independent

Bob Dylan: Together Through Life

Bob Dylan: Beyond Here Lies Nothin’

“As Dylan himself put it in an interview with Bill Flanagan, “I know my fans will like it. Other than that, I have no idea.”” PopMatters, Michael Metivier