“Blowing Zen: Finding An Authentic Life” by Ray Brooks (Sentient Publications)

I first came across the term “blowing zen” when I began teaching the Music of the World course at SUNY Fredonia. The textbook I used that semester referred to “Suizen” (in English, “blowing Zen”) as a Japanese meditation practice, in which a person playing the shakuhachi bamboo flute (now just as often made of harder woods, and even plastic) uses breath control techniques specific to that instrument as a means to attain enlightenment, a profound level of self-realization. This stayed with me, first off because I love the sounds the shakuhachi is capable of making, but also because it represented a function of music-making that I’d never considered before.

I should at this point make clear that, despite some youthful flirtation with the concepts of Zen Buddhism, I have never seriously pursued an interest in Zen, and am thus unqualified to critique the book from that particular perspective. My primary interest in this book, then. is the shakuhachi, a flute with an uncommon range of timbres and pitches, achieved by a skillful manipulation of the notched mouthpiece, the player’s breath and head movements, and partial holing techniques. It is an instrument long associated with the komuso, known as “monks of nothingness and emptiness”, itinerant Japanese monks who survived by playing the shakuhachi both for spiritual sustenance and for begging. as street musicians who wore beehive-shaped headgear that covered their faces, the better to deny the ego.

Ray Brooks is an English-born musician now resident in British Columbia who has achieved considerable mastery of the shakuhachi, well beyond the noodlings one too often encounters from Westerners dabbling in a non-Western musical idiom. “Blowing Zen” (first published in 2000, and now revised and expanded) begins by looking at how Brooks discovered the instrument, virtually by accident, while living and working as an English teacher in Japan. It goes on to trace the fascinating path he took not simply to learn the instrument as a casual means of personal entertainment, but to achieve spiritual goals and self-discipline, while studying on a high level with two of the very finest shakuhachi masters/teachers (sensei) of our modern era, the late Katsuya Yokoyama and the still-active Akikazu Nakamura. Brooks’ musical and spiritual journey also led him to witness and to participate in aspects of Japanese culture and the Japanese worldview closed to most Westerners.

Playing the shakuhacki is a very exacting art, with a great deal of tradition behind the learning process, requiring strict attention, scrupulous adherence to the dictates of the sensei, and considerable self-restraint. It is fascinating to read about the arduous beginners’ process of blowing one note over and over before progressing to the next note, a commitment American music students would be too impatient to put up with for very long. Later, students must learn a composition thoroughly before being given the opportunity to begin work on another piece.

The shakuhachi is in some ways an endangered tradition in modern-day Japan, with its highly Westernized culture - albeit a Westernization that clashes oddly with a worldview that treasures orderliness and subordination to one’s work to degrees rarely encountered in the West - that threatens to turn traditional, classical Japanese culture into museum-piece status. Long hours of practice and relative solitude (even when practicing in public places, as Brooks very often did), required to play the shakuhachi with any sort of true understanding, require a regimen which the fast pace of Japanese life and devotion to one’s employer rendersincreasingly difficult to live by. The description of Brooks’ shugyo, a self-imposed “marathon” in which he headed up a chilly mountainside every day to practice his instrument for hours at a time for sixty consecutive days is a testament to his determination to do whatever was needed to devote himself fully to his chosen musical and spiritual paths. (Fortunately, he had the moral and financial support of his wife during what must have been a trying time for her.)

Brooks’ story is peppered with a number of interesting characters, in many senses of that word. We not only get to meet his sensei, but also his translator (a necessary adjunct, though the flutist managed to learn a fair amount of Japanese; there is a useful glossary in the back of the book which I found myself consulting a number of times), people he met while practicing at temples and riding trains (he often went great distances for lessons and practice sessions), fellow-Westerner street musicians and vendors he befriended, Tibetan Buddhist monks he met in trips to India (there are occasional flashbacks to earlier experiences) and so on. The tales of these encounters are very much a bonus, giving Japan and its people a substantial subsidiary role in his story.

One doesn’t need a great knowledge of Zen to learn quite a lot from this enchanting book. One doesn’t even have to know much about Japanese music theory or performance practices; Brooks supplies whatever basic musical/cultural knowledge you may need to understand his story. Not only will an interest in faraway places and their customs suffice as a starting point, simple intellectual curiosity will be amply rewarded. The book works on many different levels, so that no matter what your particular reason may be for picking it up, it will be a satisfying experience. Very definitely recommended.

www.sentientpublications.com

“Me, The Mob, and the Music” by Tommy James with Martin Fitzpatrick (Scribner) /”High Strung” by Mike Rabon (Aberdeen Bay)

Two memoirs by 60’s rock’n’roll stars, both of which offer inside glimpses of how a record industry that was rotten to its core cajoled the young performers we loved to sell their souls and forced them to pay an enormous price in exchange for their few years of glory. To be certain, we all knew that the music business was full of shysters, but here are the gory details direct from the pens of two of the survivors. At the risk of sounding cynical - before you start feeling too sorry for record companies who are losing their stranglehold on our entertainment dollars in this era of copyright infringement via illegal downloads, it might pay you to see what really goes on, or at least did in the Golden Era when fortunes were made by everyone except the voices you heard on the records you bought.

Tommy James’ reminiscences are far from the usual dry recitation of names, dates, and facts. No, Tommy has a story to tell and it’s a pretty harrowing one. He opens with an ingratiating recounting of childhood memories, slanted toward those parts of his childhood that are relevant to his later career choice. We see young Tommy Jackson growing up in Niles, Michigan (not Pittsburgh as has been reported from time to time, though Pittsburgh does figure heavily into a significant portion of his story). He works in a record store as a young teenager, where he hears all the latest hits and gets a feel for what the youthful public wants to hear. He starts playing guitars in bar bands while still well below the drinking age. He loves the attention, the girls, the process of putting a cover band and a sound together.

He becomes part of a regional scene where cover bands gleefully steal show-stopping favorite songs from other cover bands (who didn’t write them in the first place). When one of those bands, the Rivieras, hits the bigtime with “California Sun”, Tommy Jackson wants to be next to grab the brass ring. A first attempt, with a band called Tom and the Tornadoes, had (deservedly) gone nowhere, But with a new band, the Shondells, he records a simple, yet irresistible tune called “Hanky Panky”, which had been a B-side for the Raindrops (songwriters extraordinaire Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich). It doesn’t do much at first, but suddenly takes off big - but only in Pittsburgh. The rest of the Shondells don’t seem ready to tour on behalf of the record, so young Mr. Jackson (still a teenager) makes a round of personal appearances in PA, with such a degree of success that a local DJ takes him to New York to hunt for a record deal.

If this were a typical rock’n’roll tale of woe, it might well end after this brief burst of regional fame. But ”Hanky Panky”’ catches the ear of Roulette Records boss Morris Levy. (Some of you probably already know where this is going, since Mr. Levy has long-since amassed a, shall we say, “reputation” as a wheeler-dealer virtually devoid of scruples.) Roulette had been a successful record company in the 1950’s, the home of Jimmie “Honeycomb” Rodgers, Buddy Knox, Jimmy Bowen, the Playmates, et. al. Its various subsidiaries were a dominant force in doo-wop. But by the mid-60s, Roulette had become mostly a home to jazz and (also on a subsidiary) Latin music, with no pop-chart stars. But when Morris Levy heard “Hanky Panky”, he heard cash registers ringing. He convinces other record companies that this new young singer, re-named Tommy James for reasons that are unclear, was HIS artist. No one in the record industry dared buck Morris Levy.

What happens from this point on is a story best told by Tommy James himself. It’s a tale of deception on a grand scale, incorporating thievery, bribery, tax evasion, organized crime (Levy was intimately tied in with the Genovese family, THE New York Mob family in its heyday), drugs, violence and threats of violence, murder, whatever other forms of vice you might name, it’s here. One is tempted to add “involuntary servitude” to that list, in that Tommy James had no idea what level of criminal activity Morris Levy was exposing him to when the wide-eyed youth innocently signed his life over to Roulette Records. But no one put a gun to his head to sign on the dotted line (though they may as well have).Even so, for all intents and purposes, Levy virtually treated him almost like a slave. While James was selling millions of records, bringing tens of millions of dollars into Morris Levy’s personal bank account, James saw none of the royalties due him. Yet he continued to work for Levy, partly out of fear, to be sure, but also because all those hit records were allowing him and the Shondells to play ever more lucrative live gigs, from which he could indeed make some very decent money.

This really should have been a very special time for Tommy James. He was on national t.v., touring to places most musicians only dream about seeing, accumulating a stash of gold records (which Morris Levy kept for himself), hob-nobbing with the likes of Ed Sullivan (who, not surprisingly, bungled his name on-air; turns out Ed drank during his show) and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey - it all sounds so ideal. But the reality was constant exploitation, mind-altering pills, and the necessity to always watch one’s back in case a goodfella was behind a partition intending to gun him down. The smiling face on the album covers masked a total mess of a talented young man, caught up in a web of fraud and treachery with seemingly no way out. But those few opportunities which might have presented an opportunity to leave it behind were ignored. Tommy James was not simply addicted to uppers, fame, women, and guns, he was addicted to Morris Levy.

There are times when it seems Tommy James is making Morris Levy the primary focus of the book, not Tommy James. But since this is an eye-witness account which doesn’t simply confirm all the rumors which have circulated around Levy for decades, it expands upon them and then some, this is not necessarily a bad thing. James strikes me as being brutally honest about both himself and Levy, and is not afraid to point fingers and name names, even when significant Mobsters are involved. One can only guess that he waited to tell his story until enough people had died to render it safe. The result is a real page-turner of a true-crime story as well as an expose of record business excess at what I can only hope was its worst. And when Tommy recounts the events of his final confrontation and break-up with Morris Levy, the writing reaches such a feverish pitch that one reads as fast as one can to match the pace of the story, then has to go back and read it over more carefully to savor every detail.

The full title of the book is “Me, The Mob, and the Music: One Helluva Ride With Tommy James and the Shondells.” One helluva ride, indeed, and one helluva book. Perhaps not as many will line up at bookstore counters to read this as they did for the recent books by Keith Richards or Steven Tyler, but this would be the book I would recommend if you’re only going to be reading one rock’n ‘roll memoir.
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There are times when Mike Rabon’s memoir is even more harrowing than Tommy James, though not quite for the same reasons. But Rabon and his compadres in the fondly-remembered 60’s garage band, the Five Americans, also experienced the seamier side of the record business, albeit not on the same scale of a Morris Levy. (I’m sure it seemed just as seamy to Rabon and friends while they were living through their nightmare, of course.) But it’s the brutal honesty with which Rabon describes the horrifying life that he lived for several years following the demise of the band that makes it stand out from the rock-memoir pack.

The Five Americans were an Oklahoma band working out of Dallas when they managed to amass five hit records during 1966-67. Considering that conditions under which they had to work, it’s almost surprising that they had any hits at all, much less a #3 smash in “Western Union” and a bona-fide garage-psych classic with their first hit, “I See The Light”. Rabon takes us through his growing-up years, which were pretty normal, and his brief tenure at Southeastern State College, in Durant, OK, where a band called the Mutineers first got together. The Mutineers decide to drop out of school and head to Dallas, where they assumed they could find more club/bar dates and perhaps even make enough money to eat on a regular basis. They promptly began to starve, surviving by means of shoplifting foodstuffs. So it seemed like quite the break when they attracted the attention of Jon Abnor, Jr., A&R director of a small Dallas label called Abnak. (Abnor later became a one-hit wonder as one-half of the duo Jon and Robin, though Javonne “Robin” Braga was the only one of the pair who could actually sing.)

This was where the Mutineers’ troubles really begin. Abnak head, wealthy insurance executive John Abdnor, Sr. (his ne’er-do-well son slightly changed the spelling of the family name) may not have been a mob-connected gangster on the same level of criminality as Morris Levy, but he was a shyster with a capital “S”. He was just as eager to keep all his talent’s earnings for himself as Levy, but he did so with a sniff of legality. (Abdnor did, however, also serve time for tax evasion.) Abdnor depended on the business naivete of five teenaged musicians who were so excited to “sign here” that they did so without comprehending, or even reading, the contract they foolishly inked their names to, making Abdnor their manager, recording boss, and essentially, mortal-soul owner. No matter how much the newly-christened Five Americans (a name they hated; it was, of course, bestowed on them by Abdnor) earned in royalties and live performances, Abdnor absconded with all of it, even the concert fees. However, he did give the band a place to stay, and left them a small monthly stipend to live on as an advance against future royaltes. Of course, they were never given a reckoning to show how much they actually earned, with the result that Abdnor kept them in perpetual indenture till the day the band broke up, and beyond in Rabon’s case.

The entire Five Americans/Abdnor saga makes for fascinating reading, but the truly traumatic parts of the book relate the story of Rabon’s post-stardom descent into a maelstrom of poverty, mind- and body-destroying drug addiction, brutal maltreatment, injuries from accidents, thoughts of suicide, even a failed attempt at becoming a drug dealer, all recounted with excruciating detail that is both hard to read, yet hard to put down. The book alternates chapters - musical career one chapter, addiction the next, music after that, more about addiction, and so on. This structure may seem less than ideal to a chronologically-minded historian like myself, but I shudder to think if the entire last half of the book had been devoted to his post-music troubles. Fortunately, in the end, Rabon is rescued from certain (and very literal) oblivion, returns to college, and works his way into a settled and satisfying life as a teacher, husband, and father. His medical woes were not yet over, but he has managed to survive once again.

There are some factual difficulties with Rabon’s biographical details. He claims to have been inspired by Elvis Presley’s “Heartbreak Hotel” and “Hound Dog” in 1953, and that they were released on the Sun label. Both of these songs were recorded for RCA Victor, in 1956. Perhaps he was confusing them with “That’s All Right, Mama” or another Sun release, but even these were not yet recorded till 1954. He also refers to “I See The Light” as being the Five Americans’ second release, but Wikipedia (not always the most reliable source, admittedly; see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Americans#Singles) lists it as the third. Wikipedia also lists five unsuccessful releases between “Evol - Not Love” and “Western Union”, which Rabon does not acknowledge. Of course, it would have been just like John Abdnor, Sr. to release material without telling his artists, or perhaps Rabon simply didn’t feel they merited attention. There are a number of small typos, which seem to be plaguing small-press books these days, but they do not interfere with one’s understanding of the text.

Both of these books are essential reading if you wish to get a better grasp of what the record business was like in the 60’s, or just like to read fascinating autobiographies by once-major stars. Tommy James still has a healthy career as a touring performer, Mike Rabon is doing equally well in his life, but both have dramatically intense stories to tell. (I hear rumors that Mitch Ryder’s forthcoming book will top them all. Hard to see how, but I’d love to see it!)

“1950’s Radio In Color: The Lost Photographs Of Deejay Tommy Edwards” by Christopher Kennedy (Kent State University Press)

I should mention right off the bat that the Tommy Edwards whose photographs of rock’n’roll, r&b, adult pop, and jazz artists are presented here is NOT the singer Tommy Edwards whose “It’s All In The Game” was a #1 hit in 1958. The Tommy Edwards under consideration here was a very popular and influential disc jockey in Cleveland during that same period, who later became known nationally for running a record store that advertised in the music magazines of the 60’s.

One of the reasons Cleveland established such a vaunted reputation as an influential music town in the 1950’s (which subsequently made it such a natural location for the Rock’n’Roll Hall of Fame, even long after its musical significance had dwindled) was the power of its disc jockeys to choose the “right” tunes to make into hits, their willingness to take chances on new sounds and small labels, and their ability to create tastes not just among their local listeners but among other members of the deejay fraternity throughout large chunks of the US. Keep in mind that this was a long-ago time when individual deejays were free to pick the music they played on the air, and were not bound to the dictates of Music/Program Directors, out-of-town consultants, tight playlists, prepackaged formats, automation and satellite broadcasting. The local DJ was king, and Cleveland spawned a number of Kings, from the daddy of them all, Allan Freed to local superstars such as Bill Randle and Tommy Edwards.

But Tommy Edwards didn’t simply spin records on-air. As with so many other DJ’s of the era, he played host to a number of young hopefuls who would arrive at radio stations hoping to be interviewed live on the air and get their record played on a major outlet. As with so many other DJ’s, he also hosted record hops, which might feature brief appearances by young hopefuls as well. Beyond that, however, Tommy Edwards had a hobby - photography. Thus, when artists showed up at the studio, he would take color photographs of most of them, then show many of these photos in slide-show format at the record hops he hosted, and mail copies of a few of then out to fans who paid a small fee to receive them. In doing so, he unwittingly documented the Cleveland radio comings and goings of a large number recording artists of the mid-to-late 50’s - big stars, total unknowns, and unknowns who - every so often - would eventually develop into stars.

These photographs disappeared from sight until quite recently, until rediscovered by Christopher Kennedy. Likewise, Kennedy managed to locate copies of Edwards’ hastily assembled newsletter, read mostly by people in the radio industry, in which the energetic DJ shared many of his thoughts, plugged the records he liked, discussed a number of shows and club dates occurring in Cleveland - all in brief, pithy sentences shoved together with little rhyme or reason. What Kennedy has done is reproduce dozens upon dozens of these marvelous pictures, nearly all unseen for decades - rockabillies, ballad singers, aspiring teen idols, actors attempting to exploit their fame by releasing records, and so on - one per page, then supplement it with an extremely readable text that’s every bit as valuable as the pictures.

Kennedy’s text is generally written as if he composing it at the time the pictures were being taken, though there are occasions when he is not averse to allowing himself the wisdom of hindsight, and will let us in on what became of these artists in the ensuing years. He will often insert relevant quotes from Edwards’ newsletter, in a bold typeface, so we don’t confuse it with Kennedy’s own contributions. In yet another typeface, he then shares (whenever possible; sadly, many artists have passed away in the intervening half-century since they were photographed) the thoughts and memories of many of the artists as they look back on their experiences in recent years (mostly 2008-2009).

So what have here is a multi-level pop-music-history package here - the photos, quotes from Edwards, text by Kennedy, modern-day quotes by the artists, all well-organized, beautifully printed, and logically edited. There are more lesser-known artists than major names here (though there ARE many of them also), as there have always, throughout pop music history, been more people who didn’t make it than there have been major names. It is both entertaining and invaluable to see them, learn about their small triumphs and greater failures, and hear what they have to say when looking back on their lives. Their photos are sometimes posed, but more often candid. Much can be learned by studying the subjects’ expressions, demeanor, even their wardrobe and jewelry. It seems clear that most of the artists liked Tommy Edwards as a result of their brief encounter. Perhaps more significantly, it is clear that Mr. Edwards liked and genuinely respected the great majority of the artists as well.

Sadly, Tommy Edwards. who consistently claimed he had nothing at all do with payola and refused to accept it at every opportunity, was nonetheless caught up in the wake of the pay-for-play scandals. The era of the local DJ who could choose his own music came to a close, when it was deemed somehow safer for consultants to choose what people would hear, and the Top 40 format came into existence, with pretty much the same music being played pretty much everywhere. Edwards was unable to find a job in radio, so went into the retail end of the record business. Now, thirty years after his death, we have this visually beautiful and historically invaluable coffee-table book to remember him and his era by. This one’s a gem.

“The Sight Of Silence: John Cage’s Complete Watercolors” by Ray Kass (distrib. by University of Virginia Press)

John Cage’s contributions to the musical life of the 20th-century were game-changing. What may less known to the public at large are his efforts in such fields as mycology, print-making, poetry/literature, and painting. Truth is, in a couple of these areas, he was essentially a dilettante, but this book/DVD gives us a chance to see and assess his attempts at applying his chance compositional techniques to the art of watercolor painting.

Cage was first invited to participate in painting workshops at Mountain Lake, Virginia in 1983. He was already in his 70’s, and had no need to break new artistic ground. But his enthusiasm for discovering and experiencing new (to him) things led to what was a fascinating new toy for Cage. Needless to say, his paintings were no more representational or carefully calculated than his music was. The I Ching, which served as the basis for assembling musical scores without the interference of artistic intention, once again was used to substitute for pre-conceived creative decisions. At least this was his original concert, though aesthetic decisions occasionally forced their way into the process.

Cage’s subjects were river rocks. No, he did not paint portraits of rocks. Rather, rocks of various sizes and shapes were selected, placed on paper (the specific paper chosen by reference to a randomly-generated number list) in a position dictated by the I Ching, after which Cage selected a brush with reference to his I Ching random-number list, dipped it in a color of paint chosen by reference to the I Ching list, etc. He then painted around the rock, so we are left with outlines of rocks, which were then painted over using a randomly selected wash. In all, 125 paintings were completed in roughly this manner over a period of seven years. Many are aesthetically striking, while others communicate nothing to the viewer (at least to this viewer). But Cage wasn’t concerned with how the viewer would react to these works, pro or con. It was the process that was most significant to him.

The book covers this process in quite a bit of detail, but not so painstakingly that it becomes tedious. Cage’s fascination with this “new toy” is readily communicated by the accompanying DVD, which is essential to any understanding of this intriguing experiment. The films make visual sense of many points that may be a bit difficult to fully comprehend through simply reading the text and viewing the still photos that are generously sprinkled throughout the book. It’s intriguing to see Cage apply the very compositional techniques he brought to his musical scores to an entirely different, fully visual medium, whether one finds them ultimately satisfying or not. Even so, the longer the project carried on the more Cage began to make decisions based on personal preference rather than leaving every single aspect to chance.

Of course, the “main event”, the reason for this book’s existence, is the watercolors themselves. Many of them are reproduced small-scale, several to a page, but in most cases such a view will suffice. The colors tend to be earth-toned rather than brightly colored, but this seems to blend well with the genesis of the project as a collection of rocks culled from a riverbank. The book’s author/assembler, Ray Kass, was the instigator of this art project, and was involved during every step of the operation. Thus, his text may be readily accepted as the definitive retelling of the events described herein.

The accompanying DVD not only illustrates the artistic process, there is a also performance of an early Cage work for prepared piano and percussion, a couple literary readings, and a stimulating question-and-answer session with the artist. In all, a satisfying document, which allows us a glimpse into “another side” of John Cage from the one we’re used to reading about.

“Musical Instruments Of The Southern Appalachian Mountains” by John Rice Irwin (Schiffer)

This book by folklore historian John Rice Irwin, founder of the Tennessee-based Museum of Appalachia, has been around since 1979, but is new to me. Thankfully, it is still available, as it is a seminal source for understanding the art and craft of non-professional music-making in the Appalachian areas of the United States.

“Musical Instruments Of The Southern Appalachian Mountains” is largely a book of photographs of music-making devices from the Museum’s collection, with explanatory text describing them without organological jargon, and contributing small, but helpful amounts of information regarding their provenance. If you’re thinking, “OK, a book of pictures of fiddles, banjos, and guitars, big deal” - clearly, you haven’t seen this book.

For one thing, there isn’t much here about guitars, because the instrument is a relatively recent (by comparison) arrival to this part of the world, to the point where it is included in a section devoted to “miscellaneous instruments”, along with the mandolin, the jews’ harp, harmonica, flutes, etc. The focus instead is on the long-standing staples of Appalachian music, the fiddle, banjo, and plucked dulcimer (plus two photos of hammered dulcimer, a zither which in the US is more normally found in the further north of the region covered by the book), plus a short chapter on the now-rarely-encountered mouth bow.

But what really entices me to write about this book is the fact that the vast majority of these pictures are of homemade instruments. Keep in mind that the mountain people generally could not afford store-bought, manufactured instruments, most likely couldn’t find them very easily if they wanted to (especially in the pre-Montgomery Ward era), and furthermore, had no intention of playing these instruments professionally. The people who owned these instruments were truly “the folk”, who played music solely for their own entertainment, as well as for friends, family, neighbors. Thus, if the instrument is shaped funny - and many of them are - or made out of non-standard materials - and many of them are - they served the purposes of the people who played them.

Thus, we have pictures of a fiddle made from a wooden cigar box to which a carved neck was attached;, an octagonal banjo, a square one, a cardboard one, pus one made from a ham can; and dulcimers of various shapes, including purely rectangular. Clearly, the assemblers of these oddities made instruments from the objects they had at hand, with no fancy tools to shape or fabricate “proper” instruments. But even those which look like “normal” instruments at first glance often have anomalies of construction which set them apart from more formal patterns. In a few cases, it’s a puzzle how any sound could come out of these rough-hewn products of unskilled hands, belonging to ordinary mountain residents who were simply hoping to make something pleasant with which to pass the time.

This is, then, an absolutely enchanting book, one which appeal greatly to folklorists, acoustic string musicians, folk-art enthusiasts (because in the long run, many of these are closer to folk-art constructions than to “legitimate”, finely-crafted instruments), regional history buffs, students in American Studies courses, and anyone interested in the byways of American music.

The book is 104 glossy pages, longer than they are tall. The photos are in black and white, which somehow seems more appropriate to the subjects at hand than slick, shiny color photography. The publisher’s catalog may be downloaded from http://www.schifferbooks.com/newschiffer/catalog_download.php The catalogs will also guide you to other books on Appalachian culture (not just music) by the same author.

“Preachin’ The Blues: The Life &Times of Son House “ by Daniel Beaumont (Oxford University Press)/“Hidden History of Mississippi Blues” by Roger Stoll

I have to confess, this is a book I never thought I’d live to see - an actual biography of Eddie James House,Jr. (1902-1988). It’s not that Son House doesn’t deserve a book, because he most certainly does. It’s not that he lived so long ago in the distant past, as his most active years as a professional musician were during my own lifetime. No, it’s a case of my not realizing that the interviewers who wrote articles on House following his mid-1960’s rediscovery had spent as much time as they did discussing his earlier life with him. So, we do know quite a bit about his life and times after all. Indeed, it is the liberal use of these earlier interviews that has made it possible for Daniel Beaumont to even attempt a book-length biography on this complex figure from the early days of recorded blues.

Having said that, however, it needs to be quickly noted that these earlier interviewers left some gaping holes in Son House’s life story. His early years are sketchy at best. The period in between his Alan Lomax sessions of the early 1940’s and his re-emergence in the mid-1960’s are mostly a cipher. Even the extremely few events in House’s life during that period that we do know at least something about are shrouded in impenetrable mystery. Beaumont has done what he can to fill in gaps by studying public documents, tracking down what few relatives he can, and uncovering a handful of musicians in House’s long-time adopted home of Rochester, NY, who remember him from his immediate pre- and post-rediscovery years. But there are still enormous chasms in our knowledge of Son House’s life, which will most likely never be filled in.

Even so, we must celebrate what we do have here, since “Preachin’ The Blues” is most likely as close to a definitive rendering of the life of Son House as we can ever hope to get. True, I can’t help but wonder if there isn’t some older Rochesterian who knew Son House during the 50’s and 60’s - even a neighborhood kid who would be in his 50’s or 60’s now - that remains uncovered. But I’m willing to accept that Beaumont has done all he can to uncover whatever facts he could find. Certainly, he has interpreted and arranged these scattered nuggets into a coherent true-life picaresque narrative.

The Son House we meet here is a brilliant musician who lived his life with extreme carelessness. To be sure, beginning one’s life in a small hamlet near Clarksdale in the Mississippi Delta is generally not thought of as being conducive to a life of great intellectual accomplishment or urbane sophistication. House took one of the few “ways out” available to a young black man in the plantation world of the early 20th century, and became a preacher. But his penchant for alcohol, women, and a hot temper proved to be far too much of a temptation. But in House’ case, you could remove him from the pulpit, but you couldn’t remove the pulpit from Son House. He continued to preach informally through his career as a blues singer, dispensing advice on how his listeners should get right. Ironically, his religious rants were always abetted by the consumption of massive quantities of intoxicating drinks.

“Preachin’ The Blues” has a fair number of on-tour anecdotes of this type. But Beaumont also has some trenchant observations on the subject of whether re-discovery and a measure of fame were actually good for Son House, aside from increasing his income substantially. The book opens with his rediscovery, as we witness three young white blues fans poking around Mississippi during some of the most tragic days of the Civil Rights struggle, asking questions about an old black man who was not even in the area anymore.The naivete of these insufficiently prepared pseudo-folklorists could well have gotten them killed. They eventually pick up clues that lead to their quarry in inner-city Rochester. What they found was an alcoholic in rather rough physical condition who didn’t play the guitar anymore, didn’t intend to perform anymore, and didn’t even possess a guitar. Their unmitigated chutzpah in hauling him off to face adoring audiences who were ready to worship at the proverbial feet of one of the unsung greats of a bygone era is rather mind-boggling in retrospect. (Canned Heat fans will be interested to learn about the role Al ”Blind Owl” Wilson played in rehabilitating House’s musical skills.)

The story of the circumstances surrounding House’s Wisconsin recording sessions for the fabled Paramount label, and the trip up north in the company of Willie Brown, Charlie Patton, and Louise Johnson, is another highlight of the book. Much has been written about House’s relationship with Alan Lomax, who for all his valuable work as a folk-music preservationist, always seemed more interested in the song than the people who performed the song. Indeed, I’ve heard stories about House’ Library of Congress sessions that are more colorful than what we read here. But Beaumont seems to treat both House and Lomax from an objective viewpoint, which makes his version seem believable. House’ sad final years in Detroit are treated with sensitivity and sympathy.

In sum, there are gaps, and no doubt there will always be gaps. But what we do have here is well worth reading and pondering. The book will appeal more to the hard-core Mississippi blues listener, who already knows a thing or two about the milieu from which Son House’s music arose, rather than to the average person who once saw the name Son House in connection with his influence on Robert Johnson. But if the book brings that Johnson fan closer to the true originator - well, OK, truer, at least - of the style Johnson is erroneously credited with developing, then Beaumont would have done his job doubly well.

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The title “Hidden History of Mississippi Blues” may set you to wondering at first glance. Dozens of dozens of books have been written about the Mississippi blues, so what could be so darn hidden at this point? That would probably be a legitimate reaction, particularly if you believe every word found on academic library shelves is pure gold, or that every word composed on Alan Lomax’s typewriter was the gospel truth.

But our present era is a fascinating period in blues historiography. Seemingly every assertion that generations of early writers on the blues took for granted, every long-cherished opinion-masquerading-as-fact that served as the basis for the next generation’s textbooks is now being questioned, and many are being thrown out. It’s not that earlier writers were lying to us, you understand, it’s more a case of their making unwarranted assumptions based ontoo-scant evidence.

Roger Stolle, a widely-published blues writer/radio DJ/CD and DVD producer, who runs a blues store in the heart of the blues world (Clarksdale, MS), is not the first writer to offer a “corrective” version of blues history (I won’t use the word “revisionist”, as it has too often taken on a negative connotation), and certainly is neither the most thorough nor the most radical. But what he offers in several of the chapters within this slim, yet compact volume is a short historical look at the history of the Mississippi blues for non-specialists, one which incorporates many of the updated concepts and jettisons many of the now-discredited speculations of the past.

Stolle goes beyond psychological/sociological mythologizing by looking at the historical conditions in the Yazoo Delta region which went into the development of the distinctive styles of Mississippi blues music, the lives of cotton-plantation sharecroppers, the realities of the record business in the 1920’s and 30’s, the juke joints where black Mississippians were entertained by this music, the infamous “Crossroads” myth (which my students still believe to be the honest truth about Robert Johnson, no matter how many times I bring up the name Tommy Johnson, and no matter how many times I explode other aspects of this long-standing Tall Tale; a good myth trumps the truth any day), the role of radio in popularizing and disseminating the blues, and more.

For most hard-core blues historians, much of this book will no doubt sound familiar. But even they should find much of interest here. Because Stolle is an active participant on the modern Delta blues scene, he has perspectives to offer which only an insider can develop. In particular, there are almost fifty pages of interview transcripts, reminiscences and commentary from giants such as Honeyboy Edwards and Jelly Roll Kings’ drummer Sam Carr, modern-day Delta-blues survivors such as T-Model Ford and Duck Holmes, and a few less heralded - though not necessarily less interesting - performers whose names are new to me. Most of the interviews have been previously published, to be sure - though some material has been added - yet they are given a new permanence and importance within the covers of this book. (Digression - the day all information appears online rather than in printed books will be the day we have to worry about losing large chunks of our heritage and understanding. Our knowledge may then become dependent on which websites turn enough profit to stay online, and on which formats this information is stored. Books are permanent, or darned close to it; the internet may not be.)

Stolle’s easy-to-read text is complemented by some well-chosen photographs by Lou Bopp, which add to the authenticity and atmosphere of Stolle’s narrative. In all, this is a very welcome addition to the long bookshelves of the blues, and one which you can trust to tell you the truth as it happened.

The Son House book should be relatively easy to find. You might need to search https://www.historypress.net/ to find the “Hidden History” book.

“Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth” by Dion DiMucci with Mike Aquilina (Servant Books)

“Dion: The Wanderer Talks Truth” is not so much an autobiography - Dion wrote one of those several years ago - as it a collection of reminiscences and opinion pieces.

For the first hundred or so pages (out of 145), he shares stories from his childhood, his early career, his heyday, his lean years, his turn as a Contemporary Christian artist, etc. The stories are told, however, from a different perspective from the way they might have been told in the past. They reflect his current viewpoint, of what one might call a “born-again” Roman Catholic. This is definitely a man who has looked at life from many sides now, and who now feels the need to set the record straight.

With humor, sensitivity, and total credibility, he tells us about the travails of growing up in a dysfunctional family in the Little Italy section of the Bronx. His a father was a small-time entertainer (a part-time puppeteer) who was more interested in keeping himself physically fit than in getting a job to feed his family. We see little 10-year-old Dion discovering Hank Williams, soon taking his first steps into the music business by singing country songs to a big-city audience. We also find him hanging around bad companions, getting into trouble and, before long, falling prey to heroin. Yet he also talks about his relationship with a caring priest, who never stopped attempting to set Dion on the right path.

Some of the most interesting chapters deal with Dion’s recording career. His first recording was designed to make him just another teen idol, and really had nothing to do with Dion’s own style or musical preferences. We learn how Dion and the Belmonts got together, and how the other members managed to steer the group’s sound away from the sheer streetwise doo-wop of their first hit, “I Wonder Why”, to the more polished-pop sound of such songs as their biggest hit, “Where Or When”. He also tells his version - the true story, he tells us - of the flight which killed Buddy Holly, Richie Valens, and the Big Bopper, and it’s quite different from the many tales that have been recounted in the past.

Dion’s breakthrough days as a solo performer find him becoming a superstar with “Runaround Sue” and “The Wanderer”. He reveals that the former song is NOT about his then-future-wife Susan, despite everything you may have read in the past. We find him learning about the blues from no less a significant behind-the-scenes figure than record producer John Hammond. We see him almost stumbling into the song which once and for all established Dion as a serious artist, “Abraham, Martin and John”. But we also witness the downward spiral of an angry and egotistical young man, who made a lot of money and achieved great fame, but seemed determined to shoot it all up in heroin.

Fortunately, his conversion to evangelical Christianity helped to straighten out his life, his marriage, and his career, at least to an extent. But something was still missing, and he eventually found his personal salvation in the same Roman Catholic faith he ignored as a youth.
It’s at this point that the book becomes somewhat problematical for me. I am not a Roman Catholic. However, my wife is, and I have attended Mass with her on several occasions. The Roman Catholic church I have encountered in this manner would seem to be “Catholicism lite”, at least in comparison to the brand of religion Dion espouses. I’m used to hearing reassuring platitudes and mild instruction, not hard-core Augustinian philosophy. Quite frankly, I had a hard time grasping onto Dion’s personal belief system in the manner in which he expresses it here.

But this is my problem. What Dion tells us in the final third or so of the book is The Truth as he believes it to be, which is exactly what he had been doing in the first two-thirds. He doesn’t soft-pedal his beliefs for public consumption, nor should he. He says what he wants to say in the way he wishes to say it. You have to admire that, you have to accept that, whether or not you choose to agree with it. This is Dion as he was and as he is, and what he has to say is certainly worth reading if you want a fuller understanding of the man.