Jazz Cigarettes

1. Burnt out

It was a rock & roll moment in a country & western temple. At the country music awards in 1975, what possessed Charlie Rich to burn the envelope after announcing the winner of the big award was … John Denver? Antipathy towards Denver, or the country music industry? Sam Phillips regarded Rich as the greatest talent on Sun Records. He had spent nearly 20 years playing rock’n’roll, country, jazz and gospel piano – often in the same song – and in 1973-74 he was finally riding high, after the huge crossover success of ‘Behind Closed Doors’ and ‘The Most Beautiful Girl’.

Now a video of that notorious TV moment has been unearthed, and it suggests that, rather than antipathy towards Denver, Rich was riding high on gin and tonic, as well as bitterness towards the country industry. The debate that follows this posting is worth reading, as is the take of his son, Charlie Rich Jr. The incident scandalised Nashville, and did Rich’s career no favours. It’s certainly hard to imagine this happening at an country awards ceremony now, though there have been those awkward Taylor Swift/Kanye West moments. And let’s not forget the notorious Goftas …

2. Those young Dudes

Writing about Th’ Dudes recently for the AudioCulture New Zealand music website, I came across “Th’ Dudes: Modern Music”. It was the first article In Rip It Up about the band, published in February 1978, before Th’ Dudes had even entered a recording studio:

“We don’t want to end up as ‘old farts’,” says Dave Dobbyn. “Right now, we know that what we are doing is good, but by the time we’ve been around for a bit we’ll have lost that edge. When you’re 30 you’re finished. Even if we split now and joined other bands, those bands would not be the same or as good as Th’ Dudes.”

The writer, Glenn Barclay, responds: “A bit arrogant but not totally unjustified. 

3. Pop for Potheads

A friend of mine was once at function with Paul McCartney, and got very close. “He was the coolest man in the room, and he knew he was.” Defending McCartney takes too long when talking to the narrow-minded who prefer a simple, heroes’n’villains take on music history. The Lennonists are usually unaware of the experimental side of McCartney, which often appeared on the B-sides of Wings 45s; nor have they ever suffered through the rebellious Beatle’s Some Time in New York City. Bill Brewster has compiled an eclectic mix tape called McCartney’s Left: a tribute to the funkier and left-field side of Paul McCartney. Why he opened with soporific ‘Waterfalls’ is beyond me, but the reggae version of Mickey & Sylvia’s ‘Love is Strange’ (from 1971) is curiously captivating, the epitome of his pot-for-potheads B-side style. And the slow-groove big band excursion ‘Bridge on the River Suite’ (recorded in Nashville in 1974) could be by Quincy Jones. Leaving out 1989’s dreamlike doodle ‘Distractions’ is only a slight disappointment. The person who has written most about this side of solo McCartney is Graham Reid, in his epic three-part series. The first part is called “Success in the Seventies”. I don’t agree with him about ‘Another Day’ – okay, Roy Carr was right when he compared the lyrics to a deodorant commercial, but the chord changes could come from Bach’s Even-Tempered Clavier. The chorus is glorious, Linda included, but the pause in the verse between “bedroom” and “… chair” used to annoy the hell out of Ian Morris.

4. Tea for Texas

When I was writing the Crowded House biography Something So Strong in 1996 it was this genre – melodic, lo-fi pop – that dominated the stereo. Simple influences, rather than elaborate competitors such as XTC or the High Llamas. McCartney’s self-titled solo album from 1970; Donovan’s greatest hits, especially ‘Riki Tiki Tavi’. Top of the playlist was the Everly Brothers’ Roots album. This 1968 late-career classic stands alongside Sweetheart of the Rodeo as a seminal influence on country-rock, with the difference – as archival audio from their childhood radio show confirms – that these were genuine roots, not affectations. Compared to the Byrds they may have looked square but musically they share the same head-space, with songs by Merle Haggard, the Beau Brummels, and Randy Newman sharing space comfortably with ‘I Wonder If I Care as Much’, ‘Living Too Close to the Ground"’ and ‘Kentucky’. The session musicians are LA’s finest, a Hollywood honky-tonk band filtered through a wah-wah. I just came across this amazing footage of the Everlys performing in Australia in 1971. The guitarist is a stunner, and the song selection shows how the brothers were trying to loosen up their clean-cut image, or reveal what was really going on backstage and after hours.

When the day is dawning

‘Just a Little Lovin’ is the perfect opening track to the perfect album, Dusty in Memphis. Written by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, it works like an overture to the 40-minute emotional opera that is Dusty Springfield’s 1969 classic.

Ironically, Dusty never really recorded in Memphis. While the backing tracks were put down in Memphis at the American Studios of Chips Moman, Springfield herself was intimidated by the setting. A tormented perfectionist, she found she couldn’t record with musicians who played by ear, not using charts. Always insecure, she had her headphones turned up extremely high, as if to drown out her own voice. In 1990 Springfield told me (in an interview for Rip It Up) that hearing the producer Jerry Wexler and engineer Tom Dowd tell her, “Stand there – that’s where Aretha stood” just unnerved her. (I’ve since realised of course that Aretha never recorded at Memphis: her two classic Southern tracks, ‘I Never Loved a Man’ and ‘Do Right Woman’ were actually recorded at nearby Muscle Shoals.) So – oddly, like Aretha after her unhappy experience at Muscle Shoals – she bailed out, and recorded the final vocal tracks in New York.

But what a brilliant song, recently revived by Shelby Lynn for her Springfield tribute album, Just a Little Lovin’. Is there a better opening than, “Just a little lovin’, early in the morning / beats a cup of coffee, for starting off the day…”

This is all a preamble to a discovery recently made, of 60s bombshell Elke Sommer performing the song with a charming accent on The Dean Martin Show. Not so charming is the bibulous host, who undercuts any message the song has by donning his tuxedo and fleeing. Martin did have issues.

Martin himself recorded a song called ‘Just a Little Lovin’ but it wasn’t the same song. Written by Eddy Arnold, it had the sub-title “Will Go a Long Way”, and was also recorded by Ray Charles. After Springfield released the Mann/Weil classic, though, it was later recorded by Sarah Vaughan and Carmen McRae. Now there’s a vote of confidence in a song – and a performance.

Fish wrapping

1. I Read it in a Magazine

Salient – Victoria University’s student magazine – is these days stapled, A4 and 48 pages. It is smartly edited (Asher Emanuel & Ollie Neas) and also elegantly designed (Racheal Reeves), albeit imitative of The Believer. But whereas much of The Believer is unreadable due to its slippery, affected prose, with Salient it’s simply the typography. Grey type on bleached white paper, black type on dark grey paper, and all in 4 point. Don’t they want their writers to be read? A pity, as the content is strong, like much of the student media (see Peter McLennan’s summary of a Craccum campaign about an Auckland University scandal here) – though we are yet to see the effect of the vindictive voluntary student unionism bill. Two items from the October 1st “Power” issue:

2. ‘The Measure of a Manhire’

Rob Kelly interviews Bill Manhire the mild-mannered Superpoet on his departure from VUW. Manhire describes the 1960s at Otago, when – thanks to the university’s Burns fellowship – a few New Zealand writing role models finally entered his sphere (they weren’t part of the English curriculum at the time): Baxter (“behaving badly”), Janet Frame (“scuttling along corridors”), Maurice Gee, Hone Tuwhare. These writers “became very influential, but more as examples of people who had committed their lives to doing the thing that mattered. So it was great to go to the Captain Cook and drink beer with Hone, but also you knew that … I mean, he would arrive with poems and sort of hand them out, and all the local alcoholics would give him advice and he’d go away with a much worse poem than he arrived with. A sort of anti creative writing workshop.”

3. ‘I Moustache You Some Questions’

Chris McIntyre interviews TVNZ’s Mark Sainsbury, just prior to the news that Close Up is closing shop. Is it hard defending his throne against the likes of Hosking and Henry? “It’s one of the top jobs, so people want that job, but they can’t have it … Paul Henry made no secret he wanted that job, he’s now working on breakfast in Australia. I mean, draw what you like out of that.”

4. Must Try Harder

We’ve all made mistakes, rushing to judgement on a new album, film or book, only for it later to be declared a classic. Michael Schmidt is devoting his spare time to collating “Rolling Stone’s 500 Worst Reviews of All Time”.

He actually comiserates rather than scores points as he finds Lenny Kaye dissing Exile on Main Street, Jon Landau underwhelmed by Sticky Fingers, Langdon Winner finding After the Gold Rush rushed (“I can’t listen to it at all”). And Ed Ward, who was often excellent (on the Band, Texan country rock and 1950s rock’n’roll) on Abbey Road:

Side two is a disaster ... The slump begins with ‘Because’, which is a rather nothing song ... the biggest bomb on the album is ‘Sun King’,which overflows with sixth and ninth chords and finally degenerates into a Muzak-sounding thing with Italian lyrics. It is probably the worst thing the Beatles have done since they changed drummers. This leads into the “Suite” which finishes up the side. There are six little songs, each slightly under two minutes long, all of which are so heavily overproduced that they are hard to listen to ...

Ward wasn’t alone of course, in the New York Times Nik Cohn agreed, though not about the “Suite” (“For 15 minutes, tremendous”), and two years earlier Richard Goldstein dissed Sgt Pepper, following it up in the Village Voice with a similarly well-argued piece about the reaction called “I Blew My Cool Through the New York Times.”

Rolling Stone’s response? The managing editor Evie Nagy sniffed: “I say this genuinely without bias, that person's time could have been so much better spent. At least make it funny.”

5. Gambling with Gout

Speaking of the Fabs, I remain to be convinced by Magical Mystery Tour, though the connections with Python are plausible. But just released, by the BBC’s Arena programme, are five minutes of outtakes in which the Beatles buy fish’n’chips while on their bus journey (think Ken Kesey meets Beano).

It reminds me of another fish’n’chip/musician/tour bus story, about Kenny Rogers and the First Edition. When Kenny Rogers couldn’t get arrested, he toured New Zealand often and regularly appeared on NZBC-TV. Circa 1971 Rogers and the First Edition were travelling down the West Coast; it was a Sunday night and dinner time. So the New Zealand promoter got requests from the band and stopped at a local takeaway, somewhere between Karamea and Franz Josef. When he returned with a big cardboard carton, he walked down the bus aisle, saying to Rogers and his band, “Chicken and chips? That’s $1.30. Two fish, a fritter and chips? $1.75. A hot dog and chips? $1.20 …”

There'll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’ is done.

Let them eat cake

Politicians get enough airtime so I am loathe to let them invade this space. But twice in the past week I have come across an extraordinary sight that, to quote Taika Waititi, brought “a little bit of vomit to the back of my throat.”

While going about my daily business, harming no one, I observed two politicians currying favour – or moonlighting – by cooking on a morning television show.

The title of the segment is clever if off-putting: “Meet Your Member”. My first experience was seeing Phil Goff, the leader of the opposition, trying to cook steak. Stuck in one spot, I had to witness just how long this took, and how much talk was involved. Extensive research has revealed he was actually preparing barbecue wraps. By the time they were ready, any guests would have been sloshed.

It seemed curious that this was taking place while the big news story of the morning was the first death in battle of a New Zealand soldier in Afghanistan. Surely the former minister of defence – who was involved in sending the troops overseas – should have been holding a press conference, expressing his condolences? One hopes that this photo opportunity was pre-recorded or, as they say in the trade, something he prepared earlier.

Yesterday I had a second encounter. As with Goff, the sound was mercifully down. On screen, Peter Dunne, hairdresser to the stars, was making a meal out of making a curry. It did look colourful and appetising. When the recipe flashed up, I saw there was something for everyone, it was a veritable polyglot of community interests: potato (Irish), cumin (Arabs, Indians), onions and garlic (French), ginger (Chinese), chillies (both green and red, just in case). But wait, there’s more …

When will Ahmed Zaoui be invited on to share his kebab recipe?

I Am a Free Man

Patrick McGoohan, 1928-2009

Clint Ballard, 1931-2008

Comic hero

1. Ponsonby Graphic
I had heard murmurings of legendary comic artist Barry Linton's magnum opus - a science fiction epic, apparently - so it was good to read of progress, and an explanation, in the latest Listener (27 Sept). It's called Lucky Aki in the New Stone Age, and excerpts will first appear in a Christchurch art gallery. It isn't science fiction, but a "fictional prehistoric geography in which to explore humanity's (and his own) search for understanding the world," beginning 5500 years ago in what became Iraq. Comic historian Tim Bollinger's warm tribute to Linton mentions the sense of place that has always been apparent in Linton's work, especially its portrayal of a Pacific Auckland, and a gritty Ponsonby before it was gentrified. Dylan Horrocks has often championed Linton, who is regarded as a godfather of graphic story-telling by the comix community. He's a national treasure who should get one of those Icon medals, and some cash. Meanwhile, it's worth seeking out the most autobiographical strip that Linton has ever done, in Landfall #180 (December 1991). It's the centrepiece of a special Hamilton issue, guest edited by Alan Brunton, in which Linton looks with humour and wistfulness at his 1950s and 60s Waikato childhood. Horrocks has written his own profile of Linton - graphically, of course, in the anthology Look This Way: New Zealand Writers on New Zealand Artists. (The exhibition is at the Centre for Contemporary Art, Christchurch, until October 12.)

2. Channel Surfing
I am on a D-Day kick. It started with The Big Show, Alison Parr's collection of oral histories of New Zealanders involved in the invasion of Normandy on 6 June 1944. That these are the war stories our fathers never told us goes without saying - they never did - but there is another reason. New Zealand soldiers weren't involved in D-Day: they were too busy in Italy and the Pacific. But here we have first-hand accounts from New Zealand airmen and sailors: farm boys who became pilots dropping parachutists to almost certain death, a radar engineer stranded on the dreaded Omaha Beach, a bomber who survived the Dambusters raid now miles from the action, precisely dropping tinfoil as a diversion. To a man, they are deeply moving. Because they're not men: they're all about 21. To be so young, and watch the doors of the landing craft open, and your peers dive straight into an onslaught ... Parr edits the interviews expertly - some will have required a lot of work to make them flow - and as she says, print cannot convey the emotion of hearing the voices. The stuttering, the pauses. (Related web feature with interview transcripts and audio here.)

3. Dawn Chorus
The next port of call of course was not Saving Private Ryan or The Longest Day, but The World at War, which I re-watched five years ago for the first time since its original screening here in 1974. The fact New Zealand had only one TV channel, and no videos, weren't the only reasons the nation stopped and watched together. This compelling series is still the ultimate example of documentary making, letting the pictures do most of the talking, Larry Olivier providing context in his sparse narration (he made suggestions when he should shut up, though there is the odd camp moment when he should have). The D-Day episode is called Morning and it starts with a shot of an empty Normandy beach, with archival audio from Winston Churchill. He is speaking to the French people in 1940, post-Dunkirk, promising they will be back: "Goodnight then: sleep to gather strength for the morning. For the morning will come." The World at War should be re-run every few years on taxpayer television, but meanwhile it is available cheaply as a boxset from overseas suppliers, with lots of episodes we never saw. Watching it again was another reminder of the travesty that was the mid-1990s series New Zealanders at War: ignorant and sensationalist, even for the arrogant larrikin producer/director Neil Roberts. I hope they kept all the raw interview footage so someone can do a decent job with it one day; the interviewees are almost all gone now.

4. You're Nicked
Staying with the 1970s golden age of television, I was given an episode of The Sweeney. Cultural gatekeepers may be namechecking The Wire, which is indeed excellent: Sopranos without the humour, Deadwood without the swearing, and less violence than both, just credible character and scripts. But what a delight to see John Thaw and Dennis Waterman taking on the crims of the dirty old town in a hotted-up Austin Allegro; the big collars, bad rugs, East End chancers and posh totty. This era has been recently revisited by Roger Donaldson in his entertaining caper flick, The Bank Job. But today I was reading the obit of Harry Challenor, who sounded like a real-life version of Thaw's character, Jack Regan. Challenor was a wartime SAS hero later nicked for being a corrupt cop in Soho (planting evidence). Being a paranoid schizophrenic seems to have had something to do with his courage, and his poor decisions. "I accept I'm mad," he once said. I don't say mentally ill, that's a bloody silly expression. I'm mad and I get on with it."

5. Give the Drummer Some
When a lightbulb blows, you always know that a bunch more will expire within a few days. It's odd, this roll call of R&B legends that have died recently, it's like their batteries just ran out. Two more last week: Norman Whitfield, who wrote 'Papa Was a Rolling Stone' and 'I Heard it Through the Grapevine', and Earl Palmer, the engine room of R&B. Palmer was the drummer on all the early hits that came out of New Orleans, and helped turn R&B into rock'n'roll. His biography was apparently disappointing, but it had the perfect title, Backbeat. He played on 'Tutti Frutti', 'Tipitina', 'Long Tall Sally', 'Lawdy Miss Clawdy', 'I'm Walkin' and countless others. After moving to LA - like many New Orleans musicians, after Harry Connick's dad closed down the clubs - he became a top session drummer, with 'You've Lost that Lovin' Feeling' among his many contributions. His specialty was the shuffle, a primal rhythm that is deceptively difficult to play. The best place to read about him is in The Big Beat, Max Weinberg's fascinating collection of interviews with top drummers. I saw Palmer play once, an old man in a tuxedo, dominating a room full of legends. Also present at the 1994 gig, in an old theatre on Canal Street, was a stunning R&B pianist from the 1950s, Edward Frank. Allen Toussaint put his arm round Frank's shoulders and said, "this is the pianist we all looked up to." He was still playing boogie brilliantly, like four hands taking on 88 keys. The extraordinary thing was, even in his 1950s heyday, Frank was paralysed and could only play with one hand.