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I always thought Chaim Tannenbaum was from Quebec. He was the lanky male presence behind the beloved Kate and Anna McGarrigle, instrumentals and passionate tenor – particularly singing the lead on “Dig My Grave.” Talk about soul: Chaim Tannenbaum, singing gospel. One night the sisters decamped in Symphony Space or Town Hall or somewhere, and Chaim was nowhere to be seen. The sisters sang a song or two before a fan shouted lustily, “Where’s Chaim?” The ladies shrugged as if to say, deal with it. Maybe Chaim had a philosophy class to teach at Dawson College in Montreal. That was his day job. Kate passed in 2010 and the torch is carried by Loudon, by Martha, by Rufus, in their ways. And at the age of 68, Chaim released his first solo CD, “Chaim Tannenbaum,” last year. Never too late. One of his songs is “Brooklyn 1955,” about, you know, Next Year. Turns out, Chaim is from Brownsville. Who knew? We fans thought Next Year would never come, but the Brooklyn Dodgers beat the dreaded Yankees in that World Series and bells rang all over the Borough of Churches. (I can attest; I was in a soccer match in Brooklyn that afternoon.) In this tribute, Chaim strums and sings about the hallowed Dodgers long before pre-hipster Brooklyn, catching the mood of a borough finally having its moment. He’s been in Montreal for decades, and his Brooklyn history is a bit vague: people were already committing white flight in the early ‘50s, and Brownsville is not the total hellhole he describes. But he is right. Brooklyn, 1955, was a time and a place. Stick with the video because at the end the great Red Barber recites the defensive lineup from the 1952 World Series -- my eventual friend George Shuba in left, plus Billy Cox, “The Hands,” at third base. And Barber promises that sometime that afternoon the fans would be “tearing up the pea-patch” in Ebbets Field, one of his signature phrases -- a southerner talking about a pea-patch. In Brooklyn. (Below: Young Chaim Tannenbaum sings “Dig My Grave,” a cappella, 1984, Red Creek Inn in Rochester N.Y. with Anna McGarrigle, Kate McGarrigle and Dane Lanken, bass vocal.) We always remember the first time. Somehow or other, I had never witnessed the live pre-game ritual of Liverpool fans singing “You’ll Never Walk Alone” -- until last Tuesday. Real soccer fans have witnessed it dozens of times, but I must be slow. Bummed by winter, a nasty bug, and the toxic new regime in my country, I tried to lose myself in a match -- starting with two minutes of Anfield stadium performing “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” with perfect timing, perfect enunciation. (I’d seen it and heard it, of course, but never live, right before a match.) This beautiful song is from “Carousel,” by Rodgers and Hammerstein in 1945, at the end of a war that almost took the world down. I still get teary when I see the Gordon Macrae-Shirley Jones movie, set in coastal Maine. From what I read, “You’ll Never Walk Alone” became an anthem in Liverpool in 1963 when fans poured their hearts into a pre-game pop song on the loudspeaker – and immediately elevated it into the team’s greatest tradition. You can read about it here: http://wrti.org/post/youll-never-walk-alone-story-behind-rodgers-and-hammersteins-beloved-song-hope Soccer once again served as a diversion this week. And who doesn’t need at least a momentary diversion in these scary times? After the group singalong – red and white scarves waving -- I watched powerful Chelsea hold off the home team in a 1-1 draw. Rory Smith, the very knowledgeable Brit who is covering Euro football for the New York Times, was underwhelmed by the match, but I was intrigued by the mischievous free kick goal by David Luiz of Chelsea when he spotted the Liverpool keeper dawdling and stepped past his teammate Willian to let one fly. (The keeper’s cock-up, from “Howler:”) https://whatahowler.com/what-went-wrong-for-simon-mignolet-on-david-luizs-sneaky-free-kick-6d830f297dee#.fk9gbxh0w Mediocre the game may have been – but at the extremely high level that Americans can only dream about for our stadiums. Soccer continued Wednesday with a desperate Hull, facing relegation, gritting out a 0-0 draw with underperforming Manchester United – at Old Trafford. As a fan with no dog in the Premiership, I admit I enjoy seeing Man U humbled at home. Speaking of big dogs, the United States is in big trouble for qualifying for the 2018 World Cup in Russia – no points in the first two qualifiers. The federation recently brought back Bruce Arena to try to rescue the four-year effort, before a pair of two “friendly” matches, but the first match was a thoroughly humiliating 0-0 draw with a third-string team from Serbia. In the break between the two friendlies, Captain Michael Bradley – a hard competitor who usually keeps his thoughts to himself -- gave a typically neutral response to a question about Trump’s willy-nilly attempted ban on travel by people from seven mostly Muslim countries. But after deliberating, Bradley sent out an Instagram of depth and thought, including: “The part I left out is how sad and embarrassed I am. When Trump was elected, I only hoped that ... President Trump would be different than the campaigner Trump. That the xenophobic, misogynistic and narcissistic rhetoric would be replaced with a more humble and measured approach to leading our country. I was wrong. And the Muslim ban is just the latest example of someone who couldn’t be more out of touch with our country and the right way to move forward.” Bradley seemed to represent athletes who compete against opponents of all races and religions – far different from the white citizens’ council assembled in DC. After taking his stand, Bradley was rested for most of the tepid 1-0 victory over a reconstituted Jamaica squad Friday night. Most of the American regulars were otherwise engaged in European leagues, so the game served as a tryout for a few spots on the 2018 squad – if it gets to Russia. The match also served as diversion, even while a Washington judge reminded the office-temp President that this remains a nation of laws -- and acceptance. Earlier in the week, I got to hear a live rendition of “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” I can only hope this erratic new “government” does not force the U.S. to walk alone.
The first time I heard The Band, late Sixties, I had known them all my life. They were the music of Canada and the States – the guitars and basses, the drums and organ, the wails and whistles, the trains passing through, the wind in the pines. I knew that music, even though they were just inventing it, four Canadians and a guy from Arkansas. The Band. Now Robbie Robertson, who wrote many of the songs and played the guitar so beautifully, has lived to tell his tale, in “Testimony” -- his new book about the nuclear fusion that produced The Band. I love shop talk from cops and miners and athletes and musicians and I learned a lot about how the Band came together – and broke apart. For all that, I found myself profoundly saddened by the unsurprising lowest common denominators of these five people – the music and the drugs. Richard Manuel hung himself at 40 and Rick Danko died in his sleep at 56 and Levon Helm lived to 71 when he succumbed to cancer, leaving Garth Hudson, now 79, and Robbie Robertson, now 73, in their very separate orbits. Robertson wrote such haunting lyrics but cannot summon up one primal scream about the impending doom of his mates. (The book ends before all that comes down.) And then I wrote. And then I played. Lots of girls around. And then we broke out the white powder that fueled the rages and the withdrawals, the car wrecks and the illnesses. I come at this, having only once held a joint and taken a few puffs, but I also inhaled enough second-hand smoke at the Fillmore and other places to know that the stuff works. I covered the Dylan-Band tour in New York in 1974; I briefly met all of them except Hudson, at other times. Hardly naïve, I nevertheless felt saddened at Robertson’s book. Did all those drugs produce that glorious music, summon the pain and the insight and the chords? Or did those drugs, so casually discussed in his book -- a shopping list of wanton self-destruction -- keep some of them from enjoying middle age, to say nothing of old age? Depends on how you define “enjoy.” It was the age. Robertson lists four or five geniuses he knew who died at 24. Twenty-four. People whose music still stirs me. They died for our pleasure? One of the most interesting aspects of the book is that the most thoughtful, most generous person is, get this, Bob Dylan – who was close to Robertson, often there with a mature observation, a generous gesture. Dylan was a survivor, whose backup band caught fire only to crash and burn. He has lived long enough to show his butt long distance to the Nobel Prize people. Thanksgiving was the 40th anniversary of The Last Waltz, their farewell concert (and catered dinner) in San Francisco and the classic Scorsese documentary. We took our son when he was, what, nine? Last month, three generations filtered into a family den to watch segments of it. Oh, my God, how good they were. I didn’t know much about Robertson, who tells about learning as a teen-ager that he was really the son of a Jewish gambler who died young, with exotic relatives in Toronto including a goniff-uncle right out of some Band songs, who later did time. Robbie’s striking mom, Rose Marie, earth mother to The Band, was of Mohawk descent, from the Six Nations Reservation near Toronto. Robertson was drawn to write songs about characters and flim-flam artists and restless souls, like the Cajun wanderers who leave Louisiana, to sail home to Acadia: “Set my compass north/ I got winter in my blood.” (I quote it all the time about why I winter on Long Island and not in Florida.) Having helped a few folks write their books, I had this urge to pull more reflection, out of Robertson. “Talk about your own voice; why were you not a soloist?” “Slow down and tell us more about how you wrote some of those lyrics?” “Do you think rehab might have helped some of you?” Am I asking too much of Robertson? This is, after all, the guy who wrote and played some of the most beautiful songs I know. Imagine trying to get Mad Vincent to slow down, put down the palette, tell us what you were feeling when you painted the orchards and the stars? So I don’t know how Robertson came to write “Rocking Chair,” about an old sailor who decides it’s time to stay home on the front porch. But I sing it when I am giving thanks I am puttering around the house with my headset on, not at some ball park. It's for sure, I've spent my whole life at sea/ And I'm pushin' age seventy-three; Now there's only one place that was meant for me: Robbie Robertson just got there. I can’t help feeling badly that some of The Band didn’t get to those shores. But listen to what they left behind….  I look and listen for this man whenever I change subway lines at Roosevelt Ave. in Queens. I often find him midway on the Manhattan-bound platform, facing the E and F trains. In quiet moments I hear the melancholy strains of the erhu, a two-stringed Chinese violin. The chords convey the vastness of China, the long history, the pain, the hope. His own story, I do not know. He keeps his head down, plays to the beat from a mobile speaker. He puts a modest cardboard box between his sneakers. I stand up close. His China is not the neon-and-skyscraper China I encountered at the 2008 Olympics in Beijing, after they bulldozed most of the hutongs, the old neighborhoods. I take a few photos on my iPhone. He does not seem to notice. I drop $5 in the box and say “Xie Xie” -- thanks, in Mandarin. He says, “Thank you.” Then my train arrives. They are a matched pair, Bob Dylan in Oslo for the Nobel Prize, and Dario Fo, who already had a Nobel Prize, on his way to the Great Beyond for a reunion with Franca Rame. Dylan and Fo, a couple of troublemakers. Dylan upset the establishment with his macaw singing voice and his confrontational lyrics; Fo upset entire nations with his anarchic words. Which one of them wrote, “Something is happening, but you don’t know what it is, do you, Signore Rossi?” My wife saw Rame, a true survivor, on stage in London a few decades ago, performing a short Fo play about a woman locked in her apartment by her husband, wearing a shortie negligee, ironing endlessly. It was an allegory. After that, we cheered when the United States lifted a 15-year ban on Fo and Rame for their political views. (What, you think Trump invented this stuff?) They were heroes to us for thumbing their noses at convention, and hardship. Dylan was more accessible here in the Stati Uniti, honking on his harmonica, rasping into the microphone, an outsider. I have never met Dylan, exactly, but I annoyed the heck out of him in 1974 when I covered the great tour by him and The Band. Dylan did not do interviews but Bill Graham, the great promoter, slipped me into a highly secure sound check in an empty Madison Square Garden. I mean, even ushers and security people had to wait outside. But I was crouched down behind a chair, observing Zim as he checked out the acoustics and the lighting, uneventfully, as I described in my early space-holder story. That evening, the joint was throbbing, like when Clyde and Willis were at their best. Dylan came out on stage and in a rare aside to the audience, he rasped it was “An honnuh to be here.” Wow! Dylan speaks! That night, after a knockout show, Dylan was back in his hotel suite, perusing the early edition of the Times. He reached for the phone and called David Geffen, the uber-promoter, in Europe, to report: He Had Been Observed. Dylan was so mad that the next day Graham sidled up to me and said he had to tell them that I sneaked in there on my own. Absolutely, Bill, I said. I’ve always been proud that an innocuous little early story could spur Dylan into phone rage. Now he is a Nobel winner, deservedly, for all the songs he gave us. The best description Dylan was written by Joan Baez in Diamonds and Rust,” describing their love affair between “the unwashed phenomenon” and “the Madonna” who was his for free. One of the most romantic sentences in pop music: “Speaking strictly for me We both could have died then and there.” Then Baez sums up her vision of Dylan: “Now you're telling me You're not nostalgic Then give me another word for it You who are so good with words And at keeping things vague Because I need some of that vagueness now It's all come back too clearly Yes I loved you dearly And if you're offering me diamonds and rust I've already paid.” Dylan and Baez, matched in their temporary way. I like to think of Fo and Rame, performing again.  Altenir, Celia and Neo Silva Are Definitely Into the Olympics (The Silva family lives in the Copacabana section of Rio. He is a writer....and a Yankee fan....and my friend. I asked Altenir to write something he was sensing about these Olympic Games, taking place all around them.) "Yes, We Have Problems” By Altenir Silva Rio de Janeiro is a divided city in its complexities. There are two sides in Rio de Janeiro and we can put these terms in a musical context: the sadness of Bossa Nova and the happiness of the Samba. The Rio of "Bossa Nova” is a movement musical that shows the soul of existence of the middle class on the ways of sadness. There's a poem by Vinicius de Moraes with a melody by Tom Jobim, "Tristeza Não Tem Fim; Felicidade Sim” (Sadness Doesn’t End, Happiness Does) that shows the broken heart of Bossa Nova, formed by composers who lived in the South Zone of Rio, a rich region. And there's a Rio of Samba, our African musical heritage, where the music is sung with joy about the heartaches and the cultural characteristics of the place. Samba has its origin in the North Zone and the favelas, which are poor regions, but with a great vocation to be happy. There’s a samba that is very meaningful by songwriter Zé Keti, “A Voz do Morro” (A Voice of the Hill) that says on its verses "I’m samba; I’m native from here, from Rio de Janeiro; I’m the one who brings joy to millions of Brazilian hearts”. Even in different contexts, the Bossa Nova is a softer way of singing and playing Samba. The Olympic Games in Rio are happening on this musical equator: for one side is the image of a city that is all right, but is sad because we know that this city is temporary - it finishes after the Olympics Games. This city is Bossa Nova. There's a Rio of Samba, where the people know that this feast isn't made to them, but they are being happy because they believe that the glee is the matter of the soul. The life is difficult and the smile makes it bearable. The paradox is our essence: the Brazilian smiles to not cry. All the world knows that there’s a breakdown of the State of Rio de Janeiro and the City Hall as well. This real city is out of our media, but has been shown relatively in the international media. Anyway, we have to take advantage of this unique moment in our city and sing the song of Braguinha & Alberto Ribeiro that was sung by Almirante: “Yes, We Have Bananas.” Now the song is: “Yes, We Have Olympics Games," also. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Roger Cohen, who has lived and worked in Brazil, finds the positive side of Rio's hosting the Games: www.nytimes.com/2016/08/16/opinion/brazils-uplifting-olympics.html?hpw&rref=opinion&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=well-region®ion=bottom-well&WT.nav=bottom-well -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Works by Altenir Silva: http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0993971/bio?ref_=nm_ov_bio_sm Links to the music Silva references: A Felicidade - Tom & Vinícius: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RtOLSXFf_MA Yes, Nós Temos Bananas - Braguinha & Alberto Ribeiro: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ou_N7ajW96I A Voz do Morro - Ze Keti: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1DHN0O3ObPA Michael Powell's excellent column on the favelas: www.nytimes.com/2016/08/15/sports/olympics/rio-favelas-brazil-poor-price-too-high.html?_r=0 George Butterworth did not see himself as a composer. Rather, he was a well-rounded musician, who, like so many other privileged English men, enlisted in the military early in what they called The Great War. (I wrote the first draft of this a week before the Donald Trump Heel Spur controversy; of course, I did not serve in the military, either, having had two children young. George Butterworth did volunteer for the Great War, at the age of 29.) I never knew much about George Butterworth except as the first of three composers on a lovely Nimbus CD, “Butterworth, Parry & Bridge” -- three British composers, brought together in a 1986 recording by William Boughton and the English Symphony Orchestra. In my iPod, that arrangement blends into one long summer afternoon in the British countryside, idyllic, gentle, peaceful. It takes me back to afternoons when we used to visit a friend in mid-Wales. I paid more attention to the name Butterworth when it popped up in my wife’s ongoing genealogy study. One of her ancestors married a man named Butterworth in the 19th Century somewhere in Lancashire. It does not appear to be the same family, inasmuch as George Sainton Kaye Butterworth was born in London. His father was an executive on a railroad, who sent his son to the best schools—Eton and Trinity College, Oxford. After university, Butterworth traveled around England, sometimes as a professional morris dancer (there was such a thing in those days) and collector of folk songs. Sometimes he went around with Ralph Vaughn Williams, whom he prodded to expand a short piece into what would become his “London Symphony.” Butterworth expanded on the folk song, “The Banks of Green Willow,” and wrote music to accompany the poems of A.E. Housman in “A Shropshire Lad.” But "composer" was a label he resisted. In August of 1914, Butterworth joined up and was sent to the front, where armies were hunkering down in the fields of Belgium and France. He was made a lieutenant, put in charge of coal miners from Durham, with whom he had great rapport. He was shot once in the Battle of the Somme but recovered and went back to the trenches. On Aug. 5, 1916, George Butterworth was shot by a sniper. His body was not recovered but friends back home made sure his music was written down and survived the war. Ursula Vaughn Williams, the widow of the composer, kept Butterworth’s music in circulation. (I wish I had known that while watching that force of nature, Frances de la Tour, portray her in the recent movie,“The Lady in the Van.” ) “The Banks of Green Willow” has come to represent the people who died in the Great War. There is a Butterworth B&B in the French countryside, not far from where George Butterworth fell, a century ago, Aug. 5, 1916.
George Butterworth did not see himself as a composer. Rather, he was a well-rounded musician, who, like so many other privileged English men, enlisted in the military early in what they called The Great War. (I wrote the first draft of this a week before the Donald Trump Heel Spur controversy; of course, I did not serve in the military, either, having had two children young. George Butterworth did volunteer for the Great War, at the age of 29.) I never knew much about George Butterworth except as the first of three composers on a lovely Nimbus CD, “Butterworth, Parry & Bridge” -- three British composers, brought together in a 1986 recording by William Boughton and the English Symphony Orchestra. In my iPod, that arrangement blends into one long summer afternoon in the British countryside, idyllic, gentle, peaceful. It takes me back to afternoons when we used to visit a friend in mid-Wales. I paid more attention to the name Butterworth when it popped up in my wife’s ongoing genealogy study. One of her ancestors married a man named Butterworth in the 19th Century somewhere in Lancashire. It does not appear to be the same family, inasmuch as George Sainton Kaye Butterworth was born in London. His father was an executive on a railroad, who sent his son to the best schools—Eton and Trinity College, Oxford. After university, Butterworth traveled around England, sometimes as a professional morris dancer (there was such a thing in those days) and collector of folk songs. Sometimes he went around with Ralph Vaughn Williams, whom he prodded to expand a short piece into what would become his “London Symphony.” Butterworth expanded on the folk song, “The Banks of Green Willow,” and wrote music to accompany the poems of A.E. Housman in “A Shropshire Lad.” But "composer" was a label he resisted. In August of 1914, Butterworth joined up and was sent to the front, where armies were hunkering down in the fields of Belgium and France. He was made a lieutenant, put in charge of coal miners from Durham, with whom he had great rapport. He was shot once in the Battle of the Somme but recovered and went back to the trenches. On Aug. 5, 1916, George Butterworth was shot by a sniper. His body was not recovered but friends back home made sure his music was written down and survived the war. Ursula Vaughn Williams, the widow of the composer, kept Butterworth’s music in circulation. (I wish I had known that while watching that force of nature, Frances de la Tour, portray her in the recent movie, “The Lady in the Van.” ) “The Banks of Green Willow” has come to represent the people who died in the Great War. There is a Butterworth B&B in the French countryside, not far from where George Butterworth fell, a century ago, Aug. 5, 1916.
It was December of 1973 and New York still had an AM country music station and I was writing about the Long Island suburbs but thinking about Appalachia, where I used to work.
Three years earlier, I had been at the Hyden mine disaster, Dec, 30, 1970, when 38 men were blown to Kingdom Come, which remains just about the saddest event I ever covered. Now, back home in New York, I was still thinking about Eastern Kentucky and West Virginia, and the country station was playing a lot of Merle Haggard, singing “If We Make It Through December.” One of his lines is: “Just got laid off down at the factory,” which means he cannot afford presents for his little girl. Sure, it's a tear-jerker, but that's what country is, or should be. The song hits a universal theme -- parents wanting to provide for their children; in Appalachia I saw a lot of people living at the margins, and the song cut deep. That’s my major impression of Merle Haggard, who died Wednesday on his 79th birthday, a balladeer of the working class and hard-living men and long-suffering women. He was what country used to be, before it turned slick and uptown on us. I never met Haggard when I was privileged enough to wander around backstage at the Ryman Auditorium in funky downtown Nashville and chat casually with Johnny Cash and June Carter and Bobby Bare and Roy Acuff and Minnie Pearl. Haggard was probably out on the road, living up to the label of outlaw, and doing a good job of it. As Don Cusic notes in his fine book, “Discovering Country Music," Haggard was a symbol of the outsider, the working class, an American type, then and now, writing “Okie From Muskogee,” a defiant celebration of otherness. When I helped Barbara Mandrell write her book, "Get to the Heart," she noted that she did not cover Dolly Parton or Loretta Lynn or Tammy Wynette's "Stand By Your Man," but that she loved performing Haggard's "Okie From Muskogee." (Mandrell noted that Haggard and other men got away with romanticizing the double standard in cheatin' songs.) In this primary season, politicians exploit resentments galore but don't talk often enough about the economic inequities, the stacked deck, the rich getting richer, the great people who pay off politicians and park much of their money offshore, so it cannot possibly trickle down to people who just got laid off down at the factory. It’s early March. It’s New York. It rained overnight and now it’s getting windy. The baseball games are starting down south. I found myself humming “Waters of March,” sung by Susannah McCorkle, with her English lyrics: “It’s the promise of life/ It’s the joy in your heart.” But wait: when Antonio Carlos Jobim wrote that song, in Portuguese, he was talking about March in Brazil, in the Southern Hemisphere. I checked with my friend Altenir Silva, film-writer, who lives in Rio, not far from the Tom Jobim statue. Altenir said the Portuguese lyrics mean, “It’s the rest of a bush in the morning light,” and he added, “Yes, March is a rainy month in Brazil.” Turns out, Jobim was caught in a major rainstorm, in the interior, far from the beaches of Ipanema. Apparently, McCorkle wrote the English version around 1993, giving it a northern take. She was a linguist, who sang in English, Portuguese and Italian, and a writer, published in magazines and working on a memoir when she committed suicide on May 19, 2001 at the age of 55. Her obituary was lovingly written by Leon Wieseltier in the June 4, 2001, edition of The New Yorker. McCorkle’s version of “Waters of March,” with terrific guitar backup by Howard Alden, survives her, as recorded music does. My friend Altenir followed up by sending me a version by Elis Regina, probably the most popular Brazilian pop singer when she died on Jan., 19, 1982, at 36, of an overdose. This sadness from both hemispheres is diluted by the music they left behind, the music of water, the rush of life, the little things we see and hear and feel, the things we take for granted: -- “a stick, a stone.” “É pau, é pedra.” McCorkle could have added a stanza about spring training. A bat, a ball, a glove, a cap. “It’s the promise of life/ It’s the joy in your heart.”  Florence Beatrice Price (1887-1953) It is Black History Month, which means I always learn something. This Black History Month has caused me to re-think my position on the first woman, or women, who should be on an American bill. But first: Three years ago, Terrance McKnight of WQXR-FM did a documentary on a composer I had never heard of, Florence B. Price. The other night, PBS ran a visual documentary on Price, and by now her music was more familiar to me, ranging from traditional classical to black gospel. One of the experts (mostly black, via Arkansas Public Television) compared her to one of my favorites, Antonin Dvorak, who used folk music (in the deepest sense of the phrase) of two worlds, Bohemia and America. Artists generally have it hard, but black artists have it harder. The PBS documentary showed how Price was inspired by classical music but segregation and economics held her back. She always had to be double good. (Sound familiar?) In one pathetic episode, already accomplished, Price wrote a letter to Serge Koussevitzky, the legendary director of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, asking to compose for him, and she felt the need to call attention to being “Colored.” He never wrote back. Yet she had her triumphs. Mainstream conductors and critics and performers took her seriously, notably in her adopted home town of Chicago. In one of the great moments in American history, Marian Anderson performed at the Mall in front of the Lincoln Memorial, April 9, 1939, after Eleanor Roosevelt had forced the issue. Anderson sang a hymn by Florence B. Price, her friend. In the Arkansas documentary, an elderly black woman recalls, half a century later, being young and seeing a black woman singing to 75,000 people. The old lady daubs her eyes with a handkerchief. I bet you will, too. How hard it was, how hard it is, to be black in America. Just look at the dignity of people who have been poisoned in Flint, Mich., because of the incompetent and heartless regime of a latter-day plantation massa, Gov. Rick Snyder. But there are triumphs. Look at the lovely front-page photo of President Obama, speaking at a mosque in Baltimore, calling for a cessation of prejudice, as children smile in awe. We have seen those smiles on black service members when Obama visits the troops and on black citizens when Obama goes out in public. So there is that. But Black History Month reminds us how hard America has been on any black who aspired. That is why I am wavering in my position that Eleanor Roosevelt should be on a bill. I think she may be the greatest woman yet produced by the U.S.A., but her greatness may have been in her advocacy of the underprivileged, for people of all colors. Now I think the next bill (lose Andrew Jackson off the 20, not Alexander Hamilton off the 10) should be a tribute to the great women of color in America. Who? How many? I leave that to historians. But when that glorious bill arrives, somebody should play the classical music of Florence B. Price. Below: The multitalented Terrance McKnight accompanies Erin Flannery in “To My Little Son,” by Florence B. Price:
It’s bad enough to have nihilists around the world blowing things up after their own systems failed. But what accounts for apocalyptic behavior in the United States? This is no news that Donald Trump is proposing things right out of the dictator playbook, even citing the one really unpleasant thing Franklin Delano Roosevelt did – internment of Japanese-Americans. Trump doesn’t even know how widely that is condemned, by people who admire FDR. He doesn’t know much, which is his appeal to a generation dumbed down by reality shows with sneering hosts. I grew up near Trump in Queens. People tell me he was a nasty little kid. Still is. But he has terroristic help from the Republicans he scorns: Carly Fiorina made public comments about dissecting embryos for “baby parts.” This has been proven untrue. Tell that to the crazed hermit who killed three people at a Planned Parenthood site in Colorado. I haven’t heard Fiorina apologize for inciting the brute. The main New Hampshire newspaper endorsed Chris Christie in that state’s primary. At least it wasn’t Trump. But I heard the paper’s editorial writer explaining what a fine leader Christie is. He had no idea that New Jersey is doing terribly financially, and he did not seem to know about the bridge scandal -- people in Christie’s circle backing up the George Washington Bridge. Isn’t that terrorism? What would happen if Christie were elected – from the clink? Finally, Lindsey Graham is urging Republicans to take back their party from the unwashed interloper. That’s nice. But Graham and the “establishment” is coming off nearly seven years of overt sabotage to the President and the government. The motivation was more than politics. It was racial. They could not stomach a smart man with African-American roots as President. Graham and his pals facilitated Donald Trump. Isn't that terrorism? This just in: a sweet example of Graham saying nice things about Joe Biden, as forwarded by my political friend, George Mitrovich: * * * https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/mitrovich-baseball-notes/HGgHFL8Cq5U * * * Here’s a song from the Prophet Iris -- Iris DeMent: "Wasteland of the Free:"  Somewhere in East Tennessee They were heading from Lexington to Chattanooga when the clouds lowered. When I spent a lot of time in the mountains, I loved to watch pockets of fog nestled in the hollows (pronounced "hollers.") Anjali noticed them, too. I would have posted the classic 1972 recording of "Rolling Fog" on the "Dobro" album by the Seldom Scene, with Mike Auldridge, but I couldn't seem to locate a single. So here is one of America's musical treasures (never mind the glitz), Dolly Parton, singing about East Tennessee.  Andy Aledort, in concert, Port Washington, June 2 Is it true that inside every band musician there is a superstar looking to break free? “We all feel that way, if we had our druthers,” said Andy Aledort, the blues guitarist who will be part of a concert at the Landmark on Main Street in Port Washington, Long Island, on June 2 – The SideMen With the Uptown Horns. Aledort then added the practical side of the blues – “It’s hard to make money.” So you do what you can. He is a thoughtful musician who has played for Dickey Betts and Double Trouble and Buddy Guy and in Jimi Hendrix tribute shows. He also transcribes classic riffs and teaches guitar (to Paul Allen, just to drop a name) and writes about music. His experience in the industry has taught him that winning teams must have rebounders, passers and defenders as well as stars firing 3-point shots. “Just as an aside, a few years ago I went to an astrologist, Bob Cook, who looked at my chart and told me, without knowing anything about my life or career, that I was the type of person that was happier helping others to ‘shine’ without striving for the spotlight myself, and this is definitely borne out by the many things I’ve done on and off stage.” In recent months I have been reminded of the talent that backs up the stars. I went to the Landmark – where all three of our children went to elementary school -- to see two of my favorite singers, Kathy Mattea and Iris DeMent. Sitting up front, I was transfixed by the guitar riffs that made the stars even better. (I wish I had taken names of the two pickers, but afterward I did get to tell both of them how terrific they were.) On June 2, the same Landmark on Main Street will welcome to a whole concert of sidemen – Aledort, plus Audley Freed (Cry Of Love, Black Crowes, Jimmy Page, Sheryl Crow), bassist Andy Hess (Black Crowes, Gov't Mule, John Scofield), singer/keyboardist Mike Dimeo (Deep Purple, Riot, Bonnie Tyler, Tommy James), drummer Shawn Murray (Mink Deville, John Hammond, Mick Taylor), bassist Dennis Metzler, and singer JP Patrick. They will be joined by the Uptown Horns, who have backed up The Rolling Stones, James Brown and Bruce Springsteen and, yes, B.B. King. For information on the event at 7:30 PM, please see: http://www.landmarkonmainstreet.org/event.cfm?id=245 The SideMen concept is the brainchild of Bill Willets who works with Louis Rosano of Louis Electric Amps in New Jersey. Willets recently organized the first Sidemen concert in Ramsey, N.J., and sold out the place – and is bringing accomplished musicians to my town on June 2, with another concert scheduled for Teaneck, N.J., on June 4. Aledort, 59, grew up in nearby Little Neck and at the age of 8 he and a few pals began riding their bikes up and down the hills to Port Washington to ogle the wares at the legendary Ghost Motorcycles – by coincidence, next door to the Main Street School. He studied guitar under the legendary teacher Joe Monk of Great Neck and lives in nearby Sea Cliff with his wife Tracey Aledort, who runs Forest Books in Locust Valley, and their children, Rory and Wyatt. For a while, Aledort did 50-80 shows a year with Dickey Betts (who came up with the Allman Brothers Band) but Aledort says life on a band bus “is like being on a chain gang.” Hence, he tries to stay close to home, but the blues are always the blues. (Below: Aledort gives a little primer on the blues.) Looking for a poem about work, for my visit to a New York high school, I came across “Let America Be America Again,” by Langston Hughes. It is as contemporary as the current flap over Rudolph Giuliani’s comments about President Obama. The President, a graceful writer, has often talked about his love for America, as it is, as it could be. Giuliani, particularly disappointingly for a New Yorker, deliberately overlooks the President’s body of work. Langston Hughes, writing in a time of lynching and outright segregation, begins his poem this way: Let America be America again. Let it be the dream it used to be. Let it be the pioneer on the plain Seeking a home where he himself is free. (America never was America to me.) Hughes then touches on the aspirations in this country: I am the poor white, fooled and pushed apart, I am the Negro bearing slavery's scars. I am the red man driven from the land, I am the immigrant clutching the hope I seek-- And finding only the same old stupid plan Of dog eat dog, of mighty crush the weak. But near the end, Hughes raises what sounds to me like a prayer of hope: O, let America be America again-- The land that never has been yet-- And yet must be--the land where every man is free. The land that's mine--the poor man's, Indian's, Negro's, ME-- Who made America, Whose sweat and blood, whose faith and pain, Whose hand at the foundry, whose plow in the rain, Must bring back our mighty dream again. The high-school class I visited had mature young people from other lands -- young women in head scarves, several young men from Asia, a young woman from Mexico about to begin an internship, a young woman from Ecuador who in two years has learned to speak English almost perfectly. It’s Black History Month. I wanted them to share the hope I feel when I listen to President Obama, the hope I feel when I listen to Langston Hughes. The poem: http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/let-america-be-america-again/ On Tuesday, Feb. 24 at 9 PM, Terrance McKnight will host a show about the pianist Hazel Scott on WQXR-FM. http://www.wqxr.org/#!/series/black-history-month-2015/ And as a bonus, here is “I’ve Known Rivers,” a jazz version of Hughes’ poem, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers,” performed by Gary Bartz: 
The train ride to posterity.
The two of us, whacked by a cold, missed a nice party on New Year’s Eve.
Younger people staying home would line up DVDs or Netflix or something streaming. We played clicker roulette, with my only resolution to avoid the rancid pairing of Kathy Griffin and Anderson Cooper. (He is out; the joke never did work, people.) There was a rather classy concert by the New York Philharmonic on PBS – jazz and an orchestra. Then I started clicking. Four slender lads were running around a field, hair flopping in the breeze, coping with a grumpy old man with an overbite who kept insisting he was, at least, clean. Grandfather McCartney. Suddenly it was 1964 all over again. I did not pay much attention to the Beatles at first but one morning I was listening to one of my favorite disk jockeys, William B. Williams, on “W-N-E-W, 11-three-oh on your dial,” as the jingle went. William B, was normally cool – a champion of Nat Cole, Ella Fitzgerald, Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett and Peggy Lee – but that morning he was denouncing a quartet of moppy-maned Brits for desecrating the air waves. He was so angry that he broke the Beatles’ new vinyl record, right on the air. I could hear shards clattering into the waste-paper basket. Geez, what was threatening William B? One night that fall we lined up a baby-sitter and caught Hard Day’s Night. There they were, cheeky lads, goofing on people, minding Paul’s cantankerous grandpa, being pursued by girls, always in motion. We were smitten in 1964, and we were smitten again on New Year’s Eve, mostly by the music, but also by the understated irony. Who will ever forget the glum lament by Ringo in Yellow Submarine, stuck at the bottom of the ocean, speaking in flat Liverpool dialect: “I want me mum.” Or the agitator that was my favorite Beatle, John Lennon, putting Paul’s grandfather in his place in Hard Day’s Night: John: You know your trouble, you should have gone west to America. You would have been a senior citizen of Boston. But you took a wrong turn, and what happened? You're a lonely old man from Liverpool. Grandfather: [Sour] But I'm clean. John: [Cheerful cynicism] Are you? The lads ace their television appearance but their reward is not the birds of London but an update from management: “They think it'd be better if we pushed straight to Wolverhampton.” And that’s where the movie ends. Two people home with a cold clickered around and found Jennifer Lopez and Taylor Swift conducting contemporary pop concerts with the charmless intensity of a new year’s resolution workout. My wife delivered her critique: “The last 50 years, eat your heart out.” Happy New Year.  Antonio Carlos Jobim and Neo Silva/ Photo by Altenir Silva On a warm day last May, Neo Silva was baptized in a glorious Italian church on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village, in the presence of his parents, Celia and Altenir. Seven-plus months later, in summer in Rio, Neo encounters the new statue of Antonio Carlos Jobim near the beach in Ipanema. No matter what hemisphere you are in, Feliz Ano Novo, with special thanks to Brazil for being the permanent heart and soul of Jogo Bonito, the beautiful game, and the source of Tom Jobim and La Garota de Ipanema. Wanna feel warm?  These are poems about a priest abusing a boy, a number of boys. Norbert Krapf, recently the poet laureate of Indiana, held it inside for half a century, before a spiritual advisor suggested he deal with it. He then did what an artist does. He created something else, something different. Think of it as a stage. (This is my conceit, not the author’s.) On the stage is a boy, still reeling from what happened so long ago, and an older man, who has been living a productive life, despite what happened. With his back to the audience, mute and distant for a long and heavy time, is the priest himself. And then there is Mr. Blues. "Okay, you got some mean and nasty stuff in your past. "I admit you got some mean and nasty stuff in your past. "My mama used to say, 'Son, let go of that bitter sass.!'" -- Mr. Blues Sings Yes Mr. Blues is the friend we all want to ride shotgun on the journey of our lives. He is the third part of the Freudian trinity, who sees clearly, speaks the truth, does not let things rest. (Krapf told me he did not create Mr. Blues but rather Mr. Blues just began speaking one day.) Mr. Blues prods the boy and the man to reconcile, to look again at what went down in rural southern Indiana, when the home-town priest asked altar boys to stay over at the rectory on the night before Sunday Mass, and also took them hunting, was a pillar of the community, and over the years he violated some but not others. Many people knew, but not everybody. The boy and the man are still working that out, five decades later. Why couldn’t they tell anybody? (One boy told his father, who beat him up, but not the priest.) Krapf used to teach at C.W. Post College on Long Island. I first heard about him in 2003, from three Navajo women from the Southwest who had been recruited to play volleyball, and who raved about Krapf for initiating them into poetry as part of the fine education they were receiving at Post. Krapf moved home to Indianapolis after that. We still have never met, although I wrote a column about him and the frontier between Bears fans and Colts fans in northern Indiana, before Super Bowl XLI in 2007. Krapf sings blues and jazz around Indiana, and loves to reminisce about the hills and farms of southern Indiana, just north of the Ohio River, a region I learned to love in my days in Louisville. Now Krapf has written poems about a different corner of his childhood. The man wonders what he could have done to heal some of the pain of the boy, and Mr. Blues hectors them to meet in the middle, to get it out. The reality is as current as Pope Francis meeting with six victims of priest abuse in early July. By now, we all know what happened, in so many places. Late in the book, there is a rustling on the hypothetical stage. It takes a long time for the priest to speak, but ultimately he does, beginning with a terse warning to the boy. Let us say he is not contrite. (Krapf notes in the preface that his therapist urged him to include the priest in these poems. Good instinct. It works in the context, and I suspect it worked for Krapf, also.) I am not qualified to critique poetry, Krapf’s use of three-line stanzas, blues cadence, repetition with slight variation, slang, familiarity, child-like observations of the living past. I only know that I read Catholic Boy Blues in two huge chunks, wondering how it would turn out. I was reminded of the aside that Nina Simone hurls at the audience in her epic song, “Mississippi Goddam:” “This is a show tune/ But the show hasn’t been written for it, yet.” Never was, to my knowledge. But the aside lives. Most of us think we have read and heard everything we need to know about priest abuse, but up to now we had not heard Norbert Krapf take it on. * * * Catholic Boy Blues. By Norbert Krapf. Introduction by Matthew Fox. 2014. Greystone Publishing LLC. Nashville, Tennessee. www.greystonepublishing.com. On July 15, it was announced that Krapf has been selected as the regional winner of the 2014 Eugene & Marilyn Glick Indiana Authors Award. He and a colleague plan to hold workshops about writing about difficult relationships. For more information: http://www.krapfpoetry.com/  Norbert Krapf, right, with Gordon Bonham 
And I'll wake up and find that my faults have been forgiven/ And that's when I'll start living/ When my mornin' comes around -- Iris DeMent
Iris DeMent has a better home-run ratio than Babe Ruth.
She has issued only a handful of albums, as we still call them, containing some of the most profound songs ever written, ever sung – “Our Town,” “My Life,” "No Time to Cry, and “When My Morning Comes Around," which is more than a song, it is a hymn. I have raved about her before, The Prophet Iris and her song "Living in the Wasteland of the Free," never more relevant. DeMent does not come around that often, but she is currently wending her way toward Port Washington, Long Island. On Saturday at 8 PM, she will appear at the Landmark on Main Street. to be introduced by John Platt of WFUV. The building used to be the Main Street School, high on a hill -- a landmark, one could say. All three of our children attended Main Street. One daughter played the flute and the other played the cello and our son had a notable cameo in a class play. Now the building has been converted into apartments for seniors, with the old auditorium hosting a music series ranging from doo wop to folk. Iris DeMent fans await that rare swing, that rare album, that rare tour. In 2012 she issued "Sing the Delta," 12 of her songs, rooted in Arkansas, where she was born, the youngest of 14 children. “Some of these songs I’ve had around awhile but I needed time to grow into them,” she has said. “I guess you could say I just wasn’t ready to deliver them in the way that they de-served. I’m glad I waited. It’s taught me to surrender…to trust the natural flow and order of things and not worry about it.” On Saturday Iris DeMent is performing a mile from our house. I'll be there.  Robert Herrick. Honored on May Day Every name has a story, and our daughter Corinna tells hers in a lovely May Day essay today. http://www.wilson500.com/uncategorized/my-name-day-and-the-value-of-a-good-affordable-education/ She tells the story on the day when she witnessed her friend Jacky Nkubito become an American citizen in DC. The name happened as Corinna tells it. I was taking a course on the Cavalier Poets with Dr. Ruth Stauffer at Hofstra College in the spring of 1960, the last semester of my very good liberal arts education. I loved the urgency of Andrew Marvell: Had we but world enough, and time, This coyness, lady, were no crime. It’s possible I might even have used those words, or at least felt the sentiment, in that beautiful flowering spring. I also loved the poem Corinna’s Going a-Maying by Robert Herrick, which our daughter describes so nicely. So how did we name our two other children? Marianne and I agree that her mom, still with us at 93, loved the name Laura. Also, Marianne and I both knew the David Raksin song “Laura,” from the noir movie of the same name, from 1944. Laura is the face in the misty light Footsteps that you hear down the hall The laugh that floats on a summer night That you can never quite recall. One version is by Frank Sinatra -- long before his ring-a-ding-ding stage, I hasten to add. It's a little lush, but a time piece. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7uXPeBRt1fM I was sold as soon as the name Laura was proposed for our oldest daughter. And she’s not the only Laura named for the song. In the comments portion of the youtube Sinatra version, LauraLaVitaEBella says her grandfather gave her the name. Bravo, Nonno. How did we arrive at David for our third child? Marianne notes that I wanted to name him Dylan. It would have been perfect. She counter-proposed David – for the Michelangelo statue in Florence. Many years later, I came to understand King David through the Leonard Cohen song, written in 1984, now one of the great touchstones of contemporary life. http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2012/12/how-leonard-cohens-hallelujah-became-everybodys-hallelujah/265900/ Personally, I am partial to the k.d. lang version on her glorious Canadian tribute, Hymns of the 49th Parallel. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0UHv7mDG4s So I say, Hallelujah for music and poetry and art. Hallelujah for May Day. And Hallelujah for Citizen Jacky in DC today.  Citizen Jacky (in shades)and Friends. May Day. Photo: CV Wilson. Top: Raglan Road. Below: classic concert at the Alhambra.  The networks and the papers are gearing up for the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington on Aug. 28. I saw the saintly John Lewis on television the other night. Memories kick in. I was covering the Mets in Pittsburgh, and watched the march on television during the day, captivated by the mood, the words, the faces. Then I got on the bus from the Hilton, down by the famed confluence, to funky old Forbes Field up on the hill. At some point I got into a conversation with Maury Allen of the Post and Jesse Gonder and Alvin Jackson of the Mets, who had all been watching in their rooms. I’ve always treasured this memory of four people standing around the clubhouse, so enthused about Martin Luther King and the other speakers, and the people who had come so far, the joy and hope we felt. I’d forgotten that Jackson was the starting pitcher that night, lasting four and two-thirds innings against his old club, taking the loss in a 7-2 defeat. Gonder pinch-hit for Choo Choo Coleman with two on and no out in the ninth and hit into a force play. Roberto Clemente went 3-for-4 and drove in 3 runs. I can’t remember if we asked him about the march after the game. I’d like to think we did. Throughout the bad times and the good times, the memory remains of that march. The four of us had been sure, as the Sam Cooke song would say a few months later, a change was gonna come. Nowadays, the sour faces on Cantor, McConnell, Paul and Boehner seem straight from the bad old days. And we are assured by Chief Justice John Roberts that things are so good that we do not need a voting rights law anymore. Governors and legislatures do their best to deny access to voting. Fifty years ago I stood around a clubhouse with three friends and talked about the March on Washington. The box score from that game: http://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1963/B08280PIT1963.htm The history of the Sam Cooke song: http://www.americansongwriter.com/2009/07/behind-the-song-a-change-is-gonna-come/ A more recent story about the March on Washington: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08/28/us/politics/28race.html?_r=0 Ladies and gentlemen, the late, great Sam Cooke: James Agee is back, with a revived version of the work he did with Walker Evans in the American South during the Depression. His ear supplied the words and Evans’ eye supplied the photographs of stoic people trying to survive. Here is another great collaboration I seek out at Father’s Day: Knoxville: Summer of 1915, Samuel Barber’s adaptation of Agee, sung by Eleanor Steber at a concert in Carnegie Hall on Oct. 10, 1958. The song works for Mother’s Day but even more for Father’s Day, because the lyricism and discordance suggest what is coming soon. Agee’s father died in 1916, which was commemorated in Agee’s A Death in the Family, published in 1957, two years after Agee’s death. The song describes Agee’s family sitting outdoors, in a time before air conditioning and television. It begins: It has become that time of evening when people sit on their porches, rocking gently and talking gently and watching the street and the standing up into their sphere of possession of the trees, of birds' hung havens, hangars. People go by; things go by. A horse, drawing a buggy…. I heard it first on WQXR-FM years ago, and bought the CD, Eleanor Steber in Concert, 1956-58. I later read that Steber was from Wheeling, West Virginia, and wondered if she would have felt any affinity for Knoxville, further down the Appalachian range. The song reminds me of summer evenings in the 1940’s, when my family stayed outdoors, in our own back yard in the borough of Queens, to catch some slight breeze. I remember fireflies and the Brooklyn Dodgers on the radio and my brothers and sisters and my parents. This is where I usually lose it: All my people are larger bodies than mine...with voices gentle and meaningless like the voices of sleeping birds. One is an artist, he is living at home. One is a musician, she is living at home. One is my mother who is good to me. One is my father who is good to me. By some chance, here they are, all on this earth… When I play this song, I think of our parents, talking about books and politics and the old days, suggesting what is possible for us in our lives. For those of us who know that our parents were good to us, this is a memory. For others, it may be an ideal, a hope. * * * The concert above is from 1948, when the work made its debut. The pianist is Edwin Biltcliffe. Jane Redmont’s web site has a wise tribute to the song, and includes the lyrics: http://actsofhope.blogspot.com/2008/02/knoxville-summer-1915-james-agee-samuel.html My childhood friend Alan Spiegel wrote a lovely biography and critique of Agee in 1998: http://muse.jhu.edu/login?auth=0&&url=/journals/american_literature/v071/71.4maine.html  Another type of concert: Altenir and Celia Silva attended Caetano Veloso and Vanessa de Mata at Ipanema the other night. Eu sou ciumento.  It's as good as ever He sounds best on vinyl, even with a scratch or two, accentuating the throb in his voice, the emotion in his heart. It’s good to accumulate a few dings over time.
I went right to the vinyl on Monday when I heard Richie Havens passed at 72. He once made an album called Mixed Bag that (with all due respect to Dylan, to Joplin, to Cash, to Motown, to The Band) says everything about America in the late ‘60’s. Or maybe now. I think young people should know his work. Mixed Bag was the album of the age, not just because Havens became famous for holding the fort at Woodstock until reinforcements arrived. That was in August of 1969 when it was beginning to seem possible that we -- the ubiquitous we – might be making some points about the war and injustice. But in 1967, when he made Mixed Bag, things were pretty bleak. He caught the poignancy of Dylan’s Just Like a Woman and the Beatles’ Eleanor Rigby and he carried the torch big time on San Francisco Bay Blues. But check out the song Handsome Johnny, written with Louis Gossett. Havens mentions Handsome Johnny, marching off to one battle or another: Gettysburg, Dunkirk, Korea and Vietnam and then he adds Birmingham, which is pertinent since he came from Bed-Stuy back in the day. Then he blurts: Hey, what's the use of singing this song Some of you are not even listening I say, in the spirit of Richie Havens, in homage to the ‘60’s, give a call to some of those senators who ignore the 90 per cent of this country on the gun vote, and give Handsome Johnny one more play over the phone. Richie Havens gave the title to Pete Fornatale’s marvelously eclectic radio show on WFUV, still ongoing, but Pete left us a year ago, and now Richie Havens is gone, too. I can only imagine what Don McGee will play in his Havens tribute on Saturday. I heard the news from Christine Lavin, that talented and caring staple of the New York folk community, who wrote: “I played at many Canadian festivals when Richie was one of the headliners -- backstage he was always very modest and humble, always interested in meeting the other musicians and watching others' sets. He's one of those musicians (and there's not a lot of 'em) who you know exactly who he is from the first strum of the guitar or the first words out of his mouth. Very rare. “It was always a hoot to watch him do that crazy signature 'kick' of his as he finished his sets. His taste was very broad -- I love what he did with Ervin Drake's It Was A Very Good Year, and the Beatles' In My Life, Eleanor Rigby, and With A Little Help From My Friends -- and his Dylan covers went a long way toward cementing Bob Dylan's reputation as the premiere songwriter of his generation.” Sat next to Richie Havens in a Dunkin Donuts or Starbucks on Eighth Avenue and 43rd Street a decade or two back. He had sheet music with his name hand-written across the top. That’s how I knew who it was, since I never saw him perform. I could not bring myself to say, “Hey, man, I love your work,” because….well, he was enjoying his coffee and glancing at the music sheets, and why disturb an artist in his repose. But, hey, man…. 
Slid Under a Motel Door. Still Playing.
How refreshing, in the dark of winter with snow on the ground, to see all that young talent at the Grammies. My wife and I laughed at the great commercials, geared to a younger audience – not the remedies for old-age ailments we see on MSNBC. Different crowd. Guess the kids on the Grammies don’t have achy knees yet. I’ve lost all touch with current pop music – got enough Satie and Marley and McGarrigles stocked up to last my lifetime – but the performers were so accessible, so good, so attractive, that we watched right through to the tribute to performers who died in the past year. I knew about Dave Brubeck and Levon Helm. But there was a shock when I saw the name Mike Auldridge. It brought me back to the fall of 1972, when I was covering the award ceremony of the County Music Association in Nashville. (Had an interview with Loretta Lynn coming up.) I was staying in some chain motel east of I-65, and overnight some zealous promoter slid a couple of vinyl 33 1/3 albums right under my door. One of them was Old Train by a sensational fusion bluegrass group called the Seldom Scene. Another album was Mike Auldridge – Dobro. I never turn down anything free, so I stuck them in my luggage and played them when I got home. And I still play them today, particularly because of the dobro of Mike Auldridge on both albums, so thoughtful, spare, clear. The best track on Dobro is Rolling Fog, credited to Paul Craft and sung by Auldridge, who apparently did not do many solos. His mellow baritone is timeless -- as good as men like to think they sing in the shower. Find a place to creep in, underneath my door, Whisper to me, while I’m sleeping, Make yourself at home. Knowing that the Seldom Scene was based in Alexandria, Va., I always figured I'd be in DC and notice they were playing in some club, but it never happened. I did interview John Duffey and Dr. John Starling, a surgeon and soloist, on the phone for the Times before their gigs in the New York area, but I never caught them. Why? I’ve been singing along with the Seldom Scene for a long time, courtesy of my turntable that fascinates my grandchildren no end. I missed the obituary for Mike Auldridge in the Times on Dec. 31 but vinyl is coming back, and I just played Rolling Fog on a damp gray Monday morning. Thanks to the Grammies for letting me know about Mike Auldridge. 
Mike Auldridge, 1938-2012, Dobro Album.
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