And He Shall Be Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John

The fourth song on Elton John's fourth album, recorded on February 27, 1971, is 'Levon'.  The lyrics, like so many others, were written by the great Bernie Taupin.  The track speaks of a son being born to Alvin Tostig on Christmas day ... sing it with me .... And he shall be Levon / And he shall be a good man.  The song [and main character] was named in tribute to Levon Helm, as The Band was one of Bernie and Elton's favorite groups at the time. 

Elton John and his partner David Furnish just a few weeks ago became the parents of a baby boy, born to a surrogate mother, a pawn as it were.  The men named their son Zachary Jackson Levon in tribute to Elton's song from nearly 40 years earlier.  And the best part of this story is that, just as the song goes, Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John was born on Christmas Day. 

Let's all tip our caps to Levon Helm and listen to the studio version of 'Levon' from Madman Across The Water, one of Elton John's best:

Chris Cotton: White Man Sings The Blues

You know the feeling of elation after finding a 20-dollar-bill in last year's winter coat?  Well, today, I got that same feeling  after stumbling upon an artist I'd never heard while listening to the "acoustic blues" channel on AOL radio.  "Acoustic blues," a long-time favorite of mind,  normally digs deep into the back catalog of old Delta blues and folk standards; rarely do we hear any contemporary artists, and for good reason -- because the movement saw its heyday from around the turn of the 20th Century until the early 1950's.  So I was somewhat surprised to hear a recording without the typical hisses, crackles and pops of most of the songs from that era.  Even more surprising was my reaction to learn that the performer was white -- another paradox when talking about the Delta blues.  Lo and behold, his name is Chris Cotton and I assure you, he is the real deal.  Reminiscent of the likes of Mississippi John Hurt, Big Bill Broonzy, John Lee Hooker and Blind Lemon Jefferson, I was floored by his gritty tone and soulful finger-picking style -- an absolute must if you intend on channeling the spirits of the great ones. According to his bio on Last.fm:

"An aural portrait that owes a debt to Southern bluesmen and Americana pioneers alike, Chris Cotton’s Yellow Dog Records debut sounds like a house party caught on tape – world-weary men effortlessly strumming their guitars and bass, while passing around a jug of whiskey for sustenance. The barrelhouse piano, is, of course, pushed up against one wall; Cotton’s gravelly voice reigns over the debauchery. The scene is timeless – harkening back to days when the distinction between blues and country was hopelessly blurred."

How is that for an endorsement.  Naturally, I searched YouTube but unfortunately found only a handful of amateur clips of Cotton playing on friends' porches, at house parties, and at chatty dive bars.  Overlooking the obvious, I visited his website and MySpace page, where you can buy his studio releases -- which I plan on doing -- and listen to most of his catalog.   

In any event, here is a clip of Cotton performing the Dixieland standard, "(Won't You Come Home) Bill Bailey."   And pay no mind to the cockeyed hat and grunge-inspired attire; Cotton is legit.  You can see it in his face and hear it in his voice.  And while Derek Trucks may be the heir-apparent of the blues-throne amongst the younger generation, I like Cotton as the dark horse candidate.

 Chris Cotton, "(Won't You Come Home) Bill Bailey"




Here was the song I hear today, "Louis Collins" -- another old blues standard:
http://www.myspace.com/cottonchris/music/songs/louis-collins-40956137

Cover Me Do

Without checking any stats, I think it's safe to assume that The Beatles are the most frequently covered band in music history.  And a cursory search of YouTube pretty much confirms this much.  However, my search yielded some very interesting clips.  The Weight wants to know which of these do you think is the most original (cheap attempt at boosting reader participation):

Jack White performing "Mother Nature's Son"


Franz Ferdinand performing "It Won't Be Long"


Soundgarden performing "Come Together"



Stereophonics and Oasis performing "I'm Only Sleeping"


Booker T. & The MGs performing an Abbey Road Medley


Nirvana performing "I Feel Fine" (sort of)



Elvis Presley performing "Yesterday" (brilliant)



And last but not least...a very tired and jaded Beatles covering themselves (this footage is unreal -- make sure to watch entire clip)


There are countless others -- if you find some good ones, let us know.

Turn The Page: Bob Seger On The Road Again

Reclusive Rock n' Roll Hall of Famer Bob Seger has announced plans to go out on a tour this spring with his Silver Bullet Band, his first tour since late-2006 and only his second since 1996. It's not yet known how many dates Seger will play on this year's tour, but I've read rumors of 20-30 dates with another possible leg of the tour coming in the fall. At this time, only four markets are highlighted on a US map for the spring dates on his website: Ohio, Michigan, New York and Missouri. The rest of the tour should be announced soon. Last March, Bob announced that he would be doing a full tour in the fall of 2010, but that outing never materialized with Bob instead choosing to continue working on the follow-up to his 2006 studio album, Face The Promise. I bought Face The Promise when it was first released back in 2006 and its got a ton of spins on my iTunes over the last few years. It was really a great album that not surprisingly didn't generate much Internet buzz, but it has sold over 1 million copies, certified platinum, when so few records achieve that status anymore.

In 1980, Bob Seger released the album Against the Wind and it became his first and only #1 album on the Billboard album chart. The first single "Fire Lake" featured Eagles Don Henley, Timothy B. Schmit, and Glen Frey on backing vocals.  Glen Frey and Bob Seger's relationship goes way back to when both were working in the Detroit rock scene in the late 60s. Glen Frey's first recording gig was performing acoustic guitar and background vocals on Bob Seger's Ramblin' Gamblin' Man in 1968.

Take a listen to the studio recording of Fire Lake featuring Bob Seger and the trio of Eagles:

Ramblin' Man: Hayes Carll To Open For Levon Helm

When you're writing songs for Guy Clark, who's songs have been recorded by Johnny Cash, Vince Gill, Alan Jackson, and The Highwaymen, you know you're doing something right.

This afternoon, I received an email from Levon Helm Studios listing the dates for the next set of Midnight Rambles taking place at Levon's barn/studio/home in Woodstock, NY.  The list of dates includes the artists that will be opening for each of the shows.  Included as the opener and guest on February 12th, which is amazingly the 201st Ramble hosted by Helm on his property, is Texas singer-songwriter Hayes Carll, a name that I expect many of you don't recognize.  I don't know alot about Carll, other than that it looks like his first and last name got swapped, that he is the songwriter I mentioned at the start of this post, and that his song 'Wish I Hadn't Stayed So Long' has existed on one of my Grooveshark playlists for well over a year. 

Like all songs that end up on this playlist, I first heard it on Pandora on one of several custom stations I've created over time to discover new music.  When I like a song I hear on there, I make a note of it and add it Grooveshark so I can then listen to it on demand.  Doing some research tonight on Carll, I learned that before graduating from Hendrix College in Conway, Arkansas in 1998, he began writing songs influenced by Bob Dylan, Kris Kristofferson, John Prine, Jack Kerouac and Dead Poets Society. Looks like I was on to something with Hayes.

With my pleasant surprise in seeing Carll's name in my email today, I decided that I would introduce to you the song that introduced him to me. 

Hayes Carll
Wish I Hadn't Stayed So Long




If you like what you hear, Hayes Carll will be opening for Jason Isbell at the Bowery Ballroom in April.

Bonus Content:

Interpreting the Grateful Dead

This is hardly breaking news, but something tells me there are a few readers of The Weight that aren't aware of this.  On their new album, 'The King Is Dead', released just last Tuesday, the Decemberist's cover the Grateful Dead's 'Row Jimmy.'  While I admire the attempt at one of the Dead's best slow songs, their take falls far short of the emotive original. 

Decemberists
Row Jimmy




Speaking of 'The King Is Dead', fortunately for us, Elvis Costello is far from dead and knows a little something about interpreting the Grateful Dead.  This is how its supposed to be done:

Elvis Costello
Ship of Fools




Bonus Content

Elvis Costello, Levon Helm, Allen Toussaint, Nick Lowe, Richard Thompson, Larry Campbell, and The Imposters play 'Tennessee Jed' on the Costello hosted interview show Spectacle:

Waylon Jennings: Are You Sure Jimmy Done It This Way?

I started this post to write about Jimmy Buffett playing his first concert in Australia in 24 years. Fortunately for me, I stumbled upon a video that led me down a different path.

In 2004, Jimmy Buffett released an album called License To Chill that featured many of the biggest country acts of the day, including Toby Keith, Alan Jackson, and Kenny Chesney.  It's his only album to reach #1 on the Billboard 200 chart and we haven't been able to escape 'It's 5 O'Clock Somewhere' ever since.  Its my opinion, and there is much evidence to back this up, that it was right at the same time that modern country artists started to make their money rehashing the Jimmy Buffett formula of singing songs about islands, surf, and sand to people who don't live near any of those things.  This sound further commercialized country music, giving it a slick, produced veneer and removed much of the traditional elements of heartbreak and honky-tonk that make it so honest and relatable.  Now don't get me wrong, I'm actually a fan of Jimmy Buffett and I think he does what he does well, but I don't want margaritas anywhere near my whiskey. 

With this trend in modern country music to sway towards Jimmy Buffett's islands in the past decade, I was very surprised to find evidence that one of country music's superstars tackled a Jimmy Buffett tune way back in 1997, before it was financially advantageous to do so.  Highwayman Waylon Jennings included his take on Buffett's 'He Went To Paris' on his All American Country album.  Waylon's version does this song the real country music way, featuring steel guitar without a hint of steel drums. 

The Weight Recommends: The Silver Seas

I've had these two 'New-Music Sampler' CDs, that were packaged with a copy of Paste Magazine I'd gotten in the mail, sitting in my apartment since last summer.  Every time I'd come across them while cleaning my place, I decided that I couldn't throw them out without first dropping them in the CD player.  Well, here we are six months later and I've just gotten though the first one (July 2010) with the other one left to go (June 2010). 

What I'd planned to do, in listening to each CD, is downselect the songs I liked and then from there I would pick a single favorite that I could recommend here on The Weight.  I figured there'd at least be a few per disc that I'd enjoy enough to put on my short list.

I started working my way through each of the 20 songs on the first disc, including some artists I'd heard of before (Menomena, Broken Social Scene, Wolf Parade, Andrew Bird) and many that I had not (Blue Giant, Wintersleep, The Young Veins, Spree Wilson).  I'd gotten through 18 songs before I really liked anything that I heard.  What's so disappointing is that Paste Magazine is a publication that I really respect.  In a few cases, the intro was decent enough but I found myself turned off after a few vocal lines.  I consider myself to be pretty open-minded about music, accepting that in all genres there are good and bad songs, and these songs didn't do it for me.  At least based on my first listens. 

So after suffering through 90% of the July sampler, I finally heard what I was hoping for.  In the second to last track I found a song that I could confidently put my seal of approval on.  It's Track 19 from the July 2010 Paste Magazine New Music Sampler.  And its by Nashville band The Silver Seas on their April release Chateau Revenge.  The song is called "Best Things In Life" and its not just the best song on the CD, its one of the best songs I've heard in months.  The Pointer Sisters wish they could still groove like this!

The Silver Seas
'Best Things In Life'
Chateau Revenge



Bonus Content:
Here's another song by the Silver Seas that both nameschecks The Weight favorites ELO and also does a damn fine job of replicating their sound.  Jeff Lynne would be proud. 

The Silver Seas
"What's The Drawback"
Chateau Revenge

The Legend of Big Bill Broonzy

Shame on me and shame on The Weight for failing to ever pay homage to this hero of a man -- a man whose life & times is as mythical as his musical legacy.   Let me share a little of Broonzy's story:

(courtesy of Wikipedia)

Born William Lee Conley Broonzy, "Big Bill" was one of Frank Broonzy and Mittie Belcher's 17 children. His birth site and date are disputed...He began playing music at an early age. At the age of 10 he made himself a fiddle from a cigar box and learned how to play spirituals and folk songs from his uncle, Jerry Belcher... In 1915, 17-year-old Broonzy was married and working his own land as a sharecropper. He had decided to give up the fiddle and become a preacher. There is a story that he was offered $50 and a new violin if he would play four days at a local venue. Before he could respond to the offer, his wife took the money and spent it, so he had to play. 

*                     *                      *

In 1916 his crop and stock were wiped out by drought. Broonzy went to work locally until he was drafted into the Army in 1917.  Broonzy served two years in Europe during the first world war. After his discharge from the Army in 1919, Broonzy returned to Pine Bluff, Arkansas where he is reported to have been called a racial epithet and told by a white man he knew before the war that he needed to "hurry up and get his soldier uniform off and put on some overalls." He immediately left Pine Bluff and moved to the Little Rock area but a year later in 1920 moved north to Chicago in search of opportunity...

 *                      *                     *

After arriving in Chicago, Broonzy made the switch to guitar. He learned guitar from minstrel and medicine show Papa Charlie Jackson veteran , who began recording for Paramount Records in 1924.  Through the 1920s Broonzy worked a string of odd jobs, including Pullman porter, cook, foundry worker and custodian, to supplement his income, but his main interest was music. He played regularly at rent parties and social gatherings, steadily improving his guitar playing. During this time he wrote one of his signature tunes, a solo guitar piece called "Saturday Night Rub."

In 1930 Paramount for the first time used Broonzy's full name on a recording, "Station Blues" — albeit misspelled as "Big Bill Broomsley". Record sales continued to be poor, and Broonzy was working at a grocery store...In March 1932 he traveled to New York City and began recording for the American Record Corporation on their line of less expensive labels: (Melotone, Perfect Records, et al.).  These recordings sold better and Broonzy began to become better known. Back in Chicago he was working regularly in South Side clubs, and even toured with Memphis Minnie...In 1934 Broonzy moved to Bluebird Records and began recording with pianist Bob "Black Bob" Call. His fortunes soon improved. 

*                        *                         *

Broonzy expanded his work during this period as he honed his song writing skills which showed a knack for appealing to his more sophisticated city audience as well as people that shared his country roots. His work in this period shows he performed across a wider musical spectrum than almost any other bluesman before or since including ragtime, hokum blues, country blues, city blues, jazz tinged songs, folk songs and spirituals. After World War II, Broonzy recorded songs that were the bridge that allowed many younger musicians to cross over to the future of the blues: the electric blues of post war Chicago.

*                       *                       *

In Europe, Broonzy was greeted with standing ovations and critical praise wherever he played. The tour marked a turning point in his fortunes, and when he returned to the United States he was a featured act with many prominent folk artists such as Pete Seeger, Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee, and Leadbelly. From 1953 on his financial position became more secure and he was able to live quite well on his music earnings. Broonzy returned to his solo folk-blues roots, and travelled and recorded extensively...In 1953, Dr. Vera (King) Morkovin and Studs Terkel took Broonzy to Circle Pines Center, a cooperative year-round camp in Hastings, Michigan, where he was employed as the summer camp cook. He worked there in the summer from '53-'56.  On July 4, 1954, Pete Seeger traveled to Circle Pines and gave a concert with Bill on the farmhouse lawn, which was recorded by Seeger for the new fine arts radio station in Chicago, WFMT-FM...

*                      *                          *

By 1958 Broonzy was suffering from the effects of throat cancer. He died August 15, 1958, and is buried in Lincoln Cemetery, Blue Island, Illinois.
 

{wiping the tears from my eyes so I can continue writing}

One of 17 children? Minstrel and Medicine Shows? Fiddles made from cigar boxes?  A sharecropper?  WWI veteran?  Pullman porter? Was working as a cook at a summer camp where Pete Seeger visited only to play a show with him?  How is there not a national holiday celebrated in honor of this man?  Or an Academy Award-winning film about his life?   Or a widespread revival of his music?  His story and achievements are simply epic.  No doubt a musical journey even Dylan wishes he could claim for himself.  Big Bill Broonzy, The Weight salutes you!

Below is an astonishing clip of Broonzy performing "When Did You Leave Heaven."  The footage, shot in noir-type fashion, I promise will send shivers down your spine.

Big Bill Broonzy, "When Did You Leave Heaven"  (date and source unknown)

Lennon & ...Garfunkel?

At the Grammy Awards in Los Angeles, on March 1st, 1975, Paul Simon presented the Record of the Year Award with John Lennon.  You'll be very surprised to see who the award is presented to.