The Mighty 55: October 2014

Thursday, October 16, 2014

#33 -- Eric Clapton

Judging something as subjective as music is like grasping for a wet bar of soap; ...unless, that is, you look at record sales. And one mark of a great performer is that they consistently please their listeners. Eric Clapton, despite all the differences in personnel, style and intensity during his years recording music, always seemed to please.

Success over a four decade period is hard to argue with.

And then there are all those collaborations (with 10 of our remaining 32 slots, plus Aretha Franklin, Elton John, B.B. King, Carole King, Traffic, Kate Bush), proving that sharing one's talents pays off--when friends are needed, and in terms of an ever-expanding fan base.

Perhaps Clapton's greatest specific legacy was his elevation of reggae music, and specifically Bob Marley and the Wailers, when he covered their "I Shot The Sheriff", which was a #1 hit in the US in summer, 1974.

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Each band or performer is graded on four things:
1. Innovation
2. Influence in my life--as a typical American
3. Integrity: the band's approach to music (just making a buck or honing a craft?)
4. Immortality--am I, a typical American--still eager to hear their music

8/6/5/7 = 26 out of a perfect 40

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A turning point: Clapton credits The Basement Tapes (Bob Dylan and The Band) with his turn away from guitar solos to, instead, the development of a given song itself.

And a revelation: practicing his guitar playing, when learning to play, Clapton recorded himself, then listened to the tape, gradually refining his methods. Sounds like "know thyself".

See you next year....

Monday, October 13, 2014

#34 -- Paul Simon

Paul Simon is a great example of an act that could be referred to in either of two ways: as Simon & Garfunkel or as Paul Simon. In this case, I consider his solo career more important than his earlier two-man collaboration, though not by much.

Simon's recordings with Garfunkel were favorites in my early teens. My first few years listening to AM top-40 hits, beginning in '66, focused on songs like, Homeward Bound, Sound of Silence and I Am A Rock. They were perfect for my age and musical upbringing.

The cultural enrichment, however, that marked Simon's solo career was even more important for me. Beginning with the early-70's reggae styled "Mother and Child Reunion" and "Me and Julio Down by the Schoolyard" (not to mention the earlier, "El Condor Pasa"), Simon went on in the '80s to bring first South African and then Brazilian artists and styles to the fore, establishing himself as a pioneer in world music.

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Anecdote: In early '70, after hearing the opening bars to "Bridge Over Troubled Water" for only the second or third time, I unplugged our bathroom transistor radio and excitedly brought it into my folks' bedroom, plugged it in, and was shocked that they didn't consider the tune one of the best things they'd ever heard.

Saturday, October 11, 2014

#35 -- Emmylou Harris

Here's my hat tip to Country, featuring a performer who has collaborated with a surprising number of acts yet to be mentioned in our Mighty 55 countdown. Would you believe nearly a third of the 34 remaining acts have collaborated or appeared with Emmylou Harris?

That's country for you. A welcoming collaboration.

My own awakening to country music came with the album, "Will The Circle Be Unbroken", featuring Grand Ol' Opry stars. During our house's construction, in the 1980s, that record was on most days, once the stereo system was installed, as we house painters and carpenters all loved it.

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A favorite..., plus: Harris' Evangeline, which she originally recorded with The Band. A recent album of hers I purchased was 2006's All The Roadrunning, a collaboration with Mark Knopfler.

Thursday, October 9, 2014

#36 - Steely Dan

As if to make our point about jazz, who other to follow Thelonius Monk than Steely Dan, taking jazz to a mass audience?

Would the 1970s have been bearable without such intricately composed treasures as "Josie": the chorus being:

"When Josie comes home

So good

She's the pride of the neighborhood
She's the raw flame
The live wire
She prays like a Roman

With her eyes on fire"

And if you don't know who they're praising, you've got something quite good coming.

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You-won't-believe-it department: In an earlier incarnation, the Steely Dan duo, Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, had as their drummer, a one Chevy Chase!

#37 - Thelonius Monk

Ah, jazz! Here we hat tip to the top cat in the felt hat. Literally, the musician who, in the mid-'40s, started wearing a beret and sunglasses.

Music is a strange beast, being indirect (patterns of notes that are recognized) and internal (sounds that are heard). By way of contrast, touching is much more direct. So, it's perhaps not surprising that a music would develop, jazz, that leaned towards touching: improvisation.

In the world of Rock & Roll, improvisation is the gold standard for separating ability from contrivance. If all you can do is follow notes on a page, "you ain't goin' nowhere", as the Dylan lyric says. So, jazz was and is essential to Rock's integrity.

Noodling? No, we're talking about a musician so immersed in gospel, early jazz, and music theory (Julliard School of Music) that his piano playing was pure American genius. When others schooled in the 'stride' style were using the left hand as a rhythm section, Monk constructed melodies with both hands.

Granted, he was great, but why Monk, and not Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker or Lionel Hampton for the hat tip? Even the more approachable Max Roach, Ella Fitzgerald, Sonny Rollins or Benny Goodman? For one thing, Monk is the second-most recorded jazz musician after Duke Ellington. Second, when you see a guitar player wincing with slack jaw as the notes find their way around the rhythm section and fuse with the melody, that's internalization, which was Thelonius Monk to a T.

Um, but Monk's music is so difficult! That's because jazz, more so than other great music, is most rewarding when the listener gradually awakens, as the music unfolds, to the approaching wink of the eye that ties everything together. It is perhaps telling that Monk was a great chess player.

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Star power: The jazz musicians who have been on the cover
of TIME magazine: Louis Armstrong, Dave Brubeck, Duke Ellington, Wynton Marsalis..., and yes, Thelonius Monk, just
as February turned into March, 1964.

Wednesday, October 8, 2014

#38 -- Chrissie Hynde

This list's tip of cap to Punk, Chrissie Hynde, is as one review put it "...the female rebuke..." to "...'Under My Thumb'".

Although there were several other female-led bands in the late '70s/early '80s, the craftsmanship that Hynde exhibited on songs like "Back on The Chain Gang" set The Pretenders apart--the emotion we hear is simply true, as opposed to the hurried confections that so often pass for 'hits'.

I am not a fan of punk. Hynde's fellow Akron, Ohio band Devo, for example, leaves me at 'meh'. But one thing Punk did was tear down conventional gender roles (while it was tearing down much else). And so, up popped a woman whose band mates came and went at her discretion. And I think it's a testament to her principles that her music was never "Chrissie Hynde and The Blank", but that she kept to the original "The Pretenders" (a reference to the Platters' classic song, "The Great Pretender" from 1955--which, incidentally, I first heard and loved when covered by The Band).

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Awesomeness: When Hynde found out that Rush Limbaugh was regularly using a cut of The Pretenders' hit "My City Was Gone" on his radio show, she wisely negotiated a deal whereby royalties were donated to PETA, surely a more satisfying result than a cease-and-desist order, a strategy her record company had pursued. One can easily imagine a repeatedly flummoxed Limbaugh, realizing he's supporting animal rights whenever he opens his show with that rhythm-and-bass thunderclap.

Monday, October 6, 2014

Taking A Break

The hiatus in postings is due to family visiting.

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As promised, here are the general reasons why some acts were never even considered, let alone invited to the ceremony:

1. Substance. A group may fire away with pyrotechnics, may don wild costumes, may prance around on stage with amazing vigor, may wow you with a machine gun rhythm section, may even talk dirtier than the next guy. There are countless ways to try to attract attention. But often there's nothing behind the schtick.

2. Attitude. Some offenders in this category are easily spotted: the poseurs who think we need to know about their superiority; these are often frantic chord thrashers, or shouters, or in-your-face arm-thrusters.

3. Dullsville. The formulaic pablum servers who never wander from their predictable script. These are often attempts to capture others' success, or to recapture former glory.

Obviously, these categories are caricatures. Most losers have one foot in one of these mud-holes and the other on firm ground, making them difficult to spot. Even some of our Mighty 55 have only made it into the pantheon by virtue of being so overwhelmingly talented in some other way that we end up forgiving them their dalliances in one or more of the above quagmires.

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The Mighty 55 just wouldn't be complete without a shout-out to #56, the act bumped out of contention when all musical chairs were finally filled.

So, here's the Tupelo Honey award, given to Van Morrison for his deserving catalog.