|
 The
Major Lift
By
Erik Hage
A
few months back when I read that movie star Joaquin Phoenix
was quitting acting, I was intrigued. Like Bjorn Borg, I thought,
quit at the top of your game, distilled in perfection. But
then I actually read the whole news story: He was quitting
acting to focus on his music. Egad. (A side note: I
had seen his late brother River’s and sister Rain’s band,
Aleka’s Attic, a couple of times in a small bar in Woodstock,
and prefer to remember River’s acting.)
Here’s another anecdote: Over the holidays I was watching
the Survivorman marathon, which is a pretty compelling
reality show. On this episode, the survivorman, Les Stroud,
had managed to live off the jungle for several days, until
a leopard started stalking him and he sought refuge in an
indigenous tribal village. Wanting to learn more about this
brave and resourceful Canadian, I looked him up and found
out that in 1994 he and his wife had lived a “Paleolithic
existence” (stone tools, hunter-gatherers) in the Canadian
wilderness for a year and made a documentary about it. Pretty
incredible. I searched in vain to try to find clips of this
film, Snowshoes and Solitude, but all I could come
up with was a music video of Les singing a song with roughly
the same title. It was the worst kind of sappy, keening, nature-
loving folk-rock (like a David Crosby castoff). And even more
unfortunately, he seems to be turning his career focus toward
his music. (He has a new CD out.)
 I
think music is very seductive and very immediate for creative
types, but the truth is that a shockingly large percentage
of the people who ply away at it passionately aren’t very
good (and don’t know it). Sure, many play and sing technically
well, but something is often missing. Perhaps it’s because
most of our culture simply has bad taste in music. That’s
a fact, not an opinion: The best-selling album in the history
of our country is the Eagles’ greatest hits.
The novelist Cormac McCarthy once said that a writer should
have a soul to express, and producer Sam Phillips once allegedly
said after hearing Howlin’ Wolf, “This is it. This is where
the soul of man never dies.” Few people can do what Howlin’
Wolf did, but I wish more musicians would measure themselves
against such a high-water mark—instead of against the Eagles
or an indie-rock band du jour.
I was thinking of that as I listened to the soundtrack to
Cadillac Records, the movie that tells the story
of Chicago label Chess Records, where the Wolf himself—as
well as Chuck Berry, Etta James, Bo Diddley, and Muddy Waters
(to name a few)—did their thing so many years ago. The songs
themselves are sung mostly by the actors from the film; thus,
Jeffery Wright (as Muddy Waters) does a noble version of “I’m
a Man,” Mos Def doesn’t quite nail Chuck Berry doing “Maybelline”
and Beyoncé Knowles (Etta) does a dynamite “At Last.” English
actor Eamonn Walker (Oz) also does about as well as
a mortal can on Howlin Wolf’s “Smokestack Lightnin’,” and
Q-Tip keeps the circle unbroken with “Evolution of a Man,”
a hip-hop approximation of Muddy.
 I
guess what I want to say is this: See this movie, which marks
out a crucial era in musical history. Without Chess Records,
you wouldn’t have the Rolling Stones and a whole lot of other
groups that absorbed this music, emulated it and then transformed
it into their own discrete language. But don’t buy this album.
Instead, opt for another new one, The Best of Chess
Records. The Chess stuff is like the Moby-Dick
or Old Testament of popular music: You can keep going
back to it and it yields up new worlds each time. And so much
music has sprung from this source. Here’s the real soundtrack—the
soundtrack to that soul of humanity that Sam Phillips talked
about.
To keep diving into history, I expected the new compilation
The Roots of Hip-Hop to yet again offer
up all of the usual 1970s tracks from the Bronx. But I was
blown away to hear the gospel vocal group Soul Stirrers singing
their 1940s tribute to Franklin D. Roosevelt (long, long before
Sam Cooke entered their ranks). Of course! The group’s remarkable
polyrhythmic vocal grooves certainly seem a distant ancestor
to hip-hop. And when early-’60s singer Little Caesar says
(in “You Can’t Bring Me Down”), “Girl you can’t do this to
me/Talking ’bout suing me for everything you bought me/Girl
is you for true?/Let’s see the lawyer,” it doesn’t sound thematically
too far afield from today.
Frankly, though, some of this is a stretch, and the collection
could have been pulled together without using the term “hip-hop.”
But there are some priceless gems, such as criminally unknown
Sun Records blues howler Joe Hill Louis on the raw, tough
and primitive “Gotta Let You Go” and the early-’50s snappy
hillbilly romp “Swamp Root” by white sharecropper Harmonica
Frank Floyd. These disparate gems can be appreciated outside
of this expanded notion of hip-hop.
 Speaking
of hip-hop, let me tell you how far out of control this guesting-on-other-people’s-records
thing has gotten: Tupac makes a prominent cameo on the new
Keyshia Cole album, A Different Me. I know!
But here he is, rapping his way through Keyshia’s convincing
Quiet Storming on “Playa Cardz Right.” Overall, though, Cole’s
third album is a more mature, smooth and cosmopolitan type
of effort than previous outings, and a very convincing and
soulful album. The lyrics are a bit cringe-worthy at times—but
didn’t the great Marvin Gaye once toss aside all heroic coupletting
to give us “Let’s Get It On”? And that’s what this is: soul.
A strain that ran from Ray Charles to Gaye to Mary J. Blige
to Keyshia Cole, who has made a dang good album that sounds
to me like a place where the soul of something or other keeps
living on.
|
Site
Search 
