Boudin, Le Roi Du Ciel

Now, with the last of winter tumbling into spring, the two seasons share a common space and the skies reflect the push and pull between them.

It's a time when I appreciate Eugene Boudin - the 19th century French painter to whom the master of the poetic landscape, Corot, proclaimed one day "You are king of the skies!".
Boudin,who was born in Honfleur in Normandy, spent most of his life painting in this vicinity, where the winds off the English Channel hit the seashore resorts of Deauville and Trouville. Here he loved to counterpoint his skies against the shoreline where the crinoline-clad ladies and top-hatted gentlemen, children and umbrellas, were all scattered and grouped across the horizon like so many colored stones or nestled villages.



Only on occasion would he venture abroad, notably to the emerald coast of Brittany where he met his wife, then in later years to Venice where he captured the calmer skies and watery reflections.

Though early in his career, he barely scraped out a living (at times facing starvation and contemplating suicide) he was already applauded by fellow artists and poets of renown. Baudelaire, as was his fashion, (at least with a chosen few) waxed rhapsodic after seeing a showing of Boudin's work.

"At the end, all these clouds in their fantastic and brilliant forms, these chaotic darknesses, these suspended and added the one to the others green and pink immensities, these gaping volcanoes, these firmaments of black or purple and crumpled, rolled or torn satin, these horizons in mourning or flowing of melted metal, all these depths, all this magnificence went up to my brain as a heady drink or as the eloquence of opium...."

I believe Baudelaire was referring, here, to some of Boudin's watercolors which were looser than the early oils. His oil renderings of the skies were not so much
spectacular in themselves but subtly suffused and enfolded the landscape beneath in the embrace of their delicate whims and dramatic moods.

Like Daubigny, Courbet, Corot, Whistler, and even to some extent Edouard Manet, Boudin was a godfather to the Impressionists; revered and even sharing exhibitions with them but always on the periphery of the movement. He never quite gave himself over to (and I'm personally relieved at this) the overriding absorption with light and color - "impressions" - that his early admirer Monet became noted for. Boudin retained a solidity of form and composition that was a remnant of an earlier time, despite the free flowing strokes that formed his skies and seas.

Giulietta, Lo Spippolo

Today is the birthday of Giulietta Masina, the Italian actress noted for her roles in the most well known of Fellini's early films, La Strada and Notti Di Cabiria. She also happened to be Fellini's wife for 40 some years until they passed away within months of one another; he in October 1993 and she in March of 1994.

Despite the close connection between the two, creatively and as polar personalities and physical opposites, Giulietta was a great talent regardless, winning accolades and awards as a supporting actress before appearing in her husband's films.

Giulietta had the natural whimsical grace of a mime and dancer and was often referred to as the female Chaplin in Europe. At a little under 5ft. she had waif-like appearance that made her a comic natural and an amusing counterpoint to Anthony Quinn's strongman, Zampano, in La Strada.

Fellini's own nickname for her was Lo Spippolo which is a slang word meaning "any small thing that inspires tenderness".

Early in life she displayed musical talent but with fingers that were to small to progress at the piano, she had more success at the violin. Her appearance on the dancing stage appeared comic or limited by her appearance and so, she was, in a sense, derailed into the theatre and radio where she found her niche preceding her film roles.




For myself and many others, the culmination and fulfillment of her screen talent was in the role of Cabiria, the resilient but perennially ill-fated prostitute in
Le Notti Di Cabiria
My favorite scene featuring Giulietta in this movie occurs when "Cabiria" wanders into a vaudeville house where a hypnotist ( masterfully; dare I say "hypnotically"? What the hell!) played by Aldo Silvani, is performing, taking volunteers from the audience. After he brings up the local jeering louts onstage and transforms them into amusing buffoons, he manages to convince Cabiria to "go under". What follows is a wonderful scene, a tribute to both Giulietta and Fellini at their poetic best.

see it here
.. i don't think you have to know Italian to appreciate it!
Andiamo amici!

* thanks to blitzey's posting on youtube for this marvelous scene!

Wardell at One O'Clock

The scene is the Shrine Auditorium, Los Angeles, April of 1948. On the stage are gathered a collection of jazz luminaries; Benny Carter, Howard McGhee, Red Callender and Vic Dickenson to name a few.

The pianist, Arnold Ross, takes an intro and kicks into a medium-up swinging blues, One O'Clock Jump and the Basie-style rhythm sections falls in, a sandy soft-shoe chug-a-chug chug train leaving the station, for the piano's two choruses in the familiar key of F concert....
then, in a surprise shift, there's a turnaround to the key of Db just as the thin-as-a-rail young tenor player, Wardell Gray, steps up to the microphone, signals his entry with a descending diminished triad, lands back up on the Db, and proceeds mow everyone down for 18 choruses of the swingingest jazz tenor solo ever taken.

Throughout the proceedings, on this live recording, a man in the background - I don't know if he's a fan or someone in the band - is clearly heard relentlessly inciting Wardell, like the crackle of kindling fire "Go! Go! Go!". Rather than this being the annoyance that it might be to the hi-fi connoisseur (who is already doubtlessly derailed by the roughness of the recording), I am RIGHT THERE with him, exhorting Gray to let it rip.

This solo is from a peak-time in Wardell's career; fresh from his sessions with Charlie Parker but still swinging in the Lestorian mode and playing with that gorgeous round bell tone that would gradually give way to a slight vibrato-buzz in the 50's before his untimely death in 1955.
This solo on One O'Clock is the longest on record from Wardell (his take on Blue Lou from the same performance, I believe, is another delightfully extended one) and I can only pine for the one's that got away.


An interesting, if brief, interview with clarinetist Buddy DeFranco was conducted by Abraham Ravett for his documentary on Wardell called Forgotten Tenor. Buddy played alongside Wardell in one of his short stints with the smaller version of the Count Basie band in 1949-1950. Here he has some insightful remarks regarding Wardell's playing and the rhythm of the Basie band:

"Wardell's ability to swing musically, maybe even now, I don't know what the younger musicians talk about but we used to talk about swing, whether swing isn't on top of the beat, behind the beat right on the beat, but I think swing has nothing to do with behind the beat, in front of the beat, or on top of the beat or on the beat. I think it has everything to do with the combination of the inherent gut or soul of the musician playing. In other words, I've heard some very intense players and if you analyze for instance, the great John Coltrane, some of his ballads especially, where he would play a million notes across a very slow four, none of the notes would be on the beat or off the beat at any given time. It would be on, off, late, forwards, and yet the pulse, the inherent pulse from the soul of the player was there, of John Coltrane. And Wardell had just a natural way of swinging and he could play, he could fool with the time, he could play behind, or forward or on it and make certain statements but there, the way he made certain statements is the way that made him swing so to speak.

I know so many school bands throughout the United States that say we're going to play like Count Basie, so our ensemble is going to play behind the beat, which is basically how Basie's band operated. The rhythm was steady and the ensemble played behind the beat. However, it's not so much that they played behind the beat, as they inferred that they were behind the beat and that the soul, the feeling was from the depth of the organism. Late, of course, behind, a little bit behind but you couldn't put it into a computer and say here's how far behind the beat Count Basie's band played. You see? There were a lot of times where they played right on the money though, maybe a couple of times they might have gone ahead a little. So sum it up, swing is like feeling, it's like the feeling of Jazz. Swing is the ambiguous mysterious element, it's either there or isn't there. And Wardell had it."



This from Ravett's interview with Jimmy Lewis who played bass behind Wardell and Buddy in the same basie line-up:

"He used to seem to create as he went along, you know?, on his solos. You can always tell when something new pops into his mind while he's playing, because he'd always smile, you can see him smiling while he's playing his horn.

You know I'd like to see him featured in a film, where he could really show off his talent. Really show it off, say, it was just the band playing in the background, and put him out front. I think, when I was with Basie in his big band, and Wardell was featured on a tune, Wardell he gets out and he plays the first chorus, and right in the middle of the thing he says, come on, let's play, let's play now. Now this is right while the recording was going, and he played that thing, he played his heart out man, he just played and it looked, he gave the whole band a lift because he had so much to offer you know? He tried to put everything in his tunes, so Basie would say let him go, he wasn't supposed to have maybe one or two choruses and he ended up playing five or six choruses of the same tune you know?"

At the end of Wardell's solo on One O'Clock, I swear that I can hear our "inciter" saying to him, "Do it again, do it again!"



I highly recommend the website for Abraham Ravett's Forgotten Tenor. Aside from numerous interviews there is an excellent biography, discography, and a wonderful live clip of Wardell taking a chorus on "I Cried For You" with the pared-down Basie Band. Incomparable (except for Prez, of course!)

The above mentioned recording of Wardell on "One O'Clock Jump" can be found on
Wardell Gray on the Giants of Jazz label.

Charles Daubigny

Today commemorates the birthday of Charles Daubigny (1817-1878), a painter of the French "Barbizon" school.

Daubigny is one of those artists who are a link between the "plein air" painters of the Barbizon school and the Impressionists. Though he was invited to exhibit with the Impressionists, he remained independent of the "movement" and though his style became looser and more atmospheric he never quite abandoned himself to the effects of light over matter, continuing to remain comfortable with both.

In 1857 he bought a 29 foot houseboat for himself, called "Le Botin", converted it into a studio, and for much of the remainder of his life sailed up and down the rivers Meuse and Seine basking in the world of the riverscape.

I've often mused on the river-barge life. John Renbourn, the English guitarist who has been a longtime idol of mine, once lived on a houseboat in France, traveling about leading the young bohemian musician's life on the river.
Myself, though quite relishing the familiarity of a neighborhood and the rhythm and ritual of familiar friends and haunts, can well imagine traveling down the river; painting, playing guitar, stopping now and then to play saxophone in a local jam session, sell a painting to get by for awhile, and reconnect with the human race - knowing full well that the boat and the watercourse always would be there, waiting for me to come back to my senses.

Slow Light of Atget

Today, almost passed, marks the birthday of the French photographer Eugene Atget.



The great irony of Atget's life is that he considered himself merely an artisan, recording, first "documents for artists" and then, almost exclusively, the streets buildings, parks, vendors, prostitutes and ragpickers of his beloved "Old Paris" which was passing away into memory with the advent of cars, cinema, and advertisements. When his neighbor, the American surrealist, Man Ray asked him if he could include some of his prints in an avante-garde journal, Atget demanded that his name not be mentioned.
Yet, as it appears to the legion of great artist/photographers that revered him, it was the very innocence and denial of his personal "specialness" that allows his photographic subjects to speak through him, as if through a dream.




Atget used an old bulky, 36 pound, large format wooden bellows camera that favored slow, extended exposures and gave his photos a twilit, somnambulist air. When Man Ray offered to secure a more advanced up-to-date camera Atget demurred, saying that this model would be too fast for the slower workings of his mind. Atget had likely gone through too many years, taking an early morning train out to the suburbs, or arriving at a scene somewhere in the sprawling center with his old mechanical companion, the two of them poised for that just-right ephemeral afternoon light.
Many of his favorite subjects were to be found on streets just around the corner from a bustling crowded avenue that would have registered as so many blurs. In fact an occasional blurred figure will appear, ghostlike, in front of one of his shop-front or stairway scenes, unexpectedly and unavoidably captured, like a prehistoric firefly in amber.


In his youth Atget had worked as a sailor and actor in a traveling theatrical troupe. It was in this group of repertory players that he met, in 1886, the woman who was to be his lifetime companion, Valentine Compagnon. When she died in 1926 Atget soon followed suit, passing away on August 4, 1927. Berenice Abbott, the young American photographer who was an assistant to Man Ray, befriended him in his last years and she took a photograph of him only two days before he died. He never lived to see this photo, nor did he live to see the acclaim his photos would gather due to the tireless archiving of his works by Abbott who was to become a photographer of renown. Her photographs of New York City in the 30's are works of reverence much like Atget's prints of Paris.

Ora Cogan

Just a quick note for those of you enamoured with the likes of Jolie Holland, the Be Good Tanyas, Alela Diane, and Mariee Sioux; Ora Cogan is a Vancouver-based songbird (as are the Tanyas), who shares some of the appealing qualities of the above while striking out on her own musical path.

Although, like the aforementioned, she is immersed in the "old-timey" Appalachian, southern blues, and gospel stylings there is a gentle mystery about her songs that sets her apart and her guitar style underlines this. She also plays a very expressive fiddle that touches perhaps on her ventures into experimental music with other cohorts.
Like Jolie, she conjures the warm, clear, tones of the early Billie Holiday rather than her later style, which is evident in Karen Dalton's voice, and more overtly in Madeleine Peyroux and others. I don't know if it's just a coincidence or direct influence; whether "early" or " late", both Ora and Jolie list Billie as prominent among their influences.


I must admit I was struck by her picture; wondering what sort of ethnicity she arose from. Like Billie Holiday she has a Creole look; then I think "no, definitely Native American or maybe some oriental or Algerian...howabout Adzerbaijani?" Conclusion: forget about it! However, I did glean from a radio interview there is a definite Israeli connection and her father (Uri, a photo journalist) and mother (Susan, also a musician) met in Israel.

Ora hails from Salt Spring Island in the Gulf Islands grouped off the west coast of Canada; lying north of Washington's San Juan island and east of Vancouver Island. Descriptions of the place evoke a beautiful setting, consciously preserved, and a cultural environment that nurtures those "off the beaten path".

On hearing Ora I can only offer a grateful toast to such places and the people therein.


Ora's songs can be heard off her myspace site, here
and her website: www.oracogan.com

Les Feuilles Mortes

Jacques Prevert in Paris, with friend

"I like spring,but it is too young, i like summer, but it is too proud. So I like best of all autumn, because it's tone is mellower, it's colours are richer,
and it is tinged with a little sorrow."
- Lin Yutang

"It was one of those perfect English autumnal days which occur more frequently in memory than in life"
- P.D. James

February at last, and here I'm writing something autumn-related!
Yes, I'm a little slow on the uptake at times; it's just that I came upon an upcoming birthday notice (February 4, 1900) for the French poet/lyricist, screenwriter, and - here's the tie - purveyor of the "original" Autumn Leaves lyric, Jacques Prevert. Of course the original title in French for the song was "Les Feuilles Mortes", the English translation resonating with a thud as "The Dead Leaves". those of us with a musical ear, would have hoped for the melodious and visually attractive French word "automne" in the title; not to be! At this point, I would add that the English version of the lyrics, written by Johnny Mercer, are, though exquisite, quite different.


Here, with the introductory verse and the refrain - which accompanies the gorgeous melody known to all, of Prevert's musical collaborator Joseph Kosma - is the French "Les Feuilles" followed by a fairly literal translation into English by Chuck Perrin:

Oh! je voudrais tant que tu te souviennes
Des jours heureux oů nous étions amis
En ce temps-la la vie était plus belle,
Et le soleil plus brűlant qu'aujourd'hui
Les feuilles mortes se ramassent a la pelle
Tu vois, je n'ai pas oublié...
Les feuilles mortes se ramassent a la pelle,
Les souvenirs et les regrets aussi
Et le vent du nord les emporte
Dans la nuit froide de l'oubli.
Tu vois, je n'ai pas oublié
La chanson que tu me chantais.

C'est une chanson qui nous ressemble
Toi, tu m'aimais et je t'aimais
Et nous vivions tous deux ensemble
Toi qui m'aimais, moi qui t'aimais
Mais la vie sépare ceux qui s'aiment
Tout doucement, sans faire de bruit
Et la mer efface sur le sable
Les pas des amants désunis.

Oh I wish so much you would remember
those happy days when we were friends.
Life in those times was so much brighter
and the sun was hotter than today.
Dead leaves picked up by the shovelful.
You see, I have not forgotten.
Dead leaves picked up by the shovelful,
memories and regrets also,
and the North wind carries them away
into the cold night of oblivion.
You see, I have not forgotten
the song that you sang for me:
It is a song resembling us.
We lived together, the both of us,
you who loved me
and I who loved you.
But life drives apart those who love
ever so softly
without a noise
and the sea erases from the sand
the steps of lovers gone their ways.

Unlike his more intricate screenwriting work (eg. my longtime favorite, the brilliant Les Enfants Du Paradis), Prevert's poems were very simple, often reading like surrealist laundry lists or the guileless word-collage of a child; simple sentiments delivered with a twist. In "Feuilles", the rake gathering leaves juxtaposed against the lost love is a very Prevertian touch - an ordinary utilitarian object with no romantic "charge", together with an intangible sentiment - connected by, the more obviously metaphorical, leaves.
My favorite musical version of "Autumn Leaves" is the Miles Davis / Cannonball Adderley take from Somethin' Else. The misterioso introduction, ending vamp and Miles' bare and elegant solo. Most "poetic" of all, his choice to resolve the line on the 6th (E against G minor) of the chord in the 7th bar, rather than the expected minor 3rd. I like to think Prevert tipped his hat to that.

one more poem by Jacques:

Paris at Night


Trois allumettes une à une allumées dans la nuit
La premiére pour voir ton visage tout entier
La seconde pour voir tes yeux
La dernière pour voir ta bouche
Et l'obscuritè tout entière pour me rappeler tout cela
En te serrant dans mes bras.


Three matches one by one struck in the night
The first to see your face in it's entirety
The second to see your eyes
The last to see your mouth
And the darkness all around to remind me of all these
As I hold you in my arms.

Here is a lovely version in French by Yves Montand that starts with a reading of the verse.

Sonny's Lists

Browsing through amazon.com today, I came upon the "Amazon Earworm" section which features lists created by celebrity musicians/performers, of music, books, or movies they recommend.

I was delighted to find lists by one of my idols, tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins who is now 77 years old and still performing with great intensity and clarity - witness the show I caught last year.
I had an inkling of some of his choices, having read many interviews, including an exceptional NPR radio interview he gave Teri Gross back in the early 90's - but there were some surprises. Here are his lists of recommended music and recommended films, with some brief commentary by him.

Sonny Rollins' List of Music You Should Hear

1. "The Man I Love" from Ken Burns JAZZ Collection: Coleman Hawkins by Coleman Hawkins
The Great Hawk, and a masterpiece.

2. "Afternoon of a Basie-ite" from The Complete Lester Young on Keynote by Lester Young
This is Lester Young and all he represents.

3. "Cotton Tail" from The Best of Ken Burns Jazz by Duke Ellington & His Orchestra
The Duke Ellington Orchestra in one of its many unforgettable recordings and, of course, the mighty Ben Webster up front.

4. "I Can't Get Started" from I Can't Get Started by Bunny Berigan
There’s something about this record that gets to me. I can’t explain it beyond that.

5. "Unforgettable" from The Very Best Of Nat King Cole by Nat King Cole
My favorite singer and a good enough song.

6. "Lover Man" from Ultimate Billie Holliday: Lover Man by Billie Holiday
I’ve been told that that is Budd Johnson playing the tenor solo. A great arrangement to cuddle the lady.

7. "Billie's Bounce" from Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948 by Charlie Parker
Here is the Bird out of Kansas City, and listen to the genius of young Miles.

8. "Ballad for Americans" from Ballad for Americans by Paul Robeson
The great voice, the great man, and again, the great message of this song.

Sonny's List of Movies you Should Watch:

1. Casablanca
Everybody’s favorite for the usual reasons, but Dooley Wilson’s band sealed it for me.

2. Cabin in the Sky
Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong, Lena Horne, Ethel Waters. . . You get the idea.

3. Swing Time
I saw it when I was 6, and Jerome Kern’s music stayed with me.

4. The Third Man (50th Anniversary Edition) - Criterion Collection
Austria after the war. Intriguing plot, and that great zither music.

5. Foreign Affair (1948)
Berlin just after the war – a great cast, a great story, and Billy Wilder.

6. Laura (Fox Film Noir)
Who can resist Gene Tierney as Laura? The song isn’t bad, either.

Like many great improvisers, Sonny plays a fair bit of standards from the "American Song Book" - but he is also notable for playing many tunes from the the standard repertoire that are infrequently played by the majority of jazz musicians.
Things like "Count Your Blessings", "The Most Beautiful Girl In the World", "To A Wild Rose", "I'm An Old Cowhand", "The Last Time I Saw Paris", and "How Are Things In Glocca Morra" come to mind.

It amuses me that many jazz musicians, and fans, seem to be in denial about Rollins' love of those standards made popular in the great movie musicals of the 30's and 40's. I heard one musician cohort claim that "Sonny is just kidding us when he plays those tunes. He isn't serious." I also recall one young musician writing to Sonny's website, complimenting him on "destroying" such and such a tune.
Get a clue people, Sonny loves this stuff! I recall Sonny telling an interviewer that he had amassed a fair collection of bygone musicals and was currently in awe of the dancing performance of Joan Leslie opposite Fred Astaire in "The Sky's the Limit". I always felt that Rollins' best improvised lines danced and continued to dance in the head and steps down the street long after the initial hearing.

The mind of the greater creative musician is not confined to the narrow box of "hipness" that many lesser mortals find comforting.
End of sermon.

Madame George

Down on Cyprus Avenue
With childlike visions leaping into view
The clicking clacking of the high heeled shoe
Ford & Fitzroy, and Madame George.

Marching with the soldier boy behind
He's much older now, with hat on, drinking wine
And that smell of sweet perfume comes drifting through
on the cool night air like Shalimar oil

And outside they're making all the stops
Kids out in the street collecting bottle-tops
Gone for cigarettes and matches in the shops
I’d be taken Madame George

That's when you fall
Whoa, that's when you fall

Yeah, that's when you fall

When you fall into a trance
A sitting on a sofa playing games of chance
With your folded arms in history books you glance
Into the eyes of Madame George

And you think you’ve found the bag
You're getting weaker and your knees begin to sag
In the corner playing dominoes in drag
The one and only Madame George

And then from outside the frosty window raps
She jumps up and says Lord have mercy I think it's the cops
And immediately drops everything she gots
Down into the street below

And you know you gotta go
On that train from Dublin up to Sandy Row
Throwing pennies at the bridges down below
And the rain, hail, sleet, and snow.

Say goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George

And as you leave, you'd be laughing, you'd be
dancing, music goin all around the room
And all the little boys come around, walking away from it all
So cold

And as you're about to leave
She jumps up and says Hey love, you forgot your gloves
And the love to love she loves to love the love
to love to love she loves to love the love to love.

To say goodbye to Madame George
Dry your eye for Madame George
Wonder why for Madame George
Dry your eyes for Madame George

Say goodbye in the wind and the rain on the back street
In the backstreet, in the back street
Say goodbye to Madame George
In the backstreet, in the back street, in the back street
Down home,

down home in the back street….

Say goodbye, goodbye
Get on the train

Get on the train, the train, the train...
This is the train, this is the train...
Whoa, say goodbye, goodbye....
Get on the train, get on the train...

Van Morrison sings out the first line of Madame George and, with the descending phrase that tumbles down and curls up with "Avenue", I'm transported to a place not quite physical but voiced into being verse to verse a narrative that gradually disassembles into feeling; and looking up from the street below a flash of a woman pausing in the third floor window frame, before closing the drapes on a scene that flickers in the mind of a man looking back in his memory with longing and regret, upon an event that will never be quite digested because the coincidences of time that brought him to that place will never be retrieved.

Madame George carries a mystery; no one can quite fathom who Madame George is. Lester Bangs, best known for his in-depth reviews in Rolling Stone Magazine, wrote a compelling piece about Morrison's Astral Weeks, focusing in particular on Madame George whom he, naturally with a line like "caught up in a corner playing dominoes in drag, the one and only Madame George", deduces to be a drag queen. He starts out;

" 'Madame George' is the album's whirlpool. possibly the most compassionate piece of music ever made, it asks us, no, arranges that we see the plight of what I'll be brutal and call a lovelorn drag queen with such intense empathy that when the singer hurts him, we do too."

Van Morrison, in various interviews, denied the drag queen theory:"Oh no. Whatever gave you that impression? It all depends on what you want, how you want to go. If you see it as a male or female or whatever, it's your trip." Later he said,

"Madame George was about six or seven people who probably couldn't find themselves in there if they tried."

Perhaps Cyprus Avenue itself is a way station in Van's memory for a number of people and happenings that he gives form to in this song.


The writer Tom Nolan recently wrote an article in Wall Street Journal (a likely place!) positing that Morrison's Madame George was actually "George" Yeats (originally Georgie Hyde Lees) the wife of William Butler Yeats, the Irish poet. "George", who was about 30 years younger than W.B. when they married, was a psychic medium and fellow member with her husband-to-be of the mystical Order of the Golden Dawn. Most importantly, she introduced Yeats to automatic writing. If the assumption of George Yeats as our "Madame" seems too loopy to consider, especially given the setting of the song, there are some odd connections, if only coincidental.

Consider Morrison's further descriptions of the song in an interview:



"The original title was 'Madame Joy' but the way I wrote it down was 'Madame George'. Don't ask me why I do this because I just don't know. The song is just a stream-of-conciousness thing, like 'Cyprus Avenue'.

It may have something to with my great aunt whose name was Joy. Apparently she was clairvoyant...that may have something to do with it. Aunt Joy lived in the area mentioned in connection with Cyprus Avenue. She lived on a street just off Fitzroy Street which is quite near to Cyprus Avenue."


"Madame George" begins with the simple 3 chord turnaround pattern that Morrison uses for the duration of the song. The singing commences together with Richard Davis' jazz double bass line which grounds the proceedings while Connie Kay on drums, John Payne on flute, and a violinist float in and out - an unconventional line-up that gives it a feel that defies labels.

I'll give the final word to Van the Man himself:

"I didn't even think about what I was writing. There are some things that you write that just come out all at once....'Madame George' just came right out. The song is basically about a spiritual feeling."



While somewhere out there or in the hereafter "six or seven people" are wandering about in a state of unknowing as regards their contributions to the person that is Madame George, I'll be kicking back and relishing this song again and again just i did that first day some time in 1969. I leave the solving to some other sleuth, admitting that really, like a great jazz improvisation or beautiful painting, there's no need for a solution.




* For those who haven't the record I've copied a clip from youtube which I've posted here
The video has nothing to do with the tune, and my version keeps stopping about a 2 or 3 minutes near the end (which is an area that shouldn't be missed) , but I'm grateful, nevertheless, that the poster posted it!
There is another earlier, still formative, version posted of it from hitherto unreleased tapes but i heartily do not recommend it.

* there is a nice myspace site on the album Astral Weeks that has some complete versions of a few great songs . check it out here

Mexican Blue

My favorite song in the universe is...... (drum roll please, Jo Jones....)

Mexican Blue, as written and performed by Jolie Holland on Springtime Can Kill You.
The song is dedicated to Samantha Parton of the Be Good Tanyas. Jolie started out with the Tanyas in Vancouver but left to due to creative "differences" and moved to San Francisco where she started her solo career and resides to this day.

I don't profess to know the exact relationship of Jolie to Sam but doubtlessly this about the most affecting love song I've ever heard. Perhaps, a plea for her friend to simply take care of herself and not let hard times to press her down.
The song begins simply, stepping lightly, with Jolie's voice and a simple 4 chord sequence that continues to cycle through to the end. As it moves along, the underplayed coloring of the drums and bass fill it out and the magnificent tonal colors of Brian Miller's guitar bring just the right touch to the mood. Jolie's verses shift from poetic allusions to direct plea and back again and she rearranges the melody to fit the pictures her words paint; reaching high and plaintive or warm and settled.
If nothing else the song offers the listener an opportunity to relish, intimately, the beautiful glowing tones of Jolie's voice and the way she takes a word and ever so slightly draws it out and spins and flutters it, and let its melt off her tongue. Just the way she says, in her lovely drawl, "hydrangeas" is enough for me to hop the nearest train to SF and lay bouquets at her door. Ahh, but one must let go of what can never be and appreciate what's been given!

The song is the last on the album; number 12, and i wouldn't doubt that those flicking about, perusing the cuts, might never make it that far. Here is the Jolie recording of Mexican Blue as posted on myspace - thanks to the poster and long may it stay!

You're like a saint's song to me

I'll try to sing it pure and easily

You're like a Mexican blue

So bright and clear and pale in the afternoon

I saw you riding on your bike

In a corduroy jacket in the night

Past the hydrangeas that were blooming in the alley

With a galloping dog by your side

When I was hungry you fed me

I don't mean to suggest that I'm like Jesus Christ

Your light overwhelmed me

When I lay beside you sleepless in the night

And when you dreamed my guardian spirits appeared

And the moon stretched out across your little bed

They said they'd started to get worried about me

They were happy we had finally met

We had finally met

A mysterious bird flies away

Seemed to be calling your name

And bounced off the top of a towering pine

And vanished in the drizzling rain

There's a mockingbird behind my house

Who is a magician of the highest degree

And I swear I heard him rip the world apart

And sew it back again with his fiery melody, melody

When you were mad at me I didn't care

And I just loved you all the same

And I waited for the wind to push the hurricane

Out to sea, and the sun could shine again

Oh I don't mean to give you advice

Its just like Delia said, "oh, Jesus Christ"

Just don't get so high you leave the ground

Everything is so much better when you're around

Just don't float so high you drift away

Stand tall, with your feet on the ground

I love your songs, I love your sound

Everything is so much better when you're around

When the moon is as clear as an opal

And the amethyst river sings a song

I'll remember all your dreams and the mysteries

You have borne in your crystalline soul

That you sing from your golden throat

That you shine from your sparkling eyes

That you feel from the goddess in your thighs

You're like a saint's song to me

I'll try to sing it pure and easily

You're like a Mexican blue

So bright and clear and pale in the afternoon

In the afternoon

The Candle is All Flame

One late spring day around 1934 Jan Yoors, a Belgian boy of twelve, overcome with curiosity from his father's stories, wandered up to the grassy periphery of a gypsy camp on the edge of town. Boys from the kumpania approached him, and engaged him in conversation, showing him their horses. Though they barely could understand a word between them, a natural ease set in - they were at an age when such things were possible. Jan would gradually realize that he had freely slipped through a door between cultures rarely traversed and if he had been older or much younger, there wouldn't have been the ghost of a chance.

The pull was so strong that Jan seemingly forgot that he had a warm,well-furnished home and two loving parents to return to - one night with the gypsy kids out under the stars led to another and soon he was accepted by the elders and traveled freely with the caravan. It took a great deal of time for Jan to shed the veneer of "civilization", and adjust to the constancy of travel:


"On a few occasions I was distressed when we left a particularly pleasant or convenient camping spot...Rupa chided me for this, in her gruff way; she said I would, by losing it, cherish the memory of this place even more, with the tenderness reserved for incompletely satisfied longings. She said in time I too would learn to possess the single passing moment more passionately, more fully, without regrets. She tried to tell me that the Rom lived in a perpetual present: memories, dreams, desires, hungers, the urge toward a tomorrow, all were rooted in the present. Without now there was no before, just as there would be no after.
She said that 'to the Lowara (their Gypsy branch) a candle is not made of wax, but is all flame'. In the stories they told, the Rom praised extravagant lavishness and most of them practiced this all consuming generosity, at times to the extreme of outright squandering. In their language thriftiness, or any other word denoting carefulness, was translated as stinginess. They strongly disapproved of saving, with the result that between red-letter days, worthy of legend, there were hollow ones, more frequent than bargained for."


Fortunately, his parents were a liberal-minded pair; his mother Magda, a human rights activist and his father Eugene, a renowned stained glass artist. When Jan finally returned home they reached an agreement that he could live with the Rom half the year and live at home, attending to his studies.

Yoors wrote "The Gypsies", describing his life with the Gypsies and also a connected book "The Crossing" which deals with his work - in tandem with the Gypsies - as a resistance fighter in World War II. He was arrested twice and narrowly escaped execution by some paperwork foul-up by the Nazis. A majority of his dear traveling companions were less fortunate, and perished in the death camps.

Amongst the companions lost to him was his Gypsy "father" Pulika.
This from Jan's son Kore's reminiscences of his father's stories in the introduction to "The Heroic Present: Life Among the Gypsies" a compilation of Yoors photos and writings:

"One day in the 1930's, as winter approached and Jan was preparing to return to his parent's home, he asked Pulika to pose for a photo. Pulika asked, "Why do you need a photo of me? Are you going to betray me to the police?" Jan replied that he wanted the photo to remember him by.
Pulika responded, "If you need a piece of paper to remember me by, forget me!"


Jan Yoors is the tall, very white, teenager second from left in the top photo.

Tear-Water Tea From Poetry

One of my favorite reading pleasures is the children's series consisting of Frog and Toad Together, and Owl (alone) by Arnold Lobel.
I never read them as a kid but as a grown-up father to my daughter Laurel; no matter, I can pick up one now on my own and while away the contented....minutes!

Owl at Home consists of 5 stories featuring the logically challenged, somewhat obsessive homebody, Owl. I especially like the one entitled "Tear-Water Tea". On a frosty night, Owl gets a hankering for tear-water tea; but to get it he must provide his own tears. So he thinks of sad things like "mashed potatoes left on a plate because nobody ate them.", "a beautiful morning that nobody saw because they were sleeping." and, for me, the topper: "spoons that have fallen behind a stove and are never seen again." Eventually, Owl works up enough tears to get a decent batch which is then boiled and enjoyed in quiet contentment.

While at my day job at the library in the periodical section, I often am reminded of the "spoons fallen behind the stove" but in my version it's "literary or poetry journals that never get read because most people prefer to read about Britney's twisted childhood in US Weekly and the like, while waiting to get on a computer.". So I take it upon myself to peak into them whenever I can and read at least one poem all the way through.

Tuesday i found this poem by Tony Hoagland in the November "Tri-Quarterly". As a jazz musician and lover of words and (reasonably) accessible poems, i thought this to be a find. It also has some invisible, etheric thread of relation to Tear-Water Tea!

Jazz

I was driving home that afternoon
in some dilated condition of sensitivity
of the kind known only to certain heroic poets
and more or less almost everybody else

the sun of the six pm glaring orangely through the trees
as through the bars of some kind of cage
and the poor citizens of Pecore Street waiting for the bus
with their sorrowful posture and bad feet-

I admit when I'm in one of those moods I find it
a little too easy to believe the trees are suffering
to see the twisted branches as arthritic hands,
and the Spanish moss dripping from their scabby limbs
as parasitic bunting.

Someone had given me a jazz CD
he had thought I would enjoy
but the song unfurling on the stereo that day,
it seemed a kind of torture music,

played by wildly unhappy musicians
on instruments that had been bent in shipping,
then harnessed by some masochist composer
for an experiment on the nature of obstruction.

But of all the shrieking horns and drums
it was the passionate effort of a certain defective trumpet
to escape from its predetermined plot
that seemed to be telling a story that I knew:

veering back and forth, banging off walls,
dripping a trail of blood
until finally it shattered through a window and disappeared.

For some reason I didn't understand,
it had to suffer before it was allowed to rest.
It was permitted to rest before being recaptured.

That was part of the composition.
That was the only kind of feedom
we were ever going to know.

A Few Drops of Lubitsch

Ernst Lubitsch began his career in Germany as a comic actor and later took up directing, developing an international reputation by the the 1920's. Mary Pickford brought him to the US to direct her and he soon became a citizen of Hollywood. His "ouevre" in these years had moved from historical epics to "relationship" dramas and musicals with a certain flair for irony and whimsy.

Although the "Lubitsch Touch" seems to have been a Hollywood studio-concocted catchword it began innocently enough, describing flourishes that introduced a "continental" touch counter to the heavyhanded American approach.
Here, an early description derived from a now-lost movie:

"'Kiss Me Again' has many deft and delightful touches, the outstanding one being where Mr Lubitsch depicts a rain shower in a natural way. The average director resorts to a deluge after a glimpse of darkening skies torn by streaks of lightning.
Mr Lubitsch craftily shows a few spots on the pavement, and even when the shower comes, it is pictured as ordinary rainfall and not as a cloudburst."

Another Lubitsch "waterscene", this from "Forbidden Paradise", caught some attention in 1924. Under the moonlight, two lovers meet by a pond:

"You see the reflection of the two heads in the water as the lovers gaze into each other's eyes. Slowly, very slowly, their lips approach and just as the kiss is about to be given, a dawdling fish shatters the reflection."

As Lubitsch films progressed into the talkies new dimensions of expression came naturally to him, and he continued to find ways to say more in the new medium with elegant economy.



In "Trouble in Paradise" (1932) Miriam Hopkins (Lily) and Herbert Marshall (Gaston), masquerading in Venice as world-weary "nobility", are not aware that each is actually a master thief. They arrange a dinner rendezvous and over the polite chit-chat and relishing of the cuisine (Lily is perhaps gobbling it down a little too enthusiastically for a countess!) they gradually voice their suspicions that the other one is not what they seem. Meanwhile, their fascination for one another begins to steam up the screen as mutual "pickpocketing skills" become evident. Roger Ebert likens this scene to a kind of strip poker game (on a higher level of course!)

Lily: I like you, Baron.
Gaston: I'm crazy about you. By the way, your pin. (He returns her brooch pin - after appraising it.)
Lily: (after suddenly noticing she's missing it) Thank you, Baron.
Gaston: Not at all. There's one very good stone in it.
Lily: What time is it? (She allows him to search for his pocket watch before looking startled. She hands it to him from her purse - after resetting it.) It was five minutes slow but I regulated it for you. (He pockets the watch with a smile.)
Gaston: I hope you don't mind if I keep your garter. (She checks her leg, under the table, and then Gaston holds the garter up high and kisses it to prove his expertise.)
Lily: Darling! (excitedly, she rises and kisses him, flinging herself into his arms) Oh now, darling. Tell me, tell me all about yourself. Who are you?
Gaston: You remember the man who walked into the Bank of Constantinople, and walked out with the Bank of Constantinople?
Lily: Monescu.
Gaston: Gaston Monescu.
Lily: Gaston!*

Unable to hold back any longer, Lily and Gaston are on their feet and in each other's arms. He leads her to the couch and declares his undying love, in the smoothest Marshall tones:
I love you. I loved you the moment I saw you. I'm mad about you. My little shoplifter. My sweet little pickpocket. My darling.

As Lubitsch dissolves the scene we see an empty couch in dimming light and a "Do Not Disturb" sign on the door.
Only Lubitsch could carry off such a scene with the ABSOLUTE seamless ease despite the absurdity - no technological gimmickry or slapstick needed. He has the viewer poised in the palm of his hand.

Like a Lao Tzu description of the Tao, many could recognize the "touch" when they saw it, and it was undeniable that there was such a thing, but no one could conclusively define it much less pass it on or possess it.
The director Billy Wilder (along with Preston Sturges, and later, to some degree Peter Bogdanovich and Woody Allen) was much influenced by Lubitsch and had even worked with him in the 1930's.
Wilder on Lubitsch, "You know, if one could write Lubitsch touches, they would still exist, but he took that secret with him to his grave. It's like Chinese glass-blowing; no such thing exists anymore. Occasionally, I look for an elegant twist and I say to myself, 'How would Lubitsch have done it?' And I will come up with something and it will be like Lubitsch but it won't be Lubitsch. It's just not there anymore."

In Scott Eyman's wonderful book on Lubitsch* he includes an interesting commentary on a Wilder film related by Lubitsch's long-time scriptwriter,Sam Raphaelson. Again, a waterscene conveys the "touch".
"When Sam and Dorschka Raphaelson went to see Love in the Afternoon, they watched a scene wherein a water truck, dousing the early morning streets of Paris, soaks a pair of young lovers who fail to notice. Raphaelson leaned over to Dorschka and said,'What a mistake! Now if I were doing that scene with Lubitsch, we would have first shown the truck spraying water moving toward the lovers. But when the truck gets to them, the water shuts off. After it passes them, then the water starts up again. Now, that's the Lubitsch Touch'"

quotes above were gleaned from:
Dirks, Tim "Trouble In Paradise" see Tim's ABSOLUTELY MASTERFUL description of the movie at http://www.filmsite.org/trou.html
Eyman, Scott "Ernst Lubitsch: Laughter In Paradise".
Thompson, Kristin "Herr Lubitsch Goes To Hollywood: German and American Film After World War I"
Hall, Mordaunt "Appealing Touches In Film Directed by Mr. Lubitsch"

Ragtime Nightingale

Joseph Lamb was an anomaly among the ragtime composers; the son of Irish immigrants, growing up in an environment (Montclair, New Jersey and rural Canada) totally devoid of "ragtime" culture, he somehow flourished in a musical world of his own making and rose up like an exotic flower from a sidewalk crack.
Lamb was an intuitive pianist who had little formal training. His primary exposure to ragtime was through sheet music acquired in music stores and he was greatly enamoured of Scott Joplin's compositions. Prior to age 20 he began composing ragtime tunes inspired by Joplin but with a touch of his own originality.

Lamb frequented John Stark's publishing house in Manhattan where he unsuccessfully submitted a few original compositions.
In 1909 he walked in to Stark's and, according to his own reminiscence, "There was a colored fellow sitting there with his foot bandaged up as if he had the gout, and a crutch beside him. I hardly noticed him. I told Mrs. Stark that i liked the Joplin rags best and wanted to get any I didn't have. The colored fellow spoke up and asked whether I had certain pieces which he named. I thanked him and bought several and was leaving when I said to Mrs. Stark that Joplin was one fellow I would certainly like to meet. 'Really,' said Mrs. Stark. 'Well, here's your man.' I shook hands with him, needless to say. It was a thrill I've never forgotten. I had met Joplin and was going home to tell the folks."

Joplin asked if Lamb would care to accompany him for a walk and a chat, and subsequently invited him to come by the boarding house where he was living near Times Square the following week. Lamb played him some of his pieces and Joplin was very impressed with "Sensation - A Rag" calling it "a regular Negro Rag" - the ultimate compliment for Lamb. Joplin offered to add his own name on the title page of "Sensation" as an arranger to help sell the piece to Stark and the public. This thoughtful gesture placed Lamb's foot in the door and Sensation was the first in string of his rags published in the next 10years.

Considered today as one of the "Big Three" of Ragtime composers, along with Joplin and James Scott, Lamb did little to promote himself and disappeared into obscurity at the onset of the 20's when passion for jazz began to supersede ragtime.
In his words; "I wanted to keep my music in my private
life. I didn't want to make any money on my
things. I only wanted to see them published
because my dream was to be a great ragtime
composer." He rejected any suggestions to commercialize his music wanting to remain free to express himself without compromise.
He lived the remainder of his life near Coney Island in Brooklyn, quietly raising a family of 5 children, and working as an accountant for the same import firm from 1911 until his retirement in 1957. His wife recalled nights when Joe played the piano after dinner with one foot on the bassinet rocking the baby asleep.

When there was a revival of interest in classic ragtime in the late 40's and early 50's, many thought that "Joseph Lamb" might have been a pseudonym for Scott Joplin.
Although there were similarities their styles, one notable difference was that Lamb's compositions tended to be built on 8 bar phrases as opposed to Joplin's 4.

Relying on the handwritten address marked on one of Lamb's last published pieces, revivalist
Rudi Blesh found Lamb through a Brooklyn phonebook and interviewed him. Encouraged by a newfound interest in his work, Lamb began composing again. Just prior to his death in 1960 he was visited by Sam and Ann Charters who wanted to document his work. Ann (known now for her writing on Jack Kerouac and the beat poets) played and recorded Lamb's compositions and coaxed the old man to play a number himself for posterity.



*Searching online for good representative soundclips, the best i've found is off "Perfessor" Bill Edwards ragtime site http://www.perfessorbill.com/index2.htm
The Perfessor plays Lamb's rags beautifully in an elegant style. Check out "A Ragtime Nightingale"
Especially to be avoided are renditions in the cheesey speeded-up honky-tonk style inappropriate for Lamb's rags in particular and generally toxic to an true appreciation of great classic ragtime.

The Phantom City of Coney Island

I was a five year old in 1958, holding tight to my dad's hand as we were ushered into the ROCKET TO THE MOON at Disneyland.
It was a darkened ampitheater with seats that surrounded a large screen on the floor ensconced by a scant barrier, like the portal of a vast glass-bottom boat. Looking down from above, we rocketeers watched the orange-tinted moon grow larger and more luminous until we were hovering over the craters. I was moved to go down to the edge and peer down at the mountains and blue-shadowed "seas', shuddering at what would become of me if I fell overboard and became a lunar castaway.

Back in 1901 at the Buffalo Exposition, similar wonderment gripped those voyagers embarking on the TRIP TO THE MOON; suspended in an airship moving through starlit darkness as they beheld the approaching moonscape. Upon landing they met up with spiny haired Selenites in subterranean grottos and moon-midgets offering them green cheese.
Though the Exposition's organizers intended a cultural edification of the masses, the TRIP TO THE MOON, off the midway, was the runaway hit. George P. Tilyou, who ran Steeplechase Park at Coney Island by the sea in Brooklyn, was there to see the TRIP and offered it's creators, Thompson and Dundy, a spot on his grounds. The partners moved to Steeplechase, then capitalized on the ride's popularity by throwing all the earnings into a new park next door - to be called LUNA PARK after Skip's sister Luna in Bayonne Park, New Jersey.

The gates of LUNA PARK opened at 8:00 on the evening of May 16,1903. The curious masses waiting on Surf Ave. blinked, and suddenly an oriental OZ of minarets and towers switched on with 250,000 incandescent lights, illuminating lakes and dazzling promenades lined with arches.
The Brooklyn Eagle reported the next day,"..it seemed that huge mantle of light had been let down from the sky to disclose the domain of an unknown world."

Unlike Disneyland, Luna Park was not designed for "kids" or even "kids of all ages" -the turn of the century was a new era where people had come to the end of their rope with "reality". The working class, middle class, leisure class were all ready for fun and getting "out of this world." Frederic Thompson, the artist/designer of the Luna Park partnership, also designed the sets for "Little Nemo In Slumberland", now a very successful Broadway musical taken from the comics. Transport via dream to the moon, planets, and beyond came along at the right time.
Thompson wrote, "Straight lines are necessarily severe and dead. In building for a festive occasion there should be an absolute departure from all set forms of architecture. One must dare to decorate a minaret with Renaissance detail or to jumble romanesque with Art Nouveau, always with the ideal of keeping his line varied or broke and moving..."



Day and night people flocked to LUNA to ride Chute the Chutes waterslide, new-fangled elevators, gyroplanes, weave down the Helter Skelter, enter the Dragon's Gorge or the 20,00O Leagues Under the Sea submarine or any number of small circuses, sample exotic foods, and delight to historical tableaux, naval battles, clowns, acrobats, trick elephants, a village of genuine Phillippine tribesmen, oriental dancers, men shot from cannons; the whole works - and of course, the TRIP TO THE MOON. Sexual mores were changing and any amusement that could bring men and woman (even strangers) within touching space for a dime was a new pleasure.

Between 1903 to 1911 Luna Park, Steeplechase, and a new neighbor park, Dreamland reigned supreme together on Coney Island.
Then in 1911, Dreamland burned down,and soon after, Thompson went bankrupt, and Tilyou died and World War 1 was on its way. Slowly Coney Island slipped away from the singular realm of the fantastic and back into the Carnival it emerged from - still a thrill to the end, but much like the thousands of amusement parks that sprouted up around the world.

Ric Burns and Lisa Ades released "Coney Island: the American Experience" in 1991, a landmark, beautifully filmed and choreographed "documentary" history of Coney Island from the beginning to present, but largely focused on Luna Park. It includes commentary from contemporary writers, actors and vaudevilleans from Coneys past as well as readings and reminiscences of Henry Miller and other writers long gone. The soundtrack, old film footage, photographs and interviews make it a well-rounded feast of the senses.

One image haunts me most; footage of Luna Park at night as if seen from offshore; a spectral city of floating lights flickering together with the shimmering decay of the film and sparse notes of Harold Budd's "White Arcade" marimba/bell tiptoeing over a wash of nocturnal hum making the soundtrack.
Maxim Gorky wrote of his visit to Luna Park:

"With the advent of night, a phantom city of fire rears itself skyward from the ocean. Thousands of glowing sparks glimmer in the darkness. Threads of golden gossamer tremble in the air, weave translucent patterns of fire, hang motionless, in love with the beauty of their own reflection in the water. Fabulous beyond conceiving, ineffably beautiful is this fiery scintillation."

* to read about Luna Park and Coney Island i highly recommend Amusing The Million by John Kasson, and The Kid of Coney Island: Frederic Thompson and the Rise of American Amusements by Woody Register

Mystery of Licorice

Way back in the early 60's Robin Williamson, Clive Palmer, and Bert Jansch were sharing a flat and running a folk club in Edinburgh. The folk club served primarily as a place to perform their own music, which was taking "folk" down new, unpegged roads. Edinburgh was a hothouse flower bed of beatnik folk/jazz/blues with a sliver glint of psychedelic color beginning to tinge the brownstone street rain puddles.
Bert left and went on to a solo career, eventually joining up variously with Anne Briggs, or John Renbourn, and finally Pentangle. Robin and Clive hooked up with another Scotsmen, (from Perthshire) Mike Heron, and formed the Incredible String Band.

The Incredible String Band evolved from a kind of Celtic East Indian Old Timey Jug Band playing a mix of traditional tunes and originals to something even more defiant of record bin placement. Clive moved on and Mike and Robin added their girlfriends Rose and Licorice to the mix; tentatively with the release of 5,000 Spirits Or the Layers of the Onion and full on with The Hangman's Beautiful Daughter. Dylan's head was already bent by Robin's "October Song" (from their first record) and "First Girl I Loved" from "5000 Spirits" became a classic covered by many. Stevie Winwood's praises and inspiration were manifesting in Traffic's first record and Paul McCartney named "Hangman's" his favorite record of 1967.
Still, for various reasons, the String Band remained way on the outer fringe of the public ear. They were no virtuoso vocalists, and their lyrics ranged from absolute gems, to simpleton or arcane, circuitous, and precious annoyances. Increasingly, every record was a crapshoot with a guaranteed masterpiece (or three) in the crackerjack box.

I first saw them at the Aquarius Theatre in LA when I was about 16. Subsequent shows were memorable but this one was the capper. They came out on the stage in exotic clothes and beads, onto an Indian rug with nigh on 30 instruments scattered about like a stoned gypsy royal court and proceeded to tune it all up for what must have been 10 minutes. Others in the audience might have been fidgeting and leaving the premises to have a smoke - but I was in heaven. It was a slow, beguiling ceremony for what turned out to be a mesmerizing evening of great songs.

I confess that my teenage heart reserved a very warm space for Robin's girl Licorice (I'm sure he understands). I suppose, in a Jungian anima way, Licorice embodied the ideal hippie/folkie/psychedelic brownrice-eating girl-goddess that i was looking to project on some unsuspecting and unattainable female.
With the group Licorice played a bit of harmonium, guitar and such but mainly contributed a childlike angel voice to the oft ragged proceedings. You can hear her voice adding harmony to "Painting Box", announcing "amoebas are very small" on "A Very Cellular Song" from "Hangman's" and contributing the lovely solo part in "Fair As You" from I Looked Up.

According to Wikipedia Christina "Licorice" McKechnie (also called "Likky")was born in Scotland in on October 2nd, 1945.

Here's the mystery:

As time went on, Rose left the group and Robin and Licorice broke up - amicably it seems as she remained with the group for a few albums. Licorice settled in Los Angeles, was briefly married to guitar-player Mike Lambert and still played a bit of music here and there - along with a stint of waitressing and other quotidian enterprises.
I'd heard she did a bit of collaboration with Chick Corea but nothing came of it.
The String band as a whole had been involved with Scientology midway thru their career, but apparently Licorice was the first to become disillusioned. We might assume that would discount any connection with what happened next.

Licorice was last seen hitchiking through Arizona in 1987, although her older sister Frances, reports having received a letter "certainly sent from Sacramento" in 1990.
I sincerely hope that she is still on the planet, having started a new life but I have to accept the possibility of a sadder or darker ending. Peace be with her.

This letter from a former friend of Likky's courtesy of the "Likkie Shrine" site
http://www.angelfire.com/biz3/ISB/likkie.html
From: David Evans:

"I knew Likki and her husband Brian Lambert in about 1980 in Los Angeles. She was not in the music business at the time, but still incredibly talented and musical. She and I made some attempts at writing together.

I took guitar lessons from Brian. Likki still had Robin's nylon string painted guitar he had written many ISB songs on. I offered her every cent I had but she wouldn't think of parting with it. At a party at her house in the Hollywood Hills, she sang a song called Old Songs And Cottages which was so amazing I had to learn it. She felt so close to that song that she refused to teach anybody how it goes. I still remember the first two chords and have been playing with them for the past 18 years. She was incredibly sweet."


* aside from the Likkie Shrine site there is a little youtube soundtrack/video clip with pictures of Licorice, and the song "On the Banks of Italy" with a taste of her singing http://youtube.com/watch?v=011w7n_-EY8

* the sound of most of the clips of the ISB on youtube is fairly crappy but there's one fairly decent one of Robin and Mike in 1968 performing "The Half-Remarkable Question" on the Julie Felix Show in England. Julie sings with them on "Painting Box", and you can get a glimpse of the painted acoustic guitar that Licorice inherited from Robin.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AZYNO6SteaU&NR

* for some excellent full-length renditions of the String Band from their records go to myspace.com and check out
http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendID=54203671