You know that you’re a success when your name is used to represent your creation and, in the same breath, endows in it a sense of quality and authenticity. I’m going to defer to the many guitarists who are mourning the 94-year-old Les Paul online today, who love what he created and did with his life — they are better than I am at describing how his work changed the world. But I want to acknowledge the passing of this man and what he accomplished.
By all accounts, a master with a guitar in his hands, Lester Polfus didn’t settle for what he had. He innovated, attaching amplified strings to a 4-by-4 piece of wood — lovingly called “The Log” — when he was dissatisfied with the volume of his acoustic guitar. Brought aboard by Gibson Guitars, he continued to innovate, developing the solid-body electric used by so many musicians, whose sound is loved by so many music fans. He is also credited for multi-track recording and numerous recording techniques. Always innovating, exploring and crafting new possibilities. I’m so proud to count him among the many talented and restless folks to come out of my home state of Wisconsin.
It’s a safe guess that Les Paul held a guitar in his hands nearly every day of his 94 years. But after he mastered it, he transformed it. It’s a sentimental cliche to talk about the big concert being staged every night in heaven. But I bet there are a lot of tributes tonight to the new guy, who inspired so many.
RIP Mr. Paul.
I made a bad joke to friends a few years ago when Hank Cochran died that he was the fifth best-known Hank, and we were down to just a few contenders left. Well, I consider Hank Locklin the third best-known Hank, and the highest-ranked “living Hank” before his death yesterday.
Hank Locklin’s greatest moment may have been “Send Me The Pillow That You Dream On,” a really sweet song, so earnest that it could never be recorded today, when the sentiment would be considered creepy. I believe that “Please Help Me, I’m Falling” was an even-bigger hit, although both songs became hits for several other artists. But I’ll always remember him for a song called “While the Band Plays the Blues,” a song my Dad requested that I find for him. When the only copy I could find was my own copy of Hank’s 1960 LP, I happily gave it to my Dad. I got the LP back a few months later, and put it back into my collection. Dad’s probably bugging him tonight to play it live.
And officially, I consider the order to be Williams, Snow, Locklin, Thompson, Cochran and Penny.
RIP Mr. Locklin.
Back in the ’80s, music was pathetic. There are very few exceptions — the world was obsessed with MTV, and artists like Michael Jackson and Madonna dominated radio, and if you didn’t like it, there was always yacht-rock captains like Christopher Cross. There was also new wave, which to some was an attempt to make punk more acceptable, more popular. I bought many records that had guys wearing makeup on the cover and playing weak-sounding keyboards on the record. Then one glorious day, I bought a strange record with a slightly ominous-looking cover photo.
Songs the Lord Taught Us was the Cramps’ first full-length record, and its murky, crazed songs had a big effect on me. There’s not a sufficient way to describe songs like “TV Set” or “Garbageman” or their cover of the Sonics’ “Strychnine” or their cover of Johnny Burnette & the Rock and Roll Trio’s “Tear It Up,” or any of the others. You have to listen to them. They were so wild, so frantic, in that age of staged weirdness, where you know everything is so calculated to be “out there.” When you saw a performance of the Cramps (wherever you were so fortunate to see such a thing in the pre-YouTube days, maybe on MTV’s 120 Minutes), you were focused on the lead singer, stuffing the microphone in his mouth, flailing on the stage, still singing. It seemed like genuine dementia — not something rehearsed, but something really wrong.
That was Lux Interior (born Eric Lee Purkhiser), the perfect guy to lead this perfect band. Along with guitarist/vixen Poison Ivy Rorschach, Lux led the Cramps through a dozen or so records, never compromising the band’s sound: raw rockabilly mixed with R&B and punk, with dark themes, even cartoonishly dark themes that seemed to be drawn from midnight b-movies and monster magazines. The Cramps’ Gravest Hits and Psychedelic Jungle were thick with tribal rhythms and Charlie Feathers-like vocals.
But maybe the clincher, the moment when you knew that the Cramps meant business is their performance at the California State Mental Hospital — a live show thankfully captured on video. The performance actually feels dangerous. It was dangerous for the band, who endures patients wandering onto the stage and hijacking the mic; for the patients, whose fragile conditions may not have been able to handle either the band’s performance or material; and for the activities coordinator who scheduled the performance, who must have been looking for a new job within a week.
Lux apparently died today, and the first indications are that it was the result of a heart problem. It was a well-used heart — he put all of it into the music he made, and I’m very thankful for that.
RIP, Mr. Interior.
The Cramps “Garbageman” (Video, YouTube)
The Cramps “Tear It Up” (Live, YouTube)
The Stooges recorded three frantic, intense LPs, developed a tough and nasty reputation, then watched as their lead singer became an icon. They got old, were remembered and idolized by a relative few, then reunited — like stepping out for the expected encore — and gathered the respect and adoration that might have escaped them earlier.
To perform in the shadow of Iggy Pop and not become invisible means you’re doing something right. Ron Asheton’s guitar on the The Stooges and Funhouse records was as raw and wild as Iggy’s vocals and stage behavior, and endeared him to many who came later to create punk rock and its many descendents. He was reportedly happy to tour again and to record another Stooges LP a few years back, and had since lived a quiet life in his native Ann Arbor. When no one had heard from him for a couple days, the police were called. He was found on the living room couch, dead at 60. I hope it was as peaceful as it sounds.
The Stooges have been nominated repeatedly for inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but have not been invited. Steely Dan, but not the Stooges. The Police, but not the Stooges. Madonna, but not the Stooges. They are nominated again in 2009, but so is Chic. Pretty tough competition.
But their place in rock-and-roll history has already been secured, despite the deliberations of some. And somewhere tonight, as the old cliche goes, Ron Asheton is joining in on the greatest jam ever.
RIP, Mr. Asheton.
Last weekend began with an AP news item that Bettie Page, the 85-year-old iconic pinup model, had been hospitalized after a number of strokes and was in intensive care. I’ve been checking for updates all week, avoiding the practice of some major newspapers of writing about her life in the past tense until she passed away. She apparently never regained consciousness, which can be a blessing.
Bettie Page’s face and figure are so well-known that, I bet, anyone who doesn’t recognize her name will recognize her photo. Even her hairstyle was iconic. She began her career in somewhat more innocent days: an amateur photographer saw her on the beach and asked to take her picture. Her gaze into the camera was usually direct and always playful, even when the subject matter grew a little more. . .intense. She made the suggestiveness of her photos seem like fun, and while that contributed to her popularity, some of the photos made her a target of a congressional investigation. She grew older, got married, had some troubled years and disappeared from the public eye. A renewed appreciation in the past couple decades gave her a well-deserved revival, although she no longer wanted to be photographed, saying that she wanted to be remembered as she was. I have no doubt that she will be.
From all accounts, Bettie Page never lost the earthy nature apparent in her smile. She claimed to be “born again” but didn’t regret her earlier life, glad to have played a role in changing society’s feelings about nudity. I’m one of many fans — more so of her bikini photos than any of the infamous bondage stuff. She just always seemed nice. I know how weird that sounds, but she seemed nice and seemed like she was having fun. I hope she was.
RIP Ms. Page.
A staple of every record collector’s “bachelor pad” section, the works of Yma Sumac were weirdly calming, even when they were at their cacophonic, screeching-infused best. She passed away in Los Angeles on November 1.
Sumac was born as Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo in Peru in 1922, and released her first American album, Voice of the Xtabay, on Capitol in 1950. She claimed to have descended from Atahualpa, the last Incan emperor, and Capitol made every attempt to play up the exotic nature of her voice, her music and her appearance. She famously had a five-octave voice, capable of performing great opera, but thankfully (for us opera-indifferents) performed mostly haunting, orchestrated “exotica” works.
I have a soft spot for “exotica,” including records by Yma Sumac. Along with The Three Suns, Martin Denny, Les Baxter and Esquivel, this is the music you want to play for your cool cocktail party. How many other records do you have that were recorded by Incan princesses?
RIP Ms. Sumac.
Official site: http://yma-sumac.com/index.htm
Just weeks ago, I wrote in a review of Hud that there’s no other actor I’d rather be than Paul Newman. I guess I hadn’t heard much about him for a while, and that usually means one thing for a celebrity his age. I knew it was coming, and yet it depresses me.
There are fewer and fewer of his type: men who provided unreproachable role models and examples of how to live one’s life. A comment that I’ve read in several tributes this morning quote him explaining why he was faithful to his wife, the beautiful actress Joanne Woodward: “Why go out for a hamburger when you’ve got steak at home?” Very un-player-like, and not helpful if you want to get your face on Inside Edition. What was beautiful was that he didn’t care — he had other priorities. Best-known was his “Newman’s Own” line of salad dressings, spaghetti sauce and other food products, which has donated nearly $200 million to charity, much to his camps for children with cancer and other life-threatening diseases.
His movies and characters were well-chosen and well-performed: Hud, The Hustler, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Sting, The Color of Money, The Verdict, and Road to Perdition were among the best. And the iconic lead role in Cool Hand Luke (which I’m going to review soon, so I’ll keep it brief here), which any young actor would kill for today. That’s quite a career, and it’s not even counting his dozens of other solid performances.
Everytime we lose a Jimmy Stewart or a Johnny Cash, I feel robbed. Partially because we won’t experience more their great work, but also because it feels like there’s a little more room for the toxic ooze of someone like Howard Stern or Rush Limbaugh in our daily life. I hope that’s not the case. I hope someone who seen and admired the work and life of Paul Newman will come along and try to emulate him. It’s going to take someone special, though. They just don’t make them like that anymore.
RIP Mr. Newman.
“Eastbound and down, loaded up and truckin’, we gonna do what they say can’t be done. . .”
Jerry Reed started out as a songwriter and session man, recording a few rockabilly sides of his own before gaining attention through the recording of his “Crazy Legs” by Gene Vincent, as well as “Guitar Man” and “US Male” by Elvis Presley. He had some later hits of his own, including “Eastbound and Down,” “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” and “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft).”
Probably best known as Burt Reynolds’ sidekick in Smokey and the Bandit and its sequels, Reed joined Mac Davis and Glen Campbell as country crossover stars who were given the chance to host their own variety shows in the modern-country-lovin’ ’70s and ’80s. I always loved the line in Bandit when Reed used the CB to tell Reynolds that he was stopping to “throw some groceries down my neck.” After he is set upon and beaten by bikers, he gets revenge by running over their motorcycles domino-style. The little chuckle he gives as he drives away defined his onstage persona, perfect for its time and, I think, still pretty cool.
RIP, Mr. Reed.
Don Helms was a member of Hank Williams’ Drifting Cowboys, which must have been fulfilling and frustrating at the same time. As steel guitarist, he was able to put his signature on some of country music’s most-renown songs but he had a boss whose battles with drugs and alcohol made the lives of all around him difficult, and who played himself off the stage at age 29. Helms continued to work, adding steel guitar to the music of Johnny Cash, the Wilburn Brothers and Lefty Frizzell, among others.
Don Helms was 81, and lived long enough to have a Myspace page. RIP Mr. Helms.
There are very few of rock and roll’s innovators left. Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis are the only ones I can think of, now that Bo Diddley has gone. His records have always made me happy — the standard riff, the shuffling beat and tumbling bass. The songs were rarely about anything, and that worked out fine, since Bo Diddley found a groove and stayed in it. Music fans never got tired of it.
The saddest thing was that most of the tributes I’ve read in the past day or so mentioned that, despite the enormous impact he had on music — his riff can be clearly heard in songs by Buddy Holly, the Stones, the Clash and U2 — he felt he hadn’t been rewarded sufficiently. I have no doubt that he, like so many others, were lied to and underpaid, cheated and forgotten. But I hope that before he died, he forgot the promises that were broken and the long tours he worked, and imagined a million bands beginning in garages around the world, all working on that riff that wouldn’t quit. RIP Mr. Bates.
Bo Diddley on Hollywood A Go Go
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