MEANDERING THROUGH MUSIC MEMORIES – PART III

LATER YEARS

MY FRIEND WHO HEADS UP A CHARITY

Our Louisiana trip started in Lafayette where we went to the Cajun Festival.  It was exhilarating — Zydeco music, dancing, good food, and lovely people.  In a driving rain, we drove to New Orleans for the Jazz and Heritage Festival.  Our hotel was a former bordello with damp and slightly moldy red velvet fabric on the furniture and long, red velvet curtains.  The first day of the festival was a deluge and we ended up wearing plastic bags to stay dry.  In the jazz tent, a young Branford Marsalis was scheduled to play, and I was sitting next to and chatting with a friendly, elderly, African-American couple.  When Marsalis came out to play, the woman, who was sitting next to me, told me that she knew him well — said he was such a sweet boy — and that he frequently came to their house to jam with her husband and others.  She asked me if I had heard of her husband — Danny Barker.  I had not, and she was only mildly surprised.  Later on, to my huge embarrassment, I discovered that Danny Barker was a legend — a musician, singer, raconteur, teacher and jazz historian, and owner of multiple record labels.  His wife of 67 years was the singer, Blue Lu Barker, who co-wrote and recorded with Barker “Don’t You Make Me High” (“Don’t You Feel My Leg”), a bawdy blues classic.  What a lost opportunity to learn about New Orleans jazz history! Later on that night after drying off, we went to a house on Ramparts Street which was advertising the Algiers Prison Band.  The house had three floors with a different party and band on each floor, the prison band being one of them.  They were accomplished, loud, and having a good time.

We went to several Vancouver Folk Festivals together. The last time we went was just a few years ago.  The festival is more expensive now, and it is harder to find a seat out of the sun because hordes of people arrive early and stake out their spots in the shade with tarps and blankets. In the old days, we loved sitting in the sun but now we’re looking for shade. We heard Betty LaVette at the beginning of her comeback, and the Seattle band The Head and the Heart (you might have heard them at Conor Byrne in 2009 before their rise to fame). We always stay at the University of British Columbia Conference Center which is convenient by bus to Jericho Beach Park where the festival is held. The site is truly magnificent with English Bay in the foreground, sailboats rocking in the breeze, and the North Shore Mountains beyond.  The weather is almost always perfect.  You never knew who you would run into in the elevator or at breakfast in the cafeteria.  Once it was a singer in the Haitian mizik rasin band, Boukman Eksperyans, a group whose music I have enjoyed for years, and who performed later in the day.

My son bought two tickets for me for the first concert in the Lilith Fair series (July 5, 1997), a charitable venture initiated by Canadian singer Sara McLachlan to feature women singers and bands.  The concert was at the Gorge in George, Wa., a stunning venue with a massive amount of seating on a hill above the stage below, with mountains and sweeping sunsets behind the stage.  My friend and I arrived at the camp site which, not surprisingly, was full of women.  I had last loaned my tent to my son, and the tent stakes were missing, but I tried to set it up anyway.  It was quite an ordeal as I flailed around in 100 degree temperatures for at least ten minutes surrounded by an audience of hardy and amused looking women. Every time I got one corner down, another corner flipped up again.  Thankfully and at last, and before I expired in the heat, a kind woman came over and asked me if I needed help.  She got the tent up in seconds at which point she told me the tent didn’t need stakes.  Thereafter, I resolved to always set up a tent beforehand to make sure I knew what I was doing.   At the concert, we listened to McLachlan, Jewel, Suzanne Vega, and Paula Cole, and others, but I was so traumatized by my tent experience, I only remember McLachlan.  The music, however, inspired a moment of real camaradery and solidarity.

In 2016 we went on a quick trip to Austin, Tx.  The two highlights were the LBJ Library (a fascinating treasure trove) and a blues concert at Antone’s, a well known Blues Club which has hosted Stevie Ray Vaughn, The Fabulous Thunderbirds, James Brown, and many others.  We heard Bobby Rush, an old time chitlin circuit performer, a tall man with a big voice, a funky band and a voluptuous dancer; the performance is etched in my memory.  Early in the performance, the bathrooms became clogged and bouncers were stationed at the door to prevent people from entering.  Needless to say, this was a problem since beer and alcohol were flowing.  The club announced their solution to the dilemma which was for customers to walk across the street to the Hilton and use their bathroom.  There was a steady stream of blues club customers going to the Hilton and back, and the Hilton staff were not amused.  (I took the blurry photo of Rush.)

MY PARTNER

We used to go to a lot of Pier concerts, but after we saw the once great The Band (minus Robbie Robertson and Richard Manuel) and Nina Simone there (we left when she was on the 30th verse of “Hallelujah”), we decided to review our decision to see old bands and singers again.  Levon Helm and Garth Hudson were still holding up, but Rick Danko seemed to be under the weather, and Simone was seemingly very ill or under the influence.  Never go to see your old favorites in their decline unless it’s the Rolling Stones. 

We went to concerts at Magnuson, downtown summer concerts, the Triple Door, the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, Bumbershoot, Folklife, the Vancouver Folk Festival, and many concerts at Town Hall and through Earshot Jazz.  In New Orleans for the Tennessee Williams Festival, we saw Branford Marsalis and his band in a terrific performance at Snug Harbor in the Treme district, and various incarnations of the Neville Brothers at different venues.  We heard trumpeter Jack Walrath at Jazz Alley with part of his Mingus Dynasty band in a dizzying performance.  Another time at the Alley we heard Maceo Parker with saxophonist Pee Wee Ellis.  It was a very funky, upbeat performance with people dancing in the aisles; a woman actually threw a pair of panties on stage, two significant firsts for the slightly stuffy jazz club.  We shared an interest in Michelle Shocked, the trumpeter Dave Douglas, the Cape Verdean morna singer Cesaria Evora, the Senegalese musician and singer, Ismael Lo, many other kinds of ethnic music, and fado, an interest that took us to Portugal and several fado clubs.  I clearly remember one club in Lisbon’s Alfama neighborhood — Clube de Fado — owned by well known fado guitarist, Mario Pacheco, who also played in the house band.  The club was a study in Moorish architecture and the food was indifferent, but the music was unbelievable, and we stayed for hours.  In Lisbon, our hotel was near a street lined with CD vendors’ carts, all playing Amalia Rodrigues, Mariza, Ana Moura, and other fado musicians.  The street was on fire with fado, and it was an almost out-of-body experience to walk up or down the street with all of the competing voices.

Once at the Port Townsend Jazz Festival, we heard Patricia Barber.  She sang several songs from her recently released Cafe Blue CD, including “A Taste of Honey,” one of my old favorites.   Written by Scott and Marlowe as an instrumental piece for the play by that name, then made into an iconic British movie, many singers and musicians have made it their own.  Until I heard Barber’s version, I thought the Morgana King version was the best, but Barber’s unique and understated style is memorable.

In our house exchange years, we made an exchange with some people in Edinburgh so that we could go for two weeks of the Fringe Festival, the largest arts festival in the world, which takes place over three weeks. We were mainly going for the theater, and did see many interesting/puzzling/good/bad plays in real and makeshift theaters.  There was music everywhere on the streets, however, and some of the musicians and singers were startlingly good.  The memory of plates of haggis will never be forgotten either.

Our most disappointing concert was when we went to see Mexican singer and social activist Lila Downs at the Moore Theater.  I had heard her incredible voice for the first time in the 2002 movie, Frida, where she and Caetano Veloso wrote and performed the song “Burn It Blue.”  There was a big crowd at the Moore, and she started off on a long series of very uptempo songs.  Most of the crowd immediately jumped to their feet, dancing, and singing along.  Since we couldn’t see her, we got up too, but it was a missed opportunity to actually hear her.  She has an extraordinary vocal range, but much of that performance was lost, unfortunately.  This video is not live, but the sound is good.

MY CIVIC-MINDED, GARDEN CONSPIRATOR, FORMER SISTER-IN-LAW FRIEND

We went to New York in 2012 on a garden tour of four estates, the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, Battery Park, the High Line, the Noguchi Museum, the sculpture garden at Pepsico, and Wave Hill, all in either New York, New Jersey, or Connecticut. The private estates belonged to two hedge fund billionaires, an Italian ceramic garden pot importer, and a wealthy investor, and the gardens were very lovely with the requisite swathes of grasses and elaborate hardscape, and scrupulously maintained.  One of them, we were told, had an annual garden budget of a million dollars.  (It should not be amazing that if your garden budget is a million a year, you have an amazing garden.  It is much more amazing if you don’t have money and manage to have an interesting garden.) We were given a couple of ticket choices for Broadway musicals, and we chose Porgy and Bess. The stars of this new, revised production were the talented, six-time Tony award winner Audra McDonald as Bess, Norm Lewis as Porgy, and Phillip Boykin as Crown.  Although the score is familiar to many, the artistry of the singing and acting were of the highest caliber, and it was a stirring performance. In addition to visiting several museums and galleries, we also had our first $15 gin and tonics at the charming Bemelmans Bar in the Hotel Carlisle, which struck me as exorbitant at the time but which is now typical in Seattle.

OTHER FRIENDS

The Vancouver Folk Festival, Earshot concerts, Bumbershoot, Backstage concerts, Moore Theater concerts, zoo concerts, Pier concerts, Folklife, the New Orleans Heritage Festival, and park and downtown concerts have been a big part of my life, and other friends have joined me in the hot pursuit of either hearing someone new or an old favorite. The Joan Baez concert at the zoo not that many summers ago was particularly unforgettable because it rained solidly for the entire concert.  It was torrential and Baez observed as she looked out at the undaunted audience sitting on plastic and covered with tarps that it “reminded her of Woodstock.”  The timbre of her voice has aged, but she remains as compelling as ever. This video is not from the zoo, but is about the same time frame.

MY FRIEND THE GRAPHIC DESIGNER

My memories of several Folklife Festivals are much more about the experience rather than the specific performance — sitting on the grass in front of the stage, usually listening to an African or Latin band, and watching people.  I’ve seen Boe Odyssey, also known as the Seattle Scarf Dancer, at local festivals for 45 years — brown as a nut and with long white hair and beard — wearing rainbow colored scarves and skirts, feathers, and beads as he does his whirling dervish routine, and continues to grace us with his eccentric presence. Festival aroma is so much a part of the appeal — the pungent smell of bbq and grilled salmon, the strong smell of cilantro, and the sweet odor of sugary donuts, sweat, suntan lotion, perfume, patchouli, and weed.  You are in a crowd of people enjoying themselves, reveling in the sun and music.  For the scent-averse or the crowd-averse this is not a pleasant experience.

The pandemic has revealed who we are, and how we deal with adversity, as character is revealed when times are hard, not when times are easy. Think of what you have read about the London Blitz. Not since the 1918 flu pandemic have Americans had to comply with any kind of restrictions on our ability to move around and do as we wish. This is harder for some than for others, but music has always been a good antidote to despair and salve for the emotions.  In the 1697 poem by William Congreve, “The Mourning Bride,” he says that “music has charms to soothe a savage breast,” sometimes interpreted as “savage beast.”  We can all find our own “charms” in weathering these difficult days, and hope to emerge by the end of this summer ready to forge on to the next adventure.  So onward, or, as we used to say in the fifth grade, Excelsior.  The liberating forces inherent in listening to music can be a lifesaver.

Let me close with “Georgia On My Mind,” from Rock the Runoff:  Broadway for Georgia, a song and sentiment we can all appreciate and celebrate, particularly in light of recent events. Even more recently, the power of music to unify, heal, and uplift was demonstrated at Joe Biden’s Inauguration, and I include the moving song-poem, “The Hill We Climb,” narrated and written by poet Amanda Gorman, and the spectacular “Celebrating America” production later on that evening.

Go back to Meandering Through Music Memories: Part 1 or Part 2

Post main featured image: Seattle Municipal Archives
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