David Cantwell writes:

Michael Jackson’s death at age 50 was startling but hardly surprising. The strange saga of Michael Jackson had been outdoing itself for at least a quarter of a century—lately by the repulsion it provoked, mostly by the sheer pleasure it inspired, and always in just plain weirdness. It was only the timing of this final chapter that caught us off guard. We all expected, I think, that this story was bound to end badly, sooner or later, and we’d expected a bad end for a very long time. Indeed, as far back as 1986, critic Dave Marsh published a book on Michael Jackson that he knowingly titled Trapped. The first words of that book’s open letter to Jackson posed a question that people were already asking, even then, and that they have been asking ever since: “Dear Michael: What happened?”

At first the weirdness that was Michael Jackson was of the entirely delightful variety. How in the hell could a little kid sing like that? What did an 11 year old know, after all, about the anguished hindsight of “I Want You Back,” a single that is still as viscerally thrilling a record as any I’ve ever heard? Or of the devotion expressed in “I’ll Be There,” a pledge of unity and spiritual succor as sustaining as any other from its era, which is saying something since the early seventies was a pop moment largely defined by such songs: “Lean on Me,” “I’ll Take You There,” “Family Affair,” “You’ve Got a Friend,” “I’ll Be Around,” “Love Train.” On a similar theme and no less moving, 1972’s “Ben,” Jackson’s first solo chart topper, featured what will now go down as the most fetching melody of his career. But it will also be remembered as the most prescient of his early hits because it presents Michael singing oh-so-delicately (a vocal tact he mostly lost in his post Thriller years) to a best friend that just happens to be a pet rat. The real Michael, who would eventually afford a zoo’s worth of critters, upgraded to a chimpanzee.

Off the Wall, which produced four top ten pop hits and sold eight million copies in 1979, made Jackson into the biggest star in the world, its own brand of weirdness. Three years later, Thriller rendered such merely terrestrial claims meaningless and left Jackson with nowhere to go but down. Thriller remains a stunning achievement, and not only commercially. Someday that album will be universally recognized, if it isn’t already, as being as important to its time and to the sounds it inspired as Sgt. Pepper’s was to an earlier moment. And Thriller will hold up better, I think. Most eighties music has for a long time now sounded very much like eighties music, but “Billie Jean” and “Beat It,” “P.Y.T.” and “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’,” besides anticipating the Rhythm Nation that was to come, and in which we all now reside, already have a timeless feel.

But even as he was thrilling the world with a vision of possibility, and just plain fun, a vision of both both in human community and human distinctiveness, the joy seemed to slip from his own performances. Unlike his only commercial peers in the eighties—Springsteen, Madonna, Prince and U2—Jackson never seemed to be having a blast in the spotlight; even his most amazing dance steps came off like very hard work, and work he had to do alone. The young man’s sense of self seemed to slip further away along with his joy, and it was then that the weirdness of Michael shot through the roof. First, the nose job, then the skin lightening. There were the high profile though usually short-lived relationships with child stars of the past (Elizabeth Taylor) and of this or that particular present (Emmanuel Lewis, Ryan White). There was Neverland. The hyper-baric chamber. The creepy crawling-down-his-face hair. The marriage to Elvis’ daugther. The final Lon-Chaney-as-Phantom-of-the-Opera visage. And, of course, the charges of pedophilia…those despicable, unforgivable acts… As Carl Wilson put it, Jackson died last week, yes, but only “after a long illness.” Indeed, Jackson’s long weird illness was something we couldn’t get enough of, that we encouraged, and therefore for which we are partly culpable. Our individual and collective acts in nurturing today’s culture of celebrity constitute our own chronic illness.  I think Michael understood this, too, at some level. “You’re just a buffet, you’re a vegetable,” he blurts breathlessly, over and over, in “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin’.” “They eat off of you, you’re a vegetable.”

One thing we ‘re after in our fascination with celebrity is the way shared pleasure can make us feel connected to other people, make us feel part of something larger than ourselves while at the same time validating our need to see ourselves as individuals, unique in the universe and therefore worthwhile on our own terms. The danger in this obsession for the celebrity, especially for the rare celebrity who has achieved the thin-air heights of a Michael Jackson, is that it leaves the star feeling connected to no one in particular, no one at all.

I think that’s what stands out most to me about Jackson in the years following his Thriller triumph. Michael always seemed alone. He was alone. Even when dancing, he danced alone.

The unassailable greatness of the Jackson 5’s music aside, and any nostalgia aside too (I’m almost 48, Michael’s contemporary; we grew up together), I love “I Want You Back” and “ABC” and “Dancing Machine” and the rest so dearly because Michael looks and sounds like he’s having fun, with his brothers. Some of the most soul-sustaining, emotionally-perfect musical moments I know are those times in J5 hits when Michael’s high sweet voice gave way to the voice of one of his brothers’, usually Jermaine’s, who would spell Michael for a line or a verse or a bridge, the older sibling with his musical arm around the shoulder of a kid brother.

What’s probably my favorite moment in Michael’s solo work, and the saddest, comes at the end of “Wanna Be Startin’ Somethin.” As that skittering, mechanical-sounding high-hat pulse fades in and out of the dance beat, Jackson tries to strike a deal with us:

Lift your head up high
And scream out to the world
I know I am someone
And let the truth unfurl
No one can hurt you now
Because you know what’s true
Yes, I believe in me
So you believe in you

I don’t think he really believed it, though. And maybe one reason he couldn’t believe it was because, most of the time, we don’t believe it either, not really. We crave freedom, we want to believe in each other, to believe in ourselves, to achieve ourselves, but we are also terrified of exposing ourselves that way. So, instead, we cling to that which has robbed us of ourselves and of one another all along. Michael Jackson clung to that which had robbed him, too, as people will.

Charles Hughes writes:

The death of Barry Beckett – who passed away last week at the age of 66 – marks a truly unhappy milestone in American musical history.  With his passing, the second Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section, which is among the most significant studio ensembles of the twentieth century, loses one of its core members.  Beckett’s is not the first death in the larger ranks of prodigiously talented Shoals musicians and songwriters, given the losses of Arthur Alexander and Eddie Hinton, among others.  But Barry Beckett’s stature, not only as primary keyboardist in the studio ensemble, but also as co-owner of the immensely successful Muscle Shoals Sound Studio, makes this a particularly momentous loss for the Shoals, as well as for Nashville, since – like many who made their name in the Shoals’ numerous recording studios – Beckett later moved to “Music City” and found great success there.  In each place, he helped define genres, launch careers, and create a vast catalog of classic, hit recordings that continue to shape our listening.

Beckett, who grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, came to Muscle Shoals under the wing of “Papa” Don Schroeder, the Miami-based DJ/producer who – like many during the period – came there to work at Fame Studios, where producer Rick Hall and a cadre of talented players and songwriters had established themselves recording soul, pop and country sessions.  Beckett arrived at Fame at a fortuitous juncture, as Hall was in the process of rebuilding his core group of studio musicians following the 1964 departure of his first rhythm section, who moved to Nashville and became some of the most sought-after players in the city.

Beckett’s fluid style fit perfectly into Fame’s model of musical professionalism, which favored the efficiency and versatility necessary to service Fame’s growing roster of paying clients.  Beckett quickly became a cornerstone of the new, second group, along with drummer Roger Hawkins, guitarist Jimmy Johnson, and – later – bassist David Hood.  Beckett’s spare, supple work on piano and organ helped establish Fame as a Southern soul center, a reputation that only intensified once the studio (and its musicians) became a favorite of Atlantic producer Jerry Wexler.  In Fame’s heyday, Beckett played on records by soul greats like Wilson Pickett, Etta James, Arthur Conley and Aretha Franklin.  This Aretha Franklin session – which produced her breakthrough single “I Never Loved A Man (The Way I Love You)” and “Do Right Woman (Do Right Man)” – gained infamy for a race-related confrontation between a white horn player and Franklin’s husband.  This fracas ultimately led to Franklin’s (and Wexler’s) departure from Muscle Shoals, with a half-completed recording and plenty of tension between Wexler and Rick Hall.  Despite his ill feelings about the politics at Fame, Wexler remained committed to the musicians, and ultimately flew the Rhythm Section to New York to finish the session in semi-secret.  Although Franklin never physically returned to Muscle Shoals to record, Shoals musicians, including Beckett, appear on her pivotal early Atlantic albums.

In 1969, after a series of disputes with Hall over money, control and fallout from the Franklin/Atlantic controversy, the core Rhythm Section – Beckett, Hawkins, Hood, and Johnson – split from Fame and opened their own studio, across the river, at 3614 Jackson Highway.  Their hit-making reputation, and the support of Jerry Wexler, brought quick success: R.B. Greaves hit the Top 10 with “Take A Letter, Maria,” and the Rolling Stones visited Muscle Shoals Sound to record three tracks for what became Sticky Fingers.  This visit, chronicled vividly both by author Stanley Booth and filmmakers Albert and David Maysles, symbolized the increasing prevalence of rock and pop artists in Muscle Shoals, a trend which, throughout the 1970s, brought Beckett and his colleagues into collaboration with, among many others, Bob Seger, Paul Simon, Cher and Traffic, with whom the Rhythm Section toured in 1973.  Additionally, artists from Willie Nelson to Herbie Mann to Jimmy Cliff (whose “Sitting In Limbo” bears the unmistakable throb of Beckett’s organ) visited the area during these years.  The Rhythm Section – whose nickname “The Swampers” gained international recognition following the shout-out from Lynyrd Skynyrd – worked dozens of sessions a week.

Despite the studio’s growing focus on rock and pop records, and despite the growing feeling among many Black artists that Muscle Shoals was abandoning R&B, the studio continued recording R&B artists like Bobby Womack and Millie Jackson, both of whom did much of their most famous work at Muscle Shoals Sound, as well as a number of artists from Memphis’ Stax Records.  Stax President Al Bell sent nearly half of the label’s expansive 1970s roster to Muscle Shoals, including Mel & Tim, Johnnie Taylor and – most prominently – The Staple Singers.  The recordings made in the Shoals by the Staples – including their #1 hits “Respect Yourself” and “I’ll Take You There” – are near-perfect representations of the area’s musical alchemy, with the Staples’ rich mix of gospel, funk and Civil Rights/Black Power messages meshing perfectly with the Swampers’ wide catalog of influences.  “I’ll Take You There,” for example, emerged from a studio jam, where Mavis Staples began improvising a series of lyrics – infused with affirming messages from both the church and the Movement – over a skittering beat, which the Rhythm Section admitted was lifted from one of their favorite records, Harry J. and the All-Stars’ ska instrumental “The Liquidator.”  On the finished recording, as each member of the band – including Barry Beckett – takes a brief, grooving solo, Mavis Staples calls them out in celebratory fashion.  Although Southern soul’s racial politics, and interracial quality, has been both romanticized and simplified in subsequent years, “I’ll Take You There” is one of the truest symbols of the promise represented by this musical and racial collaboration.

The studio kept up a full slate of bookings through the 1970s, with Beckett always a key contributor.  Beckett even branched out alone, producing and playing on three Bob Dylan albums, including two – Slow Train Coming and Saved – which Dylan recorded at Muscle Shoals Sound.  By the 1980s, though, the success and energy began to dissipate, and – in 1985 – Beckett officially ended its tenure when he followed in the footsteps of the first rhythm section (as well as other Shoals originals like Billy Sherrill and Arthur Alexander) and moved to Nashville.  It may have broken up the Swampers, but the move proved profitable for Beckett, as he quickly established himself as an in-demand producer and A&R executive.  He won CMA Awards, charted numerous hits, and helped guide the careers of Hank Williams, Jr. (who’d briefly worked in the Shoals in the 1970s), Alabama, and – eventually – Kenny Chesney.

Although his primary commercial and creative interests settled firmly into the country world, albeit a country world that was fundamentally changed by the soul and pop music he’d made in Muscle Shoals, Beckett still made time to work with some of his old collaborators, including Etta James, whom Beckett produced in the 1980s.  In her autobiography, James remarked that she worked well with Beckett because he “liked his shit funky,” and some of the spark of James’ original Shoals sessions was reignited on their later collaborations.  (He also produced Phish’s breakthrough album, Rift, in 1994.)  More recently, Beckett was deservedly inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame, along with Hawkins, Hood and Johnson.  (None of the foursome has yet entered the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame, an omission which will hopefully soon be rectified, especially given the recent induction of fellow Shoals mainstay Spooner Oldham.)  Upon their inclusion in the Alabama Music Hall Of Fame, the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section released their first self-titled album, a collection of instrumentals which demonstrated their love and talents for a variety of styles, from rock to jazz to funk. 

Barry Beckett was among the most prolific studio musicians of the twentieth century.  He leaves behind a treasury of music which speaks not only to his talents, but also to a particularly fertile moment in American musical history, when a small city in Northern Alabama could legitimately lay claim to being – as its Chamber of Commerce called it – “The Hit Recording Capital Of The World.”  Although the Muscle Shoals Rhythm Section is less famous than their contemporaries at Motown, Stax, Philly International, or elsewhere, the group deserves to be included with those more celebrated ensembles, and no one was more important to that group than Barry Beckett.  He will be missed, but his legacy is present in nearly every aisle of the record store, in a majority of sizable iTunes playlists, and in most facets of today’s pop music.  

David Cantwell writes:

This is neat: My very favorite music critic is going to be on my very favorite show. Our friend Carl Wilson sits down with Stephen Colbert on the Wednesday, March 4 edition of The Colbert Report. On the Oscar red carpet last week, the actor James Franco had nice things to say about Carl’s entry in the 33 1/3 series, Let’s Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, and that apparently got the wheels turning. I’ve gone on before about the book–word for word, and ounce for ounce, I’d call this little volume the best music book ever–so if you don’t have a copy, get one. And Carl, a music writer for the Toronto Globe and Mail and the man behind Zoilus, is certainly a great fit for Colbert: Stephen is a big music guy and likes artists that critics have deemed both cool and uncool (his show’s featured the Decembrists and Toby Keith, TV on the Radio and Rush), he likes big ideas (the authors he books are often so little known that the only explanation for their being there in the first place is that Colbert is interested in their work), and his Col-burt/Col-bare persona split certainly gives him a big personal interest in the issues of taste and identity that Carl tackles in the book. I am so happy!

(Carl, if you can somehow get yourself animated into one of Colbert’s Tek Jansen adventures, I will worship you like unto a God!)

Charles Hughes writes:

I figured that Etta James had something to say about the sudden prominence of Beyonce’s version of her classic hit “At Last,” and the fact that Ms. Knowles—and not Ms. James—sang it at the Obama inauguration festivities.  Still, I wasn’t quite expecting the legendary singer to say this to an audience in Seattle: “You know your President, the one with the big ears?  He might be yours.  He ain’t my President.  And, I tell you, that woman he has singing my song, she’s gonna get her ass whipped.  The great Beyonce.  Now, like I said, she ain’t mine…but I can’t stand Beyonce.  She had no business up there singing, singing on a big old President day, gonna be singing my song that I’ve been singing forever…I’m gonna whip her butt as soon as I see her.”

To be fair, James has since claimed that this was a joke.  Judging by the audio clip available at Crown City Media, she doesn’t sound all that jocular to me.  She’s also quoted earlier as being proud of Beyonce’s performance of “At Last” at the Inauguration. Even given these caveats, though, the words were powerful, evidenced by the reaction of the Seattle crowd, who tittered at the Obama criticism, before exploding with applause at the first diss of Knowles.

I think James’ criticism is misdirected, since I don’t think Beyonce deserves to be personally called on the carpet for this.  (Was she supposed to say no?)  I also hope that James’ belief that Obama is “not her president” is based on something deeper than this snub.  (It might be, and maybe it should be.)  Still, I feel her when she speaks of her frustration, and I don’t think her sentiments should be quickly dismissed.

Like I said, I don’t think Beyonce’s to blame.  Beyonce’s “At Last” comes from the film Cadillac Records, which featured Knowles as Etta James, along with Mos Def as Chuck Berry and Jeffrey Wright as Muddy Waters. In full disclosure, I haven’t seen the film, so I can’t really comment on it or its quality, but—from what I’ve heard—Beyonce’s performance is one of the highlights of a film that I’ve heard get very mixed reviews.  I also happen to like Beyonce more generally: I find her work to be among the most consistently engaging and interesting in pop music, and I wish she were taken more seriously for her work as a songwriter and producer.  (Here, I share the views of Sasha Frere-Jones, the controversial New Yorker critic who just penned a piece on the James/Knowles beef, and Beyonce more generally.)  She’s been great since Destiny’s Child, and I love the fact that—from “I don’t think you’re ready for this jelly” to “You must not know about me”—many of her most famous lines are expressly directed towards asserting her status as a strong, multifaceted Black woman.  Admittedly, I found her most recent album, I Am…Sasha Fierce, to be kind of a mess, but I value her sense of experimentation and keen ear.  I even kinda dig her alter ego, Sasha Fierce, even though I think she’s got a ways to go before it’s more like Camille than it is like Chris Gaines.

I also, of course, love Etta James.  I admire the fact that she bridges blues, R&B and soul genres with enough skill to master them all, yet enough fluidity to avoid being pigeonholed into any one sound.  I find her recordings in Muscle Shoals—including “Tell Mama” and “I’d Rather Go Blind”—to be on the top-shelf of any Southern soul work.  I appreciate that she beat back her addictions, and talks about them with blues honesty and steely determination.  Finally, I love the fact that she steals the show from Chuck Berry in the great film Hail! Hail! Rock And Roll, with her piss-and-vinegar version of “Rock And Roll Music.”

So I’ve got no real rooting interest, although I guess that my appreciation of James’ status as a soul survivor does sway me slightly in her favor.  The larger issue is far more interesting to me, as are its contexts.  First of all, several things puzzle me about the fact that Beyonce was so quickly and thoroughly embraced as the singer of “At Last” at the inauguration.  For one, her version wasn’t really a hit, especially not before it was used in the inauguration festivities.  It’s one thing for the popularity of a remake to outstrip (at least temporarily) that of the original—as with the Aguilera/Eve/Lil Kim/Pink version of “Lady Marmalade,” or even The Blues Brothers’ version of “Soul Man.”  But I don’t see that happening with Beyonce’s “At Last.”  Nor was her version an artistic triumph in the manner of Jeff Buckley’s “Hallelujah” or Aretha Franklin’s “Respect,” where an artist adds so much to the material that he or she serves to reinvent it.  As pleasant as Beyonce’s “At Last” might be, I think even the most hardcore admirer of Sasha Fierce would be hard-pressed to claim that she reinvented the James classic.  In fact, that seems like the whole point, given her performance as James in Cadillac Records, and given the intricacy with which the soundtrack’s producers recreated the sound of the original.   She was supposed to recreate Etta James’ performance, and—given the better job done by Mos Def, Jeffrey Wright, and Beyonce herself, on her version of “I’d Rather Go Blind”—I find her “At Last” especially stale and unmemorable.  (In the New Yorker, Sasha Frere-Jones praises the track, which I find odd.  I like that he draws parallels between the lyrics and the Obamas’ historic accomplishment, but I can’t see how that is made any stronger by having Beyonce sing the tune, rather than Etta James, who’s performed the song since the Jim Crow era.)

I’m further puzzled, and somewhat disappointed, by the fact that the complete absence of James from any of Obama’s inauguration proceedings (or the accompanying hoopla) isn’t at all consistent with the new administration’s clear love and appreciation for American music and musicians.  The “We Are One” concert surely had plenty of cheeseball moments, but I, at least, was moved by several moments throughout the event: Bruce Springsteen singing “The Rising” with a gospel choir, Stevie Wonder joining with Shakira and Usher on “Higher Ground,” Bettye Lavette (!) and Jon Bon Jovi delivering “A Change Is Gonna Come,” and Pete Seeger’s astounding singing of the banned verses of “This Land Is Your Land” as a climax.  Aretha Franklin recalled Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson when she sang at the actual inauguration.  Obama quoted “A Change Is Gonna Come” in his election-night speech.  His campaign soundtrack included Brooks And Dunn, U2, The Staple Singers and Will.I.Am.  He loves Blood On The Tracks. He listens to Rihanna on Air Force One.  Hell, he even happily endorses his children’s love for The Jonas Brothers.

So it’s a strange series of events.  I don’t want to overlook the personal element to this: James surely feels affronted that the song she made a classic is now being sung by somebody else.  James’ sense of ownership over “At Last” reveals that—no matter who owns the copyright—the association of a performer and a song works very deeply into our cultural memory.  Still, this incident strikes me as symbolic of something more than the simple yet significant question of artistic ownership.  It’s also about history, specifically the often tense relationship between the soul and hip-hop generations.

The brilliant Mark Anthony Neal has actually referred to a “post-soul” generation of African-Americans, whose desires and responsibilities—whether political, social or artistic—can’t be fully understood in the older soul paradigm.  (Kinda like Obama’s relationship to the Civil Rights generation of Black leadership, actually…)  It’s not that either James or Knowles is invoking this dynamic through their words or actions in this spat, nor do I imagine that Beyonce’s “At Last” will ultimately be more famous or revered than Etta James’.   Still, the fact remains that Knowles is the one who will be associated with “At Last” at this pivotal moment in African-American history (or American history, for that matter), and it seems a shame that the long journey to this moment couldn’t include a bit of room for Etta James.  (This is in spite of the fact that she may or may not personally support Barack Obama.)  If nothing else, James’ outburst is a reminder—from a surprising source, directed at a surprising target—that we’re not only a far way from being “post-racial” in these United States, but also that even this great moment of symbolic triumph is seared through with divisions and unfinished business, particularly for those who bridge these two key epochs in Black history.  Jesse Jackson cried when Obama was elected; he also threatened to (figuratively) castrate Obama during the campaign, over a disagreement in rhetoric and tactic.  This kind of disagreement within Black politics (or anybody’s politics) ain’t new, of course, but Obama’s election understandably makes those questions all the more acute.  Maybe it’s a stretch to connect the Jackson/Obama incident to that of James/Knowles…but maybe it’s not.

There’s also another, more obvious, precedent for this.  Remember, this is the second time in a year that Beyonce has been called out by an R&B legend over her sense of musical history.  Last year, Aretha Franklin vehemently criticized Knowles for calling Tina Turner “the queen” during the Grammy ceremony, and now—almost to the day—Etta James fires back with her own rebuke.  They are different cases, surely, but each traces back to the belief among a legendary woman of African-American music that a member of the newer generation isn’t properly respecting the soul-generation elders who came before her.  I’ve read several people refer to both Franklin and James being “divas” in their public smackdowns of Knowles, or to the situations being some kind of “battle of the divas.”  I won’t deny that there’s some serious ego-tripping going on by all concerned.  Let’s also remember that Beyonce embraces the term, and asserts that “a diva is a female version of a hustler,” on the new album’s “Diva,” a strutting dance track that’s drenched in the sounds of Houston hip-hop.  There’s a damn blurry line, though, between “acting like a diva,” and simply being assertive, especially when you’re female.  (In fact, don’t songs like Beyonce’s “Diva” represent an attempt to reveal and even celebrate that fact?)  So to simply chalk this up as a “battle of divas,” or even a “battle of the female versions of a hustler,” would be to not only lose sight of the ball, but also to fall into a gendered trap that makes the issue less serious than it is.

Race and gender politics are everywhere in popular music, as are battles and negotiations over the meanings of musical history, and what music means to history more generally.  I don’t think that the hope I felt (and still feel) over the election of Barack Obama and the events that surrounded it are in any way dimmed by this.  In fact, my hope is strangely strengthened, since—like the best soul music—this incident reminds me that the recognition of conflict, and the attempts to work through it, are part and parcel of achieving the true community that Obama’s election symbolically represented.   Moreover, it also reminds me that popular music and the musicians who make it are going to help us on that journey.  Even if it’s only because they, like us, don’t always get along. 

Danny Alexander writes:

Right now, about two weeks out, Bruce Springsteen’s Working on A Dream bumps the rest of his work from my short list of desert island discs. This no doubt will confound people who disparage various elements of this album. It is a risk-taker, which is crucial to its grandeur, and I can imagine if something here doesn’t work for you, it probably falls to its death. It’s not for nothing that the album keeps coming back to characters standing on ledges and peering into the abyss.

That’s how the character Outlaw Pete ends up in the gorgeous, cinematic opening cut. He’s digging in his spurs and contemplating the ledge. The question at the end of the song is whether or not he jumped off, whether he froze there or whether there’s even any value to his story, a memory which becomes a braid in his Navajo daughter’s hair.

Like one ending to that story, fortune falls more than once here, right at the start of the second song, “Lucky Day.”  “Working on A Dream” ends poised precariously on top of a ladder.  As listeners take on these characters, we find ourselves standing at “world’s end” and “high up on the wall of death,” and contemplating the pull of a “cold black river.”  We may “reach for starlight all night long/But gravity’s too strong.”  And “we fall away in our own darkness, a stranger to our own hearts.”

Musically, this is an album that consistently sticks close to the edge.  “Outlaw Pete” takes things about as far as it can in terms of writing pure soundtrack, layering thrumming strings, choral vocal backing and a rhythm to mimic the pace of Pete’s running horse.  And I think the whole album is, in a sense, forecasted by this familiar western tale told with epic grandeur.  That rendering of the simple as sublime allows for a similar approach to a grocery store crush on “Queen of the Supermarket.”

Contrasts abound.  The dense, celestial strings of “This Life” give way to the raw, banjo-driven blues of “Good Eye.”  The heavenly call and response between guitar and strings at the end of “Kingdom of Days” gets answered by the sparkling guitars and rockabilly bite of “Surprise, Surprise.”  Perhaps the clearest definition of the edge comes with “Life Itself,” a song that contemplates how to hang onto life in the face of defeats, with a tenuously reaching lead vocal and guitar part.

“Outlaw Pete” forecasts it all.  The momentary peace of “Lucky Day” and “Kingdom of Days,” the struggle of “Working on a Dream” and “What Love Can Do,” the uncertainty of “Tomorrow Never Knows” (its dark side in “Good Eye” and its potential in “Surprise, Surprise”), and the effort to grasp life itself in the face of death with “The Last Carnival.”  All of these emotions play a role in the subtext of the simple western tale that starts the record.

And something else happens at the beginning, as well. After Pete awakes from “a vision of his own death” and tries to turn his life around, a guitar part like sweeping strings suggests the big sky that is so crucial to the western, a tale about the power of the individual and, at the same time, that character’s small role in the great scheme of things.  When Pete actually does peer over that ledge, the guitar part is replaced by a string arrangement that makes the enormity of the vision all the more tangible.  The end of the song finds the guitar and strings painting the universe together.

Of course, at that point, the music is answering the central question of the song, “Can you hear me?,” which not incidentally calls to mind the first great rock opera, Tommy.  In the first three verses, the singer makes a point of identifying with Outlaw Pete, suggesting the link between the renegade path of a rock star and an outlaw trying to have his cake and eat it too.  But the next verse points out the tragedy of the song and turns the perspective so that the singer declares “You’re Outlaw Pete,” implicitly suggesting this is a plight not unique to rock stars.  By the end of the song, he’s asking the myth itself, meaning now the myth of individualism and the faith in redemption all of us carry in our hearts, and he’s simply asking, “Can you hear me?”

The tragedy of the song lies in the prospect of not being heard.  The hope lies in one another.

Not incidentally, one of the edges that offers the most hope on this album seems to be that one found lying flat on your back, contemplating the universe that begins just above your body.  It’s the lovers in the field of “Tomorrow Never Knows” and feeling “the wet grass on our backs” in “Kingdom of Days.”  And it’s the loving prayer of “Surprise, Surprise” asking that “the evening stars scatter a shining crown upon your breast” and “may the rising sun caress and/bless your soul for all your life.”  One of the lyrical oddities of the album is the notion that this character should open her eyes and “let your love shine down,” but then I picture Outlaw Pete holding his daughter at the beginning of the story, above his head or on the ground where he lay, and the image makes perfect sense, particularly sense the song always makes me think of my own daughter and the grace that falls from her eyes.

But the other edge that speaks to me strongest is “the hem of your dress” the singer touches in “This Life,” his “universe at rest.”  That precious need for one another may seem trite, if you ignore all of the ways in which these songs show the ways we turn our “good eye to the dark,” the whole world inclined to conspire against us.  In this context, our common needs hold the promise of our redemption.  Something like love is the answer, but there’s nothing simple about that.

So, if I was stuck on that desert island alone, I suppose this would be a very sad record to play, but that might not be such a bad thing.  As I contemplate my old knife throwing partner in “The Last Carnival,” perhaps the one who used to play Outlaw Pete in his showdown with Bounty Hunter Dan, I think I’d be thankful for that song reminding me what it means to be human, to celebrate “the million stars shining above us like every soul livin’ and dead/Has been gathered together” at the edge of the universe, just above my head.

David Cantwell writes:

This past Saturday, December 6th, made it twenty speedy years since the death of Roy Orbison. I mark the occasion with my latest column at No Depression by taking a look at the recently released Orbison box set, The Soul of Rock and Roll, and I thought I’d do something similar here at Living in Stereo. Below is an essay I wrote a few years back, also for No Depression, when Orbison’s first trio of Monument albums were reissued along with a new best of set.

The Essential Roy Orbison
Sings Lonely and Blue
Crying
In Dreams
Monument/Legacy

When describing Roy Orbison and his music, people reach for adjectives like “weird” and “otherworldly,” “eerie” and “haunting.” These word choices mean to underscore the ways in which Orbison stood apart from his rock-and-pop contemporaries. But such descriptions have the effect of separating Orbison from the sounds and trends of his era, as if he were not, like each of us, a person completely of his time.

He sure looked different. Perhaps—considering that Orbison eventually cloaked his weak and weensy eyes behind dark and thick prescription sunglasses, and the way his raven black pompadour clashed with the ghostly pallor of his skin; and recalling all of those songs about dreams and, of course, his trembling, sky-scraping tenor—perhaps he wasn’t even quite real. As Colin Escott has cleverly observed, “even the name ‘Roy Orbison’ had a touch of unreality. Do you know anyone else called ‘Orbison’?”

The conventional wisdom is that Orbison was unlike any and all other singers, before or since. And the “weird” factor only intensified after director David Lynch sparked Orbison’s 1980s comeback by having the singer re-record one of his most indelible songs, “In Dreams,” for that genuinely haunting scene in Blue Velvet.

But the original “In Dreams”—the one with the buoyant strings but without a lip-synching sociopath—isn’t a creepy record and wasn’t heard that way when it was a top ten hit in 1963. Rather, like so much of Orbison’s work, the original “In Dreams” is…fanciful. And not in any delusional or menacing sense, either, but wistfully so, achingly, and—very important, this–playfully.

There’s no better example of what I mean here than the famous opening lines to “In Dreams” itself: “A candy-colored clown they called the Sandman tip-toes through my room every night.” Orbison’s plea for a dream of the lover who has abandoned him is closer to, say, “The Nutcracker” (television versions aired in 1958 and 1961) or to Patsy Cline’s “Sweet Dreams” (a crossover country hit from that same year) than to Lynch’s nightmare.

More specifically, “In Dreams” alludes to the Chordettes’ 1954 pop smash, “Mr. Sandman [send me a dream].” Orbison mines a conceit here that, while not exactly a pop cliché, was hardly sui generis, either

What is it about Orbison’s records that feels so different? Many explanations have been posited over the years, none of them very satisfactory.

Is it Orbison’s and producer Fred Foster’s oft-noted use of rhythmic and counter-melodic nonsense syllables? Definitely not. Any doo-wop fan would have been right at home with the “Dum- dum-dum, dum-dee-do-wah” that launched Orbison’s first big hit, “Only the Lonely,” or the “Sha la la, dooby wah, bum bum bum, yip yip bum” that kicked off his follow-up hit, “Blue Angel.” And in the early sixties, remember, radio was smack in the middle of a doo-wop revival.

Did Orbison’s records sound so different thanks to their lush, swelling arrangements or, perhaps, because of their sometimes faintly Latin-inflected rhythms? Not in an era when Orbison’s chart rivals included Phil Specter and Motown, “This Magic Moment” and “Save the Last Dance for Me,” the West Side Story soundtrack and the albums of Perez Prado.

Is the Orbison “trick” there in the intense drama of his vocal attack itself, particularly the way he flew his voice to such unexpected heights? The word people choose here is “operatic,” but even that’s misleading. Orbison’s vocals were more influenced by the Mexican singing he heard growing up in west Texas than by any love of opera. More to my point, the vibrato and soaring crescendos, the gulping emotionalism, that mark Orbison’s style also just happen to have marked the style of many of his pop contemporaries and their immediate predecessors.

Such as, to cite only a few examples: Tony Bennett, Johnny Ray, Jackie Wilson, Tony Williams of the Platters, Roy Hamilton, the Conway Twitty of “It’s Only Make Believe,” and the pop recordings of Mario Lanza, as well as the music of Johnny Mathis, Gene Pitney, Perry Como, and, of course, Bobby “Blue Velvet” Vinton.

My point is that even something so seemingly unprecedented as Orbison’s dramatic, soaring style of balladry was completely of a piece with his era, a style that was not just here and there but practically everywhere, common currency. One more example: You probably know that Orbsion’s “Only the Lonely” and such Orbisonesque kin as Brenda Lee’s “I’m Sorry” and Elvis Presley’s “It’s Now Or Never” were all recorded with the same Nashville sessions pros. But did you know they were recorded the same week?

Roy Orbison’s three albums for Monument Records have now been reissued, just in time to commemorate what would have been the singer’s seventieth birthday. Each of them—Sings Lonely and Blue from 1960, Crying from 1962 and In Dreams from ’63—is a rock & roll classic, Nashville Sound division. Excellence aside, however, they are also entirely conventional records that include, alongside singles like “Crying” and “Running Scared,” covers of Don Gibson songs and recent hits by the Platters and Jim Reeves, as well as exquisite renderings of what were, even then, hoary chestnuts like Johnny Ray’s “Cry,” Johnny Mercer’s “Dream,” and Stephen Foster’s “Beautiful Dreamer.”

What to make of this? Well, for one thing, we can say that Roy Orbison was, to his immense credit, a member of the rock & roll generation who wanted to get real gone but who also wanted to come to terms with, embrace even, the Hit Parade as it had existed for decades—all the supposedly schlock that, we’re told, rock & roll sneered at and replaced.

You might miss all this, though, and much more, if all you have to go on is The Essential Roy Orbison, a two-disc collection that mistakes some interesting footnotes for key parts of the text. The most egregious example of this is that The Essential includes five tracks from Orbison’s comeback album Mystery Girl—fully half that Jeff Lynne-produced album—but a paltry four tracks from the entirety of Orbison’s MGM tenure, where the Big “O” spent nearly a decade and released 11 albums.

The Essential Roy Orbison also omits entirely the singer’s pre-Sun RCA recordings, and it includes not one track from the albums he released between his departure from MGM and his late ‘80s return to prominence. And a disc entitled The Essential Roy Orbison that doesn’t feature the Traveling Wilburys’ “Handle with Care” can’t possibly live up to its billing. Orbison’s aching turn on the bridge of that 1988 hit single not only solidified his comeback but stands with the most thrilling moments of a career comprised of them.

The 1963 “In Dreams” is missing too, replaced by the inferior Blue Velvet version.  It’s in those original grooves that we can hear the essential Roy Orbison. The exemplary execution of its era’s crooning, vibrato-laden phrasing, bolero beat and pleading climaxes, and in its sweet evocation of swirling-stringed dreams, but also in the one obviously unique quality about Roy Orbison and his music…

That voice, all west-Texas pinched and nasal, a tenor with a tone—a texture, really—that feels lonely and elegant, sobbing yet stoic, and like no one else’s we’ve ever heard.

David Cantwell writes:

It’s that time of year again when people in my line of work are expected to compile a series of lists, honoring the best and worst whatevers of the preceding twelve months. And this annual necessity reminds me that one aspect of contemporary culture I am well past weary with is…The List.

Let me be precise here. I believe listmaking is a helpful, and sometimes even perhaps the best, way of foregrounding an argument. For example, Dave Marsh’s The Heart of Rock & Soul: The 1,001 Greatest Singles Ever Made not only makes my short short list of essential pop music criticism; its list structure has inspired my own work. This is not because I appreciate so many of Marsh’s selections, though I do (He puts Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It through the Grapevine” at number one, a savvy choice), anymore than it is because I disagree with so many of his selections, though I do that as well (I’d go with the Staple Singers’ “I’ll Take You There,” at number one) Listmaking’s enjoyments include the way lists alternately flatter our individual tastes and provide opprotunities to assert our distinctiveness.

Still, none of this accounts for the primary reasons I recommend to you, specifically, the listing in The Heart of Rock & Soul, nor does it explain why I have grown to loathe our listing culture, generally. THOR&S works, I think, because Marsh uses the list merely as a rhetorical tool to advance arguments about all sorts of bigger issues: about what qualities really are at the heart of rock & soul, for starters, and also about the importance to that heart of singles relative to albums, of reconcilliation revelevant to rebellion, of sound relevant to words, and so on.

(Typing this last sentence, I am struck, and not for the first time, that Marsh’s book might have been the first in what is termed today a poptimist approach to rock history. And, yes, I am well aware that observation directly contradicts Marsh’s reputation among many of those very same poptimists.)

When Bill Friskics-Warren and I wrote our Heartaches by the Number: Country Music’s Greatest Singles (It makes a great Christmas gift!), we tried to follow Marsh’s model, laying out our arguments and criteria up front, then elaborating and illustrating those arguments via the book’s 500 cases in point. In our introduction we take Marsh’s motto as our own: “It’s a book, not a list.” We could as well have written, “It’s not a list; it’s an argument.”

Most lists out there these days, from all those list shows on E! or VH1, to Q’s Top Singers Ever or Rolling Stone lists of greatest albums or songs and so on and on, ad infinitum, are not making arguments. Indeed, they dismiss argument all together in favor of…well, I don’t know what. They’re just lists, at best rough drafts for an argument no one is willing to make, at worst an exercise not even in trivia but in randomness and arbitrary subjectivity.

Rolling Stone’s Greatest Singers of All-Time is the lastest example. First thing we notice is that “All-Time” means merely “since 1954 or so.” Aretha Franklin tops the list, and who could argue? I mean, seriously, without a thesis, some criteria, something, who could argue?

*****

Speaking of essential pop music criticism, Carl Wilson resports at Zoilus that his contribution to the 33 1/3 series, Let’s Talk about Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (I explain why here) has been selected by Toronto’s Globe & Mail as one of the best books of the year and by London’s Telegraph as a swell Christmas gift for music loving readers. Congratulations!

*****

My colleague here, Charles Hughes, and Living in Stereo’s best friend, Roy Kasten, both inform me they will be returning with contributions here soon. Some year-end lists perhaps?

David Cantwell writes:

I have a review of the book pictured above, Dana Jennings’ Sing Me Back Home: Love, Death and Country Music, up at No Depression. Though I have a few caveats with Jennings’ approach, and still scratch my head at illustrating a book titled after a Merle Haggard song with a painting of Johnny Cash (even if it is by Laura Levine), I liked the book and recommend it. 

Also my most recent ND column took a look at the twang-centric HBO vampire series, True Blood.

On other fronts…I’ve become quite a fan of literary critic James Wood these last few years. He recently offered a deconstruction (to use a word I suspect he’d loathe) of Barack Obama’s victory speech that was typically sharp and moving, Woodsian…The London Times essays gender difference and musical taste in “Why Does Music So Often Divide the Sexes?” If the lists identifying what men and women alternately like and hate are any indication (and I doubt they are), then I am either asexual or a hemaphrodite…Finally, I was excited to learn that one of my favorite popular critics, Entertainment Weekly’s Ken Tucker, has written a book about the film Scarface (the 1983 Pacino/DePalma version mostly, rather than the the 1932 Muni/Hawks one. Oh well…) and its influence on hip hop and other popular culture. He sketches his ideas a bit at his blog, Ken Tucker’s Pop Culture. I trust the books talks at length about the pertinent Geto Boy.

Finally, for further depressing instances of the headline to my last post, see the Associated Press story “Election Spurs ‘Hundreds’ of Race Threats, Crimes.”