Ebonies and Ivories: Billy Preston and the Strange Case of the Dissapearing Keyboards

Billy Preston.jpg 

Like most people, I became aware of Billy Preston, who died last week, when he began scoring solo hits like “Outa Space” and “Will It Go Round in Circles.” I loved those 45s, in part, because I loved all those weird and crazy sounds that Preston got to emerge from his pianos, organs and synthesizers.

What didn’t seem weird to me in the least, though, was that Preston would be a keyboard player in the first place. Today our image of the rock and/or pop star is typically of some guy or gal holding a guitar–or singing and dancing without any instrument at all. But when I was first starting to pay serious attention, as it were, to pop music–this was in the late sixties and early seventies–it was as likely that my favorite acts would appear in my mind sitting, or sometimes standing, at a piano, organ or synth–Billy Preston was, in this respect, not weird but typical. Recall how many major hitmakers from that era were keyboardists: Aretha, Sly, Stevie, Elton, McCartney, my man Charlie Rich, Carole King, Richard Carpenter, and on and on.

In fact, throughout the seventies, even artists who were and remain identified, first and foremost, as guitar bands, still had keys as a major part of their sonic approach–think of, say, Skynyrd or any southern rock band for that matter; or of Pete Townsend’s piano and synth work in The Who; or, later, of Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band’s twin keyboard approach. (Pianos ruled The Dark Ages (so-called), and frequently accompanied the women Bruce was listening to then). I heard all of those rock acts on KY102, the big AOR station in Kansas City when I was in high school, along with Billy Joel, Jackson Browne, Warren Zevon, Christine McVee of Fleetwood Mac, Benmont Tench of Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers, and Randy Newman–piano plunkers all!

Who are today’s piano- and organ-centric pop artists? John Legend, Alecia Keyes and…Ben Folds?

This absence of keyboards is but one barometer of just how far contemporary pop and rock has moved away from its roots–particularly its roots in the church. I think of that great photo of Elvis sitting at the piano that graced the cover of the original edition of Peter Guralnick’s Last Train to Memphis. Though he usually performed with a guitar or no instrument at all, it was the piano that Presley turned to when he wanted to make music for himself. Of course it was! The piano was the primary musical accompaniment for the music Elvis heard at church, at the southern gospel concerts he attended, and on most of the R&B and black gospel records he loved.

At its beginning, and through the Dark Ages (so-called), and on through the sixties and seventies, rock & roll was almost as much a piano-based music as it was a guitar-based one: Ray Charles, Little Richard, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Fats Domino are obvious early examples here, but so are all those songwriters who composed at a piano: Leiber & Stoller and Pomus & Shuman; Phil Specter and Goffin & King and all the rest of the Brill Building folks; Bacharach & David, and so on.

Also, all of the famous studio bands had pianist/organists, often acting as session leaders. Earl Van Dyke was at Motown; Booker T. and Isaac Hayes were at Stax; A-Teamers Floyd Cramer, Pig Robbins, and David Briggs worked sessions in Nashville; Spooner Oldham and Barry Beckett were in Muscle Shoals…

Well, it ain’t that way no more. Does it matter?

I think it does, for at least two reasons. First off, changing the way people make music changes how that music sounds. I think the lack of melodocism of much contemporary R&B and rock can be accounted for, though only in part, by less emphasis on the piano. I don’t have the technical language to make much of a specific case here (help?!), but my sense of it is that you don’t come up with those expansive melodies for “Yesterday” or “Imagine,” “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow” or “Save the Last Dance for Me,” when you’re strumming a guitar. At any rate, when I note this change, I’m merely being descriptive of current sounds, not evaluative.

Second, and this is evaluative, the gospel impulse–that existential sense (Craig Werner taught us about it) in which we believe that by working together and by believing in something larger than ourselves we can make the world a better place–is in relatively short supply in today’s popular music. Perhaps that’s because the impluse’s material basis in the church, specifically in the piano and organ and the kind of music you make with those instruments in a collective setting, has been seriously diminished. 

This is hypothesis only. Thoughts?

*****In memory of Preston, here are a few of my favorite solo numbers from this great and important keyboard man, who began playing in the church, who toured with Mahalia Jackson and who played for several years in Ray Charles’ band. 

“King of the Road” from [the mid 1960s but I’m not sure exactly where; collected on] Billys’ Bag (ARC Records) 

“John Henry” from I Wrote a Simple Song (A&M, 1971)

“Sunday Morning” from the out-of-print Everybody Likes Some Kind of Music (A&M, 1973) [check out the banjo!]

“As One” from I Believe to My Soul (Rhino/WEA, 2005) [among Preston’s final recordings with producer Joe Henry]

For more on Billy Preston….You can download another quartet of key Preston tracks at Shot of Rhythm….There’s a short recent appreciation of Preston at The B-Side, as well as a ridiculously in-depth overview of Preston’s career there from last February…..If you go to Preston’s All Music Guide entry–and click on “Credits”–you can scroll through five pages worth of albums to which Preston contributed keyboards…..Mark Anthony Neal wrote about Preston earlier this week at Soul Sides, as did the good folks at Soul Shower on June 7th…..Also read about Preston at Funky 16 Corners, one of the first posts at the blog’s new site….Finally, there’s a good roundup of available downloads Preston downloads at Got My Mojo Workin’.

All of which reminds me that I’ll need to write before too long about piano man Allen Toussaint and his new collaboration with Elvis Costello…

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 14th, 2006 at 9:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

15 Responses to “Ebonies and Ivories: Billy Preston and the Strange Case of the Dissapearing Keyboards”

  1. Larry Grogan Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 12:20 pm

    I too lament the dearth of rock’n'roll piano/organ. I could listen to stuff like Little Richard nd Leon Russell all day long, not to mention the hundreds of Hammond organ instros, soul/funk/pop/jazz that came out on 45 in the 60’s.

  2. Eric Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 12:54 pm

    They are a few bands out now, while I don’t know how popular they are, that use piano as their main instrument, bands like Keane and the Fray. But I agree that it seems the influence of the instrument, mainly the Church use, has faded quite a bit of late. Whether that is attributed to less people of this generation attending services of any kind or to the fact that when they do attend these services they see more or a band or guy-with-a-guitar type of Worship service. Something for me to ponder today :)

  3. Charlie Shill Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 5:24 pm

    Channel-surfing the other day, I landed on BET and an old Nat King Cole show featuring a duet with a pre-teen organist/vocalist, young William Preston. He and Cole swapped verses and seats at the keyboard. Sweet, rockin’ slice of soul for the white TV crowd…

  4. Squeezyboy Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 6:47 pm

    My own theory is that the rise of the synthesiser helped kill the cool image of pianists and organists.

    Check out the video here for the exact moment that this happened…
    http://squeezyboy.blogs.com/squeezytunes/2006/04/the_death_of_co.html

  5. livingin Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 9:04 pm

    My Dear Squeezy: Who is that, Greg Lake or Keith Palmer or someon like that?

    For me, what’s key in that clip is not only that he’s playing synths, but that he’s drawing upon classical rather than church styles in his playing.

  6. Squeezyboy Says:
    June 15th, 2006 at 9:10 pm

    It’s Rick Wakeman.

    That he’s drawing upon classical rather than church styles is an interesting point though.

  7. Barry Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 2:46 pm

    I think the composing aspect may be the key thing, Dave, in terms of the melodicism issue. Virtually anyone who composes at the piano mentions that in talking about the sound of the result. There are just more notes, blue notes and chords readily at hand, more ways to breka out of some pattern and find a new one, it seems, than when people are compisig via guitar chording.

    What I don’t quite understand, and would like to hera more about, is why the keyboard-based synthesizer isn’ simply expanding those pluses. It doesn’t seem to–while offering an incentive for so many acts to opt out of having a pano, organ et live on stage.

    Barry Mazor

  8. livingin Says:
    June 16th, 2006 at 3:05 pm

    I don’t know why that is, Barry, not exactly. When the synth was introduced it was often presented playing classical music–a way of presenting it as a legitimate instrument, I suppose, not just some silly noisemaker. I remember when I was in grade school or maybe junior high seeing a film in music class where a moog played Bach’s Little Fugue in G Minor–and loving it so much I went out and bought one of those Spaced Out Bach lps or whatever they were called, where the moog was used like a modern harpsichord.

    Certainly it was the classial approach that so-called art rock bands like ELP went with. But why that would have to be the case with the instrument, I don’t know… Preston and Wonder used synths along with their other keys, but by the time the 80s came around, synths were used mostly for big washes of sound or sustained chords like a string section….

  9. DJA Says:
    June 18th, 2006 at 6:44 am

    Who are today’s piano- and organ-centric pop artists? John Legend, Alecia Keyes and…Ben Folds?

    Fiona Apple.

  10. Riccardo Says:
    June 20th, 2006 at 10:08 pm

    Dear Squeezyboy, you cannot blame Rick Wakeman for killing what you call “the cool image of pianists and organists”. If you really think so, I must assume you are not aware of Wakeman’s astounding versatility at the piano and all the keyboards, his many crucial contributions as a session man to important recordings by many important musicians, and more in general the role he played in the history and evolution of rock keyboards. Nor you seem aware of the role he played in most of Yes’s masterworks.

    IMHO, I would instead say that Wakeman was crucial in shaping a wholly new (and cooler as well) image of pianists and organists in rock music. The same goes, of course, for Keith Emerson and other great Prog Rock keyboardists of the 1970s.

    Riccardo

  11. Grant Alden Says:
    June 21st, 2006 at 8:54 pm

    Mourn keyboards if you will, but what ever happened to the saxophone, the onetime lynchpin of early rock ‘n’ roll (the bass line, before bass amps were readily available, I’ve been told).

    And I played [sic] piano for six years. My third concert, to make it worse, was Gary Wright opening for Rick Wakeman, nothing but keyboards at the Paramount. So there. Whatever all that means: Nothing, then.

  12. Squeezyboy Says:
    June 21st, 2006 at 8:59 pm

    Riccardo,

    I think you’ve entirely misunderstood my sense of humour.

    Squeezyboy

  13. livingin Says:
    June 21st, 2006 at 10:17 pm

    Grant: Yeah, I’d thought of mentioning the loss of the sax as well, but then decided against it…for several reasons, I guess. Its absence doesn’t represent a break with church music specifically or with the gospel impulse more generally; people don’t compose, typically, on the saxaphone; the instrument’s run as an expected part of the rock ‘n’ roll sound was fairly brief compared to keys; and…I tend not to like rock and roll saxaphone!

    I would much rather have seen you play the piano, than Gary Wright.

  14. Carlota Montealegre Says:
    April 8th, 2007 at 8:03 am

    If you are missing the dissapearing keyboards, you should check out Brian Mitchell. He was Allen Toussaints understudy many years ago, and recently has been sharing the stage with him (Allen) at Levon Helm’s (of The Band) Midnight Rambles. Billy and Allen are two of his hero’s. Brian was lucky enough to play with Billy before he died. I truly think Brian is one of the cats holding on to what you are talking about. He’s also an amazing accordion player. Go to his myspace page if you’re interested www.myspace.com/brianmitchellmusic or go to his website www.brianmitchellmusic.com Brian plays with his many bands all over NYC and Austin. try and catch a gig (not sure where you’re from). Brian also recently did an interview with Allen Toussiant for Keyboard magazine. I had the luxury of reading the unedited 12 pages of amazing conversation and history.

  15. The Five Love Language Man Edition Says:
    October 11th, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    If I were to really, really, think about it, Ebonies and Ivories: Billy Preston and the Strange Case of the Dissapearing Keyboards is a great way to frame your point, especially when The Five Love Language Man Edition is taken into account.

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