Monday August 21st, 2000 @ 8:49 PM
I looked at Tommy before it happened. He was illuminated in the soft glow of red floodlights. It gave him the appearance of glorification, as though he were about to be raptured off to a holy place. The rest of the room was dark but for the neon of an occasional beer light. Then I noticed that no one was talking. Silence is a strange atmosphere in a dance hall. They just sat and stared, a large audience in a small room, gazing and waiting, locked in anticipation, having been seduced by the music.
I looked down at my pocket watch: twelve twenty-four. The distance between its tick and tock, which I only imagined I heard, had slowed deliberately and dramatically: TICK…TOCK…TICK…TOCK…and still no one moved or spoke. I could feel it coming as one senses the advent of a storm ascending the far side of a hill, hidden from sight except for the rustle of leaves, and the ceasing of birds chirping, and the smell of rain-wet dust on the wind.
Instinctively I knew the next song was critical to the moment. I’d been here before, many times, but never enough times. I chose carefully. It would last long and the groove would be deep. It would be a journey and everyone would come along, like the children of the piper. The guitar tone leapt from the stage and impaled the audience like the piercing of a herald trumpet. The other instruments remained silent four bars and then thundered into the closed quarters of the hall and shivers went down my spine. The band seemed to know it was coming and responded in spirit.
Tommy’s giant Hammond B-3 whirled through its Leslie and screamed into the night air like a banshee. Tommy flung his fingers down the keyboards postured like an Opera Phantom. I was so excited I could hardly sing. The people reacted as one, and the dance floor filled almost instantly. No one cared who saw him dance. No one cared with whom they danced. They just had to dance. Not dancing in self-awareness, not dancing to show off, not dancing practiced steps, but dancing in response to a call. A call to their very soul. No one knows from where the call comes, I least of all. Some dance halls never hear the call, but they did that night in Cherryvale, Kansas.
By itself, a band cannot create this Cherryvale transcendence. Neither can it be the will of an audience. It cannot be dictated or planned. It just happens. But, it can only happen when the band and the audience merge their souls collectively. Dancing doesn’t have to be involved. If this transcendence never happened to you, and if you do not believe it can happen, then this accounting is probably as close as you will ever get. Because it only happens to the willing, and only after a cycle is established between the band and the audience. A beautiful cycle of human energy that feeds on itself and regenerates each time it is passed on. It is empowered by concentration of focus and feeling and is seen in myriad ways like the enchantment in the eye and the exuberance of body movement.
It is this transcendence that fills the soul with vivacity like a sexual adventure, only it is of the human spirit and indeed transcends the mundane and takes away those things temporal. The experience taps into things eternal. The exhilaration is so fiercely delicious that ones mind wills time into a slow motion warp. There is no want to think or desire to explain, only the feeling exists. A feeling that takes on texture from wave after wave of silent elation: ever deepening, ever cycling, ever borrowing from those around; a spiritual whorl that sends the participant spiraling profoundly into a nether world. When the music stops the feeling begins to fade and ones mind returns unwillingly and slowly as though awakening from a nepenthean slumber. Therefore, from the darkness of the Freudian Id, a cry goes out to prolong the music.
The musicians do not hear the cry, but they feel it. Each is lost in some zone peculiar to his mind and its mastery of the musical instrument. To become self-aware is to lose the transcendence, for it is the terrestrial from which he escapes and joins the grand illusion.
It is an illusion is it not? Without the lights and the music it disappears like the grin of the Cheshire cat. Yet it happens–and what then do we call the happening? You can’t reproduce it at will. You can’t preserve it even with the best of movie cameras because they don’t record feelings. You can’t bring it back or give it to someone else. It is ethereal, and yet something happens. I call it the Cherryvale Transcendence.
There will be scoffers among my readers. Some stiff pragmatists will undoubtedly challenge my words and accuse me of overwriting and sensationalism. In the minds of some, what you have just read will remain the prattle of romanticists such as I. Some musicians would be among the doubters because their band has never seduced and mesmerized an audience. Some club owners would shake their heads in derision because they know nothing of lighting and ambience and are disinterested in the very bands they hire for their patrons. Some patrons will question my veracity because they remain stoically behind barriers of inhibition or insecurity or misanthropy and cannot and will not yield to things intangible.
But the Cherryvale Transcendence is not restricted to bands and dancing. It is available in many forums. The American Indians find it in Sweats and other rituals. One can slice it with a knife at epic heavyweight championship fights. A mighty preacher can conjure up spellbinding visions. Think about the poem “Casey at the Bat” or whatever it is called. Was not the entire crowd, the team, the pitcher, and Casey himself caught up in baseball’s version of the Cherryvale Transcendence? Ask yourself where and in what way you’ve experienced it.
I write of it because I am challenged to put words to the transcendence because I was told it can’t be put into words. But then, how do we share what we have felt with those who have never felt it? And, how do we, who have experienced it, talk about it amongst one another? How then do we cue each other to watch for it? How do we freeze the memory for examination and reflection? How do we prevent the diminishing of personal illumination? How do we enlighten others so they can become themselves seekers?
Unfortunately the Cherryvale Transcendence doesn’t happen often, or at least often enough. One abrasive and loud naysayer in a crowd can squash the entire effect. I know clubs where the transcendence is impossible and will never occur because the ambience, and the philosophy of the ownership won’t allow it. It may not happen in Cherryvale again. But somewhere, one night, it will happen. It may start with the contagious enthusiasm of one dancer who, like a bell-cow, leads the others to pasture.
This happened in Cherryvale that night. A middle-aged black man named “Lucky” was dancing so enthusiastically and having so much fun that it made us want to exceed our performance levels. He made me happy just to watch him. He made others want to share in his happiness as dozens of people joined him on the floor. He challenged the band loudly, saying: “You can’t play a song that I can’t dance to.” He danced the way I see Delta artists paint old juke joint dancers. I think Lucky started the cycle between band and congregation. I can see his beaming face as though he were dancing around on my computer screen.
The savoring of such memories is what makes a good life. I begin writing this piece on August 16th, my fifty-fourth birthday. My father was in the hospital very sick and calling for me. When I saw him he was weak and frail. It hurt me to see this proud man losing his powers. I realize how quickly my middle age is going to turn to old age. Twenty-four years ago I was a cocky young buck of thirty, and twenty-four years from now I’ll be my father’s age. The last twenty-four went by so very fast. Fortunately I’ve let myself be open for the Cherryvale Transcendences that fortune and fate have strung out for me, and I intend to seek them always.
I’ve envisioned myself knowing when it was time for me to pass on. I would like do as the Indians of old who simply walked away and sought a place to die with dignity, then prepared themselves. I can’t help but think that their minds were flooded with memories and their hearts with feelings of times and people past. That being the case, some had sterile, lonely, and depressing death experiences, while others vaulted into a fabulous kaleidoscope of remembrances that allowed their final moments to be a Cherryvale transcendence.
The old Blinddog bus arrives in Cherryvale again September 30th and Tommy Carlyle will come from Wichita to play the mighty Hammond Organ with us. Here’s hoping we get Lucky.
Carl
*My 500th subscriber is a young man under 18 years old from Short Hills, New Jersey. I don’t expose my readership in any way unless they so desire, so I’ll not mention his name, but Blinddog Smokin’ will send him our latest CD, “More Trouble Than Worth.” Some of you have read every piece I’ve written for TTW and certainly deserve more than my gratitude, but please know you old faithful are the motivation that keeps me writing.
*Look to upcoming issues of Southwest Blues Magazine for an article I wrote about our recording sessions with the fabulous Dorothy Ellis, a.k.a., Miss Blues, and another article by Aletha Dewbre on Blinddog Smokin’.
Posted by Carl
Wednesday August 2nd, 2000 @ 8:58 PM
Jazz vs. Blues
I’m always being asked innocently by acquaintances and relatives what kind of music my band plays. When I say blues they almost always smile in delight as though we’ve made an unanticipated connection. “I love blues,” a friend declares with sincere enthusiasm. “My uncle played in a jazz band when I was a kid. We went to hear him in the City Park one time.”
What?
How am I supposed to respond without sarcasm? Let’s see: “Gee, we must be soul brothers, let’s go over to your house and listen to your Thelonious Monk collection, now there’s a blues man if I ever heard one.”
Here’s some other choice connections: “Five years ago we went to the Bluegrass festival in Telluride…I love blues, my favorite band is Moody Blues…or Blues Traveler…I like the old blues like Janis Joplin and Led Zeppelin…”
If you asked Americans to name one blues singer, almost all of them would say, B.B. King. If you asked them to name two, they’d probably throw in either Dan Ackroyd or one of the Belushi brothers. If you asked for a third, you might get any damned suggestion from Bo Bice to Tiny Tim, or they might just give up and defer to their uncle who plays jazz at the city park.
I’m going to be incredibly kind and forgive the ignorance of those who mistake Bluegrass for Blues, or those who think Moody Blues is a Blues band. Why? Because, after all, the word blue is a commonality. Not everybody is Sherlock Holmes.
But why do we lump Jazz and Blues together as one genre? Most jazz guys I know view blues as simple and primitive and way too easy for their sophisticated skills. Most blues men I know think jazz is musical chatter or clutter and devoid of emotion. Not all. Some jazz musicians join blues jams in an attempt to have soul. Some blues musicians play jazz in an attempt to prove they have brains. Occasionally I even find someone who is skilled at and loves both, but rarely. The old adage that jazz is the music of the head and blues is the music of the heart, if true, would explain the bifurcation.
If you don’t think the aficienados know the difference, consider that I once tried to audition my band in a jazz club in Denver. The owner was old and cranky. “Blues!” He exclaimed indignantly, as though I’d handed him a stinky diaper. “This is a goddamned jazz club. Haven’t had a blues band in the entire history of the place.” He said it defiantly, as though he had successfully defended against the barbaric hordes from the Russian Steppes. “Whaduyuh want my customers to hang me back in the alley?
I trudged out of the place wondering why I felt like I did when they wouldn’t let me into advanced Algebra. Of course the reason I wanted in was that the girl from whose paper I always cheated was headed there. But I have a point to make. What makes music good or bad is the craftsmanship, not the genre. Somewhere inside it should be melody, phrasing, originality, soul, dynamics, and technique. And we, as the American public, should seek and reward those qualities.
If instead we are content to applaud wildly in a Karaoke bar for some poor pilgrim singing Patsy Cline’s “Crazy,” and define that as quality entertainment, then we deserve what we get. Not being able to distinguish blues from bluegrass or jazz is akin to thinking all wines are just “booze.” Not being able to distinguish the quality music of any genre from the cheap and dismal is like pouring a glass of Ripple into a vintage Cabernet Sauvignon, and declaring with a burp, “It ain’t that bad!”
Posted by Carl
Wednesday August 2nd, 2000 @ 8:55 PM
They kissed her hand. One by one, a cowboy, two college kids, an old hippie, a New York tourist–and the line was long behind them. In the background people applauded in the rain. No one left. All beheld her in astonished admiration. Two girls genuflected as they caught her eye. The diverse gathering had formed one mind, one focus, one emotion. I looked on in disbelief.
Here was an elderly black lady in a cowboy town on the high lonesome Laramie Valley, during its rodeo days. She stood on a flat bed trailer parked on the street facing the toughest bar in the state: the Buckhorn. She had arrived only hours before after riding all night from Oklahoma with her faithful friend, Doc Metcalf. They had staggered out of his pick-up wearing weightlifting belts for their worn out lumbars.
After a short nap, Dorothy Ellis, known as “Miss Blues,” marched down the street from her motel and took the stage before a wild crowd of revelers, and simply proceeded to stop them cold, mesmerize them, and leave them impaled on her piercing vocal tone. With her might and her charm she became thunder and rainbow, so whom she didn’t dazzle she tantalized.
Those who have seen her do this, know my words are true; those who haven’t need to make a pilgrimage to wherever this lady is performing and behold.
The fascinating Texas shouter hadn’t come a thousand miles just to sing a few songs in the rain, she had come to record her first CD after fifty-four years of singing the blues professionally. As we know, sometimes life is not fair, and sometimes it is ridiculously unfair. With all the twits and nincompoops we hear squeaking and squawking on MTV with their record labels printed so proudly in the corner; this captivating and dynamic woman wandered in recording wilderness fourteen years longer than the ancient Hebrews in Sinai.
Now Laramie, Wyoming, hardly looks like the promised land, but it is the home of Crying Tone Records and the blistering blues band, Blinddog Smokin’. It was the blistering quality that drew Miss Blues to Blinddog as a kindred spirit seeking a home–because this woman likes Tabasco on her blues.
She had shunned invitations to record elsewhere because as she put it: “They was gonna stick me with some tired old men, playin’ tired old blues…” She knew Blinddog Smokin’ would start up like a struck match– but we didn’t.
When she had positioned herself before the recording microphone and explained her first song, the guitarist, Jason “12 fingers” Coomes, plodded into an acoustic progression and the drums sauntered in behind him. “Chicago” Chuck Gullens peered at Miss Blues through his question marked face wondering if he was going too fast.
After a few bars the grand lady stopped suddenly and formed an awful face full of dismay, “What in the world are you guys doing?” She screamed. “You worse than the tired old men. Just because I’m a lady don’t mean I want you to play gentle and slow. This ain’t no funeral. I want the Blinddogs. I want you to play Blinddog style. Get some electric guitars and make ‘em scream. I want some energy. I want it now.”
Well, ladies and gentlemen, this woman weighs two hundred and thirty pounds and is damned near as tall as my six foot one. Her voice sounded like a locomotive coming through a tunnel and we sat up straight and begin’ “yes ma’aming” like orphans in a Charles Dickens novel.
From that galvanic moment on, the basement studio was smokin’. Miss Blues likes it hot. “I want music that will sell CDs…” She announced between songs. I believe her CD is going to do exactly that.
She wrote several original songs. Slow blues that glow like embers at midnight. Songs from her rugged past. Songs where one can feel the pathos in her tone like you feel the chill of a north wind. Songs like “Sinkin’, Sinkin’, Sinkin’, where the despair of a young and abandoned mother torque’s your soul like a spiritual wrench until it draws out the compassion that lies so often dormant in human languor.
We all begin to feel an atmosphere of reverence around this woman. We approached each song as though it were lain upon the altar. Metaphorically we were in a state of worship. She taught us. She told us to listen to the words, listen to her voice, and then let our own vision come out in the instruments. No longer were we playing notes, we were telling a story–her story. The guitarists forgot their practiced licks and begin to mirror her voice, her soul, her words. If she sang of a mountain stream, then so did each instrument, and soon she was painting pictures with song and we were her brushes and paint, and the black electric recording boxes stacked against the wall with their myriad and dancing colored lights were her canvas.
An odd orchestra it was: an old black woman; a young black drummer; a guitarist of eighteen years, dubbed “The Kid;” a young white bassist nick-named “Junior” from the yuppie town of Boulder, Colorado; a stoic and stern master of guitar who also served as technician; and me, the raconteur philosopher. We had nothing in common, except our gathered souls. In that almost eerie atmosphere of concentration, everything, all that one is, all that one can be, lines up into a single purpose and anything outside that purpose disappears. It is not something you can walk into a store and buy. Neither is it something that can be dictated or decreed.
By contrast, time between songs was filled with joviality and outrageous banter. Some of this was captured on tape and will be included on the final CD release. It is this buoyancy and vivacity and merriment that make Miss Blues profoundly lovable, despite how intimidating her stage persona can be. This is a woman who loves to laugh and has every reason to be bitter instead. I think she loves herself and truly gets a kick out of Miss Blues. Because of that everybody else finds it easy to love her too. I am reminded of a quote from William Makepeace Thackeray who wrote: The world is a looking glass, and gives back to every man the reflection of his own face.
The faces that look back at Miss Blues are happy faces because hers is happy. They are inspired faces as well, and faces that reflect deep feeling. They are faces revealing certain expression perhaps for the first time because they have never looked into a face like that of Miss Blues. I lament that more people can’t participate in her reflection, or that those of us who do, can’t do it more. The world needs that. Too often we look into faces reflecting self-pity and self-loathing, anger and angst.
When I reminisce about those four July days we spent recording with this beautiful old Texas Shouter, and I hear the dozen songs we made together with her fire and our smoke, I think of another beloved quotation I found years ago by Ralph Waldo Emerson: The days come and go and they say nothing, and if you do not use the gifts they bring, they carry them as silently away.
Dorothy Ellis has been a gift each day in many peoples lives for over fifty-four years of professional singing, yet she grew old having never made a record of her own. If Blinddog Smokin’ does nothing else with our precious time on this mysterious earth than to make sure she is not carried silently away, I will know we have not lived in vain.
Look for Miss Blues’ first CD on the Crying Tone Record Label sometime around the end of November. Blinddog Smokin’ will be appearing with her at varied times and locals in Oklahoma and Texas this fall and winter.
Posted by Carl