"Down Goes Frazier!"

"Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier! Down goes Frazier!" Howard Cosell's staccato delivery of those words during the 1973 Frazier-Foreman fight was one of my favorite TV moments as a kid. (I used to do a pretty fair Cosell impression back when Nixon was in the White House.)

That said, and with apologies to Howard's estate, down goes Dallas Frazier as one of my favorite country/soul songwriters. Never heard of him? Then check out "The R&B Sessions," the recent release (on Australia's great Raven reissue label) of some of Mr. Frazier's work from the mid-1960s. It'll be time well spent.

Dallas was the guy who penned "Mohair Sam" (Charlie Rich), "Elvira" (Rodney Crowell, The Oak Ridge Boys), "Alley Oop" (The Hollywood Argyles), "There Goes My Everything" (Jack Greene), "True Love Travels Down a Gravel Road" (co-writer) (Elvis Presley, Percy Sledge), and many other classics. (The last two tunes listed are not on this reissue.)

Although Mr. Frazier's career as a recording artist never really took off, this pair of albums from the mid-1960s is a great listen. It's a wonderful blend of country, soul, and gospel delivered in two- to three-minute doses. If you're a fan of Charlie Rich or Buddy Miller, give it a listen.

Let's Hope This Deal Gets Done

Legendary music executive Jerry Wexler died last Friday at his home in Florida. If you don't know who Jerry Wexler is, read "Sweet Soul Music" by Peter Guralnick; better yet, listen to just about anything issued on Atlantic Records from 1953 through the late 1960s.

At the time of Mr. Wexler's death, he was working with my good friend Alan Elliott to bring to life a documentary about the making of "Amazing Grace," Aretha Franklin's great gospel record from 1972.

The film, which was orignally shot by the late Sydney Pollack, ended up in the Warner Brothers vault because the production company was never able to reach an agreement with Aretha.

Alan told me several months ago that he was working with Jerry Wexler to get this movie financed and released. I'm confident Alan will figure out a way to secure the financing to get this done.

After Mr. Wexler's death, Alan discussed the project with writer Ethan Smith for an article that appeared in Saturday's Wall Street Journal:

"Jerry always would say, 'My contribution to that session was that I brought a profane rhythm section into a sacred space,'" recalls Alan Elliott, a former Atlantic staff record producer.

* * * * *

"All the energy he poured into these phone calls at 91, you can only imagine what he must have been like 50 years ago," Mr. Elliott says.

* * * * *

Mr. Wexler and drummer Bernard Purdie felt that the rehearsals for "Amazing Grace," which Mr. Pollack also shot, were even more powerful than the actual sessions. Mr. Wexler was overseeing sound mixing on the rehearsals near the time of his death. The film is now being edited.

Over at Al's blog, he describes, as only he can, the events that sparked his involvement with this project.

I'm keeping my fingers crossed that this documentary hits the big screen one of these days.

"Elvis Has Left The Building"

Because today is the thirty-first anniversary of Elvis Presley's death, you can bet that there are folks around the globe donning white jumpsuits and jet-black wigs to attend screenings of "Clambake" and "Flaming Star." I won't be among them. That's not the Elvis that hooked me as a kid.

I've been a fan of EP's music since I was a toddler. I sat glued to the tube as a four year-old, when the 1968 comeback special aired. (I still get goosebumps watching his performance of "If I Can Dream.") And as I got older, I came to appreciate the writing of folks like Peter Guralnick, Robert Gordon, and Greil Marcus, whose books shed light on the larger cultural and musical contexts in which Elvis crafted his body of work -- the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Yes, I'm a fan of Elvis, but being a music geek, I guess I'm also a student of Elvis -- in the same way I'm a student of Duke Ellington, James Brown, and Hank Williams.

Back in mid-2002, it was the "music student" in me that initially got a charge out of meeting Al Dvorin. My family and I had just moved into our Rogers Park home, and Al and his wife, Bernice, lived across the street.

As I later found out, Al loved to chat, and on one of the first Saturday afternoons we were in our new house, Al stopped my wife on the sidewalk and engaged her in a long conversation. During the course of that conversation, Al mentioned Elvis. My wife took that as a cue to tell Al, "You really need to meet my husband."

A couple minutes later, I wandered out of the house to meet Al. He was almost eighty years old, but that day we began a friendship that lasted until his death in August 2004.

You see, I knew about Al from Peter Guralnick's two-volume biography of Elvis -- and Al got a big kick out of that fact. And when I told Al that I was a part-time rocker and was probably the only guy in the neighborhood who had performed "Suspicious Minds" in Japan and "Burning Love" at the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, he knew he'd met a kindred spirit.

You never would have guessed it by looking at the octogenarian who walked cautiously from his Rogers Park bungalow to his old blue station wagon, but Al was the man whose voice was heard at the end of the King's concerts: "Elvis has left the building. Thank you and good night."

During the short time I knew Al, he spent most of his time caring for his sick wife. After she passed away, he used to talk to me about his desire to go back “on the road” to attend the many Elvis festivals and conventions to which he was always invited. He said, “My family will think I’m nuts, but this is what I need to do right now.” And it was what he needed to do.

Al eventually went back "on the road." Sadly, in August 2004, he was killed in a car accident near Palm Springs on the way home from an Elvis tribute show.

Shortly before Al died, he was excited when a local pinball machine company – Stern, I believe -- wanted to license his voice for use in an Elvis game it was designing. Al asked me to review the proposed contract for him. I don’t know whether the game ever hit the market.

I’m glad I got to know Al Dvorin. I miss him, and I think of him often -- and always on August 16 -- the day on which Elvis left "The Building" for good.

Papa Jack -- Thanks for the Threads

Jack Weil, America's oldest living CEO, passed away on Wednesday . . . at the ripe old age of 107. He founded Rockmount Ranch Wear in 1946.

When it comes to cars, cameras, toothpaste, and most other consumer goods, I've never had much brand loyalty. Jack Weil's Rockmount shirts are the exception. When I put one on, I'm ready -- at least in my own mind -- to rock.

Most of the calendar year, I'm a lawyer. As a result, I have way too many lawyer clothes in my closet. They weren't fun to buy and they are not fun to wear. Every now and then, I get to shed the lawyer skin (no snake jokes, please) and lead my bar band. For those occasions, I keep a small section of music clothes in my closet. Those were fun to buy and they're also fun to wear. Most of those duds came from Jack Weil's company.

Elvis had Bernard Lansky; Gram Parsons had Nudie Cohen. Legends all.



But even without the talent or the checking accounts of Elvis and Gram (both of whom I've managed to outlive), I look forward to playing tavern gigs in Jack Weil's Rockmount shirts for a long time. Good Lord willing and the creek don't rise, I hope to be doing it when I turn 107.

Rest in peace, Papa Jack.

If You Only Knew Him From "South Park" . . .

If you only knew Isaac Hayes -- who died earlier today -- as the voice of "Chef" from the TV show "South Park," you've missed out on a lot of music -- and a lot of music history. (Same is true if you only knew Buck Owens as a cornball character from TV's "Hee-Haw.")

Grab Rob Bowman's book "Soulsville USA: The Story of Stax Records" if you want the best account of Mr. Hayes and his contribution to soul music. Had Isaac Hayes never made a record as a solo artist, the songs that he wrote with his partner David Porter (e.g., "Soul Man," "Hold On, I'm Coming," "B-A-B-Y," "When Something Is Wrong With My Baby") would have ensured his place in any number of musical halls of fame. His performance credits, however, were equally noteworthy. Isaac Hayes was a massive talent.

To my ears, one of the more interesting -- though least popular -- records in his discography is his first Stax offering, "Presenting Isaac Hayes." It's a late-night piano trio record from 1968, and it features Ike's piano and vocals along with "Duck" Dunn's bass and the magnificent drumming of Al Jackson, Jr. The session, it is said, followed a Stax company party, and Isaac Hayes sounds, shall we say, quite relaxed. Check it out. The trio covers several standards and digs into some gospel and blues, as well.

The live clip below is not from that 1968 date, and it features a mega-star Ike with a larger group; nevertheless, his treatment of T-Bone Walker's "Stormy Monday Blues" carries a vibe similar to the one you'll feel on that first Stax record.



Isaac Hayes was 65 years old.

Ask and you shall receive . . .

In my July 19 post on this blog, I wrote about a recent Christie's auction of many of the late James Brown's possessions. The auction (and the ugliness that gave rise to it) disturbed me. After reading about an auction house selling off James Brown's hair rollers and gel, I asked:

Couldn't the Godfather's estate have figured out a more tasteful way to raise some cash? For example, there has got to be a wealth of old James Brown performance videos out there. I've been trying for years to track down a decent copy of James on the T.A.M.I. Show, but I've had no luck. I realize the JB estate may not own any rights to that particular video, but surely it owns rights to a lot of other great footage. James was too shrewd a businessman to have given all that away.

So imagine my surprise this afternoon when I stumbled upon a 3-DVD set -- just released yesterday and officially licensed by the Godfather's estate -- entitled "I Got The Feelin': James Brown in the '60s" The set features not only the documentary "The Night James Brown Saved Boston" -- a night more Americans should know about (see trailer below) -- but also footage from the T.A.M.I. show.



Spectacular. Buy it. Savor it. Share it with your kids.

"Can we hit it and quit it?"

JG & KG

Within a four-hour span yesterday, I picked up two seemingly unrelated pieces of information about a couple of saxophone players. First, I learned that the great tenor-man Johnny Griffin passed away yesterday at his home in France. He was 80 years old. Mr. Griffin was born and raised right here in Chicago, but left the United States for Europe in the early 1960s, finding it easier to make a living as a jazz musician over there.

Second, while having a friendly chat with a seven year-old neighbor -- one of my daughter's playmates -- I learned that he listens to the soulless soprano sax stylings of Kenny G when he has a hard time falling asleep at night.

The strange confluence of my learning, within that four-hour window, about both JG's death and KG's role in my neighbor's life got me thinking. I'd wager that everyone in my office has heard of Kenny G and that most of my co-workers are generally familiar with his music. I'd also wager that no more than two of the roughly twenty people in that same office could tell you a single thing about Johnny Griffin. Sad but true.

If you never had the pleasure of seeing him play at the Jazz Showcase during his annual April visits to Chicago, you missed out. The little man had big chops. Check out this clip from a date at The Village Vanguard.



I don't know whether my little neighbor will ever learn about Griff (or Lockjaw, or Jug, or Long Tall Dexter, etc.), but his night-time reliance on the soporific sounds of Kenny G brought to mind Pat Metheny's screed -- from eight or nine years ago -- about the G-Man's decision to dub his own playing over a Louis Armstrong recording ("What A Wonderful World") and release the CD to his adoring public. (If you're a jazz fan who somehow missed this cyber-squabble years ago, click the link above.) Here's a taste of Mr. Metheny's invective:

Kenny G is not a musician I really had much of an opinion about at all until recently. There was not much about the way he played that interested me one way or the other either live or on records.

* * * *

But he did show a knack for connecting to the basest impulses of the large crowd by deploying his two or three most effective licks (holding long notes and playing fast runs - never mind that there were lots of harmonic clams in them) at the key moments to elicit a powerful crowd reaction (over and over again). The other main thing I noticed was that he also, as he does to this day, played horribly out of tune - consistently sharp.

* * * *

Of course, I am aware of what he has played since, the success it has had, and the controversy that has surrounded him among musicians and serious listeners. This controversy seems to be largely fueled by the fact that he sells an enormous amount of records while not being anywhere near a really great player in relation to the standards that have been set on his instrument over the past sixty or seventy years. And honestly, there is no small amount of envy involved from musicians who see one of their fellow players doing so well financially, especially when so many of them who are far superior as improvisors and musicians in general have trouble just making a living. There must be hundreds, if not thousands of sax players around the world who are simply better improvising musicians than Kenny G on his chosen instruments. It would really surprise me if even he disagreed with that statement.

* * * *

But, like I said at the top, this relatively benign view was all "until recently".

Not long ago, Kenny G put out a recording where he overdubbed himself on top of a 30+ year old Louis Armstrong record, the track "What a Wonderful World". With this single move, Kenny G became one of the few people on earth I can say that I really can't use at all - as a man, for his incredible arrogance to even consider such a thing, and as a musician, for presuming to share the stage with the single most important figure in our music.

This type of musical necrophilia - the technique of overdubbing on the preexisting tracks of already dead performers - was weird when Natalie Cole did it with her dad on "Unforgettable" a few years ago, but it was her dad. When Tony Bennett did it with Billie Holiday it was bizarre, but we are talking about two of the greatest singers of the 20th century who were on roughly the same level of artistic accomplishment. When Larry Coryell presumed to overdub himself on top of a Wes Montgomery track, I lost a lot of the respect that I ever had for him - and I have to seriously question the fact that I did have respect for someone who could turn out to have such unbelievably bad taste and be that disrespectful to one of my personal heroes.

But when Kenny G decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great Louis's tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that I would not have imagined possible. He, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that Louis Armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. By disrespecting Louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, Kenny G has created a new low point in modern culture - something that we all should be totally embarrassed about - and afraid of. We ignore this, "let it slide", at our own peril.

* * * *

There ARE some things that are sacred - and amongst any musician that has ever attempted to address jazz at even the most basic of levels, Louis Armstrong and his music is hallowed ground. To ignore this trespass is to agree that NOTHING any musician has attempted to do with their life in music has any intrinsic value - and I refuse to do that. (I am also amazed that there HASN'T already been an outcry against this among music critics - where ARE they on this?????!?!?!?!, magazines, etc.). Everything I said here is exactly the same as what I would say to Gorelick if I ever saw him in person. and if I ever DO see him anywhere, at any function - he WILL get a piece of my mind and (maybe a guitar wrapped around his head.)

Maybe my little buddy is making the best possible use of Kenny G's music by using it to put himself to sleep.

Rest in peace, Johnny Griffin.

Papa's Got A Brand New . . . Set Of Hair Rollers?

As if the news of the day -- mortgage meltdowns, bank runs, endless war, and yesterday's big-screen release of "Mamma Mia!" -- wasn't depressing enough, it pained me to read Guy Trebay's piece in today's New York Times about Christie's recent auction of 328 items that once belonged to the Godfather of Soul.

Christie's held the July 17 auction in an effort to raise money to pay down the outstanding bills and taxes owed by James Brown's estate -- an estate over which many heirs and would-be heirs are now battling.

Mr. Trebay's account hammered home the weirdness of the event:

"The most curious lot of the day was not the bracelet, however, or the singer’s platform shoe collection ($15,000) or the paranoid note he once scrawled on loose leaf paper alleging that his record label was out to kill him ($7,000.) It was not the suite of red leather furniture that conjured up images of the recreation room on a mother ship ($40,000.)

It was the single-lot offering of 80 hair rollers, accompanied by spray styling products like Smooth Sheen, Finisheen and Volumax, a Polaroid of Brown with his hair up in curlers, and a variety of picks and combs.

* * * *

After spirited bidding, Lot 242, simply labeled “Hair Supplies,” was hammered down to a private collector for $4,800, plus the auction house’s 25 percent buyer’s premium."

Couldn't the Godfather's estate have figured out a more tasteful way to raise some cash? For example, there has got to be a wealth of old James Brown performance videos out there. I've been trying for years to track down a decent copy of James on the T.A.M.I. Show, but I've had no luck. I realize the JB estate may not own any rights to that particular video, but surely it owns rights to a lot of other great footage. James was too shrewd a businessman to have given all that away.

Until some of those wonderful old JB concerts are released on video, we fans will have to content ourselves with clips like this one:

The Man and his band were just too cool . . . .

The Secret Life of Collier, Mitty

It's telling that I have to rely upon folks from outside the country -- in this case, the good people at Kent Records in the UK -- to fill me in on a lot of great music that came out of Chicago back in the 1960s.

A couple of days ago, Kent released "Shades of Mitty Collier: The Chess Singles, 1961-1968," which compiles all fifteen of Mitty's Chess 45s, plus several of her B-sides. I took a shot on this disc even though I was familiar with only a couple of Mitty's records. I'm delighted I did because this one's a keeper. Why she wasn't a major star, I'll never know.

If you're not familiar with Mitty, check out this clip from Hoss Allen's mid-1960s TV show, "The Beat," which was filmed in Nashville -- and is now available on DVD courtesy of, go figure, Germany's Bear Family label. Here, Mitty is lip-synching her biggest hit, "I Had A Talk With My Man," while Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown is pretending to lead the band.



(Although "The Beat" did feature some lip-synching, the six DVDs, which feature twenty-six episodes, showcase a lot of blistering live performances.)

Mitty turned 67 a few days ago and, rumor has it, still runs a church here in Chicago. I should probably make a pilgrimage soon.

Father's Day

The folks at Hallmark tell me this is my big day. But it's not. I love being a father 365 days a year, and I'm grateful for each day I have with my kids -- even the days when they do or say things that make me want to bang my head against the wall.

My dad dropped dead at age 39, when I was just 14 years old, so I value greatly each moment I have with my kids.

One of the many things my dad sparked in me was a love of music. He didn't play an instrument, and he certainly never had money to take me to concerts, but through the magic of long-playing records and AM radio, he introduced me to much of the music I still listen to today. I've tried to spark that same love of music in my kids, and I have tried -- probably as a tribute to my dad -- to pass along to them a lot of the same songs, stories, and musical insights he shared with me.

So thanks, Dad, for turning me on to Little Richard, Johnny Cash, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis, Charlie Rich, Bo Diddley, Ike & Tina, CCR, Johnny Horton, Arthur Prysock, Wilson Pickett, Roger Miller, Ray Price, Ray Charles, Willie Nelson, Jim Croce, and Fats Domino.

Thanks for introducing me to "Black Slacks" (Joe Bennett & The Sparkletones), "Chantilly Lace" (J.P. Richardson a/k/a The Big Bopper), "The Johnny Cash Show," "Jubilee Showcase," and "Hee-Haw."

And thanks for sitting me down, way back in 1971, with the lyrics (printed on the Monument record sleeve) to Kris Kristofferson's "The Silver Tongued Devil And I" album. That little exercise taught a curious seven year-old that poetry and popular music weren't mutually exclusive.