On and On and On (TOTR 307)

Mavis Staples - Turn Me Around

Mike Farris - Take Me (I’ll Take You There)

Patty Griffin - Getting Ready

the everybodyfields - Aeroplane

The Avett Brothers - Go To Sleep

Bright Eyes - Four Winds

Bruce Springsteen - Radio Nowhere

Kings of Leon - On Call

Band of Horses - Ode To LRC

Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation

Okkervil River - Unless It’s Kicks

Ryan Adams - Two

Andrew Bird - Plasticities

Yeasayer - Forgiveness

Klaxons - As Above So Below

Radiohead - Weird Fishes/Arpeggi

Arcade Fire - (Antichrist Television Blues)

Arcade Fire - Windowsill

Arcade Fire - No Cars Go

Eddie Vedder - Society

The White Stripes - You Don’t Know What Love Is

Wilco - On and On and On

Bon Iver - Flume

Iron & Wine - Resurrection Fern

Rock N Roll Is Here To Stay (TOTR 306) 10th Anniversary Show

Sha Na Na - Rock N Roll Is Here To Stay

Delaney & Bonnie - Free The People

Richie Havens - Freedom

The Allman Brothers Band - Revival

Janis Joplin - Summertime

The Band - Life Is A Carnival

The Rolling Stones - Under My Thumb

Grateful Dead - Touch Of Grey

My Morning Jacket - Wordless Chorus

U2 - Bullet the Blue Sky

Mumford & Sons - Roll Away Your Stone

Iron & Wine - Call It Dreaming

The War On Drugs - Pain

Judah & the Lion - Suit And Jacket

Conor Oberst - A Little Uncanny

The Avett Brothers - Ten Thousand Words

Dawes - For No Good Reason

Kings of Leon - Comeback Story

Moon Taxi - River Water

Mike Farris - The Lord Will Make A Way

Mavis Staples & Aaron Neville - Respect Yourself

Michael Franti & Spearhead - Same As It Ever Was

Emma’s Revolution - Peace, Salaam, Shalom

Love City (TOTR 305)

(in honor of the San Francisco sound & the 50th anniversary of the Summer of Love, aired 8/28/2017)

Buffalo Springfield - Flying On The Ground Is Wrong

The Byrds - Renaissance Fair

The Sunshine Company - Back On The Street Again

The Young Rascals - Groovin’

The Beau Brummels - When It Comes To Your Love

Blue Cheer - Lovin’ You’s Easy

Sly & the Family Stone - Love City

Moby Grape - Rose Colored Eyes

Moby Grape - Changes, Circles Spinning

It’s A Beautiful Day - Place of Dreams

New Riders of the Purple Sage - Garden of Eden

Quicksilver Messenger Service - Mona
Quicksilver Messenger Service - The Fool

Big Brother & the Holding Company - Flower in the Sun

Grace Slick & the Great Society - Outlaw Blues

Jefferson Airplane - Embryonic Journey

Jefferson Airplane - 3 / 5 of a Mile in 10 Seconds

Spirit - Topanga Windows

Stoneground - Great Changes Since I’ve Been Born

Grateful Dead - The Golden Road

Grateful Dead - Viola Lee Blues

Santana - Evil Ways

The Sons of Champlain - For Joy

Hot Tuna - Keep Your Lamps Trimmed and Burning

All Of Me (TOTR 304) with guest co-host Dr. Troy D. Smith

 (photo of Arnold Shultz on Left)

Mildred Bailey: "All of Me"

Howlin' Wolf: "Spoonful"

DeFord Bailey: "Davidson County Blues"

DeFord Bailey: "John Henry"

Link Wray: "The Rumble Man"

Buffy Sainte-Marie "My Country Tis of They People You're Dying"

Charley Pride: "Kiss an Angel Good Morning"

Redbone: "Come and Get Your Love"

Redbone: "We Were All Wounded At Wounded Knee"

Redbone: "Wovoka"

Jesse Ed Davis & Eric Clapton: "Washita Love Child"

The Staple Singers: "The Weight"

Robbie Robertson &U2: "Sweet Fire of Love"

Indigenous: "Things We Do"

Gangstagrass: "Long Hard Times to Come"

Darius Rucker: "Alright"

Carolina Chocolate Drops: "Hit'Em Up Style"

Rhiannon Giddens: "Julie"

Valerie June: “Man Done Wrong”

Living Colour: “Cult of Personality”

Algiers: “Cry of the Martyrs”

TV On The Radio: “Province”

 Red, White, and Black: Intersection of American Music 

On Monday, August 21st (2017), I appeared as a guest of WTTU’s radio program Teacher on the Radio, hosted for many years now by my friend Andrew Smith. I was asked to put together a playlist of songs that focused on one of two things: Native American Indians in popular music (as performers, not subjects), and African American musicians in genres that most folks don’t associate with African Americans. 

I said a couple of words about most of the songs, but we also wound up having an impromptu interview in which Andrew asked for my take, as a historian of race, on the current mood of the country in the wake of the white supremacist riot in Charlottesville. 

While preparing the playlist, and later having that on-air discussion, I realized something I had never realized before about American Indians and African Americans in music and how that fits into the overall racial history of America. What I’m going to do now is, first, give some links to previous essays I’ve written that deal with the questions Andrew and I discussed, and with which we all continue to wrestle. 

Second, I will give my playlist, with a little background about the songs and performers. Third, I will tie it all together and show how the two things are interrelated. First, my previous essays about race. Feel free to check those out later, or do so and then come back here for the next parts. 

“Barack Obama and Race in America” http://bit.ly/2iz8HDT (this one has a detailed look at how race was constructed)

 “White Servants, Black and Indian Slaves, and the Turning Point of American History” http://bit.ly/2w88YCF 

 “Race in Ferguson, Race in America” 

http://bit.ly/1q90xfT 

 “Black Lives Matter: Historical Perspective” http://bit.ly/29FZXCm 

 And now, the Playlist. 

1. Mildred Bailey, “All of Me” a. Mildred Bailey, one of the most popular vocalists of the late 1920s and early 1930s, and the first non-black woman to achieve fame as a jazz singer, was a member of the Coeur d’Alene tribe and was born and raised on a reservation in Idaho. She used her pull to secure gigs for her younger brother and his partner, a skinny white kid named Bing Crosby. 

2. Howlin’ Wolf, “Spoonful” a. Howlin’ Wolf was one of several blues singers from the Delta who claimed some Native American ancestry, in his case Choctaw. A lot of the “hoodoo” (folk magic) elements in the songs performed by him and other Delta singers was a mixture of Native American and African spirituality.

 3. DeFord Bailey, “Davidson County Blues” and “John Henry” a. DeFord Bailey, of Smith County, TN, was one of the most influential harmonica players of the first half of the 20th century. He was the first (of only three) black performers to be a member of the Grand Ole Opry. 

4. Link Wray, “Rumble” a. Link Wray’s parents were both Shawnee. He introduced the power chord to rock music with this 1958 hit, and heavily influenced the generation of guitarists that came after him, helping form the sound of modern rock. 

5. Buffy Saint-Marie, “My Country Tis of Thy People You’re Dying” a. Buffy Saint-Marie was a Cree Indian from Canada, who was adopted by a white couple in Massachusetts and only learned details about her Native culture as an adult. She was a popular folk singer in the 1960s and 1970s, and in the latter decade she was both a Red Power activist and a frequent guest on Sesame Street (teaching about American Indian culture). 

6. Charley Pride, “Kiss an Angel Good Morning” a. Charley Pride was the second black member of the Grand Ole Opry. He was a baseball pitcher in the last days of the Negro Leagues, and became a country music star in the late ‘60s, releasing 29 #1 songs in his career. 

 7. Redbone, “Come and Get Your Love”, “Wounded Knee”, and “Wovoka” a. Redbone was a band composed of two brothers who were of mixed Mexican, Shoshone, and Yaquis Indian heritage; another Shoshone member, and a Cheyenne. “Redbone” is a New Orleans term for someone of mixed race; no one in the band had ancestral connections to Louisiana, but the Vegas brothers loved Cajun music. Their biggest hit was “Come and Get Your Love”, which hit #1 in 1974 and then hit #1 again 40 years later when released as a single from the Guardians of the Galaxy soundtrack. The other two songs on the play list have strong American Indian themes, with “Wounded Knee” applying principally to the 1890 massacre of Lakota Ghost Dancers by the U.S. Cavalry, but also relevant at the time as the AIM occupation of Wounded Knee was going on when the song was released. “Wovoka” was the name of the Paiute holy man who founded the Ghost Dance movement in the 1880s. 

8. Jesse Ed Davis, “Washita Love Child” a. Davis was born in Norman, OK, and was half-Kiowa and half-Comanche. He was one of the most respected session guitarists of the 1960s and 1970s, and was especially known for his extended solo on Jackson Browne’s “Doctor My Eyes.” 

9. The Band, “The Weight” and Robbie Robertson (with U2) “Sweet Fire of Love a. Robbie Robertson was the lead guitarist and principal songwriter for The Band. His mother was full-blood Mohawk. The original 1968 version of “The Weight” featured vocals by Levon Helm with Robertson, the writer, on lead guitar. 

 10. Indigenous, “Things We Do” a. Indigenous is a blues-rock band that debuted in the 1990s, composed of three siblings –two brothers and a sister –who are Nakota, or Assiniboine. 

11. Gangstagrass, “Long Hard Times to Come” a. Gangstagrass has had a revolving membership for the past decade, but usually consists of two or three white bluegrass musicians and two black rappers. This song was the theme for the TV show Justified, set in Harlan County, KY. 

12. Darius Rucker, “Alright” a. Rucker, formerly of the pop group Hootie and the Blowfish, is the third African American member of the Grand Ole Opry. He has had a string of hits since crossing over to country. 

13. Carolina Chocolate Drops, “Hit ‘Em Up Style” and Rhiannon Giddens, “Julie” a. The Carolina Chocolate Drops, including vocalist, banjo player and fiddler Rhiannon Giddens, formed after attending a Black Banjo Festival in NC. In 2010 they won the Grammy for Best Traditional Folk Album. 

 14. Taboo: “Stand Up / Stand N Rock” a. Taboo, a member of The Black Eyed Peas, is of mixed Mexican and Shoshone descent. This protest song about Standing Rock was nominated for an MTV Video Award. In it, Taboo is backed by Native vocalists from several different tribes. 

 What it all means 

The African American acts on this list showed up in “unexpected places”… in the sense that the public associates African American artists with rap, hip hop, blues, jazz, and various subgenres of rock: rhythm and blues, Motown, soul, funk. The public does not associate black artists with country, folk music, or bluegrass. However, there is a lot more black history in those latter categories than most people are aware, and a hundred years ago black and white music in the American heartland was much more fluid. 

Black and white musicians borrowed freely from one another. It was common for black musicians to have a repertoire of “hillbilly” or “country” songs, and for white musicians to play blues songs. The line between Leadbelly and Jimmie Rodgers was much less sharply defined than the line between Fifty Cent and Toby Keith. What caused the separation? Radio and record producers. “Race” music –which they defined as music for black audiences –was segregated from music for white audiences. Which they just called “music.” 

Perhaps this was due, in part, to the popularity of jazz in the late 1910s and 1920s with white and black audiences alike, and the association of that music (by most older whites) with the black community of New Orleans, which made middle-class white kids dancing to it seem like an unholy cauldron of miscegenation which must be nipped in the bud. 

Regardless of the reasons, by the late 1920s “white” and “black” rural-themed music, both with strong Southern backgrounds, were separated on the dial. And that set the tone for decades to come. I remember in the 1990s, when we had these esoteric things called “record stores,” looking for Kenny Wayne Shepherd (a white blues musician). I noticed that Shepherd and other white artists who had recorded blues albums were filed under Rock and Roll, while Buddy Guy and Taj Mahal –who were recording some of the same classic blues favorites and had powerful electric guitar styles –were filed under Blues. 

It was often the very same music, played in a very similar style. Yet still it was … segregated. (While much of the older generations’ ire at Elvis regarded his gyrating hips, a good deal of the animus also came from the fact he was a white man singing “black” music). I am going to diverge for a moment to talk about a theory I’ve been thinking about (although I’m sure I must be the millionth person to do so).

 In the 1950s and 1960s older blues musicians had a hard time making it in the U.S. due to the popularity of rock and roll (which was itself originally an innovation of young black artists like Chuck Berry expanding the scope of blues). Many of them toured in Europe, where they were more popular than they were at home –especially in England. 

Many of the British Invasion acts were heavily influenced by blues, and by specific blues musicians, and did not hesitate to admit it. While this may be an overly broad statement, I think a lot of those young Brits came from very blue collar, working class backgrounds, and identified with blues as a result… but they were not weighed down by the racial attitudes that white Americans their age and social class tended to have, which allowed the Brits to embrace the blues so much more honestly and readily. 

The Native American acts in our playlist are different. They were not part of a movement in popular music that was separate from the white “mainstream”, as African Americans often were; they were part of the mainstream, and their ethnicity did not usually stand out. Redbone performed in Native regalia, not just in concert but on live TV, where they showed up quite a bit in the mid-seventies. 

But almost everyone I talk to about them, for whom that band’s biggest hit has been part of the soundtrack of their lives, is amazed to learn they were American Indians. The same is true for most of the Natives who show up on this list. And that has been my epiphany about popular music and race. I had never realized just how closely it followed the trajectory of America writ large. I have argued, as have many, that “American identity” was originally forged in colonial times by being defined against Indians and Africans. 

In that scenario, Africans were deserving of slavery because (in whites’ eyes) they were “inferior,” and had to be kept separate. Indians were either reviled or romanticized, sometimes both simultaneously, and were always being described by whites as either having vanished in the past (except the degenerates who remained) or in the process of vanishing before the superior white society… a society which absorbed the Indians’ very identity, in an effort to demonstrate their own American-ness (it was not a coincidence that the colonists at the Boston Tea party disguised themselves by dressing as Indians). 

And the artists in our playlist? They are either African Americans performing in genres that a hundred years ago included blacks (or would have, had the “genres” themselves existed as separate from music in general) but which now come as a surprise, because “race” music was long ago separated into specific forms, or they are Native Americans that almost no one in mainstream America recognized as Native Americans, even when the artists repeatedly told them so, thus practically forcing them into a “vanished” status.

Eclipse (on the radio) (TOTR 303)

Originally aired on Monday, August 14, 2017. Special guest & co-curator of playlist Steve Robinson!

Fleet Foxes - Sun It Rises

Steve Harley & Cockney Rebel - Here Come The Sun

Chris Cornell - Black Hole Sun

Pink Floyd - Brain Damage

Pink Floyd - Eclipse

The Kinks - Waterloo Sunset

Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark

Cream - Sunshine of Your Love

Credence Clearwater Revival - Bad Moon Rising

Duran Duran - New Moon On Monday

Uriah Heep -Echoes in the Dark

A Perfect Circle - Vanishing

Gary Wright - Dream Weaver

Bill Withers - Ain’t No Sunshine

Van Morrison - Moondance

Yusuf Cat Stevens - Moonshadow

Michael Nesmith - Silver Moon

Passion Pit -Moonbeam

Phosphorescent & Friends - Standing On The Moon

Steve Gunn - Full Moon Tide

The Collection - Sing of the Moon

Drive By Truckers - Sun Don’t Shine

Coldplay - Daylight

My Morning Jacket - Circuital

Aracde Fire’s Everything Now is everything I need to listen to, at least for now.

The sharp snark and blistery bad news infected my social media stream on the eve of Everything Now. This was it. The end of Arcade Fire. Of course Arcade Fire almost ended for me after Neon Bible, for I don't know why! Something about the brilliant Suburbs or Reflektor never saturated my ears, until now, what were my fears?

After getting stirred up by the all the online shouts of angry fire in a crowded arcade, I was curious. What could this new album sound like? Feel like? ABBA, really? Too curious, on the day before the drop, I decided to find out, while in my car and flying from the endorphin surge sparked by my morning walk. Some cosmic force turned my attention to YouTube and videos for Everything Now, Signs of Life, and Creature Comfort. I wasn't even on the fence when this inquiry commenced. I was about to hand the haters some extra nails for their critical coffins and join the chorus of jaded cruelty. From the glories of Wake Up back in 2005 to this Twitter-tested toxic wake! But something happened to my head and heart in the short investigation.

By the time I got to the blood burning punk disco of Creature Comfort, I was parked in the carport and on the verge of crying. This teenage anthem of existential worries hit me in a flurry with a fury of our common insecurities. Just make me famous, just make it painless. We don't know what we want, just that we want something. The death of desire meets every desire organizing itself against death.

Behind the whole Everything Now project is a brand-name alternate universe, where "everything now" is a corporate concept that is also a mock corporation. Each song is an imprint with its own logo. Because I was so busy dropping-out during the first years of mobile phones and the internet, I also missed U2's pop-infused critique of pop culture the first time around (but later came to admire it). Of course, that was called Pop, and just like so many people were so busy mis-reading that cul-de-sac, the same seems to be happening to the big-tent happening currently being engineered by the evangelistic enthusiasms of the Win Butler Family Band. If Everything Now is Arcade Fire’s Zooropa-Pop period, let them have at it, and let us enjoy the sparkling beats.

Because I had spent some moments lost in the cultural studies wings of literary and social theory during the eight-year arc of my undergrad days, it would be easy to think Arcade Fire was just rehashing and recasting a giddy projection of nuanced simulation. But honest, I really groove into ths poor-man's crash course in Situationist propaganda, warmed-over Society of the Spectacle for people too young to remember May 1968 or Greil Marcus on the Sex Pistols. The same artists that brought us a Neon Bible clearly know something about the mirrored-hallways of Baudrillard's hyped-up hyper-boredom.

If people think that Everything Now and Infinite Content are only Abba-inspired happy-clappy innuendos about Googling GIFs or other image-heavy, throwaway "whatevers" found in the endless gigabytes of entertainment on smartphones and tablets, they might be missing the point within the point. I don't think U2's Playboy Mansion was about a good Christian boy like Bono losing his way among Hefner's young hotties. I thnk it was really about postmodern ecology of Protestant eschatology, that is finding true heaven, even out of discards from hedonist hell. Somehow in the same way, Arcade Fire lyrics can turn on a dime into theological, ecological, and psychological manifestos of hope. Inside every single one of these infectious new-wave-disco jams is some juicy nugget of higher truth.

My favorite meditation for these multiple meanings, this comes deep into the disc, with the slinky slipperiness of Good God Damn. This is some wild Sunday-morning-coming-down revelation, a burning bush for the people too burned-out for burning bushes. Like an earlier track, it's grooves can be misleading, in this case some hangover funk filled with suicidal ideation. But the song begins with a desperate curse and flips itself into a dynamic prayer, simply by the lyricist changing which word in the title, which is also the chorus, he emphasizes. There is also a missing comma or long dash in the title. So the "damning" is not an epithet aimed at undermining the eternal It, but rather, by the song's conclusion, it is an exclamation of needed recognition. So it is not "Good, goddamn" by any means but a song about a "Good God" that prompts the poet to utter a divine belch of relief in the final "Damn!"

Within a few listens, I am completely inside Everything Now, and it is inside of me. I found myself driving to another city just to snag a copy of the vinyl on the weekend it dropped. I watched the band's livestream from Brooklyn on the eve of the album release, watched their spot on Colbert including some goofy bits fromt he Everything Now corporation, watched their recent Sunday-night headlining set from Lollapalooza on RedBullTv, and also snagged tickets to see them soon on the upcoming tour. Hearing the new songs mixed with old ones clarifies that Arcade Fire are purveyors of a coherent canon, a band in the best sense, worthy of our attention, admiration, and even pushback, if that is your thing. (I asked a friend for their take, and they came up with something totally different.)

There seems to be an easy rendering of Everything Now that says the disco flavors must be ironic and detached against the formerly inspired intimacies of earnest rock in the tradition of Springsteen or U2. Just because Everything Now had some crazy and clever marketing gimmicks doesn't mean the band has given up on meaning. I don't think they meant to be coy or cute. Case in point is the cheesy send-up Peter Pan. Why not just enjoy the giddy narration of eternal youth without nitpicking it as the worst song ever? I get it, Everything Now might take some unpacking for some Arcade Fire fans. I now regret not giving Suburbs or Reflektor their proper due, but reuniting with this band has been a gratifying celebration.

Sure, you can say that Infinite Content is just about how many channels you have on your smart TV and how many days and days of unwatched wisdom you have clogging your Netflix queue. Of course, whether the omniscience of which they sing is corporate or cosmic depends on the context of how we are hearing the song, but I suggest both angles for listening have license. Yet if you only hear self-referential media theory with a pop hook and not the possibility of liberation and love, you might be missing the better version. So I hopefully hazard that Arcade Fire are also reminding us about everything and infinity in their more transcendent sensibilities, to help give us courage and joy to face the coming days.

the author and Win Butler, ten years ago, in Asheville

Grits & Gravy (TOTR 302)

The Fame Gang - Sweet Caroline

The Fame Gang - Grits and Gravy

Boz Scaggs - Loan Me A Dime

Wilson Pickett - Hey Jude

Aretha Franklin - The Weight

Bob Seger - Ship Of Fools

The Rolling Stones - You Gotta Move

Arthur Alexander - You Better Move On

Etta James - I’d Rather Go Blind

Clarence Carter - Patches

Percy Sledge - When A Man Loves A Woman

Rod Stewart - The First Cut Is The Deepest

Jimmy Cliff - Sitting In Limbo

The Staple Singers - I’ll Take You There

Paul Simon - Kodachrome

Joe Cocker - High Time We Went

Lynyrd Skynyrd - Comin’ Home
Jason Isbell - Alabama Pines

Jason Isbell - The Magician

Traffic - (Sometimes I Feel So) Uninspired

Bobby Womack - I Can Understand It

The Black Keys - Unknown Brother

St. Paul & the Broken Bones - Like A Mighty River

Dr. Hook - Storms Never Last

Arthur Conley - Sweet Soul Music