508 Park Avenue Revisited

March 23, 2013

Music on the outdoor stage at 508 Park Avenue

 Live music filled the air again at the Dallas site where some of the most significant blues and western swing recordings of the 1930s were made, the Brunswick Radio Corporation recording studios.  This occasion offered free concerts by area blues bands as community outreach of the Stewpot Ministries and First Presbyterian Church.   "We are excited to have a new generation of local blues and country artists stepping forward to pay tribute to the history of 508 Park, where artists such as Robert Johnson and Bob Wills & his Texas Playboys recorded,” said the Rev. Bruce Buchanan, executive director of the Stewpot. "This is the first in a series of concerts that 508 Park will host."  Unlike the June 2012 event celebrating the 75th anniversary of the historic 1937 recording sessions where the artists played the music of Johnson and Wills in devoted replication of their original styles, this time around, the bands played more contemporary, amplified arrangements that owed more to the blues/rock styles of the 60s and 70s than to the 30s.  While I prefer the music that was offered last year over this year's event, I'm glad to see the progress being made in revitalizing and repurposing this historic art deco building.

 The event got me thinking again about the "On That Day" 75th anniversary presentation last year (see Texas Songbook post from July 6, 2012).  As I wrote in the earlier post, "On That Day" focused appropriately on Robert Johnson's last recordings, which were part of the June 1937 sessions at 508 Park Avenue, and added highlights that paid tribute to Bob Wills and the other western swing bands of those sessions.  I noted the Light Crust Doughboys were featuring their newest member, Deon Pride, son of Country Music Hall of Fame member Charley Pride.  It may be a healthy sign of the times that it was only on reflection months later that the oldest western swing band, having taken on a black musician, a very talented one, as its newest member, playing at this commemorative event had any special significance.  Seventy five years prior, two of the greatest musical figures of the time recording at the same set of recording sessions didn't use the occasion to record some tracks together, they most likely never spoke to each other.  They were from two separate racial worlds and bridging the two would have been out of the question.

Deon Pride

 Charley Pride was a pioneer himself, breaking into a pretty much all white country music genre in the 1960s and going on to having a spectacular country music career.  Ray Charles had to overcome a lot of resistance in both worlds to cross over from R&B to country successfully in the 60s, but today it doesn't turn many heads when Darius Rucker crosses over from rock to country and picks up a CMA award.  When you consider the diverse roots that Bob Wills and others used to create the western swing sound in the first place, it is long pas time for western swing bands today to reflect that diversity.



Charles Townsend,  Bob Will's biographer, frequently mentions how strongly Wills felt his music was influenced by the black blues singers he worked along side in the cotton fields.  He was such a fan of blues songstress Bessie Smith in the 1920s that he rode his horse from his Turkey, Texas home 40 miles to Childress to see her perform.  (Bessie Smith was also Janis Joplin's greatest inspiration if you can imagine her and Bob Wills having that in common!)  So we can imagine what it might have been like if Robert Johnson had sat in with the Texas Playboys on some of their bluesier numbers, or if Bob Wills had played fiddle with Robert Johnson on "Sweet Home Chicago."  Kokomo Arnold, from whom Johnson got that song, also wrote "Milk Cow Blues," a hit for Bob Wills.  Wills and Johnson had certainly enough common musical ground for a collaborative session, but the potential magic would have been unthinkable in the 30s even though it would be a dream scenario today.

But back in the 30s, the classic version of the Light Crust Doughboys, after Bob Wills and Milton Brown departed, came a bit closer to the kind of multicultural, multiracial collaboration that the western swing style would have naturally suggested.  The new creative leaders, Marvin Montgomery and Knocky Parker, were partial to the musical inspirations they found in the bars and music halls in Deep Ellum, a thriving center of blues, jazz and black culture in general rivaling Harlem.  They would carry these influences back into their western swing offerings, but of course, in their case also, the racial divide prevented direct collaboration.  Today we can enjoy the contemporary western swing sound, inclusive of many cultural and racial influences, with a band composition a little more reflective of its roots in the current Light Crust Doughboys composition.

The Godfather of American Roots Music

March 14, 2013

There they stood in the Threadgill’s Restaurant parking lot: Chris Strachwitz, founder of the Arhoolie record label, filmmakers Maureen Gosling and Chris Simon, and grammy winning music writer Adam Machado.  As I got out of my car and started toward them, they turned and smiled and Chris Strachwitz said “Ah, a down home friend.”  How cool, I thought, that these roots music movers and shakers greeted me before I could say anything to them.  A fortunate wardrobe decision had made me a welcoming committee of one; I wore my Down Home Music (the record store which is also Arhoolie headquarters) t-shirt.  They were in Austin for the South by Southwest Film Festival premier of “This Ain’t No Mouse Music,” a film by Gosling and Simon celebrating the work Strachwitz and his record company Arhoolie.  Over half a century, Strachwitz  and Arhoolie brought an incredible variety of regional roots music – blues, country, conjunto, cajun, zydeco, polka, and more  –   from many areas, but especially Texas and Louisiana, to national exposure.  We talked for a few minutes about the film and the gratification of seeing it finally reaching the public after years of work by Gosling and Simon.  In a very small way, I could share in their gratification through becoming a supporter of the Kickstarter project for the film last year.  I got out my Arhoolie “Hear Me Howling!”  book with CDs - the work that earned Adam Machado his grammy - and got him and Chris Strachwitz to sign it. 

We talked a while about how the restaurant where we were meeting was started by Kenneth Threadgill in 1933 as a gas station/beer joint with the first alcohol license in Travis county after prohibition, thus allowing Threadgill to retire from bootlegging and indulge his love of singing Jimmy Rodgers blue yodels for the entertainment of his patrons.  And we began to talk about Eddie Wilson, who on New Year day 1980 opened the restaurant a day after closing the Armadillo World Headquarters, Austin’s premier music venue in the 1970s for rock, blues and progressive country.  Just about then, Eddie Wilson appeared and invited us into the restaurant. 

Threadgills

                                       

Chris Strachwitz had been traveling the countryside in 1960 finding musicians and recording them where he found them when he made a stop in Navasota, Texas.  He had recently found out that a plantation owner in an old blues song “Tom Moore’s farm” was an actual person who was living in Navasota.  The song is from downtrodden sharecroppers viewpoint and not flattering to Tom Moore; nevertheless, Strachwitz tracked him down and talked to him.  He asked Moore if he knew sharecroppers in the area who were musical.  Moore said he didn’t, but suggested Strachwitz go find “Pegleg” down at the train depot and “Pegleg” could lead him to such a person.  Sure enough, “Pegleg” indeed led Strachwitz to Mance Lipscomb.  After recording Lipscomb, Mac McCormick, who was traveling with Strachwitz suggested that the Mance Lipscomb recordings should be the first album released on their new record label, and he suggested they call the label “Arhoolie,” which is a word that means “field holler.”   That he followed this advice was fortuitous for both Strachwitz and Lipscomb. 

Mance Lipscomb

                                           

Mance Lipscomb was in his 60s when Strachwitz and had never been recorded, though he had performed at local gatherings going back to when Blind Lemon Jefferson was the reigning King of the Country Blues in the 1920s.  He had lived the hard life of a sharecropper.  After the first album, “Texas Songster,” there were several more albums and many festival bookings as the blues revival of the 1960s caught on.  In the last years of his life (he lived till 1976), he performed before thousands instead of dozens and traveled across the US and Europe instead of to the next town.

Chris Strachwitz has similarly impacted the lives and careers of many other musicians over the decades, including Lightning Hopkins, Big Mama Thornton, Clifton Chenier, and Flaco Jimenez to name a few.  Rather than recording carefully arranged, rehearsed, and produced studio sessions, he has specialized in going to where the musicians are performing and then “catch it as it is.”  He is also a compulsive collector of rare 78s and put back into circulation via Arhoolie many valuable recordings from defunct labels.  The Threadgill’s announcement for the dinner with Chris Strachwitz event on this evening called him “the Godfather of American Roots Music,” a fitting and well earned title.

Eddie Wilson has made his own contributions to bringing musicians and various types of music to the fore, especially in the Austin music scene since the 1970s.  At the Armadillo, he fostered the odd blended crowd of music loving hippies and rednecks enjoying acts that would often include rock, blues, and classic country acts on the same bill.  Threadgill’s has allowed him to continue to provide a venue for live music, both at the original Threadgill’s location and a south location where the Armadillo used to stand, while in addition, the restaurant has given him an outlet for his other passion, southern cooking.  Kenneth Threadgill was an inspiration and mentor to Wilson in his youth, and Wilson has endeavored to keep Threadgill’s legacy alive through the restaurant.

As we walked into the restaurant, Wilson played the host to the VIP guests from Arhoolie, pointing out pictures and memorabilia on the walls that triggered stories of Threadgill and Janis Joplin, the most prominent figure to stop in and play at the old beer joint.  Chris Strachwitz and Eddie Wilson are two people that I have respected and admired for decades, and more than that, they have added immeasurably to the quality of my life through the music they brought into it.  I know I am not alone.  For many, many people, they have been like matchmakers bring people together with musicians and music they love.  They both seem to have a sense of mission and single-mindedness in doing just that.

                          

Eddie Wilson, Chris Strachwitz, Grandad