The Drifting 100 Year Blues
“I have always been delighted at the prospect of a new day, a fresh try, one more start, with perhaps a bit of magic waiting somewhere behind the morning.”― J. B. Priestley
Today would have been the 100th birthday of blues crooner Charles Brown. Brown is little discussed in the press these days…is rarely played over the modern airwaves (as far as I can tell) but his career was a mighty one that changed music…helped it evolve from the swing era, and set the stage for the birth of rock n roll. His was the bluesy voice that mingled with the jazz of his day to create a hybrid sound that people could not get enough of, that launched a career that lasted for over five decades.
Near the end of World War II in 1943, chemistry student Charles Brown made it out west to Los Angeles from Arkansa via a short stint at Richmond, Ca (where I am watching the sun rise over from my living room as I write these words). Once in LA, he met Johnny Moore during a moment when Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers was a duo in search of a piano playing singer.
There was a hole in the local scene after Nat “King” Cole’s popularity took him on the road, and Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers featuring Charles Brown not only filled it in, by 1945 they had signed to Exclusive Records and released Drifting Blues that hit the R&B chart hard, staying there for six months. The voice of Charles Brown was everywhere, along with his movie star good looks: he became the king of the clubs.
I love how writer Michael Corcoran talks about Brown in his great piece IVORY GHOSTS: AMOS MILBURN AND CHARLES BROWN:
Charles Brown kept his piano blues in a more laid-back, swankier locale. Matinee idol handsome, with a voice like an aching, lingering whisper, Charles had women in front of the stage practically humping the legs of his piano. Even his holiday classic ‘Merry Christmas, Baby’ (1947) exuded sexuality. Topped by a toupee or beret, Brown liked to wear matching mink capes and neckties and in private was as flamboyant as Little Richard, according to Ruth Brown. But onstage Charles was the smooth, sexy Captain of a forlorn ship, looking for a harbor.
His voice was smooth….his presence was giant…and his bluesy style (mixed with the horn blowin’ jazzy vibes) inspired a whole generation of artists who followed him. By 1948 he went solo and never looked back, recording for countless labels having hit after hit after hit (Trouble Blues, My Baby’s Gone, Black Night, In the Evening When the Sun Goes Down, anon). When the Rock N Roll era jumped into the space that he once dominated, with a more brash sound replacing his sweeter approach, it only took him a few years to hit gold again with his evergreen seasonal recording Please Come Home For Christmas, which the great Syd Nathan released on King in 1960. That single became Brown’s reintroduction to the world year after year, being covered by the Eagles in 1978 which garnered Brown even more acclaim.
Brown never stopped working, always finding gigs, labels and famous fans that would push him always back into the limelight. As late as the 1980s, he found himself with a residency at Tramps in New York which led to a new record deal with Blue Side Records releasing the aptly named LP One More For The Road and a tour with Bonnie Raitt. In 1995 he played at Ted Danson’s wedding in front of Bill & Hilary Clinton and two years later was awarded a National Heritage Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And while he died a month before the ceremony, it just shows how from the beginning to the end of his long career he was for a majority of his days always on top.
Charles Brown’s legacy seems to have been affected the same way Josh White’s legacy has been: both exhibited a smooth singing style that has not aged well to the holders of recorded history. To be honest, I prefer Amos Milburn’s dirtier singing and playing style to Brown’s polish…and given that the two were secretly lovers while passing as straight, I think Brown wouldn’t mind me saying that. But between the two, it was Brown whose impact on the sound of his musical era was greater, leading the charge of a blues push into the mainstream (Milburn, by the way, admitted to being influenced by Brown during his early artistic development).
Happy 100th Birthday Charles Brown.
Photographer William Klein, famous for street scenes but also fashion, has died
There are a slew of articles coming out about the passing of this giant. Make sure you click through to the page that showcases a lot of Klein’s work.
Lagniappe SuperSession :: Birthday Blues | 33 Artists Interpret The Music Of James Toth
Know of Wooden Wand or man behind Wooden Wand, James Toth? Toth has been an incredible songwriter for a while now, and this collection of covers truly celebrate just how good he is….and the artists they got to do the covers (Sonic Youth folks, Ethan Miller, Meg Baird….so many more) are pretty damn incredible!
Nan Goldin Documentary Wins Top Prize at Venice
“Laura Poitras’s All the Beauty and the Bloodshed follows Goldin’s fight against the Sacklers’ attempts to artwash their reputations as chief architects of the opioid epidemic in the United States.”
Dwarf planet collision may have sent strange ultra-hard diamonds to Earth
“Strange hexagonal diamonds may have been jettisoned into space when a dwarf planet collided with a large asteroid around 4.5 billion years ago. New research identified the hexagonal diamonds, also called lonsdaleite, in a rare class of meteorites that might come from the mantle of a dwarf planet. Like graphite, charcoal and diamond, lonsdaleite is a particular structural form of carbon. Where diamond's carbon atoms are arranged in a cubic shape, the carbon atoms in lonsdaleite are arranged in hexagons.”
Afsaneh Aayani revives Houston’s avant-garde puppetry scene
For those worried about Houston’s floundering avant-garde puppetry scene…
Daisies
By Mary Oliver
It is possible, I suppose that sometime
we will learn everything
there is to learn: what the world is, for example,
and what it means. I think this as I am crossing
from one field to another, in summer, and the
mockingbird is mocking me, as one who either
knows enough already or knows enough to be
perfectly content not knowing. Song being born
of quest he knows this: he must turn silent
were he suddenly assaulted with answers. Instead
oh hear his wild, caustic, tender warbling ceaselessly
unanswered. At my feet the white-petalled daisies display
the small suns of their center piece, their - if you don't
mind my saying so - their hearts. Of course
I could be wrong, perhaps their hearts are pale and
narrow and hidden in the roots. What do I know?
But this: it is heaven itself to take what is given,
to see what is plain; what the sun lights up willingly;
for example - I think this
as I reach down, not to pick but merely to touch -
the suitability of the field for the daisies, and the
daisies for the field.
***This newsletter is dedicated to Jean-Luc Godard