Bulletin: I'm Alive!

I happened upon a link the other day that announced, alarmingly enough, "Writer M.D. Spenser Dies."

Well, this was news to me. I wondered perhaps if I was browsing the web from the far side. Maybe I had died without realizing it. Is this what death is like, I wondered?

So I clicked on the link and found this: "NOTE: M.D. Spenser has not yet died."

Whew! What a relief! Apparently it's a tribute page just waiting for me to kick the bucket.

Wait on, folks, wait on. M.D. Spenser has not yet died.

On-line petition asks that Shivers be republished!

Hello, everyone! Important news: There is an on-line petition circulating that asks that my entire 36-book Shivers series be republished.

I get e-mails quite often from people asking me how they can buy copies. And I'm afraid I have to disappoint them and say that the books are not in stories anymore. But I know there is considerable demand for them and it would help if publishers had evidence that this was the case.

If they were published again, it would make Shivers available to a new generation of readers. I ask your help: Please sign the on-line petition and forward the link to all your friends. Here's the link: http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/mdspenser_shivers/

Your friend,

M.D. Spenser

Americana - The Wonder Of It All

By M.D. Spenser

When did Americana shrink so small?

How did a term that once described music that defied genre become itself so strict a genre? And to what benefit? Because in the process, something vital has been lost.

The term originally described artistry that drew on all the myriad strains of American music. Narrow-minded program directors, catering to incurious listeners, were rejecting country music with too much rock, and rock with any fiddles at all. Folk that was bluesy found no home. Pop flavoured with jazz was deemed too big a stretch for the masses. Blues with too much soul was somehow impure.

Then came a brave and determined group of artists who transcended genre. Their songs echo with blues, country, pop, folk. These writers draw on the full range of the American experience: rockabilly, Appalachian, bluegrass, Tex-Mex, Dixieland, and Zydeco, or Cajun music

This is music as big and expansive, as diverse and exciting, as the country itself.

In it you can hear the ebb and flow of migration, the creative force of culture meeting culture: The Cajuns draw musical traditions from their ancestral home in France, by way of eastern Canada (their name is derived from “Acadian”). Thence they were evicted in the 1700s by the British; many migrated to Louisiana, where they mingled and intermarried with Native Americans, Caribbean Islanders, Spaniards and other Europeans.

The Blues are born of the forced migration of Africans to North America, and the economic migration of rural American blacks to the cities of the north. It rings with spirit in the face of oppression.

In country music, and particularly bluegrass, you can see the dancing of the Irish and hear their joy: They carried this joy, along with their sorrow, to America when they fled poverty at home.

What makes American music so rich is not merely that each of these musical traditions found a home in America. It is the exuberant cross-pollenization of different traditions—of Acadians meeting Caribbean Islanders, of Africans meeting the Irish—that makes it so vital and alive.

Americana is as big as the country itself. And as rich, expansive, exciting and magical.

But that wealth and diversity is no longer embraced by all who produce programs of what they call Americana music.

Some reference sources describe the term “Americana” as interchangeable with“alt-country.”

In the UK, the AmericanaOK internet radio program brings little-known musicians to broader attention, and that’s good. But listen awhile and you’ll find one song pretty much like another: weatherworn country—more resonant emotionally than the gloss of radio country—but, it must be said, pretty dreary and downbeat. There’s no swing, no bop, no bounce, and not all that much hope. Missing is strut of Dixieland, the urgency of rock, the magic of Mariachi, the richness of the blues, and the shimmering beauty of American folk at its best.

I’ve even seen Americana defined as “a loose subset of American folk music.” What? You must be kidding. Folk is a subset of Americana, not the other way around. How could something once so inclusive become so exclusive? Why did something once so wide become so narrow?

Here’s to making the tent broad once more. This is music that stimulates and broadens. Without our knowing it, it awakens us. It excites us to embrace many cultures, to make them part of us.

Americana music, in its broadest sense, is great entertainment and wonderful fun. Accept no substitutes: Enjoy it, feel it, revel in it, make it your own—and support it wherever you find it.

CD Review - Tim Lothar & Peter Nande

Two For The Road
Straight Shooter

By M.D. Spenser

From the first notes of this outstanding country Blues album you know it’s going to be fun.

The rollicking beat and wonderfully relaxed feel of it all might make you overlook just how fine the musicianship is. But don’t.

Tim Lothar, originally a drummer, plays a style that’s pure blues yet recognizably his own: He combines fingerpicking, slide, and a drummer’s intricate sense of rhythm.

Peter Nande’s harmonica ranges from dance-quick and happy to as lonesome as a midnight train.

Lothar and Nande have each been named Danish Blues Artist of the Year, but to say that is almost to undervalue them: Who cares that they’re Danish? They should win some W.C. Handy awards: This is the best acoustic Blues album you’ll buy this year.

It’s produced by long-time American Bluesman James Harman—who, one critic has written, “is incapable of making a bad album.” His production (and guest vocals) infuse the outing with authenticity and humour.

One highlight is a cover of the Lovin’ Sam Theard tune, ‘Can’t Get That Stuff No More’ (wrongly attributed here to Tampa Red)—you just have to sing along.

The nine originals are stellar, too, from ‘Slow Train’, a jaunty toe-tapper, to ‘Rough Ride’, which Lothar’s loping drums and staccato guitar give a propulsive feel.

This album proves that Blues don’t come from place of birth: These guys get it. Beginning to end, this album is a damn good time.

Here’s hoping Lonesome Tim and Big Boy Pete tour the UK—soon.

The Album That Almost Never Was: Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”

By M.D. Spenser

One of the greatest soul albums of all time was almost never recorded.

Had Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On” remained but a dream, Maria Muldaur’s latest album, “Yes, We Can”, would not exist. And music would have missed a cry from the heart that remains as moving today as it was nearly 40 yeas ago.

The problem was a dispute between Gaye, Motown’s biggest solo star, and Berry Gordy, the label’s founder.

During the 1960s, Motown racked up an extraordinary string of hits, crossing over to the white audience with Diana Ross & the Supremes, Smokey Robinson & the Miracles, The Four Tops, the Temptations, and Gaye himself.

This was dance music; its crossover appeal was rooted not only in its rhythms but also in its avoidance of social comment. Gaye had huge hits in the ’60s, all personal, none political: songs like ‘I Heard It Through The Grapevine’, ‘Ain't That Peculiar’, and ‘How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved by You)’.

But society was changing. As the ’60s wore on, blacks, often lacking student deferments, were sent in disproportionate numbers to fight and die in Vietnam.

In the summer of ’65, racial tension exploded into six days of riots in the Los Angeles area of Watts. When the smoke cleared, 34 people were dead, more than 1,000 were injured, and nearly 4,000 had been arrested.

And in 1968, the civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated. More riots followed, sometimes brutally repressed.

Motown’s hit-factory formula was becoming increasingly out of touch with the black experience.

Nor did Gaye fit the Motown mould. No pretty boy whose talents were limited to smiling, dancing and singing songs written by others, he was a complete musician, a successful drummer and hit songwriter before making it big as a singer—a complex, moody, thoughtful, talented man.

In 1970, he recorded a single: ‘What’s Going On’. It opened with the words: “Mother, mother/There’s too many of you crying/Brother, brother, brother/There’s far too many of you dying/You know we’ve got to find a way/To bring some lovin’ here today.”

The song addressed the war in Vietnam and police brutality. Gordy called it “the worst record I ever heard” and refused to release it.

But Gaye said he would record nothing else unless the song was released. In early 1971, Gordy relented.

The song topped the Billboard R&B chart for five weeks. After which Gordy asked whether Gaye could record a whole album of songs like that.

Two months later, in the grip of inspiration, Gaye recorded the album in 10 days. He wrote or co-wrote every track. He produced the album himself, spending as much time at the controls as behind the microphone.

The result was an enormous commercial and critical success.

‘“What's Going On” is not only Marvin Gaye's masterpiece, it’s the most important and passionate record to come out of soul music,” the critic John Bush has written on allmusic.com.

Even the cover heralded something different. Here was Gaye, suddenly bearded, no longer the manufactured star of TV dance programs, with the skinny tie and big grin. He’s walking in the rain, pensive, melancholy, hands in his pockets, drops of water flecking his hair and beading up on his raincoat.

And there’s the title: “What’s Going On.” No question mark: This is a statement. As the song says, ‘Come talk to me/So you can see/What’s going on.”

The music is gorgeous, from the haunting alto sax that opens the title track to the fading drumbeat that concludes ‘Inner City Blues (Make Me Wanna Holler)’. (The two bonus tracks on the CD should not be there.) It’s a symphony, gracefully shaped, a suite of songs that sometimes run one into the next, distinct but of a piece. This is pop that is orchestral, but quietly so; it’s jazzy, relaxed, a sweeter shade of mournful.

Over it soars one of music’s most soulful voices: Rolling Stone magazine put Gaye sixth on its list of The Greatest Singers of All Time.

The album tackles all the issues Motown had avoided: war, brutality, addiction, pollution, the pouring of money into moon shots while inner cities decayed. There’s anger, yes: “Make me wanna holler/The way they do my life”, he sings. But there’s sadness and caring, too, and wistfulness.

The album included three huge hits: the title track, ‘Inner City Blues’ and ‘Mercy, Mercy Me (The Ecology)’. It cleared the way for countless other soul artists to address these issues and to write and produce their own work.

The album still sounds utterly current; covers from it continue to be recorded.

When Muldaur, distraught at the state of the world in the 21st Century, thought of recording a social justice album, she thought first of the protest music of the 1960s folkies. But then she remembered that she didn’t really like it: it was marked by monotonous strumming; it had no groove. Then her thoughts turned to the black social consciousness music of the 1970s—started by Marvin Gaye with this album.

On “Yes, We Can,” Muldaur includes ‘Inner City Blues’ and others songs that followed from what Gaye had begun. This was the music she’d been looking for.

“It was like protest music you could dance to,” she said.

Soul To Soul – A Concert For The Ages

By M.D. Spenser

One of the most exciting R&B concerts ever staged took place not in America but in Africa. And it was originally the brainchild of a former prostitute.

The show, put on in Accra, the sprawling capital of Ghana, began March 6, 1971. More than 200,000 people packed what was then called Black Star Square, on the Gulf of Guinea, and went wild to some of the most supercharged soul you could ever want to hear. Featured were huge American stars like Wilson Pickett, Ike & Tina Turner, the Staples Singers, Carlos Santana and Roberta Flack, along with a variety of top African artists.

The show lasted 14 hours, until 6:45 the next morning. To watch videos of Tina Turner from that night is to see her in the peak of her fiery form, a dozen years younger than the woman who sang ‘What’s Love Got To Do With It’. Her feet are a blur as she shimmies across the stage, shaking a tailfeather in the best tradition of the era, and her vocals a scream of passion from deep within.

Not only did the show electrify those present. In time, it also showed the connections music can form—between African song and American, between white and black, and between past and future.

And it began with an idea from Maya Angelou, the celebrated American writer—and former prostitute.

“Music was my refuge,” Angelou wrote once. “I could crawl into the space between the notes and curl my back to loneliness.”

Another of her refuges was Africa. She lived in Ghana for a time in the 1960s. And it was she who suggested to the government of Kwame Nkrumah that black American artists be brought in to celebrate Ghana’s independence.

Nkrumah, a Marxist, was overthrown in a military coup—some say it was backed by the CIA—before the concert could take place. But the idea didn’t die.

In the end, the Soul to Soul concert was held in 1971, on the 14th anniversary of Ghana’s independence from Britain. It was a concert for the ages. A documentary about it was released later that year; the film was released again on DVD in 2004, along with a CD soundtrack.

The connections between Africa and America showed in the way the music from both continents fit side by side, each building on the excitement of the other. The way music bridges the races was evident, too: Many people remarked that the performer with the most African sound that night was not Wilson Pickett, for example, or Roberta Flack, but Carlos Santana, a white man born in Mexico.

The connections between past and future have become apparent over time. Just recently, when the jazz and Blues artist Lizz Wright was making “The Orchard,” her newest album, her producer showed her the film of Soul to Soul. Wright was mesmerized by Tina Turner; she heard in Turner’s voice something of her own experience, a feeling she wanted to capture on the new album.

In the end, she included ‘I Idolize You,’ a song sung by Tina but written by Ike Turner, then her husband. Ike had started playing in the ’40s. In the ’50s he backed people like Elmore James and Otis Rush. You can hear him playing piano on early Howlin’ Wolf recordings.

And now, because of that concert in 1971, a song written by man who backed Howlin’ Wolf is the highlight of one of the finest, most progressive Blues albums of the 21st Century.

CD Review - The History Of Rhythm & Blues 1925-1942

Various Artists
Rhythm and Blues Records

By M.D. Spenser

This exhilarating compilation covers the period almost from when the Blues were first recorded until Billboard magazine inaugurated its first sales chart for black music, the Harlem Hit Parade.

It runs from a rough and rhythmic field holler to the smooth tones of Lionel Hampton’s vibraphone, and encompasses along the way developments central to modern music: the introduction of slide guitar, the invention of the walking bass, the development of boogie woogie piano, the advent of swing.

This album is a distillation of a four-CD set; as such, it’s an exceptionally strong collection, each of the 25 tracks a discovery, a joy. The liner notes are worth the price in themselves: Well-written and entertaining, they detail not only the history of each artist, but the context of each song.

We hear John Lee “Sonny Boy” Williamson pioneer the single-note lead on harmonica, Tampa Red introduce the guitar-piano Blues combo, Jimmie Rodgers mix Blues and country in a way later taken up by Ray Charles and others.

Great names appear: Robert Johnson, Bessie Smith, Cab Calloway, Count Basie. A number of these songs remain famous, too: 1929’s ‘Roll And Tumble Blues’ has been recorded most recently by Seasick Steve; 1940’s ‘Don’t You Lie To Me’ was covered by the Stones.

But some of the best stuff is more obscure: Arthur “Big Boy” Cruddup’s ‘Mean Ol’ Frisco’ is a treat, as is ‘I’d Rather Drink Muddy Water’ from The Cats and the Fiddle.

The most recent song on the album was recorded more than 65 years ago, but this is no dusty exercise in musicology. This is creative, vibrant music. Even today, it quickens the pulse.