Give me absolute control
over every living soul
And lie beside me, baby,
that’s an order!
Give me crack and anal sex
Take the only tree that’s left
and stuff it up the hole
in your culture
Give me back the Berlin wall
give me Stalin and St Paul
I’ve seen the future, brother:
it is murder.
(“The Future”)
Natural Born Killers – The Future:
Continue reading Leonard Cohen: The Future (24 November, 1992)
As the bassist for Booker T. & the MG’s, Donald “Duck” Dunn became, like James Jamerson at Motown, the man who provided a groove for an entire generation to dance to. In Dunn’s case it was the legendary Memphis record label Stax/Volt, where he laid down basslines for soul stars such as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Albert King, helping to create one of the largest bodies of soul and R&B music that exists.
~Steve Kurutz (allmusic.com)
Short intro:
Booker T & the MG’s – green onions:
| Birth name | Donald Dunn |
|---|---|
| Also known as | Duck |
| Born | November 24, 1941 Memphis, Tennessee, U.S. |
| Died | May 13, 2012 (aged 70) Tokyo, Japan |
| Genres | Rock, soul, rhythm and blues |
| Occupations | Songwriter, producer, actor |
| Instruments | Bass guitar |
| Years active | 1960–2012 |
| Associated acts | Otis Redding, Booker T & the MG’s, Albert King, Mar-Keys,The Blues Brothers, Sam and Dave |
| Website | duckdunn.com |
Donald “Duck” Dunn (November 24, 1941 – May 13, 2012) was an American bass guitarist, session musician, record producer, and songwriter. Dunn was notable for his 1960s recordings with Booker T. & the M.G.’s and as a session bassist for Stax Records, which specialized in blues and gospel-infused southern soul which became known as Memphis Soul. At Stax, Dunn played on thousands of records including hits by Otis Redding, Sam & Dave, Rufus Thomas, Carla Thomas, William Bell, Eddie Floyd, Johnnie Taylor, Albert King, and many others. Dunn also performed on recordings with The Blues Brothers, Muddy Waters, Freddie King, Isaac Hayes, Levon Helm, Neil Young, Elvis Presley, Jerry Lee Lewis, Eric Clapton, Tom Petty, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Wilson Pickett, Guy Sebastian, Rod Stewart, Bob Dylan, Roy Buchanan, Steely Dan, Tinsley Ellis and Arthur Conley.
Booker T. & The MG’s – Time Is Tight (Live, 1970):
Dunn played himself in the 1980 feature The Blues Brothers, where he famously uttered the line, “We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline!”
Awards:
Continue reading Today: The late Donald “Duck” Dunn was born in 1941 – 71 years ago
Well, I still do that song [It’s Alright Ma]. It’s still very relevant to me.
~Bob Dylan (June 1985)“I’ve written some songs that I look at, and they just give me a sense of awe,… Stuff like, It’s Alright, Ma, just the alliteration in that blows me away. And I can also look back and know where I was tricky and where I was really saying something that just
happened to have a spark of poetry to it.”
~Bob Dylan (to John Pareles, Sept 1997)Ironically, this song, which Dylan performs unaccompanied on the “folk-side” of his half-folk, half electric album, is more of a rock and roll performance than anything else on the record.
~Paul Williams (Performing Artist 60-73)
@ no.7 on my list of Dylan’s 200 best songs.. comes this acoustic masterpiece with lyrics that still makes me shiver in awe…
While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand naked
best of the best:
Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dying
original version:
Lyrics:
Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in tryingPointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fool’s gold mouthpiece the hollow horn
Plays wasted words, proves to warn
That he not busy being born is busy dyingTemptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover that you’d just be one more
Person cryingSo don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to your ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighingAs some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatredDisillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their mark
Make everything from toy guns that spark
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much is really sacredWhile preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the president of the United States
Sometimes must have to stand nakedAn’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make itAdvertising signs they con
You into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around youYou lose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand with nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks they really found youA question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit
To satisfy, insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong toAlthough the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up toFor them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despise their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something they invest inWhile some on principles baptized
To strict party platform ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God bless himWhile one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s inBut I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please himOld lady judges watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phonyWhile them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes must get lonelyMy eyes collide head-on with stuffed
Graveyards, false gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough, what else can you show me?And if my thought-dreams could be seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only
….and proceeded to record the final versions of “Mr. Tambourine Man”, “It’s Alright, Ma” & “Gates of Eden” in a single take, with no playback between songs! ….. It is as though all three songs came out of him in one breath, easily the greatest breath drawn by an american artist since Ginsberg & Kerouac exhaled “Howl” & “On the Road” a decade earlier.
~Paul Williams (Performing Artist 60-73)
“He was a happy-go-lucky nihilist…. he took things exactly as they were. No more, no less.”
~Matthew Johnson, the founder of Mr. Burnside’s record label, Fat Possum.
See My Jumper Hanging On the Line (1978):
| Birth name | Robert Lee Burnside |
|---|---|
| Born | November 23, 1926 Harmontown, Mississippi, Lafayette County, United States |
| Origin | Oxford, Mississippi, United States |
| Died | September 1, 2005 (aged 78) Memphis, Tennessee, United States |
| Genres | Blues, garage rock |
| Instruments | Guitar, vocals |
| Years active | 1960s–2005 |
| Labels | Fat Possum |
| Associated acts | Calvin Jackson Jon Spencer |
R. L. Burnside (November 23, 1926 – September 1, 2005), born Robert Lee Burnside, was an American blues singer,songwriter, and guitarist who lived much of his life in and around Holly Springs, Mississippi. He played music for much of his life, but did not receive much attention until the early 1990s. In the latter half of the 1990s, Burnside repeatedly recorded with Jon Spencer, garnering crossover appeal and introducing his music to a new fanbase within the underground garage rock scene.
One commentator noted that Burnside…. were “present-day exponents of an edgier, electrified version of the raw, uncut Delta blues sound.”
Poor Black Mattie:
In the 1990s, he appeared in the film Deep Blues and began recording for the Oxford, Mississippi, label Fat Possum Records. Founded byLiving Blues magazine editor Peter Redvers-Lee and Matthew Johnson, the label was dedicated to recording aging North Mississippi bluesmen such as Burnside and Junior Kimbrough.
Burnside remained with Fat Possum from that time until his death.
Burnside’s 1996 album A Ass Pocket of Whiskey (recorded with Jon Spencer) gained critical acclaim, earning praise from Bono and Iggy Pop.
Style:
Burnside had a powerful, expressive voice and played both electric and acoustic guitars (both with a slide and without). His drone-based style was a characteristic of North Mississippi hill country blues rather than Mississippi Delta blues. Like other country blues musicians, he did not always adhere to 12- or 16-bar blues patterns, often adding extra beats according to his preference. He called this “Burnside style” and often commented that his backing musicians needed to be familiar with his style in order to be able to play along with him.
Burnside collaborated in the late 1990s with The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion on the album A Ass Pocket of Whiskey. Consequently, he gained the attention of many within this underground music scene, cited as an influence by Hillstomp and covered on record by The Immortal Lee County Killers.
Burnside’s “Skinny Woman” was also interpolated into the song “Busted” by fellow Fat Possum musicians The Black Keys, who have listed Burnside as an influence on their music.
Shake ‘em on down – Live:
Too Bad Jim (1994):
Continue reading Today: The late R. L. Burnside was born in 1926 – 86 years ago
I want everyone to know what I can really do
~Elvis Presley (to producer Bob Finkel)
Trouble/Guitar Man:
| Released | November 22, 1968 |
|---|---|
| Recorded | June 1968 |
| Genre | Rock and roll |
| Length | 44:27 |
| Label | RCA Records |
| Producer | Bones Howe |
Elvis (NBC TV Special) is the thirty-fourth album by Elvis Presley, released on RCA Victor Records in mono, LPM 4088, in November 1968. Recording sessions took place in Burbank, California at Western Recorders on June 20, 21, 22 and 23, 1968, and at NBC Studios on June 27 and 29, 1968. It peaked at #8 on the Billboard 200. It was certified Gold on July 22, 1969 and Platinum on July 15, 1999 by the RIAA.
Hound Dog/All Shook Up:
From allmusic.com – John Bush:
…………… Although he exhibited more nerves than he ever had in the past — a combination of the importance this chance obviously presented plus the large gap between the psychedelic music culture of 1968 and the rather quaint rock & roll of ten years earlier — Elvis delivered an incredible performance throughout the television special. His vocal performances were loose and gutsy, and his repartee was both self-deprecating and sarcastic about his early days as well as his moribund film career (“There’s something wrong with my lip!…I got news for you baby, I did 29 pictures like that”). He was uninhibited and utterly unsafe, showing the first inkling in ten years that there was life and spirit left in music’s biggest artistic property. The resulting LP, NBC-TV Special, combined sit-down and standup segments, but probably over-compensated on the standup segments. What impresses so much about NBC-TV Special is how much it prefigures the rest of Elvis’ career. Dramatic, intense, driven, and earthy, frequently moving, but not without the occasional cloying note, Elvis during the ’70s was the apotheosis of rock music, a righteous blend of rock and soul, gospel and pop, blues and country. …
~Read more over @ allmusic.com
This album also happens to contain one of Elvis Presley’s best songs…..
If I Can Dream:
Personnel:
Continue reading Today: Elvis Presley released “Elvis (NBC TV Special)” in 1968 – 44 years ago
