Monthly Archives: July 2017

  • Kekuku’s Gift: A Forgotten Musical Influence on America

    Lame DogHawaiian

    A pivotal moment in the history of popular music occurred at an unexpected place and time.  The place was La’ie, a Mormon enclave on the northeastern coast of the island of Oahu.  The time was 1885, when Hawaii was an independent nation ruled by its own monarch.  And the person responsible was even more surprising:  an eleven-year-old boy.  

    According to a story repeated for generations, the boy — Joseph Kekuku — was walking by the railroad tracks one day carrying a guitar, perhaps of the Spanish variety that had been widely disseminated in the Islands since at least the 1840’s.  He idly picked up a bolt on the railroad bed and it brushed against one the strings.  According to another account, which circulated within his family, he was playing guitar outside the local Cash and Carry when he leaned over and a  steel comb tumbled onto the strings from his pocket.  Whatever the cause, he was riveted by the sound he heard and spent the next seven years inventing a new instrument  — the Hawaiian steel guitar — and perfecting a technique for playing it.  For much of that time, Kekuku — whose family were pioneers unsuccessfully attempting to found a settlement for Hawaiian Mormons in Skull Valley, Utah — was enrolled in the Kamehameha School for Boys in Honolulu.  From there, the new music quickly spread throughout the archipelago and the world beyond.

    This subject is explored in a fascinating book published last year by the University of North Carolina Press: Kika Kila, by Professor John W. Troutman.  The author explains how the new music helped preserve Hawaiian culture after the monarchy was overthrown by United States marines, the queen tossed in prison, and the Hawaiian language banned in schools.  But the impact on the American mainland, where Kekuku and his followers went to teach and perform, was also profound.  One indication was that by 1916, Hawaiian records were the top selling music category in the United States.  Have a listen to one of them:

    Another sign was the success of the Oahu Publishing Company.  Although founded by a car thief who had escaped from a prison road gang, (more…)

  • Sixty Years Ago — An Encounter that Rocked the World

    Lame DogClassic Rock
    On Saturday, July 6, 1957, St Peter’s — a parish church in Woolton, England — held a garden fete.  There were games for children and a 25-piece military band.  A “Rose Queen” was crowned.  Oh, and to keep the teenagers interested, there was also one of those “skiffle groups,” a British take on an American jug band that performed an amalgam of folk, country, and blues.   Ivan Vaughn, who played bass,  invited along a friend and introduced him to the group’s leader.  Ivan’s friend was Paul McCartney.  The leader of the group, then known as the Quarrymen, was John Lennon.
     
    According to Phillip Norman’s recent biography of McCartney, he had actually seen Lennon on prior occasions in their Liverpool neighborhood.  But Lennon looked to him like a “Teddy boy” — one of those young men who responded to the advent of rock and roll by donning “Edwardian-stype velvet-collared jackets” and narrow trousers “with accessories often including switchblade knives, razors, brass knuckles and bicycle chains.”   McCartney recalled that when Lennon got on the bus, “I wouldn’t stare at him too hard in case he hit me.”  This time, McCartney had the chance to audition.  Lennon invited  him to join the Quarrymen and the rest is history.
     
    Although McCartney did not play that day, the Quarrymen’s performance happened to be captured on a reel-to-reel recorder by a man in the audience named Bob Molyneau.  Thirty-seven years later, he found the tape.  While the quality is poor, you can listen to it here:
     

     
    In the interest of celebrating this special anniversary, I’ll also share another exceptional clip.  This may not be one of the Beatles’ best songs, but the energy and audience enthusiasm are irresistible. And it illustrates a side of Lennon’s character that is often overlooked.

    (more…)

  • Three Views of Stagger Lee

    Lame DogFolk

    Popular culture comes in a variety of forms.  There may be a traditional version (or versions) that is handed down from generation to generation.  There may be underground variations that until recent years were not discussed in polite society.  And there may be a “prime time”  offering designed so as not to offend a broad general audience.  As a case in point, I offer “Stagger Lee” — one of the most durable American crime ballads and a celebration of badass criminal violence that predates gangsta rap by about ninety years.

    “Stagger Lee,” also known as “Stackolee” and “Stagolee,” has been recorded over four hundred times by artists from Mississippi John Hurt to Wilson Picket to, in more recent years, Bob Dylan and Amy Winehouse.  It tells the story of a fight between a man named Billy Lyons and the title character — a tough-as-nails anti-hero who mercilessly shoots Billy down.  Here is a recording with a traditional feel released in 1969 by Taj Mahal.

     

    Much research has gone into tracing in the origins of the song.  In The Folk Songs of North America in the English Language, Alan Lomax referred to tales identifying Stagger Lee with the mulatto son of a Confederate cavalryman and with a “tough Memphis sport” who “sold his soul to the Devil in return for a magic Stetson hat.”  But more recent scholarship has identified the protagonist as

    (more…)