Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Conversation
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Freaks For The Festival
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Portrait Of Those Beautiful Ladies
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Dream/Portrait Of Those Beautiful Ladies
Rahsaan Roland Kirk – Side 4 Secret Conversation

{With this I’ll be formally taking a hiatus from the blog until probably the end of August.  I’m going to be doing some traveling and then getting ready for the beginning of the Fall semester at Long Beach.  When I come back, both here and on the radio, I’ll have stories to tell and (hopefully) some great records to share with you.  I’ll see you (or more accurately you’ll hear me) on August 28th when I return to the KPFK airwaves…until then, Bright Moments!}

Today would have been Rahsaan Roland Kirk’s 80th birthday, and since he IS the patron saint of Melting Pot, we always celebrate this day with a look at one his albums. In this case it’s one of his most distinctive albums, released 40 years ago (just like me!), The Case Of The Three-Sided Dream In Audio Color. This album was the follow up to Bright Moments and much of the energy from that live album finds it’s way here. The album in many ways is a concept album, connected together by interludes that seem to be connected to Rahsaan’s dreams.

Dreams were very important to Rahsaan, it’s said that he came up with the idea to play multiple instruments at once because of his dreams, and his name “Rahsaan,” came to him in a dream. Aside from the opening “Conversation” where Rahsaan is commanded to dream, the dreams themselves are audio collages mixing in a variety of sounds from trains to horses to Billie Holiday’s voice. The fact that many of these sounds repeat again and again throughout the record also connects to a clear theme for Rahsaan, in his music more broadly, but perhaps never more fully explored than on this album, the cyclical though timeless nature of music. Over the three sides of music, Rahsaan & the Vibration Society perform different versions of the same tracks, almost appearing in reverse/mirrored order. There are two versions of “Freaks For The Festival,” “Bye Bye Blackbird,” “Portait of Those Beautiful Ladies,” “The Entertainer” as well as versions of “High Heel Sneakers” and “Echoes Of Primitive Ohio and Chili Dogs.” With so much material you might think the album would get redundant, but the additional versions support and augment the dreamlike quality of the album, reminiscent of the feeling you may have when you awake from a dream and fall back to sleep into the same dream, yet things have shifted in slight ways.

The really distinctive thing about this album is the fourth side. Though the record itself says that grooves were added to the fourth side solely to protect people’s audio equipment who might have forgotten that this was a three sided album, there is something to be heard on that fourth side. It’s not something that is really easy to see when you look at the wax and so I’m sure that a lot of people might have missed Rahsaan’s message. It’s possible that I only would have realized that something was there because I first heard this album on CD, which recreated that fourth side through a hidden track.

“Hey Rahsaan, do you have a message for the people who will be listening to the part of the record that no one will be listening to?”

{Speaking in tongues}…In that, we all know that there will never be peace, I would like to say Bright Moments and joy through the universe to all the very beautiful people that might take time out to paste their ears to this very beautiful spinning piece of material that is in their presence…Bright Moments and joy, because we know that the whole thing of peace has passed us all by, but serenity and joy through the land…Bright Moments {more speaking in tongues}.”

It always makes me smile that Rahsaan and company came up with that idea and I’m sure it must have tripped people out when they discovered it for the first time. I like to think that Rahsaan’s spirit is still smiling every time someone puts needle to that part of the album to this day.

Bright Moments!

Michael

Ronie Von – A Maquina Voadora
Ronnie Von – Baby De Tal
Ronnie Von – Imagem

A week ago here in LA, Brasil came to town in the form of Joel Stones and his legendary store Tropicalia In Furs, roughly two years after closing down in NYC. As of yet, Stones hasn’t fully set up shop, only a pop-up store for a weekend, but from the response, he seems like he’ll be back. As a fan of Brazilian music from the 1960s & 1970s, it can be extremely difficult to get these records here in the states. Out in the wild of “regular” stores, you’d be lucky to run into a greatest hits collection. If you go the Ebay/Dicogs route, you’ll be paying shipping costs that are almost as expensive as the records themselves and waiting for a month before they arrive (IF they arrive!). So, a store like Tropicalia In Furs, dedicated to rare, psychedelic and funky Brazilian music is a dream come true. If not for my upcoming trip to Cuba, I would have gotten many more records than I did and spent significantly more money. I was able to get a nice little haul, mostly just solid titles, but a couple of rarer ones that I’ll definitely feature here in coming months.

This Ronnie Von record was one that I tried to win from a online auction that Stones did last year. Recorded in 1970, this album walks the tightrope between the rocking MPB sounds of Roberto Carlos and the fuzzy soul of Tim Maia or Erasmo Carlos. “A Maquina Voadora” and “Imagem” both bring the fuzz and have a lovely headnodic sound. I’d heard those tracks and knew what to expect for most of the record. “Baby De Tal” was a surprise, toned down, much more soulful and emerged as my favorite track. My ears and yours are made all the better by having Tropicalia In Furs back on the scene, here’s to hoping that the store opens up full-time in the very near future.

Cheers,

Michael

Claire Austin – I’ll Never Be The Same
Claire Austin – My Melancholy Baby
Claire Austin – This House Is Haunted
Claire Austin – Can’t We Talk It Over

As I think I’ve mentioned previously, over the past year I’ve been buying many more vocal albums than normal, seemingly one of the many strange unintended consequences of my separation and soon to be finalized divorce. More so than just getting vocal albums I haven’t owned, I’ve been tracking down vocalists I hadn’t heard before. I found this album on the same trip to Groove Merchant that netted the Ensemble Al-Salaam album. The cover design was absolutely a drawing point, the stark photo, the strange greenish hue to the black and white image, the pensive woman, clearly melancholy and slightly out of focus. But what was most intriguing was the fact that there was no artist information on the cover, a very rare thin indeed. Only “When Your Lover Has Gone.” Without hearing the music or knowing who the artist was, I would have likely bought the album, solely on the strength of that cover, which is one of the most distinctively beautiful ones I’ve ever seen.

Quick flip over, identified the artist as “Clair Austin sings ‘When Your Lover Has Gone’ & other songs of unrequited love, with Bob Scobey, trumpet, Barney Kessel, guitar, Stan Wrightsman, piano, Morty Cobb, bass, Shelly Manne, drums.” I’d certainly heard of Kessel and Manne, Scobey’s name rang a slight bell, but Clair Austin was someone I hadn’t heard of. Part of the reason for that is that she really didn’t record much or for very long. Austin began singing some time in the 1930s, but WWII meant that she was separated from her drummer husband, Chuck Austin, while he was fighting. After the war, the Austin’s became accountants and settled into suburban life in Sacramento. But, at some point in the late 1940s, Austin began singing again and landed a recording gig with Kid Ory, and this one with Bob Scobey, before largely fading away again into obscurity.

Austin has a really distinctive and slightly unsettling style of singing. There’s something about her voice that sounds both wrong and right. Though I’ve seen writers compare her to Peggy Lee, I don’t hear that at all. Her phrasing is straight out of the 20s or 30s, as a strange mix of Bessie Smith & Billie Holiday with just the slightest of Swedish accents. I’m not sure if Scobey chose these songs or Austin chose them, but it’s an interesting mix, and another drawing point for me, since the majority of them are ones that I’d never heard or rarely see on other vocalists albums from this period of time. My copy of the album isn’t pristine, so my favorite songs, “This House Is Haunted,” and “My Melancholy Baby” have some assertive pops and clicks, but I share them nonetheless solely because of how lovely they are.

Cheers,

Michael