EP review: The Ruminators with Patti Rothberg, It's You

 It’s You, the Ruminators with Patti Rothberg (EP, independent)

--originally published in The Village Sun--

The boundaries that once doggedly confined Downtown below East 14^th have faded like myth, but even as artists sought out points north, west and out, that worn strip of rich cultural past remains spiritually vital. In the mid-90s, as gentrification encroached without mercy, singer-songwriter Patti Rothberg was signed by a major record label and began touring the world. It was one hell of a ride.

While studying at the Parsons School of Design, Rothberg thrust herself into the Anti-Folk scene, aligning with punk-damaged protest singers bearing acoustic guitars as proper weaponry. Soon after, while performing in the Union Square subway station, she was encountered by an EMI A&R man (“EMI and Sony were fighting over me”, she has said), and was soon in the studio and then on the road pushing her debut album Between the One and Nine. Alternative hits like “Inside” and “Treat Me Like Dirt” made for important statements as well as damned good rock n roll.

In the years since, Rothberg’s projects have included the all-female Ramones trib, Rockaway Bitch, but it’s only within the Ruminators, her duet with vocalist/bassist/guitarist known as Just Jill which offers the listener a raging glimpse into the Anti-Folk days of yore. Armed consistently with an acoustic guitar, Rothberg’s voice blends tightly with Jill’s, casting strains of Cindy Lee Berryhill, the Washington Squares and Michelle Shocked through their new, outspoken repertoire. As expected, the songs are bitterly, wonderfully spiced with ironic tales of life, relationships, and society, but as both women are skillful songwriters, each came to this duo with quiversful of material. Jill’s long been a constant of song circles downtown and up, as well as in Brooklyn, pouring out warmly emoted titles (and solo albums), and Patti’s career has been nothing if not prolific. The pairing maintains the essence of each, albeit threaded through a blast of post-punk folksay, highly harmonic British invasion pop, and a vital dosage of feminism, seemingly custom fit to Little Steven’s Underground Garage.

The Ruminators with Patti Rothenberg released their EP It’s You earlier this year, and it’s been making the rounds of radio and podcasts that thrive on such sounds (including this writer’s Beneath the Underground streaming weekly on WFMU). The first cut of the set, “Love Shrine”, driven by a thicket of acoustic guitars, features Patti’s moving vocal and a carefully placed electronic keyboard line. Jill’s harmonies at times encase the lead vocal, moving along in thirds, but at other points leaping up into a new range, closing out on a dramatic low. Following this is “Emo Man”, a highly unique bit of new wave with an 80s-rich swirling synthesizer, electronic drums, and Jill’s probing bass are arranged just behind Patti’s acoustic guitar. Their voices here are closely knit, more reminiscent of actual folkies but the Everly Brothers creep in there, too, as well as underground sardonic pairings like the Sugar Twins.

The breakout cut seems to be “Manwhore” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NQCFfY6FTU  , riddled with straight-faced sarcasm and backbeat handclaps, the duo’s traded vocal lines and call-and-response chorus reel the ear in without effort. The lyrical snarl (there’s plenty room for more/when you’re a manwhore) is relentless, as we like it. But closing number “Fuck the Penises”, while needing no explanation, wins the medal for acid humor through ersatz vocal harmony crashing into unisons, oddly calling on visions of childhood songs that girls coming of age might have sang while playing the hand-jive of Miss Mary Mack on a much more feminist planet.

Find the Ruminators with Patti Rothberg here:

https://www.instagram.com/ruminatorswithpattirothberg/

https://www.facebook.com/theRuminatorsOfficial

https://www.tiktok.com/@ruminatorswpattirothberg

https://justjillandpattirothberg.hearnow.com/

 

Remembering Pete Seeger During Labor History Month

 

Recalling Pete Seeger This Labor History Month

--Originally published in Allegro magazine, May 2024--

Pete Seeger spent the better part of his life performing topical songs and championing social justice. A tireless activist for the rights of the underdog, toward global peace, and for the sanctity of the environment, Pete was also a major proponent of folklore in all its forms. A constant presence within the labor movement, he wasn’t only a member of Local 802 but also a founder of AFM Local 1000 and any number of other organizations on behalf of working musicians.

As a Marxist and follower of Rosa Luxemberg, Pete wouldn’t have given credence to the concept of predestiny, but it seems about right that his would be a May birth (May 3, 1919). Another deciding factor for this month’s member profile is that 2024 marked the tenth anniversary of his passing.

The son of leftist musicologist Charles Lewis Seeger, founder of the decidedly radical Composers Collective of New York (with Aaron Copland, Henry Cowell, Ruth Crawford, Marc Blitzstein, and Conlon Nancarrow), and Constance de Clyver Seeger, concert violinist and Julliard faculty member, Pete almost singlehandedly resurrected, of all things, the 5-string banjo. Introducing its application as an American instrument of African origin, developed through the sweat and blood of the oppressed, in Seeger’s wake, the banjo – or at least his banjo – symbolized the power of song as an icon of more than one ‘folk revival’. His hand carved long-neck instrument bearing the slogan “This Machine Surrounds Hate and Forces It to Surrender”, sang with pride over decades … even through Bob Dylan’s decision to go electric. For the many of us raised with the sound of his split-tenor vocals, Pete was larger than life.

During the Great Depression, the teenaged Pete Seeger took to collecting folk songs in the rural south with his father. The elder Seeger foresaw the need to replace the modernist, experimental track of American composers with one imbedded in traditional music after recognizing its revolutionary potential. American workers suffering economic disaster needed radical content, but within a music immediately accessible; he never looked back and clearly neither did Pete.

The 1930s were desperate years, utterly brutal for people already in the throes of poverty. Daily Worker columnist Mike Gold wrote of the need for “a communist Joe Hill” (referring to the IWW labor martyr) to offer musical organizing on the front lines: a few years later Woody Guthrie came to prominence on the political Left. Guthrie, a firestorm of creative energy and radical philosophy was introduced, in 1940, to Pete Seeger by folk archivist Alan Lomax. The two became inseparable. Once Woody had taken up Pete’s offer to join his group the Almanac Singers, they wrote and performed music together, and Seeger, through musical and political osmosis, rapidly morphed into a new kind of cultural force.

Early on Pete developed a strong kinship within the West Village’s brimming radicalism and quickly became a first call for rallies, May Day parades, and militant unions here and across the country.

He joined forces with progressive cultural organizations, anti-fascist collectives and was featured at American Labor Party actions throughout the 1940s and into the ‘50s, even as the specter of the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) haunted his musical groups, the Almanac Singers, then the Weavers, as well as his organization, People’s Songs. Later, he would be subpoenaed by the “House Un-Americans” when, riddled with accusations questioning his patriotism and the many he’d associated with, Seeger refused to name names, but offered instead to sing for the HUAC inquisitors. They refused his overture and called it Contempt of Congress.

A victim of the same tenacious Blacklist that had torn apart Hollywood and the CIO in the post-war period, Pete sang for college students and children, when no one else cared to listen … or, rather, when no one else could hear. And when he could not sing for them, he sang for the trees and forest life about him. Seeger was hell-bent on allowing music to touch deep, whether as a weapon or a healing force. Uniquely, he achieved both in tandem.

Seeger’s recordings with the Almanac Singers easily demonstrate the revolutionary fervor of the mean Depression years, as well as the fight against the fascism. Toward the latter, the Almanacs’ 1942 recording “Round and Round Hitler’s Grave”, composed by Seeger, Hays and playwright Millard Lampell, was a rousing vehicle against Hitler and Mussolini which remains a firestorm of radicalism. The original trio by then had expanded to include Guthrie, and accordionist Agnes “Sis” Cunningham (later the founder of Broadside magazine, with some financial help from Pete and his wife Toshi). Similarly, the group’s labor songs album of the year prior featured the debut recording of Woody Guthrie’s “Union Maid”, a stalwart of the movement bearing a percussively structured chorus:

Oh, you can’t scare me/I’m stickin’ to the union/stickin’ to the union/ stickin’ to the union/

Oh, you can’t scare me/I’m stickin’ to the union/till the day I die

The Almanac Singers campaigned for Progressive Party presidential candidate Henry Wallace in the election of 1948, a seminal year in which the political right-wing gained major footing in Congress and began the dissolution of many of President Roosevelt’s liberal reforms. The witch hunt by right-wing activists against workers in government, education, social work, and the arts immediately overturned whole professions and ultimately ruined lives. The Almanac Singers were among the casualties of McCarthy’s Senate investigations as well as HUAC’s show trials. But only months later, Seeger, along with Hays, Ronnie Gilbert, and Fred Hellerman, banded together for an outdoor performance in Peekskill NY where the guest of honor was Paul Robeson. A Klan-inflected police department stood idle as fascistic stone-throwing civilians turned the gathering into a violent, racist, anti-Semitic, red-baiting riot.

Moved by the need for a new progressive folk music ensemble, the four remained together and as the Weavers initially scored major hits with Leadbelly’s “Goodnight Irene”, and classics “The Midnight Special”, “The Rock Island Line”, “On Top of Old Smokey”, South African traditional song “Wimoweh” (later known as “The Lion Sleeps Tonight”), Woody’s “So Long It’s Been Good to Know Yuh”, Hebrew work song “Tzena, Tzena, Tzena”, and an assortment of others. Signed to Decca Records, the Weavers were renowned---right up to the point of FBI investigations and a vicious hatchet job by the right-wing press. Seeger and Hays were called to testify under the hot HUAC lights, and while the group carried on for some time, by ’53 it lost the major label deal, and became subject to the blacklist and a barrage of flag-waving protestors.

In the later 1950s, Pete began performing his “peoples songs” in liberal colleges and left-wing summer camps across the country, and theatres around the world, but was blacklisted from major performances, let alone lofty recording sessions or television appearances, at home. The Hollywood blacklist was finally severed with the 1960 film Spartacus’s win at the Academy Awards, but not so for radical folkies; the inclusion of Seeger performing “Waist Deep in the Big Muddy” on the Smothers Brothers television show in 1968, only achieved by the Brothers’ threats to walk out if the singer was not aired, finally did it.

In a prodigious career, some of his noted compositions including “Turn, Turn, Turn”, a number one for the Byrds in ‘65, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”, “If I Had a Hammer”, co-written with Lee Hays (a smash for both Peter, Paul and Mary, and Trini Lopez), and “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine” remain immortal. Pete was also one of the authors of civil rights anthem “We Shall Overcome”, a song born of the gospel tradition and fully developed in protest demonstrations.

While Pete became a beloved figure with the passage of time and was awarded the National Medal of Arts in 1994, he never ceased outspoken participation at rallies, bridging the 1940s and 2000s with demonstrations for civil rights, the labor movement, the environment, women, immigrants and free speech, and against fascism, imperialism, war, and nuclear weaponry.

Even in his final years, most Saturday afternoons Pete stood at a busy crossroads not far from Poughkeepsie, waving a large peace flag and leading a small group in song. This writer came to know Pete to some degree over years, most pridefully performing as part of his back-up band for a 1999 concert entitled Music in the History of Struggle at Local 1199’s midtown auditorium. And then between 2005 and ’10, when my wife Laurie Towers (also an 802 member) and I resided in Beacon, the opportunity to join Pete at the peace vigil was an immediate draw and we did so many times. Further, we shared the stage with him on other occasions in area venues, not the least of which was the inaugural Dissident Arts Festival.

Pete Seeger was the embodiment of the cultural worker, dedicating his music and tireless activism to the peoples’ and the planet’s cause. Taking the distant advice of Joe Hill, he recognized long ago that more can be said in one topical song than in a hundred pamphlets. But, even in silence, Pete’s philosophy of an art of empowerment rings eternal.

Book Review: STEVE CANNON, Groove, Bang and Jive Around

 Steve Cannon, Groove, Bang and Jive Around  (Blank Forms Editions, 2023)

--Originally published in an overly-edited version in The NYC Jazz Record, 7/1/24--

Steve Cannon was a revolutionary poet many saw as the cultural heart of Black Liberation in another period when the struggle was a matter of life and death. This founder of Gathering of the Tribes was a mentor to countless New York poets, particularly the downtown contingent, starting with his days in the Society of Umbra alongside luminaries Akia Toure, Ishmael Reed, Calvin Hernton, Tom Dent and David Henderson, as well as free jazz leaders Sun Ra, Cecil Taylor and Archie Shepp. By the 1980s, his failing vision deteriorating to blindness, Cannon and his Tribes performance space and magazine remained a major underground voice of East Village poetry. His passing in July 2019 resulted in countless tributes including one at the Clemente Soto Center which this writer covered in the pages of this paper. One would be hard-pressed to find naysayers to Cannon’s vast inspiration; his legacy is profound. And yet, this review of his only novel was difficult in the writing.

Groove, Bang and Jive Around was published by the Parisian Ophelia Press in 1969, and largely lost since its original printing. Of its age, the story is filled with psychedelic, indeed, hallucinatory imagery within the context of the fight for Black power. Unfortunately, social justice drowns under the carnal imagery, and while the sexual revolution was a vital part of the day (and of women’s liberation), this series of prurient adventures reaches further than Lolita or Carnal Knowledge would have dared. To refer to Groove, Bang and Jive Around as “notorious” is an understatement. The brutally raw depiction of African American culture in the south is somewhat reminiscent of the protagonist in recent film American Fiction; told by his literary agent that he must “write more Black”, Jeffrey Wright’s character reluctantly complies with impassioned jailhouse zealousness. Some hardcore sections seem to be competing with Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, but what’s missing here is the legacy (Burroughs remained a novelist).

The story of fourteen-year-old Annette’s explicit coming of age starts with a shockingly graphic scene in an outhouse with a man twice her age, goes through exploits with the guy she believes to be her father, has a threesome with her boyfriend and an obese older woman, engages in ritualistic orgies, and is the main course in a violent mass gang bang. Related visions of her mother and brother’s lurid relations, as well as flashbacks of Annette’s first time, age 10, with her brother and his friend, do little to accent the politics Cannon held so dear.

Yet, the larger story carries Annette through an odyssey to a Black nirvana, Ooh-bla-dee, where people of color hold power and take vengeance on corrupt officials and their wives via public humiliation and bestiality. Along the way, a wonderful variety of jazz artists make cameos, Dizzy Gillespie presides over Ooh-bla-dee, and Count Basie’s band plays uproariously for the victors.

Though Cannon’s eyesight was intact in 1969, the work plays out more as classic storytelling than any of his literary work. A New Orleans native who moved to the Lower East Side in 1962, he carried the southern tradition of tall tales into the fertile mix of radical downtown and it’s easy to imagine the book as a series of spoken presentations. Groove is the motherlode of all chin music and this re-publication may just mark it as an invaluable vision of cruel, imposed poverty and the dissonant journey north. Tragically, Cannon never found his Ooh-bla-dee.

Liner notes, Bobby Kapp Plays the Music of Richard Sussman (2023)

 Liner notes, Bobby Kapp Plays the Music of Richard Sussman (2023)

by John Pietaro

BOBBY KAPP, musical sojourner, has made a mission of advancing truth within his art. During childhood, back in Perth Amboy, his natural talents led to the drums and a need to carry this musical message far and wide. As both drummer and vocalist, Kapp’s flights, built of the improvisational moment, guided forays throughout the US, into Cuba, and then Mexico, his base since the 1990s, shredding the soundscape with such legends as Marion Brown, Gato Barbieri, Gene Perla, Matt Shipp, Dave Burrell and Ivo Perlman. His canon is one most empathic.

Kapp’s road-less-traveled is now walked in the company of composer and pianist Richard Sussman, another icon of sounds bold and unique. “I’ve spent most of my career playing free; the “compositions” began with the red light in the studio”, Kapp explained. Yet, in his 81^st year, he commissioned Sussman to write an album’s worth of pieces which take orchestration toward its most vexing, compelling the ear toward a deeper listening. With Synergy: Bobby Kapp Plays the Music of Richard Sussman, the veteran improvisor revels in colors reminiscent of Gil Evans’ explorations. But the chordal clouds of another Miles compatriot, pianist/composer Bill Evans, also thrives amid this mesmerizing, expansive ensemble and its leader’s dynamic time machine. Watch carefully and you’ll almost see the sounds draining off the nib of Sussman’s calligraphy pen. Throughout, Bobby Kapp’s course of empathy is matched only by the restless surge of change.

Cast, sojourner, so transient be your berth!

Reportage: Pride Month, Music, and the LGBTQ Community

 Originally published in "Allegro" magazine (the journal of Local 802 AFM)

Pride Month, Music, and the LGBTQ Community

by John Pietaro

At even a precursory glance, the role of gays, lesbians, bisexuals, and trans people as leading voices within the arts is immediately evident. Yet this relevance alone has not been enough, particularly in years past, to combat the ignorant fear if not the visceral hatred of far too many toward the LGBTQ community. Personal lives had to remain tightly closeted to avoid government and police persecution, as well as ostracization from producers, arts administrators and, in many cases, fellow artists. The practice of having “marriages of convenience” (really, of necessity) and worse, the denial of one’s lifestyle and actual life partner, amounted to a further ghettoization of some of the greatest creative minds. Pride came only with the boldest activism of the Stonewall Inn uprising of June 28, 1969, and surely during the cruel years of the AIDS crisis.

Cut to the present and LGBTQ+ visibility has increased globally with the work of “out” creatives and “out” characters featured in film, literature, visual art, stage works and on television screens. Perhaps it’s unfathomable here from my office on West 48th Street, but the current hysterical backlash to progressive gains is boiling over not only in rural enclaves but the state houses of Florida, North Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and other primarily conservative regions.

As of May 23, the Human Rights Campaign’s Year-to-Date Snapshot of Anti-LGBTQ+ State Legislative Activity told the awful truth: so far, over 520 anti-LGBTQ+ bills have been introduced in state legislatures, a record; over 220 bills specifically target transgender and non-binary people, also a record; and a record 70 anti-LGBTQ laws have been enacted so far this year, including: 15 laws banning gender affirming care for transgender youth, 7 laws requiring or allowing misgendering of transgender students, 2 laws targeting drag performances, 3 laws creating a license to discriminate, 4 laws censoring school curriculum, including books.

For musicians identifying as LGBTQ, the struggle has often been dire, particularly in genres deemed particularly macho, i.e. jazz and rock. Gary Burton has been acknowledged as one of the most important vibraphonists in the history of the instrument, and his music crosses boundaries between many genres. The endless accolades, however, didn’t allow him to feel safe as a gay man, at least not until the publication of his 2014 autobiography, “Learning to Listen”, which details his experiences in music and life. When asked why he’d chosen to come out at this later stage of his life, he answered inasmuch that it was due time. Burton’s fearlessness allowed others to come forward, happily, but it’s just as important to look back, particularly into the lives and careers of two Local 802 musicians who survived through times more arcane.


Leonard Bernstein conducting at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1963.

LEONARD BERNSTEIN (1918-1990) is perhaps the most celebrated conductor-composer in the canon of American music. Born in Lawrence, Massachusetts (itself the site of a vastly important mill strike by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1912), Bernstein studied piano as a child and quickly took to orchestral music. At the age of 14, he attended a concert of Arthur Fiedler’s Boston Pops which made a profound impact on his life; among the material was Ravel’s “Bolero”. In 1935 he became a student at Harvard, studying with Edward Burlingame Hill and Walter Piston, serving as accompanist to the Harvard Glee Club, performing numerous contemporary pieces and staging a production of gay composer Marc Blitzstein’s “Cradle Will Rock”, among other credits.

His professional baptism by fire was with the renowned New York Philharmonic, taking over the baton for an ailing Artur Rodzinski with scant notice, and drawing international praise. Bernstein’s credits number far too many to list here, but what has been less publicly acknowledged is his life as a gay man.

Though Bernstein married Chilean actress Felicia Cohn Montealegre in 1958 and the couple remained together, successfully raising a family, he continued to see men. She wrote to him: “You are a homosexual and may never change — you don’t admit to the possibility of a double life, but if your peace of mind, your health, your whole nervous system depends on a certain sexual pattern, what can you do?” (from “The Letters of Leonard Bernstein” edited by Nigel Simeone).

They separated in 1975 when Bernstein lived with a boyfriend, but he returned to Felicia when she became terminally ill, only parting after her death some three years later.

As has been quoted often, his West Side Story collaborator Arthur Laurents, stated that Bernstein was “a gay man who got married. He wasn’t conflicted about it at all. He was just gay.” And according to “The New Yorker”, prolifically so. While this was rarely a secret, Bernstein’s passionate, intimate relationship with a young Tokyo man, Kunihiko Hashimoto, has only come to light in recent years. Hashimoto became an important collaborator as well as lover, and the relationship continued across oceans and through the remainder of Maestro’s life.

BERTHA “MADAME SPIVY LEVOE” LEVINE (1906 — 1971) was a celebrated pianist-vocalist, actor and early activist for the LGBTQ community. Born in Brooklyn, as a young woman she began performances in area speakeasies which, by the mid-1930s, led to engagements in major New York nightclubs where she was lauded “the female Noel Coward” due to her satirical, double-entendre-filled lyrics. “The New York Times”, in 1939 wrote: “Spivy’s material, witty, acid, and tragicomic, is better than most of the essays one hears about town, and her delivery is that of a sophisticated artist on her own grounds. She knows the value of surprise in punching a line, she uses understatement unerringly, and her piano accompaniment is superb.”

A special target were the right-wing politicians and especially the Daughters of the American Revolution, who were lampooned in the barely veiled “100 percent American Girls”: “Our country is so fine, it will really be divine, when we get everyone but us to move away.”

In 1940 Levoe opened her own nightclub, Spivy’s Roof, on the penthouse of 139 East 57th Street, which became a highly successful gay and lesbian center of midtown nightlife. Due to the homophobia of the day, the establishment was private and without signage yet attracted major film and Broadway stars in the know, particularly those living closeted lives. A pair of grand pianos across from the bar assured that Spivy could join in with the house pianist, usually Liberace, to the thrill of the crowds. Regulars included Mabel Mercer, Thelma Carpenter, and Martha Raye. “It was the place in those days,” Davis said, “especially for men,” who adored her. Women did too, including her current lover, usually seated at the bar, and friends such as Tallulah Bankhead and Patsy Kelly, whom she entertained at specially reserved tables. Paul Lynde, on the Tonight Show, added: “Judy Garland and Martha Raye and Judy Holliday… they used to come in and Spivy would entertain all night long for them….”.

The writer Ignacio Schwartz reminisced: “She was a plump lady (one writer said that she was “squat like a bulldog.”) She wore her hair in a tight pompadour with a white streak down the middle. She would place a tall glass of what was probably chilled gin on the piano before her. During her time on stage, she would drain a couple, but her singing — her low, throaty voice — would always be perfect.” https://sfbaytimes.com/spivy-last-fleur-de-levys/

A recent blog post on Madame Spivy described her favorite means of introducing a song while capturing attention: “This is VERY sad and we must be VERY quiet, please.” She would then launch into a number that was anything but either of those things.” https://brianferrarinyc.com/2020/02/22/madame-spivy-aunties-face/

So popular had she become, that the entertainer was signed to Commodore Records for a series of 78 RPM sides compiled as “Seven Gay Sophisticated Songs”, which were followed by several albums for other labels. Spivy’s songs, both original and those of other composers, were utterly timely and bravely satirical.

Following her club’s 1951 closure, Spivy focused on acting and was soon cast in several film roles and one noted episode of the “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” television program (many will recall “Specialty of the House”). Among her film work was the 1960 adaptation of James T. Farrell’s “Studs Lonigan” and Rod Serling’s powerful “Requiem for a Heavyweight” of 1962.

In closing this Pride article, here is the full lyric of “100 percent American Girls”:

Members of the Daughters, Aunts, Mothers and Second Cousins of the War of 1812, form into double file.

Stop twitching at that bunting Carrie and smile.

Take off that feather boa, Mary Louise this is a parade, not a charade.

Vera, you go right back to Washington, you’re not supposed to be marching at all! You’re supposed to be keeping THOSE people out of Constitution Hall.

Please… you on the float there. Lord Calvin is sagging. Yankee Doodle is flat. Your powder is wet. And your Mayflower is dragging.

Oh thank God here’s George III. Alright Lizzie, stand right there and sneer.

Please Consuela, someone has to be the rabble. You throw the Boston tea right in this little box over here.

Remember the things we said we’d never abandon. Remember we’re still true to Alfred M. Landon.

Remember when the Bill of Rights…. HMMMM ….. tried to get fresh with me!

My Westbook Pegler ‘tis of thee. Ah ha! The bugle! Formation girls:

Nelly pull your belly in — it’s for the U.S.A. We’ve got to be adorable today.

Oh aren’t you excited? And isn’t this a binge? Lets unfurl every curl in our lunatic fringe.

Tilly, Queenie, Magnolia, Hillaire… to arms!

Nelly pull your belly in and hold your chin up high. We’ll give the crowd a treat as we pass by.

The Pricker unit forward, the Bilbo club behind….And Bessie you keep waving what your grandpa signed.

All together now: Comb your hair for California, wash your neck for Io-way.

Our country is so fine, it will really be divine when we get everyone but us to move away.

Take a Benzedrine for old Virginia, where our daddies sniffed their snuff with dukes and earls.

We are for the human race, which is lovely (in its place). We’re 100 percent American Girls!

What? Do I see one of you lag when before you is marching the flag?

Did Washington crossing the Delaware say “Let’s call it off, boys — I’m not in the mood for rowing”?

Did Betsy Ross say “Fold up the banner girls — I hate sewing”?

Hmmm. Really girls! Eyes up! Curls up and away!

Annie pull your fanny in — it’s for the U.S.A. We’ve got to be adorable today.

When Valley Forge was icy and up to here in snow… did Dolly Madison say “No”?

Myrtle, Cissy, Prissy, Mamie — to arms!

Annie pull your fanny in — it’s for the U.S.A. We’re 100 percent American Girls!

–composed by Charlotte Kent for the album “An Evening With Spivy” (Gala Records 1947)

Reportage: Harvey Brownstone Honored at the Stonewall Inn

 Harvey Brownstone Honored at the Stonewall: Canadian Talk Show Host, Activist Kicks Off Pride Month

By John Pietaro

Just who is Harvey Brownstone? For the many residing south of Niagara’s Rainbow Bridge, the celebrity host with an audience of 5 million+ may not be immediately recognizable, but his legend and impact are unmistakable. 2023’s Pride Festivities in New York were given a special commencement with Brownstone’s appearance at the Stonewall Inn, June 5. The birthplace of LGBTQ Liberation anchored Harvey’s New York City debut with in-depth discussion about his life, career, and ‘Interviews’ program, alongside guest speakers and live music. It was produced and hosted by public relations maven Laurie Towers.

The former Canadian judge—that nation’s first openly gay jurist—made history by marrying countless same-sex couples from the provinces as well as throughout this nation. The New York contingent was so numerous that Brownstone’s dedication earned a 2008 Proclamation by NYS State Senator Tom Duane. His marriage officiating occurred continually—and free of charge--around an already full Family Court docket. At the Stonewall, Brownstone offered, “It was always so moving. There were so many desperate to finally hold that legal commitment, I couldn’t turn anyone away.”

Among those he couldn’t turn away were New Yorkers Edie Windsor and Thea Spyer, married by Brownstone after 42 years as a couple; their union came to trigger the Supreme Court litigation which ushered in legal marriage for LGBTQ people across the U.S. The latter story was ardently told in documentary Edie and Thea: A Very Long Engagement which includes footage of the pair’s wedding ceremony at Toronto Pearson Airport. Among the guest speakers at Stonewall was Judith Kasen-Windsor who became the second wife of Edie Windsor following Thea Spyer’s lengthy battle with multiple sclerosis. Kasen-Windsor offered details of the fight, not only for recognition but that which Windsor endured leading up to the Supreme Court decision.

Grammy-nominated songwriter Harriet Schock (“Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady”, a massive hit for Helen Reddy), moved by Brownstone’s “coming out” story, composed “I Am Yours”, now released by vocalist and pianist Gary Lynn Floyd on his album Present Schock: The Songs of Harriet Schock. Floyd flew in from Houston to perform a riveting set including this song and Schock’s reworking of “Ain’t No Way to Treat a Lady”, adding, “This time it’s from the male perspective and it’s actually my own coming out story”. He also performed a rousing original with vocalist Denise Lee, another out-of-towner in for the occasion (“And I also came to see my baby performing in Shuck’d on Broadway!”, she excitedly added). The duo lit the house with Floyd’s classic, warm baritone and Lee’s Mavis Staples-inspired vocal flight. Jim Keaton, president of the Helen Reddy Fan Club, spoke powerfully about the songs of Schock and the relationship he developed with Reddy and her team.

Award-winning mixologist Maria Gentile who’d crafted special libations for the evening including the Marvy Harvey, Love Wins, Justice for All, and the Brownstone (with Canadian Club whiskey, natch), emerged from behind the bar to lend her vocal talents to the goings-on. “If I Was a Boy”, a deeply touching piece recalling Gentile’s own childhood struggles within the LGBTQ reality, was emotionally performed by this veteran cabaret singer with emotive piano accompaniment by Floyd.

Other features of the evening included an address by long-term activist and WBAI radio host David Rothenberg. “I may be older than water”, he joked, nonplussed, “but I can still get up on stage”. Rothenberg, who’d spent decades as a Broadway press agent, was also founder of the Fortune Society. His activism for civil rights, civil liberties and peace expanded in 1973 “when I was asked to be on the David Susskind Show to discuss gay and lesbian issues. That was my coming-out story. I lived across the street from this place in 1969 during the uprising, but was frozen, deep in the closet then. I haven’t looked back since.” Others in the crowd included television, film and stage actor Louise Sorel (whom Rothenberg recalled from his earliest press rep days), and breakthrough TV screenwriter Susan Silver, among many more.

Wendy Stuart, actor, activist, and host of the ‘If These Walls Could Talk’ show, clarified just how fragile the situation is right now, in the face of ultra-conservative legislation stripping human rights through the most extreme of right-wing voices.

During his years on the bench, Brownstone also became a best-selling author with the groundbreaking “Tug of War: A Judge’s Verdict on Separation, Custody Battles and the Bitter Realities of Family Court”, leading to numerous appearances in media, but his lifelong desire to host celebrated actors and writers came to be only following retirement from law.

Since its debut in 2021, ‘Harvey Brownstone Interviews’ has counted Louis Gossett Jr, Linda Evans, Sir Tim Rice, Robert Wagner, Louise Sorel, Ruta Lee, even the elusive 93-year-old Mamie van Doren among his notable guests. The show is broadcast globally on Brownstone’s own YouTube channel as well as XPTV1 throughout the U.K., among other sources. Honoring the show, the Breakfast at Dominique’s fair trade, environmentally friendly coffee company premiered its ‘Talk Show Blend’, suited to Brownstone’s specific taste.

As the Stonewall celebration came to a close and the over-filled glasses were drained down to their rocks, so to speak, the house system played “Oh, Canada”, with host Towers proclaiming, “This is New York’s ‘thank you’ to you, Harvey. For all you’ve done!”

Here-here.

Links:

Harvey Brownstone Interviews website: https://www.harveybrownstoneinterviews.com/

“Harvey Brownstone Interviews” youtube channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCaE5NJCAmpqkFvyJRpOpokw

“Harvey Brownstone Interviews” XPTV1: https://xptv1.com/

“Harvey Brownstone Interviews” Spotify channel: https://open.spotify.com/show/5uGlhWQ3Z63di2kem431eB

“Harvey Brownstone Interviews” Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/harvey-brownstone-interviews/id1555774578

Gary Lynn Floyd: https://garylynnfloyd.com/

Harriet Schock: https://harrietschock.com/#choices

Breakfast at Dominique’s Hollywood Blends coffees: https://hollywoodblends.com/

 

Album review: Curlew, CBGBs, NYC, 1987

 The NYC Jazz Record, March 2023

Curlew, CBGBs, NYC, 1987

Review by John Pietaro

This historic reach back to 1987, one of the high years of “downtown”, opens in the hallowed crush of CBGB (there was no “s” in the title) with Curlew’s pulsating rendition of “Ray”. The  piece by saxophonist George Cartwright was inspired by novelist Barry Hannah. Like Cartwright, Hannah was an artist stemming from the deep south who thrived in dark humor. But Curlew’s urgency leaves little space for laughter. One reference point is Ornette’s Prime Time, had that ensemble been reared not in a Prince Street loft, but across Bowery and over. The linear work of each member of Curlew reached as far as any band at CBGB would, or could. “Ray”, angular, swinging, funk-infected, is a celebration of musical liberation that lusciously conjoins into a raw Coleman-like piece, the B-section of which will send shivers down the spine of latent listeners. The wonderfully restless electric bass of Ann Rupel, tenaciously seeking news paths through the thicket, pushing the primal-scream solos of Cartwright, guitarist Davey Williams, and especially cellist Tom Cora, as well as the sonic explosions of drummer Pippin Barnet, remains an essential showcase of the downtown sound.

“Kissing Goodbye”, which follows, is perhaps the missing link between Prime Time and the throttling polyrhythms of ‘80s King Crimson, peppered by the essence of stale beer that perfumed Bowery and Bleeker. Ornette’s penchant for folkish melodies is often realized in Cartwright’s compositions, the improvisation’s this inspired are nothing short of legendary. And as an aside, aspects of Crimson’s 1973 “Lark’s Tongues in Aspic” are evident within the ominous pulsations of “To the Summer in Our Hearts”, but then Rupel turns that harmonic structure on its head.

Curlew was founded in 1979 not long after Cartwright arrived in NYC. His biography, intertwined with that of the band, is the stuff of East Village legend, and by the time this set was recorded (directly off the mixing board), the ensemble had found its classic line-up which demonstrated again and again the necessary ingredients. Yet it remains vexing as to why Curlew has so often sat on the music’s periphery. The answer may be found in its interchangeable line-up, even with the downtown A-list on hand. Earlier, Bill Laswell, Fred Frith, Nicky Skopelitis, and Denardo Coleman held chairs, and later Chris Cochrane, Kenny Wolleson, and Sam Bennett, among other notables. The scene overflowed with talent and there was a vast array of venues, encouraging transience for many. Just a year after this performance at CBGB, Ann Rupel founded No Safety with Cochrane, Barnett, Zeena Parkins, and Doug Seidel, thriving on Curlew’s magic. Around the same time, Tom Cora co-led Skeleton Crew with Fred Frith, and Frith continued his own trans-Atlantic foray, including the Golden Palominos and Massacre with Laswell. The cross-pollination was impossible to avoid, but so daring the synthesis that even in casting ‘the shock of the new’, its presence was fleeting, an emulsion. Such a capture as Curlew at CBGB, though remains immortal.

CREDITS:

George Cartwright - saxes
Tom Cora - cello
Davey Williams - guitar
Ann Rupel - bass
Pippin Barnett - drums

1. Ray

2. Kissing Goodbye

3.To the Summer in Our Hearts

4. Barking

5. Moonlake

6. One Fried Egg

7.The Hardwood

8. Oklahoma

9. Agitar / The Victim

10. Light Sentence

11. Mink's Dream

12. First Bite

13. Shoats

 

 

 

 

Performance review: “Jazz Gypsies”: MAC GOLLEHON & OMAR EDWARDS

 The NYC Jazz Record, JOHN PIETARO, NY@Night column, March 2023

“Jazz Gypsies”: MAC GOLLEHON & OMAR EDWARDS

2/7/23, The Hard Swallow, NYC

 The Hard Swallow, a classic East Village bar, swelled throbbingly on this oddly warm Tuesday night (February 7). The duet Jazz Gypsies--Mac Gollehon, trumpet/samples/voice; Omar Edwards, dance/voice--commandeered the atmosphere, their manipulated pre-recorded orchestral hits and rhythm tracks shredding the whisky-soaked night air. Gollehon blared a warning call and Edwards tossed himself into a flurry of tireless movement, part jazz and tap, part hip hop, his syncopated steps ricocheted off the platform with abandon. Edwards’ triplet attacks sprayed the club like tommy gun bullets as Gollehon, a multi-instrumentalist and mean jazz trumpeter whose session work is legendary, improvised bop heads, defying the dancer at each turn. The swing was killing, with Edwards popping quarter-note triplet figures on one foot against 16^th-note and 32^nd-note triplets in the other, like Gene Krupa or Papa Jo Jones tearing into accented rim shots. By the time the duo took on Paul Desmond’s “Take Five”, Hendrix’s “Third Stone from the Sun”, or something by Jaco, Omar was drenched in sweat, dancing in odd time like it was common (pun intended). Various Latin and funk pieces had Gollehon rapping and vocalizing over the thunder and then moving throughout the tightly crowded space, trumpet aloft, the crowd dancing and clapping wherever the backbeat may lay. At points, percussionist Jeanne Camo added to the thicket on snare drum, but otherwise the sizzling, soaring music and visuals were owned by this marvelously unlikely pairing. These Jazz Gypsies may be solely responsible for an entirely new genre.

Women’s History Month Profile: HAZEL SCOTT, Allegro Mar '23

 Allegro, the Journal of Local 802 AFM, March 2023

Women’s History Month Profile: HAZEL SCOTT

John Pietaro

By the time Hazel Scott reapplied for membership in Local 802, she’d lived more in her 46 years than most could in a lifetime. From child prodigy to renowned performer, she was a major recording artist and noted film actor, as well as the first African American artist to host her own programs on both radio and television. In a tragic turn, this acclaim was followed in 1950 by a racist, red-baiting campaign by the forces of reaction, particularly the House Un-American Activities Committee. Almost immediately thereafter, her television show was canceled, and Scott suffered the indignity of media blacklisting and a mental breakdown. By the late 1950s, her prominent marriage to Adam Clayton Powell had eroded and she’d left New York for Paris, returning only with her own healing and the racial advances of the next decade. Still, her story is one that has rarely been told.

The Trinidad-born pianist and vocalist began her prodigious career as a child, and in 1924, when she was four years of age, relocated to New York City with her family. Scott’s perfect pitch and outstanding instrumental ability led her mother Alma Scott (also a musician), four years later, to bring her to the attention of Julliard professor Oscar Wagner who provided Hazel advanced musical training. By the age of 11, she’d already made her professional debut.

A performance at Roseland led to a contract with WOR radio and, over the next few years, celebrated gigs at increasingly prestigious nightclubs. When she was 19, Scott began a residency at Café Society, casting an important series of Swinging the Classics, bridging the jazz she loved (and would go on to perform with the likes of Charles Mingus and Max Roach) and the classical music she’d showcased over the years. Barney Josephson, Café Society’s owner and a virulent opponent of segregation, became Scott’s manager and assured that her bookings were for integrated audiences, and supporting her when racist incidents occurred along the way.

In such a climate, with neighborhoods (and the active U.S. military) so coldly separated by race, one might assume that an artist like Scott could never proliferate, yet she was called out to Hollywood and offered a Columbia Pictures contract. Pridefully, she insisted on terms that were shocking at the time, including the control of character and costume, making several movies including one with Lena Horne. Following a successful protest action when she refused for the other Black actresses in a film to be dressed in soiled aprons (holding up production for three days!), Columbia head Harry Cohn threatened to close Scott out of all film work; she returned to New York and resumed her successful music career. Later, she markedly stated: “From Birth of a Nation to Gone with the Wind, from Tennessee Johnson’s to My Old Kentucky Home; from my beloved friend Bill Robinson to Butterfly McQueen; from bad to worse and from degradation to dishonor—so went the story of the Black American in Hollywood.”

In 1944, the FBI opened a file on Scott, citing her involvement in the Civil Rights Congress and the ACLU’s American Committee for the Protection of the Foreign Born as well as her professional association with the openly left-wing Barney Josephson. Her marriage a year later to the dashing, newly-elected Congressman Adam Clayton Powell Jr and the headlines they achieved after protesting Scott being barred from performing at Constitution Hall by the notorious Daughter of the American Revolution was apparently what the festering right-wing was seeking. Scott was a force, establishing a 1950 battle against the National Press Club’s racist admission policy and a civil rights lawsuit against a Spokane WA restaurant that refused to serve her (following a USO performance).

That same year, Scott’s successes in television guest appearances led to the premiere of The Hazel Scott Show, a music and variety series, historic as the very first for any African American performer. The slanderous write-up of the pianist’s “communist sympathies” (i.e., her activism) in the pages of archconservative “Red Channels” magazine put Scott into the sites of the notorious House Un-American Activities Committee and the myriad neo-fascist organizations who breathed life into it. Voluntarily, Scott agreed to appear before the Committee and made all attempts to separate herself from the Communist Party but used the occasion to speak out against the influence of “Red Channels” on the industry, and the very blacklist she would soon find herself in the midst of. A single week after her appearance before HUAC, the network canceled her television show, meanwhile Scott’s performance schedule was scrutinized and heavily strained. By ’51, the tension evolving in her life led to a total breakdown and the need to be hospitalized.

Though she resumed aspects of her career, the wider exposure of television proved more elusive. In 1957, Scott chose to leave the country, moving to Paris where she continued to speak out against both racism and the McCarthyism and the rightist politics that fuel them. With her marriage to Powell apparently in distress, the couple formally separated by the close of the decade. Yet, she stood strong, appearing with the great writer and voice of liberation James Baldwin in support of civil rights.

In preparation for her relocation back to New York, Scott reactivated her long-held 802 membership in June, ’66. She resumed performances, with a highlight at the New York Paramount in in 1968, and with the blacklist formally broken, she returned briefly to television. Scott endeavored into the Ba’hai faith, performing for its various large events here and abroad with Dizzy Gillespie, and continued being a voice of pride and power.

Hazel Scott died of cancer at Mt. Sinai Hospital in 1981. She was just 61years old. But her legend remains and was recalled by Alicia Keys during the 2019 Grammy Awards, and the latter-day memorials include a Dance Theatre of Harlem celebration in 2022.

Hazel Scott’s FBI file:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1xwdPLMZqxkSO8b-CkU3UQdKI8iXCAmlG/view

 

Hazel Scott, Discography:

Prelude In C Sharp Minor, Op. 3, No. 2 / Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 In C Sharp Minor (1940)

Piano Greats - Andre Previn*, Earl Hines, Hazel Scott, Matt Dennis, Barkley Allen, Hazel Scott - Prelude In "C" Sharp Minor / Country Gardens (1941)

Hungarian Rhapsody No. 2 In "C" Sharp Minor / Valse In "D" Flat Major (1941)

Ritual Fire Dance / Two Part Invention In "A" Minor (1941)

Hazel's Boogie Woogie / Blues In B Flat (1942)

Her Second Album Of Piano Solos With Drums Acc. (1942)

People Will Say We're In Love / Honeysuckle Rose (1943)

Body And Soul / "C" Jam Blues (1943)

A Piano Recital (1946)

Great Scott! (1947)

Swinging The Classics. Swing Style Piano Solos With Drums - Volume 1 Swinging The Classics. Swing Style Piano Solos With Drums - Volume 1 (1949)

Two Toned Piano Recital (1952)

Hazel Scott's Late Show (1953)

Grand Jazz album (1954)

Relaxed Piano Moods (1955)

 Round Midnight (1957)

The Man I Love / Fascinating Rhythm (1945)

I'm Glad There Is You / Take Me In Your Arms (1945)

Sonata In C Minor / Idyll (1946)

A Rainy Night In G / How High The Moon (1946)

Butterfly Kick / Ich Vil Sich Spielen (1947)

On The Sunny Side Of The Street (1947)

Take Me, Take Me / Carnaval (1957)

Hazel Scott Joue Et Chante (1957)

Im Mantel Der Nacht (1958)

Viens Danser  (1958)

Le Desordre Et La Nuit (1958)

Hazel Scott (1965)

Fantasie Impromptu / Nocturne In B Flat Minor

Brown Bee Boogie

How High The Moon / I Guess I'll Have To Change My Plans 

Valse In C Sharp Minor / (A) Sonata In C Minor (B) Toccata 

Round, Fine And Brown / Noages 

Always (1979)

 

For more information on Hazel Scott:

https://broadcast41.uoregon.edu/biography/scott-hazel#paragraph-111

https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/04/24/hazel-scott-jim-crow/

 

 

 

 

 

Performance review: Studio Rivbea Revisited

The NYC Jazz Record, JOHN PIETARO / NY@Night Column, February 2023

Studio Rivbea Revisited

We Free Strings and Ensemble Rivbea Revisited

Jan 8, 2023, Gene Frankel Theatre, NYC

 Studio Rivbea, founded by Sam Rivers in the Loft Jazz days, remains the stuff of legend. Arts for Art celebrated it over a five-day period, capturing the revolutionary brilliance still ruminating within 24 Bond Street. Creative spirits never die, surely not within current occupant, the Gene Frankel Theatre which played host to this fest (January 8), in particular day five’s overflowing gifts. Violist Melanie Dyer’s We Free Strings harbors the raw radicalism, cultural pride, and multi-media plausibility that filled the Lofts. Dyer’s group swings, burns, sizzles and swoons through the composed and the improvised (and the seemingly composed but improvised) as heard on its latest album. But this concert, a thrilling preview of her “Rebecca”, added Dyer’s rich prose, spoken word, film and photography to the mix. Dedicated to her 90-year-old aunt, the work explored heritage, lineage, the larger family, the self. “A few poems the love of my youth never read in a coat pocket full of tacit apologies, acts of hubris, lint”. The literature stood as vitally as the music, however Charlie Burnham and Gwen Laster (violins), Alex Waterman (cello), Rahsaan Carter (bass), Newman Taylor Baker (percussion), and Dyer herself simply transcended. And then Ensemble Rivbea Revisited, comprised of Loft Jazz vets (William Parker, Juma Sultan, Joe Daley, Daniel Carter, Ted Daniel,) and younger musicians (Ingrid Laubrock, Brandon Lopez), played a transporting improvised set. And a special closer had Parker offering invaluable tutelage on Rivbea and its day as well as the everlasting lesson of both.

 

Performance review: The Art of Counterpoint

 The NYC Jazz Record, JOHN PIETARO/NY@Night Column, February 2023

Closing Concert: The Art of Counterpoint

Stephan Haynes, leader

Jan 10, 2023, Zurcher Gallery, NYC

 The very air within Zurcher Gallery (January 10) bred community and spoke fluently of downtown’s thriving. “The Art of Counterpoint”, a high point in Zurcher’s already alluring season, featured inner visions of the music via artwork of several notable musicians, Bill Dixon, Marion Brown, Oliver Lake and legendary poet Ted Joans (grown from the free jazz circle) among them. This closing concert feted not only the stunning visuals, but free improvisation itself with a line-up headed by cornetist Stephen Haynes, and a string ensemble of Joe Morris, Jessica Pavone, Sarah Bernstein, Charlie Burnham, and Lester St. Louis. Well before the downbeat, the room filled with area visionary creatives warmly greeting one another with hugs, laughter, memories, and plans for future collaboration. Once the music began, however, the audience sat in riveted silence. “Fifty years ago, when I was 18, I met Bill Dixon”, Haynes began, redoubling the sense of heritage and family. The ensemble, then, cast a gorgeous atonal mosaic of modal string heterophony, aerial muted cornet, and Morris’ acoustic guitar filling each crevice. Within the prodigious musicianship, violist Pavone stood out, expressing passages lustrous and incendiary, seemingly davening as streams of muscular, pulsating bowing threatened to spark a fire. And with Haynes’ soaring, knowing commentary above and below, Burnham’s and Bernstein’s violins took flight, crafting imagery of the outsider jazz adaptation of Le Sacre du Printemps that never was. Appropriately, cellist St. Louis deftly captured the house with moving, whispery fanfare and a hunter’s bow. Unforgettable.