Big Sound Saturdays: ‘Taint No Sin to Take Off Your Skin! (Guest Post)

The sordid secrets of the pop stars of the 1920s and 1930s hold a fascination that far outstrips any scandal Kanye could conjure. From Ruth Etting, whose mobster boyfriend shot her pianist and lover, to Libby Holman, whose extravagantly wealthy husband conveniently disappeared on a boating trip in 1932, tabloid queens, dulcet voices, and songs both classic and forgotten dominated the radio waves and records of the 1920s and 1930s.

Sarah Bernhardt paved the way for women to behave badly at the turn of the century, but it wasn’t until the rise of mass entertainment in the 1920s that women found their way as public celebrities. Many of the women on this mix were constantly scrutinized in public and private, their lives intersecting with famous names, drinking and partying through their most vital decades. Still others are greats whose limited recording output or race meant their powerful voices are frequently forgotten. For me, listening to most of these songs makes me ask, like Lee Wiley on the Fats Waller recording of the Gershwin hit, “How long has this been going on?”

The mix begins with an early example of public trolling: the short message that Max Fleischer sent to Helen Kane after she unsuccessfully sued him for infringement in 1932.  It bears the question: was Helen Kane the true “boop boop be doo girl” or was it “Baby Esther,” a black singer popular at the Cotton Club? Baby Esther’s voice may be lost to time, but Kane’s “I Wanna Be Loved by You” remains a perennial classic. The next few tracks travel through the radio pop of the 1920s and 1930s: hitmakers like “America’s Sweetheart of Song” Ruth Etting, “The Personality Girl” Annette Hanshaw, the jazz singer Lee Wiley, and the tragic and beautiful Lee Morse dueled for top plays for almost two decades.

Next up are a few oddities, first from Greta Keller, whose husband was mysteriously murdered in 1943, possibly following an affair with Howard Hughes. Marlene Dietrich copied Keller’s unique style, and while she never achieved wide popular appeal, she remains the First Lady of Viennese Chanson. Zarah Leander may have been Hitler’s favorite singer, but that didn’t stop her from recording a confused version of “Bei Mir Bist du Schön,” possibly most recorded Yiddish song of all time. Rounding out these jazzy ladies are Minnie and Claire Bagelman, otherwise known as the Barry Sisters. They began their recording career in the late 1930s, and this rare Yiddish version of “Makin’ Whoopee” is a charmer.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the most rare, most pioneering, and often most forgotten women on this mix are the black blues singers of the 1920s. While Clarence Williams’s “Cake Walkin’ Babies from Home” may be a standard, its brilliant singer Eva Taylor is often overlooked by jazz lovers. Mamie Smith isn’t related to the more famous Bessie Smith, but her version of “Crazy Blues” was the first blues hit in 1920.  These racy, often risqué tunes include the powerhouse Sippie Wallace, the rare and vital Texas blues singer Mary Dixon, and Lucille Bogan’s apocryphal alternate (and filthy) take of “Shave ‘em Dry.”

Making this mix proved to me, more than anything, the fleetingness of the hit machine. While all these women were profoundly talented and most found acclaim in their time, many of these records aren’t usually listed among the greats. Some of them died young, like the influential Clara Smith, best friend of Bessie and lover of Josephine Baker. Others faded into obscurity like Annette Hanshaw, who retired from show business in 1935, and still others like Sippie Wallace, who was nominated for a Grammy Award at 85, continued to record past their golden age. 

Still, Mildred Bailey charted hits eighteen times, Lee Wiley launched the concept of the songbook, and the alcoholic Lee Morse was one of the most famous women of her time. They were all uncompromising and strong women with lives marked by tragedy, diverse sexual politics, and scandalous love lives. I’ll quote Bea Foote in her jazzy and flirty “Try and Get it” to try and explain why they’re not household names: “I’ve got something that can’t be had/But try and get it.”

These women didn’t hide their talent, but these songs are pearls that need to be discovered, which is a difficult metaphor for a 21^st Century feminist, and one that’s still too common for women. These recordings are surprising, funny, and often shockingly ahead of their time. When Bette Midler recorded Holman’s hit “Am I Blue?” in the 1970s, she sang it almost note for note, but Holman’s voice has a deep drama that lives on in the original.

Annette Hanshaw ended all her songs with a peppy “That’s all!” before Porky Pig was a twinkle in Mel Blanc’s eye, so that’s where I ended this mix. Say goodnight, Gracie. (Goodnight, Gracie!)

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Artist Profile: Supreme of the Mighty Wu-Tang Killa Beez

“Shadow” and “Supreme” from Wu Tang Killa Beez | Photo cred: Yahsure Wright from SkinnyHeadTv 

By B.C.

Supreme of the Mighty Wu-Tang Killa Beez grew up in the struggle. His father, known as D.C., was prominent in the Black Panthers Party, a Black Nationalist and revolutionary organization pivotal in the Civil Rights Movement. D.C. was instrumental in structuring the widely-known “Free Breakfast for Children” program. This fed thousands of poor inner city kids throughout the country and eventually got the FBI’s attention. They halted the program because they saw the Black Panthers as a threat to internal security.

 

“[My father] basically got told by our government to shut up. They did that in a way that was pretty bad,” recounts Supreme. “Some people basically entered our house and I was the one who was threatened because I was his only child. So it was like, Shut the f–k up and take this job and retire or else. That’s the other side of the government that people don’t know about.”

 

The West Coast Wu-Tang producer-turned-rapper says his dad had to make a choice and live under the radar. When Supreme was twelve, his dad told him that if he wants to speak the truth, he either has to be willing to die or go to prison. But that didn’t stop Supreme from lecturing, marching, fighting and “empowering the people.” The rapper has a business degree from UC Berkeley and is soon releasing an album that addresses serious social issues, including racism.

 

Supreme is finalizing tracks on his album and recording some music videos in Cincinnati, Ohio. Earlier this year in July, unarmed black man Sam Dubose was shot by white Officer Ray Tensing in Cincinnati. Tensing was indicted but is still waiting to go on trial, which should be happening next month. It seems almost serendipitous that as Supreme works on his music here, the trial is upcoming and expected to draw national attention as the shooting and indictment did. I spoke with Supreme about his new project and making the choice to not shut the f—k up:

 

ACRO: Tell me about your new project:

Supreme: This new project is called “Supreme Life Volume 1.” We’re gonna drop the album in the spring. It’s done but we’re just mixing down and mastering. It’s going to be a set of three albums. The first album is predominantly hip-hop and rock. The next album will transition into more rock. It’s the first album on Wu Rock, the new label that I created, which will be another branch and continue the legacy of Wu Tang. It’s pretty high energy. It’s geared for performance; it’s geared for stage. It’s geared to incite the people to learn, to seek, to open their minds and hearts, and it’s geared to ultimately unite the people through the music and to address issues and to heal. That’s what our mission is. We say Wu Tang is for the children. It’s for the people. It’s for the masses. It’s about the human family. We’re trying to get out of racism and classism and gender issues and biases and get people back down to the basics of humanity, love and peace.

 

Can you talk about one track you’re working on that highlights all of this?

I have a track called, “White Man.” It’s a song that is greater in content than “Fight the Power.” I won’t say it’s a greater song than “Fight the Power” because all respect due to Chuck D, to Flavor Flav, and to Public Enemy as a whole. That song definitely inspired this song. We came from that. So it’s no disrespect to our elders and to our mentors, our predecessors. We can say the white man this, the white man that, but we have become that which we hate. We have become our own slave masters. So this is what “White Man” is really about. We got classic Wu-Tang stuff. We got stuff that’s entertaining. But we want to address issues. Yes, we did go through slavery. Yes, we are affected by slavery. Yes, there is still slavery today. Yes, there is racism and biases and ignorance, but there still is no excuse [for our own actions]. We’re going to be responsible for self first. These are the things we need to rectify and correct first. Black Lives Matter, you f–king right they do. Why do Black Lives Matter? Because black lives are human lives.

 

So you’re here in Cincinnati where in July, unarmed black man Sam Dubose was shot by white officer, Ray Tensing. Do you have anything to say about this case?

It’s a tragedy in every sense of the word. Our love, our respect and our prayer go out to the family of not only Sam Dubose but Officer Tensing. Just because a white officer shoots a black person doesn’t mean his family or friends support him; they’re affected by that too. They’ve had a lot of white people fight and die for black people. [However], the fact that [police brutality] is tolerated, the fact that [Tensing] even had it in his mind that it was okay to take another person’s life, regardless of race [is the problem]. Was race a factor? You’re f–king right it was. And you can’t deny that, because he’s had issues and encounters with Caucasian people and he didn’t shoot them. He knows and everybody in the United States and world knows right now what’s happening — how many thousands of black men are getting killed. They know what they’re doing. Why are they putting black men and men of color in jail? But the root of it all is the fact that it is condoned. It’s tolerated. It’s accepted. It’s overlooked. We need to go to the root of the issue and until 350 million correct 8,000 people in power, nothing is going to change. Until people fix this and rectify this in themselves, [nothing will change]. Marching. We’ve been marching. What does that do? These people been killing us and they’ve been getting away with it. The reality of justice in this country is the reality of what has transpired in each individual case. We’re already geared and programmed to expect this guy to get off.

 

How do you want to address this kind of police brutality through your music?

I was in an organization called Copwatch. I went to UC Berkeley. I had a group back in the nineties called Black Underground Movement — the BUMS. That was before we did the Wu-Tang jump-off. [Cops] shot their 15-year-old kid at the BART Station in 1991 or 1992 for a [having a] Walkman. [The cop] said he had a gun and saw a flash and shot him. He was 15 and had a Walkman. Jesse Jackson came out. We performed. [Jackson] spoke. Nothing happened. What can we do with our music to curb this? We can correct it, speak out against it, educate people against it, confront people with it and convict people. The same issues that we’re facing are the same issues that have been transpiring not only now but a million years ago. We’re occupied! We’re occupied by Europeans. This land belongs to the Native Americans and the Mexicans. We’re in an occupied country but people can’t see. Why is it taking us dying to wake up? We just came out of slavery. Women just got voting rights. People are still getting hung. This sh-t is still here. Music is the universal language so we’re going to utilize music to lead a vehicle and be a medium for us to get to the people, man. Because everybody responds to love, everybody gets hungry, everybody hurts, everybody cries — we’re all one and the same.

 

 

Big Sound Saturdays: Sonic Zoo Vol. 2!

One very great thing about crafting a “sonic zoo” of old-time Americana is the unpredictable ways that animal songs flit between hyper-realism, innuendo, religiosity, and symbology—so convoluted that you can’t even begin to pull the song apart. O what a tangled web we weave:

Big Sound Saturdays: The Big Heavy

Without either the disposable income of long-lived, financially successful adulthood, or the manly inclination to “understand” by owning, record collecting has always felt like a far-off impossibility for me. I’m grateful to the men—and in the old-time world, they’re men almost exclusively—who perform this kind of labor, and I do think that these recordings couldn’t exist without them. Folk music archives have a fraught history, but thank goodness they have a history to begin with.

Without Deben Bhattacharya, we wouldn’t have “Mahour,” the Iranian folk song I’ve nestled between the Yogyakartan jam “Hai Clum Dong” (almost definitely sung by two very groovy kids) and Elliott Smith’s touching cover of, surprisingly, Hank Williams Jr. (aka “Bocephus,” of this and this reprehensible fame), the lilting “All My Rowdy Friends Have Settled Down.” Without ethnomusicologist, photographer, composer, and artist Jack Body, “Hai Clum Dong” never would’ve been recorded and released. The same for “Sea Lion Woman,” the funky children’s game song performed by Katharine and Christine Shipp (19 and 20 years old, respectively) and recorded by Alan Lomax in 1939. And the same for Hocine Slaoui (“Yamouia Ghanni”), recently reissued by the ethical and aesthetically with-it Dust-to-Digital label in Opika Pende: Africa at 78 RPM. Even Blind Willie Johnson, who (as I’ve mentioned before is about as famous as a country bluesman can be, and Abner Jay, and Jean Ritchie, are all rooted in the legacy of archival recordings, ethnomusicological desire for American old-time and world music exotica.

My dream is for a music-sphere where we can talk about how exploitative and, often, racist, a lot of these recordings were while still locating them in their context, and understanding the impact that these recordings’ sheer existence have on today’s music. Celebrating the artist, considering the recorder. Sacasas y su Orquesta’s “Rumba Negra” is a full, dense rumba, not possible without the orientalist legacy that helped bring the performing genius Josephine Baker into the spotlight. The Dezurik Sisters, also known as the “Cackle Sisters” for their masterfully synched and disorientingly accurate chicken calls, wouldn’t be singing a song called “Birmingham Jail” if not for the history of blues music that informs the country progression and vice versa. I hope we can keep talking about this, and talking about music should always come second to listening to it. A mix, then, to start us!

In truth, I made this mix for how huge and heavy these songs are, especially next to each other. If my heart could handle listening to Tom Waits’ “Anywhere I Lay My Head” more than two or three times a year, it’d grace these ranks as well. Traditional non-American musics, first recorded in the early 20^th century onto 78 RPM discs, were almost never recorded for the reasons we’d want them to’ve been, but I hope that doesn’t mean that we should forget them.