Musicology

Let us now praise formerly famous, nowforgotten men (and women).  Our praise is cold comfort to them, especially when itʼs posthumous or follows decades of impoverished frustration.  Rediscovery is rarely a gift to the rediscovered: Itʼs to those of us drawn to hidden human gems, their luster brightened by tales tragic or at least bittersweet. Author John Wirt tells such …

Spying the Grim Reaper in the rear view mirror evokes a range of responses.  `Getting religion’ or reaching for the gin are common ones.  Dave Alvin’s reaction to his brother Phil’s near-death and the passing of old friends was novel: instead of seeking salvation or oblivion, he joined forces with his brother to record an album of Big Bill Broonzy …

Tales of rediscovered art treasures tend toward Nazi loot stashed in Austrian attics.  Less dramatic sagas can still be compelling.  Consider one concerning radio transcriptions by an artist dubbed `the hillbilly Shakespeare,’ rescued from a small town florist shop in Oklahoma.  At first, the collector who found them couldn’t listen, since radio transcriptions require a special turntable and the one …

World music, anyone?  Didn’t think so.  A lonely legion of public radio DJs flog what sounds like one stripe or another of American pop, edged by exotic embellishments and sung in a foreign tongue.  For textbook examples, listen to Marco Werman’s music picks on PRI’s The World.  You’ve got your `world’ hip hop, your `world’ techno-dance music.  Plenty of slushy …

Who was the last piano roll salesman?  Surely someone who entered the trade with Gilded Age optimism as sales boomed, only to see `talking machines’ turn the 19th century marvel of player pianos into objects of quaint obsolescence.  The last piano roll salesman fell victim to technology’s restless relationship to music, and the fortunes made and lost thereby.  The story …

“Where Have All the Flowers Gone?”  The passing of Pete Seeger in January made many nostalgic for the era when `topical songs’ boldly took on social issues.  Seeger was most famously associated with the Civil Rights struggle of the early Sixties and the anti-war movement which followed.  He also sang about environmental concerns, particularly the pollution of his beloved Hudson …

The world comes to NAMM.  A maker of a guitar fretboard cleaner from New Zealand (Boogie Juice by name) is elated to announce he’s found a distributor for his product—in Thailand!  A family of Greek bouzouki makers has, for the first time, flown from Athens to Anaheim.  China’s presence grows greater year by year.  Every January, the National Association of …

Baja is especially alive with music in December.  There are Christmas Concerts for every music lover from Hard Rock to Classical.  My personal favorite was “Canta Noel” presented by our very own Ensenada Opera Star, Maria Lozano.  Maria is now also teaching voice at the University here in Ensenada, in Tijuana, and in Mexicali.  Her students adore her, and some …

Ray Charles and the Beatles both `covered’ him.  He held his own with the era’s great rock and Soul singers to become part of America’s soundscape of the Sixties.  Yet by the decade’s end he’d become a self-parody, popping out of cornfields on the hillbilly Laugh-In called Hee Haw.  Twenty years after that (and before Johnny Cash), he’d become the …

By art auction standards, it was chump change.  But eyebrows went up last year when John Tefteller paid $37,100 for a 1929 78 by Delta bluesman Tommy Johnson.  Tefteller is as famous for his passion for vintage blues as for the deep pockets that have enabled him to amass the largest private collection of this music.  For the eleventh consecutive …