Musical Marginalia
David says: Hank Williams died in a car, but he did NOT die in a car WRECK! What a disappointing error -- I thought every self-respecting country-music fan knew that! (October 14th, 2009 at 11:48am)
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Trance Syndicate From 1990 to 1998, Butthole Surfers drummer King Coffey’s Austin label released albums by Texas rock bands (Dallas’ Bedhead, Houston’s Pain Teens, Austin’s Ed Hall) that other indies wouldn’t touch. JOHN MORTHLAND
Bigger there than here
The LeRoi Brothers The name of this roots-rock band’s forthcoming CD—Kings of the Catnap (due in July from Rounder)—says a lot about the particular skill its members have acquired after more than a decade of serious European touring. At first the Austin-based band played mainly in Sweden and Norway, but these days it tours France, Germany, England, and Australia as well.
Cotton Mather When they play a show in their native Austin, there’s usually standing room and then some. “I guess we don’t promote ourselves enough at home,” says lead singer Robert Harrison. No matter; in England, the pop rockers have others to talk them up, including the members of one of the most popular bands on the planet, Oasis, who have been singing Cotton Mather’s praises to anyone who will listen. The band recently opened for Liam Gallagher and the boys on several European dates; this summer it will cross the Atlantic and do it again at the Reading and Leeds festivals. Cotton Mather’s latest full-length album, Kontiki, is available in England on Rainbow Quartz and in America on Copper Records.
Calvin Owens The loyal following that the 71-year-old Houston-born trumpet player enjoys overseas may have something to do with the fact that he lived in Belgium for fifteen years, during which time he played some of the largest concert halls and festivals in Europe. Or it might be that he has worked—as a player, an arranger, a composer, and a conductor—with dozens of internationally renowned jazz and blues luminaries, including Albert Collins, Johnny Copeland, and B. B. King. “We’re gonna start working on the States now,” says Owens, whose new CD, Stop Lying in My Face (Saw Dust Alley Productions), is due out this month.
Calvin Russell For the past decade he’s been France’s hottest musical import: the Jerry Lewis of bluesy rock. His nineties albums on the French label New Rose sold tens of thousands of copies in that country alone, and the press there idolizes him, once calling him a revolutionary who “has principles and fights injustice, ignorance, and intolerance.” Is this the same Texas blues singer who used to play the tiny Austin Outhouse in the late eighties? Oui.
Omar and the Howlers Once a popular headliner in the state’s larger clubs, these days the blues trio plays lesser-known rooms, even in its hometown of Austin. But why should lead singer Omar Dykes care? “Europe feeds his family,” says the band’s manager, Kevin Wommack. When the band returns to Denmark, Germany, Belgium, Sweden, and Holland this summer—with The Screaming Cat, its new CD on the Dutch label Provogue—the crowds will surely be there too. EILEEN SCHWARTZ
Where are they now?
Sam the Sham The author of the most immediately recognizable count-off ever (“Uno! Dos! One-two-tres-quatro!”) went mano a mano with the Fab Four and lived to tell the tale: Backed by his mighty Pharaohs, the turbaned Dallas madman scored two number two hits (“Wooly Bully” and “Li’l Red Riding Hood”) in 1965 and 1966, respectively, at the height of Beatlemania. He went on to win a Grammy for best liner notes (Sam, Hard and Heavy) before dedicating himself to spreading the Word as a Memphis street preacher in the seventies under his given name, Domingo Samudio. But like fellow rock and roll penitent Little Richard Penniman, he has since re-embraced the discreet charms of his own distinctively secular oeuvre and can be found touring the country with the reconstituted Pharaohs.
Christopher Cross The San Antonio native (né Christopher Geppert) hit the music-industry lottery with his self-titled 1980 debut album, which went platinum, spawned five Top Ten singles (including “Sailing”), and netted five Grammys—a record for one recording. The following year’s hit, “Arthur’s Theme,” won an Oscar, but since then Cross’strophy case has not required further enlargement. His most recent release is last year’s Greatest Hits Live, and in addition to regular touring, he plays plenty of odd gigs; as he reported during an online chat last year, “I have to play a bar mitzvah with Mike McDonald on Saturday.”
Edie Brickell The Deep Ellum singer’s quirky onstage demeanor and art-school lyrics led record execs to pluck her from the midst of her band, the New Bohemians, and place her front and center. The result was the platinum-selling Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars and a 1989 Top Ten hit, “What I Am.” The group disbanded after a disappointing follow-up, and Brickell’s subsequent solo effort fared little better. But a New Bohs reunion is afoot—the singer and some of her erstwhile bandmates have been rehearsing new material in Dallas and on the Long Island estate she shares with her husband, songwriter Paul Simon.
Radish By the time the Dallas group’s first major label album came out in 1997, it had already negotiated one of the biggest deals in the history of recorded music and had been profiled in the pages of The New Yorker. Despite the buzz, Restraining Bolt sold a measly 16,000 copies and failed to establish singer-songwriter Ben Kweller and drummer John Kent, both sixteen, as the Next Big Things. They were promptly dropped by their label, though you can still find the album in some stores and at the band’s Web site, www.radish.rawks.com. JOHN RATLIFF
Myths true or false?
“The Yellow Rose of Texas” was written to honor Emily Morgan, a beautiful mulatto slave who kept Mexican general Santa Anna occupied at the Battle of San Jacinto while Sam Houston’s soldiers attacked. False.There may have been such an interlude, but the song—a minstrel tune first printed as sheet music in 1858—had nothing to do with it.
In 1949 members of a Baton Rouge audience—including some musicians—became so annoyed by Fort Worth native Ornette Coleman’s wild free jazz and unruly appearance (beard and long hair) that they took him outside, beat him senseless, and destroyed his saxophone. True.
The drummer on “Paralyzed,” the maniacal 1968 single by Lubbock’s Legendary Stardust Cowboy, was a one-armed Indian. False. It was Fort Worth’s T-Bone Burnett.
Johnny Ace killed himself playing Russian roulette backstage at the Houston City Auditorium during the intermission of a show on Christmas Day, 1954. False. It wasn’t Russian roulette. Ace had been waving his seven-shot .22 around and had aimed and pulled the trigger at least twice at others, including his girlfriend, who sat on his lap. Then he stuck the revolver, which he knew had at least one bullet in it, to his head and pulled the trigger. It went off. According to singer and witness Willie Mae ”Big Mama” Thornton, when Ace realized he was going to die, “that kinky hair of his shot straight out.”
Roy Orbison left his glasses on a plane when touring England in 1963 and was forced to wear his prescription sunglasses the rest of the tour—onstage and off—thus inaugurating his hipster look. True.
At age fifteen Bob Wills got on his horse and rode forty miles, from Turkey to Childress, to hear Bessie Smith sing. True.
Lubbock native Delbert McClinton taught John Lennon how to play the harmonica. True. McClinton was on tour with fellow Texan Bruce Channel in England; Lennon’s band, the Beatles, was opening.
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