Brookswords

A Heartbeat and a Guitar

 I just learned an entire book about "Bitter Tears", Johnny Cash's 1964 concept album that centered on the plight of Native Americans, came out a few years ago, with cover art by Shephard Fairey, the artist who did the famous Obama Hope poster. The story behind this album is captivating. As one writer says, "In 1963, Johnny Cash released one of the biggest hits of his career with the trumpeting, propulsive 'Ring of Fire'. But he followed up with his most obscure and controversial effort: the 1964 folk-protest album called “Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian.”

Here's a summary from Amazon:

"With his highly personal early 1960s work, Johnny Cash had been trying the patience of the Columbia brass, who were less than thrilled with his commercial performance. When "Ring of Fire" topped the country charts in 1963, it allowed him to continue the many ambitious concept albums-history lessons close to his heart. The eight songs on 1964's Bitter Tears are sung from the point of view of the American Indian (still the accepted term in 1964), and together they form a potent work that is both deeply real and highly spiritual. With assistance from co-composer Peter LaFarge, Cash offers an  earnest, solemn portrait of Native Americans that examines a variety of issues through a range of  viewpoints and contained in unadorned musical settings. Cash actually took out full-page ads daring radio programmers to play "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," but all of the material hits home, from LaFarge's defiant "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow" to Johnny Horton's mournful, spooky "The Vanishing Race."

Here's "As Long as the Grass Shall Grow" performed by Cash shortly after the album's release on Pete Seeger's public TV show. One note -- Cash was in the middle of drug addiction & is clearly stoned out of his head. I'm kind of surprised Seeger had him on the program in that condition -- but his show, Rainbow Quest, was usually populated by little-known folk singers, so Cash must have been quite a catch.  And he does sing the song well & true.

After Johnny Cash cleaned up his act, here is another performance of the same song, with added lyrics, on his successful TV show. He sang it as part of a recurring segment of his program called "Ride This Train" -- within which Cash was now, on  TV, giving "history lessons close to his heart".  6 years after the Seeger clip -- and looking 10 years younger -- Cash frames the song with an extensive prologue and epilog (containing a short version of "Ira Hayes"), creating a more searing indictment of the treatment of Native Americans.

Lynda Kay at Amoeba Records

Saw Alt-Country crooner Lynda Kay at Amoeba Records in Hollywood a couple days ago. She put on quite a show, wowing the crowd from the start when she walked onstage in a golden suit and under amazing hair--looking just as she does on the left. Kay was also tugging along a big ol' Gretsch--she's affiliated with that great ol' guitar company in a publicity campaign. Here's a clip from that show, followed by a clip of Kay singing a hot Rockabilly number, from a concert in another city. When she performed it at Amoeba, it brought the house down. Finally, there's her Gretsch video. She appears in very  different guises in these. At one moment, she's the reincarnation of Patsy Cline; at another, she's the still alive & well Wanda Jackson. But that's nothing--she used to perform an act where she changed costumes 8 times, as noted in this week's  LA Weekly--which chose her one of its "People of 2010", and to grace one if its 4 covers. The picture they used was a cropped black & white version of the picture above. (Where I pick up my Weekly, her cover wasn't the one that was in the bin, dang it!)