The Never Ending Pool

Warren wrote:

QUOTE:
Elliott will be appearing this Saturday, AU 30th., at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park, Ohio.

If you are in the Bay Area, he will be at Camp Mather, Yosemite, this Thursday, the 28th.



Ramblin' Jack at Nelson Ledges Quarry Park, 2007

I need etiquette help...

I had every intention of going to see Ramblin' Jack at this Ohio show. In fact, I was just going to spend the weekend at this music festival. However, I'm a groomsman in a wedding the next week and the bachelor party is this Saturday - the day Ramblin' Jack plays.

So... uh... can anyone think of a good excuse?

No excuse necessary. You tell the groom what you REALLY want to do, and why. Ask him to let you off the hook, Nutopia. Elliott is only doing a couple of dozen gigs, annually, nowadays. If you truly want to go and then don't go, and never see him, subsequently, I think you'll regret it at some point in your life. Opportunity is knockin'. Go. But be upfront with your buddy.

Some upcoming Texas shows:


Thu 9/18/2008 8:00 PM Austin TX Texas Union Ballroom

Fri 9/19/2008 8:00 PM Fort Worth TX McDavid Studio-Bass Performance Hall

Sat 9/20/2008 7:30 PM Winnsboro TX Crossroads Coffeehouse


I happened upon a link to The Old Quarter, in Galveston, TX, which said:

TUESDAY. Sep. 16th - Ramblin' Jack Elliott - Yes this great legend will be here. It will sell out.


Ftr, The Old Quarter was once in Houston, and is where Townes Van Zandt recorded (in 1973) what some consider to be his masterpiece.

Then it's out to Californy:

Sat 9/27/2008 3:00 PM Big Sur CA Henry Miller Library Theater

Anyone going to see Jack?

Elliott in Austin, SE 18 08:

- sings "San Francisco Bay Blues," by Jesse Fuller

- tells a story about Jesse Fuller, citing Paul Mc Cartney learning SFBB from an Elliott record.

- sings "High Sheriff From Baltimore," another Fuller song that Elliott has never recorded.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5JQhAiD6QTc&feature=related

Guy Carawan, 1961


We Shall Overcome [NO 05, 2008]

In 1960, when Guy Carawan first came to the Highlander Research and Education Center, then known as the Highlander Folk School and located near Chattanooga in Monteagle, Tenn., he was a 33-year-old veteran of the Greenwich Village folk revival and a compatriot of Ramblin’ Jack Elliott and Pete Seeger. Guy and his wife, Candie, met at Highlander when he took over the music program there that same year and have stayed with the school ever since, participating in sit-ins, teaching new generations of activists, and introducing the anthem “We Shall Overcome” to the civil-rights movement.

Their efforts may not have made them household names, but last week the Tennessee chapter of the ACLU honored the Carawans with its Lifetime Achievement Award for their decades of activism and organizing.

“The Carawans lifelong integration of music with activism, including their role in introducing ‘We Shall Overcome’ to the civil rights movement, exemplifies the power of freedom of expression to promote justice and equality,’ said ACLU-TN executive director Hedy Weinberg in a press release.

With the rest of the Highlander Center staff, the Carawans moved to Knoxville in 1961 after a Georgia group branded Highlander a communist training school. Since 1971, the Center has been based in New Market, about 25 miles east of Knoxville. (Matthew Everett)



L to R: Perry Horton, Jack Elliott, Lee Tom Perry, Frank Hamilton, Guy Carawan at the Highlander Folk School, 1953

Again, Hamilton and Carawan were the "Frank and Guy" of Elliott's masterpiece, "912 Greens."

http://www.metropulse.com/news/2008/nov/05/eye-scene-stage-directions/

Elliott's forthcoming album, A Stranger Here, is set to be released AP 07, 2009, according to his record label, ANTI-Records. A current press release has this to say:

He stole James Dean's girl, listened for two days while Jack Kerouac read him On the Road, and taught Dylan everything he knew [a bit of an exaggeration, there], now Ramblin' Jack Elliott is trying something new: lending his plaintive drawl to Depression-era blues classics. Produced by Joe Henry (Elvis Costello, Solomon Burke, Bettye LaVette), the new album also features guest appearances from David Hidalgo (Los Lobos, Tom Waits) and Van Dyke Parks. Out April 7.


This Blind Willie Johnson song may take a little getting used to. It is very different from anything Elliott's done that I'm aware of. I've only heard it twice, but I have a hunch it will grow on me.

"Soul of a Man," by Ramblin' Jack Elliott

http://www.sendspace.com/file/dym8ht


The ANTI- label is offering a free download of artists on their label, Mavis Staples included.

The download (left side, near the top) can be found here:

http://www.antilabelblog.com/

thanks warren!
I love it.
A hell of a song (in a good way), and a great job by Jack!
Thanks for these updates!

Ever hear Catfish Keith''s version of Soul of a Man?
It is track 10 on his cd Rollin SEa: http://www.cduniverse.com/search/xx/music/pid/7158932/a/Rolling+Sea.htm
if you're interested.
But I'm not drawing comparisons.It's just yet another interpretation.

And I love Jack's!

My pleasure, Flowr.




From Anti Records, Elliott's label:


RAMBLIN' JACK ELLIOTT TO RELEASE A STRANGER HERE APRIL 7 2009

Legendary Troubadour Explores Depression-Era Blues Classics with Producer Joe Henry

Ramblin' Jack Elliott will release his long-anticipated follow-up to his 2006 ANTI- Record debut I Stand Alone on April 7th 2009, entitled A Stranger Here. Working with producer Joe Henry (Bettye LaVette, Solomon Burke, Elvis Costello/Allen Toussaint), the 77 year old Elliott sings and plays acoustic guitar, and is backed by a stellar collection of musicians handpicked by Henry, among them Van Dyke Parks and David Hidalgo (Los Lobos).

Revered for his interpretive take on traditional American music, on A Stranger Here Elliott steps out of the country/folk arena that has shaped his legend, 50+ years in the making. Haunting and evocative landscapes crafted by Henry construct a mood that is enhanced by Elliott's world-scarred voice. Together, musician and producer examine a carefully selected number of pre-WWII blues songs in a wholly unique way.

From the liner notes of A Stranger Here, Henry writes: "I pitched the idea that he interpret country blues music from the Depression era of his birth... songs as dark, funny and strange as is he and the times that produced them, and also ones that still resonate in these turbulent days: songs from the blues masters Jack had known during their latter-day resurgence - and his own ascension - in the early sixties (Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, Rev. Gary Davis); songs that share shape and subject with many folk songs of the same period but speak with a particular poetry to struggle, love, justice and mortality - off-handedly and all at once... I needn't have pitched so hard. Jack seemed intrigued by the notion from the start, and had no trouble reading the songs as pertinent to him. He pounced on each one as it came up during the four days of recording in my basement studio, gave each a face of suave cunning, and was as unexpectedly arch as Bob Hope might've seemed strolling through a Fellini tableau. He's using an old language but always speaking in the present tense."

One of the great American musical treasures, Elliott has had a rich and storied life. As a budding musician, Jack developed his voice under the tutelage of Woodrow Wilson Guthrie, truck hitching across the country off and on for a couple of years with Woody, carrying "only razors and guitars." The pair eventually landed in the McCarthy-free enclave of Topanga Canyon CA in the 1950s, where Elliott played for James Dean and later married Dean's former flame. On the other coast, Elliott was also a fixture of the Greenwich Village scene, and once spent "three days and a lot of wine" listening to Jack Kerouac read On the Road. But it is his relationship with a young Bob Dylan that Elliott is perhaps most famous for, though back in the 1960s the up-and-coming Dylan was often mistakenly dubbed the "son of Jack Elliott." Today Elliott simply states "Dylan learned from me the same way I learned from Woody."

A Stranger Here promises to be another wonderful tome in the library of Ramblin Jack Elliott, one of the great American storytellers.

http://www.anti.com/catalog/view/123/A_Stranger_Here

Song samples are in the link. Some of Elliott's songs are rare, and are among his first recordings, dating from the early-to-mid 1950s.

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Musical-Grandfather-Father-Bob-Dylan/dp/B001BHTNBI/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&s=music&qid=1229667889&sr=1-3

Hilarious!

Some of you will have heard Dylan and Elliott sing "Acne," from 1961, on The Ballad of Ramblin' Jack soundtrack, but the RTR video segment (in its entirety), here, is not in "The Ballad" video.

Don't miss it, kids. Bob drivin' and Jack puffin', on the RTR bus:

http://www.understandingacnefree.com/acne-pictures/ramblin-jack-elliott-bob-dylan-acne-live-1961

Bonus laff: on the Acne Treatment Blog, yet!

Jack talks about his forthcoming album, and weighs in on the state of the economy:

Ramblin' Jack Elliott And Friends Sing The Blues

Fri Jan 30, 2009 7:17pm EST

By Michael D. Ayers

NEW YORK (Billboard) - Van Dyke Parks and Los Lobos' David Hidalgo lend a hand on storied songwriter Ramblin' Jack Elliott's second album this decade, "A Stranger Here."

Due April 7th via Anti-, the set finds Elliott, 77, working with producer Joe Henry to interpret Depression-era blues songs. Parks contributes piano and vibraphone, while Hidalgo offers acoustic guitar and accordion.

"The record company selected about 15 old blues songs that I might choose to learn, and I was listening to that CD about four or five times a day for three months," Elliott said of the origin of the project. "I got a good feel for some of the songs, but I didn't memorize them. So I was a bit nervous, because I hadn't memorized a single song. But I tried to give a good reading, despite all that half-assed preparation."

The album was recorded in just four days, a pace Elliott attributes to the backing band. "They followed me; they were good listeners, good followers and gave a really great back up," he said. "It was so thrilling; I just dug into it."

Grateful Dead fans will recognize "Death Don't Have No Mercy," a staple in the seminal band's early sets. Also included are the Son House classic "Grinnin' in Your Face" and a marching, dark version of Blind Willie Johnson's "Soul of a Man."

The material here reflects the current economic crisis, a fact that's not lost on Elliott. "I think they're trying to deter people from getting too scared," he said.

"The word 'recession' is just a polite way trying to make it sound nicer. When I was born, it was the worst year of the depression -- 1931. But I was too young to notice anything."

Reuters/Billboard

http://www.reuters.com/article/musicNews/idUSTRE50U03V20090131

Courtesy of moon j, expectingrain.com, and a tip from PSB:

Here's another cut from Elliott's forthcoming album:

Rev. Gary Davis', "Death Don't Have No Mercy"

http://www.nodepression.com/articles.aspx?id=5282

Thanks Warren!

Good to see ya.