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Several weeks ago, Ramblin' Jack had hip replacement surgery. But he's been up and about, and rode around in a small pickup, giving an interview. Included is an amusing anecdote about how he met producer, Joe Henry.
Legendary Musician Has Seen and Done It All and Still Has a Twinkle In His Eye
By JOHN BECK
THE PRESS DEMOCRAT
Santa Rosa, CA
Published: Sunday, April 5, 2009 at 3:41 a.m.
"I better learn the words to these songs before they get me out on the road singing them," says Ramblin' Jack Elliott.
Ramblin' Jack Elliott learned from Woody Guthrie, introduced Bob Dylan and signed an autograph for a young Bruce Springsteen. At 77, he has a new CD out Tuesday.
We're driving down a windy west Marin road listening to his new CD, "A Stranger Here." He starts singing along, his voice cracking in the same spots as the voice on the car stereo.
"Death don't have no mercy in this land," he lets loose in a cowboy blues drawl, with the windows wide open so anyone we pass can hear.
Three weeks ago, he had his second hip replaced -- the right one this time. Now he's crammed into the cab of a small pickup truck with his walking stick, sitting at an angle so his "starboard cheek is off the seat."
He's wearing a tattered nautical cap, green flannel shirt with a tan jacket and purple sweatpants. Every once in a while, before he arrives at the kicker in a long-winded tale, he gets a wry smile and a twinkle in his eye that makes you laugh even if you haven't followed the myriad tangents it took to get there. It's the reason singer Odetta's mom blessed him with the nickname "Ramblin' Jack."
But for now, he's just trying to remember the lyrics, singing along to himself on the stereo: "Death don't take no vacation in this land."
Covered by scores of musicians over the years, the haunting blues classic by Rev. Gary Davis is one of the "five out of 10 songs I like on the album," Elliott says.
Coming out Tuesday, "A Stranger Here" is his first ever blues album, reviving masters like Mississippi John Hurt, Son House and Blind Lemon Jefferson. It was the brainchild of producer/singer-songwriter Joe Henry who, last fall, found himself humming the same song -- "Death Don't Have No Mercy" -- over and over, until he was stuck in a loop.
"I was just kind of walking around singing it in my head constantly," he remembers. But the voice he heard singing it was Ramblin' Jack Elliott's.
They had met more than 20 years ago, one afternoon while Joe Henry was sitting in the hallway of the Warner Brothers offices. Sire Records co-founder Seymour Stein "came tearing out of his office, frustrated, yelling out loud, 'I can't believe nobody knows what Ramblin' Jack Elliott looks like!'"
Henry did and wound up driving to the airport to pick up the folk legend in the cowboy hat who was attending Woody Guthrie's posthumous induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame that night.
"I thought, well if I want to hear Jack singing this song, I'm gonna have to have an excuse to do it," Henry says. "So I'm gonna scheme a record that will make sense for me and give us a context to allow me to get Jack to record this song."
The perfect excuse was a timely collection of Depression-era blues songs -- music from the heyday of Elliott's birth, revived three-quarters of a century later as America once again teeters on the verge of Depression blues.
Elliott likes the way it turned out even though "I had no faith, no hope and no expectations when I went down to record this thing."
At 77, he's seen it all. He's busked all over Europe. Played the missing link between Woody Guthrie and Bob Dylan. Listened to Kerouac read on and on from the scroll that would become "On the Road." Signed an autograph for a wide-eyed kid named Bruce Springsteen. A Greenwich Village icon, he's recorded more than 40 albums, been nominated for four Grammys - taking one home for "South Coast" - and won over legions of fans and fellow musicians, including Beck, Billy Bragg and the cast of the folk mockumentary "A Mighty Wind."
He did heroin once but hated it. Contrary to myth, he only rode a freight train once in his life. The best sound system he's ever had is in his pickup truck. Someone painted a picture of him riding a bull on his guitar. But "after several years of tequila dripping down underneath the plastic cover (of the pick guard), there's no face and no hat -- it's the headless bullrider."
It's not a bad life for a Jewish kid born Elliott Charles Adnopoz in Brooklyn in 1931. His first guitar was a $12 Collegiate, made out of cigar-box wood with strings "an inch above the fingerboard." He joined the rodeo and the rest is history. At least that's the legend.
To hear Ramblin' Jack tell it these days is an exercise in oral history.
"Feel like going to town?" he asks. "I think it'd be fun if I can stand the pain."
We decide to drive in for coffee at Point Reyes Station House Café, where everyone knows him as Ramblin' Jack.
When he sends back his water because it has ice in it, he takes a moment to explain. "You know that ice is not only bad for the vocal chords -- and I used to be a singer, that's how I know that -- but it's also bad for your immune system."
"Well, I'm not drinking ice anymore," the waitress replies. "I'll take your word for it. You seem like a very wise man."
Over the years, "I've gotten too much respect," he says in between tall tales and sailing yarns. "I'm anti-social. I really just dream about getting out on the bay in my dory, preferably alone."
The Rev. Gary Davis song he sang earlier is never more relevant. "I never thought I'd be 77," he says. "This period right now is very scary because I feel like I'm three inches from death all the time."
He says he's "not that creative anymore" but he would like to write down a few things on a portable typewriter an old girlfriend gave him. Problem is, he can't find any typewriter ribbons.
His girlfriend these days is a woman who goes by the nickname Sticky Vikki. Back at the house, he pointed out her picture pinned to his bedroom wall. He met her a year ago, one night at Rancho Nicasio, where she was singing in the Sacramento Americana band Sticky Vikki and the Pinecones. She was the one in the cowboy hat and "the short abbreviated red dress." They bonded instantly.
"Although I told her she might have to change her name," he says. "I don't like sticky women."
One of the biggest things on his mind these days is going out on the road for three weeks later this month. He's heading back east for Pete Seeger's 90th birthday celebration in May, sharing a Meadowlands stage with Bruce Springsteen, John Mellencamp, Dave Matthews, Eddie Vedder and at least 20 other notable musicians, many half his age.
Then in Los Angeles, "they've got me gigging in one of my least favorite places -- McCabe's Guitar Shop. I've fallen asleep on stage there many a time. They're terribly religious folk music addicts who go there. They're my age and older. They're afraid to clap because there are a lot of guitars hanging on nails in the wall."
Back in the car on the way home, we flip ahead a few tracks on the CD and listen to him sing "Soul of a Man" by Blind Willie Johnson.
"This song was not my favorite one to sing on the record," he says. "It's very difficult to sing."
What was so challenging?
"Well, I'm trying to sing like a 90-year-old blues singer there," he says. "I've been singing like a 60-year-old folk singer all my life."
He rolls down the window, ready to sing another song, sitting at an angle so his "starboard cheek is off the seat" once again.
He's eager to get back home. Sticky Vikki will be arriving any minute now, making her way by train, bus and car.
"You see she doesn't drive," he says. "I don't know if I can be with a woman who doesn't drive."
When we arrive, Sticky Vikki is nowhere to be found. But he's already off on another tangent, asking, "Do you know where I can find some typewriter ribbon?"
http://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/20090405/LIFESTYLE/904050310/1309?Title=Legendary-musician-has-seen-and-done-it-all-and-still-has-a-twinkle-in-his-eye#
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