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Ramblin' Jack Marks Birthday In Style
By DANIEL SIDMAN
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
August 03, 2011 2:00 AM
SOUTH YARMOUTH [Massachusetts] -
Even at age 80, Ramblin' Jack Elliott remains the consummate entertainer. The famed folk troubadour and two-time Grammy winner took to the stage on Monday, the day he became an octogenarian, in front of a packed house at the Cultural Center of Cape Cod.
He delighted the audience with an array of blues and folk tunes on his guitar, interspersed with humorous anecdotes acquired from his years of extensive traveling. Just off a performance at the Newport Folk Festival in Newport, R.I., Elliott ascended the stage sporting jeans, a cowboy hat and sunglasses. It quickly became evident that his voice hasn't lost its any of its charming luster and that he still retains all the vivacity and stage presence that endeared him to audiences in the first place.
Elliott opened his set with "San Francisco Bay Blues," the invigorating and upbeat but still heartbreaking tune by bluesman Jesse "The Lone Cat" Fuller.
After the opening number, Elliott talked briefly about his hitchhiking trip from New York City to the tip of the Cape in 1953 "to get away from Greenwich Village." In Provincetown he had a loaf of bread and a red onion for lunch because he heard that it was a meal fishermen in Brittany, France, routinely ate. "I didn't get seasick," he quipped.
Next Elliott played a tune by his mentor Woody Guthrie, "Ranger's Command." The song's cadence replicates the plodding rhythm of a horseback trip through the desert, with cavalier cowboy lyrics to match: "Come all of you cowboys all over this land/I'll teach you the law of the Ranger's Command/To hold a six shooter, and never to run/As long as there's bullets in both of your guns."
Elliott moved on to "Freight Train Blues" by John Lair. "I've got the freight train blues/ Lordy, lordy, lordy, got 'em in the bottom of my ramblin' shoes," he sang, prolonging the end of each line in imitation of the sound of a freight train whistle.
He followed with Guthrie's "Talking Sailor," a talky story song about becoming "one of the merchant crew" that was inspired by his mentor's experience in the Merchant Marines during World War II.
Throughout the show Elliott got laughs from the audience with his charming personality and keen sense of humor. "Can we dim the lights a tiny bit," he politely asked early in his set. "I feel like I'm at Miami Beach."
He described playing with fellow folk legend Pete Seeger at the Newport festival and, because of his admittedly poor hearing at this point in his life, not understanding what Seeger was singing: "Pete was mumbling into the microphone. I knew it meant a lot to him. It meant a lot to me, too. I just wish I knew what it meant."
He joked about his age as well. "By the way, this is my 78th birthday, not my 80th," he informed the audience. "I'm turning the boat around. It's a good thing, I was getting tired of being 79."
Next came Guthrie's "Talking Columbia," and later Jimmie Rodgers' "Mule Skinner Blues," which featured Elliott appropriately singing, "I like working/I'm rolling all the time."
Elliott brought blues musician
Paul Geremia onstage for a solo performance of Gertrude "Ma" Rainey's blues staple "See See Rider" on guitar and harmonica.
Geremia met Elliott in 1966 in Canada when Elliott had just returned from England and was sporting "a deerstalker hat, a houndstooth jacket and smoking a Sherlock Holmes-style corncob pipe."
"Paul saved my life two or three times fishing," Elliott explained when he got back on the stage. "I'm a good sailor, but I'm not a very good fisherman."
He played "The South Coast Ballad," a gripping story song by Lillian Bos Ross about a man winning a wife in a game of cards with the woman's father. "I learned this song from the woman that wrote it," he said. "No I didn't. I learned it from (folk musician) Frank Hamilton, who told me about the woman who wrote it."
The staff at the Cultural Center wheeled out a birthday cake for Elliott with two lit candles on it. "It's great to be 2 years old again," he joked. The audience joined in singing "Happy Birthday" to the singer.
Elliott's manager, Gaynell Rogers, read off some birthday messages sent to the folk singer, including one from Kris Kristofferson. His message: "Happy birthday, you old fart."
The set ended with "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," a Bob Dylan track. Elliott described performing the song at an open-mic night at Gaslight Lounge in New York City. Elliott did an accurate and truly hilarious impression of Dylan's distinct voice as he explained how Dylan poked his head out from a curtain in the back of the room as he sang and said to him, "I relinquish it to you, Jack."
The emotional earnestness and openness of Elliott's voice as he sang this bittersweet tune about "traveling on" made for a truly moving closure for a memorable evening, an evening in which Elliott demonstrated with his inimitable charm and musical chops why he's regarded as a legend in the realm of folk music.
Cultural Center of Cape Cod, South Yarmouth
http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20110803/LIFE/108030302
"...sporting 'a deerstalker hat... .'" c. JA, 1967 on tour with The Lovin' Spoonful
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