The Never Ending Pool

A recent Arlo Guthrie performance, in London, included the following between-song patter, according to reviewer Andy Gill:


Later, he recounts how his mother insisted that on his first solo teenage trip to LA, he had to stay with his father's old travelling companion Ramblin' Jack Elliott, who promptly fixed him up with his first tab of acid, a transaction that went as follows:

"Take this."

"What is it?"

"Don't worry, it'll wear off."



http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/music/reviews/arlo-guthrie-100-club-london-1605274.html

Here are the track listings for Elliott's forthcoming album:

1. Rising High Water Blues
2. Death Don't Have No Mercy
3. Rambler's Blues
4. Soul Of A Man
5. Richland Women Blues
6. Grinnin' In Your Face
7. The New Strangers Blues
8. Falling Down Blues
9. How Long Blues
10. Please Remember Me


Editorial Review

Product Description

Ramblin' Jack Elliott is one of folk music's most enduring legends. An influence on everyone from Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger to the Rolling Stones and the Grateful Dead, Elliott used his charismatic cowboy image to bring his love of folk music to one generation after another. On A Stranger Here, Elliott takes on Depression Era blues songs that have a particular resonance in these turbulent times. With his world scarred voice wrapped around these dark songs of dark days, Elliott has made his masterpiece, an album at once elegiac and defiant, that can stand beside great late career recordings by master singers like Billie Holiday and Frank Sinatra. With the fantastically sympathetic producer Joe Henry at the board, Ramblin' Jack delivers the album his legend has always deserved, and finally proves not just that he is a great folk singer, but a great American singer.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B001SLNPQ6/pageturners0c

Note: Amazon has used the wrong album cover for A Stranger Here

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The Guardian/Observer gives Elliott's new album, A Stranger Here, 5 stars.

Folk review: Ramblin' Jack Elliott, A Stranger Here (Anti-)

Steve Yates The Observer, Sunday 15 March 2009

Born two years into the last big depression, Ramblin' Jack Elliott must have assumed he'd never see another. But here the folk legend rings in the new with songs from the old, sensitively produced by Joe Henry. Underlining the contemporary resonance, he begins with Blind Lemon Jefferson's Rising High Water Blues, reworked as a New Orleans dirge. The cracks in the 77-year-old voice only make songs like Death Don't Have No Mercy even more intimate.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/mar/15/ramblin-jack-elliott-stranger-here


"Rising High Water Blues," by Blind Lemon Jefferson, from 1927

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

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Another cut from the forthcoming album:

"Richland Women Blues"

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

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The Boston Phoenix Review:


Ramblin' Jack Elliott | A Stranger Here
Anti- (2009)
By TED DROZDOWSKI | March 30, 2009

4.0 Stars



The country-blues songbook as written by Son House, Blind Willie Johnson, Mississippi John Hurt, and Charley Patton seems like natural, if previously unexplored, territory for this folk legend. Add producer Joe Henry and a crack band including pianist Van Dyke Parks, Los Lobos' David Hidalgo, and Boston drummer Jay Bellerose and the results are soulful, moody, and entrancing.

Little details like Hidalgo's acoustic slide guitar on "How Long Blues" and the electric rumble he tags on "Falling Down Blues" underline the humanity etched into Elliott's well-traveled, tattered, 77-year-old voice. But Henry's too smart to be predictable, so it's piano - not the genre's emblematic six-strings - that shares the most space with Elliott's dusty-road emoting. And there's even a little vibraphone to help recast Elliott's own "Please Remember Me" as lounge fare.

This is not so much a reinvention as another way to look deep into the heart of Elliott's music. It's also an early nominee for folk album of the year.

http://thephoenix.com/Boston/Music/79167-Ramblin-Jack-Elliott-A-Stranger-Here/

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Crawdaddy! presents a somewhat mixed review:

Ramblin' Jack Elliott
by j. poet
April 1, 2009
A Stranger Here
(Anti-, 2009)

Ramblin' Jack Elliott is 77, and his legend looms large. Live, his charisma is palpable; even today his boyish charm and dazzling smile can turn an audience of strangers into a group of adoring fans. He doesn't write many of his own tunes, but he breathes new life into ancient folk songs, cowboy tunes, and blues classics. His long, between-song narratives-kaleidoscopic tales of his life and times may sound fantastic, but they're mostly true. His nickname, in fact, doesn't refer to his inability to stay in one place for very long, but rather to his habit of jumping from subject to subject in conversation. He was one of Woody Guthrie's last traveling companions, mentored the young Bob Dylan, and hung out with Pete Seeger, Odetta, Jesse Fuller, Allen Ginsberg, and Jack Kerouac.

Elliott's had a strong cult following on the folk circuit most of his life, but over the past 15 years, he's been getting some mainstream recognition - a Best Traditional Folk Album Grammy for South Coast in 1995 and a National Medal of Arts in 1998. Anti- Records signed Elliott in 2006 and his first album for the label, that year's I Stand Alone, introduced him to generations of listeners that weren't born when he started ramblin'. Elliott has never made a bad album, but there are a few hit-or-miss titles in his back catalog, and A Stranger Here is one of them.

Elliott is at his best without any fancy trimmings, which may be why he's seldom recorded with a band. He's a folksinger, and conveys the simple beauty of traditional songs with his energetic picking and a voice that can whoop and holler, plead and moan, sooth and excite. He's at his best all alone with his guitar and harmonica, rambling at will through the estimated 3,000 songs in his repertoire. He usually plays a couple of country blues numbers at each show or on each record, but for A Stranger Here, producer Joe Henry suggested an entire album of blues, and although Henry picked some great players to back Elliott up - David Hidalgo on guitar and accordion, Van Dyke Parks on piano and vibes, and Jay Bellerose on drums - some of the tunes have an awkward feel. Blind Lemon Jefferson's "Rising High Water Blues" limps along on a plodding beat with little swing. "Death Don't Have No Mercy," made popular by the Rev. Gary Davis, is taken at a funereal pace; Elliott sounds uncomfortable and the band superfluous. He starts to hit his stride on Blind Willie Johnson's "Soul of a Man," a religious blues song about mortality and salvation with a barebones arrangement: Just slide guitar, percussion, and a bit of dark, ambient electronica. Mississippi John Hurt's "Richland Women Blues" gives us the Elliott we're more familiar with. It's also the first stripped-down track, just Dobro and piano, and Elliott turning in a loose, playful, sexy vocal. You can feel him smiling as he sings.

"Grinnin' in Your Face," a Son House tune, is musically similar to "Death Don't Have No Mercy," but works better. Elliott sounds defeated and angry and the minimal backing - bass and percussion - uits the tune. Tampa Red's "The New Stranger Blues" has a ragtime feel with some bright mandolin work from Greg Leisz, Parks' piano accents, and a mischievous vocal from Elliott. For the Furry Lewis ode to drink and excess, "Falling Down Blues," Elliott uses a slurred, drunken tone, and plays some nice country blues guitar. The ambient percussion and keyboard is an interesting production choice, but doesn't add anything to the track. The album closes with two of the strongest tracks, Leroy Carr's "How Long Blues" with Hidalgo's conjunto accordion, slashing slide guitar, a down and dirty rhythm section, and Elliott's weary vocal. "Please Remember Me," a proto-R&B tune from the pen of pianist Walter Davis, sounds like a lament being played at closing time in a dingy bar on the corner of a dead-end street. Elliott turns in another boozy vocal full of anguish and self-pity.

Henry's idea of a program of blues from the Great Depression was in production before the awareness of our current economic situation became front-page news. While the synchronicity of events makes for a convenient hook to hang a review on, the blues is a timeless state and doesn't need to be modernized to sound current. The same is true of Elliott. His weathered, soulful voice and traditional picking style define folk music at its purest and best. The continuing popularity of the blues, folk, and other traditional forms prove how vital they are. People who think they need updating are missing the whole point.

http://crawdaddy.wolfgangsvault.com/Article.aspx?id=12904

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Some upcoming gigs for Elliott:

Thu 4/16/2009 7:30 PM San Diego CA Acoustic Music San Diego

Sat 4/18 & 19/2009 8 PM Both Nights +10 PM As Needed Santa Monica CA McCabe's Guitar Shop

Sat 5/2/2009 8:00 PM Kent OH Kent Stages

Note: Sun 5/3/2009 Ramblin Jack' will be at Madison Square Gardens, NYC, for the Springsteen-led tribute to Pete Seeger, on the occasion of Pete's 90th birthday.

Thu 5/7/2009 7:30 PM Cambridge MA Regatta Bar

Sat 5/9/2009 8:00 PM Baltimore MD The 8 x 10 - Eight By Ten

Tue 5/12/2009 9:00 PM New York NY Highline Ballroom

Fri 5/15/2009 7:30 PM Piermont NY The Turning Point

Sun 5/17/2009 8:00 PM Sellersville PA Sellersville Theater


Dates for the gigs are courtesy of Keith Case & Associates.

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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#

Some great lines in that interview, Warren!

'A Stranger Here' has reached Ireland, and I'm really liking it.
Interesting that Jack says he likes 5 out of the 10 tracks. I'm liking a lot more. Some of them have a great bluesy, honky-tonk, neworleansy feel about them.
His voice is amazing (must be down to avoiding ice!). He doesn't sound like a 90-years old, or even a 77- years old.
My favourite track so far: Soul of a Man, Death Don't Have No Mercy, New Strangers Blues, Rambler's Blues. But it's all good. A fine album, very recommendable!

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There're some fine tales in this interview, 4th. Great to see you around (no pun intended)! Your contributions are sorely missed in this forum, and evidence of that is the example you set on the first four or five pages of this thread. Missed, too, is your wit, and also your sparring abilities with trolls that most always provided some of us with some yuks.

Anywho, the mention of Ramblin' Jack and the Wall Street Journal in the same sentence strikes me as somewhat incongruous, but here it is, and it's a good read. Love the anecdote about putting Rev. Gary Davis to bed:


CULTURAL CONVERSATION APRIL 7, 2009 Ramblin' Jack Elliott

Diving Into Deep Blues

By BARRY MAZOR

Ramblin' Jack Elliott, last musical partner of Woody Guthrie, mentor and model for young Bob Dylan, and sonic grandfather of just about every scruffy-voiced folksinger in the Western world, is now 77 and has just undergone some needed hip-replacement surgery. Unlike most people at that point in life, and well past 50 years in a performing career, he not only has a new CD, A Stranger Here, out today on Anti-Records, but it's a release that marks a whole new turn in his repertoire -- toward the hard, "deep" blues of the Depression era.


Ramblin' Jack Elliott
Getty Images

"This is the first time I really tried to do something like Blind Willie Johnson," Ramblin' Jack noted in a recent phone interview. "I was always in awe of his music, and never even thought to try it, really, but when they suggested it to me I thought, 'Well, give it a shot.' I've always loved the blues, and especially the type on the new record -- but some of them were so tough that I wasn't sure if I was going to be able to do them."

The suggestion that the veteran singer of cowpoke ballads and protest songs, and teller of rambling, often hilarious personal stories that gave him his nickname, take up darker, bone-cutting acoustic blues came from performer and producer Joe Henry. Mr. Henry has recently produced notable CDs that brought new 21st-century audiences to Solomon Burke, Bettye LaVette and Allen Toussaint. While Jack Elliott has always sung lighter, blues-related songster numbers of the "San Francisco Bay Blues" and "Don't You Leave Me Here" variety, hillbilly blues like "Salty Dog" and "East Virginia," he has never before ventured into the realm of Lonnie Johnson, Son House, Blind Lemon Jefferson, and Tampa Red, as he does on the new release. And that is despite having shared stages with so many central, even legendary blues singers during the folk revival.

"Yes, I'd hung out with Mississippi John Hurt, the nicest guy you'd ever want to meet," he recalled in typically picaresque style, "and played a couple of tunes with him . . . and Jesse Fuller, and I met Lead Belly one time, in 1948, when I was only 17. I met Big Bill Broonzy, and Muddy Waters, the first time they each played in England. . . . And when I opened for Reverend Gary Davis at the University of Indiana, we stayed overnight in the same room. He got back from the party afterwards before I did, and he was sleeping sitting up on the bed -- in a suit and tie! I loosened his necktie and laid him down, covered him with a blanket, and he slept -- fully dressed. I'd been honored to describe the scenery out the window for him on the plane ride there." (Davis was blind.)

"I also played with Brownie McGee and Sonny Terry in Felton's Lounge in Harlem when I was 19 or 20. But I wasn't really picking up on the blues that intricately. I remember Brownie scolding me one time because I played a wrong chord. He said: 'Hey, Jack. That's a cowboy chord!'"

While the bluesmen whose songs were taken up for this project were mainly either solo acoustic guitar players and singers, as Jack Elliott usually has been himself, or notable singing piano players (Leroy Carr, Walter Davis), the essential sound of the new record, captured in a series of sessions in South Pasadena, Calif., last summer, is that of a small blues combo. Producer Henry assembled a stellar group of supporting musicians for the back-up, including Greg Leisz on guitar, mandolin and slide Dobro, Van Dyke Parks on piano and vibraphone, and David Hidalgo of Los Lobos on guitar and accordion, and Ramblin' Jack credits their finesse for making the adventure in new territory easier than he'd expected:

"All I had to do was sing my part; I'm usually a rhythm guitar player. On some of these, I didn't play guitar at all, and I actually played a little lead on John Hurt's 'Richland Women Blues' and 'Ramblers Blues' from Lonnie Johnson -- who I'd also met and done a show with. He was the first guitarist that I was aware of before I even started playing; I used to listen to Lonnie Johnson records on the radio when I was listening to jazz, back before I got into cowboy music and ran away from home in 1948.



...by Zina Saunders

"It felt like a jam session, done live, with very few repeats. I've done very little playing with other musicians throughout my whole life, and I hardly ever have gone and jammed with people, even when I could have. I'm known to avoid that. But these guys were so good, and they played so beautifully, and it was so tasty, that everything just worked out very sweetly. We worked about nine hours a day, and took about three hours to get each song -- in the basement of a very nice house that used to belong to the widow of the assassinated President James A. Garfield."

The result, some critics were already saying before the album's release, is another "career record," likely to be added to the Jack Elliott titles that have lasted decades, the likes of his live recordings in England in the 1950s [Warren, here. I'm not aware of any such live recordings from the 1950s], his cowboy-song recordings, and his salutes to Woody Guthrie and Jimmie Rodgers. Nicely recovered from the hip surgery, Ramblin' Jack is scheduled to perform his new blues repertoire at some select West Coast shows (including San Diego and Los Angeles) in mid-April, and back East (including New York and Cambridge) in mid-May. (For more information, go to www.ramblinjack.com.)

"I'm trying to learn the words better right now," he admitted. "I was just reading them off a paper in the studio -- after listening to them about a thousand times. I don't really know how well I can do without that wonderful band backing me up, but I can't afford to hire them all the time."

The striking vocals on A Stranger Here suggest that getting a handle on these blues won't really be a problem.


Mr. Mazor, based in Nashville, writes about country and pop music for the Journal.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123905726535894711.html


P.S. 4th Time Around pointed out to me that Elliott's website has had a (much-needed) makeover.

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A recent interview:

RAMBLIN’ JACK ELLIOTT: ALL THINGS GOOD AND ALL THINGS BAD!

April 17th, 2009 · 2 Comments


carolyn pennypacker riggs

Ramblin’ Jack Elliott’s first job was a rodeo hand after he ran away from his childhood home in Brooklyn. Not long after, he apprenticed under Woody Guthrie. Not long after that, Bob Dylan apprenticed under Jack. He’s only written four songs in his entire life, but one of those songs was a personal favorite of Townes Van Zandt. His newest album A Stranger Here (out now on Anti) is made up of blues standards and features Van Dyke Parks on piano. He had his hip replaced just last week. This interview by Kevin Ferguson.

Can you still do the 45-second yodel at the end of ‘Muleskinner Blues?’

I haven’t sung ‘Muleskinner Blues’ in a couple of years. But actually I was going to get a lung test at the hospital one day. The doctors put me on this machine and they told me that I had a problem with my lungs—that it wasn’t reading good. And I thought, ‘Well, I’ll show you guys!’ So I looked at the clock on the wall and I waited ‘til the second hand came up the twelve and I started my yodel which I believe was supposed to be 45 seconds long. But under the added stimulation of having two young doctors watching me and the clock and all—and having just done the lung test, which was like a warm up exercise—I held that note for sixty seconds! A couple of years later I went back to the hospital for another lung test and I had two new doctors—but the same machine, the same old story. I did the test and they said it wasn’t a good reading and I said, ‘OK, I’ll show you guys, too!’ And I looked up at the wall for the second hand again and I started my sixty-second yodel again, but that time I held that note for seventy seconds! But I haven’t tried it much since then. And of course they repeated their diagnosis about what they thought was wrong, and I thought, ‘You guys are a bunch of spoilsports! I ain’t going back here!’

Does the yodel require practice?

I’ve never been known to do any practicing of the guitar or singing—the only practice I get is when I’m on stage. I’m gonna be practicing again soon though, because I need to learn these new songs that I recorded almost ten months ago. I recorded them last June—they’re on a new album that’s just coming out in a few days now? I don’t know any of those songs. I didn’t learn them when I went down there. I was just reading them off the paper.

How did you choose the songs for that album?

I didn’t choose them. The record company suggested them to me—they had this concept in their mind of me doing these funky old blues songs, and I thought, ‘OK, that sounds like a good idea!’ I didn’t want to be argumentative. As a matter of fact, I didn’t even like about half the songs! I listened to them for three months about five times a day, and I never learned a single one! There was only one that I already knew, and I had been singing it for about fifty years—the ‘How Long Blues.’ But I sang Leadbelly’s version, and this is not Leadbelly’s version. This is a different version—the one by the guy that wrote it. I think he was a piano player. The only reason that record so good is because the musicians who were backing me up are a bunch of geniuses! They had done their homework—they knew the songs pretty well, and we did it like a huge jam session. That too is unusual for me because I don’t normally do jam sessions. The best way you can learn and improve your technique on guitar is to work out with other musicians—to play live. I did a lot of that for the first ten years or so that I was playing guitar. But after I got to traveling around and playing professionally more and more, I sort of lost interest in going out and jamming all the time. I love playing with those guys! They were great. Jay Belrose on drums—Van Dyke Parks on piano. And I knew Van Dyke from about twenty years back—we were drinking buddies in L.A.!

What has been the biggest revelation in your life?

Biggest revelation! I had a marvelous time last night. I just got out of the hospital about ten days ago—had a new hip put in, and I just started to walk back to normal. I’m walking with a walking stick. A friend of mine told me that Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard were playing in a theatre near where I lived, so he drove me over there in my truck because I’m not ready to drive yet. I got a special cushion I can sit on ‘cause it’s kind of painful to sit in a car. I got about two more weeks to go—I’ll be ready to go on the road. But right now I’m just barely getting used to having this new hip in me, and it gets a little painful sometimes. But I walked a mile a day before yesterday, and that was a little bit too much. It took me an hour and a half to get the mail! But I went to see Kris Kristofferson and Merle Haggard last night! They did a great show. Joel Selvin was there from the San Francisco Chronicle, and he had just written a big story about them… so a good time was had by all, and I’m starting to like get ready to face show biz and being on the road again. So—the greatest revelation! Well, I guess it was when I climbed the rigging in an old whaler in a museum ship in Mystic, Connecticut. I’ve always loved boats—water and clipper ships. So I met some people who sailed in these old square riggers, and I was memorizing a lot of information about boats and navigation. I went and climbed up the rigging that cold winter’s day. My hands were so cold I could only go up about one third of the way! So then I climbed back down to the deck to warm my hands. It took me three separate climbs—about an hour—to gradually work my way up to the whale lookout about 125 feet above the deck on this old sailing whale ship called the Charles W. Morgan. That was kind of an exercise in control of cold and fear of heights, and learning to accept being alone in the cold. A lot of my heroes were singlehanded navigators, and I’d read about it. But I myself have never done a long trip solo. I had a small sailboat in the Atlantic Ocean about a mile offshore from when I was about 16 to when I was 20. When I’d sail it in the wintertime, they’d call that ‘frostbite dinghy sailing.’

Frostbite dinghy sailing?

Warmly dressed, of course. You’d wear ex-Navy foul-weather gear—wool and such. It was very fun. But then my first performance was playing for World War II survivors in a hospital in New York. These guys were pretty fucked-up from being in the war and they lost legs and arms and stuff—they didn’t make a very good audience. Some were laughing, some were crying, some were cussing, some were telling jokes, and some were even listening and enjoying the music! That was my first schooling in handling an audience. But I have never been able to handle drunks very well. My L.A. gigs are a bit trying, too, because the audience at McCabe’s guitar shop are mostly elderly people and they’re serious fans and they’re dead quiet—sort of like in church! I’ve been known to go asleep on stage in that venue! So I have to be a stand-up comic at the beginning. Get them out of their reverent worshipful mood that they’re in and wake ‘em up! Of course, there’s about a hundred guitars up on the wall there—people are afraid to clap for fear that they might start a guitar avalanche off the wall!

Do you still play your old Gretsch?

Well, it was stolen and it was missing for 23 years! I got it back—I had a local guitar maker take it back and glue it all together again. He did a pretty good job. It’s got a lot of scars of battle on it. I asked him to please not make it look any prettier than it did before I lost it. It’s been over the Alps on the back of a motor scooter in a blizzard, all over Europe for about three years! So I don’t need to kind of expose it to any more travel—it’s a museum piece. The other day, I hauled it out in its case and showed it to a friend who’s a boat builder. He stomped on it and he was amazed—I was amazed—how good the Gretsch still sounds and holds up despite all of the glue that’s been added to it. Because I got it back from this thief because he saw me singing with Kris Kristofferson in the same theater where I was last night to see Kris. He must have had a pang of guilt when he saw me playing on stage without it—he knocked on the stage door later and he said his name, said he was a friend of so-and-so. He gave me his number and I called him and went up to visit at his farm and got my guitar back. It looked like he carefully removed the guitar from the case, put it on the ground, and rolled over it with a tractor two or three times! It was a mess! Totally wrecked! He said a friend of his gave it to him and stuff like, ‘I didn’t know where you were. I thought you were out of town, Jack! Here’s the guitar—take good care of it.’ I was very tempted to say, ‘Why didn’t you take good care of it?’ But I thought it wouldn’t be polite. Especially when I’m sitting in his house drinking his wine and he’s treating me like a guest. I really think that kid stole my guitar. It took a couple of years for my guitar-maker friend to glue that thing back together again! You know, I loaned that guitar to the Experience Music Project museum and they had it travelling all over America for two years as an exhibit of early Bob Dylan influences. They had it in a glass case along with some pertinent information about the guitar because that was the guitar I had played on my first early recordings that Bob had gotten from some friends in Minneapolis when they first turned them on to Woody Guthrie and then to me.

Did you ever really call him your son?

No! I never did! The press called him ‘son of Jack Elliott.’ They thought it was kind of a cute way to announce the arrival of a new talent on the scene. And I was very proud of it because he was very obviously imitating me, although other people saw it more plainly than I could see it. I’d sing a song on stage and a minute later Bob would jump on and start doing something that he just noticed that I was doing—totally unabashedly! It used to piss people off—they didn’t understand why I was allowing it. They thought I ought to crack down on the bastard! But I liked him. He was my friend—sort of unofficially like a student. That’s the way I learned from Woody, too. I was out hanging out with Woody for about four years, starting in 1951. He just told me a lot of stories and we’d play music together. I learned a lot about guitar playing with Woody.

What was the first song he taught you?

Actually, I learned it off a record of his—it was called ‘Hard Travelling.’ I actually knew it by heart when I first met Woody. I’d been listening to that record for about two months before I finally called him one day. I got his phone number through a friend of mine. I called him up and said ‘I’ve been listening to your records, and I sure like your music.’ And he said ‘Well, come on over—bring your guitar! We’ll knock off a couple of tunes together! Don’t come today, though—I got a bellyache.’ And indeed, he almost died. He had appendicitis.

What’s the worst indignity about travelling by air?

Having to give them my guitar and put in baggage where they can break it! I was very lucky they’ve never broken it. But I’ve had many, many friends who had their valuable guitars broken by airlines, Earl Scruggs had his banjo broken by one of those airlines, and so he bought an airplane to learn how to fly on his own! I’ve had my suitcase lost four or five times—always got it back a few days back. I remember when they used to have beautiful stewardesses and nice food and silverware. Metal silverware! That was the old days when the plane stunk of cigarette smoke and coffee, and I didn’t mind!

How did it feel knowing that ‘912 Greens’ was one of the last songs Townes Van Zandt ever heard?

Well, it felt very good that night—I didn’t know that he was going to die. He didn’t even let me know that he had a broken hip. He had tripped over a tree stump the day before and he was frightened to go to a hospital. But he needed to get a surgical operation to get his hip fixed. He put it off ac couple of days before his loved ones finally talked him into going to the hospital. Now, my father was a surgeon. When you operate an alcoholic, you have to give them alcohol. Otherwise they’ll die of shock! And those doctors must’ve not known that. You know, there are a lot of doctors who just don’t know anything nowadays. Isn’t that funny? I don’t know what they teach in medical school. There’s a lot to be found out about the medical profession. He said he liked ‘912 Greens.’ I know he did because every time I talked to him he mentioned that. And I thanked him and I said, ‘You have a nice New Year’s.’ He died about eight hours after that.

What do you think America lost with the death of Odetta?

She had a great powerful voice and a lot of spirit. She was a wonderful, wonderful woman and I just don’t think they make a lot of people like that anymore. She sang Leadbelly songs and old folk songs. She sang a lot of Leadbelly songs. We did five or six concerts together, spread out over two years time. When she died they had a big tribute to Odetta, so I made a videotape and they played it on a big screen.

Is it true that her mom was the first person to call you ‘Ramblin’?’

That’s correct! I like to tell a lot of stories, you know—long stories. I had just met Odetta about a month before and she lived across the street from a man that had several Model A Fords. I had just purchased a Model A and I went to see the man about fixing this and that I because he was an expert. The first time I visited Odetta, her mother answered the door and said, ‘Odetta is in the bathtub—you can wait here in the living room.’ So I waited and I waited and I waited—I could hear the water splashing in the bathtub. I could hear Odetta singing to herself! She seemed very content to be in the bathroom for over a half hour. She’s a large person. Anyway, I got tired of waiting so I went up to the bathroom door and said ‘Hey, Odetta—it’s me, Jack! I’m here!’ and I started telling stories about my adventures. Her mother thought that was odd. The next time I visited Odetta and knocked on her door, her mother looks out the little peephole, saw my face and I heard her holler, ‘ODETTA, RAMBLIN’ JACK IS HERE!’ That was the first time I heard that name. I’ve heard it an awful lot since then!

Was On The Road the only manuscript that’s ever been read to you?

That’s the only one! I’ve read manuscripts for movies and stuff, but that was the first and last time anybody read me their manuscript. We drank some wine, had some other things and we sat on the floor. Jack read to us for three days!

How do you stay awake through that?

I don’t think we had any trouble staying awake—it was such a wonderful story. That was in the year 1953 and the book came out in 1956, or ‘57! Yeah, ‘57—it was four years prior to the publishing of the book. So when it finally came out I was in Paris and I gave a reading of some of the chapters of that book and along with a reading of some of Woody’s writings. I performed, too. I was performing in concert with Allen Ginsberg and Gregory Corso in Paris.

How do you survive on two dollars a day when you’re a rodeo hand?

Well, it was in 1947—I could get bacon and eggs and a cup of coffee and sometimes still have enough money left over for a malted milk later! But that was it—I was pretty much a one-meal-a-day kid for about three months. Well, the latter part of that time I was on the ranch I was paid 5 dollars a week, but they fed us. I had nineteen flapjacks every morning! The cook made the most delicious pancakes! To this day, I still love buckwheat pancakes—they’re very different. A unique flavor. They taste rich and healthy without being too sweet. It’s sort of like a good bowl of oatmeal!

Is there a trick to make the most money possible while busking?

Aw, I never made much money busking! When I was busking in Paris regularly—practically every night—in the wintertime, we would work for approximately one hour and collect the equivalent of about $8 U.S., which was about enough to pay our room rent and one or two meals. Breakfast was just coffee and a croissant, lunch was a ham sandwich, and dinner was a beefsteak and frites.

When was the last time you rode a horse?

I rode a horse when I was watching Larry Mayham practice roping. It was at a Colorado film festival. Before that, I rode a horse about a year ago on a round-up finding some cattle up in the mountains of Northern California. Bringing them down in a rainstorm and sleeping in a very leaky tent with a cowboy who snored. After about three hours of soaking in my sleep, I apologized to him for abandoning him and went into my Ford truck. There, I had a wool blanket and 2 full hours of good sleep until I heard the cook rustling up the coffee pot. I was up like a flash! We couldn’t even brand the calves—they were too wet! But I like riding horses—I just don’t get to ride them enough. I used to have a horse for twelve years and rode him constantly in the hills of Northern California.

What was his name?

His name was Young Brigham. I had him on a record album cover—the album was named after him, too. The saddle maker that sold me that horse told me, ‘You know, Jack, if you put a picture of Brigham on the cover of your record album, the hay will be tax deductible!’

Is that for real?

It was a good sales point! I was already in love with the horse, anyway.

How do you think your music and Woody’s music fits in with today, as we’re risking a second Great Depression?

I think it fits in perfectly. He was singing about hard times, and he went through the hard times and he saw it and he wrote about it. And now we’re getting ready to have some more. I think people appreciate the music because it means something to them. Back as recently as a year ago, the country was still in a blind bourgeois alcoholic drug-induced Hollywood-induced fog of, ‘Gimme, gimme, gimme! Gotta have a fast car, gotta have a big fat four-wheel drive, just like in the movies.’ We were totally stupid—in a crazed state of mind—which helped to bring about the fall. It’s like the rise and fall of the Roman Empire. Stuff goes up and comes back down again. It’s gravity!

What’s the one lesson we all should have learned from history but never will?

I think that there’s a very good chance that most of the people will never have learned anything. Because it seems like it’s almost built into human nature that it’s easy for certain politicians to exist. As long as the politicians do exist, they’re always going to lie to the public and the deprivation and destruction of schools will continue. And California is the leading state in backwardness for education. It’s still shocking and hard to believe! I was raised on mom, apple pie, red white and blue, ‘America the Beautiful’—I was very patriotic in my heart, although I was lucky enough to not have to go to war. I was too young for World War II and later I just fell through the cracks. I probably would’ve had to be a draft dodger or refuse to go. I don’t approve of warfare and I don’t like killing animals or people. Although I used to love a good steak!

So you’re a vegetarian?

I’m part idealist and part hypocrite. I’m part yogi and part bull-rider. I’m all things good and all things bad! No, I’m not, Hitler was! No, I’m not a vegetarian. But I am trying to cut down on meat as I’ve found out that red meat is not as good for you as I had once supposed that it was. And yet I crave it! But I’m starting to eat more lamb. I love lamb curry and I love lamb chops. I like Indian food a lot, too. Theoretically, I’m much more a vegetarian than I am in practice. And I don’t smoke cigarettes. I did smoke cigarettes for about twenty years. I started when I was fifteen, rolling my own cigarettes at the rodeo ranch. I thought that was cool! Then I started smoking Camels and Luckys and all that trash. I was very lucky that I didn’t get seriously addicted to tobacco. One day I decided I was really tired and bored with it, and I just stopped buying and smoking cigarettes. I didn’t have a difficult time quitting tobacco. I know that most people have a hard time—they say it’s harder to kick than heroin!

What was it like getting an award from Bill Clinton?

Well, of course I don’t ever rehearse what I’m going to say. It seems like it comes out better ad-libbed, in the style of Woody Guthrie and Will Rogers. They never rehearsed or planned out what they were going to say. And so here comes the president and he’s about to shake hands with me in the White House. I said, ‘It’s wonderful to meet you, Bill! Is it ok if I call you Bill?’ And he said, ‘Of course, Jack.’ And I felt like he was my friend! I like him! And I had come in with no preconceived notion about him. I just looked in his eyes and I thought, ‘This guy is OK. Good man.’ When I met his wife, I said, ‘I’m Ramblin’ Jack!’ and she just hollered, ‘I KNOW YOU, RAMBLIN’ JACK!’ It reverberated down the hall of the White House! It was as if she was back in Arkansas knocking on the back porch to borrow some sugar. I thought, ‘These guys are down home folks!’

What was the most memorable time you sang the national anthem?

As a matter of fact, I sang it the one time we were being serenaded by some musicians on foot who were in blue. It was the U.S. Marine Corp band, and they were playing all these tunes, mostly patriotic songs. So I chimed in with them on, ‘America, America, God shed his grace on thee.’ I had had ONE shot of scotch and two glasses of red wine, which is about enough. I was a little bit in my cups—as they say—but I didn’t dare look but my wife sitting next to me peeked over. I was singing a little too loud because I was carried away with patriotic fervor. Bill was looking right at me, grinning broadly. He just dug it! And later after the dinner was over, immediately I had to scooch over and allow Bill to sneak past me, ahead of some other people. As he walked by me, I put my hand up to my mouth as if I had a secret to whisper to him. And in fact the G-Men by the other wall couldn’t see what I was saying, and I told Bill, ‘I heard a rumor that Bob Dylan is in town tonight and I thought we could dress you up in a disguise and sneak you over there.’ He threw his head back and laughed, ‘That would be fun!’

http://larecord.com/interviews/2009/04/17/ramblin-jack-elliott-all-things-good-and-all-things-bad/

At Pete Seeger's 90th, MA 03 09

In April of this year, Elliott did a show (with Ralph Stanley and The Clinch Mountain Boys on the bill) in Boulder, Colorado. The occasion was for a broacast on NPR, by Etown.org.

Jack's segment begins at the 30-minute mark of this hour-long feature. He performs two songs off his new album, A Stranger Here, followed by a short and amusing interview. He is in good form. He also sings the first Woody Guthrie song that he learned, "Hard Travellin'."

The pod link is here:

http://dreamhost.etown.org/podcast/


Here is the mp3:

http://www.sendspace.com/file/xz57ze

Thanks Warren.

.
Courtesy of Scott Miller and expectingrain.com:

A Rolling Stone Interview. Some of the tales will be familiar to some fans.


Ramblin' Jack Elliott: Tales From His Long and Winding Career

Urban cowboy talks Bob Dylan, Woody Guthrie and his own legacy

DAVID BROWNE

Posted Jun 23, 2009 7:40 AM

Over a half century ago, Ramblin' Jack Elliott became Woody Guthrie's sidekick and leading interpreter, and later a hero to Bob Dylan and the early '60s folk scene. At 77, Elliott (born Elliot Adnopoz, in Brooklyn) still lives up to his nickname. Ask the San Francisco-based urban cowboy a simple question - for instance, how Joe Henry came to produce Elliott's new album of Depression-era blues, A Stranger Here - and he'll embark on the first of many detours through his long and storied career. "I've known him for close to my whole life, and I've never heard the same story twice," marvels Arlo Guthrie. "It wasn't until I was older when I realized that 'ramblin' was not a geographical name." A few of Elliott's fascinating rambles:

On first meeting Dylan:

"I met Bob when Woody was in the hospital. He was this funny little kid. He told me he had all my recordings. He rattled off the names of all the songs I did on those albums. I didn't remember them myself. He was kinda weird, and a lot of people were making noises about what a terrible voice he had. He did have kind of a screechy voice. But he was like a son to me. For his first gig at Gerde's Folk City. I took him down to the Musicians Union because you had to be in the union to work that gig. I was a member myself, and I vouched for him. Said he was a very good guitar player."

On his memorable version of Dylan's "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right":

"For three days I was locked in a cabin in a snowstorm in Pennsylvania after my second wife had run off with another man, who was later Bob's road manager. I was about to play a gig but it snowed so hard that we couldn't get down the hill to get out of the house. So we were locked in this cabin with firewood and a bottle of whiskey and a Bob Dylan record. I listened to that record all day and night for three days. On the third day the snow melted and I got the door open and jumped in my truck and drove to New York City and went to the Gaslight where everyone hung out. It was a Monday open mic night. I sang about one verse of 'Don't Think Twice' and someone stood up in the audience. I squinted into the darkness and recognized Bob and he waved his arm at me and said [in perfect Dylan imitation], 'I relinquish it to you, Jack!' I said, 'Wow' and went on playing. I'd never had anything relinquished to me before."

On jamming as a kid with Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee:

"I used to play with them when I was living in Brooklyn with Woody. Sonny used to tell me that my mother would call him up looking for me: 'Have you seen my boy?' He liked to rag me on that. I was about 15 and it kinda made my fur crawl. It kinda was embarrassing."

On accompanying Nico in Greenwich Village, mid-'60s:

"I really admired her. She was very beautiful. She had a very strange way of singing. It was kind of monotone but she put it over. I played that one weekend and got paid $75 with a check signed by Andy Warhol. I could've sold that check for $75,000, but I cashed it because I needed money. I don't know where that check is now. Probably some banker has it on a wall somewhere."



On the cover of his just-reissued 1970 album Young Brigham:

"I was living in a ranch in the San Fernando Valley, and Brigham was the name of my horse. The man who sold me that horse said, 'You know, Jack, if you put your horse on your album cover, the hay will be tax deductible!' I went, 'I gotta remember that.' I took a picture of me on the horse and put it on the record album and named it after him. But I don't think I ever bothered to do that tax deduction."

On being part of Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue (1975):

"It was like a bunch of kids who'd run away with the circus. We were coddled and protected and it was kind of fun, like being a kid again. We probably had too much to drink and it seemed like we were having a lot of rollicking fun the whole way. One time I shared a back room on a bus with my daughter and Joni Mitchell for four hours. We saw a fire out the window. Joni was writing a song called 'Coyote' and she put that in the song, 'We saw a farmhouse burning down in the middle of the road.' I still don't know who Coyote is."

On helping induct Woody Guthrie into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (1988):

"I was sitting there with a dirty beat-up old Stetson and a lumberjack shirt I had on the airplane. I was late and couldn't change clothing, so we went straight to the building. Had some cold coffee and some cake. Later we were all jamming onstage. That piano player from England, Elton John, stood up and turned around and shook hands with me. I guess he was a fan of mine. We didn't have a chance to talk; he had to sit right back down and continue playing. It was in the middle of a song."

On seeing Dylan, recently:

"He played here a few years ago at a lake up north, and he said, 'What's in your life, Ramblin'?' I said, 'I got a new Ford truck, I drove from Oklahoma, took me four days, fed the cats, got a little sleep.' He starts giggling: 'Fed the cats. Fed them cats.' He was giggling. That's all he said. I'm still waiting for a Dylanographer to explain to me what he meant."

On his legacy - reinventing yourself:

"I was going to visit Willie Nelson in San Francisco. One obviously gay young man recognized me on the street and he said, 'Ramblin' Jack! You know, you're a hero - you've done a lot for the movement.' I said, 'What movement?' He said, 'Gay liberation.' 'What did I do for you?' He said, 'Just being yourself.' I pretended to be angry and yelled, 'This ain't no Brokeback Mountain!' And they laughed like hell, because they knew where I was comin' from. I'm a friendly kind of guy."

http://tinyurl.com/mph6fh