june 16th extract- charlie parker

Charlie Parker-The Bird Gets The Worm

Today, 16^th June is Bloomsday. This year Radio 4 have been running dramatisations of the novel all throughout the day and broadcast live from Dublin. This has prompted me to dig out from the back of the bookcase the copy of Ulysses that I bought a long time ago. Looking in the front cover, I’ve written the date-July 1991. And I’ve still never read it. I think that I once read the very studious introduction and about half of the first page of the novel and gave up. I really must give it a proper go. As it’s about half way through the year I should make this a sort of resolution-to read Ulysses before the end of 2012. It would be good if I could say that Ulysses is the only book that I’ve bought but never got through. (Considering I’ve read some shit novels over the years and generally try to plough through to the end of any book, just in case it turns out to get better, the number of books I’ve given up on is small but potentially significant.) Glancing at the bookcase I can see two others, quite easily, that are sort of glaring at me. Like Ulysses, I bought them a long time ago and did start them before throwing in the towel. One of them-Remembrance of Things Past, a hefty tome, I even took on holiday with me. It was carted on a coach trip to Italy in 1988-the only book that was given the honour. I got about 30 pages into it before deciding that life was just too short. I did bring it back with me though. It has since sat on the bookshelf and moved between houses a number of times, unread and was joined at around the same time with War and Peace which suffered a similar fate. Although Tolstoy never managed to join me on holiday I have picked it up on a number of occasions, put it in the car when embarking on a long journey with the full intention of actually giving it a proper go. I’ve driven back with it unread and it joined Proust and Joyce on the bookshelf. The graveyard of unread classics.  And for twenty years or so they’ve sat there gathering dust. The significant thing is that I’ve known they’ve been there all this time and they’re sitting there, challenging me, daring me even, to make a start. It has become a battle of wills in a literary sense. I can’t bring myself to throw them out-I’d never do that with a book anyway- and every time I read something “easier”, say Nick Hornby, I have a feeling that even if I’ve really enjoyed it, then I have taken the easy, lazy option. Then I feel a bit guilty but instead of caving in, even if I read something more complex than Hornby say, DeLillo, then I still can’t win because I feel that Joyce, Proust and Tolstoy (doesn’t that sound like an especially erudite firm of accountants or solicitors-Joyce, Proust & Tolstoy?) are sitting up there, whispering that I’ve still bottled it. Even after all this time and the hundreds of books I’ve read in the intervening years I’m still not up to reading them. It’s the fear of the first page I suppose. Not writers block but readers block.  

june 9th extract-lattie moore

Lattie Moore-100,000 Women Can’t Be Wrong-King single

I’ve not got that much pure hillbilly music on the iPod but I suppose that this would surely qualify. It’s a 1957 single on King Records. King was latterly known as the r & b label that issued records by Johnny Guitar Watson, Joe Tex, Jack Dupree and Hank Ballard and the Midniters amongst many others. They had a big hit with James Brown’s “Please Please Please” but, after the next nine James Brown singles failed to chart it all went a bit pear-shaped. James Brown even recorded under another name for a different label after King’s owner, Syd Nathan, refused to let him record “Do the Mashed Potato” on King. Nathan also did not want to release “Live at The Apollo” as he couldn’t see how a live album would be a hit. Missed a bit of a trick there, Syd. (Luckily, it was released and for me, the introduction of James Brown at the very start of the record is possibly one of the most exciting few seconds of music that has ever been recorded.) Syd Nathan wasn’t wholly a mug though. King Records, uniquely for independent labels at the time, ensured all the production of their records was done in-house-recording, mastering, pressing, distribution and shipping. This meant that wily old Syd could get a record on the shelves within 24 hours of it being recorded. It also had the effect for any of the releases that weren’t hits now are rare as hens teeth as some pressings were limited to as little as 50 copies.

However, back to hillbilly music and the start of King Records, back in 1943-who had the motto-"If it's a King, It's a Hillbilly -- If it's a Hillbilly, it's a King." I think that now we’d call it country rather than hillbilly music but I do like the idea of “hillbilly”-even though King Records was based in Cincinnati as opposed to a shack in the mountains. I don’t want to digress too much but King’s first big hit was “I’m Using My Bible as a Road Map” by Reno and Shirley which strikes me as a unique method of navigation.

As for Lattie Moore himself, although a hillbilly/country singer, had a sort of toe in the camp of rockabilly and therefore early rock and roll. His first single, recorded in Indianapolis in 1954 when he was 26, “Hideaway Heart” for a local label, Arrow Records wasn’t successful. It took mad record collectors over 50 years to track down just one copy of it. (Must have sent them crazy.) Lattie wasn’t to be put off though and the next year, having moved back home to Nashville, he spotted  Speed Records label owner, Frank Innocenti coming out of the famous Ernest Tubbs record store. Lattie auditioned for him right there on the street. This led to Lattie recording his first hit, “Juke Joint Johnny” and in time, a move to King Records where he made over two dozen singles, including this great song. A description of the “100,000 Women Can’t Be Wrong” isn’t really necessary. If you know it’s a country/rockabilly tune and combine that with the title you get the general idea. His last release was the album “You Can’t Make Hay Picking Cotton” in 1971. By then he clearly couldn’t make hay releasing records either as it didn’t do too well. Lattie threw the towel in and took up a career in law enforcement. I have an image of a sheriff in his mid- fifties, barrelling down a country road in a dusty, big American Police car, singing one of his own hits, say, “Here I Am, Drunk Again” on his way to bust some local miscreant.