Take 5 (Paul Desmond), 1959: The Dave Brubeck Quartet
The brilliant guitarist Marc Ribot and his Ceramic Dog rhythm section take a musical ball-peen hammer to the otherwise dusty bronzed American standard. Ribot’s fingers leave little of the original. Instead, he treats the tune like a textbook, leaving his highlights, notes, and doodles all over the pages. The original rhythm remains, if less recognizable, and the melody gets battered and deep-fried like a county fair Twinkie. By the time he gets into deep space with it, what’s left kind of skips off towards Neptune. As a pilot, Ribot has never navigated anywhere straight, but if you’re prepared, the trip will be extraordinary.
So who’s carrying the stank funk buckets of the 70s masters? Who’s casting a cosmic slop worthy of Sly Stone, Slave,The Gap Band, and Funkadelic? Karl Denson may be a contender. Maybe it’s his vintage (b. 1956), and journeyman trips around the sun with Lenny Kravitz, Blackalicious, Blind Boys of Alabama, and The Rolling Stones. His has been a career worthy of being called illustrious. When it came to sculpting the sound for his own joint, you can assume his record crates are loaded with the above iconic classics. Like his 2019 album with the band Tiny Universe suggests, it’s an influence that digs into the dog of his jam I’m Your Biggest Fan like foxtails. While he’s no Sly or George Clinton at the mic, he floats well enough across the groove and offers enough jazzy space in his changes to sink a pocket respectably deep. For those longing for the otherwise neglected harder edges of 70s funk, Denson is giving them props and abundance they rightfully deserve. Tour Spotify and you’ll find no shortage of classic funk pretenders and dilettantes – particularly those peddling Zapp’s brand of synth clappy disco. Even among the betters in the field – here’s a list of somebody’s idea of the worthier candidates – most are a long way from rising to Denson’s elevation. When it comes to the hard funk bucket, Denson delivers.
This Oakland based, self-described “sister caberet” duo was active from 2006 to 2009. Their bio blurbs include terms like “noise witch,” HBIC (Head Bitch In Charge), and positive expressions of body hair, gender fluidity and pronoun eschewal. This song, from their 2006 debut album, isn’t emblematic of their sound so much – sounding here like a hempier Pentangle channeling through Nashville – but it’s one of their best. See for their Bandcamp, band site, and their individual pages: Zoe Boekbinder and Kim Boekbinder. I’m guessing the video isn’t canon.
Songs of the folk tradition can have long umbilical cords stretching back hundreds of years. (This one is over 800 years old.) More recently, a song like Streets of Laredo has a musical and lyrical DNA that can been traced to Irish ballads and British sea chanties from the19th century. In America, these Anglo progenitors of tune- and wordsmithery were added to a cultural gangbang of cowboy ballads and laments on the American frontier. A tradition built on a platform of African American cowboys, Mexican troubadours, and even a wank by way of New Orleans. By 1924, all of this cultural spunk ended up in the mouth and pen of cowboy singer Frank H. Maynard who was bestowed with Hey Joe’s official attribution by a journalist and academic. What exactly was Maynard’s contribution we’ll never know but before him there was likely a hundred years of curation by, and with the fingerprints of, others. So, music of the folk and minstrel traditions, and likely all music to a degree, is like a whorehouse child – aside from its mysterious progenitors, there was also a lot of stepparenting. Such is how culture is made. This is also the history of Hey Joe, though less plains, deserts, and ocean crossings and more of an urbanized terrain – coffeehouses, taverns, and clubs. Joe also has the parentage of many donors. After this trajectory of borrowing, thieving, plagiarizing, and various appropriation, we’re left with the hard polished nugget that has been through the mouths of hundreds of recordings and performances. And while the family tree may not be nearly as leafy as Streets of Laredo, thanks to attorneys and publisher privateers, Joe’s paternity was also forced into the possession of a stepfather with one name: Billy Roberts, a California-based folkie who’d register the song’s copyright in 1962. Then comes Dino Valenti: Best known as the composer of The Youngblood’s Let’s Get Together (still a much-used song for period soundtracks) and Quicksilver Messenger Service’s Fresh Air, Valenti would be sent to Folsom Prison from a police shakedown and a marijuana possession charge. To pay for his defense, Valenti sold the rights to Let’s Get Together for $100. While at Folsom, Valenti would meet Billy Roberts who at the time was playing with Johnny Cash’s band when he famously played there. Valenti would talk Roberts into transferring the rights to Hey Joe to help him woo the parole board with his status as a working musician. The ruse worked and Valenti was released and soon would be peddling the song to Los Angeles record companies. Mira Records would be the first to buy. At Mira Records, and the reason we know the song at all, was the Angeleno garage band The Leaves. Their version would at last free the song from the folk clubs and put it on the radio with their hit 1965 recording. Their version that would be the conduit that brought Hey Joe to Jimi Hendrix’s attention. His iconic version would appear less than a year later. After Hendrix, the tale of the gun-wielding rake of the song would receive many injustices from voices and fingerings of many along the way. Yet, it still bears the spunk of its stepparents The Leaves and Hendrix. And then in 2002, Robert Plant and his rootsy outfit Strange Sensation offered a revitalized and reductive slow-burn take of the erstwhile overworked jewel. In Plant’s retelling, the circle of fifths refrain was diluted, droning and other non-bluesy elements were offered, and a nod of tribute to the Stratocaster of Hendrix. All coming together to gave this Joe an understated power that patiently bides its rage until nearly the end, waiting almost four minutes before releasing the full furious extent of its, er, payload. After 55 years – and 36 after Hendrix – dusky Joe once again is fired from a gun worthy of his caliber.
