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Friday, November 02, 2007
IF YOU PICK HER TOO HARD (SHE COMES OUT OF TUNE)
Little Richard
1972
Available on : King of Rock and Roll: The Complete Reprise Sessions
Rhino Handmade : 2005
[Buy It]
WE'RE GONNA HAVE A REAL GOOD TIME TOGETHER
The Velvet Underground
1969: Velvet Underground Live, Vol. 1
Mercury : 1974
[Buy It]
TOO MARVELOUS FOR WORDS
Frank Sinatra
Songs for Swingin' Lovers!
Capitol : 1955
[Buy It]
TOO MARVELOUS FOR WORDS
Art Tatum
The Art Tatum Solo Masterpieces, Vol. 1
Pablo : 1953
[Buy It]
YOU CAN HAVE WATERGATE (JUST GIMME SOME BUCKS AND I'LL BE STRAIGHT)
The JBs
1973
Available on : Funky Good Time: The Anthology
Polydor : 1995
[Buy It]
A friend of mine returned from a trip recently. We spoke a few days later. I'm sure that the thing I was supposed to do was to say, "Welcome back" and leave it at that. But you know how it is with friends -- they're not acquaintances. So we got into a discussion about life and what it means. At some point, philosophy slid into soap opera. She wanted to talk about a relationship she's in and I was reluctant at first because I didn't think it was a wise idea. The relationship, I mean, not the talking about it, although it turned out that the talking about it wasn't such a great idea, either, because what I said caused additional tension. What I said was that this relationship of hers seemed to have an element of opportunism, and a section of my mind felt that was unfair. The man she was seeing seemed to me to be spending intimate time with her under somewhat false pretenses, not in a malicious way but not in an especially provident way either, although I recognized that it was condescending to suggest that she wasn't capable of seeing that on her own and making her own judgment about how much the false pretenses were offset by the genuine pleasure and comfort. I was worried about someone I cared about standing in harm's way, even voluntarily, but opening up my mouth to begin to express that worry was not necessarily my right. I didn't say that. How could I? It was a conversation, not a symposium. But what I did say failed me, and her, and our friendship. I was bossy. In working things through in my mind, I came uncomfortably close to telling another adult how to live her life. I grew angry at myself -- I should have laid out and said nothing -- and then I grew angry at language.
Why was I mad at language? Well, let me explain, using more language. Language has limits, particularly when it is charged with expressing complex emotions. Or rather: there may not be any theoretical limits, but there are operational limits. The operators of the language (in this case, me) are hobbled by conflicts of interest, by positionality and personality, by temerity and timidity. There were no words, or there weren't enough words, or there were too many words that got in the way. Stupid language.
Songs seemed like a better way to go. They have one foot in language, but that foot is tapping. They have meaning but also the spell of melody and the force of rhythm, which improves their ability to address situations that touch on emotional and physical issues along with intellectual ones. This is a contentious stance -- again, stupid language -- until it's demonstrated. Exhibit A: Little Richard. In the early seventies, Little Richard, like many iconic artists from the fifties, was in limbo, uncertain how to respond to the quickly changing times. The electric blues giants who were still alive released heavy blues-rock records with psychedelic flourishes (Muddy Waters had Electric Mud, Howlin' Wolf had Howlin' Wolf's New Album), but the rockers faced equally severe identity crises. Each of them dealt with it idiosyncratically, sometimes desperately, and not always to their critical or commercial advantage. Elvis had been to Memphis and was already slouching toward Vegas. Jerry Lee Lewis had shifted over into country. Chuck Berry experienced a pyrrhic victory when "My Ding-a-Ling," the worst song he ever recorded, hit number one. Bo Diddley soldiered on at Chess, covering many of the artists who had imitated him. The remaining giant of fifties rock, Little Richard, signed to Reprise and recorded a quartet of records: The King of Rock and Roll (1970), Second Coming (1971), The Rill Thing (1972), and Southern Child. They were roots records, reaching back into country and jazz as well as taking a stab at the rock-and-roll of the time. The vocals weren't as volcanic as the Specialty sides, but they were more than just respectable, and the songwriting was sometimes fascinatingly personal.
Respectable and fascinating sold poorly. Sales were so sluggish that the fourth album of the series, Southern Child, wasn't even released at the time, and only saw the light of day thanks to bootleggers and, eventually, a Rhino anthology of the Reprise years. Southern Child is of a piece with the others, with some key differences: more original songs, subtler vocals, and a more mellow feel. It also contains Little Richard's mid-career masterpiece, a country-folk composition called "If You Pick Her Too Hard (She Comes Out of Tune)." The song has many assets (arresting title, peaceful acoustic guitars, unorthodox structure) but its real strength is in its wordless opening, which consists of some two dozen sweet exhales and then a rousing cry that communicates some kind (and maybe all kinds) of freedom:Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha
Whoa whoa whoa yeah yeah yeah The song has other lyrics, and they're not bad.If you pick her too hard she'll come out of tune
If you pick her too hard she'll come out of tune
The sound of your breath mixing with my breath
It's the only sound that's true
The touch of your back pressing on my back
Gives us both a place to play out back If you subtract the sexual implications (which make up about 50 percent of the song) and the strangeness of Little Richard addressing a love song to what seems to be a woman (40 percent), there's not much left over, but what there is conveys a simple message: don't pressure your intimates lest you throw your relationships with them into crisis. It seemed like a good lesson regarding the benefits of laying out rather than charging ahead. And while the song isn't expressly about using language injudiciously, the argument is elevated, and maybe even made true, by the nonsense syllables in the lyrics.
Connected to this apology was my own need for reassurance that I hadn't caused any permanent damage to the friendship. I couldn't ask directly. That would mean more language. Instead, I turned to another song that turns on wordlessness, the Velvet Underground's "We're Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together." The lyrics aren't artful or even anthemic, but they're not exactly placeholders either:We're gonna have a real good time together
We're gonna have a real good time together
We're gonna have a real good time together
We're gonna laugh and dance and shout together
Na na na na na na na na na na na hey hey hey baby Listening to it restored my hope. So now I had two song-messages, one about my understanding that I should have backed off and the other about my hope that good faith would return intact, and they said what they needed to say without any words at all. Whoa whoa whoa yeah yeah yeah, na na na na na na na na na na na hey hey hey baby.
Little Richard and Lou Reed weren't the first songwriters to recognize that the language that they depended upon for their livelihood was iffy at best. The great Johnny Mercer, who once dismissed a musical he didn't care for by saying "I could eat alphabet soup and shit better lyrics," copped to the problem in 1937, when he fit words to a song by Richard Whiting for the film "Ready, Willing, and Able":You're just too marvelous
Too marvelous for words
Like glorious, glamorous
And that old standby amorous
It's all too wonderful
I'll never find the words
That say enough, tell enough
I mean they just aren't swell enough
You're much too much, and just too very very
To ever be in Webster's dictionary
And so I'm borrowing a love song from the birds
To tell you that you're marvelous
Too marvelous for words The song became a standard. Everyone recorded it: Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Rosemary Clooney, Nat King Cole, Johnnie Ray, Frankie Laine. In 1947, a version by Jo Stafford was used in the film, "Dark Passage," which starred Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, and the film also incorporated an instrumental version. The irony of stripping "Too Marvelous For Words" of its marvelous words was not confined to the film. Art Tatum recorded a coruscating solo piano version of the song (as wordless pieces go, it's pretty wordy--all those notes!) and the song even supplied the title of James Lester's biography of Tatum. "Too Marvelous for Words" is about love, of course, but love is just one of many possible sites of failure for language; pretty much any emotion that requires explanation also thwarts explanation.
When I spoke to my friend a few days later, I didn't plan on raising the issue of her relationship. She raised it. She said that she had thought more about the situation and why she was in it. She then explained herself, badly. "Things will either get better or they will get worse and when it's better or worse than I'll know which way it's going," she said. She was trying to tell me something, and probably trying to tell herself something, but she ran afoul of language. Then, that night, I was listening to the JBs perform "You Can Have Watergate (Just Gimme Some Bucks and I'll Be Straight)." The lyrics are largely the title, repeated over and over again, along with a few other short chants and some James Brown punctuation. The song is officially listed as an instrumental, but in this case the small amount of language does everything it needs to do:You can have Watergate
But give me some bucks and I'll be straight
I need some money You can spend all your time discussing the large issues of corruption in society or the complexities of an imperfect relationship, but when it comes down to it, people have needs that have nothing to do with fine-grained discussion, precise rendering of interior states, or persuasive argument. Those things are luxuries. My friend just wanted her bucks and she'd be straight. I was going to call her and recommend the song. But then I'd have to explain the connection, and maybe who the JBs were, and that would mean more words, and maybe picking too hard. I remembered that Little Richard had said "whoa whoa whoa yeah yeah yeah," and also something else that he said. He said "Shut up!" That was good enough for me.Labels: ben, funk, jazz, soul
posted by Ben
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