Music and Mysticism

Let the music keep our spirits high

Let the buildings keep our children dry

Let creation reveal its secrets by and by,

When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Jackson Browne – ‘Before the Deluge’

My brother always said we heard Nina Simone’s ‘Gin House Blues’ for the first time on Radio Luxemburg, but my guess would be the BBC Light Programme.  The announcer made special mention of the album title (Forbidden Fruit) and the record label which, in my mind at least, was not a Radio Luxemburg thing to do.  Whatever the source, the song was a turning point, and the opening bars had all three of us kids on our feet, reaching for the volume control and fighting for speaker space.

In the ‘80s, I read a review of a Robbie Robertson CD; ‘Music you would expect to hear in a roadhouse half a mile down from the Pearly Gates’, or some such.  That’s stuck with me for almost 4 decades, perhaps because I bought the CD on the strength of the review, and it sucked.  However, there’s a lot of songs I would expect to find on that roadhouse jukebox: The Band’s ‘It Makes No Difference’, which is what led me to Robbie Robertson in the first place, The Allman Brothers’ Live at the Fillmore East, B. B. King’s ‘Time is a Thief’, Steve Young’s ‘I’ve Closed my Heart’s Door’.   For sheer joy I would also add Tommy Tucker’s ‘Hi-Heel Sneakers’, Jimmy Reed’s ‘You Got me Dizzy’, and Joe Cocker’s ‘You Came Along’.

But ‘Gin House Blues’ bypassed the roadhouse and went straight for the Pearly Gates.  It hit like a thunderbolt, a spiritual revelation, a divine illumination.  There is a God, He is glorious, and he speaks through music.  Or, in my case, A 10-year-old girl, struck by the Numinous, in the form of the black female voice.  ‘I merged with it, and from there with all creation’ as Phillip Berman said of his own experience.  A fairly common response, I’m told, with many others ahead of me, transported by Mozart, Puccini, John Coltrane, and occasionally complete crap such as Louis Armstrong’s ‘Wonderful World’.  But, hey, God moves in mysterious ways, right?

Before Nina Simone, we siblings had Little Richard, Chuck Berry, The Drifters and the Chess catalog, but for me the hit parade became a dead zone after ‘Gin House Blues’.  It was as if I’d peaked, and had nowhere to go but down.  Either that, or the whole scene had crashed into the early Sixties doldrums of Bobby Vee and Bobby Rydell.  Still, there were moments that came close: Slim Harpo’s ‘Rainin’ in my Heart’, Ben E. King’s ‘Stand by Me’, Ray Charles ‘I Can’t Stop Loving You’.  We also had Motown, but I was largely indifferent to their pop approach until 1964, when The Four Top’s ‘Baby I Need Your Loving’ had me back through the Pearly Gates.

1964 was also when my sister and I discovered Otis Redding’s ‘Pain in my Heart’.  It was the first thing I heard by him and it remains my favorite to this day.  Most of what he did was breathtakingly beautiful, and yet for me he hasn’t prevailed.  By his untimely death at 26, he was already losing his edge and crossing over to pop: ‘Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa-Fa’, ‘The Happy Song’ and ‘Day Tripper’, all of which I hated and which didn’t augur well for the future.

Solomon Burke, on the other hand stayed the course, maintaining his voice and artistic integrity until his death in 2010.  In his book Sweet Soul Music, Peter Guralnick records a discussion between Jerry Wexler and Philadelphia DJ Jimmy Bishop. ‘(W)e were talking about who was the best soul singer of all time. People were saying Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, Ben E King. Jimmy said, 'No way. The best soul singer of all time is Solomon Burke. With a borrowed band.'  Which I agree with.  Both parts.'

Me too.  Never mind the 4 wives and 21 children, never mind the endomorph body, he had me locked in by the end of ‘The Price’ and ‘Baby Come on Home’, and I would’ve taken him anyway he came.  When I was 14, I had a picture of him - 25 years old and pleasingly plump - above my bed.  “Don’t you think you should take that down,” my mother said.  “I mean, it’s not very… appropriate, is it?”  To which I replied, “Clearly, you haven’t heard him sing!

”1964-1966 produced The Righteous Brothers ‘You’ve Lost That Loving Feeling’, James Carr’s ‘Life Turned Her That Way’. Percy Sledge’s ‘Warm and Tender Love’, all of which were never off the stereo.  But it was not until 1967 that Aretha’s B-side ‘Do Right Woman’ catapulted me back to the meaning of life, and kept me there for the next couple of years.  Very good years for soul fans, as it transpired, with Clarence Carter’s ‘Slip Away’, Jackie Wilson’s ‘Higher and Higher’, Tyrone Davis’s ‘Can I Change my Mind’, and William Bell’s ‘I Forgot to be Your Lover.’

And let’s not forget Van Morrison’s ‘Astral Weeks’, the most beautiful album ever recorded.  'A mystical document, a beacon, a light on the far shores of the murk.'   My desert island disc.  A mishmash of Irish folk and black jazz, led by Richard Davis on bass.  Or as Morrison told NPR ‘…musicians, previously unknown to each other, discovering a shared vernacular, stumbling upon something transcendent that no party attempted to conjure again.’   How could they?  It was a gift from God, a once in a lifetime portal to the divine.  My sister wants it played at her funeral.  No service, no speeches, no chatting.  Her final offering to the world: Van Morrison, and everyone sitting in silence, listening!

By 1970, it was all over, although it took a while for that to register.  Al Green appeared in 1971.  I was sitting on a bus outside the international terminal at Heathrow, people struggling on with bags, talking and laughing, and I’m homicidal because they’re drowning out a brilliant song on the bus radio.  ‘Tired of Being Alone’ as it turned out.  Like, shut the fuck up!  Not to mention his version of ‘Funny How Time Slips Away’, which is bona fide Pearly Gates material.  But that was more or less it. We had a few small miracles from Ann Peebles and Candi Staton – ‘You Keep Me Hanging On’ and ‘What a Feeling’, and Margie Joseph’s ‘Make me Believe You’ll Stay’ is a pure gem.  Then nothing until 1980, when The Amazing Rhythm Aces underlined the end of the era with ‘I Got the Feeling’.

So, what happened to that music?  Quincy Jones reduced Aretha to pop/funk and is hopefully now in Hell, being force fed banjos and bagpipes.  Disco, Punk, electric drumkits and Grunge, came and went.  Prince and Michael Jackson gave way to hip hop and rap.  Real instruments gave way to technology and finger popping, and I stopped listening to anything new.  Another fairly common response I’m told.  The theory is that people over 35 get stuck in a holding pattern, buying only new releases by old artists, or new releases in the style of those artists.

That’s certainly true of me.  I’ve continued to follow Van Morrison, Ry Cooder, and the like.  Radio Luxemburg in the 70’s gave me Jackson Browne’s ‘Before the Deluge’, and Charlie Gillett led me to Emmylou Harris’s version of ‘Hello Stranger’, both of which were pushed through the Pearly Gates - in my view - by the fiddle players.  (David Lindley and Ricky Scaggs)  Through Ry Cooder’s session work I found Buckwheat Zydeco’s ‘Crying in the Streets’, which had my dying brother bawling, and Shazam-ing supermarket music gave me Frazey Ford’s ‘Indian Ocean’.

But mostly I just listen to old school Gospel, dancing in my kitchen to Dorothy Love Coates, Calvin Cooke’s ‘Since I Laid My Burden Down’, Tommy Ellison and the Singing Stars ‘Trying to Get to Heaven’ and my absolute favorite – Claude Jeter’s ‘Take Your Burdens to the Lord’ – which is unadulterated joy, and sweeps me away every time I play it.

As for Nina Simone… Well, Nina didn’t sell out, spiritually or politically, but she did go the way of many other geniuses: into mental illness.  At some point in 1970, I wound up in a London hotel, at an evening meet-and-greet for Edwin Starr.  On our way out, my date and I saw Nina Simone alone at the piano in the hotel’s bar, which had just closed for the night.  We barged in ready and eager to fall at her feet, but the barman shook his head in a very definite ‘No!’, and we beat a hasty retreat.

She died in France, in 2003; deeply troubled, but a conduit to the Divine, nevertheless.

Godspeed Nina; blessings on you. 

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