Unsung Giants of Modern Music VII: Terry Allen

It's been over a year since I've written one of these but, since we've been on the subject of mavericktude lately, it seems like a good time to talk about the true maverick of Texas music: Terry Allen. Now, there are great Terry Allens in a lot of different realms. Magnum T.A. was a legendary pro wrestler whose career was cut short by a broken back and the Redskins had a running back by the same name who was quite good at running roughshod over the Cowboys, much to my delight. But the man who has truly made the name great is the man from Lubbock, TX who has written some of the finest songs in the history of country music about the hard life of West Texas, murder, and the art mobs of New York and Los Angeles, often in the same song.

(Warboy: kid with the Thalidomide eyes)
Allen is not a musician first, however. His father, "Sled" Allen, was a turn-of-the-century pitcher for the St. Louis Blues and later a wrestling promoter through West Texas who was nearly sixty when Terry was born. His mother, Pauline Pierce, was a barrelhouse piano player who was, herself, nearly forty at his birth. While his penchant for storytelling and musicianship can clearly be attributed to his family (it is hard for me to imagine a more outrageous storyteller than a man who went from old-timey ball player to wrestling promoter; ol' Sled must have been quite the liar) but, when Terry left Lubbock for art school in Los Angeles, he wrote and sculpted, and his art installations have been received as fondly, and often more so, as his music.

His first album, Juarez, was originally conceived as a soundtrack to an imagined film, and finally came out in 1975 to accompany as series of lithographs that describe the story. Filthy and violent, this concept album about a pair of lovers and a crime spree is ambitious and difficult to say the least. At the time, and rarely since, there's little in country music that resembles it. Willie Nelson's Red Headed Stranger comes to mind, but Nelson's Western flight of fancy with himself in the lead doesn't hold a candle to the dark and violent landscapes that Allen creates with just his heavy Lubbock drawl and simple piano melodies. The strength of his songwriting is on full display in his first album, but this would only get better.

(Stage 5: The Sea of Amarillo)
In 1977, Allen released Lubbock (on Everything), and the double meaning of the title really describes the album. Not a full concept album as Juarez, Lubbock uses a large band with backing vocals and horns to describe the hard, but often very funny, stories of ex-football stars robbing convenience stores and travelers falling in love with waitresses. It is far easier on the ears than its predecessor, but is also one of the most ambitious and best country albums of all time. His esthetic takes shape here; he shows that his subjects are more than the narrow themes of some of his Lubbock contemporaries (he went to high school with the likes of Joe Ely, Butch Hancock, and Jimmie Dale Gilmore). On the one hand, he mocks the young loser in the FFA and, on the other, the losers in the world of high art. The song, "Truckload of Art" is about New York artists who rent a truck to send samples of their work to the artists in L.A., simply to show how much better at it they are. Unfortunately, this super-sweet truck blows up along the way, leaving the art burning on the highway. It's a silly song, but one with great writing, such as this verse:

"Well the driver went sailing high in the sky
Landing in the gold lap of the lord
Who smiled and then said,
'Son, you're better off dead
Than haulin' a truckload full of hot Avant-garde.'"

I'm not sure how many country artists discuss the world of the Avant-garde, though I'd bet you can count them on one finger. Between his upbringing in the Texas flatlands and his life as a high artist, Terry Allen has done essentially whatever he's wanted to do, flipping the bird to whoever might stand in his way. I'm not going to go through every album but, though this is less than ten over thirty years, there is great stuff in all of them. One of his newest records, 1999's Salivation, is also one of his best. Rife with blasphemies, praising our Lord and Savior Jesus Cash, he shows that he hasn't lost a step (and his voice still sounds great after all these years). This is a man who writes what he wants to write and creates what he wants to create. It's amazing to me, living in Texas, how few people there are that I know who have even heard of him, let alone know any of his songs beyond Robert Earl Keane's cover of "Amarillo Highway," admittedly a great song, but it's sadly shocking. Terry Allen is a treasure to be cherished, both as a songwriter and a visual artist and, though he has a devoted following. For how great his art is, however, this following is unfathomably small.

Unsung Giants of Modern Music (VI): The Melvins

Picture those unfortunate days of rock music circa 1987. With the smell of hairspray and vinyl pants in the air, you turn on the radio to hear the singer from yet another band that sounds like Led Zeppelin squeal in his most irritating falsetto without rhyme or reason, just squealing. When Motley Crue is the best thing in popular rock, you know days are dark. Around now, pockets of bands in cities like Austin, Chicago, and Seattle began to creep into college radio, many referred to by the dubious genre of “post-punk” through labels such as Sub Pop, Touch and Go, and 4AD, which started to break the mold of what most knew as rock. The bands were varied, and not all good, but they were often very different than what could be heard through mainstream media. The Pixies, Soundgarden, and The Jesus Lizard were just a few of the bands that emerged and some, such as Nirvana, became worldwide superstars. In the subsequent twenty years, most of these bands destroyed themselves by either submitting to the drug pitfalls of the road or allowing themselves to be absorbed and altered by the lure of the mainstream’s bankroll. One act, however, that did not fall for these traps, for better or for worse, and one that would become one of the most influential bands in years was The Melvins.

The Melvins originally formed in 1983 in (the great) Montesano, WA as a high school band that featured Buzz Osborne (the only still present member) on guitar, Mike Dillard on Drums, and Matt Lukin (who would leave to form the also great Mudhoney with members of the soon-to-be-defunct Green River) on bass. Dillard was soon replaced by Dale Crover (who was about sixteen at the time) and they moved to (the even greater) Aberdeen, WA. What basically began as a sheer ripoff of Black Sabbath (innovative, in its own right, given the overabundance of Zeppelin ripoffs at the time), moved into something much greater once they moved from Washington to San Francisco. Lukin left before the move and they recruited (daughter of Shirley Temple) Lori Black, dubbed Lorax who played on their next few albums. Over the years, the band has gone through a litany of bass players, but the core of Osborne and Crover has remained intact, and they have grown together as musicians and innovators.

Metal, over the years, has often been more concerned with speed than anything else, but The Melvins changed this. They slowed their tempos and tuned down their instruments, which gave a dark, sludgy feel to their music that was hugely influential to up and coming acts that would become huge, much larger than they could ever become. Most notably, a former roadie of theirs named Kurt Cobain took the sound, added his own brand of songwriting talent and a distinct pop sensibility to form Nirvana, one of the biggest bands of the last two decades. But it wasn’t just Nirvana; the entire world of mid-90s “grunge” begins and ends with The Melvins. To hear “Love Thing” off their 1989 album Ozma is to hear the melody and tone of Pearl Jam’s “Alive” three years later. After all these acts got major label contracts, finally The Melvins were granted a similar deal and, in 1994, were signed to Atlantic Records. They stayed here for three years, releasing “Houdini,” “Stoner Witch,” and “Stag.” Unfortunately, Atlantic was looking to cash in on the craze of the time, but The Melvins had no interest in this and released three of the most difficult rock albums to be released on a major label. Innovation rarely occurs in situations such as this but, completely eschewing all pop music structure and the idea of being superstars, they made no changes to their style, only broadening their sound further. After the contract was up, they were immediately dropped and returned to indie status where they, once again, continued to broaden, using samples and electronic manipulation to further intensify the sludge.

Above and beyond all else, what is truly “unsung” about The Melvins is Dale Crover. King Buzzo is charming, skilled, and highly interesting, but Crover is possibly the single best drummer in rock music today. Heavily influenced by Sabbath’s Bill Ward, Crover plays slow with minimal, but perfectly executed fills that accent Osborne’s guitar and vocals. Most importantly, he plays without ego, never pulling a John Bonham “Moby Dick” bullshit solo, and never leaning against power over precision. The current lineup of the group is Osborne, Crover, and noise act Big Business, which consists solely of a bass and drums. In spite of his greatness, Crover does not take it as a slight to bring a second drummer in; he embraces it as an avenue to experimentation, something the band has always reveled in. Sitting side by side and sharing a tom, they play in sync and independently to hugely successful rhythmic ends.

Where is Nirvana today? Where is Mudhoney? Where is Pearl Jam? Where is Soundgarden? All are either defunct or relegated to irrelevance. The Melvins, on the other hand, twenty-four years after their inception are playing their most advanced, strangest music yet. Buzzo’s afro may be graying, Crover may no longer be sixteen, and they may have gone through more bassists than live in some small towns where they’re from, but there they stand, going strong for two decades making music that make the most diehard metalhead cringe and shaming all their imitators. Where are they today? Likely resting after a tour last month that spanned Italy, Croatia, and Israel for undoubtedly small, fanatically devoted crowds who laugh at the thought of going to witness the horror of a Soundgarden reunion show.

Unsung Giants of Modern Music (V): Ennio Morricone

In light of his Lifetime Achievement award this Sunday at the Oscars, I felt it a fine opportunity to finally discuss Ennio Morricone here. I have spoken of him briefly but, as one of the most important, not to mention prolific, composers of the 20th Century, one can never say too much. Given, however, that he is being given this award, can he actually be called an unsung hero? This award is recompense from the academy for being forgotten about over forty years and, while everybody is familiar with his Western scores, there are other themes in his body of work that are often used, that everyone knows, that remain uncredited to the person who created them. That, and the fact that he's my favorite 20th century composer, means that he's in.

Born in Rome in 1928, Morricone entered conservatory at ten to study trumpet and composition. While his ambitions had always been in classical music, he was given the opportunity to write arrangements for popular songs and, after some moderate success, he never really looked back. He has continued writing more traditional classical music over the years, but never that seriously. His knowledge of classical forms and popular styles made him a natural and, after popular success in pop arrangement and critical acclaim writing theater music, was hired in 1961 to score his first film, Il Federale, directed by Luciano Salce, a comedy about a Fascist sent to capture an anti-Mussolini professor (sounds fun). He continued to work with Salce for the next three years, scoring films of suspect quality, until Sergio Leone heard Morricone’s arrangement of an American folk song and asked him to score his Western trilogy, starting in 1964 with A Fistful of Dollars and continuing with For a Few Dollars More in 1965 and The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in 1966. It was at this early stage in his career that he made his biggest impact. Domestically and abroad, critics and audiences saw Morricone’s score as another character in the film, something that had seldom occurred before, but has become Morricone’s hallmark. As a result of budgetary limitations, there was no access to a full orchestra, which may have been preferred at the time, but forced Morricone to work with odd instruments, singers, and sound effects. What he created changed the face of the Western, if not the entirety of the film music world.

The success of the films and the scores themselves (thank, in no small part, to Hugo Montenegro’s cheesy rendition of the theme to The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly) gave Morricone more work than he could handle. He was hired to do other Westerns in those first few years, solidifying a sound that would be mimicked for years and years, but also got a lot of work in other genres, mostly horror and comedy, both of which benefit from smaller, subtle scoring. The largest success of his early career outside Westerns came in 1966 as well, when he wrote his brilliant score for Gillo Pontecorvo’s Battle of Algiers. Wildly different in tone and style from anything he’d produced to this point, this score showed a rare versatility, something that would serve him where other composers fail. As the success came, so did more work, which he apparently took all of. At this point, Morricone was still attempting, albeit unsuccessfully, to get into the Classical world but, by 1968, a year in which he scored twenty films, the thought of any other work became laughable. The next few years he was a scoring machine, working for every major director in Italy, most notably Pier Paolo Pasolini, who he collaborated with on numerous occasions until Pasolini’s murder in 1975. Hollywood didn’t catch on to him for a long time (they never really did); he wasn’t hired for an American production until 1970 in which he scored Two Mules for Sister Sara (a film which I cannot endorse), most obviously because of Clint Eastwood in the starring role. He has never worked for any length of time for Hollywood, with only exception being his scores for Brian DePalma, who he has worked with three times. The scores he writes for American films are highly lauded, especially in the case of The Mission, which is one of the single most solid film scores ever written, but has never maintained a working relationship with studios in this country. Still, over the years, he has written so many amazing scores in so many varied genres that he has become the most artistically influential composer in the history of film.

Where so many of his contemporaries score a film so that the music reflects the action directly, Morricone writes in a way that often comments on the action--a happy scene may likely have minor chord undertones that can reveal an amount of sadness or irony on the happiness, the theme song for the killer in a horror film is a lullaby—this kind of subtlety does not occur with his contemporaries. Because of the variation of styles and knowledge of instruments that he has, a wealth of depth is opened to him that others can’t compete with. To combine folk music with free jazz and music concrete for a beautiful overture to an international spy thriller is an extraordinary thing.

On top of his prowess as a technical composer, Morricone’s music is decidedly romantic; he uses broad strokes to elicit particular emotions in a rare way that does not feel like manipulation, that feels organic, such that the emotional power of the music stands separate from the film it belongs with. The first time I heard the soundtrack to Dario Argento’s The Stendahl Syndrome was months before I saw the film. I was entering it into the now-defunct Schwann Opus Classical Music Guide as part of my mission was to include all the film scores I could get my hands on, a class of music that had been forgotten about for much of the history of that book. I started listening to the album to hear what I was entering. A squealing violin, a minimal harpsichord, and a soprano singing nonsense greeted my ears. The tension built quickly, and by the end of the seven minute theme, when all of a sudden a group of trumpets blare out like a herd of dying elephants and whispering voices have an incoherent conversation, I had to turn the album off and get up to walk around. There is an economy to this score, as well as many others, which use a minimalist approach to gain the maximum emotional effect; an effect that is much more difficult to achieve with a full orchestra anymore.

Now, at 79 years old, Morricone has not slowed down his output very much. He has scored around twenty five films in the last ten years which, while not the kind of output that he had in the ‘70s, is still significant, and he remains far more prolific than his much younger contemporaries. And still, to this day, he does not get bogged down in one style or another. If anything, his palette has only gotten broader over the years. Yet, for all the variation in his music over the years, there is a style that is distinctly Morricone that stretches through hundreds of scores and every genre under the sun. The world of film owes him a great debt, and there is nobody currently working who is prepared to take the reigns when The Maestro inevitably passes on. He is as deserving of this award as anyone has ever been. As I said before, after 500+ scores over half a century, some of which have changed the face of film music and have been massively influential on popular music, his five nominations and zero wins at the Oscars is ridiculous, especially while others are nominated for nearly every score they write, no matter how redundant the material has become. The Academy has this award around to right perceived wrongs, and I think it’s fantastic that they want to acknowledge him in this way. If nothing else, Morricone will get paid a lot of money to score some massive budget piece of trash that will give him a lot more exposure than he’s had in years.

Unsung Giants of Modern Music (IV): T. Rex

I may never understand the differences in pop music taste with American and British audiences, but it sure showed itself in the case of T. Rex who, from 1970-74, recorded three top five albums (two at #1) and six top five singles (three at #1) on the British side, but had only one single, Get It On (incidentally, with the name changed to Bang a Gong [Get It On]), reach the top ten in America. Now, even their stake in the Classic Rock is that one measly single (sometimes even going as far as playing the Power Station version instead. Thanks, Robert Palmer, for remaking the song and thanks, Albuquerque’s own Arrow, for playing it), compared to Journey’s fifteen (it seems, at least). They had plenty of other good singles, and it’s not like those playlists couldn’t use some freshening up. Like the Velvet Underground and other high quality, if less successful, rock acts of the early-‘70s, those who heard T. Rex were more heavily influenced than could ever have been intended.

T. Rex’s origins as a folk band are pretty amusing. Marc Bolan started Tyrannosaurus Rex (only briefly under it’s full name) with percussionist Steve Peregrine Took (aka Steve Turner, who was asked to change his name to reflect Bolan’s strange beliefs in Tolkein’s Middle Earth) as a hippy-folk act. What is on 1968’s “My People Were Fair and Had Sky in Their Hair…But Now They’re Content To Wear Stars on Their Brow” is a far cry from 1973’s “Tanx,” and not just in title length. They weren’t a half bad as a dippy folk act, if you like that kind of thing, but there was a lot more going on for Bolan than singing about hobbits. After three albums, Took apparently washed out on acid, eloped, and left the band. In a clear monetary decision, with new drummer Mickey Finn, Bolan plugged in and, on 1970’s “A Beard of Stars,” though still a two-man act, they started sounding like a real rock band. It took a cool-down on the Tolkein, electrification and, finally, shortening the name to something speakable before so-called T. Rextacy kicked into full force and, over the next three years with the releases of “Electric Warrior” that featured “Get It On,” “The Slider” (my personal favorite), and “Tanx,” all of which reached the top five, they were on top of the British music scene. Then, all of a sudden, they slid as fast as they could. In the fickle pop music industry, despite any previous success, Bolan struggled to write anything successful from that point on. By the end of his life, his career was on the upturn with a well-received new album, “Dandy in the Underworld,” and a television variety show that had him introducing acts like The Damned, Billy Idol and Generation X in the emerging punk scene.

Marc Bolan, in many ways, stands as a bridge in the rock gap between the ‘50s and the ‘70s beyond. His lyrical subject matter aside, Bolan’s music, much like the innumerable punk acts he would influence, was inherently stuck in a simple three-chord progression. This isn’t a bad thing. Bolan once said in an interview “There are certain chords—you play a C major chord and I hear 25 melodies and symphonies—I’ve just got to pull one out. It’s all there….” He was genius at making masterful melodies out of very small foundations, without making anything too complicated (it was still pop) and simultaneously kept one foot in the past and one in the future. He kept with the simple progressions because that is the style he grew up with—the Eddie Cochrans, the Chuck Berrys, the Little Richards of the world were where he got his influence, both in the musical style and the stage presence. Bolan looked at these performers as role models, like so many who later looked at him; his one goal was to be a rock god like his heroes. He crafted himself in whatever way would most get him farthest. This gave him a basis for success, but it was his vision that made him. Grounding himself in the past gave him a launching pad to move, slowly but surely, down the road from the hippy-folk teen idol to the metal and punk godfather he became by the end. His music was, essentially, fuzzed-out ‘50s R&B, which in turn became the template for any number of punk acts, all the way up to our current obsession with “punks” like Green Day, as well as softer rock bands like REM. Bolan’s signature look, which helped greatly in his popularity—corkscrew curls, top hat, feather boa, and platform shoes—became the cliché that acts like Enuff z’ Nuff, Britny Fox, et al took for granted, a look that wouldn’t be accepted for a number of years, really until KISS came down the pike. This may be one of the most dubious of legacies, paving the way for ‘80s hair metal. Even if the results of Bolan’s groundwork aren’t the most artistically sound, or even listenable, he was one of the founders of both rock theatrics and was possibly the one artist who most facilitated the increasing heaviness of rock and roll. At times, he looked at his music as throwaway but, given what has come since, it is a true shame that his beauty has, indeed, been thrown away. It’s not like I lament the lack of good classic rock stations out there, but let’s get some “Jeepster,” “Children of the Revolution,” and “Metal Guru” on the airwaves.

Unsung Giants of Modern Music (III): Carl Stalling

Growing up, like most children of my generation, I was crazy for Saturday morning cartoons. Whether it was The Snorks, Monchichi, or Laugh-a-lympics, I was obsessed. For what reasons, I can’t say, the greater majority of cartoons from the era were garbage. But, the saving grace of the cartoons at this time (and I knew they were better then), despite the fact that they were fifty years old, were the Warner Bros. cartoons, the Looney Tunes. The animation was basic and understandable, the characters were fun (even if I couldn’t get the extent of their references), and the kinetic action was more violent than other cartoons of the time. The part of these shorts, however, though I wouldn’t come to understand until much later though, that sets these apart from anything produced before or since is the music, written and conducted by Carl Stalling, a maverick and forward-looking artist who has rarely, if ever, been matched in style or tone.

Stalling began his career in the early 1920s as an organist and small orchestra conductor at a local theater in Kansas City accompanying silent film. This would clearly have a great influence on him and, in the mid-‘20s, he got together with a young Walt Disney to write music for Disney’s early sound cartoons. Stalling developed the Silly Symphonies series with Disney but, in 1936, was wooed away to Warner Brothers, which was beginning to include cartoons before their films and he became their number one full-time animation composer. For Warner Bros, Stalling produced scores for more than 600 cartoons over both the Merrie Melodies and Looney Tunes monikers between 1936 and his retirement in 1958. This averages over 27 scores per year over his entire career, which makes him one of the most prolific composers of the 20th century.

He wrote his compositions at the same frenetic pace as both the tempo of the music and the action on screen and, in fact, the cartoons were contrived with what were called “click tracks,” that is, physical marks made on the film to act as a kind of metronome that indicated where changes would occur in the music. Stalling has been (dubiously) credited with the invention of the click track, though this is likely not the case. Still, the changes in the music happen at a rate that foreshadowed the tape and computer music that would become popular in avant-garde circles in the 1950s and 60s as well as some of the extreme jazz that has arisen in recent years.

Stalling has been in the public eye (or ear) consistently on television for 40 years, if innocuously behind the scenes, giving three generations of cartoon fans an education in jazz, classical, and folk music that they never asked for. How many people hear and recognize Raymond Scott’s “Powerhouse,” Edvard Grieg’s “Morning Mood,” or the traditional “Little Brown Jug” even if they’ve never been told what the song is? The recognition is instant and, moreover, the recognition is directly tied to an image. “Powerhouse” represents industrial action, “Morning Music” (obviously) represents waking up and stretching, and “Little Brown Jug” represents drunks. These songs, and a mind-boggling number of others, are referenced throughout the catalogue by what Stalling called “musical puns,” in which he would insert snippets of songs both classic and modern into his original music. For him and his original audience, these references would have been more instantly recognized for what they were than they are now, but it would be the same if a film composer added a few notes from “Sweet Child ‘O Mine” for no reason other than the association that it would bring and the comment it would add to the action onscreen. This was unprecedented at the time but, more than that, has never been repeated in mainstream soundtracks or popular music. The technique is occasionally used by John Zorn in his “Naked City” and “Spillane” projects, and by Mike Patton in his work with Fantomas, but this usage is a direct reference by artists who site Stalling as a huge influence. DJ’s, of course, use the method consistently, though it’s hard to say whether there is any direct correlation or a happy coincidence that always helped me greatly in accessing the style. Often unmentioned is his ability, beyond the borrowings, to write masterful and timeless themes for the onscreen characters that are worthy of any film composer at any time. His method in this has its roots in opera, where each principle character would have his or her own key and melody and where changes in key in relation to the action would indicate changes in the character.

All of this gels into one of the most unique composers of the 20th century. Unfortunately, bare recordings of most of his scores are non-existent. The sum of his work on CD encompasses a grand total of two releases. TWO!!!!! Only one of these contains any full scores, the other being mostly montages, medleys, and studio footage (interesting, but not very telling of the greatness of the final product). I had hoped for years that more volumes of The Carl Stalling Project would be released, but have since given up. It’s an interesting experiment, on this note, to try and both watch the cartoons without the sound and the music without the visuals. In the former, the cartoons are decidedly less funny and sometimes unwatchable. In the latter, the music becomes wackier, more frenetic and, in many ways, much more profound as, like many great film compositions, the expressions present in the music allows the mind to build images that cannot exist when given direct visual reference.

Unsung Giants of Modern Music (II): The Allen Brothers

Everybody is familiar with The Carter Family. Many are familiar with Jimmie Rodgers. Some, but not enough, are familiar with “Fiddlin’" John Carson." Very few, however, are familiar with one of the most diversified, talented, and flat-out fun duos of old-time music: The Allen Brothers, Austin and Lee Allen, sometimes known as The Chattanooga Boys. An old-time duo may not technically count as “modern,” but their unique qualities (even by today’s standards) place them, in many ways, in the upper echelon of early recorded music.

Born on Monteagle Mountain in the Cumberland Plateau north of Chattanooga, they gained popularity among the local communities and mining camps in the area in the early ‘20s and, as a result of hearing and playing with many other artists, developed a wide repertoire of traditional songs and popular blues and mountain music of the day. With this, they began recording for Columbia in 1926 with “Bow Wow Blues,” a version of traditional favorite “Salty Dog.” It became fairly popular and the label signed them to record more sides. They recorded for Columbia until the label released their oddball “Laughin’ and Cryin’ Blues” on their “Race” series as opposed to the significantly more white “Old-Time” series. Many of their songs take precedent from popular black songs of the day and, without meeting the duo or doing any research whatsoever, Columbia made what is essentially a clerical error. The single sold well and nobody seemed to care; nobody except the duo themselves, who threatened a lawsuit to get back on the white series. They left the label afterward and signed with Victor, where they stayed the remainder of their career, when they stopped recording in early 1934. They recorded 89 songs over these eight years, of varied scope and style, with odd instrumentations and unique lyrics.

The first thing that struck me as a new listener was Lee’s heavy use of the kazoo, often mimicking or replacing Austin’s voice. While now a fun, if annoying, child’s toy, it was often used as a rhythm and side instrument in rural groups in the early 20th century, but this is the only case of it used as the primary instrument, and the melodies he gets out of it are fast, bouncy, and smooth on top of Austin’s guitar or banjo (Lee would sometimes pick the banjo up, in lieu of the kazoo, but not often). At first, it feels very odd, and it gives the music a novelty but, because of Lee’s skill, instead of gimmickry, it quickly becomes natural. When the novelty wears off, there is the disparity of styles that appear song after song in their catalogue. Many of their songs fall distinctly in the old-time “hillbilly” style, but elements of the blues blurring the lines, not unlike Jimmie Rodgers. Unlike Rodgers and their other contemporaries was their knowledge and utilization of vocal jazz and “hokum,” a style of blues often used on Vaudeville that focused on blatant double-entendre and self-boasting (see “Please Warm My Weiner” by Bo Carter and “My Tweet Twaat Twaat” by The Za Zu Girl [Elton Spivey]). All of this, in combination, gave them an edge on other artists in which they could sell records and play shows for widely varied audiences in more widely varied areas.

For all the musicianship, however, their biggest asset was their lyrical styling. Their abilities in so many styles of music show themselves in their words as well as their harmonies. Alongside the regular subject matter of rural music: working, drinking, loving, and the sadness of it all, they were one of the rare groups to place current commentary and pop culture references in their songs. The song they are most known for “Jake Leg Blues” describes the epidemic of drunks in the early ‘30s who suddenly couldn’t walk because of “medicinal” drinks with Jamaican ginger extract that were popular during Prohibition and is, more than that, a good commentary on the desperation of this particular breed of drunk. They broke the mold of “old-time” in their commentary on depression-era politics, actresses like Clara Bow, the recent election of Hoover and, maybe most odd, direct references to their own music, its inherent greatness, the inferiority of contemporaries like The Skillet Lickers (these passages are strangely mirrored almost nowhere else until the emergence of rap), and many subjects that I have no way to understand.

The Allen Brothers were one of the few acts to be able to record and perform successfully during the depression, but it finally took its toll on them and they split for good in 1934; neither ever recorded another song. They were prolific, popular, and highly skilled in their eight years, but forgotten now. Their entire catalogue resides on three CD’s released on the supreme Document Records with extensive liner notes that virtually contain the sum of biographical and historical information on them. Outside of “Jake Leg Blues,” it proves very difficult to find a shred of information on them or their recordings. Their influence on future folk music is dubious at best and the varied nature of the music makes me wonder about their sincerity on any level, but there are few old-time musicians that are more constantly rewarding with repeat listening, and virtually nobody from this era is as fun to hear.

Unsung Giants of Modern Music (I): Viktor Ullmann

This will be the first in a series of posts on musical artists, past and present, who have been forgotten for varying reasons. While I will discuss artists in multiple musical arenas, I will begin with who I feel is one of the most important, and unknown, composers in 20th century music: Viktor Ullmann.

Ullmann was born in 1898 in Teschen, in what is now the Czech Republic, but moved to Vienna when he was very young. As a result of his father’s stature in the army and his own clear musical abilities, he was sent to music school at a young age. Eventually, associates of atonal innovator Arnold Schoenberg took notice of his talents, and he became one of the maestro’s apprentices. His early compositions, while heavily influenced by his mentor, pushed the envelope of the atonal styling and, finally, he broke away and left for the tutelage of Alexander von Zemlinsky, where he began to develop his own style, combing the atonality of what he’d learned in his relative youth with older forms, quotations from contemporary and earlier composers (what Carl Stalling called “musical borrowings”), and a philosophy stemming from the Anthroposophic movement founded by Rudolf Steiner, a highly emotional but technical style that was met with good success in the years between WWI and WWII. However, it was the advent of the Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe that caused both his greatest artistic successes and his demise.

On September 8, 1942, Ullmann, along with many, boarded a train to Theresienstadt, the Nazi "show camp," 40 miles north of his home in Prague, where the Red Cross and journalists could come into for “proof” that the Jews were treated humanely. As disgusting a fabrication as this was, it did afford those lucky enough to be here a semblance of culture. Many of the important Jewish artists of the day were shipped here and Ullmann himself, being one of those elevated, was allowed to organize concerts, lecture and, most importantly, continue to compose his own music. In his two year tenure, he composed some 25 pieces. Many were songs (remarkable, Mahler-esque pieces, in their own right), but he also composed what are often considered now his most important pieces, the 3rd [Theresienstadt] String Quartet (one of the most emotional and scintillating pieces I’ve ever had the pleasure to see in person; second only to seeing Arnold Schoenberg’s own Verklarte Nacht) and a one act opera: Der Kaiser von Atlantis.

It is Atlantis, one of the final pieces he composed, which sets him apart. It tells the story of a king (of Atlantis, that is) who declares war on the entire world with the express intention of ending all life on Earth. Death (as character) tries to intercede but, when Der Kaiser’s juggernaut proves insurmountable, Death leaves his post. As such, the thousands upon millions of people “killed” by Der Kaiser lay tattered, bloodied, and torn on the battlefield, but not dead. For the anguish of this unlife, the world suffers true horror.

Under such dire circumstances, it would have been easy for Ullmann to write nice, safe, Germanic music in the hope that he could eke out a little more time. But he knew where he was going to end up and, instead of cowing to his executioners, he threw it back in their faces. In early October 1944, not long after the opera's first performance, Ullmann was carted to Auschwitz, where he was gassed within days of his arrival. While many of his songs and chamber pieces had political subtexts and borrowings from banned music (namely, Smetana’s Ma Vlast), very little in any composer’s catalogue is as audacious or as cutting as what Ullmann presents in Der Kaiser von Atlantis. He has contributed, like nobody else, a sense of unfathomable time and place, allowing no concession.

Very little of Ullmann’s pre-camp work survives, as a result of the clean sweeps during the siege of Prague but, thanks to the German’s obsessive record keeping, they did allow all the pieces Ullmann wrote in the camp survive. This work is some of the most important of the 20th Century, and it is a shame to see that, while the scores do exist, nearly every previously available recording of his work is now out of print. Maybe someday, symphonies will break from the relentless canon, not play a single Mozart or Beethoven piece for an entire season (God forbid!!), and perform compositions by composers like Ullmann (but certainly not exclusively so). Unless they do, there will come a time where composers such as this are relegated even deeper into academic obscurity, where we admire how the score is put together, but have no idea how it sounds.