Tag: folk

Tim Buckley – Blue Afternoon, 1969

I don’t have much sense for how people feel about Tim Buckley these days, other than a widespread unending fascination with “Song to the Siren,” which could very well be a perfect song. I get the sense, though, that Happy/Sad is typically treated as Buckley’s magnum opus, and that not much attention is given to Blue Afternoon, which he recorded in a month at the same time as Lorca and Starsailor. Some people think Buckley considered Blue Afternoon a throwaway record made to fulfill a contractual obligation to Frank Zappa and Herb Cohen’s label, Straight. It’s also a lot more approachable than some of his more avant-garde works, which might be off-putting to hardcore fans. I would love to hear that I’m way off and that this record is loved by many, because it’s dreamy, in the more honest sense of the word.

I’m especially excited to share it today, on what feels like the first day of spring. Blue Afternoon is so lazy and honeyed that it feels like having too much wine at the picnic and drifting in and out of consciousness in the shade. Hazed in twelve-string guitar and vibraphone shimmer. Taking a jazz approach to folk, Buckley is moody, blissful, and deeply expressive. If this is in fact a throwaway album, all the more reason to stand in awe of his ability.

Judy Henske & Jerry Yester – Farewell Aldebaran, 1969

Guest post by René Kladzyk (Ziemba)

“Come ride with me
We’ll gallop through the sky
The stars our road will be
On racing winds we’ll fly”

Aldebaran is a giant orange star in the Taurus constellation, and is one of the brightest stars in the nighttime sky. Farewell Aldebaran, a singularly bizarre and captivating album produced by Jerry Yester and Judy Henske over a couple weeks in the summer of 1969, is appropriately titled, existing in a musical space located far outside of its time and the trodden terrain of planet Earth. Each song sounds remarkably different, widely-ranging in style, instrumentation (with Yester playing over a dozen instruments and contributions from Ry Cooder, Zal Yanovsky, and David Lindley, among others), and the disparate contours of Judy Henske’s incredible voice.

Henske, who was known as the “Queen of the Beatniks,” had cultivated a style of powerful vocal delivery singing at clubs in Greenwich Village, and peppered her performances with wild jokes and vivid story-telling (live performance recordings from this era are hilarious and amazing). In Farewell Aldebaran, her poetics and nuanced vocal delivery are at their most transfixing. Her voice ranges from sweetly lulling to powerfully wailing, as she sings stories of a bewitched clipper ship named Charity, church fundraisers, and lands beyond the edge of death.

The musical arrangements travel just as swiftly along these outer space winds, merging folk and psychedelia in an inventive array of instrumentation (including toy zither, marxophone, Chamberlain tape organ, hammer dulcimer, bowed banjo, and heavy use of synthesizers).

My obsession with this album was immediate and very potent, and has only grown with repeat listens. I had the pleasure of recently seeing Jerry Yester play at a small venue in Northwest Arkansas, where he performed unreleased songs from the Farewell Aldebaran sessions and shared stories of his incredible musical career (he also played in The Lovin’ Spoonful, Modern Folk Quartet, and New Christy Minstrels, and produced for Tim Buckley, Tom Waits, The Turtles, and The Association, to name a few). He was even sweet enough to let me sing “Rapture” with him accompanying at the end of his set, a moment forever etched in my memory. If you’re ever driving through Northwest Arkansas, consider a visit to the Grand Central Hotel in Eureka Springs to hear Jerry Yester play, and prepare yourself for pure wonder. Until then, listen to this!

Bridget St. John – Ask Me No Questions, 1969

Peak British folk. Bridget St. John is most well known for the trio of excellent records she released between ’69 and ’72 on John Peel’s Dandelion label. This, her debut and the first in the series, is the most bare-bones and raw, with guitar that’s alternately sunny and somber. It’s also blessedly absent of the goofy optimism that made many of her peers less palatable (and, unlike many of its contemporaries, all the songs on it are self-composed). Her voice is remarkable not just for sitting in a notably low alto range, but for its consistency of non-expression, as if she preferred to let her androgynous bard quaver and her direct lyrics speak for themselves. The follow up to this record, Songs for the Gentle Man, is also worth seeking out, but it’s more padded out with instruments, and feels somehow less pure for it–I love how Ask Me No Questions is unabashedly moody, dappled with the occasional patch of sun (the eight minute long closing title track is dense with field recordings of birds and church bells). Perfect fall soundtrack.

Judee Sill – Judee Sill, 1971

Guest post by Cora Walters

The more I listen to Judee Sill’s music, and specifically this album, the more I come to think of it as a church. The perfect soundtrack for finding your way. Her earnestness and skill as a singer and lyricist certainly rank her among the sweet sirens of the seventies–Joni Mitchell, Vashti Bunyan, Karen Dalton, Linda Perhacs, Bridget St. John, Nico–but what sets her apart is her constant craving. Surreal parables swirl around, clutching to make contact or to make sense of the world and her place in it. Each song is a hymn of her own mystical making. Even at its most baroque (“The Archetypal Man”), twangy (“Ridge Rider”), or pop (“Jesus Was a Cross Maker”), she’s driftin’ and “lopin’ along” some serious terrain–the rocky road to salvation.

Henri Texier – Amir, 1976


The debut album from French jazz double bassist Henri Texier, who has worked with Don Cherry, Bud Powell, Donald Byrd, Chet Baker, and Total Issue, and co-founded the Transatlantik Quartet and European Rhythm Machine. Amir is spare and stark, vibrating and volatile with unrealized possibility, slightly sinister and about to burst at the seams. Long stretches of double bass drone, lyricless vocal chants (Texier’s voice sounds an awful lot like a string instrument), and a few brief forays into free-jazz, moments at which the record threatens to break apart. Texier on double bass, viola, oud, flute, percussion, piano, and vocals. Cool, weird dinner-eating music.

Van Dyke Parks – Song Cycle, 1967

Another one from the canon. Song Cycle is deranged. It riffs on all things Americana: gospel, bluegrass, orchestral ballads, folk, show tunes, marching bands, movie scores, ragtime, waltzes, girl groups, and pop rock, but it never settles into any of these shapes. People call it impenetrable, but I think it’s, ahem, too penetrable, too open and slippery and rife with forks in the road. It’s psychedelic insofar as every measure seems to want to tug away and break off into several different songs, leaving the listener in many places (and times!) all at once, volatile and hanging off of a musical precipice. It’s nauseating, beautiful, and a tiny bit misanthropic.

As a teenager, my first dozen listens left me unable to remember anything about what I had just listened to, what had just happened, and yet despite it being so elusive, you can’t stop listening, trying to grab hold of it. I’m sure this is a pretty typical response, and Parks himself sums it up best in this anecdote:

When I played the album for Joe Smith, the president of the label, there was a stunned silence. Joe looked up and said, “Song Cycle”? I said, “Yes,” and he said, “So, where are the songs?” And I knew that was the beginning of the end.

A massively expensive commercial flop, the record was originally supposed to be entitled Looney Tunes, and it does feel cartoonish and larger than life. Most of it is accompanied by Parks’s reedy, androgynous vocals–he sounds like a jaded, aging chorus girl who’s smoked a few packs too many, singing sardonically to an empty theater. Clearly he’s amused by this whole thing. The opener, “Vine Street,” is Steve Young covering a Randy Newman song, and it fades in midway through the song and fades out before it’s finished. Track six, the cheekily titled “Van Dyke Parks,” is a minute long clip of a gospel hymnal, almost completely masked by what sounds like a helicopter making a water landing. The closer, “Pot Pourri” (probably another joke title, given that it’s the least hodgepodge track in the cycle), finds Parks alone with a piano, padded by a thick hiss of room tone, and the song doesn’t exactly end so much as stop–presumably leaving it open-ended and the cycle unbroken, ready for another go round.

Mix: Winter (Indoors)

I made this mix for ambient indoor listening, thinking about the last few moments of winter and a little bit of thawing for spring. It’s heavy on vocals, folk, and acoustic instruments, so it may be more of a background listen. If you like it, download it here.

Tracklist:
1. 0:00 Arthur – Wintertime
2. 2:50 The Durutti Column – Sleep Will Come
3. 4:38 Bridget St John – Many Happy Returns
4. 6:51 Harold Budd – Albion Farewell (Homage to Delius, for Gavin Bryars)
5. 9:22 Connie Converse – There is a Vine
6. 10:54 Woo – Taizee (Traditional)
7. 13:06 Unknown – Pumi Song
8. 14:13 John Jacob Niles – Go ‘Way From My Window
9. 16:27 Clara Rockmore – The Swan (Saint-Saëns)
10. 19:19 Lewis – Like To See You Again
11. 23:41 Unknown – IV
12. 25:39 Patti Page – The Tennessee Waltz
13. 28:32 Gigi Masin – Parallel Lines
14. 30:57 Yasuaki Shimizu – Suite No. 2: Prélude (Bach)
15. 34:55 Donnie & Joe Emerson – Love Is
16. 37:55 Rosa Ponselle – The Nightingale and the Rose (Rimsky-Korsakov)
17. 41:11 Henri Texier – Quand Tout S’arrête
18. 42:43 Molly Drake – I Remember
19. 45:41 Virginia Astley – Sanctus
20. 47:40 Nico – Afraid
21. 51:11 Arthur Russell – A Sudden Chill