On the Banks of the Deep Bend
Photo by Kelly Sikkema on Unsplash
You can bury a lot of misery in a good rock lyric. Just lay it out there. Catch hold of a gift flying in from the artist’s muse, pencil it down to four lines of righteous blues, three verses with a hook and you don’t really need a chorus. Not hardly so easy, though. George Thorogood never seemed to catch on. And Alice Cooper let too much of his makeup drip on the frets. So they’re not all gems.
But rock does big themes more than people recognize. It’s not all head-banging and heavy makeup, even if that’s what the media likes and gets the biggest twitter feeds. A definite indicator: if you can’t write lyrics like Joni Mitchell, you’d best adopt a persona with pointy breast armor like Madonna—and no telling about Lady Gaga. Rock grew from, flourished actually, in popular entertainment. Teenage girls screamed for Elvis in the 50s—ordinary middle Americans offered themselves free to their idol. In the 60s it was the Beatles. We humanoids are a hive culture with frequent irruptions, some better targeted than others, and popular music is the perfect mirror of each wave passing.
At Woodstock, Jimi reconceived the Star Spangled Banner to an awe-struck field of fresh-eyed stoners. Some said what he did was anti-American, definitely sacrilege, but I expect most of those are gone to the Elysium Fields, and the kids nowadays have never heard of the whole business. Before he checked out on this world, Jimi said he was already bored with being a persona instead of a person who wanted to ingest as much music as he could. There seemed something dangerously prophetic about a twenty-seven year-old crash and burn—like his whole generation was heading there.
Car wrecks from reckless speed. Is that what it took to be an artist in the 60s? In many respects it was what it took to live in the 60s and 70s.
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Though the title of this piece tells of a different story. We’re speaking of a not well known band—Gov’t Mule—who are no longer recording except for occasional reunions.
My, how time flies.
I saw the Allman Brothers playing for free in an Atlanta park when I was a twenty something college student, and it’s been how long since Duane’s death and his brother, Greg picked himself up and continued. Dickie Betts, Butch Trucks, Jamoe Johnson and Berry Oakley kept the name alive, employing a rotating group of guitarists, Warren Haynes and Derek Trucks among the more outstanding.
The Allman Brothers were a working band who reached their peak based in live performances. Gov’t Mule comes from the same school. You might say Gov’t Mule occupies a piece of the popular music scene not visited by the media, more the backwater where real musicians like to play.
Warren Haynes of Gov’t Mule fame ain’t no pretty boy—he’s too country for starters and too burly to be a sex icon like Jim Morrison in his skinny leathers screaming at the microphone—Haynes is as misfit in the role of rock star as, oh say, Jerry Garcia. And he can handle an axe just fine. But his vocals are even better. Southern misfits, black and white alike, and electric guitars are at the heart of the rock and roll beast.
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Gov’t Mule’s On the Banks of the Big End has more verses than the usual rock song, and guitar interludes to complete the composition. What makes it unusual—other than not being a lost love song—is that Haynes waits for the final verse to deliver the goods. He’s mourning a lost friend with complicated regrets. The lyrics span years in a life, and they only suggest; they don’t explain.
“Searching for a reason to go astray.” Haynes uses the phrase only twice, dropped in casual-like but to best effect.
Some of the finest rock—of the musical variety not the smoking kind—comes out of the South. Tom Petty, he’s from Florida so that kinda counts. Petty was another one of those working musicians. Greg Allman borrowed his blues from southern blacks, even if his voice was god-given. And Duane took up a slide guitar to improvise on Mississippi Delta blues licks—in turn to improve on a number of rock guitarists coming after him. The Allmans, as we called them, had a drummer named Butch Trucks. His kid cousin, Derek, came by the music by wearing out his old man’s Allman Brothers vinyl.
Reading about these linkages between generations and backgrounds makes me smile nearly as much as the music. They speak to me of living in notable times and places, some of which I witnessed.
Allman Brothers
A good number of Greg Allman’s lyrics were just flavoring the beat with the blues—and to glorify his brother’s slide guitar—Greg’s voice authenticated whatever he was singing about. If Clapton was god, Greg was his voice. Like Elvis with superior blues credentials. Some of Greg’s were classic. The intro to Statesboro Blues with the band setting down those boogey licks, followed by Greg’s opening verse—the whole song start to finish, hmmm. Though I’ve never been trapped upstairs with the woman’s man arriving downstairs, not even close. If it's a personal problem, not being able to brag like that, I’ll have to live with it. The storyline is classic shanty sex, and if it isn’t a tale taken from real life, Greg probably wished it were—the part about shagging the lady leastways.
Greg’s best, far as I’m concerned, was on the band’s first album, a slightly ethereal song called Dreams. It’s one of the few times you hear his organ come to the fore, and his lyrics are strongly felt. Recorded when he was 22 years old. Not even blues, just electrified guitars, that Wurlitzer organ sound and his voice from the deep South. Greg wrote Ain't Wastin' Time No More—which I remember listening to intently, needing something good to come from an unnecessary death by motorcycle. After his brother died.
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Layla and Other Assorted Love Songs almost didn’t happen. It took Duane Allman sitting in as a sideman with Eric Clapton and the Dominoes to pull together those seminal recordings—all blues and what could be drawn from them. Clapton sings on most of the songs, with Bobby Whitlock singing harmonies that stand on their own. Clapton and Whitlock, their voices have a natural affinity. Carl Radle on bass and Jim Gordon on drums.
Derrick Truck and Susan Tedeschi’s 2-CD live recording of Layla is trapped in my car’s CD player until either I or the car gets hauled to the junkyard. And in a final twist, Derrick and Warren toured with Greg Allman.
Then & Now: Tedeschi Trucks Band
So Derek Trucks played beside Warren Haynes in the Allman Brothers Band. You don’t need to take notes, just sit up and read.
Midnight up in Harlem is the song I’ll nominate to represent the Tedeschi Trucks Band, though others might differ.
“He was born to love me. I was raised to be his fool, oh, his fool.” from Midnight in Harlem by Mike Mattison and Derek Trucks
To the point. The singer is living in the moment—in the life of a working musician, remembering a single night in Harlem.
If you want to see how much the rock scene has evolved since Duane stood a stage, let Derek Trucks open with a few artful notes for Susan Tedeschi to dig into her southern fried vocals about a singular moody experience in a part of the country you don’t expect to find people singing the blues. And she didn’t grow up southern—unless Massachusetts qualifies—but then neither did Bonnie Raitt. The blues have an open door policy.
Derek Trucks’s slide guitar coda reprises the theme to Midnight in Harlem, building it to a crescendo, then dropping back to soft notes, with the 20-something person orchestral ensemble following suit. Wandering lost in Harlem. Duane would be smiling to see the son of his bandmate making those strings cry. The coda by Trucks is their band’s signature closing.
Then: Mercy, Mercy Me
What business did black artists ever have singing about environmental issues? That was simply not what Motown singers in the 70s were supposed to be about—and Berry Gordy told Marvin Gaye to stop recording his because they wouldn’t be accepted by Motown’s larger, white audience. Stay in your lane, bro.
Dancing a slow one to a Motown crooner was popular growing up in South Carolina, but that was as far as it went when it came to accepting blacks. Blacks might could sing to whites in the 70s but they sure couldn’t preach to them. Gordy was black—and also he was ambitious.
It was hard to wrap your head around Marvin Gaye—he needed that extry ‘e’ so people didn’t go and be confused. Truth was, his old man had named him Marvin. In those days Smokey Robinson was an icon at Motown. Stevie Wonder was another. Berry Gordy had his formula, and it was hard when Marvin Gaye and Stevie Wonder wanted to break the mold, but Motown was a seriously disciplined operation.
Mercy, Mercy Me is a black man’s gift to his country. Gaye didn’t alter his vocal style from his earlier soul songs, and the lyrics he wrote for Mercy, Mercy Me are more reflective than angry, like he was weary of the toil—or more immediately arguing with Berry Gordy. But with the success of the earlier single record of What’s Going On? even Gordy grasped how the country loved Marvin Gaye and agreed to the recording the entire album. The vinyl album begins with What’s Going On? and the first side of the record concludes with Mercy, Mercy Me in an unrecognized nod to an unseen generation of blues artists—like Robert Johnson, an artist dead and gone before he was ‘discovered’ by a wider white audience.
Robert Johnson’s poor man’s blues were composed by a poor black man before jazz turned mainstream and even longer before rock, both borrowing heavily from their country cousins. (Johnson’s Crossroads was the song that put Cream and the lead guitarist on the map).
And what would Robert Johnson think to hear some English lads, Clapton, Bruce and Baker go crazy electric on his work? Their Crossroads recordings have to be in that rare atmosphere with Jimi’s All Along the Watchtower. If Jimi, another black man hadn’t composed his version of Bob Dylan’s cryptic anthem it might well be remembered as half the song it is. Clapton returned the favor for reviving Johnson, and if Johnson was the artist he’s remembered for being, he wouldn’t be jealous, only appreciative of where Cream took his work.
You can read about the great migration of blacks from the cotton fields, but listen to Crossroads if you a glimpse of the pain.
“I went down to the crossroads and fell down on my knees.” Robert Johnson
Robert Palmer
In 1990 Robert Palmer did a remake of Merci, Merci Me—a very true-to-the-original remake because he had the voice to pull it off. If any remember Palmer now, it was for the dubbed dance number with all those foxy ladies in pushup bras right behind him. If you google Robert Palmer and foxy lady video, I feel sure it will come right up. The dancers in tri-colored shifts looked about as friendly as hungry alligators—or Victoria Secrets models, man-eaters all. And you have to believe Palmer regretted that particular marketing sidelight even if it paid well.
Makes me wonder how many impressionable boys turned gay, seeing that Victoria Secrets catalog that they mailed every month to every zip code in the country. Nice asses, but lord look at those mean eyes Bad diets will make you mad. .
Marvin Gaye Again
Seems the thing about Marvin Gaye, besides overcoming an unfortunate first name—I like his last name—was the man had a voice bestowed by the gods. Tall and handsome. And he was reaching for deeper lyrics when his own father murdered him. That’s as fucked up as it comes.
Listening to the song, it’s hard to appreciate the shear work behind it—seeming so effortless and soulfully sung. Marvin Gaye’s years singing since junior high in DC, then the years in Detroit with the Motown machinery, surrounded by songwriters like Holland-Dozier-Holland (Come See About Me, Baby I Need Your Loving, Where Did Our Love Go?...); singing with Tammi Terrell, singing songs by Ashford & Simpson of Ain’t No Mountain High fame—it was a creative hive for creative blacks. If Motown was a machine and Berry Gordy ran it like his personal empire, the music produced runs into how many songs still sung today. Pop, yes, but also soul and even songs about ecology.
The LA movie business swamped the world—flooded it like a tsunami. The recording moguls had grown up alongside the movie moguls and there was enough greed to go around, and it didn’t take long for a nascent rock industry to follow the movie moguls.
I always assumed the worst part of seeking a music career were the smokey bars you needed to play on the way up. How many minutes do you actually get to play between miseries like dealing with lousy agents and the rest of the lot? I can’t envy a life in hotel rooms. I did enough of them and played not a lick.
It’s a seriously fucked up world as Marcus Aurelius was too polite to say.
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Mark Knopfler
If you don’t know Mark Knopfler’s Why Aye Man, you haven’t heard about the decline of the British blue collar workers in quite this way—being in Germany where he and his mates in the story came to make a living they could no longer make in Northumberland, and the hero sings, “sometimes I miss my River Tyne.”
Some say rock has passed its prime. It’s obviously not the hedonistic, drug-powered affair it once was. But listen to Knopfler: “We had the back of Maggie's hand. Times were tough in Geordie land.” Maggie as in a certain conservative British prime minister.
Then listen to Derek Trucks and his gorgeously voiced Susan Tedeschi. Listen to old Marvin Gaye the artist.
Wrap-up
What follows is a tangential subject, which isn’t how they say to wrap up an essay, but does it matter? It came to me while writing this piece on some of the music that led my growing up in America. It was Labor Day, and I was thinking about where we are in America in 2022.
The U.S. has had great fortune to its rise in the world. Beginning with a vast, underpopulated country with enviable resources, to timing and ultimately to its wealth taken from all the usual places—and people.
Paris fell in love with jazz and its great black musicians in the 20s. American music and popular culture have become wildly influential across Europe, across the world.
All of which we can trace back to a group of ornery contrarians—from Puritans to southern slave holders who didn’t particularly like each other so they crafted as tortuous a constitution best they could to ensure their opponents didn’t win. The only thing they forgot was Shakespeare’s sage advice, “First, we kill the lawyers.”
But we in the U.S. are often confused by the phenomena of living here, believing it elevates us personally, believing each and every U.S. person is precious to the rest of the world, instead of being grateful for where we landed in history. We shouldn’t take lightly this amazing American rise on the planet, nor unappreciatively, but we current occupants cruising with headphones in BMWs and Chevies weren’t the reason, nor are we irreplaceable.
The stories about music, rock among its best subjects, reinforces a belief in digging deep to sustain life.
So for this Labor Day recently passed, I’ll offer this: we should live as fully as possible, appreciating the generations who brought us here, and work to leave things cleaner for those who follow. It’s a simple idea. For the rarer few like Marvin Gaye who left a memory like Merci, Merci Me, we can embrace his gifts and smile. Next time I raise a glass in Paris, it will be to Marvin Gaye and all his cohorts. Toasting genius makes me happy.