Roots & Branches: Ancestor Worship

by John Sinclair

In ABC of Reading Ezra Pound described series of concerts he and some friends had organized in Italy during the early 1930's to demonstrate the various excellences to be found in works of little-known composers of that period and earlier. Their method was to juxtapose similar and dissimilar compositions and approaches to creating music so that the relative merits of the composers could be examined by persons interested in the creative process. The series served not only to expose great musical works to people otherwise unfamiliar with them, but also to demonstrate the scientific method as applied to art work, viz., that the only interesting way to compare various works of art in the same discipline is to lay them side by side, like that, for comparison.

Having been initially inspired by EP's example I set out some ten or eleven years ago in Detroit to present, on the same small scale as Pound and his friends in Italy, series of music and poetry concerts which might serve the same purpose for musicians, composers and poets who were friends and associates of mine, and for our friends in the audience in the same term. In the years since I have been privileged to participate in the production of the same type of concerts on a much larger scale- the Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festivals, for example- and have had the equally useful opportunity to practice this methodology in numerous radio programs.

Which brings me to the point of these remarks. While doing a series of radio programs each Sunday night from 7:00 p.m. to 1 :00 a.m. on WNRZ-FM in Ann Arbor between August 1972 and the last of April 1973, I had the opportunity to present great music of the past fifty years under maximum air conditions: the freedom to play any music I thought important, the support of mostly sympathetic advertising sponsors who rarely insisted that the flow of the music in long (thirty-minute to one-and-a-half-hour) sets be broken up in order to sell their products; and a more or less regular audience made up of friends and other people eager to expose their ears to music previously unfamiliar to them.

From August until October 1972 Jim Tate and I coproduced the Toke Time radio program; Tate supplied the great blues and blues-band recordings of the 30's, 40 s, 50's, and 60's and a tad of swing music from the same period, and I covered jazz, rhythm and blues singing, spoken recordings (Malcolm X, Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Gil Scott-Heron, etc.) and other esoteric items. We alternated cuts from our personal record collections, building long, complex sets which juxtaposed the best of several idioms in order to point out the similarities and differences of the many forms of creation in music as well as to delight our audience.

After Tate left the show to concentrate on his own musical work with the Mojo Boogie Band. I programmed the show myself each week. with the help of my producer Richard Stoneman and a succession of musician guests, who were invited to bring records from their collections to play in sets and/or to mix with mine. Lyman Woodard on Charles Mingus; the Brooklyn Blues Busters and Radio King on r&b; Jim McCarty and John Fraga on the roots of their band, the Rockets; Elephant's Memory; Sarah Brown; Ron English; Bud Spangler; and others helped to realize this concept during the remaining months of the Toke Time program.

In December 1972 we began to publish, for the handful of readers who requested them, lists of the material presented in the radio programs. We thought it would be valuable for people who were taping the show (which we regularly encouraged) and for people who listened regularly, dug the music, but had a hard time matching the song titles and artists with the music they had heard flowing without interruption for 30 to 90 minutes at a time. (I chose the flow over a more didactic presentation with frequent announcements because I felt it was more important for people to hear the music and become familiar with its sound rather than the rap about it.)

Writing down the sequence of tunes and recording artists while doing the show (all of the music was chosen spontaneously as the sets developed: very little was pre-conceived), my mind was blown by the way the sequences looked on paper, and how they made it possible for interested persons to to reconstruct the shows for themselves, provided they could amass the source records or a reasonable facsimile thereof.

Many times since I was forced off air in April 1973 I've looked over my Toke Time lists and thought about publishing them in some form in order to share the programs and the concept with other people. Then a month ago, on February 8, 1975, I had the happy opportunity to do a four-hour radio program with David Fenton on WCBN-FM at the University of Michigan. Since this program, which was titled Ancestor Worship, was more formally structured than most of the others, and since a number of people who are reading this may have heard it themselves, I thought it might be useful to publish the list of compositions, artists, and recordings in the sequence in which they were played that night.

One last note before the list is transcribed: Many of the records featured in the Ancestor Worship program may be familiar to people as "golden oldies" or "nostalgic items" or somesuch, but my intention is to place them in the context of the great works of music produced by black people in America, and to reexamine the recordings in that light in order to understand how the music developed and the various forms it took according to which sector of the black community was making it. Most of the material featured here was recorded during the 1950's; the exceptions are noted. And the breaks in the text mark the beginnings and endings of uninterrupted sets of music.

"ANCESTOR WORSHIP"

I. Party Time

1. Pearl Bailey & Jackie "Moms" Mabley: "Saturday Night Fish Fry" (from "Stars of the Apollo Theatre" Columbia) -1949

2. The Drifters featuring Clyde McPhatter: "What'cha Gonna Do" (from "Their Greatest Recordings -The Early Years"; Atlantic)

3. Etta James & The Peaches: "The Wallflower (Roll With Me Henry)" (from "Golden Goodies, Volume 4"; Roulette)

4. Albert King: "Let's Have a Natural Ball" (from "Travelin' to California"; King)-- 1962

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Roots & Branches

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5. Esther Phillips: "Lets Move and Groove" (from "Alone Again Naturally"; Kudu)-1973

6. King Floyd: "Groove Me" (from "King Royd"; Cotillion)-1967

II. Dance Time

7. Bobby Freeman: "Do You Wanna Dance" (from "Golden Goodies Volume 4": Roulette)

8. Jackie McLean: "Let's Face the Music and Dance" (from "Swing Swang Swingin'"; Blue Note)-1961

9. Earth Wind & Fire: "Mighty Mighty" (from "Open Our Eyes"; Columbia)-1974

10. Yusef Lateef: "Happyology" (from "Jazz for the Thinker"; Savoy)

III. Risky Blues

11. T.V. Slim: "Flat Foot Sam" (from "The Blues": Volume 4. Chess)

12. James Cotton: "Rocket 88" (from "Chicago/The Blues/Today"; Vanguard)

13. The Swallows: "It Ain't the Meat It's the Motion" (from "Risky Blues"; King)

14. Bessie Smith: "You Got to Give Me Some" (from "Any Woman's Blues"; Columbia)-1929

15. Billy Ward & the Dominos: "Sixty Minute Man" (from "Risky Blues": King)

16. Butterbeans & Susie: "I Want a Hot Dog for My Roll" (from "Stars of the Apollo"; Columbia)-1927

17. Bull Moose Jackson: "I Want a Bowlegged Woman" (from "Risky Blues"; King)

18. The Drifters featuring Clyde McPhatter: "Honey Love" (same as 2.)

IV. Making Tracks: The Atlantic Years

19. The Chords: "Sh-Boom" (from "Rock Begins. Vol. 1"; Atlantic)

20. Joe Turner: "Boogie Woogie Country Girl" (from His Greatest Recordings", Atlantic)

21. Laverne Baker: "Jim Dandy" (from "Her Greatest Recordings"; Atlantic)

22. The Drifters: "Steamboat" (same as 2.)

23. Joe Turner: "Shake Rattle & Roll" (same as 20.)

24. The Clovers: "Your Cash Ain't Nothin' But Trash" (from "Their Greatest Recordings"; Atlantic)

25. Ray Charles & the Raelettes: "The Right Time" (from "Ray Charles Live"; Atlantic)

26. Hank Crawford: "Mr. Blues' (from "Mr. Blues"; Atlantic)

27. The Drifters: "White Christmas" (same as 2.)

28. Joe Turner: "The Chicken and the Hawk' (same as 20.)

29. John Coltrane: "Giant Steps" (from "Alternate Takes"; Atlantic)

V. Giants of Jazz-Recorded Live

30. Charlie Parker: "Bebop" (from "Broadcast Performances, Vol 2"; ESP-Disk)-1948

31. Charlie Parker: "Slow Boat to China" (same as 30.) -intro's: Symphony Sid

32. Billie Holiday: "Billie's Blues" (from "Broadcast Performances, Vol 1"; I ESP)

33. Thelonious Monk Quartet: "Nutty" (from "Monk at the Five Spot"; Riverside)

34. Lenny Bruce: "Shorty Pederstein Interview" (from "Interviews of Our Times"; Fantasy)

35. Sonny Rollins: "Old Devil Moon" (from "A Night at the Village Vanguard": Blue Note)

36. Miles Davis Sextet: "If I Were a Bell" (from "Jazz at the Plaza"; Columbia)

37. Miles Davis Quintet: "Autumn Leaves" (from "Miles Davis in Europe"; Columbia)

38. Eric Dolphy: "Miss Ann" (from "Last Date"; Limelight)-1964

VI. Killer Blues

39. Buddy Guy: "First Time I Met the Blues" (from "The Blues, Vol. l"; Chess)

40. Big Walter Horton: "Hard Hearted Woman" (from "Chicago Blues-The Early 50's"; Blues Classics)

41. Lowell Fulson: "Reconsider Baby" (same as as 39.)

42. Muddy Waters: "She's 19 Years Old" (from "The Blues Vol. 4"; Chess)

43. Muddy Waters: "Honey Bee" (from "Ann Arbor Blues & Jazz Festival 1972"; Atlantic)

44. Little Walter: "Last Night" (same as 42.)

45. Howlin' Wolf: "Highway 49" (same as 43.)

46. Sonny Boy Williamson: "Don't Start Me to Talkin'" (same as 41.)

47. B.B. King: "Why Do Everything Happen to Me" (from "Boss of the Blues"; Kent)

48. Malcolm X: "The Dinner Table" (from "Malcolm X-His Wit & Wisdom"; Douglas)

49. John Brim: "Tough Times" (same as 40.)

50. Tower of Power: "It's Not the Crime" (from "Urban Renewal"; Warners)-1974

51. Gil Scott-Heron: "Pardon Our Analysis" (from "First Minutes of a New Day"; Arista)-1974

52. Sun Ra & His Arkestra: "Space is the Place" (from "Space is the Place"; Blue Thumb)-1973