[Image above, "Don't Wait for Tomorrow" (original oil on board, 92cm x 122cm),
by Nadeem Chughtai]
From whiskey river:
I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.
(Joan Didion; quoted widely, allegedly from a 1975 commencement address)
…and:
The time allotted to you is so short that if you lose one second you have already lost your whole life, for it is no longer, it is always just as long as the time you lose. So if you have started out on a walk, continue it whatever happens; you can only gain, you run no risk, in the end you may fall over a precipice perhaps, but had you turned back after the first steps and run downstairs you would have fallen at once – and not perhaps, but for certain. So if you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, and if you find nothing behind these doors there are more floors, and if you find nothing up there, don’t worry, just leap up another flight of stairs. As long as you don’t stop climbing, the stairs won’t end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards.
(Franz Kafka, quoted at Memory Green from a work called The Advocates)
Not from whiskey river:
Keep Going
I was led to the trees, as if someone with muscle
In her walk had pushed me. Heading
To the leaves — regal, molten with their final
Chance to breathe, Indian summer — I stopped
By the crowd shouting at the blue police barricade,
Mile 25. This was the moment, one of 26,000
Runners, you presented yourself, dazed and red-faced,
Soldiering on. Although I was too astonished
To speak, your name issued from me, the same way
A cut bleeds, the eyes allow us to see.
“Keep going!” I shouted, again without forethought.
Slowly, your mouth fashioned my name, then
You continued, working to control your body,
Pushing on through a life out of control.“I can’t sit still,” were your words, so urgent,
Serving as much as a plea and apology as a goodbye.
Yet it is the way we would sit together
For which I remember you. We would talk only briefly
Or not talk, leaning against each other while the light
Turned to darkness over the Hudson, until we were sitting
In darkness, and one of us, without any active thought,
Might quietly speak, or rise to turn on a light,
Or move closer to the other, as if the darkness
Itself had spoken and thought were held away
Like an outsider, standing outside a barrier,
And we were not going anywhere. We were inside.
(Michele Wolf [source])
…and:
The abbot had known that this day would bring pilgrims. The knowledge was a part of his dreams; it surrounded him, like the darkness. So the day became one of waiting, which was, he knew, a sin: moments were to be experienced; waiting was a sin against both the time that was still to come and the moments one was currently disregarding. Still, he was waiting. Through each of the day’s services, through their scant meals, the abbot was listening intently, waiting for the bell to sound, waiting to know who and how many.
(Neil Gaiman, Neverwhere)
I really, really wish I understood music better than I do.You may recall the musical clip from last week’s whiskey river Fridays post — Canned Heat’s “Going Up the Country.” In that post, I blithely introduced the group as “the classic hippie-era boogie-blues band”; re-reading it, a couple days later, I wondered just what the heck makes “boogie blues” different from, say, “boogie-woogie jazz.” I can hear the difference, but damned if I can explain it, y’know?
Well, I forgot all about that question until formulating this post. And then I thought of including some boogie-woogie music, because that driving barrelho0use-piano-based sound comes about as close to not-waiting as I can imagine.
Which brings me to “Beat Me Daddy, Eight to the Bar.” A bizarre title, right? It sounds like it must be some drunken masochistic domestic-violence scenario. Not so, according to Wikipedia (although no source for this story is provided there):
The title adopts 1940′s hipster slang coined by [songwriter Don] Raye’s friend, Ray McKinley, a drummer and lead singer in the Jimmy Dorsey band in the 1930s. McKinley kicked off certain uptempo songs by asking pianist Freddie Slack — nicknamed “Daddy” — to give him a boogie beat, or “eight to the bar.”
Given my general level of ignorance about music theory, I wouldn’t dare attempt to trace a line from the early Big-Band versions of the song all the way to the 1970s, including multiple recordings by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen. But I’ll share one of the latter with you:
[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 4:28 long.]
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
Lyrics:
Beat Me Daddy Eight to the Bar
(by Don Raye and Ray McKinley;
performance by Commander Cody and His Lost Planet Airmen)Well, there’s a little
Honky tonky village in Texas
Where’s a guy who plays
The best piano by farHe can play piano
Any way you like it
But the way he plays it best
Is eight to the barWhen he jams, it’s a ball
He’s the daddy of them allThe people gather round
When he gets on the stand
And when he plays
He gets a handThe rhythm he plays
Puts the cats in a trance
Nobody there bothers to danceAnd when they jam
With the bass and guitar
They holler, oh, beat me, Daddy
Eight to the barI said plink, plink, plink
Plink, plink, plink, plink
Plunking on the keys
Riff raff, riff raff, riff raff
Riffing up with easeWhen he jams, it’s a ball
He’s the daddy of them all
People, one time, yeah[instrumental break; repeat lyrics]
I don’t know; I don’t hear patterns of eight of anything in there. (Maybe my hearing’s not only weak, but slow.)
For contrast — and to restore normal cardio-pulmonary functioning to your system — here’s a forcibly decelerated and more recent version, by jazz duo Liz Magnes (piano) and Sandra Bendor (vocals):
[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 3:39 long.]
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Hadn’t heard of Captain Cody before – something else for me to go and look up.
Curious – nice, but sort of incongruous – to find Kafka writing about dreams in a positive way! There’s more to him than I’d realised.
There’s a version of Beat me, Daddy nagging away in the back of my brain, but I can’t quite place what it is. Did Fats Waller ever cover this? I’m thinking it’s someone like that – very laidback piano style and humorous take on the vocals.
Froog: It often frustrates me when I can’t track down some sort of “ultimate source” for an interesting story online. The Wikipedia claim about how “Beat Me, Daddy” got that name sent me searching all over creation, looking for confirmation (which I never did get, other than hints).
But while doing that, I did come across this Google Books item. It’s a transcript of a radio interview with Waller, probably in 1940 (when the song was written). Details are sparse — the Google Books preview doesn’t make that page available — but the interviewer, identified only as “R,” seems to be someone named Rochester (Eddie Anderson???). The relevant portion goes like this:
I haven’t found any recordings of “Beat Me, Daddy” by Fats Waller (although apparently he did cut a piano-roll version in October, 1940).
You might like this YouTube video by Ondrej Havelka, a Czech bandleader who specializes in recreating the sound and spirit of music from that era:
Havelka himself strikes me as looking quite a bit like Benny Goodman!
Ha – great video! But oh my god, the pianist’s in blackface – wouldn’t be able to do that in the States, I don’t suppose.
I may have to add the termite line to my ‘Bar jokes’ thread. Thanks, John.
I love these selections. Thank you.
Froog: Yeah, the blackface is pretty jarring. There’s another video by Havelka’s group — I forget which song it covered — which was set up in the manner of a 1930s-era African-adventure serial, guys in pith helmets and so on; it features a group of “natives” likewise made up. It takes the minstrel-show feel even further, though, in making the natives into cannibals. What a world.
Jules: So happy to see you here (I know, egad, you are… how you say?… freaking busy :))!
It always startles me when you say anything about wanting to understand music more. I mean, you more know than I ever could.
I love the art and the quotes from Didion and Kafka. Gaiman is always good too. I can’t listen to the music right now because I’m waiting for the kiddo to go to sleep–and he should’ve been asleep ages ago. Sigh.
Thanks for the Friday quotes. I look forward to them even if I have nothing smart to add.
Hey, Froog! I think it’s a female singer. Someone like Ella Fitzgerald…I can hear her doing that “Beat me, Daddy” part in that carmel coated voice of hers. I know I’ve heard it, too. But can’t quite grasp where…maybe it’ll come to me in my sleep.
marta: The “I don’t understand music” thing in this post probably would have been clearer if I’d left in the approx. 200 words of additional explanation. (It had to do with understanding, e.g., what it means for a song to be in 4/4 time vs. 3/4 vs. 6/8 time — time signatures. I know what it means at the superficial level of definition; 3/4 time, for example, “means” the song is written with three beats per measure, with the quarter notes each getting a beat. And I know that waltzes are classic 3/4 time examples. But then I have no idea what a “measure” equates to when you’re listening to a song — although if I’m looking at music, I know that each span between two vertical bars is a measure. I just don’t… get it.)
Really, on such matters the best I can do amounts to convincing riffing. :)
cynth: Now see, that right there — “caramel coated” to describe Fitzgerald’s voice — that’s what I’m talking about.
The Missus and I sometimes watch The Next Food Network Star reality show, in which each of a group of maybe a dozen cooks, chefs, and what-have-you competes over the course of several months for the privilege of doing his/her own cooking show. One thing the judges constantly hammer them for is not describing well enough just how something tastes, for an audience which (duh) can’t taste it themselves. Which often leaves me wondering just how I’d describe a food’s taste.
The Other Sister once served a new red wine with a dinner, and wanted to know what I thought of it. “It tastes,” I said, “round.” When I tell this story, and come to that last word, I remember the taste exactly. The Other Sister and Brother-in-Law, however, looked predictably bemused. And I doubt it would have flown with the Food Network judges.
[Ooooh... reCaptcha wants me to comment on RAMH's Auteuil Policy. Answer: it's still in draft form, but yes, in general I want to hear what anyone has to say about any films he appears in. Wonderful actor.]
JES, your posts (like your kicks at 7-imp on Sunday) fascinate and educate me. This one is no exception. I wish I lived in your cranium sometimes. First of all, I love Nadeem’s art — it’s sad and lonely and resigned, but it’s also compelling. As for “Beat Me, Daddy”, you got me curious again, and my searching indicates that either Will Bradley (a trombonist) and/or Ray McKinley (a drummer) wrote the song, which originally had no lyrics. The Andrews Sisters made it famous in 1940, and either wrote the lyrics or lyrics were written for their recording. Cynth is correct that Ella did a version of it later.
The song is stuck in my head now, but that’s not a bad thing. I need to play it while cleaning my house — should take me less time!
Jill: Be careful — curiosity is like a time vampire when there’s a live Web connection lying around. It can suck hours out of a day, leaving no more than barely perceptible bite marks. :)
I’d never seen Nadeem Chughtai’s work before finding that image. But yes, very haunting!
Claude Sautet’s Un Coeur En Hiver is worth looking up if you haven’t seen it, a study in perverse psychological manipulation. I’m also a huge fan of Patrice Leconte, so La Fille Sur Le Pont is another favourite of mine.
Froog: It’s a guess, but I assume you’re saying that Auteuil is in those? I haven’t seen either — in fact, I’m very disappointed in myself that I don’t even recognize the directors’ names. Argh. I hate finding gaps like this!
But thanks for the recommendation; I just added both to my Netflix queue, without bothering to read about either.