Yesterday, in The Record, Southside Johnny talked about his friendship with Bruce Springsteen, adding, “He’s stealing my saxophone players to replace Clarence, so we steal from each other’s bands occasionally.” Southside did not mention a saxophone player by name — and he did use the plural “players” unless that was a misprint. But one may assume that the theft at least includes Eddie “Kingfish” Manion. Manion played with Springsteen as part of The Sessions Band when Springsteen was touring to promote The Seeger Sessions. In addition to being an original member of Southside’s Asbury Jukes, Manion also played with The Miami Horns and Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul. He also was part of the backing horns when Springsteen played the Super Bowl halftime in 2009, and he played baritone sax with the E Street Band in the Carousel House video shoot for songs from The Promise in December 2010. So, considering the long relationship, the rumor seems like it could be true. [Feb. 9, 2012 Update: As noted below, it has been confirmed now that Manion will be playing saxophone on the upcoming tour — with another saxophonist.
Assuming Manion is part of the tour, it is unclear whether Manion will be a full-fledged permanent member of the E Street Band or whether he is just filling in for the upcoming tour or whether he will be one part of a larger horn section. Of course, Southside’s comment is not official and Springsteen has not made any announcements yet. Nobody can replace Clarence and those are some mighty big shoes to fill, but the music must go on. Welcome, Kingfish.
Update: Blogness on the Edge of Town speculates on the addition of a horn section while noting that we may not know the makeup of the touring band until the first rehearsal show.
Update 2 (Feb. 9, 2012): Bruce Springsteen’s website has now confirmed that Eddie Manion will be playing saxophone on the new tour along with another saxophonist, Jake Clemons — the nephew of Clarence. The tour will also feature singers Cindy Mizelle and Curtis King, trombonist Clark Gayton, and trumpeters Curt Ramm and Barry Danielian.
Jack White, formerly of The White Stripes, is getting ready to release his first solo CD. The new song “Love Interruption” from White’s new forthcoming solo CD Blunderbuss is coming out April 23.
I like the bluesy feel of the song provided by the keyboard, so I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of the album.
What do you think of Jack White’s new song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Apparently, Saturday was National Clash Day, as well as National Kazoo Day. While I suspect that I was supposed to wear clothes that do not match, which I often do anyway, I am celebrating National Clash Day with one of the bands that helped keep my faith in rock music through the 1980s before the group broke up in 1986. So, celebrate National Clash Day with one of my favorite songs from The Clash, “Train in Vain” from London Calling (1979).
Fortunately, there are no kazoos in the song.
Should there be a National Clash Day in honor of the band? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Peter Paul & Mary signed their first recording contract on January 29, 1962. Thus began a recording career with Warner Brothers that would help bring folk music and Bod Dylan’s music to a broad audience.
That broader audience included me when I was a kid. We did not have Bob Dylan albums in my house when I was a kid, but we did have Peter Paul & Mary’s second album, Moving (1963), which included “Puff the Magic Dragon.” The trio and “Puff” eventually led me to Dylan and other folk singers. They even led me to John Denver with their cover of “Leavin’ on a Jet Plane.”
Although today I only have a couple of Peter Paul & Mary albums, I have a huge collection of Dylan and other folk songs that they helped me discover. So, while some hear them and think of a group less authentic than some other folk singers because of their smooth harmonies and the way the group formed, I hear the joy in their music. And I appreciate the role they played in my music education.
“Puff the Magic Dragon”
The story of “Puff the Magic Dragon” began in 1958 when Leonard Lipton, who was a Cornell student, found inspiration in Ogden Nash’s “The Tale of Custard the Dragon.” Lipton used that inspiration to write his own poem about a dragon.
Lipton showed his poem to another Cornell student, Peter Yarrow, who added music and additional lyrics. Not much later, Manager Albert Grossman, looking to capitalize on the growing folk music trend, put together what he saw as a commercial pairing of Yarrow with Peter Stookey and Mary Travers.
Thus began Peter Paul & Mary. The new group recorded “Puff the Magic Dragon” in 1962, and it went on to rise to #2 on the Billboard charts.
What is “Puff” About?
Several years after “Puff the Magic Dragon” was released, rumors started about drug references in the song. Yarrow and Lipton have both explained that the song is really about a loss of innocence, and Lipton has compared the story to Peter Panon his blog.
Many decades on, the song’s themes about lost innocence resonate more strongly for those of us who grew up listening to the song. When I hear the song, I think not only about the lost innocence of Little Jackie Paper. I also think about my own childhood listening to the unusual dark children’s song. In the song, I sensed some frightening message about the world ahead where little boys do not live forever and dragons are left alone to disappear.
But in addition to the haunting elements, there was something comforting in the way the three voices blended together, revealing something else in the world. Perhaps there was a touch of the nearly half-century friendship between the three singers that continued until Mary Travers’s death in 2009.
And maybe some things do last forever. I do not know where I will be in another half century, but I do know that children still will be singing the college student’s poem about a dragon who frolicked in the autumn mist in a land called Honalee.
Update: Dick Kniss, who played bass for Peter Paul & Mary for almost five decades, passed away in 2012 at the age of 74. He also co-wrote John Denver’s hit, “Sunshine on My Shoulders.” RIP.
The killing would inspire both Bob Dylan and the Civil Rights movement.
The Murder
Jurors had acquitted the two white men, Roy Bryant and J.W. Milam, of the 1955 kidnapping and murder of Till. But after the acquittal, in the magazine article, Bryant and Milam described the killing.
After beating and shooting Till, they used barbed wire to tie a heavy cotton gin fan around his neck to weigh down his body when they threw him in the Tallahatchie River.
Throughout the ordeal, the two men could not break the spirit of the teenager. Till maintained that he was as good as them and that he had dated white women.
Emmett Till
Till was a 14-year-old African-American teenager from Chicago. Prior to his death, he was visiting Mississippi relatives in 1955.
In Money, Mississippi, he went to Bryant’s Grocery and Meat Market to buy some candy. Reportedly, while he was in the store, the teen either whistled at or requested a date from Carolyn Bryant, who ran the store with her husband Roy, who was out of town.
As word spread around town about the incident, the husband Roy Bryant returned to town and contacted his half-brother J.W. Miliam. A few days after the encounter in the store between Till and Byrant’s wife, Miliam and Bryant abducted Till from his great-uncle’s home. Three days later Till’s body was found in the river.
Authorities arrested Miliam and Bryant, who were tried and acquitted by an all-white all-male jury. Many were outraged with the acquittal, and some credit the events with helping inspire the Civil Rights Movement.
I saw the morning papers but I could not bear to see, The smiling brothers walkin’ down the courthouse stairs. For the jury found them innocent and the brothers they went free, While Emmett’s body floats the foam of a Jim Crow southern sea.
The events also inspired a young Bob Dylan to write about the Till in the song “The Death of Emmett Till.” He performed the song on a radio program in 1962, explaining the tune came from a song by folk-musician Len Chandler.
On the March 11, 1962 radio show, the host flattered the young Dylan’s skills. But Dylan responded, “I just wrote that one about last week, I think.”
Relatively consistent with Dylan’s comments, in Keys to the Rain: The Definitive Bob Dylan Encyclopedia, Oliver Trager reports that the 22-year-old Dylan wrote the song around February 1962. That date means it is one of the first songs Dylan ever wrote. Trager also suggests that Emmett Till’s death may have affected Dylan because they were born only months apart.
Although Dylan initially was proud of “The Death of Emmett Till,” he later seemed embarrassed by its literalness. He claimed he was just trying to write about something topical. He even went further and said that it was a “bullshit song.”
It’s true that the song does not rise to the poetic level of the more brilliant similarly themed song, “The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll.” But “The Death of Emmett Till” was a good start for the young songwriter, and it helped highlight a great injustice.
This song is just a reminder to remind your fellow man, That this kind of thing still lives today in that ghost-robed Ku Klux Klan. But if all of us folks that thinks alike, if we gave all we could give, We could make this great land of ours a greater place to live.
Through the years, listeners rarely got the chance to hear Dylan’s song. “The Death of Emmett Till” never appeared on an official Bob Dylan release until in 2010 when it was on the CD The Witmark Demos: 1962-1964 (The Bootleg Series Vol. 9) (2010).
The photo above of Till — whose nickname was Bobo — was taken by his mother on Christmas 1954, eight months before he was murdered.
How does “The Death of Emmett Till” rank in the Dylan canon? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Yesterday, in The Record, Southside Johnny talked about his friendship with Bruce Springsteen, adding, “He’s stealing my saxophone players to replace Clarence, so we steal from each other’s bands occasionally.” Southside did not mention a saxophone player by name — and he did use the plural “players” unless that was a misprint. But one may assume that the theft at least includes Eddie “Kingfish” Manion. Manion played with Springsteen as part of The Sessions Band when Springsteen was touring to promote The Seeger Sessions. In addition to being an original member of Southside’s Asbury Jukes, Manion also played with The Miami Horns and Little Steven and the Disciples of Soul. He also was part of the backing horns when Springsteen played the Super Bowl halftime in 2009, and he played baritone sax with the E Street Band in the Carousel House video shoot for songs from The Promise in December 2010. So, considering the long relationship, the rumor seems like it could be true. [Feb. 9, 2012 Update: As noted below, it has been confirmed now that Manion will be playing saxophone on the upcoming tour — with another saxophonist.
(2010).
