With Coffee and a Kiss

Ever notice how various styles of music fit the three requests of the “Serenity Prayer”?

Yes, there are far more than three genres of music, many of them overlapping, but just as three primary colors give us a complete spectrum, so too music:

Classical offers the serenity to rise above a gotta go-go world; rock and roll the courage to confront it; folk the wisdom to understand it.

Such was my thinking after hearing Roger Ebacher’s jazz quartet, Re:Groove, on a night I was determined to put all the concerns of my go-go if not already gone-gone world out of mind. No matter that I left jazz out of those prayed-for qualities, Re:Groove bestows all three while taking you into a relaxed and relaxing world of its own.

This is Latin jazz, Brazilian and Cuban, samba and bossa nova, cha-cha-cha, and it’s easy to forget that you are sitting in a brewpub in downtown Haverhill and imagine yourself instead on a Caribbean beach. It’s just as easy to filter out the din from the bar in the next room while four musicians turn their featured passages into stories that captivate from their opening chords to the notes that return to the full combo.

All of them have a few, complementing Ebacher’s signature melody flute on the lead of most tunes, all of them articulated so fluidly and clearly that Herbie Hancock would be proud to have his name on “Herbally,” Ebacher’s tribute to him.

Michael Shea’s keyboard sizzles on “Down to My Very Last Dream,” a composition by legendary Newburyporter Charles Bechler and his sometime collaborator Ed White. Lionel Girardeau’s bass swaggers through Ebacher’s enigmatic “Three in the Afternoon.” And percussionist Michael Wingfield dances all ten fingers in a mesmerizing solo over four congas–at one point bouncing a closed fist for comic relief–in a joyous piece Ebacher titled “Zola.”

Let me disclose here that I’ve known Ebacher since the 1980s when our daughters were both in a children’s play produced by Newburyport’s Theater in the Open. I’ve heard him in jam sessions and I’ve heard his recordings, but apparently not enough to know that he’s a vocalist as well as a flautist and percussionist.

The songs he sings are his own, and are just right for his across-the-cabana voice. “What the World Is Coming To” hints at topical subjects:

Faster and faster
Everything’s spinning
Seems like we’re losing control
Life is a game, but nobody’s winning
Better hold on to your soul

That one and a sky-kissing, yet still determined “This Time Around” are just enough to remind us that this is a night off from any woes of the world as Ebacher reassures us in his most charming “Coffee and a Kiss”:

There’s nothing better
I can tell you this
And if you leave me
That’s what I’ll miss
Your coffee and your kiss

Charming becomes disarming when the band takes it up an octave leading into “Welcome Home,” a vibrant melody that Ebacher composed in a rhythm of Mozambique to highlight the chops of both Shea and Girardeau.

Re:Groove plays all tempos, effortlessly kept and shifted by Wingfield’s congas occasionally abetted by a pair of bongos and various shakers Ebacher keeps in front of himself. Among the more sentimental tunes is “Missing Rio” which he imagined on a flight out of “The Marvelous City.” Though Latin, an unmistakable feel of departure turned back my own musical clock to missing Denver even if I was well more than a mile high.

Yes, I heard them in The Tap in Haverhill, which hosts jazz every Sunday night, 6:00 to 9:00, and Re:Groove will be back likely in October. But this is a Newburyport-based band formed by Ebacher, a Port native–as is Wingfield–with a keen regard for this city’s musical history.

In addition to Bechler’s “Very Last Dream,” we also hear “Plum Island,” a samba composed by another local legend, world-renowned saxophonist Charlie Mariano. Bechler and Mariano who, in Ebacher’s words:

… were band mates in the seminal psych/jazz/rock group Osmosis, who opened for Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, and the Grateful Dead in the early 70s, just a few years before my tenure in the Charles Bechler Group.

To complete the tribute, Ebacher plays “Plum Island” on a Casio DH -100 digital horn, which I’d rather call a melody sax in keeping with the melody flute.

But then, why fit labels and categories when the music offers every color and answers every prayer whether you asked or not?

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Roger playing “Plum Island,” composed by the late, great saxophonist Charlie Mariano. The Plum Island motto appears on the wall over keyboardist Michael Shea’s left shoulder.
Please enter our Mouth of the River poll: “Melody Sax” or “Casio DH -100 digital horn.” Deadline is midnight, August 1. Members of the band may not enter. No write-ins. Choose wisely!

Re:Groove at The Tap in Haverhill, July 24, L2R: Michael Shea on keyboard, Roger Ebacher on melody flute, Lionel Girardeau on bass, and Michael Wingfield on congas.

All photos courtesy of Jazz at the Tap
https://www.facebook.com/JAZZ-at-the-TAP-303756670443083/

May I Misquote You?

By now, any honest person, no matter his or her inclinations or beliefs, knows enough to fact-check quotations that circulate on social media before indicating any approval and certainly before reposting.

Not that many years ago when we were all just getting used to what might be called information-saturation, it was easy to be tricked into believing fabrications, especially when the quote “sounded like” something that Mark Twain or John Lennon or any witty, glib personality from the past or present might have said.

I learned the lesson early on when I quoted the then-president of the United States insisting that his sons had 2nd Amendment protection while they bagged wildlife on an African safari. Seemed so plausible, and the photos of a grinning Eric and Don Jr. proudly holding up carcasses larger than themselves seemed to justify a proud, if geographically challenged father.

Luckily, a friend caught my error on-line before it went to print, and so I was able to correct and apologize for it quickly. My subject had so many other gaffes from which to choose–Clorox, windmills, hurricanes, “very fine people,” upside down Bibles, contempt for the military, ridicule for the handicapped, defamation of minorities, degradation of women–that I was hardly at a loss.

Unfortunately, this keeps happening, and it is clear that many of those in error simply do not care about error. Most examples are so petty that the quotes are hardly worth noting. However, the responses can be eye-opening, as in this thread that followed a post of a fabricated quote attributed to Abraham Lincoln after Facebook covered it up:

Wow Fascistbook is on a roll. They have this covered up with a black window claiming false information. Sheesh.
No kidding. No testing the character please. Lol.
Oh they think it’s mis attributed to Lincoln. But others have posted the same thing…
“If you want to test a persons character, give them power” ~ There! “I” said a thing. LOL.
Why is that photo covered by FB?
apparently Abe did not speak these words.
there’s plenty of other lies to cover. Cancel culture erasing our past

Fascinating to note in two of those comments how closely “whataboutism” is entwined with whining over what they call “cancel culture.” How else could something which never existed–the “quote”–be said to be “erased”?

Some fabrications are of such an extreme nature that they reveal far more than, say, carelessness with facts. In fact, they scream with an intent to bury what is true in favor of what they say is true.

Perhaps the most glaring example was when someone slowed down a tape of Nancy Pelosi making some remarks that, in real time and tempo, were clear and coherent. The slowed version made her sound drunk, slurring words. Numerous posts were made of it long after the truth was exposed, and those who posted didn’t want to hear any objections. As one told me, “This is what we think she really is.”

No doubt this is what Kellyanne Conway had in mind when she cited “alternative facts” at the start of the Trump presidency, and it may explain the very foundation of efforts in several state legislatures to submit an “alternate slate of electors” in the 2020 election for certification by the sitting-while-a-noose-awaited-him vice president.

On the surface, all of this is so absurd that it’s tempting to laugh right into the faces of those who do it. Problem is that it has such a proven appeal to so many people in the right places–as fabricated by gerrymandering and by the Electoral College–that “alternate electors” could determine the 2024 presidential election.

Are these people at all phased by a transparent effort to erase the popular votes they anticipate in states with growing minority populations in 2024? No, not in the least. Why?

Because this is what they think America really is

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https://historeetees.com/collections/t-shirt-collection/products/george-armstrong-custer-t-shirt

Driving Rock & Roll’s Car

If you told me any time in the last 40 years that you heard a band play the Rolling Stones’ “19th Nervous Breakdown,” I’d have figured you were drunk when you thought you heard it.

But I heard it live in the beer garden of Newburyport Brewery last weekend while still sipping my first pint of Overboard IPA.

Oh, the nostalgia in that so unusual song! Something of a litmus test for those of us who were teenagers when it shocked the airwaves. Who dared dance to drug abuse?

Nor did it help that the song remained number two on the charts while at the top each of those weeks was “The Ballad of the Green Beret.” How’s that for polarization?

But all of that happened when the five members of Pathological Outliars were still cluck-clucking and moo-mooing “Old MacDonald Had a Farm.”

Perhaps their relative youth combined with their multi-generational tastes makes them the ideal outdoor hot-weather band. Their repertoire spans decades from “Slow Down,” a 1957 R&R classic later popularized by the Beatles, to “Molly’s Chambers,” a Kings of Leon hit in 2003–and genres from Booker T & the MGs’ suave “Green Onions” to the Ramones’ punk-raucous “I Want to Be Sedated.”

Sunny Douglas and Ed Cameron alternate vocal leads, both pitch perfect for their individual selections. Cameron may not be able to find matching socks, but he harmonizes well with Douglas whether they are belting out Bowie’s defiant “Suffragette” or lifting the weight of the Kinks’ “Tired of Waiting.”

Craig Douglas’ drumming accelerates and decelerates the Outliars like a fine-tuned transmission through songs that demand both. Peter Larsen’s bass is distinct, exact, and bold, keeping the group on the roads the songs chart.

The steadiness of those two allow lead guitarist Eric Gootkind to pick and fret magic. From the flaming intro of Loretta Lynne’s “Portland Oregon” to the iconic drive of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” all the way to the Beatles’ “Ticket to Ride,” Gootkind can drive rock-and-roll’s car.

Back when I danced to “19th Nervous Breakdown”–and not quite that far back when I danced at all–my favorite rock songs were always the ones where the steadiest rhythms make possible the wildest leads, and where confident vocals launch energetic instrumentals that return to the lyrics seamlessly.

Much of the Pathological Outliars’ set list fits that description. And it goes quite well with Overboard IPA.

Look for them again at Newburyport Brewery and, in mid-September, at Plumfest over here on The Island.

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The Pathological Outliars, L to R: Drummer Craig Douglas, Vocalist and Rhythm Guitarist Ed Cameron, Bass Guitarist Peter Larsen, Vocalist and occasional guitarist and tambourine-shaker Sunny Douglas, and, looking directly at you over the top of his shades, Lead Guitarist Eric Gootkind.
Photo by Richard K. Lodge.

Off to the left is now their beer garden. There’s a tent in front of the vat for the band, and tables and chairs extend further to the left, all with a decent view of the western horizon.
https://www.nbptbrewing.com/

No Team in I

Sunday night, ESPN aired Major League Baseball’s draft. One selection keeps nagging, or maybe it’s just me. See what you think:

Put aside the team, the player selected, and the high school he did not play for.

Yes, you read that right. Midway through his senior year, the “high velocity” pitcher knew that pro teams were scouting him. So, he decided to “shut it down,” as the saying goes, and not risk any strain on his arm that could lessen his value.

The move paid off–paid him off at least–in both senses of the word. He was drafted quite high which guarantees him a lucrative contract. All smiles as he donned the pro team’s jersey, he spoke with a congratulatory reporter who asked about his decision to abbreviate his high school season:

“I have to do what’s best for me, and be in the best condition I can be when I join a new organization.”

Something like that, and he went on in that vein. I am sure that he used the word “organization” rather than “team.” Referring to his high school, he used neither word. He used no word at all, and he certainly never used the word “teammates,” which is understandable because he quit on them.

The reporter was all smiles when congratulating him at the end of the interview, and ESPN’s anchor and commentator added their praises as well.

This is what America celebrates in 2022. We each have to do what’s best for our individual selves. There is no team in I.

Is there something wrong with this picture? Or is it just something about me that makes this nagging?

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/115686284157489687/

Finding Folk & Roll

They live up to many descriptions–from “rootsy” and “gutsy” to “gritty” and “edgy”–as well as labels from “genre-fluid” to “alt-Americana.”

Here’s a second to all the adjectives, and though their music defies labels, their own “folk and roll” comes closest.

More specifically, I’ll recommend them as a duo-at-times-trio featuring a vocalist who can belt out like Maria Carey–or entice like Nanci Griffith–and a guitarist with licks reminiscent of the lead guitarist of Arlo Guthrie’s Shenandoah, as deft, precise, and clear as a recording studio.

Except that this is live.

And this is Rockwood Taylor, a duo since 2018 who had played together in other local bands, most notably as the rhythm section for Liz Frame and the Kickers. Lynne Taylor accompanies her vocals on keyboard, at times playing a bass ukulele while guitarist Charlie Rockwood sings lead in a few songs, including Gillian Welch’s “Red Clay Halo.” He also turns the instrumental passages in every song into lively conversations with the listener.

As energetic as his riffs are, it’s as if he’s confiding in you. Any musician ever in a jam session will think he or she is aside him, no matter the distance, able to see every figure made by his left hand no matter how fast it goes up and down the fret.

So, too, Taylor’s voice. Her delivery engages us with every song, several of them RT originals. As one reviewer notes, songs such as “Where I Started From” and “Steel Wheels” from the band’s recent album, Finding Home, “brim with melancholy and remembrance.”

Taylor’s vocals and keyboard on those–and on “Plenty” and “Collateral Damage,” scheduled for release this fall–also brim with exhilaration and hope. Her blues renditions are riveting, particularly on Sam Cooke’s “Change Is Gonna Come” and her uncle RC Wilson’s “Crooked River Blues.”

Hippo Press captured Rockwood Taylor as “a mix of Shovels and Rope rusticity and singer/songwriter emotion.” Yes, that’s a comparison to a husband/wife duo from Carolina, but for all I heard and felt, it could as well be lower-case.

Eclectic? As Taylor quipped, “Enough serious songs. We’re going to play some silly songs.” In that category is their own spoof of a Chuck Berry classic, re-titled “Covid B. Gone.”

She also tells us, “Tomorrow is Sunday. We won’t be going to church, but we will sing this song.” Tom Waites himself may not have a better intro for his “Chocolate Jesus.”

In their recent local gigs, Rockwood Taylor has added percussionist Kristine Malpica of Imagine Studios in Amesbury who often plays with Meg Rayne. She’s a nice fit, not just for the group’s rhythmic range, but for its overall joyous, at times comic, cast with her back-up vocals.

Joy was the driving force of the show-stopper when all three rang out the medley of Dave Rawlings and Ketch Seccor’s boisterous “I Hear Them All” wrapped around Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.” No song so old has ever sounded so new and so urgent.

At this writing Rockwood Taylor are touring west and south for gigs as far flung as Ohio and North Carolina. On August 20, they play Manchester, N.H. After that, you can look for them at BareWolf Brewery in Amesbury, a frequent venue, as is the Newburyport Brewery’s beer garden and, in warm weather, maybe again at Cider Hill Farm in Amesbury.

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Rockwood Taylor at BareWolf Brewery in Amesbury. L2R: Lynne Taylor, Kristine Malpica, Charlie Rockwood.
Photos by Fred Long.

Forbidden Fruit

There’s a moment early in the film Elvis when his manager, as the film’s narrator, looks at the young women reaching up and onto the stage and says:

Now, I don’t know nothing about music. But I could see in that girl’s eyes, he was a taste of forbidden fruit.

“Forbidden fruit” was the charge some American critics made against a Boston-born actress in the mid-19th Century, but it didn’t stick because her performances were so powerful, making her so popular–and rich–that she could flaunt convention all she wanted.

And she wanted a lot according to her recent biography, Lady Romeo: the Radical and Revolutionary Life of Charlotte Cushman, America’s First Celebrity.

Some might object to that “first” designation, having read it applied so often to Mark Twain and by some to Herman Melville. Yes, both were sensations, but a teenage Cushman had wowed audiences from New York to New Orleans a decade before Melville hit the scene in 1847, or right about when Twain was born.

Author Tana Wojczuk paints a picture of a woman obsessed with theater from girlhood, never with a thought of anything but acting. That included–or excluded–getting married. Instead, she strung relationships, all of them with women, many of them overlapping while remaining close friends with most all to the end of her life

Whispers and gossip never phased her as she threw herself into a profession in which women were assumed to be prostitutes.

She didn’t play roles. She became them, as she did Nancy in Dickens’ Oliver Twist, spending days by herself roaming the slums of New York, trading her clothes for the rags of a dying prostitute. That became her costume on stage, as did the woman’s rheumatic voice.

While making theater more respectable, she also, without trying, gave a generation of women a powerful example of what we now call an alternative lifestyle choice.

Nothing phased her as she became the first actress to seriously play leading male roles. Previously, the few women who played them were cast “to titillate the men in the audience who enjoyed seeing a pretty actress in a short tunic.” One role made her an international sensation: Romeo. Says Wojczuk, Cushman…

…acted like a man rather than a woman in tights, besting men at swordplay. Then, when her chivalric Romeo collapsed weeping in the final scene, she gave men in the audience the dangerous impression it was okay to do the same.

Cushman breathed controversy, but her prim and proper critics were drowned out by important allies. Walt Whitman, a young editor of the Brooklyn Eagle, “was awed by the ‘overpowering grandeur of her genius’.” Others raved about her “virile energy,” her “pythonic inspiration,” her “noble frenzy of eccentric genius.”

A coveted conversationalist, she kept company with Emerson, Hawthorne, Dickens, and on more than one occasion with Lincoln who probably knew Shakespeare better than any man alive, but not better than she.

She gladly shared the stage with the Royalty of American Theater, the Booths, Junius and two of his sons, Junius Jr. and Edwin–but not the third son, John Wilkes. Cushman “disliked him intensely, calling him reckless, drunken, a ‘dare-devil'” years before the assassination.

Following the assassination, the coroner who examined Booth’s shot up body was able to identify him by a scar left by a laceration on the back of his neck made years earlier by a zealous Cushman during a play.

Tana Wojczuk’s portrait of Cushman is flush with these vignettes of American public life in her lifetime, 1816 to 1875, that keep a reader turning its 179 pages. With its fair-sized print and generous spacing, its a book you could read on a long day at the beach or on a cross-country flight.

Lady Romeo is a biopic waiting to happen. Catch may be casting. There’s no actor anything like this actor. Then again, we could have said that about Elvis Presley.

If the film Elvis is fresh in your mind, the comparisons are eye-opening. Not just for celebrity status, but for sexual attraction and all other forbidden fruits that theater always implies.

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https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Lady-Romeo/Tana-Wojczuk/9781501199530

https://www.folger.edu/shakespeare-unlimited/wojczuk-lady-romeo-cushman

And Onto the Blues

As if out of the blue here on Cape Ann, a duet-just-turned-trio called Out of the Blue is offering sets of songs that cover time as well as music.

From Dylan’s “Don’t Think Twice” to Tori Amos’ “Cornflake Girl,” lead vocalist Jill Pallazola boasts a voice ranging from powerhouse to kitchen table, from conspiratorial to riding shotgun. She doesn’t so much cover songs as re-interpret them. Never been to an Amos concert, but anyone who ever heard Dylan live knows the satisfaction of hearing old favorites from new angles.

While Dolly Parton sensationalizes desperation in “Jolene,” Pallazola’s betrayed narrator has something else in mind. And Creedence Clearwater themselves might be surprised at how many syllables roll through “I want to kno-o-o-o-o-o-o-ow” when Pallazola persists in asking, “Have You Ever Seen the Rain?”

Guitarist Tim Neill sings lead on a few, including Tom Petty’s “Free Falling” and, “for those of you unfamiliar with the Allman Brothers, here’s a tune I wrote myself,” as he launches into “Midnight Rider.” His delivery is as faithful as his licks on instrumental passages are vibrant.

Slapping time as lively as the windshield wipers of “Me and Bobby McGee” is drummer Matt Colturi, heard now and then at O’Neill’s in Salem as one-half of Calling for Heathcliff. He’s a brand new addition to Out of the Blue as they gain gigs in coffeeshops such as Zumi’s in Topsfield and restaurants such as Decklynn’s in Gloucester where I caught them on an outdoor deck overlooking the harbor.

No idea what connects Colturi and CFH bandmate James Rogers to Wuthering Heights, but Pallazola and Neill, who have played together on and off since high school, have a combined taste rooted in the blues. Quite unlike most cover bands, Out of the Blue steeps a rock and roll playlist in blues classics such as “Ain’t No Sunshine When She’s Gone” and “Stormy Monday.”

Blues aside, the early evening was as bright–and the fish and chips as delicious–as the music this past weekend at Decklynn’s up here on the tip of Massachusetts’ other cape.

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They return to Decklynn’s Friday, July 29, 7:00 pm.

Out of the Blue, L to R: Tim Neill guitar, Matt Colturi drums, and Jillian Pallazola lead vocals & keyboard. Photo by Christine Winfrey.

Now You’re in the Way

Sitting in a downtown coffeeshop at mid-day, a time when, as any barista can tell you, such places are havens for young mothers with strollers.

Too hot in the window seat, I’ve moved barely five feet into shade, still close to the door. I see the strollers approach and can tell by the turn of their heads before they pause and make the turn if they are coming through the door.

There’s a natural tendency to get up and assist. So ingrained that even I feel it despite knowing better. Obviously, I’d get up as quickly as anyone to assist anyone having a problem getting a stroller or packages through a door, or if they asked for assistance.

Otherwise, you’re just getting in the way.

That may sound like an excuse to be lazy or inconsiderate, but to someone who has delivered boxes totaling upwards of one hundred pounds on a dolly–aka a two-wheeler, aka a hand-truck–it is a practical matter of fact, nothing less than a law of physics.

Over the twenty years that I made deliveries, how many times did I start through a door, backwards to get the wheels over a threshold or a step, only to stop because some well-intentioned soul crossed the path I needed to barge through?

Start the bidding at two hundred on that one.

Without the good, if clueless, Samaritan, I’d be through the door in a continuous motion with few quick moves: Throw the door open, back into it, pull the cart across, keep moving past the door. With ill-advised “help,” you must stop moving and lose all momentum. All you can do then is back out and roll back in saying “thank you” with a forced smile.

At times, you cannot avoid telling someone they are in your way. In some cases, as when a door opens in a corner against a side wall or other objects are left there, they will see that they can’t be of any help.

And then there are cases when someone inside says, “Let me get out of your way,” and you state what should be obvious: “You’re not in my way.” Better believe that the very next thing they will do is try to “help,” and you then have no choice but to inform them, “Now you are in my way.”

Start the bidding at one hundred on this one.

All of this is true of parents pushing strollers. Unless the baby is newborn and firstborn or the stroller just acquired, they know they must back it in over a door’s threshold. I’d bet they have the move down in a day, as I did with a dolly twenty years ago.

None of this is to imply that the rest of us should never pay courtesies to people pushing strollers or to delivery men and women. Or to folks in wheelchairs or with canes or walkers or bundles or to the elderly. Were I seated or standing on the backside of that door, I’d have gladly held it open.

All we need do is be aware of the difference.

As if! All of this is written as I overlook a three-way intersection of two one-way streets joined by a traffic light and a Walk/Don’t Walk sign. As always, cars stop on green to wave pedestrians through Don’t Walk, while other pedestrians just walk across and make cars brake.

Admittedly, any bidding for awareness and making distinctions in this 21st Century starts very, very low.

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https://www.pinterest.com/pin/299278337731759374/

An Unwitting War on Art

In a 2010 interview by the San Antonio Examiner, B.B. King put it like this:

Music is owned by the whole universe. It isn’t exclusive to the black man or the white man or any other color. It’s shared in and by our souls… I told Elvis once, and he told me he remembered I told him this, that “music is like water. Water is for every living person and every living thing.”

Should have known that Elvis, the film, would draw complaints of “cultural appropriation” against Elvis, the person, from those who, with all good intention, think that any culture somehow belongs to an ethic group and should never be adopted by anyone outside the group.

They may be right in many cases, but not this one.

Tom Hanks, who co-produced and has a role that includes the narration of the film, no doubt anticipated the charge. With or without Hanks’ prodding, director and co-writer Baz Luhrmann took great care to open the film with a young Elvis Presley growing up in a housing project with Black neighbors, playing with Black friends, eyeing Black musicians, entering a Black church.

Yes, that’s Black culture, but it was also his culture. Put another way: What other culture did he have?

Add to that his friendships with B.B. King and other up and coming Black musicians at Club Handy on Memphis’ Beale Street. Then add to that the racial barriers Elvis erased:

Radio stations that would not air “race music.”
Concert halls that were white-only or segregated into roped-off areas.
Recording contracts from northern companies that suddenly saw what would sell.

Add to that how Elvis infused rhythm and blues with country that he heard on the radio and at fairs. Was he “appropriating” that cultural scene as well? Or was he deeply, intuitively engaged in–perhaps engaged by–a creative process?

Whatever you think to be the sum of your addition would be subtracted by those who, for all their good intention, raise the cry of “cultural appropriation.”

This dates as far back as 1987 when Paul Simon recorded Graceland in South Africa with local musicians. Though ironic, it’s no coincidence that it has been aimed at successful, historically revealing films: From Dances with Wolves in 1990 to The Descendants in 2011 and Green Book in 2018, just to name the first three that come to this projectionist’s mind.

With no end of examples in sight, “cultural appropriation” is a presumptuous, self-righteous claim that lends credence to right-wing accusations regarding suppression of speech. In recent years, the right has boiled all of it down to two words: Cancel Culture.

Last but hardly least in what we call America’s “cultural divide,” if combining styles of music qualifies as creative, then the cry of “cultural appropriation” is also a call to ban art.

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https://screenrant.com/were-elvis-bb-king-friends-true-story-debate/

American Roulette

Take every dollar they have, leaving them nothing but the smile on their face.

So went Col. Tom Parker’s motto as he convinced a very young Elvis Presley to take him on as a manager who could open every door–and coached him as he glided through most of those doors and tore down walls around the rest.

The new two-hour, thirty-nine-minute film, Elvis, is a dual biography. And if you subscribe to the idea that places are often characters in films and novels, call it a triple-play.

As one who came of age when the Beatles landed at LaGuardia, the film’s coverage of “Elvis the Pelvis” at his peak in the ’50s took me by surprise. I had heard about his above-the-waist-only rendition of “Don’t Be Cruel” on the Ed Sullivan Show, but the arrests that shut down concerts were new to me.

And while I have long known that rock-and-roll was born and raised in the African-American South, and called “race music,” I never knew how openly Southern politicians condemned the “Africanization” of American culture. The film’s rapid cuts between scenes of Mississippi Sen. John Eastman holding a rally surrounded by Confederate flags and Elvis surrounded by musicians and amplifiers opening a concert just miles away reveal a divide as deep as we have today.

Elvis could cross it because he grew up in a housing project where few whites lived. He had African-American friends and was enthralled by the music in their churches, on their porches, in their joints as he peered through their windows, and on Memphis’ streets. As a white boy, he could merge it with country and take it places where it was not welcome. When he complains of resistance, his good friend, B.B. King reassures him:

They might put me in jail for walkin’ across the street, but you a famous white boy.

As Parker tells us as the camera pans an audience reaching up onto the stage trying to touch the King of Rock and Roll:

Now, I don’t know nothing about music. But I could see in that girl’s eyes, he was a taste of forbidden fruit.

Two older cousins once swooned over him, but their accounts did nothing to gain my musical tastes–although he did impress hippies and activists alike with songs such as “In the Ghetto” and “If I Can Dream,” which he sang following the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy in 1968.

In the film, actor Austin Butler as Elvis sings it at the end of a Christmas special much against the advice of Parker, played by Tom Hanks. Parker has already told Elvis that America’s turmoil “has nothing to do with us.” Presley, as he does a few times for various reasons, pressure always one of them, explodes.

Following that scene comes the film’s most mesmerizing moments of Presley sounding out the song to himself, adding chords on a piano, and walking into the NBC studio without the Christmas sweater Parker insisted he wear. As Elvis later explains:

A reverend once told me, “When things are too dangerous to say, sing.”

Mesmerizing? With fast paced split-screens, panning cameras, overlapping and morphing images, the whole film is a roulette wheel spun by Parker’s narration that shifts from dubious to undeniable and stops but for moments in Elvis’ childhood or fame, in concert or at home, in America mid-20th Century or Now.

Now? Well, you try listening to Col. Parker’s gleefully proud definition of “Snowman” without thinking of the con-job that has captivated so many of us these past seven years. In the end, we learn that Parker was never in the military, let alone a colonel. It’s as if Director Baz Luhrmann is urging us to reconsider Presley’s most lasting chorus.

Every one of Presley’s hits plays in the soundtrack, and we hear strains of a few, most notably “Fools Rush In” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” in the score. All of it is threaded throughout the end credits by the song that offers that chorus:

We can’t go on together
With suspicious minds (With suspicious minds)
And we can’t build our dreams
On suspicious minds

As I mentioned, this is as much a biography of “Colonel” Parker as of Elvis Presley, and it serves well as a biography, then and now, of the only nation on Earth where two such people could conceivably exist.

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