| Can we live without the phone for just one damn hour? | |  |  | | Brass tacks: Aurelian Barnes and Maurice Brown of New Orleans' Trumpet Mafia at New Orleans Jazz Fest, May 5, 2023. | | (Erika Goldring/Getty Images) | | | | quote of the day | | | rantnrave:// | Roots & Blues
SNOOP DOGG looks out at a universe of billions and billions of streams and asks the reasonable question "Where the f*** is the money?" JUSTIN TRANTER ponders a townful of striking screenwriters, some of them old friends, and admits "to be super honest, I'm jealous"—because guess what songwriters can't do. At times like these, an artist and a composer could use, among many other things, an ally like CHRIS STRACHWITZ.
Strachwitz, who died Friday, was a roots music collector, preservationist, label founder and store owner who had a reputation for being fair and honest with his artists and, more to the point, going to bat for them, no matter who might be pitching. Like the time he decided the ROLLING STONES should actually pay Delta blues great MISSISSIPPI FRED MCDOWELL for recording his song "YOU GOTTA MOVE" on one of their biggest albums, the one with the ANDY WARHOL cover and "BROWN SUGAR" and "WILD HORSES." The Stones didn't put McDowell's name anywhere on the album (it was the '70s) and their lawyers told Strachwitz, who'd recorded McDowell several years earlier for his label, ARHOOLIE, "no, no, no, everything they record is their own stuff."
With a no, no, no of his own, Strachwitz appealed directly to the band and got that money—a check for around $12,000, a whopping amount he was able to deliver to McDowell shortly before the bluesman died—and a songwriting credit. And then, eventually, he helped add a credit for the REV. GARY DAVIS, too. That part took some extra research, including doubling back with McDowell, who wasn't entirely sure himself where his song began.
It's never been easy—the money, the metadata, none of it. Strachwitz, whose legacy includes the 400-album-plus catalog of Arhoolie Records and his El Cerrito, Calif., store Down Home Records, was a fan of an enormous range of regional American and Mexican roots music and the artists who made it. "That shadow, of people trying to make money off the artist at the artist's expense, is not there with Chris," BONNIE RAITT, a friend and one of the many musicians influenced by those records, once told the New York Times.
Strachwitz leaves behind a vast treasure of music by the likes of McDowell, MANCE LIPSCOMB, BIG MAMA THORNTON, BLIND LEMON JEFFERSON, CLIFTON CHENIER, FLACO JIMÉNEZ and countless others, along with a way of doing business. May he rest in peace, and may songwriters and screenwriters alike find their way past the lawyers and digital accountants and anyone else standing between them and their next $12,000 checks. And other basic needs. "I really don't want to die without getting songwriters health care," SONGWRITERS OF NORTH AMERICA president MICHELLE LEWIS tells Rolling Stone. Because the more things change, the more they don't.
Etc Etc Etc
RHIANNON GIDDENS and MICHAEL ABELS win the Pulitzer Prize in Music for their opera OMAR, based on the true story of a Muslim scholar sold into slavery in South Carolina in the early 19th century. The piece, composed by Giddens and orchestrated by Abels, "is a melting pot inspired by bluegrass, hymns, spirituals and more, with nods to traditions from Africa and Islam," the NY Times' JOSHUA BARONE wrote when it premiered at the SPOLETO FESTIVAL in 2022. "It's an unforced ideal of American sound: expansive and ever-changing"... Music plays a central role in New Yorker writer HUA HSU's STAY TRUE, winner of the Pulitzer in Memoir or Autobiography, about "a mismatched pair of friends moving through the world" in the 1990s... Ring, ring: It happened—you can't make this stuff up—inside a place called VERIZON HALL... After a three-year pause, BILLBOARD will once again recognize merch-and-album bundles—or "fan packs"—on its album charts starting in July, with restrictions. The merch can't be concert tickets and the albums can't be digital... Indie label network MERLIN opts in to SOUNDCLOUD's user-centric royalty model, joining WARNER MUSIC... TWISTED SISTER singer DEE SNIDER and SAN FRANCISCO PRIDE organizers eventually get around to describing their breakup—prompted by Snider's attempt to appoint himself as the "moderate" "middle" in Twitter trans politics—as mutual and reasonably amicable, the organizers' anger at Snider notwithstanding. Expect no such peace treaty between proudly-non-moderate TED NUGENT and the Birmingham, Ala., club that sided with locals who complained about an upcoming booking and decided to cancel on him... The first semifinal of EUROVISION airs live at 3pm ET today on Peacock.
Rest in Peace
Pioneering American opera singer GRACE BUMBRY, a mezzo-soprano who also sang soprano roles. She was the first Black woman to perform at the Bayreuth Festival in Germany, for which she earned the racist scorn of some devotees of Richard Wagner, to whom the festival is devoted, and a half-hour's worth of curtain calls from the opera fans who actually showed up. She also walked away with a nickname, the Black Venus, and the seeds of major stardom in both the US and Europe... Pianist MENAHEM PRESSLER, who fled Nazi Germany with his family in 1939 and went on to found the acclaimed piano-violin-cello group the Beaux Arts Trio. He led the trio for more than 50 years... Rapper and indie label A&R rep YOUNG LO, murdered early Sunday morning in Miami Beach. He was a Memphis native who lived in California for most of his career and had recently moved to Florida... ROB LAAKSO, guitarist for Kurt Vile & the Violators and the Swirlies. "Musical genius. Recording whizz. Best husband and father," Vile wrote on Instagram... British A&R exec MALCOLM DUNBAR, who worked at labels including Polydor, Island and Mother.
| | - Matty Karas, curator | |
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