Mortarboard Society

A few months ago, I wrote a blog entry praising Steven Beasley’s biography of Big Band leader Kay Kyser, titled Kay Kyser: The Ol’ Professor of Swing! America’s Forgotten Superstar (Richland Creek Publishing, 2009). I received a cheerful email from Steve yesterday, who wrote to tell me that he’d just returned from an exhilarating 4-day tour of North Carolina promoting the book, a tour financially supported by the Chapel Hill Museum (Kyser, as everyone from those parts knows, was from Chapel Hill, North Carolina). Steve indicated he did a 30-minute oral presentation and Q&A session at two of the larger locations, followed by book signings at each of the four cities he visited—Chapel Hill, Durham, Rocky Mount, and Raleigh. In Rocky Mount he spoke to several (elderly) people who’d known Kyser and heard some good stories. He also stopped by to say hello to Kyser’s widow, Georgia (pictured in the 40s, with Kyser), who at age ninety I’m happy to report is doing very well. Georgia graciously presented Steven with a couple of absolutely amazing gifts, truly historic items which you can read all about on his latest blog, available at www.myspace.com/officialkaykyser. I’ll let Steven tell you about the gifts she presented to him on his blog, but I will add that I, too, can’t think of a person more deserving of the gifts. I believe him when he says the gifts brought tears to his eyes, and I would have loved to have been there for the occasion.

Steve also indicated in his email that his publishing company, Richland Creek, has just issued a new 18-track CD titled Kay Kyser: The Ol’ Professor of Swing! Live Air Checks 1937-44, which he compiled, produced and annotated. Since he is a world authority on Kyser, you can be sure it is historically and factually accurate. You can purchase the CD at the book site, www.kaykyserbook.com. I should add that Steve owns one of the largest collections of Kyser memorabilia in the world (now, thanks to Georgia, grown a bit larger). As I stated in my earlier blog post, Steven’s book is the first (and only) full-length biography about the once popular band leader. In addition to its many fascinating biographical details, it is loaded with rare and unpublished photographs and interviews, sheet music and magazine covers, and the definitive Kyser discography. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in America’s musical past, especially the Swing Era. To reiterate: Kay Kyser and His Orchestra had 11 “Number 1” records and 35 “Top 10” hits. In addition, Kyser had a top-rated radio show for eleven years on NBC, featuring the Ol’ Professor of Swing along with his show, “Kay Kyser’s College of Musical Knowledge.” No band leader of the Swing Era has a more extensive filmography than Kay Kyser, who starred in seven feature films and had appearances in several others. He frequently outdrew the Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman orchestras in live appearances; ballroom attendance records set by the Kyser orchestra during the Swing Era have never been toppled. In short, Kay Kyser was one of the most and popular and beloved entertainers in America from the late 1930s to the late 1940s.

I’d also like to applaud the Chapel Hill Museum for helping support Steven’s tour through North Carolina, as it seems to me such activities are an indication of its commitment to championing regional artists and culture. Incidentally, in addition to Kay Kyser, another of Chapel Hill’s favorite sons is James Taylor, for whom the museum maintains a website, available here.

Ghostly Apparitions

Perhaps the most famous ghostly apparition in Western literature is in Act I of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, when the titular protagonist confronts the ghost of his father. The moment in the play is an example of what Freud described as unheimlich, translated into English as the uncanny. In German, heimlich refers to that which is as familiar as one’s home, that is, “home-like.” A less common meaning of the word, though, is secretive or deceitful. Thus unheimlich can refer to something unfamiliar or strange, but also to something that was to have remained a secret, but has been unintentionally disclosed. Hence the familiar become alien is linked by Freud to the return of the repressed, and both such experiences are “weird,” odd, and perhaps frightening—i. e., uncanny. When that which is hidden away wishes itself to be disclosed, the person or persons who are chosen to disclose it are said to be “haunted.”

Interestingly, if a popular song about an uncanny experience is done well, it usually becomes a hit. For instance, although Burl Ives apparently first recorded “(Ghost) Riders in the Sky” early in 1949, the Vaughn Monroe version was the best-selling one. Monroe’s version, released around the first of April 1949, spent 22 weeks on the chart and reached No. 1. Bing Crosby’s version appeared on the charts soon after, and peaked at No. 14. Meanwhile, Burl Ives’ version spent six weeks on the charts and nearly made the Top 20. The popularity of Marc Cohn’s “Walking In Memphis,” in which the singer sees the ghost of Elvis, helped Cohn win the Grammy for Best New Artist in 1991. David Allan Coe’s “The Ride,” in which the singer is given a ride by the ghost of Hank Williams, reached No. 1 on the Country charts, and Stan Ridgway’s “Camouflage,” the jungle warfare equivalent of Red Sovine’s “Phantom 309,” reached No. 4 in the UK in 1986. In Sovine’s “Phantom 309” (1967), the singer is hitchhiking home after being unable to find work. Stuck at a crossroads on a rainy night, the singer is kindly given a lift by Big Joe, the driver of a rig named Phantom 309. Big Joe eventually deposits the singer at a truck stop, giving him a dime for a cup of coffee. The singer informs everyone at the truck stop of Big Joe’s largesse, only to learn from a waitress that Big Joe is a ghost. At the particular intersection where he, the singer, was picked up, years before Big Joe had avoided certain collision with a school bus by deliberately driving his tractor-trailer off of the road, killing himself but sparing the lives of the children. The song’s final twist is that the ghost of Big Joe has given rides to many hitchhikers. “Phantom 309” thus activates both meanings of unheimlich, a common activity made strange, but also the return of the repressed—the unknown or hidden is revealed, in this case the story of Big Joe. The song was later burlesqued in Pee-Wee’s Big Adventure (1985) during a sequence in which the hitchhiking Pee-Wee Herman is given a lift by a ghost driver named “Large Marge.”

In songs such as Joni Mitchell’s “Furry Sings the Blues” and Robyn Hitchcock’s “Trams of Old London,” ghosts are meant to invoke a way of life long past, suggesting belatedness, a situation in which one has arrived on the scene too late. The singers cast themselves as epigones, those born after the Golden Age is already over, and all the heroes have vanished. The singer in Neutral Milk Hotel’s “Ghost” is likewise haunted by the past, but especially haunted by the figure of Anne Frank, a young person whose bodily existence was reduced to ashes during the Holocaust.

A Few Close Encounters Of The Ghostly Kind:

David Allan Coe – The Ride
Marc Cohn – Walking In Memphis
Crash Test Dummies – The Ghosts That Haunt Me
Robyn Hitchcock – Trams of Old London
Dickey Lee – Laurie (Strange Things Happen)
Joni Mitchell – Furry Sings the Blues
Vaughn Monroe – (Ghost) Riders in the Sky
Neutral Milk Hotel – Ghost
Stan Ridgway – Camouflage
Red Sovine – Phantom 309

What The Dead Men Say

An interesting article on the late Alex Chilton has been posted on nola.com, well worth reading for anyone interested in the enigmatic rocker’s life in New Orleans after leaving Memphis in the early 80s. However, the article encourages at least one illusion about the musician, that he was actually a “professional” musician rather than an amateur one. I don’t use the designation “amateur” in any pejorative sense here, but only to suggest that a professional has a career, and Chilton did not. Practicing amateurs are the rule rather than the exception in rock. What is meant by career other than a narrative that charts an artist’s development through time? Since Chilton had a largely elusive life (and career, if one must use that word) after leaving Big Star, and is now dead and therefore no longer able to speak for himself, others will speak on his behalf, writing such narratives as can be found by clicking on the link above. For the act of speaking on a dead person’s behalf is always done retroactively. As Michelet observed about the writing of history, the living have every right to speak for the dead, articulating their wishes and desires, even if they themselves were not fully aware of them. As evidence of this, consider the declaration in bold at the beginning of the nola.com article: “Alex Chilton’s life in New Orleans was a mystery, and that’s how the Big Star singer wanted it.” Oh yeah? Says who? Why, we the living do. The article also reveals how his “career” is now open to (re)negotiation, and his greatness, however that is to be weighed and measured, shall be posthumously conferred. Certainly Big Star has undergone institutional ratification, that is, has earned institutional distinction (canonization), indicated by its albums being listed on Rolling Stone’s “500 Greatest Albums Of All Time”. I admit I do not know Rolling Stone magazine’s critical assessment of the band’s albums at the time of their initial release in the early 70s, but what their appearance (years later) on the “500 Greatest” list means is that the band’s music has been designated, retroactively, as “genuinely” innovative by one of rock’s sanctioning institutions. That is, the institution has brought the band into the realm of discourse, validating its musical endeavors. In any case, Big Star’s greatness was bestowed posthumously, and hence so, too, has Alex Chilton’s.

Boom 168

It goes without saying that recording technology has had a huge impact on rock music, primarily in terms of performance. Virtually every rap and hip hop group today performs to taped music and/or lip-synchs to prerecorded vocal tracks, an example of how the “live” has been influenced by the recorded. One often refers to a “vocalist” rather than “singer.” In his book, The Recording Angel: Music, Records and Culture From Aristotle to Zappa (Yale UP, Second Ed., 2005), Evan Eisenberg asserts that “Records and radio were the proximate cause of the Jazz Age. . . . Intellectuals and society matrons who hesitated to seek the music out in its lair played the records. . . . [R]ecords not only disseminated jazz, but inseminated it—. . . . [I]n some ways they created what we call jazz” (118). In the same way, digital storage and recording technology shapes contemporary musical creation, and is, in fact, to use Eisenberg’s term, the “proximate cause” of rap and hip hop. An illustration of this idea can be found in the latest issue of Rolling Stone magazine (April 29, 2010), which has a cover story on The Black Eyed Peas. At one point, the article states:

As a songwriter, Will.i.am ascribes to Moore’s Law, the software principle whereby increasingly smaller devices hold increasingly more information. “Right now, every chorus is getting shorter and shorter,” he says. “Soon we’ll be listening to blips. . . .” [A]n apparently simple song, like “Boom Boom Pow,” is actually downright avant-garde. “It has one note,” says Will.i.am. “It says ‘boom’ 168 times. The structure has three beats in one song. It’s not lyrics – it’s audio patterns, structure, architecture.” (56)

More a product of computer software and the recording studio, how are software platforms and recording technologies influencing music itself? For Will.i.am, says the RS article, “songs aren’t discrete works of art but multi-use applications – hit singles, ad jingles, film trailers – all serving a purpose larger than music consumption” (50). In other words, the discrete song is no longer to be contemplated or celebrated as is a work of art, but is instead analogous to Warhol’s serial reproductions of found photographs of famous stars. Remember that Warhol, appropriately, called his studio The Factory.