Surf Jazz
March 15th, 2010 | 8:00 am est |
The Marketts weren’t a band in the standard sense, but a collection of veteran Los Angeles session players assembled by producer Joe Saraceno to capitalize on the emerging surf music scene of the early 1960s. Loosely known as “the wrecking crew,” and including, among others, guitarists Tommy Tedesco and Rene Hall, sax player Plas Johnson, bassist Jimmy Gordon, and drummers Earl Palmer and Ed Hall, the so-called Marketts probably had more in common with 1940s jazz than they did Dick Dale, and the charming collection of shuffles, stomps and trippy lounge jazz they produced for the surf market is really a genre all its own. The group’s first single, 1962’s “Surfer’s Stomp” b/w “Balboa Blue,” is indicative, featuring a lazy, sax-led shuffle on the A-side, reprising the same rhythm on “Balboa Blue,” only with a different melody line (again led by Johnson’s sax), that generates a leisurely, joyous, and infectious groove. It was wonderful stuff, and while this version of the Marketts (they were really more a brand than a group) was marketed as a surf outfit, their gentle merging of R&B and small combo swing is really something else again, a style that — for lack of a better term — might be called “surf jazz.”
By all accounts, Tom Darby and Jimmie Tarlton were an acrimonious duo, thrown together more by opportunity than any pressing desire to play music together, but in spite of the tension between them (or maybe because of it), the body of work they recorded together for Columbia Records between 1927 and 1933 is as singular and distinctive as any in early country or blues. Both were fine guitar players, with Darby generally handling the lead vocals and Tarlton the harmonies, but the difference maker was Tarlton’s striking slide guitar style. Tarlton played with the guitar in his lap Hawaiian style, and reportedly fretted it with a wrist pin from a car. His slide lines give everything the duo recorded an eerie, exotic presence that, coupled with their impeccable vocals, makes them utterly unique. 
Although marketed as a surf band, Minnesota’s Trashmen were decidedly landlocked by geography, but not by spirit. The group’s odd mix of surf, R&B, sneering garage pop, and psychotic instrumentals made them one of the most eccentric and interesting of the groups that sprang up around the surf craze of the early 1960s. Essentially a northern cover band that wasn’t afraid to take chances, the Trashmen played every gig like it was Saturday night. Sundazed’s 
Blind Arvella Gray’s real or imagined life story is, in some respects, a more complete creative statement than the actual music he made. Born Walter Dixon in Texas in 1906, he lost his eyesight and two fingers on his left hand due to a shotgun mishap (Gray’s account of the incident involved several different plot possibilities), and he turned to street singing to keep things afloat. At some point in the 1940s he landed in Chicago, where he became a fixture at the Maxwell Street open-air flea market, playing his National Steel guitar and singing a mixed bag of blues, gospel, spirituals, work songs, and field hollers. By the early 1970s he had released three 45s on his own Gray Records label, had four songs on a British import album called Blues from Maxwell Street, and had been featured in the video documentary And This Is Maxwell Street. 
Elizabeth Cotten’s “Shake Sugaree” is a delightfully whimsical song that carries at its heart a good deal of wisdom. Cotten developed the simple melody of the song from folk sources, and used it as a lullaby when putting her great grandchildren to bed in the evening. She encouraged the kids to think of words for the song, and they all had a hand in its composition. The song seems to be about hardship and poverty, as the lyrics list all manner of things that the singer has pawned, but the chorus (“didn’t we shake sugaree”) is upbeat and bears no trace of regret. To “shake sugaree” is to dance. Jean Ritchie has suggested that “sugaree” is a reference to the Appalachian practice of “sugaring,” of throwing sugar out to “slick up the dance floor.” So the message in “Shake Sugaree” seems to be that no matter how bad things get, you can always dance. Cotten’s original version was the title tune on her second album for Smithsonian Folkways, and the lyric was actually sung by one of her great grandchildren, Brenda Evans, who was then only 12 years old. Cotten performed the song frequently in concert, and its lightly surreal lyrics and gentle, positive tone have made it a popular cover song in folk circles. Taj Mahal, Mary Lou Lord (with Elliot Smith on guitar), Chris Smither, Greg Brown, Faith Nolan, and Po Girl have all recorded versions of “Shake Sugaree.” Fred Neil covered it as “I’ve Got a Secret (Shake Sugaree),” and it is Neil’s rendition that Bob Dylan used when he performed the song on his 1996 and 1997 tours. The Grateful Dead song “Sugaree” is based on Cotten’s original, but is essentially an entirely new piece, in which Sugaree becomes the name of a woman (a hooker, actually). Aside from “Freight Train,” “Shake Sugaree” is Libba Cotten’s best-known song, and its timeless and gentle wisdom make it a wonderfully joyous lullaby, one that feels like it has always been there.
Although Louis Marshall Jones was only around 30 years old when he cut his first acetate for Syd Nathan’s fledgling Dayton, Ohio-based King Records in 1943, he was already known as Grandpa Jones, earning the nickname because he supposedly sounded like an old man when he spoke on the radio, and over his half-century career, Jones grew into the physical aspect of the name, as well. Steppin’ Out Kind from Ace Records gathers the best of the surviving acetates Jones cut during his initial nine-year run with the King label, and these sides will be revelatory for those who are only familiar with the latter-day Jones through his appearances on the Hee Haw television show in the early 1970s. 
In the late 90s, someone at Matador must have become tired of guitars or grown bored with indie rock because all of a sudden the label began releasing all kinds of really great electronic music. In retrospect it’s even crazier that the label releasing the Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Pavement, Silkworm and Run On was all of a sudden confusing people by putting out albums by Plone, Solex and Boards of Canada. You have to admit that it was a pretty brave move and though it probably didn’t pay off financially, it established the label as even more of a maverick in the indie rock world than it already was. Let’s take a look back at some of the high points of Matador’s electronic years…. 
