White Man’s Blues
February 8th, 2010 | 12:00 pm est |
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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 
Lonnie Johnson was best known for his tonally beautiful guitar playing, but he was also a fine singer and songwriter, and pretty adept on violin, piano, banjo, mandolin, harmonium, and bass as well. Equally at home in the blues or the jazz world (he worked with artists as raw as Texas Alexander and as polished as Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington), Johnson’s life as a professional musician began in the mid 1920s and stretched all the way into the 1960s, when his career was given an autumnal boost during the folk/blues revival.
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. 
Everyone remember Sally Shapiro, the icy Swedish disco duo? They had a couple albums that were blogged to death, including one that was released this year. Well, if you read the small print on their records, you’ll see the name Roger Gunnarson as the composer of many songs, including “Anorak Christmas.” Turns out he’s also responsible for a whole bunch of very good pop music during the past decade. Gunnarson’s own group, Nixon, made a few really good electro pop albums in the early 2000’s; he was a member of the noisy indie pop groups Free Loan Investments and The Garland; and best of all, he has his own Shapiro-esque set up with a duo called Cloetta Paris. Roger writes the sweet and gentle Italo disco-inspired tunes, wraps them in cheerfully frigid synth pop arrangements, and a female friend of his (not named Cloetta) sings them in a simple but very effective manner. If you like Sally Shapiro at all, you need to check out Cloetta Paris because, confidentially, they are way better! It’s like Roger snatched back the formula and perfected it while nobody was watching. He’s my indie pop hero! 
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…. 
