2006 - 6 May - Joe Boyd plus Charlie Dore

[Con Murphy]

Seq - Artist - Song Title - Album - Country - Label

1 - Sister Rosetta Tharpe - What is the Soul of a Man? - The Original Soul Sister - USA - Proper

2 - Rabih Abou-Khalil - Serenade to a Mule - Il Sospiro - Lebanon - Enja

3 - Charlie Dore - Your Lover Called - Live in session - UK -

Radio Ping Pong with Joe Boyd (*)

4* - Toots & The Maytals - Sweet & Dandy - From "Bam Bam" to "Cherry Oh! Baby" - Jamaica - Jamaican Gold

5 - The Jimmy Giuffre Trio - The Train And The River - Jazz on a Summer's Day - USA - Charly

6* - Music of the Baka Forest People - Yelli 2 - Heart of the Forest - Cameroon - Hannibal Records

7 - K'naan - Wash It Down - The Dusty Foot Philosopher - Somalia/Canada - Track & Field

8* - Joe Tex - Bad Feet - The Geoff Muldaur Personal Gift Edition - USA - not released

9 - Marvin Pontiac - Wanna Wanna - The Legendary Marvin Pontiac's Greatest Hits - USA - Strange And Beautiful Music

10* - Shoukichi Kina feat. Ry Cooder - Jing Jing (Firefly) - Asia Classics 2: Peppermint Tea House - Japan - Luaka Bop

11 - Charlie Dore - My Wayward Friend - Live in session - UK -

12 - Nick Drake - Poor Boy - White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s - UK - Fledg'ling

13* - Chris McGregor Brotherhood of Breath - Country Cooking - Country Cooking - South Africa - Venture

14 - Ivo Papasov & His Bulgarian Wedding Band - Bulchenska Ratchenitsa (Brides's Ratchenitsa) - Orpheus Ascending - Bulgaria - Hannibal Records

15* - Otis Redding - My Lover's Prayer - Memphis Gold Vol 1 - USA - Stax

16 - Zainidin Imanaliev - Küidüm chok (I Burn, I Smoulder like Charcoal) - Tengir-Too: Mountain Music of Kyrgystan - Kyrgystan - Smithsonian

17* - The Swan Silvertones - Get Right With God - Get Right With The Swan Silvertones - USA - Rhino Records

Live in London:

18 - Rabih Abou-Khalil - Bukra - Bukra - Lebanon - Enja

19 - Julia Sarr & Patrice Larose - Namana - Set Luna - Senegal/France - No Format

[Alan]

Thu 25 May Joe Boyd in conversation with Charlie Gillett

More than any previous 60's music autobiography Joe Boyd's "White Bicycles" offers the real story of what it was like to be there at the time. His greatest coup is bringing to life the famously elusive figure of Nick Drake - the first time he's been written about by anyone who knew him well. The book also offers vivid portraits of Coleman Hawkins, Eric Clapton, Sandy Denny, The Incredible String Band and Fairport Convention.

"This is the best book about music I've read in years and a gripping piece of social history" Brian Eno.

Join Joe and Charlie at The Boogaloo, 312 Archway Road, Highgate, London N6 5AT 020 8340 2928 www.theboogaloo.co.uk

more information, reservations etc (020 7609 2543).

[will vine]

Well, I'd never apologise for shoving The Brotherhood of Breath anyone's way, nor will I apologise for proposing the link between them and the distantly remembered Nick Drake track since they make up an interesting story; However Nick Drake's "Poorboy"? Despite some splendid piano playing by Chris MacGregor, on hearing it again.......well, it was all a bit cluttered in there wasn't it ? Probably less than the sum of it's parts I think. wv

[Tom McPhillips]

Joe is just the best salesman! Jin-Jin by Shoukichi Kina, is way up on my hit parade, but that's all about Kina-san-- silly of me not to spin it like it's a young Cooder-san fusioning his first World Music experiment!

Charlie, pity you couldn't get him to reprise "Miss Wakana" - now there's a track I'd pay dearly to get my hands on!

(he played it on R3's Private Passions:

Akst, Lewis and Young: Dinah
Miss Wakana
Audi Book CD 9000 T.19)

great show nonetheless!

[Charlie]

Joe.. played it on R3's Private Passions

does anybody have the full list of what Joe played on that show?

maybe you could post it here

[Con Murphy]

does anybody have the full list of what Joe played on that show?

maybe you could post it here

Your wish is my command:-

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio3/privatepassions/pip/aaucf/


Playlist

M. Berkeley: The Wakeful Poet (from Music from Chaucer) (pub. OUP)
Beaux-Arts Brass Quintet
BBQ BBQ 003 T.10

Rose-Jackson-Olman: Some Sweet Day
Louis Armstrong and his Orchestra
Classics 529 T.8

James: I'm so glad
Skip James
Yazoo 2009 T.16

Trad: Saviour pass me not
Swan Silvertones
Archives Alive 70081 S.2 B.2

Trad arr. Johansson: Brudmarsch efter Larshoga Jonke
Jan Johansson (piano)/Georg Riedel (bass)
Megafon MFCD 0410 T.5

Celedenio Flores: Mano a Mano
Carlos Gardel
Nimbus 7896 T.9

Walter Donaldson: Hallo Was Machst Du Heut, Daisy?
Comedian Harmonists
Hannibal 1445 T.1

Hibbert: Six and Seven Books
Toots and the Maytals
Island ILPS 9374 S.1 T.4

L. Boyer: Les Goelands
Damia
Pharaon 125212-2 T.1

Akst, Lewis and Young: Dinah
Miss Wakana
Audi Book CD 9000 T.19

Bach: Partita No 1 in B flat, BWV825 (1st mvt - Prelude)
Dinu Lipatti (piano)
EMI 5669882 T.1

[Charlie]

Well, as Chuck Berry so eloquently put it, you never can tell.

Last week, the young French singer Camille surprised us by throwing down the gauntlet with a series of provocative challenges. This week, Joe Boyd, the American godfather of British folk rock, disarmed us by playing soulful songs by Toots and the Maytals, Joe Tex, Otis Redding and the Swan Silvertones.

It’s tough enough trying to make a living in the music industry. It’s a lot harder if you choose to work only with music you actually like. Joe Boyd has managed it, following a zigzag path that has seen him in the roles of Tour Manager (shepherding Coleman Hawkins, Sister Rosetta Tharpe and other jazz and blues legends across Europe in the mid-60s); Stage Manager (at the notorious Newport Folk Festival in 1964 when Dylan confounded the audience by playing with a loud electric band); Club Promoter (co-founding UFO in a basement on Oxford Street in London in 1967, launching what was soon called underground music); Record Producer (starting with Pink Floyd’s first single, the hit ‘Arnold Layne’); and Entrepreneur, founder of both Witchseason Productions (his protégées included Fairport Convention and Nick Drake) and Hannibal Records (pioneer world music label, for which Joe produced two albums by Ivo Papasov and the debut by Toumani Diabate). Not to mention occasional forays into film, as producer of Scandal, and now books, as author of his autobiography, White Bicycles: Making Music in the 1960s (Serpents Tail).

Although the timing of this Ping Pong encounter coincided with the publication of White Bicycles, it soon became clear that Joe’s selection had a wider remit. His first two choices related to events he had recently attended in London, a stage version of The Harder They Come (which he unreservedly recommended) and the debut London performance by a group of Baka Pygmies from the Cameroon. Among Hannibal’s most successful projects was Baka Beyond, whose principal musicians Martin Craddick and Su Hart have spent a lot of time in Cameroon, setting up a recording centre to enable local musicians to learn how to use the equipment.

Joe’s keen ear noted a similarity between the call and response playing of Jimmy Giuffre (clarinet) and Bob Brookmeyer (trombone) in ‘Train and the River’ and the distinctive vocal duetting technique of the Baka Pygmies, documented on the album Heart of the Forest (1993). By satisfying coincidence, that same album was also the source of the rhythmic water-splashing sampled on ‘Wash It Down’ by next week’s guest, K’naan.

Only one song in tonight’s programme was a Joe Boyd production from the period covered in White Bicycles – ‘Poor Boy’ by Nick Drake, included on the 23 track compilation album of the same name released by Fledg’ling to coincide with the publication. Joe recalled how the South African pianist Chris McGregor sat quietly in the control room, listening Nick run through his song until Joe asked him, ‘are you thinking what I’m thinking, that there’s a place for piano on this?’ Hard to deal with the poignancy of Nick Drake’s belated recognition, long after he ended his life. At the time of their original release, Nick could not handle the disappointment as his albums made no dent. Since the early 1990s, boosted by use of his songs in TV advertisements and by any number of young musicians citing his influence, Nick’s records have sold more each year than the year before.

Having been in the right place at the right time more often than not, becoming part of many of the most interesting musical movements of the past forty years, Joe Boyd turns out to be just as good at writing about it all, and his book is a succession of fascinating anecdotes, keen insights and wry surprises. Joe is already working on his next book, about world music, and meanwhile he and I will meet again on Thursday, 25th May in the Q&A session at the Boogaloo - at 312 Archway Road London N6 5AT [020 8340 2928 – www.theboogaloo.co.uk].

Joe Boyd was among several producers who worked with Charlie Dore back in the early 1980s, when she had radio hits as a singer on both sides of the Atlantic. Charlie dropped out of sight for twenty years, while continuing to write hits for other people, but she has now returned to the fray with two albums under her own name in the past eighteen months. Tonight she came back with her impressive team of musicians to play two songs live, the first with Guy Barker on muted trumpet, the second featuring Jake Walker on violin. Charlie played harmonium, with long time writing partner Julian Littman on guitar, Dudley Holland on stand up bass and Fergus Gerrand on percussion. The album Cuckoo Hill is on Black Ink Records.

A postscript to last week’s show with Camille. On Wednesday, Camille made her UK debut with a performance at the Jazz Café that had the entire audience spellbound for the entire 90-minute set, very rare at that awkward venue where so often most of the audience soon starts talking. I had not been able to imagine how Camille would represent the studio trickery of her album, and in some senses she didn’t try – she and her two musicians approached the material with fresh eyes, ears, mouths and hands, in a performance that sometimes seemed close to disintegration and yet never fell out of control. Their secret is to realise that there is no inherent fascination in watching somebody sing or play an instrument, and to create situations in which they can catch themselves, as well as us, by surprise. Camille is featured on Later with Jools on BBC-2 this Friday (12th) which may belatedly kickstart her UK career. In France, Camille’s Le Fil has sold 350,000 copies; in the UK, only 4,500. Time for us to start catching up on one of the major talents of our time.

[uiwangmike]

It's notable that in 3 Beeb interviews in 3 weeks (with Michael Berkeley, Mike Harding and Charlie - and maybe he's given more), Joe Boyd has not once repeated himself (though his Skip James anecdote, with a piece of shameless namedropping told appropriately on Private Passions, bears repetition). What a career - and he hasn't even touched in any of the interviews either on Duelling Banjos or on all the great stuff he's done with Hannibal.

[Charlie]

On Saturday, Joe told the story of how he and Paul Rotchschild went to Chicago to hear the Butterfield Blues Band and then went to another club to catch Mike Bloomfield, recommended to Joe by Sam Charters. They proposed that Mike join Paul Butterfield's band,and it came to pass...

the following alternative version was sent by email:

---------------------------------

Paul Rothchild, in the book about Jac Holzman and Elektra - 'Follow The Music', tells the story quite differently :

PAUL ROTHCHILD : I'm at a party in Cambridge, Massachusetts, New Year's Eve of 1965. Fritz Richmond is just in off the road with the Jim Kweskin Jug Band. He says, "Hey Paul, you remember that harmonica player, Paul Butterfield? Well, I've got to tell you, I've just heard the best music I've ever heard in my entire life. He's got a full-on electric blues band, and he's playing in a bar in Chicago. You should go there right away."

I got on a flight to Chicago, got off the plane, walked into Big John's about three in the morning, in time for the last set. And I heard the most amazing music. It was thrilling, chilling - changed my entire genetic code.

At the end of the set I talked to Butter and told him I wanted them to make a record with Elektra. Paul always had to have an argument. This one lasted about ten minutes over pizza. Then he said, "OK".

Then Butter said, "Are you tired yet?"

I said, "No, I'm on fire, I'm ready."

He says, "Great. I've got this buddy playing at an after-hours club over on the South Side. Pepper's Lounge".

I walk in and it's Muddy Waters. Those guys were playing at the clubs every day then. So Paul showed me the last of the great era on the Chicago South Side.

Towards dawn he says, "One more stop." We walk into a luncheonette kind of place, and there's another band playing, and it's like a pale reflection of Paul's band. But there was a guitar player that just tore my mind apart.

About four tunes in I turn to Paul and say "Who is that?"

He says, "Oh, that's Mike Bloomfield. That's his band."

I say, "Wow, how come he's not in your band?"

He says, "Nah, he's got his own."

I say, "How would you feel if he was in your band?"

He says "Wow, it would be great. Two guitars. Amazing. Nah, it'll never happen."

I say "Do you mind if I give it a shot?"

He says, "No, but I've tried it twenty times."

Michael comes and sits down at our table. We shake hands. We then do a half hour of intense, intellectual Jew at each other. He found a kindred soul, I found a kindred soul, it was wonderful.

Finally, I said, "Michael, how would you like to leave your band and join Paul's band? We're going to New York to make a record."

He said, "Sure."

Butterfield is sitting there with his jaw on the table.

---------------------

But where was Joe?

[uiwangmike]

You can hear more of Joe Boyd, as much to the point as ever, on Radio 2's fascinating Story of Donovan, hosted by the redoubtable Bob Harris, but rather confusingly titled after a Tom Paxton song, Rambling Boy.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/aod/index.shtml