gurdonark‘s comment on the some gigs 10/8 post, where I talked about volunteering to play in the hospital:

I admire that you took on this hospital gig. Lately I see folks use the word “privilege” in regard to linguistic bias. A study about chess “privileges” attack and risk-taking over sound positional play, for example. A recent article in a magazine talks about how schools now “privilege’ math and science.

I think lately about a different set of privileges than the ones in those examples. I think how we ‘privilege’ the concert experience and the paying customer. This is natural, as money is a reasonable basis of valuation in a culture which ascribes material goods to those who can generate money.

Yet there is something important, I think, in sharing music outside this “money” thing. I think you’ve hit on part of that importance here, with this volunteer work.

My goal is to play well for people who dig it. If that comes off I’ll walk away with a happy buzz. Performing in private spaces like a hospital room works great.

I remember singing a sad hymn with a friend whose dad had just died. There were four or five of us sitting around at his house. It was just the right music and the right thing to do.

I know these two examples sound a little ghoulish.

So who was the mysterious Jean Havez, author of the 1901 drinking song “Goodbye Booze“? It turns out that H. L. Mencken’s autobiography talks him up:

Ok, so Havez was a hard drinker and partier. His name wasn’t pronounced “gene”, it was prounounced “zhaw.” He was an chubby newspaperman in Baltimore who made regular trips to New York to go to the theater, or maybe to work in theater.

What about the history of the song? It was originally titled “Good-Bye Booze!”, with a dash and an exclamation point. According to a 1901 publication called The Music Trade Review (PDF at arcade-museum.com):

“Good-bye, Booze” is a coon temperance ditty and is distinctly funny, with a good swinging melody. Jean C. Havez is the writer of both words and music.

Coon temperance is a genre? Huh? Well, Wikipedia says Coon songs were a genre of music popular in the United States from 1880[1] to 1920[2], that presented a racist and stereotyped image of blacks. … Coon songs almost always aimed to be funny and incorporated the syncopated rhythms of ragtime music. … Coon songs were popular in Vaudeville theater, where they were delivered by “coon shouters,” who were typically white females.[5] Notable coon shouters included Artie Hall,[22] Sophie Tucker, and May Irwin.[5]. And in the Music Trade Review quoted above, it put the release of this song in the context of a performance by May Irwin. Temperance songs included hits like Lips that Touch Liquor Will Never Touch Mine.

Given that the version of the song that I transcribed is a few generations of musicians away from the original, and musicians usually make changes to suit their taste, how does it compare? I found the original written out at University of Colorado’s web site:

The tune got a hell of a lot simpler to become a dead simple 3-chord wonder. The lyrics also changed a lot over time. They got tighter and more direct, and the verses went from third person to first person. The verses are totally different in the 1926 version by the Skillet Lickers (aka Gid Tanner and Fate Norris), the Charlie Poole version that I transcribed and in the original Jean Havez publication. The 1939 version by Charles Fulton is the closest to the original, though rewritten to be about politics instead of money. I also found 1960s or 1970s version by the Piedmont blues player John Jackson, and it also has original lyrics in the verses and the standard stuff in the chorus. Except for Fulton version, they all throw out the music from the verses as well as the words — too stuffy, I guess. Jean Havez was a better writer than he was a musician.

Briggs’ Banjo Instructor is an 1855 book of banjo tunes. Rob MacKillop figured out how to play them on ukulele, wrote them out in tablature, and made an MP3 demo for each one. The demos are folksy and Hawaiian sounding at the same time, plus there’s this Scottish accent in the mix. I dig em, so here are links:

If you’re reading this in an RSS reader or some site but soupgreens.com, you’re better off stopping by the blog and hitting the play button in the page, because it will turn all these little snippets into a seamless playlist. Downloading and listening one by one won’t be half as much fun.

Tonight, October 8, I’ll play on the party bus for the art walk in downtown LA. That’s at 8pm.

Tomorrow I’ll do happy hour at Cinema Bar, basically 7-8:30. With luck I’ll have a cool drummer girl playing along on tin can and wooden spoons.

I have also picked up a regular gig at the hospital. It’s a profound experience. Here’s an email I got from an organizer:

The kids are mainly non-responsive. They have been born with birth defects or have been in a horrific accident. A lot of the kids are in bed in a fetal position, but a lot are able to sit in wheelchairs. Studies have shown that music touches these children in a way that we cannot monitor or we hope that is does. When you see the smiles on their faces you will know that you are reaching them. It is a hard place at first, but once you see what you are providing them, you will love it.

Question #1: did anybody at the time not know that the dude was gay?

Not David Coverdale

David Coverdale

Question #2: is it my imagination, or are these women not all that pretty? Being in this photo was the equivalent of being the designated cupcake in a video for a hair metal band, and I’m not seeing a lot of Tawny Kitaens in the group.

Yearbook photos

No, seriously, I’m not being a frat boy ragging on ordinary women for being human, because these are cover girls. Look closely at these women’s faces — for the most part they look trapped in a regrettable yearbook shot.

I guess the issue was health. People used to be more or less about to drop dead at any moment. No orthodontia, no liposuction => no Tawny. Swimsuit models are like the Six Million Dollar man in comparison.

Bring plenty of copies of your lead sheets for the musicians. Don’t be cheap.

It’s hard enough to read and play at the same time. If people have to share they won’t be able to put the page in a place that allows them to concentrate on their playing.

My new rule: make one more copy than I need.

I’ve been collecting examples of how people write out songs. This is a user-submitted schematic of a Django Reinhardt tune called “Minor Swing” on the site djangopedia:

This example is brilliantly obtuse, especially for a composition which is pretty close to the Louie Louie level of simplicity.

Anyhow, here’s how the tune really goes.