Louis Jordan: Jordan for President

Today is the day we go and vote. It’s too bad we’re 60 years too late to cast a ballot for Louis Jordan, who crafted 180 seconds or so of promises and analysis, dashed in a little self-promotion and called it a campaign: Jordan For President on the Swing ticket.

Though we might have a tradition, in certain cities, of dead people voting, we don’t of voting for dead people (Jordan last had the chance to vote in Nixon vs. McGovern in 1972; the King of the Jukebox died in 1975).

But if there’s one thing Democrats and Republicans should be able to agree on, it’s Jordan. His platform was a lot like his music — full of satire, rhymes and humor. If you want someone to throw the rascals out, Jordan had a chance — in a takes one to know one way.

Jordan for President came out, according to its YouTube link, in the spring of 1952. Today, both parties would normally have their candidates picked by then. Not so in 1952, which gave Jordan an opportunity to scout the field in his song:

• “If you want a man with a good offer, then cast your ballot for Kefauver” (Sen Estes of Tennessee, won 14 of 16 Democratic primaries but not the nomination; the party might have done better if he had).
• “And you can rest, and be assured, you’ll get no graft from Taft” (Sen. Robert A. of Ohio, who outpolled Dwight Eisenhower in the primaries, but lost the Republican nomination at the convention).
• “If you want to get the military bit straight, we all know that MacArthur would be great” (General Douglas A., fired by President Harry S Truman in the midst of the Korean War, did not run and endorsed Taft).
• “If you want a hipster, that’ll take no sassing, then vote for Stassen” (Ex-Gov. Harold of Minnesota, elected at age 32; president of the University of Pennsylvania in 1952; ran for the Republican nomination 12 times)
• “If you want the man of the hour, then vote for Eisenhower” (Gen. Dwight D., and Jordan was as right as any cable-news pundit; Eisenhower wasn’t just the man of the hour, but the next eight years as the 34th president).
• “If you want to hustle with Russell, go ahead” (Sen. Richard of Georgia, a segragationist and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee).

Jordan had no comment on the eventual Deomcratic nominee, Adlai Stevenson, and perhaps more Democrats should have paid notice to that. Stevenson got only 44% of the popular vote and 16% of the electoral in November (on the bright side, he did even worse when he ran again against Eisenhower in 1956).

Stevenson might have been detached, but Jordan sure wasn’t. Like a lot of candidates he made a lot of promises: he’d “entertain” everyone’s kids on the White House lawn every Sunday, drink champagne, and buy everyone new shoes on his birthday with which to go dancing — just not all at the same time, we’re guessing.

“If you send me to Washington as your leader,” Jordan sang, “I’ll personally see to it that every living American gets his portion. After I get mine.”

Jordan’s candidacy had third-party cool — literally. “If you want to walk on the sunny side of the street, with the candidate with a beat . . .,” he sang, and then followed up with “If you want a candidate that’s real cool, don’t vote for the elephant or the mule, vote for me.”

And like presumably almost anyone who runs for president, Jordan had ego, too. “No longer will I be on a phonograph record, I’m going to be on Congressional record,” he sounded, more excited than any stump speech.

Of course, there was also the possiblity Jordan’s motives weren’t altruistic. There’s a bipartisan tradition of exactly that in American politics, too, and it goes back a lot longer than 60 years; even swing musicians might not have been able to resist temptation.

“If you send me to the White House, we all will serve,” said Jordan, pre-dating the Peace Corps with a pregnant pause, before adding, “Time.”

That’s the ticket.

sources: encyclopedia.com, wikipedia.org

Dr. John: How Come My Dogs Don’t Bark (When You Come Around)

Birthday greetings to Dr. John, born Malcolm Rebennack, who celebrates No. 71 today.

Rebennack was a guitar player known by his given name until two events in the 1960s altered his course: a gun accident injured a finger and detoured him to the piano, and he changed his name to the identity that would soon make him famous. His namesake was John Montaigne, a 19th-century doctor, whose treatments apparently were more in line with voodoo than the American Medical Association. The first Dr. John was once arrested, according to Tom Aswell’s Louisiana Rocks: The True Genesis of Rock and Roll, for prostitution, with a woman named Pauline Rebennack. The modern-day Dr. John, according to Aswell, thought the surname too much of a coincidence to overlook.

Most casual music lovers know Dr. John for 1973’s Right Place Wrong Time, but he never lost touch with his roots as Malcolm Rebennack, or as a session player (on Rickie Lee Jones’ debut 1979 album, for example, Rebennack — not Dr. John, who was by then famous — is one of six listed keyboards players).

“Doc has been my name all my life, and John is my middle name. I’m proud of all my names — Malcolm John Michael Creaux Rebennack,” Dr. John said in an interview on npr.org. “I’m proud of them names.”

Dr. John once said, in a Rolling Stone interview with Andy Greene, he always liked Johnny Cash because Cash “remembered my real name. Not many people do.”

In the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, he’s enshrined as Dr. John, although his bio pays homage to his given name. His 2011 induction was the right place at the right time.

“See, I don’t know nothing about singing,” he told npr. “I never wanted to be a frontman. Frontmen had big egos and was always crazy and aggravating. I just never thought that was a good idea.”

Ideas, Dr. John had, most of them provided by his native New Orleans, and many of them outlandish. But he attracted attention not just for the show, but for the substance of the music, too.

“. . . many are the coats,” wrote Ashley Kahn, in an essay that originally appeared in the program from the 2011 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induiction program, “he’s worn: riff-master, R&B guitarist and boogie-woogie piano professor. Psychedelic voodoo rock shaman and stately New Orleans musical ambassador. Bandleader of top-tier talent and A-list sessionman/producer. Player of downhome blues and singer of uptown jazz standards. ‘Ain’t no difference,’ Dr. John said of himself a few years back. ‘It’s all one sucka in there however you want to break it down . . . ‘ ”

Dr. John was music’s Dr. J long before Julius Erving became basketball’s. He’s still going, of course. Asked by Greene about retirement, Dr. John said: “I think it’s only proper that I play until the last note of a set, then fall over and die. The band won’t have to play an encore and they’ll still get paid for a gig.”

sources: npr.org, answers.com, nitetripper.com, rollingstone.com, rockhall.com

Steve Miller: Your Saving Grace

Birthday greetings to Steve Miller, who celebrates No. 68 today.

There are few musicians for whom the before and after contrast is as stark as it is for Miller. Before Fly Like An Eagle, he was counter-culture, bluesy, cool, underground FM available; after Fly Like an Eagle he was commercial, mainstream, conformist, overplayed and uninspiring. Before Miller was the highlights, after Miller was Miller Lite.

You could hear Fly Like An Eagle songs seemingly everywhere but in elevators (every time I hear Take The Money and Run, I feel like doing so, away from the song). The metamorphosis started with The Joker in 1973 — Miller’s first No. 1 hit — which gave us the expression “pompatus of love,” but was still of a different feel than Fly Like An Eagle. We’re not sure what happened, but we can guess that it’s good to be No. 1.

If you’re familiar only with the After Miller, know that there’s an earlier and better decade of Miller to listen to. Mentored when young by jazz guitarist Les Paul, a family friend, Miller’s early band mates included Boz Scaggs,  who had his own breakout album (Silk Degrees),  Ben Sidran, author, pianist and critic, and, if you know what I mean, Lee Michaels, whose one and only hit was Do You Know What I Mean.

Miller’s early work was rebellious, enduring and worthy of appreciation: Space Cowboy, Living In The U.S.A., Going To Mexico, Don’t Let Nobody Turn You Around, Going To The Country, etc. A link to Your Saving Grace and lyrics from the same below:

 And now I spend my life
On the velvet side of hell
Aimlessly here searching
For what I cannot tell