Tom Piazza sits in a car waiting for Jimmy Martin to come out of Jimmy Martin’s house. Jimmy Martin, in case you didn’t know—and Jimmy Martin would have been painfully aware that in many cases, people didn’t know—was a bluegrass legend, as memorable for his smash-the-table-against-the-wall temper as for singing and stringing. Jimmy Martin is drunk inside his own house. Tom Piazza’s thoughts of rousing him become quickly tempered by the sounds of Jimmy Martin’s two intemperate guard dogs.

Tom Piazza doesn’t know what’s going to happen next, and in simple, supple language his mounting terror becomes a hysterical heartbeat in the throat of the reader. Adept with emotions, the writer combines the personal and the political with his defenses of his adopted home. New Orleans as theme park, he writes—and not everyone will agree—could conceivably out-worsen New Orleans as après-deluge devastated: “The idea of turning one of the great, thriving, complex living cultural centers of the world…into a manicured jewel box like Savannah or Charleston…is nauseating and despicable.” Turning on a dime from the personal to the political.

He also finds a unifying theme between those two above. Like the Band (Canadians absorbed in Americana) and the Mekons (to Nashville by way of Leeds), Piazza isn’t sure where he belongs and the status of interested outsider leads him to inquiries into the very nature of community, and even friendship. Inspiration and illumination on every page. And he even survives Jimmy Martin (not really a spoiler).

Devil Sent the Rain on Amazon.com

Behold, Mike McGonigal’s curated a second set of obscure, raw, raving, and maybe even revenant gospel sides. This one lacks the assurance of the first one, Fire in my Bones (proceeds from it benefit the New Orleans Musicians Relief Fund), but you’ll want it anyway. Anybody with an interest in African-American culture could and should have this, and so should anyone with any interest in being mystified and/or just plain scared out of his/ her wits. Few box sets cover quite that much aesthetic space.

Yes, you’ll find drum machines and electronic keyboards here and there. Witness Deacon James Williams’ “God is Taking Care” from 1980, where (presumably) the Deacon chants and the machine chatters. “The only copies I have found,” McGonigal writes, “are in pretty bad shape”—frustrating to the curator and the listener—but it comes over much less crackly than other sides herein, and as McGonigal admits, “at least a few people liked it enough to play the record until it’s hardly listenable.”

Some folks don’t know how to stop—Prophet G. Lusk’s “The Devil’s Trying to Steal My Joy” cuts out at exactly the moment you’re convinced that he has too much joy for even the devil to steal. Some folks, we don’t know how they started—Elder Curtis Watson’s “Be There in the Happening (Part 2)” starts mid-sermon since Part 1 is presumably too trashed to even contemplate.

And some folks simply make the soul crawl like spiders on skin. The Rev. R. Henderson’s “Stop Living on Me” puts the guitar out in front and leaves the vocal an unintelligible, sinister vapor—“Exile On Main Street” prophesied, perhaps, except this 45 lacks any identifying information and may have always been with us. The title song appears a few times; at Brother Will Hairston’s Detroit service it begins simply. Then a scream. Then more screams. No formal rhythm. No earthly rhyme. There, gone, there, gone again before you apprehend. I don’t believe in the Holy Ghost, and I believe it sounds thusly.

Updated Listen to Lee Ann Womack take the early lead on “I Was a Burden,” wavering from each pitch like a fast, heavy car struggling through a curve—painful, unpredictable, the least-likely superstar voice in recent years. Then hear the Blind Boys of Alabama back her up—always certain, but always shifting within that certainty, building twice to “when you’re standing in the light,” the first time with a conventional gospel push, second time with a hushed variation emphasizing awe.

Chet Flippo’s Take the High Road liner notes indicate that Blind Boys lead singer Jimmy Carter wanted to make a country gospel album for some time, and the new alliance with country’s Jamey Johnson, who co-produced here, made that viable. To my ears the underlying sound doesn’t shift radically. The Blind Boys go back to the beginning of World War II, more than far enough to remember and to embody the primordial tree from which the roots of roots music snaked away. But the gambit lets in plenty of high-powered country artists who checked their egos with Jesus at the door.

And so the Oak Ridge Boys blend their harmonies and trade testimonies with the Blind Boys on the title track, which cleverly folds faith into altruism, advice against “casting a stone” bolstered with the reminder that “we never walk alone.” Willie Nelson brings his slow-burning fire to “Family Bible”—more than any other American superstar, Willie simply is when he opens his mouth, a living Tao infused into American Southern values. Hank Williams, Jr. roughs up his father’s “I Saw the Light,” reminding us, again, that his father respected and drew from many traditions associated with many colors.

The Blind Boys may not make another country gospel album, but they seemingly effortlessly manage another many-splendored thing.

Buy the Blind Boys of Alabama’s Take the High Road on iTunes

Listen to the Blind Boys of Alabama’s Take the High Road on Spotify

Updated July 28, 12:58 p.m.

As a commenter says, Clarence Fountain is on the album. The text has been changed to remove statements to the contrary.

Booker T. Jones, still occasionally of Booker T. and the MGs, reminded us of his mastery of the Hammond B3 two years ago with Potato Hole, which satisfied all Memphis R&B receptors in the human mind and body. Jones always shows us how less is more—a lesson still lost on many musicians, not to mention many multitasking Americans in general. He brushes away our weak-tea interconnectivity and forces us to focus. Here, he pushes a few more keys to flesh out a chord; here, he answers himself with a second melody line in the background.

The Road from Memphis sags just a tad under the burden of his guest stars. When Sharon Jones and the National’s Matt Berninger join vocal forces for “Representing Memphis,” she’s subdued but soulful in a just-woke-up tone; he signifies too earnest by a few fingers, as if cutting a public service spot. Yim Yames of My Morning Jacket effortlessly grabs a tough edge, that point in “Progress” where the sun peeks over the horizon of despair. Jones takes the mic for a rare vocal turn and turns “Down in Memphis” into a knowing travelogue. Unlike Berninger, he’s got mixed feelings about tour-guiding, so he hints at where a few bodies are buried.

Then there’s Lou Reed, who makes very little sense intoning about “The Bronx” on a Memphis concept record, but always keep your ears on the band and this one won’t disappoint. Jones sat illuminating the inner groove of “Eleanor Rigby” before drummer/producer Questlove was born; here he passes the torch and blazes the trail like it’s the easiest one-two punch in the ring.

Buy Booker T.’s The Road From Memphis on iTunes

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A friend I know as intellectual and a roots music aficionado waved off Satchmo, saying the man’s main interests “were pot and Swiss Kriss.” When I told her that the late Louis Armstrong gave Eisenhower the finger, metaphorically, she lightened up a bit: “I would have given him the finger too.”

For those who don’t know, Armstrong’s “finger” flew during a 1957 interview with reporter Larry Lubenow
from the University of Arkansas. Satchmo called Ike “two-faced” and condemned him for having “no guts,” after Arkansas governor Orval Faubus used the National Guard to temporarily preserve segregation in Little Rock.

For good measure, the trumpeter called Faubus a “no-good motherfucker,” but Lubenow could of course not go to press with that. He did allow the reporter back into his hotel room after the Associated Press demanded proof of the two-faced, no guts remarks. “Don’t take nothing out that story,” said Satchmo. “That’s just what I said and still say.” At the bottom of Lubenow’s copy he wrote one word. “Solid.”

And that word can stand in, surprisingly enough, for most of Armstrong’s “decline,” defined by Riccardi as the span from the 1947 NYC Town Hall concert, until Satchmo’s overworked heart gave out in 1971. Riccardi finds much less fault with these years than most jazzbos and even most Satchmo-watchers. He methodically goes about rehabilitating Armstrong’s Act II.

And comes up with a fetching, sticky web of evidence. Armstrong taught “Mack the Knife” to swing before Bobby Darin turned it into a theme song. He let his heart show on “Blueberry Hill” before Fats Domino cut it a shade more smug. He led his All-Stars band all across the globe playing music planted in New Orleans’ classic style, but green and growing from its roots.

Many dismissals of latter-day Satchmo, the author argues, stem from misunderstandings. His upbringing taught him to value showmanship and entertainment as much as “artistry.”On race, he’ll always suffer for not marching; even Riccardi concludes as much, but his New Orleans upbringing taught him to cling to the nearest powerful white man (i.e. manager Joe Glaser). In those days, that was not an option as much as a survival tactic.

“They would beat me on the mouth if I marched, and without my mouth I would not be able to blow my horn,” he told a reporter in Denmark after the Montgomery riots in 1965. “They would even beat Jesus if he was black and marched.” But onstage that night he blew “Black and Blue” until everyone knew what he was talking about. “The people over there ask me what’s wrong with my country,” he’d told Lubenow about a proposed trip to the USSR. “What am I supposed to say?” He said it with song, with the horn, with all-inclusive artistry.

I was fine with this until the sort-of title track—“Sweetblood Call,” two words, versus the album title above—and then I couldn’t carry it anymore. That’s the song about sticking a gun in a woman’s mouth and threatening to pull the trigger. I thought about it, but I just can’t carry that. Damn shame too since elsewhere on this 1975 set (reissued early this year), Louisiana Red is everything I’d want in a down-home blues guitarist: riffs lie languid, single or doubled notes shoot out spring-loaded to punch through any listener resistance. Red’s red-meat howling compliments his aw-shucks crooning and his bitter, bitten-off asides. But I just can’t carry “Sweetblood Call.”

An old friend of mine said Robert Johnson sucked because he sang, “I’m going to beat my woman / Until I get satisfied” and I thought about saying, well, the Velvet Underground sings, “There she goes again. / You better hit her,” and besides, a man like Robert Johnson walking “side by side” with the devil might do horrible things from madness, and damnation. Red shows an overflow of abjection, but neither madness nor damnation. Indeed, he elsewhere on this set hangs out the widespread bluesman conceit about how he’s got a whole lotta fish in his sea, and yes indeed he’s going to catch every single one of them. This doesn’t sit well next to a harrowing account of watching your wife die. Let alone sticking a gun in a woman’s mouth.

Gotta be the succulent-est book to feature the Axeman of New Orleans. If you don’t know the Axeman of New Orleans, feel free to look him up while I wait here, but be warned: you’ll probably go off your feed. Dave Thompson’s written over 100 books, sayeth Wikipedia; this one’s surely the first featuring recipes, let alone recipes for “Alligator Balls.” That’s alligator meat (location on original alligator unspecified) shaped into one-inch balls. Now you can breathe a little easier.

An Englishman, Thompson acknowledges that he’s a fish out of the fryer. He lays out his first page with a Louisiana fable concluding, “Well, if you need directions, maybe you don’t have any business going there” and then includes a lot of asking directions. But the journey is the reward, as the story of the bluebird of happiness tells us—a story not from Louisiana, but which should be. Thompson writes plenty for quick cash (the used pizza ovens sold through his website must not add up to much) but hunker down with a few paragraphs of a given tome and you can tell when his heart’s in it. His heart’s in this one. Along with those alligator balls.

Two-hundred-and-forty-seven pages including bibliography of course isn’t enough space for the whole of the soul of the Pelican State, but give the man his passion: you get Hank Williams, Huey Long, Robert Johnson, Marie Laveau, Blind Joe Reynolds, Dr. John and Dr. John (if you know what I mean), Zozo Labrique, Jean Lafitte, alligator meat, and potentially deadly swamp critters by the cloud. Thompson corrects us on the true meaning of “Gris-Gris Gumbo Ya Ya” but inserts an error of his own: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn came from the former Samuel Langhorne Clemens, not Longhorne (although maybe that’s a better fit).

For people who don’t need directions, all this may be old news. For anyone else, the linkage of bayou to, say, Alice Cooper and Judas Priest should justify taking this down from the shelf. Alligator balls, optional.

Nick Tosches wrote a whole book on Lewis and proclaimed him elsewhere, “the last man to have been touched by the Holy Ghost of Gnosis.” Does that leave everybody else (even Sun Ra) stumbling in the Spiritual Dark for the Light Switch? Tosches goes on to say that Lewis has never made a great album. Mean Old Man won’t change that man’s mind, but the main attraction sings over, under and through all those potentially saggy guest artists. This sounds convincingly enough like a house party, not a northern-style wake.

Kid Rock, true, can’t do more than impersonate Steven Tyler for “Rockin’ My Life Away.” Jerry Lee’s succulent Louisiana vowels shame and shellac Mick Jagger’s trademark faux-southern on “Dead Flowers;” Keith Richards sounds better sounding like himself on “Sweet Virginia” (docked a notch for switching “shit” for “shine”).

AllMusic calls this “country,” and over its sweeter majority it sounds country-grown rather than rock-rolled. Except for “Roll Over Beethoven,” Ringo Starr slipping into what he does best (backbone) and John Mayer oddly keeping his mouth shut. “Miss the Mississippi and You,” got cut solo, our Killer keeping himself company with Hank Sr.’s hiccup and Jimmie Rodgers’ yodel. He still misses them, too.

The work of the late great Willie Mitchell on his last production job makes this more essential listening. Mitchell stirs the spices of his artfully selected house band (kudos to Steve Potts, who makes everyone wait for him on the 2 almost as long as Al Jackson, Jr. did). The first song Mitchell showed to Burke? “You Needed Me,” a number one for Anne Murray in 1978. Mitchell knew this was secretly a soul song, and Burke testifies the lyric, deceptively gently, then more deceptively gently. We don’t know if the lover he’s singing to is Jesus and/or God, but it sounds more and more like holy praise with every phrase. Solomon knew it was a soul song, too, and that’s one sweat drop more precious than sleepwalking.

David Stricklin
Louis Armstrong: The Soundtrack of the American Experience (Ivan R. Dee)

Scott Allen Nollen Louis Armstrong: The Life, Music, and Screen Career (McFarland and Company)

Louis Daniel Armstrong lies buried in Flushing, Queens, but his heart belongs to the Crescent City. Practically and spiritually, he belongs to the planet, and measuring the full extent of his influence, a well-nigh impossible task in itself, proves easier than measuring the extent of his value.

These two new books, both short, shy wisely from the big picture and genuflect generously to previous Satchmo scholars. Nollen’s tome, “Life” and “Music” notwithstanding, goes for a summation of Louis on film. Scaling a formidable task into a finite number of moves and movies, Nollen produces the definitive work on that subject, and not incidentally tells the post-fame story of its subject along the way. Bing Crosby adored him, Dorothy Dandridge cooed over him, Billie Holiday cooed along with him in an otherwise regrettable picture actually called New Orleans.

Actually, many pictures were equally unfortunate, to be kind. A Betty Boop cartoon cast him as a cannibal; “A Rhapsody in Black and Blue” stuck him in leopard skins. Pops blew himself clear of it all.

Armstrong’s endless capacity to catch society’s dung and grow (blow?) roses forms the backbone of his success, David Stricklin argues over his own 182 pages. Asking the question why we don’t see more Satchmos, the University of Arkansas professor argues, sensibly enough, that many such talents find themselves smothered and strangled professionally.

“Armstrong’s approach to racism,” he writes of Satch in the mid-1920’s, “was simply to work harder, play better music, and exude more goodwill than anybody black or white, racist or otherwise.” Later on, the trumpeter would speak up—not early and often enough to satisfy some critics, but except for very early on, he never satisfied all of his critics, socially or musically. His refusal to prize jazz above other musics, and his disinclination to categorize jazz as “black music” also lost him brownie points.

When in doubt, he went back to the horn—and/or, as his lip began to disintegrate, his vocal cords. Plenty of Pops-watchers scolded his singing, too. In private he judged his own voice “nothing to write home about…But,” he concluded, “It is Different [sic].” More than true enough.

Ossie Davis, who worked with Armstrong on a forgettable Sammy Davis, Jr. picture, summarized Satchmo as “a smile, a handkerchief, and sweat, and the capacity to move me beyond tears.” He added, “In that horn of his, you know, he had the power to kill. That horn could kill a man.”

Remember both of those, then you won’t go wrong.