Smokey 2325 hr (Thursday 24th January 2019)

Although I popped into Bath to visit Richer Sounds, Charles Tyrwhitt and a computer shop that appears to have vamoosed I didn't get to take any pictures, and it was dark when I set off for home. As I haven't blipped for a couple of days I snapped this quickie of Smokey on the living room table. He'd cleared a space for himself by curling up and spreading out, sending a selection of utensils and unused boxed light bulbs flying onto the floor. Bless him :(.

L.
25.1.2019 (1824 hr)

Blip #2833 (#2583 + 250 archived blips taken 27.8.1960-18.3.2010)
Consecutive Blip #000
Blips/Extras In 2019 #10/265 + #005/100 Extras
Smokey #457
Day #3226 (653 gaps from 26.3.2010)
LOTD #1975 (#1816 + 159 in archived blips)

Smokey series

Taken with Panasonic Lumix DMC-TZ60 compact

Lozarhythm Of The Day:
Max Roach Quintet featuring Abbey Lincoln - Driva' man - We Insist! - Freedom Now Suite (recorded 31 August/6 September 1960, Nola Penthouse Sound Studio, New York NY)
Max Roach (drums), Abbey Lincoln (vocals), Booker Little (trumpet),  Julian Priester (trombone), Walter Benton (tenor sax), Coleman Hawkins (tenor saxophone), James Schenk (bass)
Abbey Lincoln, who later married Max Roach, has yet to be discovered by younger generations and indeed I am familiar with less of her material than I should be, judging from this. I first knew this track, which concerns slavery, sexual abuse and racism, from one of those Mojo cover discs (The Bad Seeds Jukebox, Feb 2014, curated by Nick Cave) but was reminded of it when I heard it on Six this week. I suspect it has been widely sampled since 1960.
Written by Max Roach and Oscar Brown, Driva Man tells the explicit story of slavery through its lyrics and accompaniment. Nat Hentoff, who was present at the recording sessions of the album, wrote that the Driva' Man "is a personification of the white overseer in slavery times who often forced women under his jurisdiction into sexual relations." Also in the lyrics are "pater ollers." In Hentoff's liner notes he includes a description of the patrollers by a former slave who says they are men "who would catch you from home and wear you out and send you back to your master...Most of them there patrollers was poor white folks...Poor white folks had to hustle round to make a living, so they hired out theirselves to slaveowners and rode the roads at night and whipped you if they catched you off their plantation without a pass."
This track uses several tactics to evoke its images of slavery. Alisa White describes how the 5/4 time signature of the track adds an intense percussive hit, played either by a tambourine or as a rimshot, on the first beat of each measure. The track does not deviate from this pattern, which White wrote, "conjures up images of forced labor," specifically a cracked whip. Additionally, the track is played in a blues form that is only six bars long, however this is found in pairs, so that each chorus is actually twelve bars long. Abbey Lincoln is the first to enter the tune, singing the melody a cappella and accompanying herself with tambourine. Coleman Hawkins then enters with the tenor saxophone melody, along with the three horns supporting him. After a chorus of instrumental melody, Hawkins takes a 4 chorus solo. All the while, Roach maintains the unusual 5/4 time signature with the punching hit on the first beat of each measure. Melodically, "Driva' Man" is the simplest tune on the album, based in a C minor pentatonic scale.
Coleman Hawkins makes an appearance here and "plays the male counterpart to Abbey Lincoln," as Hentoff notes in his liner notes. Hawkins would stay far past his part in the recording, and he would turn to Max Roach in astonishment, asking, "did you really write this, Max?" In his liner notes, Hentoff wrote of an interaction between Hawkins and Abbey Lincoln after a squeak in Lincoln's opening solo in Driva' Man: "No, don't splice," said Hawkins. "When it's all perfect, especially in a piece like this, there's something very wrong." - Wikipedia


One Year Ago:
Always Different, Always The Same