February 2010

Frederick Knight's only album for Stax is one of the loneliest albums ever made.  It speaks of failure, the sense of loss, and solitude.  Of these things, Knight knew a great deal.

He was born in Bessemer, Alabama, in 1944, and spent years visiting record companies. Joe Tex's manager, Buddy Killen, helped Knight obtain an advance from Mercury for "Throw the Switch," but it was never released. Capitol issued "Have a Little Mercy," but it went nowhere. Knight looked for a career in New York, but had no luck. Eventually he returned to Alabama to work as an engineer at the Sound of Birmingham Studio.  Knight's first hit, "I've Been Lonely For So Long," was written by Posie Knight, his wife, and Jerry Weaver (although they had someone else in mind when they wrote the song).

Released in April, 1972, the single was a unique, almost bizarre, example of Southern soul, its sound gentle and resigned, not over-the-top or too deep. Knight's falsetto suggests Al Green's, but it's more whining, less serene. Unlike most soul songs, the passionate tirade of a preacher is not at the heart of the performance. Instead, Knight's voice knows the value of keeping the peace.  No drums were used on the recording session; the rhythms were made by tambourine and a stool hit with slats of wood. There is a silence imbedded even in the percussion work.

“Regular Lovers” (2005, Philippe Garrel)

Or, Nixon in China: The events of 1968, depicted by one of its cinematic heroes as an intimate epic—and, with a self-deprecating fury, as a lovely but unsustainable burst of youthful lyricism.--

RICHARD BRODY, New Yorker, Best Films of the Last Decade

This is #5.

This footage very well may be the evidence why I am... the way I am. My parents had impeccable taste in music. A FB friend [the ridiculously talented Marc Campbell of Nails fame] posted this song and immediately I remembered how much my dad loved it and all of Billy Lee Riley's stuff... I liked to dance with my Grandmother to this. Bless!

A man of the south, Billy Lee Riley was the son of a sharecropper and learned to play the guitar from folks [read: poorly treated black folks] working on the farm. He headed to Memphis, where he recorded with Sun, however... not unlike many of the best of the best, was poorly represented so sales were slow. In the music business, naturally, that means zip, nada, zero promotion.

So, I said a little prayer this morning, "Hey Dee Dee Ramone! Can you hear me?! Winter is killing me - thank you, wherever your soul may be, for your funny, inspired, humble brilliance."

A day's worth of errands, responsibility, over-load, etc., DONE. I'm left with only MUSIC, forming strange word-sculptures and flickers of scenery, other than my current view, DC's "snow tomb" and the nightly news of the weird (CNN). Nope, I'll pass on the winter wonderland and ever depressing (ever mind boggling) current events and scribble a bit about the man, Mr. Douglas Glenn Colvin, because he wrote a heap of it.