Professor P. gives nostalgia free rein to move him to tears as he enjoys new – and old – music by Snooks Eaglin, The Dawn Brothers, Beabadoobee, Marcus Trummer, and Elles Bailey.
A sweltry evening in the old millennium. The air is hot, humid, and stuffy; even the cockroaches have sweat burning in their eyes. The beer, however – that’s as cold as possible. A necessity in subtropical New Orleans in the Deep South, where day after day crawls by in slow motion and people talk to each other in the incomprehensible N’awlins drawl – heaving complete words over your lips is just too tiresome. As for the ice-cold beer, you gotta chug it down fast, or else your teeth will be begging for mercy and your throat will suffer frostburn. It’s intermission. A supporting band is packing up their gear, and the main act is about to start. In the background, dudes in cowboy hats – Texas isn’t far away – are pushing bowling balls down shiny polished lanes. The “Rock’n’Bowl” has been an institution on the Mississippi for three half-eternities, roughly an alligator’s spitting distance away from the brackish, lazily meandering river. It offers a bowling alley and concert club in one, creating a unique anarchy of sounds composed of blues chords, Cajun violin, Zydeco accordion, and the cacophony of bowling pins colliding. While the musicians of the band about to play are still busy getting their supply of South Pole-fresh Bud at the bar, I go dispose of mine. So I’m standing at the urinal when two men come in. One is the bassist, a tall man who just produced some surprisingly gentle tones with his instrument during the sound check. His name is George Porter Jr., a legend in the South and co-founder of funk pioneers The Meters. Out of the corner of my eye, I see him resting his strong hand on the fragile-looking shoulder of a small, stooped man: Snooks Eaglin, the blind blues guitarist who was nicknamed “Little Ray Charles” in his younger years because of his soulful singing. He’s the reason I’m at the bowling alley. A man whose build resembles a waning crescent moon, a never-failing smile on his face, a grand master of Southern soul who in a few minutes will be led onto the stage, take a seat on a chair, and let his guitar cry out in a peculiar grip position on his lap. Snooks Eaglin has been playing his unconventional brand of funky-rock’n’roll since the 1950s and will use it now to get the audience dancing, and Professor P. will blissfully lose his poise and composure in the middle of it all. But those moments with the legend at the urinal, sunglasses on his old face, just before the gig at the bowling alley, as pee was splashing from three directions: a strange minute in my life, perhaps the strangest of them all.
Why am I telling you this? Because I – oral history – don’t want to let the past rest. I was just reading a book by the late Swiss author Pascal Mercier – he passed away two years ago – Night Train to Lisbon. In it, I found the interesting theory that things past are never really in the past. That you can travel back in your mind to distant, once familiar times and thus bring them back into the present and, in a subtle philosophical sense, actually be there again. Snooks Eaglin, who died impoverished of a heart attack in 2009, is no longer in many people’s thoughts, I fear. I can’t allow things to remain this way. So I’m taking the liberty of introducing a new sub-section of Prof. P.’s Rhythm and Soul Revue: Prof. P.’s Retro Show. Every now and then, I’ll grab an album from the professor’s specialty section and introduce you to music that you probably wouldn’t come across anywhere else. Here we go!
Snooks Eaglin – The Complete Imperial Recordings
A slightly off-key guitar chord – and just like that, we find ourselves in 1950s New Orleans. So to give a proper introduction, welcome to Prof. P’s Retro Show! To be fair, though, I must clarify: we’re really in early 1960s California. Because that’s where Snooks Eaglin, born in 1936 in American Atlantis on the Mississippi, recorded 26 songs in the Imperial Records studios around 1962, even though he probably hardly ever spent more than a week away from the Ol’ Man River in his entire lifetime. Before it was bought out in 1964 and shut down in 1971, the independent label was a kind of West Coast outlet for the pulsating rock ‘n’ roll that already back then was being combined in New Orleans with jazz and the earliest attempts at funk to concoct a unique groove gumbo. Fats Domino recorded here, as did Earl King, the gentle blues singer Tommy Ridgley – and Snooks Eaglin, an influential pioneer of rock ‘n’ roll, who unfortunately is largely forgotten today. But that is precisely the meaning, purpose, and responsibility of Prof. P.‘s retro show: to pay tribute to the old masters once again in an age when mediocre AI algorithms determine the audience’s playlists. So, with that crooked guitar chord, Eaglin kicks off “Yours Truly,” a swinging little rock ‘n’ roll miniature. His voice is very close to Ray Charles’s; it was not without reason that the singer – also blind – was called “Little Ray Charles.” The guitar is in the typical, cheerful, groovy fast-forward style that little Snooks once taught himself on the radio. Songs like “Guess Who” or “C.C. Rider,” first recorded by Ma Rainey in 1924, show Snooks Eaglin’s passion for melodramatic, melancholic groove ballads. Songs like “Down Yonder (We Go Balling),” later revived in modern times by Shakin’ Stevens, among others, already hint at where Snooks Eaglin would later travel: the free-spirited realms of early funk, with the blind guitarist supported by a well-rehearsed team, with the legendary James Booker working the keyboard at Imperial Studios – James Booker, who died far too young from a heroin overdose. Well, having said that: The professor sentimentally flicks a tear off his buttonhole as half-forgotten images of that sweltry evening at the Rock’n’Bowl bubble to the surface of his consciousness. At the urinal with Snooks Eaglin. The concert where he crouched on a stool and performed almost all 2,500 songs in his repertoire. His cheerful, cheeky giggle with which he introduced each song… Those were the days, my friends.
PS: The Complete Imperial Recordings was released on CD in 1995. It is no longer available new, but can be purchased from online retailers such as Discogs for around 15 euros. In 2020, some of the recordings – only 12 songs – were re-released, this time on vinyl as The Imperial Recordings, Vol. 1 on the Naked Lunch label. This version is new and available in stores for around 32 euros.
Label: Capitol Records
Format: CD
The Dawn Brothers – Cry Alone
And with that, we leave Prof. P.’s retro show, wish the spirit of Snooks Eaglin continued safe travels through Nirvana, immerse ourselves in the familiar world of Prof. P.’s Rhythm and Soul Revue, and take a look at the present, the old witch. But because one might despair in the here and now, given how the population of the Gaza Strip – certainly not blessed with happiness and cheerfulness – might end up facing being resettled to Greenland, and since we’re all mad here, we’re just going to go ahead and shape the world the way we like it, opposing the monstrous madness by consuming offbeat culture in combination with ritual herb burning and dancing on the edge of the volcano until lava pours out of our ears. Take the hand of your neighbor, wherever you are, join in, friends, to the postmodern ring-a-ring-a-rosy. Here I have the perfect soundtrack for it: The new album by the Dawn Brothers from Rotterdam. I introduced you to the quartet five and a half ages ago on the occasion of their debut Staying Out Late, which they recorded in the orbit of psychedelic rock trio DeWolff, also based in the Netherlands – and at this point, I’ll insert a cliffhanger, quite unusually in the middle: In the near future, the professor will report on his trip to Amsterdam, during which he saw DeWolff in the country’s most magnificent concert hall and almost got into a fight with a red wine drinker carrying a toilet bowl, for reasons… Well, stay tuned. Back to the Dawn Brothers: They are a kind of reincarnation of Bob Dylan’s old backing band, The Band, and the canal groove sounds similar to “The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down”: Warm, soft arrangements, melodic Americana folk with blues and soul elements, simply good music, if I may say so myself. The bassist and guitarist take turns singing, and that in turn sounds like Tom Petty (“Can’t Let You In, Can’t Let You Out”), like Golden Earring (“Do Me Wrong”), for whom the young people from the Netherlands were allowed to play as the opening act, and sometimes like Neil Young (“Don’t You Weep”).
Label: Excelsior Recordings
Format: CD, LP, DL 24/96
Beabadoobee – This Is How Tomorrow Moves
For a few seconds, you think you’ve put in the wrong CD. Isn’t this from Tom Petty’s hit album Wildflowers? The professor hears warm Americana grooves, somewhere between the Allman Brothers, Beatles pop, and Southern rock. Bass, drums, and guitar swing so familiarly with and around each other, as if the song had been playing for ten minutes rather than the actual eight seconds. But then, just when you expect Petty’s soft, nasal vocals to kick in, we hear a young woman instead, whose voice, oscillating between basement club and nursery, sounds like a 14-year-old soul prodigy. Of course, this is not the case. The professor had already plunged headfirst into the deepest depths of the internet and done his research before inserting the CD. What’s more, the cover of This Is How Tomorrow Moves features neither Petty nor any flowers, but the young, yet already 24-year-old artist Beabadoobee. The British artist was born Beatrice Ilejay Laus in Iloilo City in the Philippines, but then collided with guitar lessons and rigid school customs in London. And her new, third album is, simply put, magnificent work. Beabadoobee is a very good songwriter, which also came to the attention of Rick Rubin, who announced on his own initiative that he wanted to produce her next album. For anyone who has just returned from a long trip to Mars: Rick Rubin is the producer who started out with the Beastie Boys (Licensed To Ill), before working with the Red Hot Chili Peppers (Blood Sugar Sex Magik) and finally with Tom Petty’s solo album Wildflowers, who helped Johnny Cash enjoy a second, better spring and later worked with Adele, AC/DC, ZZ Top and Lady Gaga … Well, and in between, Santa Claus-bearded Mr. Rubin still finds time for exciting side projects like this one, which was largely recorded at Rubin’s Shangri-La Studios in Malibu Beach. Listen here: “Take A Bite” (opening song that combines Tom Petty’s laid-back Southern swing with the melancholic, beautiful songwriting style of Elliot Smith), “One Time” (But isn’t that by Elliot Smith? No? How lucky that someone is writing such beautiful songs again) and “Post” (pop rock song for Generation Z, which makes one thing clear: Beabadoopee accompanied Taylor Swift as the opening act in the US for weeks. Rubin translated these vibes into a fitting arrangement – good mix!).
Label: Dirty Hit/Sony
Format: CD, LP, DL 16/44
Marcus Trummer – From The Start
The Canadian prairie. The smell of dust and grass and cow piss. Tumbleweed on straight highways, the sound of the wind in the brush, the eternal wind that never pauses to take a breath. Yes, this is Alberta, the westernmost of Canada’s prairie provinces and home to countless ice hockey players, curlers, synchronized swimmers and, why not, lots of wrestling heroes. If you want to find out more, please consult Wikipedia’s “List of notable people from Calgary.” But I must point out that one name is not on it, not yet. Marcus Trummer is also a child of Calgary, and “child” can almost be taken literally, at least in the worlds of blues and soul. The guitarist and singer is 23 years old and has just released his creatively titled debut album, From The Start. But don’t judge an album by its cover; the work is as mature as any album by, say, Solomon Burke, and for anyone who accuses the professor of blasphemy and immediately cobbles together the hashtag #Where-is-the-Inquisition-when-you-need-it? I have one answer: #Get-the-fuck-out-of-my-kitchen! Marcus Trummer has already been described as an “old soul” by the leading Canadian media outlet Calgary Herald, with an incomparable “wise weariness” resonating in his voice. I can only agree with that, and add the following weary wisdom: Praise be to the wise and weary! The work was produced by a young, shaggy-haired guitarist named Ross Hayes Citrullo, who is currently conquering the world with his band The Commoners, based in Toronto, with their heavy Southern rock. Marcus Trummer sings soul, he sings the blues, and he writes good songs. Quiet, wise songs that tell of the vastness of the prairie.
Label: Gypsy Soul
Format: CD, LP, DL 24/48
Elles Bailey – Beneath The Neon Glow
The professor engages in self-reflection and comes to the conclusion that not everyone is obliged to like every piece of work praised in his Rhythm and Soul Revue. That’s when I often reach out to the FIDELITY reading circle and lead you down the most remote beaten paths, far, far away from any middle-of-the-road navigation. Well, as loyal consumers of my freestyle stream of consciousness (literary types may appreciate the slight appropriation of James Joyce at this point), you know that in professorial yin and yang, there is always a balance – so let’s steer straight ahead for once and enjoy an album that is simply pleasing to the ear. Elles Bailey, soul singer from Bristol, offers a light version of soul on her fourth studio album, Beneath The Neon Glow, mixed with radio-friendly pop rock essences and a good dose of Nashville Americana. Perhaps this is no surprise, as she is a regular guest on the British radio station Planet Rock Radio, which also had Alice Cooper under contract for his radio show for a time and was owned for several years by a Scottish consortium including Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull, Fish of Marillion, and Northern Irish blues misunderstanding Gary Moore. In any case, on Beneath The Neon Glow, Elles Bailey switches between rich blues rock (“Enjoy The Ride”: a rock-solid introduction to a good, if not grandiose, work, with blues-anchored guitar, sparkling piano artistry, and a richly driving rhythm section) and, in my opinion, subtly boring Nashville ballad melodrama, including wailing pedal steel (“Silhouette In A Sunset”). But don’t let my arrogance put you off. Because even the professor has to admit: the groovy “1972,” a fine country funk with a Louisiana offbeat, is perfect for cutting a rug on the dance floor.
Label: Outlaw Music/Cooking Vinyl
Format: CD, LP, DL 24/48