Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show live 1970

Evangelical groups tried to have this song banned because they thought it was disrespectful to Christianity. Fortunately, progressive Christian artist Johnny Cash didn't feel that way.

"Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" (Neil Diamond) review

To hear a Neil Diamond record of circa 1969-70 is to find Middle American peace sign, hitch-hiking, earth-in-balance transcendence. It’s a breaking through of the walls erected to place us all within categories and definitions.

Diamond’s serrated voice on vinyl of that era opens – like sweet blown grass – a window into what my mom would’ve been listening to at the time – somewhere in the cross-cultural bag of the Stones, The Band, Herb Albert & the Tijuana Brass, the Temptations -- in the kitchen of our little house beside a gravel road.

"Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show," the opening title track to Diamond’s 1969 album deserves a listen a listen on your turntable. Put aside the overplay this standard receives on the corporate world’s Oldies and Classic Hits station and hear the song with new ears. Listen to the entire album and put life in its circular perspective.

While none of the other tracks have the ’45 hit single appeal of the opening or its phenomenal closing track – “Sweet Caroline – taken as a whole, the album emanates a breezy, spiritually sound feeling befitting the up-and-coming singer-songwriter of the era --appropriate because Neil Diamond is not conventional pop. Or is he?

Depends on how you define pop music. If your definition is limited by a post-MTV era paradigm of machinery, manufacturing and imagery, then no – Diamond is not standard pop. However, if your understanding has been broadened by 60s era Wall of Sound, Wrecking Crew and the Civil Rights amalgamation of rock n’ roll, soul, pop and country, then Diamond and his band stand with the artists who molded commercial pop with a sense of craftsmanship.

As an ‘80s teen-ager I lacked historical perspective and dismissed Neil Diamond as some adult contemporary wimp liked by old people. Some of that, Diamond brought on himself. “Love on the Rocks.” What the hell is that? “Heartlight” from the E.T. soundtrack? Bland, corporate contrived and uninspired. Like some of the most multi-talented, yet non-purist artists – Elvis Presley, Aretha Franklin, Rod Stewart, Stevie Wonder, Elton John – Neil Diamond became more about the name – the brand – than the artistry.

It was only in college during the early ‘90s, while listening to stuff like Sonic Youth, the Pixies, the Jesus and Mary Chain…that I learned Neil Diamond had relevance. That brings me to back to Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show. In January of 1969, after his last two albums failed to chart, Diamond left New York and went to 827 Thomas St. in Memphis, home to American Sound Studio and laid down tracks with the house band, the Memphis Boys. Guided by record producer Chips Moman, the band added a complementary musical groove to Diamond’s growing prowess as a songwriter.

While not as lauded as Stax’s Booker T. and the MG’s, the Memphis Boys were steady and steeped in southern traditions of gospel, soul, rock and country. Having cut his teeth on tunesmithing at New York’s Brill Building in the early 60s, Diamond’s lyrics and music at the end of the decade had the feel of his earlier catchy pop hits like “Cherry, Cherry,” but also revealed the growing introspection that would mark his early ‘70s work.

Bobby Woods played the gospel piano intro to “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” setting the stage for Diamond to enter hot and stoic, vocals steady. Starting soft and slow-ow, like a small earthquake and when he lets go-o, half the valley shakes. The song builds to a crescendo as he narrates a tale, straddling the line of fleshly pleasure and spiritual sensations. Diamond – with strong support from the band –pays homage to southern gospel tradition as only an East Coast Jewish boy, dazzled by the early sounds of Chuck Berry and Little Richard, can.


Tunes like “Dig In” and “Deep in the Morning” are sexy, grooving song with a blues edge driven by Guitarist Reggie Young and bassist Mike Leech. “River Runs, Newgrown Plums” features Bobby Emmons sputtering organ solo (like something traditionally out of a baseball park or ‘70s game show), which sounds a little dated, yet cool considering there’s nothing like it on the radio today. The solo gives the song a special spice. The song has the buoyancy of Diamond’s early hits and the line, “honey, it’s natural, I love you” is a classic Diamond-like lyric of that era. Diamond’s best line in any of the songs is “I’m a ten dollar dreamer” from the song, “Memphis Streets.” With fun lyrics about working the day shift and driving a ’59 Ford, this song – like many on the album -- reflect a young adult sense of freedom and abandon. In no less than three songs, he talks about going barefoot. Girls..God..himself…barefoot by the stream.

"You're So Sweet, Horseflies Keep Hangin' Round Your Face" is a fun parody of a corny country song. The lyrics invoking Kentucky moonshine, front teeth missing, county rodoes..would make this a fun one to sing verbatim from the dance floor of a bar as a band plays. "Long Gone" sounds more like country with accoustic rock guitar, absent parody.

Much of the album’s songs show restlessness, a longing to drift along the roads of America, aimless, carrying a few worldly possessions, while opening up to fresh love and life experience. While the world approaching 1970 was growing rapidly more urban and polluted, there seemed – in Diamond and other artists of the time – a reaching out for that something pure and authentic from the country.

In the ballad “Juliet,” Diamond signs of “wandering around a grown man, no more than a small boy.” The dichotomy is evident in lyrics throughout the album. There’s the youthful frivolity and desire for the road, alongside an underscoring knowledge that it’s not all it promises and the game is almost up. It’s like he sings in “Glory Road” – And I know glory road’s waiting for me, rest my load, now I know glory road won’t set me free. The song, with its Kerouackian references to Colorado, Wyoming, LA, Louisiana…hints at the loneliness Diamond would later explore in “I Am, I Said.”

“And the Grass Won’t Pay You No Mind” is the purest portrait of Diamond’s pop-rock lyricism and maturing song writing talents. An acoustic, country-folk-styled ballad, the song is earthy and poetic, capturing a still moment that had to resonate with young people coming of age in a world of noise and confusion. More than romantic love, the song was downright spiritual. Elvis Presley would cover “And the Grass Won’t Pay You No Mind” a few months later and I’m guessing it’s because he couldn’t resist the opening line, “Listen easy, you can hear God calling.”

Of course, Elvis would be all over Diamond’s smash hit of the year – “Sweet Caroline” – adding the pop-rock smash to his Vegas shows. Originally, not part of the album, its popularity prompted MCA to tack it at the end of side two. Good call. “Sweet Caroline” is a serendipitous work of pop transcendence, an enveloping arch over the waters of human kindness. Sung with confidence, it’s become Diamond’s signature song. Could we imagine Boston’s Fenway Park without it now?

Diamond wrote the song after seeing a picture in Life magazine of Caroline Kennedy riding a horse. Is that not appropriate?

Was not the entire era a musical Camelot?


Gateway Music

Elvis in Memphis -- After completing Diamond’s album at American Sound Studios, Chips Moman and the house rhythm section recorded this album with Presley and the result was artistic, commercial sophistication – “In the Ghetto,” “Suspicious Minds”... Soulful, poignant and muscular, this album – with the right mix of professionals – brought Presley back to his roots and rescued his career and talents from Hollywood kitschdom. Just as Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show prompts us to see Neil Diamond beyond the Desiree-like Vegas sequins, this album shows Elvis beyond ersatz soundtracks and Liberace bombast.

Dusty in Memphis – A must for any record collection. Like the aforementioned Presley and Diamond, Dusty Springfield’s career was lagging when she recorded in Memphis’s American Sound Studios. And like those guys, her career and talents were injected with new vigor. A British pop diva, she traveled across the pond to work with musicians who would fuel her work with a soulfulness they had lent to Ray Charles, Otis Redding and Aretha Franklin. Tommy Cogbill, who helped produce and contribute bass lines on Diamond’s album played the classic, sexy bass intro we all know from “Son of a Preacher Man.” Without this white English girl’s homage to black soul music, we would have no Amy Winehouse or Adele.

Just look for music everywhere from these Memphis musicians and producers. Their handiwork crossed genres and decades – Gene Vincent, Carla Thomas, the Box Tops, Sly and the Family Stone, Tammy Wynette, B.J. Thomas…Chips Moman wrote “Luckenbauch, Texas" for Waylon and Willie. The list goes on and the hunt can only be a thrill.

Outside the box gateway
As a young man, Neil Diamond received a scholarship to be on New York University’s fencing team. No way, I can resist recommending one of my favorite books by one of my favorite all-time authors -- The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger. Holden Caulfield was manager of his prep school’s fencing team. Everyone in the world knows that, I’m sure.

"The Dream" review

Drew D. Hansen’s book, The Dream: Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Speech That Inspired a Nation is a fascinating examination of King’s iconic “I Have a Dream” speech. Hansen presents the human story behind MLK’s spectacular address, rescuing the speech -- as King -- from their mythic pedestal.

King famously disregarded his notes that August day in 1963 when he came to the “I have a dream” portion of his speech, spoken spontaneously. Hansen shows, however, that King’s poetic words had been in his creative arsenal for some time. They were the products of references he had gathered over the years, variations of which he had already used in sermons before black church audiences in the South.

The most interesting aspect of Hansen’s book is the detective work he did in tracing the origins of King’s references. King’s writing and oratorical style was influenced by other theologians and poetry, but most of all, by the King James Bible.

Hansen lists several Bible verses, from which King drew allusions, in his famous speech. Psalm, Isaiah, Matthew…the speech drew from a rich array of scriptural sources. Hansen juxtaposes King’s metaphors with their Biblical sources. King quoted directly from Amos 5:24, with the words “justice rolls down like waters and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

The “I have a dream” phrase could have been derived from several Biblical passages to a “dream” or “vision” in the Old Testament. But it also could have been lifted from things he had heard from people in his congregation, as well as from a religious vision King described having around the time of the Montgomery, Ala. Bus boycott in 1956.

“’I had a vision’ could easily have become ‘I had a dream,” Hansen writes.

The image of King delivering an emotional plea for interracial brotherhood upon the steps of the Lincoln Memorial is the defining moment of the Civil Rights Era. However, as Hansen shows, the iconography of the moment has led to a watered-down version of the Civil Rights Movement.

Today on MLK Day, politicians can point to the federal legislation that ended Jim Crow in the South and say King’s dream has come true. Mission accomplished. The mythology surrounding the “I have a dream” King glosses over his final years and the battles he didn’t win. Hansen reminds us that the full history isn’t so neat and tidy.

“Remembering King through the ‘I Have a Dream’ speech allowed the nation to tell itself a comforting, but inaccurate story about King’s legacy,” Hansen writes.

The Black Power moment sprang from growing discontentment with King’s philosophy of non-violence and interracial brotherhood. King’s successes in the South had not carried over into solving the more subtle effects of racism found in the inner city slums of cities like Chicago and Detroit. A new crop of African-American leaders mocked King for having a “dream,” while they were living a nightmare.

By the late ‘60s, King had broadened his mission, speaking out against poverty and the Vietnam War. Today, King’s vision of an age free of income inequality and imperialism remain the part of his dream that has been deferred.

Hansen places King’s dream in context. He acknowledges that in ways it remains unfulfilled, yet reminds us of the gratitude we should feel for the miracles that MLK and thousands of Civil Rights workers have helped accomplish.

“In just under a decade, the civil rights movement brought down a system that had stood essentially unaltered since Reconstruction,” Hansen writes. “King’s dreams of an America free from racial discrimination are still some distance away, but it is astounding how far the nation has come since that hot August day in 1963.”

Hopefully, this history will provide hope in the work still before us.

jguyreview: "Make Way for Ducklings" review

jguyreview: "Make Way for Ducklings" review

"Make Way for Ducklings" review

Writer’s note: I recently heard a story on NPR about how 2011 marks the 70th anniversary of Robert McCloskey’s Caldecott Award winning children’s classic, Make Way for Ducklings. So I'm submitting a review of the book that I wrote for a Children’s Literature class I took a few years ago. From time to time, I’ll submit other children’s book reviews I handed in for the class. As readers of this blog know, I have my own style of review writing, but I was required to write in a certain style and I’m going to post what I turned in.

Also, I’m too lazy to change them.

McCloskey, Robert. Make Way for Ducklings. New York: The Viking Press, 1941.

Audience: Ages 3 to 8

Genre: Traditional Fantasy

Summary: A duck couple, Mr. and Mrs. Mallard, look for a place to live and raise a family. They settle in a pond at Boston’s Public Gardens, but decide the place is too wild and crowded for babies so they search for a new home. They settle along the Charles River where Mrs. Mallard hatches eight ducklings. She prepares the children to live in the city, while Mr. Mallard flies out to explore the river. Mrs. Mallard and her ducklings have to dodge the bustling traffic as they walk back to the Public Gardens. A kindly policeman halts traffic and calls for police back-up so the family can safely make their way home where they are reunited with their husband and father.

Themes: There is the idea of searching for and finding a home, a place where a family can feel safe and secure. The theme of family stability is demonstrated in the care Mr. and Mrs. Mallard give to finding a home to start their family and in the way Mrs. Mallard nurtures her ducklings. The police officer’s assistance to the duck family illustrates the theme of helping others in need, particularly those who are different from us and tend to get overlooked. McCloskey suggests stepping back from our busy pace and considering the needs of others.

Curriculum Connections: I see this as a story that would be read to kids in around the first grade so I would make the curriculum simple. Ask the children if this is a fiction or non-fiction book. After establishing that the book is fiction, ask the kids if anything about Mr. and Mrs. Mallard and their ducklings reminds them of their own family. Take a few suggestions from the children. Then model for the children a picture a picture you drew of your own family and tell how it is similar to Make Way for Ducklings. For example, it could be a picture illustrating a mother (or father) taking care of the children by reading them a story or tucking them in bed at night. After students make their own drawings, give each child an opportunity to show his or her drawing to the class and talk about it.

Reader Response: I found Make Way for Ducklings to be a charming, endearing story, the kind that never grows old. The brown charcoaled pencil drawings evoke autumn on the East Coast during the 1940s. These images often have a comical flair, the best picture being the one in which the police officer stops traffic while the duck family crosses the street. This was a fun book to read to my kids.

Technology Connection: The following link provides an activity guide that includes lesson plan ideas for building cognition by putting story events in sequence and emphasizing vocabulary words in the story. There are also ideas on integrative curriculum, connecting the story with music, art and science. http://www.liveoakmedia.com/client/guides/27319.pdfThis web link contains a brief art lesson plan for “egg carton ducks.” Other ideas integrate art with social studies by having students draw places named in the story and identifying them on a map of Boston. A similar idea is for children to make a chart showing the differences between a city, suburban and rural area. http://www.teachervision.fen.com/fiction/activity/1733.html?detoured=1

Gateway Reading: After Make Way for Ducklings, you have to read McCloskey’s Blueberries for Sal. It’s a beautiful story and an even better book. Both children’s books are classics and Caldecott Award winners – Ducklings winning the prize in 1942 and Blueberries in 1948.

The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Pape...

"The Most Dangerous Man in America" review

I think we cannot let the officials of the Executive Branch determine for us what it is that the public needs to know about how well and how they are discharging their functions. . . . (From Ellsberg’s TV interview with Walter Cronkite)

I was in college majoring in journalism, taking a Media Law class when I learned about the Pentagon Papers case – one of the most important cases ever decided by the Supreme Court. Tricky Dick Nixon tried to suppress publication of leaked documents about the Vietnam War, but fortunately the high court ruled in favor of the Constitution.
The 40th anniversary of the case brought the Pentagon Papers in the news again. At long last, the government has declassified the entire collection – more than 7,000documents telling the dirty truth about how four U.S. presidents helped create a war that needlessly ended 58,000 American and 2 million Vietnamese lives.
Daniel Ellsberg, a defense dept. analyst, leaked the Top Secret documents to the press. The court ruled against prior restraint, saying the government could not stop newspapers from publishing the classified papers. While I understood the impact of this decision – a triumph for First Amendment rights -- I knew next to nothing about Ellsberg. I learned that Nixon’s plumbers ransacked his psychiatrist’s office and that’s about it.
This week’s news prompted me to finally watch the 2009 documentary film, The Most Dangerous Man in America: Daniel Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers. The film, directed by Judith Ehrlich and Rick Goldsmith, educated me about Ellsberg and gave me new insight into this historical drama and its relevance today. POV’s (that’s cinema speak for “Point of View”) website showed the documentary online for free on Monday and Tuesday this week. If you didn’t see it, I say go to your local library and check out the DVD.
Ellsberg was not a hippie peacenik. He was an Establishment figure. A Harvard graduate, summa cum laude, Ellsberg then attended Cambridge University on a fellowship. Between 1954 and 1957, he spent three years as a U.S. Marine Corps commander. In 1959 he joined the RAND corporation global policy think tank. During the 1960s, he was a Dept. of Defense analyst perpetuating the Cold War line until – in good conscience – he could do it no longer.
He leaked a bombshell government study to newspapers chronicling the history of our Southeast Asian police action. The report – which Ellsberg helped write -- revealed how presidents Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson had lied to the public and dragged the United States into an unjust, unwinnable war. Nixon, happy to see his predecessors with their pants down, nevertheless realized a whistleblower could also get dirt on him. So he went after Ellsberg and tried to muzzle the press.
The film’s title is taken from Henry Kissinger. Imagine that, a war criminal calling someone of principle “the most dangerous man in America.” That speaks loudly about the arrogance and hypocrisy of power. Hearing White House tapes of Nixon’s voice is chilling: “You’re so goddamn conscientious about civilians and I don’t give a damn.”
Ellsberg and the Pentagon Papers are relevant in 2011. The U.S. military is fighting wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya, suicides are on the rise among veterans, wikileaks has revealed things the U.S. government doesn’t want you to know and the guys who blew the whistle are in jail on questionable charges. We would be remiss not to examine history in the context of today’s world and The Most Dangerous Man in America is a great resource for doing that.
The Academy award nominated film is modest, not a hagiography, but I came away from it, seeing Ellsberg as an American hero. It’s a view he would not share. Ellsberg, now 80, feels guilty about the five years he spent in the defense dept., knowing the government was lying to the public, and doing nothing as the death toll mounted in Vietnam.
The “most shameful episode in my life,” he says in the film, was helping Defense Secretary Robert McNamara persuade Pres. Lyndon Johnson to launch the “most disproportionate bombing campaign in the history of the world” on North Vietnam.
Ellsberg’s disaffection with the war evolved gradually, but by the end of the ‘60s, he could no longer remain “a passive bureaucrat.” The most riveting moments of the film reveal Ellsberg anguishing as he confronted a moral dilemma: violate the secrecy contracts he had signed or stay silent as more lives were lost. The man was willing to go to prison for the rest of his life if it meant stopping the war. Hearing this, there was no way I could not respect the man.
Ultimately, a federal judge threw out the government’s case against Ellsberg. (The Nixon administration had compromised the integrity of its investigation with dirty tricks.) But nobody could have foreseen the outcome.
The recent de-classification of the Pentagon Papers was a quiet news item. There were no world shaking revelations. The contents of the documents were revealed by the news media years ago. Really, the public response has been too quiet. We should be asking ourselves: what parallels do we see today? (Wikileaks for one.) Is the government, acting in our name, conducting itself honorably? What are the possible ramifications of our actions in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya? Is there transparency in government?
I don’t think we’ve learned from our history. Nixonian policy has become a template for the presidency and Vietnam is our template for waging war. History has vindicated Ellsberg, but if we were today fighting a war with American casualties on a scale with Vietnam, and someone leaked documents revealing executive branch weapons of mass deception, I think he would be Typhoid Mary. Most Americans would swallow that hackneyed government stand-by about that person being a traitor, costing American lives and giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
The same old song and dance.
Gateway films
One Bright Shining Moment: An intriguing documentary about George McGovern’s 1972 presidential run, this film is a reminder of a good opportunity lost.
Gateway books
Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers, Ellsberg’s memoir, upon which much of the film is based.
The Arrogance of Power by Sen. J. William Fulbright. This book by the late Arkansas senator and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee is a must-read. Fulbright was writing about U.S. mistakes related to Vietnam, but he could just as well have been writing about today. If only America had heeded his advice.
There is a clip of Fulbright in The Most Dangerous Man in America explaining on a TV news show why he voted with the rest of Congress to give LBJ a blank check to wage war in Vietnam. A formidable political mind, Fulbright wasn’t perfect.
A Political Odyssey: The Rise of American Militarism and One Man’s Fight to Stop It by Sen. Mike Gravel. The two-term Alaska senator is featured in “The Most Dangerous Man” for introducing the Pentagon Papers into the public record during a filibuster.
Integrity: Good People, Bad Choices, and Life Lessons from the White House by Egil “Bud” Krogh. The head of Nixon’s plumber’s unit, Krogh served a brief prison term, turned his life around and is the only one of the plumbers to take ownership of his actions. He is interviewed in the Ellsberg documentary.
Outside the box gateway film
It's mentioned in the film how Ellsberg's favorite movie was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. He watched it, like, seven times. So what the hell, it's a fun movie.