The Boy Who Cried Freebird by Mitch Myers Read Free Book Online

always rose to the occasion of spontaneity, this was one short slice of twentieth-century existence. Two geniuses colliding at the Chelsea Hotel in 1973.”
    Fug Tuli Kupferberg maintained a more speculative assessment of the Smith-Ginsberg Chelsea encounter: “When two geniuses get together, you’ve got to expect something great!…Is there music on it?”
    A fair question, it was only after this particularly raw phase of his singing career that Ginsberg began working in more sophisticated musical environs, ones that departed from his raggedy voice plus harmonium expositions at the Chelsea.
    Guitarist Steven Taylor worked with the Fugs, and he was also Ginsberg’s accompanist for years, even playing on Hammond’s First Blues sessions. Taylor reflected on Ginsberg’s “blue” period of the early ’70s. “Blues is a particular genre within a larger history of African American folk music,” said Taylor. “One of Allen’s main inspirations was Leadbelly, who was on the radio when he was a kid. Leadbelly is generally considered to be a songster, not a bluesman. Blues could be part of his repertoire, but the songster is a larger tradition. Allen was more of a songster than a bluesman—a historian in song, a singer of ballad narratives, and a singer of topical material.”
    â€œBlues are a funny thing,” said Fug Ed Sanders. “They are supposedto make you sad but they make you triumph, too. Allen’s diaries are strangely filled with the down mode. The poor guy was so publicly joyous and exalted, but in his private moments he was quite sad and dejected. He was drawn to the blues. He had been a fan of Ma Rainey and ‘CC Rider’ was the final music, the last tune he listened to before he died.”
    And what of the implicit connectivity that Harry Smith brought to the sessions at the Chelsea Hotel? Does it serve the same creative function that Smith unleashed when he first traced the paths of interrelated folk and blues idioms with the Anthology of American Folk Music ?
    John Feins studied under both Harry and Allen at the Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He thought that Smith’s efforts to document life and sound were informed by a deep empathy for humankind. “What’s great is that Harry wasn’t an elitist, he recorded everybody,” said Feins. “Harry felt that every occasion of sound was a recordable event and it had not just artistic merit and meaning, but anthropological meaning. If a human being opened his mouth up for song, Harry treasured and honored it as an archivist and a scholar and an anthropologist. He captured it when he could.”
    Just how does First Blues sound? Noted Ginsberg authority Bob Rosenthal is tough but fair. “I’ll be frank with you. I couldn’t listen to this record,” he said. “I just wrote it off as caterwauling. I was so skeptical when I heard someone was going to reissue this. I’ll confess I’m much more interested in it now than I was at the time when it came out. Allen saw the possibility of helping to change people’s consciousness. And so did Harry, although they were total opposites in methodology.”
    Hal Wilner felt that First Blues was more than just an archival curiosity, and he included some of the Chelsea sessions on his Ginsberg anthology. “I’ll admit when I first was slated to produce an album withAllen I was holding my ears,” said Wilner. “Yet, it’s amazing how this stuff holds up and just gets better. I felt I needed it for the historical aspect—here’s Harry Smith producing Allen Ginsberg. But when I went back to those tapes, I couldn’t believe how strong it was.”
    Were Ginsberg and Smith blue when they made these recordings? Were they stoned? Whatever the mood, Harry allowed himself to be subsumed by Allen’s Rags, Ballads & Harmonium Songs . As a witness to the (painful) birthing of