On Wednesday, December 7, 2022 at 3:49:18 PM UTC-5, Willie wrote:
On Tuesday, November 22, 2022 at 5:48:43 PM UTC-5, K. Hematite wrote:
On Tuesday, 22 November 2022 at 13:37:58 UTC-6, LeoK wrote:
Danny Kalb died of cancer in a nursing home in Brooklyn. He was 80. He
met Bob Dylan at college and followed him to Greenwich Village.
I took some guitar lessons from Danny in the 1980s, at which time he was
living in Chelsea and suffering from bipolar disorder. He got himself
together enough to organize a Blues Project reunion which went very well. My memory is hazy but ISTR that a highlight of the show was his
version of "It Takes A Lot To Laugh, It Takes A Train To Cry."
Hi,
According to Olof Bjorner, a most dedicated Bob Dylan reviewer, Robert Zimmerman did hitchhike with a guy named Fred Underhill to NYC in January 1961 and immediately visited Greenwich Village.
I've asked a long time ago in RMD if anyone know (knew) this person. Do you Diane, or anyone else, know anything about this Fred Underhill?
Maybe they where three hitchhiking?
Hi, again
Have searched in my RMD folio and discovered this reply in 2005:
"Underhill's a guy from New Jersey who was a student at the University of
Wisconsin in 1961 when Bob was hanging out there debating about going back
to Minn or on to the east coast. He had made it as far as Chicago, but then
doubled back up as far as Madison. Underhill had a place on campus where local muscians sometimes hung out. Underhill was the person who actually got Bob to NY. A friend of his was looking for a couple relief drivers to
make the trip and he asked Bob to come along. Underhill also apparently clued Bob in about Greystone hospital and how he might reach Woody Guthrie."
Regards
LeoK
A year earlier, Dylan learned the song "Po' Lazarus" from Danny Kalb in Fred Underhill's kitchen in Madison, WI.
https://www.facebook.com/legacy/notes/209432715761935/
"As for Dylan's source, although he might have heard some of the Lomax recordings and certainly would have been familiar with Woody Guthrie's recording (“Dead or Alive”, not the same song), it seems Bob learned his version from blues guitarist
Danny Kalb. In an early 1990s interview, Kalb said: "I'd got my version from Dave Van Ronk, and I shared it with Bob Dylan in the kitchen of Fred Underhill's house in Madison [Wisconsin - January 1961]. He'd learned that from me, although my version was
really based on Dave Van Ronk's". Van Ronk's recording of the song is available on the album "Inside Dave Van Ronk" (Fantasy FCD-24710-2)."
LeoK, your message mentions Fred Underhill, but not Danny Kalb. But you must have known there was a connection, right? And leave it to K to find that connection. Here's Bob and Danny. Bob could sure play fast harmonica:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XFOPFiMylZ8
Last night I went to the Cambridge Public Library for a talk by Peter Guralnick, to promote his new book "The Birth of Rock 'n' Roll: The Illustrated Story of Sun Records and the 70 Recordings That Changed the World." During a discussion of the origins
of rock and roll, he said that one could argue that Frank Stokes' "Downtown Blues" was the first rock and roll song (not Ike Turner's/Jackie Brenston's "Rocket 88"). I don't see that, as "Downtown Blues" was written in, I think, 1928, and finger-picked
country blues. But while looking into "Downtown Blues," I discovered Guralnick had written the following, while talking about Frank Stokes:
"There are many songs that epitomize that ebullient but hauntingly melodic, not to mention unrelentingly rocking (in the best Memphis tradition), sense of style and grace that Frank Stokes exemplified but 'Downtown Blues' to me was always the one that
captured it best. Even with that old-timey wobble in the voice (and the scratchy sound of an old 78), there is nothing antiquarian about it in the least.
It’s a source that has never ceased to replenish musical inspiration and imagination, but the first time I think I actually heard this particular song was on a compilation album called The Blues Project (it was Blues Project group founder Danny Kalb’
s participation on this same 1964 Elektra album that suggested his yet-to-be-born band’s name). To me Geoff Muldaur, possessor of one of the great voices of the blues revival (he may well have been the great blues-revival voice, a torch he picked up
again with his transcendent 1998 return to recording, The Secret Handshake) didn’t just capture the spirit of the Memphis blues with his version of “Downtown Blues” - he actually took it a step further in the company of his own brand of latter–
day Sheiks, an acoustic ensemble that included John Sebastian (soon to found the Lovin’ Spoonful) and an anagrammatically pseudonymous Bob Dylan (as Bob “Landy”) on treble piano. Well, take a listen for yourself, and see if it doesn’t presage the
popular ascendance of the Rolling Stones and the electric Dylan - at least that’s how it sounded to me at the time, and it still does."
So we get Danny Kalb mentioned (I'd forgotten that he named the band after that Blues Project album), and also that Bob used the pseudonym/anagram "Bob Landy" as pianist in a band with John Sebastian.
Incidentally, I told Guralnick about the find James Zadok had told us about from a Rob Stoner podcast where Stoner said that Bob had offered Elvis "Forever Young" in 1973, and was miffed that Elvis didn't record it. I asked Guralnick (the world authority
on Elvis) if he'd heard about that, and he said he hadn't, but that "Forever Young" was played at Elvis' funeral.
--- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05
* Origin: fsxNet Usenet Gateway (21:1/5)