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Post Scripts 1

Other Aspects posts are generating interesting comments. Thank you to all who have written. Thinking it a shame to keep them to myself, I will periodically gather and share items of general interest in a post called “Post Scripts”.

The sub-headings give the name and date of the post being addressed (recognizing that some posts build upon previous ones). The comments are in italics; my replies are not. I will edit only in the interest of space and contextual consistency. Enjoy, and please keep sending your thoughts to KenBossong@gmail.com. Finally, if anyone does not wish to be quoted, even anonymously as I’ll be doing it, please just say so when you email me.

Otis Rush: An Appreciation (1/18/19)

There was considerable response to the Otis Rush tribute. While some were already fans, many said how rewarding a revelation listening to him had been:

I very much enjoyed the Otis Rush remembrance.  Nicely written and complete.  I viewed him as a minor figure until you talked to me about him a few years back and I started listening.

Great tribute to Otis Rush. I look forward to following your blog.

I am not much into jazz and blues–preferring classical, 60s rock and country–but your Otis Rush ode prompted me go to YouTube to watch and listen to what I could find regarding him. I chose the Live at Montreux concert from 1986. You may get me yet.

Good choice for something to watch, with Otis being joined on stage by admirers Eric Clapton and Luther Allison. This concert marked something of a comeback for Otis from some lean years. Make sure you get to hear the best of his Cobra recordings.

Thanks for sharing this. [We] enjoyed your tribute to Otis Rush; we were both struck by how well your voice comes across in your writing.

Your piece on Otis Rush was spot on, as I also think he was truly one of the greats. We all know where Mike Bloomfield got his inspiration from.

Doing the Limbo Inside the Beltway (1/25/19)

I enjoyed reading this and certainly agree with you on a need for no more “How Low can we go!”

Unfortunately, there is no end in sight for “How low can you go?” January, when the post was written, already seems a long time ago.

What Makes Jazz So Endearing and Enduring (3/4/19)

The one on what makes jazz was a nicely done, succinct statement that I printed out and saved for reference.

I really enjoyed the article about Jazz. I have always had a love for it, but had no idea about the depth of Jazz.

Life as a Zero Sum Game: It Ain’t Necessarily So (4/2/19)

I read your blog post and found it very interesting especially your view of the political landscape. One thing that you didn’t mention is that Hillary Clinton won the popular vote but not the electoral college which is, I believe, one of the reasons there is so much discontent in the political scene. I have heard people say, so my vote really doesn’t count. I’m not a fan of labeling left vs right. I can identify with both because I have voted for both Republican and Democratic presidents in my lifetime. However, as you stated there is a vitriol and a need to categorize people as either all good or all bad politically lately which equals to your point, 0 Sum.

Another reader used bold to supplement my portrayal of how environmentalists see the other side of the debate:

These huge corporations are legally required to care only about maximizing profit and nothing about the environment beyond regulation. Since environmental damage is not monetarily accounted for in a company bottom line, the choice to befoul our common property is nearly always the one that shareholders require the company to make. There’s nothing they won’t befoul to make a buck, per design. If we leave them to their own devices, the planet will be unlivable before we know it. Therefore, absent correct financial accounting of the environmental damage done, strong environmental regulations are required to ensure that the needs of everyone are balanced with the greed of the shareholders.

Add “civil liability” to “regulation” here. When something goes wrong, environmental clean-up can be hugely expensive, greatly affecting a company’s bottom line. Companies that reflexively choose to befoul are probably making bad business decisions. Ensuring that such decisions are regretted is sound public policy; that one should clean up the mess one creates is axiomatic. The “us vs. them” chasm and the zero-sum game remain unnecessary and counterproductive.

[In response to my open letter to scientists:]

Is this a response to a perceived problem? My take is that the scientists are not the problem and are not the ones who make it political. The consensus on climate change, which has been overwhelmingly consistent on the topic of AGW, does not seem to be enough. Not all of us can “take it” when presented with scientific consensus, apparently.

I don’t demand complete consensus, but the propensity of some “scientific studies” to produce results their sponsors prefer is no coincidence.

It’s Not Too Late To Learn From 2016 (4/18/19)

One reader paired a line in this post with something by Vonnegut years ago, as follows:

“There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don’t know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.” -Kurt Vonnegut

“Perhaps we have made the job of President, or the process of attaining it, so distasteful that no one who would be ideal to serve is willing to seek it.”

I don’t remember reading Vonnegut’s piece “Cold Turkey” in the May 10, 2004 edition of In These Times, but I can’t swear I didn’t, either.

Referring to the portions of the post where I (a) say what voters like me seek in a president is “someone who is smart, sane, honorable, effective, and sensible” and (b) indicate that it should not be a given that the incumbent be the Republican nominee, a reader had this:

I’ll bet you $20 (or whatever alternate wager) that if he’s still in office come primary time, he’s the candidate. He demonstrated clear unfitness for office before 2016. The “enough is enough” moment should have happened a LONG time ago for any smart, sane, honorable, effective, and sensible republican. I have ZERO expectations that anything should change before 2020.

From another reader:

In 1968, Richard Nixon watched the crowds flock to George Wallace rallies and devised the brilliant if inherently evil “Southern Strategy,” an appeal to racism that was hugely successful. The Republican Party has been running on that and its evolutionary progeny ever since. Trump is the apotheosis of that reprehensible scheme. Liberals and what some call “socialists” (they have no idea what real socialism is) a la Bernie Sanders are way out there and thus unacceptable. However, they do not merit the same condemnation as today’s Republicans, who have abandoned the principles of rational conservatism for the crass electoral flavor of the moment. They deserve to be called out for their craven hypocrisy.

I expected plenty of feedback on this post. I was a bit surprised, however, not to hear from people with other reasons to believe the incumbent president should automatically be the nominee. Hopefully it’s clear that the point was not to predict an outcome, but to argue for a much-needed real discussion within the Republican Party.

Immigration – Governing With Nods and Winks (5/10/19)

The seasonal guest worker programs under which what we used to call “migrants” come here to help the harvest was something I grew up around. I visited several migrant camps out of curiosity and observed appalling living conditions. I also observed how hard they worked. Few native-born Americans could match them. [A relative] works in that county and has special responsibility for migrants. She says nothing has changed except a visceral fear among her clients about what Trump’s nativist, faux-hostility will do to their livelihoods.

Recalling a Great Little Sports Story (5/22)

Thanks Ken for making us aware of this story. It goes well beyond sports and sportsmanship, and many happenings in the pro sports world pale in comparison to it.

The Coarse in Our Discourse (6/28/19)

I just read your most recent blog post and your conjuring of [Richard Neustadt’s] Presidential Power struck a chord and brought up a memory that had been buried for decades…I disagree, however, that federalizing the Arkansas National Guard and sending them to Central High School in Little Rock was a sign of weakness. Rather, it was the measured and effective use of a powerful weapon that the Federalists included in their plan for the new country. I commend Eisenhower for doing it. Faubus needed to stand in the schoolhouse door for his own political survival. Words would never have persuaded him otherwise. When we visited the Central High School visitor center and museum that the National Park Service maintains across the street, we were surprised to learn that Faubus was somewhat sympathetic to integration. Sending in the Guard was a “win-win” for all sides, Faubus included.

This one motivated me to read more on Faubus. Sure enough, Orval was a more complex character than first appears. Every account seems to cast him in a different light. While his presentation as the outraged school-segregationist governor was beyond convincing, he had already desegregated public transportation in Arkansas. Was it simply that Orval could abide integration on buses but not for kids in schools, or was the whole thing with Ike and the 101st Airborne just a cleverly choreographed strategy for integrating schools without casualties?

The truth was probably somewhere in between. After all, Orval himself had upped the ante by predicting “blood will run in the streets” if Brown v. Board were enforced, and later closed the integrated school for the ’58-’59 school year.

I, too, commend Eisenhower for doing what he had to do. Neustadt’s central point remains that the most important and impressive power is the power to persuade – even, perhaps especially, for the President of the United States.

Ken Bossong

© 2019 Kenneth J. Bossong

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Otis Rush: An Appreciation

As Good As It Gets

Any New Year is awash in lists: best movies, best albums, notable deaths. I don’t know how many lists in that last category included him, but we lost one of the all-time greats, the irreplaceable Otis Rush, on September 29, 2018. Considering that he never received his due in either public fame or fortune while alive, the quality of the obits was a pleasant surprise.  Nevertheless, I am compelled to write. If you have never heard him, you owe it to yourself to experience all the Blues can be.

Rush was the singer/guitarist who had it all: a rich, versatile voice, a knowing way with a lyric, and remarkable skill on the guitar. Indeed, he is my second favorite guitarist – just behind Buddy Guy and a hair ahead of T-Bone Walker, B. B. King, and Earl Hooker (John Lee’s cousin and the greatest guitarist you’ve never heard of, unless you are a Blues aficionado; I’ll write about him someday).

Otis either wrote or was drawn to lyrics with a wry wisdom, and he knew what to do with those lyrics.

Then there was his voice. You don’t need a special voice to be a great Blues singer, but Rush proved that having one is no impediment, either. He could have been a pop star crooner, had he been inclined. Most assuredly, he was not so inclined, and his artistic integrity as a bluesman did his wallet no favors.

It’s tempting to delve deeper into the details of his brilliance. For example, no one could bend a note quite like Otis Rush. I am told that his playing a right-handed guitar upside down gave his note-bending a different sound. (Albert King, another great lefty who played a guitar strung for right-handers, was also justly renowned for bending notes, so there may be something to it.) Rush’s playing, like his singing, was not just different, though, but spine-tingling.

The details are secondary to his total impact as an artist, however. With Rush, the whole clearly exceeds the sum of his considerable parts. Why? What else is going on? All these skills were bound in a package of passion so powerful and authenticity so undeniable as to rivet the listener. He could play as fast as he wanted, but would not do so at the expense of a song’s integrity. Rush integrated the bent notes, the soaring voice, the perfectly chosen notes (and silences) not to show off but to convey feelings triggered by the music. This is Blues at the highest level. It is human communication.

Recordings

Otis neither recorded nor played live as often as would be expected for one so gifted. There were many reasons for this, some of which apparently involved his moods and his health.  The good news is that there are still plenty of opportunities to hear him, most ranging from very good to truly great.

It was a song by Otis Rush that made me a Blues fan long ago. I was very young, probably no more than 10 or 11, but my older cousins had gotten me into rock and roll already. I stumbled upon the Blues Show on Penn’s radio station, WXPN, on a Saturday evening (a show that is ongoing and still very well done, by the way).  It did not take long to have that “So THIS is where all the great stuff comes from” moment. That insight was not enough, however,  to prepare me for what I felt one night on first hearing a spell-binding guitar intro, followed by an impassioned vocal, an even better guitar solo, a clever “punchline“ vocal chorus, and a guitar “outro” that may be the best of all. I was hooked on the Blues for life.

The only problem was that the song was in the middle of a long set and the host never identified the song or the artist. That it was longer than a standard three-minute song and had something to do with gambling was all I knew. Over time, I realized that Otis Rush was the artist, the song was “Gambler’s Blues”, and the album was Mourning in the Morning on Cotillion, a subsidiary of Atlantic Records. It took me years to get my hands on that record, the first of many such quests that music fans know well.

The performance remains a marvel. One might have thought that B.B. King’s classic “Gambler’s Blues” on Blues Is King (his second greatest album, in my view, after Live at the Regal) would never be topped. One would have been wrong. The rest of the Mourning album is somewhat controversial among fans – some thinking it overproduced and containing material unworthy of Rush – but, in addition to “Gamblers’ Blues”, there are stellar remakes of two songs that had helped establish his reputation (“It Takes Time”, “My Love Will Never Die”) and his remarkable take on one of the genre’s recurrent themes, “Reap What You Sow”. True story about the latter: Someone for whom I once played it exclaimed, “My goodness! What did she do to him?”

Otis first recorded when bassist and prolific song writer Willie Dixon brought him to Eli Toscano, the owner of Cobra Records in Chicago. The result was a series of landmark recordings in the history of urban blues. Issued from 1956 to 1958, the best of these Cobra recordings, such as “I Can’t Quit You Baby”, “All Your Love (I Miss Loving)”, “Three Times A Fool”, “It Takes Time”, “My Love Will Never Die”, and the astounding “Double Trouble”, are essential listening, and a great place for listeners to start. (Quick aside: Any compilation of Otis’s Cobra recordings that is complete will also include a couple clunkers. Dixon apparently insisted that certain of his own songs be included for Otis to record despite not being up to the quality of others. It’s hard to imagine Rush would have chosen [shudder] “Violent Love”, for instance.)

One of nine artists to participate in a three-record series for Vanguard called Chicago/The Blues/Today!, Otis laid down only five tracks, but they are superb. Rush also shares the bill, with Albert King, on Door to Door (Chess); among his six sides on the album is the magnificent original of “So Many Roads”.

Other studio albums worth considering include: Right Place, Wrong Time (Bullfrog); Troubles, Troubles (Verve); Any Place I’m Going (Evidence); Ain’t Enough Comin’ In (Mercury); and Lost In The Blues (Alligator).

Among albums that capture Rush live: Tops (Blind Pig); Otis Rush and Friends Live at Montreux [the friends being Eric Clapton and Luther Allison] (Eagle Records); Double Trouble (Rock Beat); and Cold Day in Hell, All Your Love I Miss Loving, and So Many Roads, all on Delmark. The last of these was recorded in Tokyo in 1975, and the roar of a very large crowd of fans who really get what they’re hearing is exhilarating.

I’m tempted to say there is no such thing as a bad Otis Rush record. I do have this caution on one, though: Screamin’ and Cryin’ (Evidence) was recorded live at a time when Otis was clearly in a bad place in his life. It makes for uncomfortable listening, at least for me; in that sense, I cannot recommend it.

Seeing Otis Rush Live

I managed to see him twice. The first was at the Commodore Barry Club in Philadelphia, backed by a group of some of the better bluesmen in the Philly area, the Dukes of Destiny. From the looks on their faces, these musicians were as thrilled to play with Otis Rush as I was to finally see him. The second was at a Chicago blues club in Lincoln Park, backed by his Chicago blues band. In each case, he was in total, scintillating command.

No one is going to do better describing what it was like to see Otis Rush at his best than Robert Palmer did in his classic 1981 book Deep Blues (Viking), so I’m not going to try:

“The set…was devastating. The first tune rocked, with Otis snarling the words out of the side of his mouth, and then he settled down to slow, minor-key blues, an idiom in which nobody can touch him. ‘He’s so good, man,’ Muddy Waters had told me, and Muddy does not dispense praise lightly…That night at the Wise Fools [Pub], during one forty-minute set, Otis focused all his extraordinary talents. His grainy, gospelish singing carried the weight of so much passion and frustration, it sounded like the words were being torn from his throat, and his guitar playing hit heights I didn’t think any musician was capable of – notes bent and twisted so delicately and immaculately they seemed to form actual words…The performance, if you could call it that, was shattering and uplifting all at once, the way blues is supposed to be…Otis Rush had something else – an ear for the finest pitch shadings and the ability to execute them on the guitar, not as mere effects but as meaningful components in a personal vocabulary, a musical language. He was playing the deep blues.”

Coda

At the top of his game, Otis Rush had no superiors, and few peers. I have listened to the original “Double Trouble” (Cobra, 1958) dozens of times. The next time it fails to send chills down my spine will be the first. Not for nothing, as they say, did Stevie Ray Vaughan name his band.

Palmer was onto something with his aside “The performance, if you could call it that…” above. Such authenticity is all to the benefit of the lucky listener. Feeling at this depth is a rare, profound treat.

Ken Bossong

© 2019 Kenneth J. Bossong