Dear Don

Fiddlin Chubby Anthony with Big Timber Bluegrass
"Love and Life", Old Homestead OHS-90121

Brighton, Michigan, 1979, photo by Jinx McCall

According to liner notes by Glen Olden on Love and Life Donald "Fiddlin' Chubby" Anthony was considered the finest fiddler in Bluegrass music and the hottest fiddle player on the Bluegrass Music Circuit. He was a friendly lad, and he combined dedication with talent and honesty to make him top musician three times in the State of Florida. Chubby Anthony passed away in 1980 from kidney failure and liver failure, he was only 44 years old.

There's not much local music of note to be found in the thrift stores of Southwestern Florida (there are no record stores) so it's nice to come across a record by a friendly fiddler from Central Florida. There's actually not much live music to be found in South West Florida either. Downtown Fort Myers has a free music night once a month but it's not too good (unless you're a fan of cover bands doing versions of The Eye of the Tiger, or The Final Countdown), and the sole concert hall in town could feature a jam with old members from Boston or The Three Dog Night for $25 or Dionne Warwick for 45. The best music in town comes out of a nearby park when a religious holiday prompts yet another Mexican celebration or groups of youths that gather to practice their hip-hop dance moves.

(My apologies go out to those who are involved with the music scene in Fort Myers for me making up those names, titles, and prices.)
The song below is the opener on Love and Life called Dear One. It was written by Donald Anthony and recorded in Auburndale, Florida in 1978.
(My apologies also to those who want to download some of these songs I post: I keep forgetting to use that option, but if you want something you see, or if you want more from a certain album, I will put it out there for you, just write me a note. In the meantime here's Dear One.
  

Olympic Records

Authentic Greek Folk Songs and Dances
Olympic Records – The Atlas Series 6106
Olympic Records Corporation, New York

Records in the Atlas series from the Olympic label I usually pick up when I spot them in the 2nd hand bin of the record store or at thrift stores. The series come with a very handsomely designed cover that’s easily recognized and they’re fun to collect. Looking at each individual record you get the impression that they’re authentic field recordings from far away places but this may be deceiving, I’m not totally sure. The texts on the back look academic enough to go with real academic field work but I have the sneaking suspicion that some of the music was recorded in a studio in New York. Again, I can’t be totally sure. The record I have in front of me is called Authentic Greek Folk Songs and Dances that has a lot of text on the back but no recording data. At the very end there is a little note concerning the performers which are The Royal Greek Festival Company directed by Dora Stratou. The music on the record is divided up into several different regions of Greece, each with a set of their traditional music, played medley style. It is also noted that the Company made its American debut in 1954. All this information leads to a conclusion that, despite the title, is not as authentic as the customer is led to believe. Either which way it is, the records are enjoyable, some are great, some are terrific. This one, a home run for Olympic Records, is of the latter category. Dora Stratou (1903-1988) is a well known Greek folklorist who has her own Wikipedia page. On the records she sings a set of Moirologhia, which are funeral laments. I selected a number of songs from the album, enjoy.

In order of appearance:

• Psaropoula —a lyrical island song (Cyprus?)
• Moirologhia —funeral laments from Peloponnese and Epirus by Dora Stratou
• Yialo-Yialo —polyphonic song of Kephalonia
• Youria-Youria —a song of Thessaly
• Tora a Poulia —allegoric "klepthic" song (Roumeli?)

Pygmy music

The Belgian Congo Records
Commodore Records, DL 30,005
Yonkers, NY

There's something in me that chooses authentic music above the less authentic. What is "authentic"? The meaning of the word is open for debate, it's the material of philosophy. I can not offer anything new to the debate, yet the word is key to my collecting habit. Some arguments about the authentic I'm familiar with through contemporary criticism lectures in art school. Some arguments rang more real to me than others did, some stuck. Despite the containment of the word author in authentic, I think that authentic, in discussing music, is precisely the opposite: a lack of authorship. It is not the work of some creative genius but the material of isolated peoples that was passed on through the years, decades, centuries, ages. For me the distinction is based on how untouched the music is by commercial civilization. I realize the hypocrisy and snobbishness of such a statement but the experience is real. Through empathy I recognize authenticity. Listening to the music of people from far away, long ago, and with such different agendas than mine, I am struck with awe (or fear) in the face of otherness. My heart beats a little faster when I find yet another example of an "authentic" recording in a thrift store. They're not rare; there are ample scholastic websites and archives on line where you can listen, and often download for free, historic recordings of extinct or vanishing musical traditions. Recorded often by musicologists with philanthropic ideals. But they don't have the same impact that finding records in a thrift store have, records that once belonged to the collection of, without a doubt, some intellectual philanthropic minded individual whose children or grandchildren decided after his (mostly his) death, to donate those records to the local thrift store.

Hypocrite too because some of my favorite music is precisely those of the individual genius, or hybrids of many styles, cultures, and what not.

Featured on the LP The Belgium Congo Records are recordings made during the 1935-36 Africa expeditions to the Congo by Armand Denis and Leila Roosevelt. On it are very early, but not the earliest, recordings of Pygmy music. My favorite track is a recording by a Pigmy orchestra of Kigali, (Rwanda) which is ironically filed under the heading of Royal Watusi Drums. (The Watusis–Tutsis as they are now called, are considered to be tallest people of Africa, Pymies being the shortest.)

Lizzy

Lizzy Mercier Descloux – Press Color
ZE Records, ZEA 33004, 1979, New York

How did this end up in a thrift store in Fort Myers? This would be something you'd find, if at all, in a most specialized 2nd hand record store in New York for about $40. But I wasn't as lucky as it would appear from my opening sentence; there was no vinyl inside! I looked inside every record in the store for the slight chance it was misfiled, three times over, no it wasn't there. From excited to disappointed I went to the cash register and the lady behind it was fair to give half off the one dollar price tag. Two of the songs on the record I have in CD format on N.Y No Wave: The Ultimate East Village 80's Soundtrack. Torso Corso below is one of them, and it's enough to keep wanting the original album. Maybe one day I'll get lucky. In the meanwhile I'm happy to have the two songs on CD and the original jacket to the LP.

Lizzy Mercier Descloux was born in Paris in 1956, moved to New York in 1977, became friends with Patti Smith, Richard Hell, and pretty much everybody else of note in the scene. The heroine of minimalist New Wave (or No Wave) recorded two albums before returning to France where she practiced as an artist and writer. She died of cancer in 2004.