ADDED: In the comments JSD said:
I only remember him because a musician friend of mine pointed him out on the street one day. He was very emphatic about his legendary stature. I still have the Les McCann Eddie Harris “Swiss Movement” record. “Compared to What” was a pretty incendiary song in the 70’s. The Roberta Flack “Feel Like Makin Love” was good too. Not many black people in Maine, so I thought it was unusual but cool.Here's Eugene McDaniels, acknowledging that he's a "hermit" in Maine and reminiscing about "Compared to What":
Here are Les McCann and Eddie Harris doing "Compared To What":
McDaniels died in 2011. From the obituary:
His hits of the early 1960s... cast him as a suave performer of upbeat pop songs aimed at white teenagers; in his last years he would occasionally take the stage to deliver standards with all the graceful inventiveness of the great jazz singer he might have been.Here are the lyrics to "Compared to What." Excerpt:
In between came the event that changed his life, when his protest song Compared to What became an unexpected hit after being released on an album recorded at the 1969 Montreux jazz festival by his first employer, the pianist Les McCann, and the saxophonist Eddie Harris. The song went on to be covered more than 270 times by other artists, including Ray Charles, Della Reese and John Legend. Its success enabled McDaniels to stop performing in night-clubs, an environment he detested because of the lack of respect he felt was shown towards the music by their audiences....
His later years were spent by the ocean in Kittery Point, Maine. In 2010, he performed an acoustic version of A Hundred Pounds of Clay to a group of teenage girls attending an arts outreach programme....
Slaughterhouse is killin' hogsAND: The same commenter, JSD, had wondered "why this is being posted today." Perhaps he thought it might have some connection to the racial discord in the news lately, but that's not why. As I answered in the comments, it came up in the context of a conversation with Meade that I wasn't able to reconstruct for the post. I remember where I was standing and where Meade was sitting when I brought up the old song.
Twisted children killin' frogs
Poor dumb rednecks rollin' logs
Tired old lady kissin' dogs
I hate the human, love that stinking mutt (I can't use it!)
Try to make it real — compared to what? C'mon baby now!
Meade was analogizing something to the wedging of clay (and activity he's done much of in times past), and he seemed to remember that we were discussing the phrase "ashes to ashes, dust to dust." That makes me think it was part of our discussion of this BBC article about Fyodor Dostoyevsky, who was subjected to a staged fake execution, and years later said: "I cannot recall when I was ever as happy as on that day." And that might have come up in connection with the subject of the U-shaped — smile-shaped — curve of happiness, which depicts the puzzling/understandable phenomenon of happiness increasing at the end of life.
So maybe there was something about the closeness to death, something about endings and new beginnings, perhaps, as one returns to earth and becomes subject to wedging into clay.
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13 comments:
This is my favorite Gene McDaniel song
Not sure why this is being posted today. Really cool guy with an amazing portfolio of performing producing and writing. I remember “Compared to What” the Les McCann Eddie Harris jazz recording. In the later decades of life he was fixture in Portland Maine area. The video was probably shot somewhere in Maine.
Portsmouth NH, not Maine.
Only a hundred pounds? Fat-shaming! Persecute!
Hell of a voice.
That school did not have any 100 pounders. Maybe men scoffed them all up already.
Here's the hit recording from 1961.
I was looking for that because it came up in a conversation that Meade and I had yesterday in which he compared something to the process of wedging clay. (Meade is, among other things, a potter, with so many stories to tell, if he only would.)
This post would be more interesting if I could remember that context. I remember where he was sitting and I was standing when it came up. He seems to remember that we were discussing the phrase "ashes to ashes, dust to dust."
It might have had some origin in this story about how Dostoevsky was subjected to a fake execution, in this BBC article "http://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-30129713". I remember talking about this idea:
"Dostoyevsky's experience had altered him profoundly. He did not abandon his view that Russian society needed to be radically changed. He continued to believe that the institution of serfdom was profoundly immoral, and to the end of his life he detested the landed aristocracy. But his experience of being on what he'd believed was the brink of death had given him a new perspective on time and history. Many years later he remarked: 'I cannot recall when I was ever as happy as on that day.'"
I think that connected to the idea of age connecting with happiness, here "Where Age Equals Happiness."
Something about the closeness to death, something about endings and beginnings, maybe, getting wedged back into the clay and made into something creatively new.
Or, I don't know, maybe clay grew out of all the Paul Klee (pronounced "clay").
A music class where the audience can't clap in time with the music.
The song is really, really politically incorrect these days.
I only remember him because a musician friend of mine pointed him out on the street one day. He was very emphatic about his legendary stature. I still have the Les McCann Eddie Harris “Swiss Movement” record. “Compared to What” was a pretty incendiary song in the 70’s. The Roberta Flack “Feel Like Makin Love” was good too. Not many black people in Maine, so I thought it was unusual but cool.
Great art in creation is first proof that there is a Great Artist Himself. The little children are still in awe of creation as they encounter new stuff.
Swiss Movement
I wore that record out in high school. Before that record, I just couldn't understand jazz.
This is what happens when a woman who is too smart for her own good, over analyzes a simple story. The antidote: get a bottle of scotch and drink to stupefaction.
The nightclub atmosphere is the nightclub atmosphere. Lots of musicians don't like it much. This contributes to why you often end up performing stoned, because why not.
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