Friday, January 1, 2021

Daniel Charles - Unlikely Godfather Of Southern Rock

Daniel Charles (center) with the original "Charlie Daniels Band", Cape Cod, 1959

Boston's famed Charles River was named after Cabot Brigham Charles, an early settler in the region, and Daniel Charles' great-great-great grandfather. The Charles family made a fortune from their patented "Coolie-Proof™" Railroad Tie. Daniel's great-grandfather was a generous benefactor of Harvard University, where a lecture theater is named after him. Daniel, a pampered child, grew up in the luxury of the family mansion on Beacon Hill, where Jascha Heifetz gave him private violin lessons. As a sensitive, bookish young man, he spent summers on Cape Cod, where he mingled with the Antebellums, an artistic and bohemian crowd who affected the ways of the Old South.

Inverting his name to Charlie Daniels ("too amusing!"), the suave Daniel formed a musical band to play at debutante balls, playing "hillbilly arrangements of études by Debussy and Fauré". His impersonation of a good old boy convinced a passing Tom Dowd (then a struggling root beer salesman) to offer him studio time in Nashville. The rest is history.

Charlie Daniels - his first solo album from '71 featured Jerry Corbitt, ex-Youngbloods, with whom (grammar) he also recorded a couple of live albums for the infamous Tiger Lily label, run by shite-hawk Morris Levy as a tax scam.You need these albums if you are to earn the respect of the freeloading bums down at Waltie's World Famous Pool n' Pierogies you like to think are your confreres.

[Corbitt has been FoamFeatured™ antecedently, and you may care to test the search facility provided for your convenience over there in the sidebar - Ed.]

at

24 comments:

  1. Farquhar Throckmorton IIIJanuary 1, 2021 at 7:15 AM

    I shall load up these swell long-playing records as soon as Kreemé pushes my cuticles back.

    Meanwhilst - kick up a little foam, pals.

    ReplyDelete
  2. pmacJanuary 1, 2021 at 9:53 AM

    Kinda hard to believe that he went all full right wing Trumpster (yeah, look out for the incoming bromides). Had that first album but it disappeared over the years, and never really thought about it again, until now. Foamie best wished for a happy new year!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Farquhar Throckmorton IIIJanuary 1, 2021 at 10:54 AM

      The time to start forgetting Trump is yesterday. We'll have more immediate concerns this year, like staying alive and fed and housed. Daniels is long gone, but the music outlives him and his opinions, and it's great.



      Delete
    2. Eric S.January 1, 2021 at 11:15 AM

      I fear even as we dispense with Trump, Trumpism and the Trumpistas and Trumpettes will be with us for a while. What with my putative training as a political sociologist, I'll venture it's gonna gonna take a generation to clean up this mess. But we will. Right side of history, demographics, and all that mean these sad effer's desperate rear-guard actions are just dying days of empire shit. Even globally, the authoritarian revanchism is (s l o w l y) winding down.

      And through it all, music is music is music...

      Delete
    3. Farquhar Throckmorton IIIJanuary 1, 2021 at 11:25 AM

      Trump is just a new brand for an old problem the human race has always had; wilful, ignorant intolerance. He and his followers didn't invent it, and his passing will have no effect on its persistence.

      Delete
    4. Eric S.January 1, 2021 at 10:52 PM

      Fair...

      Delete
    5. pmacJanuary 1, 2021 at 11:17 PM

      Agreed they didn't invent it. Difference now is that it went from dog whistle to wearing it proudly on your sleeve (or, at least different since 1920s Germany).

      Delete
    6. Eric S.January 2, 2021 at 3:48 AM

      the Germany comparisons are dicey (though my aged mother, who knows of what she speaks, is not shy about making them), which doesn't mean they are wrong. I think much of what we see here is more akin to Wiemar or Mussolini's Italy though if you wanna get nitty gritty there are elements of Franco's Spain, Salazar's Portugal, and Peron in Argentina (with apologies for the completistism, a nasty habit, maybe a flash of Ubico's Guatmala but not so much Vargas in Brazil). Anywhichway, a nasty lineup which Trump resonates with more verbally and temperamentally than in practice, lucky us. If here were more skillful and had a modicum of talent, we'd be in far more dangerous Putin, Erdoğan, Modi, Orbán territory, the 21st century's authoritarian democrats/democratic authoritarians, another thoroughly nasty bunch. Proud to say I'm banned from Turkey, though a book of mine on revolution originally scheduled to be published there in 2013 weirdly did get published there about a year ago; go figure.

      Delete
    7. jonderJanuary 2, 2021 at 6:50 AM

      Good for you Eric on pissing off the Turks. Were you banned for reminding them of inconvenient truths about Armenia?

      It's shameful that DJT openly admires dictators and murderers like Erdogan, Putin, Kim Jong-Un, and Mohammed bin Salman. To paraphrase a favorite line, Trump treads on angels and sucks up to snakes.

      Delete
    8. Eric S.January 2, 2021 at 9:49 AM

      Alas, I am an obscure geeky academic who primarily studies revolutions but happen to be on the fringes of much better known folx. Some of us stupidly tried to help out some young colleagues there with sadly predictable results, including a few hundred of us being banned. C'est la vie or guerre or somesuch. Farq'll know which.

      Delete
  3. Farquhar Throckmorton IIIJanuary 1, 2021 at 11:03 AM



    Stormy Daniels

    ReplyDelete
  4. Eric S.January 1, 2021 at 11:10 AM

    I'm betwixt & between--how/why he became a straight up right-wing racist asshole--long before Trump--has always been a (sad) mystery to me. But he had a knack with a fiddle, could write a song or five, and one memorable 10 hour day in the Superdome as the opening act managed to show up on stage, fit in, and add to, with Wet Willie, Marshall Tucker, & the ABB. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. pmacJanuary 1, 2021 at 11:16 PM

      That was the concert to celebrate the opening of the Superdome. Also the one where the ABB took forever to take the stage, then played two songs, and took an abrupt break. When they re-emerged, Betts was sporting a shiner.

      Delete
    2. Eric S.January 2, 2021 at 3:31 AM

      I had forgotten that, lol.

      Delete
  5. jonderJanuary 2, 2021 at 6:40 AM

    The Boston Brahmin stuff is hooey, but if anyone's interested in reading more about Morris Levy and his tax scam label (Tiger Lily Records), here's a fun place to start:

    https://dangerousminds.net/comments/whats_up_tiger_lily_the_wild_story_of_the_tax_scam_record_label_run_by_the_

    ReplyDelete
  6. Farquhar Throckmorton IIIJanuary 2, 2021 at 8:10 AM

    I hate to drag the ugly subject of *cough* music up, but the Daniels album was released the year after he played on Nashville Skyline. Making the move from the back porch to the festival stage was quite a leap. Daniels was a terrific guitarist, and this album - if you'll forgive my French - rocks out as much as the first albums by the Allmans and L. Skynyrd. Enjoying Southern Rock doesn't make you racist-adjacent - just someone who appreciates good music. Politics can sometimes be glimpsed from th' Isle O' Foam©, but it soon disappears back over the horizon. Good music breezes in most days.

    ReplyDelete
  7. UncleBJanuary 2, 2021 at 9:05 AM

    No doubt there's some sweatshop on an adjacent island pumping out the T-Shirts of this one as we type/read/listen while bathing in the warm rays of the FMF Isle sun.......

    "Take that, 2020!"

    (This about says it all re. 2020 vs. 2021...):

    ("Goodbye 2020 Hello 2021" grafick):

    https://i.etsystatic.com/23867923/d/il/f64cde/2742420900/il_340x270.2742420900_jjiq.jpg

    And, as a further insult to connoisseurs of cowpokeish croonin'... lovers & makers & lovermak--- Oops. ? ... LIKERS of fine the sounds of classic "country/rockish" materiel...

    Just last night the pruss-tee-juss "Gerhswin Award" was given out in a multi-hour wank-fest on our local Pee Bee Ess Tee Vee station...

    To ...Wait for it...

    Barf Gooks...

    Scuse me...

    Garth Brooks.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Farquhar Throckmorton IIIJanuary 2, 2021 at 5:04 PM

      Not everyone who wears a stetson is worth listening to. Bono, f'rinstance.

      Delete
  8. Fanny BlancmangeJanuary 2, 2021 at 3:47 PM

    Thanks for the Charlie stuff, and so much else to be dug up here speedily before the next load gets tipped out over it.

    Viewed from over here y'all a bit harsh on Trump, to say the least.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Farquhar Throckmorton IIIJanuary 2, 2021 at 4:24 PM

      "Over here ..." that would be the Arkham Asylum For The Criminally Insane, right?

      Delete
    2. Eric S.January 3, 2021 at 12:52 AM

      is it literally or even figuratively possible to be too harsh on Trump?

      Asking for a friend

      Delete
  9. PsychfanJanuary 3, 2021 at 7:49 AM

    Maybe they could build an exact replica of the Oval Office inside the Arkham Asylum, with OLED screens displaying views from the real OO where the windows would be.
    A discreet mickey in the Diet Coke on 1/20, a quick ride to the asylum and whammo, most people will be happy, very much including Mr. Orange!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. AnonymousJanuary 4, 2021 at 12:54 AM

      Where's Mr. Phelps and the IMF team when you need them!?

      Delete

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)