White Rabbit
As I write it’s about day two hundred without the sun appearing. The dark is punctuated by occasional rain, and it occurs to me that perhaps I might not write yet another gloomy Substack article, and that you might prefer not to read more sad musings from me. So, because it is cloudy and cold and, at the moment, raining. I have been passing the time going down rabbit holes. I don’t know if rabbit holes are more labyrinthine than gopher, or woodchuck or groundhog (all slightly different animal) holes. I do know it was certainly too cloudy here in New Jersey for the groundhog to have seen a shadow on Groundhog Day. Is it seeing the shadow or not seeing the shadow that is supposed to be significant? I don’t recall.
I like the phrase, “down the rabbit hole.” Lewis Carroll might have coined the expression by using the phrase to title chapter one of Alice in Wonderland. He also might have heard it somewhere. Truth is a slippery thing. Regardless, Alice and Through the Looking Glass are among my favorite childhood books. My father would read me a chapter each night, I still have my well-worn copy, a birthday gift from my aunt, with facsimiles of the Tenniel illustrations. It’s nice to have them visit on this rainy afternoon.
My rabbit hole today also includes a soundtrack. It begins with a memory from somewhere between age three and six. I am sitting in the backseat of my dad’s two-tone Chrysler. That car, I believe was maroon and gray. I’m not sure why we had a family car. We lived in a small apartment in Brooklyn. My father worked in the Chrysler Building and took the subway to work. But he loved to drive. I assume he learned in the service. I don’t know. I’m sure he bought the car used. We were about to go– I don’t know, somewhere, my grandparents? a Sunday drive?– and the radio was on. A man was singing “You ain’t nothing but a hound dog,” and the music was bouncing. Such is the power or rock and roll that this is the first song I remember hearing on the radio.( Elvis sings Hound Dog)
Maybe this memory of Elvis is why, for my fiftieth birthday, a few months after my husband died, I took myself and my daughter to Memphis. I had not seen the Mississippi River except from the air before. We visited Graceland, and Beale Street, Sun Studios, and the National Civil Rights Museum, and the Lorraine Motel. The motel room and balcony where Martin Luther King was shot have been kept as they were. It’s a powerful experience I have spent two decades thinking about.
In the last few weeks, I learned about a podcast that’s been running for several years. Wish I had known about it during the pandemic. The podcast is called, Rock Music in A History of Rock Music in 500 Songs. There was even a New Yorker article about it that I managed to miss. That could be because I’m a skimmer with no patience for long-form journalism, and I mostly haven’t enjoyed reading articles about rock music over the years. To me they so often feel like they are written by men in a style that’s both vaguely misogynistic and insider focused. Not so this podcast. The British narrator, Andrew Hickey, loves the subject matter, is deeply informed, a great storyteller and offers a history often told through the lens of race and racism in the U.S. and the world. For more details, do look at the New Yorker that I went back and found online. A Music Podcast Unlike Any Other. I’m about halfway through the episodes currently available. While I wouldn’t say I have a favorite episode, check out Number 91, “The Twist’ by Chubby Checker,” if you are so inclined. And share your special music memories in the comments.
“Hound Dog” and “The Twist” notwithstanding, I tend to enter songs more through the lyrics than through the music. In part that’s because I don’t know enough about music. Also there is nothing like a story set to a tune and rhythm to augment meaning. I’m primarily a folk music fan. Bruce Springsteen, Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon– I think of them all as folk artists. Tonight, I’ve got tickets to see Patty Larkin, Cliff Eberhardt, John Gorka and Lucy Kaplansky at Monmouth University. Don’t think of this as gloomy. It’s about memory. The same way listening to Tracy Chapman and Joni Mitchell at the Grammy’s brought us all (admit it) to tears. I’ll remember to bring tissues this evening. And, in the last few days, the weather has improved.
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The latest issue of ALTE is now on the website. Hope you will check it out. ALTE
Okay, my music memory starts with the fact that the first record I ever bought was "Heartbreak Hotel" by Elvis, his breakthrough record when he went from Sun Records to RCA. The follow-up was "I Want You, I Need You I love You". And then came "Hound Dog" one of the most exciting records I had ever heard if you don't count Little Richard singing/ shouting "Tuitti Fruitti". And I was also a left-wing folkie. I distinctly remember one listener asking why don't you turn over the record to play the other side, "Don't Be Cruel"? So the deejay said, okay, he turned it over for 5 seconds, and immediately turned it back to "Hound Dog". Many years later, at a gathering of the monthly Tel Aviv folk song club, one of the singers brought his dog with him. The singer who's turn it was was about to launch into his next song when the dog started barking. The singer stared at the dog, and burst into a rousing rendition of "You ain't nothing but a Hound Dog", with everyone laughing and joining in.
There's so much memory connected to music. For me it's the Beatles and especially the song, "She Loves You." I still see me sitting on the living room floor in that apartment on the second floor of a 2-family home in Queens, me close to the TV screen as Ed Sullivan introduced The Beatles!