Happy Easter everyone. Well’ I found something with Easter in the title anyway. According to Zappa Wiki Jwaka the full title of this instrumental piece is “Playing A Guitar Solo With This Band Is Like Trying To Grow A Watermelon In Easter Hay.” Frank Zappa was born in Baltimore and grew up, mostly in Edgewood Maryland, near Aberdeen Proving Grounds, a military facility, where his father worked as a chemist. The Zappas kept gas masks in their house, in case of a chemical accident at the proving ground, where tons of WWI era mustard gas were stored. This may have had an effect on Frank’s music. The Zappas moved to California when Frank was twelve years old.
Watermelon In Easter Hay is one of Zappa’s later compositions featuring a full band, with brass, reeds, electronic keyboard, percussionists, drums, two guitars and bass. It first appeared on his 1979 album “Joe’s Garage.” Zappa shows a high degree of control over the characteristics of his guitar and amplifier. He employs distortion, uses feedback to give amazing sustain to some notes and bends notes with the tremolo bar on this Fender Stratocaster.
Perhaps the definitive song in the Brazilian “Bossa Nova” canon is “Águas de Março,” “The Waters of March” by Antonio Carlos Jobim. This song repeats two short melodic themes, with slight variations in tempo, over a deceivingly simple sounding set of chord changes. The lyrics are a list of impressions as if the singer is describing an album of photographs.
Tom Jobim wrote words in Portuguese and in English for the song, however I prefer the English translation made by Susanah McCorkle. I was searching for McCorkle on YouTube when I found this beautiful video of Brazilian singer Elis Regina singing the song in the original Portuguese. I did find evidence that footage of McCorkle singing this song exists but apparently has been removed from YouTube. This would have been at the request of the copyright holder, what a shame.
Elis Regina Carvalho Costa was one of Brazil’s most popular singers. She started performing on a children’s radio program at the age of eleven. Her 1974 collaboration with Jobim, “Elis & Tom,” on which this song appears, has been called one of the greatest bossa nova albums of all time. In 1982 Elis Regina died of an accidental overdose, caused by a combination of prescription tranquilizers and alcohol. She was 36.
The close-up camera work, on Regina’s expressive face, as she sings Águas de Março is marvelous, the music is hypnotic and her voice is thrilling.
Here is the English translation by Susanah McCorkle.
A stick a stone
it’s the end of the road,
it’s the rest of the stump
it’s a little alone
it’s a sliver of glass,
it is life, it’s the sun,
it is night ,it is death,
it’s a trap, it’s a gun.
the oak when it blooms,
a fox in the brush,
the knot in the wood,
the song of the thrush.
the wood of the wind,
a cliff, a fall,
a scratch, a lump,
it is nothing at all.
it’s the wind blowing free.
it’s the end of a slope.
it’s a beam, it’s a void,
it’s a hunch, it’s a hope.
and the riverbank talks.
of the water of march
it’s the end of the strain,
it’s the joy in your heart.
the foot, the ground,
the flesh, the bone,
the beat of the road,
a slingshot stone.
a fish, a flash,
a silvery glow,
a fight, a bet,
the range of the bow.
the bed of the well,
the end of the line,
the dismay in the face,
it’s a loss, it’s a find.
a spear, a spike,
a point, a nail,
a drip, a drop,
the end of the tale.
a truckload of bricks,
in the soft morning light,
the shot of a gun,
in the dead of the night.
a mile, a must,
a thrust, a bump.
it’s a girl, it’s a rhyme.
it’s the cold, it’s the mumps.
the plan of the house,
the body in bed,
the car that got stuck,
it’s the mud, it’s the mud.
a float, a drift,
a flight, a wing,
a hawk, a quail,
the promise of spring.
and the riverbanks talks.
of the waters of march.
it’s the promise of life,
it’s the joy in your heart,
a snake, a stick,
it is john, it is joe,
it’s a thorn in your hand,
and a cut on your toe.
a point, a grain,
a bee, a bite,
a blink, a buzzard,
the sudden stroke of night.
a pin, a needle,
a sting, a pain,
a snail, a riddle,
a weep, a stain.
a pass in the mountains.
a horse, a mule,
in the distance the shelves.
rode three shadows of blue.
and the riverbank talks
of the promise of life
in your heart, in your heart
a stick, a stone,
the end of the load,
the rest of the stump,
a lonesome road.
a sliver of glass,
a life, the sun,
a night, a death,
the end of the run
and the riverbank talks
of the waters of march
it’s the end of all strain
it’s the joy in your heart
Born in Chester Pennsylvania in 1896, the child of a 13 year old rape victim, Ethel Waters rose to stardom on her own talent,intelligence and effort. She left her job as a aid in Philadelphia to work in vaudeville, at the Lincoln Theater in Baltimore at the age of 17 after being heard singing at a Halloween party. After Baltimore Waters sang in honkey tonks, traveled with a carnival to Chicago, and worked in a club, opening for Bessie Smith. By 1919 Waters was living in New York where she was part of the Harlem Renaissance, a flowering of music, art and literature among the African American population of New York - really all over the country - which lasted through the 1930s. Waters sang and recorded with band leader Fletcher Henderson in the 1920s.
Waters appeared n Broadway and in films during the 1930s in addition to nightclub appearances. “Stormy Weather” was one of her signature songs, although she was passed over for the film role in favor of the younger Lena Horne when the song was used as the basis of a film in 1943.
This is a clip from a 1934 short film “Bubbling Over” in which Ethel Waters starred. The song expresses a fatalistic, yet hopeful attitude toward life as an early twentieth century African American. Faith in a better life to come (in heaven) is the focus of the song, which descries the hard and thankless never ending toil that is her fate. The song also uses the Stephen Foster-esque term “darkies,” so be prepared. This song presents, with a smile and a sigh, the meaning behind the, rather more forceful, remarks of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, which are causing such a stir this week.
Bubbling over is a comedy, set in a Harlem apartment, using every stereotype available to a 1930s filmmaker. In order to watch one has to remember that this was a far distant time. I was able to find a digitization of the entire film at Veoh.com. You are cautioned that you may find it offensive.
One day I was cruising YouTube, playing videos of various guitarists and I said to my wife " I'm just amazed that I can be sitting here watching Doc Watson's fingers for free." It dawned on me that it would be a valuable service to share these gems with other people. The videos posted here are the ones that really caught my eye.
