Nick Tosches On The Hound's Show

June 29, 1991

July 11, 1992

Also see the Hound blog for more insight and inspiration.

Norton DJ Wash-A-Thon!!

Sunday Record Washers League

NORTON RECORDS DJ MARATHON WASH-A-THON!

13 TOP JOCKS • 13,000 SOGGY RECORDS

Sunday November 18th

BROOKLYN BOWL
61 Wythe Avenue Brooklyn, NY

4pm til Midnight!

FREE!

Hurricane Sandy may have preempted one NYC Marathon but it has precipitated another -- the world’s first ever record washing marathon! Yes, join us at the Brooklyn Bowl as we tackle a truckload of wet wax from the label with the able stable- New York’s own NORTON RECORDS, which was totally trashed, bashed and flooded by the wrath and fury of Sandy! Get in on it as thirteen of the nation’s top disc jockeys blast their best, while lucky YOU joins the loud crowd lathering and buffing our Sandy-soaked footlongs back into action! Free admission but B.Y.O.RG. – Bring Your Own Rubber Gloves … and rolls of hi-klass paper towels! Teams of clean freaks will work with record washers provided by the acclaimed Discwasher Company of Pittsburgh, while others will use the time tested soapy sponge method. Learn a trade! And know that you have participated in saving the wildest wax in the world. As you know, Hurricane Sandy destroyed the contents of the Red Hook based Norton Records warehouse, soaking everything within. Time is not on our side as we strip off and discard wet jackets, and wash, dry and resleeve the recordings of the Sonics, Link Wray, Hasil Adkins, Jack Starr, Bloodshot Bill, Esquerita, Daddy Long Legs, King Uszniewicz and hundreds of artists whose shouts and stomps have come into your homes and hearts via the Norton label. Kudos to the beautiful BROOKLYN BOWL for setting the pins up for the first ever NORTON RECORDS WASH-A-THON—enjoy their food, beverages, great sound system.. plus break for BOWLING after the WASH-A-THON! See you there!

NON-STOP KILLER SOUNDS FROM THE TOWN’S TOP DJs


11:00PM * JONATHAN TOUBIN
10:00PM * JOSH STYLES
9:00PM * THE HOUND
8:30PM * TODD-O-PHONIC TODD
8:00 PM * DEBBIE D
7:30PM * REX
7:00PM * MR. FINE WINE
6:30 PM * DAVE THE SPAZZ
6:00 PM * JEFF THE CHEF
5:30PM * PHAST PHREDDIE
5:00 PM * DREW REDMOND
4:30 PM * AVI SPIVAK
4:00PM * CHARLY HIMMEL


Limited advance copies of Norton’s upcoming releases (which were safely at the plant during the storm) will be on sale at Brooklyn Bowl. This includes KIM FOWLEY - KING OF THE CREEPS (1959-69), THE DEL-AIRES - ZOMBIE STOMP (full LP by the Horror of Party Beach Guys), four new albums in our EL PASO ROCK series and T. VALENTINE WITH DADDY LONG LEGS - THE VAMPIRE! Several new singles will also be available! Pick up a Norton bags and teeshirt, too!

Sneak peak, pre-pub copies of LORD OF GARBAGE VOL. 1 (memoirs from 1939-1969) by KIM FOWLEY will be available—hot off the press at KICKS BOOKS!

http://nortonville.blogspot.com/

In case you can’t come by, but would still like to help, we have a donation button on our homepage, www.nortonrecords.com

Norton Records: The Hound Checks In...

 At the Norton 25th anniversary party: The Hound, Ichiban's Debbie D and WMBR DJ John Funke.

Last year we were celebrating Norton Records' 25th anniversary, this year they're struggling to recover from Hurricane Sandy.  I spent two days this week helping out, cleaning discs on the volunteer assembly line.  It's a daunting task, two hundred thousand + records destroyed, jackets ruined - although some of the discs can be salvaged, hence the assembly line, but they need some help.

I go way back with the Norton Records people - Billy Miller and Miriam Linna.  Before Norton Records, before the Zantees, before Kicks, Bad Seed and Flamin' Groovies monthly magazines even.  Back to another time, back when it seemed like there were maybe a dozen or so people in the whole world that liked the type of sounds Norton has brought to the world - Esquirita, Hasil Adkins, Jack Starr, et al.  Now it seems like everyone knows who they are.  Last night a friend texted me - his daughter was playing on WFMU at that exact moment.  I tuned in to hear the kid, and she and her friends are warbling their way through a Charlie Feathers tune!  My, things have changed.  If there was one factor in bringing great rock'n'roll to the world, it was Norton Records.  Now they're fighting for their life, Hurricane Sandy (obviously named for the Dion tune) destroyed their warehouse, taking out records, personal items like most of Miriam's fabled paperback collection, Billy's 78RPM's, master tapes, fanzines, Kicks Books, etc.  If there was ever a good cause, this is it.  You can donate money at the Norton website or time or both.

Reasons you should head to Norton headquarters and volunteer:

*For one thing, it's a good cause, maybe the best cause ever.  Norton Records has long been at the forefront of what some of us think of as rock'n'roll, and they're just about the only ones who still do it.

*Free pizza and beer.  And rubber gloves....

*Its' where all the cool people are, the ones who hardly ever go out anymore (like me and my wife....).  I saw some of my favorite people in the world there this week.

*Despite the tragic and stressful conditions, Billy Miller is still one of the funniest people in the world.

*You'll earn indulgences to get to heaven, or where ever you plan on spending your afterlife.

*Learn the record business from the ground up.

*Learn about the hazards of global climate change and how it affects you and your Hasil Adkins records.

*Meet folks from all over the world, study their habits and learn to recognize their accents.

*More fun than it looks, in fact more fun that most NYC clubs these days.

To volunteer call the Norton office (718-789-4438) or Billy's cell (917) 671-7185 or email nortonrec@aol.com with the word Volunteer in the subject box.

James Brown Month: RJ Smith Interview part 1

RJ Smith's James Brown biography, The One, was published in March by Gotham Books. James Brown's life is so large and complex that making sense of it is a lot like staring directly into the sun (which is why we've taken such a scattershot approach to celebrating it this month on Ichiban) but Smith manages to hit all the major points (the music, the ego, the dancer, the ego, the politics, his disturbing relationships with women, the ego, his dictatorial relationship with his bands, his worldwide social impact, the drugs, the ego) in a compelling and fascinating way.  In this e-mail interview Smith discusses some of the more obscure parts of the book and some of the events and people from JB's life that there was just no room to fit into The One. The interview ran longer than a JB single from 1969, so we're splitting it up into three parts, just like Hot Pants.  Catch the first flipside tomorrow!

ICHIBAN:  What inspired you to spend this much time writing about James Brown? Was there an initial point of revelation that connected you to him as a subject matter? 

RJ SMITH: The first connection I had with him was when I was growing up in Detroit in the late 60s and early 70s. That of course was Motown country, and Top 40 radio was laced with bubblegum, “The Sound of Young America” and local garage rock and then ... you encountered ... the scream. That scrofulous shout that just shredded everything on the air. I don’t even remember what song I heard first, or any song at all, I just remember the noise of his voice, and I was interested.

After that, well he just seemed more interesting, and confusing, and larger than life than about anybody else I can think of in life. I mean this guy just talked and talked and talked, and he kept getting more mystifying while he kept speaking these deep truths in broken poetics. What kind of life was this? If you are gonna live in somebody’s head for four or five years, may it be as interesting as this one.

talkin' loud and sayin' somethin'

ICHIBAN: Your technique of grounding the various eras of James's bands by focusing on the drummers really tied the disparate elements of his career together. When did you decide this was the way to go?

RJ SMITH: There were so many amazing musicians in that band, how do I give them credit without overwhelming the story I’m trying to tell? You need this CNN crawl across the bottom of the page flashing all these folks names as you read about the records. But then, if I start naming people, it’s hard to do it part way, there will be reader’s who quite rightly ask, where’s Sugar Pie DeSanto, where’s Country Kellum, where’s the Dapps, right? Reasonable questions, but there’s so many great players – they need their own book. I started thinking about the drummers as a way to at least symbolically nod in the direction of the whole unit, and then the more I thought about rhythm at the core of his sound, and Southern-if-not-New Orleans rhythms in specific, the more reasons I had for focusing on the drums.

Give (some of) the drummers some!
Jabo Starks, Clyde Stubblefield, Melvin Parker, Clayton Fillyau

How do you view JB's artistic career arc?  Modern consensus seems to make the 60s a long slow build to the apotheosis of the early 70s with the Bootsy version of the band, and that was the artistic peak. But in the 70s, critical consensus put his peak more in the late 60s, but this was before the importance of funk music was really understood.  I guess my question is: Is, say, Sex Machine a more radical artistic breakthrough or amazing piece of music than, say, Live at the Apollo?  

Probably – this is the baby boomer divide with JB, whether you think Live at the Olympia is better than Live at the Apollo. That early 70s outpouring with Bootsy and the other iterations of the JBs and assorted projects of this era is singular. Those funk records are so deep, and Brown was just popping them out like beads of sweat, it’s pretty unprecedented. It was this whole new genre of sound for a while that mostly had only itself to refer to, and then it started touching other musics. We still haven’t gotten to the bottom of this era. I sure would love to hear rehearsal tapes, or to have been a fly on the wall when the JBs got together in the studio – how did they talk to each other, how did they establish a bass line, etc? It seems so complicated and hard to assemble, but they had to be laying it down pretty quick and on the fly.

or 

What says you, Ichibunnies?

Syd Nathan [head honcho of King Records and frequent JB financial sparring partner] and James Brown would have probably made one of the great comedy duos; their relationship seems so contentious and codependent.  I was surprised to learn that Brown was a pallbearer at Nathan's funeral - were they closer than their antagonistic reputation lets on?  Did they have a genuine friendship or was it strictly business? And did Nathan EVER like anything JB did, besides make him money?

There’s a great story Syd’s nephew told me about James putting a Mezuzah around his neck whenever he had to get something from Syd, because who knows, it might help somehow. Syd never totally saw talent on its own terms – money shaped his view of a great many things. But I am sure he understood how special James was. He had to have. Syd liked the way “No” sounded, but at some point he learned that telling James “No” lead to great things down the road. Doesn’t a great comedy team need contrast? These two were like Redd Foxx and Slappy White together, but with two Redd Foxxes! They were so much alike, I think they totally UNDERSTOOD each other and fed off the mirror image they found in their competitor.  Part of what encouraged Syd to stick it to James every chance he got was that he felt he had to keep the guy in check. When Charles Spurling told me he was hired in the late ‘60s at King (besides his considerable musical value) to be pure thug muscle to push back at James, it totally made sense.

SYD NATHAN: Give the drummer some . . . money!

The stories in The One about tent show culture and its influence on Brown in the 50s was very interesting, particularly the contrast between the Daddy Grace religious version of a travelling tent show and the Esquerita/Little Richard nascent drag-queen version.  Do you have any more anecdotes about either or both of these traditions and what JB took from them? 

Hats off to The Hound there – he’s really blazed the way in chronicling the whole gay tent show masquerade culture in the South. I keep telling my academic friends there’s a lot to write about here, but so far nobody’s dug in. I wish I understood better the sexual identity dynamics of this phenomenon. How did James Brown become not quite a part of this scene, but cognizant of its stars – Billy Wright, and of course Little Richard, probably others too – and how did he think about the queer undertow (and text) of this scene? The “Man’s Man” dressing like Little Richard, and walking down the same streets of Macon. How did that play itself out in daily life, and what did people say about Brown, and what did Brown do when he heard it?

As for Daddy Grace, any chance I can take to write about him I will totally go for it. The guy is one of the great American stories, and I am convinced he had a crucial imprint on funk (through the drumming and bands in his church) that has yet to be fully understood. So many cool things happen in tents, we definitely need more tents in America today. 

Sweet Daddy Grace - GIVE THE PREACHER SOME!

Tune in tomorrow for James in jail, the Dapps, Bobby Byrd, "There Was a Time" and the return to the Ichiblog of Soul Brother #? - Mr. Joe Tex!

Arthur's favorite cover of his songs was Dusty Springfield's "Everyday I Have To Cry Some"

Arthur Alexander Month!

The Hound and Rex at the Ichiban launch party

The Hound's interview with Arthur Alexander April 17, 1993 on WFMU, Arthurs's last.

Entire show (mp3)