by Peter Berryman
Book Review:
the day is so long and the wages so small:
music on a summer island
by Samuel Charters, published by
Marion Boyars, 1999
My musical partner Lou, searching for appropriate travel books prior to a recent trip to the Bahamas with her husband, came across an incredible paperback called the day is so long and the wages so small: music on a summer island (the title in lower case letters, at least on the cover), by Samuel Charters. This book, first published in hardcover in 1999, is Charters' memoir of an enchanted summer he spent on the Bahamian island of Andros way back in 1958 with his future wife, Ann Danberg (soon Charters) who took the accompanying photographs.
These two young music sleuths, inspired by a few recordings made in the late 30s by Alan Lomax, tracked down, interviewed, and recorded some of the amazing musicians of that big weird island (2,300 square miles) which is situated 120 miles or so southeast of Miami.
Previous to reading this book, Lou and I already were huge fans of Joseph Spence (1910-1984), one of the musicians recorded by Charters that summer. We had come to know his music via a favorite 1978 LP by Ry Cooder called Jazz, which featured Cooder's arrangements of Joseph Spence adaptations of three traditional songs. I eventually acquired a few tapes of Spence himself, playing what must be the most spellbinding guitar work on the planet. Joseph's vocals consist of grunts and laughs and strangely captivating mumblings. But when his recordings feature the vocal stylings of his sister and in-laws in the Pinder family, as in the more recent collection called "Joseph Spence and the Pinder Family: The Spring of Sixty-Five," recorded by Peter K. Siegel and Jody Stecher, the effect is transcendent. It is no surprise that Spence influenced Ry Cooder as well as other musicians as diverse as Taj Mahal, the Grateful Dead, and Pete Seeger.
Lou and I were also long-time fans of one particular song recorded by Charters that summer: the ballad Run Come See Jerusalem featuring, in this case, Andros Island singers John Roberts, H. Brown, and Charles Wallace. I haven't heard this recording yet, but have heard a recording of it by its probable author, another Bahamian singer, Blake Alphonso Higgs of Nassau.
Higgs, known as "Blind Blake" (which confused me at first, because recording in the Chicago area in the 20s and 30s, there was a ragtime blues artist originally from Florida, Arthur Blake, who was also known as "Blind Blake") holds the 1952 copyright to the Jerusalem song, which describes a horrendous storm that struck the island of Andros in 1929. Higgs himself is not mentioned in the Charters book, probably because Charters was covering the musicians of Andros and not Nassau, but the Andros Island arrangement, described in detail by Charters, seems very like the rendition sung by Blind Blake and his bandmates. This arrangement is also very similar to the version performed currently by Steve Gillette, Cindy Mangsen, Michael Smith, and Anne Hills, in their group Fourtold, which, if I'm not mistaken, they learned from a recording of it made by the Weavers years ago. I sheepishly add that Lou and I were so thrilled to hear Fourtold sing this song, we recently talked poor Steve and Cindy into letting us howl it with them in California, then a few months later shamelessly pulled the same stunt with Matt Watroba and Katie Geddes in Michigan. Believe it or not, we're normally not this pushy, so maybe you can tell how much we love this Bahamian marvel, and why we were so happy to find Charters' book which spoke so reverently of it.
I would recommend this little book to anyone. The detective work of finding the musicians, the understated romance of Samuel and Ann, the sensory recollections of that long ago summer, the technical but superbly understandable descriptions of the music, the anecdotal accounts of being in an unfamiliar culture and geography, all blend perfectly thanks to Charters' human but not at all sappy writing style.
And as if that were not enough, the book's
observations are marvelously thought provoking. For example, Charters
writes that twenty years later (about the time Cooder was recording
the Jazz LP), he "...finally understood what it was
[he] had been hearing in African-American music in the United
States; in the blues, in gospel song, in jazz and ragtime, and
now in Bahamian [singing]. African music has no strong rhythmic
stresses -- it has a rhythmic flow, and voices become a part of
the textural weave. Vocal melodies are freely interspersed with
comments and changes of emphasis..."
This may now seem like a small and even obvious realization, however
I think it is a defining but easily overlooked characteristic
of most contemporary popular music. The whole ostensibly modern
copyright issue of a song's arrangement being as important as
its fundamental lyric and melody is a major outcome of this pivotal
point, in my 'umble opinion.
All in all, this is one jewel of a book.
Samuel Charters, teacher of creative writing and author of four
novels and 11 books of poetry, has become a world famous ethnomusicologist
and has written extensively on blues and jazz. He also has produced
and otherwise been involved with countless recordings in these
areas. Of interest to Madisonians, he was a great help in launching
the career of then-local blues artist Tracy Nelson in the mid-60s.
Ann Charters, now a professor of English, has gone on to become a preeminent authority on Beat writers. I have read her biography of Jack Kerouac and it is a treasure. Her photographs of Beat writers have been collected into the book Beats and Company. She has also written in other areas including a book on the great black songwriter and Vaudevillian, Bert Williams, whose song, Nobody, is coincidentally covered by Ry Cooder on the above mentioned Jazz album.