Some art: Zola, Blind Willie McTell, Decoy (1946), A Day in the Country, Art Tatum, Dylan in '93, Leroy Carr, the Zombies' last gig, John Lee Hooker, Massacre at Central High, "August Heat" radio

Wednesday 8/26/26

One should read more Zola. "But I don't read any Zola!" you cry. Well, this is all the easier then. The Masterpiece (1886) would work. Van Gogh liked it and so can you.

Blind Willie McTell's cut his last session in September 1956 and it happened almost accidentally on his part. McTell was playing for quarters on the street in Atlanta. Record store manager Edward Rhodes invited McTell into his shop to record some songs. McTell asked Rhodes not to release the music until after he died, in the off-chance it sold. He was scared he'd drink himself to death with the money. Heartbreaking. But true art. Get yourself his 1927 sessions, the material he recorded for Alan Lomax in 1940, and this final session, and you have one of the most important bodies of work in American music.

Watched the 1946 film noir, Decoy, directed by Jack Bernhard, starring Robert Armstrong and Jean Gillie as the femme fatale. She was quite good. Interesting twist having a British actress as the femme fatale, with accent at least partially intact. Film noirs can often be bonkers--think of the strangulation-by-phone scene in Detour--but Decoy is among the most bonkers of all of them.

Here's the set-up: there's a guy on death row who's the only person who knows where some stolen loot is buried. He won't tell and he's about to be executed, so the crooks rope a doctor into using this miracle chemical that brings you back to life--so long as it's used within an hour of death, and even then it's a long shot--after you've been put to death by this kind of gas. It's not quite a supernatural angle, but it's as close to that line as film noir gets.

Gillie's character screws over everyone very calmly, even nicely. We see the last scene of the drama first, with the person we soon learn is the mostly good guy of a doctor who makes some terrible choices appearing like he may be slightly zombie-fied as he leaves a gas station on a forlorn country road.

Speaking of: the Zombies gave their last concert--before they regrouped, of course--in December 1967. How I would love to be able to hear a recording of this. It's tantalizing to imagine what they played. Songs from Odessey and Oracle? Mixed with early hits like "She's Not There" and "Tell Her No," material from their '65 debut LP, and rhythm and blues covers? "Care of Cell 44" followed by "Going to a Go-Go"? And the Zombies at Christmastime just makes sense and sounds like it'd be wondrous.

A good film to revisit at this time of year: Jean Renoir's forty-minute work, A Day in the Country, made in 1936 and released in 1940. A Parisian husband, wife, daughter, and a future son-in-law have an afternoon in the countryside, where two young men attempt to seduce the two women. One does, and many years later he sees her again at the same spot, with her sleeping husband next to her and they speak. It's a film about connections and what can be both their fleeting nature and their sticking power.

 A good story for this time of year and certainly this weather we're having here which I'll mention again: W.F. Harvey’s “August Heat,” a (non?) ghost story from 1910 and which I'm touching on in a piece about the 1958 horror film, I Bury the Living. There are a number of radio adaptations as well, including a not very good one on Hallmark Playhouse from 9/29/49 with Fred MacMurray and a much better one on Suspense from May 31, 1945 with Ronald Coleman.

Another version worth checking out comes from the November 28, 1956 broadcast of a program called Sleep No More. The show ran for a couple years. Nelson Olmstead would read a literary work and act out the various parts, rather like what we'd get later with Erik Bauersfield and The Black Mass. Sleep No More tackled a couple A.M. Burrage stories, which alone would make it notable for me. Alas, the radio adaptations of "August Heat" can't leave the ending alone, which is to say, can't just leave it open, which is a big part of the point of Harvey's story. It's robbed of its core weirdness as a result. But it's cool up until then.

Everything Ray Teal was in became better than it would have been without him. Also, Dabbs Greer. Like some special character actor guarantee of quality. I echo this previously expressed idea here because more examples have mounted in the past few days where I'm watching something and up pops one of these two fellows. Can be some obscure noir in an uncredited role, can be an episode in the middle of the night of Perry Mason.

"And if I could holler like I was a mountain jack/I'd go up on the mountain, and I'd call my baby back." From Leroy Carr's 1928 "How Long, How Long Blues." Poetic execution, from the title on down. Such a specialized simile that treats a kind of hollering as a skill endemic to loggers. If our narrator possessed that skill, he wouldn't use it in what the simile treats as the regular fashion of mountain jacking but rather baby bringing-backing. Alas, he's not thus blessed.

Film recommendation: Anthony Mann's The Tall Target (1951) with Dick Powell, which I watched over the weekend. It's a train film, a noir, a kind of war picture, and what we can call an eastern Western. Powell plays a New York detective trying to stop an assassination plot against Abraham Lincoln who is en route to his inauguration in Washington. Mann excelled at tension; he may have wrung more juice out of that fruit than anyone in the 1950s, excepting possibly Hitchcock. Lots of fine character actors throughout. Fritz Lang was another high tension noir guy. Mann's Westerns are probably the tensest on balance in that genre. Even something like Ford's The Searchers has moments of comic relief.

Listening recommendation: Art Tatum's Piano Starts Here. A certain kind of piano playing, anyway. The LP combines Tatum's first solo studio cuts from 1933 with a concert from 1949. Tatum made pianists become ex-pianists. The effect of hearing him for the first time could be similar to what London guitarists later experienced with Jimi Hendrix. He's partially why Les Paul switched from piano to guitar. Piano Starts Here may be the most virtuosically dazzling disc in the whole of jazz.

The sound of a man bringing it: John Lee Hooker’s Modern recordings. I love the Ace label and the set they put out of this music.

Downloaded a number of Bob Dylan shows from 1993 and will download more. How can one not love him opening with Stephen Foster's "Hard Times"?

Rewatched the 1976 film Massacre at Central High for a piece I'm writing. Have found it gripping each time I've done so. A strange and affecting film. It's Peanuts-like in that we see no adults where we expect to see adults, except in Peanuts that's at home and here it's at school. Has both realist and satirical elements and finds the right balance.