BrooklynBio: Arthur Rhames

As the world mourns the passing of madcap free jazz drummer Rashied Ali, it is important to note that Ali's legacy extends far beyond the sonic pyrotechnics of Ascension and New Directions in Jazz Music. Long after his halcyon days in the mid-sixties, the prolific Ali continued to champion musicians of the same iconoclastic pedigree as John Coltrane and James "Blood" Ulmer. Among the less fortuitous of these collaborators was Bed-Stuy native Arthur Rhames, a fusion prodigy whose intermittent career and rampant egotism belied a talent that, in Ali's estimation, was on par with the "greatest musicians God ever put on this Earth." Today, Rhames' imprimatur is the stuff of forgotten indie labels and luminiferous memories, but his recondite profile has cast a towering shadow among the cognoscenti well into the 2000s: Vernon Reid of Living Colour described Rhames' guitar style (he also played tenor sax and melodica to rapturous acclaim) as "frightening" in an interview conducted three years after the musician died of AIDS complications in 1989, and even the laconic Bill Frisell cited Rhames as an "overwhelming" presence, adding that he had "never seen the guitar played that way." Like another multi-instrumentalist named Arthur who helped to define the epoch, minimalist composer/dance auteur Arthur Russell, Rhames' output was uniquely variegated, a jarring confluence of influences that ranged from his Hare Krishna faith (he was a regular at the Krishna temple at 439 Henry Street in Cobble Hill, a brisk fifteen-to-twenty minute walk from the Eagle's offices) to R&B to free jazz to the stentorian excesses of Mahavishnu Orchestra. As such, it's hardly surprising that this style only became germane to record company scouts in the wake of his untimely death -- when drummer and steadfast collaborator Charles Telerant mentioned that he had played with Rhames to Brian Bachhus of Verve Records, the A&R executive offered to sign the enigmatic local legend to a career-making deal on the spot -- an offer that was rescinded when Telerant informed him that Rhames had been deceased for three weeks.

Garnering his initial reputation (ballasted by a profile in Guitar World) as the pubescent guitarist with local jazz-funk trio Eternity, "the Brooklyn Flash" embraced the jazz orthodoxy in his early twenties, busking frequently in Union Square in various permutations with Telerant and a trio configuration that included pianist John Esposito and Jeff Siegel on drums. The few recordings of Rhames from this era, collected on a tribute album recorded with Ali (The Dynamic Duo Remember Trane and Bird) and a lone live album (Live from Soundscape) find him increasingly dependent upon the tenor saxophone and emulating Coltrane's late-period deconstructionism (the Trio's microtonal take on "I Got Rhythm" from Soundscape is a competent demonstration of this approach). In 1984, Rhames (credited as "Butch") contributed pedestrian guitar and keyboards to Positive Power by Steve Arrington's Hall of Fame, an obscure boogie-disco effort.

Rhames remains an elusive figure even in jazz circles, but a reappraisal seems to be on the horizon. An official website showcases scintillating rock fretwork from his Eternity days and highlights from the the mellifluous jazz recordings that eventually manifested, while an unreleased duo album with Telerant was recently released to favorable notices.

Ego considerations notwithstanding, it's difficult to ascertain why Rhames failed to attain even a modicum of success in the insular world of jazz. As an instrumentalist, his crossover appeal to pop audiences was limited at best; moreover, as an African-American gay man who refused to compromise with the duplicity of the music industry, he may have simply been too ahead of his time.

BrooklynBio: The Mystery of Grandmaster Flowers

Working in an era where their sociocultural stratum was plagued by gang violence and urban decay, many of the New York-based pioneers of hip-hop and dance music operated under a veil of secrecy. The block parties that served as the birth pang of hip-hop and the dance incubators of SoHo were more than merely parties and clubs -- they were refuges from such virulent forces of homophobia and compulsory braggadocio, where even the toughest B-boy could lock and pop to the JB's "Monorail". As glorified saloonkeepers who hardly saw themselves as enduring historical figures, the founding fathers of these respective movements -- whose paths commingled and dovetailed more frequently than the prematurely revisionist record led earlier generations to believe -- were largely forgotten until recent years, when ethnographers like Tim Lawrence brought such seminal figures as David Mancuso and Nicky Siano from the microfiche collection at the New York Public Library to VH1. Even still, figures are bound to get lost in the shuffle, and despite valiant efforts by the few who remember him, Grandmaster Flowers will probably remain not much more than an enigmatically fading memory.

Here's what we know about the elusive DJ:

• In 1969, Flowers -- who was reportedly based in central Brooklyn -- opened for James Brown at Yankees Stadium. That a regional performer opened for Brown is rather peculiar in the context of the times, and the fact that the trend-saavy Brown hired a DJ (instead of a band) suggests that the influence of the discotheque had already become pervasive by 1969 -- three years before Vince Aletti's seminal article on the trend in Rolling Stone.
• During the warmer months, Flowers and a coterie of earlier mobile DJs (also including Pete DJ Jones, Maboya, and DJ Plummer) would play spontaneous and semi-illicit gatherings at Riis Park in the Rockaways, Prospect Heights' St. Mark's Park, assorted Brooklyn schoolyards (with the P.S. 92 yard figuring most prominently), and Prospect Park. According to Mike Barnes, a member of the deephousepage.com message boards who has done much to preserve the legacies of Flowers and other DJs whose careers defy the traditional bifurcation between disco and hip-hop, "Cats from Brooklyn would not fess when it came to traveling to other parts of New York to rock a spot or park throwdown."
  
• According to Paradise the Architect from early 90s Afrocentric group X-Clan, "In Brooklyn, Flowers was to brothers in Brooklyn what Kool Herc was to brothers in the Bronx. Everybody loved and followed Flowers." After drug addiction forced Flowers into vagrancy and destitution in the early 90s, X-Clan took Flowers on the road with them as their sound engineer.
• In addition to gigging at many Bronx proto-hiphop clubs, Flowers held down regular residencies at Panorama on Flatbush Avenue and the Blue Maze on Nostrand Avenue (popular discos that mainly catered to a straight African-American clientele) and worked at Downstairs Records (a specialist shop popular among early dance spinners).
  
• As a primarily mobile DJ who played for a diverse range of audiences, Flowers was expected to be conversant in numerous styles -- and boast a sound system that could compete with the city's finest underground clubs. According to DJ Poppysoul, another DHP poster and veteran of the era, "Not only could Flowers and [Pete] Jones throw down on the turntable and rock a party, they had truly incredible sound systems and excelled at turning a plain space into something that resembled the Garage. Massive speaker stacks with subs you could walk into, horns you see in arenas, tweeters, speakers and more tweeters and speakers would be spread all around the ballroom, the park, etc., all connected with what seemed like Con-Ed feeder cable to four and five way active amp racks. There was no full range and a sub thing going on. Parties back in the day were really more like a cultural religious concert of sorts. Grandmaster Flowers was the first guy I ever heard scratch or cut if you prefer. It was back @ The Stardust Ballroom. The record he used was "Apache" [a staple of Nicky Siano's 1972-73 Gallery sets that later popularized by hip-hop "founding father" Kool Herc during his "Merry Go Round" mix of James Brown's "Give It Up Or Turn It Loose" and "The Mexican" by English prog-rock group Babe Ruth]. Talk about being amazed. The moment is forever etched in my mind. I used to say to myself I want to be like these guys when I grow up. My subsequent thought was where in the world will I get the cash to buy all that equipment (now called gear) they had?"
• Tellingly, Kool Herc views the early mobile jocks like Flowers in a more circumspect fashion. "I used to hear the gripes from the audience on the dancefloor," he recalls. "Even myself, 'cause I used to be a breaker (breakdancer). Why didn't the guy let the record play out? Or why cut it off there? So with that, me gathering all this information around me, I say: 'I think I could do that'. Although hip-hop likely would not have coalesced into a genre without the contributions of the mobile DJs -- who brought funk and early disco records to some of the most economically depreciated areas of New York City -- Flowers' affinity for mixing and beatmatching records (like the gay club DJs) separated and eventually alienated him from the later generation of cutup-oriented jocks (who creatively looped the percussive breaks instead of playing whole records). Despite this, a tape from a St. Mark's Park performance in 1979 demonstrates that Flowers had integrated certain hip-hop flourishes -- MCing, limited scratching, and a greater propensity of break-oriented records (as opposed to the four-on-the-floor metier of disco that was then in vogue) -- into his sets. Barnes corrobrates this assessment and speaks of a "battle" between Grandmaster Flash (who omitted any reference of his namesake in his recent memoir) at the Stardust Ballroom in the late 70s where "Flash was doing alot of tricks (cutting, scratching, rocking the breaks of plates [records], etc.) while Grandmaster Flowers was mixing and blending plates ([but] rocking the breaks of plates too)."
• According to Tony Smith, a peripheral DJ in the disco scene who asserts that it was possible that Flowers -- and not the canonical Francis Grasso -- was the first DJ to beat-match records, "He was the best, but he was most egotistical, too. He was a bastard. He just wasn’t nice to you. He wanted to be so exclusive. He wanted to be the best and I guess and he thought that’s the way he had to be to be the best."
• On the Ilixor boards, PappaWheelie reports that "At a lecture about hip hop history at the Brooklyn public library the lecturer was interupted, while claiming hip hop to have originated out in the Bronx, by an angry man claiming hip hop to have started out in Brooklyn. After gaing the attention of the crowd the man, whose name escapes me now, proceded to produce photos and a flyer, both dated 1968, of Grandmaster Flowers rocking a party of thousands in Brooklyn and in the front row are what appeared to be bboys uprocking. Who knows, it might just turn out to be that Brooklyn keeps on makin it and its the Bronx that keeps on takin it."

What are we to conclude from these nebulous (and seemingly improbable) accounts?

• Breakdancing began at Grandmaster Flowers' Brooklyn-based parties, which were already enjoying a considerable following by 1968. (What were they dancing to? Dyke and the Blazers? Southern soul?)
• Grandmaster Flowers was so popular among inner city audiences that he opened a stadium show for James Brown in 1969 and -- his extreme arrogance notwithstanding -- inspired numerous DJs in the five boroughs.
• Incensed by the disco tendencies of Flowers and his older brethren, a younger generation of jocks (led by breakdancer Kool Herc) began to isolate the percussive breaks in dance records. The birth pang of hip-hop.
• Flowers solidified his connections with the predominantly gay downtown party network (namely Larry Levan and Francois Kevorkian) while still playing to the putatively "declasse" inner-city audience.
• Hip-hop and dance music are so much more related than their exponents care to admit.

And that, as they say, is that.

BrooklynBio: Doc Pomus

“Viva Las Vegas”. “Save The Last Dance For Me”. “This Magic Moment”. “Young Blood”. “A Teenager In Love”. Doc Pomus was never a household name, but it would not be unreasonable to suggest that the Brooklyn native was the most important pop lyricist of his epoch, blending the ribald urbaneness of Cole Porter with a friable blues sensibility that provided the template for the innovations of Bob Dylan and the Beatles. Born into an era where “whiteness” was still very much synonymous with being of Anglo-Saxon extraction and adherence to Protestantism, it was only natural that young Jerry Felder – like future Atlantic Records chieftain Jerry Wexler across the East River – would feel more an affinity with the African-Americans migrating to Harlem or Brooklyn than the prevailing popular culture. Developing a penchant for the music, specifically blues, Felder adopted the moniker that would become his name for the rest of his life and sweated it out in Brooklyn’s scabrous – and mostly forgotten – blues clubs. His idol was the vivacious Big Joe Turner, a 40s-era stalwart who blended myriad styles (the small-combo jump blues that evolved from swing, fledgling electric blues, and just about everything else) under his devilish imprimatur.

Unfortunately, Pomus’s career was impeded by his race (while Greek-born Johnny Otis had broken the inverted blues color barrier in San Francisco, the notion of a white blues singer was risible to many blacks and whites in the early 50s), worsening post-polio symptoms (Pomus would eventually be confined to crutches, then a wheelchair), and a growing family to support. Falling in with a Francophile pianist eleven years his junior – Mort Shuman, later known for translating Jacques Brel’s oeuvre into English and collaborating with the ubiquitous Johnny Hallyday – they set up shop at the Brill Building as one of the foremost composing teams of 50s rock and roll, second only to Leiber and Stoller (who mentored the duo) in name recognition and overall import. In particular, the team developed a synergistic relationship with Elvis Presley, writing no less than 20 songs recorded by the King during his formative period; they considered their hit songs for Fabian among their greatest accomplishments, mainly because the scourge of the teen idol era was incapable of holding a tune. Pomus gradually emerged as a personality in his own right, frequently collaborating with Phil Spector on the latter’s earliest songwriting efforts.

As the virile days of early rock and roll segued into the automatonic splendor of the girl group era, Pomus and Shuman continued to draft the hits for an increasingly selective group of artists. But stagnation had set in: although he wrote vividly about “sleaze” and “juvenile delinquency”, Pomus’s annual income was upwards of $50,000 (nearly $500,000 in today’s dollars), while his wife – Broadway actress Willi Burke – enjoyed such suburban accoutrements as an oversized swimming pool. Long contemptuous of his bluesy ways – “If I had written a fifth-rate Broadway song,” he once observed, “my God, [her friends] would have been proud…” – Burke left Pomus in 1965; out of sheer coincidence, Shuman dissolved their partnership the same week, relocating to France.

The next ten years would find the good Doc – according to close friend Josh Friedman – gambling, “part of a sad Broadway underworld where high-stakes card games sometimes ended in robberies or kidnappings. He had no respect for his past work; his songs meant nothing to him. There were no rock critics back then, no awards or artistic recognition beyond his immediate comrades.” And so it went through the long hot summers of the 1970s, until Pomus and his son were nearly gunned down by the Mafia during a high roller game at the songwriter’s 72nd Street apartment in 1977. Scared into submission and spurred on by a series of retrospectives in the now-defunct SoHo Weekly News, Pomus returned to music, producing the debut album of blues revivalists the Fabulous Thunderbirds and supplying a gaggle of words to Dr. John. (Friedman insinuates that Pomus helped the New Orleans legend overcome a debilitating narcotics addiction.) While his new compositions would never top the charts – nostalgia hits by Dolly Parton and others ensured a steady income – he became an institution of New York nightlife, often spotted at the Lone Star Café.

Pomus died on March 14, 1991 at the age of 65. (“At least they can’t say I died young!” he frequently exclaimed in the years following his sixtieth birthday.) A year later, fellow Brooklynite Lou Reed would eulogize Pomus on his Magic and Loss album. His songs have reached number one on every Billboard domestic and foreign chart, and the top 40 in every decade since the 1950s.

BrooklynBio: Erykah Badu

“The Queen of Neo-Soul”, Fort Greene resident Erykah Badu has played an integral role in extricating the roots of hip-hop from the moribund and vacuous stylizations that permeated the genre throughout the mid-to-late 90s (think the P. Diddy era). Closely associated with the Soulquarian collective – Philadelphia-based “live hip-hop” ensemble the Roots (currently Jimmy Fallon’s backing band on Late Night); eccentric producer J Dilla (whose instrumental collection Donuts, recorded as he succumbed to a terminal battle with lupus, is analogous to Nick Drake’s Pink Moon in its sepulchral forbearance); and rappers Talib Kweli, Mos Def, Q-Tip, and Common (the latter of whom she dated for many years) – Badu has balanced enviable commercial success with a strident dedication to preserving artistry in one of pop’s more rapacious spheres.

A native of Dallas, Badu’s (born Erica Johnson) name reflects her Afrocentric orientation – her surname is common among the Ashanti people of Ghana, while “kah” (or “ka”) denotes the inner spiritual self in numerous African cultures. After dropping out of Grambling State University to pursue music full-time, Badu’s Country Cousins demo tape garnered attention from several labels. Throughout the late nineties, Badu enjoyed a string of hits that set the foundation for the nascent genre of neo-soul; “Tyrone”, “You Got Me” (a collaboration with fellow soulstress Jill Scott), and “On and On” were noted for their dense lyrical inscrutability and eschewal of hip-hop’s materialistic stereotypes. Nor did she shy from outright social commentary, as “A.D. 2000” – an invective against the NYPD’s handling of the Amadou Diallo incident – attested to. These factors have contributed to Badu being frequently cited as a positive role model for young African-American women.

After spending most of the 2000s in seclusion and raising a family with longtime boyfriend, rapper Jay Electronica (best known for his sampling of outré film soundtracks and infrequent release schedule), Badu has returned to the forefront of R&B with the New Amerykah series, which finds her refracting the groove-oriented spirituality of the transitional Worldwide Underground (2003) into the mordant, gritty sound that was her initial trademark. Whether taking on the establishment in an agitprop manner rarely seen these days or adding a touch of sass to the braggadocio of her male counterparts, Badu will be a formidable force – and, we hope, a proud Brooklynite – for years to come.

BrooklynBio: Iggy Pop

Since releasing his first album as a member of the Stooges forty years ago, Iggy Pop – the titular Godfather of Punk -- has acquired as much a reputation for his hard living as he has for being one of rock’s less boorish exponents (indeed, his article “Caesar Lives” appeared in the academic journal Classics Ireland some years ago). Since the Igster is such a man of open-mindedness and multitudinous talent, it should come as no surprise that his early 80s lean years included a sojourn in an exotic locale for the Ann Arbor native (nee James Osterberg)… Bensonhurst!

After trading in the doldrums of a heroin addiction in ennui-laden L.A. for clean living with David Bowie in Berlin in 1976, Pop seemed poised to break through to the mainstream with the classically off-kilter The Idiot (1977) and the shamanistic tour de force of Lust for Life (September 1977). Unfortunately, the wave of outpouring that surrounded the unexpected death of Elvis Presley forced RCA – Pop’s label at the time – to drop all extant publicity campaigns in favor of pressing more copies of Moody Blue (the King’s lamentably turgid swan song). Without any publicity or support, Lust for Life stalled on the charts, leaving Pop as dejected as he had been when Columbia failed to promote the sinuous Raw Power in 1973. Having blown yet another opportunity in his eyes, Pop spent the next few years on a shambolic never-ending tour characterized by diminishing returns, pausing only to release the intermittent album of punk-influenced dross on Arista Records.

Having reached a new critical and commercial nadir by 1982, he returned to New York City – the site of his greatest triumphs – and signed with indie label Animal Records in a prevaricative move. “After the Party tour, I was broke and I didn’t know how to get a room to live in. A roadie from that time, an Italian American, helped me to find a room… I felt very lonesome.” The apartment was in Bensonhurst, then an off-the-beaten-path Italian/Jewish enclave some 40 minutes away by subway from Pop’s stomping grounds in downtown Manhattan. (Continued displacement from gentrification, coupled with an influx of immigrants that began around this time, have seen Bensonhurst emerge as one of the most diverse and lively neighborhoods in the borough.) The solitude proved beneficial – fueled by kosher hot dogs, “good Chinese dishes”, and behemoth pasta dishes from the area’s ristorantes, the provocateur rallied to produce one of his more underrated efforts, Zombie Birdhouse. Recorded at Blank Tape Studios (an intimate space frequented by the likes of Arthur Russell and the Talking Heads) and produced in conjunction with Chris Stein of Blondie, the record successfully blends crisp new wave melodies with spoken word interludes redolent of Patti Smith and The Doors. Although seldom cited as one of his better efforts by the critical cognoscenti, the album was a definite return to form and remains a cult classic among Iggy connoisseurs.

Alas, a life of anonymity under the clangor of the West End line (then home to the B train) proved not to be an ideal fit for one of rock’s more astringent talents. The release of Zombie Birdhouse was overshadowed by David Bowie’s hit cover of the dissolute Berlin-era anthem “China Girl”, finally relieving the singer of the precarious financial straits he had known for his entire adult life. After paying off a not inconsiderable tax bill and breaking up with longtime companion Esther Friedmann, Pop established his long-term residence at the then-haute Chistodora House – reviled by many of his fans as one of the East Village’s first tangible examples of gentrification – on Avenue B and 10th Street. Although he still maintains an apartment there to this day, you’re more likely to find the rocker at his regular residence in the even more improbable environs of Miami. Pop’s latest album, the jazz and electronica-influenced Preliminaires, was released to some of the best reviews of his career earlier this week.