Mitch Greenhill and Jack Landron on folk music history

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thanks. A Mitch Greenhill singing hand jive live at Storyfile at the Art Share, which is hosted by Lee Beck the first Thursday of every month at Art Share in the downtown arts district. Welcome to the Coon Round Report. May the peace and blessings of the life-giving creative spirit be upon you and upon your family. My name is Melvin Ishmael Johnson with my co-host Earlene Anthony, coming at you live from Skid Row Studios. Our call in number is 800-893-9562. Listen to us live or download our show and past shows by googling in skidrow.la and hit Coon Round Report. This week on the Coon Round Report, we will have a conversation with Mitch Greenhill, president of Folklore Production, about the history of folklore production, and his father, Manny Greenhill, the founder of Folklore Production. Also sitting in is the musician Jack Landron. Mitch, Jack, welcome to the Coon Round Report. Thank you, Melvin. Thank you, Earlene. Can you tell, just to start off with you, Mitch, can you tell us a little about your background and how did you become a musician? Well, I was born in New York but grew up in Boston. And at a certain point, my father, Manny Greenhill, decided that he was, his mission was to present folk music and roots music to the world. Now, this was a much more informal day than it is today. So when these musicians came to town, they would stay at our house. They wouldn't stay at hotels. So people like Pete Seeger, Reverend Gary Davis, and Lyden Hopkins, they were our, Sonny Terry, they were our house guests. And for an impressionable 13-year-old like myself, it just seemed much more interesting than anything else I could be doing. So I just spent my time learning all I could from those people who are, you know, my mentors. And I feel very blessed to have had that interaction with them. Now, did you have a particular instrument that you were studying? At that particular time? I started off with the banjo because I was very taken with Pete Seeger and the charisma of him and his banjo playing. But I switched to guitar pretty quickly. That probably was when Reverend Davis showed up. I can remember Reverend Davis just sitting on the couch at Huntoon Street in Dorchester, Lower Mills, playing the guitar hour after hour. And I would have places I was supposed to get to, and I remember once I had a date even, and I just couldn't get out. I couldn't leave, you know. I was just glued to the music. And did you ask for any hints or anything like that on playing the guitar? Sure. I would, you know, say, how do you do that? And actually, Reverend Davis is very good at breaking it down. At a certain point, a fellow named Rolf Kahn came to town, and he stayed at our house for, must have been a couple of months. And finally, he, you know, I guess my parents said, okay, you got to work off your play. Give this guy some lessons. So those were formal lessons. And Rolf would break down the music of Casey Douglas or Sister Rosetta Tharpe. I remember learning Sister Rosetta Tharpe guitar solo note by note. And that was a much more structured and formal way of learning. Mm-hmm. Yeah, Sister Rosetta Tharpe. Yeah, I'm familiar with her. I saw some old, she was great. You know, my mom took me to a concert that she did when I was, got really young, maybe 10 or something like that. And Sister Rosetta and her mother were there. And it was at Ringe Technical High School in Boston. Remember that? I remember, because it was the first time that I'd seen somebody get possessed in a, in a, I was sitting in, you know, the fourth or fifth row. And all of a sudden, this woman behind me started screaming. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I'm standing there in that photo lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp lamp Did you study music at Harvard? Not formally. The Harvard music department was very classically oriented, and I wasn't interested in classical music at the time. Now, knowing what I know now, I probably should have taken a little more advantage of it. I took a couple of music courses, but I spent most of my time across the street at the Club 47, which was the place where the traditional musicians came. I was looking at a calendar at the Club 47, the other day, and I'm on the calendar. My buddy Jack Landron is on the calendar. Muddy Waters is on that calendar. Reverend Davis is on the calendar. The Paul Butterfield Blues Band. It's astonishing how much music, the staple singers. It's astonishing how much music came through our lives at that time. Just a very high-quality music. And music, and this is, I think, the thing that's maybe not as prevalent today, is music that was connected to, a tradition and a certain place and time. I guess, you know, today, music is everywhere. And so it's less specific and less rooted in a certain experience. And I think that's one of the things that Folklore Productions has tried to do, is to keep the flame burning of music that relates to a specific culture, a specific place, and a specific time. Not that it can't be shared. It can be shared. But it's, you know, it's in a sense, the more specific it becomes, the more universal it becomes. And I also want to mention that we got sitting in here, Jack Landrum also sitting in here. I want to hear from him in a moment. But let me ask you this. How much have the internet changed the whole nature of music? You know, let me tell you a story. When I was 16 years old, I became very interested in a blues singer named Barbecue Bob. He was from Georgia. He played 12-string guitar. Barbecue Bob. Barbecue Bob. And I, you know, he just kind of got to me. And so, but I couldn't, there was nothing available. And finally, I heard about in New York City, which was 200 miles away, if I went to the certain record store and, you know, said the magic word or whatever it was, I could buy for $20, this is, you know, 1959, 1960, you know, $20. I could buy not an album, but a, what did you call them, an acetate recording. Now, an acetate recording, you can play maybe 10 times and then it's unplayable. It's worn out. So I got this $20 acetate of Barbecue Bob and I knew I had only, you know, 10 listens in it. So I listened in a way that I can't anymore. You know, I listened really carefully. Now I can get on the internet. Actually, I haven't tried to look up Barbecue Bob on the internet. It'd be interesting to see if he's there. But I can hear music, you know, from anywhere around the world. So I find that that's wonderfully satisfying. It's rewarding to be able to do that. But I've lost the ability to listen as if my life depended on it. So that, I think, is the way the internet has changed. Jack, what do you think? Well, first of all, tell us how the two of you met. And then can you talk about how the internet have changed the music? What do you think it have changed the way people listen to music? Well, I came to folk music from a completely different path. I was born in Puerto Rico and I lived in Roxbury, Massachusetts, which was predominantly black neighborhood and in Puerto Rican, West Indian. And I heard what the white kids in Harvard Square were calling music all the time. I mean, my family and family gatherings, Aguinaldo's and Puerto Rican music was played. But just walking through the streets, I would see those posters, which I used to love. They would be purple and gradated in different colors. It would say Clara Ward and the singers or Sunny Till and the Orioles and all those. One hope. I mean, there were posters and they were all the people were always sitting tilted to the side, you know, and I love that. And you could hear Sister Rosetta Tharpe. You could hear that blaring out of out of stores, windows and whatnot. And everybody in my family spoke Spanish. But my grandmother was from what was called the Danish West Indies. I think that was St. Thomas. I'm not really sure where it was, but when she spoke English. She spoke like that, you know, she talking all the time. And the first time I ever hear her talking, my mother had gone to the hospital to have what would have been my sister. She died in childbirth. But she came. My grandmother came in my mother's place up to the school. And she said she was there because her mother having a baby and was the first time I'd ever heard her speak English and I was mortified because she sounded like that. But as I grew older, I I loved the calypso. I loved the the music that my friends would play. The rhythm and blues were Ruth Brown, the the Clovers and all those all that music, which was. I mean, just part of my life. And when I got to college. One and we were very bourgeois, I should say, and one day a few of my friends and we decided we heard that there were these folk music clubs, these coffee houses down there when they were all these loose white women who were, you know, like, hey, they were dancing around with no bras on and everything we got to go down there. So we went to a place called the Golden Vanity and we walked in. It was a wild scene. They had all these kegs that were larger kegs where the table and smaller kegs were the seats and you'd sat around and sawdust on the floor. And there were people closing their eyes and snapping their fingers to music. And it was just. It was incredible to us. We were sitting around there and we're having drinks. They had coffees and ciders and teas and stuff. We're drinking this stuff. And when the time came for, you know, they raised their eyebrows. We didn't have the money, but it was it was a hootenanny night. A hootenanny was an open mic and I got up and sang. I didn't play the guitar. The owner of the club, Freddie Basler, accompanied me. And. I sang a couple of clips, those and. Made of, you know, played the fool and people enjoyed me. So they asked me to come back. And little by little, I was in a folk music scene. I didn't know, you know, but like I had. The beginnings of a repertoire and the gift to gab and one. They started booking me there and I would play. And one night, Manny Greenhill came in and. He liked me. And he said, yeah, you got something that you. But by that time I had started playing a guitar badly. And he said to me, yeah, but you got to do something about that guitar. And I said, well, what should I do? He said, well, my son can teach you. And so I had an apartment then and I remember this little kid coming over with a guitar and be trying to be very professional. I don't even think his voice had. Changed and he walked in and started giving me lessons, which was not only the beginning of my learning how to play guitar, but it was a beginning of a friendship that's gone on for how many years? 50 more and more than 50. Oh, it can't be. I'm only 28. But that's amazing. And that's how you met me. Yeah, you met Manny before you met me. Yeah. OK, well, Jack was kind of an older, the older brother. He never had in a sense. You know, I was the older brother in my family. And but Jack, you know, he had his own apartment. I actually saw women going in and out of there at various times. And, you know, he seemed very suave and sophisticated and plugged into a whole lifestyle that I envied. And so I latched on. Can you talk about let's talk about the founding of Folklore Production. Can you talk about that for a minute? Well, I think was it outside? We're talking about that Pete Seeger concert. My mind is a permeable membrane. My dad was my dad had gotten into what we call folk music through his union activities in New York, where he would hear Pete Seeger and Woody Guthrie and some of the old labor music. A lot of those labor songs were old folk songs that were where the words were changed. Which side are you on? You know, it used to be. You know, about the devil or the righteous path that turned out to be about the scabs or the righteous path. Which side are you on in this? And so we went out the family or my my my mother, my father, my sister and I went out to Tanglewood in Western Massachusetts to hear a concert by the Weavers. Pete Seeger's old group, probably one of their last concerts, at least with Pete in it. And afterwards, my dad and Pete had a long conversation. And Pete said, I'm trying to start this solo career. I get these bookings and people say they're going to present me. But then these right wing organizations object to me because of my politics. And the promoters bail, they won't go through with it. And my dad said, no, no, I won't bail. Let's let's do it. And a few months later, Pete Seeger shows up at the house with his. His wife, Toshi, who just passed a few months ago, and I think maybe their kids, Tina and Danny. And and Pete Seeger gave a sold out concert at at Symphony Hall in Boston. Sonny Terry was the great harmonica player, was a special guest. And during the afternoon, Pete and I went ice skating. And, you know, he's in his nineties now. Whenever I meet him, he remembers. That's what he remembers. He he doesn't recognize me. You know, he still thinks I'm 14 or something like that. He remembers going ice skating. And that basically was the start. That was the. That was the successful concert. It wasn't the first concert. My dad had presented his his guitar teacher, Josh White, a couple of months earlier. But that was the one that kind of put us over, put us on the map. And from there, there were Odetta came and did a concert. She was a regular house guest. And one thing led to another. And it was it was largely at that time, folklore productions was a presenting organizations presented concerts when it was also language press. Well, that was the. The the company that that was kind of that was the day job in a sense that Manny Hattie had come to Boston to establish this agency to represent foreign language newspapers, you know, I remember working at language press as a teenager, calling up and saying, hey, you're ready to advertise in the Pulaski Day issue of the Polish Daily Journal, the structure of the of the thing. But at a certain point, Manny, who was always very political, went to a meeting of the committee for a sane nuclear policy and heard a physicist named Al Baez give a talk. And then when Al finished talking, he introduced his teenage daughter, young gal by the name of Joan Baez. And, you know, she was very impressive. And a few months later or a year later, Al, then Joan started working at the Club 47 and developing quite a following. And Al got it. He was his teaching gig at Boston University was over and he was, you know, going somewhere else. But Joan wanted to stay in Boston and pursue her career. So Al asked Manny to look after look after my teenage daughter. And that that was a 14 year old, a 14 year management relationship. And that was the start of a folklore as a as a management operation. Wonderful, wonderful. Can you tell me also actually of this, can you talk? Well, you know what? Let's play some music. OK. Let's let's let's let's play the first thing. New. OK, this is new. This is a it's I wouldn't even call it a folk song. This is a jazz tune that that Django Reinhardt composed. And we're going to hear actually, I guess we're jumping ahead a little bit. This is my my group now called String Madness. I work with an all instrumental, all acoustic band called String Madness. And this is one of the tunes that we find really deep and we get into its Django's new age, which was his big hit during the while the Germans were occupying Paris, actually. OK, new.!!! And nuance, can you talk about talk a little about this, the history behind that? But just a moment. Well, it's first place. I got to say that this is a song that I could play every day and the rest of my life and never get to the bottom of it. There's something really mystical about this. This tune, I thought it was kind of interesting that, as I say, it was Django's big hit, the Germans were occupying Paris. Django was a Roma and many of his compatriots were being sent to concentration camps. But it was the height of Django's popularity. He was the toast of Paris. And this song was a big hit in the in forty three. And it was kind of. Appealed to both the occupiers and the occupied alike. I don't know where that comes from. Nineteen forty three. Let's play another song called All Blues and talk about it for a while. Well, of course, that's the Miles Davis tune. Miles Davis put out this album, Kind of Blue. Where was that? The late class, I guess, in which he kind of, you know, deconstructed bebop. You know, it kind of had gotten to the point where bebop had become so fast and so complex. Miles himself, I think, is quoted as saying, I can't keep up with the chords of the. Mm hmm. So when he did the the Kind of Blue album, the if you look at there's a there are photos of the charts that he had and the charts are just a few lines long and basically their modes. And this is kind of the start of modal playing in jazz. But he's still very blues oriented. OK.!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OK, let me ask you a couple of questions now. What is folk music? Let's talk about that for a while. Can you? Well, that's some matter of some dispute. I take a broad view of folk music. I think that broad folk music would encompass hip hop or certainly, you know, Cajun, Zydeck music as we were talking. I find it's I think it's a living music of a specific culture. Now, in terms of what we generally I mean, a lot of what we call folk music is basically singer songwriters material. And a lot of what the term was, the term, I think, was really invented in the 40s during the labor song movement. And then the Lomax is going down and recording music of the of the South. But it's kind of I guess what it isn't is kind of mass produced cookie cutter music. It's it's music that it's got a personality. It's got a, you know, a point of view. Well, what would you say, Jack? I have a slightly different definition. I think folk music is the music that people make before it becomes a business. And I think that we sort of missed a step here because the things that we've been listening to that Mitchell plates and nicely music is the continuum. And when people had nothing but a couple of rocks and things to bang together and make a rhythm and then make some words up, that is what I consider a folk song and people in jail and in chain gangs. And it takes a rock and a gravel. Well, that's a folk song, right? But when it becomes something that you do for money, I mean, you play the dancers, they hire somebody to come in and play a little song. It becomes a little bit more sophisticated and more studied. And a person like Mitchell, who has a very, very strong basis in folk music, is naturally interested in where did music go? And he can see the origin in something as sophisticated as as as new. So music has come to wherever it is now. But it all starts in folk music and in whatever people do when words just don't suffice. You want to express something. Your love of God. Your whatever it is. Boom. You just start singing. So it's similar to the history of gospel music and all of that is gospel music. Well, I mean, the folks in white folks in the South have gospel music to black people have gospel music and they differ, but they come from the same place in their heart and so that they they want to sing their joy, their devotion or whatever. And that is the impetus for any kind of folk music. I think. You want to sing your trouble. You want to sing your desire. You want to sing your your sorrow. And that is what folk music is. It's the first song that you ever sang. But when you get a little bit, you know, you're living not on the farm, you're living in an apartment like, you know, like you want to hear some a little bit more sophisticated and, you know, you want to have some horns and stuff behind it so music goes there. But folk music is the basis of everybody's music. And so maybe. I'm going to play a cut of Bessie Jones and the Sea Island Singers. I might illustrate something. Way down yonder on the east coast line They aint served by the gallop They aint meat by the pound They aint bread by the pound They aint bread by the pound They aint bread by the pound And if I wasn't you And you wasn't me I'd stop resting And I'd shake it back Shake it to the east, shake it to the west Shake it to the very one you love the best Way down yonder On the east coast line They aint served by the gallop They aint meat by the pound They aint bread by the pound They aint And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back And I'd shake it back So that's kind of using like hip-hop techniques, but the sounds were actually sounds that Tom Jenkins, who's actually a visual artist and a performance artist, made with his lathe, you know, and then we kind of put it together in a... But to me, I see the connection there, you know. What about... Let me ask you this first. How do country and western, what is that relationship to folk music? Is that considered folk music also? Yeah, I would think so. You know, maybe not the most commercial ends of it, but let me see. Somebody like, you know, Merle Haggard, I think there's great stuff going on there. It's... I think it's... Yeah, I mean, it is kind of... There's certainly a direct line from the music... The music of the mountains, you know. Folklore productions in general, and me in particular, I in particular have a long relationship with the late Doc Watson, who died last year. And Doc, you know, grew up in a holler in western North Carolina. He once told me, if my uncle hadn't sold my dad the car, I don't know when I'd ever got to town. And he was talking about Boone, which was 10 miles away, you know. But at a certain point, he started listening to the Grand Ole Opry, and that was kind of taking the music from... Actually, maybe I should play a little of Doc. That might be a good way of getting into that. Here's Doc. Well, let's just play Doc and do it in a couple of fiddle tunes. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. No. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Actually, if that is Doc playing the mandolin, I actually didn't know him play the mandolin that much. But that's kind of where, you know, you can hear kind of where that comes. That was... Well, I wanted to say one thing that I think is very important. I think that, first of all, folk music is music that evolves. Commercial music is music that is written to produce an effect. But I think that you can't... Pete Seeger has a song that says, The wind mixes dust from every land and social man. I think that that is true in music because American music, as a matter of fact, the music of the world owes a great debt to the African, especially in this country. White people tended to count their music on one and three. By that I mean, take a song like, Do lord, oh do lord, oh do remember me, oh lordy do... Black people, the slaves that came here, noticed that English is mostly on the first syllable, like window, table, you know, the first... And that was just too confining. So they would go, hear music on the two and the four. So instead of, Do lord, oh do... It was, Do lord, oh do lord... It gives you more room. And you can really get off on whatever it is you're trying to put into the music, what it is you're trying to express. And Western music, as a matter of... Music of the world, except for a lot of Eastern things, are now on the two and four because African music or languages, like Spanish, in English it's, in Spanish it's, it's next to the last syllable. So having the accent of the words on the same beat as the music was kind of confining to the slaves. You couldn't really express how horrible or how happy you were or how bad you felt as much as you could if it was on the offbeat. You know, you heard it in the Bessie thing that we were playing a minute ago. And I think that's very important to what the music is today because everything that we see young people doing is on the offbeat, it's on the two and the four, rather than, boom, on the same beat that the language is on. That's interesting. Look, let's play another song, then we take a break from our community calendar, and then we'll come back with more. Let's do this song, Thinking of Leona. Well, Leona, Leona was my mother. Oh. guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo Okay, Mitch, can you talk about that? You was getting ready to tell us about Leona. Well, Leona was my mother who passed a few years ago. Made many a pot roast for Jack for the years. And String Madness, whom we heard playing, in addition to myself, the players are Bob Applebaum, who's kind of a world-class mandolin player, and Peter Spellman, who wrote that song. And Peter knew my mother, just towards the end of her life, when she, frankly, didn't have all her marbles, but still had a wonderful personality. And Peter just was thinking about her one day and laid out that line, which has become one of the songs that we always play. And I feel it's kind of a gift Peter gave me, because I'll be on stage with String Madness, and I can spend this time actually focusing in on my mother and thinking about her qualities. That's beautiful. Beautiful. Let's take a break for our community calendar, and then we'll come back with our two distinguished in-studio guests. This is the community calendar for the month of October. Tuesday, October 29th. This is in a continuing fundraising event leading up to the stand-down in November. Drama Stage Coon Run Veterans Community Theater Workshop presents, The Son of Play Reading Series. We will be doing scenes from Surviving the Nickel and Nailhead. They're both written and directed by Melvin Ishmael Johnson. At 7 p.m., we will have the meet, greet, and mixer. At 8 p.m., the performance of a special guest, spoken word artist and singer, Tasha Asset. This is a free event and free parking. All are welcome to attend. The location is the Vortex 2341 East Olympic Boulevard. This is at the corner of Santa Fe and Olympic. The Metro Bus No. 60 and 66 stops at the corner. For contact information, DramaStage1 at Yahoo.com or 213-479-1764. Upcoming guests on the Coon Run Report, Monday, October the 21st, will be OG and Company, talking about the three-on-three basketball and the Skid Row clothing line. Also joining us will be Tasha Asset. We're asking you to save these dates. Saturday, November the 16th, 8 a.m. to 3 p.m., the second annual Downtown Los Angeles Stand-Down for Veterans. The location, the Vortex 2341 East Olympic Boulevard. That's in Los Angeles. And if you or your organization would like to participate, contact Judith Bowman at nomoretimetowrite at gmail.com or 626-703-1230. We will be announcing more information about this event. Also, Saturday, November the 16th at 8 p.m., Public Work and Provincial Theater present Mitch Greenhill and Jack Landrum. They will be in concert. And the location of the concert will be the Art Share, 801 East 4th Place, Los Angeles. This is in the Art District in Little Tokyo. Free parking is available. And for a ticket and more information, you can contact Lee Beck at Public Work, improv.com, or 323-330-5448. There are other events that Mitch Greenhill will be having in the month of November that I will be announcing on a later date. If you have a community event that you would like announced on our show, send the information to drama stage 1 at yahoo.com, attention Earlene Anthony. A reminder, the call-in number for the show is 800-893-7000. That's 800-893-9562. Now back to our host. Okay, thank you, Ms. Earlene Anthony. We're back with our in-studio guests, Mitch Greenhill and Jack Landrum. We also have a call on the line. Who are we speaking with? Here is speaking to Rashad, while Lee Muhammad Johnson. Okay. Peace and blessings be upon you. Oh, Rashad. What? Oh, that's not. My. Brother called us. Yeah. Yeah. Rashad, where you been? Yeah. How y'all doing? Oh, fine. What are you calling from Las Vegas, huh? Yeah. Yeah. I'm calling from Las Vegas. You're listening to the show? Oh, definitely. Yeah. We're going to have to hook up. Man, I'm going to give you a call when I leave here, man. So glad to hear from you. Yeah. I wanted you to call me. Yeah. I was just wondering, that's on a question on a concept. Well, divide and conquer. Uh huh. To me, that's one of Satan's biggest tricks. You know, Mm hmm. Between. There's also deal with sex, people's nations and everything else, you know? Mm hmm. Not only to divide and conquer, but once they conquer, they can divide. Mm hmm. So that's the that's the position. I see many nations. Then I've seen, uh, with many religions. I am. Mm hmm. Well, I think. Do. Yeah. A great question. And I'm hoping that we as a society is moving in them in a direction where we can unify. You know, we I think we got our government is divided right now. You know, that's affecting the majority of the people in this country now about having a gut with the government shut down by the two major parties that can't come together. But hey, we'll get a chance to discuss. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'll try to make it there one day soon. We should talk again soon. Don't forget to call me back. Okay. I'll do that. And thanks for calling in. All right. Salaam alaikum. Walaikum assalam. Much love. Love you. Love you. That reminds me of this song. Maybe we could have time for a few moments from Blind Willie Johnson about everybody ought to treat a stranger right a long way from home. Mm-hmm. Everybody ought to treat a stranger right a long way from home Everybody ought to treat a stranger right Ain't no way to get from home Careful of how you treat a stranger Why be lyin' to turn him away Why be fear that you may obtain Why you drive him from your gate Everybody ought to treat a stranger right a long way from home Everybody ought to treat a stranger right Oh, man, that sounds like my church that I come up in. There's a lesson there, huh? Who is that? That's Blind Willie Johnson. Mm-hmm. And who is that female in the background? Mrs. Blind Willie Johnson. Woo, that sounds good. For the moment. That's great. Yeah, yeah. Okay, let's, uh, uh, man, that is, that's beautiful. Sorry about that. Beautiful. That, uh, uh, how would you classify that type? Would that fit within gospel folk music? I'd call that gospel music, gospel and folk music. I mean, it's also, Blind Willie, in addition to, obviously, being a powerful singer, was a, um, a slide guitar player of great renown. Um, and actually, that, that reminds me, that reminds me of, uh, the Campbell Brothers, who are, um, this, we, we, at Folklore Productions, we represent the Campbell Brothers and their slide guitar masters. This is a, uh, tradition that's called sacred steel. There's, um, the, what's the, there's a, a, a sect in Florida, especially, that where instead of an organ, they use a steel guitar. And, uh, I think it actually comes pretty much straight out of, uh, out of, out of, out of, um, let me hear what, what we got to say about the Campbell Brothers. The Campbells are, uh, actually involved in a, Lincoln Center has, uh, commissioned them to re, uh, visit John Coltrane's A Love Supreme next year, on his 50th anniversary, with steel guitars. Can you imagine that? I feel good, good, good I feel good, oh yes, my Lord Something by the name of Jesus It makes me feel, feel good I feel good, good Good, oh yes, my Lord Something by the name of Jesus It makes me feel real good guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo guitar solo I feel good I feel good I feel real good I feel real good I feel real good I feel real good I feel real good I feel real good I feel real good I feel real good I feel real good I got to get my music together. Wow. That's my type of music, man. But I wouldn't want to, you know, neglect my own Jewish heritage. Now, let me play you a little bit of the klezmatics playing Shnurla Pirula. Shnurla Pirula Ah Ah Shnid eleferele, gildene fon, Mashiach ben duvid, zid tuin non, E halta becher in derechter hand, Machta broche af en ganzen land, Amen be, amen, dos is vor, Mashiach vet kumen haintiz yor, Amen be, amen, dos is vor, Mashiach vet kumen haidafen mir, Mashiach shnid eleferele, gildene fon, Mashiach ben duvid, zid tuin non, E halta becher in derechter hand, Machta broche af en ganzen land, Amen be, amen, dos is vor, You know one thing that I think is also important is that there is a relationship between Black American music and Jewish music. They made sadness, their entertainment. You give me nothing but the bowels of a pig and I will make chitlins. You give me nothing but sadness and I will make the blues. It will be my entertainment. You cannot defeat me. And those Jews that were in little cellars trying to pray, they went to the same thing that the slaves did. They went to the two and the four that I was talking about before. Bum, bum, oi, bidi, bidi, bum, bum, bim, bum, bum. They're on the two and the four and that gave you a chance to dance off, you had troubles. And that was one thing that Manny Greenhill and I connected on. The universality of music. He came from a Jewish tradition and I came from, although Puerto Rican, it was still an Afro experience. And I saw the connections and he was able to connect those things for me in a way that were meaningful for me. Because we, Mm-hmm. We all seem to do the same things within the confines of our own cultural environment. But we're all doing the same thing. We're trying to be happy, trying to live our lives well. I think there's a Jewish tradition of being touched by black music and black experience. Does it go back beyond Gershwin? But Gershwin was one of the first guys who did it. Mm-hmm. Okay, we got about two minutes and I want to give us some final comments. And then I want you to close us out with a song that you picked. Let me say, let me give the thanks first. I would like to extend a special thanks to Mitch Greenhill, Jack Landron, our special in-studio guest, my co-host Earlene Anthony. Please listen to past shows of the Qumran Report on iTunes, Facebook, Stitcher, and skidrow.la. Thank you for tuning in to the Qumran Report from your host, Mel B. I'm your host, Melvin Ishmael Johnson. May the peace and blessings of the life-giving Creator Spirit be upon you, upon your family. Turn it over to Mitch Greenhill, the final word, and he's gonna close us out with a song. Well, I do hope that everybody will show up at Art Share on November 16th, when Jack Landron and String Madness will be kicking out the jams. String Madness also has a gig the weekend before, November 10th, at Westwood Music in Westwood. We love the music, we love you all, we want to bring them all together. Okay. Here's a tune by, we were talking briefly about Louisiana music, here's a Cajun tune by the Pine Leaf Boys called Mon Coeur Fait Mal, My Heart Feels Bad. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh.! guitar solo solo solo solo