#625: Scottie Miller - Carnival Cocoon (PhillyCheezeBlues.Blogspot.com)

 

2022 – Scottie Miller

By Phillip Smith; July 29, 2023

Original source : phillycheezeblues.blogspot.com

Carnival Cocoon, the latest release from Minnesota poet/pianist Scottie Miller, has me gob-smacked with amazement and delight.  This companion set features an eighty-three-page book of poetry coupled with a twenty-three track album featuring those poems eloquently set to music with a classic beat-inspired delivery.  Miller, a three-time inductee of the Minnesota Blues Hall of Fame has toured with Bo Diddley and currently tours with Ruthie Foster.  With Miller on vocals and piano, he is joined by JT Bates on drums, Jeff Bailey on electric and double bass, Cierra Alise Hill on violin 1, Bex Gaunt on violin 2, Jesse Kellerman on viola, Greg Byers on cello, and double bass.  As a bonus, there is a special appearance by Ruthie Foster.

The album opens with a flowing beat as Miller recites “Ah, New York”, a fast-passed from-the-street lyrical treat from which the title Carnival Cocoon is birthed.  I can smell the smells and hear the sounds of traffic, automotive and pedestrian both.  With “Whiskey, Coffee”, my thoughts effortlessly drift toward Tom Waits.  This track swims among my favorites.  As ear-worms go, this is the most welcome.  Hearing Miller reminisce about his days at “Berklee” certainly bring back college-days memories of my own.  “Adrenalina” lives up to its name, breaking through with staggering words and a surging riff.  The Bukowski-esque “Bleecker Street” paints a bleak vision of homeless folks and hopeless alcoholics lining the street in Greenwich Village.  An air of somberness hovers over “A Better Way to Cope” while it rings out like a long-lost Bob Dylan song.  Ruthie Foster joins along for “Stay” an anthem against injustice.  Miller vocalizes this one with a cadence reminiscent of Eminem, and tops it with a chill beat and smooth R&B hook.  “Beggar, Banker, Fisherman Pay” is nested in a Celtic tradition and beautifully performed.  The recording comes to its end suited up in full gonzo attire with “24 Hours in Mexico”.  Miller condenses a day’s worth of debauchery in Puerto Vallarta into eight minutes of freewheeling fun. 

Carnival Cocoon is an unexpected masterpiece.  It is unlike anything I have ever read or heard.  I will certainly be revisiting this one for a very long time.                       

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 For more information about Scottie Miller or to purchase Carnival Cocoon, visit his website at:  https://www.scottiemiller.com/

 

#500 : Howard Grimes with Preston Lauterbach - Timekeeper My Life in Rhythm

 

2021 – Devault Graves Books

Release Date : July 1, 2021

By Phillip Smith; May 15, 2021

 

I’ve been a huge Stax Records fan for a very long time, and I absolutely love the southern soul music which poured out of Memphis in the Sixties and Seventies.  The grooves were buttery and always inviting.  Howard Grimes, the man who created the beats upon which the Memphis sound was built, tells his story of navigating the Memphis music scene from behind the drums of the prestigious Hi Records Rhythm Section.  Written with Preston Lauterbach, who also co-wrote the recent book from Annye C. Anderson Brother Robert – Growing Up With Robert Johnson, Timekeeper makes for a most intriguing read.    

A key connection was made when Grimes, never knowing his real father, found guidance and a mentorship from Emerson Able, the Manassas High School band director who referred to the youth as a human metronome.  The world Grimes paints of his growing up in Memphis in the Forties and Fifties, is a dicey, exciting, and sometimes terrifying one filled with neighborhood juke joints, barber shops, cafes, and pool halls.  That being said, Grimes was almost always able to steer his way out of trouble, and focus on his love of playing drums. 

Grimes’ stories of starting out are so captivating, and his brushes with fame are countless.  While still in high school, he was already going on road gigs with Rufus Thomas and his crew.  The whole band, plus Ma Rainey would all be packed in a ’59 four-door Chevy with all the instruments in the trunk, and the stand-up bass fiddle running through the middle of the car from the front windshield to the rear window.  Willie Mitchell and the Hodges brothers who made up the rest of the Hi Rhythm Section are all continually mentioned throughout the book, showing just how intertwined their lives were, through the good times and the bad.  It was while traveling through Texas with Mitchell when Al Green was discovered and signed to Hi Records.  Mitchell produced Green’s record, with Grimes and the Hodge boys providing the backing.  That record became a hit, and Al Green became household name after that.     

Besides recording with top artists such as Rufus Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Al Green, Ann Peebles, Willie Mitchell, Otis Clay, O.V. Wright, and Steve Cropper, he’s backed legends Marvin Gaye and Jackie Wilson as well.  His encounters with each are  discussed.  It’s these stories which really draw me in.

Grimes also goes into deep details regarding his home-life, documenting the rocky relationship he had with his wife, and the fight that left him in the hospital with a knife wound.  Several of his friends were going through that same kind of turmoil, and he talks about how that affected things in the studio as well.  He does not sugar-coat his feelings or mince his words when it comes to telling it like it is or how it was.  His faith in God though kept him going when the going was tough.

In the end, I found it endearing that Grimes has continued to maintain contact with Able, the bandleader from high school throughout the years.  Timekeeper is a book that is hard to put down.  I already want to read it again.

 

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