{"id":4706,"date":"2014-09-06T17:20:06","date_gmt":"2014-09-06T17:20:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=4706"},"modified":"2014-09-30T17:17:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-30T17:17:23","slug":"ramblin-jack-elliott-still-takes-his-audience-down-a-long-crooked-road","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=4706","title":{"rendered":"Ramblin’ Jack Elliott still takes his audience down a long, crooked road"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Photo by Ann K. Peterson<\/em><\/p>\n

At 83, Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliott might be shrinking a tad — there didn\u2019t seem too much there under the long, gray curls, the big cowboy hat and the sturdy old guitar Friday night at Milwaukee’s Shank Hall.<\/p>\n

Ah, but that leaves the timeless charm, the cavernous memory and the storytelling way with songs, and the twisting tales between them. All that still oozes at a steady, impressible rate, like Vesuvius set on medium flow. And truth is, the man\u2019s physical bearing still radiates smart charisma, in a sly smile, a mock-heroic pose, and a face that vividly collapses into a lifetime of memories and feelings.<\/p>\n

He opened with what sounded like a secularized rendition of the old, dark spiritual \u201cNearer, \u00a0My God, to Thee.\u201d After the applause he muttered, \u201cYou\u2019re not supposed to clap at that.\u201d<\/p>\n

So a packed house embarked on a mine-filled journey, even if at times the anecdotal tributaries seemed to outrun the songs. But following-him-where-he-may-go is a big part of the appeal and adventure of a Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliott performance.<\/p>\n

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Through his long career, Ramblin’ Jack Elliott has traveled far in song, story and distance. Photo courtesy of gbae.org.<\/em><\/p>\n

You encounter moments like when Elliott stopped smack in the middle of a song line — to ostensibly talk about the song — but then led us on a picaresque journey, the song left unfinished. Maybe on his next time through.<\/p>\n

He told about being on the road in 1954 with a 20-years-elder Woody Guthrie, stopping in Woody\u2019s hometown of Kansas City, where Woody ironically got abused by someone who recognized him, while Jack slept in the car. But the young Elliott was blessed, he claims. \u201cI didn\u2019t have pimples as a teenager. Back then I did everything backwards.\u201d<\/p>\n

We heard the tangled tale about the rodeo clown who gave him his first cigar for fifty-five cents, and somehow persuaded him to go back to high school, and then college, which he got partly through. Yet Jack roundaboutly ended up in \u201ca stolen whale ship boat going down the Thames River.\u201d<\/p>\n

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“Jack Elliott and Woody Guthrie,” 1961.\u00a0Photo by John Cohen, courtesy of nyphotoreview.com<\/em><\/p>\n

Or there was the Guthrie naval story about his ship being torpedoed by German U-boats, but Woody manages to save his slogan-branded guitar and his fiddle. That did lead logically to Guthrie\u2019s song \u201cTalking Sailor\u201d:<\/p>\n

\u201cThis convoys the biggest I ever did see\/it stretches all the way out across the Sea\u2026Look out, you Fascists!\/I\u2019m just one of the merchant crew\/<\/em><\/p>\n

I belong to the union called the N.M.R.\/I\u2019m union man from head to toe\/I\u2019m USA and CIO\/fighting out here on the waters\/when some freedom. On the land.\u201d <\/em><\/p>\n

Such unvarnished Guthrie politics seems anachronistic in an era where union power seems perpetually under the capitalist boot. And Elliott, virtually a pure song interpreter, seems out of step, too, when every person today with a guitar and two lungs seems also a self-proclaimed \u201csongwriter.\u201d<\/p>\n

Do we ever need a guy like Ramblin\u2019 Jack, who seems to have most of America’s folk song history in the tattered backpack of his brain. So this crowd waited for each transporting turn though time.<\/p>\n

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Photo of Jack Elliott courtesy\u00a0tadd.txt-nifty.com<\/em><\/p>\n

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We heard the old Roy Acuff train song in which, before starting in the wrong key, Jack finally hit the track and his careening falsetto caught the train\u2019s long, lonesome whistle, like a bird soaring into a slipstream.<\/p>\n

At this point in his career, besides his set break, Elliott turns the mic over for one song to his Tim Grimm, who offered a song mythologizing the storied folksinger for whom he has served as a driver for, due to Grimm’s high regard for the aging legend. But first, Grimm fiddled with Jack\u2019s instrument for a moment, then asked him, \u201cDo you ever tune this guitar?\u201d<\/p>\n

From a spot near the men\u2019s room door, Jack demurred, \u201cIt was in tune when I bought it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Of course, Elliott\u2019s musical meanderings inevitably led to Bob Dylan, whom he once influenced, and who, after hearing Jack perform Dylan\u2019s \u201cDon\u2019t Think Twice, It\u2019s All Right,\u201d said, \u201cI\u2019m relinquishing the song do you, Jack.\u201d So Elliott did it in the voices of several different people \u2013 slipping in and out of nasal mimics of Dylan at pointed spots in the trademark song of sullied romance.<\/p>\n

And yet he also flipped to Dylan\u2019s bright side, with a pulsing version \u201cI\u2019ll Be Your Baby Tonight.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Jack Elliott (right) with Bob Dylan and John Sebastian in the heady musical days of Greenwich Village in 1964. Photo courtesy the worldsamess.blogspot.com<\/em><\/p>\n

By contrast, his riveting rendition of Merle Travis\u2019 classic mining song \u201cDark as a Dungeon\u201d proved even more harrowing than his recording of it with Guy Clark — here a focused mini-opera with noirish shades of fear, blackness, rain and measured nuance.<\/p>\n

Elliott’s career has been too shambling to ever court commercial success. But eventually he’s gained recognition, from Dylan’s recollections in his biographical book Chronicles,<\/em> to a Grammy award for Best Traditional Folk Song album in 1995 for South Coast<\/em>, the National Medal of the Arts in 1998, and another Grammy, for Best Traditional Blues Album in 2009 for A Stranger Here.<\/em><\/p>\n

Through it all at Shank Hall, Elliott\u2019s guitar playing still bounced and crackled just enough to keep each song moving smartly. Of course, there was always <\/em>another story to subvert his own music-making.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you hear about the time I landed the space shuttle in Dakar? They said it was a perfect three-point landing.\u201d After a calculated pause he added. \u201cI wish I\u2019d known you then, I could\u2019ve invited you onto it.\u201d<\/p>\n

By then, he had the crowd almost in synch with his unpredictable stride. So it didn\u2019t matter that he\u2019d clearly crossed the line into fabrication. We were about ready to follow him anywhere. Even time seems to wait to hitch a ride with Elliott. Grimm said he drove Jack from Denver to Milwaukee in one day.<\/p>\n

Ramble on, Jack Elliott. Hope to see you back this way again some time.<\/p>\n

\"jack<\/p>\n

Irrepressible Ramblin’ Jack Elliott even had stories to tell for a number of fans waiting in line for him after a recent performance at Shank Hall in Milwaukee. Photo by Ann K. Peterson<\/em><\/p>\n

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  Photo by Ann K. Peterson At 83, Ramblin\u2019 Jack Elliott might be shrinking a tad — there didn\u2019t seem too much there under the long, gray curls, the big cowboy hat and the sturdy old guitar Friday night at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4706","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-www-kevernacular-com"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hJWE-1dU","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4706"}],"version-history":[{"count":25,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4778,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4706\/revisions\/4778"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4706"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4706"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4706"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}