She's been teaming with Ry on and off all year, performing her father's songs after being convinced by Ry that she should give up her 40-year reluctance to do his music. In the program notes Rosanne talks of shedding the reluctance. As much as not many people get to Carnegie twice, not many children of stars get to be their own star.
We've already noted Rosanne is a New Yorker. She reminded the audience that her favorite gig is getting on an N train and in 20 minutes being at Carnegie. I rode the same train she did because my wife and I came up from the Greek restaurant Periyali on West 20th Street. I'm sure she took the train a little earlier than we did. She has a brownstone somewhere in the Chelsea area and has lived in the city now for nearly 30 years.
I halfway wondered if she might make a comment from the stage. But she didn't. She was smart enough to keep politics out of the evening. She let Ry do it for her. Ry Cooder, on the other couldn't resist talking about the photos in the dressing room. My guess it was his first Carnegie appearance.
He mentioned the Pete Seeger photo and that the DAR once kept him from performing at Carnegie, and that "thankfully, we no longer have the problems like that." It was of course a joke, but I was surprised at how few people seemed to get it. I'm not sure they even knew who Pete Seeger was. Or what the DAR is.
The DAR is of course the Daughters of the American Revolution, and is solid right-wing organization, Pete being left-leaning and a former member of the Communist Party, was considered persona non grata. He did prevail, and eventually did get to perform at Carnegie in what is now a historic June 1963 concert.
Rosanne nearly arranged for her own upstaging. With Ry Cooder and husband John Levanthal's guitar playing Rosanne was almost reduced to being a member of the audience.
Hardly being an expert. but Ry might have been a bit over-amped when he was filling in the part of singing John's lyrics. And sometimes Ry forgot to be plugged in, or it slipped out, but no one seemed to mind, especially when Rosanne, certainly used to being on stage when slip-ups occur, told the audience, "at least you can't say we're over rehearsed."
In her 2016 appearance, Rosanne alluded to a musical that she and her husband John were working on. I think they then might have performed a song from their project. The program notes tell us they are working on music and lyrics to 'Norma Rae,' with the book by John Weidman.
Roget Miller wrote an award-winning score for 'Big River: The Story of Huckleberry Finn' that was on Broadway. Norma Rae is a story of a union organizing textile worker in the South. Maybe they'll borrow a Woody Guthrie song. Union Maid would certainly fit.
In the program notes, Rosanne explained her reluctance to perform her father's songs. She told the Boston Globe, "I refused to do 'I Walk the Line' on [the first show]. I thought it was too much. I just can't walk into my dad's territory that far."
To me, Rosanne has the most expressive hands. Her fingers create a spirituality when she points upward, or outward while performing. I don't know how long her fingers are, but even from the back of house in row X they seem to grow from her hands.
Between John and Ry's guitar playing they created a new way to hear Johnny's chestnuts. There was sonic force to the live music coming from the stage. When they introduced a song with a lead-in you couldn't tell where it was going. But you did find out. It you came to hear Johnny, you should have stayed home and played records. This was coming to hear his music.
Of all the numbers, I wasn't familiar with 'Cotton Pickin' Hands.' Rosanne explained that her father never glamorized the drudgery of picking cotton growing up. But the song is so lively I was wondering if the melody was 'Skip to My Lou'. It is not.
In most concerts I've attended, Rosanne mentions "The List" her father gave her of the 100 country songs that she should know of, or sing. One concert I was at Rosanne talked of "The List" and said the next song, Bobbie Gentry's 'Ode to Billie Joe' belonged on the list. Rosanne even recorded a fairly recent album titled 'The List.'
Coincidentally or not, just before the concert, the WSJ ran a story in its weekend edition about the to-do lists of 10 famous people, and square, front and center, was her father's famous handwritten list that lead off with "Not Smoke, ahead of the second reminder: "Kiss June," his second wife. For whatever reason, Rosanne didn't mention the Journal's acknowledgement of putting her father's to-do list first.
There were no fanfare trumpets, but John, Ry and Rosanne performed the song like it was never performed before. It was a sonic force of nature, with Rosanne's hands keeping you from meeting the Devil.
The reluctance to sing 'I Walk the Line' has melted away, and Rosanne did perform the song. In the Ken Burns recent documentary of America's country music, Rosanne explained that the song— about marital fidelity, written by her father in 1956 when he felt he needed to keep his devotion to his first wife Vivian, her mother—Rosanne wistfully adds that well, we all know "that didn't happen." Daughters know their fathers better than they know themselves. And probably forgive more.
Johnny walked his line, and parallel to it, Rosanne walks hers. And we get to enjoy it.
http://www.onofframp.blogspot.com
No comments:
Post a Comment