Tan Songbook

Tan Songbook. An alternative title for this post would be Concertina Man. I put these songs together over several years, then realized in about 2007 that I had a set--the basic song list for VS185X Songs & Places: American Roots. A good number of them come from the published collection, Rise Up Singing, but that volume was much too elaborate (including some Beatles, Broadway show tunes, etc.) and I wanted the focus here to be (my own vision of?) American folk music. Beginning with Down in the Valley and You Are My Sunshine--two poles in the American consciousness, and both involving a combination of love and loss. (Maybe all love songs work this way?) The clumps of songs move through the American landscape, following the frontispiece map from one of the early Lomax collections (songs by region) but also allowing for authorship and personality (Woody Guthrie, Leadbelly, Mississippi John Hurt) and theme (Cowboy Songs, Railroad Songs, Sea Shanties). Plus Spirituals and Blues. About 30 titles overall, corresponding to the CD that we put together (with Anthony Bello, who helped me in organizing that first S&P class). All can be found online at http://anthonydubovsky33.blogspot.com/

Right alongside (partly visible) is our Gray Songbook, which included more recent tunes along the same lines--for example, Rivers of Babylon, and Bob Dylan's He Was A Friend of Mine and Kingsport Town--still two of my favorites. Sometimes starting a new class with the Dylan would somehow provide a bridge back into the older songs, less familiar to kids today. Which makes sense, because that's what Dylan himself had done in writing them. Or maybe they're just great songs!

Again, an alternative title for this post would be Concertina Man--because of the drawing. It came from one of my Analects--clipped out and collaged onto the cover. (The Tan and the Gray Songbooks have different versions of this drawing.) It was always one of my favorites--maybe because it seemed the most true. In part because of the bare feet and flip-flops (an Oceanside childhood) but also that raised toe--which took me to Guilin in 2003, the boat journey down the Li Jiang, and all the old Chinese poems. In some sense, every time I made one of these concertina drawings I also became part of that line of Taoist wanderers...

I always wondered whether anybody got this--or if it simply seemed an act of ego to put my own picture on the cover?
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My brother Peter's songwriter friend, Jack Tempchin, told me a story once, about why he'd play his raunchiest R&B songs on a cheap Stella guitar, the one with the with the dodgy sound-hole pickup. He said that was the only way they sounded right. Jack, by that point, could afford any guitar he wanted, but nevertheless, he'd take the Stella and  perform occasionally on corners in downtown San Diego--just this older guy with guitar, playing on the street for change...

After Peter died, in 1999, I took my concertina to the Calypso, where he'd always enjoyed playing. (A truly delightful restaurant-bar on the coast in North San Diego County, run by French father and son, Henri and Gilles.) Jack was playing there, together with Peter's old group. I remember that first night--when at one point they did Corinna, Corinna, which I knew, of course, but it was unclear if the key would work, so I ducked outside to try a few notes--and sure enough, they were playing it in C...

Played with them many times after, always to the side--just my single lines of notes, on the concertina... Something of Peter's spirit, perhaps...


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