Though his voice was always strong and clear, he also knew the effectiveness of singing softer to force the listener to focus intently on every line to fully grasp it all. As emotional voyeurism goes this is gripping stuff.Īrguably nobody in rock’s formative years had better vocal control than Amos Milburn, his ballad singing in particular was an ongoing lesson in the use of dynamics that by all rights should be a graduate course for aspiring singers to study.Īmos never rushes a lyric, judiciously using pauses to build anticipation for the next line. It’s a sorrowful sight for sure, but one that we can turn away from either as he seems to be floating about aimlessly in a netherworld of hazy regret, resigned to his fate and completely unaware, or unconcerned, that anybody is paying the least bit of attention to him.
Sometimes I believe this wasn’t meant for me Of course he’s not doing anything to ensure this happens, choosing instead to wallow in his own pity, silently recounting his mistakes and even going so far as to doubt he’d ever really earned the happiness he’d briefly enjoyed with this girl in the first place, as he bemoans: But WHY he did doesn’t seem to make much difference, all that matters to him is that he somehow get her back. Naturally it was a girl who put him there, as the lyrics make clear in case there was any doubt.
#Lunacy brewing full
Close your eyes and you can easily visualize Milburn in the corner of some dimly lit club as the last of the patrons are making their way to the door, the din of the night’s activities now just a fading murmur while he nurses his last of about a dozen drinks, an ashtray full of cigarette butts never out of his reach while his eyes remain at half-mast in quiet far-off contemplation. The piano that opens it is simple but remarkably evocative, sort of a staggering progression that could conceivably lead anywhere – jazz, classical, you name it – heightening your anticipation before Milburn’s voice, already weary with self-torment and frustration, enters and sets the scene of his misery ( with a title like Sad And Blue you didn’t expect it to be a party jam did you?).ĭavis’s smoky saxophone, always the measure of well-judged restraint, follows with sympathetic responsorial lines and is aided in this cause by a subtle spanish tinged guitar, the three instruments combining to create the sound of late night resignation. There’s never a credible reason to NOT want to hear a Amos Milburn record, especially when he’s just about entering his prime ( though of course at this point nobody outside his own mother would’ve gone out on a limb to dare suggest such a thing), for even at this early stage of the game it’s pretty clear he’s always got some good idea brewing under the surface, while his vocals and piano playing – along with Maxwell Davis’s sax – are all but assured of being compelling.Īnd they are here as well. You almost get the sense that things which are out of his control seem to be somehow conspiring against Milburn, preventing him from making a truly decisive statement, one which will leave absolutely no doubt as to his own vibrancy as an artist and the potential of rock ‘n’ roll in general. So now less than a month after his first release in the rock era we see Aladdin Records hastily throw another Amos Milburn single into the marketplace, one offering little or no variation on what he’s just put out and which clearly was a decision by the label that was made with no real foresight, or even an awareness of what was sitting right in front of them, a style waiting to be defined by the artist who presaged the entire rock movement a year earlier.
Such was the case with rock ‘n’ roll music in some quarters during the fall of 1947, or at least that’s how it could seem at times such as this, when one of its most promising artists was stuck in a holding pattern not entirely of his doing. Nothing seems to move so slowly as the gradual warming to an idea, especially one that is beset on all sides by deep-seated skepticism as to how legitimate and worthwhile that idea really is.
0 kommentar(er)
