Shaker (Remastered) David Johansen and the Harry Smiths

• 1 Furry's Blues 03:24
• 2 I'll Go With Her 04:01
• 3 Deep Blue Sea 03:41
• 4 My Morphine 06:08
• 5 Ham Hound Crave 03:15
• 6 Let the Mermaids Flirt with Me 03:41
• 7 I Can't Be Satisfied 02:42
• 8 In Love Again 03:07
• 9 Death Letter 04:04
• 10 My Grandpa Is Old Too 03:25
• 11 Jailbird Love Song 03:20
• 12 High Sheriff 03:40
• 13 Kassie Jones 06:32
• 14 The Last Kind Words 03:44
• Total Runtime 54:44

Info zu Shaker (Remastered)

David Johansen and the Harry Smiths' Shaker is more than just a tribute to great blues legends and the infamous anthologist of folk music. This work effectively brings together a profound understanding of the folk/blues genre, Johansen's own gritty style, and a band of seasoned musicians to bring an enticingly accessible creation with traces of rock and jazz sprinkled throughout. Building on the folk accuracy of their first album, Shaker elevates this artistic concept to a new level, casting another set of classic tunes that glow with a coat of that unique Johansen character.

"When one looks back at David Johansen's body of work, it's not difficult to get the feeling you're watching an actor who has slipped in and out of a number of character roles over the years; there was the trashy glam punk libertine of his New York Dolls days, the swaggering hard rock belter on his '70s and '80s solo albums, the over-the-top devotee of vintage-nightclub sounds known as Buster Poindexter, and now the grizzled bluesman who cuts pared-to-the bone acoustic sessions with his band the Harry Smiths. Shaker is Johansen's second album with the Harry Smiths, and the set list is comprised of vintage country blues classics made famous by the likes of Son House, Mississippi John Hurt, and Charley Patton (one notable exception: "My Morphine" by Gillian Welch, which fits in seamlessly into the mix). As with much of his material from the past, the theatricality of Johansen's performance is certainly evident here, though given the purposefully sparse musical arrangements of his band, it stands out in a different degree of relief; Johansen avoids an overtone of minstrelsy as he assumes the role of an aging bluesman, but ultimately he sound like an actor on-stage giving a performance as a bluesman rather than the vintage blues singer himself. That's not to say, though, that Johansen doesn't find something pure and honest in these songs; he's always been a con brio performer, and if his touch is sometimes broad, it's also passionate and sensitive, and he doesn't over-play so much as give a dramatic reading that would befit an actor who must balance restraint with the need to communicate with the last row of the balcony. The result is a collection that honors the tenor of the classic country blues recordings while adding a tone that is pure David Johansen, and not only is his delivery strong and compelling, but his voice is more supple than it has been in years, while his musicians back him up with subtle fire. While dozens of modern blues artists have stumbled while trying to re-create the sound of the past, David Johansen has taken a genuinely different approach to that idea, and on Shaker the results are impressive indeed." (Mark Deming, AMG)

David Johansen, vocals, guitar, harmonica
Brian Koonin, guitar, mandolin
Larry Saltzman, guitar, dobro, banjo
Kermit Driscoll, bass, didjeridu
Keith Carlock, drums, percussion

Digitally remastered

David Johansen
has been one of the most important musicians in American music since he was a teen in the early 1970s, with ratty hair, caked makeup, hyperlips, and a misanthroandrogynous stance, singing post heavy water blues songs like “Frankenstein” and “I’m Looking for a Kiss” with the New York Dolls.

David was the first punk rocker. The band he led inspired brief but boffo generations, including those of Sex Pistols, Ramones, Blondies, and Bowies. The Dolls never made it to the big time because, to quote one of their album titles, they were “too much, too soon.” The first time I saw them I thought they were a parody of the Rolling Stones, but they were certainly better than the Rolling Stones and therefore the first musical parody far greater than its subject.

They left the self proclaimed “world’s greatest rock and roll band” in the angel dust. David was Mick informed by Robert Johnson and Cab Calloway. His partner Johnny Thunders was raunchy, junkier, more banjily real than Keith Richards. And David was not only a superior wordsmith, he was a greater musicologist. He was a twisted combination of Noël Coward and Bo Diddley. He brought vacuum tubular blues beatitude cum panachio to classics like Bo Diddley’s “Pills” and “Bad Detective.” And he knew who Jan Murray and Phil Foster were.

Although he’s a great parodist, David has never been content to be a parody of himself for more than minutes at a time. When he tired of playing his sophisticated hard rock songs to arena morons, he reinvented himself as a bluesy cabaret entertainer roughly in the traditions of Cab Calloway, Ray Charles, Louis Prima, and Louis Jordan. When he tired of doing the Buster Poindexter schtick full-time to audiences of sophisticated drunks, David went back to the dry look and his deep roots and came up with David Johansen and the Harry Smiths. The Harry Smiths are named after the legendary artist, filmmaker, occultist, anthropologist, and collector. In 1952, Smith’s collecting resulted in the Folkways Anthology of American Folk Music, a six-LP set of music culled from his vast collection, selected by Folkways, according to Smith, “from an epistemological, musicological selection of reasons.”

This crucial set introduced to the world such voices as Blind Lemon Jefferson, Lightnin’ Hopkins, Mississippi John Hurt, and others too numerous or obscure for you to remember unless you reread this. Anyway, whenever popular music gets too insidious (see ‘N Sync) the blues come up and smack it down, which is what Bob Dylan did recently with some Harry Smith Material. And now here’s Dave doing it again, just as good, and sometimes a little bit better, with an excellent band of soulful cohorts and a voice that makes rice soft and roosters hard.

I’m not going to waste good buying and listening time describing the subtle, scintillating playing and singing on David Johansen and the Harry Smiths, except to say that it brings to life biorhythms all too often filtered out by digital thinking and bad posture. This is the real deal, from an artist who is an adept in the arts that made Freud toss in his sleep.

The Harry Smiths are a great band, comprised of Johansen’s longtime musical collaborator Brian Koonin on guitar, the brilliant rhythm section of Joey Baron on drums and Kermit Driscoll on bass (famous where it counts for their work with guitarist Bill Frisell). Larry Saltzman is heard on guitar and banjo, and Dave himself on singing, guitar, and masterful harmonica. This record was recorded live as an ensemble, not assembled part by part like a damn Porsche, but recorded in a church which is still standing, a testament to the soul here infused. If you only buy one record this year you are probably a creep, but if you are chronically delighted by the vagaries of the inflamed human spirit, I told you so. — Glenn O’Brien

Dieses Album enthält kein Booklet