The Story of Therapy Dog Tails 484
Where Everyone Gets a Dose of Puppy Love
BACKGROUND 237: Ohio Sabbatical 18
July, 1988
Eric Clapton, Crossroads
Polydor 835 261-2 - 4 discs [1988 - LS] / Gift from Day School teachers
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I remember the day I got this. It was at the last teachers’ meeting of the year, which would have been July 1988 and it was known that I wasn’t coming back to The Day School. They sprang this on me at that meeting and I was happy for it. I think Zulakis picked it out but all (or most) of them kicked in. It wasn’t as good as the baby shower they surprised me with but it was nice nonetheless. I had taught there for 6 years - the first 3 as an English teacher & the last 3 as a math teacher. I was probably a better math teacher but my teaching deteriorated after each first year. I was a good teacher the first year I was there but not so good the next 2. Then the change to math revitalized me and since math was much easier and required much less preparation, I was a better math teacher but I wasn’t a great teacher in either subject. Josie and Eve were probably both better English teachers (which may be why Dexter suggested that I change rather than that one of them change - also each of them had political aspirations that I didn’t have) and Janice DeLuca was certainly a better math teacher than I was. But nobody was better with children than I was. I had the year book dedicated to me in my 5th year there because I paid more attention and gave more respect to children than any other adult (with the possible exception of Greg, who was like me in that he was better with the kids than he was with his subject and had no teaching ambitions whatsoever). I provided the best example to kids because I was someone who was happy and seemed to be more than just a teacher.
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Teachers have the problem of trying to get kids to be more than teachers, which is not a job that gets a lot of respect, especially in an age where Michael Jordan is a hero and for no other reason than that he has been able to turn himself into the ultimate money generating machine. Rap music has taken these values to an extreme and justified it with racism. Blacks have been denied the material reward of the world for so long that it is now okay for them to take the money and run. In fact, anyone who doesn’t take the money in any way that he can and run as far and as fast as possible is a fool. Making money is increasingly the standard value of our society. Acting on principle is now as esoteric a concept as the conflict of interest. If you are are a teacher because you are a woman and you want to earn a little extra money for the family, which is often the case, you have a built in rationalization. If you are a man and are the primary source of income for your family, you must be crazy. This is also what Dr. Marx always thought of me and is why I don’t like to even see that guy. The only thing he cares to know is how much money you’re making and if you are a teacher, you can’t be making much.
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But at The Day School, at least I was something more than a teacher and that was good. I was able to gain the respect of the students for other reasons. I was a musician and a basketball player, which was very impressive to kids. I also had been around the world and had a wife who was better looking than the average teacher’s wife. Having a beautiful wife is superficial, of course, but it is also something that can’t be denied. It is a sad fact of life that physical beauty counts and I, too, was not as good looking as Luz but relatively all right. Luz didn’t make many appearances there but I’m sure she was remembered. I’m sure she was a topic of conversation as much with the kids as with the other teachers whenever she did come around.
Note: That was a great going away present. Jim knew exactly what I’d want but I was known as a blues lover at the school. In fact, I taught a mini-course on the blues during their mid-year mini course sessions. It was a teacher at that school, a music teacher named John Landry, who introduced me to the Clapton / Mayall / Blues Breakers album. At the time I would have argued that Canned Heat was the greatest white blues band and Alan Wilson the greatest white blues virtuoso. John was a great guitarist and played with the rest of us blues lovers at The Day School from 1982 until his tragic death in 1985 at the age of 32. I was looking for a song to feature John’s blues playing but the band was formed primarily to spoof teaching and education. So I took a fairly standard blues lick, wrote the words for Lonesome Teacher Blues and handed it to the group during one of those Friday night jam sessions in the basement of the Church of the Heavenly Rest at the corner of E. 90th and Fifth Ave. where that school was located. Jim Zulakis sang it right off the lyric sheet I gave him and played bass; I was on keyboard and John guitar. The back and forth between him and me in the last verse was entirely improvised. We got the track down in one take and had a lot of fun doing it as you can hear in the reaction we were getting from people who were there to watch. But mainly you can hear John eking out every bit of the blues feeling that I was hoping to get from him in spite of those silly words.
AUDIO INSERTED: Brain Embargo, Lonesome Teacher Blues
IMAGE INSERTED: Church of the Heavenly Rest
On that Clapton collection was one of the best tracks from the album he made with John Mayall. All Your Love is an Otis Rush song. Clapton handles the guitar while Mayall takes the vocal and I'd say that you can almost hear Eric Clapton learning how to sing by listening to John Mayall. He sings in a dry, almost hoarse voice that isn’t far off the vocal style that Clapton developed at that time. Clapton didn’t sing with the Yardbirds and maybe that was one of the reasons he left. Legend has it that he left because the Yardbirds had strayed too far from the blues but Cream, while blues based, strayed just as far, if not further, and Clapton did some of his best work on songs like Dance the Night Away and Sunshine of Your Love, which were certainly rock, not blues and not even blues rock. Maybe the reason Clapton left the Yardbirds was because he wanted to take Keith Relf’s place as vocalist. But see for yourself. Here’s the Mayall / Clapton All Your Love with Mayall singing and I’ll finish with a Clapton vocal below for comparison. London release the Blues Breakers recording of All Your Love as a single in the USA. I don’t know how the record did in England but it didn’t chart here.
AUDIO INSERTED: John Mayall’s Blues Breakers, All Your Love
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
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Of course John Mayall had learned how to sing while listening to Otis Rush records. While British blues player Stan Webb was emulating the relatively wild screech of Buddy Guy, John Mayall was taking the more laid back Otis Rush approach to singing the blues. I’d say that the Rush style was easier to do and easier on the vocal chords. Rush released All Your Love, his own composition, on the Cobra label in Chicago in 1959. At the time there was an absolute deluge of great blues guitarists playing the south and west side clubs from the older guys like Muddy Waters, Hound Dog Taylor and Elmore James to the youth who were following in their footsteps, Rush, Guy, Luther Allison, Earl Hooker, Son Seals and Magic Sam, to name but a few. But again, as for the Mayall / Clapton vocal style, you be the judge. I’d say you can draw a straight line from Rush to Mayall to Clapton.
AUDIO INSERTED: Otis Rush, All Your Love
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
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So let’s finish with that Clapton vocal. Badge was the next to last single released by Cream. It came out in early 1969 after the band had broken up and mysteriously only reached #60 on the Billboard chart. By this time Clapton had clearly also been paying attention to Jack Bruce as a singer. In fact, he’s almost doing a Bruce imitation on this record though in the long run it’s the Rush / Mayall style that dominated Clapton’s career. He’d also made great steps as a song writer by this time because Badge is in my opinion one of the great blues / rock / psych songs of the era.
AUDIO INSERTED: Cream, Badge
(Once again I insert this track without permission and will take it down upon request.)
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