THE KID AND THE LIFER

This past weekend I was walking down the short three block long business district towards the beach. Walking in the opposite direction was a kid, looking like he was in his mid-teens. He was walking down the street holding a record album with both hands, reading the liner notes with a big shit eating grin on his face. I was so enamored with the look of a kid that age being that excited by an album cover, I didn't even notice what record he was looking at. I just looked at his face and imagined what lay before him, because many years ago, I was that kid, on that very same sidewalk, doing that exact same thing. Checking out the liner notes of a just purchased record. Back then the record store was Soundsville, and it was just two doors down from the current record store, the curiously named Cow. I flashed back to all of the excitement of the trek home to listen to a new record for the first time. I thought about all of the record stores I've been in, all the counter guys whose wisdom I soaked up, all the discoveries and chances taken merely on the merit of a cool album cover. I was hoping that kid's smile would reappear, week after week for decades as mine has.

I just found out that on the very same day I saw that kid, San Diego lost one of the longest running and most knowledgeable counter guys that has ever worked in a local record store. His name was Lou Curtiss, and he may not be well known outside of his hometown but believe me, music freaks here knew him, particularly those who are into roots music. He ran his own record store, Folk Arts, for 47 years (he sold it in, I think, 2014). His specialty was the old shit. Old timey, early blues, early jazz, folk and so on, with 78s as far back as 1892. As a local musician put it on Facebook today, "Who else would have a whole section in their store of rare 78’s labeled ‘Honking Sax’" And he had a radio show, Jazz Roots, on the local jazz station. And he wrote for the local roots music tabloid, Troubadour, and he put on folk festivals, and later roots festivals. Dude knew his shit.

Curtiss was an early supporter of Tom Waits, before he was signed and after. That top photo above is Waits hanging outside Folk Arts in 1974, taken by Curtiss's wife Virginia. So that's the tie in with the link below to a 1976 Waits show. There's also a link to Honey Where You Been So Long, an unrelated but similar in theme old timey blues site, and a link to Folk Arts' partial library of late sixties folk festivals Curtiss was involved in. Because Curtiss has been described as a curmudgeon, and just for good measure, a totally unrelated interview with 78 collector Joe Bussard, an opinionated sourpuss with an insane record collection.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:

Tom Waits - Live at the Ivanhoe Theater, Chicago, 1976 (zip) at Aquarium Drunkard Go there to get it.
Visit:
Honey Where You Been So Long Pre-war blues, yo.
The Lou Curtiss Sound Library All good.
Joe Bussard, 78 collector - Interview, photos and streaming mix at Dust and Grooves Joe Bussard is punk rock.

NAPOLEON'S STILL AROUND?

If you've been lurking around here a while, you may have noticed. I've got a thing for early Tom Waits stuff. It might be because he was one of few non-oldies artists to survive the punk rock purge of my record collection. You may have had one of those, when punk rock powered your personal bullshit detector, and a lot of the bands that you liked became somewhat irrelevant, not necessarily because of their music, but because of their showbiz flash and all that rock star nonsense. Waits still seemed like a regular guy to me. A few years later, I happened to meet him. He was still living at the Tropicana Hotel at the time and though the conversation was short, he did seem like a regular guy, albeit a regular guy about thirty years older than his age. Anyway, the early stuff has always been my preference. Yeah, yeah, the later stuff is good and all that, but there's something about the early stuff that's so simple that it makes the bells and whistles of some of the later stuff seem unnecessary. And now I'll use the word stuff just one more time for good measure.

Aquarium Drunkard just posted a live set from 1976, from a live radio broadcast of a show in Chicago. When I went looking for a few single songs to pad things out, I found another live set from 1974, recorded at the Troubadour, in L.A. We'll wait while you empty your ashtray.

The photo above was taken outside Folk Arts, in San Diego, where he was a local, Snapped in 1974 by Virginia Curtis, wife of Lou Curtis, together the proprietors of the record store. Folk Arts Rare Records is still open. And they have one hell of a musical archive. Folk, blues and gospel.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~ 

Listen:
Tom Waits - New Coat of Paint mp3 at Missy Oshimura (?)
Tom Waits - Tom Traubert's Blues mp3 at Pathfinder Pat
Tom Waits - I Hope That I Don't Fall In Love With You mp3 at Sensuous Summons
Live sets:
Tom Waits - Live at the Troubadour, 1974 mp3 at Crooks and Liars 64 minute set, fast download
Tom Waits - Live at the Ivanhoe Theater, Chicago, 1976 (zip) at Aquarium Drunkard Go there to get it.

EARLY TOM WAITS: LIVE

Above photo by Virginia Curtiss (1974)

Back when I was in high school, I had a buddy whose Dad was really into folk music. For a few years running, he'd pile his son, me and my brother, into his car and take us out to the San Diego Folk Festival. I don't have many memories from the shows we attended, but I do remember that it was the first time I'd heard of Lou Curtiss and his record shop, Folk Arts (then at the end of India St., where Gellato Vera is now). To those not from the San Diego area, Lou Curtiss is probably not a familiar name. But, if you lived here, you'd likely know that he's been championing roots music for a long, long time. He opened his record store and organized the first San Diego Folk Festival in 1967, and just kept going. He later helped book music for the early Adams Avenue Street Fairs and, after that, the Adams Avenue Roots Festival. He writes a column for The Troubadour, and has a radio show, "Jazz Roots," on the local jazz station (heard live on 88.3 FM and online, Sundays from 8:00 to 10:00 Pacific Time). All this and he's an active archivist and researcher for the Smithsonian and Library of Congress.

Folk Arts was, and still is, a magnet for those looking for out-of-print recordings. Shop visitors run the gamut; past customers include Muddy Waters, Horace Silver, R. Crumb, Joan Baez, and local boy-done-good Tom Waits. Waits, a store regular back in the day, said of his friend, “Lou Curtiss is a heroic curmudgeon, entrepreneur and keeper of the flame.” Which brings us to the impetus for this post. When I ran into a post on Captains Dead, with Tom Waits from the 1974 Folk Festival, I had to post a link, for a few reasons. The fact that this is early Waits, without a full band, accompanying himself on guitar and piano, was reason enough. Then, there's chatter between songs, which is really, really, funny in places. And the excellent quality of the recordings didn't hurt. The big reason, though, was to publicly thank Curtiss, for doing what he does, humbly, and without tooting his own horn, for so many years. He's every music lover's cool older brother. The man is a local treasure.

~ NOTE: ALL MEDIA IS HOSTED BY THE BLOGS & SITES NAMED BELOW ~

Tom Waits at the 1974 San Diego Folk Festival at Captain's Dead NOTE: As of 11/8/11 these links are dead, but the ones on the link below are still live:
Another live Tom Waits set from 1979, 20 mp3's at Captain's Dead (Right click song titles to download)
Folk Arts Rare Records, Curtiss' record store
The 4th annual SD Folk Festival mp3s at Folk Arts, Sam Chatman, Sam Hinton, Merle Travis and others
Samples from the Lou Curtiss Sound Library
"Lou Curtiss keeps American roots music alive here" at SignOnSanDiego

Above photo of Tom Waits by Virginia Curtiss (1974)