Then I'll Take You Home - Trevor Beales

James Joyce died on this day.

James Joyce died on January 13th 1941 in Zurich.  James Augustine Aloysius Joyce was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of the 20th century. Joyce's novel Ulysses (1922) is a landmark in which the episodes of Homer's Odyssey are paralleled in a variety of literary styles, particularly stream of consciousness. Other well-known works are the short-story collection Dubliners (1914), and the novels A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) and Finnegans Wake (1939). His other writings include three books of poetry, a play, letters, and occasional journalism. Here is me & Kim at James Joyce's statue in Dublin about 20 years ago.

Searching For Tia Blake.

It is another dark, windy and rainy day here. I won’t be going out today. I am listening to a CD called Folksongs & Ballads by Tia Blake & Her Folk-Group. I discovered Tia Blake quite by accident about three years ago. I was looking on youtube for a song by Fairport Convention called Rising For The Moon but got the title wrong and found Rising Of The Moon by Tia Blake. I knew this song previously as a rousing rebel song by The Clancy Brothers. It is all about the Irish rebellion of 1798, but Tia had changed it to a slow wistful, lilting and mysterious ballad. (I have shared it below) I was very impressed and listened to a couple more of her songs. I determined to buy an album by her to add to my collection of long-lost singers, but when I looked on eBay all that was available were vinyl copies of her only LP which were very expensive and no good to me anyway because I don’t have a turntable to play vinyl. Time went by, and recently I heard that the album had been re-released on CD and copies were available from a company in Germany called Grooves Inc (Or something like that) My search for Tia Blake was over and my CD arrived here a few weeks ago.

I’ll just tell you a little bit about Tia Blake. That is not her real name, she was born Christiana Elizabeth Wallman in 1952 and grew up in North Carolina. I think her mother was originally from Canada. After she left school, she worked for a publisher for a few months but got bored with that and headed for Paris aged eighteen. Friends had given her the address of a record store in the Latin Quarter called Disco ‘The’. When she met the owner Benito Merlino they fell in love, and she stayed. The shop was a popular hang out for the artistic, creative, bohemian types of Paris, and musicians would practice there. They encouraged Tia to sing and finally at the end of 1971 they recorded eleven songs in two sessions. 

The album was released in France in February 1972 on a label with the ponderous title Société Française de Productions Phonographiques. Tia and her group only ever played one concert, at Theatre Du Vieux-Colombier in early 72. Shortly after that Tia left France and returned home. I have read that she made some demo recordings in Canada a few years later that emerged on vinyl for Record Store Day in recent years, but the French album was the only work released in her lifetime. I have enjoyed listening to the CD very much indeed. None of the songs were written by Tia, they are mainly traditional songs that are in the public domain, songs that she had sung all her life. The opening track is Betty & Dupree. The guitar picking by Bernard Vandam, Francois Brigot, and Michel Sada is first rate and reminds me of Bert Jansch and Pentangle. Black Is The Colour is a Scottish song that I am very familiar with through Christy Moore. I wish I Was A Single Girl Again is a sad song of regret, and you can sense a feeling of underlying sadness and mystery in Tia’s voice on many of these songs. 

Jimmy Whalen has some nice flute accompaniment by Sydney Aufrere which gives the song a kind of South American feel. I like all eleven of the songs although Rising Of The Moon remains my favourite. It seems to me a bit of a tragedy that the album was only released in France in 1972. I think if it had been recorded in New York about ten years earlier when the Folk boom was at its height, and Tia had been singing in the clubs of Greenwich Village she might have made quite an impact. Maybe she wasn’t all that ambitious because I discovered that there was more to Tia than music… She was also a writer

Tia returned to education and graduated from Smith College in 1989. Then she became a freelance writer. I discovered that she had two stories published under her real name of Tia Wallman in the prestigious British literary magazine Granta which I know well. It isn’t really a magazine, more like a paperback book published quarterly. I wanted to read her stories. I found one of them online here- https://granta.com/forbidden-games/.  I found it fascinating. Her parents were divorced, and the story tells of her father buying 10,000 acres of savannah grassland in Brazil, and Tia’s life there. It shows she had a very eventful life even apart from heading to Paris. There is a vivid description of a grass fire breaking out and their efforts to beat it out while being infested with little creatures and insects that are hopping and jumping ahead of the flames. There are trips to Guyana in which even Fidel Castro makes an appearance. Her father seems to be a mysterious figure who might have been working for the CIA. Tia wonders why he is known as Havana Jack. I had to buy Granta 94 on eBay to read the other story called We Went To Saigon which is even more amazing. Tia’s stories read like a Grahame Greene novel. Her father who was now in Vietnam wanted to see his daughters, so at the height of the Vietnam war he flew Tia and her sister to Saigon. What sort of parent would give their kids a holiday in a warzone? There is no doubt that Tia was a talented writer as well as a great singer.

Sadly, Tia Wallman /Tia Blake passed away in 2015 from breast cancer. She was laid to rest in Quebec alongside two of her brothers. I am glad to have discovered her music and writing. She never achieved fame and fortune, but maybe she wasn’t all that bothered about that, and for her, being creative was its own reward. I think the one record she made will be enjoyed by a small number of people for a long time, so she will never be forgotten.

  

The Rising of the Moon by Tia Blake.

Fairport Convention & Sandy Denny 1974. Matty Groves (Very rare footage)

Pee Wee Ellis & The Spirit of Christmas.

I have never been a great one for Christmas albums. I think I have only bought two of them previously, The Beach Boys Christmas album when I was about fifteen, back in the 1960’s, and Sweet Bells by Kate Rusby a few years ago at her Christmas show in Bath. However, when I saw this album quite a while ago in a shop in Warminster I had to buy it. It is The Spirit of Christmas by Pee Wee Ellis. As you probably know Pee Wee was the saxophone player, arranger, and music director in Van Morrison’s band for many years. That is one reason I bought the CD, the other reason is because I had the pleasure of meeting Pee Wee in Bradford On Avon fifteen years ago, and you couldn’t meet a nicer person. I was very sorry to hear that he had passed away in September 2021. When I bought the album, I didn’t play it for months, but today I remembered it and thought now was the right time to give it a good listen.

Pee Wee is joined on the album by his old friend from James Brown and the J.B. Horns Fred Wesley on trombone. Also, Clare Teal who Van Morrison fans will know from his Duets album. Clare has also been an occasional guest of Van on stage. I remember seeing her at Glastonbury Abbey and the Royal Albert Hall. Both she and Pee Wee lived in the West Country which might be why they worked together so often. On piano and keyboards is Jason Rebello who I think is also based locally in Bath. Gary Winters is on trumpet, Tony Remi on guitar, Patrick Scales on bass, and Guido May on drums. This album was made in Cologne in 2013, and I think some of the other musicians might be based in Germany because I had never heard of Lisa Bassenge, Lillian Boutte, or Peter Fessler before, but they are all great singers. I see on the sleeve notes that the production co-ordinator is Pee Wee’s wife Charlotte.

The album opens with Have Yourself A Merry Little Christmas with Clare on vocals. Rudolf The Red Nosed Reindeer is presented here as a jazz instrumental arranged by trumpet player Gary Winters and some passages in it are reminiscent of A Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. The George Michael song Last Christmas doesn’t sound like Wham here. It has become a jazz song with Peter Fessler scatting away to his hearts content. Christmas In New Orleans was originally popularised by Louis Armstrong, but here it is sung by Lillian Boutte and she does a wonderful job of it. Christmas Time Is Here was written by Vince Guaraldi who you will know from Cast Your Fate To The Wind, but he wrote this tune in 1965 for a TV show called A Charlie Brown Christmas. Pee Wee’s arrangement features some wonderful piano playing by Jason Rebello. 

In The Upper Room was written by a great American lady called Lucie E Campbell who was a civil rights activist as well as a composer of hymns. Lillian Boutte sings this great gospel song and Pee Wee performs an excellent solo on tenor sax. Here, In The Bleak Midwinter is transformed by a bluesy arrangement with guitar and trumpet to the fore. Ezekiel Saw The Wheel is a lively upbeat song by Lillian. White Christmas is sung by Peter who also plays acoustic guitar on this track. Van fans will know bass player Laurence Cottle from his contributions to Van’s Keep Me Singing and Roll With The Punches albums. Here he arranges Snowfall written by Claude Thornhill.

Stille Nacht (Silent Night) is sung here as a jazz arrangement in the original German by Lisa Bassenge. Pee Wee again plays a wonderful solo (See video below). Clare returns to sing What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve? Written by Frank Loesser who you will know from such songs as Baby Its Cold Outside and Let’s Get Lost. Jason excels himself on piano on this track. The album officially comes to a close with The Christmas Song which was written by Robert Wells and Mel Torme. I thought the album was finished, but after about a minute of silence the band return for a jam session which I’ll call Merry Christmas. I really enjoyed hearing this excellent album today on a cold December afternoon. I’m not sure if it is still available, but I’m sure you could track down a copy. If you like Christmas and great soulful jazz music, then this could be just what you need.

 

Stille Nacht (Silent Night) by Pee Wee Ellis.