Fat Stevens

Following the photo shoot for Swedish folk singer Cornelis Vreeswijk’s homage to Evert Taube, the six-string acoustic cradled in the sweaty embrace of Cornelis’s ample, unburdened loins required months of intensive counseling and a full refinish. So traumatized was the guitar, nicknamed “Raggmunk” after Cornelis’s favorite potato pancake recipe, he (yes, it's a he) never played the same again. Some say that the humiliation Raggmunk was forced to endure at the hands of a hack photographer bent on transforming his subjects into steamy sex symbols caused Raggmunk to lose his will to carry a tune. Nevertheless, the guitar remained close with his owner, Vreeswijk, often spending many hours with him on the couch—not playing, though, but watching their favorite films, Lee Hazlewood’s Cowboy in Sweden and Torgny Wicket’s Anita: Swedish Nymphet. And when Vreeswijk succumbed to liver cancer in 1977, Raggmunk mustered the strength to perform an elegy to his mate at his funeral. Appropriately, it was a meditation on the song “Nudistpolka” (no translation necessary) from the infamous Cornelis sjunger Taube LP (“sjunger” means “sings”). It was also Raggmunk’s last performance. As he downstroked the final chord of his poignant tribute, Raggmunk did so with such cathartic force that his strings snapped, filling the mouse-quiet cathedral with a ringing cacophony of profound sorrow. Raggmunk then collapsed on the altar, just a few feet from Vreeswijk’s coffin (a reinforced refrigerator box), his neck breaking off in the process. Sobbing, Cornelis’s brother, Gard, scooped up the broken and now deceased Raggmunk and placed him tenderly in the cardboard casket atop the corpse of his brother. Luckily for Raggmunk, this time Cornelis was wearing pants.

Yes, this is a work of fiction. No need to get upset.

Germany's Last Polka

It’s not an everyday occurrence that a truly remarkable album is exhumed from the dusty heaps of discarded vinyl at the thrift store. It’s an even rarer occurrence that an LP of true historical import is rediscovered. Let alone two. Two that are related. Two that tell the long-forgotten tale of the Great Rock ’n’ Roll Wars of the 1950s and ’60s.

So it was one sunny Saturday morning at the local Goodwill as I rummaged the dusty stacks of wax (the platters that seemingly no longer matter) that my dirty fingers flipped to these two LPs: Walt Groller and His Orchestra’s Auf Wiedersehen and the Little German Band’s Auf Geht’s! On the surface, they appear to be your typical oompah party music albums that crossed the ocean from the Fatherland a generation ago, begging for one last polka on the turntable. Yet it takes an astute collector with master’s degree in ethnomusicology (thank you, University of Phoenix®!) such as me to recognize these recordings for what they actually are: crucial documents containing German folk songs, battle hymns, and field recordings inspired by and captured during the Great Rock ’n’ Roll Wars.

What were the Great Rock ’n’ Roll Wars? You might recall that in the 1950s a new strain of popular music sprouted up like pustules on a pubescent face. It was called rock ’n’ roll, a crude, most unwholesome marriage of hillbilly music and rhythm and blues, and it swept through the United States faster than diarrhea in a hot tub. The music was savage, loud and obnoxious and featured prominent use of the electric guitar and drums. It soon inspired mass hysteria among millions of horny degenerates (teenagers) and led to rebellion, chaos and societal collapse. Churches and schools were torched. Planned Parenthoods, liquor stores, massage parlors and marijuana dispensaries sprang up at every corner strip mall. Morals fled north to Alaska. And communists moved into the White House. It was a scary scene to be sure: a once peaceful, verdant, prosperous, Christ-loving nation had been raped and pillaged into a dystopian wasteland.

With flies buzzing America the Carcass, rock ’n’ roll turned its voracious appetite east toward Europe and went swimming.

Across the pond in the old country, Germany, still nursing the self-inflicted wounds and humiliation it sustained both during and after World War II, braced for the onslaught. It was 1957 when American rock ’n’ roll, led by Elvis Presley (a.k.a. Private Pelvis), stormed the western shores of Europe and began its high-decibel charge eastward toward Das Fatherland. Having been crushed and then occupied by the U.S. and its allies, Germany thought that by making a triumphant stand against this nascent musical enemy it might rekindle national pride among the citizenry and reclaim its place as a major player on the world stage. Or any stage for that matter. Even a stage at some local festival involving wiener dogs, warm lager, toten hosen and luft balloons. Indeed, Germany wasn’t about to let such filthy, impure music impregnate its kartoffelpuffer (that’s German for potato pancake, thank you very much).

So the country dispatched its warriors to the Black Forest, the strategy being that the thick vegetation would provide sufficient cover for national forces to surprise and pounce on the unsuspecting invaders. But because the country’s elite soldiers were either dead or still imprisoned (something about crimes against humanity committed during WWII), Germany’s leaders were forced to draft its accordion-wielding yodelers, all 249,000 of them, to do battle. It was a decision that wrought disastrous consequences, but at the time, the entire country rallied behind its leaders as they held out hope that their unconventional militia would triumph.

This brings us to the records this post serves to highlight. The first record shown above, Auf Wiedersehen by Walt Groller and His Orchestra, depicts an actual scene of an oompah band sending Germany’s heroes off to war on the wings of a high-tempo waltz and bright, soaring notes, a most fitting Auf Wiedersehen for sure. Meanwhile, the second album, Auf Geht’s! by the Little German Band, meanwhile, shows members of an elite accordion battalion hiking into the Black Forest (and toward their certain deaths).

What transpired on the battlefield was gruesome. Germany fought, and fought valiantly. For 20 minutes. Emerging from the cover of the Black Forest for pre-battle polka pep rally, the accordionists were ambushed by the sound of a million guitars roaring from a mountain of Marshall stacks. They were overwhelmed, blown back, unable to match the amplified barrage with their feeble squeezeboxes, whose cumbersome shape and heavy weight impeded and ultimately prohibited a hasty retreat back into forest. When the cliché dust settled, the smoke parted, and the last yodels and accordion farts echoed into the past, a quarter million men lay in a bloody, smoking heap, their lederhosen in tatters, accordions destroyed. I won’t go into detail about how rock ’n’ roll celebrated their victory, except to say that they made sandwiches of their adversaries, hence the name of Black Forest Ham. 

With Germany out of the way, rock conquered Europe, and the rest of the globe soon surrendered, as billions of people from all nations raised their horned hands in unison to salute to their new leader. I can only imagine what the world might have been had polka successfully stood up to the rock ’n’ roll aggressors. Suffice it to say it would have been a better place. Just because.

Should you happen across these records in your archaeological digs in the vinyl mines of Goodwill, know that you’re holding a piece of important history, about a war everyone else has either forgotten or never known about.

Rocky Mountain Sigh

A year before folk icon John Denver died after his experimental aircraft made an unscheduled water landing off the California coast in October 1997, I had the pleasure of interviewing him by phone in advance of a Spokane concert appearance. The John Denver I remember from the interview was not the lovable nature boy who sang “Sunshine on My Shoulders” and “Rocky Mountain High” and made a couple records with the Muppets but a hostile, cantankerous jerk. He was such an ass, his replies to my questions so testy, that I wrote “John Denver has come down from his Rocky Mountain high” as the lede of my story.

That was 15 years ago, when I was trying to make it as a journalist and music critic at Spokane’s daily paper, the Spokesman-Review. Had I the choice I would have gladly punted and let someone else write about the singer/songwriter/environmentalist/stunt pilot/wannabe astronaut. I remember at the time being worried about my credibility with the local punk rock scene and how writing about a washed-up middle-of-the-road folk singer wasn’t going to help it. (Stupid, I know, especially since very few in my perceived target audience read the paper.) But the editor assigned it to me and I accepted. I made arrangements with Denver’s publicist for a phone interview, and John agreed to speak with me from his Colorado home the following Monday at 8 a.m., which was a little bit early—I preferred rolling in to work at 9.

The only problem was that I think John thought we were to chat at 8 a.m. his time, Colorado time, Rocky Mountain time. And so he started calling at 7 a.m., probably as I was trying to will my lethargic body into the shower. By the time I arrived at work at just before 8, I saw the red light on my phone flashing angrily at me—informing me that I had a message. Three messages, actually, all from John Denver. Not sunshine-on-my-shoulders John Denver either, but a you-just-clear-cut-the-old-growth-forest-surrounding-my-palatial-estate John Denver.

7:01 a.m.: “Joe, this is John Denver calling,” said the voice, clearly annoyed. “I’ll try back.”

7:15 a.m.: “Joe, this is John Denver calling,” went the second message, the voice now sounding only few degrees cooler than piping-hot angry.

The third message came a half-hour later. It sounded as friendly as the second.

As I hung up the phone, it started ringing, sending a hot flash of panic coursing through my veins. With some trepidation, I answered the call.

“Joe, this is John Denver calling.”

His tone had only a hint of irritation. But I could already intuit that this interview was going to be a disaster. Trying to force a little cordial small talk, I threw out the first cringe-worthy softball: “So what are you up to?”

“Heh-heh,” he chuckled incredulously, “talking to you.”

I don’t know what was going through John Denver’s mind at the time. Clearly it was more than a scheduling foul-up. As the interview progressed, it became more apparent that he was not nearly as angry with me as he was bitter toward the music business. John Denver had sold millions of records in his prime, charted numerous hits in the 1970s, made a lot of people, including himself, rich. But by 1996, the hits had long since dried up, and he was unsigned in the U.S. and couldn’t secure a deal beyond one-off gimmicks—children's records or new recordings of the old hits, records that seemed well beneath his talent. (Denver had other problems beyond music, most notably a bitter divorce and two DUI arrests.)

Here’s what Denver had to say about the state of affairs with record companies: “I did an album for Sony a little over a year ago—The Wildlife Concert—and it’s pretty funny to me,” he said, no hint of humor in his tone, “that that album was a double album and it sold a quarter of a million copies. That’s a gold album. You know, it’s a double CD. That’s a big project, pretty successful, but not where they want to sign a record deal with me. Isn’t that interesting?”

Sony did however want Denver to make another album, an album that, as Denver described it, sounded a bit, well, sad. “[Sony] do want me to do another album and what they’re talking about—the example they’ve given me is something Kenny Loggins did, which ended up being a million seller—is a children's album.”

The album to which Denver referred actually materialized. Released it 1997, it was called All Aboard!, a children's album about trains, and it earned Denver a posthumous Grammy—his only Grammy.

The interview wasn’t a total disaster, but it was clear Denver wasn’t all that interested in my line of questioning. Perhaps I was too inexperienced or shy to ask more thoughtful questions. As this interview was to function as a concert preview, I hadn’t prepared to ask him more probing questions. Or maybe Denver just didn’t want play along that morning. Witness the following exchange:

“What is your Spokane concert consisting of—are you–”

“John Denver songs,” he blurted, before I could even finish my question. He didn’t elaborate.

Flustered, I countered with: “Are you gonna do another record with the Muppets?”

Denver softened, but only a bit. “Actually we’ve talked about that a little bit,” he said. “That was one of the most enjoyable things I ever did was working with the Muppets, and the thought of doing another television special with them along with an album is a great idea.”

Lucky for me (and John), the interview was a few minutes from its conclusion. After reading the resulting concert preview, my editor declined to have me review the show. I didn’t argue with her.