Anybody from Iowa?

Subject: BS: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 09:36 AM

I was reading a book about the jazz trumpet player Bix Beiderbecke and his early years in Davernport Iowa. It gave me the idea for this song about Iowa.

http://www.myspace.com/folksingerbigal

as I've never been to Iowa. I wondered if any of you knew anybody from there and if they might relate to it. If they like it, I can burn off a cd - they can download it for free.

Al

Subject: RE: BS: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,mg
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 10:05 AM

I am not but my great grandparents from Ireland all ended up in Clermont Iowa and my grandparents on my father's side are both from Clermont. It is a beautiful little town..just went back there this summer.

I clickedbut did not see a song..could you post the lyrics perhaps? mg

Subject: RE: BS: Anybody from Iowa?
From: maeve
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 10:09 AM

Try again, mg. I found it.

Subject: RE: BS: Anybody from Iowa?
From: maeve
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 10:10 AM

This belongs upstairs in the music section.

Subject: RE: BS: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Melissa
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 10:40 AM

My friend from Iowa is going to love that!

thanks,
M

Subject: RE: BS: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 10:44 AM

Maybe.....as people are always pointing out ....its not folk music. I don't really want to piss on their chips.

Folkmusic people in England don't understand why I write and sing the way that I do. many actually resent it. i'm fed up of getting defensive about it.

render unto Caeser what is his...I don't look for gigs in folk clubs.

Subject: RE: BS: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Bill D
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 11:43 AM

occasional poster SongBob is originally from Iowa.

Subject: RE: BS: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Jack the Sailor
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 11:56 AM

its close enough to American Folk music to be above the line.

Subject: RE: BS: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 12:17 PM

I'm not from Iowa but I pass through there often, and I have friends there. It's a fine place. My friends are not folkies. I've never connected up with any folkies from Iowa.

Greg Brown is from Iowa. He's a singer-songwriter who performs mostly his own songs and is therefore in the debatable area of folk music.

He has done some notable songs about Iowa.
CANNED GOODS,
COUNTING FEEDCAPS,
EARLY,
FLAT STUFF,
IF I HAD KNOWN
IOWA WALTZ,
OUT IN THE COUNTRY,
WALKING DOWN TO CASEY'S, and
WALKING THE BEANS
are a few songs that come to mind. They don't always mention Iowa by name, but they often have a small-town or rural flavor.

I like the fact that he doesn't always portray rural people as isolated, caring only about their immediate environment. His people are affected by things like politics and the Vietnam war.

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Songbob
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 12:44 PM

I'm from Iowa, and will check out the Myspace site when I am home. I can't get there from my work PC, owing to network blockage of 'social networking' sites.

Bob

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 01:35 PM

I'm not from Iowa, but I've been there often.

Ames, Iowas is the home of the Barn Owl Band, whose 'Barn Owls Live' is the most enjoyable CD of traditional music that I have ever heard.

Now I'm going to go to the Amazon page where Mudcat gets a cut and see if I can buy another Barn Owl CD.

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 01:42 PM

Thanks Bob.

I felt incredibly lucky to get the book on Bix. It cost about ten quid and copies were routinely changing hands for sixty and a hundred quid. when I told the guy who ran the Bix website, that I'd got a copy, he said it was the finest book about a musician he'd ever read.

yet when I read it - it was a strange experience. here was this very troubled young man. His personal life seemed like a catalogue of disaster. Dead after drinking too much at the age of 28.

And yet the reminiscences of his young life were like a Norman Rockwell painting....an idyllic in a knickerbocker trousers by the side of the Mississippi. Even a record of his first kiss...

Finally I came to the conclusion that these people weren't really taking about Bix. they were talking about Iowa before World war One, the society, almost a pastoral scene. That's when I got the idea for the song - what people seemed to yearn for in their childhood memories of the state.

al

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 03:08 PM

Here's something I've seen in Iowa and nowhere else:

Barn Quilts - images of traditional quilt patterns painted on, or mounted on, barns.

There's an organization that promotes and coordinates these. The barns are supposed to be at least 50 years old. (Although I don't suppose there's anything to stop you from putting one up on a newer barn.)

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Phil Cooper
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 03:56 PM

I was born in Fort Dodge, Iowa back in Dec. 1954. My dad was superintendent/teacher for a small school district. They moved back to Illinois when I was nine months old, so I don't remember any of it. Have played in Iowa many times.

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: open mike
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 04:13 PM

I am from Nebraska--right "next door" and there are a lot of similarities. Lots of corn. And as Greg Brown says lots of "flat stuff" (the great plains) My maternal great grand parents from Sweden landed in eastern Iowa when they came over here. They moved to a homestead in western Nebraska, where a lot of other Swedes were. My paternal great grandparents from Denmark were in western Iowa and they moved from there to north east nebraska, to an area that had a lot of other Danes living there. I always get a chuckle out of this statement by Laura Love, a musician who comes from Nebraska...
she calls it the "gateway to the rectangular states".

The Iowa song is a perfect backdrop to the Barn Quilts slide show!!
thanks for the info about barn quilts...i had no idea....

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Jim Dixon
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 04:23 PM

The list of musicians from Iowa is pretty sparse. The only names I recognize are Bix Beiderbecke, Greg Brown, the Everly Brothers, C. W. McCall (who wrote CONVOY), Roger Williams (pianist), and Meredith Willson (composer of The Music Man).

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 05:07 PM

Bill Bryson hails from Des Moines, perhaps he sings or plays, who knows?

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: maeve
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 05:17 PM

Iris DeMent spends time there with her husband Greg Brown. Songwriter and old friend Dave Moore is there.

I enjoyed your song, Guest Alan Whittle.

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 05:18 PM

Thankyou Maeve.

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,crazy little woman
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 05:27 PM

it's not all flat.

http://farm1.static.flickr.com/114/295671752_649c84259f_o.jpg

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: nager
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 05:53 PM

I am originally from IOW but not IOWA

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: open mike
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 06:56 PM

yeah, there is a hill north of Council Bluffs, Iowa that they ski on.
It is steep enough that I knocked my tooth out there... http://www.skicrescent.com/ (here is how they ski in Kansas http://www.cafepress.com/+ski_kansas_posters,64920572)

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: catspaw49
Date: 23 Nov 10 - 08:58 PM

Good job Alan!

I'm from Ohio and we share some similarities as all the states running across "Middle America" do. There are certainly large cities in every one but the farming legacy and small town character often define these states far more.

I think you can find a trail of barn quilts from Pennsylvania through Nebraska and in other states as well, although I'd bet the most are in the states with strong German backgrounds. Maybe not.....just a passing thought.......

THe other thing I think many of these rural states share is that anywhere outside of their largest cities, the times change at a far slower rate which ties the generations together a bit more. Jean Shepherd (think:"A Christas Story") wrote wondeful short stories about growing up in Indiana. I grew up in Ohio 20 years later and his stories could have been mine as well.


Spaw

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Joybell
Date: 24 Nov 10 - 07:00 PM

True-Love -- Hildebrand -- is from Albia, Iowa. I'll have him look in on this thread.
Cheers, Joy

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 24 Nov 10 - 08:21 PM

Thankyou Open Mike and Catspaw for your kind comments. Thanks to everyone for replying to this thread.

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Mike in Brunswick
Date: 24 Nov 10 - 11:26 PM

My parents were from Davenport, Iowa, Bix's hometown. In fact, they knew him slightly, though they knew his older brother (also nicknamed Bix) better. I think my Mom would have liked the thoughts expressed in your song, Alan. My Dad, not so much. He got out as soon as he could, dragging my Mom to California. Nice song, though. Thanks for posting it.

Mike

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Albert Haim
Date: 25 Nov 10 - 10:49 AM

Hello Mike in Brunswick.

I run the Bix Beiderbecke website http://bixbeiderbecke.com

I would like to get in touch with you regarding your recollections of what your parents may have told you about Bix and Davenport in the 1920s.

Please email me at [e-mail]

Thank you.

Albert

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 25 Nov 10 - 03:11 PM

Thanks, all, for telling me about Bix Biederbecke.

I found a great recording of a 1927 jazz tune in the belly dance minor here:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZxP0cf1bpTM&feature=related

It got my husband up from his sick bed to ask with pleasure what it was.

I can just imagine Bertie Wooster, in London, 'swinging a swift shoe' to it.

Next I expect somebody to tell me that it's New Orleans jazz. But it's not.

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 26 Nov 10 - 04:54 AM

Welcome to the world of Bix, Leenia!

I first met him and his world in a book by the jazz guitarist Eddie Condon called We Called It Music, which I read when I was fifteen. It was heady stuff. Bix and Eddie's picaresque adventures criss crossing America doing gigs for high and low, and meeting everyone from Bessie Smith and Fats Waller to gangsters in Chicago and the Gatsby set in their lakeside mansions.

The late Miles Davis was entranced by Bix - man, musician and legend - and would seek out anyone who played with him.

Can a member of Mudcat, PM Mike in Brunswick and tell him about Albert Haim's interest in chatting to him online.

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 27 Nov 10 - 10:26 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: GUEST,Alan Whittle
Date: 29 Nov 10 - 06:39 PM

re

Subject: RE: Anybody from Iowa?
From: Leadfingers
Date: 29 Nov 10 - 07:15 PM

When I was pretending to be a Reed Man (Clarinet , Soprano , Alto and Tenor Sax) I was more into the Black Bands (Johnny Dodds was God !) but I DID enjoy Bix and The Wolverines !

My only other conection is I Owe A lot of money to the Building Society ! LOL

Nice song Al !