On Sunday 11/6 my 5-year-puppy Josie became paralyzed (some kind of spinal degeneration) and had to be put to sleep on Monday. I cried, even as I voted Tuesday morning. Tuesday night I lost my country, and cried all day Wednesday.
Then Leonard Cohen, then Leon Russell, and now Mose Allison. He was 89. I hope the Nouveau Regime will let me live that long.
I discovered Mose in 1961 thanks to a schoolmate who came to my school because his school system in Norfolk VA was being integrated and they hadn’t gotten around to my small town, South Norfolk, so we had an influx of kids from the city next door. They paid well to escape the pain of being around black people. Even then I was outraged.
I was in 10th grade, My friend Jimmie was a senior and a paid professional musician. He introduced me to Mose Allison (and told me lots of useful things about girls).
The first Mose album I had was ‘I Don’t Worry About a Thing’, probably his first album that was well recorded (for Atlantic). Some earlier ones for Prestige are great musically but not sonically.
Mose tended to write in great aphoristic couplets. From the title song:
Now this world is just one big trouble spot
‘Cause some have plenty and some have not
And from ‘Your Mind is On Vacation'
If silence was golden
You couldn’t raise a dime
But great as he was as a lyricist and composer, if I could only have one Mose Allison song it would be his minor-key version of ‘You Are My Sunshine’.
I loved Leonard and Leon but Mose is up their in my musical pantheon with Thelonious Monk, Charles Mingus, and Igor Stravinsky.
If such great artists only knew how they’ve affected the rest of us.