The Greatest American Heroes: The Reverend Dick Picks Music's All Time Best

William Katt: "Met Christopher Reeve,
He told me I'm the Greatest!" 

The other day, I was at the grocery store, trying to figure out a way of turning my last ten bucks into nourishment for a week, when, all of a sudden, "Gettin' Jiggy With It," by Will Smith comes on over the supermarket satellite radio.

Unlike some of the other shoppers, who began to unconsciously shake their ample shit while heaving flat after flat of Mountain Dew, jumbo bags of Doritos, and bulk boxes of Pop Tarts into their already overflowing buggies, my hunger pangs left me in no condition to get jiggy with anything.

But as I stood there in the produce section, trying to stave off the onset of scurvy by covertly gobbling grapes and strawberries, I found myself actually listening to the song for pretty much the first time.  I'd heard it before, I mean, back in '98 when it came out, the song was almost unavoidable.  But I'd never given much thought to the message Big Willie Style was trying to convey.  A starvation-induced reverie ensued.  What was this nebulous "it" he was suggesting we get jiggy with?  For some reason, I just had to know.

As it turns out, it's him.  Will Smith.

And why would we would want to get jiggy with him?  Well, for starters, because all women "wanna bounce with a bruthah that's platinum," Smith asserts.  Also, he has floor seats at Lakers games and can pose effectively with a cigar without even smoking it ("it's for the look, I don't light it").  Still not convinced?  No problem.  Smith counters with his coup de gras:

"Met Ali, he told me, I'm the greatest."

Take it from me,
Parents just don't understand.

This seemed fucked up to me.  My only explanation is that Muhammad Ali's punch-drunkeness must've momentarily got the better of him.  Either that or his plan was to try and fuck Jada Pinkett when The Fresh Prince dumb-danced off to the bathroom to jerk off to his own reflection in the mirror while Jazzy Jeff made scratching noises for him in the background.

Nonetheless, as ridiculous as it was, his bold claim "started making trouble in my neighbourhood," so to speak.  And I found myself wondering:

If not Will Smith, then who?

Who is the greatest?  And why?

I like lists, so I decided to make one.

You may notice a few things about my selections: They're all Americans, most of them are black, and too few of them are women.  Let me explain.

Swiss Rock Superduo, Myron's
recent, awe-inspring performance at
Saul Silverstein's Bar Mitzvah in Utica
was topped only by Uncle Shlomo's
stirring rendition of "Don't Worry Be Happy."

When it comes to pop music, the United States is well, Will Smith and the rest of us are Jazzy Jeffs making scratching noises in the background while he jerks off.  Out of the dank soil of racism, economic oppression, and a thoroughgoing "You don't like it?  Fuck you"-type attitude, the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave has somehow managed to sprout musical greatness the way more civilized countries like say, Switzerland and Canada breed mediocrity.  I really don't know what else to chock it up to other than the resilience and spiritual depth of the people who created its musical legacy, i.e., the African Americans the pilgrims enslaved and persecuted, but never managed to beat the life out of.

British Prime Minister, David Cameron
during a recent fundraising event
at Boreham House, Essex.

For comparison's sake, the Brits are a similarly bigoted and plutocratic people, but they're also a bunch of perverts and copycats and their contribution to pop music reflects this.  Eric Clapton's not a bluesman, he's a thief.  The Beatles' music is great for associating wishy-washy revolutionary sentiment or the universal healing power of love with a particular sneaker or soft drink choice, but that's about it.  And despite their uncanny capacity to mesmerize morons, the only lasting marks Led Zeppelin has left are those on the bodies of the groupies they've abused, and on the walls of the Holiday Inns they've abused them in.

The women-issue is a little different.  The music industry has pretty much never permitted women to assume any role other than that of singer.  Moreover, the list of women who've had any creative control whatsoever in the writing, arranging, and producing of their material is shockingly small.  As a result, the industry basically disposes of them as soon as their tits start to sag: not exactly a recipe for greatness or a lasting career.

Anyways, here are, in my humble opinion, the Greatest of All Time.

Enjoy.

1.  Miles Davis.

Song selected: "Summertime" from Porgy and Bess.

Despite his dastardly penchant for throwing bitches down the stairs in a drug-addled, misogynistic frenzy, Miles Davis is, hands down, the greatest of all time.  Four times for the better (and once for the worse), Davis, as sideman, collaborator, or full-fledged leader, revolutionized his chosen idiom.  That's right.  Count 'em.  Five fucking times!  Nobody else on this list did this more than twice.  He played with Charlie Parker on the Savoy and Dial sessions that birthed Bebop.  With Gil Evans as midwife, he squeezed out "the birth of the cool," Cool Jazz, that is.  On Kind of Blue, often regarded as the greatest album of all time, he and Bill Evans invented Modal Jazz.  His large ensemble work on In A Silent Way and Bitches Brew set the blueprint for fusion.  And those are just some of the highlights.  Virtually all of Davis' work, with the exception of his embarrassingly shitty 80s output (which helped spawn Smooth and Pop Jazz cultural criminals like Kenny G and the bubonic John Tesh), is capable of evoking stunned astonishment in all but the seriously hearing-impaired.

Albums to check out:

Selecting even a small group of albums from Davis' vast and awesome oeuvre is kind of like picking which Playboy Bunnies to sneak off into the grotto with during a party at Hef's house, but here goes:  Birth of the Cool, Walkin', Sketches of Spain, Kind of Blue, In A Silent Way, Bitches Brew, On The Corner, all of which are sublime masterpieces that should be a part of everyone's music collection.

2. James Brown.

Song selected: "People Get Up And Drive Your Funky Soul" from the Motherlode compilation.

Along with being one of the major players in the emergence of Soul as a form distinct from straight-ahead blues, James Brown, along with his band, the JBs, invented funk.  That's right.  He invented funk.  For that alone, he should be worshipped as a god in his native land and never should have been sent to prison for leading cops on a multi-state car chase with an underaged girl riding shotgun.  Jesus Christ, the man was all fucked up on PCP at the time.  Can't a soul brother, even the Soul Brother No. 1 get a break in this country?  Apparently not.  Although by the late-seventies, his creative juices had begun to dry up, he'd already left the world an astonishing body of work.  He remained an amazing live act right up to the end.  I saw him live a year or so before he died and he was still doing splits and shit.  The guy was like 70 years old.  When my grandma was 70, she was dropping her cigarettes on herself, lighting herself on fire, and not even noticing.  Hot Pants!

Albums to check out:

James Brown had the irritating tendency to throw a hit or two onto a record along with a bunch of unrelated material, but his enormous discography has plenty of highlights: Live At The Apollo, The Payback, Sex Machine, Black Caesar, Hot Pants, Hell.  The Motherlode and In The Jungle Groove compilations are also fantastic collections of his funky seventies shit.

3.  Aretha Franklin.

Song selected: "A Change Is Gonna Come" from I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You.

With the exception of the Beatles, no other artist has achieved the degree of universal critical acclaimed and widespread popular appeal as Aretha Franklin.  This is why she's won more grammys than any other female artist besides Alison Krauss.  (No really, Alison Krauss has the most grammys: 22.  Aretha has 18.  How the fuck did that happen?)  Anyways, unless you're a member of the Ku Klux Klan or severely mentally retarded, you either already love Aretha, or will after even the briefest exposure to her music.  Aretha is the most authentic, most emotionally honest, most soulful, and most powerful of all vocalists.  She's the Queen of Soul, for Christ's sake, and not only because she stands supreme in the genre, but because she's the reigning monarch of all those who have one.  The greatest singer who ever lived.  

Albums to check out: I Never Loved A Man The Way I Loved You, Lady Soul, Soul '69, Young Gifted And Black.

4.  Ramones / The Velvet Underground (tie)

Songs selected: "Beat On The Brat" from Ramones and "What Goes On" from The Velvet Underground.

The first caucasians on the list and for good reason.  They represent the first time whitey didn't just steal his shit from his darker-hued countrymen, scrub it free of all soul and substance, and proudly market it to the masses as his own discovery.  The music of these two bands is basically the Illiad and the Odyssey of all things Alternative and the sonic blueprint they set down is one of the main reasons your parents don't like your music.  Why?  Because unlike pretty much everything that came before it, this music is not rooted in the blues.  As such, it represents a new and authentic place for white kids to start other than by ripping off Robert Johnson or Muddy Waters.  Though the alt-tsunami hasn't entirely washed away the encrusted filth of Zeppelinism and Prog-Rock pretension like a deluge from on high, it has, over time, severely dilapidated the temple of Rock and driven its denizens into the high hills of cultural irrelevancy.  On a personal note, the advent of the music of these two bands upon my dark suburban world affected me like being knocked on his ass on the road to Damascus affected the apostle Paul.  New Vistas of previously unimagined possibilities suddenly splayed out before me like a thousand dollar hooker, and I knew, right then and there, that things would never be the same.

Albums to check out:

Ramones - Ramones, Ramones Leave Home, Rocket To Russia, Pleasant Dreams.

The Velvet Underground - The Velvet Underground & Nico, The Velvet Underground, The Velvet Underground Live 1969, Loaded.

5.  Ornette Coleman.

Song selected: "Lonely Woman" from The Shape Of Jazz To Come.

There are few artists in the history of American blues-based music more important than Ornette Coleman.  His early work represents a kind of Gotterdammerung for jazz as a progressive form.  Prior to Coleman, one could characterize jazz as developing along a continuum where progress was understood largely in terms of the expansion of the harmonic possibilities implicit in the American pop or blues song.  Coleman, however, dispensed with harmony as a structural requirement of the music altogether.  Throughout his long and diverse career, he has explored the notion that it is the direct interaction between the melodic lines of the individual performers, rather than their relationship to to a preconceived harmony that makes music what it is.  In a way, his work has stressed the primacy of the actual over the metaphysical, the thing itself over its explanatory apparatus.  Coleman, thus, offers the "revolutionary" suggestion that the best way to make music that is fully real is to focus on reality.

Albums to check out: The Shape of Jazz to Come, Dancing In Your Head, Ornette!, Ornette On Tenor.

6.  John Fahey.

Song selected: "Sunflower River Blues" from Death Chants, Breakdowns, And Military Waltzes.

A somewhat idiosyncratic selection, I admit, but no one has ever inspired in me quite the awe and envy of another man's skills quite as much as John Fahey.  Fahey's prowess, however, had nothing to do with the effect-laden histrionics or fingertip gymnastics that meatheads find so drool-inducing in the work of Steve Vai or Eddie Van Halen.  What Fahey explored was the poetic rather than the heroic capacities of his instrument.  On most of his albums, he simply sat down in front of a microphone with his acoustic guitar and took you on an aural journey through the history of American folk and blues-based music.  One capable of blowing all but the most shit-clogged of minds.  Fuck Jimi, Fahey's greatest guitarist of all time.

Albums to check out: Death Chants, Breakdowns, And Military Waltzes, Blind Joe Death, Dance of Death And Other Plantation Favorites, The Great San Bernadino Birthday Party.

7.  John Coltrane

Song selected: "Quartet: Acknowledgment" from A Love Supreme.

Once he got off the smack and high on God, Coltrane spent the remainder of his unfortunately short life giving thanks and praise to the Lord above for revealing to him a new vision of reality, one in which the divine power of love permeates every aspect of being.  The results, like pretty much all of Coltrane's work, is at times tender, lyrical, and sublimely beautiful, and at others, ferocious, skronky delvings into another world.  In any case, whether your listening to the earlier, secular, smack-head 'Trane or the later, more sanctified version, the music itself offers a more compelling case for the existence of a higher power than the entire corpus of Scholastic Theology.  Regardless of whether its source is celestial or terrestrial, that Coltrane's music is inspired is difficult to deny.

Albums to check out: A Love Supreme, Ole, Live At The Village Vanguard, Giant Steps, My Favorite Things.

8.  Captain Beefheart

Song selected: "Owed T'Alex" from Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller).

It so happens that I lost my virginity to Captain Beefheart.  Hmmm... That didn't come out right.  I  mean, I lost my virginity while his music was playing in the background.  Anyways, I don't think I'd recommend it as a sure-fire way of getting your ladyfriend or gentleman caller in the mood.  That is, of course, unless they happen to get turned on by the sound of a Howlin' Wolf impersonator barking surrealist poetry over an harshly angular, free-jazzy accompaniment.  But the Captain's music is so much more than this.  In a sense, he may be the only truly great caucasian bluesman.  He reminds me of some of the very early Mississippi Delta musicians who sang largely for themselves in a wholly personal, idiosyncratic voice before the music got co-opted by the music industry, and formalized and homogenized soon after.  Like them, Beefheart never achieved the success and recognition that his genius should have afforded him and, eventually, he gave up and turned to oil painting.  Our loss.

Albums to check out: Safe As Milk, Trout Mask Replica, Clear Spot, Shiny Beast (Bat Chain Puller).

9.  Son House

Song selected: "Death Letter Blues." This is a great video of Son House performing this Delta Blues masterpiece.

The steaming cesspool of poverty and hatred that is the Mississippi Delta has probably produced more musical greats than any other place on earth.  Robert Johnson, Charley Patton, Skip James, Bukka White, and Muddy Waters, just to name a few.  But the greatest of them all is Son House.  He's the shit.  To see this solitary man here, sitting on a chair in a suit and Colonel Sanders tie, writhing in seeming agony as he frets, bottlenecks, and basically pounds the fuck out of his National while howling his tale of truth and woe is to see the living manifestation of the blues in all its frenetic, hypertensive glory.    

Albums to check out: Son House's work mostly preceded the advent of the LP but there's tons of great compilations out there: Delta Blues, Preachin' The Blues, Heroes of the Blues, Son House: Revisted.

10.  Al Green

Song selected: "Here I Am Baby (Come And Take Me)" from Call Me.

Combined with a well-prepared seafood penne and a nice merlot, the sexy, soulful stylings of Al Green are almost guaranteed to get you laid.  Indeed, no one harnesses the power of the Holy Spirit in the single-minded pursuit of sexual conquest with quite the righteous audacity or supple touch of the Reverend Al Green.  The Higher Power of this ordained minister and divinely-inspired apostle of the poontang, however, is one that even the most faithless among us cannot help but wanna get down on our knees and pray to.  He only wants to "take you by the hand, hold you, squeeze you, lie down next to you, love you, Heeee-hee, Heeee-hee... Yeeeeaaaah!"

Albums to check out: Let's Stay Together, The Belle Album, Green Is Blues, Al Green Is Love.