Jack Black discovers his country music DNA on father-in-law’s album

NEW YORK, Jan 2 — Jack Black may have been schooled in rock, but now he’d like to sing at the Grand Ole Opry with his wife’s family — who recently turned him on to bluegrass music.

The actor-musician energetically sings the traditional tune “Old Joe Clark” with his father-in-law Charlie Haden on Haden’s Grammy-nominated CD “Rambling Boy”.

“I wasn’t sure what to expect because I haven’t recorded or really sung any old songs like that before, bluegrass style, but it came very naturally and I cranked it out in two takes,” said Black, who grew up in the Los Angeles area.

“There was something in the music that I think struck a chord in my DNA. I think I’ve got some hillbilly in my roots. ... I’m already practising my square dancing if we play the Grand Ole Opry.”

Black, who recently starred in “Tropic Thunder” and the animated “Kung Fu Panda”, landed the last-minute supporting role when his father-in-law brought the nearly finished mix to their home so he could hear his daughter, Tanya, sing on her own and as part of the Haden Triplets, with sisters Rachel and Petra.

“Tanya’s very shy and doesn’t think she can sing, so I wanted Jack to hear, especially, how beautifully she sings ‘He’s Gone Away’, which I really had to do some talking to get her to sing,” said Charlie Haden, the eminent modern jazz bassist.

Haden brought his current family together to perform some of the old-style country songs he once sang with his parents and siblings in the popular Haden Family band in the 1930s and ‘40s.

“Old Joe Clark” was originally intended to be an instrumental, but Black felt it was “a great jam” and asked his father-in-law if there were any lyrics. Haden hastily arranged a studio session so his son-in-law could add a vocal track.

“Even though I was already married to Tanya and we had kids, when I was invited to be on the Haden family album, I finally felt like I was truly part of the family,” said Black, speaking by cell phone with his wife from their car outside a Los Angeles restaurant. “I’ve always loved Tanya’s family. The whole family has always been kind of a magical source of mystery.”

Black is a self-declared “ham” whose upcoming Judd Apatow/Harold Ramis biblical times comedy, “The Year One”, co-starring Michael Cera is slated for summer release. His wife, a cellist and visual artist, describes herself as “more of a hermit” and recently completed an animated short with music by her sister Petra for the Nick Jr children’s show “Yo Gabba Gabba!”

But on the album, Tanya and her sisters — with their tightly blended harmonies on the Carter Family’s “Single Girl, Married Girl” and other songs — really stand out among a line-up that features such vocal stars as Vince Gill, Elvis Costello, Dan Tyminski, Ricky Skaggs and Rosanne Cash.

“We’ll just start singing a song and we’ll naturally fall into certain harmonies,” said Tanya Haden. “When we were little we would spend the night at our grandparents’ house on our mom’s side, which was really fun for us because we’d share a room and sing in harmony before we went to bed.”

The triplets and brother Josh — all of whom have been involved in the indie rock scene — were largely raised by their mother, Ellen Haden, a therapist, after her parents divorced. Tanya says her mother — whose parents both played classical music in the Los Angeles Mandolin Orchestra — helped influence their musical bent along with her more well-known father.

Haden and Black first met at a private high school in Santa Monica, California, but went their separate ways. She jokes that she was “a groupie” who would show up at concerts by his comedy-rock band Tenacious D. He says he was “kind of stalking” her by turning up at Haden Triplet performances. They met up again three years ago when Tenacious D was playing at a mutual friend’s surprise birthday and got married in March 2006.

“Rambling Boy” includes an excerpt from a 1939 Haden Family radio show with 22-month-old Little Cowboy Charlie yodelling on a gospel tune. Black and Haden say the oldest of their two sons, 2-year-old Sam, is already showing he’s inherited the family musical DNA after being exposed to everything from Weezer’s danceable “Surf Wax America” to Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite”.

“Our son is already yodelling better than my father,” said Tanya Haden. “He already has his own taste in music. He’ll hear something and do his own rendition and we’ll try to sing along with him and he’ll tell us to shut up.” — AP

Welcome 2009 with Viennese music

By : Radin Sri Ghazali


Arpiné Rahdjian.

USHER in 2009 a la Viennese style with the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra (MPO) at Dewan Filharmonik Petronas (DFP) from Jan 9-11.

The concerts are held in tribute to renowned Austrian composer Johann Strauss II.

Music aficionados will be entertained by the maestro’s masterpieces including wonderful waltzes, The Blue Danube and Vienna Blood, pleasing polkas such as Annen and Fireworks Festival and sumptuous operettas, The Gypsy Baron and Die Fledermaus.

Held as part of the Light Classics series, the concerts will be conducted by Martin Sieghart, one of Viennese most versatile conductors.

The show will also see the MPO collaborating with soprano Arpiné Rahdjian.
The young Armenian was discovered in 2005 during her debut as Micaela in a Carmen production.

Her potential artistic skills, beautiful voice and extraordinary stage persona has enthralled audiences in Europe, Japan, Canada and the United States.

A graduate of the Vienna Music Conservatoire, Arpiné has also received guidance from renowned maestros in the operatic world and has performed the roles of Fiordiligi, Donna Elvira, Contessa Almaviva, Agathe and Liùand Mimi, making her one of the most successful singers of her genre.

Tickets priced at RM95, RM85, RM75, RM55, RM25 and RM20 are available at the box-office. Call 03- 2051-7007 or email dfp_boxoffice@petronas.com.my.

American folk music legend Odetta dies at 77

Prominent voice from the civil rights movement succumbed to heart disease

Paul Hawthorne / Getty Images File

Odetta attends the premiere of "Lightning in a Bottle" at the DGA Theater in October 2004 in New York City.

NEW YORK - Odetta, the folk singer with the powerful voice who moved audiences and influenced fellow musicians for a half-century, has died. She was 77.

Odetta died Tuesday of heart disease at Lenox Hill Hospital, said her manager of 12 years, Doug Yeager. She was admitted to the hospital with kidney failure about three weeks ago, he said.

In spite of failing health that caused her to use a wheelchair, Odetta performed 60 concerts in the last two years, singing for 90 minutes at a time. Her singing ability never diminished, Yeager said.

"The power would just come out of her like people wouldn't believe," he said.

With her booming, classically trained voice and spare guitar, Odetta gave life to the songs by workingmen and slaves, farmers and miners, housewives and washerwomen, blacks and whites.

First coming to prominence in the 1950s, she influenced Harry Belafonte, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez and other singers who had roots in the folk music boom.

An Odetta record on the turntable, listeners could close their eyes and imagine themselves hearing the sounds of spirituals and blues as they rang out from a weathered back porch or around a long-vanished campfire a century before.

"What distinguished her from the start was the meticulous care with which she tried to re-create the feeling of her folk songs; to understand the emotions of a convict in a convict ditty, she once tried breaking up rocks with a sledge hammer," Time magazine wrote in 1960.

"She is a keening Irishwoman in `Foggy Dew,' a chain-gang convict in `Take This Hammer,' a deserted lover in `Lass from the Low Country,'" Time wrote.

Active in civil rights movement
Odetta called on her fellow blacks to "take pride in the history of the American Negro" and was active in the civil rights movement. When she sang at the March on Washington in August 1963, "Odetta's great, full-throated voice carried almost to Capitol Hill," The New York Times wrote.

She was nominated for a 1963 Grammy award for best folk recording for "Odetta Sings Folk Songs." Two more Grammy nominations came in recent years, for her 1999 "Blues Everywhere I Go" and her 2005 album "Gonna Let It Shine."

In 1999, she was honored with a National Medal of the Arts. Then-President Bill Clinton said her career showed "us all that songs have the power to change the heart and change the world."

"I'm not a real folksinger," she told The Washington Post in 1983. "I don't mind people calling me that, but I'm a musical historian. I'm a city kid who has admired an area and who got into it. I've been fortunate. With folk music, I can do my teaching and preaching, my propagandizing."

Among her notable early works were her 1956 album "Odetta Sings Ballads and Blues," which included such songs as "Muleskinner Blues" and "Jack O' Diamonds"; and her 1957 "At the Gate of Horn," which featured the popular spiritual "He's Got the Whole World in His Hands."

Her 1965 album "Odetta Sings Dylan" included such standards as "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right," "Masters of War" and "The Times They Are A-Changin'."

In a 1978 Playboy interview, Dylan said, "the first thing that turned me on to folk singing was Odetta." Dylan said he found "just something vital and personal" when he heard an early album of hers in a record store as a teenager. "Right then and there, I went out and traded my electric guitar and amplifier for an acoustical guitar," he said.

Belafonte also cited her as a key influence on his hugely successful recording career, and she was a guest singer on his 1960 album, "Belafonte Returns to Carnegie Hall."

She continued to record in recent years; her 2001 album "Looking for a Home (Thanks to Leadbelly)" paid tribute to the great blues singer to whom she was sometimes compared.

Odetta's last big concert was on Oct. 4 at San Francisco's Golden State Park, where she performed in front of tens of thousands at the Hardly Strictly Bluegrass festival, Yeager said. She also performed Oct. 25-26 in Toronto.

Odetta hoped to sing at the inauguration of President-elect Barack Obama, though she had not been officially invited, Yeager said.

Born Odetta Holmes in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1930, she moved with her family to Los Angeles at age 6. Her father had died when she was young and she took her stepfather's last name, Felious. Hearing her in glee club, a junior high school teacher made sure she got music lessons, but Odetta became interested in folk music in her late teens and turned away from classical studies.

She got much of her early experience at the Turnabout Theatre in Los Angeles, where she sang and played occasional stage roles in the early 1950s.

"What power of characterization and projection of mood are hers, even though plainly clad and sitting or standing in half light!" a Los Angeles Times critic wrote in 1955.

Occasional acting roles
Over the years, she picked up occasional acting roles in TV and film. None other than famed Hollywood columnist Hedda Hopper reported in 1961 that she "comes through beautifully" in the film "Sanctuary."

In the Washington Post interview, Odetta theorized that humans developed music and dance because of fear, "fear of God, fear that the sun would not come back, many things. I think it developed as a way of worship or to appease something. ... The world hasn't improved, and so there's always to sing about."

Odetta is survived by a daughter, Michelle Esrick of New York City, and a son, Boots Jaffre, of Fort Collins, Colorado. She was divorced about 40 years ago and never remarried, her manager said.

A memorial service was planned for next month, Yeager said.

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