Songs for Telegraph Avenue
Archy Stallings and Nat Jaffe, the central characters in Michael Chabon’s sprawling Telegraph Avenue, love nothing more than records; listening to them, talking about them, savoring the whisper of an LP as it slides out of its sleeve. But for all the music it name-checks the novel, which revolves around the two owners of Oakland’s rapidly obsolescing Brokeland Records, lacks its own soundtrack. So eMusic has thoughtfully provided one, syncing an album to each of the novel’s major characters (and a few minor ones).
Telegraph Avenue casts a wide net, encompassing cultural and generational shifts, the blurry line between urban renewal and gentrification, the politics of home birthing and the struggles of new (and not-so-new) fatherhood, so our musical choices are equally diverse.
Archy Stallings
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On several occasions, Chabon likens Brokeland Records' co-proprietor to the great jazz bassist Charles Mingus, a resemblance that does not escape the character who calls him a "beret-wearing, soul-patch dee-vo-tay of Negritude, Charles Mingus-impersonating motherfucker." Mingus's 1959 album includes "Fables of Faubus," a protest against the Arkansas governor who attempted to thwart the integration of public schools in Little Rock, a struggle whose fruits are evident in the culturally mixed – but... emphatically not post-racial – neighborhoods of Telegraph Avenue. The elegiac "Goodbye Pork Pie Hat," a tribute to Mingus's late mentor, Lester Young, reflects Archy's relationship with his own surrogate father, jazz organist Cochise Jones, as well as the novel's preoccupation with the way memories are passed on through music.
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Nat Jaffe
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Like Archy, Brokeland partner Nat Jaffe is a music maker as well as seller, but where Archy is devoted to his bass, steadily keeping the beat as the world moves on, Nat's talents are more diffuse, proficient at many instruments but wedded to none. As a Jewish man steeped in African-American culture – he even cooks some mean collard greens – he's never quite certain of where he stands, especially as father... to a 14-year-old son he's beginning to suspect may be gay. So he might find inspiration in "Isn't She Lovely," the cornerstone of Stevie Wonder's crowning masterwork, Songs in the Key of Life. Like Nat, Wonder is a musical polymath, evoked by another of the book's characters as an exemplar of the days when black musicians created rather than remixed. ("Now, black kid halfway to a genius comes along? Like RZA? Can't even play a motherfucking kazoo.") As you might expect from a novel by the author of Manhood for Amateurs, fatherhood in Telegraph Avenue is a messy business, but the sheer joy of Wonder's song, a contrast to the singer's own messy personal life, could serve as a lodestar for the conflicted dad.
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Gwen Shanks
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Archy's wife, Gwen, who owns a boutique midwifery clinic with Nat's wife, Aviva, has been tolerating her husband's wayward tendencies for a long time. But observing an encounter between Archy and a woman she correctly guesses to be his current mistress pushes her to the edge, and a confrontation with a condescending obstetrician sends her over it. Her overpowering anger, fueled by a deep sense of anger and confusion, finds an unlikely... counterpart in the on-the-warpath funk of Betty Davis, whose solo career began not long after her marriage to Miles Davis ended. As a wronged woman she's all fury and no regret, making the kind of music Gwen might use to rile herself up before making a hot-headed decision she'll quickly come to rue.
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Aviva Roth-Jaffe
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Joni Mitchell is more associated with Los Angeles than the Bay Area, but the combination of earthiness and whimsy in her music seems like the right fit for Aviva Roth-Jaffe, who, as Telegraph Avenue's conflicts intensify, finds herself putting out several fires at once. Gwen's outburst threatens to cost the midwives their privileges at the only hospital that will let them in the door, and her husband and his partner are troubled... by the planned arrival of a massive shopping mall that threatens to obliterate their old-fashioned business. Through it all, Aviva holds onto idealism of the kind so succinctly expressed in Mitchell's "Free Man in Paris," even when it threatens to cost her dearly.
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Gibson “G-Bad” Goode
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Wrong coast, we know. But you have to cross the country to find a pop-cultural figure with the impact Chabon envisions for his football-star-turned-entrepreneur – at least, one who makes music worth listening to. (Sorry, Shaq.) Gibson Goode, who takes meetings in his own private zeppelin, embodies Jay-Z's classic boast, "I'm not a businessman – I'm a business, man," and the omnivorous sounds of his classic album embody the pancultural mixture to... which Telegraph Avenue aspires. G-Bad's own taste may run more to Minnie Ripperton than Hova, but the novel's lack of hip-hop reference points had to be addressed somehow.
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Luther Stallings
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Like the absentee father that he is, Luther Stalling floats in and out of Telegraph Avenue, all but disappearing for much of the book's middle section. Archy's rarely seen dad is a washed-up black action star who's been on and off drugs for decades and is now in the process of purportedly cleaning up his act – the fact that said cleanup involves blackmailing an old acquaintance for money to fund his... planned comeback film is a regrettable compromise. Trouble Man isn't one of blaxploitation's crown jewels, but Marvin Gaye's theme is a stone classic. Gaye's relationship with his own father ended in tragedy, but Luther and Archy have at least a slim chance of settling their differences.
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Cochise Jones
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With closets full of eye-searing leisure suits, Brokeland regular and de facto father figure to Archy Cochise Jones is a living relic, a link to an earlier age who is literally crushed by his devotion to his music. His funeral marks a rare coming together of Telegraph Avenue's scattered characters, whose varied agendas are set aside just long enough to lay a legendary player to rest. Booker T. Jones shares a surname... with Cochise as well as legendary proficiency on the Hammond B-3 organ, and the sweaty, gritty soul the former made with the M.G.'s stands as an exemplar of the benefits of cultural collision. Half-black and half-white at a time (and in a place) where racially integrated bands met with fierce and sometimes violent opposition, the quartet's four members were trained and untrained, poor and middle-class, bound by common understanding and a willingness to let their music speak for them. Melting Pot, which Nat drops on Brokeland's turntable at a pivotal moment, was their most ambitious album, fueled by the collegiate music studies Jones had pursued on his days off, and the strain of recording it broke up the band (whose home base, Stax Records, was located not far from the motel where Martin Luther King was assassinated). Jones, seeking a change, left Memphis for California, where perhaps he met up with a long-lost uncle who shared his love of the Hammond.
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redcoates7on October 17, 2012 at 10:06 pm said: I absolutely loved this book, and love the musical selections chosen to accompany it! Strong work
