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March 25, 2008
Numerology: With Care for "...Cell 44"
I know what you’re thinking. If you’re anything like me, 44 makes you think of Dirty Harry and his .44 Magnum, “the most powerful handgun in the world, which would blow your head clean off.” I’m also reminded of that memorable turn in front of the camera by Martin Scorsese, playing a cuckolded psychopath in Taxi Driver who manages to creep out Travis Bickle himself, by posing disturbing questions about the destructive power of the .44 he’s planning on using on his wife. Accordingly, “.44 Magnum is a Monster” is the name of an instrumental piece on the movie’s soundtrack, scored by the great Bernard Herrmann, who put shrill violins permanently on the map in his score for Psycho. The mighty Howlin’ Wolf apparently never left home without packing his piece. In his oft-covered “Forty-Four,” a jaunty two-steppin’ blues, Wolf delivers a raw, impassioned vocal that shows off his unmistakable jagged-edged timbre. “I wore my .44 so long,” he wails, “I’ve made my shoulder sore.” In just a few words he conveys both a world of pain and the sense that healing can come through the sheer power of expression.
Even without the gun association, no. 44 signifies power. Ask Henry Aaron, Reggie Jackson, and Willie McCovey, Hall of Fame sluggers all, who slammed the white pill skyward hundreds and hundreds of time with 44 stitched across their broad backs. I would be surprised if they would have hit a collective 1,839 homers had they all worn no. 43. “Surprise Me 44,” by the UK folk-tronica purveyors known as Tunng, has nothing to do with baseball, but with its comforting acoustic guitar lines and hazy campfire vocals, if the song were a baseball player, it would be a light-hitting but dependable second baseman. Even the hippie-dippy sentiments of lines like “Let all the moments go down on you/we’ll sleep tomorrow/it’s nice to do” don’t really rankle. I wish I could say the same for Insane Clown Posse’s “The Night of the 44, ” a rhythmically and lyrically uninspired mass-murder fantasy. A much better song about murder is “44,” from Happy Suicide Jim! (2006) by the Love Kills Theory, which mocks vigilantism instead of celebrating it, and makes its case with a combination of sturdy chords and an upbeat chorus bolstered with gunshots (a full two years before M.I.A. pulled the same trick on “Paper Planes,” to an admittedly grander height).
Nevertheless, no. 44 is the opposite of a big brawny chest beater of a song. In fact, it’s incredibly light on its feet, but before we go there, let’s set this up properly. It’s worth it.
I’m sure it never occurred to Al Kooper in 1968 that one of his most lasting contributions to music would involve the stack of 40 or so British LPs he brought back with him from London that summer. Al Kooper was on the hot streak of his life at the time, and would have been well within his rights to be thinking primarily of his own career trajectory. After all, three years earlier the man makes history, twice: going electric with Dylan at the Newport Folk Festival, and playing organ on “Like a Rolling Stone,” a great song that becomes revolutionary when Dylan tells Al to turn up his organ. From 1965-68, Kooper proceeds to play guitar and keyboards on hundreds of sessions, with the Stones and Cream, Jimi Hendrix and the Who, and other lesser mortals; he starts and leaves not one, but two, successful bands—the Blues Project and Blood, Sweat & Tears—and now he is poised to add solo artist to his resume. In the midst of all this, one of those British LPs, starts to haunt him. One of them, Kooper later writes, “stuck out like a rose in a garden of weeds.”
Odessey & Oracle by the Zombies is now recognized as one of the finest pop records of its decade, or any decade, but in 1968, no one else but Kooper seems to recognize the record’s greatness. Kooper’s so passionate that he personally leans on the new head of CBS Records, which owns it, Clive Davis, to release it in the States. CBS doesn’t think much of the record’s commercial prospects, and they’re about to just shelve it. Remember, Columbia has all the big acts at this time, from Dylan on down, and they’re just not excited enough to get behind a bunch of specky Englishmen singing intricate, minor-key, utterly English-sounding psychedelic pop. But Kooper, a producer at Columbia with nothing to gain from his efforts save for avoiding a crime against nature, persuades Davis to change his mind and Odessey gets released, with little fanfare, and no one pays much attention. The first few singles are released that fall, including this week’s winning song, and they go nowhere. But November spawns a monster, in the form of “Time of the Season,” which grows into an international hit. Of course, by this time, the Zombies have long since broken up.
It’s hard to imagine how Kooper, with his golden touch, somehow believed that “Care of Cell 44” was a stronger single than “Time of the Season” and advised CBS to put it out first. While undoubtedly the definitive no. 42 song of all time, “Cell 44” had already tanked as a single in the UK. It’s suitability as a single notwithstanding, “Care of Cell 44” is the glorious opening of a record that is as good as Pet Sounds or Forever Changes, and flat-out better than Sgt. Pepper, with which it is often compared. The song is a perfect pop tapestry woven of Colin Blunstone’s delicate, dreamy vocals, washes of gauzy mellotron, harpsichord plinks, and a richly melodic bass line. The exquisite, guitar-less arrangement just soars. In addition to its remarkable beauty, the song offers a scenario that appears to be unique in the annals of rock: a love letter to an incarcerated girlfriend. In the hands of Johnny Cash or Nick Cave, a song with this lyrical conceit would be a dirge, but the Zombies fill it with such barely suppressed joy and musical inventiveness (the falsetto-dominated middle eight is remarkably sublime) as to render the prison part irrelevant. We know she’s a good girl; it’s probably just a lot of parking tickets or something. The point is she’s coming home, and soon, and we can hardly wait.
I can never imagine getting tired of this song. That’s even higher praise than “I’ll always love this song” or “This song has a lot of meaning for me” or even “I’ll always think of my first love/car/dog when I hear it.” Nope, a lifetime skip count of zero trumps them all.
the Zombies - "Care of Cell 44"
A final note: Al Kooper’s first solo record, I Stand Alone (1968), received critical praise but was not a commercial success. While he would continue to matter greatly in the music world in the ‘70s (and beyond), mostly as a producer and as the man who discovered Lynyrd Skynyrd, Kooper never made it as a solo artist, a fact that he apparently took pretty hard. But in the year in which he was arguably at his absolute peak, Kooper helped the Zombies leave an indelible mark with their posthumous masterstroke. We can be thankful to Al for that, just as I am grateful to the Zombies, from a numerological standpoint, for ditching both of the song’s original titles: “Prison Song” and “Cell 69.” How they settled on 44 is unclear, but oddly enough, ’44 was the year Al Kooper was born. Guess it was just meant to be.
Numerology is our pal Dave's ill advised quest to find the definitive song for every number from one to a hundred. It's starting to creep everybody out.
Previously: No. 1, 2-4, 5-7, 7 (counterpoint), 8, 9, 10/11, 12/13. 13 (counterpoint), 14/15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26/27, 28 , 29 , 30, 30 (counterpoint), 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43
Posted by David Klein at March 25, 2008 09:20 AM
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Comments
i love this series
Posted by: EF Matt at March 25, 2008 11:04 AM
An entire post on 44 and not a single Syracuse reference? C'mon.
Posted by: Randall Monty at March 25, 2008 03:54 PM
That shit is only important in central New York, let's let it stay there...
Posted by: Jeff K at March 25, 2008 05:20 PM
Fair point. I'm just not hoops-fan enough to know about that stuff. I guess I figured I covered my sports quotient with the baseball discussion, but I should have realized who I was dealing with...
Posted by: david at March 25, 2008 06:36 PM
For (four!) Monty:
44 is also a number for the most heralded talents of Syracuse University sports. Somewhat quixotic to reference SU glory on the same day the basketball team takes an early exit from the we're-not-proud-to-be-in-this-thing-anyway NIT tourny, or in terms of the football team, an entire decade.
Posted by: Sebastian at March 25, 2008 10:03 PM
As if it weren't already a self-fulfilled prophecy, the SU football team has "retired" the number 44.
Posted by: Randall Monty at March 25, 2008 10:33 PM
In my younger days (as in the early 90's) I knew of a singer/songwriter named Chris LeDoux. He pretty much has always been off the radar except for his one song Amarillo By Morning. However, even that song was better known when George Strait covered it (and the Strait version was better). But there was one song of his I remember from my youth...Hairtrigger Colt .44. Now I don't remember exactly how the tune went but I remember something about "Glory's not worth killin' for, I wish now I had never touched the handle of a Hairtrigger colt .44". In no way am I suggesting this song should be in contention against The Zombies, just thought I would throw this out there though. Later ya'll!!
Posted by: Kelli Douglas at March 26, 2008 11:09 AM
I just realized my comment might be a good lead in for #45....as in Colt 45. Yes it gross but you all know you have tried it and when your purse is light the Colt can still provide.
Posted by: Kelli Douglas at March 26, 2008 11:16 AM
Don't you think the prison angle is just unbelievably weird? I mean, within the song its not like there are gritty ladies jail details or anything. The whole song is just about anticipation for seeing your girl. She could have just as easily been at summer camp. Or does it need to be jail to set up an impenetrable barrier against having seen her?
Posted by: Jeff K at March 26, 2008 01:48 PM
That's what i was saying--the prison part doesn't really make its presence felt in the song, except in theory. And yet it's there and it makes the song something much more than a love letter to a girl at camp...
Kelli, thanks for the addition to 44-ness, and as for 45, you can rest assured that it will be dealt with fully as a gun, a single record, and an age.
Posted by: david at March 26, 2008 02:17 PM
I've always taken the prison angle to insinuate that the narrator is a little bit off his rocker. Maybe he fell in love with this woman after she became incarcerated. He could have been a volunteer reading teacher, or perhaps he followed her murder trial and started writing letters to her while she served time.
Posted by: Randall Monty at March 26, 2008 07:04 PM
Good essay. Honestly, I'd always assumed that "Cell 44" was a sort of metaphor, that the girl was away at college, maybe, in a dorm room, and our pining singer likened that time away to a prison sentence. Actual prison never occurred to me!
Posted by: Nick at March 28, 2008 11:49 AM
I appreciate the praise. As for the prison being metaphorical, it's possible we're all being too literal about it, but then again, in the absence of any lyrical evidence to indicate that the singer is being ironic or metaphorical or whatever, it's only a theory. I've read a fair amount on the record and most people seem to take the prison setting at face value, but certainly the music is at odds with this idea.
Posted by: david at March 29, 2008 03:38 PM
Just to bring yet another sport into the mix, 44 was the number of the great long stick defenseman on the Johns Hopkins lacrosse team when they beat 'Cuse in '87.
(But yes, David, I think Reggie, too).
Posted by: Liza at March 29, 2008 05:10 PM
