After listening to and posting “Freedom / (Sometimes I Feel Like a) Motherless Child” by Richie Havens (see below) – whose voice has been described, by eminent New Orleanian Mike Poché, as “walnuts covered with honey” – I was reminded of this song: 

…which which opens Havens’s debut album, Mixed Bag.

I remember listening to this album when it first came out, and having the sensation that I was hearing something from some other world – or almost – a place of high imagination, of total originality.   This was particularly true of “High Flyin’ Bird”: driving percussive rhythm guitar the likes of which you generally hear only in Flamenco; a loping-rocking bass line conterpointing and grounding that rhythm; tasty Jazz guitar riffs acting as fills; drums (starting about halfway through) seeming to partake equally of the Reservation, West Africa and a New Orleans second line; all overarched, almost  dominated, by a voice that sounded like it was coming  out of some person, some being, who seemed about a thousand years old –

And all pretty hard to classify too, of course: Folk-Jazz fusion?  Americana Jazz avant la lettre?  Well, this album, released in 1966, charted in both the Jazz (1967) and Pop (1968) categories.

* Personnel:

Richie Havens: rhythm guitar and vocals;

Harvey Brooks: bass;

Howard Collins: guitar;

Bill LaVorgna: drums/percussion.

*History:

“High Flyin’ Bird” was written by Billy Edd Wheeler and first recorded by Judy Henske.  It quickly became something of a folk standard, and was later covered by a good many other artists during the late Sixties, including the Jefferson Airplane, the Au Go Go Singers, Carolyn Hester,  the New Christie Minstrels, H. P. Lovecraft, Isaac Guillory, and Neil Young & Crazy Horse .  Wheeler even recorded his own version in 1967. 

*Lyrics:

There’s a high flyin’ bird, flying way up in the sky
And I wonder if she looks down, as she goes on by?
Well, [While?] she’s flying so freely in the sky

Lord, look at me here
I’m rooted like a tree here
Got those sit-down can’t cry
Oh Lord, gonna die blues

Now the sun it comes up and lights up the day
And when he gets tired, Lord, he goes on down his way
To the east and to the west he meets God every day

Lord, look at me here
I’m rooted like a tree here
Got those sit-down, can’t cry
Oh Lord, gonna die blues

Now I had a woman
Lord, she lived down by the mine
She ain’t never seen the sun
Oh Lord, never stopped crying

Then one day my woman up and died
Lord, she up and died now
Oh Lord, she up and died now
She wanted to die [fly?] and the only way to fly is die, die, die

Well there’s a high flyin’ bird, flying way up in the sky
And I wonder if she looks down as she goes on by?
Well [While?], she’s flying so freely in the sky, hey

Lord, look at me here
I’m rooted like a tree here
Got those sit-down, can’t cry
Oh, Lord, gonna die blues

Got those sit-down, can’t cry
Oh, Lord, gonna die blues, hey hey

*Remarks:

According to Wikipedia, Critic Richie Unterberger described the song as having “…an arresting minor-key melody and brooding lyrics contrasting the freedom of a bird to the singer’s earthbound misery.” 

I’d add that the same contrast is also embodied in the musical texture itself.  The rhythm guitar, bass, and the drums (once they join in) seem almost solid – indeed an excellent expression of the phrase “rooted like a tree” – but at the same time agitated, angry even – as befits someone who’s just suffered a great loss.  Contrasting with that are the soaring windhovering voice and those subtle float-fluttering Jazz guitar fills – expressions, in their turn, of different aspects of birdness, of flight, and of an ultimately wished-for liberation.

Of course, there’s more, as there always is, but just one final thought for the moment: “Those sit-down, can’t cry / Oh Lord, gonna die blues”: as a description of a state of deep grief and loss, one could do worse…