In 2006, Anti- Records, home of Tom Waits, Nick Cave, Neko Case, Kate Bush (and so many more favorites of mine, this list is already too long), pub­lished the tons-of-fun com­pi­la­tion Rogue’s Gallery, a selec­tion of sea shanties and pirate songs as inter­pret­ed by an ensem­ble of lumi­nar­ies from the pop, indie, and folk worlds. The two-CD, forty-three track release is avail­able on YouTube (I’d rec­om­mend Nick Cave’s “Fire Down Below,” but he’s an old hand at this kind of thing).

Both CDs are pro­duced by Hal Will­ner and curat­ed by Will­ner and Pirates of the Caribbean star John­ny Depp and direc­tor Gore Verbin­s­ki; Son of Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Bal­lads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys is set for release on Feb­ru­ary 19th. Will­ner told Rolling Stone in Decem­ber that this new release “seems happier—not as much about tor­ture, sodomy and death.” Hard to imag­ine a sea song with­out those three things, but here we are, with “Shenan­doah” (above), a nos­tal­gic hymn to old Vir­ginia, sup­pos­ed­ly sung by Mis­souri Riv­er flat­boat­men in the ear­ly 19th cen­tu­ry, then export­ed ‘round the world on clip­per ships. The ver­sion above by Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards turns the maudlin bal­lad into a drunk­en funer­al dirge. A com­menter on the video puts it per­fect­ly: “If a song could smell like whiskey….” Richards’ spare elec­tric gui­tar work near the end adds a clean, melod­ic coun­ter­point to Waits’ down-and-out growl. Won­der­ful stuff.

The song has long been a favorite of clean-shaven choral and vocal groups like the Statler Broth­ers and Mor­mon Taber­na­cle Choir and was the title theme of the 1965 Civ­il War film Shenan­doah, with Jim­my Stew­art. Waits and Richards do the song a much-need­ed service—they reclaim it for the drunk­en, dirty boat­men and rum-soaked, lone­ly sailors who sang it at sea.

* Cor­rec­tion: a pre­vi­ous ver­sion of this post stat­ed that Rogue’s Gallery and Son of Rogue’s Gallery were asso­ci­at­ed with the Walt Dis­ney com­pa­ny and part of the Pirates of the Caribbean pro­mo­tion­al cam­paign. As you can see from pro­duc­er Hal Will­ner’s com­ment below, nei­ther project is asso­ci­at­ed with Dis­ney or the mar­ket­ing of the Pirates films. We apol­o­gize for the mis­take. 

Relat­ed Con­tent

Tom Waits Reads Charles Bukows­ki

A Brief His­to­ry of John Baldessari, Nar­rat­ed by Tom Waits

Tom Waits’ Clas­sic Appear­ance on Aus­tralian TV, 1979

Josh Jones is a free­lance writer, edi­tor, and musi­cian based in Wash­ing­ton, DC. Fol­low him @jdmagness

Wag­ing Heavy Peace — it’s not your aver­age rock star biog­ra­phy. There’s not much sex and drugs. There’s some rock ’n’ roll. But most­ly, there’s a lot of Neil Young being an ordi­nary guy, hang­ing out with fam­i­ly and friends, tin­ker­ing with toy trains, and refur­bish­ing old cars. It’s a decid­ed­ly down-to-earth auto­bi­og­ra­phy, so far as auto­bi­ogra­phies go. But it’s not entire­ly devoid of fan­tas­ti­cal sto­ries. Like the time when, dur­ing the late 1960s, Young stopped by the Los Ange­les home of Den­nis Wil­son, the drum­mer of The Beach Boys. There, Wil­son was liv­ing with three or four girls who had an “intense vibe” and a “detached qual­i­ty about them.” Young con­tin­ues:

After a while, a guy showed up, picked up my gui­tar, and start­ed play­ing a lot of songs on it. His name was Char­lie. He was a friend of the girls and now of Den­nis. His songs were off-the-cuff things he made up as he went along, and they were nev­er the same twice in a row. Kind of like Dylan, but dif­fer­ent because it was hard to glimpse a true mes­sage in them, but the songs were fas­ci­nat­ing. He was quite good.

Young then adds:

I asked him if he had a record­ing con­tract. He told me he did­n’t yet, but he want­ed to make records. I told Mo Ostin at Reprise about him, and rec­om­mend­ed that Reprise check him out.… Short­ly after­ward, the Sharon Tate-La Bian­ca mur­ders hap­pened, and Char­lie Man­son’s name was known around the world.

After the mur­ders, Man­son kind of got a record deal. His record­ings were com­mer­cial­ly released on the album Lie: The Love and Ter­ror Cult. Above, we have one bizarrely upbeat song from the col­lec­tion, “Home Is Where You’re Hap­py.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Neil Young Reveals the New Killer Gad­get That Will Save Music

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

‘The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done’: Neil Young Plays Two Songs on The John­ny Cash Show, 1971

Take R.E.M.‘s 1991 bal­lad “Los­ing My Reli­gion” and rework it from minor to major scale, and here’s what you get — some­thing that’s, as one Vimeo com­menter called it, “rec­og­niz­able enough to be nostalgic…unique enough to be shared!” Oth­er songs dig­i­tal­ly reworked by MajorScaled TV include “Rid­ers on the Storm” by The Doors, Metal­li­ca’s “Noth­ing Else Mat­ters,” and Djan­go Rein­hardt’s “Minor Swing.” Fol­low MajorScaled TV on Face­book for even­tu­al addi­tions to the col­lec­tion.

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it,” Reworked in Major Key, Becomes a Cheer­ful Pop Song

R.E.M. Reveals the Secrets Behind Their Emo­tion­al­ly-Charged Songs: “Los­ing My Reli­gion” and “Try Not to Breathe”

R.E.M Plays “Radio Free Europe” on Their Nation­al Tele­vi­sion Debut on The David Let­ter­man Show (1983)

After hear­ing this week from two great French com­posers linked to the Impres­sion­ist move­ment–Claude Debussy and Mau­rice Rav­el–we con­tin­ue our series of clas­sic piano-roll record­ings with a trio of per­for­mances by the last of the great Russ­ian Roman­tic com­posers: Sergei Rach­mani­noff.

When the Bol­she­viks seized the aris­to­crat­ic Rach­mani­nof­f’s estate short­ly after the Octo­ber Rev­o­lu­tion of 1917, he and his fam­i­ly fled to Scan­di­navia and then to Amer­i­ca, where they arrived in Novem­ber of 1918. To make mon­ey, the cash-strapped émi­gré put aside com­pos­ing and embarked on a gru­el­ing per­for­mance sched­ule, and in March of 1919 agreed to make a series of piano-roll record­ings for the Amer­i­can Piano Com­pa­ny, or “Ampi­co.”

It was a time of tran­si­tion for musi­cal enter­tain­ment. Most fam­i­lies who were not poor owned a piano, in keep­ing with the tra­di­tion that home enter­tain­ment was a do-it-your­self affair. But as tech­nol­o­gy advanced, peo­ple became more accus­tomed to the idea of hear­ing the music of a world-famous vir­tu­oso in their own liv­ing room. Play­er pianos, or pianolas, sound­ed bet­ter than ear­ly phono­graphs and could still serve the func­tion of a reg­u­lar piano, so for awhile there was a boom­ing busi­ness in the per­fo­rat­ed paper rolls that kept them play­ing.

Rach­mani­noff was inter­est­ed in tap­ping into the piano roll mar­ket, but was skep­ti­cal at first about the qual­i­ty of the record­ings. When he made his first record­ing at the Ampi­co stu­dio in New York, he was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised when he heard the play­back. “Gen­tle­men,” he report­ed­ly said, “I, Sergei Rach­mani­noff, have just heard myself play.” He would even­tu­al­ly record 35 pieces for Ampi­co between 1919 and 1929, twelve of which were his own com­po­si­tions. In the video above, we hear three of his best-known piano-roll record­ings:

1. Rach­mani­noff plays his famous Pre­lude in C Sharp Minor, Op. 3, No. 2 , from the 1892 suite, Morceaux de fan­taisie (“Fan­ta­sy Pieces”), record­ed on March 17, 1919.
2. Rach­mani­noff plays his own piano tran­scrip­tion of his pop­u­lar 1902 song “Lilacs,” from 12 Romances (also known as 12 Songs), Op. 21, record­ed on April 6, 1922.
3. Rach­mani­noff plays a famous short piece writ­ten by anoth­er Russ­ian com­pos­er: Niko­lai Rim­sky-Kor­sakov’s 1903 “Flight of the Bum­ble­bee,” record­ed on Feb­ru­ary 1, 1929.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Rav­el Plays Rav­el: The Haunt­ing, Melan­choly ‘Oiseaux Tristes,’ 1922

Debussy Plays Debussy: The Great Com­poser’s Play­ing Returns to Life

Watch the Great Russ­ian Com­pos­er Sergei Rach­mani­noff in Home Movies