PANTHER BURNS Stalk New York [1983]

Text by Julia Masi / FFanzeen, 1983

Introduction and photos by Robert Barry Francos / FFanzeen, 2017

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The music of the Panther Burns was interesting in that it deviated from a formula. In fact, it was the same rockabilly-blues paradigm that the Cramps built on, but the Burns went in another – albeit equally minimalist – way. They used dissonance, changed the rhythm, and included a bunch of “tricks” that would warp the sounds without veering that much away in order to keep it “electric” without it being “electronic.” To give you some idea, past members of the group included Alex Chilton (d. 2010) and Jim Dickinson (d. 2009)  

I saw the Burns play once (though for the life of me I can’t remember where) around the time of this interview (The Ritz perhaps?), and saw Tav Falco once more in 1996 in a solo gig at Mercury Lounge after an interview there for the Videowave cable access show (see at bottom) The rest of the band here also went on to other bands that achieved cult status.

Meanwhile, Falco moved to Europe towards the end of the last century, and continues to front a version of the Burns.

This article / interview was originally published in FFanzeen, issue #10, dated 1983. It was written by the Managing Editor of the magazine, Julia Masi. – RBF, 2017

The Panther Burns saunter out of a small rehearsal studio on East 8th Street and Avenue A, ready to make their way across town. Just as they begin to pile themselves and their instruments into a friend’s car, lead guitarist Jim Duckworth [who would join the Gun Club - RBF, 2017], the most loquacious and animated Southern gentleman imaginable, announces that he’d rather walk and “get some of that good Greenwich Village, Manhattan air.” A flimsy excuse to pursue his favorite New York pastime, looking for copies of the Panther Burns’ latest, their first big budget 12” EP, Blow Your Top (Animal Records), on the city’s street corners. “I love the adoration,” he calls from afar as he and drummer Jim “Voon” Sclavunos slip off in the direction of St. Mark’s Place.

About a half hour later, Jim and Voon arrive at bassist Ron Miller’s apartment for the interview. Of course, Jim is anxious to relay his experiences: “It was pretty exciting, seeing the record in the street. But the thing to do now is to go to street corners and ask for the Panther Burns’ record.” His voice becomes deeper and he slightly squints one blue eye. “You have the Panther Burns’ EP?” You see, it’s not cool to go into the records store. That is the first thing you do. You wanna see it in the stores. But when you get really hip, you wanna see it on street corners.

“We didn’t really acknowledge that it was us. We just asked him how much he wanted for it. He wanted two dollars for it. But the interesting part of the story is that when we walked back over there, every street corner was sold out of our record! So that’s a really good sign. We’re impressed with that. It’s on the streets. It’s in the stores. It’s even in Memphis. But it’s not on street corners in Memphis. Nobody sells stuff on the street in Memphis. Well, actually, they do, I take that back. They sell those ceramic Elvis busts. And those velveteen tapestries with the ship, always with the ship. And jeans. Jeans all the time. And inflatable frogs. It’s not like it is here (where) they have shoes and things you can use, like Panther Burns’ records.”

 Aside from an infatuation with street hawkers, Jim is slightly less than enchanted with New York City’s Northern hospitality. “I’ve been thrown out of everywhere I’ve ever stayed (in NY). I slept in a Volkswagen seat least night, and I’m not in a very good mood from it. I get to sleep in the Volkswagen again tonight, but then I’m thrown out of there, too,” he laments.

Fortunately, he’s not taking such petty annoyances to heart. Especially not in light of the fates that befell his musical heroes when they relocated to the Big Apple. “All those guys – Jimmy Rogers, Buddy Rogers – died almost on the train goin’ out to Coney Island. They brought him up here to make some last records. They carried him up on a cot. And then he says,” Jim lowers his eyelids, stretches out his arms in a crucifixion pose, his voice a crackling whisper, “’Oh, no-o-o-o-o-o.’ And that was it! He was a goner, Jack!

“Buddy Holly comes up here, and on February 3rd [1959] he dies in an airplane crash.” So why do Southern boys like Duckworth care to flirt with fate and not only play, but record their EP on jinxed turf? One of the lures of the big city was that the band was able to work at Plaza Sound Studio in Radio City Music Hall, which left them only feet away from the space where the legendary Rockettes rehearsed. “I’ve only heard about them all my life,” recalls Jim. In fact, he was so anxious to meet a real live Rockette that he hung up signs around the building saying, “Singers Wanted,” hoping that a hoofer or two would be willing to sing back-up on the EP. His scheme didn’t work out as planned, but he frequently got to see some of the dancers in and around the building.

“I just love tap dancers. They’re just – “he smiles and stares into space. “There are just hardly any left.” A big fan of Bill “Bojangles” Robinson (he’s even seen some of Robinson’s videos in slow motion) and Fred Astaire, he and Ron wax nostalgic about the dancers they’ve worked with while touring in jazz bands. “I played a gig with a tap dancer jus last winter, as a matter of fact,” remembers Ron. “There was a tap dance concerto with Honey Coles (one of Jim’s idols), and this girl named Brenda Bufalino. It was an orchestra gig. Morton Gold wrote this thing with a rhythmic tap dance part that’s mainly improvised. And an orchestra.”

“There’s two black guys in Pittsburgh who can’t get nowhere,” sympathizes Jim. “I remember I played with them when I was in the Jazz Workshop All-Stars. I was playing one night in Tunisia, and the next thing I know – these guys were so neat! They just came out on stage, dancin’ like this – “; he gets up and does a pretty impressive shuffle step across the room. “They were just having the greatest time tappin’ and doin’ solos, cuttin’ each other, and doin’ fours! And I remember when they got off, they just tapped off! And I was watchin’ them in the wings, tappin’ and slappin’ each other on the back, and doublin’ over with laughter. I just thought it was wonderful. They’d just been doin’ this for about 40 years. Saxie Williams. And I forget the name of his partner.

“There was a period when all these guys in Pittsburgh would try to tap in the kitchen, late at night, doin’ the timestep.” He confesses that he can’t tap, as he demonstrates his own competent version of the dance. But the dancer of the group is said to be lead singer/guitarist Tav Falco. He’s known in some Southern Arthur Murray Dance Studio circles for his very classy tango.

“This is a studio record,” Jim continues on the original subject. “This thing was done in Plaza Sound. This thing meets the requirements of everybody. The last one was the garage record [the 45 produced by Alex Chilton on Frenzy Records – Ed., 1983]. And the one before that, that was done in the closet.

“We tried to keep a raw sound by recording the rhythm section first, (then) guitar, bass and drums, so, we could have that “feel.” We didn’t want to do it, like, drums, and then puttin’ stuff over it. We wanted it to sound like the group playing.

“I think rock’n’roll is continual,” he explains. “There was rockabilly, then there was another kind of music, and then there was the ‘60s, and it just keeps changing. Anything you do is going to include the whole tradition.”

And tradition, or just a desire to reinforce the roots of rock’n’roll, is one reason why the Panther Burns have chosen to resurrect some of the classics of rockabilly. They bring a fresh, timely originality to the material that they revere. “There are just so many great cover tunes,” answers Jim, when asked why the band doesn’t incorporate more original material in their repertoire. “What’s the difference if it’s a cover tune anyway? We just play the music the way we feel it anyway. Ron makes his own bass parts and we generally change the music around to fit us.”

“Why must performers do original tunes?” asks Tav. “You know, Frank Sinatra didn’t write a lot of the material he did. Yet people didn’t ask him to write songs. ‘Why aren’t you writing songs, Frank?’ It was his voice. He had the voice. And Elvis didn’t write much of his songs. I think that’s a thing from the ‘60s. Buddy Holly was a good songwriter, and there were a lot of singer-songwriters like that. I personally have never concentrated on songwriting. I look at this as a body of work that can be shared. I think rock’n’roll is a genre, and you participate in that body of work. Now, if we contribute something, write a song and something comes out, fine. But personally, I’m not trying to get down and be a songwriter.

“I like working out of a tradition like some of the blues work we’ve done so far. Especially the blues. We’re bringing into the modern world music traditions that we were exposed to, that we grew up with.”

But Jim does think it’s necessary for artists to do original work, “Because that’s what moved the American musical tradition on, the need to write new tunes. Be-bop; they could have reused the harmonic basis of the standard tunes, but they would have lost money, so they wrote these incredible melodies on top of them. So, original music is where all of this stuff comes from. It’s necessary to go in and write original tunes if you have something you want to say. If not, go and do cover tunes. The reason we do so many cover tunes is that there are so many great ones to do. And it’s not a constriction. It’s not black and white: ‘cover tunes are constrictions; originals are freedom.’ Sometimes it’s the opposite.

“Take the first song,” he points to the cover of his EP on the table, “I’m a Rocket. “ “The original was acoustic guitar and voice. This one has all sorts of things happening to it. We gave it an ensemble. The whole group is playing. We have drum parts, bass, guitar parts. It has the same words at the original. It has the same rhythmic feel, but Voon has opened it up a lot. It has feedback and all sorts of stuff.”

“I just think that the music we’re doing is a product of the atomic consciousness of the ‘60s,” offers Tav. “You know, like after 1945 and the atomic bombs that were dropped. Like this song,” he pauses to listen to part of Arthur Pruitt’s “Gonna Dig Myself a Hole,” coming from the stereo in the next room. “When he comes out (of the hole), there won’t be any more wars around. So, in a way, music has a sort of political strata. People think that this music is very primitive. Blues and early rock’n’roll are very primitive. However, there is a subversive quality about it that comes out of the absence of any really strong labor movement in this country. It’s kind of a product of that, because it’s not about joining in. It’s not about filling the American Dream. It’s not about that at all. So, people think this kind of music is very Rightist and a celebration of all the American values, but it’s not. It’s carried on in spite of that.”