Rock 'n' roll-call in heaven

Okay, sometimes the sheer volume of rock brethren shucking this mortal coil spins even my head around. You can’t keep up. And as the Righteous Brothers once philosophized, “If there’s a rock and roll heaven, well, you know they’ve got a hell of a band (band, band…).”

So now it’s time to pay tribute. Recent weeks/months have seen the deaths of Davy Jones (of The Monkees), The Band’s Levon Helm, Booker T. & the M.G.s bassist Donald “Duck” Dunn and honorary Beastie Boy Adam “MCA” Yauch. What do they all have in common? Each unleashed a barbaric yawp, in one way or another. Davy Jones was the least appreciated, perhaps. The surviving band members are today still struggling to gain entry into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. The British member of the ad hoc Monkees was first recruited as the drummer, but was found to be too tiny behind a drum kit; Mickey Dolenz took over the skins instead, leaving Jones to sing and shake maracas. While there’s never been any doubt that the Monkees could pour out the hits (Daydream Believer, I’m Not Your Stepping Stone, Last Train to Clarksville, Valeri, Pleasant Valley Sunday), it’s the period when the band rebelled against their Don Kirschner-owned record label and started playing their own music that stands up best.

Walks like a duck: Donald “Duck” Dunn, influential bass player for Booker T. & the M.G.s, died in Tokyo on Mother’s Day, May 13.

Though obits might legitimately read “Least Talented Monkee Passes Away,” Jones did fill an important role in the band, and especially on the Beatles-influenced weekly TV show: he always got the girl. Though his British vocal stylings were calculated to win over Beatle fans (the future members answered an ad in Variety that read, in part, “Running Parts for 4 insane boys, age 17-21”), they also gelled perfectly with the higher voice of Dolenz and the folkie/country inclinations of Liquid Paper heir Mike Nesmith.

One need only listen to 1968’s “Headquarters” or the follow-up, “Pisces, Aquarius, Capricorn & Jones,” to sense something was up with the squeaky-clean TV boys. Everyone from Glen Campbell to Stephen Stills dropped in to session with them, since their string of hits apparently allowed the Monkees unlimited studio time in Culver City, California; folks like Frank Zappa did cameos in their movie surrealistic opus, Head, which Bob Rafelson and Jack Nicholson wrote and co-directed.

Yet it’s the little things that earn The Monkees respect: the Motown-meets-punk bassline in Words, the punk organ in Stepping Stone (yes, the Sex Pistols even half-covered it), and forgotten gems like Love is Only Sleeping, Peter Tork’s For Pete’s Sake, and As We Go Along (featuring Stills and Neil Young on acoustic guitar!). Respect.

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Funky Boss: Adam Yauch, also known as Beastie Boys’ MCA, departed on May 4.

Along with multi-instrumentalist Garth Hudson, Levon Helm added that necessary extra dollop of Americana authenticity to The Band, since most of the other members were actually Canadian. Plus the guy loped on the drums like a mo-fo, while singing such staples as The Weight, The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, Up On Cripple Creek and Ophelia. It’s the carnal delight he takes in phrasing lines like “Now there’s one thing in this who-ole wi-ide wo-rld I sure would like to see/ that’s when that little love of mine dips her doughnut in my tea” that sets him apart as a yeller. You can hear traces of Helm in everyone from My Morning Jacket singer Jim James to Kevin Drew from Broken Social Scene. His approach to drums — like the way he drops in on the fiddle intro to Rag Mama Rag before settling into a country shuffle — bespoke his maturity, the wisdom of ages. And it’s their collective love of music — switching instruments, each member writing songs — that made The Band such an important link to the future of American music, by pointing to its past. (Now only guitarist Robbie Robertson remains.) See Levon’s shaggy visage tell stories about The Band coming together in Martin Scorsese’s The Last Waltz, and you realize what an education the road was; listen to his loose-limbed delivery on Strawberry Wine (on “Rock of Ages”), and you realize this stuff can’t be taught by anything but experience. And we’re still waiting for the second coming.

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Another crucial link — between R&B and country soul — was forged by the economic bass work of Donald “Duck” Dunn. Paired with the stinging leads of Steve Cropper and Al Jackson’s fatback drums, they formed the grooving backbone of Booker T. & the M.G.s and Stax’s House Band in Memphis. Just listen to the way he cooks up a little story with his bassline on Otis Redding’s Respect (1968), and you can hear how Stax had found its own homegrown, laidback groove machine. And it’s his amazing circular bass work on I Can’t Turn You Loose that electrified Monterey crowds: it’s that locomotive sound, the kind that belters like Redding and Aretha Franklin rode down, hands clapping, into the tunnel of soul. He’s the ginger-haired, pipe-smoking bass man in The Blues Brothers, the guy who gave a solid bottom to Hip Hug-Her, and the guy never stopped working: he died in Tokyo, May 13 after finishing some shows there. R-E-S-P-E-C-T.

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Second coming: Levon Helm, mighty drummer and vocalist for The Band, transited on April 19.

Listening to “Paul’s Boutique” again, on the way to the Morrissey show, I realized with fresh ears how prescient the Beasties’ second Dust Brothers’-produced album was: not just the mother lode of samples it contained (most snuck in there), but the ultra-chill opener, To All the Girls, and the companion closer, A.W.O.L., signals where the band was heading. (You can’t sing about “doin’ it with a Wiffle Ball bat” your whole artistic career, after all.) A decade of laidback hip-hop grooves and trip-hop was to follow this 1989 release, with the Beasties already senior citizens of the genre by the time Tupac and others arrived. It’s the three-way mic offerings on tracks like High Plains Drifter that show the Brooklyn boys knew how to spread smooveness all down the block. Freed from the need to clown around and “Fight for their right to party” (as their breakout MTV hit from “License to Ill” had it), the Beasties were now poised to grow in all kinds of cool new directions: fashion, style, their own music label, and a budding social consciousness. They were, in fact, the template for hip-hop success to come. The Beasties could have easily milked their rap clown roles for a few more albums, cashed in and just spent the money; but in making “Paul’s Boutique,” they showed that the music really mattered. Yauch became a Buddhist, spoke out for Tibetan freedom, and was a vegan who died of throat cancer at 47. His barbaric yawp will be missed.