Tape hung like curtains in Arthur Russell’s apartment. The recording devices responsible were powered by an extension cord that ran out the window and down a few floors to Allen Ginsberg’s.
Russell left behind 166 feet of tape when he died, only 40 years old, of AIDS-related illness in 1992. And if you’ll let me tell it as I hear it in my head, the words need to be as big and bold as any headline: This 166 Feet Of Tape Will Restore Your Faith In All That Is Good (And Weird) In The World.
Russell, a cellist, composer and Billboard-minded Buddhist, was born in Oskaloosa, Iowa. He ran away from home at 16, and by the early ’70s, had landed in that East Village apartment — New York City, not Des Moines. Columbia Records producer/kingmaker John Hammond evidently said, “When they write my legacy, they’re going to say, ‘John Hammond discovered Billie Holiday, Charlie Christian, George Benson, and then Dylan, Springsteen and Arthur Russell.’”
It didn’t work out that way. Russell tinkered toward the divine and only released a few finished products in his lifetime. There were the disco-clubs to the face, like “Kiss Me Again,” with David Byrne guesting on guitar. And then there were the extraterrestrial transmissions, like World of Echo, which bounced voice and cello off the walls and into a place where past and present seem like petty things.
Most Arthur Russell music, though, has been shepherded posthumously by his partner, Tom Lee, and fan turned record label head Steve Knutson. These free-range releases, collected from those cassettes, reels, betas, DATs and VHSs, cover endless ground and genre. The Iowa of it all can be heard on Russell’s strummed-and-sung ditties — idylls somehow richer than the soil from which they sprouted.
I grew up in the same area code that Russell did, but embarrassingly enough, didn’t learn about him in school. Now, whenever I find myself overwhelmed by some stretch of two-lane highway, I make up for lost time. Coming from the speakers, his music sounds simpatico with the world outside the windshield.
“Will the corn be growing tonight / As I wait in the fields for you,” Russell sings on a song called “Close My Eyes.” “Who knows what grows in the morning light / When we can feel the watery dew.”
This article was originally published in Little Village’s December 2024 issue.
