Saturday night he sings soul, Sunday morning gospel. Here, at Christian Tabernacle Church on the south side of Chicago, is Otis Clay, a label mate of Al Green at Hi Records.
Otis Clay, live, Chicago
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“How can you sing of amazing grace and all God’s wonders without using your hands?”—Mahalia Jackson
Here—with a shout-out to Rachael Zalutsky, the 20-something woman who cuts my hair while we talk about music (among other things)—is Battles, a band she opened my ears to.
Battles, live, Chicago, 2007
For those who’re interested in such genealogical details, one of the group’s members, Tyondai Braxton (he’s the guy on the right in the above still), is the son of Anthony Braxton, reed player, composer, bandleader extraordinaire—not to mention MacArthur “genius” grant winner and Wesleyan University professor.
And for those who’re interested in, uh, words, the lyrics to this (“Atlas”) can be found here.
Want to hear more? Here.
Blues Guitar Festival/day 3 of 3
Performances like this usually fall somewhere between disappointing and disastrous. So many things can—and usually do—go wrong when you take a bunch of folks who’re used to leading their own bands and throw them together onstage. People trip all over each another; flash trumps feeling. But this performance, with Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Paul Butterfield, and (at the end) B.B. King, has plenty of strong moments—some funny ones, too. Listen to Albert bark at Paul: “Turn around!” (0:39) And watch Albert outfox B.B. First he invites him back onstage (4:40) and then, just when B.B.’s about to take flight (5:55), he cuts him off—faster than you can say “wham”—with his own (wonderful) solo. So much for Emily Post.
Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert King, Paul Butterfield, B.B. King, live, 1987
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A radio station that’s well worth checking out, if you’re not already familiar with it, is WKCR-FM, which broadcasts from NYC’s Columbia University. Like pretty much everything else these days, it’s available on-line. Among other things, it features a daily dose of Charlie Parker on “Bird Flight” (M-F, 8:30-9:30 a.m. [EDT]), hosted by Phil Schaap (profiled last year, by David Remnick, in the New Yorker), as well as, on Sunday, two excellent shows devoted to Indian music (6:00-8:00 a.m. and 7:00-9:00 p.m. [EDT]). (Another nice thing: the folks there are readily accessible; while listening yesterday, for instance, I heard an intriguing piece [by Alfred Schnittke] that I didn’t get the name of; I emailed them a query and, by the end of the night, had a response from the DJ.)
Blues Guitar Festival/day 2 of 3
A blues guitarist backed by, let’s see, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, James Moody, and Teddy Wilson? With most blues artists that might seem odd. Not T-Bone Walker.
T-Bone Walker, live, England, 1966
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“When I heard T-Bone Walker play the electric guitar I had to have one. T-Bone Walker has a touch that nobody has been able to duplicate.”—B.B. King
“T-Bone Walker was a big influence on just about every guitar player around.”—Johnny Winter
“The first thing I can remember was my mother singing the blues as she would sit alone. I used to listen to her singing there at night, and I knew then that the blues was in me too.”—T-Bone Walker
Blues Guitar Festival/day 1 of 3
If you think blues and country never mingle, just listen to blues guitar great Earl Hooker. Backstage, he fools around, lovingly, with the country classic “Walkin’ the Floor Over You.” Onstage, he launches into a bluesy instrumental that’s as hyped up as a truck driver, past midnight, on his fifth cup of coffee. While some musicians (particularly in jazz) are famous for playing “behind the beat” (Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, et al.), Hooker keeps racing ahead of the beat, pushing so insistently that, at times, it feels like he might jump off the road altogether.
Earl Hooker, live, Germany, 1969
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“I used to listen to country and western and blues, John Lee Hooker, spirituals, the Bluegrass Boys, and Eddie Arnold. There was a radio station that come on everyday with country, spirituals, and the blues.”—Otis Rush
Cigarettes, Scotch, amphetamines, cocaine: alto saxophonist Paul Desmond consumed them all, often in prodigious quantities. But that didn’t muddy his playing. It would be hard to find, anywhere in music, a sound more pure.
Paul Desmond, live, Monterey (California), 1975
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“I have won several prizes as the world’s slowest alto player, as well as a special award in 1961 for quietness.”—Paul Desmond
If I didn’t have kids, would my ears be stuck, forever, on “repeat”?
Here’s something my younger son Luke, who just started college, played for me recently, after first pronouncing it, with quiet but absolute authority, the best thing this guy has done (already Luke’s learned that what’s important isn’t to be right; it’s to seem right).
Lupe Fiasco, “Hip Hop Saved My Life,” live, Los Angeles, 2008
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And here’s a track my older son Alex played for me a couple weeks ago, before heading back to school.
Dirty Projectors, “Stillness Is The Move”
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Koan for aging parents: What is the sound of a childless house?
If influence were compensable, Claude Jeter of the Swan Silvertones—
a huge influence on Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield, Eddie Kendricks (Temptations), Al Green, even Paul Simon (who took inspiration from a line in the Swans’ “hit” “Mary, Don’t You Weep” [“I’ll be a bridge over deep water if you trust in my name”] when he wrote “Bridge Over Troubled Water”)—would have, when he passed earlier this year at the age of 94, died a wealthy man.
Swan Silvertones, “Only Believe,” live
New York Times obit
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“When he leaves the house [in NYC], he whistles his favorite tune, ‘What A Friend We Have In Jesus,’ while greeting the assorted neighborhood junkies and prostitutes who knew him mainly as sometime manager of the [Hotel] Cecil. ‘What’s new, Jeter,’ they ask. ‘Nothing new, nothing good, just thank God for life up here with these heathens and muggers.'”—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (1971)
New Orleans Music Festival/day 3 of 3
Only in New Orleans do the dead dance.
New Orleans Jazz Funeral for tuba player Kerwin James (2007)
New Orleans Music Festival/day 2 of 3
If spirit could be sold, New Orleans would be rich.
Rebirth Brass Band, live, New Orleans, 2009
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“Brass band musicians are a wild bunch. They’re hard to control. The street funk that the Rebirth [Brass Band] plays definitely isn’t traditional—it might be in thirty years time.”—Lajoie “Butch” Gomez (in Mick Burns, Keeping the Beat on the Street: The New Orleans Brass Band Renaissance [2006])
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