Here’s one of the more intriguing, and inspiring, music videos I’ve ever seen.
Various Artists (Roger Ridley, Grandpa Elliott, Washboard Chaz, Clarence Bekker, Twin Eagle Drum Group, Francois Viguie, Cesar Pope, Dimitri Dolganov, Roberto Luti, Geraldo & Dionisio, Junior Kissangwa Mbouta, Pokei Klass, Django Degen, Sinamuva, Stefano Tomaselli, Vusi Mahlasela), “Stand By Me,” live, various locations
Here’s another well-known artist who started out singing gospel.
The Pilgrim Travelers (with Lou Rawls [singing lead on the refrain]), “Daniel Saw the Stone” (late 1950s)
“Hey, Dad, listen to this . . .”—my 18-year-old son Luke
Mr. J. Medeiros, “Constance”
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lagniappe
wow, somehow i did not know Tommy Johnson [12/16/09], just fine. Luke’s guy [Passion Pit, 12/15/09] was good too.
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Responding a couple days late to your Passion Pit [12/15/09] posting. I was first exposed to Passion Pit last year when my son . . . wrote a paper on the role of bloggers in the distribution of music. He tracked Passion Pit’s hits on My Space in relation to hits on a well-respected music blogger, Stereogum, and a music blogging compilation Hype Machine. Although he started off on the premise that the blogs and internet distribution of music was a new and democratic form of distribution of music, I believe he ended up concluding that the music blogs were just another way to exploit artists. . . . I do not recall all of the details, but there appeared to be a number of examples where a music blog became successful (lots of hits – I couldn’t believe how may, like hundreds of thousands) off of the free distribution of music by up and coming bands. Then the blog was bought out and/or funded by one of the large music/entertainment conglomerates without anything going to the artists.
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i think feldman [12/5/09, 11/7/09] is the discovery i’ve enjoyed most thru your clips (which i consistently enjoy, but much of the other music i know). i played him for my students during the 3-week term, along with an Eno video installation and Malick’s Days of Heaven (still my favorite movie ever). it made for an interesting contrast between the few who appreciated such work and the many who were bored/nervous/offended because “nothing happens.”
Moment for moment, this record, made in 1931 (up north in Wisconsin), remains one of the most astonishing performances in all of blues.
Skip James (1902-1969), “I’m So Glad” (1931, Grafton, Wisconsin [famously covered by Cream on both their first and last albums: Fresh Cream, 1966; Goodbye, 1969])
Here’s another record, featuring another of blues’ greatest voices, that was made in Memphis in the 1920s.
Sleepy John Estes (1899[or 1904]-1977), “The Girl I Love She Got Long Curly Hair” (1929, Memphis)
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lagniappe
i’m standing there watching the parade/feeling combination of sleepy john estes. jayne mansfield. humphry [sic] bogart/mortimer snerd. murph the surf and so forth . . .—Bob Dylan (liner notes to Bringing It All Back Home [1965])
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. . . Bob Dylan stalked [Ry] Cooder for months asking him for advice on how to play one particular Sleepy John Estes lick.—Paul Duane
Old records, where everyone involved is long dead, don’t just appeal to the senses—they’re springboards for the imagination. Here’s a record that was made, in Memphis, over 80 years ago. It features one of the greatest voices in blues.
Close your eyes.
Open your imagination.
They’re just about ready to record.
What’s the room look like?
What’s the last thing they say before they start?
Tommy Johnson (1896-1956), “Cool Drink of Water Blues” (1928, Memphis)
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lagniappe
On the deepest level, a recording . . . is an invitation to time travel, a chance to resurrect the voices of the dead, a way to indulge a deep instinctual yearning to slow the passage of time. With a recording, we can preserve that fleeting moment, and play it again and again, according to our will. In his penetrating book “The Recording Angel,’’ Evan Eisenberg calls record listening “a séance where we get to choose our ghosts.’’—Jeremy Eichler, 12/13/09
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For about twenty years Tommy Johnson was perhaps the most important and influential blues singer in the state of Mississippi. He was one of the few black musicians to whom that much abused epithet ‘legendary’ rightfully applies.—David Evans
Yesterday’s email included this from my 18-year-old son Luke:
“i bet you might like this video it’s crazy and i like the song”
Passion Pit, “Sleepyhead” (2009 [album], 2008 [EP, single])
(If this clip stops, then starts, then stops again [as it sometimes does for me], the trick seems to be, as with other YouTube clips, to stop it yourself and allow the colored line at the bottom to fill in all the way before restarting it. It should then play without interruption.)
Something you like a lot, something you can’t stand: the difference between them isn’t always that great. Take this track, for instance. If, say, the musical backdrop were a bit sweeter, or the lyrics weren’t quite as spare, or the voice sounded a little less haggard, I’d probably hate it.
David Sylvian, “Darkest Dreaming” (1999)
Rev. Utah Smith, Vernard Johnson, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, et al.: to those who have “ears to hear,” has any church given more than the Church of God in Christ (COGIC)?
Sister Rosetta Tharpe
“Didn’t It Rain,” live, England (Manchester), 1964
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“Up Above My Head,” live (TV broadcast)
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“Strange Things Happening Everyday” (1944)
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lagniappe
One of Sister Rosetta Tharpe’s many fans was Johnny Cash. She was, according to daughter Rosanne, his favorite singer.
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Other [black] churches were modeling themselves after mainline white Protestant institutions. They had a piano and an organ, and that was it. They had prepared literatures and other things. But the Church of God in Christ came out of African tradition, its call-and-response mode. . . . There is a definite COGIC style, and it has influenced the whole of gospel music. . . . Rosetta Tharpe and all of those personalities, they all sang in the Church of God in Christ. Utah Smith with “Two Wings”? COGIC. The Church of God in Christ has always been in the vanguard of expressing music.
One thing the Church of God in Christ understood very early on was that if you want to hold children in church, let ’em sing. If they’re not saved, let ’em sing. They’ll get saved. Let ’em hang around the church long enough, let ’em fall in love with singing. I don’t know anybody that’s a preacher in this church, a missionary in this church, that did not start off singing in the choir. If you were a child in this church, you sang. Even if you couldn’t carry a note in a bucket. The choir is where I began. I blew saxophone—and every now and again I still do. I’ve blown alto, soprano, and tenor. But basically I did my blowing and my music in the church. And so I have my musical part that I played in the church. My brother was the organist for the church. My other brother, Nathan, is the organist here [at Temple Church of God in Christ in Memphis]. He’s minister of music for this church. And we have an adult choir, and a youth choir, and our Sunshine Band, little children. So singing plays a part from the cradle to the grave.—Rev. Dr. David Hall (in Alan Young, Woke Me Up This Morning: Black Singers and the Gospel Life [1997])
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Today MCOTD celebrates its 100th post! (Hmmm . . . if this is where we are now, where would we be without music?)
Last week a recording of his complete works for solo piano (so far), Oppens Plays Carter (on Chicago-based Cedille Records), was nominated for a Grammy.
This week he celebrated his 101st birthday.
Next week?
Elliott Carter, Quintet for Piano (1997), Ursula Oppens, The Arditti Quartet, live
Part 1
Part 2
Want more? Here.
music clip of the day 