Friday, June 11, 2010
music to levitate by
Dizzy Gillespie & Louis Armstrong, “Umbrella Man,” live (TV broadcast), 1959
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Month: June, 2010
2010
Thursday, June 10, 2010
We still have this song . . .
—my 19-year-old son Luke, at the end of a long, hard day—one full of setbacks—as he played this (again) on the car CD player
Mike Posner, “You Don’t Have To Leave” (2009)
Want more? Here.
2010
Wednesday, June 9, 2010
guitar players who sound like nobody else, part 3
Sonny Sharrock (1940-1994)
Live (with Melvin Gibbs, bass; Abe Speller & Pheeroan Aklaf, drums), New York (Knitting Factory), 1988
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“Who Does She Hope To Be?” (with Pharoah Sanders, tenor saxophone; Charles Moffett, bass; Elvin Jones, drums), 1991
2010
Tuesday, June 8, 2010
guitar players who sound like nobody else, part 2
Derek Bailey (1930-2005)
With tap-dancer Will Gaines, live, 1995
Want more of Will Gaines? Here.
*****
Playing (and talking) for friends, New York, 2001
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With the Shaking Ray Levis, live, New York, 2003
*****
“Laura,” 2002
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lagniappe
Playing music is not really susceptible to theory much. Circumstances affect it so much.
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Personally, I`ve found that the kind of thing that I like is going into somebody else’s area and not playing their music but doing whatever I do in their area.
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I like duos with percussionists. I like the songs that percussionists sing.
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You can’t always wait for a composer to write the music you want to play.
—Derek Bailey
2010
Monday, June 7, 2010
guitar players who sound like nobody else, part 1
John Fahey (1939-2001)
“On the Sunny Side of the Ocean,” live, Germany (Hamburg), 1978
2010
Sunday, June 6, 2010
Fierce, insistent, soaring—this voice, which I first heard over 30 years ago, still gives me chills.
Inez Andrews
With the Andrewettes, “Let the Church Roll On,” live (TV broadcast), 1964
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With Rev. James Cleveland & the Metro Mass Choir, “We Are Soldiers in the Army,” live, 1981
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“A Stranger in the City,” “He Lives In Me,” “Lord, Don’t Move The Mountain,” “Mary Don’t You Weep,” live, Chicago (Apostolic Church of God), 1988
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With the Caravans, “Mary Don’t You Weep” (1958)/mp3
This track comes from The Widow’s Might, a wonderful DVD with nearly 700 gospel songs in mp3 format (everything played on Sinner’s Crossroads in 2009) that’s available as a $75 premium from WFMU-FM.
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lagniappe
The Caravans’ star then was Inez, whom they called the High Priestess. She looks the part. A coffee-colored woman with high Indian cheekbones and an intense, almost drugged stare, she can sing higher natural notes than anyone on the road. Tina [Albertina Walker] said, ‘The rest of us sang awhile, but the folks really wanted to hear Inez whistle.’
—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (6th ed. 2002)
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Determination is important. You’ve got to be determined to live what you sing as well as sing what you sing. God understands the . . . difficulty that we go through for the truth. The Bible says your determination will be rewarded because God sees it when no one else does.
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art beat
The Matisse exhibit at Chicago’s Art Institute (which I returned to yesterday) closes on June 20th, then opens at New York’s Museum of Modern Art on July 18th. I have only one word of advice: Go!
Interior with Goldfish, 1914
2010
Saturday, June 5, 2010
replay: a clip too good for just one day
If you want to stay right where you are, don’t even bother with this clip. But if, instead, you’d like to go somewhere you may never have been before, well, this might be just the ticket.
Gyorgy Ligeti (1923-2006), Three Etudes, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, piano
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lagniappe
I listen to all kinds of music—new music, old music, music of my colleagues, everything.
—Gyorgy Ligeti (whose influences included not only the usual suspects [Chopin, Debussy, et al.] but also Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans and the Rainforest Pygmies and fractal geometry)
(Originally posted 10/6/09.)
2010
Friday, June 4, 2010
The rock & roll mansion boasts a particularly spacious lunatic wing.
Jerry Lee Lewis, “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” live (TV broadcast), 1957
2010
Thursday, June 3, 2010
She is—to borrow from Duke Ellington—beyond category.
Patsy Cline, live (TV broadcasts)
“Three Cigarettes (In An Ashtray),” 1957
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“Crazy,” 1962
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“I Fall To Pieces,” 1963
2010
Wednesday, June 2, 2010
Here’s a big (60th!) birthday shout-out to my brother Don.
How could we ever have gone wrong musically, given where we started?
Perry Como, “Hot Diggity (Dog Ziggity Boom),” live (TV broadcast), 1956
music clip of the day 
