Charlie Parker (alto saxophone) with Ray Malone (tap dance), “Donna Lee,” TV show (Broadway Open House*), 1950
*Broadway Open House is network television’s first late-night comedy-variety series. It was telecast live on NBC from May 29, 1950 to August 24, 1951, airing weeknights from 11pm to midnight. One of the pioneering TV creations of NBC president Pat Weaver, it demonstrated the potential for late-night programming and led to the later development of The Tonight Show.
There is, it appears, a new addition to the list of activities that threaten national security—channeling Whitney Houston, badly.
An American Airlines pilot was forced to make an emergency landing after a passenger refused to stop singing Whitney Houston’s hit song I Will Always Love You.
The solo performance began shortly into the flight from Los Angeles to New York and her crooning quickly became too much for passengers and staff on the domestic flight last Thursday.
The pilot was forced to change course halfway through the six hour flight and make an unscheduled stop at Kansas City so officers could escort the woman from the plane.
A house with a screened-in porch
On the road to nowhere.
The missus topless because of the heat,
A bag of Frito Banditos in her lap.
President Bush on TV
Watching her every bite.
Poor reception, that’s the one
Advantage we have here,
I said to the mutt lying at my feet
And sighing in sympathy.
On another channel the preacher
Came chaperoned by his ghost
When he shut his eyes full of tears
To pray for dollars.
“Bring me another beer,” I said to her ladyship,
And when she wouldn’t oblige,
I went out to make chamber music
Against the sunflowers in the yard.
Today, celebrating his twenty-second birthday, we revisit a few of the many posts inspired by my son Luke.
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It’s impossible, sometimes, to separate our experience of music, especially pop music, from the surrounding circumstances. The other day, for instance, I was taking my son Luke back to school in Bloomington, Indiana. He was playing dashboard DJ. As we rolled through the hills of southern Indiana, nearing our destination, this came on after a long stretch of hip-hop (Lil Wayne, Eminem, Young Jeezy, Tyga, et al.), and the electronic intro, the Björk-like voice—they lit up the highway.
Pastor Ezell Smith, live, Chicago (Prince of Peace Baptist Church)
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lagniappe
random thoughts on Mother’s Day
Professional jargon, whether legal, medical, psychological, whatever, is largely a desert. But once in a while you come upon a flowering tree. The great British psychoanalyst and pediatrician D. W. Winnicott (1896-1971) planted one such tree—the good enough mother.
Only a world this noisy could produce music this quiet.
Evan Parker (soprano saxophone), et al.,* live, London (Freedom of the City festival), 2011
*Heledd Francis Wright (flute), John Russell (guitar), Augusti Fernandez (piano), Adam Linson (bass), Toma Gouband (percussion), Lawrence Casserley (electronics), Matt Wright (electronics).
music clip of the day 