I wouldn’t mind dying if I knew my funeral would sound like this.
Vernard Johnson (alto saxophone), “Goin’ Up Yonder,” “Amazing Grace,” live (service for alto saxophonist Philip Slack [begins at 2:50]), 1/09 (from the forthcoming documentary Walk With Me)
Greatest radio station on the planet?WFMU-FM, home of the wonderful Sinner’s Crossroads(“[s]cratchy vanity 45s, pilfered field recordings, muddy off-the-radio sounds, homemade congregational tapes and vintage commercial gospel throw-downs; a little preachin’, a little salvation, a little audio tomfoolery”), is a contender. They’re currently in the midst of their annual fundraiser, offering great DJ-crafted premiums. What better way to get rid of that extra dough that’s just taking up space?
*****
art beat
American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White Art Institute of Chicago (through 5/15/11)
Berenice Abbott, Church of God, New York (Harlem), 1936
DeAndre Patterson, “I’ll Fly Away,” live, Chicago (homegoing service for Eugene Smith, Christian Tabernacle Church, 47th & Prairie), 5/18/09
#1
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#2
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art beat
After a court hearing Friday, I stopped by the Art Institute of Chicago, which is just a couple blocks from the federal courthouse. In the Modern Wing, there’s a wonderful space on the second floor—a small room you enter through a glass door. Once inside, these paintings—each has a wall to itself—surround you.
The other night, as my older son Alex packed up his stuff for the next day’s trip back to school, this played on his computer—over and over and over.
The Mountain Goats, “This Year”
#1: recording (The Sunset Tree), 2005
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#2: live, Iowa (Ames), 2006
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Lee Friedlander, New York City (Self-Portrait), c. 1960(?)
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More Son Seals
Last night I discovered that two of the sets Son played at the Bottom Line in January of 1978 can be heard here and here. The second features a guest
artist—Johnny Winter.
Mixing a record, as I learned when I worked at Alligator Records (back in the 1970s), involves a seemingly countless number of decisions. After a few hours, everyone starts to get a little punch-drunk. By the end of the night, for instance, this track had morphed—in the warped warble of engineer Freddie Breitberg (AKA, in his personal mythology, Eddie B. Flick)—into “Serve Me Rice For Supper.”
Jimmy Johnson, “Serves Me Right To Suffer” (Living Chicago Blues, Vol. 1, Alligator Records, 1977 [Grammy Nominee])
. . . Van Gogh’s letters are the best written by any artist . . . Their mixture of humble detail and heroic aspiration is quite simply life-affirming.—Andrew Motion, The Guardian (11/21/09)
—Cecil Taylor (when asked what advice he would give to a young musician)
Cecil Taylor, live, 1981 (Imagine the Sound)
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art beat
Going to an art museum you never know what you may encounter. This painting, for instance, I’d never laid eyes on—never even heard of the artist—until I happened upon it the other day at Chicago’s Art Institute.
Arthur Wesley Dow (American, 1857-1922), Boats at Rest
I think that this is what everybody needs a whole lot of—not only in their playing, but in their way of living.
As far as rating this—maybe you should use a different kind of star for rating this from the stars you use rating jazz records. A moving star. Make it five moving stars.
—Charles Mingus, listening to a record by Mahalia Jackson during a Downbeat “Blindfold Test” (1960)
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art beat
Lee Friedlander, “Mahalia Jackson” (1956)
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[I]t almost looks like if you could see the next second after this picture was taken that she would start to ascend.
music clip of the day 