Friday, 9/17/10
Many years ago, when I was younger than my sons are now (22, 19), I listened to this album (Forever Changes) day after day after day.
Arthur Lee and Love, “Alone Again Or,” “A House Is Not A Motel,” England (London), 2003
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: bass
2010
Tuesday, 9/7/10
Happy (80th) Birthday, Sonny!
Sonny Rollins (with Jim Hall, guitar; Bob Crenshaw, bass; Ben Riley, drums), live (TV broadcast), 1962
Part 1 (“The Bridge”)
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Part 2 (“God Bless the Child”)
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Part 3 (“If Ever I Would Leave You”)
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lagniappe
The great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins turns 80 on Tuesday, awash in more than the usual veneration. The MacDowell Colony last month awarded him its Edward MacDowell Medal. This week Abrams is publishing “Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait of Sonny Rollins,” a handsome art book featuring photographs by John Abbott, with an essay by Bob Blumenthal. And Friday night Mr. Rollins will walk onstage at the Beacon Theater.
It won’t be just another Sonny Rollins concert, if there even is such a thing. In addition to his working band, Mr. Rollins has reached out to several guests. The guitarist Jim Hall is the most eagerly anticipated: at 79, he is indisputable jazz royalty himself, and a trusted partner from one of the most celebrated stretches of Mr. Rollins’s career. (Consult the ageless 1962 album “The Bridge.”) Mr. Hall sat in with Mr. Rollins in New England one night this summer. Before that they hadn’t played together since 1991, in a Carnegie Hall concert that also included the gifted young trumpeter Roy Hargrove, now 40, who will rejoin them here.
—Nate Chinen, New York Times, 9/1/10
*****
Interview (2009) (encountering W.E.B. DuBois as a child in Harlem, playing with Bud Powell at nineteen, using drugs, studying yoga in India, aging, etc.)
2010
Monday, 8/30/10
two takes
This just in from my older (22-year-old) son Alex:
Have you heard the new Arcade Fire? It’s incredibly good, totally different from their older stuff—poppy and catchy.
Arcade Fire, “The Suburbs”
The Suburbs (8/10)
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live, New York (Madison Square Garden), 8/5/10
More? Here.
2010
Friday, 8/27/10
Happy Birthday, Pres!
Lester Young, August 27, 1909-March 15, 1959
(nicknamed “Pres” [or “Prez”] by Billie Holiday, who called him the “president of tenor saxophonists”)
Who else is at once so earthy and so ethereal?
Jammin’ the Blues (1944)
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On Lester Young
B.B. King:
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Lee Kontiz:
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Joe Lovano:
*****
Want more?
One of my favorite radio stations, WKCR-FM (based at Columbia University and available on-line), is celebrating Pres’s birthday in the best possible way—playing his music all day. (Actually, they’re playing his music for 36 hours straight, until the middle of the day tomorrow, when they’ll begin playing the music of Charlie Parker, whose birthday is Sunday, for the next 36 hours.)
2010
Monday, 8/23/10
Who would’ve thought this would be so good?
Tom Jones & Janis Joplin, “Raise Your Hand,” live (TV broadcast), 1969
2010
Sunday, 8/22/10
I have no idea what they’re saying.
It makes no difference.
I could listen to this all day.
(That’s why God made “replay.”)
The South African Gospel Singers, live, Wales (Brecon Jazz Festival), 2006
2010
Friday, 8/20/10
Here’s more from the guy who, the other day, we heard live in Slovenia.
Bob Dylan, “Beyond Here Lies Nothin'” (2009)
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lagniappe
Howlin’ Wolf (with Hubert Sumlin, guitar; Hosea Lee Kennard, piano; Alfred Elkins, bass; Earl Phillips, drums), “Who’s Been Talking” (Chess Records, Chicago, 1957)
More Howlin’ Wolf? Here.
*****
lagniappe
art beat
The New Yorker (8/16/10) writes of Matisse’s Bathers by a River, which is currently on view, in the exhibit “Matisse: Radical Invention, 1913-1917,” at the Museum of Modern Art: “it consumes at least as much aesthetic energy as it imparts.” Except when it’s on loan elsewhere, this painting hangs at Chicago’s Art Institute. Over the years I’ve seen it dozens (maybe hundreds) of times. Never once, as I looked at it, did it occur to me how much “aesthetic energy” it was “consum[ing].”
Henri Matisse, Bathers by a River (1909-16)
2010
Tuesday, 8/17/10
Last week I wrote: “Guitar, drums—that’s all it takes.”
Actually, all it takes is a single string.
Lonnie Pitchford (diddley bow), live, Mississippi, 1978 (The Land Where The Blues Began [1979])
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lagniappe
? and the Mysterians—still more (take #4 [NYC, Great Jones Cafe; 7/31/10])
*****
mail (makes me want to be [yikes!] a grandfather)
The other day Oran Etkin, whose music was featured here a while back, wrote:
I’ve been checking in every once in a while to your blog— you’ve got some really amazing and diverse music up there!
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I wanted to let you know about a new project I have and a great video I just posted yesterday. I have a project for kids called Timbalooloo (www.timbalooloo.com), which has music classes for 0-10 year olds using a new approach I developed to reach that age group, CDs, Videos, Books, etc. I am putting out a kids CD next month called Wake Up, Clarinet! based on this whole approach. It’s with my band featuring Jason Marsalis, Curtis Fowlkes, Fabian Almazan, Garth Stevenson and Charenee Wade. Anyways, I put up this video from a live concert, and I thought you might enjoy it and see if it would be cool for your blog.
***I’m loving the videos up on the site!
—Oran
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Oran Etkin, “Wake Up, Clarinet!”; live
2010
Monday, 8/16/10
Suppose Blind Willie McTell, who died in 1959, came back to life for a day.
How would you explain this to him—a video clip of a pop icon singing a song about him, during a recent concert in Slovenia, captured by a cell-phone camera then uploaded onto the ’net for anyone, anywhere in the world, to see?
Bob Dylan, “Blind Willie McTell,” live, Slovenia (Ljubljana), 6/13/2010
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lagniappe
Blind Willie McTell
hotel room, Atlanta, 1940
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“Statesboro Blues,” 1928 (Atlanta)
music clip of the day 
