It used to be that music came from a particular place. No more. Whether it’s Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi (the Iranian saxophonist who’s lived in Germany, in Japan, and now in New York City [2/18/10]), or Burkina Electric (whose members come from Burkina Faso, from Germany, and from New York City [by way of Austria] [2/22/10]), or this singer, who’s lived (and has homes) in Nigeria and in Germany, much of today’s most intriguing music has its ears and heart and feet on more than one continent.
1. Take a singer whose range includes about as many notes as he has fingers (on one hand).
2. Add a saxophonist who’s renowned for his melodic and harmonic inventiveness.
3. Mix?
Leonard Cohen with Sonny Rollins, “Who By Fire,” live (TV broadcast), 1989
These two mostly sound (to these ears) like, well, what they are: two distinctive artists whose musical worlds couldn’t be more different. But when Sonny finally leaves his world and enters Leonard’s—a world where melodic invention counts for nothing and subtle changes in inflection count for everything—the results are breathtaking (5:47 and following).
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Hope that sometime I will play in your city to have a chance to meet you.
Bessie Smith, Clifford Brown, Scott LaFaro, Duane Allman: the road where musicians lose their lives goes on, and on, and on.
Lil’ Dave Thompson, May 21, 1969-February 14, 2010 (killed in a car accident Sunday morning en route home to Greenville, Mississippi, after a Saturday night performance in Charleston, South Carolina)
“I Got The Blues,” live, Kentucky (Bowling Green), 2008
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“Lil’ Girl,” live, Pennsylvania (Blakeslee), 2008
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“Call Me, Baby,” live, South Carolina (Charleston), 2009
More people than ever are cultural nomads. Take this guy, for instance: a Swiss-born Iranian, he moved to New York in 2008, after living in Japan. His music conjures places that can’t be found on any map—a jazz club in the desert, sand hills in Manhattan.
The Tehran-Dakar Brothers (Sohrab Saadat Ladjevardi, tenor saxophone, with Ladell McLin, guitar; Al MacDowell, bass; Lukas Ligeti [son of composer Gyorgy Ligeti], drums), live, New York, 2009
Delmar Allen “Dale” Hawkins, a rockabilly pioneer who gave the music world the hit “Oh! Suzy-Q,” died Saturday in Little Rock of colon cancer. He was 73.
Hawkins, originally from Goldmine, in Richland Parish, recorded his first hit in the KWKH Radio studios in downtown Shreveport in 1956 with then-15-year-old guitarist James Burton, who later went on to perform and record with Elvis Presley, Ricky Nelson, John Denver and Jerry Lee Lewis, among others.
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[Burton] recalled the guitar lick that became the hook for “Oh! Suzy-Q.”
“I wrote that little guitar lick when I was 14,” Burton recalled. “It got to be so pop in the club that Dale decided to write some lyrics to it and that became ‘Suzy-Q.’ It became a good record for him and (me) both.
“I was probably his first fan. He was a good guy, a good friend, and I think he lived life to the fullest, right up to the end.”
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Bassist Joe Osborn, whose career on hundreds of No. 1 and Top 10 hits includes work with Ricky Nelson, Johnny Rivers, the Carpenters, the Fifth Dimension and Bob Dylan, credits Hawkins with starting his career and transitioning him from the guitar to the electric bass.
“In 1956, I was working at Sears in the hardware department and Dale came in,” Osborn said. “‘Suzy-Q’ was already out and a hit, and he wanted me to play with his brother Jerry and his band at the Skyway Club. That’s how me and Dale started. If he hadn’t come in that day I’d still be at Sears, selling hardware.”
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In addition to his classic “Suzy-Q,” Hawkins recorded more than 40 songs on the “Chess” label. According to an obituary, he was the third entertainer to appear on Dick Clark’s American Bandstand and was the first white artist to perform at the “Apollo Theatre” in Harlem and the “Regal” in Chicago.
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In the mid-1980s, after moving to Arkansas and entering into a second career as a social worker and counselor, Hawkins returned to live performances in a comeback concert at then-Cowboys nightclub in Bossier City, an event put together by Oil City producer Tom Ayres.
Hawkins, a Navy veteran of the Korean War, is in the Rockabilly Hall of Fame and the Louisiana Music Hall of Fame.
Great drummers are like great basketball players—they lift everybody’s game.
Trixie Whitley with Brian Blade (drums) and Daniel Lanois, “I’d Rather Go Blind,” recording session, 2008
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Herbie Hancock (piano), Wayne Shorter (saxophone), Dave Holland (bass), Brian Blade (drums); live, Germany (Salzau), 2004
Part 1
(It may simply be a coincidence [or my imagination], but a four-note pattern that Herbie keeps repeating, with variations, reminds me, particularly at around 2:27 and following, of the beginning of Alfred Schnittke’s Piano Concerto [featured on 1/14/10].)
Part 2
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lagniappe
Johnny [Vidacovich, featured on 9/30/09], man . . . what an inspiration. His playing is so liquid but at the same time just the street of it is so intoxicating. Studying with him, the drumming aspect was never about fundamental things. It was never about the drums as much as it was about the music and playing with this melodic sensibility. That sticks with me even more than the thickness or the groove, which he never spoke about, really. That was like a given. If you have it inside of you, that groove, you need to lay it down. But also need to be able to sing through the drums.—Brian Blade
Or anything else that’s got more than one syllable.
You want sweat.
Funk.
That clenched scream: “Uhowwwww!”
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Wilson Pickett, live, Germany, 1968
“Everybody Needs Someone To Love”
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“I’m In Love”
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“Ninety-Nine And A Half (Won’t Do)”
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“Mustang Sally”
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lagniappe
“We didn’t make enough money to press our suits,” Pickett reminisced when asked about the Violinaires, the gospel group he formed shortly after moving to Detroit from his native Alabama. “We would sing three programs a Sunday at different churches. We’d sing our hearts out, and so we done sweated up that suit three times — from the socks all the way up.
“The sisters would get up and they’d put a penny or a dime on the table and say ‘Ya’ll boys sho’ can sing.’ And we’d come in the back, and they got all the chicken baskets and pies and stuff to eat, and even occasionally one of the sisters would take you home.”
The young Pickett soon caught the eye not only of a sister or two, but also of the Falcons, a local R&B group with whom he later wrote and sang his first hit song, “I Found a Love,” in 1962.
“I was scared because these people says that if you leave God and go to the devil, you’re going to go to hell. You see, I wanted to sing gospel, but I wanted to make some money, too. So I said, ‘No I’ll never leave, I’ll never leave God.’ Until that evening that one of the Falcons came by and I was sitting on the back porch and I went down and tried it out. And from then on I told God, I looked up and I said, ‘I’m on my way this way — would You care to go with me? I’d really appreciate Your being with me. It’d make me feel better.’—Ken Emerson, “Wilson Pickett: Soul Man On Ice”
The term “sideman” can be misleading. It suggests a leader/soloist who reigns supreme while the other musicians serve merely as accompanists. But the strongest jazz performances, especially live ones, rarely work that way—they’re all about interplay. Here, on piano, bass, and drums, are three of the finest jazz musicians in recent memory. Each contributes mightily to the quality of this performance. All, alas, are now gone.
David Murray, tenor saxophone, with John Hicks, piano; Fred Hopkins, bass; Ed Blackwell, drums; “Morning Song,” live, New York (Village Vanguard), 1986
Part 1
Here are just a few of the things I love about what these guys do:
:14-16, :45-48, 1:17-20: Hopkins can be both fat and precise, funky and elegant. What other bassist pops so impeccably?
4:04-4:22: This is pure Blackwell: a delicate counterpoint dance that lifts everything without ever calling attention to itself.
5:25-42, 6:00-05: Some musicians play “inside” the chord changes and structure, some play “outside”; only a few, like Hicks, are able to do both at once, delineating the changes and structure while at the same time subverting them.
music clip of the day 