No one could convince me, when I’m listening to the clarinet, that any instrument is more beautiful.
Shabaka Hutchings, clarinet, with Kit Downes, keyboards; John Edwards, bass; Mark Sanders, drums; Leafcutter John, electronics; live, London (St. Sepulchre-without-Newgate), 7/14/11
Vodpod videos no longer available.Happy Birthday, Thelonious!
Thelonious Monk, composer, pianist, bandleader
October 10, 1917-February 17, 1982
Monk’s music—its exquisite mix of logic and lyricism—sometimes makes me think of Mozart.
“’Round Midnight” (AKA “’Round About Midnight”) (T. Monk)
Take 1: Bill Evans Trio (BE, piano; Eddie Gomez, bass; Marty Morrell, drums), live, Sweden, 1970
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Take 2: Don Pullen (piano), rec. 1984 (Don Pullen Plays Monk)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Take 3: Milt Jackson (vibes), live, Japan, 1990
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Monk? Here. And here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
If it wasn’t for music, man, life wouldn’t be nothing—it’s all about music.
—Thelonious Monk
*****
Sonny Rollins talks about Monk:
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
radio
All Monk, all day: WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).
It’s easy to forget, sometimes, just how great somebody could be.
B.B. King, “How Blue Can You Get?”
Live, Sing Sing Prison (Ossining, New York), 1972
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lagniappe
last night
W. S. Merwin, who just finished a term as U.S. Poet Laureate, gave a reading at Chicago’s downtown library, where he talked about this and that:
The English language is a great dump. Everything that has come into it has stayed there.
***
Poetry begins . . . with listening.
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I wanted to be open . . . to anything that sounded like poetry.
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To animals the meaning is the sound—and that’s pretty close to poetry.
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Time is one of the great human fictions.
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Many of the most important things we do are not calculated. They take us by surprise.
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What the arts are made of is nothing but pure attention.
*****
radio
Happy (100th) Birthday, Papa Jo! WCKR-FM’s Centennial Festival, mentioned Monday, continues until noon tomorrow.
Charisma needs no translation.
Mahmoud Ahmed & Badume’s Band, live, France (Festival de Sete), 2008
“Belomi Benna”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Atawurulegn Lela”
Vodpod videos no longer available.three takes
Blues guitarists—great ones, anyway—aren’t instrumentalists; they’re singers with two voices.
“Born Under A Bad Sign” (W. Bell, B.T. Jones)
Albert King, live, Sweden, 1980
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Albert King, recording, 1967 (Stax)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Jimi Hendrix, recorded in 1969 (Blues, 1994)
Vodpod videos no longer available.What makes this last take effective? Part of it is the phrasing: Jimi, like Albert, doesn’t play anything that couldn’t be sung.
More Albert? Here.
Don Byron New Gospel Quintet (DB, tenor saxophone & clarinet; DK Dyson, vocals; Xavier Davis, piano; Brad Jones, bass; Pheeroan akLaff, drums), “Precious Lord” (T. A. Dorsey), live, Brazil (São Paulo), 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.Last night I heard these folks live at the University of Chicago. Whenever I go out and hear someone, I’m reminded, again, that even (especially?) today, when records and the ’net make more music more available than ever before, there’s no substitute for live music. No recording offers the textures and nuances of a great live performance. (Never, for instance, have I heard a recording that truly reproduces the sounds of a drum kit, much less the interplay between horn and drums.) Not only is there more to hear live, your focus is sharper: you know you won’t have another opportunity to experience these sounds. And when you go to a club or a concert hall, you become, for that night, a member of an ad hoc musical community—something you can’t do sitting in your living room.
Happy (85th) Birthday, Trane!
John Coltrane, September 23, 1926-July 17, 1967
John Coltrane Quartet (JC, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums), “I Want To Talk About You,” live, Sweden (Stockholm), 1962
Vodpod videos no longer available.More? Here. And here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
radio
All Trane, all day: WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).
Life thickens as you get older, becoming more layered. The other night, for instance, listening to Mad Professor dub Bob Marley at a club on Chicago’s south side (Reggie’s, State near Cermak), I found it hard not to think of another night over thirty years ago, of another club on the other side of town (Quiet Knight, Belmont near Clark, now gone), of hearing Bob Marley not dubbed but live.
Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Trenchtown Rock”
Live, Chicago (Quiet Knight), 1975
Never heard of this guy?
You’re not alone.
But for serious mental illness, he would have been a big star.
James Carr, singer, June 13, 1942-January 7, 2001
Live, “You Got My Mind Messed Up”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Live, “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“The Dark End of the Street” (D. Penn & C. Moman), Goldwax, 1967
Vodpod videos no longer available.What may be my favorite moment in this track is one that’s easy to miss; a throwaway, it comes at 1:37—the muted, fleeting “huhh.” The whole welter of emotions Carr brings to this performance—anxious, defiant, rueful, resigned—can be heard in this single syllable.
Miles Davis Quintet (MD, trumpet; Wayne Shorter, tenor saxophone; Herbie Hancock, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Tony Williams, drums), “Footprints” (W. Shorter), live, Sweden, 1967
Vodpod videos no longer available.Time for just one note? 3:34. (Shorter’s entire solo is a marvel [1:54-3:54]: it’s as intimate and delicate as a dream.)
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lagniappe
reading table
just the other day
we said goodbye . . .
dewy grave—Kobayashi Issa, 1790s (trans. David G. Lanoue)
music clip of the day 