blues | music clip of the day

Category: blues

Saturday, 11/19/11

old stuff

Bertha “Chippie” Hill (with Louis Armstrong, cornet), “Trouble In Mind”
Rec. 2/23/1926, Chicago

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lagniappe

random thoughts

Growing up in the 1960s, the 1920s seemed as far away as the other side of the moon. No more—time changes your perspective on time. The distance between, say, 1926 and 1966 is smaller than that between 1966 and today.
The 1920s? They’re just down the block and around the corner.

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reading table

1926

The porchlight coming on again,
Early November, the dead leaves
Raked in piles, the wicker swing
Creaking. Across the lots
A phonograph is playing Ja-Da.

An orange moon. I see the lives
Of neighbors, mapped and marred
Like all the wars ahead, and R.
Insane, B. with his throat cut,
Fifteen years from now, in Omaha.

I did not know them then.
My airedale scratches at the door.
And I am back from seeing Milton Sills
And Doris Kenyon. Twelve years old.
The porchlight coming on again.

—Weldon Kees (1914-1955)

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2011

Wednesday, 11/2/11

This guy sounded so good the other day—let’s hear some more.

B.B. King with T-Bone Walker, “Bad News”/“Sweet Sixteen”
Live, Monterey Jazz Festival (Monterey, California), 9/16/1967

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2011

Monday, 10/31/11

two takes

Need a Monday morning boost? You’ve come to the right place.

“Let the Good Times Roll”

Koko Taylor (1928-2009), live

Years ago, when I was at Alligator Records, I worked with her—what a sweetheart.

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Louis Jordan And His Tympany Five, c. 1946

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

art beat

Yesterday at Chicago’s Goodman Theater:

MARK ROTHKO: Wait. Stand closer. You’ve got to get close. Let it pulsate. Let it work on you. Closer. . . . There. Let it spread out. Let it wrap its arms around you; let it embrace you, filling even your peripheral vision so nothing else exists or has ever existed or will ever exist. Let the picture do its work—But work with it. Meet it halfway for God’s sake. Lean forward, lean into it. Engage with it!

—John Logan, Red (2009)

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2011

Thursday, 10/27/11

flicks

Bessie Smith, St. Louis Blues (1929)

Part 1

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Part 2

*****

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2011

Wednesday, 10/19/11

Herman E. Johnson, “She’s A-Looking For Me”*
Rec. 1961, Baton Rouge, Louisiana

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lagniappe

So my life was just that way, to keep out of trouble, drink my little whiskey, an’ go an’ do little ugly things like that, but in a QT way.

—Herman E. Johnson (August Kleinzahler, Red Sauce, Whiskey and Snow [1995], epigraph [I’ve changed “cue-tee” to “QT”])

*This is how this song is titled on the album Louisiana Country Blues (Arhoolie). To these ears a better rendering would be “She Out Looking For Me.”

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2011

Monday, 10/17/11

Stick around long enough and images that conjure your own past, going out to clubs on Chicago’s south and west sides, start to turn up as history.

Ricky Allen, “No Better Time Than Now” (One-Way 1974)
Light: On The South Side (Numero 2009)

Yeah, that’s Junior Wells at 1:08.

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2011

Friday, 10/7/11

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

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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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.

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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.

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radio

Happy (100th) Birthday, Papa Jo! WCKR-FM’s Centennial Festival, mentioned Monday, continues until noon tomorrow.

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2011

Tuesday, 10/4/11

Has anyone played blues harp more sweetly?

Johnny Shines (1915-1992), vocals, guitar; David “Honeyboy” Edwards (1915-2011), guitar; Big Walter Horton (1917-1981), harmonica; “For The Love of Mike,” live, 1978

Vodpod videos no longer available.

More Big Walter? Here.

More Honeyboy? Here.

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lagniappe

A belated Happy Birthday to MCOTD Hall of Famer Von Freeman, who turned 88 yesterday. Want to send birthday wishes? You can email them to info@jazzinchicago.org (subject line: Birthday Wishes for Von Freeman). Or you can do it the old-fashioned way: Birthday Wishes for Von Freeman, c/o The Jazz Institute of Chicago, 410 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60605.