Wednesday, 6/8/11
flicks
an occasional series
Mamie Smith and The Alphabetical Four, “Harlem Blues” (reworking of “Crazy Blues”), Paradise in Harlem (1939)
Vodpod videos no longer available.music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: blues
2011
2011
Saturday, 5/7/11
More Hound Dog
Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers (Brewer Phillips, guitar; Ted Harvey, drums), “Roll Your Moneymaker,” live, Ann Arbor Blues Festival, 1973
Vodpod videos no longer available.More? Here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
reading table
M. Abel Bonnard, of Villeneuve-Saint-Georges, who was playing billiards, put out his left eye falling on his cue.
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On the bowling lawn a stroke leveled M. Andre, 75, of Levallois. While his ball was still rolling he was no more.
—Félix Fénéon, trans. Luc Sante, Novels in Three Lines (collecting, as the back cover puts it, “more than a thousand items that appeared anonymously in the French newspaper Le Matin in 1906—true stories of murder, mayhem, and everyday life”)
2011
Friday, 4/29/11
When you’re young you can’t imagine that the things that make your life sing won’t always be there. Then you get older. And they aren’t.
Hound Dog Taylor & The Houserockers (Brewer Phillips, guitar; Ted Harvey, drums), “Sadie,” live, Ann Arbor Blues Festival, 1973
More? Here.
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langiappe
This arrived yesterday, in response to an email letting her know that she was featured here (with Hazel Dickens):
Thanks for letting me know about this. We said goodbye to Hazel yesterday and singing was never more difficult. She was my musical guide and my beloved friend. Smart, funny, complicated, always real. She’ll live in my music, and my life, forever. “Fly away, Little Pretty Bird.”
Ginny
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Hazel Dickens, “Pretty Bird,” 1967
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Monday, 4/4/11
Feeling glum?
Not for long.
Albert Ammons, Lena Horne, Pete Johnson, Teddy Wilson
Boogie-Woogie Dream (1944)
Part 1
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Part 2
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Saturday, 3/26/11
The notes are easy enough to replicate—the touch impossible.
Pinetop Perkins (piano, vocals), July 7, 1913-March 21, 2011
“Grindin’ Man” (with Willie “Big Eyes” Smith, harmonica), live, New Jersey (New Brunswick), 2008
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
“How Long Blues,” live
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
He was one of the last great Mississippi Bluesmen. He had such a distinctive voice, and he sure could play the piano. He will be missed not only by me, but by lovers of music all over the world.
*****
If you don’t want to die, don’t be born.
—Red Paden, owner of Red’s Blues Club, Clarksdale, Mississippi
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my back pages
Many years ago I had the pleasure of working with him, co-producing his tracks on Living Chicago Blues, Vol. 2 (Alligator 1978). Warm, amiable, unassuming—he was easy to like.
*****
listening room: what’s playing
• Ornette Coleman, Town Hall 1962
• Mos Def, The Ecstatic
• Lupe Fiasco, Lasers
• Steve Reich, Double Sextet, 2×5
• Rudresh Mahanthappa & Bunky Green, Apex
• Nneka, Concrete Jungle
• Theo Parrish, Sound Sculptures, Vol. 1
• Powerhouse Gospel On Independent Labels, 1946-1959
• WFMU-FM: Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt), Mudd Up! (DJ/rupture)
• WKCR-FM: Bird Flight (Phil Schapp), Jazz Alternatives (various), Out To Lunch (various), Western Swing Festival (various)
2011
Saturday, 3/19/11
Sometimes, when the world just seems too noisy, too busy, what you need is something that couldn’t be simpler.
Slim Harpo, “Rainin’ In My Heart” (1961)
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Tuesday, 3/15/11
Big Jack Johnson, July 30, 1940-March 14, 2011
Live (Deep Blues, 1992)
“Catfish Blues”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Daddy, When Is Mama Coming Home”
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
art beat
American Modern: Abbott, Evans, Bourke-White
Art Institute of Chicago (through 5/15/11)
Walker Evans, Barbershops, Vicksburg, Mississippi (1936)
2011
Wednesday, 3/9/11
Happy (81st) Birthday, Ornette!
His sound—his whole approach (simple melodies, vocal phrasing, off-center intonation)—is drenched in the blues.
Ornette Coleman (alto saxophone) with The Roots
Live, London (Meltdown Festival), 2009
#1
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2
Vodpod videos no longer available.The tenor player at the end—that’s David Murray.
More Ornette? Here.
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lagniappe
radio
What am I listening to today?
That’s easy—WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University), where it’s all Ornette all day.
2011
Monday, 2/28/11
When something is this lyrical, this convincing, there’s only one thing I want to do when it ends—hear it again.
Michael Burks, “Empty Promises,” live, Falls Church, Virginia, 8/21/09
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Tuesday, 2/8/11
three takes
Twenty inches of snow.
Fifty-mile-an-hour winds.
Thunder, lightning.
When the weather’s this bitter, shouldn’t the songs be too?
She wait till it got nine below zero . . .
Sonny Boy Williamson II (AKA Aleck “Rice” Miller), “Nine Below Zero”
Live (introduced by Memphis Slim; with Otis Spann, piano; Matt Murphy, guitar; Willie Dixon, bass; Billy Stepney, drums), Europe (Germany), 1963
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Recording (with Otis Spann, piano; Robert Jr. Lockwood & Luther Tucker, guitars; Willie Dixon, bass; Odie Payne, drums), Chess Records, Chicago, 12/14/60
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Recording (with Elmore James, guitar; Willie Love, piano; Cliff Givens, bass; Joe Dyson, drums), Trumpet Records, Jackson, Mississippi, 12/4/51
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Three Below Zero?
Seven Below Zero?
Ten Below Zero?
Sonny Boy nailed it with nine.
