music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Category: blues

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.

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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)

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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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? and the Mysterians—still more (take #4 [NYC, Great Jones Cafe; 7/31/10])

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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.

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I’m loving the videos up on the site!

—Oran

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Oran Etkin, “Wake Up, Clarinet!”; live

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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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Blind Willie McTell

hotel room, Atlanta, 1940

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“Statesboro Blues,” 1928 (Atlanta)

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2010

Tuesday, 8/10/10

The lineup Bambino and Group Inerane use today in the West African desert—two electric guitars, drums—is the one this guy used, 40 years ago, on Chicago’s south side.

Hound Dog Taylor, live, Chicago, 1971

Want more? Here.

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Spiritual Stars Singers

Silver Wings

Amazing Mentholiers

Chosen Wonders

Rev. R. Campbell and His Wonder Boy

Rhythmical Wright Singers

Willie Harris and the Sensational Six

Never heard of ’em? I hadn’t either. Now you can hear all of ’em in the latest installment of Sinner’s Crossroads (8/5/10), Kevin Nutt’s weekly “gospel extravaganza.” (This one’s so good I’ve already played it twice.)

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“dark dismal-dreaming night” *

Listen to the Cubs lose at four in the afternoon?

Anyone can do that.

You’ve gotta be crazy to listen to them lose at 1:00 a.m (Giants, 11th inning, 4-3).

*W. Shakespeare

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2010

Saturday, 7/31/10

In the wrong hands no genre is more tedious.

In the right hands none is more riveting.

Robert Pete Williams, live, England, 1966

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going forward

It will still be “music clip of the day”—it just won’t be every day. Some weeks, I expect, I’ll be here nearly every day; other weeks less often. Stay tuned.

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2010

Friday, 7/16/10

Simple, subtle, soulful: blues is (as Artur Schnabel said of Mozart’s piano sonatas) “too easy for children, too difficult for adults.”

R.L. Burnside, “Goin’ Down South,” live, early 1970s, Mississippi

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musical thoughts

Music is the healing force of the universe.

—Albert Ayler

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2010

Thursday, 7/8/10

You can learn how to play the harmonica. You can learn how to sing. What you can’t learn is the most important thing—presence.

Junior Wells (vocal and harmonica), Buddy Guy (guitar), “Cryin’ Shame” (AKA “Country Girl”), live, Chicago, 1970 (Chicago Blues)

Want more? Here.

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2010

Wednesday, 7/7/10

Fluid, supple, springy: with him on drums, the beat just floats.

Fred Below, September 16, 1926-August 14, 1988

Otis Rush, guitar; Little Brother Montgomery, piano; Jack Myers, bass; Fred Below, drums; Europe, 1966

Want more? Here. Here.

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2010

Thursday, 7/1/10

looking back

Today, celebrating our 300th post, we revisit a few favorites.

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3/12/10

Both Chicago blues artists. Both guitar players. Both influenced by other kinds of music.

Musical personalities? They could hardly be more different.

Buddy Guy, “Let Me Love You Baby,” live

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Fenton Robinson, “Somebody Loan Me A Dime,” live, 1977

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Back in the 1970s, when I was at Alligator Records, I had the pleasure of working with Fenton, co-producing his album I Hear Some Blues Downstairs (a Grammy nominee). He didn’t fit the stereotype of a bluesman. Gentle, soft-spoken, serious, introspective: he was all these things. He died in 1997.

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3/3/10

What other pop star has made such stunning contributions as a guest artist?

Sinead O’Connor

With Willie Nelson, “Don’t Give Up”

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With the Chieftains, “The Foggy Dew”

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With Shane MacGowan, “Haunted”

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5/28/2010

two takes

“La-La Means I Love You”

The Delfonics, live, 2008 (originally recorded 1968)

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Bill Frisell, live, New York (Rochester), 2007

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musical thoughts

Music . . . carr[ies] us smoothly across the tumult of experience, like water over rocks.

—Vijay Iyer, liner notes, Historicity (2009)

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2010

Saturday, 6/26/10

replay: a clip too good for just one day

Performances like this usually fall somewhere between disappointing and disastrous. So many things can—and usually do—go wrong when you take a bunch of folks who’re used to leading their own bands and throw them together onstage. People trip all over each another; flash trumps feeling. But this performance, with Albert King, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Paul Butterfield, and (at the end) B.B. King, has plenty of strong moments—some funny ones, too. Listen to Albert bark at Paul: “Turn around!” (0:39) And watch Albert outfox B.B. First he invites him back onstage (4:40) and then, just when B.B.’s about to take flight (5:55), he cuts him off—faster than you can say “wham”—with his own (wonderful) solo. So much for Emily Post.

Stevie Ray Vaughan, Albert King, Paul Butterfield, B.B. King, “The Sky Is Crying,” live, 1987

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lagniappe

A radio station that’s well worth checking out, if you’re not already familiar with it, is WKCR-FM, which broadcasts from NYC’s Columbia University. Like pretty much everything else these days, it’s available on-line. Among other things, it features a daily dose of Charlie Parker on “Bird Flight” (M-F, 8:30-9:30 a.m. [EDT]), hosted by Phil Schaap (profiled last year, by David Remnick, in the New Yorker), as well as, on Sunday, two excellent shows devoted to Indian music (6:00-8:00 a.m. and 7:00-9:00 p.m. [EDT]). (Another nice thing: the folks there are readily accessible; while listening yesterday, for instance, I heard an intriguing piece [by Alfred Schnittke] that I didn’t get the name of; I emailed them a query and, by the end of the night, had a response from the DJ.)

(Originally posted 9/18/09.)

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