The Cubs couldn’t seem to make up their minds this season. Were they—as often seemed to be the case—god-awful? Or, taking the longer view, were they simply mediocre? Oh, well. Instead of dwelling on this dismal season, let’s remember one of the brightest spots in Chicago baseball history. Here’s the finest musician ever to work between the foul lines: blues and boogie-woogie piano player Jimmy Yancey, who, for 25 years (1925-50), was a White Sox groundskeeper.
Jimmy Yancey, “Rolling the Stone” (1939)
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“I can’t believe the season is over—but it is.”—WGN Radio Cubs broadcaster Pat Hughes, after yesterday’s game (a loss to Arizona, 5-2)
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, live, 1987
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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.)
A blues guitarist backed by, let’s see, Dizzy Gillespie, Clark Terry, Zoot Sims, James Moody, and Teddy Wilson? With most blues artists that might seem odd. Not T-Bone Walker.
T-Bone Walker, live, England, 1966
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“When I heard T-Bone Walker play the electric guitar I had to have one. T-Bone Walker has a touch that nobody has been able to duplicate.”—B.B. King
“T-Bone Walker was a big influence on just about every guitar player around.”—Johnny Winter
“The first thing I can remember was my mother singing the blues as she would sit alone. I used to listen to her singing there at night, and I knew then that the blues was in me too.”—T-Bone Walker
If you think blues and country never mingle, just listen to blues guitar great Earl Hooker. Backstage, he fools around, lovingly, with the country classic “Walkin’ the Floor Over You.” Onstage, he launches into a bluesy instrumental that’s as hyped up as a truck driver, past midnight, on his fifth cup of coffee. While some musicians (particularly in jazz) are famous for playing “behind the beat” (Lester Young, Billie Holiday, Miles Davis, et al.), Hooker keeps racing ahead of the beat, pushing so insistently that, at times, it feels like he might jump off the road altogether.
Earl Hooker, live, Germany, 1969
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“I used to listen to country and western and blues, John Lee Hooker, spirituals, the Bluegrass Boys, and Eddie Arnold. There was a radio station that come on everyday with country, spirituals, and the blues.”—Otis Rush
music clip of the day 