funeral service and second line for Snooks Eaglin
9/27/09, New Orleans
Irma Thomas, “Singin’ Hallelujah”
*****
Charmaine Neville, Clarence “Frogman” Henry, Allen Toussaint, et al.
“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”
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“Hush, Somebody’s Calling My Name”
Edward Wilkerson, Jr. (bass clarinet), Tomeka Reid (cello), Scott Hesse (guitar), live, Lakeside, Michigan (Lakeside Inn), 10/16/11*
Vodpod videos no longer available.No matter how long you’ve been listening to music there are always new things to hear. When, for instance, is the last time you heard a trio featuring bass clarinet, cello, and guitar?
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
This whole division between genres has more to do with marketing than anything else. It’s terrible for the culture of music. Like anything that is purely economic, it ignores the most important component.
*This concert was presented by portoluz as part of its Jazz on a Summer’s Day series.
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.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.
The right music, heard at the right moment, can change your whole day.
The Staple Singers, “I’m Coming Home” (Vee-Jay), 1959
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
Happy Birthday, Lionel!
Today trumpet player Lionel Ferbos, who was born when William Howard Taft was president and tonight can be heard at New Orleans’ Palm Court Jazz Cafe, turns 100.
The Lionel Ferbos Band, “When You’re Smiling”
Live, New Orleans (Norwegian Seamen’s Church), 8/28/09
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For some years, trumpeter Lionel Ferbos has been touted as the oldest active jazz musician in New Orleans. Come this weekend, he’ll qualify for another honorific: The only active jazz musician in New Orleans whose age has crossed into triple digits.
John McCusker / The Times-Picayune
Lionel Ferbos, photographed in May 2011.Ferbos first learned trumpet in 1926, at age 15, inspired by seeing Phil Spitalny and his All-Girl Orchestra at the Orpheum Theater. He played in 1930s bands led by Captain John Handy and Walter “Fats” Pichon. He worked on a crew digging a City Park lagoon before getting hired for a Depression-era Works Progress Administration band, making around $13 a week.
Sheetmetal work eventually paid the bills, even as he continued to moonlight as a musician. He joined Lars Edegran’s New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra in the early 1970s, which toured in Europe, and in 1979 played trumpet and sang in the touring musical “One Mo’ Time.” He has maintained a regular gig at the Palm Court Jazz Cafe on Decatur Street for more than two decades.
—Keith Spera, The Times-Picayune, 7/13/11
Happy Birthday, Pops!*
Louis Armstrong, “Basin Street Blues” (three takes)
#1 (live, 1959, Germany [Stuttgart])
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#2 (live, 1953, New Orleans)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
#3 (recording, 1928, Chicago)
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
more
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five, “West End Blues,” 1928, Chicago
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radio
The federal government, in its wisdom, gives you the day off so you can listen to Louis Armstrong.
—Phil Schaap, 7/2/11, Traditions in Swing, WKCR-FM
(broadcasting from Columbia University), which today is all Pops, all day
*****
reading table
Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.
—Henry James
*Louis Armstrong gave July 4th as his birthday, something that was determined, after his death, not to be true—at least not literally.
sui generis, adj. A person or thing that is unique, in a class by itself. E.g., Anthony Braxton, composer, reed player, professor, MacArthur “genius” grant winner, one-time professional chess hustler.
Happy (Belated 66th) Birthday, Anthony!
(born June 4, 1945)
Anthony Braxton with his 12+1tet, Ghost Trance Music
New York (Iridium), 2008
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
I wanted to live. I wanted to be alive. This experience goes by very quickly. Part of the radiance of a moment, in my opinion, involves that which we call music.
***
Suddenly, Coltrane solos become the “it” of music, when in fact, the records and the notated solos are the sonic footprints, the bone structure of what actually happened in the music.
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I wanted a system that would be equal to the dynamics of curiosity. I wanted to have a music where I could have some fun.
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There is the wonderful discipline of music and the ability of music to keep on opening up fresh prospects. I must say, what a discipline!
—Anthony Braxton
Happy (89th) Birthday, Mingus!
Charles Mingus, bassist, bandleader, composer
April 22, 1922-January 5, 1979
In celebration of Mingus’s birthday, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is playing his music all day. We’re celebrating by revisiting some favorite clips.
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Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis: so many of the greatest figures in jazz weren’t just great musicians, or composers, or arrangers. They were great bandleaders. As important to their artistic success as anything else was their ability to find, and showcase, players who could make the music come alive—people like Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Jimmy Blanton and Lester Young and Freddie Green and Jo Jones and John Coltrane and Bill Evans and Tony Williams.
That small circle of elite bandleaders includes this man. He hired musicians who played their instruments like no one else (Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, et al.). He gave them a musical setting in which structure and freedom were exquisitely balanced. And together they made music that sounds (even on something familiar) like nothing else.
Charles Mingus Sextet (with Johnny Coles, trumpet; Jaki Byard, piano; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums), “Take the A Train,” live, Norway (Oslo), 1964
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lagniappe
I nominate Charles Mingus one of America’s greatest composers—Ran Blake (in the liner notes to his recent album Driftwoods)
(Originally posted 12/1/09.)
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No jazz composer since Thelonious Monk has a stronger voice.
Lyrical beauty, inexhaustible drive, deep feeling: what more could you ask for?
Enormously influential, his music served as a bridge between the compositional elegance of Duke Ellington and the freewheeling rambunctiousness of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, David Murray, et al.
Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964
“So Long, Eric”
*****
“Peggy’s Blue Skylight”
*****
“Meditations on Integration” (excerpt)
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lagniappe
. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)
*****
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
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I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
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In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
—Charles Mingus
(Originally posted 4/22/10.)
I’m surprised that I got this old and know so little.
—Terry Riley
Terry Riley, talking and playing, California, 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
In C (excerpt), Terry Riley, 1964
Take 1
Terry Riley, Center of Creative and Performing Arts (SUNY-Buffalo), 1968
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Take 2
Ars Nova, Percurama Percussion Ensemble, Paul Hillier (cond.), 2007
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at Boston’s Museum of Fine Arts
Hiroshige, The City Flourishing, Tanabata Festival (1857)
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.
music clip of the day 