Chicago Blues Festival, part 2
Howlin’ Wolf (with Hubert Sumlin, guitar), live, Chicago, 1966
“How Many More Years”
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“Meet Me In The Bottom”
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When I first heard him [Howlin’ Wolf], I said, ‘This is for me. This is where the soul of man never dies.’—Sam Phillips
Chicago Blues Festival, part 1
Muddy Waters (with James Cotton, harmonica; Otis Spann, piano; Pat Hare, guitar; Andrew Stevenson, bass; Francis Clay, drums), “Got My Mojo Working,” live, Newport Jazz Festival, 1960
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Soon after he got to Chicago, Muddy [Waters] began playing the blues for his friends in relaxed moments, and that led to work playing at rent parties, for small tips and all the whiskey he could drink. ‘You know,’ he said, refilling his glass with champagne, ‘I wanted to go to Chicago in the late thirties, ’cause Robert Nighthawk came to see me and said he was goin’ and get a record. He says, you go along and you might get on with me. I thought, oh, man, this cat is just jivin’, he ain’t goin’ to Chicago. I thought goin’ to Chicago was like goin’ out of the world. Finally he split, and the next time I heard he had a record out. So I started asking some of my friends that had went to Chicago, Can I make it with my guitar? ‘Naww, they don’t listen to that kind of old blues you’re doin’ now, don’t nobody listen to that, not in Chicago. So when I finally come to Chicago, the same person that told me that . . . Dan’s wife, my sister, that’s the same person I started playin’ every Saturday night for, at the rent party in her apartment. Peoples is awful funny.’ He chuckled, savoring the irony. ‘So I started playing for these rent parties, and then I run into Blue Smitty and Jimmy Rogers and we got somethin’ goin’ on. We started playing little neighborhood bars on the West Side, five nights a week, five dollars a night. It wasn’t no big money, but we’s doin’ it.’ They were doing it, all right; they were creating modern blues and laying the groundwork for rock and roll.—Robert Palmer, Deep Blues (1981)
According to Miles Davis, the history of jazz can be told in four words; here are the first two.
Louis Armstrong, “Dinah,” live, Copenhagen, 1933
Why take a straight path when you can take a crooked one?
Sheila Jordan (with Steve Kuhn, piano; David Finck, bass; Billy Drummond, drums; Mark Feldman and Barry Finclair, violin; Vincent Lionti, viola; Harold Birston, cello), “Autumn in New York,” live, 2008, New York (on her 80th birthday)
captivating, adj. capturing interest as if by a spell. E.g., Betty Carter.
Betty Carter (with Cyrus Chestnut, piano), “Once Upon A Summertime,” live, Japan, 1993
(Watch how she moves when giving way to Cyrus Chestnut’s piano solo [3:40-54]: the elegance of a dancer, the dignity of a queen.)
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If you’re sitting in that audience ready to fight me from the very beginning, I’m going to have a hard time getting to you. But if you’ve got a heart at all, I’m going to get it.—Betty Carter
Is there any greater joy than to hear something fresh?
Steve Lehman (saxophonist, composer, bandleader), talking and playing, 2009
Want more? Here (click on the “listen” tab).
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. . . the most important thing, and the most important element of the music, and the most important compositional step is deciding who it is that you’re going to work with—even more so than what notes they’re going to play, or what context you’re going to put them in.—Steve Lehman
genius at work
Thelonious Monk with saxophonist Charlie Rouse, working out a number, “Boo Boo’s Birthday,” during a recording session, 1967
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Thelonious Monk (with Charlie Rouse, tenor saxophone; Ben Riley, drums; Larry Gales, bass), “Boo Boo’s Birthday” (Underground [Columbia], 1968)
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reading table
One of the great discoveries I made in college, besides Bach (10/19/09, 10/24/09, 12/25/09) and Blind Willie Johnson (11/15/09) and Bill Evans (11/18/09) and Hound Dog Taylor (10/30/09), was John Berryman. Hearing him read his poetry, not long before he died (jumping off a bridge in Minneapolis), changed my life. Really. That night made me realize, in ways that I never had before, just how lively and surprising and exciting poetry could be. It made me realize, too, that what a great poem offers is an experience—one you can’t get anywhere else. And so I have Berryman to thank not only for his own poems (especially The Dream Songs [which would be on my desert-island packing list]) but also for making Emily Dickinson, Gerard Manley Hopkins, Wislawa Szymborska, Charles Simic, et al., such important figures in my life. Just as my life would be immeasurably poorer without Thelonious Monk (11/2/09, 11/25/09, today) and Vernard Johnson (12/6/09) and Morton Feldman (11/7/09, 12/5/09) and Lester Bowie (9/8/09, 10/28/09), so too would it be without them.
This recording, for all its technical shortcomings (headphones help), captures some of what I heard in Berryman that night almost 40 years ago. Blustery and grandiose and vulnerable, jazzy and funny: he was all these things—and more.
This is not a cultural occasion, ladies and gentlemen, in case you were misled by anyone. This is an entertainment.—John Berryman
John Berryman (1914-1972), live, Iowa City, 1968
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
The French Quarter: the spirit of some places is so strong you can go there, in mind if not in body, just by saying their name.
Rebirth Brass Band, live, New Orleans’ French Quarter, 2008
This is the kind of guy who gives discographers fits. According to Wikipedia: “On recordings, he is credited under many different names, including: Noel ‘Scully’ Simms, Noel ‘Skully’ Simms, Scully, Scully Simms, Skullie, Skully, Skully Simms, Zoot ‘Scully’ Simms, Mikey Spratt, Scollie, Zoot Sims, and Skitter.” Even in the course of a single book, Lloyd Bradley’s This Is Reggae Music, his name’s spelled two different ways (Skully, Scully).
Noel “Skully” Simms, live (recording session, Horace Andy, Livin’ It Up [2007])
lagniappe
Tuesday I emailed Oran Etkin, letting him know that his music was being featured here, and he sent this response: “That is great. Thank you. Are you the writer of the blog? I like the melodic rhythm and rhythmic melody idea.” In a later message, he added: “Great stuff. I’m checking out the 3-part Lacy interview. Checked out the Malian drumming and gospel sax stuff too.”
Take away the hand drums and the music of this man—another of the great artists to come out of Chicago in the last 50 years—would have a whole different flavor.
Curtis Mayfield (with Master Henry Gibson on hand drums), “Move On Up,” live, The Netherlands (The Hague), 1987
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In the Sixties, you had percussionists like Master Henry Gibson that was playing with Curtis Mayfield and he was pretty much used as melodic accents. When you listen to a lot of Curtis’ work after the Impressions, rather than a horn player he’s got Henry Gibson out front on percussions. A lot of people had missed that in the sense of compositional expression.—Kahil El’Zabar
