not for the faint of heart
Phil Minton (vocals), Mats Gustafsson (baritone saxophone), John Russell (guitar), live, London (Cafe Oto), 2010
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lagniappe
art beat: Sunday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Seascape, 1879
Sometimes, when posting an image of a painting, I wonder: “Why bother?” No art form resists reproduction more successfully.
two takes
“Feel Like Going Home” (C. Rich)
Charlie Rich (vocals & piano), demo, 1973
*****
Tom Jones with Mark Knopfler (guitar), TV performance, 1996
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
I don’t think I ever recorded anyone who was better as a singer, writer, and player than Charlie Rich. It is all so effortless, the way he moves from rock to country to blues to jazz.
—Sam Phillips (Sun Records)
*****
radio
Happy Birthday, Charles!
*****
reading table
I thought that you were an anchor in the drift of the world;
but no: there isn’t an anchor anywhere.
There isn’t an anchor in the drift of the world. Oh no.
I thought you were. Oh no. The drift of the world.
—William Bronk,* “The World” (mp3 [Hudson Falls, NY, 1978], Selected Poems [1995])
***
*Bronk, who died in 1999, was recently inducted, posthumously, into the ultra-exclusive MCOTD Hall of Fame, joining tenor saxophonist Von Freeman and poet Wislawa Szymborska.
passings
Levon Helm, drummer, singer, songwriter, actor, etc.
May 26, 1940-April 19, 2012
Live, 2/12, Woodstock, NY (Levon’s home)
“Ophelia”
***
“The Weight”
*****
“When I Go Away,” recording (Electric Dirt, 2009)
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lagniappe
Levon Helm will always hold a special place in my heart. He was as great of an actor as a musician. For me watching him play the role of my daddy in Coal Miner’s Daughter is a memory I will always treasure.
***
When I heard The Band’s Music from Big Pink, their music changed my life. And Levon was a big part of that band. Nigel Olson, my drummer, will tell you that every drummer that heard him was influenced by him. He was the greatest drummer and a wonderful singer and just a part of my life that was magical. They once flew down to see me in Philadelphia and I couldn’t believe it. They were one of the greatest bands of all time. They really changed the face of music when their records came out. I had no idea he was sick so I’m very dismayed and shocked that he died so quickly. But now my son [Zachary Jackson Levon Furnish-John] has his name.
***
He was my bosom buddy friend to the end, one of the last true great spirits of my or any other generation. This is just so sad to talk about. I still can remember the first day I met him and the last day I saw him. We go back pretty far and had been through some trials together. I’m going to miss him, as I’m sure a whole lot of others will too.
two takes
“Honky Tonk Man” (J. Horton, et al.)
Dwight Yoakam
Live, mid-1980s
*****
Johnny Horton
Recording (Billboard Hot Country Singles, #9), 1956
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lagniappe
reading table
Hank Williams . . . was essentially the first rock star. He was a hillbilly singer, but he was a rock star. As Chet Atkins said, the year that Elvis hit, it ruined country music. Because they had rural America and southern America’s teenage audience. And then they couldn’t keep them. Elvis had changed everything.
***
I was a Monkees kid. For a ten-year-old like myself, the Monkees were a cultural access point that the Beatles weren’t. I was an oldest kid, teaching myself, and the Beatles were a bit beyond my grasp. Television delivers the Monkees to me in a different way; A Hard Day’s Night was not on TV in 1965. . . . The Monkees . . . came inside my living room, and there was a familiarity that allowed me to really understand what this new thing was. I had the first two Monkees albums, and I couldn’t have gotten a better education, retrospectively, in songwriting, when you think about it, than listening to Neil Diamond, Carole King, Boyce and Hart compositions. The world in two-and-a half to three minutes.
***
I had the jeans, the boots . . . There was a whole Hud element to that cowboy culture that I knew that could be introduced, the Route 66 Americana, not the Nashville Dixie country. Beyond James Dean, beyond Giant. This Route 66 Corvette cowboy. So let’s just call it that—it’s beyond Cadillac Cowboy. It’s Corvette cowboy.
—Dwight Yoakam (in Don McLeese, Dwight Yoakam: A Thousand Miles From Nowhere [2012])
Boi Akih (Monica Akihary, vocals; Niels Brouwer, guitar) with guest Wolter Wierbos (trombone), live, Netherlands, 2008
Instruments, too, are often stereotyped. Take the trombone. Loud? Blustery? Bull in a china shop? Not here.
The tree of country music has lots of eccentric branches.
The Handsome Family, “My Friend” (2009)
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lagniappe
reading table
The Everyday Enchantment of Music
by Mark Strand
(Almost Invisible [2012])
A rough sound was polished until it became a smoother sound, which was polished until it became music. Then the music was polished until it became the memory of a night in Venice when tears of the sea fell from the Bridge of Sighs, which in turn was polished until it ceased to be and in its place stood the empty home of a heart in trouble. Then suddenly there was sun and the music came back and traffic was moving and off in the distance, at the edge of the city, a long line of clouds appeared, and there was thunder, which, however menacing, would become music, and the memory of what happened after Venice would begin, and what happened after the home of the troubled heart broke in two would also begin.
*****
Happy Birthday, Billie!
Happy (75th) Birthday, Merle!
Merle Haggard, live
“Lonesome Fugitive,” Buck Owens Ranch Show, 1966
***
“Working Man Blues,” Austin City Limits, 1978
***
“Today I Started Loving You Again,” with Tammy Wynette, England (Wemberly), 1988
music clip of the day 