clear, adj. bright, luminous, transparent. E.g., Wadada Leo Smith’s trumpet playing.
Wadada Leo Smith (trumpet), live, London (Cafe Oto), 9/5/11
A performance like this opens up, I’ve found, once you quit trying to find
a foothold.
It’s easy to forget, sometimes, just how great somebody could be.
B.B. King, “How Blue Can You Get?”
Live, Sing Sing Prison (Ossining, New York), 1972
**********
lagniappe
last night
W. S. Merwin, who just finished a term as U.S. Poet Laureate, gave a reading at Chicago’s downtown library, where he talked about this and that:
The English language is a great dump. Everything that has come into it has stayed there.
***
Poetry begins . . . with listening.
***
I wanted to be open . . . to anything that sounded like poetry.
***
To animals the meaning is the sound—and that’s pretty close to poetry.
***
Time is one of the great human fictions.
***
Many of the most important things we do are not calculated. They take us by surprise.
***
What the arts are made of is nothing but pure attention.
*****
radio
Happy (100th) Birthday, Papa Jo! WCKR-FM’s Centennial Festival, mentioned Monday, continues until noon tomorrow.
only rock ’n roll
The Ex, “Waiting,” live (studio performance), WFMU-FM, 2007
Vodpod videos no longer available.serendipity
The other day, while I was listening to the radio,* this popped out.
Derek Bailey (guitar) & Tony Oxley (percussion, electronics)
“Sheffield Phantoms,” The Advocate, Tzadik, 2007 (rec. 1975)
Rarely do you hear something that’s both this “out” and this intimate.
*Afternoon New Music, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University), Mon.-Wed., 3-6 p.m. (EST)
Has anyone played blues harp more sweetly?
Johnny Shines (1915-1992), vocals, guitar; David “Honeyboy” Edwards (1915-2011), guitar; Big Walter Horton (1917-1981), harmonica; “For The Love of Mike,” live, 1978
Vodpod videos no longer available.More Big Walter? Here.
More Honeyboy? Here.
**********
lagniappe
A belated Happy Birthday to MCOTD Hall of Famer Von Freeman, who turned 88 yesterday. Want to send birthday wishes? You can email them to info@jazzinchicago.org (subject line: Birthday Wishes for Von Freeman). Or you can do it the old-fashioned way: Birthday Wishes for Von Freeman, c/o The Jazz Institute of Chicago, 410 S. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60605.
Charisma needs no translation.
Mahmoud Ahmed & Badume’s Band, live, France (Festival de Sete), 2008
“Belomi Benna”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Atawurulegn Lela”
Vodpod videos no longer available.three takes
Blues guitarists—great ones, anyway—aren’t instrumentalists; they’re singers with two voices.
“Born Under A Bad Sign” (W. Bell, B.T. Jones)
Albert King, live, Sweden, 1980
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Albert King, recording, 1967 (Stax)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Jimi Hendrix, recorded in 1969 (Blues, 1994)
Vodpod videos no longer available.What makes this last take effective? Part of it is the phrasing: Jimi, like Albert, doesn’t play anything that couldn’t be sung.
More Albert? Here.
Think you can listen to these guys without moving?
Just try.
Staff Benda Bilili
Live, Democratic Republic of Congo (Kinshasa)
“Na Lingui Yo,” c. 2007
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Polio,” c. 2007
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Singing, playing, talking, 2011
Vodpod videos no longer available.Life thickens as you get older, becoming more layered. The other night, for instance, listening to Mad Professor dub Bob Marley at a club on Chicago’s south side (Reggie’s, State near Cermak), I found it hard not to think of another night over thirty years ago, of another club on the other side of town (Quiet Knight, Belmont near Clark, now gone), of hearing Bob Marley not dubbed but live.
Bob Marley and the Wailers, “Trenchtown Rock”
Live, Chicago (Quiet Knight), 1975
Never heard of this guy?
You’re not alone.
But for serious mental illness, he would have been a big star.
James Carr, singer, June 13, 1942-January 7, 2001
Live, “You Got My Mind Messed Up”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Live, “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“The Dark End of the Street” (D. Penn & C. Moman), Goldwax, 1967
Vodpod videos no longer available.What may be my favorite moment in this track is one that’s easy to miss; a throwaway, it comes at 1:37—the muted, fleeting “huhh.” The whole welter of emotions Carr brings to this performance—anxious, defiant, rueful, resigned—can be heard in this single syllable.
music clip of the day 