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My favorite tenor player?
A while back, I said that if I had to name my favorite alto player, there would be days where I’d say Art Pepper.
Tenor players?
Some days this’d be the guy.
Like Pepper, he has a sound that’s immediately identifiable. It’s a sound that, like Pepper’s, holds both joy and heartbreak. And like Pepper, he’s hard—no, impossible—to pigeonhole. Swing, bebop, free: the label that’s capacious enough to contain him hasn’t been invented.
Von Freeman, “Lester Leaps In,” live, Chicago (New Apartment Lounge), 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.More? Here.
The other night, near the end of his big show at Madison Square Garden,
after bringing his opening act back onstage, the little guy played this.
Prince & Cee Lo (Cee-Lo?) Green, “Crazy,” New York, 2/7/11
Vodpod videos no longer available.Like a lot of great music, this song first reached my ears (shortly after its release) through my younger son Luke, who, one day as I’m driving him across town to a friend’s house, says he has something to play me and slides this into the CD player, cranking the volume way up.
three takes
Twenty inches of snow.
Fifty-mile-an-hour winds.
Thunder, lightning.
When the weather’s this bitter, shouldn’t the songs be too?
She wait till it got nine below zero . . .
Sonny Boy Williamson II (AKA Aleck “Rice” Miller), “Nine Below Zero”
Live (introduced by Memphis Slim; with Otis Spann, piano; Matt Murphy, guitar; Willie Dixon, bass; Billy Stepney, drums), Europe (Germany), 1963
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Recording (with Otis Spann, piano; Robert Jr. Lockwood & Luther Tucker, guitars; Willie Dixon, bass; Odie Payne, drums), Chess Records, Chicago, 12/14/60
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Recording (with Elmore James, guitar; Willie Love, piano; Cliff Givens, bass; Joe Dyson, drums), Trumpet Records, Jackson, Mississippi, 12/4/51
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Three Below Zero?
Seven Below Zero?
Ten Below Zero?
Sonny Boy nailed it with nine.
You weren’t there Saturday (neither was I); but, hey, we’re here now.
North Mississippi Allstars (Luther [guitar] & Cody [drums] Dickinson [sons of the wonderful Jim Dickinson]), “Let It Roll,” “Ain’t No Grave,” live, Atlanta (Criminal Records), 2/5/11
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
Keys to the Kingdom (new album)
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
reading table
Country Fair
If you didn’t see the six-legged dog,
It doesn’t matter.
We did, and he mostly lay in the corner.
As for the extra legs,One got used to them quickly
And thought of other things.
Like, what a cold, dark night
To be out at the fair.Then the keeper threw a stick
And the dog went after it
On four legs, the other two flapping behind,
Which made one girl shriek with laughter.She was drunk and so was the man
Who kept kissing her neck.
The dog got the stick and looked back at us.
And that was the whole show.—Charles Simic
Simic reads this here, beginning at 2:08:
Vodpod videos no longer available.three takes
I’ve got a band you should listen to . . .
—my (23-year-old) son Alex
Smith Westerns, “Tonight”
Live, Swarthmore College (Pennsylvania), 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Live, Chicago, 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Recording (Smith Westerns), 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.Here. And here. And here. And here.
And here.
fringe dress festival (cont’d)
Wanda Jackson, live (TV broadcast [Town Hall Party]), 1958
Vodpod videos no longer available.How many musicians are so at home, and give so much pleasure,
in so many styles?
Marc Ribot, guitar
Border Music, with David Hidalgo (Los Lobos, Latin Playboys)
Live (with Anthony Coleman, organ; Brad Jones, bass; Cougar Estrada, drums; Fabian Hevia, percussion), Australia (Sydney), 6/2/10
“Choserita Plena” (Marc Ribot)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Chinese Surprize” (David Hidalgo)
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Live (with Rob Burger, keyboards; Greg Cohen, bass; Cougar Estrada, drums; with guests Juan Medrano Cotito, cajon, and Hugo Bravo, congas),
Germany, 11/10/09
Roy Eldridge, January 30, 1911-February 26, 1989
No you, no me.
“I Can’t Get Started,” live (TV broadcast), 1958
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“After You’ve Gone,” 1937
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Wabash Stomp,” 1937
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Let Me Off Uptown” (Gene Krupa Orchestra with Anita O’Day), 1942
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
radio Roy Eldridge
WKCR-FM’s centennial birthday celebration, mentioned yesterday, continues until midnight.
Today MCOTD celebrates its 500th post. When this started, I thought I might eventually run out of material. But what I’ve found is the opposite: the more you hear, the more there is to hear.
Percy Sledge, “When A Man Loves A Woman,” live (TV broadcast), c. 1966
Vodpod videos no longer available.
**********
lagniappe
reading table
Haiku
That was fast.
I mean life.—Ron Padgett
music clip of the day 