music clip of the day

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Category: guitar

2011

Thursday, 1/27/11

two takes

Charlie Louvin, July 7, 1927-January 26, 2011

“If I Could Only Win Your Love” (Ira & Charlie Louvin)

Emmylou Harris & Charlie Louvin, live (TV broadcast), mid-80s

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Louvin Brothers, 1958

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lagniappe

He really changed the world of music, Charlie did. I know that, for me, hearing the Louvin Brothers brought me that fierce love of harmony.

—Emmylou Harris

*****

Louvin Brothers, “I Don’t Believe You’ve Met My Baby,” live (TV broadcast),
c. 1955

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*****

I can remember my brother and I singing together when I was 5 and he was 8 years old. He already knew how, and he was teaching me.

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I’m the biggest harmony lover in the world. If a song’s worth singing you ought to put harmony on it.

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Show business is all I really know how to do. I would like for that to be the last thing I do.

—Charlie Louvin

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2011

Tuesday, 1/25/11

three takes

Is this—the new cover—great?

Maybe, maybe not.

No matter—I, uh (to dip into the aging hipster’s lexicon), dig it.

“Is This Love” (Bob Marley)

Corinne Bailey Rae

Take 1: recording, 2010

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Take 2: live, Los Angeles, 2010

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Bob Marley

Take 3: live, Santa Barbara, 1979

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More Bob Marley? Here.

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2011

Sunday, 1/23/11

I’ll be all right when I find somewhere to lay my head . . .

The Sensational Nightingales, “Somewhere To Lay My Head,” live (TV broadcast), early ’60s

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2011

Friday, 1/21/11

two takes

. . . the most beautiful song in the English language.

—Robert Christgau

“Waterloo Sunset” (Ray Davies)

The Kinks, live, 1973 (TV broadcast), England

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Ray Davies, live, 2010, England (Glastonbury)

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2011

Thursday, 1/20/11

Some voices seem to come from another world.

Skip James, “Devil Got My Woman,” 1931

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More? Here.

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lagniappe

reading table: variations on a theme

I sometimes think that an idea is the worst thing that can happen to a writer.

—David Vann, New York Times, 1/14/11

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[A]ll ideas . . . fail to work at some point . . .

—David Kirby, “L’Explication de Tasty-Fuck”

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Ideas are always wrong.

—William Bronk, “Blue Spruces in Pairs, A Bird Bath Between”

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2011

Tuesday, 1/18/11

two takes

The other night, as my older son Alex packed up his stuff for the next day’s trip back to school, this played on his computer—over and over and over.

The Mountain Goats, “This Year”

#1: recording (The Sunset Tree), 2005

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#2: live, Iowa (Ames), 2006

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lagniappe

art beat

Lee Friedlander, New York City (Self-Portrait), c. 1960(?)

*****

More Son Seals

Last night I discovered that two of the sets Son played at the Bottom Line in January of 1978 can be heard here and here. The second features a guest
artist—Johnny Winter.

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2011

Monday, 1/17/11

Back in the ’70s, when I was at Alligator Records, I worked with this guy—coproducing albums, booking live performances, traveling to New York for a series of “showcase” performances (little pay, big exposure) at the Bottom Line (opening for Buddy Guy & Junior Wells). But I was a fan before that. In college I had a weekly radio show, where I often played his first album, released in 1973. Now, like so many others I worked with (Hound Dog Taylor, Big Walter Horton, Fenton Robinson, Koko Taylor, Albert Collins, et al.), he’s gone.

Son Seals, August 13, 1942-December 20, 2004

“I Think You’re Fooling Me,” live (TV broadcast), 1987

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“Your Love Is Like A Cancer” (The Son Seals Blues Band, Alligator, 1973)

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lagniappe

reading table

for . . . Son Seals, who left to work a better room

—Andrew Vachss, Mask Market: A Burke Novel (2006)

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2011

Sunday, 1/16/11

This lady, who cut just a handful of sides, really lights it up.

Sister O.M. Terrell, “Life Is A Problem,” 1948

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Want more? Here.

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2011

Thursday, 1/13/11

Talking with a Jamaican-born client, I mention Gregory Isaacs’ passing.

He responds, “He died too?”

Sugar Minott, May 25, 1956-July 10, 2010

1983:”Rough Ole Life (Babylon),” Reggae Sunsplash, Jamaica

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2009: Rehearsal, Lovers Rock Gala Awards, England

“Lovers Rock”

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“Good Thing Going”

Vodpod videos no longer available.

More? Here (Sugar Minott Memorial Broadcast, WKCR-FM).

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2011

Wednesday, 1/12/11

Subtlety has its place; but so does noise.

Whoopie Pie with guest Marc Ribot (guitar), live, New York, 2009

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More Marc Ribot? Here.

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lagniappe

reading table

It might be thought the height of poor taste to ascribe good fortune to a healthy man with a young family struck down at the age of sixty by an incurable degenerative disorder from which he must shortly die. But there is more than one sort of luck. To fall prey to a motor neuron disease is surely to have offended the Gods at some point, and there is nothing more to be said. But if you must suffer thus, better to have a well-stocked head.

—Tony Judt, The Memory Chalet (2010)

*****

radio

Simone Dinnerstein, featured here a couple weeks ago, was on NPR’s All Things Considered the other day.

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