music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Category: guitar

2010

Monday, 12/13/10

Here, following Big Mama Thornton’s, are two more takes.

Elvis Presley, “Hound Dog,” live (TV broadcast, Milton Berle Show), 1956

Vodpod videos no longer available.

*****

The Rock and Roll Trio (with Johnny Burnette), “Hound Dog,” live (TV broadcast, Ted Mack and the Original Amateur Hour), 1956

Vodpod videos no longer available.

In 1952, the Burnette brothers and Burlison formed a group called The Rhythm Rangers at the time. Johnny Burnette sang the vocals and played acoustic guitar, Dorsey played bass and Paul Burlison played lead guitar. For economic reasons, in 1956, the three young men moved to New York, where they managed to get an audition with the Ted Mack Original Amateur Hour. They won the competition three times in a row, which gained them a place in the finals, a recording contract with Coral Records and they officially became The Rock and Roll Trio.

—Wikipedia

Leave a comment
2010

Friday, 12/10/10

two voices

Some voices are so distinctive and indelible that, once heard, they occupy rooms all their own in your mind.

Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, “Hound Dog,” live (TV broadcast; Buddy Guy, guitar; Fred Below, drums), Europe, 1965 (originally recorded 1952)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

*****

Happy (180th) Birthday, Emily!

I’d subscribe to her Twitter feed in a heartbeat.

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

***

Escape is such a thankful Word

***

Our lives are Swiss –

***

I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

***

My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

—Emily Dickinson (first lines)

Leave a comment
2010

Wednesday, 12/8/10

Some sounds never grow old.

Lil’ Ed & The Blues Imperials, “Find My Baby,” live

Vodpod videos no longer available.

**********

lagniappe

mail

In response to yesterday’s post, a reader writes:

No, you were right the first time, the movement to bebop was immense progress. . . . To deny progress in art or politics is bad politics, tho there are clearly eddies and flows as we know from being currently enmeshed in a backward eddy.

*****

reading table

They don’t live long
but you’d never know it—
the cicada’s cry.

***

Awake at night—
the sound of the water jar
cracking in the cold.

***

Even in Kyoto—
hearing the cuckoo’s cry—
I long for Kyoto.

—Matsuo Basho (trans. Robert Hass), 1644-1694

Leave a comment
2010

Tuesday, 12/7/10

The history of jazz, I once thought (like a lot of folks), is a story of progress. The shift from swing to bebop, for example, wasn’t simply a change; it was an advance. What bunk.

Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, “Swinging in Harlem,” 1938

Leave a comment
2010

Monday, 12/6/10

Here’s more from the city that does death like no other.

Funeral for Juanita Brooks, New Orleans, 2009

Vodpod videos no longer available.

**********

lagniappe

Here’s a taste of the Syl Johnson show I recently saw.

Syl Johnson, “Same Kind of Thing,” live, Chicago, 11/27/10

Vodpod videos no longer available.
Leave a comment
2010

Friday, 12/3/10

Is any drummer more exciting?

Keith Moon, August 23, 1946-September 7, 1978

Vodpod videos no longer available.

***

The Who, “Young Man Blues,” live, Isle of Wight, 1970  

Vodpod videos no longer available.

**********

lagniappe

The man is a drummer.

—Elvin Jones

*****

[N]othing had prepared me for the ferocious energy of The Who. . . . Pete Townshend’s hard, tense suspended chords seemed to scour the air around them; Roger Daltrey’s singing was a young man’s fighting swagger, an incitement to some kind of crime; John Entwistle’s incessantly mobile bass playing was like someone running away from the scene of the crime; and Keith Moon’s drumming, in its inspired vandalism, was the crime itself.

—James Wood, “The Fun Stuff,” The New Yorker, 11/29/10

*****

this just in

Scientists said Wednesday that the number of stars in the universe had been seriously undercounted, and they estimated that there could be three times as many stars out there as had been thought.

—New York Times, 12/1/10

Leave a comment
2010

Thursday, 12/2/10

Memphis.

1953.

A little studio—Memphis Recording Service—over on Union Avenue.

Little Junior Parker, “Feel So Bad” (1953), “Sittin’ at the Bar” (1954), Sun Records, Memphis

**********

lagniappe

I’d like to dedicate this song to Little Junior Parker, a cousin of mine who’s gone on, but we’d like to kind of carry on in his name . . . .

Al Green, “Take Me To The River,” Hi Records, Memphis, 1974

Al wrote this, with guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, and recorded it first; Hi labelmate Syl Johnson had the hit.

Leave a comment
2010

Wednesday, 12/1/10

recipe

take one electric guitar

add another

& another

& . . .

Glenn Branca Ensemble, Symphony No. 5, live, New York (The Kitchen), 1984

Part 1

***

Part 2

**********

lagniappe

Born . . . in 1949, [Glenn Branca] . . . ignored rock until attracted to the repetitiveness of certain songs by the Kinks and Paul Revere and the Raiders. He claims to have taught himself composition by listening to guitar feedback at point-blank range for forty-five minutes at a time.

—Kyle Gann, American Music in the Twentieth Century (1997)

Leave a comment
2010

Tuesday, 11/30/10

Subtlety and delicacy aren’t usually associated with hard rock. But those are the qualities that (to these ears) stand out when you unpack this recording and hear the tracks separately. Listen to the guitar, the bass. Sledgehammers? More like sushi knives.

Rolling Stones, “Gimme Shelter,” 1969

voice (Mick Jagger & Merry Clayton)

***

guitar/1 (Keith Richards)

***

guitar/2 and piano (Keith Richards & Nicky Hopkins)

***

bass (Bill Wyman)

***

drums (Charlie Watts)

*****

all of it

(Yo, Don: Thanks for the tip!)

Leave a comment
2010

Monday, 11/29/10

. . . the best and most original guitar player of his generation.

—James “The Hound” Marshall

***

Someday Quine will be recognized for the pivotal figure that he is on his instrument—he is the first guitarist to take the breakthroughs of early Lou Reed and James Williamson and work through them to a new, individual vocabulary, driven into odd places by obsessive attention to On the Corner-era Miles Davis.

—Lester Bangs

Lou Reed with Robert Quine (guitar), “Coney Island Baby,” “White Light/White Heat,” live, 1984

Leave a comment