music clip of the day

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Category: reading table

2010

Saturday, 12/25/10

Merry Christmas!

Bessie Smith (with Joe Smith, cornet; Charlie Green, trombone; Fletcher Henderson, piano), “At the Christmas Ball” (1925)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Lowell Fulson, “Lonesome Christmas (I & II)” (1950)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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Sonny Boy Williamson, “Sonny Boy’s Christmas Blues” (1951)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

radio: all Bach, all the time

WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is currently in the midst of their annual Bach Festival, which runs through the end of the year.

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reading table

Barn’s burnt down—
now
I can see the moon.

—Mitzuta Masahide (trans. Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto), 1657-1723

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going forward

I won’t be here every day; but I’ll be here often.

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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.

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Happy (180th) Birthday, Emily!

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

I’m Nobody! Who are you?

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Escape is such a thankful Word

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Our lives are Swiss –

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I felt a Funeral, in my Brain,

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My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun –

—Emily Dickinson (first lines)

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2010

Wednesday, 12/8/10

Some sounds never grow old.

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

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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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.

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reading table

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

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

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

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

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2010

Saturday, 11/27/10

This guy and the guy we heard Monday (Syl Johnson) are brothers.

Speaking of Syl, he’s getting a lot of attention right now: the cover story in this week’s Chicago Reader; a big new boxed set on the Numero label; and a concert tonight, in Chicago, with a top-flight band and guest Otis Clay (yeah, I’ll be there).

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replay: a clip too good for just one day

This take?

Or that?

Move the voice forward?

Back?

Make the guitar brighter?

Darker?

Enough bass?

Too much?

Enough room sound?

Mixing a record, as I learned when I worked at Alligator Records (back in the 1970s), involves a seemingly countless number of decisions. After a few hours, everyone starts to get a little punch-drunk. By the end of the night, for instance, this track had morphed—in the warped warble of engineer Freddie Breitberg (AKA, in his personal mythology, Eddie B. Flick)—into “Serve Me Rice For Supper.”

Jimmy Johnson, “Serves Me Right To Suffer” (Living Chicago Blues, Vol. 1, Alligator Records, 1977 [Grammy Nominee])

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reading table

The ’net’s filled with enough dreck for a thousand lifetimes; but then, as happened the other day (after hearing about it on the radio), you come across something that’s simply stunning—like the new, complete collection of the letters of Vincent van Gogh.

. . . Van Gogh’s letters are the best written by any artist . . . Their mixture of humble detail and heroic aspiration is quite simply life-affirming.—Andrew Motion, The Guardian (11/21/09)

(Originally posted a year ago [11/27/09].)

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2010

Sunday, 11/21/10

ain’t no grave can hold . . .

Johnny Cash, “Ain’t No Grave,” 2003 (recorded), 2010 (released)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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lagniappe

The Johnny Cash Project is a global collective art project, and we would love for you to participate. Through this website, we invite you to share your vision of Johnny Cash, as he lives on in your mind’s eye. Working with a single image as a template, and using a custom drawing tool, you’ll create a unique and personal portrait of Johnny. Your work will then be combined with art from participants around the world, and integrated into a collective whole: a music video for “Ain’t No Grave,” rising from a sea of one-of-a-kind portraits.

Strung together and played in sequence over the song, the portraits will create a moving, ever evolving homage to this beloved musical icon.  What’s more, as new people discover and contribute to the project, this living portrait will continue to transform and grow, so it’s virtually never the same video twice.

Ain’t No Grave is Johnny’s final studio recording. The album and its title track deal heavily with themes of mortality, resurrection, and everlasting life. The Johnny Cash Project pays tribute to these themes. Through the love and contributions of the people around the world that Johnny has touched so deeply, he appears once again before us.

The Johnny Cash Project is a visual testament to how the Man in Black lives on—not just through his vast musical legacy, but in the hearts and minds of all of us around the world he has touched with his talent, his passion, and his indomitable spirit. It is this spirit that is the lifeblood of The Johnny Cash Project. Thank you for helping Johnny’s spirit soar once more. God bless.

—Chris Milk

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reading table

Without trouble, there is no life.

—New Orleans restaurateur Provino Mosca, quoted in Calvin Trillin, U.S. Journal, “No Daily Specials,” New Yorker, 11/22/10

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radio

Happy Birthday, Hawk!

Today, Coleman Hawkins’ (106th) birthday, the folks at WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) are celebrating in their usual way—playing his music all day (and then some [’til 9:30 a.m. tomorrow]).

When I heard Hawk I learned to play ballads.

—Miles Davis

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2010

Friday, 11/19/10

If you have any doubts about the transformative powers of music, watch this. I’ve spent more hours than I could count in prisons, state and federal, in Illinois and Ohio and Wisconsin, meeting with clients. Never have I seen folks so relaxed.

Johnny Cash, live, San Quentin, 1969

“I Walk the Line”

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“Folsom Prison Blues”

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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“Orange Blossom Special”

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“Jackson” (with June Carter Cash)

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reading table

There is nothing in our material world more beautiful than the book.

—Patti Smith (after winning this year’s National Book Award for nonfiction for her memoir Just Kids)

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2010

Monday, 11/15/10

Madonna would’ve been a big star back then, too.

“Snake Hips (Do The Wiggle Waggle Woo),” Happy Days (1929), with Sharon Lynn (singer), Ann Pennington (dancer)

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reading table

As I sd to my
friend, because I am
always talking, — John, I

sd, which was not his
name, the darkness sur-
rounds us, what

can we do against
it, or else, shall we &
why not, buy a goddamn big car,

drive, he sd, for
christ’s sake, look
out where yr going.

—Robert Creeley (I Know a Man)

Want to hear Creeley read this? Here (MP3).

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2010

Wednesday, 11/10/10

two takes

Some lyrics sound as though they want to be read; others would look silly on the page but, unlike the page-worthy, they sing.

“If I Had A Boat” (Lyle Lovett)

Lyle Lovett, live (TV broadcast), 2004


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The Holmes Brothers, State Of Grace (Alligator),  2007

lagniappe

Gregory Isaacs/p.s.

Yesterday’s link to WKCR-FM’s Memorial Broadcast didn’t work right (only a fraction of the show could be accessed), but it does now.

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reading table

To fall into despair is just a high-class way of turning into a dope. I choose to laugh, and laugh at myself no less than at others.

—Saul Bellow, Letters (2010) (as quoted in yesterday’s New York Times review)


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2010

Tuesday, 11/9/10

Gregory Isaacs, July 15, 1951-October 25, 2010

[Gregory Isaacs’ friend and former manager Don Hewitt] said of Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones that when he was introduced to Mr. Isaacs, “he carried on like he’d met Jesus.”

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In a 2001 interview, Mr. Isaacs reflected on his legacy. “Look at me as a man who performed works musically,” he said. “Who uplift people who need upliftment, mentally, physically, economically—all forms. Who told the people to live with love ’cause only love can conquer war, and to understand themselves so that they can understand others.”

—Rob Kenner, New York Times (obituary, 10/25/10)

Live, London (Brixton Academy), 1984

“Number One”

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“Night Nurse”

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“Border”

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“Sad Mood Tonight” (1994)

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“Kingston 14” (Made in Jamaica, 2006)

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Want more? Here: “Gregory Isaacs Memorial Broadcast,” Eastern Standard Time, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University), 11/6/10.

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lagniappe

reading table

No battle that can be won is worth fighting.

—T Bone Burnett (blog comment, 10/9/10)

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2010

Monday, 11/8/10

What makes this guy such a great guitarist?

He doesn’t show off.

“Lead”? “Rhythm”? To him it’s all one.

He doesn’t play over the drummer—he plays with him.

Keith Richards (with Willie Nelson, Ryan Adams, Hank Williams III), “Dead Flowers,” live (TV broadcast), 2002

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I’m not here just to make records and money. I’m here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: ‘Do you know this feeling?’

—Keith Richards, Life (2010)

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reading table

As the fiftieth birthday approaches, you get the sense that your life is thinning out, and will continue to thin out, until it thins out into nothing . . . . Then fifty comes and goes, and fifty-one, and fifty-two. And life thickens out again. Because there is now an enormous and unsuspected presence within your being like an undiscovered continent. This is the past.

—Martin Amis, The Pregnant Widow (2010)

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