Sunday, January 25th
old school
The Consolers (Iola & Sullivan Pugh), live (TV show), early 1960s
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lagniappe
art beat
Bruce Davidson (1933-), New York (Subway), 1980s
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: organ
2015
2015
Thursday, January 8th
voices I miss
Lester Bowie’s From the Root to the Source (MCOTD Hall-of-Famer Lester Bowie [1941-1999], trumpet; Fontella Bass, vocals, piano; Martha Bass, vocals; Malachi Favors, bass, et al.), live, 1983
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lagniappe
reading table
I walked through the mountains today. The weather was damp, and the entire region was grey. But the road was soft and in places very clean. At first I had my coat on; soon, however, I pulled it off, folded it together, and laid it upon my arm. The walk on the wonderful road gave me more and even more pleasure; first it went up and then descended again. The mountainous world appeared to me like an enormous theatre. The road snuggled up splendidly to the mountainsides. Then I came down into a deep ravine, a river roared at my feet, a train rushed past me with magnificent white smoke. The road went through the ravine like a smooth white stream, and as I walked on, to me it was as if the narrow valley were bending and winding around itself. Grey clouds lay on the mountains as though that were their resting place. I met a young traveller with a rucksack on his back, who asked if I had seen two other young fellows. No, I said. Had I come here from very far? Yes, I said, and went farther on my way. Not a long time, and I saw and heard the two young wanderers pass by with music. A village was especially beautiful with humble dwellings set thickly under the white cliffs. I encountered a few carts, otherwise nothing, and I had seen some children on the highway. We don’t need to see anything out of the ordinary. We already see so much.
—Robert Walser (1878-1956), “A Little Ramble” (translated from German by Tom Whalen)
2015
Thursday, January 1st
What better way to start the year than with the music of Sly Stone?
Steven Bernstein’s Millennial Territory Orchestra (Steven Bernstein, trumpet; John Medeski, organ, et al.), live, Paris, 2011
“Stand” (feat. Sandra St. Victor, vocals)
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“Everyday People” (feat. Eric Mingus, vocals)
*****
Still, after four decades, this album remains on my desert-island list.
Sly and the Family Stone, Fresh, 1973
1. In Time (0:00)
2. If You Want Me To Stay (5:48)
3. Let Me Have It All (8:48)
4. Frisky (11:43)
5. Thankful ‘N’ Thoughtful (14:54)
6. Skin I’m In (19:36)
7. I Don’t Know (Satisfaction) (22:29)
8. Keep On Dancin’ (26:23)
9. Que Sera, Sera (Whatever Will Be, Will Be) (28:45)
10. If It Were Left Up To Me (34:07)
11. Babies Makin’ Babies (36:07)
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lagniappe
random thoughts: New Year’s resolution #5
Each day: begin, again.
2014
Tuesday, November 4th
blues festival (day two)
Albert Collins (1932-1993), Stevie Ray Vaughan (1954-1990), Jimmie Vaughan (1951-), “Frosty” (A. Collins), live, Washington, D.C., 1989
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lagniappe
random (birthday) thoughts
Blessed to have lived sixty-two years—thirteen more than my father—in a world so beautiful.
2014
Sunday, October 12th
two takes
“Strange Man” (D. L. Coates)
Steve Dawson (lead vocals, guitar), Diane Christensen (vocals), Robbie Fulks (vocals, guitar), live, Chicago, 2013
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Dorothy Love Coates (1928-2002; MCOTD Hall-of-Famer), recording, 1968
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random thoughts
Do the Canada geese, seeing me ride by on my bicycle, feel like they’re communing with nature?
2014
Tuesday, June 24th
alone
Olivier Messiaen (1908-1992), organ, “Improvisations,” live, Paris
2014
Monday, March 24th
like nobody else
Nina Simone (“Black Is the Color of My True Love’s Hair” [Trad.], “To Love Somebody” [B. Gibb, R. Gibb], “Suzanne” [L. Cohen], “Save Me” [A. Franklin], “Porgy, I Is Your Woman Now”/”Today Is A Killer”/”I Loves You Porgy” [G. Gershwin, D. Heyward]), live, Rome, 1969
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lagniappe
art beat
Helen Levitt (1913-2009), New York, 1940s
2013
Saturday, November 16th
passings
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, saxophonist, March 26, 1936-November 9, 2013
From the New York Times obituary (Nate Chinen, 11/14/13):
Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre, a saxophonist who was a founding member of the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians, a pioneering Chicago avant-garde coalition, died on Saturday in the Bronx. He was 77.
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Present at the association’s first meeting in 1965, Mr. McIntyre later articulated its objectives in an in-house newsletter, The New Regime. The priority, he wrote, was creative autonomy. But he also touched on sociopolitical issues: “We are trying to balance an unbalanced situation that is prevalent in this society.”
Maurice Benford McIntyre was born on March 24, 1936, in Clarksville, Ark., and raised in Chicago. His father was a pharmacist, his mother an English teacher. He studied music at Roosevelt University in Chicago until a drug habit derailed him, leading to a three-year stretch in prison, in Lexington, Ky., where he later said he got most of his musical education.
After returning to Chicago, he met the pianist Muhal Richard Abrams and the saxophonist Roscoe Mitchell, who were developing an aesthetic revolving around strictly original music. Mr. McIntyre became a fixture in Mr. Abrams’s Experimental Band and appeared on Mr. Mitchell’s 1966 album, “Sound,” the first release under the Association for the Advancement of Creative Musicians banner. Mr. McIntyre released his first album, “Humility in the Light of the Creator,” in 1969, the year that he adopted the name Kalaparusha Ahrah Difda, a confluence of terms from African, Indian and astrological sources. (He later modified it to Kalaparusha Maurice McIntyre.) Like many of his fellow association musicians, he began performing in Europe.
He moved to New York in 1974 and spent a productive stretch at the Creative Music Studio in Woodstock. But his career foundered in the ’80s and ’90s, and he took to busking — a practice he continued even after making several comeback albums, notably “Morning Song,” in 2004.
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Talking and playing, New York, 2010
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Live (with Karl Berger, vibes, piano; Tom Schmidt, bass; Jack DeJohnette, drums; Jumma Santos, drums, percussion), “Ismac,” Woodstock, N.Y., 1975
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Recording (with J.B. Hutto, vocals, guitar; Sunnyland Slim, organ, et al.), “Send Her Home to Me,” 1968
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Recording (with Malachi Favors, bass; M’Chaka Uba, bass; Thurman Barker, drums; Ajaramu [A. J. Shelton], drums), “Humility in the Light of the Creator” (Alternate), 1969
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
A human life. A series of notes. Which is more permanent?
2013
Sunday, October 6th
two takes
Bobby McFerrin, “Joshua,” live (studio performances), 2013
WNYC-FM, New York
*****
WFUV-FM, New York
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lagniappe
reading table
Novelist Philip Roth on death, getting older, etc.:
‘You think, That’s the end of it when your parents die. After that, you’re done. Nobody’s supposed to die anymore, right?’
—Claudia Roth Pierpont, “The Book of Laughter: Philip Roth and His Friends,” New Yorker, 10/7/13
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‘Seventy-five; how sudden.’
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‘Time runs out at a terrifying speed. It seems that it was just 1943.’
—Patricia Cohen, “Philip Roth, Provacateur, Is Celebrated at 75,” New York Times, 4/12/08
2013
Friday, April 5th
Jose James, “Do You Feel”
Live, KCRW Berkeley Street Session, Santa Monica, 12/17/12
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
R&B?
Jazz?
Pop?
We need a new vocabulary—or maybe none at all.
music clip of the day 