Sunday, 4/1/12
Willie Neal Johnson & The Gospel Keynotes
“Just For Me,” live
“Well, all right?” Gospel singers often follow a song, immediately, with a question. This opens a performance up, welcoming anyone who wants to come in, believer or not.
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: organ
2012
2012
Tuesday, 2/7/12
Some tracks, the first time you hear them (as I did this a couple weeks ago), you wonder how you ever got along without them.
Joe McPhee (tenor saxophone) with Otis Greene (alto saxophone), Mike Kull (electric piano), Herbie Lehman (organ), Dave Jones (guitar), Tyrone Crabb (bass), Bruce Thompson & Ernest Bostic (percussion), “Shakey Jake” (Nation Time, 1970; reissued 2009)
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Remember when there was a whole season—not just a storm or two—called “winter”?
2012
Sunday, 2/5/12
one of my desert-island singers
Dorothy Love Coates (1928-2002) & the Gospel Harmonettes
“I Won’t Let Go” (AKA “I’m Just Holding On”), live
More?
And here.
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lagniappe
Here’s the original recording (Specialty, 1950s).
*****
Were gospel to be more publicly acclaimed, she [Dorothy Love Coates] might have the stature of a Billie Holiday or a Judy Garland. Instead, for thousands of black people, she is the message carrier.
—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (6th ed. 2002)
***
[I]t was obvious that Keith [Richards] and Gram [Parsons] enjoyed spending time together. . . . [W]e just all cared deeply about the same things. We just loved, for instance, to sit and listen to Dorothy Love Coates, the gospel singer.
(Quotes originally posted 3/28/10.)
2012
Thursday, 1/19/12
Tim Hecker, “The Piano Drop” (Ravedeath, 1972), 2011*
The First MIT Baker House Piano Drop, 11/1972
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Suppose you had to assign a number: what percentage of your daily life do you understand?
*****
*One of the year’s top 10 albums—Ben Ratliff (New York Times).
2012
Sunday, 1/1/12
Dionne goes to church.
Dionne Warwick, “Up Where We Belong,” live, c. 1985
New Hope Baptist Church, Newark, New Jersey
Ann Drinkard Moss (Dionne’s aunt), Choir Director
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lagniappe
art beat
Helen Frankenthaler, December 12, 1928-December 27, 2011
Mountains and Sea (1952)
2011
Friday, 12/9/11
Janis Joplin, “Get It While You Can” (J. Ragovoy)
Live, TV broadcast (The Dick Cavett Show), 1970
If she had lived, what would she sound like, at 68, today?
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lagniappe
reading table
We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven,
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
Forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come, memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.—Donald Justice, “On the Death of Friends in Childhood”
2011
Wednesday, 11/2/11
This guy sounded so good the other day—let’s hear some more.
B.B. King with T-Bone Walker, “Bad News”/“Sweet Sixteen”
Live, Monterey Jazz Festival (Monterey, California), 9/16/1967
2011
Sunday, 10/9/11
passings
Jessy Dixon, singer, songwriter, pianist
March 12, 1938-September 26, 2011
“I’m Too Close,” live 1988
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
“I’ll Tell It” (vocals, organ), with Rev. Milton Brunson & The Chicago Community Choir, live, c. early 1960s
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
“Nothing But the Blood,” with the Combined Choir of the Omega Baptist Church, recording, 1967
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
Though he was already well known in gospel circles, Mr. Dixon reached the mainstream pop-music audience in the 1970s, when he collaborated with Mr. Simon on the albums “Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin’ ” (a follow-up to Mr. Simon’s hit album “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon”) and “Still Crazy After All These Years.” The two musicians had met at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1972, and Mr. Simon was impressed with his vocals.
Mr. Dixon and his group, the Jessy Dixon Singers, toured with Mr. Simon for the next eight years. Mr. Dixon also played keyboard with the funk group Earth, Wind and Fire and collaborated with the guitarist Phil Upchurch.
But these were side projects. It was in the gospel genre that he left an important musical mark, releasing 18 albums between 1964 and 2006 — five of them went gold — and touring worldwide until 2001. After his work with Paul Simon, Mr. Dixon built a large following in Europe.
Born on March 12, 1938, in San Antonio, Texas, Mr. Dixon studied classical piano as a boy and started singing as a teenager at the Refuge Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The son of a porter and a seamstress, he went to a local Catholic college on a scholarship but dropped out to pursue a career as a musician. At 17, he was touring and playing black churches in California, Texas and Louisiana.
It was during a performance at a theater in San Antonio in 1957 that the Rev. James Cleveland, the great Chicago-based gospel musician, discovered Mr. Dixon and asked him to move to Chicago. There he became a pianist and singer with Mr. Cleveland’s group, The Original Chimes.
Mr. Dixon told The Associated Press in 1997 that being a young musician on Chicago’s South Side in the 1960s was like getting an advanced degree in blues and gospel music. “Going to church was like going to school,” he said.
—New York Times, obituary, 9/26/11
2011
Friday, 9/16/11
Never heard of this guy?
You’re not alone.
But for serious mental illness, he would have been a big star.
James Carr, singer, June 13, 1942-January 7, 2001
Live, “You Got My Mind Messed Up”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Live, “Pouring Water on a Drowning Man”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“The Dark End of the Street” (D. Penn & C. Moman), Goldwax, 1967
Vodpod videos no longer available.What may be my favorite moment in this track is one that’s easy to miss; a throwaway, it comes at 1:37—the muted, fleeting “huhh.” The whole welter of emotions Carr brings to this performance—anxious, defiant, rueful, resigned—can be heard in this single syllable.
2011
Sunday, 6/19/11
Gospel, soul, blues—sometimes they seem inseparable.
Willie Banks and The Messengers, live, Mississippi (Jackson), 1990
“Things I Can’t Change”
***
“God Is Still In Charge”
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lagniappe
listening room: what’s playing
• Talib Kweli, Gutter Rainbows (Javotti Media/3d)
• Art Ensemble of Chicago, Full Force (ECM)
• Anthony Braxton Quartet, (GTM) 2006 (Important Records)
• John Coltrane (with Rashied Ali), Interstellar Space (Impulse!)
• The Lester Young/Count Basie Sessions (1936-1940) (Mosaic)
• Various Artists, Ska Bonanza: The Studio One Ska Years (Heartbeat)
• Stefan Wolpe: Compositions for Piano (1920-1952), David Holzman, piano (Bridge)
• Ann Southam: Simple Lines of Enquiry, Eve Egoyan, piano (Centrediscs)
• Morton Feldman, For Bunita Marcus, Stephane Ginsburgh, piano (Sub Rosa); John Tilbury, piano, Morton Feldman, All Piano (London HALL)
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz)
—Out to Lunch (Various, jazz)
—Jazz Profiles (Various, jazz)
—Jazz Alternatives (Various, jazz)
—Afternoon New Music (Various, classical and hard-to-peg)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)
—Rag Aur Taal (Various, Indian)
—Morning Ragas (Various, Indian)
—Amazing Grace (Various, gospel)
—Live Constructions (Various, hard-to-peg)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Give The Drummer Some (Doug Schulkind, sui generis)
—Transpacific Sound Paradise (Rob Weisberg, “popular and unpopular music from around the world”)
—Daniel Blumin (sui generis)
—Airborne Event (Dan Boodah, sui generis)
—The Push Bin with Lou (Lou Z., sui generis)
*****
art beat
One of the great things about having friends is that they invite you to things you’d never get to, or even know about, otherwise—like, for instance, this wonderful exhibit of illustrated architecture books (dating from 1511), something I wouldn’t have gotten to but for my friend Bob Blythe.
music clip of the day 