Dear MCOTD,
What would go well with a bottle of sleeping pills?
Chet Baker, “Almost Blue” (Let’s Get Lost [1988])
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Here’s a big birthday shout-out to my 19-year-old son Luke, who’s opened my ears to more things than I could ever count.
Is the greatest electric guitar player of all time a guy who died in 1942?
Charlie Christian, July 29, 1916-March 2, 1942
“Waiting for Benny” (1941 [recorded at a Benny Goodman session, while the engineers were testing the equipment])
*****
Live, New York (Minton’s), 1941
“Swing To Bop”
***
“Stompin’ at the Savoy”
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TV news piece, Oklahoma City, 2007 (following CC’s induction into the Jazz Hall of Fame)
YouTube giveth, and YouTube taketh away.
I’ve posted other clips that were subsequently removed by YouTube. But this is the first time where I’ve posted something that was removed the very same day.
Oh, well—more tomorrow.
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When the tempo is perfect, the music unfolds in what seems to be the only way it could. “Fast” and “slow” lose their meaning. Time disappears.
Frederic Chopin, 24 Preludes for Solo Piano, Op. 28/Friedrich Gulda, piano
Nos. 15, 10, 9, 3, 4
*****
Nos. 7, 13, 21, 24
Want more? Here.
New Orleans Jazz & Heritage Festival, 2010/part 1
Scene 1: Sousaphone Parade
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Scene 2: Brian Blade & The Fellowship
Want more Brian Blade? Here.
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Scene 3: Mardi Gras Indians (Members of the Golden Star Hunters, Carrolton Hunters, et al.), Backstage
Want more Mardi Gras Indians? Here.
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Happy (111th) Birthday, Duke!
At least one day out of the year all musicans should just put their instruments down, and give thanks to Duke Ellington.
—Miles Davis
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
“C Jam Blues,” 1942
*****
“Mood Indigo,” “Sophisticated Lady,” “It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing),” “Don’t Get Around Much Anymore,” 1943
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It is becoming increasingly difficult to decide where jazz starts or where it stops, where Tin Pan Alley begins and jazz ends, or even where the borderline lies between between classical music and jazz. I feel there is no boundary line.
—Duke Ellington
*****
Radio Ellington: All Duke, All Day
WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
Happy Birthday, Mingus!
No jazz composer since Thelonious Monk has a stronger voice.
Lyrical beauty, inexhaustible drive, deep feeling: what more could you ask for?
Enormously influential, his music served as a bridge between the compositional elegance of Duke Ellington and the freewheeling rambunctiousness of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, David Murray, et al.
Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964
“So Long, Eric”
*****
“Peggy’s Blue Skylight”
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“Meditations on Integration” (excerpt)
Want more? Here.
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. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)
*****
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
***
I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
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In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
—Charles Mingus
*****
Radio Mingus: all Mingus, all the time
In celebration of Mingus’s birthday, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is playing his music all day.
Bob Dylan/1965, part 3
“Like A Rolling Stone,” live (with Mike Bloomfield, guitar; Jerome Arnold, bass; Barry Goldberg, piano; Al Kooper, organ; Sam Lay, drums), Newport Folk Festival, July, 1965
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Press Conference, San Francisco, December, 1965
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Bob Dylan/1965, part 2
“Maggie’s Farm,” live (with Mike Bloomfield, guitar; Jerome Arnold, bass; Barry Goldberg, piano; Al Kooper, organ; Sam Lay, drums), Newport Folk Festival, July, 1965
*****
Interview with Time magazine, 1965
When it comes to saying a lot with a little, Chopin’s 24 Preludes for solo piano—most of which last no more than a minute or two—have few equals. This one was played at his funeral.
Frederic Chopin, Prelude No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 28
Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997)
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Alfred Cortot (1877-1962)
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Martha Argerich (1941-)
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Today isn’t just any old day; it’s Record Store Day 2010.
Chris Brown, Bull Moose (New England record stores)
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reading table
an old man’s ways—
my backside warmed
by the wood fire
—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828; Trans. David G. Lanoue)
What a joy it is (and how rare) to hear someone who makes every note count.
Abdullah Ibrahim Trio, live, Germany (Leverkusen), 2007
Part 1
*****
Part 2
music clip of the day 
