radio gems | music clip of the day

Category: radio gems

Wednesday, 1/26/11

Sometimes you don’t know you have a thirst until you hear a musician
who quenches it.

Nikhil Banerjee (sitar), October 14, 1931-January 27, 1986

Raag Maluha Kaylan (excerpts), live (with Anindo Chatterjee, tabla)

Part 1

Vodpod videos no longer available.

***

Part 2

Vodpod videos no longer available.

***

Part 3

Vodpod videos no longer available.

***

Part 4

Vodpod videos no longer available.

Want more? Here.

**********

lagniappe

radio gems: Indian music

Raag Aur Tal
WKCR-FM
New York (Columbia University)
Sunday, 7:00-9:00 p.m. (EST)

Recordings, interviews, live studio performances—this program has it all.
A companion show, Morning Ragas, airs on Sunday morning
(6:00-8:00 a.m. [EST]).

Leave a comment

Tuesday, 10/5/10

beauty from behind bars

Tadd Dameron wrote and arranged this while serving time for a federal drug crime.

Blue Mitchell Orchestra (Blue Mitchell, trumpet, with [among others] Clark Terry, trumpet; Tommy Flanagan, piano; Willie Ruff, French horn; Philly Joe Jones, drums), “Smooth as the Wind” (1961)

***

Federal Bureau of Prisons
Federal Medical Center (as it’s now called)
Lexington, Kentucky

***

Tadd Dameron

**********

lagniappe

Sarah Vaughan, live, “If You Could See Me Now” (Tadd Dameron)

*****

radio gems: jazz

Bird Flight
WKCR-FM
New York (Columbia University)
Monday-Friday, 8:20-9:30 a.m. (EST)

I know of nothing, in radio or anywhere else, like Phil Schaap’s daily meditations on the music of Charlie Parker, which he’s been offering now, five days a week, for over twenty-five years. At its best, his show enthralls. At its worst, well, sometimes you wish Phil would play a little more music and talk a little less. But even when he goes on longer than perhaps he should, your tendency, as with a charmingly eccentric uncle, is to excuse his excesses.

Leave a comment

2010

Sunday, 10/3/10

three takes

You don’t need no baggage, you just get on board.

“People Get Ready”

Curtis Mayfield, live, England (London), 1988

*****

The Impressions (featuring Curtis Mayfield), 1965

More Curtis Mayfield? Here. Here. Here.

*****

Al Green, live, Washington, D.C., 1983 (Gospel According to Al Green, 1984)

More Al Green? Here. Here. Here.

**********

lagniappe

radio gems: gospel

Gospel Memories
WLUW-FM
Chicago, Illinois
Saturday, 10-11 a.m. (CST) (archived shows)

Leave a comment

2010

Sunday, 9/26/10

two takes

I’m too close to heaven, I just can’t turn around . . .

“Too Close To Heaven”

Brooklyn All-Stars (featuring Hardie Clifton), live, 1989

***

Bessie Griffin, live

**********

lagniappe

radio gems: gospel

Sinner’s Crossroads
WFMU-FM
Jersey City, New Jersey; Mt. Hope, New York
Thursday, 8-9 p.m. (EST) (archived shows)
One of my all-time favorite radio shows.

*****

reading table

Shelby had been fooled about Florida, but that was okay. She wasn’t the first. She’d imagined a place that was warm and inviting and she’d gotten a place that was without seasons and sickeningly hot. She’d wanted palm trees and she’d gotten grizzly, low oaks. She’d wanted surfers instead of rednecks. She’d thought Florida would make her feel glamorous or something, and there was a region of Florida that might’ve done just that, but it wasn’t this part. It was okay, though. It was something different. It wasn’t the Midwest. It wasn’t a place where you could look around and plainly see, for miles, that nothing worthwhile was going on.

***

“Everybody calls this the real Florida . . . . I don’t understand an expression like that. Is part of the state imaginary?”

—John Brandon, Citrus County (2010)