music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Category: R&B
2011
Monday, 10/17/11
Stick around long enough and images that conjure your own past, going out to clubs on Chicago’s south and west sides, start to turn up as history.
Ricky Allen, “No Better Time Than Now” (One-Way 1974)
Light: On The South Side (Numero 2009)
Yeah, that’s Junior Wells at 1:08.
2011
Saturday, 10/15/11
serendipity
Want to feel no better than you do right now?
If so, don’t bother with this stuff.
Last night, while I was listening to the radio,* these tracks came on back to back to back to back, brightening my mood considerably.
Valorie Keys, “Listen Here” (Double Shot 1966)
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Arthur Alexander, “You Better Move On” (Dot 1961; London [UK] 1962))
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Bessie Banks, “Go Now” (Blue Cat 1964; Soul City re-release 1966)
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Dee Dee Warwick, “You’re No Good” (Jubilee 1963)
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*WFMU-FM (Betsy Nichols, subbing for Mr. Fine Wine)
2011
Saturday, 9/17/11
Mahogani Music Promotional Video, Detroit (2010)
Vodpod videos no longer available.Yeah, the interplay between these two is awfully cliche.
But there’s a lot to like here: the sounds,* the colors, the composition, the sense of place.
I dig the camera-shy dog, too.
*Joe Simon, “Theme from Cleopatra Jones” (1973)
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lagniappe
art beat
Yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after an oral argument in the nearby federal court of appeals, in a drug case involving 20 kilos of cocaine—from the sordid to the sublime):
Vasily (AKA Wassily) Kandinsky
Painting with Green Center, 1913
*****
Improvisation No. 30 (Cannons), 1913
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
Wednesday, 8/31/11
passings
Jerry Lieber, songwriter, April 25, 1933-August 22, 2011
Willie Mae “Big Mama” Thornton, “Hound Dog” (J. Lieber & M. Stoller), live (TV broadcast; Buddy Guy, guitar; Fred Below, drums), Europe, 1965 (originally recorded 1952)
Vodpod videos no longer available.(Originally posted 12/10/10.)
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Nick Ashford, songwriter, singer, May 4, 1941-August 22, 2011
Ashford & Simpson, “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” (N. Ashford & V. Simpson), live
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
David “Honeyboy” Edwards, singer, guitar player, June 28, 1915-
August 29, 2011
Live, WBEZ-FM (Chicago), 2008
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Tuesday, 8/30/11
keep on dancing
DJ Funktual, “Top 10 Samples in Hip-Hop History” (Part I)
Vodpod videos no longer available.2011
Friday, 8/26/11
two takes
“Teach Me Tonight”
Amy Winehouse, TV broadcast (Later with Jools Holland, BBC), 12/31/04
Vodpod videos no longer available.How nervous is she? Just look at those hands (:04-:14).
More? Here.
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Dinah Washington, recording, 1954
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
langiappe
Tony Bennett on Amy Winehouse (weeks before her death)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
2011
Wednesday, 8/10/11
keep on dancing
(an occasional series)
Peven Everett, “Stuck”
take 1: live, London, 2008
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
take 2: original recording (Soul Heaven Records 2006)
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take 3: Phil Asher Remix (2006)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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take 4: Groove Assassin Remix (2007)
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lagniappe
Did you come up in the house music community of Chicago?
My brother was in that community before he passed away. Every night he was going out. That was a way of me basically paying homage to him, and finding the fruit, if you will, in that community that had yet to been picked. There’s so much that has to be said about music, and dance music altogether. People have been dancing since the beginning of time, so I don’t know what this whole “dance music” [label] is about.
—Peven Everett, Chicago Reader, 7/21/11
2011
Friday, 7/29/11
what’s new
(an occasional series)
Kanye West & Jay-Z, “Otis” (feat. Otis Redding)
*****
favorites
(an occasional series)
Buddy Holly, Patsy Cline, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and many more, including this man: if you could somehow revive all the folks who’ve died falling out of the sky, you’d have a hell of a band.
Otis Redding, “Try a Little Tenderness,” live, Norway, 1967
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give the drummer some
Listen to the double-time pattern Al Jackson begins playing at the start of the second verse (0:47): what a subtle, rippling urgency it creates.
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lagniappe
“[Otis would] keep pushing, and each time Al Jackson would go with him. He would enable the rest of the musicians to reach whatever Otis was trying for. Otis would record stripped to the waist. He put bath towels under his arms. He wanted those horn players live on the floor; he’d sing their parts to them and put that whole session together. Otis got a live feel that nobody else on that label [Stax] ever got.”—Jim Dickinson (in Peter Guralnick, Sweet Soul Music [1986]; for more on Dickinson, see the 9/9/09 post)
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Bassist Duck Dunn (also in Guralnick’s book):
— “Otis would come in [the studio], and, boy, he’d just bring everybody up. ‘Cause you knew something was gonna be different. When Otis was there, it was just a revitalization of the whole thing. You wanted to play with Otis. He brought out the best in you. If there was a best, he brought it out. That was his secret.”
— “When you talked to him [Otis Redding], he was like you was. Then you see him on stage. Hey, there ain’t too many people wear the crown. Elvis wore it, and I guess Frank Sinatra wore it. And here he comes, and, boy, he wore it. He wore that halo. He knew it. He was a goddam star.”
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At Redding’s 1996 Whiskey A Go Go shows in Los Angeles, Bob Dylan “presented Redding with a prerelease copy of ‘Just Like A Woman,’ claiming his vocal approach had been Otis-inspired. ‘Otis’ appraisal of it,’ says [Phil] Walden, ‘was that it had too damn many words in it.'”—Carol Cooper
(Originally posted 9/25/09)
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