take 2: original recording (Soul Heaven Records 2006)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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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)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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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.
BuddyHolly, 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
George Porter (bass), Ivan Neville (vocals, keyboards), June Yamagishi (guitar), Johnny Vidacovich (drums), with guest Corey Glover (vocals)
“Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone,” live, New Orleans (Maple Leaf Bar), 5/4/11
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Johnny Vidacovich, New Orleans drummer & teacher (Brian Blade, Stanton Moore, et al.), playing and talking (street rhythms, clave, New Orleans drummers, drum tree, etc.)
Today and tomorrow, from 3 p.m. to midnight (EST), WFMU-FM will be broadcasting live sets from Barcelona’s Primavera Sound Festival—Pere Ubu, Swans, Animal Collective, et al.
Who else (besides, of course, Bob Dylan) has played so many different roles so brilliantly?
Miles Davis (with Robben Ford & guest Carlos Santana, guitars), “Burn”
Live, Giants Stadium, East Rutherford, New Jersey, 6/15/86
Listen to stuff long enough and it changes—or you do, anyway. Once I might have faulted this for being repetitive. But that’s a bit like faulting roast beef for being meat. Of course it’s repetitive. That’s part of what makes it soar.
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Morning Classical (Various)
—Amazing Grace (Various)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads(Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Give The Drummer Some (Doug Schulkind, sui generis)
—Fool’s Paradise (Rex, sui generis)
—Transpacific Sound Paradise (Rob Weisberg, “popular and unpopular music from around the world”)
music clip of the day 