recipe
1 river
1 bridge
1 brass band
Mix lightly.
Raya Brass Band, live, Poughkeepsie, New York
Walkway Over The Hudson Grand Opening, 10/3/09
#1
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#2
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#3
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#4
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#5
old stuff
Best two minutes of the whole day?
Jimmie Lunceford and his Orchestra (with Jimmy Crawford, drums)
“White Heat,” 1939
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
It’s difficult to name one favorite drummer, because . . . I’ve got a lot of favorites. But Jimmy Crawford—they called him “Craw”—with the Jimmie Lunceford band? He was a motherfucker.
*****
reading table
How should I not be glad to contemplate
The clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
And a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
But there is no need to go into that.
The lines flow from the hand unbidden
And the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
And the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
Watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.—Derek Mahon, “Everything Is Going to Be All Right”
Labels are often worse than useless. This guy, for instance, is often tagged as “cerebral.” But here’s something you can’t—I can’t, anyway—listen to without smiling.
Anthony Braxton, Composition No. 58
Taylor Ho Bynum Chicago Big Band,* live, 2009, Chicago
*****
Here’s another take—Braxton’s original recording (The Complete Arista Recordings of Anthony Braxton [Mosaic], rec. 1976).
More? Here.
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lagniappe
reading table
To obtain the value
of a sound, a movement,
measure from zero.***
A sound has no legs to stand on.
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The world is teeming: anything can
happen.—John Cage, “2 Pages, 122 Words on Music and Dance” (excerpts)
*Taylor Ho Bynum & Josh Berman (cor), Jaimie Branch (tpt), Jeb Bishop & Nick Broste (tb), Nicole Mitchell (fl), Caroline Davis, Keefe Jackson & Dave Rempis (saxes), Jeff Parker (g), Jason Adasiewicz (vib), Nate McBride (b), Tim Daisy & Tomas Fujiwara (d)
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
It’s easy to forget, sometimes, just how great somebody could be.
B.B. King, “How Blue Can You Get?”
Live, Sing Sing Prison (Ossining, New York), 1972
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lagniappe
last night
W. S. Merwin, who just finished a term as U.S. Poet Laureate, gave a reading at Chicago’s downtown library, where he talked about this and that:
The English language is a great dump. Everything that has come into it has stayed there.
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Poetry begins . . . with listening.
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I wanted to be open . . . to anything that sounded like poetry.
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To animals the meaning is the sound—and that’s pretty close to poetry.
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Time is one of the great human fictions.
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Many of the most important things we do are not calculated. They take us by surprise.
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What the arts are made of is nothing but pure attention.
*****
radio
Happy (100th) Birthday, Papa Jo! WCKR-FM’s Centennial Festival, mentioned Monday, continues until noon tomorrow.
Charisma needs no translation.
Mahmoud Ahmed & Badume’s Band, live, France (Festival de Sete), 2008
“Belomi Benna”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“Atawurulegn Lela”
Vodpod videos no longer available.three takes
Blues guitarists—great ones, anyway—aren’t instrumentalists; they’re singers with two voices.
“Born Under A Bad Sign” (W. Bell, B.T. Jones)
Albert King, live, Sweden, 1980
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Albert King, recording, 1967 (Stax)
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Jimi Hendrix, recorded in 1969 (Blues, 1994)
Vodpod videos no longer available.What makes this last take effective? Part of it is the phrasing: Jimi, like Albert, doesn’t play anything that couldn’t be sung.
More Albert? Here.
Don Byron New Gospel Quintet (DB, tenor saxophone & clarinet; DK Dyson, vocals; Xavier Davis, piano; Brad Jones, bass; Pheeroan akLaff, drums), “Precious Lord” (T. A. Dorsey), live, Brazil (São Paulo), 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.Last night I heard these folks live at the University of Chicago. Whenever I go out and hear someone, I’m reminded, again, that even (especially?) today, when records and the ’net make more music more available than ever before, there’s no substitute for live music. No recording offers the textures and nuances of a great live performance. (Never, for instance, have I heard a recording that truly reproduces the sounds of a drum kit, much less the interplay between horn and drums.) Not only is there more to hear live, your focus is sharper: you know you won’t have another opportunity to experience these sounds. And when you go to a club or a concert hall, you become, for that night, a member of an ad hoc musical community—something you can’t do sitting in your living room.
Happy (85th) Birthday, Trane!
John Coltrane, September 23, 1926-July 17, 1967
John Coltrane Quartet (JC, tenor saxophone; McCoy Tyner, piano; Jimmy Garrison, bass; Elvin Jones, drums), “I Want To Talk About You,” live, Sweden (Stockholm), 1962
Vodpod videos no longer available.More? Here. And here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
radio
All Trane, all day: WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).
music clip of the day 