music clip of the day

jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more

Category: saxophone

Monday, 1/10/11

Happy Birthday, Max!

No drummer is more clear, more precise, more melodic.

Max Roach, January 10, 1924-August 16, 2007

“The Third Eye,” live

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“The Drum Also Waltzes” (Drums Unlimited), 1966

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With Sonny Rollins (saxophone), “St. Thomas” (Saxophone Colossus), 1956

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With Clifford Brown (trumpet), “Sweet Clifford” (Brown and Roach Incorporated), 1955

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With Dizzy Gillespie (trumpet), Charlie Parker (saxophone), Bud Powell (piano), Charles Mingus (bass), “Salt Peanuts,” live, 1953

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lagniappe

musical thoughts

In this music, you have to find out who you are, what you feel, what you want to say. That’s one of the reasons that it’s so American. You have to be yourself.

That’s also one way jazz is different from classical music. In classical music, you learn to study and come up with the finest interpretation of a work that you can. That’s a different way of expressing your personality. You have to learn to use what’s written already to express yourself. In jazz, you have to learn to be who you are, and create the music from that.

—Max Roach (in Gene Santoro, Highway 61 Revisited [2004])

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radio

Today it’s all Max all day at WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University).


Saturday, 1/8/11

Don’t try this at home.

Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, live, Detroit, 1971

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More? Here.

Friday, 1/7/11

This would be riveting even with the sound off.

James Brown, “I Got You (I Feel Good),” live (TV broadcast), c. 1965

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Like Lester Young and Charlie Parker and John Coltrane, James Brown floats over the bar lines, defying, as he dances, the gravitational pull of the downbeat.

Want more? Here.

Thursday, 1/6/11

street music

The brass band goes uptown.

Asphalt Orchestra, live, New York

#1 (2009)

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#2 (2010)

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Monday, 1/3/11

Perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived . . .

—Brian Eno

Tony Allen

Live, “New Morning”

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Secret Agent, 2010

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lagniappe

When I sit down there [at the drums], that’s what I’ve been waiting for . . .

—Tony Allen

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reading table

The time to make up your mind about people is never!

—Tracy Lord, The Philadelphia Story

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You get to decide what to worship.

David Foster Wallace

Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind (2009), epigraphs

Saturday, 12/25/10

Merry Christmas!

Bessie Smith (with Joe Smith, cornet; Charlie Green, trombone; Fletcher Henderson, piano), “At the Christmas Ball” (1925)

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Lowell Fulson, “Lonesome Christmas (I & II)” (1950)

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Sonny Boy Williamson, “Sonny Boy’s Christmas Blues” (1951)

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lagniappe

radio: all Bach, all the time

WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is currently in the midst of their annual Bach Festival, which runs through the end of the year.

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reading table

Barn’s burnt down—
now
I can see the moon.

—Mitzuta Masahide (trans. Lucien Stryk and Takashi Ikemoto), 1657-1723

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going forward

I won’t be here every day; but I’ll be here often.

Saturday, 12/18/10

Captain Beefheart (AKA Don Van Vliet), January 5, 1941December 17, 2010

replay: a clip too good for just one day

For some people, going their own way seems to be the only way they could possibly go.

Captain Beefheart (AKA Don Van Vliet)

The Artist Formerly Known As Captain Beefheart (BBC Documentary, 1997)

Part 1

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Part 2

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Part 3

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Part 4

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Part 5

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Part 6

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lagniappe

Don’t you think that somebody like Stravinsky . . . it would annoy him if somebody bent a note the wrong way?

—Captain Beefheart

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About the seventh or eighth time [I listened to Trout Mask Replica], I thought it was the greatest album ever made—and I still do.

—Matt Groening

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art beat

Paintings by Don Van Vliet

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(Originally posted 3/6/10.)

Having posted this, I’m going to return to the break I mentioned the other day—back soon.

Saturday, 12/11/10

The older you get, the more time you don’t have.

—James Moody

James Moody, March 26, 1925-December 9, 2010

“Easy Living” (with Barry Harris, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Alan Dawson, drums), 1969 (I have no idea why, but this track, on my Mac, seems to play much better with Safari than Firefox.)

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With Moody, it’s all meat—there’s nothing superfluous.

Want more? Here.

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lagniappe

radio

WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) pays tribute to Moody through noon (EST) today.

Thursday, 12/9/10

Some music asks nothing more than to be a source of delight.

Wim Mertens Ensemble, “Maximizing the Audience,” live, Spain (Madrid), 1998

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Tuesday, 12/7/10

The history of jazz, I once thought (like a lot of folks), is a story of progress. The shift from swing to bebop, for example, wasn’t simply a change; it was an advance. What bunk.

Erskine Hawkins Orchestra, “Swinging in Harlem,” 1938