Thursday, 1/6/11
street music
The brass band goes uptown.
Asphalt Orchestra, live, New York
#1 (2009)
***
#2 (2010)
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street music
The brass band goes uptown.
Asphalt Orchestra, live, New York
#1 (2009)
***
#2 (2010)
Perhaps the greatest drummer who has ever lived . . .
—Brian Eno
Tony Allen
Live, “New Morning”
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Secret Agent, 2010
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
When I sit down there [at the drums], that’s what I’ve been waiting for . . .
—Tony Allen
*****
reading table
The time to make up your mind about people is never!
—Tracy Lord, The Philadelphia Story
***
You get to decide what to worship.
Zadie Smith, Changing My Mind (2009), epigraphs
Some music asks nothing more than to be a source of delight.
Wim Mertens Ensemble, “Maximizing the Audience,” live, Spain (Madrid), 1998
Vodpod videos no longer available.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
Here’s more from the city that does death like no other.
Funeral for Juanita Brooks, New Orleans, 2009
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
Here’s a taste of the Syl Johnson show I recently saw.
Syl Johnson, “Same Kind of Thing,” live, Chicago, 11/27/10
Vodpod videos no longer available.Memphis.
1953.
A little studio—Memphis Recording Service—over on Union Avenue.
Little Junior Parker, “Feel So Bad” (1953), “Sittin’ at the Bar” (1954), Sun Records, Memphis
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lagniappe
I’d like to dedicate this song to Little Junior Parker, a cousin of mine who’s gone on, but we’d like to kind of carry on in his name . . . .
Al Green, “Take Me To The River,” Hi Records, Memphis, 1974
Al wrote this, with guitarist Mabon “Teenie” Hodges, and recorded it first; Hi labelmate Syl Johnson had the hit.
Deep, wide, strong: the groove, with this guy at the drums, is like a river.
The Levon Helm Band with guest Jim Keltner (drums), “Deep Ellum Blues,” live, Los Angeles (Greek Theater), 8/15/10
How many pop stars have given thanks so memorably?
Sly & The Family Stone
“Thank You (Falettinme Be Mice Elf Agin),” live (TV broadcast), 1973
***
“Thankful N’ Thoughtful,” 1973
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
Michael Jackson and
George Clinton and
Miles Davis
Big influence on all three?
Short list.
James Brown
Sly Stone
Walk into a blues bar on Chicago’s south or west side in the mid-1970s:
this would jump out of the jukebox.
Syl Johnson, “Take Me To The River,” live, 1975, Memphis
replay: clips too good for just one day
No jazz composer since Thelonious Monk has a stronger voice.
Lyrical beauty, inexhaustible drive, deep feeling: what more could you ask for?
Enormously influential, his music served as a bridge between the compositional elegance of Duke Ellington and the freewheeling rambunctiousness of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, David Murray, et al.
Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964
“So Long, Eric”
*****
“Peggy’s Blue Skylight”
*****
“Meditations on Integration” (excerpt)
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lagniappe
. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)
*****
Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
***
I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
***
In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
—Charles Mingus
(Originally posted on 4/22/10.)
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Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis: so many of the greatest figures in jazz weren’t just great musicians, or composers, or arrangers. They were great bandleaders. As important to their artistic success as anything else was their ability to find, and showcase, players who could make the music come alive—people like Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Jimmy Blanton and Lester Young and Freddie Green and Jo Jones and John Coltrane and Bill Evans and Tony Williams.
That small circle of elite bandleaders includes this man. He hired musicians who played their instruments like no one else (Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, et al.). He gave them a musical setting in which structure and freedom were exquisitely balanced. And together they made music that sounds (even on something familiar) like nothing else.
Charles Mingus Sextet (with Johnny Coles, trumpet; Jaki Byard, piano; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums), “Take the A Train,” live, Norway (Oslo), 1964
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lagniappe
I nominate Charles Mingus one of America’s greatest composers—Ran Blake (in the liner notes to his recent album Driftwoods)
(Originally posted on 12/1/09.)
music clip of the day 