old white men
Rolling Stones, live, England (Glastonbury Festival), 2013
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lagniappe
art beat: other day, Art Institute of Chicago
Jackson Pollock (1912-1956), Number 17A (1948)
The painting has a life of its own. I try to let it come through.
—Jackson Pollock
Merry Christmas
Blind Lemon Jefferson, “Christmas Eve Blues,” 1928
*****
Victoria Spivey (with Lonnie Johnson, guitar), “Christmas Morning Blues,” 1928
*****
Bessie Smith (with Joe Smith, cornet; Charlie Green, trombone; Fletcher Henderson, piano), “At the Christmas Ball,” 1925
*****
Leroy Carr, “Christmas In Jail—Ain’t That A Pain,” 1929
*****
Johnny Moore’s Three Blazers (feat. Charles Brown, vocals, keyboards), “Merry Christmas, Baby,” 1947
*****
Lowell Fulson, “Lonesome Christmas (I & II),” 1950
*****
Sonny Boy Williamson II, “Sonny Boy’s Christmas Blues,” 1951
*****
John Lee Hooker, “Blues For Christmas,” 1959
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lagniappe
art beat
Helen Levitt (MCOTD Hall of Fame), New York, early 1940s
only rock ‘n’ roll
Hasil Adkins, “She Said” (H. Adkins), live, Westwood, Calif., mid-1990s
***
Another take.
Cramps, live, Boston, 1983
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lagniappe
art beat: other day, Art Institute of Chicago
Willem de Kooning (1904-1997), Interchanged, 1955
more
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, Mstislav Rostropovich (1927-2007), cello
If I had to list a dozen recordings I couldn’t live without, surely a set of Bach’s cello suites would be among them. I first heard them in the early ’70s, when I was in college—and I’ve been living with them ever since.
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lagniappe
radio
Bach Festival, WKCR-FM (see yesterday’s post): Day One.
never enough
Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750), Chaconne from Partita No. 2 in D Minor, Jascha Heifetz (1901-1987), violin
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lagniappe
radio
One of the year’s truly great musical events begins Friday at 1 a.m. (EST)—the annual Bach Festival on WKCR-FM (Columbia University). All Bach, all the time, until midnight New Year’s Eve. If, after the last few months, you just can’t take any more clarity and light, you might want to skip it.
sounds of New York
Pulverize the Sound (Peter Evans, trumpet; Tim Dahl, bass; Mike Pride, drums), live, New York, 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
Jackie Evancho, a 16-year-old singer who became famous after appearing on “America’s Got Talent,” announced last week that she would sing the national anthem at the inauguration.
—“Andrea Bocelli Won’t Be Singing at the Trump Inauguration,” New York Times, 12/20/16
sounds of New York
Charmaine Lee (vocal) & Nate Wooley (trumpet), live, New York, 11/20/16
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lagniappe
reading table
If novelists know anything it’s that individual citizens are internally plural: they have within them the full range of behavioral possibilities. They are like complex musical scores from which certain melodies can be teased out and others ignored or suppressed, depending, at least in part, on who is doing the conducting. At this moment, all over the world—and most recently in America—the conductors standing in front of this human orchestra have only the meanest and most banal melodies in mind. Here in Germany you will remember these martial songs; they are not a very distant memory. But there is no place on earth where they have not been played at one time or another. Those of us who remember, too, a finer music must try now to play it, and encourage others, if we can, to sing along.
—Zadie Smith, “On Optimism and Despair,” (“A talk given in Berlin on November 10 on receiving the 2016 Welt Literature Prize.”), New York Review of Books, 12/22/16 issue
sounds of New York
Eli Keszler & So Percussion, “Archway,” New York, 2013
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lagniappe
reading table
“I shouldn’t have to see the pain, struggle and despair of homeless people to and from my way to work every day.”
—Daniel Duane, “The Tent Cities of San Francisco” (quoting Justin Keller), New York Times, 12/18/16
more
Joe Ligon (September 11, 1942-December 11, 2016) with the Mighty Clouds of Joy, “I Don’t Feel No Ways Tired” (J. Cleveland), live, Charleston, S.C., 1996
sounds of India
Nikhil Banerjee (1931-1986), sitar, Raag Darbari (Alap), Raag Hemant (Gat), live (Dover Lane Music Conference), India (Kolkata), 1986
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lagniappe
random sights
this morning, Oak Park, Ill.
