Sometimes you can’t help but shout (3:05-).
Rev. James Cleveland and the Southern California Community Choir (with guest Albertina Walker), live, Chicago, 1972*
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Life isn’t short. It isn’t long, either. It’s nothing more, or less, than a series of moments, each beyond measure.
*****
*That same year Rev. Cleveland and his choir backed Aretha Franklin on Amazing Grace.
Happy 100th Birthday, Teddy!
Teddy Wilson, pianist, November 24, 1912-July 31, 1986
“Rosetta,” 1934
***
“Body and Soul,” with the Benny Goodman Trio (BG, clarinet; TW, piano; Gene Krupa, drums), 1935
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“Foolin’ Myself,” Teddy Wilson Orchestra (TW, piano; Billie Holiday, vocals; Lester Young, tenor saxophone; Freddie Green, guitar; Jo Jones, drums, et al.), 1937
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR-FM’s celebration of his centennial, which I mentioned the other day, runs through midnight Sunday.
*****
musical thoughts
John Cage (whose centennial we recently celebrated), Conlon Nancarrow (ditto), Teddy Wilson—they’d make a helluva band.
Chicago: 1974
“Muddy Waters Blues Summit in Chicago,”* Soundstage, 1974
*Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Pinetop Perkins, Koko Taylor, Mike Bloomfield, Johnny Winter, Dr. John, et al.
otherworldly
Maurice Ravel, Jeux d’eau (1901)
Martha Argerich, live (1977)
*****
Alfred Cortot, recording (1920)
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lagniappe
radio
After finishing, at midnight, their 24-hour Coleman Hawkins birthday celebration, the indefatigable folks at WKCR-FM didn’t rest for even a minute. Instead they embarked on a 4-day, 96-hour celebration of pianist Teddy Wilson’s centennial.
*****
Happy Thanksgiving!
MCOTD gives thanks for
Lester Bowie and
Blossom Dearie and
The Dirtbombs;
for Mingus, Miles, Monk,
Bach, Beethoven, Bruckner, Bartok;
for WKCR-FM and WFMU-FM;
for Morton Feldman and
Elliott Carter and
Alfred Schnittke and
Tristan Murail;
for Hound Dog Taylor, Junior Wells, Sonny Boy Williamson, Magic Sam;
for The Ex, The Heptones, The Swan Silvertones, The Impressions, The Art Ensemble of Chicago;
for Von Freeman and Art Pepper and Vernard Johnson;
for Friedrich Gulda and Martha Argerich, Pierre-Laurent Aimard and Ursula Oppens;
for Ed Blackwell and
for Phillip Wilson;
for Julius Hemphill and
Henry Threadgill and
D’Angelo and
Dorothy Love Coates;
and for all the others—singers, musicians, composers, painters, photographers, printmakers, novelists, poets—who have graced this site;
and for you, who have found your way here, somehow, from Mongolia and Slovenia and Jamaica and Saudi Arabia; from Myanmar and Syria; from Angola, India, Ethiopia; from Finland, Thailand, Ireland, Iceland, and over 100 other countries.
Happy (108th) Birthday, Hawk!
Coleman Hawkins, tenor saxophonist, November 21, 1904-May 16, 1969
“Prisoner of Love,” 1958 (Art Ford’s Jazz Party, music starts at 1:15)
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“Lover Man,” 1961
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“Body and Soul,” London, 1967
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lagniappe
radio
WKCR-FM, broadcasting from Columbia University, is playing his music—and nothing but—until midnight. (Thank God for college radio.)
*****
reading table
We’re all in this apart.
—David Ferry, “Found Single-Line Poems,” excerpt (Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations [2012])
*****
something to get you in the holiday mood
William Burroughs, “Thanksgiving Prayer” (Gus Van Sant, dir.)
what you’d be listening to if you were 21*
Kendrick Lamar, “Bitch, Don’t Kill My Vibe”
Lady Gaga mix, released 11/8/12
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Album version (good kid, m.A.A.d city), released 10/22/12
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lagniappe
reading table
David Ferry, “The Birds,” Boston University, 2011
This poem appears in Ferry’s latest collection, Bewilderment: New Poems and Translations, which just won the National Book Award. Ferry, now in his late 80s, has said of the book’s title: “It’s not entirely personal. I think everybody’s slightly off the rails. Me too, but I don’t mean it’s my exclusive territory. Yours and mine.”
*****
*Based on a sample of one, my son Luke, who’s home for the holiday.
Albert Collins (1932-1993), “Lights Are On But Nobody’s Home,” live, Austin, Tx., 1988
How strange to think that Albert, a sweet, warm, gentle guy I had the good fortune to work with in the ’70s while at Alligator Records, has been gone nearly 20 years.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
There’s one cat I’m still trying to get across to people. He is really good, one of the best guitarists in the world.
Where classical music, as we heard the other day (remembering Elliott Carter), has the concerto, gospel has the soloist and choir.
Jennifer Hudson & Chapter 2 Gospel Singers, “Changed” (W. Hawkins)
Live, New York (Harlem), 2005
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lagniappe
reading table
Deep autumn—
my neighbor,
how does he live, I wonder?—Matsuo Basho, 1644-1694 (translated from Japanese by Robert Hass)
My heaven, I said the other day, is full of string quartets—dancers, too.
New York City Ballet, 2012
only rock ’n’ roll
Metz, “Wasted”
Recording (Metz, Sub Pop), 10/12
***
Live, Canada (Sackville), 8/3/12
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Rock ’n’ roll.
R&B.
Jazz.
Whatever their differences, they’ve got something in common.
Nobody’s more important than the drummer.
If the drums aren’t happening, nothing is.
*****
reading table: passings
“The Forgotten Dialect of the Heart”
How astonishing it is that language can almost mean,
and frightening that it does not quite. Love, we say,
God, we say, Rome and Michiko, we write, and the words
get it all wrong. We say bread and it means according
to which nation. French has no word for home,
and we have no word for strict pleasure. A people
in northern India is dying out because their ancient
tongue has no words for endearment. I dream of lost
vocabularies that might express some of what
we no longer can. Maybe the Etruscan texts would
finally explain why the couples on their tombs
are smiling. And maybe not. When the thousands
of mysterious Sumerian tablets were translated,
they seemed to be business records. But what if they
are poems or psalms? My joy is the same as twelve
Ethiopian goats standing silent in the morning light.
O Lord, thou art slabs of salt and ingots of copper,
as grand as ripe barley lithe under the wind’s labor.
Her breasts are six white oxen loaded with bolts
of long-fibered Egyptian cotton. My love is a hundred
pitchers of honey. Shiploads of thuya are what
my body wants to say to your body. Giraffes are this
desire in the dark. Perhaps the spiral Minoan script
is not language but a map. What we feel most has
no name but amber, archers, cinnamon, horses, and birds.*****
“By Small and Small: Midnight to Four A.M.”
For eleven years I have regretted it,
regretted that I did not do what
I wanted to do as I sat there those
four hours watching her die. I wanted
to crawl in among the machinery
and hold her in my arms, knowing
the elementary, leftover bit of her
mind would dimly recognize it was me
carrying her to where she was going.—Jack Gilbert, February 18, 1925-November 11, 2012
music clip of the day 