four takes
“I’ll Fly Away,” Albert E. Brumley, 1929 (publ. 1932)
Jerry Lee Lewis and Mickey Gilley
Live (TV show), 1980
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The Caravans (feat. Shirley Caesar)
Recording, 1964
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Bill Monroe and Ralph Stanley
Live, Virginia (Coeburn), 1970s (?)
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Aretha Franklin
Live (Albertina Walker’s home-going service), Chicago, 2010
(This last clip was originally posted on 10/24/10, shortly after Albertina Walker, the leader of the Caravans, passed away.)
two takes
Santigold, “Disparate Youth”
Recording & video, 2012
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Live (studio performance), BBC, 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
After a certain age our memories are so interwoven with each other that the object of our thoughts or the book which we are reading has practically no importance. We have left traces of ourselves everywhere, everything is fertile, everything is dangerous, and we can make discoveries every bit as precious in an advertisement for soap as Pascal’s Pensées.
—Marcel Proust, The Fugitive (translated from French by Peter Collier)
Aretha’s father
Rev. C. L. Franklin (1915-1984), live, Dallas
“The Doors of the Church Are Open”/“I Will Trust in the Lord”
(recording ends at 5:55)
One thing I love about this is the ease with which he slides into and out of song (1:20, 2:25, 2:50, etc.). (Or is it all song?)
More? Here.
*****
taking a break
I’m going to take some time off—back in a bit.
Spirits need a lift?
Consider this: how much wonderful music—more than a lifetime’s worth—waits to be heard for the first time.
Morton Feldman, For Philip Guston (1984)*
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
More Feldman?
And here.
And here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Q. This is a tough question, but what would be your five Desert Island disks?
John Luther Adams: I’d want music I could live inside for a long time; music that’s complex and enigmatic enough that there’s always something new to discover. Off the top of my head, my choices might be . . .
One of Morton Feldman’s major works, probably the Second String Quartet. Or maybe For Philip Guston.
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*For piano, celesta, piccolo, flute, alto flute, glockenspiel, vibraphone, marimba, chimes.
Ken Vandermark (saxophone) & Paal Nilssen-Love (drums)
Live, Romania (Bucharest), 2010
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Last night, while I was listening to these guys at a little club on Chicago’s near northwest side (The Hideout), a thought kept running through my head: there’s nothing like live music; there’s nothing at all like live music; there’s nothing at all in this world even remotely like live music.
three takes
“Fool For You” (C.L. Green)
Alice Smith, recording and video, 2011
*****
Cee Lo Green, feat. Melanie Fiona, recording, 2011
*****
Alice Smith, live, Washington, D.C. (Howard Theatre), 2012
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lagniappe
reading table
What will it all be like in five years’ time
when you try to remember?—John Ashbery, “For John Clare” (excerpt)
only rock ’n’ roll
Granted, there are no sure things in pop music; but how can a shaggy-red-haired sister-and-brother duo miss?
White Mystery, “Switch It Off,” live, New York, 2010
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lagniappe
reading table
World is crazier and more of it than we think,
Incorrigibly plural.—Louis MacNiece (1907-1963), “Snow” (excerpt)
