Here’s a MCOTD first—music by someone who’s been featured previously (here, here, here, here, here) as a visual artist.
William Eggleston, piano
Live (Big Star: Nothing Can Hurt Me [forthcoming])
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Live, Japan (Tokyo, Hara Museum of Contemporary Art), 2010
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lagniappe
art beat
William Eggleston
Yesterday he sang gospel; today he sings soul music.
O.V. Wright
“I Feel Alright,” live, Memphis, 1975
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“I’d Rather Be Blind, Crippled, And Crazy” (Back Beat Records, 1973)
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“Drowning On Dry Land” (Back Beat Records, 1973)
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“A Nickel And A Nail” (Back Beat Records, 1975)
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lagniappe
Soul is church. Just changing ‘Jesus’ to ‘baby.’ That’s all it is.
—O.V. Wright
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Somehow, someway, O.V. Wright continues to be a mystery. Though he spent his entire life in Memphis, recorded with [producer] Willie Mitchell and was a contemporary of everyone from Otis Redding to Al Green, Wright remains a largely unheralded figure.
Hardcore soul enthusiasts and R&B historians have consistently ranked him among the most evocative and powerful singers of all time, yet his troubled life and tragically early death at the age of 41 in 1980 have consigned him to the margins of music history.
“I remember Willie Mitchell saying, after we lost O.V. — and I never will forget this — Willie said he was the greatest singer that was ever on the planet,” recalls drummer Howard Grimes.
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Wright was revered by his peers, including a young Al Green. “Al used to come in and try and listen to O.V. record,” recalls Willie Mitchell, laughing. “And O.V. would see him and say, ‘Al, what you doing here? Get out of my session!'”
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“He just had more church in him,” says Howard Grimes. “That’s what touched people.”
[Otis] Clay recalls being in the audience when Wright turned a Miami nightclub into a revival meeting. “Man, he whipped that audience into a frenzy like I’ve never seen,” says Clay. “You would’ve thought he was a preacher passing out blessings. He’d say, ‘If you love the blues, come up and shake my hand.’ And, man, people lined up, just like they would in church. That was typical O.V.”
—Bob Mehr, Commercial Appeal (Memphis), 11/13/08
Few singers, in any genre, get under my skin like he does.
O.V. Wright, October 9, 1939-November 16, 1980
Sunset Travelers (featuring O.V. Wright), “On Jesus’ Program” (Peacock Records, 1964)
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“I’m Going Home To Live With God” (Back Beat Records, 1973; produced by Willie Mitchell)
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lagniappe
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music—evidence of the existence of God?
[M]usic is and always has been the one thing that makes me a believer. You can say, ‘Oh, I’m an agnostic. I don’t believe in God.’ OK, fine, but then explain music to me.
—Sonny Rollins, Village Voice, 9/8/10
*****
technical stuff
Having trouble playing clips smoothly—without annoying little hiccups? One way to avoid this, as I’ve mentioned before, is to let a clip load completely before you play it (start the clip, then stop it, then start it again after the bar at the bottom has filled in all the way). Changing browsers may help, too. On my Mac, for instance, clips often play better on Safari than Firefox.
To these ears, this is just inches shy of insufferable—too cute, too precious, too fey. But those inches make all the difference. As it is, I find it beguiling.
Clare and the Reasons, “Wake Up (You Sleepyhead),” 2009
For those who’re interested in such genealogical details (and are old enough to remember), Clare is the daughter of Geoff Muldaur.
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lagniappe
reading table
Utterly unbelievable, incontrovertibly real: his poems, at their best, have the associative logic of a dream.
Russell Edson, “Let Us Consider”
Elvis—blues singer
Elvis Presley, “Stranger In My Own Home Town,” live (rehearsal), 1970
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lagniappe
Percy Mayfield, “Stranger In My Own Home Town” (1964)
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art beat
Stranger in Paradise: The Works of Reverend Howard Finster, Chicago Cultural Center, through 9/26/10 (in the gallery next to The Jazz Loft Project, W. Eugene Smith in NYC, 1957-1965, there through 9/19/10)
Mr. Coke (1988; tractor enamel on wood)
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My work is scrubby. It’s bad, nasty art. But it’s telling something. You don’t have to be a perfect artist to work in art.
—Reverend Howard Finster
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Matthew Arient’s Angel (1987; tractor enamel on wood)
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Howard Finster Vision House
Today we move north and west: the music of Mali.
Salif Keita, live, Spain (Cartagena), 7/10/10
Want more Malian music?
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lagniappe
mail
An attentive reader/listener—someone I’ve listened to music with for over fifty years (which reduces the pool of possible correspondents to, uh, one)—wrote yesterday to tell me about an amazing bargain: a recording of Morton Feldman’s For Bunita Marcus (last mentioned here, previously featured here) that’s available, in MP3 format, for 89¢.
Sunday, South Africa; Monday, Morocco; today let’s head to the center—the Democratic Republic of the Congo (formerly Zaire).
Konono No. 1, “Lufuala Ndonga”
Happy (80th) Birthday, Sonny!
Sonny Rollins (with Jim Hall, guitar; Bob Crenshaw, bass; Ben Riley, drums), live (TV broadcast), 1962
Part 1 (“The Bridge”)
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Part 2 (“God Bless the Child”)
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Part 3 (“If Ever I Would Leave You”)
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lagniappe
The great tenor saxophonist Sonny Rollins turns 80 on Tuesday, awash in more than the usual veneration. The MacDowell Colony last month awarded him its Edward MacDowell Medal. This week Abrams is publishing “Saxophone Colossus: A Portrait of Sonny Rollins,” a handsome art book featuring photographs by John Abbott, with an essay by Bob Blumenthal. And Friday night Mr. Rollins will walk onstage at the Beacon Theater.
It won’t be just another Sonny Rollins concert, if there even is such a thing. In addition to his working band, Mr. Rollins has reached out to several guests. The guitarist Jim Hall is the most eagerly anticipated: at 79, he is indisputable jazz royalty himself, and a trusted partner from one of the most celebrated stretches of Mr. Rollins’s career. (Consult the ageless 1962 album “The Bridge.”) Mr. Hall sat in with Mr. Rollins in New England one night this summer. Before that they hadn’t played together since 1991, in a Carnegie Hall concert that also included the gifted young trumpeter Roy Hargrove, now 40, who will rejoin them here.
—Nate Chinen, New York Times, 9/1/10
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Interview (2009) (encountering W.E.B. DuBois as a child in Harlem, playing with Bud Powell at nineteen, using drugs, studying yoga in India, aging, etc.)
Morocco—it’s just a click away.
Musical Brotherhoods from the Trans-Saharan Highway, excerpts (2007)
