two takes
“I Just Don’t Know What To Do With Myself” (Burt Bacharach & Hal David)
Dusty Springfield, TV broadcast, 1964
*****
The White Stripes, live, Australia, 2006
When the groove is strong enough, even the walls seem to sway.
Group Inerane, “Ano Nagarus,” live, Niger, 2004
getting older
“Where did everybody go?” you wonder.
With each passing year, more of the musicians who’ve shaped your world—who’ve made life sing—are gone.
Ed Blackwell, Lester Bowie, Betty Carter, Malachi Favors, Steve Lacy, Kate McGarrigle, Art Pepper, Professor Longhair, Sun Ra, Junior Wells, Julius Hemphill (below): the list goes on, and on, and on.
World Saxophone Quartet (Julius Hemphill, alto saxophone; Oliver Lake, soprano and alto saxophones; David Murray, tenor saxophone; Hamiet Bluiett, baritone saxophone)
Medley: “West African Snap,” “I Heard That,” “Fast Life,” “Hattie Wall,” live (TV Broadcast [Night Music]), 1990 (music starts at 2:20)
Listening to Julius Hemphill (far left), a phrase from Martin Luther King, Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech comes to mind: “the fierce urgency of now.” Hemphill has, it seems, so much to say—right now. Listen, for instance, to 4:30-6:35.
*****
Live, with M’Boom (Max Roach’s 9-piece percussion ensemble), New York (The Cathedral Church of St. John the Divine), 1981 (music starts at 1:55)
Want more? Here.
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Without music, life would be an error.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
recipe
1 cup funkiness
1 cup elegance
Mix until thoroughly blended.
Professor Longhair (AKA Henry Roeland [“Roy”] Byrd), December 19, 1918-January 30, 1980
“Tipitina,” live
*****
“Hey Little Girl,” live
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lagniappe
Mike Kinnamon, Bonnie Bramlett’s Nashville-based manager, in response to an email letting him (and Bonnie) know that her music was featured here (Delaney, alas, is no longer alive), left a voice-mail message yesterday:
. . . I just love it when somebody like you cares enough to send stuff like that around. It’s really cool, and it lifts her [Bonnie] up, too. Thank you so much, buddy . . .
What do I listen to these days?
This more than anything.
Each night it’s the last thing I hear before falling asleep. Having left the Bose on “repeat” (usually Hildegard Kleeb [Hat Hut], sometimes John Tilbury [Extraplatte]), it’s the first thing I hear upon awakening. It seems, sometimes, as if it’s always playing—whether I’m listening or not.
Morton Feldman, “For Bunita Marcus” (1985)/Mark Knoop (piano), live, London, 2010
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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Part 4
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Part 5
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Part 6
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Part 7
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Part 8
Want more? Here. Here. Here. Here.
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lagniappe
Almost all Feldman’s music is slow and soft. Only at first sight is this a limitation. I see it rather as a narrow door, to whose dimensions one has to adapt oneself (as in Alice in Wonderland) before one can pass through it into the state of being that is expressed in Feldman’s music. Only when one has become accustomed to the dimness of light can one begin to perceive the richness and variety of colour which is the material of the music. When one has passed through the narrow door and got accustomed to the dim light, one realises the range of his imagination and the significant differences that distinguish one piece from another . . .
Feldman sees the sounds as reverberating endlessly, never getting lost, changing their resonances as they die away, or rather do not die away, but recede from our ears, and soft because softness is compelling, because an insidious invasion of our senses is more effective than a frontal attack. Because our ears must strain to catch the music, they must become more sensitive before they perceive the world of sound in which Feldman’s music takes place.
*****
Legend has it that after one group of players had crept their way as quietly as possible through a score of his Feldman barked, ‘It’s too fuckin’ loud, and it’s too fuckin’ fast.’
—Alex Ross, “American Sublime,” The New Yorker, 6/19/06
Everything I learned, I learned here in the church as a little girl.
—Sharon Jones
Sharon Jones, “Gospel Sunday,” New York (Queens)
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lagniappe
reading table
In this short Life that only lasts an hour
How much—how little—is within our power—Emily Dickinson (#1292)
replay: a clip too good for just one day
At his best, Lenny Bruce didn’t meet expectations—he confounded them.
Lenny Bruce, “All Alone,” live (TV broadcast [“The Steve Allen Show”]), 1959
(Originally posted 11/30/09.)
Simple, subtle, soulful: blues is (as Artur Schnabel said of Mozart’s piano sonatas) “too easy for children, too difficult for adults.”
R.L. Burnside, “Goin’ Down South,” live, early 1970s, Mississippi
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Music is the healing force of the universe.
—Albert Ayler
Music can be made anywhere—a street corner, a subway station, even a bathroom.
Shiyani Ngcobo
“The Bathroom Recordings,” live, France (Nantes), 1997
*****
“Izinyembezi” (Introducing Shiyani Ngcobo [2004])
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lagniappe
I’d like to make a plea for a new concept—elastic precision. It’s what [South African musician] Shiyani Ngcobo has, and what so many musicians have: an absolutely determined (in both senses of the word) and precise groove, with infinite, fractal variants that relate to what comes before and after. . . . Perfection may be infinitely seductive, but it’s the flaws and differences that make the beauty.
—Ben Mandelson, liner notes, Introducing Shiyani Ngcobo (2004)
They weren’t glamorous. And they couldn’t have been paying a whole lot. But everybody, it seemed, wanted to play with them.
Delaney & Bonnie
With Eric Clapton (guitar), Dave Mason (guitar), Bobby Whitlock (vocal); “Poor Elijah-Tribute to Robert Johnson”; live (TV broadcast), England, 1969
•••••
With Eric Clapton (guitar), George Harrison (guitar), Bobby Whitlock (keyboards), Carl Radle (bass), Jim Gordon (drums); “Comin’ Home”; live, England, 1969
*****
With Duane Allman (guitar), Gregg Allman (organ), King Curtis (tenor saxophone); “Only You Know And I Know”; live, 1971
(The bass player, whoever he is, is the MVP here—he lights up everything [check out, for instance, 1:06-1:56].)
