Imagine that you were talking with someone who’d been blind all his life.
How would you describe this guy’s act?
Wayne Cochran & the C.C. Riders, live (TV broadcast [The Jackie Gleason Show]), 1968
Happy Birthday, Mingus!
No jazz composer since Thelonious Monk has a stronger voice.
Lyrical beauty, inexhaustible drive, deep feeling: what more could you ask for?
Enormously influential, his music served as a bridge between the compositional elegance of Duke Ellington and the freewheeling rambunctiousness of the Art Ensemble of Chicago, Henry Threadgill, David Murray, et al.
Charles Mingus Quintet (CM, bass; Dannie Richmond, drums; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone, bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Jaki Byard, piano), live (TV broadcast), Belgium, 1964
“So Long, Eric”
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“Peggy’s Blue Skylight”
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“Meditations on Integration” (excerpt)
Want more? Here.
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lagniappe
. . . [Mingus’s] music was pledged to the abolition of all distinctions: between the composed and the improvised, the primitive and the sophisticated, the rough and the tender, the belligerent and the lyrical.—Geoff Dyer, But Beautiful: A Book About Jazz (1996)
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Making the simple complicated is commonplace; making the complicated simple, awesomely simple, that’s creativity.
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I, myself, came to enjoy the players who didn’t only just swing but who invented new rhythmic patterns, along with new melodic concepts. And those people are: Art Tatum, Bud Powell, Max Roach, Sonny Rollins, Lester Young, Dizzy Gillespie and Charles Parker, who is the greatest genius of all to me because he changed the whole era around.
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In my music, I’m trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it’s difficult is because I’m changing all the time.
—Charles Mingus
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Radio Mingus: all Mingus, all the time
In celebration of Mingus’s birthday, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) is playing his music all day.
Bob Dylan/1965, part 3
“Like A Rolling Stone,” live (with Mike Bloomfield, guitar; Jerome Arnold, bass; Barry Goldberg, piano; Al Kooper, organ; Sam Lay, drums), Newport Folk Festival, July, 1965
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Press Conference, San Francisco, December, 1965
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Bob Dylan/1965, part 2
“Maggie’s Farm,” live (with Mike Bloomfield, guitar; Jerome Arnold, bass; Barry Goldberg, piano; Al Kooper, organ; Sam Lay, drums), Newport Folk Festival, July, 1965
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Interview with Time magazine, 1965
Bob Dylan/1965, part 1
“If You Gotta Go, Go Now”
Live, England (Leicester), May, 1965
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Manfred Mann, September, 1965 (#2, UK charts)
Some singers—like this one, featured a few weeks ago—you just can’t get enough of.
Dorothy Love Coates & the Gospel Harmonettes
“(You Can’t Hurry God) He’s Right On Time,” live (TV broadcast)
(This song, written by DLC, reportedly inspired the Supremes’ hit “You Can’t Hurry Love” [Holland-Dozier-Holland].)
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“You Must Be Born Again,” live (TV broadcast)
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“It’s Getting Late In The Evening,” live, Los Angeles, 1955
Want more? Here.
When it comes to saying a lot with a little, Chopin’s 24 Preludes for solo piano—most of which last no more than a minute or two—have few equals. This one was played at his funeral.
Frederic Chopin, Prelude No. 4 in E Minor, Op. 28
Sviatoslav Richter (1915-1997)
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Alfred Cortot (1877-1962)
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Martha Argerich (1941-)
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lagniappe
Today isn’t just any old day; it’s Record Store Day 2010.
Chris Brown, Bull Moose (New England record stores)
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reading table
an old man’s ways—
my backside warmed
by the wood fire
—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1828; Trans. David G. Lanoue)
The Rock ’ n’ Roll Guide To Getting Girls (excerpt)
“Treat Her Right”
Roy Head, live (TV broadcast), 1965
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Bob Dylan, live (TV studio, rehearsal [David Letterman Show]), 1984
What a joy it is (and how rare) to hear someone who makes every note count.
Abdullah Ibrahim Trio, live, Germany (Leverkusen), 2007
Part 1
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Part 2
