Louis Armstrong | music clip of the day

Sunday, 10/2/11

Here, at Luther Vandross’s funeral, Stevie testifies.

Stevie Wonder, “I Won’t Complain”
Live, New York (The Riverside Church), 2005

**********

lagniappe

For as long as you’ve got a harp in your heart, God’s got a hymn for your hurt. And as long as you’ve got a hymn, then you’ve got hope.

—Maurice O. Wallace (funeral sermon, quoted in Karla FC Holloway, Passed On: African American Mourning Stories [2002])

(Originally posted 10/11/09.)

*****

listening room: (some of) what’s playing

• Coldcut, 70 Minutes of Madness (Journeys by DJ)

• Mahmoud Ahmed, Ethiopiques, Vol. 6: Almaz (Buda Musique [import])

• Staff Benda Bilili, Tres Tres Fort (Crammed Discs)

• Louis Armstrong, Hot Fives & Sevens (JSP [import])

• Jaki Byard, Solo/Strings (Prestige)

• John Carter & Bobby Bradford’s New Art Jazz Ensemble, Seeking (hat Art)

• Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch (Blue Note)

• Bill Evans Trio, Sunday at the Village Vanguard (Riverside)

• The Great Concert of Charles Mingus (Verve)

• The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings Of Charlie Parker (Mosaic)

• Sun Ra, Sleeping Beauty (Phantom Sound & Vision [import])

• The Complete Novus & Columbia Recordings of Henry Threadgill & Air (Mosaic)

• Wadada Leo Smith’s Golden Quartet (Tzadik)

• Bela Bartok, String Quartets Nos. 5 & 6, Takacs Quartet (Hungaroton [import])

• David Behrman, On the Other Ocean (Lovely Music)

• Morton Feldman, Crippled Symmetry, Eberhard Blum, flute; Nils Vigland, piano, celesta; Jan Williams, glockenspiel, vibraphone (hat Art)

Morton Feldman, For Christian Wolff, Eberhard Blum, flute; Nils Vigland, piano, celesta (hat Art)

• Morton Feldman, For Bunita Marcus, Stephane Ginsburgh, piano (Sub Rosa) (available as a download from Amazon for 89¢)

• Morton Feldman, For Samuel Beckett, San Francisco Contemporary Players (Newport Classic)

• Morton Feldman, Triadic Memories, Markus Hinterhauser, piano (Col Legno [import])

• Morton Feldman, Piano, Violin, Viola, Cello, Members of the Ives Ensemble (hat Art)

• Ingram Marshall, Kingdom Come (Nonesuch)

• Maurizio Pollini, piano, Arnold Schoenberg (The Solo Piano Music, Piano Concerto), Anton Webern (Variations, op. 27) (Deutsche Grammaphon)

• Dimitri Shostakovich, String Quartets Nos. 5, 6, & 7, Borodin Quartet (Melodiya)

• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Lester Young/Charlie Parker birthday marathon
—John Coltrane birthday broadcast
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)

• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Airborne Event (Dan Bodah, “electronic noise to free jazz, drone rock to a capella African song”)
—Give the Drummer Some (Doug Schulkind, sui generis, web only)
—Transpacific Sound Paradise (Rob Weisberg, “popular and unpopular music from around the world”)

• WHPK-FM (broadcasting from University of Chicago)
—The Blues Excursion (Arkansas Red)

Leave a comment

2011

Thursday, August 4, 2011

Happy Birthday (Again), Pops!

During his life, Louis Armstrong’s birthday was believed to be July 4, 1900, but, as it turned out, that was a year and a month off—the actual date was August 4, 1901. Given the circumstances, WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) does the only sensible thing: they celebrate both days, playing nothing but Pops 24 hours straight.

favorites
(an occasional series)

According to Miles Davis, the history of jazz can be told in four words:
here are the first two.

Louis Armstrong, “Dinah,” live, Copenhagen, 1933

(Originally posted January 15, 2010.)

Leave a comment

2011

Monday, July 4, 2011

Happy Birthday, Pops!*

Louis Armstrong, “Basin Street Blues” (three takes)

#1 (live, 1959, Germany [Stuttgart])

Vodpod videos no longer available.

***

#2 (live, 1953, New Orleans)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

***

#3 (recording, 1928, Chicago)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

**********

lagniappe

more

Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five, “West End Blues,” 1928, Chicago

*****

radio

The federal government, in its wisdom, gives you the day off so you can listen to Louis Armstrong.

—Phil Schaap, 7/2/11, Traditions in Swing, WKCR-FM
(broadcasting from Columbia University), which today is all Pops, all day

*****

reading table

Summer afternoon — summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.

—Henry James

*Louis Armstrong gave July 4th as his birthday, something that was determined, after his death, not to be true—at least not literally.

Leave a comment

2011

Thursday, 4/7/11

Happy (96th) Birthday, Billie!

Tune in to WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University) and you’ll swear you must’ve died and gone to heaven—it’s all Billie, all day.

Billie Holiday, “The Blues Are Brewin'” (with Louis Armstrong, trumpet), New Orleans (1947)

Vodpod videos no longer available.

More? Here. And here. And here.

**********

lagniappe

art beat

Joan Mitchell, Chamonix (c. 1962), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

Leave a comment

2011

Thursday, 3/10/11

Happy (108th) Birthday, Bix!

God the poet, the master of metaphor, wanting to comment on what a big, open, unruly country this is, put the birthdays of Ornette Coleman, born in 1930 in Fort Worth, Texas, and Bix Beiderbecke, born in 1903 in Davenport, Iowa, back to back.

Bix Beiderbecke, cornet, with Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra
“I’m Coming, Virginia,” “Way Down Yonder In New Orleans,” 1927

Vodpod videos no longer available.

**********

lagniappe

Speaking of Bix’s playing, Louis Armstrong said:

Those pretty notes went right through me.

*****

. . . “I’m Coming, Virginia” became the most beautiful thing in my life . . . The coherence of its long Bix solo still provides me with a measure of what popular art should be like: a generosity of effects on a simple frame. The melodic line is particularly ravishing at its points of transition: there are moments when even a silent pause is a perfect note, and always there is a piercing sadness to it, as if the natural tone of the cornet, the instrument of reveille, were the first sob before weeping.

—Clive James, London Times, 5/16/07

*****

radio

Yesterday, at WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University), it was all Ornette all day; today it’s Bix. (Listening to so much Ornette seems to have rearranged my brain cells—permanently, I hope.)

(Some of this was previously posted on Bix’s last birthday.)

Leave a comment

2011

Friday, 2/25/11

Our music is a Secret Order.

—Louis Armstrong, 1954 (John F. Zwed, Space Is The Place: The Lives And Times Of Sun Ra [1997], epigraph)

Von Freeman (tenor saxophone, with Ed Petersen, tenor saxophone; Willie Pickens, piano; Brian Sandstrom, bass; Robert Shy, drums), live, Chicago (Green Mill Lounge), 12/31/10

Vodpod videos no longer available.

More? Here. And here.

Leave a comment

2010

Sunday, 7/4/10

Happy 4th of July!

The funkiest, countriest quartet. As a church once rocked to guitarist William ‘Pee Wee’ Crawford’s vamps, the late Reuben Willingham quipped, ‘This may not be a Fish Fry, but it sure got soul.’ The Augusta-based Swanees maintained the same background—Charlie Barnwell, Rufus Washington and the good-humored falsetto James ‘Big Red’ Anderson—for over thirty years. Some of James Brown’s grooves were first set down by his friends the Swanees. Veteran leads included Willingham, Johnny Jones (the finest singer in the post Sam Cooke tradition, with a range from baritone to high falsetto, and a more vivid, sanctified persona than his idol Cooke) and Percy Griffin.

—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (6th ed. 2002)

*****

Swanee Quintet, live

“What Are They Doing In Heaven” (featuring Johnny Jones), TV broadcast

*****

“Little Talk With Jesus” (featuring Johnny Jones), TV broadcast

*****

“New Walk” (featuring Reuben Willingham and Johnny Jones), TV broadcast

*****

“Doctor Jesus” (featuring Percy Griffin and Johnny Jones)

**********

lagniappe

listening room

Sly Stone, gospel singer

Stewart Family (Sylvester Stewart—AKA Sly Stone—with Freddie, Rose & Vaetta Stewart), “Walk in Jesus Name,” c. 1953/mp3

*****

Happy Birthday, Louis!

Louis Armstrong Birthday Broadcast, WKCR-FM (’til 9:30 a.m., 7/5/10)

Leave a comment

2010

Wednesday, 6/16/10

movies/part 3

Once upon a time, before the Gulf oil spill, before Katrina, there was a city . . .

*****

New Orleans (1947)

Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong

“Do You Know What It Means To Miss New Orleans?”

Want more Billie Holiday? Here. Here.

More Louis Armstrong? Here.

**********

lagniappe

The impact of the oil from the Gulf of Mexico spill now soiling the Louisiana shoreline was felt far inland on Thursday as P&J Oyster Company, the country’s oldest oyster processor and distributor, ceased its shucking operations.

“The bottom line is that the guys that we purchase from are not working,” said Sal Sunseri, referring to the oyster harvesters who’ve been idled by the mass closure of harvesting areas and freshwater diversions. “Today’s our last day of shucking.”

***

“Having the guy down the street deliver oysters that were shucked just that morning to our doorstep is an amazing thing,” said John Besh, who featured P&J Oysters at his five New Orleans area restaurants. “The relationship is so valuable, knowing that I can count on them to source the best oysters from the saltiest areas and deliver them in a consistent, uniform manner.”

“They provide wonderful oysters,” said Darin Nesbit, chef at the Bourbon House, whose relationship with P&J is so tight Sal Sunseri helped shuck oysters the first night the restaurant opened following Hurricane Katrina. “Even in times of trouble, they’ve always taken care of us.”

P&J was started in 1876 by John Popich, a Croatian immigrant who took on partner Joseph Jurisich at the turn of the century. In 1921, Popich and Jurisich purchased a shucking house at the corner of Toulouse and North Rampart streets. Alfred Sunseri, the current owners’ grandfather, who was married to Popich’s cousin, joined the company soon after.

—Brett Anderson, “P&J looks to bring oysters in from the West Coast for the first time In its 134 years,” New Orleans Times-Picayune, 6/10/10

*****

mail

You’re right, not only can’t you lip-synch this stuff; you can’t really sing it if you don’t know it in your heart. That’s why it’s sooooo good. [The Pilgrim Jubilees, 6/13/10]