what’s new
Common, “When We Move” (feat. Black Thought, Seun Kuti), 9/28/21
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lagniappe
random sights
other day, Chicago
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reading table
Clear and clearer
with the moon the heart
swells widening
out toward
what distant end I know not—Saigyō (1118-1190), translated from the Japanese by Meredith McKinney
joy, n. a source of keen pleasure or delight. E.g., the singing of Eddie Jefferson.
Eddie Jefferson, jazz singer, August 3, 1918-May 9, 1979
Live (with Richie Cole, alto saxophone; John Campbell, piano; Kelly Sill, bass; Joel Spencer, drums), Chicago (Jazz Showcase), 5/6/79 (days later, outside a jazz club in Detroit, he was shot to death)
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Mark Rothko, Untitled (Purple, White, and Red), 1953
No painting has held my gaze more often, or meant more to me, than this. It’s different every time I see it.
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reading table
ROTHKO: Look at the tension between the blocks of color: the dark and the light, the red and the black and the brown. They exist in a state of flux—of movement. They abut each other on the actual canvas, so too do they abut each other in your eye. They ebb and flow and shift, gently pulsating. The more you look at them the more they move . . . They float in space, they breathe . . . Movement, communication, gesture, flux, interaction; letting them work . . . They’re not dead because they’re not static. They move through space if you let them, this movement takes time, so they’re temporal. They require time.
—John Logan, Red (2009)
Leon Russell loved these guys so much—both, alas, have since passed—that, in 1974, he recorded them for his Shelter label.
The O’Neal Twins
“Jesus Dropped The Charges,” live
Take 1 (Say Amen, Somebody [1982])
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Take 2
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“It’s A Highway To Heaven,” live (Say Amen, Somebody [1982])
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“Power In The Blood,” live (TV broadcast), mid-1960s
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“He Chose Me,” live
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“He’ll Give You Peace In The Midst Of The Storm,” live, Texas (Dallas), 1981
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lagniappe
In a 2005 interview with the Post-Dispatch, Mr. [Edgar] O’Neal spoke about the early challenges. “We always had bookings and recordings, but when we started, black gospel was not readily accepted with the wide range it is today,” he said. “And the money wasn’t there.”
The O’Neals—with Edgar on piano and both brothers singing—challenged gospel tradition. “The main gospel thrust at the time (was) male quartets, and we were a piano group,” Mr. O’Neal said. “We were considered in a different category from the male singing groups. But then the quartets got into piano. It took some years as we stayed out there before our style took hold.”
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The O’Neal Twins
Fontella Bass
Chuck Berry
Scott Joplin
Little Milton
Clark Terry
Ike & Tina Turner
When it comes to musical history, few cities are as rich as St. Louis.
music clip of the day 