passings
Pete Seeger, singer, songwriter, banjo player, May 3, 1919-January 27, 2014
“Michael, Row the Boat Ashore,” live, Australia (Melbourne), 1963
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“Amazing Grace,” live, New York (90th birthday concert, Madison Square Garden), 5/3/09
This just in from my son Luke (now twenty-two, living in Kansas City):
Did you see Stevie Wonder last night with Daft Punk?
Stevie Wonder, Pharrell Williams, Daft Punk, “Get Lucky,” live (Grammy Awards), 1/26/14
sounds of Mali
Salif Keita, live, Switzerland (Winterthur), 2013
Little Richard, Jerry Lee—they’ve got nothing on this gal.
Rev. Julius Cheeks (lead vocals), Marge Cheeks (piano), Knights of Washington, D.C., “Morning Train,” TV show (TV Gospel Time), early 1960s
sounds of Japan
What do you get when you cross Abba and the Chipmunks?
Perfume, “1 mm,” 2013
sweet soul music
Al Green, live, 1974
sweet soul music
Larry Hargrove, “Gone On Pt. 2,” live, c. 2010
Thirty-seven years ago, at a church outside Chicago, my wife Suzanne and I were married. Saxophonist Von Freeman and pianist John Young played at the ceremony.* Afterward, at the nearby reception hall, this guy tickled the ivories. All three are now gone.
Blind John Davis (1913-1985), live, Canada, early ’80s
#1
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#2
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#3
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*Here’s how they sounded that night. (Give it a few seconds.)
passings
Claudio Abbado, conductor, June 26, 1933-January 20, 2014
Gustav Mahler (1860-1911), Symphony No. 5 (4th Movt.); Lucerne Festival Orchestra (Claudio Abbado, cond.), live, 2004
I love watching him conduct: his hands and arms embody the music, moving with the grace, and the precision, of a ballet dancer.
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lagniappe
reading table
[T]he time of death is every moment . . .
—T. S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages”
Some people make music even when they speak.
Martin Luther King Jr., “I Have a Dream,” Washington, D.C., August 28, 1963
Reading this, instead of hearing it, would be like reading a transcription of a spellbinding saxophone solo.
music clip of the day 