Happy Birthday, Blind Willie and Tammy!
Blind Willie McTell (5/5/1898-8/19/59), “Dying Crapshooter’s Blues” (1940)
*****
Tammy Wynette (5/5/42-4/6/98), medley (“Apartment No. 9,” “D-I-V-O-R-C-E,” “Stand By Your Man”), TV show
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
Imagine what this country would be like if everything were as fine as the music.
three takes
“Dream Baby Dream” (A. Vega [Suicide])
Neneh Cherry & The Thing, The Cherry Thing, 6/12
*****
Bruce Springsteen, live (encore), 2005
*****
Suicide (long version), 1980
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Who says sports are frivolous? Baseball offers a veritable Ph.D. program in life’s hardest lessons. Good fortune is fleeting. Nothing can be taken for granted—ever. No matter how smooth the sailing, the shoals of despair are never far away. Yesterday, going into the bottom of the ninth, the Cubs were beating the Reds 3-0. Exit starter Ryan Dempster; enter closer Carlos Marmol. He gives up a walk. Then another. The next batter reaches on an error. Then there’s a line drive. The next batter? He walks, too. By the time Marmol crawls back to the dugout, the bases are loaded, there are no outs, and two runs are in. If nothing else, the pain would have come and gone more swiftly if the Reds had finished things right there. But they don’t. They add just one more run, tying the game. The Cubs come to bat. Nothing. The Reds score again and, finally, it’s over. Reds 4, Cubs 3. No tale from Greek mythology could have made the point more emphatically: fate is pitiless.
Weary of words?
You’ve come to the right place.
These guys take you places words don’t go.
Von Freeman,* tenor saxophone; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone (first solo); Willie Pickens, piano; Dan Shapera, bass; Robert Shy, drums; “Oleo” (S. Rollins), live, Chicago (Chicago Jazz Festival), 1988
More Clifford? Here.
Nothing hits the spot, sometimes, like a homicidal love song.
The Handsome Family, “My Beautiful Bride”
Live, Australia (Sydney), 2010
More? Here.
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lagniappe
art beat: Monday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Utagawe Hiroshige, Autumn Moon over Tama River (from the series Eight Views of the Environs of Edo), 1837-38
ready to levitate?
Peter Brötzmann Chicago Tentet,* “Aziz” (M. Zerang), recorded live in Chicago (Empty Bottle), 9/17/97 (Okka Disk OD-12022)
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lagniappe
art beat: yesterday at the Art Institute of Chicago (after meeting with a client at the nearby federal jail)
Utagawe Hiroshige, Suijin Shrine and Massaki on the Sumida River (from the series One Hundred Famous Views of Edo), c. 1856
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reading table
Were I to choose an auspicious image for the new millennium, I would choose . . . the sudden agile leap of the poet-philosopher who raises himself above the weight of the world, showing that with all his gravity he has the secret of lightness, and that what many consider to be the vitality of the times—noisy, aggressive, revving and roaring—belongs to the realm of death, like a cemetery for rusty old cars.
—Italo Calvino, “Lightness,” in Six Memos for the New Millenium (1988, translated from Italian by Patrick Creagh)
*****
*PB, tenor sax/clarinet/tarogato; Mars Williams, tenor/alto/soprano sax/clarinet; Ken Vandermark, tenor sax/clarinet/bass clarinet; Mats Gustafsson, baritone sax/fluteophone; Joe McPhee, pocket cornet/valve trombone/soprano sax; Jeb Bishop, trombone; Fred Lonberg-Holm, cello; Kent Kessler, bass; Michael Zerang, drums/percussion; Hamid Drake, drums/percussion.
Let’s go to church.
“Until I Die,” Pilgrim Rest Baptist Church, Winston-Salem, N.C., 2001
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lagniappe
reading table
On the Death of Friends in Childhood
We shall not ever meet them bearded in heaven,
Nor sunning themselves among the bald of hell;
If anywhere, in the deserted schoolyard at twilight,
Forming a ring, perhaps, or joining hands
In games whose very names we have forgotten.
Come, memory, let us seek them there in the shadows.
—Donald Justice (Collected Poems, 2004)
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“[We find] it impossible, when we have to analyze death, to imagine it in terms other than those of life.”
—Marcel Proust, The Fugitive (translated from French by Peter Collier)
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listening room: (some of) what’s playing
• The Dirtbombs, Ultraglide In Black (In the Red Records)
• Wild Flag (Merge Records)
• That’s What They Want: The Best of Jerry McCain (Excello)
• The Best of Slim Harpo (Hip-O)
• Ambrose Akinmusire, When the Heart Emerges Glistening (Blue Note)
• Lester Bowie’s Brass Fantasy, I Only Have Eyes For You (ECM)
• Anthony Braxton, 9 Compositions (Iridium)
• Chicago Tentet, American Landscapes 1 & 2 (Okka)
• Steve Lehman Octet, Travail, Transformation, and Flow (Pi Recordings)
• Joe McPhee, Nation Time (Unheard Music Series)
• Weasel Walter, Mary Halvorson, Peter Evans, Electric Fruit (Thirsty Ear)
• J. Berg’s Royal Rarities Vols. 2-3; A Cappella Archives, Vol. 3; Gospel Goldies, Vol. 2 (Rare Gospel)
• The Fisk Jubilee Quartet, There Breathes A Hope (Archeophone)
• This May Be My Last Time Singing: Raw African-American Gospel On 45 RPM 1957-1982 (Tompkins Square)
• Bach, Suites for Unaccompanied Cello, Pierre Fournier, (Archiv Production/DG)
• Mozart, Piano Sonatas Nos. 16 and 17, Peter Serkin, piano (Pro Arte)
• Arnold Schoenberg, Das Klavierwerk, Peter Serkin, piano (Arcana)
• The Art of Joseph Szigeti (Biddulph Recordings)
• Anton Webern, Five Movements For String Quartet, Op. 5; Six Bagatelles For String Quartet, Op. 9; String Quartet, Op. 28; Quartetto Italiano (Philips)
• Anton Webern, Complete Works for String Quartet and String Trio, Artis Quartet Wien (Nimbus)
• Music of Stefan Wolpe, Vol. 6, David Holzman, piano (Bridge)
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)
—Rag Aur Taal (various, Indian)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Cherry Blossom Clinic (Terre T, rock, etc.)
—Fool’s Paradise (Rex; “Vintage rockabilly, R & B, blues, vocal groups, garage, instrumentals, hillbilly, soul and surf”)
• WHPK-FM (broadcasting from University of Chicago)
—The Blues Excursion (Arkansas Red)
*****
radio
Happy Birthday, Duke!
James Blood Ulmer, “Are You Glad to Be in America?”
Live, 2008
Imagine this with bass and drums. Can’t? Me, neither. That’s one sign of a great solo performance: accompaniment is unimaginable.
what’s new
The Very Best, “Yoshua Alikuti” (Nairobi, Kenya), 2012
Any resemblance to this is purely intentional.
Lil Wayne, “A Milli,” 2008
*****
Here’s a big shout-out to my son Alex, who just finished his last week of classes, graduates from Harvard next month, and introduced me to The Very Best in the first place.
Not even with all the fingers on all the hands of all the people in the city of Chicago could you count the possibilities offered by just three instruments.
Gyorgy Ligeti, Trio for Violin, Horn, and Piano (1982); Tomas Major (violin), Zora Sloka (horn), Denes Varjon (piano), 2009
Part 1
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Part 2
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lagniappe
art beat: Sunday at the Art Institute of Chicago
Robert Rauschenberg, Short Circuit, 1955
two takes
“Run Joe” (L. Jordan, et al.)
Chuck Brown and the Soul Searchers, live
Capital Centre, Landover, Md., 1987
*****
Louis Jordan and his Tympany Five, recording, 1948
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lagniappe
random thoughts
Last night, sitting at Wrigley Field with my brother Don (something we’ve been doing together for over 50 years), I thought of a line my younger son Luke, who turns 21 next month, wrote in elementary school in response to a prompt: “When I am 100 I will not be able to play baseball with my brother.” (P.S. Cubs 3, Cards 2—their second straight walk-off victory.)
music clip of the day 