two takes
The Mighty Clouds of Joy, “I Made A Step,” live
Switzerland (Montreux Jazz Festival), 1981
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
Nashville, 2005
Vodpod videos no longer available.**********
lagniappe
Greatest musical intersection in the world?
Chicago’s South Side, W. 36th St. (Honorary Sam Cooke Way, as of this month) and S. Cottage Grove Ave. (Honorary Albertina Walker & The Caravans Drive)
Photo credit: Bob Marovich, The Black Gospel Blog
nadir, n. the lowest point.
On July 29, 1946, Charlie Parker was arrested in Los Angeles, after starting a fire in his hotel room. Earlier that day, unable to score heroin, scratchy, drunk on whiskey, he recorded this track, which, depending on your point of view, is either one of the worst records he ever made (Parker’s view) or, despite (because of?) its raggedyness, among the greatest (Charles Mingus’s opinion). After his arrest he was confined, for six months, at Camarillo State Mental Hospital.
Charlie Parker, “Lover Man” (CP, alto saxophone; Howard McGhee, trumpet; Jimmy Bunn, piano; Bob Kesterson, bass; Roy Porter, drums), rec. 7/29/46
More? Here.
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lagniappe
rewarding the deserving
So often, it seems, when arts awards are announced, my initial reaction is: “Huh?” Not this time. The National Endowment of the Arts just announced their 2012 Jazz Masters Awards, which recognize, with Lifetime Honors, “living musicians for career-long achievement.” And the winners are Jack DeJohnette, Jimmy Owens, Charlie Haden, Sheila Jordan, and Von Freeman.
*****
reading table
The cafeteria in the hospital’s basement was the saddest place in the world, with its grim neon lights and gray tabletops and the diffuse forboding of those who had stepped away from suffering children to have a grilled cheese sandwich.
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The next day, I set up an iPod dock and played music, not only in the willfully delusional belief that music would be good for a painful, recovering brain but also to counter the soul-crushing hospital noise: the beeping of monitors, the wheezing of respirators, the indifferent chatter of nurses in the hallway, the alarm that went off whenever a patient’s condition abruptly worsened.
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One early morning, driving to the hospital, I saw a number of able-bodied, energetic runners progressing along Fullerton Avenue toward the sunny lakefront, and I had a strong physical sensation of being in an aquarium: I could see out, the people outside could see me (if they chose to pay attention), but we were living and breathing in entirely different environments.
—Aleksandar Hemon, “The Aquarium: A Child’s Isolating Illness” (behind a paywall), New Yorker, 6/13 & 20/2011
only rock ’n roll
(an occasional series)
Hasil Adkins with SCOTS (Southern Culture on the Skids), “Hubcap Hunch”
Live, Sleazefest, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, 1994
Classical music would be better off if folks quit calling it “classical music.”
Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951), Op. 19, Six Little Piano Pieces
Michel Beroff, piano, live
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lagniappe
musical thoughts
My music must be short.
Lean! In two notes, not built, but “expressed.”
And the result is, I hope, without stylized and sterilized drawn-out sentiment.
That is not how man feels; it is impossible to feel only one emotion.
Man has many feelings, thousands at a time, and these feelings add up no more than apples and pears add up. Each goes its own way.
This multicoloured, polymorphic, unlogical nature of our feelings, and their associations, a rush of blood, reactions in our senses, in our nerves; I must have this in my music.
It should be an expression of feeling, as if really were the feeling, full of unconscious connections, not some perception of “conscious logic.”
His blues seem bottomless.
Arnett Cobb, tenor saxophonist, August 10, 1918-March 24, 1989
“Texas Blues,” live (with Ellis Marsalis, piano; Chris Severin, bass; Johnny Vidacovich, drums), 1984, New Orleans
Vodpod videos no longer available.***
“The Nearness of You” (mislabeled “Misty” on YouTube), live (with Wild Bill Davis, piano; Bernard Upsom, bass; Frankie Dunlop, drums), 1982, Germany (Berlin)
Vodpod videos no longer available.One of my favorite moments comes at 2:48: “I hear ya, I hear ya.”
one man’s meat, etc.
(an occasional series)
The other night I happened upon a live set by this guy on WKCR-FM’s Live Constructions—after a few minutes, it felt as though someone had poured a bottle of Drano down my ears (which, actually, I mean as a compliment).
Rust Worship (Paul Haney), live, New York, 2009
Music? Noise? What’s the difference?
Here’s another take on the blues.
Ben Webster Quartet (BW, tenor saxophone; Stan Tracey, piano; Rick Laird, bass; Jackie Dougan, drums), “Poutin’,” live
Vodpod videos no longer available.More? Here. And here. And here.
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lagniappe
Sonny Rollins, Joe Lovano, et al., talk about Ben Webster
Vodpod videos no longer available.*****
You are sending out some great stuff at all times. . . . It’s always interesting, and the one you sent out today, Onmutu Mechanicks, was especially cool, since I hadn’t ever crossed their path.
Gospel, soul, blues—sometimes they seem inseparable.
Willie Banks and The Messengers, live, Mississippi (Jackson), 1990
“Things I Can’t Change”
***
“God Is Still In Charge”
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lagniappe
listening room: what’s playing
• Talib Kweli, Gutter Rainbows (Javotti Media/3d)
• Art Ensemble of Chicago, Full Force (ECM)
• Anthony Braxton Quartet, (GTM) 2006 (Important Records)
• John Coltrane (with Rashied Ali), Interstellar Space (Impulse!)
• The Lester Young/Count Basie Sessions (1936-1940) (Mosaic)
• Various Artists, Ska Bonanza: The Studio One Ska Years (Heartbeat)
• Stefan Wolpe: Compositions for Piano (1920-1952), David Holzman, piano (Bridge)
• Ann Southam: Simple Lines of Enquiry, Eve Egoyan, piano (Centrediscs)
• Morton Feldman, For Bunita Marcus, Stephane Ginsburgh, piano (Sub Rosa); John Tilbury, piano, Morton Feldman, All Piano (London HALL)
• WKCR-FM (broadcasting from Columbia University)
—Bird Flight (Phil Schaap, jazz [Charlie Parker])
—Traditions in Swing (Phil Schaap, jazz)
—Out to Lunch (Various, jazz)
—Jazz Profiles (Various, jazz)
—Jazz Alternatives (Various, jazz)
—Afternoon New Music (Various, classical and hard-to-peg)
—Eastern Standard Time (Carter Van Pelt, Jamaican music)
—Rag Aur Taal (Various, Indian)
—Morning Ragas (Various, Indian)
—Amazing Grace (Various, gospel)
—Live Constructions (Various, hard-to-peg)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
—Give The Drummer Some (Doug Schulkind, sui generis)
—Transpacific Sound Paradise (Rob Weisberg, “popular and unpopular music from around the world”)
—Daniel Blumin (sui generis)
—Airborne Event (Dan Boodah, sui generis)
—The Push Bin with Lou (Lou Z., sui generis)
*****
art beat
One of the great things about having friends is that they invite you to things you’d never get to, or even know about, otherwise—like, for instance, this wonderful exhibit of illustrated architecture books (dating from 1511), something I wouldn’t have gotten to but for my friend Bob Blythe.
Art forms, like animal species, become extinct.
Robert Pete Williams (1914-1980), “Scrap Iron Blues”
Live, Louisiana (Baton Rouge), 1971
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lagniappe
It’s difficult to approve the banalities of most blues singers after listening to Robert Pete Williams. The blues tradition is frequently cited to explain a singer’s conventionality. We see with Robert Pete Williams, however, the possibilities of the blues. He relies upon none of the cliches, either of music or of lyric, which bluesman after bluesman will invoke. He makes each song unmistakably his own and while at times his genius may seem perverse in its oddness, when he succeeds and each odd element comes together, he will convey a tone of almost unbearable sadness.
—Peter Guralnick, Feel Like Going Home (1971)
only rock ’n roll
(an occasional series)
The Dirtbombs, “Stop,” New Jersey (Asbury Lanes, Asbury Park), c. 2007
Vodpod videos no longer available.Anybody can play in tune.
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lagniappe
reading table
welcoming in loads
of new year’s rain . . .
trashy house—Kobayashi Issa (1763-1827), trans. David G. Lanoue
music clip of the day 