Saturday, March 26th
timeless
Paul Simon, Joan Baez, Richard Thompson (guitar), “The Boxer” (P. Simon), live, New York (2016)
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lagniappe
reading table
I shall keep singing!
—Emily Dickinson (1830-1886), from 270 (Franklin)
music clip of the day
jazz/blues/rock/classical/gospel/more
Tag: Paul Simon
2022
2011
Sunday, 10/9/11
passings
Jessy Dixon, singer, songwriter, pianist
March 12, 1938-September 26, 2011
“I’m Too Close,” live 1988
Vodpod videos no longer available.
*****
“I’ll Tell It” (vocals, organ), with Rev. Milton Brunson & The Chicago Community Choir, live, c. early 1960s
Vodpod videos no longer available.
*****
“Nothing But the Blood,” with the Combined Choir of the Omega Baptist Church, recording, 1967
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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lagniappe
Though he was already well known in gospel circles, Mr. Dixon reached the mainstream pop-music audience in the 1970s, when he collaborated with Mr. Simon on the albums “Paul Simon in Concert: Live Rhymin’ ” (a follow-up to Mr. Simon’s hit album “There Goes Rhymin’ Simon”) and “Still Crazy After All These Years.” The two musicians had met at the Newport Jazz Festival in 1972, and Mr. Simon was impressed with his vocals.
Mr. Dixon and his group, the Jessy Dixon Singers, toured with Mr. Simon for the next eight years. Mr. Dixon also played keyboard with the funk group Earth, Wind and Fire and collaborated with the guitarist Phil Upchurch.
But these were side projects. It was in the gospel genre that he left an important musical mark, releasing 18 albums between 1964 and 2006 — five of them went gold — and touring worldwide until 2001. After his work with Paul Simon, Mr. Dixon built a large following in Europe.
Born on March 12, 1938, in San Antonio, Texas, Mr. Dixon studied classical piano as a boy and started singing as a teenager at the Refuge Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ. The son of a porter and a seamstress, he went to a local Catholic college on a scholarship but dropped out to pursue a career as a musician. At 17, he was touring and playing black churches in California, Texas and Louisiana.
It was during a performance at a theater in San Antonio in 1957 that the Rev. James Cleveland, the great Chicago-based gospel musician, discovered Mr. Dixon and asked him to move to Chicago. There he became a pianist and singer with Mr. Cleveland’s group, The Original Chimes.
Mr. Dixon told The Associated Press in 1997 that being a young musician on Chicago’s South Side in the 1960s was like getting an advanced degree in blues and gospel music. “Going to church was like going to school,” he said.
—New York Times, obituary, 9/26/11
2011
Sunday, 8/21/11
Ever feel like, each day, you understand less and less?
Davis Sisters (with Jackie Verdell), “We’ll Understand It Better By and By,” live (TV broadcast), early 1960s
Vodpod videos no longer available.
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lagniappe
reading table
So long as that woman from the Rijksmuseum
in painted quiet and concentration
keeps pouring milk day after day
from the pitcher to the bowl
the World hasn’t earned
the world’s end.—Wislawa Szymborska, “Vermeer” (trans. Clare Cavanagh & Stanislaw Baranczak, Here [2010])
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Johannes Vermeer, The Milkmaid (c. 1658)
*****
Speaking of Szymborska, a charter member, like Von Freeman, of the recently announced MCOTD Hall of Fame (coincidentally, they were both born in 1923), here’s something I just came across:
I am a big admirer of her [Szymborska’s] work. I have read everything she has written, and I keep coming back to it. She is a very witty poet and she has greatly helped me to enjoy life. She exactly fits my definition of an artist. Who shouldn’t only have profound insight and a sharp mind but also remember that his obligation is to entertain the reader. And this is exactly what she does.
—Woody Allen, in the documentary Sometimes Life Is Bearable (2010)
*****
listening room: (some of) what’s playing
• Paul Simon, So Beautiful or So What (Hear Music)
• Shane MacGowan and the Popes, The Snake (ZTT [import])
• Captain Beefheart & His Magic Band, Trout Mask Replica (Reprise/Ada)
• The Best of Charlie Patton (Yazoo)
• Charley Patton, The Voice of the Delta (Indigo)
• The Detroiters/The Golden Echoes, Old Time Religion (Specialty)
• The Spiritualaires of Hurtsboro, Alabama, Singing Songs of Praise (CaseQuarter)
• Archie Shepp/Kahil El’Zabar’s Ritual Trio, Conversations (Delmark)
• Benny Goodman, The Complete Trios (Capitol)
• Charlie Parker, The Complete Royal Roost Live Recordings on Savoy, Vol. 3 (Savoy/Columbia [import])
• Charles Gayle, Repent (Knitting Factory)
• Steve Lacy-Roswell Rudd Quartet, School Days (hat Art)
• Wadada Leo Smith & Jack DeJohnette, America (Tzadik)
• Kenny Werner, No Beginning, No End (Half Note)
• Bach, Suites for Unaccompanied Cello/Jean-Guihen Queyras (Harmonia Mundi [import])
• Alfred Schnittke, String Quartet No. 3, Piano Quintet, Piano Quartet/
Borodin String Quartet with Ludmilla Berlinsky (Virgin Classics)
• Morton Feldman, Piano and String Quartet/Kronos Quartet with Aki Takahashi (Nonesuch)
• Morton Feldman, For Bunita Marcus, Stephane Ginsburgh, piano (Sub Rosa) (available as a download from Amazon for 89¢)
• 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)
—Raag Aur Taal (Various, Indian music)
• WFMU-FM
—Mudd Up! (DJ/Rupture, “new bass and beats”)
—Sinner’s Crossroads (Kevin Nutt, gospel)
2010
Sunday, 11/14/10
MCOTD’s alter ego has a letter in today’s New York Times Book Review.
To the Editor:
In connection with his review of Stephen Sondheim’s “Finishing the Hat” (“Isn’t It Rich?” Oct. 31), Paul Simon, in the Up Front, says that when he wrote the refrain to “Bridge Over Troubled Water” — “Like a bridge over troubled water, I will lay me down” — he had “no idea where those words and melody came from.” It takes nothing away from Mr. Simon to note that one apparent source of inspiration for this line was the Swan Silvertones’ gospel song “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep,” which was released in 1959. That recording, which features the wonderful Claude Jeter on lead vocals, includes the ad-libbed line “I’ll be a bridge over deep water if you trust in my name.” Mr. Simon has previously acknowledged this link.
RICHARD MCLEESE
Oak Park, Ill.
The Swan Silvertones, “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” (1959): MP3
*****
replay: a clip too good for just one day
If influence were compensable, Claude Jeter of the Swan Silvertones—a huge influence on Sam Cooke, Curtis Mayfield, Eddie Kendricks (Temptations), Al Green, even Paul Simon (who took inspiration from a line in the Swans’ “hit” “Oh Mary Don’t You Weep” [“I’ll be a bridge over deep water if you trust in my name”] when he wrote “Bridge Over Troubled Water”)—would have, when he passed earlier this year at the age of 94, died a wealthy man.
Swan Silvertones, “Only Believe,” live
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lagniappe
When he leaves the house [in NYC], he whistles his favorite tune, ‘What A Friend We Have In Jesus,’ while greeting the assorted neighborhood junkies and prostitutes who knew him mainly as sometime manager of the [Hotel] Cecil. ‘What’s new, Jeter,’ they ask. ‘Nothing new, nothing good, just thank God for life up here with these heathens and muggers.’
—Anthony Heilbut, The Gospel Sound: Good News and Bad Times (1971)
(Originally posted on 9/13/09.)
2009
Monday, 11/16/09
Saturday morning, driving down to Champaign-Urbana to visit my younger son Luke (Dads’ Weekend at the U of I), when the radio signal on Scott Simon’s NPR show started to fade (interviews this week with Wes Anderson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar), I took out this CD and slid it into the dashboard player—something Luke gave me, a couple years ago, for Christmas.
Wyclef Jean, Carnival II: Memoirs of an Immigrant (2007)
“Sweetest Girl (Dollar Bill)” (with Akon and Lil Wayne)
*****
“Any Other Day” (with Norah Jones)
*****
“Fast Car” (with Paul Simon)
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lagniappe
A native of Haiti, WJ established a foundation to provide aid to the people of that country, which can be found here.
Haiti is my native country, one I know as the first black nation to gain independence in 1804. Most other people seem to know Haiti only by the statistics about how bad things are there. The majority of its 8 million residents live on less than $1 per day. Unemployment is close to 80 percent, and more than half the population is under 21 years old. Haiti is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
I have been spending a lot of time talking with people in my native country to try and understand what is behind these statistics and the past escalation of violence, all of which brings tears to my eyes. I have had conversations with gang leaders, met with the police officers and sat down with the leaders of the militias and the army. I have talked with Haitians from all walks of life, all colors of skin, all backgrounds and beliefs. From all these people I hear only one thing in my head and feel only one thing in my heart–that there is only one Haiti. Every Haitian loves their country like a mother loves her child.
I see old women with large bags of rice on their heads and men on street corners selling sugarcane and mangos, all just trying to survive with a strong sense of pride. Walking past a church in my village, I hear the congregation singing an appeal to God to hear their cries and grant deliverance to Haiti. Through experiences like this, I sense where my mother and my father got their strength. Now the whole country needs to reach deep into the spirit and strength that is part of our heritage.
The objective of [my foundation] Yéle Haiti is to restore pride and a reason to hope, and for the whole country to regain the deep spirit and force that is part of our heritage.—Wyclef Jean
music clip of the day 