tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-52410631904504648882024-03-14T01:10:03.381-07:00I Witnessa politically progressive blog mixing pop culture, social commentary, personal history, and the odd relevant poem--with links to recommended sites below right-hand column of photosIWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.comBlogger333125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-7380102844004772662017-03-20T09:30:00.000-07:002017-03-20T09:46:41.755-07:00Lost WorldsHello, friends, confidants, and total strangers--anyone, I guess, who's been wondering if I am alive, or dead, or merely asleep at the switch. All I can say in my defense is: a day without blogging is sometimes as good as a year without Trump.<br />
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In reality (if such there be in this post-DT's world) I needed a break, and then the break kept getting longer and longer. But now it's been so long, I've grown a beard, outlasted a phase of Parkinson's and, as the big-time applers say, "landed a book deal." Yes, it's true, I am writing (or maybe EDiting) the text for a big picture book dedicated to the amazing and amazingly varied works of illustrator and artist William Stout. (Those with a long memory, or an interest in popular music, may recall that some years ago I wrote the Intro for a book of Bill's called <i>Legends of the Blues</i>.) And now I am rewarded with a longer challenge, a 300-page beauty published by Insight Books, presenting several hundred illustrations retracing Bill's 50-year career as comix artist, film designer, Disney Imagineer, defender of Antarctica, paleo-artist of the museum murals of prehistory, etc., etc., etc. <br />
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'Tis a puzzlement why Stout's not a household word. (He is, actually, in certain circles, where he is known as the "dinosaur man.") Anyway, I'm working to change all that... and my minor blog will just have to limp along as we see where <i>Fantastic Worlds: The Art of William Stout</i> takes us.IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-16413020511051842382016-10-29T13:20:00.000-07:002016-10-29T13:20:58.340-07:00True Bru<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrDehyEvwaDVSHM4512bz97YNtl6oyQosCtZmhYRGJuSvltObD77qJkqTrQM-gx195t0Se8wsI7Tda1C6kTopNgdgUBWTv4puZpq4jIgTx3QBN2Q-5-R_wh_CJydUU9PmxgIMhfMhVIJ2H/s1600/IMG_8305.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhrDehyEvwaDVSHM4512bz97YNtl6oyQosCtZmhYRGJuSvltObD77qJkqTrQM-gx195t0Se8wsI7Tda1C6kTopNgdgUBWTv4puZpq4jIgTx3QBN2Q-5-R_wh_CJydUU9PmxgIMhfMhVIJ2H/s320/IMG_8305.JPG" width="320" height="319" /></a></div>Matching the disposition of his Swiss forebears, my father rocked out to a gentler beat. When he thought "Jazz," he heard in his mind the softer side of Swing: Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, Artie Shaw. Bebop and after was a foreign language left to me to reckon with... later. <br />
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In the mid-Fifties his (reluctant) military career took us to Turkey, where I proceeded to contract--or so the family legend goes--one of the world's first recorded cases of Asian flu. Whatever it was, my fever kept going up and my body kept drying out, so I was sent to the local military hospital to recuperate. While I was recovering, then, I kept hearing this strange music, rhythmically percussive and sweetly keening, emanating from elsewhere on the floor; and I soon went in search of the source.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUo33-N3BRnt35NK1UrcVDncHezMLiAPLaA0nOzAPDIi3Kt1LkCZsd2c3a35CHwMq-_duREB3CAXW1F7AnBOPce2NcmyLs-FKBgGWUyg_omMELSf4fPcRKDrJPIvGnW0dhIdP5rtpOHgC6/s1600/IMG_8311.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUo33-N3BRnt35NK1UrcVDncHezMLiAPLaA0nOzAPDIi3Kt1LkCZsd2c3a35CHwMq-_duREB3CAXW1F7AnBOPce2NcmyLs-FKBgGWUyg_omMELSf4fPcRKDrJPIvGnW0dhIdP5rtpOHgC6/s320/IMG_8311.JPG" width="320" height="290" /></a></div><br />
What I found was a young airman, quarantined, with his Fifties-style portable record player and a few records by a group called the Dave Brubeck Quartet which he was playing repeatedly. The brief Modern Jazz primer he gave didn't make much of an impression on the 13-year-old rock 'n' roller I was then--I don't even remember for sure which albums he owned--but the exciting sound of Brubeck's live recordings must have stayed with me because when I did begin a rest-of-my-life fascination with Jazz a few years later, the quartet was at the center of my random, uneducated buying. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnE6gv-dDc8nSgCHb5B-yZiRlaE1eY4fpbQvdbiSeMtFFCYEj9sIBpV45ta_7JAYnBf0f7Eexk0w6vUZsbu-nW52hujVTvCThlUMOaSyTLHLFW6hyphenhyphen4QSk1efzdRmATr3SjQ6HUzUT5Q5gc/s1600/IMG_8313.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnE6gv-dDc8nSgCHb5B-yZiRlaE1eY4fpbQvdbiSeMtFFCYEj9sIBpV45ta_7JAYnBf0f7Eexk0w6vUZsbu-nW52hujVTvCThlUMOaSyTLHLFW6hyphenhyphen4QSk1efzdRmATr3SjQ6HUzUT5Q5gc/s200/IMG_8313.JPG" width="196" height="200" /></a></div>What I eventually realized was that among the Jazz LPs I listened to most, and I bought scores of Brubeck albums over the decades, were two early live recordings: <i>Jazz at Storyville: The Dave Brubeck Trio and Quartet</i> (Fantasy, with a mostly black record jacket and liner notes by Nat Hentoff quoting poet Wallace Stevens!) and <i>Dave Brubeck at Storyville: 1954</i> (Columbia, offering a clever newspaper design front and back), the tracks on both of them pieced together from sets recorded at George Wein's Boston nightclub in the early and<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZCvX3nGGMpFjuwJeZs5UJrLSzWFzAHRbzJDonTutHn0oC3cC-Zasr8ny2eUfMHGH4VN38HXoqt7fwatSxgOhncKrQL0roNzg1EsfIT6Q1or0k4_tC-capKA7befG5ZWsGaCRSNis90cES/s1600/IMG_8318.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZCvX3nGGMpFjuwJeZs5UJrLSzWFzAHRbzJDonTutHn0oC3cC-Zasr8ny2eUfMHGH4VN38HXoqt7fwatSxgOhncKrQL0roNzg1EsfIT6Q1or0k4_tC-capKA7befG5ZWsGaCRSNis90cES/s200/IMG_8318.JPG" width="199" height="200" /></a></div>mid-Fifties. Youth, <i>joie de vivre</i>, disarranged improvisation, the vivid contrast between Brubeck's Bach-influenced piano (alternatively, his locked-hands power and brutal hammering-on) and Paul Desmond's "dry martini" alto sax, these all became that most excellent rendering of Jazz as "The Sound of Surprise."<br />
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Over the decades I played and played and replayed the Storyville LPs, wearing out two or three copies of each. I reveled in the joyful abandon of "Crazy Chris" and the tender beauty (Dave practically alone for 13 minutes) of "You Go to My Head" and "Summer Song/Over the Rainbow"; those were the highlights on Fantasy, while the Columbia LP was just well-nigh perfect, first note to last--"On the Alamo," "Don't Worry About Me," "Gone with the Wind," "Back Bay Blues," "Here Lies Love," and "When You're Smiling"--which I certainly was.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2E_ogbhTTsZdOSGfu8aYD0pLikIIOAJGh6JcuJqKwn1jvfPa-pA_V95ep90EsE5lXstDNnP5kypG65-tRP9c0-DzRqjI824DC0JGF26NgLcnHMH8CoyT71gzo0M6Sy4J5aE67B6pnT4H/s1600/IMG_8309.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhg2E_ogbhTTsZdOSGfu8aYD0pLikIIOAJGh6JcuJqKwn1jvfPa-pA_V95ep90EsE5lXstDNnP5kypG65-tRP9c0-DzRqjI824DC0JGF26NgLcnHMH8CoyT71gzo0M6Sy4J5aE67B6pnT4H/s320/IMG_8309.JPG" width="320" height="285" /></a></div>I'm now grinning from ear to ear because some enterprising producer-collector in Europe has gotten his hands on master tapes comprising <i>The Complete Storyville Broadcasts</i> (early 1952 to July of 1954, on the Essential Jazz Classics label)--meaning the music from both LP albums plus another 120 minutes of hitherto unissued tracks of comparable sound and quality; in other words, four years of broadcast recordings now released on three 70-minute CDs. ("Wow" was my stunned response.) <br />
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There's some minor repertory overlap with other Brubeck albums (and announcer Hentoff works too hard at being both erudite and amusing), but any Brubeck fan can easily welcome the new old versions of "Stardust," "Undecided," and "All the Things You Are" plus uncommon bongo bashments ("Body and Soul"), frenzied fingerings ("Frenesi"), and rippling reminders of then-recent success ("I'll Remember April" and "I Didn't Know What Time It Was")--a total of more than 40<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ATJlk2laegHsbIoo-w2qMpHMKGjdzFzHYpL0hmNnGjg-ybWDqjxUFMwSy_L-Fe6PZLfzyhak5uhHzCj30DatV2_j__ZTTq5k6STH98YJEGT84wCrxJw3d12Mjg1biLniFIhhyphenhyphenjpRS8tx/s1600/IMG_8316.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0ATJlk2laegHsbIoo-w2qMpHMKGjdzFzHYpL0hmNnGjg-ybWDqjxUFMwSy_L-Fe6PZLfzyhak5uhHzCj30DatV2_j__ZTTq5k6STH98YJEGT84wCrxJw3d12Mjg1biLniFIhhyphenhyphenjpRS8tx/s320/IMG_8316.JPG" width="320" height="296" /></a></div>performances added to the quartet's discography! (Actually, I was at first surprised that some eager Columbia producer hadn't, back then, combined a few of the earlier shorter pieces with the five dated February 7, 1953--"Love Walked In/I'll Never Smile Again," "The Way You Look Tonight," "These Foolish Things," and "Perdido"--in order to create a sequel, <i>Jazz at Storyville Volume 2</i>, say. But once my fan-boy enthusiasm cooled down, I realized that the found performances aren't really as compelling as those used in the original two albums from Columbia and Fantasy.)<br />
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No matter, I have them all now. It's been 60 years since the Asian flu brought me to Brubeck, Desmond and, eventually, Boston's Storyville. With this three CD set now as witness, I believe I'm as close as I'll ever be, this side of heaven, to that first magical encounter with something called "Modern Jazz," and with the Brubeck Quartet's exciting version of it. IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-57038720415749256802016-10-11T10:34:00.000-07:002016-10-11T11:08:29.595-07:00Who's Left?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeDXShVDVgLbq0LXQj5McVVlIuUcCPDWxe4SzOZEtSjiBxG9jNWASqQKdstDNQkKNkLCL-IlysliyARyLvnk7oqISmUZsqZ75POViUP_Pm6nDb3xQfFdFer2aNE2HWNTTGx_MeNutFKyNJ/s1600/IMG_8304.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgeDXShVDVgLbq0LXQj5McVVlIuUcCPDWxe4SzOZEtSjiBxG9jNWASqQKdstDNQkKNkLCL-IlysliyARyLvnk7oqISmUZsqZ75POViUP_Pm6nDb3xQfFdFer2aNE2HWNTTGx_MeNutFKyNJ/s320/IMG_8304.JPG" width="320" height="303" /></a></div>Springsteen has a new autobiography out, titled <i>Born to Run</i> (not to be confused with the 35-year-old <i>bi</i>-ography of Bruce of the same title, by Rock critic Dave Marsh). I'll probably buy a copy but I confess I still haven't read the similarly bulky tell-alls of Keith Richards and Pete Townshend (pictured at left). That neglect is partly the result of vision difficulties due to Parkinson's, but it's also a reflection of my increasing indifference to Rock celebrity-hood. <br />
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Springsteen snuck in and out of Seattle this past week, a stop on his book tour which I learned about only after the fact. I had seen him on Colbert's <i>Late Show</i> a week earlier, where he appeared oddly subdued and diffident. (Different spotlights make for different stagefrights, I guess.)<br />
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At least Bruce's book must offer some solid workingman's politics along with the Rock 'n Roll braggadocio; for example, he's already identified Donald Trump, correctly I'd say, as a "moron"--a judgment I'll bet that Pete Townshend of the Who would also render. Like Bruce, Pete and his lead singer Roger Daltrey were both known for their lippy, working class attitude. When I wrote about them a few years ago, it was in connection with the Who's lengthy masterpiece, the rock opera <i>Tommy</i>. Here's that three-parter revived:<br />
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1) <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2012/09/who-staged-tommy.html">Part the First</a>. <br />
2) <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2012/09/tommy-who.html">Part Two</a>. <br />
3) <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2012/10/you-better-you-bette.html">Third Part</a>.IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-20485174268972211232016-09-26T12:14:00.000-07:002016-09-26T12:14:59.082-07:00All(b)Lose<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU_NlBqHjtmudmVTy4XIf14ijL8BaFa86r8xlIHBm8jBKlKI-khUwIjxUnYQ3vpsNWCy8dtM2EYSnHSmEsc1wPYBOCsazpC-2lI-PQeyhKkULuQ7w5-MnnW1OSZdgDse1rKb5tBp-Mr6-C/s1600/IMG_8296.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjU_NlBqHjtmudmVTy4XIf14ijL8BaFa86r8xlIHBm8jBKlKI-khUwIjxUnYQ3vpsNWCy8dtM2EYSnHSmEsc1wPYBOCsazpC-2lI-PQeyhKkULuQ7w5-MnnW1OSZdgDse1rKb5tBp-Mr6-C/s320/IMG_8296.JPG" width="240" height="320" /></a></div>My header up there claims to include Politics occasionally. With the Presidential debates upon us, and the election mere weeks away, I guess it's time to speak up. I loathe everything that Humpty Dumpty the bloated, race-baiting egomaniac thinks, says, and does. (Has anyone remarked on the number of negative English words built around that <i>-ump</i> sound?) I just wish I could be unquestioningly positive about his opponent, our ex-Sec of State. Hillary stands forthrightly for women, but she drags the Clinton name, infame, and a few scandals of her own around with her. Can't we just put a Constitutional ban on family dynasties (accent on the <i>-nasties</i>) in Politics and be done with it (or them)?<br />
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Anyway, <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2012/04/blue-state-reds-red-state-blues.html">here</a> are some thoughts I keyed-in some time ago...IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-20467523389938991052016-09-15T10:51:00.000-07:002016-09-15T10:51:33.860-07:00Jack's Back<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsNi5fA8LE8DiZSqalyz3nM7arC_uqNWD5CHBRnoRvktJuhxqsEKWwU-q2ZH4CNHvs3v2W52nz825WiYioZv9OWeUrRoQ0-FZN0t7uSstsa_zk2buZZ6n60C60oxFib84f5KthSXKouiau/s1600/IMG_8294.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjsNi5fA8LE8DiZSqalyz3nM7arC_uqNWD5CHBRnoRvktJuhxqsEKWwU-q2ZH4CNHvs3v2W52nz825WiYioZv9OWeUrRoQ0-FZN0t7uSstsa_zk2buZZ6n60C60oxFib84f5KthSXKouiau/s320/IMG_8294.JPG" width="200" height="320" /></a></div>The small package in my mailbox yesterday held a welcome surprise, a brand new volume from the Library of America--<i>The Unknown Kerouac: Rare, Unpublished & Newly Translated Writings</i>--no reprint this time, but a 450-page original collection that expands available Kerouac handily by dint of a mixture of quickie two- or three- page mini-essays, longer unpublished letters and journal excerpts, lifts from earlier drafts of <i>On the Road</i>, a cogent interview with friend John Clellon Holmes, plus <i>The Night Is My Woman</i> and <i>Old Bull in the Bowery</i>, two fiction novellas written originally in Quebecker French. <br />
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I'm a hundred pages into <i>The Unknown</i> already, fascinated by the unbridled flow of Jack's prose; it's not all essential of course, but the volume and variety can't be denied. (One timely aspect is the insistence by editor Todd Tietchen and translator Jean-Christophe Cloutier that Kerouac was acutely, painfully, aware of being treated as an unwelcome refugee, for speaking and occasionally writing a demotic version of French. Like the Cajuns who moved to Louisiana, the 900,000 French Canadians who migrated to New England had a hard time of it.)<br />
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And this gives me an excuse to call the reader's attention to my earlier posts on Jack. Together they cover most of the Kerouac items issued in the past 45 years. You might read them in this order: <br />
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1) <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/06/good-beat.html">Good Beat</a><br />
2) <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/06/always-beat-2.html">Always Beat 2</a> <br />
3) <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2010/02/kerouac-crack-up.html">Jack: The Crack Up</a> <br />
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Jack and his pals and the many he influenced, past and present... the Beats go on. IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-62226731378111404132016-04-30T10:20:00.000-07:002016-04-30T10:20:54.129-07:00Who's That Writin'?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSkXUwIyHefm-uw3ZFL7BYgn6NBTIrYPJZLSPuOcSYGC9vXTMTiBotA5lE3jPBbEJwQB2C__Np8MkZAhvVEaZQ8b7AGU4d8oLAYm6_Uj8xsIX6ySomShDYqeoelj5quGyWEyTCJDAmIhr2/s1600/IMG_8281.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjSkXUwIyHefm-uw3ZFL7BYgn6NBTIrYPJZLSPuOcSYGC9vXTMTiBotA5lE3jPBbEJwQB2C__Np8MkZAhvVEaZQ8b7AGU4d8oLAYm6_Uj8xsIX6ySomShDYqeoelj5quGyWEyTCJDAmIhr2/s320/IMG_8281.JPG" /></a></div>April is not the bluesest month, except maybe this year... <br />
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Idly internetting recently, I found and bought what are sure to be the two best Blues albums of 2016, <i>Blues & Ballads--A Folksinger's Songbook: Volumes I & II</i> by Luther Dickinson, and <i>God Don't Never Change: The Songs of Blind Willie Johnson</i> performed by a group of solid re-senders. (If I find any other candidate LPs with longer, wordier titles, well, I guess the Blues Millenium really will be upon us.) <br />
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But for now, if you know your Blind Willie Johnson, there's only one right answer to the question posed up top: "John the Revelator, wrote the Book of the Seven Seals." Of course, an equally accurate response might be "Blind Willie himself"--the great<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo2PcYMWVwzlo0_pmhL8v3-iH41qJkxe-8UsfjOUAKt3HDiJmrGVmVf7G3Cmunr1Y9LkqraU0L-DAzd1_c5MVm1A_8RRx5hS8BLNOesgCE8ffHWxH_UHwUF7AaylMr3GcbyieHAi3wIo0T/s1600/IMG_8284.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgo2PcYMWVwzlo0_pmhL8v3-iH41qJkxe-8UsfjOUAKt3HDiJmrGVmVf7G3Cmunr1Y9LkqraU0L-DAzd1_c5MVm1A_8RRx5hS8BLNOesgCE8ffHWxH_UHwUF7AaylMr3GcbyieHAi3wIo0T/s320/IMG_8284.JPG" /></a></div>gravelly voiced "Bluesman" of the Twenties; no relation to the other Johnson (Robert, that is, who also recorded a total of 29 songs, fixing the all-too-brief recording careers of both men). Willie's own unique repertoire included... <i>{No Sinful Country Blues; Sacred Gospel Numbers Only}</i> ...his "Nobody's Fault But Mine," "Motherless Children Have a Hard Time," "Bye and Bye I'm Goin' to See the King," "God Don't Never Change," "Trouble Soon Be Over," "Let Your Light Shine on Me," "John the Revelator," and the timeless, ethereal, mostly instrumental number "Dark Was the Night, Cold Was the Ground," which decades back was chosen for the space capsule carrying music samples from Earth out to the Universe.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfXC8WQpCR0bCMIzveFcdKSHL-ydAmSvenjnMNjd7YFPoGOIEqzGmDcm0l_7TIkIIdUG9d53aUybP6PO_bSsnWueXrB7vWrtS3S6_24yuA4wkg6nx2cefRaG3xIUb7r0oFjTbZ9DxO2ni/s1600/IMG_8286.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjlfXC8WQpCR0bCMIzveFcdKSHL-ydAmSvenjnMNjd7YFPoGOIEqzGmDcm0l_7TIkIIdUG9d53aUybP6PO_bSsnWueXrB7vWrtS3S6_24yuA4wkg6nx2cefRaG3xIUb7r0oFjTbZ9DxO2ni/s200/IMG_8286.JPG" /></a></div>The eleven Johnson songs recorded this time around are performed by a suitably stellar cast: Lucinda Williams, the Cowboy Junkies (who incorporate samples of Willie's "Jesus Is Coming Soon"), Derek Trucks & Susan Tedeschi, Maria McKee, Rickie Lee Jones (a surprisingly beautiful rendition of "Dark Was the Night"), and Mr. Sui Generis himself, Tom Waits, whose gargle-and-grit vocal in "The Soul of a Man" is an almost perfect match for the Blind Willie original. Many highlights fill this Alligator Records CD, but let me just note that Blind Willie's muscular slide guitar stylings, even as refashioned here, are joyous and revelatory; and what some Philistines might call his "barbaric yawp" an acquired taste you really do need to acquire!<br />
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Meanwhile, serving as a suitable path to the <i>Blues & Ballads</i> CD is a hill-country<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZOlJbRFbOxrNdkJrTY_oyO_usbUnR921fffCjD80bbuf-PoQWD-hE0MIwSKbUOk_zanW1VHQZS8HuZPndsXEdplhUIBPTrTI1a6lBy-aEVFRIshzOX5Zh2K9ANJh04WDHF7WWcTOVRRAU/s1600/IMG_8287.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZOlJbRFbOxrNdkJrTY_oyO_usbUnR921fffCjD80bbuf-PoQWD-hE0MIwSKbUOk_zanW1VHQZS8HuZPndsXEdplhUIBPTrTI1a6lBy-aEVFRIshzOX5Zh2K9ANJh04WDHF7WWcTOVRRAU/s320/IMG_8287.JPG" /></a></div>version of Willie's "Bye and Bye..." This track, as by Luther Dickinson and the Rising Star Fife & Drum Band, offers the outdoors, barbecue-and-dance sound (revived in recent decades by Mississippi's Fat Possum Records): tootling fife and martial drum, rollin'-reelin'and-rockin'-out to the glory of God. Luther (of North Mississippi Allstars fame) has honed his all-inclusive Blues over many years; the CD's tongue-in-cheek title and plain packaging (for one disc, not two), with hand-scrawled lyrics, are maybe meant to suggest a bootleg LP reissue of old-timey music, but there's nothing amateurish about the picnic-and-barbecue festivities. I hear rich slatherings of slide guitar over rockabilly roots, of Fred Macdowell and Mississippi John Hurt, of Memphis jug bands, Huddie Ledbetter, and Tommy the third Johnson (Robert and Blind Willie too)--the Country Blues of Texas, the Deep Blues of the Delta, some Piedmont South East picking, and languid music made on the Dickinson family front porch.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Hs_WfcdeMqrH9cxWemZ1mkdHqHaaHuU9sKZCQVMi4FcZJUfbaVdGulKHJYpxOVj0C_FkfV7Q-by11vmo7ox8YJFAWpp5lgrWNXsEC-4UM7gpiFhU9E46PBhXWnqT6RnYf8w9nfXW1GVq/s1600/IMG_8292.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh_Hs_WfcdeMqrH9cxWemZ1mkdHqHaaHuU9sKZCQVMi4FcZJUfbaVdGulKHJYpxOVj0C_FkfV7Q-by11vmo7ox8YJFAWpp5lgrWNXsEC-4UM7gpiFhU9E46PBhXWnqT6RnYf8w9nfXW1GVq/s400/IMG_8292.JPG" /></a></div>I commend to you a half dozen numbers in particular (of the 21 total, divided into two "Volumes" of ten and eleven tracks respectively, like the two sides of an uncommonly generous LP): "Hurry Up Sunrise," the opening track, is co-credited to the late Otha Turner, last of the hill-country, fife-and-drum Bluesmen, keenly resurrected here; soon followed by the piano thunder/slidin' lightnin' of dance number "Bang Bang Lulu," and then "Moonshine" with its gentle guitar harmonics, for a sort-of remembrance tree of nights spent playing in some back-country bar. This opening threesome leads to a shapelier fife-and-slide, gotta-dance anthem called "Mean Old Wind Died Down," plus "Ain't No Grave," a gospel soul hymn featuring great vocalist Mavis Staple. <br />
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And so, skipping ruthlessly over another five or ten gems, we fetch up against the haunted final track, "Horseshoe"--multiple guitars, fond memories of Junior Kimbrough, Otha Turner, and others, and more harmonics ringing out to the very end. Blues & Ballads... & the Best of a whole vanishing tradition. Way to go, Luther! <br />
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IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-91956811009379480972016-04-17T17:37:00.000-07:002016-04-25T11:18:21.087-07:00In Dublin's Fair City<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC85ddonFUXKLpFJS6yYoVMnjUFRaKn8JENF9-iUB-P8AfHfWelEtIWKF8BmUlDCfsjFTcrlCu4rtHp95y14cX49kU291x6tvHFz0pVj3ZiyzckAcHOnEd0BMs8GgzgSLsJLyqR8ZuR2vl/s1600/IMG_8279.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC85ddonFUXKLpFJS6yYoVMnjUFRaKn8JENF9-iUB-P8AfHfWelEtIWKF8BmUlDCfsjFTcrlCu4rtHp95y14cX49kU291x6tvHFz0pVj3ZiyzckAcHOnEd0BMs8GgzgSLsJLyqR8ZuR2vl/s320/IMG_8279.JPG" /></a></div>My wife and I live in a two-separate-wings house with our two oldest granddaughters and their parents--i.e., the McEachern family. <br />
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Madelyn ("Maddie") is a senior in high school and a regionally, perhaps nationally known rower; long and lovely, she's also the team captain of her rowing club. She loves the ocean and would go to Hawaii for college if it were in the coral, but she has chosen the University of San Diego as next-best. There were many schools competing; as with her older sister, every college she applied to said Yes. (Or as Mrs. Leopold Bloom might say: "yes I said yes I will Yes.")<br />
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Lliralyn ("Llira") in contrast is a college sophomore--attending Bucknell University actually, in Lewisberg, Pennsylvania. Another smart and beautiful young woman, she's given up soccer in order to major in some version of Chemical Engineering (huh?) and will soon get to experience her junior year abroad, at University College, <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2yaohFGMcepGAXM8djN7ZUHHZAeJdtXpI7HULj_4PQicw4VOEjG4UFCZhbnLVISfzNeX7Uo0hak1ccMxAQSz2GT_HeRXebXWcBGfX644XP4TdunanSzL9aKQXN4q22sRLMPU9jE4Ek16f/s1600/IMG_8276.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2yaohFGMcepGAXM8djN7ZUHHZAeJdtXpI7HULj_4PQicw4VOEjG4UFCZhbnLVISfzNeX7Uo0hak1ccMxAQSz2GT_HeRXebXWcBGfX644XP4TdunanSzL9aKQXN4q22sRLMPU9jE4Ek16f/s320/IMG_8276.JPG" /></a></div>Dublin. (Her own version of <i>Portrait of the Chemist as a Young Woman</i> perhaps.)<br />
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Naturally, family matriarch Sandie and I hope to visit Eire's umpteen green fields while Llira's resident there--both of us for the sightseeing, and me for the Modern Lit-inspired, romantic visions derived from the works of James Joyce and William Butler Yeats, Seamus Heaney and Sean O'Casey. (Ireland remains the most conspicuous gap in my stamped-to-overflowing passport. How have I so cavalierly neglected the land of leprechauns, the Easter Rising, Galway Bay, and Guinness Stout? I even walk with the aid of a modified shillelagh these Parkinsonian days!)<br />
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So... as short and sweet as an April morn in County Clare... <i>Slainte</i>!<br />
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IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-72166667071599759642016-01-11T14:56:00.000-08:002016-01-11T15:02:01.731-08:00Garnered<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDxU0iQvpSAZNNHFFRSBmr61Np2JkE-izPA9OGovQxxyHrXY5JePg6LN_mr0xvYmURDTtG6Y390cgOhIYx4A-m9C0R-yOokZhS4gCU8Rkm9EXhe7mK61l9n3r_L0AYdB2szeSCYscHw5u/s1600/IMG_8255.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggDxU0iQvpSAZNNHFFRSBmr61Np2JkE-izPA9OGovQxxyHrXY5JePg6LN_mr0xvYmURDTtG6Y390cgOhIYx4A-m9C0R-yOokZhS4gCU8Rkm9EXhe7mK61l9n3r_L0AYdB2szeSCYscHw5u/s320/IMG_8255.JPG" /></a></div>It's not much of a stretch to designate pianist Erroll Garner the Rodney Dangerfield of Jazz. From the Forties to--what?--the early Seventies, Garner was praised for the myriad sessions he'd cut for labels large and small--Dial and Blue Note, Mercury/EmArcy and Columbia--and he had (still has) one of the most popular and best-selling albums in Jazz history, his <i>Concert by the Sea</i>, recorded live in Carmel, California, in 1955.<br />
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Then his place in Jazz seemed to vanish. The Fusion/Disco/Rock Drums/Death of Jazz era came crashing down, maybe more on Erroll than others. His exuberant, happy piano was ruled fatuous and simplistic, partly because he couldn't read music. (So every session was truly improvised, first note to last.) The style he had devised--long, quizzical, inventive introductions followed by a kind of theme-and-variations dissection of the song, ending (usually) in a percussive, emphatic, slowing-to-a-stop of the music--was finally rejected as more ignorant than original, and his habit of grunting along with the melody sneered at (before Keith Jarrett brought a whole barnyard of ecstatic noises to the recording studio). Because the diminutive, elfin Erroll needed telephone directories to lift him higher on the piano bench, even this quirk was held against him. Yes, he couldn't "get no respect." <br />
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Garner died in the Seventies before the digital era and multiple-reissue CD sets brought artists back from Jazz obscurity. But throughout the decades of his eclipse, <i>Concert by the Sea</i> kept selling. I first heard Garner in the early Sixties, another college kid more ignorant than hip, drawn to the bouncy joy of his records, and then I got to see Erroll in action at the Seattle World's Fair. I didn't know anything about Jazz back then, but I had no trouble enjoying Garner at the keyboard; I subsequently learned of his proficiency (able to record enough tracks in one three-hour session to produce three separate 12-inch LongPlay records!), and I even loved his deluxe two-disc set of tunes celebrating Paris and France, many of them played on harpsichord. My vinyl copy of the Carmel concert had to be replaced a couple of times as the years passed, and I finally gave up imagining an expanded issue. But a couple of months ago, without much fanfare, <i>The Complete Concert by the Sea</i> suddenly appeared, 60 years on.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuiremW0-ulwaWu9MmFpSubthwV6wmbdv-Ge0OuJ-8hp6BcvBK9zwPmDgupyyUMRVddg4PGsbTZcCx5mmHhyphenhyphenvVfpffQgFqvkBiLlC0DVQrnEgp2Ahi-1NESIs6DXPepIE10AtHSsNtn0TQ/s1600/IMG_8251.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuiremW0-ulwaWu9MmFpSubthwV6wmbdv-Ge0OuJ-8hp6BcvBK9zwPmDgupyyUMRVddg4PGsbTZcCx5mmHhyphenhyphenvVfpffQgFqvkBiLlC0DVQrnEgp2Ahi-1NESIs6DXPepIE10AtHSsNtn0TQ/s320/IMG_8251.JPG" /></a></div>First we must acknowledge the startling largesse of this set--now twice as long as the hallowed original--launching 22 grand excursions instead of the merely wonderful 11 chosen for the classic <i>Concert</i> album. And let no man (no <i>woe</i>-man) beguile you with carping, because the new numbers are just as splendid as the long-familiar eleven. BUT the set now does bump up against a couple of minor matters: a possible surfeit of sufficiency, and (what we might call) the natural order of things. <i>The Complete Concert</i> now takes up two of the three discs, each totaling over 60 minutes in length, so we are farther than ever from the third-of-an-hour sides of the original 12" disc. It is unexpectedly clear that the LP era trained many millions of us His-Master's-Voice, Pavlov's vinyl dogs to live out our lives in 20-minute segments. I guess you could say that these 60-minute CDs are therefore easy to listen to but hard to hear!<br />
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Also, recreating the "new" full-length concert rearranged for a chronological placement of tunes, seems to destroy the structured rise-and-fall, the careful build-up to a musical climax, that I believe one can hear in the 11 selections as originally presented. (This arrangement you can hear on Disc Three of the new set. I suppose there must be hundreds of concert albums that silently offer a selection arranged for effectiveness, but being able immediately to compare the two versions I'll bet is uncommon.) <br />
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I don't want to belabor the matters mentioned. This three CD set is a veritable feast for sore ears. (As we used to say in Spanish class, <i>Punto final</i>.) Instead, I'm going to end the brief review right here by advising all Garner and <i>Concert by the Sea</i> fans to proceed with abandon rather than caution. What was for 60 years a concise source of piano pleasure has belatedly and amazingly become an embarrassment of riches... even if henceforth I may personally choose to program Disc Three ahead of the other two. IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-87382740986228172652015-10-27T12:07:00.002-07:002015-10-27T16:24:53.838-07:00Justified<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSizIrxDWxcJyitqtQDXfujWvlEKjK2a3LlipuRgA5_n51H3UXR13jQuAHcpF44RlBuvWJYkONFCAtLMN7FATZa5pw7DwKO8Lyp5k1Q5B-K6Z7RZ8s5e19ztSreh5QemLdjUKvxFpaRjYI/s1600/IMG_8244.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiSizIrxDWxcJyitqtQDXfujWvlEKjK2a3LlipuRgA5_n51H3UXR13jQuAHcpF44RlBuvWJYkONFCAtLMN7FATZa5pw7DwKO8Lyp5k1Q5B-K6Z7RZ8s5e19ztSreh5QemLdjUKvxFpaRjYI/s320/IMG_8244.JPG" /></a></div>I'm hip deep in a new Jazz post but struggling to find the time and energy to finish it. <br />
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In the mean-between, here's a plug for the best TV series I never knew about during its six seasons on cable, the coal-blooded, Kentucky-fried, hick-but-hip Harlan-County Western called <i>Justified</i>, starring lean, lanky, laconic Timothy Olyphant as U.S. Marshal Raylan Givens, riding herd and drawing down on modern-day do-badders hiding out in the hoots and hollers of mountain bluegrass country. This is the first and finest on-going film production ever truly to capture the sights and sounds and surreal mess-arounds of an Elmore Leonard reality. Oh, there've been superior versions of single novels (as well as crapulous misconceptions), but no regular series capable of recreating Leonard's irreverent characters mouthing his inimitable, pared-down, sly'n'wry dialogue.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8YJAhVRmEgYubja-h94DxoWyas86bgDd3KFGhKcVwdKV9mH8eyHqYHH-L05StDylqcBh93tB611GYFMYRb1T77qwijdYvysl_ay7w8yo4o6YNXq9qW4TMj_B0lkmoJvapw6lPvDbHli99/s1600/IMG_8241.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi8YJAhVRmEgYubja-h94DxoWyas86bgDd3KFGhKcVwdKV9mH8eyHqYHH-L05StDylqcBh93tB611GYFMYRb1T77qwijdYvysl_ay7w8yo4o6YNXq9qW4TMj_B0lkmoJvapw6lPvDbHli99/s320/IMG_8241.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Yeah, quick-draw Raylan's the real thang, and he ain't alone. There's boss marshal Art, brazen gift-of-gab villain Boyd Crowder, several sexy-yet-cerebral women (Ava, Winona, Rachel, Loretta, and maximally more), and two-bit bad guys caught up in cool mischief, coal mines, and cold-blooded murder. I binge-watched all fifty-plus hours one recent Netflixed week, and when the fine fun was over, I entered that storied, many-roomed mansion... justified. IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-61691890896288526432015-08-24T12:21:00.000-07:002015-08-26T11:23:54.122-07:00Fairport, RT, and Me<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2c23PXQtTN7uvQTRvtsCH24939sF8brDQSdoeDGsH4seWSBU45fW_5_16qetvM4uNSpXCfWc6Hvg-IgIHpDaqFd6mlBKbEPk2G3T_Ugs7Wo8SQ8Y24AKvxeR8niMgr5ckDMzDESpaSfbV/s1600/IMG_8211.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi2c23PXQtTN7uvQTRvtsCH24939sF8brDQSdoeDGsH4seWSBU45fW_5_16qetvM4uNSpXCfWc6Hvg-IgIHpDaqFd6mlBKbEPk2G3T_Ugs7Wo8SQ8Y24AKvxeR8niMgr5ckDMzDESpaSfbV/s320/IMG_8211.JPG" /></a></div>It's been a weird Summer in the Pacific Northwest. After a mild Winter and a similarly drier Spring, we experienced very hot weather in June and July followed by a cool down in August. So all the growing came a month early, and now it looks like Fall will be early too. No climate change around here, of course... But I guess the Repugs have other Obama bones to pick over as the Elections "Season" heats up. (Can't we all just hibernate for the next 11 or 12 months?)<br />
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These Dog Days instead are a perfect time to check out the music, new or old, being offered at your local CD store, Download site, or Amazon supplier-subordinate. I've been especially song-conscious (see why below); here are five of my current favorites, lifted from five different albums:<br />
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Leading off--but dating from the fifteen-years-gone centenary, "Kurt Weill 2000," celebrated 'round the globe--is Karen Kohler and her version of "River Chanty," the<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8UjmkbEv5d4QwIfOS-3_IKTumGLb9zwkSNTieMAo5YcoE4prby-wnGuAVUtgWoVnMv7KWnXwxcxTYdmHtLCL9pTTw-Z6y_jZevD8fOEZu49QuZlIpjS1V9biGhWylFCN7TRPjMFWe_w2g/s1600/IMG_8213.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh8UjmkbEv5d4QwIfOS-3_IKTumGLb9zwkSNTieMAo5YcoE4prby-wnGuAVUtgWoVnMv7KWnXwxcxTYdmHtLCL9pTTw-Z6y_jZevD8fOEZu49QuZlIpjS1V9biGhWylFCN7TRPjMFWe_w2g/s320/IMG_8213.JPG" /></a></div>concluding track on <i>Jam and Spice: The Songs of Kurt Weill</i>. "River Chanty" is one of five songs Weill composed with Maxwell Anderson for a musical version of <i>Huckleberry Finn</i>, that died along with Weill in 1950. Ms. Kohler has a lovely voice (tending more to musical theater's stylings than to Opera's soprano screeching), employs idiomatic German, French, and English in the 16 songs offered, and evinces a general joie de vivre that makes the whole album a joy to live through and listen to. Plus she is backed by a crackerjack ensemble (including cello, clarinet, trumpet, banjo, and accordion) on all but one tune, arranged and conducted by Robert Rene Galvan; excellent versions of "Berlin im Licht," "My Ship," "Surabaya-Johnny," "Lonely House," "Youkali," et al, but none so sweet and simple, so alert but resigned, as "River Chanty" with its mixed-emotions refrain:<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigIHw6eM5BOQIQkq7e73xGM8HfBsXx0ouV8Q3i2suVcag0Owzug-gbkA0llc1BFIAu76-v-0DZxE2epB6fXu-nXpYBUZEXA9l7bESRQ3uQYn4eTuPdDYXbjcV3oXUkYF5xIiKuFjwbM9pj/s1600/IMG_8231.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEigIHw6eM5BOQIQkq7e73xGM8HfBsXx0ouV8Q3i2suVcag0Owzug-gbkA0llc1BFIAu76-v-0DZxE2epB6fXu-nXpYBUZEXA9l7bESRQ3uQYn4eTuPdDYXbjcV3oXUkYF5xIiKuFjwbM9pj/s320/IMG_8231.JPG" /></a></div><i>Where you been river, where you goin' today/ What you bringin' me river, river,/ What you takin' away?... Who you been stealin' from river,/ Who you been friendin' today?/ What you bringin' me river, river,/ What you takin' away? <br />
</i><br />
The Weill piece sounds like a 19th century folk tune, while Martin Simpson's astringent new love song "Dark Swift and Bright Swallow" (from Topic TXCD591, <i>Murmurs</i> as by super folk trio Simpson-Cutting-Kerr) could have come from any alert Romantic poet, and been written down at any time in the past 300 years.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu5sxTb78nodc8HrgpnK0lSf4qT28m-4Zwu5EQaWFlCXumFJN6kGAwQT100Ag5tK6AHOavv1dUxWK2j07e54QdJSSAu773wZBPIU83WVCFYpzb67O1xq7iRn85AcAFYVNd4W6Th7_zDjBC/s1600/IMG_8230.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhu5sxTb78nodc8HrgpnK0lSf4qT28m-4Zwu5EQaWFlCXumFJN6kGAwQT100Ag5tK6AHOavv1dUxWK2j07e54QdJSSAu773wZBPIU83WVCFYpzb67O1xq7iRn85AcAFYVNd4W6Th7_zDjBC/s320/IMG_8230.JPG" /></a></div>Preeminent songwriter, songcatcher, folk-and-blues guitarist Simpson (plus Andy Cutting on diatonic accordion and Nancy Kerr on fiddle), has shaped a lilting, loving melody hiding a much darker story from WWII (see Simpson's notes):<br />
<br />
<i>April sun on Slapton Ley, between the lagoon<br />
and the haunted sea,<br />
I was thinking of war and cruelty when<br />
Spring's first Swallow split the sky<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4slkrbSCF5yNGjFIynK_1evG44GHv74cYrd-HU9V-K89gcs6SCJoS_Lkk9L9qzYFN1TlXNZ1f-zsoFN0isXeUE2WBMRata3A5Drt-i_ZHqU-NQ3Ptb2br33SVIBgihRkidGYVLpPmBqwP/s1600/IMG_8232.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4slkrbSCF5yNGjFIynK_1evG44GHv74cYrd-HU9V-K89gcs6SCJoS_Lkk9L9qzYFN1TlXNZ1f-zsoFN0isXeUE2WBMRata3A5Drt-i_ZHqU-NQ3Ptb2br33SVIBgihRkidGYVLpPmBqwP/s320/IMG_8232.JPG" /></a></div>And I was lifted above all care as the Swallow<br />
swung through the salted air,<br />
Come from Savannah and desert and sea to<br />
mark another year for me...<br />
And for you my Love and Eternity.</i><br />
<br />
Love, death, war, two birds of Britain, and a birthday ditty too; at awards time this one should win song and performance of the year.<br />
<br />
One remarkable sidebar of the British invasion of 1964 or so was the "trad arr": out-of-the-distant-past discoveries rendered 20th century-friendly by real green-fields, Blessed Isles Folk/Rock groups like Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span. Fairport will soon celebrate 50 years together; only Simon Nicol remains from the original group whose list of important ex-Fairporters includes Richard Thompson,<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC-AosHLPweQLXYl3Kf79m0tVXjsNQ6fGq5ZSsi3UFRUCf3HSDpS84M9Wz616ADPdVToT9ptxZ6Pk57XFAnclW1tC_r7tG0i9amC1_OMZG74OiJrVAXmN54d1L7M8GHtSVxmsJJNg4rQks/s1600/IMG_8224.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiC-AosHLPweQLXYl3Kf79m0tVXjsNQ6fGq5ZSsi3UFRUCf3HSDpS84M9Wz616ADPdVToT9ptxZ6Pk57XFAnclW1tC_r7tG0i9amC1_OMZG74OiJrVAXmN54d1L7M8GHtSVxmsJJNg4rQks/s320/IMG_8224.JPG" /></a></div>Sandy Denny, and Dave Swarbrick). Simon, who writes rarely and sings reluctantly, functions as interpreter rather than creator most of the time, which forces the group to rely on current member Chris Leslie (often too "twee" or spiritual for me) or "friends of Fairport" like Ralph McTell, Rob Beattie, and P.J. Wright, for the latest song advancements. Still, their brand-new album <i>Myths and Heroes</i> (Matty Grooves MGCD053) is a corker--mixing jigs and ballads, rocks and reels, plus one beauty from the proud British tradition of songs shredding WWI. Credited to the unidentified Irish trio of Laird/Starrett/McRory, "John Condon" is a quiet, haunted, harrowing account of all that useless death:<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK4GCXn6Q5nB2yym-CZrPDT3Yu7tgqHu6f8ibfY7GTpC2_Y5p7vaaA5LaH7l2iC1NH5giQ2FXI-9IUzvLd98OWUmjL-UuOjuVrd4lhIWZsQxG5rJwYjay5hqXqeyD_XPJLDIfhL57bHKFT/s1600/IMG_8225.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiK4GCXn6Q5nB2yym-CZrPDT3Yu7tgqHu6f8ibfY7GTpC2_Y5p7vaaA5LaH7l2iC1NH5giQ2FXI-9IUzvLd98OWUmjL-UuOjuVrd4lhIWZsQxG5rJwYjay5hqXqeyD_XPJLDIfhL57bHKFT/s320/IMG_8225.JPG" /></a></div><br />
<i>Just a day another day, beneath a Belgian sun<br />
Past grave on grave, row upon row, until I see the name John Condon...<br />
And all around the harp and crown, the crosses in the ground<br />
Stand up in proof, the bitter truth, the waste of youth that lies forgotten...<br />
Heroes that don't come home<br />
Sing out for all their souls<br />
Here they lie in Belgian fields and Picardy.<br />
<br />
</i>Bitter, resigned, Simon quietly nails the coffin lid shut.<br />
<br />
No lack of originality and brilliance on any album by the great Richard Thompson ("RT" to his fans); and his new one, <i>Still</i> (Proper PRPCDX131), offers solo guitar <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2F0dfKx5tPkI1aCnCje4uIoHqZzO6WL3IYC50Va2sXkgvS09s2h9uEsB0npC_NaFH0hTcrg-O2q6lEeOkRtQ9MW31y4iHpD1FMJFTH2cxaar43zZg59gVCSSyr2qZjGzaTV5H4NmjmoM5/s1600/IMG_8216.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2F0dfKx5tPkI1aCnCje4uIoHqZzO6WL3IYC50Va2sXkgvS09s2h9uEsB0npC_NaFH0hTcrg-O2q6lEeOkRtQ9MW31y4iHpD1FMJFTH2cxaar43zZg59gVCSSyr2qZjGzaTV5H4NmjmoM5/s320/IMG_8216.JPG" /></a></div>moments, stinging electric excursions, solid trio rockers, and expanded-group elaborations, brought to fruition by producer Jeff Tweedy. Richard has several albums on various magazines' lists of all-time greatest (<i>Unhalfbricking</i>, <i>Liege and Leif</i>, and <i>Full House</i> with Fairport; <i>I Want to See the Bright Lights Tonight</i>, <i>Shoot Out the Lights</i>, <i>Hand of Kindness</i>, and several more from his solo career--kind of listener's choice among 30 or 40 candidates). He has seen many of his songs covered by other artists, has received degrees and honors from academia and pop culture alike, eclipsed most other guitarists in both skill and originality, not to mention listenability, and somehow has managed to age, within Rock music, with dignity and distinction both.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFBrLkjiWLoPX7nzXwnpi5-2lHLrQLoHHVaPfQ2XNPNF_n7Y9B9VEJLSMtlzT5GRIckWyoXY_2N6BATgcyiFdr6klZ4CDhniSS0zP2iGdSgGegfozK6_eM2dTRyzHA_NaMqYA-kwpNSunL/s1600/IMG_8214.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhFBrLkjiWLoPX7nzXwnpi5-2lHLrQLoHHVaPfQ2XNPNF_n7Y9B9VEJLSMtlzT5GRIckWyoXY_2N6BATgcyiFdr6klZ4CDhniSS0zP2iGdSgGegfozK6_eM2dTRyzHA_NaMqYA-kwpNSunL/s320/IMG_8214.JPG" /></a></div><br />
I don't blindly love the new album yet, but here's one folk-related gem, its opening track, "She Never Could Resist a Winding Road," which has the melodic familiarity and Scottish "drone" that anchor his finest songs in the patented RT "doom and gloom":<br />
<br />
<i>In the old cold embers of the year<br />
When joy and comfort disappear<br />
I search around to find her<br />
I'm a hundred miles behind her<br />
The open road whispered in her ear<br />
<br />
She never could resist a winding road<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBhl1rSkCDFx7-QShhf6egtwCC3oPgkxnUx1IM4xbnh7aZvvvZlUQfxYAWHPNq9cSvGRJH4oJWyE5uDnfkHn07VPnvQQ48gMkNDARii_MmqX46t1ofyQVlA_ZcVrLqVN0QHsNSX3JxV8AE/s1600/IMG_8219.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBhl1rSkCDFx7-QShhf6egtwCC3oPgkxnUx1IM4xbnh7aZvvvZlUQfxYAWHPNq9cSvGRJH4oJWyE5uDnfkHn07VPnvQQ48gMkNDARii_MmqX46t1ofyQVlA_ZcVrLqVN0QHsNSX3JxV8AE/s320/IMG_8219.JPG" /></a></div>She never could resist a winding road<br />
Maybe just around the bend<br />
The rainbow waiting at the end<br />
She never could resist a winding road.</i> <br />
<br />
The last song that's been tugging on my aural sleeve is, I confess, a ringer. Over the course of 40 years, I've written a handful of songs (the lyrics, that is) with Bruce Lofgren, my guitarist/big bandleader friend living in L.A., and Bruce has just released the latest album, <i>Wind and Sand</i> (Night Bird NB-4), featuring his terrific Jazz Pirates band, playing six originals, two covers (a great version of Bronislaw Kaper's<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibkra0z8Py8ZbKDoPBfDExENv_b4ZfIHB94g7sSOstwZLV1KcEb3YH_pNKP_opWVmAssGG-6d8XiygGguq5JgJAaasHuNzIDqNT_QbXQEI7u2nQXHK9o0X0sRpaKw4g673yqvrVKJHzBBD/s1600/IMG_8222.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibkra0z8Py8ZbKDoPBfDExENv_b4ZfIHB94g7sSOstwZLV1KcEb3YH_pNKP_opWVmAssGG-6d8XiygGguq5JgJAaasHuNzIDqNT_QbXQEI7u2nQXHK9o0X0sRpaKw4g673yqvrVKJHzBBD/s200/IMG_8222.JPG" /></a></div>"Invitation"), and three tunes with lyrics by... <i>me</i>. The vocalist is Karen Mitchell, niece of Jazz bassist Red Mitchell, and she does a fine job overcoming the limitations of the lyrics. <br />
<br />
Still, I can't get them out of my head, so here's a sample of the words to the frisky, some would say racy "Sheet Music":<br />
<br />
<i>My daddy's a master musician,<br />
He rocks and rolls me right,<br />
Composin' me<br />
With close harmony,<br />
Sweet sheet music every night...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5fTEqkDRxQU8MBYAP3CyxZdbLKU5qVtEF1tm28NFCXBeZuW1ZaYVK45zTXoZlBqMQ0YzlrQsi97O2l6HWKGXApylV4BCG3e18xzDnGzj2pR1Xq0__BlJdo9DiebYoQ7VsC8U_-ONo4ejX/s1600/IMG_8220.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg5fTEqkDRxQU8MBYAP3CyxZdbLKU5qVtEF1tm28NFCXBeZuW1ZaYVK45zTXoZlBqMQ0YzlrQsi97O2l6HWKGXApylV4BCG3e18xzDnGzj2pR1Xq0__BlJdo9DiebYoQ7VsC8U_-ONo4ejX/s320/IMG_8220.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Jazz me, Papa, that bed time song,<br />
Rhythm followed by blues.<br />
Write me some inner chorus<br />
I can put vocals to.<br />
Dot my sweet half-note, baby,<br />
I'm treble and bass for you.<br />
</i><br />
And further deponent sayeth not.<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-58827802200096766332015-06-23T12:12:00.000-07:002015-06-23T12:12:16.189-07:00Red Garland, Bill Evans: Miles Apart<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMPGqPaGt0zQbju_7LcC3W8DR3RvYazrjFPWfpIBTEofiVjPTTJ_kzZS1GcpU28PGW0dFIaV2caTusN7Bodj5iGoLs6yVBsjrhLpsfhP4VdlX7sZ_fRHWo8oP75ANZO0YaqSMv-Ck5SHnT/s1600/IMG_8204.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiMPGqPaGt0zQbju_7LcC3W8DR3RvYazrjFPWfpIBTEofiVjPTTJ_kzZS1GcpU28PGW0dFIaV2caTusN7Bodj5iGoLs6yVBsjrhLpsfhP4VdlX7sZ_fRHWo8oP75ANZO0YaqSMv-Ck5SHnT/s320/IMG_8204.JPG" /></a></div>I sometimes ponder Miles Davis's place in the popular history of Jazz. Leaving his music aside for the moment, first he battled heroin, that scourge of the Beboppers, going cold turkey back in the early Fifties. Then he survived beatings by white cops, and just got surlier, taking up boxing as his voice went from a scream to a whisper. And of course, every decade or so, he reinvented the sound of the Jazz he played, at least as recorded by various Davis quintets and groups larger yet, morphing from Parker acolyte to hard-Bop balladeer, from jigsaw gingerbread-man to hot-and-cold <i>fusionista</i>, from hip-hop funkster to late-Seventies master of silence--and the fans (white or black, in the U.S. and around the world) seemed to follow along every step of the way. <br />
<br />
I guess you could say he was Jazz's first superstar (post-War anyway, ignoring the popularity versus cash sales of Satch and Bing, Benny and Glenn and the Duke). Did anyone ever actually count the number of copies of <i>Kind of Blue</i> and <i>Workin'</i> and <i>Sketches of Spain</i> that echoed from the dorm rooms of college kids in the late Fifties and throughout the Sixties?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8wmbjNJTBzo9m6xR6DEdTmDIcs7ZH9fwgmczMcqGlthCnMI2QET71kwQ_2QW6EH9DhxBCU3wGXpT6u2o6JJSJ7MNsE6hWBKTLE8T6a2xkG_y7fW5Np-YMIHgt2DFG9VN2RoimOzeN4GYV/s1600/IMG_8205.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj8wmbjNJTBzo9m6xR6DEdTmDIcs7ZH9fwgmczMcqGlthCnMI2QET71kwQ_2QW6EH9DhxBCU3wGXpT6u2o6JJSJ7MNsE6hWBKTLE8T6a2xkG_y7fW5Np-YMIHgt2DFG9VN2RoimOzeN4GYV/s320/IMG_8205.JPG" /></a></div><br />
At the very least he knew a top side-man (and potential leader) when he heard one, whether Paul Chambers or John McLaughlin, Wayne Shorter or John Coltrane, Tony Williams or Jack DeJohnette. Just think of his main men at the keyboards: Wynton Kelly, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, Joe Zavinul, and the two I'm about to celebrate here, Red Garland and Bill Evans.<br />
<br />
A pair of recent 2CD sets (recorded live in 1972 and 1977, respectively) remind us of the post-Miles stature of Bill and Red. Listening to Evans' Momentum (Limetree MCD 0043) and Garland's Swingin' On the Korner (Elemental 5990426) both <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikauDD9UTJwMl6Z5N8wdkq3WWyaEtgGaedDO6gon-kIc0SYFYJcbt6aDfycA7hE0QBqHJ_BjX9cnY6gZ7wXlpigWrxsJOoEoMkVYBdU0Kxl-lHlfdyYHPItpo3oN2tcc6lyjqOzczS5Ofq/s1600/IMG_8198.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEikauDD9UTJwMl6Z5N8wdkq3WWyaEtgGaedDO6gon-kIc0SYFYJcbt6aDfycA7hE0QBqHJ_BjX9cnY6gZ7wXlpigWrxsJOoEoMkVYBdU0Kxl-lHlfdyYHPItpo3oN2tcc6lyjqOzczS5Ofq/s320/IMG_8198.JPG" /></a></div>reinforces one's conviction that the two are keyboard greats and then leaves one confused as to what Miles heard or saw that told him the time had come to move on from the locked-hands punch of pugnacious Red to the airy, impressionist modes of gentle Bill. Garland was clearly a cornerstone of the so-called first quintet, the five who recorded three-quarters of all the tracks Miles cut for Prestige (and earliest Columbia); he was versatile enough to sound like Ahmad Jamal when asked to by the boss, but his own approach tended more to the Blue Note/Prestige collective (Horace Silver, Hank Jones, Cedar Walton, Wynton Kelly, Horace Parlan, et al) than to the chordal explorations of Evans. <br />
<br />
Check out the long first track here, "Love for Sale," to hear the essence of Red. An<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ811siM0ObrJY6MnEZ24B06k-I-keyUvU22LMCWzIiFlgyvzfa8KTgg4k6DPaFHCsiZ1fUZ07sX51L_jxozjnV0LauIAYQJFlSB5XWaUYne_1snEokHpvgQaELnmIwVl_w3qUHEN5M6gL/s1600/IMG_8202.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJ811siM0ObrJY6MnEZ24B06k-I-keyUvU22LMCWzIiFlgyvzfa8KTgg4k6DPaFHCsiZ1fUZ07sX51L_jxozjnV0LauIAYQJFlSB5XWaUYne_1snEokHpvgQaELnmIwVl_w3qUHEN5M6gL/s400/IMG_8202.JPG" /></a></div>Errol Garner-styled <i>a tiempo</i> mystery-ballad opening suddenly springs into action, African-American soulful/earthy rather than European classical-attenuated, with Red's piano as an instrument more percussive than stringed. Philly Joe Jones and Leroy Vinnegar are his cohorts throughout this generous 150-minute selection of tunes (including fine versions of "It's Impossible," "On Green Dolphin Street," "Dear Old Stockholm," "On a Clear Day," "Autumn Leaves," and the inevitable "Billy Boy"), the East Coast drummer as un-shy and un-retiring as ever and the big West Coast bassman doing more "running" then "walking." <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinhw_kG3ESvuUxE-QW8eN_vDJApOuIPySqKdA1VEezLErAJNggcknC8BEFo64qEZ2mbg9YX0YiYnEpqOL5BxrthEJ0AB8FUlmeuDFCsQRViH-9UCIOGy6wjJUNZh1zAx88ymkpxNdcoELS/s1600/IMG_8200.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEinhw_kG3ESvuUxE-QW8eN_vDJApOuIPySqKdA1VEezLErAJNggcknC8BEFo64qEZ2mbg9YX0YiYnEpqOL5BxrthEJ0AB8FUlmeuDFCsQRViH-9UCIOGy6wjJUNZh1zAx88ymkpxNdcoELS/s320/IMG_8200.JPG" /></a></div>And that's the truth of Garland's solid set. It's energetic and exciting, the sound of three Jazz pros working together almost as one, sparring minimally, any solos pretty much played singly... and thus with most of the possibilities for piano-trio subtlety checked at Keystone Korner's front door. (I'm trying not to sound pejorative as I write this, because Red's lively set really is a welcome addition to his discography.) Evans' support, in contrast, came from Eddie Gomez on bass and Marty Morell on drums... singular Jazzmen who happened to be white and who played with a more Eurocentric approach. <br />
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After the stellar success of Bill's short-lived trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motion, he wanted all of his sidemen/partners to sound that convincingly complex and freely independent, every threesome blessed with big ears and greater understanding, the players somehow going their separate ways but still communicating with one another and moving the melody or changes forward. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxsYrEdKut0er37Hz-aijPCjpYATYtwgf_qw9EaNl08nwEJz0bOiSLFWL7tDpUvWL8dBDUVwQgfk53fhUVbG1q07uE5UixYWhfnV6rU-In3yIZI66uZfYYFEn7OeDTdABZybv5rPMC7Tei/s1600/IMG_8197.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxsYrEdKut0er37Hz-aijPCjpYATYtwgf_qw9EaNl08nwEJz0bOiSLFWL7tDpUvWL8dBDUVwQgfk53fhUVbG1q07uE5UixYWhfnV6rU-In3yIZI66uZfYYFEn7OeDTdABZybv5rPMC7Tei/s320/IMG_8197.JPG" /></a></div>There's plenty of that three-in-one going on here; follow whichever player you choose and hear an amazing "argument" sounded, point and point and not exactly counterpoint, more like deliberation and interpretation, concentration and inspiration. Eddie Gomez is especially aggressive (in rehearsal for the Eddie Gomez Trio perhaps?), but Bill and Marty insist on playing front and center as well. And the recorded sound lets each go his own way--brilliant, crisp and clear and undistortedly loud. <br />
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When Bill Evans draped himself around keyboard and bench, an evening would typically be filled with single notes and silences; but when he took a deeper breath and sat up marginally straighter, the chords and substitute chords and sideman-chasing harmonies would fly fast and furious. The list of tunes here ("Emily," "Quiet Now," "My Romance," "Turn Out the Stars," "What Are You Doing the Rest of Your <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMoNFfjNfRlbtFFttvfG29KmBy0eeIDM6k05xNL-K3bXyLbDb1AZ1mio4NJFdSuCRLx40UAkM9EFOQytQ6sJcZKnRQGUopCvKJEcBGpeJ4aQUVO-Vj3_VhgiNv2MIFFR3AQJpZgRV7Gafd/s1600/IMG_8195.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjMoNFfjNfRlbtFFttvfG29KmBy0eeIDM6k05xNL-K3bXyLbDb1AZ1mio4NJFdSuCRLx40UAkM9EFOQytQ6sJcZKnRQGUopCvKJEcBGpeJ4aQUVO-Vj3_VhgiNv2MIFFR3AQJpZgRV7Gafd/s320/IMG_8195.JPG" /></a></div>Life") sounds ballad-oriented--romantic, heartfelt, tender--but someone has fed Bill his Quaker Oats; like Eddie he tears into these tunes, shakes them every whichaway, and takes no limpid prisoners. To hear the two (or three) of them at their blended best, the opening original, "Re: Person I Knew," does more than nicely, with grace and balance and three-part invention all to the fore; but tune two ("Elsa") then comes surging at you like a battering ram. Morell lays down a continuous barrage that Bill takes up with both hands, while Eddie rips out an unstoppable solo that sounds more like a <i>bajo sexto</i> across his lap than a double bass under his fingers. On this particular night in the Netherlands, Eddie Gomez revised the sound of Mexico's "DeGuello," and the Bill Evans Trio took no prisoners. <br />
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Maybe, to return to the initial question about Miles' pianists, it was as simple as that. The rhythm section of his first quintet had become too familiar, too <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4K9HOZufGfSWRZteNRMvaFuTRgHH2fLaycCDhZq7OHHYrC-wIH5UMRgAZd5y95xZQKTd4Asz80U3Rep2BqymU4s2i7Gp8Hcilnl0y214pEtZBABjggsA8hO5qRwAc-dHEh_PtBmHNAazg/s1600/IMG_8209.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4K9HOZufGfSWRZteNRMvaFuTRgHH2fLaycCDhZq7OHHYrC-wIH5UMRgAZd5y95xZQKTd4Asz80U3Rep2BqymU4s2i7Gp8Hcilnl0y214pEtZBABjggsA8hO5qRwAc-dHEh_PtBmHNAazg/s320/IMG_8209.JPG" /></a></div>predictable. Miles suspected (or "knew") that the <i>Kind of Blue</i> tunes, buttressed by Evans' chord changes and hovering modalities, would be mysterious and distinctive and open-ended, allowing for a new approach to soloing.<br />
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But if that's the case, why was there no further development, no second act, no encore? Because Miles chose not to follow up on it, <i>Kind of Blue</i> remains a miraculous one-off. Instead Miles went listening for a new quintet while, on their own, Red Garland just kept swinging and Bill Evans too kept on, exploring, reshaping the sound of Jazz piano, each man enjoying his own certain momentum.<br />
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IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-40028106146578349802015-05-18T13:38:00.000-07:002015-05-18T13:38:49.641-07:00Encore for Ozzie Bailey<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgztFAj2qFwomVgGNC0aelLvF17BCWgE8EesTMfs4tHgqGv2GXhSL_E_Sjdvg_gqs9EHewh3I_3gJ1BUGpnypHu6x0ywfPdtLLaMnIQjaCIdL-K_FqBQgMU695-Ec-K-axenIhuSHQwQO4/s1600/0-00+043.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgztFAj2qFwomVgGNC0aelLvF17BCWgE8EesTMfs4tHgqGv2GXhSL_E_Sjdvg_gqs9EHewh3I_3gJ1BUGpnypHu6x0ywfPdtLLaMnIQjaCIdL-K_FqBQgMU695-Ec-K-axenIhuSHQwQO4/s320/0-00+043.jpg" /></a></div>When I wrote tentatively about little-known Jazz vocalist Ozzie Bailey (revisit it <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2010/11/ozzie-strays.html">Here</a>), somehow I touched a nerve. Both the Bailey essay and its sequel several months later (that one archived <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/06/ozzie-bailey-too.html">Also, Here</a>) proved to be among the most-read pieces I've written in over a decade of blogging. (The Duke still makes a difference, it seems.)<br />
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Prior to that I wrote about another Ellington curiosity, his valiant attempt at composing in long-form, that odd<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7TvyMGN6-28zDWl3PCr62aN4DRN5T_pIGmFlLnHwaCMcqiJMg3WI2mOcUIN2sBPyArU1GFBIQnpO2tLQjqPMWnzl1Rpf7Jz4EWbEdOXPRSFkJPx4GGwSEubg3OSnf3KEdVtvpZ1nNvWI/s1600/00000+008.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7TvyMGN6-28zDWl3PCr62aN4DRN5T_pIGmFlLnHwaCMcqiJMg3WI2mOcUIN2sBPyArU1GFBIQnpO2tLQjqPMWnzl1Rpf7Jz4EWbEdOXPRSFkJPx4GGwSEubg3OSnf3KEdVtvpZ1nNvWI/s320/00000+008.jpg" /></a></div>mix of Jazz, song-and-dance, and symphony known mostly as <i>Black, Brown and Beige</i>. Ellington's tone-parallel--as he defined it--to the American Negro, BB&B began as the music for a night at Carnegie Hall, rose and fell and reformed at various lengths and with select motifs, and finally limped over the line as a source theme ("Come Sunday") for the Duke's late quasi-religious "sacred concerts."<br />
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No version much pleased the Jazz critics and popular culture reviewers. Read about the Duke's long and painful experience <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/08/duke-in-black-brown-beige.html">Here As Well</a>. IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-26343522897548904052015-04-21T11:28:00.000-07:002015-04-21T11:28:22.107-07:00Kurt Weill and Gil Evans<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJW9fFJidH9xvYmxROYITNSDNQsH4na_SLN7A97p_SuTIEap4Fk9JwvVJcNLsZ2pEWaFHoRNJuLzVZz7sOEG_cOIKYR8mkHln2bASj2PFNnQZczdKiNKwbrsH4vfpBWIinEwEG_LXgNHT7/s1600/IMG_8183.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiJW9fFJidH9xvYmxROYITNSDNQsH4na_SLN7A97p_SuTIEap4Fk9JwvVJcNLsZ2pEWaFHoRNJuLzVZz7sOEG_cOIKYR8mkHln2bASj2PFNnQZczdKiNKwbrsH4vfpBWIinEwEG_LXgNHT7/s320/IMG_8183.JPG" /></a></div>As a new email from the Kurt Weill Foundation reminds us, that 65-years-dead composer's music still has surprises in store and even premieres awaiting performance... and so... the American premiere of <i>The Road of Promise</i>, a concert adaptation of his lengthy, unappreciated theatrical pageant (from 1937 or so) <i>The Eternal Road</i>, will occur early in May. Meanwhile, Weill's greatest champion among Jazz musicians--that would be Gil Evans--continues to have his say, three decades after Evans closed the keyboard and relinquished his baton. To put it another way, young arranger/conductor Ryan Truesdell is back with a new (second) CD of previously unknown/unrecorded big band arrangements by Gil; titled <i>Lines of Color</i>, this one was taped live in New York City last year and is co-issued now by ArtistShare and Blue Note. <br />
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I wrote extensively about both Weill and Evans and their remarkable, long and<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj2lwmNAf6aouNNA3IrUBwFhc2qlnIOH7KmstGN7JkbGnQx84PQwgXODeQuFq2NmlIPbftPg0WtGuiAUElo7Gkf4zdk5HdQP9bHxJRdl2fwxJLs6rxyaGkq9nk6yJ-2UblfKDWOYSwa-B7/s1600/IMG_8184.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgj2lwmNAf6aouNNA3IrUBwFhc2qlnIOH7KmstGN7JkbGnQx84PQwgXODeQuFq2NmlIPbftPg0WtGuiAUElo7Gkf4zdk5HdQP9bHxJRdl2fwxJLs6rxyaGkq9nk6yJ-2UblfKDWOYSwa-B7/s320/IMG_8184.JPG" /></a></div>winding careers a few years ago--an eclectic five parts dividing, sort of, as three for Weill and then two more for Evans, and each part set up as an independent essay. Since the five appeared piecemeal and separately but do have some significance in the annals of Modern Music, I'm re-calling them all now for an encore; I hope some other readers will enjoy discovering their convoluted stories.<br />
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<a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/08/lenya-kurt-and-bert.html">Part One</a> is a disguised Introduction to the European years, but including 40 or so photos of Weill LPs. <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/08/part-2-long-long-weill.html">Parts Two</a> and <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/09/part-3-short-weill.html">Three</a> take up Weill's career in America (on Broadway and off) together with his burgeoning impact on Jazz. Then Evans assumes the lead in <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/09/gil-evans-here-4a-weill.html">the Fourth</a> and <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/09/4b-svengali-weill-later.html">Fifth sections</a>. Finally, as a bonus and sort-of <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2012/06/gil-still-cool.html">Sixth Part</a>, comes a follow-up essay/review of 2012's "new" (but also old) Evans album, which of course also featured Weill--and which later won the Big Band Grammy award. <br />
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<i>Centennial</i> was a suitable conceptual name for that release, but for some unexplained reason this new one is called <i>Lines of Color</i>, its exterior offering an abstract pretty picture on the front cover, tiny print obscuring Evans' name, and no identifying photo of the man. Commercial this packaging isn't--Blue Note was just asleep at the switch--which is really too bad because the music is terrific, another excellent selection of previously unrecorded charts dating from the Thornhill Orchestra days up to Gil's more experimental bands of the 1960s. <i>Centennial</i> had <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi07HsS8SFp3DCHqtf5U9eBym8m_JXjmHFxBP0gSCeZ8OkHzvr4C0gRnZ5cBSntqocbv9Jq2AcWSnpTiq4FNSFAwh0jEJailHkKJIBxeiFtXHUWPFCNxuFfx0gxVToBYO8-7NtVc7W7tq9W/s1600/IMG_8185.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi07HsS8SFp3DCHqtf5U9eBym8m_JXjmHFxBP0gSCeZ8OkHzvr4C0gRnZ5cBSntqocbv9Jq2AcWSnpTiq4FNSFAwh0jEJailHkKJIBxeiFtXHUWPFCNxuFfx0gxVToBYO8-7NtVc7W7tq9W/s400/IMG_8185.JPG" /></a></div>top session players and the thrill of important historical discovery; this one has the sound of a crackerjack Jazz orchestra working live, its creative engines firing on all cylinders.<br />
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Some long numbers revive and/or revise previous Evans tracks; "Time of the Barracudas" and "Davenport Blues" crackle authoritatively with dramatic solo work from trombonist Marshall Gilkes, tenor saxman Donny McCaslin, and trumpeter Mat Jodrell, while "Concorde" and the medley ("Easy Living/Everything Happens to Me/Moon Dreams") play the master's measures either more lightly, or layered more intricately. That last is certainly one of the album's highlights, with pianist Frank Kimbrough and tenorist Scott Robinson quietly leading the charts.<br />
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Other tracks sound like what they are, Claude Thornhill specialties from the early Forties ("Gypsy Jump") to the post-Bop Fifties ten years later ("How High the Moon"), two of them yet meriting special mention--"Greensleeves" for its one-take trombone solo by Gilkes, eradicating memories of Kenny Burrell's feature (on his 1965 album with Evans, <i>Guitar Forms</i>), and a chipper little ditty called "Sunday <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRDRGzhZRuyyo3WC0SHfxBY8_-QRgER5GlR7vJhmvZ2HIQgHRXrjgmr9-YEuYJSHk2FPNq8pCDtVLymEVtnvqdcsg0xtaNgVEGWhKCZ4o2_PvPEP6Y-KHoq2i7lelPcLHfL4PLGpRCGv0i/s1600/IMG_8188.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRDRGzhZRuyyo3WC0SHfxBY8_-QRgER5GlR7vJhmvZ2HIQgHRXrjgmr9-YEuYJSHk2FPNq8pCDtVLymEVtnvqdcsg0xtaNgVEGWhKCZ4o2_PvPEP6Y-KHoq2i7lelPcLHfL4PLGpRCGv0i/s320/IMG_8188.JPG" /></a></div>Drivin'," dating from 1947 but featuring current band vocalist Wendy Gilles, which could have been a hit back then, and sounds like a radio-ready theme song right now.<br />
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One last note: conductor-visionary Ryan Truesdell once again provides exceptional annotation, and on "Moon Dreams" he writes convincingly about the Impressionist classical influences on Evans (Ravel, Prokofiev, et al), some of whom found a spot in Weill's wheelhouse as well... or at least that's still <i>my</i> Impression.<br />
IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-21590226212533376902015-04-06T15:03:00.000-07:002015-04-06T15:03:12.218-07:0010 Ways of Losing Track of a Rock 'n' Roll Song<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDDX0wiQtRsm7iMnY-bx9j8Lrb_JD-JsuqXEvdu8tXKYZEit8xTLi5RTdS4KYSjE__bGuaGPhDGwlzLgUnB2TQ3Fyo9crPA5c1Qo5zERmBuJ4zqHsDpHeePmWsOpNX7Mo2e8yi6Nmta0Jc/s1600/IMG_8181.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjDDX0wiQtRsm7iMnY-bx9j8Lrb_JD-JsuqXEvdu8tXKYZEit8xTLi5RTdS4KYSjE__bGuaGPhDGwlzLgUnB2TQ3Fyo9crPA5c1Qo5zERmBuJ4zqHsDpHeePmWsOpNX7Mo2e8yi6Nmta0Jc/s320/IMG_8181.JPG" /></a></div>This is a book review of sorts. I don't know Latin any more than I know German. <i>Caveat lector</i>.<br />
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<br />
1. "It's only as important as your life." So claimed Van Morrison quoting James Brown, the hardest working man in show business--never caught with his pants down or even split, a becaped crusader of grit 'n' soul always on his toes and maybe yours too, sucking every cubic centimeter of air from any room he occupied. If you still can't breathe, recite "It's a Man's, Man's, Man's World" 13 times and then mutter, "Uncle."<br />
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2. Walt Whitman was a nurse. Emily Dickinson was a recluse. They met serendipitously in Ralph Waldo Emerson's daylight basement. "I need some Transcendental work," she said. "Where's Waldo?" responded Walt.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRIcAhmOgRpoOEPkq8orIGe85nWxQk5XnXwnm3YQOIOWAMW71TFtcau1UxCySHfWcITjVaY_feftowyGONXFAcSTu79mcwZHh2nZFYB6iwbdt5Uf_snu1u4ergYKzZdwnv2Nmkguo50bLp/s1600/IMG_8178.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiRIcAhmOgRpoOEPkq8orIGe85nWxQk5XnXwnm3YQOIOWAMW71TFtcau1UxCySHfWcITjVaY_feftowyGONXFAcSTu79mcwZHh2nZFYB6iwbdt5Uf_snu1u4ergYKzZdwnv2Nmkguo50bLp/s320/IMG_8178.JPG" /></a></div>3. Inspired by <i>ein sonnen haus</i> of Son House, <br />
the Viennese Secessionists chose to paint <br />
with <i>schadenfreude</i>, but also Freud<br />
in shades, filling every inch of canvas<br />
with 33-and-a-third degrees of <i>die blauen</i>.<br />
<br />
4. I ate the big bowl of borscht. Forgive me, but the gruel was not only good, it was Beat.<br />
<br />
5. In the still of the guitar drag, she was crying, waiting, hoping to shake some action. "To know him is to love his transmission," she said. All <i>I</i> could do was cry out, "This magic money changes everything! That's momentarily what I want." <br />
<br />
6. "Anthemic" as a term in rock criticism had no meaning until Jimi Hendrix digested his Wheaties on July 4, 1969. Sadly, he still thought six was nine and so missed his golden opportunity. Ninety-nine and a half wouldn't do.<br />
<br />
7. So much depends <br />
upon his readers<br />
possessing the full<br />
complement of <i>kunst<br />
und kultur</i> too<br />
arcane to be obscure<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv7iGsJfe3w081rW7G4pCJTYvRO6T7WaanVuoVMDAvvaWZPWYI-67WTsr4TrWudXQFGUY6sBWA4iHHKqY6Kk_IgDMq79cT-7do77dprkKdQHzpL3FJJBGwvy6TnVVF_ejaR_nGpJlctri4/s1600/IMG_8175.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv7iGsJfe3w081rW7G4pCJTYvRO6T7WaanVuoVMDAvvaWZPWYI-67WTsr4TrWudXQFGUY6sBWA4iHHKqY6Kk_IgDMq79cT-7do77dprkKdQHzpL3FJJBGwvy6TnVVF_ejaR_nGpJlctri4/s320/IMG_8175.JPG" /></a></div>8. Joe Strummer channeled Robert Johnson to write "Train in Vein," but Sid Vicious couldn't remember which needle to insert in the tone-arm.<br />
<br />
9. The day the music died, eight-and-a-half-year-old Billy Jim Murray bounced his bicycle through frozen flower gardens around Willamette. He was dispirited... seeking earthly confirmation of that infamous airplane crash. He wished he lived in suburban Lubbock, or Shreveport, or Cincinnati, anywhere but the northwest environs of Chicago. That'll be the day, he thought, the dark day I light out for the territory ahead...<br />
<br />
But you don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. Except maybe in this case. Because 34 years and 9 days later, Bill as "Phil""--brother under the fur to stuck-in-his-rut groundhog "Punxsutawney Phil"--did that time warp again for the first time.<br />
<br />
How could any fan of rock 'n' roll not feel the chill that touched their heartbeat that day (and everyday one re-views the music of film)? Yes, unseen but present in fraternal dispensation, and sharing the stage with both of the on-air Phils, were the<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ybz5acbkthCFODrU6zIQSkpJ7vZhrUZ0BOSPw7TcdOIwX3lF1ojNx0zP7cHvOxkY0Eiq8GiL47o2qyn0OCsSrXqq8BK3jkjcddINAfmrQM7vin_n1f9TLIfuStuWhYf453cW8aWX1OUf/s1600/IMG_8177.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5ybz5acbkthCFODrU6zIQSkpJ7vZhrUZ0BOSPw7TcdOIwX3lF1ojNx0zP7cHvOxkY0Eiq8GiL47o2qyn0OCsSrXqq8BK3jkjcddINAfmrQM7vin_n1f9TLIfuStuWhYf453cW8aWX1OUf/s320/IMG_8177.JPG" /></a></div>high harmonies of Graham Nash, the lyrical tenor solos of Stan Getz, and the émigré exhilaration and despair of ex-patriate James Joyce--but couched in the elegant twists and repeats of Homeric prose slimmed down to the scale of a groundhog. It took Bill/Phil another 8 years, 8 months and 16 days to get life, love, and his weather forecast exactly right. <br />
<br />
And if that don't change your way of seeing and hearing, buddy, you ain't got that mood indigo. <br />
<br />
10. Ike Zimmerman is to Robert Zimmermann as Bob Dylan is to Dylan Thomas as Thomas Aquinas is to Greil Marcus Aurelius. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-24622782523511902452015-03-23T17:23:00.000-07:002015-03-23T17:27:46.345-07:00Of Mice and Music<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMoNniUIXj9TUHvS2Xvc3smuWdP1Ux08ajPcF5GV8LgJqLZ-2_2sOA3ypNAQlPUwQXFE0MrI3QrTzooqtqJVJAtIrlhnX8XU27x9-VuuWdlLw56OmWW1J9V5DilFqgDZm285hC2AggHot5/s1600/IMG_8170.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhMoNniUIXj9TUHvS2Xvc3smuWdP1Ux08ajPcF5GV8LgJqLZ-2_2sOA3ypNAQlPUwQXFE0MrI3QrTzooqtqJVJAtIrlhnX8XU27x9-VuuWdlLw56OmWW1J9V5DilFqgDZm285hC2AggHot5/s320/IMG_8170.JPG" /></a></div>Readers of this blog may recall that I venerate the venerable Roots Music label Arhoolie (see posts <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/05/paul-olivers-blues.html">Here</a> and <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2013/04/when-les-was-mor.html">There</a>); owner/producer Chris Strachwitz has been one of my culture heroes for over 50 years. So you can imagine my delight when <i>This Ain't No Mouse Music!</i>, the 2013 documentary about Chris and Arhoolie Records showed up this month on Netflix. I immediately downloaded and watched the 90-minute film (loved every frame!) but postponed a repeat screening for a few days until my less-biased friend Marv Newland--who is both animator/owner of International Rocketship Animation Studio and a voting member of the Motion Picture Academy--came for a visit last weekend. <br />
<br />
We feasted on Thai food, then settled in the TV room... with <i>Mouse Music</i> for our just desserts. Nor were we disappointed, rewarded instead by a host of artists ranging from Mance Lipscomb and Mississippi<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN7OR_V3ZO61GSrgLeWZSB7GuPtajWdo8tQN_kE4N9nOj-BHJa5PKFksfl944CzAV1QhhacOELYs7RwWzAoduRD3ht8K9_NIAFa3PvkXz9E7GVdBoFtzrx4DtNzRysc8y4zVahvteHikp1/s1600/IMG_8168.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhN7OR_V3ZO61GSrgLeWZSB7GuPtajWdo8tQN_kE4N9nOj-BHJa5PKFksfl944CzAV1QhhacOELYs7RwWzAoduRD3ht8K9_NIAFa3PvkXz9E7GVdBoFtzrx4DtNzRysc8y4zVahvteHikp1/s320/IMG_8168.JPG" /></a></div>Fred McDowell to the Savoy Family and Clifton Chenier, from Lydia Mendoza and Big Mama Thornton to (Mountain Bluegrass group) No Speed Limit and the Treme Brass Band--well over fifty years of what you might call Ruckus Juice and Rootin's, a rowdy musical history of Americana encompassing Blues and R&B, Cajun and Norteno, Bluegrass and German Polka, Zydeco and Jazz, recorded and issued every step of the way by Mister Chris. <br />
<br />
Granted that most of the performances are truncated by circumstance (no cameras available when the tape decks were rolling, for example), still the joy and enthusiasm are undeniable, buttressed beautifully by artist interviews, unbuttoned reminiscences (by Ry Cooder, Santiago Jimenez, Jr., Wilson Savoy, and Whosit--sorry--an ex-drummer for Lightnin' Hopkins and Clifton Chenier), and the happily biased comments of the Man himself. A same-title 2CD set exists as well, offering a prime 38 songs and instrumentals complete--with nary a sliver of stale cheese nor disposable music mouse to be found 'round the hallowed halls of Arhoolie.<br />
<br />
* * * * *<br />
<br />
Among the near-dozen great Westerns starring John Wayne--which would include <i>Stagecoach</i>, <i>She Wore a Yellow Ribbon</i>, <i>The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance</i>, and<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5k9DLu_DxoTrEdcmFpjDLctA9fMfhA7Zdgg3umZ8L7JtyWwCe4kGtlEO-dmDPAJoyhyIthEKuQqXCpka35-TaHQlKqpLlSxCiFylXykxASPHf6I4PAnMP5LYxxkUkZR3Cd0QW0UdJAbLB/s1600/IMG_8162.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5k9DLu_DxoTrEdcmFpjDLctA9fMfhA7Zdgg3umZ8L7JtyWwCe4kGtlEO-dmDPAJoyhyIthEKuQqXCpka35-TaHQlKqpLlSxCiFylXykxASPHf6I4PAnMP5LYxxkUkZR3Cd0QW0UdJAbLB/s320/IMG_8162.JPG" /></a></div><i>The Searchers</i>, all directed by John Ford--two had Ford's sometime rival Howard Hawks at the helm: <i>Red River</i> and <i>Rio Bravo</i>. Until his late performance as Rooster Cogburn, only <i>Rio Bravo</i> afforded the Duke a partially comic Western role. Wayne as Sheriff John T. Chance just doesn't know what to make of "Feathers," the sassy saloon girl (the debut of gorgeous Angie Dickinson) who rides in on a stagecoach and stays on to tongue-tie and hog-tie him, every which way but loose.<br />
<br />
What a cast Hawks assembled around them... Dean Martin (as besotted "Duke"), Ward Bond, Walter Huston (one-legged "Stumpy"), Rick Nelson (young-gun "Colorado"), John Russell, and the rest were just as stolid and stubborn, drunken and dramatic, gun-fast and gal-foolish, as Hawks had hoped for; and the resulting <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQBCqy4EaiEcnFQimDHCvwKOoDSVWjw7o62FUVxRjJcbpQY8NgD84eqG-35lBxPwPRMf3P1aV2VslntAzwl1g4F8aCzKeGRtvtc9MfIpM9cGMMY32ZNsKZEQXfrH3cjQeVJWfCdg5ZALr-/s1600/IMG_8172.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQBCqy4EaiEcnFQimDHCvwKOoDSVWjw7o62FUVxRjJcbpQY8NgD84eqG-35lBxPwPRMf3P1aV2VslntAzwl1g4F8aCzKeGRtvtc9MfIpM9cGMMY32ZNsKZEQXfrH3cjQeVJWfCdg5ZALr-/s320/IMG_8172.JPG" /></a></div>blend of brashness and rio-bravado proved so potent that the aging director recycled the plot and characters twice more (<i>El Dorado</i>, <i>Rio Lobo</i>) as his own originality flagged.<br />
<br />
Just as potent a "character" as Wayne or Martin was the mesmerizing film score composed by Dimitri Tiomkin, with Spanish guitar, Mexican trumpet, and suspenseful Latin percussion as lead instruments, regularly repeating the ominous folk tune known as "The De Guella" (supposedly dating from Santa Ana's military band marching outside the walls of the Alamo). Tiomkin's spare score must have resonated with Ennio Morricone, gleefully reinventing the "sound" of Westerns about then... (or did any influence flow the other way around?)<br />
<br />
Anyway, the splendid <i>Rio Bravo</i> soundtrack, available now for the first time ever--on 2CD set Intrada Special Collections ISC 300--also made room for a couple of songs; with both Dean Martin and Rick Nelson in the cast, what's a poor composer gonna do? The guys manage to sneak in a snippet or two during their long hours barricaded in the jailhouse. The official numbers are titled "Rio Bravo" and "My Rifle, My Pony and Me," and Dino recorded them as a tie-in single (included here), but Rick actually had the best song, "Restless Wind," written by Johnny Cash but dropped from the film and available only on an early Nelson LP.<br />
<br />
Cash's "no quarter" lyrics go in part like this:<br />
<br />
<i>I came in like a restless wind<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimEnJcFXecODbwRDrwhiXBfIR4KsO3KBCxzulvhtVk8wU11sEWa9KId44BDyXFxberwfSKHQJgzkUaYd68XPWJiKNBr8yYSGwmxmvkdRiiFo-A5a9-g-WM22Ut7UHV4emhfjoMTeYx_6LR/s1600/IMG_8167.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimEnJcFXecODbwRDrwhiXBfIR4KsO3KBCxzulvhtVk8wU11sEWa9KId44BDyXFxberwfSKHQJgzkUaYd68XPWJiKNBr8yYSGwmxmvkdRiiFo-A5a9-g-WM22Ut7UHV4emhfjoMTeYx_6LR/s320/IMG_8167.JPG" /></a></div>On a wagon train<br />
I'm gonna go like a July snow<br />
Back to where I came from<br />
Gonna leave this humdrum<br />
It's too slow and tame<br />
<br />
None of your business where I been<br />
Don't ask me what I've done<br />
Run your ranch and punch your cows<br />
And stay behind my gun, man<br />
Colorado's right hand<br />
Will put you on the run...</I><br />
<br />
So pay heed, pard. Here's a linchpin of Western film scores, never before available, and yours for a mere fistful of dollars. <br />
<br />
IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-85215026258439967392015-03-04T09:54:00.000-08:002015-03-04T09:54:32.834-08:00Stall, Y'allI've not resumed general posting here for one overriding reason: the shakes are creeping back. The level of R & R (that's Repair and Regenerate in this instance) stays high, but it seems that perfection was not in the cards after all. I'm much improved in many ways, but I've decided to wait and live with these changes before limping on.<br />
<br />
For now, I'm walking a lot, reading more, reducing Netflix some, and reluctantly submitting to a class in Yoga for Parkinson's patients. <br />
<br />
There is no cure. There is only resistance. IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-50054190909910521702015-02-05T14:40:00.000-08:002015-02-05T14:40:22.602-08:00Calling Lee Majors!Well, I wouldn't believe it if I hadn't seen it with my own bloodshot eyes... It took a few hours of testing frequencies, but by noon on the 3rd, my hands had stopped vibrating. They went perfectly still and have not fluctuated or shaken in the slightest since then. If I weren't superstitious, I'd be invoking the Bionic Man...<br />
<br />
Stitches removed from skull, I now resemble a car-crash survivor rather than Frankenstein's antenna'ed piece-goods or a crushed home run ball hit out of the park(insons). Sandie has big plans for me--long walks with my little-used walker, yoga exercises to limber up the frozen bod, a return to successful selling on-line, etc. My inclination is to take things more slowly, but I imagine we'll find a compromise we can both embrace.<br />
<br />
Thanks to all well-wishers, and to whoever deserves the credit for d.b.s. surgery. I may even get back to blogging something more than these soap-operaish medical reports--once I start feeling the old confidence again.IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-66605212247412866132015-01-24T10:10:00.000-08:002015-01-24T10:10:18.430-08:00Now What?Christmas, New Year's, Martin Luther King day... three weeks farther along with little or no change. New holes in my skull, ugly stitches in my sparse head flesh (I look a bit like a flattened baseball), hands shaking worse than ever. I got through the surgery on December 30 and January 6, but found this boring anticlimax. Still waiting for the hookup now coming on February 3, one day after the Super Bowl, one day after my 72nd birthday. <br />
<br />
Should be good luck, right? Stay tuned. <br />
<br />
IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-46065369488720994002014-12-21T12:33:00.000-08:002014-12-21T12:33:08.931-08:00Sitting in LimboNo photos this time, just my rambling thoughts.<br />
* * * * *<br />
A rum-happy tourist clumsily Limbo dancing enjoys a whole lot more motion than Reggae singer Jimmy Cliff, stuck sitting... somewhere. <br />
<br />
These December days leading right to the end of 2014 are a limbo for me. I'm waiting for a Godot, or maybe it's that big boat, the <i>Robert E. Lee</i>... waiting for the other shoe to drop (while cooling my heels)... waiting for the axe to fall. Or could it be that, like Mr. Dylan, "I'm stuck outside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues again"?<br />
<br />
Call it what you will, I'm just hangin' out at the house, all dressed up and no place to go, anxiously awaiting (and dreading too) the morning of the 30th of December, when I'll undergo the surgical procedure known as "deep brain stimulation." The DBS operation is designed to control Parkinson's tremor, the shaking or flailing hand movements of those with Parkinson's disease. (A slightly different procedure works on "essential" tremor instead--meaning shakes when in motion rather than shakes while at rest.) DBS sort of reenables the age-worn nerve switches in your brain that, for most of your life, have prevented or minimized the shakes so common to the elderly in general and to us "Parkies" in particular.<br />
<br />
I've mentioned Frankenstein's monster a couple of times lately, for good reason. This operation drills a half-inch hole in your skull, embeds wire leads (one for each "side" of the brain) in the STN (Sub Thalamial Nucleus) area of the brain, and those wires run down inside your neck and upper chest to hook up with one or even two battery-driven, pacemaker-like "stimulators" planted in your chest. These in turn are programmed to zap the brain as needed, in order to suppress whatever unleashed nerves are causing the shakes. <br />
<br />
Parkies individually exhibit a variety of symptoms, from stiffness and spinal collapse to forgetfulness and overall diminished capacity; DBS pretty much works on tremor only and in rare cases makes some capacity problems worse. So by New Year's Day 2015 I'll be either an incipient new man... well, an improved old one, anyway... or somewhat more vegetal. If I'm part of the fortunate 97 per cent, my Parkinson's shakes will be stilled measurably, allowing for easier keying at the computer, better control when attempting to eat, reduced interference when using a toilet, less agitated movement when I'm lying in bed trying to doze for a few hours.<br />
<br />
I'm reluctant to examine the missing 3 per cent too closely, which I suppose just means I'm haunted all the more. To avoid such thinking during this on-hold, thumbs-twiddling time, I've spent about 16 hours a day listening to music or watching downloaded DVDs and TV shows. (Reading is iffy due to shaking hands and ragged vision.) The good news is I have a few artifacts of American culture--i.e., CD sets issued for the current holiday season--to recommend.<br />
<br />
I've written before about a certain record label and its remarkable owner (go here to be hip to the long-range trip), and can happily endorse a new 2CD set long-windedly titled <i>This Ain't No Mouse Music! The Story of Chris Strachwitz and Arhoolie Records</I>, the Americana/Roots-rich soundtrack to a new documentary issued to mark Chris's 80th birthday, featuring 38 tracks, most of them previously unissued, from the five decades of Arhoolie Records--Mance Lipscomb to Michael Doucet, Lydia Mendoza to Lightnin' Hopkins, Mississippi Fred McDowell to the Treme Brass Band, and Ry Cooder (joined by Flaco Jimenez) to Clifton Chenier zydeco-in' alone. Buy it... you'll like it!<br />
<br />
Also released this month in a 2CD set offering 38 tracks (from Columbia/Sony this time): the "Raw" version of the brilliant, (in)famous, wide-ranging ragtag recordings universally known as "The Basement Tapes," perpetrated on an unsuspecting (but eager-for-anything) Folk-Rock public by raggle-taggle gypsy musicians Bob Dylan and the Band--a splendid sampling from the monster master cache of 138 songs, rough bits, snippets, and outright goofs, casually taped at home(s) by those five or six cats'n'jammin' <i>kinder</i> over the summer of 1967. (The Raw sampler just might persuade you to spring for the bigger-and-better, legalized boot expansion, presenting all known or found tracks, and packaged in a solid slipcase housing six CDs and a spectacular hardbound book... The Basement Tapes complete, maybe, at last.) <br />
<br />
RecommendEd too, though not yet arrived on my doorstep (read more about it at www.mosaicrecords.com), is the latest landmark CD set from the inestimable Mosaic label specializing in Jazz reissues, whose multi-disc Limited Edition packages are inarguable masterworks of critical, historical, and musical significance. This time it's the long-overdue <i>Complete Dial Modern Jazz Recordings</I>, documenting the astonishing, later Forties to mid-Fifties run of Ross Russell's tiny Dial label, which managed to record and release much of the best of Charlie Parker, plus terrific sessions led by or featuring Dizzy Gillespie, young Miles Davis, Howard McGhee, Dexter Gordon, Wardell Gray, Teddy Edwards, Dodo Marmarosa, Erroll Garner, Teddy Wilson, Max Roach, J.J. Johnson, Ralph Burns, Bill Harris, Lucky Thompson, Red Norvo, Slam Stewart, etc., <i>etcetera</i>, excelsior! Nine great CDs of Beboppin', ever-illuminatin', essential-and-then-some, essence of Modern Jazz recordings, issued in most excellent Monaural sound and accompanied by the usual impeccable Mosaic booklet of rare photos, annotation essays, and detailed discography. A copy belongs in every Jazz collection, but there are only 7500 copies available. I will be listening, pre-op and post-, come what may.<br />
<br />
...Whiling away the hours, watching the play of light as it changes... pre-dawn; midday up from the water; near-twilight's "golden time"; full dark... but each stage as reflected on the HD television screen, my new version of through a glass darkly. Eight episodes comprising the BBC's <i>Broadchurch</i>; 19 cases from the wan career of Sweden's <i>Kurt Wallender</i>; 32 quirky, conZentric angles on the jaunty cop show called <i>Life</i>; 86 chapters in the on-going horse opera of the Canadian <i>Heartland</i>; 275 stop-offs at Boston's landmark bar <i>Cheers</i>, always good for a laugh and a coupla beers (per the Norm, anyway)--all these and scads more. But none so wonderful and brilliant and historic, so clever/funny and heart-warming and patriotic--none of them, in short, as well-written and important as the 156 episodes of writer/producer Aaron Sorkin's television masterpiece <i>The West Wing</i>. <br />
<br />
Originally airing from 1999 to 2007, that hour-long program was at the time the perfect ironic counterpoint to the venality and stupidity and repression of rights of the Bush years--the Towers, invading Iraq, legalizing torture, Homeland insecurity, the shame of Katrina, squandering the Clinton surplus, outsourcing America, the banking collapse and the new Depression, plus the growing cult of celebrity, the gadget-driven fracturing of information, and the ridiculous rise of so-called Reality TV. Week after week, while the United States went to hell, for one hour at least, the last, best gasp of Liberalism, Humanism, and American Democracy was there to see in the fictional two terms of the "Bartlett Presidency." One would think that such a splendid, hope-bearing role model would carry over into the unprecedented reaction-to-Bush ascendency of Barack Obama...<br />
<br />
But no.<br />
<br />
What became of that remarkable candidate and campaign? Was it timidity? An excess of <i>polity</i>, or some better word for professorial politeness caught up in politics-as-usual? A lack of fire-in-the-belly ambition? Too much oreo in that milk chocolate exterior? However defined, it seems the President just didn't know how to preside--no Roosevelt-Truman or Kennedy-Johnson he, merely another big-business, lower-case mode of Demo like Carter and Clinton, both of whose celebrated (but uncelebate) brains proved ineffectual against the negative forces, barely legal farces, and immoderate <i>forces majeures</i> manipulating 21st century America. Our first not-really-Black President turned out to have feats, and resolve, of clay--a nice-guy odd duck incapable of overcoming the inside-the-Beltway yammering, hammering, and stammering, and the infernal No-Mercy/NO-bama black magic of the ugly Repugnicants. <br />
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And now he too, on a massively bigger and more important, not to mention tragic on a national and likely international scale... he too sits in limbo--in stasis--a low-confidence sitting duck stilled two years ahead of his unavoidable lame-duck status and time. <br />
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Please... no quacks.IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-33922504132441335842014-12-07T10:01:00.000-08:002014-12-07T10:01:50.477-08:00David Stone Martin, Graphically<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy2usAeYACUF2YZb3-l5_bvINt4ts4oM5yeqC672TMaCcQjVhVxVK_93Y_7A0rJfJlOq2YP4OqKV4_n9WLLDFg-VBeZomqrcz0w6pw455FZjuOwzRXLTJcmSfdRTqlw_P2PN0gIL_B4p9F/s1600/IMG_8155.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiy2usAeYACUF2YZb3-l5_bvINt4ts4oM5yeqC672TMaCcQjVhVxVK_93Y_7A0rJfJlOq2YP4OqKV4_n9WLLDFg-VBeZomqrcz0w6pw455FZjuOwzRXLTJcmSfdRTqlw_P2PN0gIL_B4p9F/s320/IMG_8155.JPG" /></a></div>And so we come to the <i>pater familias</i> of record jacket illustrator/designers, Mr. David Stone Martin. Samples of his artistry and sometimes avant garde illustration can be found in books, on the covers and insides of slick magazines and, of course, gracing the front jackets of hundreds of 78 and 33 1/3 r.p.m. record albums. <br />
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I've had occasion to mention DSM fairly often, but the bulk of any intelligent remarks can be found in a post from 2010, when a splendid visual gallery of his work appeared on Steve Cerra's Jazz blog and I wrote a piece meant to complement verbally that pictorial. Sadly, his gallery has since <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivpsPW5A_2HdZ08cFgc2rpcVEvd3KBhcCVW9Wb6P9AnXHT714MWcSYmmpEYwmarmzcPvL6cOV-90Qa-Sz-2-mL14THbNT-lsnuULybmXdNkeRfxKrUTTSVkW_AFE5cynsM6e1w6mroeDca/s1600/IMG_8149.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEivpsPW5A_2HdZ08cFgc2rpcVEvd3KBhcCVW9Wb6P9AnXHT714MWcSYmmpEYwmarmzcPvL6cOV-90Qa-Sz-2-mL14THbNT-lsnuULybmXdNkeRfxKrUTTSVkW_AFE5cynsM6e1w6mroeDca/s320/IMG_8149.JPG" /></a></div>been removed, so my archived commentary is short on pictures, but I assure anyone coming to view DSM's work for the first time that a Google search of his name will yield wonders!<br />
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Start with <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2010/06/jammin-with-martin-and-granz.html">this appetizer</a>, and then take a seat at the DSM table... it's a viewable, movable feast. IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-70598590069352983972014-11-25T10:23:00.000-08:002014-11-25T10:23:24.178-08:00Burt Goldblatt (Giving Thanks for)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT1ewwPK2gAtEN2cfA7AdiN6uXsTXcJk1fzV9rD9AOy33K76a-ThOY7gUhyr6feohl2FwsxGrGCA01Njv2C4ddusZhaw2iGNeglHzB4tkLhGFk1FI7cE_v-RpmjbRCRlQ336VWxew9Tb-t/s1600/IMG_8153.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjT1ewwPK2gAtEN2cfA7AdiN6uXsTXcJk1fzV9rD9AOy33K76a-ThOY7gUhyr6feohl2FwsxGrGCA01Njv2C4ddusZhaw2iGNeglHzB4tkLhGFk1FI7cE_v-RpmjbRCRlQ336VWxew9Tb-t/s320/IMG_8153.JPG" /></a></div>Can't trust the old Memory all the way to the wall these days the way I useta could, but umpteen years ago when eBay was really hoppin', with hot collector rarities and long lines of crazed bidders, I surely did get swept up too... paid way too much for a staggering number of rare Jazz albums. Oh, I gradually made most of that back reselling them over time, but the money difference I've always just chalked off to education--my tuition and fees, and texts, that is, for an advanced course (if not a degree) in Modern Jazz circa 1947 to 1967: Bebop to Hard Bop, Mainstream to Free, East Coast commercial to Left Coast Cool; K.C. cribs, L.A. clubs, N.Y.C. lofts, and a hundred basement dives across the U.S. of A., wonderfully pictured and described on the jackets of all those 10" and 12" LPs.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHBqmiaf421SxZP7kQKdsONB8s-jaQA5L5vQtZtKMTZiGAfYnHzOVYgywZ_JbExk9veaFGXW1dZWS1eBn_L4mwhSP86KoiLO-JrsDQm7sW5u9mSCpX3eODtwTVW7TB5Xywp5XSoyP_TQVv/s1600/IMG_8151.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHBqmiaf421SxZP7kQKdsONB8s-jaQA5L5vQtZtKMTZiGAfYnHzOVYgywZ_JbExk9veaFGXW1dZWS1eBn_L4mwhSP86KoiLO-JrsDQm7sW5u9mSCpX3eODtwTVW7TB5Xywp5XSoyP_TQVv/s200/IMG_8151.JPG" /></a></div><br />
Among designer heroes still surprisingly unsung is a Renaissance Man of rather unpoetic name, master of all he chose to survey, the truly great Burt Goldblatt. Read all about him, complete with a measured albeit miniscule sampling of his mighty work, right <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2010/09/burts-works.html">about here</a>.IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-48403932818844726252014-11-13T10:35:00.000-08:002014-11-13T10:35:36.962-08:00William Claxton, Photographer<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ06svLOnOOmVAFYjfnybJ-ycHKhbYkpAx75EmJ55F2Dr_yOGnBiPj-Z6_jUB_-R6uoDWIW_2R5Fiakg2cFCTSZrQ9vPOrszSy9tYzWBVmM5hEEZzrqQynga1fX-5X4Hd7RJhjpkfL7Ab6/s1600/IMG_8141.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjQ06svLOnOOmVAFYjfnybJ-ycHKhbYkpAx75EmJ55F2Dr_yOGnBiPj-Z6_jUB_-R6uoDWIW_2R5Fiakg2cFCTSZrQ9vPOrszSy9tYzWBVmM5hEEZzrqQynga1fX-5X4Hd7RJhjpkfL7Ab6/s320/IMG_8141.JPG" /></a></div>For the first year or three of this blog, I regularly tested the familiar mathematical formula regarding the respective worth of pictures and words--too few of the former, too many of the latter--so when BlogSpot.com made posting pics a snap for even us computerrors, I was what you might call "Jazzed" to be able to make the mini-essays more visually arresting. In particular I compiled sample galleries representing certain artist/photographer/designers, the best of whom had turned LongPlay album jackets into 12-inch-square artworks suitable for framing.<br />
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Francis Wolfe and David Stone Martin, Herman Leonard and Burt Goldblatt, <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOs-DIsuT7SaDES_Hnf0hDneGcvs_ACGMpjLycFAQ4Lwbji3VtgVAb_JCG5PozkLew_vp5AuLYIxARGfnKnqhbrgS6cy4WV68Phd2efff1xABW78HqJzmagT_4JZbnGRK3heOPgZfmjdd5/s1600/IMG_8144.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiOs-DIsuT7SaDES_Hnf0hDneGcvs_ACGMpjLycFAQ4Lwbji3VtgVAb_JCG5PozkLew_vp5AuLYIxARGfnKnqhbrgS6cy4WV68Phd2efff1xABW78HqJzmagT_4JZbnGRK3heOPgZfmjdd5/s320/IMG_8144.JPG" /></a></div>William Gottlieb and William Claxton and scores more, their names forgotten or revered, but creators nonetheless of whole record libraries, hundreds of memorable covers emblematic of the beauty or excitement etched in plastic within.<br />
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First up from said Archives... Mr. Claxton, whose elegant b&w photos (<a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2010/07/clax.html">a selection here</a>, with several more in <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2011/07/perky-fanfare.html">this visual piece</a>) pretty much designed the look of West Coast Jazz.IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-84470024114976426312014-10-31T18:05:00.000-07:002014-11-01T09:42:37.772-07:00Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman: Burrito Brothers<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLyWC-3nelaQCOUcfkxV0YR5vai7EUCm2pDeTCKUvfTz5MgxEykUTGz0gLVFfnQPRYpXI_mpC26O7LA3zzqmbOrX4R6Qr_IGxRuFgvGMnxnz6Bg3-FmfFtmzbyvGp8EQ_orT0HHW_3R2v1/s1600/IMG_8137.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLyWC-3nelaQCOUcfkxV0YR5vai7EUCm2pDeTCKUvfTz5MgxEykUTGz0gLVFfnQPRYpXI_mpC26O7LA3zzqmbOrX4R6Qr_IGxRuFgvGMnxnz6Bg3-FmfFtmzbyvGp8EQ_orT0HHW_3R2v1/s320/IMG_8137.JPG" /></a></div>In the annals of Rock Music, the most historically significant interview I ever conducted came during the brief tenure of the Flying Burrito Brothers original foursome: Gram Parsons, Chris Hillman, Chris Ethridge, and Sneaky Pete Kleinow. Ironically, since the underground newspapers that printed the interview (much shortened) carelessly omitted my credit, I got no strokes from its publication. But I had the last word eventually, and literally, because in this blog in 2007 I finally uploaded the never-before-revealed, three-times-longer, complete version. <br />
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Much has been written (too much, according to Hillman) about Parsons as the "flawed genius" creator of so-called Country Rock--which Gram high-falutin'ly, maybe tongue-in-cheekily designated "Cosmic..." something-or-other... "American Soul Music," maybe. No doubt I've been guilty of some hagiographing too. A&M Records sent me a promo copy of the Burritos' debut album, <i>The Gilded Palace of Sin</i>, and I was fascinated by it and soon sought out the band when they played Seattle on three different occasions early on.<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQlcbO_FcPykcSxjtlc8jpv-EvjpdVbobAwP5ju3wXkBqse1LnlpNiENE1YWUyY5XFLuGpK9Tx_B8-9RsURqTajdwrwUsgioaOgR9O4lWmTutMulb7ze4nWd5wYAxGZSlu8chORlFaY9V/s1600/IMG_8134.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgHQlcbO_FcPykcSxjtlc8jpv-EvjpdVbobAwP5ju3wXkBqse1LnlpNiENE1YWUyY5XFLuGpK9Tx_B8-9RsURqTajdwrwUsgioaOgR9O4lWmTutMulb7ze4nWd5wYAxGZSlu8chORlFaY9V/s320/IMG_8134.JPG" /></a></div><br />
My mother was born and raised up in rural south Georgia, a whoop and a holler from Macon, on a farm we visited regularly in the 1940s and '50s. I felt some kinship with Southern charmer Gram, and we hit it off, briefly; he came to dinner, I interviewed Hillman and him, separately and together, and he subsequently vouched for me with Jim Morrison... which led to a strange afternoon, an encounter also documented in the IW Archives. (More on that some other time.)<br />
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For Rock historians, Parsons fans, and regular readers with stamina, here's the complete saga in five sections--<a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/06/parsons-and-hillman-part-one.html">beginning here</a>, continuing in <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/06/parsons-and-hillman-part-two.html">Part 2</a>, diverging in <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/07/parsons-and-hillman-part-three.html">the third segment</a>, shifting briefly for <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/07/hillman-alone-interview-part-four.html">Part 4</a>, and then finally <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/07/parsons-and-hillman-reaching-end.html">concluding</a>.IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-37482180435402027932014-10-20T16:14:00.000-07:002014-10-24T12:59:50.322-07:00Which Rick Nelson?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXoFOI-JOBdq3HkySyRGanDiVzzs78WXftv81-bHj0ffhPi2TxZaJZJXbAJ88piy4-7VjSY_QMDjobzDinsCL1jys7r7Btn5iOZaDVZXrOAMY-nhtZbJo_6t06kq6ZGUsdaLDSIX81dS0E/s1600/IMG_8127.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXoFOI-JOBdq3HkySyRGanDiVzzs78WXftv81-bHj0ffhPi2TxZaJZJXbAJ88piy4-7VjSY_QMDjobzDinsCL1jys7r7Btn5iOZaDVZXrOAMY-nhtZbJo_6t06kq6ZGUsdaLDSIX81dS0E/s320/IMG_8127.JPG" /></a></div>Over the course of his four-decade, yet tragically crash-shortened career, rocker Rick Nelson managed to do some creditable acting too, from teen heartthrob Ricky courtesy of <i>Ozzie and Harriet</i>, to cast-against-type rapist (for an Eighties TV movie, I think); whether a young gunfighter backing John Wayne (in Howard Hawk's great <i>Rio Bravo</i>), or a Navy lieutenant in some Jack Lemmon shipboard comedy circa 1960, or years later the guy who keeps bursting into the wrong sitcom-family kitchens ("Hi, Mom... I'm home!") in a brilliant early <i>Saturday Night Live</i> skit.<br />
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Still, Rick was happiest and most comfortable on stage, singing, initially in his rockabilly combo with guitar-great James Burton, then stuck doing country-ish<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_jCUmrO2gAjweTmjkLUTSPtDkwcF64eUAuljN_RXdEa62Ovud1hBDzJzSEJwbUkvvuAkfFgPhwiC9LbnzgFY__eeXISEd6_NbJzU0rlVbKFlOzHQtAZY9p_trsYXHXB7f9elo3ZqyVmLJ/s1600/IMG_8123.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_jCUmrO2gAjweTmjkLUTSPtDkwcF64eUAuljN_RXdEa62Ovud1hBDzJzSEJwbUkvvuAkfFgPhwiC9LbnzgFY__eeXISEd6_NbJzU0rlVbKFlOzHQtAZY9p_trsYXHXB7f9elo3ZqyVmLJ/s320/IMG_8123.JPG" /></a></div>Pop tunes for too long, before finally fronting a fine country-rock band in the Seventies performing mostly his own songs, from "Restless Wind" to "Garden Party" and beyond. <br />
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I got to spend a weekend hanging out with Rick the country-rocker for an interview piece that appeared in <i>Fusion</i>, Boston's then-answer to S.F.'s <i>Rolling Stone</i>. Forty years on, I still think of him as the friendliest, most easy-going star/celebrity I ever had the pleasure of meeting. He was sometimes accused of being wooden and withdrawn (and later had drug problems), but I believe he was just shy and private, a likeable, rather ordinary guy thrust into more limelight and folderol than he really ever wanted.<br />
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I've been thinking of Rick in these latter days, when Parkinson's symptoms and the side effects of meds leave me embarrassed and unhappy out in the public eye. <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-VKRWCneGlh-M5Urx02R5ueu5Y5alInmNjmXFDNBYWlMqv8fxqZRPcgZQjRGM4jmJuCUqK7RmEpkFmA3jL5jz5INWtt8La6hclx8F8NhyRbCJmtjiQ0QV95iK4XrcBxHWS-1xu_7od-IB/s1600/IMG_8124.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-VKRWCneGlh-M5Urx02R5ueu5Y5alInmNjmXFDNBYWlMqv8fxqZRPcgZQjRGM4jmJuCUqK7RmEpkFmA3jL5jz5INWtt8La6hclx8F8NhyRbCJmtjiQ0QV95iK4XrcBxHWS-1xu_7od-IB/s320/IMG_8124.JPG" /></a></div>People want to be helpful, and no one's pointing at me and snickering but, <i>pace</i> Greta Garbo, I just want to be ignored and left alone. (Soon I'll be walking around like Frankenstein's monster, with electrodes in my skull, wires down my neck, and a pacemaker-like device in my chest, as "deep brain stimulation" attempts to stall some symptoms for a few years.)<br />
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Whether I stutter then, or stumble, or somehow stand taller, I guess I'll still be some version of Ed. But... I'd rather folks remember examples of the good fortune and good times I was granted--including my take on Rick Nelson, archived <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/11/ozzie-and-harriets-son.html">partly here</a> and <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/12/last-time-around-part-2.html">the rest here</a>. IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5241063190450464888.post-11218337077034497272014-10-05T13:16:00.000-07:002014-10-24T12:59:08.296-07:00John Hammond's True Blues<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ieacjhdpQbSt0ymaHgB0PqxGUR2VwT9F5nW6RkFjZrqXJZpyrgYSrWzToedq_CpTxDsNKhuqVvgHPNZDALzHzvAAiMcyEX1_8BDoyxoGrdnFWsiF7CEmAifw_zVP73egiWZ-otDSYlTb/s1600/IMG_8121.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg0ieacjhdpQbSt0ymaHgB0PqxGUR2VwT9F5nW6RkFjZrqXJZpyrgYSrWzToedq_CpTxDsNKhuqVvgHPNZDALzHzvAAiMcyEX1_8BDoyxoGrdnFWsiF7CEmAifw_zVP73egiWZ-otDSYlTb/s320/IMG_8121.JPG" /></a></div>I do quite like the idea of "3"... it's the most basic "family" unit (that is, source parents plus child), the minimum number of voters for a democratic resolution, three of a kind, three on a match, trouble in triplicate, the trio rhythm section of Jazz, baseball's least common hit, Christianity's Holy Trinity, three to get ready, <i>ménage a trois</i> (although three's also a crowd), number of storied Bears/Musketeers/Wise Men, even 3x3 to produce an extra-lucky integer. I also consider it the minimum number of items to fashion a representative sample of something, which is why I often provide three examples rather than a barebones one or a not-convincing-enough two.<br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXpNW50L-0uGhkqY4peYOpBBtEKX3FaJ6PdIANECybeJldKX8Hyf0EG2lxtJ9Fk4A1RYQNAAtFI3y65FQgevoHVxJ27Gr-3EWZ_s3-q_X0cmwnqLkSFhuzmUaNX96MYssK7tr7t5tA0Z1F/s1600/IMG_8118.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXpNW50L-0uGhkqY4peYOpBBtEKX3FaJ6PdIANECybeJldKX8Hyf0EG2lxtJ9Fk4A1RYQNAAtFI3y65FQgevoHVxJ27Gr-3EWZ_s3-q_X0cmwnqLkSFhuzmUaNX96MYssK7tr7t5tA0Z1F/s320/IMG_8118.JPG" /></a></div>Moving through this "Bereaved Knew Whirled" of Parkinson's dissed-ease has me, for now, mining the IW Archives to entertain you reader. Recently I dredged up... I mean, <i>carefully selected</i>, three posts of poems celebrating animals. Now I offer you--again, one per each new post--a threesome of meaty-beaty interview-portraits from my venerable rock critic days, back when I got to hobnob with the hoi polloi of musicdum.<br />
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First up, the then-younger Bluesman often identified as John Hammond Jr., even though his middle name does not echo that of his famous music producer dad. In three parts (but of course!) Hammond holds <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/07/john-hammond-bluesman.html">forth here</a>... and <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/07/my-time-after-while.html">hear-to</a>... and <a href="http://mrebks.blogspot.com/2007/07/bluesman-john-hammond-briefly-had-jimi.html">then here</a>.IWitnessEdhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18312808828448124509noreply@blogger.com2