pt at large

Willie Nelson singing for his supper...

WHAAATT!?

C'mon, Willie...

I was startled then downright dismayed...two seconds into a commercial break on CNN, here you come singing "You Were Always On My Mind." for a Fed Ex commercial…."Willie Nelson x FedEx | Delivering for Earth"

What are  you thinking?

Your voice belongs in lots of places, from Farm Aid that you founded in 1985 to Honky Tonk road houses, but this Fed Ex business is a bridge too far.

The only damn thing that will make me feel at all better is if every penny Fed Ex pays you goes straight to the United States Revenuers to pay for your federal taxes this year. We all remember what happened in 1990 when the IRS raided your home, seized your  possessions and auctioned them off to pay a $16.7 million dollar tax debt.

You've never been short on telling us what's on your mind. I'm not entitled to do anything but listen to your vast and adventurous catalog of songs but I sure would like to know why oh why you agreed to hitch your wagon to Fed Ex.

You support environment causes and farmers who depend on a stable environment.

The Fed Ex commercial touts its commitment to reducing its carbon imprint  but hey, FedEx had more than 200,000 motorized vehicles in its fleet in 2019. To its credit it added 2944 electric vehicles that included delivery trucks, forklifts and airport ground service equipment.

Fine and dandy, but FedEx's airline cargo division boasts a huge fleet of 691 aircraft, twice as many as Ryanair, Europe's largest airline, and nearly three times as many as British Airways.as of 2017. In 2018, it's estimated that global aviation – which includes both passenger and freight – emitted 1.04 billion tonnes of CO2. This represented 2.5% of total CO2 emissions in 2018. Aviation emissions have doubled since the mid-1980s. That ain't hay.

As my dear readers have figured out after watching tons of hours of TV since March 2020, the songs pitched to sell product aim for our hearts then make a break our our wallets or try to improve our opinion of the aspirations of the corporation.

Hearing a song by Willie or Smokey Robinson transports us to the first time we heard it, who we were with, what we were doing, and the world in which we were living at the time... a cagey strategy to co-opt our buying choices by playing on my emotions.                       

Corporations began to capitalize it in 1926 when they knew most of America was tuned into their radios. Since March 2020 most of us have been glued to our TVs. Branding by using songs deeply embedded in our consciousness is a sneaky, powerful soft sell. Not fair. But effective on TV.

Willie, maybe Fed Ex delivers your monthly supply of weed.

For god's sake, grow your own.

PS

Amanpour & Company interview shows Willie's amazing memory

https://www.pbs.org/wnet/amanpour-and-company/video/legendary-musician-willie-nelson-his-letters-america-nie80g/

 

 

 

 

 

Morning Coffee Series: Duke and Trane

Composed while relaxing into my morning cuppa coffee...

Morning coffee series

Alexa play Duke Ellington and John Coltrane …

“Playing music by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane” she says and along comes “My Little Brown Book” by Duke Ellington and John Coltrane.

 

Coltrane’s tenor saxophone floats like a butterfly above Ellington’s spare chord changes that subtly repeat during a brotherly reverie. Grounded, melody pure and simple. Composed by Billy Strayhorn and recorded in 1962 it preceded John Coltrane‘s evolution into bebop and harder edged free flow visceral energy. Spare brush work by Elvin Jones and Aaron Bell’s softly persistent chords add to the misty feel of the contents of that little brown book. This piece should be encapsulated for the ages in amber.

 

Next, my digital disc jockey plays “In a Sentimental Mood“ by the same group.  Coltrane’s solos this time have the energy of a bird flying through the open door of its cage and practicing gentle barrel rolls in the space outside its cage, presaging the free-form style he will adopt in the coming years, never again to be contained by the comfortable cage.

 

Hard edged bebop was in the air. Coltrane felt the updraft. Reveries morphed into cascades of circle of fifths theory, deeply felt emotions, social commentary through the voice of his tenor saxophone, and perhaps a safety valve to express rage at his place as a black man in 1960s America…an inflection point, the obverse of Little Brown Books and Sentimental Moods.

“The Lady Is A Tramp”, Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett

"Alexa play some music by Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga," says I.

I could have asked, “Play something by two artists at the top of their games but separated in age by about 60 years“ or “Play a song that will make me laugh and cry with joy and admiration at the camaraderie between two artists, confident of and using every element in their each of their deep musical repertoires“ or “Play a song by two artists whose synergy together is powerful enough to split an atom“.

In a digital heartbeat Alexa loads up a 2011 version of “That’s Why The Lady Is A Tramp“.

The irony that Bennett has Alzheimer’s Disease and is singing on sheer instinct ignited by his chemistry with his friend Lady Gaga makes me cry and cheer from the first moment of this shot out of a cannon duet.

https://ladygaga.fandom.com/wiki/The_Lady_Is_a_Tramp_(song)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lady_Is_a_Tramp

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/tony-bennett-lady-gaga-alzheimers-disease-60-minutes-2022-06-26/    ...by the way, Bennett was 95 years old at the time of the concert.

Boston Symphony Orchestra Review Sparkes with Charming Vigor

February 17, 2023

Insight, information, interpretation... Jeffrey Gantz gave me a front row seat at the February 16, 2023 BSO concert at Symphony Hall featuring Prokofiev, Rachmaninoff and St. Saens.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2023/02/17/arts/lahav-shani-makes-powerful-symphony-hall-debut/

All the way to his final observation, a perfect fit for the closing moment of Rachmaninoff’s “Symphonic Dances.”

Guest conductor Lahav Shani conducted sans baton, using his hands and body language.

Reviewer Jeffrey Gantz conducted with his keyboard.

Both at the top of their game.

 

 

 

 

Keith Jarrett: The Köln Concert

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

December 4, 2022

Keith Jarrett totally improvising, letting his inner skylark free on stage in front of a huge audience outdoors in Germany. His recording, made in 1975,  became an early morning mantra that transformed me, my psyche tagging along, into an out of the blue surprising Zen moment .....by turns igniting ruminative contemplative cheerful and evocative interior solos of my own, ping-ponging  as unexpected flights as Jarrett’s fingers press on just about every one of the 88 keys on the keyboard. Worries about my to-do list evaporated like mist on a summer morning, flashes like heat lighting on a hot August night inexplicably exposed vignettes of my life, past loves, dreams, disappointments, aspirations, regrets for things done/not done in a pure matter of fact way, no finger-pointing here only gratitude for having had them.

Music that appeals to me resonates in wells of memory so deep I can hear an echo as I peer down and exhale. Feels like Jarrett is peering down his own well,

I picture him bent over the keyboard, seemingly oblivious to the crowd of thousands quietly observing his creative genius, fingers on the keys, feet on the pedals, displaying a cognitive sentient mirror  through which  the audience can see themselves transformed into a dynamic, representational sense of their own interior landscape, like a Whistler watercolor, with a touch of his their own hearts in the wet paper.

 

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Photos by  Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Amy Kucharik and Tiger Moan, November 6, 2022

The Burren, 247 Elm Street, Davis Square, Somervllle, MA 02144

If this band was any tighter, it would implode.
Fronted by Amy Kucharik, they perform with the timing of a seasoned show band.

With a nod of the head by Amy, the trombone, keyboard, percussion, and stand-up base players reel off rich solos with the cadences of the blues, rock, shuffle or swing songs on the playlist…every so often punctuated by Amy’s wild card solos with harmonica, ukulele, and this thing she does by pursing her lips together, a labial kazoo, to pardon the expression, that simulates a muted trumpet and often stops dancers in their tracks trying to figure out where the horn is coming from.

This is a big-time dance crowd. It looks and feels like every blues dancer within driving distance is in the room. A 15-minute blues dance lesson given by a member of the Blues Union warms up newcomers in a low key and enticing way,,,it's fun watching them get their backfields in motion.

There’s nothing like blues dancing to call down the spirits in whatever shape, form or style dancers can imagine. Unlike waltz, foxtrot, salsa, or rumba, blues is free style and driven by this band that grasps layers of its gritty spirit. Their unique brand of musicianship beams dancers into a fourth dimension, channeling the music with the playful, passionate, fun-loving gusto and style that blues has always inspired…and Tiger Moan delivers.

Don’t come to passively listen to the music, as fine as it is. Come to have it be the oxygen that courses through your arteries, animates your spirits, connects us to each other, arm in arm, body to body, on a dance floor filled with couples of every orientation, expressing themselves in the slow syncopation of a righteous blues song, a kaleidoscope of jazz styles, blues styles on the floor during any given song. 

This is a collection of art forms in motion. If this were a museum, it would be a collection of modern art, American revival, and impressionist art forms. By the third song, the synergy meter pegs the needle.

With each song, the spontaneous energy of partners who have never danced before tests each other’s limits and possibilities.  The dynamic form, function, and synchronicity when they get it all together is a sight to behold. The dancers are mostly their 20s 30s and 40s. Men and women in their 50s, 60s and beyond break out their moves as easily as they breathe.

Sitting at the bar and observing this is like watching Pablo Picasso and Kara Walker pushing artistic boundaries to create an amalgam of the new and the old in 4/4 time.

Photo by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Duke and 'Trane

"Alexa, play Duke Ellington"

A big surprise when first two songs are arrangements with John Coltrane, whose nimble evocative phrasing are harbingers of where  he will take it as he ventures over the horizon toward the dense introspective opaque arrangements he will play in his later career.

Both songs are from the Impulse album "Duke Ellington/John Coltrane" featuring the tight group of Elvin Jones, drums; Jimmy Garrison, double bass; Aaron Bell, double bass; Sam Woodyard, drums.

MY LITTLE BROWN BOOK

Composed by Billy Strayhorn, a lyrical inside-the-lines light-as-a-feather reverie, Duke and double bass (Aaron Bell) lay down a foundation for Coltrane's alto sax that perches in your memory long after its final notes fade. Ellington's spare phrasing, brilliantly timed chords swirl with Coltrane's sweet trills that are intimations of where Coltrane will be headed as he breaks new ground after this.

ANGELICA

This arrangement lifts off like a kite in a late afternoon breeze... your psyche riding along as your memory bank opens a door to a sweet moment in your love life when the mixtures were calibrated just about right...three minutes of sweet melancholy.

Upbeat with Elvin Jones' muffled drums pounding an insistent beat, Jimmy Garrison's on-time double bass, Duke piano in hot pursuit in a ripe swing with vaguely a Latin lilt, Coltrane’s tenor sax that he favored after 1947 riffing along with increasingly be-bopping swoops and trills for a couple of minutes before Duke sets it gently to earth with familiar riffs that fade into silence as the song ends three minutes later.

Hard to find Duke and John Coltrane  pull off a better example of where 'Trane's train is heading.

Keep asking Alexa to play John Coltrane. Hear Coltrane's solos fly into the wild like a bird swooping from its comfortable nest into his locomating Blue Trane, 'Trane at the throttle pushing his band-mates to pour some of their own coal into the fire box.

And when you have an hour or so... read this out then play "A Love Supreme".   

John Coltrane – bandleader, vocals, tenor saxophone; Jimmy Garrison – double bass; Elvin Jones – drums, gong, timpani; McCoy Tyner – piano.

And for a chaser. John Coltrane Full Album: Stardust...put this band in a studio and they chilled like a bowl of jello.

"Stardust" (Hoagy Carmichael, Mitchell Parish) – 10:44 "Time After Time" (Sammy Cahn, Jule Styne) – 7:45 "Love Thy Neighbor" (Mack Gordon, Harry Revel) – 9:21 "Then I'll Be Tired of You" (Yip Harburg, Arthur Schwartz) – 9:27 Personnel[edit] John Coltrane – tenor saxophone Wilbur Harden – flugelhorn (track 1), trumpet (3) Freddie Hubbard - trumpet (4) Red Garland – piano Paul Chambers – bass Jimmy Cobb – drums (1, 3) Arthur Taylor – drums (2, 4)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vf6E2Pu7Hc

         

"Don't Be Cruel" Billy Swan Channels Elvis

Re-posting  because like a birthday cake, you only see/feel the layers after you've opened it with the first slice.  I've heard layers of the song that I missed the first time around - a churchy organ thread, small  piano bluesy piano riffs, muffled guitar licks, angelic backup singers. impeccable timing of the whole arrangement, a first rate mood enhancer for a music lover of any stripe.

"Don't Be Cruel" - Reinvented

Whooeeeee, never thought someone could, or would, take this song by you know who, turn it upside down, let the sound of the coins falling from its trousers produce a song track, utterly its own, groove heavy, emotionally convincing, reeking of the 1950s ... voice, phrasing, backup singers, and tight band that makes every note count. And a bass line running through it like a freight train with a metronome in the firebox.

The organ coda swirling like incense from the first chord holds it together with an incongruously religious thread.

I don't remember dancing to the original but this version begs you push the chairs back in the kitchen. Oh, my. This song has it all going on.

Forget Elvis. Billy Swan owns this song.

Don't waste time. Play it now.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-STFyfsdoVA

 

"I can help"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fsSxdGZni3Y

 

Toad, Resurrected, July 27, 2022

Toad, July 27, 2022

 

Wednesday night July 27, 2022

The little band box on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge was stuffed with virtual tinder.

 

Like a spark from stone and flint, it erupted in one virtual soul and psyche purification flame when the righteous Fred Griffeth and his top-tier Fandango band struck the first chords of the first song. 

 

The ageless Fred Griffeth sang robustly to the good souls in Toad, in the cleansing ritual known by all as “choich“. 

 

How much joy can you stuff into a little outpost like this? How many angels can you fit on the head of a pin?

 

The set list was familiar. The faces in the crowd were sprinkled with a handful of newcomers.

 

The psycho emotional fervor of the flock was in need of a bi-weekly calling down of the spirit. Three songs in and we had all been led to the figurative river, gently immersed, baptized bona fide, and ready to testify. Rapture was within reach. Given the daily news diet of human and ecological mayhem, we were pilgrims, supplicating, waiting for 90 minutes of salvation. 

 

If there were drones circling overhead to manage the electrical grid of Cambridge, they might have called in an alert for the inexplicable dot of energy coming from 1912 Mass Ave.

 

Close inspection would show no cause for alarm, no danger to the grid. Data would show that a similar energy vortex would be detectable every other every Wednesday from the same address.

Photo courtesy of Carol Fondé

 

Many of the flock were perched at the mahogany bar, others sitting on the brawny ancient curved bench leading up to the bandstand. A few people strolling past the door were sucked into the righteous rock and blues house of worship and found themselves surrounded by kindred spirits from legal drinking age to card-carrying members of the AARP.

 

Griffeth, always animated and spontaneously emoting, sang from the soles the flip flops on his brown feet, tapping into the energy from the roiling core of the earth. At some point, I don’t know whether he even saw us.  Consumed by stagecraft and the art of connecting, Griffeth merged into a sublime fourth dimension, the musicians soloing in intent pursuit.

 

The man was speaking in tongues of gospel, rock n roll, blues, and Americana. Griffeth left the song charts behind.  In musical legerdemain, he became a euphoric energy dervish that, like a black hole, sucked us deep into our own euphoria. Critical mass was achieved, early and often.

 

I had not been to Toad since March 2020. The place had become shuttered. Many believed that it would fall to the pandemic malaise and become a footnote in our collective memory.

 

But no… A physical space can become abandoned boarded up and obliterated. But with a force fueled and kept alive by the collective memory of those who seek salvation, (is there any other word for this?), there on Wednesday nights, not so much.

 

I showed my vaccination card, walked in the door, sucked in my breath, and nearly sobbed. I was home. 

 

Safe. Amongst kindred spirits. And this bar of such compact dimensions wrapped its arms around me, warmly whispering, “Hey Stranger, where have you been?”

 

“You waited for me!” I whispered, pleased with the recognition.

 

“That’s what friends do,” said the disembodied voice from above the purple neon “TOAD“ sign just above the door.

 

https://toadcambridge.com

Fandango

Fred Griffeth, vocals

Andy Santospago, guitar

Chris Anzalone, percussion

Steve Monahan, bass

Ryan Claunch on keys

                    

Photo courtesy of Carol Fondé

As always, comments welcome

                                                                                                                          

American Routes Goes To The Circus

22/04/24 American Routes: MUSIC CIRCUS

Arlo Guthrie once sang, ‘You can get anything you want,,.at Alice’s Restaurant…”

Well, the same can be said of FM radio.

FM radio offers news, daily commentaries, thoughtful programs like TED Radio Hour, The Moth Radio Hour, This American Life, and The New Yorker Radio Hour.

For a music lover, there’s American Routes. http://americanroutes.wwno.org/archives/show/1270/Music-Circus

American Routes is blues and jazz, gospel and soul, rockabilly and country, Cajun and swamp pop, Tejano, Latin… and beyond. Songs and stories from musicians describe a deep and diverse nation with sounds and styles shared by all Americans. From the bayous to the beltways, from crossroads to crosstown, on interstates and city streets, turn up your radio for the sonic journey!

The weekly radio program is produced in New Orleans by Nick Spitzer, who created it in 1998.

Over the years, Spitzer’s had conversations with Willie Nelson, Tom Waits, B.B. King, Dr. John, Dave Brubeck, Elvis Costello, Ray Charles, Randy Newman, McCoy Tyner, Lucinda Williams, Rufus Thomas, Jerry Lee Lewis and scores of musicians and singers you may never have heard of and will google because they’re characters whose life stories are as compelling as the music they make.

When the April 24 program is titled “Music-Circus”, I’m thinking what the heck does circus have to do with music. Circuses are visual experiences, music essentially an aural one.

What follows is an astonishing array of songs loosely related to the Big Top plus interviews with the aerial artist who defies gravity in the most inventively curated show I’ve ever heard…I mean who else could fill two hours with songs related to the circus, one of the most red white and blue pieces of Americana, in such a lovingly cohesive 120 minutes.

The theme is universal. While most of American Routes shows dig into music he connects broadly to Louisiana, this show is a bouquet to America, Americana music, American entertainers and the most recognizable piece of American culture, The Big Top, that has thrilled and chilled children of all ages for 146 years.

How creative? Check out the set list… makes you dizzy with wonder to how Americana ring master Spitzer pulls you in with everything from Ella, The Coasters, Everly Brothers, Al Jolson, Randy Newman, Los Lobos, several acts you’ve never heard of plus a segment of organ grinder music. Geez, everything but the popcorn.

Pairing interviews with New Orleans singer and former circus glass eater Meschiya Lake with high-wire trapeze artist Dolly Jacobs in two separate interviews, Spitzer makes sure you know that the circus isn’t ready to be covered in cobwebs like a piece of furniture in an abandoned Victorian mansion. It’s still a thing. Shot out of a cannon.

Buy a bag of peanuts. Tune in.

American Routes: Plumbing the Roots of Our Music Every Week

April 3, 2022

All you need is a radio or an internet connection to dig into this weekly radio program…

For a music lover, American Routes is a deep dive into the sources of our music - jazz, country, rhythm 'n blues, country, swamp pop, Cajun, zydeco and the subtle ways they interconnect. Every week, Nick Spitzer curates two hours featuring the work of songwriters, singers, musicians and a featured interview - this week with Corey Henry, who grew up in the Tremé district of New Orleans.

You don't grow up in the Tremé without having music pulsing through your veins or, for that matter, the smell of rice and beans cooking in a pot every Monday. Henry's father, grandfather, uncles, and now nieces are familiar names to New Orleanians.

Spitzer's lens is wide open. This week's show, "Antique & Modern New Orleans Style: "Corey Henry and The Tremé Funktet", sounds like an homage to New Orleans music - until you check the set list in the first hour that includes Cannonball Adderley, Lester Young, Peggy Lee and  Benny Goodman, Waylon Jennings and Nancy Sinatra (yes), Betty Carter. Spitzer is setting the table for the next two hours. The wonder is how he weaves them together to support his theme of the week.

The second hour is New Orleans specific, featuring Spitzer's interview with Corey Henry that shows that music runs in the family in so many New Orleans bands. And that performers like Henry consciously intend to offer something uplifting and positive to combat the crime in the city. New Orleans has its share of gun violence.

Other weeks feature two hours of music ranging from blues and jazz, gospel and soul, old-time country and rockabilly, Cajun and zydeco, Tejano and Latin, roots rock and pop, avant-garde and classical wrapped in a theme that Spitzer chooses. For 20 years, Spitzer's been opening our eyes to how New Orleans music has influenced American culture and the influences that informed New Orleans musicians to create it

Today’s interview is with Corey Henry is more than keeping the  spirit of New Orleans music alive. Henry wants his people to stay alive so they can enjoy it. "Trumpets Not Guns" is a direct appeal that comes from a respected voice who uses his pulpit to preach for an end to gun violence.

Henry's "Sunny Side of the Street", an upbeat bouncy take on Louis Armstrong's song of the same title, shows Henry's grasp on the many strands that simmer together in the pot of New Orleans music.

The show ends with Corey Henry's "Suite for the Candlelight Lounge", a homage to longtime proprietor Leona Grandison. I spent many Wednesday nights listening to The Tremé Brass Band play at Leona's place on North Robertson in the Tremé.

Get on board American Routes any time right here.

WWNO

• American Routes is blues and jazz, gospel and soul, rockabilly and country, Cajun and swamp pop, Tejano, Latin… and beyond. Songs and stories from musicians describe a deep and diverse nation with sounds and styles shared by all Americans. From the bayous to the beltways, from crossroads to crosstown, on interstates and city streets, turn up your radio for the sonic journey!
• American Routes—produced in New Orleans since 1998

http://americanroutes.wwno.org

 

• American Routes is blues and jazz, gospel and soul, rockabilly and country, Cajun and swamp pop, Tejano, Latin… and beyond. Songs and stories from musicians describe a deep and diverse nation with sounds and styles shared by all Americans. From the bayous to the beltways, from crossroads to crosstown, on interstates and city streets, turn up your radio for the sonic journey!
• American Routes—produced in New Orleans since 1998

http://americanroutes.wwno.org

 

 

Teach Your Children | Playing For Change Band | Live in Brazil

Turn off the TV...play this.

Now is the time to teach your children well...or set an example yourself for others to follow.

Complete with the late Grandpa Elliott Small on harmonica, the band hitting stride with a run of scat singing at the 6 minute mark

Teach Your Children | Playing For Change Band | Live in Brazil

And for the fun of it, a cover of The Grateful Dead's  "Ripple"...you almost get a whiff of patchouli in the air.

And Taj Mahal and company, "Queen Bee"

https://www.playingforchange.com/videos/queen-bee-feat-taj-mahal-ben-harper-rosanne-cash-song-around-the-world

And "Down By The Riverside" from Phoenix...with Grandpa Elliott Small "making noise" on his harmonica at the 7:30 minute mark.

Playing For Change Performance and Interviews "One Love" & "A Better Place" with Grandpa Elliott at the 5:35 mark THE BACK STORY  Playing For Change performance and interviews at the 2014 Skoll World Forum on Social Entrepreneurship in Oxford England.

The Changing The World Foundation

https://www.playingforchange.com/membership

I signed up as a Lifetime Member

 

 

 

 

Elvis Presley - The King, a film

Elvis Presley - The King, a film

From impossibly beautiful man to one impossibly bloated, the story of Elvis Presley is an allegory about the cultural history of America from the 1950s to today. “The King” has all the subtlety of car crash. It poses questions, it offers answers. Some are not pretty. It puts a serious hurt on the notion that if you work hard you can achieve what you want….aka The American Dream.

It’s poignant. It’s revelatory. It’s complicated. It digs into the taproot of the divide in America: race. At times, I squirmed in my seat as the dots were connected between race, music, commerce, and the myths and platitudes we tell ourselves to this day.

Twenty minutes into the film, I realize this is a documentary whose ambition is to connect the zeitgeist between the 1950s and America of 2017, forty years after Elvis dies at 42 of a heart attack caused by abuse of painkillers. This is no gauzy portrait encased in amber. As one reviewer  comments, “We go from Graceland to Trumpland.”

How did Elvis happen? How did he become The King? Whose King? Why did we love him? Who were his people?  What made him tick? How did he become packaged and merchandised to within an inch of his life? Why did he never take the reins and become himself? Did he ever comprehend his power and the possibility of using it for social or racial betterment?  Was he simply the most successful cultural appropriator in history? (David Simon’s comment about that is probably as close as you can get to an answer).

Somewhere under the popular image was a country boy whose ambition, noted in archival footage, was to sing the music he loved.  It all started in 1954 while 19 year-old Elvis was trying to make an impression on Sam Phillips at Sun Records in Memphis.

After he sang some unimpressive country-ish popular songs, the demo tapes stop rolling. Elvis loosens up, probably to decompress, and begins singing with the unbuckled energy and style of the blues, gospel, and rhythm ‘n blues he’d been listening to on black music stations and in his neighborhood churches since he was a kid.

With irrepressible abandon, he begins to sing his version of Willa Mae "Big Mama" Thornton’s “You Ain’t Nothing But A Hound Dog, ” a white boy covering a decidedly black influenced song with all the unbound juice it called for.  Of note, "hound dog" was common black slang for a cheap gigolo, not the dog I imagined when I heard the song.

Philips runs in from his office and tells Elvis to keep singing. He had finally found what he’d been looking for. A white kid whose sound could bring the music of black America to a wider audience. The legend was born.

The film’s brilliant conceit is Elvis’s 1963 Rolls Royce. Director and co-writer Eugene Jerecki gathers a collection of big-name celebrities, including Chuck D, Emmylou Harris, Alec Baldwin, Ethan Hawke, Van Jones, James Carville, Mike Myers to sit in that car and paint a multi-dimensional, occasionally contrarian portrait of The King, much like the country he ruled (and that ruled him).

Jerecki tricks out that dream car with state-of-the-art audio and video equipment and takes it on a road trip from Memphis to New York to Las Vegas and down the rural lanes of Tupelo, Mississippi. The real time segments shot in the Rolls Royce are quilted with archived black and white and color footage that contrasts reality with myth. That car is a rolling sound stage. It feels like part of the cast. Its occasional breakdowns during the filming may be the exotic car’s commentary on its owner’s life.

Rapper Chuck D and Van Jones speak the truths about race and culture that I reckon were true. They sting. The most jarring observations about America are made by a truck driver and several residents of Tupelo, Mississippi, the King’s sleepy hometown.

One minute, people like me who grew up when Elvis turned the country upside down, relive the liberating youthful moments he changed our worlds. The next moment, in news clips of the time, I felt uncomfortable to confront an America that, like Camelot, was never what I believed it was.

A giant qualifier: That “we” is a huge chunk of white men and women of a certain age. The larger lens includes comments from today’s black community and a younger generation that never saw the arc of popular American music change with the comet named Elvis. The conversation about cultural appropriation?

David Simon says it best.

“The entire American experience is cultural appropriation.”

Consider that In 1952, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, two twenty-something rhythm 'n blues loving songwriters from Jewish families, wrote the song “Hound Dog” specifically for Thornton. “It took them 15 minutes to write the song,” said Gil Anthony. Of note: “Hound dog” was common black slang for a cheap gigolo, not the literal hound dog I thought about when I heard the song.

The film is brutally honest and complex. Director Jarecki shines light on history found not in books but in newspaper accounts around the country. Black and white photos of lynched black men hanging from a tree with a bunch of white people standing around are bone chilling. This is one of the most disturbing and provocative films you will ever see, a deep dive into American culture.

The 120-minute film’s clips weave his early career, first recordings 1953-1956, his commercial breakout 1956 – 1958, his mother’s death and military service 1958-1960, film career 1960-1967, his comeback to the stage 1968-1973 with archival footage and hit you upside-the-head contemporary comments by those passengers rolling along in that Rolls Royce.

“There are three kings, BB King, Elvis, and Martin Luther King, Jr.,” says one commentator connecting the dots as we see vintage footage of the Lorraine Hotel in Memphis and hear the voice of Martin Luther King, Jr. delivering the “I’ve Been To The Mountaintop” speech in April 1968.

Jarecki exposes the self-promoting role Colonel Parker took in commanding Elvis’s career choices before Presley’s ignominious self-destruction in Las Vegas. Elvis was the unscrupulous Parker’s piggy bank. Parker set Elvis up in Las Vegas, willfully ignored his descent into a sad parody of himself as he became a blubbering mess with pain killers coursing through his veins. Elvis doesn’t get off the hook, choosing the most lucrative next step for his career, no matter what the cost to his soul or his art. 

How is Jarecki going to end this, I wonder as the film hits 115 minutes. The footage of Elvis five minutes before the film ends will keep you transfixed in your seat long after the credits roll. Jarecki lets you draw your own conclusions.

In panoramic detail, director Eugene Jarecki takes us on a road trip showing us how we got here. The biggest question - where do we go from here?

Documentary filmmakers want to make you think.

My takeaway? Who are our idols? Who are our role models? Beyond wishful thinking and envy, do they change the way we live or behave or are they an anesthetic that numbs us to the rocky social conditions in which we live?

We are so out of touch with our authentic history. “The King” is shock therapy that makes us look beyond our next order on Amazon and the next bizarre story about a government in dysfunction. After you see this film, make a vow to snap out of living in a world of tweets and do one small thing every day to make America a better place.

Elvis Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977)

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/the-king-reviewed-a-documentary-about-elvis-that-wants-to-be-a-documentary-about-america

found after I wrote this

 

 

 

Grandpa Elliott Small: An Appreciation

Grandpa Elliott Small 1944-2022

One more star is twinkling in the firmament tonight and one fewer icon is holding down the unvarnished street character of the New Orleans French Quarter... one more magnificent voice is in the celestial choir, with a New Orleans accent and spin on everything he will talk about up there...Grandpa Elliott Small.

Known for decades as Grandpa Elliott, the man was a living legend, dressed in his trademark denim overalls, red shirt,  floppy hat, his bushy Santa Claus beard poking out from under it. Most nights, there he was at the corner of Royal and Toulouse, sitting on a milk crate, his suitcase by his side.

Born in the Lafitte Housing Project, the man everyone calls "Grandpa Elliott" had been making music for years. Locals knew him by sight and shouted hello as they pass by. Tourists on Royal Street stop in their tracks when they walk past the legend, crooning and playing his harmonica. If street musicians are royalty, some like Grandpa Elliott wear their crowns with nonchalant elan.

Music is the rosetta stone of New Orleans. One of the best places to hear it is on the streets of the French Quarter. He would have been a top tier memory if you happened to walk by the corner of Royal and Toulouse and hear him croon and back it up with his harmonica.

The man was an embodiment of New Orleans spirit, warm, full of stories, outgoing, engaging, accepting.  He unfailingly lifted the spirit of any who come in contact with him. Totally blind since 2005, he doesn't seem to miss much of what's going on around him.

December 2012. The man gets around.

There's Grandpa being transported in a wheelchair to the same American Airlines flight as mine at Louis Armstrong International Airport.

"Hello, Grandpa, it's PT from Boston. I really enjoy listening to you sing in front of Rouse's on Royal Street. A million people have clicked on the Playing For Change 'Stand By Me' video."

He laughs, says thank you, adjusts his glasses, right side an empty frame, left side a deep sun-glass tint to block light.

"Since I recorded that video, Aaron Neville has sung it, Dr. John has sung it."

He holds out his big hand, says thank you.  "I'm heading to Spain to make a 'Playing For Change' video."

“You’re really stirring things up,” says I, "see you back in New Orleans.
 I'll get you another Dr. Pepper at Rouse's!"

Grandpa was one of the musicians playing Ben E. King's  "Stand By Me" on the uplifting award-winning documentary, Playing For Change: Peace Through Music, (the late Roger Ridley sings the lead and Grandpa Elliott is featured at the one minute mark sitting next to Jackson Square as he sang) the first of many 'Songs Around The World' produced by Playing For Change. That song has been viewed 177 million times.

It could be an anthem for the times we live in.

"My eyes hurt me,"  he said to me one night.

"Do you mean pain?" says I.

"No, that I can't see."

It was a rare admission from a man who overcame growing up in rough circumstances to occupy a seat of royalty on Royal Street in New Orleans. This is a man who performed to a crowd of more than 40,000 at Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles, California, on June 30, 2009. He couldn't see them. He sure felt them.

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

You may have seen him perform in the Playing for Change videos.

BONUS: Grandpa playing in Brazil! (Grandpa kicks in at the 3:30 minute mark with the PFC Band)

And rocks the house in San Salvadore in 2018

https://www.playingforchange.com/band

From the web

How can musicians change the world?

Music can help in healing, in breaking down barriers and borderd, in reconciling, and it can also educate. s a cultural right, music can help to promote and protect other human rights (civil, political, economic or social). There are many amazing examples of music being used as a tool for social change around the world.

How Grandpa Elliott got connected with Playing For Change. I couldn't remember the  name of Playing For Change.I couldn't remember the name Playing For Change. Grandpa helped me out.

Photos and 2 videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

Scott Alarik: An Appreciation

December, 2021

 

It took me a few days to figure out why Scott Alarik’s "Folk Tales" radio program, was being aired outside his regular program time…until I heard “the late Scott Alarik” and my heart sank. Scott Alarik 1951-2021

 

"Folk Tales," told in Scott’s gentle, deeply informed avuncular tones, was a regular must-listen program, the kind that made me dash from my car to turn on the radio when I got home so I wouldn’t miss more than a few sentences.

 

Roots music? 

 

Scott dug his fingers into the rich earth of the origins of songs, the historic arc of the folk movement and artists who populated it. Without fail, I would want to hear a Folk Tale again to learn details that I couldn’t absorb in one listen. If you didn't hear it on Saturday, and one repeat on Sunday, you were out of luck,

 

I am so grateful that WUMB-FM intends to put Scott’s entire archive on its website, certain that I will listen to this master story teller add threads to his folktales quilt as I replay years of his studiously researched program in which every sentence was an important strand in a one hour tale.

 

As tightly written mini-tale, every word in service of the narrative, listening was like finding a pearl in an oyster. Exhibit A...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N4rwN3PgF1c

 

Folk Tales is the east-of-the-Mississippi equivalent of Nick Spitzer’s American Routes. Both are wide ranging, deeply engaging programs that every week examine a specific facet of our aural cultural landscape and the artists who shaped it. 

 

With gratitude that the station intends to archive his programs on its web site.

 

"Carry it on…” was Scott's out-tro...and WUMB is doing just that.

Wednesday March 26, 2022  Scott Alarik Memorial

https://www.passim.org/live-music/events/scott-alarik-memorial/

 

MORE about Scott Alarik

https://wumb.org/saddened-by-the-loss-of-scott-alarik/

https://www.scottalarik.com/bio

https://www.scottalarik.com/blog/stories/intro/

selection of Scott's writing from his blog

https://www.scottalarik.com/blog/blog/c/299

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdK5A0IYDZg

Informative bio if you can get by the digital audio voice

Wendy Moten: Country/Western Pure and Simple

I'll bet this has happened to you. You're searching for a song and come across one that stops you in your tracks...melody, tempo, evocative voice, an old-fashioned, unadorned country ballad.

Today's rabbit hole... an artist I've never heard of, Wendy Moten.

Till I Get It Right

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R6qknOC6A-M

Pure voice, piercing lyrics sung in a simple time tested uncluttered arrangement, laptop steel, guitar, percussion, bass.

The lyrics are classic country. I warn you, you're going to play this a few times in a row, content and evocative voice a perfect match.

"I'll just keep on fallin' in love til I get it right
Right now I'm like a wounded bird hungry for the sky
But if I try my wings and try long enough
I'm bound to learn to fly
So I'll just keep on fallin' in love til I get it right

My door to love has opened out more times than in
And I'm either fool or wise enough to open it again
Cause I'll never know what's beyond the mountain til I reach
The other side
So I'll just keep on fallin' in love til I get it right

If practice makes perfect then I'm near bout as perfect as I'll ever
Be in my life
So I'll just keep on fallin' in love til I get it right."

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Larry Henley / Red Lane

Tammy Wynette recorded the song in 1972. At the time, it was Wynette's 12th number one song.

Another Wendy Moten show stopper, I played this a few times in a row too.

"Each Time Yoiu Touch Me"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xv0H1BSepdo

Both sung in the style of the greats...Tammy, Loretta, Patsy...but not in the color of their skin...Wendy Moten is Black.

https://www.allmusic.com/artist/wendy-moten-mn0000247691/biography

MORE

https://musikandfilm.com/wendy-motens-country-ep-produced-by-vince-gill-ive-got-you-covered-1-2/

Whoa...any singer who can croon "Till I Get It Right" in classic C/W style tweaks my presumption that C/W is a generally white singer's province. Moten's cover of Aretha's "Freeway of Love" breaks the speed limit of versatility.

Billy Conway: An Appreciation

It didn’t take a lot for drummer Billy Conway to make a big impression

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/12/22/arts/it-didnt-take-lot-drummer-billy-conway-make-big-impression/

Billy Conway, 1956 - December 19, 2021

The appreciation is a start, but the youtube below is a philosophical riff, wide ranging, with elegant off the cuff metaphors and similes that make it sing. Responding to the interviewer, Conway strings together exquisitely specific responses that, like his intuitive, spare drumming, are never showy and always in service to shaping the narrative that his interviewer is seeking to elicit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pm9XIETEzBo

Billy Conway, a totally engaging human being...erudite, humorous, perceptive, self-reflective...this is a master class in music, bands that produce it, and a musician who lived it and left a singularly defining legacy when he died, a legacy that will shape the next time I listen to live music.

As a cancer survivor, I am in awe at Conway's response to the interviewer's question about his cancer diagnosis. Conway's response is so inexplicitly dispassionate,  matter of factly describing  his spreading cancer and the ravages of chemo on his body with nary a trace of self pity. His slightly hoarse,  charged voice evokes vitality, wisdom and a sly charm.

A quote I read recently, "Pain is inevitable, suffering is not," comes to mind.

Conway, 1956 - December 19, 2021

By his example, I've had a clue how to engage life when my next battle looms over the horizon. Thank you, Billy. Losing you is a blow to every man, woman, and child who has ever been in, and felt, your sage, gentle presence.

Marcus Roberts: "Gershwin For Lovers"

Coffee Series servings...notes scribbled while listening to my CD collection as I enjoy my first cup of coffee...

MARCUS ROBERTS, Gershwin for Lovers, Columbia, 1994

This album - piano, bass, drums - is the penultimate classic jazz trio collaboration. Roberts interprets Gershwin as swing, a subtle rumba, and jazz infused ballads. He mixes it up with gorgeous lightly struck chords and arpeggios that nail the personal groove he stamps on Gershwin songs.

I’ve heard Gershwin 100 times. This is one of the most refreshing. Swing, sly Latin, a soft hint of blues, all three musicians in the same groove, point and counterpoint. Percussion soft sweet and definitive, the arrangements are inventive and totally in spirit with the Gershwin intent that can be performed buoyantly, or as a ballad, or soft or lazily swinging.

Roberts finds the groove between fresh and traditional. Upright bass of Robert Veal and fresh riffs by drummer Herlin Riley take off in flight that is always in the vapor trail of Marcus Roberts lead.

A Foggy Day

The Man I Love

Our Love Is Here To Stay

Summertime

Someone To Watch Over Me

It Ain’t Necessarily So

Nice Work If You Can Get It

They Can’t Take That Away From Me

How Long This Been Going On?

But Not For Me

Produced by Marcus Roberts

Executive Producer Dr. George Butler

CVS Orchestra Al Fresco

October 10, 2021

Phil, also known as Dutch (not Doug) Is bringing the joy to the quiet parking lot behind CVS on Main Street in Watertown.

This man is no amateur. He got his affinity for music by listening to his mother’s piano playing and singing when he was a kid. After learning music theory at the Berklee College of Music, he joined a bunch of rock ‘n’ roll music bands , one of which opened for Ray Charles (not sure where or when). Star struck, he and his mates got to watch Ray perform from the wings at the side of the stage.

Today, situated behind the back door of CVS on Main Street, Watertown, there’s always lots of foot traffic. Street musicians and buskers have to have a specific frame of mind to perform. They go through stretches of time where people pay more attention to the parking meters or their phones than to them and their music.

Buskers like Dutch Phil (not Doug, as I refer to him in the video) are here because they they need to play, sort of like they need to breathe.They may pocket a few dollars to cover gas money and a meal or two. When they perform solo, they’re playing for their muse and to feed their psyches with the creative process that, like a songbird in its cage, needs the freedom to stretch its wings and explore the world before returning home.

There is a lotta magic that Phil coaxes from his Yamaha electric keyboard - powered by a cord attached to the battery of his car a few spaces away from his makeshift bandstand strategically set up across from the exit of CVS.  Musicians like Phil have a vast library of standards tucked away in their memory cells. It amazes me that he can switch from blues to the American songbook to swing to rock ‘n’ roll at his own whim or the request of a passerby.

His sense of phrasing and tempo is elegant. His spontaneous riffs and quotes from other songs appear then disappear back into the main frame of the song like the beams of the headlights disappear after passing his bandstand.

His curly gray hair poking out from under his baseball cap, he is totally present. Nevermind this is a bland concrete parking lot. This man is a commanding presence with the improvisational spirit of a Keith Jarrett. Who cares if the audience is a bunch of empty cars and the occasional shopper at CVS or visitor to the ATM machine at the bank next-door. My guess is that he's imagining playing for a full house at the Chevalier Theatre in nearby Medford, MA.

He doesn’t appear to have a definite schedule. He does have an unshakable presence and a remarkably nimble style that that samples music from every genre he’s ever heard..he's a one man mood elevator, as powerful as a prescription you just got from CVS.

This rollicking video of "When The Saints Go Marchin' In" is Dutch Phil in full, with impressive keyboard panache in his over the top concluding riff.

 

Video by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Apologies, this it Dutch playing, not Doug.

 

 

 

Terrence Blanchard: From New Orleans To The Met

The murder of George Floyd, captured on video for the world to see, was an inflection point in America.

In tandem with or a result of the ghastly sight and evolving Black Lives Matter consciousness, companies began to realize that black people were consumers. Commercials for clothing, electronics, insurance, cars and trucks, home repair products, are pitched by black men and women and interracial couples. The abrupt change would not have  happened before George Floyd. Rational talk about racism are becoming a  regular feature on radio and TV.

Not everyone may be thrilled about that. But the persistent  history of neglected acknowledgement of contributions of creative black talent is being registered.  Much is written about how immigrants, which most of us were at one point, enriched America. Black people, to state the obvious, were transported here and became enslaved people. The effects on them and on us are rippling through our culture this very minute.

Black writers, singers, dancers, actors, actresses, film makers have occupied a sub-strata of our culture for decades. No longer.  Think about the singers and  songs seared into memories of your teenage years, songs that were the backdrop of your romancing and dancing. And remain embedded there with everyone from Aretha, James Brown and their successors to this day.

This is more than entertainment. It shaped our culture.

Tine to give due respect to the creative talent, inventiveness, with which they enrich our lives. I have listened to Terrence Blanchard play at the annual Satchmo Summerfest in New Orleans. 

Terrence Blanchard's creative juice was obvious at Sculler's Jazz Club in 2010.

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2010/09/terence-blanchard-trumpeter-and-trio-at-scullers-jazz-club-1.html

But I'll bet no one in the audience would have guessed his genius would be in full bloom at another stage, nearly another planet away culturally, The Metropolitan Opera in October 2021.

Seeing his work at the Met is a huge step forward, an eye opener, a reminder of the depth of the pool of black talent and its pervasive influence on me and generations of white folks before me and after me. I am watching an inflection point become a cultural shift that affects all of us.

FIRE SHUT UP IN MY BONES, TERRENCE BLANCHARD,

 

 

John Prine - Angel from Montgomery

John Prine - Angel from Montgomery

Simple, Direct. Poetic. Imagery that made John Prine one of the great songwriters of all time.

If these first eight lines don’t duck you under the water to get a John Prine baptism nothing will.

I am an old woman
Named after my mother
My old man is another
Child who's grown old
If dreams were lightning
And thunder were desire
This old house would've burned down
A long time ago

I’ve listened to this song for years. And assumed that an “Angel from Montgomery” was some form of miraculous visitation that would carry the lonely woman off to another kitchen filled with rich conversation and a partner who made her feel alive.

Prine says that “I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks.”

He relished the idea that your idea wasn’t the same as what had in mind.

I always thought that Angel from Montgomery would transport the old woman to a life rich with relationships and things that mattered..

One of the blanks I filled in…
An "Angel from Montgomery" refers to a pardon for a prison sentence from the governor. It is also used to refer to a last-minute pardon from the death sentence. The phrase originated in Alabama where the capital is Montgomery. I thought she was praying for a pardon from a loveless marriage that would set her free to find her cowboy. I think that John would appreciate that one.
https://www.jpshrine.org/lyrics/songs/trivia/angelfrommontgomery_t.htm

Once he wrote the line about a cowboy, he got obsessed with finding an image to hang it on. He rooted around till he found the cover of a book of Grand Ol’ Opry posters. Lo and behold one poster shows a man atop a bucking bronco with the title “Angel From Montgomery.”

Serendipity meets creativity.

The first time I heard Bonnie Raitt sing it, those words pouring out of her heart, I assumed she wrote it. No idea it was composed by a man. Prine is probably the only male who could think of writing it as a woman and pull it off. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=toJ3ZYWRh24

And Raitt performing it with Prine in 2020

https://www.npr.org/2020/04/10/830101087/watch-and-weep-john-prine-and-bonnie-raitt-perform-angel-from-montgomery

John Prine wrote a three-minute song that captures a lifetime of living.

XXXXXXX

"Angel from Montgomery" written by John Prine, originally appearing on his self-titled 1971 album John Prine.

Lyrics

I am an old woman
Named after my mother
My old man is another
Child who's grown old

If dreams were lightning
And thunder were desire
This old house would've burned down
A long time ago

Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go

When I was a young girl
Well, I had me a cowboy
He weren't much to look at
Just a free ramblin' man

But that was a long time
And no matter how I tried
The years just flowed by
Like a broken down dam

Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go

There's flies in the kitchen
I can hear 'em there buzzin'
And I ain't done nothing
Since I woke up today

How the hell can a person
Go to work in the morning
Then come home in the evening
And have nothing to say?

Make me an angel
That flies from Montgomery
Make me a poster
Of an old rodeo
Just give me one thing
That I can hold on to
To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go

To believe in this livin'
Is just a hard way to go

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOg7mAkrKJw

tiny desk in march 19, 2019 , also shows Prine's puckish sense of humor

Prine's tongue in cheek song, "Jesus, the missing years.." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=suoJ6mLVBlU

and his last recorded song

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L21Tc_DtL6M

John Prine died of Covid related illness in April 2021

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-country/john-prine-obit-253684/

 

 

 

Loretta Lynn: Still Woman Enough...at 89!

And she still was at age 89 according to this interview with Raina Douris in 2021.

https://www.npr.org/2021/04/23/990217558/loretta-lynn-transforms-classic-songs-on-still-woman-enough

No way you'd ever guess the woman belting our these songs on this album was anywhere close to her age. She's got the pipes, the attitude, and the overwhelming desire to let those vocal chords and coal country lungs loose. I don't believe she can spend a day without singing any more than she can spend one without breathing.That Kentucky twang and her emotional grounded-ness in the hollers around her is as deep as those coal mines a few miles from where she  was born. Her natural beauty has been enhanced by modern day face lifting...vanity, commercial necessity? Who knows.

Nothing artificial is necessary to alter that piercing, achy, proud, pure tone of voice with pitch perfect tonality she's had no inclination to cap since she was born in Butcher Hollow, Kentucky on April 14, 1931.

"She became a part of the country music scene in Nashville in the 1960s. In 1967, she had the first of 16 No. 1 hits, out of 70 charted songs as a solo artist and a duet partner.^[10] Her later hits include "Don't Come Home A-Drinkin' (With Lovin' on Your Mind)", "You Ain't Woman Enough (To Take My Man)", "Fist City", and "Coal Miner's Daughter".^[11]

Lynn focused on women's issues with themes about philandering husbands and persistent mistresses. Her music was inspired by issues she faced in her marriage. She increased the boundaries in the conservative genre of country music by singing about birth control ("The Pill"), repeated childbirth ("One's on the Way"), double standards for men and women ("Rated 'X'"), and being widowed by the draft during the Vietnam War ("Dear Uncle Sam").^{[12]" Wikipedia}

^{During the interview, Lynn says "Tell the truth in your songs."}

That's exactly what she did, in subjects so far ahead of public taste that some radio stations refused to put then on air.

https://www.allmusic.com/album/still-woman-enough-mw0003469057

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loretta_Lynn

Personal aside: a photo of Loretta Lynn before she had all that youth culture work done on her face would be a master stroke against ageism that apparently equates age and appearance with ability ...or even worse, your relevance.

Is it too hard to equate what your ears are hearing with this lovely aging face taken a few years ago (much more appealing than the plastic face she acquired more recently?)  C'mon, Loretta, your face right there is inspiring for young singers to grow into and for your contemporaries to be proud of.

PS

IN MEMORIAM

In memoriam, Loretta died at 90 on October 4, 2022...https://lorettalynn.com/loretta-lynns-family-statement-and-obituary/

The good times were rolllin' when she sang these duets with her friend Dolly Parton...a fine way to remember her.

 

 

Winter Holiday: Solstice, Hanukkah, Christmas and Kwanzaa: American Routes Radio

The vapor trail from Santa's sleigh heading back to the North Pole may be dissipating but the music in his wake is still ringing in my ears thanks to American Routes...

LISTEN right here...http://americanroutes.wwno.org/archives/show/1200/Winter-Holiday-Solstice-Hanukkah-Xmas-Kwanzaa

This week's edition of American Routes - Two hours of Americana that celebrates a whole range of songs for the season.

Tune in and feel the pulse of the season in as many flavors as you find in a fruitcake - rhythm & blues, blues, ballads, country and rock, in as many tempos as the number of ornaments on your Christmas tree, Hanukah bush or colors on your Kwanzaa candle holder.

Spitzer is the equivalent of a Santa Claus with a bag of gifts that satisfy the soul thirsting for seasonal sentiments only quenched by voice and instruments. Not to mention that a few of them are played as universally as Rudolph The Red Nosed Reindeer.

From the first selection to the last, Santa Spitzer dispenses gifts he has shopped for all year long, hidden in his closet, and gleefully stuffed in the bag he opens for us today.

The first hour features several artists you'd never hear on your radio and rock or croon righteously. The second hour is loaded with familiar artists moved by the spirit of the season and deliver chestnuts disarmingly recast from the original versions. Eartha Kitt, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, Otis Redding, Herbie Hancock with Corinne Bailey Rae, John Coltrane all slide into the program as easily as the big man with the round belly slides down our chimneys.

The second hour is more dedicated to songs celebrating Hanukah, Kwanzaa, Christmas and New Year. Opens with lyrical Andy Statmam's Klezmer clarinet solo "Old Brooklyn" followed by a marzipan collection of Carole King (Hanukkah songs), New Birth Brass Band, Chuck Berry, Willie Nelson, Otis Redding,  Herbie Hancock with Corinne Bailey Rae, Bruce, John Coltrane, among others. 

Spitzer doesn't just drop presents under the tree. While you open his carefully wrapped gifts he tells you stories of where he found them and how they fit so synchronously with the other presents. After Chuck Berry's bluesy "Merry Christmas Baby" ... "Berry is covering in 1958 the original that Charles Brown made famous in 1947. Other covers were made by Elvis, Otis Redding, and Mae West..."

After the first of John Coltrane’s two compositions," This is a 1963 take on 'Greensleeves,' the old ballad from 1580 with Coltrane joined by his legendary quartet, piano McCoy Tyner, bass Reggie Garrison, and trumpet Freddie Hubbard."

I love this. Music has roots, songs and interpretations have antecedents. Every week Nick Spitzer digs in and tells us about them on American Routes.

"With Kwanzaa upon us, we'll close with music from the Georgia Sea islands, Lord Invader and his calypso composition Father Christmas," Spitzer says. Up comes West Indian singer Lord Invader joined by playful saxophone, drums, hand cymbals and hand clapping  followed by the Georgia Sea Island Singers "Join the Band" with an up-tempo penny whistle and hand clapping song that carries the message just fine.

My memories of Christmas past evoked by this day's American Routes is as intense my memory of incense wafting over the pews at Midnight Mass at Mount Carmel Church when I was a kid.

Listening brings home to me that the grip these secular songs have on me is as strong as any traditional or religious songs recalled from my youth. And reinforces how deeply embedded the contributions of Black musicians and singers are in our Christmas songbook and culture.

 

Frank Morgan: Listen To The Dawn

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

Frank Morgan: Listen To The Dawn, 1993

Frank Morgan, alto saxophone; Kenny Burrell, guitar; Grady Tate, drums and a young Ron Carter on bass, for 5 of the 8 tracks.

First track,"Share The Dawn," a Kenny Burrell composition - rarely have sax and guitar shared the same bed with such easy intimacy. Their take on Rogers and Hammerstein's chestnut "It Might As Well Be Spring" is as fresh as a daisy. The trio of Morgan, Burrell (three originals),  drummer Grady Tate and, for 5 of the 8 tracks, a young Ron Carter (one original composition) on bass are on a groove of intuitive repartee.

Soft swing with Morgan's signature bop inflected solos flights are underpinned seamlessly by Burrell, Tate, and Carter. A dawn to dusk mix of spritely,  one touch of sly Latin (Ellington's "I Didn't Know About You," and tender melancholy are stirred and not shaken. Morgan and Burrell finish where they started on the last track, "Goodbye."

 

 

 
 Frank Morgan (1933-2007) learned from and played with the best. He also fell into a drug habit, as did many of the best including his mentor Charlie Parker, but clawed his way back for the last set of his career. He persevered...not many musicians have a stint in San Quentin on their resumes.

OF INTEREST

https://www.michaelconnelly.com/extras/sound/

Sound of Redemption: The Frank Morgan Story is an absorbing documentary about a gifted alto sax player and Charlie Parker’s protégée, Frank Morgan

AND

>Harry Bosch – had a particular affinity for the saxophone. Its mournful sound, like a human crying out in the night, was what he was drawn to. The detective saw the worst of humanity every day on the job. He found solace every night in the sound of the saxophone."

Harry Bosch,  a fictional character in a series of Connelly's books, is a veteran police homicide detective with the Los Angeles Police Department. Connelly weaves together his complex, layered character over several books.

Michael Connelly asked Morgan to compose beginning and ending solos and between chapter clips for one of my favorite Connelly audio books, The Overlook.

Connelly drops names of musicians and songs in every book he's written...impressive.

I had to go to google when he dropped the name of. trumpeter Tomasz Stanko , one of Harry Bosch's favorites.

 

The Benny Green Trio: That's Right

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

A very together trio - Benny Green, piano; Christian McBride, bass; Carl Allen, drums, 1992

Dexterous piano riffing, inventive, swing to bop, creatively arrangements, cool ensemble work throughout. No wonder this seems familiar even though it's first time I've played it in years. Ideas from playing for 4 years with Betty Carter and 2 1/2 with Art Blakey and  listening to the likes of Bud Powell, Tad Dameron, Erroll Garner, Horace Silver, John Coltrane and Miles Davis ( "Something I dreamed Last Night") have percolated and informed his style and approach to each cut on the album.

Elements of shuffle, stride and swing - they're all in there. He plays "Cupcake", a Green original (there are 4 originals here), in a really cool swing beat.

In the liner notes, Leonard Feather comments on Green's 'double handed chording' that learned from listening to George Shearing and played on "Me And My Baby" and that "Hoagie Meat" is played in 24 bar blues in 3/4 time -  that tells me  how little I know about the structural elements that are embedded in the music I love and how much all forms of music have antecedents.

This album is gonna get lots of play. I'll feel quite proud of myself if I can pick out those 24 bar blues in 3/4 time and realize where else I've heard it used. The list of songs in 3/4 time above surprised me.

Nearly an  hour's worth of music to enjoy and learn from.

Harvard Square: A Sunday Uplift From The Grips Of A Pandemic

Sunday, December 13, 2020

Manna from heaven comes in many forms during these months of pandemic. A Sunday afternoon jaunt to Harvard Square ranks right up there with the miracle of the fishes and the loaves of bread. Since March, only places I have frequented are the market, Home Depot, CVS and my favorite restaurants to pick up takeout food at their doors. For those of you keeping count, that’s 9 months.

Lately, I have been beset by maddening intractable technical issues on my desktop. A trip to one the most iconic places in metro Boston is just the ticket. If my computer can’t reset, I can.

Harvard Square on a Sunday afternoon is a destination known around the world. Battle scars from the pandemic are obvious. Some of the stores that have anchored the square for generations have been shuttered. Some have moved to another part of the square when their rents were jacked up, others have reestablished themselves in other neighborhoods. Some sadly will never reopen. Despite the economic toll the square is still a drawing card of the first order.

There is enough meat left on the bones of the place to give old timers like me a sense of continuity on this circumscribed patch of Cambridge that has drawn locals and visitors to it for generations. 

The emergence of free and fabulous street entertainment in the past 15 years - jugglers, magicians, pantomimists, acrobats, goofy and dog and pony shows without the ponies and hallelujah – music - is a huge draw. 

You’re not tripping over them as you walk from store to store, the city regulates where they can entertain. The most coveted place for entertainers is the section smack in the middle of Brattle Square, at the intersection of Massachusetts Avenue, Brattle Street, and John F. Kennedy Streets

On warm summer nights, spectators by the hundreds make a beeline there to be thrilled by some of the most original street acts in any town you’ll ever visit.

Heading down Brattle Street from what used to be Nini’s Corner (forced to move after decades), we hear the strains of a righteously ramped up cover band. Whatever else was on the to do list is immediately scratched. Live music, talented musicians, outdoors in the fresh air, real dance music, totally fabulous, oh yes, we are heading there right now.

Most people are tapping their feet or swaying to the music or wiggling their butts. A few are free styling  the music by themselves. All wear masks.

I have absolutely got to dance right now. I have not partner danced since March. This feels like the oasis I have been dreaming about for months. 

“Baby, we’re going to dance,” says I.  

My shopping companion, the one who came up with this idea, is quite the rug cutter at her Arthur Murray Dance Studio and knows the steps to just about any dance known to man. She and her teacher compete in routines they’ve practiced with total sang-froid in front of tables of judges and loads of spectators. 

She is hesitant to dance outside her familiar territory of polished oak floors and nattily attired cohorts.

I flunk at memorizing a routine. I intuitively follow the beat and channel it into dance…with style, joy, and absolute confidence that I can make it work no matter my partner’s level of expertise.

We step out of the crowd.

After so long a time without live music and a place to dance, I feel like a lemming inexorably heading toward the cliff. A sense of the preordained in play, I’m positively certain that when I reach it, I’m going to defy gravity, soar, and take her with me.

Partner dancing fills a place in my heart and psyche that has not been fed since March. For the next 15 glorious minutes, my partner relaxes, erases her habit of dancing to a creative routine she has mastered and goes with my flow.

I am in an altered state and have no fear of being arrested for it. My troubles and cares have dissipated in 4/4 time. A vital part of my life has been a resurrected like Lazarus. No drugs, no alcohol. Just following the stylings of fabulous singer Lois Lane and The Daily Planets. Christmas has come early. 

I lead. She follows. It is as simple as that.

Heading down Brattle toward the action in Brattle Square.Everyone wears a mask..it's the law.

 

Teen band in front of new Harvard Coop; on the way down Brattle Street

 

Harvard Yard across the street; original Harvard Coop on corner of Brattle and Massachusetts Avenue. Everyone wears a mask.

Lois Lane and band cover the classics...first rate mood elevator...Lois Lane and The Daily Planets

SIDEBAR

"Lois Lane and the Daily Planets are a mainstay in the Boston area music scene. Specializing in R&B, funk, soul, jazz, rock and pop, Lois Lane and the Daily Planets are sure to satisfy even the most demanding audiences! Once the crowd is on its feet they do not sit down.

Lois Lane herself, is a phenomenal singer and a natural entertainer and is known for getting and keeping the crowd on their feet dancing and laughing. Gifted with outstanding people skills, Lois reaches out and touches the heart of everyone from nine to ninety! You are guaranteed to have a great time listening, dancing and celebrating to this great entertainer and band.

Backed by a powerful rhythm section in guitarist Peter Fedele, bassist Lee Lundy and drummer Cliff Goodman, the show is always energy-packed experience to remember!:

https://www.reverbnation.com/loislaneandthedailyplanets

Up and comers...snag a place between the two Harvard Coops and their own echo chamber

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/11/01/arts/introducing-pair-14-year-old-harvard-square-buskers-with-sound-beyond-their-years/

Photos and videos by Paul  A. Tamburello, Jr.



 

Keith Jarrett: The Köln Concert

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

 

His left hand pounding with vigor and occasional rhapsody, right hand trilling like a lark with occasional riffs reminiscent of a choir at a distant white clapboard church,  is an acoustic balm to ease soul and body in troubled times.

A reader told me about Keith Jarrett's current health, his penchant for perfectionism, and stand-offish relationship with a  live audience. .https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/arts/music/keith-jarrett-piano.html

The 1975 recording is of sweepingly surpassingly in the moment lighting caught in the bottle.As of now, the bottle may be capped forever.

 

Horace Silver: Songs For My Father

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

 

1963,1964

The first cut on this album, "Songs For My Father," John Tavares Silver, who happens to be the nattily dressed man on the album cover, is still today the most recognizable Horace Silver composition. All but one of the ten cuts were composed by Horace at the piano.

Blue Note has a great catalog of jazz from the mid-fifties to the late sixties, one of the richest periods in jazz history. Horace gives his side men plenty of space to play around him, from rich solos to subtle underpinnings to his 88 key center of gravity.

 

Sarah Vaughn: The George Gershwin Songbook Volume 1

The morning coffee series:.listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...
December 7, 2020

Sarah Vaughn’s voice and phrasing take a backseat to the strings and intrusive orchestration in much of this album but… the last three songs with snappy big band arrangements mercifully without strings give us full throttle Sarah without the clutter. Gershwin and strings were never a natural combination.

reply by fellow jazz enthusiast who sends me this

"Ain't  Misbehavin" by Foe Pass on Oscar Peterson show

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p_kUJa1PueM

 

 

 

 

 

 

NPR: COVID-19 Hits Hard For South Louisiana's Cajun Musicians

On Nov 28, 2020, at 4:25 PM, Bernard Ussher sent:
https://www.npr.org/2020/11/28/938574647/covid-19-hits-hard-for-south-louisianas-cajun-musicians

My reply to my good friend Bernard who lives in Lafayette, LA.

All  I have to do is look around my own city to see the economic effects of the pandemic. Many of my favorite family owned restaurants shuttered,  maybe for good. Having eaten at their places so  often, I know the owners. I feel their loss and and grieve for lost connections to them...my favorite bars, dive bars, small dance venues, my own barber shop all closed. Some are gone for good. That hurts. 


Practically having a second home with welcoming friends with whom I've stayed in Lafayette for years, what's happening with economic scene in Lafayette is what's happening in my own home town except on a broader scale
.

The ubiquity of music and the merriment of dancing is crumbling as fast at the chunks of ice falling into the sea from icebergs at the poles of the earth. Music and dancing have been embedded in this culture for generations, from  farmers and fishermen to everyday folks. For as far as they can remember, they've relied on it to ease everyday tensions and, as they say down there, "laissez les bon temps rouler"...Let the good times roll. No more.


Some readers of this blog live there. Some of you were born there. Hundreds of people from around America head to SW LA for the sole purpose of joyfully dancing to the music in those parts. 


You've all experienced the dancing, the music, and the inner glow of emotional sustenance that lights us up like two-stepping Roman candles when we partner up on the dance floor. There's the manifest joy of dancing in the dust, in parking lots, muddy fields, dance halls with floors old enough to remember Prohibition, and the camaraderie between dancers and musicians that’s as natural a combination as red beans and rice.

The pandemic hurts musicians in the pocket book and in their own hearts. I’ve danced to so many bands there that I feel like those musicians are part of my family. I know they’re not giving up. It's not in their DNA. Sure they can find a job to put food on the table. Their hearts will still beat but not in 4/4 time. They'll breathe the oxygen but it won’t have whiffs of sweat and BBQ and beer-soaked wood dance floors.


My last trip to Lafayette was to visit Bernard and Rubia on the last days of February and first few of March 2020.  If not for the pandemic, I’d have been down there for festivals and any ‘ol weekend of good company and rousing music a dozen more times. I can still dance in my kitchen. I worry about the people in Lafayette who struggle like my people here.

I worry about the musicians who animate the culture, give it a common rhythm, and don’t get paid to play in their kitchens and don’t make very much on Zoom performances.

Men and women in SW LA miss their Cajun and Zydeco music. Music in this part of the country is not just a weekend thing. And it’s not only a night-time thing. Dancing begins right after your first cup of coffee on Saturday and Sunday mornings and happens every night of the week, and at weddings, public parks, and BYO house parties. Most of the musicians who played on Saturday and Sunday mornings played somewhere the night before, If you think you’re tired, think about that…then leave a good bunch of folding money in their tip jar and buy their CDs.

To me, the gift of music is a survival mechanism. Listening to it juices me up, takes me into an orbit high enough to put the pandemic into a far away box.

John Burnett's NPR story that I read ended with the words "Music — like seafood and family — is the nucleus of Cajun culture. It's not going away. It's just gone virtual.”

Honestly, I doubted that the music and musicians could rebound…until I listened to Burnett’s story with the music embedded inside it.

That’s when I began to believe that, like the crawfish that begin to emerge from the mud of the rice fields that are flooded every autumn, Cajun and zydeco music will survive until the pandemic is controlled enough and then re-emerge to resume all over SW LA.

In the meantime, think of the money you have not spent when flying to Louisiana, staying at motels, dining out, renting cars, paying to enter the dances. Find out a way to send money to the musicians you love and have danced to.

THE BIG PICTURE...
Like looking through binoculars to see in detail, turn the lens around to look at the big picture.


The story is way beyond Lafayette. This is a coast to coast story. You feel it wherever you live. And you can do something about it.

Whether it's musicians who've raised your spirits, mom and pop stores or locally owned eateries or dive bars that are on your weekly glide path, find a way to pay forward your gratitude.

Keep ordering that take out food. Find a local source for what you found on Amazon. Let's transform  "Let The Good Times Roll" to "Let The Pecuniary Gratitude Roll". You can do this.


Give the kind of love that will ensure that all your local faves will be there when the coast is clear and you need them to feed the hole in your life that has become deeper and darker than you'll admit.


Louis Armstrong is said to have signed his letters “Red beans and ricely yours” .
I follow suit,
Red beans and ricely yours,
Paul Tamburello
 
 

Birth Of The Cool; Miles Davis

Morning coffee series...

November 8, 2020

Recorded in 1949, 1950. Big band sound produced by a small classic core of musicians that give it an air of intimacy as if produced in a dimly lit room with a cloud bank of cigarette smoke obscuring the cramped stage. Listen closely enough and imagine the sound of ice cubes swirling around in tumblers of scotch.

 

 

Marcus Roberts: Gershwin For Lovers

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

A surprisingly versatile and imaginative take on George Gershwin

 

Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster

First cup coffee series...listening to a reorganized  collection of CDs while enjoying those first sips of rich coffee...

October 27, 2020

Recorded November 3/December 2, 1959

Ben Webster was reputed to have been a  very difficult, angry man.

His music was a 180...says David, my knowledgeable friend of 50 years.

 

 

 

 

American Routes: Sounds Of Solace

October 18, 2020

Nick Spitzer, host of weekly program American Routes on WWNO, is the most eclectic curator of music of  the American musical landscape. His weekly two-hour program  serves up helpings of blues, country, soul, Tejano, Cajun, zydeco, jazz and surprises in between.

Every so often, he surprises me with an out of left field choice. This week's out of the gate opening selection, "Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting," by Charles Mingus (Blues and Roots, Atlantic Records) is straight ahead jazz with a different feel.

I'm thinking how the heck does Charles Mingus's jazz composition fit in here...then recall the title of this week's program.

Nick is a master of identifying a theme and finding music and musicians to build a subtle playlist that holds it all together. Every week he knits a musical and cultural quilt. By the time he's done, you feel the warp and the weft of American music and the backgrounds and histories of men and women who made it.

His intro for this week's program he's titled 'Sounds of Solace'.

"We reflect on these difficult times with sounds of solace and uplift to see us through solitude and the unknown. From Blue Skies and the Milky White Way to down home and earthly struggles with Mavis Staples and Elvis, Bill Monroe, and Louis Armstrong."

What ensues is a tapestry of  what Spitzer describes as "memory, hope, uplift, and contemplation" ...ballads, folk,  blues, country western, rock 'n roll, jazz, and pop from artists with household names and a few you've never heard of but fit the bill perfectly.

http://www.americanroutes.org/archives/show/1190/Sounds-of-Solace

Spitzer unleashes a calming musical frontal attack on the pandemic. Each song is introduced with dates, record labels to set time and place, and he digs in.

No pedant, he's the drum major, twirling stories introducing each song with palpable energy and contained enthusiasm that reinforce why the song belongs in the today's theme, Songs of Solace.

American Routes began 90 minutes ago as I was listening to WUMB, Boston, on my desktop. I'm still in my chair, now in the midst of  Bonnie Raitt's 1974 cover of  John Prine's "Angel From Montgomery." 

Songs of Solace is  delivering the goods.  Music is a balm, a solace, and Dr. Spitzer is making a virtual house call.

 

 

 

 

Dancing at Chez CVS

August 25, 2020

6:00 PM, dusk fading to evening

LIVE MUSIC!   I haven’t heard live music since the Ides of March, 2020. No matter that it’s coming from a masked bearded guy in a white cowboy hat playing an electric keyboard powered by a cable he runs from his car to his outpost on a slab of concrete at the end of a row of parking meters. The music is a merry mix of American Songbook, Blues, and Rock ‘n Roll. And it’s good!

I haven’t danced anywhere but my kitchen for months. I’m Fred Astaire wishing a masked-up Ginger Rogers would detour from heading for CVS or the  Bank ATM machine across the parking lot and join me in a Covid inspired lead and follow from six feet away.

Show time. I chivalrously extend my hand. In a virtual twinkling, there she is, in heels, a glorious smile of approval on her face as I lead her through a series of swing, fox trot and a rumba routine, brilliant and spontaneous. Just the kind she likes. She’s missed a live connection too.

Phil, “Dutch Phil” he says, Is bringing the joy to the quiet parking lot behind CVS on Main Street in Watertown. He got his affinity for music by listening to his mother playing piano and singing when he was a kid. After learning music theory at the Berklee College of Music, he joined a bunch of rock ‘n’ roll music bands.

“Early on, we got a gig to open for Ray Charles. After we finished, they put us in the wings at the side of the stage. I’ll never forget watching him and the Raylettes perform.” The word starstruck comes to mind,

Situated across from the back door of CVS on Main Street, there’s always lots of foot traffic.

Street musicians go through stretches of time where people pay more attention to the parking meters than to them and their music. Guys like Phil need to perform in parking lots because Covid has dried up all their gigs. A few bucks in the tip jar is good, might pay for their dinner but won’t satisfy their jones to perform.

When they perform solo, they’re playing for their muse and to feed their psyches with the creative process that, like a songbird from its cage, needs the freedom to stretch its wings and explore the world before returning.

 

There is a lotta magic that Phil coaxes from his Yamaha electric keyboard. All the more incongruous that it’s powered by a cord attached to the battery of his car a few spaces away from his makeshift bandstand.

Musicians like Phil have a vast library of standards tucked away in their memory banks. It amazes me that he can switch from blues to the American songbook to swing to rock ‘n’ roll at his own whim or a request from a passerby.

His sense of phrasing and tempo is elegant. His spontaneous riffs and quotes from other songs appear then disappear back into the main frame of the song like the beams of the headlights that disappear after passing his bandstand.

An improbable sight, his bushy gray hair poking out from under a white cowboy hat, slouched in a faded saggy camp chair, he is in his own universe, playing for an unseen audience he clearly feels. The gray concrete parking lot is Phil’s proscenium.  This man is on stage with the improvisational spirit of a Keith Jarrett. The audience is a bunch of empty cars and the occasional shopper at CVS or visitor to the ATM machine at the bank next-door. If that bothers him, he doesn’t show it.

As for me, this is the most fun I’ve had on a dance floor since March 15, 2020.

"Don't Be Cruel" - Billy Swann's Beautiful Cover

Whooeeeee, never thought someone could, or would, take this song by you know who, turn it upside down, let the sound of the coins falling from its trousers produce a song track utterly its own, groove heavy, emotionally convincing, reeking of the 1950s ... voice, phrasing, backup singers, tight band that makes every note count and a bass line running through it like a freight train with a metronome in the firebox.

The organ coda weaving through the song is a tonal match for Billy Swann's light sweet phrasing with just enough emotional urgency that made me play it a few more times after I found it.

I don't remember dancing to the original but this version begs you push the chairs back in the kitchen.

First version

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2020/09/song-of-the-day-dont-be-cruel-reinvented.html

Country Funk, Vol. II (1967 - 1974)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-STFyfsdoVA

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Be_Cruel

 

 

 

 

Epic Beethoven ‘Ode to Joy’ flashmob...

July 22, 2020

If banks across the world paid homage to their founding and made a subtle commercial for themselves while they were at it, this would be the great grandmother of all of them...in Sebadell, Spain, May 31, 2012

 

Surprise and a sense of joy on the faces citizens from 7 to 70 is a universal response to emotive music...contagious, too. I cheered.

"We will be back."

They intend to come back? Hope? A coping mechanism?

Whatever it is, it's the spirit that we call up every day in the midst of living with the pandemic.  Here they are, in living rooms, kitchens, offices, keeping their chops sharp, virtually connecting with their colleagues while their families make dinner and their children dance in the kitchen. 

They don't know how or when it will happen.

Not the point. A musician at the 2:16 mark is wearing a surgical mask, playing through the reality of a global pandemic. The point is they intend it to happen.

Lord knows, we all need something to look forward to, even if it will happen in a way we don't yet comprehend.

Embrace uncertainty...and be ready to perform when the time comes!

 

Willie Nelson: Willie Nelson: National Treasure, World Class Composer/Musician/Singer, Iconoclast, Weed Lover

Willie Nelson: National Treasure, World Class Composer/Musician/Singer, Iconoclast, Weed Lover

Featured on World Cafe interview with Raina Douris, July 8, 2020

10 ET - 11 ET

https://www.npr.org/2020/07/08/889063221/willie-nelson-inhabits-the-songs-of-others-on-first-rose-of-spring

For my money, Willie Nelson is the Voice Of America. Born April 29, 1933, he learned to play guitar from his grandfather and at the age of 10 was performing at local dances. The Voice Of America began broadcasting in 1942, a year before Willie got a band going. They both represent America in their own distinct ways. Willie is probably better known and listened to more often.

Nelson is a man of few words. Whether consciously or not, he's the laconic cowboy, his mind in the saddle, heading to a destination that will unfold as he rides. You're more likely to learn what he's thinking by listening to the verses in his songs. In conversations with a well-prepared interviewer like Raina Douris, he makes his words count.

Willie inhabits a song as naturally as he breathes. A couple of lines into one his songs and you instantly recognize the voice, high pitched, vaguely nasal, and beautifully in tune. A few more bars and you recognize the sounds he strums from his trusty guitar "Trigger." No one picks a guitar like Willie, a mix of south of the border riffs he heard growing up in Abbott,Texas, punctuated by licks inspired by Django Reinhardt.

Raina Douris, host of World Cafe, sets up the first 20 minutes of tonight's show.

"Willie Nelson’s 70th studio album, First Rose of Spring, came out last Friday – And just a few days before its release, the country music legend spoke with host Raina Douris. Willie shares about following his instincts when choosing songs to record, the advice he gives his kids Lukas and Micah as musicians, and how he feels about growing older in country music. Plus, we’ll hear about the new memoir he’s working on with his sister, who was Willie’s music teacher as a kid, and we’ll listen to some of the songs from First Rose of Spring.

She's interviewing Willie by phone because of the virus. He's on one of his ranches outside of Austin where his 47th annual July 4 party will be live streamed online. "If we musicians don't play, we go a little crazy so we really needed to do this."

Willie's songs have been sung by countless others. His ballads about love range from wistful, melancholy, tender, vulnerable, personal and universal, often within the same stanza. There may be a handful of people in America who have not heard Patsy Cline sing Nelson's "Crazy." Raina chooses it to get the show going on solid footing.

"First Rose of Spring," released on July 3, is Willie's 70th, gulp, album. He's only written a few songs on it, the rest are covers of songs he loves. Douris cues up the title song, "First Rose of Spring."

Here's Willie sing-talking, his guitar strumming to underpin the emotion of the song, a man recalling a first moment with a woman, a softly poignant memory Nelson is so good at exploring. From Willie's first words, you intuit emotionally that it's going to touch your heart so you just surrender and lean into the song. Fragments of memories of my past float to the surface. The beauty of Nelson's songs is that his lyrics always leave a space for us to add our own.

"I like songs that tell stories," he says. 'Don't Let The Old Man In,' written by Toby Keith is one of  those."

https://www.billboard.com/articles/news/8490429/toby-keith-clint-eastwood-inspired-dont-let-the-old-man-in-the-mule-interview

"There's a line in there that really floored me. 'Many moons I have lived, my body's withered and worn, but ask yourself how old you'd be if you didn't know the day you were born.'"

Douris plays the song. Willie's voice is steady and true. His trademark guitar licks shine like a neon light that marks the entrance to the roadhouse you've been looking for after a long haul on the highway.

I love "Don't Let The Old Man In." I'm not too many years behind Willie. We know we're closer to the end of the trail than the beginning. The affirming lyrics are a map with signposts reminding people getting on in years how to blaze the trail. I can't sing a lick but Willie and I are on the same page. That old man ain't gonna be darkening our doors any time soon.

This is a man comfortable in his own skin, no pretension, an introspective man who taps into his experiences with a memory sharp as a tack.

Raina Douris sets up the next thread. Willie's writing a memoir with his sister Bobbie, two years older, who taught him to  play the piano "as soon as my legs were long enough to touch the floor. I listened to her play Stardust, Moonlight In Vermont, Down Yonder and all those great songs... and learned to play music from her."

"We're going to write it together and make an audio book, maybe make some money from that," says Willie, ever the one to keep an eye on the bottom line.

"Me and little sister are old friends, we take care of each other. She learned music before I did and taught it to me."

"Is there a song you both like that we could put on next?"

"Down Yonder, an instrumental, is one of her favorites, she plays it at the end of our show every night,"  says Willie.

Raina was ready. In five seconds comes a rousing rollicking instrumental, Bobbie pounding  those keys. probably keeping time with her feet. You can find it on Willie's 1975  'Red Headed Stranger' album. I could just about see it being played on a dilapidated saloon piano. That album changed the course of country music.

https://www.wideopencountry.com/the-fascinating-story-behind-willie-nelsons-red-headed-stranger/

"What are your sons up to?" asks Raina.

"I tell them to follow their art, follow their instincts, if someone tells you you can't do it, that's a good reason to show them that you can." Sounds like the Red Headed Stranger to me.

"Lukas is making an album of Roger Miller songs, Micah and I have helped him cut a couple of tracks already. Micah has a band. It's great to be working with your kids, especially when they're good," says Willie.

Raina heads back to the "First Rose Of Spring" album.

"I want to play 'We Are The Cowboys' by Billy Joe Shaver in 1981. Nelson cut the song with Waylon Jennings, Kris Kristofferson and Shavers in 2002. Why did you want to put this song on  'First Rose of  Spring'?"

"I love the song and I love Billy Joe and I thought it was an appropriate song to do in these times," Willie replies.

"Why?"

" 'Cowboys are average American people, Cowboys are Texicans and Mexicans, blacks and Jews,' that line that covers a whole string of people. Cowboys have the same mentality. We like wide open spaces, like to sing and pick for folks, Billy Joe feels the same way."

"It's  been 40 years since it was recorded. What is the cowboy in 2020 America?"  asks Douris.

"In this particular time, there's a line in there 'we can get the job done'. I think that applies to all of us, cowboys and cowgals. We're all doing what we can to help our country and make it better."

Hard to tell if his audience will interpret that line the way he does but no denying that he's reading the news, thinking about what's ahead for the country, and that we’ll get the job done.

LYRICS

Texans are gathered up in Colorado
The kid with a fast gun ain't with them today
The cowboys are riding tall in the saddle
They shoot from the heart with the songs that they play

There's a right handsome woman on up around Boulder
They got slick hardwood floors and a pot belly stove
She swears I am someone she can believe in
She's the best Colorado gal I've ever known

We are the cowboys the true sons of freedom
We are the men who will get the job done
We're picking our words so we won't have to eat them
Were rounding them up and then driving them home

Cowboys are average American people
Texicans mexicans black men and jews
They love this old world and they don't want to lose it
There counting on me and there counting on you

The world will breathe easy when we stop the bleeding
The fighting will end when all hunger is gone
There's those who are blind so we'll all have to lead them
It's everyone's job till we get the work done

We are the cowboys the true sons of freedom
We are the men who will get the job done
We're picking our words so we won't have to eat them
Were rounding them up and then driving them home
Were rounding them up and then driving them home.

I smell sagebrush, smoke wafting from a pot next to a chuck wagon, and cool breezes rolling across the prairie as night falls.

"There seem to be two themes in this album, getting older and beautiful love songs," says Douris.  "I wonder if you  would talk about 'Love Just Laughed'".

Willie quotes the first lines.

'She said, "Please don't let me go"
I said, "I gotta let you go"
And love just laughed.'

"That's pretty much the whole story. Love does what it does, it doesn't ask us what we want."

Willie's a deft impressionist painter with words. His purposeful brush strokes strike a chord with moments we've lived, emotions we've felt, people we've loved and maybe lost. Love just laughed. No judgement. Just a fact.

Douris plays the song.

Last question. "Music today trades on youth. Do you think you've been able to grow old with country music?"

"Well, I don't know how other people feel about it but I'm tired!" says Willie with a chuckle. "I like to do what's easy. Music is easy. Playing with my boys is easy. The everyday living and breathing, sometimes that can be difficult."

Douris defuses that admission. "Well, you don't seem tired," and laughs with surprise.

Willie's answer was revelatory. He now appears more comfortable riding in the corral than on the prairie and acknowledges it in a lighthearted but telling exchange. It's part of Willie's charm. He'll tell you what he's thinking, no filter necessary.

"I'd like to finish with 'I'm The Only Hell That Momma Ever Raised'."

Willie's raspy chuckle tells you he's good with that.

"It's one of my favorites on the album. It was written by some Nashville writers several years ago. Johnny Paycheck had a big hit with it. I've always loved the song and decided to put it in the album. During our last tour, I ended each show with the song... I  thought heck let's record it."

The song is a clone of Merle Haggard's "Momma Tried, " an anthem that Willie's Texas crowd loves.

World Cafe's interview is coasting to a close. The Red Headed Stranger still rides tall in the saddle.

 

The Miles Davis Tadd Dameron Quintet in Paris Festival International de Jazz May 1949

May 19, 2020 P.E.

"I haven’t played this in years. In perfect condition. Ecstasy!"...

says my dear friend. I've been swapping stories and adventures with him since he moved across the street from me as we entered our first year at South Junior High School.  We've been on the same wave length since Elvis, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider, Little Richard,the  Boys Club Friday night dances, the list goes on...

 

Friendship matters. Thick and thin. We're in the thick part. Past, present, future swirl around like the disco ball at the Boys Club dances, casting bright beams, illuminating memories long forgotten but ready to comfort with the power of shared recollection. Where would my psyche be without these connections during isolation? When I listen, cascades of memories from a less complicated time flood in surges, an inchoate tumble of laughter and melancholy roll over well worn milestones. Opportunities taken, opportunities lost are matters of fact. Recalibrating and reimagining are in order. My timeline is limited. Not so my imagination.

 

So here I am with Miles...

 

Listening now, music only, no video but who cares. I can smell the smoke filled room, see the band through the haze as I squeeze into a wrought iron chair at a tiny deuce crammed in with a bunch of people who appreciate what they’re hearing. Bebop must have just been bolting from the gate. Incandescent energy of a live concert…the riffs at the 29 minute mark start with the known then plunge into spontaneous reverie, sort of a stepping stone from tradition to new territory that the French, god bless them, really understood for what it was.

 

Check the credits at the end.

This brought me back, way back.

Later

Swallowed whole into the belly of youtube, I hear Miles Davis - February 1955 at the Hi-Hat Club, Boston, on the corner of Columbus and Mass Ave.

And a treasure trove of Bill Evans

 

Isolating with giants of jazz...

 

Mother’s Day with Irma Thomas, WWOZ, May 10, 2020

May 10, 2020

Mother’s Day with Irma Thomas, WWOZ, 12 PM - 2 PM

Today would have been Irma's 37th (yes, 37th) annual Mother's Day performance at the Audubon Zoo.  New Orleans does not give up its sense of tradition for anything, a pandemic included.

The two-hour program that Thomas usually performs is being broadcast on flagship radio station WWOZ....a virtual feat that uses a fabulously curated collection of her songs over the years. 

Just as WWOZ did with Jazz Festing in Place, the radio station today is one giant PSA sending love to moms and thousands of listeners sheltering in place. I have watched Irma light a place on fire.

Sadly, my internet is down until 1:15 PM… then

...finally Thomas's still poignant “Cold Cold Rain” (Katrina) pours down from the ionosphere and here’s the Mother’s Day Salute by Irma Thomas, The Soul Queen of New Orleans. If New Orleans has an earth mother, it has to be Miss Irma.

 "You Can Have My Husband but Please Don’t Mess With My Man” 2011 continues the set that spans from resilience to rejoicing. “Can’t Break Away From You,” 2011, “Time On My Side,” a proclamation of female resilience charged with comeuppance for an inattentive lover, I am listening to one in-charge woman. #metoo, meet Ms. Irma Thomas.

Listen to that cackle at the end of “I Wish Someone Would Care About Me.” Right about now I am throwing bouquets to the engineers and producers who integrated pace and style of this salute as mightily as the Mississippi River threads its way around the city.

Here comes “I Done Got Over It.” When the Queen says, “This is the audience participation part, we’re gonna have an indoor second line. We celebrate everything in New Orleans with a second line, births, deaths, weddings, funerals, when a pregnancy test comes back negative! Get out your hankies, shake your tail feathers (cackles)” the audience needs no encouragement.

“Iko Iko,” another New Orleans anthem.

I can’t stand it. I’m bounding down the stairs, JBL Flip speaker blaring in hand. Out the front door to dance in the sunlight on my front porch. Someone in the audience shouts, “We love you, Irma!”

“So do I! Happy Mother’s Day Miss Irma!”

Photo top PT, bottom courtesy of WWOZ

Irma Thomas at the Regatta Bar, Cambridge, MA April 9, 2009

Jazz Festing in Place...the home stretch

May 2, 2020 6 PM EST

To WWOZ...

After listening to Detroit Brooks sing (more or less) a favorite song E La Bas and then the Bruce (as in Springstein, 2006, 7 months after the storm) inspired set..I’m blessing the 'hood with music of New Orleans. The now amplified speakers will probably levitate when the Neville Brothers take off right now. I bow to your people who created these six days of music with an alchemy of intentional solace, grace, and joy…an accomplishment that in my mind equals the miracle of the five loaves and two fishes.

Guarding the groove in the ‘hood.

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

PS. Those speakers did virtually levitate. The Neville Brothers had the honor of closing Jazz and Heritage Festival in 1980. That honor had been lovingly given to Professor Longhair from 1971 till 1979. "Fess," born in 1918, died on January 1980 before the next Jazz Fest. Henry Roeland "Roy" Byrd to this day is revered for his impact on New Orleans music. The Neville Brothers are equal to the honor.

 

 

 

 

Jazz Festing in Place: First Take, Friday May 1, 2020

Right from the pages of unedited running commentary of Friday, May 1, 2020.

FRIDAY MAY 1

12:30 PM Catch last part Michael White 2011 performance

All day long, WWOZ delivers vignettes and back stories, wonderful windows spilling sunlight into corners of Jazz Fest we’ve never known about. These need to be archived, will do my best to find them or ask WWOZ to add them to the website.

Jazz Fesstoid: Louis Armstrong 2001 was his 100th birthday celebration. Louis never played at Jazz and Heritage Fest, he had been invited in 1971 but was recovering from a heart attack at home in NYC and died months later.

Samantha Fish vocals then Roy Hargrove 2007

Jazz Fesstoid: Jazz fest poster history, first was b/w poster given out free and posted around the city.
now silk screen posters and collectibles prices up to thousands of dollars as revenue to support Jazz Fest, see then at www.art4now.com says Lena Prima of WWOZ
https://art4now.com/collections/jazz-fest-posters/products/jf-13

Big Frieda’s gospel roots at 1 PM rock n gospel, hip hop meets revival meeting.

1:25 PM Aaron Neville, Charles Neville in Blues Tent 2014.
Aaron sings Summertime, a classic, how such a burly man can croon with such high frequency is a stunning contradiction,1966 song that made the Longshoreman into a household name, “Tell It Like It Is,” delivered with heartfelt pain, his bluesy falsetto floating over the tent, Neville sing talking a roman candle of scales up and down the all time doo woppy shimmering rendition and as if this isn’t enough poured into your emotional pool then the same stunning emotive octane on turbocharge cover of “Amazing Grace”.That tent is floating and has taken every damn person inside it half way to heaven.

Neville’s voice up and down the scales has traveled with more range than a camel through the Sahara, a thing of inestimable beauty, “Let’s Get Together” closes it out. During three songs with absolutely no warning, I weep. Joy? Deeply buried emotions of past? Dreams of my future? I don’t know. And I don’t care right now. I’m sitting at my desk, listening to music that creeps up on me with the power of a religious experience. Blues, gospel? A fine line Neville through which Neville’s voice flows as if it is a permeable membrane.
Lord have mercy.

Little Freddie King in the Blues Tent 2018 seems like just yesterday as I sit in isolation.

2:15 PM New Orleans trademark rambunctious “Get Together” second line by TCB Brass Band. If that don’t get people steppin’ up, kerchiefs, parasols, arms waving like sheaves of wheat, i don’t know what all will.

Gambling addiction PSA by WWOZ

2018 Paul Sanchez Rolling Road Show on Gentilly Stage
tribute to Alan Toussaint, “Louisiana” , ok everybody knows this gentleman legend, can sing the refrains from “Mother In Law” easy as the national anthem (to some may be more relevant) and another song in memory of Arthur Robinson, “My Name is Mr. Okra” , in honor of this particular street vendor and street vendors of fresh fruit and vegetables who used to walk neighborhood streets. People would come out their doors when they heard the vendor’s singsong voice proclaiming what was in his cart that day. Get a side order of Mr. Okra, value you could not afford but got gratis with your bag of fresh produce.

https://www.nola.com/entertainment_life/eat-drink/article_1a603a92-20fd-5b59-9bdd-07b7f41c5026.html
https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/ezq8a4/meet-the-last-singing-vegetable-vendor-of-new-orleans
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2018/02/17/586575973/goodbye-mr-okra-new-orleans-remembers-its-singing-vegetable-vendor

Chris Joseph record producer Lafayette LA up next

From time to time the upbeat voice of WWOZ general manager Beth Arroyo Utterback, best i can remember “ Glad you’re tuned in and enjoying Jazz Festing in Place. WWOZ is a community and public radio station. We rely on listener support from generous people just like you. We’ve been broadcasting Jazz Fest for nearly 40 years. Join us and become a member.”

Next, Ruthie Foster, Blues Tent 2018 reliable as always. “Back to the Blues” to prove it. Then a
Mississippi John Hurt cover, “Richland Woman Blues,” complete with banjo strumming, can’t make out the title but no trouble grooving in my chair with a terrific little percussion brushes riff, this song rocks, quite an upbeat addition to the tent.
https://www.austinchronicle.com/music/2017-03-31/ruthie-foster-joy-comes-back/

John Mooney 1998 House of Blues Stage, My Creole Belle, uptempo om pa pa do pah slide guitar rollin drum kit ratatat bass thrummin rollercoaster.
“Walkin On Sacred Ground” upbeat gotta get up and dance number propulsive drum pounds the beat guitar slide sirens underpin with slinky sinewy slide riffs not gonna sit down any time soon, whoa baby!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7Y05TR30wk

I bow in gratitude for whoever it is who picked out all these songs/performances from almost 40 years and thousands of performances then arranged them in a satisfying order to entertain us for in same hours Jazz Fest take place every year.

What the heck follows Mooney?
Then a recipe from an African American kitchen from a WWOZ presenter/chef!
This whole shebang’s mega sponsor is Shell followed by big time local companies and individuals.

Congo Square Stage 2002 Wynton Marsalis starts w Pedro’s Getaway, a very modern jazz arrangement, another facet of New Orleans quilt of music heritage, way different from anything that’s been played for the past five hours. Not danceable groove, has a groove and of course Wynton’s trumpet takes the lead followed by piano, saxophone solos in quick succession and Wynton making sounds on trumpet you’ve never heard from a brass instrument before but since this is New Orleans, should not surprise you in the least. This sounds right out of a Blue Note stage in NYC.

Jazz Fesstoid: paraphrased bc i can’t write fast enough. Spring of 1970 George Wein has idea to showcase New Orleans music and heritage. First one was held on steamboat President on Mississippi River, with Pete Fountain as honorary captain. Wein needed help so asked young Alison Minor and Quint Davis, who were knowledgeable and had reverence for the music and culture, to help him promote the fair. He knew that New Orleans future depended on the unique talents of its musicians. They lined up 100 musicians that many had never heard of and set up stages on what was then Beauregard Square now Congo Square. Every day Big Chief Bo Dollis led Mardi Gras Indians through the square in big second line parade.There was a gospel tent with musicians no one had heard of. One day Mahalia Jackson who was performing at the Municipal Auditorium, heard the second line parade and came out, ended up singing A Closer Walk With Thee. What would you give to have witnessed that! The first fair made no money. Wein planned a second one even though its success was an unknown quantity. Over time it grew, moved to The Fairgrounds Race Track 140 acres. Wein, Davis, and Minor’s vision to show the unique musical heritage of New Orleans now almost 40 years for all to see in the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival.

Papa Grows Funk: as advertised.

Jazz Fesstoid: Cajun singer Louis Michot of The Lost Bayou Ramblers talks about the introduction of Louisiana rural music from Cajun and Creole performers generally unknown to city dwellers in the 1970s. No way can i write fast enough. This needs to be archived too. By the 1980s the best cajun and creole musicians began to play at Jazz Fest.
https://kreolmagazine.com/music-entertainment/musicians/louis-michot-a-true-creole-musician/#.Xqzb6i_Mxgc

5:15 pm Blind Boys of Alabama Blues Tent 2018 How these guys in their various incarnations can be so damn good is quite a miracle in one way but the fact is that the kind of music they sing whether a cappella or with a churchy organ and percussion is uplifting, spiritual and that, my friends, is never out of date.
They get into a souped up gospel song and you can feel that tent rock, hell i feel it a couple thousand miles away. A version of Stand By Me gets them off the ground then they slow the train down with a rhythm n bluesy song that shows me the well beaten path between music of the black church and rhythm n blues I used to hear on juke boxes back in the 1960s and still knocking me out in 2020.

The final notes of this song are delivered by what i imagine is a host of gray haired angels stationed at the Pearly Gates. You say ‘Amen’ and you get admitted. Could not pick up the title but the feel of it will be seared in my memory for a long long time.
Next “I Saw The Light” The first three songs were a dazzling combination of gospel that shifted into rhythm n blues styling that showed the straight line from white washed clapboard churches to popular music.

5:34 GREAT story about Professor Longhair, WWOZ needs to put these little stories on their web site. Think i missed the beginning.
5:40 pm story
Jazz Festoid: in 1971 George Wein wanted to go to a practice of Mardi Gras Indians along with Alison Minor and Quint Davis. Sitting somewhere to wait, Wein hears a song on radio, says who is that? Professor Longhair , the two young guides say.
Find him, Wein says. Longhair had performed from 1940s to 1960s but his star had faded.
They found him in plain sight working as a janitor at a record store. The second year 1971 Jazz Fest outdoors April 21, 1971, Longhair agree to play. No one knew who the heck Prof Longhair was. In Congo Square he’s set to play. Well that stage was a small platform set up a a foot or so from the ground. Jazz Fest was still more of an idea about to be born than a rolling well oiled production. First day Fess shows up wearing a blue short sleeve shirt. Probably surprised by the enthusiasm, he shows up the next day wearing a suit. Lord knows where he got it.
Long story short, the crowd loved him. Look up his songs. “Tipitina” for example. Fess was the festival’s closing act from 1971 till 1979. All in the way of embracing your heritage says WWOZ Kyle Roussel (not at all sure of that). 1918-1980 https://www.discogs.com/artist/18394-Professor-Longhair

in April 1974 Professor Longhair’s story burned down, everything he owned except the clothes on his back gone. New Orleans takes care of its own. A benefit for the man was held in a warehouse to raise money for new home rebuild.The tapes of that show have never been heard. Tonight is the night they see daylight.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-lsiDJWMsQ

Great raw performance with remarks about Professor and musicians having fun. I think it was Earl King who introduces the man who wrote Mother in Law, The Fortune Teller, Sittin’ in Ya Ya, no other than Alan Toussaint (1938-2015)
36 year old Toussaint sings “Why Cant You Come Home” a little off key, maybe more practiced as a composer not performer. The with the host doing great job of pushing the band, firing up the audience, to give Toussaint a little love. Next song Earl King sings Toussaint’s “Fortune Teller.”

You can feel the make it up as you go along vibe of the night. People probably straggling in little by little, no one knows yet how it’s gonna work out, King is making a super effort to charge up the audience who by now have woke up and are screaming for more. This tape is totally unedited. All of it. Pauses and all . A masterpiece of history The Wild Magnolias are next.
Next The Wild Magnoiia’s. New Orleans audiences have always known that they’re part of the show, that it’s their job to send energy back to the stage and the more they send the more they get back from the performers.

The Meters Hey Pokey Way! Wow. This song might be in the curriculum of the public schools in New Orleans. The choruses come back and forth like the waves in a swimming pool after a good time Charlie plunged in with a cannonball.

Next Earl King so I have no idea who the MC is.
with Dr John and Earl King
THEN PROFESSOR LONGHAIR HIMSELF in a mighty upbeat original of his, “Big Chief,” his trademark whistle solo and all. How the heck does he whistle like that and rock that piano. The house band, probably the best musicians in town.
Thank you, Thank you, Fess modestly says.
Then with that voice that no one can imitate, that can bump up and down an octave when you’re not expecting it, sort of like a New Orleans yodel. A rocking swing tempo “Since My Baby” ??
Those long fingers pound out another solo sliding up and down the keyboard like a seal surfs a roller. With guitar hitting as many notes as Fess can play. His modest thank you again non plussed that the audience is in full voiced adulation, cheers, screams, lustily.
Now what? Whoa! Fess comes up with a Longhaired version of something that ends up as Stagger Lee!
Lost connection for a minute. Miss the last minutes! Geez!!
about 7 PM end of today’s Jazz Festing in Person.
credits.

Personal opinion: the man made up his own lyrics or what can be called lyrics which were actually riffing with sounds he heard in his brain and channeled into his mouth. You’ve heard of the harmonica being called a mouth organ? Well The Professor’s mouth was his primary organ that he channeled through his fingers to make sounds emerging from a pre-conscious brain in spontaneous warblings with an infectious Afro-Caribbean beat. With a distinct element of joy, the kind of joy that may only be attained after suffering of equal magnitude. Many of us can relate to that with some degree of personal experience but I think it informs black music in a way that beyond the racial experience of a white middle class guy like me.

Fess is an unrefined version of Fats Waller, with the bedrock vein of joy marbled through everything he invents. Listen to it when you need a lift without the benefit of drugs or alcohol.
You don’t buy it? Listen to this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-lsiDJWMsQ
then go back to Fess.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MkGjDbKauVo

and the best story about Professor Longhair, Roeland Henry Byrd that I"ve ever read. https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-still-burning-piano-genius-of-professor-longhair

WWOZ: Paul T. Guardian of the Groove!

Oh my...WWOZ's features pt at large today...

 

 

 

 

WWOZ FM: Jazz and Heritage Festival Savior Part 2

April 25, 2020

More great responses from WWOZ radio hosts. Their answers lead to travels down memory lane.

Email to Brice White, DJ of Block Party

Brice, I'm loving listening to Jazz Festing in Place up here in the Boston area, just became a member of WWOZ last night.
Great opening Cajun song tonite, My Far Away Pal? on Crazy Cajun label.
(could not find) so the question...is there going be a set list of your show
tonight.
I tried checking "Last 100 songs" no luck but I sure do love listening to
New Orleans music, the original melting pot of American music.

From a fellow sheltering in place citizen:)

Two hours later...

Thanks for listening and supporting! Normally I post my playlist. I'll look for a way to do it since things are different now and I prerecorded. That track was My Far Away Cow by Abel on Crazy Cajun, it was a Dan Penn tune!

Take care!

Brice

 

Two hours later...

THIS started out as a thank you note until i got down the Dan Penn rabbit hole after reading your reply.

Thank you, Brice!
That was the most unusual Cajun song I ever heard so wanted to track it down and you did it with attribution to the writer as well.
RE playlist, I don’t want to give you more work to do, you’re doing enough to supply us with vintage music from your own collection . I appreciate you’re curating from your stacks of 45 rpms at home, possibly a silver lining to organize them, likely would never have happened in normal times.

I haven’t seen a 45 rpm for ages but that’s where I got my introduction to rock n roll…at Sammy Vincent’s in Pittsfield MA. That was the place to go for a bunch of us high schoolers after school. We were allowed to thumb through the disks in two large bins, take one out and play it on one of several small turntables and buy the ones we liked. Lots of cross pollination as we listened to choices we made. We knew about Elvis but it might have been the first time i heard “Tutti Fruiti”  and  then “Be Bop A Lula” by Gene Vincent.

While writing this, I discovered that the ‘fight song’ the high school football captain sang to an auditorium full of teenagers was actually a lift from Lionel Hampton’s Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop…  thus ”Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop, Hey! Ba-Ba-Re-Bop, we’re gonna win this game tomorrow!” So it’s only taken me 50 years and a pandemic to suss this out!

WWOZ is coming to the rescue by re-imagining how to host Jazz Fest. I spent most of my afternoon looking our the window and playing Festing in Place. I’ve sent a blog post to my friends encouraging them to tune in. Who knows, they might be dancing around their kitchen tables just like me by the time Festing in Place is over.

I got a response to a query to WWOZ yesterday from Dave Akers, way cool.  I became a dues paying member as I was listening to my first day of Festing in Place. WWOZ is the best!

Keep on keepin’ on!
Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

PS
This link has the Dan Abel 1966 song on it. Upon second listen, it’s a double entendre isn’t it, I don’t believe he’s talkin’ about Bossy the cow... , this was an eye opener and written by a guy from Alabama…love the line "since that day there’s been an extra large Milky Way"
https://www.discogs.com/Abel-My-Far-Away-Cow/release/8745805

and this site sold the 45rpm that has that song in your pile of 45 rpms for $206 in 2012!
https://www.popsike.com/DAN-PENN-ABEL-CRAZY-CAJUN-45-MY-FAR-AWAY-COW/260924418779.html

MORE!
I just discovered this guy Dan Penn is a major hit machine! I was gobsmacked to see the list of his songs familiar to anyone who has listened to radio for the past 50 years, hits recorded by luminaries from several genres.
https://www.tablyrics.com/artist-dan-penn-chords-lyrics
Serious credentials! this list is crazy good! 117 songs composed!

Dan Penn's Lyrics & Chords from the same site.
Wallace Daniel Pennington (16 November 1941 -) is an American singer, songwriter, record producer and sometime guitar player who co-wrote many soul hits of the 1960s including "Dark End of the Street" & "Do Right Woman" (with Chips Moman) and "Out of Left Field" & "Cry Like A Baby" (with Spooner Oldham). Penn has also produced hits such as "The Letter" by The Box Tops, amongst others. Though he is considered to be one of the great white soul singers, Penn has a meagre recorded output, preferring the relative anonymity of songwriting & producing.

Finally this
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dan_Penn

You are making the most out of a crisis by giving your audience the gift of your personal vault of 45 rpms!

Thanks again!
PT

 

 

 

 

WWOZ FM: Jazz and Heritage Festival Savior Part 1

April 24, 2020

To: <[email protected]>

In Boston (Watertown to be precise), loving listening to Jazzfesting In Place, brilliant gift to music lovers worldwide. If there was ever a time I needed it, this is the time, a respite from important news I need to know but… I need  music to balance frame of mind and remind me of the palliative pleasure of listening to music in times when i can’t leave the house in the time of stay at home mandate, let alone listen to it and support it in live performances..or to go out dancing. As much as I dearly miss all this I value my life and the lives of those I walk by even more.
Sooo, i hope you can answer this question.

Listening to a Patricia Boutté backed by Paul Longstreth funky rolling classic New Orleans take on a traditional song as I write this and I am  boogying along in my chair in front of my desktop.
QUESTION what was the title of this song Patricia sang just before her “Bourbon Street Parade”?

Many many thanks from a grateful listener
Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.
PS
have visited New Orleans and SW Louisiana for years, one muddy weekend at Jazz Fest as well.
Just contributed to WWOZ at Saxophone level $100. I am right on key with y’all:)

April 25, 2020

Paul - thanks for reaching out!  And for your very generous support.  It's because of music lovers like you that we can keep doing what we do!

 

The Tricia Boutte cover song you're looking for was "Dreamland," originally a classic 1966 reggae track by Bunny Wailer, but now given a New Orleans feel.  Her version of the track is on a CD called "Oh New Orleans Here I Come."   It was a great set, wasn't it? 

 

I hope you can keep listening, and that you stay safe

 

Dave A

Dave Ankers

Director of Content

WWOZ 90.7 FM New Orleans and wwoz.org

April 25, 2020

Hey Dave!

Thanks for your reply, another reason to love WWOZ. 

 

There are no known counterparts anywhere in the world to New Orleans music, food, people, and radio stations. Anyone with a beating heart will tell you that after a visit to New Orleans where you keep your eyes and ears open, talk to folks on the street cars, get used to being called “Baby” by  women and men who you’ve known all of ten seconds, smell the food, and feel a vibe that hums just at the bottom threshold of hearing and resonates in your heart like a tuning fork every time i visit. My Lafayette friends took me to the Krewe du Vieux parade into Frenchmen Street in 2019. I still have an Abita Beer bottlecap with image of Brett Kavanaugh inside w caption “I still like beer.” You get the picture.

 

I tuned in during Tricia Boutées set.

"Hey Siri, What’s the name of this song, I asked.She was stumped. I suppose i shoulda known better than to ask.

Trust me, after watching a few hours of news, I am so ready to tune in to Jazzfest in Place, a brilliant idea. You rose from the debris to stage Mardi Gras in 2005. You figured out a way to gift it to the world this week during the time of the virus.

 

It appears that you all dove into the archives of thousands of performances and cherry picked the ones that would give us the medicine we need in the time of the virus. What a mammoth undertaking. In truth, you could probably thrown darts at the list and come up with winners because the depth of New Orleans talent is deeper than Stellwagon Bank off the shores of Boston. And bravo that you pick New Orleans musicians and singers not headliners from ‘out of town’. I’m throwing a bouquet to Boutée and Thomas and Cleary and Barker and Ball and Richard and the Nevilles, each and every one will make my stay in place at home life richer not to mention give me a workout. You ever see a man second lining around his kitchen table? No? Well, you ain’t been lookin at me. Parasol and all, baby.

 

It is a pleasure to support a station so tuned in to the psyches of of New Orleans and New Orleanians at heart.

 

Thanks again, Dave. I’ll be listening.  Next to a face mask and washing my hands, this is the best way to stay safe, sound, and find joy at the same time. No small accomplishment.

 

2010 - my first Jazz Fest. I haven’t been the same man since.

https://ptatlarge.typepad.com/ptatlarge/2010/05/the-41st-annual-new-orleans-jazz-and-heritage-festival-part-2.html

 

Thanks again, Dave

Onward…with a beat!

 

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

 

 

"Jazz Festing in Place" April 23 – 26 and April 30 – May 3

A BRILLIANT WORK AROUND...NEW ORLEANS FIGURES OUT HOW TO KEEP ITS CROWN JEWEL SHINING IN THE TIME OF A PANDEMIC!

"Jazz Festing in Place" April 23 – 26 and April 30 – May 3

With over 130 festivals a year in New Orleans, the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival is the colossus of them all - "One of the world's greatest cultural celebrations. The annual springtime event spanning 10 days, with thousands of musicians playing on 12 stages and attracts almost 500,000 culture-crazed fans from around the world."

What does Jazz Fest mean to New Orleans? In 2001, favorite son Louis Armstrong's 100th birthday, 650,000 people packed the 145 acre Fair Grounds Race for one weekend of the celebration of music and culture.

In 2006, the festival was held 6 months after Katrina devastated the city. No Jazz Fest? No way! Tradition holds New Orleans together like a roux holds together gumbo.

A plague in 2020? Jazz Fest was cancelled. But...

WWOZ FM, the umbilical cord to New Orleans music on the air waves, created Jazz Festing In Place, two weekends of curated performances from way back. Put a camp chair in your living room, soak some red beans, boil the rice, put on your dance shoes when the spirit moves you. Jazz Festing In Place happens in the exact hours the two weekend festival would have gone down. Hallelujah.

Friday, April 24 4 PM...at home

After a few hours of counter-balancing the voices of CNN and Fox News, I was worn down.

Chloroquine may or may not be a palliative to treat Covid-19.  But music...oh baby, in a nanosecond, my psyche is on a chariot ride to exuberant cosmic heights. Jazz Festing Online is on the radio runway. Fasten safety belt. In seconds, I'm lifting off, circling the earth in my own Jazzfest skywriter.

I'm flying on Air WWOZ and Jazz Festing In Place...Online!

https://www.wwoz.org/listen/player/

New Orleans' bid to keep the juice of Jazz Fest, the most enduring gift that city gives to its residents and people from all over the world, is alive and well.

This is the lineup that was to be...

https://www.neworleans.com/event/new-orleans-jazz-%26-heritage-festival-(cancelled)/3197/ (lists big name artists; for my money, the scores of local bands/musicians that play are why I came in 2010).

This is the brilliant Plan B, cherry picked rock the house performances from as far back as 1977, online and in the same time slots as they would have been at the Fairgrounds Race Track. New Orleans is arguably the well from which American music was drawn. The set that closed Friday's Festing In Place was Fats Domino's  2001 performance. The Fat Man from the Lower 9th ward was in great form.

https://www.wwoz.org/640011-jazz-festing-place-cubes

Reproducing the energy of Jazz Fest on the radio is a daunting task but these performances taped live, dang, you can hear the crowd's unabashed shouts and cheers to performers on the outdoor stages. The energy came in waves from people in camp chairs, or sprawled on blankets, umbrellas popped up to ward off rain or the beating sun. From the heavens, it must look like a carpet of mushrooms topped with rainbow sprinkles.

Jazz Fest has always been an interactive experience. Now we just recreate it virtually, listening in our living rooms, kitchens and porches as we shelter in place. Interactive with distance!

Today, late Friday, I tuned in to listen to Patricia Boutté, backed by Paul Longstreth, with a funky rolling classic New Orleans take on a traditional song as I write this and boogying along right in my chair in front of my desktop. Boutté follows with the ultra classic "Bourbon Street Parade" written by drummer Paul Barbarin in 1949.  Followed by her cover of  "Going to the Mardi Gras" , originally recorded by Professor Longhair in 1959, a monumental figure in New Orleans history. By the way, here's his recording of "Tipitina," whose rolling rumba style is so totally New Orleans.

NOTE: Reason I love WWOZ: Siri couldn't figure out the name of Patricia Boutée's first song so I shot an email to the station. A few  hours later..."The Tricia Boutte cover song you're looking for was "Dreamland," originally a classic 1966 reggae track by Bunny Wailer, but now given a New Orleans feel.  Her version of the track is on a CD called "Oh New Orleans Here I Come."   It was a great set, wasn't it?" From Dave Ankers, Director of Content, WWOZ 90.7 FM New Orleans and wwoz.org  

How cool was that!

Boutée's rambunctious energy is followed by Kenny Neal's slow groove "How Time Slips Away," recorded at 2018 Jazz Fest. It is so eerily perfect for life in the time of pandemic. Time is indeed slipping away, but not in a way we ever imagined.

Friday's Jazz Festing in Place ends with Irma Thomas, The Soul Queen of New Orleans, 2006 set. It was the first Jazz fest since Katrina ruined New Orleans in August 2005. The city still smelled like mud that day. Irma kicked it off with my favorite, "It's Raining In My Heart." New Orleans audiences, especially at Jazz Fest, take it as an obligation to shout out to the singers. Irma stokes that fire, calls out, "We're still here!" You can imagine the response.

By this time her set closes, I'm dancing in the kitchen, grateful for the gift of music and its power to heal. An odd piece of synchronicity. Katrina's shadow still hovered over New Orleans, bruised and perhaps broken and caked with mud, in 2006.

The Covid-19 virus is killing us in 2020. We're in a mandate to stay home. Unprecedented. A nightmare with a death toll. On that day in April, Irma delivered the sermon, a lesson in survival and resilience and succor. New Orleans needed it then. We can use that same sermon today.

"Put your handkerchiefs in the air," she shouts, a signal she's ending her show and the day at the mandatory 7 PM closing time.

Here comes "Iko Iko." You know damn well the crowd was shakin' what the maker gave 'em and second lining on what is left of the grass on the infield of the New Orleans Fairground and Racetrack. New Orleans survived Katrina. Covid-19 is another order of magnitude.

 

A Virtual Dance Party...Boston to Lafayette

March 20, 2020

COVID-19 has closed down gatherings of more than 5, 10, 25  depending on your source. No contact closer than 6 feet, stay close to home. For sure, no public dancing.

I needed a dance fix.

8:00 PM
Text my friends Bernard and Rubia in Lafayette. 
“Put on your dancing shoes, The Revelers are in the CD rack, we’re gonna have a party in our kitchens!”

“Call us in 15, we’re finishing dinner.”

8:15 PM
Sent them a set list of 4 songs. A brief phone conversation about logistics ensues. "We’re going to connect a cell phone to a little boom box on the counter," they say. They are all in.

8:20 PM
Crank up the volume on the speakers in my kitchen.
Dial Lafayette on my cell phone.
Cue up the music… whoop and holler dancing around the stools around my kitchen table as if they were other dancers crammed into the tiny dance floor at The Blue Moon Saloon in Lafayette. I'm in the moment in my own alternate reality, feel the energy of the crowd, imagine the band on the stage about two feet above the dance floor, the musicians taking turns with their solos and me and my imaginary smiling dance partner in synch, styling away with spontaneously invented moves that draw smiles from the other dancers.
I can hear Bernard and Rubia doing the same thing together in their kitchen.

Our little fais do do finishes with a waltz, often a way the band in a Cajun dance hall ends an evening.

The best dance in Lafayette that night…maybe in all of southwest Louisiana and probably the only one!

Facetime, Zoom, Skype…we’re gonna get creative. We’re not going to miss a beat.
Danses virtuelles, la vague du futur

Based in Lafayette, this band has a national following. These top notch musicians play a mix of Cajun, Zydeco, swamp pop, covers and original material in one of the most musically alive cities in America.

PS

Asked Bernard to tell band members he knows what we just did... could be a wave of the future!

Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

The Back Bay Chorale: The Golden Age of Brass Concert

COVID-19 is a game changer, the world’s pace of life is changing daily. If you’re a music lover as I am, showing up for live concerts and shows is now a no-no.Tonight’s concert is the last one I will attend for a while. My devices are ready to fill the gap. I’ll play my favorites on my phone, laptop, listen to my favorite radio stations, and dance in my kitchen. Music is another game changer, but the best kind for me, a mood enhancer, a psychic salve. I can get lost in song. And I don’t have to wash my hands after listening.

The Back Bay Chorale: The Golden Age of Brass

Saturday March 7, 2020, 8 PM
The Emmanuel Church, 15 Newbury Street, Boston, MA

A special night for singers, musicians, the crowd, and director Scott Allen Jarrett -A Rich Program Delivers A Bridge Over Troubled Waters

This was no ordinary evening of cultural entertainment. The tide of COVID-19 was rolling in to Boston. The public was skittish. Whether patrons would attend or not was in question. In the days preceding, several public events had been cancelled. When we arrived at 7:15 PM, about fifty people were rattling around in the pews of the historic Emmanuel Church. That’s about 500 people short of its capacity. Not encouraging.

You could see the relief on their faces at precisely 8 PM when the performers filed onto the stage. About 300 patrons awaited them. The loyalists in the pews knew the score, not the one on the pages of the performers' song books but the chance that this would have been a major (but understandable, considering the circumstances) disappointment for the 110 singers in the chorale, plus the six soloists, and the six musicians with period style instruments in hand, if the audience had stayed home.

The reception was not lost on esteemed conductor Scott Allen Jarrett. Visibly moved, he stepped down into the aisle on level with the first row, hands clasped, and delivered his own solo of heartfelt gratitude. Ardent supporters had showed up for the Chorale. He was aware that tonight there could have been more people on the stage than in the audience. It was a poignant moment.

In another departure, Jarrett took the time to give us a tutorial on tonight's program, "The Golden Age of Brass" that featured the music of Giovanni Gabrielli (1553-1612), Claudio Monteverdi (1567-1643), Johann Hermann Schein (1586-1630) and Heinrich Schütz (1585-1672).

“The late 17th century composers wrote some of the richest pieces in the canon. I love their work. They added new techniques to older tradition to enrich choral singing, they are not played as often as they deserve to be and we’re thrilled to perform them for you tonight.” Their collective creativity introduced contrapuntal technique and fused Italian and north German musical and concerto styles.

I am familiar with the Italian names Monteverdi and Gabrielli thanks to my Saint Michael's College professor Dr. William Tortolano  The Germans Schütz and Schein not so much. They all made stirring polyphonic music. (By the way, Dr. Tortolano, at 90, "still practices on the organ at Saint Michael's when the priests are not looking!")

Sitting in a semi-circular pocket in the midst of the chorus was the early instrument sextet, Dark Horse Consort. The sextet plays three sackbuts (early trombones), two cornetti (early trumpets), keyboard and a strange looking theorbo (a plucked string instrument of the lute family). The small grouping of brass and strings was calibrated to undergird the chorale and soloists with just enough instrumentation to be heard, not overwhelm, and add a soft brass layer to the chorale. The aptly named cornetti were so small they looked like a children’s instrument (but certainly didn't sound like ones).

Add the 110 member chorus, three female and three male soloists who could blow out candles on a birthday cake at ten paces and you got a glorious sound that filled the acoustically perfect Emmanuel Church with music that was divine.

Choral, even classical music, are becoming less played and performed as a host of rich popular music takes over the airwaves. It took my ears a few minutes to become accustomed to it. Soon, I felt myself settling into the warm curve of the 150 year old sturdy burnished oak pew in the venerable church. I was transported into a world of long ago when the sounds of voices in harmony and a few brass and stringed instruments could transport you a little closer to a world you imagined you would some day inhabit.

 Ready to perform...

As the chorale settles into their places, conductor Scott Allen Jarrett delivers an impromptu heartfelt thanks to the audience for showing up...

and an explanation of why tonight's music is special to him and why it was chosen...

A standing ovation...Well done!

Artistic Consultant Justin Blackwell and Artistic Director Scott Allen Jarrett

Stained glass window, back of church, behind the pews

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Sonny Landreth Slides Into Somerville

Sonny Landreth
February 25, 2020
Once, a theater space in Somerville, MA

Sonny Landreth… you not going to see a more spectacular display of slide guitar virtuosity for a long time.

The silver bottleneck on his pinky flashed as fleetingly as a shooting star as he nimbly rode it up and down every inch of the guitar’s neck, caressing, thrashing, plucking every inch with jaw dropping riffs, his hands inches apart from the bottom of the neck of his Resonator and the throat of the guitar body. Mesmerizing.

The blues he played in the first half of his set was lyrically drop dead beautiful and played with the atmospherics that few players can emulate. Not much body language, the man just sat there, whaled away with alternating finger fast slides and achingly slow holds to caress one note. Gasps were audible, some of them mine. His percussionist and rhythm guitar player were on stage but all eyes were on Sonny.

Long gray hair flowing straight down to his shoulders, faded shirt and jeans, he looked more like a geek at the back of a computer store. When he sat on a wooden chair and made that guitar sound like the sound track to a rocket to heaven or a slow decent into the blue room in hell, the rest of the outside world simply disappeared from consciousness. For many, he ascended a throne for the next 45 minutes.

Sonny got into an instrumental run for the second half of his set. As brilliantly as he played, my ears got used to the unremitting genius of his playing and longed for another killer blues song to complement his playing. The full house at Once Theater in Somerville didn’t seem to mind.

You’re gonna have to go some to find virtuoso slide guitar playing like this. In the spirit of Mardi Gras, which was today, he played a zippy Zydeco song with so much zap that a few couples found enough space to dance in the corner.

He’s on the road with Long Tall Marcia Ball. There, my friends, is a double bill of Louisiana music that has more energy than a bomb hurricane.

Photo, videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

Amy Kucharik Lights Up The Burren Backroom Concert Series

The Burren

247 Elm St, Somerville, MA 02144

February 20, 2020

Give Amy Kucharik a couple of spoons and a wooden box top and she could entertain a crowd in front of a WalMart in Anyplace, USA. Give her a ukulele and a few talented musicians and she can, and did, entertain a full house in The Back Room at The Burren in Somerville tonight.

Singer/songwriter is a feeble way to think about what she does. She's a master of the ukulele for starters. "I like to learn new things," she says as she picks up a guitar, adjusts the capo to set it in ukelele range and sings one of her original songs. That's after she's accompanied herself with a harmonica and some righteous foot stomping. And what you have to hear to believe, a kind of humming she calls mouth harping that sounds like a trumpet with a kazoo for a mouthpiece. Your jaw will drop the first time you hear this. Delightful.

The woman loves music that tells stories. She pitches them to us with a bit of their history, a personal anecdote, a bit of philosophizing, and natural sense of humor (some delightfully at her own expense). Several songs are from her 2018 album "Until The Words Are Gone" (original songs) and a few from her 2014 "Cunning Folk" album (more original songs!).

A nod from Amy, and Shazam!  ...her regular crew of sax, keyboard, and standup bass players tattoo the song's intent, from lyrical to raucous, in a six lane highway spanning blues, punchy 1920s/30s ragtime  jazz, folk, pop, and country, with show-stopping energy that elicit spontaneous applause from us, and grins from her band mates.

The Amy Kucharik partisans in the crowd were treated to Amy at her best, haunting, jaunty, and humorous...this is why you come to hear live music.

A light - hearted moment, one of many tonight...

Jeremy Valadez - saxophone; Michael Valdez - keys; Greg Toro - upright bass; Leo Ciarametaro - drums, all of 'em on an intuitive roll with solo after solo built on what each has just heard. On both sides of the stage, we know something special is happening.

Down Hearted Blues, a 1922 classic written by Alberta Hunter and Lovie Austin - Amy sings and plays, the band kills it with inspired solos, note Amy's inventive 'mouth harp" at around the 4 minute mark.

Knock down blues....oh, my...blues dancers and listeners delight, Amy and the band are in a serious groove covering Lil Green's 1940 "Romance In the Dark," written by Big Bill Broonzy, revered for its smoky hues and covered by scores of artists. You'd have to go some to find a cover that does it more justice. .

Photos and videos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.

The Burren Backroom Series is hosted by WUMB. FM, Boston, tonight's MC Perry Persoff.

 

Dennis Stroughmatt: "The Key's In The Mailbox" - A Tribute to Tony Booth

November 27, 2019

“I loved your rendition of ‘Together Again,’ says I to Dennis Stroughmatt.

“You might like this collection of Tony Booth songs I just recorded,” says he.

Looking for a CD to play while boiling water for a pasta dinner, I saw Stroughmatt's face on the cover and without reading the title, racked it into the CD player.

Stroughmatt’s annual show with his band Creole Stomp at The German Club in Pawtucket, RI, draws a full house for his stellar interpretations of old time Louisiana Cajun and Canadian French ballads, waltzes, and frisky two steps.

The man’s a scholar of French Creole music, has been honored at the Kennedy Center, and is as good as it gets for listening and dancing to French Creole music with a vein of the Missouri Ozarks embedded inside it. What I heard on "The Key's In The Mailbox: A Tribute to Tony Booth" blew me away...14 of the most indelible western swing/honky tonk songs you're likely to hear on one album.

Dennis’s stratospheric baritone with its evocative vibrato illuminates every song in his catalog. And here he is in full Ray Price mode…deep country  and a long way from Louisiana.

Stroughmatt’s diaphragm must be made of Kevlar. His clear, resonant register lights a fuse to the lovelorn lyrics that, with his traditional phrasing, shows why old time country music, classic short stories of love and loss, has stood the test of time.

His clarion voice has an edge that would cut through the crowd chatter in any dusty Texas roadhouse then draw them to the dance floor. The baritone that he unleashes with this CD, “The Key’s In The Mailbox A Tribute to Tony Booth,” has the energy of his cajun/creole catalog but more evocative and downright Texas. Forget Price. This is pure Stroughmatt.

Chances are you’ve never heard of Dennis Stroughmatt and, unless you’re a die hard country music fan, of Tony Booth. Tony Booth’s albums were on permanent rotation on Stroughmatt’s father’s turntable when Dennis was a teenager. Booth topped the charts with a slew of hits in the early 1970s. He faded from the charts but he's still belting them out.

Dennis, fiddle in hand, reprises Tony Booth songs that mesmerized him when he was a kid. Tribute? Sort of. More like a gift to a boyhood hero. Stroughmatt picks 14 songs from the Booth archives and kills them. Each one is just under three minutes long, perfect for three-for-a-quarter in a juke box back in the day, and pull on your heart strings and make you yearn to find the nearest hardwood dance floor. There’s probably a verse in every song that you’ve lived yourself.

“Apartment No. 9,” “The Keys In The Mailbox,” Happy Hour,” “Second Fiddle,” I’ve Carried This Torch,” “He Don’t Deserve You Any More,” “Would You Settle For Roses,” Under Your Spell Again,” Cinderella,” …do you need to be told we’re talking heartache? The searing power of his voice reveals hurt and longing.  Its shimmering vibrancy tells you that no matter how strong the winds, the singer is going to weather the storm.

This is a CD of full-boil country swing Texas two-step honky tonk music that you're likely to wear out like Dennis's father wore out that first Tony Booth 33 rpm record back in the 1970s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rwXBdnWvWDM

"The Key's In The Mailbox Come On In"...Tony Booth's version of this song got worn out on the Stroughmatt family's record player in the early 1970s...Dennis Stroughmatt does it proud in his tribute to Tony Booth today.

Photos by Paul A. Tamburello, Jr.