Riffs: Quiz du Jour

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The Quiz:

What is the correlation between the following four years?

1950
1962
1965
1967

Clue: It migrated north from the Delta.
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Riffs: Something I've Been Missing

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via Amy McCann. Who knew?:



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Riffs: The Stratfords - Ultimate Pop

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I posted this on Facebook yesterday, but things get pushed to the bottom of the stack so quickly there...

This is one of my very favorite 45s from the Golden Age of Rock'n'Roll. I never understood why this wasn't a mega-hit record. It is certainly a better tune than anything that the Beatles had put out at this point in history.

It worked for me back then, and it still works for me today. Give it a listen:



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Riffs: Sunday Morning Music

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Not at The Village Vanguard; not with Scott LaFaro on bass; but Bill Evans, nonetheless:


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Riffs: Sweet Thing

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A Facebook friend posted this old favorite for the world's pre-dawn delight, and it seems appropriate to the day. You know who you are:




Thank you, Van the Man.
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Riffs: If Only

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Riffs: Rodak Rockin' Rural

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Wail on, bro'...



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Riffs: Fatwa Lifted

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Although this clip is inferior in terms of both son et lumière, I offer it up as the best I that I could find in the time I wanted to devote to the search. I love both the singer and the song. The 10,000 Maniacs cover of Cat Stevens’ great tune, “Peace Train” first appeared on the 1987 album, In My Tribe. But when Stevens disclosed that he had become a Muslim and later, in a fit of the kind of excess zeal that often afflicts converts, endorsed the fatwa issued against author Salman Rushdie over the content of his novel The Satanic Verses, the tune was removed. By the time I purchased the CD (in great part because of my love for the band’s treatment of that song) it was—to my disappointment—gone.

I have always felt that this censorship, although well-meant, was a mistake. The song has a vital and valid message. Moreover, the truth from the lips of Satan himself remains the truth. It’s not where it comes from, but how you use it:



If anyone can supply a link to a better clip, please send it along and I'll gratefully replace this one with that one.

(The 10,000 Maniacs' cover of "Peace Train" is again available, btw, on the retrospective compilation, Campfire Songs.)
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Riffs: Just Call Me "Sonny"

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Considering that I love popular music, that I have a rather large collection--on vinyl, tape and CD--of popular music, going back to the very beginnings of recording in the last century; and considering that I have been listening to popular music, first on radio--when Perry Como and Patti Page were big stars--considering all of that, I've been quite neglectful of sharing some of the music that I love here. I've been doing better this past week. Tonight, I'm putting up a song by another of my favorite singer-songwriters. Enjoy:


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Riffs: A Nice Jewish Boy

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As long as I'm on a music kick, here is another of my favorite artists, doing my favorite of his recent tunes:





That is some septuagenarian soul, baby.
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Update: In truth my favorite song on that album is Boogie Street, but I couldn't find a video that matched my enthusiasm for the song. Play it anyway.
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Riffs: It's Better To Burn Out

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For several hours I've been communicating with Pentimento via Facebook on the topic of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez. This, then, is the appropriate sound track to that series of exchanges:



This song, so drenched in New York City images, has personal resonance. It is almost physically painful for me to listen to it now.

Speaking strictly for me, we both could've died then and there.
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Riffs: I Love This One

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Riffs: As Irish as Paddy's Pig

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Pentimento has put up a post featuring some beautiful Irish music, and in the comment box over there I've contributed a couple of others. And this has brought to mind this song that I love almost beyond all others. Once in while, far into a dark Bronx night, my friend Bobby Hackett would bring his guitar down from his mother's apartment down the block, and we would would sing--my drunken Irish friends and I--this song, the beer running down the fronts of our shirts, and the tears streaming down our cheeks. It was always in Huvanes that we sang this song--for some reason, never in the Glenside, my "home" pub. Listen to it, then. And if you can do it without emitting a sob, then there's something drastically wrong wit'yez:



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Riffs: Been There, Done That

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Riffs: Some Cultcha

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As I type, I am listening to Henryk Górecki’s Symphony No.3, featuring soprano, Dawn Upshaw, with David Zinman conducting the London Sinfonietta.

Back in the early ‘90s, this recording was something of a major fad. Tribes of Euro-Quaalude freaks (or maybe it was Ecstasy) were gathering in converted airplane hangers featuring vampire castle lighting and pumped-in clouds of detergent foam to dig the haunting beauty of this piece of music while trying to remember where they’d left their genitalia.

Or something like that.

I will freely admit that I don’t listen to much symphonic music. My personal strings are more attuned to three-chord guitar classics. I will also confess that I sent away for the disc due to curiosity about its cult status, rather than as a high-toned exercise in music appreciation.

All of that said, if you don’t know this gorgeous work, and if archival Poison, Kanye West and Coldplay just aren’t diddling the ol’ G-spot like they used to, you might want to check it out.

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Riffs: Music You Maybe Missed

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Where’s the great new music coming from? Maybe it’s coming out of left-field. Maybe it’s coming from the past...

If you’re like me…God help you! (rimshot) That said, if you’re like me, you like to find your own new music. When you discover some new-to-you group or artist that really does it for you, completely on your own, you tend to value that find more highly than something that has been suggested to you by somebody else. Be that as it may, I haven’t posted anything about music in a very long time. So, to put an end to my record-smashing streak of non-musical posts, I thought that what I would do is briefly introduce a few recordings that I have discovered, by one means or another, over the years and have greatly appreciated and enjoyed. Some of what follows is music by relatively obscure artists. None of it is very new. And any of it you could easily have missed.

I will begin with a recording to which I was introduced by this really good article that appeared in The New Yorker. Read the article; you’ll dig it. It chronicles the creation of Sunday Night at the Village Vanguard, featuring the Bill Evans Trio. The album is da bomb. This recording not only sent me out buying more Bill Evans, but it sent me out investigating the whole “Cool School” of jazz, including such artists as Chet Baker, June Christy, Lennie Tristano, Wayne Marsh, and Lee Konitz, among many others. But Sunday Night at the Village Vanguard is a true classic and not to be missed.

My next pick is Genius + Soul = Jazz by Ray Charles. Given the fuss raised by Jamie Foxx’s cinematic portrayal, maybe this album has had a comeback of which I’m not aware. I own it only on vinyl, so I’m not sure what tracks may be on the CD version. But this mostly instrumental album also features a couple of great vocals, one of which is a killer rendition of “I’m Gonna Move to the Outskirts of Town” arranged by Quincy Jones—as is “One Mint Julep” which, as I remember, came out as a single back in the early ‘60s when instrumental singles were the thing. If you are familiar with Ray Charles only as an R&B singer, you owe it yourself to check this one out.

From this point on we get a bit more esoteric. A truly classic recording that is not as well-known as it deserves to be is In the Night, by The George Shearing Quintet with vocals by Dakota Staton. Neither of these performers seems to have withstood the test of time as well as some of their contemporaries. Bill Evans is better known today than George Shearing, I’d say. Shearing may have been too popular in his heyday for his own good, posterity-wise; too successful to stay hip. Sarah Vaughan and Dinah Washington are well remembered; Dakota Staton not so much. This recording includes a rendition of her signature tune “The Late, Late Show”. If you can figger out why she’s slipped into obscurity, do share it with me.

A musically erudite friend introduced me to both of my final two artists. First is Vic Chesnutt. This is a guy who really bears comparison with no other artist. He is a paraplegic, having been injured in a car accident as a teenager. He was “discovered” and brought into the studio by Michael Stipe of R.E.M. Chesnutt writes and sings his totally idiosyncratic songs with a take-it-or-leave-it delivery that immediately captured my admiration. His lyrics you must experience for yourself; I can’t describe them. I could recommend any of his first several albums: Little, West of Rome, Is the Actor Happy?—but the one I’ve chosen is Drunk. If you can’t relate to the opening tune, “The Sleeping Man” you just ain’t gonna get it, ever. Have a nice life.

My final recommendation is Nightclub, by Patricia Barber. The first cut alone—her rendition of “Bye Bye Blackbird”—was worth the price of admission to me. Like Vic Chesnutt, Patricia Barber is unique. I can listen to her hour-on-end. You might compare her to Diana Krall…but, no—you can’t—uhn-uh. Get real.

And all of that said, if you haven’t yet discovered Eva Cassidy, do it on your own. Google her or something. Sheesh! Just do it.
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