It was 50 years ago this week that Medgar Evers was murdered outside his Mississippi home. Within six months Bob Dylan had penned, performed, recorded and included on the album The Times They Are a-Changing his song about Evers’ killing, Only a Pawn In Their Game.

Great art is often borne of tragedy, but Dylan’s song wasn’t the only art borne of this one. Writer Eudora Welty, a native Mississippian, wrote a short story Where Is the Voice Coming From on the day she learned of Evers’ killing; Welty said “the short story was the only thing she had ever written in anger,” according to Jerry Mitchell’s blog at clarionledger.com.

The story was published by The New Yorker less than a month later, shortly after the arrest of Byron de la Beckwith for the murder. The similarities between the accused and the protagonist in Welty’s story were so strong — even though Welty wrote it before even being aware of Beckwith — the magazine changed the names and the name of the town for legal reasons.

“No, Welty didn’t know De La Beckwith’s name or what he looked like,” wrote Jarvis DeBerry at nola.com. “But Welty was from Mississippi and of Mississippi, and she knew Mississippi. So even if she didn’t know the name or look of the assassin, she was dead certain she knew how he’d sound.”

“I says to my wife, ‘Just reach and turn it off. And be quiet. You don’t need to set and look at a black n—–r face no longer than you want to or listen to what you don’t want to hear. It’s a free country.’ ”

That’s how Welty’s story began. Dylan’s song began “A bullet from the back of a bush took Medgar Evers’ blood” and he sang it that summer, less than a month after Evers’ murder, at a voter registration drive in Mississippi for the first time, according to pophistorydig.com.

He sang it again that summer at the festival in Newport, according to the website, and at the Lincoln Memorial on Aug. 28 before Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s I Have A Dream speech at the March on Washington — perhaps one of the few times Dylan performed when his words weren’t the most memorable of a day.

Dylan’s album was released early the next year, and Beckwith was tried twice that year for Evers’ murder. Both resulted in hung juries; it didn’t help the prosecution that segregationist governor Ross Barnett shook hands with the defendant, in front of the jury, before the deliberations, according to nytimes.com.

More than two decades passed and Beckwith served time in another case of potential vioience born of bigorty. Anyone younger than 30 might find it hard to believe, but the case to try Beckwith a third time for Evers’ murder was fueled by a newspaper. The Jackson Clarion-Ledger’s stories spurred the final trial, and if you’ve seen Ghosts of Mississippi, you know how it ends.

It’s doubtful Beckwith had the revelation Dylan predicted in Only a Pawn In Their Game that the killer would. By all accounts, he died unrepentant in prison in 2001.

“But when the shadowy sun sets on the one
That fired the gun
He’ll see by his grave
On the stone that remains
Carved next to his name
His epitaph plain:
Only a pawn in their game.”

But the story doesn’t end there. Two years after Beckwith died, Dylan returned to Mississippi to perform at a music festival. He was 62, and Evers’ older brother Charles was 80, and they had never met. Donna Ladd, who midwifed the two’s meeting 40 years after Medgar’s murder, described it in heartwarming fashion at jacksonfreepress.com.

“(Dylan) warmly grasped Mr. Evers’ hand and held it for a good five minutes while they talked eye-to-eye, heart-to-heart, man-to-man. They both nodded a lot and seemed emotional. I didn’t try to get closer. This was between two giants of the Civil Rights Movement, and the man they—we—had lost to hatred. I blinked back tears.”

sources: clarionledger.com, nola.com, pophistorydig.com, nytimes.com, jacksonfreepress.com

I have a routine, perhaps morbid, upon hearing of the death of a prominent musician: I play their music. I scour my collection, and when I find it lacking, I listen to Pandora and YouTube until I’ve exhausted it.

This week I’ve been listening to pianist Mulgrew Miller, who died at just 57 years old on May 29. His is the latest passing in what’s been a sad few months for pianists: Dave Brubeck’s death was well noted last December, Don Shirley’s less so in April, and Miller’s very much so, especially by his fellow musicians, in late May. (And it’s been a sad few years for fans of the piano before that: Ray Bryant, Hank Jones, Andrew Hill, Oscar Peterson, etc.)

In my collection I found two CDs of Miller’s and a 1990 record — which would make it one of the last I bought — in their alphabetical places. I played them for five straight days and wondered why I didn’t have more.

That could hardly be Miller’s fault. “Mulgrew is very much in demand and finds it difficult to say no — particularly to people whose music he appreciates,” wrote producer Orrin Keepnews on Miller’s 1990 album From Day to Day.

Miller must have been as generous in his musical tastes as contemporaries said he was personally — Miller once estimated he played on 500 albums. It’s possible he wasn’t exaggerating, but if not it begs credulity to wonder when he also had time to teach at Williams Paterson University

“If the jazz world had a most valuable player award, pianist Mulgrew Miller would be a leading contender . . .,” James Hale wrote in 1993 for the Ottawa Citizen in advance of a Miller concert there.

That wasn’t just because of the frequency of Miller’s playing, but the quality of it. Fellow pianist Eric Reed called Miller “the most influential jazz pianist since Keith Jarrett.” (Ironic that Jarrett was born and grew up outside of Allentown, Pa.; Miller, a native of Mississippi, settled in nearby Easton, Pa. When asked by the newspaper there why, Miller said that he “heard (Easton) was the jazz mecca of the world”).

And yet Miller led and played discreetly. Even on his albums, Miller didn’t dominate. Kenny Garrett’s sax or Eddie Henderson’s trumpet were just as noticeable on the album Hand in Hand pictured above as Miller’s piano, if not always as memorable.

Every obituary or appreciation of Miller last week described his playing as “soulful,” as if it were a band mate. His Mississippi roots were evident. It was there that he first, as a young boy, heard Peterson and was inspired by him (as a young boy, Peterson first heard Art Tatum and was intimidated by his playing. Fortunately, he got over it).

Miller grew to be a big man, 6-foot-2 and wide, which presented a contradiction. Lehighvalley.com said, “Miller’s entrance to the stage resembled a giant stalking a Steinway . . . ” but he “commanded a presence that would soon be overshadowed by the graceful notes of his craft . . .”

Wrote Hale: “Everything he plays sounds like it’s from his heart. He plays with emotion, and always swings.”

Maybe that’s why bassist Christian McBride cited the words of Duke Ellington on his Facebook page upon Miller’s death: “We loved you madly.” And why he challenged those who love jazz. “I hope every self-respecting jazz musician and fan,” wrote McBride, “takes this day to reflect upon all the music he left us.”

McBride was wrong in only one respect. It should take more than a day.

Below is a link to Grew’s Tune, off the 1993 album Hand in Hand:

Charlie Haden and Hank Jones 1995 album Steal Away

I’ve never watched the Grammys, and don’t intend to start tonight (music, to me, is primarily for the auditory sense, not the visual, which is why I couldn’t find MTV without a well-directed remote or the date of the Grammys without a Hollywood calendar).

But I won’t object if I stumble on to the only few minutes that might be worth it — the recognition of bassist Charlie Haden.

Haden received a Lifetime Achievement Award Saturday, and the timing couldn’t be more appropriate. When he was in his teens, Haden suffered from polio, and it took his singing voice; in his 70s now, Haden suffers from post-polio syndrome, and it’s taken much from the last two years of his life.

According to published reports, Haden has difficulty eating and swallowing, suffers from headaches, tires easily, is in frequent pain and is deprived of interaction with two groups vital to him: fans and students.

He hasn’t played publicly since September 2011, and he only recently returned to the classroom at the California Institute of the Arts, where according to Charles Gans’ Associated Press story, Haden started the jazz program.

“I miss (playing live) very much,” Haden told the Los Angeles Times’ Howard Reich. “A lot of people call me to play . . .

“Oh, man – one of the main things I want to do is play my bass again (publicly). It’s why I live.”

Haden’s playing is why we listen — from Ornette Coleman to the Liberation Music Orchestra to Old and New Dreams to the Quartet West to associations with Keith Jarrett, Jan Garbarek, Egberto Gismonti and so many others. He made them all better.

“The one thing that should always be said about Charlie, though, is that there is a whole genre of music with ‘improvised harmony’ that can’t exist without him,” wrote pianist Ethan Iverson on his blog dothemath.typepad.com. “It started with Ornette, then moved to Keith Jarrett, Dewey Redman and Paul Motian . . . All of that canonical music requires Charlie Haden.”

My favorite Haden albums tend to to the softer: his 1996 duet with fellow Missourian Pat Metheny, Beyond The Missouri Sky (written about previously in this entry), and his two releases of spirituals with pianist Hank Jones, 1995′s Steal Away and 2010′s Coming Sunday, the latter recorded just months before Jones’ death.

“Charlie Haden has made it his life’s mission to uplift the lives of others,” wrote The Red Hot Chilli Pepper’s Flea on grammy.com. “In my case he has succeeded dramatically.”

I didn’t know Flea had won six Grammys when I read what he wrote about Haden; I hadn’t seen any. But if they awarded them for writing about music, or explaining Charlie Haden, they’d quickly give Flea another.

“A few years ago, I had the fortune to play with the great Ornette Coleman,” wrote Flea. “. . . I’m just an uneducated punk rocker, but I did my best. I did OK.

“. . . A lot of different musicians played that night, all of whom were very well-respected, but at one point, all the many musicians left the stage, Charlie walked on it, and it was just Charlie and Ornette. After all the intense virtuosity that had gone on through the night, Charlie began to play a simple, bluesy, twangy, country riff, a little folk melody, and I felt Ornette really come alive, saw the audience fall into a reverent silence, and Charlie just schooled everybody, shredded everything that came before.

“He had the ability to play anything, but just came from the gutbucket with the humble truth, and he and Ornette began to dance around each other, and it was the greatest thing I ever saw. These two giants, who turned jazz upside down 50 years earlier, just connecting on the highest level, and the sheer beauty and violence of it reduced me to joyous tears.”

A link below to a piece from Haden and Jones’ version of Take My Hand, Precious Lord off their 2010 album Coming Sunday.

sources: latimes.com, washingtonpost.com, calarts.edu, grammy.com, dothemath.typepad.com

Ali Farka Toure’s 1990 release The River. Springsteen isn’t the only artist with an album so titled.

You can listen to the music of Mali’s Ali Farka Toure almost anywhere in the world you are reading this. Except in much of his home country.

If you’re looking, you can find Mali on the map in northwest Africa. But if you were there, you couldn’t find much music to listen to — at least not openly.

Mali is in conflict. That’s no different than much of Africa — Mugabe still rules Zimbabwe by force of fear, the Central African Republic is in rebellion, in Congo when someone mentions civil war, they wonder which one.

Most of us probably couldn’t name a half dozen countries in Africa — and South Africa is a gimmee — let alone know what’s going on in them. But if you’re a music lover in general, or the blues specifically, Mali cries out for our attention as if Toure, the king of the desert blues, were singing the words.

Northern Mali — including Timbuktu — has been overtaken by religious fanatics intent on instituting a Sharia Law so strictly interpreted they banned music, according to a BBC story posted on Toure’s Facebook page. If you’re wearing headphones in Mali, you’d better be hearing verses of the Koran.

From an October story in the Guardian: “Culture is our petrol,” said Toumani Diabaté, a Malian kora player. “Music is our mineral wealth. There isn’t a single major music prize in the world today that hasn’t been won by a Malian artist.”

None is better known than Toure, a devout Muslim according to Lucy Doran’s biography at worldcircuit.com. Toure won a Grammy with Ry Cooder and was celebrated in filmmaker Martin Scorsese’s Feel Like Going Home — Scorsese said Toure’s music contained “the DNA of the blues.” (When Toure first heard the blues, according to Doran, he thought “this music has been taken from here.” By here, he didn’t mean Mississippi.)

“. . . According to (Toure) Mali was first and foremost a library of the history of African music and perhaps also the heart of the musical world itself,” according to a story in sephisemagazine.com. “Ali’s love for his country was clear. He owed her a huge debt, as he researched and mastered the wealth of the country’s musical traditions.”

Toure traveled the world, but made his home and farmed the land in Niafunke, the village he came of age in. He was its mayor, and helped bring it electricity.

Toure was 66 when he died nearly seven years ago. Perhaps it’s a blessing he can’t see what’s being done to the culture he contributed to; perhaps it’s a greater loss he’s not there to help fight for it.

(“Farka,” means “donkey”, according to Doran’s biography. “Let me make one thing clear,” Toure said. “I’m the donkey that nobody climbs on!”)

Musicians enjoy no reprieve in northern Mali today. Singer Khaira Arby, according to the Washington Post and BBC, said militants threatened to cut out her tongue. She moved south and can’t go safely home, whether she feels like it or not.

One of the members of the band Tinariwen wasn’t home when militiamen came: “If you speak to him,” they told his sister, according to guardian.co.uk, ”tell him that if he ever shows his face in this town again, we’ll cut off all the fingers he uses to play his guitar with.”

Imagine a world without music, without concerts, without song at religious occasions or weddings or parties. That’s northern Mali today. “There’s no music up there any more,” said Toure’s son Vieux Farka Touré, according to the Guardian. “You can’t switch on a radio or a TV, even at home.”

Malian musician Rokia Traore, also according to the guardian.co.uk: “If I couldn’t go up on stage anymore, I would cease to exist. And without music, Mali will cease to exist.”

I’m not sure it will help, or whether it’s a useless gesture. But today’s a good day to listen to the late Ali Farka Toure. So is tomorrow. So is the day after. There may not be music in Mali. But there’s still Mali’s music.

Below is a link to Ai Bine, the first cut of Ali Farka Toure’s 1990 album The River. If you’re new to him, don’t expect to understand the words unless you know African dialects.

Sources: worldcircuit.com, the culturetrip.com, sephisemagazine.org, bbc.co.uk, washingtonpost.com, guardian.co.uk

The back side of the Grateful Dead’s 1970 release American Beauty. Jason Ankeny of allmusic.com: “American Beauty remains the Dead’s studio masterpiece — never again would they be so musically focused or so emotionally direct.”

Look into any eyes
you find by you, you can see
clear to another day
Maybe been seen before
through other eyes on other days
while going home -
What do you want me to do,
to do for you to see you through?
It’s all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago

The first time I ever heard the Grateful Dead’s Box of Rain it was wafting from the speakers in my brother’s room. He was home from prep school; when I heard it, I wondered what the place had done to him.

I liked the song from the first note, the way the smell tells you what’s cooking will taste good. It was new, almost mystical (hey, I was 15) — I had no idea there was a world of music beyond AM radio (WFIL and WIBG in my case) — and I certainly wasn’t going to admit that to my older brother. He already had all the advantages of seniority. I sure wasn’t conceding a note to musical taste or knowledge (my first 45 was Marvin Gaye and Kim Weston’s It Takes Two; his was Georgy Girl. Nothing against the Seekers, but they can take their dowdy feathers and fly).

I’m thinking of Box of Rain today as I often do when I think of my brother, because he celebrates another birthday, if not like he used to. I don’t want to reveal how old he is, but we can say Keith Richards isn’t feeling threatened. Yet.

I listened to American Beauty with him that day long ago — and in my adolescent mind, he was the coolest guy I knew (in my adult mind, he’s not, except if you’re playing cards against him. When he starts twirling his hair between his fingers as if it were the guitar strings between Garcia’s, you might as well put your cards on the table, because he can see them in his mind as clearly as you can with your eyes).

Years went by. I got my own copy of American Beauty and his speakers. We went to two Dead concerts together, where I learned why many of the most devoted fans were called Deadheads — they really were dead in the head, if chemically induced. Many of them walked as if they had vertigo; I once couldn’t avoid a collision with an oncoming Deadhead, which wouldn’t have been unusual except I was seated. “Sorry, dude,” he said, and wobbled away. I think he meant it.

Like many fans, my brother started collecting Dead concert tapes. San Francisco ’72. Copenhagen ’74. BFE ’75. BF deal I thought — they all sounded the same to me (and a pox on any tape where Friend of the Devil is played at the pace the aforementioned Deadhead was walking). It was about then that I retracted the idea of his hipness. I liked The Dead without becoming a Deadhead. Some groups, like AARP, you don’t want to join, even if you’re eligible.

Not much has changed in my brother’s musical taste since. If you asked him today to name his 10 favorite bands, more than half would be The Dead and/or Dead spinoffs. If you asked him about new bands, he’d probably mention Dire Straits. If you walked into his room today, Box of Rain might still be playing. And it would sound just as good.

As any Deadhead could tell you, Phil Lesh wrote the music to Box of Rain for his father, who was dying. Any Deadhead could tell you Robert Hunter wrote the words, and that Hunter used Box of Rain because Ball of Rain didn’t sound right. “The lyrics that (Hunter) produced were so apt,” said Lesh, “so perfect, it was very moving. Very moving to me to experience that during the period of my dad’s passing.”

And any Deadhead can tell you it was the last song The Dead ever played in concert, 25 years after it was released, the final encore of a 1995 show in Chicago, a month before the death of Jerry Garcia.

It’s a reminder of the truth in the last lines of the song: “Such a long, long time to be gone and a short time to be there.”

Which brings me to the point of this post. Happy birthday, bro. Sometimes you’re still the coolest guy I know.

Randy Newman’s 2008 album harps and angels

Randy Newman was named last week as one of the 2013 inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, in a class with Heart, Donna Summer and Rush. Which begets the question: What did he ever do to deserve such musical company?

It’s not enough that one generation knows Newman as the sappy old guy who wrote Toy Story, and another generation of basketball fans knows him through Lakers’ playoff games as the guy who wrote the annoying, endlessly playing paean to perfect Los Angeles, I Love L.A.

Now, yet another will know him through his Hall of Fame class (the induction ceremony in Cleveland should be a perfect time for Newman to perform Burn On: ‘Cause the Cuyahoga River goes smoking through my dreams). I don’t want to say I’m not impressed, but I’m thinking of a word to describe Newman’s aforementioned classmates that rhymes with fame but isn’t; if lame is too strong, try tame (I’m excusing Public Enemy, which made the first and perhaps only rap album I’ve owned, and Albert King, whose music I like but name I don’t only because it’s the same as a Nets forward who helped eliminate a good 76ers team from the 1984 NBA playoffs).

“I’m glad I didn’t have to die to get in,” Newman said. “. . . The (Rock and Roll) Hall of Fame has other resonance, like the Baseball Hall of Fame has a tremendous kind of historical reverence to it.”

Funny he should mention the Baseball Hall of Fame. If Heart was a baseball player, it would be Brady Anderson: Heart had a good song or two — Crazy on You was Anderson’s 50-homer season — but an ordinary career in all; the late Donna Summer would be Rabbit Maranville, a star from another era; Rush would be Kiki Cuyler, who did a little of everything although nothing much better than his contemporaries and was put in by the Veterans Committee.

There’s an irony in there Newman can appreciate more than most. Here’s another: the artist who wore glasses almost as big as goggles for much of his career could see deeper into topics often lightly examined: race, sex and Americana.

Newman’s songs are filled with odd characters — often lustful, insecure or obese — and doused with satire; they often don’t say what listeners think they do.

All those Lakers fans who think I Love L.A. completely celebrates the city? Then why the mention of “that bum over there, man He’s down on his knees?” All the smug Yankees who think Rednecks is an indictment of Southern racists? Listen to the last verse and the litany of Northern ghettos. All the tall people looking down, literally and figuratively, at short people? “Short people are just the same as you and I.”

Often, the objects of Newman’s derision are the last to know. If they ever do. His 2008 album harps and angels included a song Laugh and Be Happy; you’re correct if you assume Newman never morphed into Bobby McFerrin.

The bigger the target, the sharper the verse. Newman slays organized religion more than once (“You all must be crazy to put your faith in me, That’s why I love mankind”), and American exceptionalism (“America, America, God shed his grace on thee, you have whipped the Filipino, now you rule the Western sea”) again and again.

Newman assuredly isn’t for the easily offended. He’s an acquired taste, but he should be a required one.

“A lot of my stuff makes me a little nervous because I don’t like controversy,” Newman said in a 1995 interview at performingsongwriter.com, “but I can’t help the way I write.”

Amen for that. “His songs can be frightening or funny, absurd or heartfelt,” wrote Lydia Hutchinson on performingsongwriter.com. “But his characters always present some flash of surprising, lucid insight.”

Ten of my favorite Newman insights, in no particular order:

“King Leopold of Belgium, that’s right
Everyone thinks he’s so quiet
Well he owned the Congo and he tore it up too
He took the diamonds
He took the silver
He took the gold
You know what he left them with?
Malaria”
A Few Words in Defense of Our Country

sources: performingsongwriter.com

Tagged: God's Song, It's Money That I Love, Randy Newman, Rollin', Sail Away, Sigmund Freud's Impersonation of Albert Einstein in America, You Can't Fool the Fat Man ]]> http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/12/13/randy-newman-and-the-hall-of-fame/feed/ 0 davidjmarkowitz Ramdy Newman: harps and angels http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/dave-brubeck-its-a-raggy-waltz/ http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/dave-brubeck-its-a-raggy-waltz/#comments Sat, 08 Dec 2012 07:22:31 +0000 David Markowitz https://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/?p=2729 ]]>

Dave Brubeck’s Gone With the Wind

Seventeen years ago I came home from Europe to learn, over brunch via the New York Times at the News Cafe on South Beach, that Don Pullen had died. When I told my then-girlfriend, now my wife, she misunderstood me and thought I had said someone was pulling her leg.

When I explained that Pullen was a jazz pianist, she looked at me as if she had bitten into her grapefruit thinking it was an orange.

She wasn’t unsympathetic, only uninterested. Over the years, whenever I would mention a notable jazz performer had died — Mal Waldron, Johnny Griffin, Lionel Hampton, Don Cherry, Ray Bryant, Hank Jones — I would get the grapefruit look. And think of Don Pullen.

So last week, mere hours after Dave Brubeck’s death a day before his 92nd birthday, she called to ask why I hadn’t shared the news. Naturally, I thought of Don Pullen. And saw the grapefruit look on the other end of the phone.

Even she wanted to know about Brubeck, and nothing, of course, could illustrate the difference between the pianist and any living jazz musician: Brubeck was so famous non-jazz fans knew him, and so popular they liked him.

We saw Brubeck a few years back in our small Southern beach town, where a colleague says folks like both kinds of music: country and western. Maybe that’s one reason why Brubeck was so popular: he brought his music into places others thought arid for jazz.

Brubeck was frail of walk that night, but when he sat at the piano, no one in the building was more devilish.

He could be inspiring — how many 86-year-olds are still working, let alone touring? — but he also could still be inspired. He talked about an upcoming visit to Poland and another he had made nearly 50 years previous, when he said the Poles let him know the jazz he played symbolized the freedom they lacked.

He had gone on a goodwill tour during the Eisenhower years, which was fitting — every Brubeck show was a goodwill tour. Being the most popular kid in class and the edgiest is normally mutually exclusive, but not for Brubeck. He sold records — Take Five, written by the quartet’s saxophonist, Paul Desmond, took off — without selling out.

“Dave Brubeck told me one of the greatest, funniest stories I ever heard,” the bassist Christian McBride said on his Facebook page after Brubeck’s death. “Upon meeting Miles Davis, Miles said to him, ‘Dave you sound great. You swing your a** off. I don’t know about them other m***f**** you got with you, but YOU sound great.’ ”

McBride wrote that Brubeck “always got a big laugh from that story.” He didn’t say if Brubeck filled in the blanks. Maybe that was left for Brubeck’s fellow pianist, Eric Reed. From ericreed.net:

“When I was 4, my Aunt Barbara gave me an inch high stack of used vinyl records that she purchased for about 25 cents from a flea market. Included in that stack was Dave Brubeck’s “Time Further Out”, recorded May/June 1961. When I put on the first track, ‘It’s a Raggy Waltz’, it struck a chord with the funny, adventurous side of my ‘old soul.’ That’s all I knew; here’s what I DIDN’T know then:

“I didn’t know that this record was over 10 years old.
“I didn’t know that Mr. Brubeck was a leading force in the ‘Cool Jazz’ era.
“I didn’t know that he, along with Max Roach, was a master of odd time signatures.
“I didn’t know that Dave Brubeck was White and Modoc.

“I didn’t know any of that, and I didn’t care.”

Like Potter Stewart’s obscenity, even a young Reed knew swing when he heard it, even if he couldn’t define it. And maybe that’s not a bad legacy, if a simple one. Dave Brubeck swung. And didn’t miss.

Below is a link to It’s a Raggy Waltz, which made an impression on a young Eric Reed. From allmusic.com: “. . . this piece isn’t exactly a waltz or a rag but a choppy piece with constantly shifting accents that don’t predictably fall where the listener expects. It had immediate appeal on concert dates . . .”

source: ericreed.net, allmusic.com

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Tagged: Brubeck, Christian McBride, Dave Brubeck, Don Pullen, Eric Reed, Hank Jones, Lionel Hampton, Mal Waldron, Miles Davis ]]> http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/12/08/dave-brubeck-its-a-raggy-waltz/feed/ 0 davidjmarkowitz Dave Brubeck http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/happy-birthday-kelly-john-fogertys-joy-of-my-life/ http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/happy-birthday-kelly-john-fogertys-joy-of-my-life/#comments Tue, 27 Nov 2012 20:14:22 +0000 David Markowitz https://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/?p=2692 ]]>

Kelly is a little older today than she was when this picture was taken, but I still get that look occasionally. Hopefully not today.

Today is Randy Newman’s 69th birthday, which should be one to celebrate.

But not in my house, where Newman shares a birthday with my wife Kelly. There aren’t many people to whom Newman gets lower billing, but Kelly is one and especially on her birthday. Even if it’s his, too. (It’s also Jon Stewart’s, who for some reason, she thinks is funnier than her husband and sometimes seems to love even more, and William Blake’s. At least I can be sure the latter won’t be sending an e-card. He did leave us with:

Soon my Angel came again;
I was armed, he came in vain;
For the time of youth was fled,
And grey hairs were on my head.

John Fogerty’s 1997 release Blue Moon Swamp. Joy of My Life is song No. 10.

It’s important to note, in this entry and on this occasion, the grey hairs are mine.

Newman’s music, full of wit and satire, isn’t really appropriate for birthday celebrations (with the possible exception of You Can Leave Your Hat On). To celebrate properly, I’m borrowing John Fogerty’s Joy Of My Life, because Kelly is the joy of mine. I needn’t go into reasons, at the risk of making this more tacky than it already may be, except to say they’re bountiful.

Fogerty released the song on his 1997 album Blue Moon Swamp, one of his many comebacks. “As a songwriter, only a few did as much in three minutes [as John Fogerty] . . . He was severe, he was precise, he said what he had to say and he got out of there,” said Bruce Springsteen, according to Derek Barker’s liner notes from the 2009 Bruce Springsteen’s Jukebox: The Songs that Inspired the Man, according to wikipedia. Sounds a lot like the birthday girl.

Fogerty plays the guitar, on the link below, with the guitar prone in his lap. I’m not sure I could manage that; about the best I could ever do to approximate the sound would be with my teeth on a beer bottle. Which I’d gladly attempt.

Happy birthday, Kelly. I hope it’s a good one.

Some may have their riches
Some may have their worldly fame
Long as I have you
I treasure each and every day

Tagged: John Fogerty, Joy of My Life, Randy Newman ]]> http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/27/happy-birthday-kelly-john-fogertys-joy-of-my-life/feed/ 1 davidjmarkowitz kellym fogerty http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/george-winston-thanksgiving/ http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/george-winston-thanksgiving/#comments Thu, 22 Nov 2012 07:02:00 +0000 David Markowitz https://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/?p=2674 ]]>

George Winston’s 1982 Windham Hill album December. Thanksgiving, naturally, is the first track.

I’ve seen George Winston in concert several times, and each time he seemingly wore the same outfit: jeans, flannel shirt, unassuming demeanor.

So when Winston’s Facebook page linked last week to a live version of him performing his song Thanksgiving, appropriately enough, Winston’s outfit was no surprise: jeans and flannel shirt. I’m beginning to think it’s all he owns.

(Wikipedia cited a Dallas Morning News story from 1986 which said early audiences were so unused to Winston’s modest dress, they often thought he was coming to work on the piano rather than play it when he made his entrance.)

I once saw Winston at a very proper venue in Philadelphia, where the women wore evening gowns and many of the men formal wear. I dressed up, too, which meant my best pair of jeans. I felt a little self-conscious, afraid my Levis were soiling the seat, until Winston strode on stage attired in jeans and a flannel shirt.

I’m guessing Winston is thankful every Thanksgiving for at least one thing: he has a job which doesn’t require a dress code.

Winston said the song Thanksgiving (link below) gave him a “picture of Miles City and Billings,” from his native Montana. Having lived in five states, all of which went blue two weeks ago, unlike Montana, I wouldn’t know (I don’t think I’ve even flown over that part of flyover country). I’m guessing a lot of folks there wear jeans and flannel shirts.

I’m thankful, too, this Thanksgiving for all the usual reasons: family, friends, health, employment, security.

I’m also thankful to live in a time when music is so accessible and easy to explore, when you can hear of a new artist one moment, then find his bio and play his music the next, all on the same gadget.

I’m thankful for a year in which I’ve discovered new likes, like Uganda’s Samite, whom I listened to for the first time Wednesday, and become reacquainted with old ones, like the venerable Who.

I’m thankful for a year in which I traveled 10,000 miles from home to find a CD store where the employee had a limited grasp of English, but an expansive knowledge of jazz. I’m thankful to have made not one, but two pilgrimages to the Princeton (N.J.) Record Exchange, which is now, with the unfortunate passing a few years ago of Plastic Fantastic, officially my favorite shopping destination (equally thankful for the lunches afterward at Olive’s Deli).

And most of all I’m thankful for the musicians and the music they play, compose, record, whether it makes you want to jump up and sing along with a smile, like Ray Charles, or thrash and shriek like Pharaoh Sanders’ sax, or serene and contented, like George Winston’s Thanksgiving.

Like the Thanksgiving meal, it’s all good.

Tagged: George Winston, Plastic Fantastic, Princeton Record Exchange ]]> http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/22/george-winston-thanksgiving/feed/ 0 davidjmarkowitz winston http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/kenny-werner-beyond-the-forest-of-mirkwood/ http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/kenny-werner-beyond-the-forest-of-mirkwood/#comments Tue, 20 Nov 2012 05:47:32 +0000 David Markowitz https://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/?p=2651 ]]>

Kenny Werner’s Beyond the Forest of Mirkwood: he was Ken then

Allmusic.com called Ken Werner’s Beyond the Forest of Mirkwood “one of the best-kept secrets in his extensive discography.” Now I’m beginning to wonder if it’s one of mine — from me.

The album is a solo piano release from Inner City in 1981; I’m not sure how long I’ve owned it but it’s long enough to have forgotten it was there. Whenever I bought it, it was cheap, because the price tag is $1.99 from the late, great Plastic Fantastic record store in Philadelphia (Ardmore, Pa., to be exact), which stocked a good part of my collection.

I found the album Monday — Werner’s 61st birthday ironically enough — where it’s been hidden all these years in the oddest place: in perfect alphabetical order, squeezed between the many Eberhard Weber albums and the even more Randy Westons.

Sometimes new music is in the place you least expect — where you put it years ago after having never listened to it, or played it just once, while distracted, missing the treasure of it and assigning it, unjustly, to record collection purgatory. It certainly wasn’t because it was inexpensive because there are few greater pleasures than paying little for a piece of music you enjoy a lot. Thankfully, time occasionally appeals such injustices.

(The W’s are among the hardest for me to get to in my collection, because they’re on the bottom and require bending, which requires motivation. But the door to the W’s has been open all month because I had reverted to college-era habits and played The Who’s Quadrophenia non-stop in anticipation of their local concert appearance earlier this month. Monday I made my way down the W’s from Mal Waldron to Weber to Werner).

“On this beautifully recorded album of solo piano, his seven originals show a lot of depth. . .,” read the allmusic.com review. “. . . this should be considered one of Kenny Werner’s essential recordings.”

There are many more, of course, which is the next benefit of this re-discovery. Werner has much work as a leader and much as a collaborator with Joe Lovano and others; in the last part of his career, he played in a trio with drummer Arie Hoenig and bassist Johannes Weidenmuller, from where the link to the performance of The Little Blue Man from a 2004 live New York performance below is drawn.

He also goes by Kenny now instead of Ken, and has for most of his career. I’m wondering if it makes Beyond the Forest of Mirkwood more valuable since Ken Werner albums are so much rarer than Kenny’s.

Tagged: Eberhard Weber, Hobbit, Joe Lovano, Ken Werner, Kenny Werner, Mal Waldron, Mirkwood, Philadelphia, Werner ]]> http://davidjmarkowitzmusic.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/kenny-werner-beyond-the-forest-of-mirkwood/feed/ 0 davidjmarkowitz werner