Some Pixies, some Yaz and now The Dead with Branford Marsalis. This was his first show.
Peace to all the kind brothers and sisters out there.
Helmut Lachenmann: Allegro Sostenuto, for clarinet, cello and piano
ensemble phorminx
Disc 2. The greatest Sunday morning music ever??
This disc represents the peak of the âAmericanâ recording studio sound for me. Itâs been all downhill since. If your ever in Nashville, buy the ticket, take the tour, then pick up vol 1 & 2 in the gift shop.
Probably my favorite of the 27 Mozart piano concertos:
W. A. Mozart: Piano Concerto No. 13 in C major, K. 415
My brother is a big deal labor attorney here in Chicago with a lot of heavy hitter construction union clients. Heâs hosting many of his clients this fall at a conference in New Orleans. He asked me for a recommendation on a giveaway. I picked this mostly because it was in print and good enough. He also asked me to write a story to go along with it. Their gonna insert this into the CD. Below is the story.
New Orleans: The Gumbo of Americaâs Music
I have a theory that most American influenced music can be traced to New Orleans in a couple steps.
The Beatles (yes, American influenced), in their early years, recorded quite a few covers. They chose to cover three songs originally written and recorded by Larry Williams: âSlow Down,â âDizzy, Miss Lizzy,â and âBad Boy.â As you might have guessed, Larry Williams was a New Orleans-born rhythm and blues singer and piano player. No other artist had three songs covered by The Beatles!
A second example, and this time an undoubtedly American one, is the pop star Prince, who was a protĂ©gĂ© of Little Richard. Little Richard might have been from Georgia, but he recorded most of his big hits, including âTutti Frutti,â at J&M Studio located at the corner of Rampart and Dumaine Streets in New Orleans. The famous studio is now unceremoniously a laundromat, but the seminal J&M Studio was run by Cosimo Matassa. Look him up, heâs as important to the birth of American Rock ânâ Roll as any one man.
Louis Armstrong is one of Americaâs most important historical and musical figures. Where else but New Orleans could a poor, black orphan, growing up in a tough neighborhood known as the Battlefield, have as significant a life as Satchmo? Iâve heard Louis Armstrong described as the Jimi Hendrix of his day. âPotato Head Blues,â like much of his 1920s music, was recorded for Okeh Records in Chicago on May 10, 1927. In the film Manhattan, Woody Allenâs character describes Armstrongâs âPotato Head Bluesâ as one of the reasons that life is worth living. Listen to the song without a biased modern ear. Revel in Louisâ solo.
Jelly Roll Morton recorded a song about another larger-than-life (though never recorded â that we know of) man, Buddy Bolden, which can still be heard in just about every modern music club in New Orleans. âI Thought I Heard Buddy Bolden Say (Buddy Boldenâs Blues)â is about a foul smelling âfunk butt,â referring to the smelly people dancing in the clubs on Rampart Street, New Orleans. Though a bit of a self-promotor, Mortonâs song is an obvious nod to Bolden, who basically invented Jazz (look up the Big Four) in the brothels of Storyville. âOpen up that window and let that bad air out,â the verses cry. Storyville thrived until the U.S. Navy pressured New Orleans to close the (not legal but not illegal) brothels at the beginning of World War I. Storyville existed a stoneâs throw Lakeside (learn to navigate like a native: Lakeside, Riverside, Upriver, Downriver) of the French Quarter on Iberville Street.
âSaint James Infirmaryâ is the greatest song of all time. I didnât say debatable. Iâm making a declaration. The roots of the song are based in English folk music, but the tune was radically changed and popularized in New Orleans to become a song about death and pride. There are upwards of 10,000 covers of this song. I once found a web site that listed page after page of known covers. I donât know of a bad version. I donât know anyone who isnât moved by the somber notes. The version you hear on this set comes from King Oliver. King Oliver was Louis Armstrongâs teacher and hero. King Oliver first moved to Chicago (thatâs where the money was, because of Capone) and encouraged Louis to later move north. âTwelve men going to the graveyard and eleven coming back.â
The theory continues that New Orleans is the only place that could have given birth to Jazz. The intermingled port city offers the ultimate combination of African rhythm, Caribbean influence and European traditions. The African slaves were âallowedâ to gather and play drums at Congo Square (the current site of Louis Armstrong Park) on Sundays. Sailors from the Caribbean brought their sounds to the port city. Europeans, in this heavily French influenced town, codified the process of writing down music and invented many of the instruments played. A big gumbo of influences equals Jazz. New Orleans-born Wynton Marsalis considers Jazz to be a perfect metaphor for democracy and to be Americaâs gift to the rest of the world.
Itâs nearly impossible for me to articulate the depth and width of New Orleans music and its influence on American music. Some of the origination points are sampled on this compilation set, which is just a start. You can spend a lifetime exploring the deep, gold-filled veins of this music. Learn about the magical combination of Dave Bartholomew and Fats Domino. Dave Bartholomew produced and played on nearly every Fats Domino hit. Explore the music of Alan Toussaint: an absolute groove writing machine. The extraordinary artists of this set were just ordinary New Orleans neighborhood kids: Sidney Bechet, Smiley Lewis, Bobby Charles, Earl King, Johnny Adams⊠The groove oozes out of the swamp and mud. In a city where the weather is overtly oppressive, historically dirt poor, where life and death work hand-in-hand, raise your horn toward Heavenâif you hit that high note just right, God will notice!
Great write-up, but I respectfully question the use of the term, âorphanâ to describe Louis Armstrong. If the description of his early life on Wikipedia is accurate, I do not think most people would describe him as an âorphan.â (Interestingly, the general âOrphanâ link on Wikipedia lists Louis Armstrong as one of several ânotable orphans,â but his hyperlinked name simply takes the reader to the above Louis Armstrong bio link, which makes no mention of him being an orphan.) Orphan or not, I think you could convey the same message by substituting âkidâ for âorphan.â Not looking to sidetrack the thread ⊠just a friendly suggestion.
âHe was sent to the Colored Waifs Home, an institution for troubled and orphaned children, and was listed as a new arrival with six other boys on October 21. In total, there were 77 boys at the home.â Good enough definition for meâŠ
I love the name, Colored Waifs Home.
He was not an orphan, although his father had abandoned the family.
According to Jaziz.com:
âOn January 1, 1913, Louis Armstrong attended a New Yearâs Eve parade and shot six blanks from his stepfatherâs .38 revolver. A policeman arrested him on the spot. Later that day, Judge Andrew Wilson sentenced the young boy to the Colored Waifâs Home, a reform school on the outskirts of New Orleans. The court considered his case serious enough to commit him for an indefinite period of time.â
As it turns out, the Home had a music program although he was, of course, exposed to music prior to this.
Interesting stuff.
Not sure where that quote is from, but it is not in Louis Armstrongâs bio on Wikipedia. In any event, not all âtroubledâ kids are âorphanedâ (and not all orphans are troubled). Young Louis was arguably troubled (in the sense that he got in trouble with the law), but per Wikipedia he lived with a parent before he was sent to reform school, and again after he got out:
âOn June 14, 1914, Armstrong was released into the custody of his father and his new stepmother, Gertrude. He lived in this household with two stepbrothers for several months. After Gertrude gave birth to a daughter, Armstrongâs father never welcomed him, so he returned to his mother, Mary Albert. In her small home, he had to share a bed with his mother and sisterâŠâ
Duke Ellington âThe Second Sacred Concertâ (disc 19 of the Complete RCA Victor Recordings, Centennial Edition)
Herbie Hancock âV.S.O.PâFive Starsâ (from the Complete Columbia Recordings box set)
