Five Things: Wednesday 2nd April [Late]

Oxfam Remembers The Great Skip James, Marylebone High Street

Jesse Winchester: Not Dark Yet
…although news travelled around that it was. Looked out his great first album, on Ampex (a tape manufacturers’ short-lived attempt to run a record label), and listened again to a fine set of songs, helped along by Robbie Robertson’s light-handed production. And what now seems an envelope-pushing fold out sleeve…

Loved this Patti Smith Questionnaire
Favourite song That No One Else Has Heard Of: “The… song that I think of is “If I Can’t Have You” by Etta & Harvey. Etta James used to sing with Harvey Fuqua and it’s an awesome song. No one knows about it – I’ve asked a million people, do you know this song by Etta & Harvey? And there’s just something so… it’s a very sensual… it’s a badass song!” Check the elongated “I” just before a minute in, from Etta, and the “Well-a-hooo” that Harvey follows with. Sensational. And in the week that my sister-in-law gives birth to a baby girl called Etta, most appropriate.

Lunch With Sammy & Louise Rimington

1970 Jazz Fest poster, bass drum in the basement (with a calfskin head that Sammy had fitted, Sammy playing his 1982 Fender Telecaster Elite (a commercial unsuccessful attempt to do a Fender version of a Gibson Les Paul Recording model) and the mandolin that Sammy will take to this year’s Jazz Fest for his string band with Sava Venet.

George Harrison Selfie, Taj Mahal, sometime in the Sixties. Cool wide-angle.