Saturday, May 30th. Part One
May 30, 2020 by 6 Comments
Read this for more from Richard on the astonishing career of Buddy Featherstonhaugh,
possibly the only man to have had careers as a jazz saxophonist
(he toured with Louis Armstrong) and Grand Prix racer simultaneously.
Peter Guralnick on Little Richard here.
Read Emily Nussbaum’s fascinating profile of Fiona Apple in The New Yorker.
Here’s Carrie Battan’s review of “Fetch the Bolt Cutters”.
More on Armstrong’s collages at The Louis Armstrong House here.
Wednesday, December 14th
December 14, 2016 by 4 Comments
ONE JAZZIE B: FROM DOLE TO SOUL, BBC 4
This documentary started lazily, but gradually sharpened up to be a fascinating portrait of black experience in 80s London. “The media painted us all with the same brush, but we were all different strands of that brush… not everybody in south London and Brixton enjoyed West Indian food – no we didn’t. We were sick of chicken and rice and dumpling and all that stuff, ’cos that’s what we were raised on. We aspired to the Wimpy Bar – we wanted to eat chips. I was born and raised in England. I wanted to be like my mate at school. I wanted to go fishing down on the River Lea. I wanted to play Subbuteo, I wanted to roller skate. I wanted to have those kind of experiences. I played Ice Hockey, for Christ’s sake!”
TWO RICHARD HARRIS IN A COMMENT ON thebluemoment
On a post about the Stones’ new album: “May 12, 1963 (Sunday) they played an afternoon “R&B” session at The 51 Club (Ken Colyer’s place). We were in London, up from Wales for the opening concert that night of Ray Charles’ hugely anticipated first British visitation, so wandering through Soho just to kill time, we drifted in. Yes, they cranked through the Chess Best Of anthology rather well, loud and tight, and with embryo attitude! I do remember they also did “I’m Moving On” with a two chorus break, the second with the bass lifting up an octave. We stole that! The Stones at a pivotal, enthusiastic point and Ray & that Band on one London Sunday… to be alive etc…”
THREE LORRA LORRA ROBBIE ROBERTSON THIS WEEK…
from an animated (!) interview by Andy Kershaw on Radio 4, to a very interesting Michael Simmonds piece in Mojo. The Kershaw interview felt to me to be treading old ground (the Starlight Lounge story is told in the Last Waltz and in every book about the Band ever written), but reading the interview in Mojo reminds me that there’s more than one side to any story. I was idly looking at robbierobertson.com when I came upon this gallery of his guitars. I singled out one Telecaster, partly because of its extraordinary appearance, partly because of its extraordinary history.
Then I went off on a detour around Chuck Berry. First, a wonderful piece by Peter Guralnick, where he discusses a series of meetings with Chuck Berry, where the subject of poetry’s influence on the words of Berry’s songs comes up.
It’s here, too, in this interview shot for “Hail! Hail! Rock ’n’ Roll”, with Robertson and Berry looking through Chuck’s scrapbook. It’s fascinating how subtle and tender Berry’s thoughts are.
FOUR A LOVELY IDEA…
Tyler Coates in US Esquire on the news that no, Bob won’t go to the Nobel Ceremony, but yes, he has written a speech for it: “Usually when one RSVPs “no” to an invitation, it isn’t necessary to submit a long explanation or – perhaps even more ballsy – a script to be read to the people who did show up to the party. Then again, we’re talking about a guy who ghosted on the people who simply wish to bestow upon him one of the world’s most coveted awards. Would it be too much to ask for a member of the Swedish Academy to stand up in front of the crowd, silently hold up Dylan’s speech on cue cards and drop them to the floor?”
The reality was a moving rendition of “Hard Rain” by Patti Smith, beautifully chronicled here by Amanda Petrusich on newyorker.com (she’s the author of Do Not Sell at Any Price: The Wild, Obsessive Hunt for the World’s Rarest 78rpm Records, a fantastic book.)
FIVE REST IN PEACE, HERB HARDESTY
Not only a kick-ass saxophonist on those great Fats Domino records out of New Orleans, but for those of us who saw Tom Waits touring in ’79, a fabulous trumpet player, too. Follow this link to hear him on the glorious medley of “Summertime/Burma Shave” essayed on that tour. Apparently, his trumpet was custom-made by Henri Selmer Paris, one of two made in France by a master craftsman; the other was owned by Louis Armstrong.
AND FINALLY… PHOTO OF THE WEEK
Halfway up the Atlas Mountains in Morocco, we come across this…
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Five Things: Wednesday 15th January
January 16, 2014 by 1 Comment
“As the radio spit out Charlie Rich/Man, he sure can sing, that son of a bitch…”
Bob sends me a link to this extraordinary piece from the Oxford American’s Tennessee Music issue. Joe Hagen finds a way to add new things to a story where the subject is not only dead, but was heavily profiled (and more) by the peerless Peter Guralnick while alive. He finds a way in, through the people who were around Charlie and a suitcase full of fan mail. Here’s a taster: “Williams, his publicist, was charged with motivating him and keeping him off the booze. But the music business seemed to make Charlie miserable. For a magazine profile in 1974, he returned to his old farm in Arkansas to visit CJ, the black field hand who taught him to play piano, joined by Williams, Epic executive Dan Beck, a reporter named Carol Offen, and a female photographer, Raeanne Rubenstein. Offen recalls that Charlie was tortured by his heavy schedule, showing her on his calendar where he’d penciled in “Make love to Margaret Ann.” The only way to cope with touring, he told her, “is with pills and booze and that kind of crap—and I don’t want to live the rest of my life like that, and why should I?”
Visiting CJ at his dilapidated shack in rural Arkansas, Charlie seemed as happy as anybody had seen him, with a “beatific smile on his face.” CJ, in a blue porkpie hat and suspenders, started fingering the blues on his out-of-tune piano, singing a B. B. King song. “That’s it! That’s where you put the hex on me, right there!” Charlie yelled out. “Now, you talk about some soul!” He told Offen it was the first time he’d relaxed in four years.
What began as a tightly controlled PR junket soon turned into a beer-soaked misadventure, going from a local house party in the afternoon to a pizza parlor at midnight, where Charlie, getting increasingly smashed, asked that they play the somber “Feel Like Going Home,” the B side to “Behind Closed Doors,” on the jukebox over and over again. By “home,” he didn’t mean back in suburban Memphis with Margaret Ann, but on his old property in Colt, Arkansas. There, Charlie brooded in a muddy field at 3 a.m. while the rest of the group—which now included the Lebanese pizza parlor owner, Najeeb—were attacked by swarms of mosquitos. While the others ran back to the van for cover, Charlie and Najeeb built a campfire and enjoyed the stars until dawn. As the sun came up, Charlie yawped, “God, how I love this fuckin’ place!”
When they returned at dawn to the driveway of Charlie’s house, twenty-four hours later, Charlie covered in mud, Bill Williams told the writer and photographer to hide in the bushes to protect them from Margaret Ann’s wrath.”
And Also In The Same Issue, Riding with the King…
A fantastic reminiscence by Norbert Putnam, Nashville bass player and producer. Here’s a taster from that: “A few days later, I received an unusual phone call from Felton [Jarvis, Elvis’s producer]. He was wondering if I could drop by his house and assist him as he brushed the teeth of his pet boa constrictor. This was a job that very few of his friends accepted, but I was appreciative of all the work he sent my way, so I agreed to go over.” This leads on to the most extraordinary story of faking a week’s worth of overdub sessions on an Elvis album so that The King could impress his new bride, Priscilla. You have to read it to believe it…
Alanna Nash, in Vanity Fair, on a lovely photo of (possibly) Elvis at 15, in North Tupelo, published for the first time
“But it’s the location of the photo that cinches the deal. The boy in the frame stands at the intersection of North Spring and Jefferson, the epicenter of black and white Tupelo. The establishments on the west side of North Spring—a pool hall, barber shop, and military surplus store—catered to a mostly black clientele. The businesses to the east—a grocery-and-seafood market, a furniture store—served white customers. Bell, who still lives nearby, remembers many Saturdays when the block was the busiest spot in town, where some shoppers arrived from the country in horse-drawn wagons.”
Apples, Pears and Paint: How to Make a Still Life Painting
Intriguing – in places brilliant – soundtrack to this wonderfully filmed history. It seemed to take in every genre of music ever made, and I tried to contact BBC producer/director Liam McArdle to get the tracklist, but have so far failed. If anyone knows how to…
Paintings by Paul Lisak, Gallery Different, Fitzrovia…
of his bass player. Rather lovely in the flesh (my photo doesn’t do it justice) and Goyaesque – and, as it was painted by a musician, pretty accurate when it comes to the bass.
Five Things I Saw & Heard This Week 