NewMexiKen saw Jake Shimabukuro play the Anthem once-upon-a-time in Honolulu. It really is unforgettable. There’s only four strings on a ukulele.
Then, there is, of course, Jimi’s version, from nearly 38 years ago.
Thanks to dangerousmeta! for the Hendrix link.
. . . of Maria Schneider. She’d be having that “Last Tango in Paris” at 55 now. She was 20 then.
. . . of Mariah Carey. She’s 37.
. . . of Fergie. No, not that Fergie. The singer. She’s 32.
Three-time Oscar nominee for best actress Gloria Swanson was born on this date in 1897. She’s best known for Sunset Blvd., which was made in 1950, and was only her second film since 1934. She’s perhaps even better known for an affair with Joseph P. Kennedy. Ms. Swanson died in 1983.
. . . was born on this date in 1924. The PBS web site for American Masters profiles Miss Vaughan, who died in 1990:
Jazz critic Leonard Feather called her “the most important singer to emerge from the bop era.” Ella Fitzgerald called her the world’s “greatest singing talent.” During the course of a career that spanned nearly fifty years, she was the singer’s singer, influencing everyone from Mel Torme to Anita Baker. She was among the musical elite identified by their first names. She was Sarah, Sassy — the incomparable Sarah Vaughan.
“There’s nothing remarkable about [making music]. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.”
Johann Sebastian Bach, born on this date in 1685, and quoted by The Writer’s Almanac in a brief profile.
Back during the Great New Year’s Weekend Snowstorm NewMexiKen mentioned This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
I’ve just finished the book, which I found interesting but a struggle. I have a difficult time understanding music theory and an even more difficult time understanding neuroscience. I don’t think my limitations were the main problem, though. I think the real problem was with the author who, in this reader’s mind at least, exhibited no sense of structure or organization in how the material was presented. Well, “no” is too strong; let’s say limited structure. The discussion always left me fuddled.
Nonetheless the book was interesting because the two subjects themselves are so fascinating.
Two factoids:
Apparently EMI (the music conglomerate) invented magnetic resonance imaging, investing their music profits into the research. Next time you get an MRI you have the Beatles to thank.
And this:
The emerging picture from such studies is that ten thousand hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert—in anything. In study after study, of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals, and what have you, this number comes up again and again. Ten thousand hours is equivalent to roughly three hours a day, or twenty hours a week, of practice over ten years. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people don’t seem to get anywhere when they practice, and why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems that it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.
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James Taylor is 59 today.
Liza Minnelli is 61.
Jon Provost is 57. Who? Timmy on Lassie.
Courtney B. Vance is 47.
Dave Eggers is 37. The Writer’s Almanac has an interesting essay today about Eggers.
Jean-Louise Kerouac was born in Lowell, Massachusetts, on this date in 1922.
He grew up speaking French, and couldn’t speak English fluently until junior high. He was a football star in high school and got an athletic scholarship to Columbia University. It was there that he became friends with Allen Ginsberg.
In 1951 he sat at his kitchen table, taped sheets of Chinese art paper together to make a long roll, and wrote the story of the cross-country road trips he took with Neal Cassady. It had no paragraphs and very little punctuation and Allen Ginsberg called it ”a magnificent single paragraph several blocks long, rolling, like the road itself.” And that became Kerouac’s novel On the Road (1957).
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A fascinating, eclectic iTunes playlist from Alan Arkin.
‘Twas Halloween and the ghosts were out,
And everywhere they’d go, they shout,
And though I covered my eyes I knew,
They’d go away.
But fear’s the only thing I saw,
And three days later ’twas clear to all,
That nothing is as scary as election day.
Norah Jones, “My Dear Country”
Elsewhere, TheSonoranSon, official youngest brother of NewMexiKen, suggests that “America the Beautiful” would be better than “The Star-Spangled Banner” as a national anthem. NewMexiKen agrees.
O beautiful for spacious skies,
For amber waves of grain,
For purple mountain majesties
Above the fruited plain!
America! America!
God shed His grace on thee,
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea!
The lyrics (above is just the first stanza) were originally written as a poem by Katharine Lee Bates after a trip to Pikes Peak. The poem was first published in 1895 and for years sung to various melodies, most notably “Auld Lang Syne.” In 1910 the lyric was published with the music for “Materna,” composed by Samuel A. Ward in 1882.
Of course, in a perfect world our national anthem would be Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land.”
This land is your land This land is my land
From California to the New York island;
From the red wood forest to the Gulf Stream waters
This land was made for you and Me.
As I was walking that ribbon of highway,
I saw above me that endless skyway:
I saw below me that golden valley:
This land was made for you and me.
I’ve roamed and rambled and I followed my footsteps
To the sparkling sands of her diamond deserts;
And all around me a voice was sounding:
This land was made for you and me.
When the sun came shining, and I was strolling,
And the wheat fields waving and the dust clouds rolling,
As the fog was lifting a voice was chanting:
This land was made for you and me.
As I went walking I saw a sign there
And on the sign it said “No Trespassing.”
But on the other side it didn’t say nothing,
That side was made for you and me.
In the shadow of the steeple I saw my people,
By the relief office I seen my people;
As they stood there hungry, I stood there asking
Is this land made for you and me?
Nobody living can ever stop me,
As I go walking that freedom highway;
Nobody living can ever make me turn back
This land was made for you and me.
… is 80 today. Here is what Bob Dylan wrote about Belafonte in Chronicles:
Harry [Belafonte] was the best balladeer in the land and everybody knew it. He was a fantastic artist, sang about lovers and slaves—chain gang workers, saints and sinners and children. His repertoire was full of old folk songs like “Jerry the Mule,” “Tol’ My Captain,” “Darlin’ Cora,” “John Henry,” “Sinner’s Prayer” and also a lot of Caribbean folk songs all arranged in a way that appealed to a wide audience, much wider than The Kingston Trio. Harry had learned songs directly from Leadbelly and Woody Guthrie. Belafonte recorded for RCA and one of his records, Belafonte Sings of the Caribbean, had even sold a million copies. He was a movie star, too, but not like Elvis. Harry was an authentic tough guy, not unlike Brando or Rod Steiger. He was dramatic and intense on the screen, had a boyish smile and a hard-core hostility. In the movie Odds Against Tomorrow, you forget he’s an actor, you forget he’s Harry Belafonte. His presence and magnitude was so wide. Harry was like Valentino. As a performer, he broke all attendance records. He could play to a packed house at Carnegie Hall and then the next day he might appear at a garment center union rally. To Harry, it didn’t make any difference. People were people. He had ideals and made you feel you’re a part of the human race. There never was a performer who crossed so many lines as Harry. He appealed to everybody, whether they were steelworkers or symphony patrons or bobby-soxers, even children—everybody. He had that rare ability. Somewhere he had said that he didn’t like to go on television, because he didn’t think his music could be represented well on a small screen, and he was probably right. Everything about him was gigantic. The folk purists had a problem with him, but Harry—who could have kicked the shit out of all of them—couldn’t be bothered, said that all folksingers were interpreters, said it in a public way as if someone had summoned him to set the record straight. He even said he hated pop songs, thought they were junk. I could identify with Harry in all kinds of ways. Sometime in the past, he had been barred from the door of the world famous nightclub the Copacabana because of his color, and then later he’d be headlining the joint. You’ve got to wonder how that would make somebody feel emotionally. Astoundingly and as unbelievable as it might have seemed, I’d be making my professional recording debut with Harry, playing harmonica on one of his albums called Midnight Special. Strangely enough, this was the only one memorable recording date that would stand out in my mind for years to come. Even my own sessions would become lost in abstractions. With Belafonte I felt like I’d become anointed in some kind of way. … Harry was that rare type of character that radiates greatness, and you hope that some of it rubs off on you. The man commands respect. You know he never took the easy path, though he could have.
Forget Celine Dion (great pipes, no heart) and hear some of Ennio Morricone’s wonderful film music, “The Ecstasy of Gold” from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly (Buono, il brutto, il cattivo).
… of William “Smokey” Robinson, born in Detroit on this date in 1940.
Some Smokey Robinson trivia:
… of author Amy Tan, 55 today.
… of Jeff Daniels, 52. Daniels has been nominated for several acting awards, most recently for The Squid and the Whale.
… of “Family Ties” actress Justine Bateman. Mallory Keaton is 41.
… of Benicio Del Toro. The supporting actor Oscar winner, for Traffic, is 40. Del Toro was nominated for the supporting actor Oscar again for 21 Grams.
Author Carson McCullers was born on in Columbus, Georgia, on this date in 1917.
Her most famous novel, The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, published in 1940, delves into the “lonely hearts” of four individuals—an adolescent girl, an embittered radical, a black physician, and a widower who owns a cafe—struggling to find their way in a Southern mill town during the Great Depression. (Library of Congress)
Thomas Edison received a patent for the phonograph on this date in 1878.
The phonograph was developed as a result of Thomas Edison’s work on two other inventions, the telegraph and the telephone. In 1877, Edison was working on a machine that would transcribe telegraphic messages through indentations on paper tape…This development led Edison to speculate that a telephone message could also be recorded in a similar fashion. He experimented with a diaphragm which had an embossing point and was held against rapidly-moving paraffin paper. The speaking vibrations made indentations in the paper. Edison later changed the paper to a metal cylinder with tin foil wrapped around it. The machine had two diaphragm-and-needle units, one for recording, and one for playback. When one would speak into a mouthpiece, the sound vibrations would be indented onto the cylinder by the recording needle in a vertical (or hill and dale) groove pattern. Edison gave a sketch of the machine to his mechanic, John Kreusi, to build, which Kreusi supposedly did within 30 hours. Edison immediately tested the machine by speaking the nursery rhyme into the mouthpiece, “Mary had a little lamb.” To his amazement, the machine played his words back to him. …
The invention was highly original. The only other recorded evidence of such an invention was in a paper by French scientist Charles Cros, written on April 18, 1877. There were some differences, however, between the two men’s ideas, and Cros’s work remained only a theory, since he did not produce a working model of it.
Source: Library of Congress
… was born Hyman Arluck in Buffalo, New York, on this date in 1905.
A short list from the more than 400 tunes written by Harold Arlen:
Arlen worked with many lyricists through the years, most notably Ira Gershwin, Yip Harburg, Johnny Mercer and even Truman Capote. Harburg, for example, wrote the lyrics for the Wizard of Oz songs. Though it’s the lyrics we most remember, it’s the melody that makes a song memorable. That was Arlen.
One day in early February 1959, a 13-year-old in New Rochelle, New York, cut open the stack of newspapers he was about to deliver and read that three rock ’n’ roll stars, Buddy Holly, J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson, and Ritchie Valens, had died in a plane crash in Iowa. The boy later said he felt “like someone had punched me in the face.” It was a feeling shared by many in America and around the world. Years later, in 1971, that paperboy, Don McLean, would write the song “American Pie,” which gave an enduring name to the event: the Day the Music Died.
Right up there with other “where were you when you heard” events for those of us of a certain age. Read all about it at AmericanHeritage.com.
“Joe was twenty, with fewer prospects than a box turtle on a four-lane highway.”
Gerri Hirshey, writing in Rolling Stone about Joe Brown, father of James Brown — The Definitive Profile of the Godfather of Soul.
Her new album, “Not Too Late,” is on sale today — NorahJones.com.
NewMexiKen, still liking music I can touch, pre-ordered the CD from Amazon for $10.
“Irreplaceable” by Beyoncé is in its seventh week as Billboard’s number one. The Dreamgirls soundtrack is the number one album.
Johnny Cash performed his historic concert at Folsom Prison on this date in 1968.
I hear the train a comin’
It’s rollin’ ’round the bend,
And I ain’t seen the sunshine,
Since, I don’t know when,
I’m stuck in Folsom Prison,
And time keeps draggin’ on,
But that train keeps a-rollin’,
On down to San Antone.
[The song itself was originally recorded at Sun in 1956.]
“Listen to this,” Daniel Levitin said. “What is it?” He hit a button on his computer keyboard and out came a half-second clip of music. It was just two notes blasted on a raspy electric guitar, but I could immediately identify it: the opening lick to the Rolling Stones’ “Brown Sugar.”
Then he played another, even shorter snippet: a single chord struck once on piano. Again I could instantly figure out what it was: the first note in Elton John’s live version of “Benny and the Jets.”
Dr. Levitin beamed. “You hear only one note, and you already know who it is,” he said. “So what I want to know is: How we do this? Why are we so good at recognizing music?”
An intriguing article. One thing though. If you attend a concert by any well-known performer there are always those that react to the first few notes. But there is the larger group that doesn’t seem to catch on until the lyrics begin.
But more from the article:
Observing 13 subjects who listened to classical music while in an M.R.I. machine, the scientists found a cascade of brain-chemical activity. First the music triggered the forebrain, as it analyzed the structure and meaning of the tune. Then the nucleus accumbus and ventral tegmental area activated to release dopamine, a chemical that triggers the brain’s sense of reward.
The cerebellum, an area normally associated with physical movement, reacted too, responding to what Dr. Levitin suspected was the brain’s predictions of where the song was going to go. As the brain internalizes the tempo, rhythm and emotional peaks of a song, the cerebellum begins reacting every time the song produces tension (that is, subtle deviations from its normal melody or tempo).
“When we saw all this activity going on precisely in sync, in this order, we knew we had the smoking gun,” he said. “We’ve always known that music is good for improving your mood. But this showed precisely how it happens.”
Funny how they keep finding out that sex, drugs and rock and roll really are good for you. As if we didn’t know.
This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession
How about a free acoustic version of Auld Lang Syne from Jack Ingram?
Start your surfing here, activate the Miles Davis music player (lower right corner), choose a track and be “cool and collected” while surfing the net.
(You can leave the music player window open in the background.)
New Orleans Jazz — “O Holy Night”. This is a link to the video from Studio 60 that was posted here Saturday evening.
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From Rolling Stone. Here’s the top three.
1 “Crazy”
Gnarls Barkley
In a perfect world, Al Green could still sing collard-green soul gems like this one, but Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse stepped up with an instant classic, winning this year’s “Hey Ya!” award for the song nobody even pretended not to like. Everybody tried to cover it (our personal fave: the Raconteurs’) — but nobody can hit the chorus like Cee-Lo, and nobody ever will.2 “Steady As She Goes”
The Raconteurs
The first single from Brendan Benson and Jack White’s garage-glam band was a perfect dirty sundae of fuzz-box stutter, metallic zoom and pop-chorale candy. It is also a good reason to hope the Raconteurs are no one-album project.3 “Ridin”
Chamillionaire
The song least likely to be played in Drivers’ Ed.: Chamillionaire dodges the cops, riding dirty with a car full of thugs who don’t care where they’re rolling or if they get there in one piece.
NewMexiKen has still gotta go with Stevie Nicks for a hot version of “Silent Night,”, but Sarah McLachlan’s Silent Night is very nice.
Better yet, it’s free from iTunes while supplies last.
And tell Beethoven some news of your own. They do “The Nutcracker Ballet” in Albuquerque just fine, too.
Having ventured out to see and hear Nutcracker on the Rocks last weekend, tonight NewMexiKen took in the real thing presented by the New Mexico Symphony Orchestra and the New Mexico Ballet Company. Bravo!
When, just before the overture, a tiny little girl in front of me was asked if this was her first “Nutcracker,” I had to marvel because, well, it was my first “Nutcracker,” too. (Unless you count the dancing hippos in Walt Disney’s Fantasia.) And it was really wonderful; like the two boys near me (age seven or eight and nine or ten) I sat engrossed.
While it’s hard to fault James Brown or The Stones as heard in “Nutcracker on the Rocks,” a live orchestra playing Tchaikovsky’s masterful music is really beyond marvelous. I also have to laugh because in no way do I feel capable of commenting on dance, yet after two performances in one calendar week I began to notice things. The prima ballerina, Angelie Renay Melzer as the Sugar Plum Fairy tonight, taught me how it’s done. While there were many excellent dancers, and many athletic ones, she was the dancer who brought the music and the dance into one. Just sublime.
Life offers so many moments of beauty and pleasure if we just give them a chance.
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Slate Magazine has the Bob Dylan video.
The video for “Thunder on the Mountain,” which Slate is proud to premiere, is a whirlwind tour of the many phases, and faces, of Bob—from fierce ’60s folk-rock tyro to white-makeup-caked troubadour to craggy old bard with a gleam in his eye and a Vincent Price mustache. The video draws on several decades of archival footage, some of it previously unseen. It’s a panorama of 40-odd years of American musical history, and—for Dylan freaks—a trainspotter’s dream.
And a damn fine rock and roll tune.
Is that they can really pile up on you in a hurry.
Anyway, a couple of quick items from Rolling Stone Issue 1015 (the one with Snoop in the Santa hat).
Suze Rotolo, Bob Dylan’s first New York girlfriend (the woman with him on the cover of The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan) is selling some of her memorabilia. Included is a valentine card (1963): “Love, Love, Money, Booze, I’d swap ‘m all to be with youse, love love me Bob.” It’s a good thing he didn’t choose to write romantic ballads.
Oh, and there’s a good best line of the day in RS, too. “[T]hey’re pretty people who wear white coats so they can drip tears on them, and carry stethoscopes only so they can listen to their own heartbeats in sad, private moments.”
The reference is, of course, to “Grey’s Anatomy.”
iTunes is giving away James Taylor’s very stylized version of Jingle Bells this week.
And tell Tchaikovsky the news. In Albuquerque they perform The Nutcracker to a different beat.
NewMexiKen had the enjoyable pleasure this evening of attending a tenth anniversary performance of Nutcracker on the Rocks, a reinvented version of the traditional Nutcracker ballet. The music of Tchaikovsky opens and closes the dance, but in between we hear — and the dancers dance to — James Brown (”I Got You”), Van Morrison (”Moondance”), The Velvet Underground (”Rock ‘n Roll”), Aretha Franklin (”Rock Steady”) Billie Holiday, The Rolling Stones (”Sympathy for the Devil”), Morphine (”You Look Like Rain”), Janis Joplin (”Move Over”) and others. There were nearly 100 individual dancers, some of them very young, all of them enthusiastic, many quite good. Keshet founding company member Sarah Elizabeth Bennett was terrific as the Rat Queen.
And it makes me proud and happy that I live in a time and place where some of the “snowflakes” danced in their wheelchairs — and that even the chairs were choreographed into the dance movements.
The performance was at the Roy E. Disney Center for the Arts at the National Hispanic Cultural Center, an Albuquerque gem. The run is over for this year, but make plans for 2007.
Keshet Dance Company is a community supported, non-profit professional dance company. Keshet is Hebrew for rainbow.
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“This music makes my feet go out of control.”
Three-year-old Sofie while dancing to Madonna’s “Confessions on a Dance Floor.”
Scott Adams asks:
Sometimes I wonder why music is legal. Music can alter your mood and your body chemistry just like any illegal drug. The fact that it goes into your body through your ear shouldn’t make a difference. We take drugs via practically every other hole in our body – mouth, butt, eyeballs, nose – you name it. Ain’t nothing special about an ear.
Music is clearly unsafe. Suppose you’re in a perfectly good mood and a depressing song comes on. That could make you sad and break down your body’s natural defenses. You could get sick and die. Thank you very much Tori Amos.
… of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee Tina Turner (with Ike); she’s 67.
The Ike and Tina Turner Revue was one of the highest energy ensembles on the soul circuit in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s.
Ike Turner had begun as a bandleader and talent scout in the ‘40s for blues and R&B performers. He recorded “Rocket 88,” considered by many the first rock ‘n’ roll recording, under the name of his baritone sax player, Jackie Brenston, in 1951.
Turner and his band, the Kings of Rhythm, found a young singer named Annie Mae Bullock in 1956. Eventually, the singer was renamed Tina Turner and the two married.
Their first hit, “A Fool in Love,” was recorded in 1961 when another singer failed to show up for a session. After several early ‘60s hit R&B singles, including “It’s Gonna Work Out Fine” in 1961, they became major stars in England.
A 1971 cover version of John Fogerty’s “Proud Mary” reached No. 4 on the pop chart. Ike and Tina divorced in 1976.
… of Oakland Raiders coach Art Shell. He’s 60. Shell is in the Pro Football Hall of Fame as a player and he was the first African-American head coach in modern NFL history.
Hall of Fame pitcher Vernon Louis “Lefty” Gomez was born on this date in 1908. He died in 1989.
“No one hit home runs the way Babe (Ruth) did. They were something special. They were like homing pigeons. The ball would leave the bat, pause briefly, suddenly gain its bearings, then take off for the stands.” Lefty Gomez
“When Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, he and all the space scientists were puzzled by an unidentifiable white object. I knew immediately what it was. That was a home run ball hit off me in 1933 by Jimmie Foxx.” Lefty Gomez
Charles M. Schulz was born on this date in 1922. He died in February 2000, the night before his last Sunday strip appeared.
Thanksgiving Day brings us a rare moment of coming together. A tradition that crosses boundaries. No, it’s not eating supper with family or even watching football. For radio fans and programmers alike, today’s holiday is best celebrated by the playing of one song, Arlo Guthrie’s “Alice’s Restaurant.” That song, which was originally released as the 18-minute “Alice’s Restaurant Massacree,” will be heard today ….
The song, which is usually broadcast in either the original album track form or the even longer 30th anniversary live version, relates a Thanksgiving story. In it, Guthrie talks about enjoying a Thanksgiving feast with friends in Stockbridge at the title restaurant. After that, things get weird. The singer relates taking out the trash and, having no place to legally drop it because of the holiday, dumping it illegally. This leads to a long, shaggy-dog tale of being arrested for littering that turns into both an anti-Vietnam War protest and a statement of human rights. Somehow, by the end, he has turned the song into a statement that in union there is strength. And the best way to demonstrate that communal strength? Everyone, as listeners know, must sing along with the familiar refrain: “You can get anything you want at Alice’s Restaurant.” As the singer points out, if we can pull ourselves together to do that, we can change the world.
Downloadable versions from the Alice’s Restaurant Massacree Concert / Radio Show.
Alice Brock — the actual Alice.
NewMexiKen guesses he is the last kid on his block to learn a little about the music of composer Steve Reich (I wasn’t totally ignorant, just unfamiliar), but an article in The New Yorker earlier this month got me interested. So far I’ve just been listening around the edges at the iTunes Store, but it’s fascinating.
I don’t know enough to begin to explain what Reich does. Let this paragraph from Alex Ross’ article suffice as an introduction:
In this sense, “Different Trains,” for recorded voices and string quartet, may be Reich’s most staggering achievement, even if “Music for 18” gives the purest pleasure. He wrote the piece in 1988, after recalling cross-country train trips that he had taken as a child. “As a Jew, if I had been in Europe during this period, I would have had to ride very different trains,” he has said. Recordings of his nanny reminiscing about their journeys and of an elderly man named Lawrence Davis recalling his career as a Pullman porter are juxtaposed with the testimonies of three Holocaust survivors. These voices give a picture of the dividedness of twentieth-century experience, of the irreconcilability of American idyll and European horror—and something in Mr. Davis’s weary voice also reminds us that America was never an idyll for all. The hidden melodies of the spoken material generate string writing that is rich in fragmentary modal tunes and gently pulsing rhythms.
The NPR 100 included Reich’s “Drumming” among its “100 most important American musical works of the 20th century.” Here’s that report. (RealPlayer)
So I buy J.J. Cale and Eric Clapton’s new CD last night. This morning I go to import it into iTunes, which happily pulls up the track names from some database on the internets. If you’re obsessive-compulsive as NewMexiKen is from time-to-time, you verify the iTunes information against the actual CD.
iTunes title: “The Road To Escondito”
Actual title: “The Road to Escondido” (Escondido is an actual place not far from San Diego. I’ve been there.)
iTunes song title: “When The War Is Over”
Actual song title: “When This War Is Over”
OK, not exactly the end of the world, but doesn’t anybody proof their work anymore — or take any pride in getting it right?
(It’s rare for the database to have the album title wrong, but song titles are often incorrect.)
The playlist for this week’s Theme Time Radio Hour with Bob Dylan.
The theme is Time.
Time is on My Side - Irma Thomas
Right Place, Wrong Time - Dr. John
As Time Goes By - Dooley Wilson
Time Marches On - Derek Morgan
All The Time - Sleepy La Beef
Boogie Woogie (I May Be Wrong) - Count Basie
Only Time Will Tell - Etta James
24 Hours - Eddie Boyd
Turn Back the Hands of Time - Tyrone Davis
Life Begins At 4 O’Clock - Bobby Milano
60 Minute Man - Billy Ward and the Dominos
15 Minute Intermission - Cab Calloway
Funny How Time Slips Away - Willie Nelson
September Song - Lou Reed
Two Years of Torture - Ray Charles
Walking After Midnight - Patsy Cline
Midnight Hour - Clarence Gatemouth Brown
What Time Is It - The Jive Five
Real Rock - The Soul Vendors
Armigedion Time - Willy Williams
Time Has Come Today - The Chambers Brothers
Time is Tight - Booker T and the MGs
W.C. Handy was born on this date in 1873. Handy was the first to write sheet music for the blues and for that reason is known as the Father of the Blues. Though associated with Memphis and Beale Street, Handy’s most famous song is St. Louis Blues (1914).
NPR told the Handy and St. Louis Blues stories as part of the NPR 100. Click to hear the NPR report, which includes Handy’s own reminiscences and the complete recording of the song by Bessie Smith accompanied by Louis Armstrong, possibly the most influential recording in American music history. (RealPlayer file.)
W.C. Handy died in 1958.
…became a state on this date in 1907. It was the 46th state to enter the Union.
The official song and anthem of the State of Oklahoma is “Oklahoma,” composed and written by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein. Oddly enough, the song, arguably the best “state song” of them all, wasn’t mentioned when we tried to list a song for each state here last month.
Brand new state, Brand new state, gonna treat you great!
Gonna give you barley, carrots and pertaters,
Pasture fer the cattle, Spinach and Termayters!
Flowers on the prairie where the June bugs zoom,
Plen’y of air and plen’y of room,
Plen’y of room to swing a rope!
Plen’y of heart and plen’y of hope!
Oklahoma, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the plain,
And the wavin’ wheat can sure smell sweet
When the wind comes right behind the rain.
Oklahoma, ev’ry night my honey lamb and I
Sit alone and talk and watch a hawk makin’ lazy circles in the sky.
We know we belong to the land
And the land we belong to is grand!
And when we say - Yeeow! Ayipioeeay!
We’re only sayin’ You’re doin’ fine, Oklahoma! Oklahoma - O.K.
NewMexiKen just loves the Chuck Berry version of “You Never Can Tell” — it’s the song Vincent Vega and Mia Wallace win the twist contest to in Pulp Fiction.
But this moring I heard for the first time the Emmylou Harris version, “(You Never Can Tell) C’est la vie.”
What d’ya think?
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