“The average 12-year-old can hold in her hand more songs than my great-grandfather would have heard in his entire lifetime.”
Daniel J. Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music.
Following link for a bunch of interesting factoids about music, iPods, etc.
CUPERTINO, Calif., Oct. 23— Apple Computer introduced a portable music player today and declared that the new gadget, called the iPod, was so much easier to use that it would broaden a nascent market in the way the Macintosh once helped make the personal computer accessible to a more general audience.
But while industry analysts said the device appeared to be as consumer friendly as the company said it was, they also pointed to its relatively limited potential audience, around seven million owners of the latest Macintosh computers. Apple said it had not yet decided whether to introduce a version of the music player for computers with the Windows operating system, which is used by more than 90 percent of personal computer users.
“It’s a nice feature for Macintosh users,” said P. J. McNealy, a senior analyst for Gartner G2, an e-commerce research group. “But to the rest of the Windows world, it doesn’t make any difference.”
Steven P. Jobs, Apple’s chief executive, disputed the concern that the market was limited, and said the company might have trouble meeting holiday demand. He predicted that the improvement in technology he said the iPod represented would inspire consumers to buy Macintosh computers so they could use an iPod.
Introduces What It Calls an Easier to Use Portable Music Player – NYTimes.com
Ten years ago today. Industry analysts were wrong.
Juanita Jean tells how to pick a Mexican restaurant, at least in Texas, though I think much of her formula would apply in New Mexico and possible even Arizona, South Tucson at least.
As you might guess, she tells a good story. Go read it.
She’s right about Oscar & Anita, too.
… is 85 today. I’ve been busy celebrating the national holiday.
You? What have you done to celebrate the birthday of this Great American?
While no individual can be said to have invented rock and roll, Chuck Berry comes the closest of any single figure to being the one who put all the essential pieces together. It was his particular genius to graft country & western guitar licks onto a rhythm & blues chassis in his very first single, “Maybellene.” Combined with quick-witted, rapid-fire lyrics full of sly insinuations about cars and girls, Berry laid the groundwork for not only a rock and roll sound but a rock and roll stance. The song included a brief but scorching guitar solo built around his trademark double-string licks. Accompanied by long-time piano player Johnnie Johnson and members of the Chess Records house band, including Willie Dixon, Berry wrote and performed rock and roll for the ages. To this day, the cream of Berry’s repertoire—which includes “Johnny B. Goode,” “Sweet Little Sixteen,” “Rock and Roll Music” and “Roll Over Beethoven”—is required listening for any serious rock fan and required learning for any serious rock musician.
“Economic justice isn’t the most popular theme in pop music. It’s a distant third behind girls and cars. Oh, wait. We made an accounting error: it’s behind girls, cars, surfing, drinking, food, technology, space travel, dogs, boys, and other topics. But there is a persistent strain of pop songs about haves, have-nots, and the distance between them.”
You Never Give Me Your Money: A Soundtrack for Occupy Wall Street : The New Yorker
The list includes this great Randy Newman tune.
And I’ve added this classic cover by The Nighthawks.
Did I post this before?
Just music, no video, but none is really needed.
But here’s a very different version with video. That’s Sonny Boy Williamson II with the harmonica.
And last. Bessie Smith and Louis Armstrong, 1925.
- Hallelujah was first released in 1984 on Leonard Cohen’s album, Various Positions.
- Cohen once told Bob Dylan that it took him two years to write the song.
- Dylan himself has sung it live, and there are bootleg versions in circulation of his performance. It has also been sung by Bono and Bon Jovi.
- More than 100 versions of the song have been recorded.
- The best known is by Jeff Buckley, whose unadorned version was on his 1994 Grace album.
- Cohen has recorded two versions – the second one appeared on a live album in 1988 – with very different endings; one upbeat, one dark.
- Buckley’s version was used in the soundtrack to the American TV series, The OC.
- Other TV shows to have used the song include The West Wing, ER, Scrubs, and Holby City.
- The full version of the song has 15 verses.
- Cohen, a notorious perfectionist, is said to have originally written 80 verses.
- Cohen is set to earn £1 million in royalties from sales of singles by X-Factor winner Alexandra Burke.
- Burke’s version is the fastest selling download single in history.
- Former Velvet Underground member John Cale’s version was used in the film Shrek.
- The Shrek soundtrack album featured a version by Rufus Wainwright, who also sang it in the Leonard Cohen tribute film, I’m Your Man.
- Cohen was once asked why the song is so popular. “It’s got a good chorus,” he replied.
- It has become a mainstay of live shows by Cohen’s fellow Canadian singer-songwriter, kd lang.
- The English singer and songwriter Kathryn Williams once introduced her version of Hallelujah in a live show by saying, “I really, really, really want to shag Leonard Cohen.”
- The song is broadcast at 2am every Saturday night by the Israeli defence force’s radio channel.
- Hallelujah is a Hebrew word, meaning “praise Yah”.
- Cohen has said of the song’s meaning: “It explains that many kinds of hallelujahs do exist, and all the perfect and broken hallelujahs have equal value.”
Two years ago.
Hiram Williams was born 88 years ago today (1923). We know him as Hank. Arguably he is one of the two or three most important individuals in American music history. Hank Williams is an inductee of both the Country Music (the first inductee) and Rock and Roll (its second year) halls of fame.
Entering local talent talent contests soon after moving to Montgomery in 1937, Hank had served a ten-year apprenticeship by the time he scored his first hit, “Move It on Over,” in 1947. He was twenty-three then, and twenty-five when the success of “Lovesick Blues” (a minstrel era song he did not write) earned him an invitation to join the preeminent radio barndance, Nashville’s Grand Ole Opry. His star rose rapidly. He wrote songs compulsively, and his producer/music publisher, Fred Rose, helped him isolate and refine those that held promise. The result was an unbroken string of hits that included “Honky Tonkin’,” “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry,” “Mansion on the Hill,” “Cold, Cold Heart,” “I Can’t Help It (If I’m Still in Love with You),” “Honky Tonk Blues,” “Jambalaya,” “Your Cheatin’ Heart,” and “You Win Again.” He was a recording artist for six years, and, during that time, recorded just 66 songs under his own name (together with a few more as part of a husband-and-wife act, Hank & Audrey, and a more still under his moralistic alter ego, Luke the Drifter). Of the 66 songs recorded under his own name, an astonishing 37 were hits. More than once, he cut three songs that became standards in one afternoon.
The words and music of Hank Williams echo across the decades with a timelessness that transcends genre. He brought country music into the modern era, and his influence spilled over into the folk and rock arenas as well. Artists ranging from Gram Parsons and John Fogerty (who recorded an entire album of Williams’ songs after leaving Creedence Clearwater Revival) to the Georgia Satellites and Uncle Tupelo have adapted elements of Williams’ persona, especially the aura of emotional forthrightness and bruised idealism communicated in his songs. Some of Williams’ more upbeat country and blues-flavored numbers, on the other hand, anticipated the playful abandon of rockabilly.
Hank Williams’s legend has long overtaken the rather frail and painfully introverted man who spawned it. Almost singlehandedly, Williams set the agenda for contemporary country songcraft, but his appeal rests as much in the myth that even now surrounds his short life. His is the standard by which success is measured in country music on every level, even self-destruction.
Again from American Masters:
It all fell apart remarkably quickly. Hank Williams grew disillusioned with success, and the unending travel compounded his back problem. A spinal operation in December 1951 only worsened the condition. Career pressures and almost ceaseless pain led to recurrent bouts of alcoholism. He missed an increasing number of showdates, frustrating those who attempted to manage or help him. His wife, Audrey, ordered him out of their house in January 1952, and he was dismissed from the Grand Ole Opry in August that year for failing to appear on Opry-sponsored showdates. Returning to Shreveport, Louisiana, where he’d been an up-and-coming star in 1948, he took a second wife, Billie Jean Jones, and hired a bogus doctor who compounded his already serious physical problems with potentially lethal drugs.
Hank Williams died in the back seat of his Cadillac. He was found and declared dead on New Year’s Day 1953. He was 29.
Yes, that is June Carter in the video.
Idea from Krugman.
As pop auteurs who wrote, arranged and produced countless recordings by the above-mentioned artists and others, Leiber and Stoller advanced rock and roll to new heights of wit and musical sophistication. They were particularly influential during rock and roll’s first decade, beginning with the original recording of “Hound Dog” in 1953 and continuing through to the Drifters’ “On Broadway” in 1963. They brought a range of stylistic flavor to their story songs, which ranged from wisecracking, finger-popping hipster tunes to quieter love ballads. They even made a foray into country & western at Elvis Presley’s request, penning “Just Tell Her Jim Said Hello.” About all that their songs had in common was a fundamental grounding in rhythm & blues.
Leiber, the son of Jewish immigrants from Poland, was born in 1933 and grew up on the edge of Baltimore’s black ghetto. Stoller, also born in 1933, was raised in Queens, learning the basics of blues and boogie-woogie from black kids at summer camp. The pair met in Los Angeles in 1950 and began writing right away. Leiber served as the sharp-witted lyricist, while the classically trained but jazz- and R&B-loving Stoller wrote the music.
“Jerry Leiber and Nick Ashford helped define American music — and created the sound of strength.”
A good brief tribute. Good video, too.
Here’s another with a couple of videos: Jerry Leiber: Half of Everything.
I just searched my iTunes library for Jerry Leiber and got 53 tracks.
First the original by Desmond Dekker and the Aces (#9 in U.S., #1 U.K. 1968) and one of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 660 Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll.
And the remix by Apache Indian.
There is an iPhone app for the Songs That Shaped Rock and Roll. Lists all 660 songs with links to samples of nearly all. It’ll cost you $2.
Links via Jared Bernstein | On the Economy.
The blog is 8 today. Here’s Stevie Ray to help me celebrate my Pride and Joy.
From New Yorker music writer Ben Greenman:
Barack Obama turns fifty today, placing him in the esteemed company of other celebrities such as Wayne Gretzky, Ricky Gervais, and Eddie Murphy. The occasion was marked Wednesday with a high-end benefit at Chicago’s Aragon Ballroom that featured performances by Herbie Hancock, OK Go, and Jennifer Hudson; tickets were priced at up to $35,800 per couple. If you want to hold on to your $17,900 and still wish the President a happy birthday, we’ve put together a playlist that will cost you absolutely nothing, composed entirely of songs from the year of Obama’s birth. There’s one for each decade, and one for good luck.
He starts it off with Jimmy Reed, “Big Boss Man.” [YouTube audio/video.]
A look at the song “Try A Little Tenderness” over 80 years.
“Now he’s gone and joined that stupid club, I told him not to join that stupid club.”
Wendy O’Connor, Kurt Cobain’s mother when Cobain joined the 27 Club.
Amy Winehouse joined the Club today. Robert Johnson, Brian Jones, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin and Cobain lead the way. All died at age 27.
Amy Winehouse, 27, has died of an apparent overdose.
… was born in Autlan de Navarro, Mexico, 64 years ago today. His family migrated to the U.S. in the 1960s.
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame introduces inductee Santana this way —
Guitarist Carlos Santana is one of rock’s true virtuosos and guiding lights. Since 1966, he has led the group that bears his surname, selling over 30 million albums and performing before 13 million people. Though numerous musicians have passed through Santana’s ranks, the continuing presence of Carlos Santana at the helm has insured high standards. From the earliest days, when Santana first overlaid Afro-Latin rhythms upon a base of driving blues-rock, they have been musical sorcerers. The melodic fluency and kineticism of Santana’s guitar solos and the piercing, sustained tone that is his signature have made him one of rock’s standout instrumentalists. Coupled with the polyrhythmic fury of drums, congas and timbales, the sound of Santana in full flight is singularly exciting. Underlying it all is Santana’s belief that music should “create a bridge so people can have more trust and hope in humanity.”
Billie Holiday died 52 years ago today. She was 44.
Considered by many to be the greatest jazz vocalist of all time, Billie Holiday lived a tempestuous and difficult life. Her singing expressed an incredible depth of emotion that spoke of hard times and injustice as well as triumph. Though her career was relatively short and often erratic, she left behind a body of work as great as any vocalist before or since.
I first posted the above three years ago today.
It’s a great album.