Category: Music

That’s All Right, Mama

Fifty-seven years ago today Elvis Presley recorded “That’s All Right, Mama.”

Sun Studio

During a break in a recording session consisting mostly of slow ballads, Elvis, Scotty Moore and Bill Black began fooling around.

Sam recognized it right away. He was amazed that the boy even knew Arthur “Big Boy” Crudup — nothing in any of the songs he had tried so far gave any indication that he was drawn to this kind of music at all. But this was the sort of music that Sam had long ago wholeheartedly embraced, this was the sort of music of which he said, “This is where the soul of man never dies.” And the way the boy performed it, it came across with a freshness and an exuberance, it came across with the kind of clear-eyed, unabashed originality that Sam sought in all the music that he recorded — it was “different,” it was itself.

They worked on it. They worked hard on it, but without any of the laboriousness that had gone into the efforts to cut “I Love You Because.” Sam tried to get Scotty to cut down on the instrumental flourishes — “Simplify, simplify'” was the watchword. “If we wanted Chet Atkins,” said Sam good-humoredly, “we would have brought him up from Nashville and gotten him in the damn studio!” He was delighted with the rhythmic propulsion Bill Black brought to the sound. It was a slap beat and a tonal beat at the same time. He may not have been as good a bass player as his brother Johnny; in fact, Sam said, “Bill was one of the worst bass players in the world, technically, but, man, could he slap that thing!” And yet that wasn’t it either — it was the chemistry. There was Scotty, and there was Bill, and there was Elvis scared to death in the middle, “but sounding so fresh, because it was fresh to him.”

Peter Guralnick, Last Train to Memphis: The Rise of Elvis Presley

NewMexiKen photo, 2006

This isn’t fair

And they both are lovely, but doesn’t looking at James Taylor (with his wife Caroline at last night’s White House State Dinner), make you feel a little older than you did a minute ago? He looks like he’s seen plenty of fire and plenty of rain by now.

Paul Simon and a Moment of Pure Sobbing Joy

“Paul Simon has brought joy to so many for so long, but on this night he made Rayna Ford’s dream come true. During a show in Toronto on May 7, Rayna Ford, a fan from Newfoundland, called out for Simon to play ‘Duncan,’ and said something to the effect that she learned to play guitar on the song. In a moment of astonishment and disbelief, Paul Simon invited her on stage, handed her a guitar and asked her to play it for the crowd.”

All Songs Considered Blog : NPR

And here is the video:

The National Jukebox

The National Jukebox is spinning tunes – and you don’t have to drop any coin to get it to play. Today [May 10th] the Library of Congress and Sony Music Entertainment announced the launch of what’s being billed as “the largest collection of historical recordings ever made publicly available online.”

The new website provides access to more than 10-thousand historical recordings for free on a streaming-only basis – no downloads. It covers the first quarter of the twentieth century and includes music, poetry, political speeches and other spoken word recordings. Right now, it only includes recordings made by the Victor Talking Machine Company, which Sony controls.

Above from NPR.

The website itself is here.

More from NPR:

There is more well-known stuff: the first recording of the Paul Whiteman Orchestra’s “Rhapsody in Blue,” with composer George Gershwin at the piano, Parts 1 & 2, from 1924; Woodrow Wilson’s speech on labor from September 24, 1912; Theodore Roosevelt’s speech on the farmer and the businessman from that same month and year; and the Original Dixieland Jazz Band’s 1917 recording of, “Livery Stable Blues,” considered to be the “first jazz recording ever released.”

And the song below was recorded 110 years ago today.

April 15th ought to be a national holiday

Bessie Smith

Bessie Smith was born on this date in 1894.

Bessie Smith earned the title of “Empress of the Blues” by virtue of her forceful vocal delivery and command of the genre. Her singing displayed a soulfully phrased, boldly delivered and nearly definitive grasp of the blues. In addition, she was an all-around entertainer who danced, acted and performed comedy routines with her touring company. She was the highest-paid black performer of her day and arguably reached a level of success greater than that of any African-American entertainer before her.
. . .

Some of her better-known sides from the Twenties include “Backwater Blues,” “Taint Nobody’s Bizness If I Do,” “St. Louis Blues” (recorded with Louis Armstrong), and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out.” The Depression dealt her career a blow, but Smith changed with the times by adapting a more up-to-date look and revised repertoire that incorporated Tin Pan Alley tunes like “Smoke Gets in Your Eyes.” On the verge of the Swing Era, Smith died from injuries sustained in an automobile accident outside Clarksdale, Mississippi, in September 1937. She left behind a rich, influential legacy of 160 recordings cut between 1923 and 1933. Some of the great vocal divas who owe a debt to Smith include Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Aretha Franklin and Janis Joplin. In Joplin’s own words of tribute, “She showed me the air and taught me how to fill it.”

Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

And this from a review of The Essential Bessie Smith.

. . . Bessie could sing it all, from the lowdown moan of “St. Louis Blues” and “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out” to her torch treatment of the jazz standard “After You’ve Gone” to the downright salaciousness of “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl.” Covering a time span from her first recordings in 1923 to her final session in 1933, this is the perfect entry-level set to go with. Utilizing the latest in remastering technology, these recordings have never sounded quite this clear and full, and the selection — collecting her best-known sides and collaborations with jazz giants like Louis Armstrong, Coleman Hawkins, and Benny Goodman — is first-rate. If you’ve never experienced the genius of Bessie Smith, pick this one up and prepare yourself to be devastated.

allmusic

There are no lyrics today that surpass “Need a Little Sugar in My Bowl” for sexual imagery.

And, there is no more important recording in American musical history than Smith and Armstrong’s “St. Louis Blues.”

In listening to the earliest recordings, keep in mind there were no microphones until 1925. The artists sang or played and the sound was recorded acoustically, i.e., without electrical amplification.

And Thomas Hart Benton was born on this date in 1889.

TrailRiders.jpgNamed after his great-uncle, Missouri’s first senator, Thomas Hart Benton was born on 15 April 1889 in Neosho, Missouri, an Ozark town of 2,000 people. … In 1935 they moved to Kansas City, Missouri, where Benton directed the Art Institute until 1941, and where he contiued to live for the rest of his life. Albert Barnes, the Philadelphia collector, purchased some of his paintings, which raised the level of public success for the artist. Benton published his autobiography, An Artist in America, in 1937. He completed several murals in the midwest and on the east coast. Shortly before Harry Truman’s death in December 1972, Benton finished a portrait of the former President. Thomas Hart Benton died on 19 January 1975 in Kansas City, the day he completed a large mural for the Country Music Foundation of Nashville.

National Gallery of Art

Click on the painting to see larger version.

Line of the day

Paul Simon’s Graceland celebrates a quarter century this summer: . . . This means that Graceland is now the same age that ‘Will You Love Me Tomorrow’ by the Shirelles, ‘Stand By Me’ by Ben E. King, ‘Hit the Road, Jack’ by Ray Charles, and ‘Are You Lonesome Tonight?’ by the King (of Graceland) were when Simon’s album came out. I name only songs because in 1961 albums as we understand them today hadn’t yet been invented.”

In Which There’s A Girl In New York City Who Calls Herself The Human Trampoline – Home – This Recording

One of his 1,093 patents

133 years ago today Thomas Edison received a patent for the phonograph and ultimately music changed forever.

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. . . .
It didn't look much like an iPod

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

Click image for larger version.

Rhapsody in Blue

George Gershwin’s phenomenal blending of jazz and classical music, premiered at Aeolian Hall, in New York City, on February 12, 1924, 87 years ago tonight. Gershwin wrote the piece in three weeks, reportedly improvising some of the piano parts during the premiere.

Rhapsody in Blue was one of NPR’s 100 most important American musical works of the 20th century. You can listen to the NPR report from NPR Music.

This video (audio with photographs actually) is, I believe, a recording made in June 1924 with Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra with Ross Gorman playing the clarinet opening as he did during the premier, and the composer at the piano.