Reliving Elvis
No matter how much is written, or by whom, Elvis Presley remains impossible to explain. The usual “young white rocker who could sing black" is as inaccurate as any standing American mythology. His legacy has been as mangled as his career was, often to the detriment of the work itself. Yes, at the time of his ...
Carole Simpson Remembered
As news of Donald Byrd's passing was leaking out slowly, jazz educator Keith Pawlak sent me a note on Facebook asking if I had heard that pianist/vocalist Carole Simpson had passed away. Her name is barely known except to a few collectors who specialize in female singers of the Eisenhower era. She was during that period ...
Beyond The Blues
Back when I was a kid--I was born in 1965--the first comprehensive push for children's education about American Black History was on. Elementary school libraries suddenly included books about Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman, and George Washington Carver, and there were even a few books about jazz and blues for young readers. I wish I could remember ...
John Hartford: Aereo Plain/Morning Bugle - The Complete Warner Brothers Recordings
John Hartford Aereo Plain/Morning Bugle: The Complete Warner Brothers Recordings Real Music 2012
This 1971 album was to the emerging newgrass movement approximately was Bill Evans' Village Vanguard recordings were to jazz piano trios: the flexible blueprint for the genre. Evans and singer/multi-instrumentalist John Hartford both successfully found ways to dissolve the “soloist ...
Ernie Kovacs and Edie Adams For Beginners
Fifty years after his death, Ernie Kovacs is de rigueur. Mainstream, even. His angular, imaginative approach to humor was impossible to imitate, but his influence on television-specifically television comedy-is intractable. He's the Thelonious Monk of the small screen. And just trying to play in a Monkish style always points out that Monk is Monk and nobody ...
Frank M. Young and David Lasky: The Carter Family - Don't Forget This Song
Frank M. Young and David Lasky The Carter Family: Don't Forget This Song 192 pages ISBN 978081988361 Abrams ComicArts 2012 In recent years, the music biography has turned notable corners. The post-punk generation, coming largely from the world of fanzines and urban weekly newspapers, has become a big chunk of the ...
Your Past Will Come Back To Haunt You: Omnivore and Dust To Digital - Two Record Labels That Matter
When I was growing up, a great many labels actually worked hard at having an identity. Blue Note meant something, as did Stiff, Rounder, Sugar Hill, Fania and many more (even some of the majors). Music fans actually bought stuff with a sense of trust for the people who put it out. Packaging, production style, taste, ...
Crimejazz: The Sound of Noir
Crimejazz! In 1923, Caroll John Daly wrote Knights of the Open Palm. Published June of that same year in the pulp magazine Black Mask, its protagonist was Race Williams, an acerbic private eye. This was the first hardboiled crime story, and it touched off a world of crime fiction. That same year, trumpeter Louis Armstrong recorded ...
Los Lobos: Kiko - 20th Anniversary Edition
Los Lobos Kiko: 20th Anniversary Edition Shout! Factory 2012 Looking over the punk-era rise of Los Angeles roots rock, reveals an embarrassment of musical riches. The prototypical outfit was The Blasters, a literate working class rockabilly-tinged barband whose songs (written by Dave Alvin) were knowing, compassionate stories of real American life, and they ...
A Few Frames Of Public Access Art
Music and television have always worked together, and through the history of the medium, apocolypses have happened because the world was tuned in together. Language quickly becomes hyperbole when people recall Elvis Presley or the Beatles on Ed Sullivan, Ricky Nelson's fantastic weekly performances on his parents' show (The Adventures of Ozzie and Harriet), any number ...
Art Restoration: Laurie Pepper and Widow's Taste Records
It was F. Scott Fitzgerald who wrote, “In American life, there are no second acts," which means he clearly was not an Art Pepper fan. Pepper was one of the great alto saxophonist stars of the bop era, famed not only as a Stan Kenton sideman, but also for his own albums as a leader. In ...
England Swings Like A Pendulum Do
Several years ago, when the Skip Heller Trio was touring all the time, I came across a disc called London Is The Place For Me: Trinidadian Calypso In London, 1950-1956 (Honest Jons, 2002), a collection of calyspo music recorded in London. The music and accompanying thick booklet were full of revelations: the history of postwar migration ...
Sun Ra: The Eternal Myth Revealed Vol. 1
Author's note: Michael Ricci has ordained me with the power to come to you once a month and throw a little information your way. A lot of great music falls through the cracks, often enough because the people who make it don't live comfortably in some nice categorical box. If you're someone who prefers music to ...
