That’s a resolution I think many of us would happily accept for this new year.
Here’s a little music from the late great Johnny Otis. You most likely know him best for Willie and the Hand Jive but if you get a chance take a look at his bio sometime. An interesting guy. This is his Happy New Year Baby.
So, have yourself a good day and may 2018 mark the return of the power of truth. Happiness and peace to you in this New Year.
Been taking a little hiatus but still wanted to post something today, maybe just a simple song. I spent quite a bit of time this morning listening to music on YouTube, doing that thing where you keep choosing an obscure but somehow related video on the right side, seeing how far it can lead you down a twisting rabbit hole of oddball songs and forgotten genres. I heard a lot of songs I haven’t heard in years, some good and some not so much.
It was going pretty well and I thought I had my choice when out of the blue, the YouTube algorithm turned up this song from 1979’s Monty Python’s Life of Brian. I knew I had my choice for the day. During the Falklands War in 1982, the British naval ship HMS Sheffield was hit and sunk by an Argentine missile. As the crew was waiting to be rescued, the crew broke out singing this song and it has become tradition among British troops in dire situations.
So whether it’s sinking ship or a nation stumbling along at the end of an odd year, it might be the right song for the day. It made me feel better this morning. Feel free to sing or whistle along…
I wanted to play a Christmas song for this week’s Sunday music and thought I’d replay a song that first ran here back in 2009. It’s Must Be Santa from Bob Dylan. It’s a great song, a polka with a klezmer feel and in the the entertaining video you get the bonus of seeing Dylan dance. Good fun for the day before Christmas.
While looking for an photo or two to accompany this post, I browsed through masses of images of Santas from the past and was amazed how many of them crossed that line into outright creepiness. It made me believe that Santa is just about on par with clowns in creep factor. You might see a rogue clown in the woods but Santa is, simply put, a bearded home intruder ( and flamboyant dresser) who slides down your chimney in the dark of night. He knows when you are sleeping, for god’s sake!
I picked a few that are pretty strange. I left out some that actually made me cringe and feel a little queasy. I have a feeling that many of their photos are also in some sort of registry somewhere.
Anyway, enjoy the song and have a good holiday evening. And don’t worry about the weird old man hovering around your home tonight…
Slowly on the mend and in my weakness somehow let some useless trivia find its way into my head. It seems that the song Silent Night is the most recorded holiday song of all time, having been recorded 137,315 times.
Maybe it’s because I don’t feel great but all I can think is “ugh.”
The reaction has nothing to do with the song itself. It’s a lovely song and there are worse songs that could occupy its spot as the number one holiday song. Imagine 137,000 versions of Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer— I don’t think I would ever feel well again.
It just feels like 137,000 versions of any song might be a few too many.
As it is, you could start listening to versions of Silent Night this morning and you would still be listening to them a year from now, even if the asylum you’re in lets you listen to it around the clock.
So, let’s hope for a hiatus on future versions of the song. But before shutting the door on listening to it, give a look and a listen to what I think is a definitive version from the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson. This is a wonderful performance and her face is as expressive as the music and lyrics.
Maybe it’s the time of the year. Maybe it’s the weather that brings a certain bleakness. Or maybe it’s the political climate and the anxiety it produces on what seems like an hourly basis. Whatever the case, I have found myself listening to the album Nebraska in the studio on a regular basis lately.
It’s an album from Bruce Springsteen from back in 1982 that was recorded solo in his home on a four track cassette recorder. It was meant to serve as a demo for a new group of songs but Springsteen liked it as it was and released it without a band or much embellishment. It is sparse but has an urgency along with a contemplative and sometimes darker tone, much like the Andrew Wyeth winter scenes from yesterday’s post, that makes it one of my favorites. I also like the feeling that you are hearing these songs in a pure state, closer to how the artist felt them as they formed, before they’ve went through a hundred iterations in the studio to become something much different.
For this week’s Sunday music I thought I’d share one of the more upbeat numbers, Open All Night. If you’re feeling a bit bleaker – or want to feel that way– I’ve also included My Father’s House, a song that gets little notice but, for me, has great imagery, feeling more like a piece of literature than a song.
Give a listen, if you are so inclined, and have a good day.
I completely overlooked that yesterday marked the 50th anniversary of the death of the great soul singer Otis Redding. He died in a plane crash on that date in 1967 as he made his way to a show in Wisconsin, only a short time after recording his iconic (Sittin’ on)The Dock of the Bay. He was only 26 years old.
I hear that voice and it’s not the voice of a 26 year old. It’s ageless. To me, that voice is the definition of soul music. Every time I hear it is a new experience, even on those tracks I’ve heard a thousand times before. What a gift we were given in the short time he lived in this world.
Here are two of his songs from so many that I call favorites, Just One More Day and You Don’t Miss Your Water. Give a good listen– it’ll do your soul some good.
Some days reveal their moods pretty quickly. Today is one of those days– bone cold with a slate gray sky, the first dusting of this winter’s snow on the ground. Feels somber and a little sad, even mournful, just to look out the studio window. There is a group of deer milling around out there, moving with a slowness that makes me think they feel that same somberness, sensing that the good times of summer and fall are past and that ice and snow will soon be a constant for them.
One of the first songs I clicked on this morning fell right into this mode of feeling. It’s Down By the Riverfrom Neil Young. Released in 1969, it’s a song that has been covered by a lot of people and I was close to using a live performance of it by Norah Jones and Young but the original just has the right amount of anguished beauty for this morning.
The paintings I am including here are from back in 2009 and doesn’t really adhere exactly to the mode of this post or the song but something about it seems to fit. It’s a small group of work that dealt with tightly clusters of red roofed structures hugging a a river or canal, often with no sky visible, just a jumble of roofs and buildings. It was work that I really liked and looking at it this morning while listening to this song brought forward a whole slew of concepts that I would like to soon pursue in this same vein, perhaps on a larger scale.
Can’t get my mind organized this morning, can’t seem to want to focus on any one thing. Had a lot of ideas for the blog but just lacked the desire to follow through so I am just going to play a song this morning accompanied by a tiny painting from back around 1995 called Harlequin. I always smile when I come across this piece.
The song is a favorite of mine, Dead Flowers, from the Rolling Stones and their 1971 album, Sticky Fingers. But the version below is from the late great Townes Van Zandt. I can’t say that it’s better or worse than the Stones version but it’s one that I like very much.
So give a listen and I’ll try to get my act together this morning…
It was about this time last year that I ran a post with a couple of different versions of the song, Nature Boy, the wonderful song first sung by the incomparable Nat King Cole. Maybe it is the time in which we live, with an administration that seems hellbent on decimating all conservation efforts and environmental protections, but I really felt a need to hear the original again this morning. I thought it might be a good opportunity to repost the story of the interesting man who wrote the song.
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Sometimes when you look behind something that’s been in front of you for years you find out things you would have never imagined otherwise. Such is the case with the song, Nature Boy.
Nature Boy, as recorded by the great Nat King Cole, has long been one of my favorite songs. It has a wonderful haunting melody and tells the story of a “strange enchanted boy” and his search to find love. It always has had a sort of mystical feel to me, a real oddity in the world of popular music in 1948 when Nat King Cole recorded and had a huge hit with it, staying at #1 on the charts for eight weeks.
I was going to just have a short post and put up a YouTube video of Cole’s version but in doing so I saw the name of the songwriter, eden ahbez, and was intrigued, perhaps by the lack of capitalization in his name. Doing a little research I came across some photos of him such as the one above, from the late 40’s sitting with Cowboy Jack Patton (who wrote the song Ghost Riders in the Sky) and a spaniel of some sort. I’ll let you figure out who is who in the photo. ahbez’s long hair and attire seemed really out of place for me in thinking of 1948 so I read on.
eden ahbez was a real one of a kind character in the world of music and in general. You could probably guess that from the name which he adopted and wrote only in lower case letters. Born in 1908, he is regarded as the first hippie by many, a long-haired and bearded wanderer who crisscrossed the country on foot, wearing robes and sandals, maintained a vegetarian lifestyle and slept out under the stars. In fact, when Nature Boy hit the charts he and his wife were living under the first L on the Hollywood sign, which stoked a bit of a media frenzy around ahbez. He worked in and frequented a vegetarian restaurant (that’s where he met Cowboy Jack Patton, another interesting character) in 1940’s Los Angeles whose German owners preached the gospel of natural and raw foods. Their followers became known as the Nature Boys.
Not really what I was expecting from a pop songwriter in 1940’s LA. ahbez died in 1995 from injuries sustained in an auto accident. He was 87. His was a truly unique life, just waiting for a biographer to tell the story, and reading the little I discovered makes me find the song even more interesting. Hope you’ll do the same now that you know a bit more about eden ahbez…
First thing on this Sunday morning, I would like to send out many thanks to Kathy and Joe at the Kada Gallery for hosting my current show as well as to everyone who took the time on a busy Friday evening to come out to attend the opening on Friday evening.
It was good to see and talk with many wonderful folks again and meet many new ones, as well. The response to the work was strong which is gratifying because even though I might feel the show was good that means little unless people react positively to the work.
So, thank you to everyone involved.
This Sunday morning music is a song you most likely haven’t heard from an artist whom you also are probably not aware. It’s titled Pawky and is from the late Dorothy Ashby who was a jazz harpist who is considered one of the most unjustly under loved jazz greats of the 1950’s. I came across her and this track in particular the other day by chance. And it pleased me greatly.
This song has a kind of 50’s jazzy, witchy feeling, like it should have been in the soundtrack of the movie Bell, Book and Candle, the 1958 film about modern day witches in Greenwich Village, starring Jimmy Stewart, Kim Novak and Jack Lemmon. But it was not in the film though I think the title theme poaches elements from this song a bit.
Now, pawky is a British word that means shrewd, tricky or slyly humorous. I chose the painting here, Pax Domum, that is part of the Kada show not because of the word’s definition but because there is something witchily atmospheric in the sky that reminds me of the sound of this song. Take a look and a listen and see if you agree.
Redtree Times 