I wanted to feature some music this morning that kind of jibed with the Henri Matisse Blue Nude cut-outs above that the artist produced in the early 1950’s. I wasn’t sure what I wanted but I settled on something from composer Burt Bacharach.
Bacharach, along with lyricist Hal David, collaborated with singer Dionne Warwick a number of times back in the 1960’s when they had an amazing string of hits that didn’t really sound like anything else on the radio at the time. It’s an unmistakable sound, light and breezy but complex and full.
When I was looking I came across this video that shows how beautifully Bacharach and Warwick worked together. It’s interesting to see how he communicates his vision for the song to Warwick and how she responds. It goes a long ways towards explaining why she was such a perfect vessel for his music. The clip ends with the full recording of the song.
So, have a great Sunday and here’s Burt Bacharach and Dionne Warwick with Loneliness Remembers What Happiness Forgets. I may steal that title at some point…
Ah, the dark days of winter are receding. The trees are budding out and the green of the grass (under the newly fallen four inches of snow!) is pushing aside the dead growth of a long gone last year. The robins have returned and once again the world makes sense– the daily metronome that is major league baseball returns today.
Sunday morning quiet…
Last week, we watched the HBO documentary Mavis! which is, of course, about the career of singer Mavis Staple. Ever since I have been going to YouTube to listen to her early gospel work with her family, the Staple Singers, in the 1950’s. It’s just great stuff, a little gritty and blues-edged beneath with her vocals soaring above it all. It seemed so ahead of the time, especially given what was being played on pop radio at that point.
There’s been a huge resurgence as of late in interest in the music and life of the great Nina Simone, who died in 2003 at the age of 70. You hear her music on all sorts of movie and television soundtracks and commercials. There has been a couple of documentaries made of her life ( this includes the highly acclaimed What Happened, Miss Simone? on Netflix) and there are a number of big screen biopics in the works.
I have always been a big fan of the movies. I’ve written here in the past how I will often paint while an old movie plays in the studio, especially some of the older classics that were often based on great ideas and great dialogue. They are not distracting in most cases and it’s easy to pull thought and emotion from these films that finds its way into my work. It’s hard to not want to inject more feeling into whatever I am at work on when I listen to some of the lines from The Grapes of Wrath or so many other great films.
Valentine’s Day.
I was going through some old images the other day and for some reason I always settle on this image shown here, an old piece from my earliest painting efforts over twenty years back. I call it The Incantation. At that moment a news station was on the TV, with its incessant and seemingly never-ending coverage of the presidential primaries.
Redtree Times 