Every spring the Library of Congress selects 25 recordings that they deem to be “culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant” to be added to their National Recording Registry. There is a wide selection each year with recordings from all genres of music combined with radio broadcasts. speeches and other spoken word recordings.
For example,this year includes General Marshall‘s 1947 speech at Harvard where he laid out the basis for the Marshall Plan alongside George Carlin’s seminal Class Clown comedy album. Plus for sports lovers, there’s the recording of the broadcast of the fourth quarter of the historic 1962 game in which Wilt Chamberlain scored 100 points.
There are a lot of things from the list that I could use for this Sunday morning music selection. There are two versions of Mack the Knife, one from Louis Armstrong and the other from Bobby Darin. There’s Where Did Our Love Go? from the Supremes, Piano Man from Billy Joel, Cry Me a River from Julie London and too many others to list this early in the morning. You can see the whole list here.
But the selection that caught my eye was the 1964 debut album, It’s My Way, from folk singer-songwriter Buffy Sainte-Marie. If you are of a certain age, you probably remember Buffy Sainte-Marie when she was one of the stars of the folk revival of the 1960’s. Her Cree Indian heritage and the fact she was one of the few women songwriters in the genre at the time made her stand out and she was staple of variety television shows of the era. But her profile was less visible going into the 1970’s and she had a 16 year hiatus from recording from the mid 70’s until 1992 although she was still busy as a songwriter. The song Up Where We Belong which she co-wrote was a huge hit for Joe Cocker and Jennifer Warnes as well as winning the Academy Award for Best Song in the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman.
This 1964 album is a pretty remarkable recording and there are a number of her songs from it which I could have chosen to play. Universal Soldier became a standard as a 1960’s protest song and Cod’ine was covered by dozens of artists, most famously Janis Joplin. But it is the title track that stands out for me. It’s a song that seems timeless in its sound, not trapped in its own time like some songs from significant eras. It’s a powerful song that builds and builds.
Give a listen to It’s My Way and have a great Sunday.
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. 
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.
The painting above is titled Paradise-The Land of Men, Birds and Ships. It’s actually a mural that was painted on a building outside of Paris in 1950 by artists Friedensreich Hundertwasser and René Brõ. It was saved from demolition in 1964 although I have no idea where or in what condition it now stands. I’ve featured Hundertwasser’s work, with it’s rich colors and organic shapes, here on the blog a few times in the past. I like his work, I like this and thought it fit well with the song I’ve chosen for today’s Sunday Morning Music.
Redtree Times 