Louie “Satchmo” Armstrong lived a pretty middle class life in Corona Queens, while also traveling all around the world to play and present music that delighted many and introduced even more to Jazz.
But before that, Armstrong may well have been the most important figure in all of jazz history musically, pushing and extending and disciplining the form, before he then helped popularize it.
Which is why his old house out in Corona is now a museum.
Yesterday, Dr. John, the Nite Tripper and an icon of the New Orleans music scene that Armstrong came from long ago, visited and played Satchmo’s piano in Satchmo’s museum, promoting Dr. John’s new album, which is a tribute to Armstrong’s overwhelming influence on New Orleans music and the creation of jazz in the early part of the 1900s.
One of my favorite bands of my high school years, though not a big favorite among some of my friends. But among my best friends, the ones who read R. Crumb comix and, well, shared a sensibility that saw a future in that truckin’ past mutating into whatever awful future seemed to be in store, and loved Symphony Sid Page’s fiddle playing, this was gold.
Today, when I load a new musical device I make sure to get some Dan Hicks on there. Deep ties indeed.
Talking about the charged music of one’s youth, both Rufus’s Tell Me Something Good and Hot Chocolate’s You Sexy Thing, as well as Stevie Wonder’s Innervisions album and Kool and Gang’s Wild and Peaceful album, served as a heated soundtrack to youthful explorations both physical and mindbending that are to this day indelible.
I listen to You Sexy Thing now and I wonder why in the heck they inserted those strings, but in my memories of long ago all I hear is the funky guitar and the pleading naked vocals.
If I put on my objective hat today the song is overproduced and undercranked, but through the lens of youth’s underproduction and overcranking, it is sweet indeed.
This one goes out to my friends Jane and Pete, who are looking to rent a place in Washington DC (job change) and rent out their place in Red Hook in the Hudson Valley.
If you’re in the market in either place, let me know.
I fell on this tune tonight, however, because we were having a little hootenanny after dinner and I ended up singing on this one. It’s hard to sing voice chorus verse and not get monotonous, or corny.
I’ve heard the Leadbelly version many times, he wrote it, but I fell in love with the song because of Ry Cooder. Never heard the Joplin version until tonight, but she sang it with heart when she was but a child (20 years old). It’s plenty good.
I’m a bigger Pixies fan than my fellow remnants, but tonight a few of my family sucked down the utterly ridiculous and sometimes majestic Fight Club movie, which cannily uses no pop culture of any sort during the film itself. (Except for a marquee plug for Brad Pitt’s Seven Years in Tibet, late in the film.) But does latch onto this fine Pixies tune in the end credits.
For those of us still interested in the question about great songs, this isn’t one of those. This is a fine performance by a charismatic band on a very serviceable tune which amounts to a series of satisfying touchpoints, rockwise.
In other words, it’s not Debaser. But I’m happy to hear it at any time.
This is an old Lucinda Williams song that Johnny Cash apparently covered for the American sessions he recorded with Rick Rubin near the end of his life. The great thing about the American sessions is that Johnny hobbled through scores of songs and marked every one of them his own.
I think the musical arrangement here is bold but hamhanded, and Cash’s performance is a little wispy at times, and the whole abandoned thing is haphazardly mixed, but a fine song shines regardless, as it does here.
I’m not sure anyone wants to follow how I landed on this song.
We went to see Emmylou Harris and Rodney Crowell tonight at a show in the park by Lincoln Center. For free. This city in the summer is chockablock with concerts and movies in the parks.
Emmylou Harris got her fame from singing with Gram Parsons, but she’s done a ton of great stuff since GP died. The show tonight opened with a Parson’s song, moved onto a Townes Van Zandt song, and then moved onto tunes from Emmylou and Rodney’s histories, and (of course) the Grammy-winning album they released last year.
Country music is all about song writing. There are fantastic musicians playing country music, but all of them are playing to service the tunes that the great songwriters provide. Which is why outsiders are (or maybe it is better said were) anathema. They don’t/didn’t understand how the system works.
Gram Parsons was not part of the system, but he loved the songs.
I discovered Gram Parsons and bought his records and his CDs, though he was long dead. But he taught the Rolling Stones a lot about country music, and the songs were fantastic.
Until today I thought Parsons wrote Streets of Baltimore, which is a dark story song a couple who leave the country for the city. Turns out the song was written by some country dudes. With story and chorus and verse, it’s not trad., but part of our American history for sure.
We watched Snowpiercer tonight. It is a videogame of a movie, each car is a level, and at least for a part of the story it relies on that video game convention. But then it doesn’t.
One of the oddest things about this odd movie is that the one piece of licensed music is Cream’s Strange Brew. Brilliant.
I liked the movie, but it is pretty shaggy. Which is much like Boon’s previously over the top movie, The Host. I suspect he doesn’t care much about tightness.
I cannot even remember what I was looking for in YouTube when on the list of suggested items I saw a link to a version Dion’s Runaround Sue, just a fantastic song.
I am sure Peter and Gene, New Yorkers both, appreciate Dion, first with the Belmonts, then as a solo artist, who represented the doo wop bands, and the toughness of the New York streets of the 50’s better than anyone.
Dion’s pained voice and words reflected the unspoken angst of an era when angst was indeed not to be spoken about: but, at least we could live our pain vicariously through Mr. diMucci.
Dion, who had his struggles along with his hits, still lives and I believe still performs, but in the 1961, with Runaround Sue, he was dynamite.
What is funny is this clip, of the singer with the band The Del Satins, is just weird.
First, I don’t remember ever hearing-or at least knowing about–a song by them backing Dion.
Second, I could swear they are all just lip synching here, because Dion recorded the song under his name alone after splitting with the Belmonts. And, the song represented sure as hell sounds like the original recording.
But, even for lip synching, these guys have to be the most laconic band in the history of anything.
Even so, my man Dion is still at least trying to perform, but the rest of the band, especially the back up sax guy who largely snaps his fingers, and sings back-up with the two guitar players, is almost dead. And, when they go into their “awwwwwwwws” none of them moves even remotely close to the single mike. Not too mention their lips are way out of synch.
The piano guy is even worse, for though he is playing, or pretending anyway, he is largely looking at the camera in some kind of earlier wishful version of a photo bomb or selfie or something.
But, enough of the band, the audience is even worse. They seem to be in a nightclub, but no one has have a drink in front of him or her (well, ok, I saw one beverage, but it looks untouched). Otherwise, they are just fucking sitting there, while Dion is at least pretending to wail. And, even if the song is piped in from the original recording, that song rocks.
Yet not one person is so much as tapping their finger on the nice white table cloths, or even swaying just a little.
Which confirms my notion of how sadly repressed we were.
Whew. Glad we can all now have sex and drugs and rock’n’roll.
While we are at it, while thinking about this piece, I happened to hear J.D. McPherson on KTKE, in Truckee, performing a song new to me, but surely evocative of Dion and doo wop and rock’a’billy.
Check it out. Pretty cool tune, and though it seems the sax is overdubbed in this video, the sax player still showed more moxie than that guy in the Del Satins.
Saw Dawn of the Planet of the Apes tonight. It’s kind of painful to realize how grateful we are for a movie that pretends to have a plot and gives the characters a sliver of emotional stake in the outcome.
I loved the original book, The Planet of the Apes, by Pierre Boulle, and the original 1968 movie wasn’t bad. It has one of the corniest and most effective endings, which I won’t describe in case you don’t know it.
Didn’t see the Tim Burton version, or Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which leads into this one. I don’t think you’ll be unhappy with this one, but I really recommend the book.
I also recommend this Rufus Thomas sequel to his own Walking the Dog franchise.
