Today is April 30th and it is the "International Jazz Day". So this week's post will be purely jazz. I hope you are staying home and listening to more music than ever...
As Boris Vian once said;
“Without jazz, life would be a mistake.”
Here is the list for the weekend;
Nina Simone - "African Mailman"
Helen Sung Trio - "C Jam Blues"
Sons Of Kemet - "My Queen Is Harriet Tubman"
Metheny & Mehldau - "The Sound of Water"
Mostly Other People Do The Killing - "King of Prussia"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
This week's song was written by Phil Spector and Jerry Leiber and was first recorded by Ben E. King at the beginning of the 60s. It climbed the Billboard charts with an arrangement by Stan Applebaum featuring Spanish guitar, marimba, drum-beats, soprano saxophone, strings, and a male chorus, and peaked at number 15 for rhythm and blues and number 10 in pop music. It was ranked number 358 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.
Here is the song for this week;
"Spanish Harlem"
Spanish Harlem is a section of New York City with a large Latino population and a rich cultural heritage. This song is about a rose that grows through the concrete in the city, always shaded from the sun. The singer is enchanted by this beautiful flower and dreams of taking it to his garden.
The rose is likely a metaphor for a girl - one who is "soft and sweet and dreaming."
This was one of the first songs written by the legendary producer Phil Spector. He wrote it with Jerry Leiber, the lyricist of the famous songwriting team Leiber and Stoller. Spector learned his craft working with Leiber and Stoller, and quickly made a name for himself as a top producer.
This was the first single Ben E. King released as a solo artist - he left The Drifters after complaining of low wages. The song became the title track of his first solo album, which had a Spanish theme, with songs like "Besame Mucho" and "Perfidia."
King recorded this in the same sessions as "Stand By Me," which would be his next release and biggest hit.
Here are the 5 versions I picked for you;
Aretha Franklin - "Spanish Harlem"
Rebecca Pidgeon - "Spanish Harlem"
Laura Nyro - "Spanish Harlem"
The Jazz Passengers - "Spanish Harlem"
Tom Jones - "Spanish Harlem"
Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).
nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.
4 days of lockdown as of today in my home country and at the same time, today is a public holiday...
Nice weather outside but no one can go out :(
So we do a lot of cooking, drinking and listening to amuse ourselves. I don't know when these days will be over but I hope to see them over very soon as we miss the social life and our friends (no zoom for a while please...).
As Harry Belafonte once said;
“You can cage the singer but not the song.”
Here is the list for the weekend;
Michelle Gurevich - "Fatalist Love"
Yvonne Fair - "Straighten Up"
Piero Umiliani - "Lui e Lei"
ESG - "My Love For You"
Celeste - "Strange"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
This week I have a song from the 60s which for many years I had thought that the best known cover had been the original and the original had been a cover version :) When I say Cher and Nancy Sinatra, probably you will realize which song I am talking about. I hope you like this song, written by Cher's husband at the time, Sonny Bono, as much as I do.
Here is the song for this week;
"Bang Bang (My Baby Shot Me Down)"
The song is the second single by American singer-actress Cher from her second album, The Sonny Side of Cher. Written by her then-husband Sonny Bono and released in 1966, the song reached No. 3 in the UK Singles Chart and No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 for a single week (behind "(You're My) Soul and Inspiration" by The Righteous Brothers), eventually becoming one of Cher's biggest-selling singles of the 1960s.
In this song, Cher recalls playing childhood games with a boy when he would shoot her with his toy gun. They grow up together and get married but then he leaves her. She has again been shot down, but this time it's for real and she is devastated.
Here are the 8 versions I picked for you;
Lady Gaga - "Bang Bang"
Bria Skonberg - "Bang Bang"
Ania - "Bang Bang"
Dalida - "Bang Bang"
David Guetta & Skylar Grey - "Bang Bang"
Nancy Sinatra - "Bang Bang"
Paul Weller - "Bang Bang"
Isobel Campbell - "Bang Bang"
Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).
nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.
The death toll continues to increase amongst artists due to Corona virus and another great jazzman passed away due its complications. Alto sax player Lee Konitz, one of the pioneers of cool jazz, died yesterday. He was 92...
Konitz in the middle, with Miles Davis & Gerry Mulligan
He performed successfully in a wide range of jazz styles, including bebop, cool jazz, and avant-garde jazz. Konitz's association with the cool jazz movement of the 1940s and 1950s includes participation in Miles Davis's Birth of the Cool sessions and his work with pianist Lennie Tristano. He was one of relatively few alto saxophonists of this era to retain a distinctive style, when Charlie Parker exerted a massive influence.
Here is a live recording of Lee Konitz (Denmark 1965 feat. Bill Evans, Alan Dawson and Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen).
Quarantine days continue as the Covid situation seems to improve in some countries and unfortunately worsens in others. It seems that we will have to live with it at least for a couple of months more. Let art guide and support you during these tough times...
As Bob Marley once said; “One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.”
Here is the list for the weekend;
The Modern Lovers - "Hospital"
The Golden Filter - "Restraint"
Darondo - "Didn't I"
Frank Zappa - "Bobby Brown Goes Down"
Itsuroh Shimoda - "Everybody Anyone"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
During the corona days at home, I have been spending some time in my music room especially with my synthesizers and more specifically with my modular gear. While doing so, I thought of a new post series about electronic music (my other favorite genre with jazz, that I had written a lot of stuff in the past years).
This time I plan not to write about the genre itself but feature its main pioneers that have made a lasting impact on the development of the genre. The posts will not be in chronological order or in any kind of order whatsoever as I will only be mentioning one great electronic music artist in each post that comes to my mind...
So for my first post on this topic, I chose Suzanne Ciani who is a composer, recording artist, record label executive (Seventh Wave) and a true pioneer in the field of electronic music and sound design. She is best loved for her fifteen albums of original music which feature her performances in a broad array of expressions: pure electronic, solo piano, piano with orchestra, and piano with jazz ensemble. Her music, renowned for its romantic, healing, and aesthetic qualities has found a rapidly growing international audience, and her performances include numerous benefits for humanitarian causes. Today, she is 73 years young and still very influential in the electronic music world.
In the eighties and early nineties, in order to finance her recording projects, Ciani brought her expertise to Madison Avenue. Her New York-based commercial production company, Ciani-Musica, Inc., was the leader in the field of sound design and TV spot scoring, creating award-winning music for a host of high profile Fortune 500 clients, including Coca-Cola, Merrill Lynch, AT&T, and General Electric. Additionally, Ciani has scored the Lily Tomlin feature 'The Incredible Shrinking Woman,' and 'Mother Teresa', as well as scoring for the TV daytime serial 'One Life to Live'.
In the early nineties, Ciani relocated to northern California to concentrate on her artistic career from her seaside studio. She has toured extensively throughout the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe, including Italy, Spain, Germany, and the Netherlands, and Asia.
Her many recognitions include five Grammy nominations for Best New Age Album, an INDIE award for Best New Age Album, numerous Clios, a Golden Globe, Keyboard Magazine's "New Age Keyboardist of the Year," and the 2017 Moog Innovation Award.
Ciani is a graduate of Wellesley College and holds a Masters in Music Composition from the University of California at Berkeley. "A Life in Waves", a documentary about Ciani’s life and work by filmmakers Brett Whitcomb and Bradford Thomason, debuted at SXSW in 2017.
Here is a trailer for the documentary;
Her success with electronic music has her dubbed "Diva of the Diode" and "America's first female synth hero".
In the early days of synthesis, Ciani says a dichotomy formed almost instantly. Robert Moog and Don Buchla each invented their synthesizers at roughly the same time. But whereas the Moog synthesizer was rooted in Western musical traditions, and almost always was tethered to a 12-note-scale-based keyboard, Buchla eschewed that idea, considering the new technology an opportunity for unfettered musical explorations. Most important of all, the Buchla was designed with performance in mind.
“It was compact and portable. There were people out playing live, being interactive, learning and teaching performance techniques, just like you would with any instrument,” Ciani says. From those times Buchla became the signature instrument of Ciani (listen to her Live Buchla Concerts album). Of course, we can see and hear her playing plenty of different instruments during her live performances and recordings.
It is really mesmerizing to watch her create sounds with machines and tangled multi-colored patch cables, knobs, buttons, and other weird looking tools. Suzanne Ciani has spent much of her career testing the limits of one of these cumbersome instruments with steep learning curves. So dedicated to its oscillating drones, burbles and bleeps did she become that has jokingly referred to the Buchla as “her boyfriend”.
She was one of the few women on the frontline of electronic innovation in the 1970s, a five-time Grammy-nominated recording artist, a pioneer of the new age genre and the first solo female composer to soundtrack a Hollywood film. Brilliantly, she also invented Coca-Cola’s infamous “pop and pour” sound effect.
Now sit back and relax and watch Ciani performing 'Improvisation On Five Sequences' live at Elevation Festival 1049 in Lauenen, near Gstaad, on 2nd February 2019.
I hope you liked the new series and please comment below about your favorite and influential electronic music artists...
This week's song is coming from Bill Withers, whom we lost on March 30th. The sweet-voiced baritone had written hits like "Ain't No Sunshine", "Lean On Me" and "Just The Two Of Us" that were covered by many artists. I chose another song which I personally like very much.
Here is the song for this week;
"Use Me"
This is a song, composed and originally recorded by Bill Withers, which was included on his 1972 album Still Bill. It was his second-biggest hit in the United States, released in September 1972, and later reaching No. 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
The song is about a guy whose girlfriend walks all over him. His friends try to convince him to break up with her, but he enjoys the abuse and won't consider leaving. As Withers explains in the 2009 documentary Still Bill, he didn't write it about a particular person. He came up with the song when he was working as a mechanic making airplane parts - the original inspiration was his employer. After all, he was making $3 an hour and wasn't getting much attention from the ladies.
Withers' band for the album was keyboardist Ray Jackson, bassist Melvin Dunlop, guitarist Benorce Blackman and drummer James Gadson. In 2003, Withers told Mojo magazine that they rehearsed in Gadson's garage, and then, "We cut that whole Still Bill album in eight hours for $7,500. I loved that band." According to Gadson, he played the groove for about 5 minutes before Withers came up with the song.
Here are the 6 versions I picked for you;
Liza Minnelli - "Use Me"
Patricia Barber - "Use Me"
José James - "Use Me"
Better Than Ezra - "Use Me"
Grace Jones - "Use Me"
Mick Jagger & Lenny Kravitz - "Use Me"
Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).
nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.
I think days are passing faster at home and all of us are pretty bored with this virus by now. On the other hand, we all have more quality time to step back and review certain things about how we live our lives. I would really like to see what is going to change when things get back to normal. In the meantime, let's be grateful if you have not contacted the virus and even more grateful if you did and recovered. Of course, our hearts are with the people who have passed away from it.
As Martin Luther once said; “My heart, which is so full to overflowing, has often been solaced and refreshed by music when sick and weary.”
Here is the list for the weekend;
Jimi Tenor - "Africa Kingdom"
Parliament - "Aqua Boogie"
Janelle Monáe - "Django Jane"
Ras G & The Afrikan Space Program - "All Is Well"
William De Vaughn - "Be Thankful For What You Got"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
Here is another 80s classic from Yazoo. The song was released in 1982 as the second single from the duo's debut album, Upstairs at Eric's. This song was written by Vince Clarke, who was the non-singing half of Yazoo, which he formed after leaving Depeche Mode in 1982. Yazoo, who were known in America as Yaz, lasted just two albums, with Clarke and vocalist Alison Moyet each contributing songs, but writing separately.
Here is the song for this week;
"Don't Go"
Released in the UK in July 1982, the song peaked at number three on the UK Singles Chart, becoming Yazoo's second top 5 hit. In the US, where the band was known as Yaz, the song was their second big hit on the American dance chart, where it spent two weeks at number one in October 1982. Their first American dance chart hit was "Situation", which had also gone to number one on this chart earlier the same year. The music video for the song features band members Alison Moyet and Vince Clarke in a sort of haunted mansion.
Here are the 5 versions I picked for you;
Nouvelle Vague - "Don't Go"
Slow Moving Millie - "Don't Go"
Terminal Choice - "Don't Go"
Starting Rock feat. Diva Avari - "Don't Go"
Boobytrax - "Don't Go"
Now the floor is yours, go ahead and make your comments (here, Instagram, Facebook wherever you feel like...).
nb. Please note that I intentionally do not include the original versions of the songs as it would be a little unfair to the artists covering the songs, and I am sure that sometimes you will be surprised to see that the songs you thought were the originals are just covers.
Unfortunately, coronavirus continues to have a huge impact on our lives. Some don't even notice, some escape with mild symptoms and the least fortunate ones get hospitalized and even die. This week the jazz world lost 2 big names to the virus, trumpet player Wallace Roney and pianist Ellis Marsalis. Let's hope these days will be over very soon...
As Suzy Kassem once wrote; "Life is like a piano. White keys are happy moments and the black ones are sad moments. Both keys are played together to give us the sweet music called Life."
Here is the list for the weekend;
Wallace Roney Quintet - "Metropolis"
Ellis Marsalis Quartet - "Twelve's It"
Dave's True Story - "Stormy"
Caterina Barbieri - "Fantas"
Chip Taylor & The New Ukrainians - "Fuck All The Perfect People"
Hope you have a great weekend.
nb. You can open the actual youtube page by clicking the name on the upper left side of each video.
