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Posts Tagged ‘jazz’
Spilled Coffee
Wednesday, 16 May 2018Saturday Matinee – Live From NorWay, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Fishbone & The Allman Brothers Band
Saturday, 31 March 2018
LIVE CAM: Train Engineer’s Cab View in Norway [click here for local time]. Not sure which line this is, where it’s headed, or if it’s running above the Arctic Circle. Check it out in full screen view and I’ll see you back here in a couple of days.
Someday, I suppose I’ll go to Norwegia and ride that train. Meanwhile, I’ll listen to The Mighty Mighty Bosstones from 1993.
Or maybe I’ll roll with Fishbone, one of the tightest ska/rock/funk bands I ever heard. Those guys won me over a long time ago. (Check out this 1987 live version. Sound quality sucks, but the energy is killer.)
Let’s turn it down a bit with a cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along The Watchtower.” The Allman Brothers Band in 2011 always found a nice groove (presumed band lineup here).
Have a great Easter/Passover/Seder weekend, folks. See you soon.
Rambling Muskrat Hot Links
Sunday, 7 January 2018
A muskrat is not a rat. It’s more like a small capybara and is a resource of food and fur for humans according to Wiki, so send us your recipes and clothing patterns and we’ll post them with credit.
“Muskrat Ramble” was written by Kid Ory and first recorded by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five in 1926.
In 1965, Joseph Allen McDonald, aka Country Joe, shamelessly ripped off Kid Ory’s “Muskrat Ramble” note-for-note for his Vietnam-era protest song “Feelin’ Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag.”
“In 2003 McDonald was sued for copyright infringement over his signature song, specifically the “One, two, three, what are we fighting for?” chorus part, as derived from the 1926 early jazz classic “Muskrat Ramble“, co-written by Kid Ory. The suit was brought by Ory’s daughter Babette, who held the copyright at the time. Since decades had already passed from the time McDonald composed his song in 1965, Ory based her suit on a new version of it recorded by McDonald in 1999. The court however upheld McDonald’s laches defense, noting that Ory and her father were aware of the original version of the song, with the same questionable section, for some three decades without bringing a suit. In 2006, Ory was ordered to pay McDonald $395,000 for attorney fees and had to sell her copyrights to do so.”
[McDonald’s parents were communists and named him after Joseph Stalin according to Wiki. That explains a lot.]
From the This Shall Not Pass Department: A Heinz ketchup packet caused a New York woman to be diagnosed with Crohn’s disease. TRUE.
R.I.P. Dominic Frontiere (17 June 1931- 21 December 2017).
The Football Capital of the World.
What’s the smallest hole a mouse shrew can get through? 16.5mm in diameter according to this.
Jim Flora (1914-1998) was a graphic commercial artist whose work creeped me out when I was very young.
Mambo For Cats was a 33rpm EP featuring various artists. It’s now a collectors’ item for the album cover designed by Jim Flora, and original copies are worth hundreds. Papa had a copy so when I saw the album cover recently, fireworks went off in my head, and the only song I remembered from the compilation was “Muskrat Ramble Mambo.”
[Top image found here.]
Saturday Matinee – Lindy Hop Showdown, The Wrecking Crew, Tommy Tedesco & The Memphis Group
Saturday, 16 December 2017
Pure awesome. Girl in the stripes gets my vote [via].
“The Wrecking Crew” recorded some killer stuff, and you’ve likely never heard of them because they weren’t named “The Wrecking Crew” until 1990. Their peak years were 1962-73 when they worked with Phil Spector. They weren’t a solid unit as the musicians came and went, but the music WAS solid, no matter who was sitting in at the time.
Tommy Tedesco, one of the greatest session musicians ever, was a member of the post-defacto-named Wrecking Crew. Tedesco was one of those rare people who, if told something was a musical instrument, could play it flawlessly.
Now about “The Memphis Group.” Steve Cropper, Duck Dunn, Al Jackson & Booker Jones provided the backup for some amazing recording artists, but you already knew that.
Have a great weekend, folks and we’ll see what happens tomorrow.
Syncopated Polyrhythmic Hot Links
Sunday, 9 April 2017
Mark Twain’s study was designed to simulate the pilot house of a Mississippi steamboat.
Rogue Punctuation Nazi strikes after-hours in Bristol, England. He specializes in fixing apostrophe errors on business signs.
Need a Computer Science paper at the last minute? This generator is for you.
I knew that rebooting and hitting F8 gets you into safe mode for trouble shooting. Here’s what the other keyboard function keys do.
“The Frog Survey Letter” went viral a couple years ago.
Never heard of Hooverball? Now you have.
Click “play.”
Like early jazz? You’ll love this free download of 1920s recordings. It’s six hours of syncopated awesome.
[Top image found here.]
Saturday Matinee – Crater Face, Postmodern Jukebox, Gunhild Carling & The Best Moth Joke You’ve Ever Heard
Saturday, 26 November 2016
“Crater Face” is an animated short about two lonely moon pimples and a deranged astronaut (by Skyler Page).
Awesome RickRoll by Postmodern Jukebox on the RMS Queen Mary in 2016, featuring Gunhild Carling on vocals, trumpet, recorder, trombone & bagpipes. Really.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE!
I knew a guy who could play two saxes at the same time (with rubber bands holding down a couple of keys) and I can believe that someone might be able play two trumpets simultaneously, but three? Had there not been a video I’d have never believed it.
The song is “El Manisero“ (aka “The Peanut Vendor) and it dates to 1930s Cuba. Stan Kenton’s version is my favorite because of all the discordant stuff that he worked into it.
Classic Norm MacDonald delivery.
Have a great holiday weekend, folks. Enjoy the leftovers while you can, and don’t EVEN try to retell that moth joke because you’ll fail miserably.
Saturday Matinee – Chet Atkins, Louis Armstrong, Joe MacDonald & The New Orleans Jazz Hounds
Saturday, 18 June 2016
Chet Atkins‘ version of the jazz classic “Muskrat Ramble.” This is perfect early morning sunrise roadtrip music. From Wiki:
“Muskrat Ramble” is a jazz composition written by Kid Ory in 1926. It was first recorded on February 26, 1926, by Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five, and became the group’s most frequently recorded piece.
There’s some dispute over the authorship of the song, as Lil Hardin (pianist, composer, arranger, singer, bandleader, and the 2nd Mrs. Armstrong) may have come up with it and missed out on the credit. According to Sidney Bechet, Hardin merely renamed a song stolen by Kid Ory from Buddy Bolden (“The Old Cow Died and the Old Man Cried”). Eh… I’m not a jazz historian so we’ll leave it at that.
Satchmo in Munich 1962. I love this stuff.
Just a few years later, Joe McDonald stole the same music, renamed it, put words to it and performed it at Woodstock as an anti-Vietnam War protest song. (I didn’t realize until I scanned his bio – McDonald’s parents were communists and he was named after Joseph Stalin. Now it all makes sense.)
Yeah, we all know about the bloodshed that happened after South Vietnam got chumped, Joe, and I bet you never paid any royalties to Ory, Hardin or Armstrong either.
Okay, let’s lighten it up a tad.
Live from Tokyo, it’s The New Orleans Jazz Hounds. Recorded 14 May 2016, it features Kikuchi Haruka, Tamura Makiko, Sato Shingo. I don’t know who plays what, but it’s still a nice tribute.
Have a great weekend, folks. Let’s see what happens tomorrow.
