Some Celtic and Scandinavian-like sounds for today’s mix. You’ll hear Norway’s Kings of Convenience getting very “Simon & Garfunkel: on us; Lyle Mays’ journey into the highlands, Nickel Creek going Celtic, more great piano from Norway’s Tord Gustavsen, and a very Bjork-like plea from fellow Icelander Emiliana Torrini.
Here’s a record that celebrates the roots of American popular music, going back to nearly a century, in the place where it all started, the blessed city of New Orleans, LA.
Allen Toussaint is known for his classic r&b songwriting, his record producing work with a host of pop legends, his deft piano skills on the bandstand, and his work as the lead songwriter and producer of The Meters.
This disc however goes further back in time with selections from the catalog of jelly Roll Morton, Sidney Bechet, Louis Armstrong, King Oliver, Django Reinhardt, Thelonious Monk, Duke Ellington, and others. He’s got an awesome band with him too, with special appearances from Brad Mehldau, Joshua Redman, Don Byron, Nichaols Payton, and Marc Ribot.
The New Orleans jazz and Heritage festival is going on right now and in my book, there’s no better way to celebrate it than to play some of this great old music.
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Set List:
Singin’ The Blues (w/ Nicholas Payton)
Bright Mississippi
Just A Closer Walk With Thee (w/ Don Byron)
Blue Drag (w/ Marc Ribot)
Whinin’ Boy Blues (w/ Brad Mehldau)
And here’s Allen doing his old hit record, Workin In The Coal Mine:
Nat King Cole is one of my musical heroes. His piano playing (and Oscar Moore’s incredible guitar work) in the King Cole Trio is brilliant (Check out the jam on “Sweet Georgia Brown” on this podcast). He was a reluctant vocalist who stumbled into being one of the biggest pop stars of his generation, and the first African-American to host his own TV show and have a worldwide audience. A very gracious man as well. Whenever I need a lift in life, putting on a King Cole Trio record nearly always does the trick. Check out the tunes on the audio file below. Had he lived, he would’ve turned 90 years old on March 17.
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Set List:
Jumpin At Capitol
Straighten Up & Fly Right
Gee Baby Aint I Good To You
Body and Soul
Sweet Lorraine
When I Take My Sugar To Tea
Sweet Georgia Brown
The Frim Fram Sauce
Route 66
Want to watch a couple of classic videos? Here’s one from 1949 with the Trio:
And how bout Nat singing with Oscar Peterson, Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, and Coleman Hawkins. Awesome!
There were lots of electronic sounds happening in pop music in the 1980’s, but the most interesting experiments at that time were being applied by a variety of keyboard players and jazz players. The creation of MIDI in 1983 was the real kicker; this new digital language allowed all sorts of instruments and sound making machines to talk with and interact with one another. Here are some mellow-sounding recordings (mostly from the 1980’s) that brought lots of new texture and timbre to the spirit of the times.
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I still get quite a bit of mail from record companies and musicians, all sending me promo copies of their latest productions. I consider all of it junk mail, unless I know who the artists and record labels are, or have asked someone or have given permission for someone to send me something. For the most part, I find new material by hearing recommendations by friends and listeners of my show, or auditioning tunes on music blogs, or reading an interesting review, or finding stuff while working at KPLU. I always check the online playlists from other similarly formatted shows (Echoes, the Chill show), and I do a ton of online browsing. (And I am hooked on an open source music player called “Songbird”, which is like “iTunes meets Firefox”, a music player that has a web browser built into it. It really rocks.)
However, some of the discs that come via the mail make it into my library. Here are a few tunes that have recently come to my attention and are definitely worth sharing.
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A big continent. With hundreds of cultures, tribes, and languages spread throughout. We in North America do ourselves a big disfavor by lumping everyone and everything together. Particularly the music. There are so many different styles and influences happening; the diversity is incredible. But the vibrancy is amazing, across the board.
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Here are some very mellow and quite unique cover versions of tunes originally done by The Temptations, Tears For Fears, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Leonard Cohen, and Roxy Music, respectively. Enjoy.
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