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Jimmy Webb
August 29, 2010 1:43 AM
Last month, there was a terrific profile in the NY Times by Stephen Holden on the very special song-writer, Jimmy Webb: Is it possible for a musician to emerge unscathed from the kind of early success enjoyed by the singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb? In the late 1960s, when he was barely 21, Mr. Webb was showered with Grammys for writing the Glen Campbell hits "By the Time I Get to Phoenix," "Wichita Lineman," "Galveston" and the Fifth Dimension’s "Up, Up and Away." Then there was "MacArthur Park," the grandiose quasi-symphonic "cake out in the rain" popularized by the Irish actor Richard Harris and in 1978 remade into a disco fantasia by Donna Summer. He's a special musician with a new CD out - finally: Sitting in his publicist's Lower Manhattan office on a steamy afternoon recently, Mr. Webb, tall and rangy, now 63, still has a wild man's gleam in his eye. He is a marvelous storyteller with the expansive style of a rural yarn spinner, who becomes more excited the more wound up he becomes. If he is an endless storehouse of real-life rock 'n' roll adventure stories, set mostly in Hollywood and London in the late '60s and '70s, part of him is still a wide-eyed Oklahoma country boy agog with wonder at the goings-on in the big city. The profile continues: Today Mr. Webb has the aura of a pop-country patriarch who is keenly aware of having outlived a number of his rock 'n' roll contemporaries, including two Beatles. He has five sons and a daughter, age 19 to 35, by his first wife. Recently remarried, he lives in Oyster Bay, N.Y. He is also vice-chairman of Ascap, the organization that protects musicians' copyrights. And then there's Linda Ronstadt's take on Jimmy Webb: An ardent Webb champion who recorded several of his songs on her blockbuster album "Cry Like a Rainstorm, Howl Like the Wind," Ms. Ronstadt, reached by telephone in her home in Tucson, commented, "From a singer's point of view, Jimmy is the only songwriter in my experience whose level of craftsmanship is comparable to that earlier era of Rodgers and Hart and Gershwin." She went on to compare the colors of his harmonies to Debussy and cited the tension between his disciplined craftsmanship and his songs' "over-the-top" emotionality as one of his most compelling qualities. Continue on with the profile. You won't be disappointed. Oh, and while you're at it, pick up his fantastic book, "SongSmith: Inside the Art of Songwriting."
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Permalink to post: http://www.cslproductions.org/music/talk/archives/001061.shtml Receive an email whenever this MUSIC blog is updated: Subscribe Here! Tags: Jimmy Webb, Linda Ronstadt, MacArthur Park
Once-in-a-lifetime treasure trove of jazz recordings discovered.
August 17, 2010 12:21 AM
Yes, the title of this post is not an exaggeration: For decades jazz cognoscenti have talked reverently of "the Savory Collection." Recorded from radio broadcasts in the late 1930s by an audio engineer named William Savory, it was known to include extended live performances by some of the most honored names in jazz -- but only a handful of people had ever heard even the smallest fraction of that music, adding to its mystique. It's simply astounding what these recordings might reveal. Already, we have a few samples that The Times has released (you'll have to stream the 1938 selections from Cab Calloway, Benny Goodman & Teddy Wilson, Bunny Berigan, Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, Fats Waller & Louis Armstrong, since they aren't available for download yet): This 1938 broadcast brings together the trumpet king Louis Armstrong, the pianist Fats Waller and the trombonist Jack Teagarden to improvise, at Martin Block's request, an impromptu blues. Once you get finished listening to those clips, head on over to the video that The Times put together in the loft of the sound engineer, Doug Pomeroy, "a recording engineer in Brooklyn who specializes in audio restorations and has worked on more than 100 CD reissues, among them projects involving music by Louis Armstrong and Woody Guthrie. The process involves numerous steps, beginning with cleaning the discs by hand and proceeding through pitch correction, noise removal, playback equalization, mixing and mastering." "As fate would have it, a couple of the most interesting Count Basie things are so badly corroded that it took me two afternoons and 47 splices just to put one of them back together again," Mr. Pomeroy said while working on yet another Basie tune, a shuffle featuring Lester Young on clarinet rather than saxophone, his main instrument. "In almost every case I've been able to get a complete performance, but it can be very fatiguing to hear the same skip over and over again and have to close the gap digitally." And when will all this new music be available to the general public? Executive Director of the museum, Loren Schoenberg, said that they planned to make as much as possible of the Savory collection publicly available at its Harlem home and eventually online. But the copyright status of the recorded material is complicated, which could inhibit plans to share the music. While the museum has title to Mr. Savory’s discs as physical objects, the same cannot be said of the music on the discs. Make sure to read the entire story of Bill Savory and how these remarkable recordings came into existence. It's an amazing chapter that was just added to the story of America's Classical Music...Jazz!
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Permalink to post: http://www.cslproductions.org/music/talk/archives/001058.shtml Receive an email whenever this MUSIC blog is updated: Subscribe Here! Tags: Benny Goodman, Cab Calloway, Doug Pomeroy, Fats Waller, Harlem Jazz Museum, Loren Schoenberg, Louis Armstrong, William Savory
Abbey Lincoln: R.I.P.
August 16, 2010 10:46 AM
Abbey Lincoln, a singer whose dramatic vocal command and tersely poetic songs made her a singular figure in jazz, died on Saturday in Manhattan. She was 80 and lived on the Upper West Side. Hers was a truly original voice, both haunting and elegant. Through her marriage to Max Roach from 1962-1970, she became very active in the Civil Rights Movement: The most visible manifestation of their partnership was "We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite," issued on the Candid label in 1960, with Ms. Lincoln belting Oscar Brown Jr.'s lyrics. Now hailed as an early masterwork of the civil rights movement, the album radicalized Ms. Lincoln's reputation. One movement had her moaning in sorrow, and then hollering and shrieking in anguish -- a stark evocation of struggle. A year later, after Ms. Lincoln sang her own lyrics to a song called "Retribution," her stance prompted one prominent reviewer to deride her in print as a "professional Negro." Ms. Abbey Lincoln will be sorely missed.
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Ten new videos posted!
August 13, 2010 12:40 AM
Our May 1st CD Release Performance at Smalls Jazz Club here in NYC has finally been edited and posted - a total of ten new videos! You can check 'em all out on YouTube anytime, OR start with "A Moment of Silence" right now: Thanks for watching!!
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Permalink to post: http://www.cslproductions.org/music/talk/archives/001053.shtml Receive an email whenever this MUSIC blog is updated: Subscribe Here! Tags: Smalls Jazz Club, video, Vinson Valega Sextet, youtube
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Free MP3s from Vinson Valega: Live at Blues Alley, Washington, DC (April 2005): Jiminy Cricket Goes To The Go-Go Dance (Vinson Valega) [5.1 mb] Live at The Cape May Jazz Festival, Cape May, NJ (April 2005): Georgia (Ray Charles) [9.0 mb] Live rehearsal, NYC (summer 2006): Ask Me Now (Thelonious Monk) [8.8 mb] ~~~~~~~ For musician info and more free MP3s, go to our "Awake" CD page. Videos of various bands available at YouTube. ~~~~~~~ |
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