Duck Dunn, whose simple but inventive bass playing anchored numerous hit records and helped define the sound of Memphis soul music, died early Sunday in Tokyo, where he had been on tour. He was 70.

As the resident bassist at Stax's studio in Memphis for much of the 1960s, Mr. Dunn provided the solid, bluesy foundation for classic soul records like Wilson Pickett's "In the Midnight Hour," Sam & Dave's "Hold On, I'm Coming," Albert King's "Born Under a Bad Sign" and a long string of hits by Otis Redding, with whom he and other Stax studio musicians also performed at the Monterey International Pop Festival in 1967.

Stax recordings were known for their raw, down-home soulfulness, a striking contrast to the urbane slickness of Stax's friendly rival, Motown. Mr. Dunn's playing was an essential element of the Stax sound.

He was the Stax sound, indeed.

And if you have the chance, a must-see is the Stax Museum in Memphis, TN. It's an amazing museum.

The Beastie Boys are one of the most important and influential hip-hop groups of all time. They were instrumental in making hip-hop a global, mainstream force. Formed in 1981 as a hardcore band, they combined punk and rap into a singular sound that grew increasingly broad over the years, encompassing a vast array of genres. Yauch, Michael Diamond (Mike D), and Adam Horowitz (Ad-Rock) released several classic albums, including their debut album Licensed to Ill in 1986, 1989's Paul's Boutique, and 1994's Ill Communication.

For all you hip-hop fans and aficinados, this is a really big deal, as he and the Beastie Boys were there at the beginning, helping to create an entirely new type of music. He was also one of the few white rappers who have broken through over the years.

A sad day in the hip-hop world, indeed.

Here's the NY Times Obit.

Here are a few vids from that era:

"I have a question I want to ask you, Mr. President," I venture, once I catch his attention.

"Sure," the president says.

"Kanye or Jay-Z?"

The president smiles. "Jay-Z," he says, as if the answer should be obvious. When it comes to the most meaningful pop-cultural divide of the moment, the question of whether you prefer Kanye West or Jay-Z -- the top two hip-hop artists in the world, who recently joined forces for a national mega-tour called Watch the Throne -- Barack Obama is clearly a Jay-Z guy. Jay-Z is about control. Jay-Z is about success. He's a natural-born leader. He is married to Beyonce Knowles, the gorgeous, sugar-spun R&B star who recently joined with Michelle Obama in a public campaign against the epidemic of childhood obesity. Together, Jay and Beyonce are worth something close to $1 billion. Jay-Z fills arenas and enunciates clearly -- unlike Kanye West, who jumps onstage and interrupts during award ceremonies, cries on talk shows, and jets off to Rome to apprentice with the House of Fendi. Besides, the president’s smile says, we are at a fund-raiser in New York, which is Jay-Z's hometown.

"Although I like Kanye," Obama continues, with an easy smile. "He's a Chicago guy. Smart. He's very talented." He is displaying his larger awareness of the question, looking relaxed, cerebral but friendly, alive to the moment, waiting for me to get to the heart of the matter.

"Even though you called him a jackass?," I ask.

"He is a jackass," Obama says, in his likable and perfectly balanced modern-professorial voice. "But he's talented." The president gives a wink, poses for a few more pictures, and then glides away to meet with the rich Manhattan lawyers in the other room, leaving behind a verdict that he intended to be funny, and also entirely deliberate: even before an audience of one, the leader of the free world is still not letting Kanye West off the hook.

It's a pretty awesome article; The Prez sort of nails it with his characterization of Kanye, too. He is a jackass.

But at least he's trying out some different shit.

Swiss archaeologists have discovered the tomb of a female singer dating back almost 3,000 years in Egypt's Valley of the Kings, Antiquities Minister Mohammed Ibrahim said on Sunday.

The woman, Nehmes Bastet, was a singer for the supreme deity Amon Ra during the Twenty-Second Dynasty (945-712 BC), according to an inscription on a wooden plaque found in the tomb.

She was the daughter of the High Priest of Amon, Ibrahim said.

Word has it that there was a tip jar located as well...empty of course...

BADDA-BING!

Earl Scruggs, the bluegrass banjo player whose hard-driving picking style influenced generations of players and helped shape the sound of 20th-century country music with his guitar-playing partner, Lester Flatt, died on Wednesday in a Nashville hospital. He was 88.

Mr. Scruggs and Mr. Flatt probably reached their widest audiences with a pair of signature songs: "Foggy Mountain Breakdown," which they recorded in 1949 with their group the Foggy Mountain Boys, and which was used as the getaway music in the 1967 film "Bonnie and Clyde"; and "The Ballad of Jed Clampett," the theme song of the 1960s television sitcom "The Beverly Hillbillies." (Mr. Scruggs and Mr. Flatt also appeared on the show at times.)

But he also helped shape the "high, lonesome sound" of Bill Monroe, often called the father of bluegrass, and pioneered the modern banjo sound. His innovative use of three fingers rather than the claw-hammer style elevated the five-string banjo from a part of the rhythm section -- or a comedian's prop -- to a lead or solo instrument. What became known as the syncopated Scruggs picking style helped popularize the banjo in almost every genre of music.

He started at the beginning and ran through the middle years:

In 1959 the group appeared at the first Newport Folk Festival, an offshoot of the Newport Jazz Festival, introducing the Scruggs style to the folk-music revival of those years. Soon young folk musicians were adopting his style, and the Foggy Mountain Boys began to play the college folk-festival circuit. Mr. Scruggs also began to work with his growing sons, Gary, Randy and Steve. And he recorded material by Bob Dylan and other folk-rockers.

Mr. Flatt, by contrast, disliked the new music and felt it was alienating the band's grass-roots fans. In 1969 the two broke up -- they had also performed as Flatt & Scruggs -- and Mr. Scruggs, with his sons, formed the Earl Scruggs Revue, a mostly acoustic group with drums and electric bass. It broadened his repertory to include rock, and the group played on bills with acts like Steppenwolf and the singer-songwriter James Taylor, sometimes before audiences of 40,000.

He made it into the 21st century and made it to the end:

He continued to play into the 21st century. In 2001 he released a CD, "Earl Scruggs and Friends," his first album in a decade and an extension of the Earl Scruggs Revue. In 12 songs, he collaborated with Elton John, Dwight Yoakam, Travis Tritt, Sting, Melissa Etheridge, Vince Gill, John Fogerty, Don Henley, Johnny Cash and the actor Steve Martin, a banjo player.

And finally, this says it all:

At an 80th birthday party for Mr. Scruggs in 2004, the country singer Porter Wagoner said, "Earl was to the five-string banjo what Babe Ruth was to baseball."

"He is the best there ever was," Mr. Wagoner said, "and the best there ever will be."

Before you go, make sure you check out this tribute video to Earl Scruggs at the NY Times site:

Roy turns 87 today and is simply the last great jazz drummer from the early formative years of this music, having played with everyone from Louis Armstrong to Charlie Parker to John Coltrane, Herbie Hancock, and beyond.

Simply incredible:

Make sure to pick up a few of his CDs while you're at it.

Don't believe us...watch this:

Here she plays a track that somehow didn't make it on our CD:

We think that in her next performance on Colbert she's going to cover our very own, "Biophilia."

The folklorist and ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax was a prodigious collector of traditional music from all over the world and a tireless missionary for that cause. Long before the Internet existed, he envisioned a "global jukebox" to disseminate and analyze the material he had gathered during decades of fieldwork.

A decade after his death technology has finally caught up to Lomax's imagination. Just as he dreamed, his vast archive -- some 5,000 hours of sound recordings, 400,000 feet of film, 3,000 videotapes, 5,000 photographs and piles of manuscripts, much of it tucked away in forgotten or inaccessible corners -- is being digitized so that the collection can be accessed online. About 17,000 music tracks will be available for free streaming by the end of February, and later some of that music may be for sale as CDs or digital downloads.

WOW!

Today, to commemorate what would have been Lomax's 97th birthday, the Global Jukebox label is releasing "The Alan Lomax Collection From the American Folklife Center," a digital download sampler of 16 field recordings from different locales and stages of Lomax's career.

And just in case you haven't heard of Alan Lomax, this should help:

Starting in the mid-1930s, when he made his first field recordings in the South, Lomax was the foremost music folklorist in the United States. He was the first to record Muddy Waters and Woody Guthrie, and much of what Americans have learned about folk and traditional music stems from his efforts, which were also directly responsible for the folk music and skiffle booms in the United States and Britain that shaped the pop-music revolution of the 1960s and beyond.

Lomax worked both in academic and popular circles, and increased awareness of traditional music by doing radio and television programs, organizing concerts and festivals, and writing books, articles and essays prodigiously. At a time when there was a strict divide between high and low in American culture, and Afro-American and hillbilly music were especially scorned, Lomax argued that such vernacular styles were America's greatest contribution to music.

"It would be difficult to overstate the importance of what Alan Lomax did over the course of his extraordinary career," said the writer Tom Piazza, who has written an introductory essay for "The Southern Journey of Alan Lomax," a book of about 200 of Lomax's photographs that is to be published in the fall. "He was an epic figure in and of himself, with a musical appetite that was omnivorous and really awe inspiring, who used the new recording technology to go and document musical expression at its most local and least commercial."

And lest you think there's ill-gotten profits to be made on this project, hopefully this part of the project is not all hot air:

The Association for Cultural Equity also has what it calls a repatriation program, meant to make Lomax's work available to the communities where it was obtained and to pay royalties to the heirs of those whose music was recorded. On Friday, recordings, photographs, video and documents are to be donated to the public library in Como, Miss., where in September 1959 Lomax made the first recordings of the blues guitarist Fred McDowell, whose songs were later covered by the Rolling Stones, Aerosmith, Bonnie Raitt and Jack White of the White Stripes.

Yes, Alan Lomax was an amazing figure in America's cultural heritage. Amazing.

Here's a taste of what's to come:

Here's a video of the first song, Thelonious Monk's "Think of One."

Vinson Valega Quintet, appearing at Twins Jazz Club, Washington, DC:

Featuring:

Anton Denner - alto sax & flute
Chris Bacas - tenor & soprano saxophones
Harry Appelman - piano
James King - bass
Vinson Valega - drums

Stop by to hear the band as we celebrate the end of 2011!

Playing originals from our CDs: Biophilia, Awake, & Consilience, in addition to rearrangements of Standards.

Yummy Caribbean Cuisine.
Two sets: 8:00pm & 10:00pm
$10 cover.

Hope to see you there!

It's an instant classic, no doubt:

"His key is B-flat and his wife Be Ugly."

The disagreement between the union and club owners dates back to 2005, when union leaders joined the night clubs to lobby the State Legislature for a reduction in the sales tax on tickets because the extra revenue would be used to pay for pension and health benefits. In letters supporting the legislation, union officials maintained they had an informal agreement with several club owners to that effect. (A similar trade-off had been made in the 1960s to get pension benefits for Broadway musicians.)

The tax break was passed in 2006, but the union never hammered out a formal pact with the club owners. Five years later none of the clubs have entered negotiations with the union to sign collective bargaining agreements. Those agreements are legally required before the clubs can begin paying into Local 802's pension system.

When the legislation was passed, the union estimated the major jazz clubs each stood to gain about $67,000 a year from lifting the tax. In 2008 the state estimated it amounted to a tax loss of about $2.2 million a year.

It's that "informal" agreement mentioned above which has never been enforced, and really, the Union has no one to blame but themselves. But hopefully this new movement will change all that:

Two years ago, the union elected new leaders who have made pensions for jazz artists a priority.

Some club managers say the plan was flawed from the start. Repealing the tax saved the customers money but never produced extra revenue for the clubs, they say. The owners have balked at raising ticket prices to pay for the pension contributions, though some have suggested collecting donations from patrons.

Bernard Purdie, among many other musicians here, are pissed:

"They are collecting that money, and they are using it for whatever reason they feel like," said Bernard Purdie, a jazz drummer and bandleader, just before going on at Carnegie Hall with Galt MacDermot and the New Pulse Jazz Band. "They have been getting away with it for the last four or five years."

Support the movement to create pension funds for jazz musicians - America's only true art form!

Read more here from the Local 802 Musicians Union:

There was a time when the union would have sat down with the club owners in this city who benefited from the elimination of the entertainment tax that Local 802 worked so hard to achieve five years ago. We would have been willing to do whatever was necessary to find a way to divert the dollars that had once been paid as a tax into the pension fund for musicians who played the nightclubs. The nightclubs, every last one of them, made it clear they have no interest in talking to us. Letters and phone calls went unanswered. Even veteran jazz supporter and critic Nat Hentoff couldn’t get the time of day from club owners on this subject.

Is it time for something new?

Hell yes, it's time for something new! No organization or corporation ever gave up anything without a demand. It's time that the Union demanded from these jazz clubs that they start paying into the pension fund and live up to the agreement they made back in 2005.

Vinson Valega Quartet
featuring:
Justin Flynn (tenor & soprano saxophones)
Matthew Fries (piano)
Gary Wang (bass)
Vinson Valega (drums)

Playing music from our newest release, Biophilia.

The 55 Bar is located at 55 Christopher Street, just east of 7th Avenue, smack dab in the middle of The Village.

7-9pm.
No cover. Two drink minimum.

Hope to see you there!

He was, to be sure, an unrivaled performer ("A god for pianists" in Berlioz's words), a man of unusually catholic artistic interests and the 19th century's nearest approach to a Hollywood superstar. But although he is surely significant enough to celebrate, the question whether his music is actually any good has never really gone away.

It probably never will. Liszt, like his music, was constructed of paradoxes, as he well knew. "Half Gypsy, half Franciscan monk," he called himself; another contemporary called him "Mephistopheles disguised as a priest." But if his life was to some extent a touring soap opera played out publicly on various European stages, what the more prudish Mendelssohn described as a "constant oscillation between scandal and apotheosis," it was at least a drama with a sympathetic protagonist. And for all his worldly success, Liszt didn’t have a particularly easy ride.

This picture sure does capture his charismatic presence, doesn't it? Click on it to read the rest of this fascinating story: