do yourself a solid and make stan getz’s 1964 live album getz au go go the soundtrack to your mid-march. it doesn’t have the girl from ipanema, which is okay because it can only be heard so many times, but there is astrud gilberto fluttering by to sing rodgers and hammerstein’s it might as well be spring, plus nine others with very good vibes and vibraphones.
#543: stan getz and astrud gilberto - the girl from ipanema (1964)
it’s worth limping through a long new york winter, not to mention the treacherous chill of a sad manhattan autumn, to get to afternoons like this one. footsteps have pep, sweaters are yellow, the sunny side of the street smells like sunflowers, and astrud gilberto is playing on the radio.
#463: nina simone - sunday in savannah (1961)
the internet is a stuffed animal, i hold it close and it makes me feel good. it is lovely like central park, only not scary at night. it gives and asks little.
for example: so far today it’s provided dana goodyear’s extraordinary profile of james cameron (which begins with the director an inch from arnold schwarzenegger’s face, asking “do you want paul verhoeven to finish this motherfucker?”), the first two parts of david rohde’s epic about his 7 months in captivity, a smithsonian compilation of mid-1950s calypso and two wild-eyed harry nilsson albums (from the glorious blog zamboni soundtracks), and, best of all, a 30-minute concert that nina simone played in an empty new york studio with her trio in 1961. watch her show why gershwin and nigerian chain gang music sound good together.
#429: dr. john - iko iko (1988)
this is what happens when an entire human being is made up of only gin, gumbo, genius, barbiturates, alligators, mardis gras beads, 1950s pop, ice cream, heroin, crawfish, full moons, fedoras, firearms, 1920s jazz, and tarot cards.
#393: elis regina - àguas de março (1973)
elis regina sounded like cotton, tasted like blood, smelled like pipe tobacco, and looked like wine. the only thing better than watching her sing àguas de março alone is watching her sing it with cardigan-wearing, flute-holding tom jobim, beaten only by watching her sing it with him alone in a studio where they can whistle and giggle in peace.
#341: fats waller - ain’t misbehaving (1943)
fats waller had a mustache so salacious that little richard would have blushed, plus libidinous, leering eyebrows that flopped and jumped and thwacked along with his piano playing, not to mention a drummer who broke into solos so uncontrollable that women had to be held down. and yet the great lesson from his greatest song is that humdrum, ho-hum, mundane monogamy is the world’s most thrilling thing, which is probably wholly true. still, it’s odd to learn that lesson from a man with such hilariously suggestive, wildly licentious, probably polyamorous eyebrows.
#248: thelonious monk quartet - ‘round midnight (1966, norway)
the third proof for god’s existence in thomas aquinas’ quinquae viae is called the argument by degrees: “there is found a greater and a less degree of goodness, truth, nobility, and the like… there exists therefore something that is the truest, and best, and most noble, and in consequence, the greatest being… what moreover is the greatest in its way, in another way is the cause of all things of its own kind; thus fire, which is the greatest heat, is the cause of all heat… therefore there exists something that is the cause of the existence of all things and of the goodness and of every perfection whatsoever—and this we call god.” the reason i bring that up is because thelonious monk is the universe’s most beautiful and perfect piano player, and thus the cause of all beautiful and perfect piano playing for ever and ever, amen. and if that sounds outlandish, just watch this clip of ‘round midnight three times.
#191: t-bone walker (with dizzy gillespie) - she’s my old time used to be (1966)
yesterday was sunday and sunny and i stood in a massive, empty pool and watched glorious yo la tengo play. not only did they play with a horn section, but they played a gaggle of tear-jerk soft songs and schizophrenic electric freak-out songs—and i almost cried, twice. the lesson i learned is that it is monstrously good whenever a poppy little brass section backs an epic guitarist (ira kaplan is a woody allenified jimi hendrix, and he looks like a furniture executive, really and truly), especially if either a baritone sax or a french horn is involved.
but t-bone walker knew that back in the 60s. t-bone also knew how to wear a mustache that shakes and shimmies when he plays. shimmy, t-bone, shimmy.
image #46: speaking of somnolent ella songs, this album (fuck, what a cover), had a track called dreams are made for children, which was co-written by someone named max meth, which will be my alias should i ever become a low-level methamphetamine dealer in the midwest.
#180: ella fitzgerald and louis armstrong - dream a little dream of me (1964)
compared to this, the famous mama cass version is a tiny cutey slice of juicyfruit-chewing, elevator-riding, hair-dying, haltertopped, manicured californian nothingness.
if the word dream spent ten years zombied out in an opium den, having perpetual opium-induced nightmares about what it meant to actually be the word dream, listening to ella fitzgerald would make it feel better again.
#168: kristy maccoll & the pogues - miss otis regrets / just one of those things (1990)
last week’s pogues video had some things (loose eyeballs, elvis costello as a fascist) that i would have changed, but this entire video for two cole porter songs should be preserved for all ages to behold and admire, especially because of the multi-cultural drunken dance-off at the end.
just be sure to make it past the slower first half, because it’s the just one of those things section that has the circus folk, volcano, the sailors doing jazzhands, the little girls doing some sort of irish jig, and the front-man that genuinely looks like he’s going to fall over and lose more teeth any second now.
#125: tom waits - ‘til the money runs out (1980)
any man who writes a song as suave as this one (or this one, or this) owes the world nothing else, but tom waits decided to release an interview today, an interview with himself, that’s so incredibly good that it’s going to be the new testament for a new religion i’m founding called tom waitsism. (there’s even a heaven in the religion: “me and my wife on rte. 66 with a pot of coffee, a cheap guitar, pawnshop tape recorder in a motel 6, and a car that runs good parked right by the door.”)
this is his introduction, and it only gets better from there: “i must admit, before meeting tom, i had heard so many rumors and so much gossip that i was afraid. frankly, his gambling debts, his animal magnetism, coupled with his disregard for the feelings of others, his elaborate gun collection, his mad shopping sprees, the face lifts, the ski trips, the drug busts and the hundreds of rooms in his home. the tax shelters, the public urination. i was nervous to meet the real man himself.”
#61: nina simone - ain’t got no / i got life (1969)
yesterday i wrote that haggard and rough music isn’t necessarily better than the kind that’s glossy and sweet. but by putting up an insanely devastating, godly billie holiday performance next to a silly little doris day clip (about “whoopee”) i think i made shiny pop look much worse than serious music.
so here’s nina simone-the high priestess of soul, jazz pianist, civil rights activist, and growling r&b songwriter—who proves that gleeful pop can be as fiery as the most seriously serious songs.
playing live in harlem, she takes two tracks from the hippy broadway show hair (“the american tribal love-rock musical,”) and turns them into a glistening love song to her tongue and toes and fingers. it’s bubbly but it’s grand.
#60: billie holiday - fine and mellow (1957)
if the doris day video below is corn syrup, then this is liquid morphine. and even though music that’s haggard and devastating isn’t necessarily grander or truer than the kind that’s glossy and blonde, this recording happens to be one of the best performances in the history of the world.
that’s because billie holiday was playing with coleman hawkins, ben webster and gerry mulligan (basically the john lennon, mick jagger, and bob dylan of the saxophone). hallow-eyed billie holiday looks like she’s going to fall off her stool, but the band keeps her from warbling over.
and then there’s the world’s first and best hipster, lester young, who played on dozens of billie holiday’s original recordings decades earlier (including fine and mellow in 1939) before a falling out. they reunited for this performance, while he was dying of cancer—that’s why he’s the only player sitting down, though that doesn’t get in the way of one of the most famous solos of all time.
he and billie holiday both died two years later.
