#646: nina simone - four women (1965, antibes)
hearing enter the wu-tang live was the highlight of my month, but i’d trade it any day for reanimating nina simone to do wild is the wind. and maybe talib kweli would agree to come on afterwards to do his version of the album’s best song, four women? and not to compare apples to oranges, but i’d also take let it all out over midnight marauders, as fast as you can say “i intend to be independently blue.”
there’s blow, and blowing, blows, blown, blew and blower, all of which are important in their own ways. but johnny griffin called his 1957 album with john coltrane and hank mobley—which means there were three tenor saxophonists—a blowin’ session, the best choice of all. it’s available here, thanks to the lovely blog buns o’plenty.
the weird thing about fou tourist is that somehow the entire jazz chronological classics series seems to have been completed late last month, so there are bonuses like this 1961 negro spirituals album. sadly, the music isn’t as good as the album cover. i like sticking with the official records, like for example louis prima ‘35, cab calloway ‘40, lionel hampton ‘41, wynonie harris ‘46, and then ella fitzgerald ‘47.
it’s likely someone’s being a little dramatic if you hear a phrase like “my favorite thing on the internet of the year.” but i genuinely don’t know where i’d be without the wonders of fou tourist. somehow they’ve managed to compile what seems to be every single entry in the jazz chronological classics series, which means, for example, that you can start with bud powell from 1945-1947 (when he played with fats navarro and max roach), then go to 1949-1950 (when there was sonny rollins and buddy rich), then 1951-1953 (mr. charles mingus), and then 1953-1954 (mingus again, and max roach again, plus art taylor). it’s more or less the ultimate thing in the universe.
#613: oscar peterson, john coltrane, stan getz, paul chambers and jimmy cobb - hackensack (1960)
oscar peterson was a canadian, john coltrane was a longtime heroin addict, stan getz cuckolded joão gilberto, and paul chambers drank himself into a pile of spaghetti, but it’s music like this that makes me proud, genuinely, to be american.
#600: carly simon - i got it bad (1981)
carly simon was lying in bed in martha’s vineyard. wearing a white nightgown, a kind of victorian-style shift, she answered the phone. “i’m fine,” she said. “i’m not fine, what am i saying?” for one thing, she’s been ill: she thinks she was bitten by a tick when her horse was put down. for another, the singer says she has lost upward of $15 million to kenneth i. starr, who is being held without bail on charges that he was running a ponzi-like scheme. (read more at observer.com)
#577: mahalia jackson - down by the riverside (nat king cole show, 1957)
sing it again, mahalia!
#576: ben webster - somewhere over the rainbow (1964)
this is music made from fog, feathers, heavy eyelids, scissors, velvet, ivory, radiators, rose petals, blood, and unfiltered cigarettes.
go buy ten copies of ben webster’s soulville—give two to your parents, two to your siblings, three to any current or future children, two to strangers, and keep one for yourself, though you should probably get an extra just in case it gets lost.
#569: fred astaire - puttin’ on the ritz (1946, blue skies)
i spent a while reading the exceedingly awesome book of mozart’s letters in washington square park this afternoon (“keep well and do not die,” he writes his sister at age 14, “so that you may do another letter for me and that i may do another for you and that we may keep on doing until we are done, for i am the man to go on doing until there is nothing more to do”), while a group called the baby soda jazz band played uproariously well by the fountain. except for the oddity of reading wolfgang’s words while some happy-looking dancers shuffled and shook and shimmied and swung to baby soda’s rendition of puttin’ on the ritz, it was pretty lovely. afterwords i watched the kingly last minute of this video fifteen times.
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.
