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Thumper
Veteran Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 553
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008 - 08:48 pm: | 
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Hello All,
Carey: I'm glad you asked me about music. I have heard a little from Leidisi (sp). I like what I have heard so far. But right now, I have fallen in love with Natalie Coles past CDs; Ask A Woman Who Knows, and snowfall on the Sahara. Both CDs are marvelous. Her last one Learn' was wonderful too! It fallen back in love with Betty carter and Carmen McRae. I'll spent a lot of money on getting some of their earlier recordings. Beautiful music. Fortunately for me, Betty carter and Carmen McRae made a duet album before they died. Marvelous singing!
I got Cassandra Wilson's new as, Lottery. Wonderful as but then Cassandra has never let me down. she has this Funky version of The old blues song, St. James Infirmary, and one of the smoothest version of "The Very Thought of You" with just her and a stand up bass. Love Cassandra Wilson!!! She's the coolest singer out there.
Now as far as young singers goes, Lizz insight is my favorite. She has three CD's out and all are wonderful. Check her out.
There are 2 cess that were released last year that still sends me: the Rare and unreleased track from the Queen of Soul. and the One and Only: Like From Philly both by Aretha Franklin. The Rare and Unreleased Recordings as is made of outtakes and tracks that were not released. The 2CD package is literally off the hook! there are some ass wipers on there, including Aretha's cover of Etta Jane's classic "At Last" and a duet with Ray Charles and more. Now the One and Only CD is a concert she did in Philly in 1972. this is a treasure, to hear the Queen at the height of her powers-I was in heaven. So, if you get the chance to check them out, please do, |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 932
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008 - 10:26 pm: |
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Hey Thump
I just had an image that just made my skin crawl.
I hope you don't get upset but you know we talked about your voice...right. Well, for some strange reason I saw you running around your house butt naked singing one of Aretha's songs....YIKES  .
You know I bought that box set of Marvin Gaye's. It also had unreleased songs. It also included mellow songs of the Sinatra version. I was pleased with it but I am still in love with his first smash. I am going to leave that alone, it takes me somewhere.
So you say Lizz and Cassandra Wilson. I've never heard of Lizz but I will check her out tonight.
I don' tknow if you ever watched American Idol but I've often wondered why that last sister didn't blow one of Aretha's songs. The girl had a voice but someone should have told her to pick something with a little soul...The Queen Of Soul.
She could have sing "I never Loved A Man Like I Love You" or "Until You Come Back" even "A Natural Woman" would have tore the house down.
Ray and Aretha huh? Don't think I can go wrong with that. Hey, real quick, what did you think of ol'boy's "Ray Charles" in the movie? Man, did he kill that one!!?? That performance, IMO, falls in the top 10. Now you know I take my movies very seriously and Jamie Fox filled my cup. |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 933
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008 - 10:38 pm: |
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Ohhhh, wait, I just noticed you said Aretha did Etta Jame's "At Last"....oouuuu weeee. I don't know if I want to hear it! You know, me and Etta have been having this love affair for quite some time. You know I lost some thangs in my **cough** transition, but I managed to retrieve my Etta James "heart of a woman. Also I ....pssst *come close* I stole a 20TH Century Masters, Millennium Collection of Etta....**come closer** from my mother. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 357
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 18, 2008 - 11:35 pm: |
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I wanted to add that Joni Mitchell's "Carey" (get out your cane and I'll put on some silver) was not about an old dude, nor was it about L'Oreal silver. The Carey of that song was twenty-four year old Carey Raditz whom she met while vacationing on Crete after she had split (I think) from Graham Nash (of Crosby, Stills, and Nash). Carey also appears as the "redneck" in the song called "California" off the same album (I met a redneck on a Grecian isle / Who did the goat dance very well / He gave me back my smile /But he took my camera to sell)
"Carmen Sings Monk" is one of my favorites, especially In Walked Bud (a kind of bop reworking of Irving Berlin's "Blue Skies") and the gorgeous ballad "Pannonica" (after Monk's daughter), I also used to have the one where she sings a song usually associated with Ella: ex-patriate Fran Landesman's hip rendering of T.S. Eliot's poem, The Waste Land, with its downer interpretation of Spring as the cruellest season.
http://www.powerlineblog.com/archives2/2008/03/020086.php
Thumper, I've been reading the 575-page biography of Amiri Baraka by Jerry Watts. Yeah. Terrific book, a must-read in fact. It's very critical of course, but it's well reasoned and not based on innuendo. He actually supplies you with relevant information about the various schools of thought, political and aesthetic movements, etc. The chapters on Kawaida, Newark mayoral politics, and Pan-Africanism are especially good. I have about 75 pages left. Thanks.
PS I heard Deborah Cox's cover of Dinah Washington's "This Bitter Earth." It's great. |
Carey
Veteran Poster
Username: Carey
Post Number: 934
Registered: 05-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 19, 2008 - 12:01 am: |
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Thanks Steve
Kitty hit me with that title (you read the thread) and I've often wondered what it was about. If I could be 24 again, if only for a day . Carey Raditz, okay. So Joni was married to one of the famous Crosby Stills and Nash. One of those boys died in a treatment center?
Deborah Cox, the one that did "How Did I Get Here" well, that's the hook, am not sure if that's the title? Dinah Washington could blow. So Deborah did it justice? |
Thumper
Veteran Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 554
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, July 20, 2008 - 02:41 pm: |
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Hello All,
Carey: Parish that thought and image of me running around naked singing Aretha FROM YOUR MIND!! I assure you that that is not going to or has ever happened!!! But the Rare and Unreleased recordings CDs is awesome. There are also some other cuts worth mentioning, So Soon, My Cup Runneth Over and Are You Leaving Me! Her concert CD is only available through Rhino.com. It's a limited edition so you had better hurry on that one.
I'm glad you got that Marvin Gaye set. I love his standard recordings! It's a shame he ended it before singing standards became marketable again.
Lizz Wright puts you in mind of Norah Jones, but not as boring. Her second CD is my favorite, Dreaming Wide Awake. Her new one, The Orchard, is a good one too! Beautiful voice. I LOVE HER!
Carey, I always knew you had to be schooled on Etta! I am glad that she is still putting out new music and she is still adventurous.
Steve S: Man, there you go. Carmen Sings Monk is one my favorite albums of all times!! My brother got the CD when it first came out and I flipped over it. I've been a hard fan of Carmen McRae and Monk ever since. Speaking of Monk, have you ever heard his Big Band recordings?
Thanks for the heads up on the Baraka biography. I'm in the middle of Faulkner's The Hamlet right now and I'm straight trippin'.
I got the Deborah Cox's album Destination Moon which is her tribute to Dinah Washington. It's a beautiful album, very well done, excellent arrangements, and her singing is superb. I'm surprised that she wasn't nominated for the album. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 358
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 21, 2008 - 05:21 pm: |
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Carey,
Here's "This Bitter Earth" sung by Deborah Cox (the audio is not so great on the return:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGqO1WxhiJI
Did I read the jazz thread? I got that information about the song "Carey" from a new book about Joni Mitchell and two other singers called "Girls Like Us." I didn't read the book though, so I don't know if she and Nash were married. There's another book that looks more interesting to me called "A Freewheelin' Time" by Suze Rotolo, the girl on the cover of the Bob Dylan album. It's a memoir of Greenwich Village in the Sixties, and although I was never much of a Dylan aficionado at the time, I am now after reading his recent memoir, "Chronicles Vol. 1" (and I lived on Bleeker and MacDougal in, yes, Da Sixties), so I intend to check that one out.
Thumper, Yeah, her pianist late in her career (and on that album) is a very gifted cat who attended Berklee College in the late 1970s, which is where I played with him one time. He moved to NYC very briefly before moving somewhere like Seattle, which is where I think he hooked up with her.
Funny you should mention the Monk big band recordings, because I was just thinking about a confrontation that Baraka and Cecil Taylor instigated against the guy who wrote the imaginative arrangements on the Monk at Town Hall album. It was at a symposium at Bennington I believe, not to dwell on that kind of behavior.
The biography is quite an achievement in my opinion. I wasn't sure that I even wanted to read a biography of Baraka, but I was very impressed with it.
You know, Thelonious Monk Big Band and Quartet in Concert (recorded at Lincoln Center in 1964), is one that I've never owned and I'm not even sure if I've heard it. I used to have a copy of Oliver Nelson's big band Monk album (minus Thelonious) recorded in L.A., but the arrangements seemed way too ordinary, although I love Olvier Nelson's work. Are there any others?
I need to start reading Faulkner. I loved As I Lay Dying, but The Sound and the Fury, which I've attempted a couple of times, is very confusing and I never finish it.
I probably should attempt The Hamlet, I'm in between books right now and I have a copy of it. |
Thumper
Veteran Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 560
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, July 21, 2008 - 06:23 pm: |
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Hello All,
Steve S: I haven't heard of any other big band arrangement of Monk's music except for his own 1964 recording. I got it years ago so I don't know if it's still avaiable or not. I'm going to have to think some more on this one. I have so much Monk that I honestly don't know how much I got.
Faulkner is my boy. I have to admit, it took me a LOOOONg while to read The Sound and The Fury. I honestly don't see why people get caught up on the Benjy chapter where he says, only, I am a fish. Who gives a rat's ass, he's an idiot. Who wants to dwell in the mind of an idiot? Anyway, give The Hamlet a shot, let me know what you think. I do know that Faulkner sho did have a love for the idiots. Because The Hamlet got one a whole damn chapter centering on an idiot who is really and truly in love with a damn COW! |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3072
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Tuesday, July 22, 2008 - 01:33 pm: |
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Hey, Thumper. Nice music picks! I enjoy both Cox's and Wright's work. However, I do wish they would take a few more chances with their song selections, arrangements, and personnel. I absolutely LOVE Cassandra Wilson, and she is kind of my model for what I wish I'd see more in some of these other female jazz vocalists.
Have you heard any of Esperanza Spaulding's stuff? She is a young vocalist/bass player. I think she has a lot of potential.
I also am still optimistic about Dana (Queen Latifah) in her jazz vocalist guise--though, again with her I think she is playing things too safe right now.
The biggest risk-taker right now, IMO, is Meshell Ndgeocello. Her melding of genres and styles, as well as her often mystical content puts me in a mind of Alice Coltrane. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 360
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Wednesday, July 23, 2008 - 04:50 pm: |
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I have to admit, it took me a LOOOONg while to read The Sound and The Fury. I honestly don't see why people get caught up on the Benjy chapter where he says, only, I am a fish. Who gives a rat's ass, he's an idiot. Who wants to dwell in the mind of an idiot?
Thumper, That's funny! On my third attempt in two years I bulled my way through the Benjy section with a little help from a study guide I copped from the library, but don't tell Jean Paul Sartre.
Yeah, Benjy is the metaphorical idiot in the quotation from Shakespeare's Macbeth (a tale told by an idiot...) which is where the novel gets its name and it's written in a stream of consciousness style with time shifts and free association. Now I guess it's clear sailing ahead.
Alright, thanks for the laugh. I'm gonna finish this one and then read Light in August next month, and eventually Absalom, Absalom! and Go Down, Moses. That's my game plan. |
Thumper
Veteran Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 562
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, July 24, 2008 - 12:41 am: |
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Hello All,
Carey: I'm sorry, I didn't answer all of your post. I'm not that heavy into American Idol. I don't really care for the show. I know the singer you're talking about and you are not the only one that said she should have sung something from the Aretha songbook. Why she choose Proud Mary is beyond me. Not taking anything away from Tina Turner, but Tina is not that great of a singer. She couldn't move me to tears or make my day brighter just by singing me a song. She's the bomb when it comes to that stage, girlfriend will give you a show, but she's no Aretha. Since Idol is "suppose" to be a singing contest, the contestant would have done better with an Aretha cover.
Yvettep: Thanks for suggesting Esperanza Spalding. I'm going to get her albums. I love her groove. The only downside I see with her is she doesn't do any standards. I love hearing jazz singers do standards because they each take them to different places and the standards are such solidly constructed songs that they can take the different interpretations. I love her voice though and the fact that she's playing that stand up bass and singing is terrific. I've come to appreciate the bass as I grow older.
Steve S: I'm glad I could get a laugh out of you. I'm going to have to re-read Light in August. I'll read Light in August next month with you. I might have some questions that I can throw at you. Absalom, Absalom! is my favorite. I loved Go Down Moses as well. I'm going to tackle the second book in the Snopes trilogy, The Town, next month, as well. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 363
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2008 - 04:52 am: |
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I'm going to have to re-read Light in August. I'll read Light in August next month with you. I might have some questions that I can throw at you. Absalom, Absalom! is my favorite. I loved Go Down Moses as well. I'm going to tackle the second book in the Snopes trilogy, The Town, next month, as well.
Great. I'm going to finish The Sound and the Fury today, so I can either start Light in August next or else read something first, I'll leave it up to you.
Aren't the Snopses the poor, conniving rednecky type folks, as opposed to the noble Gavin Stevens type folks? I've heard about them, however, there have been no Snopses in either of the Faulkner novels I've read so far.
Jason is a piece of work, isn't he? He's funny, though, in a deranged kinda way. |
Thumper
Veteran Poster
Username: Thumper
Post Number: 568
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, July 25, 2008 - 12:59 pm: |
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Hello All,
Steve S: Yeah, Jason was a NUT! I could have slapped Faulkner for that book because he did NOT have to give the same names to different characters. This is named after an uncle, that daughter is named after a great grandfather. I treated the Sound and Fury like it was a wild horse and I jumped on its back and was determined not to get thrown.
Yeah, the Snopes is that same poor white trash, low rent family! They're crazy! I find them fascinating to watch in a strange demented way. I'm going to start The Town in a couple of weeks.
I'm in the middle of Cinder, so go ahead and read your other book and I should be ready for Light in August around the time you finish your book.
Does anybody else care to join us on the Light in August read? |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 365
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, July 26, 2008 - 01:59 am: |
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Thumper: Yes, Miss Quentin is named after her uncle Quentin who commits suicide a few months before she's born; Benjy, the intellectually disabled character, is formerly named Maury, same as his uncle Maury; and Jason IV, the cruelest character in the book (although even Miss Quentin is capable of some vicious words to Dilsey, who is only trying to protect her), is named after his father, Quentin III. Faulkner is describing a doomed family (Jason IV is the last Compson male) so maybe by doubling the names he's trying to suggest an inbred mentality. Whether that's a commentary on this one family or extends to the whole culture I can't really tell.
The obsession with Caddy's honor that leads Quentin to commit suicide starts in childhood. When Jason is nearly killed by the old man with the hatchet, his rescuer says, "What were you trying to do, commit suicide?"
Benjy is intended as a Christ figure and the last section of the book takes place on Good Friday when Dilsey takes him to her church. When the driver of the carriage shows off and turns left instead of right at the town monument, Benjy reacts by howling and Jason jumps in to the carriage, takes the reins and threatens the driver, screaming "If you ever cross that gate with him again, I'll kill you." I guess it depends on how you interpret that symbolism.
There's so much going on here I don't think it's possible to understand it all in one reading. I've been skimming Bloom's Notes to get an idea of how much I missed.
I've had a copy of Billy for ages and I may read it one of these days, however, I'm going to attempt "Lost City Radio" by Daniel Alarcón next because I liked his short story collection and he's one of the up and coming new voices in fiction.
Wikipedia has this summary of Light in August if anyone is interested (I tried not to read too much of it):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Light_in_August |
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