Programa - Jazz, Blues and R&B

And it’s back to one of my favorite program themes: jazz, blues, and R&B, mostly of the era between 1940-80. At times I feel like an anthropologist, studying the music as an outsider looking in. Growing up white, Catholic and middle class in Racine, Wisconsin prepared me little for my embrace of African American music, but through knowledgeable acquaintances and strokes of good fortune (proximity to Chicago and Milwaukee [site of such as as the Avant Garde], amongst others) it became my go-to sound. As John Lee Hooker once intoned: “If the impulse is in you, it’s got to come out.” [continued below...]

Al compás del mundo - programa #12 - Jazz, Blues and R&B
First Broadcast 5-2-24

01 Eddie Lockjaw Davis - Untitled Blues

02 Sidney Bechet - I'm Speaking My Mind

03 The James Cotton Blues Band - Somthin' You Got

04 Titus Turner - Hold Your Lovin'

05 Sonny Stitt - Me 'n You

06 Mercy Dee - Call the Asylum

07 King Curtis - Free for All

08 Duke Ellington - Blues for New Orleans

09 Magic Sam - I Have the Same Old Blues [pictured above]

10 Lee Dorsey - People, I Wish You Could See

11 Archie Shepp - Keep Your Heart Right [pictured below]

12 Roosevelt Sykes - She Ain't for Nobody

13 Lonnie Smith – Seesaw

14 Sonny Boy Williamson - Unseen Eye

15 J. B. Hutto - Speak My Mind

Whirling Archie

[... continued] Today’s playlist brings forth a solid bunch of musical stalwarts. They don’t form a group of all-time favorites, necessarily, but fill in the blanks of any test procedure looking for honest talent and soulful statements. In choosing a playlist I feel the need to include the work of artists not recently profiled. Keep it fresh. So there’s Mercy Dee, Titus Turner, Roosevelt Sykes, Lonnie Smith, Lee Dorsey, J. B. Hutto and Magic Sam (who died age 32 of a heart attack, apropos of something). Their companions perhaps better known, but all befitting an hour’s worth of show time on Mexican radio and the world-wide web. -JH

Comments

Al compás del mundo - programa #99 - Los Folkloristas

This week’s Al compás del mundo earns a pair of dedications. Primarily, to Las Folkloristas, a group of Mexican musicians who first came together in 1966 and who continue to the present day, delighting their public and educating them as to the breadth of folk music genres and instrumentation found in every corner of Latin America. The second dedication is to me and my sweetheart wife Claudia – we met at a concert of Los Folkloristas at the Sala Agora in Mexico City, in 1976. And yes, we too are still together. Get out your handkerchiefs and dry your eyes because there’s a story to be told as evidence that there’s a soulmate out there for everyone. You just have to make the effort to look, even if it takes you to a foreign land. And so it goes like this: I spent all of 1976 living in Mexico City, ostensibly to learn Spanish, but en realidad to loaf around, drink beer, practice my saxophone, and maybe, just maybe, look to meet a señorita. I lived in a pension (boardinghouse) owned by Jul...

Al compas del mundo, programa #92 - Japan

The Japanese historically have been a most creative people, excelling in aesthetic conventions like architecture, painting, culinary arts, theatre, music, and more. A craftsman’s care and an artist’s flair have come to define everyday household objects such as articles of clothing and kitchen ware, designed with a sensibility that imbues them with import and elevated status. After WWII in the United States however, an item inscribed “made in Japan” usually indicated a tchotchke of mediocre quality. A perfect example is the large number of Northwest Coast Native American-style bone totem poles made for the tourist shops in the Northwest. There is a distinctive difference in these “artifacts” from the real, home-made variety that illustrates someone from another culture tackling aesthetics they don’t fully comprehend. And that leads us to some of this week’s musical choices. Imitating Western pop, rock and jazz, Japanese artists have recorded many forgettable efforts – not unlike those o...

Al compas del mundo - programa #114 - potpourri of fun, fun, fun

Fun, Fun, Fun. And I do mean fun. Sometimes this summary of a weekly radio show veers off to a serious side, but not today. Not with this batch of winners. Not when we’re leading off with Los Xochimilcas. Like a mix of The Three Stooges and Spike Jones, they clamor for a round of “pulque for two!” with an eloquent danzón accompaniment. Then there’s Pigbag showing off some serious jazz chops…but is it jazz? Then again, who cares? Why fret over labels when we’re here to have fun?! So The Magnetic Fields’ tune isn’t exactly light-hearted glee and all, but fun comes in many packages. I had fun when I first heard I Die You Die. They sounded like the Velvet Underground had they hailed from West Virginia instead of New York. That’s not fun? Relatively speaking, there’s always room for Ennio Morricone. That lonesome whistle thrills me, along with the chorus of grunting injuns. A Spaghetti Western at its stereotypical best. Allen Toussaint, by the way, is one hell of a song writer, in cas...

Search This Blog