Ray pretty much invented soul and then cornered the market. Instead of leaving well enough alone, he went and invaded Nashville, dressing a string of Country and Western classics in his jazz/pop/soul style, but with fiercely personal interpretations. Something new under the sun. Something indelibly beautiful.
Continue reading...Song Of the week
193: The Band, ‘Rockin’ Chair’
“The Band” had a profound timeliness for 1969. But it also has a purity and timelessness, a music that evokes respect for what went before, a modesty and gravitas and resonance rare in popular art. The album is a gift.
Continue reading...192: Les Double Six of Paris, “Moanin'”
The hard-bop jazz vocal sextet Les Double Six of Paris–their sources, their contemporaries and their followers; and why vocal jazz groups loved singing Count Basie.
Continue reading...195: Hoagy Carmichael, ‘Skylark’
Earworms, crazy loons, the will o’ the wisp, a gypsy serenading the moon, Oliver Twist (the dance), all these and more in this week’s SoTW!
Especially the elegant and passionate songwrighting of Hoagy Carmichael and Johnny Mercer.
190: Bob Dylan, ‘Boots of Spanish Leather’
Kids, be careful! One little romp in the back seat, whoops, you’re a parent forever. One untimely text, you’re limping through the Pearly Gates at 21. Write a Protest Song at 22, you’re a Protest Singer forever.
Continue reading...186: The Everly Brothers, ‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’
Boudreaux and Felice Bryant wrote 23 hit songs for The Everly Brothers. The couple met when Felice was 19. She saw Boudreaux in a hotel lobby, told him she’d seen him in a dream when she was 8, and had been looking for him ever since. ‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’ was true autobiography.
Continue reading...183: Love, ‘Alone Again Or’ (Bryan MacLean)
An obscure legend: the beautiful Bryan MacLean demo, of the indelible opening cut of Love’s “Forever Changes”, a gift that justifies all the mothers of the world cleaning out their garages and discovering their little boys’ lost treasures.
Continue reading...184: Arik Einstein, ‘Ruach Stav’ (‘Autumn Breeze’)
Arik Einstein died six years ago this week. More than a singer, he was a national icon, a symbol of our brand-new little old-fashioned country with its oh-so-long history, its pain, its optimism and its cynicism, its utter belief in itself and its vehement denial of that belief.
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