Maria Callas, 100 Best Classics, EMI

So right now you can buy this 6-CD set on Amazon for $9.94 and I cannot conceive of anyone who is financially able not being tempted to do so. I don't care whether you like rock, rap, country, folk, reggae, salsa, tejano, fado, the blues, jazz, whatever. I don't care if you don't know a thing about opera or think you hate it.

You will spin these discs and you will sit there and you will think, or even say out loud, the gods surely designated this woman as a singer because there is no other explanation for it. And there isn't one track less than "wow" in the whole collection--100 cuts, never anything below stellar. That's unnatural.

Earlier today, I was listening to a Thelonious Monk CD titled The Transformer in which we get to hear Monk teaching himself the tune I'm Getting Sentimental Over You and then remaking it as his song, still something like the original and, yet, so much more. This is what Maria Callas does in all 100 songs in the collection here cited. Makes you glad to have ears and to be alive to use them.

Henry doodles, and I love it

2010 holiday email card from the great Henry Grimes. I look forward to these every year and to whatever music Henry produces in the year following.

Like my old dad used to say...

How do you know you know what you know? The answer, as dad knew, was sometimes you don't--if you take an honest look at that position you're so stridently sure of (and yeah, I'm talking to you Tea Party wingnuts). This, for instance:

"History records that President George W. Bush, who inherited a $236 billion government surplus from the Clinton administration in 2001, handed President Obama a stacked deck eight years later. The Congressional Budget Office's projected budget deficit for FY2009, beginning four months before Obama took office, was already in excess of $1.3 trillion. Indeed, the 2011 budget deficit is projected to be ever-so-slightly lower than the one Bush left on the White House doorstep. Despite the one-time $787 billion economic stimulus (spread over three years), no huge growth in government spending has taken place on Obama's watch. Three proximate causes of the rising national debt remain: the Bush tax cuts of 2001, his unfunded Medicare drug benefit, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan."

More in this succinct, informative commentary.

Robbie Hummel gone, Purdue barely Top 25

Reality: 2 potential NBA players still on team, 5 guys 6-5 to 6-10 to fill the gap, 1 junior point guard who's started 3 years. Let's say Robbie was going to average 20 and 15 this year, which is high. You're telling me Matt Painter can't get 4 points and 3 rebounds out of 5 replacements (realizing some will do more than others)? Defensively, 25 fouls to spend, which should allow them to be aggressive; smart, hopefully, but aggressive. Moreover, a diverse group, which could allow Purdue to really take advantage of favorable matchups.

None of that takes into account improvements by the other 2 potential All-Americans on the team (likely), two highly rated freshman guards, and a couple experienced juniors on the bench.

And people are saying they're barely still worthy of a Top 25 ranking? You just keep thinking, Butch, that's what you're good at. --The Sundance Kid

I kind of like it, though, because it may piss them off and motivate them further.

Ana Sofia Varela, Fados De Amor E Pecado, iPlay

So I was listening to my man John Prine today and, let's face it, John Prine is not the world's greatest singer. Mostly, he more or less talks through his songs in a sing-songy way and the point isn't his pristine or rangy voice but the words and the feeling with which he delivers them. True, as well, of the late (and lamented, in my house) Harry Chapin or Mr. Tom Waits. True also of my favorite male fadista Alfredo Marceneiro, whom I hear in Ana Sofia Varela singing Quase Um Anjo (Almost An Angel), Estranha Vontade (Strange Will), O Corvo (The Crow) and a lot of other places.

She does not sing in the precious tones of Amalia or generate the aural and emotional roller coaster that is the singing of Mariza. She does not make me think of a powerful blues shouter like Jimmy Rushing, as Carminho does. But she sings captivating, expressive, emotive fado as appealing to me as John Prine doing Sweet Revenge, Harry Chapin doing A Better Place To Be or Tom Waits doing Closing Time.

Her voice is prettier than those dudes, but the end result is the same: good tunes, and better stories, well told. The album title means fados, essentially fates, of love and sin.

Ralph Towner, Paolo Fresu, Chiaroscuro, ECM

Chiaroscuro is art characterized by contrast between light and dark and here, I would have to say, Towner's guitar is the dark and Paolo's trumpet and flugelhorn are the light, which is maybe not what I might expect, although in point of fact neither is all that dark nor overly bright. Mostly, this is very peaceful music, bordering on classical, Sacred Place for instance, particularly where Towner's playing is concerned.

Paolo, as always, makes me think of Miles, not in an imitative sense, also as usual, but as a logical extension by a man with a horn who comes from the European tradition. Their rendition of Blue in Green is a perfect example and simply marvelous. Likewise the rest of this duo session, a format that gives them both plenty of room to work. Doubled Up makes me think of a two-man Jazz Messengers piece, or Miles and the second great quintet at the Plugged Nickel.

This is what it means...

... to "own" an audience.

What he said

Now this is the guy I voted for and would dearly like to see more of.

WASHINGTON (AP) - After skirting the controversy for weeks, President Barack Obama is weighing in forcefully on the mosque near ground zero, saying a nation built on religious freedom must allow it.

"As a citizen, and as president, I believe that Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country," Obama told an intently listening crowd gathered at the White House Friday evening to observe the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.

"That includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in lower Manhattan, in accordance with local laws and ordinances," he said. "This is America, and our commitment to religious freedom must be unshakable."

Miles Davis, Agharta, Columbia

So I figure you like Miles in his electric period or you don't (and I do, as well as liking him during any other of his decisions to change music), but I think, if I were trying to turn someone onto it, I might suggest this.

Pete Cosey on guitar, bassist Michael Henderson, Al Foster on drums and Mtume generating percussion created a near-perfect soundscape for Miles' trumpet to interact with, recorded live, no less, in 1975 at what may be the last juncture that you can say he was at a height of his powers. Oh, he was very good later, but he kills here, as does the rest of the band, which you only have to listen to the fantastically diverse Interlude to get. Sonny Fortune on saxes and flute reinforces my belief that he's grossly underappreciated.

Blind Gary Davis, Harlem Street Singer, Prestige

Samson and Delilah, which has meaning far beyond the face value of the words, its marvelous singing and mesmerizing guitar playing justifies the purchase even if the 11 other tracks were mediocre, as they're not.

Take, I Belong to the Band, which is about as impressive as Samson with more than a minute less to work everything out, or Pure Religion, essentially a 2-minute, 57-second avant-garde gospel and blues piece. I mean to say, Albert Ayler would get it from one end to the other. The song, the concept, the whole damn thing. Death Don't Have No Mercy in particular.

Alejandro Escovedo, Real Animal, various

Back Porch, Manhattan Records EMI, but also Blue Note, if you notice on the back of the CD, which I notice because Alejandro makes me think of jazz as I have listened to him now through five CDs since developing a jones with his latest, Street Songs of Love. Nah, he's not a jazz musician. Except maybe he is at heart.

He assimilates stuff. I think of Springsteen and the E Street Band, the Sex Pistols, neither necessarily surprisingly, Muddy Waters and, for gods' sake, John Prine and even Randy Newman (Nuns Song) listening to this. Golden Bear, I'm thinking of Roky Erickson and the 13th Floor Elevators. Not that he is really like any of them.

He bends forms to his own purposes. He does things you wouldn't expect. He slips in odd instrumentation (like the frigging hot violin--yeah, I said hot violin--that colors hard-rocker Smoke) and makes it work. He's frequently discordant and adept at manipulating tension and release, a la Monk and Miles, in his lyrics (Chelsea Hotel '78) as well as his musical structure. He knows how to work in a good sax solo, like on Sensitive Boys.

Rockin' for sure, but thoughtful, as well, the classical strings opening Hollywood Hills, for instance. Tom Waits would be down with the whole program, I expect.

Plays a damn fine guitar, I might add.

P!nk, Missundaztood, Arista

This has to do, what, with avant-garde jazz and the blues and reggae and fado, my purview? Well, it has this not exactly what you would expect thing going (take Respect), and it is generally discordant, lyrically as in My Vietnam if not always, but sometimes, musically in a Monkian sense. Likewise, the words are generally ironic, in, more or less, a Robert Johnson, Bob Marley or Albert Ayler (in Albert's case ironic sounds not words) sense (see 18 Wheeler). What I perceive is that she is laying herself bare in her music, which when you think about is precisely what Miles and Coltrane did, or any good fadista does, and, hence, I respect it. Oh, and Misery, Aretha would R-E-S-P-E-C-T it. She could certainly sing soul well and kind of does here, like on Eventually, and I think she would be a fine fado singer, too. Gone to California is a blues. Which is to say, this isn't typical pop bullshit, but something I might, actually, listen to in 2111 and beyond.

Eddie Harris & Ellis Marsalis, Homecoming, ELM

This is as excellent a saxophone and piano duo pairing as People Time with Stan Getz and Kenny Barron, one of my all-time favorite jazz sessions (and People Time: The Complete Recordings, Sunnyside, 2009, which includes all seven sets from which the original was derived, is even better).

Here we have Harris, who really should be considered a tenor giant, and Marsalis, patriarch of one jazzy family and a stunning musician in his own right, on an out-of-print session from 1985 and reissued on the Marsalis family label with his son the stellar drummer Jason Marsalis in charge. Ethereal Moments, 1&2 is a track that really strikes me as revelatory because it could be taken as excellent 1) Third Stream music incorporating European classical forms and jazz or 2) advanced avant-garde jazz, neither of which you would necessarily associate with Harris, whose reputation suffers (unjustly in my my mind) from some of his more commercial efforts and Marsalis, at heart a New Orleans traditionalist. This is not, however, an out session (although some of the Harris licks on Zee Blues make the think: Archie Shepp). Ethereal, for example, is followed by an inside, but creatively Latinized, version of the Harold Arden-Johnny Mercer tune Out of This World, which is followed by a post-bop rendition of Darn That Dream, which would have struck a chord, so to speak, with the second great Miles Davis quintet, or Stan Getz and Kenny Barron for that matter.

The original clocked in at 42 minutes, so Jason Marsalis added four tracks with his father dueting with the young New Orleans pianist Jonathan Batiste in December 2009, a tasty bonus, and a final track, Blues at the End of the Session, with Ellis on piano, Batiste on melodica and Jason drumming that is a boffo blues and as good as anything else on what is a track-after-track gem.

You can have my book when you pry it ...

I am reading the Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot in the Kindle app on my iPad as I ride my exercise bike in the morning and it has me worried. More or less on a lark, I opened it in the Kindle app on my iPhone over lunch downtown today. The book came up in the exact place, the beginning of Chapter 36, where I left off on my iPad at the end of this morning’s ride at home.

That ability to keep track of my place through the ether is certainly a nifty trick. But think, I also carried the book with me without having to carry the book, or anything else other than what I normally carry--my cell phone.

Then there is the way I have bumped up the type size of the book on my iPad to make it easy on my not-as-young-as-they-used-to-be eyes, and the ease of turning the pages simply by swiping my index finger across the screen. Likewise, the iPad sits flat on the book holder that’s a feature of my bike and the pages don’t have to be clipped down to keep the e-book open, or unclipped to turn them. I don’t even have to turn on the reading lamp connected to the book holder; iPad backlight. Moreover, the Kindle book is hyperlinked in many places, for example to more information about DNA or historical incidents like the Tuskegee experiment.

So what worries me? I love books. When I moved into my condominium pretty much the second piece of furniture I bought, after a bed , was a set of bookshelves. I don’t think books are going anywhere soon, certainly not my books. But I also love bookstores, I love spending hours perusing them, even when I don’t buy anything (which isn’t often). I now have to think--given online sellers like Amazon, et al, and buy them, carry them, read them anywhere e-books--that brick and mortar bookstores will soon go the way of film cameras, record shops and video rental stores. You may be able to find one (I hold out hope for the kind of wonderfully overstuffed used bookstores I adore), but it won’t be easy, convenient or in every community of decent size. Technologist though I am, I dislike the thought nonetheless.

The other thing that bothers me about reading Immortal Henrietta in Kindle form is this: it’s a stunningly good book I would love to loan, or give, to someone else; great science journalism, great journalism period, excellent reportage and marvelous writing. But I have no easy (or legal) way to pass on my e-copy.

I’ll just have to go to the bookstore and buy copies for people.

Oops...

Now I am really sorry I stayed up too late, got too lit and passed out on Alejandro Escovedo in Austin, Texas, that time because his new CD Street Songs of Love is better every listen I keep giving to it. Tender in places, tough in others, which is appropriate to the topic, great guitar play throughout (Street Songs rocks). Favorite track: maybe Fall Apart With You, kind of of doo-wop with an edge. But I dig it all.

Harpin' on it

I was hanging out around Fisherman's Wharf one time and ran across Dave Earl playing there and I have to say that on his CD S.F. Blues he plays some mean harp. I mean Little Walter mean, if you know what I mean.

Archie Shepp, Phat Jam in Milano, Dawn of Freedom

So I was thinking the other day I wonder what Archie Shepp has been up to and of course I Googled it and I found Archie here working with my man Napoleon Maddox, late of Iswhat?!, which might have been the best melding of jazz and hip-hop ever, and now I see they're severely, and correctly, bad-rapping George W. Bush and his era, rightly so, among other things, plus Oliver Lake, Joe Fonda and Hamid Drake are playing on this and I'm saying, damn, you talk about supergroups, gotta love it, and the saxophone playing kills, too.

Fred Anderson, Dark Day, Atavistic

Like The Missing LInk this is a 1979 session, recorded live in Italy, but with the addition of another horn, Fred's musical compadre trumpeter Bill Brimfield, which offers a different view of Fred at his heights.

Fred's marvelous, inventive solos that sometimes make you feel like you're listening to sounds from another dimension are here in very healthy measure, in extended pieces barely clocking in at less than 11 minutes and running up to a half hour in a couple cases. Most striking to me, however, is what a good ensemble player Fred also was as he interacts with Brimfield, Steve Palmore on bass and, as on The Missing Link, his favorite drummer Hamid Drake, so young he's still listed as Hank.

As an aside, titles from Atavistic's Unheard Music Series, of which this is a part, are always excellent in my experience.

Fred Anderson, The Missing Link, Nessa

I own a dozen CDs from the great Chicago tenor saxophonist Fred Anderson, who passed away at 81 Thursday. Almost any of the live sessions at Fred's Velvet Lounge is wonderful. (He was still playing wonderfully when I heard him on the occasion of his 81st birthday this spring.) But if I had to suggest a disk to turn someone on to Mr. Anderson for the first time, it might be The Missing Link.

It's a 1979 date with drummer Hamid Drake, the musician with whom Fred was maybe most symbiotic, the notable Adam Rudolph on percussion and on bass Larry Hayrod, who seems to know how to play with Mr. A about as sympathetically as Harrison Bankhead or Tatsu Aoki, two other bassists with whom Fred clearly dug playing.

More importantly, what you get is Fred at his most robust, sound fully developed, although he would tweak it for the rest of his life, and playing in a way that clearly illustrates his inventive straddling of Charlie Parker and Lester Young, his first influences, and Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler, and beyond. I don't know that anyone else, any saxophonist anyway, with the possible exception of Sonny Rollins, has ever been better at tying together the idoms of bop and post-bop jazz of the late 1940s to early 1960s and the avant-garde jazz of the late1960s and the 1970s. And then he kept retooling it for the '80s, '90s and 2000s, always sounding modern, yet his roots in the tradition always evident. Fred's music may have been "outside," but it was never inaccessible and ever lyrical. I'll miss him.

Blue in Pres

Lester Young makes On the Sunny Side of the Street so blue it is darn near not the same song, and there is genius in that. The Complete Aladdin Recordings, Disc 2, Blue Note.