Allow Page To Load & Discover Mp3 Musique du Jour Patronizingly Posted By A Demented Denizen Of The Left Coast
Stay To Soak Up Sordid Stories, Tawdry Tales, Libelous Lies & Egregious Exaggerations that'll burst yer broadband bubble.
Did anyone in Tinley Park Ill, regret not going to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, instead of getting pinned down in the crossfire at the plus size ?????????
Police investigate the scene of the shooting that killed 4 iat a Lane Bryant store at the Brookside shopping center in Tinley Park, Ill., Saturday, Feb 2 2008.
As much as I love a good strip mall story, not to mention bloody shooting spree...
Interestingly enough, back in October the Illinois State Rifle assoc. focused it's sights on the village of Tinley Park because they were enacting stricter gun control laws.
The pro-gun lobbyists were up in arms at supposed "Enemies of Freedom" that would dare mess up Tinley Park by restricting firearm ownership.
Well, I bet those pro-Gun boys are truly happy today to see freedom for firearms being exercised so damn freely in the local shopping plaza. With no enemies of freedom in sight, the shooter was ale to take out plenty of folks in a powerful display of the American Way, and just drive off.
Is this a great country or what?
Here's a relevant tune that somewhat captures the day's emotion...
It's the earliest Mardi Gras in years down in Louisian this year, and I imagine the wet weather & winter chill is keeping breast displays down to a bare minimum...
But there's still prolly a lot more titty & goodtimes to be had than in the Tinley Park strip mall today...
Here's one of my fave New Orleans artists, doing up a bit of Mardi Gras music for y'all
Here's two more cuts from Ruffins... the first from his album "Live At Vaughans", one of the best selling CD's at the annual jazzfest, It's raucous live sound perfectly captures the ecstatic energetic & casually contagious New Orleanean funk fervor to be found in a Ruffins set.
Kermit Ruffins' spirited jazz trumpet playing and showmanship have seen him compared to the legendary Louis Armstrong, and no trip to the city is complete without a stop in the Bywater at Vaughan's where he generally can be found every Thursday for the past 15 some years.
Greetings from the tail of what was my Hectic Hump Day...and man, if Friday isn't banging on the door already...
I'm currently in the midst of simultaneously monitoring the taping of 3 different classrooms with a total of six cameras...and using the ol' sneaker net to monitor a "Digital Media Law Seminar on IP Rights As Corporate Assets" moderated by the lead counsel for a company y'all know, even if yer not using their software anymore.
So let's further complicate matters by attempting to distract myself and get a "blog" post up for y'all...
and then I'm outta here, no last call, no b.s
So how about a Five Track Free For All Freak Out...
Whoops I noticed that in my haste, I didn't bring my "stash"...
Y'know the deep digital repository from which I oft draw my inspiration from...
I am referring to the fact that I thought I left the house today with my extra "hard drive", the one with the 250 Gigabytes of mp3z to supplement my meager "blogging" skills...
Turns out where gonna have to wing it with my wits alone & the mere 80 gigs of tuneage I have on hand...
Well I guess i'll get by, and somehow distribute some of those corporate assets around & increase the sonic peace...
hey
Not only is it Super Sunday this weekend...
But considering we've just had a super state of the union, and we're heading into another round of "Dupe the Nation" coming up on Super Duper Tuesday, I imagine everyone's feeling pretty super?
right?
here's some super news stories for y'all , each with a little super duper freakiness quotient for ya
Anyhow in honor of all this wintry freakiness in the air:
Here's a Brazilian hit track called Freak Cat by the band known as Jumbo Elektro, from São Paulo ...
I recently was digging in the digital crates and pulled this nugget of classic jazz funk flim flam out of the detritus, and I think it's a story that's worthy of sharing with ya...
It's got some serious street cred, unlike most of the candidates for office you see running about these days.
Eddie Jefferson was one bad mutha, a tap dancer and an O.G vocalist whose "vocalese" style influenced not only King Pleasure, Lambert Hendricks & Ross, and the Manhattan Transfer, all of whom worked with him. Also I swear indirectly lots of jazzy funk, especially the Sugarhill era rap, and quite possibly the less fluid crap you still hear these days. Eddie would kick back in his jammies with his Victrola, and used to come up with lyrics to great jazz instrumentals. He'd play these composistions after hours for pals, and one got out to the wider world.
His biggest hit being "Moody's Mood for Love", was based on a song that was a 1949 instrumental hit for Jack Moody. Eddie composed lyrics that got picked up by the curious ear of touring musician King Pleasure when he was visiting Cincinatti.
King Pleasure recorded Jefferson's version, but when asked to duplicate the style again for a new tune, the King fessed up that it wasn't his idea. He told people about some dancin' fool on the midwest black vaudeville circuit. Eventually by 1952 Jack Moody the alto saxman went looking for Eddie and found him in Cleveland. Moody reportedly needed the now quasi-legendary Eddie Jefferson to tour & deliver the lyrics to appease the audience demand, and everywhere they played was packed.
Eddie Jefferson created lyrics to a Lester Young solo on 'Its Only A Paper Moon' and renamed it 'Lester's Trip To The Moon', which was a big track for Dexter Gordon.
Eddie Jefferson had a long & winding career path, and was tragically shot and killed by a bullet fired from a black Lincoln Continental as he was leaving a famous Detroit club called Baker's Keyboard Lounge on May 8th 1979. Apparently the shooter, a fellow dancer had some bad blood with Jefferson, but the corrupt Detroit cops never came up with enough evidence to convict the purported killer.
Interestingly, just two nights before his death, a crew filmed his show with Richie Cole in Chicago. It's out on DVD under the title, Eddie Jefferson: LIVE FROM THE JAZZ SHOWCASE
Here's Eddie from 1968's Body & Soul, his comeback LP where he gets down while revamping a Horace Silver tune by giving it some serious "vocalese" swagger.
I noticed that supposedly importing Absynthe is now legal here in the states...
In fact the first distiller in the US is operating just a few miles away on the little island hamlet of Alameda.
I haven't been in a big hurry to pound any, afterall, I've seen the holes this liquid chews in marble in all the old Absinthe houses in New Orleans...and god knows what it does to the soul. It contains "wormwood" extract, and that can't be very good for ya can it?
Although, my deranged distant relative Edgar Allen Poe swore by it, it appears he also seemed to be into syphilis as well...
Anyhow, I do enjoy this song that goes by the same name as that weird green elixr
In fact I have a video of the track I shot some years back at SF's Covered Wagon Saloon posted below the mp3 here...
Ladies & Gentlemen, hopefully they need no introduction, here's The Gits, from their Seafish Louisville live release recorded in their hometown of Seattle by Doug Pray's crew during the making of Hype...
Incidentally Lymbyc System, dialed in the remix above, not only are being repped by my pal Todd Cote's Leafy Green Booking empire, but have their own remix EP coming out in which other acts muss up & mangle their tunes from their "Love Your Abuser" CD...details here
Here's the track from the upcoming release where One AM Radio returns the favor of the flavor to the Lymbyc System
On this date in 1992, while America's teens came to grips with grunge, and the NY Giants celebrated their recent Super Bowl victory over the Buffalo Bills, in Burbank California, at St. Joseph’s Medical Center, a one legged, diabetic old black man passed away.
Very few people working in the hospital probably realized that the man, whose musical influence was still felt daily on rock radio, was one of the most important blues musicians, if not musician of any genre in the post World War II era.
Born one of 14 children in 1915 in poverty outside of rural Vicksburg, Mississippi, his life was a story of fights & skirmishes. A man who'd once been Joe Louis' sparring partner, and a 1937 Golden Gloves Boxing Champion. He also fought against the US Army and served a year in jail in 1941 for his conscientious objection to the draft in WWII. He was escorted by Military Police off the stage of Chicago's Pink Poodle Club.
But he prevailed after his release, parlayed his talents into some gigs, record deals, and eventually became a man who'd written and recorded so many songs, they numbered well over 500. By the time of his death, his publishing catalog rights alone were worth well over an estimated 10 million dollars.
That man was Willie Dixon...
He may have seemed a background figure during his peak productivity period of the 1950s & early 60's, merely backing up other performers, but Willie Dixon had a plan. He was always working, playing bass, writing and producing sessions, and through it all, he is considered the driving force in what's known as the "Chicago Blues sound", particularly that on Chess Records, and later for Cobra. Artists who relied on his skills for their successes include Muddy Waters, Magic Sam, Chuck Berry, Howling Wolf, Memphis Slim, Otis Rush, Little Walter, Buddy Guy and many others. While the Chess brothers may have owned the studio at 2120 S. Michigan ave in Chicago, one must wonder how thriving of an enterprise would it have been without Willie Dixon's creative genius?
His bass playing laid the foundations of so many blues & rock songs it's impossible to calculate the depths of his influence and his role as an architect of the blues & rock idioms. So many of his songs went on to become hits for other artists, including a slew of white arena rockers who used his compositions as a solid sound & foundation to further their careers.
In the 1970's, Dixon continued to tour & record, and aside from some occasional work with Chess & Columbia, mostly as a solo act for smaller labels like Yambo and Ovation. He also won the first of several legal fights in 1977 to see the return of copywrites, and publishing monies from his Chess years. In the 1980's he established the Blues Heaven scholarship foundation from his increased royalty funds. His final album "Hidden Charms" was released in 1988 on the indie Bug label, distributed by Capitol. He also released his autobiography, "I Am the Blues" at around that same time in 1989.
In his autobiography, Dixon recounts his saga of becoming one of the first professional blues song-writers to benefit from his craft materially. But he had to fight to do it.
His legacy is an important symbol of the injustices that early writers and recording artists were put through.
Seven years prior to his death, in 1985 he'd won acrimonious litigation & damages, and the right to writing credits, in a dispute that a certain British rock group named Led Zeppelin had stolen his musical ideas for a song they called "Whole Lotta Love" and appropriated them as their own.
Willie Dixon's victory over Zeppelin was just one in a war, and the legal battles did not even end with his death. After he passed, a former manager kept sniping claims at his estate, attempting to secure as much as 33% of Dixon's publishing royalties that he claimed he was due. Finally after many years of contentious court cases, the decision finally rested with Dixon's widow in 1995.
Willie Dixon, a child of the segregated south, eventually had a street named after him in Vicksburg MS, but it was posthumous, much like his election into the Rock n Roll Hall Of Fame Hall of Fame.
That doesn't mean he isn't slandered to this day, those who say he was a shrewd bully in the studio who'd steal the collaborative songwriting credits just for himself. Detractors include David Johansen of the NY Dolls who tells a story In the film New York Dolls - All Dolled Up, how Dixon used to offer meals to hungry songwriters newly in Chicago from the Delta in exchange for the rights to their songs. Johansen claims "Hoochie Coochie Man" was one such song and called Dixon "The Vampire of the Blues."
WC Handy was apparently guilty of the same thing, and at least Willie Dixon ddn't build up his reputation by simply sampling his way to the top like so many in the current crop of creeps on the charts...
He's a truly remarkable character... and dead too...
So let's not speak ill alrighty...
Vampire or not... he should be recalled long after "Vampire Weekend" fades from yer cranium...
We think about ye sir, and we salute ya Willie...up there in Blues Heaven.
When in Chicago, be sure to visit the Blues Heaven HQ at 2120 S. Michigan Ave, site of the Chess studios where Willie did some of his most famous studio work...and due to Willie's persistence, it is officially recognized as a protected Chicago Landmark.
Here's a tiny sample of music associated with Willie Dixon:
Before Willie Dixon had his Chess era, he was a member of the Big Three Trio, which formed in 1946.
The groups first big break was backing Rosetta Howard on a recording of her #8 charting hit Ebony Rhapsody in 1948. Even though the recording of this 78 is over 60 years old, you can hear Dixon's thumping bass fairly clearly.
This next & final track is actually a soundtrack excerpt from an out of print video I've posted below from a 1981 Willie Dixon show. In it, you'll hear some brief interview comments on the Blues by Mr. Dixon, and the song 29 Ways, plus an excerpt of I Think I Have The Blues with an elongated spoken intro from Willie.
For more videos of Willie in action, check out this collection:
Historic performances by the aristocracy of American blues, unseen for forty years and never before released, comprise the latest addition to Folk Blues DVDThe American Folk-Blues Festival DVD series. The British Tours 1963-1966.
In this archival footage Willie is seen as part of an all star band backing folks like Muddy Waters, Junior Wells, Sugar Pie DeSanto, Lonnie Johnson, Big Joe Williams, Howlin’ Wolf, Big Joe Turner. Playing alongside Willie are guys like Matt "Guitar" Murphy, Hubert Sumlin, Sunnyland Slim, Clifton James, Bill Stepney, Otis Rush, Little Brother Montgomery, Jack Myers, Fred Below, Cousin Joe Pleasant.
Here's an 18 track audio collection worth checking out featuring Willie Dixon in conjunction with many of his collaborators...
Stream Tommy's "Year Of The Monkey" album 
The Nightmare Scenario
"Point Blank Range In the World's Finest Shooting Gallery" (mp3)
Buy at iTunes Music Store
Buy at eMusic
Buy at Amazon
More On This Album
Kermit Ruffins with the Rebirth Brass Band
Kermit Ruffins
Stream from Rhapsody
Buy at Napster
, from São Paulo ...
