class="typelist-description">My aunt Pat Hite was diagnosed with terminal cancer in the spring of 2004. Being bedridden, she was missing the beautiful spring outside. I decided to create a photo album of pictures taken in our yard to send to her.
Pat passed away on June 1, much earlier than I expected. I was very disappointed that I was not able to complete the photo album and get it to her before she died. This photo album is a tribute to Pat, who loved country living, nature, and beauty.
Click on a thumbnail below to see the photo. The Title shows describes the subject and the long number is the date (20040401 is 2004-4-1, the first of April 2004)
Mayer covers a Hendrix song on this release. He also shows off his blues guitar prowess with a cover of Jimi Hendrix's Bold As Love.
A bold step for a young pop musician like Mayer?
I'm in my third record, he says. No one thinks I'm covering a song because I can't write one more.
Even if I don't have what it takes, which I probably don't, to cover a Jimi Hendrix song, I have at least proven myself to be true to the art and true to the message and true to the spirit. And I'm also coming at it as a singer-songwriter, because I believe Hendrix was a brilliant singer-songwriter and I'm defending that memory with 'Bold As Love.' And defending music as music.
There are no musical hallowed grounds if you walk into them pure of heart.
Here's an excerpt from Part 10 of 's essays on Progressive Rock with observations of Jimi Hendrix' explosive emergence in 1967.
.
..one of the most landmark rock LPs of all time, the Jimi Hendrix Experience’s Are You Experienced?
, featuring rock music’s #1 eternal mainman, the inimitable Hendrix. Having been a much-suppressed sideman for ensembles fronted by Curtis Knight, Little Richard, and others, Hendrix burst onto the late 60s scene like an atomic bomb.
In that maiden effort, Hendrix hit every archetype in the still-young rock canon, twisting them to suit his voracious appetite for innovation.
...
“Purple Haze” and “Are You Experienced?” were hedonistic penseés on the pleasures of drug consumption (in which he still stands as the guy to top, lo!, these several decades later), particularly LSD.
“Manic Depression” explored that notorious mental state without reverting to the sort of Kasenetz-Katz sugary avoidances so common then. “I Don’t Live Today” was an existentialist expostulation, but, all reading material to the side, what hit everyone between the ears was the guitarist’s ultra-spacy approach, best codified in “Third Stone from the Sun”.
This tune demonstrated most vividly the new mindset.
Throughout the disc, Hendrix had been embroidering bars and measures with florid exotica, throwing in instrumental asides and extrapolations, pointing to a rich new mindset for pushing back convention and expanding territory. It was as much an impulsive urge as a disciplined one. Jimi was one of those fanatics who lived for his instrument, practicing constantly, injecting his experiences - magnified by a vivid imagination - into gifted fingers.
...
It was obvious, no matter how you cut it, that he was not your average workaday humanoid, transcending norms in more ways than one. That pronounced sense of otherworldliness came pouring out in “Third Stone”, ineradicably putting the stamp of approval on forthcoming space and jam styles. Improv, variations, and extensions had been around, though not prolifically, but Hendrix set the mold all others had been reaching for and now people like Clapton and a legion of admirative players would jump in with wild abandon.
To be considered for the National Recording Registry, recordings must be at least 10 years old. The Library of Congress has been selecting recordings of historical significance every year since 2000.
Librarian Of Congress James Billington says these recordings reflect the nation's ever-changing cultural history. They represent the diversity, the humanity and the history that lies in our sound heritage. They are a cascading flood of mostly joyous sounds and certainly always creative spirits that flow into the American bloodstream, he says.
Legendary guitarist Jimi Hendrix recorded one of the most influential rock and roll albums of all time, Are You Experienced.
A touching collage of sights and sounds, remembering people who died in their prime. | Video of a mellow Hendrix.
Jimi appears to have aged about 20 years between 1967 and 2000.
Note: YouTube needs to increase their server / network capacity.
Mark S. Tucker demonstrates impressive wordsmith skills and a deep knowledge of music.
Here are some excerpts from part 3 of his essays on Progressive Rock / Progressive Thought from .
Foundation
1967 was the seminal year, the Moody Blues were the great Fathers of progrock (now the Godfathers), and it was already time to move on. The Moodies would do so on their very next LP, In Search of the Lost Chord, but it’s worthwhile to remain in the year a moment more and see what surrounded the founders.
As noted last installment, Pink Floyd issued their debut, The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, which started archly the moment it opened, in a song exceedingly durable, “Astronomy Domine”, featuring the peripatetic Syd Barrett, a small genius who staggered to the top of the pile for a moment or two before going under, an acid-damage case destined to be mythologized out of all proportion to the body of work left behind (especially when considering his wretched later solo LPs). With this release, the Floyd established space rock, soon to be a sub-division of Prog Inc., and contributed seminally to paisley pop, a mainstream offshoot heavily infused with psychedelic overtones, something The Soft Machine would add to next year.
Jimi Hendrix and the Experience cut their imperishable Are You Experienced, one of rock’s dozen most influential discs. Hendrix instantly became a superstar, setting the sky on fire with his unbelievably unorthodox guitar playing, backed by Noel Redding’s bass and Mitch Mitchell’s superb drumming. Jimi took the bluesrock formula and turned it inside out, drug impregnated and glowing like an unquenchable conflagration.
“Third Stone from the Sun” would prove to be as essential to space rock as Pink Floyd’s most galactic, while the rest of the LP established several other milestones. The tormented ubermaestro would not live long but his very short catalogue of records set a marker by which the entire genre paid attention. Once safely dead, the effect would prove itself, as his corpus of work would be vampirized to a staggering degree: Hendrix saw three LPs published while alive; at last count, the post mortem flood (label releases, bootlegs, anthologies, etc.
- up to but not including Janey Hendrix’s overwhelmingly providential wresting of the estate from greedheads) was over 350, or so some have averred. Like as not, they're right.
Mark S.
Tucker demonstrates impressive wordsmith skills and a deep knowledge of music. Here are some excerpts from part 2 of his essays on Progressive Rock / Progressive Thought from .
The recording studio, with its multitrack equipment, gave composers and players an, what was at the time, almost unlimited palette to paint with, in what Frank Zappa cogently recognized from the very beginning to be an artificial situation: few groups could ever hope to pull off live the wilder permutations and sonic massageabilities studios offered, though some would create mindbending performances attempting it.
Much debate is expended needlessly in an argument amongst progrock devotees as to whether Pink Floyd or even the Beatles beat the Moody Blues to the punch, but it‘s an ill-considered contention. Part of the problem is that the albums in question all released the same year, 1967. However, Days of Future Passed had a tidal wave influence on the slowly gathering form, fathering it, affecting many other styles, certainly far more than Pink Floyd.
The Beatles’ realm was never progrock and their work, though incredibly influential on mainstream rock, was not nearly so affective within prog in toto.
One very important detail: the first ‘art rockers’ were English almost unanimously, issuing from a British school system - elementary, secondary, and university - which had effectively pounded a far more serious classicalist music orientation into children than any other country.
Mark S.
Tucker demonstrates impressive wordsmith skills and a deep knowledge of music. Here are some excerpts from part 1 of his essays on Progressive Rock / Progressive Thought from .
What The Hell is Progrock?
...
progressive musics are not dead, have been fermenting for quite some time, and have spawned a rich bedrock of hidden vastness and complexity, a milieu that could very easily provide the much-needed exit from a mainstream morass currently stifling sonic art and intellectual thought. Moreover, a section of the progressive canon is actually an unrecognized realm of the classicalist purview: neoclassical music.
With the Moody Blues’ Days of Future Passed, the progressive rock genre was born as ‘art rock’, a lofty title meant to infer that other musics weren’t really art when compared to practitioners in such rarefied pastures as theirs.
That arrogance was a typical promo department ploy, one which critics fell tellingly uncritically into and stuck with from the moment the regrettable notice was set down in print. From there, ‘symphonic rock’ and ‘progressive rock’ followed. Of the three, ‘symphonic rock’ was the only non-judgmental byline but was also insufficient to cover what would follow, hence ‘progressive rock’, aka ‘progrock’, aka ‘prog’, became the label of choice.
It remains so to this day.
Robert Hilburn of the Los Angeles Times says these are 12 must-see DVDs.
• ``Elvis '56'' (Lightyear, $20).
The ideal would be seeing Elvis Presley's raw performances at Southern clubs and ballrooms before he became a national sensation with ``Heartbreak Hotel'' in 1956. But there is no comprehensive footage from that period, so this is the next best thing. This disc enables us to discover rock's greatest star in the same way most fans did -- via a series of television appearances.
Highlights: his debut on the Dorsey Brothers' ``Stage Show,'' where he was so excited that it looked as if he was going to explode. By the time the hip-swinging star got to ``The Ed Sullivan Show,'' network execs were so nervous about negative parent reaction that they showed him only from the waist up.
• ``The Four Complete Historic Ed Sullivan Shows Featuring the Beatles'' (SOFA Entertainment, $20).
Here, too, we relive a moment of discovery. The Beatles' renditions in 1964 and 1965 of ``All My Loving'' and ``I Want to Hold Your Hand'' have been shown in documentaries, but the fascinating thing about this two-disc package is the entire ``Sullivan'' telecast, including commercials.
• ``Don't Look Back'' (Docurama, $25).
This tops my list of rock movies because director D.A. Pennebaker takes us into Dylan's world, on stage and off, during a 1965 acoustic tour of England for a glimpse of someone who is at the absolute center of pop attention.
It is a penetrating, unsentimental portrait of a complex artist who was torn between reaching for fame and disdaining it.
I don't read and I don't agree with many of these selections. This statement – Almost one third of Q's 100 Greatest Albums Ever were recorded in the 1990s, making it the best ever decade for music – suggests that Q readers are much younger than I am.
To my ear, much of the popular music released in the 1990s is an embarrassment.
Link:
RADIOHEAD have topped a poll by the readers of Q Magazine to find the greatest album ever - narrowly beating themselves to the No1 spot.
The band's 1997 record OK Computer won the vote, with 1995's The Bends grabbing second position. Their more experimental follow-up Kid A also made the Top 10.
Almost one third of Q's 100 Greatest Albums Ever were recorded in the 1990s, making it the best ever decade for music.
Nineties record that charted highly include Nirvana's Nevermind, which came third, Oasis' fifth-placed Definitely Maybe and The Stone Roses' self-titled debut album at No6.
There was some success for older bands - The Beatles came fourth with Revolver - but landmark records like The Clash's London Calling and Beach Boys' Pet Sounds had to make do with the outer reaches of the Top 20.
Voters also sprang a surprise by ranking Madonna's 1998 album Ray Of Light at No33, ahead of classics by The Rolling Stones, Blur and Jimi Hendrix.
The newest record to make the list was Coldplay's A Rush Of Blood To The Head, which was released in 2002 and ranked 25th.
A recent exhibition at the Experience Music Project displayed many of the albums in Hendrix's collection at the time of his death. It's a wide mix of music but taken as a whole, Hendrix's distinct musical vision takes form.
1. I Want You (She's So Heavy), The Beatles, Abbey Road
2. Rainy Day Women, 12 35, Bob Dylan, on Blonde on Blonde
3.
A Hazy Shade Of Winter, Simon and Garfunkel, on Bookends
4. 2,000 Light Years From Home, The Rolling Stones, on Their Satanic Majesties Request
5. Cocaine Blues, Johnny Cash, on At Folsom Prison
6.
Seven and Seven Is, Love, on Da Capo
7. Plastic Factory, Captain Beefheart, on Safe As Milk
8. Darling Be Home Soon, Lovin' Spoonful, on You're A Big Boy Now
9.
Gustav Holst, The Planets, conducted by Adrian Boult, performed by The New Philharmonia
10. Pink Half Of The Drainpipe, Bonzo Dog Band, on The Doughnut In Granny's House
11. Sgt.
Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, The Beatles, on Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart's Club Band
12. In The Evening, The Sun Is Going Down, Lightnin' Hopkins, on Autobiography In Blues
13.
Lenny Bruce, Warning: Lenny Bruce Is Out Again
14. Crosscut Saw, Albert King, on Born Under A Bad Sign
15. All Along The Watchtower, Bob Dylan, on John Wesley Harding
Below are excerpts of 's review of the recently released DVD of Jimi's performance at Woodstock.
Adorned with a banner on its glossy color front cover that reads “Definitive Collection.” this comprehensive production actually lives up to its title. Startling in both its video and audio clarity, this double-DVD is nevertheless more than just another remaster.
In enlisting the aid of the original film editor and gaining the rights to an independent recordist’s shots of Jimi’s heralded performance (never before see due to official film crew lapse), the producers of this package—Janie Hendrix and John McDermott along with esteemed Warner Brothers film restoration specialist Bill Rush— provide every sight and sound to a presentation that, with positive revisionist hindsight, now is as courageous as it is striking.
Live at Woodstock, as full of color, vision and intensity as it is, may be the clearest illustration why Jimi Hendrix's death was such a tragedy.
I'm watching the intro to the Duke vs Texas basketball game. They are ranked number 1 and 2, respectively. As the commentators break to a commercial, they show some slow motion of a high-flying dunk shot, and the soundtrack is one of my all-time favorite songs, All Along the Watchtower – the Jimi Hendrix version. Very cool!!!
FYI: All Along the Watchtower was written by Bob Dylan, who now performs it using Jimi's arrangement. (Two geniuses combined.) For a great analysis of this song, see the post on the wonderful web site. Greed knows no bounds. But the story seems to end well. was the signer/songwriter/guitarist for (CCR).
Creedence was one of the biggest bands in the late 1960s and early '70s -- over the course of less than 4 years, they racked up 8 Gold albums and 10 Top Ten singles.
Somehow, Fogerty lost the rights to his own music -- the details are abit murky, but they ended up in the hands of CCR's label, Fantasy Records owner Saul Zaentz.
How bizarre is this: When Fogerty left Creedence and started recording solo, Zaentz sued him, claiming the songwriter had plagiarized himself.
Fogerty is back in the news because Fantasy records was recently purchased by Concord Music Group, which is owned in part by TV producer Norman Lear. The new owners and Fogerty buried the hatchet, and he released
Cross lectured on “The Cult of 27” at the Fine Arts Building, Nov. 10 at an event cosponsored by Student Activities and the Campus Bookstore.
The title of the lecture refers to the many musicians who died at the age of 27, including Cobain, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Robert Johnson and Jim Morrison, among others.
Anchorage was Cross’ last stop on a worldwide tour to promote his latest book, a biography of Hendrix titled “A Room Full of Mirrors.”
Cross said music can recover from being inundated with untalented bands and performers.
Source:
It was 8.30 in the morning of August 18, 1969. After three days and nights, 32 acts, 210 songs, two births and two deaths, Woodstock was grinding to a halt. Most of the legendary half a million had dispersed; the 40,000 who remained were bleary-eyed, sore-headed and seriouslyhungover.
There was only one way to get them going.
Half an hour into his set, Jimi Hendrix launched into his version of the Star Spangled Banner; for the next three minutes and forty-two seconds, time stopped at Woodstock. Upstate New York was 11,000 miles from Vietnam but one man and his guitar brought the war home, using every electronic aid — feedback, sustain, fuzzface — at his disposal and his own peerless skill to rewrite the American national anthem.
Even today, on an anodyne stereo and in the aseptic environs of your own home, you can hear the Vietnam War in this track: the screams of the bombers, the bombs and the bombed, the rush of blood as the United States tangled with yet another unequal foe.
Probably the single greatest moment of the sixties,’’ said New York Post critic Al Aronowitz. ‘‘You finally heard what that song is about, that you can love your country but hate your government.’’
Ironically, Hendrix didn’t intend it to be social or political comment but merely an exercise in musical creativity.
It was typical of the man, arguably the most creative and certainly the most enigmatic guitarist of all time.
| Sir re-tuned the old Epiphone guitar he played on the Beatles' Taxman and Paperback Writer for a new track on his latest album.
Producer Nigel Godrich insisted McCartney dig out some of his old instruments for his latest album, , and the rocker dusted-off one of his old favourites, even though he knew it was tough to keep the instrument in tune.
He says, (I remembered) George (Harrison) let me have a go (on it) for the solo (on Taxman) because I had an idea - it was the early days and I was trying to persuade George to do something...
feedback-y and crazy.
I like to play on it because it's oldish and a bit infirm. It won't stay in tune easily, like Jimi Hendrix's guitar didn't.
McCartney bought the guitar after watching Hendrix perform one night - and called out to pal to help him tune his axe.
He recalls, I went to the shop and said, 'What have you got that feeds back great?' That was normally a disadvantage in the old days.
MTV reviews the Live at Woodstock DVD Jimi below. I can't wait to see it.
Thirty-five years after his death, Jimi Hendrix is still The Man.
The howling winds of his talent — his breathtaking guitar technique, his eloquent melodic gift, his astral songcraft and his wrangling of raw feedback into a revolutionary new kind of music — still surge and roar through the four studio albums he managed to record in the course of a solo career that lasted little more than three years.
The iconic Hendrix performance, of course, is his bombs-away rendition of The Star Spangled Banner at the 1969 Woodstock Festival. But Hendrix played a full set at Woodstock; in the famous 1970 documentary of the event, The Star Spangled Banner is all that remains (with a bit of lyrical, minor-key improvisation edited on at the end).
What happened to the rest of it? Well, the missing footage turned up on an overseas-only DVD in 1999, and now it's finally been released here, in a two-disc set called Jimi Hendrix Live at Woodstock, with the music remixed into Dolby 5.1 Surround Sound.
What took so long? And has it been worth the wait? Let's see.
Jimi Hendrix took his first footsteps on British soil on Saturday, September 24th, 1966, arriving at Heathrow at nine in the morning. As he walked off the plane, he carried a small bag that contained a change of clothes, his pink plastic hair curlers and a jar of Valderma cream for the acne that still marred his twenty-three-year-old face. These few items, along with his precious guitar, were all he owned.
Escorting Jimi was Chas Chandler, formerly the bassist for the Animals, who was launching himself as a manager. Chandler had come upon Jimi in a Greenwich Village club and spilled a milkshake on himself, convinced that Jimi was his ticket to riches. Jimi was penniless at the time, having spent the previous three years as a backup musician on the chitlin circuit. Though Jimi had been born in Seattle, and didn't even begin to play guitar until he was fifteen, by the time Chandler met him he had already toured the nation with countless R B combos, including Little Richard and the Isley Brothers. In Greenwich Village, fueled by both LSD and Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, Jimi was attempting to re-create himself as a solo act.
He was playing to twenty teenagers when Chandler arrived, yet Jimi still only agreed to follow him to England if he promised to introduce him to Eric Clapton.
Once in England, Chandler immediately set out to turn Jimi into a star. On the way from the airport, they stopped by the house of bandleader Zoot Money.
Jimi attempted to play his Stratocaster through Money's stereo, and when that failed, he grabbed an acoustic guitar and began to wail. Andy Summers, who a dozen years later would help form the Police, lived in the basement and heard the commotion. When he came upstairs to join the informal party and found himself mesmerized by how Jimi's huge hands seemed at one with the instrument's neck, he became the first of Britain's guitar players to be awed by Jimi's phenomenal skill.
I don't know enough about music and music history to see the parallels. But it could create some interesting conversations.
In their previous lives, Sir Paul was Scarlatti, Lennon J.
S. Bach, Sting Schubert and Hendrix Bartok. Thus postulates the Barbary Coast Guitar Duo.
According to them, it wasn't the psychedelic drugs that influenced what possibly are the most brilliant and well-crafted songs ever written in modern times. No, it's the result of reincarnation of some of the greatest composers in music history says matter-of-factly Florante Aguilar, one half of the guitar duo. It was their inner Stravinsky pounding away .
The Beatles' strict observance of 17th century counterpoint? Uncanny. Their effective use of voice leading and text painting?
Master-like. Sting's gift for naturally flowing melodies are straight out of a Schubert lieder. And what to make of Hendrix's liberal use of ancient scales like pentatonic and mixolydian?
You can't tell us that was independently arrived at by a man from the 20th century.
Call it years of over-education at the conservatory but this dynamic duo's tongue-in-cheek approach sets out to prove the theory with the release of their CD Suites for 2 Guitars: The Music of Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix and The Police. A collection of heart-stopping guitar duo re-interpretation of classic rock songs.
The Barbary Coast Guitar Duo (Florante Aguilar and Michael Walsh) have been wowing audience in the Bay Area and beyond for over 10 years. Their fiery interpretations, crisp ensemble playing, and engaging stage presence promise to blow the roof off this joint . The duo's concept of the recording stems simply from their desire to play the music they love and grew up with.
We owe our existence as musicians in equal parts to Andres Segovia and Jimi Hendrix .
If you don't know the name, Grace Slick was a lead singer for the band in the late 1960s. FYI:
White Rabbit was a song about doing drugs.
If you want to hear her at her best, find the song Somebody to Love and give it a listen. She really rocked in her prime.
Psychedelic '60s rock icon Grace Slick will tell you herself: She's a fat, white-haired woman who's too old to make music.
To watch people flap their wrinkles around with rock 'n' roll songs really gags me, she says. I stopped when I was 50, and that's too late.
Q: What is the significance of White Rabbit, 40 years ago and today?
A: Well, it's actually not well done in the sense that what I had in mind is not obvious in the song. Our parents would sit there, and they'd have a glass of Scotch or whatever in their hand, and they'd ask us, Why do you take all these drugs? What I was trying to say in the song was to remind the parents of the books they read to us when we were very young.
Last week I recorded The Howlin' Wolf Story on our DVR from the Encore Drama channel. Scooter and I watched it last night – I highly recommend it to anyone who loves blues music.
Chester Burnett, aka Howlin' Wolf, was a big man with a kind heart who made the improbable journey from picking cotton on the Delta as a boy to a blues superstar in Chicago acclaimed by the Rolling Stones and Eric Claption.
Unlike many of his peers, he was a dedicated family man who managed his earnings well. His fame didn't inflate his ego – he went back to school in his 50's to learn to read and write.
Click on this link to hear , one of his biggest hits.
There's history in a book and then there's living history.
University of Montana students in a class on the history of rock 'n' roll got a little of the latter Monday morning when Bitterroot Valley/San Francisco rocker Huey Lewis came to town.
Lewis, who had a string of major hits in the mid-1980s, lived and breathed rock 'n' roll in the 1960s, growing up in San Francisco and going to shows at the Fillmore, where he saw Cream, the Jefferson Airplane, Quicksilver Messenger Service, the Grateful Dead.
From : Legendary rocker JIMI HENDRIX once filled in for ENGELBERT HUMPERDINCK's unwell guitarist - but hid behind the stage curtains so the audience wouldn't realise who was playing.
The late PURPLE HAZE star was touring Britain with Humperdinck in the 1960s when the unnamed musician fell ill just before show time.
And, while Hendrix's unparalleled musical prowess saved the day, his identity couldn't be revealed for fear of distracting the audience away from Humperdinck's performance.
Indian Humperdinck - real name ARNOLD GEORGE DORSEY - says, That was my first UK tour and CAT STEVENS was also on the bill.
He saved my bacon once when my guitarist fell ill just before the show was due to start. 'Don't worry,' he said, 'I'll play for you.
I told him he couldn't just walk on stage with me - he was much too big a star.
So he played behind the curtain. It sounded as though I had three guitarists instead of one that night.
Yesterday, I wanted to hear the Mamas and Papas classic song as interpreted by George Benson ( CD). When it started playing on my CD player, it skipped badly. So I washed the CD, hoping that it was dirty.
It still skipped.
I put the CD in my PC's CD tray and burned a copy. I put the copy in my CD player and it sounded great — not a skip throughout.
The music, recorded in 1971, still sounds great. Here's are review from the :
In the MGM vs Grokster case, the fewer than 50 companies who control less than 1 pct of all digital information are trying to take control of innovation in the technology industry and pry it away from the rest of us.
Everything our imagination creates and touches that can be made digital is at risk if Grokster loses.
What innovations will be condemned by law before they have a chance to come to market because they could have an impact on Hollywood and the music industry ? We have no idea and that is a very scary prospect.
Which brings me back to 1980.
The last 25 years have seen unimaginable increases in productivity, creativity, economic development and American pride because amazing people have been able to take amazing ideas and develop them without fear. That fearlessness ends if Grokster loses and the content industry is able is to take on the role of technology gatekeeper.
Jimi was 27 when he died in 1970.
He would have been 16 in 1959. He toured with Ike Turner in the 1950's?
Big News Network.com Wednesday 15th December, 2004
Legendary rocker Ike Turner has lost two heirloom guitars, apparently to theft, Celebrity Justice reported Tuesday.
Turner, 73, was performing at an inner city Los Angeles nightclub two weeks ago when the two guitars went missing.
One of them used to belong to Jimi Hendrix, who had played in Ike's band in the 1950s.
1: ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER - JIMI HENDRIX EXPERIENCE, 1968, original - BOB DYLAN, 1967
2: YOU WERE ALWAYS ON MY MIND - PET SHOP BOYS, 1987, original - ELVIS PRESLEY, 1972
3: MY WAY - SID VICIOUS, 1979, original - FRANK SINATRA, 1969 (after Paul Anka, 1969)
4: HALLELUJAH - JEFF BUCKLEY, 1993, original - LEONARD COHEN, 1984
5: RESPECT - ARETHA FRANKLIN, 1967, original - OTIS REDDING, 1965.
Music legend JIMI HENDRIX's version of BOB DYLAN's hit ALL ALONG THE WATCHTOWER has been named the best ever song cover.
Music critics at British newspaper the DAILY TELEGRAPH said the song qualified as the best reworking because it was well established by one Dylan and was then given a new lease of life by Hendrix.
This article about Bob Dylan's big break illustrates how well the music business recognizes talent.
Shaun Considine tells the saga of Bob Dylan's Like A Rolling Stone, which was just named greatest rock 'n' roll song of all time by Rolling Stone magazine. He was co-ordinator of new releases at Columbia Records when song was recorded in 1965.
Considine took the single to hot new disco in Manhattan and had it played there. A DJ at one radio station and music programmer at another heard song and rest is history.
Note: I went to elementary and high school with John. We've stayed in contact over the years.
My ride pulls up to the hotel in Denver and I notice a young African-American man standing next to his drums. He waits for a cab, ready to leave.
I get out, carry my drums toward the entrance behind him. We eye each other, knowing what's happened though neither of us speaks. I walk closer and he gives me a thin smile that telegraphs gloom, frustration, and defeat.
"Good luck, man" he says. I hope you come out better than I did."
This was my introduction, 30 years ago, to working for Ray Charles.
The musician I was about to replace had been chewed up and spat out by a music legend whose taste for perfection thrilled the world but challenged his musicians to his last days. Ray Charles was a genius who knew exactly what he wanted and demanded it from everyone around him. 
I played drums for Ray in 1974 and '75, doing recording sessions, TV.
I was sometimes summoned to fill in for his regular drummer, in addition to hiring the orchestras for some of his symphony concerts. I'm not really sure why Ray and I seemed to hit it off so well. I think it may have something to do with his left foot.
My perspective on Ray Charles comes from the best seat in the house – the drum throne. From there I saw it all: the glare of the lights, the band all around, the eager audience, and the backside of the Raelets. But most important of all, I had to see Ray's left foot.
"I don't change !" sayeth Brother Ray. The declaration applies to both his musical idiosyncrasies and his lifestyle.
And it's the first commandment you learn on the job. For the drummer, it means Ray always expected you to watch his feet. When that leather soul hit the floor, you're talking ground zero.
The downbeat and the right beat. The tempo and the dynamics. The beginning, middle, and end of RC's musical expectations were conducted by his left foot.
And for drummers, that's where the trouble starts.
From day one, all drummers learn that tempo is their responsibility. All musicians are expected to play with good rhythm, but an experienced drummer's inner clock has been honed to a fine degree of precision, and instead of worrying about melody and harmony, his game is all about the time keeping – every millisecond of fast to slow.
Even though all musicians must watch the conductor, any drummer worth his salt knows that the band will have one eye on the conductor, one on the music, and at least one ear for him. And Ray Charles knew that better than anybody.
"Look man, you go with me and the band will follow," he once said to me.
"As long as you and I are playin' together, that's what matters – they have to go with us ! "
And so we're back to that left foot. When he set up, the drummer had to make sure he could see Ray's feet.
Ray couldn't watch a conductor, and he wasn't able to look into the eyes of his musicians to send a message. Instead, Ray's feet were his stomp of approval. His left foot effectively served as his conducting baton.
He knew that if the drummer is dancing right along with those feet, all is right with the world. And drummers knew if they were not precisely with his feet, especially the "downbeat" left foot, they were entering a musicians' hell.
Ray Charles came from the real "old school", where you show what you're made of on the bandstand.
There, your experience and knowledge, your art, comes out for all to judge, and you could count on veteran musicians like Ray to write a report card as soon as you handed in your lessons. Who have you studied ? How well do you know the music of Charlie Parker, Nat King Cole, Count Basie, Big Boy Crudup, Billie Holiday, Hank Snow, Bach and Beethoven ?
Ray knew this music intimately, and he didn't waste any time. With Ray's generation of jazz musicians, every time you got on a stage it was a contest to see who could cut it and who couldn't. There was no forgiving or forgetting.
Ray's Rules demanded that a musician had to play with his tempo and dynamics, plus be able to read music and improvise. You had to be comfortable with rock, pop, blues, country, and most importantly, jazz.
And so, there was a price to pay if you hit a wrong note, played too loudly, or,if you're the drummer, failed to attach your mind and soul to his feet.
The punishment was immediate, usually delivered with a quick upper body turn in a burst of fury. He combined hot directives with a look that burned a hole through you and made you freeze at the same time. If the drummer listened to his own clock instead of watching those Size 10's.
.. Look out!
That's why drumming for Ray was considered to be a hazardous endeavor. And since Ray had to know whether you were watching him, he was known to speed up or slow down, just to make sure you were with him.
On Ray's stage, it had to be played his way.
During a concert one spring night in Germany in 1975, I was feeling a bit cocky and decided to change the beat on one of Ray's best known hits,"What'd I Say". Not a good idea. This drum beat is very important in the history of R B and rock 'n roll.
Its New Orleans funkiness and distinct Latin cymbal technique can make a Baptist dance on the tables. So when I attempted to leave my mark on this Rock of Gibralter, Ray recoiled like he had been shot in the back, immediately firing some well-worn words in my direction that everyone heard. I jumped back on track, but it was too late.
The song ended the set, and also, I feared, my career with Ray. The road manager came over and said RC wanted me in his dressing room right now. When I walked in, Ray was hot.
"How could you do that, son ? Don't you know that beat is written in stone?" It can't be played any other way!
You ever do that again, and you'll be on the side of the road! "
Officially on probation, I had to earn back his trust. There came a testing point in France.
We were rehearsing a new piece of music that Ray had never heard before, and that's when you could appreciate his musical genius, and subsequently, his memory. After the band played the arrangement a couple of times, RC started to put his signature on it.
"John, when we get to the chorus, I want you to play, 'Boom, bop - bop, boom," he said to me.
In drummers' terminology, this translates to bass drum, snare drum, snare drum, bass drum. In Ray's terms, it becomes left foot stomp, knee slap, knee slap, left foot stomp.
Okay, I've got it.
I play it, and Ray grins out, "That's it, honey, just like that, every time! "
That night I fully expected Ray to put this new piece of music in the concert while it was fresh in the mind, but it didn't happen. Not the next night, or the next.
Anyone who knew Ray will tell you that he was an excellent chess player, and so about two weeks later, Ray made his move and called up the song. As the band cautiously dipped its big toe into these unfamiliar waters, Ray was doing back flips off the high board. Just before we got to the chorus, Ray interrupted his physical undulations, held perfectly still, and cocked his left ear towards me.
"Boom, bop - bop, boom," shout the drums.
Ray returned to his swaying and playing, satisfied that I was paying attention. No name calling, no expressions of disgust, no expletives.
Back to business as usual, lesson learned.
I loved nearly every moment of my time with Ray. If you played by his rules, you were allowed to take part in his genius, a gift beyond words that I will always treasure.
But in 1975, I realized the only way I could regain my control as a drummer was to leave Ray. I simply had to get back to my inner clock and find my own path. I knew he could understand.
Fast forward to 1996. I was called to come back into his world to play a concert in Hartford, Connecticut, and I was anxious about how it was going to go. The last time I had played with Ray he was 44.
He, already a legend. Me, fresh out of the highly respected jazz department of North Texas State University, learning the difference between school and "Ray's School".
This time around, I was a little smarter, a bit more confident.
A whole lot more appreciative of the talents of Ray Charles. He had a head of gray hair, the high notes were a little tougher to hit, but I was sure that everything else was exactly the same.I decided to let RC know that I knew this as soon as I could.
In the hour just before the concert, Ray sent word for me to come to his dressing room. He received me with that famous, broad smile mixed with laughter and lots of handshaking, touching, and nudging. We quickly rekindled our memories of the past that made us laugh and appreciate how long it had been since we had played together, and then I saw an opportunity.
"Well Ray, you know, some things never change."
"Amen," intoned Brother Ray, with an expression that told me he knew that I knew: Watch his left foot. Play his music the way it has always been played.
My name was announced, I walked out to center stage and bowed to the audience, then took my place in the midst of a sixty piece orchestra, behind the drums, behind where RC would be seated. As I sat down on my drum throne, I looked in front of me to the spot where Ray's left foot would be dancing. My heart skipped a beat.
There perched an alto saxophone on its stand, innocently interrupting my view of Ray's exclamation point. Ray occasionally played sax on a number, but I didn't expect it to be there of all places. Twenty-one years previous, I would have panicked and called for a stagehand to move it.
This time I stopped to think about it.
I realized that it's not really about seeing that foot hit the floor. It has more to do with knowing where it's coming from.
This time around, I was willing to gamble that I was a better musician. That I could play with Ray rather than react like a heat seeking missile. One thing was for sure, it wouldn't take long to find out – one song would do it.
"Ladies and Gentlemen, Raaaaay Charles ! "
The band hits the intro, the crowd goes wild, and as soon as Brother Ray is seated behind the piano, he absorbs every bit of attention that this concert hall can offer. The first song goes by without a hitch.
We settle into the second one and my anxiousness begins to fade. By the time we get to "Georgia..
.", the only thing on my mind is the beauty of the moment; how wonderful it is to be able to go back, and be in the present, all at the same time.
Ray's way was uncompromising, maybe because he loved the music more than anything.
His blindness brought focus to his control: first, he listened to his inner voice; then, he sang out for himself, played piano for all, and talked to the drummer by foot.
During his last few months I heard that he was very ill, and the news of his death made me think Ray had put his foot down for the last time. I was wrong.
In his final interview, with David Ritz in Rolling Stone, Ray addressed his own mortality by removing his suit of armor and acknowledging the price of his purpose.
"..
.I hurt some musicians. .
...
Looking for everything to be perfect. ..
.You know me, man. I'm always [expletive] with the drummers.
If they don't get my time, I pitch a bitch. Treat them bad..
.I know I hurt people. .
..Tell them I have feelings, too.
I can feel their feelings, man. Tell them I appreciate them. .
...
.just tell them Brother Ray loves them."
He started crying.
Ray never played encores. He would never pretend at the end. Yet for me, his apology to the drummers, with whom he constantly jousted, served as the encore that he reserved only for those who saw and heard everything he did - his musicians.
But had he recovered, his apology doesn’t mean that he would have done anything differently. The same heart that couldn’t lie about the music, would have always beat at a tempo that would challenge and inspire us all. My time with Ray, from fast to slow, will always be with me.
Some things do not change, and Ray Charles' left foot would never let you forget it.
John Bryant is a music producer, drummer, and co-owner of a music production company, in Dallas, Texas. He is also a member of D'Drum, a world music percussion group.
When I first heard the song Layla, I was stunned by its beauty and power. Layla and Jimi's All Along the Watchtower still give me chills, three decades after they were released. Note: Guitar genius Duane Allman, who was killed in a motorcycle accident soon after Layla was recorded, teamed with Eric Clapton and his band to produce this masterpiece.
Layla, recorded by Derek and the Dominos, written by Eric Clapton and Jim Gordon, was originally released in 1970.
The effect is majestic, and unmatched in all of rock. The intensity of the singer's emotions is not resolved lyrically, but musically. It is as if the storm suddenly ends and gives way to a wet, green world overarched by a luminous rainbow. The singer's desperate situation seems to give way to a beautiful vision of a union with his loved one, the pair walking hand-in-hand through the forest alone, freed from other entangling relationships. The raw intensity of the song's first half is almost a mirror image of the haunting, gentle lyricism of it's second half.
After his show Sunday at HiFi Buys Amphitheatre, singer-songwriter (and blues enthusiast) John Mayer dropped by Smith's Olde Bar in Midtown to play a blistering hour-long set featuring material by B.B. King, Buddy Guy and Jimi Hendrix.
Mayer isn't exactly famous for his blues background, but people who know him from his days in Atlanta are always testifying about his outrageous guitar chops. At Smith's, those chops were on full display, as Mayer --- wearing one of his own T-shirts on stage, and backed by bassist David LaBruyere and drummer JJ Johnson --- shredded song after song. By the end of the set, everyone who ever compared Mayer with James Taylor looked terribly imperceptive; this guy is Stevie Ray Vaughan in a folkie's clothing.
If that strikes you as hard to believe, well, you shoulda been there.
Mayer's late-night show was billed in advance on the club's Web site as Midnight Blues Benefit Show, which was true enough (since the show began at 12:30 a.m.
and benefited Mayer's Back To You Fund) but which wasn't exactly helpful to the general public.
In any case, every scenester and their booking agent found out about it, and the place was packed.
Link
Jimi Hendrix is one of those extraordinary hubs of music where everybody lands at some point.
Every musician passes through Hendrix International Airport eventually -- whether you're a Black Sabbath fan or an Elmore James fan; whether you like Hanson or the Grateful Dead. He is the common denominator of every style of contemporary music. There were so many sides to his playing.
Was he a bluesman? Listen to "Voodoo Chile" and you'll hear some of the eeriest blues you can find. Was he a rock musician?
He used volume as a device. That's rock. Was he a sensitive singer-songwriter?
In "Bold As Love," he sings, "My yellow in this case is not so mellow/In fact I'm trying to say it's frightened like me" -- that is a man who knows the shape of his heart
So often, he's portrayed as a loud, psychedelic rock star lighting his guitar on fire. But when I think of Hendrix, I think of some of the most placid, lovely guitar sounds on songs like "One Rainy Wish," "Little Wing" and "Drifting." "Little Wing" is painfully short and painfully beautiful.
It's like your grandfather coming back from the dead and hanging out with you for a minute and a half and then going away. It's perfect, then it's gone.
But when I listen to Hendrix, I just hear a man, and that's when it's most beautiful -- when you remember that another human being was capable of what he achieved.
I will always try to attain that kind of control on the guitar: Hendrix's playing was sloppy, but it was controlled. Who I am as a guitarist is defined by my failure to become Jimi Hendrix. And that's who a lot of people have become.
However far you stop on your climb to be like him, that's who you are.
To say that we are confronting change on an unprecedented scale cannot even begin to describe the disruptions facing us in the coming decade. From the continued growth and pervasiveness of the Internet and the resulting changes in consumer attitudes and expectations towards business and government to the constant introduction of new innovations and technologies across countless industries we are living through one of the most momentous times in the last century.
Why do I consider that entrepreneurship is so vital to be included separately here? Because an entrepreneur can never start a venture with a business plan premised on threats. He/she will always have to start a business in the pursuit of new opportunities as no investor will be prepared to fund them otherwise.
So what's so important about having entrepreneurs pursuing these opportunities? Well there's one simple prevailing fact about entrepreneurs: in order to succeed they know that they must create something that is somewhat or significantly better than what is currently available because customers will otherwise have absolutely no reason to flock to their products or services. Entrepreneurs are the ones who risk to dream the future, the ones who must have the motivation and energy to make it work because there isn't a nice 'cushion' to sustain them if things don't work out - they have to make it work.
Naturally not all entrepreneurs will approach their business in this spirit and may also fall in the 'play to play' category but the odds are that most will.
In times of rapid change in particular, a country driven by entrepreneurs pursuing opportunities will over time completely outdistance its competitors.
I had never owned any of Bruce Springsteen's music collections until recently.
I received The Essential Bruce Springsteen for Christmas — three CDs of Bruce's best.
I always liked his hits. As I listened to these songs, I was transported back to Graduate Happy Hour at the University of Virgina in the late 1970's.
Graduate Happy Hour was supposed to be a gathering of graduates students, relaxing with a few beers, but it was really a lively outdoor party on Friday afternoons. Bruce's songs Rosalita and Born To Run take me right back to that grassy area where draft beer was 25 cents and the parade of pretty undergraduate girls got plenty of attention. It was a great way to end the week.
I always felt like I had inside information on Ray Charles from the stories that childhood friend John Bryant told. Ray was a true American success story. Where else could a blind boy from rural poverty rise to a multi-millionaire musical force by combining great talent with hard work?
The plane was about 30,000 feet in the air when John Bryant leaned up in his seat and peered in the cockpit. And there sat his pilot -- Ray Charles.
It sounds like the punchline to a tasteless joke, but this was no joke to Bryant. Back in 1975, it was just another concert date to the then-23-year-old drummer and the blind pianist.
"Ray was always good with machines," Bryant said nearly 30 years later, from his music studio in Dallas, Texas. Bryant recalled how Charles often would direct his private jet in the air while licensed pilots would direct the musician.
Bryant, a Martinsville native, still chuckles at the memory, one of hundreds he has of his former boss who died Thursday at the age of 73.
Charles, the raspy-voiced soul icon behind such staples as "Hit the Road, Jack," "Georgia on my Mind," and "What'd I Say," died of complications from liver disease.
This description of the song written by Bob Dylan, as recorded by Jimi Hendrix, comes from the great website.
Reason To Rock, a Web Book by Herb Bowie, is subtitled Rock Music As Art Form. Herb Bowie, who writes with style and insight, shares his love for his favorite rock recordings through a series of essays on artists, albums, and tracks. Below he analyzes the synergy of a master song writer and a musical genius embodied in four minutes of amazing music.
Let's start by looking at the lyrics. This song came off of Bob Dylan's John Wesley Harding album, which marked a radical departure from his previous recordings. His older compositions often had many more than the standard three verses of popular songs — “Positively Fourth Street” boasted twelve.
His lyrics had often been pointed and sharply critical. His use of language was unusual, and called attention to itself by juxtaposing words and images not usually associated with each other. In contrast, “All Along The Watchtower” is spare and restrained.
The song consists of only three verses, with no chorus. The language is simple. Yet the three verses are packed with meaning and drama.
Let's see how it starts.
Keywords: Bob Dylan, Guitar Duo, Pink Floyd, John Bryant, Eric Clapton, Rolling Stone, Progressive Thought, Rolling Stones, Star Spangled, Club Band
News RSS