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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/arts/music/pauline-oliveros-composer-who-championed-deep-listening-dies-at-84.html?_r=0
 
Pauline Oliveros, Composer Who Championed ‘Deep Listening,’ Dies at 84
By STEVE SMITH NOV. 27, 2016
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Photo

 
Pauline Oliveros in 2015. Taking up the accordion as her principal instrument, she also learned to play violin, piano, French horn and tuba.
Credit
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Pauline Oliveros, a composer whose life’s work aspired to enhance sensory perception through what she called “deep listening,” died on Thursday at her home in Kingston, N.Y. She was 84.
Her death was confirmed by her spouse, Carole Ione Lewis, a writer and performance artist known as Ione.
Early in her career in the 1960s, Ms. Oliveros avidly adopted cutting-edge technologies, working with magnetic tape and prototype synthesizers at the San Francisco Tape Music Center.
Already active as an improviser, she approached electronic music with a performer’s instincts; to make “Bye Bye Butterfly” (1965), which John Rockwell, The New York Times music critic, called “one of the most beautiful pieces of electronic music to emerge from the 60s,” she manipulated a recording of Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly” on a turntable, augmenting its sounds with oscillators and tape delay.
The resulting piece, Ms. Oliveros wrote, “bids farewell not only to the music of the 19th century but also to the system of polite morality of that age and its attendant institutionalized oppression of the female sex.”
Gender inequality would be a theme that she addressed repeatedly and tenaciously. An essay she wrote for The Times in 1970 started with a provocative question – “Why have there been no ‘great’ women composers?” – and then enumerated reasons, including gender bias and societal expectations of domestic compliancy.
Ms. Oliveros said in a 2012 Times profile that in 1971, after a period of intense introspection prompted by the Vietnam War, she changed creative course, eventually producing “Sonic Meditations,” a set of 25 text-based instructions meant to provoke thoughtful, creative responses.
“Native,” the most commonly cited example, is also the most succinct: “Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.”
Embedded within that poetic instruction and the other meditations was a substantial proposition: a total inclusivity, meant to free music from elite specialists and open it up to everyone, regardless of status, experience, or ability.
“All societies admit the power of music or sound. Attempts to control what is heard in the community are universal,” Ms. Oliveros wrote in a preface to the meditations. “Sonic Meditations are an attempt to return the control of sound to the individual alone, and within groups especially for humanitarian purposes; specifically healing.”
Ms. Oliveros never quit composing, but from the 1970s favored improvisation, adapted elements of ceremonies and rituals encountered in her studies of Native American lore and Eastern religion, and conducted meditative retreats to share her artistic discipline.
One more turning point came in 1988, when Ms. Oliveros and two colleagues — the trombonist, didgeridoo player and composer Stuart Dempster and the vocalist and composer Panaiotis — descended into an extraordinarily resonant disused cistern in Port Townsend, Wash. Their drone-based improvisations were recorded, and selections issued on CD under the title “Deep Listening” in 1989.
Beyond a self-evident pun referring to music played 14 feet underground, “Deep Listening” signified Ms. Oliveros’s emerging aural discipline: a practice that compelled listening not just to the conventional details of a given musical performance — melody, harmony, rhythm, intonation — but also to sounds surrounding that performance, including acoustic space and extra-musical noise.
The process lent its name to a working ensemble, Deep Listening Band, for much of its duration a trio comprising Ms. Oliveros, Mr. Dempster and the keyboardist and composer David Gamper, who died in 2011. Over time, the Deep Listening banner would extend to cover retreats, workshops and lectures in which Ms. Oliveros shared her artistic discipline.
In 2005 Ms. Oliveros rechristened her Pauline Oliveros Foundation the Deep Listening Institute, defining as its mission “creative innovation across boundaries and across abilities, among artists and audience, musicians and nonmusicians, healers and the physically or cognitively challenged, and children of all ages.”
Among other projects, the institute supported the design of software that would allow children with severe physical or cognitive disabilities to improvise music. In 2014, the institute merged with the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.
In her final decades Ms. Oliveros formed close bonds with groups like the International Contemporary Ensemble, which brought her work closer to the mainstream canon with performances at Lincoln Center, Miller Theater at Columbia University and elsewhere.
“I’m not dismissive of classical music and the Western canon,” Ms. Oliveros said in 2012. “It’s simply that I can’t be bound by it. I’ve been jumping out of categories all my life.”
Pauline Oliveros was born on May 30, 1932, in Houston to John Oliveros and Edith Gutierrez. Her childhood was accompanied by the sounds of piano lessons taught by her mother and grandmother, bird song and buzzing cicadas, and the curious special effects used on favorite radio serials like “Buck Rogers” and “The Shadow.”
Taking up the accordion as her principal instrument, she also learned to play violin, piano, French horn and tuba.
At 20 Ms. Oliveros moved to California in search of a compositional mentor. She found one in Robert Erickson, a prominent composer, who as the music director of KPFA-FM, a Berkeley radio station, introduced Bay Area listeners to the latest trends in European avant-garde composition.
She explored free improvisation with colleagues like the composer Terry Riley and the bassist and koto player Loren Rush in the late 1950s, and joined Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick at the trailblazing San Francisco Tape Music Center, founded in 1962.
When the center was absorbed by Mills College in 1966, Ms. Oliveros served for a year as its director. In 1967 she joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego, where she taught until 1981. From 2001 she served as distinguished research professor of music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her honors include a John Cage Award from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts.
In addition to her spouse, Ms. Oliveros is survived by three stepchildren, Alessandro Bovoso, Nico Bovoso and Antonio Bovoso; a brother, John Oliveros, and eight grandchildren.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/27/arts/music/pauline-oliveros-composer-who-championed-deep-listening-dies-at-84.html?_r=0
 
Pauline Oliveros, Composer Who Championed ‘Deep Listening,’ Dies at 84
By STEVE SMITH NOV. 27, 2016
close shareTools close story-meta-footer
close story-meta
Photo

 
Pauline Oliveros in 2015. Taking up the accordion as her principal instrument, she also learned to play violin, piano, French horn and tuba.
Credit
Hiroko Masuike/The New York Times
Pauline Oliveros, a composer whose life’s work aspired to enhance sensory perception through what she called “deep listening,” died on Thursday at her home in Kingston, N.Y. She was 84.
Her death was confirmed by her spouse, Carole Ione Lewis, a writer and performance artist known as Ione.
Early in her career in the 1960s, Ms. Oliveros avidly adopted cutting-edge technologies, working with magnetic tape and prototype synthesizers at the San Francisco Tape Music Center.
Already active as an improviser, she approached electronic music with a performer’s instincts; to make “Bye Bye Butterfly” (1965), which John Rockwell, The New York Times music critic, called “one of the most beautiful pieces of electronic music to emerge from the 60s,” she manipulated a recording of Puccini’s opera “Madama Butterfly” on a turntable, augmenting its sounds with oscillators and tape delay.
The resulting piece, Ms. Oliveros wrote, “bids farewell not only to the music of the 19th century but also to the system of polite morality of that age and its attendant institutionalized oppression of the female sex.”
Gender inequality would be a theme that she addressed repeatedly and tenaciously. An essay she wrote for The Times in 1970 started with a provocative question – “Why have there been no ‘great’ women composers?” – and then enumerated reasons, including gender bias and societal expectations of domestic compliancy.
Ms. Oliveros said in a 2012 Times profile that in 1971, after a period of intense introspection prompted by the Vietnam War, she changed creative course, eventually producing “Sonic Meditations,” a set of 25 text-based instructions meant to provoke thoughtful, creative responses.
“Native,” the most commonly cited example, is also the most succinct: “Take a walk at night. Walk so silently that the bottoms of your feet become ears.”
Embedded within that poetic instruction and the other meditations was a substantial proposition: a total inclusivity, meant to free music from elite specialists and open it up to everyone, regardless of status, experience, or ability.
“All societies admit the power of music or sound. Attempts to control what is heard in the community are universal,” Ms. Oliveros wrote in a preface to the meditations. “Sonic Meditations are an attempt to return the control of sound to the individual alone, and within groups especially for humanitarian purposes; specifically healing.”
Ms. Oliveros never quit composing, but from the 1970s favored improvisation, adapted elements of ceremonies and rituals encountered in her studies of Native American lore and Eastern religion, and conducted meditative retreats to share her artistic discipline.
One more turning point came in 1988, when Ms. Oliveros and two colleagues — the trombonist, didgeridoo player and composer Stuart Dempster and the vocalist and composer Panaiotis — descended into an extraordinarily resonant disused cistern in Port Townsend, Wash. Their drone-based improvisations were recorded, and selections issued on CD under the title “Deep Listening” in 1989.
Beyond a self-evident pun referring to music played 14 feet underground, “Deep Listening” signified Ms. Oliveros’s emerging aural discipline: a practice that compelled listening not just to the conventional details of a given musical performance — melody, harmony, rhythm, intonation — but also to sounds surrounding that performance, including acoustic space and extra-musical noise.
The process lent its name to a working ensemble, Deep Listening Band, for much of its duration a trio comprising Ms. Oliveros, Mr. Dempster and the keyboardist and composer David Gamper, who died in 2011. Over time, the Deep Listening banner would extend to cover retreats, workshops and lectures in which Ms. Oliveros shared her artistic discipline.
In 2005 Ms. Oliveros rechristened her Pauline Oliveros Foundation the Deep Listening Institute, defining as its mission “creative innovation across boundaries and across abilities, among artists and audience, musicians and nonmusicians, healers and the physically or cognitively challenged, and children of all ages.”
Among other projects, the institute supported the design of software that would allow children with severe physical or cognitive disabilities to improvise music. In 2014, the institute merged with the Center for Deep Listening at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y.
In her final decades Ms. Oliveros formed close bonds with groups like the International Contemporary Ensemble, which brought her work closer to the mainstream canon with performances at Lincoln Center, Miller Theater at Columbia University and elsewhere.
“I’m not dismissive of classical music and the Western canon,” Ms. Oliveros said in 2012. “It’s simply that I can’t be bound by it. I’ve been jumping out of categories all my life.”
Pauline Oliveros was born on May 30, 1932, in Houston to John Oliveros and Edith Gutierrez. Her childhood was accompanied by the sounds of piano lessons taught by her mother and grandmother, bird song and buzzing cicadas, and the curious special effects used on favorite radio serials like “Buck Rogers” and “The Shadow.”
Taking up the accordion as her principal instrument, she also learned to play violin, piano, French horn and tuba.
At 20 Ms. Oliveros moved to California in search of a compositional mentor. She found one in Robert Erickson, a prominent composer, who as the music director of KPFA-FM, a Berkeley radio station, introduced Bay Area listeners to the latest trends in European avant-garde composition.
She explored free improvisation with colleagues like the composer Terry Riley and the bassist and koto player Loren Rush in the late 1950s, and joined Ramon Sender and Morton Subotnick at the trailblazing San Francisco Tape Music Center, founded in 1962.
When the center was absorbed by Mills College in 1966, Ms. Oliveros served for a year as its director. In 1967 she joined the faculty at the University of California, San Diego, where she taught until 1981. From 2001 she served as distinguished research professor of music at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Her honors include a John Cage Award from the Foundation of Contemporary Arts.
In addition to her spouse, Ms. Oliveros is survived by three stepchildren, Alessandro Bovoso, Nico Bovoso and Antonio Bovoso; a brother, John Oliveros, and eight grandchildren.

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https://storiesonwalls.com/
 
Chicago’s Original Jazz Joints
Chicago in the 1950s was an exciting showcase for jazz. The wave of musical talent that swept through the Windy City poured out of clubs, ballrooms, hotel lounges and restaurants.
American photographer, Ted Williams haunted these hotbeds of jazz during their heyday and captured all the big names at work and at play.
Visit the Chicago’s Original Jazz Joints Shop

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https://storiesonwalls.com/
 
Chicago’s Original Jazz Joints
Chicago in the 1950s was an exciting showcase for jazz. The wave of musical talent that swept through the Windy City poured out of clubs, ballrooms, hotel lounges and restaurants.
American photographer, Ted Williams haunted these hotbeds of jazz during their heyday and captured all the big names at work and at play.
Visit the Chicago’s Original Jazz Joints Shop

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsyzfda9ViY
 
From The Comments Section:
 
Jayne Narog5 months ago
Yes! I worked on this with Jack Sidney Producer and Ray Ellis, I was 22 y.o. and a production assistant at Hollywood Bowl and Oakland Coliseum..Many stories to be told about this Tribute only done Once in Time! These jazz Vocalists  are in the top of all time!  The stories…this number here was not planned this way…never know what’s going to happen on stage but it was a success!

 

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lsyzfda9ViY
 
From The Comments Section:
 
Jayne Narog5 months ago
Yes! I worked on this with Jack Sidney Producer and Ray Ellis, I was 22 y.o. and a production assistant at Hollywood Bowl and Oakland Coliseum..Many stories to be told about this Tribute only done Once in Time! These jazz Vocalists  are in the top of all time!  The stories…this number here was not planned this way…never know what’s going to happen on stage but it was a success!

 

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/arts/music/al-caiola-guitarist-who-played-hit-tv-themes-dies-at-96.html?_r=0
 
Al Caiola, Guitarist With Top 40 Instrumental Hits, Dies at 96
By SAM ROBERTSNOV. 24, 2016

Al Caiola, a guitarist who reached the Top 40 with instrumental hits. Maurice Seymour, via Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Al Caiola, a versatile guitarist who recorded hit versions of the themes from the westerns “The Magnificent Seven” and “Bonanza” and worked with artists ranging from Buddy Holly to Tony Bennett, died on Nov. 9 in Allendale, N.J. He was 96.
His death, at a nursing home, was confirmed by his daughter, Sandra Ayres.
Mr. Caiola (pronounced kay-OH-lah) had Top 40 hits in 1961 with his renditions, on the United Artists label, of those two themes, becoming one of the relatively few artists to reach that plateau with instrumental recordings.
His version of the galloping theme from the NBC western “Bonanza,” which began in 1959 and would end its hugely popular run in 1973, reached No. 19 on the Billboard singles chart. His rendition of the now-classic heroic theme, composed by Elmer Bernstein, from “The Magnificent Seven,” a 1960 film with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, reached No. 35.
The son of a New Jersey barber, Mr. Caiola started as a vocalist but was persuaded by his father that being an instrumentalist would offer more professional opportunities.
His father was right.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Mr. Caiola was one of the busiest guitarists in the recording studios of New York. In addition to Mr. Holly and Mr. Bennett, the many artists with whom he recorded or performed included Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis, Simon and Garfunkel, Sarah Vaughan, Glen Campbell and Rosemary Clooney.
He also played in orchestras led by Percy Faith, Morton Gould and Andre Kostelanetz, and on radio and television with Steve Allen, Jackie Gleason, Arthur Godfrey and Ed Sullivan. And he recorded albums as a leader, beginning with “Deep in a Dream,” released in 1955 on Savoy, on which he led a jazz quartet featuring Hank Jones on piano.
“He could play classical, rock ’n’ roll, R&B,” Moe Wechsler, a pianist who often recorded with Mr. Caiola, told The Palm Beach Post in 2004. “Al could do anything that was required; he’s the classic well-rounded musician.”

Fresh Sound Records
Alexander Emil Caiola was born on Sept. 7, 1920, in Jersey City, to Emil Caiola and the former Genevieve Esposito.
He began on the banjo, was a guitar prodigy by the age of 11, took formal lessons as a teenager at a Times Square studio and at 16 was already associated with his fellow guitarist Tony Mottola, performing with him on a children’s radio show, “Sally and Sam.”
He enlisted in the Marines, where he performed in the Fifth Marine Division Band with the singer and bandleader Bob Crosby (Bing’s brother) and served as a stretcher bearer during World War II at Iwo Jima.
After a brief interlude on the trumpet (he switched because marching bands largely forgo string instruments), he returned to guitar after the war and studied at the New Jersey College of Music on the G.I. Bill.
He played an Epiphone Al Caiola Standard guitar. He was one of the first artists honored with a signature guitar in the modern era by the company, which was founded in 1873.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Caiola is survived by his wife, the former Rosalie Fiocco; a son, Alexander Jr.; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/24/arts/music/al-caiola-guitarist-who-played-hit-tv-themes-dies-at-96.html?_r=0
 
Al Caiola, Guitarist With Top 40 Instrumental Hits, Dies at 96
By SAM ROBERTSNOV. 24, 2016

Al Caiola, a guitarist who reached the Top 40 with instrumental hits. Maurice Seymour, via Michael Ochs Archives/Getty Images
Al Caiola, a versatile guitarist who recorded hit versions of the themes from the westerns “The Magnificent Seven” and “Bonanza” and worked with artists ranging from Buddy Holly to Tony Bennett, died on Nov. 9 in Allendale, N.J. He was 96.
His death, at a nursing home, was confirmed by his daughter, Sandra Ayres.
Mr. Caiola (pronounced kay-OH-lah) had Top 40 hits in 1961 with his renditions, on the United Artists label, of those two themes, becoming one of the relatively few artists to reach that plateau with instrumental recordings.
His version of the galloping theme from the NBC western “Bonanza,” which began in 1959 and would end its hugely popular run in 1973, reached No. 19 on the Billboard singles chart. His rendition of the now-classic heroic theme, composed by Elmer Bernstein, from “The Magnificent Seven,” a 1960 film with Yul Brynner and Steve McQueen, reached No. 35.
The son of a New Jersey barber, Mr. Caiola started as a vocalist but was persuaded by his father that being an instrumentalist would offer more professional opportunities.
His father was right.
In the 1950s and ’60s, Mr. Caiola was one of the busiest guitarists in the recording studios of New York. In addition to Mr. Holly and Mr. Bennett, the many artists with whom he recorded or performed included Frank Sinatra, Elvis Presley, Johnny Mathis, Simon and Garfunkel, Sarah Vaughan, Glen Campbell and Rosemary Clooney.
He also played in orchestras led by Percy Faith, Morton Gould and Andre Kostelanetz, and on radio and television with Steve Allen, Jackie Gleason, Arthur Godfrey and Ed Sullivan. And he recorded albums as a leader, beginning with “Deep in a Dream,” released in 1955 on Savoy, on which he led a jazz quartet featuring Hank Jones on piano.
“He could play classical, rock ’n’ roll, R&B,” Moe Wechsler, a pianist who often recorded with Mr. Caiola, told The Palm Beach Post in 2004. “Al could do anything that was required; he’s the classic well-rounded musician.”

Fresh Sound Records
Alexander Emil Caiola was born on Sept. 7, 1920, in Jersey City, to Emil Caiola and the former Genevieve Esposito.
He began on the banjo, was a guitar prodigy by the age of 11, took formal lessons as a teenager at a Times Square studio and at 16 was already associated with his fellow guitarist Tony Mottola, performing with him on a children’s radio show, “Sally and Sam.”
He enlisted in the Marines, where he performed in the Fifth Marine Division Band with the singer and bandleader Bob Crosby (Bing’s brother) and served as a stretcher bearer during World War II at Iwo Jima.
After a brief interlude on the trumpet (he switched because marching bands largely forgo string instruments), he returned to guitar after the war and studied at the New Jersey College of Music on the G.I. Bill.
He played an Epiphone Al Caiola Standard guitar. He was one of the first artists honored with a signature guitar in the modern era by the company, which was founded in 1873.
In addition to his daughter, Mr. Caiola is survived by his wife, the former Rosalie Fiocco; a son, Alexander Jr.; four grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
 

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Thanks to Mitch Myers for these links:
 
“Early In The Morning” (covered by Nilsson, Ray Charles, et al) mentions Dooky.
“I went to Dooky Chase to get something to eat.
The waitress looked at me and said you sure look beat.
I said, it’s early in the morning…”
 
 
Ray Charles – Early in the Morning – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPVixS5jSWs
 
Harry Nilsson – Early in the Morning – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjS64HYm32M
 
RAY CHARLES LYRICS – Early In The Morning
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/raycharles/earlyinthemorning.html
“Early In The Morning”
 
Usage of azlyrics.com content by any third-party lyrics provider is prohibited by our licensing agreement. Sorry about that. Early in the morning and I can’t get right, now
Had a little date with my baby last night, now
 
And it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
I know it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
Early in the morning (early in the morning)
Hey, I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
I went to all the places where we used to go
I went to her house but she don’t live there no more
 
Well it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
And I know it’s early in the morning, yeah (early in the morning)
Early in the morning, yeah (early in the morning)
I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
I went to her girlfriends house, but she was out
I knocked on her fathers door and he began to shout, “Get away from here boy”
 
Yes, early in the morning (early in the morning)
I know it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
Early in the morning, yeah (early in the morning)
I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
I went to Dukie Chance’s (???) to get something to eat
The waitress looked at me and said, “Ray, you sure look beat”
 
Now it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
I told ’em it was in the morning, now (early in the morning)
Yeah, early in the morning (early in the morning)
Yeah, I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
I had a lot of money when I started out
Can’t find my baby now my money run out, now
 
Yeah, early in the morning (early in the morning)
Whoa, it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
Yeah, early in the morning (early in the morning)
Yeah, I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
Yeah, early in the morning (early in the morning, yeah)
I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues, now
 
Bonus
Dooky Chase’s fried chicken, behind the scenes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLp_VElEqU8
 
 
 
 
 
Jim Eigo
Jazz Promo Services
272 State Route 94 South #1
Warwick, NY 10990-3363
Ph: 845-986-1677 / Fax: 845-986-1699
Cell / text: 917-755-8960
Skype: jazzpromo
jim@jazzpromoservices.com
www.jazzpromoservices.com
“Specializing in Media Campaigns for the music community, artists, labels, venues and events.”
 

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO

Thanks to Mitch Myers for these links:
 
“Early In The Morning” (covered by Nilsson, Ray Charles, et al) mentions Dooky.
“I went to Dooky Chase to get something to eat.
The waitress looked at me and said you sure look beat.
I said, it’s early in the morning…”
 
 
Ray Charles – Early in the Morning – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPVixS5jSWs
 
Harry Nilsson – Early in the Morning – YouTube
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NjS64HYm32M
 
RAY CHARLES LYRICS – Early In The Morning
http://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/raycharles/earlyinthemorning.html
“Early In The Morning”
 
Usage of azlyrics.com content by any third-party lyrics provider is prohibited by our licensing agreement. Sorry about that. Early in the morning and I can’t get right, now
Had a little date with my baby last night, now
 
And it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
I know it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
Early in the morning (early in the morning)
Hey, I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
I went to all the places where we used to go
I went to her house but she don’t live there no more
 
Well it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
And I know it’s early in the morning, yeah (early in the morning)
Early in the morning, yeah (early in the morning)
I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
I went to her girlfriends house, but she was out
I knocked on her fathers door and he began to shout, “Get away from here boy”
 
Yes, early in the morning (early in the morning)
I know it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
Early in the morning, yeah (early in the morning)
I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
I went to Dukie Chance’s (???) to get something to eat
The waitress looked at me and said, “Ray, you sure look beat”
 
Now it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
I told ’em it was in the morning, now (early in the morning)
Yeah, early in the morning (early in the morning)
Yeah, I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
I had a lot of money when I started out
Can’t find my baby now my money run out, now
 
Yeah, early in the morning (early in the morning)
Whoa, it’s early in the morning (early in the morning)
Yeah, early in the morning (early in the morning)
Yeah, I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues (blues)
 
Yeah, early in the morning (early in the morning, yeah)
I ain’t got nothin’ but the blues, now
 
Bonus
Dooky Chase’s fried chicken, behind the scenes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLp_VElEqU8
 
 
 
 
 
Jim Eigo
Jazz Promo Services
272 State Route 94 South #1
Warwick, NY 10990-3363
Ph: 845-986-1677 / Fax: 845-986-1699
Cell / text: 917-755-8960
Skype: jazzpromo
jim@jazzpromoservices.com
www.jazzpromoservices.com
“Specializing in Media Campaigns for the music community, artists, labels, venues and events.”
 

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

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http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/11/22/judge-we-shall-overcome-forward/
 
Judge Allows “We Shall Overcome” Lawsuit to Move Forward
November 22, 2016

<img class=”size-full wp-image-77663″ src=”http://4dpavshx5ly3quwy2v9yv83i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Together-We-Shall-Overcome.jpg” alt=”Judge Allows &quot;We Shall Overcome&quot; Lawsuit to Move Forward” width=”750″ height=”400″ srcset=”http://4dpavshx5ly3quwy2v9yv83i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Together-We-Shall-Overcome.jpg 750w, http://4dpavshx5ly3quwy2v9yv83i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Together-We-Shall-Overcome-65×35.jpg 65w, http://4dpavshx5ly3quwy2v9yv83i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Together-We-Shall-Overcome-300×160.jpg 300w” sizes=”(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px” />
Image by Gee Double You
Shall We Shall Overcome, actually overcome?
Earlier this year, We Shall Overcome Foundation filed a lawsuit against Warner/Chappell to free the song We Shall Overcome. This song is actually a 19th century spiritual, according to the foundation. Pete Seeger’s version copyrighted in 1960 and 1963 includes only minor alterations.
/22112625/DMN_Article_11_Leaderboard
Now, the Hollywood Reporter writes that a New York federal judge rejected a publisher’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs have “plausibly alleged that lyrics in the first verse…were copied from material in the public domain.” The judge also said that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that “there’s been a fraud on the U.S. Copyright Office.”
“[These] allegations of fraud are sufficiently specific, and provide enough information from which to infer the requisite intent, to survive a motion to dismiss.”
Warner/Chappell backed off from ownership claims over Happy Birthday to You after failing to prove they didn’t own the rights. The publisher claimed millions of dollars in copyrights over the years before a judge struck down their claim. The same legal team from that lawsuit is now representing the We Shall Overcome foundation.
The song in question is a protest song that became a key anthem during the African-America Civil Rights movement. According to the plaintiffs, striking tobacco workers used the African-American spiritual. Seeger published a periodical in 1946, with authorship credited to FTA-CIO Workers Highlander Students.
In Read
Seeger explained his reasoning for seeking a copyright.
“In the early ’60s, our publishers said to us, ‘If you don’t copyright this now, some Hollywood types will have a version out next year like, ‘Come on Baby, We shall overcome tonight.’”
Also joining the lawsuit is the production company behind Lee Daniels’ The Butler. The publisher told the company that they would charge a $100,000 payment to use the song “as it wished.”
Ludlow Music and The Richmond Organization asserted that the copyrighted version was original enough to merit protection. Lawyers representing them note that 100% of the royalties go to the Highlander Research and Education Center.
These claims were insufficient for District judge Denise Cote. She wrote,
/* Revive Adserver Javascript Tag v3.0.2 */ /* * The backup image section of this tag has been generated for use on a * non-SSL page. If this tag is to be placed on an SSL page, change the * ‘http://72.52.81.231/revive/www/delivery/…’ * to * ‘https://72.52.81.231/revive/www/delivery/…’ * * This noscript section of this tag only shows image banners. There * is no width or height in these banners, so if you want these tags to * allocate space for the ad before it shows, you will need to add this * information to the <img> tag. * * If you do not want to deal with the intricities of the noscript * section, delete the tag (from <noscript>… to </noscript>). On * average, the noscript tag is called from less than 1% of internet * users. */ +Learn How You Could Be Protecting Your Music From Copyright Infringement  
“The copyrighted work differs from the 1948 version by only three words: (1) ‘we’ll’ for ‘I’ll’; (2) ‘shall’ for ‘will’; and (3) ‘deep’ for ‘down.’ The Plaintiffs have also plausibly alleged that the individuals listed on the 1960 copyright registration are not the authors of the changes that were made to the three words in the Song’s first verse. If they are not the authors, the Defendants cannot claim copyright protection. The Plaintiffs allege that the author of the underlying work is unknown, that it is unclear who changed ‘will’ to ‘shall,’ and that a Black tobacco worker named Lucille Simmons changed ‘I’ to ‘We.’ Simmons is not listed as an author in the application to register the copyright for the Song.”
Ludlow Music and The Richmond Organization are fighting another court case. Brooklyn band Satorii filed a lawsuit in September over This Land is Your Land.
 

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http://www.digitalmusicnews.com/2016/11/22/judge-we-shall-overcome-forward/
 
Judge Allows “We Shall Overcome” Lawsuit to Move Forward
November 22, 2016

<img class=”size-full wp-image-77663″ src=”http://4dpavshx5ly3quwy2v9yv83i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Together-We-Shall-Overcome.jpg” alt=”Judge Allows &quot;We Shall Overcome&quot; Lawsuit to Move Forward” width=”750″ height=”400″ srcset=”http://4dpavshx5ly3quwy2v9yv83i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Together-We-Shall-Overcome.jpg 750w, http://4dpavshx5ly3quwy2v9yv83i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Together-We-Shall-Overcome-65×35.jpg 65w, http://4dpavshx5ly3quwy2v9yv83i.wpengine.netdna-cdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/Together-We-Shall-Overcome-300×160.jpg 300w” sizes=”(max-width: 750px) 100vw, 750px” />
Image by Gee Double You
Shall We Shall Overcome, actually overcome?
Earlier this year, We Shall Overcome Foundation filed a lawsuit against Warner/Chappell to free the song We Shall Overcome. This song is actually a 19th century spiritual, according to the foundation. Pete Seeger’s version copyrighted in 1960 and 1963 includes only minor alterations.
/22112625/DMN_Article_11_Leaderboard
Now, the Hollywood Reporter writes that a New York federal judge rejected a publisher’s bid to dismiss the lawsuit. The judge ruled that the plaintiffs have “plausibly alleged that lyrics in the first verse…were copied from material in the public domain.” The judge also said that the plaintiffs plausibly alleged that “there’s been a fraud on the U.S. Copyright Office.”
“[These] allegations of fraud are sufficiently specific, and provide enough information from which to infer the requisite intent, to survive a motion to dismiss.”
Warner/Chappell backed off from ownership claims over Happy Birthday to You after failing to prove they didn’t own the rights. The publisher claimed millions of dollars in copyrights over the years before a judge struck down their claim. The same legal team from that lawsuit is now representing the We Shall Overcome foundation.
The song in question is a protest song that became a key anthem during the African-America Civil Rights movement. According to the plaintiffs, striking tobacco workers used the African-American spiritual. Seeger published a periodical in 1946, with authorship credited to FTA-CIO Workers Highlander Students.
In Read
Seeger explained his reasoning for seeking a copyright.
“In the early ’60s, our publishers said to us, ‘If you don’t copyright this now, some Hollywood types will have a version out next year like, ‘Come on Baby, We shall overcome tonight.’”
Also joining the lawsuit is the production company behind Lee Daniels’ The Butler. The publisher told the company that they would charge a $100,000 payment to use the song “as it wished.”
Ludlow Music and The Richmond Organization asserted that the copyrighted version was original enough to merit protection. Lawyers representing them note that 100% of the royalties go to the Highlander Research and Education Center.
These claims were insufficient for District judge Denise Cote. She wrote,
/* Revive Adserver Javascript Tag v3.0.2 */ /* * The backup image section of this tag has been generated for use on a * non-SSL page. If this tag is to be placed on an SSL page, change the * ‘http://72.52.81.231/revive/www/delivery/…’ * to * ‘https://72.52.81.231/revive/www/delivery/…’ * * This noscript section of this tag only shows image banners. There * is no width or height in these banners, so if you want these tags to * allocate space for the ad before it shows, you will need to add this * information to the <img> tag. * * If you do not want to deal with the intricities of the noscript * section, delete the tag (from <noscript>… to </noscript>). On * average, the noscript tag is called from less than 1% of internet * users. */ +Learn How You Could Be Protecting Your Music From Copyright Infringement  
“The copyrighted work differs from the 1948 version by only three words: (1) ‘we’ll’ for ‘I’ll’; (2) ‘shall’ for ‘will’; and (3) ‘deep’ for ‘down.’ The Plaintiffs have also plausibly alleged that the individuals listed on the 1960 copyright registration are not the authors of the changes that were made to the three words in the Song’s first verse. If they are not the authors, the Defendants cannot claim copyright protection. The Plaintiffs allege that the author of the underlying work is unknown, that it is unclear who changed ‘will’ to ‘shall,’ and that a Black tobacco worker named Lucille Simmons changed ‘I’ to ‘We.’ Simmons is not listed as an author in the application to register the copyright for the Song.”
Ludlow Music and The Richmond Organization are fighting another court case. Brooklyn band Satorii filed a lawsuit in September over This Land is Your Land.
 

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http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/jazz-guitarist-kenny-burrell/
 
Jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell
 
Guest interviews are usually available online within 24 hours of broadcast.

The jazz great discusses his legendary career.
Kenny Burrell is one of the most respected jazz artists in the world. He has been active from 1956 to the present as a guitarist and composer in a variety of musical contexts including solo, small combo, large ensemble and symphony orchestra. He is a producer and recording artist whose extensive discography includes the critically acclaimed Guitar Forms; Ellington is Forever; and Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane. He has recorded 97 albums under his own name and several hundred with other artists. He has performed and recorded with many of the most influential musicians in jazz history including Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Tony Bennett, Billy Holiday, Quincy Jones and Louis Armstrong among others. Burrell, recipient of many awards, was named a 2005 Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a title awarded annually to a handful of living figures in recognition of their exceptional contributions to the field of jazz. He is a recognized authority on the music of Duke Ellington and in 1978 developed the first regular college course on Ellington ever taught in the United States, at UCLA. In 1996, he was appointed director of the then new Jazz Studies Program. Born and raised in Detroit, Burrell found musical colleagues at an early age among jazz greats such as Paul Chambers, Tommy Flanagan, Frank Foster, Yusef Lateef, Betty Carter, and the brothers Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones. While still a student at Wayne State University, he made his first major recording with Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Percy Heath and Milt Jackson. The founder of the Jazz Heritage Foundation and the Friends of Jazz at UCLA, Burrell is recognized as an international ambassador for jazz and its promotion as an art form. He is a professor in the Departments of Music and Ethnomusicology at UCLA.

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

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http://www.pbs.org/wnet/tavissmiley/interviews/jazz-guitarist-kenny-burrell/
 
Jazz guitarist Kenny Burrell
 
Guest interviews are usually available online within 24 hours of broadcast.

The jazz great discusses his legendary career.
Kenny Burrell is one of the most respected jazz artists in the world. He has been active from 1956 to the present as a guitarist and composer in a variety of musical contexts including solo, small combo, large ensemble and symphony orchestra. He is a producer and recording artist whose extensive discography includes the critically acclaimed Guitar Forms; Ellington is Forever; and Kenny Burrell and John Coltrane. He has recorded 97 albums under his own name and several hundred with other artists. He has performed and recorded with many of the most influential musicians in jazz history including Duke Ellington, Herbie Hancock, Dizzy Gillespie, Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charlie Parker, Oscar Peterson, Tony Bennett, Billy Holiday, Quincy Jones and Louis Armstrong among others. Burrell, recipient of many awards, was named a 2005 Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA), a title awarded annually to a handful of living figures in recognition of their exceptional contributions to the field of jazz. He is a recognized authority on the music of Duke Ellington and in 1978 developed the first regular college course on Ellington ever taught in the United States, at UCLA. In 1996, he was appointed director of the then new Jazz Studies Program. Born and raised in Detroit, Burrell found musical colleagues at an early age among jazz greats such as Paul Chambers, Tommy Flanagan, Frank Foster, Yusef Lateef, Betty Carter, and the brothers Hank, Thad, and Elvin Jones. While still a student at Wayne State University, he made his first major recording with Dizzy Gillespie, John Coltrane, Percy Heath and Milt Jackson. The founder of the Jazz Heritage Foundation and the Friends of Jazz at UCLA, Burrell is recognized as an international ambassador for jazz and its promotion as an art form. He is a professor in the Departments of Music and Ethnomusicology at UCLA.

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO

http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/portrait-hod-obrien/
 
A Portrait Of Hod O’Brien
By David Johnson Posted January 26, 2016

Photo: Book cover art
O’Brien’s colorful life in jazz is recounted in a new memoir.
end postimage-wrapper
Hod O’Brien was a hard-swinging pianist whose roots went all the way back to boogie-woogie and bebop, and whose musical path crossed over the decades with many notable fellow jazz artists. On this edition of Night Lights we’ll hear him talking about his life and playing with Art Farmer and Donald Byrd, Chet Baker, Roswell Rudd, and Rene Thomas and JR Monterose, as well as some of his own dates as a leader.
 
 
 
 
 
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From Boogie-Woogie To Bop
O’Brien chronicled his life in the recent book Have Piano, Will Swing. In addition to recording with the players listed above, he shared the stage with Dizzy Gillespie and Ornette Coleman, and wrote songs with famed hipster tunesmith Fran Landesman. He participated in New York City’s vital jazz loft scene of the late 1950s, ran a club in the city in the mid-1970s, and spent the past three decades frequently performing and recording with his wife, singer Stephanie Nakasian.
Born in Chicago in 1936, O’Brien grew up in New York State and at an early stage discovered a popular musical style of the time that thrilled him: boogie-woogie piano. His musical tastes and direction would evolve over the next few years as he stayed up late listening to the bebop-era radio broadcasts of DJ Symphony Sid Torin and began to take the train into New York City, checking out pianists such as Billy Taylor and Hank Jones on the city’s club scene. By the mid-1950s O’Brien himself was making his way into that scene as a performer, as well as studying at the Manhattan School of Music. His first recording date brought him into an unusual and high-level setting, accompanying three top-notch trumpeters of the era–Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, and Idrees Suliemann:
 
 
 
 
 
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“O’Brien Astutely Laid Out”
In the late 1950s O’Brien formed significant musical alliances first with bassist Oscar Pettiford, who served as an early mentor, and then with saxophonist J.R. Monterose, performing frequently in upstate New York. The ongoing gig with the talented but sometimes-unpredictable Monterose led to O’Brien’s playing with a soon-to-be legendary drummer, Elvin Jones, as well as another recording date, with Belgian guitarist Rene Thomas:
 
 
 
 
 
<div class=”player-unavailable”><h1 class=”message”>An error occurred.</h1><div class=”submessage”><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju6gDe6Tne0″ target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>
Not long after this date, O’Brien, who was plugged into New York City’s late-1950s jazz-loft scene, ended up performing at a benefit at the Jazz Gallery for the family of hipster comedian Lord Buckley, who had recently passed away. O’Brien found himself at one point accompanying an unlikely, only-time-this-ever-happened on-stage pairing, of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and the new avant-garde icon, saxophonist Ornette Coleman. O’Brien laughingly recalls that in Dan Morgenstern’s review of the event for DownBeat, the critic noted that while Coleman played, “O’Brien astutely laid out.”
Parternships
O’Brien would enjoy a less fleeting association with another member of the 1960s New York City avant-garde–trombonist Roswell Rudd, whose origins went back to Dixieland. O’Brien had known Rudd as a teenager but didn’t connect with him again until the early 1970s. The two started a club together called St. James Infirmary, featuring artists such as Chet Baker and Archie Shepp, but it ultimately proved to be fiscally unsustainable. O’Brien’s affiliation with Rudd did result in another recording date, however, the album Flexible Flyer, to which O’Brien contributed the composition “Waltzing In The Sagebrush,” which features vocalist Sheila Jordan:
 
 
 
 
 
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O’Brien spent much of the 1960s off the jazz scene, taking classes at Columbia College in math, physics, and psychology, and working as a computer programmer before the renewed connection with Roswell Rudd helped pull him back onto a professional music path. In the late 1970s he teamed up again with another former artistic partner, saxophonist JR Monterose. Here they are live in 1979 in Albany, New York:
 
 
 
 
 
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In the early 1980s O’Brien formed a significant personal and artistic relationship with singer Stephanie Nakasian. In 1984 he joined her during a working stint in Europe, where he came into favor with CrissCross record label owner and producer Gerry Teekens. Teekens wanted O’Brien to back trumpeter Chet Baker and cool-jazz stalwart saxophonist Warne Marsh on a recording date. O’Brien had played with Baker before and knew it would probably not be a standard day in the studio:
Chet came to that date–he got there on time, number one–he had driven a thousand miles from Rome to Amsterdam, in a broken-down Volkswagen, and he was just emaciated-looking in those days… So he comes in, sits down, lines all over his face and drawn, and the first tune he plays is ‘If You Could See Me Now.’ (laughs) It’s a great date, Chet played great on it.
 
 
 
 
 
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“The Swing, The Beat”
Around this time O’Brien made Opalessence, one of his most significant albums as a leader, also for Criss-Cross, with a supporting cast that included Pepper Adams on baritone sax and Tom Harrell on trumpet. One of the tunes they recorded was co-written by O’Brien with Fran Landesman, the legendary lyricist who penned “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” and “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most”, and sung by the woman who is now O’Brien’s wife, Stephanie Nakasian. O’Brien had been given a set of Landesman’s lyrics by a mutual friend, who suggested that he try putting music to them. For Opalessence he recorded “A Handful Of Dust,” with Nakasian on vocals:
 
 
 
 
 
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From the late 1980s on Hod O’Brien has toured and recorded frequently, both in a trio context and with his wife. In 1994 they moved to Charlottesville, Virginia and had a daughter, Veronica, who has begun to develop her own career as a jazz performer. O’Brien saw and played a lot in his 60 years on the jazz scene, and he cited one element in particular as the source of his artistic joy–”The swing, the beat”:
 
 
 
 
 
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Special thanks to Hod O’Brien and Yael Ksander.
Hod O’Brien P.S.

• Hod O’Brien’s website
• Hod O’Brien on Piano Jazz
• JazzWax’s Marc Myers on O’Brien
• A Hod O’Brien discography

Night Lights program outtake:
 
 
 
 
 
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Music Heard On This Episode

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http://indianapublicmedia.org/nightlights/portrait-hod-obrien/
 
A Portrait Of Hod O’Brien
By David Johnson Posted January 26, 2016

Photo: Book cover art
O’Brien’s colorful life in jazz is recounted in a new memoir.
end postimage-wrapper
Hod O’Brien was a hard-swinging pianist whose roots went all the way back to boogie-woogie and bebop, and whose musical path crossed over the decades with many notable fellow jazz artists. On this edition of Night Lights we’ll hear him talking about his life and playing with Art Farmer and Donald Byrd, Chet Baker, Roswell Rudd, and Rene Thomas and JR Monterose, as well as some of his own dates as a leader.
 
 
 
 
 
<div class=”player-unavailable”><h1 class=”message”>An error occurred.</h1><div class=”submessage”><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sXsLffF38r8″ target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>
From Boogie-Woogie To Bop
O’Brien chronicled his life in the recent book Have Piano, Will Swing. In addition to recording with the players listed above, he shared the stage with Dizzy Gillespie and Ornette Coleman, and wrote songs with famed hipster tunesmith Fran Landesman. He participated in New York City’s vital jazz loft scene of the late 1950s, ran a club in the city in the mid-1970s, and spent the past three decades frequently performing and recording with his wife, singer Stephanie Nakasian.
Born in Chicago in 1936, O’Brien grew up in New York State and at an early stage discovered a popular musical style of the time that thrilled him: boogie-woogie piano. His musical tastes and direction would evolve over the next few years as he stayed up late listening to the bebop-era radio broadcasts of DJ Symphony Sid Torin and began to take the train into New York City, checking out pianists such as Billy Taylor and Hank Jones on the city’s club scene. By the mid-1950s O’Brien himself was making his way into that scene as a performer, as well as studying at the Manhattan School of Music. His first recording date brought him into an unusual and high-level setting, accompanying three top-notch trumpeters of the era–Donald Byrd, Art Farmer, and Idrees Suliemann:
 
 
 
 
 
<div class=”player-unavailable”><h1 class=”message”>An error occurred.</h1><div class=”submessage”><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dXjuqmO5_MA” target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>
“O’Brien Astutely Laid Out”
In the late 1950s O’Brien formed significant musical alliances first with bassist Oscar Pettiford, who served as an early mentor, and then with saxophonist J.R. Monterose, performing frequently in upstate New York. The ongoing gig with the talented but sometimes-unpredictable Monterose led to O’Brien’s playing with a soon-to-be legendary drummer, Elvin Jones, as well as another recording date, with Belgian guitarist Rene Thomas:
 
 
 
 
 
<div class=”player-unavailable”><h1 class=”message”>An error occurred.</h1><div class=”submessage”><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju6gDe6Tne0″ target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>
Not long after this date, O’Brien, who was plugged into New York City’s late-1950s jazz-loft scene, ended up performing at a benefit at the Jazz Gallery for the family of hipster comedian Lord Buckley, who had recently passed away. O’Brien found himself at one point accompanying an unlikely, only-time-this-ever-happened on-stage pairing, of bebop trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie and the new avant-garde icon, saxophonist Ornette Coleman. O’Brien laughingly recalls that in Dan Morgenstern’s review of the event for DownBeat, the critic noted that while Coleman played, “O’Brien astutely laid out.”
Parternships
O’Brien would enjoy a less fleeting association with another member of the 1960s New York City avant-garde–trombonist Roswell Rudd, whose origins went back to Dixieland. O’Brien had known Rudd as a teenager but didn’t connect with him again until the early 1970s. The two started a club together called St. James Infirmary, featuring artists such as Chet Baker and Archie Shepp, but it ultimately proved to be fiscally unsustainable. O’Brien’s affiliation with Rudd did result in another recording date, however, the album Flexible Flyer, to which O’Brien contributed the composition “Waltzing In The Sagebrush,” which features vocalist Sheila Jordan:
 
 
 
 
 
<div class=”player-unavailable”><h1 class=”message”>An error occurred.</h1><div class=”submessage”><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=njQNJ8P8SnM” target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>
O’Brien spent much of the 1960s off the jazz scene, taking classes at Columbia College in math, physics, and psychology, and working as a computer programmer before the renewed connection with Roswell Rudd helped pull him back onto a professional music path. In the late 1970s he teamed up again with another former artistic partner, saxophonist JR Monterose. Here they are live in 1979 in Albany, New York:
 
 
 
 
 
<div class=”player-unavailable”><h1 class=”message”>An error occurred.</h1><div class=”submessage”><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gjr0IARNbx8″ target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>
In the early 1980s O’Brien formed a significant personal and artistic relationship with singer Stephanie Nakasian. In 1984 he joined her during a working stint in Europe, where he came into favor with CrissCross record label owner and producer Gerry Teekens. Teekens wanted O’Brien to back trumpeter Chet Baker and cool-jazz stalwart saxophonist Warne Marsh on a recording date. O’Brien had played with Baker before and knew it would probably not be a standard day in the studio:
Chet came to that date–he got there on time, number one–he had driven a thousand miles from Rome to Amsterdam, in a broken-down Volkswagen, and he was just emaciated-looking in those days… So he comes in, sits down, lines all over his face and drawn, and the first tune he plays is ‘If You Could See Me Now.’ (laughs) It’s a great date, Chet played great on it.
 
 
 
 
 
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“The Swing, The Beat”
Around this time O’Brien made Opalessence, one of his most significant albums as a leader, also for Criss-Cross, with a supporting cast that included Pepper Adams on baritone sax and Tom Harrell on trumpet. One of the tunes they recorded was co-written by O’Brien with Fran Landesman, the legendary lyricist who penned “Ballad of the Sad Young Men” and “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most”, and sung by the woman who is now O’Brien’s wife, Stephanie Nakasian. O’Brien had been given a set of Landesman’s lyrics by a mutual friend, who suggested that he try putting music to them. For Opalessence he recorded “A Handful Of Dust,” with Nakasian on vocals:
 
 
 
 
 
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From the late 1980s on Hod O’Brien has toured and recorded frequently, both in a trio context and with his wife. In 1994 they moved to Charlottesville, Virginia and had a daughter, Veronica, who has begun to develop her own career as a jazz performer. O’Brien saw and played a lot in his 60 years on the jazz scene, and he cited one element in particular as the source of his artistic joy–”The swing, the beat”:
 
 
 
 
 
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Special thanks to Hod O’Brien and Yael Ksander.
Hod O’Brien P.S.

• Hod O’Brien’s website
• Hod O’Brien on Piano Jazz
• JazzWax’s Marc Myers on O’Brien
• A Hod O’Brien discography

Night Lights program outtake:
 
 
 
 
 
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Music Heard On This Episode

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/arts/music/milt-okun-dead-cherry-lane-publishing.html
 
Milt Okun, Who Turned John Denver Into a Pop Star, Dies at 92
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIKNOV. 20, 2016

 
John Denver, left, and Milt Okun. Okun Archive
Milt Okun, a producer and arranger who helped turn acts as diverse as Peter, Paul and Mary, John Denver and Plácido Domingo into pop sensations, and who founded Cherry Lane Music Publishing, one of the world’s largest independent music publishers, died on Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 92.
His death was confirmed by his son-in-law, Richard Sparks, with whom he wrote the memoir “Along the Cherry Lane: Tales From the Life of Music Industry Legend Milt Okun” (2011).
Trained as a classical pianist and raised around the music of folk singers like Woody Guthrie, Mr. Okun recorded his own versions of folk songs before he turned to developing the music of other artists.
He worked as a pianist, conductor and arranger for Harry Belafonte in the 1950s, then coached Peter, Paul and Mary before they released their debut album in 1962. He helped form the folk group the Chad Mitchell Trio and discovered Mr. Denver when he replaced Mr. Mitchell in 1965, after which the group became known as simply the Mitchell Trio.
Mr. Okun produced and arranged for Peter, Paul and Mary during the 1960s and for Mr. Denver for decades, producing hit songs like “Rocky Mountain High” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane” (which was a No. 1 hit for Peter, Paul and Mary).
In an interview with the website Artists House Music in 2011, Mr. Okun said that identifying hit songs came naturally to him. “Hearing a great song is its own definition,” he said. “You hear it and you know it.”
But his musical interests transcended pop.
“Popular music, where I made my living, was work,” he said in that interview, “but my heart was in classical music and opera.”
So Mr. Okun brought classical to pop. After doggedly pursuing Mr. Domingo for several years, Mr. Okun persuaded him to record the romantic pop album “Perhaps Love” with Mr. Denver. Released in 1981, it featured Mr. Domingo’s lustrous tenor in duet with Mr. Denver on a program of love songs. The album eventually went platinum and helped catapult Mr. Domingo to mainstream success as one of the Three Tenors, along with José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti.
Mr. Okun founded Cherry Lane in Manhattan in 1960, naming it after a Greenwich Village theater. In addition to Mr. Denver, the company represented songwriters like Tom Paxton, John Legend, Will.i.am and Irving Burgie, a calypso singer known professionally as Lord Burgess, who wrote many of Mr. Belafonte’s hits.
The business also entered music rights partnerships with NFL Films, World Wrestling Entertainment and Nascar. Cherry Lane owned or represented nearly 100,000 copyrights when BMG bought the company in 2010 for $85 million.
Milton Theodore Okun was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 23, 1923, to William Okun and the former Leah Seligman. He grew up in Brooklyn and spent summers at a resort his parents ran on Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks, where singers like Pete Seeger and Mr. Guthrie performed.
Mr. Okun trained as a pianist as a child, then earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from New York University and a master’s in music from Oberlin College in Ohio. He worked as a junior high school music teacher for years, recorded several unsuccessful folk albums of his own and began working with Mr. Belafonte during a summer tour. When Mr. Belafonte asked if he wanted a more long-term engagement, Mr. Okun left teaching behind.
He also produced Laura Nyro’s first album, “More Than a New Discovery” (1966), and the Starland Vocal Band’s No. 1 hit, “Afternoon Delight” (1976), and conducted Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and the orchestra that accompanied him, on his album “Haneshama Lach” (1959).
He married Rosemary Primont 58 years ago. She survives him, as do a daughter, the photographerJennifer Okun Sparks; a son, Andrew; and three grandchildren.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/21/arts/music/milt-okun-dead-cherry-lane-publishing.html
 
Milt Okun, Who Turned John Denver Into a Pop Star, Dies at 92
By DANIEL E. SLOTNIKNOV. 20, 2016

 
John Denver, left, and Milt Okun. Okun Archive
Milt Okun, a producer and arranger who helped turn acts as diverse as Peter, Paul and Mary, John Denver and Plácido Domingo into pop sensations, and who founded Cherry Lane Music Publishing, one of the world’s largest independent music publishers, died on Tuesday at his home in Beverly Hills, Calif. He was 92.
His death was confirmed by his son-in-law, Richard Sparks, with whom he wrote the memoir “Along the Cherry Lane: Tales From the Life of Music Industry Legend Milt Okun” (2011).
Trained as a classical pianist and raised around the music of folk singers like Woody Guthrie, Mr. Okun recorded his own versions of folk songs before he turned to developing the music of other artists.
He worked as a pianist, conductor and arranger for Harry Belafonte in the 1950s, then coached Peter, Paul and Mary before they released their debut album in 1962. He helped form the folk group the Chad Mitchell Trio and discovered Mr. Denver when he replaced Mr. Mitchell in 1965, after which the group became known as simply the Mitchell Trio.
Mr. Okun produced and arranged for Peter, Paul and Mary during the 1960s and for Mr. Denver for decades, producing hit songs like “Rocky Mountain High” and “Leaving on a Jet Plane” (which was a No. 1 hit for Peter, Paul and Mary).
In an interview with the website Artists House Music in 2011, Mr. Okun said that identifying hit songs came naturally to him. “Hearing a great song is its own definition,” he said. “You hear it and you know it.”
But his musical interests transcended pop.
“Popular music, where I made my living, was work,” he said in that interview, “but my heart was in classical music and opera.”
So Mr. Okun brought classical to pop. After doggedly pursuing Mr. Domingo for several years, Mr. Okun persuaded him to record the romantic pop album “Perhaps Love” with Mr. Denver. Released in 1981, it featured Mr. Domingo’s lustrous tenor in duet with Mr. Denver on a program of love songs. The album eventually went platinum and helped catapult Mr. Domingo to mainstream success as one of the Three Tenors, along with José Carreras and Luciano Pavarotti.
Mr. Okun founded Cherry Lane in Manhattan in 1960, naming it after a Greenwich Village theater. In addition to Mr. Denver, the company represented songwriters like Tom Paxton, John Legend, Will.i.am and Irving Burgie, a calypso singer known professionally as Lord Burgess, who wrote many of Mr. Belafonte’s hits.
The business also entered music rights partnerships with NFL Films, World Wrestling Entertainment and Nascar. Cherry Lane owned or represented nearly 100,000 copyrights when BMG bought the company in 2010 for $85 million.
Milton Theodore Okun was born in Brooklyn on Dec. 23, 1923, to William Okun and the former Leah Seligman. He grew up in Brooklyn and spent summers at a resort his parents ran on Schroon Lake in the Adirondacks, where singers like Pete Seeger and Mr. Guthrie performed.
Mr. Okun trained as a pianist as a child, then earned a bachelor’s degree in music education from New York University and a master’s in music from Oberlin College in Ohio. He worked as a junior high school music teacher for years, recorded several unsuccessful folk albums of his own and began working with Mr. Belafonte during a summer tour. When Mr. Belafonte asked if he wanted a more long-term engagement, Mr. Okun left teaching behind.
He also produced Laura Nyro’s first album, “More Than a New Discovery” (1966), and the Starland Vocal Band’s No. 1 hit, “Afternoon Delight” (1976), and conducted Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, and the orchestra that accompanied him, on his album “Haneshama Lach” (1959).
He married Rosemary Primont 58 years ago. She survives him, as do a daughter, the photographerJennifer Okun Sparks; a son, Andrew; and three grandchildren.

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From: Stephanie Nakasian
Reply-To: Stephanie O’Brien <info@stephanienakasian.com>
Date: Sunday, November 20, 2016 at 8:24 PM
To: Jazz Promo Services <jazzpromo@earthlink.net>
Subject: Hod O’Brien Passing
 

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From: Stephanie Nakasian
Reply-To: Stephanie O’Brien <info@stephanienakasian.com>
Date: Sunday, November 20, 2016 at 8:24 PM
To: Jazz Promo Services <jazzpromo@earthlink.net>
Subject: Hod O’Brien Passing
 

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Thanks to Don Frese, my original partner when we had our Daybreak Express mail order company.
 
POETRY AND JAZZ WITH BILLY COLLINS:
 
Billy Collins has come out with a new collection of poetry, The Rain in Portugal, and included in it is the following poem:
 
1960
 
In the old joke,
the marriage counselor
tells the couple who never talk anymore
to go to a jazz club because at a jazz club
everyone talks during the bass solo.
 
But of course, no one starts talking
just because of a bass solo
or any other solo for that matter.
 
The quieter bass solo just reveals
the people in the club
who have been talking all along,
the same ones you can hear
on some well-known recordings.
 
Bill Evans, for example,
who is opening a new door into the piano
while some guy chats up his date
at one of the little tables in the back.
 
I have listened to that album
so many times I can anticipate the moment
of his drunken laugh
as if it were a strange note in the tune.
 
And so, anonymous man,
you have become part of my listening,
your romance a romance lost in the past
 
and a reminder somehow
that each member of that trio has died since then
and maybe so have you, and sadly, maybe she.
 
 

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Thanks to Don Frese, my original partner when we had our Daybreak Express mail order company.
 
POETRY AND JAZZ WITH BILLY COLLINS:
 
Billy Collins has come out with a new collection of poetry, The Rain in Portugal, and included in it is the following poem:
 
1960
 
In the old joke,
the marriage counselor
tells the couple who never talk anymore
to go to a jazz club because at a jazz club
everyone talks during the bass solo.
 
But of course, no one starts talking
just because of a bass solo
or any other solo for that matter.
 
The quieter bass solo just reveals
the people in the club
who have been talking all along,
the same ones you can hear
on some well-known recordings.
 
Bill Evans, for example,
who is opening a new door into the piano
while some guy chats up his date
at one of the little tables in the back.
 
I have listened to that album
so many times I can anticipate the moment
of his drunken laugh
as if it were a strange note in the tune.
 
And so, anonymous man,
you have become part of my listening,
your romance a romance lost in the past
 
and a reminder somehow
that each member of that trio has died since then
and maybe so have you, and sadly, maybe she.
 
 

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

CHECK OUT OUR NEW YOUTUBE VIDEO

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/is-rock-n-roll-dead-or-just-old.html?emc=edit_tnt_20161119
 
Is Rock ’n’ Roll Dead, or Just Old?
By BILL FLANAGANNOV. 19, 2016
close story-meta

 
Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones performed at the Desert Trip concerts in October. Kevin Winter/Getty Images
This has been a bad year for music legends. First David Bowie, Glenn Frey and Maurice White. Then Prince and George Martin.
In the most recent sobering sequence, Leonard Cohen and Leon Russell.
We have to face it — rock has grown old. Nothing brings out the indignation of a certain kind of rock ’n’ roll fan like the suggestion that the music of Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and other iconoclasts has aged with its audience. It’s like telling people they are someday going to die — it may be true, but no one wants to hear it, and anyway, why spoil the party?
Rock’s core audience was born in the 1950s and ’60s, and its life span has kept expanding. Sixty years after Elvis appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” rock concerts are raking in more money than ever.
At the Desert Trip festival in Indio, Calif., last month, about 150,000 tickets were sold for two weekends of shows featuring six legends of 1960s rock — Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, the Who and Roger Waters — in one place.
close story-body close supplemental
close story-body-supplemental
The headliners were born in the 1940s. The audience was all ages. There were wrinkled hippies and young families. There were college-age backpackers, white-haired fanny-packers and sleepy-eyed six-packers. Many of them had not been old enough to see the Beatles or go to Woodstock, but they were right on time to enjoy (depending on the price of their ticket) comfortable seats, wine vendors and chef-prepared cuisine, and plenty of decent restrooms. I was a long way from sleeping in the mud at Watkins Glen in 1973, waiting for the Band, the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers, and grateful for the improvement.
But growing record sales? Not so much. The record business has evaporated for everyone not named Adele. Top 40 radio, which has always been for teenagers, is mostly devoted to post-rock pop and hip-hop. In 2016, rock is not teenage music.
Rock is now where jazz was in the early 1980s. Its form is mostly fixed. From Louis Armstrong in the 1920s to Duke Ellington in the ’30s to Charlie Parker in the ’50s to Miles Davis in the ’60s, jazz evolved at superspeed and never looked over its shoulder.
In the early 1980s, it began slowing down and looking back. The trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis returned to styles that Davis and Parker had abandoned and showed how much was still there to explore.

 
Fans cheered on the Who at Desert Trip. Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Jazz moved into Lincoln Center, established a repertoire and assumed its place as “American classical music.” It was no longer controversial or evolving, at least in any popular form.
That is where rock finds itself, in a stage of reflection on past glories. Rock-star memoirs are a booming business — Bob Dylan, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, made it cool with “Chronicles: Volume One” in 2004. This fall, Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Robertson of the Band and the he said-he said Beach Boys Brian Wilson and Mike Love are looking back on long public lives.
Rock ’n’ roll as we know it was named in the mid-1950s, born as a mix of black and white musical styles of the Deep South — blues, country and early R&B.
A “new” invention, the electric guitar, replaced the horn section. The performer was usually the songwriter, and there was a standard of honesty, autobiography and (to use a word that was swung like a sword of judgment) authenticity in the rock musician that made him more artist than entertainer.
In the 1980s rock got a boost from MTV and the compact disc, but the first signs of middle age were already showing. Rock became the soundtrack to Hollywood movies and TV commercials. At the same time, rap began to challenge rock’s domination of mainstream music.
After the brief early ’90s insurgency of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the grunge bands passed, rock became less interested in innovating than in repeating. A popular new rock band tended to sound a lot like beloved old rock bands, and the days when the Beatles moved in three years from the teen pop of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to the experimentation of “Strawberry Fields Forever” were gone.
Certainly, there are rock musicians who push the boundaries of the form. Bjork and P. J. Harvey change the rules with each new album and play to devoted followings — but they don’t fill arenas the way even second-tier bands did in the 1970s and ’80s. The musicians who wish to push rock forward are no longer in the mainstream, and the rock acts remaining there rarely challenge the old rules.
It’s easy to imagine that a musician like Annie Clark, who performs as St. Vincent — original, theatrical and a fierce guitar-shredder — would have been a superstar if she had come along between 1966 and 1994. In 2016 she is a critic’s darling with a devoted cult following, sort of like the young jazz powerhouse Kamasi Washington.
If rock has settled down, what has taken its disruptive place? Millions of hip-hop fans wait anxiously to see how Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé and Kanye West will surprise them next. Hip-hop’s audience still rewards innovation. Hip-hop has learned a lot from rock, but hip-hop is not troubled by rock’s self-imposed restrictions. Rap songs have multiple writers and do not glorify instrumental soloists; hip-hop stars do not pretend to be uninterested in commerce.
In the late 1980s, when Frank Sinatra was in his 70s — the age the Desert Trip stars are now — white-haired women who had once been bobby-soxers stood at his concerts and shouted, “Frankie, you’ve still got it!” Sinatra, a teen idol, had grown up and grown old with his audience.
That is how popular music works. We fall in love with the singers of our youth, and the best of them travel with us through life. Sinatra spent his middle years singing songs like “Last Night When We Were Young” and lyrics about “the autumn of my years.” Dylan in his 50s sang, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”
I was a rock journalist from age 20 to 40 and produced music shows for MTV Networks from 40 to 60. I figured I had enjoyed a front-row seat for the best of it. I assumed that rock was the companion of my generation, and that my children would find a music of their own.
My two daughters, born in 1987 and ’88, did as I expected — they progressed from the Spice Girls to Destiny’s Child to 50 Cent to Drake — the voices of their generation.
But my son, born in 1994, surprised me. He and his friends were post-MTV, post-Top 40 radio. All the music ever made was on their computers and at their fingertips, and they did not pay attention to boundaries of genre or chronology. Tom Petty led them to the Byrds, which led them to the Everly Brothers. The “Rock Band” game was a steppingstone to Santana, which opened the door to Django Reinhardt.
When my son was a teenager we went to the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee for the Buffalo Springfield reunion and to New Orleans to see Stevie Wonder. My son got to see Prince, Mr. Cohen, Levon Helm, Mose Allison and Allen Toussaint before they died. On Sept. 19 he turned 22 and crossed the biggest remaining hero off his bucket list when he finally saw Tom Waits.
Rock ’n’ roll certainly is for old people now. It’s for those young people who want it, too. Like any music that lasts, it’s for anyone who cares to listen.
And if in 20 years midlife hip-hop fans are driving through the California desert to see a gray-haired Jay-Z and a balding Eminem? As Frank Sinatra sang when the Beatles were on top, “That’s life.” The only people who want to die before they get old are those too young to know better.
 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/20/opinion/sunday/is-rock-n-roll-dead-or-just-old.html?emc=edit_tnt_20161119
 
Is Rock ’n’ Roll Dead, or Just Old?
By BILL FLANAGANNOV. 19, 2016
close story-meta

 
Mick Jagger and the Rolling Stones performed at the Desert Trip concerts in October. Kevin Winter/Getty Images
This has been a bad year for music legends. First David Bowie, Glenn Frey and Maurice White. Then Prince and George Martin.
In the most recent sobering sequence, Leonard Cohen and Leon Russell.
We have to face it — rock has grown old. Nothing brings out the indignation of a certain kind of rock ’n’ roll fan like the suggestion that the music of Little Richard, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain and other iconoclasts has aged with its audience. It’s like telling people they are someday going to die — it may be true, but no one wants to hear it, and anyway, why spoil the party?
Rock’s core audience was born in the 1950s and ’60s, and its life span has kept expanding. Sixty years after Elvis appeared on “The Ed Sullivan Show,” rock concerts are raking in more money than ever.
At the Desert Trip festival in Indio, Calif., last month, about 150,000 tickets were sold for two weekends of shows featuring six legends of 1960s rock — Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, Neil Young, Paul McCartney, the Who and Roger Waters — in one place.
close story-body close supplemental
close story-body-supplemental
The headliners were born in the 1940s. The audience was all ages. There were wrinkled hippies and young families. There were college-age backpackers, white-haired fanny-packers and sleepy-eyed six-packers. Many of them had not been old enough to see the Beatles or go to Woodstock, but they were right on time to enjoy (depending on the price of their ticket) comfortable seats, wine vendors and chef-prepared cuisine, and plenty of decent restrooms. I was a long way from sleeping in the mud at Watkins Glen in 1973, waiting for the Band, the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers, and grateful for the improvement.
But growing record sales? Not so much. The record business has evaporated for everyone not named Adele. Top 40 radio, which has always been for teenagers, is mostly devoted to post-rock pop and hip-hop. In 2016, rock is not teenage music.
Rock is now where jazz was in the early 1980s. Its form is mostly fixed. From Louis Armstrong in the 1920s to Duke Ellington in the ’30s to Charlie Parker in the ’50s to Miles Davis in the ’60s, jazz evolved at superspeed and never looked over its shoulder.
In the early 1980s, it began slowing down and looking back. The trumpeter and composer Wynton Marsalis returned to styles that Davis and Parker had abandoned and showed how much was still there to explore.

 
Fans cheered on the Who at Desert Trip. Mark Ralston/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images
Jazz moved into Lincoln Center, established a repertoire and assumed its place as “American classical music.” It was no longer controversial or evolving, at least in any popular form.
That is where rock finds itself, in a stage of reflection on past glories. Rock-star memoirs are a booming business — Bob Dylan, the winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature, made it cool with “Chronicles: Volume One” in 2004. This fall, Bruce Springsteen, Robbie Robertson of the Band and the he said-he said Beach Boys Brian Wilson and Mike Love are looking back on long public lives.
Rock ’n’ roll as we know it was named in the mid-1950s, born as a mix of black and white musical styles of the Deep South — blues, country and early R&B.
A “new” invention, the electric guitar, replaced the horn section. The performer was usually the songwriter, and there was a standard of honesty, autobiography and (to use a word that was swung like a sword of judgment) authenticity in the rock musician that made him more artist than entertainer.
In the 1980s rock got a boost from MTV and the compact disc, but the first signs of middle age were already showing. Rock became the soundtrack to Hollywood movies and TV commercials. At the same time, rap began to challenge rock’s domination of mainstream music.
After the brief early ’90s insurgency of Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the grunge bands passed, rock became less interested in innovating than in repeating. A popular new rock band tended to sound a lot like beloved old rock bands, and the days when the Beatles moved in three years from the teen pop of “I Want to Hold Your Hand” to the experimentation of “Strawberry Fields Forever” were gone.
Certainly, there are rock musicians who push the boundaries of the form. Bjork and P. J. Harvey change the rules with each new album and play to devoted followings — but they don’t fill arenas the way even second-tier bands did in the 1970s and ’80s. The musicians who wish to push rock forward are no longer in the mainstream, and the rock acts remaining there rarely challenge the old rules.
It’s easy to imagine that a musician like Annie Clark, who performs as St. Vincent — original, theatrical and a fierce guitar-shredder — would have been a superstar if she had come along between 1966 and 1994. In 2016 she is a critic’s darling with a devoted cult following, sort of like the young jazz powerhouse Kamasi Washington.
If rock has settled down, what has taken its disruptive place? Millions of hip-hop fans wait anxiously to see how Kendrick Lamar, Beyoncé and Kanye West will surprise them next. Hip-hop’s audience still rewards innovation. Hip-hop has learned a lot from rock, but hip-hop is not troubled by rock’s self-imposed restrictions. Rap songs have multiple writers and do not glorify instrumental soloists; hip-hop stars do not pretend to be uninterested in commerce.
In the late 1980s, when Frank Sinatra was in his 70s — the age the Desert Trip stars are now — white-haired women who had once been bobby-soxers stood at his concerts and shouted, “Frankie, you’ve still got it!” Sinatra, a teen idol, had grown up and grown old with his audience.
That is how popular music works. We fall in love with the singers of our youth, and the best of them travel with us through life. Sinatra spent his middle years singing songs like “Last Night When We Were Young” and lyrics about “the autumn of my years.” Dylan in his 50s sang, “It’s not dark yet, but it’s getting there.”
I was a rock journalist from age 20 to 40 and produced music shows for MTV Networks from 40 to 60. I figured I had enjoyed a front-row seat for the best of it. I assumed that rock was the companion of my generation, and that my children would find a music of their own.
My two daughters, born in 1987 and ’88, did as I expected — they progressed from the Spice Girls to Destiny’s Child to 50 Cent to Drake — the voices of their generation.
But my son, born in 1994, surprised me. He and his friends were post-MTV, post-Top 40 radio. All the music ever made was on their computers and at their fingertips, and they did not pay attention to boundaries of genre or chronology. Tom Petty led them to the Byrds, which led them to the Everly Brothers. The “Rock Band” game was a steppingstone to Santana, which opened the door to Django Reinhardt.
When my son was a teenager we went to the Bonnaroo festival in Tennessee for the Buffalo Springfield reunion and to New Orleans to see Stevie Wonder. My son got to see Prince, Mr. Cohen, Levon Helm, Mose Allison and Allen Toussaint before they died. On Sept. 19 he turned 22 and crossed the biggest remaining hero off his bucket list when he finally saw Tom Waits.
Rock ’n’ roll certainly is for old people now. It’s for those young people who want it, too. Like any music that lasts, it’s for anyone who cares to listen.
And if in 20 years midlife hip-hop fans are driving through the California desert to see a gray-haired Jay-Z and a balding Eminem? As Frank Sinatra sang when the Beatles were on top, “That’s life.” The only people who want to die before they get old are those too young to know better.
 

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

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MUSIC

 

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MUSIC

 

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http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/7581245/early-latin-grammys-2016-winners
 
Fonseca, J Balvin & Julieta Venegas Score Early Latin Grammy Wins
11/17/2016 by Leila Cobo

Rich Polk/WireImage
Fonseca accepts the Latin Grammy Award for Best Cumbia/Vallenato Album onstage during The 17th Annual Latin Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony at MGM Grand Garden Arena on Nov. 17, 2016 in Las Vegas.
Pre-telecast ceremony is dominated by veterans & politics.
Veteran established names were the early winners at the 17th annual Latin Grammy Awards, with Alejandro Sanz, Paula Fernandes, Fonseca, J Balvin, Juan Gabriel, India, Los Tigres Del Norte, Julieta Venegas and Michael Salgado, among others, taking home trophies at the pre-telecast.
Beyond the wins, the early ceremony featured heartfelt speeches, with multiple calls for unity through music in the post-Donald Trump era.
“Walls should be only mental,” said Mexican alt/rocker Carla Morrison, who won best alternative song for “Vez primera.” “I hope us as a Latin community can focus on making quality music, sending a message of equality and quality in music to the new artists who aspire to be on this stage. It’s important that we open our minds to give inspiration through music. We should not only talk about love. We have to open consciousness and open doors for new generations. Let’s not allow some orange son of a bitch take away our mental, spiritual and emotional liberty,” she added, directly referencing Trump, though not naming him.
“There is no racist or fascist who can harm us,” said bandleader Arturo O’Farrill, who won best Latin jazz album with his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra for Cuba: The Conversation Continues.
O’Farrill has taken the ashes of his father, the late Chico O’Farrill, to be laid to rest in Cuba in December, after 15 years of negotiations that were resolved this year when president Obama normalized relationships with Cuba.

Read More
Chico O’Farrill to Be Laid to Rest in Cuba
Beyond politics, the only new name to surface in the early afternoon was Manuel Medrano, the Colombian singer/songwriter whose eponymous debut won in the best singer/songwriter category, besting stiff competition from the likes of veterans like Francsico Céspedes and Alejandro Lerner.
The big early winners were alt Argentine duo Ilya Kuryaki & The Valderramas, who won best alternative music album for L.H.O.N. and best short-form video for “El gallo” in a category that featured little-watched productions and none of the big names that have made YouTube waves this year.

Ethan Miller/WireImage
Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas attend the 2016 Person of the Year honoring Marc Anthony at MGM Grand Garden Arena on Nov. 16, 2016 in Las Vegas.
Also, Brazilian singer Céu won best Portuguese language contemporary pop album for Tropix, which also won best engineered album.
Fonseca, who along with Jesse & Joy is the most-nominated artist this year, won bBest cumbia/vallenato album for Homenaje a la música de Diomedes Díaz. 
“Vallenato was the genre that inspired me and I receive this award with a lot of respect,” said Fonseca, who also has a second album, Conexión, up for album of the year.
Fellow Colombian J Balvin won best urban album for his commercially successful and much-touted Energía, while best urban song went to “Encantadora,” the Yandel hit co-written by Farruko, Yandel, Egbert Rosa Cintron and Eduardo Vargas.

Read More
Who Will Win at Latin Grammys? Billboard Editors Debate
As was widely expected, the late Juan Gabriel won in the traditional pop vocal album category for his chart-topping Los duo 2. And veteran norteño group Los Tigres del Norte won best norteño album for their live set Desde el azteca, while their song “El ataud,” written by Erika Ender, Manu MOreno and MOnica Velez won best regional song.
The competition was decidedly more heated in the tropical categories. Best salsa album, a category featuring only veteran acts, was won by Intensamente India con canciones de Juan Gabriel, India’s heartfelt homage to her good friend Juan Gabriel, who was involved in the album’s production.
Rafa Arcaute, whose credits include Diego Torres’ Buena Vida, up for album of the year, won producer of the year. 
For a full list of winners so far, head to LatinGrammy.com.
How to Rock Sofia Richie’s Billboard Cover Look: Rock the Look
 

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

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http://www.billboard.com/articles/columns/latin/7581245/early-latin-grammys-2016-winners
 
Fonseca, J Balvin & Julieta Venegas Score Early Latin Grammy Wins
11/17/2016 by Leila Cobo

Rich Polk/WireImage
Fonseca accepts the Latin Grammy Award for Best Cumbia/Vallenato Album onstage during The 17th Annual Latin Grammy Awards Premiere Ceremony at MGM Grand Garden Arena on Nov. 17, 2016 in Las Vegas.
Pre-telecast ceremony is dominated by veterans & politics.
Veteran established names were the early winners at the 17th annual Latin Grammy Awards, with Alejandro Sanz, Paula Fernandes, Fonseca, J Balvin, Juan Gabriel, India, Los Tigres Del Norte, Julieta Venegas and Michael Salgado, among others, taking home trophies at the pre-telecast.
Beyond the wins, the early ceremony featured heartfelt speeches, with multiple calls for unity through music in the post-Donald Trump era.
“Walls should be only mental,” said Mexican alt/rocker Carla Morrison, who won best alternative song for “Vez primera.” “I hope us as a Latin community can focus on making quality music, sending a message of equality and quality in music to the new artists who aspire to be on this stage. It’s important that we open our minds to give inspiration through music. We should not only talk about love. We have to open consciousness and open doors for new generations. Let’s not allow some orange son of a bitch take away our mental, spiritual and emotional liberty,” she added, directly referencing Trump, though not naming him.
“There is no racist or fascist who can harm us,” said bandleader Arturo O’Farrill, who won best Latin jazz album with his Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra for Cuba: The Conversation Continues.
O’Farrill has taken the ashes of his father, the late Chico O’Farrill, to be laid to rest in Cuba in December, after 15 years of negotiations that were resolved this year when president Obama normalized relationships with Cuba.

Read More
Chico O’Farrill to Be Laid to Rest in Cuba
Beyond politics, the only new name to surface in the early afternoon was Manuel Medrano, the Colombian singer/songwriter whose eponymous debut won in the best singer/songwriter category, besting stiff competition from the likes of veterans like Francsico Céspedes and Alejandro Lerner.
The big early winners were alt Argentine duo Ilya Kuryaki & The Valderramas, who won best alternative music album for L.H.O.N. and best short-form video for “El gallo” in a category that featured little-watched productions and none of the big names that have made YouTube waves this year.

Ethan Miller/WireImage
Illya Kuryaki and the Valderramas attend the 2016 Person of the Year honoring Marc Anthony at MGM Grand Garden Arena on Nov. 16, 2016 in Las Vegas.
Also, Brazilian singer Céu won best Portuguese language contemporary pop album for Tropix, which also won best engineered album.
Fonseca, who along with Jesse & Joy is the most-nominated artist this year, won bBest cumbia/vallenato album for Homenaje a la música de Diomedes Díaz. 
“Vallenato was the genre that inspired me and I receive this award with a lot of respect,” said Fonseca, who also has a second album, Conexión, up for album of the year.
Fellow Colombian J Balvin won best urban album for his commercially successful and much-touted Energía, while best urban song went to “Encantadora,” the Yandel hit co-written by Farruko, Yandel, Egbert Rosa Cintron and Eduardo Vargas.

Read More
Who Will Win at Latin Grammys? Billboard Editors Debate
As was widely expected, the late Juan Gabriel won in the traditional pop vocal album category for his chart-topping Los duo 2. And veteran norteño group Los Tigres del Norte won best norteño album for their live set Desde el azteca, while their song “El ataud,” written by Erika Ender, Manu MOreno and MOnica Velez won best regional song.
The competition was decidedly more heated in the tropical categories. Best salsa album, a category featuring only veteran acts, was won by Intensamente India con canciones de Juan Gabriel, India’s heartfelt homage to her good friend Juan Gabriel, who was involved in the album’s production.
Rafa Arcaute, whose credits include Diego Torres’ Buena Vida, up for album of the year, won producer of the year. 
For a full list of winners so far, head to LatinGrammy.com.
How to Rock Sofia Richie’s Billboard Cover Look: Rock the Look
 

HAVE A JAZZ EVENT, NEW CD OR IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT FOR THE JAZZ COMMUNITY YOU WANT TO PROMOTE? CONTACT JAZZ PROMO SERVICES FOR PRICE QUOTE.

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https://web.musicaficionado.com/main.html?utm_source=email
 
The 7 Greatest (And Often Bizarre) Stories Of The Les Paul ‘Burst
 
 

POSTED BY
ANDY ALEDORT



SHARE ON FACEBOOK

 
NOVEMBER 15, 2016
 

PHOTO COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES
There is no vintage guitar more coveted than a 1959 Les Paul Standard. Often lovingly referred to simply as the “Burst,” Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Duane Allman and many others laid the foundation of rock utilizing this singularly renowned axe. Here are 7 of the greatest (and often bizarre) stories of renowned artists and their relationship with the most renowned, coveted and irreplaceable electric guitar ever made.
1. The “First” Les Paul
Any discussion of the world’s most essential Les Pauls would be remiss without mention of the one that started it all. In 1951, jazz guitarist Les Paul collaborated with Gibson to create Gibson’s first solidbody electric guitar, though Les had been after them do so for at least a decade; in 1941, Les had built two “solidbody” guitars, the Log and the Clunker, which he found to possess greater tone and sustain. Both instruments were used extensively on many of his hit records. Though a few solidbody guitars had been produced in previous years (during the ’30s, Rickenbacker released the Electro model, Lloyd Loar produced the Vivi Tone and Slingerland built the Model 401, and in the mid-40s Paul Bigsby designed a solidbody for Merle Travis), it was not until Leo Fender revealed the Broadcaster at the 1950 NAMM show that the solidbody concept really took off.
 
 
 
 
 
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Les Paul Demonstrates Multitracking on the CBS program “Omnibus,” 1953.

Les Paul and Mary Ford
Ted McCarty of Gibson has stated that he felt the company needed a “hook” to move in the solidbody direction, and Les Paul was hugely popular at the time, and was also a friend to many of the Gibson brass. After much back and forth and redesign work between Les and the Gibson engineers, the results were introduced in 1952: the guitar featured two P-90s single coil pickups, a mahogany body with a maple cap and a gold finish. The maple cap was added during design revisions as the original all-mahogany body did not produced the type of sustain or bright tone Les desired. Les’ principle contribution was to the pickups and electronics. The gold finish was chosen to hide the fact that the maple cap was a laminate; Gibson did not want their competitors to know just how the guitar was constructed.
The instrument went through five design changes between 1952 and 1960, after which the body design was changed radically to the Les Paul/SG model.
2. The Peter Green/Gary Moore ’59 Les Paul ‘Burst
 
 
 
 
 
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Still Got The Blues (Live)

Gary Moore
Peter Green’s 1959 ‘Burst is one of the most legendary Les Pauls of all. In 1999, Green told Guitarist magazine, “I stumbled across one when I was looking for something more powerful than my Harmony Meteor. I went into Selmer’s in Charing Cross Road and tried one. It was only £110 and it sounded lovely and the color was really good. But the neck was like a tree trunk. It was very different from Eric’s Les Paul, which was slim with a very fast action.” The sunburst on Green’s Les Paul is so slight that it almost looks like a plain top; today, this finish is referred to as a “honeyburst.”
Green befriended the very young guitarist Gary Moore, and in the early ’70s, after becoming disillusioned with the music business, he decided to give the guitar to Moore, much to Moore’s shock and surprise. The understanding was Moore would happily return the guitar to Green if ever wanted it back, but he never did ask for the guitar to be returned to him.
One of the most unique things about this guitar is its tone, which for years had been attributed to the neck pickup being turned around, creating an “out of phase” interaction with the bridge pickup. But designer and luthier Jol Dantzig had the chance to examine the instrument and discovered that the magnets inside that neck pickup were out of phase with one another, resulting in the answer to, “the secret we’d all been searching for!”
Gary Moore would use the guitar on a variety of recordings, most notably on his tribute album to Peter Green, Blues For Greeny. Moore sold the guitar in 2006 and it now resides at Maverick Music in North Carolina.
3. Mike McCready’s First ’59 Les Paul
 
 
 
 
 
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McCready Talks About His First ’59 Les Paul

Mike McCready
Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready’s first vintage guitar purchase was a 1959 Les Paul Standard. As Mike puts it, “A Les Paul Standard was the guitar I always really wanted above all others, because, among other things, Jimmy Page was known for using one on all of the classic Led Zeppelin recordings.”
But Mike was in for a surprise when he finally bought his ’59 he wanted: “I bought my ’59 LP up in Everett, WA, from Danny’s Music, and it just played amazingly. My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, it really does live up the legend!’ And then I found out that it had belonged to Jim Anderson, who played with Van Morrison in the band Them back in the sixties. I had started on a Matteo Les Paul copy when I was 11, so I always wanted to get the real thing”


Mike McCready 1959 Les Paul Standard (Signed)

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Gibson Custom is proud to announce the Limited release of 50 signed Mike McCready 1959 Les Paul Standards in true historic spec.
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Mike plays all sorts of different guitars, but for certain sounds, he says it has to be a Les Paul. “You just can’t get that sound from any other guitar, especially when you are talking about 1959’s. I always liked the way the Les Paul sounded more bluesy in the neck pickup, and more aggressive overall, as compared to any other guitar. And my ’59 Les Paul is my favorite of all my guitars.”
Fans of Pearl Jam know that Mike turns to the ’59 Les Paul at very important moments during the live shows. “I always go to this guitar when we play Alive at the end of our shows. It gives me the perfect tone for the solo and also for the rhythm parts. ‘Alive’ is a giant anthem that has turned into something bigger than we expected so it makes sense to have the biggest and best sound for it.”
4. The Jimmy Page/Joe Walsh ’58/’59 ‘Burst
 
 
 
 
 
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Black Dog (Live 1973)

Led Zeppelin
In April of 1969, legend has it that Jimmy Page bought his “Number 1” Les Paul ‘Burst from James Gang guitarist Joe Walsh and first performed with the guitar in San Francisco later that month. The guitar had had a number of repairs and revisions by the time he received it, such as a headstock repair (obscuring the year and serial number) and the neck had been shaved to make it thinner. In August, Jimmy would replace the original Kluson tuners with gold Grovers in August 1969.
To this day, this guitar remains his absolute favorite. In 1998, Page exclaimed, “An awful lot of Walking into Clarksdale was played on this guitar.” It was also his primary guitar for the 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion show at the O2 Arena in London.
5. Eric Clapton’s “Long-Lost” Sunburst Les Paul


Gibson Custom Eric Clapton 1960 Les Paul

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The Long-Lost “World’s Greatest Les Paul,” Reincarnated for You
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What many consider to be the most intriguing fifties Les Paul of all is the one Eric Clapton used to record John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton in 1965, the album with which Eric revolutionized the sound of electric blues guitar forever. Photographs exist from the Bluesbreakers session that reveal Eric had removed the pickup covers from the original PAF pickups; the neck pickup is a “double white” (both bobbins have white covers) and the bridge pickup is a “double black” (both are black). Though through the years this guitar has usually been referred to as a 1960, Joe Bonamassa recently stated that he has seen this long-lost guitar and it is in fact a 1959.
It has been deemed “long-lost” because the guitar was stolen during the earliest days of Cream’s rehearsals, June of 1966, and prior to Cream’s first gig on July 29, 1966 at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, England. By the time Cream began gigging, Eric had replaced the stolen Les Paul with another ‘Burst, one fitted with a Bigsby tremolo system; photos exist of Eric playing this guitar at the National Jazz & Blues Festival in Windsor, England on July 31, 1966. Shortly thereafter, photos reveal Clapton with a third Les Paul Standard, a “plain top” that is missing the pickup switch cover.
In Eric’s own words, “The ‘best’ Les Paul I ever had was stolen during rehearsals for Cream’s first gig. It was the one I had with John Mayall, just a regular sunburst Les Paul that I bought in one of the shops in London right after I’d seen Freddie King’s album cover of Let’s Hide Away And Dance Away, where he’s playing a Goldtop. It had humbuckers and was almost brand new—original case with that lovely purple velvet lining. Just magnificent. I never really found one as good as that. I do miss that one.”
6. Joe Perry Gets His Long-Lost Les Paul Back
 
 
 
 
 
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Slash Gave Joe Perry Back His Prized Guitar – CONAN on TBS

Joe Perry


Gibson Custom Joe Perry 1959 Les Paul

gibson.com
When Aerosmith began to suffer internal strife towards the end of the 70s, guitarist Joe Perry left the band and was forced to make some hard economic decisions, including selling some of his most iconic guitars. The pinnacle of his collection at the time was his 1959 tobacco-burst Les Paul. But after many years, the guitar incredibly found it’s way back into Joe’s hands, via none other than his close friend, Slash of Guns ‘N Roses. This is a story best told by the guitarists themselves.
SLASH: When I was first learning to play, there was a live Aerosmith album called, Live! Bootleg, that is one of the best live albums I’ve ever heard! In the foldout of the LP, there were a couple pictures of Joe Perry playing a tobacco-finish Les Paul—a black-to-brown-with-puke-yellow kind of deal. This was my “discovering the Les Paul” period, and to me, this was the coolest guitar I’d ever seen.
Years and years later, I was in Japan and I got a phone call saying that there was a guy that wanted to sell me a guitar that I might be interested in, which was a ’59 Tobacco-finish Les Paul. The caller said that it had been owned by both Duane Allman and Joe Perry. I said, “Get outta here! Send me the photos!” When I got back to LA and the photos arrived, in the envelope were 3x5s of the guitar. I recognized it as Joe’s guitar right away because of the wear and specific scratches that were in the finish. I knew it was Joe’s guitar! I bought it for $8000, and I was so excited when it arrived at my apartment. Ultimately, I didn’t even play it that much—it was more of an amazing guitar to have in the collection. I ended up only using the guitar a couple of times—for one song in the studio and for one video.
Years later, I had heard that Joe really wanted to get the guitar back. He called me and it was really terrible to tell him that I didn’t want to sell it. But a bit later I decided that it would really be great to surprise him and give it to him for his birthday. And Joe was so happy—he said, “This is the only thing I have from that period, because everything else I had to part with, in one way or another.” It was so cool to be able to give the guitar back to him.
JOE PERRY: In 1980, I had just left Aerosmith, and it was around Christmastime and I needed some bread. I was playing Stratocasters a lot right around then, and my ’59 Les Paul was really the best guitar to sell because I could get rid of it pretty quick for some good money. They are rare and valuable. I sold it, and let’s just say I didn’t “bid it out;” there was no eBay back then so I just called a guitar dealer friend of mine and he found a buyer for a decent price.
Time went on and by the mid-80s the band got back together again and we started to have some real success again. So I decided to try to find some of those old guitars that had gone the way of the wind. A friend of mine said to me, “I know where the Les Paul is,” and pulled out a magazine with a photo spread of Slash’s guitar collection, and right in the middle was that guitar. Slash has been a fan of the band for a long time, so I called him up and he said, “Oh, please don’t ask me that—don’t ask for that guitar back!” I said, “I’ll pay you whatever you want for it,” but he did not want to sell it. He said, “Listen… I’ll think about it.”
I called him a few more times over the months and finally he stopped taking my calls! It was actually getting in the way of our friendship, so I said to him, “I’ll never ask you about it again—if you ever want to sell it, just give me a call.” At my 50th birthday party, Cheap Trick was playing, and I sat in with them. In the middle of the set, my guitar tech walks up and hands me the tobacco-burst Les Paul. I knew what it was right away. And it soon became apparent that it was Slash’s birthday present to me. I was blown away by that. He’s such a great guy—his heart is so big, I don’t know how it fits in his chest.
7. Jeff Beck’s Infamous Stripped ’59 Les Paul
 
 
 
 
 
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Shapes of Things

Jeff Beck Group
One of the most iconic pictures in rock lore is the one of Jeff Beck from 1968, a promo shot for the newly formed Jeff Beck Group, showing Jeff shirtless with white suspenders, holding a natural finish 1959 Les Paul. A natural finish Les Paul?! But, you say, there was no such thing!
During that time of the late sixties, a popular trend was to strip the finish off of one’s guitar in order to let the wood “breathe” and achieve a more natural, fuller sound. Both John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles had stripped their Epiphone Casinos, as evidenced in the “Get Back” rooftop film as well as the promo film for “Revolution.” In 1999 following a performance at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, I had the opportunity to ask Jeff about how this instrument came to be relieved of its original finish.
“Ahh!,” exclaimed Jeff, “that was the dumbest thing I ever did!” Jeff apparently had stripped the instrument himself. It was not unheard of for some people to strip Goldtop Les Pauls, as the prevailing thought was there might be some nice book-matched maple under there that would look good refinished as a ‘Burst, so I asked if it had, in fact, been a Goldtop. “Noooo,” said Jeff. “It was actually a beautiful sunburst. I stripped it because I had seen a picture of Mickey Baker playing a Les Paul that had had the finish taken down to the bare wood, and I loved his tone. So I thought I could replicate that tone if I did the same thing. It was a failed experiment!”
In the early ’70s, the neck was severely broken on this guitar, and it was replaced. The new, thinner-profile neck had “JB” engraved on the 22nd fret. Additionally, the original PAF pickups on the guitar were replaced, though without Jeff’s knowledge or consent.
By the way, there are pictures of Jimi Hendrix playing this guitar in 1968 at the Scene Club in New York City, when he showed up five out of six nights in a row to sit in with the Jeff Beck Group.
 

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The 7 Greatest (And Often Bizarre) Stories Of The Les Paul ‘Burst
 
 

POSTED BY
ANDY ALEDORT



SHARE ON FACEBOOK

 
NOVEMBER 15, 2016
 

PHOTO COURTESY OF GETTY IMAGES
There is no vintage guitar more coveted than a 1959 Les Paul Standard. Often lovingly referred to simply as the “Burst,” Eric Clapton, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, Duane Allman and many others laid the foundation of rock utilizing this singularly renowned axe. Here are 7 of the greatest (and often bizarre) stories of renowned artists and their relationship with the most renowned, coveted and irreplaceable electric guitar ever made.
1. The “First” Les Paul
Any discussion of the world’s most essential Les Pauls would be remiss without mention of the one that started it all. In 1951, jazz guitarist Les Paul collaborated with Gibson to create Gibson’s first solidbody electric guitar, though Les had been after them do so for at least a decade; in 1941, Les had built two “solidbody” guitars, the Log and the Clunker, which he found to possess greater tone and sustain. Both instruments were used extensively on many of his hit records. Though a few solidbody guitars had been produced in previous years (during the ’30s, Rickenbacker released the Electro model, Lloyd Loar produced the Vivi Tone and Slingerland built the Model 401, and in the mid-40s Paul Bigsby designed a solidbody for Merle Travis), it was not until Leo Fender revealed the Broadcaster at the 1950 NAMM show that the solidbody concept really took off.
 
 
 
 
 
<div class=”player-unavailable”><h1 class=”message”>An error occurred.</h1><div class=”submessage”><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WRjjlUYiZ_8″ target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>
Les Paul Demonstrates Multitracking on the CBS program “Omnibus,” 1953.

Les Paul and Mary Ford
Ted McCarty of Gibson has stated that he felt the company needed a “hook” to move in the solidbody direction, and Les Paul was hugely popular at the time, and was also a friend to many of the Gibson brass. After much back and forth and redesign work between Les and the Gibson engineers, the results were introduced in 1952: the guitar featured two P-90s single coil pickups, a mahogany body with a maple cap and a gold finish. The maple cap was added during design revisions as the original all-mahogany body did not produced the type of sustain or bright tone Les desired. Les’ principle contribution was to the pickups and electronics. The gold finish was chosen to hide the fact that the maple cap was a laminate; Gibson did not want their competitors to know just how the guitar was constructed.
The instrument went through five design changes between 1952 and 1960, after which the body design was changed radically to the Les Paul/SG model.
2. The Peter Green/Gary Moore ’59 Les Paul ‘Burst
 
 
 
 
 
<div class=”player-unavailable”><h1 class=”message”>An error occurred.</h1><div class=”submessage”><a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4O_YMLDvvnw” target=”_blank”>Try watching this video on www.youtube.com</a>, or enable JavaScript if it is disabled in your browser.</div></div>
Still Got The Blues (Live)

Gary Moore
Peter Green’s 1959 ‘Burst is one of the most legendary Les Pauls of all. In 1999, Green told Guitarist magazine, “I stumbled across one when I was looking for something more powerful than my Harmony Meteor. I went into Selmer’s in Charing Cross Road and tried one. It was only £110 and it sounded lovely and the color was really good. But the neck was like a tree trunk. It was very different from Eric’s Les Paul, which was slim with a very fast action.” The sunburst on Green’s Les Paul is so slight that it almost looks like a plain top; today, this finish is referred to as a “honeyburst.”
Green befriended the very young guitarist Gary Moore, and in the early ’70s, after becoming disillusioned with the music business, he decided to give the guitar to Moore, much to Moore’s shock and surprise. The understanding was Moore would happily return the guitar to Green if ever wanted it back, but he never did ask for the guitar to be returned to him.
One of the most unique things about this guitar is its tone, which for years had been attributed to the neck pickup being turned around, creating an “out of phase” interaction with the bridge pickup. But designer and luthier Jol Dantzig had the chance to examine the instrument and discovered that the magnets inside that neck pickup were out of phase with one another, resulting in the answer to, “the secret we’d all been searching for!”
Gary Moore would use the guitar on a variety of recordings, most notably on his tribute album to Peter Green, Blues For Greeny. Moore sold the guitar in 2006 and it now resides at Maverick Music in North Carolina.
3. Mike McCready’s First ’59 Les Paul
 
 
 
 
 
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McCready Talks About His First ’59 Les Paul

Mike McCready
Pearl Jam guitarist Mike McCready’s first vintage guitar purchase was a 1959 Les Paul Standard. As Mike puts it, “A Les Paul Standard was the guitar I always really wanted above all others, because, among other things, Jimmy Page was known for using one on all of the classic Led Zeppelin recordings.”
But Mike was in for a surprise when he finally bought his ’59 he wanted: “I bought my ’59 LP up in Everett, WA, from Danny’s Music, and it just played amazingly. My first thought was, ‘Oh my God, it really does live up the legend!’ And then I found out that it had belonged to Jim Anderson, who played with Van Morrison in the band Them back in the sixties. I had started on a Matteo Les Paul copy when I was 11, so I always wanted to get the real thing”


Mike McCready 1959 Les Paul Standard (Signed)

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Mike plays all sorts of different guitars, but for certain sounds, he says it has to be a Les Paul. “You just can’t get that sound from any other guitar, especially when you are talking about 1959’s. I always liked the way the Les Paul sounded more bluesy in the neck pickup, and more aggressive overall, as compared to any other guitar. And my ’59 Les Paul is my favorite of all my guitars.”
Fans of Pearl Jam know that Mike turns to the ’59 Les Paul at very important moments during the live shows. “I always go to this guitar when we play Alive at the end of our shows. It gives me the perfect tone for the solo and also for the rhythm parts. ‘Alive’ is a giant anthem that has turned into something bigger than we expected so it makes sense to have the biggest and best sound for it.”
4. The Jimmy Page/Joe Walsh ’58/’59 ‘Burst
 
 
 
 
 
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Black Dog (Live 1973)

Led Zeppelin
In April of 1969, legend has it that Jimmy Page bought his “Number 1” Les Paul ‘Burst from James Gang guitarist Joe Walsh and first performed with the guitar in San Francisco later that month. The guitar had had a number of repairs and revisions by the time he received it, such as a headstock repair (obscuring the year and serial number) and the neck had been shaved to make it thinner. In August, Jimmy would replace the original Kluson tuners with gold Grovers in August 1969.
To this day, this guitar remains his absolute favorite. In 1998, Page exclaimed, “An awful lot of Walking into Clarksdale was played on this guitar.” It was also his primary guitar for the 2007 Led Zeppelin reunion show at the O2 Arena in London.
5. Eric Clapton’s “Long-Lost” Sunburst Les Paul


Gibson Custom Eric Clapton 1960 Les Paul

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What many consider to be the most intriguing fifties Les Paul of all is the one Eric Clapton used to record John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers with Eric Clapton in 1965, the album with which Eric revolutionized the sound of electric blues guitar forever. Photographs exist from the Bluesbreakers session that reveal Eric had removed the pickup covers from the original PAF pickups; the neck pickup is a “double white” (both bobbins have white covers) and the bridge pickup is a “double black” (both are black). Though through the years this guitar has usually been referred to as a 1960, Joe Bonamassa recently stated that he has seen this long-lost guitar and it is in fact a 1959.
It has been deemed “long-lost” because the guitar was stolen during the earliest days of Cream’s rehearsals, June of 1966, and prior to Cream’s first gig on July 29, 1966 at the Twisted Wheel in Manchester, England. By the time Cream began gigging, Eric had replaced the stolen Les Paul with another ‘Burst, one fitted with a Bigsby tremolo system; photos exist of Eric playing this guitar at the National Jazz & Blues Festival in Windsor, England on July 31, 1966. Shortly thereafter, photos reveal Clapton with a third Les Paul Standard, a “plain top” that is missing the pickup switch cover.
In Eric’s own words, “The ‘best’ Les Paul I ever had was stolen during rehearsals for Cream’s first gig. It was the one I had with John Mayall, just a regular sunburst Les Paul that I bought in one of the shops in London right after I’d seen Freddie King’s album cover of Let’s Hide Away And Dance Away, where he’s playing a Goldtop. It had humbuckers and was almost brand new—original case with that lovely purple velvet lining. Just magnificent. I never really found one as good as that. I do miss that one.”
6. Joe Perry Gets His Long-Lost Les Paul Back
 
 
 
 
 
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Slash Gave Joe Perry Back His Prized Guitar – CONAN on TBS

Joe Perry


Gibson Custom Joe Perry 1959 Les Paul

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When Aerosmith began to suffer internal strife towards the end of the 70s, guitarist Joe Perry left the band and was forced to make some hard economic decisions, including selling some of his most iconic guitars. The pinnacle of his collection at the time was his 1959 tobacco-burst Les Paul. But after many years, the guitar incredibly found it’s way back into Joe’s hands, via none other than his close friend, Slash of Guns ‘N Roses. This is a story best told by the guitarists themselves.
SLASH: When I was first learning to play, there was a live Aerosmith album called, Live! Bootleg, that is one of the best live albums I’ve ever heard! In the foldout of the LP, there were a couple pictures of Joe Perry playing a tobacco-finish Les Paul—a black-to-brown-with-puke-yellow kind of deal. This was my “discovering the Les Paul” period, and to me, this was the coolest guitar I’d ever seen.
Years and years later, I was in Japan and I got a phone call saying that there was a guy that wanted to sell me a guitar that I might be interested in, which was a ’59 Tobacco-finish Les Paul. The caller said that it had been owned by both Duane Allman and Joe Perry. I said, “Get outta here! Send me the photos!” When I got back to LA and the photos arrived, in the envelope were 3x5s of the guitar. I recognized it as Joe’s guitar right away because of the wear and specific scratches that were in the finish. I knew it was Joe’s guitar! I bought it for $8000, and I was so excited when it arrived at my apartment. Ultimately, I didn’t even play it that much—it was more of an amazing guitar to have in the collection. I ended up only using the guitar a couple of times—for one song in the studio and for one video.
Years later, I had heard that Joe really wanted to get the guitar back. He called me and it was really terrible to tell him that I didn’t want to sell it. But a bit later I decided that it would really be great to surprise him and give it to him for his birthday. And Joe was so happy—he said, “This is the only thing I have from that period, because everything else I had to part with, in one way or another.” It was so cool to be able to give the guitar back to him.
JOE PERRY: In 1980, I had just left Aerosmith, and it was around Christmastime and I needed some bread. I was playing Stratocasters a lot right around then, and my ’59 Les Paul was really the best guitar to sell because I could get rid of it pretty quick for some good money. They are rare and valuable. I sold it, and let’s just say I didn’t “bid it out;” there was no eBay back then so I just called a guitar dealer friend of mine and he found a buyer for a decent price.
Time went on and by the mid-80s the band got back together again and we started to have some real success again. So I decided to try to find some of those old guitars that had gone the way of the wind. A friend of mine said to me, “I know where the Les Paul is,” and pulled out a magazine with a photo spread of Slash’s guitar collection, and right in the middle was that guitar. Slash has been a fan of the band for a long time, so I called him up and he said, “Oh, please don’t ask me that—don’t ask for that guitar back!” I said, “I’ll pay you whatever you want for it,” but he did not want to sell it. He said, “Listen… I’ll think about it.”
I called him a few more times over the months and finally he stopped taking my calls! It was actually getting in the way of our friendship, so I said to him, “I’ll never ask you about it again—if you ever want to sell it, just give me a call.” At my 50th birthday party, Cheap Trick was playing, and I sat in with them. In the middle of the set, my guitar tech walks up and hands me the tobacco-burst Les Paul. I knew what it was right away. And it soon became apparent that it was Slash’s birthday present to me. I was blown away by that. He’s such a great guy—his heart is so big, I don’t know how it fits in his chest.
7. Jeff Beck’s Infamous Stripped ’59 Les Paul
 
 
 
 
 
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Shapes of Things

Jeff Beck Group
One of the most iconic pictures in rock lore is the one of Jeff Beck from 1968, a promo shot for the newly formed Jeff Beck Group, showing Jeff shirtless with white suspenders, holding a natural finish 1959 Les Paul. A natural finish Les Paul?! But, you say, there was no such thing!
During that time of the late sixties, a popular trend was to strip the finish off of one’s guitar in order to let the wood “breathe” and achieve a more natural, fuller sound. Both John Lennon and George Harrison of the Beatles had stripped their Epiphone Casinos, as evidenced in the “Get Back” rooftop film as well as the promo film for “Revolution.” In 1999 following a performance at New York’s Roseland Ballroom, I had the opportunity to ask Jeff about how this instrument came to be relieved of its original finish.
“Ahh!,” exclaimed Jeff, “that was the dumbest thing I ever did!” Jeff apparently had stripped the instrument himself. It was not unheard of for some people to strip Goldtop Les Pauls, as the prevailing thought was there might be some nice book-matched maple under there that would look good refinished as a ‘Burst, so I asked if it had, in fact, been a Goldtop. “Noooo,” said Jeff. “It was actually a beautiful sunburst. I stripped it because I had seen a picture of Mickey Baker playing a Les Paul that had had the finish taken down to the bare wood, and I loved his tone. So I thought I could replicate that tone if I did the same thing. It was a failed experiment!”
In the early ’70s, the neck was severely broken on this guitar, and it was replaced. The new, thinner-profile neck had “JB” engraved on the 22nd fret. Additionally, the original PAF pickups on the guitar were replaced, though without Jeff’s knowledge or consent.
By the way, there are pictures of Jimi Hendrix playing this guitar in 1968 at the Scene Club in New York City, when he showed up five out of six nights in a row to sit in with the Jeff Beck Group.
 

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“100 Days, 100 Nights” by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, the title song from the album, available in stores offline and online. The video was directed by Adam Elias Buncher using two vintage TV cameras bought on E-Bay for $50 dollars each. Shows how much you can do with just a little soul! http://www.sharonjonesandthedapkings.com

 

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“100 Days, 100 Nights” by Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings, the title song from the album, available in stores offline and online. The video was directed by Adam Elias Buncher using two vintage TV cameras bought on E-Bay for $50 dollars each. Shows how much you can do with just a little soul! http://www.sharonjonesandthedapkings.com

 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/arts/music/sharon-jones-dap-kings-dies.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fobituaries
 
Sharon Jones, Powerful Voice of Soul With the Dap-Kings, Dies at 60
By STEVE KENNY and NOV. 18, 2016

 
Sharon Jones performing at Radio City Music Hall in 2009. Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times
Sharon Jones, the soul singer and powerful voice of the band the Dap-Kings, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer that had been in remission but returned last year. She was 60.
Ms. Jones’s death was confirmed by Judy Miller Silverman, her publicist. She said Ms. Jones was surrounded by members of the Dap-Kings and other loved ones when she died.
She continued performing throughout the summer, even while undergoing chemotherapy that she said caused neuropathy in her feet and legs and restricted her movements onstage. But Ms. Jones remained undeterred.
“Getting out on that stage, that’s my therapy,” Ms. Jones said in a New York Times interview published in July. “You have to look at life the way it is. No one knows how long I have. But I have the strength now, and I want to continue.”
The summer tour promoted “I’m Still Here,” a single with the Dap-Kings that detailed Ms. Jones’s birth in a brutally segregated South, a childhood in the burned-out Bronx, and a career hampered by record executives who considered her “too short, too fat, too black and too old.”
Ms. Jones was that rare music star who found fame in middle age, when she was in her 40s.
In addition to working as a correction officer at Rikers Island and an armed guard for Wells Fargo, Ms. Jones, who had grown up singing gospel in church choirs, initially dabbled in professional music as a session singer and the vocalist in a wedding band, Good N Plenty.
After meeting Gabriel Roth, the producer and songwriter also known as Bosco Mann, Ms. Jones made the leap from backup singer to main attraction. Desco Records released her debut 7-inch vinyl single, “Damn It’s Hot,” in 1996. She was 40.
With the encouragement and songwriting of Mr. Roth, who co-founded the Brooklyn soul and funk revival label Daptone Records and serves as the bandleader of the Dap-Kings, Ms. Jones’s full-length debut, “Dap Dippin’ with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings,” came out in 2002. She would go on to release four more studio albums and two compilations on the small label, a point of pride for the fiercely independent Ms. Jones.
“A major label’s going to do what?” she said to Billboard last year. “I sing one or two songs, they give me a few million dollars, which they’re going to want back, and then the next thing you know, the next record don’t sell, and then they’re kicking me to the curb. With us, this is our label, this is our project.”

 
Ms. Jones in 2007. She fought pancreatic cancer after a 2013 diagnosis. Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Sharon Lafaye Jones was born on May 4, 1956, in Augusta, Ga., though her family lived just across the border in North Augusta, S.C. In “Miss Sharon Jones!” the singer recalled that her mother had needed a cesarean section, but because of segregation in the Jim Crow south, she was not allowed in the hospital’s main unit and was instead relegated to a storage room.
After her parents separated, Ms. Jones, the youngest of six children, moved with her mother to New York and was raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. “But New York in 1960, no peace to be found,” she sang on “I’m Still Here.” “Segregation, drugs and violence was all around.”
She went on to attend Brooklyn College and acted in “Sister Salvation,” an Off-Broadway play, before turning her focus to music.
With her late start, Ms. Jones recorded and performed at an unrelenting pace, and in the last year and a half of her life she made two albums, opened two national tours for Hall & Oates, was featured in a television commercial for Lincoln (performing the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider”) and starred in “Miss Sharon Jones!,” a documentary about her life.
The film traced her life from the diagnosis of Stage 2 pancreatic cancer in 2013 through her triumphant return to the stage in 2015. Ms. Jones is survived by four siblings, seven nieces and three nephews.
“Sharon is always up,” the film’s director, Barbara Kopple, said at the time of its release. “Even when she’s in the room where people are getting chemo, she’s the sunshine.”
During her illness, Ms. Jones and the Dap-Kings earned a Grammy nomination in 2015 for best R&B album with “Give the People What They Want.” (“Why is there not a category for soul?” Ms. Jones told Billboard at the time. “That’s my goal. Put me in the right category.”)
The singer, who also collaborated live and on tour with Lou Reed, Phish, Michael Bublé and David Byrne, publicly announced the return of her cancer in September 2015 at the film’s first showing at the Toronto International Film Festival. Doctors, she said, had found a spot on her liver. “I didn’t want people to come up and congratulate me on beating cancer when it’s back,” she said.
That recurrence was treated with radiation. But in May, while she was on tour, cancer cells were found in her stomach, lymph nodes and lungs. Chemotherapy was required, although Ms. Jones changed the regimen to give her greater freedom of movement.
“I need to dance onstage,” she said. “I don’t want something that makes me bedridden. I want to live my life to the fullest.”
 

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http://www.nytimes.com/2016/11/19/arts/music/sharon-jones-dap-kings-dies.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fobituaries
 
Sharon Jones, Powerful Voice of Soul With the Dap-Kings, Dies at 60
By STEVE KENNY and NOV. 18, 2016

 
Sharon Jones performing at Radio City Music Hall in 2009. Nicholas Roberts for The New York Times
Sharon Jones, the soul singer and powerful voice of the band the Dap-Kings, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer that had been in remission but returned last year. She was 60.
Ms. Jones’s death was confirmed by Judy Miller Silverman, her publicist. She said Ms. Jones was surrounded by members of the Dap-Kings and other loved ones when she died.
She continued performing throughout the summer, even while undergoing chemotherapy that she said caused neuropathy in her feet and legs and restricted her movements onstage. But Ms. Jones remained undeterred.
“Getting out on that stage, that’s my therapy,” Ms. Jones said in a New York Times interview published in July. “You have to look at life the way it is. No one knows how long I have. But I have the strength now, and I want to continue.”
The summer tour promoted “I’m Still Here,” a single with the Dap-Kings that detailed Ms. Jones’s birth in a brutally segregated South, a childhood in the burned-out Bronx, and a career hampered by record executives who considered her “too short, too fat, too black and too old.”
Ms. Jones was that rare music star who found fame in middle age, when she was in her 40s.
In addition to working as a correction officer at Rikers Island and an armed guard for Wells Fargo, Ms. Jones, who had grown up singing gospel in church choirs, initially dabbled in professional music as a session singer and the vocalist in a wedding band, Good N Plenty.
After meeting Gabriel Roth, the producer and songwriter also known as Bosco Mann, Ms. Jones made the leap from backup singer to main attraction. Desco Records released her debut 7-inch vinyl single, “Damn It’s Hot,” in 1996. She was 40.
With the encouragement and songwriting of Mr. Roth, who co-founded the Brooklyn soul and funk revival label Daptone Records and serves as the bandleader of the Dap-Kings, Ms. Jones’s full-length debut, “Dap Dippin’ with Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings,” came out in 2002. She would go on to release four more studio albums and two compilations on the small label, a point of pride for the fiercely independent Ms. Jones.
“A major label’s going to do what?” she said to Billboard last year. “I sing one or two songs, they give me a few million dollars, which they’re going to want back, and then the next thing you know, the next record don’t sell, and then they’re kicking me to the curb. With us, this is our label, this is our project.”

 
Ms. Jones in 2007. She fought pancreatic cancer after a 2013 diagnosis. Chester Higgins Jr./The New York Times
Sharon Lafaye Jones was born on May 4, 1956, in Augusta, Ga., though her family lived just across the border in North Augusta, S.C. In “Miss Sharon Jones!” the singer recalled that her mother had needed a cesarean section, but because of segregation in the Jim Crow south, she was not allowed in the hospital’s main unit and was instead relegated to a storage room.
After her parents separated, Ms. Jones, the youngest of six children, moved with her mother to New York and was raised in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn. “But New York in 1960, no peace to be found,” she sang on “I’m Still Here.” “Segregation, drugs and violence was all around.”
She went on to attend Brooklyn College and acted in “Sister Salvation,” an Off-Broadway play, before turning her focus to music.
With her late start, Ms. Jones recorded and performed at an unrelenting pace, and in the last year and a half of her life she made two albums, opened two national tours for Hall & Oates, was featured in a television commercial for Lincoln (performing the Allman Brothers’ “Midnight Rider”) and starred in “Miss Sharon Jones!,” a documentary about her life.
The film traced her life from the diagnosis of Stage 2 pancreatic cancer in 2013 through her triumphant return to the stage in 2015. Ms. Jones is survived by four siblings, seven nieces and three nephews.
“Sharon is always up,” the film’s director, Barbara Kopple, said at the time of its release. “Even when she’s in the room where people are getting chemo, she’s the sunshine.”
During her illness, Ms. Jones and the Dap-Kings earned a Grammy nomination in 2015 for best R&B album with “Give the People What They Want.” (“Why is there not a category for soul?” Ms. Jones told Billboard at the time. “That’s my goal. Put me in the right category.”)
The singer, who also collaborated live and on tour with Lou Reed, Phish, Michael Bublé and David Byrne, publicly announced the return of her cancer in September 2015 at the film’s first showing at the Toronto International Film Festival. Doctors, she said, had found a spot on her liver. “I didn’t want people to come up and congratulate me on beating cancer when it’s back,” she said.
That recurrence was treated with radiation. But in May, while she was on tour, cancer cells were found in her stomach, lymph nodes and lungs. Chemotherapy was required, although Ms. Jones changed the regimen to give her greater freedom of movement.
“I need to dance onstage,” she said. “I don’t want something that makes me bedridden. I want to live my life to the fullest.”
 

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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/sharon-jones-soul-singer-with-dap-kings-dead-at-60-w451517
 
Sharon Jones, Soul and Funk Singer With Dap-Kings, Dead at 60
Grammy-nominated vocalist dies following “heroic battle against pancreatic cancer”
9 hours ago

Sharon Jones, the fiery Grammy-nominated soul singer of the Dap-Kings, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 60. Jesse Dittmar/Redux
Sharon Jones, the fiery soul singer who spent decades in obscurity before becoming a Grammy-nominated soul and funk vocalist with her longtime backing band the Dap-Kings, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer. She was 60.
“We are deeply saddened to announce that Sharon Jones has passed away after a heroic battle against pancreatic cancer,” the singer’s rep wrote in a statement. “She was surrounded by her loved ones, including the Dap-Kings.”
Doctors diagnosed Jones with stage two pancreatic cancer in 2013 and removed the singer’s gallbladder, the head of her pancreas and 18 inches of her small intestine. She went into remission nine months later, but announced that the cancer had returned at the premiere of Miss Sharon Jones!, a documentary detailing Jones’ life and career. The cancer would be elevated to stage four, with tumors spreading to her lung, liver and lymph nodes.
Jones recorded seven albums with the Dap-Kings, but it was her exhilarating live shows, which functioned as equal parts Baptist church revival, Saturday night juke joint and raucous 1970s Las Vegas revue, that showcased the singer’s unparalleled energy. In venues filled with people half her age, Jones was the most dynamic person in the room, bolting onstage and commanding the crowd like her idol James Brown. It was homage without mimicry; respecting the soul and funk elders that defined the genres while displaying seemingly boundless vitality. Jones’ power was the ability to straddle the line between thankful humility, born out of late-in-life success, and boastful performer.
“I’m not trying to ride anybody’s coattails,” the singer said in 2008. “I’m just doing my thing and people are coming to us.”
Sharon Lafaye Jones was born May 4th, 1956 in Augusta, GA. The youngest of six kids, she discovered her love for the stage as a child. Her mother moved the family from Augusta to Brooklyn to escape her abusive husband, and it was there that Jones began singing in church with her sister Willa.
Jones started numerous funk groups in the 1970s, earning extra money by performing in wedding bands and singing gospel music. But for decades, she had trouble breaking in to the industry.
“I wasn’t what they was looking for,” she told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “They just looked at me and they didn’t like what they saw: a short, black woman.” As documented in Miss Sharon Jones!, a record producer told the singer in the 1990s that she was “too fat, too black, too short and too old.” “I looked at myself and saw ugliness,” she said in the film.
She retreated from music for a few years, taking various jobs that included armored car guard for Wells Fargo and two years as a corrections officer at Rikers Island prison. The latter job was a harbinger of her onstage persona: Commanding, fierce and demanding respect.
In 1996, Gabriel Roth, current Dap-Kings bandleader and head of now-defunct funk label Desco Records, worked with Jones’ then-fiancé and needed a back-up singer for a few tracks. Jones would record numerous songs as a back-up singer for the label and release “Damn It’s Hot,” her first song as a frontwoman at the age of 40.
 
 
 
Sharon Jones – Damn It’s Hot (Part I)
 
 
 
 
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After the dissolution of Desco, Roth, alongside saxophonist Neal Sugarman, recruited Jones and the Dap-Kings to record their 2002 debut album Dap Dippin’ With Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings on what would become Daptone Records. They recorded in a Williamsburg basement, selling copies out of Sugarman’s kitchen in Brooklyn. (Jones would help Roth build the label’s permanent studio-cum-headquarters in 2002, handling the electrical wiring herself.)
Jones and the Dap-Kings released a series of increasingly popular, horn-anchored soul and funk albums, including 2005’s Naturally, 2007’s 100 Days, 100 Nights and 2010’s I Learned the Hard Way. The group continued to record and tour constantly, watching their crowds grow as Jones’ roaring voice, frenetic energy and gregarious personality surpassed the initial “female James Brown” comparisons.
In 2012, the group began recording their sixth album, Give the People What They Want, which would earn Jones her first Grammy nomination for Best R&B Album. The next year, she entered a hospital in Augusta, Georgia with yellow eyes, severe itching and rapid weight loss. The cancer diagnosis was swift and unimaginable. “I just started crying,” Jones told Rolling Stone. “All kinds of thoughts went through my head because I figured that I was going to die.”
Jones continued to perform when possible, using the stage as therapy. “When I walk out [onstage], whatever pain is gone,” Jones said. “You forget about everything. There is no cancer. There is no sickness. You’re just floating, looking in their faces and hearing them scream. That’s all that is to me.”
The group’s last album, It’s a Holiday Soul Party, was released in 2015. Speaking to Rolling Stone earlier this year, Jones expressed interest in recording a gospel album with the Dap-Kings, repeating her mantra, “I have cancer; cancer don’t have me.”
Jones’ rep wrote in a statement that donations may be made to The Lustgarten Foundation, James Brown Family Foundation and Little Kids Rock.
“She opened up her life to me in the most intimate, life-and-death situation. She was always open. She’s not homogenized for a moment. What you see is what you get,” Miss Sharon Jones! director Barbara Kopple told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “There wasn’t a minute where she thought she wasn’t going to get better. She was striving because she wanted to be on the stage even when sometimes the news wasn’t that good.”
 
 
 
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings “100 Days, 100 Nights”
 
 
 
 
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Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings “Stranger To My Happiness”
 
 
 
 
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Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings – I’ll Still Be True (Live at SXSW)
 
 
 
 
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Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings featuring Prince – “When I Come Home” – Paris – June 30th, 2011
 
 
 
 
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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/sharon-jones-soul-singer-with-dap-kings-dead-at-60-w451517
 
Sharon Jones, Soul and Funk Singer With Dap-Kings, Dead at 60
Grammy-nominated vocalist dies following “heroic battle against pancreatic cancer”
9 hours ago

Sharon Jones, the fiery Grammy-nominated soul singer of the Dap-Kings, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer at the age of 60. Jesse Dittmar/Redux
Sharon Jones, the fiery soul singer who spent decades in obscurity before becoming a Grammy-nominated soul and funk vocalist with her longtime backing band the Dap-Kings, died on Friday of pancreatic cancer. She was 60.
“We are deeply saddened to announce that Sharon Jones has passed away after a heroic battle against pancreatic cancer,” the singer’s rep wrote in a statement. “She was surrounded by her loved ones, including the Dap-Kings.”
Doctors diagnosed Jones with stage two pancreatic cancer in 2013 and removed the singer’s gallbladder, the head of her pancreas and 18 inches of her small intestine. She went into remission nine months later, but announced that the cancer had returned at the premiere of Miss Sharon Jones!, a documentary detailing Jones’ life and career. The cancer would be elevated to stage four, with tumors spreading to her lung, liver and lymph nodes.
Jones recorded seven albums with the Dap-Kings, but it was her exhilarating live shows, which functioned as equal parts Baptist church revival, Saturday night juke joint and raucous 1970s Las Vegas revue, that showcased the singer’s unparalleled energy. In venues filled with people half her age, Jones was the most dynamic person in the room, bolting onstage and commanding the crowd like her idol James Brown. It was homage without mimicry; respecting the soul and funk elders that defined the genres while displaying seemingly boundless vitality. Jones’ power was the ability to straddle the line between thankful humility, born out of late-in-life success, and boastful performer.
“I’m not trying to ride anybody’s coattails,” the singer said in 2008. “I’m just doing my thing and people are coming to us.”
Sharon Lafaye Jones was born May 4th, 1956 in Augusta, GA. The youngest of six kids, she discovered her love for the stage as a child. Her mother moved the family from Augusta to Brooklyn to escape her abusive husband, and it was there that Jones began singing in church with her sister Willa.
Jones started numerous funk groups in the 1970s, earning extra money by performing in wedding bands and singing gospel music. But for decades, she had trouble breaking in to the industry.
“I wasn’t what they was looking for,” she told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “They just looked at me and they didn’t like what they saw: a short, black woman.” As documented in Miss Sharon Jones!, a record producer told the singer in the 1990s that she was “too fat, too black, too short and too old.” “I looked at myself and saw ugliness,” she said in the film.
She retreated from music for a few years, taking various jobs that included armored car guard for Wells Fargo and two years as a corrections officer at Rikers Island prison. The latter job was a harbinger of her onstage persona: Commanding, fierce and demanding respect.
In 1996, Gabriel Roth, current Dap-Kings bandleader and head of now-defunct funk label Desco Records, worked with Jones’ then-fiancé and needed a back-up singer for a few tracks. Jones would record numerous songs as a back-up singer for the label and release “Damn It’s Hot,” her first song as a frontwoman at the age of 40.
 
 
 
Sharon Jones – Damn It’s Hot (Part I)
 
 
 
 
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After the dissolution of Desco, Roth, alongside saxophonist Neal Sugarman, recruited Jones and the Dap-Kings to record their 2002 debut album Dap Dippin’ With Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings on what would become Daptone Records. They recorded in a Williamsburg basement, selling copies out of Sugarman’s kitchen in Brooklyn. (Jones would help Roth build the label’s permanent studio-cum-headquarters in 2002, handling the electrical wiring herself.)
Jones and the Dap-Kings released a series of increasingly popular, horn-anchored soul and funk albums, including 2005’s Naturally, 2007’s 100 Days, 100 Nights and 2010’s I Learned the Hard Way. The group continued to record and tour constantly, watching their crowds grow as Jones’ roaring voice, frenetic energy and gregarious personality surpassed the initial “female James Brown” comparisons.
In 2012, the group began recording their sixth album, Give the People What They Want, which would earn Jones her first Grammy nomination for Best R&B Album. The next year, she entered a hospital in Augusta, Georgia with yellow eyes, severe itching and rapid weight loss. The cancer diagnosis was swift and unimaginable. “I just started crying,” Jones told Rolling Stone. “All kinds of thoughts went through my head because I figured that I was going to die.”
Jones continued to perform when possible, using the stage as therapy. “When I walk out [onstage], whatever pain is gone,” Jones said. “You forget about everything. There is no cancer. There is no sickness. You’re just floating, looking in their faces and hearing them scream. That’s all that is to me.”
The group’s last album, It’s a Holiday Soul Party, was released in 2015. Speaking to Rolling Stone earlier this year, Jones expressed interest in recording a gospel album with the Dap-Kings, repeating her mantra, “I have cancer; cancer don’t have me.”
Jones’ rep wrote in a statement that donations may be made to The Lustgarten Foundation, James Brown Family Foundation and Little Kids Rock.
“She opened up her life to me in the most intimate, life-and-death situation. She was always open. She’s not homogenized for a moment. What you see is what you get,” Miss Sharon Jones! director Barbara Kopple told Rolling Stone earlier this year. “There wasn’t a minute where she thought she wasn’t going to get better. She was striving because she wanted to be on the stage even when sometimes the news wasn’t that good.”
 
 
 
Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings “100 Days, 100 Nights”
 
 
 
 
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Sharon Jones & the Dap-Kings “Stranger To My Happiness”
 
 
 
 
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Sharon Jones and the Dap-Kings – I’ll Still Be True (Live at SXSW)
 
 
 
 
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Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings featuring Prince – “When I Come Home” – Paris – June 30th, 2011
 
 
 
 
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http://blogs.loc.gov/music/2016/11/when-smokey-sings-forget-everything/?loclr=eapab
 
When Smokey Sings, Forget Everything
November 18, 2016 by Pat Padua
.entry-meta
.entry-header

Gershwin Prize for Popular Song recipient Smokey Robinson performs at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., November 16, 2016. Photo by Shawn Miller.
In a recent interview with Smokey Robinson, recipient of this year‘s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the songwriter told the Music Division about the birth of Motown, which he co-founded with Berry Gordy, Jr. Asked about the crossover appeal of the label, Robinson passed on something that Gordy had said to him: “I’m going to start my own record label and we’re not just going to make black music. We’re going to make music for the world.”
Wednesday night the Library of Congress and the music world gathered together to celebrate Robinson, and the show’s opening number spoke to the wide range of his music. A sparkling array of young and veteran musicians performed a medley of two of Robinson’s most spirited songs, “Get Ready” and “Going to a Go-Go.” The Tenors were joined by JoJo, Gallant, Aloe Blacc, Esperanza Spalding, Corrine Bailey Rae, and finally 13-year old Tegan Marie, who revealed to the audience early that she has a voice bigger than her years.
Emcee Samuel L. Jackson echoed the crowd-warming opener: “Like the song said—get ready.” Jackson explained that the first 45 he ever bought (he clarified that it was a record, not a gun), was the Miracles’ “Shop Around.” “Almost anything I needed to learn about life and love and being a man I got from Smokey.” The host was also impressed that Robinson’s music united a diverse audience, singing along in what Jackson admiringly called, “bipartisan karaoke.”
Robinson, who Music Division Chief Susan Vita called, “the nicest person on the planet,” exudes a warmth that you could feel all the way in the concert hall’s nosebleed seats. After that uptempo opening medley, much of the show was given to a Smokey specialty: R&B ballads. Aloe Blacc crooned “The Tracks of My Tears,” Corrine Bailey Rae cooed “Ooh Baby Baby,” Ledisi belted “You’ve Really got a Hold On Me.”
It wasn’t all dreamy. Esperanza Spalding took on “The Tears of a Clown,” whose boisterous classic arrangement belies its tale of woe. JoJo and Gallant performed Robinson’s solo ballad “Crusin’” with an unusually pronounced beat, and CeeLo Green swung a lively “The Way You Do the Things You Do.” From his box seat in Constitution Hall, Robinson clearly enjoyed teenaged Tegan Marie’s rendition of “My Guy,” originally written for Mary Wells.
With all the talent on display, the highlight of any Gershwin Prize event is always the guest of honor. To present the award to Robinson, Librarian of Conrgess Carla Hayden was joined by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Rep Gregg Harper (R-MS), Rep Steny Hoyer (D-MD), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep Candice Miller (R-MI) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Hayden expressed a sentiment that was true of many in the audience when she said that Robinson’s music was “the soundtrack to my teenage life.”
Robinson was grateful to God, his friends and family, and his many fans for blessing him with the life he has led. In his acceptance speech, the songwriter told us that there was music in his house all the time when he was growing up, all kinds of music: from gutbucket blues like John Lee Hooker and B.B. King and Little Walter (“there were a lot of Littles around”), gospel, classical and jazz. Robinson took special note of the men for whom the prize was named. “The Gershwins’ music was prevalent in our home…For me to be standing here tonight in that company is beyond my wildest dreams.”
So while the Gershwin Prize event is held to celebrate a living songwriter, Robinson was modest and gracious enough to perform not just one of his own songs, but a Gershwin standard, transforming “Our Love is Here to Stay” into the kind of quiet storm ballad that defined his solo career.
The night closed with an all-star performance of “My Girl,” a song Robinson originally wrote for the Temptations, and that has become one of the most beloved of all pop hits. Even Samuel L. Jackson sang a bar. The Music Division congratulates Smokey Robinson on his well-earned reward. Thank you for all the music!
 
 

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http://blogs.loc.gov/music/2016/11/when-smokey-sings-forget-everything/?loclr=eapab
 
When Smokey Sings, Forget Everything
November 18, 2016 by Pat Padua
.entry-meta
.entry-header

Gershwin Prize for Popular Song recipient Smokey Robinson performs at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C., November 16, 2016. Photo by Shawn Miller.
In a recent interview with Smokey Robinson, recipient of this year‘s Gershwin Prize for Popular Song, the songwriter told the Music Division about the birth of Motown, which he co-founded with Berry Gordy, Jr. Asked about the crossover appeal of the label, Robinson passed on something that Gordy had said to him: “I’m going to start my own record label and we’re not just going to make black music. We’re going to make music for the world.”
Wednesday night the Library of Congress and the music world gathered together to celebrate Robinson, and the show’s opening number spoke to the wide range of his music. A sparkling array of young and veteran musicians performed a medley of two of Robinson’s most spirited songs, “Get Ready” and “Going to a Go-Go.” The Tenors were joined by JoJo, Gallant, Aloe Blacc, Esperanza Spalding, Corrine Bailey Rae, and finally 13-year old Tegan Marie, who revealed to the audience early that she has a voice bigger than her years.
Emcee Samuel L. Jackson echoed the crowd-warming opener: “Like the song said—get ready.” Jackson explained that the first 45 he ever bought (he clarified that it was a record, not a gun), was the Miracles’ “Shop Around.” “Almost anything I needed to learn about life and love and being a man I got from Smokey.” The host was also impressed that Robinson’s music united a diverse audience, singing along in what Jackson admiringly called, “bipartisan karaoke.”
Robinson, who Music Division Chief Susan Vita called, “the nicest person on the planet,” exudes a warmth that you could feel all the way in the concert hall’s nosebleed seats. After that uptempo opening medley, much of the show was given to a Smokey specialty: R&B ballads. Aloe Blacc crooned “The Tracks of My Tears,” Corrine Bailey Rae cooed “Ooh Baby Baby,” Ledisi belted “You’ve Really got a Hold On Me.”
It wasn’t all dreamy. Esperanza Spalding took on “The Tears of a Clown,” whose boisterous classic arrangement belies its tale of woe. JoJo and Gallant performed Robinson’s solo ballad “Crusin’” with an unusually pronounced beat, and CeeLo Green swung a lively “The Way You Do the Things You Do.” From his box seat in Constitution Hall, Robinson clearly enjoyed teenaged Tegan Marie’s rendition of “My Guy,” originally written for Mary Wells.
With all the talent on display, the highlight of any Gershwin Prize event is always the guest of honor. To present the award to Robinson, Librarian of Conrgess Carla Hayden was joined by Sen. Dick Durbin (D-IL), Rep Gregg Harper (R-MS), Rep Steny Hoyer (D-MD), House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Rep Candice Miller (R-MI) and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). Hayden expressed a sentiment that was true of many in the audience when she said that Robinson’s music was “the soundtrack to my teenage life.”
Robinson was grateful to God, his friends and family, and his many fans for blessing him with the life he has led. In his acceptance speech, the songwriter told us that there was music in his house all the time when he was growing up, all kinds of music: from gutbucket blues like John Lee Hooker and B.B. King and Little Walter (“there were a lot of Littles around”), gospel, classical and jazz. Robinson took special note of the men for whom the prize was named. “The Gershwins’ music was prevalent in our home…For me to be standing here tonight in that company is beyond my wildest dreams.”
So while the Gershwin Prize event is held to celebrate a living songwriter, Robinson was modest and gracious enough to perform not just one of his own songs, but a Gershwin standard, transforming “Our Love is Here to Stay” into the kind of quiet storm ballad that defined his solo career.
The night closed with an all-star performance of “My Girl,” a song Robinson originally wrote for the Temptations, and that has become one of the most beloved of all pop hits. Even Samuel L. Jackson sang a bar. The Music Division congratulates Smokey Robinson on his well-earned reward. Thank you for all the music!
 
 

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