Today is the 59th birthday of the gorgeous and supremely talented Sade. Her serene and sexy vocal style coupled with her inspired band led smooth jazz, adult-oriented music, and world pop into a whole new direction. Their music was enjoyed by just about everyone; Mature listeners looked to nostalgic comparisons with Stan Getz & Astrud Gilberto, Jazz players ate up the technical abilities of the musicians and the sophistication of the songwriting and arrangements, dancers loved their Latin-inspired beats, and everyone else got off on her exotic good looks and her mysterious persona.
When singer Sade and her band of the same name were establishing themselves, their record company, Epic, made a point of printing “Pronounced Shar-day” on the record labels of their releases. Soon enough, the music had no problem with the correct pronunciation. With the breakthrough Billboard Hot 100 Top Ten single “SmoothOperator” propelling the debut Sade album, Diamond Life, to the same spot on the Billboard 200 chart in 1985, the band fast came to epitomize soulful, adult-oriented, sophisti-pop. Though only five more studio albums would follow in the next 25 years, the band’s following abated only slightly, and each release was treated like a long-awaited public return of a mysterious yet beloved diva.
Born Helen Folasade Adu in Ibadan, Nigeria, about 50 miles from Lagos, Sade was the daughter of an African father and an English mother. After her mother returned to England, Adu grew up on the North End of London. Developing a good singing voice in her teens, Adu worked part-time jobs in and outside of the music business. She listened to Ray Charles, Nina Simone, Al Green, Aretha Franklin, and Billie Holiday, and studied fashion design at St. Martin’s School of Art in London while also doing some modeling on the side.
Around 1980, she started singing harmony with a Latin funk group called Arriva. One of the more popular numbers that the group performed was an Adu original co-written with bandmember Ray St. John, “Smooth Operator.” The following year, she joined the eight-piece funk band Pride as a background singer. Pride’s opening acts often featured members of the band in different combinations. Pride and their off-shoots performed often around London and stirred up record company interest. Initially, the labels wanted to sign only Sade — technically a trio featuring Adu, Stuart Matthewman, and PaulDenman — while the whole of Pride wanted a deal. The members of Pride not involved in the Sade trio eventually told Adu, Matthewman, and Denman to go ahead and sign a deal. Adding keyboardist Andrew Hale, Sade signed to the U.K. division of Epic Records.
The band’s debut album, Diamond Life(with overall production by Robin Millar), went Top Ten in the U.K. in late 1984. January 1985 saw the album released on CBS’ Portrait label, and by spring, it had gone platinum on the strength of the Top Ten singles “Smooth Operator” and “Hang On to Your Love.” The second album, Promise(1985), featured “Neveras Good as the First Time” and “The Sweetest Taboo,” the latter of which stayed on the U.S. Hot 100 for six months. Sade was so popular that some radio stations reinstated the ’70s practice of playing album tracks, adding “Is It a Crime” and “Tar Baby” to their playlists. In 1986, Sade won a Grammy for Best New Artist.
Sade’s third album was 1988’s Stronger Than Pride, and featured their first number one single on the U.S. R&B chart, “Paradise,” as well as “Nothing Can Come Between Us” and “Keep Looking.” The fourth Sade album didn’t appear for four years: 1992’s Love Deluxecontinued the unbroken streak of multi-platinum Sade albums, spinning off the hits “NoOrdinary Love,” “Feel No Pain,” and “Pearls.”
Matthewman, Denman, and Hale went on to other projects, including the low-key Sweetback, which released a self-titled album in 1996. Matthewman also played a major role in the development of Maxwell’s career, providing instrumentation and production work for the R&B singer’s first two albums. Sade eventually reconvened to issue LoversRock in 2000. The lead single “By Your Side” was a moderate hit, peaking at number 18 on the adult contemporary chart; the following summer, Sade embarked on their first tour in more than a decade and sold out many dates across America. In early 2002, they celebrated the tour’s success by releasing a live album and DVD, Lovers Live. They resurfaced in late 2009 with “Soldier of Love,” the lead single on the album of the same title, released the following year. In the U.S., Soldier of Love debuted at the top of the Billboard 200 chart and sold over 500,000 copies during its first week. Another live set, Bring Me Home, followed in 2012.
At one time, after the release of Lovers Rock in 2000, the singer took a 10-year break from music (until 2010’s Soldier of Love) to raise her daughter, Mickaila, and to move to the Caribbean. Mickaila Adu is Sade’s only child (born in 1995), and from her relationship with Jamaican-American producer Bob Morgan. They raised Mickaila together during Sade’s break from music before breaking up.
Because her mom doesn’t like the spotlight, most people haven’t seen much of Mickaila. Still, the 20-year-old has been out here over the last few years sharing aspects of her life (and artwork) on social media. That includes her journey to identifying as a transgender man.
According to Black Girl Long Hair, Mickaila, otherwise known as “Ila,” was open about being a lesbian for a while. Yesterday, Ila took to Instagram to let people know that he’d started taking the necessary shots, or hormone replacement therapy, to transition. He shared the news with the caption, “Today is the first day of the rest of my life.”
Ila hasn’t shared what his new name will be, or if he plans to have a new one at all now that he identifies as male. But he has reportedly been open for some time about his desire to transition. Of course, you won’t hear what Sade has to say about any of this because her private life has always remained just that — private. Still, I’m sure she’s been nothing short of supportive of her child.
For many jazz fans, trumpet player Harry James was at best superfluous and at worst a sellout: a musician of formidable technique who abandoned the fiery style that made him a star of the Benny Goodman Orchestra in the late 1930s, only to adopt a much more schmaltzy, flashy, commercial manner that led to a remarkable number of hit records throughout the 40s.
Born in Georgia in 1916, Harry James learned to play the trumpet at age eight and became one of the most admired jazz musicians of the big band era. He was so popular in the early 1940s that Columbia Records couldn’t press enough of his records to meet demand.
To dance music lovers, James was the leader for three decades of consistently satisfying big bands whose earliest incarnation gave Frank Sinatra his start and whose 1950s version found its most lucrative gigs at the casino hotels in Vegas and at Tahoe.
But most of America knew Harry James simply as the husband of movie star Betty Grable, the blonde pinup who caused World War II G.I.s to croon, “I want a gal, just like the gal, who married Harry James…”
There were a number of different Harrys – jazz player, big-band leader, celebrity husband (as well as a promiscuous womanizer, unrecovered alcoholic and ruinous gambler). Harry James was both one of the most essential trumpeters and bandleaders in the history of American music, and a man who lived a sad and misguided life.
Born to circus performer parents (his father was a bandmaster, his mother a trapeze artist and horse rider), Harry Haag James was reared as a prodigy and learned that performing well was the price of approval. He became a performer himself as early as the age of four when he began working as a contortionist. By age 5, he was a featured drummer; by 9, he played trumpet; at 12, he took over leadership of the second band in the Christy Brothers Circus, for which his family was then working. Schooled by his father, a stern taskmaster, James studied the classic trumpet repertoire and developed the iron chops and bravura technique of a circus musician; but he also soaked up the jazz and blues of his native Texas and loved Louis Armstrong‘s playing.
After a stint with the influential Ben Pollack Orchestra band in 1936, James joined the wildly popular Benny Goodman in 1936 at the startlingly early of 20 and an early first marriage, he rapidly gained notice in the band, and by December 1937 he had begun to make recordings under his own name for Brunswick Records (later absorbed by Columbia Records).He was an instant sensation, and the rest of his life was lived in the spotlight.
By 20, too, his bad habits were formed: heavy drinking, incessant gambling, and compulsive promiscuity. In his decades of success, James found no reason to change, remaining (in the words of one of his band members) “a perpetual teenager as a man,” someone who “served all his appetites and all his desires. He wasn’t terribly concerned with other people.” Indeed, his dark sides had a tendency to eclipse his skill on the silver trumpets.
In early 1939, he left Goodman and launched his own orchestra, premiering it in Philadelphia in February. That spring, he heard the then-unknown Frank Sinatra on a radio broadcast and hired him. The band struggled, however, and when the more successful bandleader Tommy Dorsey made Sinatra an offer at the end of 1939, did not stand in his way. In later years, Frank bankrolled a number of different Harry James’ Orchestras. Around the same time, he was dropped by Columbia and switched to the tiny Varsity Records label.
After two years of difficulties in maintaining his band, James changed musical direction in early 1941. He added strings and turned to a sweeter, more melodic style, meanwhile re-signing to Columbia Records. The results were not long in coming. In April 1941, he first reached the Top Ten with the self-written instrumental “Music Makers.” (His band was sometimes billed as Harry James and His Music Makers.) A second Top Ten hit, “Lament to Love,” featuringDick Haymes on vocals, followed in August, and late in the year James reached the Top Five with an instrumental treatment of the 1913 song “You Made Me Love You (I Didn’t Want to Do It).” This was the record that established him as a star. But with its sweet style and what was frequently described as Harry’s’ “schmaltzy” trumpet playing, it was also, according to jazz critic Dan Morgenstern (as quoted in the 1999 biography Trumpet Blues: The Life of Harry James by Peter J. Levinson), “the record that the jazz critics never forgave Harry for recording.”
James was second only toGlenn Miller as the most successful recording artist of 1942. During the year, seven of his recordings peaked in the Top Ten: the Top Five “I Don’t Want to WalkWithout You,” with vocals byHelen Forrest; the number one instrumental “Sleepy Lagoon“; the Top Five “One Dozen Roses,” with vocals by Jimmy Saunders; the Top Five instrumental “StrictlyInstrumental“; “He’s My Guy“; the Top Five “Mister Five by Five“; and “Manhattan Serenade,” the last three with vocals by Helen Forrest.
In September, when Miller went into the armed forces and gave up his radio show, Chesterfield Time, he handed it over to James, a symbolic transference of the title of top bandleader in the country. (James was ineligible for military service due to a back injury.) Meanwhile, wartime travel restrictions and the recording ban called by the musicians union, which took effect in August 1942, had limited James’ touring and recording activities, but another avenue had opened up. He began appearing in movies, starting with Syncopation in May 1942 and continuing with Private Buckaroo in June and Springtime in the Rockies in November. His next hit, “I Had the Craziest Dream,” with vocals by Helen Forrest, was featured in Springtime in the Rockies; it hit number one in February 1943. The movie is also memorable for having starred Betty Grable, whom James married in July 1943; they had two children and divorced in October 1965.
He had continued success throughout the 40’s & 50’s, even as the Big Band Era’s popularity was slowly waning, By then, he was deliberately trying to make his band sound like that of Count Basie. He was back onscreen in February 1950, his trumpet playing was heard in the film YoungMan with a Horn, though the man fingering the trumpet onscreen was Kirk Douglas, and in November 1956 in the film The Opposite Sex.
He made his first major tour of Europe in October 1957, and in ensuing years he alternated national and international tours with lengthy engagements at Las Vegas hotels. There were two more film appearances, The Big Beat (June 1958) and The Ladies Man (July 1961). James performed regularly through the early ’80s. He was diagnosed with lymphatic cancer in 1983, but continued to play, making his last appearance only nine days before his death at 67. Led by trumpeter Art Depew, his band continued to perform.
No one questioned Harry’s talent as a jazz trumpeter, though after his commercial ascendance in 1941 many jazz critics dismissed him. After his period of greatest success, he turned back to a more jazz-oriented style, which failed to change the overall impression of him, if only because he was no longer as much in the public eye. Nevertheless, his swing hits remain among the most popular music of the era.
James’ self-centered existence had its colorful aspects. A great sports fan, he was very serious about his band’s baseball team and often hired band members as much for their athletic prowess as their musical abilities. A lover of Western movies, he eventually arranged to star in one (Outlaw Queen, 1957). And as a big-band leader for much of his life, he participated to an expected degree in the antics and merriment that punctuated the dullness of life on the road.
But antics aside, Harry James was aloof. “Harry never got close to people,” one of his drummers said. “I don’t think anybody really liked him.” His first of three wives, singer LouiseTobin spoke of James’ “inhuman side,” his “cold, icy stare” and his “absolute indifference to hisown children.”
James’ stunted personality stemmed from his deeply ingrained loneliness and insecurity to a childhood in which he received no proper nurturing. It appears he grew up not knowing the meaning of love. From boyhood on, Harry needed an audience to feel alive, special, important and loved. Without it, he believed he really wasn’t worth very much. Lacking any real education, he wouldn’t allow people to get close to him fearing they might find out he was a fraud. Only on the bandstand did James feel fulfilled and safe, according to singer HelenForrest: “He was at peace and he knew he was loved when he was playing the trumpet…. He knew nobody could hurt him.” Another singer, Marion Morgan, thought that James “gave all his warmth and love through his trumpet. There just wasn’t much left.”
The good-looking, high-living James slickly packaged by record and movie people, quipped trumpeter Pete Candoli, “like a WASP Cesar Romero” — thought his success ride would never end. Certainly his work never did. His poor gambling luck, which found him losing millions of his own dollars (plus some of Betty Garbles’), kept him touring virtually to his dying day, on July 5, 1983, in Las Vegas. Harry James said he didn’t fear death: “It’s just another road trip.”
The guitarist and singer Long John Baldry, born January 12, 1941, and died July 21, 2005, at the age of 64, played a key role in the growth of the British rhythm and blues movement, notably as the vocalist with Alexis Korner’s Blues Incorporated.
He led bands in the mid-1960s that featured the youthful Rod Stewart and Elton Johnbefore recording his big hit, Let The Heartaches Begin, in 1967.
Baldry grew up in a middle-class family in Queensbury, north London, attending the local grammar school and singing in the choir at St Lawrence’s, Edgware. Listening to a neighbor’s collection of jazz and blues records, he was entranced by the voice and 12-string guitar playing of the black American songster Huddie Leadbetter (“Leadbelly”). He also heard New Orleans jazz, recreated by the Crane River Jazz Band at Kingsbury baths hall.
Baldry acquired his first guitar at 14 and taught himself to play in Leadbelly’s style, often practicing in nearby Canon’s Park. This had once been owned by Handel’s patron, the Duke of Chandos, and, in a recent interview, Baldry joked that if he were to write an autobiography he would call it From Handel To Howlin’ Wolf.
Aged 16, in 1957 he discovered the skiffle and folk scene of Soho, where his 6ft 7in frame earned him the nickname “Long John”. He soon formed a duo with the guitar virtuoso Davy Graham and bought, for £15, a 12-string guitar built by a furniture maker and blues fan, Tony Zemaitis. A year later, he found himself billed at a Bradford folk club as “the world’s greatest white, 12-string guitarist”.
By the late 1950s, Baldry was a leading figure on the Soho scene and the only regular performer at both the blues club of Alexis Korner and Cyril Davies and the folk-song sessions run by Ewan MacColl and Peggy Seeger. The policy of the irascible MacColl was that singers should perform only the music of their native country, but he made an exception for Baldry, who remained a close friend until MacColl’s death in 1989.
When Korner and Davies decided, in early 1962, to form Britain’s first amplified blues group, Baldry was the natural choice as lead singer. Blues Incorporated‘s pioneering sessions at the Ealing Club, in west London, drew audiences that included future members of the Rolling Stones, John Mayall’s Bluesbreakers, and Manfred Mann. Baldry’s commanding vocal presence is one of the glories of R&B From The Marquee, the only album made by the original Blues Incorporated line-up.
Within a year, Korner and Davies had fallen out and formed separate bands. Both implored Baldry to join their new groups. He decided to go with Davies because, he later said, “Alexis was too hospitable to other musicians and I did not want to share the stage with 20 other singers.”
The Cyril Davies All Stars also featured the exceptionally talented guitarist Geoff Bradford, but the group’s progress was halted when its leader died suddenly in early 1963. Renaming the band, the Hoochie Coochie Men, Baldry assumed the role of leader, recruiting the 19-year-old Rod Stewart as a second vocalist in 1964 after hearing him singing on the platform at Twickenham station.
When that group disbanded, Baldry formed Steam Packet with organist Brian Auger, and later hired, as his backing group, Blues-ology, whose pianist Reg Dwight chose the stage name of Elton John by combining the first names of Baldry with that of the group’s saxophonist, Elton Dean. Baldry’s sage advice, when Dwight was experiencing a sexual identity crisis, is commemorated in the Elton John song, Someone Changed My Life Tonight.
By 1967, Baldry’s swinging, jazzy blues were out of favor and he was persuaded to move into middle-of-the-road pop. This was a commercial success when Let The Heartaches Begin and Mexico became top-20 hits but was an artistic disaster, from which Rod Stewart and Elton John rescued Baldry by co-producing his well-reviewed 1971 album, It Ain’tEasy.
This revival in his fortunes was short-lived and, at the end of the 1970s, he emigrated to Canada, living first in Toronto and then in Vancouver. He was signed to a recording contract by Holger Peterson, of Stony Plain Records and became a popular figure on the blues club and folk festival circuit. He returned occasionally to perform in Britain and Europe, most recently in 2003. He also exploited his gruff, but mellow, bass voice by recording numerous voice-overs for advertisements and for Captain Robotnick, the villain of a children’s television cartoon series.
His final album for Stony Plain, fittingly, was Remembering Leadbelly, in 2002, of whom Baldry said, “His songs touched me as a kid and they still talk to me all these years later”.
With all the attention Jimmy Page has been getting as a result of the court case regarding the origin of “Stairway to Heaven”, was it nicked from Spirit or not (it wasn’t), I thought I would post some history of Page’s life and career for your pleasure.
Jimmy Page is best known as the fire-slinging riffmaster who helped Led Zeppelin to hard-rock dominance in the 1970s. His work with Zeppelin made him one of rock’s most important and influential guitar players, writers, and producers; in 2003, Rolling Stone listed Page as number nine on its list of the 100 greatest guitarists of all time. Since Zep’s demise, Page has alternated between solo projects and collaborations with other superstars. Largely uninterested in new trends and technology, Page’s later work has been as bound to classic rock as his legendary band was.
A self-described “introspective loner” as a child, Page, who was born January…
Nat Hentoff, the civil liberties advocate and columnist who wrote about jazz and politics everything in between during a career spanning seven decades, died Saturday at 91, his son said. He passed surrounded by family and listening to Billie Holiday.
I had the pleasure of spending time with Mr. Hentoff on several occasions in New York and I always found him to be a walking encyclopedia of Jazz.He would start out every encounter with a “pop quiz” on music, after which he feigned disgust with any wrong answer. He took great pleasure in regaling you with anecdotes about famous musicians, singers, songwriters, and producers.There will never be another Nat Hentoff.
Hentoff was born in Boston to Russian-Jewish immigrant parents in 1925. The New York Times reported that he tried to rebel at the age of 12 by publicly eating a salami sandwich as people walked by him on the way to synagogue, which angered his father and his neighbors. He said later that he did it in order to know how it felt to be an outcast, calling the experience “enjoyable.”
He attended Boston’s Latin School and graduated with honors from Northeastern University in 1946. In 1950, he was a Fulbright fellow at the Sorbonne in Paris. From 1953 through 1957 he was associate editor of Down Beat magazine. He was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in education and an American Bar Association Silver Gavel Award in 1980 for his coverage of the law and criminal justice in his columns. In 1985 he was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Laws by Northeastern University.
George Wein presenting Nat Hentoff with the NEA Jazzmaster Award
He has published many books on jazz, biographies, and novels, including a number of books for children. Among his works: “Does Anybody Give A Damn?: Nat Hentoff on Education,” “Our Children Are Dying,” “A Doctor Among Addicts,” “Peace Agitator: The Story of A. J Muste,” “The New Equality,” “The First Freedom: The Tumultuous History of Free Speech in America,” “The Day They Came to Arrest the Book,” “The Man from Internal Affairs,” “Boston Boy,” and “John Cardinal O’Connor: At The Storm Center of a Changing American Catholic Church,” “Free Speech for Me and Not for Thee: How the American Left and Right Relentlessly Censor Each Other,” and “Listen to the Stories: Nat Hentoff on Jazz and Country Music.”
Hentoff developed a love for jazz early in life, and unlike many fans of his generation, took it seriously as art music rather than as glorified dance music. He brought to his listening a quality of focused, sustained attention that has always been rare. In Lewis’s film, Hentoff relates a story that seems as extraordinary as it is characteristic of the man: Unable to appreciate Charlie Parker’s genius — the ideas were too dense, he says, and came too quickly for him to grasp — he followed a friend’s advice and listened to Parker’s records at half-speed, closely and repeatedly. Slowed down, the music gradually became comprehensible, its intricacies less opaque, its beauties less veiled, and he began to understand the scope of the talent on display. It is no accident that Hentoff was the first non-musician to be named a Jazz Master by the National Endowment for the Arts.
The title of David Lewis’s documentary “The Pleasures of Being Out of Step/Notes on the Life of Nat Hentoff” begs a central question: Has Hentoff, 91, famed social commentator, critic, jazz writer, and activist, really spent his life being out of step? Or is that largely a romanticizing conceit?
If one considers the prevailing conformity of Eisenhower-era culture out of which his career first flowered, the answer, of course, is yes; a bearded, left-leaning, jazz-loving, African-American-befriending agnostic Jew was about as out of step as a person could get. But situated more narrowly within his own milieu, among his own kind, this East Coast child of the Great Depression who lived in the heart of Greenwich Village, frequenting its lively night scene while helping to forge the distinctive tone of its own local newspaper, has spent most of his life not only in step, but also frequently choreographing those steps for his confreres.
Charles MIngus with Nat Hentoff
Musicians themselves sensed in him a kindred spirit, and many became his personal friends. Charles Mingus wrote in his memoirs that Hentoff with whom he found it possible to form a deep, abiding friendship. The writer’s admiration for his favorite artists was unfeigned, wholehearted and free of any consciousness of a racial divide. Interracial friendships were not so very rare in left-wing circles during the 1950s; nevertheless, there seems to have been a special quality of warmth and receptivity that Hentoff brought to these relationships.
In addition to his weekly Village Voice column, Hentoff wrote on the subject of music for the Wall Street Journal. Among other publications in which his work has appeared are the New York Times, the New Republic, Commonweal, the Atlantic and the New Yorker, where he was a staff writer for more than 25 years.
John Coltrane never stopped wondering what he wanted from music, and never stopped pushing the boundaries. Trane genuinely strove to be saintly in his devotion to the divine, creating a body of deeply spiritual music that has come to be regarded as holy by his many devotees. His musical legacy was officially consecrated in 1971 when the Church of SaintJohn Will-I-Am Coltrane was founded in San Francisco.
A gentle and enigmatic man of many voices, Trane was an often fiery, shockingly original musician. Put on any of his records, and the sounds emanating from his saxophone crackle with life. While his music was criticized by some as being too “aggressive,” Trane knew (as some people “knew” in the 1960s) that love was the answer. His albums gaine momentum, one after the other, until his death in 1967, when perhaps he finally went even further beyond.
Right from the outset, Olé Coltrane establishes itself as a continuation of the approach taken on its predecessor, My Favorite Things. The modal jazz setting remains, the lineup is mostly the same, and Coltrane is playing soprano sax again. But the title track, a Coltrane original, is a different framework for the musicians to build on in terms of tone, with its strong Spanish influence. While Miles Davis’ Sketches of Spain album recorded the year earlier could’ve been an influence, Davis and company opted for a more rigid orchestral setting which limited the opportunity for group improvisation. Coltrane’s take is far more conducive for that.
When he recorded Olé Coltrane in 1961, Trane was already transitioning over to Impulse! Records and his playing reflected the greater freedom that the new label afforded him. In the original liner notes, he is quoted as saying (in a classic understatement), “I like to play long.” On the 18-minute showpiece Olé, one can imagine the profound satisfaction he must have felt, when for the first time, he was free to let his playing stretch out across the record grooves. This is trance music of the highest order.
Trane’s Olé resonates with the mystical sounds of the North African Moors who once ruled the Iberian Peninsula. While Sketches of Spain is big on Gil Evans’ sweeping orchestrations and flamenco grandeur, Olé” explores the Eastern-influenced musical modes of Islamic Spain in a more stripped down and earthy manner. Just two days after recording Africa/Brass, his stunning debut album for Impulse!, Trane took old band mates McCoy Tyner and Elvin Jones into the studio for a rendezvous with some talented new friends. Joining them there were Trane’s equally intense and innovative counterpart, EricDolphy, the very young and fabulous trumpeter Freddie Hubbard, and two bassists: ReggieWorkman and the Art Davis.
Reggie WorkmanArt Davis
He would often record within a conventional quartet in which he was the only horn player, but here he expands his group, adding a trumpet, a flutist, and even a second bassist. The way the band accommodates the two bass players on Olé is interesting and effective – one hammers out the distinct, simple, repetitive riff that establishes the Spanish theme on which the piece is built, while the other tinkers in a higher register, arguably operating free of pure rhythm section duties. The two co-exist without ever crowding each other out or cluttering the low end.
Eric DolphyElvin Jones
Freddie Hibbard
This dream team provided a great deal of musical empathy, liberating the conception and size of Coltrane’s solos, spurring him to unknown heights. Everyone except Elvin Jones solos on Olé, shaping the song with ever increasing freedom into the masterpiece that it is. Eric Dolphy’s flute solo is unforgettable, communicating genius in a voice that no one could fail to identify. The interplay of the two basses lends an eerie mysticism to the song, with Art Davis’ strong rhythmic bow-work suggesting the entrancing dance of Istanbul’s Whirling Dervishes. Dahomey Dance is a more traditional sounding blues, with Trane switching to tenor sax. If not for the double-bass frontline and Dolphy’s blissfully unconventional solo, this song could easily be mistaken for a missing gem from Miles’ Kind Of Blue sessions.
The soloing is fantastic throughout, as you’d expect from these musicians. Eric Dolphy’s contributions on the flute stand out very prominently, not just for the choice of instrument but also his distinct style and delivery. The instrumentation is more typical of jazz than on Dolphy’s most famous work, but the solo is brilliant in any case.
McCoy Tyner
Tyner is also wonderful, managing to thrive in this format as he did on My Favorite Things. His interplay with Elvin Jones is incredible. The title track is one of Coltrane’s greatest songs and is clearly the highlight of the record, spanning 18 captivating minutes. It’s intense but in a radically different way to his work that would follow. Ole casts a long shadow on the rest of the record, but Aisha, written by McCoy Tyner, is another excellent song – the ballad of this set. Aisha burns with such sensuality that it’s hard to understand why it was one of the few McCoy Tyner compositions Trane ever recorded. People familiar with Coltrane’s more famous, frenetic work can appreciate the restraint shown, particularly Jones’ minimal brushwork on the kit.
. The final track, a Billy Frazier composition entitled Original Untitled Ballad (To Her Ladyship), was not released until 1970. A lovely and delicate tune, it was excluded from the original release for some strange reason.
Fans of My Favorite Things will find lots to like about this album. This, along with Africa/Brass from the same period, are good starting points for hearing Coltrane playing in a larger group than his typical quartet formation. Four short years later, he’d record in larger ensembles again, but by that stage, his philosophy towards performance and composition had changed considerably and it bears very little immediate resemblance to what he offers here.
Olé Coltrane was his last recording for Atlantic Records, after which he’d record for Impulse for the remainder of his career – a label that would afford him tremendous freedom and faith that’d be reflected in his later work. It’s an intriguing listen that further showcases Coltrane’s rapid development, and is worthy listening for fans of his work or modal jazz in general.
A transitional record, Olé Coltrane successfully navigates the line between Trane’s sonically challenging later years and his earlier accessibility. A magnificent milestone in Trane’s artistic growth, this is an essential recording for any collection.
It was (gulp) 50 years ago this week that The Doors first self-titled album was released. When I hear it even today, it reminds of the first time I was exposed to its inherent coolness. It was on of those “cold chill” records that had to be played again & again & again and, for some reason, was empowering. To me, it represents the late 60’s California vibe of love, sex, debauchery and pushing the limits of what was good taste, at that time. (Remember when your parents picked up on the theme of “The End?” It was guaranteed to prompt a demand to “get rid of that filthy album!” Those same parents, however, loved “Light My Fire” – the Jose Feliciano version! It is a beautiful interpretation of the song (see below.)
When the Doors entered a Hollywood recording studio to make their debut album at the end of August 1966, they knew what they wanted. Months of serving as house band at the Whisky a Go-Go had sharpened their playing and performing skills to the point where one member of the quartet could abruptly swerve toward a new direction and the others would follow without missing a beat.
And they had become adventurous songwriters in the process, coming up with a culture-tipping set of songs that sampled the flavors of 1967, from blues and pop to folk and psychedelia. Built on Ray Manzarek’s woozy organ (which fell somewhere between old-man jazz and tripping-balls garage rock), the Doors’ music sounded playful and serious, stoned and studious, artsy and yes, it must be said, pretentious.
Its dubiously in-charge ringleader was Jim Morrison, one of rock’s most magnetic frontmen, a swaggering mound of sweaty flesh who was defined by a combination of slurred lyrics and pants-down-now sex. His penetrating presence turned The Doors into something more than just another hippie-era relic; he got under your skin and wormed his way into your system’s vital wiring. Without him, the music was an empty vessel.
But it all came together in a collision of ideals, ideas and high-as-a-kite philosophy during that week in late August 1966. When The Doors was released on Jan. 4, 1967, it sounded both part of and a distraction from a scene that was on the verge of discharging. “Break on Through (To the Other Side)” was the album’s lead track and single, but the showpieces came at the end of each side: “Light My Fire” was Top 40 pop with a hard-on; “The End” was apocalyptic theater laced with Oedipal tension. And they pretty much summed up The Doors experience.
Interestingly, “Light My Fire” was the first song Robby Krieger ever wrote. Wow.
He said in a 1990 interview about the cover: “It’s really a great feeling to have written a classic. I think I owe a big debt to Jose Feliciano because he is actually the one, when he did it, everybody started doing it. He did a whole different arrangement on it.”
“Break on Through” failed to crack the Top 100, but “Light My Fire” made it to No. 1, hitting the peak position in July, just as the Summer of Love was ramping up.
The song has become a pivotal moment in that momentous year. So has the album, which reached No. 2. Its blues (“Back Door Man”) and pop-art (“Alabama Song [Whisky Bar]”) covers blended with originals like “Soul Kitchen” and “Twentieth Century Fox” for the start of a trip that helped open rock’s expanding perceptions.
Also recognizing the half-century anniversary of that debut album, Rhino Records announced plans for a deluxe reissue of “The Doors,” originally released Jan. 4, 1967, in a 3 CD, one LP set that will be available in March.
“The Doors: 50th Anniversary Deluxe Edition” will include stereo and mono mixes of the album. The stereo version has been remastered for the first time in nearly 30 years and the mono edition is appearing for the first time on CD, along with a 12-by12-inch hardcover book and a CD of a live performance from the Matrix club in San Francisco, which the band gave shortly after the album debuted.
Although the Matrix performance had been previously available, Rhino officials noted that the 2008 release was taken from a third-generation source and that recently discovered original tapes long thought to be lost have been used for the new version. It will list for $64.98.
In recent months, a video has gone viral depicting a robust, middle-aged woman in grainy black and white ripping one of the meanest guitar solos you’ve ever seen:
The woman featured is none other than Sister Rosetta Tharpe, the “Godmother of Rock ‘n’ Roll,” who has one of the more enviable legacies in music. Her musical disciples and descendants read like a whose-who of legendary ‘50s and ‘60s figures, her personal history bears the earmarks of a classic outlaw, and her music is richly powerful and evocative—soul-stirring in the truest sense of the term. What a legacy that is—but that legacy has long been obscured.
For decades, fans and critics tended to gloss over pre-1955 music as compared to the music of the late 20th century, and the fact that she was a gospel star likely places her in a certain niche in the minds of the general public. While names like Chuck Berry, Muddy Waters, Elvis Presley, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee Lewis became etched into the culture’s collective consciousness, Sister Rosetta Tharpe was rarely mentioned in the same breath—or even as an obvious forbear—to her rock ‘n’ roll offspring who would carry the genre into the mainstream.
Born Rosetta Nubin in Cotton Plant, Arkansas, her mother, Katie Bell Nubin, was a singer, preacher, and mandolin player for the Church of God In Christ (COGIC) who encouraged little Rosetta to play and sing for services. A clear prodigy, it was through her association with COGIC that Rosetta would evolve into one of the most amazing gospel performers of her time. It was a church that believed in musical expression and was progressive in its view of gender roles within the church, encouraging women ministers and musicians. After moving to Chicago, little Rosetta and her mother became fixtures within the city’s gospel music scene.
At 19 years old, she would marry a minister named Thomas A. Thorpe in 1934, but the union would be short-lived. Though they divorced, Rosetta would keep his last name as her stage name—slightly altering “Thorpe” to “Tharpe.”
Upon signing with Decca Records, Tharpe issued singles that are instant smashes. Her versions of Thomas Dorsey tunes like “This Train” made her a household name—in particular, her reworked version of “Hide Me in Thy Bosom” (retitled “This Train”) was a breakthrough for her as a recording artist. Backed by Lucky Millender’s jazz orchestra, the song raised her visibility with secular and white audiences and set the stage for a remarkable run that saw her perform at Carnegie Hall (as part of John Hammond’s “Spirituals to Swing” showcase) and record music with Cab Calloway and the Jordanaires. She also made recordings for U.S. troops stationed overseas; Tharpe was one of only two black gospel artists included on these “V Discs”—along with the Dixie Hummingbirds. But it was her song “Strange Things Happening Every Day” that proved a major leap forward for both her career and gospel music; it was the first gospel hit on the Billboard R&B charts, peaking at #2.
She would team up with gospel singer Marie Knight, whom she’d seen perform in Harlem with Mahalia Jackson, and the two would tour together throughout the 1940s as “The Saint (Knight) and the Sinner (Tharpe).” By 1951, she’d become so popular that 25,000 people paid to watch her wedding to her third husband, Russell Morrison, in Griffith Stadium in Washington, D.C. That same year, Tharpe and Knight would make an ill-fated attempt to forge a career in straight-ahead blues.
Tharpe’s forays into the mainstream and secular worlds had been a delicate balancing act up to that point; they’d earned her some scorn but also notoriety. But the early ‘50s blues records hurt her gospel standing and the partnership she’d enjoyed with Knight. In 1951, Knight left to pursue a solo career in secular music while Tharpe tried to return to gospel. But her attempted move into blues totally alienated fans and by the late 1950s, she’d been dropped by Decca as her popularity waned. She continued to perform as a major draw in overseas markets throughout the 1960s, sparked by the decade’s resurgent interest in blues music. She would tour Europe with bluesmen like Muddy Waters and Otis Spann and remained a consistent performer until a stroke slowed her down in 1970. Tharpe subsequently died in Philadelphia in 1973. She was 58.
She lived her life boldly, daring to play guitar aggressively at a time when female guitarists of any discipline were rare. She chose to embrace secular artists and audiences at a time when the black gospel community was loud in its condemnation of crossing over. And her own sexual identity has been the subject of much candor. Her attempts at marriage have been called a facade by some who’ve claimed that Tharpe was bisexual, and only considered marriage for appearances and to pander to gospel’s conservative audience. Her biographer, Gayle Wald, wrote that one fellow musician claimed to have walked in on Tharpe and two other women in bed during her “honeymoon tour” right after her third wedding in 1951.
“The circulation of this and other lore indicated that the gospel world had its own legends of outlaw identities and behaviors: of sissy men and bulldagger women, of philandering evangelists and pilfering prophets, of hypocrites who boozed up backstage before singing in front of the curtain about the virtues of holy living,” wrote Wald. “For homosexuals in her audiences, rumors about Rosetta’s sexuality might have been liberating, an invitation to look for tell-tale signs of affirmation of their own veiled existence.”
Her status as an important figure in music has largely been muted due to both rock’s whitewashing and the tendency to elevate the male rock star mythos while treating the genre’s most significant women like footnotes. To be certain, Sis. Rosetta Tharpe paved the way for countless musical women in general and in rock ‘n’ roll specifically—but make no mistake, she also paved the way for men who wanted to play this style of music, black and white men who decided to incorporate her sure-fingered guitar style and swingin’ grooves into the template of what would become a world-changing genre.
Later performers like Little Richard, Tina Turner, and Johnny Cash cited Tharpe as a major influence; and her intricate electric guitar style set the template for what would be considered “lead guitar” in Chicago blues and early rock ‘n’ roll. In the past few years, there have been documentaries and articles that celebrate Tharpe as an important figure in 20th century music who helped set the stage for many of the sounds that would come to define rock ‘n’ roll and R&B. But it’s just as important to remember how great she was on her own merit as an artist and musical force—not just who she influenced.
The term “pioneer” can sometimes be a pejorative. Contemporary music fans toss it off in a way that suggests a certain artists’ significance only exists as a trailblazer, that they only matter because they “paved the way” for the music you actually care about that came afterward. That shouldn’t happen with Sis. Rosetta Tharpe. One listen to songs like “Rock Me,” “That’s All,” and “Jericho” and it’s obvious that the spirit and fire of gospel music, along with the swing and sincerity of the blues, came crashing into each other and bursting out in this woman’s amazing songs.
John Paul Jones, born John Baldwin, will forever be remembered as the other musical genius who helped propel Led Zeppelin to some of the greatest heights that any rock band has ever reached. From the iconic bass line on “Dazed and Confused,” the spine-tingling organ solo on “No Quarter” and the iconic recorder intro to “Stairway to Heaven,” his contributions to the band’s sound were as critical as they were varied. Not such a bad way to be remembered, but Jones has always been a more multi-faceted figure than even his time in Led Zeppelin would suggest.
Beginning early on as a teenager in the 1960s, Jones has quietly led one of the more fascinating and unusual careers in popular music history. As a musician, arranger and a producer, he’s worked in a shockingly wide range of genres and with a surprisingly odd and brilliant assortment of artists.
I’ve included many video links to give you an idea of how versatile and talented John paul Jones Really is.
Here are 20 things you may not have known that Led Zeppelin’s secret weapon did:
Released a 1964 solo single, “Baja,” written by Lee Hazlewood and produced by Andrew Loog Oldham. One of the major trends among popular artists in England in the early 1960s was to change one’s name to something a little bit more eye-grabbing. Thus, Richard Starkey became Ringo Starr and Alan Caldwell became Rory Storm. In 1964, John Baldwin entered the studio with Rolling Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham to cut his first single, “Baja,” a song penned by country/pop singer Lee Hazlewood. The song itself is a pretty nondescript instrumental propelled by woody-sounding guitar, but the session’s implications were enormous. Going to market, Oldham was convinced his young charge’s birth name just wasn’t going to cut it, and thus rechristened him John Paul Jones. As Jones remembered Oldham got the name from a “movie poster for John Paul Jones the American.” The rest is history.
Played in an R&B band named Herbie Goins and the Nightimers with future Mahavishnu Orchestra leader John McLaughlin in the early Sixties. As influential as the early British blues scene turned out to be — with bands like the Yardbirds, the Rolling Stones and the Animals all breaking out of it — in London in the 1960s, that community was actually quite small. Lots of future stars frequently jammed together at scene maker Alexis Korner’s residency at the Marquee Club downtown and formed upstart bands that typically folded within months of their inception. One such group was an outfit called Herbie Goins, named after the Florida-born blues singer of the same name, which featured Jones on bass and John McLaughlin on guitar. As McLaughlin later recalled, “John Paul Jones and I were very good friends. … I gave [him] harmony lessons, believe it or not.”
Nearly joined up with the Shadows as a full-time member at age 16 in 1963. Before the Beatles exploded onto the scene in England in 1964, the hottest pop group around was the all-instrumental outfit the Shadows. Originally started as the backing band for the singer Cliff Richards, the group broke out in 1960 with its Number One single “Apache.” Two years later, bassist Jet Harris and Tony Meehan struck out on their own and recorded another Number One record titled “Diamonds” with Jones’ future Led Zeppelin band mate Jimmy Page on guitar. Looking to capitalize on that success, Meehan and Harris took Jones out on the road for a short tour and almost tendered an offer for him to join up with the Shadows a year later, but went with another bass player named John Rostill instead.
Was a frequent collaborator with Donovan and played on the songs “Hurdy Gurdy Man,” “Sunshine Superman” and “Mellow Yellow.” Beginning in 1963, Jones established a reputation among many of the producers and engineers at the major studios that dotted London as one of the most reliable, creative bass players and arrangers on the scene. Though he performed on countless sessions in his pre-Zeppelin years, his work with the singer-songwriter Donovan might be the most indelible. Not only did Jones play bass on the singer’s biggest hits, including “Hurdy Gurdy Man” and “Sunshine Superman,” he actually saved the latter number from the scrap heap.
Mickie Most
“The first Donovan session was a shambles — it was awful,” he recalled. “It was ‘Sunshine Superman’ and the arranger had got it all wrong so I thought, being the opportunist that I was, ‘I can do better than that’ and actually went up to the producer.” Jones managed to rework the track and was eventually hired by the producer Mickie Most to work on many of his future sessions, including those with Nico, Tom Jones and Wayne Fontana.
Arranged music for Jimmy Page’s lone solo Yardbirds studio album,Little Games, in 1967. Jimmy Page quit the full-time session life once and for all in the summer of 1966 to join up with his childhood friend Jeff Beck as the second guitarist in the Yardbirds. The duo only recorded a handful of tracks together before Beck jumped ship, leaving Page the sole remaining guitarist in the band. When it came time for the group to work on their next Beck-less album, Little Games, producer Mickie Most called in his ace in the hole John Paul Jones to lay down a bit of bass and put together some cello arrangements. Jones contributions weren’t small either: He performed on the tracks “Ten Little Indians,” “No Excess Baggage” and “Goodnight Sweet Josephine” in place of the Yardbirds’ nominal bassist Chris Dreja, who switched over from rhythm guitar when Page originally joined up.This record truly epitomizes that pop-psychedelic sound of the British scene at the time.
Recorded with Jeff Beck multiple times, including on the session for “Beck’s Bolero,” which birthed the name and concept for Led Zeppelin. While still an official member of the Yardbirds, Jeff Beck decided to test the waters of a solo career and entered IBC Studios in London on May 16th, 1966, to cut his first single. His friend and bandmate Jimmy Page served as the producer that day — though Mickie Most ended up with the credit — while also playing 12-string backing guitar. For the rhythm section, Page enlisted the best in the business: Keith Moon of the Who on drums and John Paul Jones on bass. The resulting song, “Beck’s Bolero,” is one of the most exhilarating instrumentals in rock history, but as good as the song was, the very existence of the session proved to have far larger implications than anyone could have realized. An oft-repeated tale was that at some point while in the studio, someone suggested that the players assembled should form a band. Moon was said to have quipped, “That would go over like a lead balloon,” an offhand comment sparked the genesis of Led Zeppelin.
Created the string arrangement for the Rolling Stones’ “She’s a Rainbow.” There aren’t too many bright spots on the Stones’ 1967 foray into psychedelia, Their Satanic Majesties Request, but “She’s a Rainbow” is unquestionably the brightest — thanks in large part to John Paul Jones. Written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards, the track is one of the most adventurous and touching in the entire Stones catalog, highlighted by a tender solo piano section from frequent collaborator Nicky Hopkins. Jones was brought in by Stones manager Andrew Loog Oldham to arrange the avant-garde string section that acts as the song’s coda.
Worked with Cat Stevens on his debut album,Matthew and Son, in 1967. In 1966, Cat Stevens was just another folkie trying to make a name for himself around the club and coffeehouse scene in London. Then one day he met manager/producer Mike Hurst and impressed him enough with his songwriting that Hurst signed him up as his next client. Stevens entered the recording studio to work on his first album, Matthew and Son, in July 1967, and John Paul Jones was brought in by Hurst to play bass on all of the record’s 14 tracks.
Worked with Dusty Springfield onDusty … Definitelyin 1968. Just before she took off to work with Jerry Wexler and Atlantic Records in the United States to create her breakthrough album, Dusty in Memphis, in the fall of 1968, the British soul singer still had one album left on her original contract with Philips. When it came time to record Dusty … Definitely, Jones was brought in by producer Johnny Franz to lay down some bass and conduct the orchestra. This ended up being a more fortuitous assignment for Jones than he could have realized: When it came time for Led Zeppelin to sign with Atlantic Records later that year, Springfield made sure to put in a good word in to Wexler on Jones’ behalf, paving the way for one of the most lucrative signings in rock history up to that point.
Created the signature riff to “Black Dog.”
Jimmy Page is widely renowned as one of the greatest riff-smiths in rock history, a fact that often overshadows some of the more impressive musical contributions of his Zeppelin bandmates. Case in point: It was Jones, not Page, who came up with the unique 5/4 riff for one of Led Zeppelin’s most recognizable songs, “Black Dog.” As Jones told Cameron Crowe in the liner notes to the Led Zeppelin box set Light and Shade, “I wanted to try an electric blues with a rolling bass part. But it couldn’t be too simple. I wanted it to turn back on itself. I showed it to the guys, and we fell into it. We struggled with the turn-around, until [John] Bonham figured out that you just four-time as if there’s no turn-around. That was the secret.”
John Bonham & John Paul Jones
Considered quitting Led Zeppelin in 1973. By 1973, after recording five albums and touring almost nonstop, Jones was apparently fed up with life in Led Zeppelin and wanted out. According to band lore, he was thinking about leaving the band to take up a position as the choirmaster of Winchester Cathedral, a claim that he has repeatedly rebuked. “It was a joke,” he explained. “Somebody said, ‘Do you like being on the road?’ I said, ‘No … I saw this advert for a job for the organist out by the cathedral, I’m gonna bid for that. I’m gonna take that. I’m gonna apply for that.’ It was one of those things.” Ultimately, Jones opted to stay in the band and stuck it out for another seven years until the untimely death of John Bonham brought the whole enterprise crashing down.
Played bass on Paul McCartney’s 1984 album,Give My Regards to Broad Street. Following the demise of Led Zeppelin, while Robert Plant launched a successful solo career and Jimmy Page hooked up with Paul Rodgers to form the supergroup the Firm, Jones essentially picked up right where he left off before he joined the band, working the session scene. One of his first high-profile jobs of the 1980s was his work with Paul McCartney on the soundtrack to the former Beatle’s film Give My Regards to Broad Street. While the film flopped, the album did quite well, taking the Number One spot on the British charts. Lead single “No More Lonely Nights” earned both a Golden Globe and a BAFTA nomination.
Contributed a track to Brian Eno’s 1988 ambient record,Music for Films III. In 1988, electronic music pioneer Brian Eno was plotting the third installment of his ambient music series Music for Films when he decided to bring in Jones to work with him on the track that ended up being named “4-Minute Warning.” While the album isn’t one of Eno’s greatest works — it’s a bit of a stylistic mishmash — it’s hard to argue against the brilliance of that song in particular. Credited solely to Jones, it’s a musically adventurous passage of music that sounds as disturbing as it does alluring, building to an almost unholy crescendo. It’s another marker of Jones being perhaps the most “out there” of his Zeppelin cohorts.
Produced the Butthole Surfers’ 1993 album, Independent Worm Saloon. Of all the bands in the world that you’d imagine a former Seventies-rock giant collaborating with, the Butthole Surfers would probably be very low on the list. Nevertheless, when it came time for the freaky Texas rockers to record their sixth record and first with a major label, Independent Worm Saloon, they reached out Jones, who surprisingly agreed. As Butthole Surfers frontman Gibby Haynes remembered of those sessions, “We spent so much money on that record! We basically spent a fortune to hang out with some guy from Led Zeppelin!”
Worked on the orchestral arrangements for R.E.M.’sAutomatic for the People. If Automatic for the People isn’t R.E.M.’s best record, then at the very least it’s their most popular, with more than 18 million copies sold. While the Georgia alt-rockers were clearly hitting their stride by this point and writing some of their best material in years, it was a stroke of genius to bring in Jones to help put together some of the orchestral arrangements on the album. As Jones recalled, “They sent me the demos of their songs, and we went into a studio in Atlanta, with members of the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra. They were great songs, something you can really get your teeth into as an arranger. And I’ve been good friends with them ever since.”
Recorded an album with outré singer Diamada Galàs (Yoko Ono Redux) in 1994. During the Nineties, while his former Led Zeppelin bandmates Jimmy Page and Robert Plant were reuniting for an MTV Unplugged album, Jones was off taking yet another creative left turn, linking up with avant-garde singer-composer Diamanda Galàs to create the album The Sporting Life. “We met once in London for an evening and talked about music and our backgrounds and what we liked,” Jones said. “Diamanda went back on tour and then to New York, and I went back home and started thinking about this. And I put down some riffs with a drum machine and sent them to Diamanda, who by that time was working at a studio, SIR, with a Hammond organ. … We got together for the recording period, just the two of us for two weeks and put it all down.”
Signed with King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp’s DGM label in 1999 and released two solo albums. After waiting for a number of years to see if Page or Plant might call him up and ask him whether he would like to join them out on the road, Jones decided to move on and try his hand as a solo artist. When it came time to find a label, however, the options appeared limited, so he reached out to King Crimson guitarist Robert Fripp, who had just started his own company: Discipline Global Mobile or DGM. “Robert and I shared managers at one point,” Jones recalled. “I asked what Robert was doing. He said that Robert had this record company and it had this great ethic, you know, where the artist had total artistic control … and they retained ownership of their music, which is pretty rare in the music industry, and there were no contracts, which is also nice. I just liked the whole idea — it’s very artist friendly, not artist-hostile or even artist-dangerous, like some places!” Ultimately, Jones put out two albums under the Discipline umbrella, Zooma in 1999 and The Thunderchief in 2002. The former actually featured Jones’ boss Fripp playing guitar on the song “Leafy Meadows.”
Played on two tracks on the Foo Fighters’ 2005 album,In Your Honor. Dave Grohl is a vocal Led Zeppelin fan — the first tattoo he ever got was of John Bonham’s interconnected-circles symbol that appears on the band’s fourth album — so when it came time to record the Foo Fighters’ 2005 album, In Your Honor, the singer/drummer/guitarist threw up a Hail Mary and put in a phone call to Jones to see if he’d be interested in coming into the studio to add a bit of instrumentation. Ever the game collaborator, Jones agreed and played mandolin on the song “Another Round” and piano on “Miracle.” Jones would collaborate with Grohl once again four years later along with Queens of the Stone Age frontman Josh Homme in the supergroup Them Crooked Vultures.
In 2009, Jones linked up with Sonic Youth for a one-of-a-kind performance with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company in Brooklyn. The happening was avant-garde to the extreme, with Jones joining the band’s guitarists Lee Ranaldo and Thurston Moore, and swapping frantically between bass and keyboard passages. As the hour-long performance progressed, Jones kept his foot pressed almost constantly on a pedal that controlled the pitch, tone and volume of his bass sound. Needless to say, the entire endeavor was one of the more intense performances of his long and storied career.
Is currently busy writing an opera. Not one to rest on his laurels, Jones has apparently spent the past few years working on a completely original opera production. As he stated in 2014, “It’s unlike anything else. It’s the emotion, the passion.” Apparently, Jones opera is based partly on August Strindberg’s The Ghost Sonata, and at the time he gave that interview, he was about halfway through the work’s first act. While Jones hasn’t given many updates on the project since that point, it’s safe to assume, given his track record, that if he ever does complete the piece, it won’t meet anyone’s expectations of what a traditional opera sounds like.
Like most of you, my parents and their friends generally went to house parties on New Year’s Eve. Guy Lombardo’s broadcast on ABC was either playing in the background or turned on a few minutes before Midnight to hear his Orchestra’s rendition of Auld Lang Syne as the clock strikes 12:00 AM. The required list of supplies for the celebration in those days, were a couple of noisemakers, a glass of bubbly, and someone to kiss. For almost 50 years music on New Year’s Eve meant Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians.
Although I am a musician and try to appreciate most forms of music, his group’s sickeningly sweet sound did me in. The saxes with that heavy vibrato, swooping strings, cascading pianos, along with the tuba often providing the bass line in lieu of a bass fiddle could cause cavities with excessive listening. Also, let’s not forget Guy himself with his 30” baton waving in the air, conducting no one.
Guy Lombardo owned New Year’s Eve. In fact, the live broadcast of his show on December 31st was so popular that he was known as “Mr. New Year’s Eve.” Guy and the band cultivated a trademark sound early on that seemingly only white people loved. It was considered revolutionary at the time: the soft, mellow saxophones, muted trumpets, slow tempos, symphonic style always presented with top-notch musicianship. His concerts were elegant affairs. Imagine grand ballrooms filled with guests dressed to the nines, a fine suit or maybe even a tuxedo, or stylish frock. If you weren’t sitting at your table enjoying a cocktail, you might be swaying across the dance floor to the sweet sounds of the band. And on stage, the band in red tuxes with Guy Lombardo in black, baton in hand and gently swaying and dancing as he conducted.
From humble beginnings in London, Ontario, a move to the U.S. and first recordings in the 1920s, the band’s popularity soared. By 1954 Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians had sold over 100 million records and played at the inaugural balls of every U.S. president from Franklin Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower and again in 1985 for Ronald Reagan.
Although Lombardo achieved great success in the United States and became an American citizen in 1938, he maintained close ties with Canada and came back frequently to visit. Lombardo appeared regularly on CBC Radio over the years. In 1973 he talked to Peter Gzwoski on his program This Country in the Morning. Lombardo was a household name. They talked about the early years of the band when he and his band mates were teenagers living in London.
By the time the band had grown to a 9 piece outfit they figured they were ready for the big time and decided to head south. Their first stop was Cleveland, Ohio. Guy reminisced about the surprise of learning that Cleveland was stuffed to the gills with big bands. They were definitely not the only game in town. But lucky for the Royal Canadians, it seemed that the other bands were reluctant to perform on radio. They thought it was too much bother to come all the way to a radio station for each appearance when instead they could fill a concert hall. Lombardo jumped at the chance and made their name. It was radio that helped catapult The Royal Canadians to fame and their name was made.
Bandleader Guy Lombardo, right, poses in 1943 with his brothers, from left, Victor, Carmen and Lebert.
In the mid-1970s, Guy appeared on the local CBC Radio weekend morning show Fresh Air. Interviewing him were Bill McNeil and Cy Strange. Guy was always quick to give credit, especially to his brother Carmen. Carmen played sax in the band and he was entirely self-taught. He also wrote some of the band’s greatest hits, like their most famous, Boo Hoo. In fact, the band was a family affair, with brothers Lebert and Victor also part of it, and for a time sister Rose Marie.
One thing you might not know about Guy Lombardo is that he was a champion boat racer, specializing in hydroplane boats. Between 1946 and 1949 he was the reigning U.S. national champion of the sport. The name of his beloved race boat? Tempo, of course.
Although I didn’t like the vast majority of their music, here’s one I really do like. Perhaps it is that I agree with the sentiment so much. Enjoy Yourself!
Over their long career, Guy Lombardo and the Royal Canadians had over 500 hit songs. In fact by the early 1970s total sales exceeded 300 million, making it the most popular dance band ever. Their recording of Auld Lang Syne still plays as the first song of the New Year of Times Square in New York.
Happy New Year Everyone! Thanks to all of you for reading & writing my humble blog.
Reggie Workman 
Art Davis
Eric Dolphy 
Elvin Jones
Freddie Hibbard
McCoy Tyner
Mickie Most
John Bonham & John Paul Jones
One thing you might not know about Guy Lombardo is that he was a champion boat racer, specializing in hydroplane boats. Between 1946 and 1949 he was the reigning U.S. national champion of the sport. The name of his beloved race boat? Tempo, of course.
Beryl Porter's In One Ear 