Tag Archives: Music

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R.I.P. Doc Watson

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The great Doc Watson has passed away at the age of 89. He played the guitar and sang, but mostly he took possession of songs and fixed them with a translation that others could only admire and hope to imitate.

Doc Watson became blind around the time he was one year old, the result of an eye infection. But Doc Watson did not allow blindness to restrict him. I gathered some notes about Doc Watson for Trial Balloon in May of 2010. They still apply.

He was an expert in flatpicking and fingerpicking guitar techniques. His influence among players of traditional and popular music is impossible to measure. Among his many honors, Doc received the National Medal of Arts from President Clinton in 1997.

But far greater gifts came from Doc’s father, who hand built a banjo for his 11 year old son. Watson told Fresh Air’s Terry Gross that his dad …

“… showed me a few of the old time frailing or clawhamer style banjo tunes. And one day he brought it to me and put it in my hands and said “son I want you to learn to play this real well. Some of these days we’ll get you a better one. It might help get you through the world.”

General Dixon Watson’s dedication to helping his son ‘get through the world’ led to another important moment. When Doc was 14 his father assigned him to do some work with a crosscut saw – a risk many of today’s hyper-protective parents wouldn’t take with their sighted children. Doc told an interviewer for “Bluegrass Unlimited” …

“He made me know that just because I was blind, certainly didn’t mean I was helpless.”

And it helped develop a useful skill. Doc and his younger brother cut and sold scrap wood to a local tannery to make some money. Doc used his share to buy his first mail order guitar from Sears Roebuck.

Years later, a music store proprietor in Boone, North Carolina offered to help Doc get a better guitar, a Martin D-18, by cutting the payments to five dollars a month.

As Doc told Terry Gross …

“At that time I was playing at the little fruit stand and a little bean market that they had at Boone and makin’ me a few shekels on Saturday. Havin’ a good time a pickin’. I paid for the guitar that summer. He got me that thing at his cost – and it cost ninety bucks. And I paid for it. Lord I was proud of that guitar. But in all truth, compared to my guitar now it was like frettin’ a fence. It was really hard to play.”

Doc Watson made the best of what he had to work with. If you didn’t already know the story you wouldn’t look at that early handmade banjo or the Sears mail order guitar and guess that a blind boy might pick them up and with time and talent, become a national treasure.

Watson also told Terry Gross in that interview that he considered leaving the road and the music business when his son Merle died in 1985, and would have if Merle hadn’t come to him in a dream and urged him to keep going. Good thing, or we’d have lost 27 years worth of music.

What talent or skill would you like to be able to practice all the way to the very end?

Songs

Happy Birthday, Jean Redpath

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Today is Scottish folk singer Jean Redpath‘s birthday. She was born in Edinburgh on April 28th in 1937. She is (has?) an M.B.E. (Member of the British Empire), which is an exalted title that carries some weight but mostly what it tells us is that everyone agrees she’s the best there is at what she does. The Edinburgh Evening News put it this way:

“To call Jean Redpath a Scottish folk singer is a bit like calling Michelangelo an Italian interior decorator.”

I would have issues with Michelangelo as my decorator, just as I’m sure he would have issues with my interior. I’m not so sure about painted ceilings, but can we talk about the color of the couch?

When Jean Redpath fills a room with a song there is a clear connection to the ancient and ongoing tradition of the Scottish people – their history and poetry come alive through her voice and she taken this all over the world in person and through the airwaves on “A Prairie Home Companion” and other broadcasts.

She has done 40 albums and has recorded at least 180 Robert Burns songs – wonderful tunes that are full of strange Scottish words that sound like throat clearing exercises but they connect to essential human experiences and emotions that cross all cultural barriers.

Perhaps she would like to sing a Lady Gaga tune every now and then, but my guess is that Jean Redpath is completely happy and engaged in the rich artistic realm she inhabits. It must be a great comfort to know so clearly what you are about and to have such success sharing it with other people.

Imagine that you have been anointed as an ambassador to the world of a great cultural tradition. Which one would suit you best?

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The Rain in Spain

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Today is the anniversary of the 1956 Broadway debut of the musical “My Fair Lady“.
It was based on George Bernard Shaw’s “Pygmalion”, I title I never understood except as a possible reference to the attitudes of the misogynistic and patronizing main character, Henry Higgins, who was both a pig, and male. At least that’s how we see him today. Shaw actually took the title from mythology and the story of a sculptor who fell in love with his own creation.

Higgins is full of himself, to believe that he can shape the guttersnipe Eliza Doolittle into something new and superior and then convince everyone that she is, in fact, well born.

The musical was a huge success, ran for years, is regularly revived, and was made into a movie that won an Oscar in 1964. The music is catchy, and the existence today of a thriving self-improvement industry confirms that the theme has enduring appeal.

Here’s my favorite moment.

After all that coaching, Audrey Hepburn, as Eliza, finally produces a “perfect” sound. From this moment on, she is cured of her Cockney background, only dropping her H’s a few times in the rest of the show. A miracle!

For the film, Hepburn was cast as an “improvement” over the Broadway star, Julie Andrews, who had never made a movie before and didn’t have the box office power of an established commodity like Hepburn. That’s OK – it freed Andrews up to do a different project that year – a film called “Mary Poppins”. Another miracle! Guess which one won the best actress Oscar? (Hint: Audrey Hepburn wasn’t nominated).

Do you have an accent? Can you do an accent?

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Stay Awake

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The death at age 86 of Disney composer and lyricist Robert Sherman has served to remind people of a certain age that they grew up with a particular group of songs that are indelible. Including, but not limited to, It’s a Small World, I Want To Be Like You, and everything from the film Mary Poppins.

Sherman and his brother Richard wrote for a bunch of Disney films – familiar ones like The Jungle Book and Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, and movies you never heard of like The One And Only, Genuine, Original Family Band – a film about politics in 1888 and a musical Missouri family moving to the Black Hills. Yes, Robert Sherman and his brother wrote a song called “Oh, Benjamin Harrison.” Not every work by a genius turns out to be a work of genius.

The two Sherman Brothers did not get along with each other, though they occasionally tried to make it look as though they did. Both wrote lyrics and music, though it appears Robert was more drawn to the words. Lots of songs have been nominated as favorites in the past 24 hours. This is mine – for the clever contrast of words, music and intent.

http://youtu.be/nPw6QBSggls

Has reverse psychology worked for you? Or on you?

The Baboon Congress

The Baldwin Acrosonic

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Today’s guest post comes from Barbara in Robbinsdale.

A few months ago we moved my mom from central Iowa to a lovely senior residence here in Robbinsdale. In mid-September past, this spunky little woman was uprooted from her home of 52 years. We knew that since her new apartment would be smaller than the old one, she would need to lighten up her belongings a bit, and bring just the things are most central to her life. The TV was left behind, but we brought the piano.

Hope (the fifth child in a family of seven kids) has loved music from day one. As a child she tinkered around like her mom did, by ear on their old upright piano that eventually became ours. She finally took piano and voice lessons in college when majoring in music.

I remember there always being a piano in our house – Grandma’s upright This is me in maybe 1951.

I had a great role model – Mom played a little pretty much every day – simple classical pieces, opera aria accompaniments, Broadway numbers, and (whenever she was teaching) music for the programs she would put on at school. I can remember falling asleep to strains of a Chopin Prelude, the haunting slow one (#20).

When we moved to Marshalltown in 1959, we lived for a year in an upstairs duplex. There was no way to get that big upright up the stairs, so they actually went into debt for a new piano. (This was very uncharacteristic for my father, who would, for instance, save up and pay for our next “new” car with cash.) I remember the day the delivery men huffed and puffed their way up those stairs with the Baldwin Acrosonic, a much smaller and prettier piano than the old upright — and it was NEW. It had such a beautiful tone, none of the keys stuck, and it had a light and easy touch.

Mom made sure my sister and I got piano lessons. Eventually, any combination of the three of us might sit down and play a duet from (something like) “59 Easy Piano Duets You Love to Play.”

She is still in love with that piano, which she plays often. At her new residence, it fits just fine on her living room wall, and she can practice to her heart’s content for accompanying the occasional sing-along there. It’s all possible because she still has her Baldwin Acrosonic.

What was the most memorable thing ever delivered to your home?

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Happy Landings

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Today is the anniversary of Amelia Earhart’s 1935 flight from Honolulu to San Francisco.

She’s not famous for this one, though it was a long solo ordeal that could have ended badly. Earhart is best known for the trip from which she didn’t return, inaccurately memorialized in my favorite song about a real event – Amelia Earhart’s Last Flight.

That last flight, still a mystery, is exceptionally song worthy. It’s hard to imagine a better chorus than this:

There’s a beautiful, beautiful field,
far away in a land that is fair.
Happy landings to you, Amelia Earhart.
Farewell, first lady of the air.

I thought it would be fun to listen to the song on this, the anniversary of a flight where she actually DID have a happy, though tired, landing. The Aberdeen, South Dakota American-News published this as part of its account:

“I had a lot of sandwiches with me but I didn’t eat any of them. I did eat a hard-boiled egg, which was quite a luxury, and drank some tomato juice. I feel just filthy and I want a bath.”
Miss Earhart said commercial flights between the islands and California were “entirely feasible.”
“They are inevitable,” she said, “and we’ll be flying everywhere in a short time.”

She was right, of course.

Describe your most arduous airplane journey.

The Baboon Congress

Solstice Song Circle

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Today’s guest post is by Barbara in Robbinsdale.

Light is returning, even tho’ this is the darkest hour
No one can hold back the dawn.
Let’s keep it burning, let’s keep the light of hope alive
Make safe our journey through the storm.
One planet is turning, circle on her path around the sun
Earth Mother is calling her children home.

I sang this song over the weekend because it was the 3rd Saturday of the month, which means there’s Song Circle. This month it fell right before the Winter Solstice.

Song Circle is a group of aging hippies (and some younger, regular people) who meet monthly at various homes to sing together, led by a couple of folks with acoustic guitars and the occasional concertina, tambourine, or drum. The only requirements are a voice you’re willing to use, and showing up. There are other attractions as well – there is a plentiful supply of snacks, and in June and December there is a not-to-be-missed potluck. Once we’ve settled into the comfiest chairs we can find, we go around the circle as we take turns choosing the next song.

Talk about variety! We sing mostly from a spiral-bound book called Rise Up Singing, edited by Peter Blood et al, and with a forward by Pete Seeger (and there is a whole stack of the books available if you don’t own one), that provides the song lyrics, source, and chord progressions for the guitar-literate. There are hundreds of song lyrics, neatly organized both by title (if you’re lucky enough to know it) and topic. (A lot of the ones we sing were played on The Late Great Morning Show.) Of course, someone will always pop in with new song sheets that stretch our abilities and the skill of the guitarists. Depending on how many people show up on any given evening, we will get around the circle for two or three requests apiece.

December is particularly rich, with so many holiday songs to choose from, and there are extra booklets of Christmas songs, from the ridiculous to the sublime. This time I picked the above Light is Returning (lyrics by Charlie Murphy, tune: “original”). The words by themselves seem to indicate a quiet ballad, but no, it has a rollicking, boppy beat to it and sounds best sung with a throaty gusto. I also requested In the Bleak Mid-winter (but not too slow, please), and Bob Franke’s Thanksgiving Day as we were heading out. There was no need to stick with December – someone also chose an old Stan Rogers that I’d never sung.

I’m happy that we sing to celebrate Christmas and Hannukah, and especially glad to give a nod to the Winter Solstice. I am relieved that we’re almost there, and that even though the coldest days are still to come, the pendulum is about to start back in the other direction. Soon enough there will be more light, rather than less.

Share your favorite Winter Solstice songs, stories, poems, and customs.
If you don’t have any, you can create your own! Start here with an idea and give others the chance to help you develop it.

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The Oldest Chickadee on Earth

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I had the pleasure of talking with ornithologist Michael North on KFAI the other day. He bands birds in Cass County in Northern Minnesota, and on December 9th he captured a black-capped chickadee he has seen before – nine years ago to be exact. The first time he saw it, Michael determined the bird’s age to be about two years, based on the shape of the tail feathers. He says after a year in the world, the tail feathers of a chickadee go from sharp-edged to rounded. I think life does that to all of us.

Not THE bird, but one very much like it.

It is unusual for a chickadee to live so long, and Michael North determined that this particular bird was the oldest chickadee on record at 11 years, 6 months. You can hear our interview here, along with a song made up just for the occasion by the stellar and chickadee-friendly artist Claudia Schmidt.

We don’t often think of a chickadee’s small life as having an arc, but imagine what that bird has been through, somehow surviving through all the hazards of life in Northern Minnesota for well over a decade. Not to mention making it through 11 winters without a snowmobile suit or alcohol to assist. We don’t know how much longer this bird will survive, but at the moment it is the Oldest Living Chickadee on Earth. That is quite an achievement. I can only guess what trials have been met and what calamities have been surmounted. I suppose there was a hungry cat somewhere along the way, and a sharp-eyed hawk. But so far, none of the normal things that can do in a chickadee have done a thing to this one.

What might be in the autobiography of the Oldest Chickadee on Earth?

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So Far Away

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I stumbled across this article a few days ago and immediately recognized the idea as one that makes so much sense, I assumed it had already been done – a Carole King jukebox musical on Broadway. Apparently one is in the works, though the NY Post write up breathlessly describes a reading of the script that happened last May as it it were the most remarkable and recent development. Do things really happen that slowly in the world of musical theater? Well, a lot of Ms. King’s songs are thoughtful and unhurried. And it was a long summer.

If the show ever gets launched, let’s hope it includes this song.

http://youtu.be/l7Vf9Fqi17Y

Doesn’t anybody stay in one place anymore? Let’s look at it on the residence level. Where have you lived the longest?

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Dave Brubeck’s Birthday

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Today is Dave Brubeck’s birthday – he’s 91 years old.

The jazz man was born in California and raised by a cattle rancher and a music teacher. I think if him as a thoroughly American musician – dedicated to freedom of expression, but willing and able to please the audience. Just the right combination of inventiveness and show business.

Here he is in a perfectly ’60’s-type setting (the year was 1961) performing with the quartet on Paul Desmond’s “Take Five”.

http://youtu.be/BwNrmYRiX_o

There was a moment in 1951 when we could have lost Dave Brubeck and all he brought to our culture. This is from a PBS website devoted to Brubeck and his music:

While working a gig in Hawaii, Dave had a swimming accident and nearly broke his neck. “I was swimming with my kids on Waikiki Beach and my last famous words were, ‘watch daddy,'” Brubeck recalled. “And I dove into a wave and there was a sandbar right in front of me. And rather than hit it with my face, I turned my head and it almost broke my neck, and I thought I was gonna be paralyzed. I had to go to the Army hospital and stayed there for twenty-one days in traction and they were able to pull my neck back.” While lying in traction at a local hospital, he lost his job and his trio.

I’m both amused and horrified at this: “… my famous last words were ‘watch daddy.'” Ooof. How many pour unfortunates have gone to the great beyond with that exact set up? And what sort of person would you become if you had actually watched your daddy dive into the afterlife while showing off for you at the beach. I’m so grateful Dave Brubeck survived, but it does make me wonder.

What tricks can you do to impress the kids? And would you want to leave the world doing that particular thing?