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Category Archives: ragtime
Les Paul; Nothing Else to Say
hese days everyone has a guitar named after them.Only one man had that guitar named after him. ’nuff said. Continue reading
Birthday Mashup?
orn this date (27 January) were Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756), blues legend Elmore James (1918), David Seville, creator of The Chipmunks (1919), and Nick Mason of Pink Floyd (1945) Continue reading
It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry
oke up this morning to the strangest sound; like living next to a major freeway, but more of a rumble. It woke me up, starting suddenly and rolling and rumbling like distant thunder. After a couple minutes, I got up to look out into the dark to see if I could make out what it was. The closest freeway is a mile away, and not busy at night. I couldn’t see anything that looked like a sudden LA-sized influx of traffic.Suddenly it hit me. One of the joys of living on the north side of Sacramento is that most of these small towns were built around the railroads. I was hearing a sound I hadn’t heard like this in years—a passing freight train. Continue reading
Posted in blues, jazz, ragtime, rock, trad
Tagged Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Genesis, Gordon Lightfoot, Harry Nilsson, Michelle Shocked, Various
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Link Death
ink rot is a web phenomenon whereby links from one site to others begin to fail over time due to changes in the target sites.I’m about to introduce link assassination. Since I have to remove all my CDNow links, but haven’t had time to get all the Amazon.com links, I’m going to just kill them until I have the time. Continue reading
Comment: In Memoriam: The Red Back Book
I received an interesting e-mail a while ago. I’ve added a final paragraph to my review of Scott Joplin’s rags as performed by Gunther Schuller, Myron Romanul, and the New England Conservatory in my article “In Memoriam: The Red Back Book. Continue reading
Dead Man Blues Alive and Well
Ferdinand “Jelly Roll Morton” Lamothe was such a colorful character that it’s not possible to discuss him at length here; it would take an entire book (and it has.) Instead, I’ll focus on just one tune: Dead Man Blues.Many of Morton’s recordings begin with bits of banter between band members. The Smithsonian, in their “Smithsonian Jazz” releases (currently unavailable, I believe) removed these spoken bits, commenting that they were ‘apparently intended to be humorous.’ Perhaps I’m too far away in the stream of time (it was recorded 21 September 1926); perhaps I’m too culturally integrated (or not integrated enough?) but I prefer “Dead Man Blues” with the introduction intact. It’s better heard than read, so I won’t reproduce it here. Suffice it to say that they make it clear it’s not intended to be a dirge. Continue reading
