Month: October 2005

John at Crooks and Liars works day and night, painstakingly piecing through hours of video so that we can enjoy his terrific clips. It takes a lot of special equipment, software, and servers to pull this off. He’s often exhausted, but infailingly pleasant when I request a video. The last time John and I chatted about his equipment, he told me he had five servers running (that’s expensive) and they were overloaded. He’s also good to BoomanTribune. So, if you find yourself enjoying John’s videos, links, and his wry observations — but what he writes is never mean, I’ve noticed — visit, click and/or donate.

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Listed as #1 in an on-line list of Greatest Jazz Vocalists I found, I’m finally going to respond to the requests from several weeks ago and profile a female jazz vocalist:

Billie Holiday

Born Eleanora Fagan in Philadelphia on April 7, 1915, and raised in Baltimore, Billie Holiday had what Wikipedia euphemistically calls “a difficult childhood which affected her life and career.”  (Warning – rest of the paragraph is rated “R”)  Her mother was 13 when she was born; her father, a jazz guitarist, was 15.  Her parents married three years later, but soon divorced; she was raised by her mother and her mother’s family.  “A hardened and angry child,” she left school at an early age, and may have worked with her mother as a prostitute before moving to New York in the early 1930’s.  She rarely saw her father, and when she did, she would shake him down for money, threatening to tell his girlfriend that she was his daughter.

Settling in Harlem, she sang informally in clubs and was discovered in 1932 by record producer John Hammond, who arranged for her to record with Benny Goodman in 1933.  By 1934 she was performing at the Apollo Theater to rave reviews, and soon began appearing with well-known bands led by Lester Young, Count Basie, and Artie Shaw.  She was able to break the color barrier and appear with white bands, trademark white gardenia in her hair, but still had to use the back entrance, and wait in a separate dark room offstage before performing.  

She was a recreational drug user much of her life, by some accounts starting on marijuana at 12 or 13.  Heroine, however, was to be her downfall; by 1940 she was injecting the drug intravenously.  Her drug and alcohol use marred her success and eventually affected her voice, as with Janis Joplin a generation later.  She was arrested for heroin possession and served 8 months in prison; more importantly she lost her New York City Cabaret Card, which kept her from performing there the last 12 years of her life.

She had a series of abusive relationships; she married trombonist Jimmy Monroe in 1941, but left him to become the common-law wife of trumpeter Joe Guy.  She divorced Monroe and left Guy in 1957 to marry Louis McKay, a Mafia “enforcer.”  While also abusive, he did try to get her off drugs.  They had separated by the time of her death.

Holiday was swindled out of her savings, and died with $0.70 in the bank and $750 in cash.  She was hospitalized in May 1959 for liver and heart problems, and was placed under house arrest on July 12 for drug possession.  She remained under police guard until she died on July 17, 1959 of cirrhosis of the liver at age 44.

Her hard life lent an authenticity and emotion to her songs that was palpable to audiences.
While her recordings in the 1930s were still somewhat girlish, by the 1940s her voice was “lovingly sweet, weathered and experienced, sad and sophisticated (Wikipedia).”  In the 1950s, her range was limited and her voice was rougher, but she had great phrasing and emotion.  Orchestra conductor/arranger Ray Ellis had this to say about her last recording session in 1958:

I would say that the most emotional moment was her listening to the playback of “I’m a Fool to Want You”. There were tears in her eyes… After we finished the album I went into the control room and listened to all the takes. I must admit I was unhappy with her performance, but I was just listening musically instead of emotionally. It wasn’t until I heard the final mix a few weeks later that I realized how great her performance really was.

(I’ll do Ella Fitzgerald next, unless there’s an outcry for a different female vocalist, so don’t despair Ella fans…)

Jazz Birthdays
16 October
Roy Hargrove. Born 1969. Trumpeter/composer
17 October
Barney Kessel. Born 1923. Guitarist.
18 October
Wynton Marsalis. Born 1961. Trumpeter/composer/band leader
20 October
Jelly Roll Morton. Born 1890. Pianist/composer
21 October
Dizzy Gillespie. Born 1917. Trumpeter/composer/band leader

Jazz Podcasts

Here are links, and blurbs about the sites.  I haven’t had a chance to check them all out, so you’re pioneering here.  Let us know what you find if you go!

D.D. Jackson’s Living Jazz Podcast:  New York-based jazz pianist/composer and Down Beat columnist D.D. Jackson’s discussions on the world of jazz & beyond  (I download this one regularly; the conversations are usually interesting, as are his ideas on the future of the music business in the internet age)

Night Passage Jazz Podcast: The official podcast of nightpassage.org – A podcast in English from Rome, Italy. Great Indie Jazz (and occasionally other genres) from all over the world. Member of the ASSOCIATION OF MUSIC PODCASTING

Gallery 41 – Interviews with Jazz Legends:  From a collection of rare, historical, and personal conversations recorded with some of the greatest Jazz legends of our generation. Recorded and produced for Gallery 41 by Ron J. Pelletier

Straight No Chaser – A Jazz Show:  The Podcast for Jazz Lovers Everywhere (Episode #8 previews the artists appearing at the Greater Hartford Festival of Jazz)

Jazz and Conversation, with Nick Francis:  The Ultimate Jazz Blog, with Reviews, Raves and Audio From The World of Jazz, Ambient, and World Music.  (Current episode is on the Monk and Coltrane CD I mentioned last week)

redJazz.com  Great jazz music found as free downloads from around the internet or contributed by the artists themselves, brought to you each week as a 30 minute radio show.

Hot Springs Jazz Fest:  The official podcast of the 2005 Hot Springs Jazz Fest

TOPLEXIL JAZZ PODCAST:  Site du podcast Toplexil dédié au Jazz Bebop, Cool, Hardbop principalement. Toplexil is a Jazz oriented podcast.  (Website is mostly in French, but I could figure out how to download the music without speaking French.)

JazzDJ – Explorations in jazz:  Explorations in jazz – exploring the many essences of that jazz juice groove:

I began Djing in 1988 during the Rare Groove/Acid Jazz moment. My jazz collection includes most flavours including Blue Note, Jazz Funk, Rare Groove, JapJazz, Acid Jazz, Disco Jazz, Cuban, Jazz House, Break Beats, Latin, Brazilian, Soul, Dance Jazz, Funk! I have played festivals, clubs, bars, parties… too many nights to mention, both in the UK and abroad.

GavezDois:  Appears to be an eclectic Brazilian podcast (from what Portuguese I can translate from my knowledge of Spanish); Episode 35 features the progressive jazz group “Thursday Group”:  

Podcast número 35. Hoje nós vamos ouvir pela primeira vez o programa Jazz. Aqui ouviremos novidades do mundo do jazz e, sempre que possível, músicas de distribuição livre. Neste primeiro episódio escolhi para lhe apresentar um grupo norte-americano chamado Thursday Group, que se classificam como um grupo de jazz progressivo.

I’ll end with this Brazilian podcast, as it leads right into one of my topics for next week – Bossa Nova…

Take the Billie Holiday Memorial poll:

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by Col. Patrick Lang (Ret.)

In this column, Richard Cohen of the Washington Post — who once had a claim to be considered something other than

Col. Patrick W. Lang (Ret.), a highly decorated retired senior officer of U.S. Military Intelligence and U.S. Army Special Forces, served as “Defense Intelligence Officer for the Middle East, South Asia and Terrorism” for the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and was later the first Director of the Defense Humint Service. Col. Lang was the first Professor of the Arabic Language at the United States Military Academy at West Point. For his service in the DIA, he was awarded the “Presidential Rank of Distinguished Executive.” He is a frequent commentator on television and radio, including PBS’s Newshour, and most recently on MSNBC’s Hardball and NPR’s “All Things Considered.” His CV and blog are linked below the fold.

the usual self-absorbed member of the coastal press corps — tells us that Patrick Fitzgerald of Brooklyn and Chicago should go away quietly.

He opines that destruction of people’s reputation by the Washington political machines in government or out of “K” Street is OK because that is how ” the game is played.”

He further opines that illegal release of classified information by government official to the press in pursuit of the above is acceptable and should be tolerated because, if it is not, then journalists, in Washington, will not be able to ply their trade in marketplace of information. Why? It is because the leakers in government will be afraid to leak and Mr. Cohen will not then be able to take advantage of this porosity and frailty in our government.

For shame.

See also: “Why Patrick Fitzgerald Gets It,” Larry Johnson’s take on Cohen. Johnson often posts on my blog (URL below).

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2% milk, you ask? Nope. Two percent is the number of African-Americans who approve of Bush’s job performance. Ken Mehlman reportedly has dispatched Young Republican squads to find the few. Let’s see. Former football great Reggie (“Black people are very gifted in what we call worship and celebration”) White is deceased. Armstrong Williams? Clarence Thomas, for sure. Anybody else? … OPEN THREAD:

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While U.N. Ambassador John Bolton was pushing unilateralism ideology for the U.N. in a speech today in London — and the U.N. is frantically attempting to help Sudanese while John Bolton ruthlessly short-circuits their efforts — Juan Cole published a blistering expose on the self-interest that led to Judith Miller and John Bolton using each other (amid hints that those two connivers may have shared more than we yet know).

Reports The Guardian, John Bolton, “set out the US [um, his?] vision for UN reform.”

“Reforming the United Nations is not a one night stand, reform is forever,” Bolton proclaimed. (And don’t miss — below Juan Cole’s rip-’em-a-new-one report — how Bolton is actively eviscerating the U.N.’s ability to respond to increasing catastrophe in Darfur.)

What Bolton wants is a smaller U.N.: “a reduction in the committees attached to the general assembly, a rethink of the role of some of the agencies and, as far as the development goals go, keeping trade negotiations firmly in the grasp of the WTO.”

One questioner asked if the US “should not pursue more than its national interest. Mr Bolton looked surprised. ‘Would you prefer that the US pursued its own interests or think for the whole world?’ he asked back. ‘I think if you think about it for a second you will say ‘Please pursue your national interest!’.”

Indeed…. pursue one’s own interests at all times. And it apparently suited Judith Miller to parrot John Bolton, writes Juan Cole:

‘ Miller began to uncritically parrot even some of the neocons’ loonier claims. On CNN’s “American Morning With Paula Zahn” for May 14, 2002, Miller explained the controversy that had broken out about allegations that Cuba had a biological weapons program. She told Zahn, “And there are a lot of very unsavory contacts, as the administration regards them, between Cuba and especially Iranians who are involved in biological weapons.” Such frankly weird assertions raise questions about where in the world Miller got her so-called information. No serious intelligence professional believes that either Iran or Cuba has a significant biological weapons program, much less that a communist Latin American dictatorship was being helped by a Shiite Muslim fundamentalist state with deadly microbes.

Miller’s statement only makes sense. … Continued below:

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