The Practice Room

Ahmet Ertegun

Watch for the PBS American Masters special on Ahmet Ertegun tonight (Thursday). It's called  “Atlantic Records: The House That Ahmet Built.” You can read about it in this New York Times story.

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The very first Paul Reed Smith

Ever wonder what Paul Reed Smith looks like? Here he is at the 30th Annual Dallas International Guitar Festival with a PRS Private Stock Modern Eagle (thanks to Modern Guitars.)

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The National Recording Registry

Under the terms of the National Recording Preservation Act of 2000, the Librarian of Congress is responsible for annually selecting recordings that are "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" to be placed in the National Recording Registry. Recordings must be at least 10 years old. This year’s additions to the Registry were announced on March 6. Among the 25 recordings are:

"Black Bottom Stomp," Jelly Roll Morton’s Red Hot Peppers (1926)
"Wildwood Flower," The Carter Family (1928)
"Pony Blues," Charley Patton (1929)
“You’re the Top," Cole Porter (1934)
"The Osage Bank Robbery," episode of "The Lone Ranger" (December 17, 1937)
"Blue Suede Shoes," Carl Perkins (1955)
"Be My Baby," The Ronettes (1963)
"We Shall Overcome," Pete Seeger (1963) recording of Pete Seeger's June 8, 1963, Carnegie Hall concert
"(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction," Rolling Stones. (1965)
"A Change is Gonna Come," Sam Cooke (1965)
"Velvet Underground and Nico," Velvet Underground (1967)
“The Wailers Burnin’,” The Wailers (1973)
“Graceland,” Paul Simon (1986)

For the whole list, and a short description of each recording, visit the Library of Congress web site. If you wan to nominate a recording for next year, visit the National Recording Preservation Board web site.

[TJH]

Blind Lemon Blues

There’s a musical running in New York based on the music of Blind Lemon Jefferson, who was one of the top blues artists of the easrly days of recording, and who inspired BB King, T-Bone Walker, Leadbelly and countless others. The show, called “Blind Lemon Blues,” runs for another few days at the Theater at St. Peter’s Church at Lexington Avenue and 54th Street. Here’s the Reader’s Digest version from the New York Times:

“Blind Lemon Jefferson, a country blues singer in the early days of recorded music, made enormously popular records for Paramount in the mid-1920s, but the known details of his life would fit comfortably inside a small toolbox. His vague biography, however, did not deter Alan Govenar and Akin Babatunde from creating a lively and intelligent new musical about his life and work, “Blind Lemon Blues,” currently in a limited run from the York Theater Company. …

“He might or might not have had children; he might or might not have died of a heart attack in a snowstorm. He was an inspiration to later blues musicians, among them Huddie Ledbetter, or Leadbelly, and this musical’s conceit is to imagine Leadbelly reminiscing about Jefferson.

“The songs come mostly from Jefferson’s repertory, but Mr. Govenar and Mr. Babatunde (who also plays Jefferson) reinterpret them in a 60s blues-gospel style. This may dismay purists, but it infuses the show with an energy and cohesion that a precise rendering of Jefferson’s volatile style might have lacked. …”

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George Jones University

Yes, that’s right. The hard living, high singing country legend is opening the doors of his home for a series of quarterly seminars on country music. According to the Nashville Tennessean, “The seminars will focus on music publishing, recording contracts, artist management and bookings, life on the road and the politics of Music Row. The history and traditions of country music and its legendary icons also will be covered.” Guest lecturers include Jones, Ralph Emery, Tom T. Hall and Hank Williams, Jr. It’s even on line. (I wonder if there’s anything in there about passing some kind of bar exam.)

Lock the vault?

If you’re of a mind to scarf up the live concert recordings from the Fillmore being offered on line at Wolfgang’s Vault, you might want to hurry. Some of the performers whose concerts you’re scarfing are suing, claiming that the current owners don’t have the right to sell the stuff. According to Billboard, “…Grateful Dead Productions, Carlos Santana and members of Led Zeppelin and the Doors, sued the current owner, claiming it was illegally offering recordings to stimulate sales of other products.”

Of course, if your legal training or your moral compass lead you to side with the artists, you’ll stay away from the site anyway.

[TJH]

Gift idea

If there’s a musical omnivore on your Christmas list, consider the book And They All Sang: Adventures of an Eclectic Disc Jockey by Studs Terkel.

Terkel, in addition to being one of the great interviewers, used to have a daily radio show in Chicago on which he played any kind of music he wanted – classical, jazz, opera, blues, folk, rock, anything. He started in 1945, when blues records were still called “race records” and white people weren’t supposed to listen to them. He would string together recordings by Enrico Caruso, Woody Guthrie and Louis Armstrong, with no thought to playlists or formatting.

And They All Sang is a collection of interviews Terkel did with musicians over the years. Included are Pete Seeger, Leonard Bernstein, Keith Jarrett, Bob Dylan, Andres Segovia, Earl Hines, Alan Lomax, John Jacob Niles, Jon Vickers, Big Bill Broonzy and many more. The interviews are casual and conversational in tone. In many of them Terkel has cut out his side of the dialog, so it’s like hearing Dizzy Gillespie or Ravi Shankar spin their thoughts out over a cup of coffee.

[TJH]

Ahmet Ertegun 1923-2006

…John Coltrane, Ray Charles, The Rolling Stones, Led Zeppelin, Aretha Franklin, Joe Turner, Otis Redding, Clyde McPhatter, Crosby Stills & Nash, Cream, The Allman Brothers, The Spinners, Roberta Flack, Bette Midler, Jewel, Charles Mingus, Ornette Coleman, Ruth Brown, The Drifters, The Coasters, LaVern Baker…

More American Beauty

We talked about the American Beauty project a few weeks ago. To recall, it’s a bunch of interesting folks playing all the songs from Workingman’s Dead and American Beauty in two free concerts at the World Financial Center Winter Garden, 220 Vesey Street, New York, New York. Now the set list is available. (Strictly speaking, you already knew the set list – that’s the whole point. What’s really available is the list of who’s playing what.)

The list is as follows:

Workingman's Dead - Saturday, January 20 at 8:00pm:

Uncle John's Band - Ollabelle with Larry Campbell
High Time - The Holmes Brothers
Dire Wolf - Larry Campbell with Teresa Williams and Rob Barraco
New Speedway Boogie - Catherine Russell
Cumberland Blues -The Klezmatics
Black Peter - Jim Lauderdale with John Leventhal, Brandon Ross and friends      
Easy Wind -Tim O'Reagan (the Jayhawks)
Casey Jones - Railroad Earth
Plus instrumental interludes by: Tony Trischka and Andy Statman

American Beauty - Sunday, January 21 at 8:00pm:

Box Of Rain - Toshi Reagon
Friend Of The Devil - Mark Eitzel
Sugar Magnolia - Jim Lauderdale and friends
Operator - Jorma Kaukonen and friends
Candyman - Jay Farrar (Son Volt)
Ripple - Dar Williams and Dan Zanes
Brokedown Palace - Ollabelle with Larry Campbell
Till The Morning Comes - Espers
Attics Of My Life - Larry Campbell with Teresa Williams and Rob Barraco

Plus instrumental interludes by: Andy Statman, Tony Trischka, and Sex Mob

The host is John Schaefer, also the host of WNYC's innovative music talk show "Soundcheck," which features live performances and interviews with a variety of guests, and “New Sounds,” a nightly odd-music radio show that by itself is a reason to live in New York, as if there weren’t already a million others.

[TJH]

Million Dollar Quartet

Carl Perkins was in the Sun Records studio on Dec. 4, 1956 when Elvis Presley happened by. Johnny Cash and Jerry Lee Lewis were also hanging around that day. Sam Phillips, founder of Sun Records, phoned the Memphis Press-Scimitar newspaper to have th em send over a photographer to capture the four young stars. The photo appeared the next day; years later the music from that gathering showed up in record stores, billed as “The Million Dollar Quartet.” (Turns out Cash left early, so it was really a trio.)  The group recorded gospel songs, country songs, rock ‘n’ roll songs, a blues or two and some Christmas music, taking turns on vocals.

There’s a new recording of the session out now, which features 12 minutes of previously unreleased material. RCA/Sony claims this is everything from the session.