Forty-five years ago today, Stax released Otis Redding’s “(Sittin’ on) the Dock of the Bay,” a recording Redding never heard due to his death in a plan crash less than a month before the hit’s release and just eighteen days after the recording session. The Wall Street Journal has an oral history of the recording of the song.
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Previously
Up in smoke: Duck Dunn, dead at 70
Related
Time to retire #27?
A timely observation of my Thanksgiving tradition was a casualty of my recent relocation, but I was able to restore order, albeit belatedly, this week with the assistance of Commodawg. Considering anew how a group of (mostly) Canadians had such a substantial impact on American music, I found myself wondering what group of Canadians was the most Canadian, and, in turn, what Canadian song was the most Canadian Canadian song ever.
I immediately knew the answer, having reached the conclusion some years ago. The group: the hit-making Bachman-Turner Overdrive precursor The Guess Who. The Jam:
Tell me I’m wrong.
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It all started on Monday night: “Congratulations, You’re a Winner!” the email read. It was so nondescript that I assumed it was junkmail, but read it anyways. Turned out my hasty decision to submit a sweepstakes entry for a Macklemore & Ryan Lewis YouTube Presents taping had worked out in my favor and I was one of 200 people picked to attend. Great news, right? Well…you see, despite living in Music City, this was going to go down in New York City…in about 48 hours. Cue Clay Davis. My PhD budget barely has enough in it for drinks at 3Crow, definitely not for last minute flights to NYC. I forwarded the email to my main girl, Lauren, and suddenly things happened…fast. … Read More
(via A Kaleidoscoped Life)
The world lost a musical giant this week. I have long been a fan of this performance of his, but since his passing, I was tipped off to the below performance, and if it was good enough for Jimi, it’s good enough for me:
You’re lucky, though: you don’t have to choose. You can enjoy both selections, and why not? Listen in to a few extended moments from this one, who’s just stepped off this mortal coil, if just for a moment.
Ravi Shankar, the Indian sitar master who built a global following and pioneered the charity concert, has died.
His official website carried this statement: “With profound grief and sorrow, we mourn the passing of Pandit Ravi Shankar on December 11, 2012. He died in San Diego at 4:30 pm Pacific time. He was 92.” … Read More
(via WSJ)
Last night I had the good fortune of finding myself with a ticket for the latest stop on the Mark Knopfler and Bob Dylan tour. Today, these are my thoughts about what I heard: Continue reading
The Chicago Bears are off to a great start this season with a 7-1 record, good enough for first place atop the difficult NFC North division. Their offensive attack has become much more balanced, and some younger players are rising up to keep their stalwart defense sharp. Players like Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall, and Charles Tillman rightly are receiving lots of attention and credit for success.
There’s one name I haven’t heard or seen mentioned even once across the media spectrum, though, and it belongs to the Bears’ head coach, Lovie Smith. I don’t know whether Smith deserves any credit for the Bears success this season, but as the head coach, it would seem like he does. As far as I can tell, though, no one is talking about him at all.
People sure were talking about Smith when things went south for the Bears during the last couple seasons, though, and the image we were given of him was that of a quiet coach who maybe didn’t have that strong a grasp of the game or that much control over his team. Someone had to be blamed for the losses, though, and after everybody was done ripping Cutler and his perceived attitude, they turned the spotlight on Smith.
I don’t have WGN on 24/7, but I have heard more in the national media about all of the former Vanderbilt Commodores who now play for the Bears than I have about Smith, which, again, is nothing. There isn’t necessarily anything wrong with this. I’m just making a note of it.
That fine day has come. Expect reduced output from me over the next few weeks.
Over the weekend, I decided it was time to start transitioning my music listening into the autumnal mode, and rather than go straight to Harvest on the vinyl, I decided to ease into things with Jerry Garcia’s second solo album, a 1974 release known as Garcia (Compliments). The version I have comes from a Garcia boxed set, which means it has a number of bonus tracks appended to those songs that comprised the original release. Like a lot of Garcia’s solo work, there are plenty of cover tunes on this album, and while I generally like the release more than the two-star rating it received from AllMusic, there’s one song in particular that’s stuck out to me since my first listen.
The tune is one of the bonus tracks, an R&B-type cover entitled “(I’m a) Road Runner,” written by the hit-making Holland-Dozier-Holland Motown songwriting team, and first recorded by Junior Walker and the All-Stars in 1965. Of the versions I’ve heard, I like Garcia’s the best– it’s the most complete, to my ear– but Bo Diddley got ahold of it too, and it’s his version that prompted this post.
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Two things you might think would happen in this space are not going to happen. First, this being the continuation of our Silent Film Series, you might expect discussion of a video clip best viewed without sound, since that’s the premise of the Series. Second, this being a post about Halloween, videos, and music, you might expect me to go with this, which, if this was a Friday, is what I would’ve done.
Instead and in light of the above, I’m appealing to the common notion that, on Halloween, things that were dead take on an impressively lifelike quality (e.g., ghosts, mummies, zombies, vampires, etc.), and applying that concept to the notion of “silent” films as I’ve conceived it here. In other words, when a “silent” film takes on lifelike qualities on Halloween, you can hear it as well as see it. In other words, I was watching the selection, below, with the sound on, quickly reached the definite conclusion were the visuals of the sort that would make the clip a good feature in this spot, and then reached the probable conclusion that everyone would like watching it better with the music playing too. In still other words, turn up your volume, and enjoy a minor spectacle of live-action sight and sound:
A person familiar with the situation says New York Jets wide receiver Santonio Holmes has a Lisfranc injury to his left foot, meaning the team’s struggling offense probably will be without its top playmaker for the rest of the season.
Holmes went down on the first play of the fourth quarter of the Jets’ 34-0 loss to the San Francisco 49ers on Sunday after catching a pass. X-rays on the foot were negative, but subsequent MRI exam results were sent to a foot specialist in North Carolina. The Jets’ fears were then confirmed, according to the person who spoke to the Associated Press on condition of anonymity Tuesday night because the team had not announced the severity of the injury.
Holmes was the best player left on a team that had already lost its best player, Derrelle Revis. That leaves only Mark Sanchez, Antonio Cromartie, and Timothy Richard Tebow as active Jets anyone’s possibly heard of, and they haven’t necessarily heard of those guys for the best reasons.
There’s little argument that Holmes’ departure seals the fate of a team already showing signs of being dead in the water. With their current 2-2 record, the Jets can’t be historically bad, but there’s absolutely nothing keeping them from being epically bad, and they’ve taken more than a few bounding steps down that path. The problem is that the pump arguably was primed for that destiny before the season began, before Revis and Holmes got injured, before Sanchez and Tebow gave us evidence of their stunted development as professionals, before Cromartie donned 2011 Holmes’ locker-room-killing mantle. Now we’ll never know for sure whether this Jets team, fully healthy, still would have been capable of the type of losing they’re in for. Not only does Holmes’ season-ending injury leave us irretrievably in this alternate-1985 reality, though. The real lament is that history will note the injury as an explanation, a rationalization, even a partial justification of what is sure to be a disastrous Jets season when these Jets were capable of such beautiful losing all along.
ALDLAND 