Famous person is dead. R.I.P. [R]

Discussion in 'Movies, TV and Music' started by That Phat Hat, Mar 16, 2011.

  1. taosjohn

    taosjohn Member+

    Dec 23, 2004
    taos,nm

    Yeah, I thought of Herbie after I posted-- I think of him in association with Miles and Chick, and forget how much younger he is. Carter likewise, more or less. "Jack Johnson" is kinda the seam between the worlds of the Jazz of my youth -- Miles, Monk, Ory, Goodman, Brubeck, Dollar Brand, Getz, Grappelli, Rollins, Oliver Nelson, Chico Hamilton, etc.--and the rock/pop/nonjazz "light music" of the 60's-70's-80's for me.

    Anyway, it was your "subjective thing" I was asking for, and you have given me three names I know pretty much nothing about in Roney, Moffett, and McBride; so there's a possibility of extending my aesthetic yet again, which is always a pleasure-- thanks.
     
  2. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    McBride is one hell of a bassist. If he's even 40, he hasn't been for very long.

    About seven years ago, he, with drummer Jeff "Tain" Watts, rounded out a McCoy Tyner trio that I was lucky to catch in Pittsburgh. Damn fine night.
     
  3. Dr. Wankler

    Dr. Wankler Member+

    May 2, 2001
    The Electric City
    Club:
    Chicago Fire
    Billy Joel is still alive, but Motown behind-the-scenes legend Maxine Powell dies at 98

    http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/17/a...towns-maven-of-style-dies-at-98.html?src=recg

    At Motown, Mrs. Powell presided over what is believed to have been the only finishing school at an American record label at any time. Her disciples — young, scrappy and untried — included many future titans of American popular music, whom she polished with the finesse of a diamond cutter...

    ...

    Among her other pupils were the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye and Smokey Robinson. Diana Ross, the Supremes’ former lead singer, has described Mrs. Powell as “the person who taught me everything I know.”

    Officially, Mrs. Powell was a director of Motown’s artist development department. But in reality she was equal parts headmistress, psychotherapist, iron-willed favorite aunt and temperate bartender.

    Her combined ministrations, she told her charges, were meant to equip them for precisely two contingencies: invitations to the White House and invitations to Buckingham Palace.

    “I teach class,” Mrs. Powell was fond of saying. “And class will turn the heads of kings and queens.”...

    ...

    At Motown, singers were required to take instruction from Mrs. Powell for two hours a day whenever they were in Detroit. Her curriculum covered deportment onstage and off: how to speak impeccably and stand erect, how to glide instead of merely walking, how to sit in a limousine with the ankles crossed just so.

    There was also individualized instruction. Ms. Ross, for instance, favored exorbitantly long false eyelashes. That did not sit well with Mrs. Powell, who installed shorter ones.

    Mr. Gaye liked to sing with his eyes closed. That did not sit well with Mrs. Powell either, and she insisted he keep them open.

    She once came upon the Supremes practicing a dance called the shake. That emphatically did not sit well with Mrs. Powell, as she recalled in a 1986 interview with People magazine:

    “ ‘You are protruding the buttocks,’ ” she admonished them. “ ‘Whenever you do a naughty step like the shake, add some class to it. Instead of shaking and acting tough, you should roll your buttocks under and keep smiling all the time.’ Then I showed them. They were shocked that I could do it and at how much better it looked my way.”​

     
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  4. Crimen y Castigo

    May 18, 2004
    OakTown
    Club:
    Los Angeles
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Brad Mehldau -- Whoops, He's not dead.

    Responding to the above queries re: Who is a contemporary jazz artist worthy of respect.
     
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  5. Bootsy Collins

    Bootsy Collins Player of the Year

    Oct 18, 2004
    Capitol Hill
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Keith Jarrett. But he's arguably yesterday's, as you say.
     
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  6. taosjohn

    taosjohn Member+

    Dec 23, 2004
    taos,nm
    Yeh-- and I left "Treasure Island" off my list of "my" jazz... that album is really how I know Dewey Redman, which is how I came to know Joshua.
     
  7. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
  8. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Wha? You've got it precisely ass-backwards. It makes the originals far KEWL-ER.

    I won't comment on jazz because I don't know it that well. You shouldn't comment on indie rock because it's clear you don't know it well.

    The fact that eternally-27 Kurt Cobain admitted he was basically trying to ripoff The Pixies makes the Pixies 100X better than 2nd generation Nirvana was. And even without Nirvana's hype, bands like Husker Du, Sonic Youth & The Pixies were just straight-up better. Maybe not R&R HOF material, but they're cited by dozens of bands after them as being huge influences. When the Seattle sound died it basically died for good.
     
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  9. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    So, instead of making further comment about indie rock, this newb will simply ask why the Pixies, etc. didn't get the hype instead.

    FWIW, I've heard some Sonic Youth, and wasn't terribly impressed with the writing or production or the playing. Kim Gordon's interview in Bass Player years ago didn't do anything to change that opinion.
     
  10. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    It wasn't their time. They laid the foundation like the bands that preceded & influenced the Beatles but never cashed in. LOUD quiet LOUD was the Pixies formula and Nirvana copied it very well.

    Teenage Riot is like the post-punk Freebird. How can you not like that one?
     
  11. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    I know all about the covers of Roll Over, Beethoven and all that- I give the Fab Four a pass because they were so young then and hadn't found their own style. I give a pass for all the Love Me Do/Please Please Me/Wanna Hold Your hand crap, too. But I'd be VERY interested in hearing the rock bands that influenced Within You Without You, Strawberry Fields, Tomorrow Never Knows, A Day In The Life and She's Leaving Home. Gimme a list, and I'll be glad to check it out.

    Well, I don't like Freebird all that much. It's an anthem, sure, but it's Southern Rock. I can go hear that all day long, and played by equally talented musicians- just in small bars and performance halls is all.
     
  12. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    A better example would be early Stones. Total ripoffs and almost a cover band of American blues.

    Speaking of Skynyrd, you'd appreciate the new doc. about Muscle Shoals studios.

    A long line of ghosts, some famous, others unfairly forgotten, haunts Greg "Freddy" Camalier's splendid music documentary Muscle Shoals. Duane Allman, Arthur Alexander, Wilson Pickett, half of Lynyrd Skynyrd… a full accounting of the dead is too sad to contemplate, but Muscle Shoals does us the great favour of putting on camera almost all of the survivors of a defining era in American popular music and of two feuding studios – FAME and its spin-off Muscle Shoals Sound – both located in a single tiny town on the Tennessee river.

    If you've read Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music you'll know much of the story, but Camalier puts ageing faces to names often only seen in liner notes. The central figure is legendary producer Rick Hall, a dyed-in-the-wool Alabama good ol' boy who, in a place where everything was segregated except the airwaves, played unwitting midwife to a dream of transracial cooperation and cultural miscegenation, and built up at FAME Studios a house band that played on more hits than any comparable outfit of the period – or any since.

    http://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/oct/21/muscle-shoals-alabama-documentary
     
  13. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    Oh, I have very little appreciation for that band. What's weird is, the stuff of theirs that I like, I really, REALLY like- "Deserted Island CD" like. That would be Angie, Ruby Tuesday and Paint It Black. None of those have their roots in Blues or R&B. They're much more like the Beatles songs I listed above.

    Muscle Shoals is part of a four-town area (Florence, Tuscumbia and Sheffield are the other three. Florence is the biggest by a fair margin). Muscle Shoals itself is only 12 sq. miles and has about 13,000 people. My dad's family is from that area.
     
  14. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    #714 Cascarino's Pizzeria, Oct 22, 2013
    Last edited: Oct 22, 2013
    There was some special where Mick & Keith joined Muddy Waters at a Chicago blues club in the early 80s. They looked like 2 gnats buzzing around him as he did his thing. Mick looked especially goofy dancing around the stage like a chicken. Just didn't fit.

    I will give props to Brits like Richards, Jeff Beck, Clapton & Page tho. Even more than most American guitarists, they really did appreciate what the bluesmen of the 40s & 50s contributed to music.
     
  15. Bootsy Collins

    Bootsy Collins Player of the Year

    Oct 18, 2004
    Capitol Hill
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    When they weren't, in the case of Richards and Page at least, claiming that they wrote the songs and thus cheating those 40s and 50s bluesmen out of royalties.
     
  16. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    You're both right.

    What's interesting to me is, the best music created by the best Brit rockers wasn't their blues-related stuff at all. Don't look at Rock & Roll for Zeppelin or Money for Floyd- look instead at stuff like The Battle of Evermore or Kashmir or Don't Leave Me Now or Echoes. U2 has almost no R&B or blues in them. Sting deserves a bit of ridicule for his fake Jamaican accent in most of the stuff he's recorded, but the Police did something different and original with their reggae/ska/whatever-esque sound.
     
  17. Bootsy Collins

    Bootsy Collins Player of the Year

    Oct 18, 2004
    Capitol Hill
    Club:
    DC United
    Nat'l Team:
    United States
    Heh. "Echoes" is nice, but "Don't Leave Me Now" irritates the ever-loving crap out of me. It's a strong contender for my least-favorite Floyd song. Similarly, I still like "The Battle of Evermore," but "Kashmir" . . .well, I don't actively dislike it, I guess, but I'd never go look to listen to it. It just seems too bombastic and self-indulgent to me now. Sorta like how, when I was young, I listened to a lot of prog; but I never really do anymore, even though I wouldn't say I dislike it.
     
  18. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    Huh. I've always loved DLMN for the (sorta) chromatic bassline and the non-standard vox melody (It starts cool and a bit dissonant but all comes together at the word "road", makes Mey Bay sense for the rest of the verse and then returns to cool at the top).

    I know this is my fault and not yours, but this kinda always pisses me off when people say it, because anyone who thinks their thoughts set to music --or their compositions, free of lyrical content-- are worthy of attention from the general public is about as self-indulgent as it gets. The musicians who falsely equate musical simplicity with virtue and selflessness missed that point and are fooling themselves and/or maybe you as well.

    Art meant for others is by definition self-indulgent, and that's okay with me. I wouldn't pay any attention at all to someone who didn't think they had something more to offer in terms of creativity than the next musician (whether they actually do or not is up to the listener, I suppose). I always assumed the prog rockers were playing as much from their hearts and for their audiences as the bluesmen and fiddlers and roots rockers. The people who show up at prog concerts are just as human as the folks who show up at post-punk shows. Robert Fripp probably doesn't command the appearance fees that B.B. King does, and Fripp could certainly take a week or so off and rehearse a few blues licks to boost his income- why woudn't he go for the money?
     
  19. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    No - Sting deserves a beatdown for his entire solo career.

    And I'd rather listen to the Clash's take on reggae than the Police's actually.
     
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  20. sitruc

    sitruc Member+

    Jul 25, 2006
    Virginia
    I keep skimming this thread with all of the recent updates and then I'm surprised none of the people mentioned are dead.:mad:
     
  21. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    Disagree. On Blue Turtles: Russians and Set Them Free I could pass on. Moon Over Bourbon street recalls a bit too much of Autumn Leaves for me, but the rest of the album is fine. I really like We Work The Black Seam.

    Nothing Like The Sun: History Will Teach Us Nothing, They Dance Alone, Straight To My Heart, and sister Moon are great IMO. They Dance Alone especially for its lyrical content. Hiram Bullock's compact solo on Little Wing is cooler IMO than the SRV version.

    Beyond that, I haven't bought or really studied any of his albums (and I know he's put out like 5 albums since), but I love Seven Days and Jeremiah Blues as singles.

    He's not quite Peter Gabriel, but the scope of his writing shows a bit of concern about the world, or concern for making folks think he cares.
     
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  22. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    Nobody had anything to say about poor Bum Phillips. I'm a bit shocked at that myself.
     
  23. Cascarino's Pizzeria

    Apr 29, 2001
    New Jersey, USA
    Well he wasnt Chuck Noll!

    Speaking of dead HCs. In the Sunday paper magazine insert someone asked whether a coach had ever died on the job. The answer was "no", however they said that George Allen may have died from a Gatorade shower while coaching Long Beach State to a rare winning record. The temps were in the 50s and George stuck around to give interviews soaking wet. Soon after he contracted pneumonia & died at 72 a month later. I never knew that. Man never had a losing season in NFL or USFL and is 3rd all-time in winning pct. behind only Lombardi & Madden.
     
  24. taosjohn

    taosjohn Member+

    Dec 23, 2004
    taos,nm
    Hard to think what to say-- the public persona pretty much said it all already.

    I will throw in the line MNF reminded me of the other night. One year Earl Campbell failed to finish the mile run the Oilers did in camp. Predictably a reporter in a press conference started in on questions aimed at developing the "lazy black guy" theme, and Phillips responded "Tell ya what-- when its first and a mile I won't give it to him, okay?"

    Oh, and just for you-- "It don't take too long to spend all the time you want in Pittsburgh."
     
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  25. Auriaprottu

    Auriaprottu Member+

    Atlanta Damn United
    Apr 1, 2002
    The back of the bus
    Club:
    Atlanta
    Nat'l Team:
    --other--
    No... no, he wasn't. But those were some entertaining AFC Central games and playoff games as well. Much props to the Oilers.

    I've heard the same story, and AFAIK, it's true.
     

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