[Monday Notes No. 59] Both born at the turn of the century, Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith recorded this duet on W.C. Handy’s St. Louis Blues in 1925. By the 1920s jazz was changing from the mainly collective music of the New Orleans groups to music where more emphasis was placed on individual improvisation.Continue readingBessie Smith & Louis Armstrong, St. Louis Blues
Tag: voice
[Monday Notes no. 53] My Funny Valentine is a song by Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart. Chet Baker, Frank Sinatra and Sarah Vaughan have made particularly memorable interpretations of it. The song is a great jazz classic and is composed in a very special way. Let’s try to unveil the secret of its creation.Continue readingMy Funny Valentine, Sarah Vaughan. Melody first.
[Monday Notes No. 50] Dolores Duran made a career out of music when she was still a child, using her exceptional talent to support her family after the death of her father. When she met Antonio Carlos Jobim, he was not yet a legend of Brazilian music and the term bossanova had not yet been…Continue readingPor causa de voce, Dolores Duran meets Antonio Carlos Jobim
[Monday Notes no. 44] John Lennon was an imaginative musician who constantly broke the mould. Some of his songs have become an anti-militarist and libertarian symbol and make us miss a time when music had the ambition to change the world.Continue readingJohn Lennon, Imagine. A white piano for an everlasting song
[Monday Note 36] Nat King Cole was a formidable jazz pianist, yet he had greater success as a singer. Songs such as Mona Lisa, Smile and Unforgettable made him popular and led to him to be the first African American to lead a television show.Continue readingNat King Cole plays and sings Mona Lisa, a song with an Italian flavour
[Monday Notes No 33] In jazz, the voice often performs like a musical instrument, e.g. Billie Holiday has been known to imitate Louis Armstrong’s trumpet. Sometimes the reverse happens and it is the instruments that try to imitate the human voice. This is what happens in Little Girl Blue, performed by Chet Baker.Continue readingChet Baker, Little Girl Blue. The instrument as a voice
[Monday Notes No.32] Chet Baker was a great trumpeter and singer who lived a tormented life. Addicted to drugs for over 30 years almost continuously, he went from the heights of beauty and success to the depths of desolation and degradation. Let’s listen to his interpretation of a song written by Rodgers-Hart, Do It the…Continue readingChet Baker, Do It the Hard Way. The voice as an instrument