Why should Sister Sadi and Brother Butki have all the list fun with the lists of the moment and such? Here then are some records that I just can't get enough of lately.
"There'll Be Moonshine in Them Old Kentucky Hills" by Stringbean
I've recently discovered this slammin' Stringbean cut, which best I can tell dates from 1963. It's a classic old timey bluegrass banjo cut. It's a really sweet and sentimental ode to brewing the moonshine and whacking revenuers in them beautiful hills.
I realize I'm a sucker for something like this. For starters, both of my grandfathers were known to run bootleg liquor in Kentucky during the Prohibition. Sucker or not though, this is a gem.
Indeed, I'm so taken with it that I have named it the official theme song for MoreThings.com. It's available for a Free Download Right Here.
"Original Faubus Fables" by Charles Mingus
Working out from the mother's milk of country and rock, I'm still struggling to get my mind around the more highbrow end of jazz. Mingus was definitely toward that highbrow end, but he kept some of those basics working, the blues and gospel and New Orleans stuff setting up or underlying the more extended and intellectual excursions.
I'm listening to the nine minute version included in the Ken Burns series, which appears to have been recorded in 1960. You can hear some of the New Orleans parade stuff going in parts of it, with the emphasis on the off beat, and the call and response stuff. Then you get the meatier solo sections. There's a trumpet solo just past 100 seconds that particularly sends a little tingle up my spine. It's righteous stuff.
He's carrying on in the lyrics about Nazis and swastikas, Jim Crow and the Klan. This turns out to be addressing one of those ridiculous segregationist Jim Crow governors whom I'm fortunate enough to not have had to know much about. Orval Fabus was the governor of Arkansas in 1957, promising blood in the streets of Little Rock if they tried to integrate Central High. "Why's he so sick and so ridiculous?" The tone comes out more gentle mockery than righteous anger. Swingin' stuff anyway you look at it.
"Hora Decubitus" by Elvis Costello
This is the first cut on the brand new My Flame Burns Blue album, recorded live in 2004 in the Hague with the Metropole Orkest, a unique combination jazz/classical orchestra.
This is, coincidentally, a Charles Mingus composition for which Elvis Costello wrote a lyric at the request of the widow Sue Mingus. This is swingin' and jammin' all kinds of ways, with special good from the classical strings that you wouldn't expect on a jazz recording.
Article comments
1 - Matthew T. Sussman
Oh, Al, they got to you too?
Is nothing sacred anymore?
2 - Christopher Rose
Don't worry, Suss, I'm with you. Enough of this list madness!
3 - Al Barger
It's not my fault. That evil Miss Sadi made me do it. Like David Byrne's "Animals," she's setting a bad example. That'll have to go on the next list.