Playlist and Notes 6 February 2024

 

Today’s Show: We celebrate February Birthday. Also, we celebrate Black History Month by examining how jazz and the blues represented, chronicled, and celebrated the African American community.

 

Joshua Redman – Baltimore (5:38)

James P. Johnson – Charleston (1:49)

Sadao Watanabe – Early Spring (Live at Blue Note Tokyo) (8:37)

Joe Sample – Hippies on a Corner (5:57)

Mississippi Fred McDowell – Soon One Mornin’ (Death Come A-Creepin’ in My Room) (3:14)

Shemekia Copeland – Clotilda’s On Fire (4:28)

Gene Gilmore – The Natchez Fire (2:52)

Billie Holiday – Strange Fruit (3:15)

Louis Armstrong – West End Blues (3:20)

Duke Ellington – It Don’t Mean a Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing) (3:11)

Lonnie Johnson – Another Night To Cry (3:20)

Bill Evans – Gloria’s Step [Take 2] (6:08)

 

Notes

Laura Barton writes “…the root of the disconsolation that colors the blues, is perhaps, because it is a music born of a people wrenched from their homelands and brought to America to be slaves. In its ramblings and its restlessness, lies the sense of the impossibility of return and the sorrow of never truly arriving.” 

A documentary on the Rhythm Club Fire, noted in Gene Gilmore’s “The Natchez Fire,” can be seen here.

A fan video of Gene Gilmore’s “The Natchez Fire” written and recorded in 1940.

Blues music was, and is, an alternative form of storytelling, commentary, and oral history that diverged from the dominant narrative. It was a way to recount what was happening to a community that was not included or covered by dominant media outlets, such as local newspapers and radio stations.

Time Magazine in 1999 called “Strange Fruit” the song of the century. Nina Simone said: “That is about the ugliest song I have ever heard. Ugly in the sense that it is violent and tears at the guts of what white people have done to my people in this country.”