Originally posted on August 26, 2006.
“Kiss to Build a Dream On” – Louis Armstrong
From Sleepless in Seattle
I periodically think of myself as a great jazz lover. In fits and spurts, I try to be. Back about ten years or so I was with a friend at his friend’s house and the subject went naturally to music. Well, it went naturally there because I was checking out his CD collection. The discussion turned to jazz and I mentioned I liked Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan. Condescending with a whisper he said, “Oh so you like vocal jazz?”
I had never thought about it like that. Isn’t jazz jazz? I had just begun to listen to the likes of Miles Davis and John Coltrane, and by that, I mean I had heard talk about their frenetic awesomeness amongst deadheads. I got the knock of vocal jazz not being real jazz and split. I have since dug what this guy would dub real jazz, but it is a moderated digging. I whip out all that cosmic jazz once in a while, but I can’t take in more than smaller doses.
Louis Armstrong started in the real jazz category, being a trailblazing blower, but in the latter days became the unique voice singing such family hits as “Wonderful World” and “Hello Dolly.” This song falls straight in that camp, being off of the soundtrack to Sleepless in Seattle of all things. It’s a darn fine song though, and one I stuck on my wedding CD.
Most days I’ll take this version of jazz over the real stuff, hands down.
“Rainbow’s Cadillac” – Bruce Hornsby
From 11/06/98
There is a video on YouTube, but the embed has been disabled, you can watch it by clicking here.
I didn’t really get into bootleg trading until just after I graduated college. I had moved to Abilene, TX to start graduate school – start over really, as I didn’t know a soul. Actually I never really got to know many people and left after a semester. But while I was there my refuge was bootlegging.
During this time Bruce Hornsby played a long run at Yoshi’s in Oakland California to promote his album, Spirit Trail. The tour was highlighted by guitar work from Steve Kimock, and a couple of guest spots from Phil Lesh and Bob Weir. This was one of the few performances Lesh had given since Jerry Garcia’s death a few years back and really marked his return to music.
This run came out on tape quickly and with a fantastic sound quality. In those days we were still using analog tapes and the sound quality often degenerated quickly through each generation of recording (unlike CDs where you can get an exact copy of the music, with analog the quality of a recording digressed every time you recorded it). This was an amazing thing to me to have so much high-quality music so quickly after it had been performed.
Now that I’ve moved to the CD world and almost everything is high quality, such recordings are no longer rare. In fact, I’ve only got a couple of these shows on CD and the tapes have long since been given away. But it still brings fond memories. Some of the only ones from that small chunk of time I spent in Texas.
It’s a great performance too. “Rainbow’s Cadillac” is one of Bruce’s finest songs, and an excellent jamming song done live. He pretty much nails the sucker. The sound is great and there is an energy at these shows that this was a new Bruce. Great stuff folks.
“Can’t Stand Me Now” – Libertines
From the Libertines
Peter Doherty, lead singer of the Libertines, and now Babyshambles, is a pretty danged good musician/songwriter but has so thoroughly screwed up his life that it’s all kinds of sad. We don’t hear much about him on this side of the ocean, but in England, he’s all sorts of tabloid fodder, what with the heroin addiction, the multiple arrests, and his off-and-on relationship with Kate Moss.
The Libertines were an excellent British, indie rock outfit, that broke up in, well, tabloid fodder. This is a really great upbeat, heavy drum, pop song. Maybe that’s not very indie rock of them, but a good pop song is a good pop song. And 9 times out of 10 I’ll take a good pop song over a great classical, jazz, or obscure rock song.
“Dead Flowers” – The Rolling Stones
From Sticky Fingers
The first time I ever heard this song was through a live performance by Townes Van Zandt over the closing credits of The Big Lebowski. I hunted the song down and eventually got the Rolling Stones album. Yeah, I know I’m a little behind on the Stones, but I’m slowly catching up with them.
Great freaking song. What more can be said? One of my all-time favorites. It’s a favorite daydream to learn to play this song (when I learn to play an instrument) and please the crowd (for of course I’ll make it big as a musician) when I whip it out.
“Turn On Your Lovelight” – Blues Brothers
From Blues Brothers 2000
This is an old blues number, but I know it mainly through the Grateful Dead. Pig Pen used to do these half-hour rave-ups to it. He’d rap along about women and drinking and whatever while the Dead freaking took off behind him. If I could go back in time I’d go back to 1968-69 San Francisco and groove to Pig taking off on this song. The tapes simply can’t do him justice.
The Blues Brothers don’t do the song justice. Man I dig the Brothers, and the original movie is a classic. The sequel had some good moments but sorely missed John Belushi. I miss Pig Pen on this song. It’s got all kinds of cool bluesmen playing along, but it ain’t got no soul.
RIP Ron “Pig Pen” McKernan
themidnightcafe.org 
Matt ~ just read your comments about jazz and felt compelled to reply. I fell in love with the music of Billie Holiday in the summer of 1970 when I bought the three LP Box set “The Golden Years Volume II” when I saw it for sale in a record store window on one of my rare visits to London. I was fifteen. That summer Billie was rarely off the turntable.
Ten years later I had moved from the UK to Canada. My ambition was to live in the US – but that never happened. I never got my green card. Even though I married an American – she had zero interest in living in the States.
I studied English at Universities in Scotland, the USA and Canada. I was fortunate to win a scholarship to the US in 1975-1976 and spent my junior year at Macalester College in Saint Paul. I had a room-mate who was a Deadhead. We smoked a lot of pot and he turned me on to some great music. I loved the Dead albums “Wake of the Flood” and “Music from the Mars Hotel” – but I never appreciated the band’s musical scope until I encountered what you have been offering at the Midnight Cafe. So thank you! Mind you John Oswald’s Grayfolded offered a fascinating foretaste.
But back to jazz….
By 1979 I felt that rock was exhausted – so for a year I got into reggae. It was my bridge into jazz – which dominated my listening for much of the 80s….
A key moment for me was buying the “Mingus Ah Um” album – it was on sale at Super Clef in Ottawa. $5 I think. Man, that is one exciting record!
By the time I was 25 I was seriously getting into jazz – helped enormously by college radio – specifically CKCU FM – which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary next year…
Gradually my jazz record collection grew – I used to haunt garage sales and then trade in batches of schlock rock in order to trade them in for used jazz albums that I could not otherwise afford!
Ten years after I fell in love with the music of Billie Holiday ~ her classic early thirties stuff ~ I began to appreciate why. Philip Larkin referred to them as “the crown jewels of jazz” for good reason. All the great star players of that era – notably Lester Young from the Basie band and Johnny Hodges from Duke Ellington Orchestra – were eager to jam and record with her. I began to identify the sound of the soloists ~ jazz really developed my ear. I began to realize “Oh that’s WHY I loved this record so much – that’s Johnny Hodges!”
One thing that listening to college radio helped me to realize is that I was fascinated by the entire tradition _ from vintage jazz (“the original avant garde” as my mentor Ron Sweetman put it – more than anyone his program “In A Mellotone” mapped out the oceanic scope of this music – so that I was not trapped in any specific era – like swing or bebop – as I have indicated I am fascinated by the entire sweep of this music – from vintage jazz to free jazz and beyond….
Early on I was hit by a dilemma – when I had amassed twenty to thirty albums – eventually my collection would grow to over six thousand vinyl albums ~ “that’s my house!” I would say years later with cruel irony – but my dilemma was simple – I was so excited by all the options before me that I could never decide what to play! Sometimes I would waste twenty minutes trying to decide what track to play next!
It was always curious to me why so many jazz albums listed the date and location for the recordings. But this is how I decided to organize my record collection – by recording date. And this became the basis for many radio programs that I did at CKCU in Ottawa (1984-1995) and CFMU in Hamilton (1996-2000).
So it has been fascinating for me to discover the central importance of recording dates in the organization of your Midnight Cafe!
I have no time for jazz snobs. Personally I see the rock tradition as an exotic off-shoot of jazz! Chuck Berry appears in the first modern jazz discography.
as for the jazz snob who told you “Oh – you like jazz singers” – the reality is that this music expresses an oral tradition – the secret is that all the great soloists are singing – Ben Sidran’s book “Black Talk” impressed this simple fact on me!
Ultimately as Duke Ellington observed there are only two types of music: good or bad!
Louis Armstrong was the first great pop star. HE transformed the music. He is called POPs for good reason!
Matt I have a lot of jazz I recorded off the radio in the 80s – all on Beta Tape. I would love the Midnight Cafe to consider it… Much of these broadcasts were recorded at the Montreal International Jazz Festival by the French C.B.C….
I also have thousands of recordings that my Dad made on cassette from the BBC.
Let me know if you have any interest!
Thank you for all your great work. And I hope you will enjoy a well deserved festive break with your family.
Thank you for these stories. I love it.
I’m at my wife’s folks house at the moment and typing in my phone (which I hate doing) so I won’t say much right now. But know I appreciate the comment.
I’d absolutely love any jazz you want to send me. Hit me up next week when I’m home and we can discuss further.
Sure. I will. Organizing my jazz collection by recording date became a basis for educating my ear – and ultimately creating radio shows. I decided I was NOT just going to become a “collector” – I was going to listen to ALL the music – and I devised a system to annotate the recordings – list the soloists and evaulate the solos – very crazy – but I AM!… ultimately this saved me a LOT of time… will explain later… enjoy the holy days!