Dear readers, I don't know how to say it but I'm getting a bit tired, abit lazy, a bit ditracted, and this blog hasn't been active for a few weeks now. Lack of inspiration ? Weak feedback compared to the amount of work provided ? Too much time spent on my computer ? Need to take a new life turn, to be more open to real people, find a better job, try to make more music ? Yes, all these things, and a lot more. I'm working on other musical projects, like building [...]
Me, my daughter Cyann and Honorio Nicolas & Honorio - La Marine (Georges Brassens cover) (2010) Nicolas & Honorio - Reason To Believe (Bruce Springsteen cover) (2010) Hi, Here are the two other songs that we mixed last week in Valencia after recording by exchange files with my friend Honorio. The African instruments were only for the photo ! Two songs by my 2 favorite singers : Brassens (as you probably noticed if you're [...]
Nicolas & Honorio - Canción Mixteca (2010) Nicolas & Honorio - Guilty By Association (2010) I'm in Valencia when the sun is always shining (except today) I'm in vacations so I won´t make a long post, but just check out the songs that Honorio and me recorded and mixed this week: Honorio played all the guitars, his friend Esteve the accordion and I sang. You'll probably recognize that the version of "Canción Mixteca" is a cover of the Paris [...]
Gent Del Desert - El Record (2009) (see lyrics with English translation below) Vacations, again, at last ... 2 days left, and I'll be on the plane to Valencia, sunny Spain, to meet my friend Honorio, during the holiday week of Fallas (see photo). He's one of my Internet friends that I've never seen, we had a lot of great conversations in the Acclaimed Music forum. And we're making music together, by file exchanges. We recorded 4 covers (Brassens, Ry Cooder, Springsteen, Chestnutt) Next monday we'll go to a studio and mix the [...]
Mariachi Vargas de Tecalitlán - El Mariachi ( buy ) Last year I made a series of posts about Tejano music , mostly played by Mexican immigrants in Southern texas. The book Americana by Gérard Herzhaft is the main source for this post. Today I'll post songs of 3 different styles of sones, and later I will post about other sones, bolero and canción. - First, the son mariachi , probably the most popular style of Mexican music. [...]
Blind Blake Higgs - John B. Sail ( buy ) (1952) Blind Blake Higgs - JP Morgan ( buy ) (1951) E.T. Mensah - John B. Calypso ( buy ) (1958) One of the great discoveries I made while exploring the music of the fifties. Alphonso "Blind Blake" Higgs , not to be confused with the great Piedmont bluesman and guitar virtuoso, was a singer-guitarist from Nassau who was very popular there from the 1930s to the sixties. [...]
Returning soldiers : the 1916-22 ear saw America engage in World War I. Here's the final part of my series about pre-country music, which in fact encompasses a lot of different old recordings of all styles. I stop in 1921 because 1922 is the year of what is now considered as the first hillbilly commercial recording. So as in the previous posts ( part 1 , part 2 , part 3 ), I will go through this playlist made of sentimental songs, vaudeville numbers, blues played by military bands, hawaiian music, everything [...]
Lester Flatt and Earl Scruggs - Foggy Mountain Breakdown ( buy ) (1950) Professor Longhair - Mardi Gras in New Orleans ( buy ) (1950) On the Acclaimedmusic.net forum , we're doing a decade poll every year. Last year we did the seventies, and in 2010 we're doing the 50's and 60's. I've decided to post here my favorite albums and songs of the fifties from time to time, starting with 1950. If you feel like taking part in these polls, don't hesitate. We are [...]
(3 generations out ot of 4 of Lejeune guys on this picture : me, Jean and Basile) My grandfather passed away during the night. He was My father's dad. We used to call him Pépé (pronounced "pay-pay"). Pépé was great. He was a good and humble man. Pépé was a French teacher. Past students used to call him or went to see him in his remote house in Burgubndy long after his retirement. Pépé was a man of words. Pépé wrote his life in a book. Pépé loved to tell stories. [...]
Grupo Vocal Desandann - Guédé Nibo ( buy ) (1999) Sometimes I'm just fed up with news images. Especially when such a tragedy hits. You get saturated by pictures and videos on TV, in the web, in your papers... It really looks like, as Rev Gary Davis used to sing, death don't have no mercy in this land. This beautiful song by a vocal ensemble of Haitian singers from Cuba (there's a huge Haitian community there) is dedicated to the day of the dead, on november 1st. Guédé Nibo is a spirit [...]
Marion Harris - Paradise Blues (1916) Victor Military Band - Joe Turner Blues (1916) Prince's Band - Hesitating Blues (1915) Nora Bayes - Homesickness Blues (1915) All blues scholars and writers have ID'd the first true blues record : "Crazy Blues", by Mamie Smith, recorded in 1920. Every story of the recorded blues starts with this song. But we tend to forget that songs were recorded with the word "blues" in the title before 1920. [...]
Metropolitan Orchestra - Smoky Mokes ( buy ) (1900) The Victor Minstrels - The Cake-Walk ( buy ) (1902) Europe's Society Orchestra - Down Home Rag ( buy ) (1913) Trying to trace the origins of jazz in pre-1920 recordings may prove a bit frustrating. The great New Orleans bands only started to gain the interest of producers in the mid-twenties. So all you get before is mostly music recorded by Victor in New York City, generally played by white [...]
Harry Lauder - Roamin' in the Gloamin' (1912) Bert Williams - Nobody (1913) Morton Harvey - I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier (1915) This is the third part of my explorations of pre-country music. Here is one more little compilation I've made of various songs and tunes from the first half of the 1910s. Musically speaking, ragtime is still very popular, and the arrival of Afro American syncopated music is related by Tin Pan Alley or vaudeville singers [...]
Leadbelly - On A Christmas Day ( buy ) (1944) Georges Brassens - Le Père Noël et la petite fille ( buy ) (1960) Have a nice Xmas dear readers !!
Bessie Smith - T'ain't Nobody's Bizness If I Do ( buy ) (1923) Jimmy Witherspoon - Ain't Nobody's Business ( buy ) (1947) Here's one of these blues standards that was sung by almost everybody. If you think it's by Eric Clapton, you're wrong (again)... The theme of this song is universal and holds in the title : it's a song of freedom. Freedom from the universal "what will the neighbors say ?". That's the reason why it became so popular among the [...]
Dear readers, I'm both excited and worried. Excited, because I've discovered a new field, a musical virgin land for me : pre-1920 recordings. Worried because , as always, there is so much music and so little time. I just wanted to post a couple of songs the other week to illustrate the pre-hillbilly era, but now I'm hooked on this music and I want to go much farther. I know this is just the beginning but as I did last time, I have posted a playlist I want to share with you (see link [...]
Henry Thomas - Bull Doze Blues ( buy ) (1928) Henry Thomas - Fishin' Blues ( buy ) (1928) Henry Thomas, aka "Ragtime Texas" was one of the oldest Black folk musicians to ever record. Born in Big Sandy, Tx, in 1874, he recorded in 1928-89 when he was in his fifties. The 23 songs he left us (available on the Yazoo compilation Texas Worried Blues ) are a great document on the music that was there before the blues. Henry [...]
Edison Male Quartet - A Flower From Home Sweet Home (1907) Edison Male Quartet - My Old Kentucky Home (1902) Byron Harlan - Hello Central Give Me Heaven (1904) Billy Murray - Casey Jones (1909) It is admitted that the first documented country recording was Eck Robertson's Victor session in june 1922. But what was there before ? In the first years of the phonograph industry, before [...]
Growling Tiger - Money Is King (1979) ( buy ) Growling Tiger - The Train Blow (1979) ( buy ) First of all, I am deeply sorry for not posting those past weeks, I was too much busy with the Acclaimed music poll, which is now over. Just after submitting my list of favorite albums, I found this gem, that I would heve included if I could. I knew one track already, the first one I posted, the delicious "Money Is King", on a [...]
Blind Gary Davis - Death Don't Have No Mercy ( buy ) (1960) Blind Gary Davis - Lo, I Be With You Always ( buy ) (1960) Sorry folks for the late post, I have few free time these days due to the Top 200 AMF album poll I'm running. This is another of my favorite albums. This beautiful LP was part of my father's collection when I discovered it. It features a great vocalist and guitar picker in 12 gospel-blues songs as he [...]
River's Invitation
Miike Snow – Paddling Out (Jacques Lu Cont Remix)
Lana Del Rey covers Lovecat magazine!
