Anita O'Day : Newport 1958

The iconic image of Anita O'Day is from “Jazz on a Summer's Day," shot at the 1958 Newport Jazz Festival, where she showed up for her afternoon set in heels, an audacious bonnet and a slinky black dress, treating the crowd (some of whom looked somnambulistic) to a white-hot “Sweet Georgia Brown." O'Day was high as a kite - probably, she says, in one of the many interviews that punctuate “The Life of a Jazz Singer." Despite her substance abuse, there was an incredible strength to O'Day, who refused to compromise her art (while never calling it such) and lived a jazz life at a time when women didn't. (read more...)

Albert Collins: I Ain't Drunk at Buddy Guy's Legends club.

Albert Collins was a moderate vocalist, but instead an incredible and extremely magnificent guitarist with a rel iable phat and juicy Fender Telecaster sound. With his peculiar, original and funky guitar trademark Collins quickly established himself as one of the worlds leading blues guitar players, together with fellow guitar colleagues as B.B King, Buddy Guy, Eric Clapton and Albert King. Between 1958 and 1971, Collins mainly recorded instrumental Texas blues influenced by artists as T-Bone Walker, John Lee Hooker, Lightning' Hopkins and various jazz musicians. It would take until the mid 1970s before he finally stepped up in front of the microphone for the first time.(for more...)

The Hidden Child from Ein Hod

Until the German invasion of Belgium in 1940, when he was 4, he had “a normal childhood,” David Tamir, a Holocaust survivor, says. He and his parents, Ephraim and Tova Tamir, were living in Antwerp when they joined a mass flight to France, only to discover British soldiers were evacuating from Dunkirk, France. They, along with thousands of other refugees, were made to turn back when German troops moved in. Two years later, when he was 6, the Germans began “rounding up Jews from the streets (of Antwerp),” Tamir says. Out of concern for their son’s safety, his parents contacted an elderly couple, Roman Catholics who lived on a farm in the small village of Petegem. The coupleagreed to take in David for money, and pass him off as part of their family. David, who was being raised in a traditional Jewish family, was sent to live with them. He was surrounded by fields and animals, a change from the city, and attended the village school. It was not unusual for children to be sent to live in rural villages during the war, he says, because the Allies were dropping bombs on urban areas, and food was scarce in the cities. His parents, too, were forced into hiding to avoid being arrested and deported to the camps created and run by the Nazis. No one knew about Hitler’s Final Solution then, Tamir says, but people knew something bad was happening because those who were caught never came back. They just disappeared.In January 1949, David Tamir and his parents immigrated to Israel. He grew up and was educated there, and served in the army. After marrying an American, he moved to the States, where he lived for more than 40 years. He moved back to Israel — “It is my home” — in 2005 after retiring and now lives in Ein Hod, an artists’ community in the Carmel foothills.(read more...)

Skinny Kid with Funny Name

On behalf of the great state of Illinois, crossroads of a nation, land of Lincoln, let me express my deep gratitude for the privilege of addressing this convention. Tonight is a particular honor for me because, let's face it, my presence on this stage is pretty unlikely. My father was a foreign student, born and raised in a small village in Kenya. He grew up herding goats, went to school in a tin-roof shack. His father, my grandfather, was a cook, a domestic servant.

July 27, 2004 Illinois Senate candidate Barack Obama introduced himself to Democrats and a national television audience Tuesday, giving the keynote address at the Democratic National Convention (read more...)

Yma Sumac, 86 - "nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn"

Yma Sumac, a Peruvian folk entertainer with an astonishing vocal range who surged to fame in the 1950s with an "Incan princess" mystique that captivated millions of record-buyers in search of exotic sounds, died of cancer Nov. 1 at an assisted living facility in the Silver Lake section of Los Angeles.
She was believed to be 86, according to personal assistant Damon Devine, who said he had seen the birth certificate.
Nearly every biographical aspect of Ms. Sumac's life was long in dispute, including her age, her town of birth and her ancestral claims that on her mother's side she was a descendant of the last Incan emperor, Atahualpa.
Fueled by an intensive publicity machine, the rumors grew so thick at one point that she was jokingly rumored to be a "nice Jewish girl from Brooklyn" who had merely reversed her name, Amy Camus. (read more...)

Robinson Selkirk

Alexander Selkirk was born in the small seaside town of Lower Largo, Fife, Scotland in 1676. A younger son of a shoemaker, he was drawn to a life at sea from an early age. In 1704, during a privateering voyage on the Cinque Ports, Selkirk fell out with the commander over the boat’s seaworthiness and he decided to remain behind on Robinson Crusoe Island where they had landed to overhaul the worm-infested vessel. He cannot have known that it would be five years before he was picked up by an English ship visiting the island.
An article in the journal Post-Medieval Archaeology presents evidence from an archaeological dig on the island of Aguas Buenas, since renamed Robinson Crusoe Island, which reveals evidence of the campsite of an early European occupant. The most compelling evidence is the discovery of a pair of navigational dividers which could only have belonged to a ship’s master or navigator, as evidence suggests Selkirk must have been. Indeed Selkirk’s rescuer, Captain Woodes Rogers’ account of what he saw on arrival at Aguas Buenas in 1709 lists ‘some practical pieces’ and mathematical instruments amongst the few possessions that Selkirk had taken with him from the ship.(read more...)

Low Rent Disrict-Stephen Lawrence Suffet

Born Stephen Lawrence Suffet in 1947, Steve Suffet is best described as an old fashioned folk singer in the People's Music tradition. His repertoire is a mixture of railroad songs, trucker songs, union songs, old time country music, blues, ragtime, Gospel, topical-political songs, and whatever else tickles his fancy. He takes songs from whatever sources he wishes and then he sings them his own way, maybe rewriting the lyrics on the spot or changing the music to fit his own particular style.
Heavily involved in the antiwar movement in the 1960s, Steve appeared at several of the legendary Broadside magazine hoots in New York City. Steve later left the organized folk scene for nearly thirty years, playing instead at political rallies and demonstrations, campgrounds, schools, day care centers, weddings, parks, pubs, and pick-up jam sessions.
Steve returned to the folk scene when invited to perform at a Sis Cunningham Tribute Concert in 1997. Since then he has played for festivals, clubs, and folk music societies throughout the northeastern USA. In 2007, Steve made his first appearance at the Jacob's Ladder Folk Festival in Israel."Low Rent District" is Steve's third full CD. It eighteen tracks include eight of Steve's own compositions, four traditional folk songs that Steve arranged, a cowboy song from 1911, a Carter Family song, a song by contemporary songwriter Si Kahn, two little known Woody Guthrie songs, and Guthrie's version of a traditional Gospel song.
Accompanying Steve on various tracks on this CD are Hillel Arnold, Jaque DuPree, Carl Fortunato, Alan Friend, Robin Greenstein, Allen Hopkins, Ray Korona, Laura Munzer, Anne Price, and Gina Tlamsa. Each is an accomplished musician in his or her own right.(listen to CD ...and BUY!)

From Fourier Transform to the Beatles’ Riddle

It’s been a hard day’s night
And I’ve been working like a dog
The opening chord to A Hard Day’s Night is also famous because for 40 years, no one quite knew exactly what chord Harrison was playing. Musicians, scholars and amateur guitar players alike had all come up with their own theories, but it took a Dalhousie mathematician to figure out the exact formula.
“I started playing guitar because I heard a Beatles record—that was it for my piano lessons,” says Jason Brown of Dalhousie’s Department of Mathematics and Statistics with a good laugh. “I had tried to play the first chord of the song many takes over the years. It sounds outlandish that someone could create a mystery around a chord from a time where artists used such simple recording techniques. It’s quite remarkable.”(read more...)