50 Miles, 40 Years from Yasgur’s Farm

Michael Esposito, the guitarist for the Blues Magoos, stands sentry at his bike shop, the Old Spokes Home.


4 summers ago I took my bicycle to his shop, the only one closer (18.8 miles) to Chichester than Kingston (28.2 miles), to have the brakes fixed. The shop is behind the stores that line Tinker Street.

No, he said to me, the brake pads do not need replacing, but adjustment. Look closely, he added, and I'll teach you about it. He then showed me how to adjust the two screws on each side of the brakes, one to move the pad closer to the wheel itself.

When I offered him payment, he refused. When I offered to instead buy him a coffee as payment, he told me he did not drink coffee. I took my bike back to my car, and drove back home. As I passed by Tinker Street on my way out, I saw him emerging from the deli with a cup of coffee.

He had told me rehabilitated old bicycles and donated them to needy kids. I assumed his refusal of recompense was simply a donation of time and of a lesson to me.

Of Michael Esposito, who heals and sells old bikes out of an old cow barn called the Old Spokes Home, you can, for starters, say the following.

He was once the guitarist for the briefly famous ’60s rock group the Blues Magoos, dimly remembered for their one hit, “(We Ain’t Got) Nothin’ Yet,” for their breakthrough album, “Psychedelic Lollipop,” and for performing in black suits with Day-Glo piping and battery-powered psychedelic lights that gave them periodic shocks when inspiration met perspiration.

He came to Woodstock in 1967 at the age of 27 and was so taken with things he soon bought his burial plot in the Woodstock Artists Cemetery for $125.

He hasn’t driven a car since 1977, wakes up at night worrying about being six months behind on his house payments and is the son of a professor of military history at West Point with two brothers who graduated from there. Along with running the bike shop, he’s an aspiring painter and plays bass with young musicians in town and with the eclectic musician and songwriter Marc Black.

Of course, there are now videos of Woodstock the Concert on YouTube.

Woodstock is a little like the Middle East, one of those places where everyone has his own view of reality. (And for those unable to actually set foot here, there’s the WoodstockUniverse.com social network.) But the anniversary of the concert, which ended up about 50 miles away at Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, is prompting renewed appreciation for the way the town’s history and spirit produced the concert.

Quite a simile, equating Woodstock with the Middle East; a stretch.

A laid-back feel remains in Woodstock, the town where the fabled festival was originally planned to be held.

Laid back? Well, yes, but quite touristy, as well. Quite.

After all, long before the concert, hatched and originally planned to be held here, there were Woodstock’s two original attempts to get back to the garden. First was the Byrdcliffe art colony, founded in 1903 as a utopian, anti-industrial community of artists and artisans. Then, beginning in 1905 and peaking in the 1920s, came the Maverick community and festival in which hundreds of free spirits gathered each summer for music, art, theater and drunken orgies in the woods.

Byrdcliffe I knew about, but not Maverick. There is a medical group named Maverick that has two offices, one in Zena, another in Phoenicia.

Before Woodstock, from 1967 to 1969 there were small-scale, noncommercial musical festivals in the woods called Sound Outs that helped the promoter Michael Lang come up with the idea of the Woodstock Festival. (The main observances of the anniversary are in Bethel, but Woodstock’s version of Woodstock at 40 is a concert on Saturday billed as a celebration of the Sound Outs. Performers will even include Mr. Esposito and the reunited Blues Magoos.)

Every group from the 60s, it seems, is reuniting. Can't seem to let go, and, often, the money is too good.

One sign of that is Alchemy of Woodstock, billed as a combination coffeehouse, bookstore, music venue, art gallery and gathering space, and remarkably, one of the only places to hear live music in a town full of famous musicians. And, some say, one positive byproduct of the recession has been to drive down housing costs, keeping the town affordable to artsy types and pulling the plug on much of the boutique Hamptons North dynamic.

Yes, Hamptons dynamic: a good way to put it. I'll have to see just how many boutiques get shut down; they were sprouting as mushrooms do in the nearby woods.

But others say, creative or not, Woodstock remains doggedly stuck in time. There’s virtually no construction in the main part of town that wasn’t there in 1969, the Woodstock T-shirt/nostalgia industry is an economic staple and the economy is now dominated by the second-home owners.

Construction? Any time anyone moves too quickly, protests spring up, and environmental impact statements are demanded.

“For young people the only career paths are law enforcement or lawn care,” said Peter Cantine, an owner of the Bear Cafe, a popular restaurant.

There is also construction, repair, and so on; be or work for a contractor.

Still, you don’t get the feeling anyone’s too bummed by it. Even the young people hanging out downtown with skateboards and iPods and rap pouring out of car windows seem to think whatever Woodstock is, it’s just fine.

“It’s all New Age hippies now,” said Nicole Krieger, 20, who sells hemp jewelry in town. “It’s still really cool.”

Radical changes in jazz

Whilst browsing the newspaper, I came across this obit. A few minutes later a patron called, looking for the book George Russell wrote: The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for Improvisation.

Coincidence.


July 30, 2009
George Russell, Composer Whose Theories Sent Jazz in a New Direction, Dies at 86
By BEN RATLIFF

George Russell, a jazz composer, educator and musician whose theories led the way to radical changes in jazz in the 1950s and ’60s, died on Monday in the Jamaica Plain neighborhood of Boston. He was 86 and lived in Boston.

The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said his wife, Alice.

Though he largely operated behind the scenes and was never well known to the general public, Mr. Russell was a major figure in one of the most important developments in post-World War II jazz: the emergence of modal jazz, the first major harmonic change in the music after bebop.

Bebop, the modern style pioneered by Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie and others, had introduced a new level of harmonic sophistication, based on rapidly moving cycles of dense and sometimes dissonant chords. Modal jazz, as popularized by Miles Davis and John Coltrane, sought to give musicians more freedom and to simplify the harmonic playing field by, in essence, replacing chords with scales as the primary basis for improvisation.

Mr. Russell explained the concept in great detail in a book that came to be considered the bible of modal jazz, “The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization for Improvisation.” Conceived during bouts with tuberculosis in the 1940s, the book was originally self-published in 1953 and published as a book six years later. A final revised edition was published as Volume 1 in 2001; Mr. Russell had been working on a second volume.

Mr. Russell’s concept could be difficult for readers to absorb. “When you are trying to communicate a new theory of music,” he told The New York Times in 1983, “the whole fight is to put the sentences together so that other people understand them. Sometimes, when I read them back, I don’t understand them.”

But the basic idea behind it was simple. He believed that a new generation of jazz improvisers deserved new harmonic techniques, and that traditional Western tonality was running its course. The Lydian chromatic concept — based on the Lydian mode, or scale, rather than the familiar do-re-mi major scale — was a way for musicians to improvise in any key, on any chord, without sacrificing the music’s blues roots.

Mr. Russell proposed that chords and scales were interrelated. He sought ways for an improvising musician to play more notes that fit harmonically with whatever he was playing; to put it another way, he was trying to develop a system in which there are no “wrong” notes.

Miles Davis most famously put Mr. Russell’s ideas into practice. His “Milestones,” written and recorded in 1958, swung back and forth between two scales, rejecting the rapid chord changes that had become prevalent in modern jazz. His landmark album “Kind of Blue,” recorded a year later, is widely regarded as the first great document of modal jazz.

Subsequent recordings by, among many others, the saxophonists John Coltrane (a participant in the “Kind of Blue” sessions) and Eric Dolphy (who also recorded with Mr. Russell), helped spread the gospel of modal jazz. Mr. Russell still stayed mostly behind the scenes, and, in later years, was primarily a teacher, but his fellow musicians acknowledged and appreciated his influence.

George Russell was born in Cincinnati on June 23, 1923, and grew up in a foster home. His adoptive father was a chef on the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad, and his adoptive mother was a nurse. He played drums with the Boy Scouts’ drum-and-bugle corps and attended Wilberforce University in Ohio on a scholarship. At Wilberforce he played with the Collegians, the university’s imposing jazz and dance band. In 1941, while hospitalized for tuberculosis, he learned the science of harmony from a fellow patient. At that time he composed “New World” for the saxophonist and bandleader Benny Carter.

He later moved to New York to play drums with Carter’s band, but he gave up the instrument as soon as Max Roach was called in to replace him. “Max had it all on drums,” he said. “I decided that writing was my field.”

In 1947 he composed the modal introduction to “Cubano Be” and other sections of the multipart “Cubano Be, Cubano Bop,” an early example of Afro-Cuban jazz recorded by Gillespie. He later wrote “A Bird in Igor’s Yard,” an early experiment in classical-jazz crossover, for the clarinetist Buddy DeFranco.

He was part of the circle that convened around the arranger Gil Evans’s Manhattan apartment in the late 1940s, a group that included Miles Davis; returning to music after an illness, he wrote “Odjenar” and “Ezz-Thetic” for a Lee Konitz album recorded in 1951 that also included Davis.

In 1956 he began his own career as a recording artist and a bandleader with the album “The Jazz Workshop.” His other albums from that period included “New York, N.Y.” (1959) and “Ezz-Thetics” (1961).

In 1958 he taught at the Lenox School of Jazz in Massachusetts, run by the pianist and composer John Lewis, who called Mr. Russell’s Lydian chromatic concept “the first profound theoretical contribution to come from jazz.”

In 1964 Mr. Russell, who as a black man was dismayed by race relations in the United States, moved to Scandinavia. He returned in 1969 and joined the faculty of the New England Conservatory, where he taught until 2004.

He also began touring with his own groups, notably the Living Time Orchestra, a large international ensemble he led from the mid-1980s on, which experimented with all kinds of music, including funk, electronics and jazz-rock. A 21-piece version of that band recorded “The African Game,” an album for Blue Note in 1983.

Among the many awards Mr. Russell received were a MacArthur Foundation grant in 1989 and a National Endowment for the Arts Jazz Masters fellowship in 1990.

In addition to his wife, he is survived by his son, Jock Millgardh, of Los Angeles, and three grandchildren.

On the first few albums released under his name, Mr. Russell composed the music and led the ensemble but did not perform, and although he later played piano in the groups he led, he did not have a high opinion of himself as a pianist. “I don’t play the piano,” he once said. “I play the Lydian concept.”

Peter Keepnews contributed reporting.

King of Pop

Quincy Jones on How Jackson Did It

"Off the Wall" and "Thriller" solidified Michael Jackson's status as the "King of Pop." Jim Fusilli talks to Quincy Jones, the producer behind these two recordings.

• Video: Fans Pay Tribute | Photos

Walk, Don't run

The Ventures, from left: Nokie Edwards, Bob Bogle, Don Wilson and Howie Johnson in 1960


Bob Bogle, a founding member of the Ventures, the long-running guitar band whose jaunty 1960 hit “Walk — Don’t Run” became an early standard of instrumental rock ’n’ roll and taught generations of guitarists how to make their solos sparkle, died on Sunday in Vancouver, Wash., where he lived. He was 75.

I can hear that guitar.

Mr. Bogle and Don Wilson, two young construction workers and novice guitar enthusiasts, started the group in Tacoma, Wash., in 1958. Unable to attract a record label, they founded their own, Blue Horizon.

Smart.

“They took a jazz song that had some swing to it, and they garaged it out,” Peter Blecha, author of “Sonic Boom: The History of Northwest Rock From ‘Louie Louie’ to ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit,’ ” said in an interview on Tuesday. “They stomped their way through it, ignored the niceties of the sound and made it palatable to 15-year-old tastes.”

“Walk — Don’t Run” became the Ventures’ formula, applied on hundreds of subsequent records. That same year, 1960, they had another hit with their instrumental version of “Perfidia,” a much-covered song by the Mexican songwriter Alberto Domínguez. (Charlie Parker, Glenn Miller, Nat King Cole and Linda Ronstadt, among others, have also recorded versions of it.)

Bird did Perfidia? Never heard it.

The band covered pop hits, television theme songs and various novelties in the signature Ventures style, including Johnny Cash’s “I Walk the Line,” “Slaughter on Tenth Avenue” and the “Batman” theme. Psychedelic albums followed in the late 1960s, and in 1972 the Ventures covered “Theme From ‘Shaft,’ ” the blaxploitation classic by Isaac Hayes.

Ventures doing I Walk the Line? Wild, man.

In 1965 the group released an instructional album, “Play Guitar With the Ventures,” and over the years many top rock guitarists, including George Harrison and John Fogerty, have acknowledged a debt to the band.

Wow.

The Ventures were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2008; Mr. Fogerty was the presenter. Mr. Bogle was not in attendance, but Mr. Wilson and Mr. Edwards were, and Ms. Taylor, the band’s manager and widow of Mel Taylor, accepted the honor on his behalf. Mr. Taylor died in 1996, and Howie Johnson had died in 1988. At the ceremony, the band performed the “Hawaii Five-O” theme and “Walk — Don’t Run.”

Blazing a New Path in Classical Music

Nobuyuki Tsujii, shown above in the semifinal round of the Van Cliburn International Piano Competition, went on to tie for first place.






Classical pianist Nobuyuki Tsujii listens to the conductor’s breathing for cues, since he can’t see the baton. On stage, he feels for the edges of the keyboard before he begins playing, to orient his hands. He learns new pieces through listening and memorization, rather than reading the notes. The 20-year-old Japanese musician last weekend became the first blind pianist to win the prestigious Van Cliburn International Piano Competition.

“I’m handicapped, but I have overcome it,” he said at a crowded press conference in Tokyo Wednesday.

I'm currently listening to Art Tatum music, and am constantly amazed how good he was; he, too, was blind.

Pianist Norman Krieger, a professor at the USC Thornton School of Music who watched Mr. Tsujii’s performances online, was impressed by the difficulty of the pieces Mr. Tsujii chose, including Beethoven’s Hammerklavier Sonata, a piece notorious for its demanding physicality.

Not everyone liked his performance, but, that is to be expected.

Mr. Tsujii began learning music by listening. His mother, Itsuko Tsujii, said in a telephone interview that at age 2 he played “Jingle Bells” on a toy piano after hearing her sing it. He switched to reading music in Braille at age 7, when he started using Braille to read and write. Learning music in Braille is laborious. Pianists learn the music for each hand separately—using one hand to read the score in Braille and the other to play—and then combine what they have memorized. Mr. Tsujii eventually adopted a different method: Now he practices from a recording of a volunteer reading aloud every musical note in a piece.

Although there is a rich tradition of blind organists and organist-pianists, blind artists focusing primarily on the piano are less common. In the 18th century, a blind Austrian pianist named Maria Theresia Paradis commissioned works from composers including Mozart and Salieri. In the 19th century, “Blind Tom” Wiggins, who was born a slave, rose to fame.

By comparison, examples of renowned blind pianists in popular music abound. Ray Charles, Stevie Wonder, George Shearing and Art Tatum, who was seriously visually impaired, helped dispel the notion that sight was a prerequisite for great musicianship. Though Ray Charles knew musical Braille, he came to rely nearly entirely on playing by ear, says Rob Bowman, an ethnomusicology professor at York University in Toronto. When composing music for big-band arrangements, Mr. Charles would dictate the parts to the musicians or arrangers, who would translate his directions to sheet music.

Seriously visually imparied, not blind, Tatum.

Some evidence suggests a correlation between blindness and musicality. In the general population, absolute pitch is rare, a skill one in 1,000 or perhaps one in 10,000 has, says Oliver Sacks, a professor of neurology and psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons, whose book “Musicophilia” explores the relationship between music and the brain. In those born blind, he says, it is one in two or one in three.

Wow.

Ibrahim Ferrer, 78

Ibrahim Ferrer at Carnegie Hall in 1998.

Had this page, B8, of the Monday, 8 August 2005, tacked onto a door in Chichester.

Mr. Ferrer was at the center of the Buena Vista Social Club, a phenomenon that brought long-delayed international fame to a group of older Cuban musicians thanks to a Grammy-winning 1997 album produced by Ry Cooder and a subsequent film by Wim Wenders, both by that name. Besides offering American audiences a musician's-eye view of Cuba, the film set up Mr. Ferrer as a particularly sympathetic figure - tall, distinguished and lively, an excellent bolero singer who used space and silence in his relaxed elegant delivery to increase the drama, a man who had been rolled over by history and was now simply trying to enjoy an absurdly lucky situation.

Born in 1927 at a social club dance in the eastern city of Santiago de Cuba - his mother went into labor on a night out - Mr. Ferrer's first professional involvement with music came at age 13, a year after he became an orphan, when he joined a band, Los Jóvenes del Son.

Jammin’ in the East Room

May 12, 2009, 9:45 pm

Jammin’ in the East Room

By Rachel L. Swarns

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times Esperanza Spalding started off an evening of performances at the East Room of the White House on Tuesday.

The candles flickered, the bassist strummed and, one by one, the writers and poets seized their moments in front of the microphone.

James Earl Jones served up Othello, his sonorous voice rumbling through the East Room. Mayda del Valle, a poet from Chicago, conjured her grandmother from Puerto Rico. Joshua Brandon Bennett, a poet from Yonkers, N.Y., delivered an ode to his deaf sister, his fingers flying as he translated his words into signs.

Ozier Muhammad/The New York Times First lady Michelle Obama spoke of the importance of art and culture.

It was Tuesday night, time for the White House poetry jam. A pony-tailed disc jockey hovered over a pair of turntables in the hallway, guests sipped white wine and President Obama and his wife, Michelle, celebrated the power of the spoken word.

“We’re here to celebrate the power of words and music to help us appreciate beauty and also to understand pain,’’ Mr. Obama told the crowd.

Mrs. Obama urged her guests to “enjoy, have fun and be loose” as they absorbed performances from Hawaiian, Puerto Rican, Jewish and African American writers in an event intended to showcase the diversity of American talent.

The crowd, which included the director Spike Lee and the television broadcaster George Stephanopoulos, among others, enjoyed the music of the pianist Eric Lewis and the bassist and singer Esperanza Spalding along with the writers. And while the poetry jam may well have been the hippest performance staged by the Obamas in the White House, it was just one of a series of events they have put on to celebrate the arts.

Since January, the Obamas have played host to bagpipe and mariachi bands, Irish fiddlers and poets, pop stars and jazz singers. Performers have included Stevie Wonder and Earth Wind and Fire, Tony Bennett and Fergie, the singer from the Black Eyed Peas.

Paul Muldoon, the Pulitzer-Prize winning poet from Northern Ireland, has recited his verses. The rocker Sheryl Crow and the rhythm and blues singer Alicia Keys have entertained cheering crowds in the East Room.

“Our goal really is to bring the house alive,’’ said Desiree Rogers, the White House social secretary. “We’re all American, but all of us come from different backgrounds. We want to expose Americans to other Americans that are doing brilliant work.’’

Laura Bush, the former first lady, also brought writers to the White House to highlight the works of Langston Hughes, Mark Twain and the women writers of the West and others. (Mrs. Bush was forced to cancel her poetry symposium in 2003, however, when it became clear that several participants planned to protest the war in Iraq.)

It is probably safe to say that Tuesday’s event may well have been the first White House poetry jam, the fast-paced presentation of spoken verse that has become popular among young people in cities across the country. (This should not be confused with a poetry slam, which is a poetry competition.)

Jamaica Heolimeleikalani Osorio, a young Hawaiian poet, talked about the struggles of finding her own identity, of living in her own skin. Lin Manuel Miranda, the creator of the Tony-Award winning Broadway musical, “In the Heights” rapped his way across the stage.

The writers, Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, who are husband and wife, described how words break down barriers.

Ms. del Valle, the 30-year-old poet from Chicago, said she never dreamed that she would be invited to perform in the White House.

“To be able to go in the White House and to represent my grandmother and my ancestors, it really means a lot,” she said. “It’s a
generation of women that don’t often get heard, you know, these old Puerto Rican women that no one ever really thinks about. To be able to use my voice to represent them on this kind of platform is really powerful.”

Anachronisms

The former Beatles Paul McCartney and Ringo Starr performed in New York on Saturday.











Anachronism:

• something located at a time when it could not have existed or occurred
• an artifact that belongs to another time

Word fits.

ArtsBeat: Here Comes the Sun: The Beatles Finally Get Remastered (April 7, 2009)

Times Topics: The Beatles

Apple Corps

"Rubber Soul" is one of the 12 albums the Beatles released in Britain that will be included in the new series, along with "Magical Mystery Tour" and the “Past Masters” set.

April 8, 2009
Original Beatles Albums to Be Reissued
By ALLAN KOZINN

Finally. After watching the Beatles’ company, Apple Corps, devote the last few years to developing a site-specific show in Las Vegas, a video game and a line of pricey memorabilia, Beatles fans are finally getting something they’ve been demanding for at least the last decade: sonically upgraded reissues of the group’s original British albums, in stereo and mono. Apple Corps and EMI announced on Tuesday that the much-postponed remasters would be released on individual stereo CDs and in two boxed sets — one stereo, the other mono — on Sept. 9, the same day the Beatles edition of Rock Band, the music video game, is scheduled for release.

Downloadable versions of this music, however, remain in limbo. In December Paul McCartney said that they were being held up because of a dispute between Apple Corps and EMI. More recently, Dhani Harrison, George Harrison’s son, suggested that Apple Corps was dissatisfied with the price Apple, the computer company, was charging for iTunes downloads, and hinted that the Beatles might sell digital downloads through a system of their own. That could be resolved by September as well.

Like the original set of Beatles CDs, released in 1987 and not upgraded since, the reissue series will include only the 12 albums the Beatles released in Britain between 1963 and 1970, from “Please Please Me” through “Let It Be,” along with “Magical Mystery Tour” — an American album that was originally released as a two-EP set in England — and the two-CD “Past Masters” compilation of the group’s nonalbum singles. All told, the set includes 16 CDs. (Beatles projects are typically tightly guarded; few outside EMI have heard the remasters yet.) Compilations released since 1987, including the “Beatles Anthology” series, “The Beatles Live at the BBC,” “Yellow Submarine Songtrack,” “1” and “Love,” the soundtrack for the Cirque du Soleil show in Las Vegas, are not included in the new series. Nor are the two “Capitol Albums” boxed sets, which presented several of the Beatles’ albums in the versions released in the United States.

The main reason collectors have been so intent on reissues of music they already own is that the 1987 CDs, like many discs released in the early years of the format, sound comparatively harsh and brittle by today’s standards. Since then, improvements in digital sound technology and remastering equipment have yielded a richer, smoother sound, and most of the major groups and artists from the 1960s — from Bob Dylan, the Byrds and Simon and Garfunkel to the Rolling Stones and Pink Floyd — have had their catalogs refurbished at least once since their first appearance on CD. And the Beatles’ own recent releases, including the “Capitol Albums” and “Love” discs, showed that the band’s recordings could sound vastly better — warmer and with far greater presence — than they do on the 1987 discs.

Even so, remastering can be a dicey business: noise-reduction techniques can slice away the high frequencies of a recording, dulling the treble sound (in return for eliminating tape hiss). EMI’s remastering team apparently took this into consideration: the company’s production notes mention that fewer than five of the 525 minutes of music were subjected to noise reduction. The new transfers were done using a high-resolution Pro Tools system, and each track was compared with both its vinyl LP and 1987 CD incarnations.

This is largely what collectors have been looking for. But Beatles fans are an exacting bunch, and the release plan gives them some cause for complaint as well. The stereo CDs include video documentaries, directed by Bob Smeaton (“The Beatles Anthology”), about the making of each album. But these will be available only on early pressings, and there are otherwise no bonus tracks, outtakes or extras.

Moreover, the group’s first seven albums (through “Revolver”) include only about 25 minutes of music. The mono and stereo versions of each — collectors prize both because of anomalies like different vocal takes, instrumental lines or effects — could have fit on a single CD with room to spare. In many cases, the contemporaneous singles could have fit as well, making the “Past Masters” set superfluous.

The mono boxed set, in fact, demonstrates this. Because the stereo CDs will include George Martin’s 1987 remixes of “Help!” and “Rubber Soul” — mixes that have been the subject of much criticism and debate among Beatles fanatics — the mono CDs of those albums will include both the mono and the original 1965 stereo mixes of those albums.

Those are, however, available only in the mono boxed set, which includes the 10 albums (through “The Beatles,” popularly known as the “White Album”) that were mixed separately for mono and stereo in the ’60s, as well as a mono equivalent of “Past Masters.” (An 11th album, “Yellow Submarine,” was also released in mono, but the mono version was just a folded-down version of the stereo mix.) The stereo boxed set has a minor attraction as well: the documentaries included on the individual discs are offered here on a separate DVD, a format many collectors will prefer. An Apple Corps spokesman said that prices were not yet available.

Having spent years fantasizing about the ideal reissue series, collectors will also be disappointed about the high-tech opportunities that Apple Corps and EMI did not take. Although many collectors insist that only the ’60s original mono and stereo mixes will do, others, impressed with some of the remixes on the “Yellow Submarine Songtrack” — the version of “Nowhere Man” with centered vocals, for example — had been hoping EMI’s engineers would return to the original multitrack session tapes and use the flexibility of today’s equipment to prepare fresh mixes. And the 5.1 surround-sound mixes included on “The Beatles Anthology” DVDs and the “Love” album had collectors hoping that EMI would release all the original albums in surround.

The wildest dreamers hoped the reissues would be all things to all collectors: Blu-ray DVDs, for example, with the original mono and stereo mixes, a surround mix and a raft of outtakes.

But collectors can look on the bright side: the reissues are imminent, but there is still so much to continue to clamor for. That still elusive 27-minute outtake of “Helter Skelter,” anyone?

A Great Piano Teacher Remembered

Joseph Bloch
Interesting piece about one who was obviously a fascinating person.

Joseph Bloch, a pianist and scholar who taught piano literature at the Juilliard School for more than 40 years, passed away this month at the age of 91, culminating a life of musical discovery and high adventure. Along the way, he guided generations of pianists around the world, some of whom stayed in touch for over five decades. He was not unlike the prized Lagavulin Scotch whisky with which he welcomed visitors to his Larchmont, N.Y., home: cultivated, singular and awe-inspiring.

Lagavulin is a single malt scotch whisky. (Aye, without the e.)

"And there was always that rapier wit," says Robin McCabe, now professor and director of the University of Washington's School of Music. "Once he was telling me about a semester of Liszt he was planning and I asked him how he was going to organize all that repertoire. 'By mistresses,' he replied."

Orlando Cachaito López, 76, Bassist, Dies

February 11, 2009

Orlando Cachaito López, 76, Bassist, Dies

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

HAVANA (AP) — Orlando Cachaito López, the bassist considered the heartbeat of the Cuban group Buena Vista Social Club, died here Monday. He was 76.

The cause was complications of prostate surgery, said Manuel Galbán, a Cuban musician who played with Mr. López for decades.

Mr. López was a founding member of the band, a group of older Cuban musicians brought together in the 1990s by the American guitarist and producer Ry Cooder. The group included Compay Segundo, Ibrahim Ferrer, Rubén González and Omara Portuondo.

Later, the filmmaker Wim Wenders showcased their talents, which had been all but forgotten, in the documentary “Buena Vista Social Club.” The band, which plays a mix of traditional Cuban rhythms, saw its renown grew as it toured internationally.

But it has lost many of its members. Mr. González, a pianist; and the vocalists Mr. Segundo (born Máximo Francisco Repilado Muñoz), Mr. Ferrer and Pio Leyva have all died in recent years.

Mr. López was also a star independent of Buena Vista. His groundbreaking debut album, “Cachaito,” won a BBC Radio 3 Award for World Music in 2002.

Born in Havana in 1933, Mr. López hailed from a family of at least 30 bass players, including his uncle, the well-known Israel Cachao López. Mr. López’s nickname translates to “Little Cachao.” His father, Orestes, played piano and cello as well as bass and was also a composer.

Mr. López originally played the violin but, as he said many times, eventually switched to the bass after his grandfather urged him to take up the family trade.

Mr. López was a pioneer of Cuban mambo, and by 17 was part of a noted big band group known as Riverside. He later joined Cuba’s national symphony and played with a band called Los Zafiros.

At 70, a Legendary Jazz Label Asks, ‘Now What?’

Blue Note records.

Buddy Holly's Still-Living Legacy

Today marks the 50th anniversary of the plane crash that took the life of Buddy Holly among other rock 'n' roll pioneers.

The Rock Laureate

Just a great shot.

Oscar Peterson

Saw this last evening; masterful musicians, timeless music.

Hanukkah Receives Kosher Pop Welcome

Rahav Segev for The New York Times -Matisyahu, the kosher-pop singer, welcomes Hanukkah with his Festival of Lights series, which continues this week and next at Webster Hall in the East Village and the Music Hall of Williamsburg, in Brooklyn.

Matisyahu has built a career on analogies between Rastafarian roots reggae and Hasidic songs. Both are concerned with faith and survival struggles and have lyrics phrased in Biblical allusions; both draw on modal scales and melismatic vocal lines that can sound Middle Eastern. Near the end of the concert Matisyahu sang long, cantorial phrases while rocking back and forth, as if davening, or praying. Yet if his lyrics weren’t so clear about their references to Jewish history and the majesty of God, most of the time Matisyahu would simply be one more reggae-loving rocker.

melisma: a group of notes sung to a single syllable, typically including both a primary note and ornamentation.

Rahav Segev for The New York Times

Matisyahu performing at Webster Hall on Sunday night.

Mitch Mitchell Dies at 62; Drummer for Jimi Hendrix

Mitch Mitchell, the jazzy and versatile British drummer in the Jimi Hendrix Experience, died on Wednesday in a hotel in Portland, Ore. He was 62 and had recently finished a national tribute tour, Experience Hendrix.

The cause was unknown, said Bob Merlis, publicist for the tour.

Mr. Mitchell was one of two Englishmen in the Experience, the group that catapulted Hendrix to fame in the late 1960s. Along with the bassist Noel Redding, who died in 2003, Mr. Mitchell was recruited in a rush in the fall of 1966, after the journeyman Hendrix had been discovered in a New York club and whisked to London by Chas Chandler of the Animals.

Hendrix’s guitar pyrotechnics caused an immediate sensation among the British rock elite — the audience at one early gig included John Lennon, Eric Clapton, Pete Townshend, Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck and Brian Jones — and a backup band was needed for a last-minute French tour. Mr. Redding was hired first, followed a few days later by Mr. Mitchell, who was barely out of his teens but already an established session player with the Pretty Things and Georgie Fame.

Mr. Mitchell did not expect much from the job. “I’ll give it a crack,” he later remembered telling Mr. Chandler, who became one of Hendrix’s managers. “I’ll have a go for two weeks.”

But led by Hendrix’s explosive and rhapsodic style, the group revolutionized rock music and became an archetypal power trio. Its style was built around Hendrix’s improvisations, with Mr. Redding’s steady bass lines acting as an anchor and Mr. Mitchell — who was influenced by jazz players like Elvin Jones — playing a lighter, looser counterpoint to the guitar.

The group also developed a signature look that embodied the dandyish flamboyance of the British psychedelic era. The members sought out bell-bottoms and vintage clothes in British shops and teased out their hair. “For Noel, the curly Afro came naturally,” wrote Charles R. Cross in his 2005 Hendrix biography, “Room Full of Mirrors.” “Mitch had to get a permanent to achieve the same result.”

The Jimi Hendrix Experience released three albums: “Are You Experienced” (1967), “Axis: Bold as Love” (1967) and “Electric Ladyland” (1968). Mr. Mitchell continued to play with Hendrix until his death in 1970, and later played in the band Ramatam.

Born John Mitchell in London, he worked as a child actor, appearing in the BBC television show “Jennings at School.”

Survivors include his mother; wife, Dee; a daughter; and two grandchildren.

After Hendrix died Mr. Mitchell worked with the producer Eddie Kramer in completing the albums “The Cry of Love” and “Rainbow Bridge,” and he long worked with Experience Hendrix, the company founded by Hendrix’s father, in promulgating the Hendrix legend.

Miriam Makeba

I remember her from the 1960s.

Singer Miriam Makeba dies

Makeba became popular with her song 'Pata pata' [EPA] Miriam Makeba, the world-renowned South African singer, has died at the age of 76 after collapsing on stage during her last performance. Makeba was taken ill to a hosptial early Monday morning near the southern Italian town of Naples. "I'm not yet absolutely certain of the causes of her passing, but she has had arthritis, severe arthritis, for some time," her publicist told an Italian radio station, however other reports said she passed away after sufferring a heart attack. Makeba was best known to her fans as 'Mama Africa' as she became the distinguished voice of Africa and a symbol of the fight against apartheid in her home country. "Her haunting melodies gave voice to the pain of exile and dislocation which she felt for 31 long years. At the same time, her music inspired a powerful sense of hope in all of us," said Nelson Mandela, who led the struggle to replace the apartheid regime of South Africa with a multi-racial democracy. Born in a shantytown outside of Johannesburg on March 4 1932, Makeba first received international attention as a featured vocalist with the Manhattan Brothers in 1954. She toured the US until 1959. The following year, when she wanted to return home to bury her mother, the apartheid state revoked her citizenship and also banned her music. As a result, she spent 31 years in exile, living in the US and later in Guinea before becoming the first black African woman to receive a Grammy Award, which she shared with folk singer Harry Belafonte in 1965. 'Pata, Pata' Two years later her fame sky-rocketed with the recording of the all-time hit "Pata Pata". From that point, Makeba stood out for her distinctive clicking sounds, which she used to punctuate songs in her native Xhosa language. She hit an all-time low in 1985 when Bongi, her only daughter, died at the age of 36 from complications from a miscarriage. Makeba did not have money to buy a coffin for Bongi so she buried her alone barring a handful of journalists covering the funeral. But she picked herself up again, as she did many times before, surviving failed marriages and illness. 'Homeland' She returned to South Africa in the 1990s after Mandela was released from prison. However, it took a cash-strapped Makeba six years to find someone in the local recording industry to produce a record with her. She then released "Homeland" which contains a song describing her joy to be back home after the many years in exile. "I kept my culture. I kept the music of my roots. Through my music I became this voice and image of Africa and the people without even realising," she said in her biography.

FEC Chairman McGahn Marches to His Own Tune

Different jobs.

Don McGahn takes the stage with his band one recent night, sporting a black cap and a T-shirt warning: "Not Now, I'm Busy." He props his leg on a speaker, points his red electric guitar skyward and strums the distinctive opening notes to the Guns N' Roses classic "Paradise City." The boozy beach crowd here flocks to the dance floor to shout along. A few days later, Mr. McGahn leans into a different kind of microphone, his shaggy hair resting on the collar of his pin-stripped business suit. Addressing a few dozen Washington bureaucrats and election lawyers, Mr. McGahn weighs the merits of a pleading from a politician caught up in a prostitution ring, asking to be allowed to use re-election funds to pay an assistant to monitor the trial.

In his day job, the 40-year-old lead guitarist for Scott's New Band serves as chairman of the Federal Election Commission. Trading his Gibson Les Paul guitar for the gavel at the regulatory agency, he is the top cop enforcing the laws for the most expensive campaign in history.

Musical Talent Runs Deep in Among Political Leaders

Legally Dead

Lawyer to the Grateful Dead.

Hal Kant, the longtime attorney for America's quintessential hippie band, gave the legal nod to what became the Grateful Dead's commercial signature: While most groups prohibit taping, the Dead tacitly allowed fans to make their own not-for-profit tapes and pass them around. "Every one of those tapes became a marketing device," says Dennis McNally, the Dead's publicist for many years.

It was Mr. Kant who led the Grateful Dead to incorporate, making it one of the first rock bands to offer health benefits and pensions. He negotiated contracts that preserved the Dead's master recordings for the band, not a record company, and coordinated its many businesses. And it was Mr. Kant – "the Czar," to lead guitarist Jerry Garcia – who convinced Mr. Garcia to protest when groovy Vermont dairy Ben & Jerry's Homemade Inc. named one of its flavors Cherry Garcia. The company now pays royalties, split between a Grateful Dead charity and Mr. Garcia's heirs.

Cherry Garcia seemed such a perfect name; apt. And why should Ben & Jerry have benefitted from what was obviously a play on Garcia's name?

Still, as a registered Republican with an office in Beverly Hills, Mr. Kant, who died Oct. 19 in Reno, Nev., at age 77, seems an unlikely candidate to have spent three decades as lawyer to the San Francisco band, starting in 1971."I didn't hang out with them – they were not an important client to me financially [at the time], so I could be very independent," he told Mr. McNally for the publicist's history of the Grateful Dead, "A Long Strange Trip."

Mr. Kant said he never charged the band a percentage but only billed hourly, and insisted that the band pay managers a flat fee. "Hal was the sounding board, the adult in the room" during the band's anarchic and consensus-driven meetings, Mr. McNally says. Although he ended up as a pioneer entertainment lawyer, much of Mr. Kant's practice was a general one, with specialties in tax and corporate law.

Born Harold Sanford Kant in Queens and raised in the Bronx, he was the son of immigrant Russian Jews in the dry-cleaning business. Itchy after attending City College for two years, he traveled west to Seattle and finished college at the University of Washington.

A Queens boy.

He earned a master's in psychology before service in the Navy during the Korean War, then used his G.I. Bill money to study law at Harvard, graduating in 1958. A clerkship on the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals took him back to the West Coast, and he went on to join a Beverly Hills law firm next door to the William Morris Agency. Mr. Kant counted a few starlets among his early clients. His first musical client was the Association, to be followed by Captain Beefheart and Stevie Ray Vaughan, among others.

I remember the Association; mid-1960s. Along comes Mary. And SRV as a client?

Rudy Ray Moore, 81, Precursor of Rap

There is a website, of course. And an "official" one, as well.


Mr. Moore called himself the Godfather of Rap because of the number of hip-hop artists who used snippets of his recordings in theirs, performed with him or imitated him. These included Dr. Dre, Big Daddy Kane and 2 Live Crew.

Snoop Dogg thanked Mr. Moore in liner notes to the 2006 release of the soundtrack to Mr. Moore’s 1975 film, “Dolemite,” saying, “Without Rudy Ray Moore, there would be no Snoop Dogg, and that’s for real.”

While very little of his work reached mainstream audiences, some knew of his work. Snoop did.

Mr. Moore could be said to represent a profound strand of African-American folk art. One of his standard stories concerns a monkey who uses his wiles and an accommodating elephant to fool a lion. The tale, which originated in West Africa, became a basis for an influential study by the Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr., “The Signifying Monkey: A Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism.”

Hewlett-Woodmere Library owns the book.

In one of his few brushes with a national audience, Mr. Moore, in a startlingly cleaned-up version, told the story on “The Arsenio Hall Show” in the early 1990s. Other characters he described were new, almost always dirtier renderings in the tradition of trickster stories represented by Brer Rabbit and the cunning slave John, who outwitted his master to win freedom.

Rudy Ray Moore as the title character in “Dolemite” (1975), a cult classic among aficionados of blaxploitation movies.