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June 16, 2007

PHINEAS NEWBORN JR.: Baby Grandiloquent

NewbornImage by CharlesFred via Flickr



oleo



lush life



Theme For Basie



Left Hand Blues


Created by television pioneer and life-long jazz devotee Steve Allen, Jazz Scene USA was nationally syndicated television program in the beginning of the sixties that showcased some of the best practitioners of that very American musical form. All appearances are featured in a relaxed, casual atmosphere created by hipster host, singer Oscar Brown Jr. Uncompromising in its use of imaginative camera angles, the visual style is on a par with the music. These shows are time capsules to cherish fron america's golden days of televised jazz.

In these videos circa 1962 we see the amazing pianist Phineas Newborn interpreting his own "Theme For Basie", Billy Strayhorn's lush ballad "Lush Life", "Blues For Left Hand" , "The New Blues" and Sonny Rollins' "Oleo" accompanied by Al McGibbon on bass and Kenny Dennis on drums.




Phineas Newborn Jr., a leading jazz pianist, died at his home in Memphis, Tenn., Friday. He was 57 years old.

Phineas Newborn Jr., a leading jazz pianist, died at his home in Memphis, Tenn., Friday. He was 57 years old.

The cause of death has not been released.Irvin Salky, Mr. Newborn's agent and friend, said X-rays six weeks ago showed a growth on one of his lungs.

Although Mr. Newborn was not a celebrity, he was highly regarded by jazz aficionados, especially in the 1950's and 60's. ''In his prime, he was one of the three greatest jazz pianists of all time, right up there with Bud Powell and Art Tatum,'' said Leonard Feather, a jazz critic for Downbeat magazine and The Los Angeles Times.

His albums included ''A World of Piano,'' ''The Newborn Touch,'' ''The Great Piano of Phineas'' and ''Piano Artistry of Phineas Newborn.''His father, Phineas Newborn Sr., led a big band that played on Memphis's celbrated Beale Street in the 30's and 40's. Mr. Newborn grew up playing saxophone, trumpet and vibraphone in the band, which included his brother Calvin, who played guitar.

Besides his brother, he is survived by his mother, daughters, a son and two grandchildren.


A racial attack took him out of the playing circuit in 1974. He was admitted to the Veteran’s Hospital with a cracked jawbone, broken nose and several broken fingers. The day Phineas was discharged from the hospital he went to Ardent recording studios and recorded a Grammy nominated album, ‘Solo Piano’. The tracks included a version of ‘Out of The World’ which contained stunning left-hand virtuosity. Stanley Booth says that ‘hearing that performance while looking at the X-ray photos of Phineas’s broken hands is enough to make you think that Little Red (Phineas Newborn), like Jerry Lee Lewis is a little more than human.’Rhythm Oil: A Journey Through the Music






By ROBERT PALMER
Published: July 11, 1986

Phineas Newborn Jr., Sweet Basil, 88 Seventh Avenue South, below West Fourth Street (242-1785). Born into a musical Memphis family and a pianist with his father's big band and on early B. B. King recordings while still in his teens, Phineas Newborn Jr. was in every sense a prodigy. By the time he made his classic Atlantic, RCA and Contemporary jazz albums, in the 1950's and early 60's, that prodigious abundance of technique was getting him compared with the virtuosic Art Tatum, and dismissed by some as all fingers, no heart. That was never true, and certainly isn't now. In his maturity, Mr. Newborn is one of the masters of jazz piano, with an immediately identifiable tone and touch, great harmonic originality, and, as a kind of signature, octave runs that seem to fairly whip along the keyboard. Shows are around 10 and 11:30 P.M. and 1 A.M. through Sunday, with a $10 music charge and $6 minimum.


tav falco
PHINEAS NEWBORN, Jr.
August 17, 1975
Memphis, Tennessee
3-min. excerpt
1/2 » Open Reel Video original, B&W


Imagine yourself a prodigy, a jazz virtuoso of the 1950s. You have played with everybody from Duke Ellington to Charlie Mingus. Then POW… you are lost for twenty years. Your achievements and talents put into chemical and canvas straitjackets. Living with your mother. Treated like a miscreant. Then you begin to rise to the top again. This is one of the man’s first public performances before a public eager and waiting so long for his return.
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June 15, 2007

welcome to memphis




Welcome to Memphis
Ratings: Mudflat
Warnings: Unspecific sex


The characters and situations portrayed here are not mine, they belong to then.
This is a fan authored work and no profit is being made.



































Welcome to Memphis




cigarettelessness and other lessnesses to rss

rss this lessness mess


cracking up
nick lowe


health fanatic
john cooper clark


hey there, mr. dealer
morton downey, jr.

here are the half-swedish, half-spellchecked tags

Football caftan din gavel!HoraBebiskukDitt Java rival!GA och dö!KukPattarFanSubbaSlynaMammaknullareKuksugareKnullareRövhål HelveteBögArselJävlaSug min gasket rucksacks mug i arsletTa dig i häckenKukjävelDu kan draw åt jackknifed i Velvet air duet DUI sagger?Du kan dra åt helveteAldrig i helveteVad i helveteVar är den dummy javelin?Den fete gavel slog midget mig fan Jag hater er unflagging Pavla idiotic DUI Sarge det gin så Dior duFittslickareNu ska jag tarmacking DOA dignity flensUtmana Intel Advil du ha sex?Mucka inte med Magritte jävla äggFörbannat!Förbannade hönsjärna!Din mammy tar 100 kronor för ett rövknullFittfjärtGå och knulla dig själv!Mina fajita guitar battery än digÄt skit din jävel!KuksugareKukhuvudAnalsugande rövfistfuckareSkit ner dig!Han är en bajspackareJag skulle inte ens pissa på dig om du brann!BarnknullareJävla FittaKnulla digDin mamma

King Kobra - Breakin' Out


Added by janeca80rock

Reverend Gary Davis - If I Had My Way

Aretha Franklin - Rock Steady

On Soul Train


Madeleine Peyroux - Between The Bars


Added by RobWilloughby

June 14, 2007

Traci Lords - Fallen Angel


Added by nmywhtn

Dr.John, Professor Longhair, Earl King, The Meters - Big Chief


Added by gugugumbo

Willy Deville talks Johnny Thunders (John Anthony Genzale, Jr.) Dead in the Quarter OR Started out on Burgundy...


https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/db/NLN_Johnny_Thunders.jpg

in '96 i lived two blocks from willie. after his girlfriend started buying art at my gallery i got up the nerve to go over one night, and for the next three years spent as much time there hangin' out on his stoop as possible, discussing music and doctors, like:
doc pomus, dr. john, little jimmy scott, little willie john, nyc, mardi gras indians, etc.
but mostly local characters of whom he was definitely one. i got to admire his antique furniture, artwork, and his Victorian eyeglass collection, and got to share with him some of my cures for headaches which he always appreciated but wouldn't ever share with his girlfriend, and which was always repaid by early morning serenades in his studio in the back of the apt. featured above, accompanied by their yapping dog, dixie belle.
Singer Willy DeVille, who lived next door to the hotel in which Thunders died, described his death this way:
I don't know how the word got out that I lived next door, but all of a sudden the phone started ringing and ringing. Rolling Stone was calling, the Village Voice called, his family called, and then his guitar player called. I felt bad for all of them. t was a tragic end, and I mean, he went out in a blaze of glory, ha ha ha, so I thought I might as well make it look real good, you know, out of respect, so I just told everybody that when Johnny died he was laying down on the floor with his guitar in his hands. I made that up. When he came out of the St. Peter's Guest House, riga mortis had set in to such an extent that his body was in a U shape. When you're laying on the floor in a fetal position, doubled over - well, when the body bag came out, it was in a U. It was pretty awful.
courtesy of junkipedia
 
i've included this next article for my host:
Johnny Thunders låg död på mitt hotellrum NEW ORLEANS
Iko Iko
Sitter i Johnny Thunders dödsrum, dricker Hurricane, lyssnar på Dr John och stoppar nålar i voodoodockan.
Men ångbåtsorgeltanten tutar vidare.
Rum 37 på hotell St Peters House är litet, kostar 69 dollar, jag sitter på sängen.
På andra sidan korsningen Burgundy Street (Rue de Bourgogne) och St Peter Street ligger CD"s Saloon - baren där punkrockens Dean Martin, heroinisten Johnny Thunders, träffade två skurkar och tog sitt sista glas.
Sedan hittades New York Dolls-mannen död här på golvet, utanför toaletten. Rånad och antagligen mördad av dåliga droger. Han hade också lymfkörtelcancer.
and your host has been kind enough without the aid of nicotine to translate it into pidginglish:


"Johnny Thunders was laying dead in my hotel room"

Sitting in Johnny Thunders room of death, drinking Hurricane, listening to Dr John and putting needles in the voodoo doll.

But the steamboat-organist-lady is still horning away

Room 37 on hotel St Peters House is tiny, costs 69 dollar, I'm sitting on the bead.

On the other side of the Burgundy Street (Rue de Bourgogne) och St Peter Street crossing is CD"s Saloon - the bar where the Dean Martin of punk rock, the heroinist Johnny Thunders, met two crooks and had his last glass.

Later the New York Dolls-man was found dead död here on the floor, outside the toilet. Robbed and probably murdered by bad drugs. He also had lymphocyte cancer.

Han was 38 years old.

Thunders sang "You can"t put you arms around a memory" and Per Bjurman likes him alot.

Bjurton likes New Orleans alot too. He's a sinner, he's a saint.

Bon voyage, baby.

My travel companion, Svenska Dagbladets enfant terrible, the man with William Faulkners "Sound and the Fury" on the nighstand, puts the needles in the country music enthusiast who can find a five star record every week and I've got two guys - you know who you are, teehee - back in the old country who will receive my needles in the voodoo doll for 15 dollars.

but fiest I'm aiming at the lousy lady onboard the Mississippi steamboat Nachez. Her off-key steamorgan squeels by Tennessee Williams tramway "Linje Lusta" and perhaps all the way to Tipetina"s and I'm sure voodoo musician Professor Longhair, whos head you ought to rub there, had put his needles into her if he had been into voodoo.

Been her in "The Big Easy" four times now, but never seen Mystikal or Master P. Or Dr John. But the lady plays the steamboat every time..

My voodoo must be wrong.

Voodoo religion exists only in Haiti, in Brasil and here in Louisiana. 15 % of New Orleans population is down with voodoo. The local voodoo saint is Marie Laveau but that doesn't help me. The old lady still plays.

I wish someone could rub my head too. Well, this sickening headache; I don't know whether it was the cajun-martini I had at Paul Prudhomme's Louisiana-cooking-restaurant, K-Pauls, or if it is the plague from NYC, or if it's the flu, or if the needle I put in Mr. X's head backfired...

That's how the story goes.


Respect voodoo.


Like Dr John sings :
"After you rub it a while, you dub it."
Meeting perhaps the worlds fattest black gay. He's cooking his cajun sausages Po-Boys together with a tiny little transvestite at Clover Grill, a little place on Borbon Street and Dumaine.
"Come on in, ya"ll, we not gonna eat ya, he says and flirts with a gumbo in the hand.
What a man!"

Many rumors surround Johnny's death at the St. Peter House in New Orleans, Louisiana in April, 1991. He apparently died of drug-related causes, (i'm sorry but i'm just not buying that) was it accidental or the result of foul play?

Dee Dee Ramone (and you know how fond jt was of dd) took a call in New York the next day from Stevie Klasson, Johnny's rhythm guitar player.
"They told me that Johnny had gotten mixed up with some bastards... who ripped him off for his methadone supply. They had given him LSD and then murdered him. He had gotten a pretty large supply of methadone in England, so he could travel and stay away from those creeps - the drug dealers, Thunders imitators, and losers like that."
What is known for certain is that Johnny's room (no. 37) was ransacked...cont.
here.

June 13, 2007

*i played buddy holly in the worst movie of all time



Great Balls of Fire!!!


from Jim McBride the man who brought you The Big Easy with Dennis "CAJUN" Quaid asGomer/ JLL:

i was filmin one of my scenes at the beautiful mempho orpheum theater watchin gomer (the big DQ) burn the piana in the recreation of the brooklyn/freed/apoc-rock myth, although with a distinct disney/bowdlerized epithetlessness:

listen here, my good man of bitumen complexion...now you may attempt to perform your set piece, as i have just completed my great pyrotechnical display...
jerry lee shows up to watch. he exits the limo in flip flops and a sherlock holmes pipe while me and chuck berry are gettin our pictures snapped with the extras. the producer, adam fields, starts to introduce me to the killer, and jerry lee looks at this biopipsqueak-rock'n'roll-desecratin-phony-type-producer cat and says to adam killer:
killer, i know killer...

and adam killer says:
he's playin buddy holly.
jerry lee gives me the once-over twice, pops the meerschaum out of the side of his leering suckhole and in a dilaudid-meets-ferriday drawl, slurs in my direction:
killer, buddy holly was my best friend in the world...
and then to adam killer:
killer, if you had enough sense to get killer here to play buddy holly you got more sense than i thought you had...
and then to me killer again:
son, you look more like buddy holly than buddy holly ever did!

here is a transcript of my comment to this guy:
christ, where did you get this?


oh, god, i'm dyin...who the fuck is dorothee? and where are her giant french balls hidden? and how does she materialize beside killer's piana like that? oh fuck, that's harold cowart playin' bass on this, the craunchiest vid i've never seen of gbof



rockin' my life away by the late great Mack Vickery, who divulged to me at one of jll's nesbit ranch birthday parties in answer to my questioning the significance of the seemingly random set of numbers with which jll introduces the song:
well, hoss, i used to play touch football with elvis at graceland and it's a quarterback play we used to run!
i said, oh...and smiled



that's me in the intro standing in the front row with a gold tuxedo and seven jack daniels and babania in this craunchy raveup of swanee river rock at the greatest small show of all time at storyville in n.o., fats and friends...ray charles can play a rhodes...and for all you harp-lovers, that's sug blue...and for all you obscure bass/cajun studio legend cognescentis, that's harold cowart on bass...and for all you cocaine kingpins, that's ron wood well into a second eightball...but who is that second guitarist???



see more buddy holly impersonator resume here:
*THE完 PERFECT完 AMERICAN な

June 12, 2007

Cobra Killer - Mund Auf Augen Zu


Added by monikavision

Bill Evans Trio - Beautiful Love

Livi in 1965


Serge Gainsbourg - Cargo Culte

Two Man Sound - Charlie Brown

1975


Steely Dan - Do It Again


Added by slaws24

(via VideoSift)

Kenny Rogers and the First Edition - Ruby


live performance from 1972

Added by MrMGA

wayne county ramblin' (not that one): dan rose, director

Wayne County Ramblin' directed by dan rose

Provided By:

Here is a Trailer from the recently completed feature length film, Wayne County Ramblin' -- 15 yrs. in the making. Acting performances from Iggy Pop, Mick Collins (of the Dirtbombs / Gories), Otha Turner, Sharde, Lorette Velvette, Cub Koda, Tav Falco, Jeff Conolly (of Lyres), Cordell Jackson, Ron Easley, Ben 'Rivethead' Hamper (of Michael Moore's 'Roger & Me'), Bill Peitsch, and narrated by soul legend, Nathaniel Mayer. Also, unique soundtrack recordings from Chan Marshall (of Cat Power), Eddie Kirkland, Iggy Pop, Fan Fan & Jou Jou -- produced by Mick Collins. DVD of complete film and more info availablehere.






This is a music video we made for the late and incredible, Junior Kimbrough. One that we at Little Ruby Pictures are most proud of having made. It was for the last record that Bob Palmer produced for Junior. When we were working with Iggy Pop on our independent, feature length film, Wayne County Ramblin', the video impressed upon him to ask Junior to open for him on the upcoming Iggy Pop tour. We were contracted by Fat Possum Records to make this video way back in 1993; we've been awaiting reimbursement for many a sad day and many a lonely night. Still, was an honor to have met and worked with such a great and talented man. Look for Otha Turner and R. L. Burnside among the patronage at Junior's Juke Joint. We also featured many of the remarkable paintings created by local artist Johnny Hughes, in the video, as well. The juke joint burned down shortly after Junior's passing, and we are sad for the loss of a kind and uniquely gifted musical legend in Mr. Junior Kimbrough.




This is the first music video I made. One that I am most proud of, both in content and for the opportunity to work with the prestigious Cordell Jackson. This video we used to help get Cordell on David Letterman, Arsenio Hall, Regis & Kathie Lee, MTV, and the Jon Stewart Show. It also helped Cordell land the Budweiser commercial with Brian Setzer that premiered in a super bowl many moons ago, nearly making her a houselhold name. We were thrilled to work with Cordell Jackson again for our independent feature length film, Wayne County Ramblin', in which Cordell plays a prison security guard with genuine authority! Cordell was a marvelous performer and human being. She is much missed.




This is a shortened version of the tour film Iggy hired us to make and project behind his band throughout the 'Naughty Little Doggy' tour. There was no music behind it originally, as Iggy provided that live for it's original intention, and it was about 3 times as long. We shortened it to cut with a song from the album both the tour and the fim were meant to promote. Prior to making this we had completed filming phase 1 of shooting with Iggy for our independent feature length film, Wayne County Ramblin', in which he plays a grandfather.





Growing up in a suburb of Detroit, Michigan, Dan relocated to New York after graduation from college to begin a career in film and video production. He has directed and produced award winning music videos for record companies such as Warner Brothers, Hollywood, Matador, broadcast on MTV. He has also worked on a large number of TV commercials for national advertisers.

Pride lies more, though, with the music videos he has directed for artists such as Cordell Jackson, The Gories, Lorette Velvette, The Country Rockers, Junior Kimbrough and Alan Vega, to name a few--as well as those he produced for Pavement. (dig doug easley's pedal steel--he recorded wowee zowee)





produced by dan rose
directed by John Kelsey







technorati tags:, , ,

curly chalker

craunchy notes for people too hip for adjectives

CURLY CHALKER

Instruments: Steel Guitar
Date of Birth: 1933
Place of Birth: Enterprise, Alabama
Date of Death: April 30, 1998


Harold Lee "Curly" Chalker is of pedal steel guitar, known as "Curls...Hee Haw for 18 years, played sessions by Lefty Frizzell...on Hank Thompson's "Wild Side of Life." also with Charlie McCoy & Doug Kershaw, and was even open-minded (adj. included for ex.) enough to contribute to the Country Porn album by Chinga Chavin here. (beat ya to the blog)

Chalker has a nickname, "the King of Chords." uncredited on Marie Osmond's "Paper Roses," and on Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer" and he played live or in the studio with Willie Nelson, the Gap Band, Ray Price, Leon Russell, and the original Bill Haley and the Comets.

Chalker almost went to prison once for whacking a drunk over the head with the metal leg of his pedal steel guitar. Chalker died of a cancer-related brain tumor.

~Eugene Chadbourne, All Music Guide

died April 30, 1998 (age 66) at a nursing home in Nashville, TN. of a cancer-related brain tumor.





linx for steeler fans: