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Friday, July 06, 2007
AZALEA
Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington
The Complete Louis Armstrong & Duke Ellington Sessions
Blue Note : 1961
[Buy It]
CAREFUL (CLICK, CLICK)
Wu-Tang Clan
The W
Sony : 2000
[Buy It]
BLACK STARLINER MUST COME
Culture
Two Sevens Clash
Shanachie : 1977
[Buy It]
In recent posts, I've been writing about friendship, trust, faith, belief, hope, disappointment, communication, sexual possessiveness, and sexual permissiveness. This week, for Independence Day, I'm going to temporarily leave off with all that. Regular programming will resume next week.
Every year, around the Fourth of July, I spend whatever spare time I have listening to Louis Armstrong, who was supposedly born on July 4, 1900. That's legend -- in fact, he was born a year and a month later -- but it's an appropriate legend for the man who went on to become the greatest American artist of the century. And evey year, when I'm thinking of Louis Armstrong, I try to listen to different music. Anyone can go through the Hot Fives and Sevens or the W.C. Handy album for the hundredth time, and everyone should, but there are dozens of other records I wouldn't get to if it wasn't for set-asides. This year, I ended upon on the Armstrong-Ellington sessions, specifically "Azalea." Ellington wrote the song a few decades earlier, recorded it with Al Hibbler in 1951, and finally had a chance to record this definitive version with Armstrong in 1961. It's one of the slower songs from the Great Summit sessions, but whereas the rest of the record is autumnally slow, two lions not yet in winter, this is literally a spring song. It's also about New Orleans, obviously, and got a little bit of a boost after Katrina, but it should stand on its own as a love song.
Also worth noting this week: today is the birthday of the RZA, and tomorrow, of course, is the day when the three sevens clash.Labels: ben, hip-hop, jazz, reggae
posted by Ben
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