Bloggerhythms

One of the truly outstanding Internet radio stations is The Jazz Groove , a streaming service that specializes in music that is mellow, or to use the station's own descriptive words,  "cool and elegant." The station plays melodic fare that still manages to possess an eclectic edge.   It's not elevator music. It's the stuff you'll hear in smokey bars late at night that's also suitable for romantic, candlelight dinners. At any given moment, you may hear Al Di Meola, Vince Guaraldi, Oscar Peterson, Diana Krall, Billie Holiday, Quincy Jones, Nat King Cole, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Chris Botti, Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Herbie Hancock, George Benson, Coleman Hawkins, Dave Brubeck, Frank Sinatra, Jon Batiste and many more. There are other online radio stations that play mellow jaz...

What The Hell Happened to Blood, Sweat & Tears?  is a new documentary released only in theaters about the famous jazz-rock hitmakers of the late 60s. For a short time Blood, Sweat & Tears (BS&T) were among America's most popular musical artists. They were even one of the headliners at Woodstock. Unfortunately, their days in the sun were fleeting because people of all political persuasions eventually discovered reasons to hate them. To use today's overly trite terminology, they were canceled. The movie takes place in the Spring of 1970 when the nine musicians committed an unforgiveable sin. At that time it wasn't a good career move to cooperate with the United States government in any way, but at the request of our State Department BS&T toured three of Eastern Europe's communist bloc nations -Yugoslavia, Romania and Poland - as part of a cultural exchange program. Because the band worked wit...

This quote is stenciled on the wall at the entrance to the museum What do the songs "Julia" and "Blackbird" from The Beatles' White Album have in common with Eric Clapton's famous, 1992, unplugged concert on MTV? The answer: John Lennon, Paul McCartney and Clapton each played a C. F. Martin acoustic guitar during those performances. Considered by musicians around the world as being among the finest musical instruments of their kind it seems like every famous axeman owns at least one Martin. Among them are Judy Collins, Tom Paxton, Mark Knopfler, Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Amanda Shires, The Avett Brothers, John Mayer, Muddy Waters, Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, Hank Williams, Sting, Elvis Presley, Neil Young and the recently departed David Crosby . The business began in 1833 in New York City. Because German immigrant and company founder Christian Frederick Martin and his family were not happy living there he moved...

There are too many singer-songwriters born with sub-standard vocal chords. I've always said they should just compose and leave the singing to those who can. Fortunately, the recently departed Gordon Meredith Lightfoot Jr. (1938 - 2023) was never one who needed to avoid a microphone because his elegant baritone always enhanced his highly literate songs. I've thought many times about adding some Lightfoot to my already large CD collection, but for reasons that can't be explained, I never did. So, proving that death is often a good career move the recent, sad news about the beloved, Canadian star's passing finally spurred me into action with my purchase of  Complete Greatest Hits .  This excellently re-mastered, 2002 compilation from Rhino Records is loaded with Lightfoot's most popular songs. For the majority of music lovers this outstanding, twenty song collection - that clocks in at almost an hour and fifteen minutes - should be enough. Complete Greatest Hit...

One of the things I miss about music today is the protest song. Today's rap crap is frequently too full of violent, misogynistic lyrics (OK, you've made a good point, The Rolling Stones' songs were often full of that stuff too). The current crop of self-absorbed, singer-songwriters - as excellent as many of them are - can not be mistaken for real folk or protest singers even though folk is the genre where a lot of their musical influences were schooled. It's not that there isn't anything left to say and nobody around to say it. Jackson Browne's 2014 album,  Standing In The Breach , is a very politically and socially aware album. The dearly departed Celtic-rock band, Black 47, also frequently walked in Browne's territory over their twenty-five year existence. Their final CD, Last Call (also 2014), took on illegal immigration. In 2008 they recorded an entire disc about the war in Iraq and they were impo...

I recommend reading  Making Records: The Scenes Behind The Music - the late Phil Ramone's collaborative memoir with writer Charles L. Granata - even though this 2007 autobiography of the legendary record producer received mixed reviews. Some readers complain the book doesn't provide enough technical information so they never actually learn how records are made, and others say the author offers too much of it. To me, Ramone struck a nice balance between the technical details of how music is recorded with the human side, and that's the way it should be. There is so much more to know about making good records than highly detailed explanations about microphone placement or how certain pieces of recording equipment were used. Ramone possessed instinctively great people skills. It gave him the ability to work with many of the world's biggest egos. That extraordinary trait enabled him to provide the stars with what they wanted from their recording dates while ...