Who has to win the award for the hippest minister ever? Why Little Richard, of course, whose birthday is celebrated today.
Listen to a few versions of Tutti Frutti, including one by Pat Boone (ask you granddad.) For the real thing, watch the master at work on Long Tall Sally, and then compare the version by a very fine cover band. This recording we’ve got.
Rolling Stone has an item about the bizarre rivalry between Pat Boone and Little Richard.
Here at the Mudd we don’t think The Web is evil. In fact, its beauty lies in the fact that it makes everyone’s lives easier and more complicated at the same time. If there were no internet you wouldn’t be reading this right now. You’d have to intercept this message using your tin-foil hat.
The latest issue of the online magazine Online is featuring a subject near and dear to our hearts: research. And music research to boot: “Music to Researchers’ Ears: Ten Top Sites for Researching Music.” This helpful guide, written by a music librarian in California, runs the gamut from Mozart to world music. Unfortunately, as web resources sometimes go, one of the links she’s included is no longer valid. It’s the International Sheet Music Library Project and if you go to the site you’ll get a rather depressing message from the site’s founder explaining why he’s decided not to go on. Those who value the site’s purpose are trying valiantly to get another sponsor in spite of the threats of legal action. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, all of the other sites get the official Mudd Seal of Approval.
It’s December. It’s cold. There’s snow. That means two things are certain: fewer students wearing shorts and flip-flops, and the concert season is in full swing. Today’s CD pile features some fine performances by well-known artists, and some home-grown talent on LU Conservatory CDs. We’ll be dribbling in more LU CDs on future CD piles.
It was a very sad day in 2001. George Harrison died of cancer in Los Angeles. Those of you who remember the 20-something George will be stunned to see his son Dhani who looks exactly like him. This clip is from “Concert for George,” organized a year after his death by his widow Olivia and his friend Eric Clapton, who, incidentally used to be married to George’s ex-wife Pattie Boyd.
If you’re under 30 you can get a good sense of George on the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame website. And the Mudd has a few of his recordings.
Here are some alliterative topics for discussion: travel, time and twins.
There’s time travel: the great soprano Nellie Melba died in Australia on Feb. 23, 1931, but her death was reported in some New York newspapers on the 22nd.
There’s twin travel: Bulgarian composer Pantcho Vladigerov was born in Switzerland but his twin brother had arrived the day before in Bulgaria. Their mother did not care for the Bulgarian medical system so she hopped a train with one twin and hours later de-trained in Switzerland to give birth to the second.
And now…Twin Time Travel! Earlier this month a woman in North Carolina gave birth to a boy at 1:32 a.m. Thirty-four minutes later his twin sister arrived. But wait! Daylight Saving Time ended at 2:00 a.m. The second twin was actually born at 1:06 a.m. which makes her older. Or does it? In the famous last words of the mother, “We’ll let them work that out between themselves.”
We love to sing-a about the moon-a and the June-a and the spring-a. All of our CDs in today’s pile contain vocal music. We’ve got chants, art song favorites with violin obbligato, and opera excerpts. For good measure we’ve also got some chamber music with and without voice.
On this day in 1942 possibly the most famous interpreter of the United States national anthem was born. Listen to the greatest left-handed guitar version performed outside a stadium or arena.
The Mudd has several recordings of riffs on Jimi Hendrix.
You young ‘ns have probably only seen the word “phonograph” in history books. Conventional wisdom has it that on this date in 1877 Thomas Alva Edison publicly introduced the cylinder phonograph. It is not known the precise date Mr. Edison spoke the first verse of “Mary had a little lamb” into the contraption, but the American Memory Project at the Library of Congress puts the date somewhere August 12th and December 24th. We’ll go with the flow and say it’s today.
The New York Times ran a commentary on November 28 of that year stating that with the invention of the telegraph, telephone and now the phonograph “electricians had lost all self-restraint.” On the horizon was the wireless telegraph, the use of which could have dire consequences: “A mother, sitting in the nursery with her baby in her arms, may be struck by a violent speech by Wendell Phillips, and sustain a fatal injury.” “The aerial electrical current will be constantly full of Congressional speeches…which will be liable at any moment to…penetrate our houses.” Sounds very familiar.
Sometimes our CD collection has such depth and breadth we can hardly stand it. Today we offer CDs containing piano trios; choral music; an Orff work probably new to you; chants that are, to say the least, unusual and a ’50’s pop vocal quartet.
Todays’ new CD pile is prid near all Miles Davis. We threw in a little Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, Tony Williams and a couple of Ben Allisons, too.
