Maggie's Farm

Jimmy Rodgers is said to have risen from his sickbed to record this the day before he died. h/t SDA

There is one tonight, for whatever it means.

and here's Dylan's cover of the tune from 1970's Self Portrait:

My favorite. This is St. Paul's, London:

Here are the lyrics.

Cute, but not great like some of his stuff:

h/t, Sippican

Lyrics at Norm, who introduced me to this song  -

A wonderful Christmas hymn written by the Baptist English newspaper editor James Montgomery in 1816. Over the years, the lyrics have been sung to different tunes.

One verse I like:

Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar;
Seek the great Desire of nations;
Ye have seen His natal star.

I am no sage, but I am happy to escape my contemplations to view a brighter vision. The lyrics and a midi of the music here.

"Lord, you gotta help me now." Who has never felt that way? New Orleans blues:

Submission #4 from our Youth of Today Czar. Dr. Dog's My Old Ways

1969:

Lena Horne, 1969. Damn, this is good:

Viking wonders whether country music is the new rock and roll. I stole this Youtube from him because it's touching as hell. Taylor Swift:

Recorded live in the Schauspielhaus on Christmas Day, 1989, this Choral Symphony celebrated the fall of the Berlin Wall.

And it’s some of the last work Bernstein did – he died in November the following year.

An ‘Ode to Freedom’, rather than the usual ‘Ode to Joy’, Bernstein felt authorised ‘by the power of the moment’ to change the word ‘Freude’ to ‘Freiheit’ (which may be closer to Schiller’s original intention). So this is very much the record of an occasion.

In the choral finale, the performance really takes off, with choirs and soloists singing at full stretch. The first cry of ‘Freiheit!’ ('Freedom!') and the choral answer are completely thrilling, and must have galvanised the audience in what was still officially East Berlin.

 

Some Wiki info below the fold about Beethoven's most famous work -

Duane Allman (h/t Riehl)

"Get up in the morning', I believe I'll dust my broom..."  h/t, Englishman.

Herman's Hermits made a big hit out of this song, but here's the original excellent version by Frankie Ford:

and here's John Fogerty:

I will post some more on board ship pictures in a few days. I am always up for taking somebody on a sea cruise.

I was fortunate to attend a private party at which New Orleans' Sonny Landreth played this weekend. A few guys wore their Rock and Bowl bowling shirts: you don't see those too often up here. Mr. Landreth performs at Rock and Bowl regularly.

I guess slide-guitarist Landreth can play anything, but he does like to rock the blues with a Louisiana twist. He's the kind of guy who is in the music, not the audience. Here's a Youtube, with the band he plays with now. He writes songs and sings too, but not on this piece in which he sings through his guitar. Turn your volume to max:

Does music get more dramatic than this? Via a piece at Right Wing Prof:

Managed to find my way to the delightful town of Lucca two weeks ago, the home of the beloved Jack Puccini and his illustrious musical ancestors. More than a tunesmith - but what a tunesmith. Here's his family church in which he first performed:

 and here's the house he grew up in (second one in from the right corner):

 More Lucca photos later...plus lunch, of course.

J. S. Bach

Stella By Starlight. Keith Jarett (h/t, Little Green a while ago):

Chris Kenner never made the charts with his (the first) version of this great tune. (H/T somebody. Maybe Sipp, but I forget):

Cool (h/t, Neatorama):

World Science Festival 2009: Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale from World Science Festival on Vimeo.

Carlos Santana turns a young 62 today. I was fortunate to hear him play in recent years. Here's a delicious Samba Pa Ti:

  Brief history of European Music, Part 3 - with some perfect morning music.

It gets no better than this.

Thanks for these from the Golden Gate Quartet, AVI, from your fine music post. Real American music:

The Jewish-born Roman Catholic convert Czech composer Viktor Ullmann's Der Kaiser Von Atlantis was his last composition in the Terezin concentration camp outside Prague before he was shipped to Auschwitz in 1944 and gassed on arrival.

One of the remarkable stories of the era is about all of the music in the camps, and Terezin had more than its share of talent. The Nazis and even the SS loved music and thus encouraged camp musicianship. Mrs. BD recently heard a Terezin survivor speak about being in the choir there at age 11. (140,000 passed through Terezin: 20,000 were liberated at the end.)

In this short (50+ min.) modernist opera, the Emperor of Atlantis (a thinly-disguised Hitler-type) declares total war on the world. (As one would expect from a prison camp opera, the "Loudspeaker" has a major role and, instruments being limited, it's like a cabaret band.) Death goes on strike out of resentment at the competition from the Emperor, but love reappears on the battlefield and, in the end, Death is persuaded to resume his merciful task of erasing pain from the world when the emperor himself agrees to die.

Here's a snippet of the opera on YouTube, the Emperor's farewell aria:

A lunchtime tune from from Levon Helm's new record. It has some of the old Band sound. Pure, cheerful, Christian, sentimental Americana. The guy can play anything, but he loves his drums - and he thought he was a lousy singer even before his throat cancer. 

Gotta love it, Sipp:

Eric Anderson. I thought Tin Can Alley was his best album.

Patty Griffin (h/t, LGF). Stunningly simple lyrics about life here.