Exploring the intrigue of death...
Catching Elephant is a theme by Andy Taylor
Booker T & the M.G.’s: Melting Pot - from Melting Pot, 1971
(via everygreatsongever)
Gone today at 70, Donald ‘Duck’ Dunn - bass player of Booker T & the M.G.’s and responsible for a big part of the signature Stax/Memphis soul sound…
Photo: Booker T & the M.G.’s - Dunn is 3rd from left…
Chet Baker: Look for the Silver Lining - from Chet Baker in Milan, 1959
(via jazz-swing)
Chet Baker, American Cool Jazz trumpeter - died this day 1988, aged 58, from head injuries sustained in a fall from a hotel window in Amsterdam…
(via newamsterdamboys)
Nina Simone: Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood - from Broadway-Blues-Ballads, 1964
(via thingsdannylikes)
Nina Simone, American/Pan-African singer, songwriter, pianist, arranger, and civil rights activist - died this day in 2003, aged 70, after years of battling breast cancer…
(Source: whalebiology)
Fairport Convention: Farewell, Farewell (Richard Thompson) - from Liege & Lief, 1969
(via cuty-beauty-abku)
Sweet Sandy Denny, English singer-songwriter and key figure in the development of folk-rock - died this day in 1978, aged only 31, following a fall in her home…
(via acadiandriftwood)
On April 19, 2012 great-hearted singer, songwriter, drummer, string-player, actor - and keeper of the Americana flame, Levon Helm died, aged 71, from cancer…
He joins Rick Danko and Richard Manuel for the great Band reunion in the sky.
“If you give it good concentration, good energy, good heart and good performance, the song will play you.”
Levon Helm
(via rapporter)
A jazzy tear falling for Händel - German-born Baroque composer of operas, oratorios and concertos galore - who died this day in 1759, aged 74, having been blind for the better part of his last decade due to bungled eye-surgery…
Paolo Fresu & Uri Caine: Lascia Ch’io Pianga - from Think, 2009
Fresu - tp; Caine - p.
(via johnnykskim)
Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. - five years gone today…
Alan Glenn writes:
“In early 1969 popular underground author and raconteur Kurt Vonnegut, Jr., was invited to spend two weeks on campus as Writer-in-Residence. The chain-smoking novelist started off well with a lecture at Rackham liberally sprinkled with his trademark wit and deceptively simple philosophy. ‘Be kind,’ he said. ‘Don’t kill for any reason. Don’t even kill out of self-defense. Don’t take any more than you need of anything. Help others.’
But Vonnegut perhaps started having second thoughts when he realized the true intensiveness of the WIR program. At an American Studies seminar he said, ‘I don’t particularly like to talk to people, or listen to people.’ To which a student responded, ‘Why are you here?’
Soon thereafter Vonnegut announced he would be cutting his stay in Ann Arbor short by a week. Tossing back shots of scotch whiskey in his South Quad quarters, he said that he wasn’t having a good time, and had run out of things to say.
‘It makes more sense for me to go home and write more.’”
Photo: Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. at Canterbury House, Ann Arbor, Michigan, 1969 - Jay Cassidy
(Source: michigantoday.umich.edu)
Martin Luther King, Jr. - assassinated April 4, 1968…
Earl Scruggs: Nashville Skyline Rag - from Earl Scruggs: His Family and Friends, 1970
(via babybokchoy)
Earl Scruggs, bluegrass legend - died yesterday at the age of 88, after a career spanning eight decades…
Photo: John Partipilo/The Tennessean - Scruggs waiting in his dressing room at the Ford Theatre at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum…
(Source: thefiveandten)
The great American poet Adrienne Rich died March 27, 2012 from conditions stemming from her long-term rheumatoid arthritis…
—
Adrienne Rich: Wait
In paradise every
the desert wind is rising
third thought
in hell there are no thoughts
is of earth
sand screams against your government
issued tent hell’s noise
in your nostrils crawl
into your ear-shell
wrap yourself in no-thought
wait no place for the little lyric
wedding-ring glint the reason why
on earth
they never told you
— from The School Among the Ruins: Poems 2000-2004 by Adrienne Rich
Photo: Robert Giard, 2001
