In a post ear­li­er this year, we show­cased one of the few known sound films of Char­lie Park­er per­form­ing live. Above, we have anoth­er very rare clip, from 1950, with Park­er, young upstart alto, trad­ing lines with vet­er­an tenor Cole­man Hawkins. Bud­dy Rich plays drums, and Hank Jones and Ray Brown play piano and bass.

Park­er looks char­ac­ter­is­ti­cal­ly cool between the dis­tin­guished poise of Hawkins and the boy­ish exu­ber­ance of nat­ur­al band­leader Bud­dy Rich who, in the sec­ond tune, exudes much goofy enthu­si­asm as he destroys the snare drum. This take may be hard bop at its hard­est, which makes Parker’s under­stat­ed con­test with Hawkins all the more vital, pro­pelled by some of the most fre­net­ic rhythms in jazz his­to­ry.

There is much more after the first two takes, as a voiceover seg­ment announces. The rhythm sec­tion gets a lit­tle time, then they’re joined by Bill Har­ris and Lester Young. And then, at 12:18, the already all-star cast gets round­ed out by a scat­ting Ella Fitzger­ald off stage left, leaned over Hank Jones’ piano. This is a hell of a fun per­for­mance to watch, whether you’re a stu­dent of bop, have a music-his­tor­i­cal bent, or just love see­ing live jazz at the top of its game.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Char­lie Park­er Plays with Dizzy Gille­spie in Only Footage Cap­tur­ing the “Bird” in True Live Per­for­mance

Ella Fitzger­ald Sings ‘Sum­mer­time’ by George Gersh­win, Berlin 1968

Miles Davis Plays Music from Kind of Blue Live in 1959, Intro­duc­ing a Com­plete­ly New Style of Jazz

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

In a year that marks some sig­nif­i­cant pop cul­ture 20^th anniver­saries—Wired mag­a­zine, Nirvana’s In Utero, The X‑Files–one in par­tic­u­lar may get some­what less press. This com­ing Decem­ber will be twen­ty years since Frank Zap­pa died of prostate can­cer at age 52, after achiev­ing infamy, noto­ri­ety, and final­ly, actu­al, run-of-the-mill fame. The lat­ter he didn’t seem to cher­ish as much, and cer­tain­ly not dur­ing his sick­ness. Nev­er­the­less, Zap­pa sat for a Today Show inter­view, one of his last, and dis­cussed his cur­rent work and fail­ing health. A young chip­per Katie Couric gives Zap­pa an ambiva­lent intro as the “bizarre per­former with a pen­chant for las­civ­i­ous lyrics.” “What few know,” she goes on to say, “is that he’s also a seri­ous and respect­ed clas­si­cal com­pos­er.” Zappa’s bona fides as a “seri­ous” artist seem to grant him a pass, at least for a bit, from inter­view­er Jamie Gan­gel, who begins ask­ing about the suc­cess­ful per­for­mances of his work in Europe, where he “sells out con­cert halls.”

Zap­pa responds respect­ful­ly, but is obvi­ous­ly quite bored and in pain. He’s sub­dued, down­beat, guard­ed. Then the inevitable grilling begins. “How much do you think you did for the sound and how much for the humor?” asks Gan­gel. “Both,” answers Zap­pa, “The goal here is enter­tain­ment.” Zap­pa pro­nounces him­self “total­ly unre­pen­tant” for his life. In answer to the ques­tion “is there any­thing you’ve done that you felt sor­ry for?” he sim­ply says, “No.”

And why should he con­fess on nation­al tele­vi­sion? There are many more inter­est­ing things to dis­cuss, such as Zappa’s stand against Tip­per Gore’s Par­ents Music Resource Cen­ter (PMRC) dur­ing the leg­endary 1985 Sen­ate Hear­ings (along with Dee Snider and, of all peo­ple, John Den­ver). When the con­ver­sa­tion turns to that his­to­ry, Zap­pa learns a fun fact about Gore that gen­uine­ly catch­es him off-guard. The inter­view goes to some very sad places, and while Zap­pa hangs in there, it’s not par­tic­u­lar­ly enter­tain­ing to see him staunch­ly refuse to view his con­di­tion through Gan­gel’s lens­es. He clear­ly doesn’t see his ill­ness as the­ater and won’t play pen­i­tent or vic­tim.

A much more live­ly inter­view, by a much bet­ter informed inter­view­er, six months before Zap­pa’s death, is with Ben Wat­son for Mojo. In both of these moments, how­ev­er, Zap­pa insists on the only label he ever applied to him­self: he’s an enter­tain­er, noth­ing more. Whether tout­ed as a “clas­si­cal com­pos­er” (a phrase he doesn’t use) or thought of as an artist, Zap­pa to the very end dodged any hint of seri­ous moral inten­tions in his music, which per­haps makes him one of the most hon­est musi­cians in all of pop cul­ture his­to­ry. He saved the seri­ous inten­tions for an are­na much more in need of them. His PMRC hear­ing tes­ti­mo­ny con­tains an elo­quent state­ment of his ethos: “Bad facts make bad laws. And peo­ple who write bad laws are, in my opin­ion, more dan­ger­ous that song­writ­ers who cel­e­brate sex­u­al­i­ty.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Young Frank Zap­pa Plays the Bicy­cle on The Steve Allen Show (1963)

Frank Zap­pa Debates Cen­sor­ship on CNN’s Cross­fire (1986)

Frank Zap­pa Reads NSFW Pas­sage From William Bur­roughs’ Naked Lunch (1978)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness.

Sev­er­al years back, we fea­tured Mat­teo, a band from Salt Lake City, per­form­ing the Talk­ing Heads’ 1983 hit, “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody).” And they were play­ing the Heads’ new wave, avant-garde music with tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese instru­ments.  Now they’re back with anoth­er clip. Above we have them per­form­ing “What a Won­der­ful World,” a song writ­ten by Bob Thiele and George David Weiss, and first record­ed and made famous by the great Louis Arm­strong in 1967. Watch a clas­sic per­for­mance below.

Last year, Mat­teo ran a Kick­starter cam­paign where they promised this to any backer who pledged more than $100: “Your choice of a song for MATTEO to cov­er (and we mean any song) which will then be ded­i­cat­ed and sung to you in a youtube video post­ed for the world to see…” Some­one named “Jen­nifer” kicked in her $100+. And, for Jen­nifer, they per­formed Arm­strong’s stan­dard. Hope you enjoy. And don’t miss some oth­er great instances of west-meets-east below.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Talk­ing Heads’ “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)” Per­formed on Tra­di­tion­al Chi­nese Instru­ments

Watch Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Voodoo Chile’ Per­formed on a Gayageum, a Tra­di­tion­al Kore­an Instru­ment

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play Amaz­ing Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

A Mid­dle-East­ern Ver­sion of Radiohead’s 1997 Hit “Kar­ma Police”

Rolling Stone is report­ing that Lou Reed, whose music career began with The Vel­vet Under­ground in the 1960s, before becom­ing an influ­en­tial solo artist in the 70s, has died. He was 71 and had under­gone a liv­er trans­plant back in May. Whether that’s relat­ed to the cause of death remains unknown. We will fol­low up with a length­i­er reflec­tion on the life and times of Lou Reed. But, for now, we want to make you aware of this sad news and present some of our favorites clips of Reed and the VU. We start you off, above, with Reed singing a live funk ver­sion of “Sweet Jane,” a song first released on VU’s 1970 album, Loaded. It was per­formed in Paris in ’74, with Prakash John play­ing bass and Steve Hunter on gui­tar. To delve deep­er into Reed’s career, we sug­gest you watch the 1998 doc­u­men­tary, Rock and Roll Heart. It’s from PBS’s Amer­i­can Mas­ters series and runs 75 min­utes.

More Lou:

Hear New­ly-Released Mate­r­i­al from the Lost Acetate Ver­sion of The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico (1966)

Warhol’s Screen Tests: Lou Reed, Den­nis Hop­per, Nico, and More

Hear 38 Ver­sions of “Sep­tem­ber Song,” from James Brown, Lou Reed, Sarah Vaugh­an and Oth­ers

Sell­ing Cool: Lou Reed’s Clas­sic Hon­da Scoot­er Com­mer­cial, 1984

Philip Glass & Lou Reed at Occu­py Lin­coln Cen­ter: An Art­ful View