I’m going to make your Fri­day, right here, right now. Above, we have a clip of David Sedaris doing a dead-on Bil­lie Hol­i­day impres­sion while singing the famous Oscar May­er theme song. The clip is an out­take from a 1998 episode of This Amer­i­can Life where Sedaris talks about his child­hood fan­ta­sy of singing com­mer­cial jin­gles in Hol­i­day’s voice. You can catch the jin­gles around the 9:00 mark (lis­ten here) … and again at the 17:45 mark. But I’d real­ly encour­age you to lis­ten to the full tale from the very start (6:00). Day made?

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Bil­lie Hol­i­day Sings ‘Strange Fruit’

Bil­lie Holiday–The Life and Artistry of Lady Day: The Com­plete Film

David Sedaris Reads You a Sto­ry By Miran­da July

Find Sto­ries Read by David Sedaris on our list of 800 Free Audio­Books

Where is the wis­dom we have lost in knowl­edge?

Where is the knowl­edge we have lost in infor­ma­tion?

So won­ders T.S. Eliot’s cho­rus in a pageant play he once helped write in 1934. Nev­er one to let moder­ni­ty tram­ple glee­ful­ly over tra­di­tion, Eliot asks us to consider—long before it seemed necessary—what the sea of infor­ma­tion we now swim in might be worth with­out good maps to guide us and wise nav­i­ga­tors to chart out the course. We live in a time in which every­thing can be cat­a­logued, pre­served, backed up, and made open and search­able. This is a won­der­ful thing. But Will Pren­tice, Audio Engi­neer and Con­ser­va­tion Spe­cial­ist at the British Library’s Sound and Vision Divi­sion, points out a spe­cial prob­lem with archiv­ing in the dig­i­tal age. Echo­ing Eliot, Pren­tice says in the short film above, pro­duced by British music mag­a­zine The Wire:

The 20th cen­tu­ry was about audio­vi­su­al mate­r­i­al, our mem­o­ry of the 20th cen­tu­ry is heav­i­ly audio­vi­su­al, but our sense of the 21st cen­tu­ry is going to be a dif­fer­ent kind of audio­vi­su­al… archiv­ing is not going to be so much about what we can bring in, but about what to exclude.

As much as we mod­erns hate the idea of dis­crim­i­na­tion in any form, when it comes to media, past and present, it’s often a nec­es­sary good. In thought­ful inter­views above, see Pren­tice, Pop­u­lar Music Cura­tor Andy Line­han, and Wildlife Sounds Cura­tor Cheryl Tipp dis­cuss their roles as archivists of vast troves of audio­vi­su­al infor­ma­tion in their Lon­don library.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Brew­ster Kahle and the Inter­net Archive Will Pre­serve the Infi­nite Infor­ma­tion on the Web

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

In Novem­ber of 1969 Thelo­nious Monk appeared at the Berlin­er Jaz­ztage (“Berlin Jazz Days,” now known as Jaz­zFest Berlin) and played a series of Duke Elling­ton pieces on solo piano. Monk brought his own quirky genius — his jagged-edged, per­cus­sive play­ing style and har­mon­ic dis­so­nance — to Elling­ton’s ele­gant melodies. The result was mag­ic.

In the video above, Monk plays four com­po­si­tions by Elling­ton — “Satin  Doll,” “Sophis­ti­cat­ed Lady,” “Car­a­van” and “Soli­tude” — fol­lowed by one of his own, “Cre­pus­cule With Nel­lie,” before join­ing the Joe Turn­er Trio in a per­for­mance of “Blues for Duke.” The trio includes Turn­er on Piano, Hans Ret­ten­bach­er on bass and Stu Mar­tin on drums. The per­for­mances are avail­able on the DVD Monk Plays Elling­ton: Solo Piano in Berlin ’69.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Thelo­nious Monk: Straight No Chas­er

Advice From the Mas­ter: Thelo­nious Monk Scrib­bles a List of Tips for Play­ing a Gig

Duke Elling­ton Plays for Joan Miró in the South of France, 1966: Bassist John Lamb Looks Back on the Day

Image by F. Antolín Hernán­dez, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons

Gra­ham Nash, of Cros­by, Stills, Nash & Young, has a new book out, Wild Tales: A Rock & Roll Life. And that means he’s doing inter­views, many inter­views. A cou­ple of weeks ago, he spent an excel­lent hour on The Howard Stern Show (seri­ous­ly). Next, it was off to chat with the more cere­bral Ter­ry Gross on NPR’s Fresh Air.

In the midst of the inter­view (lis­ten online here), Gross asked Nash to talk about his friend­ship with Neil Young, a man Nash has called “the strangest of my friends.” Just what makes him strange? Nash explains:

The man is total­ly com­mit­ted to the muse of music. And he’ll do any­thing for good music. And some­times it’s very strange. I was at Neil’s ranch one day just south of San Fran­cis­co, and he has a beau­ti­ful lake with red-wing black­birds. And he asked me if I want­ed to hear his new album, “Har­vest.” And I said sure, let’s go into the stu­dio and lis­ten.

Oh, no. That’s not what Neil had in mind. He said get into the row­boat.

I said get into the row­boat? He said, yeah, we’re going to go out into the mid­dle of the lake. Now, I think he’s got a lit­tle cas­sette play­er with him or a lit­tle, you know, ear­ly dig­i­tal for­mat play­er. So I’m think­ing I’m going to wear head­phones and lis­ten in the rel­a­tive peace in the mid­dle of Neil’s lake.

Oh, no. He has his entire house as the left speak­er and his entire barn as the right speak­er. And I heard “Har­vest” com­ing out of these two incred­i­bly large loud speak­ers loud­er than hell. It was unbe­liev­able. Elliot Maz­er, who pro­duced Neil, pro­duced “Har­vest,” came down to the shore of the lake and he shout­ed out to Neil: How was that, Neil?

And I swear to god, Neil Young shout­ed back: More barn!

To that we say, more Neil Young! Find more Neil right below.

Neil Young Busk­ing in Glas­gow, 1976: The Sto­ry Behind the Footage

‘The Nee­dle and the Dam­age Done’: Neil Young Plays Two Songs on The John­ny Cash Show, 1971

The Time Neil Young Met Charles Man­son, Liked His Music, and Tried to Score Him a Record Deal

Neil Young on the Trav­es­ty of MP3s