Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue broke new ground in the world of jazz in a year that saw an unusu­al num­ber of ground­break­ing jazz releas­es, 1959. Fol­low­ing up his exper­i­ments on 1958’s Mile­stones, Davis’ move from bop to modal jazz impro­vi­sa­tion­al tech­niques shift­ed the terms of the genre, and, as many crit­ics have argued since, the terms of West­ern music, pop­u­lar and clas­si­cal. Released in August of ’59, Kind of Blue was record­ed in New York by Davis’ famous sex­tet in March and April of that year, and before lis­ten­ers had a chance to hear the record, those few peo­ple lucky enough to be in atten­dance at the April per­for­mance above—at CBS’s Stu­dio 61—got a chance to hear what Davis was up to. Doubt­less those lucky atten­dees were few indeed, but one of them, pro­duc­er and pre­sen­ter Robert Her­ridge show­cased the per­for­mance for a July, 1960 broad­cast of his show The Robert Her­ridge The­ater.

The Davis sex­tet play a few ver­sions of “So What” from Kind of Blue, pre­view­ing the album Quin­cy Jones would call his “orange juice” for its dai­ly jolt of inspi­ra­tion. The remain­der of the per­for­mance con­sists of com­po­si­tions by Dave Brubeck, Gil Evans, and Ahmad Jamal. See the full track list below.

1 So What
2 Intro­duc­tion (Robert Her­ridge)
3 The Duke
 (D. Brubeck)
4 Blues for Pablo 
(G. Evans)
5 New Rhum­ba
 (A. Jamal)
6 Announce­ment (Robert Her­ridge)
7 So What (reprise)
8 So What (reprise)
9 Orches­tral frag­ment

The style of “So What” and the oth­er com­po­si­tions from Kind of Blue have been cred­it­ed with cre­at­ing, in Chick Corea’s words, “a new lan­guage of music.” But Davis can­not take all of the cred­it. He must share it with pianist and edu­ca­tor George Rus­sell who pub­lished a the­o­ret­i­cal account of a new way of impro­vis­ing in 1953 called Lydi­an Chro­mat­ic Con­cept of Tonal Orga­ni­za­tion. Davis was great­ly influ­enced by Russell’s the­o­ries and found in them a way out of the man­ic style of bop that had begun to tire him. Russell’s “modal” jazz moved away from bas­ing jazz impro­vi­sa­tion on chords and tra­di­tion­al major and minor scales. Though the the­o­ry was new, its basis, the Lydi­an mode, is as ancient as the Greeks. In the video above, see Rus­sell in an inter­view dis­cussing his modal the­o­ry, which Ben Ratliff in Russell’s 2009 New York Times obit describes as “sim­ple”:

[Rus­sell] believed that a new gen­er­a­tion of jazz impro­vis­ers deserved new har­mon­ic tech­niques, and that tra­di­tion­al West­ern tonal­i­ty was run­ning its course. The Lydi­an chro­mat­ic con­cept — based on the Lydi­an mode, or scale, rather than the famil­iar do-re-mi major scale — was a way for musi­cians to impro­vise in any key, on any chord, with­out sac­ri­fic­ing the music’s blues roots.  

With­out Rus­sell, we’d have no Kind of Blue, but it’s prob­a­bly safe to say that with­out Davis’ bril­liant appro­pri­a­tion of modal the­o­ry, Russell’s ideas may have fad­ed into obscu­ri­ty. The col­lab­o­ra­tion between the hum­ble the­o­rist, the flam­boy­ant com­pos­er and band­leader, and his tremen­dous­ly tal­ent­ed 1959 ensem­ble pro­duced one of the most endur­ing musi­cal doc­u­ments of all time, and in the archival footage above, we can see some of its crit­i­cal pieces come togeth­er.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Miles Davis Sto­ry, the Defin­i­tive Film Biog­ra­phy of a Jazz Leg­end

Miles Davis and His ‘Sec­ond Great Quin­tet,’ Filmed Live in Europe, 1967

Rare Miles Davis Live Record­ings Cap­ture the Jazz Musi­cian at the Height of His Pow­ers

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

“It is 164 years after Chopin’s death. His music is well into the pub­lic domain, yet most peo­ple con­sume it as if it were still copy­right­ed: from CDs, iTunes, or Youtube videos (many of which are copy­right­ed). We think Chopin deserves bet­ter.” That’s how Musopen.org frames its new Kick­starter cam­paign called Set Chopin Free. If the cam­paign reach­es its goal of rais­ing $75,000 (it’s already at $34,748), Musopen will work with tal­ent­ed musi­cians to “pre­serve indef­i­nite­ly and with­out ques­tion every­thing Chopin cre­at­ed.” They will record per­for­mances of 245 Chopin pieces in both 1080p video and 24 bit 192kHz audio, and then release them all into the pub­lic domain. Sounds like some­thing our read­ers can get behind. If you con­tribute to this cam­paign, you can get some pret­ty nice-look­ing gifts, while mak­ing your own gift to the cul­tur­al com­mons. Learn more about the Set Chopin Free cam­paign here. And, of course, we’ll let you know when this project is com­plete and the pub­lic domain record­ings are online.

Note: If you want to savor the fruits of anoth­er Kick­starter cam­paign, please vis­it our pre­vi­ous post: The Open Gold­berg Vari­a­tions: J.S. Bach’s Mas­ter­piece Free to Down­load

via Boing­Bo­ing

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

Glenn Gould Explains the Genius of Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach (1962)

On Jan­u­ary 29, 1972 Lou Reed and John Cale, found­ing mem­bers of the Vel­vet Under­ground, reunit­ed with Nico, the Ger­man actress, mod­el and musi­cian who sang sev­er­al songs on the band’s debut album, for a spe­cial con­cert at le Bat­a­clan night­club in Paris.

In this scene Nico (in her “deep nar­cot­ic monot­o­ne voice,” as one writer apt­ly described it) sings one of three songs she sang on 1967’s The Vel­vet Under­ground & Nico. The song, “Femme Fatale,” was writ­ten by Reed at the request of the band’s man­ag­er, Andy Warhol. “Andy said I should write a song about Edie Sedg­wick,” Reed lat­er explained. “I said, Like what?’ and he said, ‘Oh, don’t you think she’s a femme fatale, Lou?’ So I wrote ‘Femme Fatale’ and we gave it to Nico.”

The Bat­a­clan con­cert was staged four years after Cale left the Vel­vet Under­ground and almost two years after Reed left. The show was record­ed for French tele­vi­sion and has been wide­ly boot­legged. Nico’s per­for­mance of “Femme Fatale” came mid­way through a 16-song set, but was placed at the end of the orig­i­nal 23-minute TV spe­cial. You can watch the com­plete spe­cial on YouTube.

via WFMU

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Andy Warhol Quits Paint­ing, Man­ages The Vel­vet Under­ground (1965)

A Sym­pho­ny of Sound (1966): Vel­vet Under­ground Impro­vis­es, Warhol Films It, Until the Cops Turn Up

Nico Sings “Chelsea Girls” in the Famous Chelsea Hotel

Roger Waters of Pink Floyd turns 70 years old today. Waters was the prin­ci­pal song­writer and dom­i­nant cre­ative force dur­ing the band’s famous 1970s peri­od, when it released a string of pop­u­lar and influ­en­tial con­cept albums such as Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here and The Wall. But today we thought it would be inter­est­ing to take you all the way back to 1967, when Waters was 23 years old and the band was led by his child­hood friend Syd Bar­rett.

The video above is from a May 14, 1967 broad­cast of the BBC pro­gram The Look of the Week. Pink Floyd had­n’t released an album yet. Only two nights ear­li­er the band had staged its atten­tion-get­ting “Games for May” con­cert at the Queen Eliz­a­beth Hall. In the TV broad­cast, Pink Floyd plays its ear­ly favorite “Astron­o­my Domine” before Waters and Bar­rett sit down for a rather tense inter­view with the clas­si­cal­ly trained musi­cian and crit­ic Hans Keller. It’s amus­ing to watch Keller’s face as he express­es his extreme irri­ta­tion at the band’s loud, strange music. “My ver­dict is that its a lit­tle bit of a regres­sion to child­hood,” he says with a gri­mace. “But after all, why not?”

Waters and Bar­rett man­age to hold their own dur­ing the inter­view. Bar­rett comes across as lucid and well-spo­ken, despite the fact that his heavy LSD use and men­tal insta­bil­i­ty would soon make him unable to func­tion with­in the band. By Decem­ber of 1967, Pink Floyd would add gui­tarist David Gilmour to the line­up to com­pen­sate for Bar­ret­t’s errat­ic behav­ior. By March of 1968 — only 10 months after the BBC broad­cast — Bar­rett would quit the group.

We’ll close with an even ear­li­er video of Pink Floyd onstage. Filmed on Jan­u­ary 27, 1967 at the leg­endary UFO club in Lon­don, the clip is from the Feb­ru­ary 7, 1967 Grana­da TV doc­u­men­tary So Far Out It’s Straight Down. It shows the band play­ing anoth­er major song from its psy­che­del­ic era, “Inter­stel­lar Over­drive.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pink Floyd’s David Gilmour Sings Shakespeare’s Son­net 18

Watch Pink Floyd Plays Live in the Ruins of Pom­peii (1972)

Pink Floyd’s Roger Waters Per­forms The Wall at the Berlin Wall (1990)

Singer/songwriter War­ren Zevon died of lung can­cer ten years ago tomor­row. I remem­ber the day of his pass­ing well, but at the time I was a lit­tle baf­fled by the enor­mous num­ber of trib­utes to the musi­cian, who I vague­ly thought of (stu­pid­ly) as a nov­el­ty song­writer vague­ly asso­ci­at­ed with the L.A. soft rock scene. How wrong I was. I arrived at the Zevon par­ty late, but I final­ly showed up, and came to under­stand why almost every musi­cian from the sev­en­ties and eight­ies that I admire deeply admires War­ren Zevon and his hard­bit­ten, wit­ty, and unsen­ti­men­tal nar­ra­tive style. There’s so much Zevon in so many trou­ba­dours I love: Joe Jack­son, Tom Waits, Spring­steen. Always on the cusp of star­dom but nev­er quite a star like peers and for­mer room­mates Lind­sey Buck­ing­ham, Ste­vie Nicks, and Jack­son Browne, Zevon was nev­er­the­less one of the most well-regard­ed writ­ers of the L.A. rock scene. Whether it was his mis­an­throp­ic com­mit­ment to his cynicism—as All­mu­sic describes his per­son­al­i­ty—that side­lined him or his strug­gles with acute alco­holism isn’t entire­ly clear, but he always had his cham­pi­ons among crit­ics and peers alike.

In addi­tion to the afore­men­tioned lumi­nar­ies, Zevon’s career was boost­ed by mem­bers of R.E.M., with whom he record­ed under the name Hin­du Love Gods, and—most vis­i­bly and consistently—by David Let­ter­man, who had a twen­ty year rela­tion­ship with Zevon as his guest and some­time sub­sti­tute band leader. At the top of the post, you can see Zevon’s final appear­ance on Letterman’s show. The two attempt light ban­ter but lapse occa­sion­al­ly into awk­ward paus­es as they dis­cuss Zevon’s diag­no­sis. The talk is frank and filled with mor­dant wit, as was Zevon’s way, and Let­ter­man con­fess­es he’s astound­ed at his long­time friend’s abil­i­ty to keep his sense of humor. When Let­ter­man asks Zevon if he’s learned some­thing Dave doesn’t know about life and death, Zevon responds with the end­less­ly quotable line, “not unless I know how much you’re sup­posed to enjoy every sand­wich.” In the clip above, watch one of Zevon’s final per­for­mances on the same show. He plays the pow­er­ful bal­lad “Muti­neer,” a song with a fit­ting epi­taph for Zevon’s life: “ain’t no room on board for the insin­cere.”

And in the clip above, see Zevon’s first appear­ance on Let­ter­man in 1982, play­ing “Excitable Boy” and “The Over­draft.” Watch­ing these ear­ly and late per­for­mances, I’m baf­fled again—this time by why War­ren Zevon wasn’t a major star. But it doesn’t mat­ter. Those who know his work, includ­ing near­ly every major singer/songwriter of the last forty years, know how amaz­ing he was. For more of Zevon’s amaz­ing­ness, check out this full 1982 con­cert film from an appear­ance in Pas­sa­ic, New Jer­sey. And please, remem­ber to enjoy every sand­wich.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Tom Waits and David Let­ter­man: An Amer­i­can Tele­vi­sion Tra­di­tion

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

I have many mem­o­ries grow­ing up of gin­ger­ly plac­ing my father’s Abbey Road LP on the turntable and spend­ing the after­noon lying on the floor and peer­ing at the pho­tos inside the album cover’s gatefold—trying to wrap my head around what kind of hairy genius­es could make music like this. I had no inkling that this was their final record­ing togeth­er, that the band was about to come apart. None of that mat­tered to me. I didn’t quite grasp how this band evolved from the teen pop sen­sa­tions in iden­ti­cal suits and hair­cuts with their legions of flail­ing school­girl fans and goofy com­e­dy troupe ban­ter. This seemed like an entire­ly dif­fer­ent entity—and the par­tic­u­lar sub­lim­i­ty of the med­ley on side 2 (lis­ten to it here) had me lift­ing up the nee­dle and drop­ping it back at the intro to “You Nev­er Give Me Your Mon­ey” over and over.

That med­ley is such an impres­sive demon­stra­tion of The Bea­t­les’ range of voice and sen­si­bil­i­ty that it almost func­tions as a cap­sule for the sound of their whole lat­er career—all the weird nar­ra­tives, blues, bal­lads, and gor­geous­ly lush hymns and lul­la­bies. What remains con­stant through­out every Bea­t­les’ record—even before George and Ringo’s song­writ­ing contributions—is the vocal and lyri­cal inter­play of Lennon/McCartney, and it’s all on fine dis­play in the med­ley.

George Har­ri­son described side 2 in 1969 as “a big med­ley of Paul and John’s songs all shoved togeth­er.” Lennon gave George and Ringo more cred­it for the med­ley in an inter­view that same year:

We always have tons of bits and pieces lying around. I’ve got stuff I wrote around Pep­per, because you lose inter­est after you’ve had it for years. It was a good way of get­ting rid of bits of songs. In fact, George and Ringo wrote bits of it… lit­er­al­ly in between bits and breaks. Paul would say, ‘We’ve got twelve bars here– fill it in,’ and we’d fill it in on the spot. As far as we’re con­cerned, this album is more ‘Beat­ley’ than the dou­ble (White) album.

How­ev­er it all came about, it’s the med­ley’s strange lyri­cal twists, mélange of vocal styles, and pow­er­ful har­monies that stay with me, and that I find myself singing soft­ly, even after hav­ing gone sev­er­al years with­out hear­ing the album in full. Per­haps you do this too. Now we can hear what The Bea­t­les’ them­selves sound­ed like in the stu­dio sans instru­ments with the iso­lat­ed vocal tracks for the side 2 med­ley at the top of the post. Hear the full album ver­sion here and see the Med­ley track­list below.

You Nev­er Give Me Your Mon­ey

Sun King

Mean Mr. Mus­tard

Poly­thene Pam

She Came in Through the Bath­room Win­dow

Gold­en Slum­bers

Car­ry That Weight

The End

via Eric Alper

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Short Film on the Famous Cross­walk From the Bea­t­les’ Abbey Road Album Cov­er

John Lennon’s Raw, Soul-Bar­ing Vocals From the Bea­t­les’ ‘Don’t Let Me Down’ (1969)

The 10-Minute, Nev­er-Released, Exper­i­men­tal Demo of The Bea­t­les’ “Rev­o­lu­tion” (1968)

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