Yes­ter­day we fea­tured a piano-roll record­ing of the French com­pos­er Claude Debussy play­ing his “La soirée dans Grenade” in 1913. Today we bring you a lyri­cal and melan­choly work record­ed in 1922 on a sim­i­lar device by Debussy’s younger friend and rival, Mau­rice Rav­el. It’s called “Oiseaux tristes,” or “Sad Birds.”

The impe­tus for com­pos­ing the piece came in 1904, when Rav­el heard a sec­ond-hand account of some­thing Debussy had said. Accord­ing to Alex­is Roland-Manuel, Rav­el’s friend and biog­ra­ph­er, Debussy had told the pianist Ricar­do Viñes that when writ­ing his exper­i­men­tal piece, “D’un cahi­er d’esquiss­es,” he had been “dream­ing of a kind of music whose form was so free that it would sound impro­vised, of works which would seem to have been torn out of a sketch­book.”

Viñes recount­ed Debussy’s state­ment at a meet­ing of “Les Apach­es,” a group of rad­i­cal writ­ers, artists and musi­cians, of which Rav­el was a mem­ber. Rav­el respond­ed by say­ing that he was ready to put Debussy’s dream into action. He drew his inspi­ra­tion from an expe­ri­ence he had one morn­ing in the for­est at Fontain­bleau. Rav­el’s friend and for­mer music school class­mate Émile Vuiller­moz remem­bered:

He was stay­ing with friends and one morn­ing he heard a black­bird whistling a tune and was enchant­ed by its ele­gant, melan­choly arabesque. He had mere­ly to tran­scribe this tune accu­rate­ly, with­out chang­ing a note, to pro­duce the limpid, poet­ic piece which spir­i­tu­alis­es the nos­tal­gic call of this French broth­er of the For­est Bird in Siegfried.

After the meet­ing, Rav­el set to work on the E Flat Minor “Oiseaux tristes,” which he ded­i­cat­ed to Viñes and includ­ed in his five-piece suite, Miroirs. “Oiseaux tristes is the most typ­i­cal of my way of think­ing,” Rav­el wrote in his 1928 auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal sketch. “It evokes birds lost in the oppres­sive­ness of a very dark for­est dur­ing the hottest hours of sum­mer.”

Rav­el record­ed “Oiseaux tristes” and four oth­er pieces in Lon­don on June 30, 1922, using a Duo-Art repro­duc­ing piano. Unlike the Welte-Mignon machine used by Debussy in 1913 (Rav­el also made a pair of record­ings on the Welte-Mignon at about the same time as Debussy) the Duo-Art sys­tem did not auto­mat­i­cal­ly record the dynam­ics of the per­for­mance. So when Rav­el played “Oiseaux tristes” at the stu­dio in Lon­don, there was an engi­neer seat­ed next to him at a con­sole, turn­ing dials to cap­ture the dynam­ic mod­u­la­tions in his play­ing. After­ward, Rav­el lis­tened to a play­back on a pianola and, sat­is­fied with the results, signed his name on the orig­i­nal roll.

A cen­tu­ry ago, the great French com­pos­er Claude Debussy sat down at a con­trap­tion called a Welte-Mignon repro­duc­ing piano and record­ed a series of per­for­mances for pos­ter­i­ty.  The machine was designed to encode the nuances of a pianist’s play­ing, includ­ing ped­al­ing and dynam­ics, onto piano rolls for lat­er repro­duc­tion, like the one above.

Debussy record­ed 14 pieces onto six rolls in Paris on or before Novem­ber 1, 1913. Accord­ing to Debussy enthu­si­ast Steve Bryson’s Web site, the com­pos­er was delight­ed with the repro­duc­tion qual­i­ty, say­ing in a let­ter to Edwin Welte: “It is impos­si­ble to attain a greater per­fec­tion of repro­duc­tion than that of the Welte appa­ra­tus. I am hap­py to assure you in these lines of my aston­ish­ment and admi­ra­tion of what I heard. I am, Dear Sir, Yours Faith­ful­ly, Claude Debussy.”

The selec­tion above is “La soirée dans Grenade” (“Grena­da in the evening”), from Debussy’s 1903 trio of com­po­si­tions titled Estam­pes, or “Prints.” Debussy was inspired by the Sym­bol­ist poets and Impres­sion­ist painters who strove to go beyond the sur­face of a sub­ject to evoke the feel­ing it gave off. “La soirée dans Grenade” is described by Chris­tine Steven­son at Notes From a Pianist as a “sound pic­ture” of Moor­ish Spain:

Debussy’s first-hand expe­ri­ence of Spain was neg­li­gi­ble at that time, but he imme­di­ate­ly con­jures up the coun­try by using the per­sua­sive Haben­era dance rhythm to open the piece–softly and sub­tly. It insin­u­ates itself into our con­scious­ness with its qui­et insis­tence on a repeat­ed C sharp in dif­fer­ent reg­is­ters; around it cir­cles a lan­guid, Moor­ish arabesque, with nasal aug­ment­ed 2nds, and a nag­ging semi­tone pulling against the tonal cen­tre, occa­sion­al­ly inter­rupt­ed by mut­ter­ing semi­qua­vers [16th notes] and a whole-tone based pas­sage. Debussy writes Com­mencer lente­ment dans un rythme non­cha­la­m­ment gra­cieux [Begin slow­ly in a casu­al­ly grace­ful rhythm] at the begin­ning, but lat­er Tres ryth­mé [Very ryth­mic] in a bright­ly lit A major as the dance comes out of the shad­ows, ff [Fortissimo–loudly], with the click of cas­tanets and the stamp­ing of feet.

Debussy was 52-years-old and suf­fer­ing from can­cer when he made his piano roll record­ings. He died less than five years lat­er, on March 25, 1918. Since then his beau­ti­ful and evoca­tive music has secured a place for him as one of the most influ­en­tial and pop­u­lar com­posers of the 20th cen­tu­ry. As Roger Hecht writes at Clas­si­cal Net, “Debussy was a dream­er whose music dreamed with him.”

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Relat­ed con­tent:

Rare 1946 Film: Sergei Prokofiev Plays the Piano and Dis­cuss­es His Music

I am a child of Bea­t­les fans; we owned near­ly every album in orig­i­nal mono vinyl press­ings. But some­how there was a hole in our collection—a whale-sized hole, it turned out—because we didn’t have a copy of the White Album. I was intro­duced to it lat­er by a friend, who shared its secrets with me like one would share the favorite work of a favorite poet—reverently. We delved into the his­to­ry and learned that record­ing ses­sions were noto­ri­ous­ly fractious—with Ringo step­ping away for a while and Paul step­ping in on the drums, and with the oth­ers record­ing solo, some­times with ses­sion play­ers, rarely in the same room togeth­er— a sit­u­a­tion reflect­ed in the track­ing of the record, which feels like a com­pi­la­tion of songs by each Bea­t­le (but Ringo), rather than the usu­al smooth affair of Lennon/McCartney, and occa­sion­al Har­ri­son pro­duc­tions.

That rangi­ness is what makes the White Album spe­cial: it’s feels so famil­iar, and yet it’s not like any­thing they’d done before and presages the genius to come in their solo careers. So imag­ine my sur­prised delight at stum­bling across a boot­leg that die-hard com­pletists have sure­ly known about for ages (though it only saw release in 2002): The Bea­t­les: Unplugged is a record­ing of acoustic songs, most of which would appear on the the White Album, played and sung by John, Paul, and George at George’s house in Esher—hence the bootleg’s sub­ti­tle, the Kin­fauns-Ses­sions (Kin­fauns was the name of George’s home). Here are the close vocal har­monies that seemed to mark a group of musi­cians in near-per­fect har­mo­ny with each oth­er (but with­out Ringo, again). And here are some of the Bea­t­les’ most poignant, point­ed, and vaude­vil­lian songs live and direct, with­out any stu­dio tricks what­so­ev­er.

Of course these were record­ed as demos, and not meant for release of any kind, but even so, they’re fair­ly high-qual­i­ty, in a lo-fi kind of way. Lis­ten­ing to the songs in this form makes me think of the folk/psych revival­ism of the so-called New Weird Amer­i­ca that hear­kened back to so much six­ties’ trip­py play­ful­ness, but most­ly eschewed the major label stu­dio sound of six­ties’ records and wel­comed promi­nent tape hiss and sin­gle-track, bed­room takes. Giv­en the rapid pop-cul­ture recy­cling that is the hall­mark of the ear­ly 21st cen­tu­ry, The Bea­t­les: Unplugged sounds strange­ly mod­ern.

The Unplugged ses­sion includes a won­der­ful­ly airy ren­di­tion of “Dear Pru­dence,” which like so many of these songs, was writ­ten dur­ing The Bea­t­les’ sojourn in India, about Mia Farrow’s sis­ter (a com­plete track­list is here). The com­pil­ers of the release have tacked on three addi­tion­al songs: “Spir­i­tu­al Regen­er­a­tion India” (also a birth­day trib­ute to The Beach Boy’s Mike Love), an odd­ly upbeat stu­dio run-through of “Hel­ter Skel­ter,” and a free-form acoustic med­ley of tra­di­tion­al songs called “Rishikesh No. 9” (also called “Spir­i­tu­al Christ­mas”). In addi­tion to the slew of White Album songs, the record­ing ses­sion also fea­tures McCartney’s “Junk,” which lat­er appeared on his 1970 solo album McCart­ney and John Lennon’s “Jeal­ous Guy” (here called “Child of Nature”), which sur­faced on 1971’s Imag­ine. As Allmusic’s Bruce Eder writes, Unplugged is a boot­leg so good, “the folks at Apple and EMI ought to be kick­ing them­selves for not think­ing of it first.”

Relat­ed Con­tent

Eric Clapton’s Iso­lat­ed Gui­tar Track From the Clas­sic Bea­t­les Song, ‘While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps’ (1968)

Hear the 1962 Bea­t­les Demo that Dec­ca Reject­ed: “Gui­tar Groups are on Their Way Out, Mr. Epstein”

How Bertrand Rus­sell Turned The Bea­t­les Against the Viet­nam War

Peter Sell­ers Reads The Bea­t­les’ “She Loves You” in Four Voic­es

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian. He recent­ly fin­ished a dis­ser­ta­tion on land, land­scape, and labor. 

Like mil­lions of African Amer­i­cans in the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, the blues­man John Lee Hook­er made the Great Migra­tion from the rur­al South to the urban North. Trav­el­ing a cir­cuitous route from his native Clarks­dale, Mis­sis­sip­pi, Hook­er set­tled in 1943 in Detroit, Michi­gan, where he worked at a car fac­to­ry by day and played in the blues clubs by night. In 1948 his first sin­gle, “Boo­gie Chillen,’ ” rose to num­ber one on the rhythm and blues charts and intro­duced Hook­er’s unique style of elec­tric blues, which sound­ed clos­er to the Mis­sis­sip­pi Delta than Chica­go. It was a style that would have an enor­mous impact on rock and roll. Hook­er’s dri­ving, one-chord boo­gie rhythms can be heard in the music of the Rolling Stones, ZZ Top, George  Thoro­good and count­less oth­ers. Today we bring you two of our favorite videos of Hook­er. Above is a per­for­mance, cir­ca 1970, of Hook’s clas­sic 1961 sin­gle, “Boom Boom.” Below is a 1965 per­for­mance from the Amer­i­can Folk Blues Fes­ti­val of his sec­ond, less­er-known sin­gle from 1948, “Hobo Blues.”

Relat­ed con­tent:

Mar­tin Scors­ese Presents The Blues

Mud­dy Waters and Friends on the Blues and Gospel Train, 1964

Lead Bel­ly: The Only Known Footage of the Great Blues­man, 1935 and 1945

Last sum­mer, we revis­it­ed a mem­o­rable moment from the annals of rock ’ n’ roll — the time when Kei­th Moon, fly­ing high on PCP, passed out at a 1973 Who con­cert in Cal­i­for­nia, giv­ing an unsus­pect­ing fan, Scot Halpin, the chance to take over on the drums. (Watch it all hap­pen here.) It was a glo­ri­ous moment for Scott. For Kei­th, it was the mid­dle of the end — anoth­er exam­ple of the out­ra­geous sub­stance abuse that would kill him five years lat­er.

Fast for­ward to 1978, and we arrive at Kei­th Moon’s final live per­for­mance with The Who. It took place when the band shot live footage for the rock­u­men­tary, The Kids Are Alright. In his recent­ly-pub­lished biog­ra­phy, Who Am I?, Pete Town­shend writes that, by 1978, Moon’s addic­tions had caught up to him. His “drum­ming was get­ting so uneven that record­ing was almost impos­si­ble, so much so that work on the Who Are You album had ground to a halt.… [The Who] had just about enough tracks for a record, with very lit­tle addi­tion­al mate­r­i­al to spare. ‘Music Must Change’ was com­plet­ed with foot­steps replac­ing drums.” When it came time to shoot live footage for The Kids Are Alright, Town­shend “was ter­ri­fied that Kei­th would­n’t be able to hide his dete­ri­o­rat­ing con­di­tion,” but agreed to give it a try.

The ini­tial shoot was appalling. The band was out of prac­tice, and Kei­th could­n’t keep up. So they tried a sec­ond shoot, filmed at Shep­per­ton Stu­dios on May 25, 1978, where they played a lim­it­ed num­ber of hit songs before a small audi­ence. (Watch above and below.) “Kei­th was in a good mood but bloat­ed and unfit,” writes Town­shend, “and he found the repeat­ed takes weary­ing.” Because Moon’s ear­phones kept falling off, they taped them to his head with thick black gaffers’ tape. In the months that fol­lowed, Moon head­ed to Mal­ibu, Cal­i­for­nia where he tried to kick his alco­hol habit and then start­ed abus­ing med­ica­tions to relieve the with­draw­al symp­toms. On Sep­tem­ber 6, Moon took 32 tablets of clome­thi­a­zole, a seda­tive meant to help him cope with the with­draw­al. The next morn­ing Roger Dal­trey, The Who’s lead singer, called Pete Town­shend and sim­ply said “He’s done it.”

For more on this sto­ry, check out the audio ver­sion of Pete Town­shend’s auto­bi­og­ra­phy Who Am I?. It’s read by Town­shend him­self, which gives it a nice per­son­al touch. And you can down­load it for free if you sign up for a 30-day free tri­al with Audible.com. Find the details here. Final­ly you can also watch Town­shend dis­cussing his book and music career in a 90-minute con­ver­sa­tion with Paul Hold­en­graber here.

via Rolling Stone

Last month the sur­viv­ing mem­bers of Led Zep­pelin went to Wash­ing­ton to receive lau­rels from the pow­er­ful at the 35th Annu­al Kennedy Cen­ter Hon­ors. The most mem­o­rable moment, by far, came at the end of the event, when drum­mer Jason Bon­ham, son of the late Led Zep­pelin drum­mer John Bon­ham, put on a bowler hat like the one his father used to wear and joined Ann and Nan­cy Wil­son of Heart for a beau­ti­ful­ly arranged and very mov­ing ren­di­tion of “Stair­way to Heav­en.”

It was the grand finale of an evening of enter­tain­ment. Jim­my Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones sat watch­ing from the bal­cony (along­side the oth­er hon­orees and Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma and his wife Michelle) as a series of per­form­ers paid trib­ute to the leg­endary rock band. The full 20-minute seg­ment includ­ed an intro­duc­tion by comedic actor Jack Black (who called Led Zep­pelin “the best band ever”) fol­lowed by trib­ute per­for­mances from the Foo Fight­ers, Kid Rock and Lenny Kravitz. But the scene that real­ly brought down the house came at the end, when the young Bon­ham joined the Wil­son sis­ters to per­form Led Zep­pelin’s sig­na­ture song.

Ann Wilson’s singing was right on the mark. Under the most intim­i­dat­ing con­di­tions, she gave a beau­ti­ful and fault­less per­for­mance. “It was our hon­or to be asked to do it before an audi­ence like that,” Wil­son wrote after­ward on the Heart Web site. “My main goal though was to please Jim­my Page, Robert Plant and John Paul Jones…especially Plant, since all these many years he has taught me so much about singing from the soul and has giv­en me such a plea­sure in his lyrics. What a high that night was. Nev­er to be for­got­ten!”

Gui­tarist Shane Fontayne did an admirable job recre­at­ing Page’s famous solo at the cli­max of “Stair­way to Heav­en.”  But the most stir­ring moment came when a heav­en­ly choir–all wear­ing bowler hats to invoke the pres­ence of the depart­ed Bonham–joined Wil­son in singing the final lines of the song. Look­ing down from the bal­cony, the sur­viv­ing band mem­bers were vis­i­bly moved. Tears welled up in Plan­t’s eyes. It was a fit­ting trib­ute to a great band, and proof that rock and roll actu­al­ly can–in some hands, anyway–age grace­ful­ly.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Pres­i­dent Oba­ma Pays Trib­ute to Led Zep­pelin in Wash­ing­ton D.C.

Jim­my Page Tells the Sto­ry of Kash­mir

Jim­my Page and Robert Plant Reunite in Exot­ic Mar­rakesh, 1994