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

Because it’s Fri­day, we have a treat for you: a recent­ly unearthed take of Jimi Hen­drix rip­ping through a song called “Some­where,” with Band of Gyp­sies drum­mer Bud­dy Miles and Stephen Stills (of CSNY) on bass. Released last Novem­ber to mark the 70th anniver­sary of Hendrix’s birth, this track will be includ­ed on a 12-song album of pre­vi­ous­ly unre­leased Hen­drix record­ings from 1968–69 called Peo­ple, Hell & Angels, com­ing in ear­ly March.

“Some­where” has appeared before, on the 2000 box-set mon­ey­mak­er The Jimi Hen­drix Expe­ri­ence and a hit-and-miss 2003 dou­ble-disc of cuts called Axis Out­takes (culled from the Axis: Bold as Love Ses­sions). The pre­vi­ous release, how­ev­er, was a dif­fer­ent take, a blues-rock demo made pri­or to Elec­tric Lady­land. Record­ed ear­ly in 1968, with Mitch Mitchell adding drums in ’71, two years after Hendrix’s death, the oth­er ver­sion is noth­ing to write home about, frankly, with a def­i­nite demo feel—exploratory, but some­what unin­spir­ing pro­duc­tion, although the ideas are there (lis­ten to it here).

The ver­sion above is anoth­er ani­mal: it bursts out of the gate in full break­down, then the drums recede, Hen­drix rides the descend­ing rhythm line in a long, expec­tant pause, and when the rhythm kicks back in, he wails and wahs his way into a tight verse, punc­tu­at­ed with bursts of his blues fills and Miles’s con­fi­dent snare cracks. Stephen Stills’ bass play­ing holds up to any­thing Noel Red­ding or Bil­ly Cox con­tributed to Hendrix’s ensem­bles. Between each verse, Hen­drix explodes into the wild solo runs he’s known for. It’s a real gem, and the lyri­cal con­tent per­fect­ly cap­tures the street-lev­el, and South­east Asia-ground-lev­el, hos­til­i­ty, fear, and frus­tra­tion of the late six­ties:

Oh uh,
I see fin­gers, hands and shades of faces,
Reachin up and not quite touch­in the promised land,
I hear pleas and prayers and a des­per­ate whis­per sayin,
 Whoa Lord, please give us a helpin hand,
Yeah yeah

Way down in the back­ground,
I can see frus­trat­ed souls of cities burnin,
And all across the water vapor,
I see weapons barkin out the stamp of death,
And up in the clouds I can imag­ine UFO’s jumpin them­selves,
Laugh­in they sayin,
Those peo­ple so uptight, they sure know how to make a mess

Back in the saloon my tears mix and mildew with my drink,
I can’t real­ly tell my feet from the stones on the floor,
But as far as I know, they may even try to wrap me up in cel­lo­phane and sell me
Broth­ers help me, and dont wor­ry about lookin at the storm
Yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah

Hen­drix was right. They did wrap him up and sell him.

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian. He recent­ly com­plet­ed a dis­ser­ta­tion on land, lit­er­a­ture, and labor.

Duke Elling­ton once said of Louis Arm­strong, “He was born poor, died rich, and nev­er hurt any­one on the way.”

The grand­son of slaves, Arm­strong grew up in the poor­est neigh­bor­hood of New Orleans. As a child he was fas­ci­nat­ed with the march­ing bands that played in funer­al pro­ces­sions. At the age of sev­en he went to work for a junk deal­er. He would ride on the junk wag­on and, as he recalled lat­er, toot an old tin horn “as a call for old rags, bones, bot­tles or any­thing that the peo­ple and the kids had to sell.” When the young boy saw an old cor­net in the win­dow of a pawn shop, he asked his boss to loan him the five dol­lars to buy it. He learned to play the instru­ment in the Home for Col­ored Waifs, where he was sent for delin­quen­cy. The gift­ed young­ster soon caught the atten­tion of the pio­neer­ing jazz cor­netist Joe “King” Oliv­er, who became his men­tor. In 1922 Arm­strong joined Oliv­er in Chica­go to play in his famous Cre­ole Jazz Band. He was 21 years old. Before long Arm­strong set out on his own, and in 1925 began record­ing his leg­endary “Hot Five” ses­sions that estab­lished him as a vir­tu­oso and changed the course of jazz his­to­ry. Arm­strong’s horn play­ing and singing made an enor­mous impact on 20th cen­tu­ry music. In 2006, Wyn­ton Marsalis wrote:

Louis Arm­strong’s sound tran­scends time and style. He’s the most mod­ern trum­pet play­er we’ve ever heard and the most ancient…at the same time. He has light in his sound. It’s big and open with a deep spir­i­tu­al essence–a sound clos­est to the Angel Gabriel. You Can’t prac­tice to get Louis Arm­strong’s sound. It’s some­thing with­in him that just came out. Rhyth­mi­cal­ly, he’s the most sophis­ti­cat­ed play­er we’ve ever pro­duced. He places notes unpre­dictably with such great timing–always swing­ing, always coordinated–with over­whelm­ing tran­scen­dent pow­er.

Marsal­is’s com­ments are from the fore­ward to the Jazz Icons DVD Louis Arm­strong: Live in ’59. The con­cert, see Part 1 above, was filmed in March of 1959 in Antwerp, Bel­gium. (Here are the remain­ing parts: Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, and Part 5.) It may be the only full Arm­strong con­cert cap­tured on film. By the time it was made, Arm­strong was firm­ly estab­lished as a cul­tur­al icon. He was tour­ing Europe with the All Stars, a group he formed in 1947. The line­up at Antwerp fea­tured Arm­strong on trum­pet and vocals, Michael “Peanuts” Hucko on clar­inet, Trum­my Young on trom­bone, Bil­ly Kyle on piano, Mort Her­bert on bass, Dan­ny Barcelona on drums and Vel­ma Mid­dle­ton on vocals for “St. Louis Blues” and “Ko Ko Mo.” Here’s the com­plete set list:

1. When it’s Sleepy Time Down South
2. (Back Home Again in) Indi­ana
3. Basin Street Blues
4. Tiger Rag
5. Now You Has Jazz
6. Love is Just Around the Cor­ner
7. C’est si bon
8. Mack the Knife
9. Stompin’ at the Savoy
10. St. Louis Blues
11. Ko Ko Mo (I Love You So)
12. When the Saints Go March­ing In
13. La Vie en rose

“By the time of the All-Stars per­for­mance in Bel­gium,” writes Rob Bow­man in the lin­er notes, “they were a well-oiled machine, per­form­ing sim­i­lar sets night after night.” But three months lat­er, Arm­strong suf­fered a heart attack in Spo­le­to, Italy, and his pace slowed down. The Antwerp film cap­tures Arm­strong when he was still going strong. It show­cas­es the craft of a con­sum­mate enter­tain­er from the old school, who strove always to please peo­ple. As Bow­man writes:

Com­ing of age as a pro­fes­sion­al musi­cian at the dawn of jazz record­ing, musi­cians of Arm­strong’s gen­er­a­tion thought of them­selves, first and fore­most, as enter­tain­ers. Great art might occur in the process, but at the end of the day it was their abil­i­ty to enter­tain that guar­an­teed them an audi­ence and a liv­ing year after year. The roots of such enter­tain­ment for African Amer­i­can musi­cians of Arm­strong’s gen­er­a­tion were min­strel­sy and vaude­ville. To that end, Arm­strong comes across as a larg­er-than-life char­ac­ter, clown­ing, grin­ning from ear to ear, rolling his eyes and mug­ging for the audi­ence through­out the show. That meant shtick like Arm­strong and Young’s parad­ing at the end of “Tiger Rag,” the corn­ball humor of “Now You Has Jazz” and the con­stant guf­faw­ing and drawn out cries of “Ahh” heard at the end of tunes were an inte­gral part of his show. While some con­tem­po­rary crit­ics accused Arm­strong of being an Uncle Tom, they sim­ply did­n’t get it. This was a per­for­mance aes­thet­ic from an ear­li­er point in time, and Arm­strong was a mas­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

10 Great Per­for­mances From 10 Leg­endary Jazz Artists: Djan­go, Miles, Monk, Coltrane and More