1959 was a water­shed for jazz, a form of music that often looks back­ward and for­ward at once. That year, vir­tu­oso com­posers and soloists like Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Charles Min­gus, Dave Brubeck, and Ornette Cole­man pulled jazz in all sorts of tem­po­ral and spa­tial dimen­sions, giv­ing new shape to bebop, cool jazz, hard bop, and what­ev­er Ornette Cole­man was up to. 1959 also brought us per­haps one of the most tra­di­tion­al records by a jazz great that year, Louis Armstrong’s Satch­mo Plays King Oliv­er, a trib­ute album to his “ear­li­est musi­cal hero,” writes All­mu­sic, “and the man who enabled two of his break­out gigs” in 1918 and 1922.

Arm­strong reached back to those years in his selec­tion of mate­r­i­al, with his All-Stars play­ing such clas­sic Oliv­er com­po­si­tions as “New Orleans stomp” and “Dr. Jazz,” along with a hand­ful of tunes Arm­strong “admit­ted with a sly smile, ‘Joe [Oliv­er] might have played.’” The record­ing ses­sions for that album end­ed up on a “33-minute, 16mm film,” writes The Guardian. “The record pro­duc­er, Sid Frey, had the film pro­fes­sion­al­ly shot but wound up not doing any­thing with it or telling any­one about it.” Just recent­ly, that film was dis­cov­ered in a stor­age facil­i­ty and acquired by the Louis Arm­strong House Muse­um. It’s the only known footage of Arm­strong in the stu­dio.

See Arm­strong and his All-Stars record “I Ain’t Got Nobody” at Audio Fideli­ty in Los Ange­les above. Here, as in the oth­er cuts, Arm­strong revis­its his New Orleans swing and rag­time roots, in stark con­trast to the for­ward-look­ing wave of records from a new gen­er­a­tion. But in doing so, he also cre­at­ed an instant clas­sic trib­ute that “deserves to be placed on the shelf along­side Arm­strong Plays W.C. Handy and Satch Plays Fats,” writes Jaz­zviews, “and in some aspects is supe­ri­or to them both.… ‘I Ain’t Got Nobody’ is a tune that could have been writ­ten by Louis and the group, it fits them well. The whole group are in top form and Louis’s vocal is a gem.” It cer­tain­ly puts David Lee Roth’s ham­my ver­sion to shame.

This rep­re­sents one of “two com­plete takes,” The Guardian notes, pre­sum­ably the first. After­ward, at 4:22, watch Louis and the band take five and talk things over. There’s no audio, but it’s cool nonethe­less to see them casu­al­ly lounge around smok­ing cig­a­rettes and crack­ing jokes. “For now, the muse­um will post one com­plete song on its web­site and social media”—it’s cur­rent song being that above. “It plans to show the com­plete film at a future date.” For now, it’s housed at the museum’s Coro­na, Queens loca­tion, “in the mod­est brick build­ing where Arm­strong lived for 28 years and died in 1971.”

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Louis Arm­strong and His All Stars Live in Bel­gium, 1959: The Full Show

The Clean­est Record­ings of 1920s Louis Arm­strong Songs You’ll Ever Hear

Louis Arm­strong Plays His­toric Cold War Con­certs in East Berlin & Budapest (1965)

Watch the Ear­li­est Known Footage of Louis Arm­strong Per­form­ing Live in Con­cert (Copen­hagen, 1933)

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

Last night, Bruce Spring­steen played a three-song acoustic set at a Hillary Clin­ton ral­ly in Philadel­phia, First came “Thun­der Road,” then “Long Walk Home” and “Danc­ing in the Dark. At the 6:00 mark, the Boss makes his pitch for Hillary, whose can­di­da­cy is “based on intel­li­gence, expe­ri­ence, prepa­ra­tion and an actu­al vision of Amer­i­ca where every­one counts.” And the case against Don­ald, a “man whose vision is lim­it­ed to lit­tle beyond him­self, who has a pro­found lack of decen­cy,” and puts his ego before Amer­i­can democ­ra­cy itself. Amen, now let’s hear Bruce play.

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via Rolling Stone

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Bruce Spring­steen Lists 20 of His Favorite Books: The Books That Have Inspired the Song­writer & Now Mem­oirist

Bruce Spring­steen Plays East Berlin in 1988: I’m Not Here For Any Gov­ern­ment. I’ve Come to Play Rock

David Bowie Sings Impres­sions of Bruce Spring­steen, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits & More In Stu­dio Out­takes (1985)

Just before his death this year, David Bowie revealed that what turned out to be his final album, Black­star, was large­ly inspired by the exper­i­men­tal sounds of Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a But­ter­fly. And just this past August, Bowie’s name appeared in the cred­its of the much-antic­i­pat­ed Blonde from Frank Ocean (as an “influ­ence”). This meld­ing of style and influ­ence between rock, pop, hip-hop, and R&B giants is a hall­mark of 2016, but in 1975 such crossovers were rare. When David Bowie began work­ing with Luther Van­dross and Car­los Alo­mar on his Philly soul-inspired Young Amer­i­cans album, “no oth­er estab­lished rock musi­cian had yet tried to do any­thing sim­i­lar,” writes Dou­glas Wolk at Pitch­fork, “and Bowie pulled it off in a way that not only didn’t seem crass but gave Luther Van­dross his big break.”

The album’s first big sin­gle, “Fame,” (above) “land­ed Bowie on Soul Train,” Wolk notes, and though “he wasn’t the first white solo per­former to play the show [that would be Den­nis Cof­fey] he was damn close.” Bowie and Alomar’s hip con­fec­tion lat­er inspired George Clinton’s “Give Up the Funk,” and James Brown released an instru­men­tal track in 1976 that was a “note-for-note dupli­cate of ‘Fame.’”

That kind of gen­uine admi­ra­tion for Bowie’s deft take on funk and soul extend­ed to ordi­nary fans as well. In a Q&A before his Soul Train per­for­mances, one audi­ence mem­ber asked him “when did you actu­al­ly start get­ting into soul music? You know, when did you start want­i­ng to do soul music? I mean you’re doin’ it now!” Bowie gives a some­what gar­bled answer, then launch­es into mim­ing “Gold­en Years” (below).

Fan­site Bowie Gold­en Years claims he “had been drink­ing to calm his nerves before his per­for­mance” and “spoke thick­ly with dis­con­nect­ed sen­tences.” We can see him flub a few lines as he lip-synchs. This was also the year Bowie pre­sent­ed the best female R&B vocal Gram­my to Aretha Franklin appar­ent­ly so high on coke that he didn’t remem­ber being there after­ward. A lot of Young Amer­i­cans, espe­cial­ly “Fame,” address­es exact­ly the state he was in, “at a moment,” writes Wolk, “when [pop star­dom] seemed like­ly to destroy him.” Bowie’s appear­ance on Soul Train coin­cid­ed with the release of the “Gold­en Years” sin­gle from 1976’s Sta­tion to Sta­tion, the album on which he bridged his obses­sions with soul music and krautrock, and adopt­ed the per­sona of the Thin White Duke, “a nasty char­ac­ter indeed,” as he once said.

Vast num­bers of Bowie fans con­sid­er his sub­se­quent three albums, known as The Berlin Tril­o­gy, to be the best work of the artist’s career, but for a brief moment in the mid-sev­en­ties, he was ful­ly immersed in black Amer­i­can music, and those influ­ences con­tin­ued to inform his work through the decade and through­out the rest of his life. Bowie also gave back as much as he bor­rowed: “black radio sta­tions that nev­er thought twice about ‘The Man Who Sold the World’ or ‘Changes’ ate up ‘Fame’ and ‘Gold­en Years,’” writes Renée Gra­ham at the Boston Globe, and artists like Clin­ton, Brown, and a few dozen future hip-hop DJs took note.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

David Bowie and Cher Sing Duet of “Young Amer­i­cans” and Oth­er Songs on 1975 Vari­ety Show

David Bowie Sings Impres­sions of Bruce Spring­steen, Lou Reed, Iggy Pop, Tom Waits & More In Stu­dio Out­takes (1985)

David Bowie Becomes a DJ on BBC Radio in 1979; Intro­duces Lis­ten­ers to The Vel­vet Under­ground, Talk­ing Heads, Blondie & More

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

A quick update: Back in May, Col­in Mar­shall told you about how The Shin­ing–first a Stephen King nov­el, then a Stan­ley Kubrick film–was get­ting adapt­ed into an opera. Fast for­ward six months, and you can now hear a com­plete record­ing of that pro­duc­tion, thanks to Min­neso­ta Pub­lic Radio. The MPR web site, where you can stream the record­ing through Novem­ber 30, includes a scene-by-scene guide to the com­plete opera. You can also find the dig­i­tal pro­gram for the opera here. Enjoy.

via Fla­vor­wire

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Stephen King’s The Shin­ing Is Now an Opera, and The Tick­ets Are All Sold Out

Down­load & Play The Shin­ing Board Game

The Shin­ing and Oth­er Com­plex Stan­ley Kubrick Films Recut as Sim­ple Hol­ly­wood Movies

Watch a Shot-by-Shot Remake of Kubrick’s The Shin­ing, a 48-Minute Music Video Accom­pa­ny­ing the New Album by Aesop Rock

Watch The Simp­sons’ Hal­loween Par­o­dy of Kubrick’s A Clock­work Orange and The Shin­ing

Stan­ley Kubrick’s Anno­tat­ed Copy of Stephen King’s The Shin­ing