All posts by Egil

Blues, Featured Articles, Gospel, Review, The Best Songs, Video

The Best Songs: Lord, I just can’t keep from crying sometimes by Blind Willie Johnson

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Drawn by the legendary Robert Crumb
The Best Songs: Lord, I just can’t keep from crying sometimes by Blind Willie Johnson

Chuck Berry, Louis Armstrong, Bach, Beethoven and Blind Willie Johnson was included on the golden record that was sent into deep space in 1977 as part of the Voyager missions. What potential alien life forms might make of Johnson humming along to his slide guitar on “Dark Was The Night (Cold Was The Ground)” is anyone’s guess. The track moves me in a way that’s hard to explain, it’s the sound of pure emotion.

Steve Martin, the actor, once told a story about the golden record: “the first message from extraterrestrials has been received… ‘Send more Blind Willie Johnson’.”

Today we will give you more Blind Willie Johnson, we will present the fantastic,  “Lord, I just can’t keep from crying sometimes” (audio only):

Wikipedia:
“Blind” Willie Johnson (January 22, 1897 – September 18, 1945) was an American singer and guitarist, whose music straddled the border between blues and spirituals.

While the lyrics of all of his songs were religious, his music drew from both sacred and blues traditions. His music is distinguished by his powerful bass thumb-picking and gravelly false-bass voice, with occasional use of a tenor voice.

Johnson was not born blind, and, although it is not known how he lost his sight, Angeline Johnson told Samuel Charters that when Willie was seven his father beat his stepmother after catching her going out with another man. The stepmother then picked up a handful of lye and threw it, not at Willie’s father, but into the face of young Willie.

Johnson made 30 commercial recordings (29 songs) in five separate sessions for Columbia Records from 1927–1930.

“Lord, I just can’t keep from crying sometimes” is sung along with an as-yet-unidentified female singer. They complement each other, he sings in a gruffy voice, she shimmers above with a high pitched soft style of singing.
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Jazz, Music Calendar

April 22: The late Charles Mingus was born in 1922

charles_mingus_std

 Just because I’m playing jazz I don’t forget about me. I play or write me the way I feel through jazz, or whatever. Music is, or was, a language of the emotions.
~Charles Mingus

–

Irascible, demanding, bullying, and probably a genius, Charles Mingus cut himself a uniquely iconoclastic path through jazz in the middle of the 20th century, creating a legacy that became universally lauded only after he was no longer around to bug people.
~Richard S. Ginell (allmusic.com)
Charles Mingus Triumph of the Underdog (1998 documentary film)

April 22: The late Charles Mingus was born in 1922

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Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan video, Van Morrison

Van Morrison & Bob Dylan: Whenever God Shines His Light/Enlightenment Milan 1991 (video)

bob dylan van morrison 1991

Reach out for him, he’ll be there
With him your troubles you can share
If you live the life you love
You get the blessing from above
He heals the sick and heals the lame
Says you can do it too in Jesus name

Palatrussardi di Milano
Milano, Italy
8 June 1991

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Music Calendar, Punk

April 21: Iggy Pop was born in 1947

Iggy-Pop

My parents wanted to light my artistic candle. But over time, the definition of ‘the arts’ began to stretch. And as I got older, they suddenly realized, Oh, my God, we’re the parents of Iggy Pop.
~Iggy Pop

—

There’s a reason why many consider Iggy Pop the godfather of punk: every single punk band of the past and present has either knowingly or unknowingly borrowed a thing or two from Pop and his late-’60s/early-’70s band, the Stooges.
~Greg Prato (allmusic.com)
Live 2001 (30min)

April 21: Iggy Pop was born in 1947

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Bootleg, Rolling Stones

The Rolling Stones – Sticky Fingers Sessions (Bootleg)

rolling stones sticky fingers sessions

While many hold their next album, Exile On Main St., as their zenith, Sticky Fingers, balancing on the knife edge between the 60s and 70s, remains their most coherent statement.
~Chris Jones (bbc.co.uk)

This wonderful bootleg contains many unreleased promo single mixes, and alternate takes of tracks from the “Sticky Fingers sessions”.

Sticky Fingers is in my opinion The Rolling Stones second best album.

The Rolling Stones - sticky-fingers

 

wikipedia: 

Sticky Fingers is the ninth British and 11th American studio album by English rock band the Rolling Stones, released in April 1971. It is the band’s first album of the 1970s and its first release on the band’s newly formed label, Rolling Stones Records, after having been contracted since 1963 with Decca Records in the UK and London Records in the US. It is also Mick Taylor’s first full-length appearance on a Rolling Stones album, the first Rolling Stones album not to feature any contributions from guitarist and founder Brian Jones and the first one on which singer Mick Jagger is credited with playing guitar.

Sticky Fingers is widely regarded as one of the Rolling Stones’ best albums. It achieved triple platinum certification in the US and contains songs such as the chart-topping “Brown Sugar”, the country ballad “Wild Horses”, the Latin-inspired “Can’t You Hear Me Knocking”, and the sweeping ballad “Moonlight Mile”.

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