The Lyrics of Life come in many forms, many unspoken.
NOTE: An UPDATE on John Lewis Bartee is coming. It focuses on the business of Music, unpaid royalties, and men's lies... all of which take Joy & Beauty from the ART. One needs the strength of the Poetry of Music to face this ugliness.
Today, November 15th John Lewis Bartee would have been 98 years old... with his death nine years ago he was found and resurrected.
John abt. 1946
California
John abt. 2000 - 2001
Gallup, New Mexico
John Lewis Bartee born in Woodland, Georgia on November 15, 1912, the third child and oldest son of James Maxey Bartee & Nell Vashti Mathews.
John's Mother the musically talented
Nell Vashti (Mathews) Bartee
(click on pictures to enlarge)
above: Nell on left with Guitar, her sister Mary Jane with Guitar on right. Their younger sister Kate 2nd right from Nell. About 1899 near Atlanta, Georgia left: John's older sister Julia (Bartee) Hardy
Bartee Family March 1936 Nell Vashti Bartee's Funeral (Oldest daughter Julia taking picture)John between sisters Mary Kate & Virginia Nell L to R brothers William, James, Robert & father James Maxey
Bartee Home - Interlachen, Florida
The Little Sisters of the Poor buried John Lewis Bartee on a hill overlooking Gallup, New Mexico
John's Grandparents who lived in Woodbury, Georgia. James Allen Bartee & Julia Ann (Thornton) Bartee
Cavatina is a classical guitar piece by Stanley Myers. It is best known as the theme from the Academy Award-winning The Deer Hunter, whose writer/director, Michael Cimino, was a neighbor when I lived on the North Fork of the Flathead River near Polebridge, Montana, in 1985.
The piece had been recorded by classical guitarist John Williams, long before the film that made it famous. Myers originally wrote it for piano, but at Williams' invitation, Myers rewrote it for guitar and expanded it. After this transformation, it was first used for the film, The Walking Stick (1970). In 1973, Cleo Laine wrote lyrics and recorded the song as "He Was Beautiful" accompanied by John Williams.
My thanks to Brigid for allowing me to share her words. She has a blog, Home on the Range, which is filled with good food, humor, and memories of family & friends. The World she paints offers a perspective of a very unique individual whose journeys and experiences will leave you intrigued.
Looking for information on Grace Marie Sampson. She was the daughter of Arranger/Composer Edgar Sampson (b.1907), who worked with many of the great Musicians of the Big Band Era.
Grace was a Music Professor at Southern University in LA in 1955. She may have had a mother, sister, or daughter named Anna Sampson.
She is also credited with work on some of the Music Machito performed.
Here is Mambo Inn performed by Grant Green on his album The Latin Bit.
A Century of Progress International Expositionwas the name of a World's Fair held in Chicago, Illinois, from 1933 to 1934 to celebrate the city's centennial. The fair's theme was technological innovation. Its motto was "Science Finds, Industry Applies, Man Conforms," and its architectural symbol was the Sky Ride, a transporter bridge perpendicular to the shore on which one could ride from one side of the fair to another.
77 years have passed since John walked among the exhibits of the Fair... have we, as a World Society, built on what we were given?
One musician who played at the World's Fair in Chicago was Harry Horlick. Harry conducted one of early American radio's most popular salon orchestras, largely because he regularly appeared on the long-running "A & P Gypsies" show from 1924 to 1936. Born in 1896 in Tiflis, Russia, Horlick remained in Russia when his family left for America at the beginning of World War I, and he became a prisoner of war. His family and the American consul helped him reach the United States, where he performed in cafés in the early 1920s. Horlick's six-piece ensemble was playing unsponsored on New York's WEAF in the winter of 1923 when they were seen by a Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company executive who was taking a tour of the radio studio. The band -= now holding the name A & P Gypsies, began regular broadcasts, sponsored by A&P, on Monday nights, beginning March 17, 1924, with the opening theme of "Two Guitars. The host and bandleader, Harry Horlick, had learned gypsy folk music while traveling with gypsy bands in Constantinople. The musicians performed while wearing gypsy costumes.
From 1924 into the 1930s, they were the most popular instrumental music program on the air. In 1933, A&P took part in the World's Fair in Chicago with a canopied boardwalk where tea dances were held, and free tea and coffee samples were distributed.
Squandered Fortune is a book about Huntington Hartford, a troubled man. His share of the "A&P Fortune" was only $400 mil. When he filed for bankruptcy several years ago, he still had $ 12 million and a trust fund that netted him $500K per year. Throughout his life, he made bad investments. A&P had almost 16K stores in 1930, but that number declined quickly as corner stores closed and larger-format supermarkets replaced them.
Ironically, Harry Horlick died, as his grandnephew said, "practically broke." Horlick's ultimate employer, George Huntington Hartford II, was heir to the A&P fortune estimated in 1975 at $2.6 billion -- 16,000 A&P Supermarkets -- then the largest retail empire in the world. Hartford died in 2008 at his Bahamas estate at 97, fortune mostly intact. As we enjoy the great musical legacy Horlick left us, let us consider how relatively little he and other great musicians received for their efforts.
Horlick died in July 1970.
Update: A & P, the 150-year-old grocery store chain, filed for bankruptcy reorganization on Sunday, December 12th, 2010.
Harry Horlick's A & P Gypsies ~ Only The Girl Brunswick 1929
Stephanie DeLange, the daughter of songwriter / Bandleader Eddie DeLange, stopped by the site this past week. In my search for John Bartee, I keep crossing paths with others who open my life to the Music of really talented individuals. Eddie wrote some really poetic lyrics during his career and, like so many gifted individuals, ended too soon.
Check out some of his work and the artists he worked with on his great website. Even though he died in 1949, his Music is timeless, with thoughts & feelings that serenade the listener.
I felt this tune, which he composed with Duke Ellington, In My Solitude, fit this Sunday Morning Serenade.
Maybe it's something in the air... The picture above brings the most viewers to this site from Google Images. This isn't just individuals doing an image search in the United States; more than half of the searchers are from a diverse group of other Countries.
For name search referral...
I think it's great that Tony Martin, who will be 98 on December 25th, still has a huge following all over the World. At least we still have a statesman of the music world who has shared a song during a time of Global financial turmoil.
I don't have a lot of words for this post... Other than creative individuals balancing their art on the edge of insanity, they always open others' minds to the many colors of their world.
An Unnatural Love ~ Insane Stranger
The Single Life Dizzy Gillespie ~ Love Theme from The Sandpiper
I have read that Cab Calloway could have picked any music arranger in his day, and unlike Duke Ellington, he relied on others to create the compositions he performed. It is written that Will Hudson was the only "white" arranger Calloway ever used. Yet, according to Mario Bauza, John Bartee was Calloway's arranger while he was with the band. Uh... John was at least 95% white.
Will Hudson
b. March 8, 1908, Barstow, California
d. July 1981, Isle of Palms, South Carolina
Will Hudson is best remembered as a bandleader and composer. In his late 20s, Hudson wrote scores for many of the day's most famous bands, including Cab Calloway, Don Redman, Fletcher Henderson, Ina Ray Hutton, Jimmy Lunceford, Earl 'Fatha' Hines, Erskine Tate, and McKinney's Cotton Pickers. In the mid-to-late 1930s, he led an orchestra, first on his own, then in partnership with Eddie DeLange.
Hudson's family moved to Detroit, MI, and in the mid-1930s, he formed his first band there. In 1936, he and Eddie De Lange got together and formed the 'Hudson-DeLange Orchestra'. The band was well drilled and sounded good, but trouble was brewing in the wings. Eddie was very extroverted, and Will was just the reverse, very quiet. Because of this personality difference, the two did not get along, and they disbanded in 1938, somewhat acrimoniously. In 1939, Will formed his own Will Hudson Orchestra, which lasted until 1940. In 1941, Hudson and DeLange formed a band again, but it was short-lived. Interestingly, Will studied composing at New York's Juilliard School of Music in 1948. Nevertheless, he was musically inactive during the 1950s.
As a team, Will Hudson's songs with Eddie DeLange's lyrics were "Deep in a Dream"; "Remember When"; and perhaps their most successful work, "Moonglow". Separately, Will Hudson wrote some very successful instrumentals, such as "Sophisticated Swing"; Love Song of a Half Wit"; "Monopoly Swing"; "Eight Bars in Search of a Melody"; and perhaps his most successful was "Organ Grinder's Swing".
Later, he arranged scores for music publishers. During World War II, he served in the U.S. Army Air Forces. Joining ASCAP in 1935, his popular-music compositions include "Moonglow", "Tormented", "Sophisticated Swing", "Organ Grinder's Swing", "Mr. Ghost Goes to Town", "White Heat", "Jazznochracy", "Hocus Pocus", "Devil's Kitchen", "You're Not the Kind", and "Witch Doctor".
Irving Mills published their music, recorded it on his Master Records label, and took a little "piece of the action" by making them list him as one of the composers. That was how the industry operated back then. Irving did the same thing with the Duke Ellington Orch., and others.
Moonglow ~ By Will Hudson with lyrics by Eddie Delange Performed by Judy Judd
Nothing against Lou Reed... but Beck did a really nice cover to his original. I felt this Original titled, Sunday Morning by Velvet Underground just nudged out Maroon5's song by the same title.
So on this Sunday Morning... Sunday Morning by Beck
Sunday Morning (The Velvet Underground song) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Recording
In late 1966, "Sunday Morning" was the final song to be recorded for The Velvet Underground & Nico. It was requested by Tom Wilson, who thought the album needed another song with lead vocals by Nico with the potential to be a successful single. The song was written with Nico's voice in mind by Lou Reed and John Cale on, in fact, a Sunday morning. The band previously performed it live with Nico singing lead, but when it came time to record it, Lou Reed sang the lead vocal.
Wilson brought the band into a New York City recording studio in November. At the last minute, Reed declared that he would sing lead vocals himself, which was received with great resistance from Paul Morrissey, the band's manager, who thought Reed's voice was far less marketable than Nico's.[1][2] Nico would instead sing backing vocals on the song.
Aiming to create a hit for the album, "Sunday Morning" features noticeably more lush and professional production than the rest of the songs on the album. In fact, the song's inclusion on the album seems to be an afterthought — the final master tape of side one of the album shows "Sunday Morning" only penciled in before "I'm Waiting for the Man".[citation needed]
The song's prominent use of celesta was the idea of John Cale, who noticed the instrument in the studio and decided to use it for the song.
Personnel
Lou Reed – lead vocals, lead guitar
John Cale – celesta, viola, piano
Sterling Morrison – bass guitar
Maureen Tucker – percussion
Nico – backing vocals
Willie Mae Thornton toured the South as a blues singer in the 1940s, then settled in Texas. She wrote and sang blues songs, played the harmonica, and taught herself to play the drums.
Willie Mae "Big Mama" Thornton (December 11, 1926 – July 25, 1984) was an influential American rhythm and blues singer and songwriter. She first recorded the hit song "Hound Dog" in [1952], which topped the Billboard R&B charts for seven weeks. The B-side was "They Call Me Big Mama," and the single sold nearly two million copies. Elvis Presley later recorded his version in [1956], based on Freddie Bell and the Bellboys' rendition. She also wrote and recorded "Ball 'n' Chain," which became a hit for her and was later covered successfully by Janis Joplin in the late 1960s.
Thornton was born in Ariton, Alabama. She was introduced to music at a Baptist church, where her father was a minister and her mother a church singer. She and her six siblings began singing at a very young age. Thornton left Montgomery at age 14 in 1941, following her mother's death. She joined Sammy Green's Georgia-based Hot Harlem Revue. Her seven-year tenure gave her valuable singing and stage experience and allowed her to tour the South. In 1948, she settled in Houston, Texas, hoping to further her career as a singer.
She was also a self-taught drummer and harmonica player and often played both onstage.
Thornton began her recording career in Houston, signing a recording contract with Peacock Records in 1951. While working with another Peacock artist, Johnny Otis, she recorded "Hound Dog", a song that composers Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller had given her in Los Angeles. Johnny Otis produced the record, and it went to number one on the R&B chart. Although the record made her a star, she saw little of the profits. She continued recording for Peacock until 1957 and performed on R&B package tours with Junior Parker and Esther Phillips. In 1954, Thornton was one of the eyewitnesses to the accidental self-inflicted handgun death of blues singer Johnny Ace. Her career began to fade in the late 1950s and early 1960s. She left Houston and relocated to the San Francisco Bay Area, where she mostly played local blues clubs.
In 1966, Thornton recorded Big Mama Thornton With The Muddy Waters Blues Band, with Muddy Waters (guitar), Sammy Lawhorn (guitar), James Cotton (harmonica), Otis Spann (piano), Luther Johnson (bass guitar), and Francis Clay (drums). Songs included "Everything Gonna Be Alright", "Big Mama's Blues", "I'm Feeling Alright", "Big Mama's Bumble Bee Blues", "Looking The World Over", "Big Mama's Shuffle", and "Since I Fell For You", among others.
Her Ball 'n' Chain album in 1968, recorded with Lightnin' Hopkins (guitar) and Larry Williams (vocals), included the songs "Hound Dog", "Wade in the Water", "Little Red Rooster", "Ball 'n' Chain", "Money Taker", and "Prison Blues".
One of Thornton's last albums, Jail (1975), was released on Vanguard Records. It captured her performances during a couple of mid-1970s concerts at two northwestern prisons. She became the leader of a blues ensemble featuring sustained jams with George "Harmonica" Smith, plus guitarists Doug Macleod, B. Huston, and Steve Wachsman; drummer Todd Nelson; saxophonist Bill Potter; bassist Bruce Sieverson; and pianist J.D. Nicholas.
Thornton performed at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1966 and 1968, and at the San Francisco Blues Festival in 1979. In 1965, she performed with the American Folk Blues Festival package in Europe. While in England that year, she recorded Big Mama Thornton and followed it up the next year in San Francisco with Big Mama Thornton and the Chicago Blues Band. Both albums came out on the Arhoolie label. Thornton continued to record for Vanguard, Mercury, and other small labels in the 1970s and to work the blues festival circuit until she died in 1984, the same year she was inducted into the Blues Hall of Fame.
During her career, she appeared on stages from New York City's Apollo Theater in 1952 to the Newport Jazz Festival in 1980, and was nominated for the Blues Music Awards six times. In addition to "Ball 'n' Chain" and "They Call Me Big Mama," Thornton wrote twenty other blues songs.
In the 1970s, years of heavy drinking began to hurt Ms. Thornton's health. She was in a serious car accident and recovered to perform at the 1983 Newport Jazz Festival with Muddy Waters, B. B. King, and Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson; the recording is called The Blues—A Real Summit Meeting on Buddha Records. Ms. Thornton died of a heart attack in Los Angeles on July 25, 1984, at age 57.
In the 2007 movie Hound Dog, singer Jill Scott played Thornton.
Thornton is also the namesake of the Willie Mae Rock Camp for Girls.
Selective discography
Year Title Genre Label
2007 Big Mama Thornton Texas blues Vanguard
1994 The Complete OKeh Sessions 1952-55 Texas blues Sony
1975 Jail (Live) Texas blues Vanguard
1975 Sassy Mama! (Live) Texas blues Vanguard
1973 Saved Texas blues Backbeat
1970 The Way It Is Texas blues, Mercury
1969 Stronger Than Dirt Texas blues Mercury
1968 Ball 'n' Chain w/Lightnin' Hopkins Texas blues Arhoolie
1967 Big Mama Thornton Vol. 2 Texas blues Arhoolie
1966 Big Mama Thornton With The Muddy Waters Blues Band Texas blues Arhoolie
1966 Big Mama Thornton in Europe Texas blues Arhoolie
With all the voices out there in the Universe... I have come across a very talented singer-songwriter. Watching his YouTube covers of popular tunes, you might feel impressed by his musical abilities and versatility.
Once you visit his website and explore his original songs from Strangers & Aliens, you'll be inspired by his musical talent and originality. Be sure to read his lyrics to connect more deeply.
Huw Reesis his name. He is from Haverfordwest, Pembrokeshire, in the UK. Training to be a Science teacher, I understand that... he already has a great start as a Musician, with performances on local radio and positive reviews from fans.
Let's begin with one of his originals.
I had never REALLY heard the Lyrics to this Song before. This Cover really makes you want to listen.
I Remember Clifford by Benny Golson in memory of Clifford Brown
Whisper Notby Benny Golson
Edward Lee Morgan was born in Philadelphia on July 10, 1938, the youngest of Otto Ricardo and Nettie Beatrice Morgan's four children. Emphasizing his early influences can help the audience appreciate his musical foundation and feel inspired by his journey.
Lee Morgan, a leading trumpeter and composer, recorded prolifically from 1956 until a day before his death in February 1972. Originally interested in the vibraphone, he soon grew enthusiastic about the trumpet. On his thirteenth birthday, his sister Ernestine gave him his first trumpet. HiClifford Brown was his primary stylistic influence; he gave the teenager a few lessons before he joined the Dizzy Gillespie Big Band at 18nd remained a member for a year and a half, until economics forced Dizzy to disband the unit in 1958. He began recording for Blue Note Records in 1956, eventually recording 25 albums as a leader for the company, with more than 250 musicians. He also recorded on the Vee-Jay label.
He was a featured sideman on several early Hank Mobley records, as well as on John Coltrane's Blue Train (1957), on which he played a trumpet with an angled bell (given to him by Gillespie) and delivered one of his most celebrated solos on the title track.
Joining Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers in 1958 further developed his talent as a soloist and composer. He toured with Blakey for a few years and appeared on numerous Messengers albums, including Moanin', one of the band's best-known recordings. When Benny Golson left the Jazz Messengers, Morgan persuaded Blakey to hire Wayne Shorter, a young tenor saxophonist, to fill the chair. This version of the Jazz Messengers, including pianist Bobby Timmons and bassist Jymie Merritt, recorded the classic album The Freedom Rider. The drug problems of Morgan and Timmons forced them to leave the band in 1961, and the trumpeter returned to Philadelphia, his hometown. According to Tom Perchard, a Morgan biographer, it was Blakey who introduced the trumpeter to heroin, an addictive drug that impeded his career trajectory.
After returning to New York in 1963, he recorded The Sidewinder (1963), his greatest commercial success. The title track cracked the pop charts in 1964, and served as the background theme for Chrysler television commercials during the World Series. The tune was used without Morgan's or Blue Note's consent, and intercession by the label's lawyers led to the commercial being withdrawn.[citation needed] Due to the crossover success of "The Sidewinder" in a rapidly changing pop music market, Blue Note owners encouraged other of its artists to emulate the tune's "boogaloo" beat. Morgan himself repeated the formula several times with compositions such as "Cornbread" (from the eponymous album Cornbread) and "Yes I Can, No You Can't" on The Gigolo. According to drummer Billy Hart, Morgan said he had recorded "The Sidewinder" as filler for the album, and was bemused that it had turned into his biggest hit. He felt that his playing was much more advanced on Grachan Moncur III's essentially avant-garde Evolution album, recorded a month earlier, on November 21, 1963.
He became more politically involved in the last two years of his life, becoming one of the leaders of the Jazz and People's Movement. The group demonstrated during the taping of talk and variety shows during 1970-71 to protest the lack of jazz artists as guest performers and members of the programs' bands. His working band during those last years featured reedmen Billy Harper or Bennie Maupin, pianist Harold Mabern, bassist Jymie Merritt and drummers Mickey Roker or Freddie Waits. Maupin, Mabern, Merritt and Roker are featured on the well-regarded 3-disc, Live at the Lighthouse, recorded during a two-week engagement at the Hermosa Beach club, California, in July 1970.
Death
Morgan was murdered in the early hours of February 19, 1972, at Slugs', a jazz club in New York City's East Village where his band was performing.[4] Following an altercation between sets, Morgan's common-law wife shot him in the chest, killing him within moments. He was 33 years old.[4]
