Garth Hudson (1937–2025)
From 2017, some extraordinary pianism, a lengthy solo lead-in to “The Weight.”
A Christmas song
From 1929, it’s the Cotton Top Sanctified Singers, with “Christ Was Born on Christmas Morn.”
Lead Belly and “Kisses Sweeter Than Wine”
Song origins.
Old heads
Roy Haynes, Lou Donaldson, Marshall Allen.
“Tell Me Why You Like Kamala”
At harvest.ink, a song lyric after “Tell Me Why You Like Roosevelt”: “Tell Me Why You Like Kamala.”
The New Grown-Ups: “Franklin Roosevelt Is Back Again”
FDR FTW!
The New Grown-Ups: “Cheese Closet”/“Billy in the Lowground”
More music.
The New Grown-Ups: “Taxman Salamander”
With AI-generated lyrics.
The New Grown-Ups: “When I Stop Dreaming”
One more.
The New Grown-Ups: “Early”
One more.
The New Grown-Ups: “What Will Become of Me”
One more.
The New Grown-Ups: “I’d Jump the Mississippi”
Another tune.
The New Grown-Ups: “Treehopper”
A tune by our son.
Benny Golson (1929–2024)
The tenor saxophonist and composer Benny Golson has died at the age of ninety-five.
The New Grown-ups: “The Hills of Isle Au Haut”
One more.
The New Grown-Ups: “William Blake’s Dead”
Bluegrass.
The New Grown-Ups: “The Devil’s Nine Questions”
Bluegrass.
The New Grown-Ups: “My Heart’s Own Love”
Bluegrass.
Swift FTW
As just reported on MSNBC: Taylor Swift has endorsed Kamala Harris and Tim Walz.
The New Grown-Ups: “Cumberland Gap”
The New Grown-Ups just took first in a new-band showcase at the Thomas Point Beach Bluegrass Festival in Brunswick, Maine. Here’s a sample.
Reappropriation
The reappropriation of “Born in the U.S.A.” at tonight’s DNC — a song first appropriated by Ronald Reagan so many years ago — makes my head hurt.
Jackie’s in the house
“Higher and Higher,” playing at the DNC.
Hold the hold music
From Letters of Note, a plea to CVS: “Please change your hold music.”
Earworms
From the Jardiance jingle to “Minnie the Moocher.”
“Harris Walz”
Elaine Fine has written a one-minute waltz for piano.
Toumani Diabeté (1965–2024)
The kora virtuoso.
John Mayall (1933–2024)
I wanted to find something with Mayall playing piI wanted to find something with Mayall playing piano, solo. I got close: here’s “Bear Wires,” with Bob Hite.
Kamala Harris’s vinyl
Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald’s Porgy and Bess, Roy Ayers’s Everybody Loves the Sunshine, and Charles Mingus’s Let My Children Hear Music.
On old Delancey Street
These storefronts are in fact 191 and 193 Bowery. But let’s imagine them on Delancey Street, nos. 6 and 8.
Music, worsening
Rick Beato explains “The Real Reason Why Music Is Getting Worse.”