Gram Parsons. He called his music "Cosmic American Music." The music writers called it country-rock. Gram, whose birthday is today, November 5 (1946), headed up the pioneering group The Flying Burrito Brothers, jammed with Keith Richards, discovered Emmylou Harris, nudged The Byrds into country-rock, and put country music in the hip pocket of many a rocker.

Click cosmic Gram to hear him fronting a live Flying Burrito Brothers' performance at 

San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom, 1969. "You're Still On My Mind" was one of the first songs Gram sang lead on with his earlier group, the Byrds.

Click Keith Richards and Gram in a jamming-song-writing session, 1971, south France, during the recording of the Stones' Exile on Main Street. Gram played a big part in steering the Stones toward country music. The two collaborated on the song "Wild Horses." Here is the Burritos' version.

Burrito bandmate Chris Hillman told Gram about Emmylou Harris, then an unknown coffee house folk singer in the D.C. area. He went to see her play and they tightened it up right away, performing and recording together. Following Gram's death in 1973, Emmylou championed his music at her concerts, often singing and recording his songs.

"Wheels" is one of my favorite Burrito Brothers' songs. It is a main rail of the mythical, mystical Fish Hawk Country soundtrack - https://fish-hawk-country.blogspot.com/2017/12/the-music-they-listened-to-in-fish-hawk.html

"Do Right Woman"

"'Farther Along' we'll understand why ..."

The Flying Burrito Brothers' 1969 album, The Gilded Palace of Sin, realized Gram's musical vision: a modernized version of the Bakersfield sound that Buck Owens popularized mixed with strands of soul and psychedelic rock. The band appeared on the album cover wearing Nudie suits emblazoned with all sorts of hippie trappings. Nudie Cohn, was a tailor who designed decorative rhinestone-covered suits, known popularly as "Nudie Suits," and other elaborate outfits for some of the most famous celebrities of his era. Customers included Elvis, Gene Autrey, Cher, and Glen Campbell. Clicking the pic opens a YouTube playlist of the album.

 

Celebrating the birthday and seven-decades career of Paul Simon. (Born October 13, 1941.) Sixteen Grammys, Rock and Roll Hall of Famer, Oscar-winner, genre-busting hit-maker, exquisite lyricist ...

Click Paul to dig him singing"Late in the Evening," one of my favorites of all his "rockers."

... Paul Simon's musicality infuses our culture with melody, harmony, rhythm, and grace.

Speaking of "grace" ...

Click Paul performing "Graceland." The album so-titled sold 14 million copies worldwide on its release and remains his most popular solo work.

Clicking Paul and Art opens to their first hit, "Sounds of Silence." They recorded it in 1964 for their album, Wednesday Morning, 3 AM, which was a flop. (I did not know this!) Paul moved back in with his parents. But without telling Paul and Art, a producer added electric guitar, bass, and drums to the song and released it as a single. It went to number 1 on the pop charts.

Here's more Paul Simon music, with and without Art. If I included all of my favorites I'd still be writing this blog.

"Kodachrome" was a 1973 hit for Paul. It blends in perfectly with Chuck Berry's opus, "Mabelline," and thus Paul and Art pay tribute to one of their influences.

"Like a Bridge over Troubled Water"

One of Paul Simon's main contributions is bringing "world music" into the  mainstream. Certainly the albums, Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints, are great examples. Here's a song from Graceland that illustrates the point.

Paul Simon takes a final bow at his Austin, Texas, appearance on his Farewell Tour. Clicking the pic opens to him singing "Me & Julio Down by the Schoolyard" at a concert in 1992.

Her voice! Gritty, salty, marked by absolute clarity of diction with that clipped, bluesy phrasing. Dinah Washington, born this day, August 29, 1924.

Dinah made her recording debut for the Keynote label, December 1944, with "Evil Gal Blues", written by jazz musicologist Leonard Feather and backed by Lionel Hampton (who gave her her first big break) and musicians from his band, including Joe Morris (trumpet) and Milt Buckner (piano). It made Billboard's "Harlem Hit Parade" that year.

Like all of the greats - Louis Armstrong, Billie, Sarah Vaughan, Ella,  Sinatra - when you hear her powerful voice, you know who it is right away! 

Also like many of the great African-American singers, she found and honed her talent in the gospel choirs of the Black Church. Dinah was still in elementary school when she began singing and playing the piano at St. Luke's Baptist Church, Chicago. In her teens she directed the church choir.

Dinah Washington was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1993.

As a teen-ager Dinah won an amateur contest at Chicago's Regal Theater where she sang "I Can't Face the Music".

Dinah's first top ten pop hit came in 1959 with "What a Difference a Day Makes." Her band at that time included Kenny Burrell (guitar) and Joe Zawinul  (piano).

"15 Minutes with Dinah!" - Dinah performs in two different venues, Apollo Theater, 1955, and in Newport, Rhode Island, 1958. 
"All of Me"

"I Don't Hurt Anymore"

"My Lean Baby"

"Only a Moment Ago"

"Oh, What a Night"

Dinah Jams! My favorite Dinah Washington album. Click the photo to open a You Tube Playlist of 8 songs from that album. It's a live performance (1954) in front of a studio audience with some of the best musicians in jazz! Dinah is in charge, though! Her renditions of "Come Rain or Come Shine" and "You Go to My Head" alone are worth the price of admission.

1. "Lover, Come Back to Me"
2. "Alone Together" 

3. "Summertime" 

4. "Come Rain or Come Shine" 

5. "No More" 
6. "I've Got You Under My Skin" 

7. "There Is No Greater Love" 

8. "You Go to My Head"

Dinah Washington - vocals, Clifford Brown - trumpet, Maynard Ferguson - trumpet, Clark Terry - trumpet. Herb Geller - alto saxophone, Harold Land - tenor saxophone, Richie Powell - piano, Junior Mance - piano, George Morrow - double bass, Keter Betts - double bass, Max Roach - drums.

Hemingway. He took the simple declarative sentence and made it into an art form. Ernest Hemingway (born this date, July 21,1899) invented modern American fiction. An inveterate naturalist, intensive listener, and relentless observer of life, he transformed literature into an adventure bounded only by style and unforgiving truth.

"There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed."

Ernest Hemingway, 19, recovering from wounds received while driving an ambulance on the Italian front during World War I. That experience inspired his second novel A Farewell to Arms.

"The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.” - A Farewell to Arms

Hemingway (left), with fellow expatriates at a café in Pamplona, Spain, July 1925. The group formed the basis for the characters in The Sun Also Rises, his first novel. Duff Twysden (in hat) became Brett Ashley in the book. Hemingway's first wife, Hadley Richardson, is in the center.

Hemingway pioneered the style of concise description and terse dialogue. Here, at the end of The Sun Also Rises, his protagonist, Jake Barnes, and erstwhile lover, Lady Brett Ashley, try to come to grips with their ill-fated romance. The scene is Paris.

"Down-stairs we came out through the first-floor dining-room to the street. A waiter went for a taxi. It was hot and bright. Up the street was a little square with trees and grass where there were taxis parked. A taxi came up the street, the waiter hanging out at the side. I tipped him and told the driver where to drive, and got in beside Brett. The driver started up the street. I settled back. Brett moved close to me. We sat close against each other. I put my arm around her and she rested against me comfortably. It was very hot and bright, and the houses looked sharply white. We turned out onto the Gran Via.

"'Oh, Jake," Brett said, "we could have had such a damned good time together.'

"Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.

"'Yes," I said. "Isn't it pretty to think so?'"

Hemingway, the quintessential (a very un-Hemingway word!) outdoors man. He was also one of the best short story writers in American literature. Below read a quote from his masterpiece Big Two-Hearted River. The protagonist, Nick Adams, has just returned from the war (WWI), though that is not mentioned in the story. This exemplifies another Hemingway technique, the "ice-berg theory." That is, as he said, if you know your subject well enough, you don't have to explain everything. It's significance will come through to the reader. Or, perhaps the reader will glean more from the bare-bones writing than he/she would from any explanatory detail.

"He baited up, then picked up the rod and walked to the tar end of the logs to get into the water, where it was not too deep. Under and beyond the logs was a deep pool. Nick walked around the shallow shelf near the swamp shore until he came out on the shallow bed of the stream.      

"On the left, where the meadow ended and the woods began, a great elm tree was uprooted. Gone over in a storm, it lay back into the woods, its roots clotted with dirt, grass growing in them, rising a solid bank beside the stream. The river cut to the edge of the uprooted tree. From where Nick stood he could see deep channels like ruts, cut in the shallow bed of the stream by the flow of the current. Pebbly where he stood and pebbly and full of boulders beyond; where it curved near the tree roots, the bed of the stream was marry and between the ruts of deep water green weed fronds swung in the current.   

   

"Nick swung the rod back over his shoulder and forward, and the line, curving forward, laid the grasshopper down on one of the deep channels in the weeds. A trout struck and Nick hooked him.

      

"Holding the rod far out toward the uprooted tree and sloshing backward in the   current, Nick worked the trout, plunging, the rod bending alive, out of the danger of the weeds into the open river. Holding the rod, pumping alive against the current, Nick brought the trout in. He rushed, but always came, the spring of the rod yielding to the rushes, sometimes jerking under water, but always bringing him in. Nick eased downstream with the rushes. The rod above his head he led the trout over the net, then lifted.      

"The trout hung heavy in the net, mottled trout back and silver sides in the   meshes. Nick unhooked him; heavy sides, good to hold, big undershot jaw   and slipped him, heaving and big sliding, into the long sack that hung from his   shoulders in the water.      

"Nick spread the mouth of the sack against the current and it filled, heavy with   water. He held it up, the bottom in the stream, and the water poured out   through the sides. Inside at the bottom was the big trout, alive in the water.      

"Nick moved downstream. The sack out ahead of him sunk heavy in the water,   pulling from his shoulders.      

"It was getting hot, the sun hot on the back of his neck."

"Papa" at his Cuban villa, Finca Vigia ("Lookout Farm"), where he wrote several novels, including Old Man and the Sea, for which he won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1954. Click Hemingway standing up writing to hear his acceptance speech.

Hemingway outside his Paris residence, circa 1925. His Paris memoir, A Moveable Feast, was published posthumously in 1964. Hemingway shot himself July 2, 1961, in his home in Ketchum, Idaho. He was 64 years old.

"I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day. But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made.

"I would stand and look out over the roofs of Paris and think, 'Do not worry. You have always written before and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the truest sentence that you know.'

"So finally I would write one true sentence, and then go on from there. It was easy then because there was always one true sentence that I knew or had seen or had heard someone say.

"If I started to write elaborately, or like someone introducing or presenting something, I found that I could cut that scrollwork or ornament out and throw it away and start with the first true simple declarative sentence I had written. Up in that room I decided that I would write one story about each thing that I knew about. I was trying to do this all the time I was writing, and it was good and severe discipline.”   - from A Moveable Feast 

Papa liked Fats Waller. At Finca Vigia he walked around singing Waller's "Your Feet's Too Big." Click the photo to open the You Tube recording of the song.

Happy Birthday, Paul! Sir Paul McCartney was born June 18, 1942. He is is one of the most successful composers and performers of all time.

Click Paul to hear him work out on bass guitar and sing lead on his song, "Paperback Writer," with John Lennon backing on vocals and tambourine on the original recording, George Harrison on rhythm guitar, and Ringo of course on drums. (Also on the original recording Paul plays lead guitar.)

Paul gained worldwide fame as the bass guitarist and singer-songwriter for the Beatles, the most popular and influential group in the history of pop music. His songwriting partnership with John Lennon was the most successful in all of music history. Their body of work will be considered classical music by music-lovers hundreds of years from now.

In 1957 at a church festival, Paul saw an older boy, something of a troublemaker, singing on stage with his skiffle band. The boy kept getting the words wrong and making up new lyrics as he went along. This was John Lennon. Paul got a chance to impress him after the show with his mastery of the song, Eddie Cochran's “Twenty Flight Rock.” Lennon later invited McCartney to join his band, the Quarrymen, thus giving birth to a great musical partnership. Click the pic to dig the song!

Clicking Paul on acoustic  guitar opens to his most popular song. "Yesterday," with more than 2,200 cover versions, is one of the most covered songs in the history of recorded music.

Click the montage to see and hear "Hey, Jude" ("hosted" in the beginning by TV personality, David Frost). At a little more than seven minutes, it's one of the longest singles to ever top the charts. Paul wrote the song for John's son Julian to help comfort him during his parents' divorce proceedings. When introducing it to John, Paul assured him that he would "fix" the line, "the movement you need is on your shoulder," explaining that "it's a stupid expression; it sounds like a parrot." John said,  "You won't, you know. That's the best line in the song." McCartney retained the phrase. He later said of his subsequent live performances of the song: "That's the line when I think of John, and sometimes I get a little emotional during that moment."

The "Abbey Road Medley," closing out the B side of the album, Abbey Road, was some of the last music recorded by The Beatles before their break-up in 1970. Some of the lyrics allude to the personal and business conflicts they were experiencing. At the very beginning of "She Came In Through the Bathroom Window," in anticipation of the change of tempo, John Lennon says, "Well listen to that Mal (referring to Mal Evans, their roadie)... heh-heh" and then shouts, "Oh, look out!" [This clickable pic of Paul opens to a You Tube playlist. Click "Play All" to hear the entire medley.]

"And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make."

In 1971 Paul and his wife Linda formed the rock band, Wings. "Band on the Run," a million-seller, has an anthem-like quality to it.

Inspired by the family sing-alongs he remembered as a boy, Sir Paul entered the famous Capitol Records studio in 2010 to record a selection of jazz and traditional pop music, backed by the likes of the fabulous Diana Krall on piano. Here's  a tune popularized by the inimitable Fats Waller, "I'm Gonna Sit Right Down and Write Myself a Letter" from that session.

It's the birthdate of the man who wrote and sang, "I've always been crazy, but it's kept me from going insane." Waylon Jennings. Texas "outlaw" singer-songwriter.

High living, an ornery attitude, double-parking on Nashville's Music Row - it was a lifestyle suited to a country music outlaw. And it fueled the lyrics of this song. Click ol' Waylon to see and hear it for yourself - an authenticity that over rides phoniness. (A live Austin City Limits performance. Austin - where the progressive country music "outlaw" movement kicked into high gear.)

In the mid-80's Waylon joined up with the super group, The Highwaymen,  comprised of him, Willie Nelson, Johnny Cash, and Kris Kristofferson. Click the pic to catch Waylon doing a song from one of their performances, a song that was recorded a decade earlier and goes back even before that in cosmic country time. (Luckenbach, Texas - smack dab there in the Texas Hill Country, y'all.)

Click Willie n Waylon to see them perform "Good Hearted Woman." The song was inspired by a newspaper article about a rocker and his lady. The guys wrote it while playing poker in a motel room between gigs. Chet Atkins, virtuoso guitarist and respected Nashville country music producer, opens this cut with conversation about Waylon's "outlaw" days. It is ironic that given his mainstream status, Atkins produced so many hits for Waylon, the iconoclast. It's another case of talent attracting talent (business as well as music).

Waylon rocks out a song by another beloved Texas singer-songwriter, Billy Joe Shaver -  "Honky Tonk Heroes."  ("Have a good time.")

Here's another Willie-Waylon favorite! The lyrics of "Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up to Be Cowboys" aim to bust the cowboy myth. But the poetry of the song only reinforces it.

Mr. Excitement! It's Jackie Wilson's birthdate (June 9, 1934). He was a soul-singing tenor with a four-octave vocal range. And he was a gettum-dancing-in-the aisles performer!

Click the pic of Jackie in action to see and hear him perform, "Lonely Teardrops," his 1958 hit that rocketed him to R&B super stardom.

A master showman and one of the most dynamic and influential performers in R&B and rock 'n' roll history, Jackie Wilson recorded over 50 hit singles that spanned R&B, pop, soul, doo-wop, and easy listening. 

Jackie's break-through hit was a very soulful rendition of "Danny Boy." Clicking this shot of him opens a later performance of this tune and shows his full expressive musical talent.

Due to his fervent  performances, with his dynamic dance moves, singing, and impeccable dress, he was christened "Mr. Excitement." His stagecraft in his live shows inspired James Brown, Michael Jackson, and Elvis Presley, as well as many artists who followed. 

"Reet Petite," released as a single in 1957, was Jackie's first hit. Two decades later it became an international smash hit.

"Doggin' Around" was a big hit for Jackie in 1960. One of the pix in this vid is an autographed photo of Elvis with Jackie Wilson. Elvis' caption reads "You got you a friend for life." Wilson was sometimes called "The Black Elvis."  Reportedly, when asked about this Elvis said, "I guess that makes me the white Jackie Wilson." (The woman with Jackie in another photo in this video is Harlean Harris, his second wife.)

"Feel it! Hey-hey!" Jackie Wilson real live in concert! 1. "Higher & Higher" 2. "That's Why (I Love You So)"  3. "Lonely Teardrops" -  (Reprise) 4. "Standby Me." Ladies and gentlemen, Jackie Wilson!

Eighteen years after he was born this day (May 24, 1941), he hitchhiked from his home up in the frozen Iron Belt and wound up in Greenwich Village, USA. ...

... As soon as he could he headed over to hang out with his hero, a dying Woody Guthrie. He picked and sang Woody's songs for him. He hit the open mic's in the Village. A New York Times columnist caught his act and wrote a good piece about him. Famed Columbia Records A&R man, John Hammond, dropped by one evening and wound up signing him. He went on to write over 1,000 songs, get the Pulitzer and the Nobel Prizes for literature. And he's still touring - "The Never-ending Tour" Go, Bob! Happy Birthday!

Click Dylan with The Band at Carnegie Hall where they played at a Woody Guthrie tribute concert in 1971. The Woody song is "I Ain't Got No Home." Bob has made a career of playing with top musicians, and it doesn't get much better than Richard Manuel's haunting vocal harmonies and honky tonk piano, Robbie Robertson's blues-drenched lead guitar, Levon Helm's right-on drums and Arkansas vocals, Rick Danko's lonesome-sounding vocals and pulsating bass, and Garth Hudson on electric keys - the wizard presiding over it all!

At 22 he was a celebrity on account of "Blowing in the Wind." He was seen as a protest singer who voiced the spirit of his generation, an image that made him wince or at least shrug. Appearances at the Newport Folk Festival confirmed the image. Dylan cemented that impression when he and Pete Seeger performed at a SNCC-sponsored voter-registration rally in Greenwood, Mississippi. Click Bob and Pete playing one of my favorite songs from that time.

Click harp-blowin' Bob to hear the first Dylan song to mean anything really personal to me. This goes way back. It'd been made clear to me that I could show myself out. She went to the back of her apartment. Up front there was a record player with The Freewheelin' album on it. Side two. I lifted the needle arm and gently placed it down in the groove and heard this song as I headed for the door.

Click Bob with mutual hero, Johnny Cash, to hear them perform "One Too Many Mornings." They recorded it while Bob was in Nashville cutting the Nashville Skyline album, 1969.

It was a big deal when our folk poet laureate went electric! He speed-jumped into a world tour with The Band (sans Levon Helm who sat it out working on an oil rig off the coast of Louisiana). They got booed everywhere! (Except in Austin, Texas!). This vid is from the Newcastle date. In Manchester, England, he gets cat-called, "Judas!" for "betraying" the pure folkies and selling out. His response is to tell The Band to play "Fucking loud," as he launches into rock and roll's number one anthem, "Like a Rolling Stone!" Click it! "How does it feel!"

Click the gypsy Dylan to hear a song off of one of my favorite albums, Blood on the Tracks. This was recorded during his Rolling Thunder Revue concert tour. It included a traveling caravan of musicians, such as Joan Baez, Roger McGuinn, Ramblin Jack Elliott, and perennial side-kick, the late Bob Neuwirth. And Bob plays some bottleneck slide on this one.

Bob was on hand when The Band called it quits, Thanksgiving 1976, with one of the best concert movies ever, The Last Waltz. He leads them in two numbers, "Forever Young" and one stemming from their early days on the road, "Baby, Let Me Follow You Down."

Click to hear "Thunder on the Mountain" from one of Dylan's later albums, Modern Times. The vid shows a good montage of him performing over the years.