It's the birthday of Charlie Musselwhite (January 31, 1944). He's been touring fifty years. He cut his (musical) teeth along side Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf.

Born in Mississippi blues country, Charlie Musselwhite moved to Memphis, the cauldron of American musical tradition, at an early age. There he soaked it all up - the blues, the Memphis Jug Band, rockabilly, Western swing.

Click blues harp man, Charlie Musselwhite, to hear him do it to it!

Charlie hit Chicago when he was 18. He says those rough and tumble years “toughened me up,” performing at South Side clubs for a dollar or two. “My feet would be wet from walking in the snow,” he recalls. “I had great big holes in my shoes and I remember that really well...once you've been there you don't forget.”

Click young Charlie to hear him musically tell his life story.

Charlie may be the only musician to get a huge ovation just by opening his brief case. That's where he keeps his harmonicas. Fans know they're in for some real "truth-telling."

Click a going Charlie to hear his "River Hip Mama"

"The blues is your buddy in good times and your comfort in bad times. It empowers you to keep going. It is secular spiritual music, the gospel blues. It's music from the heart instead of the head."

Click Charlie in the studio to hear a cut from his Southside Band album, Stand Back! [Barry Goldberg on keys; Harvey Mandel, guitar.]

Click the graphic to travel to my Fish Hawk Country blog for some surreal textural moments with blues harp sounds - soundtrack by Mister Charlie Musselwhite.

It's the birthday of the "King of the Slide Guitar," Elmore James (January 27, 1918).

When I first heard Elmore James, he zinged my ear drums! What a crisp assertive sound! What a powerful voice! His opening guitar riff said, "Look here! Listen to this!" He is one of my heroes of the blues!

Click the Elmore James pic to hear his best-known song and first hit (1951), the blues standard "Dust My Broom" (also known as "Dust My Blues").

James was born Elmore Brooks in Richland, Holmes County, Mississippi, the illegitimate son of 15-year-old Leola Brooks, a field hand. His father was probably Joe Willie "Frost" James, who moved in with Leola, and Elmore took his surname. He began making music at the age of 12, using a simple one-string instrument (diddley bow, or jitterbug) strung on a shack wall. As a teen he performed at dances under the names Cleanhead and Joe Willie James. He married Minnie Mae about 1942. He subsequently married at least twice more.

Click Elmore to hear his 1953 hit, "I Believe." The piano man is Ike Turner.

Click Elmore to hear "It Hurts Me Too" (1957).

Click Elmore to hear, "Shake Your Money Maker," a song that did not appear on Your Hit Parade!

Click Elmore to hear "I Can't Hold Out" (1960).

Click The Man for "Good Bye, Baby"

"Blues before Sunrise"

"Elmore James only knew one lick, but you had the feeling that he meant it."  - Frank Zappa

It's Antonio Carlos Jobim's birthday (January 25, 1927).

Antonio Carlos "Tom" Jobim

Jobim is one of the great exponents of Brazilian music. He internationalized bossa nova and, with the help of some American artists (e.g., Stan Getz, Charlie Byrd), merged it with jazz to standardize a new sound whose popular success endures. He's been called the George Gershwin of Brazil.

His "Girl from Ipanema" ("Garota de Ipanema"), one of the most recorded songs of all time, has been recorded over 240 times by other artists.

Click the album cover to see Astrud Gilberto sing her original rendition of this song with Stan Getz, tenor sax, and his trio backing her. 

Click the album cover to hear my favorite Jobim song, "Wave," performed by him live.

Click Jobim's photo to see him play a duet with collaborator, João Gilberto, on "Desafinado," another favorite. (In the vid Jobim plays piano.)

Click the album cover to play six bossa nova classics sung live by Astrud Gilberto, backed by the Pim Jacobs Combo.

Song list:

0:09 - "Meditation," 2:49 - "It Might As Well Be Spring," 5:29 - "The Telephone Song," 7:02 - "Only Trust Your Heart," 8:36 - "Corcovado," 10:35 - "The Girl From Ipanema" (reprise)

"Tchau," Tom. Click photo to hear "Brazil."

It's Etta James' birthday (January 25, 1938)

Etta James' powerful, earthy voice bridged the gap between rhythm and blues and rock and roll. She was born Jamesetta Hawkins in Los Angeles, California.

        Click Etta's image to hear one of her first hits, "Good Rockin' Daddy"

When she was 14 she formed the Creolettes with two other girls. They tracked down Johnny Otis ("Hand Jive"), a bandleader and promoter. On the strength of the Creolettes' audition for him, Otis arranged for the girls to tour.

Otis renamed the group The Peaches and reversed Jamesetta's name. The girls started off earning ten dollars per night for their work with Otis's revue. James first recorded with The Peaches in 1955. The song, “Roll with Me Henry,” was her own composition and was a coarse response to a song by Hank Ballard and the Midnighters called “Work with Me, Annie.”

Clicking Etta's photo opens her first hit, "Roll with Me, Henry."

Click Etta listening to a studio playback to dig one of her biggest hits, "Something's Got a Hold on Me." (The band leader, Phil Harris, introduced her as Miss Peaches, using the name of her earlier 'girl group.')

Click the Etta photo-quote to see her bring her power to Chuck Berry's "Rock and Roll Music" from the Taylor Hackford rockumentary, Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll. ... with Keith Richards, Robert Cray, and Eric Clapton - guitars; Johnnie Johnson, piano; Steve Jordan, drums.

Clicking the Etta-meaning-business pic plays her belting out "Tell Mama" with Carlos Santana on guitar and John Lee Hooker working with her on the vocals and the great blues harp man, Paul Butterfield.

It's Sam Cooke's birthday (January 22, 1931). "The King of Soul!"

Before Aretha, Curtis, Otis, Stevie, and Marvin; before Bobby Womack, Al Green, and Billy Preston; before James Brown - there was Sam Cooke!

He preceded Nat Cole and Ray Charles in being the number one influential Black recording artist who took charge of his own recording production and owned his own songs.

Click Sam's image to hear his first pop hit, "You Send Me" (1957).

Sam Cooke began singing as a child and joined the gospel group, The Soul Stirrers, out of Chicago, before moving to a solo career where he scored a string of hit songs like "You Send Me" and "Twistin' the Night Away."

Click the Soul Stirrers with Sam Cooke (lower left in the photo) album cover to hear "Farther Along."

Click the Soul Stirrers with Sam Cooke (third from left) to hear "Nearer My God to Thee."

 

Click Sam Cooke performing live to hear "Twistin' the Night Away" (1963). 

Click the pic of Sam in the studio to hear his bluesy 1962 hit "Bring It on Home to Me." 

The definitive biography is Peter Guralnick's Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke.

It's Haruki Murakami's birthday (January 12, 1949).

He is one of the most powerful, imaginative writers alive today. In Japan his books sell out in the pre-publication stage. 

Murakami is a runner (I enjoyed his What I Talk About When I Talk About Running) ...

... and a music lover.  He once ran a coffee house and jazz bar, Peter Cat, in  Tokyo.

Click Murakami with his record collection to play the Chet Baker Quartet doing "Let's Get Lost."

Another Murakami book is Norwegian Wood, about college students in Tokyo in the 1960s and about nostalgia, loss, and evolving sexuality. 

This Beatles' song of the same name is often described in the novel and is the favorite song of one of the characters.

Click the cover of Norwegian Wood to hear the Beatles song of the same name.

1Q84 is one of the most fascinating books I have ever read. It's about two lost lovers seeking to find each other in a subtle yet dangerous alternate world.

The title is a play on the Japanese pronunciation of the year 1984 and a reference to George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty Four. The letter Q and the Japanese number 9 (typically romanized as "kyū") are pronounced the same but differ in meaning, which presents a possiblity for Japanese wordplay.

As in many of his works, Murakami often refers to composers and musicians, ranging from Bach to Vivaldi to Billie Holiday to the Rolling Stones to Leoš Janáček, whose Sinfonietta pops up many times at crucial points in the novel.

Click the 1Q84 book cover to hear a beautiful rendition of Janáček's  "Sinfonietta" (final movement.)

In 1Q84 a verse from the 1933 song "It's Only a Paper Moon" by Harold Arlen and Billy Rose appears in the book and is the basis for a recurring theme throughout the work.

Click the image depicting key scenes in the book to play Nat Cole's version of "It's Only a Paper Moon."

It's Elvis' birthday (January 8, 1935).

Click Elvis performing at his big "comeback special" (NBC TV, 1968) to hear him do his first record, "That's All Right, Mama."

"That's All Right, Mama" almost didn't get recorded. During an uneventful recording session at Sun Studios on the evening of July 5, 1954, Presley, Scotty Moore (guitar), and Bill Black (upright bass) were taking a break between recordings when Presley started fooling around with an up-tempo version of Arthur Crudup's song "That's All Right, Mama." Black began joining in on the bass, and soon Moore came in on guitar. Producer Sam Phillips, surprised by this sudden upbeat atmosphere, asked the three of them to start again so he could record it.

Upon finishing the recording session, according to Scotty Moore, Bill Black remarked, "Damn. Get that on the radio and they'll run us out of town."

Click the image of Elvis reaching out to fans (the Mississippi-Alabama Dairy Show, Tupelo, Mississippi, 1956) to hear, "I Want You, I Need You, I Love You."

Click Elvis-Las Vegas to see an an amazing performance of "Suspicious Minds/Caught in a Trap." Elvis seems wired to the drum beat.

This "clickable" opens to Elvis on the Ed Sullivan Show, singing his biggest hit ever, "Don't Be Cruel." (The Jordanaires backing him.) What makes the 1956 chart performance of “Don’t Be Cruel” so phenomenal is that it faced stiff competition from Elvis’s own “Hound Dog” on the flip side. His biggest hit spent 27 weeks in the Top 100, 16 weeks in the top 10, and 7 weeks at #1.

What was Elvis' second biggest hit? "All Shook Up." In 1957 it stayed on Billboard's Top 100 for seven months! Eight of those weeks it was Number One! And, no wonder! How can you go wrong with lyrics like, 

"A well'a bless my soul
What'sa wrong with me?
I'm itchin' like a man in a fuzzy tree ..."

It's the birthday of Khalil Gibran (January 6, 1883). He was a mystic, writer, poet, and visual artist.

Self-portrait

Click this self-portrait to view Aphorisms of Gibran from his poem "Sand and Foam," accompanied by beautiful impressionistic music.

One of his most notable lines of poetry is from "Sand and Foam" (1926), which reads: "Half of what I say is meaningless, but I say it so that the other half may reach you." This line was used by John Lennon and placed, though in a slightly altered form, into the song "Julia" from The Beatles 1968 album The Beatles (aka "The White Album").

Gibran is chiefly known in the English-speaking world for his 1923 book The Prophet, an early example of inspirational fiction including a series of philosophical essays written in poetic prose. The book sold well despite a cool critical reception, gaining popularity in the 1930s and again especially in the 1960s counter culture. Thousands of hippies and college students read the book and passed it on to others. Many weddings used passages from The Prophet. Gibran is the third best-selling poet of all time, behind Shakespeare and Lao Tze (reputed author of the Tao Te Ching).

Quotes from The Prophet
"The timeless in you is aware of life's timelessness. And knows that yesterday is but today's memory and tomorrow is today's dream.” 

"You pray in your distress and in your need; would that you might pray also in the fullness of your joy and in your days of abundance.” 

"Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.
But you are eternity and you are the mirror.”

"In the sweetness of friendship let there be laughter, and sharing of pleasures. For in the dew of little things, does the heart find its morning and is refreshed.” 

"Say not, 'I have found the truth,' but rather, 'I have found a truth.'
Say not, 'I have found the path of the soul.' Say rather, 'I have met the soul walking upon my path.'
For the soul walks upon all paths.
The soul walks not upon a line, neither does it grow like a reed.
The soul unfolds itself, like a lotus of countless petals.” 


“And think not you can direct the course of love, for love, if it finds you worthy, directs your course.” 

"Love gives naught but itself and takes naught but from itself. Love possesses not nor would it be possessed: For love is sufficient unto love.” 

It's the birthday of Carl Sandburg (January 6, 1878).

He was a mid-westerner with a strong back, weathered hands, and had a voice like the rolling prairie winds. He won three Pulitzer Prizes: two for his poetry and one for his biography of Abraham Lincoln. He was a man of the people, as down to earth as they come. Yet because of his talent and authentic dignity, people who made the headlines wanted to know him.

Click Carl Sandberg's image to hear him reciting his famous poem, "Fog."

Fog

By Carl Sandburg

The fog comes 
on little cat feet. 

It sits looking 
over harbor and city 
on silent haunches 
and then moves on.



Click the image of Carl Sandberg at the typewriter to hear him recite his "Buffalo Dusk."

Buffalo Dusk

The buffaloes are gone.

And those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

Those who saw the buffaloes by thousands and how they pawed the prairie sod into dust with their hoofs, their great heads down pawing on in a great pageant of dusk,

Those who saw the buffaloes are gone.

And the buffaloes are gone.

Click Carl Sandberg with guitar to hear him singing, "I Ride an Old Paint."

 

Carl Sandberg was the first white man to be honored by the NAACP with their Silver Plaque Award as a "major prophet of civil rights in our time."

Among the many who made the headlines and were attracted to him was Marilyn Monroe. She admired his poetry and he encouraged her to write her own.