The News Review:
- Marcus Shelby marries lyrical life of Harriet Tubman with jazz
- Black woman singer Rissi Palmer breaks color lines
- Haggard goes bluegrass with fresh take on tunes
- Briefs | Blues Traveler plays tonight
- Life of the boogie-woogie boaster
- Annie Lennox digs into her sense of outrage for a dark new album
Marcus Shelby marries lyrical life of Harriet Tubman with jazz
San Francisco Chronicle – Oct 16, 2007
The composer whose large-scale pieces have often delved into African American history and culture – his pregnant 2002 “Port Chicago” suite dealt with the 1944 Bay Area naval base explosion that killed hundreds of black sailors and eventually led to the desegregation of the military – came to music through the church. He began playing bass as a kid with the men’s choir at Mount Calvary Baptist Church in Sacramento where his father is the longtime president of the Urban League and his mother was a public school teacher and principal. In church Shelby heard the hymns and blues rooted in the music that Tubman heard and sang. That music forms what Shelby calls “the DNA” of the oratorio for which he wrote the music and libretto (his first). “I heard the feeling of the blues even if I didn’t know that’s what I was listening to or that it was going to be a major part of my life later on” Shelby says. “Part of it was frightening because it would make people get up and dance and yell. I felt the power that music had over people.
Black woman singer Rissi Palmer breaks color lines
Houston Chronicle – Oct 16, 2007
She recalls how Nashville music executives would gush over her demos then back off when they discovered she was black. Palmer doesn’t blame racism just the realities of the market. “It was a question of ‘Is this marketable? Is this something country listeners will buy into? ‘”Despite its roots in blues and gospel country music may be the whitest of musical genres. Aside from Charlie Pride it’s tough to name a single black country star. Harmonica wizard DeFord Bailey was a Grand le pry favorite but that was back in the ’20s. Ray Charles had success on the country charts but country wasn’t his primary milieu. More recently country rapper Cowboy Troy made waves but radio treated him more as a novelty than a legitimate hitmaker.
Haggard goes bluegrass with fresh take on tunes
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel – Milwaukee Journal Sentinel (subscription… – Oct 16, 2007
17 2007 Appalachian music might seem a strange fit for a guy so closely linked to the hard electric twang of country’s Bakersfield Sound but don’t tell that to Merle Haggard. “The Bluegrass Sessions” released ct. 2 finds Haggard and friends putting fiddle Dobro and banjo to some of his classic tunes like “Big City” and “Mama’s Hungry Eyes. 1 on Billboard’s Top Bluegrass chart… There will be appearances on there from people you’d recognize. ” Perhaps the loftiest compliment paid him came this year one songwriter to another. Inspired by Haggard’s 1969 classic Dylan wrote “Workingman’s Blues #2″ for his latest album “Modern Times. ” Dylan told him he was going to write the song and work it into his shows. Haggard’s response? “I said ‘Good that gives me a reason to do Blowin’ in the Wind #2. ‘ ” Tools.
Briefs | Blues Traveler plays tonight
MU The Parthenon – MU The Parthenon (subscription) – Oct 16, 2007
substring(0 thispageresult. tonight at the Huntington Music Hall also known as the Monkeybar. The 37-show tour is a celebration of the band’s 20th anniversary and release of its next album “Cover Yourself” available in stores ct.
Life of the boogie-woogie boaster
Belfast Telegraph – Oct 16, 2007
He pursued his own career with The Millionaires who found some success and then carved out a TV career on The Tube and later in America before Squeeze reformed fully in 1990. Nevertheless they didn’t stick around long and disbanded amicably soon after. It was then that Jools formed his Rhythm And Blues rchestra. "I’m very lucky that I make the music I want to and love. That may sound obvious but there are a lot of musicians that don’t do that" he says. Best f Friends contains 21 songs but having recorded more than 160 selecting the rchestra’s ‘best’ work was always going to be a difficult task. So difficult that Jools delegated the job to his producer and people at his record label.
Annie Lennox digs into her sense of outrage for a dark new album
Malaysia Star – Oct 16, 2007
“I want the audience to have an emotional and provocative experience. ” To do that Lennox will include heavy numbers from Songs of Mass Destruction. She thinks singing them – including the suicidal blues-rock stomp Love Is Blind – helps purge the pain. “Everyone feels that way from time to time” the 52-year-old singer said of suicide. “It’s not that I live there permanently. But I touch on it that feeling of absolute pointlessness. “When a person sings the blues it serves a purpose like a kind of exorcism… Through the purging or expression of this darkness comes a whole other kind of heightened transcendent sense. ” Lennox points out that on Mass Destruction there is light that balances the darkness. It comes in the music which ranges from ballads (the Elton John-like Smithereens) to driving rockers (Ghost in My Machine) to soulful dance-floor workouts (Coloured Bedspread which evokes the Eurythmics). The dark beauty of the sounds she said provides `moments of shining and glowing and light – or hopefulness. ” The album’s centrepiece is an uplifting anthem called Sing inspired by Lennox’s many trips to South Africa where she witnessed the AIDS pandemic firsthand. She can recite statistics off the top of her head: ne in three pregnant women there is thought to be HIV positive. If the woman doesn’t get treatment she will die and the child could easily die by its fifth birthday.