Spike
Songs You Should Be Listening To
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Allah's Holiday. Fox TrotJazz and Hot Dance in Switzerland (HQ 2011)
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You Are My Lucky StarJazz and Hot Dance in Austria (HQ 2014)Heinz Sandauer, Klavier, begleitet von seinem Orchester
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When You've Got a Little Springtime in Your Heart
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I Ain't Got NobodyColumbia Historic EditionBob Wills & the Texas Playboys (with Tommy Duncan)
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Jerry o' Mine
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Fajar Di Atas AwanMusic of Indonesia 20: Indonesian GuitarsSuarasama (Rithaony Hutaljulu, vocal)
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Posts
Luciano Tajoli
A few years ago my nucular family and I visited Cabo San Lucas at the bottom of Baja California, and dined one night at the Italian restaurant in our hotel. The food was so-so, and the décor was generic fancy by Mexican standards. At one point I began feeling unrelaxed and realized that it was because of the Italian opera arias coming out of the speakers and because the playlist was now repeating itself. When I asked the waiter in my fumbling Spanish what we were listening to and if we could hear something different and at a lower volume, his face brightened, and he said it was Luciano Pavarotti and that I should fill out a form.
This reminded me of fifteen years earlier when my wife had complained about something to the front desk of a hotel south of Cancun, and they had told her to fill out a form, which had led me to imagine a scenario in which the highest-ups paid attention only to documented evidence about a ne’er-do-well scion mismanaging their hotel.
This memory now helped me realize that that the restaurant staff had no authority to change the music without written customer complaints, and that the waiters were depending on me to finally end their audio torture. This sudden power they thrust at me gave me a blissful intoxication and licence to name-drop what few Italian vocalists I knew of on the form. I remember remembering at least the names Luciano Tajoli, Carlo Buti and a couple of others as guys who could evoke Italy better and more soothingly than Pavarotti doing opera, and could sing popular songs about Naples which are in some ways melodically superior even to famous arias. (Tajoli and Buti’s ilk of course includes countless singers whose oleaginous pipes spout fake emotion.) With opera, you have to give it its full attention and relate it to the storyline and the set, whereas Neopolitan songs make better background music. The line between classical music and traditional popular music is blurrier in Italy than in countries like the United States. Whoever had decided on Pavarotti had probably figured that the most famous of the Three Tenors singing Italian opera would be the classiest way to go, and that should take care of it.
If we ever return to Cabo, my main goal will be to discover if it’s still an all-Pavarotti restaurant.
As a member of the rock group Mother Earth, Tracy Nelson provided the vocal, the piano playing, the music and (with Earthette Sylvia Caldwell) the lyrics of this song for the group’s first album Living with the Animals in 1968. This song was relegated to second-to-last on side B, more often than not where the worst cut ends up, and was given the unfortunate title “Goodnight Nelda Grebe, the Telephone Company Has Cut Us Off,” some idiot’s idea of whimsy. I hereby rename it “Why Do I Lie Awake Nights and Cry?” Martin Fierro plays the alto solo. The cover doesn’t say who did the arrangements, but this song has a great one, straddled between r & b and jazz.
It's surprising no one has posted something about this Nichols & May comedy skit from 1958 before now. It doesn't need any introduction or explanation. It hasn't dated at all. Enjoy.
Comments
it almost hurts:)
Brilliant, sir. New to me and damned sure timely. And the music was nice, too.
Oh my god, that's wonderful. I haven't heard that in years and years. Thanks so much for putting that up. My favorite line is when Nichols says "EXACTLY" so percussively about "Thus Spake Zarathustra." HAHAHA! I for about that bit and nearly fell off my chair. Wonderful. Again, thanks.
MOG Meter
Comments
I think I'm having a flashback.
This track you posted was probably the closest they came to their own vision on the whole album. I probably could have said that better, let me try again.
I think this is the kind of music they would have made a lot more of if they had their druthers. This track was always my favorite, though I was inevitably in the minority on that. Anywho, I haven't even thought about this in decades (ouch). Thanks, (I think).
Whoa! Always your favorite? Another thing we have common!
That's the stuff, Spike. As it happens, "Down So Low" was my key into Tracy's world. As a blues singer, she was always more appealing to me than Janis Joplin, but that's taste for ya.