On this day in 1934, the great blues guitarist Freddie King was born. He was raised in Dallas but his family moved to Chicago when he was a teenager. As a result of this, he developed a style that combined the distinct music associated with those areas. By the time he was 18, he was playing semi-professionally. By his early twenties, he was playing with people like Hound Dog Taylor and the legendary Willie Dixon. It was through his connection with Dixon that he got a record contract. (The establishment felt he sang too much like BB King — not an invalid criticism.)

In 1960, he signed with Federal Records where he broke out. His first single was “Have You Ever Loved a Woman.” It was actually the B-side, “You’ve Got to Love Her with a Feeling,” that got more radio play. But I prefer the A-side. Here he is ten years later performing it live:

In 1961, King had a bona fide Top-40 hit with “Hide Away.” It is an upbeat instrumental. It too was originally a B-Side. Here he is performing it live — pretty much as it is on the original single but faster.

King’s career was marked by almost constant touring. The stress of this and his bad “Bloody Mary” diet resulted in his death of pancreatitis at the age of only 42. But he left us a lot of great music. It’s well worth check out. He was one of the greats.

Happy birthday Freddie King!

On this day in 1946, the great musician Billy Preston was born. People know him mostly for his hits like “Nothing From Nothing” and “Will It Go Round in Circles.” But he was a great keyboard player who started playing professionally by the age of ten. At 16, he was playing organ for Little Richard. At 22 he was working with Ray Charles.

He really came to prominence for his work with The Beatles. And most notable about that is his Fender Rhodes part on the song “Get Back.” In fact, according to Wikipedia, the song was credited to, “The Beatles with Billy Preston.”

Shortly before his death, I saw him perform at Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. He put on a great show. He was quite a showman in addition to being a great musician. He died much too young.

Here he is at the height of his fame doing “Nothing From Nothing”:

And here he is doing Sam Cooke’s “A Change Is Gonna Come”:

Happy birthday Billy Preston!

Today, the comedian Julie Brown is 56. But she started as a regular stand-up comedian working primarily in the gay clubs around Los Angeles. This led to her making short films. By the early 80s, she began working in television and film. And in 1984 she released a five song EP, Goddess in Progress. This is primarily what I know her for, because Dr Demento picked up on some of the songs and played them quite a lot. Yes, I was one of those guys: people who listened to Dr Demento each Sunday. I’m not proud, it’s just the truth.

One of the songs on the EP was, “Earth Girls Are Easy.” It is produced in an annoying New Wave style but with enough charm to overcome it. It’s a story song about a UFO that crash lands in her swimming pool. Love ensues. Brown later leveraged it into the film, Earth Girls Are Easy. I found it very amusing when I in college, but that shouldn’t be taken as a recommendation.

The film included a number of Brown’s songs, including “‘Cause I’m a Blonde.” I could do without the song’s The Romantics production, but it is funny:

In 1992, she finally got around to doing a full-on Madonna parody, Medusa: Dare to Be Truthful. But otherwise, she mostly does small projects. I’ve been very interested in some of her political things. For example, she did “The Ex-Beauty Queen’s Got a Gun” — a reworking of her classic “The Homecoming Queen’s Got a Gun” for Sarah Palin. And she did the very funny “Victoria Jackson Reacts to the Election!” — a reaction to Jackson’s Twitter meltdown on election night 2012. Here’s another one, “Victoria Jackson Tea Party Spokesmodel.” Vote for Romney: R-O-M-K-N-E-E!

Happy birthday Julie Brown!

On this day in 1886, the great violist and composer Rebecca Clarke was born. Sadly, she didn’t write all the much—her longest piece is the twenty odd minute Rhapsody. But because of this, it is all the more notable just how complex her tonal pallet is. The Rhapsody is especially intriguing given the way it supplements her traditionally impressionist style with atonal elements. But unlike Schoenberg, these elements come and go—adding to the dramatic structure of the piece. It’s quite an amazing work:

Clarke faced what can only be described as comical sexism. In 1918, she performed a recital with a number of new pieces by her. One of the pieces, Morpheus was credited not to her, but to “Anthony Trent.” The critics all praised it and ignored the ones she had put her own name to. Now, it is true that Morpheus is a heartbreakingly beautiful piece, but undoubtedly it would have been criticized for that very fact had it been presented under Clarke’s own name. Here it is; it is a wonderful piece:

The following year, she entered her Viola Sonata into a composition competition. She ended up tying with the great composer Ernest Bloch. There was much speculation at the time that “Rebecca Clarke” might be a pseudonym used by Bloch. According to Wikipedia “or at least that it could not have been Clarke who wrote these pieces, as the idea that a woman could write such a work was socially inconceivable.” Of course, even at that time there were great female composers, most notably (for me), Germaine Tailleferre. But facts never stand in the way of prejudice.

Here is a performance of the Viola Sonata with Molly Carr on the viola and Yi-Fang Huang on piano:

Happy birthday Rebecca Clarke!

The great singer-songwriter John Hiatt is 62 years old today. I first noticed him in my teens. “Pink Bedroom” got a lot of play on our local radio station. He seemed to me like the American equivalent of Elvis Costello. That’s still not an entirely inappropriate comparison. But whereas Costello is more adventurous musically and lyrically, Hiatt is more audience-friendly and doesn’t suffer from Costello’s many excesses.

I don’t have much to say about his life or career. Mostly, he’s written a lot of songs that other people have covered. And he has a substantial following, but he isn’t playing stadiums. He has the kind of career I think most singer-songwriters would like: widely acclaimed by his peers, famous enough for it to be flattering, and rich from all his royalties.

To me, his 1983 album Riding with the King made him a star. For one thing, it is just a great album. But it seemed to me that everyone was playing “You May Already Be a Winner.” But that doesn’t seem to be the case. Here is “She Loves the Jerk”:

In 1992, Hiatt put out the album Little Village with Ry Cooder, Nick Lowe and Jim Keltner. I still listen to that album. It’s not great, but it’s a lot of fun. Here they are performing live:

Since that time he has been extremely consistent. Here is the title track from his 2005 album Master of Disaster:

Happy birthday John Hiatt!

On this day in 1750, the great Classical composer Antonio Salieri was born. Although he was born in Italy, he spent almost his entire life in Vienna. He was a protege of Gluck and is generally considered Germanic in his compositional style. Historically, he is important for two things. First, he was a primary figure in turning opera into a major classical music form. Second, he was one of the most important teachers of the time, whose pupils included Beethoven, Schubert, and Liszt.

Sadly, his work still isn’t performed very much (but this is slowly changing). It is all Mozart’s fault. When he was young, Mozart wrote a number of things in letters claiming that Salieri was sabotaging his career. Many academics have taken this at face value. But I think they are confused about how Mozart thought of himself. He wasn’t the great composer from history, but a young man trying to establish his career. And he was struggling. After being a child prodigy, most people weren’t that interested in the 20-something composer.

Not long afer Salieri’s death, Alexander Pushkin wrote the short play Mozart and Salieri. It was meant to be, as Wikipedia says “a dramatic study of the sin of envy.” And others followed along with that narrative, leading eventually to Peter Shaffer’s play and movie, Amadeus. I love the film, as I discussed in, A Tale of Two Constanzes. But there is no relation between Salieri the dramatic character and Salieri the man.

In fact, these representations have the history flipped. There was jealousy early on, but it was Mozart’s jealousy of the Salieri’s success. And after Mozart became successful, he and Salieri were at worst amiable colleagues. The last reference that Mozart made to Salieri was in a letter to his wife about taking the older composer to see The Magic Flute, “He heard and saw with all his attention, and from the overture to the last choir there was not a piece that didn’t elicit a ‘Bravo!’ or ‘Bello!’ out of him.”

Because Salieri is still not widely performed, there isn’t a lot of his work available online. But here is the Amadeus Chamber Orchestra performing Piano Concerto C Major. Heeguin Kim is on piano and she is relishing the performance:

Happy birthday Antonio Salieri!

On this day in 1929, the great jazz pianist Bill Evans was born. Yes, I know: I wrote about him last year and yesterday I wrote about another great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson. What can I say? I really like both men.

Listening to Evans is a lot like listening to classical music. He was very modal in his harmonic structure. As a result, a lot of his stuff sounded like Debussy. But Evans owed a great deal to his early work with the jazz composer George Russell. Regardless, Evans work was the basis of Miles Davis’ greatest album (and arguably the greatest jazz album ever), Kind of Blue. It is an album that continues to inspire after decades of listening. It is also, one of those albums that I’ve had to buy repeatedly over the years.

Even at the time of the recording, Evans was in the process of forming his own trio with Scott LaFaro and Paul Motian. It is considered one of the great jazz trios. Unfortunately, I can’t find any live footage of them together. So here is “Waltz for Debby” off the album of the same name:

Sadly, just ten days after the performance from which this song was taken, Scott LaFaro died in a car accident. It wasn’t until five years later that he met Eddie Gomez, who Evans played with pretty much to the end of his career. Here he is with drummer Marty Morell, who he worked with for a long period, doing Miles Davis’ “Nardis”:

Just ten years after this performance, Evans died of various ailments related to his lifestyle. I try not to talk too much about his drug use because it really isn’t what defined him. But it is what deprived us of him for the last three and a half decades. Maybe he wouldn’t have made it that long, but we certainly should have gotten another decade. He was only 51 when he died.

Happy birthday Bill Evans!

On this day in 1925, the great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson was born. He has an amazing back story. When he was very young, he played the trumpet. But he caught tuberculosis and so concentrated on the piano. Not that it matters. Had this not have happened, I probably would have started this article, “On this day in 1925, the great jazz trumpet player…” Because the instrument doesn’t generally matter.

He was trained classically, but naturally gravitated toward jazz, especially boogie-woogie. At the age of fourteen, he won a nationwide music competition put on by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. After that, he quit school and went to work as a musician.

I learned something new and charming about Peterson. I’ve always associated him with Art Tatum. Lot of people have. The influence is clear enough. But apparently, when he was still a kid, Peterson’s father introduced him to Art Tatum and the boy became depressed, thinking he could never be as good. He and Tatum later became friends, but Peterson would never play the piano around the older musician, such was his reverence and insecurity toward the older master.

Last year, I presented Peterson playing his own composition, “The Cakewalk.” I don’t want to repeat myself, but you really owe it to yourself to click over and listen to it. It includes Joe Pass on guitar, who is a marvel himself. Here Peterson is all by himself doing a beautiful version Thelonious Monk’s “Round Midnight”:

Happy birthday Oscar Peterson!

On this day in 1909, the great Japanese composer Yuji Koseki was born. I don’t know a great deal about him. He worked in a lot of different forms and as a result, nothing especially stands out. Wikipedia tends to reward specialization. He composed film scores, songs, marches, fight songs, and much more.

He lived one of those old fashioned, very Japanese lives that I’m so jealous of. After he college, he went to work for Columbia Records as a composer, where he appears to have stayed his whole working life. He wrote both “classical” and popular music for the company. In 1939, he started writing film scores. He composed the music for 47 films over two decades and then he stopped, although I doubt he retired, since he was only 53 at that time. He also wrote fight songs for professional sports teams that are still sung to this day.

He is best know, however, for writing the music to “Mothra’s song” for the film Mothra that he also scored. It is a very catchy tune with lyrics by Susumu Ike:

Happy birthday Yuji Koseki!