I’ve been stuck on Kierra Sheard’s duets lately. There are wonderful ones with Jekalyn Carr (on Sheard’s last album), with Tasha Cobb, and a couple with Sheard’s mother Karen Clark (of the Clark Sisters). One of those Mother-and-Daughter ones has an indelible moment where Karen gently induces her pregnant daughter not to go full-on. (The tale of what once happened to “Gimme Shelter’s” Merry Clayton shadows her maternal attentiveness.) What comes next here is great from the jump (catch the guy who starts hopping on one leg pretty early on) but it gets transcendent when Ms. Sheard and her chorus lock on their truth: “He’s holding me up!!!”
A bow to Robbie R. (and Garth Hudson on sax!). Mixed feelings about The Band over here (FWIW). Still remember (like a million others) the way Music from Big Pink hit, but I saw them live when I was a kid in a small room — should’ve been great but instead — dead dog dead facsimiles of songs on their albums. Not worth finessing a ride over the Notch to Mt. Holyoke College. OTOH, this would’ve been worth a cross-country trip!!!
Per Scott Spencer: “PROMISE ME! You’ll listen to Lillie Mae on EARPHONES while she delivers this beautiful version of the Steinbeck novel — the harmony on ‘We’d like to have some, too’ is a socialist pamphlet in 6 shiver-inducing words! And the musicianship throughout is stunning.”
Tony Joe White’s song sounds a lot like “Sultans of Swing,” but maybe he’s closer to the making of Americans… “I went down on the Padre Island coast/Of all the hard times I still remember/Repossession of the guitar hurt the most…”
Back in the 70s I was on a mission at 8th St.’s used record stores. I found “Sweet Harmony” but this Smokey song on the same album went right by me. I got a second shot, thanks to C. Liegh McInnis…
Bless CLM — see here — for steering First readers to this bit of heaven too…
125th Street isn’t the walk of life for a music-lover anymore, but Frederick Douglass Blvd from, say, 120th to 110th, has promise. Soundtracked first by Tyla and an earful of Senegalese rap, I got an early evening lift there last Friday when I ran into Ben Webster blowing through a vendor’s speaker…
Proved it all night…
“On a bright fall morning…”
On the train last week, I got a contact high from a bunch of young French tourists — a school group of some kind — who were giddy-rapping en francais. I’m no all-worldly hipster but, thanks to my son’s ear for francophone pop, I struck a pose as I stepped off the train, shouting out the name of le mec de Marseille: “JUL!!!!!” came back at me tres fortement.
Across the channel (and a couple of decades)…
Back to Black (Atlantic). Per John Chernoff…”when they come out of the break at about 6:00 in, ‘Auntie Akosua Ba’ picks you up and soars.”