birthday Archives - Page 11 of 49

Musician Stevie Wonder is 70

Do you want some candy?

When you’ve written about Stevie Wonder at 60 and at 65, featuring songs he wrote for other people, then what?

I suppose I could note his Carpool Karaoke with James Corden from 2015. Or point out a YouTube page called RareWonderMusic. It features Stevie singing I Can See the Sun in Late December, a song he gave to Roberta Flack, plus I Think I’m On The Right Track, Spread The Love, and Good Light.

But I’ll just list 25 songs. I could have listed 25 other songs. The last two are my top two, but the rest of the list is fluid.

Do I Do. For a 1982 greatest hits double LP called Original Musiquarium I, he added four new songs. Dizzy Gillespie and a stoned ending. “Do you want some candy?”
Do Yourself a Favor – from the transitional Where I’m Coming From album
Another Star – first of the songs from Songs in the Key of Life
You Haven’t Done Nothin’ – from Fulfillingness’ First Finale. Features the Jackson Five.

He’s Misstra Know-It-All – from Innervisions
Blame It On the Sun – from Talking Book, the first of those great 1970s albums
You Are the Sunshine of My Life. I love the fact that Stevie’s vocal doesn’t appear until the verse after the chorus.
Nothing’s Too Good for My Baby

That was a hit?

Fingertips, Part 2, and for a bonus, Fingertips. An article from WNYC: That Was A Hit?!?: Little Stevie Wonder, ‘Fingertips’
Sir Duke. If you’re going to namecheck, this song is exemplary.
We Can Work It Out. One of my all-time favorite Beatles’ covers. A live version.
Living for the City – album version and single version. The former has the better storyline -“Skyscrapers and everything!” but the latter is more danceable.

Boogie on Reggae Woman
I Wish
Higher Ground
For Once In My Life – a ballad turned into an uptempo song

Signed, Sealed, Delivered, I’m Yours. “I’ve done a lot of foolish things..”
Pastime Paradise. My daughter discovered, in order, Amish Paradise by Weird Al, Gangsta’s Paradise by Coolio, then the original
I Was Made To Love Her
Master Blaster (Jammin’)

Superstition
Love’s in Need of Love Today. After 9/11, he sang this song on a television benefit.
Uptight (Everything’s Alright). Sonically, for me, the demarcation from post-Little Stevie Wonder
As – until the day that 8 times 8 times 8 is 4

Musician Bobby McFerrin turns 70

a blackbird, a Martian, an operatic soprano, a small child, and a bebop trumpet

“There is something almost superhuman about the range and technique of Bobby McFerrin,” Newsweek noted. “He sounds, by turns, like a blackbird, a Martian, an operatic soprano, a small child, and a bebop trumpet.”

Back in the early 1980s, I had heard of this a capella singer who performed in the jazz mode, making near orchestral sounds with his voice and body, named Bobby McFerrin. I was familiar with him mostly because every album had a some pop music covers. [Here is a live cover version of the Beatles’ Blackbird.]

In the summer of 1988, I was in San Diego, riding in the car of my sister’s friend Donald, when I heard a song called “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” for the first time. I thought, “That could be a big hit in southern California, but I don’t know if anyone else will buy it.” Of course, it hit the national charts on July 30, and went to #1 for two weeks, starting on September 30. (Here’s one video, and this the video featuring McFerrin and Robin Williams.

Medicine Man

Skip to in 1989, when he formed a ten-person ‘Voicestra’ which he featured on his 1990 album Medicine Music. I happened to catch McFerrin and Voicestra one morning on NBC-TV’s Today show. After a couple songs, I recall that Bryant Gumbel, then the co-host of the show, made an observation. McFerrin had said in a previous interview that he would no longer perform “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”, his only #1 hit. Now Gumbel understood why.
Sweet in the Morning from Medicine Music, featuring Voicestra.
Discipline, Featuring Robert McFerrin & Voicestra

I bought about a half dozen copies of that album to give as Christmas presents in 1990.

I was watching that episode with our brand-new new church choir director, Eric. He was crashing at our apartment until he found a place of his own. A couple years later, he arranged the McFerrin version of the 23rd Psalm for three guys in the choir to sing. Bob, Tim, and with me performed it , with me singing the highest part, all falsetto. On the recording, McFerrin sings all three vocal tracks, overdubbed, himself, which you can hear HERE.

McFerrin has also worked in collaboration with instrumental performers including pianists Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, and Joe Zawinul, drummer Tony Williams, and cellist Yo-Yo Ma. This is Ma and McFerrin’s version of Ave Maria.

SPAC

My wife and I had the great good fortune to see Bobby McFerrin live at the Saratoga Performing Arts Center on August 6, 1999. From the review, now apparently offline:

Whether conducting the classics, improvising on an original tune plucked from thin air or cavorting within the ranks of the Philadelphia Orchestra, the affable McFerrin charms all in his wake.

Finding descriptive labels for the multitalented McFerrin seems futile. His talent is so broad and diverse that there seems to be nothing he can’t do well, including stand-up comedy. There’s a serious side, too, as the wunderkind leads the likes of the Philly through compositions by major composers such as Sergei Prokofiev and Felix Mendelssohn.

McFerrin’s uncanny ability to do “voices” put the audience on the floor with
all the characters from “Oz,” the most memorable of which was Margaret Hamilton’s Wicked Witch line — “Come here, my little pretty!”
[This was HYSTERICAL.]

McFerrin invited singers in the audience who knew the Bach-Gounod “Ave Maria” to sing along. McFerrin sang every note of Bach’s rippling arpeggios for accompaniment, while several audience soloists sang Gounod’s wonderful melody over the top.
[This was absolutely extraordinary. One of the soloists was only a few rows in front of us.]

The Philly sang (yes, sang) the “William Tell Overture,” for encore.
[A hoot.]

Listen to CircleSong Six from the CircleSong album.

Eclectic

As an Amazon review says:
“Despite the undeniable uniqueness of his gift, Bobby’s music is always accessible and inviting. When he invites his fans to sing along, as he almost always does, few can resist. Inclusiveness, play, and the universality of voices raised together in song are at the heart of Bobby’s art.

“Bobby McFerrin was exposed to a multitude of musical genres during his youth–classical, R&B, jazz, pop and world musics. ‘When you grow up with that hodgepodge of music, it just comes out. It was like growing up in a multilingual house,’ he says.

“Bobby McFerrin continues to explore the musical universe, known and unknown.”

A Bobby McFerrin discography.

Bobby McFerrin turns 70 today.

Edited from a 2010 post.

Music. Birthday. Roger. Chaos. 67.

Annie Haslam, Judy Collins, Odetta

Roger.babe We have the convergence of Saturday, when I generally write about music, and March 7, which is my birthday. Save for the obvious, there is isn’t much I play every year.

Now there WAS a song I played on March 8, a lot. Have a Good Time from my favorite Paul Simon album.

Yesterday it was my birthday
I hung one more year on the line
I should be depressed
My life’s a mess
But I’m having a good time

I’ve been trying to remember what music I have received on my birthday. A couple years back, I received an album of Odetta singing Bob Dylan. A couple of those tracks appear here.

There was an album I got on my 16th birthday called Who Knows Where the Time Goes by Judy Collins. I wrote about it back in 2008, but somehow all the YouTube links got mucked up. So here it is again.

I was thinking about a particular song from the album, The Story of Isaac, written by Leonard Cohen. It’s because my Bible guys have been rereading the book of Genesis. Specifically Genesis 22, when Abraham is tested by God.

In 1977, I was in Charlotte, NC, crashing on my parents’ sofa. What I wanted for my birthday was the album Scheherazade & Other Stories by Renaissance. I played it. Don’t think my family appreciated as much as I did. So it goes.

Anyway, 67 suggests sixes and sevens. Chaos. Or at least that’s how I’ll remember how old I am.

Musician Peter Gabriel turns 70

Peter Gabriel Melt Peter Gabriel is one of my 25 “island” albums. Hmm, I suppose I should specify. There were three or four eponymous albums of his, depending on the country.

I’m talking about the THIRD Peter Gabriel album, the one originally released on Mercury Records in the US in May 1980. “The album is also often referred to as Melt owing to its cover photograph by Hipgnosis.”

At FantaCo, where I started working that very same month, many of the tracks were on heavy rotation on the radio station WQBK-FM, Q104, which was on in the store constantly.

I also heard songs from his first two albums. From Car, Solsbury Hill and Here Comes the Flood. Scratch featured On the Air. And from the last Genesis album featuring Gabriel, the title track of The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway.

Melt

Intruder uses the “gated drum” sound of Phil Collins, Gabriel’s former bandmate on Genesis.

No Self Control is well described on a blog about the music of Kate Bush by Christine Kelley.

Start is a snippet leading to I Don’t Remember. “Gabriel jokingly summarised the album’s themes as ‘The history of a decaying mind.'”

Family Snapshot was inspired in part by An Assassin’s Diary (1973). Gabriel said it was “a really nasty book” by Arthur Bremer, who had attempted to assassinate George Wallace in 1972.

And Through the Wire the closest to a straight-up rocker, but with a distorted vocal.

Side Two starts with Games Without Frontiers, also well described by Kelley. We knew the line was “jeux san frontières” but the FantaCo running joke was that it was really “she’s so funky, yeah.”

Not One of Us is another song of alienation.

Lead a Normal Life – “Atlantic Records (the label for the first two albums) didn’t want to put [Melt] out at all…” Atlantic head Ahmet Ertegun wondered “‘Has Peter been in a mental hospital?’ They thought I’d had a breakdown and recorded a piece of crap … I thought I’d really found myself on that record, and then someone just squashes it. I went through some primordial rejection issues.”

Biko – I was vaguely aware of the murder of South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko in 1977. But this haunting track gave the incident the worldwide attention it deserved.

Deutsches

For Christmas 1980, our boss Tom at FantaCo gave us each a foot-long cube, which turned out to be six LPs. One of mine was Ein deutsches Album, “released in July 1980… Gabriel sang German vocals on top of completely new recorded instrumental and backing vocal tracks.” I loved it.

After that, I became a big Peter Gabriel fan, buying the first two albums, then Security and ITS German counterpart (1982), with the hit Shock the Monkey. Plays Live came out in 1983. The massively successful So album was released in 1986.

In October 2001, my wife and I were in Cherry Valley, NY, trying to get away from the world. A store was playing Afro Celt Sound System’s Volume 3: Further in Time. I recognized vocals by Gabriel (When You’re Falling) and also Robert Plant. I bought it.

Peter Gabriel turns 70 today. Links to songs throughout.

Mary Elizabeth “Sissy” Spacek turns 70

Recommended: In the Bedroom; The Straight Story

Although I never saw either Carrie or Coal Miner’s Daughter, I’ve seen Sissy Spacek in a slew of movies, so many that I had to look them up on IMDB.

Three Women (1976). Robert Altman film about three women in a western desert town. It was creepy, as I recall.

Missing (1982). It was a Costa-Gavras (Z) political drama in a South American country on the precipice of a military coup. American activist Charles Horman (John Shea) suddenly disappears. Spacek plays his wife Beth, who can find no information from either the new rulers or from the American consulate. Her father-in-law Ed Horman (Jack Lemmon) joins Beth in the search, despite their political differences. A real thriller.

Crimes of the Heart (1986). “Three sisters from a rather dysfunctional family in the South are gathered together for a birthday. One can’t seem to stay in a relationship for long, one was just released on bond for shooting her senator husband, and the other is an aspiring actress.” Well-acted but stagey, if memory serves.

The Nineties

The Long Walk Home (1990). The Mongomery (AL) bus boycott of 1955/1956 was “a decided inconvenience for Miriam Thompson (Sissy Spacek), a well-to-do white woman. Now, Miriam must drive to the black section of town to pick up her maid Odessa Cotter (Whoopi Goldberg) and bring her to work.” I recall it as pretty good, albeit sober.

JFK (1991). Spacek played the wife of the crusading district attorney wife of the Louisiana district attorney Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner), who is skeptical that Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby each acted alone. Liz Garrison served as a sounding board, I believe.

If These Walls Could Talk (1996 TV movie). An anthology “about three disparate women coping with unexpected pregnancies.” Spacek is in the middle section in 1974 “when Barbara, who already has four kids, tackles another one. A pretty good, if overly earnest, film.

The Straight Story (1999). A G-rated David Lynch film about “a trip made by 73-year-old Alvin Straight (Richard Farnsworth in his final role) from Laurens, Iowa, to Mt. Zion, Wis., in 1994 while riding a lawnmower. The man undertook his strange journey to mend his relationship with his ill, estranged, 75-year-old brother Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton). Spacek plays Alvin’s daughter Rose. This was REALLY good and quite touching.

21st Century

In the Bedroom (2001). “A New England couple’s college-aged son dates an older woman who has two small children and an unwelcome ex-husband.” This is Spacek’s best performance among the ones on this list. “Quietly wrenching…”

Tuck Everlasting. I’m fairly certain I saw it, but the details of the book adaptation are failing me.

North Country. I recall that Charlize Theron was quite good as “Lori Jenson, who took a job at a Minnesota iron mine in 1975. She and other female miners endured harassment from male co-workers.” But I’m not remembering Spacek.

Get Low (2009). I saw the movie. Fortunately, I wrote about it, and the details are refreshed.

The Help (2011). She played the old woman pushing back against her daughter’s bigotry.

Sissy Spacek turns 70 on Christmas Day 2019.