1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die by Tom Moon

1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die by Tom Moon

Author:Tom Moon
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Published: 2008-12-28T16:00:00+00:00


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GENRE: Jazz. RELEASED: 1989, Timeless. KEY TRACKS: “You’ve Changed,” “Yellow Dolphin Street,” “If You Could See Me Now,” “Manuel,” “Una gitarra.” CATALOG CHOICES: Boleros, Vol. 1; The Music I Like to Play, Vol. 1. NEXT STOP: Chick Corea: My Spanish Heart. AFTER THAT: Gonzalo Rubalcaba: Solo.

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An Introduction to a True Original

The Viking of Sixth Avenue

Moondog

This is the first decent anthology devoted to the zany multi-instrumentalist Louis Hardin, who called himself Moondog and was happiest performing his “symphonies” and strange fusions of jazz, classical, and Native American chant on the streets of New York. In a Viking suit. In all kinds of weather. He was one of Manhattan’s most famous and enigmatic street fixtures, and over the decades his acquaintances and champions included Charlie Parker, Igor Stravinsky, Janis Joplin, and Frank Zappa.

As a child growing up in Arkansas and then Wyoming, Moondog (1916–1999) went with his father to an Arapaho Sun Dance ceremony. This left a deep impression; much of his music is set to the steady thrumming of the tom-tom, an integral part of Native American music. Moondog also incorporated the ritual chanting patterns of ceremonial music from around the world, and after moving to New York in the late ’40s, began integrating elements of jazz—though he told an interviewer that some of his esteemed solos, like the one on “Lament I: Bird’s Lament,” were actually written out note for note.

A happy outsider who largely disdained traditional performance outlets like clubs and concert halls, Moondog did manage to document his ideas on records for several labels (Joplin, who recorded his madrigal “All Is Loneliness” on the debut album by her band, Big Brother and the Holding Company, helped get him a contract with Columbia). His compositions have the wild inventiveness of music made by a child: There are trancelike explosions of interconnected rhythm, and catcalls from bleating and shouting saxophones, and fantastical cartoonmusic whiz-bangs. Most of the time Moondog overdubbed all the parts himself, re-creating the slightly wacky house band he heard in his head. It’s some of the most inventive music the New York streets ever produced.



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