Some Favorite Recordings

What a shame. Ry Cooder was my conduit to a lot of great American roots music.
Here he does a spot on version of Blind Blake's Police Dog Blues.

Blake was the premier Piedmont or East Coast blues man with a style that featured very advanced finger picking technique.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Piedmont_blues
This arrangement was my go-to piece at open mics.

The first time I heard Billy Williams sing, he irritated me. I love him now.

Thanks for Ry Cooder music. Good artist.

when I was living in the South, I saw a concert with Cooder and Leo Kottke. I was in heaven. Those guys can play. Only thing was that Kottke used to get lost in rambling licks that he probably just made up while playin. SOmetimes great, sometimes, not so much.

right on the money about Kottke.Ya had to be a true fan.

I'm also an unabashed fan of RY Cooder and Leo Kottke.

The song won the first C&W Grammy
Grady Martin (Nashville sideman)provided the lovely guitar intro.
Here's his version of the song.

True. Marty used to drive through El Paso and he would get these feelings and then one day wrote down El Paso in one sitting. So I read some place.

Tim Hardin was the writer of this song and sings this version. I like Bobby Darrin's version; however, this version to me has more authenticity..and more ... feeling:

I prefer Bobby Darin's version. That said, I like and admire Tim Hardin. You don't hear much about it these days. He had a hit with a Bobby Darin song.

My first big record, purchased by me in 1959. A guy at work sneered, that's parlor music..
To me, it picks up in interest..
In 1959, at seventeen, I was amazed by it.

Vladimir Horowitz; Arturo Toscanini: Tchaikovsky: Piano Concerto #1 1943
Live

Quoting the album cover - which is a little tired looking by now -

Was it only sixteen years ago? On April 25, 1943, The New York Times reported the beginning of an Allied drive against the Axis Afrika Corps in Tunisia: a few miles only were gained in the north. Five United States air raids were made in the Solomons. It was the day of Shakespeare's birthday, which was celebrated by a broadcast from Stratford-on-Avon, transmitted to a crowd of three thousand enjoying the warmth of the first spring days on Central Park Mall. On the afternoon of April 25 there took place a concert in Carnegie Hall which was probably unique in the history of concert-giving. To gain admission to this concert, the audience could not buy tickets. Admission was to be had only by the purchase of War Bonds.

The artists who gave this concert - as a patriotic gesture and without remuneration -- were Arturo Toscanini and Vladimir Horowitz. The ofchestr was the NBC Synphonny. It was an all-Tchaikovsky program.

An additional feature of the event was the aurtioning, for the highest bid, again in War Bonds, of the manuscript of Maestro Toscanini's own orchestration of the Star Spangled Banner.

The result was that eleven million dollars were raised.
None of us who had been at Carnegie Hall that afternoon has ever forgotten that hour, The electricity and excitement always present in a Toscanini or a Horowitz concert were here charged with enormous extra voltage, an emotion which derived from the high purpose of the event.

This emotion must in turn have ated on the artists. The secret of an exceptionally great musical performance lies in an interaction in which music, the artist and the audience itself each plays a part. How this greatness comes about, what is the alchemy that fuses the various elements, that no on can explain. One can only feel it when it happens. So it was that the performance of the Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto, a performance which was familiar to man in the audience and had aroused them to enthusiasm previously, this time took on and extra measure of inspiration. The response to it was almost one of frenzy.

It is fortunate that this performance did not die with the last notes heard on April 25, 1943. A recording of it exists.

This is it.
/end clip
George R. Marek
Vice President and General Manager, RCA Victor Record Division


There were two commercial in this, which, of course, drove me nuts.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ksVduF2rr4[youtube/]

oops -

(youtube)https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4ksVduF2rr4(/youtube)

you meant to use brackets not parens

I did, in the first one.

I see what I did - I put the slash in the wrong place in the first one. Doh!

That's good music, too, osso.

three of my favorites have something in common. Can you guess what it is?