metube, part 3

Here's an email I received via The Princeton Review a few weeks back:

I am a teacher for the School District of Palm Beach County, FL. I am participating in a technology seminar wherein we are expected to produce an enhanced podcast. I found your wonderful vocabulary songs, and illustrated one with video and text for my students (8th grade language arts).... I am attaching a copy for you to review.

Thanks!

Tom Felt
Bak Middle School of the Arts

And now I, likewise, am attaching a copy for your review, dear reader. Check it out!


PS Many thanks to Tom Felt for his excellent work on this!

metube, part 2

More metube! Here's a video for one of my Princeton Review Vocab Minutes. It was shot by middle-school students in Gregory Andree's class up at the Old Rochester Regional High School in Mattapoisett, MA. Now this is cool!!!

metube, part 1

This video was made 22 years ago. I last saw it about 21 years ago and was fairly confident I would never see it again. Damn you, youtube!!!

Underappreciated Geniuses, Vol. 4: Sister Rosetta Tharpe

My good friend Mark introduced me to the music of Sister Rosetta Tharpe back when we were still in college. I believe his exact words were "You ought to check this out" as he cued up "Don't Take Everybody to Be Your Friend." Ought to check it out, indeed. Me and everyone else in the world.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe was a great gospel musician. In her day, she was tremendously famous, second among gospel artists maybe to Mahalia Jackson but otherwise to no one. She was a star of the New York jazz clubs and the church circuit alike, and for good reason: there was nobody else remotely like her, and few as good.

Sister Rosetta Tharpe's music will probably sound instantly familiar to you, and not because you've heard it before--few folks other than music geeks and listeners to weekend left-of-the-dial radio programs deejayed by music geeks have much opportunity to hear her music anymore. While many of her recordings are currently in print (thanks in part to the use of a performance clip in the movie Amelie), as often as not they are hardly available, or not at all.

But with its rat-a-tat-tat guitar playing, its bluesy singing, the absolutely electric energy of the performance… you will recognize this music because it is rock and roll, recorded well over a decade before anyone had ever heard of Elvis Presley, before anyone had coined the phrase 'rock and roll.' Listen to Sister Rosetta Tharpe play guitar and you hear the roots of Chuck Berry. Listen to her sing and you know whose shoulders Aretha Franklin stands on.

Her music is exhilarating and it is endlessly rewarding. It is full of passion and humor and, of course, faith. It is foundation music, the music I return to over and over, every time the most recent flavor of the month has lost its allure. You can check it out with the budget CD The Gospel of Blues or you can order up a bigger serving with the budget import box set Original Soul Sister. There's also an excellent biography of Sister Rosetta called Shout Sister Shout!. Start with the music, find your way to the book.

Check her out for yourself.

Underappreciated Geniuses, vol. 1: Betty Hutton

I have only seen one Betty Hutton movie, and it's probably the only one in which she doesn't sing. It's Miracle of Morgan Creek, and it's one of Preston Sturges' greats, which makes it one of the best movie comedies ever. This, by the way, is an empirical fact, not an opinion.

Truth be told, I don't remember Hutton's performance all that well. I'm sure she's great, but the movie really belongs to Eddie Bracken. If I'd never stumbled across Hutton's work outside that movie, I probably would never have given her another thought. Fortunately, a local DJ is a huge fan and she plays a lot of Betty Hutton. It wasn't long before I'd joined the fan club.

When she performs her signature material, Betty Hutton is probably the closest approximation ever of a living cartoon character. She is Spike Jones on speed, pure energy, liable to explode at any second. She's completely over the top, but unlike today's frenzied clowns, there's nothing ironic in her performance; she inhabits a refreshingly postmodern-free zone. All she's doing is selling a song like it's a life-or-death matter to get you to smile.

The disc Somebody Loves Me is a great introduction to her music. Not only does it include many of her biggest and best records--"Doctor, Lawyer, Indian Chief," "Murder! He Says," "It's Oh So Quiet" (later covered by Bjork)--but also some really wonderful examples of her serious singing. Check out her version of "It Had to Be You" and tell me this lady couldn't have been one of the best crooners of her time.

A performance is worth a thousand words, right? Check this out.

Sam Cooke

Every time I think I've got a beat on Sam Cooke, that I know just where he sits in my personal pantheon, the guy reemerges in my consciousness and forces me to once again reevaluate, and once again upgrade, my opinion.

A little background: like most folks, I first came to know Sam Cooke through his big hits, a deep catalogue of mid-tempo love songs that generally fall into the I-IV-I-V or I-vi-IV-V chord patterns. Wading through such pleasant but lightweight fare as "Chain Gang," "Only Sixteen," "Wonderful World," and "Everybody Loves to Cha Cha Cha," I was naturally floored by the quality of the guy's voice and singing but was equally underwhelmed by the material. I was ready to group him with Nat King Cole: massive talent with a pop career dragged down by middle-of-the-road songs and arrangements.

Then I heard Night Beat, a small-combo album on which Cooke sings a bunch of blues and torch ballads. I was floored; here, finally, was an album of material that reached the level of his talent. If you do not own a copy of this album, stop reading right now and get yourself a copy immediately. Seriously, I'll wait. [patient tapping of shoe]

Night Beat sent me searching for more such music; surely a vein producing such pure gold had to be just the beginning of a rich motherlode. But alas, it was not to be; there's just no other Sam Cooke album like it, at least not in print. At this point I figured I had Sam Cooke pegged as "that guy who made one great album and could have made a lot more if he had only been less attached to his hit-making formula." Which, in fact, extended the Nat King Cole anthology, as Cole's early trio recordings are every bit as breathtaking as Night Beat.

And then, just a few weeks ago, I saw this clip of Cooke singing "Basin Street Blues" on the Mike Douglas Show, and remembered once again what an astonishingly good singer he was. The experience compelled me to pick up keep movin' on (on which the song appears), a collection of the final 23 recordings of Cooke's career, and now, once again, I am reevaluating Sam Cooke. There's a lot of amazing material here--a nifty, up-tempo 4/4 reworking of "Tennessee Waltz," a great little "Shake"-like obscurity called "Yeah Man" (which Arthur Conley later revised and rerecorded as "Sweet Soul Music"--thanks to Mikey for this correction--ed.), "Good News," "Rome Wasn't Built in a Day," "Good Times," "Meet Me at Mary's Place," and of course the jaw-dropping "A Change is Gonna Come," Cooke's self-penned reaction to "Blowin' in the Wind" and the winner of that contest in a first-round knockout. The singing here is freer and more emotive than anything I've heard from Cooke except for perhaps his early gospel recordings with the Soul Stirrers. While you're buying Night Beat, grab a copy of this one too; hell, it's only $9.99, how can you possibly go wrong? You can't.

Perusing Sam Cooke's catalogue at the All Music Guide, I see a ton of Sam Cooke material that's out of print. I hope they bring it all out. I don't know how much higher my opinion of the guy can get, but I'm anxious to find out.