This is like John Barrymore playing Hamlet—an auspicious pairing of genius performer and masterpiece. Written between 1878 and 1881, the Piano Concerto No. 2 is Brahms's most formidable offering for piano and orchestra, a dense work in which elements of symphonic form are utilized to fulfill the virtuoso-showcase imperatives of the concerto. It's a full meal of a piece, and Russian pianist Sviatoslav Richter (1915–1997), one of the most agile, electrifying pianists of his day, devours it. This recording, which was made during his first tour of the U.S. in 1960, takes Brahms to deeply emotional places.
Brahms gives each of the four movements the character of a Romantic-era symphony—the second is a tense scherzo (marked "allegro appassionato"), the third a doleful andante. There are fleet-fingered, technically demanding passages for the soloist—at times in the first two movements, Richter sounds like he's shoving the strings to the sidelines, insisting on center stage. When he gets there, he earns the attention by rattling out low-register chords, or dashing off commanding technical passages, including several rollicking descending lines that feel like a tumble down a long flight of stairs.
Richter's playing traverses extremes of sound. He's able to bring a superhuman force to the crescendos and executes jarring peaks that bring the first movement to a torrid close. But these heated flashes are followed almost immediately by calmer atmospheres, and whenever Brahms calls for a light touch, Richter provides it, insinuating himself into the fabric of the ensemble. The quieter moments (particularly those in the astoundingly serene third movement) showcase another Richter signature—the pearly, glowing "resonance" he coaxes from the piano. Even on this vintage live recording, that rare quality shines through.
Genre: Classical
Released: 1961, RCA
Key Tracks: First movement (Allegro Non Troppo); third movement (Andante).
Catalog Choice: The Four Symphonies, NDR Symphony (Gunther Wand, cond.)
Next Stop: Franz Liszt: Two Piano Concertos, Piano Sonata, Sviatoslav Richter, London Symphony Orchestra (Kiril Dondrashin, cond.)
After That: Ludwig van Beethoven: The Late Sonatas, Richard Goode.
Book Pages: 113–114
If Jimmy Page's guitar attack made Led Zeppelin the "Hammer of the Gods," then John McLaughlin's work with Mahavishnu Orchestra is the "Devil's Needlepoint." A cool Brit with Eastern spiritual leanings and seemingly limitless six-string technique, McLaughlin plays as if running an agility course, nailing small details while engineering statements that can take your breath away. His majestic lines, both the "written" melodies and the improvised derivations, come blazing across the soundscape. More than once you may hear one of these lurching riffs, which usually chug along in some odd time signature, and wonder "What kind of a mind thinks up stuff like this?"
Answer: A restless one. By the time he formed this group, McLaughlin had established himself as part of the rapidly coalescing jazz-rock-fusion movement, first with Miles Davis during the famed Live/Evil sessions, then as part of the Tony Williams Lifetime. On his website, McLaughlin recalls that after playing a gig with Davis in a Boston club in 1970, Davis told him it was time to form his own band. The guitarist listened: "If he says it, it must be true." The first incarnation of Mahavishnu was in place by Feburary 1971; this recording was made after just two weeks of live performances. It's clear that everyone's on the same mission: They crank the fusion rhythms that Davis pioneered up faster and louder, creating a whiplash-inducing pulse that seems forever on the verge of exploding.
Two adjacent tracks on this consistently amazing debut, "Noonward Race" and "A Lotus on Irish Streams," reveal Mahavishnu's range. The former is a panicky up-tempo whirlwind powered by virtuoso drummer Billy Cobham. It features solos by McLaughlin, who frequently relies on a double-neck guitar for extra textural possibilities, as well as violinist Jerry Goodman and keyboardist Jan Hammer, whose electric piano positively crackles.
The tune lasts six minutes, and after its tricky passages and all-out intensity, the tempoless "A Lotus" seems almost too tranquil. But this beautiful theme is demanding in a different way; it requires the five musicians to bring the cohesion of the up-tempo stuff to delicate, slowly unraveling themes. This they do with great care. Having established that they can play virtually anything, the group discovers that a different kind of profundity blossoms when they play nearly nothing.
Genre: Jazz
Released: 1971, Columbia
Key Tracks: "Meeting of the Spirits," "Noonward Race," "A Lotus on Irish Streams," "You Know You Know."
Catalog Choice: Birds of Fire
Next Stop: King Crimson: Larks' Tongues in Aspic
After That: Tortoise: TNT
Book Pages: 466–467
Explorers by nature, musicians are often the first to recognize the works discarded by previous generations. Many times their discoveries are private epiphanies, shared with a small circle of friends and fellow obsessives. Not so with Nuggets: In 1972, the record executive Jac Holzman and guitarist and music journalist Lenny Kaye (later an integral part of the Patti Smith Group) assembled what they considered the best American garage rock of the middle and late 1960s. Their initial double album (and the much-expanded four-CD box issued in 1998) spotlighted charttopping singles from one-hit wonders, minor regional bands that barely made the radio, and lots of devilishly inspired music in between.
The very first track, "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)," by the Electric Prunes, is a good example of the curatorial bent: A Top 20 hit in 1966, it's a snarly Stones-influenced rocker, with a hook that should have made it a classic. Its loose pulsating energy sets the tone for what follows: over a hundred three-minute blasts of attitude and musical acumen. Heard one after another, these disciplined and sometimes deliriously unruly tunes are footnotes to the Official History, the stuff that scholars focused on the Great Bands (the Beatles, Cream, the Rolling Stones, etc.) often miss. The Nuggets compilers aren't saying that the Swingin' Medallions are as important as Cream, just that the South Carolina band made a few songs like "Double Shot (of My Baby's Love)" that deserve a bit of bandwidth in the big time capsule.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1998, Rhino (Original issue 1972, Elektra)
Key Tracks: Sagittarius: "My World Fell Down." Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band: "Diddy Wah Diddy." The Electric Prunes: "I Had Too Much to Dream (Last Night)." The Sir Douglas Quintet: "She's About a Mover." The Knickerbockers: "Lies."
Next Stop: The Sir Douglas Quintet: Mendocino
After That: The Dukes of Stratosphear: Psonic Psunspot
Book Pages: 816–817
During the Depression years, one of the ways people in New York made ends meet was to hold informal house concerts featuring well-known musicians, usually piano players. These "rent parties" were sometimes uproarious events. One star of the circuit, the pianist Willie "The Lion" Smith, recalled that "about a hundred people would crowd into a seven-room flat until the walls bulged and the main door was often split wide open."
Through these informal, off-the-books affairs, Smith (1897–1973) and others developed sizable reputations for rocking out—while refining the intricate conventions of "stride piano," which fused elements of ragtime, the blues, and boogie-woogie. This is music of superhuman dexterity: On many of the performances in this anthology, Smith can be heard operating as a one-man rhythm section, pumping out a repetitive bass line while also dishing sharp, hard-swinging chords. It's music of synapse-frying intricacy, but rarely is that the first impression: A gregarious entertainer and raconteur, Smith always sounds like he's just having fun.
This anthology gathers recordings Smith made during his peak years. The Newark, New Jersey, native began playing professionally after returning from combat duty in World War I (where, he told people later, he earned that "Lion" nickname for his bravery), and quickly found himself in demand. The early tracks are drawn from sessions he did as a sideman, backing the clarinetist Mezz Mezzrow and others. Later highlights include pieces from Smith's group called His Cubs— among them his original "Echoes of Spring" (1935), which has a sweet, almost disarming lyricism. Then come piano solos like the aptly named "Finger Buster" (1939), which find Smith contrasting beautiful rhapsodic melodies with high-energy ragtime-derived impromptus that utilize the piano's full range. These might sound quaint today, but they startled plenty of musicians at the time, influencing such essential voices as Duke Ellington (who wrote "Portrait of the Lion" for him) and Thelonious Monk.
Genre: Jazz
Released: 1988, Living Era
Key Tracks: "Harlem Joys," "Echoes of Spring," "The Swampland Is Calling Me," "Strange Fruit"
Catalog Choice: The Lion and the Lamb
Next Stop: Albert Ammons and Meade "Lux" Lewis: The First Day
After That: Various Artists: Stride Piano Summit
Book Pages: 720–721
Like many DJs, Norman Cook—the journeyman former rocker who makes dance music under the name Fatboy Slim—builds fine, wiggly grooves out of tiny bits of old records. Equally important to the beats on on this breakthrough, though, is his sense of drama. Consider his tune "Everybody Needs a 303," which uses the bass line and vocal hook from Edwin Starr's "Everybody Needs Love." After it's been percolating for a few minutes, the drums nearly vanish into an oceanic wave of white noise. Then, slowly, the sounds clarify—we hear a chanting crowd in a stadium, followed by a bubbling synthesizer figure that morphs from a round blob to a knife-edge as it repeats. When the vocal sample returns, it's chopped into ever-smaller pieces as a rumble intensifies beneath it. Then the snare drum barrels in, surging and rolling with such power it threatens to explode the speakers as it crests.
That little episode lasts over a minute, and changes everything. When the groove finally returns, it travels at a different velocity. The drums seem bigger and better than before. Experience this crescendo (or one of the many others on Better Living) on a dance floor, and you may feel it as a timed-release drug, spreading a sudden wave of euphoria.
Cook first attracted attention as the bassist of the (very smart) British jangle-pop band the Housemartins. Applying the tricks of the songwriter trade to his club incarnation, he creates instrumental passages that are riveting in ways much repetitive dance music is not, studded with interesting chord changes and other sound-collage manipulations. Along with its follow-up, You've Come a Long Way, Baby, this record influenced much of the popular electronica of the 1990s. The rippling "Give the Po' Man a Break" sounds like the template for every track on Moby's hit Play (1999), while "Going out of My Head" finds Cook showing how even harsh rock power chords (courtesy of the Who's "I Can't Explain") can, with the proper sorcery, wind up feeling groovy.
Genre: Electronica
Released: 1996, Astralwerks
Key Tracks: "Santa Cruz," "Going out of My Head," "Everybody Needs a 303," "Give the Po' Man a Break"
Catalog Choice: You've Come a Long Way, Baby. The Housemartins: London 0 Hull 4.
Next Stop: The Chemical Brothers: Dig Your Own Hole
After That: Prodigy: The Fat of the Land
Book Pages: 271–272
In stride-style piano, the left hand leaps wildly between bass notes and chords plinked in the center of the keyboard. Meanwhile, the right hand is busy doing cartwheels and backflips and triple-lutz reverses. The masters of the form, including father and self-proclaimed "dean" of stride James P. Johnson, make this juggling act sound like the most natural thing in the world.
Johnson (1894–1955) brought stride to a rococo peak in the late 1920s. He wrote fanciful inventions streaked with childlike optimism and an irreverent sense of humor—one characteristic tune is "The Charleston." He also wrote intricate "suites," like "Yamekraw: A Negro Rhapsody," in which he contrasts brief episodes of improvisation with more elaborate composed-in-advance themes. He could play lightning-fast tempos—jazz historian Marshall Stearns once described a Johnson performance this way: "It was as if Franz Liszt had discovered ragtime."
A native of New Brunswick, New Jersey, Johnson first attracted attention in 1913, playing small clubs in the Hell's Kitchen neighborhood of New York. He began recording in 1920, often performing original tunes like "Harlem Strut" and "Jingles." He attracted a coterie of worshippers and students, including Fats Waller and Duke Ellington, and within a few years, he was among the city's celebrated instrumentalists, backing Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters. Johnson also found himself in demand as a composer—he wrote for nightclub revues and Broadway musicals. The writing took over his schedule, and Johnson didn't perform regularly again until the early 1940s, during a resurgence of interest in "traditional" jazz.
These recordings, made between 1942 and 1945, demonstrate Johnson's ability to rock the keyboard. Though his approach is a touch more refined, he's still gunning through demanding pianistic agility trials. His left hand doesn't always stride steadily—sometimes he'll sneak in an unexpected pause, or break the flow of a melody like "Sweet Lorraine" with unusual offbeat syncopations. These are kinetic. As he moves up the keyboard from the bass line, through the clipped chords, and into the delicious top octaves of the piano, Johnson pirouettes like a ballerina, making every note seem perfect.
Genre: Jazz
Released: 1996, Smithsonian Folkways
Key Tracks: "Liza," "Jersey Sweet," "The Dream," "St. Louis Blues," "Twilight Rag."
Catalog Choice: King of Stride Piano, 1918–1944.
Next Stop: Willie "The Lion" Smith and Luckey Roberts: Harlem Piano
After That: Dick Wellstood: Live at the Sticky Wicket
Book Pages: 401–402
Opera began in the 1600s as an attempt to revive Greek tragedy, and it's been a tug-of-war between words and music ever since. The opera world has suffered through works at both extremes—recklessly wordy narratives in search of musical anchor, and gorgeous music lacking plot lines. Italy's Giacomo Puccini (1858–1924) achieved a very happy medium with this, a breakthrough work considered his "perennial youthful" opera. Throughout his voyeuristic tour of Paris's starving-artist bohemia in the nineteenth century, Puccini sprinkles genuinely memorable melodies, songs that would be deeply affecting independent of any narrative. All of his musical decisions were informed by the necessities of the drama, and timed to last exactly as long as needed to advance the story, and no more.
The opera, the basic out-lines of which were hijacked for the '90s musical Rent, begins on Christmas Eve in Paris's Latin Quarter. The year is 1830, and the painter Marcello (sung by Rolando Panerai) and his roommate, the poet Rodolfo (Luciano Pavarotti), are shivering because there's no fuel to heat the fire. Rodolfo burns a manuscript he's been writing, there's a confrontation with the landlord, and after several other unemployed bohemians traipse through on their way to make merry at Café Momus, Rodolfo finds himself alone with neighbor Mimi, who's looking for a light for her candle. By the end of Act 1, which culminates in Rodolfo's beautiful aria, they've fallen in love. The three subsequent acts pick up melodic threads of the first, and sometimes evolve entirely new themes. The best of these, in the second act, is the aria of Musetta, a vixen whose appearance at the café is intended to make former lover Marcello jealous. In the third, an extended discussion finds Rodolfo explaining why he's no longer hot for Mimi, a position that later fills him with remorse; in the fourth, the dying Mimi (the sopranos seem to perish at the end of many Puccini operas) hallucinates a glimpse into the hereafter, aided by florid string counterlines.
This 1973 recording revolves around two of the premier Italian voices of recent times, the richly hued and effortlessly resonant tenor Pavarotti (heard here at a golden moment before he became a brand) and the perpetually-in-motion Mirella Freni, who makes a bewitching Mimi. A key player here is conductor Herbert von Karajan, who was, according to musicians, himself an extremely gifted actor. When he demonstrated a phrase to a singer, he was able to completely embody the nuances of the character—so much so that even the minor players seem to spring to life when they make their entrances. Of course Karajan has help in this regard—the coloristic splendor and firm gestures of the mighty Berlin Philharmonic.
Genre: Opera
Released: 1973, London
Key Tracks: Act 1: "O soave fanciulla"; Act 2: "Quando men vo"; Act 4: "Sono andati?"
Another Interpretation: RCA Symphony Orchestra (Thomas Beecham, cond.).
Catalog Choice: Turandot
Next Stop: Vincenzo Bellini, Norma
Book Pages: 619–620
Van Cliburn arrived at Carnegie Hall on May 19, 1958, as the classical-music equivalent of a rock star. The Fort Worth, Texas–based pianist had recently won the first Tchaikovsky competition in Moscow, besting his hosts at their national music during a tense moment of the cold war. Upon his return, he was greeted with a ticker tape parade in New York City (he remains the only classical figure to receive one), and shortly after became the first classical musician to sell a million copies of a recording.
At Carnegie Hall, Cliburn, then twenty-three, performed one of the most demanding pieces in the classical repertoire—Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 3 in D Minor, a work of dazzling interlocked melodies and sudden mood changes. He caught every curve of it: Throughout this live performance, Cliburn has a sparkle in his touch and a rare knack for making the intricate fingerwork sound like an impulsive caper. The accompanying Symphony of the Air, the New York ensemble that rose from the ashes of the NBC Symphony Orchestra, picks up his slight changes of emphasis. At times during the folk songs of the first movement, the ensemble seems to sway behind Cliburn, leaning into the supporting passages with exactly the same amount of elbow grease the pianist applies. The result is a transfixing, unified reading.
While the pace of the Rachmaninoff requires Cliburn to scamper, the Prokofiev Piano Concerto No. 3, the most frequently heard Prokofiev piano music, demands more drama. The pianist delivers the phrase that becomes the primary theme with a precise articulation that remains the industry standard—to this day, few snap off chords the way Cliburn does on this performance, which was recorded in 1960 with the lively Chicago Symphony Orchestra.
These recordings catch Cliburn at a lyrical peak. Alas, the adulation apparently got to him: Critics who'd heard him early on complained that his later interpretations never went anywhere different, that he essentially stopped growing as an artist. Which makes this recording all the more essential: It shows Cliburn at a moment when he was more than the culture's latest unlikely "It" boy. He was a musician in full control of his art.
Genre: Classical
Released: 1960, RCA
Key Tracks: Rachmaninoff: first movement (Allegro ma non tanto). Prokofiev: first movement (Andante).
Another Interpretation: Martha Argerich: The Great Pianists Series
Catalog Choice: Piano Concertos by Beethoven and Schumann
Next Stop: Richard Goode: Beethoven: The Late Piano Sonatas.
Book Pages: 173–174
When most music obsessives think about gospel, it's usually in the past tense, something that happened a long time ago. Of course some know about the reverent recordings Marion Williams (see p. 865) made in the 1980s and '90s, and about groups like the Fairfield Four and the Dixie Hummingbirds (see p. 226), whose legends have evolved over decades of gracious harmonizing. But in recent decades not much of interest has appeared under gospel—unless you count Kirk Franklin's dim R&B bait-and-switch routines.
Recorded in 2000, Spirit of the Century suggests that all gospel needed was a little bit of old-fashioned jukejoint energy. Here are freshly hopped-up versions of revivaltent standbys, including a version of "Amazing Grace" set to the chords of "The House of the Rising Sun." Also included are rock-era pieces cut from the same message-music cloth—notably the Rolling Stones' "I Just Wanna See His Face," treated as an up-tempo jubilee, and Tom Waits's yowling better-get-ready parade song "Jesus Gonna Be Here." They're sung by one of the most storied groups ever to travel the gospel highway: The Blind Boys of Alabama first formed in 1937 at a state school for the blind, and under the direction of Clarence Fountain became one of the powerhouse harmony acts, contributing important works in the '50s, '60s, and '70s.
Spirit, which features cameos from Ben Harper, harmonica virtuoso Charlie Musselwhite, and British bassist Danny Thompson, may not be the single best Blind Boys title available. But it's the one that set the group's comeback in motion. It's also the best illustration of the group's adaptability—its knack for savoring the riches of the epoch just past while hurtling, at fearless speed, into the new one. The spotlight throughout is on the singers, reverent voices who know exactly what to do when the man upstairs sends down a double dose of great-gosh-almighty.
Genre: Gospel
Released: 2001, Real World
Key Tracks: "Jesus Gonna Be Here," "Run On for a Long Time," "Amazing Grace," "Nobody's Fault but Mine," "Motherless Child"
Catalog Choice: Collectors Edition; The Gospel at Colonus
Next Stop: Ben Harper and the Blind Boys of Alabama: There Will Be a Light
After That: Mavis Staples: Have a Little Faith
Book Pages: 97–98
Kings of a head-nodding approach to groove that embraced all kinds of musical expression, De La Soul went from zero to 90 miles per hour faster than any other group in hip-hop history. One minute in 1988 they were Long Island unknowns with a penchant for nonsensical live performances. Months later they were being called the "future of rap."
Three Feet High and Rising is the album responsible for that change—twenty-four songs about flowers and peace and sex and body odor intercut with silly game show skits, with spontaneous raps offset by easygoing, thrown-together chanted refrains. Crucial to its sound is DJ Pasemaster Mase (Vincent Mason). Where most DJs capture a distinct slice of an old record and repurpose it for use as a backdrop, this deep thinker, with encouragement from producer Prince Paul (of Stetsasonic), gives the samples a starring role. He uses them as brief punch lines, wry counterpoints to the narratives, or as split-second "drop-ins" designed to change the mood. The snippets come fast and furious—sometimes MC Posdnous (Kelvin Mercer) will be running some idea down, and he'll stop, seemingly in mid-phrase, to let some surreal, seemingly incongruous old record finish his thought. These sounds include obscure disco singles, a longtime rap standby, as well as vintage jazz titles and hits by the Turtles, Steely Dan, and Johnny Cash. (The Turtles' "You Showed Me," which was used on "Transmitting Live from Mars," eventually got De La Soul into trouble; the band sued the rappers, in one of several cases that established the current precedent known as "sample clearance," in which the owner of the recording must grant permission before it is sampled.)
For all the psychedelic sound-twisting, De La Soul's breakthrough, which topped the Village Voice's annual Pazz and Jop critics' poll after its release, remains even more notable for its stances. Running alongside the inevitable (and often funny) rap-prowess proclamations are anti-drug messages and be-yourself anthems. De La Soul's embrace of nonconformity, on "Me, Myself, and I" and other tracks, may be its biggest contribution: Three Feet High and Rising made it supremely cool to be a hip-hop iconoclast.
Genre: Hip-Hop
Released: 1989, Tommy Boy
Key Tracks: "Me, Myself, and I," "Ghetto Thang," "Say No Go"
Catalog Choice: De La Soul Is Dead
Next Stop: A Tribe Called Quest: The Low End Theory
After That: Mos Def: Black on Both Sides
Book Pages: 217–218
Ritchie Valens has at least two significant rock-trivia claims to fame: The Los Angeles native is regularly identified as the "first Hispanic rock star." And because he was on the same ill-fated plane that killed the Big Bopper and Buddy Holly in 1959, he's one of rock's original road tragedies, forever part of "the day the music died."
Valens was seventeen at the time of the crash. He was just beginning to attract national attention as a hitmaker—he'd performed his first single "Come On, Let's Go," four months before on American Bandstand—and had only completed one full album of material. Valens's second single was "Donna," a ballad he wrote for his real-life girlfriend; "La Bamba" was on the flip side.
Where "Donna" resembles countless mildmannered '50s love songs, "La Bamba" is a shot of unrestrained wildcat exuberance unlike anything else. Building on the simple shooping beat of maracas, Valens creates a guitar melody for the ages, merging Chuck Berry–style riffs with the nimble lines of Mexican mariachi music—in fact, "La Bamba" is an adaptation of a traditional Mexican wedding song. Valens sings in phonetic Spanish (he'd been raised speaking only English), delivering the ridiculously catchy lines with such energy, no translation is necessary. This is one of the first instances of a rock song toppling language and cultural barriers.
Passionately covered by Los Lobos (see p. 453) for the 1987 Valens biopic of the same name, "La Bamba" is one of those watershed moments that tends to overshadow everything else. That's not fair to Valens, whose spry guitar inventions (see "Come On, Let's Go," "Bonie Maronie," and others on any decent compilation) exhibit a boundless energy that suggests had he missed that plane, Valens might really have gone on to shake up the music world.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1958, Del-Fi
Appears On: Rockin' All Night: The Best of Ritchie Valens
Another Interpretation: Los Lobos: La Bamba, Original Motion Picture Soundtrack
Next Stop: Chan Romero: Hippy Hippy Shake
After That: Los Lobos: How Will the Wolf Survive?
Book Page: 799
We tend to see figures like Ravi Shankar—the sitar master from India who is often called the first "world music" superstar—as on a life journey with music, constantly sharpening skills in pursuit of unattainable mastery. That may be a romantic notion. What if Shankar hit the grand slam on his first attempt at reaching a Western audience, way back in 1956? What if all the experience he acquired subsequently turned out to be not really necessary? What if, in his refinement of the intricate systems that underpin the Indian raga, he lost something more elusive than technical command—a sensibility that allowed him to get beyond notes and the intricate counting sequences in order to communicate in beams of pure energy?
This, Shankar's first long-playing recording, invites such questions. For while his later output is plenty awe-inspiring, there are sparks of almost para-normal divine inspiration pulsing through this music. You can hear that intensity in the thrashing chords of the twenty-eight-minute opener "Raga Jog," and in the morning devotional "Raga Ahir Bhairav," which Shankar explores in double-time and later triple-time bursts. The improvisations are humble yet audacious; they uphold the pattern and, at the same time, seek release from it. They're notable for incredibly precise feats of sitar pitch-bending, extravagant slurred swoops that extend half an octave or more, and are played with such microtonal control they might fry the synapses of anyone who ever tried to make a guitar "talk."
Although Shankar went on to make many breathtaking albums—including the well-known At the Monterey International Pop Festival and the George Harrison–produced Chants of India, which offers imaginative musical settings of Sanskrit chants from ancient Hindu scriptures—Three Ragas remains something special. In the liner notes to the remastered edition, Shankar acknowledges as much: "When I hear this I feel the spirit of freshness and the vigor of youth in it."
Genre: World, India
Released: 1956, World Pacific (Reissued 2000, Angel)
Key Tracks: "Raga Jog," "Raga Ahir Bhairav"
Catalog Choice: At the Monterey International Pop Festival; Chants of India
Next Stop: Nikhil Banerjee: Afternoon Ragas, Rotterdam 1970
Book Pages: 692–693
The voice on this recording belongs to a sixty-four-year-old man. Someone who, after a life of hard work, might have expected to be able to take life easy by this point. The Reverend Gary Davis (1896–1972) began performing professionally in the 1920s, and spent much of the '40s and '50s singing on Harlem street corners—in all kinds of weather, no doubt facing daily indifference. Though there's gruffness in Davis's voice, there's also great vigor, and a sense of mission. To hear him is to marvel at how someone who sang for so long under such less-than-perfect conditions was able to be persuasive—and at times utterly charming—well into his advancing years.
Davis grew up in Laurens, South Carolina, and taught himself guitar. By age twenty, he'd developed techniques that were eventually copied by many other so-called ragtime guitarists—Blind Lemon Jefferson and Blind Willie Johnson (see p. 400). Drawn to religion, Davis became an ordained minister in 1937, and that changed his repertoire: From then on he stayed away from secular blues and adapted gospel songs and spirituals with his own blues-tinged guitar touches.
His rediscovery during the '50s folk revival led to a stack of recordings. This one, made in three hours by the esteemed jazz engineer Rudy Van Gelder, features Davis solo. Whenever he reaches the end of his verses, he simply switches into a finger-picking style for spry guitar interludes. Among the lesser-known pieces tucked between gospel-blues standards is a wondrous expression of faith, "I Belong to the Band," and a song that sums up Davis's exemplary work ethic, "Lord, I Feel Just like Goin' On." He did that, for far longer than most would have. And we are richer for it.
Genre: Blues, Gospel
Released: 1960, Prestige/Bluesville
Key Tracks: "I Belong to the Band," "Twelve Gates to the City," "Lord, I Feel Just like Goin' On," "Tryin' to Get Home"
Catalog Choice: From Blues to Gospel; If I Had My Way (Early Home Recordings)
Next Stop: Blind Willie Johnson: Sweeter as the Years Go By
After That: Son House: The Original Delta Blues
Book Page: 207
Gabriel Fauré (1845–1924) was an innovator who had nothing against the past. His music goes its own moody way, gently and sneakily and with great sensitivity to what's come before. Operating with much less fanfare than his more famous contemporary countryman Claude Debussy, Fauré created music that is unfailingly demure; pleasantness covers every external surface, almost obscuring the emotions underneath. His pieces rarely venture to extremes, and you have to pay close attention to their inner workings—like the serpentine melody lines of the Pavane, which glance momentarily at different keys, then turn back—before the core of his art is revealed.
Fauré's central medium was song. His notion of art song conforms to classic ABA structure, but with simple, direct melody lines. Even his Requiem, among the most "songful" such works of all time, leans in that direction: It was intended to be a concert piece, not part of a church service, and has little of the counterpoint heard in the sacred music of Germanic composers. Check out the Pius Jesu movement, for example, where the lines spun so lovingly by Kiri Te Kanawa bear the faint hint of a parlor song, or a cabaret piece. Those looking for sobering piety may be disappointed; the rest of us can enjoy a stirring rhapsody, complete with those garish harp arpeggios that French composers couldn't seem to resist.
This version of the Requiem, with the Swiss-born Charles Dutoit conducting the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, honors Fauré's composerly demeanor while magnifying the reassuring beauty of his melodies. The Pavane, which is often programmed with Fauré's Requiem, is rendered methodically but not with a heavy hand. Also here is the incidental music Fauré wrote for the play Pelléas et Mélisande; it's the story Debussy adapted for his opera of the same name (see p. 213), and as such provides an interesting comparison of temperament. Debussy, the pioneering impressionist, insists on the primacy of music among the arts. Fauré's task is to simply provide atmosphere for the theatrical proceedings; it's a humbler job, and Fauré does it as though he's happy to exist somewhere in the mix, an equal among writers, poets, and painters.
Genre: Classical
Released: 1990, London
Key Tracks: Requiem: Sanctus, Libera Me. Pélleas: Andantino. Pavane.
Catalog Choice: Piano Quartets, Yo-Yo Ma et al.
Next Stop: Claude Debussy: La mer
After That: Maurice Ravel: Complete Works for Piano
Book Pages: 272–273
Cream crammed a lot into three years. Though it started as a blues-rock band—guitarist Eric Clapton formed the group in 1966 after leaving John Mayall's Bluesbreakers—it evolved quickly, first as a purveyor of imaginative singles ("I Feel Free"), then a leading exponent of psychedelic rock (British division). Cream's configuration—Clapton's guitar alongside Jack Bruce's bass and Ginger Baker's drums—established the idea of the "power trio," a lean machine in which every musician had a specific role. Its penchant for extended instrumental explorations made it the first jam band; Cream's epic journeys inspired similar trips by acts including the Grateful Dead and Santana, and obliterated the rules governing the structure and length of rock songs. Before Cream, rock was mostly about verse, chorus, and eight bars of guitar. After Cream, which sold fifteen million records during its run, it could be almost anything.
Disraeli Gears (1967), the band's second album, is the best snapshot of this multifaceted beast. Recorded just after the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper (see p. 60) shifted the emphasis to full albums rather than singles, it contains one of the all-time great rock riffs ("Sunshine of Your Love"), several enduring blues distillations ("Strange Brew" and "SWLABR," an acronym for "She Walks Like a Bearded Rainbow"). Crucially, it catches Clapton at his least affected. When he steps up to play, he is not the guitar god—as he'd been anointed during his time with the Bluesbreakers—but an open-minded melodist, intent on finding unexpected truths within the three-chord crunch.
Disraeli Gears was recorded in six days. It began under the direction of Atco president Ahmet Ertegun, who initially deemed "Sunshine of Your Love" to be "psychedelic hogwash," but after two days Ertegun ceded the production job to Felix Pappalardi. Instantly the tenor of the sessions changed: Pappalardi got the band to loosen up, added piles of guitar distortion, and helped Cream transform the blues standard "Lawdy Mama" into the heady "Strange Brew."
The expanded edition is worth hearing for the powerful original mono mixes and nine tracks recorded live at the BBC. These show that the trio, later known for long detours down the road marked Indulgence, could take wild swings and, at the same time, maintain enough discipline to honor the song.
Genre: Rock
Released: 1967, Atco (Expanded Edition 2004, Polydor)
Key Tracks: "Sunshine of Your Love," "Strange Brew," "Tales of Brave Ulysses"
Catalog Choice: Wheels of Fire; Cream Live
Next Stop: Blind Faith: Blind Faith
After That: Jimi Hendrix Experience: Are You Experienced
Book Pages: 191–192