On February 26, 1932 in Kingsland, Arkansas, the fourth child of Ray Cash and Carrie Cloveree,, J.R. was born. When J.R, joined the Air Force he was told he couldn’t use just initials, so he used John R. Cash. In 1956 when he began recording for Sun Records he began using Johnny Cash… and the rest of the story we know, but we’ll let Wikipedia sum it up….
Today is Al Kooper’s birthday. Al was born in 1944 and while none of his solo records or the first Blood, Sweat and Tears albums can’t be found in my collection. Super Session with Mike Bloomfield (Side 1)and Stephen Stills (side 2), The Live Adventures of Mike Bloomfield and Al Kooper are there. Also there are the album he recorded with Shuggie Otis and Rekooperation.Here’s some background on Al Kooper from Wiipedia….
So each time one of my children’s birthdays roll around I joke that I feel like another year older and it’s not even my birthday. Well this year with birthday celebrations for my grandchildren Zoe and Oliver the number of days per year that I feel another year older has soared to seven – if I include my own birthday!! Luckily, unlike a dog I still only age one year at a time and not seven!!
So last night as I was looking through old posts from Me, Myself, Music and Mysteries I kept seeing old morning music posts.When I first started blogging those posts were a staple of my blog. They were often just videos of musicians that I like, sometimes it was connected to the musicians birthday, while other times it was connected to a day in music or the artists birthday. When I looked down the list of jazz musicians who share birthdays today I saw Van Morrison’s name and thought that today would be a good day to re-introduce morning music!! The jukebox in my head immediately began to play Morrison’s “Tupelo Honey”. So I decided to make that today’s morning music! It could have been “Brown-Eyed Girl” for my brown-eyed girl, but hey “Tupelo Honey” works, too!
So I’ve spent the last 30 minutes or so thinking and trying to find videos in celebration of Richie Furay‘s birthday. Then I go to Wikipedia and see that Richie was born of May 9th, so I guess those thoughts will have to wait a few days! Today is, however, the birthday of David LaFlamme of It”s a Beautiful Day. Here’s some background for those of you who may have never heard of David from Wikipedia:
Everyone has them,you know those days when things happen that you can’t control, that scare you to death. Two of those days for me involve my two oldest sons,Nicholas and Andrew. The first day was the day that Nick had his seizure.He was 21 months old and it was just a typical day. My wife fed him spaghetti for lunch and put him down on the bed for a nap. She came downstairs and in a little while she heard a thud. When she picked him up, there was no response, she quickly called me at work. When I got home and picked him up, it was the scariest moment of my life, as I held him and talked to him, and got no response. He was breathing and awake but that was it! We rushed him to the pediatricians and after an evaluation, we were told that he had a seizure, and should be hospitalized. He was sent to close by Rancocas Valley Hospital and when he got settled he was sleeping and stable. I went home and got some books and other things. At around six that evening, he woke up, sat up and started to play with his books, like nothing happened. We were told that the seizure was localized in the right side of his brain, and there did not seem to be permanent damage. He was though put on medication for two years, because a another seizure could be life-threatening. Luckily he never had another one!!
So last week’s babysitting went like this – easy Zoe (2 hrs) on Monday, Mister Go-go gadget legs Oliver on Tuesday (10 hrs)and back to Zoe on Wednesday for six hours – actually all of th days were fairly easy! I say “fairly” because with Oliver nothing is ever REALLY easy with Oliver!
So last year the FreeWheelin/ Music Safari discovered that on this date in 1975, a very talented world fusion guitarist, Shahab Tolouie was born! That’s him at the start of this post, he is pictured with a guitar of his creation an instrumentally speaking a very cool guitar. Well technically speaking, it is not a guitar it is a
Houston Person is a jazz artist whose name I have seen on the JazzWeek Chart, as recently as this week. His latest release as a leader The Melody Lingers On is now at # 9. I had yet to listen to any of his music until last week. To be more specific, I listened to two albums on his birthday, November 1oth. The albums nI listened to were Something in Common from 1989 and Now’s the Time. Now’s the Time, released in 1990, was recorded with legendary bassist Ron Carter. Both albums were released on the Muse label. They were recorded at the Van Gelder Studios with Rudy Van Gelder serving as the engineer. I have listened mostly to Now’s the Time and for me it is simply an incredible album, just the two of them, a bass and a saxophone blending together, soaring alone!
