So my usual routine in the morning consists of reviewing several this day in history and music sites. Then I think about the events, birthday, etc, that catch my eye and decide while exercising and taking my shower what to write about and how the music may tie into my musical library. Today two things caught my eye. The first was the birthday of Ron Carter the jazz bassist and the second was that on today’s date the first Grammys were awarded! So as I thought about Ron Carte I thought about how he was the bass player on probably over half of the jazz albums that are in my collection. So I decided I would go with today being his birthday…… then I came down to write the post and I discovered that, in fact, today is NOT Ron Carter’s birthday rather his 76th birthday will be celebrated on May 4th. So I thought ok, I’ll go with the first Grammys. Then I read this:
The very first Grammy Awards are held in New York City, and the winners, to one’s surprise, have nothing to do with rock and roll, or, sometimes, even the categories they were nominated in: for some reason, the Champs’ “Tequila” wins Best R&B Song, but Record of the Year goes to “Volare” by Domenico Modugno, while Henry Mancini’s Peter Gunn soundtrack LP wins Album of the Year. (From About.com:Today in Oldies Music History)
Hum, not a lot of connections to my musical library there …. I do think that guitar wiz Scotty Anderson does have a version of the Peter Gunn Theme on his album Triple Stop… .. Anyway for those of you who may be interested here’s Domenico Modugno’s “Volare” Or if you prefer here”s Dean Martins version!
As for me I’m going to listen to some Ron Carter even though it’s not his birthday! The amazing thing that I read about Ron Carter this morning was that:
His appearances on over 2,500 albums make him one of the most-recorded bassists in jazz history, along with Milt Hinton, Ray Brown and Leroy Vinnegar
See I told you he’s on almost every jazz album I have! Anyway, here he is with the Miles Davis Quartet featuring …. Ron Carter Bass, Herbie Hancock, piano, Wayne Shorter, sax and Tony Williams on drums! Wow!
