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Monday 2 January 2012

No man can serve two masters

Music is infectious and pernicious.

I listened again to the Wynton Marsalis link at the end of the previous post. Even better fun second time round. In the sidebar I noticed Wynton had done Embraceable You and that set me trawling Charlie Parker’s version which he’d needed a quart of whiskey to complete. Found one but it wasn’t the one.

However I noticed (again in the sidebar) that the late pop singer, Amy Winehouse, had done Tenderly. But that’s a standard, poppers usually avoid standards. Tried that and was moderately impressed by her bluesing her way through the first eight bars accompanied by Jools Holland. But I couldn’t leave it at that and had to listen to Sarah Vaughan who showed how it really should be done.

Listened, too, to Sarah’s Summertime but interrupted her on a sudden impulse to hear that ultimate-quintessence-of-cool version by the Emperor of Cool, Miles Davies. Then I went on to other stuff which I’ve completely forgotten.

I notice I’ve done 30 posts for Tone Deaf, roughly one a day. But it could easily have been 60. With music, I post one sub-subject and a hydra-headed half- dozen springs up immediately. The temptation is enormous since the alternative – writing Blest Redeemer – is like waiting for charity in Times Square. Slow progress. Three thousand words in five weeks. Since I have no plot summary each sentence I write has imaginary links with as-yet-unwritten passages ten-thousand or twenty-thousand words ahead.

Far easier to write a comparison between LvB’s fourth and fifth piano concerti which is, in fact, more or less complete in my head as I type. Oh dear, din-din time.

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