Good evening, Kibitzers! I was sitting inside watching it snow on Saturday, and thinking about what to put in this diary. (None of the rest of this diary has anything to do with snow; I just like snow pictures. ➡️)
Anyway, I was musing about the loss of a few well-known people already this year, most notably Neil Peart of Rush, and I thought that surely, enough musicians were lost to us last year to fill a diary with music.
Well, sadly, enough were lost in 2019 to fill several diaries with music, but rather than crash your browser, I’m going to try and pick only one diary-full. Feel free to add favorites I may have missed in the comments. Many, though not all, of the people who ended up on the big list from which I picked came from this piece on ThisDayInMusic.com. (I am also limiting this to one embedded video per person. And then immediately breaking my own rule, but just once twice.)
Let’s open these sad proceedings with Robert Hunter (June 23, 1941 – September 23, 2019), since I know I am not the only Grateful Dead fan here. Here’s a thing I had not known before reading his linked Wikipedia page: Hunter is the name of his stepfather; his birth name was Robert Burns, and he was a direct descendant of the Scottish poet of that name.
I’d initially picked Ripple, of these two, because I think it’s technically the better performance. It sits in a better place for his voice than Brokedown Palace does, too. But I couldn’t close the tab on Brokedown Palace, and it kept making me cry every time, so that’s worth something too.
Irving Burgie (July 28, 1924 – November 29, 2019), also known as Lord Burgess, was a composer of Caribbean music, including 35 Calypso songs recorded by Harry Belafonte. He also wrote the lyrics of the National Anthem of Barbados. Rather than paste a Belafonte cover here, this is a tiny clip of the already-elderly composer, in an interview with a man writing about national anthems, giving a robust 45 seconds of his own song.
Mac Rebennack, Dr. John (November 20, 1941 – June 6, 2019): some people don’t need an introduction.
Jerry Lawson (January 23, 1944 – July 10, 2019) was the lead singer, arranger, and producer for a cappella group The Persuasions, a Brooklyn group discovered and promoted by Frank Zappa, who thereby did the world yet another service.
Ginger Baker (19 August 1939 – 6 October 2019) , drummer of Cream and Blind Faith. I picked this video because it showcases Ginger Baker well, but it showcases him so well, and so studiously ignores Eric Clapton, I’m kind of wondering if it was shot by Ginger Baker’s mom. (Also, it contains two consecutive passes at the same performance, the second one with video glitches, so you won’t miss anything if you quit after the first 5 minutes.)
Beverly “Guitar” Watkins (April 6, 1939 – October 1, 2019) began playing the blues professionally when she was in high school. She had an active career, playing with James Brown, B.B. King, and Ray Charles among others, but she didn’t gain recognition on her own until late in her life. Her debut CD was released in 1999, when she was 60. This is the title track. She stayed “back in business” for another two decades or so.
Ric Ocasek (March 23, 1944 – September 15, 2019) was the lead singer of The Cars, and wrote many of their songs, this being an example.
Johnny Clegg, OBE, OIS (7 June 1953 – 16 July 2019) moved to South Africa with his mother at age 6, and in his teens became fascinated by the language and music of the Zulu migrant workers in the suburbs of Johannesburg. He befriended a musician who taught him Zulu, along with the guitar and dance styles associated with the music. At age 15, he started getting arrested for violating apartheid laws by “congregating” with people of a different race. The mixed-race bands he formed could not legally play in public. In his view, “Politics found us.”
Asimbonanga is a song he wrote for Nelson Mandela while Mandela was imprisoned in South Africa. There’s also a chorus each addressed to Stephen Biko, Victoria Mxenge, Neil Aggett, “and all the others” killed by the government in that era.
Asimbonanga
Asimbonang ‘umfowethu thina (we have not seen our brother)
Laph’ekhona (In the place where he is)
Laph’wafela khona (In the place where he died)
The song was banned in South Africa, and it got the band harassed by the police and repeatedly arrested. The government did not, however, prevail in the long run.
Leon Redbone (August 26, 1949 – May 30, 2019): I wrote about Leon Redbone when he died, but that does not at all discourage me from including him here.
Dave Bartholomew (December 24, 1918 – June 23, 2019) was a New Orleans musician, composer, producer, and everything else. Many of his best-known songs were hits for Fats Domino. (Blueberry Hill is not his composition, but I thought this short clip of the two of them playing together for fun was more interesting than commercial recordings.)
Eddie Money (March 21, 1949 – September 13, 2019), né Mahoney, grew up in Levittown, and initially joined the New York City Police Department like many of his male relatives. This went poorly because he also wanted to be a musician, and a) the NYPD wouldn’t let him have long hair, and b) potential bandmates didn’t want to play with a cop. His dad was predictably pissed when he opted for the music career, but apparently it was the right call.
Art Neville (December 17, 1937 – July 22, 2019) is the third New Orleans musician in this diary. He was the eldest of the Neville Brothers, but he had an extensive career before that group formed, most notably as keyboardist of The Meters, a band considered seminal in the creation of funk music.
Hal Blaine (February 5, 1929 – March 11, 2019) was a drummer in the highly-skilled and prolific group of studio musicians that he nicknamed The Wrecking Crew. He played the distinctive drum part on the Ronettes’ Be My Baby in 1963, and he played on every Record of the Year Grammy winner from 1966 through 1971. Here, we see him playing on the recording of Good Vibrations.
Diahann Carroll (July 17, 1935 – October 4, 2019): People my age probably best remember Diahann Carroll for her TV roles (she was the first African-American woman to star in her own TV series not playing a domestic worker), but she began her career as a singer, including on Broadway.
Neil Innes (9 December 1944 – 29 December 2019) might be best known as a member of the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, or maybe for his involvement with Monty Python (see him here in M.P & the Holy Grail as Brave Sir Robin’s head minstrel). I lean, however, toward his work with The Rutles, a parody of The Beatles that started as sketches for Eric Idle’s British TV show and took off into its own 1978 mockumentary, All You Need Is Cash. Innes wrote the songs and also portrayed the John Lennon character, Ron Nasty.
John Lennon reportedly liked the work so much that he refused to return the tapes he’d been given for approval. He warned Innes, though, that the Get Back parody, Get Up and Go, was so close to the original that he feared the owner of the Beatles’ catalog at the time, ATV Music, might sue. That caused Get Up and Go to be left off the soundtrack album, but to no avail, as ATV sued anyway. Innes had to testify that he had not specifically listened to the Beatles songs when composing his, but had just gone by what he remembered of their sound. I believe that, but Get Up and Go — man, it’s a masterpiece of being the other song without quite being it:
I have something to add, unrelated to this diary topic. Last week in this thread, on debate night, Chrislove was observing that Tom Steyer was wearing an ugly-ass tie. Chris added that he thought Steyer had only the one. He was joking, of course, but as I caught up on last night’s Colbert show this evening, I found that in actual reality, such as it is, Steyer claims to wear that tie every day:
So, that’s a very compelling reason not to support Steyer for president, imo.
⛈️ 🌊 HURRICANE MARIA 🌊 ⛈️
💥 AND 2020 EARTHQUAKES 💥
853 days since Maria made landfall in Puerto Rico
on September 20, 2017.
Puerto Rico and USVI are still struggling to recover.
And now,a swarm of earthquakes is adding to their misery.
PLEASE FOLLOW Denise Oliver Velez and the SOS Puerto Rico group for the latest news about developments in Puerto Rico and the USVI. Denise continues to collect resonant tweets on the subject, and post them in comments daily in the Abbreviated Pundit Roundup (APR) and twice weekly in the Black Kos diaries, to make them easy to retweet. If you tweet or FB, please share something about Puerto Rico and USVI regularly.
Find links to help HERE (now including earthquake relief).
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🐨 🔥 AUSTRALIAN FIRES 2019-20 🔥 🐨
Enormous bushfires have burned over 12 million acres in Australia, so far in that continent’s summer (which is far from over). The fires have forced widespread evacuations, and have been large enough to generate their own weather, including fire tornadoes and dry lightning that set more fires. Nearly half a billion (with a B) wild animals are estimated to have died so far.
Find links to help HERE.
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🚒 🔥 CALIFORNIA FIRES 2019 🔥 🚒
This piece from Wonkette is a pretty concise explainer about how climate change, overdevelopment, and greed are fueling the California fires. (Spoiler: failure to rake the forest doesn’t figure into it.) Even your dumbest FB friend can probably get something out of it.
Find links to help HERE.
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⛈️ 🌊 HURRICANE DORIAN 🌊 ⛈️
Denise Oliver Velez posts what news there is on the Bahamas in the APR thread. This Black Kos thread has coverage of the scale of the damage.
Find links to help HERE.
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