South African singer Johnny Clegg died on July 16, 2019 of pancreatic cancer. He was 66. He was instrumental in bringing South African music to a broader audience during the apartheid era.
Here is Johnny Clegg performing “I Call Your Name” with his biracial band Savuka in 1988:
Is this cultural appropriation? We’ve become more sensitive to this issue over the years. I don’t know how Johnny Clegg was perceived at the end of his life, but 30+ years ago, cultural appropriation didn’t stick to him, as he immersed himself into Zulu culture, to the point that he was called the White Zulu.
Today I listened to a delightful program on NPR called American Anthem. Among the songs that the show profiled were:
The Star Spangled Banner (naturally)
America The Beautiful
Fanfare for the Common Man, by Aaron Copeland
Born in the USA
God Bless The USA
America, by Simon & Garfunkel
This Land is Your Land
The Times They Are a-Changing
Get Together, as performed by the Youngbloods
Symphony No. 9 in E minor, “From the New World”, Op. 95, B. 178, by Antonín Dvořák
Dixie
NPR writes:
Sometimes, a song isn’t just a song: It’s shorthand for an idea. Some songs can rouse and rally huge masses of people at once, whether they’re chanting in a stadium, marching in the streets or sweating it out on the dance floor.
The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin do? He de-Christs them both! Easter, he turns into a fashion show [Easter Parade] and Christmas into a holiday about snow [White Christmas].
That quote from Phillip Roth begins Marc Tracy’s article “From ‘Winter Wonderland’ to ‘White Christmas,’ the Top Ten Christmas Songs Written by Jews” in Tablet magazine and quite frankly, I can’t think of a better way to begin this post.
I’ve assembled a playlist of the de-Christed secularized Christmas songs listed in Tracy’s article:
There’s plenty of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra here, but the one video that catches my eye and ear is the video of Mel Tormé and the one, the only Judy Garland singing The Christmas Song (aka Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), which Tormé co-wrote with Bob Wells. Who knew? I didn’t even know that Mel Tormé was Jewish.
Today is Veterans Day, so it’s only appropriate that today’s #MusicMonday feature is a patriotic song “God Bless America,” composed by Irving Berlin and sung here by Kate Smith, who is linked forever to the song.
The article Ten Songs From the ‘80s That You’ve Probably Forgotten About from PJ Media inspired me to put together this short playlist of five songs from the 80s that you might have forgotten (or else don’t know because you were born later):
Today’s #MusicMonday feature is the instrumental Taurus by the sixties band Spirit.
Why is this relevant? Notice the riff in Taurus. Does it sound like the beginning of Stairway to Heaven?
Last week, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a jury’s decision that Led Zeppelin did not plagiarize the chords from Spirit’s Taurus. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit that accused Led Zeppelin of stealing portions of “Stairway to Heaven” from “Taurus,” which was written by Randy California (né Randy Wolfe) of the 1990s band Spirit. The dispute stemmed from a passage 45 seconds into “Taurus,” which sounds like the opening guitar tones of “Stairway,” which was released three years after “Taurus.”
Great, what a crock! Some of the notes sound the same, but they are completely different. Love Led Zeppelin, if the other guys were any decent, more people would have heard of em.. The Artist is dead, just a Greedy estate rep trying to scam $$$$$$$$$.
I won’t comment on the merits of the lawsuit, but it’s unfair to say “if the other guys were any decent, more people would have heard of em.” No, no, no. Spirit was great. Songs like “Fresh Garbage” and “I Got a Line on You” were fixtures of late 1960s FM radio.
Sources:
C. Clarke [Aus4Aus] (2018, September 29). Great, what a crock! Some of the notes sound the same, but they are completely different. Love Led Zeppelin, if the other guys were any decent, more people would have heard of em.. The Artist is dead, just a Greedy estate rep trying to scam $$$$$$$$$ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Aus4Aus/status/1045890297241063424.
The whole world knows by now that Aretha Franklin died last week of pancreatic cancer. This is heresy, but I could not get into Aretha. Is it a cultural thing?
You might remember that Starbucks sold compilation CDs at its counters. Here’s a gem that I found through those compilation CDs:
You might associate Piece of My Heart with Janis Joplin, but Erma Franklin (Aretha’s sister) recorded it in 1967 before Janis. This video is a live performance from 1992.
Cher is a 2018 Kennedy Center Honoree along with Philip Glass, Reba McEntire, and Wayne Shorter. In tribute to her selection, I present this cover of ex-husband Sonny Bono’s I Got You Babe featuring Cher and Beavis & Butthead.
Butthead: “Is it true that you used to be, like uh, married to that Bono dude?”
This video is taken from the Frank Sinatra show in 1958. It starts with wise-cracking between Sinatra and Keely Smith’s then husband Louis Prima. Keely sings “When Day is Done.”
While she put away the crinolines, she wore the same haircut throughout her life. 🙂
Cold Cream 'n' Roses 
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