Ralph Stanley and Patty Loveless - Pretty Polly

Emily Bronte - Remembrance

Happy 196th birthday to Emily Bronte, one of my favorite writers. Her major achievement was the novel Wuthering Heights, but she wrote poetry as well. Here the reading is by Stella Gonet.

Alfred Deller - I Am A Poor Wayfaring Stranger

Some more Deller, here doing the same song I recently posted in the Charlie Haden version. The guitarist is not identified in the source I have.

Alfred Deller - Sweet Kate

Oops. Got so busy both Saturday and Sunday mornings that I forgot to post at all. Never done that before. How about a little more Alfred Deller? Here again he is accompanied by Desmond Dupre on the lute, with Mark Deller, who I believe is his son, as second countertenor.

John Dowland - Flow My Tears

As performed by Valeria Mignaco, soprano, and Alfonso Marin, lute. I've posted Dowland before but the link is broken.

Children and Art (from Sunday In The Park With George)

Lately I've been listening to this soundtrack, and for some reason this song in particular stands out. Bernadette Peters, who originated the role on Broadway, plays the second of her roles, Marie the grandmother.

Henry Purcell - The Plaint - Alfred Deller with Harmonia Mundi

Still listening to Alfred Deller and really enjoying it.

Alfred Deller and Desmond Dupré - Have You Seen But the White Lily

It's always nice to discover a talent with which I was unfamiliar. Alfred Deller, here accompanied by his frequent collaborator Desmond Dupré on lute, was apparently the godfather of the countertenor revival a few decades back. His most important asset, while difficult to describe, is basically the same as the one possessed by Frank Sinatra: he sings the song, not the notes. There is a great deal of craft and skill on display here, but it is put at the service of emotion.

Ringo Starr - Easy For Me

Mr Starkey sings a song written by his good friend Harry Nilsson.

Charlie Haden - Wayfaring Stranger

After Charlie Haden's recent death NPR's Fresh Air aired a sort of "best of" of his appearances there over the years. Part of this recording was played. This is Haden's only recorded vocal, in a voice rendered weak by childhood polio, singing a song he learned from his mother. We make jokes about "Love" and "Death," but really, what else is there?

Johnny Winter - Highway 61 Revisited

Haven't honored Mr W's passing yet. Here he reconfigures a Bob Dylan song on his second album.

Josh Marshall on the Consequences for Russia of the Malaysian Airlines Shootdown

This makes sense.

Find extremists and hot-heads of the lowest common denominator variety, seed them with weaponry only a few militaries in the world possess - and, well, just see what happens. What could go wrong?

The audio tapes posted by The New York Times might as well be from some future Russia-based version of Waiting for Guffman or Best in Show, a comical rendering of rustics and morons stumbling into an event of vast carnage and international consequence mainly because they're hotheads and idiots - the kind of people no one in their right minds would give world class weaponry to. It's like finding some white supremacist/militia types on their little compound in the inter-Mountain west and giving them world class missile launchers and heavy armaments.

The Four Tops - It´s the Same Old Song

Classic Motown from the Holland-Dozier-Holland era, with James Jamerson pumping the bass. The "sentimental fool" phrase was used years later by Michael McDonald, a huge Motown fan, in the song "What a Fool Believes."

"Weird Al" Yankovic - Word Crimes

Yeah, it's funny, but he pretty much hits all the points that word nerds harp on these days.

Quartetto Italiano - Beethoven String Quartet Op.132

Beautiful.

Haydn: Symphony in B-flat major "La Reine" Hob I:85 Part:3. Menuetto e Trio: Allegretto

Happy Bastille Day. This is the third movement of Hadyn's Symphony 85, known as the "Queen Symphony" because it was a favorite of Marie Antoinette. So I guess this is basically the music of the people on the losing end. Not a hundred percent sure who the performers here are or I'd credit them.

Finishing the Hat (from Sunday In The Park With George)

Mandy Patinkin sings Stephen Sondheim's song about what it means to live the life of someone devoted to creativity, its pleasures and its perils.

The Ramones - Blitzkrieg Bop

RIP Tommy Ramone.

Harry Nilsson - Perfect Day

There's a glitch at the beginning, but what the hell. This is the last song off Nilsson's last album for RCA. He only put out one more album, which wasn't even released in the US until decades later. So for most of his American fans this was the last new music they ever heard from him.

The Beatles - If I Fell

From A Hard Day's Night.

Ed Kilgore on the Republicans' Outreach to African-Americans

A nice piece of information and analysis touching points I haven't seen covered elsewhere. Kilgore is referring specifically to the current situation in Mississippi regarding the Cochran/McDaniel race, but it applies to many other places.

The idea that becoming more conservative is going to lift the prospects of Republicans among African-Americans is a complete hallucination. Perhaps it’s more accurate to say, reflecting [McDaniel campaign manager Melanie] Sojourner’s comments, that conservatives want African-Americans to change before they are worthy of outreach. And in a place like Mississippi, that means the GOP will remain the White People’s Party perpetually fearing black encroachment on its White Primary by “corrupt” pols like Cochran who dare suggest that representing constituents is more important than maintaining pure conservative ideology.

Harry Nilsson - That Is All

Harry covering a song from George Harrison's solo career, in 1976.

Krugman on Reality-Deniers

I guess I can face reality, because I read this and believe it.

The problem, in other words, isn’t ignorance; it’s wishful thinking. Confronted with a conflict between evidence and what they want to believe for political and/or religious reasons, many people reject the evidence. And knowing more about the issues widens the divide, because the well informed have a clearer view of which evidence they need to reject to sustain their belief system.

Steely Dan - Cousin Dupree

Late-era Dan.

Sonny Boy Williamson - One Way Out

The version that inspired the one by the Allman Brothers Band.

Otis Rush - All Your Love (I Miss Loving)

I first heard this song on the John Mayall album that featured the young Eric Clapton, then years later I heard Stevie Ray Vaughan open a performance with it. But this is the original. Rush was another Mississippian who went electric, and was a guitarist that both EC and SRV admired greatly.

Lenny Welch - Since I Fell for You

Love brings such misery and pain.

Carole King - Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?

Didn't mark the passing of Gerry Goffin, so better late than never. The original version of this song was a number one hit in 1960. Carole King's slowed-down version was a hit eleven years later.

Nick Drake - Cello Song

One of my favorite Nick Drake songs.