Fats Waller - The Jitterbug Waltz

The original recording of this jazz standard, with composer Fats Waller also making one of the earliest jazz recordings to feature a Hammond organ.

Jethro Tull - Look into the Sun

An oldie.

malfunction

Something new from Cyriak.

Maynard G. Krebs Explains

1960s-era TV comedy. A pre-Gilligan Bob Denver shows how Hollywood saw beatniks, at least for comedic purposes.

Burns & Allen - Gracie Tells a Story

A bit of classic comic culture.

Velvet Underground - After Hours

Happy birthday to Maureen Tucker. Here she sings a song written, unsurprisingly, by Lou Reed, and which ended the Velvet Underground's third album, called simply The Velvet Underground.

Eugenia León - Corazón Gigante

There are an infinite number of ways to mourn the dead. Many of them help, none come close to healing the wound completely.

John Cale - Hallelujah

Nowadays "Hallelujah" is a standard known to millions, but for a while it was a lesser-known song on one of Leonard Cohen's lesser-known albums. That changed with this recording. John Cale heard Cohen perform it live and liked it so much he recorded it. Jeff Buckley's version, which brought the song to many people's attention, was based on this one.

Cowboy Junkies - If You Gotta Go, Go Now

A mid-sixties Bob Dylan song that was never officially released at the time, but was covered by many other artists. Here the CJs provide a contemporary gloss.

George Harrison - That Is All

Posted Harry Nilsson's version of this recently -- here's the original.

The Marvelettes - Please Mr. Postman

According to Wikipedia, this song was Motown's first number one hit, and was released on this day in 1961. The image and sound quality of this clip are not great, but it's wonderful to see the young women perform. Well, they're lip-syncing, but still.

H. P. Lovecraft - The White Ship

Recorded live in 1968. The band had secured rights from the author's estate to use his name.

L.C. Cooke - Put Me Down Easy

Still listening to the recent release of L.C. Cooke archival recordings. Here's an original vinyl release of one of them.

Krugman on the Roots of War

Not an economist's area of interest, normally, but there's a tie-in.

Modern nations can’t enrich themselves by waging war. Yet wars keep happening. Why?

One answer is that leaders may not understand the arithmetic....And delusions of easy winnings still happen. It’s only a guess, but it seems likely that Vladimir Putin thought that he could overthrow Ukraine’s government, or at least seize a large chunk of its territory, on the cheap — a bit of deniable aid to the rebels, and it would fall into his lap.

And for that matter, remember when the Bush administration predicted that overthrowing Saddam and installing a new government would cost only $50 billion or $60 billion?

Luther Allison - It Hurts Me Too

Oops. Missed posting yesterday. Maybe this'll be good enough to make up for it.

Van Dyke Parks - America (My Country 'Tis of Thee)

Ferguson, Missouri, USA

Unreal.

“My hands are behind my back,” I said. “I’m not resisting. I’m not resisting.” At which point one officer said: “You’re resisting. Stop resisting.”

"Your Move, Chief"

Probably the scene that won Robin Williams his Oscar.

RIP Robin WIlliams

H/t DS for noting this clip.

Samuel Barber - Adagio for Strings

Conducted by Raymond Leppard. The players are not identified, alas, in the link I have.

Judy Collins - Albatross

One of the few songs that Collins wrote and recorded herself, "Albatross" was originally released on the album Wildflowers with orchestral accompaniment. Nearly thirty years later she released this version with only herself on piano.

The Four Tops - Loving You is Sweeter Than Ever (Alternate Mix)

What a great song, nowhere near as well known as their biggest hits. Not sure of the source of this alternate mix.

John Renbourn & Wizz Jones - Fresh as a Sweet Sunday Morning

The wonderful John Renbourn turns seventy today. Here he is in a performance recorded just a couple of months ago. I'm not familiar with Wizz Jones, his accompanist, but he acquits himself well.

L.C. Cooke - Sufferin'

I first heard of L.C. Cooke a number of years ago but at the time could find very little information about him. Nowadays, however, that has been rectified. Last week saw the release of The Complete S.A.R. Recordings, SAR being the label run by his older brother, the much better-known Sam Cooke. The similarities between Sam and L.C. as vocal stylists are clear, but L.C. has a quality all his own that makes him well worth listening to.

nada's eccentric path

Nothing today, sorry.

Pink Floyd - Arnold Layne

Happy birthday to Joe Boyd, American-born English producer. His list of work in the late sixties and early seventies in particular is amazing, consisting of a lot of the most interesting rock coming out of London. Here's one of his earliest.

Krugman on Dodd-Frank

Dr Krugman refers to it as Obama's "other" success.

The Dodd-Frank reform bill has, if anything, received even worse press than Obamacare, derided by the right as anti-business and by the left as hopelessly inadequate. And like Obamacare, it’s certainly not the reform you would have devised in the absence of political constraints.

But also like Obamacare, financial reform is working a lot better than anyone listening to the news media would imagine. 

BBC Proms 2010 - Sondheim at 80 - Sunday from Sunday In The Park with George

Ernest Dowson - They Are Not Long

It's the birthday of Ernest Dowson, born this date in 1867. He died in 1900, and his brief life resonates well with what might be his most famous poem. The Latin epigram may be translated as "the brief sum of life forbids us from thinking of far-off hope."

    Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam.

    They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
    Love and desire and hate;
    I think they have no portion in us after
    We pass the gate.

    They are not long, the days of wine and roses;
    Out of a misty dream
    Our path emerges for a while, then closes
    Within a dream.

Krugman on Experts and Reality

Dr K discusses what the economic consensus is and what the general perception of that consensus is.

Are we as societies even capable of taking good policy advice?

Economists used to assert confidently that nothing like the Great Depression could happen again. After all, we know far more than our great-grandfathers did about the causes of and cures for slumps, so how could we fail to do better? When crises struck, however, much of what we’ve learned over the past 80 years was simply tossed aside.