During the holiday season we’re running a few repeats from the archives. Let’s cheer ourselves up after a rotten week with one from September 2010… here’s Patrick Kurp on some joyful music…
What these performances have in common besides the pleasure I take in watching and listening to them is the evident pleasure the musicians take in performing. The Miles Davis, back-turned-to-the-audience pose squelches any enjoyment I might find in a piece of music. Arrogance and narcissistic preening have an effect identical to saltpeter’s in another setting. I’m likelier to have a good time when a musician or any artist appears to be doing the same.
Slim Gaillard (1916-1991) is a sui generis American oddity, a pianist, singer and all-around performer best known for an absurdly hip jazz language he invented and spoke fluently, Vout. Think of it as a bop-inflected Esperanto, and keep in mind that Gaillard was so confident of his own hipness, he couldn’t take it seriously. What’s evident from this performance of “Cement Mixer” is that Gaillard was a happy performer who enjoyed making his audience happy.
Stan Rogers (1949-1983) may be the least likely musician to appear on a list of pleasure-giving, pleasure-taking performers: He was a folk singer and Canadian. “Barrett’s Privateers” is a sea shanty, of all things, and appeared on his 1976 album Fogarty’s Cove. It’s rousing and irresistibly catchy, a natural drinking song that makes you want to pump your arm, stomp and bellow. Rogers wrote it and here performs it in someone’s kitchen. His baritone is splendid and his early death absurd…
Another oddity: Norman “Hurricane” Smith (1923-2008), who engineered all the EMI studio albums by The Beatles through Rubber Soul and later worked with Pink Floyd. I remember hearing “Oh, Babe, What Would You Say?” in 1972, loving the song for its straight-faced goofiness, and having no idea of Smith’s connection with The Beatles. Here Smith performs his biggest hit on The Tonight Show, and note his unembarrassed sense of fun despite his wardrobe. And speaking of hipness, check out the alto player.
Such a list would be incomplete without the presence of Louis Armstrong, who never saw the alleged inconsistency in entertainment as art, or vice versa. Here he performs “Mack the Knife” on The Flip Wilson Show in 1970, the year before his death.
