WHAT ARE YOU LISTENING TO NOW?

[bigredbass]

Maybe not today, but THE LAST WALTZ is usually in the rotation from time to time.  Saw this excerpt from Robbie Robertson's forthcoming book in VANITY FAIR about the filming of the TLW, thought I'd pass it along.  Fascinating, inasmuch as they realized they had to get off the road to get away from the 'Occupational Hazards' before it was too late  . . . . .

http://www.vanityfair.com/culture/2016/10/making-of-the-last-waltz-the-band#1

Joey

[David Houck]

My recollection from reading Levon's book is that Robertson was the only one who felt that way; and eventually they all went back out on the road without him.  (A quick check with wikipedia suggests it was a seven year break.)

[edwardofhuncote]

I miss Rick Danko.

Good call Joey. I've got about 4 hours of windshield time coming this weekend, nothing to do but listen and drive.

[lbpesq]

I loved the Band.  This version by Robertson differs quite a bit from Levon Helm's in his wonderful autobiography "This Wheel's On Fire" (along with Phil Lesh's "Searching For The Sound", one of the two finest rock autobiographies I've read).  For example, according to Levon, they didn't invite Neil Diamond because "he represented Tin Pan Alley".  Rather, Robbie invited Diamond without consulting the others becase Robertson was producing Diamond's album at the time.  Furthermore, Robbie attempted to kick Muddy Waters off the bill to make room for Diamond (who was the only bad part of TLW, IMHO).  Also, according to Levon, Scorsese wasn't merely an up and coming director whom Robbie had just met.  Rather, Scorsese and Robertson were recently divorced bachelor buddies, sharing a house, women, and lots of coke at the time.  And I question Robbie's accuracy in claiming they were all junkies except for him and Garth.

Bill, tgo

[edwardofhuncote]

Maybe my favorite take from TLW... "Ophelia"-

Love the bass part against the horns. It's hard to tell it from the tuba at times.

"The Weight" feat. The Staples' is a close second.

[lbpesq]

Danko singing "It Makes No Difference" still blows me away.  I think I'll be listening to some Band tomorrow while I work on some guitars I'm building.

Bill, tgo

[cozmik_cowboy]

The day I can hear Mavis come in on "The Weight" and not get goose-bumps is the day you can bury me.

Peter (who puts much more stock in Levon's version that Robbie's)

[dead_head]

Peter (who puts much more stock in Levon's version that Robbie's)

Amen to that...

Rob

[pauldo]

Somehow stumbled upon this via the Cows With Guns looking know from a different thread.


Interesting version of Billie Jean.

[edwardofhuncote]

That made my day Paul! 

The bass part on Billie - Jean is quite a handful. I had to learn it once for a Harwell-Grice Band gig... well, to be honest, I learned just enough of it to sell it to anybody who didn't actually know better. 

I've been listening to John Hartford a lot this week, specifically his tributes to West Virginia fiddler Ed Haley. Our neo-oldtyme band New River Bound is working up an arrangement of "Boatmen" and several other tunes heavily influenced by Haley's touch:

Hartford was a deeply introspective guy. Maybe that isn't the right word either... he was a multi-faceted player, more like three musicians rolled into one, and you could never be certain which guise he might be in. Here he was with the late-great Roy Huskey Jr. doing his signature song, Gentle On My Mind:

I can't find it right now, but Hartford's eulogy for Husky was one of the most interesting things I ever read about a fellow bass player.

[lbpesq]

Love John Hartford!  I used to see him play often when I lived in SoCal in the early to mid 70's.   First time I ever saw a stomp board.  Here's one of his more amusing tunes:

Bill, tgo

[edwardofhuncote]

John Hartford, who delivered one of several touching eulogies at the bassist’s funeral, employed a young Huskey in his famed string bands of the ’70s. Huskey used to explain to the banjo player how he heard music in colors. He even constructed a color wheel for Hartford to show how he aligned certain notes with certain colors. Later on, Hartford came across an old book that traced the beginnings of musical notation. The earliest transcriptions were notated in colors, he discovered, and the colors were the same ones that Huskey had used to explain different notes.

“Roy had perfect pitch,” Hartford explains. “But his gift was more than that. He could tell the note that the sound of a room was in. He’d walk in a place and say, ‘This room is in this or that note,’ or ‘You better watch A in this room.’ He also could go around a room and detect where the best spot was for music. He’d find just the spot where music would sound the best, and he’d be right. He had one hell of an ear.”

Like many others, Hartford also remembers how Huskey tended to make everyone onstage feel more comfortable. Because his father was the late Grand Ole Opry bassist Junior Huskey, the younger Huskey grew up around well-known musicians, and he had an unflappable sense of calm that influenced those around him. “You’ve heard of medical people having a good bedside manner,” Hartford says. “Roy had what I call a good bass-side manner. He had a way of putting you at ease.”

For all the talk of his perfect pitch and his great ear, the thing that made Huskey such a great player was his feel for the music—his ability to make a song come alive. “He was just so on target,” Hartford says. “It wasn’t that his playing was that unusual. It’s just that it always fit, and it was always exactly appropriate.”



Taken from this 1997 article: http://www.nashvillescene.com/arts-culture/article/13001702/closer-look

In another account of Huskey's perception of musical notes in color, Roy claimed that he could tell the last note of the universe was pitch black, or Bb. Turns out, that's exactly the frequency emitted by a black hole, some 57 octaves below middle C.

Now that's deep. Literally.

[elwoodblue]

That's a great write-up,thanks for posting it.

[David Houck]

Thanks for sharing that, Greg.

[rv_bass]

Wayne Shorter - Adam's Apple