June 12, 2004

• Music:

  Duke Ellington, 'Digga Digga Do,' one of Duke's clever arrangements from his time as the musical director at the Cotton Club. Honkin' trumpet and a very, very cool soprano sax solo.

  Consider: I can upload a file to a web site, and subsequently you can listen to music recorded 70+ years ago. Any music the young Duke would have heard from 70+ years previous (140+ years before today) would have been performed in front of him.

  Earlier tonight I watched a documentary on Duke, produced in the mid '70s in the cinema-verité style. Here's Duke ordering breakfast in a hotel. Here's Duke rehearsing with some musicians. Here's Duke at a recording session... All this serves as a context in which, in a few candid moments, he explains that, for instance, his skill at being a piano player in the 20s came from watching other piano players. He'd observe them warming up the crowd in bars, playing something strange to get their attention, and then easing off to keep them locked in. He said it's not so much what you play, as how you sit.

  So listening to music from 70+ years ago from a web server, how's your posture?

  • 4:28 am
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