Bil­lie Holiday’s name has been in the news late­ly for some rea­sons that remind us of the tragedies she sang about and those she endured. First, there was the sto­ry of the rather appalling­ly tone-deaf PR firm who thought one of Holiday’s most well-known record­ings, “Strange Fruit”—a song about lynch­ing—would make a great name for their brand. Then there were the new details in Johann Hari’s book Chas­ing the Scream of how Hol­i­day was hunt­ed, haunt­ed, and pos­si­bly framed by Fed­er­al Bureau of Nar­cotics head Har­ry Anslinger. These sto­ries com­pound the image of Hol­i­day as a trag­ic fig­ure, a casu­al­ty of soci­etal ills and per­son­al demons.

Hol­i­day may have doc­u­ment­ed her trou­bled life in her auto­bi­og­ra­phy, but she would have pre­ferred to be remem­bered for her music. Born 100 years ago today, the jazz songstress trans­mut­ed her per­son­al pain into beau­ty; her inter­pre­ta­tions of songs became stan­dards in their own right, and became unique­ly hers.

“God Bless the Child,” above, res­onates with Holiday’s own dif­fi­cult child­hood, shad­owed by neglect and loss, but she deliv­ers it as though all had been for­giv­en and redeemed. She sang through abu­sive rela­tion­ships and addic­tion and some pret­ty shab­by treat­ment by a racist indus­try.

For exam­ple, Bret Pri­mack tells the sto­ry in a Jaz­zTimes arti­cle of the Fox The­atre in Detroit forc­ing Hol­i­day to wear black­face in order to appear on stage with Count Basie’s Orches­tra. As Lady Day her­self remarked of the humil­i­at­ing episode, “There’s no damn busi­ness like show busi­ness. You have to smile to keep from throw­ing up.” Toward the end of her life, in 1956, she gave one of her last of 22 con­certs at Carnegie Hall (see her do her own com­po­si­tion “Fine and Mel­low” above). The rehearsals—wrote New York Times crit­ic Gilbert Mill­stein in the album lin­er notes—“had been desul­to­ry,” her voice “tin­ny and trailed off.” But at show­time, she appeared “poised and smil­ing,” singing “with strength undi­min­ished.” In his lin­er remarks, Nat Hentoff described Holiday’s “assur­ance of phras­ing and into­na­tion” and “an out­go­ing warmth, a pal­pa­ble eager­ness to reach out and touch the audi­ence,” a smile “often light­ly evi­dent on her lips and her eyes.”

In a ret­ro­spec­tive essay, Hentoff refers to the sad fact that “Bil­lie is most remem­bered as a victim—of her­self, of soci­ety” as well as “the myth that, toward the end, Lady invari­ably sound­ed like a cracked husk of what she had been years before.” While it’s cer­tain­ly true that she fell vic­tim to oth­ers’ designs and her own bad judg­ment, she had her share of tri­umphs as well, most of them on the stage. Even in 1959, the year of her death, when her prob­lems with alco­hol had wors­ened to a soon-to-be fatal degree, and her voice had lost some of its vital­i­ty, she per­formed with swag­ger and grace. See her above sing “Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone” in one of her final live appear­ances. Holiday’s short, trag­ic life may have giv­en us plen­ty to talk about, but her mem­o­ry is best pre­served by lis­ten­ing to her sing.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How “America’s First Drug Czar” Waged War Against Bil­lie Hol­i­day and Oth­er Jazz Leg­ends

Bil­lie Hol­i­day — The Life and Artistry of Lady Day: The Com­plete Film

Duke Ellington’s Sym­pho­ny in Black, Star­ring a 19-Year-old Bil­lie Hol­i­day

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

Last year we fea­tured All of Bach, a site that, in the full­ness of time, will allow you to watch the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety per­form each and every one of Bach’s com­po­si­tions, com­plete­ly for free. Back when we first post­ed about it, the site offered only five per­for­mances to watch, but now you’ll find a full 53 wait­ing there, ready for you to enjoy. Just above, we have BWV 565, “Toc­ca­ta And Fugue In D Minor,” one of Bach’s most famous organ works, thanks in no small part to the fre­quen­cy with which it appears on tele­vi­sion, video game and movie sound­tracks.

Every Fri­day brings a new per­for­mance of anoth­er Bach piece — until, that is, the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety gets through all 1080 of them. But between now and then, they’ve also got spe­cial musi­cal events planned, such as a spe­cial per­for­mance of the whole of the St. Matthew Pas­sion sched­uled for this Fri­day, April 3. (You can now find it online here.) It will mark the prob­a­ble 288th anniver­sary of the piece’s debut, an event which musi­cal his­to­ri­ans think hap­pened in Leipzig’s St. Thomas Church, where Bach served as can­tor and cho­rus direc­tor.

“Luther­ian sever­i­ty lies at the core of Bach’s St. Matthew Pas­sion,” writes New York­er music crit­ic Alex Ross. “The immen­si­ty of Bach’s design — his use of a dou­ble cho­rus and a dou­ble orches­tra; his inter­weav­ing of New Tes­ta­ment sto­ry­telling and lat­ter-day med­i­ta­tions; the dra­mat­ic, almost oper­at­ic qual­i­ty of the choral writ­ing; the inva­sive beau­ty of the lament­ing arias, which give the sense that Christ’s death is the acutest of per­son­al loss­es — has the effect of pulling all of mod­ern life into the Pas­sion scene. By forc­ing the singers to enact both the arro­gance of the tor­men­tors and the help­less­ness of the vic­tims, Bach under­lines Luther’s point about the inescapa­bil­i­ty of guilt. A great ren­di­tion of the St. Matthew Pas­sion should have the feel­ing of an eclipse, of a mas­sive body throw­ing the world into shad­ow.”

In order to pre­pare your­self for this momen­tous musi­cal event, have a look at the teas­er for it in the mid­dle of the post, and the behind-the-scenes doc­u­men­tary Clos­er to Bach in Naar­den just above, which reveals the rela­tion­ship the musi­cians of the Nether­lands Bach Soci­ety have to the St. Matthew Pas­sion. As you can see, they’ve tak­en pains to make sure that this Good Fri­day will, for music-lovers, prove to be a very good Fri­day indeed.

Find the Matthew Pas­sion on All of Bach this Fri­day — the same place where you can find new record­ings each week.

Update: The Matthew Pas­sion is now online here.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

All of Bach for Free! New Site Will Put Per­for­mances of 1080 Bach Com­po­si­tions Online

A Big Bach Down­load: All of Bach’s Organ Works for Free

The Genius of J.S. Bach’s “Crab Canon” Visu­al­ized on a Möbius Strip

Video: Glenn Gould Plays the Gold­berg Vari­a­tions by J.S. Bach

Col­in Mar­shall hosts and pro­duces Note­book on Cities and Cul­ture as well as the video series The City in Cin­e­ma and writes essays on cities, lan­guage, Asia, and men’s style. He’s at work on a book about Los Ange­les, A Los Ange­les Primer. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Let’s take a love song—let’s take Huey Lewis and the News’ “Pow­er of Love,” why not? Catchy, right? And that video? Back to the Future! That takes you back, doesn’t it? Yeah…. Now let’s ask some hard ques­tions. Is this song an accu­rate rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the human emo­tion we call “love”? All upbeat synths and blar­ing horns? Real­ly? But then, there’s Lewis, who, right out of the gate, acknowl­edges that love, “a curi­ous thing,” can “make one man weep” and “anoth­er man sing.” I imag­ine that love can make a woman feel the same. A curi­ous thing. Huey Lewis’ 80s anthem may not sound like love, nec­es­sar­i­ly, but he’s a smart enough song­writer to know that love often uses its pow­er for ill—“it’s strong and sud­den and it’s cru­el some­times.”

Let’s take anoth­er song­writer, one with a dark­er vision, a more lit­er­ary bent, Nick Cave. The Aus­tralian post-punk croon­er and for­mer leader of chaot­ic punk band The Birth­day Par­ty wrote a song called “Peo­ple Ain’t No Good,” the most uni­ver­sal of laments, after a breakup. See him, in the live ver­sion in Poland at the top, declare in a mourn­ful, soul­ful bari­tone accom­pa­nied only by a piano, the truth of no-good­ness. Unlike Huey Lewis, this song allows for no qual­i­ty, pow­er of love or oth­er­wise, to “change a hawk into a lit­tle white dove.” It’s Niet­zschean in its trag­ic dis­ap­point­ment. And yet, such is the pow­er of Nick Cave, to write a song of no good­ness that sounds like a hymn of praise. The dual­i­ty Cave embraces gets a part auto­bi­o­graph­i­cal, part gospel treat­ment in the lec­ture above (“The Secret Life of the Love Song”), which Cave deliv­ered at the Vien­na Poet­ry Fes­ti­val in 1999.

Cave, the son of a lit­er­a­ture pro­fes­sor and him­self an accom­plished nov­el­ist and poet, knows his craft well. The bal­lads that dom­i­nate pop music have deep­er roots in a harsh­er world, one that pro­duced the “mur­der bal­lad,” not coin­ci­den­tal­ly the title of a Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds record — one All­mu­sic writes Cave “was wait­ing to make his entire career.” Cave rec­og­nizes, as he says in his talk above “an uncar­ing world—a world that fucks every­body over.” And yet… and yet, he says again and again, there is love, or rather, love songs. Quot­ing W.H. Auden and Fed­eri­co Gar­cia Lor­ca, he goes on to describe the form as “a howl in the void, for Love and for com­fort.” The love song “lives on the lips of the child cry­ing for its moth­er. It is the song of the lover in need of her loved one, the rav­ing of the lunatic sup­pli­cant peti­tion­ing his God.”

The love song, then, must con­tain a qual­i­ty Gar­cia Lor­ca called Duende, an “eerie and inex­plic­a­ble sad­ness.” Bob Dylan, Leonard Cohen, Van Mor­ri­son, Tom Waits, and Neil Young have it. “It haunts,” he says, his ex P.J. Har­vey. “All love songs must con­tain duende. For the love song is nev­er tru­ly hap­py. It must first embrace the poten­tial for pain.” Cave draws on Lou Reed’s “Per­fect Day,” the “bru­tal prose” of the Old Tes­ta­ment, and the most innocu­ous-sound­ing pop songs, which can dis­guise “mes­sages to God that cry out into the yawn­ing void, in anguish and self-loathing, for deliv­er­ance.”

He also ref­er­ences, and reads, his own song, “Far From Me,” from 1997’s The Boatman’s Call, the post-breakup record that con­tains “Peo­ple Ain’t No Good.” (Cave begins the lec­ture with a ren­di­tion of “West Coun­try Girl” from that same record.) It’s an album that brought Cave’s “mor­bid­i­ty to near-par­o­d­ic lev­els,” strip­ping the Bad Seeds stum­bling lounge punk down to most­ly piano and voice. This ref­er­ence is not a mat­ter of van­i­ty but of the most well cho­sen illus­tra­tion. Cave admits he is “hap­py to be sad,” to live in “divine dis­con­tent.” His reli­gious exis­ten­tial­ism is ulti­mate­ly relieved by the pow­er of love songs, by his “crooked brood of sad eyed chil­dren” which “ral­ly round and in their way, pro­tect me, com­fort me and keep me alive.” Maybe Huey Lewis had some­thing sim­i­lar to say, but there’s no way he could ever say it the way that Nick Cave does. Read a par­tial tran­script of Cave’s talk here.

via Dan­ger­ous Minds

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonard Cohen and U2 Per­form ‘Tow­er of Song,’ a Med­i­ta­tion on Aging, Loss & Sur­vival

Tom Waits and Kei­th Richards Sing Sea Song “Shenan­doah” for New Pirate-Themed CD: Lis­ten Online

See Neil Young Per­form Clas­sic Songs in 1971 BBC Con­cert: “Old Man,” “Heart of Gold” & More

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“I guess he’s…organically shy.”–Tina Wey­mouth

As Talk­ing Heads went from CBG­Bs (see some vin­tage video) to col­lege radio to a Euro­pean tour open­ing for The Ramones in 1977, the band was slow­ly mak­ing its way out of New York City pover­ty while their art school rock was seep­ing into Amer­i­can cul­ture at large. When “Take Me To the Riv­er,” their airy, ner­vous but still funky Eno-pro­duced cov­er of the Al Green song became their first Bill­board Top 30 hit, the band took a step towards nation­al recog­ni­tion.

And that leads us to this awk­ward March 17, 1979 appear­ance of the band on ABC’s Amer­i­can Band­stand, their first on Amer­i­can TV. Long­time host Dick Clark was pret­ty square–rock crit­ic Nik Cohn described him as “a disc jock­ey who looked like an all-Amer­i­can choirboy”–but Amer­i­can Band­stand was a prime oppor­tu­ni­ty. In 1979, the New Wave and Post-Punk scenes were rag­ing at the show’s doors. Talk­ing Heads were one of the few acts that year from NYC’s cre­ative caul­dron of a music scene, apart from Blondie and Grace Jones, to make it onto Band­stand.

In the above clip, Clark apol­o­gizes for get­ting Tina Weymouth’s name wrong, then jumps in to inter­view David Byrne, who responds to Clark’s ques­tions by shut­ting them down with embar­rassed looks and mat­ter-of-fact answers. Clark then turns back to Tina for some psy­cho­an­a­lyt­ic help. “Is he always this enthu­si­as­tic?” he asks. It crum­bles from there.
Wey­mouth remem­bered it slight­ly dif­fer­ent­ly in this recent (2014) inter­view in New York Mag­a­zine:

I couldn’t explain to the record-label peo­ple why David’s behav­ior could be so incred­i­bly odd. He had a freak-out on our first tele­vi­sion appear­ance, on Dick Clark, on Amer­i­can Band­stand. David sort of froze, and Dick Clark sort of whirled around, and hands the micro­phone to me. And there were oth­er things going on, too. I don’t think any per­son is one thing, or defined by a con­di­tion that they might have.

It’s not exact­ly freez­ing, but it is odd…for rock front­men. And ask­ing Byrne “Do you flog your­self into this?” tells you a bit more about Clark’s state of mind than any­thing else.

You can see the mimed per­for­mance of their hit here:

The oth­er song they per­formed on the broad­cast “Thank You for Send­ing Me an Angel” has not popped up on YouTube…yet.

Part­ing note: The oth­er guest that night on Band­stand was twee, blue-eyed dis­co act Brook­lyn Dreams with their sin­gle Make It Last.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear the Ear­li­est Known Talk­ing Heads Record­ings (1975)

Talk­ing Heads Live in Rome, 1980: The Con­cert Film You Haven’t Seen

Jim Jarmusch’s Anti-MTV Music Videos for Talk­ing Heads, Neil Young, Tom Waits & Big Audio Dyna­mite

The Talk­ing Heads Play CBGB, the New York Club that Shaped Their Sound (1975)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the FunkZone Pod­cast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills and/or watch his films here.

The “British Inva­sion” as a his­tor­i­cal phe­nom­e­non, has achieved a sta­tus almost like that of Paul Revere’s ride, a water­shed moment con­densed to a sin­gu­lar image: The Stones, or—if you’re more inclined, The Beatles—step onto the tar­mac, young girls scream, cam­eras flash, micro­phones jos­tle… suits abound. We remem­ber the scenery, and the hair­cuts, but the his­to­ry dis­ap­pears. The all impor­tant con­text when the British land­ed in the mid six­ties has to do with anoth­er inva­sion at the same time on England’s shores, of black Amer­i­can blues artists who toured the UK and per­formed on British TV, begin­ning in 1963: Howl­in’ Wolf, Big Joe Williams, Mud­dy Waters, Light­nin’ Hop­kins… and Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe.

If Kei­th Richards has cred­it­ed Chuck Berry for his chops, say­ing he “lis­tened to every lick he played and picked it up,” he could per­haps say some­thing sim­i­lar about Sis­ter Tharpe, as could dozens of oth­er gui­tarists who watched her strut across the stage, pick­ing out hot, coun­tri­fied blues licks on her Gib­son SG. “Nobody—not Chuck Berry, not Scot­ty Moore, not James Bur­ton, not Kei­th Richards—played wilder or more pri­mal rock ‘n’ roll gui­tar than this woman who gave her life to God and would have cel­e­brat­ed her 100th birth­day on 20 March,” writes The Guardian.

And yet, per­haps because of her reli­gios­i­ty, or her race, or her gen­der, Sis­ter Tharpe has long remained unsung as a hero of both ear­ly rock ‘n’ roll and coun­try.

A pio­neer­ing crossover artist from the gospel world, Tharpe came from Cot­ton Plant, Arkansas, a town on the banks of the Mis­sis­sip­pi. Born to musi­cal par­ents, she toured the coun­try with her moth­er in revival per­for­mances across the south and made her first record at the age of 23. By the time she took the Man­ches­ter stage to sing “Didn’t it Rain” in the video at the top of the post, Tharpe was 49 years old and a high­ly sea­soned, con­fi­dent per­former who could cap­ti­vate any audi­ence with her pow­er­ful voice and phe­nom­e­nal play­ing. Just above, see a younger Tharpe play some jazz-inflect­ed blues in “That’s All,” a sexy-sound­ing song about tol­er­ance for sin­ful men. Sis­ter Tharpe worked clean, but she could get down with the best of ‘em.

Like most rock pio­neers, Roset­ta didn’t have an easy road to star­dom, and like many women in the music busi­ness, her sto­ry involves a fair amount of exploita­tion and abuse. But Tharpe rose above it, moved to the big city, and pitched her south­ern gospel tent in the heart of elec­tric blues ter­ri­to­ry. Learn about Roset­ta Tharpe’s life and career in the 2014 doc­u­men­tary above, The God­moth­er of Rock & Roll. It’s a title Tharpe well deserves, as well as some long over­due recog­ni­tion from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

New Web Project Immor­tal­izes the Over­looked Women Who Helped Cre­ate Rock and Roll in the 1950s

Mud­dy Waters, Howl­in’ Wolf, Sis­ter Roset­ta Tharpe & Oth­er Amer­i­can Blues Leg­ends Per­form in the UK (1963–66)

Hail! Hail! Chuck Berry, the Father of Rock & Roll, Is 85

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness