Stop and Hear the Music

Everyone knows that I’m a big Dexter Gordon fan. I love listening to Our Man in Paris. Dexter Gordon has such a relaxed way of playing. It’s what I want my playing to be like–laid back. Too bad there’s nothing laid back about me.

When I stick the CD in the CD player and Scrapple From The Apple starts to play, everything in the world is good. It’s one of the few instrumental CD’s that I have that I can sing along with.

My father toured Europe with Dexter Gordon long before I was born. When my mother talks about him, she always says, “Dexter was such a gentleman.” I never met him.

I remember watching Round Midnight with my father. During the movie my father kept saying, “That’s just what he was like. That’s not acting, he was just being himself.”

Whether he was a gentleman or not, I like the way he played. If you don’t have the CD, you should consider adding it to your collection.

When my husband came home from a trip to London last February, he packed his keys in his suitcase–but that’s a different story–and he brought back some CD’s recorded by people he knew. It took a while before we listened to any of them. They sat in a stack behind the speaker on the computer desk gathering dust. One day while cleaning, I happened across them. Bee for Bass stood out to me because of the silly cover art. I mentioned it to my husband and we decided to listen to it.

When the CD started, I was surprised. I don’t know what I was expecting exactly but it wasn’t this. The CD spans genres from folk to pop to jazz. It features bass and vocals with some percussion and additional instrumentation here and there. Every track has an excellent guest performer. The sparseness of the tracks is refreshing.

After listening to the first three tracks on the CD, I told my husband that I liked it quite a lot.

“So do I,” he said as he sat down at the computer to email Andy and let him know.

Later that afternoon I took the CD to my car with me. That’s where all the CD’s I like end up. My favorite tracks are Getting On, Camel’s Back and Dear Love.

Besides being the nicest guy in the world, Andy Hamill is a darn good double bass player. Check out his website here.

I saw the 2006 tribute to Sly Stone on the Grammy’s. It featured various singers, some worse than others, singing a medley of Sly and the Family Stone’s hits. A cheesy announcer’s voice would come in over the music to introduce the next singer coming to the stage. This is an example of one of the many reasons I hate the Grammy’s and usually don’t watch them. Why would I want to hear anything other than the original version of these songs? Why would I want to hear the Grammy medley version of any song? Towards the end of the medley Sly Stone came onto the stage to sing the last song with all the other singers. He must be in his sixties by now and had a tall blond Mohawk that continued in the fringe down the back of his floor length silver coat. He stayed on stage for a couple minutes, then walked off before he was supposed to, leaving the other people on stage to finish the song without him. The whole display was sad. Sometimes it’s best not to try to reinvent things that worked great in the past.

I tried to purge my memory of this event by listening to my copy of Fresh. Fresh is a great CD. It makes me want to get up and dance. Usually, I don’t actually get up. Dancing in my chair suits me just fine. The groove is great, you can’t hear it and stay still. I love the horn parts. My favorite tracks are In Time and Que Sera, Sera.

I heard that when this was recorded, Sly was strung out and loosing his mind. Maybe there’s something positive about that when it comes to recording an album, because the singing is so expressive and pure. It sounds like he’s not holding anything back. The first time I heard this album I couldn’t do anything but listen. You should try listening to it too.

A few weeks ago, I pulled a CD from the bookcase and took it to the car with me. I was in the mood to listen to something new as I traveled from here to there. Little did I know that the the second track on the CD would be spinning in my head every time I cooked a meal for weeks. “Under The Weather” is an unbelievably catchy tune. I don’t know all of the words so I make up new ones to fit the melody. I can remember “Under the weather rain or shine.” Then I find myself trying to think of what rhymes with shine. I come up with all kinds of things. I usually end up singing something about a behind. That rhymes.

Today as I aggressively drove through the streets of downtown Saint Petersburg, track 9 stood out to me. “Halo” is not an aggressive song. It distracted me from the idiocy occurring on the road in front of me long enough to make me smile. It has a quirky quality that reminds me of my college days.

If I listed all of the songs I like on “Little Elevator”, I’d end up listing every single one of them. I like the CD because it expresses real situations in a way that doesn’t depress me. The often sad lyrics are balanced out by the humor in the music. Kirk Adams–who must have an interesting perspective on life–wrote all of the songs on the album and played many of the instruments.

“Little Elevator” would be a great addition to your music collection. Check it out here.

Patrick Bettison’s Walkin’ All Around is a unique blend of jazz improvisation and world beats. I might be a bit biased, but I think it’s a great CD. Patrick Bettison is my husband, and he recorded Walkin’ All Around in our small two bedroom apartment. I’d hunker down in the bedroom while he recorded himself beating on a TV table in the living room. The living-room floor was constantly strewn with cables. He was always looking for new objects to shake or beat for percussion–boxes of couscous, vitamin bottles. Sometimes I’d timidly stick my head through the door and ask if I could get a drink of water.

Now that the recording, mixing and mastering of the CD is done, you’d think I’d never want to hear it again, but I still want to listen to it. I slip it into the CD player on my commute to work. It’s one of my favorite CD’s.

The tracks on the CD range from silly to sad. Some have a New Age feel and some sound like traditional jazz. My favorite tracks are Boxing the Clown, Walkin’ All Around, and Missed Friend.

You can download the album from iTunes or buy the CD from CD Baby.