Lizz Wright has a new album out titled Fellowship. I have been enjoying it a lot. It has more gospel music than her previous albums have had, though all of her music has had a pretty strong gospel influence. I cannot find much live performance of the songs on the album, but I am going to go ahead and do this post with a video for one of the songs, and an interview/performance from Mountain Stage. She does sing Amazing Grace on the album. At one time a year or two ago there was a video of here performing this song, which was probably one of my all time favorite YouTube videos. I cannot find that video anymore, but if it shows up again, I will be sure to post it.
"I Remember, I Believe", written by Bernice Johnson Reagon. This is my favorite track on the album.
An interview interspersed with some performance clips from Mountain Stage.
I was surprised when I realized that I have not already done a blog post on Patsy Cline. I did include here in one of my Christmas Posts last year. So to rectify the situation, here are a couple clips.
Despite the fact that she was killed in an airplane crash before she was 30, she is still one of the most beloved singers of the 20th century. As Pam Tillis says in the video at the end of this post, "She wasn't a voice that belonged to any time period."
One of her biggest hits was this song, written by Willie Nelson, "Crazy".
"She's Got You"
This clip of "Walkin' After Midnight" is practically a music video from the days before video.
A clip with interviews of her daughter, Julie Fudge, and Pam Tillis.
I did a post on Howlin' Wolf just last month to mark his 100th birthday. He is another one of NPR's 50 greatest voices, and there are some more great videos of him, so I have decided to do a second Howlin' Wolf post.
She is now 91 years old, and no longer performs in public, but she had a career that lasted several decades, and was one of the first women to make it big in country music. She had an unadorned signing style that she always remained true to, no matter what the fashion was.
Here is her monster hit, "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels"
A video tribute to Solomon Burke who died yesterday at 70 in an Amsterdam airport. While never attaining the commercial success that he deserved, over the last decade he has released several critically acclaimed albums, including Don't Give Up on Me in 2002 which won a grammy for Best Contemporary Blues Album. Through out the many years of his career his voice remained smooth and powerful. Here are some examples.
"If You Need Me"
"Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"
Buddy Miller and Patty Griffin accompany Burke on "Up to the Mountain" - The words from Martin Luther King's final speech that Griffin set to music.
In this fun video Burke joins the Rolling Stones on stage in a performance of "Everybody Needs Somebody to Love"
Today is the 40th anniversary of the death of Janis Joplin, who died on October 4, 1970 at the age of 27. So a post in tribute to her.
My last post was on Big Mama Thornton, who was a big influence on Joplin. One of Joplin's biggest successes was "Ball & Chain", a song Big Mama wrote, and was included in my last post.
Joplin had another hit with this song that Kris Kristofferson wrote, "Me and Bobby McGee"
I am doing this post on Big Mama Thornton in anticipation of a post I will be doing next week. She was a great singer and songwriter, who made the first recording of the song "Hound Dog", later made famous by Elvis Presley. Here are a couple videos.
"Ball 'n' Chain" a song she wrote.
"Hound Dog"
Playing harmonica on "Down Home Shakedown"
Later in life Big Mama was not so big, but she could still "Rock Me"
