Author: whskyjack

From a comment in my Twitter feed:
“You may not know the composer but you know the song”
The Composer was João Gilberto and the song “Girl From Ipanema”
But Gilberto was more than that one song, He created a new genre of music, Bossa Nova, and brought the dance beat back to Jazz

Gilberto passed away last week at age of 88, in his life he left his mark on the music of Brazil and the world

The following are from the 1965 Grammy Jazz record of the year, Getz/Gilberto a collaboration between Gilberto and Jazz saxophonist Stan Getz

For a smooth mellow Monnday morning, enjoy.

From NPR
João Gilberto is credited by some with writing the first bossa nova, or new beat. This mid-20th century musical gift to the world drew on Brazil’s African-influenced samba tradition, but was performed without the usual battery of drums and rhythm instruments, and at much lower volumes. Gilberto’s intimate and nuanced style of guitar playing and singing, eventually central to the bossa nova sound, were reportedly developed in 1955 when he sequestered himself inside of a bathroom at his sister’s house so as not to disturb her family and to take advantage of the acoustics provided by the bathroom tiles.
In the mid-1950s, Brazil was in the midst of a post-WWII modernization inspired by a new president who wished to move the country out of third world economic status. Gilberto’s “Bim-Bom,” often named as the first bossa nova song, came from that period, and soon thereafter, the style began to sweep Rio’s cafe’s and bars. Bossa nova’s sophisticated sound became popular with a new moneyed class eager to move away from the more traditional samba sound of explosive drums and group singing. Rio de Janeiro was ground zero of the country’s cultural explosion; Gilberto, composer Antonio Carlos Jobim and poet Vinicius de Moraes were the key architects of a culture shift that forever changed their country’s musical point of reference.

From Wikipedia

Gillespie was a trumpet virtuoso and improviser, building on the virtuoso style of Roy Eldridge but adding layers of harmonic and rhythmic complexity previously unheard in jazz. His combination of musicianship, showmanship, and wit made him a leading popularizer of the new music called bebop. His beret and horn-rimmed spectacles, his scat singing, his bent horn, pouched cheeks, and his light-hearted personality provided some of bebop’s most prominent symbols.
In the 1940s Gillespie, with Charlie Parker, became a major figure in the development of bebop and modern jazz.
He taught and influenced many other musicians, including trumpeters Miles Davis, Jon Faddis, Fats Navarro, Clifford Brown, Arturo Sandoval, Lee Morgan, Chuck Mangione, and balladeer Johnny Hartman.
Scott Yanow wrote, “Dizzy Gillespie’s contributions to jazz were huge. One of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time, Gillespie was such a complex player that his contemporaries ended up being similar to those of Miles Davis and Fats Navarro instead, and it was not until Jon Faddis’s emergence in the 1970s that Dizzy’s style was successfully recreated [….] Arguably Gillespie is remembered, by both critics and fans alike, as one of the greatest jazz trumpeters of all time”.

I just ran across this excellent article about Elizabeth Warren. The writer does a good job of making the case of why she is the most important person running for president. It is long form writing so it will take a while to read , but well worth it whether you are a supporter, detractor or ambivalent. While it starts with Joe Biden in reality it is a case for why the American left should embrace her brand of Teddy Roosevelt style liberalism than Bernie Sanders’ path which has it’s roots in Henry Wallace socialism.

Go here to read it all

The contrast between Elizabeth Warren and Joe Biden is stark: Biden is comfort food; Warren is food for thought with, to some tastes, a dollop of spinach.

Warren stands virtually alone in the field by offering comprehensive, and specific, proposals for reanimating American democracy by reforming capitalism to reconcile its long-term interests with the needs of Americans writ large. She is, in substantive terms, by far the most important Democrat seeking the presidency.

Whether one tends right or left, Warren’s importance to the political dialogue transcends the eventual fate of her campaign. That’s because she is asking an essential question: Can we repair our deepening economic and social fissures by making large corporations more responsive participants in a revitalized democracy which expands economic opportunity, reinvigorates competition, and redefines corporate citizenship. Her candidacy is an attempt to rescue contemporary capitalism from its potentially fatal excesses.

 Richard North Patterson

Jazz and patriotic music don’t often go hand in hand but thanks to the folks at NPR I was able to find an interesting selection to start the week of the 4th. It is a medley of “America the Beautiful”, “Lift every voice and sing“, “Skies of America” by

Charlie Haden and The Liberation Orchestra

A chaotic scene of sickness and filth is unfolding in an overcrowded border station in Clint, Tex., where hundreds of young people who have recently crossed the border are being held, according to lawyers who visited the facility this week. Some of the children have been there for nearly a month.
Children as young as 7 and 8, many of them wearing clothes caked with snot and tears, are caring for infants they’ve just met, the lawyers said. Toddlers without diapers are relieving themselves in their pants. Teenage mothers are wearing clothes stained with breast milk.
Most of the young detainees have not been able to shower or wash their clothes since they arrived at the facility, those who visited said. They have no access to toothbrushes, toothpaste or soap.

New York Times

How does a person get up every morning and go to work in this facility? It is beyond my ability to even understand. How do they justify this to themselves? How do they explain their participation in this atrocity. Just to their wife, their children?

Enough sympathy.

What I want to know. Who are these criminals, we need names, we need perp walks, right down to those who went to work everyday with total indifference. This is not a time for political posturing from presidential wannabes. This a time when all Americans should stand up and say put these bastards in jail.

It is time for the press to start naming names from the top to the ones who went in everyday and silently tolerated this abuse. Stand in front of their doors with cameras running, microphones in their faces. Shine the light on them. From the big boss right down the lowliest cockroach. Treat them like the perverts they are.

In less than 10 days it will the 4th of July the anniversary of the founding of this country. A time where a group of men pledged their lives and sacred honor to create some thing better than what they knew back in Europe.

This is the God! Damn! United States of America!

How dare you assholes do this in our names!

Jack