All Hail Seattle – Home of Super Bowl Champions and Music

Not only is Seattle home to the 2014 Super Bowl champion Seahawks, but it’s also home to one of the most prolific music scenes in the U.S. The list of Seattle musicians spans many genres and many eras, and an interesting music / Super Bowl connection is that the owner of the Seahawks, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, also financed Seattle’s EMP Museum originally known as Experience Music Project.

Bing Crosby was born in Tacoma, Washington in 1923, and Quincy Jones moved to Seattle as a young boy in the 1940s. But perhaps Seattle is most identified with Jimi Hendrix. Here is a mash-up video of Jimi’s best charting single, his cover of Bob Dylan’s “All Along the Watchtower”.

Hendrix is a tough act to follow, but Seattle also gave birth to Grunge, and Kurt Cobain of Nirvana was born not far away in Aberdeen, Washington. Nirvana was chosen for the 2014 class of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in their first year of eligibility, and this is the song that began an era.

A Seattle oddity of the 1990’s was The Presidents of the United States of America. Their biggest hit was “Peaches”, but it’s hard to beat “Lump” for a great hook. After watching the original, check out Weird Al’s “Gump”.

A current Seattle favorite, and feature of an earlier blog post, is blue-eyed soul singer Allen Stone, but at the recent Grammy Awards a big winner was rapper Macklemore. Pardon the language in this video, but nearly a half-billion people have viewed the unpretentious sense of humor of this new phenom.

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2014 Grammy Awards – Mining Gems in the Lesser Known Categories

Last night’s Grammy awards may have delivered a few surprises in the major categories, but our enthusiasm for Daft Punk’s “Random Access Memories” and its hit song “Get Lucky” were matched by the Recording Academy’s. It was also nice to see a couple of awards go to Dave Grohl for the “Sound City” CD, including one to him and Paul McCartney for the track “Cut Me Some Slack”.

But scrolling way down the nominees and winners list on the Grammy website, you can find some gems that didn’t make the telecast or the mainstream media coverage.

In the Best American Roots Song category, comic genius and banjo player Steve Martin teamed up with Edie Brickell, wife of Paul Simon and former chanteuse of the New Bohemians, to write and perform “Love Has Come For You”.

In the category of Best Instrumental Arrangement, Gordon Goodwin put out a very nice take of the jazz classic “On Green Dolphin Street” performed by his Big Phat Band. Goodwin has won a Grammy before and picked up 13 nominations, and is also a three-time Emmy Award winner for his compositions and arrangements.

Twenty years after the release of Hootie and the Blowfish’s “Cracked Rear View”, the 16th best selling album in U.S. history, frontman Darius Rucker won this year’s Best Country Solo Performance for “Wagon Wheel”.

And finally, Best Traditional R&B Performance went to Gary Clark, Jr. for “Please Come Home”. Though most celebrated for his guitar playing (the solo comes at about 1:35), he shows off a fine falsetto on this tune. To hear Clark at his bluesy, guitar-slinging best (sans falsetto), check out his performance at the White House.

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Going Way Back With That Eminent Hipster, Donald Fagen

Just in time for the recent holidays, Donald Fagen published his memoir “Eminent Hipsters”. The book’s first chapter introduces us to one of his earliest musical influences, The Boswell Sisters. Fagen lauds them saying, “…when I became familiar with the early work of Connie and her two sisters, I discovered that the Boswells had created a body of work rivaling that of Duke Ellington”. High praise to say the least.

One Boswells song that Fagen discusses is “Heebie Jeebies”, a tune originally recorded by Louis Armstrong and His Hot Five in 1926 and covered by The Boswell Sisters in 1929. Below are the original by Armstrong and the Boswells’ version, with their tight harmonies and brisk rhythms. By the way, while of questionable historical accuracy, the Armstrong version is sometimes cited as the first scat singing on record (it comes at about 1:50).

Lest you worry that Fagen’s effusive tribute to The Boswell Sisters evidences any lack of respect for Duke Ellington, Steely Dan’s third album “Pretzel Logic” included a cover of Ellington’s first record to make the charts “East St. Louis Toodle-Oo”. Here is Ellington’s original from 1927 featuring the song’s co-writer, trumpeter Bubber Miley, and Steely Dan’s 1974 cover with guitar wizard Jeff Baxter’s imitation of a muted trumpet.

And here’s one more nod by Fagen to the Duke. Fagen’s most recent solo album, 2012’s “Sunken Condos”, featured the track “Weather in My Head”. When Fagen played the tune live on “Late Night with David Letterman”, what was that photo on the front of his electric piano? None other than the Duke and his orchestra!

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Singers from Across the Spectrum – St. Lucia and Stacy Barthe

St. Lucia, the stage name of Jean-Philip Grobler, has been getting a lot of exposure recently, performing at Lollapalooza in 2013 and appearing on the late night talk show Jimmy Kimmel Live. Grobler grew up in South Africa, singing in the Drakensburg Boys Choir, but now lends his clean vocals to catchy pop electronic tunes laced with harmony vocals from his bandmates. Here are a couple of live, small studio videos that show off St. Lucia’s unfiltered vocals. Thanks for the recommendation, Eric!

Norwegian music blog Read and Hear recently featured New York singer-songwriter Stacy Barthe. In addition to releasing her own tracks, she’s written songs for Katy Perry, Rihanna, Britney Spears and others. Her voice is certainly as good as anyone she’s been writing for.

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RIP Phil Everly

Phil Everly, with his older brother Don the Everly Brothers, died on Friday in California. Famous for a string of hits that began with “Bye Bye Love” and “Wake Up Little Susie”, both released in 1957, the massive influence of the duo’s vocal harmonizing was recognized with inclusion in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s inaugural class in 1986. Here are the Everly Brothers performing those hits.

Many of their hits were written by others, including the two in the videos above, but Phil wrote 1960’s “When Will I Be Loved” which also became Linda Ronstadt’s second highest charting single in 1974. Interesting note: Ronstadt was just elected to this year’s Rock and Roll Hall of Fame class.

Phil and Don also wrote “Gone Gone Gone”, covered by Robert Plant and Alison Krauss on their 2007 collaboration “Raising Sand”.

Phil did live to see Billy Joe Armstrong of Green Day and Norah Jones release “Foreverly” this past November, a song-for-song reinterpretation of the Everly Brothers’ second album “Songs Our Daddy Taught Us”. Here’s the first single released from that album.