4 Likes
Sarathy Korwar and the Upaj Collective. My East is Your West. Indian infused Jazz from a masterful array of musicians. Brilliant way to beckon the weekend.
2 Likes
On vinyl… 
19 Likes
Postman has just arrived with a parcel from Diverse Vinyl, quick splash on the RCM and first play on vinyl:
Coldplay - Music of the Spheres
5 Likes
The Fabs new Let It Be (Super Deluxe) album remixed by Giles Martin on six CDs, I’m just kicking off with CD one…
20 Likes
Having listened to this all the way through once (and some of it twice), three conclusions:
- Great job all round
- Glyn John’s Get Back album is the one they should have released
- Billy Preston is bloody brilliant.
25 Likes
On vinyl… 
23 Likes
Ethel Waters - The Very Best Of 1921 - 1947 (Tidal)
A conversation with friends earlier about historic Jazz & Blues singers (Billie Holiday, Ma Rainey etc) brought mention of the remarkable and overlooked nowadays Ethel Waters
A couple of interesting excerpts from various online biographies…
The child of a teenage rape victim, Ethel Waters grew up in the slums of Philadelphia and neighboring cities, seldom living anywhere for more than a few weeks at a time. "No one raised me, " she recollected, “I just ran wild.” She excelled not only at looking after herself, but also at singing and dancing; she began performing at church functions, and as a teenager was locally renowned for her “hip shimmy shake”. In 1917 she made her debut on the black vaudeville circuit; billed as “Sweet Mama Stringbean” for her tall, lithe build, she broke through with her rendition of “St. Louis Blues”, which Waters performed in a softer and subtler style than her rivals, Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith. Beginning with her appearances in Harlem nightclubs in the late 1920s, then on the lucrative “white time” vaudeville circuit, she became one of America’s most celebrated and highest-paid entertainers. At the Cotton Club, she introduced “Stormy Weather”, composed for her by Harold Arlen: she wrote of her performance, “I was singing the story of my misery and confusion, the story of the wrongs and outrages done to me by people I had loved and trusted”. Impressed by this performance, Irving Berlin wrote “Supper Time”, a song about a lyncing, for Waters to perform in a Broadway revue. She later became the first African-American star of a national radio show. In middle age, first on Broadway and then in the movies, she successfully recast herself as a dramatic actress. Devoutly religious but famously difficult to get along with, Waters found few roles worthy of her talents in her later years.
Singer and actress Ethel Waters had an extremely difficult childhood. In fact, she opened her autobiography His Eye Is on the Sparrow with these words: “I was never a child. I never was coddled, or liked, or understood by my family. I never felt I belonged. I was always an outsider.… Nobody brought me up.” She was conceived in violence and raised in violence. She had a minimal education at best, dropping out of school early to go to work as a maid. But despite her inauspicious beginnings, Ethel Waters made history, garnering many laurels and many “firsts.” She was the first black woman to appear on radio (on April 21, 1922); the first black woman to star on her own at the Palace Theater in New York (in 1925); the first black woman to star in a commercial network radio show (in 1933); the first singer to introduce 50 songs that became hits (in 1933); the first black singer to appear on television (in 1939); and the first black woman to star on Broadway in a dramatic play (also in 1939). She is remembered as much for her fine acting as for her expressive singing—and even more for her spirit
5 Likes
