Music

I fondly recall beloved Miss Donner von Blitzen, my third grade school teacher. I’m not saying she was mean and ugly, but when she went down to the swamp all the toads croaked. Aside from that true fact, which I am not making it up, Miss Donner von Blitzen had a particular bad habit of beating us kids when we used the perfectly good English word “ain’t.” I have the scars to prove it. My feeling to this day? “Ain’t nobody’s business if I do.”

Big, Bad Bessie Smith, A Great Blues Singer

October 4, 2020 admin2Bessie Smith, Blues, Dag Walker0 comment

By Dag Walker I fondly recall beloved Miss Donner von Blitzen, my third-grade school teacher. I’m not saying she was mean and ugly, but when she went down to the swamp all the toads croaked. Aside from that true fact, which I am not making it up, Miss Donner von Blitzen had a particularly bad habit of beating us kids when we used the perfectly good English word “ain’t.” I have the scars to prove it. My feeling to this day? “Ain’t nobody’s business if I do.”…

Music

“Swing Low, Sweet Chariot”

September 7, 2020 admin2Jubilee Choir, Music0 comment

Dag W. Walker The world famous and much loved Earl Ronald founded the red sandstone Norman-style cathedral of St Magnus back in 1137 in memory of his uncle Jarl Magnus who was assassinated in the island of Egilsay in 1115.1. That was back in what my grandparents called “The Old Country.” The cathedral is still there, beyond the northern shores of Scotland, in the middle of the island it shares with Skara Brae, a Stone Age settlement of five or six families. Maes Howe is nearby, and…

Hawkins was born in Oakland, California, in 1943. He too is now dead. In 1967, he and Betty Watson co-founded the Northern California State Youth Choir of the Church of God in Christ with 46 singers ages 17 to 25. In a time of eight-track recorders, they used a two track recorder in the church and eventually made 500 copies of their albumn, featuring Dorothy Combs Morrison as female lead. They recorded the album Let Us Go into the House of the Lord, 1968, at the Ephesian Church of God in Christ in Berkeley, California

Music

200 years later—in 1968, Edwin Hawkins and Oh Happy Day!

August 31, 2020 admin2Dag Walker, Edwin Hawkins, Music, Philip Dorridge0 comment

By Dag Walker Most afternoons back in my old hometown the old guys would sit in cane rocking chairs out front of Virgil’s barbershop down on Main Street, smoking old pipes, dozing off in the summer sun, straw hats covering their wrinkled, bald heads; and when their heads jerked up as they awakened briefly, they would talk slow and soft about the olden days of their youth. They were old, indeed, but none of them recalling the old days ever talked about the year 1755. They missed something…

Yes, my father claimed to have played the clarinet with Artie Shaw, but, sitting in the 1957 Chevy as he wheeled us to the drive-in burger joint when at long last the family had abandoned the barren wastes of the high islands of the North Sea for the easier lands of the mountains in America, he frowned as I would turn on the car radio to listen to the turns of the day, The Platters, The Four Tops, The Shirelles. Always bitter, that man, he who had lived in the era of grand music. At least he had a nice car. Me? Well, I had the music.

Music

King of Swing: Count Basie

August 23, 2020 admin2Count Basie, Jazz, Music0 comment

By Dag Walker Long ago, back when my father was a ten-year-old, his father announced one evening that he was going to town to buy an automobile the next morning. My father was so excited he could hardly sleep that night. He woke before dawn and walked with my grandfather to the top of the hill while my grandfather strode to town to buy his first car. My father sat on the hilltop awaiting his return. My father sat and watched and waited; and every hour or so…

Back in the year 1772 a bad guy, a wretched man, sat down and did something good for once. He’d been an English slave-trader until he was 30, such a wretched man that even his companions in an evil business hated him. He was so bad that his ship-mates one day sold him to the notorious slaver Amos Clowe at Sherbro Island. Slaver John Newton became a slave himself in 1748. Not that it made him a better man. He was freed and continued to be as evil as before. That changed by 1772.

Music

Gospel: Mercy, Forgiveness, and ‘Amazing Grace’

August 16, 2020 admin2Amazing Grace, John Newton, Paul Coffee0 comment

By Dag Walker Sometimes, a sinner becomes a saint. For ordinary folks like me, it hardly matters, I still want to strangle bad guys. Forgiveness is too hard. So, it’s better to step aside and allow that vengeance is for the Lord. Let the Lord deal with sinners and saints. He might know more about such things than I do. Back in the year 1772 a bad guy, a wretched man, sat down and did something good for once. He’d been an English slave-trader until he was 30,…

As a traveler for the past 50 years, every country I have been to is a foreign country. As an old guy, one who lives in the past, even my home country is a foreign country. I travel back to my childhood home fairly often, my mind returning to the joys of childhood, much of it musical. In that foreign country of the past, I am no longer a stranger adrift in a world I don’t understand. I am home again. I am not alone and bewildered by the mysteries of the world spinning out of control. I am happy. “Baby, it’s you.”

Music

The Shirelles: Baby, It’s You!

August 10, 2020August 10, 2020 admin2Band, Music, The Sirelles0 comment

By Dag W. Walker “The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there.” So wrote Leslie Poles Hartley in The Go-between, in 1953. As a traveler for the past 50 years, every country I have been to is a foreign country. As an old guy, one who lives in the past, even my home country is a foreign country. I travel back to my childhood home fairly often, my mind returning to the joys of childhood, much of it musical. In that foreign country of the past, I…

Diana Ross and the Supremes, “Where did our love go?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t1Ta5TlCBR8 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berry_Gordy https://www.britannica.com/biography/Berry-Gordy-Jr https://www.biography.com/musician/berry-gordy-jr https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/the-motown-story-how-berry-gordy-jr-created-the-legendary-label-178066/

Music

When Berry Gordy made Motown Our Town

August 3, 2020 admin2Berry Gordy, Dag Walker, motown0 comment

By: Dag Walker Growing up in the 1950s and ‘60s in the remotest parts of the Rocky Mountains in the United States of America we had our musical traditions, old guys like Elmo from down the road who played fiddle at the weekend barn dance, Zeke on spoons and a tin bucket, Bobby Joe on washboard, and Betty Lou singing up a Country Western storm of heart-break and horses on the lone prairie. Yes, there was fancy music, stuff we never actually heard in those cold, high mountains…

In Los Angeles, Herb Reed, a recently discharged Army veteran recruited Cornell Gunther, Joe Jefferson, and Alex Hodge to form a vocal quartet he would eventually name The Platters. The group’s name came from the metal disks, or “platters,” that rotate vinyl records on the turntable of a phonograph. These four men were the “original” Platters in 1953.

Music

The Platters: music was grande in the 1950s

July 28, 2020July 28, 2020 admin2Dag Walker, Music, The Platters0 comment

By Dag W. Walker Music history was grand in 1953. It was the year the American group The Platters was formed in Los Angeles, California. In LIberia that year, Solomon Carter Fuller, born in Monrovia, a pioneering physician, psychiatrist, pathologist, and professor died] on January 16, 1953. William Vacanarat Shadrach Tubman was the 19th president of Liberia, with William Tolbert as Vice President. In Los Angeles, Herb Reed, a recently discharged Army veteran recruited Cornell Gunther, Joe Jefferson, and Alex Hodge to form a vocal quartet he would eventually name…

Altogether there were more than 1000 professionals from 70 countries, 25 of which came from Africa. Among the 25 countries was Liberia represented by group of leading Liberian artists such as Takun J, DanG, Nigga Blow, Tantan and others. Though these Liberian artists are individual solo artists who are well known in Liberia, they came together as one group to perform at the event in Morocco.

Music

Liberian Artists Showcase Talents At Visa For Music Festival In Morocco

December 8, 2019 admin2Liberia, Morocco, musicians0 comment

By Nvasekie N. Konneh For the first time in recent years, a group of Liberian artists participated in a major music festival in Morocco. The festival was organized by the Visa for Music, a cultural organization based in Morocco. Since 2013, Visa for Music has been organizing the festival annually as the meeting point of music of Africa and the Middle East. 2019 was the 6th edition of the event. This year edition was held under the sign of femininity with diversity of artists representing countries in Africa…

I do not see what the urchins. Caro’s critics it seems are concerned with worldly delusions which are the cravings of the wretched of the earth; those who think that brandishing flashy fashions and gadgets while looking like pimps from some Western metropolis in an ego driven bliss to hide their low self-esteem, Caro is different she is as real as they come. MC Caro is a fine artist who seems way ahead of her times. At Liberian Music Awards, while others lavished in foreign designed attires, she elected to gown a suit made of an African traditional fabrics----proud to portray her African culture and values. While others chose to pose half-naked like a lady ready for the night, she appeared dignify and reserved and modest in her dress and style.

Music

MC Caro uses her talents to build political and social consciousness

November 23, 2019November 24, 2019 admin2Liberia, MC Caro, Rapper0 comment

By M. Uneh Yahmia MC Caro is using her talents to build political and social consciousness at a time her country needs her the most. When almost every artist is sucked, and kissing up to the powers that be, she has risen from the slums to expose a system that oppresses the people and denies the youth the opportunity to unleash its potential. This is the boldest decision any young man or woman can make at a time the fatherland is being scandalized and devoured. MC Caro has placed her…