Hi everyone, here are our five musical recommendations for the week; four streaming suggestions* and one recommended album on CD.
(Click on the photo to stream or request the album you’re interested in!)
Freegal Streaming Suggestions*
The Famous Hokum Boys by Georgia Tom (Genre: Blues):
‘Hokum’ was a raucous, rowdy music that nevertheless demanded good musicianship. All these sides were cut in 1930 – a testament to the popularity of Big Bill and Georgia Tom, both as single artists and as the Famous Hokum Boys. An added joy, on the session of February 5th, is Scrapper Blackwell taking time out from his partnership with Leroy Carr. As it turned out both the principals were to have successful but widely divergent musical careers. Big Bill Broonzy’s career lasted well into the 1950s. He was, according to the diktats of the time, a folk singer, bluesman or jazzman. By the time he died in 1958 (of throat cancer, maybe aged 55) he was relatively prosperous and (through the folk world) well connected. Georgia Tom was Thomas Dorsey, whose professional start was playing piano at rent parties. In the mid-1920s he wrote and performed religious material alongside his secular output. In 1928 his recording of the self-composed ‘It’s Tight Like That’ (it’s as bawdy as it sounds) was a multi-million seller. In 1932, a crisis – the death of both his wife and newborn son – moved him to confine himself to the religious. When he died, aged 92, he was a leading – and revered – member of the Gospel movement.
Songs on the album include: Come On In, Come On Mama, Pat That Bread, That Stuff, You Do It, Barrel House Rag and Ain’t Going There No More.
The Buckinghams: The Hit Collection by The Buckinghams (Genre: Pop, Classic Rock):
A greatest hits collection by the popular mid-sixties rock band.
Songs include: Kind of a Drag, Hey Baby, Mercy, Mercy, Mercy, Don’t You Care, Inside Looking Out and I’ll Never Say Goodbye.
Blaze by Various Artists (Genre: Soundtrack, Country):
“Country singer-songwriter Blaze Foley gets the biopic treatment from director Ethan Hawke in Blaze, which arrives accompanied by a soundtrack featuring reinterpretations of Foley’s material by the film’s stars, including Ben Dickey, Alia Shawkat, and Charlie Sexton. A contemporary of Townes Van Zandt and a fixture of the Austin music scene in the 70s and 80s, Foley’s songs were adopted by Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard, and his saga was memorialized by Lucinda Williams on her song “Drunken Angel,” which closes the Blaze soundtrack, performed by Hurray for the Riff Raff mastermind Alynda Segarra.” AllMusic – Chris Steffen
Songs on the album include: Let Me Ride In Your Big Cadillac, Big Cheeseburgers and Good French Fries, Clay Pigeons, Sittin’ by the Road and Pearly Gates.
1965-67 Cambridge St/ation (2017) by Pink Floyd (Genre: Rock):
Originally released as part of the mammoth 2016 rarities clearinghouse The Early Years 1965-1972, 1965-1967 Cambridge St/Ation collects all of the group’s unreleased music and film from Pink Floyd’s early years with Syd Barrett. Crucially, this contains several legendary rarities that have never seen the light of day, including a set of improvised recordings the Floyd recorded for a film by artist John Latham. Other highlights include the first release of “Vegetable Man” and “Scream Thy Last Scream,” but everything on this set is fascinating, whether it’s the exploratory live set from Stockholm in 1967 or the stilted blues the band played in 1965 under the name the Tea Set. The visual material — which is presented as both a DVD and a Blu-ray — is highlighted by promo clips for “The Scarecrow” and “Jugband Blues,” a Top of the Pops performance of “See Emily Play,” and the Floyd playing “Apples and Oranges” on American Bandstand with Barrett and Roger Waters being interviewed by Dick Clark afterward. Of all of the Early Years volumes, Cambridge St/Ation is among the best because it fills out portions of their beginnings in a way no other Floyd album does.
Songs on the LP include: Lucy Leave, Double O Bo, Remember Me, I’m a King Bee, Butterfly, Apples and Oranges and See Emily Play.
Recommended CD of the Week:
Cloud Corner (2018) by Marisa Anderson (Genre: Soundtrack, Guitar, Americana):
“Spilling out over the landscape in a horizontal yawn of sleepy slide guitar, ambling fingerstyle patterns, buzzing Wurlitzer, and sun-baked requinto jarocho, Marisa Anderson’s Cloud Corner feels like an old photograph come to life or a languorous, unhurried midday meal. As a guitarist and composer, Anderson has wandered in and out of projects since the ’90s, applying her intuition to the improvisatory Evolutionary Jass Band, nimbly ornamenting records by Sharon Van Etten and the Dolly Ranchers, and exploring a wide range of folk, jazz, blues, avant-garde, and classical traditions on her own excellent solo records. Her first outing for the Thrill Jockey label, Cloud Corner, follows 2016’s expansive Into the Light, which was themed as an imaginary soundtrack to an imaginary sci-fi western film. While it shares some of same dusty characteristics of its predecessor, this unthemed ten-song set moves with its own insouciant gait. Written, performed, and engineered entirely by Anderson, these tracks were born of her preferred method of capturing lengthy improvisations and slowly revising and reshaping them into the more concise portraits heard here. Seeming to just begin without much preamble, tracks like “Pulse,” “Sant Feliu de Guixols,” and the cascading title cut arrive like chapters already in progress. Tones of American folk and blues mingle with West African Tuareg and Latin in the global village of Anderson’s fingertips, suggesting travels past, present, and future. Thanks to its wandering nature, Cloud Corner is the kind of album that benefits from repeat listens, unspooling, shifting, and then settling a little more with each meditative revolution.” AllMusic – Timothy Monger
Songs on the LP include: Pulse, Slow Ascent, Cloud Corner, Sun Song, Lament, Lift and Surfacing.
Videos of the Week:
Barrel House Rag by Georgia Tom
Hey Baby by the Buckinghams
Clay Pigeons by Ben Dickey from the Blaze Soundtrack
Lucy Leave by Pink Floyd
Marisa Anderson: NPR Music Tiny Desk Concert
Have a great weekend!
Linda, SSCL
*A library card is required to use the Freegal Music Service. If you live in the service area of the Southern Tier Library System, which consists of the public libraries in Steuben, Chemung, Yates, Schuyler and Alleghany counties in New York State, you can get a library card for free at your nearest public library – including our own Southeast Steuben County Library in Corning, New York. The Freegal Music Service is free for all Southern Tier Library System member libraries library card holders to access.
References:
Artist Biography & Discography Information:
The Billboard Book of Top 40 Hits by Joel Whitburn (Billboard Books. New York. 2009.)
P.S. If you have any questions about how to download or stream free music through the Freegal Music service to a desktop or laptop computer or how to download and use the Freegal Music app let us know! Drop by the library or give us a call at: 607-936-3713
*You must have a library card at a Southern Tier Library System member library to enjoy the Freegal Music Service. Your card can be from any library in the system, and the system includes all public libraries in Steuben, Chemung, Yates, Schuyler and Allegheny Counties and includes our own Southeast Steuben Count Library in Corning, New York!
Library cards are free if you live in our service area. And you can obtain a card by visiting the Circulation Desk and presenting staff with a form of ID that features your name and your current address.
Links to the desktop versions of the catalogs for the library system – apps for each are available in your app store:
Digital Library Catalogs:
Freegal offers streaming and downloadable music
OverDrive allows you to check out eBooks, downloadable audiobooks and handful of streaming videos
RB Digital is the place you go to check out magazines – on demand – and you never have to return them!
The Traditional Library Catalog:
You can search for and request books, DVDs, music CDs, audiobooks on CD and other physical format items through StarCat – it is the modern day card catalog!
Tech & Book Talk at SSCL 