Aretha Franklin - The Long and Winding Road

Aretha Franklin - The Long and Winding Road

• Written by John Lennon, Paul McCartney
• Released on Young, Gifted and Black Album January 24, 1972

"Rolling Stone Magazine has said that no one covered The Beatles songs as well as the immortal Aretha Frankin and called her version of The Long And Winding Road” the best Beatles cover ever."

It is impossible to date the origin of the blues with any precision, although its roots in the music which West African slaves would have brought with them to the Americas have always been assumed. There are accounts of calls and field hollers back into the nineteenth century. Working individually in the fields in comparative quiet, such calls had practical use, (to ease the drudgery of repetitive actions, or to call instructions to animals), but they would also sometimes become communal expressions, as when one field hand picked up the call from another, and so on. These workers were politically segregated. The hopes which had arisen in the wake of the 1875 Civil Rights Act, which gave blacks equal treatment in terms of access to accommodation, places of entertainment, and public transport, were dashed on its repeal in 1883. Segregation became more rigidly enforced to the extent that in 1896 the U.S. Supreme Court validated new segregationist laws enacted in southern legislatures and which received national government sanction in 1913. These were extreme. The economic depression of the 1880s and 1890s hit African Americans hardest, as they were increasingly barred from any form of economic competition with whites. And, as the blues became identified as a recognizable genre singers like the stylistically eclectic Henry Thomas and Charley Patton, born in the 1870s and 1880s, are usually cited as among the first “blues” singers. The repertoire of most of these singers extended far wider than just the blues, folksongs, dances, worksongs, even minstrel songs on occasion. Many of these early singers were travelers. A disproportionate number were blind or otherwise disabled, (music being one of the few sources of income for such individuals), carrying their songs from community to community by railroad, by steamboats, by wagon and even by foot. As travelers, it was vital that their means of earning were portable, hence the widespread adoption of the guitar as an accompanying instrument.

The guitar had played a role in both nascent jazz bands, for example that of Buddy Bolden in the late 1890s, and the early string bands. Blues thus settled down in the years prior to their first recordings as an acoustic form, in which the singer accompanies him- (or less often her-) self on the guitar, particularly for various social events, dances, picnics etc. This form has been identified by various names: country blues or rural blues, recognizing its original location or downhome blues, a term more favored by players themselves. Geographical location is also important: there are recognizable stylistic differences between singers emanating from Texas, from Mississippi, from Alabama or from Georgia.
Source: The cambridge companion to Blues And Gospel Music by Allan Moore

Grant Green - Idle Moments

• Genres Hard Bop, Modal Jazz, Cool Jazz
• Recorded November 4-15, 1963
• Released February 1965

"All the unique colors of the ensemble present themselves with Green’s soulful guitar joined by Duke Pearson’s piano, Bobby Hutcherson’s vibraphone, Bob Cranshaw’s upright bass, Al Harewood’s subtle drums, and lastly Joe Henderson’s magnificent tenor saxophone."

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