Skip to main content

Andrew Hill - Laverne

During the 20th century, this melancholy music was the sound of the rural South. The blues came out of the life of struggle... It came out of what was going on in the Delta, whether it was weather or slavery and sharecropper lives that were difficult.

As a music form, the blues has certain distinct features. The melody usually goes up and down a six note scale. If you’re starting on a C, that scale would go C, E flat, F, G flat, G, B flat, C. The lyrics tend to follow what’s known as an AAB pattern, with the first line of each verse repeating itself, The thrill is gone, the thrill is gone away / The thrill is gone, the thrill is gone away. The B line usually answers or resolves whatever is in the A line, You know you done me wrong, baby, and you’ll be sorry someday.

The blues also evokes a particular response in the listener... Rock arouses and pumps up, it is intense and rebellious. R&B soothes and often seduces, its lyrics tend to be externally focused. Blues is more introspective and complex, its lyrics tend toward describing one’s internal state.


Andrew Hill - Laverne

  • Release date: October 17, 1974
  • Genre: Jazz, Post-Bop
  • Released on: Invitation album


"After a flurry of recordings for Blue Note during the 1960s, Andrew Hill didn't make another album as a leader until this Steeplechase studio session in 1974. Not that the pianist was inactive during this five-year stretch; he was performing concerts, teaching at Colgate University, and also writing for string quartets and symphony orchestras."

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Psychotic Reactions - Skip To My Lou

It expresses the emotions of angst, anger, and lust in some of the only ways that are accepted by society. The history of this edgy music genre dates back to the 1950s. It was formed by a combination of the blues, gospel music, and country. Throughout the decades, rock ‘n roll has evolved and become famous for being the genre that’s continued to push the boundaries of music, and, sometimes, the cultural boundaries of society itself. In the 1950s rock ‘n roll could be defined as rhythm and blues. In the 1960s it was partial to new musical styles such as folk rock and soul. And in the 1970s hard rock was born. From the 1980s to the present, technology has had an enormous impact on the music industry. Good taste is the enemy of the revolution. This remark epitomizes the spirit of rock ‘n roll. You’re not expected to conform, you’re expected to be yourself… no matter what anyone thinks. You are admired deeply for expressing emotions such as anger, heartbreak, and sadness through music in a...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Pat Moran Quartet - Come Rain Or Come Shine

The very institutional acceptance that many musicians sought in the mid to late 20th century has hitched jazz to a broken and still segregated education system. Partly as a result, the music has become inaccessible to, and disconnected from, many of the very people who created it, young Black Americans, poorer people and others at the societal margins. Of the more than 500 students who graduate from American universities with jazz degrees each year, less than 10 percent are Black, according to Department of Education statistics compiled by DataUSA. In 2017, the last year with data available, precisely 1 percent of jazz degree grads were Black women. The education is the anchor... We should be questioning our education system. Is it working? Is there a pipeline into the university for indigenous Black Americans to play their music, and learn their music? I don’t think that exists. Source: Jazz Has Always Been Protest Music. Can It Meet This Moment? by Giovanni Russonello The Pat Moran Q...
Post a Comment
Read more

Kenny Dorham - Like Someone In Love Take 2

In the early 20th century, the blues was considered disreputable as white audiences began listening to blues. Blues came into its own as an important part of the country’s relatively new popular culture in the 1920s with the recording, first, of great female classic blues singers and, then, of the country folk blues singers of the Mississippi Delta, the Piedmont of the Carolinas, and Texas. The first copyrighted song was in 1912, the Dallas Blues. As huge numbers of African Americans left the South at this time due to failed Reconstruction, dismal economic conditions, oppression in the South and the hope of better treatment in the North between 1915 and 1940s, the blues went with them, and settled in the urban centers of the North, especially Chicago. A more urban, electric blues developed as a result, which eclipsed the rural blues of the South and eventually became both rock and roll and what would become known as rhythm and blues. Blues fell somewhat out of popular favor until the l...
Post a Comment
Read more