Skip to main content

Christine McVie - Northern Star

The Graystone Ballroom, meanwhile, was the city’s cradle of jazz. Opened in 1922, it was once Detroit’s largest and grandest ballroom. In a 1974 interview with The Detroit News, clarinetist Benny Goodman said he drove all night to catch Bix Beiderbecke play at the Graystone, calling it a great mecca in those days. During the height of big band jazz, the Graystone often hosted a battle of the bands, with one in particular... that drew a record breaking crowd of around 7,000.

Detroit’s jazz scene, by this point, reached across the city. The now vacant Blue Bird Inn on the city’s west side eventually pulled the bebop crowd from the El Sino as blacks migrated west in the 1950s. The Blue Bird was where jazz musician and trumpeter Miles Davis cultivated his career. In his autobiography, Davis writes about moving to Detroit after quitting heroin, where he befriended the club’s owner Clarence Eddins. Eddins gave him a job with The Blue Bird house band, and as Davis’ solo career blossomed, he frequently returned to play at the venue alongside several groups.

Across the street from the Band Box was the Russell House Hotel, where a side basement entrance led to a blind pig after hours called the Night Club. Jess Faithful’s exclusive Rhythm Club, on the other hand, was a second floor booking agency that required a membership card past curfew, and it was common for late night parties to continue until noon the following day... We’d sit around and play cards and bootleg liquor was served. The police didn’t stop us. They’d walk the beat, you give them $2 and they’d walk out.


Christine McVie - Northern Star
  • Produced by: Christine McVie, Dan Perfect and Ken Caillat
  • Recorded at: Sphere Studios
  • Released on: July 27, 2004

"Christine shot to prominence as a blues singer in the 70s and was voted best British female vocalist in the Melody Maker polls. She joined Fleetwood Mac where her keyboard work and emotive singing did much to propel the band."

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Copyrights and Public Domain

Copyrighting and Public Domain Music A song is the combination of melody and words. Each is protected by copyright, the melody as a musical work and the lyrics as a literary work. One or the other could be used separately and still be protected. Image by Markus Spiske Public Domain Music Public domain essentially covers creative works that are no longer protected by intellectual property laws, compositions and musical recordings in which the claim to intellectual property has either expired, been forfeited, or been waived. Most people recognize the term public domain in reference to published works, including sheet music or musical recordings, which once were protected by copyright, but the copyright expired several decades after the artist’s death or a considerable length of time after the work’s creation. Once copyright expires on a work like a recorded song, you can use it for any purpose without paying the publisher, the artist, or another institution. The Two Types of Copyright ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Waterboys - Carolan's Weird Welcome

The blues developed during the mid 20th century as technology brought new instruments like the electric guitar, better microphones, and amplifiers to the live music scene. This new form of electric blues started in the Mississippi Delta and Chicago, but soon spread to other parts of the United States. Blues rock and British Blues developed, and soon the blues had spread to most popular genres. Rock was born from the blues, and hard rockin’ blues music is still a staple of club bands around the world. Early British rockers were avid collectors and imitators of early blues records. There’s no denying the blues stylings of modern stars like Adele. Pop star Christina Aguilera loves singing traditional blues songs, most notably her rendition of At Last at Etta James’s funeral. An incredible fusion of traditional African music, African American songs, and folk music, the blues had a worldwide impact that continues to flow through the melodies and harmonies of musical artists today. With its ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Cannonball Adderley - Willow Weep for Me

The positivity and uplifting effect of the musical product is more likely to mean the musician is cheering themselves and everybody up rather than that the musician is telling us they are happy. This can largely be applied to attitudes to the performance of jazz and other Black cultures in the Western world. Whilst some of the aforementioned jazz pioneers, like Ella Fitzgerald, stayed clean, several had a history of drug abuse... which often resulted in premature deaths. Louis Armstrong, who used the infinitely safer drug marijuana throughout his 69 years... Whilst drug use was not uncommon among musicians in general, this pattern that many of the greats of jazz died young due to addictions speaks of a consistent level of turmoil, and alludes to their common experience of racism as a depressive factor in 20th Century America. Source: A Soft Reminder of Where Jazz Came From by Tom Platts Cannonball Adderley - Willow Weep for Me Released in: September 1955 Genre: Jazz Label: Savoy "...
Post a Comment
Read more