Skip to main content

Ella Fitzgerald - My Heart And I Decided

Still, that statue didn’t quite jibe with me. The Father of the Blues depicted in the statue looked calm and grandfatherly. He wore a suit and tie and held his horn poised to play. In every photograph of Handy I had ever seen, he was always dressed impeccably. How could this man be the father of the rough, untamed music that I knew to be the blues? He looked nothing like the cafe, juke joint people my family described, and I suspected they used to be.

In fact, Handy was a formally trained musician who traveled all over the world. And though he wasn’t looking for the blues, the blues found him all the same. The story goes that he fell asleep waiting for a train and woke to find a man playing the weirdest music he’d ever heard on the guitar. This chance encounter with the blue sparked a passion in Handy that became his life’s work. But, at first at least, he didn’t create blues, be merely absorbed the raw, primitive sounds and wrote them down. Perhaps this tale planted a seed of storytelling in me, because what I learned from this was the one who writes it down get the power. That if you tell or write down stories, you can get a statue erected in your honor, even in Memphis, even if you are black. Children will be made to remember your name, if just for one month a year.


Ella Fitzgerald - My Heart And I Decided
  • First release in: January 1943
  • Written by: Walter Donaldson
  • Recorded in: July 1942

"By the 1990s, Ella had recorded over 200 albums. In 1991, she gave her final concert at New York’s renowned Carnegie Hall. It was the 26th time she performed there."

See previous Song of the Day 

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Jackson Browne - Kisses Sweeter than Wine

Europe has a rich history of embracing blues and jazz music. In the early 20th century, American jazz musicians began touring Europe, introducing the continent to a new sound that was unlike anything they had ever heard before. Jazz became an instant hit among European audiences, and many European musicians began incorporating jazz elements into their music. Today, jazz festivals are held all over Europe, attracting thousands of fans from all over the world. In addition, many European cities have thriving blues scenes, with local bands and musicians performing regularly. Blues and jazz have also made their way to Asia, where they have found a devoted fan base. Japan, in particular, has a thriving jazz scene, with many Japanese musicians achieving international recognition. In addition, China has also seen a rise in the popularity of jazz music in recent years. Jazz festivals are now held in major Asian cities such as Tokyo, Shanghai, and Hong Kong, attracting jazz lovers from all over ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Ian Brown - Home Is Where The Heart Is

Talking to artists about how they had adjusted to the pandemic yielded information that normally doesn’t come up during artist interviews. While some musicians lost their main source of income, others were able to continue with their regular day jobs that, given the generally low pay for gigs, often allowed them to be active in the blues. Others were forced to turn to webcasting. In Clarksdale, Lucious Spiller was one of the first to do these shows and was likely the most active, for a year he played every Wednesday night, on Thursday afternoons, a time amenable to Europeans, and on most Saturdays, about as often as he normally performed. Aside from a fall off after the first weeks, support for the gigs, which was almost enough to pay the bills, remained steady until things began to open up in May of 2021. About five years ago, Clarksdale reached the milestone of live music seven days a week, 365 days a year, but that ended abruptly... The contemporary Southern soul market is largely s...
Post a Comment
Read more

Roy Haynes - Satan's Mysterious Feeling

Sun Studio, located at 706 Union Avenue, was started by one of the fathers of rock ‘n roll, Sam Phillips, in 1950. It was the commingling of the Memphis Recording Service and Sun Records that formed Sun Studio, and until 1969... The studio’s claim to fame is that it is where the first rock ‘n roll record was produced, Rocket 88, in April 1951. Stax Records was born in 1957. The original Stax was named Satellite Records until it changed its name to Stax in 1961. The company brought to the forefront American and Memphis soul, as well as gospel, funk and the Delta blues. Its most famous act was Otis Redding, and after his death in 1967, the studio struggled to stay in competition with Detroit’s Motown. The music of Memphis has evolved from its long, rich history. The legends of the past have created a legacy that newer artists can only hope to imitate but never really duplicate. A walk along Beale Street should invoke the memory of the great musicians who have come to and played in Memphi...
Post a Comment
Read more