Skip to main content

Ray Charles - Moon Over Miami

When I was searching for other songs called Deep River Blues, I’m obsessive about these things, I found a fewer older ones that I assumed must be a variation of the traditional version that Watson had recorded, so I didn’t feel any rush to listen to them. When I finally did, though, I heard a completely different song, one that mentions the Mississippi river specifically. So now I have to put Deep River Blues back on the list.

After some digging around, I found out that this Deep River Blues dates to 1924... Now I had to figure out who made the first recording, a tricky task. I found two women, Rosa Henderson and Katherine Handy, another child of WC’s?, both recorded in 1924. This isn’t rocket science or American Idol, so I put them both on the list, along with a version by Willard Robison, because I like it. I haven’t had time yet to figure out if this song had legs like the other Deep River Blues. Maybe it’s been recorded a lot, maybe it’s been languishing since the 1920s.


Ray Charles - Moon Over Miami
  • Written by: Joe Burke and Edgar Leslie
  • Released on: The Genius Hits the Road album
  • Released in: July 1960

"As a rock and roll, rhythm & blues, soul, blues, jazz, country and pop musician he helped to shape the sound of rhythm & blues. He brought a soulful sound to everything from country music to rock and roll to pop standards."

See previous Song of the Day 

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Moondog - Behold

The history of jazz has been one of fusion. Its musicians and composers have continually drawn upon a huge range of different musics to create the rich and diverse tapestry that is world jazz today. Jazz is an evolving tradition of music making. And how often, in the life stories of individual jazz musicians, do we see these same patterns operating at microcosm? The richness of Turkish music and culture sometimes seems at odds with its turbulent and cruel history. In 1979... the country suffered its third military take over in thirty years... Every kind of music was in Turkey at that point. But it was not appreciated. To understand the culture of the country, with those three military takeovers, Turkey could not go anywhere. Musically, it was very difficult. But things were beginning to happen. Traditional Turkish music is essentially monophonic, rich in melody and rhythm but with little by way of harmony. The contrast with western music, with its beautiful harmonies but rhythmic weakn...
Post a Comment
Read more

Veronica Swift - A Little Taste

There has always been an uncomfortable tension between rhythm and blues and rock and roll, a cyclical influence that vacillates between inspiration, appropriation and separation. Popular music has broken off into categories of rock, pop, country, and R&B, each with their own origin stories. But R&B and rock, usually codified as vastly different, Black and white styles, have long been intertwined in ways our historical memory may have us forget.  Despite the innovation that comes from separation, rock and R&B always find their way back to each other. In recent years, rock veterans have turned to the genre’s classics for inspiration. Queens of the Stone Age veered from their typical hard rock with 2017’s Villains, a dance y album inspired by frontman Josh Homme’s love of 1920s jazz and swing, other Black genres that laid the groundwork for the popular music of today. The whitewashing of rock’s history has oversimplified music’s malleability and silenced the voices of Amer...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Gap Band - The Sun Don't Shine Everyday

The Gap Band - The Sun Don't Shine Everyday Genre: RnB Released in: 1984 Duration: 5:14 "The Gap Band was most successful when working with producer Lonnie Simmons, with four consecutive gold records. Their party train soon slowed to a stop. They reformed in the 90s and occasionally toured and attempted a comeback album." See Previous Song of the Day 
Post a Comment
Read more