“I was pretty much robbed all my life….” The big bucks versions of “The Cutting Edge 1965-1966,” the latest entry in the Bob Dylan bootleg series (note: not actual bootlegs), includes a 20-track disc of a single song, “Like A Rolling Stone.” It brings to life one of the most famous recording sessions in history […]
Curtis Mayfield (1996)
“It isn’t every day a 54-year-old quadriplegic records a record….” There are comeback stories. And then there’s Curtis Mayfield’s comeback story. In mid-August, 1990, he was about to perform at an outdoor concert at an athletic field in Brooklyn. The opening act, Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, had finished their set. Mayfield, guitar […]
Mose Allison (1994)
“One of my first public appearances was at a talent contest. I sang and played Fats Waller’s ‘fododo-de-yacka-saki want some seafood mama.’ I could just see the teacher saying, “This boy is going straight to hell.” Wondering what Mose Allison was up to lately, I checked his […]
Nina Simone (1992)
“I don’t think I’m difficult. Not at all.” The prospect of interviewing Nina Simone was thrilling. And slightly terrifying.
Mighty Sam McClain (1998)
In memoriam: Mighty Sam McClain (1943-2015) “I came from eating out of garbage cans. So if I died tomorrow, I did good.” Mighty Sam McClain wrote a song summing up his old friends’ feelings about hanging out with him after he gave up his bad habits: “Too Much Jesus (Not Enough Whiskey).” Now I […]
My Dinner With Ornette
“I’m interested in bringing instant enlightenment.” I met Ornette Coleman for dinner on a late fall evening in a fashionable restaurant in downtown Boston. He was in town to meet the press a week before a December 15, 1984 concert at Berklee Performance Center with Prime Time, his “double” […]
B.B. King (1980)
“A guy comes out of the gumbo, he likes to walk on concrete awhile.” October 14, 1980 Lippman House, Harvard University, Cambridge When B.B. King came to Harvard University, it was a special day. Not only for the fortunate few who got to witness an intimate performance in a small wooden house […]
Lee Mitchell
“Lo and behold, Al Green came out with ‘I’m So Tired of Being Alone’….Those songs I was supposed to sing….I just knew that it would have been a successful thing for me.” In a parallel universe Lee Mitchell – not Al Green – emerged as the top male soul star of the […]
Bob Dylan speaks: the MusiCares speech
“A lot of people don’t know this, but the blues, which is an American music, is not what you think it is. It’s a combination of Arabic violins and Strauss waltzes working it out. But it’s true.” – Bob Dylan After reading provocative excerpts from the 30-minute speech Dylan gave at the MusiCares […]
“Tracks” by Robyn Davidson
Last week I went to see “Tracks.” It’s a new movie, but it took more than 30 years to get made. In June, 1981 I was writing for The Real Paper, the smaller of Boston’s two alternative weeklies and the place where I began my journalistic career in January, 1981. My editor handed me […]