June 2: Charlie Watts Birthday

Rock and roll has probably given more than it’s taken.
~Charlie Watts

Usually I can hear the pianos, the saxophone, and usually I can hear Ronnie. But I really need to listen to Keith and Mick. The rest of the band is sort of an embellishment to that.
~Charlie Watts

People say I play real loud. I don’t, actually. I’m recorded loud and a lot of that is because we have good engineers. Mick knows what a good drum sound is as well, so that’s part of the illusion really. I can’t play loud.
~Charlie Watts

Nice tribute from youtube:

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June 3: The late Curtis Mayfield was born in 1942

Photo: David Reed
Photo: David Reed

June 3: The late Curtis Mayfield was born in 1942

Curtis Mayfield is one of those artists that sounded cool no matter what he sang, he was a master songwriter and a tremendous guitar player.

Freddie’s Dead (live, early 70s?):

Curtis Lee Mayfield (June 3, 1942 – December 26, 1999)  is best known for his anthemic music with The Impressions during the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and for composing the soundtrack to the blaxploitation film Super Fly, Mayfield is highly regarded as a pioneer of funk and of politically conscious African-American music. He was also a multi-instrumentalist who played the guitar, bass, piano, saxophone, and drums.

Curtis Mayfield’s songwriting and his distinct guitar playing have influenced a lot of artists.

Bob Dylan played Mayfield’s People Get Ready , and it is obvious he liked Curtis Mayfield’s work . The Impressions’s Keep On Pushing, the album, is on the Bringing It All Back Home cover.

Paul Weller interviewing his hero, the late Curtis Mayfield, most likely before Mayfield’s gig at Ronnie Scott’s Jazz club in the Soho area of London on 31st July 1988:

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10 Best Rolling Stones Songs from 1965 (Videos & Spotify Playlist)

Here is my top 10 list of songs recorded in 1965.

  1. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction
  2. The Last Time
  3. Get off of My Cloud
  4. 19th Nervous Breakdown
  5. As Tears Go By
  6. Mothers Little Helper
  7. Play With Fire
  8. I´m Free
  9. She Said Yeah
  10. Cry To Me

1. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction (Jagger/Richards)

This raw classic cemented the Stones as the nasty anti-Beatles. .. Keith says the way they wrote the song became typical for how he and Mick collaborated. “I would say on a general scale, I would come up with the song and the basic idea,” Keith wrote, “and Mick would do all the hard work of filling it in and making it interesting.”
– Bill Janovitz (Rocks Off: 50 Tracks That Tell the Story of the Rolling Stones)

Built on the Stones’ greatest riff, “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” near-singlehandedly turned “rock & roll” from a teenage fad into something far heavier and more dangerous.
rollingstone.com

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May 28: Happy 72nd Birthday John Fogerty

fogerty-2
Photo: AllDylan/Hallgeir Olsen

 

May 28: John Fogerty was born in 1945 – Happy 72th birthday!

But I think beautiful is simple and elegant, like a ballad with simple harmony.
~John Fogerty

Even though I have often recorded alone, I still feel the best music is made by musicians playing off each other.
~John Fogerty

Bruce Springsteen Inducts Creedence Clearwater Revival into The Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame in 1993:

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May 26: The Late Jazz Legend Miles Davis Birthday

miles-davis

Miles Davis (May 26, 1926 – September 28, 1991)

“Don’t play what’s there; play what’s not there.”
― Miles Davis

“Good music is good no matter what kind of music it is.”
― Miles Davis

Miles Davis is my definition of cool. I loved to see him in the small clubs playing his solo, turn
his back on the crowd, put down his horn and walk off the stage, let the band keep playing,
and then come back and play a few notes at the end.
~Bob Dylan (to Scott Cohen – Sept 1985)

Miles Davis Quintet – Footprints – 31 Oct 67 (Stockholm, Sweden):

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May 24: Happy 76th Birthday Bob Dylan

Crimson flames tied through my ears
Rollin’ high and mighty traps
Pounced with fire on flaming roads
Using ideas as my maps
“We’ll meet on edges, soon,” said I
Proud ’neath heated brow
Ah, but I was so much older then
I’m younger than that now

Our other blog – alldylan.com – is an “only Dylan” blog, that´s why we don´t post Dylan-stuff over here @ bortolisten.com.

But today we make an exception.

Here are a collection of links to interesting Bob Dylan posts @ alldylan.com.

Bob Dylan quotes

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