Ding a Ling
Dizzy Gillespie / Mike Longo
Here we see Mike Longo, whom we lost to Covid-19 last March, playing with the Dizzy Gillespie Reunion. Michael Josef Long was born in Cincinnati, in 1937, to parents with a musical background, and he started to play the bass very early. After the family moved to Fort Lauderdale, Mike set out with his father’s band but soon got his own gigs with the help of Cannonball Adderley who first hired him because he needed a pianist for his church. In the nineteen-sixties, Longo created the Mac Longo Trio, which remained active for the next forty-two years. Gillespie met him soon after and hired him on the spot as his musical director, as well as being the piano player for The Dizzy Gillespie Allstar Band. Longo’s musical career was tied to Gillespie’s from that moment. (sgs)
Pablo Records, 1973
Fiesta d’Or
Aurlus Mabélé
King of Soukous
A victim of Covid-19, Congolese music legend Aurlus Mabélé (Aurélien Miatsonama) passed away on 23 May 2020, aged sixty-six. He was born in Poto-Poto, in the Republic of Congo, in 1953, and they called him the King of Soukous. A singer and composer, he started out in the seventies in Brazzaville, moved to Paris a decade later and ended up conquering of the world with his mix of Caribbean and African rhythms, pop and soul. Joining the band of the renowned Congolese guitarist Diblo Dibala (known as “Machine Gun” for his speed), the singer-songwriter Mav Cacharel and keyboard player Ronald Rubinel, they formed the band Loketo, domiciled in Zaïre, and played soukous, also known as Congolese rumba. It is music that makes you happy. During the twenty-five years of his career Mabélé sold more than ten million records, introducing soukous all over the world. Loketo quickly became known for its complex melodies and driving rhythms. (sgs)
Jimmy’s Production, 2001
Yé Ké Yé Ké
Mory Kanté
We also lost another popular African musician: Mory Kanté was a Guinean vocalist, guitarist and balafon player, heir to the griot tradition of the ancient Mande kingdom. A griot is a historian/storyteller/cultural repository. Of his work Kanté said: “Whether you play kora, balafon or any other instrument, you have to create something that people will not soon forget. As long as your work is good, we don’t forget it.” Born in the village of Albadaria, on 29 March 1950, his mother, a singer, came of a famous family of musicians. In the nine-eighties, Kanté moved to Paris, where they nicknamed him “the electronic griot”. He created thirteen solo albums, the last of which was released in 2017. “Later in his career, Kanté expressed his pride that he was able to construct an entertainment complex in the village of Nongo, near Conakry, featuring a 1,500-seat auditorium, two sophisticated recording studios and leisure facilities. He also gave guest lectures at universities around the world, expanding on his interest in the industrialisation of culture.» (The Guardian)
Discogs, 1993
Living in a Ghost Town
The Rolling Stones
It took a pandemic for the Rolling Stones to write another good song, making it the first Rolling Stones single in four years and the first original material from the band since 2012. In an interview with Apple Music, Mick Jagger revealed that he and Keith Richards had written the song over a year earlier. “It wasn’t written for now, but it was just one of those odd things,” he said. “It was written about being in a place which was full of life but is now bereft of life so to speak…I was just jamming on the guitar and wrote it really quickly in like 10 minutes.” But they did rewrite the lyrics to fit the present situation. Richards and Jagger said they did not know when they would go on tour again, as they have been for the last number of years. The good news is that they have had a lot of time on their hands to write new music.
Polydor, April 2020
Strange to Explain
Woods
Woods is a folk rock band from Brooklyn, New York, formed in 2005. “A lot happened in the three years between Woods’ 2017 album Love Is Love and their 2020 follow-up Strange to Explain. Core members Jeremy Earl and Jarvis Taveniere worked closely with David Berman on his Purple Mountains album, the last music Berman would make before his death just weeks after the album’s release. In addition, Earl became a father and Taveniere left the East Coast for the West, putting substantial distance between himself and his bandmates. Their eleventh proper studio album, Strange to Explain, reflects all of this life in progress, standing as the most restrained, thoughtful, and varied record in a massive discography already well-stocked with thoughtful songwriting and wildly varied arrangement choice.” Singer-guitarist and founder Jeremy Earl also runs the rising Brooklyn label Woodsist, for whom the band releases their work.
Woodsist, June 2020