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Rifftides

Doug Ramsey on Jazz and other matters...

Recent Listening, In Brief

June 12, 2020 by Doug Ramsey

Michelle Lordi,’s Break Up With The Sound  (Cabinet Of Wonder) runs an eclectic course from Hank Williams’s heart-tugging country classic “I’m So Lonesome” to songs by Ms. Lordi herself,  plus pieces by Cole Porter and members of The Beatles. It is popular, mostly American, music that maintains C&W earnestness without sliding into the heart-on-the-sleeve sentimentaility that constricts so many of today’s mainstream country performances. Lebowsky and Newman’s “The Wayward Wind” kept Gogi Grant at the top of the charts half a century ago. Tex Ritter then made his country version nearly as big a hit as Grant’s. The band that backs Lordi includes enervating, often gritty, tenor saxophone solos by Donny McCaslin, the penetrating, atmospheric, guitar work of Tim Motzer, brilliant drumming by Rudy Royston and the muscular bass work of Lordi’s fellow Philadelphian Matthew Parish.

To come: Further recent listening in brief.

Comments from readers are always welcome on Rifftides.

 

 

 

 

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Doug Ramsey

Doug is a recipient of the lifetime achievement award of the Jazz Journalists Association. He lives in the Pacific Northwest, where he settled following a career in print and broadcast journalism in cities including New York, New Orleans, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Cleveland and Washington, DC. His writing about jazz has paralleled his life in journalism... [Read More]

Rifftides

A winner of the Blog Of The Year award of the international Jazz Journalists Association. Rifftides is founded on Doug's conviction that musicians and listeners who embrace and understand jazz have interests that run deep, wide and beyond jazz. Music is its principal concern, but the blog reaches past... Read More...

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Doug’s Books

Doug's most recent book is a novel, Poodie James. Previously, he published Take Five: The Public and Private Lives of Paul Desmond. He is also the author of Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music and Some of its Makers. He contributed to The Oxford Companion To Jazz and co-edited Journalism Ethics: Why Change? He is at work on another novel in which, as in Poodie James, music is incidental.

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