Three graves, two together, the other ten paces away. Today Olivia, myself and friends Brigitte and Mathias finally found the resting places of Holger Czukay and his wife, and close by Jaki Liebezeit – two members of CAN and Holger Czukay’s wife and collaborator Ursula, known as U-She and Ursa Major. They are buried here in Germany in […]
As Jazz lovers struggle with Rock and vice versa, Mose Allison managed to stay out of the genre wars by inventing his own style that incorporated Jazz and Blues with real songs, virtuoso playing, meaningful lyrics, memorable melodies, humour, seriousness – Allison had it all covered. When The Who released Live At Leeds they included […]
To die in your late sixties after fifty years of smoking, drinking and taking drugs, might not be a surprising end. But a car crash at 53 leaving behind a wife and three children – well that’s just not fair. Colin Vearncombe was best known as Black and for his European hit Wonderful Life that reached the […]
The Jazz Samba album combined Jazz and Brazilian music and was essentially responsible for the Bossa Nova craze in the USA in the sixties. Although the album had various Brazilian songwriters and composers contributing, the classics Desafinado (Slightly Out Of Tune) and Samba de Uma Nota Só (One Note Samba) written by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Newton Mendonça guided the album […]
One of the great female singers of the fifties and the sixties, Della Reese is remembered more for her role in TV series Touched By An Angel than she is for her powerful emotional singing. She was discovered by Gospel legend Mahalia Jackson and made her recording debut in 1955. Into the sixties she explored […]
I once spoke to Kim Fowley on the phone, he was in Chicago, I was on the other side of the world. “Can you play the guitar, can you sing – then get over here right now”. That about sums him up although his reach extended way beyond the realms of ordinary men. His 1968 album […]