Ken Tucker likes Stories Don’t End, the new album from Dawes and thinks you might too:

I kid Dawes about their influences — I kid because I like the way these boys carry those influences with their own good humor, and with a loose assurance that their distinctiveness will shine through. On the lovely title song “Stories Don’t End,” singer-songwriter-guitarist Taylor Goldsmith talks about the ineffectiveness of talk — how words cannot express all that he wants to say about the woman he’s describing, the feelings he has for her. For that, he requires not only words, but the slightly fuzzy timbre of his voice and the gentle drumming of his brother Griffin Goldsmith. He gets closer, in this way, to suggesting how complex a story one song can tell, because as the title reminds us, the stories of a relationship, once launched, don’t end. We impose a narrative — a beginning, middle and end — upon them.

Image via Dawes

Ken Tucker on how Natalie Maines’ new solo album Mother can be seen in light of the ostracism she experienced after criticizing the Iraq invasion on stage with the Dixie Chicks in 2003:

When Natalie Maines remarked from a London stage in 2003 that the Dixie Chicks were “ashamed the president of the United States is from Texas,” she was criticizing Iraq War policy in a manner that would earn her instant condemnation and worse, even as her take on that war would eventually become a majority opinion in the U.S. No matter: What she and her group-mates felt in immediate response wasn’t just an overreaction from a segment of the country-music audience. It was also the cowardice of a music industry running scared from blunt political ideas in a perilous industry economy. There’s a tendency, therefore, to hear every song on this album as some sort of response to Maines’ life-altering remark and her subsequent public retreat. It lurks here and there, to be sure, but after the first few listens, Mother becomes the work of a mother, wife, feminist, teammate and solo artist taking her place in the public square once again, making stubbornness sound like a kind of freedom.

Image via Blacklisted Journalist

Our pop music critic Ken Tucker on the title track from Natalie Maines’ new solo album, Mother:

Natalie Maines doesn’t hesitate to make audacious moves, and wresting away “Mother” — Roger Waters’ hymn to oppressive maternal authority figures from Pink Floyd — is the biggest one on her first solo album. Maines takes the “Mother” from Pink Floyd’s The Wall and deconstructs it, emotional brick by emotional brick. She rebuilds the melody and radically alters the vocal intonation of the lyric to render it resilient enough for new interpretations. “Mother” becomes a plea for understanding; to come to terms with difficult relationships through love and trust. Which, among other things, could be heard as Maines’ attempt to reach out to Dixie Chick fans, both present and former, loyal and hostile.

The late, great, one and only George Jones tells Terry Gross about whether he considered his voice — one of the greatest in country music history — a gift:

I think there’s only a few every now and then that come along that are lucky enough to have the little different sound in their voice and the drive and the heart, the soul, whatever you want to call it. It’s a just a little something different we’re blessed with, you know.

Above that voice on display in one of Jones’s most classic songs “She Thinks I Still Care.”

Critic Ken Tucker weighs in on the controversy over the song “Accidental Racist” on Brad Paisley’s new album, Wheelhouse:

The biggest sin of “Accidental Racist” is that its good intentions topple over into sentimentality too easily — and that its melody, something Paisley usually constructs with a firm complexity bolstered by his superb guitar playing, is here merely a languid loop designed to let the words take precedence.

Image courtesy of Schmidt Relations

Kevin Whitehead on jazz pianist Earl Hines:

Earl Hines might have focused on a career as dazzling pianist, like Art Tatum. But after working in various orchestras, Hines itched to lead one of his own. He opened at Chicago’s Grand Terrace ballroom in time for New Year’s 1929. Jazz’s center of gravity was shifting to New York, but the Grand Terrace would be his home base till 1940. Al Capone invited him not to leave.

Image via semioticapocalypse:

Dennis Stock. Earl Hines (piano) Jimmy Archey (trombone) Francis Joseph (cornet) Earl Watkins (drummer), San Francisco, California, 1958

Jherek Bischoff tells Terry Gross about how he created an orchestral sound without a fill orchestra for his new album Composed:

I knew that I could make a really convincing version of an orchestra by layering each musician with themselves, just recording them over and over and over again until we had the sound of a real orchestra. … I would just ride my bike over to the violin player’s house and put some sheet music in front of her and have her record each part about nine times and build the sound of a full ensemble, and when I was done with that then I would bike ride over to the oboe player’s house and have her record and then just worked my way through the entire orchestra just recording each individual in their own living rooms.

Image by Angel Ceballos

Emmylou Harris tells Terry Gross about learning to sing by harmonizing

When you sing harmony you’re not thinking about yourself. You’re just paying attention to the other voice and that other melody and it also requires — I’m using this word “restraint” again — but I think that’s a really important part of country music and I think as a singer you must ultimately respect the melody first and then you can go on from there, but it just seemed like I concentrated on the words, the lyrics, the melody and you get outside of yourself somehow and you just enter a different place.

Video of Emmylou Harris and Barry Tashian dueting on the Townes Van Zandt song “If I Needed You.”

An awesome map of music in Great Britain by James Chapman.

via Buzzfeed

Cuban pianist, composer and arranger Bebo Valdes talking to Ned Sublette in Bomb Magazine in 2002 about why he left Cuba for good:

In ‘56 when the revolution began, bombs started sounding in Havana. And on a famous night in Havana, [January 1, 1957], we were playing in the two salons of the Tropicana—one was under the stars and the other, the summer salon, had air conditioning, but there were nights they had to open both because there were so many people. That night there were more than three thousand people.

There was a divine young girl very near my back, close to the piano, and apparently there was a pocketbook near her—I don’t know, but they say it was that—and that girl was seated there at a table with her friends and family. She was dancing, then she came and sat down, and there was an explosion, and it tore off her left arm…very very near my back. The palm tree covered me, so nothing hit me. It could have hit me, and it could have hit Kiki Hernández, who was at my side. They took her out on a stretcher.

Valdes died Friday at age 94.

We’ve got some big Bebo fans on the staff here, so I asked them for their Bebo recommendations. Here’s what they passed along:

Roberta Shorrock, director: Route 66.

Danny Miller, executive producer: Two recommendations. 1) Bebo. We played the third track — “Danza No. 1” — off this album at the end of today’s show. 2) Bebo Valdes & Javier Colina: Live at the Village Vanguard.”

Terry Gross, host: The Chico and Rita soundtrack. It’s not exclusively Bebo’s music, but it features a lot of his work. Chico and Rita (the animated film) is loosely based on Bebo’s life and music. We did an interview with the film’s co-director Fernando Trueba a year ago which you can listen to here. 

Image above is a still from the Chico and Rita film

Pop music critic Ken Tucker reviews the new Justin Timberlake album 20/20 Experience:

Timberlake has always been a hard worker, and an early adaptor to the notion of marketing himself as a brand. Perhaps as a side benefit to what has proven his invaluable grooming and training as a Disney Mouseketeer, Timberlake knows that presentation and promotion need not degrade the product. From his own good taste, he knows that product can be transmuted into art. And by instinct and ambition, he wants to showcase that art-product to reach the maximum audience.

Image via the artist

Hip hop producer, musician and composer Adrian Younge tells Terry Gross about the influence of Ennio Morricone’s music on his sound:

To me, the Ennio Morricone kind of sound is a derivative of soul music. A lot of Ennio Morricone’s music, it’s very soulful, very cinematic and very psychedelic. So, the sounds that were used: … the chimes, the bells, the fuzz guitar, it’s something that’s nostalgic and speaks to a listener in a different way. You don’t usually hear those types of sounds in today’s music, but when you hear those sounds it takes you back to the music I like the best: organic music that is composed by real composers at a time when recording was at its height, which I believe was around like ‘68 to ‘73.

Adrian Younge on how he teamed up with William Hart of The Delfonics (above) to produce Adrian Younge Presents The Delfonics:

One day on Twitter a little over a year ago, I tweeted the question, ‘Who is better: The Dramatics or The Delfonics?’ and people went back and forth saying who they thought was better and one guy said, ‘Hey, I know William Hart of The Delfonics.’ I said, ‘Wow, okay.’ And he’s like, ‘Yo, I’m a fan of your music, man. I would love for you and him to do music together.’ To me, it’s always been a dream to do something with The Delfonics, but people say things all the time. It’s Hollywood. So [to] make a long story short, a day later, I’m on the phone with William Hart and we’re speaking for like two hours and then we’re speaking the next day for like two hours and we hit it off in a way that was just cosmic.

image via octavineillustration:

Apollo Theater, Harlem, New York.

The Delfonics, Kool & The Gang, Love Unlimited

Take a lunch/afternoon break and head outside with this music video. From NPR Music:

Usually, Allen Stone performs his bluesy soul with the aid of a crack band, but here, we got the 25-year-old belter to perform his single “Sleep” — usually a big, rollicking rave-up — with just a guitarist for backup.

nprmusic:

What are the 5 songs public radio can’t stop playing? Download 5 songs from the likes of Yeasayer and folk up-and-comers Shovels and Rope, courtesy of KCEP-Power 88, Iowa Public Radio, KHSU, WUMB, and WTMD.

Start your Friday off right with this public radio playlist.