Best of 2020 Playlist – Parting Gifts

Every year I try to put together something for the artists who’ve died – frequently the last Pink Elephant, or the between Christmas and New Year’s Party we’ve thrown the last couple years, has a wide swath of these tributes. But this year felt like such a tidal wave of death it demanded a separate playlist.

The tidal wave of death didn’t spare me – two dear friends from long ago I hadn’t talked to much in years – but while I acknowledged that, it’s impossible to not also acknowledge how lucky I’ve been and hurt for my friends who’ve taken it much closer to them. Coupled with the continued out-in-the-open murderous criminality of the police and the increased (in volume, unabashedness and obviousness) indifference and vacuity of the minority rule party, it’s hard not to despair.

I believe things are going to get better because I have to believe that. I want to try harder to be part of the better. And a tiny sliver of that is paying tribute to the people we’ve lost. The person who passed away is listed in parentheses after the song.

Continue reading for notes on each piece.

Where to find what’s available on Bandcamp thanks to Hype Machien’s Merch Table Feature: https://hypem.com/merch-table/79cIhJlv1WNJNgrmafPU7x

• Charley Pride, “Is Anybody Going to San Antone” (Charley Pride) – Anyone who’s known me for 20 minutes when music was playing has heard my Grandmother was the single biggest influence on my musical tastes. Charley Pride was on that short list of her very favorite singers – she talked about Charley Pride like she talked about Sarah Vaughan. Also, the only concert I think she went to during my lifetime was to see Pride at Veteran’s Memorial. That supple baritone helped define the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, and kept having hits well into the ‘80s and this is one of those songs I always knew and still never get tired of.
• Mountain, “Long Red (Live)” (Leslie West) – If my Grandmother’s the biggest formative influence on my taste, my Dad’s not far behind. And maybe his favorite band of all time was Mountain. There’s a reason guitarists have genuflected to frontman Leslie West after all these years and this set the standard for power trio rock for the next generation. Those singing, melodic solos surfing over the crunchy rhythm (here ND Smart on drums and Felix Papparlardi on bass) still feels fresh and alive.
• Wallace Roney, “I Will Always Love You” (Wallace Roney) – Roney’s a fascinating story, often told as a footnote to the late Miles Davis period (he was handpicked by Miles to play with him on a retrospective right before Davis died and cast in that role on a tribute where everyone else was a legendary Miles sideman) or to Roney’s wife of the ‘90s-early ‘00s Geri Allen (who created a new stream of piano playing, also gone too soon). This simultaneously chromed smooth and transcendentally weird take on the Dolly Parton classic sums up to me what’s so rich about his playing and why I couldn’t picture putting this mix together without including something of him though he’s probably the artist here I’ve listened to the least.
• Lee Konitz/Brad Mehldau/Charlie Haden/Paul Motian, “I Fall In Love Too Easily” (Lee Konitz) – Going back to the ‘40s, Konitz was one of the most influential alto players of all time, building a stream that had things in common with bebop and the west coast school but didn’t sound like anything else. His fingerprints are on so many innovations of his 92 years and he was still making great records and playing killer shows until just a couple years ago (I will never forget his quartet at the Wexner Center). This is one of my favorite standards, taken out by a quartet of crushing musicians, all of whom I was lucky to see at least once, and only one of them, pianist Brad Mehldau still walks the earth.
• McCoy Tyner, “A Prayer for My Family” (McCoy Tyner) – So many giants passed away this year, people who changed the firmament of American music and spawned legions of imitators. In many cases – not all – I tried not to put on the most famous work of the person I’m tributing. I assume pretty much everyone here knows the John Coltrane classic quartet where Tyner first came into his own. These later records as leader – I was just talking about with Andrew Patton the other day – really brought Tyner’s harmonic gifts to the forefront. This solo centerpiece from his 1971 classic Sahara still knocks the breath out of my lungs, 25 years after I first heard it and 40 after it was recorded.
• John Prine, “Fish and Whistle” (John Prine) – There’s no choosing a single John Prine song, his catalogue is so rich and so full of gems that have kept me going or reminded me to see the world from a different angle or be kinder. But as soon as I started thinking about this exercise, this off-kilter prayer jumped out at me. A series of postcards hung together by hope: “Father forgive us for what we must do. You forgive us, we’ll forgive you.”
• Shaver, “Live Forever” (Billy Joe Shaver) – I grew up on Billy Joe Shaver’s songs through Waylon Jennings’ Honky Tonk Heroes album, a Tom T. Hall cover of “Willy the Wandering Gypsy and Me” and Kris Kristofferson’s version of “Christian Soldier.” As early as I knew to look at credits I knew there had to be something to anyone songwriters as great as those three would seek out to cover, and that led me to Shaver’s eponymous band with his son Eddy (also gone way, way too soon). I remember reading a No Depression interview with Billy Joe Shaver about his son, his wife and he said, (paraphrasing) “I don’t have any folks left,” and I not only cried in the coffee shop reading that but relayed it to one of my mentors Rich Dansky that same day. But he kept going for almost another 20 years and kept making great records and putting on killer shows. And this record has always been there for me – I was gobsmacked seeing Paul Westerberg cover it at the Newport in the early 2000s, I was touched by the great Blind Boys of Alabama cover earlier this year – and I’ll start to worry if I stop connecting with it.
• Gary Peacock and Marilyn Crispell, “Waltz After David M” (Gary Peacock) – This shifts us from prayers to dreams (if there’s much of a difference) for a beautiful duet between bassist Gary Peacock (another artist I could have drawn from 20 of the best records anyone’s ever made) and the great Marilyn Crispell on piano. A friend who’s a a fantastic bass player and knew him talked about Peacock as lighting the way to seeing improvisation’s possibilities and anything he ever played on glowed from within with that warm, more-give-than-take light. I could get lost in Peacock’s spring-of-light bass solo bubbling in the middle of this track forever.
• Bill McHenry/Henry Grimes/Andrew Cyrille, “Aubade” (Henry Grimes) – Another of the great bass players, Henry Grimes, I was lucky to see on his lauded, magical return to playing twice (once with Fred Anderson, Marshall Allen, and Avreeayl Ra; once with the Marc Ribot Trio). This is from that return period, with one of my favorite alto players, McHenry, and one of my favorite drummers, Cyrille. I love the poetic form this track is named for, a song simultaneously welcoming the dawn and lamenting the end of the night, and this track captures that feeling so perfectly.
• Ellis Marsalis and Eddie Harris, “Darn That Dream” (Ellis Marsalis) – Patriarch of the Marsalis clan was one of the first celebrities I remember hearing succumbed to COVID, around the time we canceled the NYC trip for my birthday. I always loved this duet record with tenor player Eddie Harris. One of my favorite versions of this standard, so warm and lived in.
• Jimmy Heath, “The Thumper” (Jimmy Heath) – The great saxophonist and composer Jimmy Heath, centerpiece of the Heath Brothers, made so many great records in his 93 years on this planet but I’ve got special affection for this sextet with a frontline of Heath flanked by Nat Adderley on cornet and Curtis Fuller on trombone and a crackling rhythm section of his brother Tootie on drums with Paul Chambers on bass and Wynton Kelly on piano.
• Annie Ross and The Gerry Mulligan Quartet, “The Lady’s In Love With You” (Annie Ross) – Henry Grimes also appears on this, one of my favorite records by Ross who reconstructed jazz singing. Grimes underpins one of my favorite version of bari sax man Gerry Mulligan’s quartet who back the vocalist like they were born to it. A quintessential 3am record.
• Freddy Cole, “Waiter, Ask The Man To Play The Blues” (Freddy Cole) – Cole never got the acclaim of his brother Nat but made many great records over the years. This one has always held a special place in my heart – I think I discovered it in my early 20s. Cole holds a mirror to Sinatra’s mope-tastic concept albums with a cracking band featuring Sam Taylor on tenor and Milt Hinton on bass. This title track closely echoes “One For My Baby” and also anticipates Richard Thompson’s “Taking My Business Elsewhere,” one of my favorite dark ballads on one of my favorite dark ballad records.
• KT Oslin, “Come Next Monday” (KT Oslin) – It feels like we also lost country singers who made big impressions on my childhood in significant numbers this year (you’ll see two more). KT Oslin’s string of monster hits when I was a kid might have turned me onto the strain of country torch singing I love so much. The production makes me cringe a little but that voice overpowers everything.
• Justin Townes Earle, “Christchurch Woman” (Justin Townes Earle) – Lost way too young, Justin Townes Earle gave us a few great songs on every record he put out, and a couple for-the-ages classic albums, including this one Harlem River Blues. I remember talking with so many friends when this record came out, most specifically Jayna Wallace and Mike McDermott at some other show at Rumba, and I remember seeing a previous tour, right before Midnight At The Movies and being blown away at his audacity to cover “Can’t Hardly Wait” and have it be as good as it was and not overpower the rest of the set: watching his songs come into his own before our eyes. This is in the kind of soulful loverman mood he didn’t always get enough credit for but one of my favorite styles to hear him sing. The way he moans “It’s Friday night and the crowds are starting to fade away. I know I shouldn’t be here waiting on her but I keep thinking any second, she’ll be coming round the corner…” with that simultaneous comfort and longing, as the horns drift behind him like clouds and that bass line throbs, is a moment I never get tired of.
• Lee Morgan Sextet, “Latin Hangover” (Charli Persip) – The great drummer Charli Persip helped direct big band language starting in the 50s but my favorite of his work comes in these cooking small groups. His melodic drumming and exquisite hookup with Paul Chambers’ bass and Horace Silver’s piano on here is unreal, even over sixty years later, behind the fiery frontline of Morgan’s trumpet and Hank Mobley and Kenny Rodgers on saxes.
• Wes Montgomery, “Impressions” (Jimmy Cobb) – The great Jimmy Cobb, last player from Miles Davis’ Kind of Blue sextet left us this year, also the only member of that astonishing band I was lucky enough to see live (part of a set at New Orleans’ Jazzfest). His work with the Wynton Kelly Trio (the beating heart of that Davis group) still astonishes all these years later. I especially love this live take on a Coltrane classic backing guitar great Wes Montgomery.
• Ray Barretto, “Hipocrecia Y Falsedad” (Andy Gonzalez) – Bassist Andy Gonzalez was a key ingredient on countless great records and played with every Latin jazz and salsa superstar during a period when that music ruled his native New York. These Ray Barretto records have always been a favorite of mine and that bass is a key reason.
• Little Richard, “Long Tall Sally” (Little Richard) – There are plenty of contenders for where rock and roll started, but almost nothing exemplifies it better than that growled opening verse here, “Gonna tell Aunt Mary about Uncle John – he claims he has the misery but he’s having a lot of fun” with those hand-of-God piano accents. He built and broke the mold and people have been playing with and finding beauty in the pieces ever since.
• Manu Dibango, “Africadelic” (Manu Dibango) – The great Manu Dibango I found through a compilation when I was 20 and went on a deep dive of the catalogue of the artist I only knew through “Soul Makossa” beforehand. Vibrant, lush party music of another level.
• Power Trip, “Armageddon Blues” (Riley Gale) – Another in the gone too soon category, Riley Gale’s blue howl makes these crushing riffs and churning rhythms burn bright.
• Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers, “One Track Mind” (Walter Lure) – The last of this quintessential band, setting a blueprint for at least all the rock and roll I love after the ‘70s, Walter Lure died this year. One of the great survival stories – also put out a fantastic memoir – I was lucky enough to see Lure’s Waldos once and whenever I want to get ready for a party, when I think there’s no gas in the tank, anything off LAMF picks me right up.
• The Roots, “Distortion to Static” (Malik B) – It’s easy for me to forget how crucial Malik B was to those early Roots records. I went back deep into Do You Want More?!! and Illadelph Halflife seeing the news of his passing and they’re every bit as fresh and vital as they were when I was a kid. 
• Tony Allen with Africa 70, “No Accommodation for Lagos” (Tony Allen) – Tony Allen wasn’t satisfied with just giving birth to contemporary Afrobeat in Fela’s band, and I love many of the records he recorded since then – with Jimi Tenor, Oumou Sangare, Hugh Masakela, Vladislav Delay – but I remember buying this record with him leading Fela’s band, right after it was reissued, from Dusty Groove, in Chicago and it soundtracking that entire trip, hours on the el and walking around one of my favorite cities.
• Candido Camero, “Blue Lou” (Candido Camero) – One of the great Latin percussionists, Candido (often referred to just by his first name) played with everybody but my favorite work of his is this late ‘50s-early ‘60s material as a leader. Also featuring Charli Persip on drums and George Duvivier on bass, with a cooking frontline including Dick Hyman on organ.
• Whodini, “Five Minutes of Funk” (John “Ecstasy” Fletcher) – Ecstasy from Whodini passed as I was assembling this and those electro-drenched hits I grew up with still rock a party every time.
• Suzanne Vega/Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz/Syd Straw, “Stay Awake Medley Two” (Hal Willner) – These Hal Willner compilations were life-changing for me as a kid. The fact that you could shove artists I love with artists I’ve never heard of and find threads in work as disparate as the Disney catalog (this is drawn from), Nino Rota, and Kurt Weill led to most of who I am at my best today. And the fact that he kept doing it, stayed curious, kept his network expanding out of love, will be an inspiration to me forever.
• Wussy, “Teenage Wasteland” (John Erhardt) – Guitarist John Erhardt, once Chuck Cleaver’s foil in Ass Ponys, joined Cleaver and Lisa Walker’s band Wussy with this record and a band I already loved turned into “Don’t miss this if you have a chance.” I’ll always be glad for the chance to see them one last time with Erhardt in the band at Hogan House in late 2019.
• Joe Diffie, “Prop Me Up Beside The Jukebox (If I Die)” (Joe Diffie) – Another country star with one massive hit after another when I was young. More than one of you have caught me singing along with this or “John Deere Green” when I thought no one was looking – or it was late enough at the bar that I didn’t care.
• Bucky Pizzarelli, “Night Rider” (Bucky Pizzarelli) – The great guitarist Bucky Pizzarrelli continued touring and playing at an astonishing level well into his 90s, including more than a few stops at Natalie’s locally, and I never heard a bad record he’s on. But God, I love these early instrumental R&B singles of his.
• Mac Davis, “You’re Good For Me” (Mac Davis) – That smooth, very ‘70s crooning country has its own soft spot in my head and heart from growing up and very few people ever did it better than Mac Davis.
• International Sweethearts of Rhythm, “She’s Crazy With the Heat” (Helen Jones Woods) – This integrated, all-woman swing band made some of the greatest records of the 30s and 40s before disbanding. Trombonist and founder Helen Jones Woods died this year, leaving behind other legacies after music, in nursing and a daughter who founded Radio One.
• Jerry Jeff Walker, “Navajo Rug” (Jerry Jeff Walker) – Walker changed the path of country music (with a few like minded compatriots) in the ‘70s and created a tributary without which most Americana would have never existed. I love his cosmic country work of the ‘70s but I especially love this take on an early Tom Russell collaboration with Ian Tyson.
• Clayton-Hamilton Orchestra, “Jody Grind” (Jeff Clayton) – Sax player Jeff Clayton teamed up with his brother, bassist and composer John Clayton, and drummer Jeff Hamilton on some of the best straight-ahead records of the 80s through 00s. I love this surging take on one of my favorite Horace Silver compositions.
• Giuseppi Logan Quartet, “Bleeker Partita” (Giuseppi Logan) – Giuseppi Logan recorded two phenomenal records for ESP-Disk and disappeared before re-emerging, playing in Tompkins Square Park. This vibrant cry in the darkness features one of the finest small groups of that mid ‘60s scene, presenting a beautiful showcase of Don Pullen’s avant-gospel piano, and Milford Graves’ searching, questing drums.
• Horace Andy, “Leaders of Babylon” (Bunny Lee) – I got into dub as a teenager, before I’d ever tried any drugs, and went whole hog for it in college. Bunny Lee worked with every great artist of the genre in one of the most expansive catalogs in music. His ‘70s collaborations with sweet-voiced Horace Andy are some of my favorite pieces of that rich mosaic.
• Stanley Cowell, “Earthly Heavens” (Stanley Cowell) – Cowell’s kind of a stealth influential pianist, going back and revisiting his catalog upon hearing he died reminded me just how much I love his playing and writing. This track off Brilliant Corners – my call for the best entry point to his work, but you can’t go wrong with his sideman appearances on The Glass Bead Game or any of the Bobby Hutcherson Blue Notes he played on – sums up the mysterious, star-map quality of his phrasing and tight arranging that still leaves plenty of air for the phenomenal band, especially letting Hutcherson’s vibes and the frontline of Woody Shaw and Tyrone Washington shine.
• Harold Budd, “Abandoned Cities” (Harold Budd) – I’m still kicking myself for not making it to Harold Budd when he overlapped with me at Big Ears. I’m sure whatever I saw instead was great – I don’t think I ever saw a weak set at that festival – but I missed one of my favorite composers. His glistening architectural approach overlaps minimalism, ambient, and transcendentalism on the path to a wholly unique voice and syntax. The deep loneliness in this piece of his beguiled me when I first heard it in college and still works its magic whenever I hit play.
• Silver Apples, “Misty Mountain” (Simeon Coxe) – Simeon Coxe’s emergence from retirement for a tour that included Bourbon Street was one of the most exciting shows I’ve seen in a quarter century of seeing music in Columbus. These songs, on  pre-synthesizer audio oscillators wrap earworms in static and sweet noise.
• “Blue” Gene Tyranny, “Next Time Might Be Your TIme” (“Blue” Gene Tyranny) – Tyranny hit my radar through his work with Arthur Russell, The Stooges, Peter Gordon, Robert Ashley, and Laurie Anderson. It’s pretty much a fait accompli I’d love anyone who ties those threads together but that didn’t prepare me for the first time I heard his 1978 avant-pop masterpiece Out of the Blue. People like or dislike things for a variety of reasons including time of day and mood, but I’ve never played this for anyone who didn’t immediately say “Who’s that?” with affection; this song (and the rest of that short album) is perfect. “You know, the next time might be your time – to ‘love and honor’, take the bother. Just to see this thing through. Isn’t that what friends are for?”
• Toots and the Maytals, “54-46 (That’s My Number)” (Toots Hibbert) – Hibbert is one of the great voices and an artist I loved so intensely and immediately I don’t even remember when I discovered his work. There are 50 songs that would have represented his greatness and, as sorry as I am he’s no longer with us, I’m a little jealous of anyone finding his music for the first time. This is one of the great sing-alongs with that timeless bass line (later the building block for KRS-One’s classic “The Bridge Is Over”) 
• Carl Mann, “Mona Lisa” (Carl Mann) – With Mann we lost one of the final pieces of the classic Sun Records era. A string of stone classics – I didn’t know this rockabilly cover of one of my favorite Nat “King” Cole songs until I heard John Paul Keith sing this arrangement with Jack Oblivian and the Tennessee Tearjerkers at the Hideout in Chicago, and that sent me down deep. His later hard-country work is also worth investigating but this is teenage rockabilly excellence with few equals not named the Collins Kids.
• Hal Ketchum, “Small Town Saturday Night” (Hal Ketchum) – The last of the country stars of my childhood on this mix. Ketchum was also a damn fine songwriter but this riff on The Last Picture Show by Hank DeVito and Pat Alger is still immediately identifiable with him. It captures a sense of grief and frustration through a lens of empathy and understanding I associate with country music as I first heard it. “Bobby told Lucy ‘The world ain’t round. It drops off sharp at the edge of town. Lucy, you know the world must be flat ‘cause when people leave town they never come back.’”
• Betty Wright, “Tonight is the Night” (Betty Wright) – One of the best writers and singers of ‘70s R&B, Wright’s 1978 live album is nothing short of essential and this version with the monologue over a silky vamp might be the best example of that brand of romantic spoken intro smooth R&B, neck and neck with Isaac Hayes’ “By The Time I Get to Arizona.”
• Bill Withers, “Ain’t No Sunshine” (Bill Withers) – Another of the great songwriters of the second half of the 20th century, Bill Withers packed deep, human truths into a concise, stiletto sharp songs warmed in the fire of shared experience and walked away, leaving behind a small catalog where almost everything is crucial. Including this platonic ideal of the Live album, Live at Carnegie Hall. The great storyteller with perfectly sympathetic backing on one of a handful of songs always popping to the top of my head when anyone asks me what my favorite song ever is.