. Bill Callahan : Tiny Desk Concert . Voix et Profondeur .

It's a high compliment to suggest that these three Bill Callahan songs may well implant themselves in your brain, lay eggs and sprout horrifically disturbing dreams at that point when you're banging on the snooze alarm in a state of anguished early-morning half-sleep.

After Callahan — a.k.a. The Artist Formerly Known As Smog — performed at the NPR Music offices, my own slumber was absolutely haunted by at least one line from each piece he played.

From "Jim Cain":

"I used to be darker / Then I got lighter / Then I got dark again."

From "Rococo Zephyr":

 

"I used to be sorta blind / But now I can sorta see."

 

From "Too Many Birds": 

"If you could only stop your heartbeat for one heartbeat..."

All three songs are highlights from Callahan's magnificent new album, Sometimes I Wish We Were an Eagle, and all three are rendered here in faithful detail by Callahan and his crack team of backing players. 

The singer is, for obvious reasons, the driving force in these performances — every sound orbits around his deep, detached voice — but all those strings and guitars exude subtle warmth to match Callahan's sly but sneakily empathetic words.

The result is a Tiny Desk Concert that's more serious than most, and at times almost eerily transfixing. 

Immerse yourself in it, and you may just re-live it in your darkest dreams.

Bill Callahan TINY DESK 

Podcast Download NPR . Bill Callahan : Tiny Desk Concert

Set List

• "Jim Cain"
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• "Rococo Zephyr"
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• "Too Many Birds"
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. Mary Lou Williams Centennial On JazzSet . (JazzSet with Dee Dee Bridgewater)

Mary Lou Williams Collection, Institute of Jazz Studies, Rutgers University

Mary Lou Williams received an honorary degree from Fordham University in 1973.

Originally recorded Sept. 21, 1978, at the University of Michigan and March 10, 1976, at the University of Wisconsin in Madison.

Set List

Solo




History of Jazz:


"Spirituals"


"Fandangle"


"Blues"


"Baby Bear Boogie"


"Roll 'Em"


Duo




"On Green Dolphin Street" (Kaper, Washington)


"Baby Man" (John Stubblefield)


"Jeep Is Jumpin'" (Johnny Hodges)


"Let's Do the Froggy Bottom" (M.L. Williams, Juanita Fleming)




Trio




"Olinga" (Dizzy Gillespie)


"Medi II" (M.L. Williams)


"Bag's Groove" (Milt Jackson)

One day, when Williams was only 3, sitting on her mother's lap at the pump organ, her little fingers reached up and picked out a melody. Her mother dropped Williams to the floor and ran to get a witness.

Personnel

Mary Lou Williams, piano

Ronnie Boykins, bass

Charli Persip, drums (Madison concert only)

Credits

For more about Williams, the Institute of Jazz Studies at Rutgers University is a tremendous resource.

Father Peter O'Brien SJ directs the Mary Lou Williams Foundation, most helpful in obtaining the long-unheard music from University of Michigan on this episode of JazzSet. 

Thanks, as well, to Wisconsin Public Radio; producer Becca Pulliam saved that tape for 34 years. Restoration by John Solon of Mills Music Library, with thanks to Jane Reynolds.

. Histoire De Charlotte Gainsbourg .

Kyle Johnson

Kyle JOHNSON SITE Photography

Paul Jasmin photo

For IRM, Charlotte Gainsbourg teamed up with Beck, who co-wrote and produced the record.

May 11, 2010

I was a little nervous to have actress and singer Charlotte Gainsbourg visit KEXP back in April, partly because there's a huge poster of Serge Gainsbourg's Histoire de Melody Nelson .

That could have made for an awkward introduction: "Nice to meet you, Charlotte.

Hey, look, it's your mom, Jane Birkin, topless on the cover of your dad's groundbreaking album!"


Instead, I met Gainsbourg and her band down in our performance space, where they'd gathered to treat our listeners to a stripped-down acoustic set.

She was visibly shy and nervous, and I learned that this was not only her first real tour, but also her first-ever live on-air session.


But once the music started, Gainsbourg really seemed to lose herself in the dreamy tracks from her third solo album, IRM, which gets its title from the French term for what Americans know as the MRI machine.
Gainsbourg had a near-death experience in 2007, but as she explained, the sound of the MRI scan helped influence her latest album, and her collaborator Beck helped her spin that frightening situation into these beautiful songs.


It was also a delight to talk to Gainsbourg about her legendary father.

She lit up, talking about her earliest memories of his music, and how his popularity has grown since his death in 1991.

And I couldn't hold back from telling her that I felt her dad would be proud of her music, too.

Engineered by Kevin Suggs.



Recorded April 14, 2010.

Music Interview

. Victor Wooten Spirit .

30 mars 2008 — Meet Bass Phenomenom Victor Wooten

. Bassist Christian McBride, Plying the Bottom Groove.

         Deborah Feingold

April 11, 2006 

Christian McBride, a protégé of the late jazz great Ray Brown, compares playing the bass to being an offensive lineman in football: 

"You're kind of not noticed until you're not there."

But he can't see himself playing anything else.

The acoustic bass is "probably just the most beautiful-sounding instrument," the Philadelphian says.

"Just something that low and that resonant, you see this huge instrument and this wood — this house — on stage. 
You feel it more than you hear it." 

As a young man, McBride hauled his double bass up to New York City.

He started at the Juilliard School but by 19, he was recording with the likes of Wynton Marsalis and Joe Henderson.

He since has played with jazz icons including McCoy Tyner and has toured with Sting. 

Growing up, McBride remembers his mother showing him dance steps by the Temptations and seeing his father, bassist Lee Smith, performing with Cuban-born percussionist Mongo Santamaria.

During the recording of his first CD, 1995's Gettin' To It, McBride was joined by legendary jazz bassists Brown and Milt Hinton.
During one session, Brown told Hinton not to go easy on the young McBride. 

"They had no mercy on me whatsoever, and I loved every minute of it," McBride says. 

As one of a generation of "young lions" who came of age in the 1990s, McBride crosses easily from more traditional jazz forms into the fusion sounds of Weather Report, and pop — touring and recording with Sting and Diana Krall. 

McBride says he encourages his own band members to bring their own styles to the music. 

"Whatever musical ideas you have, no matter how disparate they may seem, bring 'em. 

If you like listening to cartoon music, I want you to play cartoon music. (If) that's what you're hearing, that's what you're feeling, do that."

McBride often wonders how he could build upon his predecessors' works on the bass. 

"Nobody's ever going to groove harder playing straight ahead than Ray Brown," he says. "

No one's going to groove any funkier ever than Bootsy Collins or Larry Graham (Sly & the Family Stone). 
You start thinking,' Man, what's left?' 

"But if I'm going to make some kind of contribution to the world of music, I have a feeling it's going to be rooted in the groove underneath — the bottom."

Features in this series are produced by David Schulman and NPR's Jeffrey Freymann-Weyr.