Horace Silver - The Gringo

You know, I always seem to pick these obscure pieces of music. But here’s a great video of Horace in 1959. As one of the commenter’s says, horrible, horrible quality and cutting – yet you get the feel for this piece of music – and the style of these musicians – in a way few other clips represent. Wait till you have about 10 minutes of time before you did into this fest of sound – Senor Blues.

Here’s a clip of “The Gringo”. I love the cover of the album. It’s SOOO iconic of that 60s esthetic.

Yesterday I talked about the relationship between Silver and Vincent Gardner's “The African Queen”. It amazes me that jazz is such a small world and how everyone is linked in someway – either by influence, label, or band membership to each other.

With just the two songs, “Senor Blues” and “The Gringo” you can pick up the strong Latin influence in his work. It was his album, “Cape Verdean Blues” where the “The African Queen” came from. You can hear a clear rhythmic link to his childhood where his father and friends played morna and coladeira flavored Portuguese music – and it shows up again in his album “Songs for My Father”.

Tonight is class. I have my homework done – so that’s a relief. I also am excited that a rare-out-of-print volume is on its way to me. Usually I can’t find it for less than $125-150 dollars, but stumbled upon it for $55. It’s by Robert Kelley – and called Gold vs. Grain. Kelley is a California historian – and this book deals exclusively with the North Bloomfield trial and the battle between the farmers and the miners. I’m hoping it will allow me to avoid reading the 14 film reels of testimony from the trail.

Speaking of links between things, the writing community is the same way. Little bonds forged between people who love words and stories and are trying to make them coherent and enjoyable to others. Two fellow authors will be visiting this blog/journal in the next two weeks.

On the sixteenth, Stacy Cochran, will be discussing his suspense novel, "Claws" - and aspects of conducting research, a writers growth, and focusing on character development.

On the twenty-second, Elisa Lorello, author of, "Faking It!", will be talking about her book and thoughts on writing and self-publishing.

I met Stacy and Elisa through the MeetUp Group, "Raleigh Write 2 Publish". Stacy does an amazing job of presenting topical panels with well known authors, publishers, and editors to those interested in writing. Elisa is a fellow blogger and a writing instructor at NCSU.

Please be sure and drop by, I know they'll be hanging around to answer questions during part of the day.