Yusef Lateef - "Sister Mamie"

Yusef Lateef is one of my dad's favourite recording artists and his "Russell and Elliot" (a weeping, plaintive blues) is one of the first songs I can remember hearing.

From Lateef's excellent Live At Pep's recording comes "Sister Mamie," a jazz, blue and far-eastern.

The drums are off to the side, pushing the song from left to right, not supporting it or pushing forward. The piano is an insistent low-down shake of the head. The bass slides. Lateef is on senai, a quadruple-reed woodwind. He wails and cries. His playing frames the other more traditional solos in the context of an anguish inexpressible by the twelve-tone blues.

Play it for your babies. They will end up like me.

***

Donovan - "Hurdy Gurdy Man"

Is it OK to write lyrics like these:

''Histories of ages past
Unenlightened shadows cast
Down through all eternity
The crying of humanity

'Tis then when the hurdy gurdy man
Comes singing songs of love''?

Certainly not.

However, colossal distorted electric guitars (and sitars, of course), constant drum fills and a twee voice affected with tremolo join his special brand of pre-prog fantasy lyrics to make "Hurdy Gurdy Man" a strange and beautiful classic of psychedelic folk/rock.

For further listening consider Jim O'Rourke's perverse hurdy gurdy drone album, Happy Days.