play me this one

Watched some more of "The Wire" today. I'm starting to get into it. After seeing the episodes on the first disc, kinda "eh" so far, I'd listened to a part of a commentary track to one & been roundly put off by the commentary-doing dude & how thoroughly impressed he was with himself and his colleagues and all the genius abounding about. I mighta given up on the show, despite the draw of the Baltimore thing, if I hadn't been talking about it to disclaimerwill, whose enthusiasm encouraged me to continue.

I recently read, in this blog entry I clicked to after coming across & digging the Domaje rendition (which you can hear/snag there), that each new season there's a new cover of the theme song, Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole." And here's a piece from the Balto City Paper about the show's background music & the guy who does it, if you think you might be interested in that.

The one thing in that commentary track that's stuck with me in a less put-off way was the story of how, when one of the show's creators or early producers or somethin' was dying, in some bed somewhere in NYC, the commentary track guy and some other people went all over to find a copy of the (first-year version?) of the theme song to take it to play for him, cuz man he sure loved that song.

So I was thinking about that today, and about what song somebody should go find a copy of to bring and play for me when/if I'm laying dying somewhere. The first cut that came to mind was this one, which would indeed, I declare, be a darned good choice:

  .mp3 >-->  "Tin Roof Blues" -- Louis Armstrong (live)
                                        (with some line-up of his All-Stars, it looks like)

It was one of my first favorite songs/recordings. Discovered on one of my folks' records, a knock-off label's odd assembly of various Louis numbers, including a couple featuring the intriguingly nicknamed Earl "Fatha" Hines, as the sparse notes managed to mention. In my head as a kid I was pronouncing it to rhyme with "bath-uh"---had not the first clue where somebody could get a moniker like that one, it sure is a funny and mysterious world out there.

What can I (or somebody you love) track down & put in your ears one more time, if/when it's coming right down to it? Got an idea?

play me this one

Watched some more of "The Wire" today. I'm starting to get into it. After seeing the episodes on the first disc, kinda "eh" so far, I'd listened to a part of a commentary track to one & been roundly put off by the commentary-doing dude & how thoroughly impressed he was with himself and his colleagues and all the genius abounding about. I mighta given up on the show, despite the draw of the Baltimore thing, if I hadn't been talking about it to disclaimerwill, whose enthusiasm encouraged me to continue.

I recently read, in this blog entry I clicked to after coming across & digging the Domaje rendition (which you can hear/snag there), that each new season there's a new cover of the theme song, Tom Waits' "Way Down in the Hole." And here's a piece from the Balto City Paper about the show's background music & the guy who does it, if you think you might be interested in that.

The one thing in that commentary track that's stuck with me in a less put-off way was the story of how, when one of the show's creators or early producers or somethin' was dying, in some bed somewhere in NYC, the commentary track guy and some other people went all over to find a copy of the (first-year version?) of the theme song to take it to play for him, cuz man he sure loved that song.

So I was thinking about that today, and about what song somebody should go find a copy of to bring and play for me when/if I'm laying dying somewhere. The first cut that came to mind was this one, which would indeed, I declare, be a darned good choice:

  .mp3 >-->  "Tin Roof Blues" -- Louis Armstrong (live)
                                        (with some line-up of his All-Stars, it looks like)

It was one of my first favorite songs/recordings. Discovered on one of my folks' records, a knock-off label's odd assembly of various Louis numbers, including a couple featuring the intriguingly nicknamed Earl "Fatha" Hines, as the sparse notes managed to mention. In my head as a kid I was pronouncing it to rhyme with "bath-uh"---had not the first clue where somebody could get a moniker like that one, it sure is a funny and mysterious world out there.

What can I (or somebody you love) track down & put in your ears one more time, if/when it's coming right down to it? Got an idea?