“There are so many little dyings that it doesn’t matter which of them is death,” wrote esteemed poet/ author Kenneth Patchen. Yet the accrual of such dying over the course of a calendar year belies such “little”ness. As we nudge into the 21st century, the luminaries of the previous one begin to wane, the architects and innovators of prime American music forms: blues, jazz, folk, rock. The obituary page for 2008 may not feature so many marquee names, but the crucial people behind the stage—the gurus, the producers, the poster artists, the record executives, the session men—all continued to vanish as well.
We lost studio drummers like Earl Palmer and guitarist Robert Ward, Phil Spector’s engineer Phil Levine, jazz photographer William Claxton, Mothers of Invention drummer Jimmy Carl Black, Thelonious Monk saxophonist Johnny Griffin. Number groups diminished by one, be they the Count Five, the Four Tops, the Dave Clark Five, or the Kingston Trio. Here are a few of the folks-–some well-known, some never heard of— whose work and influence created a great resonance here and whose efforts will hopefully continue to reverberate in the generations to come.
Peruvian singer Zoila Augusta Emperatriz Chavarri del Castillo, who went by the stage name Yma Sumac, passed away at her home in California on Saturday morning. Sumac, who claimed that her voice had a five-octave range, sang around South America before being signed to Capitol Records in 1950. Her albums for Capitol brought together traditional South American folk songs and splashy Hollywood arrangements, and she performed at the Hollywood Bowl and in Las Vegas during that decade. The ’60s took her around the world and resulted in her recording a live album–the only one she would release during her career. In 1971 she made a foray into rock with the album Miracles and subsequently semi-retired, only coming out to play the occasional concert or perform the odd track (like her interpretation of “I Wonder” from Disney’s Sleeping Beauty, which appeared on the 1987 Disney covers album Stay Awake). Sumac was 86.
Above, The Rotary Connection’s stellar version of Jimi Hendrix’s warped “Burning of the Midnight Lamp”, which you may recognize as being sampled in Jay-Z’s “Hova Song.” The Rotary Connection, led by a very young Minnie Riperton, take what’s arguably one of Hendrix’s lesser singles and crank up the majestic. They pile on the strings and vocals, particularly Minnie’s voice–which is striking in any octave, though she spends most of the song hanging out with Yma Sumac in the stratosphere.
Above, The Rotary Connection’s stellar version of Jimi Hendrix’s warped “Burning of the Midnight Lamp”, which you may recognize as being sampled in Jay-Z’s “Hova Song.” The Rotary Connection, led by a very young Minnie Riperton, take what’s arguably one of Hendrix’s lesser singles and crank up the majestic. They pile on the strings and vocals, particularly Minnie’s voice–which is striking in any octave, though she spends most of the song hanging out with Yma Sumac in the stratosphere.
