New York Hot

This post is about visiting a couple of jazz clubs in New York City over the fourth of July weekend this year. 

Actually, that's not true. It's not really about that at all. Yes, this post appears to be about visiting a couple of jazz clubs in New York City over the fourth of July weekend this year, but it's not. It's really about my dad. And me chasing him.

For as long as I can remember, I've had jazz in my life. My dad was (and is) fanatical about jazz. It's one of his many life's passions and loves. I can remember on weekends when we were kids growing up in England, every time the record player was on in our living room, jazz was pouring out of the speakers. Sounds cool, right? Awesome to have such a hip dad? I mean how with it is my dad to have jazz playing all the time?

I didn't like it. I mean, I really, really didn't like it. It was loud, it was discordant (I would not have used that word as a kid) and there were no words. How could you listen to an entire record with no words? And then another. And another. This is what I grew up with. I didn't appreciate it. I didn't want it. But it was there. I spent time hearing it at home. My dad received magazines about jazz. I spent time in record stores with my dad in London and Birmingham as he looked through piles of albums for hours. It was always there. Jazz, jazz, jazz! I didn't get it. At. All.

Eventually, my dad's love of music made its way to me. But it wasn't jazz. My favorite artist when I was a pre-teen was Billy Joel, and that wasn't really cool at all back in those years. But I started getting into music a little more broadly in a semi-serious way when I was a freshman in high school. Then I started buying records (yes...records) in about 1983. Def Leppard's Pyromania started it for me, but I moved on pretty quickly to other things. Duran Duran. Spandau Ballet. INXS. Genesis. The Moody Blues. Marillion (so much Marillion; like a ton!). Pink Floyd. The Beatles. Bob Dylan. David Bowie. Linda Ronstadt. Motown. Cowboy Junkies. Mark Knopfler. Brandi Carlile. Taylor Swift. There were and are many more in there. Too many to list. 

I believe my dad is at least in large part responsible for my love of music. It is also one of my many life's passions and loves and I give huge credit to my dad here. I can't tell you how many dollar or two dollar used records my dad helped me out with at Integrity 'N Music in Wethersfield, CT.

I figured one day I'd meet my dad a little musically and get into jazz, but honestly it never really happened. Whatever rock or pop music or whatever you want to label it is, I love most or all of that. My interest in all sorts of that type of music has led me to the blues, which I also love. And I do mean LOVE! Classical? Country? Rap? Easy listening? A little bit (very little bit) of opera? Sure, sure, sure, sure and sure. All of it. Well, like old country. And only a little rap. But not jazz. Not on records. I've intentionally visited New Orleans and listened to jazz in clubs and liked it. But sitting down, putting on a record or CD and listening to it at home...that's different. I never got into it. I tried, I swear. Didn't happen. I knew one day I'd be inheriting an amazing jazz collection (which I'd already pledged to honor and take care of) but I just couldn't get into it.

Then one day last fall, I got to a tipping point. My mom told me she and my dad had decided to sell my dad's jazz record collection. Not the CDs. Just the records. 

Hold on! Hold on just one second.

I wanted some. 

This music is an important part of my childhood, even though the irony of my complete rejection of this music is front and center with my objection here. So, while I was over at my parents' place one weekend a couple of weeks after my mother's pronouncement, I asked my dad if he would pull out a curated assortment of the very best jazz records ever made from his collection. He couldn't do it. Couldn't recall enough about individual works to pass along the best in his collection to me. My dad's memory is failing. It's a problem. It's frustrating for him and it breaks my heart. And not just because he couldn't pull out his favorite jazz of all time.

Lacking my dad's input, I sort of tried to do it for myself that weekend. I did a quick search on the internet for the best jazz albums ever made, found some (like honestly just five or six) in his collection and came home and started playing them. John Coltrane. Charles Mingus. Art Blakey. Miles Davis. One or two from each plus a Howlin' Wolf record. And while I played them, I continued to look online and make a list so that the next time I visited my parents, I could look properly and find what I was sure would be an instant legit classic jazz collection.

Some of what used to be in my dad's record collection.

The names on that list I made...Duke Ellington. Charlie Parker. Sonny Rollins. Grant Green. Kenny Burrell. Wayne Shorter. Eric Dolphy. Freddie Hubbard. Herbie Hancock. Dexter Gordon. Thelonious Monk. Count Basie. Lee Morgan. Django Reinhart. Cannonball Adderly. More Art Blakey. More John Coltrane. More Miles Davis. These were all names from my childhood. I knew them all. I just didn't know anything about any of them and I never listened to their music. 

The next time I visited my parents, I found most of what I was looking for in one single spot in my dad's bedroom closet. Most everything on the list I had made was recorded on Blue Note Records and my dad had all of them together in one giant treasure trove of a find. Now is not the time and place to talk extensively about my dad's record filing habits but he used to organize his music collection by label, not artist. He's mostly changed that now but it makes sense given his history that I would find all the classics in one location. They were all on the same label (Blue Note).

Since I found that stash, I've been slowly working my way through that collection. It's difficult to get used to a sizeable collection of music that is totally new but I've been doing it one by one. I definitely have favorites and some that I love. I also haven't even gotten to some of it and I also can't stand some of it and I swear it's not scars from my childhood. 

It helps that they are vinyl. There's something about dropping that needle down onto the wax and hearing the same pops and clicks sometimes that my dad used to hear. I feel like vinyl's the right medium for this music. It just feels appropriate.

Photos on the wall of The Village Vanguard.

As far as I was concerned when I was a young kid, my dad's love of jazz was confined to our home. I'm sure that's the limit of my childhood memory kicking in. I'm sure he went to listen to jazz live in England and I know he had a jazz club he used to go to every so often in Connecticut near where we lived. But eventually, he started to travel to listen to jazz in the places where men and women made it famous. I remember him taking a couple of trips to New Orleans with my mom, including one where they drove to the Crescent City all the way down from Memphis. On that trip, they visited Sun Studio where my mom literally bumped into Carl Perkins and stepped on his shoes.

The other jazz trips I remember my dad taking were to New York City. He had a lifelong friend and fellow jazz fan who used to visit us here in the States and the two of them used to head down to the City for a long weekend for what seemed to me like several years in a row but was likely really just two or three. They'd grab a hotel room, spend each night jazz club hopping until 2 a.m. or whatever in the morning, crash until late the next morning and then do the same thing over and over again. Birdland. Blue Note. The Village Vanguard. Some others probably that I don't even know about and which my dad cannot remember.

One day I thought it would be great if I could have taken my dad back to some of those places but I know enough to know that he's never going to be jazz club hopping in New York ever again. But I thought now that I have a portion of his old jazz record collection, I could do it without him. I've followed the memory of Gerry Rafferty to a pub in London and visited a hotel in Alabama where The Rolling Stones once stayed and had a late night snack in one of Ernest Hemingway's favorite restaurants in Madrid. Why shouldn't I now do the same thing and follow in my dad's footsteps to one or two jazz clubs? He's had way more influence on the person that I am today than Hemingway, Mick Jagger, Keith Richards or Gerry Rafferty. A three night trip to NYC seemed to be the perfect time to start following my dad to jazz clubs.

The Ravi Coltrane Quartet. Birdland. New York City.

I focused my jazz club search in New York on six places: Birdland, Blue Note, Dizzy's Club, Smalls, The Village Vanguard and Zinc Bar. From there, we picked where we were going mostly, but not entirely, based on who was playing, although our choices turned out to be somewhat limited on Monday night, July 3, when most were closed.

There is some real jazz history in some of these places and some of these names. Sure, Smalls has only been open since 1994 and Dizzy's Club is even younger (despite borrowing jazz legend Dizzy Gillespie's name) and Blue Note was opened in the early 1980s. But Zinc Bar is in the same space that used to be called Club Cinderella where Thelonious Monk worked as the house pianist in the 1940s and the Birdland club is one of the most legendary jazz spots named after Charlie Parker and opened way back in 1949 (although admittedly, the current location is the third iteration of the club and there was no Birdland at all from 1964 to 1986). Of all the places on my list, The Village Vanguard is the boss; it's been in the same location since 1934. And pretty much everyone who is anyone in jazz has a live album recorded at the Vanguard.

We picked Birdland and The Village Vanguard. For the artists. For the history. And because I know my dad has sat in both spots listening to jazz and being happy. 

Before we get into my very brief synopsis of our experience at each place, let me just say what an amazing place that New York is. I've said this many a time but if I could afford to live in Manhattan and maintain my current lifestyle that I enjoy living here in northern Virginia, I'd do it in a heartbeat. I love this city. I was very selective with my choice of clubs to visit but where else on this planet can you find the number of jazz clubs that there are in New York. I've listened to jazz in other cities in the world including New Orleans, Paris and Brussels but for the amount of top quality music every night, New York is the best. This doesn't just apply to jazz clubs. Like everything about New York is the best. LOVE it.

We ended up seeing the early show of the Ravi Coltrane Quartet at Birdland on Saturday night and the late show of the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra at The Village Vanguard on Monday night. From a music perspective, I enjoyed Ravi Coltrane (who yes, is the son of John Coltrane) way more than the VJO. Coltrane is leading a band of professional musicians who are making a living playing jazz and making records that are creative and original. They are also (from my limited jazz knowledge acquired in the last nine months or so) playing music pretty close to the 1950s and 1960s stuff I've been predominantly listening to since I pillaged my dad's record collection. The VJO is a big band and the big band era is long gone. That's not to say there's no value in that kind of music or that it wasn't entertaining; just that given a choice one night to see one or the other, I'm picking the quartet.

Venue-wise, they both had their own appeal. When you step off 44th Street and into Birdland, it's like you are a million miles away from the New York City sidewalk with just one step while still very definitely being in New York. There is no doubt you are in an historic jazz club. I'd go back to Birdland any time, particularly if we could get seated in the front row like we were last month (it's first come, first served seating and you know I was early).

The Vanguard Jazz Orchestra, just before they started playing (no pics once the music starts).

But it is difficult to replicate the atmosphere of the Vanguard. It's a basement space which you access through a pair of doors probably 4' or maybe 4'-6" wide between the two doors and down a staircase which I feel fairly certain doesn't meet today's building codes. But it's a magical space. It's dark. It's old without being smelly. And the triangular floor plan focuses all the attention on the small stage and the south end of the joint. We were packed in there like some kind of puzzle pieces making up some kind of larger, glorious bigger picture. You can feel the history in that place, even without the faces in the pictures on the wall looking back at you (Birdland has similar walls-full of pictures). I’d go to either club again, but the Vanguard is the space with the legit history. The music that place has heard over the years. Just legends upon legends who have played there. It's tangible.

I'll say a couple of more things about this experience. 

First of all, I'm amazed at how well the bass playing comes through in these small clubs. Listening to records at home, I seem to get everything except the bass. Horns, drums, piano, whatever. But I miss the bass. It comes through magnificently in person. I have no idea how they get a bass down into the Vanguard but we did ask bassist Dezron Douglas at Birdland how he gets his bass moved around the city. Apparently he can get it in a big cab (I can see that) and on the Subway (I can't imagine how but I trust him).

Second, one of the things my dad liked best about his jazz club visits to New York was the fact that he got to talk to the musicians between or after sets. I remember him talking about his conversations with pianist Marian McPartland in some club while he was on his visits. And sure enough after the Coltrane set, all the musicians were available for conversation, pictures or whatever. It's a completely different post-show vibe that you get at a rock or pop show. Most musicians (but admittedly not all) disappear after the shows. It was cool to see that sort of thing still gong on that my dad remembered so fondly. 

I am pretty sure that my jazz collection is going to get bigger (I just got a new record for my birthday...) and I am also pretty sure I have not visited my last jazz club (already started looking at shows at Blues Alley in DC...). These couple of visits were about getting closer to the music that I've been exploring over the last few months but they were also a conscious gesture to honor and respect and get closer to something my dad loved and loves. I have very few regrets in life but not engaging with this music earlier is one of those. I'll just have to do the best I can with what my dad has intentionally or unintentionally passed to me here. I promise I'll do the best I can.

Birdland: Show over!

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Coda

A couple of final notes about my dad's love for jazz and my own jazz journey to date. I'll take those two in the opposite order I just wrote them because my thoughts on this type of music are clearly less important than my dad's thoughts. At least from my perspective. 

I have not spent much of my life listening to jazz but I will say that as an art form, it was far, far more sophisticated in the 1950s and early 1960s than anything labeled rock and roll or something like that. I guess I'm also surprised based on my toe-dip in the last nine months or so at how contemporaneous this music is with the emergence of rock music. Put another way, I had no idea that the music my dad was listening to when I was growing up was just 10 or 20 years old at the time. 

I will say that I appreciate incredibly the following six albums that I've discovered since this time last year. I'm picking six for a specific reason, and not because beer comes in six packs. At least not this time.

• Cannonball Adderly: Somethin' Else.
• Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers: Moanin'.
• Kenny Burrell: Midnight Blue.
• John Coltrane: Blue Train.
• Dexter Gordon: Our Man In Paris.
• Grant Green: Idle Moments.

In 2022, I was not able to get a list of essential jazz albums out of my dad. However, I did ask him in the early 1990s for a list of his must-have or essential or desert island disks or whatever you want to call them top jazz albums of all time. And I still have that hand-written list 30 years or so after he wrote it down.

Here's my dad's list of essential jazz albums which he called Foot Tapping List #1. Do with this what you will. Unfortunately, there will never be a List #2.

• Count Basie and His Orchestra: The Atomic Mr. Basie.
• Miles Davis: Ballads OR Greatest Hits.
• Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges: Back to Back.
• Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong: Ella and Louis Again OR The Best of Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong.
• George Lewis: Jazz Funeral In New Orleans.
• Big Joe Turner: The Boss of The Blues.

My dad's list is way different than my list. And I think that's OK. It might reflect the fact that I like different things from my dad or it might reflect the fact that I don't know anything about jazz. I've tried my dad's list. I even asked him for copies of his CDs of his list about 15 or 20 years after I asked him for the list which he made me (mostly; he made a couple of substitutions because I think he didn't have all six on CD and easily copy-able when I asked him). The Atomic Mr. Basie is some good stuff. I'll keep going back to the rest. Maybe when I know a little bit more and can appreciate the nuance and subtlety a little better.

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Piano Sonata No. 17

This is the story of a single piece of music and why travel is so valuable for me. Although it honestly might take me a few more stories than that one to get to the story that I really want to tell. Buckle up for this one!

We went to Vienna right before Christmas to visit their many, many world-famous Christmas markets. That was without a doubt the number one reason we hopped on a plane and flew across the Atlantic Ocean in December of last year. But I can't think of a single trip of even a few days that we've ever taken that is just focused on one thing. There are always usually a lot of sub-themes that fill out our time in between the main attraction or attractions. Vienna here was no exception.

One of our interests we had to explore in Vienna was music. Had to!

Now, I am no stranger to music trips. I've been to Chicago, Memphis, Nashville, Austin, New Orleans and Los Angeles specifically to hang out in bars or clubs or concert halls or just outdoors listening to music. Music that I've loved for decades, music that I've never heard before, music that's stuck with me after the trips, music that I've forgotten about as soon as I've heard it. Rock, pop, blues, country. All of it.

Vienna was none of that. Vienna was all about classical music. Remember when classical music was dominant? Probably not, because pretty much nobody on this planet was alive back then.

Vienna's Staatsoper (or State Opera).

I'd like to think on a typical music trip (especially one where I was staying in the same city for eight nights) that I could explore pretty much everything significant related to music while I was in town. I'd like to visit the major places to listen to live music. I'd like to see all the museums that the city offers about music. I'd like to see all the historical shrines and statues and whatever else there is to commemorate this place as a mover and/or shaker on the worldwide music scene.

It became pretty apparent pretty quickly when we started planning this trip that doing that in Vienna was just not going to work. Hitting every sight, every statue, every museum, every hall and salon and room and closet that is relevant to the history or the now of classical music in Vienna is impossible in a bit more than a week. It's completely infeasible to take in everything because it is absolutely everywhere. And I really do mean that. Everywhere.

I guess the logical question to address at this point is...why? Well quite simply, for a long time (and admittedly a long time ago), Vienna was the most important city in the world when it came to music. Combine a royal family interested in sponsoring and nurturing the arts with enough talent and a couple of superstars (either homegrown or imported from elsewhere) and Vienna from the mid-eighteenth century to the end of the nineteenth century was exactly the right environment to create some of the best works of music ever.

So who are we talking about here? Well, briefly (and sticking with the undoubtedly great...), Haydn, Schubert, two Joseph Strausses, Beethoven and Mozart. 

Now, I know...six major composers in about 150 years doesn't seem like a lot. Heck, I could easily identify more than six major bands or artists coming out of London in the 1960s or New York in the 1970s but we are talking about a totally different time here. There was no vinyl or cassettes or CDs or MTV or YouTube or any other quick way to get music out to enough people to sustain hundreds or thousands of artists. Not to mention the fact that most people spent all or almost all of their time trying to just survive. The only people who really had the time to listen to music as a hobby were the aristocracy. And there's only so much music they needed, I guess.

Beethovenplatz, Vienna.

A quick look at what there was to see music-wise in Vienna got us a list of at least seven museums housed in spaces where some of Vienna's most famous composers once lived and probably way more spots than that where we could hear some music live and in person. There was no way we'd have time to get to all seven museums and we decided to settle for just three live music experiences. Since, you know, most of our nights were already booked at Christmas markets throughout the city. 

Museum-wise, we decided to skip the former residences of Joseph Haydn and Johann Strauss along with the birth and death places of Franz Schubert and concentrate instead on Beethoven and Mozart (sticking with the most famous there). Performance-wise, we decided on a variety of experiences in places small and large with crowds small and large, from the very fanciest to the most intimate. We had to do a lot of editing here to get to those three. 

I have to say it must be amazing for a classically trained musician to be in Vienna. I know my perspective is tainted by living in the United States on this issue but it must be incredible to have so many places to play and so many people (even if a lot of them are tourists in some spots) who appreciate what you are doing. I imagine the life of a musician playing in an orchestra in America is an underappreciated, underpaid profession. I imagine (with no real insight or knowledge here) that doing the same thing in Vienna is completely different as a career.

Beethoven Museum, Vienna. Yes, there's going to be a lot of Beethoven stuff here.

All three museums that we had on our list (the Beethoven Museum, the Mozart's Apartment and the Beethoven Pasqualithaus) which we made it to were apartments that either Beethoven or Mozart definitely or probably lived in at one time in their lives. All three were filled with exhibits about the composers which were informative and gave us a lot of details about the composers. But they lacked something which I'll get to in a bit and unless the museums dedicated to Haydn, Strauss and Schubert are substantially different than the two former Beethoven and one former Mozart residences we visited, I'm probably pretty glad that we skipped those other four. 

So what did we learn? Well, big picture it sounds to me like Mozart was kind of a spoiled brat who felt the rules just didn't apply to him while Beethoven was a demanding and frustrated perfectionist who had extreme difficulty dealing with his early deafness. Both were clearly geniuses who were able to channel their gifts into useful output that sticks with us gloriously today and both seemed to be well aware of their genius. That may be a little too simplistic and broad brush but that's what I got out of these three museums. I am sure I missed many subtleties about their lives. For me, by the way, Beethoven is way better than Mozart.

I really appreciated the light these museums shed on Beethoven's working methodology. He clearly started and stopped projects while he worked on other symphonies or concertos or sonatas as they came to him and he asked a ton of his musicians technically, including having them on standby while he finished composing so they could play the piece right after he was done. It actually reminded me of stories about Bob Dylan in the studio prepping his musicians to play with little direction and adjusting after each take. I think the comparison is potentially a pretty good one.

I also appreciated the information in the Beethoven Museum about the spaces where some of Beethoven's symphonies were played. They were tiny. Remember, there was no real commercial market and no real concert halls for regular people to go to listen to symphonies back then so these loud bombastic symphonies were rehearsed and played in spaces that were altogether too small. The volume must have been extreme. No wonder Beethoven went deaf.

Views of the outside of the Beethoven Pasqualithaus.

But the real problem I had with these museums is that there was nothing about being in the former apartments that added anything to the experience, except for realizing where in the city of Vienna they used to live. None of the interior is restored to the appearance of when Mozart or Beethoven lived there and there were no real original objects or written music owned or produced by either man. In fact, historians don't even know which room in at least Mozart's former apartment was the dining room vs. the kitchen vs. a bedroom. It's just a series of empty rooms filled with exhibit after exhibit of non-original objects. There's no reflection of how they lived in the residences because nobody recorded it.

I think the only original items that were (or may have been) in the possession of either composer were the sugar canister and salt and pepper shakers and the music stand (but that's really sort of doubtful based on the display description) in the Beethoven Pasqualithaus. I'm not knocking the alleged authenticity of these items (OK maybe I am just a bit...) but I'm not sure a salt shaker owned by Beethoven adds to the museum that much.

End of that rant, I promise.

Beethoven's sugar canister, salt and pepper shakers and music stand (maybe), Beethoven Pasqualithaus.

We did find a surprise in the Beethoven Pasqualithaus that absolutely crushed us. I think it's worth spending a few minutes on that issue, if only to write down two names.  

When you travel through Europe, eventually somehow when it is least expected, the Holocaust will pop up and jar you back to reality that the wonderful place you are visiting has a much darker piece in its history. And sure enough it did just that at the Pasqualithaus. This particular museum was established in 1941 and in 1941 the Nazi German army had taken control of the city of Vienna. In fact, it was the Nazis that founded the museum in the first place.

To make room for the museum, the Nazis had to expel the family living in the apartment which was thought to have been one of Beethoven's favorite places to live. Of course, the family was Jewish. In June of 1943, Josef and Josefine Eckstein were removed from the apartment and deported to Theresienstadt, a ghetto established by the Nazis in the town of Terezin, in what was then Czechoslovakia. Theresienstadt served as a way station to the various concentration camps the Nazis has set up across Europe. 

On October 23, 1944, the Ecksteins were moved to Auschwitz. They never left. They were murdered along with about 1.1 million other innocent people in that death camp. It makes you really wonder whether that museum should really be in that building at all. Or if more than just a tiny bit of wall space should be dedicated to how the museum was first created.

The Mozart Ensemble Vienna String Quartet at the Mozarthaus.

If there was a part of our Vienna music quest that was more successful (and there was), it was definitely the three performances we attended, primarily because (1) there was live music involved and (2) they didn't require extensive reading. After searching through various websites and our Lonely Planet Vienna guidebook, we eventually settled on something grand (Mozart's The Magic Flute at the Staatsoper), something seasonal (Christmas concert at the Stephensdom) and something intimate (the Mozart Ensemble Vienna String Quartet at the Mozarthaus).

I will say here that the Staatsoper is absolutely an amazing venue. It has to be one of the top few opera houses in the world. The hall is magnificent, the lobbies are breathtaking and the rooms where you can get a snack or a glass of grüner veltliner during the intermission are just gorgeous. You feel like you should be dressed in a suit or a tux for these performances just based on the place itself. I wore jeans, a sweater and boots. Hey, it was the winter. Or December, at least.

This was probably my second Mozart opera ever. I think I saw Don Giovanni years ago although I can remember very little about that experience. I don't know what Mozart was smoking or taking when he wrote The Magic Flute but it seemed shall we say not absolutely rooted in reality. Awesome music, the singing was terrific and the venue was perfect but I'd say I'm passing on future opportunities to see The Magic Flute.

Intermission time at The Magic Flute. Grüner veltliner, anyone?

I'll also say that the Christmas concert in the Stephensdom (or St. Stephen's Cathedral) right in the city center was a great complement to the Christmas markets we went to Vienna to see. However, the Stephensdom is huge (I mean it is a Gothic cathedral after all...) and a small ensemble of musicians along with a couple of vocalists struggled to fill the space with music in a meaningful way. It's also really cold inside an uninsulated stone building when it's snowing outside.

So that leaves the Mozart Ensemble Vienna as the clear winners of our live music experience in Vienna. This night out was super intimate. It's you and four musicians in a tiny room inside an historic building just steps from the Stephensplatz. There is not a bad seat in the house, particularly considering there are only six rows of chairs in the place. 

There were a couple of things that I really loved about this performance. First, there was a little historical context provided before each number which I appreciated. The comment that Schubert is probably the most important composer for string quartets is something that sticks with me above all others. It makes me want to explore that comment someday.

Second, they played the hell out of the music, particularly Schubert's Quartet in D Minor, Op. 76, No. 2. I mean really nailed it. It was aggressive and passionate and dynamic. I loved it. It's incredible to hear musicians play this way, especially when it comes to classical music. We saw a Vivaldi concert in Venice years ago where the same thing happened. Just awesome stuff. We think of classical music sometimes as calm background music. It's not at all sometimes.

Christmas concert in the Stephensdom.

But this post isn't really about any of that stuff I've just written. It's supposed to be about one piece of music. And that piece of music is Beethoven's Piano Sonata No. 17.

In the first room of the Beethoven Museum, there is a story about Ludwig van Beethoven seeing a rider on a horse canter by his window while in his apartment at what is now the Museum. The Beethoven Museum today is surrounded by other buildings in a neighborhood but at the time he occupied it in 1802, it was in the middle of the country. That bucolic view and the horse's pace supposedly created a piece of music in his head that date which eventually became his 17th piano sonata. 

The story of this inspiration is written on the wall next to a wheel with a handle. Turn the handle and the Sonata plays. We turned the handle as directed.

I have never listened to a piano sonata in my life. I have tried once or twice but it has historically been difficult for me to get into a solo piano track lacking any sort of external motivation or interest. But that piece of music in that museum was just incredible. It has pace, it has melody, it has passion, it has depth and tenderness and forcefulness. It's dynamic. I've never really heard a piece of music quite like it and I have listened to a lot of music. I mean I guess it should be all that because Beethoven wrote it but I'm sure he has some clunkers out there. All artists do, don't they? Even Beethoven?

I know if I had really wanted to I could have started going through Beethoven's piano sonatas systematically on my own. I know I didn't have to travel to Vienna and discover this piece of music. But in a way, there's no way I would have found this without traveling. Maybe that's stupid. Maybe it's inconsequential that I've discovered this one piece of music that I now love. I don't think that it is any of those things. I love this sonata. And I know I wouldn't have found it without traveling.

Don't get me wrong, here. I'm not saying that the rest of our music experience in Vienna outside of one room in a museum was a waste or wasn't an essential part of our trip to Austria. It was. I loved all the music we saw live (even shivering in the Stephensdom) and I got a ton out of the Beethoven and Mozart museums we visited. But without Vienna there would have been no discovery of that piano sonata. And I'm happier today for it. 

As soon as we got back and home and I had the chance, I bought the complete set of Beethoven's sonatas (there are 32) on a nine CD set (yes, I still buy CDs...). I've listened to No. 17 I don't know how many times. I've dabbled in the others and have not played a single one twice. Travel...I'm telling you...it changes us.

That's the story. Apologies on the length.

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How We Did It

We visited the Beethoven Museum, Mozart's Apartment at the Mozarthaus and the Beethoven Pasqualithaus. We also attended a recital by the Mozart Ensemble Vienna at the Mozarthaus; saw an opera at the Staatsoper; and shivered through a concert at the Stephensdom. With the exception of the Beethoven Museum, all of these attractions are inside the Ringstrasse and easily accessible if you are staying in or near the city center of Vienna. To get to the Beethoven Museum, we took the number 37 tram from the Schottentor U stop. Get off at the Hohe Varta stop and walk about a block or so north from there. The trams in Vienna are awesome. They run frequently and on time.

The two Beethoven museums are both owned by the City of Vienna, as are the four museums about Haydn, Strauss and Schubert that I mentioned in this post. If you have the time and inclination to be a completist on the history of music in Vienna, there is a combination ticket for all six properties. 

We found all the concerts (an opera is a concert for the purposes of this section of this post) we attended to be reasonably priced and the quality of the sound and the performers at both the Staatsoper and the Mozarthaus to be excellent. You can spend a lot of money on a ticket at the Staatsoper. We sat in the upper deck and thought the view and the sound was just great from up there. Of course, we are not fanatical about opera. 

Concerts at the Stephensdom are not restricted to the Christmas season. We got our tickets from the Kunst & Kultur website, which seems to have programs throughout the year, although certainly not as many as there were before Christmas.

We spent a lot of time looking at various venues before picking our three concerts. There's a lot to look at honestly but we found a good starting place was the Vienna tourism website's page about music in the city. 

Also, there are plenty of statues of composers around the city if you are into that sort of thing. I am, although the only one we sought out was the status of Beethoven on the Beethovenplatz.

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Southern Music Playlist

For years now, I've toyed with the idea of creating music playlists for some of the trips that I've taken over the last eight or so (or more, even) years. You know, location-specific tunes to listen to while we drive around discovering whatever new place it is we are exploring. Maybe albums that were recorded or written in the city, state or country where we happen to be spending a few days or week or fortnight or whatever. Or music made by the place's native sons or daughters. Or even just songs about wherever it is we happen to be. It's a good idea, right? 

I always thought so, anyway.

I've never done it. 

But if there was ever a trip that called out for a need for a playlist, it was our tour of the American South, just because of the richness of musical history in that area. There's a first time for everything. This had to be done! So I made it so.

The idea was the simple part. The assembly of a list would be more complicated.

My initial idea was to make a list of 52 songs (one for each full year I've been on the planet) from my own music collection that represent to me the city of Memphis and the states of Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama with an emphasis on the four recording studios we planned to visit over the little more than a week we were spending down south. No new songs. No new purchases. Just stuff that I love and which are indisputably part of music history where we were headed.

I thought 52 was a good number but I also feared editing would be a bit of a problem on this sort of exercise, which is probably a big reason why I've never done this before. My list filled up pretty quickly and easily. I managed to find a good amount (but not too much) of music recorded in Memphis or northern Alabama or songs by artists from the places we visited. It worked. I made a couple of last minute changes but 52 came together well.

But then I thought there was some room for some extra stuff that would fit the mood of the trip (told you editing was an issue). So I added five wildcard songs that have a lot of meaning but maybe don't fit my initial criteria. 

Here's what ended up on my 52 (plus 5) song playlist. And no, I'm not writing something about every song. Or even every artist.

• Robert Johnson: Cross Road Blues / Ramblin' On My Mind / Love In Vain
• Sonny Boy Williamson: One Way Out / Checkin' Up On My Baby
• Muddy Waters: Rollin' Stone / I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man / Standing Around Crying
• Elmore James: The Sky Is Crying / Dust My Broom
• B.B. King: It's My Own Fault / Help The Poor
• Willie Nelson Featuring B.B. King: The Thrill Is Gone

So much of the story of American music started in Mississippi so it seems like the logical place to start my playlist. Without blues being sung by black musicians who were sons and daughters of sharecroppers who were sons and daughters of slaves, there might not be any rock and roll today. Black families fed up with a life of perpetual poverty and effective indentured servitude headed north along Highway 61 to Chicago, some to work in factories in the city and some to seek their fortunes making music. Some of those that didn't make it all the way to Chicago stopped and stuck in Memphis. 

All the artists above were born in Mississippi with the exception of Willie Nelson; I felt that Willie and B.B.'s version of "The Thrill Is Gone" would add another classic voice into the mix on my playlist. Sonny Boy Williamson and Muddy Waters are more famous as Chess Records (out of Chicago) artists, but Sonny Boy was instrumental in broadcasting music across the Mississippi Delta through his King Biscuit Time radio station broadcast out of Helena, Arkansas on radio station KFFA to black and white kids everywhere the signal would reach.

The most legendary of these musicians has to be Robert Johnson, an itinerant and ordinary guitar player who disappeared from Mississippi only to return as the most important blues musician of his time (and perhaps ever). That astonishing transformation led some folks to speculate that Johnson had sold his soul to the devil at the crossroads of Routes 49 and 61 in exchange for his talent. Johnson didn't dispute the story for as long as he lived. Which wasn't long. He died at age 27, which likely helped keep the crossroads mythology alive.

• Jackie Brenston with His Delta Cats: Rocket "88" 
• B.B. King: B.B. Blues
• Howlin' Wolf: How Many More Years
• Elvis Presley: That's All Right / Good Rockin' Tonight
• Johnny Cash: Cry, Cry, Cry / Guess Things Happen That Way / Ballad Of A Teenage Queen
• Jerry Lee Lewis: Great Balls Of Fire / Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On
• Live: I Walk The Line

First stop on our trip: Memphis, home of the blues and the birthplace of rock and roll. Its location at the north end of the the Mississippi delta (and within reach of KFFA's signal) allowed black musicians a place to play and make money and white kids to steal that music and transform it into something different which eventually would become rock and roll. I don't use "steal" in a judgmental way there because much of the history of rock and roll is adapting what those before you laid down as a foundation. But it was stealing.

All the tracks above were recorded at Sam Phillips' Sun Studio (or Memphis Recording Service as it was known before Phillips re-branded it) with the exception of "I Walk The Line" by Live. I think it was important to strike a little bit of a balance between the Jackie Brenston / B.B. King / Howlin' Wolf tracks and the later Sun tracks recorded by white musicians. All of them are excellent. If there's a regret here, it's that I didn't put B.B. King's "3 O'Clock Blues" on the playlist because I think it's far superior to "B.B. Blues". However, I didn't own it and so didn't include it. In fact, I still don't.

So about that Live track...

Live's version of Johnny Cash's "I Walk The Line" was pulled from the Good Rockin' Tonight: The Legacy of Sun Records album. My dad bought that album for me for Christmas years and years ago and features artists I love re-recording songs originally recorded at Sun Studio. It's an awesome album which would be even awesome-er if I could lop off the Kid Rock track at the end. Not because his version of "Drinkin' Wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee" is a bad song but just because I object to all things Kid Rock. The best track on the album is Live's interpretation of "I Walk The Line". It's sinister and mean and I love it. Had to put that song on the playlist despite the fact it wasn't actually recorded in Memphis. Sometimes you have to bend the rules.

• Booker T and The MGs: Green Onions
• William Bell: You Don't Miss Your Water / Any Other Way 
• Sam And Dave: Hold On! I'm Comin' / Soul Man
• Eddie Floyd: Knock On Wood
• Johnny Daye: What'll I Do For Satisfaction
• Otis Redding: Respect / I've Been Loving You Too Long / (Sittin' On) The Dock Of the Bay
• Albert King: Born Under A Bad Sign / Laundromat Blues

There were two great record labels in Memphis in the 1950s and 1960s: Sun Studio downtown and Stax Records on the south side of town. Sun gets 11 tracks on the playlist; Stax gets 12. It's not a competition. It just worked out that way. But it does speak to the strength of Stax's catalog and my love for parts of that catalog that there are more Stax tracks than Sun. 

My favorite Stax artist is Albert King. There's no question about it. His voice and his guitar playing are so smooth and completely unlike anyone else. I could have stuck his entire Born Under A Bad Sign album (which is really just a collection of singles) on the playlist and been happy. But there had to be cuts, so Albert ends up with just two tracks. Stax was a family through and through. If you need any proof of that, look no further than the authors of the titial song of Albert King's album: William Bell and Booker T. Jones, who also have tracks on the playlist.

Two other notes about the Stax portion of my playlist. First, Otis Redding is just incredible. Among all the young deaths in music history, Otis' has to be one of the least well known. 26 years old. And he was just getting warmed up. Second, there is no situation that I wouldn't listen to the two Sam and Dave tracks on this list. These two songs always make me feel better.

• Aretha Franklin: I Never Loved A Man The Way I Love You / Do Right Woman, Do Right Man
• Wilson Pickett: Mustang Sally
• The Rolling Stones: Brown Sugar / Wild Horses / You Gotta Move
• Paul Simon: Loves Me Like A Rock / Kodachrome

The Muscle Shoals portion of my playlist could have been a lot longer, but unlike Sun and Stax, most of the artists who recorded at FAME Studios and the Muscle Shoals Sound Studio were not from one of the states we visited. So I decided to just crop it at the best of the best.

Because they ended up on two of my favorite albums ever (with Sticky Fingers being THE favorite ever), I elected to include every song recorded by Aretha Franklin and The Rolling Stones on my playlist. But if there's a favorite story about an artist traveling to Muscle Shoals to record some music, it's Paul Simon visiting there in 1973 to record one song for his There Goes Rhymin' Simon album.

Simon booked four days in Muscle Shoals to record his song "Take Me To The Mardi Gras" with the black musicians he had heard on the Staple Singers' Be Altitude: Respect Yourself album. He got surprised twice in Muscle Shoals: once when he found out none of the musicians he heard on the album he loved were black and again when the band nailed his song in a half a day. He ended up recording half his album in the studio with the leftover time. I think it's worth watching the Youtube video of the four band members discussing Simon's visit. The link is here. 

Robert Johnson's grave, Little Missionary Baptist Church, Greenwood, Mississippi.

• Hank Williams: You Win Again
• The Band: Ophelia
• Pine Hill Haints: Trains Have No Names

There is not a lot of music made by artists from Alabama and Arkansas in my music collection. But we were spending some time driving through those states so I thought it was important to include at least some music made by folks from those two states. 

The Pine Hill Haints are my favorite all time band from Alabama. You likely don't know their music. I met them in a bar below a record store (the bar was appropriately called The Basement) in Nashville in 2006. Their approach to music, which included heavy washboard and washtub bass action on most all their songs, intrigued me and I ended up buying a few of their albums which I still pull out and listen to way more than I listen to a lot of other music in my collection.  And when I say "met them" I really mean that. I was talking football while watching a preseason game with some dude at the bar when I was waiting for the show to start. That dude turned out to be Jamie Barrier, who is the lead singer and guitarist. 

I also knew that any playlist that was meant for a trip to Arkansas had to include at least one track sung by Levon Helm in The Band. "Ophelia" is perhaps my favorite track by The Band. I find it to be one of their most musical tracks and it's for sure my favorite Levon Helm vocal. Easy choice on that one.

Hank Williams made the cut because has Alabama produced a more influential musician? I tried to pick a track that was not too denigrating towards his wife, as most of his songs were.

Beale Street at night, Memphis.

• Elvis Presley: Jailhouse Rock / Suspicious Minds
• Dusty Springfield: Son Of A Preacher Man / Willie & Laura Mae Jones
• Big Star: In The Street

For the last five of my original 52 songs on my playlist, I went back to Memphis for more Elvis, one song off Big Star's #1 Album record (which is renowned by musicians but I can't for the life of me see the genius of the album) and two tracks by Dusty Springfield.

It is difficult for me to describe how incredible Dusty In Memphis is. On the first play, it sounds like it belongs on an easy listening station that only people old enough to be my parents would really listen to. I first bought this album on reputation sometime in the 1990s I'm guessing and one day started listen to it a few years later. The sexiness and sultriness set against the hot, sticky South where it was recorded lingers on every track. It is desire, it is forbidden, it is desperate, it is seductive. It never gets old. It's one of the most incredible collection of songs I've ever heard. I've consistently maintained that if I could have only five albums to listen to for the rest of my life they would be Sticky Fingers (The Rolling Stones), Abbey Road (The Beatles), a Mark Knopfler album, a Bob Dylan album (my preference on the Knopfler and Dylan albums keeps shifting) and Dusty In Memphis. It is that good.

Perhaps obviously, Dusty In Memphis was recorded in the Bluff City, specifically at Chips Moman's now long gone American Music Studio. To be more accurate here, I guess I should say that the instrumental tracks were recorded in Memphis. Dusty couldn't sing in Memphis. Just couldn't do it. Stage fright or shyness or whatever. Her vocals were recorded in New York.

The most famous song on this album is Dusty's version of "Son of a Preacher Man". The other song on my playlist, "Willie & Laura Mae Jones" was not on the original album, but it was on the expanded edition I fell in love with when I really got into the album. I think it's the most southern track on the deluxe edition so I included it on my playlist, even though it was not recorded in Memphis at all. I cheated with Live's "I Walk The Line". I'm cheating here too.

Real Deal Cowboy Neal, King's Palace Cafe, Memphis. Sometimes the best blues is found in an alley.

The living room at Graceland. The stained glass peacocks are amazing. Seriously!

• Bob Dylan: Only A Pawn In Their Game
• Neil Young: Southern Man
• Paul Simon: Graceland
• Depeche Mode: Personal Jesus
• U2: Pride (In The Name Of Love)

So this is my "plus five" list. Five songs that are completely relevant to the area of the country we visited while also being written and recorded by artists who have little to no historical connection to the deep South.

The Dylan and U2 tracks are both about assassinations of Civil Rights leaders. "Only A Pawn In Their Game" is about the driveway slaying of Civil Rights activist Medgar Evers in Mississippi in 1963. I find this song a little strange because while Dylan is (appropriately) pointing the finger of blame at the politicians who were convincing poor uneducated whites to kill for them, it sounds like he's absolving the man who pulled the trigger of responsibility. U2's "Pride" is about the killing of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis.

"Graceland" and "Personal Jesus" are both on this list because of Elvis. "Graceland" is about a man feeling compelled to visit Elvis Presley's home, Graceland, but it's really about the dissolution of his marriage. There are some awesome lines in the song that represent the area of the country in just magical ways ("The Mississippi delta is shining like a national guitar"). Depeche Mode took their inspiration from a Priscilla Presley penned memoir about her time with Elvis. Elvis is her "Personal Jesus".

Finally, I couldn't add five songs to my playlist and not add Neil Young's "Southern Man". It is a scathingly accurate condemnation of how the southern states kept black men on the bottom rung of society through an institutionalized system of violent intimidation and frequent lynchings. It (along with Young's equally scathing "Alabama") caused Lynyrd Skynyrd to pen "Sweet Home Alabama" in response and in defense of the South. As much as I love Skynyrd's music and particularly their first two albums, Neil Young is in the right here.

So that's it. That's the story of the music I took with me on a trip to explore the Civil Rights Movement. This was a lot of work and I'm not sure I'm making a trip-specific playlist again any time soon. But it was probably the right trip to do this for the first time. And never say never again. 

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How We Did It

We ended up visiting a lot of music sites in our 10 days in the American South. I've discussed some of them in my post about the four studios we visited but I thought it would be worth writing down the others we stopped by to pay our respects (literally in some cases) to some of the artists that I put on this playlist.

First of all...yes, we went to Graceland. It's overblown, far too self-important and way too expensive (the cheapest ticket to get inside Graceland is $75!!!!) but it had to be done. I visited way back in 2006 and it was nothing like this. We met someone later that same week who blamed it all on Lisa-Marie. Maybe that's true. I guess if you can get people to pay that much, go for it. But it is ridiculously priced. The property is open daily (wouldn't you be if you could get at least $75 from every visitor?) and the website encourages you to purchase tickets in advance. We didn't and did just fine, but we were also visiting at the tail end (maybe) of the COVID-19 pandemic. I'm deliberately not including a link to the Graceland website.

To get the complete Elvis experience, we also visited the Elvis Presley Birthplace in Tupelo, Mississippi. I think it's worth a stop if you are in the area. Admission to Elvis' first home and birthplace, his original (relocated) church and a museum are all separately priced at $9 each, although there's a discount if you buy admission to more than one of the buildings. We visited the home only and it took about five minutes. You can walk the property for free and if you don't care that much about seeing two rooms of a 1930s shotgun shack, you can probably save the $9 each and still have just as good an experience as we did.

We spent one long day elsewhere in Mississippi which included stops at three music-related sites. We stopped by the crossroads of Routes 61 and 49 on the way down to Indianola, Mississippi to visit the B.B. King Museum and Delta Interpretive Center. If you can't find the crossroads, plug Abe's Bar-B-Q into the directions app of your choice; it's right next to the crossroads itself (we actually parked in their parking lot). I'd completely recommend a visit to the B.B. King Museum. B.B. was such an awesome human being but the museum also conveys really well what it was like to be a sharecropper in Mississippi between the two world wars. 

In between the crossroads and B.B. King's Museum, we stopped at the likely grave of Robert Johnson. I say likely because there are multiple sites out there that claim to be the last resting place of Johnson. Based on my research, the one at the Little Missionary Baptist Church in Greenwood, Mississippi seemed to be the most credible. The grave is towards the back of the cemetery, which sits to the left of the church itself. Look for the collection box next to the grave under a pecan tree. There is a sign describing Johnson's life at the entrance to the driveway to the property. That sign also describes a visit made by Led Zeppelin's Robert Plant to the site. Can you imagine driving around rural Mississippi looking for Johnson's grave and finding Robert Plant hanging out there when you arrived? 

Finally, some words about Beale Street. While pulling our itinerary together for this trip, I read some information online about the poor quality of music on Beale Street and that you might be better off going elsewhere in Memphis to hear some live music. While I agree that you might have to search a bit for the specific type of music you want to listen to, I found the quality of the music to be no different than what I listened to on my prior two trips to Memphis. And I found the music to be excellent on all three trips, although admittedly I found some venues to be less than satisfactory. If I were heading back to Memphis any time soon, I'd head straight for the outdoor venue at King's Palace Cafe and the indoor Blues City Band Box. I would avoid B.B. King's Blues Club (too many covers of classic rock rather than blues songs) and Rum Boogie Cafe (the bands here have not matched the quality I've found elsewhere on Beale Street). But there IS good music to be found on Beale Street.

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