Great Scores at the Library

I really did well again at the library. I've been looking at the music cds that have more than one disc, because they are on shelf and not in the weird rack you have to flip through.

I found a Legion of Mary 2 cd collection which is GREAT. It is no. 1 in the Jerry Garcia collection, was issued in 2005, but is from concerts around 1975. The discs are so good. Jerry (from the Grateful Dead) plays lead guitar (and vocals), then Merle Saunders on keyboards (and vocals), John Kahn on bass, Ron Tutt on drums (formerly the drummer for Elvis, Little Richard, Billy Joel and Gram Parsons) and Martin Fierro on sax and flute.

I love it! I remember hearing the songs from the past like Tough Mama, Tore Up Over You, there's even a song by Norman Blake, from my bluegrass following days, Last Train from Poor Valley. I remember seeing Jerry with Merle Saunders in Denver and it is so neat to hear that music again. Besides rock, there are folk elements, jazz, especially with the sax, and then just pure funk. It reminds me sort of when Dylan did the Slow Train Coming album with Mark Knopfler.

Then I also got the Complete Johnny Mercer Songbooks. Recently I read The City of Falling Angels, by the author of Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil, which prompted me to read it as well because I had only seen the movie and didn't realize it was taken from a nonfiction book. The house that Kevin Spacey lives in in the movie was Johnny Mercer's home in Savannah. The book mentioned so many of his hits, that I thought I should check them out.

The collection has three cds. One which is Blues in the Night, one is Trav'lin' Light, and one is completely instrumental, Too Marvelous for Words. The people singing and playing on this album are phenomenal: Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Shirley Horn, Oscar Peterson, Cleo Laine, Billy Eckstine, Anita O'Day.

The jazz artists are like a who's who of jazz classics, Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, Bill Evans, Benny Carter, Lester Young, Quincy Jones, Stan Getz, Errol Garner, Coleman Hawkins and more.

You know, when you have to be snowed in, it sure is great to have some incredibly good music to listen to. I would suggest both of these collections to you if you haven't heard them, and if you can find them at your library you won't have to lay down the price of a multiple cd set to hear them.