Music
![David Remnick - [object Object] author](https://res.cloudinary.com/readsomnia/image/upload/authors/a_B00J7HMPJ6.jpg)
Holding the Note: Profiles in Popular Music
NEW YORK TIMES BEST SELLER • The Pulitzer Prize–winning journalist and editor of The New Yorker gathers his writing on some of the essential musicians of our time-intimate portraits of Leonard Cohen, Buddy Guy, Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney, Bruce Springsteen, Patti Smith, and more.
The greatest popular songs, whether it's Aretha Franklin singing "Respect" or Bob Dylan performing "Blind Willie McTell," have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.
He portrays a series of musical lives and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. From Cohen's performing debut, when his stage fright was so debilitating he couldn't get through "Suzanne," to Franklin's iconic mink-drop at the Kennedy Center, Holding the Note delivers a view of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime's passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.
The greatest popular songs, whether it's Aretha Franklin singing "Respect" or Bob Dylan performing "Blind Willie McTell," have a way of embedding themselves in our memories. You remember a time and a place and a feeling when you hear that song again. In Holding the Note, David Remnick writes about the lives and work of some of the greatest musicians, songwriters, and performers of the past fifty years.
He portrays a series of musical lives and their unique encounters with the passing of that essential element of music: time. From Cohen's performing debut, when his stage fright was so debilitating he couldn't get through "Suzanne," to Franklin's iconic mink-drop at the Kennedy Center, Holding the Note delivers a view of some of the greatest creative minds of our time written with a lifetime's passionate attachment to music that has shaped us all.
Editorial Reviews
"[A] gathering of exceptionally vivid and melodic profiles of musicians late in life. Written over the past three decades, these are keenly observed, deeply felt, and judiciously detailed encounters of genuine communion mixing interviews, biography, and analysis, all lyrically and radiantly composed . . . There's a bittersweet quality to Remnick's perceptions of these legendary figures. He offers arresting insights into Luciano Pavararotti, Aretha Franklin, and Buddy Guy; a funny and lacerating portrait of Keith Richards, fresh takes on Paul McCartney, Mavis Staples, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith . . . There is acuity here, bemusement, tenderness, and gratitude." -Donna Seaman, Booklist
"Remnick, the intellectually nimble editor of the New Yorker, has lately been focusing closely on world politics, but he finds time to profile a number of artists who, having enjoyed early success, ‘were all grappling, in music and in their own lives, with their diminishing gifts and mortality.'. . . There's dish here . . . and plenty of astute observation . . . A perceptive pleasure for literate music lovers." -Kirkus Reviews
"A tribute to the resilience of maturing music performers . . . Structured in a conversational style, the book touches on artists like Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, Buddy Guy, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Mavis Staples, Bruce Springsteen, Pavarotti, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith. Remnick ruminates about the connections and similarities among many of his subjects-depression and Dylan affected Cohen; Franklin's preacher father's hardships shadowed her; and Guy influenced Jimi Hendrix and Muddy Waters." -Library Journal
"[A] standout collection of pieces . . . Remnick's close observational details add texture, but what's most remarkable is his ability to give due at once to the artists' larger-than-life musical legacies and their all too human fallibilities. Music fans will revel in this peek behind the curtain." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
"Remnick, the intellectually nimble editor of the New Yorker, has lately been focusing closely on world politics, but he finds time to profile a number of artists who, having enjoyed early success, ‘were all grappling, in music and in their own lives, with their diminishing gifts and mortality.'. . . There's dish here . . . and plenty of astute observation . . . A perceptive pleasure for literate music lovers." -Kirkus Reviews
"A tribute to the resilience of maturing music performers . . . Structured in a conversational style, the book touches on artists like Leonard Cohen, Aretha Franklin, Buddy Guy, Keith Richards, Paul McCartney, Mavis Staples, Bruce Springsteen, Pavarotti, Bob Dylan, and Patti Smith. Remnick ruminates about the connections and similarities among many of his subjects-depression and Dylan affected Cohen; Franklin's preacher father's hardships shadowed her; and Guy influenced Jimi Hendrix and Muddy Waters." -Library Journal
"[A] standout collection of pieces . . . Remnick's close observational details add texture, but what's most remarkable is his ability to give due at once to the artists' larger-than-life musical legacies and their all too human fallibilities. Music fans will revel in this peek behind the curtain." -Publishers Weekly (starred review)
Short Excerpt Teaser
Preface
Sometimes, when I go to hear music, I feel like a weekend naturalist of the Anthropocene feverishly trying to catch a last glimpse of some glorious species: James Brown ringing out New Year's Eve at the Apollo; Paul Simon in a rainstorm in Forest Hills; Aretha Franklin fronting a pickup orchestra at a casino in Ontario. The urge to see aging performers while we still can is an inheritance. My parents suffered from neurological ailments that eventually made it impossible for them to work or get around easily-my mother with MS in her early thirties, my father with Parkinson's in his fifties- and yet they somehow managed to bring my brother and me, who were children in the era of the Beatles, to see Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Nina Simone. Before my father had to shut down his small practice, he was surely the only dentist in the New York metropolitan area who replaced Muzak with Big Mama Thornton and Screamin' Jay Hawkins to accompany the sound of the drill and the spit sink.
On a typical grownup venture-this one about a quarter century in the past-I emerged from the subway in the Village on a June afternoon and headed to a now-defunct club called Sweet Basil to see Doc Cheatham, a top-flight trumpet player from the very early days of jazz, who played a brunch gig there on Sundays. Cheatham was just shy of ninety. To miss him would be unforgivable. His first appearance on a record was as a sideman for Ma Rainey.
It was hot out on Seventh Avenue but the club was comfortingly dark and cool. I took a seat at a shared table near the back of the bar. Cheatham, trailed by his bandmates, made his way to the bandstand. He walked with the aid of a collapsible cane and wore oversized aviator glasses. What few strands of hair he had left he dyed chestnut and combed forward over the crown of his skull. The crowd, drinking mimosas and Bloody Marys, came dressed in jeans, shorts, T-shirts. This was not Cheatham's style. He was pin sharp, gaily professional, wearing an apricot shirt, a red-print tie, a green linen jacket, and cream-colored slacks held up by skinny red galluses.
Cheatham was born in 1905, in Nashville. He went by Adolphus until he started playing music for patients at a medical clinic and won his nickname for life. Doc's father played mandolin and was a barber on riverboats. His mother was a teacher. He took up music at fourteen, playing drums and coronet in school and church bands, and then, first as a sax player, then as a trumpet player, started hooking up with small-time professional gigs: carnivals, parade wagons, coal-mine dances. He played in the pit of the Bijou Theatre behind Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters. Following the Great Migration north to Chicago, he got work at the Dreamland Café, where the Prohibition-era clientele drank bathtub gin out of teacups. One day, he encountered King Oliver on the street and expressed his admiration. Oliver, who had been Armstrong's mentor, gave Doc a gift, a beat-up tarnished copper mute that Cheatham stuffed in his horn for the next seventy-odd years. Doc even played behind the man who claimed to have invented jazz itself, Jelly Roll Morton. On the bandstand, at Sweet Basil, he paid homage:
"This next one's by Jelly Roll Morton," he said. "Not everyone used to like him. He'd stand on the corner all day bragging about being the greatest composer in the world. Of course, he could back it up. He wore a diamond in his front tooth. Wore a twentydollar gold piece in the tips of his shoes. He didn't play in places like this. Didn't play in the Waldorf-Astoria. Mostly, he played in bodegas . . ."
"Bordellos, Doc, bordellos," the pianist Chuck Folds said, with a practiced roll of the eyes.
"Yeah, bordellos," Cheatham said. " 'Cause, he was also a pimp."
Cheatham played for an hour or so, mainly New Orleans standards from his youth. In his off-hours, he was making music with much younger musicians. He was not stuck in the past. He'd just met Nicholas Payton, a quicksilver trumpet player in his twenties, and soon they'd win a Grammy for their collaboration.
Cheatham was mindful of time: he tapped his foot to the gunshot of the snare, he played just behind the pillowy pulse of the bass. He soloed in measured steps. He knew better than to overextend himself. His solos were brief, witty, resonant; he took his leave before he lost his breath or his way. He did not need to strain in order to glow. When he used King Oliver's mute, it was to summon that distant elder, but always with attention to the song-nothing maudlin or academic about it.
After the set, I had a chance to talk with Cheatham at a table in the back. "The truth is, I was a late bloomer," he said. "I didn't even ...
Sometimes, when I go to hear music, I feel like a weekend naturalist of the Anthropocene feverishly trying to catch a last glimpse of some glorious species: James Brown ringing out New Year's Eve at the Apollo; Paul Simon in a rainstorm in Forest Hills; Aretha Franklin fronting a pickup orchestra at a casino in Ontario. The urge to see aging performers while we still can is an inheritance. My parents suffered from neurological ailments that eventually made it impossible for them to work or get around easily-my mother with MS in her early thirties, my father with Parkinson's in his fifties- and yet they somehow managed to bring my brother and me, who were children in the era of the Beatles, to see Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Dizzy Gillespie, Dave Brubeck, Nina Simone. Before my father had to shut down his small practice, he was surely the only dentist in the New York metropolitan area who replaced Muzak with Big Mama Thornton and Screamin' Jay Hawkins to accompany the sound of the drill and the spit sink.
On a typical grownup venture-this one about a quarter century in the past-I emerged from the subway in the Village on a June afternoon and headed to a now-defunct club called Sweet Basil to see Doc Cheatham, a top-flight trumpet player from the very early days of jazz, who played a brunch gig there on Sundays. Cheatham was just shy of ninety. To miss him would be unforgivable. His first appearance on a record was as a sideman for Ma Rainey.
It was hot out on Seventh Avenue but the club was comfortingly dark and cool. I took a seat at a shared table near the back of the bar. Cheatham, trailed by his bandmates, made his way to the bandstand. He walked with the aid of a collapsible cane and wore oversized aviator glasses. What few strands of hair he had left he dyed chestnut and combed forward over the crown of his skull. The crowd, drinking mimosas and Bloody Marys, came dressed in jeans, shorts, T-shirts. This was not Cheatham's style. He was pin sharp, gaily professional, wearing an apricot shirt, a red-print tie, a green linen jacket, and cream-colored slacks held up by skinny red galluses.
Cheatham was born in 1905, in Nashville. He went by Adolphus until he started playing music for patients at a medical clinic and won his nickname for life. Doc's father played mandolin and was a barber on riverboats. His mother was a teacher. He took up music at fourteen, playing drums and coronet in school and church bands, and then, first as a sax player, then as a trumpet player, started hooking up with small-time professional gigs: carnivals, parade wagons, coal-mine dances. He played in the pit of the Bijou Theatre behind Bessie Smith and Ethel Waters. Following the Great Migration north to Chicago, he got work at the Dreamland Café, where the Prohibition-era clientele drank bathtub gin out of teacups. One day, he encountered King Oliver on the street and expressed his admiration. Oliver, who had been Armstrong's mentor, gave Doc a gift, a beat-up tarnished copper mute that Cheatham stuffed in his horn for the next seventy-odd years. Doc even played behind the man who claimed to have invented jazz itself, Jelly Roll Morton. On the bandstand, at Sweet Basil, he paid homage:
"This next one's by Jelly Roll Morton," he said. "Not everyone used to like him. He'd stand on the corner all day bragging about being the greatest composer in the world. Of course, he could back it up. He wore a diamond in his front tooth. Wore a twentydollar gold piece in the tips of his shoes. He didn't play in places like this. Didn't play in the Waldorf-Astoria. Mostly, he played in bodegas . . ."
"Bordellos, Doc, bordellos," the pianist Chuck Folds said, with a practiced roll of the eyes.
"Yeah, bordellos," Cheatham said. " 'Cause, he was also a pimp."
Cheatham played for an hour or so, mainly New Orleans standards from his youth. In his off-hours, he was making music with much younger musicians. He was not stuck in the past. He'd just met Nicholas Payton, a quicksilver trumpet player in his twenties, and soon they'd win a Grammy for their collaboration.
Cheatham was mindful of time: he tapped his foot to the gunshot of the snare, he played just behind the pillowy pulse of the bass. He soloed in measured steps. He knew better than to overextend himself. His solos were brief, witty, resonant; he took his leave before he lost his breath or his way. He did not need to strain in order to glow. When he used King Oliver's mute, it was to summon that distant elder, but always with attention to the song-nothing maudlin or academic about it.
After the set, I had a chance to talk with Cheatham at a table in the back. "The truth is, I was a late bloomer," he said. "I didn't even ...
