I still have a lot of post ideas about what music has gotten me through the past few months. Here are some of those.

(General theme seems to be: my exposure to music as a child was at least partially “whitewashed” and I’ve been making up for lost time ever since.)

My first true taste of Donny Hathaway’s “Someday We’ll All Be Free” was from a FACT mix by Laraaji (an artist I first heard of through his Ambient #3 album via Brian Eno, and so on down the rabbit hole) and it’s… transcendent. Search for it and give it a listen. Hathaway’s voice is just fantastic and the wash of Rhodes arpeggios at the beginning locks you in.

This is a cover - single take, no rehearsal - by Corinne Bailey Rae and Jon Batiste. It’s a magic spell.

I heard a lot of Luther Vandross as a kid but he was mostly relegated to easy listening/the dentist office. I mean… “Here and Now” is a great ballad, and his collaboration with Mariah Carey on “Endless Love” was just everywhere in the early 90s, but… why did it take until I was an adult to hear this? (“Never Too Much”).

Now: Al Jarreau. “We’re In This Love Together” was a dentist-office staple growing up (and that song deserves so much more than whiny drills for accompaniment). It was much later that I was introduced to his other work (the gorgeous “touch the face of God” bridge on “Mornin’”, etc). This live performance of “Trouble In Paradise” from 1983 is a time capsule that deserves more eyes and ears:

More to come.