J Dilla
can't you see / it's me that loves you
Another song from one of J Dilla's 3 Beat Tapes, this track sampling the Supremes heavily for a breathless minute and a half.
Diva
Diva is one of my favourite films, even if its extremely hard to track down. I won't destroy this film du look classic by a plot synopsis but will prvovide this song, the recording of which drives the plot in absurd and beautiful directions.
La Wally - Wilhelmenia Wiggins Fernandez
Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazlewood
she reassured me / with an unfamiliar smile
A reissued vinyl of this duo's LP is one of my prized possessions. I've shared Some Velvet Morning before and after acquiring a more portable mp3 version of the album I've been devoting a lot of my time to Ladybird and Summer Wine.
Nancy Sinatra surely needs no introduction - not only is she the daughter of the ultimate Stranger in the Night, but also the singer on the Billy Strange-arranged Bang Bang. Strange also arranged the songs on this LP, another notch in a belt that has spanned most of the 20th century (most notably including a writing credit on Little Less Conversation). Hazlewood's work with Sinatra is much less maudlin than his profligate solo output but this is every bit as good as what I think is his finest work in isolation, My Autumn's Done Come.
Billie Holiday
i long to try / something i never had
Kerouac mentions this beautiful song amongst the coruscating rhythms of jazz and bop that punctuate On the Road and Holiday's truth and sadness stands out, even in such Beatific company.
Lover Man - Billie Holiday
The Smiths
take me out / tonight
I wrote a 3000-word document on music of the period in which Alan Bennett's play The History Boys is set for the director of next year's Autumn Production, accompanied by two cds. On the first The Smiths featured heavily, alongside The Cure, New Order and Joy Division, while the second was a much more ostentatious exercise in showing off the eclectic (Zoolook etc.)
My favourite Smiths song is the John Peel '84 session of Nowhere Fast - the section after 1.50 should be showcased next year - but this is almost as special.
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