Duke Ellington wrote this song in the 1930s, but this recording is from his 1962 collaboration with John Coltrane when he was 63 and Coltrane was 36. Duke is the pianist, 'Trane' the saxophonist. Two innovators from different eras of Jazz (or "American Music" as Duke liked to call it).
Music for Airports is the first of four ambient albums from musician (Roxy Music and solo), producer (U2, Bowie) and artist, Brian Eno. The idea came to him as he sat in the drab atmosphere of 1970s Cologne Bonn Airport. The creative process consisted, in typical Eno style, of splicing together various loops of recordings. It was designed to be played continously and to induce a sense of calm - Eno was a nervous flyer.
In 1968 British singer Dusty Sprngfield left for Memphis to revive her career and expand her range from the pop style of her earlier years (good though it is). The result was the Dusty in Memphis album. Still pop, but no little Soul.
Samuel Coleridge-Taylor was an English composer and conductor. Born in London in 1875, his mother was English and his father, a descendant of African-American slaves, was from Sierra Leone. He was named by his mother after the romantic poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge.
Monkee Mike Nesmith died last month. The Monkees might have been manufactured (The American Beatles) and might have made a silly if loveable tv series, but they produced some great songs helped by songwriters like Neil Diamond who wrote this one.
Nesmith went on to a successful solo career and was one of the early pioneers of music video. Talented family, as his mother invented typewriter correction fluid which earned them all a lot of money.
Okay, it's not a song and Tom can sound stilted to the modern ear - he was actually from Missouri - but there is a real music to Eliot's musing on time which perhaps sits well at this time of year. This is the first part of Burnt Norton (1936) the first poem in the Four Quartets (published in 1944).
Brinsley Schwarz were part of the pub rock scene of the 1970s in the UK, hardly the most glamorous of descriptions, conjuring up images of warm beer on warm afternoons in some dive in South London. However, they proved influential (though not until after they had disbanded) and this song, one of their best, has been covered by various artists including Elvis Costello and Bruce Springsteen.
Clara Schumann (1819-1896) was a prodigious pianist and composer until family life intervened in her mid-thirties. Much of her work was not performed until recently. The title translates as "I stood darkly dreaming".