I’m not sure Last.fm accurately captures my listening history, but this is what it says I listened to. This doesn’t count records and CDs I listened to at home, of course. This list is the top track of my top 10 artists of 2021. I’m surprised by a few of my top artists. I think the explanation is that I listened pretty heavily to a handful of artists, and the rest had very few plays, but enough to get them into the top 10....
Tidal created a playlist of my 2021 for me. I went on a few different kicks where at different times I immersed myself in Arthur Blythe, Don Pullen, Kahil El’Zabar, David Murray, along with some Latin (mostly classics by Eddie Palmieri, Mario Bauzá) and some old blues (a lot of John Lee Hooker, Little Walter, and T-Bone Walker). I’m surprised Archie Shepp didn’t make it into the playlist because I obsessed on him for a minute....
I don’t always pay attention to the recommendations and playlists on Tidal because they are so hip-hop focused and I’m not into that. Today, though, I noticed that there were playlists of my top listens for recent months and the entire year 2020. Nice! I’m happy about this because it’s cool but also because my connection to last.fm appears to have broken at some point, and a lot of my listens were probably lost....
Chick Corea left this world on February 9. He was a prolific composer, performer, and collaborator. I was fortunate enough to have seen him perform at a jazz festival in trio form with Christian McBride and Brian Blade. Chick is a special artist for me because he was the founder of one of the first groups I discovered when I was sort of coming of age musically, back in middle school....