Tuesday 30 October 2007

one day we will all be free

if you don't cry almost all the way through spartacus you're a heartless bastard. i start if i see it in the telly listings. it used to be at the bit when jean simmons is sent to his cell and he's all heroic and whatnot and the first quiet swoon of the love theme creeps in but now i know that's coming i just can't stop myself. i daren't even think about the rest or i'll be ruined all day.


yusef lateef - love theme from spartacus


7 comments:

davyh said...

This scene forever ruined for me by Monthy Python, sadly.

davyh said...

Monthy???

ally. said...

i prefer monthy as it goes and nothing could ever quite ruin that scene for me
x

Anonymous said...

That tune is pure liquid loveliness.Any more Yusef Lateef tips? All I've got is 'The Blue Yusef Lateef' although there's a couple of gems on that.

How do you rate Terry Callier's take on Love Theme? Works for me.

Eddie Harris' 'Exodus' is another good jazz makeover on a toga movie theme.Know any others? That'd make a wilfully obscure mix...

I saw Yusef Lateef supporting Don Byron at the Barbican a few years back. He was about 80 at the time. He started off pottering aimlessly between instruments against a pre-recorded backing of electronic squawks and skronks. There was an uncomfortable feeling that it wasn't really coming together.Then he sat at the piano and began playing slow chords, singing croakily that he knew that he was old, and that he couldn't have long, but he was asking the Lord to spare him just a little more time.It was very spooky and very real, like it'd stopped being a performance and it was just him having a word with God. The audience looked half spellbound, and half weirded out.

Must have worked though because he's still here aged 87!

ally. said...

ggod old yusef - that does sound spectacularly bonkers even for an old jazzer.
eastern sounds, which this track is from is lovely, and for a modal masterpiece try brother john (a dingwalls anthem if ever there was one) off of live at peps vol 2. cry tender ain't bad neither.
and i adore the terry callier version, 4 hero and zero 7 mixes, but then terry can do little wrong round here.
i shall add eddie harris to the list - thanks
x

Anonymous said...

...and I'll hear Eastern Sounds to my list. Cheers.

Never heard those Callier remixes either - a 4 Hero mix sounds good.

If you check out Eddie Harris' Exodus, try to hear Ernest Ranglin's as well - it's a ska cover of the jazz cover. And you can hear how Bob Marley reworked bits of the Ranglin tune for the intro of his Exodus. Music - the never ending journey!

Geriatric jazz genius alert: Pharoah Sanders at the Jazz Cafe last two days of January. Or are you still up north?

Anonymous said...

Changing the subject - is that the voice of the Guy who used to introduce: "Herges Adventures of Tin Tin" ??