HORSES Patti Smith Arista, 1975 Designer: Bob Heimall Photographer: Robert Mapplethorpe

I’ve always taken great pictures of Patti Smith,” said Robert Mapplethorpe in 1987. He described the collaboration as “like taking drugs; you’re in an abstract place and it’s perfect.” The cover of Smith’s cataclysmic debut LP, Horses, is the most celebrated document in the relationship between the photographer and the poet-songwriter, which spanned two decades. Mapplethorpe shot the cover to Smith’s album Dream of Life not long before his death in 1989.

The two met when Mapplethorpe was an art student and Smith wandered into his Brooklyn apartment looking for someone else. In 1970 they moved to Manhattan’s legendary Chelsea Hotel, where they shared the smallest room because it was all they could afford. “We used to stay up all night,” Mapplethorpe said, “and she would do her thing and I would do my thing, and then we’d take a break and smoke a cigarette and look at each other’s work.” That intimacy informs the Horses portrait: The directness of Smith’s gaze plays against the tense shyness of her stance; the androgyny of her dress counters the elegance of her fingers. The cover mirrors the intensity and sparse clarity of Smith’s music.

>In 1988 the catalog to a controversial Mapplethorpe retrospective included a poem by Smith that captures perfectly the exploratory essence of both Horses and Mapplethorpe’s photo. “The Artist machetes a clearance,” she writes. “Here one can be spared/the pain and extravagance of the entire body and/be transported by snaking thru a glittering fraction.”

Near legendary New York poetess and songstress comes up with an almost free-form rock set that is much much better than one might have expected. Produced by John Cale, the set comes closest to catching the urgency and sheer energy of the early Velvet Underground since the emergence of that group. Smith’s interesting and totally unique talk/sing song makes this set the most accessible LP of its type yet for those who do not feel at home with this type of material, and there are guest stints from Tom Verlaine and Allen Lanier. Frantic and frenetic instrumentation behind Smith’s vocals also work well. A truly powerful effort that offers the listener something new for a change. Best cuts: “Gloria (the old Them hit),” “Free Money,” “Kimberly,” “Land,” “Elegie. – Billboard,1975.

(20 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)

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Check out the amazing story of Mingering Mike and his private world of records.

(19 votes, average: 2.84 out of 5)

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Desert Island Disc!

(59 votes, average: 4.75 out of 5)

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The Horace Silver Quintet  Blue Note 5058  (1954) Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, Doug Watkins and Art Blakey!   Room 608 / Creepin in / Doodlin / Stop Time

 Design: John Hermansader   Photo: Francis Wolff

(19 votes, average: 4.37 out of 5)

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Clifford Brown “New Star on the Horizon”   Blue Note 5032   With Gigi Gryce, Charlie Rouse, John Lewis, Percy Heath and Art Blakey!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

(28 votes, average: 4.46 out of 5)

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An actual story in sound of “A Dog’s Life” as broadcast on CBS Radio Workshop. Conceived and recorded by Tony Schwartz. Folkways Records. 1958.

I had the rare priviledge of meeting and getting to know Tony Schwartz. Once again, my search for records led me to an experience I’ll never forget. Tony responded to an ad of mine that said I buy records. I didn’t know who he was at first, but based on his description of his collection over the phone, I made a date to visit his home on the upper west side of Manhattan.

Entering his three-story brownstone was like going into a vault that had been filled over the past fifty years with a lifetime of recordings, recording equipment, books, magazines, artwork, awards and more. File cabinets and rows of boxes packed in tall metal shelving units turned the main floor into a recording studio and home office. Scrolls of audio tape hung from clothes lines criss-crossing the room. A world of sound bites hanging like flypaper strips.

Because he has suffered from agoraphobia his entire adult life, Tony has rarely strayed far from his home and this home production office. Due to this fear of leaving home, he began to trade audio tapes with pen pals and like-minded amateurs recording sounds from their daily lives — girls skipping rope and singing schoolyard songs, taxi drivers’ ranting, slave songs, South American frogs croaking, street performers (I think Tony was one of the first to record Moondog), and more from countries around the world.

Tony’s record collection was on the third floor and it was legendary! It included many fifties Folkways records, incredible sound effect and sound library records, spoken word records – from Eldridge Cleaver to Alan Ginsburg to Tony’s friend and co-writer Marshall McLuhan. Tony’s collection also included lots of international and world music records and, strangely perhaps, many sixties rock and psych records by groups such as The Mothers, The Fugs and The Chocolate Watchband. I spent many hours and days absorbing this collection and discovering recordings I never new existed.

Even after buying Tony’s collection, I returned to visit with Tony, his wife and son and to just listen to the amazing stories that Tony told about a life dedicated to education and to bringing integrity and art to radio and TV advertising for the past fifty years. I urge you to read about Tony and his amazing life and career. He has done as much as anyone to use media to affect positive change in the world. He has created some of the most effective public service advertising ever. Around this time, Tony invited me to a tribute to him at the Museum of Broadcasting.

I’ve added a category for Tony Schwartz’s records on the site will continue to post his records in the future.

(23 votes, average: 4.09 out of 5)

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