Musicians I Heard Live from Bob Dylan to B.B. King

 

Above is a free standing cardboard sign of Bob Dylan that I got when I was in college and that I am still pleased to have. It is about 40 inches tall. Isn't he young in this photo? He is my favorite singer/song writer/poet. I saw him live in concert a few years ago when he played where I live. I still have the tee shirt I bought that evening, showing a photo of Bob.

My husband Will and I heard B.B. King several times play live in a blues club in Oakland, California. One time B.B. came and sat at our table and chatted with us. What a thrill for us. Will played guitar so it was quite an honor to meet B.B. King in that friendly manner. I couldn't find any B.B. King photos available free to post.

I heard Joan Baez perform live once, her voice is so rich and haunting. Isn't the above photo perfection? The young and talented Joan Baez and Bob Dylan, briefly a couple. I think she wrote the great song about their affair, "Diamonds and Rust."

I heard Del Shannon live in concert in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His song Runaway is a favorite of mine.

At Fillmore West in San Francisco  my husband Will and I attended many concerts, and loved The Kinks, Fleetwood Mac, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Hot Tuna and The Youngbloods. The Youngbloods was a favorite band, with their song "come on people now smile on your brother, everybody get together and try to love one another right now." We in the audience would all join hands when they sang that song. We saw The Youngbloods in concert live several times.

 

I heard Memphis Slim (in above photo) in a small underground blues club in Paris, France. There were a lot of small clubs in Paris that were built literally underground. As I recall they were called "caves."

Your comments reminded me that I saw a performance of the Bolshoi Ballet when I attended college in Istanbul, and a Shakespeare play (not music, I know) in Statford on Avon years ago.

Who have you heard live?

My old friend, Henry David Thoreau and my Uncle Leroy Pelkin

 

 

 

I began my acquaintance with Henry David Thoreau when I was a preteen, perhaps 10 or 11, when my uncle Leroy Pelkin gave me a book by Thoreau. He honored my ability to learn by only giving me adult books over the years. Uncle Leroy gave me a nice selection of books by Thoreau and by Ralph Waldo Emerson. Some of the books were published in the 1800s and I still have them. Something about the writings of these men resonated with Uncle Leroy and me. We both value independence, the beauty of nature, and minimal government. Uncle Leroy valued time alone, like Thoreau and like me. He was a bachelor, and as life goes full circle, as a widow I live alone now. Solitude has many virtues, I find.

 

 In his essay Civil Disobedience Thoreau describes our duty to obey a higher law when human laws are in conflict with that. He was opposed to slavery and was put in jail in 1846 for refusing to pay poll taxes which he understood supported slavery. His friends paid his taxes so he was released from jail; he did not appreciate what they did. His family sheltered a number of fugitive slaves.

Uncle Leroy gave me the book "Autumn: From the Journal of Henry D. Thoreau", published in 1892. Now that book is older than I am! I still have this book and will share a quote or two from it here.

"That old Carlisle road, which leaves towns behind;  where you put off worldly thoughts; where you do not carry a watch nor remember the proprietor ... The lonely horse in its pasture is glad to see company, comes forward to be noticed, and takes an apple from your hand. Others are called great roads, but this is greater than they all."  Sept. 24, 1859 Thoreau's Journal. 

Emerson and Thoreau loved America, nature, the woods, individualism and the God given rights of citizens. They understood that God gave us rights, not the government, and thus, the government has no standing to take away our rights.

Here is a quote from Thoreau's Walden: “We need the tonic of wildness...At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.”

I have a nice little book, "The Bluebird Carries the Sky On His Back", filled with short quotes by Thoreau. I will share a few with you here.

"The swiftest traveller is he that goes afoot." 

"Shall I not rejoice also at the abundance of the weeds, whose seeds are the granary of the birds?" 

 

"On Sundays  ... when the wind was favorable ... I heard the bells of Concord, a faint, sweet melody, worth importing into the wilderness."

And here is a favorite of mine "I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion."

In 2021 Thoreau reminds me of much that is important and timeless and true.