THE GIG

Angel Faces

Chad Batka for The New York Times

2011 NEA Jazz Masters Awards

Frederick P. Rose Hall, Jan. 11

Own What's Yours

Choice quote from the Marc Cary blindfold test (Before & After) in the new JazzTimes, conducted by Larry Appelbaum:

[Betty Carter] was a trouper. She would ride with us in coach. It taught me a certain cohesiveness you have to have. Abbey [Lincoln] would ride in first class and we’d be in second class and she would come back and tell us how terrible first class was. She’d complain that they took the silverware out of first class and she had to use plastic cups -- oh, and how you all doing back here? Betty wasn’t like that. They both understood the business. I learned the etiquette of being a jazz musician from Betty. From Abbey, I learned you have to own what’s yours.

(I don’t think, by the way, this casts aspersions on Abbey Lincoln. It’s just a different look. Obviously both singers were truly great.)

Lands of Lincoln

In Saturday’s Arts section: a critic’s notebook about the legacy of Abbey Lincoln, inspired partly by a coincidence of timing. (You’ll know what I mean if you read the notebook.) I compiled some other links in my previous post about Lincoln, days after her passing. But in the process of pulling this new piece together, I came across a few stray gems of footage or criticism, which I’m gathering here.

Music is the Magic

RIP Abbey Lincoln. Belatedly, here are some links -- and this video, which I had never seen before, from Night Music. (I didn’t want to post clips from the Freedom Now Suite, which are awesome but from a time before Lincoln herself had reached her fearsome maturity as an artist. No, I don’t think the presence of David Sanborn above is a sacrilege.)

• NY Times obituary
• NPR Weekend Edition remembrance
• NPR Jazz Profiles audio archive
• Do the Math on “the middle period”
• Rifftides with two more clips
• The Guardian obituary
  

In addition to the Times obituary above, I wrote a profile of Abbey Lincoln in 2007, before I started this blog. She was a tough but gracious interview, and already not in the best of health. There’s an audio accompaniment to that link, including some of our conversation.

Please feel free to share tributes and more links in the comments.