Rita Coolidge gave us 'Fever'

Rita Coolidge in a free concert at the National Museum of the American Indian, August 10, 2013/Patricia Leslie

 

Never know how much I love you, never know how much I care
When you put your arms around me, I get a fever that's so hard to bear
You give me fever - when you kiss me, fever when you hold me tight
Fever - in the the morning, fever all through the night.

 

In a free concert Saturday afternoon at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Rita Coolidge charmed hundreds in the Potomac Atrium for almost 90 minutes, singing her classics in her gentle, distinctive voice, instantly recognizable and unchanged over the four decades she has been a star. 

Rita Coolidge in a free concert at the National Museum of the American Indian, August 10, 2013/Patricia Leslie

 

Among the numbers she sang were "Fever," "Your Love Has Lifted Me (Higher and Higher)," "Come Rain or Come Shine," "We're All Alone," "The Way You Do the Things You Do,"  "Only You," "Bird on a Wire," and "How Sweet It Is to be Loved by You."

 

Eric Clapton was on her mind in 1969 when she wrote "Superstar":

 

Long ago, and, oh, so far away
I fell in love with you before the second show
Your guitar, it sounds so sweet and clear
But you're not really here, it's just the radio

Don't you remember, you told me you loved me baby?
You said you'd be coming back this way again baby
Baby, baby, baby, baby, oh baby
I love you, I really do

When she originally recorded "I'd Rather Leave While I'm in Love," she said she didn't understand what it was all about since she was not divorced.  But she discovered the meaning later.

The audience did not "sing along" until near the end of the show when Rita invited participation.  Do you ever attend concerts to hear the star perform instead of the audience?

Rita Coolidge and her band gave a free concert at the National Museum of the American Indian, August 10, 2013, which followed a concert at the museum's New York City location.  It was a rarity and welcome sight to see a woman, Mary Ekler, as a band member.  Thanks, Rita! Other band members were Randy Landas, bass and guitar; John McDuffie, guitar; Lynn Coulter, drums/Patricia Leslie

Rita Coolidge with Randy Landas in a free concert at the National Museum of the American Indian, August 10, 2013/Patricia Leslie

 

Ms. Coolidge, of Cherokee Indian ancestry,  saved the best for last: Amazing Grace, the Cherokee National Anthem. She briefly described the sad story of the Trail of Tears, the saga of 1838 when President Andrew Jackson forced the last 16,000 Cherokees to leave Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina and Tennessee and travel to what became Oklahoma, literally following in the footsteps of their brothers and sisters who had earlier moved. Thousands died on the journey, including 60,000 of the 130,000 Cherokees driven away. The Indian Removal Act of 1830 banished all Indians from east of the Mississippi River. (Click here to see their trails. And here for more information.)

 

 

Ms. Coolidge's powerful song and story brought the hall to a standstill. Babies quietened, talkative youth grew silent, and even the noisy guards on the upper floors ceased shouting at visitors standing along the stairwell to listen to the singer's message which evoked passions for peace, and emotions, including among those without known Indian heritage.

Rita Coolidge with Randy Landas on bass and Lynn Coulter on drums in a free concert at the National Museum of the American Indian, August 10, 2013/Patricia Leslie

 

It just looks like church, but it was the audience who came to see and listen to Rita Coolidge in a free concert at the National Museum of the American Indian, August 10, 2013/Patricia Leslie

The crowd gave Rita Coolidge and her band a standing ovation at the end of their free concert at the National Museum of the American Indian, August 10, 2013/Patricia Leslie

 

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The Nats or jazz in the Sculpture Garden?

 

Friday is always time to "get down" and what better place than the Sculpture Garden's jazz night at the National Gallery of Art?  Alas, although he tried to pull women on the dance floor from their nests under the trees, a partner was not to be found, but who needs a partner? Tails out?  Or tells out?  Tales out?  Ale out? With tennis shoes, shades and a tie, available/Patricia Leslie

 

On tap at the Sculpture Garden was the Joshua Bayer Jazz Quartet which played some Count Basie/Patricia Leslie

 

Members of the Joshua Bayer Jazz Quartet/Patricia Leslie

 

 Members of the Joshua Bayer Jazz Quartet including Josh Bayer on the electric guitar/Patricia Leslie

 

 

God, don't you love these shoes?  What better place to wear them than to an outdoor jazz concert?  Just stay out of the grass/Patricia Leslie

Are these perfect to stand in the restroom line for 15 minutes or what? I am so glad I didn't wear flats!/Patricia Leslie

 

We could have gone to the baseball game instead and watched a rat, is that what that was?, trip the presidents in the race like what happened Tuesday night when Bryce hit the homer which took as long as  congressional vacations to land, but oh, no!  You were too cheap to pay $15 for $5 seats for the Phillies tonight so here we are!  Outdoors with free jazz at the Sculpture Garden and $30 we can spend on sangria.  Yes!/Patricia Leslie

 

 

Who: 
Doc Scantlin's Palmettos (1920s and '30s big band) August 16
Dixie Power Trio (zydeco, Cajun and Louisiana funk) August 23
Bruno Nasta (jazz violin) and the U.S. Navy Commodores Jazz Ensemble August 30

What:  Jazz in the Garden Concert Series at the National Gallery of Art

 

When:  5 - 8:30 p.m. every Friday night through August 30, 2013

 

Where: Sculpture Garden, National Gallery of Art, at the corner of Seventh, Constitution, and Madison, N.W. Washington, D.C.

 

How much:  It's free

 

Metro stations:  Smithsonian or Federal Triangle

 

For more information: 202-289-3360 

 

Munch extended through Sunday at the National Gallery of Art

Edvard Munch, The Vampire, 1895 (printed 1896/1902) lithograph and color woodcut with watercolor on thick china paper. National Gallery of Art, Washington, Ailsa Mellon Bruce Fund and Gift of Lionel C. Epstein

© Munch Museum/Munch Ellingsen Group/ARS, NY 2013

 

 

A few precious days remain to see 20 of Edvard Munch’s prints and drawings in a special exhibition at the National Gallery of Art which commemorates the 150th anniversary of the artist’s birth (December 12, 1863).

Probably the most celebrated artist from Norway who drew one of the world's most recognizable works, if not the most recognizable, The Scream (1895), Munch said he used art to interpret the world and "explain life and its meaning to myself."

 

If you don't know anything about Edvard Munch, the etchings in the one-gallery show reveal his turmoil, depression, sadness, and anger at women who dominate the display. (They are in 18 of the pieces.)

Edvard Munch, Self-Portrait with Skeleton Arm, 1895, lithograph sheet: 45.6 x 31.5 cm (17 15/16 x 12 3/8 in.) National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection

© Munch Museum/Munch Ellingsen Group/ARS, NY 2013

 

He was born in a farmhouse in Norway, the son of a doctor and a woman half his father's age.

When Munch was only five, his mother died of tuberculosis, and he and his four siblings were raised by their conservatively religious father (whose father was a minister) and aunt. It was an oppressive environment where the father often admonished his children about their behavior, saying their mother was watching them from heaven, upset by what she saw. (“She knows when you are sleeping, she knows if you’ve been bad or good…”) He told his children tales of horror, including some by Edgar Allan Poe.

 

Said Munch: “I inherited the seeds of madness. The angels of fear, sorrow, and death stood by my side since the day I was born.”

Contributing to his lifelong angst was the death, when he was 13, of his beloved sister, Sophie, at 15, another victim of tuberculosis, who had become somewhat of a substitute mother for Munch.

His first major work, The Sick Child (1894) represents his break from impressionism and naturalism, and captures the pain and his immense sadness over his sister's death. The label quotes Munch: "Scarcely any painter has ever experienced the full grief of their subject as I did."

Edvard Munch, The Sick Child, 1894 (printed 1895), drypoint on thick cream paper, National Gallery of Art, Washington, Rosenwald Collection

© Munch Museum/Munch Ellingsen Group/ARS, NY 2013

His love life was often in shambles.  Two married women drew Munch's ardor (because they were unavailable?), an obsession he experienced for several years, and, later, he spurned marriage with a long-term lover who finally gave him up after a shooting incident and married a younger man. 

Bitter and angry, Munch took to the drawing board.

Could he have been a misogynist? Carrying anger remaining from the death of his mother who "abandoned" him, grief which engulfed him at the time of his adored sister's death, and lovers who wouldn't love? They all "left" Munch.

As a viewer moves from print to woodcut in the show, one cannot escape the obvious:  Edvard Munch was extremely troubled by women and their desertion of him.

The entrance to the tribute show for Edvard Munch at the National Gallery of Art/Patricia Leslie

 

Nothing affirms this in the show quite as well as Love and Pain, later titled Vampire which is as the name suggests:

A woman engulfs a man in a haunting embrace with her arms and bloody red hair, the major color in the woodcut. Both anonymously faced subjects look down.

Is the man a child seeking comfort in his mother's lap? Or sympathy from a lover who seems to suck blood from his neck? Every man? Every woman? Is this a perpetual trap by women with their fangs out? (I am here to tell you it doesn’t work.) Munch was unsettled by the women’s “revolution” of the late 19th century and their growing independence.

 

In 1889 he moved to Paris where art by Paul Gauguin, Vincent van Gogh, and Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec excited and influenced him. Three years later, his one-man show in Berlin closed abruptly due to controversy.  Even then, "bad press was good press," and Munch relished the talk.

From time to time his father had helped him with living expenses but frowned upon the nudes his son drew and was known to have destroyed at least one of Munch's impressions, but, like many artists, Munch's works became "his children,” and he resisted letting them go.  Or selling them sometimes.

During his later years Munch drew many nudes from the models who visited him at his home near Oslo where he lived in solitude and feared the creeping Nazis and what they would do to his art which filled the second floor of his home.  Munch died in the house January 23, 1944, four years after the Nazis invaded Norway. 

Last year the most colorful of his Screams sold for almost $120 million.  Munch's works are the first by a Western artist to be exhibited at the National Gallery in Beijing.

The Nazis called works by him, Picasso, Klee, Matisse, Gauguin, and others, "degenerate,” and they removed 82 of Munch's pictures from German museums.  Munch illustrated life's sorrows and their emotions and pain.

Wikipedia quotes Adolph Hitler: "[These] prehistoric Stone Age culture barbarians and art-stutterers can return to the caves of their ancestors and there can apply their primitive international scratching."

Enjoy “scratchings” in “the cave” at the National Gallery of Art!

The exhibition curator was Andrew Robison, Andrew W. Mellon Senior Curator of Prints and Drawings, National Gallery of Art.

What: Edvard Munch: A 150th anniversary Tribute

Admission: No charge

When: Now through Sunday, 11 a.m. - 6 p.m., and from 10 a.m. - 5 p.m., all other days

 

Where: Ground Floor at the West Building, the National Gallery of Art, between Fourth and Seventh streets at Constitution Avenue, NW, Washington, D.C.

Metro stations: Smithsonian, L'Enfant Plaza, Archives-Navy Memorial, or Judiciary Square

For more information: 202-737-4215

patricialesli@gmail.com

 

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Free Rita Coolidge concert Aug. 10 at American Indian Museum

Rita Coolidge

Grammy winner and legendary singer/songwriter Rita Coolidge will sing many of her classic hits and new songs, too, in a free concert at the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian on the National Mall beginning at 5 p.m. August 10.

Some of her best known hits include "Your Love Has Lifted Me (Higher and Higher)," "One Fine Day," "Only You," "The Way You Do the Things You Do," and "Fever."

Ms. Coolidge, 68, a native of Lafayette, Tennessee, claims Scottish Cherokee ancestry.  She is a founding member of Walela, a Native American music trio which includes her sister and her niece.  In Cherokee, Walela means hummingbird. 

Her performance is part of the museum's Indian Summer Showcase series. 

Click here for a Cameron Crowe biographical sketch of Ms. Coolidge written in 1978 when she was married to Kris Kristofferson:  "Much more than a song stylist," Crowe wrote, "Rita Coolidge is an artist's artist."  She hasn't
changed.

The National Museum of the American Indian, Washington, D.C./Patricia Leslie

 

Who:  Rita Coolidge

What:  Free concert

When:  5 p.m., Saturday, August 10, 2013

Where:  Potomac Atrium, First Level, the Smithsonian's National Museum of the American Indian, Fourth Street at Independence Avenue, S.W. , Washington, D.C.  20560, between the Air and Space Museum and the U.S. Capitol.  The American Indian Museum is open daily from 10 a.m. - 5: 30 p.m.

How much:  No charge

Metro station:  L'Enfant Plaza, exit Maryland Avenue/Smithsonian Museums

For more information:  202-633-1000

patricialesli@gmail.com

Another day on the National Mall

Lynda Farley of Edmonton, Kentucky stopped traffic on the National Mall Wednesday with her message about smokers' rights/Patricia Leslie

 

On the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol before several thousand Wednesday, Michele Bachmann waxed poetic into a microphone for a few minutes about the evils of the Internal Revenue Service.  Mrs.Bachmann went to work for the IRS after she finished law school so she could work inside the enemy and find out exactly what was going on, she exclaimed to the throng.  (Then, why did it take her 20 years to reveal her discovery?)

Tea Partiers covered the west lawn of the U.S. Capitol Wednesday and listened to Michele Bachmann, among others, talk about the evil of taxes. President Ulysses S. Grant presided from his horse (on the left)/Patricia Leslie

 

Save the world, Michele Bachmann shall!  But not from her seat in the U.S. Congress since she's quitting.

 

A van with a message/Patricia Leslie

 

Meanwhile, a little further west, beyond the Capitol Reflecting Pool and parked on Third Street was a well-decorated (every spare inch) minivan occupied by Lynda Farley of Farley Road in Edmonton, Kentucky. 

Mrs. Farley's vehicle gained some attention on the Mall Wednesday/Patricia Leslie

 

 

Mrs. Farley, an advocate for smokers' rights, sat in the driver's seat puffing away on one cigarette after another, and giving to anyone who stopped at the passenger's window for a few seconds, a little American flag with her website printed on the wooden stick:  libertyvan. com.

 

Lynda Farley of Edmonton, Kentucky, funds her smokers' rights campaign with money from retirement and inheritance/Patricia Leslie

 

She has taken her smokers' rights message to 49 state capitols (Fairbanks, Alaska is the exception) and put more than 367,000 miles on her car ("two engines!") but a traffic citation for "books on my dashboard!" will keep her in Washington at least through her court appearance on Friday.

A dashboard of books violates the law in Washington, D.C./Patricia Leslie

 

(First we have national surveillance of every email and phone call we make. Next, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants to inspect every morsel of food New Yorkers discard, in addition to checking trash, and that's just the beginning!  The government wants our light bulbs, and you better watch out for your coffee before it's taxed or banned, and now, it’s books we read!  Or pile on our dashboards.  Just like Orwell wrote about in 1984 whose sales, by the way, are up 3,000 percent ever since the national surveillance story broke.  Thank you very much, Edward Snowden.)

 

Anyway, Mrs. Farley, who left her husband at home with the dogs (18 Afghans which they breed), said the traffic cop tried to give her a ticket for obscured rear visibility until Mrs. Farley pointed out she has special cameras to show the view of the rear, so the traffic cop cited her for a crowded book dashboard, instead.  (Try Googling that.  And, if they wanna get you, they're gonna get you.  After all, this is a police state.)

"Look," said the tourist.  "Do you see what I see?" An large metal eagle with wings spread, and other items, on the minivan's attached wagon/Patricia Leslie

 

 

“Look,” said Mrs. Farley, lighting up another weed and proudly showing her copy of Rand Paul’s new book, Government Bullies, to an inquisitor:  “It’s autographed.”

 

A line of antique cars on the Mall piqued interest/Patricia Leslie

 

 

A few feet away and lined up on the Mall's gravel path were antique cars for passersby to photograph and envy. Nearby, the cars’ owners sat in lawn chairs on the grass or milled about while they piled hot dog lunches on paper plates.  They seemed somewhat dazed by all the activity and the Mall's competing factors.

 

Identification on this car said Dodge, but it looked like a Rolls Royce/Patricia Leslie

Little do they know what goes on here every day.  It's a great place to be. On the National Mall. 

God love it!

And us!

And them.

God bless the USA.

Anybody here old enough to remember the Corsair?/Patricia Leslie

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Friday night's jazz scene at the Sculpture Garden

Deanna Bogart and her band at the National Gallery's Sculpture Garden/Patricia Leslie

Every Friday!

I tell you:  Every Friday!  We've got to be there.
 

Good vibes, drink, ambience, people, people.

Dance with me, Henry.

All right, baby/Patricia Leslie

So what if all those country people are over at the National Building Museum whoopin’ and a’hollerin’. We got class at the Jazz Sculpture Garden.  Like last Friday when Deanna Bogurt and her band played the blues and jazz and her brand of "blusion."  We had a gooood time.

“Darlin’, that one’s mine! Don’t even think about taking a sip!”

 

“Oh, okay. Don’t we have enough for us each to have a pitcher?”/Patricia Leslie

If stretched from end to end, the legs of Louise Bourgeois's Spider, 1996, might equal the length of the beer line seen beyond/ Patricia Leslie

Ouch! Blisters and band-aids, all for the love of beauty in the beer line. What means comfort at a free jazzfest?/Patricia Leslie

 Chains on wheels? Or chains on heels? You got'em!/Patricia Leslie

 

The presiding officer of the day was President George Washington who held court from on high/Patricia Leslie

 

"Lovey, do you think there are sharks in this pond?"

"Silly, they only swim on Capitol Hill."/Patricia Leslie

She just looks like she's holding Claes Oldenburg and Coosje van Bruggen's Typewriter Eraser, Scale X, 1999.  Does anyone here know what a typewriter eraser is? Or was?/Patricia Leslie

What better place to look at your newest National Gallery of Art catalogue than in the National Gallery of Art’s Sculpture Garden with good food and drink and sunshine to brighten your day?Patricia Leslie

What’s with Men in Red all of a sudden?/Patricia Leslie

A line at the men's room, I declare/Patricia Leslie

Whoops!  Wardrobe!  I want wardrobe!/Patricia leslie

 

Across the street National Archives watches with envy/Patricia Leslie

 

Upcoming Jazz Sculpture Garden programs run from 5 - 8 p.m.:

Hendrik Meurkens, June 21

Swingtopia, June 28

Ernest "EC3" Coleman and Friends, July 5

Juanita Williams, July 12

Euphonasia, July 19

Incendio, July 26

Brian Simms, August 2

Josh Bayer, August 9

Doc Scantlin's Palmettos, August 16

Dixie Power Trio, August 23

Bruno Nasta (jazz violin) and the U.S. Navy Commodores Jazz Ensemble, August 30

 

Where:  The Sculpture Garden at the National Gallery of Art at the corner of 7th and Constitution Avenue, N.W.

 

How much:  No charge for admission

 

Food and beverages:  Available at the Garden and may be brought in with the exception of alcoholic beverages which may be purchased. Guards check bags.

 

Metro stations  Federal Triangle, Smithsonian, or Archives-Navy Memorial

 

For more information:  202-289-3360

 

patricialesli@gmail.com