06/01/2024
“Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world, I feel like I can’t take it, and my heart is just going to cave in.” This was the Ricky Fitts character videoing an autumn leaf dancing in the electricity of the air. My, by-far, favorite line from American Beauty, a movie securely in my Top 5.
That passion washed over me this morning.
Our Saturday Morning Salve with Scott Simon was well underway, caffeine drip assiduously regulated, and we were in transit to the Portland State University farmers’ market.
Robert Plant and Alison Krauss discussed with Scott their 2007 album, “Raising Sand”, which swept the Grammys, and their 2021 collaboration, “Raise the Roof.” They begin a 40-stop cross-country tour this weekend.
Alison recounted the many, many collabs she’s had with brilliant artists, specifically mentioning how Johnny Mathis placed “the N on the end of his word much sooner than anybody else I’d ever heard, and it was beautiful.” As a Bluegrass artist in partnership, it was her job to “match” her partner’s style.
When Robert, as a boy in Wales, talked about trying to “match listening to Robert Johnson”, he said he “wanted to strain out and wring out the emotion.”
By the time Robert Johnson was, yet again, credited for the work of today’s Blues, Bluegrass and Rock & Roll artists, I knew I was about to lose it.
Robert: “… maybe as musicians, we [should] just lie back, just taking it as all part of a beautiful dream.”
I said to my partner, Paul Caloca, “I’m going to need a lot of tissues.”
Sometimes there’s so much beauty in the world…
