News & Updates — classic albums

The English electronic music composer Delia Derbyshire may be best known for her eerie Doctor Who theme song but she held a creative chair at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop for over ten years, contributing to hundreds of productions. From Coventry, she played piano and violin as a child and expressed interest in mathematics and sound. After flat rejections from record companies that refused to hire a woman for the studio (ahem, Decca), she found some work with Luciano Berio in '62, as well as joining the BBC that year. There she and her colleagues composed for various science & learning...

The Canadian electronic music pioneer and instrument-builder/inventor Bruce Haack has a birthday today. An inspired creative person, the man participated in a wide array of projects. Early on he played jazz & Ukrainian folk music, participated in authentic pow-wows, hosted a radio show and got into tape & electro-acoustic music in the '50s. He also worked as a pop songwriter for the Dot & Coral labels, as well as composed for dance & theater. He built several musical toys including synths, samplers, a vocoder and music-playing robots that could perform in concert. He made several high-concept children's records, recorded electronic...

One of the rumberos who helped the tradition thrive in NYC, Totico is best known for teaming with Carlos "Patato" Valdes. Born in Havana, he arrived in Boston in '59 and moved to NYC shortly after. He quickly found work as a percussionist, playing with Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln & Eric Dolphy on Roach's incredible Percussion Bittersuite album in '61. He also hooked up with Pupi Legarreta's charanga ensemble (check the Salsa Nova LP) before the absolute classic rumba album Patato & Totico on Verve ('68). The album features Arsenio Rodriguez and Cachao, and I love the killer version of...

Forever associated with James Brown as one of his funky divas, Marva Whitney is fondly remembered for her raw vocal attack on some of the funkiest records ever made. From Kansas City, she came up in a gospel-singing family, performing as early as 1947 when she was three years old. She sang in R&B bands locally until '67. After rejecting offers to tour with Bobby "Blue" Bland and Little Richard, she signed on to join the James Brown Revue, which included her own featured set. She toured the world with JB (including Vietnam and Africa) and had a romantic relationship...

Maya Deren was the mother of American avant-garde cinema. Her films were surreal and intense, full of symbolism and incredibly strange ideas. Check out The Very Eye of Night, Meshes of the Afternoon and At Land. She was a Ukrainian Jew who fled to the US with her family to escape the ethnic-cleansing pogrom. Her first husband was a socialist activist who she married at 18. Her second husband, famous European photographer Alexander Hammid, was co-collaborator on Meshes and her third husband, Japanese-American composer Teiji Ito, made some amazing soundtracks to these films. John Cage and Marcel Duchamp were involved...