This week is about giving tribute. We begin with Linda Martell, one of country music’s first commercially successful Black female artists. She was featured in Dinner Music last April, and the album feels especially felicitous this week as we are (hopefully) reflecting on our past and considering the future. We jump to Italy for a compilation of recently unearthed tracks from seventies and eighties Naples. “Forget what you expect to hear,” the crate-diggers who curated the album warn. Just bask in the greatness of Italian disco and funk. We come back to an American icon, Dinah Washington, one of the most successful female vocalists of the mid-century. Her voice is both earnest and urgent and builds a sense of warm ease as you listen, the way you might feel as you sip a martini in a hazy, basement jazz club. For the next album, we stay with women who have captured a moment and a country. Mina is one of the most successful Italian vocalists of all time, with her three octave vocal range and ability to enchant listeners no matter where they are from. We end with a deeply personal, deeply emotional, deeply spiritual album from Leo Bud Welch, an artist that was “discovered” late in his life. The album sits in the space between living and the hereafter, it asks many questions and reminds us that it’s okay not to answer any.
The playlist is a tribute to a dearly departed father of a family very close and dear to me. May there be lots of Italian food and F1 wherever you are.
Enjoy.
Listen to the playlist here.
Monday
Color Me Country - Linda Martell (1970)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Tuesday
Napoli Segreta - Various Artists (70s)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Wednesday
What A Diff'rence A Day Makes! - Dinah Washington (1959)
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Thursday
Mina Con Bignè - Mina
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Friday
The Angels In Heaven Done Signed My Name - Leo Bud Welch
Spotify / Apple Music / YouTube / Other streaming services
Pair with:
The best eggplant parm recipe. Eggplant parm! What more to say? This recipe is involved, you need to soak the moisture out of the eggplant to get the right texture, but it’s a labor of love and easy to make it bulk for dinner parties.
This box of Sicilian white wine. My newest kick is a box of natural wine. It’s cost effective, delicious, easy drinking and usually lasts for a month or so. This is the best one I’ve had by far.
This essay about Cormac McCarthy. “The surprise of all this tenderness—brutality and tenderness always strangely twins, never far from each other, never balanced. There is almost nothing more moving than that.”
Thank you, thank you. Have a great week.