Recent passings

1) The incredible Ahmet Ertegun died two weeks ago, leaving behind a huge legacy of great music he helped bring to the world with a modicum of exploitation of the artists.

2) James Brown was finally kept from playing a gig without the law being involved. A great memorial to him is at WFMU's blog and pure mp3s are at bag of songs; you will find even more music at the Hype Machine. What disturbed me a bit about all the obits is that I didn't see any of them mention one of his greatest contributions to today's music, the song Funky Drummer, perhaps the most sampled song ever (it's amongst those at bag of songs).