Accordion Noir radio playlist 2010-12-29: Kate McGarrigle Memorial

AccNoir 2010-12-29

This post marks our churning back up to the surface the ten-year-old episode #211 of our weekly Accordion Noir radio program, broadcasting from Vancouver’s CFRO Co-Op Community Radio.  This one acted as a more complete memorial to the late, great Kate McGarrigle, who passed on at the beginning of 2010 (and… it still feels impossible that she’s been gone for ten years now!)  At its original online home, it was enjoyed some 7904 times, and you can revisit her rich musical vein along with us courtesy of the Internet Archive.  As for everything else… I said it pretty well in the below blurb back when we first aired this recording!  Here’s the playlist and everything else.

Greetings from co-host Rowan.  As our last show of the year, I wanted to do a tribute episode to accordion players who left us in 2010, and truly there were titans: Art van Damme, Esteban Jordan, Shirley Evans, and earliest of all, Kate McGarrigle. But as Bruce noted, Art and Esteban already got entire episodes dedicated to them, while we didn’t have enough of Shirley’s work on file to do her justice. Kate McGarrigle however got a bit shortchanged in our initial response to her passing, and so she became the primary subject of our entire tribute episode.  Hats off to all of them, however, along with other renowned accordionists who may have passed on without the news of their passing reaching our ears.

* Kate & Anna McGarrigle w/ Rufus Wainwright, Emmylou Harris, Mary Black, Karen Matheson, Rod Paterson – The Trans-Atlantic Sessions – Hard Times Come Again No More (from a YouTube clip at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YrfLnlrquo ) (1996?) … I made this the first track of the first show after she died, but couldn’t resist using it again: a fundamentally perfect arrangement of the Stephen Foster anthem.
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Songs of the Civil War – Better Times Are Coming (1991) … a natural complement.
* Andy Fielding – Accordion Noir theme (2010)
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – self-titled album – (Talk to me of) Mendocino (1975)
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Entre Lajeunesse et la sagesse (French Record) – En Filant Ma Quenouille (1981) … also the album whose cover art produced the icon gracing this podcast’s artwork.
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Dancer With Bruised Knees – Perrine Etait Servante (1977)
* Rufus Wainwright w/ Kate McGarrigle – Rogue’s Gallery: Pirate Ballads, Sea Songs, and Chanteys – Lowlands Away (2006) … I’m not sure how we avoided airing this mother/son duet until now, but it’s about time we shared it.
* Martha Wainwright – Sans Fusils, Ni Souliers, Ã Paris – C’est A Hambourg (2009) … Three accordionists (including Garth Hudson!) are credited on this Piaf tribute album, but not assigned specific songs. I started with a YouTube video of Kate playing this one with her mother on the buttonbox and extrapolated that Kate may well have done similar duties on the recording. Please don’t disabuse me of this notion.
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – I Eat Dinner (from a YouTube live performance video at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xb2x9uZVPek ) … this fundamentally perfect ode to life after love comes from the 1990 album Heartbeats Accelerating, but this live version has a bit more audible squeezebox.
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Heartbeats Accelerating – Heartbeats Accelerating (1990)
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – ODDiTiES – Parlez-Nous A Boire (2010)
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Walking Song – Dancer With Bruised Knees (1977)
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – The McGarrigle Hour – Baltimore Fire (1998)
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – ODDiTiES – the Log Driver’s Waltz (2010) … Not the version of the Wade Hemsworth classic many of us grew up with, but a new take on the eternal Canadian classic.
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – Matapedia – Why Must We Die (1996)
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – The McGarrigle Hour – Bon Voyage (1998)
* Kate & Anna McGarrigle – self-titled album – Complainte Pour Ste-Catherine (1976) … because as appropriate as I felt the dramatic arc of the previous couple of songs was, I wanted to end on a high note.

We host a monthly squeezebox circle … about which you can find further information at http://www.squeezeboxcircle.org

You can also reach us and find out more about our featured performers AND listeners by joining the Accordion Noir fans group on Facebook or visiting our profile on Myspace [Ed, 2020: OK, you can probably safely skip the MySpace visit.]

Thanks for supporting us and our parent radio station CFRO Co-Op Community Radio, 102.7 fm in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.

Thanks for reading us here (and hopefully listening to us, there), but if you find you want more, you can always keep up with us on Twitter (@AccordionNoir and @AccordionBruce), Instagram (@AccordionNoirFest), and Facebook at Accordion Noir fans (well, you already heard about that one!), the Accordion Noir Festival, and the Vancouver Squeezebox Circle.  (That’s right, ten years on we somehow budded off three more FB groups!  It’s out of control!)  Cheers & squeeze on!