At fifteen, he left school to tour Europe as the saxophonist with the Monarchs, a Belfast rhythm and blues band. He even spent some time in a country and western group known as Deanie Sands and the Javelins. Morrison learned to play harmonica, guitar, and saxophone when he was quite young, and by the time he reached his teens, he was playing professionally with various jazz, blues, and rock bands around his hometown of Belfast, Northern Ireland. His father was an avid collector of classic jazz and blues records, and his mother was a jazz singer. Morrison was immersed in music from his earliest childhood.
He “remains a singer who can be compared to no performer in the history of rock and roll, a singer who cannot be pinned down, dismissed, nor fitted into anyone ’s expectations, ” wrote Greil Marcus in the Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll.
The album has been widely praised for its music, an upbeat synthesis of jazz and rock its romantic lyrics and most of all for Morrison ’s singing, which reveals him to be “part Celtic bard, part soul singer, and part ecstatically scatting mystical visionary, ” according to Mike Jahn in Rock: From Elvis Presley to Rock and Roll.Through twenty years of experiments and stylistic phases, Morrison has retained the respect of music critics. The release of Van Morrison ’s album Astral Weeks in 1969 firmly established his reputation as a uniquely gifted musician.
0 kommentar(er)
