100 of My Favorite Things in Music (Part 1 of 2)

And you can add some of your own

Here are a few of my favorite things.

Don’t worry, you won’t find any bright copper kettles or warm woolen mittens here. We’re just doing things related to the sound of music—and not The Sound of Music—today.

Below are 50 of them. I’ll have another 50 to share soon.

In the meantime, feel free to add some of your own favorite things in the comments.

Happy listening!

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100 of My Favorite Things in Music (Part 1 of 2)

1. Alfred Brendel playing Haydn.

2. The way Lennon’s voice blends with McCartney’s (or another example here).

3. Son House’s guitar attack.

4. Pop songs with lyrics that don’t rhyme, but use haiku form instead.

5. How Maynard Ferguson finishes a trumpet solo.

6. Anything sung by Cássia Eller, the Brazilian Janis Joplin, before her early death at age 39.

7. Johnny Hodges’s saxophone glissandi.

8. The image of Big Jay McNeely playing saxophone at the Olympic auditorium, 1951—my favorite music photo (taken by Bob Willoughby).

9. Karen Carpenter playing a drum solo at age 18.

10. The Bo Diddley beat.

11. The trombone performance on the Jonny Quest TV cartoon series.

12. Hiding stolen letters of transit in a piano.

13. The Global Music Vault in Norway’s arctic mountains.

14. Hindustani slide guitar.

15. When the young Keith Jarrett danced while playing the piano.

16. Captain Beefheart’s Ten Commandments of Guitar Playing.

17. Diana Krall singing those low notes.