Downloads

Surfing the Web for new music, video and MP3 downloads can be a serious time investment. Tips from Times staff and contributors will help take the drag out of click-and-drag music choices. Some downloads may contain explicit lyrics. All are free, except as noted.

-- CASEY DOLAN

“Anita O’Day -- The Life of a Jazz Singer”

Anita O’Day

www.anitaoday.com/documentary.html

Stubbornly independent and, like Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald or Sarah Vaughan, distinctively recognizable with one bar’s listening, O’Day was one of the jazz greats. She died recently at 87, but not before releasing one final album and contributing to this documentary on her life. Her intonation was never lazy, her phrasing truly swung with a fun musicality and her scat singing (listen to a 1963 version of “Tea for Two”) was incomparable. This 20-minute “teaser” in four parts is loaded with interviews and performance clips.

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“Honey Boy”

Ruth Brown

redkelly.blogspot.com

One of the pillars that held up the house of Atlantic Records in the ‘50s -- she sold more records for Atlantic in that decade than even Ray Charles -- Brown laid much of the R&B; groundwork for the great kaleidoscope of rock ‘n’ roll. After an extended hiatus from performing and recording in the ‘60s, Brown returned in the mid-’70s and didn’t really quit, right up to her recent death. This is a slightly strange example of her craft -- a B-side from 1960’s “Taking Care of Business” -- but aptly demonstrates how much sassy personality Brown could inject into even a relatively throwaway number like “Honey Boy.”

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“Golden Fish in Pool”

Toy

aurgasm.us

This is delightful instrumental music that could work perfectly as the soundtrack for some oddball cartoon on Adult Swim. “Golden Fish

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“It Ain’t Easy”

Shooter Jennings

music.yahoo.com/premieres

This is supposed to be a tribute to Jennings’ father, the great Waylon Jennings, but it comes off as a two-dimensional rendering with the most eye-catching element being the usage of a split-screen. The band members appear exactly as if they had stepped off of a tour circa 1972 and the song is unmemorable as Jennings sings about moving on with the memory of his father’s words in mind. Crosses abound on the wall but don’t infuse the sentiment of the lyric with divine strength.

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“Look Up, the Sky Is Beautiful”

Sachiko Kanenobu

www.fatplanet.com.au/blog

Kanenobu released this gem of a waltz in 1972 and the shadow of early Joni Mitchell and the British folk movement of the late ‘60s loom heavily. It’s a gentle, haunting song sung in Japanese with a beautifully recorded acoustic guitar. Kanenobu had a burgeoning career in the early ‘70s, but then she married rock critic Paul Williams and everything was put on hold. “Misora,” the album from which this song is taken, was reissued this year by Australian label Chapter Music. If Vashti Bunyan and the late Judee Sill can have revivals, so might Kanenobu.

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casey.dolan@latimes.com