It seems like yesterday that I reached 60 and the last set of samplers and now here we are at Day 70. The sampler will come out tomorrow, obviously I'm getting a super late start today. I wish I had something profound to say about 70 days and almost 150 CDs. The whole thing still would fit on a 32g iPod Touch. Not much room left for apps, though.
Flora Purim Perpetual Emotion
This was the kind of half way in between way of doing the 'advanced copy.' Not a special sleeve, a regular jewel case with no artwork and a backing that simply pitched the artist. Not that it worked, because even with the notes linking her to 'straight jazz' performers, I was convinced I was going to have to sit through another 'adult contemporary' fusion CD. And I was not ready for that. But instead, she's a modern swing singer from Brazil, which occasionally shines through. Especially on the Brazilian flavored Saudade. And Crystal Silence. Alright, so there's a lot of Brazilian influence on the CD. Of course, I don't have any liner notes so I have no idea what that means or what the collection represents.
I have a love/hate thing with singers. For the most part I have no need for them or interest. But then, torch singers seriously do something for me. This album, in that regard, has a lot of ballads and easy swing and Latin pieces.
They're all songs that I don't know. I don't know if that means they're all original or if I just don't know them.
You don't get many drum solos on vocal albums. This is a pretty ragin' one at that.
The album actually moves from various band line ups, from a big band, Latin group, or solo guitar for a Brazilian ballad that closes the album.
Dorthry Dandridge Smooth Operator
Before the movie came out, our store didn't carry any Dorthy Dandridge. After the movie we had a variety of samplers like this available. Of course, I was the buyer for the section and I didn't stock her not because she was 'unmarketable,' but rather because I had no idea who she was. I may or may not have been pitched CDs with her before the movie, I just don't know that I noticed. But after the movie, I got promos.
I never actually watched the movie, so I still know really very little about her. In fact I wasn't sure what kind of singer she would be. For those in the same bubble as me, she manages a strong yet soft tone in her voice that's very seducing. The mastering and recording is really clean for its age. It's really very beautiful singing, if you're into that kind of thing. If you listen closely she has that 'conveyor belt' vibrato that I've always found weird. But it's subtle here and doesn't intrude unless you focus on it...like I can't stop doing right now...
This is hitting all the right buttons, about the only jazz ballad missing that hypnotizes me when sung by a breathy singer is Someone to Watch Over Me. But instead I get How Long Has This Been Going On, Body & Soul, I've Got a Crush on You and The Nearness of You. All done with a sweet breathy voice that's recorded so that she sounds like she's singing it in your ear (of course, I'm wearing headphones). I guess I would be extra late to the party at this point to 'discover' Dandridge, but she does have a really good voice.
I kind of wanted to be snarky about her absence before the movie and how we all pretended that we were into her all along afterward. But I really didn't know who she was, and I was the one who decided (for the most part) what we carried in the jazz section. So she was ignored because I didn't know who she was. But honestly, there are so many stories in jazz, how can you know them all? I mean, just look back on the last 70 days and the artists that have come up, Red Rodney, Buddy Rich...I love jazz stories and I collect them as much as I collect jazz and there are just so many, someone is going to come across an amazing jazz story before you, and they may have Halle Berry to do a movie.
Of course after leaving the store I got to be familiar with her through Carmen Jones since I spent a short period studying Otto Prelinger. Which I promptly forgot until I had to Google to check and make sure it was Halle Berry that played Dandridge in the movie.
And that's the other side of it, I just can't know all the jazz stories out there, and the ones I do learn I often forget.
Dandridge's Smooth Operator is a little saucier than the Sade song. It really manages to walk the line between 'saucy' and 'campy.'
Every time I start to think I'm about done with this bag another pack of unprocessed CDs pop up. The themes are staying pretty consistent, though.
Luiz Bonfa The Composer of Black Orpheus Plays and Sings Bossa Nova
Bossa Nova is somewhere between a successful date with The Continental and a dirty phone call. This might have a lot to do with the fact that I keep listening to this stuff on headphones, But it's that whisper singing that they do, it always gives me the impression that they're telling me something dirty.
I don't speak Portuguese, so maybe they are. Who knows. It is certainly one of the most mellow forms of music out there.
This is kind of a classic LP, I think. For some reason when I think of LPs it's always something like this, like 'so and so plays such and such.'
I know I know Black Orpheus but I can't think of it right now. This certainly provides a different feel to The Hurt Locker.
I'm starting to dread the bossa nova CDs because I didn't really have much to say about them in the first place and now I'm pretty much tapped out as far as insight goes. This recording bounces back and forth between the 'full orchestra' kind of stuff and the more simple percussion and guitar.
Of course I made the whisper sing comment, and the last track actually starts off with them really whispering "bossa nova cha cha" in my ear. Awesome.
This is a really short album, less than 40 minutes. This is the kind of thing where normally they would add bonus tracks to the original recording to fill things out, but not this time.
This was an especially difficult type of classical CD to file. The Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra wasn't necessarily an in demand orchestra. But then it isn't a single composer CD, so how do I file it so that whoever might be looking for it would find it?
Sony Classical seemed to put preference towards Rachmaninov. But it's not like Stavinsky is a complete unknown.
Ultimately I erred towards the standard I had set. I had laid this out earlier, if it was a single composer it would be filed by composer, multiple composers under the performer. So the Novosibirsk Philharmonic Orchestra got a leader card.
I didn't get far enough to do a lot of studying of Russian composers. I know that Charlie Parker was obsessed with Stravinsky and piano players love Rachmaninov.
iTunes has an even harder time with classifying the CD since it attributed the whole CD to Rachmaninov, even the Stravinsky pieces.
This album contains a performance of Vocalise, which somewhere I also have performed on a theremin. Kind of awesome.
I'm as stuck with mainstream classical as I am with bossa nova, I don't really know what to say. I'm guilty of letting classical be background music, but really there's so much that goes on in music like this that it deserves more attention, not less. Somewhere we flipped it, classical became background music and we give attention to simpler, more repetitive music. I understand why that is, but it's still kind of backwards.
There are different criteria that go into what CDs you'll take home versus CDs you'd pay money for or even bother downloading, though I imagine the latter is a lot similar. The key difference is the opportunity and how that comes about.
Today's selection reflects that with differing degrees of success. Both CDs represent something I ultimately didn't know that much about but thought I should. One is unopened, and the other I don't remember, so I don't know how much of a success there was in that...
I had mentioned this before, but part of the 'design' of the Albatross, before it became clear that the beast would become unsearchable, was to have a wide selection of music that might be appropriate for whatever situation came up, sort of a musical Swiss Army knife. It's unclear now what situation it was that I was thinking of where I would need this, but I diligently collected music that I normally wouldn't have but gladly did when it was free.
Towards the end of my time at the record store, I had already made the transition from music to film, and my last few years there coincided with my time writing plays, so maybe I imagined being in on someone's rehearsal while they mused, "Were can we get some really cheesy easy-listening dance band music?" and then, like a hero, I would jump in and say, "Why yes, I have this collection of Bert Kaempfert music!" and everyone would swoon.
Alright, I didn't really believe anyone would swoon.
But the reality is, aside from the unsearchable nature of the Albatross, you have to have listened to this stuff to know what you had, and if you've read previous posts you know that there is music I genuinely like that I haven't listened to. So I never even got around to opening this one.
I have to say, five tracks in, I've been really unfair to this CD in my head. I mean, it is cheesy dance band music of that Lawrence Welk variety (no accordion so far) but it's not really that bad. It's actually pretty listenable. There's nothing really over the top, no outlandish instrumentation that you would expect from a composer that uses "Wonderland" so often in his album titles. In fact, this might not have worked for my intended purposes, it might not have been cheesy enough.
I'm trying to think of a way to describe the sound. It's fairly close to a less bombastic big band. It really is just a dance band that you might hear after a particularly well attended bingo night.
For combined pricing it is a bit of a champ, new is $49.99 and used is $54.99. Opening it apparently made it worth $5 more...
Ah, there's a signature of this kind of music, the choir. I don't know how to describe it except as that undefined mass of voices that sing in unison and sound like they are standing across the room from their mics. And that mall organ sound. (I'm not sure that this is a universal phenomenon, but mall based piano/organ stores around me would generally have someone sitting and playing one of their organs to entice people inside to buy one of these wonder devices.)
This is also a champion in 'greatest juxtaposition' in what I'm listening to and what's playing on the TV. Usually I just didn't bother to turn the TV off before I put the headphones on, but today there is something I am actually watching on purpose, the Rolex Grand Am Series Montreal 200. So while hokey (but again, listenable if not actually enjoyable) dance music plays, endurance sports cars 'dance' around the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. It kind of gives the whole race a surreal look, reminiscent of the 'ballet' sequence in the movie Grand Prix. If you're not a racing fan, none of that made sense to you, but I'm okay with it.
No music collection is complete, really, without a Musak-esque version of Unchained Melody.
This was almost another fatality, but I was able to save it at the expense of the liner notes.
Another Brazilian CD release perhaps in the wake of Buena Vista Social Club, or at the very least more vigorously promoted as a result of it.
I initially thought this would be a lot more of a contrast with ol' Bert up top, but two tracks in I'm seeing a lot more similarities than differences. Both are easy going, light sounding albeit in different ways. There are a lot more synthesizers in the first track than the cover would suggest. The second track features just voice (literally going "La da de di dum", guitar, and soprano sax. But it's followed up by a group of singers with lots of phase shift in the beginning. It seems to bounce between heavily produced and folksy simplicity.
Ultimately both albums are dance-y in their own way, gentle. Even the close choir of voices are present. Machado doesn't have the large orchestra that Kaempfert has and more or less (for obvious reasons) confines himself to a samba feel all built around his guitar, but I suspect that I could play both CDs together without it being all that jarring. Just every once in while the music would have less instrumentation and be in Portuguese.
I enjoy this a little more, I don't know if it's the instrumentation, or the way the music is put together, or if it's just pretentiousness that makes me instinctively look down my nose at the 'easy listening' Kaempfert. It feels groovier, I guess, I find myself nodding my head to the kind of manic scatting Machado is doing.
But then come back the synthesizers and heavy mixing (the sounds of party goers) on the track Pam Pam. Makes it sound like the front office lobby.
For a sharper contrast of what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing, the sports cars have given way to sprint cars at Knoxville. Good Ol' Boys in big V8s throwing themselves around a dirt track to the docile sounds of samba... awesome.
There are far more 'over-produced' tracks on here than the cover would lead you to believe. I've found my interest wandering waiting for something like that second track. And here it is, a scatted samba rendition of Paul Desmond's Take Five. This has made everything worth it. Simple guitar rhythm and a nonsense scat sped through the deceptively difficult melody. This is one of the first jazz songs I liked, long before I knew what jazz was and was just pulling records out of my parents' collection to listen to. Deep in there I found a compilation with Take Five on it and the catchy piano figure and strange feel (I didn't yet know what a time signature was, much less that 5/4 was an odd one) got me hooked on it. This is about as far away from that as you can get, and yet it is still incredible cool. Made the whole thing worth it.
And now we're back to heavy production, sound effects, and electronic instruments. It was fun while it lasted.
The last track, Babaluê Babaluá, was pretty cool in that weird Bobby McFerrin kind of way.
More similarities than contrasts. The Albatross continues to surprise.
The prime stack is starting to vanish (well, shift the width of one cd on the bookshelf it was on) and it's getting close to the time I'll have to start pulling CDs out of the storage bags (they are currently for the most part packed into several re-usable Safeway shopping bags. I buy those bags with great intentions, but those intentions tend not to come with me when I leave the house to shop...).
I still haven't come to any decision on what to do with the CDs once they've been 'processed.' Certainly with ones that I find upon review may not be necessarily ones that I would like to drag from place to place anymore...at a certain point on the near horizon this will start to be an organizational issue. For the time being, however, I can continue to put the issue off, so on to today's selections-
I was going to blame this on The Buena Vista Social Club, but once I was able to find a release date, it came out a year before that film. Of course, this is Brazilian (the title translates to "The House of Mother Joana," which essentially means a place where anything goes, everyone does what they want. I wish I had known that when I was dating a Joanna...I don't think she would have gone for it, but I could have tried...) and The Buena Vista Social Club was Cuban, but there was a time after the release of that movie when labels emptied their South American catalogs in the hopes of catching some of that glancing glory...or at the very least hoping that shoppers couldn't tell the difference between Portuguese and Spanish.
But this is actually just a small label's compilation of various Brazilian artists. There is no translation of the lyrics, no English liner notes explaining the nature of the compilation or who the artists are. It's from a New York based label, but it is not for novices. Unless said novices are either willing to fake it or admit that they were diving in feet first.
This is where my hypocrisy would show. I would scorn 'coffee table' CDs. Essentially the same as the books, it was music that you didn't listen to on your own, it was music you displayed conspicuously and played for people knowingly when they came over, reciting the facts in the liner notes as if you knew that beforehand and went to the 'special store' (or major chain that carried this kind of stuff...) to buy it. Or Starbucks. This CD could easily be a CD at Starbucks.
But then, I have it. I wanted it, no doubt. Oh, but my reasons are pure...I'm an amateur musicologist, remember? I'm actually interested in this...so into the Albatross it went, unlistened to, but if there was that moment where someone needed Brazilian folk music, I would have it. Oh so different than the coffee table collector. In my head.
My arrogant pretensions aside, it is pretty cool. The instrumentation is light, obviously the cool Brazilian rhythm flows from song to song. If the Toots made me feel like talking about lost loves while driving along a Mediterranean coast this obviously cruises Rio finding new loves. I've never been to either place, but old movies assure me these are the appropriate actions.
I have to admit, once I translated the title I was expecting something a little more down and dirty and not so easily related to The Girl From Ipanema. But hey, for all I know, they're singing about having kinky kinky sex. I'm pretty sure someone's mentioned Carnivale a few times.
I think that every instrument has the music that redeemed it. The saxophone was lucky enough to get jazz, guitar got rock, even the accordion gets the tango, the flute gets Brazilian music. I don't know for sure, but I imagine unlike in other situations, after the singer the Brazilian flute player gets all the chicks. Or dudes, depending on gender and preferences.
I have a huge soft spot for women singing ballads in a foreign language.
Fifteen tracks in fifty-three minutes kind of breezes by. Ah, a saxophone has made it into the mix. The music manages to be fairly busy without being overwhelming at all. The guitars are in constant motion, even when they're comping it's fairly animated, and there is another guitar flying through arpeggio figures. And that doesn't mention the three or more percussion elements. I knew for a long time that jazz had become fascinated with this but never really stopped to think about why, but that has to be a huge factor. So much going on, freedom for the entire band to really let loose in the song without getting in the way.
Count Basie Cocktail Hour
This is actually a double CD, but one of the CDs has flown the coop. That's not really that uncommon, I am pretty sure that most of my doubles are missing at least one. I'd find the track or tracks that I really liked on one of the CDs and that's the one that would end up homeless after being ejected from whatever device I was using at the time. Actually, if I think about it, I might know where this disc's companion is...it might be on one of my cd carriers.
Because no matter how overwhelmed I got with music, there's no Count Basie CD that wasn't played at least a few times.
While I've been a little unkind to big band music, Basie is a special case. My high school big band was fashioned after Basie, that's what we listened to, we played predominantly Basie charts (mostly Frank Foster arrangements), that was the band we were meant to sound like. Our guitar player learned to ape Freddie Green even though the insistence that he replicate that sound would eventually start to chafe.
For my part, Lester Young was my first love on the sax. He was so smooth. I even momentarily experimented with holding my sax out way to the side like he did so he could hear himself over the powerful Basie brass. But our brass, while powerful, wasn't that powerful, and a tenor sax can get heavy. I even eventually bought a pork-pie hat, though I can't pull it off quite like ol' Prez. No one can, really.
This is the quintessential cool in a big band, what a big band is meant to sound like, that smokin' Kansas City sound.
And to top of all that bombastic swinging horn with sparse, almost absent piano solos...only the notes that are needed, perfectly placed. He could (and would) lay it down if need be, but only if need be. That's cool, to take a three note figure and make it a smokin' solo completely in place amongst the shouting horn section, the lion tamer in his element.
Cocktail Hour is a CD series of collections from various jazz artists. The sleeve is simply an insert card advertising other Cocktail Hour CDs in the series for other artists. No notes on the selections. Few 'trademark' standards on here, no One O'Clock Jump or April in Paris. This is deep catalog. The recordings sound old, there's no indication. You have to rely on your ear to see if which set of players it is.
Great lyric,
"First name James, my second name I've never been told
My first name's James, my second name I've never been told
Been chasin' women since I was twelve years old."
This disc has Cherokee on it, notorious in jazz circles for its difficult bridge to improvise on. There's a quote about someone 'growing up' or 'cutting their teeth,' or something 'on the bridge to Cherokee.' I wasn't able to find the quote, but some guides on the bridge I might come back to. Apparently at the time I was too daunted by the bridge to Cherokee to put the CD with that chart on regular rotation. But here it is...Basie tackling it with ease. I have to admit that this chart gets stuck in my head a lot and I had forgotten that the melody was the 'dreaded Cherokee.' It doesn't sound so menacing...listening to something like Giant Steps you can hear, even if you don't understand, something about those changes is daunting, but Cherokee seems gentle until you have to string a solo across the bridge...
"She's built up from the ground" is one of my favorite blues descriptions. I'm not even sure what it's supposed to mean.
Another version of Oh, Lady Be Good. This time only glancing blows at the melody while people take their solos. Still, gonna be stuck in my head all weekend.
For some reason, iTunes decided this was 'pop.' I didn't even look what it decided the Brazilian music was...Latin, it seems.
Day six down. Pretty awesome way to end it, too. Once again, join the Facebook group to get a sneak peak at what's coming. Or make suggestions on what to do with the processed CDs...
