Day 60: Avishai Cohen "Devotion" & Lee Morgan "The Rumproller"

Well, it's a day without Duke Ellington, so that must mean it's another day for a Blue Note Rudy van Gelder recording. That and a CD I know nothing about and don't have any liner notes for...away we go...

Avishai Cohen
Devotion

There's got to be a term for this. Someone has to have identified this as a distinct style and I just don't know about it yet. It's a certain kind of progressive sound that was really popular in the 90s (I don't know if people are still doing it now). It's really distinctive of that 'young gun' crowd I had talked about earlier, the new wave of academic jazz performers.

Wiki isn't really any help here (I suppose I rely too much on Wiki, and I certainly understand its weaknesses, but I decided that there was no point in pretending to be an expert on these performers, rather be honest about the fact that quite often I have to look them up since this should be about my impressions of them in regards to having carried it around for so long instead of presenting myself as any kind of authority.) Anyway, Wiki sites a blend of Middle Eastern and Eastern European influences in his jazz, which might be the case in his current recordings more than it is here. There are certainly some different harmonies and rhythms here, but this sounds very much in that class of Jacky Terrasson or other progressive jazz artists of the 90s. This is not to say that they sound exactly alike or that there is no individuality to their performance. One of the great things about jazz is that even the same artist would have a hard time sounding the same twice in a row.

But I'm starting to feel like I could listen to the first few bars of a recording and go, "That guy was young and new in the 90s." The music is both sparse and complex, segmented in a way that older forms of jazz wouldn't be. There is a lot of layering, which seems contrary to that 'sparse' comment, but it's not thick layering, if that makes any sense. Tempo changes, time changes, even style changes within a single piece are not uncommon. Unison lines trade up with counter melody and repeated figures. And the playing is always very aggressive, even during ballads.

He apparently came up through Chick Corea so that makes a certain degree of sense, because in a lot of was Corea might be considered the father of this kind of sound. Maybe not, since I'm just now piecing this together, but I put it at good odds.

Also not uncommon is the sort of newish third (fourth stream?) style that will make use of larger string arrangements and even, apparently, electronica like in Ti Da Doo Di Da. But this is a bass player's album, so it might just be an excuse to use a different bass, which has a pretty odd tone on it. My brother might be able to identify it, I'm not that good with electric instruments.

Well, there's that Middle Eastern/Eastern European influence, it's pretty present in Linda De Mi Corazon. And the Eastern European again (complete with voice at the beginning calling out in an accent, "Igor come! We play Slow Tune!) is heard on, of course, Slow Tune. And apparently the next two tracks. So basically he backloaded and grouped up all of that so that I would look silly declaring it not present after only the first two tracks...

Lee Morgan
The Rumproller

Seriously, how can you go wrong with an album called The Rumproller? So it's another Rudy Van Gelder edition hard bop Blue Note album. For a moment they felt left out, what with all the Duke Ellington going on the last few days. Hard bop is creeping up on blues and big band for most represented in the Albtross so far. And blues is kind of cheating, since I don't divide that up into 'Chicago blues' and 'country blues' etc. Without that it would be big bands followed closely by hard bop.

Seriously, though, that opening track rocked.

The problem with having so many of these RVG editions is that I'm running out of things to say.

At one point I was given a large collection of mock up album covers for all of these editions, well, not me--the store. So everyone got to pick through them and I got what was left. The problem was that the best ones were also the coolest looking ones, so I didn't really end up with that great of a collection. I haven't seen that in a few moves, so I'm guessing it didn't survive, so it's probably for the best that I didn't score the cool ones. Though I may have had this one.

There's a kind of cool 'hard bop meets calypso' recording called Eclipso on here.

Another contender for awesome track name, this CD closes out with Venus Di Mildew.

Day 37: Sarah Vaughan "The Gershwin Songbook V.2 and Steve Swallow "Always Pack Your Uniform on Top"

I'm getting a late start today. I fooled myself by thinking I didn't have much to do this morning and so I could totally watch Punisher:War Journal on cable instead of pre-write today's entry.

Not worth it in the slightest. Anyway, let's get to it.


Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan: The George Gershwin Songbook, Vol. 2

For female jazz singers there's always the 'big three,' the ones that people know who aren't even into jazz. Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, and Sarah Vaughan are the royal court of female jazz singers. Not to take anything away from other extremely talented singers.

I'm sure there's some sort of 'what Beatle are you' type personality test that goes with who you prefer, but I'm not about to figure that out. But I have always felt that Ella and Billie were just a little higher on that pedestal than Vaughan. Like, if I were asked I would feel like I'd have to answer "Billie!" or "Ella!" if asked my preference, depending on if I wanted to sound edgy and soulful or like an appreciation of vitriousity. But really, I think of the three I really like Vaughan. Which is not to say I don't like Holiday or Fitzgerald. I still hum the Cottontail solo I heard all the way back from high school, and there is just something distinctive and haunting about Holiday--especially in songs like Strange Fruit.

But there's something about the way Vaughan sings. I recognize that this is really just a subjective thing, there's something ridiculous about trying to rate numerically performers in general and especially performers on this level. I guess there's something intoxicating about the internet that makes you lean towards that. Anyway, love Vaughan. And Gershwin has a pretty good songbook.

This has one of my favorite Gershwin tunes on it, Someone to Watch Over Me. My romantic fantasy has always been a torch singer, and Someone to Watch Over Me has always been one of the top songs for that fantasy. It was the only reason I would watch Mr. Holland's Opus, to watch that student sing that song.

This collection has a lot of well known tunes on it.  I was going to comment that they must have spread them out over both collections, but really it's just that Gershwin wrote a lot of well known tunes. These are actually pretty interesting arrangements, though. And it's hard to come up with an arrangement of Summertime that will stand out, really. Everyone does that song.

Embraceable You is another one of those fantasy songs. The sultry torch singer sings that and I play tenor sax as a back up in a club where they still allow smoking...for effect.

Steve Swallow
Always Pack Your Uniform on Top

I seem to remember thinking that there weren't enough 'new jazz' groups to listen to and fawning over my Black/Note CD as an isolated case. But only 37 days in and it turns out that all I really had to do was pay attention to the pile of CDs that I was being sent home with every week. Right now, as the CD plays, it's just a guy more or less noodling on his guitar to an audience, but I do recognize the saxophone player on the cover of the unopened CD, so I have some notion of what I'm in for. Ah, there he is, Chris Potter has joined the guitarist on his saxophone.

Okay, that's kind of awesome. The liner notes to this CD is sheet music to the tracks. No explination (I was looking for the meaning behind the title), no lead in. No jazz critic or fellow musician waxing poetic about the artist or for that matter explaining who the hell this guy is. It is literally just pictures of the band recording and the sheet music to the CD. That's really cool. This is what the album is, this is what it's about--the music, here it is. That's it.

These might be my favorite liner notes yet. Well, the history of the blues ones were pretty good and informative, but as far as single artist liner notes go, these are the champ.

You don't get a lot of bass players as leaders of the band, but this really is pretty damn good. The eleven minute plus opening track had a cool disjointed rhythm to it that was inventive without resorting to the usual abrasiveness (though, I admit I really like the abrasiveness). I often consider guitar a diluting agent in jazz. It more often than not 'smooths' things out, and this isn't neccisarily an exception (even the Mahavishnu Orchestra has some mellowness to it that I blame on the guitar). Maybe it's that all the guitarists that really like the grind went to rock and all the ones that wanted to chill played jazz, I don't know. But this group has no piano, that roll is filled by the guitarist.

I kind of zoned out to this CD. I just kind of fell into listening to it, it's pretty good. I wish I had something more profound to say about it, but I don't.

I made it with an hour and fifteen minutes to spare! Unless you're on the East Coast, in which case...who are you? I mean, I'm happy to have you, I just don't know where you came from...