Day 72: Duke Ellington "Mood Indigo" & Don Byron "Romance With the Unseen"

You know what had to happen was that I mentioned that there were performers making several return appearances here and now they're all vying for top spot. Yesterday's Miles CD gives way to some more Don Byron (who has his third, I believe CD go on) and Duke Ellington who may or may not be pulling even. Peaking ahead there's even a Jacky Terrasson, but it's actually the exact same Jacky Terrasson that just went on the hard drive, so that hardly counts.

Duke Ellington
Mood Indigo

More Ellington. Another compilation, this one seeming on the cheaper 'might find this at a gas station' variety. These so far have been older, lower fidelity recordings of early Ellington. The liner notes are pretty sparse, containing an almost dry history of Ellington's beginning in music and a list of luminaries that he's performed with.

I tend to think of this kind of big band recording as 'cartoon jazz,' though that might conjure images of close harmony female vocals personified as singing flowers. It's not quite that, but it still has that mono recording quality, kind of muted sound that comes from a combination of old recording equipment and an air-tight horn section.

The back of the CD is laid out weird, too. It sets up columns for track title, composer, and publisher, all in equal font. It's such a strange way to lay the whole thing out. A lot of times the composer and publishing info is left out of the main listings, or if it's included it's much, much smaller. This kind of borders on data entry style. A little weird.

I'm sort of grasping at straws. Already with Ellington there's not much left to be said about him, but worse than that this is the fifth time he's come up. On the plus side, now I know the name of a song that I often would have in my head, Things Aren't What They Used to Be. And you can never have too many versions of Black and Tan Fantasy. Also, Sophisticated Lady ties Round Midnight for most represented song, which I didn't really see coming. Though it is a cool song. I play it every time I get a hold of a bari sax.

Don Byron
Romance With the Unseen

Don Byron is third on deck. I don't remember if this was the empty sleeve or not, but Byron was one of those artists whose labels would give me advance releases and then the actual CD when it came out. I would usually forget I had the CD originally and end up taking both. So there is a fair portion of of the Albatross that is duplicate CDs. At one point I had like five or six of the same Screamin' Jay Hawkins CD. Sadly, they all met unfortunate demises.

One thing I can say about the Don Byron CDs that have gone in, they so far have been three different CDs. The only thing that's really carried over from one to the other is his skill at the clarinet. In that respect this is perhaps the most 'straight ahead' of the three CDs. No crazy instrumentation, no wild arrangements, straight quartet...

Of course as soon as I say that, extended electric guitar solo. But still, the most straight ahead of his recordings.

I'm starting to think that I should keep track of Beatles tunes that appear on jazz albums, because there are a lot it feels like. Byron has chosen I'll Follow the Sun for his album. I guess I can't be one to judge, in my high school senior year jazz concert I did Yesterday with the guitarist.

This is always the ideal, is an artist who experiments, who tries and delivers different things. But the counter-argument is, I guess, that most people--and with reason--want the same thing, or at least a little bit of predictability. Because of the nature of my collection and the way I dealt with it, I haven't for the most part known which Byron album is which. But I have felt a need to listen to Byron only to find out that wasn't the Byron I was yearning for, it was instead the much different Byron of the CD I just put in.

If an artist experiments then there's the risk, or rather the near certainty, that the experiment won't be to your liking. Even if you're Miles Davis, you can find Davis 'camps' among those that appreciate him and there are those that like the fusion stuff and those for whom Davis more or less stopped playing jazz. I was able to see him about a year before he died, and during a brief moment where he thought he'd address us (by speaking into his bell mic) someone started shouting "Play All Blues." Jackass, this wasn't a shitty downtown jazz bar, he's not going to play All Blues, and now I won't know what he had to say. How did you buy a ticket for Miles Davis thinking that All Blues was even a remote possibility?

So anyway...

Some of it is not going to be something you're into. And so now the artist doesn't get the superlative, 'Consistent.'

It works for him, though, I guess. I mean, he kept releasing albums that I would get promos of, so that's good. It's good to hear some inconsistency now and then.

As part of the Albatross' effort to tie everything in, two days after the Basquiat CD goes in, a CD with a track called Basquiat goes in as well. I really should look that guy's art up some time. Basquiat turned out to be a kind of haunting track, really.

Day 59: Ali Farka Toure "Radio Mali" & Duke Ellington "The Best of Duke Ellington Centennial Edition"

I continue to be amazed at how grouped up these CDs are. It's like the CDs that were alike wanted to hang out together or something.

Ali Farka Toure
Radio Mali

I've talked before about my failed amatuer ambitions towards ethno-musicology. One of the underlying curriousities that drove that was the circular notion of influences and cross fertilization that music undergoes. Ali Farka Toure is a fantastic example of that.

I'll admit that I didn't really know anything about him, so after writing that first paragraph I did the "don't say something stupid" Google search to see if I was about to get a detail wrong. Instead I made the same observation that everyone has made about Toure's music, about the intersection of traditional African music and music that is influenced by traditional African music.  I just called the sky blue...

Well, regardless of how well tread and obvious my observation is, it's still pretty intriguing to hear Africa re-absorb the blues. I don't have any translations or liner notes to go on to see the translations of the lyrics, so I don't know if subject matter carries over or not. I know that the music remains solemn and mournful sounding.

According to Wiki this is a compilation of earlier recordings, which makes sense since the style, instrumentation, and recording quality shift around from track to track.

There's a bit of a pedal tone to some of these tracks that becomes sort of hypnotizing.

Duke Ellington
The Best of Duke Ellington Centennial Edition

Another day, another Duke Ellington tribute. This one features recordings from Ellington himself, however, from a box set (I believe) that spans his entire RCA recording career.

At least they resisted the temptation to make Take the A Train the first track (it's all the way down at number 8).

This instead features some early recordings, and oddly enough the recordings I'm more familiar with as far as Ellington goes. I didn't, for whatever reason, listen to many of the Strayhorn era and later Ellington but rather a lot of these rough early recordings. It might be that I just picked up anything with Ellington on it from the bargain bin and that was filled with recordings that had cheap rights. Or maybe there was a focus on early recordings at the time I started listening to jazz. I don't know, but albeit still well known pieces like Black and Tan Fantasy and East Saint Louis Toodle-O are instantly recognizable to me and stir up that weird nostalgia for when jazz was still a new world to me. Same goes with Rockin' in Rhythm, I would hum the squeaky saxophone line to this day really, though I don't often remember the name of the song indicating I probably listened to it on tape most often.

Sure enough, the music here is presented in chronological order so that the listener gets to speed read through Ellington's 50some year long music career and hear how his music evolved. Honestly, the best way to put together a compilation of this kind.

Bitter sweet is that two of my favorite and most moody Ellington pieces, Mood Indigo and Creole Love Call are stuffed together on a medley with Hot and Bothered. Granted it's a long medley, over seven minutes which is pretty ground breaking for the time. Also, apparently, when they recorded it they did it from two distinct mics with a time delay so the person who remastered it was able to do so in stereo, pretty cool.

I had a recording a long time ago in which Ellington narrated Mood Indigo explaining that the song was a boy and girl who met every day to play, and they loved playing together, but today it was raining and they couldn't see each other, and this was their mood. Now that I think about it, it might not have been a recording but rather something I read, but I seem to hear that story in my head being told by Duke. Either way, the song has remained heartbreakingly romantic in my head ever since. I heard a story about Creole Love Call, too, something about a singer humming the melody to a set of riffs that eventually became Creole Love Call, but that's less vivid. (According to Wiki, it's actually a melody lifted off King Oliver...not nearly as romantic a notion as the story I had heard...)

Well, apparently there are lyrics added after the fact to Mood Indigo making it not at all about that. The internet ruins some perfectly good myths sometimes.

Now I have another version of Day Dream, this time as a feature for Johnny Hodges, a saxophonist I got into when I felt like most of my playing was going to be in big bands anyway. Plus, it was hard to find an alto saxophonist that wasn't under the shadow of Bird.

So that's four versions of Take the A Train so far, and we've really barely started with the project. Work Song is closing in with a more eclectic spread with a Latin version, Duke's version, and a surf version. Though it's cheating a little, the surf version was already there. I went through my 'surf thing' after I left the store. I mean, I still like it, but there was a six month 'collect all the surf I can' bender I went through while in college. And of course it's a different Work Song with Ellington.

Never knew there were lyrics to Come Sunday, either. I kind of prefer it without lyrics, it was another one of those moody Ellington songs that I really liked. To complete my tour of moody Ellington, Sophisticated Lady is coming up in two tracks. I hadn't realized that my favorite Ellington was in his ballads as much.

Day 50: The Buddy Rich Big Band "Live Wham!" and Stefano di Battista Self Titled

The Albatross hits the Big 5-Oh. That means that a few days ago 100 CDs went onto the hard drive (since some were doubles and some days I did more than two). One hundred CDs that I've also listened to all the way through. Crazy. I don't have anything in depth to say about that, just felt it needed to be noted. I'm already starting to fade as far as what is what. I went through to share some songs with my brother as he starts to consider new paths in his music career and I actually found myself going through the list and knowing it was something that got added but still having to think, "What was the deal with this stuff again?"

I knew that as soon as I got a new Mac there would be some event that would come up that makes mine out of date. This happened last time, too. I need to better time my crisis. This really doesn't pertain to the Albatross, but it was on my mind.

Also, I added a food blog written by an old college friend and theater person in the links all the way at the bottom. I might have to hunt for a new template, that side bar is getting lengthy. Anyway, check it out, it might make you hungry, though.

Onto the beast...

The Buddy Rich Big Band
Live Wham!

This is not your father's big band. Well, I mean, it probably is. It's just as likely as anything else, really. It was recorded in 1977 and 1978 after all. But for a big band, that's 'modern.' And Buddy Rich's big band carries that modern big band sound, sort of recycling back that Chicago/Blood, Sweat, and Tears jazz rock sound back into jazz, this is sharper and more dynamic that 'traditional' big band. More forceful as well, partially a function of being lead by a drummer as opposed to a piano or horn player.

The liner notes include a Modern Drummer Magazine interview with Rich from the time and I have to say he comes off like an old school jazz crumedgon. Here are some highlights:

Modern Drummer: Do you do any limbering up before a performance?

Buddy Rich: Yeah, I usually take my hands out of my pockets.
...
Modern Drummer: That trick of using both ends of one stick to play two different drums. Is that something you thought up?

Buddy Rich: Almost everything I've don I've done through my own creativity. I don't think I have ever had to listen to anyone else to learn how to play drums. I wish I could say that for about ten thousand drummers.
...
Modern Drummer: Are any of your drums specially made?

Buddy Rich: Nope, right off the rack.

Modern Drummer: That's interesting. I thought many name players use custom made equipment?

Buddy Rich: Yeah, that's because they can't play. I mean it's obvious you know...you put a race driver in a car, if he knows how to drive, he can drive anything. If he can't drive, the can't push a kiddie car.
...
Buddy Rich:...It's easier now because the kids that are playing have no musical background [earlier he eschewed musical education and listening to other players and practicing, mind]. They luck out with an album and they become stars. I mean, where is their staying power? Where is their creativity? Most drummers I hear today play what every other drummer has played on a record. I don't hear one bit of originality. I hear triplets coming of tom-toms by every kid that's been able to hold a pair of sticks. That's not my idea of playing drums.

I managed to find a transcription of the entire interview, it gets worse. You really should check it out.

Joel Dorn describes him this way-

Buddy Rich was like weather in the tropics, always changing. One minute you'd be sharin' a joint wiht him and laughin' your ass off, the next he'd be screamin' at you and shooting karate kicks by your head.

 I'm not sure what it is about jazz that attracts this personality type, but it's not all that uncommon even among jazz musicians that you've never heard of unless you're into your local jazz scene. I've had instructors like this (alright, I've never had an instructor swing a kick at me, but I wouldn't have put it past a few...)

One of the odd take aways that they seemed to want to get to in these liner notes is that late in his career he became interested in cars and karate, each get a few separate mentions.

I've been trying to read all of this stuff while listening to the full on assault on my ears that this recording is. This refuses to be background music. Sometimes, when an album isn't that exciting I can push my headphones forward and still listen to the album while catching whats going on with the TV.  I'd have to put the headphones in the other room to even hope to accomplish that here. I can't help but imagine smoke rising off this big band after their done. It is loud, it is fast, it is dynamic--as long as that dynamic is loud and fucking loud.

Jim, Kermit, and Buddy

And as if to underline that, here comes their four times speed version of Miles Davis' So What? Under Davis it was a medium laid back tempo moody modal study. Under Buddy Rich it's a bright, fast, multi-layered five minute long shout chorus.

The monster at the end of the book is a 26 minute long suite. I have no idea how they can sustain themselves through a marathon like that, it should be interesting.

Speaking of Muppets, for no explained reason there is a picture of Jim Henson with Kermit on the back cover. Awesome.

Stefano di Battista
Stefano Di Battista

So clearly I am part of the problem. Because there is plenty of new jazz just sitting unlistened to in the Albatross, including new saxophonists. But if I had been asked before this project started I would have been able to name Chris Potter and Black/Note and then stalled. But two days in a row I've put a new saxophonist on the hard drive, so I wasn't even so much as paying attention to the stack of CDs that I was taking home.

This album includes some more Jacky Terrasson as well. Blue Note really like Terrasson it seems.

There aren't any fun liner notes to play with here, it's just a bunch of photos laid out from the recording session of all of the young lions of Blue Note getting together and recording and album.  After that run of liner notes I'm almost disappointed. I kind of feel like I'm going, "Yeah yeah, good music...whatever...get back to me when you have an extreme political screed or want to rage against a generation of performers on your instrument..."

And that's not far from the truth. This is almost exactly the kind of jazz I like, on the instrument I prefer. It's clean, it's well done, well performed, but I'm just kind of sitting here. This is kind of what I've talked about before. With so much nutty or bizarre things that might surface somewhere in the collection my time for stuff that is just simply good becomes limited.

I guess I could expand this into a metaphor for our information age. When there's so much of it out there you simply don't have the time for quality. This blog (while I'm not trying to bill it as quality) is simply too long for anyone to really read...why spend fifteen minutes plowing through some guy's musing on a CD when a video of a cat riding a turtle is a stumble away? And I don't say that 'holier than thou,' I do it all the time. I watched that kitten ride the turtle and forwarded it even. I get TED talks that come up on stumble where I don't have to read shit, just watch a video...but its six minutes? Cracked might have a list of the Six Silliest Super-Hero Reboots if I just hit that stumble button...

When the filter becomes our attention spans we are not filtering for quality or even for content, we're filtering for noise. When there is so much that demands our attention can we even be criticized for paying attention to the loudest, the splashiest? I can listen to this absolutely good quintet recording, but over in the stack is a bagpipe CD that tries to make the bagpipe a modern instrument. (that may or may not be true, I know there is a bagpipe CD in the wings and I feel like I'm trying to burn through the CDs to get to it because I have no idea what it's about).

I don't even have rounds anymore, I just have stumble. If I hit stumble enough I'll get my rounds, IO9 will come up, Gawker, etc. I tend to forget that the Onion is even open as part of my set of home pages. There's so much information out there and so many ways for it to be hand delivered that I do the equivalent of just go out and lay on the lawn and let it fall on me. There's good stuff within reach, there is quality in the bag. There is a perfectly awesome jazz quintet recording under foot. But I can't see it because I'm too busy being led by whatever distracting noise is in my way.

Day 42: David Murray "Deep River" and Jumpin' Jive

There is an ad campaign out for Sour Patch Kids where little animated Sour Patch candies do something messed up to someone and then follow it up with something nice with the tag line, "First they're sour, then they're sweet." I've had my issues with it, since the messed up things that they do are way more severe than being adorable can make up for, but that's not why I bring it up.

I bring it up because the Albatross has just pulled a Sour Patch Kids bit on me. Yesterday I entered a smooth jazz saxophone player who had a name deceptively similar to a free/progressive jazz player who I was a fan of. As a result I was kind of moody about the whole entry.

Well, after two empty nests--a celtic 20th Century composition album and another Real World entry, there was a fake out. Inside a Scatman Crothers CD (you may know him as the voice of "Jazz" the Autobot on the Transformers. Or, as a legendary jazz performer and prolific actor. Or as a Martini Rossi 935 Porsche race car that turns into a robot) and instead there was an actual David Murray (not a 'Mc' in sight) CD inside instead. Completely random pick, I swear.

David Murray
Deep River

Ah yeah, that's the stuff...Murray isn't the most 'agressive' of the progressive/free jazz players by a long shot. I haven't seen him by himself in concert (I have as a member of the World Saxophone Quartet), but I don't envision him leaning into his saxophone's mic and yelling like I've seen Pharaoh Sanders do (in one of the coolest shows I ever attended). There's a little more exploration that goes into his style than shear sound. The second and third tracks are longer, slower, modal pieces with sparse, drawn out solos, M'biza being done on a bass clarinet.

In any gathering of saxophone players my default favorite always goes bottom up. First the bari, then the tenor player, then the alto. If all you play is soprano and your name isn't Sidney Bechet, stop it. But my love for the World Saxophone Quartet is so convoluted that I honestly think that my favorite is which ever one of them I'm listening to at the moment. I arrive at this conclusion because I was about to declare him my favorite when I realized that I have the exact same reaction when listening to my Hammiet Blueitt recordings.

These Coltrane-style modal pieces have a tendency to hypnotize me. I might start off moving my head to them, but with the amount of poly-rhythm going on it usually slows and settles into a thousand yard stare. Not a 'thing I have on in the background,' even if it is, I'll slowly stop what I'm doing and commence 'contemplating my navel' as some soccer coaches have referred to it.

This is kind of the stealth progressive jazz, like if I catch it at the right moment I might lure someone who is resistant to more, lets say 'aggressive,' sounds. Murray works his way towards that. We're four or five minutes in before the madness starts gradually. It never ultimately works, though. Sooner or later someone goes, "You listen to this on purpose?" and I have to switch to something tamer.

This album contains Mr. P.C., which is my favorite piece of Coltrane's Giant Steps album. This also brings the total of songs called "Mr" something to ten. Oddly enough, jazz and surf music are tied for most represented.

Various Artists
Jumpin' Jive

Well, the Albatross can't be completely predictable even when it's making up for earlier cruelty. I've talked a few times about the new swing revival that happened for what felt like a couple of months in the nineties. In an attempt to cash in on this quickly flaring trend several labels pushed out these kinds of compilations. Some of them contained actual artists, sometimes there were super-bland recordings by studio bands. This falls into the former category at least, it's a sort of 'greatest hits' album...just not really a 'jump jive' greatest hits album, more of a general swing greatest hits.

It has such stalwart standards as Take the 'A' Train and In the Mood and Sing, Sing, Sing. It does have some actual jump jive on it, too, with Cab Calloway's Jumpin' Jive (makes you feel six foot when your four foot five) and Louis Jordan's Caldonia (what makes your big head so hard?) I think I've talked about this before, I'm so familiar with these songs that those lyrics jump in my head not because of the original artists but because of wearing out the recording I got from the Scottish jump jive group Fat Sam's Band I encountered at the Sacramento Dixieland Jazz Jubilee. I don't have that recording anymore (I don't think) and have since acquired the original recordings, but that was what made me familiar with it (and started my weird obsession with wearing pleated pants, but that's another story...)

I now have another version of Cherokee as well, this one by Charlie Bernet.

Alright, I don't know this one, 47th Street Jive. It's all the awesome elements of authentic jump jive, including a weird skit/exchange between the singer and the band leader thick with hipster (before the people that term applied to were insufferable) slang which carries into the lyrics which are usually a direct address to someone who either needs to lighten up or stop doin' you wrong (in this case stop talking because you're about to lie.)

And really what compilation capitalizing on the swing revival is complete without Sing, Sing, Sing, which closes out the album. But this is no slouch version of the song, it's Benny Goodman's nearly nine minute long version. Take that, swing dancers.

Day 26: Woody Herman and his Herd "Woody Live: East-West" Tony Williams "Young at Heart" Blue Note Years V.3 Organ and Soul

This may not be as much a function of the Albatross as it is the way I actually function. Sometimes I do want to put away the CDs that have been playing around in my rotation, but I don't always have the time or the inclination to find the case. So I just put them in any one I can find.

I've talked about this before, the Fake Out. But there was an aspect of the Fake Out that I hadn't mentioned, the Double Down. More than one CD in a case at a time.

Well, today there is a Fake Out AND a Double Down at the same time. What I thought was going to be my second comedy CD, a Berkeley concert by Lenny Bruce is instead two CDs that I'm kind of hoping make it (as I type this I haven't tried to injest them.) But it's two cases so I'm just going to go with the rule that they both have to go in.

But first up, yet another big band CD...

Woody Herman
Woody Live: East and West

I really have to find out what's making these CDs so expensive. I mean, I'm limiting myself to Amazon because...well, to be honest I want a new music player and if for some reason people start reading this blog and want the music I'm listening to I'll get a few pennies towards that goal, but at $30-some dollars for a used CD I might be better off opening a used store.

If only these CDs were in anyway good condition. Well, this one is, I just opened it and there isn't any damage, but for the most part.

So yeah, more big band. What to say? I rather like Woody Herman more than I realized. Which I now realize is something I discover every time I listen to Woody Herman. There's a lot of energy to his arrangements and his bands playing, even when doing ballads like I Remember Clifford. And then, of course, there's Four Brothers, which you always wanted to be in a sax section so bad ass that the leader decided to do Four Brothers. I'm not as fond of the James Bond love theme sounding Free Again, however.

The Preacher is on here, the first combo jazz number I performed in public. I really like this piece, nostalgia aside. It made me think that Hard Bop was where I was at, but it didn't work out that way as much.

Interestingly, the liner notes is written by someone who has almost the same trajectory, talking about knowing Herman is important etc etc (he goes a little further, but it's the liner notes), but not realizing he actually likes Herman until he listens to the album. Of course, being liner notes, it's a little over the top in its exuberance:

...But if there were to be a subtitle to this fine album, after listening to it joyously several times, I'd have to call it Woody Live East and West or, The passion According to Now, because in its fervor there's sure and steady voice that speaks of the immediacy of the Age in wich it is sounded--an immediacy formed the best of the Past, the Zap of the Present, and the nervy, uncertain excitement of the Future.

These are apparently the original liner notes from the 1967 release, so all that "Now" and the "Future" talk is keeping with the times. I mean, we were two years away from landing on the moon.

Listening to this live recording on headphones you get to hear snippets of people saying things to each other on the bandstand. No good dirt, but it's still kind of cool for some reason to hear someone try to get Woody's attention or Herman comment on solo.

This is another short album, too, at just under 40 minutes (almost a dollar a minute if you buy it new...seriously, what's up with that? Is it that they'll print one just for you if you really want one?)

This last track has an awesome title, Waltz for a Hung Up Ballet Mistress.

Tony Williams
Young at Heart


Tony Williams is one of the concerts I went to blind. I knew he was supposed to be good, so I went. From my senior year in high school up until about the time I moved to the Bay Area, I would make regular trips down to Kimball's East, Yoshi's, Kimball's and various other places to see jazz artists on their way to japan (at least that's what a few of them told me.)

That was the other strange and cool thing, quite often they would talk to me. Not all of them, and not always the band leaders, but with a strange frequency they would pick me out and talk to me. The most shocking instance was the Tony Williams concert because I hadn't really even expected to see anyone, but Bill Pierce was sitting on a bench in the lobby and, being a saxophonist, I was trying to inconspicuous but totally noticed him. That's when he said, in his characteristic gruff jazzman's voice, "What do you play?" Not "Do you play," what. I don't know if he figured that the only reason someone so young would be at that show was because they were a young jazz musician or what, but he pegged me. He instructed me to sit down and we talked through the intermission. I honestly don't remember about what, I was absolutely floored that the dude I just saw completely nailing it on stage a few minutes ago was having a conversation with me...one that he solicited.

This became a bit of a norm for me. I started more or less going to shows with the reasonable assumption that I might meet the performer and have a casual conversation. I don't know if it was mojo, or just the novelty of youth showing up, or what, but I was getting to meet some incredible people. When I became a buyer it actually became expected. The first time I met Branford Marsalis said he remembered me, Terrance Blanchard told me a great story about Art Blakey, Tony Bennett shook my hands like a movie mobster. But it was that first contact at the Tony Williams show that sort of stuck for me.

Hands down, drummers form the best bands. For all the jokes about drummers and musicians, at the very least in jazz, they really know how to pick 'em. A good drummer makes all the difference in the world, and of course, Williams is very, very good. Because of that first show I was always excited to get a Tony Williams promo when it came out, though I may have actually bought this one, I seem to remember having it a pretty long time, and the CD certainly shows that. I wasn't able to rescue the title track.

This particular album is just a trio, so no horns. Just straight piano trio stuff with a lot more drum features that would normally happen. It's got standards like On Green Dolphin Street and Body and Soul, some out-of-cannon selections like The Beatles Fool on the Hill. I want to characterize this but it just sounds like my first few years out of high school when I listened to stuff just like this all the time.

Oh yes! This Here, I fucking love this chart. I always forget its name, so I glazed over it when the track listings came up, but this is one of the coolest hard-bop pieces around. Sweet, thank you Albatross for eventually putting this back up. AAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!!!! Cruel fate, it's a damaged track! Sadness now surrounds me...

Various Artists
Blue Note Years 3: Organ & Soul 1956-1967 Disc 1

The anidote to sadness is the Hammond B-3 organ, preferably played by Jimmy Smith. And Blue Note is here to deliver. The rep that handled Blue Note was pretty kind to me even though he didn't have to be. It was a big label distributor and I was going to carry his stuff regardless of how he treated me, but he knew I was a real fan of jazz and he made sure to hook me up with a lot of great stuff. Most of my really great classic jazz stuff is Blue Note, partially a function of Blue Note being THE jazz label, and partially a function of this guy hooking me up.  I mean, I was a soft touch. Truth be told I probably wasn't that good of a buyer, I just don't think anyone had the heart to remove me.

On the subject of performers talking to me, Jimmy Smith is an early early instance. So early in fact, that I didn't know who he was. And it wasn't my charms at all that were involved. I had been going to local jazz clubs for a while, to the point where the local jazz musicians had gotten to know me and my friend, the piano player I mentioned in the Henry Mancini entry.

It was a piano player that we had come to see when he started talking to an old man who had come to talk to him. He seemed to get pretty excited and let the old man sit down and start playing. We were bummed, to be honest. We thought the guy we had come to see was letting some cat sit in so he could go flirt with chicks. It wasn't out of the question. But instead he came and sat at our table, beaming.

"Do you know who that is?"

"A friend of yours?"

"That's Jimmy Smith, man. He just moved here!"

Yeah, nothing. We had never heard of him. But he was pretty cool. He later came over and talked to us as well, and we tried our best to hide the fact that we had no idea who he was. Joe, the local piano player, had filled us in enough to fake it. It wasn't until much later that we discovered who we had the privilege of meeting. Of all the encounters, his is the one I most wish I could redo.

Most people 'know' (even if they don't actually know it) Jimmy Smith for the organ figure in the Beastie Boys' Root Down sampled from the track and album of the same name.

Smith is the end all for organ for me know. To the point where I don't really know any other organ players. I have a few of these compilations, mostly gained for the exact purpose of finding other organ players. I don't want to be left flat footed if I find myself in a small jazz club and some other legendary organ player walks in.

Though most of these tracks are led by saxophonists or guitarists, two instruments that go well with the Hammond. I don't have the case anymore (apparently) so I don't have the list of band members to go by.

This kind of music almost demands that everything be in sepia tone and wearing tank tops and suspenders.

Disc One opens and closes with the lengthy tracks, Jimmy Smith's twenty minute The Sermon and then Grant Green's fifteen minute Blues in Maude's Flat (which is a clever name...) Every thing else hovers around six minutes long.

Organ music is awesome. I must have been playing this one a bit, and that's how it wound up in the Lenny Bruce case. I hope I find Disc Two.

Day 24: "piano GRAND! a SMITHSONIAN celebration" and The Big Band All Stars "A Tribute to Harry James"

When you're a musician, there is a part of you that silently judges other people's music selections. When you work at a record store, there's an even bigger part of you that slightly less silently judges other people's music collections.

This isn't always negative, though some of my friends might disagree. It just sort of becomes automatic. "Oh, that's what they're into." Your opinion of 'what they're into' is shaped by your opinions of the artists selected as musicians, or what they do, or the other people who would come in and buy those CDs. Even if you had the bland kind of CD collection that would appear on the packaging for CD racks, there is something that can be said about you in the music you select. I can't tell if you're going to be successful or are a sensitive lover (though, and this is true even without any relevant facts that would make this make sense, I did on one occasion accuse the Brawny Man of listening to U2 just to score chicks...), but despite what people desperately want to believe, their tastes in music aren't all that unique and they have a lot in common with other people who have made similar choices.

I'm not going to try and pretend I know why this is. I know the principles that go into how people like music, it's not a mystery. It's what makes Pandora so successful. But when you're around music and catering to other people's musical tastes, eventually you judge. It happens. It's why there are groups of friends of mine who won't let me near their iPods.

I try and comfort them and tell them that if they had my exact collection it would be the same. Except that my collection was only partially selected, and in not any way carefully. As I have started to go through these, I've started to wonder what my judgment would be of this collection and how it matches up with my actual perception of my musical tastes. I think this as I get prepared to put yet another big band selection onto the hard drive, of an artist I've never really been that into or even like that much.

What I'm realizing, to my slight horror, is that the nature of how this collection came about puts my collection closer to the aforementioned CD rack case box than it does of a connoisseur of music.

Lets get to that box cover...


Various Artists
Piano Grand: Smithsonian Celebration

I have a complex relationship with the piano. On one hand, I hold it at least partially responsible for me ultimately forgoing my planned career as a musician, because for the life of me I could not play it even remotely well. The added frustration was listening to people pound away at it with little real knowledge of what they were doing and sounding just fine and not having the slightest problem with it. While it could be argued that this is exactly what I did on the saxophone, I have no empathy.

Plus, outside of perhaps the lead violin player, there probably is no more pretentious performer than the piano player. These arrogant dill weeds waltz around like they own the place, every place. They're the only musicians who can reasonably expect the venue to have an instrument for them, and then scorn the instrument, which costs as much as a car, as 'not to their liking.' Someone else tunes it, moves it, polishes it, and then these prima donnas stroll in, sniff, and then 'grace' us with their machinations and stride out while the rest of us clean and pack our own instruments.

And then their 'big' instrument gets to have 'grand' in the title. I mean, come on.

And the way we do music is catered to their 'center of the universe' attitude, the staffing, scales, the way we do keys are all in relation to the damn piano. Composers are iconically depicted slumped over the piano scratching away at their scores.

It's a piano's world, and the rest of us are just living in it...and they don't need us anyway. You don't hear about saxophone bars. No, when we play alone it's out in the streets with our hats on the dirty sidewalk hoping you'll drop those quarters you didn't want from your freshly bought coffee, if you're not too wrapped up in the romantic kiss I just provided the soundtrack for...you're welcome, by the way.

But, through all that, dammit...the piano can be pretty cool. And hey, it's the center piece of Western music, so that's something.

So now I apparently have this cheesily packaged celebration of the piano, as if they needed more justification for their attitude.

So far, there have been three stages of my understanding of what this CD was. First, a compilation of some studio musician playing through music everyone associates with the piano from classical to Billy Joel.

Nope, that's actually Billy Joel...okay, it's a compilation of original recordings of pieces that center around the piano.

Close, but no. It's a live concert recording with the Smithsonian chamber orchestra and a small all-star cast of piano folk to celebrate this instrument. Apparently they were able to fit that many piano players, their egos, and an audience into a concert hall.

The songs play one right after the other bridged by applause and no announcements. Billy Joel wraps up Baby Grand as the opener and then right into Robert Levin performing the third movement of Beethoven's Concerto No. 5 in E-Flat (followed somewhat comically by an audience member shouting "BRAVO!" before the applause). I don't know if this is careful and clever editing by the engineers or if the concert really did flow this smoothly from one performer to the next. If the latter, the stage manager of this event deserves a medal.

They've apparently decided to stack the classical up front (aside from the Billy Joel opener) and then slowly glide into more contemporary popular piano pieces.

We've gone from classical canon, through Gershwin, to that awkward forced juxtaposition between jazz and classical that piano players try and do eventually. It's all those years of doing studies and exercises and memorizing classical pieces - when they finally 'rebel' and become jazz artists they eventually come back to all that foundation. I'm sure it starts out innocently enough. They're noodling at the piano and muscle memory finds them doing that stupid piece that they had to do at their 4th grade recital. But then they start to swing it, just for fun. And may throw in an improvised line or two. Up to now, we're fine. This will happen from time to time. But then they start thinking, "Man, Bach was a hip cat, we should do jazz versions of his stuff, I mean, there's improvisation in baroque music." And usually, that's where it all goes awry. It's rarely, if ever, two great tastes that taste great together.

I'm not saying it's always wrong. I'm a huge fan of Uri Caine, and sometimes it can sound cool. This wasn't so bad, in fact, though I apparently typed scorn all the way through it. But often, it's just...awful.

Now it's on to the pianist who probably most successfully brought all those years of classical exercise to jazz, Dave Brubeck. No surprises here, I got into Brubeck because of Paul Desmond, so without Desmond I'm not as into him, but credit where credit is due, he bridges that divide really well. He's doing a piece called Thank You (Dziekuje) of which I know nothing about, but it sounds like one of those things piano players play in a large room they are pretending is empty so some chick in a sleek evening dress will swoon when they pretend that they just noticed them there.

Nope, haven't gotten over my piano thing yet by the eighth track.

Diana Krall had a huge bump in the 90s and rode the height of the 'piano crooner' re-birth started arguably by Harry Connick Jr. Her CDs were one of the jazz sections only big sellers. I wouldn't be surprised if her success helped prompt the idea for this concert, even though her trio only appears on the one track, Let's Fall in Love.

All things considered, this is a pretty well programed concert for its intentions. We were eased out of the classical piano selections, bridged through some solo piano interpretations that were each by steps a little jazzier until we reached Krall's rendition of a standard, now a little more upbeat progressive jazz piano number which will apparently set us up for Jerry Lee Lewis. Man, I actually really dug Eliane Elias' The Time is Now.

Now it's time for the only two songs I probably could come up with if asked to name Jerry Lee Lewis songs. Of course since he does back to back songs, Lewis breaks that no commentary thing transitioning from Whole Lotta Shakin' to Great Balls of Fire.

Alright, no cheating, no looking. Take a guess. It's a big tribute to the piano...what do you think they're going to end it with. One guess. No peaking.





Yep, Piano Man. I have to admit, deep down, I kind of like this song. Not something I admit lightly. I spent some time on the road last year in my radio-less VW Bus trying to remember all the characters that people this song with my companion. After two weeks on the road without a stereo, it was the only middle ground we could come up with, musically speaking, and we both needed something.

But this song, of course, underlines what I've been saying about piano players. "The manager gives me a smile because he knows it's me they're coming to see", "the piano sounds like a carnival", "they put bread in my jar and say 'man, what are you doing here?'"

Douche.


The Big Band All Stars
Tribute to Harry James

To someone who might have no concept of big band music, this might actually be exactly what big band music is.

Harry James was hugely popular in his time, and some of the music that he is known for is music that you would recognize the instant you heard it.

So why does all this important music produce yawns? Well, perhaps yawns are unfair, but it's not springing me to life, either.

As big band music goes, this stuff is strictly ballroom. Not to channel an 'inner hipster' here, but often the stuff that is popular in its time isn't really the best music of its time. Especially if you add into it the complicated pre-World War II (and post, for that matter) racial issues of what is essentially a 'black artform' in an essentially 'white man's world.'

This is no reflection on James himself or his character. I have literally no idea about him personally. But he was a white band leader at a time when black musicians entered through the back door.  I don't know if the telescope of time has either decided that his music had been covered, what with him being one of the most popular band leaders of his time, or that he just isn't as interesting as the others of his time. Certainly other white band leaders don't have that sheen of fluff that he has - Kenton (whom I was a little blah on, though), Woody Herman,  Benny Goodman, etc. With all of those in consideration, I can't help but think of James as almost generic brand big band.

Which is totally unfair. He's iconic. But when I'm reaching for a big band CD, James wouldn't even come to mind unless I was providing 'authentic period ballroom/dancehall' music because Earl "Fatha" Hines wasn't likely to be playing in 'finer' establishments.

And this recording isn't even James' himself or his band. It's the mysteriously named "Big Band All Stars." I have no idea who makes up the all stars. The liner notes are a goner so they're no help. Amazon doesn't have samples even, much less info on who these guys are. They apparently have a few other albums including a tribute to Tommy Dorsey (I may have that, actually), but no other information. Amazon even punted and tried to insist that other people who looked at Harry James also looked at Let's Go Bowling. I'm sure it's only a coincidence that I did a Let's Go Bowling CD not too long ago and not at all a cookie of some sort I picked up...

This might be the shortest 'full length' CD so far at just over half an hour.

I'm not sure who buys this CD. I guess someone who needed a sample of Harry James for his growing pretentious 'library' style collection.

Day 18: Herbie Hancock "Maiden Voyage" and Doc Severinsen & His Big Band "Swingin' the Blues"

Once upon a time I had a record collection. You know, like real records, LPs, vinyl. I had it because that was what was available.

It wasn't a collection of rarities or anything. I think it started with Disco Duck and Pac-Man Fever and by the time of its demise contained what I thought was the core of an essential jazz collection. Or at least jazz music I had heard in jazz history classes or from instructors that I really liked.

Sadly, the stack of records was thrown out with my stack of comics after I moved out of my Dad's house and forgot them. That has always stung. Not because Pac-Man Fever is such a valuable record (I think I saw it at a thrift store for $.50 once) or my billionth printing of Giant Steps was worth anything, but because that was music I wanted and I didn't have it anymore. (I also had the complete run of the original Johnny Blaze Ghost Rider and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles #2, which might actually have been worth something...well, the internet says $20...but that's for another story...)

Part of working at the record store was to fix this, to re-establish my collection. And this time not let go of it. Little did I know what I was getting into.


Herbie Hancock
Maiden Voyage

This is one of the first albums I bought when I first started to explore 'real' jazz. As I stated before, I had an early connection with Herbie Hancock and when I found out that he recorded this kind of stuff, I went right for it. Plus, after my dad had mentioned that Hancock didn't know how to play in response to Rock It, I looked forward to the moment he would ask who this incredible piano player was so I could beam, "Why, Herbie Hancock of course. Don't you recognize his playing?"

I don't know that it ever actually happened, but I sure know I wanted it to.

I've always had a cheese streak in me, so when I formed a jazz combo in High School I wanted them to play Maiden Voyage at our first show. That first show never happened, and no one was as into Maiden Voyage as I was, so I don't think it would have happened anyway.

This might be the first recording of people I've seen live to go into the hard drive. With the exception of saxophonist George Coleman, I have seen each member of this line up live, heading their own bands. Hancock I saw in 're-union' groups, first with Ron Carter, Tony Williams, and Wayne Shorter and last with The Headhunters.

With all the importance of this album to me, with all my clear love for these performers, this CD was unopened. I was undoubtedly excited to get such a crucial album back into my collection, but I never so much as took it out of its wrapper. It was a CD I knew, I was glad to have it back, I probably intended to listen to it at some point, but I probably got it along with a bunch of other things, or stuff I hadn't heard yet, and into the Albatross it went, lost. I remember it surfacing now and then and being happy that it still survived, but I never even picked it up.

I've painted myself into a corner, I realize, by classifying the jazz in the tags. I knew there would come a time when I wouldn't really be able to do that without messing up and here it is. I tend to think of this as just 'post-bop' jazz, not really cool or hard-bop (as wiki seems to think it is...or 'modal jazz' which is true of the title track). I think I'm just going to go with post-bop with the caveat that I am by no means a final authority on the subject. I just thought that there was so much jazz that was going to come up that just saying 'jazz' wasn't going to be enough.

This is as close as jazz gets to a 'concept album,' with all the pieces meant to evoke the ocean. This is done through the use of a lot of modality and openness in the arrangements and solos. It's a pretty easy album to listen to, which means you can end up missing some of the wilder moments in the solos. It's a little deceptive that way. This is what formed the basis of what I considered jazz at the time. To me, jazz was small combos and lengthy solos, not really blistering but rather developing over time. I had heard other pieces out of context before, Take Five etc., but this was 'on-purpose jazz.'

It's also pretty short at 42 minutes, with only five tracks.

This is another one of those Rudy Van Gelder reissues. I replaced a lot of my old Blue Note recordings when the promos for this series came out. It was a boon, since up to that point, my promos didn't feature a lot of 'classic' acts except in collections, not complete recordings.

Well, now it's on the hard drive, nostalgia on tap...


Doc Severinsen & His Big Band
Swingin' the Blues

This is another one of those 'why not' CDs. When it's free and offered to you, sure why not? Doc Severinson? Sure. You usually (unless you'd gone to a live taping) only get to hear him in little bumper segments here and there. Why not find out what he sounds like when given more than 15-30 seconds?

There isn't anything other than name-recognition based curiosity. The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson wasn't something I necessarily 'got.' I wasn't up on the daily news, so I didn't understand half of the monologue. I was too young to get the more scatological jokes no matter how overwhelmingly tame they were. I wasn't up on the latest whatever that the guests were there to promote and I could never remember anyone's name or face anyway, so the interviews were nothing much to me. What The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson meant to me was that I was up waaaay past my bedtime, and that was awesome. And occasionally someone would bring on wild animals that would mess with Johnny or McMahon. Or, as I knew him, 'that Star Search guy.'

I seem to remember listening to this, actually. I don't know why I remember this CD and especially don't remember listening to it, but I really think I did.

Something happened to Big Band music between its heyday and 'modern Big Bands.' There is a distinct sound change and it's not just in the way the band is mic'd. Where my High School band was modeled after the Basie orchestra, my second and final college band was a lot more like this. A lot of 'competition bands' sounded like this as well. I don't know enough about the influences or who affected these changes. I know I always associate it with Maynard Ferguson, but I don't know really.

I don't even know how to quantify the difference other than to say 'modern sounding.' I mean, it's the same book--In a Sentimental Mood, an Ellington staple, just ended. But the arrangements are different.

This is the kind of Big Band stuff I would run into a lot live. Mostly, as I said, at competitions. I was always a little uneasy with music competitions, but it meant that a lot of schools got together and played their music for something other than mandatory school assemblies and end of the semester concerts.

There's a track on here called "Doc & Snooky Banter" that's apparently just them making small noises back and forth on their instruments (both trumpets with the drummer wanting to play along) while the singer laughs. That might have been one of those things just for them that ended up on the album for the rest of us...

Usually at this point in the concert, if it's late enough and at something like a massive outdoor jazz festival, there is a group of older people dancing in front of the band. If that goes on long enough the people who know dances are joined by people who just move about. At some point, I get it in my head to join them, which when I was a teenager delighted the hell out of them. This isn't a 'cougar' thing, these are like grandmas who I think just pretend I'm their grandson taking an interest in them even though I've reached my 'too cool teens.' I don't do that anymore. It's not as 'adorable.'

Me and my brother spent a few minutes trying to get a decent sound out of my nephew's hunting horn the other day, confirming our notion that playing brass is at least 15% voodoo. I bring this up because the little intro Doc plays for West End Blues has that herald trumpet flare.

They're ending with a spiritual-induced The Supreme Sacrifice, complete with B-3 organ. It almost seems out of place, but there is a consistence of the sound especially in the horn voicings and the way it's all recorded. Easily, though, my favorite track on the CD.

Day 6: Casa da Mãe Joana and Count Basie

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-

Various Artists
Casa da Mãe Joana
Casa Da Mãe Joana - Samba Music

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...

Day 5:The European Broadcast Union Jazz Orchestra "100 Years of Duke Ellington" and "After Hours 4"

Two fake outs today from The Albatross. First was the Errol Garner CD that is apparently too scratched to be played by the computer, which kept spitting it out. I don't really remember ever listening to that CD so I don't know how it got scratched, but such is The Albatross. It joins the 'to be repaired' pile with Bang on a Can V.2

The next fake out comes in the form of what I thought today's new first CD was-

The European Broadcasting Union Jazz Orchestra
100 Years of Duke Ellington

This CD isn't available for download, so I've linked to the Amazon page that still has samples.

This is one of the fake outs that occasionally happens because The Albatross is made up largely of jazz and classical. What I thought I was picking up was a Duke Ellington, as in Ellington will actually be playing, CD. Nope. I'm picking up an album of Ellington charts played by a set of professional studio musicians.

This particular CD came out in 1999 and has been sitting on my shelf still in its wrapper. This CD has been following me around for more than a decade without me so much as unwrapping it. This CD is fresh as the day it was born and hopefully handed over to me to, I guess, get excited about.

At some point (and it might be here somewhere in The Albatross) the Chabot Community College Steel Drum Band recorded an album that was optimistically sold in stores. Not to put top level studio musicians in the same category as a bunch of community college students in a steel drum band (I was in that band two years before and a year after the recording, where we didn't so much as have a end of the semester concert I don't think...my timing: impeccable), but that's kind of what I feel about this.

It's another live recording, and I think it really is one of those things where you're looking at all the skilled players you have and thinking, "Man, we're wasting all this talent and skill recording ins and outs to daytime talk shows and station bumpers." A combination of two concerts in Canada, produced by a French-Canadian radio station for broadcast in Geneva to celebrate the 100th year since Ellington's birth, by a band consisting of players from Canada, Switzerland, Finland, Sweden, Croatia, The Czech Republic, Denmark, Austria, France, Norway, Hungary, the US, Slovenia, and the Netherlands...I think that alone is a pretty good example of how powerful Ellington's music is and is a tribute unto itself.

I seriously didn't think the nationality list was going to be that long when I started it, I was just looking at the first page of bios. The sole American is a Russian immigrant.

What saves this CD from being a complete vanity is their selection. There is a half hour long medley at the opening that burns through the normal catalog of Ellington standards that everyone knows even if they don't know they know them.

The actual tracks are far more obscure, Harmony in Harlem, Heaven, Purple Gazelle. Sometimes stuff is not in the regular canon because it really isn't as up to par as the stuff that is. And then there's Ellington, where he just wrote too much awesome stuff to have it all be like that.

It also includes the larger later works that Ellington had performed in Europe like the Togo Brava Suite and a piece whose only reference I can find on Google goes back to this actual CD, labeled "Cent-Ellington 1st movement, The Promise and 4th movement The Gift" These are all Ellington's suites, longer works he did later in his career that either weren't jazz enough for jazz people or weren't classical enough (or at all) for others. As such, these are not often recorded and hard to find. This is not just another rendering of Satin Doll, this is stuff you're pretty likely to have never heard.

This is actually another surprise that has happened since I started listening. I started off (you can see it a few short paragraphs ago) bemoaning the goofiness of who this was versus who I thought it would be, but as I get into it--this is some rare and intriguing stuff, and not just because it's a decade old promo from a group that recorded once. This is the kind of thing I keep The Albatross for, right here. Stuff I wouldn't even know existed without it.


They weren't really set up to record that chant at the end, so even with pretty good headphones I couldn't make it out, but that was kind of awesome once I got into it.


Various Artists
After Hours 4

Another one that is not on MP3, at least at Amazon, so the link is to the CD page where you can hear samples. You can also buy a new copy for $102.59! I have to admit, I started thinking, "New MP3 player, here I come!" but used copies are $4.12. I don't know what makes the new copies so special, but there you are.

This comes from the This is Acid Jazz collection/label/can't really tell anymore. I've been trying to come up with a way to describe Acid Jazz and its place in time. Take a time when Enya and Ace of Base were popular, New Age actually had radio stations, and raves had reached the point where there were 'very special episodes' of 90210 about them. US3 had released a rap album sampling jazz that was flash in the pan popular. Acid Jazz is the blender result of that. Electronica, really, with horns. No soloing or improv the way you'd know it in 'regular jazz.'  The music that might end up being played in the Chill Room while you try and gently come down off your E.

Thing is, to a degree, I kind of liked what Miles Davis was up to at the end of his career (I was lucky enough to see him in one of his last performances). And I think I was excited for what the prospect of Acid Jazz might be, so I snatched up Acid Jazz promos whenever they came up. Snatched sounds like there was competition, that's misleading. I casually acquired them with little to no resistance from my co-workers. Ultimately, I was hoping they'd be more Bitches Brew and less Paul Oakenfold. (Full disclosure, I messed up his name and thought, "I should check to see if that's the guy I'm thinking of"...I got a guy who apparently farts music...ah Google...)

For a more charitable description, here's Wikipedia:

Acid jazz is a musical genre that combines elements of jazz, funk and hip-hop^[1], particularly looped beats. It developed in the UK over the 1980s and 1990s and could be seen as tacking the sound of jazz-funk onto electronic dance: jazz-funk musicians such as Roy Ayers, Donald Byrd and Grant Green are often credited as forerunners of acid jazz.^[2] Acid jazz has also experienced minor influences from soul music, house music, acid rock, and disco.
While acid jazz often contains various types of electronic composition (sometimes including sampling or live DJ cutting and scratching), it is just as likely to be played live by musicians, who often showcase jazz interpretation as part of their performance. The compositions of groups such as Jamiroquai, The Brand New Heavies, Los Amigos Invisibles and Incognito often feature chord structures usually associated with jazz music.
The acid jazz "movement" is also seen as a revival of jazz-funk or jazz fusion or soul jazz by leading DJs such as Norman Jay or Gilles Peterson or Patrick Forge, also known as "rare groove crate diggers" or "Cataroos".

I would say that the 'fusion revival' predates Acid Jazz, but I guess that's a matter of perspective and I'm not prepared to go to the mat on that. By the time this compilation came out there wasn't much to distinguish it from the rest of the stuff on the adult contemporary station that played Sade and Shadowfax (the band, not the wizard's horse) on a near constant loop.

I think I remember liking Incognito, or hearing a track I liked, and that sort of fooled me into thinking I like Acid Jazz. I think more than anything, the name threw me off. On my own, I like some pretty abrasive music, Ornette Coleman, Eric Dolphy, The World Saxophone Quartet, Lester Bowie, John Zorn...dissonant free jazz--I was hoping that Acid Jazz would be like that for electronic jazz, or at least funkier, but it often is neither. And apparently I didn't have the patience to wade through all of it even though I was getting them for free, because I never found one I liked (with the possible exception of Incognito, if I'm remembering that right.)

I always hedge when I feel I'm being uncharitable, but seriously, I'm six tracks in on a compilation and I haven't even noticed the tracks changing much less could I identify them or distinguish them. To make matters worse, my brother has just stumbled me some Eric Dolphy and Headhunters-era Herbie Hancock (not knowing that I'm doing this at the moment). Before I was able to stop the YouTube videos, the contrast was pretty severe.

On the plus side, it makes an amusing if surreal soundtrack to the episode of Dirty Jobs playing in the background...

This is what smooth jazz needed, trunk rattling bass.

The track titles are what you'd expect from what you hear-
Playtime by Jimpster
Waterfront by Marschmellows (not making that up, go to the Amazon page)
Summer's End by Yada Yada

The current track that actually borders on funkiness has a pretty cool name, The Beautiful Women of Scant Virtue by Chris Standring. Plus it has hit a hot button with me, samples from ephemeral sources like science records, corporate videos, instructional films and the like. I guess that's sort of played out (though to be fair, this is from 1998), but I'm still a total sucker for it.

9 Lazy 9 and their Electric Lazyland also borders on funky. Plus, cool name.

Much like the band that dreamily brings this compilation to a close, Sad Rockets.

Alright, I feel bad for not being charitable again. There is a time and a place for this music, and Friday afternoon after having been roused by barking dogs is probably not it, especially not after some big band music. If I had done this entry at night like the last ones, perhaps winding down or after a drink or something I probably would have a better impression of it.

But such is the nature of the beast, I have to play what comes to the surface.

That's Day 5. Be sure to join the Facebook group to get a peak at what's coming up in the line up. Also, first successful mid-day completion!