Day 36: Horace Silver "Song For My Father" and Herbert Rehbein and his Orchestra The Complete LP Collection

Rudy van Gelder and another curio show up today. I really have no idea what to expect from the Herbert Herhbein. I'm intrigued to see if my new understanding that I really like Hard Bop will hold up.

Ping, by the way, finally (well, 'finally'...I've had iTunes 10 for less than a month...) does what I thought it did, so you can follow the project through there. I guess, by the way, I'm going to handle the Ping thing (ha!) by just taking any signifigent quote I make about a specific track and posting it to Ping. And of course, since everything on the net is in someway Google's, there is a Picasa page of all the album covers. I'm not really sure who any of that is for, but I am providing as many ways to not be followed as I can, I guess. The album cover collection now also plays from the Picasa on the side bar.

The other CD is a double, so really I should just get to it.

Horace Silver
Song For My Father

It really is appearing as if the Blue Note rep, whoever he was, was very generous. And really, without much need. This is another one of the Rudy van Gelder re-issues. Thing is that it's Blue Note, really the jazz label. I was going to carry these CDs or it wasn't really going to be a jazz section. In fact, I don't know that I really even had a say in the matter. Most of these might have been ordered as part of the overall order from the distributor and thus handled by the store's main buyer.

But I still got a boat load of Blue Note CDs. It didn't occur to me to keep track, but a clear majority of the jazz CDs that have gone in so far have been Blue Note CDs. I mean, obviously that's going to at least in part be a product of how dominant a label Blue Note is for jazz, but also that whoever handled their distribution for the store was incredible generous with the CDs anyway.

I'm not complaining, I have a lot of those 'must have, essential' jazz recordings because of that. And I'm apparently pretty blase´about it. Most of them aren't even opened, including this one.

Which brings me to the other, non-musical and yet weird part about it.

The credit card application. The CD came with a credit card application. Fell out when I opened the CD. This actually happened a lot, little offers of some sort or another would be included in the CD. I never really took much notice of them before. Usually they were offers to join some sort of mailing list or whatnot regarding the label, but I was a buyer, I was already in the loop. So I never really paid attention to them. This was late nineties.

But post-credit crisis, this suddenly stands out to me. A credit card offer in my CD? It is a Blue Note credit card, at least. I guess...apparently you get 'jazz insider' benefits that allow you to collect points to get Blue Note stuff and to select your own compilation that will list you as 'producer.' This act, apparently, makes you a 'jazz insider.'

I actually have no idea what the terms for credit cards are these days. This one is 3.9% for the first six months and then 9.99%, unless you miss two payments, then it's 19.99%...unless they're consecutive in which case it's 22.99%.

Really attached to that .99% thing.

There's a weird note to Wisconsin residents-

No provision of any marital property agreement, unilateral statement or court decree adversely affects the rights of First USA, unless a copy of each agreement, statement or court order is furnished to First USA, prior to the time credit is granted, or First USA has actual knowledge of the adverse obligation. All obligations on this account will be incurred in the interest of my marriage or family. I understand that First USA may be required to give notice of this account to my spouse.

 I don't understand any of that. Well, except that apparently First USA might have to tell your spouse that you have the card.

Oh yeah, and there's a CD in here as well. Which is pretty awesome. I'm pretty sure I played the title track in jazz camp.

That's right. I went to jazz camp. As far as I know nothing untoward happened with anyone's instruments, flute or otherwise. Mostly it's where I discovered my laziness towards the new need to shave. I came home both years fuzzy. And one year a much better sounding saxophonist thanks to an instructor who hated my guts.

Horace Silver's Lonely Woman is a little more solemn and less...wailing? than Ornette Coleman's, which is a song I futiley try and hum now and then. Not that this piano trio Lonely Woman is easy to hum. But it is, obviously, more conventional.

This album has two contenders for awesome song name. The first is this groovin' number playing right now, Sanctimonious Sam and the other is the one that closes the album out, Silver Treads Among My Soul.

Herbert Rehbein
The Complete LP Collection

This is going to be a little rough. Listening to 'easy listening' music intently during normal circumstances is a bit of a sleep aide, but to do it while you're tired is something else. I'm up early to watch the Petite Le Mans from Road Atlanta  and I was up late trying unsuccessfully trying to customize the theme of the blog (short story, their advice on how big the photo has to be to complete the background is a filthy lie...)

My initial strategy to find something to say about this CD was to try and link it to the Bert Kaempfret CD, but apparently I don't have to work all that hard on it. The rather anemic liner notes tell me that aside from Rehbein's apparent 'signature' string sound, he was a long time composing partner to Bert. So it's not just that I somehow tapped a vein of German based easy listening orchestras, it's entirely possible that these albums were released together and I got the promos at the same time.

While Kaempfret's CD was surprisingly jazzy, this one is not at all.  This shouldn't be a surprise after a glance at the original liner notes to all three albums. Here are the first lines of each:

"It has been aptly said that "Music has charms that soothe the savage..." It has even been stated that this phenomenon actually works." -Music To Soothe That Tiger

"The mood is romantic...the songs are haunting, nostalgic, the language of love...the artist, a musical sorcerer named Herbert Rehbein." -Love After Midnight

"The days, we spend in doing...the nights, in dreaming.
The mood may be serene, or bittersweet with memory...a love a reality, or an unfulfilled longing...a moment shared, or spent in solitude. But whatever the time or the setting, the songs dedicated to love hear in this album fully express the thoughts and emotions of lovers everywhere." -...And So To Bed

In the same way that blues liner notes have to sell the artist as a hardboiled voodoo priest of pain and heartache the easy listening notes have to, it seems, sell the artist as a romantic enchanter wielding his soothing tones to take you to a magic world of sensuality.

It is not, by any stretch, dynamic music. But I have to say, it's kind of growing on me. Not that I would listen to this music in...well, most situations. And certainly not as prescribed. I don't want to speak for the 'ladies' but this might knock them out instead of get them in the mood, so to speak. Who knows. The covers are pretty racy, from the apparently topless woman in a leotard hugging the tiger skin rug on Music To Soothe That Tiger to the nude back of the woman taking off her lingerie on ...And So To Bed, leaving not much mystery as to what is about to happen once we get there.

One CD down, one to go. So far I've only nodded off once during a full course caution in the race. (I know I nodded off because I went to sleep under yellow and woke up to them racing...of course just in time for someone else to crash...). There is no way to pair endurance sports car racing to easy listening music, it's not even surreal, it just doesn't go.

I can't listen to any version of It Was a Very Good Year without thinking about Homer Simpson. We must have hit the Frank Sinatra vein, as the very next song is Strangers In the Night.

These tracks are remarkably short, but you'd never know that listening to them.

What easy listening collection is complete without a version of Spanish Eyes. I talked before about this being the thinking behind getting a CD like this, that there was going to be this one clutch moment in theater or film or something where someone was going to go, "Man, if we only had a version of (say) Spanish Eyes..." and then, like Spiderman I would arrive just in time with my copy of Spanish Eyes. And then the lead actress would swoon. Or something like that. More likely she'd regard that along with everything else as "not her lines." I was literally dumbfounded when I first encountered an actor who counted her lines. I think I muttered something like "well, make the most of them."

As much as I chide, Bert Keampfert drives the most search traffic to this blog, at least according to my stat measures. I guess we'll see what Herb does. Though if you're doing a search for either I can't help but think this would be a disappointing result.

Well, I made it--easy listening double CD that I don't remember getting. Day 36 under the belt...

Day 13: Bert Kaempfert Double Album and Filo Machado "Cantando um Samba"

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...


Bert Kaempfert and His Orchestra
The Wonderland of & Dancing in Wonderland
 

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.


Filo Machado
Cantando Um Samba

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.