Day 67: Miles Davis "Boppin' the Blues" & Traditional Jazz The Language of New Orleans V.4

I'm going to hurt myself. It's going to happen, I complain about it happening every time and every time I do it. And I'm perpetuating it again, today, with today's choices. Though this time it's going to manifest itself as an impossibly long post in the next few days. Because I'm a deer in the headlights apparently.

Miles Davis
Boppin the Blues

This I believe puts Miles Davis in the lead as the most directly represented artist in the Albatross. There was of course that rash of Duke Ellington tributes, but only two of those were actually Duke Ellington.

So, from what I can gather from the liner notes this is a recording thought lost from a time when Miles was a trumpet player in Billy Eckstine's band. Eckstine's band also included such talents as Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie. This is a small unit recording from the larger band. How this makes it a Miles Davis recording is a little dubious. Certainly Miles Davis is in the band and featured (even if it's a young Miles, how can you not feature him?), but these aren't his tunes and from the rather confusing liner notes there doesn't seem to be an indication that Miles led the session. I suspect that someone rightfully assumed that the CD would be a much larger success as a Miles Davis recording than a Billy Eckstine recording. In fact, the liner notes go into great detail about how Eckstine's band was a 'musicians band' that never got the audience it deserved, largely due to poor recordings. And, apparently, Eckstine isn't on this recording, instead it's Earl Coleman. That might be another reason to not call it an Eckstine recording.

So this recording, this release actually, is for me. It's for the 'jazz historian' who wants that sample of early (20 years old at the time of the recording) Miles Davis, just after some sessions with Parker, a Miles in mid-development. Thus the completely listener unfriendly set up of the tracks. Each song gets anywhere from two to four 'takes,' all laid back to back so you can listen to the same song four different times, which is fantastic if you want to listen and compare the subtle differences between each performance, how the artist adapted and developed his approach during the session. Real jazz nerd stuff.

However, if you just want to listen to some Miles you might think that you accidentally putting the player on repeat. Sometimes you can get away with it in jazz, people won't notice that they've listened to the same song twice, or have been listening to the same song for half an hour. But these have lyrics, and that can throw the whole thing into focus.

And not only that, if you picked this up to get some Miles Davis it's like picking up a bunch of rough recordings of The Beatles doing Buddy Holly covers. Sure, you can hear the germ of the band that eventually recorded Rubber Soul, but it ain't Rubber Soul.

There is no information on the complete line up. I know who the singers are and who Miles is, but no idea who the saxophonist is. He sounds familiar, so I have this sinking feeling if I found out I'd be embarrassed to not know. And thanks to Google, now I know, Gene Ammons (I don't feel bad) but the drummer is Art Blakey, which is awesome.

Of course this puts Don't Explain to Me Baby in contention for most represented song on the hard drive with four off the same CD. Sort of unfair, but I have a feeling that it will hold at four for a really long time.

With all the repeated tracks, the album still manages to be just over half an hour long. Which is just long enough since it's the same four songs over and over again.

Various Artists
Traditional Jazz: The Language of New Orleans Vol. 4

So I've come across another water damaged CD. This one is a sampler of traditional or 'dixieland' jazz. It seems to range from the earliest jazz, The Original Dixieland Jazz Band, to Kermit Ruffins.

Where the last CD's liner notes were confusing, these are just fused together and therefore unreadable.

I've never been as into traditional jazz as other forms of jazz. Mostly because it's 'pre-saxophone' and I tend to not like the clarinet (despite the fact that one of the contenders for 'most represented' is actually a clarinet player...). I grew up to a rather large traditional jazz festival, so every spring I had plenty of traditional jazz on tap (though as I've related before, I spent most of that time listening to a Scottish jump jive band.) It might be a by-product of what I talked about yesterday, context being everything. Traditional jazz, good traditional jazz, top performers, were not in anyway a novelty to me, just something that was seasonal. So when I listen to traditional jazz I just think 'spring' and maybe being the dorkiest kid to ever cut a class to go watch jazz downtown.

Having said all that, I love second line music, the marches. I love the idea of a band just marching down the street until there is enough people in the street and turning around and having a party. That's just awesome, how can you not like that? Well, I guess if you had to get out of your house and there was some jazz band party parade blocking your way...

South Rampart Street Parade even comes with a raging marching drum solo.  Not uncool.

These are all pretty clear recordings. Yeah, see, that's an electric bass on Whitle We Danced at Mardi Gras. These are not old recordings.

Maryland My Maryland sounds suspiciously like O Tannenbaum...and sure enough, it is.

Also, fantastic first line of a song, "I ain't gonna give you none of my jelly roll..." Awesome.

Ultimately, even when it's sad, traditional jazz music and related forms are 'feel good' music. It's hard to be in a bad mood when listening to it.

Day 51: Keith Jarrett "Staircase" & Dizzy Reece "Comin' On"

Passing the milestone yesterday seems like I should be doing something new. I have a notion that is so mindblowingly self indulgent that I dare not speak its name unless I follow through on it. As it is this project has a blog, a Facebook page, a Picasa gallery...the only thing it's missing is actual readership. But I still can't shake the urge to expand even further. Shameless.

Until that time, on with the regularly scheduled self-indulgence.

Keith Jarrett
Staircase

Speaking of self indulgence...I have to admit that I accidently 'dropped' this CD a few times when reaching for the day's music. I have talked before about the indulgence of piano players and that inevitable piano player pumping the sustain pedal in the common room. Now, imagine if that piano player was particularly talented. He's probably Keith Jarrett.

That doesn't always make him easy to listen to, though. It also hasn't given me what I expected, some truly pretentious liner notes explaining the works on this album. Instead it's simple white with impressionistic painting (I may have that wrong, when it comes to art I'm pretty much nowhere) and simple typeset indicated the tracks. There are four pieces with two to three segments each, Staircase, Hourglass, Sundial, and Sand.

Reaction to this album, and Jarrett in general tends to be pretty emotional. You often hear things like 'open your heart' to the music, or their mind. Or ears. Or something.

Minimalism, which this album uses a lot of, is often a hard sell. It's hard to convince someone that very little music is in fact something to behold. Often the jazz notion of 'the notes they didn't play' is rightfully made fun of. (from the Simpsons, "Pfff, I can do that at home.") But as easy to make fun of as that is, it's kind of true. There is something to be said for stripping music down as far as you can, to see how much music implies and how that effects the listener.

Having said all of that, I have a hard time with Jarrett. I recognize the talent, I do. Jarrett is probably the absolute best at what he does. But I have a hard time getting into piano noodling (and I recognize that it's demeaning to call it piano noodling and it's more than that). If you like piano noodling, though, this is probably among the best piano noodling you'll find.

If you're in the right mood for this kind of thing, this really would be pretty amazing I'd have to grant.

Dizzy Reece
Comin' On

It's hard to be a trumpet player named Dizzy if your last name isn't also Gillespie. This Jamican born trumpet player, according to the rather straight forward biographical liner notes, became fascinated with brass at his father's movie theater.

This has a contender for track title, The Case of the Frightened Lover, which was actually just a normal up beat bop number.

There's a pretty impressive list of musicians on here. Art Blakey, Stanley Turrentine...apparently he was (well is, he's still around) a 'musician's musician,' well liked among other musicians but didn't quite seem to get the traction with the public. From what I'm finding this Blue Note recordings was the crest of his time with Blue Note and as a band leader. He's continued to play but hasn't really gotten the penetration that other players have.

The music is pretty good. He doubles on congo, which I had already forgot about until Achmet started with a congo solo that trades off with Art Blakey. Not really something you'd hear in bop until the other Dizzy became fascinated with Latin music and started incorporated it into his bop music.

Another feel bad moment, because this is a pretty decent album but I still don't really have much to say about it. My interest peaked at Achmet, that was pretty cool.

Day 41: Red Rodney "Live at the Village Vanguard" and Dave McMurray "Peace of Mind"

I'm doing it again, though it's with CDs I don't particularly feel like listening to at the moment. So this time I'm ensuring that the bag will end with something profoundly boring...good times.

In other news, the collection officially won't fit on a base model iPod Touch. It has crested 16 gigs.

Today the CDs are fairly related so their pairing doesn't really conjure up much. Eventually I'll break myself feeling the need to include a preamble even when I don't really have anything to add. Off we go with today's CDs.


Red Rodney
Live at the Village Vanguard

Red Rodney for me is one of those mythical jazz players more than he is Red Rodney, be bop trumpet player. It doesn't help that in his youth he looks like Alfred E. Newman...

Anyway, Rodney is myth more than man because of his role in the story of Charlie Parker, who for obvious reasons captured more of my imagination than other jazz musicians. First there is the oft repeated anecdote about the time Rodney played in Bird's quintet. He was the only white player in the band, which caused problems in the south where segregation was strong. So when they played in the south they billed him as "Albino Red"

A little more dark is the story of Rodney showing up with heroin to shoot up with Bird in the original 'I learned it from watching you!' moment. Hand in hand with the stories of Bird's drug use was the effect that it had on other musicians that wanted to 'play like Bird.' Rodney's encounter with Parker (and who knows how true it is or if it even really happened) is the personification of that effect. That this story is so closely tied to the story of Charlie Parker might be a product of the fact that I came up in the world of Academic Jazz. I think it becomes a problem to discuss the rampant drug use of one of the forms greatest musicians and not feeling like they should emphasize the negative effects. But it's not a health class, so they tag on the story of "Albino Red" to make sure it's a cautionary tale and then move on.

I don't know how many people have this impression of Red Rodney, like the first thing they think of when they hear the name 'Red Rodney' immediately think of those two stories. I mean, it was pretty commonly told--I read it in two books on Bird, it was in the movie Bird, I remember hearing it in every jazz history class I took. There has to be at least a few people who, if I'm being honest, like me who only know him that way.

I wonder...it must be odd to be known more as a cautionary tale than as a musician.

This was recorded in 1980, according to the liner notes, after his 'dental issues of the 70s' had passed. That's what it says. According to Wikipedia he was arrested in 1975 on drug charges and gave music lessons to a member of MC 5 while in jail. I don't know if 'dental problems' is a euphemism for 'I got arrested for drug possession' or if he also had dental problems.

As a result this is not as burning as a regular be bop album would be. There are a few ballads, all in all more easy going than a be bop album would be. For a live album it's fairly well recorded.

Dave McMurray
Peace of Mind

Alright, I'll admit that I am horrible with names. It is one of the many barriers to any aspiration I might have about being a musicologist.  About half the time when I relate stories here I have to do a few Google searches to remember the names of who was involved or make sure I'm thinking of the right person.

So, yeah, I'm bad with names.

But this was unfair. This is something I've thought for the entire time I've had this CD up until this moment when I had to enter the name on the blog.

See, there is also a tenor saxophonist named David Murray...tenor saxophonist for one of my favorite groups of all time, The World Saxophone Quartet. He also does solo albums of post-bop progressive free jazz that are fantastic.

And up until I had to correct the spelling that's what I thought I was about to listen to. But just as I started to go "Wait, is there a 'Mc' in his name? That doesn't seem right?" the CD had loaded and started playing. None of this seemed right. Instead of listening to dissonant wild sounding free jazz I'm listening to smooth fusion jazz closer to Grover Washington than late John Coltrane. By now the track I'm on has a DJ.

So...this is not at all what I expected, and all the cool little things I had loaded up in my brain to talk about this saxophonist are void because this is a different saxophonist. I don't know anything about this guy.

So far the best I got was noticing, in the midst of my confusion, that the first song had a bridge that used the bass line from Herbie Hancock's Chameleon.

I thought it was strange that the album was produced by Don Was. Well, apparently only one song.

The liner notes are no help at all.

I always have a little disdain when I  say 'fusion,' but not all fusion is equal. There's a huge gulf between Bitches Brew and the Yellowjackets. This still has extended solo sections if not strictly head-solo-head, it just also has a lot more synthesizer and processor effects and layering. Still has an unshakable layer of 'smooth jazz' to it, though.

It's hard to get over the disappointment, so this album isn't really getting a fair shake. Though the track 1988 was kind of funky.

And if I'm honest with myself, I'm kind of digging In This Life because I've been bobbing my head to it the entire time. However, I have no idea what the random screech from a bird of prey is all about. Every two bars (so unless it's a really hip bird outside my window...) there's a really short screech. Weird.

Day 39: Bud Powell "Paris Sessions," The Cherry Poppin' Daddies "Zoot Suit Riot" and W.C. Fields "The Best of W.C. Fields"

I think I hit a vein. This bag must have represented a portion of CDs that I listened to in rotation until a move when they were lost in the shuffle. The grab for this was a series of bittersweet moments. What I thought I was grabbing was Sun Ra's Angels and Demons at Play, which is a fantastic album which I would love to have on my iTunes. It's an album I not only bought on purpose, but I special ordered (well, I was the buyer for that section, so I just ordered it, but it never made it to the floor because I ordered it for me.) Although now that I think about it, I believe I've seen that CD loose before, so I should have known.

Instead, however, it was the major label compilation for The Cherry Poppin' Daddies, Zoot Suit Riot. Which is cool in its own way. I actually love this band. I can feel you cringing from here. I'll get to why in the review. However, since it's a compilation I already have most of that album on iTunes, so I kept digging.

There was a CD case for a box set of Beat Generation recordings that I have already ported to iTunes, but learning from my earlier experience I checked. Sure enough, inside was Sex Mob's Din of Inequity. This, too, is on my iTunes. It actually makes me a little sad, because I was sure this CD was lost and I also love Sex Mob, so I re-bought the CD through the iTunes store a few years ago. It seemed easier than scouring the collection to find out where it went. Turns out it was sitting in the Beat Generation CD case...

But that CD is already in, so digging I go and we come up with my second radio program. Finally. Though now I really just want to go through the bag to find out what else is buried in there...

Bud Powell
Paris Sessions

I've already commented about how Europe loves jazz more than Americans (being the backdrop of the movie Round Midnight). This CD is a product of that phenomenon, a collections of sessions from 1957 to 1964 with a pretty comprehensive whose who on it.

It has two saxophonists on it that I was into pretty early on in my discovery of jazz, a product of being taught by my own set of old jazz men. So early on I was hunting out recordings of Zoot Sims and Johnny Griffin. As a result this has the sound of 'the jazz I listened to before I knew what the hell I was listening to or for.'

Ideally there would be some sort of profound realization, like retroactively going back to my head and unlocking the secrets of the music that moved me to want to be a jazz musician. Unfortunately, I got nothing. I just liked it. I like it now. My tastes have grown more 'refined' in what I like specifically, so when going through the giant rolodex of what is available in jazz I might skip over a Bud Powell CD despite him being a legendary player. But it's still good, and I could close my eyes and easily transport myself back to my old Chevy playing this over my 40 watt Radio Shack car stereo (with equalizer!).

This is also the second version of Satin Doll to go in since I started using it as my go-to 'generic jazz standard.'

It's hard to come up with something to say here, I mean it's Bud Powell. I feel like I should though, with how hard on piano players in general I have been.

This doesn't have that Rudy van Gelder edition style cleanness about it, there is a definite difference in the quality of each session. Not to say that it's a messy as the Nat King Cole album, but it certainly retains a lot of its, lets call it 'analog charm.'

I've talked before about jazz piano players revisiting those classical lessons they endured in childhood and trying to 'jazz them up.' This however just contains a short track of Bud doing some straight, unidentified Bach labeled Bud on Bach.


The Cherry Poppin' Daddies
Zoot Suit Riot

I don't have a cover to go with this one because it was mislaid in a Sun Ra CD case. I thought I had lost this and that is still technically true, because I actually got three of these. I think I gave one away and then lost the other and got the third to replace it. Then, apparently, it made its way into a Sun Ra CD case. I let it go because of a few reasons. First, if I lose three that might be a sign. Second, this was their 'breakout' album that made them a one hit wonder to everyone else who hadn't been collecting their CDs. Third, it was really just a compilation of the first three albums that I already had with four new tracks added in.

This was their major label signing, which happened to coincide with the sudden and inexplicable flash in the pan popularity of New Swing music. Sadly, The Daddies were picked up on that, so the label went through their albums and pulled out all the swing related songs on their previous albums and put them on this one. Even sadder, this didn't happen until new swing was on its downward arch where it had become a bigger joke than it was something people genuinely 'liked.' So The Daddies became the face of a ridiculous trend that they weren't really following.

In a lot of ways there were a more genuine extension of jump jive bands rather than a revival. They didn't go for 'authentic,' often they didn't even go for swing at all. The album before this one barely contained any swing elements at all. There's as much rock influence from bands like Oingo Boingo as there is Cab Calloway. And their subject matter was not really poodle skirts and derby hats--their one hit, after all, is about a race riot.

Since it is a compilation I already have most of the songs, I just needed the four new tracks loaded up. Having made all the excuses for them, all four of these songs are about as traditional jump jive as they ever get. I like to think that there was some angry "Told you so!" yelling when they went for their second album, because that one was the funkiest in their catalog. Not that it made any difference, they were the poster children for the Swing fad. Singer Steve Perry (different Steve Perry) went and got a degree in molecular biology, released a glam rock album under another name, and eventually came back to The Daddies.

W.C. Fields
The Best of W.C. Fields

In theory I should like radio comedy more than anything. It was the first of the radio theater I had found. At some point someone had recorded a Jack Benny program either off the radio or a record or something that also contained Who's On First and an episode of Burns and Allen. I wore that tape out listening to it, pretty close to memorized the whole thing.

But it was later when I discovered mysteries and sci-fi radio dramas that I finally realized my love for old time radio.

I got this as a set of CDs that contained highlights of various radio dramas on the cheap. Apparently it's not available anymore because even the ISBN doesn't come up. I hadn't been exposed to much W.C. Fields so I wanted to at least have a sampler.

All I remember from the first time I listened to this was how odd it was to have a ventriliquest dummy as a character on a radio show. I know that the show is done in front of an audience, but it's still a radio program. It's such a strange device to use in the comedy. Today they might call it 'meta.' Or maybe not.

Most of this is essentially sparring matches between Fields and Charlie McCarthy the dummy and have the host of The Chase and Sandborn hour set him up for his rambling stories where he would flaunt the rules of the broadcast as a way to seed his movies and the show's sponsors.

Day 30: Stefon Harris, Jason Moran, Gerg Osby, Mark Shim "New Directions", Joe Lovano "52nd Street Themes", Andre Previn "A Streetcar Named Desire"

Well, I kind of stepped in it now with my more 'pure' notion of the grab bag technique. I pulled out a weathered and worn CD that turned out to be a three CD modern opera and a CD sleeve that was cleverly disquising two CDs without any marking whatsoever.

It's not the first operatic style CD I've had to do, but I think it is my first three CD set that has had all three discs in them. And all but one track transfered. Well, I knew the job was dangerous when I took it.

Interestingly enough, I think this is the first time an artist has repeated, and it's managed to do it in an interesting way. Not too long ago (like two days ago) I did a Greg Osby and Joe Lovano collaboration. Well, tucked in the very damaged little unmarked sleeve were separate albums from both artists. I'm not sure if this is pure coincidence, of if I received these all together and throughout all the upheavel they managed to stay somewhat united, but it's kind of cool. Add in Stefon Harris who was part of day 14. Though it won't give me much to say since I exhausted my stories about both artists two days ago, but I'm doing six hours of music today, so maybe if I'm not typing the entire time it's a good thing.


Stefon Harris, Jason Moran, Greg Osby, Mark Shim
The Blue Note New Directions Band

So, first, that's not the normal scanned image since the plain sleeve that the CD was in had to be destroyed in order to extract the CD.

So apparently this was an attempt by Blue Note to get all of their young turk players together in the same way that there used to be that cross fertilization. This also has Osby playing in that slightly wild way that I'm more used to rather than that slightly tamed way he laid down with Lovano earlier.

This is the result of what happens when the new hot jazz get together.

In the seventies there was a flood of the first of the 'film school' filmmakers. Spielberg, Scorsese, Coppola, and Lukas were the first real wave of people who had studied film and filmmaking academically. In the late 80s and more in the 90s the same thing happened with jazz. More so than with filmmaking there was not only a sense that jazz couldn't be taught, but rather that it shouldn't be taught. There was a real feeling that the old Louis Armstrong adage was law,  "If you have to ask what jazz is, you'll never know." You couldn't teach jazz in a classroom, the conventional wisdom went, it had to be learned in the clubs at the feet of the masters. It had to be in your soul and if it wasn't, tough luck.

I've briefly discussed the change in this in the 80s with the recording from Jimmy Heath, "The Professor." I was a product of this as well, I learned jazz academically. I also spent a fair amount of time following around local jazz acts and watching them in clubs and tugging their ears, but I learned a lot in a class room.

What this resulted in was a wave of extraordinarily technical players. I don't say this pejoratively, this technical skill did not substitute expressiveness or feeling. Sure, there were some amazingly technical players that emerged briefly who didn't have that hard to define 'feel.' But the ones with that hard to define element were also amazingly technical players.

So a gathering like this it is almost like the honor students putting on the science fair. There's no fake volcanoes here, if they're going to do something on volcanoes, expect actual lava.

The pieces are selected out of the Blue Note library, but this is no list of common standards. The most common piece on here is Song for My Father. The other tracks are ones like Theme to Blow Up,  No Room for Squares, Big Bertha, and Commentary on Electrical Switches. This is deep catalog. Hard bop, progressive selections that come from a well studied, extremely well trained musicians who want to flex the muscles they toned. This is not beginners jazz. You want Satin Doll, go to a hotel lobby.

Joe Lovano
52nd Street Themes

Again I don't have the real cover, but at least this album is available for download at Amazon, so it gets the big player unless you're running AdBlock, in which case you get nothing.

This is almost the opposite of the previous album, which is not to say it isn't technical. It's in fact fairly heavily arranged, bringing four saxes, a trumpet and a trombone in as the horn section. The title is a tribute to the famed section of 52nd St. that was home to a large amount of jazz clubs through the middle of the twentieth century. These are all fresh arrangements of charts you might hear walking down 52nd street on a Saturday night. The arrangements are done by a Willie Smith, but not "The Lion" Smith from an earlier entry.

This kind of feels academic in a way. When you put a bunch of jazz students together, the first thing that usually happens is you put them in big bands, but big bands are pretty limiting. Unless you're the first trumpet, alto, tenor, or piano player you're not looking at many solos and the solos people do get are not very long. So now you sort your students into combos, but you usually only have a handful of rhythm section players (they were sorted out when the big band was selected) and an abundance of horn players, so in school you get a lot more 'nonets' and octets and the like. And because that's really too many horns to have just do unison lines, they also do arrangements. I performed in a few groups like this, usually doing Hard Bop tunes.

There isn't a lot of these 'in the wild' so to speak. Economically, it's hard to get a gig that pays nine members. Or for a label to foot the bill on a relatively low selling jazz CD with that many musicians on the invoice. But it certainly is more common on CD than live.

Influence-wise, I did this a little backward. This is largely bop from 52nd Street's heyday and New Directions was largely post-bop.

I feel like I should talk more about this, but really I got nothing. It's good.

There's a pretty cool solo sax piece towards the end called Abstractions on 52nd Street. I dig solo saxophone, you usually have to head to a street corner for that.

Andre Previn
A Streetcar Named Desire

So, I still have that problem with operas in English. And I got three hours of it ahead of me. I like Tennessee Williams, though. I don't really know too much about this particular play except for the iconic line, which I'm hoping will be spectacular.

So, I have this for two reasons. The first is that I was an advocate modern composition, and new operas fell into that category, despite my difficulty in hearing them in English. I know it's unfair, but it just sounds like Opera parody. Blame Adam Sandler.

The second reason is it is the San Francisco Opera Orchestra. So it was a new opera performed by the local orchestra. I had to take the promo. Besides, it wasn't like anyone was going to fight me for it. I think i pulled it out once and tried to listen to it. That's apparently going to be the last time, however. I came back from the bathroom and found out that 'snap' when I got up was me splitting the second CD in half. Well, at least I got it onto the hard drive...

Oh yeah, there's the "STELLA!" Done by an opera singer. Happens a lot earlier in the opera than I thought it would. But then I don't know this play that well.

I think I may have discovered that the only thing harder for me to accept than English operas is opera sung with an affected southern accent. Also, wearing headphones for five hours makes your ears sweaty, something I wasn't aware was possible. When I do audio work I tend to at least move them to my forehead between takes.

I'm in the home stretch and I haven't really said much.  I keep getting this feeling like the reader is sitting in front of me waiting for me to comment, but that's not at all the case. Obviously.

Rape scenes in general are rough to watch or listen to, but in opera form they are a special kind of disturbing.

Ha, I got distracted and hadn't noticed that the music had gotten a lot more up beat and brassy, iTunes had moved on to the Canadian Brass Super Hits...

Well, opera is a rough spot for me.