Well, it's a day without Duke Ellington, so that must mean it's another day for a Blue Note Rudy van Gelder recording. That and a CD I know nothing about and don't have any liner notes for...away we go...
Avishai Cohen Devotion
There's got to be a term for this. Someone has to have identified this as a distinct style and I just don't know about it yet. It's a certain kind of progressive sound that was really popular in the 90s (I don't know if people are still doing it now). It's really distinctive of that 'young gun' crowd I had talked about earlier, the new wave of academic jazz performers.
Wiki isn't really any help here (I suppose I rely too much on Wiki, and I certainly understand its weaknesses, but I decided that there was no point in pretending to be an expert on these performers, rather be honest about the fact that quite often I have to look them up since this should be about my impressions of them in regards to having carried it around for so long instead of presenting myself as any kind of authority.) Anyway, Wiki sites a blend of Middle Eastern and Eastern European influences in his jazz, which might be the case in his current recordings more than it is here. There are certainly some different harmonies and rhythms here, but this sounds very much in that class of Jacky Terrasson or other progressive jazz artists of the 90s. This is not to say that they sound exactly alike or that there is no individuality to their performance. One of the great things about jazz is that even the same artist would have a hard time sounding the same twice in a row.
But I'm starting to feel like I could listen to the first few bars of a recording and go, "That guy was young and new in the 90s." The music is both sparse and complex, segmented in a way that older forms of jazz wouldn't be. There is a lot of layering, which seems contrary to that 'sparse' comment, but it's not thick layering, if that makes any sense. Tempo changes, time changes, even style changes within a single piece are not uncommon. Unison lines trade up with counter melody and repeated figures. And the playing is always very aggressive, even during ballads.
He apparently came up through Chick Corea so that makes a certain degree of sense, because in a lot of was Corea might be considered the father of this kind of sound. Maybe not, since I'm just now piecing this together, but I put it at good odds.
Also not uncommon is the sort of newish third (fourth stream?) style that will make use of larger string arrangements and even, apparently, electronica like in Ti Da Doo Di Da. But this is a bass player's album, so it might just be an excuse to use a different bass, which has a pretty odd tone on it. My brother might be able to identify it, I'm not that good with electric instruments.
Well, there's that Middle Eastern/Eastern European influence, it's pretty present in Linda De Mi Corazon. And the Eastern European again (complete with voice at the beginning calling out in an accent, "Igor come! We play Slow Tune!) is heard on, of course, Slow Tune. And apparently the next two tracks. So basically he backloaded and grouped up all of that so that I would look silly declaring it not present after only the first two tracks...
Lee Morgan The Rumproller
Seriously, how can you go wrong with an album called The Rumproller? So it's another Rudy Van Gelder edition hard bop Blue Note album. For a moment they felt left out, what with all the Duke Ellington going on the last few days. Hard bop is creeping up on blues and big band for most represented in the Albtross so far. And blues is kind of cheating, since I don't divide that up into 'Chicago blues' and 'country blues' etc. Without that it would be big bands followed closely by hard bop.
Seriously, though, that opening track rocked.
The problem with having so many of these RVG editions is that I'm running out of things to say.
At one point I was given a large collection of mock up album covers for all of these editions, well, not me--the store. So everyone got to pick through them and I got what was left. The problem was that the best ones were also the coolest looking ones, so I didn't really end up with that great of a collection. I haven't seen that in a few moves, so I'm guessing it didn't survive, so it's probably for the best that I didn't score the cool ones. Though I may have had this one.
There's a kind of cool 'hard bop meets calypso' recording called Eclipso on here.
Another contender for awesome track name, this CD closes out with Venus Di Mildew.
I've been going Godzilla on my CDs as of late. More than a few have found themselves under foot as I let the Albatross get the best of me and haven't really made any effort to organize the CDs as I go through them one by one. This is of course stupid as hell. I have managed to fish out some of the more scattered CDs and at least start making recognizable stacks. Which means that there is more left for the bag I was working on than I initially thought, almost two more weeks to go.
I haven't come any closer to figuring out a way to classify classical CDs in a system designed for pop music.
I was actually kind of dreading putting this CD in because while I like classical music, I haven't had to write about classical music since college, and even in college I wasn't really that great at it.
But I hadn't realized it was a 20th Century composer, which was what I took upon myself as a my mission as classical buyer to promote 20th Century composers. I even made special cards to indicate 20th Century composers, as if that was an incentive instead of a disincentive for the average person browsing the classical section of a suburban record store.
I've talked before about how, let's say 'out of hand' 20th Century music can be. That's not so much the case with this. So far it's pretty accessible.
According to the liner notes the first piece, Drowning Out, is inspired by a William Golding novel, Pincher Martin, about a drowning man. I haven't read or even heard of that book, but apparently that doesn't really matter. Turnage doesn't really commit to that whole 'impressionistic' composition style where the music is supposed to evoke certain imagery or the like.
I really like the cello. Like, in a kind of disturbing way. I bring this up because the second piece is a cello piece written as a tribute to a friend of the composer and cellist for Ensemble Modern who had died.
Turnage manages to dodge one of my main frustrations with iTunes by having his compositions play all the way though instead of in separate movements. iTunes doesn't let you imbed play lists so that when you put things on shuffle you don't get composition movements out of sequence or separated. Pretty frustrating when you have tracks that are supposed to go together in your library.
As much as I'm digging the cello piece (which really is pretty good, has a bit of darkness to it, almost a kind of updated film noir soundtrack feel), I'm looking forward to Three Screaming Popes...because, well, how can you not?
Pretty cool, and fairly tame for 20th Century music, but that's not really a bad thing.
Freddie Hubbard & Jimmy Heath Jam Gems: Live at the Left Bank
Freddie Hubbard is one of the people I've seen live, but it wasn't as an amazing a musical experience as say, Pharoah Sanders or Sonny Rollins. Instead it was a kind of old school spectacle. Hubbard was, the best of my estimation, completely plastered. What was even better was that he was fascinated with some lady in the back of Kimball's East. So really we got a front row seat to that most of the night. The performance was good, too, but really what I remember was the disjointed back and forth with a lady I couldn't make out (and I was closer to her than he was, so who knows what he was responding to...). It was kind of awesome. I mean, I'm way too young to have had the opportunity to be in a club where Parker might wander out of a bathroom just in time to take his solo after shooting up or Mingus slamming his bass and shattering it (I don't remember who that story goes to, to be honest). Jazz men to me are old men, dignified or mellowed with their age, or the ones that were professional enough to have survived long enough for me to see them. But Freddie Hubbard took one for the team to give me that old school jazz club experience.
Joel Dorn (who also wrote the description of Buddy Rich I quoted) also describes the old school jazz club experience in his liner notes, but that's of the more performance oriented variety. That legendary players would arrive at these clubs and play to enthusiastic audiences and the artists would feed off that.
I can't 'agree' as such because I haven't been to the old jazz clubs at that time, but I do know that the crowds now are more subdued. Fancy men taking fancy women on fancy dates to appear classy, upper middle class folk with the money to go to these things, and a smattering of music students, studying the playing. And I think that we were all judging each other for being there. No one was there 'legitimately' except the person making the observation. I imagine the same thing happens at punk rock shows.
This is from Label M, which packaged their CDs in the same cases used by 32Jazz. They also gave me a t-shirt. There's no insight there, I'd just been sitting here listening to blazing tenor solos and hadn't typed anything in a bit. This is pre-Professor days for Jimmy Heath and yet still awesome.
This isn't the cleanest live recording, but not the worst that's even gone onto the hard drive, and it does give a good feel of the crowd and their reaction to the pretty energetic performance.
I kind of hate Autumn Leaves. For some reason when I played in academic combos the instructor would often give the group Autumn Leaves. Maybe it's the easy changes or easy head, don't know. But it wasn't a particularly interesting piece to play and I played it way too often.
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.
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.
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.
Today is a return for both artists and possibly the biggest challenge as far as finding something to write about. In the first one I think I exhausted my stories about him and the second one it's one of the best reviewed CDs in jazz, anything I say is going to be ridiculous.
Charlie Hunter/Leon Parker Duo
Another day, another Blue Note CD. I was going to suggest for a second there that I get Blue Note to sponsor this blog, but really they already have by supplying all of these CDs.
As I stated last time that Charlie Hunter came up that I was always a bit more of a fan of his saxophonist than I was of Charlie Hunter, and this album doesn't have any saxophone on it. This is exactly as advertised, a duo of guitar and percussion. With Hunter's characteristic multi-layer playing (something I first became aware of with the 'double tap' playing of Stanley Jordan), the drummer/guitar combo is a little more filled out than it would seem.
Hunter tries to give his guitar a 'synthesizer' sound, so it tends to give me a smooth jazz vibe when listening to it. Still has a pretty good groove to it if my bobbing head is any indicator.
I'm only in the intro of the song so far, but he's giving a pretty cool 'spy movie' feel to the standard You Don't Know What Love Is. This is a smokey version to stand next to Billie Holiday's, really. It wouldn't be out of place in a Quentin Tarantino soundtrack, either, with the low sustained string bass and reverb heavy lead, it has that kind of surf flavor that pops up now and then on his soundtracks. That really was kind of awesome. Relatively short, for a jazz number.
That's true for a lot of the tracks on this album. It's ten in total coming to just under forty-five minutes.
There's a Beach Boys song on here, too, but you'd have to strain to recognize it.
I honestly remember getting this CD and kind of not caring. It wasn't the full group, I wasn't as into Hunter as I was the people he played with, the first track wasn't that dynamic. I just gave it a pass. Now that I listen to this, I was wrong, this is actually pretty cool.
"Duo" albums are pretty common in jazz, especially on Blue Note. The idea is either to legitimize a lesser known player or to hope that there is a multiplier effect of putting together two well known artists in an 'event' style performance. This usually means that I get some awesome hyperbolic liner notes ensuring that me that this was a pairing of the gods, that the universe had focused its energies to create a near perfect moment in jazz. But no such luck, it's really just simple credits. Which is too bad because I really would like to know the story behind Calypso for Grandma. Whatever the story is, the song is pretty peppy. And allows for the biggest moment for Parker to cut loose.
Miles Davis Kind of Blue
It's one of the most iconic albums in jazz. It has what could most accurately be described as a 'super group' as its line up with Miles Davis, Cannonball Adderly, Paul Chambers, Bill Evans John Coltrane...every track is recognizable even to people who may not listen to jazz (especially if they listen to NPR, likely they've heard at least a few of these tracks used as bumpers.) Google "top ten jazz albums of all time" and you'll find Kind of Blue on just about every list at or near the top.
If you don't own this album, you kind of suck.
This is, I think, my third or fourth copy. I had it on vinyl which was thrown away with my comic book collection (frustrating...). Then I lost the first two CDs and more or less assumed that I had lost this one. It's one of the few albums where I know almost every note. While I was typing I found myself humming along to Adderly's solo in So What? I knew that the BART ride to work was exactly as long as All Blues. I haven't listened to this album in years, but in the years I did listen to it, I listened to it a lot.
The trivia that you can find anywhere on the internet: It's an all 'modal' album rather than using complex key changes and chord structures. The group didn't know what they were going to record until they showed up to record it, they had an idea, but the charts weren't presented to them until the day of.
One of the greatest elements of this album is its complete simplicity and openness. This isn't the bombastic bop or deep grooved hard-bop of the time, or the chaotic avante-garde that member John Coltrane would later go on to play. This is an open canvas style music, which works great when the players you give that canvas to are legends. It was this kind of open experimentation that eventually led to Cool Jazz, which Miles Davis pioneered.
I was going to contrast it with the other albums that came out that year, but instead I'm finding out that it was the best year ever. Time Out, Duke Ellington's score to Anatomy of a Murder, Mingus Ah Hum,Portrait in Jazz, Shape of Jazz to Come, Giant Steps...all in one year. Holy crap. These are some of my favorite albums and also a pretty good representation of those 'greatest jazz album' lists. What was in the water that year? To underline how bad ass this group is, on that list is albums by two of the band members, Portraits in Jazz by Bill Evans and the absolutely legendary Giant Steps by John Coltrane. Incidently, Coltrane tried that whole Miles Davis thing of just giving everyone the music the day of the session, except he gave them the most challenging set of changes in jazz resulting in in Cedar Walton nearly trainwrecking during his piano solo. No one holds it against him.
Whats more is each one of those albums represents a landmark in a new and separate direction in jazz. If you were to look at the development of jazz as a tree, this would be where the tree shoots off into a bunch of separate branches.
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.
So this is the thirty-first day. I've been actually doing this for a month. The time period is longer because of the hiatus, but thirty one actual days of cds going onto the hard drive. I don't really have anything profound to say about it but that I'm rather enjoying doing it.
It's all jazz day on the 31st day, and all jazz that I tend to prefer, so it's an easy day for listening because I'm likely to enjoy the heck out of it. We'll see if that translates. I was also suckered again by CDs in sleeves, but this time it's only going to result in three hours of music instead of yesterday's marathon five. When I originally decided to do this, five was the first number I came up with until I realized that five CDs a day meant listening to five hours of music straight through every day and write about it while it happens. It doesn't sound horrible, I'm sure critics do it, and just listening to music that long is not bad at all. But having to comment on it, and my decision to wear headphones to give the music it's best (under the circumstances) representation, that clearly would have been too much. And besides, critics get paid to do this, and I don't know that this blog has a reader I haven't met, so two it is.
Except today, where it's three.
Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers At the Cafe Bohemia V.2
This has always stood out to me as the halmark of post bop jazz. Not this particular album, which I apparently didn't even take out of its case until just now, but The Jazz Messengers in general. I may have mentioned this when I did the Tony Williams Trio, but drummers make the best bands, and the biggest proof of that is Art Blakey and his messengers. The jazz critic written liner notes tell me that this is the original line up (as much as I admire the Jazz Messengers, I don't really know the line up history--I just know that any time I pick up a Messengers CD the line up is going to be awesome.) The Messengers went from this super band line up to be the greatest predictor of remarkable talent until Blakey hung up his sticks.
This is not a volume two in the box set sense, but it is a companion recording to another that I'm hoping comes up because it's got some of my favorite Horace Silver numbers on it, apparently. It's of course another Rudy Van Gelder edition...I wonder if I should have been tagging those all this time?
I have been sitting on my Art Blakey anecdote, and I don't think I've already blown it. I wanted to use it yesterday when it was probably a little more appropriate. I was backstage at a Terrance Blanchard performance at Yoshi's in Oakland--I don't remember if I got back there because of the record store or because a former record store employee had become artist liaison for Yoshi's--anyway, I was sitting backstage while Blanchard held court. He was talking about his days as a Messenger and playing with Art Blakey. He was part of that crowd I talked about yesterday, the musicians that came out of school jazz, the technicians. He even talked about how they (including himself) loved to flex their skill by creating complicated, difficult, technical pieces. They'd all come in, Blanchard explained, with these hard, technical pieces to try out. But they'd get three or four bars in and Blakey would wave them off. "What is this?" Blanchard quoted, doing his best raspy Art Blakey voice, "Look here, anyone can write something no one can play. It takes talent to write something people want to hear." Blanchard explained that it changed his entire approach to music. To be fair, this is in no way an admission that Blanchard rejected his academic, technical past. He had reached a point of training himself, of study, that all of that was completely on demand. He wouldn't have been the player he is without that command. It just signaled a time to develop a different direction built on that philosophy.
That story effected me pretty deeply as well, even if I didn't continue on in music.
The CD opens with a track that threw me off completely, and the internet didn't help at all. The liner notes cleared it up, the track that sounded an awefull lot like Tenor Madness but was labeled Sportin' Crowd was in fact what Tenor Madness...when it was recorded six months later by Sonny Rollins and John Coltrane. And when a young Walrus played the snot out of it in high school. I had not sufficiently understood how chord changes related to each other for far too long, so I jumped at any chance to play the blues progression.
There's a weird thing that happens at the end of I Waited for You. At the end of the nine minute track the band launches into another tune for 15 to 20 seconds until it fades out. It's a weird choice.
Various Artists 32 Jazz Sampler
This is the kind of thing that I could only get from working at the store. I don't think it's the first of its kind I've done, because that seems familiar. I don't even think that this is the first one from 32 Jazz now that I think about it. Maybe not, my posts aren't as searchable as I'd like them to be...probably my fault.
This is a collection of 32 Jazz's hard bop/post bop artists, for the most part. This was a sampler of upcoming re-issues. Sometimes this meant that I was about to get six new awesome re-issues, sometimes it meant that this was all I was going to get. Since the Albatross is completely unorganized I have no idea which one is the case here. I don't know that I've seen these albums at any point, but that doesn't necessarily mean anything.
The second track on this album is one of those Real Book charts I never really got the hang of, Freedom Jazz Dance performed here by Eddie Harris. Turns out I wasn't that far off, it's just that kind of melody, I just never listened to it with a rhythm section. Or maybe I did and never made the connection.
You know, one of the things I'm discovering about myself through all of this is that I am a way bigger fan of hard bop that I thought I was. I liked it when I was learning jazz because it was funky, not as hard to play as bop and not, in my teenage estimation, as corny as swing. But my impression of it was that it wasn't always as funky as I thought it was, but that really seems false. Or I've grown into it, or something. Because of the 'straight jazz' CDs that have gone in, I've really enjoyed the hard bop ones most consistently. Rather than trying to use my own words to define hard bop, since it only seems appropriate at this point, I'm going to link to a definition.
It might be that any song named Feels So Good is going to be pretty cool. Mose Allison gives a groovy, laid back, very different Feels So Good than Chuck Mangione.
It was only a matter of time before Satin Doll came up. I had invoked it as the 'generic standard' enough times that here it is. It's being done by Raashand Roland Kirk, who sounds like he has a few saxophones in his mouth. I'm being literal here, Kirk would occasionally play multiple saxophones at the same time.
This is also a much different Angel Eyes than I am used to. A little groovier. This one is performed by Hank Crawford, not the high school big band favorite of any band that had a really good lead alto. I should explain that, but that's really it--there is a ballad called Angel Eyes that about three or four jazz bands would do at every competition that's lead by the first alto. I was expecting that song, but it was apparently a different Angel Eyes.
I really hope these albums pop up in the collection. I only managed to find MP3 downloads of two of the albums on Amazon, but they're both good.
Miles Davis Blue Miles
I'm pretty sure I have this twice, but the other one may not have survived. This is a themed compilation of Miles Davis recordings that, at least according to the CD, try to establish him as the "King of the Blue Hours between midnight and dawn." Apparently to refute him being the prince of darkness, which I've never heard him called, though he did record a song called that. Not sure that really counts.
This is the Round Midnight I'm most familiar with, the version from the movie of the same name the second most. This is probably the version of Round Midnight that everyone is most familiar with, even if they don't know they know it.
Miles Davis was really, really good at ballads. I mean, he was really good at trumpet in general, but he really smoked ballads. He's famous for saying, "You know why I quit playing ballads? Cause I love playing ballads." I guess there's a couple ways to take that, I don't know what he said after or before that. Certainly Miles wasn't one to wallow in a comfort zone to be sure.
I usually don't like compilations, I prefer to hear the whole album. I want that artist's 'moment', so to speak, their complete thought. I would hear people complaining about having to buy a whole album for one song and I would think, "Man, listen to better music." But I guess there is an argument to be had for, "I just want to sit back and relax to some mellow, smokey Miles Davis music."
Or, I guess, if I was trying to seduce a classy lady in a cliched movie in the roll of pretentious douchebag. I do feel like I should be sipping wine instead of water for this. Though now any water I consume makes me a little nervous if the computer is anywhere near it...
So, it's time I stopped 'throwing back' the double CDs and got to it before it becomes tragic. And why not start out with an opus paired up with something I haven't the foggiest idea about?
Wynton Marsalis & the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra Blood on the Fields
So, at least in my mind if not in reality, there was a distinct rivalry in attitude and philosophy between the two more famous Marsalis brothers (Jason and Delfeayo I didn't really know...). Wynton represented a scholarly look at the past, a complete embrace of the history and tradition of jazz. He was the ambassador, the professor. There is a fair chance that if anyone under a certain age knows anything about jazz and its history it is directly because of Wynton Marsalis.
Branford, however, represented the new, the now, the ten minutes from now. He was picking up the torch of Coltrane, Dolphy, of the progressive players that came before him and running headlong into that territory. Sure, he was still using traditional quartets and trios (Buckshot LeFonque not withstanding), but he was playing that dissonant rapid sound pioneered by jazz musicians of the late sixties. Though I do remember him at a show, trying to figure out what to do for an encore, laughing when someone called out "Giant Steps".
I was firmly in the Branford camp. I mean, what teenager likes bookworm-y history nerds? I was already nerdy enough for listening to jazz in the first place, I wanted in on the hip, the defiant. Besides, Branford played sax, I played sax. My side was chosen. I bought Branford religiously (even albums where Branford guested on, which explains the Sting CD I had for a moment), trying to get every Branford recording there was and all but ignoring his brother.
It's not that I didn't like his brother. Clearly, awesome. But I had made my choice, you can either repeat the past or write the future. Black and white, one or the other. Surely that's how it is.
Then I got Blood on the Fields. Holy crap. It won a Pulitzer Prize, so I don't really have to write it up like it's some hidden treasure. If you're into jazz even a little bit, it's a pretty famous album. To catch others up, it's basically a jazz oratorio about a family transitioning from slavery to freedom. (wiki link, since I realized I more or less just repeated the first sentence... I had thought there would be more criticism on the work itself rather than the political controversy of the award, but that's a publicly edited encyclopedia for you...)
Blood on the Fields repudiates everything I so smugly claimed when I bored someone with why I liked one Marsalis more than the other. This was traditional, modern, complex, simple... frankly incredible. It reminded me of Charles Mingus' Epitaph or the larger works of Ellington towards the end of his life. This was the large work that jazz had been trying for since 1917. This was completely amazing, far in advance of anything I had heard while still shin deep in traditional jazz structures. And it sounded badass.
I was wrong. Dammit. And now I had missed out on what Wynton had been doing this entire time, so I didn't see it coming.
Sadly, this is still one of the only Wynton albums I have, and he is very prolific, so it would be quite the effort to catch back up.
So if this was so earth-shattering, why is it lost in the Albatross? Well, it's long, for one. It was always one of those things that I wanted to sit down and listen to all the way through. Especially after the first CD blew my mind so much. But I never got around to it. I didn't have a CD changer until a recent pick-up of a five disc DVD changer free off Craigslist, and that was problematic and would have to be played through the TV. The first disc ended up an orphan, drifting around in one of the caseless piles probably too scratched up now to play. Once deep in the mix, it just got lost. I'd see it and think, "That's awesome, I should listen to it sometime" - and then nothing.
I really hate when the music I really like has a completely depressing theme. I remember when I actually listened to what was being said in Strange Fruit... that song was beautiful, but now I want to cry every time I hear it. And of course the coolest track so far on the second and third CD...Forty Lashes. I mean, it's okay to like it, it just means you have to change your vocabulary about it. "Forty Lashes fucking rocks, man. I love Forty Lashes! I gotta hear me some Forty Lashes!" Just doesn't sound right.
Fortunately, the last two tracks, Freedom is in the Trying and Due North , are also awesome without the same baggage.
Well, that first track wasn't at all what I was expecting. I was thinking how unfair the line up was, really. I mean, this guy I hadn't heard of was following an album I already held in pretty high regard. I was kind of expecting to ramble on new age-y artists and nondescript covers or something.
But instead the first track exploded with a pretty hot progressive thing going on, now I'm all thrown off.
I mean, the second track has cooled down, has that post-Jaco Pastorius fretless bass, more Weather Report than Wes Montgomery.
Of course, as I type that (and look up how to spell Wes' last name...) there comes a track that's more Wes than Weather Report. This guy is kind of all over the place in an awesome way.
I really don't know anything about this guy. I thought it was going to be a blues album to begin with. And with that English professor look he has on that cover, I wasn't expecting much in the way of blues. Maybe he was going to be another Paul Brady. The Amazon reviews implied that he was a fusion player, which is kind of true, but also kind of not. This is actually pretty cool.
Which is not to imply that I can think of a lot of things to say about it. Each track has been a kind of stand alone that he's brought something interesting to.
This was the best part about working at a record store, finding stuff like this that I never would have otherwise. Eventually, I would have come across Blood on the Fields, but Philip? I apparently wasn't intrigued enough to open the case. There's no way I would have listened to this without the Albatross. There isn't much coverage for Belgian jazz guitarists.
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.
