Jazz

[madupont]

Max was kind of hard to miss. In the late 1950s, he was "Outstanding".
Especially when you came through the door at The Five Spot and he was leaning at that short front bar to the right of the door. They "all" were, on that particular night, which was Monday or off-night in New York, because they had come to assess  John Coltrane who carefully unpacked his white plastic saxophone.  Don't ask which one; he played all three.

Entering the room on such occasions was like running the gauntlet, as you could overhear the commentary identifying exactly who you were according to the grapevine. Which meant that you dressed carefully with that in mind.  Max, for some reason, wore a black suit to match the little black beard on his chin; if he had been an album, it would have been,"Black on Black".

I went to my usual place, the musician's banquette, where I could sit with my back to the  piano and pick up the rhythm through my spine; and begin taking notes.  No, I'm not a reviewer. I wrote Jazz poetry.

(After playing piano for many years. My father had played barrel-house piano which he pounded out so that you could hear what he was laying down through the walls of two houses separated by a driveway wide enough for the average car of the 1940s.  I think that I found this out by baby-sitting next door one evening.  He never read music.  As I said, I read it with my whole body.  What I absolutely couldn't stand was my mother's never ending commitment to  accessorize the piano; particularly with what was called, a "brass butler", never actually used for collecting cigarette butts from the glass ashtrays. Which meant that it brazenly echoed the vibration from the piano in a very jarring disruptive way comparable to getting used to first hearing Charles Ives.
Nobody else's composition stayed true to the ear. So I constantly moved the brass butler out to the vestibule.  She never caught on why.)

This is the room/The Five Spot where I first heard Charlie Mingus. Roach and he has just a few years previously founded Debut Records. This was a convenient venue for Mingus who some years later had an apartment on Great Jones street( as compared to Little Jones Alley) part of the routes you could take from the  East Village to the Bowery.

I throw this in as lagniappe:

http://www.bopsecrets.org/rexroth/jazz2.htm#Charles%20Mingus

[bodiddley]

Among the recently discovered jazz recordings from the late 1930s into 1940 made by William Savory, an audio engineer, at least a few rise to this level. There are nearly 1,000 acetate and metal discs in the Savory Collection. Ninety percent of them haven’t been digitized or even played, and of the 10 percent remaining, I’ve heard only about a dozen complete tracks. I’m in no position to assess the whole thing. (Nobody is yet in any position to assess when, how or what portion of the recordings can be commercially released.) But all that I’ve heard are special. And at least one is amazing: a live recording of “Body and Soul” by Coleman Hawkins from May 1940.

Mr. Savory, who died in 2004, worked in New York during the 1930s as an engineer for a transcription service: the kind of outfit with access to live radio broadcasts from around the country, and the ability to make disc copies of the broadcasts for whoever needed them. Evidently he brought home copies of what he liked as a fan, what he thought important or what had sentimental value, for here was a guy who befriended jazz musicians. That’s it: no master plan, no urge toward comprehensiveness.

Looking through the names on the discs — cataloged by Loren Schoenberg, the jazz scholar and executive director of the National Jazz Museum in Harlem, which recently bought the collection from Mr. Savory’s family — I saw a whole lot of Benny Goodman, because Mr. Savory loved Goodman’s music and came to know him. (He eventually married one of Goodman’s singers, Helen Ward, after she had left the band.) There’s a lot of Teddy Wilson, probably for similar reasons. There are recordings of now obscure swing-band saxophonists: Tony Zimmers, Stewie McKay. There’s some Billie Holiday, some Cab Calloway, some Mildred Bailey, a tiny bit of Louis Armstrong and John Kirby, and some extravagantly good jam-session Lester Young. And Coleman Hawkins.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/18/arts/music/18savory.html

[bodiddley]

I'm heading to Morocco and decided to check if perhaps longtime resident Randy Weston might be playing while I'm there.
He's 84 these days, and turns out he's in the States promoting his autobiography
And he is playing tonight Sunday Oct. 17th in NYC.
Pretty late notice, but how many chances do you have to see Randy Weston?
(Okay, he's also playing in NYC in January)

Oct.17 2010
          
Randy Weston African Rhythms Trio with Billy Harper
at Jazz foundation annual loft party
601 west 26th street, 13th Floor.(btw 11th & 12th Ave)

[bodiddley]

Not Jazz, but anyone interested in transitional R&B, and Blues, and early Rock should check out this site:
http://koti.mbnet.fi/wdd/rhythmnblues.htm

Has the basics on many performers and if you click through on their name, you get their discography.  I'm pretty knowledgeable on that era, but still there are a number of artists I didn't know.
King Coleman anyone?
Clarence Samuels?  
In the Amos Milburn, Roy Brown vein as it turns out.
Pearl Reaves?
Sunny Blair?

[kam]

"Yesterdays" by Clifford Brown
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LiBqn_mUH8

Is sampled in
"MCs act like they don't know"* by KRS-one by DJ Premier (RIP)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcsFPBv2VM8

*I posted the instrumental for those whose ears bleed while listening to 'rap'
Here is the full song http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_J-h_8dwyiM

[AlexClinton]

I love Jaco Pastorious' Jazz Music...! You must watch this video... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lwhkPSEXs1Q
Here, Jaco was jazzin' up with John Scofield...!!! R.I.P. Jaco...!

[vookaleer]

http://www.nydailynews.com/opinions/2011/01/03/2011-01-03_black_culture_in_the_age_of_jazz.html

about Billy Taylor

[redweather]

These cuts from Ralph Towner's Solstice album are some of my favorites.  I ran across these while looking for concert footage.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIqIaIZIFQU&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=af1RD7Okbtk&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qmSD1nCQZwc&feature=related

[bodiddley]

Started listening to Herman Chittison, an influence on Horace Silver.
Played with Clarence Williams early on and does a frantic version of CW's Harlem Rhythm Dance.
I prefer Chit's 30's output to his immediate post-WWII sides from what I've heard.

Also, been listening to a good deal of Helen Forrest off and on.
Some real classics such as Comes Love with Artie Shaw; I Don't Stand a Ghost of a Chance with Lionel Hampton; I've Heard That Song Before & I Had the Craziest Dream with Harry James, etc.

Not sure I have a favorite from her Benny Goodman days.
I guess It Never Entered My Mind, but really the instrumental first half of the song steals the show, with competent vocals by HF.  And Martha Tilton's version of And The Angels Sing with Goodman is better than the '39 Forrest cover.  Helen Forrest's singing is definitely subdued with Goodman compared to Shaw earlier or James after.

[bodiddley]

For anyone interested in Chicago post-war Jazz and R&B, the Red Saunders Research Foundation has tons of informative material on various artists and independent labels from that era.
http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/rsrf.html

And their section on Sun Ra is pretty exhaustive and interesting
http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/sunra.html
Much of the early Ra arrangements and backing band recordings mentioned can be found on two compilations: Sun Ra -- Very Early, Very Rare and Spaceship Lullaby -- Sun Ra - (Chicago 1954-60)

[bodiddley]

Some discussion of the very interesting late 50's jazz/race semi-documentary film Cry of Jazz.
I thought I had posted something about it here late last year.
Maybe in the Knicks forum.
The film features a good deal of Sun Ra's Arkestra, both the music and various members (often shot in very dark conditions).
Cry of Jazz is available on Youtube in 6 parts.
It's only 33 minutes long in total and a very provocative document of the era.

The Cry of Jazz premiered on April 3, 1959. It ran for a week, two showings a night, at the Lincoln Center (700 East Oakwood Boulevard). A single private showing followed on April 28, at the Union Nations Building in New York City. Another showing took place at the Sherman Hotel during a party for the Playboy Jazz Festival in July; still another at Gerri's Palm Tavern (446 East 47th Street) on August 23.

For an obscure, low-budget short film, The Cry got a lot of attention from the Defender--substantially more than Saturn Records could ever manage. Some of this was a function of the project's novelty. The South Side of Chicago had no tradition of independent film making, and the Defender's usual coverage of African American involvement in cinema focused almost exclusively on appearances in Hollywood movies by Dorothy Dandridge, Sidney Poitier, Eartha Kitt, and a few other nationally prominent performers.

What did audience think of Ed Bland's message that jazz was already dead, fatally roped in by the White man's harmonic structures? Were they persudaded that repeated chord sequences stood for the "futureless future" that slavery and Jim Crow had imposed on Black Americans? Or that when Black people escaped the savagery with which they had been treated and could look forward to a productive and fulfilling future, they would no longer need jazz? Whatever its intended impact, the film would eventually become a legend among Ra fans. And despite their disagreements over the possibilities in store for jazz, Ra would benefit, during his New York years, from recording opportunities that Ed Bland steered his way.

The Cry of Jazz was not a documentary about the Arkestra, though the narrator refers to the "The Sun Ra" as an innovator in jazz, and "A Call for All Demons" is presented as an example of his music. Rather, the Arkestra's function is to illustrate the stylistic evolution of jazz. Members of the band are shown on screen performing a Dixieland number (title uncertain), Swing (Bland stretched a little by choosing "Urnack" as an example), bop ("Super Blonde"), Cool (another unidentified title), and "The Sun Ra."   A quintet is shown playing "Blues at Midnight" (as an illustration of improvising over chord changes), and Sunny appears at the piano thrashing the same passage over and over (to illustrate the lack of growth potential in jazz). During part of this scene the trombonist from the "Dixieland" band is also present, barely discernible in the murk. The film then shows flames about to consume slum tenements while a distorted fragment of the Dixieland music shrills on the soundtrack. The Arkestra can be heard but not seen during another segment (playing "Demon's Lullaby") and is probably responsible for the movie's theme music as well.

The style of filming during the musical sequences--most of it dramatically dark--was chosen to obscure the fact that the same musicians were pretending to play all of the music. With the exception of John Gilmore and Ronnie Boykins during "Blues at Midnight," the musicians' entire faces are never on camera for long. Pat Patrick has already appeared as a Dixieland clarinetist, so when he takes a baritone sax solo on "Super Blonde" the audience gets to see just his fingers on the keys and his body from the chest down. (He does pop up with his baritone sax in another scene, but it is all over so quickly that casual viewers would never spot him.) Sunny is viewed from behind in every scene but one so he can't be identified as a regular participant. Because the soundtrack music was prerecorded and heavily edited, shots done on different nights with different personnel were rapidly intercut, though much of this trickeration would pass unnoticed by the audience. During most of a scene in which a quartet drawn from the Arkestra performs a Cool number (which the narrator has firmly defined as the White man's take on jazz--the same piece has already accompanied scenes of commuter trains and poodle grooming) the musicians are reduced to silhouettes.

http://hubcap.clemson.edu/~campber/sunra.html

[drian05]

Jamiroquai.. Jazz funk!
__________________
clinical trials for mesothelioma

[bosox18d]

Spammer fuck off!!!!!!!!

[barton2]

Are jazz fans more prone to mesothelioma?  I don't understand the targeting of this spam.  If it were "clinical trials for Dizzy Gillespie cheeks," at least it would make an iota of sense.

[bodiddley]

Not sure anyone checks in here anymore.
But I have a question.
Was wondering if anyone knew of any good cover versions of pop/soul songs from the late 60's or early 70's done by jazz or gospel or R&B musicians?
That was a lean era for jazz and gospel and many such artists attempted to expand their appeal/stay in business by covering some of the music of the era.

I'm just catching up with Sarah Vaughan's 1971 venture A Time in my Life.
She does a pretty good version of Imagine and Inner City Blues.
I love gospel great Marion Williams going off on I Shall Be Released.
And Mahalia Jackson does a raucous take on Put A  Little Love in Your Life.

Was wondering if anyone could rec any other such songs or albums?