Jump to content

Shrdlu

Members
  • Posts

    2,450
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Donations

    0.00 USD 

Everything posted by Shrdlu

  1. There are a lot of samba house tracks. This version of "Corcovado" is very good https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGlTA0xcmVM
  2. I am very impressed by Paul Chambers's arco solos, and he could play them on very fast numbers. And, of course, his pizzicato. Paul was arguably the best jazz bassist ever. I have probably heard all the recordings on which he plays, and I find that his intonation was very good. There is the odd track where he's a bit off, but I haven't heard many. At this stage, years after the event, I don't appreciate criticism of this wonderful musician. And yes, I like lots of others: Ron Carter, Richard Davis, Walter Page, Doug Watkins, Wilbur Ware, Butch Warren, both Tuckers, and so on. That instrument is awkward to play because of its size and lack of frets. It is amazing that so many people have played it well. My saxophones and clarinets are way easier to finger.
  3. I agree with what Leeway said about Rollins. He was definitely thrown off balance by Trane's progress. That is a mental problem. I love Trane, but it didn't affect me mentally. The only Rollins I listen to is the Prestige recordings, "Volume 2" with Monk and the Riverside material with Sonny Clark. I don't like tenor with only bass and drums: too dry. (I love Joe Henderson, but not without a piano.) And that pacing up and down like a lost soul and soloing for 45 minutes is not for me. I heard about Sonny playing in London with Stan Tracey, where he played a standard for about an hour and then they stopped for a meal and then came back and played the same tune agajn for an hour. I am not amused.
  4. Larry, that is one of my very favorite performances. It's worth dozens of "experimental" noise from the 1960s which I have dutifully sat through since that time (and never now play).
  5. I can't resist saying: How about Monk on C.T.I. in the 1970s?
  6. This is a good performance, from his later years. He's a bit flat, but ignore that.
  7. I'm Gonna Send Him To Outer Space https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DoHenB2hpC0 That's a real cool one. Notice that the track, which is for mixing, starts with simple percussion. That part is never heard over the sound system. Most tracks have a "Radio Edit", which gets straight to the main part, with no intro or outro.
  8. It is vital for house music, by definition. The idea is to keep 4/4 music running for hours (as long as you like) without a gap. Although I like to listen to it, it is basically for dancing. My favorite BPM is 126, for lively stuff. "Deep house", which is more subdued, I would run at 124. Some clubs run at about 133 BPM, but I think that that is too fast; nothing over 130. Yes, this music is (again, almost by definition) repetitive, but repetition can be very effective. Consider the percussion and bass patterns in Latina music. I am happy just to play a cowbell or a caxixi (shaker) or a shekere, or a cabasa or a guiro.
  9. I respect your view on this, Dan. You are more than entitled not to like it. My liking good house tracks is based on hundreds of them. It honestly interests me. I have enjoyed hearing it on location many times. It is good in its context. It seems to have disappeared in recent years. At least, I have not come across it anywhere. Of course, a lot of clubs have been closed during the last couple of years. The biggest one downtown here has been closed permanently. Dan, I listen mainly to jazz: house is just a sideline. House music is not "disco". And I dislike all other kinds of club music that I have heard. I was surprised that I liked the house music that I heard that first night. I came in with an open mind, having liked jazz from all eras (Fats Waller, Count Basie, bop, hard bop, and [some] experimental jazz from the 1960s, plus Weather Report). Anyway, that's just me. I am only one person. Rabshakeh: The beat of house has to be locked in, so that you can seamleassly mix tracks. This is one area where house is inferior to jazz. It certainly isn't anywhere near as creative, though I have played along with it with my soprano saxophone and Latin percussion. Playing the saxophone with it is dead easy, because it is mainly modal - no rehearsal needed, and one take is all that's needed. I have great fun mixing, too. Here is a great remix of a Laurent Garnier piece, with a nice alto saxophone included https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBBcjgIUoeA And I'm very fond of this one https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HYUwD_-NeEo
  10. Tell me that this doesn't swing like crazy https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Na9rQfiW60 I had that going (in a mix) in the car while I was waiting for my daughter. Love it to bits. The LP High Pitch Jam Block accents are fantastic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w8RFMjC1r2o About 14 years ago, I ventured into a downtown bar and, by chance, found the best house DJ in town. I had no idea what was going on. I heard this non-ending 4/4 music, at about 126 BPM. I thought the DJ had written it all - so little I knew then. Actually, he was spinning others' tracks, using two CD players feeding into a mixer. Being a musician, I quickly figured out what was going on. All the tracks are in 4/4, in 8-bar segments. You start a track on one CD player - the speed (BPM) can be set to whatever you want with a slider control. While that is playing, you load the next track into the other CD player. With the headphones, you adjust its speed to that of the track that is playing over the loudspeakers, and set the new track at the start of an 8-bar section near the start. As the playing track nears the end, you start the new track when the outgoing track is at the start of one of its 8-bar sections and raise the volume slider for it, on the mixer. This mixes the new track through the louspeakers with the track that's ending. Mostly, you bring the first track to a dead stop. The majority of house tracks have about 32 bars of just percussion at the start, and at the end, for mixing purposes. Piece of cake for a musician. After a while, I bought two CD players and a mixer. Pioneer is the best brand. I have two CDJ-1000 Mk 3 CD players and their DJM 700 mixer. It is a lot of fun mixing house. Yes, there is a lot of garbage house music out there, but the best of it is of a very high standard, composed by trained musicians, such as D. Ramirez. Eric Prydz (Sweden), Jimpster and Seamus Haji. I have seen the last three live. House is not instead of jazz: it is as well as.
  11. Tried to delete this, but was unable to do so.
  12. The track labeling error for the June 17, 1966 session persists in this set. Take 14 (the second item, the long track) is "Soft Impressions". I have played Trane's "Impressions" lots of times, and I know it when I hear it. Take 15 is "Chain Reaction". The error seems to go back to the time when the music was registered - probably by Duke Pearson.
  13. Further to that, I wonder why the first session in this set, that of March 7, 1963, was not all issued on one album. It sounds good as a unit, in order of recording. Mixing it up with other sessions seems silly, to me, and, as I said, I never heard the LPs that came out. I had another triumph while arranging this material into a sensible order: the February 24, 1967 and May 26, 1967 sessions, in their entirety, both fitted onto what is my CD 5. It is an 80:23 collection, but the CD plays fine. I had to split the October 2, 1963 session over two CDs (1 and 2), and the last track of December 18, 1965 had to go on CD 4. The only alternative to that would be to have extra CDs with only one session on each.
  14. I am going through this set at the moment. I decided to arrange the tracks in chronological order. The original LP order is of no interest to me - I never had any of the LPs anyway. For the first CD, I managed to get the first session and the second up to both takes of "Me 'N' You" onto one CD. It came to 80:20 or so, and the burning software gave me a severe warning, but no pet dogs were harmed during the process, and the CD plays fine. The chronological track order works fine. It looks like I will end up with one more CD than in the Mosaic set, but that's fine. I understand that they wanted to keep the number of CDs to a reasonable level. I still suspect that they will do a Lee Morgan 60s set, but, of course, the problem is what to include and what to leave out.
  15. The Tina Brooks and Freddie Redd Mosaic sets were especially valuable back in the early 80s (ouch, nearly 40 years ago now!). The recordings were not easy to find (and some, impossible) then. And the sets were vinyl only. I virtually never play vinyl anymore. CDs sound great, and no Rice Krispie sound. Now, and for quite a while of course, all those Brooks and Redd recordings are available on CDs. The Brooks set should have included the superb "Street Singer" session, but it seems that that was then regarded as a McLean session. It is now listed as by Jackie McLean and Tina Brooks. I just put together a very nice-sounding CD of the session using four of its six tracks from two Blue Note Works CDs for the best sound; "Melonae's Dance" and "Medina" came from the Japanese "Street Singer" CD. The Mosaic booklet has a picture of Alfred Lion leaning over Freddie Redd at Redd's last Blue Note session. You can see the body language there, and why Freddie was pissed off. Yes, Benny Bailey was not approved of by Alfred, but he was a fine trumpeter and there was no need to sulk.
  16. I sure remember "Bachafillen". I used to play in Jo'burg, South Africa regularly with a fine pianist from Pretoria called Robert Payne. One night, he brought the chart to a gig. I ran through it a few times, and soloed until I got the feel of it. Good for blowing. That brought back some good memories.
  17. It's going for $20 on Gumtree, and they have some free kittens.
  18. I like everything I have heard by Duke: performances and arrangements for others. He got particularly interesting toward the end of the 60s, His last Blue Note, "Só Tinha de Ser Com Você", is a very nice set and has not been widely available on CD. I found a Japanese version. I don't agree that "Little Johnny C" was a Pearson album. (One of my first Blue Note LPs.) Johnny Coles was an excellent trumpeter and Blue Note decided to give him a session. Apparently, Johnny didn't want to do the arrangements, or was unable to do so, so Duke was given the job. And a fine job it was. When I first heard the LP, I took it for what it was: a Coles album. Actually, I bouight it because I spotted that Joe Henderson was on it. And he contributed "Hobo Joe", which was included in the recent Henderson Mosaic set.
  19. What I meant is that the tunes have been issued from other sessions, not from this new one.
  20. The selections have all appeared elsewhere, so I will pass on this set. I just dug out the 1960 set at Birdland, because I was re-arranging it all into consecutive order. (Why not? It was live, and we are not now constrained by release schedules and the LP time limit.) It all fitted onto one CD if the two versions of "The Theme" are cut short; plus, I don't like a certain M.C. who was described as something rude by Prez, so I made sure that his squeak is not heard. Prior to that, I did the same with the 1959 Birdland set, which has Hank Mobley. I don't like Wayne's work on the 1960 set - very harsh and it suffers by comparison with Hank's mellow sound. I am a big Shorter fan, and I like "Mosaic" and "Free For All, and Wayne is fantastic on Freddie Hubbard's amazing "Ready For Freddie" album, which was one of my first Blue Note LPs.
  21. A few years ago, I found a set of all Frank Wolff photos online. I don't remember where that was. It might have been on the Mosaic site. No large-size, and no gelatins, of course, but the pictures are plenty large enough.
  22. This IS sad news. I had no idea that he was unwell. Many years ago, I had quite a bit of correspondence with him. I was thrilled to bits when he issued the Parker Dial recordings properly and completely at the end of the 1960s. Prior to that, I could only get some (and far from all of them) on "pirate" budget LPs with poor sound. As part of his work, he befriended Ross Russell. And yes, Tony put out a lot of other valuable recordings, including Dexter Gordon's Dial items.
  23. For me, the session with Lou Donaldson destroys the concept. It is very nice, but it becomes Lou Donaldson with a rhythm section. It is also not on a par with Lou's own sessions of that era, with Herman Foster, Horace Parlan and Baby Face Willette.
  24. I hope these wonderful Frank Wolff pictures are not gobbled up by some souless corporation whose executives know nothing about them. I scent retirement on Michael Cuscuna's part.
  25. I like all of their 1958-1962 recordings for Blue Note. My favorite is "Moods", from June 28, 1960. And I want to hear all of their unissued tracks from that period. There are about three CDs worth.
×
×
  • Create New...