Jazz DVDs

[medjuck]

I guess we're not going to start a separate forum for Music DVDs so I'll just start a thread here.

I was ordering something from Amazon and their "recommended for you" (which I usually ignore) recomended a DVD entitled "Stan Getz: the Last Recorded Concert". One customer review read:

"Those who appreciate the artistry of Stan Getz simply won't want to miss this DVD! It finds Stan, pianist Kenny Barron and the rest of the group in top form live in Munich, Germany just a year before Stan's death. The program includes a nice mix of jazz standards (who plays Billy Strayhorn's "Blood Count" any better?) and selections from the "Apasionado" CD. Both audio and video are excellently captured in a beautiful concert venue. It's one thing to hear this jazz master perform but watching him do it adds yet another satisfying dimension to the performance. And watching the musical interplay between Stan and Kenny (whom Stan described as the other half of his heart) is fascinating. I would give this DVD my highest personal recommendation!"

Sold me, so I ordered it. I think it pretty well lives up to this reviewer's rave though it does contain a couple of numbers from "Apasiionado" that add synthesizers.

I didn't know this DVD existed before Amazon pushed it on me. Obviously if you're a Getz fan this an important part of his ouvre and I don't think it's available on cd.

So my question is: Are there other DVDs that add important entries to any major musicians' discographies?

And BTW while we're discussing DVDs I highly recommend "The Greatest Jazz Films Ever". It actually lives up to it's title containing Jammin' the Blues, The Sound of Miles Davis, and what I consider the greatest Jazz

Film/Tv show of all: The Sound of Jazz. It also has an assembly of the footage shot for Granz's unfinished follow-up to Jammin' the Blues with Bird, Bean and Prez.

[Claude]

So my question is: Are there other DVDs that add important entries to any major musicians' discographies?

If you like electric Miles, then the "Miles Electric: A Different Kind of Blue" DVD is absolutely essential.

It contains the 1970 Isle of Wight concert (about 30 minutes), which was previously only available on a french CBS LP quickly withdrawn for legal reasons, and recent interviews. The picture and sound quality is outstanding

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?...=lk_organissimo

[king ubu]

Great idea for a thread - I was watching some jazz DVDs while alone this weekend (Ms ubu is on vacation in sunny Spain for the next two weeks). I was thinking of some kind of thread like this - why don't you (by editing your first post) add a subtitle like "what have you been watching lately" or something like that?

I second the recommendation for the Electric Miles/Isle of Wight DVD - it's terrific! First time I watched it it totally blew me away! That set at the Isle of Wight is so tight, and the free flow structure it has, the way they all build something together, the tension/release is terrific!

Now what I've been watching: some of the great Jazz Casual shows. First, a DVD collecting three shows with Woody Herman's 1963 band. Sal Nistico is smokin' on the first one, being the main soloist. The later sets also feature others (Billy Chase and someone else on trumpet, the great Phil Wilson on trombone, and of course also Herman, both on alto and clarinet). The second show is sort of a "dance date" show, the band this time wearing nice suits (first show had them in white ugly suits), lots of mellower, tightly arranged stuff, but still with nice solos. There's some nice sax section stuff on this one, too (or is that on the first set?) with all three tenors changing phrases, nice to see a very young Bobby Jones there, too, with a slightly off-kilter, soft sound and some pretty non-virtuoso presidential playing - makes for a good contrast to hot-headed Nistico and the bull-neck playing of the third man).

The third set, then has much worse sound (image is only so-so on all, but sound is pretty good on the first two), since it was filmed at a rehearsal. First you see the band rehearsing a new Bill Holman tune, then one pretty rough run-through, and then they do two tunes they know... Jones is gone by now, but there's still Nistico and another round of tenor trade-offs.

Then I also watched the Art Pepper show. There was some thread (by aric/chewy?) about how weird Pepper was playing here (1962 or 1963, I think), and how he was under the spell of Coltrane. That may be true for his own alto playing, he does some free-ish sheets of sound stuff that gets pretty wild, but only for rather short spots. Otherwise, he's on the way to where he ended arriving after getting out of prison, doing those great, groovy, lenghty tunes with a simple ostinato and only a spotty, roughly outlined melody as a theme. Frank Strazzeri on piano I found not that great, but Bill Goodwin on drums is pretty good.

Last, I watched the Coltrane and Sonny Rollins shows, too, but I got distracted... will have to watch those again later to make some good comments. (Funny how little hair Jim Hall had, even back then... maybe because he had so many great jobs, playing with Chico, Giuffre, Brookmeyer, Desmond, Farmer and Rollins? Pretty astonishing, what he did between, say 1956 and 1964!)

[Free For All]

I've been really enjoying the Jazz Icon DVDs. Just watched the '62 Basie with my jazz history class. Sonny Payne was tearin' it up! It was interesting to notice some of the details- Frank Wess had all his charts out on the stand while Marshall Royal had just a few. Thad played several great solos.

I also picked up the Quincy, Diz, Chet and Blakey. Haven't watched them in their entirity yet, but what I've seen is great. High quality audio and video, and very good liner notes.

And the Rosolino Jazz Scene USA segment is also a classic IMHO.

[Larry Kart]

At perhaps excessive length for this forum (but I'm too lazy to boil it down), here's a review I wrote last week of the new Jazz Icons DVD series:

Why not dream? The ideal jazz DVD would have topnotch performances by great artists in topnotch sound, shot in a relaxed, unobtrusive manner, and with the visuals revealing something interesting, important, perhaps even essential, about the artist at hand.

The new nine-DVD Jazz Icons series meets that ideal at least twice and doesn’t go far below it, with one or two possible exceptions. But before talking about what each DVD contains, a little background. What we have here – carefully produced, nicely packaged with 16- to 24-page illustrated booklets that include thorough notes by the likes of Ira Gitler, Michael Cuscuna, Chris Sheridan and Don Sickler – are European TV broadcasts (mostly of concerts, plus a few audience-less studio performances) shot from 1957 to 1979 by government controlled and subsidized stations in Belgium, the Netherlands, Switzerland, Denmark, and Norway. (Not dependent on advertising revenues, these stations were able and willing to present jazz more appropriately than American television networks did -- when American commercial networks did so at all, the glorious exception being “The Sound of Jazz” -- and more often than National Educational Television or PBS were able to do.)

How one of these tapes was unearthed is interesting; the 1958 Art Blakey Jazz Messengers concert, taped in Belgium but never aired and then incorrectly catalogued, was discovered by accident when it was sent to the producers of Jazz Icons instead of a 1965 Jazz Messengers show that they had requested. But the music is the main thing, and “Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, Live in ’58” (55 minutes) is a good place to start.

This is the version of the Messengers (Lee Morgan, Benny Golson, Bobby Timmons, Jymie Merritt, and Blakey) that made only one studio recording, “Moanin,’” plus four live albums recorded later in the European tour that this Belgium concert was part of. I would say that these DVD performances, captured in very good sound, certainly equal and may well surpass anything else from this great but rather short-lived band (Golson left after six months to form a quintet with Curtis Fuller, which eventually would evolve into the Jazztet). In particular, Golson – the Messenger’s music director – is in inspired, explosive form here, and the visuals naturally highlight the nature and quality of everyone’s playing. To see Morgan digging Golson’s fierce solo on “Moanin,’” Golson responding in kind to Morgan’s brilliant outing on “Just By Myself, ” the galvanic, locked-hands, two-chorus climax to Timmons’ “Moanin’” solo, the perfect match between Blakey’s drumming and his radiant, masterly physical presence, the rhyme between Timmons’ sly, seemingly vulnerable hipness as a man and the hair-trigger sensitivity of his comping – these are the kind of things a jazz DVD can clearly convey and that no recording can quite reveal.

Equally important, but in a somewhat different way, is “Thelonious Monk, Live in ’66,” (62 minutes) , two performances shot two days apart in Norway (in a concert hall without an audience) and in Denmark (in an audience-less studio) by Monk’s regular quartet of the time – Charlie Rouse, Larry Gales, and Ben Riley. Sound quality is again very good, the program will be familiar to anyone who knows Monk’s repertoire of the time (two versions of “Lulu’s Back in Town,” “Blue Monk,” “’Round Midnight,” an unaccompanied version of “Don’t Blame Me,” and “Epistrophy”), and some of Rouse’s solo moves will be familiar as well. But Monk’s level of inspiration is quite high, and the band is with him. What ought to make this DVD a cornerstone of any collection is the extended opportunity it gives us to watch Monk’s hands on the keyboard (and, at times, his feet on the pedals, too). As Don Sickler explains in the booklet: “In person, I saw that [Monk] played the piano very differently than I had ever seen it played before. He attacked practically every note, mostly with an unorthodox flat finger approach…. Sometimes he would even cross hands (left over right) attacking his melody notes usually with either a stiff first or second finger of his left hand, while his right hand fingers comped the sparse harmonic elements. Now I could see why his piano playing sounded so different. The way he approached the piano allowed him to give a different weight to each note, whether in a single line melodic passage or in a chord voicing.” (My emphasis.) Actually seeing what Sickler describes here – and he adds further shrewd musical insights to what has been quoted – is both enlightening and thrilling; if you have never before seen Monk’s hands at work on the keyboard for an extended stretch of time, you owe it to yourself to take in what’s on this DVD.

On now to one of Monk’s bebop colleagues, “Dizzy Gillespie, Live in ’58 and ’70” (85 minutes). The first concert here, shot in Belgium in rather airless sound, pairs Gillespie with Sonny Stitt and Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanists of the time – Lou Levy, Ray Brown, and Gus Johnson. It’s a promising lineup, and everyone seems to be in a mellow mood, but while Gillespie is in very good form (his ballad feature “Cocktails for Two,” of all things, is full of striking harmonic wit), Stitt tends to run through his Rolodex of licks more than one would wish, and the aforementioned lack of sonic presence tends to dampen the impact of what might have been nice or better than nice to hear. It’s particularly frustrating to see Johnson dig in behind Dizzy on a swift “Blues Walk” and not be able to hear that much of what the drummer is doing. The 1970 segment, shot in Denmark in front of a good-sized studio audience, finds Gillespie backed by the vaunted Clarke-Boland Band. Sound quality here is very good, but initially the band is in surprisingly ragged form – probably because the first two pieces, Gillespie’s “Con Alma” (in a strident Lalo Schifrin arrangement) and “The Brother K” (dedicated to Martin Luther King Jr.), are new to the band and have not been rehearsed enough, perhaps because there’s an odd vibe or two in the studio, as though the camera crew, the director, and Dizzy are not on the same page. Whatever, Gillespie himself is in top form – as with Monk’s hands on the keyboard, it’s enlightening to see the relationship between his unique bulging-cheeks, slow-release-of-air technique and the way that enables him to phrase – and “The Brother K” is a noble long-lined melody that he decorates with deep feeling and typical harmonic inventiveness. Eventually, on “Manteca,” the band pulls up its socks, perhaps because Dizzy is now galvanically conducting them, and from there to the end, “Things Are Here” (a re-titled version of “Things To Come”), we hear much intense communal music-making, with Dizzy to the fore. Not quite the experience it could have been, this DVD still ends up on the plus side.

Sticking with big bands, we come to a welcome surprise in the Jazz Icons series, “Quincy Jones, Live in ’60” (80 minutes), which preserves two concerts, one in Belgium, one in Switzerland, by the band that Jones formed to perform in the Harold Arlen musical “Free and Easy” and that he kept going in Europe for almost a year after the musical folded during its debut run in Paris. Much better represented here than on its few commercial recordings, this was a very hip, well-rehearsed ensemble with its own warm sound, somewhat reminiscent of the band that Oscar Pettiford led in the late 1950s. It was filled with fine players – Clark Terry, Benny Bailey, Phil Woods, Budd Johnson, Jerome Richardson, Jimmy Cleveland, Melba Liston, Julius Watkins et al. – and brimming with esprit de corps. Here, as on the Blakey/Jazz Messengers DVD, it’s a kick to see band members really digging each other’s solos; during the first concert, Terry, Woods, and Johnson are especially inspired. The second concert is slightly below that level, as though three months of further touring through Europe on a shoestring had worn everyone down a bit. Also, Johnson had returned to the U.S. in the interim, and one misses his take-no-prisoners solo presence. On balance, though, this set is a definite winner.

Esprit de corps also is a hallmark of “Buddy Rich Live in ’78,” recorded at the North Sea Jazz Festival in the Netherlands (75 minutes and in color – except for the second half of the Chet Baker DVD, all the rest of the Jazz Icons series is in black and white). Rich dubbed this edition (1976-78) of his big band the Killer Force, and with good reason. Intensity and a considerable amount of nervous tension were among Rich’s key traits, both as a drummer and bandleader, and the mostly young players of the Killer Force look and sound as though they have bought into Buddy’s ethos completely. Even when Rich is doing some some relatively light, laid-back time-keeping, one feels as though the lid were about to blow off and that every member of the band knows this. On the other hand, even those who have little taste for Rich’s technically awesome solo displays (on parade here most notably in the long “Channel One Suite”) ought to pay attention to how musically (albeit fiercely) he can interact with a strong, rhythmically gutty soloist. Captured here in very good, nicely balanced sound (after electric bassist Tom Warrington adjusts his amp), such passages are among the highlights of this disc – especially Rich’s byplay with altoist Andy Fusco during the latter’s blistering ten-chorus solo on “Grand Concourse” (Fusco plays with the strength of an NFL lineman, which is what he once was), and Rich’s multiple similar encounters with stalwart tenormen Steve Marcus and Gary Pribeck. (By the way, this set’s liner notes, by former Killer Force trumpeter Dean Pratt, are full of interesting inside information about Rich the man and what it was like to be in his band.) To my mind, only two of the charts the band plays here, the late Herbie Phillips’ original composition “Little Train” and Mike Abene’s arrangment of Joe Zawinul’s “Birdland,” are interesting, coherent examples of big-band writing – but Rich’s music seems intended to be largely a matter of showpieces and thrills, and this DVD provides those things with genuine zest.

The liner notes for the Rich DVD mention his great admiration for the Basie band, but the contrast between Rich’s tense-intense music and what can be heard on “Count Basie Live in ’62” (56 minutes) could hardly be greater. Captured at a concert in Sweden in perhaps the best sound of any of the Jazz Icon series, this edition of the Basie band was an ensemble of gorgeously relaxed timbral warmth and unanimity, with each section perfectly in balance with the others. This is particularly evident on the opening number, Frank Foster’s “Easin’ It,” which features a series of short solo exchanges among the trombone section (Henry Coker, Quentin Jackson, and Benny Powell) and then the trumpets (Al Aarons, Thad Jones, Sonny Cohn, and Snooky Young). The mature, mellow, family circle intimacy of this is something to hear and, thanks to the DVD, behold. And the same could be said of the fine Basie sax section of that time, led by altoist Marshal Royal. Phrasing of that order may be a lost art. Up to a point in this DVD, everything proceeds quite handsomely – a tasty ballad feature for tenorman Eric Dixon (“You Are Too Beautiful”), “Corner Pocket” (with a brilliant Jones solo), a lovely, pure-toned reading of “Stella By Starlight” by Chicago-native Cohn, Foster’s “Back to the Apple,” and Quincy Jones’ slow-blues setting for Basie’s piano, “I Needs To Be Bee’d With.” But then it’s time for vocalist Irene Reid, who is in rather detached, blaring form on three tunes, though the band play wells behind her -- after which we are treated to a ridiculously fast “Old Man River” (a showcase for flashy drummer Sonny Payne), a perfunctory “One O’Clock Jump” and out. Having had the table set the way this DVD does, one can’t help but feel a bit frustrated that things couldn’t have continued in that vein, but on balance one comes out well ahead.

A mixed impression also is left by “Chet Baker Live in ’64 & ’79” (71 minutes). The first part is an audience-less studio performance shot in Belgium with altoist-flutist Jacques Pelzer, pianist Rene Urtreger, bassist Luigi Trussardi, drummer Franco Nanzecchi, and Baker on flugelhorn. Pelzer, a pharmicist who owned his own drug store, was one of Baker’s close friends (fill in your own punch line) but not a very talented player; while Urtreger, who was a fine soloist, seems rather under wraps here, perhaps because the bass-drum team is tepid. But Baker is his unfailingly lyrical, logical self on every track and contributes a remarkable vocal on “Time After Time” – shaping the tune into one continous thought – after which he plays a solo in which suspended melodic ideas tread off eerily into darkness. After a brief interview with Baker comes the 1979 segment, shot at a concert in Norway. It finds Baker in vigorous form on trumpet, with vibraharpist Wolfgang Lackerschmid, pianist Michel Graillier, and bassist Jean Louis Rasinfosse. The problem here is that Lackerschmid’s stiff, clangy playing more or less dominates things, even when he isn’t soloing, and Baker understandably seems unhappy about this, though he does persevere. Rob Bowman’s liner notes claim that the second group’s final performance, a 15-minute version of “Love For Sale,” is the highlight of the DVD. I’ll take “Time After Time.”

Oddly enough, some might think, the Baker DVD leads logically to “Louis Armstrong Live in ’59” (55 minutes), shot at a concert in Belgium. In one sense this is just Armstrong’s standard show of the time, but it also may be, according to Bowman’s notes, “the only complete performance by Armstrong that exists on film,” which gives it obvious importance. Oh, yes – the Baker connection. Well, if you can listen through some of the perhaps familiar routines, and the noisy, plodding drumming of Danny Barcelona, and focus on Armstrong, one hears every time he picks up the trumpet an unfailing flow of logical, swinging melodic-rhythmic invention. Of course, the tone of Armstrong’s proud, bold musical voice differs from Baker’s introspective melancholy, but the clarity and commitment of thought, the drive to play on through in accord with the dictates of one’s inner ear – these things they have in common. Armstrong’s band here is Trummy Young, Peanuts Hucko, Billy Kyle, and Mort Herbert, with Velma Middleton on vocals. Everyone seems to be in a happy mood, and Armstrong is particularly brilliant on “Indiana” and works meaningful variations on “Basin Street Blues,” while his vocals, at least in my experience, seldom if ever fail. Check out, for one, the way he manages to fully inhabit the familiar “Mack the Knife.”

“Mack the Knife” also crops up on what for me is the disappointment of Jazz Icons series (though it does have its virtues), “Ella Fitzgerald Live in ’57 & ’63” (56 minutes). Fitzgerald, in my view, was not a gifted interpreter-dramatizer of the lyrics she sang until the late stages of her career; rather, her forte was crafting deeply swinging, at best subtly shaded variations on the melodic material at hand – as though she were the vocal equivalent of, say, Benny Carter. A certain centeredness – rhythmic, melodic, and emotional – was of the essence here, while her vaunted scat singing was more work than fun and not that inventive. Having laid my cards on the table, I can leave committed Fitzgerald fans to sort out the opinions that follow. The 1957 concert in Belgium, in front of an audience that fills the large hall and much of the stage, finds her backed by pianist Don Abney, Herb Ellis, her ex-husband Ray Brown, and Jo Jones. It’s an ideal rhythm section for Fitzgerald – she and Brown agree wholly on where “one” is, and Jones’ feather-light drumming is magical – but the story of “Love For Sale” is non-existent in her hands (better perhaps if she had handled it as an uptempo exercise in swinging virtuosity). “Tenderly,” a dramatically static song, fares much better and has a lovely coda, and “Just One of Those Things” finds a nice groove – Ella’s long-lined rhythmic “centeredness” is particularly evident here. But when the same tune crops up in Sweden in 1963, something seems to be awry, as is the case throughout this shot in the studio set (again in my view). Fitzgerald pushes hard on every tune, backed by Tommy Flanagan, Jim Hughart, and Gus Johnson, and increased effort brings diminishing returns. No Fitzgerald fan should be deterred; others may want to sample or think twice.

[king ubu]

Thanks Larry, I'll print it and read it later!

Let's keep this thread going, I think it would be great!

[tatifan]

Thanks for your thorough and thoughtful review! I've picked up the Blakey, Monk and Gillespie discs, and couldn't be happier to have these. My ONLY gripe at the production is the strange imposition of the Jazz Icons screen over the first few seconds of the beginning of the discs....I assumed it was a start menu of some kind, but you miss the starting few seconds of the original VIDEO of the performance. I, for one, would like to see the original credit screens, if there are any. Certainly, there are way too many positives to let this detract from the excellence of the productions here, but I hope the message gets through to refrain from this on future releases. (I suppose it's some way to combat the rampant piracy of the Disconforme group?).

Strangely, Netflix doesn't offer these for rent, which would be nice for the 3 or 4 I don't want to buy. Considering all the crappy Jazz discs they rent, it's a major goof on their part.

[sidewinder]

Up again for this thread. The Quincy Jones 'Jazz Icons' DVD is great. As Larry mentions, Budd Johnson is in inspired form ( ) on the first show, recorded in Belgium. Great opportunity to see the likes of Julius Watkins, Melba Liston, Quentin Jackson, Benny Bailey and Sahib Shihab in action, with solo features. Phil Woods is also very good on his feature spots too. What a band - one of the best to ever tour Europe based on the lineup alone.

I'll be checking out more of this series for sure.

Edited November 18, 2006 by sidewinder

[Tjazz]

Deepdiscountdvd.com still has their 20% off sale thru 11/23/06.

Code:

DD1123

You can pickup Jazz Shots Vol. 1 & 2.

[Matthew]

Let me recommend Bill Evans Trio: The Oslo Concerts as a very nice dvd. It has two concerts, the first from October 1966 at the Oslo Munch Museum. The trio has Eddie Gomez & Alex Riel, and it is a great recording. Nice images, and outstanding sound. The other concert on the dvd is Evans last trio with Marc Johnson & Joe La Barbera, and that was filmed at the Molde Jazz Festival in August 1980. It's shocking to she has much Evans' appearance changed over the years, but the playing is as beautiful as ever. Total time is 70 minutes, and it comes with a short interview that Evans gave after the Molde concert. Well worth the money, especially if you are a Evans fan, or piano trio buff.

[mtodde]

IT isn't a performance DVD but A Great Day in Harlem is a great jazz history lesson.

[John Tapscott]

Let me recommend Bill Evans Trio: The Oslo Concerts as a very nice dvd. It has two concerts, the first from October 1966 at the Oslo Munch Museum. The trio has Eddie Gomez & Alex Riel, and it is a great recording. Nice images, and outstanding sound. The other concert on the dvd is Evans last trio with Marc Johnson & Joe La Barbera, and that was filmed at the Molde Jazz Festival in August 1980. It's shocking to she has much Evans' appearance changed over the years, but the playing is as beautiful as ever. Total time is 70 minutes, and it comes with a short interview that Evans gave after the Molde concert. Well worth the money, especially if you are a Evans fan, or piano trio buff.

I picked up this one earlier this month and heartily second Matthew's recommendation, though I must say I enjoy the '66 concert more than the '80 concert. Better camera work on the earlier one in my view, also I sense a more relaxed and natural feeling. I wonder if my slight unease over the '80 concert is that we watch it now knowing that Evans had only a few short weeks left on this planet. Or maybe it's just the fact that I am not quite as big a fan of the Johnson/LaBarbera trio group as some, though Evans himself says in the interview it was his best trio since LaFaro/Motian. But overall the DVD is

[Matthew]

Let me recommend Bill Evans Trio: The Oslo Concerts as a very nice dvd. It has two concerts, the first from October 1966 at the Oslo Munch Museum. The trio has Eddie Gomez & Alex Riel, and it is a great recording. Nice images, and outstanding sound. The other concert on the dvd is Evans last trio with Marc Johnson & Joe La Barbera, and that was filmed at the Molde Jazz Festival in August 1980. It's shocking to she has much Evans' appearance changed over the years, but the playing is as beautiful as ever. Total time is 70 minutes, and it comes with a short interview that Evans gave after the Molde concert. Well worth the money, especially if you are a Evans fan, or piano trio buff.

I picked up this one earlier this month and heartily second Matthew's recommendation, though I must say I enjoy the '66 concert more than the '80 concert. Better camera work on the earlier one in my view, also I sense a more relaxed and natural feeling. I wonder if my slight unease over the '80 concert is that we watch it now knowing that Evans had only a few short weeks left on this planet. Or maybe it's just the fact that I am not quite as big a fan of the Johnson/LaBarbera trio group as some, though Evans himself says in the interview it was his best trio since LaFaro/Motian. But overall the DVD is

I agree with your preference for the 1966 concert, Evans looks so relaxed at the piano, and well he should since it's a beautiful Steinway that sounds great. I've always liked Gomez & Evans together, and I loved watching Gomez working his bass, in fact, I would put Gomez second only to LaFaro in an Evans trio. The 1980 Evans seems to be having some serious s*** going on, and I watch it with a heavy sense of foreboding.

Edited May 17, 2007 by Matthew

[Soul Stream]

Although I had read about Pelzer...I had never actually heard him play. I was preparred to be unimpressed on the DVD, but actually ended up rather liking his playing. Loved Baker, but thought the others were going to nod off at any moment. Didn't care for the later concert at all and agree with everything Larry said about it.

[Soul Stream]

Oh yeah...and one of my favorite jazz DVDs ever is the Count Basie Jazz Casual DVD. What those 4 guys on the Basie Jazz Casual show did...simply amazing. Swinging NEVER gets old. THAT was jazz at it's finest imho. And of course, can't leave out the Jimmy Smith Jazz Scene U.S.A. video....

Edited May 17, 2007 by Soul Stream

[Kalo]

I recently bought the Jazz Icons Thelonious Monk Live in '66 DVD, only to discover that the Oslo concert is the same one that was offered on a bonus DVD that came with the 2003 Thelonious Records/Hyena release Monk in Paris: Live at the Olympia. I don't really mind, though, since The Icons DVD version is better quality and from a different source, looking more like actual film, while the Thelonious Records/Hyena version looks to be lifted from a broadcast, with a distracting logo in the upper right corner.

[king ubu]

bumping this up to report some of what I've recently watched:

On TV a repetition of the 70th birthday special for Joe Zawinul (in 2002), with excerpts (full tracks, partial concerts) of him and a few of his sidemen and other special guests (Peter Erskine, for instance) doing a collaboration on Weather Report tunes with the WDR big band, directed/arranged by Vince Mendoza. Also a duo with Maria João, and a couple of tunes with his Syndicate (one with singer Sabine Kabongo, not bad, but João is so great...). Bass player Linley Marthe stands out in my opinion, among the Syndicate musicians - what a great, warm, rolling groove he has! (African in feeling, I assume...)

Then I also watched the MPS film "Jazzin' the Black Forrest" - pretty cool! Too bad there isn't more music and too bad many segments are silent with music from different sources, and many others are cut short. But still, highly entertaining!

Then some live material (off of dime):

Cannonball Adderley Sextet - Baden-Baden 1961 (the show of J. E. Berendt, "Jazz gehört & gesehen") - great playing by all! Lateef on oboe (Brother John) is terrific, and the late Joe Zawinul has a few funky spots, too...

Lester Bowie's New Organ Ensemble - Burghausen 1994 - only 20 minutes, mediocre sound, Bowie and James Carter shake around during their solos that they're mostly off-mike, too... but Amina is great, backing them, and so is Famadou Don Moye, who opens the proceedings with a great dum solo!

Max Roach Quartet - Hamburg 1989 - wow! I guess I finally have to agree with Sangrey about the greatness of Roach, no matter at what stage in his long career! The concert (or the part I saw, over an hour) gets underway with a solo piece, after that it's mostly quartet (except for a bass feature in duet with Odean Pope on "Tricotism"). Pope isn't in that much of a great shape (he's a one-trick-pony anyway, no? I like some of his stuff, though, but here he doesn't do a lot for me), and Bridgewater is on and off (great blues playing though on one tune!), and Tyrone Brown also never really struck me as that interesting a player... however, at any given moment, Roach is playing terrific, driving the band like mad, grooving in his marching kind of way... lots of fun to watch! And he's enjoying the concert a lot, obviously, so maybe it's just my own ignorance re. Pope, Hill and somewhat less Bridgewater...

Pierre Dorge's New Jungle Orchestra - Hamburg 1985 - wow! One of the most enjoyable concert DVDs I've seen! (Even though it's badly filmed - they manage more often than not to film the guy next to the one who's soloing... you hear a clarinet solo and you see the two alto guys riffing a bit...) Johnny Dyani's more heard than seen, but plenty of the great Marilyn Mazur in action, John Tchicai, Hugo Rasmussen, Dorge himself, and the one trumpet player, Harry Beckett, is contributing an awful lot!

Then, the last one, just finished: Bill Evans Trio (w/Lee Konitz sitting in on the last incomplete tune) - Umbria Jazz 1978. The trio at that stage already included Marc Johnson on bass (very young, playing great!) from the final edition, but on drums is Philly Joe Jones, and wow, what a joy to see him play! Konitz is fun to watch (I only seen some record cover photos of his from the 70s... looks like he escaped from a Woody Allen flick... but his playing is the epitome of cool.)

[king ubu]

watched lots of stuff since I last posted here...

last night: two Miles Davis shows: the November 1969 Berlin show by the lost quintet - terrific Wayne Sorter! Bad quality of image and not great sound, alas... then the 1973 Vienna show with Liebman, Lucas, Cosey, Foster, Henderson, and Mtume - wow! Great one! Great guitar playing, and mainly terrific grooves, great playing by Henderson and Foster and Mtume, and Miles' touches of organ made a lot of sense. The white jewish kid on saxophone in between was kinda fun... but completely up to the task of course! And miles wearing those huge plateau shoes was quite fun to watch as well!

Something else I watched recently include a full NDR Jazzkonzert show by the Timeless All Stars (smilin' Billy Higgins, Buster Williams, Cedar Walton, Harold Land and Curtis Fuller) with Dizzy Gillespie sitting in. Dizzy looks quite like his neck is going to blast in about a second as soon as he puts his trumpet to the lips. Land was rather unremarkable I found - too much Coltrane, too static somehow, not very agile... I prefer his 50s stuff by far, but Fuller was incredible, and Higgins a joy to watch. Walton - as so often, I'm afraid - struck me as doing just run-of-the-mill stuff.... never found him really interesting, but then maybe I just haven't tried to really listen to him anyway.

[stuartjewkes]

Not watched it yet but I'd been looking out for a cheap copy of Kind Of Blue for a while as I know it like the back of my hand through friends and a cassette copy but never had it on CD or LP. I found it last weekend for £3 coupled with a DVD called The Miles Davis Story which I'm looking forward to watching. It lists a bunch of performances but I'm guessing it's mainly going to be biog with some clips in between.

[sidewinder]

Not watched it yet but I'd been looking out for a cheap copy of Kind Of Blue for a while as I know it like the back of my hand through friends and a cassette copy but never had it on CD or LP. I found it last weekend for £3 coupled with a DVD called The Miles Davis Story which I'm looking forward to watching. It lists a bunch of performances but I'm guessing it's mainly going to be biog with some clips in between.

That would be Ian Carr's two-part documentary done for UK Channel 4 quite a few years back. Well worth checking out, with some nice live clips (much of which has subsequently been released in one form or another).

[stuartjewkes]

Not watched it yet but I'd been looking out for a cheap copy of Kind Of Blue for a while as I know it like the back of my hand through friends and a cassette copy but never had it on CD or LP. I found it last weekend for £3 coupled with a DVD called The Miles Davis Story which I'm looking forward to watching. It lists a bunch of performances but I'm guessing it's mainly going to be biog with some clips in between.

That would be Ian Carr's two-part documentary done for UK Channel 4 quite a few years back. Well worth checking out, with some nice live clips (much of which has subsequently been released in one form or another).

Superb, thanks for the info. I like a bit of context.

[Late]

What Ben Webster is available on DVD? Any recommendations appreciated.

I love "The Brute and The Beautiful," and wish it were on DVD.

[Free For All]

What Ben Webster is available on DVD? Any recommendations appreciated.

Just pulled up this thread as I'm watching Cannonball's band from 1963 (Switzerland/Germany, Jazz Icon series). Nat, Yusef, Zawinul, Sam Jones and Louis Hayes. Tight band, great arrangements and a serious groove from the rhythm section! The sound is really good too.

To respond to Late's request from March (better Late than Never ) there is an Impro-Jazz DVD with Dexter ('69) and Ben ('64) that is pretty nice.

Also found this very late one which I haven't heard:

[sidewinder]

What Ben Webster is available on DVD? Any recommendations appreciated.

I love "The Brute and The Beautiful," and wish it were on DVD.

That one is fantastic. Saw it once broadcast on TV - some wonderful playing by Ben on there and a great insight into his 'Euro' years.

[medjuck]

Speaking of Ben Webster has this been posted before:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQVVLAO-9LU...player_embedded

Ben seems to be crying after Teddy Wilson's solo. One of the comments on Youtube claims that he had just been told of the death of Johnny Hodges-- though the beauty of Wilson's solo is enough to bring tears to the eye.