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Bud Powell RCA, '56-'57


Larry Kart

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I've got this material, minus a few tracks that appear on the issue depicted below, on a RCA-Bluebird disc from 1987, "Time Was," that combines two Powell LPs; and much to my surprise, after years of hearing that Powell was in grim shape at the time, I find that much of it is quite lucid, even inspired. Even if the four standards that begin the album have their thick, halting moments, I think annotator Doug Ramsey goes too far when he says that "these tracks have the detachment of a lounge performer," and by the time we get to Powell's "Coscrane" or "Midway" or bassist George Duviver's handsome line "Another Dozen," there are frequent passages of splintered brilliance from Powell, plus much intense blues feeling. Haven't heard many things recently that seemed as consistently "alive." What a player Bud was!

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Turns out that I've got more late Bud than I thought, including most (all but "Live in Geneva) mentioned in this interesting post from Amazon:

Format: Audio CD Verified Purchase
"Live in Geneva," an import from Gambit Records, contains one of five essential Bud Powell concerts now available on CD. In fact, the best of these performances are as indispensable as anything Bud ever recorded in concert at any period.

The first ten tracks (almost all of them at least five minutes long, and some as long as seven or eight minutes) feature Bud Powell on piano, M. Cortesi on bass, and Jackie Cavussin on drums, and were recorded at the Hot Club, Geneva, Switzerland, on February 1, 1962: "Ornithology," "Swedish Pastry," "Hot House," one of Bud's most affecting interpretations of "I Remember Clifford," "Just One of those Things," "Anthropology," "Round Midnight," "Jordu," "I Know What You Know," and "Blues in the Closet." These first ten tracks are breathtakingly beautiful. The pyrotechnics are just as phenomenal as that of any of Powell's early (1947-1953) recordings, at times sizzling, at times lyrical, at times swinging. The sound quality is not very good, but it's decent enough, so as not to be a significant distraction. Tracks eleven and twelve, "Idaho" and "Perdido," are bonus tracks (also in decent but not great sound), featuring a duet: Bud on piano and Johnny Griffin (also known as the Little Giant) on tenor, recorded in Paris on February 14, 1960. In an interview late in his life, Bud called Griffin his favorite sax player, and it shows here--the two are just amazing together.

Yes, it's late Bud, but there is a mythology regarding his late period that simply does not hold up to examination. Some of the best tracks in Powell's career come from concert and studio sessions recorded in Europe between November 1959 and August 1964. Yes, there are some disappointing late dates (especially from September 1964 on, with Bud's ill-fated return to New York), and, yes, his early period as leader, 1947 to 1953, is consistently amazing, but the most consistently disappointing work--clunking, uninspired, mediocre--comes from 1954 to 1956, which is the first half of his middle period, 1954 to 1958. But when Powell left for Paris in 1959, it marked the beginning of one of the most remarkable periods in his music life.

And Bud is on fire at the Hot Club in 1962. His inventiveness here is at least the equal to that of his legendary quintet work at Birdland in May of 1950, with Charlie Parker and Fats Navarro, or his stunning trio work at Massey Hall in 1953, with Charles Mingus and Max Roach, or the various Birdland trio radio sessions in 1953, or the absolutely lovely late Bud concerts in Lausanne in 1962, in Copenhagen in 1962, and in Essen in 1960.

Which is to say, the performances on "Live at Geneva" are among the most masterful, the most intricate, the most engaging in the history of jazz.

So don't wait until this extraordinary CD disappears; pounce.
_____________________________________________________________

Five Essential Bud Powell Concerts Available on CD:

1. Birdland, May 17, 1950, the legendary quintet work with Bud, Charlie Parker on alto sax, Fats Navarro on trumpet, Curley Russell on bass, and Art Blakey on drums (available on RLR's 2-CD set "Charlie Parker: Complete Live at Birdland" and Proper's 4-Cd set "Charlie Parker: Chasin the Bird," and five of the fifteen tracks are also available on Proper's 4 CD-set "Bud Powell: Tempus Fugue-It"). Poor sound quality, but Bud, Bird and Fats are on fire at Birdland. Arguably the greatest recorded concert in jazz history.

2. Massey Hall, May 15, 1953, another legendary quintet with Bud, Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie, but it is in the trio pieces that Bud really shines, with Charles Mingus and Max Roach (available on the Jazz Factory's "Complete Jazz at Massey Hall"). Very good sound quality, considering the time period.

3. Birdland radio broadcasts, 1953, trio pieces from various dates in February, March, May and September of that year with various personnel, including Oscar Pettiford, Roy Haynes, Charles Mingus, Art Taylor, George Duvivier, and Max Roach (available on Fresh Sound's 2-CD set "Birdland 1953: The Complete Trio Recordings"). Poor sound quality, but indispensible Bud. And a lot of it, some 42 tracks of Powell at his best.

4. Hot Club, Geneva, February 1, 1962, trio pieces with M. Cortesi on bass and Jackie Cavussin on drums, in decent but not great sound quality (available on Gambit Records' "Live in Geneva"). Bud sizzles like it's 1953 or 1950. With two bonus tracks featuring a duet: Bud and Johnny Griffin on tenor, recorded in Paris on February 14, 1960. Just priceless.

5. Lausanne Radio, January 31, 1962, Bud with Bob Jacquillard on bass and Mike Stevenot on drums, and with lovely sound quality (available on Stretch Archives' "Live in Lausanne 1962"). Swinging and upbeat and one of my favorite concert performances. Period.
_______________

The Best of the Rest of Bud Powell Live, Available on CD:

6. Essen Jazz Festival, West Germany, April 2, 1960, Bud with Oscar Pettiford on bass, Kenny Clarke on drums, and (on four tracks) Coleman Hawkins, in good sound quality (available on Black Lion's "The Complete Essen Jazz Festival Concert"). Hawkins is just wonderful, but Bud is at his best on those tracks without CH.

7. Cafe Montmartre, Copenhagen, April 26, 1962, Bud with Niels-Henning Orsted on bass and William Schioffe on drums, in good sound quality (available on Delmark's "Bouncing with Bud"). Swinging and upbeat and just lovely.

8. Paris, Club Saint-Germain in 1957 and 1959, La Radio Television Francaise in 1959, Blue Note Cafe in 1959 and 1961, trio, quartet, and quintet sessions with various personnel, including Pierre Michelot, Kenny Clarke, Clark Terry, Barney Wilen and Zoot Sims (available on Pablo's "Parisian Thoroughfares"). The six tracks from the Club Saint-Germain are among my favorites. Most tracks have surprisingly good sound, a couple less so. But Bud's playing is sizzling throughout.

9. Paris, duets, trios, and quartets from sessions at unspecified clubs in December of 1959, and February, June and October of 1960, with Pierre Michelot on bass, Kenny Clarke on drums, and on two tracks Barney Wilen on sax, and two other tracks a duet with Bud and Johnny Griffin on sax, in poor sound on some tracks, decent sound on others (available on Xanadu's "Bud in Paris"). At times sizzling, at times lyrical, but beautiful Bud through and through (the two duet tracks with Griffin are also available on Gambit Records' "Live in Geneva," as noted in item #4 above).

10. Club Kavakos, April 5, 1953, Washington DC, Bud with Charles Mingus and Roy Haynes (available on Collectibles' "Inner Fires"). Poor sound quality. Exceptional Bud. But just a little too much drum solo for my taste. Others may find this concert as rewarding as the extraordinary Birdland broadcasts of 1953 (see item #3 above).
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I was obsessed with Bud Powell when I was in my late teens.  I have all the Blue Note stuff and most of the Verve stuff, but the RCA stuff was hard to find at that time.  

A few years ago, I ran across the Bluebird CD of the RCA stuff - not sure how complete it is - and it left me cold.  Not sure if it was the music itself, or if it was me.  Maybe I'd hit a saturation point when I was younger and there was no space left.  I dunno.

On the other hand, I recently heard four or six of the Blue Note tracks that were collected on the Vogue Jazz from America box set, and it was nice to hear them again.  

 

 

Edited by Teasing
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Larry - I have very complicated feelings about late Bud; I like the Monk album that Columbia put out (Dan Morgenstern did great notes for one issue), and I actually re-mastered the Lausanne concert for a Japanese company (I can send you a CDR of this).  I have been on all sides  of this question, and though I find a lot of it as interesting, I rarely listen to it (I think of 'late' as post-1953). There is also, somewhere, a TV performance from '55 that is quite fantastic. Also some of the things Paudras put out are quite good.

as for RCA - the two performances I LOVE  - are I Cover the Waterfront and It Never Entered My Mind. IIRC, in particular, It Never Entered My Mind is quite an amazing and transcendent performance.

 

Edited by AllenLowe
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Just an informational note, Sony Japan recently released budget reissues of the two RCA titles. I like this material. In critical mode later Bud is a roller coaster up and down thing, but in general I listen to it without prejudice . . .it's Bud. . .I love his musical mind and heart.

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Allen: In terms of comparing RCA Bud, or other late Bud, to vintage Bud, I haven't done that recently. All I can say, as I said above, is that listening to that RCA material the other day, I heard a wonderful feeling of "aliveness" in it -- not an untroubled aliveness to be sure but a rare sense of in-the-moment decisions and acts, which is something that I prize in jazz, if only because it is something that the music more or less inherently promises but often does not deliver. Yes, with Bud -- at this time especially -- it's tricky to disentangle that from the various emotional precipices upon which is he often barely standing, but nonetheless...

For one thing, while listening I half-consciously found myself mentally shuffling through a number of other accomplished, stylishly somewhat or closely related pianists of the time and asked myself if any of them played with such immediacy. No, I thought, for all their virtues. Maybe the Earl Hines one began to hear in the mid-'60s or Cecil Taylor. IIRC, some musician who was around at the time and in a position to have such an opinion, maybe Jackie McLean, said that he thought Bud played more than Bird. I wouldn't say that myself, at least not with a snap of the fingers, but we're talking about levels of inventiveness that probably are at the limits of human achievement and perception.

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interesting because I was listening one day with Dave Schildkraut to the 'Round Midnight version from Birdland and that's exactly what he said; "Bird was great but Bud had 10 fingers...."

as for Bud in general, just about any time I compose these days, he's in my head.

also:

 

Edited by AllenLowe
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4 hours ago, AllenLowe said:

interesting because I was listening one day with Dave Schildkraut to the 'Round Midnight version from Birdland and that's exactly what he said; "Bird was great but Bud had 10 fingers...."

as for Bud in general, just about any time I compose these days, he's in my head.

also:

 

Maybe I'm just echoing what Schildkraut said to you.

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A warning: After beginning this thread by extolling much that's on the RCA-Bluebird Powell CD "Time Was," I bought "Bud Plays Bird," which Bud recorded for Roulette with the same rhythm section (George Duvivier and Art Taylor) at about the same time and which had never been issued until Cuscuna unearthed it in 1996. Sad to say, it's pretty dire, at least IMO. Bud sounds close to comatose, and/or like he's in chains. The instrument he's playing is close to comatose, too. Onward to more late Powell.

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46 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Hmmm, I liked that one a lot. But it's been a while. Up front, though, I've heard next to no really dire Bud, except The Return Of Bud Powell. One of those varying mileages things, no doubt.

Well, the Penguin Guide gives it four stars and says "All Bud Powell fans will want this record." By contrast, check out anything, but especially "Just One of Those Things," on "Bud Powell, Live in Geneva 1962," which was mentioned earlier in this thread, in a passage I took from a knowledgable Powell fan's survey on Amazon of the best latter-day Powell live recordings. My gosh what playing! 

BTW, what I particularly don't like about "Bud Plays Bird" is the sense almost throughout that Bud finds himself imprisoned by bar-lines; few are the moments when he flows over them, which is why I said that he sounds like he's in chains. When Bud was really Bud, as on "Live in Geneva," there was no bar line he couldn't leave in the dust.

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The opening 30 seconds of the Geneva “Just One of Those Things” can be heard here:

 

http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7988203

 

Bud goes on at that pace and level for six minutes.

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I think Bud was always "really" Bud, depending on where Bud was at at any given moment...

I don't hear "dire" or "chains" here, I just hear Bud when not all the synapses were totally connected, but the ideas were still coming, and he made them go through with what he had. It's nothing like when he was "firing on all cylinders", but there's some harmonic turns in there (in both right and left hands) that he connects so unblinkingly that it makes me smile anyway. Working with less available maybe, but hardly chained. Whatever "space" he was in, he was in it.

 

and this, so right within itself (and again, that left hand, some of those choices...they work, he knows why to play them, because he knows where he's going with them, whatever "issues" there are are not of a lack of ideas or inspiration, and by god, whatever physical/mental connection issues he might have been having, again - he found a way to get it out and make it fit).

 

 

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4 hours ago, JSngry said:

Hmmm, I liked that one a lot. But it's been a while. Up front, though, I've heard next to no really dire Bud, except The Return Of Bud Powell. One of those varying mileages things, no doubt.

same here .... and the Duvivier/Taylor combo is a real asset ....

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There are substantial differences. However, Bud is one of those players for whom those differences register only as a subjective observation, not really as a mark of "merit" or lack thereof. The guy had one of those minds that was always working, and the process of how he got his body to get the ideas out in some form or fashion, a process that would vary widely and wildly, to be sure, is always a fascinating one, for me anyway.

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I hear what Larry's saying and agree with some of it. That said, I do like much of Bud Plays Bird. His playing isn't perfect - there are some flubs and a few lapses in his timing - but I'll go back to listen to his playing on the first (October '57) session again. "Confirmation", "Ko Ko", and "Buzzy" stand out for me.

When I listen to Bud, I feel that I have a sense of how he was feeling when he recorded, more than I do with almost any other pianist. I always have the sense that he was laying his feelings out there for us to hear and didn't hold back. On the October session, he sounds in a relaxed good mood and, for me anyway, that comes through in his playing, even on the uptempo tunes.

So even though Bud Plays Bird is far from being my favorite Bud, even my favorite late Bud, there's enough there that I want to hear now and will want to hear in the future.

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  • 1 month later...

As for the "Bud plays Bird", I wouldn´t say Bud´s playing is bad on it, but on some tunes he sounds like he is not really interested in what he´s doing. Same on a lot of the RCA material.

On the other hand sound very good on his playing a few weeks later (november 57) in Paris, his first booking there at Club Saint Germain, with  Pierre Michelot and Kenny Clarke. The fast version of "bebop" is great, and the way he leads from "Bud on Bach" to "Yesterdays", one of the best versions of that ballad.

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