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Out of character recordings.


Scott Dolan

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Sitting here on this fine, chilly Sunday morning listening to Welcome To Love from Pharoah Sanders (William Henderson quietly stealing the show). Hearing Pharoah playing an album of ballads is...well, a somewhat odd experience.

So this got me to wondering how many "out of character dates" exist in the Jazz world. Jim hipped me to the excellent Space from MJQ not too long ago, and that definitely stands out as being out of character for them. 

What others can you think of? 

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I think this is a tough one, since most jazz most jazz artists are so eclectic and open-minded that we are not terribly surprised by anything that they do.

But I'd be willing to nominate Monk's swan song on Columbia: Monk's Blues.  Definitely out of character in a bad way.

 

 

Edited by Milestones
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1 hour ago, Milestones said:

I think this is a tough one, since most jazz most jazz artists are so eclectic and open-minded that we are not terribly surprised by anything that they do.

But I'd be willing to nominate Monk's swan song on Columbia: Monk's Blues.  Definitely out of character in a bad way.

 

 

Due to pressure from his record company (Columbia) and Oliver Nelson's hack work.

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On 12/4/2016 at 6:44 AM, Scott Dolan said:

Sitting here on this fine, chilly Sunday morning listening to Welcome To Love from Pharoah Sanders (William Henderson quietly stealing the show). Hearing Pharoah playing an album of ballads is...well, a somewhat odd experience.

So this got me to wondering how many "out of character dates" exist in the Jazz world. Jim hipped me to the excellent Space from MJQ not too long ago, and that definitely stands out as being out of character for them. 

Out of character for the late 60s, early 70s firebrand/mystic Pharoah - but absolutely in-character for the calmer/mellower Pharoah of the last 2-3 decades!

Guy

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1 hour ago, JSngry said:

It's not Oliver's best work, not by a long shot.

You know that bit about love means never having to say you're sorry? This is the album that calls bullshit on all that.

:D 

I swear I must hear this album, now! 

1 hour ago, Guy Berger said:

Out of character for the late 60s, early 70s firebrand/mystic Pharoah - but absolutely in-character for the calmer/mellower Pharoah of the last 2-3 decades!

Guy

Yeah, that's an era of his music I just never heard. I was only familiar with his fire breathing of the 60's and early 70's. 

I got into other things, and just kind of wrote him off as the pure energy music I was used to hearing rom him. I do have to admit that I thoroughly enjoyed that album, though. Listened to it twice yesterday morning. His playing was very enjoyable. And Henderson was just ripping it up. Excellent group, excellent recording. 

A buddy at work who most definitely was NOT a fan of earlier Pharoah hipped me to it. 

15 hours ago, felser said:

This one was an utter desicration:

Image result for jackie mclean monuments

BTW, read the AMG review of this one yesterday. Sounds as though the review is far more entertaining than the album. 

*spoiler alert* They weren't terribly impressed.

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I'm not sure about "out of character" but at the very least Art Taylor's appearance on a session led by Frank Wright for America Records in 1970 is pretty intriguing. The date produced Wright's "Uhuru Na Umoja" and Noah Howard's "Space Dimension." Taylor acquits himself very well in this context and the music is quite free.

The expat Parisian scene around that time was pretty interesting and also resulted in Shepp and Mobley collaborating on recordings for BYG, for example, and Philly Joe's interest in the avant-garde (resulting in dates for BYG, America, and Vogue), the latter seeming to be at least partly of a political nature.

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1 hour ago, clifford_thornton said:

I'm not sure about "out of character" but at the very least Art Taylor's appearance on a session led by Frank Wright for America Records in 1970 is pretty intriguing. The date produced Wright's "Uhuru Na Umoja" and Noah Howard's "Space Dimension." Taylor acquits himself very well in this context and the music is quite free.

That's a hell of an odd pairing, no question. I wish I could find my Frank Wright discs that Ras Moshe sent me many moons ago. All OOP at the time (I'm assuming they still are). Wild shit. And that was back when I was deep in the heart of listening to wild shit. 

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2 hours ago, clifford_thornton said:

yeah, as far as I know those Universal/America CDs are still oop. To be honest it's usually cheaper to buy the LPs at this point!

Yeah, it all ended up being a very convoluted process. Ended up being some kind of weird three way trade between Ras, Dennis Gonzalez, and myself. Ras recorded the LP's to cassette and sent them to me as a trade for something. I didn't have a cassette player at the time, but figured fuck it. I told Dennis about the cassettes at some point and he told me to send them to him and he'd put them on CD. So he kept the cassettes, sent me the CD's, then I made copies of those and sent some back to Ras. 

Crazy. And now I have no idea where the hell my copies are...

Edited by Scott Dolan
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Perhaps it was not terribly 'out of character' for Blue Mitchell to join John Mayall's band in 1971-72 to tour and record two albums ('Jazz Blues Fusion' and Moving On').

However, it was out of character for Joe Henderson to join Blood, Sweat, and Tears briefly in 1972* (post-Fred Lipsius and pre-Lou Marini Jr.) 

For both of these cats, it was a relief from managing their own groups and the money was exceptionally good.

* Joe didn't record with the band   

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I don't know if Duane has it or not, but I do, and...it's basically a Technicolor Tex Ritter album. Too much of a maybe not that good of a thing. Personally, I'd have preferred Thelma Ritter.

2 hours ago, Bill Nelson said:

Perhaps it was not terribly 'out of character' for Blue Mitchell to join John Mayall's band in 1971-72 to tour and record two albums ('Jazz Blues Fusion' and Moving On').

However, it was out of character for Joe Henderson to join Blood, Sweat, and Tears briefly in 1972* (post-Fred Lipsius and pre-Lou Marini Jr.) 

For both of these cats, it was a relief from managing their own groups and the money was exceptionally good.

* Joe didn't record with the band   

But...Joe used a contingent from it on parts of Black Is The Color.

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