Playing Favorites: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s

[JSngry]

The 70s were very good for Esther Phillips. And she was good for them!

 

[HutchFan]

Weekly Recap - PLAYING FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s

02/11/20 - Blue Mitchell – Blue Mitchell (Mainstream, 1971)

02/10/20 - Stan Getz – Dynasty (Verve, 1971)

02/09/20 - Elvin Jones – Genesis (Blue Note, 1971)

02/08/20 - Duke Ellington – The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse: A Suite in Eight Parts (Fantasy, 1975)

02/07/20 - Joe Chambers – The Almoravid (Muse/32 Jazz, 1974)

02/06/20 - Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath – Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath (RCA Neon/Fledg'ling, 1971)

02/05/20 - Graham Collier Music – Songs for My Father (Fontana/BGO, 1970)

 

I really like this week's selections.  

What say you?

[kh1958]

I do recollect that when I was in college and, based on my Mingus obsession, trying to understand Ellington, I had a copy of the Afro-Eurasian Eclipse and the Prestige issue of his 1943 Carnegie Hall concert. The combination of the Chinoiserie and Acht O'clock Rock on Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, and the side of Strayhorn compositions from the 1943 concert (ranging from Johnny Come Lately to the bleak Dirge), opened the Ellington door fully wide for me.

Dynasty, I found a used copy at the long-gone Collector's Records and loved it from the first moment.

[HutchFan]

31 minutes ago, kh1958 said:

I do recollect that when I was in college and, based on my Mingus obsession, trying to understand Ellington, I had a copy of the Afro-Eurasian Eclipse and the Prestige issue of his 1943 Carnegie Hall concert. The combination of the Chinoiserie and Acht O'clock Rock on Afro-Eurasian Eclipse, and the side of Strayhorn compositions from the 1943 concert (ranging from Johnny Come Lately to the bleak Dirge), opened the Ellington door fully wide for me.

Dynasty, I found a used copy at the long-gone Collector's Records and loved it from the first moment.

Great story about finding your pathway into Ellington from two very different angles.

Completely agree re: Dynasty.  It was an immediate "Oh Wow!!!" for me too. 

 

[JSngry]

The Joe Chambers side is woefully/too often overlooked. wonderful music, and the compositional element of Chamber's musical persona has seldom been better spotlighted, imo.

Afro-Eurasian Eclipse is essential for me. Mention must/should be made of the opening monologue to Chinoiserie, imo one of the most concise, prescient, and relevant anthropological/sociological observations of the 20th Century. Combined with the cover art (not his, of course, but...), this is one of Ellington's most profound statements, and some of his most developed post-Strayhorn music.

[felser]

Good choices once again.  I'm another big fan of 'Dynasty', and of Eddie Louiss in general.  'Dynasty' was my first Getz, grabbed for like $0.99 from a cut-out bin.   Great Ellington side, the right choice.   Really glad to see Graham Collier present on the list.  Really good Elvin Jones, though I would have gone with 'Coalition' as my first choice and 'Live At The Lighthouse' as my second choice.   I'm not as big a fan of the Chambers album as others here are.

[JSngry]

29 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

Completely agree re: Dynasty.  It was an immediate "Oh Wow!!!" for me too. 

It was for me too, but it's kinda faded as the years have passed. Same thing with Sweet Rain, which for the longest time was THE Getz record for me.

Not so with Captain Marvel, though. I think it's a Tony Williams thing. Still tyring to figure out why the release of that one was delayed for so long.

[HutchFan]

16 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Not so with Captain Marvel, though. I think it's a Tony Williams thing. Still tyring to figure out why the release of that one was delayed for so long.

And The Master sat on the shelf for seven years too.  More weirdness from Big Red.

... For me, Sweet Rain is still a punch in the gut in the best possible way.  And Dynasty too.

 

20 minutes ago, felser said:

Good choices once again.  I'm another big fan of 'Dynasty', and of Eddie Louiss in general.  'Dynasty' was my first Getz, grabbed for like $0.99 from a cut-out bin.   Great Ellington side, the right choice.   Really glad to see Graham Collier present on the list.  Really good Elvin Jones, though I would have gone with 'Coalition' as my first choice and 'Live At The Lighthouse' as my second choice.   I'm not as big a fan of the Chambers album as others here are.

Genesis has always been my fave -- but I need to pull out Coalition, give it spin.  Haven't listened in a long while.   

Edited February 11, 2020 by HutchFan

[JSngry]

6 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

And The Master sat on the shelf for seven years too.  More weirdness from Big Red.

... For me, Sweet Rain is still a punch in the gut in the best possible way.  And Dynasty too.

The one with Francy Boland charts is the one that really shocked me. Getz was a marvelous coaster, but he always had that extra gear to go to when forced to, and those charts definitely forced him to!

[HutchFan]

8 minutes ago, JSngry said:

The one with Francy Boland charts is the one that really shocked me. Getz was a marvelous coaster, but he always had that extra gear to go to when forced to, and those charts definitely forced him to!

That record isn't at all what you might expect, is it?  So different than the rest of that band's music. 

Funny and interesting that Boland saved those tunes for Getz.  I wonder what it would've sounded like if Johnny Griffin took a crack at them.  Can't really imagine Jaws wanting to.

[JSngry]

I also think it's interesting to compare it to Focus & Mickey One, which up until then were Getz' most "challenging" settings. He kinda coasts over those (and I don't mean that in a bad way), but with the Boland charts, he really confronts the challenges, digs in emotionally as well as musically. That's some hard shit!

I do think that he had something triggered in him as the late-60s/early 70s unfolded. Not unlike Miles, he responded to the aggressive changes in music/society by engaging them, not avoiding or skirting them. Maybe he pulled back a little after he got it, but the records from the very last year or two of his life, when he knew he was dying....strong stuff by any standard.

[felser]

 

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

And The Master sat on the shelf for seven years too.  More weirdness from Big Red.

... For me, Sweet Rain is still a punch in the gut in the best possible way.  And Dynasty too.

 

Probably my three favorite Getz albums, period, though I also really like the Gold set with Joann Brackeen.

Edited February 11, 2020 by felser

[Peter Friedman]

Interesting that my favorite Getz recordings do not include any of those mentioned in recent posts here.

I have a long list of Getz favorites - I could easily list roughly 15 or 20 that I would not want to be without. 

But if forced to just mention a very few, these would be the ones -- At The Shrine Verve),  Voyage (Blackhawk), Serenity (EmArcy), Anniversary (Emarcy).

[JSngry]

A thought about late/last Ellington - I've always found it interesting that the band in its last few years took on a sonic resemblance to an Archie Shepp  type of ensemble - ragged, rugged, in your face and not really giving a damn. I realize that some of that was just a function of the personnel situation growing a little, uh..."unpredictable" as the years passed and Mercer having a challenge on his hands in getting steady players to play that kind of a schedule for that type of money.

But, still, Duke always wrote for the sounds of the players he had, and it seems like the raggedier the band got, the more he embraced it. Those last bands are all about the primacy of voice, and it's a voice that is as rugged as the most harsh blues singer/band. And in that, he reminds me of Shepp. In both cases, the primacy of "the blues feeling" is always there. Everything else happens from there.

There's a video of Shepp sitting in with Ellington, and it's pretty weak, Shepp was not yet developed enough in "traditional" harmonic improvisation to really dig in, but his tone and the tone of the last Ellington bands...I will posit that they are making some of the same conclusions after coming from some very different places. And Afro-Eurasian Eclipse seems to be daring us to hear otherwise.

Here, take this out of the temporal real and into the ether. Tell me that there are not some melding of vibrations of both timbre and intent, Shepp's and Ellington's, going on here:

To me, the most glorious aspect of Ellington's music is the raw sound of it, the shapes and colors and textures. It never stopped, no matter how "ragged" the band got. Never.

[HutchFan]

2 hours ago, Peter Friedman said:

Interesting that my favorite Getz recordings do not include any of those mentioned in recent posts here.

I have a long list of Getz favorites - I could easily list roughly 15 or 20 that I would not want to be without. 

But if forced to just mention a very few, these would be the ones -- At The Shrine Verve),  Voyage (Blackhawk), Serenity (EmArcy), Anniversary (Emarcy).

To each his own. 👍

Incidentally, I'm completely on board with you regarding Voyage, Serenity, and Anniversary.  All three are superb records, IMO.  I'd also add People Time and Blue Skies to the mix to round out my favorites from Getz's final years.

 

 

[HutchFan]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

To me, the most glorious aspect of Ellington's music is the raw sound of it, the shapes and colors and textures. It never stopped, no matter how "ragged" the band got. Never.

Re: that ^ sentence: Yes, yes, and yes. 100%. 

As far as your comparison, I've never thought about Duke's sound in relation to Shepp, in particular.  But I have wondered if Ellington hasn't gotten his due with regards to bringing an "African musical vision" into jazz -- way, way, way before the idea became fairly common in the 1970s. ... Which might be another way of saying the same thing that you're suggesting. 

In other words, if you have a different vision (and different values), you'll produce a different sort of music. And traditional European ways of thinking about Duke's music aren't adequate to the task -- and perhaps miss the point entirely. 

The fact that Duke was an autodidact also comes into play here. It's part of the mix as well, I think. 

 

[JSngry]

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

As far as your comparison, I've never thought about Duke's sound in relation to Shepp, in particular.  But I have wondered if Ellington hasn't gotten his due with regards to bringing an "African musical vision" into jazz -- way, way, way before the idea became fairly common in the 1970s. ... Which might be another way of saying the same thing that you're suggesting. 

In other words, if you have a different vision (and different values), you'll produce a different sort of music. And traditional European ways of thinking about Duke's music aren't adequate to the task -- and perhaps miss the point entirely.

Yeah, same way of saying about the same thing. and it really came to the fore in Ellington's music once the "mainstays" began to peel away/drop out/off/etc which also coincided with the rise of the Black Power movement, which was very much at the heart of Shepp's total esthetic (and of course, Shepp was totally into Ellington, I mean, anybody who wasn't....). So it's not so much that I hear a conscious influence either way, just that it seems that there was a road leading that way, and they were both on it.

Another thing to consider - as ragged as those last Ellington bands could sometimes (often) be, I gotta think that Duke could have instructed Mercer to get this raggedy shit outta here and hire some people who know how to play in a section. But he didn't. If anything, it seemed that he embraced that sound, wrote in ways that accentuated it. So...I just think that those last Ellington bands, there's a lot going on in that music that makes it a lot more "contemporary" to its chronology than the Jazz Conventional Wisdom has picked up on over the years, Duke not just as the Original Afro-Futurist or some such, but also one whose never veered off that path, ever, much less just established its place and then just sat there while everybody else paid tribute as they passed him.

Nobody passed Duke Ellington.

 

[Guy Berger]

On 2/11/2020 at 9:12 AM, HutchFan said:

Weekly Recap - PLAYING FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s

02/11/20 - Blue Mitchell – Blue Mitchell (Mainstream, 1971)

02/10/20 - Stan Getz – Dynasty (Verve, 1971)

02/09/20 - Elvin Jones – Genesis (Blue Note, 1971)

02/08/20 - Duke Ellington – The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse: A Suite in Eight Parts (Fantasy, 1975)

02/07/20 - Joe Chambers – The Almoravid (Muse/32 Jazz, 1974)

02/06/20 - Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath – Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath (RCA Neon/Fledg'ling, 1971)

02/05/20 - Graham Collier Music – Songs for My Father (Fontana/BGO, 1970)

 

I really like this week's selections.  

What say you?

I love the McGregor album.  A nice combination of experimentation and tradition, African American and South African music.

The Ellington is imho very good, though it tails off in quality after the first 3 classic tracks.

The Getz is nice but not a favorite.

[mjazzg]

On 11/02/2020 at 5:12 PM, HutchFan said:

Weekly Recap - PLAYING FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s

02/11/20 - Blue Mitchell – Blue Mitchell (Mainstream, 1971)

02/10/20 - Stan Getz – Dynasty (Verve, 1971)

02/09/20 - Elvin Jones – Genesis (Blue Note, 1971)

02/08/20 - Duke Ellington – The Afro-Eurasian Eclipse: A Suite in Eight Parts (Fantasy, 1975)

02/07/20 - Joe Chambers – The Almoravid (Muse/32 Jazz, 1974)

02/06/20 - Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath – Chris McGregor's Brotherhood of Breath (RCA Neon/Fledg'ling, 1971)

02/05/20 - Graham Collier Music – Songs for My Father (Fontana/BGO, 1970)

 

I really like this week's selections.  

What say you?

I say, belatedly, that any selection with the Collier, Elvin, McGregor and best of all the Chambers is one hell of a selection. 

This project is fascinating, revealing and potentially quite costly!

[Steve Reynolds]

All hail The Brotherhood of Breath

THE band I would have wanted to see live from this era more than any other

[JSngry]

Glad to see Salt Song up this week. That's a damn good record.

[Brad]

Nite Life was the choice for this past Sunday. Great disc. 

[Rooster_Ties]

Oh my gosh, Ted Curson's Pop Wine is just the best!!  Quite a few Ted Curson albums I really love (both 'by' and just 'with') -- but Pop Wine is probably my all-time favorite of anything with or by him.  The feel is different, but I rank Pop Wine right up there with any of Charles Tolliver's 70's quartet leader-dates -- which is high praise.

[Brad]

4 hours ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Oh my gosh, Ted Curson's Pop Wine is just the best!!  Quite a few Ted Curson albums I really love (both 'by' and just 'with') -- but Pop Wine is probably my all-time favorite of anything with or by him.  The feel is different, but I rank Pop Wine right up there with any of Charles Tolliver's 70's quartet leader-dates -- which is high praise.

Don’t know much about Curson and Pop Wine is very — don’t know the right word, so I’ll go with cool, incisive, what have you. 

[HutchFan]

Weekly Recap - PLAYING FAVORITES: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s

02/18/20 - Mal Waldron – Black Glory (Enja, 1971) and Plays the Blues: Live at the Domicile (Enja, 1971)

02/18/20 - Ted Curson – Pop Wine (Futura, 1971)

02/16/20 - Mary Lou Williams – Nite Life (Chiaroscuro, 1998)

02/15/20 - Richard "Groove" Holmes – Comin' on Home (Blue Note, 1971)

02/14/20 - Bobo Stenson – Underwear (ECM, 1971)

02/13/20 - Stanley Turrentine – Salt Song (CTI, 1971)

02/12/20 - Houston Person – Houston Express (Prestige, 1971)

 

R.I.P. to Jon Christensen, who died yesterday. 

He appeared with Bobo Stenson and Arild Andersen on Stenson's Underwear.  (And many other recordings too, of course.)

 

Edited February 19, 2020 by HutchFan