Playing Favorites: Reflections on Jazz in the 1970s

[felser]

9 hours ago, HutchFan said:

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.)

 

Impeccable choices (would have been hard to go wrong with most any Waldron or Curson from the decade).  Not familiar with the Williams or the Stenson, and I like late Williams a good bit, but find much of her later work hard to come by.

[HutchFan]

15 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.

I'm with you. I think Pop Wine is easily Curson's best date as a leader -- at least among those I've heard.

Too bad it isn't more well-known.  Those Futura releases can be tough to find, at least here in the U.S.

 

1 minute ago, felser said:

Impeccable choices (would have been hard to go wrong with most any Waldron or Curson from the decade).  Not familiar with the Williams or the Stenson, and I like late Williams a good bit, but find much of her later work hard to come by.

If you like Mary Lou, you really owe it to yourself to hear Nite Life.  (It's available on YT here.)

Honestly, I feel just as strongly about Zoning and Free Spirits as well.  

 

[Jim Duckworth]

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

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

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)

I really like this week's selections.  

What say you?

This list, although each selection is great, contains two records that rocked my world:  Genesis and Afro-Eurasian Eclipse.  The Elvin record was my idea of what a record could and should be at that time.  The Duke record was the first Ellington I connected with immediately.

[HutchFan]

31 minutes ago, Jim Duckworth said:

This list, although each selection is great, contains two records that rocked my world:  Genesis and Afro-Eurasian Eclipse.  The Elvin record was my idea of what a record could and should be at that time.  The Duke record was the first Ellington I connected with immediately.

Yeah man!!!  

 

 

[Brad]

14 hours ago, HutchFan said:

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.)

 

Received my copy of Comin’ On Home. Your blog may clean me out. 

[HutchFan]

31 minutes ago, Brad said:

Received my copy of Comin’ On Home. Your blog may clean me out. 

Ha!  That makes two of us!   

 

[felser]

1 hour ago, Brad said:

Your blog may clean me out. 

Just wait 'til he starts hitting some of the Strata East stuff, which will set you back $40-50 a pop 

[mjazzg]

27 minutes ago, felser said:

Just wait 'til he starts hitting some of the Strata East stuff, which will set you back $40-50 a pop 

When you find original, good condition Strata Easts at that low $ let me know 

Just listening to 'Pop Wine' for the first time. Whoa!!

Edited February 19, 2020 by mjazzg

[felser]

1 hour ago, mjazzg said:

When you find original, good condition Strata Easts at that low $ let me know 

Just listening to 'Pop Wine' for the first time. Whoa!!

Was referring to the knock-off CD's on various reissue labels!   

[mjazzg]

8 hours ago, felser said:

Was referring to the knock-off CD's on various reissue labels!   

and they make those prices...

[JSngry]

Yesterday's Johnny Lyttle selection is most worthy for including People & Love, a great record that I had totally slept on until The Magnificent Goldberg advocated for it here a while back.

Marvin Cabell!!!!

[HutchFan]

30 minutes ago, JSngry said:

Yesterday's Johnny Lyttle selection is most worthy for including People & Love, a great record that I had totally slept on until The Magnificent Goldberg advocated for it here a while back.

Marvin Cabell!!!!

Funny you mention Marvin Cabell, Jim.  I'd intended to write about him last night.  (I was just too tired.)  Because Cabell's sound really struck me too!  It's an oddly compelling sound, "wrong" at times -- but in a Pee Wee Russell sort of way.  Not precisely like Pee Wee, of course, but you know what I mean: Wrong but right. ... I did some poking around on the web, and couldn't find out much about Cabell.  Apparently, he only appeared on ten or so LPs, and made just one as a leader (in the early-80s).  But I did stumble across a reference to Cabell in Richard Cook's book, Blue Note Records: The Biography.  Cook is in the process of trashing John Patton's album Accent on the Blues (on which Cabell appears) and in passing slams Cabell's playing as "wretched." 

That made my eyes bug out!  ... Just goes to show that you can't trust anybody's ears but your own.  I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised because Cook dismisses EVERYTHING that Blue Note did in the late-60s and 1970s out-of-hand.  Talk about painting with broad brush strokes!  Way too broad, I'd say.  

 

[JSngry]

Marvin Cabell played with a "neighborhood" sound, simple as that.

To that end...

Fuck Richard Cook and whatever neighborhood he rode in on.

I love Marvin Cabell's playing. If you haven't heard his solo album, by all means, do. It's totally "neighborhood".

[Gheorghe]

Interesting playing lists ! 

But what I noticed is that most of the stuff is acoustic. When I think back to the 70´s I remember the most stuff was Electric. 

I also have quite a lot of 70´s jazz, but very much of it is the Electric Miles etc. 

[Brad]

Hadn’t heard much Mongo Santamaría so really enjoyed your selections. Thanks 

[felser]

12 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Interesting playing lists ! 

But what I noticed is that most of the stuff is acoustic. When I think back to the 70´s I remember the most stuff was Electric. 

I also have quite a lot of 70´s jazz, but very much of it is the Electric Miles etc. 

I think there will be more of that to come as he works his way through the decade.  Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Weather Report etc.  debut recordings were later than early 1971, I believe, and that is where he is in the rundown right now.

[Brad]

I haven’t listened to Johnny Lytle in a long time and the only album I have is Nice and Easy but Tawhid from People & Love blew me away. That album is now on my radar. I see it’s been reissued as a two fer.

[JSngry]

The Mongo selection is a good one, and from a band sandpoint it's as good as any. But for me, Up From The Roots (Atlantic, 1972) is the Mongo album, period, just for Side 1. The closest thing to it (to my knowledge, anyway) is, sorta, Patato y Totico on Verve.

The band cuts on Side 2 are neither better nor worse than anything else, but that Side 1is something else altogether!

and then, to close out the side:

You're either gonna turn the record over that or else play that side over again. I almost always go the latter route, but Side 2 does get you what I think was the debut recording of "Little Angel" which sorta became a Latin-Jazz
standard", or did for a while:

No matter...Mongo had been making "crossover" records to one degree or another for about 10 years before he dropped this one on a perhaps unsuspecting market (unsuspecting, and if its ubiquity in the cutout bins before too long was any indicator, uninterested). This was also his last for Atlantic, and from there he went to Fania subsidy Vaya for the rest of the 70s, after which...he kept making more records!

I don't know if he ever again made another "roots" album like this one, for any label. Not that he needed or wanted to, but the ones he did make were something special indeed.

[HutchFan]

Jim,

Thanks for the YT links. I'll give Up from the Roots a close listen. 

I've heard the record, but I don't know it.  

 

20 hours ago, Gheorghe said:

Interesting playing lists ! 

But what I noticed is that most of the stuff is acoustic. When I think back to the 70´s I remember the most stuff was Electric. 

I also have quite a lot of 70´s jazz, but very much of it is the Electric Miles etc. 

Gheorghe,

Remember that I've only posted 55 selections so far.  More than 300 to go!  

Also, I make no bones about the fact that these records are my favorites, not "representative records" from the decade.  Naturally, YMMV.

 

8 hours ago, felser said:

I think there will be more of that to come as he works his way through the decade.  Mahavishnu Orchestra, Return to Forever, Weather Report etc.  debut recordings were later than early 1971, I believe, and that is where he is in the rundown right now.

Good timing.  I posted my entry about The Inner Mounting Flame on Friday!   

 

8 hours ago, Brad said:

I haven’t listened to Johnny Lytle in a long time and the only album I have is Nice and Easy but Tawhid from People & Love blew me away. That album is now on my radar. I see it’s been reissued as a two fer.

If you'd like to sample more, check out the videos on discogs: The Soulful Rebel and People & Love.

I had an interesting reaction to People & Love.  When I first bit into it, I was wondering if it might be too sweet.  I chewed on it for a while, and l discovered that's not the case at all.  In fact, it's surprisingly meaty.   Don't let that first flavor fool you.

 

Edited February 25, 2020 by HutchFan

[felser]

1 hour ago, HutchFan said:

Good timing.  I posted my entry about The Inner Mounting Flame on Friday!   

I remember hearing that album for the first time my first year of college.  The first cut, "Meeting of the Spirits", immediately blew my mind!  I had not heard the Tony Williams Lifetime "Emergency" album yet, so absolutely nothing prepared me for the experience! 'Birds of Fire' would also have been a great choice, but nothing holds the shock appeal of that first album.

[Rooster_Ties]

Goodness, gracious! -- that Attila Zoller & Masahiko Sato MPS album is just divine!  Spinning the whole thing now through YouTube (and what a damn shame it's never been on CD, apparently, at least according to Discogs).  I'm totally smitten.  Sato is a name I've run across a number of times, and I have a fair smattering of Japanese jazz, but as best I'm seeing - I don't seem to have anything else with him (and nothing by him).

• An aside: here's another Japanese musician whose name I'll try and cram in my cranium somehow (I have to confess I have a really tough time keeping track of who's who -- and I suppose I ought to develop some kind of cheat-sheet with a couple dozen names, their main axe, and maybe one key recording each is on (or lead) -- so I can begin to try and keep track of more of their names in my head).

Here's a playlist of that entire Zoller/Sato album you posted.  What a winner!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mLmRX2y5-ZBOsX9-KNV8pwBLq6dyydjVA

 

[HutchFan]

13 minutes ago, Rooster_Ties said:

Goodness, gracious! -- that Attila Zoller & Masahiko Sato MPS album is just divine!  Spinning the whole thing now through YouTube (and what a damn shame it's never been on CD, apparently, at least according to Discogs).  I'm totally smitten.  Sato is a name I've run across a number of times, and I have a fair smattering of Japanese jazz, but as best I'm seeing - I don't seem to have anything else with him (and nothing by him).

• An aside: here's another Japanese musician whose name I'll try and cram in my cranium somehow (I have to confess I have a really tough time keeping track of who's who -- and I suppose I ought to develop some kind of cheat-sheet with a couple dozen names, their main axe, and maybe one key recording each is on (or lead) -- so I can begin to try and keep track of more of their names in my head).

Here's a playlist of that entire Zoller/Sato album you posted.  What a winner!

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_mLmRX2y5-ZBOsX9-KNV8pwBLq6dyydjVA

 

That's fantastic, Rooster!  I'm so glad that you're enjoying it.  

I definitely want to explore more from Sato -- and Zoller as well.  

I wish A Path Through Haze was available on CD too.  That said, I'm glad that the Germany company Edel acquired the MPS catalog a few years ago.  Otherwise, these recordings likely wouldn't be available at all -- even as downloads.   I know that the MPS catalog was formerly owned by a series of European "majors" -- but they reissued very little, aside from the highest profile stuff. 

[HutchFan]

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

02/25/20 - Thelonious Monk – The London Collection, Vols. 1 & 2 (Black Lion/1201 Music, 1988)

02/24/20 - Attila Zoller & Masahiko Sato – A Path Through Haze (MPS, 1972)

02/23/20 - Tete Montoliu – Songs for Love (Enja, 1974)

02/22/20 - Ornette Coleman – The Complete Science Fiction Sessions (Columbia Legacy, 2000)

02/21/20 - The Mahavishnu Orchestra with John McLaughlin – The Inner Mounting Flame (Columbia, 1971)

02/20/20 - Johnny Lytle – The Soulful Rebel and People & Love (Real Gone Music, 2013)

02/19/20 - Mongo Santamaria – Mongo at Montreux (Atlantic, 1971)

 

8 weeks (56 entries) now complete.  About 15% of the way to December 31.  LONG way to go.

 

[Д.Д.]

On 2/19/2020 at 4:16 PM, HutchFan said:

I'm with you. I think Pop Wine is easily Curson's best date as a leader -- at least among those I've heard.

Too bad it isn't more well-known.  Those Futura releases can be tough to find, at least here in the U.S.

What's so tough? You go to the label's site (http://futuramarge.free.fr/), pay €16 ($17.5) by PayPal and receive your CD in a couple of weeks.  

[HutchFan]

4 hours ago, Д.Д. said:

What's so tough? You go to the label's site (http://futuramarge.free.fr/), pay €16 ($17.5) by PayPal and receive your CD in a couple of weeks.  

Well. Yeah. There's that.  

I just meant that there (usually) aren't copies available at typical U.S. online retailers -- or "brick & mortar" stores either.  For example, a jazz specialty retailer like Dusty Groove only has Futura releases every once in a while.

But yeah. Directly from the label. That works.