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Neo-bop / Young Lions records that you still listen to


Rabshakeh

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On 3/16/2022 at 10:33 PM, Rabshakeh said:

Jazz has no equivalent ingroup cultural memory in relation to the period between its wider popularity and the present.

I wouldn't count on that, just because you don't know about it.  If working in record stores has taught me anything, it's that there's a devoted fandom for darn near everything and critical analysis has darned little to do with it.  People line things up and group them in all kinds of wonderfully weird ways.

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Joshua Redman, James Carter, Frank Kimbrough, Joe Locke, Ravi Coltrane, Jason Moran and Stefon Harris get occasional listens.  It would probably be more if I lived where I got to hear them and similar players more often.  I appreciate a younger musician that takes the time to appreciate the tradition and try not to demand utter originality from day one.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I started listening to jazz in the early 1980s.  Received a fantastic education on the classics from a college music professor.  As for then current releases, relied on a great college record store staff.  They directed me all over the place without regard to "bucket" i.e. Chick Corea and Muhal Richard Abrams simply both played keyboards.

As for the stuff we are talking about, I read heard all about Wynton Marsalis and also knew of the current guys in the Blakey band.  I saw an iteration circa 1984 or so with Blanchard/Harrison .  Over the next few years, I generally came to the belief this music was stilted and moved toward more adventurous folks.  Nevertheless, a bunch of neo-bop/young lion lps/CDs ended up in my collection.

Listening to some of them over the past few months, a few opinions:

Ralph Peterson - Blue Note LPs - very solid, exciting, both he and his soloists

Geri Allen - same

Kenny Kirkland - that album on GRP, while not fully a lost classic, is very nice as is most of his playing elsewhere

Brandford Marsalis - there is a ton of it out there, both as a leader and sideman, holds my attention, although hard to cite a favorite or classic

Wynton Marsalis - what is that dude up to?  generally very boring, Black Codes and the Blues Alley date are exceptions.  Who buys this stuff?

Terence Blanchard - solo - generally good stuff, some good records that moved away from the neo-bop thing, more of his own sound

Harper Brothers - actually saw them live, very spirited, but similar reaction to DMP on a CD

Stephen Scott - a favorite back then and I stiff enjoy those Verve CDs

Mulgrew Miller - very much enjoy the Landmark/Novus band LPs

Kenny Garrett - hit or miss, own more than I enjoy

Bennie Wallace - did not care for at the time, glad I kept them, like 'em now

Chico Freeman - particularly his Musician/Contemporary LPs, loved them then, love them now

Marcus Printup - really dug the Blue Note LPs, still enjoy today

Joshua Redman - got zero traction with him

Vincent Herring - liked the Landmark CD with Nat Adderley, but hard to engage beyond that

Roy Hargrove - from the moment he jumped off a Bobby Watson LP, always loved his sound/style

Leaving many folks out, but definitely some winners above.

Edited by Eric
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On 4/15/2022 at 3:50 PM, Eric said:

I started listening to jazz in the early 1980s.  Received a fantastic education on the classics from a college music professor.  As for then current releases, relied on a great college record store staff.  They directed me all over the place without regard to "bucket" i.e. Chick Corea and Muhal Richard Abrams simply both played keyboards.

As for the stuff we are talking about, I read heard all about Wynton Marsalis and also knew of the current guys in the Blakey band.  I saw an iteration circa 1984 or so with Blanchard/Harrison .  Over the next few years, I generally came to the belief this music was stilted and moved toward more adventurous folks.  Nevertheless, a bunch of neo-bop/young lion lps/CDs ended up in my collection.

Listening to some of them over the past few months, a few opinions:

Ralph Peterson - Blue Note LPs - very solid, exciting, both he and his soloists

Geri Allen - same

Kenny Kirkland - that album on GRP, while not fully a lost classic, is very nice as is most of his playing elsewhere

Brandford Marsalis - there is a ton of it out there, both as a leader and sideman, holds my attention, although hard to cite a favorite or classic

Wynton Marsalis - what is that dude up to?  generally very boring, Black Codes and the Blues Alley date are exceptions.  Who buys this stuff?

Terence Blanchard - solo - generally good stuff, some good records that moved away from the neo-bop thing, more of his own sound

Harper Brothers - actually saw them live, very spirited, but similar reaction to DMP on a CD

Stephen Scott - a favorite back then and I stiff enjoy those Verve CDs

Mulgrew Miller - very much enjoy the Landmark/Novus band LPs

Kenny Garrett - hit or miss, own more than I enjoy

Bennie Wallace - did not care for at the time, glad I kept them, like 'em now

Chico Freeman - particularly his Musician/Contemporary LPs, loved them then, love them now

Marcus Printup - really dug the Blue Note LPs, still enjoy today

Joshua Redman - got zero traction with him

Vincent Herring - liked the Landmark CD with Nat Adderley, but hard to engage beyond that

Roy Hargrove - from the moment he jumped off a Bobby Watson LP, always loved his sound/style

Leaving many folks out, but definitely some winners above.

Your assessment is on the money. I’ve never been all that enamored with Redman or Garrett, particularly as composers. I have a lot of their early recordings and rarely play them.

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I do sometimes wonder how the 1980s generation would be seen had the Young Lions marketing campaign not happened. I wonder whether it damaged e.g. Terence Blanchard in the longer term to be associated with the Marsalis hype machine.

On a totally different note: I've recently been exploring the later period Wynton Marsalis records: the larger and more 'ambitious' group works like Blood on the Fields and Citi Movement. I'm not sure what I was expecting, but I'm pretty surprised at how poor they are. They're like something a promising 16 year old would write. Whether you like his 1980s stuff or not, he seems to have utterly failed to deliver in the longer term. Even his role as a contraversialist seems to have been taken by Payton recently.

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I have really enjoyed Marcus Printup's SteepleChase recordings in recent years.

Aside from working as a sideman, Stephen Scott seems to have vanished from recording as a leader since the late 1990s. It's a mystery to me, as I enjoyed his recordings.

The tendency of both Wynton and Delfeayo to write overly long suites with narration make my eyes glaze over. Narration can work sometimes in shorter pieces, but heavy doses of it makes me toss the release into the "listen to later" or "discard" piles.

Edited by Ken Dryden
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59 minutes ago, Ken Dryden said:

I have really enjoyed Marcus Printup's SteepleChase recordings in recent years.

Aside from working as a sideman, Stephen Scott seems to have vanished from recording as a leader since the late 1990s. It's a mystery to me, as I enjoyed his recordings.

The tendency of both Wynton and Delfeayo to write overly long suites with narration make my eyes glaze over. Narration can work sometimes in shorter pieces, but heavy doses of it makes me toss the release into the "listen to later" or "discard" piles.

Ken - any recommendations on the Printup Steeplechase lps?

I have wondered the same thing about Scott - seems like often those guys end up as educators - have not checked his bio lately.  Of Sonny Rollins though he was OK 😎

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  • 4 weeks later...

What happened to Cindy Blackman ? She was a fantastic drummer and had that thing, that powerful drumming I like most. She was also with Jackie McLean. 
I somewhere read that she married Santano, and since that time I didn´t hear anymore from her at least in the genre of music I know.....

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1 hour ago, Gheorghe said:

What happened to Cindy Blackman ? She was a fantastic drummer and had that thing, that powerful drumming I like most. She was also with Jackie McLean. 
I somewhere read that she married Santano, and since that time I didn´t hear anymore from her at least in the genre of music I know.....

Indeed, most of her more recent discography is with Santana... she's on a 2014 Rodney Kendrick album that might qualify as "the genre of music you know"

 

 

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