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Jazz Modernism outside the Americas - Recommendations and recollections


Rabshakeh

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For the Netherlands, there are some players I like a lot, e.g. tenorists Ruud Brink and Toon van Vliet and Wim Overgaauw on guitar, but the production of nice modern jazz records was limited - most of their recordings are in somewhat more commercial settings... I agree the Jazz behind the Dikes series is essential... Boy's Big Band made some nice recordings, so did the Diamond Five... But music like the stuff on this posthumous Toon van Vliet collection, the Dutch hard bop that did exist was not documented well...

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Another recommended cd is this one, Ruud Brink with the rhythm section of the Diamond Five live 1961... I wish there was more stuff like this... what does exist are the slightly more commercial recordings by the Jacobs Brothers and Louis van Dyke, both more, say, in a Vince Guaraldi or Horst Jankowski bag... this split LP is slighlty later but it might be a good introduction... from the same time around 1970 are those famous Ann Burton albums

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12 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Some interesting hints on Belgian reissues, Niko. Thanks!

I had no idea the 10" Herman Sandy LP I found at a totally unlikely record fair locally more than 30 years ago was important enough in the Belgian jazz discography to be included (in part) in these compilations.

BBS, I am awaiting your thoughtful and eloquent response to my question about Andre Hodeir. ;) 

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10 minutes ago, Big Beat Steve said:

Some interesting hints on Belgian reissues, Niko. Thanks!

I had no idea the 10" Herman Sandy LP I found at a totally unlikely record fair locally more than 30 years ago was important enough in the Belgian jazz discography to be included (in part) in these compilations.

congrats on that find! There was just so little recording of modern jazz in Belgium and the Netherlands... the Belgians are documented a bit better because they spent more time in Paris... if you look at a discography like that of Frans Elsen, it's really quite depressing - there are the two compilation projects, Jazz behind the Dikes and before that Jazz at the Kurhaus, there's a 45 single and then some recordings with clarinetist Peter Schilperoort who briefly abandoned his Dixieland career to [work as an aircraft engineer at Fokker, most modernist job ever, and] record music in the style of Benny Goodman... and then there's stuff from the 70s onwards... similarly for Belgium, in terms of recordings that were issued in Belgium at the time in the 50s, you have this and these three... and that's more or less it...

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A lot of AA & AAA teams. The real players eventually made it to the bigs, as real players always do  The rest, hey we got 'em here too, some people just like a ball game, period, that's why there's ball parks for every occasion, so root root root for the home team, and if they don't win... there's probably a reason.

I can only take "European jazz" seriously once the "Europeans" stopped trying to play like " Americans". Wherever you are, stand your ground, your ground. Be neither conqueror or conquered.

Of course, nowadays, whose ground is it anyway? Doesn't matter, it's all going to hell, what the fires don't burn, the waters will wash away 

But that Swingles/MJQ record, I bouught an American Phillips copy of it used in the late 70s and had gotten rid of it before the early 80s arrived. OMG, what a fluffy bunch of empty fluffiness...

A lot of people have said a lot of nasty things about John Lewis, and I am happy to offer up plenty of rebuttals using many records. But THAT record...no defending against that one, just stipulate that it proves the prosecution's point and then move on.

 

 

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3 hours ago, JSngry said:

A lot of people have said a lot of nasty things about John Lewis, and I am happy to offer up plenty of rebuttals using many records. But THAT record...no defending against that one, just stipulate that it proves the prosecution's point and then move on.

Sure, it's a "one off," not representative of Lewis' work.  But I still like the record and listen to it occasionally. 

Just another listener's perspective.

 

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The Swingle Singers with Berio, yeah. Otherwise, that ShooBeeDoobieDooBach shit...just how low will white people stoop to feel justified in this fast paced ever-changing world? It's impotency is evident, like we got nothing left to fuck with, so let's but on a BachJazz mask and see who stokes us. Otherwise we die.

Bach's musical dick is big enough to survive by itself, thank you  And John Lewis showed that he had his own. Blues On Bach one hellagood record of recorded music.

Speaking of which...I'd heard good things about Lewis' post-MJQ Bach records and recently got a few of them to see what the deal was  Let me put it this way...uh...ok? If you like that kind of thing, well, there it is, but a very little of that goes a long way for me, and all those records seem REALLY long 

Just This Listener's Purrspective, and oh, check out Evolution, his solo record from 1999, and flush this other pernicious whitewashing out of your mind, and any other places it might be. That shit gotta go!

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45 minutes ago, JSngry said:

The Swingle Singers with Berio, yeah. Otherwise, that ShooBeeDoobieDooBach shit...just how low will white people stoop to feel justified in this fast paced ever-changing world? It's impotency is evident, like we got nothing left to fuck with, so let's but on a BachJazz mask and see who stokes us. Otherwise we die.

Bach's musical dick is big enough to survive by itself, thank you  And John Lewis showed that he had his own. Blues On Bach one hellagood record of recorded music.

Speaking of which...I'd heard good things about Lewis' post-MJQ Bach records and recently got a few of them to see what the deal was  Let me put it this way...uh...ok? If you like that kind of thing, well, there it is, but a very little of that goes a long way for me, and all those records seem REALLY long 

Just This Listener's Purrspective, and oh, check out Evolution, his solo record from 1999, and flush this other pernicious whitewashing out of your mind, and any other places it might be. That shit gotta go!

I know and love Evolution.  And I dig Blues on Bach too.

I will add that I also really enjoy the Swingle Singers on the Stan Getz/Michel Legrand collaboration Communication '72.  I'm sure many people would turn up their nose at that record too.  That's fine by me.

As far as your other comments go, I suppose we'll just have to agree to disagree. ;)

 

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One point occured to me this morning: what about Denmark? One of the few European scenes from which I'm pretty sure every board member could name players, although most of them are rhythm section players hailing from Ye Era of the American Exile (which I deliberately tried to avoid in the dating of this thread, since that's when everything clearly changes significantly for the European scenes). Did anything significant come before the NHOPs and Tchicais?

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18 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

BBS, I am awaiting your thoughtful and eloquent response to my question about Andre Hodeir. ;) 

Giving it the benefit of doubt, I pulled them out again - and stand corrected to a point. "Musique de films" is quite OK and listenable for what it is - film music, but somehow I'd need to see the movies and THEN listen again. Somehow there are other film jazz scores (starting with "Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud" and "Des femmes disparaissent" - or "Les liaisons dangereuses") that I can get into better even way outside the film. But that's only me ... ;)
"Essais" ("Tryouts") sounds more coherent on relistening now than I remembered it after all but still - some tracks are really a bit too "sketchy" ("esquisses") for me. There are moments when I wondered "you started out fine, now when do you get off the ground, or where ARE you going?". Something you need to be in the mood for. Of course, like with certain more explorational U.S. jazz from that period too. And like I said, YMMV.
I also relistened to the "Keny Clarke's Sextet Plays André Hodeir" (Phillips). Interesting how he trimmed down the tunes by Miles, Monk, Duke, Mulligan and Benny Carter - maybe to what he saw as the bare "essence" (pun intended again). The scores ARE interesting to listen to and compare them with other versions of those tunes but they stil leave me puzzled as to WHAT made him tick to come up with that exactly. In the liner notes he says a.o. "We felt it was important above all to rethink the problem posed by the soloist as such and in his connection with the other musicians and also to concretize by suitable works the expanded forms that could result from that." (My translation but still ...)  Huh? Was the soloist ever that much of a problem? Was Hodeir maybe answering a question nobody (or hardly anybody) in jazz had asked except Hodeir himself? Obviously blowing sessions were anathema to Hodeir, but anyway ... He seeemd to be concerned with "form" to an extent that I feel was bordering in stifling.
The record DOES merit listening but the "Grand Prix de Disque" of 1958 that was bestowed on it IMO needs to be seen in the context of the times when no doubt there was a pervading feeling of welcome for whatever was done by means of classical music (or European music forms) to "harness in" all too freewheeling jazz to make it more palatable to European listening habits.
Would you be surprised if I told you the original French title of his "Jazz - Its Evolution and Essence" book (which I did read, though a long time ago) was "Hommes et problèmes de jazz" ("Men and problems of jazz")? What (overriding) problems? To that extent and depth?
What he wrote in "Jazz Hot" at that time (of which I have read a lot) went in the same vein - often a case of "not seeing the forest for the trees" IMHO when it came to the "essence" of the VITALITY and spontaneity in jazz.

Again, YMMW, to each his own, just my 2c, and there is no overriding and eternal truth in discussions like this anyway ...^_^

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15 hours ago, JSngry said:

I can only take "European jazz" seriously once the "Europeans" stopped trying to play like " Americans". Wherever you are, stand your ground, your ground. Be neither conqueror or conquered.
 

I suppose in the same vein you can only take classical music performed by AMERICAN symphony orchestras seriously to the point they stopped trying to play like typical (forcibly and obviously Europan-sounding) orchestras performing classical works or, more consequently still, not borrow from the works of European masters but Charles Ives etc. (standing "YOUR" - American - ground). Right? :g

Of course this is a rhetorical question or retort. One that has no definite answer and is pointless to elaborate on. Just like in jazz it is very much open to debate where Europeans tried to play like "Americans" (beyond the basics of the style(s) of jazz as such which made their music "jazz"). Many of the Europeans - even in the 50s - had their own nuances and touches which set them apart, even without the crutches of devices from classical music. It's all in the ear of the behearer, and after all, to most of the  European jazzmen it was just a case of making the music they had discoverd for themselves and loved to get into and do themselves. Nothing wrong with that (except that supremely swinging rhythm sections at times were somewhat thin on the ground ;)). No absolute truth there in attempting to decree that there was excessive copying - which anyway often sounded like Americans afraid of losing their hegemony on "their" music - a music still too often ignored and slighted in THEIR country in those years ... ;) Because overall, "copying" and lack or originality - by THAT yardstick - happened with US jazzmen too.

Re- John Lewis, I definitely won't claim I am an expert on his recorded works, but have been exposed to a share of it from that period and I certainly would NOT think his Swingle Singers/MJQ LP is that atypical of his works from that period (I have the LP but cannot bring myself to listening to it now, sorry ^_^). At least not as far as his work in Europe went. He epitomized the symbiosis of jazz and classical music that was hoped for in many circles in Europe in the late 50s and early 60s. And in that respect he explored almost every direction, it seems. Remember e.g. the scores he did with classical orchestras. He not only recorded (wit the MJQ and on his own) with large symphony orchestras - incuding here in Germany - but also composed and scored and performed with these symphony orchestras for German radio and likely elsewhere in Europe in those years. Mentions of "John Lewis projects" in that respect were all over the place in late-50s/early 60s European jazz publications. The Swingle Singers IMO do fit into that particular (peculiar?) picture, like Lambert, Hendricks & Ross fit into the picture of straight-ahead jazz that otherwise was purely instrumental.
 

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For historical reco8rdings, yes, I do find myself preferring European direction over American, at least until American understanding proved a meaningful unique understanding.

But of course, Euro- American growing out of Euro is a totally different dynamic than Euro moving into African- American, where imitation to decide on meaning was the only route available.

In both cases, migrations move musics along in ways that would otherwise not occurred.

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3 hours ago, Rabshakeh said:

One point occured to me this morning: what about Denmark? One of the few European scenes from which I'm pretty sure every board member could name players, although most of them are rhythm section players hailing from Ye Era of the American Exile (which I deliberately tried to avoid in the dating of this thread, since that's when everything clearly changes significantly for the European scenes). Did anything significant come before the NHOPs and Tchicais?

50s/60s Danish jazz had a LOT of "Trad", but some (modernist) names to check out from before the NHØP heyday, apart from drummer William Schiøpffe who was on countless sessions outside Denmark (often in Sweden):

Jørgen Ryg

Max Brüel (who had the misfortune of seeing several of his 1955 Metronome EPs issued in the US on an EmArcy LP that was blasted roundly in a one-(!!)star review in DB, blaming every imaginable facet of poorness and copycatting on Brüel and his crew.  Not that the record was a standout in the annals of recorded jazz, and Brüel had clearly listened to Gerry Mulligan, but it don't sound that bad ...Maybe it grated on the reviewer that they decided to treat "Indiana" as a restrained, low-key ballad, for example?)

Bent Axen (incidentally, NHØP made his very first recordings with him in 1961)

Jazz Quintet 60 (feat. Bent Jaedig, Allan Botschinsky et al. - I think their original EPs are among those that make/made the Japanese go crraaaazy in thier auction bidding ^_^)

Erik Moseholm

and then, going beyond 100% Danish lineups, Rolf Billberg's Danish recordings form 1956/57 (reissued on Storyville), the Oscar Pettiford recordings with Danish groups, or the 1965 LP by Sahib Shihab with the Danish Radio Jazz Group (on Oktav OKLP 111 - an excellently replicated facsimile reissue LP appeared a couple of years ago).

And THEN - there were these retrospective compilations: "Danish Jazz in the 50s" - vols. 1 and 2:
https://www.discogs.com/de/Various-Danish-Jazz-In-The-50s-Vol-1-Bop-And-Mainstream/master/434418

(Sorry, Vol. 2 - on Olufsen 6001 - does not seem to be on Discogs)

 

 

 

 

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19 hours ago, Niko said:

congrats on that find! There was just so little recording of modern jazz in Belgium and the Netherlands... the Belgians are documented a bit better because they spent more time in Paris... if you look at a discography like that of Frans Elsen, it's really quite depressing - there are the two compilation projects, Jazz behind the Dikes and before that Jazz at the Kurhaus, there's a 45 single and then some recordings with clarinetist Peter Schilperoort who briefly abandoned his Dixieland career to [work as an aircraft engineer at Fokker, most modernist job ever, and] record music in the style of Benny Goodman... and then there's stuff from the 70s onwards... similarly for Belgium, in terms of recordings that were issued in Belgium at the time in the 50s, you have this and these three... and that's more or less it...

Thanks for that overview on those early Belgian LPs. I had never thought of checking out discogs. That places my Herman Sandy LP in context.
Re- Dutch recordings available now: I suppose there is a fair bit of Rita Reys around, and have you checked out what the Nederlands Jazz Archief has reissued on MODERN jazz? E.g. the "Combo's in Nederland" CDs? I have only ever got my hands on Vol. 1 ("Liefde in Rhythme - 1947-51" which essentially is Swing and touches just about on the very first hints of modern jazz in the Netherlands). Was there ever a Vol. 2, I wonder?

Judging from your comments about Dutch modern jazz, I suppose I also did well with these chance purchases (one on Ebay, one at a local record shop where they clearly were put off by the worn sleeve and priced it accordingly ;))?

41695580xf.jpg

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3 hours ago, Big Beat Steve said:

 

Giving it the benefit of doubt, I pulled them out again - and stand corrected to a point. "Musique de films" is quite OK and listenable for what it is - film music, but somehow I'd need to see the movies and THEN listen again. Somehow there are other film jazz scores (starting with "Ascenseur pour l'Echafaud" and "Des femmes disparaissent" - or "Les liaisons dangereuses") that I can get into better even way outside the film. But that's only me ... ;)
"Essais" ("Tryouts") sounds more coherent on relistening now than I remembered it after all but still - some tracks are really a bit too "sketchy" ("esquisses") for me. There are moments when I wondered "you started out fine, now when do you get off the ground, or where ARE you going?". Something you need to be in the mood for. Of course, like with certain more explorational U.S. jazz from that period too. And like I said, YMMV.
I also relistened to the "Keny Clarke's Sextet Plays André Hodeir" (Phillips). Interesting how he trimmed down the tunes by Miles, Monk, Duke, Mulligan and Benny Carter - maybe to what he saw as the bare "essence" (pun intended again). The scores ARE interesting to listen to and compare them with other versions of those tunes but they stil leave me puzzled as to WHAT made him tick to come up with that exactly. In the liner notes he says a.o. "We felt it was important above all to rethink the problem posed by the soloist as such and in his connection with the other musicians and also to concretize by suitable works the expanded forms that could result from that." (My translation but still ...)  Huh? Was the soloist ever that much of a problem? Was Hodeir maybe answering a question nobody (or hardly anybody) in jazz had asked except Hodeir himself? Obviously blowing sessions were anathema to Hodeir, but anyway ... He seeemd to be concerned with "form" to an extent that I feel was bordering in stifling.
The record DOES merit listening but the "Grand Prix de Disque" of 1958 that was bestowed on it IMO needs to be seen in the context of the times when no doubt there was a pervading feeling of welcome for whatever was done by means of classical music (or European music forms) to "harness in" all too freewheeling jazz to make it more palatable to European listening habits.
Would you be surprised if I told you the original French title of his "Jazz - Its Evolution and Essence" book (which I did read, though a long time ago) was "Hommes et problèmes de jazz" ("Men and problems of jazz")? What (overriding) problems? To that extent and depth?
What he wrote in "Jazz Hot" at that time (of which I have read a lot) went in the same vein - often a case of "not seeing the forest for the trees" IMHO when it came to the "essence" of the VITALITY and spontaneity in jazz.

Again, YMMW, to each his own, just my 2c, and there is no overriding and eternal truth in discussions like this anyway ...^_^

Thank you!   Academics were fond of using the word "problem" during that period.  

Do you have Jazz et Jazz?  That is my favorite of his.  

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No, I don't. I've heard and read about it, but that's all.

I guess you are right about the copious use of the word "problem" in those days but IMO Hodeir had a knack of turning almost everything into an ivory-towerish "problem" of deep-deeper probing dimensions (or at least presenting it as such).
It may sound sacrilegious but there were times when I had worked my way through one of his all too theoreticizing pieces in "Jazz Hot" and was left somewhat bewildered (by all the dissecting he did that clouded out much of the core of jazz - and I hasten to add that it was NOT a problem of any lack of knowledge of the French language) that I really had to do some "contrasting" reading in copies of Hugues Panassié's "Bulletin du Hot Club de France" from roughly the same period to get GROUNDED again ... :lol:

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I haven't enjoyed a thread as much as this for ages, in no small part due to Big Beat Steve's entertaining erudition but also due other contributors, notably Niko and TTK, too.

Thanks everyone and thanks to Rabshakeh for the idea.

Keep it coming!

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Rolf Kühn Quintett "Solarius" is good (recorded 1964 in East Germany). It was reissued on CD in 2012 as a part of the very nice AMIGA JAZZ mini-series, an is already quite hard to find. 

 

Gil Cuppini - What's New Vol. 2 (recorded September 1961), a pan-European team of Italian Cuppini, French Wilen, Swiss Gruntz, Macedonian Goykovich and German Geier.

  

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1 hour ago, Д.Д. said:

Rolf Kühn Quintett "Solarius" is good (recorded 1964 in East Germany). It was reissued on CD in 2012 as a part of the very nice AMIGA JAZZ mini-series, an is already quite hard to find. 

  

Apart from the music, it's apparently an interesting record production that reflects its times. Rolf Kühn had left Eastern Germany in the early 50s and in 1956 went straight to the USA where he continued his career, and returned to WEST Germany in 1962. The above session from late 1964 was indeed released under Rolf Kühn's name (despite the fact that he had defected from the GDR) and the liner notes are surprisingly even-handed and balanced, mention his U.S. stay in due form and do not fall into the anti-Western "capitalist/commercial curruption" propaganda that was seen elsewhere. In 1966 Kühn managed to get his much younger brother Joachim (part of the line-up) out of the GDR via a musical tour in Vienna, and this may have caused the LP not to be repressed (as claimed by the Discogs entry). But the Discogs claim that "the musicians" fled the GDR after the session is not correct. And repressings of 60s GDR jazz records were VERY rare in the GDR anyway. At any rate, the regime (or the heads of the State music departments) cannot have been irked by the defection of Joachim Kühn for very long because the "Fascination Jazz" book published in the GDR in 1973 DOES list this particular record among the "important GDR jazz productions", although the record was credited to a "Workshop group" ("jazz workshops" were common aggregations in Eastern Europe in those years) and the line-up indicated did not single out Rolf Kühn as the nominal leader.

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