Jean Luc Ponty

[Late]

I'm not all that familiar with Ponty, but I noticed that Sunday Walk is being reissued by MPS this month.

Sunday Walk

Other Ponty recommendations? Favorites?

Edited March 1, 2022 by Late
preposition

[HutchFan]

Late,

I'm not familiar with Sunday Walk.  But I dig Ponty.

A few faves:

and

These discs feature Ponty in a straight-ahead setting (with organ and drums).

 

For Ponty in a FUSION mode, I'd recommend:

 

[clifford_thornton]

19 minutes ago, Late said:

I'm not all that familiar with Ponty, but I noticed that Sunday Walk is being reissued by MPS this month.

Sunday Walk

Other Ponty recommendations? Favorites?

Nice record. Astrorama (with Sato, NHOP, M. Hino, Masuo) on Liberty/Express is good too. The album with Michel Portal, Phil Woods, and Daniel Humair is a party. 

[GA Russell]

2 hours ago, Late said:

I'm not all that familiar with Ponty, but I noticed that Sunday Walk is being reissued by MPS this month.

Sunday Walk

Other Ponty recommendations? Favorites?

This was my first Ponty album, and still my favorite.

[JSngry]

Of his Pacific Jazz records, the only one I still have a taste for is King Kong, and that one's got a nuanced like b/c of the overall circumstances.

The albums with Louiss & Humair, those are just totally redonkulus yeah!

[mikeweil]

I play Electric Connection once a month since I finally got a copy of the CD reissue, as I really love some of the tunes on it. 

Will have to pull out the live LP with George Duke tomorrow. This deserves a new reissue (there was a CD on One Way).

Just ordered a copy of this CD:

[Late]

4 hours ago, HutchFan said:

A few faves:

and

These discs feature Ponty in a straight-ahead setting (with organ and drums).

Nice! It looks like both volumes are up on YouTube:

Volume 1

Volume 2

Ponty can really make his violin sound like an alto saxophone at times. For some reason his sound makes me think of Sonny Stitt.

[felser]

This is by far the best of his fusion albums, great guitar work on it:

[Late]

"Carole's Garden" is bangin'! This trio was really locked in.

[Ken Dryden]

I bought those MPS Ponty LPs when they were still in print in the early 1970s. I’ve enjoyed him in concert several times over several decades and he is a fun interview guest.

Edited March 2, 2022 by Ken Dryden

[Rooster_Ties]

Saw JLP but once about 5 years ago, in DC — on his collaborative concert tour with Jon Anderson (of YES).  It was basically JLP and his band backing Anderson. A two hour evening and even mix of JLP’s fusion material and YES tunes, back and forth (and Anderson sang wordless backing vocals on a number of JLP tunes, and even added a few lyrics to some of them too).

Quite enjoyable — my first time ever having seen/heard anyone from YES before either.  Here’s a sample…

 

[medjuck]

I met him once 40 years ago and he talked a lot about being inspired by meeting Clifford Brown's widow. 

[sidewinder]

‘Live at Donte’s’ is good. As is his playing on that Gerald Wilson Orchestra album and on ‘Electric Connection’.

 

[sambrasa]

I like Ponty a lot, King Kong, his collaboration with Zappa, is a well-known classic. This one is less known but fabulous stuff still:

[felser]

This may be my favorite Ponty.  With Joachim Kuhn and Philip Catherine:

[HutchFan]

1 hour ago, felser said:

This may be my favorite Ponty.  With Joachim Kuhn and Philip Catherine:

I like that one too.   

 

[clifford_thornton]

I need to try that one again. Didn't do much for me when I first heard it in the late '90s, but my tastes have changed.

[Shrdlu]

When I was a university student, the university was downtown and I used to hang out a lot at a jazz record store. One day, my friend there said, "Hey, you gotta hear this!". It was "Sunday Walk". It's a sensational album - very high energy. The record store guy was raving about it. We had never heard of Jean-Luc before. It also has the sensational Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen on bass.

Man, I haven't been in a record store in twenty years. I used to enjoy them a lot.

Jean-Luc is also on the 1967 "Violin Summit", along with Stephane Grappelly, Stuff Smith and Svend Asmussen. That is a very tasty album. Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen is again on bass, and is loud in the mix, and he steals the show.

[Ken Dryden]

Out February 25, 2022

:

[Ken Dryden]

I bought this 2 LP set reissue back in the late 1970s. It has been reissued by Take 5, though I suspect that may be a bootleg label.

Hopefully MPS will reissue it on CD, as my LP has a scratch from a needle drop.

 

[sidewinder]

22 hours ago, Ken Dryden said:

I bought this 2 LP set reissue back in the late 1970s. It has been reissued by Take 5, though I suspect that may be a bootleg label.

Hopefully MPS will reissue it on CD, as my LP has a scratch from a needle drop.

 

That ‘Encore’ series was really good. Not often seen here though. I have the CBBB Ronnie Scott’s double in this series.

[Ken Dryden]

I don't remember if I bought this set via mail order or lucked out and found it at Peaches. Very few record stores I patronized carried much in the way of European jazz releases back in the mid to late 1970s.

[JSngry]

I bought the complete Donte's thing and it pissed me off. Everybody was hyper and playing for the cheap thrills. A precursor to the fusion up ahead, perhaps.

I do find it interesting to look at the paths of Ponty and Duke through both Pacific Jazz and MPS. Turns out that a very young Duke actually debuted on MPS, I had not known that.

It looks like Richard/Dick Bock had plans for both of them before he stopped doing records (and why did he make that choice anyway? He had a roster developing with Ernie Watts, Pony, Duke, Groove Holmes, and of course Buddy Rich and Gerald Wilson. Then he just stopped).

[Ken Dryden]

On 3/2/2022 at 11:03 PM, Rooster_Ties said:

Saw JLP but once about 5 years ago, in DC — on his collaborative concert tour with Jon Anderson (of YES).  It was basically JLP and his band backing Anderson. A two hour evening and even mix of JLP’s fusion material and YES tunes, back and forth (and Anderson sang wordless backing vocals on a number of JLP tunes, and even added a few lyrics to some of them too).

Quite enjoyable — my first time ever having seen/heard anyone from YES before either.  Here’s a sample…

 

This is easily my least favorite Ponty album, as it is more like his band is backing Anderson, while Anderson’s lyrics are often nonsensical. Ponty, however, was very enthusiastic talking about this tour and enjoyed working with him.

[Rooster_Ties]

1 hour ago, Ken Dryden said:

This is easily my least favorite Ponty album, as it is more like his band is backing Anderson, while Anderson’s lyrics are often nonsensical. Ponty, however, was very enthusiastic talking about this tour and enjoyed working with him.

I’ve never heard the album, but I definitely enjoyed it as a concert experience.

That said, getting the live album hasn’t been any sort of priority of mine — but if I ever saw it real cheap out in the wild, I’d probably give in and get it.

I went never having heard Ponty — or YES (or Anderson solo) — live, in any context. And on those terms, it was a lovely night, in a small-medium size theater (The Howard, here in DC, barely a half-hour walk from home). All seated at tables, with table service — and they had hard cider too, on draft too iirc. It was nice!

Edited March 4, 2022 by Rooster_Ties