BFT #79 Reveal

[Michael Weiss]

Thanks to all who participated. As there has been no further discussion for a while, I'd rather post answers now while the tracks are still a distant memory.


1. "Man With A Horn Goes Berserk"
BUSTER BAILEY - Complete Recordings 1939-1940 - Rarities
Recorded December 7, 1938
Buster Bailey, clarinet; Frank Newton, trumpet, Russell procope, alto; Billy Kyle, piano, James McLin, guitar, Johnny Williams, bass; O'Neil Spencer, drums

This looks like the John Kirby band minus John Kirby. The same record date produced the reefer song classic, "Light Up."
I was surprised to see in a recent "Favorite Clarinet" thread, scant mention of Buster Bailey (1 post out of 87!).



2. "Belgium Stomp" a.k.a. "State and Tioga Stomp," composed and arranged by Billy Moore
Jimmy Lunceford - Lunceford Special - Columbia
Recorded September 14, 1939
Eddie Tomkins, Paul Webster, Gerald Wilson, trumpets; Elmer Crumbley, Russell Bowles, Trummy Young, trombones; Willie Smith, Ted Buckner, Dan Grisson, altos; Joe Thomas, tenor; Earl Jock Carruthers, baritone; Eddie Wilcox, piano; Al Norris, guitar, Moses Allen, bass, Jimmy Crawford, drums.

This tune has a nice forward-looking chord progression for 1939. Not unlike something Monk might have composed later on like Epistrophy or Well You Needn't.



3. "Cuckoo Around the Clock" composed by George Wallington
George Wallington - Trios - Prestige
Recorded May 23, 1953
George Wallington, piano; Curley Russell, bass; Max Roach, drums

Under appreciated, baad motherfucker. 'nuff said. At the time of this recording, after Bud, probably no one could rip on a tempo like this with the exception of maybe Kenny Drew.




4. "Why Do I Love You"
Lucky Thompson - Plays Jerome Kern and No More - Moodsville
Recorded March 8, 1963
Lucky Thompson, tenor; Hank Jones, piano; Wendell Marshall, bass; Dave Bailey, drums

This is one of my all-time favorite record dates. It's perfect from beginning to end. The image above is from a CD reissue. I had to trade away ten OOP LPs to Michael Anderson for my LP copy.




5. "Riverbed" composed by Joe Zawinul
Friedrich Gulda - Innefable - Columbia
Recorded 1965
Friedrich Gulda, piano; Bob Cranshaw, bass; Tootie Heath, drums

I was steered to this LP for another version of this tune which I recorded on my first date ("Presenting Michael Weiss/Criss Cross 1022) in 1986. I think Gulda plays his ass off here and was probably the best jazz playing "classical" musician to come along.





6. "Marjoun" composed by Pete LaRoca
Pete La Roca - Turkish Women at the Bath - Douglas
Recorded May 25, 1967
Pete LaRoca, drums; Chick Corea, piano; Walter Booker, bass; John Gilmore, tenor

I've always found this to be one of the (pleasantly) strangest record dates. Maybe it's the weird, some might argue horrible, recording quality. The personnel is uniquely wonderful: Chick Corea with John Gilmore - gotta love it. And La Roca's compositions are fresh and unusual. Although I'm a hardcore John Gilmore fan, even though he doesn't solo here, I picked this track because Chick is so killin', soloing behind the melody. Pete LaRoca's broken/syncopated cymbal beat is one of THE hippest things in jazz drumming.





7. "Personage Wes" composed by Buddy Montgomery
Buddy Montgomery - The Two-sided Album - Milestone
Recorded March 1, 1968
Buddy Montgomery, vibraphone; Joe Farrell, tenor saxophone, Harold Mabern, piano; Ron Carter, bass; Billy Hart, drums, Montego Joe, congas

Buddy is one of my strongest influences. I learned a lot listening to tapes from his steady gig at a Milwaukee hotel in the late seventies. Buddy brought me out to the ill-fated Oakland Jazz Festival in 1988 to play a set with Stan Getz. At the last minute Stan opted for a different rhythm section so I didn't get the chance to play with him, and instead was relegated to a half a chorus of How Deep is the Ocean with Vi Redd. When Buddy spent time in NYC ca. 1988-1991 I arranged gigs for us at Bradley's, the New School and a week in Paris at La Villa (Buddy's very first trip to Europe). We also played a week at Sweet Basil in Ray Appleton's group. Buddy has certain rare qualities, some of which I think are shared by musicians who don't read music. In some ways they're more gifted then the rest of us - their instincts, their ability to be less hampered playing in unusual keys.... Buddy is one of the most soulful, expressive players I know. He's got the storytelling thing going. And he sounds thoroughly modern without invoking the styles of any of the most imitated modernists of the piano (McCoy, Herbie, Chick, etc.). in fact the only influence I can readily detect is Errol Garner, but not in the obvious ways. Buddy, like Wes, represents the best of the "homegrown" tradition of players who did their own thing in their own territory, and even after "making it" and travelling and recording have their own shit that's very personal and different from the mainstream. This tune "Personage Wes" is one of my favorites of Buddy's and used to be a staple in my repertoire before I started writing my own tunes. Aside: I couldn't find one jpeg of this album cover anywhere! I had to take a photo of it myself.

Edited September 2, 2014 by Michael Weiss

[Michael Weiss]

8. "Pathways to Unknown Worlds"
Sun Ra - Pathways to Unknown Worlds - Saturn
Recorded 1973

Sun Ra, keyboards; Akh Tal Ebah, Lamont McClamb (Kwame Hadi), trumpets; Marshall Allen, alto, flute, oboe; Danny Davis, alto; John Gilmore, tenor, perc; Danny Thompson, baritone; Leroy Taylor (Eloe Omoe), bass clarinet; Ronnie Boykins, Bill Davis, bass; Clifford Jarvis drums; Russell Branch, Eugene Brennan, Stanley Morgan (Atakatune), percussion

This, along with Heliocentric Worlds 1 & 2, is one of my favorite Sun Ra conducted collective improvisations. It really sounds like a composition, with development, climax and coda all shaped by changing instrumentation. At the beginning, each instrument slips in one by one, setting the backdrop for the harmon muted trumpet solo. Everything unfolds gradually and logically. At around 3:30, Sun Ra plays a little figure on the organ as if to cue for the next open trumpet solo. Eventually things grind to a standstill leaving the bassist by himself. After Sun Ra re-enters the tension increases as the organ plays a kind of cat and mouse with the arco bass and the horns re-enter, only to grind to a standstill again. After another climax the piece fizzles out with a final C major - nice!




9. "Sonata #8, first movement" Op. 21a. Composed by Samuil Feinberg somewhere between 1932 and 1936
Samuil Feinberg - Piano Sonatas #7-12 - BIS
Performed by Christophe Sirodeau in March, 2002

It wasn't easy selecting one piece from so many great Feinberg piano works. I've been practicing all of Feinberg's piano music (except the concertos) for a few years now, but don't hold your breath for a public performance. Known best as a pedagogue, performer of the Well Tempered Clavier, Scriabin, and several transcriptions, Feinberg is woefully neglected as a composer. Which is why these recordings of Feinberg's sonatas are so important. As a jazz pianist and composer, Feinberg's sonorities, voicings, harmonies, compositional development, etc. are entirely in my wheelhouse.





10. "Take the Coltrane" composed by Duke Ellington
private tape: Junior Cook Quartet at the Star Cafe, NYC
Recorded October 10, 1982
Junior Cook, tenor; Michael Weiss, piano: Ed Howard, bass; Jo Jones, Jr., drums

After touring with Jon Hendricks for a few months, this was the first serious regular gig I had in New York, working weekly with a real veteran. Rather fortuitous as Junior was on my very first jazz LP as a teenager ("Blowin' the Blues Away") My tenure with Junior lasted a good five years before I joined Johnny Griffin and was a great experience. I brought my Sony Walkman this particular night. That's Jo Jones Jr. on drums! Believe me - I would have been happy to edit out all of my solo, but left in just a few choruses for continuity's sake. The purpose of this track is the focus on Junior. More info from the Junior Cook thread:




11. "More Zajeni Se Ghiouro" arranged by Krasimir Kyurkchiyski
Bulgarian State Radio and Television Vocal Choir - La Mystere des Voix Bulgare, Vol. 2 - Nonesuch
Recorded 1984

This is some soulful shit. Dig those big fat chords - what daring writing for voices! I've never heard any other vocal ensemble with such perfect intonation, which matched with their full-throttle vocal quality and feeling makes for extremely powerful music.




12. "Holodeck Waltz" composed by Jim Beard
Jim Beard - Song of the Sun - CTI
Recorded May, 1990
Wayne Shorter, soprano; Bob Mintzer, flute, bass clarinet; Lenny Picket, E-flat clarinet, Jon Herington, acoustic guitar, Anthony Jackson, contrabass guitar; Dennis Chambers, drums; Don Alias, percussion.

A former classmate of mine at Indiana U, Jim went on to become not only a highly respected pianist and producer but also an outstanding composer. Like Wayne, whose solo spreads wit and wisdom throughout this piece, Jim's music defies categorization. Impressive music for a debut album. I love the way Wayne blasts the melody up an octave after his solo (3:18).



13. "Taurus People" credited to Steve Grossman but possibly composed by Farouq Dawud
Johnny Griffin/Steve Grossman Quintet - Dreyfus
Recorded May 30, 2000
Steve Grossman, tenor; Johnny Griffin, tenor; Michael Weiss, piano; Pierre Michelot, bass; Alvin Queen, drums.

I laugh everytime I hear this. It's so raucous and freewheeling, but the spirit is infectious. I think this track was recorded on the last day of the session. This was perhaps, for better or worse, the most loosely run recording session I ever participated in. The day would start out with two takes, a break to order lunch, listen to a playback or two, lunch, another take or two... where'd Johnny go? Here he is...Walking back from the corner café with a plastic cupfull of cognac. One more take and we're done for the day. Steve has one of the most thrilling, wickedly searing sounds I've ever heard. Steve and Griff's fours have me rolling on the floor. One of the more jubilant recordings I've ever been on. This tune has some interesting harmonic movement, especially in how the first chord (A-7/D) resolves into the next (Ebmaj7) on the sixth bar.


Purely unintentional and quite a strange coincidence (has it happened before?) that I had two selections from the same artists (John Kirby and Sun Ra) included in the preceding blindfold test!

Edited July 16, 2015 by Michael Weiss
new image link

[Hot Ptah]

This is a great Blindfold Test. I have that Sun Ra album. I purchased that Impulse vinyl issue at Wazoo Records in Ann Arbor within a few days of arriving in that city in 1978. However, I could not remember which album it was, when I heard it on this BFT. Maybe I have too many Sun Ra albums! NO!!! How could anyone have too many?

It is not that unusual to have a Sun Ra cut on back to back BFT tests--he seems to come up often on these tests. I think that there have been few BFTs with John Kirby, however.

You totally stumped me with many of the cuts, and I am grateful to have been exposed to them. I want to get the Buddy Montgomery and Lucky Thompson albums for sure.

I like the inclusion of the private tape--how else would we ever hear it, and it is an exciting performance.

[Michael Weiss]

This is a great Blindfold Test. I have that Sun Ra album. I purchased that Impulse vinyl issue at Wazoo Records in Ann Arbor within a few days of arriving in that city in 1978. However, I could not remember which album it was, when I heard it on this BFT. Maybe I have too many Sun Ra albums! NO!!! How could anyone have too many?

It is not that unusual to have a Sun Ra cut on back to back BFT tests--he seems to come up often on these tests. I think that there have been few BFTs with John Kirby, however.

You totally stumped me with many of the cuts, and I am grateful to have been exposed to them. I want to get the Buddy Montgomery and Lucky Thompson albums for sure.

I like the inclusion of the private tape--how else would we ever hear it, and it is an exciting performance.

Glad you enjoyed the selections.

Good luck finding the Buddy Montgomery as it seems to have never been reissued. As I mentioned I haven't seen a picture of this record online anywhere.

Edited October 15, 2010 by Michael Weiss

[Spontooneous]

Now I've got to catch up with Samuil Feinberg.

A wonderful BFT all the way, Michael. Thank you.

[Michael Weiss]

Now I've got to catch up with Samuil Feinberg.

A wonderful BFT all the way, Michael. Thank you.

Thank you!

Re: Feinberg

In addition to the 12 sonatas on the BIS label, I strongly recommend Jenny Lin's wonderful CD, "Preludes to a Revolution" on Hanssler Classics for Feinberg's op.8 Preludes as well as other neglected Russian composers.

Samuil Feinberg

(biography by Christophe Sirodeau in English)

Samuil Feinberg (born in Odessa on 26th May 1890) is known as a first-rate Russian pianist and teacher, but has unjustly fallen into oblivion as a composer. He wrote numerous works, principally for piano and for voice, and his œuvre can be divided into two parts according to his stylistic development as a composer. In the works from the period 1910-1933, we can observe an increasingly rich and virtuoso style of writing, very chromatic, often violent and rich in contrasts, but sometimes imbued with a 'symbolist' fragility that owes something to the influence of Scriabin. Then, from 1934 until his death in 1962, Feinberg moved progressively towards greater simplicity, towards a diatonic style and a preponderance of melody - somewhat reminiscent of the development of Prokofiev or of Myaskovsky. In addition, Feinberg made transcriptions, including some fifteen works by Bach as well as music by other composers. Feinberg achieved fame as an interpreter at an early age; in 1914 he became the first pianist in Russia to perform Bach's complete Well-Tempered Clavier in concert (in 1958-59 he made the second recording of the piece, after that by Edwin Fischer), and he later presented various cycles of Ludwig van Beethoven's sonatas and championed the music of Scriabin, Prokofiev and Debussy; his interpretation of Scriabin's Fourth Sonata was much admired by the composer. Starting from 1924, some of his works were published by Universal Edition, Vienna. The Piano Sonata No. 6 enjoyed great success at the Festival of Contemporary Music in Venice on 4th September 1925, played by the composer, as did the Piano Concerto No. 1, Op. 20, when it was premiered in Moscow in 1932, conducted by Albert Coates. The American critic Carl Engel - who was to become a friend of Schoenberg - suggested in The Musical Quarterly in 1924 that Feinberg might be a genius. Feinberg went to Paris in November 1925, and he was invited to Austria and German on numerous occasions (1925, 1927 and 1929). He also made recordings for Deutsche Grammophon in Berlin as well as for various German radio stations; he was one of the first performers to give a 'live' radio concert, in Berlin in 1927. Some years later, his increasing success in the West was checked by the political upheavals of Stalinism in the USSR. It was at this time that his friend and editor Nikolai Zhiliayev (who had been his composition teacher before 1914) was imprisoned in the context of the Toukhachevsky affair. Starting in the 1930s, Feinberg was no longer permitted to leave the USSR except for two appearances as a competition jury member, in Vienna in 1936 and in Brussels in 1938 and, as his music did not correspond to the criteria of 'socialist realism', he stopped performing his earlier works, preferring to hide in silence or to produce scores that were relatively simple for the listener. His Piano Concertos No. 2 (1944) and No. 3 (1947) date from this period. After the war, however, Feinberg remained one of Russia's most eminent artists and, towards the end of his life (especially after he gave up performing in public in 1956 for health reasons), he managed to commit a number of recordings to disc. In addition, from 1922 until his death on 22nd October 1962, Feinberg was one of the most outstanding professors at the Moscow Conservatory: he was deeply admired by his pupils who, after his death, fulfilled his wish by posthumously publishing his book Pianism as an Art. Samuil Feinberg never married and lived with his brother, a painter, and his family. This situation may have been partly occasioned by an unhappy 'love affair' with Vera Efron (the sister-in-law of Marina Tsvetayeva) before 1914. He was a very cultured man, spiritual, modest, and with a profound dislike of self-promotion; he was also a deeply visionary artist who was fully aware of the abysses and ambiguities of modern life. As Tatiana Nikolaeva used to say, each of his sonatas represented a 'poem of life'. Feinberg's stylistic evolution may explain why he did not make a clear mark as a composer: his major works were those written before the Second World War. The historical circumstances in Russia, however, did not permit this 'modernist' trend to continue. It is rather remarkable to observe that the Western press could write that Feinberg was an 'official figure' of the Soviet Union, an absurdity for a Jewish musician who had never belonged to the Party and had felt constrained to retreat into silence. Nevertheless, Feinberg - even if he was one of the 'cosmopolitans' in Moscow, received a certain protection from his great 'aura' as a pianist and teacher. During his lifetime, Feinberg the composer achieved public success and enjoyed the praise of musicians who admired him. Even after his death, however, it was not the done thing for his pupils and friends to draw attention to his 'non-conformist' side; this problem means that all the documentation from this period must be interpreted with caution. It is now time to rediscover scores which stand out for their expressivity, their rigorous piano writing and their great imaginative power, and which certainly reflect the anguished inner world of their composer. The great formal originality of scores such as the Piano Sonatas Nos. 3, 5, 6, 7 and 8 or the Piano Concerto No. 1, often combined with their emotional content, the specific character of the keyboard writing, and even the symbolist, nostalgic charm of his melodies (for instance his Op. 7 [1914], on poems by Alexander Blok), all make the work of Feinberg an indispensable part of the musical inheritance of the twentieth century; he also left an inestimable legacy as interpreter, saved for posterity on his recordings.

©2003 Christophe Sirodeau

English translation: Andrew Barnett for BIS Records AB 2003 (Bis no 1413)

Edited October 16, 2010 by Michael Weiss

[brownie]

Totally missed that Buddy Montgomery 'The Two-Sided Album'. I was not even aware of its existence. I am now.

Great music. Time to rediscover this musician.

The other one to rediscover is Junior Cook. That live track was superb! I caught Cook on several occasions (with Horace Silver and later with Bill Hardman) and always enjoyed his contributions.

[Michael Weiss]

Totally missed that Buddy Montgomery 'The Two-Sided Album'. I was not even aware of its existence. I am now. Great music. Time to rediscover this musician.

The whole record is very thoughtfully prepared. The second side has Buddy playing piano AND overdubbed vibes doing a suite of tunes from Camelot. Worth getting if you can track it down.

The other one to rediscover is Junior Cook. That live track was superb! I caught Cook on several occasions (with Horace Silver and later with Bill Hardman) and always enjoyed his contributions.

Junior was as serious and unpretentious as they come. Don't remember if you said you were at the gig we did at New Morning in September, 1986 (Hardman/Cook Quintet).

[brownie]

Junior was as serious and unpretentious as they come. Don't remember if you said you were at the gig we did at New Morning in September, 1986 (Hardman/Cook Quintet).

Unfortunately not. 1986 was a very busy professional year and I was away from Paris most of the time.

Caught the Hardman/Cook unit twice in New York at the Jazz Forum on 23rd Street. Great place!

[JSngry]

Who was the engineer on the Gulda date? Crenshaw was recorded remarkably well!

[Michael Weiss]

Who was the engineer on the Gulda date? Crenshaw was recorded remarkably well!

No credit on the LP other than Producer: John Hammond

[Hot Ptah]

Who was the engineer on the Gulda date? Crenshaw was recorded remarkably well!

No credit on the LP other than Producer: John Hammond

And from what I have been reading on Christiern's blog, that may not even be accurate!

[Big Al]

I gotta go back and listen to tracks 11 & 12 again!

Lotsa great stuff on here! A very nice BFT, Mr. Weiss!!!

Edited November 5, 2010 by Big Al

[Michael Weiss]

Thanks Al.

[Bright Moments]

finally got to enjoy this wonderful BFT - i enjoyed it through and through!

that Junior Cook date was smokin!!!

much thanks michael!

[Michael Weiss]

Glad you enjoyed it.