BFT #82 Reveal

[jeffcrom]

Thanks to everyone who participated. Without further ado, here is what you heard:

1. Milt Buckner - the title cut from Mighty High (Argo). Buckner, organ; Jimmy Campbell - alto sax (not very prominent on this cut); Kenny Burrell - guitar; Joe Benjamin - bass; Maurice Sinclaire - drums; December 2, 1959. This is the best cut on this LP, which I believe has not made it to CD. Buckner is a little old-fashioned in that Wild Bill Davis kind of way, but I really like him and the group here. And Cecil Taylor mentioned him positively in an interview.

2. Matt Perrine - Muskrat Ramble from Sunflower City (Threadhead). Perrine - tuba and arrangement; Matt Rhody - violin; Connie Jones - trumpet; Mark Mullins and Rick Trolsen - trombone; Chris Kohl and Ben Schenk - clarinet; Tom Fisher - alto sax; Brent Rose - tenor sax; Don Vappie - banjo; Tom McDermott - piano; Stanton Moore - drums & tambourine; Michael Skinkus - percussion; 2006 or 2007. My favorite tuba player on the planet with some of the best musicians currently playing in New Orleans. Perrine plays all kinds of music, but with his group Sunflower City, he has been exploring a trad jazz/calypso fusion. I included this largely for the incredible tuba solo. I played this track for a classically trained friend who plays all the brass instruments; he was sure that the tuba solo was played on a four-valve, higher pitched tuba in F. He went so far as to contact Perrine, who assured him that it's all played on a plain old three-valve sousaphone. If you want to purchase this CD, your best bet is the Louisiana Music Factory.

3. Wilmoth Houdini - Black But Sweet from Poor But Ambitious (Arhoolie). Houdini - vocal, with Gerald Clark's Night Owls: Walter Bennett - cornet; Walter Edwards - clarinet; Berry Barrow - piano; Joshy Paris - guitar; Gerald Clark - cuatro; Charlie Vincent - banjo; Al Morgan - bass; August 13, 1931. Houdini was from Trinidad, but he emigrated to New York, where he had a very successful calypso career. This track flowed nicely from the previous one, and I love the fusion of calypso and hot jazz here. It was hard to chose which track to use from this excellent album.

4. Heiner Stadler - Pointed from Retrospection (Jazz Alliance). Stadler - piano and composer; Jimmy Owens - trumpet; Garnett Brown - trombone; Tyrone Washington - tenor sax; Reggie Workman - bass; Brian Brake - drums; written in 1963, recorded in 1973. Stadler, in my opinion, is one of the most underrated of jazz composers. He has only put out five albums, as far as I can tell. His writing is abstract and very subtle - he avoids the obvious. Retrospection is a collection of recordings from 1966 to 1976, including a piece for solo guitar and a big band piece. I've listed the current version; I have an older copy on Tomato, and it's also been on Stadler's Labor label.

5. Horace Henderson - Smooth Sailing from The Real Kansas City (Columbia). October 23, 1940. I have this one on a HH LP, but I took it from this great CD for the BFT. It's already been discussed quite a bit in the discussion thread - go there for all the details.

6. Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers - the title cut from Feeling Good (Delos). Blakey - drums; Wallace Roney - trumpet; Tim Williams - trombone; Kenny Garrett - alto sax and composer; Jean Tousssaint - tenor sax; Donald Brown - piano; Peter Washington - bass; September 8-9, 1986. An excellent latter-day Blakey album, with a mixture of new tunes and Blakey classics. I talked about some of my reasons for choosing this one in the discussion thread.

7. Sam Rivers - Sketches from Configuration (Pelican Sound, originally on Nato). Rivers - flute; Noel Akchote - guitar; 1996. This is a wonderful album, which teams Rivers with four European musicians in different configurations. (The others are Tony Hymas, Paul Rogers, and Jacques Thollot.) The CD opens with a very nice version of "Beatrice," for fans of that composition.

8. Al Sears - Mag's Alley from an RCA Victor 78. Sears - tenor sax; Harold "Shorty" Baker - trumpet; Tyree Glenn - trombone; Budd Johnson - tenor sax; Eddie Barefield - baritone sax; Johnny Acea - piano; Joe Benjamin - bass; Kalil Madi - drums; December 5, 1952. This track attracted lots of interest; I've been fascinated with it for years. It reminded several folks of Albert Ayler - that's the reaction I had the first time I heard it. I transferred it from my 78, but it has been reissued a few times over the years. Sears' personnel is largely drawn from the Johnny Hodges band, of which he was a member at the time.

Okay, I've been on the road all day, and I'm tired. The rest will have to wait until tomorrow.

[king ubu]

I have that Heiner Stadler disc - a fine one indeed!

The biggest surprise to me is #8 - Al Sears?!? Wow!

[jeffcrom]

Okay, here's part two:

9. Astral Project - the title track from Big Shot (APR). Tony Dagradi- tenor sax; Steve Masakowski - guitar and composer; James Singleton - bass; Johnny Vidacovich - drums; January, 2002. Several folks didn't like this track by the long-established New Orleans band Astral Project, and I can understand that. They use a lot of funk grooves, but almost always with a New Orleans flavor. Vidacovich (one of my favorite drummers for any kind of music, by the way) is playing a parade beat known as a "Saint Aug" beat. Yeah, this one is slick, but it works for me.

10. Ellis Marsalis - Monkey Puzzle from The Classic Ellis Marsalis (AFO). Marsalis - piano; Nat Perrilliat - tenor sax; Marshall Smith - bass; James Black - drums and composer; 1963. Ellis Marsalis' Monkey Puzzle LP, which is reissued on the above CD, was admired and studied by a generation of young musicians in New Orleans. Sonically, it shows the limitation of Cosimo Matassa's studio, which was still the best in town. Nat Perriliat in particular was held in awe by the other saxophonists in town. He died young; I've been unable to find the date, but I think it was around the end of the 1960's. Marsalis, Perrilliat, and Black all play on Nat Adderley's In the Bag album from the same period.

11. Chubby Jackson and His Orchetra - Tiny's Blues from The New York Scene in the 40's: From Be-bop to Cool (French CBS LP). Besides Jackson on bass and vocal exhortations, key personnel include Al Porcino - trumpet; Frank Socolow - alto sax; Ray Turner - tenor sax; Gene DeNovi - piano; Teddy Charles - vibes; Tiny Kahn - drums and composer; February 24, 1949. I was unable to find a picture of the cover of this this great LP. It was one of the first dozen jazz albums I owned, and it includes all four tracks from the only studio session by Jackson's late-forties big band. They knocked me out when I first heard them all those years ago, and they still do. Tiny Kahn's charts are excellent, and the band is both tight and spirited. These tracks have probably been reissued somewhere else, but are probably going to be hard to find.

12. Fieldwork - Pivot Point from Door (Pi). Steve Lehman - alto sax; Vijay Iyer - piano; Tyshawn Sorey - drums and composer; December 21, 2007. Fieldwork is a very interesting ongoing band. I love the interaction and the willful non-interaction they sometimes engage in. Tyshawn Sorey was the real revelation for me on this album.

13. Jone and Collins Astoria Hot Eight - Duet Stomp from Sizzling the Blues (Frog). Lee Collins - trumpet; Sidney Arodin - clarinet; Ted Purnell - alto sax; David Jones - tenor sax; Joe Robechaux - piano; Emmanuel Sayles - banjo; Al Morgan - bass; Joe Strode - drums; December 15, 1929. Lee Collins was one of those New Orleans trumpet players who were just a few steps behind Louis Armstrong - gifted, just not a genius like Armstrong. This is a New Orleans band influenced by the up-to-date sounds they were hearing on records from New York. Collins is great here, and I like Purnell's alto. Manny Sayles was playing as good as ever into the 1980's. This one has been reissued a lot, but the Frog CD has this session, with alternate takes, and all the of the Louis Dumaine recordings from around the same time.

14. Randy Sandke - Meta Blue from Unconventional Wisdom (Arbors). Sandke - trumpet, composer; Howard Alden - guitar; Nicki Parrott - bass; John Riley - drums; January, 2008. This one might surprise a lot of people - but not Allen Lowe. Most folks who know Sandke's name think of him as a traditional jazz player, but he's got a lot more than that going on. I love the way he modernizes his Bix Beiderbecke influences here. This album contains plenty of tunes a trad player might do, but also has several interesting originals, as well as Bill Evans' "Funkarello."

15. Jimmy Giuffre - The Boy Next Door from Olympia Fevrier 1960/Fevrier 1965 (Trema). Giuffre - tenor sax; Jim Hall - guitar; Wilford Middlebrooks - bass; February 23, 1960. This shows Giuffre under the influence of Sonny Rollins, just before he formed the trio with Paul Bley and Steve Swallow. The audience sounds somewhat confused - I don't think they were expecting such aggressive playing - but remain reasonably polite. This great CD pairs the 1960 concert with a 1965 show by a Giuffre trio which didn't otherwise record - Don Friedman and Barre Phillips. It's Giuffre at his most abstract, and the audience gets more and more hostile as the concert proceeds. It's a hoot.

Thanks for listening, all. I hope you heard something new that you enjoyed.

And thanks to the moderator who merged my answer threads.

Edited February 2, 2011 by jeffcrom

[king ubu]

So Chubby Jackson it was - great track, that one!

And I finally ought to listen to that one Steve Lehman disc I bought nearly a year ago...

The Giuffre is embarassing... got that disc, of course. Lovely, lovely stuff!

Thanks a lot for this fine BFT of yours, hope mine will be an adequate follow-up... discussion will be opened tomorrow!

[Spontooneous]

Sharped three that are in my collection right by me! Stadler, Rivers and Horace Henderson.

As for Al Sears: What Ubu said.

[Spontooneous]

Good to hear more Randy Sandke in his not-so-inside bag. Thanks for that. Now go over to Do the Math and check Ethan's deconstruction of Randy's book.

Man, I love the Astral Project rhythm team and especially Vidacovich, but Masakowski and Dagradi have rarely done much for me.

Sad irony. I have the Ellis Marsalis CD and have enjoyed it very much. I even had to interview the guy last week.

I've enjoyed the LP with Track 11, too, but it sure slipped my mind on this BFT.

And your final coup, Jeff, getting me to assert that Jim Hall couldn't be Jim Hall!

Now I gotta head for the basement and see if I have that Jones and Collins side.

[Bright Moments]

thanks for your hard work!!!

[papsrus]

Definitely going to track down the Perrin disc. Loved that track.

A lot of really nice music here Jeff. Plan on going back and giving it all a few re-listens with your comments. Thanks.

[NIS]

So, I fell off the front poarch yesterday morning (I now know "black-ice" up close and personal) and spent the day sitting in a chair moaning. When 60 year old bodies fly through the air, they do not land with the greatest of ease. Anyway, putting on a positive spin, I had time to listen to some BFT music.

Going through BFT 82 again, I wonder why I wasn't drawn to track 4 before. I don't know Heiner Stadler, so I need to check him out.

Also, have to check out Matt Perrine. This was my favorite track of the BFT. Enjoyed your tuba comments. Hearing the Moosestache Joe Polka Show on the radio growing up, I thought oompa was all there was to the tuba. My revelation with the instrument came when hearing a group called the Empire Brass. The tuba player, Sam Pilafian, made sounds come out of the horn that were unbelievable.

Thank you very much for the listen.

[jeffcrom]

And I can't help pointing out - look closely at the cover picture of the Matt Perrine album. To the right of the sunflower, you can see an "X code" sign used by the search and rescue teams after Katrina. The markings indicate the date the house was searched, which team performed the search, any hazards in the house, and the number of bodies found. When I noticed that, the cover, and the entire album, took on a deeper meaning for me. In an interview, Perrine explained that sunflowers were the first flowering plants to return after the water receded.

[lipi]

Thanks for this BFT, Jeff!

I already ordered the Perrine (Amazon has it), and added the Houdini to my wishlist. Good stuff!

[Hot Ptah]

Jeff, This was a very enjoyable BFT, and one full of surprises and learning about great new things for me.

# 2, the Matt Perrine, and #3, the Wilmouth Houdini, are truly great! I must get these CDs. I just love this music.

#4. I have some Heiner Stadler, but not that album. So it is Garnett Brown on trombone, not George Lewis as I had thought. Very interesting track.

#5. This Real Kansas City CD is for sale all over the place in Kansas City, at the art museum gift shop and other places that stock no other jazz. I have always thought that I already had so much of it that I didn't need it. I was wrong! I love this Horace Henderson track. Horace Henderson was also the leader on the great "Minnie The Moocher's Wedding Day" with Henry "Red" Allen and Coleman Hawkins, which I love. Horace Henderson seems to have had the golden touch as a leader of recordings.

#7. As you say, this is a fine Sam Rivers album. I was able to identify this as Sam Rivers because the flute soloing reminded me strongly of the Sam Rivers/Dave Holland duet albums of the late 1970s, on which one LP side was a long flute/bass duet. I played that late 1970s duet album so often when it first came out that Sam's approach on flute is burned into my mind. Then it was just a question of going into my Sam Rivers collection and finding the album.

#8. Al Sears with the initial avant garde burst at the beginning of the track? Wow. I always thought of Sears as more of a Ben Webster kind of player, who was hired by Duke Ellington to fill that role in his band for a time. I need to learn more about Al Sears.

#9. I saw Astral Project live about ten years ago but just did not connect it with this track. I saw John Vidacovich live with Dr. John at a outdoor festival in Kansas City, over ten years ago, and he was just great, very energetic and swinging, with a lot of interesting variety as he played in a powerful funky style. Incidentally, Vidacovich appealed very strongly to a group of African Americans who were standing near me at the outdoor festival and who had been a tough audience to impress all day prior to that. I had to agree with their enthusiasm for Vidacovich. I find it very interesting that the rhythm Vidacovich is playing on this track actually has a specific name.

#10. Wow, Ellis Marsalis' "Monkey Puzzle" album with James Black! I have read about it, always wanted to hear it, but never had before. Now I see why you responded to my comment that the beginning of this track reminded me of a carnival. I should have thought more about that and connected it to THE American carnival. This is an album I now must get.

#11. Chubby Jackson! I really like his 1950s-led recordings on Chess. Now I must investigate this 1940s period. This was a great BFT cut, as it was so reminiscent of Dizzy Gillespie but yet could not be, as there was no Dizzy soloing. What a mystery, and the answer is a pleasant surprise. Chubby Jackson has one of the all time great album covers, in which he is dressed in a cap and gown, receiving his "graduation diploma" from his "dean", Woody Herman.

#12. Vijay Iyler, for all of his critical raves, has never moved me, and this cut pretty much left me cold too. There is something about his playing that I can appreciate but do not really respond much to.

#13. Another CD I must get, if I can find it. Just great music! I did not know about Lee Collins but this track made a big impression on me.

#14. I am surprised that Randy Sandke has recorded in this style, which I found quite appealing. I had only heard his recreations of older music before.

#15. I was completely fooled by this Giuffre cut, and did not recognize Jim Hall either. That one totally baffled me.

This BFT was exactly what I look for in a BFT!

[paul secor]

Jeff - Thanks for the work you put into this, and thanks for introducing me to some new music. I'll be getting the Frog compilation with Lee Collins for sure, and will keep an eye out for the Horace Henderson and Chubby Jackson material. Will also try to check out some James Black. He may play on some of the AFO r&b cuts reissued by Ace, but I'd like to hear him on some jazz recordings. I used to have the Nat Adderley record you mentioned, but that one never grabbed me.

A pleasure to hear the music you presented, as always.

[jeffcrom]

Thanks, guys. I'm gratified by your comments, and am glad you found some new things that you enjoyed.

Sorry about your spill, NIS. Nebraska's a dangerous place - on my first visit there, I slipped on a frozen lake and cracked a rib. Of course, I was being stupid - carried away with the novelty of begin able to walk on a lake (which we can't do here in Georgia), and showing off for my girlfriend (to whom I'm now married).

And for what it's worth, I was unaware of the Randy Sandke literary controversy until yesterday; it was purely coincidental that I used one of his tracks in the BFT.

Thanks again for participating. Now I need to turn my attention to BFT #83.

[jeffcrom]

Since so many people were taken with the Matt Perrine track, I thought I'd post the link to the current Offbeat magazine cover story on Perrine and his vocalist wife Debbie Davis.

[jeffcrom]

For anyone who has decided that they can't live without the Chubby Jackson 1949 Columbia date, the same album I got it from is on Ebay now - a sealed copy.

[Big Al]

HOLY SHIT!!!!! I WAS RIGHT ABOUT BURRELL!!!! WOW!!!!!! I don't even need to look at the rest of the answers now, this is good enough for me!!!

And, in fact, since I have yet to DL part 2, I had to be careful I didn't see anything else. But a few brief comments, rebuttals, threats, etc:

1. I would like to publicly apologize to the family of Horace Henderson. Next time, I will be a little more diligent in my guesses (or at the very least, start immediately guessing Fletcher Henderson on everything I think is Glenn Miller)

2. So I kinda got the Blakey track correct, but damn if Jean Toussaint don't sound EXACTLY like Wayne Shorter. However, if he's looking for a fight, I'll be in one of several of my usual hiding spots until he's ready to ask forgiveness. I sure hope this is available somewhere, would like to get my hands on this one!

3. Another Big Al Sears track for the always expanding Best of BFT discs!

Can't wait to hear part 2!