jeffcrom

Charles Brackeen - Rhythm X, from The Complete Clifford Jordan Strata-East Sessions

Only four 12" records - most of the Preludes are pretty short, so most of the sides have three or four of them. And in the interests of accuracy, further research indicates that I have Cortot's 1926 version, not the 1933 recording. That one was not issued in the US at the time. My biggest 78 album is a 1930 more-or-less complete La Traviata - 13 12" records. It weighs a ton.

I'll list some interesting stuff I've spun at 78 RPM lately soon - but tonight it's this album the mail lady brought today: Chopin: The Twenty-Four Preludes by Alfred Cortot on Victor. Cortot's 1933 recording of Chopin's Preludes seems to be regarded as one of the greatest readings of Chopin's Opus 28. My "new" copy of the original US pressing is not mint, but it's pretty good.

That's great. Tonight, so far: Steve Lacy - Last Tour (Emanem). Strong playing from a man who died less than three months later. The Klezmatics - Rhythm + Jews (Flying Fish). The nouveau-klezmer album I would take to a desert island - and that includes the two I'm on.

Typo corrected in original post - it remains in the quoted versions, of course. I started to type "Sonny Stitt," then remembered how much the name Yusef Lateef fascinated me when I was a kid

Budd Johnson - Off the Wall (Argo mono)

I discovered this thread while searching the internet for a picture of Budd's Off the Wall album, which I'm listening to now. So - Budd Johnson is special to me, because Ya! Ya! was the first jazz record I owned. I was 12 years old, and had taken up the saxophone in November, after moving to a new school. That Christmas, my mom got me this album, chosen from the cutout rack at Treasure Island department store in the Atlanta suburbs - presumably because there was a guy holding a saxophone on the cover. I was pretty disappointed - she got my older brother a rock record. But I listened, and liked half of the tracks right away. And I blame this, my first jazz album, for my avant-garde-ish bent. On the last track of side one, "Exotique," Richard Davis plays a truly out-there bass solo, all bowed with slides and double-stops and quarter tones. I was too inexperienced a listener to know how strange it was - I just thought, "Oh, you can do that." And the inner sleeve had tiny reproductions of 72 Argo album covers. (I'm looking at it now, and just counted them for the first time.) I pored over this sleeve for hours. I had never heard of any of these people, but somehow I knew that I needed to hear James Moody and The Jazztet and Al Grey and Yusef Lateef. And of course, I came to love the rest of Ya! Ya!, which still has an honored place on my record shelves. Thanks, Mom.

Duke Pearson - Merry Ole Soul (BN Liberty)

The first time I heard that music was on the radio in the early 1990s, on a bitterly cold November day in New Orleans. WWOZ was given a cassette of the then long-unavailable LP by bassist McNeal Breux's daughter. I was enchanted, and still love this album.

Louis Armstrong - Satchmo at Symphony Hall: 65th Anniversary (Verve/Hip-O/Decca). A truly wonderful performance.

Steve Lacy - The Cry (Soul Note). Every time I play this one I'm stunned with how good it is. Powerful poetry by Taslima Naslin spoken and sung by Irene Aebi, whose voice seems a perfect fit for the words and music (yeah, I know some won't agree), and an instrumental sextet that is unique in Lacy's output. This time around I was highly impressed with the work of Lacy's second woodwind player, Tina Wrase, who died young.

Paul Bley - Axis (Improvising Artists)

Steve Lacy Meets Steve Potts (Virgin/Soul Note/Europe 1). A limited-edition (500 copies) two track CD recorded live at the Virgin Megastore in Paris in 1994.

Bobby Naughton with Wadada Leo Smith and Perry Robinson - The Haunt (Otic) Sunny Murray - Hommage to Africa (BYG) Perry Robinson - The Traveler (Chiaroscruro) Tony Parenti - Ragtime (Jazzology)

No - not related to the bebop line. Pearson's "Wahoo" is an original 5/4 blues.

Last one before bed: Fats Domino - Let the Four Winds Blow (Imperial). An odd one - but that's okay, because it's Fats. It's a reminder that, at least at one time in the US, albums were places to put all the non-hits, with a few hits thrown in. Only two of these songs broke the Top 40 (the title song and "You Win Again"), and some of the selections are pretty odd ("Along the Navaho Trail," "Shanty In an Old Shanty Town"), but it's Fats! And Mr. Lee Allen and the great Roy Montrell are in the band. So I'm on board for the entire ride.

A typical evening's progression in the jeffcrom house: avant-ish to mainstream to New Orleans trad. New York Contemporary Five - Consequences (Japanese Fontana) Duke Pearson - Wahoo (BN 80s issue) Preacher Rollo and the Saints - Ostrich Walk (Lion) The last one is not for everyone, for sure. Rollo Layton was a Miami-based drummer, and by all accounts a pretty unpleasant person. His playing is kind of corny, but eight of the twelve tracks here have New Orleanian Tony Parenti on clarinet, and he elevates the music quite a bit. And all but two of these 1951-55 tracks have Marie Marcus on piano. She was a local-hero type journeywoman jazz player (in Miami, then Cape Cod) who was so admired by Whitney Balliett that he wrote a profile of her for The New Yorker. These are the only recordings of her I have. Lion was the cheap-label subsidiary of MGM.

I'd start with Places We've Never Been on Vanguard. His deal with the label called for him to make two pop/jazz albums, at which point he'd get to make an album according to his preferences. Places We've Never Been is that album. It must have sold dozens of copies, and the label dropped him. There are two excellent albums from the first decade of this century: Another Place on Label Bleu and The Salzau Quartet Live at Jazz Baltica on Traumton. The former has Jason Moran on drums. All of these represent Green's playing after he reinvented himself after his early-60s soul jazz albums. I think of his mature style as "sideways jazz" rather than straight-ahead jazz, if that makes any sense.

...with some absolutely wild alto sax solos by the underrated and under-recorded Boyce Brown.

This is going to come out wrong - but that's an awful pop/jazz album that's a great subversive pop/jazz album. Bunky's bizarre intro to "Feelings" is worth the price of admission. I love Bunky Green.

Paul Bley & Annette Peacock - Dual Unity (Japanese Freedom/Black Lion). Kind of a period piece - noisy and fun to spin every once in a while.

That was such an important album for me. I passed it on only after I acquired all the tracks elsewhere, usually in better sound.

Blue Note came out with a complete Herbie Nichols set after the Mosaic went out of print, but the Mosaic is a treasure for the booklet with Roswell Rudd's notes.

Ornette - Beauty is a Rare Thing: Complete Atlantic Recordings. From disc 3, the July 26, 1960 session with Cherry, Haden, and Blackwell. Every track is superb; it's amazing that only two of these eleven cuts were released at the time.