jeffcrom

Metronome All-Stars (Harmony)

Coupla 10" LPs: Mel Powell Septet (Vanguard) J.J. Johnson/Kai Winding - Jay and Kai (Columbia)

Great Jazz Reeds (RCA Camden). This 1958 anthology on RCA's budget label is very interesting, not just because it collects some great great music, but because it has some rare alternate takes - notably the hard-to-find take two of "Victory Ball" by the 1949 Metronome All Stars.

I only remember Mr. Konitz coming to Atlanta once - back in the 1980s. He played a small club within walking distance of where I live now (I lived in the suburbs then). When he and the local rhythm section played "All Blues," he announced that the first chorus would be a tribute to Miles. He leaned into the mike, held his nose, and sung the melody in a nasal, Miles-in-a-mute parody.

Picked up a "new" Fletcher Henderson, so I spun it and some other early Fletcher this afternoon. If I only list one side, the flip is by another dance band. Old Black Joe Blues/Potomac River Blues (Vocalion "Red," 1923). The new one - not bad for the time. Charley, My Boy (Regal, 1924). Also not bad. My Rose Marie (Silvertone, 1924). It's okay until the Louis Armstrong solo, which takes it to another level. Swanee Butterfly (Domino, 1925). No jazz content at all, really, even though Armstrong is still in the trumpet section. Sleepy Time Gal (Banner, 1925). Post-Armstrong. Some nice Joe Smith here. Then I'll Be Happy (National Music Lovers, 1925). From the same session as the record above. The band is billed as "Master Melody Makers."

Gene Roland - Swingin' Friends (Brunswick stereo)

Louis Armstrong - Rare and Unreleased Recordings (Book-of-the-Month Records); disc four. Someone gave this to me twenty-something years ago, and 75 percent was new to me at the time. Since then, and since the CD boom. I have everything on the first three records elsewhere, except for two tracks. On the fourth and last record, on the other hand, I only have three of the twelve tracks elsewhere, although I imagine that most have been released on CD by now. Among the tasty treats are a rehearsal take of "Back O' Town Blues" (you can hear Louis instructing the band on the background riffs they should be playing), a "Mack the Knife" duet with Lotte Lenya, and an outtake from The Real Ambassadors with Dave Brubeck.

I've got a recommendation (I think) for those of you who have both a taste for pop-culture parody and a strong stomach. Over the past several days, I've watched the nine episodes of Sex House, a web show produced by The Onion which can be found on YouTube. (Search for "Sex House Episode 1.") Don't get excited - this is one of the least sexy things you'll ever watch, if you're brave enough to watch. It's a parody of sleazy reality TV shows - the premise is that three men and three women are put into a house with nothing to do except party and have sex. It's pretty funny - at first, anyway. Pretty soon it starts to get disturbing. Very little sex happens, and what does happen is kind of creepy. (You see about as much as you would see on a broadcast TV show.) There's lots of alcohol in the house, but very little food. Soon the "players" are malnourished, depressed, and desperate. And things go downhill from there. The last couple of episodes are truly horrifying - they're not funny at all, except in some sort of outrageous, meta-humor way. But they're the logical conclusion to what has happened up to that point. By then you know the characters and... well, want them to survive. All nine episodes will take you about an hour to watch, I think. If a reality TV show produced by Dante sounds fun to you, watch Sex House. If not, stay away. I'm worried that I'm going to have nightmares tonight.

Abdullah Ibrahim - Ekaya (Ekapa) Kid Sheik - The Sheik of Araby (504). Since Greg Waits pointed out that it's Buddy Bolden's birthday, I wanted to listen to something Bolden-related. There were several choices, but I chose this 1981 album by Kid Sheik Colar. Kid Sheik probably didn't sound that much like Bolden, but his is an "early" style, relatively untouched by Armstrong, and he plays Bolden's "Don't Go 'Way Nobody" here.

Thanks for pointing this out, Slide/Greg. I make a point of driving by Bolden's house on First Street every time I'm in New Orleans. And I think I may have told this story before, but on one of my annual visits, before Katrina, I was walking through Armstrong Park, which was carved out from the Treme neighborhood. One of the few buildings they didn't demolish when the built the park was the Masonic Lodge known locally as Perseverance Hall, where Buddy Bolden is known to have played dances. It had always been locked up tight whenever I had visited Armstrong Park, but on this occasion there was some renovation work going on, and the doors were open. I walked in and just stood for awhile, knowing that I was in a holy place.

The first two music teachers I thought of - neither of whom taught me anything about jazz: Bob Cowles, my first private saxophone teacher. (I had a year of public school group instruction by the time I started with him.) I still remember my first lesson with Bob, as a gangly, unattractive 8th grader. He seemed to see something in me right away. He taught me that music was more than the sum of the notes, and that every phrase had to go somewhere. Later, as a fellow teacher, I was proud to see him honored as the GMEA (Georgia Music Educators Association) outstanding teacher of 1998. Tom Wallace, a professor at the University of Georgia. He was just always around, for those inquisitive music students - the coolest and most interesting member of the music faculty. He was the guy you could actually talk about Stockhausen with. The two widely varied classes I had with him were 16th Century Counterpoint (which he managed to actually make interesting) and 20th Century Composition, which in his hands became an amazing roller coaster ride. I remember him taking Varese's "Density 21.5" apart note by note and phrase by phrase, and his passion for the music kept us on the edge of our seats. And I'll always be grateful to him for introducing me to Messiaen - the week we spent on Quartet for the End of Time was intense and life-changing. Later, as a member of The Peachtree Brass, a brass quintet, Tom often visited the schools at which I taught. One of the "young peoples'" programs they presented was a concert of dance music through the centuries. Of course, when they got to the 1960s, Tom would thoughtfully ask the kids, "Who would like to see Mr. Crompton dance the Twist?"

Thanks, Colin - I'll let you know when the LP finally arrives.

Yep. Minton's.

I've been jumping in late in the month for most of the BFTs lately, so I thought I'd listen and make my comments early this month - and get "credit" for some IDs. I've had the music for awhile, since I did the upload for Bill, but didn't listen until the first of the month. 1. I liked this more every time I heard it. The tenor player has a really nice sound, and his playing is interesting and well-constructed. Good playing from the rest of the quartet, too, especially the drummer. I have no idea who it is – some young-ish gun, I imagine. 2. A very unusual version of “Just Friends.” It sounded to me like it was, at least up to the bass solo, a transcription/orchestration of someone’s improvisation on “Just Friends.” If I’m right, I couldn’t come up with whose solo it is. Without his sound and attack as clues, I thought of Sonny Rollins, just due to the odd phrase construction, but this doesn’t match any version of “Just Friends” by him (or by anyone else, for that matter) that I know. Whatever the basis for this arrangement, it’s very cool, and the piano and bass soloists are excellent. Looking forward to finding out about this. 3. Just beautiful. I recognized Roy Eldridge right away, and almost as quickly realized that I had this on a JATP record. It’s from October, 1957, with three-fourths of the Modern Jazz Quartet as rhythm section. My reissue is called The Coleman Hawkins Set. 4. I’m not sure if this an older or a newer recording, but the playing is a delight. The tenor player has a slight “buzz” to his sound which reminds me of Clifford Jordan, but I don’t really know who anyone is. A slight criticism is that, to my ears, he played all his best stuff in the first half of his solo; the second half was a slight letdown. But, again, a delight. 5. A very unusual, hollow sound from this tenor player, who plays with a lot of soul. It actually sounds a little like Von Freeman to me, but I don’t know of any recordings he made with an ensemble of this size. Whoever it is, it’s very individual and beautiful. 6. It’s all about programming. This is excellent music, but it suffers in contrast to track five. The soloist there was so individual that these musicians seem more anonymous. It’s good, though. 7. Another track I have no clue about. But it’s good. I wouldn’t say that the writing is particularly original, but it’s effective, as are the soloists. The tenor player and the drummer are particularly excellent. 8. I couldn’t remember the name of this, but I knew what CD I had it on, so it was easy to track down. It’s “Elevation” by Red Rodney’s Be-Boppers, recorded for Keynote in 1947. Allen Eager, Serge Chaloff, Al Haig, Chubby Jackson, and Tiny Kahn are also on board. Ironically, Rodney is the weakest soloist here – his playing has a “watch me play bebop” quality, with an overt flat five and a Charlie Parker “Hootie Blues” quote. Of course, he was much better a couple of years later. I loves me some Allen Eager, and everyone else is good, too, although Chaloff’s playing was not as sublime as it later became. Tiny Kahn deserves more recognition. 9. Paul Gonsalves with Nat Adderley and Wynton Kelly, playing “J and B Blues” from Gettin’ Together. It’s funny, when Gonsalves started to blow, I could “see” him, twisting his body as he played, and I identified him first by “sight” – I recognized my mental picture before I could place whose sound it was. He’s someone I’ve come to appreciate more as I’ve gotten older – very creative and highly individual. 10. Again, very nice, but I don’t have any idea who it is. Nice brassy trumpet sound – I’ll probably kick myself when I find out who it is. Speaking of kicking, the drummer does that very nicely here. 11. Some nice mid-50s cool bebop. Once again, I don’t know who anybody is, but it’s all good, and at moments more than that. 12. Is this somebody’s line on “Woody ‘n’ You?” One of the tenor players favors the upper register, and the other likes it down low, but beyond that, I don’t have much to say about this. I think I’m having a little bebop fatigue. Not that there’s anything wrong with this track – maybe that’s the problem. At this point in the BFT, I’d love to here something a little more “wrong.” This is good – just doesn’t grab me in any kind of strong way. 13. Okay, I did a little research on this interesting track. It sure sounded like a Gerry Mulligan arrangement to me, and I thought the tenor soloist was Zoot Sims. That didn’t check out but I think that it’s Mulligan’s arrangement (“Strike Up the Band,” of course) for Eliott Lawrence, recorded in 1955 with Al Cohn on tenor. (One of these years, I’ll finally get those two guys straight!) Nice soloing and nice chart on a kind of corny tune. 14. The combination of the pianist’s eccentric style and and the tinny sound of the piano really took me aback for a minute. Is this some live recording of Chet Baker with Dick Twardzik on piano? In any case, the piano playing verges on the bizarre – not that that’s a bad thing. And it sounds like like Baker to me. In any case, cool ending to a good blindfold test. Thanks for a good one - nothing I disliked, although, as you can see, some tracks reached me more than others.

Dang!

Onward Brass Band - Last Journey of a Jazzman (Nobility); sides one & four. This two-record set (issued as two separate albums) is a flawed, but remarkable document. It was recorded on the streets of New Orleans in 1965, at the funeral parade of pianist Lester Santiago; Cosimo Matassa, who recorded so many New Orleans R & B hits, carried a 50-pound "portable" tape recorder through the rain to capture this music. I call it "flawed" because three of the sides are overdubbed with narration by H. Grayson Clark, who managed Dixieland Hall and Nobility Reocords; side four is the only side mostly free of the intrusive narration. This has been reissued on CD, but with the narration, unfortunately. But it's all interesting, and side four is magnificent.

I should have pointed out that it's a David Stone Martin drawing.

I mentioned this in the 78 thread, but I wanted to post a picture here. I bought some 78 RPM albums last week, and inside an Illinois Jacquet album was a program from a 1948 tour featuring Jacquet and Sarah Vaughan, and this concert flyer. It's nothing fancy, just a simple 6" x 9" sheet, but I think it's kind of amazing for what it represents. There's no year on the flyer, but a little research shows that it's from a 1949 Boston show.

Jazz at the Philharmonic - Blues in Chicago 1955 (Verve)

David Mack - New Directions: Essays for Jazz Band (Serenus mono) One of my earliest Ebay purchases, years ago. For years before that, I had known that Max Harrison considered this an important record - most of the tracks are written using 12-tone serial technique, and many of the solos are improvised within the tone row of the piece. The composer and band are British; the most well-known musician (to this American, anyway) is probably Shake Keane, who sounds great, whether his solos are 12-tone, free jazz, or conventional. I'm glad to have this album, although I admire it rather than love it.

Atlanta's 4th Ward Afro Klezmer Orchestra, with which I play, has just released our second CD, Abdul the Rabbi. I don't like listening to recordings of myself, but I listened to the whole thing last night, and thought it was pretty good - and that was after listening to the Klezmatics. It's a nine-piece band which mixes klezmer, jazz, funk, Afro-pop, rock and hip-hop. I wrote three of the charts. You can listen to some samples here, and buy it there, too - but if anyone is interested, send me a PM and you'll get the special O board price - $13, shipping included, in the U.S.; $15, shipping included, outside the U.S. The album is also coming out on vinyl, but that process has been problematic, and the LPs probably won't be ready until October.

Byard Lancaster - Documentation: The End of a Decade (Bellows)

Disc C this evening.

Eric Quincy Tate - Drinking Man's Friend (Capricorn LP). Great Southern blues/rock from 1972.

Louis Smith - Prancin' (Steeplechase)