jeffcrom

Modern jazz time - I've probably mentioned all of these before: Ahmad Jamal - Excerpts From the Blues/It Could Happen to You (Parrot) Ahmad Jamal - But Not for Me/Seleritus (Parrot) Dave Barbour - Little Boy Bop Go Blow Your Top/Ensenada (Capitol) Better than you would think from reading the titles. Dave Brubeck Quartet - A Foggy Day/Lyons Busy (Fantasy) Wardell Gray - Blue Lou, parts 1 & 2 (Modern) From a "Just Jazz" concert. Johnny Smith Quintet - I'll Be Around/Cavu (Royal Roost) A nice one, with Paul Quinichette. Gerry Mulligan Quartet - My Funny Valentine/Bark for Barksdale (Fantasy) I had never noticed how insane Chico Hamilton's "Barksdale" solo is.

Wow! I just learned something, maybe. I've got the two Jamal 78s from the January, 1954 Parrot session - one of them is "But Not For Me" that you have pictured. But the LP is this same as Chamber Music of the New Jazz. Was that originally on Parrot? I had no idea - I have only ever seen the Argo issue.

It doesn't have the cool picture on the label, but that Snooky and Moody record of "Boogie" and "Telephone Blues" is one of the great Chicago blues recordings.

Everyone is invited over to my house to listen to Ahmad Jamal's complete Parrot recordings on convenient 78 RPM records. We'll drink lots of beer, and whichever side you're on, you'll change your mind. This was Richard Davis' recording debut, and the labels are very pretty.

The Golden Eagles - Lightning and Thunder (Rounder) Big Chief Monk Boudreaux and his Mardi Gras Indian tribe recorded uptown at the H & R Bar. This is the amazing New Orleans "Indian" tradition at its purest - no funk rhythm section, just call-and-response vocals and hand percussion.

Toshiko Akiyoshi/Lew Tabackin Big Band - Long Yellow Road (RCA)

The Virgin Island Suite is another of the longer Ellington pieces that goes up in my estimation the more I hear it. My first reaction on hearing it years ago was that it seemed hastily thrown together, even if "Virgin Jungle" had a pretty strong melody. Now I'm impressed with how well the parts flow together, and with what great music Ellington got out of limited resources. (By the way, I took the liberty of rearranging the titles of the movements into the correct order above.) I've listened to the suite several times in the last couple of days, and the first thing that struck me is that the instrumentation is sparer than I had realized, at least for the first three movements. The first two movements seem to be scored for one trumpet, one trombone (I think), four reeds, bass and drums. "Fiddler on the Diddle" is played by an even smaller group - Ray Nance on violin, three saxes (Procope, Gonsalves, and Carney, I think), bass and drums. The full band is not used until the last movement, and Ellington himself doesn't play at all. "Island Virgin" is a simple little bossa, played mostly in unision, with only a few harmonized passages. But it gets more and more interesting as it goes along. Ellington's note choices are perfect, especially behind Jimmy Hamilton's clarinet. "Virgin Jungle" is darker and more mysterious, with more great Jimmy Hamilton clarinet. And like I said, it's got an excellent, strong melodic line. "Fiddler" seems like something Ellington just tossed off to feature Nance, but what great three-part writing for the saxes! And "Jungle Kitty" is one of the few Cat Anderson features by Elllington that shows what a great jazz trumpet player he was - most of Ellington's writing for Cat just used his high register melodramatically. Anderson plays pretty high here, but in an organic way - it fits right into what he's improvising. The suite as a whole has a really nice flow - the "happier" movements (1 & 3) alternate with the more menacing and intense movements (2 & 4). And Ellington saves the full band (and the flashiest soloist) for the climax. Basically a simple piece, but a good one. "Virgin Jungle" seemed to have had some currency on the jazz scene in the 1980s - it was recorded by James Newton in 1985 and Steve Lacy in 1988. Both are excellent versions - I think Ellington would have liked the colors in the Newton version. And Lacy's version is especially touching in that it's Sam Woodyard's last recording - he died two months after his guest appearance here.

Interesting reaction - I prefer the variety of the orchestral passages to the eight-plus minutes of piano sound, but I certainly understand what you mean.

That's where my copy went! I think I remember loaning it to you a couple of months ago, so go ahead and send it back right away. Seriously, right now - Duke Ellington: Concert in the Virgin Islands (Reprise stereo), which of course was recorded in a studio in New York.

Don't know. The picture was taken by the great New Orleans photographer Michael Smith. I'll bet it was at Jazzfest.

"New World A-Comin'" was inspired by Roi Ottley's book of the same name, which (somewhat prematurely) predicted better conditions for black Americans after World War II. It was premiered at Ellington's December, 1943 Carnegie Hall concert, and a 1945 concert version from Evansville, Indiana was issued on V-Disc. There's a version for symphony orchestra, which I haven't heard, and Ellington played a solo version in the first Sacred Concert. It's basically a 12-minute concerto for piano with band. I have a better opinion of this piece than I did 24 hours ago; I gave the V-Disc version a couple of listens and the Sacred Concert solo a spin. It's put together pretty loosely, but the main theme keeps coming back to hold things together. The piano part is kind of florid, but really doesn't get too far away from the melodies of the piece. Some of what seemed like flashy rambling at first made more sense with repeated listening. If I think of the piece as kind of a rhapsody for piano and jazz orchestra I can enjoy it and not be bothered by the loose construction. The 1965 solo version from the Sacred Concert is shorter, but still presents all the sections, as far as I can tell. With no sonic contrast to the piano, it's a little harder to listen to - I can see it sort of running all together if you're not really paying attention. A worthy piece, better than I remembered. And it's one of the least jazz-oriented things Ellington ever wrote - which is not a value judgment, just a description.

Happy Birthday!

'Teo's Bag' is on 'The Collector' but not 'Etcetera', Clifford. At least on the LPs. 'Teo's Bag' turns up on that 6CD Herbie Hancock box as well I think. That's the one that's on the CD issue of Adam's Apple.

He's an extremely talented trombone and trumpet player - but that doesn't mean I like all of his music. I've always loved this early picture, though:

First of all, I've always loved this tune. It's an old blues, the tune sometimes known as "Shake That Thing." Spencer Williams may cleaned it up a bit and copyrighted it, but it's older than him. "Mama, mama, look at sis - she's out in the backyard, shakin' like this. She's doin' the Georgia grind." I think of Ellington's recordings prior to the November, 1926 Vocalion session which produced "East St. Louis Toodle-Oo" as kind of "prehistory." The ones I'm familiar with don't sound much like Ellington to me, but like an anonymous hot dance band. Ellington's "Georgia Grind" was recorded in March, 1926 for Perfect, and it's pretty dated compared to the music that came just eight months later. There's a corny fanfare introduction, then Ellington gives the tune a long-meter treatment, which means that the rhythm section is going twice as fast as the melody, so that it's a 24-bar blues instead of the usual 12 bars. This gives the tune a nervous feel; it kind of bounces rather than swings. The band was expanded somewhat for this date. Bubber Miley was in the band by this point, but he's not on this session; he's replaced by two pretty anonymous trumpeters, Harry Cooper and Leroy Rutledge. Don Redman is added to the reed section, and has a decent solo on clarinet; I wonder if he had any input into the arrangements. The high point of the recording is probably Ellington's piano solo - it's really impressive, sounding a little like Fats Waller.

Sun Ra - Live at Montreux (Inner City)

Suggestion: "Island Virgin" is part of the Virgin Islands Suite. How 'bout putting the suite together?

I didn't have a clear mental picture (mental recording?) of this one, so I went back and played it from The Okeh Ellington. It's good - suffering only from comparison to the even better Ellington pieces from around the same time. It's not a blues at all; it's a moody minor piece with a contrasting major theme. If it has a weakness, it's that the major theme seems kind of corny compared to the minor sections. It's a problem Ellington struggled with in his early years - how to provide contrast without letdown. He eventually figured it out, but it took awhile. I would guess that Ellington himself thought this piece was a lesser effort - he only recorded it once, for Okeh. In any case, I like it. I'm glad I played "Blues of the Vagabond" just after hearing "Echoes of the Jungle," otherwise I might not have noticed an example of Ellington's reluctance to waste a good idea. There's a little three-note sax figure followed by an ascending banjo tremolo that appears several times in "Vagabond" - the first time it starts in the third measure, just a few seconds into the recording. In "Echoes of the Jungle," the same figure (or very nearly) shows up at the 1:47 mark, this time played by Barney Bigard's clarinet. The very cool banjo lick is the really distinguishing feature. Hey, Bach borrowed from himself all the time.

Has anyone heard "Cowboy Rhumba?" Is it as bad as it sounds?

"Ellington is at his best in Limehouse Blues and Echoes of the Jungle (Victor 232283), a disc that will amaze even those who are familiar with the Duke's achievements in the past. The elaborate texture and diabolically ingenious arrangements will astound even the student of such modern orchestrators as Ravel and Stravinsky." - R. D. Darrell, Phonograph Monthly Review, September, 1931 Darrell (1903-1988) was an intriguing figure - a graduate of the New England Conservatory who became a classical music critic. He also wrote the "Dance Records" column for the Phonograph Monthly Review. His reviews of Ellington's early records have been collected in Mark Tucker's The Duke Ellington Reader; it's fun to see Darrell gradually realize that jazz had produced a compositional genius. Darrell's enthusiasm for Ellington led him to write a full-length critical essay on Ellington for the magazine Disques. "Black Beauty" is a pretty amazing article for 1932. The writing is a little overripe, but it's full of amazing insights; it's definitely one of the best pieces of early jazz criticism. It's also in The Duke Ellington Reader.

This one deserves at least a mention - it's one of Billy Strayhorn's earliest contributions to the book. The band tried it in the studio in August, 1939, but that version ran pretty long for a 78, and wasn't released until the Smithsonian's 1939 collection. A revised arrangement at a faster tempo was recorded in October. It's a good chart, which in retrospect has elements which seem typically Strayhornian - a rich ensemble sonority that has a certain "lightness" to the sound, and a beautiful sax chorus. Hodges is featured in the melody statement, and there are also solos by "usual suspects" Cootie Williams and Lawrence Brown. An excellent early contribution from Mr. Strayhorn.

Marion Brown - Recollections (Ballads and Blues for Alto Saxophone) (Creative Works) A 1985 Swiss studio solo recital. Beautiful, fragile playing.

Dang, so I need both Etcetera and The Collector? Former was easy to find, the latter... not so much. No - if you have Etcetera and the CD issue of Adam's Apple you'll have all of the material from The Collector.

As promised, I've acquired these two albums by young New Orleans brass bands - Modern Times by the To Be Continued Brass Band and The Assassination of American Pop by The Young Fellaz. Both are on producer Ben Coltrane's Blue Train label. After a couple of listens to each, I'm pretty impressed with the TBC Brass Band. They're good young musicians, and the band is very tight. The trumpet section is particularly impressive. There are a few old-school R & B tunes on the album, and they're okay, but the originals are really fierce. The closest thing to a brass-band standard is the Meters' "Hey Pocky Way," which a lot of bands play. The only vocals are group vocals; the vocal on "Ray Nagin" is worth mentioning: "Wanna talk to Nagin and give him a piece of my mind." Of course, I'm an old guy, and I would have loved to hear "Over in the Gloryland" or "Whoopin' Blues" thrown in among the funk. But this is really good band. The Young Fellaz seem kind of unfinished by contrast. They're just not as good a group of musicians - their sound and intonation are immature, and they don't play with the assurance and intensity of the TCB guys. They also play a lot of current R & B and pop tunes - by John Legend, B.O.B., Lady GaGa - which might mean this album will sound much more dated in five years. And there's a pretty forgettable female singer on several of the tracks. The Young Fellaz might get better with experience, but To Be Continued is already very good. Recommended for folks who want to want to know what's going on right now in New Orleans brass band music. You'll probably only find it at the Louisiana Music Factory, though.

Woody Shaw - For Sure! (Columbia) Frankie Laine's "We'll Be Together Again" is such a great song.