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jeffcrom
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Posts posted by jeffcrom
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More of yesterday's haul:
Butterbeans and Susie - Construction Gang/A to Z Blues (Okeh). I increased my King Oliver 78 holdings by one side - King Joe plays on "Construction Gang." Parts of the record are in really rough shape, but Oliver's solo comes through loud and clear.
I brought home a half dozen 1920s/30s dance band records "on spec," because you never know what will be good. Most aren't keepers, but these are nice:
Art Landry and His Orchestra - Camel Walk/Everybody Stomp! (Victor). 1925 sides - very credible (and enjoyable) second-tier hot jazz.
Gil Rodin and His Orchestra - Hello Beautiful (Crown). A nice 1931 side with solos by Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman, and Eddie Miller. The flip side is by Jack Albin's society orchestra and is of no interest.
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Spent the afternoon hunting 78s, with a surprising level of success. I decided to start with the bop / modern sides:
Charlie Parker - Billie's Bounce/Now's the Time (Savoy)
Charlie Parker - Warming Up a Riff/Thriving On a Riff (Savoy). The second side, aka "Anthropology," is credited to The Be Bop Boys, not Parker - something I would never have known without seeing the original 78. "Warming Up a Riff" seems particularly magical on 78 - an amazing studio jam that wasn't supposed to be recorded.
Charlie Parker - Klaunstance/Stan Getz - Slow (Savoy)
Little Jimmy Scott - I'll Be Seeing You/I Won't Cry Anymore (Roost)
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Just got back from hearing an Atlanta pickup band play the "Birth of the Cool' charts, minus "Darn That Dream." This was a very poorly publicized concert - apparently a benefit for a local church's music school. I only found out about it because my friend Bill Pritchard was in the Bill Barber role. Due to limited rehearsal time, there were a few rough moments, but the ensemble was generally very good, as were the soloists. Trumpeter Lester Walker was the strongest soloist, and thankfully did not attempt any kind of Miles imitation.
The weak link, ironically, was the leader / drummer. If I was going to direct a concert of this iconic music, I would be prepared. I would have my tempos down, know the music inside and out (including the correct titles), and not tell the audience incorrect information.
But in spite of that, it was a thrill to hear this music performed; I never expected to have that experience.
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I have friends who dismiss Mose's songs as lightweight and superficially "clever." Yeah, sometimes, maybe. But shortly before he died I transcribed the lyrics of "Let It Come Down," which a friend described as "existentialism in two minutes."
The punctuation and line breaks are mine. I laid this out to work as a poem on the page.
Let It Come Down
Fretting 'bout what you're going through,
Regretting the things you didn't do,
Relying on compensations you found;Groaning beneath the weight of it,
Bemoaning the fickle fate of it,
Complying just to keep both feet on the ground.That won't get you any place,
Won't excuse you from the race.
When you meet your destiny face to face,There'll be no more wrong or right,
And no more "wish I might."
And if there's going to be rain tonight,Let it come down.
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George Girard - Stompin' at the Famous Door (Vik)
Mose Allison - Lessons in Living (Elektra Musician)
A mid-career album by a musician who led a long and full life, and before that, one of the last recordings by an enormously talented player who only made it to age 26. The Mose album was recorded at Montreux in 1982, and features some of his most intense piano playing.
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Stockhausen - Atmen gibt das Leben (Deutsche Grammophon LP)
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One of the few musical artists in any genre whose entire recorded output can be found on my shelves - that's how much he meant to me. RIP.
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Paul Bley - Barrage (ESP stereo)
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Samuel Baron Plays 20th Century American Music for Solo Flute (CRI)
Excellent, austere music by Riegger, Mamlok, Kupferman, Perle, Wigglesworth, Martino, and Hovhaness.
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Illinois Jacquet - Swing's the Thing (Verve)
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Bunk Johnson - Spicy Advice (GHB). I don't play this one often enough - a session recorded for radio transcription discs in 1944, with a west coast pickup band (although most of them were from New Orleans). This ties with Bunk's later New York Decca session as the best recording job he ever had, and it's niice to hear him with a different group of musicians from his usual George Lewis/Jim Robinson/Baby Dodds circle. Besides Bunk, the most heavily featured musician here is clarinetist Wade Whaley - just as "authentically" New Orleans as George Lewis, but in some ways more sophisticated and in some ways more old-fashioned than Lewis.
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Heiner Stadler - Brains on Fire (Musical Heritage Society reissue)
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Earl Bostic is one reason I'm glad to be a 78 collector. I've got the equivalent of an album's worth of Bostic on 78, and I enjoy him a couple of records at a time. That's enough for me.
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Thank you all for your good wishes, especially since I've been less active here the past few months.
I started and ended the day with Coltrane's Crescent.Through no fault of my friends here and elsewhere, with 10 minutes to go on the day, this is shaping up to be the worst birthday ever. Good luck to United States and the world.
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Varese - The Complete Works (London); disc two:
Un grand sommeil noir
Offrandes
Hyperprism
Octandre
Integrales
Ecuatorial
Ionisation
Density 21.5
Deserts
Dance for BurgessASKO Ensemble conducted by Riccardo Chailly; Mireille Delunsch & Sarah Leonard, sopranos; Kevin Deas, bass; Jacques Zoon, flute.
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Happy birthday 2016!
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Pardon me if I've told some version of this story here previously.
When I was 12, I took up the saxophone - November, 1970. For Christmas that year, my mom gave me a record from the cut-out bin of a local department store - chosen strictly because there was a guy with a saxophone on the cover. It was Budd Johnson's 1964 Argo album Ya! Ya! I was kind of disappointed - I wanted a rock record like my older brother got. But I now had this record, so I listened to it. I liked about half the tracks right away, and the rest grew on me. But the moment that fascinated me and got under my skin was Richard Davis' bass solo on the last track of side one, "Exotique." It was bowed, with quarter tones, glissandos, and lots of dissonant double stops - it was very out there. But I don't think I realized how weird it was at the time; I just thought, "Oh, you can do that."
So I blame my mom for getting me hooked on avant-garde jazz.
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So at a certain point, perhaps a journeyman craftsman achieves critical mass and crosses over into artistic greatness. That's how I think about Cranshaw. I'm glad I got to hear him a couple of times. RIP.
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Sonny Rollins - Reel Life (Milestone). Far from Sonny's best album, but like most latter-day Rollins albums, there are a couple of stunning tracks here.
Sonny Rollins - Easy Living (Milestone). Even further from Sonny's best, but kind of a nostalgia trip for me. I remember hearing this version of "Isn't She Lovely" on black AM radio stations both in Atlanta and while driving through the rural South.
Chuck Carbo - Life's Ups and Downs (504). A 1989 LP that was kind of a local New Orleans hit / comeback album for the great R & B singer, especially the single "Second Line on Monday"/"Meet Me With Your Black Drawers On."
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On 10/26/2016 at 6:13 PM, gmonahan said:
I was into the white dance bands when I was young. Yes, I was weird. This was the first:
I, for one, love that this was your first jazz album. I can't read the titles, but I hope one of the tracks was "Well, Git It!"
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Mose Allison - Western Man (Atllantic)
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Fats Domino Presents Dave Bartholomew and His Great Big Band (Imperial stereo). A fun, lightweight listen. The main soloist is an organist named "Bobby James," who seems to have existed only for this session, never before or afterwards. I'm thinking it's James Booker, who played on almost every Bartholomew session during this period. But on Bartholomew's singles Booker's name didn't appear on the labels. Here the personnel is listed on the back cover (and it's mighty impressive) - a problem, since Booker was under contract to Peacock at the time.
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Steve Lacy - Clinkers (Hat Hut). The first Lacy album I bought, back when it was new. I guess I've taken pretty good care of my records, because it's still in mint condition.
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Earlier:
Music for Saxophone and Cello - The Helton-Thomas Duo (Centaur). Some wonderful playing of excellent music here; pieces by Dorothy Chang, Jonathan Elliot, Denisov, Augusta Read Thomas, Mark Engebretson, and Libby Larsen.
Ives - Calcium Light Night (Columbia LP). Short pieces for chamber orchestra, edited and sometimes reconstructed by Gunther Schuller, who conducts a studio orchestra full of distinguished players.
Underutilized Ellingtonians
in Artists
Posted · Edited by jeffcrom
Tonight I was listening to a CD I forgot I had - Duke Ellington at Birdland 1952 on the Jazz Unlimited label. The CD has 73 minutes of NBC radio broadcasts from November, 1952. It's generally excellent, but it got me thinking about Hilton Jefferson's stint in the Ellington band.
Jefferson is arguably one of the half-dozen best swing-era lead alto saxophonists and soloists. He was with Ellington for about six months, from June to December, 1952, filling what I can't help thinking of as the "Johnny Hodges chair" between Willie Smith's and Rick Henderson's stints in that slot. This great saxophonist doesn't get any solos on those November broadcasts, and as far as I can tell, his only recorded solo with Ellington is twelve bars in "The Mooche" from the Ellington Uptown album.
Ellington said that, "You can't write music right unless you know how the man that'll play it plays poker." But surely he must have played a game or two with Hilton Jefferson during those six months. But come to think of it, neither Willie Smith (Hodges' replacement, as part of the "Great James Robbery"*) nor Rick Henderson got much solo space with Ellington. Maybe the Duke was at a loss as to what to do with that chair until Hodges returned in 1955.
So I see Jefferson's stint with Ellington largely as a wasted opportunity. I can think of several other cases where Ellington had an excellent soloist on board whom he didn't take full advantage of, but I'll wait to see if anyone else mentions them.
*After Hodges quit Ellington, taking Sonny Greer and Lawrence Brown with him, Ellington hired Willie Smith, Juan Tizol, and Louis Bellson from Harry James' band.