jeffcrom

Charles Ives - A Radical in a Suit and Tie (El): Three Places in New England (American Recording Society Orchestra/Walter Hendl, 1953) Symphony No. 3: The Camp Meeting (National Gallery Orchestra/Richard Bales, 1950) Piano Sonata No. 1 (William Masselos, 1953) These were the first recordings of these three pieces. To borrow Bev's analogy - even though these were the first bus drivers to drive these routes, and even though the buses may occasionally seem slightly rickety over 60 years later, these guys were sure of the route, and give us a very satisfying ride.

I'll do it.

I often skip videos folks post here, but I'm glad I watched this one - it's a delight.

Winds of Change: American Music for Wind Ensemble (New World); Northwestern University Symphonic Wind Ensemble/John Paynter Persichetti - Pageant Hale Smith - Expansions Henry Brant - Verticals Ascending Ross Lee Finney - Concerto for Alto Saxophone and Orchestra of Wind Instruments (Fred Hemke, saxophone) Robert Russell Bennett - Symphonic Songs for Band

I found an interesting Kid Ory website, and wanted to post a link in the Kid Ory thread here. Except that, as far as I could tell, there wasn't a Kid Ory thread. There should be, so here it is. If I'm wrong, administrators please merge, and I'll edit this post. When I got interested in jazz as a teenager, my mom, who loved to rummage through junk stores, started bringing home anything that looked like a jazz album. When I was (I think) 16, she came home with an Ory album called This Kid's the Greatest - a collection of mid-50's tracks on Contemporary's Good Time Jazz subsidiary. I had previously heard some of the Armstrong Hot Five tracks, but the power and assurance of the 70-year-old Ory's playing on the Good Time Jazz LP made a huge impression on me. Even at that time, I recognized that Ory's music was somewhat limited - but perfect within those limits, like many mostly self-taught, "folk" musicians. Ory was more than that, but probably not much more. Anyway, here's a link to a poorly-designed website that is going to provide me hours of interesting browsing.

"Ko Ko" is based on the changes to "Cherokee."

Rosemary Clooney - Love (Reprise stereo). There's a story, or a couple of stories, behind this one, but I'll just say here that this is one of the best Great American Songbook albums ever.

The Original Tuxedo Jazz Band (Scepter). This is one of those albums that has deep meaning for me beyond the quality of the music, which is genial traditional New Orleans jazz - not profound, except in the way that all good New Orleans music has a touch of the profound lurking behind the good-time feel. The Tuxedo Jazz Band is the world's oldest continuously-performing jazz band in the world. The band was formed in 1910 by Oscar Celestin (then "Kid" Celestin, later "Papa" Celestin). This 1964 recording (originally for Saba) catches them about halfway through their journey, and well into the tenure of their third leader - and they are now only on their fifth. (Think about that!) After Celestin died in 1954, trombonist Eddie Pierson took over the leadership for a few years. Since then, the French family has led the band. Albert "Papa" French led the band for around 20 years, then his son Bob (the drummer) took over for almost 35 years. Bob's nephew Gerald has led the band for five years now.

Arthur Blythe - Elaborations (Columbia) James Blood Ulmer - Part Time (Rough Trade). The "Odyssey" trio live at Montreux, 1983. Raw and beautiful.

Paul Chambers - Chambers' Music (Imperial mono)

Steve Lacy/Jean-Jacques Avenel - Bremen; March 5, 1993. Really gorgeous.

A 10" 78 generally ran about three minutes, although I've got a few which push three and a half. By the 1940s many studios were recording onto 16" acetate discs, but I don't know the details of how those were turned into masters and stampers.

I'm letting these four sentences represent this entire mini-essay. Which I'm glad you wrote and I read. And RIP, Mr. Hutcherson.

All three of Lennie Tristano's Capitol 78s. I found Wow / Crosscurrent and Marionette / Sax of a Kind in the wild, on opposites sides of the US. Intuition / Yesterdays, which is the hardest to find, arrived in the mail yesterday from an Ebay vendor. "Digression" never appeared on a 78. Great music in great sound - I really enjoyed listening to it in the original format.

All the jazz sessions (and blues sessions involving jazz musicians) recorded in New Orleans in the 1920s. It wouldn't run to many CDs. Most of this stuff is available, but scattered. Much of it is just amazing.

A Pete Fountain memorial 78 session. .These are all on Mercury, from 1950 or 1951. Basin Street Six - Everybody Loves that Hadacol / Those Same Sweet Words Santo Pecora - March of the Mardi Gras / My Lou'siana Santo Pecora - Mahogany Hall Stomp / Listen And for good measure, one Santo Pecora with Tony Costa on clarinet: Basin Street Blues / 12th Street Rag.

American Music tonight. God bless Bill Russell. Bunk Johnson - Tiger Rag/See See Rider (12" vinyl); AM V-251 - the first American Music release. Russell chose the catalog number based on Bunk's street address in New Iberia, LA. Bunk Johnson - Careless Love/Weary Blues (12" vinyl) Bunk's Brass Band - Didn't He Ramble/You Tell Me Your Dream. What a great record. "Didn't He Ramble" speaks to me about where jazz comes from - it's a 6/8 march with everyone improvising. Not jazz yet, but you can hear it around the corner. It sounds like Kid Shots Madison is playing first trumpet on "Dream," with Bunk on second. Shots only recorded three times, once in the 1920s and twice in the 1940s for Russell. Charles Thompson - The Lily/Derby Stomp Charles Thompson - Delmar Rag/Lingering Blues. Russell's preferred takes by the great St. Louis ragtime pianist were lost by the studio, so he remade them for these 78s. The originals turned up later, and were reissued on CD, which means that these takes are 78-only. Wooden Joe Nicholas - Holler Blues/Creole Song. I've never quite figured out this record. "Creole Song" is the original take, for sure. This "Holler Blues" has never been reissued - although an American Music CD claims to include this take, it's a different one. This could be an error pressing - Wooden Joe leaves out a measure in one of the choruses.

Lu Watters' Yerba Buena Jazz Band - The Complete Good Time Jazz Recordings, disc 3. Not sure if this post is a confession, an opportunity for self-reflection, or a plea for help. I got this box set - four CDs of the seminal West Coast New Orleans-style revival band - pretty cheaply a few years ago. I don't listen to it very often, but there are times (like tonight) when I crave it. Why? Why listen to this instead of a good New Orleans band? I'm not even sure I think it's "good" music. And if I want to listen to music derived from, but one or two steps removed from the New Orleans style, there are several European bands that are better than the Watters band (like Ken Colyer's or Papa Bues' Viking Jazz Band). But Watters' band had its own flavor, and I guess that every once in awhile I want to taste that flavor. It's like not-that-good-but-still-pretty-great comfort food, I guess.

No, no, no. Not side 1 or side 2. The whole thing. "The Tattooed Bride" is something of a contrast, but not a mood-breaker. And it's one of Ellington's very best longer-form compositions - a really tightly-woven masterpiece.

I'm surprised that nobody has posted about this yet, so I will. New Orleans clarinetist Pete Fountain died this morning at the age of 86. Here are my brief thoughts about the man. When I was a young man, I had Pete Fountain pegged - he was a lightweight pop-Dixieland entertainer. Like most of my shallow generalizations about musicians, this turned out to be not entirely true. In the early 1990s I picked up a G.H.B. LP called Dixieland Way Down Yonder in New Orleans, because one side was by trumpeter Lee Collins with a New Orleans band, and I was trying to assemble a complete collection of Lee Collins' recordings. Collins is indeed excellent on this album, as are most of the other musicians. But the other side of the record was by trombonist Jack Delaney, and Pete Fountain's playing on these 1955 tracks absolutely floored me. His clarinet lines were creative and fluid, and his beautiful sound rivaled that of Irving Fazola. By a couple of years later, I realized that Fountain was an important link in the white New Orleans clarinet stylistic lineage that led from Leon Roppolo to Irving Fazola to Fountain, and now to Pete's one-time protege Tim Laughlin. I found that there are plenty of excellent, purely jazz (if that matters) performances by Pete Fountain on record. As for the rest of his legacy, well, so what if he was a popularizer, not a "pure" artist. I don 't begrudge him his nice cars and big house. I saw Fountain perform twice in his later years. The more memorable of the two occasions, for mixed reasons, was the night after I heard Tim Laughlin play at Fritzel's in the French Quarter. He announced that he would be playing with Pete at a casino in Gulfport, Mississippi the next night. So the next evening I drove over - and it was a weird experience. The "theater" was in the middle of the casino, and was open - not separated from the rest of the room by walls. So the music I heard that night was accompanied by the sound of the slot machines, and even more distressingly, by the canned music from the casino, which nobody bothered to turn off. It didn't seem to matter to the band of mostly New Orleans veterans, who played very well. Fountain had little finger facility left, but he still had his sound, and Laughlin was there to cover up any deficiencies his mentor might show. Fountain retired from playing shortly after that. RIP, Pierre Dewey LaFontaine Jr.

Finished up last night with Act 3, scene two and "Michael's Farewell." Whatever plot/story there is still doesn't make any sense to me, but what great music.

Act 3, Scene 1 - Festival

Act two - Michaels Reise um die Erde (Michael's Journey Around the Earth) - basically a 50-minute trumpet concerto for Markus Stockhausen. Lest nepotism be invoked, I'll opine that Markus Stockhausen is one of the best trumpet players on the planet.

It's been too long since I listened to any of Stockhausen's music. Tonight it's the "Greeting" and first act of Donnerstag aus Licht. I don't begin to understand what's going on here as an opera / story, but the music is wonderful.

I picked this up at Papa Jazz in Columbia, SC last week, even though I already have a copy, because I'm not sure how hard to find it is. It's the Harmonia Mundi (rather than the CELP) edition of this fine duet concert from Paris. $12 shipped in the US; overseas at actual cost. Send me a PM.