jeffcrom

Red Allen - Feeling Good (Columbia)

New Orleans artist Emilie Rhys drew this at Lionel Ferbos' last gig, on March 30, 2014. This is really the end of an era. A link has been broken. One more part of the story now exists only on recordings.

New Orleans trumpeter Lionel Ferbos died today at the age of 103 (!). He was (this is my opinion only) perhaps the last living representative of the old "downtown"/Creole style of New Orleans jazz - smoother and more melodic than the rougher, more blues-based "uptown" style. (Think Jimmie Noone as opposed to Johnny Dodds.) For years, Ferbos had a regular weekly gig at the Palm Court Cafe on Decatur St. I was lucky enough to hear him there several times, and always enjoyed his straightforward, Peter Bocage-like playing. There was a sense (to this listener, anyway) of hearing aural glimpses from a lost world - hearing something that would be completely gone once Ferbos passed. And now he has. He last played this past March. Here's the Times/Picayune obituary. I'll bet the funeral will be amazing.

Rock and roll and such today: Jerry Lee Lewis - Breathless/Down the Line (Sun) Chuck Berry - 30 Days/Together (Chess) Chuck Carbo and the Spiders - Don't Pity Me/How I Fell (Imperial) Bobby Charles - No Use Knocking/Laura Lee (Chess) Frankie Ford - Last One to Cry/Cheatin Woman (Ace)

Art Hodes - Mostly Blues (Audiophile). There's lots of discussion here about the sonic merits of various pressings, but Ewing Nunn's Audiophile label consistently issued some of the best-sounding records of the time. Audiophile's 1971 album by the Olympia Brass Band is still the best-recorded New Orleans brass band performance on record. But Nunn recorded traditional jazz almost exclusively, and I guess that limits the appeal for a lot of folks. This Hodes album was recorded in Chicago in 1957; it's an enjoyable performance, and sounds great, of course.

Pete Brown/Jonah Jones - Jazz Kaleidoscope (Bethlehem). Each of the leaders get one side of this excellent album. Joe Wilder is really great on the Pete Brown side.

Happy Birthday!

Paul Horn - Cycle (RCA Victor mono). Mr. Horn's recent death made me realize that I didn't have any of his albums as leader. I picked this one up last week in Mt. Vernon, Washington. I'm enjoying it well enough, but I doubt that it will survive the Great Record Downsizing that's going to happen in a few years.

Arnett Cobb - Ballads by Cobb; mono (Prestige/Moodsville labels, Status cover)

Bessie Jones and the Sea Island Singers/Hobart Smith/Ed Young/Nat Rahmings - "Reg'lar, Reg'lar, Rolling Under." Alan Lomax was usually concerned with recording folk music as he found it, but in 1960 he put together an ensemble to record music which would approximate the earliest African-American music. He brought together musicians who represented some of the oldest musical traditions hanging on in America at the time. Georgia's Sea Island Singers and Mississippi hill country fife player Ed Young came from isolated, majority-black areas whose music reached back to the antebellum period. White banjoist Hobart Smith, from Saltville, Virginia, learned to play from older black musicians as early as 1911, and his participation in this project was enthusiastically endorsed by the other musicians. Nat Rahmings was a Bahamian drummer whose playing, on a deep-toned drum, has just the syncopated bounce/swing you would expect early American black drumming to have. There's no way to really know, of course, if early African-American music sounded like this. But I've always found this session to be moving and compelling, and "Reg'lar, Reg'lar, Rolling Under" is my favorite track.

Keith Jarrett - Life Between the Exit Signs (Vortex). Max Harrison had admiring things to say about Charlie Haden's work on Jarrett's debut album as leader, and he was right.

Charlie Haden - Closeness (Horizon/A & M). The duet with Alice Coltrane had never really reached me until tonight.

As others have said, this is a tough loss. Listening to Haden's lines and beautiful, logical, melodic solos was a big part of my early jazz education. RIP.

On the other hand, it would be very unusual for a record company to record only a single take of a selection, even if the first take was musically superb. Multiple takes were generally recorded in case the first-choice master was damaged.

Rzewski also has a recorded a "mix" of Compositions 30-33 for piano on his Finnadar album No Place to Go But Around. (I'm a long way from my record collection, and might be slightly off on the opus numbers.)

Lou Donaldson - Fried Buzzard (Cadet)

Julius Hemphill - Georgia Blue (Minor Music)

Curtis Fuller - Sliding Easy (United Artists mono). A really nice album, with Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, and Elvin Jones on board. Joe Capraro - Dixieland Down South (GHB). In a Southland sleeve - when Jazzology/GHB bought out a label, they would use up all the old covers before printing up their own. I also have Jazzology records with Icon sleeves. Anyway, the main attraction here is the presence of two fine clarinetists - Raymond Burke on side one and Charlie Cordilla on side two.

I just learned that New Orleans bassist Bill Sinegal died on April 14 at the age of 85. Sinegal, whose name was often misspelled "Sinigal," was a minor figure, for the most part. But he deserves an obituary here - if for no other reason than because he made one of the great New Orleans singles: "Second Line, parts 1 & 2, " by Bill Sinigal and the Skyliners. The tune was a strutting R & B version of the traditional second-line brass band tune also known as "Joe Avery's Blues." It was recorded in Cosimo Matassa's famous studio with Milton Batiste on trumpet, James Rivers on tenor, and Ellis Marsalis on piano. (I don't know who the drummer was.) It released on the White Cliffs label in 1964, and was a local hit. The tune has been a staple at Mardi Gras ever since. RIP, Bill Sinegal. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_yDry61ZhMA

Great deal. I refer to my battered volumes several times each week.

Was this only released in mono? That's my guess. I think all the early-60s Savoy free jazz I have is mono.

Archie Shepp/Bill Dixon Quartet (Savoy mono)

Teenie Hodges stomped his foot five times on a wooden crate and then played the opening guitar lick on Al Green's "Love and Happiness." He's immortal.

Look carefully. Since a record is almost always displayed on the back wall of Preservation Hall during performances, the dozen or so albums I'm aware of with cover shots from inside the Hall have album covers showing, but you usually can't tell unless the picture of the cover is pretty large. Here, the cover of the PHJB's New Orleans, Vol. IV has New Orleans, Vol. II on the wall. The cover of Vol. II was also shot in the Hall, and there's an album cover on the wall of that picture. I wonder if whatever album is on the cover of Vol. II has an album cover on it....