Nate Dorward

A question: what are the best discs to hear Roland Hanna's playing? I see Cadence/North Country stocks 10 albums of his, & I'm interested in checking him out (was recently transcribing an interview with a former student of his, James Finn, who talks about him a fair bit).

Freak Out, Hot Rats, Läther, Overnite Sensation, are all ones I like. -- & though I'm sure it'd be apostasy to say it, the compilation Strictly Commercial is as close to a greatest-hits compilation as you'll get & it's often on the stereo in our car. (It's also one of the few Zappa albums I can play in the presence of my 7-yr-old.)

As far as I know CIMP keeps all titles in print. I used to have vol. 1 of the Rudd but I didn't like it much so got rid of it. If you want any CIMPs you can order them from Cadence (www.cadencebuilding.com).

OK, I'll await the answers to find out more....! I can think of a few names who'd fit the bill loosely (e.g. Roger Kellaway, Mel Powell....) but nothing that strikes me as obvious. Just posted revisions to my original responses to fill in the few tracks I missed the first time round & finish off a sentence I left hanging.

I'm also fond of Thingin on Hatology with Attila Zoller & Don Friedman. It's a bit unusual because mostly it's challenging originals rather than Konitz's usual bag of standards plus the mandatory "317 E 32nd" & "Subconscious-Lee". It has the first (I think) appearance of Lee's "Thingin", which is an "All the Things You Are" tune with the 2nd half played in the "wrong" key.

I take you mean that it's formal contemporary classical music?

Last visit to the bank there was an MOR "Song for My Father" piped in.

1: A steamin’ “How High the Moon”: I thought initially just an organ trio but then there’s some horns with a nice written-out melody. The 1st tenor sounds oddly choppy & gets into a few wrong turns; he really sticks out given how fluid the guitarist, 2nd tenor & organist are. There are many Jimmy Smithisms in the organ but I don’t think it’s actually him (not quite aggressive/lavish enough), just his pervasive influence on the instrument. 2: Good lord. I hope that’s not who I think it is singing.... 3: No idea who it is! Can’t think of much to say about it really. 4: I forget the name of this tune. Darn odd tenor solo with the hoarse, frowsy tone & wandering phrasing which seems to get glued to the same note occasionally for a while. Reminds me at times of Ari Brown’s work on Braxton’s Charlie Parker album. Now the trombone soloist sounds crisper & much more familiar but I can’t place him. No idea who the tenor/soprano doubler is either. Somewhat messy live track but a nice vibe. 5: “Gone with the Wind”. There must be some funny reason why this is on here.... obviously a piss-take of some kind (of West Coast jazz??). Plenty of bum notes on here & awful soloing, & you even hear a “whoops!” at one point. The pianist also goes off on a weird Brubeckian tangent at one point. Love that canned applause at the end. My 7-yr-old daughter said at the end “What was that?” 6: a stomping “Man I Love”. Probably players I should know, & the knowledgeable members of Organissimo who can i.d. swing-era players will probably nail this one.... Hm, the (excellent) electric guitar is a surprise. I get the feeling these aren't necessarily players who usually woudl be playing together, maybe a festival jam or something. Neat piano solo too, which has some Tristanoesque touches, even though the harmonic stuff seems a bit too calculated & tacked-on. Pity about the fade. Late 1940s probably. 7: I love that wobble in the arrangement that ends up as the vamp at the end (not even sure what instrument it is that's doing the wobble--I think electric bass?), & the nifty switch between 12 & 8. No idea who this is, but a good, very imaginative track. 8: I dunno, Abbey Lincoln? Some Holidayesque singer anyway. Weird to have the competing obliggatists here, & it doesn't really work here, not least because they're mixed more forward than the singer, so much so they sound overdubbed (I guess in part because of the stereo separation). Somehow this one gives me a bit of a headache. Weird how the alto player contributes the identical false note toward the end of the head at the start AND at the end. (Wrong: it's the tenor, circa 2:00, 3:50, 4:30 & in the last moments of the piece. Listening to this 2nd time round, I wonder if it's someone like Charles McPherson on the Bird-like alto?) 9: Yikes, one of those grab-you-by-the-scruff-of-the-neck big-band charts. I forget the name of the tune. Eddie Lockjaw Davis surely on tenor. I wish he got more of a chance to solo. I don't like the chart at all, complete with the banal little piano cadence at the end. 10: more modern big-band sound with a very Jackie McLeanish alto--but I don't think Jackie ever did a big band date so I'm positive it's not him. Nice way of easing into the solo. Again, not a chart I really like much, but I warm to this track a lot more than the previous one anyway. 11: "Hi-Fly" with a vibraphonist who uses very tight vibrato, not sure who it is. The pianist will be someone like Hank Jones, though he's so far it's so far back in the mix I can't make it out clearly. Pleasant enough but it's short & not a lot happens. 12: This saxophonist sounds familiar but it's an odd mix. Like Paul Gonsalves playing over a modern post-McTyner rhythm section! 13: No way I'm guessing at this one! 14: Let's boogie! I'm not going to be trying "mountain oysters" anytime soon, though..... Nice enough tenor solo, though I must confess I couldn't tell it apart from countless other tenor sax breaks in this kind of tune. 15: I forget the name of the tune (which they've stretched out by doubling every bar, I think)--I have it on a Sonny Criss disc I think but the CD is in my daughter's bedroom right now so I can't check. Hm, maybe Clifford Jordan, but I don't really know. (I guessed Jordan for a track on #2 & now am sure I got that wrong...) A nice track, not one that really gets me eating out of the palm of its hand but I liked it. Is that really an organ or just some electric piano imitating it? (Or is it just missing the Leslie?) Maybe it's just the Criss link but the tenor's phrasing reminds me of Criss a bit too. 16: No comment...! 17: No idea who this is--does she always sing like this? That'd make my throat hurt! Despite the poignance of the lyric & the fact the pianist is giving of his(?) best, I don't have a big response to this one either way.

OK I'll bite. #2 1: I know it’s got that intro but surely this isn’t Cannonball Adderley??? - I always hate those thingies that sound like an orangutang hooting (Airto Moreira uses one on Miles’ It’s About that Time). I’ll do a Dan Gould & say NMCOT here. Oh, hang on, 2:30 or so & we get a tart toned alto riffing over it, which as actually pretty nice. This whole track sounds like a bunch of prerecorded stuff & overdubs stuck together: I doubt it was really played “live”...? Alas, here comes the chorus & the trainwhistles again. Good lord this thing goes on forever. Well, I liked disc one a lot but this one starts with something I could do without... 2: Wow, that’s got to be the most out-of-the-ordinary opening to a sax+strings date I’ve ever heard. Fascinating stuff, even if it’s a bit cluttered. Hard to made sense of it as a coherent piece – is this adventurous film music, or just borrowing from film music? 3: a pretty-pretty version of “Try a Little Tenderness” w/ strings. S’nice; I got most out of the one-handed piano solo. Perhaps this is a track like the Clooney on the previous J.S. BFT where Jim’ll be making the (correct) point that strings do not necessarily = syrup, but still....... 4: Another Holiday-influenced vocalist (mixed way up, & definitely not as laid-back as Billie!!). No idea who anyone here is, it all sounds fine (except that bum note at the end of the piano solo), nothing that really gets me excited. I wish I could hear the sax more clearly, as he has a slight edge to his interaction with the singer (as if he's mocking her), & is the player on here I'm most interested in. 5: “Without a Song”. Weirdly thrashy racing bass & drums accompaniment. Lots of Hubbard licks in the trumpet solo but I don’t think it’s Freddie. Now, the tenor player – he gets me a lot more interested. Hang on, it’s surely Clifford Jordan. Ick, I hate the accompaniment, though. Not sure who any of these players are except Jordan. Oddly enough on the bridge during the opening head statement Jordan sounds like Warne Marsh. -- AMG search suggests that my tenor i.d. is wrong (& the real guy is a surprise) but I was nearly on the money on the trumpeter: is this the one? 6: I think this is more likely the work of overdubbing rather than a live two-piano situation, given that some of the repeated left-channel riffs seem “pre-set”. Pity about the muffled sound. Randy Weston meets Conlon Nancarrow! I really have no idea who this is. 7: A really nice big-band blues with soprano leading. Aside from saying that I think it's a good track I don't have a lot to comment. I normally love the sound of vinyl but this is one track where I feel that it'd be likely even more impressive if it got remastered. No idea who it is. 8: I have nothing much to say about this one, which isn’t to say I disliked it, just that despite the rhythmic ingenuity & some interesting sounds & textures I began to long for another lead instrument after a while. & then out of the blue comes the trombonist – huh?? A really good trombonist too, probably Ray Anderson. On that hunch I did a search & I think I got this one: here. 9: Yeeech, this one gets all my neanderthal “not synths!” instincts going, & I’m looking at the track time with a sigh & see that I’m in for the long haul.... Not quite sure what on earth we’re listening to – keyboards? electronic wind instrument? guitar? At least the sax is identifiable though it’s still somewhat processed. It's not that I hate this as that I just don't care. 10: damn odd: the tune sounds familiar from Tina Brooks' True Blue: "Nothing Ever Changes My Love for You", though they play it as if they were machinegunning it. Ugh. More of that more-is-more rhythm-section performance that Jim seems to love & I generally don't .... I don't know: it's all pretty frantic & exciting but are they "saying something" as the adage goes? No idea who this is, any of the players. -- A little searching suggests it's probably this one. 11: I ain't guessing on this one! On the whole I liked disc 1 a whole lot more--Jim seems to have put the "weird" stuff on this one & the "nromal" stuff on #1, & while I like weird stuff too I like different weird stuff evidently. The one I'm more curious about is #2, the outerspace jazz+strings+trafficnoise track.

Hm...... I really don't like those records (Live-Lee & More Live-Lee) very much. A better Lee + piano date is Wild as Springtime on Candid with Harold Danko, or the duo tracks with Mosca on Spirits. Larry Kart also tells me that a Lee/Renato Sellani duo on Philology is worth checking out, but I haven't heard it.

Sure, I'd be interested to know what Feigin had to say. If you want to see the side of the story from one musician on the label send me an email at ndorward at ndorward dot com & I can send you a semipublic letter from one musician (I don't know if he wants it too widely circulated, but given that he cc'd it to about 30 people I don't think he's expecting it to be just a private matter).

Not to rain on a parade, but several musicians I know are pretty steamed that Leo is offering downloads of their Leo releases without any permission from them or any promises of remuneration.

The Gratkowski Loft Exil V is pretty disappointing, I thought. Haven't heard it more than once & it went quickly in the get-rid-of pile so I don't have it anymore to doublecheck. -- It's a loud free blow, mostly, so it's pretty different from the quartet albums.

Is that the Ben Sidran piece in Talking Jazz? Yeah, he has some nasty things to say about Chaloff there.

There is actually a Braxton set on Leo that has his name as BRQAXTON on the spine, twice.

The thing with Ron Carter on cello was that he was actually terribly sick for the Out There session so I gather the intonation problems were largely unintentional. This is also why he doesn't take many solos on that date. Aside from intonation problems there's the minor problem that the heads are full of bum notes too, & in general, except for the tunes already well-established in Braxton's repertoire (e.g. "The Song Is You") it sounds like they're sight-reading heads from a fakebook. Which is indeed more or less what they did, I gather (see the liner notes). -- But as I've discovered it's futile to argue about this kind of stuff (witness Allen Lowe's comments about turned-around beats in the AOTW Hemingway thread & Reynolds' over-the-top response). I've yet to be slapped upside the head, but there's always a first time....

You can remove the quote marks. & yeah you can tell they probably don't care much about them.

Jeez, people really like 20 Standards.....?? I dunno, I like about half of it. The heads are frightful though, enough so that I wish they just wouldn't bother playing them & just go right to the changes. I really like the new one with Matt Bauder, 2 + 2 Compositions, on 482 Music. About half the Braxtonophiles I know like it a lot, half of them hate it.

Better stay away from Joe McPhee concerts then.......

Hey, if Impulse & OJC can get away with reissuing 35-minute LPs verbatim on CD, you can too.....! Actually I hate 70-minute CDs, LP length is cool with me. Thanks for the info.

Off topic, but any chance of reissuing this one? I've only heard Ellefson from a Sackville album (I forget the title, it was a quartet with a guitar I think)--would be interested to hear more.

Steve--the question wasn't whether Hemingway could play time but whether he can play 4/4 time, which isn't quite the same thing. I don't see why Allen's response is making you get so hot under the collar.

John--thanks. Now I just gotta settle on a suitable disc.....

Hm, so am I doing an AOTW? The pinned list's unchanged.

Allen--oh, right, you must mean the writeup I did on Braxton's Charlie Parker Project (which doesn't as it happens feature Hemingway). I kind of like that disc but it's got a lot of really basic mistakes on it. -- Just listening to the new 20 Standards (Quartet) 2003 & again despite the good things on the discs there are some things that really make me cringe, like the muffed heads that seem to be cold readings from the fakebook. No, I've never heard Hemingway play standards in straight 4/4 time, so have no opinion on that matter. He can swing darn hard but it's always been a "time but no set metre" feeling situation I've heard (e.g. the opening to BassDrumBone's Hence the Reason).