Teasing the Korean

As I've written elsewhere, my Dad had The Double Six of Paris and Mundell Lowe's TV Action Jazz, one of the greatest albums ever made and easily one one of the greatest LP titles of all time. Those were both gateway albums for me.

The title track on Sunflower is one of my favorite things in the CTI catalog.

But the other thread did not include my thoughtful, insightful, detailed, and highly entertaining original post, which has rendered the other threads obsolete.

Over the decades, when I was in my 30s, 40s, or 50s and lugging home all these jazz LPs, I would sometimes be so knocked out by a particular record, that I would ask myself, "What if this would have been my first jazz album instead of Dave Brubeck's Greatest Hits?" This got me to thinking about my first jazz albums that I bought in high school, and how they affected my taste in jazz and overall aesthetics. In browsing through my accumulation, I can report the following: I was in junior high when I bought my first two jazz albums. The were: Dave Brubeck's Greatest Hits Benny Goodman's Greatest Hits I bought the following albums when I was in high school. These are listed alphabetically, and not by purchase date, though I can say that the Brubeck purchases were earlier rather than later. The list is fairly complete, based on memory and looking through my LPs. Anthony Braxton - Duets 1976 Dave Brubeck - Time Out Dave Brubeck & Gerry Mulligan - Blues Roots - Columbia that I unloaded Dave Brubeck - College Concert (Columbia twofer) Dave Brubeck - Gone with the Wind Ornette Coleman - Ornette on Tenor John Coltrane - Giant Steps Chick Corea - Piano Improvisations 1 Miles Davis - Round About Midnight Eric Dolphy - The Berlin Concerts Bill Evans - Village Vanguard twofer Bill Evans - Columbia album with hideous cover art that I unloaded Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage Freddie Hubbard - Hub-Tones Milt Jackson/Coleman Hawkins - Bean Bags Ahmad Jamal - Live at Oil Can Harry's Lambert Hendricks & Ross - Flyin' High Mingus - Blues & Roots MJQ - Last Concert Monk - Underground Monk - Always Know (Columbia twofer comp) Wes Montgomery - Movin' (Riverside twofer reissue) Oliver Nelson - Blues and the Abstract Truth Herbie Nichols - Love, Gloom, Cash, Love 70s reissue Charlie Parker - Savoy box set Oscar Peterson - Verve Best of twofer Bud Powell - Amazing Vols. 1 & 2 Bud Powell - Genius of (twofer of Jazz Giant and Genius of) Bud Powell - some later albums which I unloaded Wayne Shorter - The All-Seeing Eye Jimmy Smith - Sounds of Jimmy Smith - A New Star, a New Sound Jimmy Smith - Live at Club Baby Grand Vol. 1 Art Tatum - Masterpieces (MCA/Decca twofer) Art Tatum - Capitol solo sessions Art Tatum - two volumes of the Pablo solo albums Cecil Taylor - Unit Structures McCoy Tyner - Expansions Randy Weston - Zulu (comp of his early Riverside LPs) Weather Report - Best of, which I unloaded Various - The Greatest Jazz Concert Ever (Massey Hall twofer) Various - The Bebop Boys (Savoy twofer) Various - A Jazz Piano Anthology (Columbia) Various - Herbie/Chick/Keith/McCoy album that I unloaded Unless otherwise indicated, I still have all of these albums, but in a few cases, I traded up for mono copies. At the same time I was buying these LPs, I was also buying 1960s pop/rock, 1960s-70s soul/R&B, and punk/new wave. I vividly remember returning from a Saturday morning piano lesson one day and spinning Art Tatum Masterpieces followed by the Byrds' Younger than Yesterday. Many of these albums were recommended in Jerry Coker's Patterns for Jazz, which may have been the first jazz instruction book that I bought. Some I heard on jazz shows on our local community radio station. Others were recommended by friends. Some were blind buys from the cutout bin. My list is piano-heavy, because that was my instrument. Looking back, I think I did OK for a high school student, and I managed to avoid fusion and smooth jazz when it was everywhere. Still, I wonder what would have happened if I had heard at that age, for example, 1950s-60s Latin jazz or West Coast chamber jazz, two sub-genres that were not played on our local jazz station, at least that I can remember. I still spin most of these on occasion, the Brubecks not so much. The older I get, the more I treasure these albums, because I heard them at a particular time.

Good to know.

So am I. Which edition has them in the correct order? I have the Pablo box from the 1970s (after writing above that I avoided Pablo records). I can forgive Andre Hodeir's criticisms because I love his music, especially Jazz et Jazz.

Yup.

I guess it comes down to whether you are more into the process or the final results. I am into the latter, though I can respect the former. I remember ages ago reading a review of Art Tatum's albums and the reviewer complaining that tunes from the solo Norman Granz sessions sounded too much like their counterparts on the earlier Decca and Capitol sessions, the implication being that Tatum was playing arrangements and not living up to the reviewer's standards of improvisation. Considering the magnitude of those solo Granz sessions, it struck me as a very petty complaint, then and now.

Some of us care about packaging. Some don't. C'est la vie.

Agreed, but I think a some jazz listeners cling to this idea that jazz needs to be "spontaneous" and "in the moment," and that production somehow compromises that high standard. Maybe those listeners should listen only to live jazz albums. And because even live jazz albums can be edited, maybe they should just hear live jazz and listen to other music on record.

I need somebody to define "over-produced." What is over-produced for one person is simply produced for another. I get the feeling that certain jazz listeners resent the idea that one iota of advance thought or planning went into a jazz album, as opposed to the musicians showing up, calling tunes, and blowing for 8 choruses apiece. Records such as this peacefully coexist on my modular LP shelving unit alongside CTI albums. There's room for both extremes, and everything between. A very prominent classical music critic once told a professional musician friend of mine that he could review an album based on the cover art alone. And I get it.

I've often wondered if I may have bought more Pablo albums if they didn't look so amateurish. Precisely.

Let him know that there are at least two Kenyon Hopkins fans who are waiting! The Astrud/Gil Evans pairing did not work for me at all.

This is fantastic, and the audio is really top notch. I watched and listened through our Bose docking station, and it was practically studio quality. How strange - or maybe not - that there is no other footage of him.

I may have been expecting it to sound like a CTI album rather than a "jazz" album. Keep in mind that I was well into jazz by several decades already by this point. I think it was the production/engineering/close miking, but yes, I will revisit and report back.

I hear you. The production values didn't work for me. And I just climbed up my library ladder to find that I did indeed hang onto Red Clay. I will give it a spin this weekend. That would be great. There is very little info on Kenyon Hopkins out there, that I've been able to find at least. He has always been a very mysterious figure. If what you're saying is true, maybe it's better that we keep him mysterious! Completely agree.

Completely agree. As someone who owns most of the CTI albums circa 1970-1974, In The Beginning is one of the few that I unloaded. This may be sacrilege, but I also unloaded Red Clay. I did not think that dry, thuddy, 70s CTI production values worked well with more straight-ahead jazz, or at least what I remember as more straight-ahead jazz at the time that I owned it.

Got it. I have I believe all of the good Kenyon Hopkins albums. I unloaded some of his sleepy albums on Capitol. +2 Thanks. I could not find the quote that you included. Is there an additional link?

Thank you for mentioning the great Kenyon Hopkins, whose score for The Hustler is one of the greatest jazz motion picture scores of all time!

Today included some very rare - rare for these days, at least - record and CD shopping for Mr. and Ms. TTK. I picked up several $2.99 jazz CDs. Of these, I'm most excited about Curtis Fuller and Hampton Hawes with French Horns. Would you consider this chamber jazz? I love the color that French horns provide in chamber jazz, and I was especially happy that David Amram is one of the players.

I figured it almost had to be, given the lineup. It is in queue to get a scrub on the ol' Nitty Gritty machine, and then will be enjoyed this weekend!

I almost never buy LPs anymore, but today at an antique mall for a dollar I found a very clean mono copy of Tell It the Way It Is on impulse!. Never heard it before; looking forward to spinning it this weekend!

Looks like you are right after all. My brother, who has listened to oldies radio much, much more than I have over the years, (and who has lived in Philly since the late-1970s,) tells me that the only instrumentals that get played with any regularity on terrestrial oldies radio are "Green Onions" and "Soulful Strut." He says that you likely may hear both versions of "Grazin'" on satellite.

That has not been my experience at all. I have heard both over the decades more or less equally, with possibly a slight edge to Masakela. I lived in Philly and used to listen to their soul/R&B oldies stations, and Masakela was played one those. His version was also on a TV commercial recently.

For a long time, this was in every thrift store, right beside Whipped Cream & Other Delights and Merry Christmas from Firestone Tires!