Rabshakeh

I guess that what I am saying is that there are plenty of people out there who think that modernist jazz ended in 1970. But it should be uncontroversial that there was a dense lineage of modernist jazz that has continued to develop since then: the classics of Strata-East, Braxton on Arista, bop revival records like Eastern Rebellion or The Homecoming, Keith Jarrett's flow of solo and trio piano albums, The Bad Plus, the Young Lions, the Art Ensemble, M Base, the World Saxophone Quartet, Pat Metheny, EST, the sensuous mid-period works of Kenneth Gorelick, Cecil Taylor's Berlin concerts, Bob James and his acolytes, Cassandra Wilson, the emergence of European Free Improv as its own thing, Jan Garbarek with the Hilliard Ensemble and on and on and on. I love some of this stuff and I dislike a fair chunk of it too. But from the point of view of the board members I think that we can see these as various points in the evolution of modernist jazz, which has never just been about a stale retread of old Hank Mobley records, regardless of what detractors might say. I don't want to be hung up on genre here. The genres and idioms have never been closed off from each other, and there's always been cross pollination, cross genre work, active pollination at the musical level. In many cases these genres have no meaning at all. But where genres do have a meaning is from the point of view of a listener seeking to find the records retrospectively, because when it comes to musicians drawing on traditional or swing idioms, the doors are closed and there is precious little information out there. This music is treated as if it were stepping stones to modernism, and after an arbitrary date it is judged as having ceased to developed, with artists since then being mere revivalists. But that isn't the case at all. The music continued to develop, old roads not taken were finally followed, gruesome commercial hybrids emerged (Acker Bilk; Trombone Shorty) and bolder musicians pursued avantgarde approaches (Lacy, Rudd), etc etc. Anyway, all very long-winded. The real message is that I want to be able to hear this music for myself and to do so, I need to find out about the records. To find the traditional jazz equivalents of The Homecoming or the Koln Concert or Snurdy McGurdy or Black Codes or From Gagarin's Point of View or Berlin '88 is very hard. Where there is information about these musicians, it is too often biographical and rarely about the albums. To step back towards modernist jazz again, it is all very well knowing that a musician called Dexter Gordon grew up on the West Coast and played in a certain style, but it doesn't really tell you about the music: about the Wardell Grey duels, the very well regarded Blue Note records, the extraordinary profusion of Steeplechases and the talismanic effect of Gordon's return to the US and the release of Homecoming in particular. Thanks! Having spent half an hour looking through an online version of the book, it looks really good and I would certainly go for it. Lots of spikey strongly held opinions, nicely expressed and based on a deep knowledge but which of course will be taken with the requisite pinch of salt. I will buy it if I see it for sure. And in answer to your question, I am really looking for the latter day stuff. Mainstream swing would be a good example. I can remember the exact day on which I finally identified that it existed as a recorded category: I simply did not know about it until then. And there are so many great records of which I had never heard, including now favourites of mine like The Dirty Old Men by Budd Johnson and Earl Hines. What I would say is that the later swing stuff is still comparatively a bit easier to access than the later "traditional" stuff, which is maybe even more closed off. Once I had identified that swing continued it was quite easy to track the albums: it helps that most active musicians came from one of two big bands, and that there were recordings being released internationally on labels like Verve and Pablo even quite late. Whereas the traditional stuff is much more esoteric: it has taken me years to identify well-known names like Jim Cullum or Kenny Davern, and records line Jack Teagarden's albums on Verve have nothing like the recognition that swing music on Verve gets.

Thanks Jim.

Thanks!

Patti Austin - Every Home Should Have One

Thanks BBS. To be clear: I want the book to expand horizons rather than narrow them. Particularly with respect to LPs and classic historically released compilations (which are how I prefer to listen to music). I'm not interested in restrictive canons but rather in discovering albums I don't know. I know that I am preaching to the choir here, given all the well considered answers you have given in the past to similar posts I have made, but I am consistently frustrated by the lack of attention paid to the "traditional" jazzes and to swing (including RnB variants) past the arbitrary cut off dates granted to them of 1935 and 1947. These styles continued to develop, go through waves of expansion and contractions, and bring in new fans for years. They had their own constellations of star players and their own canons of classic albums and all subjective personal favourites. But with time, they have lost ground to the critical consensus of modernist and free lineages. The tendancy in more recent histories is to efface these styles completely and just ignore them past their alloted historical eras. In the internet age, there are thousands of listicles and sources of recommendations for most every musical genre, from niche forms of electronica to regional variants of Thai music. However it is still all very thin on the ground for later traditional jazz and swing. Certainly there are some decent blogs, but the focus tends to be on the artists and the history, and not on what I am interested in, which is strictly the LPs. This makes it hard for someone working backwards (as I am) to discover the classic records (whether we mean most inspirational / canonical classics or personal favourites). When I was learning about jazz I followed "Best of" lists in magazines, noted records that I saw frequently in shops, took advice from older family members, picked through the Penguins and All music, and then, when the internet started, followed up all those threads on the internet, particularly the old Amazon user lists, and, these days, RYM and discogs lists, as well as posts on Instagram. This was great for helping me to find out about LPs in modern jazz styles, including some very niche or rare releases. But, other than for the big names on Verve, none of these sources really exist for pre-bop styles. For traditional jazz lineage stuff post 1935, in particular, it is a desert out there on the internet, in terms of LP recommendations. I have found that generally the best source for this stuff tends to be books on jazz written in the 1970s, when the revivalist generation (for which bop and free jazz were alternative or rival traditions, rather than the base setting for all jazz) was still productive. The reason why I am looking at this book is that it focuses on LPs, and because the writer has a good reputation. Edit: I should add that a very kind forum member has in fact helped me out with the index. So thank you again to the individual concerned.

Looks like this book isn't in print anymore. Does anyone have a list of the 250 records selected?

Emphasis – Emphasis

That's one of my favourite by him. It doesn't have the po-faced Iyer on it. Mahanthappa is a lot more enjoyable when he's setting the tone.

Sad news. RIP.

David Murray Big Band – Live At «Sweet Basil» - Vol. 2

Derek Bailey - Standards

Lee Konitz and Hal Gallery - Windows I'm with you too.

Paul Smoker Trio, Ron Rohovit, Phil Haynes – Alone

Derek Bailey – Standards

Thanks. This sums up how I feel about it much more eloquently than I did.

Wadada Leo Smith - Red Sulphur Sky

Simon Nabatov and Tom Rainey – Steady Now

That's fair. I think I was thinking most of the period marked by Universal Beings and Fly or Die. It seemed like the label could do no wrong. I have just looked back at Mazurek's back catalogue. I associate him so heavily with IA's glory era that I hadn't realised he had a whole past life on labels like Delmark, nor that he had recorded hard bop records with the likes of Eric Alexander.

Alkebu-Lan is a record that never really jelled with me. It is murkily recorded and, to my dumb ears, the music and narration is average and almost self-parodic. I am happy to listen to it occasionally as a document of what the late 1060s and early 1970s was probably really like in jazz, but I've always been a bit confused by the reverence in which it is held.

That Jeff Parker did cut through. I'd forgotten that. To a certain extent it would have been unreasonable for it to have kept up the initial hit rate. But the contrast is quite strong. There were one or two years when it felt like the top three most memorable releases were all by new artists coming out on IA. 2017-2021 or thereabouts.

I haven't heard much of or about International Anthem recently. It seems like only two years ago it could do no wrong. Every release was generating hype.

On a whim, I am currently working my way through the Penguin Guides, which are easily found in charity shops these days. I was already familiar from younger years with their Core and Crown recommendations but I hadn't considered their non-Core and no-Crown recommendations before. Whilst I viewed them with a certain disdain at the time, read retrospectively they're an excellent frozen snapshot of a certain critical viewpoint in the 1990s and 200s. Brad Mehldau and the Bad Plus were supreme. On the avant side, it was Evan Parker and Barry Guy, once a week, every week. ECM was an enormous titan that required recognition. Straight Ahead jazz of the Young Lions Coltrane-gang type was increasingly seen as old hat. A very heavy domination of Europeans. No fusion. No smooth or radio friendly jazz. It is strange to be confronted with the past in this way. That was a vanished era of low access to information, high critical power / gatekeeping, a lack of any expectations of a social mission (with accompanying extreme downplaying of African-American and of younger musicians) and a time before "poptimism" shattered self-perceived elite tastes. The 1990s and 2000s is generally my least favourite era for this music. Obviously a lot of the music reminds me of the reasons for my angry dismissals at the time, but, there is a hint of nostalgia to going through some of this stuff.

Mark Dresser Trio – Aquifer

Still a good record.

Steve Lacy – Actuality