Rabshakeh

I love this one and would love to own it.

I've actually never listened to George Howard. What is/are the record with which to start. It is time to repay my cosmic creditors. I have seen this referenced elsewhere, and found it interesting (not just because I really like Washington). Is this your personal experience (in which case I'd be interested to hear) or is there an article or something available? I missed GW first time around due to not yet being alive. I first came across Washington's name in an article in the Guardian (I think) back in 2004 ish that was so incredibly supercilious and sneering about this 'pop jazz' that the masses enjoyed in the 1970s that it made me want to check him out.

He's definitely marketed as smooth jazz though, isn't he? To my ear his "classic era" (hoho) music is just early 80s R&B, closer to that other marketing category 'Quiet Storm' than anything else. New age is as good a description as any for the more recent stuff. Substance, marketing and critical classification don't always match up, I guess. What's jazz, what's blues and what's R&B? Same conundrum that applies to Basie etc applies to Mr G. Someone made a similar point about a year ago in a thread about visiting a jazz club and being surprised to see Kenny G's face up there in the pantheon of greats. There was a follow up point about Najee. I've tried to locate the thread but can't find it.

Excellent. I'll pass, thanks. Yeah. I didn't mean anything other than to agree with the point above (regarding GW Jr) that the smooth jazz genre / radio format / marketing concept has quality, even if it isn't emanating from Monsieur Gorlitz. Sanborn and Washington are great players whose records I happily own and put on all the time. What's good about a record like Winelight is that it's a great jazz record that you could put on in a room of 90s R&B fans and get a great reaction, which you can't necessarily with Billy Harper. That said, I do think that Mr G's music is okay. Not good, and I don't like it, but a reasonable part of the pop (not even instrumental pop, plenty of his tunes have lyrics, because they are pop songs) ecosystem as it existed a few years ago. I never understood the hate, but maybe that is because I came of age after his "peak" and in Britain, so I missed whatever US marketing campaign made his name, established him as a 'jazz' section artist rather than an R&B artist, whilst irking everyone so much.

Good point. I see McLean as the inverse situation to Adderley: very little name recognition, but his particular albums are much praised, to the extent of making it into jazz 101 texts like Gioia's, and his playing clearly influenced the next gen.

RIP

Likewise Sanborn

This has gone far over my head

Kenny G is okay. Dated quiet storm music with a jazz veneer. I resent it when people joke about him as representing jazz the genre, but even that doesn't happen that much any more. I'd rather my dentist put on Kenny G than popular"classical" radio.

I like the kid. It's part of the vibe.

Bernt Rosengren - Notes from Underground (Harvest, 1974) Streaming this for the first time. I was not prepared for how extremely excellent this would be.

This is true. I have always felt something was missing with the legacy of John Coltrane in particular, and now I can place it.

Do you have a preferred album of the three?

Some Buddy Collette

I had a listen this morning before work. Do you have a set list?

Weirdly I was having a cheeky stream of some of this on Tuesday, after having come across a reference on a blog. Some of it is okay. Some not so much. It's not as bad as its reputation. Who did the "Blue Note / New Note" introduction?

Sounds like he had gotten himself together at that point. I think (on the basis of memoirs and books like Notes & Tones) that the period 1965-1972 must have been an awful time to be a bop-based jazz musician. Collapsing audiences and sales; collapsing interest/cultural capital; no respect from the wider world.

Yes. Boyd is an American who discovered / produced lots of major British bands in the 1960s, including Pink Floyd, the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Nick Drake. It's mostly about his time as a folk rock A&R/producer in London, but he actually started in the jazz scene, running tours in Europe for George Wein, so a surprisingly large amount of it is jazz (probably up to 1/5). He is very respectful of jazz and clearly sees it as being on a higher level than the music he was involved in (save perhaps for Nick Drake). Most of the jazz stories are about having to coax 60 year old swing veterans out of bars where they'd been having "breakfast" in time to catch early trains, but there's also recollections of everyone from Coleman Hawkins (I think) to Albert Ayler. One of the anecdotes is about Freddie Hubbard turning up late, falling down drunk and very angry to a gig in Europe and cursing out the crowd when it got restless. It was obviously a big embarrassment for Boyd, as a very young man who was supposed to me responsible for making things go smoothly. He is still quite respectful though (certainly in contrast to ISB, whom he obviously though were idiots, or Fairport Convention). It is a good book, essential for folk rock fans, but less so probably for jazz.

Is the 1980s survey going to cover salsa?

Joe Boyd has a story to that effect in White Bicycles.

I've heard that Alvin Lucier's death has now been announced. I saw him perform once, on a whim, at Exeter's Phoenix Art Centre, about 20 years ago. It remains one of the greatest musical experiences of my life. An obvious and huge influence on many modern musicians, including Yoshihide Otomo and John Butcher, to name just two. RIP

When I listen to the tune Milestones on the original album, I hear a moment of panic exchanged between Kelly and Adderley, I think (if I recall correctly) around the time Adderley enters. Am I guessing that I'm not the only one?

There's something about those late Capitols: their sprawling, loose, anything can happen vibe, plus the fact that there are so many of them that they're practically a genre in themselves.

I actually started this post because some references (I think yours) to those Capitol records led me to reappraise Cannonball, who I have never really classed as a personal favourite, probably because of overexposure to the Riversides. I have been working my way around his back catalogue since then, and have been very impressed at how he plays on his first record, which I think is on Savoy. He just sounds so loose in comparison to the standard 1955 bluesey hard bop approach. You can hear the link right through to those late Capitols. Despite being basically a blues specialist, his playing sounds quite unique to my ears. He also does some weird stuff with his solos (e.g. on the first track on Portrait) that you really would not expect from a player who plays the way Cannonball does. It's a weird one though. He has the name recognition of Bill Evans or Art Blakey, but, other than KOB, Milestones and Somethin' Else, there's very little tribute paid in the wider jazz culture to his actual saxophone playing or records, even less tribute than e.g. Mobley, who is a lot less well known.

Matt Mitchell - Phalanx Ambassadors (Pi, 2019) Really top notch stuff.