Rabshakeh

I did actually make my wife sit through this. She was really entranced by Cecil Taylor, but formed a visceral dislike of Paul Bley. Everyone in this film looked like they were going through a tough patch at the time. Bley pontificating with rotten teeth, Shepp welling up constantly, and Dixon, still largely unknown, talking about himself, drunk. I'm not sure how Taylor compared to himself at his height. I really felt for them all: I got the sense that they felt left out in the cold at the turn of a rough decade, during which they must have been made to feel like irrelevancies. Regardless, i second the recommendation.

That’s an interesting order. How did that occur?

Oh no.

Interesting. I need to revisit those.

I had bad first experiences. It took a while to unlearn stupid habits. I spent a year or two as a teen buying jazz, just because I thought it was something I should do. I got shipwrecked on records like Kind of Blue and Blue Train, which I wasn't sure whether I liked (I do now, but they weren't great starting choices in retrospect). I was also overly led by "name" horn players: I bought a bunch of cheap reissues that had what I thought were A listers double billed, etc., which looking back on it were basically just cynically marketed outtake records that had the leads on only maximum one track each: landfill reissues from the height of the CD era. Nowadays I would know that a record named something like "Trane 'n' Diz!" is likely to be nonsense, but back then I didn't. Then it just clicked for me when I bought My Favorite Things and A Love Supreme. These were records that sounded deep and discordant and resonated with me, at a point in time when I was around 75% hormone. I fell in love with Coltrane, at the same time as Elvin Jones and McCoy Tyner, and then began to understand that it wasn't just about who was the horn player, and I began to expand outwards from that point. About a year after that I chanced upon a throwaway reference to an album called "Sound" by an artist I'd never heard even mentioned called Roscoe Mitchell. It had a cool looking cover. I managed to find the CD reissue in a shop later that day by chance and I bought it on a whim. That was really it for me.

I think people will disagree with me, but Solal. A really unique concept when he's at his best. Organ combo served à la Blue Note or Organ combo au Prestige?

Thanks. I'll keep an eye out.

What's the third? Or is "Dizzy & Miles" two separate schools? If so, who's a trumpeter who was influenced Davis as opposed to Gillespie pre-53? This is a thing. Some people like LPs, me included. It generally ruins the experience for me if I am listening to a comp of 78s.

In case anyone hasn't seen the press, there's a doc coming out about the early years of Free Jazz, that is directed by Tom Surgal. It comes out on Friday, which is my wife's birthday. I've been joking with her that I will take her to see it as a "treat". (Although I'm not sure it is getting a theatrical release over here, so sadly she may have to miss it.) The Guardian gave it a long write up today. https://www.theguardian.com/film/2021/sep/07/fire-music-history-free-jazz-documentary The write up makes it sound solid, but a little generic. Still, I am interested. I'd like to hear what any New Yorkers or Los Angeleans think of it. In the meantime, I'm reminded of this classic meme:

Did these players actually mix jazz with Indian rhythmic and improvisatory concepts, or were they just adding a sitar to mix? What are the records I’m missing? Mr Mahanthappa I know, and there’s a nice example of full integration of ideas. Where should I start with Rez Abbasi?

Nice. I wish it wasn't just the one period. That mix of freeish jazz and Indian rhythmic and melodic ideas works so well that I think it has as much potential in it as the jazz/cuban combination that has been so fruitful since forever. It's sad that it was essentially a false dawn, plus a few lame Aquarian fusion attempts.

Abdullah Sami - Peace of Time Could have been recorded last week. Mines the reissue, of course.

Lee Konitz - Wild As Springtime (Candid, 1997) A lovely late period Lee Konitz record, with Harold Danko. Nil points for the rotten cover art, though. What even is it?

It's certainly better than "the swing era" which is not really accurate. That said, I think that it has the same problem that "the middle ages" has as a term in history, in that it arguably dismisses the contents through the label. I like the idea of the four eras too.

Martial Solal's work with Lee Konitz is some of my favourite of all recorded jazz. Funny that he uses the phrase "middle jazz" as a euphemism, I suppose, for the unspeakable swing/mainstream eras. I've not heard that term used elsewhere.

A good bold one, albeit in its own genre.

Joseph Jarman and Don Moye - Egwu-Anwu (Sun Song) (India Navigation, 1978)

Chris Potter Quartet - Vertigo (Concord, 1998) Holds up very well, I think.

The NIS record or Floating Points? Both in my opinion are smooth solid records, that are interesting within the saxophonist's wider catalogues, don't just repeat ideas, but which are not necessarily their strongest on repeat listens. For some reason they both generated a lot of press at the time. It's interesting to see that continue with an article like this.

In Person at the Blackhawk or Live at the Plugged Nickel?

Miles Davis in Person at the Blackhawk, San Francisco Friday Night (Columbia, 1961)

Yousef Lateef - Jazz for the Thinker (Savoy, 1957)

Big thumbs up to the Black Saint love above. Great label and very much of this era. One day that label is going to be "discovered" by the Grockles, like what happened with Strata-East and Black Jazz. I am hoping I will have the whole set long before then!!

Lester Bowie - The 5th Power (Black Saint, 1978) Great record that feels underrated in comparison to very much equivalent contemporaneous records under the AEC's name.

Sam Yahel Trio - Truth and Beauty (2007) Would this be the VJ record you most recommend? There was some talk on here recently about his influence on the British saxophonist John Butcher.