Mark Stryker

Real skills as a singer -- seriously underrated. From 1950, with Harry James on trumpet.

None of which I'm aware. I'd have to ask my friends Lars Bjorn and Jim Gallert -- the guys who wrote "Before Motown" -- to know the current status of the the Uptown CD. My instinct tells me that it would appear to be a long-shot at this point in time -- but don't take that as gospel.

Hey gang -- lots of daily content going up in the Musings section of my website, www.jazzfromdetroit.com. So far there have been posts about Joe Henderson, Elvin Jones, Tommy Flanagan & Ella Fitzgerald, Oliver Jackson and Kenny Burrell, Hank Jones and Duke Ellington, and today's post about a recording made 63 years ago today in which Kenny Clarke corralled four young cats from Detroit -- Kenny Burrell, Pepper Adams, and Paul Chambers, Some great music embedded in the posts too, from a rare, never-reissued single c. 1954 featuring Burrell, to today's "Cottontail" with some super-sophisticated chord substitutions. https://jazzfromdetroit.com/blog/jazzmen-detroit?fbclid=IwAR2qRkT3Q5EJrs-7ujSy42BedDSCdxvJ8WNO_avvhuIqsErCCGvOli_ZrEY

Good Junior Cook here. One of the sides where you can start to hear the Junior-Joe Henderson connection -- not as much as on "The Tokyo Blues" 14 months later, but it's there.

The discount will remain in effect until publication date (July 8) at which point it will either be reduced or eliminated -- that's still being decided. So you can order anytime. I will say that from the author's perspective, the earlier you pre-order the better it is for me, because pre-orders help determine how large a print run of hardback books they'll do initially. If they see a large demand, that's good for me. But that doesn't mean you have to order immediately ... I appreciate your enthusiasm. Thanks.

Advertisements for Myself Lots of news today about Jazz from Detroit. First, the publication date is officially July 8 and it's now up for pre-order. And have we got a deal for you -- a 40% discount off of list price if you order at the University of Michigan Press website. That takes the price from $39.95 to $23.97. Just type in the promo code UMSTRYKER on the checkout page. Here's the listing page. https://www.press.umich.edu/4454129/jazz_from_detroit Second, as part of announcing the book, WBGO has an exclusive excerpt up at their website -- the chapter about Regina Carter. https://www.wbgo.org/ Third, the book has a website at https://jazzfromdetroit.com/ Please visit and have a look around. There's background on the book, including the Table of Contents; a bio of your author and friendly proprietor; press photos (and other cool photos to see); links where you can pre-order (plus the promo code for the 40% discount); and a section called "Musings" -- basically a blog, whose inaugural post celebrates Joe Henderson's birthday today with a brief taste of my chapter about Joe and some representative music. (The "Music" section itself on the site will be populated with Playlists and the like in the coming weeks and months.). There's also some generous advance endorsements from Pat Metheny, Sonny Rollins, and others. Onward.

Maybe jazz would be more than popular if we said “jazz” more like this:

New to me. Thanks

Fascinating stuff here, folks. A tape of Mike Brecker as a college sophomore (age 19) playing "Night in Tunisia" and parts of "A Love Supreme" with just bass and drums on a gig in Bloomington, Ind., in the fall of 1968. It's wild to hear him in a raw state, with a a ton of technique but before he had his machine-like precision over chord changes really together. At times a late-Trane spirit wanders in and almost takes over on "Tunisia" -- in some ways, I wish more of that openness and looseness would have remained in his playing. I think he literally practiced those elements out of his conception. Late in his career he tried to reintroduce some of them back into his playing, but it was not easy by then to break out of the box because certain fundamentals were too deeply embedded in his DNA,Iin terms of his pure sound, the core of Brecker's identity is certainly here in 1968,. "Night in Tunisia" starts at the 52:42 (timer counts backward). The trio plays part of a "Love Supreme" starting at 40:22. At the 11:55 mark is a rather infamous tape of the Randy Sandke Septet with Michael Brecker from the 1968 Notre Dame Jazz Festival. Also, did you know that one of Brecker's classmates in high school in suburban Pennsylvania was ,,, (checks notes) ... um, Benjamin Netanyahu? Seriously.

Just saw Billy a couple of weeks ago in Detroit with David Weiss' band The Cookers and he was sounding as strong as ever at 76.

Thanks for the tip.

https://www.newyorker.com/culture/culture-desk/the-jewish-trumpeter-who-entertained-nazis-to-survive-the-holocaust

Thanks. Like many jazz folks, I only knew him from the live date with Cannonball and perhaps a couple of his later recordings,and I heard him live at the Detroit Jazz Festival maybe a decade ago. But I had never really check him out deeply and was unaware until relatively recently how far back his career actually stretched. Soulful cat.

By no means have I heard everything by Alexandria, but this might be the best single track by her that I know -- the most focused and swinging, the melody embellished in a way that elevates the expression rather than detracting from the narrative of the song. You can really hear the Sarah Vaughan influence in the second bridge. Great diction too. Having said all that that, the breath she takes at the end before the final "life" is a drag. Best moment for me is that final bridge and the ascending key change going into the last A section. Also, Wynton Kelly really knew what the fuck he was doing behind singers.

The Tom Lord Discography lists a lot of Ernie Andrews 78s (or maybe in some cases 45s) on a variety of labels including King, Sparks, London, Trend, Aladdin, Gem -- that appear not to have ever been reissued in any form. Anybody know if that's true? Secondarily, what are good sources on LP or CD for early Andrews sides and any special recommendations?

Because "changing your mind" has two different meanings. In one sense, it means to flip one's opinion from pro to con (or vice verse) but in an even more important sense it means to "enlarge your understanding." THAT is the whole point of, well, everything, including art. It's not about winning an argument; it's about elevating your consciousness. You elevate yours; I elevate mine; those folks over there elevate theirs and, well, pretty soon we might have a chance at fixing the messes all around us. Failing that, we might live more fulfilling lives. Nothing wrong with that. Besides, if you're going to mattresses over a particular musician -- even if you are fighting for him rather than against him -- then it's your duty to listen to the fucking music -- a truly representative sample, and that means sometime current. The only way these debates push the boulder forward is if everybody is arguing from the most informed point of view that they can. Also, for those of us staying on the sidelines, it makes for better and more instructive theater. Pass the popcorn, please ...

I just looked at Amazon to see what the cost is on "Warriors" and find that it's $10 for a CD, $20 for an LP but only $2.67 for an MP3 download -- just three long tracks at 89 cents each. Don't they usually charge more for longer tracks to keep some kind of parity on pricing?

Thanks for this. I don't know the record. BTW -- Bobby Battle is a Detroiter. He makes a cameo in my book as part of a hilarious anecdote that sheds some light on the racial politics of the late '60s.

I have been sitting out the substantive debate here over Branford and will continue to do so. But I do feel compelled to say that whether you are fer'em or agin'em (or somewhere in between 'em), you really can't make an honest judgement about the state of his music today unless you take the time to listen to something recent. I see references earlier in this thread from Branford's friends and enemies to records from 2004 and 2006 and some that go back to the late '80s -- that's a LONG time ago. Branford's current band has mostly been together for nearly 20 years, and if the last record you heard was something from more than a decade ago, that's not where the band is at today (and doesn't include the current drummer, Justin Faulkner). I think Branford sounds different than he used to, and so does the band. Some may think the music sounds better, some may think it sounds worse. Some may hear the differences as nothing more than re-arranging deck chairs on the Titantic. But it is different. At this point, I'm not talking about the meta debate about whether the Marsalises are/were good or bad for jazz, or the debate over innovation vs. conservatism, or the neo-liberalism critique of the jazz business, or whether Branford's latest remarks about Miles are ignorant or insightful. I'm just talking about the music itself and what it does or does not have to offer. At the same time, I also wonder whether folks who have been so invested for 25 or 30 years in either the pro-Marsalis or anti-Marsalis camp -- for any reason be it musical, personal, sociological, capricious or the result of a carefully considered aesthetic or political worldview -- can at this point even listen objectively enough to change their pre-existing opinions. I'm certainly not immune to this reality with certain musicians. There are neuron pathways in my brain that by now have been locked into place for so long that anything I hear by some players tends to result in confirmation bias one way or the other. Dammit -- why are we all so, um, human? Anyway, here's Branford's latest record. Listen (or not). Comment (or not).

Maxine Gordon’s new biography of Dexter Gordon informs me that the Los Angeles production of Jack Gelber’s play “The Connection” in 1960 —in which Dexter acted and played tenor and wrote the score — also included these two actors: Gavin MacLeod (the captain of the “Love Boat” & Murray on the “Mary Tyler Moore Show”) and Robert Blake (“Baretta”). It’s not clear what parts either played. I find it amusing that both were in the play, but not sure what to think of this clip that I found of both actors singing on “The Dinah Shore Show.”

I don't disagree with any of this -- I think "band leading" is among the least understood and most mysterious of all things in jazz. It's an art, and Miles was as great at it as anyone ever has been.

I had a line in my original post that I deleted for some reason but it speaks to your first point re: Fille de Kilimanjaro: By 1968 certainly Miles was comfortable with whatever the band threw at him. To be clear: Miles figured that shit out. Also, Filles is 100% a Miles Davis record.

Yes, you can trust Ron Carter on this. Herbie has said the same thing to me -- which is not at all the same thing as him saying Miles gave them nothing, I don't think there's any doubt that rhythm section and Wayne were driving the innovations in terms of the details of harmony, the elasticity of form, rhythmic complexity and layers of interaction, Miles WAS scrambling to keep up with the specifics of what they were doing. BUT it was his band. He was still driving the bus, shaping all of these ideas in the presentation AND influencing how the rest of the group manifested their ideas on the bandstand by the choices he as making in terms of his improvising, tune selection, tempos, segues between numbers, his overall attitude and history and his creating a space in which the band could experiment on the bandstand -- you know, he was being a fucking brilliant bandleader. Also -- and this is where those revelatory session tapes from "Miles Smiles" are so instructive -- Miles could also be extremely hands on and detailed when he felt had to. Listen to way he shapes "Freedom Jazz Dance" by telling Tony and Ron what to play. Moreover, Miles edited the compositions of everybody in the band -- except for Wayne, whose music was so perfect he didn't touch it. But with everyone else, he often thinned out the harmony and played with the forms. So to me, there were different kinds of information and influences going back and forth (and sideways) in the band. Having said all that, I would add that when I read Branford's remarks in context -- "He didn't teach them anything, Nothing. Because he didn't know it" -- I came away thinking he was focusing narrowly on the technical shit as in the abstracted harmony and approach to form -embodied by Wayne, Herbie and Tony's innovations. That's what I interpreted Branford meant by "it" when he says "He didn't know it." I thought he was saying more or less what Ron meant by his remarks and what Herbie meant. YMMV. Carry on ...

Good points from both Jim and RiddleMay -- and that is a hell of a performance and chart on "All My Tomorrows." Thanks all around. BTW -- the original 1958 version with Riddle is in the key of G, but by 1969, Sinatra and Costa take it down a step to F -- except for the climatic last A section, where the chart modulates back up to G and the clouds part and out comes the sun. Those motherfuckers were pros.

Do we know if it was Sinatra or Costa’s idea to just use the verse of “Stardust”? THAT was inspired.