Enterprise Server

Outstanding recording..!

Nice tip. Kevin Whitehead has done a number of interesting stories on the music. Gonna start archiving his jazz talks.

Nice website with some very hip pics. Woody Shaw has always been one of my favorite players. Loved his sound and intensity. A great talent that ended tragically.

The box is nice. I picked up a used copy. Haven't regretted it as of yet. But I've only listened to two discs so far. B-)

I agree. I love Herbies recordings with Miles and Blue Note. But soon after that, his music headed south and very rapidly. I think he is a very talented artist but I can't get with his techno-hip-bop-funk antics. It's very depressing seeing such talent being wasted on a genre of musical entertainment that requires little to no serious creativity or talent.

This is late entry, but that was a very interesting story. Thanks for sharing it Chris. I'm sure you have many more that we would sincerely be interested in hearing.

It will be interesting to see what the music format will be.

Sounds like a read that is worth looking into.

Sorry for crashing in on the tail end of the Ayler thread but I just got back on line after about a two or three month hiatus. Anyway, I really enjoyed that story by Late. My first Alyer record was Spiritual Unity also. I do recall how it quickly became one of my favorite recordings. At that time in my life (I was about 21 or 22), I was very hard core about the music. I was living on a steady diet of Archie Shepp, Andrew Hill, Cecil Taylor, Alan Silva, John Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, all the ESP and Actuel BYG recordings. Albert was a welcomed addition.

I have to break ranks with this MJQ love fest. I know the group was very talented but I never could get excited with the "third Stream" genre. I recognize the musicians who developed and performed but I could never connect to this hybrid experiment.

Yeah, when did that happen? I missed it also. Details please....

Maybe they thought we would not notice?

I saw that box and I could not believe someone would authorize it to be released. It is pathetic. A great diservice to Hancocks music.

That's very unfortunate. You are missing out on a genre of very fascinating music.

Sounds like an outstanding show. I'm very sorry I missed it. I've been having problems with my computer. It's an ongoing war. So I've been down for a while. How did the show turn out?

I opened up 2005 with "Miles Live at the Plaza". You can never go wrong by starting anything off by Miles.

I first heard Blame on my Youth when I was in Singapore back in 1989. I was in a music store and it was being played. I picked it up and I thought it was a nice CD. As I recall it was a live recording. Not bad. I purchased another CD by her and it was ok also. Not a big fan but the CD is not bad. I have no idea what she is doing these days. I think the Blame it on my Youth was her best.

Well, I certainly did not know that.

Well, not much to say at this point other than he was a fine guitar player and a seriously talented blues artist. I do recall his laying down the blues hard and fast in Chicago. Another major figure in the world of blues and jazz is no longer with us. Thank God for the many fine recordings he left that documents his talent and artistic accomplishments.

Has anyone on the board read this book yet and is willing to post a review or comments?

I agree. Hentoff is a fine writer. I do recall initially becoming familiar with him for his writings for Downbeat back in the 1960’s. He and Amiri Baraka (aka LeRoy Jones) were defenders and interpolators of the so called new music. There were intense debates about the validity and purpose of the not always accessible artistic creations of Archie Shepp, Cecil Taylor, Albert Ayler and Sun Ra. Many people were enraged by racial comments made by Archie Shepp in an Down Beat interview in which he stated his premise about the white man attempting to play the black mans music (jazz). Needless to say, Shepps comments created a firestorm of protest and indignation from white readers. Hentoff and Baraka made valiant efforts to explain Shepps incendiary assessments. At that time, most of the so called jazz critics were very hostile and not very understanding of so called free jazz along with its political implications. It was very interesting reading Hentoffs commentary that defended these young warriors and practitioners of the advant garde. Hentoff and Baraka were the only two writers at that time (that I recall) who openly embraced this new genre of music. Over the years, I also learned a lot reading his political and legal articles that are featured in the Village Voice. I have archived a number of Voice articles he has written over the past ten years that covered a variety of subjects. Many of them were very intriguing and informative. I have not always agreed with Hentoff, but I do respect his writing and his unrelenting passion for civil liberties. He is a constitutional law guru and he does make compelling points in many of his arguments and writings. And as expected, you will always have your detractors. At one board, I have seen posters declare that he was a marginal at best writer. I have found such criticism rooted in other personal issues rather that the reality of the Hentoffs writing abilities. Writing is somewhat like sex, music and art –highly subjective and open to individual taste and preference. For me, Hentoff works just fine. B-)

Ditto. The better the sound card the better chances of capturing the audio as you want it.

Go Chargers......???

Fred Anderson : The Rhythm Of Tradition by Adam Hill April 2004 There are two subjects tenor player Fred Anderson loves to talk about: Rhythm and tradition. Not coincidentally, these are two things a listener to Fred's records is also inclined to talk about. Like most musicians, Fred is uninterested in labels, and ignores the disputes and divides that critics and fans (like myself) tend to get distracted by. He's an improviser who, rather than rejecting or exploding traditional jazz forms, sees himself elaborating upon them, inventing from within them, and creating music that can be heard as both an assimilation and evolution of the sound. Perhaps that is most evident on his newest release, a wonderful duet with longtime friend and associate, drummer Hamid Drake. It's called Back Together Again (Thrill Jockey), and it may be the best offering by either artist to date. Symbiotic, adventurous, alive to the African rhythms of jazz and blues, every cut on it comes across as both a translation of the venerable and a pursuit of the new. This is readily apparent on the opening number, a stand-out called "Leap Forward" that has Hamid laying down three different rhythms on frame drums while Fred absorbs them and blows out plumes of his own melodic voice that tighten and slacken, run and stroll, dig in and dig out. (A bonus disc of video footage allows you to actually see this!) This is Fred's third recording of duets with drummers (others include an early one with Steve McCall and his first Thrill Jockey release with former Sun Ra drummer Robert Barry), and it's clearly a setting that comes very natural to him. "Each one is different," he said. "Each one required different approaches." Though Fred's music has often been labeled free, he scoffs at the term. "What I do comes from a lot of listening, and practicing, and composing. I'm still learning, all the time, but it's a really serious process. You got your chords and scales and you just keep playing with 'em and finding new things. I do that every day. Every single day. Nothing free about that." There's a book he's put together and recently copyrighted called Exercises for the Creative Musician, which contains transcriptions of some of his compositions and exercises for practice and exploration. In it, you can find out more about the Rhythmic Concept that he and Hamid have developed through their decades of playing together. "Part of [the concept] is thinking about melody in terms of rhythm, not restricted to any particular groove, and go with the suggestions that come from it. Like when I'm listening to Hamid, I might hear something in the syncopation, and I'll try to play a melodic phrase that might go against it or might go with it. I might play fast or slow. There's a lot there in the rhythm that I can find tones for." If rhythm is their idiom, then tradition is their forum. Not a surprise then that one of the songs on the new record is called "Know Your Advantage (The Great Tradition)". These are two artists proud to contribute to the rich history of jazz music, two who continue to take inspiration from what's come before them. "Hamid just turned me on to the new Jimmy Lyons box, and it's great to hear. I'm used to hearing Jimmy with Cecil, you know, and when I was overseas I used to see them too, but hearing Jimmy as a leader is a totally different thing. It's wonderful." In T.S. Eliot's famous essay, "Tradition and the Individual Talent", he writes that "the historical sense involves a perception, not only of the pastness of the past, but of its presence". A lot of artists like to obscure their sources, afraid that they'll be 'found out' and be considered less original. Well, there is no anxiety of influence in Fred, and no ego beyond trying to make music that matters. In my conversations with him, he spoke as much about Bird as about anyone. He is also apt to talk about Louie and Duke, Prez, Hawk, and Jug. Some of their pictures adorn the walls of his small Chicago club, The Velvet Lounge, which has become well known as a kind of workshop and showplace for younger musicians. "There was this young guy the other day who was all excited about this Charlie Parker record I had on at the club. He was saying how he'd never heard this before, and I looked at him and laughed. 'You've heard this a hundred times, I play it all the time.' See, it was just that he was finally hearing in it what he needed. It took him awhile, but he found it, and it sounded totally new to him. That's what it does." On the new record, one hears shades of Coltrane, especially in the themes Fred lays down, many having the immediacy of announcement before he takes off on them. In his playing, there is always, like Trane, a bittersweet tone, simultaneously mournful and life-affirming, bluesy and spiritual. And his interplay with Hamid has reached a new level of communication that, because it is conducted in rhythm, enters our bodies as well as our minds. On every song, Hamid creates a kind of stirring undertow from which Fred tows out the chords and makes melody. The more you listen to the record, the more you understand more of their concept. It originates from their own lives but is steeped in the larger human story. Because as we know, since the earliest primitive societies, rhythm has been associated with the unconscious, the hypnotic, the visionary, and the corporeal. It embodies and it disembodies. It states and it suggests. This also becomes tangible when you actually see Fred play live, see the barrel-bodied man in the leopard-skin kufi, dipping and stooping, attending to the sound of the drums and the sound of his horn with his whole body. And at 75, it doesn't appear that he will sit or slow down any time soon. "One of the great things about practicing and playing all the time is realizing how much you don't know", Fred told me. And after all those years, decades really, when there were no Fred Anderson records in print, there are now sixteen available. Fred's take on that: "It's good to be in the game, but now I want to stay in the game. I got more to do."

Good Amazon tip. I went there as soon as I saw the link. I can never get enough of those incredible Francis Wolff photographs.