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I committed a jazz sin


CJ Shearn

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Well, alright, it's not really a sin, but Wynton is coming here in August, and I thought I'd buy the Village Vanguard box, to drop some of my (unfair) biases against his playing, theres a lot of good stuff on the set, especially "Black Codes", "Knozz moe King" and "Harriet Tubman". Anyway, I'll probably get "Black Codes" and "Live at Blues Alley". Aside from Crouch's horrible liners in the Vanguard package, the set was surprisingly good I think.

Edited by CJ Shearn
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haha. Well, if it was something like "Big Train" oh yeah, it'd be a coaster :P . To be fair, even though Wynton in his arranging, especially for the reeds, shows a lot of Ellington, he is a good writer. Tunes like "Uptown Ruler" and "Black Codes" are good examples. I do hope he can put out something better than "The Magic Hour", which I heard on the Blue Note site when they had some cuts up, and also on the radio, the stuff there sounded quite stiff. I do think on the Vanguard stuff his blowing is a bit looser, what did get me to buy it was his blowing on Jeff Watts' "The Impaler", that was a great solo, Branford too, going as out as possible afterwards was fun.

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Don't get me started on 'Big Train'. I was talking to a well-known saxophonist once (who will rename nameless) about Wynton and we were agreeing on how lame this piece was. This person said something like: 'It's like he's never taken the train in his life'!

Bertrand.

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That's a great set!

The only Wynton I have is his 1st Standard Time which I'm probably gonna get rid of (I don't feel he's really adding much to these tunes).

A friend of mine got this a while back and I borrowed it and really liked the band. This was a while ago so my tastes may have changed, but I've been meaning to get this one myself.

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While I prefer Tom Harrell over Wynton, I think the Wynton box isn't bad especially for the price. It's one of three Wynton sets I have, the other two being Live at Blues Alley and Standards.

As for Tom Harrell, I think he's the best trumpet player out there today. He also does stuff Wynton doesn't...plays the flugel, composes beautiful music and arranges like no one since Gerald Wilson IMHO.

Tom Harrell is one of the most original, innovative musicians and composers in jazz, much more so than Wynton.

Yes I'm biased, but I've been a huge Harrell fan since I first saw him at a small club/restaurant in Schenectady, New York back in June 1990. What a night, I'll never forget.

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I find this set genuinely boring. The musicians descende on the music from a great height - i.e. they are playing well within their technical and expressive limits most of the time. This is much more about reconstruction and conforming to some idea of jazz than about actually expressing or doing anything. This isn't anti-marsalis-ism - it really does bore me.

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i probably get skewered for this, but i like a couple of wynton's longer works: "in this house, on this morning" and "citi movement.".

wynton can be stiff and cold and his arrangements can be way to indebted to ellington, but some his sidemen are excellent such as wycliffe gordon, wessel anderson, and marcus roberts.

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