BFT 33 1/3 Discussion (Disc one and only)

[randyhersom]

All comments welcome. Enjoy!

[tooter]

A flying start which then took a bit of a nose dive. I can nail the first one - one of my favourite albums. Pianist and bass player not related, and the latter composed this very nice blues - not at all colourless. Enough said?

After the first, the music strikes off into areas I am not accustomed to, so I know very little I'm afraid. I didn't like the styles of 2, 3 and 4 at all and 5 also gives me little to comment on except that I know the tune and am betting that the pianist here is the composer; "Joobobie" by Hugh Lawson. The version I'm familiar with was led by Charlie Rouse - I don't know this rendering at all. Too heavy for me, particularly the tenor playing. Wild guess - John Stubblefield?

6 I found far more attractive but I haven't a clue. 7 I didn't relate to at all and just as clueless.

8 - I don't really listen to much Coltrane of this period from choice, limiting myself to his earlier material of course, but I suppose it's him with McCoy Tyner. Don't know what it is though and as 9 is beyond me too that leaves plenty unidentified from this ideal length BFT.

Should I have been trying to guess a theme? If so, I can't. Despite much of the music being strange to me, Randy, I did enjoy some of it. I tried to come to terms with the other material but with limited success.

[tooter]

Hey, no other comments yet and at least an hour and a half has elapsed since this thread started! I was hoping to read some of the answers by now. Hurry, hurry!

[Durium]

The CD arrived today in Holland, so let's give it a try.

To be honest - I think this is a very nice record, but as always very difficult to place names and titles. I'll write down what I thought at first when I heard some tunes:

1. Brad Mehldau Trio. I don't know why, but it felt like that.

8. Coltrane and Shorter?

That's all for now. I 'll re-listen later.

Keep swinging

Durium

Keep Swinging web log

[randyhersom]

No overriding theme. Enjoying the comments so far. Two artists and one composition have been divined so far. I think there's also a sideman IDed, but I'm double checking.

[Durium]

No overriding theme. Enjoying the comments so far. Two artists and one composition have been divined so far. I think there's also a sideman IDed, but I'm double checking.

You mean I hit one?

Durium

Keep Swinging web log

[tooter]

Three tries at putting in a link, none of which worked, so I'll just come out with it, as it looks as if I could have been wrong from your comments, Randy. No-one has to read it if they don't want to know. Don't read any further if you want to stay in the dark.

1 - Mary Lou Williams album [Free Spirits] with Buster Williams on bass and Mickey Roker on drums. The tune, Pale Blue by the bassist. I thought I knew this straight off as it's such a favourite album and the question about the tune came up not long ago elsewhere (king ubu - remember, if you read this?). And I'm pretty sure about Joobobie so that makes two tunes if I'm right.

[randyhersom]

We have two compositions, two artists and two sidemen that have been figured out. The answers thread will make it clear who got what

[tooter]

Ah, I see! I'm now sure about 1, although I was virtually certain before. So that must be one artist and both sidemen ...

Assuming it really is Coltrane and as I'm convinced of Joobobie, it can't be Hugh Lawson on piano playing on his own composition. Not getting very far. Will listen again, more carefully.

[tooter]

5 - Well, I've listened and I'm convinced it is Hugh Lawson. I'll stick with him. Could it be Bennie Maupin on tenor? Sure I've heard the trombone many times but can't think of a name. Where does this leave me? Coltrane???

[randyhersom]

Yikes, a miscount. Three sidemen had been correctly named when I posted two, now it's four.

Edited February 21, 2006 by randyhersom

[tooter]

Aha!

[MartyJazz]

Received the disc today and am giving it a listen right now, currently on the last track. A very uneven disc.

Shouldn't have to say it but have not looked at previous responses.

Will only remark on the tracks that I liked and/or I positively identified:

1) Pretty laid back, pianist seems to from an older school but I have no clue. Rubber band approach from bassist is evocative of Buster Williams to these ears.

5) Tenor gots to be George Adams who is very identifiable. A second listen pinned the track for me which I have on LP only and therefore it's been awhile since the last listen: "Joobubie" from HAND TO HAND (Soul Note), an album co-led by Adams and Dannie Richmond.

6) Recognized this immediately. Love the tenor player, Nathan Davis. Woody Shaw is readily identifiable also. Track is "Evolution" from HAPPY GIRL (Saba LP). This was reissued on the CD titled: TWO ORIGINALS (MPS)

8) Evocative of Coltrane's "Spiritual", but doesn't get to me the way that piece does. Seem to be continually setting the listener up for more, and finally gets going around the 3 minute mark. However the more I listen, the more I'm convinced it is indeed Coltrane with Elvin churning away behind him.

9) Liked this but have no clue.

Wish I could have dug more. Perhaps it's the mood I'm in.

[randyhersom]

Three tracks positively identified and one more for which the leader and one sideman have been mentioned.

Comments, but no conjecture yet on tracks 2,3,4,7 and 9.

[MartyJazz]

Three tracks positively identified and one more for which the leader and one sideman have been mentioned.

Comments, but no conjecture yet on tracks 2,3,4,7 and 9.

OK, Randy. Track #8 positively ID'd. A little tricky because of course it's Coltrane and the quartet in '65, but the two saxophones are due to a bit of Trane overdubbing. The track is "Living Space" (Impulse).

[mikeweil]

Thanks, Randy, for the ride. As always, a nice mixture of familiar and unfamiliar things.

Here are my guesses on first listen without using any other sources than my ears and memory.

Track 1: Sounds very familiar, I mean that way of recording a piano trio. Van Gelder recorded that way, but the Stanley Cowell trio on Galaxy sounded similar, too. A very nice track, and I'm curious who they are. I won't risk dropping any names - I find this type of recorded sound anonymizes the personal aspects of a jazz player's sound. But musically, I like it very much. They do not exaggerate, the bass player is very inventive, it is accessible without sounding like randomized playing, they listen to each other - in short, an excellent example of piano trio the way I like it.

Track 2: That one I got before the first bar was over! I literally lived with all the albums of that group - they were the idols of my very first band. That piece has a great soaring theme, especially when you heard the free atonal piece that precedes it on the album. A musical climax that makes a great final track on that album, and the sound is great, by the late David Baker, recorded before an invited audience in the studio - the best solution to get optimum sound with live atmosphere. That oboist should be easy to recognize ... (last track)

Track 3: Never heard that one before. I like it, on the whole. The drummer bashes a little too much for my taste during the loud passages - I wish these guys would play with the finesse of a Shadow Wilson or Vernel Fournier, or is it the calf skin heads these veterans used that give the drums a wamer sound? That saxist likes his Garbarek et al., but I can't tell who they are.

Track 4: Very nice how these two saxes intertwine. Can't tell who they are, though. That piano ... I'm sitting in my office at the computer with is separated only by a bookshelf from the adjacent living room with the hi-fi, and here it sounds almost like a Wurlitzer in some phrases. Nice, but didn't thrill me as much as the first track.

Track 5: The intonation of the trombonist is not quite to my taste. Well, these slighty funked-up ditties are not my cup of tea, will have to listen again in a more patient mood .....

Track 6: Those two horns are so well together I had to listen real close to tell them apart. Very good musicianship, they get their message across, not earth shattering, inspired by some Kenny Dorham etc. things from the 1960's,

Track 7: Oh, another one I know, or at least had .... let me think .... arrrghh, it's on my tongue but won't come out! It makes me think of Carla Bley's arrangements, but this isn't her at the piano. I like it a lot how all these horns engage in free blowing without getting lost, very group-oriented playing. If I sold this, I may kick myself ....

p.s. after picking up my wife after work I suddenly got the idea who it was: Great what big sound he gets from only four horns, I took it for a big band! This composer/pianist had a weird sense of humour, naming this track after an Italian pasta type ..... (disc 1 track2)

Track 8: Now that one I had after four notes again! One of my very favourite tracks on soprano from this man! I think this was the only occasion where he overdubbed ..... IIRC the theme was inspired from a texture in his living room rug ..... that saxist should be easy to get, so I won't say any more. (title track)

Track 9: Nice free track, I like the way this violinist improvises and that the whole paces themselves very well - when free players are getting too busy it borders on chaos, but here they use space and create the mood together. Who is this?

Very nice choices, and it was just as nice to recognize some for a change ....

[randyhersom]

Six Positive IDs, no guesses ventured on 3, 4 and 9.

This one was intended to be a little tougher than last one

Pretty sure one of the three albums has been discussed on this board in recent months.

[randyhersom]

Three latecomers are headed our way, so I had to take down the clues for now. I'll repost them after the final three have had a chance to post.

Edited February 27, 2006 by randyhersom

[dutchmanx]

Great job!

At last I got BFT with music I like the most - well-recorded modern material with lot of piano!

Love all tracks but identified the second only which is Oregon's.

Also I want to thank the compiler for NOT including any annoying vaults recordings or needle-drops!

Andrew

[Stereojack]

BFT 33

OK, I’m gonna take a stab here, even though I’ve listened through twice, and didn’t immediately recognize anything.

1. A nice piano trio, a relatively recent (last 10 years) recording, I’d guess. The prominence of the bass on this leads me to suspect that the bassist may be the leader. Possibly George Mraz?

2. Although I don’t think of them as having such a strong piano presence in their music, this sounds like Oregon to me. I know Ralph Towner does play piano, and that does seem to be an oboe. I gotta say, this new-agey stuff kinda leaves me cold, although they are accomplished musicians. How generous of me!

3. At the outset I thought Tony Williams on drums, although I don’t recognize the session. Going out on a limb here, it is Billy Pierce on tenor and Mulgrew Miller on piano? A nice track overall.

4. The recording is a little thin here, although I like the performance. The tenor is tantalizingly familiar, but I can’t pinpoint him. The alto in places recalls Frank Strozier, but I’m just grabbing at straws here!

5. The instrumentation brings the Crusaders to mind, but I’m sure it ain’t them. I liked this track, although the riffing towards the end could have been shorter, and where the hell did that flute come from??

6. I had some problems with this. The theme statements seems overly precious and ponderous, although once they find a groove, some nice things happen. I just wish they’d stay in the groove. The tenor player has heard Trane, I’d say. The trumpet has a nice sound, with ideas that remind me of possibly early Woody Shaw. The whole thing seems to be from that late 60’s-early 70’s post-Coltrane bag that the kids these days call “spiritual” jazz. Lived through that era, and don’t dig it as much now as I did then.

7. Now this was a big nothing as far as I’m concerned. Carla Bley & Charlie Haden usually can pull this sort of thing off, but this just seemed overly grandiose. NMCOT

8. Jeez, talk about a Coltrane bag! Man! The whole thing was so out of Trane that it made me uncomfortable. Could this be his cousins, the Grubbs brothers (Carl & Earl), who recorded as The Visitors? The soprano player has a nice sound, but the performance was just too derivative for my tastes.

9. This sounds like it may be a fairly recent recording, by some younger players who I can’t identify, although I liked it. I recall a record by Ron Miles (trumpet) and Evand Kang (violin) that felt like this.

Some interesting music, Randy, even if it all was a tad serious. Lighten up, dude!

[Stereojack]

Well gee whiz, no wonder #8 sounded like Trane. I got fooled by the overdub, and now I understand why the other guy didn't solo! I have this record, but haven't listened to it in years. I'll remedy that very soon.

And he does have a nice sound.

[randyhersom]

BFT 33

...

Some interesting music, Randy, even if it all was a tad serious. Lighten up, dude!

10. Cab Calloway. Minnie The Mooche

DAMN! Not enough room!!

[JSngry]

One latecomer checking in. Disc arrived this afternoon. Just finished the first listen, and am on the second go-round as we speak.

I hear a theme, and it's "I Fought The Law & The Law Won". And whose fault is that? Theirs and ours both, I'm afraid. But let's not go there, not now. The damage has been done.

TRACK ONE - The tune's a little too nebulous for me to grab on to immediately, and once I did, it proved to be slight. Nice components, but no real overriding central design to it, nothing that takes shape and creates a sense of "there". But that's just the tune itself. The playing by all is marvellous, with the bassist in particular creating that "there" in the soloing. Maybe there is a there there in the composition and I'm just not receptive to it. Could be. Or maybe the tune is intended to be just a skeleton which the players are called upon to flesh out. Could be. Or maybe it's just a slight tune made up of nice devices that everybody plays really well on. Could be.

No matter. I got a very real sense of group playing by a group of obviously well-seasoned or better players. Good enough for me.

TRACK TWO - Sounds like some Paul Winter thing, or maybe Oregon (but piano? I dunno...). That sounds too much like an oboe to be a soprano, although I know some guys who aren't happy until they get the soprano to sound like an oboe. Oboe's a bitch to learn, but it takes so much effort to make a soprano sound that much like an oboe that you might as well just take that time and use it to learn the damn oboe anyway, if that's the sound you want.

Anyway, this is good stuff, altough it's soming from a "world view" with which I myself have very little to relate to. But that's cool. I hear their passion and their sense of beauty, and that's good enough. Very real, and very benevolent, so there's no sense of repulsion on hearing this. It's a place that I'd not mind taking a day trip to, but come sundown, I'd probably head elsewhere, if you know what I mean. It's a big world, dig? And we don't all have to inhabit the same zone for it to be a beautiful one.

TRACK THREE - Ok, this one is better than the recording wants us to hear, but maybe not as good as it wants to be. The tune is good, but the lead voice is pulled down in the mix, which takes the focus away from the melody. Too bad, as the melody is real enough, but not "strong" enough to stand up to being placed in the aural "background".

I like how the feel on this is neither funk nor swing. It could go either way, and sometimes does. And sometimes it's both at the same time, which is really cool. I like how the bassist and drummer are hip to this and play with it like that. Very cool.

Soloists are not too distinctive, though the pianist plays with a nice degree of Silver-like specificity, if not too much inner fluidity in terms of his phrasing. A little "episodic", but I think that he is feeling it. Competent players, to be sure, but I get a sense that the tenor player (still pulled back in the mix for god knows what reason) is more into making the changes by whatever "system" he plays by than with actually addressing the composition on its own terms. That's something that really bugs me, not just here, but everywhere. The neutering of the music is the producer's/engineer's fault, but the way the tenor player approaches the music is his own. This guy sounds like he'd rather be off at a session somewhere running Trane licks than dealing with making this particular piece of music into something meaningful on its own terms. You can do both, but you have to want to accept the reality that by doing so, you're playing for the purpose of communicating with real people and not just slumming by bringing your Trane shit to every gig you get. Big difference. It's not that he plays "badly" or "inappropriately" either. I just hear it like when he "holds back", it's not because he's feeling it as part of the music, he's doing it because he feels that he has to. I hear something "off", either resentment about communicating with a sparser vocabulary, or perhaps an insecurity about doing so and being able to say something by those means. Or maybe he's just having one of those days. It happens. But whatever it is, it keeps the music from being all that it could be. It's certainly good, very good in fact, but it could be more. And I think that everybody involved wants it to be. But I don't know that they know how to get it there. And frankly, the more I listen to the tenor player, the more he pisses me off. You learn to play the instrument that well, and this is what you do with it? WTF, dude, what's the problem?

TRACK FOUR - Dammit, I have this side, but haven't pulled it in years and can't for the life of me tell you who or what it is. Pretty sure it's from an "artist produced" label, although not Strata-East. But I'm not putting any money on that.

It's got a charm to it. Very benevolent in spirit, perhaps naively so. But given ths choice between naive optimism and belligerent cynicism, my overall preference is for the former. Fewer instances of innocent people getting damaged, although perhaps that's just postponing the inevitable.

Anyway, these guys have heard "My Favorite Things" and apparently feel that they can build a better world with what they find there. Good for them, and they'd probably be right if they weren't so damn optimistic. But if they weren't, then what would they be? Sellouts and/or dark souls just like the rest of us? That's no good, can't make things better by keeping them the same, can you. And therein lies the dillemma...

Oh shit, it just hit me who this is - It's The Visitors! Well, ok, that explains everything. God bless 'em.

TRACK FIVE - Don't like how it's recorded, but love what's being played. That melody "speaks" in a strong, decidedly non-Tin Pan Alley way, if you get my drift. These guys "get it" in a way that the group on Track Three was only trying to. Maybe they're older and wiser, or maybe they're just better people.

But yeah, this is the kind of shit that you can reach people with and still get your personal musical point across in no uncertain terms. Gotta love that. No condescending, no "dumbing down", these motherfuckers are in the pocket and they love being there. And they play their ass off while there. Take a lesson, all you neurotic virtuosism fetishists - you can play for yourself and for the people at the same time. Dammit, you should!

And yeah, that's defintiely George Adams. As on the previous cut, that explains everything. 'Nuff said.

TRACK SIX - Interesting. Kind of a Booker Little-ish take on what a jazz composition could/should be, and I like that. "Songs" are cool, beautiful in fact, but they are what they are, and if you want to be more than/different from that, then hey, you gotta move on. Solos return to the blues form, which is at one level a copout, but on another level not. Sounds like early Woody Shaw on trumpet (somebody else who "got it"), but other than that, I don't know. The playing is all solid, even if there seems to be an underlying rushing quality to the time. What strikes me the most about this one is the opening and closing themes. You can hear them looking beyond the status quo for a more accurate vision of themselves, and that's the name of the game afaic.

TRACK SEVEN - This is nice. No idea who or what it is, but it rings true to me. Laid out very well, paced very nicely, with a really good sense of overall design. Not at all predictable, yet the lack of predictability results in freshness, not disorientaton. Trombonist plays like I like to hear the thing played on these type thiings - brassy, boldly, directly and like a trombone instead of like a tenor! I'd like to have heard it go on longer, but not having any idea what the record was all about in terms of concept and/or budget, I'n happy with what it is. I like how there's no sense of rushing to get somewhere. It unfolds at its own natural pace.

One of the two big "surprises" of the disc for me. Can't wait to find out who it is!

TRACK EIGHT - Hey. There it is. The world at large is still not ready, worthy, and/or capable of handling the reality that springs from this truth. And a lot of us who are at least partially ready, worthy and/or capable aren't necessarily equipped to deal with the reality that they aren't. So here we are.

TRACK NINE - I'm wanting to say Billy Bang, although I'm not at all familiar with this piece. But it sounds like him to me. Again, I like how the piece unfolds and develops at its own pace, and how there's both time and form present at all times w/o either one of them calling attention to themselves. You hear them as a result of the music, not the other way around, and to me that's the name of the game.

Great playing on this one too, not just instrumentally but conceptually. Music like this is only going to have as much life, space, breath, whatever as the players allow it to have, and these players are all highly attuned to that fact. They all improvise compositionally as well as emotionally, taking the story of the opening theme and developing it with the skills of a fine novelist. The drummer in particular gets my attention for his empathetic and totally in-the-zone sympathetic reactivity, as does the trumpeter's ability to create a rather "busy" melodic line that nevertheless has logic, space, and symmetry.

Very, very high-level musicality on display here by all. The other big "surprise" of the disc for me, and an item that I'm intersted in obtaining for further exploration.

This BFT was nowhere near as familiar to me as Randy's previous one was, but it was just as provocative and enjoyable. I've been on a BFT hiatus, but Randy "nudged" me into participating in this one, and I'm glad he did.

[mikeweil]

TRACK SEVEN - This is nice. No idea who or what it is, but it rings true to me. Laid out very well, paced very nicely, with a really good sense of overall design. Not at all predictable, yet the lack of predictability results in freshness, not disorientaton. Trombonist plays like I like to hear the thing played on these type thiings - brassy, boldly, directly and like a trombone instead of like a tenor! I'd like to have heard it go on longer, but not having any idea what the record was all about in terms of concept and/or budget, I'n happy with what it is. I like how there's no sense of rushing to get somewhere. It unfolds at its own natural pace.

One of the two big "surprises" of the disc for me. Can't wait to find out who it is!

[mikeweil]

Well .... in case it wasn't named for the pasta:

Edited March 4, 2006 by mikeweil