Most Overrated 50's-60's Blue Notes

[andybleaden]

Interesting--but have you ever partied to Andrew Hill?!

[king ubu]

just dropping by to say I *love* shawn's new avatar!

[king ubu]

Oh, and this thread's about as overrated as is Blue Note in general.

[king ubu]

Sydney Bechet and Art Hodes and Albert Ammons and Meade Lux and James P. and Edmond Hall and George Lewis et.al. may be the truly underrated BN recording artists...

[king ubu]

Unit Structures is da shit, folks! It's difficult stuff, you might have to even try and concentrate, hit repeat, sit down and study - it's not your easy peasy Cornbread (run of the mill, as are most of Mogie's BNs - my fave? "Procrastinator", and fasten your seatbelts, I like "The Rajah" quite some...). Read up Ekkehard Jost's chapter of CT (in "Free Jazz", originally published when, late 60s I think?) - anyway, "Unit Structures" is a milestone of the music, of whatever music... only recorded in a very bad (amateurish?) way, alas. An RVG remaster wouldn't help there, as he is the messenger and knows exactly crap how they wanted to sound etc... I assume Cecil really wanted that album to sound like poop?! Cut that mythologistic crap, BN is just one of a bunch of great labels, RVG is just one of a bunch of able recording engineers (why does the Contemporary recording quality never get discussed, for instance? State of art, yet it's all BN BN BN BN!)

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

Basically, though I love Blue Notes and have 301 of them at present, I'm a Prestige man. Prestige as a concept, a method of doing business, and an aesthetic, has been carried on by Joe Fields since Bob Weinstock sold the company to Fantasy. So if I add the 215 albums I have on Joe's labels to the 385 I have on Bob's labels, they come to 600. In a sense, that's a measure of how I DON'T overrate Blue Note, as a company.

And, of course, Bebop and Hard Bop represent only 20% of my Blue Note collection (you know what the rest are, doncha?). So I actually have comparatively few of the albums y'all are talking about. Which means I don't rate them at all, because I have no basis for doing so.

But Blue Note, as Jim says, is a great company because they documented this stuff, which largely no other firm was doing. Though there's certainly some overlap between BN and PR.

From a Soul Jazz perspective, it's certainly BN's weaker suit. The company did very little exploration of what musicians might be around in other towns outside NY/NJ, which was certainly not the case with PR. But they did fine with the local musicians they had - Smith, Smith, Patton, Roach, Green, Byrd, Donaldson, Wilson, Silver, Mitchell and Turrentine. But really, those eleven guys, superb though they were, were about it. Yes, I know there were others, but those were the major characters.

The difference with PR seems to me that, whereas BN was documenting Hard Bop and making good to great Soul Jazz albums as, possibly, a more profitable sideline to cross-subsidise the Hard Bop, PR was documenting Soul Jazz for its own sake (well, of course to make money). In other words, PR was doing the same job with Soul Jazz that BN was doing with Hard Bop. So, if you're a Hard Bop fan, BN is IT! And if you're a Soul Jazz fan, PR is IT!

And that's it.

MG

[king ubu]

And that's it.

MG

'cept you forgot about Riverside, which did a heck of a job documenting Hardbop, too, and recording artists that were also on Blue Note, as well as giving young and then unknown artists an opportunity to release their music (Bill Evans, Cannonball, Wes Montgomery...)

[JSngry]

sidenote: how do ya'll rank Johnny Griffin's Riverside leader sessions, & those different contexts? (Not including Griff & Jaws, which we all know is straight fire.)

I think that griff was significantly better served at Riverside than at BN, although whether or not that was as much a matter of his own maturing as anything else, I'm not ready to say. But Riverside was definitely more amenable to different/expanded/whatever settings than was BN, for whatever reason.

Now, about Unit Structures, again, some historical perspective is called for. You gotta remember that prior to that, the last Cecil date that was out there was the Into The Hot material, and that that was still "Cecil playing over time". (I know that some of the Montmartre stuff was released in the US on Fantasy/Debut, but A)that was a trio date, B)Fantasy back in those days was not all that widely distributed except for a few "hits", and C)I don't know exactly when that album was released. Anyway, good luck finding a copy, then or now).

Anyway, Unit Structures was the first side with profile (and quite possibly the first side period) to present Cecil Taylor's music in the form that we all know today. It could be argued that pretty much everything that's come since is an expansion on what was first documented on that album. So afaic, it's "classic" status is a no-brainer, even if the music wasn't as incredible as it is ("Enter Evening" alone is one for the ages, & getting an alternate of it on the CD was a gift from on high). He'd have come out (no pun intended) somewhere sooner or later, but this is where it happened, and there ain't no changing that. There literally was no Cecil Taylor music like this on record before Unit Structures, but there's been plenty of it since. So I say you gotta give recording props to the recorded archetype.

That's an interesting perspective, Jim. I guess that, given the Cafe Montmartre recordings, I had never thought of Unit Structures as being so much of a step forward, particularly as it came several years later. I have always considered Cafe Montmartre as the foundation for everything that came since.

To clarify, I said first documented on that album. If the Mointmartre stuff came out on Fantasy/Debut before US, then I'm in error. But even if it did, the distribution was so poor/limited that it's for all intents & purposes a technicality.

Now, in hindsight, yeah, the Montmatre stuff is the shit, the real first documentation, probably. But for the longest, it was US. And for the longest, remember, Cecil was nowhere near as prolific a recording artist as he's been for the last 30 years or so. If you've come to the music since then, there's been an embarassment of riches from which to choose. But it weren't always so.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

And that's it.

MG

'cept you forgot about Riverside, which did a heck of a job documenting Hardbop, too, and recording artists that were also on Blue Note, as well as giving young and then unknown artists an opportunity to release their music (Bill Evans, Cannonball, Wes Montgomery...)

For sheer quantity, leaving aside the quality issue, which is top rank, BN leaves Riv/Jzld quite a long way behind. Documenting is primarily a matter of quantity, I think. Chess documented Blues; Atlantic R&B & Soul; Specialty Gospel quartets; Savoy 40s Bebop, the honkers and non-quartet Gospel.

And Riverside did splendid work on Soul Jazz, too. Lytle, Wes, Cannonball, Nat, JH Smith, Timmons, Mance - great Soul Jazz recordings. But the quantity pales beside Prestige's catalogue of Soul Jazz.

MG

Edited December 6, 2006 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[king ubu]

I tend to respectfully disagree on the quantity vs. quality issue. If you look at it another way, you could say (take Jackie Mac as an example since he was on both labels) that Prestige did lots of throwaway jam/blowing albums, while Blue Note or Riverside had some kind of concept behind lots of albums (even if it was just the concept of pairing musician X with musician Y - they didn't just end up playing a bunch of blues tunes, as it often was the case on Prestige).

I am not sure this leads somewhere, but I think a small label like Riverside/Jazzland can be just as important for reasons of documentation. Or take United Artists, not really a jazz label, but they did Thad Jones and Cecil Taylor and Benny Golson and Randy Weston...I just don't think that sheer quantity is what makes the difference. And just to make sure: I'm not saying the Prestige blowing concept was crap, I enjoy a lot of those albums!

[Big Al]

just dropping by to say I *love* shawn's new avatar!

Ohhhhh YES!!!

[king ubu]

just dropping by to say I *love* shawn's new avatar!

Ohhhhh YES!!!

it just so happened that I added some other irrelevant posts... alas I was sort of monologuing, which is only half as funny...

[Big Al]

(why does the Contemporary recording quality never get discussed, for instance? )

An excellent question. Listening to "Art Pepper Plus Eleven" sounds like it could've been recorded yesterday.

[king ubu]

That's good to hear, clem. But - contrary to my good memories of many over/under/whatever-rated BN threads which we've all been through numerous times, I cannot remember there having been a Roy DuNann thread... anyway, I'm no vinyl collector, so I shut up now and don't spoil your fun!

[brownie]

That's good to hear, clem. But - contrary to my good memories of many over/under/whatever-rated BN threads which we've all been through numerous times, I cannot remember there having been a Roy DuNann thread... anyway, I'm no vinyl collector, so I shut up now and don't spoil your fun!

Previous Roy DuNann appreciation thread!

[king ubu]

Thanks - since I don't regularly are in presence of a record player, I rarely read the vinyl corner... should change that, it seems.

[andybleaden]

it will only encourage them!

[Alexander Hawkins]

Albert Ammons and Meade Lux - The First Day

Monk - Genius vol.1

Bud - Time Waits

Nichols - Trio

Cecil - Conquistador

Dolphy - Out to Lunch

Hill - Point of Departure

Rollins - Night at the VV

Rollins - Newk's Time

Dorham - Bohemia v.1

[John L]

Albert Ammons and Meade Lux - The First Day

Monk - Genius vol.1

Bud - Time Waits

Nichols - Trio

Cecil - Conquistador

Dolphy - Out to Lunch

Hill - Point of Departure

Rollins - Night at the VV

Rollins - Newk's Time

Dorham - Bohemia v.1

In other words, jazz is overrated?

[JSngry]

I'm thinking the cat meant it for the "10 desert island shoices" thread

[king ubu]

Albert Ammons and Meade Lux - The First Day

Monk - Genius vol.1

Bud - Time Waits

Nichols - Trio

Cecil - Conquistador

Dolphy - Out to Lunch

Hill - Point of Departure

Rollins - Night at the VV

Rollins - Newk's Time

Dorham - Bohemia v.1

In other words, jazz is overrated?

definitely, didn't you know? it's not even good entertainment!

[Shawn]

It Don't Mean A Thing, 'less the Sonar Goes Ping.

[JSngry]

It Don't Mean A Thing, 'less the Sonar Goes Ping.

Doesn't that belong in the ECM thread?

[king ubu]

belongs in the dudleyesque rhymes thread, it seems... he probably meditated watching his avatar too long

[Jim R]

Unit Structures is da shit, folks! It's difficult stuff, you might have to even try and concentrate, hit repeat, sit down and study - it's not your easy peasy Cornbread (run of the mill, as are most of Mogie's BNs - my fave? "Procrastinator", and fasten your seatbelts, I like "The Rajah" quite some...). Read up Ekkehard Jost's chapter of CT (in "Free Jazz", originally published when, late 60s I think?)

I guess I'm generally not much for music that's so difficult that you have to study and "read up" in order to have it work for you.

As for your comments on Cornbread and Mogie's BN's... well, I actually feel a bit sorry for you. Maybe you need to study them harder and read up? Btw, let's hear you play "Ceora".