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Posted

A lot of the sessions he worked on are too commercial for my taste. For example, the late releases of Wes Montgomery or albums by Hubert Laws, George Benson, and Hank Crawford to name just a few.

He gets a lot of credit for his work for Impulse, Verve and CTI, but I don't get it. Sure his goal was to make the artists more commercial for a larger listening audience, but is his prodution work the best work by these artists?

Posted

Well, I love bossa nova, and how much bossa nova would we in the US have heard without his Verve records?

I will agree that I'm not a fan of his post-1968 work, but there aren't many mid-60s Verve recordings I don't like. For example, many people think that Cal Tjader's best records were made with Taylor.

Posted

I just say that he did what he did as well as anybody could have done it & beyond that, you can probably project all you want & find or not find anything you want or don't want..

Posted (edited)

I'm a fan. I think he did great work with some musicians, eg, Stanley Turrentine, Freddie Hubbard, among others. He had a definite outlook on jazz, wanting to showcase it different ways to different people. He might have been a failure, but it was a glorious failure, and Taylor's CTI days was the last time that jazz had a sliver of a chance of being popular in the mainstream. Now, it's all about dead people.

Edited by Matthew
Posted

I remember wishing he had been more interested in the music and less interested in the cash register. He did produce some fine albums, but there was an awful lot of talent going to waste for the sake of wider appeal.

Posted (edited)

I love virtually EVERYTHING Creed Taylor did for Verve in the 1960s. Watching the tone arm lower to the start of an LP side as the Verve label spins is like porn. It is the musical equivalent of walking into a Fellini film or an issue of French Vogue. Collectively, those albums capture that mid-60s dual elegant/decadent jet set aesthetic better than those of any other label. Put "Soul Sauce," "The In Sound" or "Getz/Gilberto" on the turntable and it's like Burt and Angie just walked into the room.

He also produced those wonderful Kenyon Hopkins albums for ABC which had to come out under Creed Taylor's name for contractual reasons.

As for CTI, there's a lot of negative generalizations about those albums. Most pre-disco albums with Sebesky or Deodato albums are solid, deftly combining pop elements with experimental delirium. CTI post-disco and/or with Bob James involvement is useless for me.

Haven't liked much of what I heard on the Kudu label or whatever it was called.

So, despite his good or bad intentions, I will always love Creed Taylor for creating the idealized 1960s and 70s that I choose to live in, in my Eames knock-off recliner on a flokati rug under an arco lamp, glass of wine in hand, being careful not to spill any on the flokati rug which I just had dry cleaned.

Edited by Teasing the Korean
Posted (edited)

I remember wishing he had been more interested in the music and less interested in the cash register. He did produce some fine albums, but there was an awful lot of talent going to waste for the sake of wider appeal.

That's the impression I get from his productions, too. More concerned with "producing" an album (his personal tastes included) than representing the artists' working groups. In the case of Cal Tjader there was one or two projects where it just didn't work with the studio crew he had contracted, but when they finally had Tjader's band flown in from California it clicked, and the album was done in one day. He should have let the musicians do their own thing a bit more.

Edited by mikeweil
Posted

I love virtually EVERYTHING Creed Taylor did for Verve in the 1960s. Watching the tone arm lower to the start of an LP side as the Verve label spins is like porn. It is the musical equivalent of walking into a Fellini film or an issue of French Vogue. Collectively, those albums capture that mid-60s dual elegant/decadent jet set aesthetic better than those of any other label. Put "Soul Sauce," "The In Sound" or "Getz/Gilberto" on the turntable and it's like Burt and Angie just walked into the room.

He also produced those wonderful Kenyon Hopkins albums for ABC which had to come out under Creed Taylor's name for contractual reasons.

As for CTI, there's a lot of negative generalizations about those albums. Most pre-disco albums with Sebesky or Deodato albums are solid, deftly combining pop elements with experimental delirium. CTI post-disco and/or with Bob James involvement is useless for me.

Haven't liked much of what I heard on the Kudu label or whatever it was called.

So, despite his good or bad intentions, I will always love Creed Taylor for creating the idealized 1960s and 70s that I choose to live in, in my Eames knock-off recliner on a flokati rug under an arco lamp, glass of wine in hand, being careful not to spill any on the flokati rug which I just had dry cleaned.

I am REALLY curious about your obsession with Burt and Angie. Do you wish we were still in the 70s??? Live in the moment, will ya?

That being said, there are dozens of producers who know more about producing a good record (not just jazz) than Creed Taylor. Just as an example, there's this German guy who is more interested in producing a variety of music that is mostly of the high quality variety. Creed's Verve and CTI records, to my ears, do NOT hold up well and have not stood the tried and true test of time. His Impulse records are a much greater achievement, and sound like they they could have been made today.

Posted (edited)

A lot of the sessions he worked on are too commercial for my taste. For example, the late releases of Wes Montgomery or albums by Hubert Laws, George Benson, and Hank Crawford to name just a few.

He gets a lot of credit for his work for Impulse, Verve and CTI, but I don't get it. Sure his goal was to make the artists more commercial for a larger listening audience, but is his prodution work the best work by these artists?

If it weren't for some of those '60s Wes Montgomery dates produced by Creed Taylor I might be......a person who actually earns a living today :excited:

But seriously, ladies and germs, a lot of the musical content on those CTI sessions gives both producer and artist reason to hold heads high. Pure Desmond, Chet Baker: She Was Too Good To Me and others, Milt Jackson, Sunflower---so many more---all healthy selling (for jazz anyway)and wonderful music. I've also read Ron Carter in interviews sing the praises of both CTI and the many dates he did for them.

And the above attempt at a joke covers a basic truth for me and many jazzers of my generation: the door was opened wide for us by those dates arrtanged by Don Sebesky, Claus Ogerman, et. al for Messrs Montgomery and confreres just as we were tiring of rock. We went through it and discovered 'deeper' treasures once inside. How can one not be grateful? Arranger and producer knew their jobs and did them to perfection----even if it wasn't Gil Evans with Miles or Riddle with Sinatra. CTI had a sound.

Regarding taking credit wrongly, I wasn't there. But one sickening and self-serving remark by Mr. Taylor has stuck in my craw since 1995: There was a special Guitar Player Magazine Wes Montgomery issue. In an interview Creed Taylor averred that Wes's brothers weren't as good as the guys he was putting him with on dates, and that it worked out OK b/c Wes recorded with guys on his level but went out on the road with his brothers, making everyone happy. What tripe! Anyone with ears that have the requisite holes can hear both the brotherly love and joy and quality of music made by the Montgomery Brothers. As a person lucky to both meet and play with Buddy a few times---well I hope he never read that ham-handed crap. I wrote a letter to the magazine, so incensed was I then----which of course never saw the light of day. Time someone called him on that and glad I got it off my chest---and my more positive comments about Creed Taylor's production, CTI, and A&M (it was A&M Montgomery recorded on, was it not?) stand.

Edited by fasstrack

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