So, What Are You Listening To NOW?

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, JSngry said:

Willie Maiden!

Little use for Chris Connor, a non-deadly "affection" for Maynard, but damn did he let his writers write, and this one's a gem.

Free-associating from Maynard brought me here:

 

I love Chris but not at all on this; she and the band are on different planets. Amazing chart.

[JSngry]

Don Sebesky for this one. I like how him & Willie & Slide could be pretty forward thinking harmonically (in terms of traditional big band writing, at least) and still keep it between the lines for "Maynard fans". It's like they all spoke that particular language and passed it back and forth from chart to chart.

Connor has never clicked for me, but I think I like at least the idea of her. In time, perhaps.

Pour me another drink, Frank.

 

[HutchFan]

This again:

Ray Mantilla - Mantilla (Inner City)

[kinuta]

 Donny testifies.

[JSngry]

 

 

 

[JSngry]

Good luck to you Mr. Loud and Wrong, you ain't gonna be drivin no airplane.

[kinuta]

 

[sidewinder]

Redial CD

[sidewinder]

[BillF]

[jazzbo]

Love this one! Great songs, great guitar playing.

[alankin]

Josh Roseman – New Constellations: Live in Vienna (Accurate Records)

Personnel:
Josh Roseman: trombone, laptop; Peter Apfelbaum: tenor saxophone, organ; Ambrose Akinmusire: trumpet; Marvin Sewell: guitar; Barney McAll: piano, keyboards, samples, live dub treatments; Jonathan Maron: bass; Justin Brown: drums.

Jazz plus elements of dub & ska, some tunes by Don Drummond of the Skatalites.
 

[soulpope]

15 hours ago, HutchFan said:

The Inimitable Teddy Edwards (Xanadu)
Everything comes together perfectly here. A great record.

Priceless ....

[soulpope]

18 hours ago, Tom 1960 said:

So good ....

[paul secor]

16 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

I love Chris but not at all on this; she and the band are on different planets. Amazing chart.

I can take or leave Chris Connor, but the arrangement sounds like someone trying to show off their cleverness, rather than creating an accompaniment for the singer. "Different planets", indeed.

[Larry Kart]

FWIW, a review I wrote of a Connor performance:

 

Cool, breathy, and almost barren of vibrato, Chris Connor's voice is a haunted house. Its tone color alone would be enough to freeze the soul, and the way each phrase seems to be exhaled more than sung only increases the impression that in her music Connor must contend with ghostly powers-either that, or she herself is a spirit summoned unwillingly from beyond

It's easy to mistake Connor's otherworldly aura for a chic, dry-martini hipness, which is why she became a star in the 1950s, first with the Stan Kenton Orchestra and then on her own-"the Kim Novak of the jazz set," as one writer put it. But even though she appeared to be a second generation disciple of Anita O'Day and June Christy who took those singers' mannerisms to near-absurd extremes. Connor was a very different type of artist. O'Day and Christy were her models, but Connor inhabited their detached, emotionally oblique style of singing in a way its originators never dreamed of, transforming an attractive show business commodity into an attitude toward life-a desperate wrestling with herself and the world. That such battles could not be won on a nightclub stage actually contributed to the power of Connor's music. Barely contained within the boundaries of performance her losses were so deeply felt and nakedly expressed that communication seemed a paltry word for what took place. While the pain she gave voice to (and the numbness that followed in its wake) must have had an innersource, to be moved by Connor's music was to recognize that her distress was public as well as private-the advance-guard of an emotional void that might swallow us all. In that sense the Kim Novak comparison is perfect, for Connor; as film critic David Thomson said of Novak, has "the desperate attentiveness of someone out of her depth but refusing to give in."

Connor now appears far more confident and optimistic than she used to be. But much of the essential Connor tension remains, the feeling that music is a dangerous medium that must be plunged into at the point of maximum threat. "The Thrill is Gone" is one of Connor's signature tunes, and last night at Rick's Cafe Americain she sang it much more swiftly than in the past-perhaps because, with her vocal technique in fine shape, she needed the challenge of speed to make the emotional content come alive. On "If I Should Lose You," extreme slowness played the same role, forcing Connor into those harrowingly awkward rhythmic corners that only she dares to explore.

Impressive throughout, and altering one's image of Connor to some extent, was the sense of control she displayed on every piece. "Out of her depth" may have been an apt description on her in the past, but now the depths are entered into more out of choice than helplessness. Chris Connor's wounds apparently have healed, perhaps more than she or anyone else dared to expect. But the memory of pain still shudders through her music, creating a dialogue between self and soul, public performance and private meditation, that is as strange as it is beautiful.

 

 

[HutchFan]

Great writing, Larry. Makes me want to explore Connor's music more thoroughly.

 

 

NP:

[JSngry]

More "cleverness".  

 

[Morganized]

1 hour ago, Larry Kart said:

FWIW, a review I wrote of a Connor performance:

 

Cool, breathy, and almost barren of vibrato, Chris Connor's voice is a haunted house. Its tone color alone would be enough to freeze the soul, and the way each phrase seems to be exhaled more than sung only increases the impression that in her music Connor must contend with ghostly powers-either that, or she herself is a spirit summoned unwillingly from beyond

It's easy to mistake Connor's otherworldly aura for a chic, dry-martini hipness, which is why she became a star in the 1950s, first with the Stan Kenton Orchestra and then on her own-"the Kim Novak of the jazz set," as one writer put it. But even though she appeared to be a second generation disciple of Anita O'Day and June Christy who took those singers' mannerisms to near-absurd extremes. Connor was a very different type of artist. O'Day and Christy were her models, but Connor inhabited their detached, emotionally oblique style of singing in a way its originators never dreamed of, transforming an attractive show business commodity into an attitude toward life-a desperate wrestling with herself and the world. That such battles could not be won on a nightclub stage actually contributed to the power of Connor's music. Barely contained within the boundaries of performance her losses were so deeply felt and nakedly expressed that communication seemed a paltry word for what took place. While the pain she gave voice to (and the numbness that followed in its wake) must have had an innersource, to be moved by Connor's music was to recognize that her distress was public as well as private-the advance-guard of an emotional void that might swallow us all. In that sense the Kim Novak comparison is perfect, for Connor; as film critic David Thomson said of Novak, has "the desperate attentiveness of someone out of her depth but refusing to give in."

Connor now appears far more confident and optimistic than she used to be. But much of the essential Connor tension remains, the feeling that music is a dangerous medium that must be plunged into at the point of maximum threat. "The Thrill is Gone" is one of Connor's signature tunes, and last night at Rick's Cafe Americain she sang it much more swiftly than in the past-perhaps because, with her vocal technique in fine shape, she needed the challenge of speed to make the emotional content come alive. On "If I Should Lose You," extreme slowness played the same role, forcing Connor into those harrowingly awkward rhythmic corners that only she dares to explore.

Impressive throughout, and altering one's image of Connor to some extent, was the sense of control she displayed on every piece. "Out of her depth" may have been an apt description on her in the past, but now the depths are entered into more out of choice than helplessness. Chris Connor's wounds apparently have healed, perhaps more than she or anyone else dared to expect. But the memory of pain still shudders through her music, creating a dialogue between self and soul, public performance and private meditation, that is as strange as it is beautiful.

 

 

Beautiful Larry.............. excellent, just excellent!!

[JSngry]

Come to think of it, I do like Chris Connor with Ran Blake, and that's a lot more recent.

Wait, did that ever happen?

[Cyril]

 

[jazzbo]

[jazzbo]

Elaborations

[Larry Kart]

2 hours ago, Morganized said:

Beautiful Larry.............. excellent, just excellent!!

Thanks.

I got to know Chris and her girlfriend after that -- two lovely people --and eventually wrote the notes for a Connor album on Concord. Helen Keane was the producer, but I was asked to do the notes by the label's veteran publicist, Terri Hinte. Late in the game, Keane contacted me, saying the notes were no good and needed to be redone or replaced altogether because in them I hadn't mentioned every song, which would imply  (she said) that the ones I didn't mention were inferior. I replied that I spoke of the songs on the album that to me exemplified Connor's approach, that anyone would understand that, and that it was Hinte at Concord, not Keane, who had asked me to write the notes (IIRC  at Connor's suggestion), and that she (i.e. Keane) could go ---- herself. Heard no more from her; the notes appeared as written.

 

[BillF]

2 hours ago, jazzbo said:

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