Jimmy Raney discovery

[Larry Kart]

(at least for me) — the six tracks Buddy DeFranco made in 1952 for MGM with Kenny Drew, Raney, Teddy Kotick, and Art Taylor. Raney is really flying free on those — melodically, rhythmically, harmonically, he’s close to a Parker-like level.
 

 

 

[Big Beat Steve]

4 of them are on Classics 1445 ("Buddy De Franco 1949-1952". Bought it years ago (when some Classics CDs came up for sale again after the demise of this series) as his MGM recordings were difficult to access elsewhere (though not all of them are that essential or even all-out jazzy).
Time to listen to this particular session again so thanks for bringing it to everybody's attention.

[Larry Kart]

They're all on a Hep CD, "Buddy De Franco, 1949-'52 Studio Performances." A mix of Capitol and MGM material.

[Peter Friedman]

I have the same tracks plus  a number more on this Japanese Verve CD.

This material was originally on "10" inch MGM LPs

[mikeweil]

9 hours ago, Larry Kart said:

They're all on a Hep CD, "Buddy De Franco, 1949-'52 Studio Performances." A mix of Capitol and MGM material.

http://www.hepjazz.com/hep_jazz_artist_biographies/buddy_defranco.html

[sgcim]

Thanks for posting the other half of this session! 

The only ones I was aware of were the four cuts on a weird Lennie Tristano LP re-issue, that featured one side of Tristano's group, and then four cuts of De Franco's group with Raney doing Russell's "A Bird in Igor's Yard", "Extrovert" and two others. I think the title of the album had something to do with 'modernists of the 50s'.

Comparing him to Parker is very apt; he spent a lot of time listening to Bird live, and then adapting his lines to the guitar, which is insanely difficult considering the difference between a wind instrument and a plucked instrument. He did it by a combination of accents, slurs and a special type of picking, that enabled him to play Bird's lines at ridiculously fast tempos.

And yet, there are still these warped 'shredders' on jazz guitar forums who insist that George Benson is the closest thing to Bird on guitar, even though Barry Harris was quoted as saying Raney "was the closest thing to Yard" that he'd ever heard. 

Thanks for posting the other half of this session! 

The only ones I was aware of were the four cuts on a weird Lennie Tristano LP re-issue, that featured one side of Tristano's group, and then four cuts of De Franco's group with Raney doing Russell's "A Bird in Igor's Yard", "Extrovert" and two others. I think the title of the album had something to do with 'modernists of the 50s'.

Comparing him to Parker is very apt; he spent a lot of time listening to Bird live, and then adapting his lines to the guitar, which is insanely difficult considering the difference between a wind instrument and a plucked instrument. He did it by a combination of accents, slurs and a special type of picking, that enabled him to play Bird's lines at ridiculously fast tempos.

And yet, there are still these warped 'shredders' on jazz guitar forums who insist that George Benson is the closest thing to Bird on guitar, even though Barry Harris was quoted as saying Raney "was the closest thing to Yard" that he'd ever heard. 

 

[JSngry]

13 hours ago, sgcim said:

The only ones I was aware of were the four cuts on a weird Lennie Tristano LP re-issue, that featured one side of Tristano's group, and then four cuts of De Franco's group with Raney doing Russell's "A Bird in Igor's Yard", "Extrovert" and two others. I think the title of the album had something to do with 'modernists of the 50s'.

this one?

 

[sgcim]

5 minutes ago, JSngry said:

this one?

 

Yeah, dat it!