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Remembering Creed Taylor


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29 minutes ago, sgcim said:

On the CD I bought, they had Vera Cruz, another Nascimento song that wasn't on the original LP.

Yeah, the remix that ended up on The Sugar Man.  I have the Gilberto with Turrentine Japanese RVG and have no need for the alternate mix.  I prefer the original Gilberto with Turrentine one.

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I had the Milt Jackson - "Sunflower"  album and after playing it a number of times got rid of it. There must be at least 20 or maybe even more Milt Jackson recordings I prefer. My recollection is that the "Sunflower" album diminished the soulful, swinging, deep jazz feeling I get from so many of Milt Jacksons recordings. 

I do like "Cherry" with Stanley Turrentine and Milt Jackson. That along with a Bill Evans and a Paul Desmond album are among the few CTI albums I have. As I am away from home on summer vacation, can't check to see what other CTI albums I might have, but would think very very few .

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16 hours ago, AllenLowe said:

Got it.  I have I believe all of the good Kenyon Hopkins albums.  I unloaded some of his sleepy albums on Capitol.

16 hours ago, CJ Shearn said:

For me the CTI sweet spot is 1970-1974

+2

14 hours ago, sgcim said:

Here's a thing on CT's Jet Set/specialty phase:

https://www.ctproduced.com/the-abc-of-specialty-recording/

The writer claims that "There is a whole fascinating story about Hopkins and especially around his divorce which includes using binoculars to peep on neighbors, hitting his wife and more. One day."
 

Thanks.  I could not find the quote that you included.  Is there an additional link?

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There's certainly some Hubbard records as good as Straight Life, and in a lot of different contexts, but none actually better than.

That record is HOT. Nobody skates, and everything has substance. That it's got an element of "production" to it is neither here nor there. Doesn't affect the playing one bit.

I don't think there's a better George Benson record than Beyond The Blue Horizon.

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2 hours ago, JSngry said:

There's certainly some Hubbard records as good as Straight Life, and in a lot of different contexts, but none actually better than.

That record is HOT. Nobody skates, and everything has substance. That it's got an element of "production" to it is neither here nor there. Doesn't affect the playing one bit.

I don't think there's a better George Benson record than Beyond The Blue Horizon.

Beyond the Blue Horizon I can agree on, some very nice playing by George on there.  Some players were more suited to the CTI approach and kinda slick was always a part of who Geo. is.

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Not every Hubert Laws CTI record is great (or even good), but the ones that are good, I'm ok with them being the only Hubert Lasw records to have. I thought that the Atlantics with Chick Corea would be better than the CTIs, but they're really not. They're good, but they're just Hubert Laws with rhythm section. The CTI records are hubert Laws in  rich and varied settings. That's what the best CTI rcords are, usually, a voice or voices in settings, like a planned program, not a man-on-the-street interview.

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15 hours ago, mjzee said:

On a different note, I've noticed a few CTIs that don't seem coherent as albums.  For example, Hubert Laws's In The Beginning.  It's really hard to figure out what they were striving for; stylistically, it's all over the place.  

Completely agree.  As someone who owns most of the CTI albums circa 1970-1974, In The Beginning is one of the few that I unloaded.

This may be sacrilege, but I also unloaded Red Clay.  I did not think that dry, thuddy, 70s CTI production values worked well with more straight-ahead jazz, or at least what I remember as more straight-ahead jazz at the time that I owned it. 

 

 

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25 minutes ago, JSngry said:

 I thought that the Atlantics with Chick Corea would be better than the CTIs, but they're really not. 

Those Laws Atlantic's are strange albums, as are so many of the Atlantic jazz albums from the Joel Dorn era.  Certainly "interesting", but not really successful.  Though I do understand the desire to try something different at that poin.  Much of the Atlantic Laws material was dreadfully over-produced (bad at it where CTI was good), and the quartet stuff had some poor choices of material.  I do like this cut a lot (indeed, have never heard a bad version of this Corea classic), but IMO nothing else on those three albums comes close to it.

 

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16 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

This may be sacrilege, but I also unloaded Red Clay.  I did not think that dry, thuddy, 70s CTI production values worked well with more straight-ahead jazz, or at least what I remember as more straight-ahead jazz at the time that I owned it. 

I'd put Red Clay right up there with Straight Life as some of the best music Hubbard ever made -- and some of the best music released on CTI.  So I can't imagine getting rid of it.

Then again, we all hear differently. 

 

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My experience at my college radio station 1973-77: We had a Jazz Music department and a separate Black Music department.  The Jazz jocks played a lot of "out" music: Coltrane (Impulse, never Prestige), Shepp, Sun Ra, etc.  These jocks were white.  The Black Music department were all black, and they were not at all interested in "out" music.  They played a very complimentary mix of music, which consisted of a lot of CTI records, Lonnie Liston Smith, Philadelphia International records, Herbie Mann, and smooth disco (Spinners, O'Jays, Intruders, etc.).  Their sets all flowed, one track mixed into the next.  They had a large audience; the "out" Jazz shows really did not.

I don't think CTI was really meant to appeal to standard jazz audiences.  They were building a whole new thing, which was very successful.  

BTW, if you go to archive.org and search for CTI, they have three live all-star shows from 1972-74.

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5 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

I'd put Red Clay right up there with Straight Life as some of the best music Hubbard ever made -- and some of the best music released on CTI.  So I can't imagine getting rid of it.

Then again, we all hear differently. 

 

I agree musically, but also agree that it's not recorded particularly well. A lot of "dead air" in the sound, like somebody forgot to hire Sebesky or something.

Really not sure how/why that happened, but it's always "mystified" me.

I'd definitely not ditch it though, it's WAAAAAYYYY to good for that, imo!

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33 minutes ago, felser said:

Those Laws Atlantic's are strange albums, as are so many of the Atlantic jazz albums from the Joel Dorn era.  Certainly "interesting", but not really successful.  Though I do understand the desire to try something different at that poin.  Much of the Atlantic Laws material was dreadfully over-produced (bad at it where CTI was good), and the quartet stuff had some poor choices of material.  I do like this cut a lot (indeed, have never heard a bad version of this Corea classic), but IMO nothing else on those three albums comes close to it.

OTOH, at times, Dorn's "strangeness" was exactly what was needed.  At least from where I'm sitting. 

For example, his work with Rahsaan and Eddie Harris would be case-in-point.  I'm glad that RRK's and Harris' albums don't sound like normal jazz records. It would've been like putting round pegs in square holes.  I know that many listeners regard their records as "over-produced" and view them as marketplace compromises. 

I don't.    

 

Edited by HutchFan
misspelled word
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4 hours ago, Teasing the Korean said:

Got it.  I have I believe all of the good Kenyon Hopkins albums.  I unloaded some of his sleepy albums on Capitol.

+2

Thanks.  I could not find the quote that you included.  Is there an additional link?

No, that quote was from a post he made to me.I asked him where I could read about it, but he never got back to me.Maybe he's saving it for a future installment on his site.

He could even be planning a bio on KH.

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23 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

I'd put Red Clay right up there with Straight Life as some of the best music Hubbard ever made -- and some of the best music released on CTI.  So I can't imagine getting rid of it.

Then again, we all hear differently. 

I hear you.  The production values didn't work for me.  And I just climbed up my library ladder to find that I did indeed hang onto Red Clay.  I will give it a spin this weekend.

4 minutes ago, sgcim said:

No, that quote was from a post he made to me.I asked him where I could read about it, but he never got back to me.Maybe he's saving it for a future installment on his site.

He could even be planning a bio on KH.

That would be great.  There is very little info on Kenyon Hopkins out there, that I've been able to find at least.  He has always been a very mysterious figure.  If what you're saying is true, maybe it's better that we keep him mysterious!

24 minutes ago, mjzee said:

I don't think CTI was really meant to appeal to standard jazz audiences.  They were building a whole new thing, which was very successful.  

Completely agree.  

Edited by Teasing the Korean
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7 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I hear you.  The production values didn't work for me.  And I just climbed up my library ladder to find that I did indeed hang onto it.  I will give it a spin this weekend.

Give it a spin, if you're so inclined.  We're all looking for stuff that scratches our own particular itches, not somebody else's. 

But it is fun to compare notes. :) 

 

Edited by HutchFan
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3 minutes ago, HutchFan said:

Give it a spin, if you're so inclined.  We're all looking for stuff that scratches our own particular itches, not somebody else's. 

But it is fun to compare notes. :) 

I may have been expecting it to sound like a CTI album rather than a "jazz" album.  Keep in mind that I was well into jazz by several decades already by this point.  I think it was the production/engineering/close miking, but yes, I will revisit and report back. :tup

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7 minutes ago, Teasing the Korean said:

I hear you.  The production values didn't work for me.  And I just climbed up my library ladder to find that I did indeed hang onto Red Clay.  I will give it a spin this weekend.

That would be great.  There is very little info on Kenyon Hopkins out there, that I've been able to find at least.  He has always been a very mysterious figure.  If what you're saying is true, maybe it's better that we keep him mysterious!

Completely agree.  

21 hours ago, Daniel A said:

I have different view. CTI was to me more distinctive in terms of concept and sound than Impulse, which Taylor left soon after the launch anyway. And while I don't necessarily like everything on that label there is no shortage of high quality playing and productions. An underestimated sequence is the albums from the period when CTI was an A&M subsidiary. Taylor himself might have felt crippled by the influence of Alpert, but what came out was consistent and almost a genre of its own.

I quite like Red Clay, Straight Life a ton, but my fav Hubbard CTI's are both the In Concert albums with Stanley Turrentine, Herbie, Ron, Jack and Eric Gale. So intense and loose! Lenny White and I debate about Red Clay often, I think because he was on the record he feels what he did but he respects I prefer Straight Life

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Funny enough, Laws is a major reason we have Joel Dorn, and vice versa.  Dorn tells the tale in the book that accompanied the "hommage a Nesuhi" box set.  Dorn, as a Philly disc jockey, developed a relationship with Nesuhi Ertegun, and kept pestering him for work.  As Dorn tells it:

"Somewhere along the way in '63, he called me and made the following offer: "Find an artist who's never made an album as a leader, and I'll give you $1,500 [not a lotta money even back then] to make an album.  The money has to cover the artist, the sidemen, all the studio costs, plus a $50 producer fee for you."  Naturally, I was elated, overwhelmed, and beside myself with joy, but it caught me off guard.  All through my disc jockey days, I was plottin' and schemin'.  I had a plan for when I got to Atlantic.  There were artists I was clockin' -- Yusef, Rahsaan, Les, Stanley Turrentine, and others -- that I was going to bring to Atlantic with me when their contracts with other labels were up.  I never thought I'd have to make my first album with an artist nobody had ever heard of.  Obviously, Nesuhi wanted to find out if I could spot talent, as well as make a record that was worthy of release.

"So now I'm trying to find someone to roll my first real dice with. In addition to hearing every jazz album that came out, I was at Pep's and the Showboat, Philly's two jazz clubs, almost every night. I got to know what the cats sounded like in person, as well as on record. It was another kind of college for me.

"I happened to tell one of the owners of Pep's, Jack Goldenberg, about Nesuhi's offer. Jack and the guy who owned the Showboat, Herbie Spivak, had been very kind to me from the day I went on the air. Even though I was underage, Pennsylvania had blue laws back then, they let me hang in their clubs. And it wasn't just because I plugged the acts who worked their joints; I would have done that for the artists anyway. They knew what I was trying to do, and they legitimately tried to help me. Naturally, I wasn't allowed to drink and I had to stay in the corner and keep my mouth shut. I got a PhD not only in jazz but also in music in general from being in those clubs all those years. I never would have made the records I made had I not had the opportunity to hear all that "live" music and see how people reacted to it.

"The other thing, by the way, that taught me what did and didn't work for people was the phone we had in the studio that our listeners called in on to talk to whoever was on the air. I got the chance to talk to thousands of people during my six years at the station. You could tell within a couple of minutes of playing a record whether or not they dug it. Their response showed me what it was that moved them, good or bad, and how certain songs by certain artists affected certain kinds of people: men and women, young and old, black and white.

"One night Jack Goldenberg called and told me to make sure I came to the club that night to catch the last set. He had Mongo Santamaria in that week, and there was someone in the band, a flute player, he wanted me to hear. His exact words were: "I got your guy. Wait 'til you hear this kid play." By the time I got to the club, Mongo was three or four songs into the last set. As I walked in the door the flute player was in the middle of a solo on "Manhâ De Carnaval." I'd never heard anybody play like that in my life. He had symphony chops and a jazz head. His name was Hubert Laws. Jack was right on the money. Hand me those dice.

"I called Nesuhi in New York and told him I found the artist I wanted to record. It wasn't hard to convince Hubert to sign with Atlantic, but convincing him to let me produce his first album was something else altogether. But in spite of me --I legitimately had no idea what I was doing-- Hubert and the guys (Chick Corea, Richard Davis, and Joe Chambers) made a hell of an album. It sold in excess of 5,000 copies, more than respectable for an unknown jazz artist back then, and got pretty good reviews. Hubert even placed first on piccolo in the "Best New Artist On A Miscellaneous Instrument" category in that year's Down Beat poll. Goodbye, Philly; hello, New York.

"Not quite."

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12 minutes ago, mjzee said:

Funny enough, Laws is a major reason we have Joel Dorn, and vice versa.  Dorn tells the tale in the book that accompanied the "hommage a Nesuhi" box set.  Dorn, as a Philly disc jockey, developed a relationship with Nesuhi Ertegun, and kept pestering him for work.  As Dorn tells it:

"Somewhere along the way in '63, he called me and made the following offer: "Find an artist who's never made an album as a leader, and I'll give you $1,500 [not a lotta money even back then] to make an album.  The money has to cover the artist, the sidemen, all the studio costs, plus a $50 producer fee for you."  Naturally, I was elated, overwhelmed, and beside myself with joy, but it caught me off guard.  All through my disc jockey days, I was plottin' and schemin'.  I had a plan for when I got to Atlantic.  There were artists I was clockin' -- Yusef, Rahsaan, Les, Stanley Turrentine, and others -- that I was going to bring to Atlantic with me when their contracts with other labels were up.  I never thought I'd have to make my first album with an artist nobody had ever heard of.  Obviously, Nesuhi wanted to find out if I could spot talent, as well as make a record that was worthy of release.

"So now I'm trying to find someone to roll my first real dice with. In addition to hearing every jazz album that came out, I was at Pep's and the Showboat, Philly's two jazz clubs, almost every night. I got to know what the cats sounded like in person, as well as on record. It was another kind of college for me.

"I happened to tell one of the owners of Pep's, Jack Goldenberg, about Nesuhi's offer. Jack and the guy who owned the Showboat, Herbie Spivak, had been very kind to me from the day I went on the air. Even though I was underage, Pennsylvania had blue laws back then, they let me hang in their clubs. And it wasn't just because I plugged the acts who worked their joints; I would have done that for the artists anyway. They knew what I was trying to do, and they legitimately tried to help me. Naturally, I wasn't allowed to drink and I had to stay in the corner and keep my mouth shut. I got a PhD not only in jazz but also in music in general from being in those clubs all those years. I never would have made the records I made had I not had the opportunity to hear all that "live" music and see how people reacted to it.

"The other thing, by the way, that taught me what did and didn't work for people was the phone we had in the studio that our listeners called in on to talk to whoever was on the air. I got the chance to talk to thousands of people during my six years at the station. You could tell within a couple of minutes of playing a record whether or not they dug it. Their response showed me what it was that moved them, good or bad, and how certain songs by certain artists affected certain kinds of people: men and women, young and old, black and white.

"One night Jack Goldenberg called and told me to make sure I came to the club that night to catch the last set. He had Mongo Santamaria in that week, and there was someone in the band, a flute player, he wanted me to hear. His exact words were: "I got your guy. Wait 'til you hear this kid play." By the time I got to the club, Mongo was three or four songs into the last set. As I walked in the door the flute player was in the middle of a solo on "Manhâ De Carnaval." I'd never heard anybody play like that in my life. He had symphony chops and a jazz head. His name was Hubert Laws. Jack was right on the money. Hand me those dice.

"I called Nesuhi in New York and told him I found the artist I wanted to record. It wasn't hard to convince Hubert to sign with Atlantic, but convincing him to let me produce his first album was something else altogether. But in spite of me --I legitimately had no idea what I was doing-- Hubert and the guys (Chick Corea, Richard Davis, and Joe Chambers) made a hell of an album. It sold in excess of 5,000 copies, more than respectable for an unknown jazz artist back then, and got pretty good reviews. Hubert even placed first on piccolo in the "Best New Artist On A Miscellaneous Instrument" category in that year's Down Beat poll. Goodbye, Philly; hello, New York.

"Not quite."

Wow!

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