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RSD April 2026

Harbour

By Harbour
in New Releases

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AllenLowe Proficient

AllenLowe

Posted
Posted
On 2/4/2026 at 2:43 PM, clifford_thornton said:

The Annie Ross is pretty cool. 

Looks like the Cecil is from Paris and not Maeght (as I'd been told) and I will definitely pick it up despite my aversion to the liner note author.

I won't mention any names but Phil Freeman is a know-nothing, with a vengeance.

Rabshakeh Grand Master

Rabshakeh

Posted
Posted
10 hours ago, AllenLowe said:

I won't mention any names but Phil Freeman is a know-nothing, with a vengeance.

He's a classic jazz entrepreneur/critic. I don't mean that in a positive way. But I don't dislike him like you do. I would follow one of his recommendations over a recommendation from someone like Chinen. I think his special skill is at least finding out when music has a pulse, which is pretty rare for younger professional jazz critics these days.

mjazzg Grand Master

mjazzg

Posted
Posted

I thought his Cecil book was really disappointing. Very little insight into the man and it became a simple chronological description of the gigs played.

I believe there's another bio on the horizon which will hopefully do Taylor justice.

As for RSD itself, well the first Little Feat album is one I'm very happy to be reacquainted with.

Eric B Rookie

Eric B

Posted
Posted

Thrilled to have found a copy of Buster Williams’s “Pinnacle” at my local. This is the one Mwandishi-adjacent LP that I could never track down. 
 

Agree Phil Freeman sucks big time. Sophomoric grouches singularly enthusiastic about “out” music are my least favorite jazz-guy archetype. 

Pim Veteran

Pim

Posted
Posted

I’m waiting for them to appear on Spotify. I want to listen first before buying. I’ve never liked the way Resonance and Elemtal issue vinyl so it’s cd for me too.

AllenLowe Proficient

AllenLowe

Posted
Posted
On 4/19/2026 at 11:32 AM, Rabshakeh said:

There are worse out there, surely. 

if you can, find his comments on Charlie Parker, who he thinks was just a harmonic trickster, essentially, who was a virtuoso but, to Freeman, uninteresting. How can anyone who thinks that be taken seriously as a critic? Here is from my Substack column about Freeman:

" 1) He says: "He (Byas) came up in the 1930s, when tenor players were supposed to be just one part of a big band, taking the occasional, short solo without disrupting the action on the dance floor."

This is a pretty bizarre claim; horn soloists, as Lester Young said frequently, were early on inspired by and offered their own prompts to the dancers. Lester said specifically: "The rhythm of the dancers comes back to you when you are playing." And he was far from the only one; there was Dick Wilson with Jimmy Lunceford’s band, Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster with Duke Ellington’s band, all of whom were public soloists for dancers. And more. Phil, try listening to some records.

2) He compares Byas' tone to Lester Young, which is….well, strange. Byas’ tone was not anything like Lester Young's but related to that of Coleman Hawkins, who was his prime early influence.

But strangest of all was Freeman’s comments about bebop, which he doesn’t like much, and Charlie Parker. What he said about Parker was really a disqualifier; how can someone who does not understand basic musical principles write about jazz ? Freeman tells us, in reference to a bebop recording:

“Anyway, listening to this mostly makes me think about why Charlie Parker’s music has never had the impact on me that it has had on so many others. Like, I can hear that he’s a virtuoso player, and I acknowledge his influence — he changed the way players after him approached composition, improvisation, and even their tone on their instruments. But any time I read about Parker being called the greatest saxophonist ever, or whatever, I always think Sure, for one particular value of “great.”

“His melodically and harmonically adventurous, chord-flipping style (which he famously described as “playing clean and looking for the pretty notes”) is one way to play jazz. But it’s not the only way, by any means. Personally, I have always been more drawn to players with more rawness and grit to to their sound. And I don’t just mean free jazz.”  "

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