a wells or a gibbon?

Generalissimo / Live Date!: Core Collection

2011-02-01T01:11:00.003+09:00

Inspired by this, I thought it might be fun to make a list of my own. I was initially thinking about making it a stand alone entry but then reconsidered so as to showcase one of the more obscure titles included. (The fact that I had been struggling with a satisfactory piece on it for several months was, needless to say, also a factor)

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— Louis Armstrong: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings
— Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy
— The Complete Louis Armstrong and the Dukes of Dixieland
— Art Ensemble of Chicago: Americans Swinging in Paris: The Pathe Sessions
— Bix Beiderbecke Volume 1: Singin' the Blues
— Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk
— Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: The Big Beat
— Clifford Brown and Max Roach Quintet with Harold Land: Complete Studio Recordings
— Don Cherry: Symphony for Improvisers
— John Coltrane: Blue Train
— John Coltrane: Olé Coltrane
— Miles Davis All Stars: Walkin'
— Miles Davis: Miles Ahead
— Miles Davis: Nefertiti
— Miles Davis: In a Silent Way
— Buddy DeFranco: Generalissimo / Live Date!
— Duke Ellington: Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band 1940-1942
— Duke Ellington: Masterpieces by Ellington
— Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins
— Duke Ellington: ...And His Mother Called Him Bill
— Bill Evans: Sunday at the Village Vanguard
— Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster
— Jackie McLean: New and Old Gospel
— Charles Mingus: Blues and Roots
— Charles Mingus: The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
— MJT+3
— The Modern Jazz Quartet: The Last Concert
— Lee Morgan: Tom Cat
— Art Pepper: Complete Surf Club Sessions
— Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section
— The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume 1
— Time Waits: The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume 4
— Sonny Rollins: Way Out West
— Clark Terry: Color Changes
— Fats Waller: If You Got to Ask, You Ain't Got It!
— Lester Young: Lester's Be-Bop Boogie
— The Young Lions

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A few points of interest:

• The Penguin Guide to Jazz considers the albums on their list to be essential to any serious jazz collection. I make no similar claim, not even for my own jazz collection. These are simply my favourites. I certainly recommend each and every one of these but I also appreciate that failing to pick up a copy of MJT+3 may not go down as a profound regret to carry with you to your dying day.

• Bix Beiderbecke Volume 1, Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section and Time Waits were all purchased by me in the past year. While it certainly is possible the gloss may well wear away in the years ahead, I can't see it happening. Other recent discoveries such as Shelly Manne's My Fair Lady, George Shearing's Complete Savoy Trio and Quintet Sessions and Jabbo Smith's Complete Hidden Treasure Sessions have impressed me but they weren't given much consideration.

• I hate to say it but the artists who appear more than once were probably held to a higher standard than the rest. Armstrong's Hot Fives and Sevens and his Ellington collaboration The Great Summit probably ought to appear as well but I don't get the same enjoyment from them than the three that appear. Same goes for Ellington. Davis' situation is slightly different since I'm largely going on memory. A sizeable chunk of my jazz CD's went missing a while ago and I'm forced to go by those that stand out most in my memory. Having said that, maybe there's something to making selections based purely on recollections. Walkin' and Miles Ahead are the two albums of his that I miss the most while I was so devastated by losing Nefertiti that I picked it up again almost immediately after I knew it was gone for good. In a Silent Way was a late addition to the list because it's not one I have much of an inclination to re-purchase but the impact it had on me back when I first listened to it in 1998 was pretty significant so it got an eleventh hour push.

• Seeing as how this entry is supposed to be about Buddy DeFranco's Generalissimo / Live Date!, I suppose I should state my reasons for including it. Firstly, it's probably my favourite album on my iPod - and the vast majority of the above are on it too. I take a lot of long bus rides and the jaunty, almost playful bop - particularly on the Generalissimo half of the two-fer - is the perfect antidote for many a long, boring commute. His version of the standard 'Sunday', which is the opener, swings beautifully and DeFranco, Barney Kessel and Sweets Edison all account for themselves very well. Even Hebie Mann, showing up on Live Date, does surprisingly well for himself. Second, it's given me a whole new appreciation for the clarinet. I admire the fact that DeFranco persisted with the licorice stick when it had clearly fallen out of favour in the post-Parker landscape. And, finally, it feels like an event, an important work by a major figure. I'm convinced that DeFranco and his co-horts knew they were doing something special on both of these April, 1958 sessions. The trouble is, I like it too much and feel I cannot adequately critique it as a result. As an outtake, here's the opening paragraph of my intended piece. Hopefully I can get my act together in the near future and do this fine musician the justice he deserves. Until then, appearing on a lowly blogger's Core Collection will just have to do.

All right, first things first: I kind of like the title. Perhaps an adequate amount of time has lapsed or I am woefully lacking in taste or I have long since accepted that the best way to belittle the horrifying aspects of a brutal dictator is to mock him ceaselessly; whatever the case may be, Generalissimo is a funny title and, as the well-intentioned liner-notes suggest, a nice bit of irony considering that everyone enjoyed working with Buddy DeFranco and he was happy to give his talented sidemen as much of the spotlight as he was getting. The notes even go on to state that the cover was also in bad taste but I think it only adds to the humour. Besides which, DeFranco's album covers often seem to edge their way into the comedically grotesque.) Even the notion that it was some tactless record company suit who came up with the title is to me an endearing throwback to pre-politically correct tiptoeing: could you possibly imagine a modern label allowing - much less suggesting - a title such as Osama's Bin Laudin' The Necks!? (Well intentioned though I'm sure he is, Morton James' introductory notes frequently lack a sense of perspective: the suggestion that the title may have impeeded it from being reissued sooner avoids the painful truth that Buddy DeFranco is no longer the name he once was - and it's not as though he was a household name fifty or sixty years ago. Though lauded by jazz musicians and industry types, who else has even heard of him?)

Hard Driving Jazz: Backseat Driving

2011-01-29T18:58:00.001+09:00

"I said 'Coltrane okay, but I want to use all the musicians that I want.' I wanted to use Ted Curson, who's a much more contemporary trumpet player than the trumpet player I ended up with, Kenny Dorham."

Coltrane okay? That's quite a ringing endorsement there, Cecil.

Stereo Drive, aka Hard Driving Jazz, aka Coltrane Time, is an album of a few aliases and a couple leaders - or so we've been led to believe. Nowadays it is easiest acquired as a Blue Note release under Coltrane's name but upon its inital pressing in 1959 this was a Cecil Taylor session and album (the above cover credits the tenor sax to one "Blue Trane"). My own copy, released by the Spanish label Gambit Records, credits it as "Cecil Taylor with John Coltrane", a rather nice compromise to be sure but the bonus six bonus cuts are all from Jazz Advance, Taylor's breakthrough release from two years previous - a sign, if any were otherwise needed, that Taylor was the man in charge. If I were to guess I'd say that Coltrane's co-credit is shore up some interest from casual buyers - and, indeed, that was my primary motivation for investment.

Given that he was using an admittedly feeble alias - I imagine in order to appear on a rival record label's release, much like "Charlie Chan" on Jazz at Massey Hall - and the fact that his name appears in smaller print than even the supposedly unwanted Kenny Dorham, there's no way that the optics of the time could persuade you to believe that this is a Coltrane session with Taylor guesting. But what about if you pick up a copy of Coltrane Time, how would having his name as part of the title and his picture on the cover affect one's perception? Well, given that he is the first soloist on opener 'Shifting Down' - notably a Dorham composition, curious that Taylor would use a number by a musician that he didn't want to be there in the first place to commence the album - is Coltrane then you could be forgiven for making this assumption. The lack of lengthy, ponderous tenor solos must be seen in the context of albums from his pre-Atlantic period and the fact that he had also been playing second fiddle to both Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk: Taylor and Dorham are hardly Jimmy Garrison or Reggie Workman, there to serve every need and desire of the guru on tenor sax.

So, could this album have been called something like Kenny Dorham in the Driver's Seat, with the trumpeter being credited as leader? I don't see why not. Miles Davis once complained that Thelonious Monk would never lay out during his solos and the Dorham-Taylor relationship is reminiscent of this dysfunctional dynamic - but the pianist seemed just as willing to go on playing what he liked while Coltrane took the lead as well. Reviews suggest that Dorham disliked Taylor's playing just as much as Taylor disliked his and indicate a certain tension to the recordings as a result but I don't hear it. Certainly their styles often clash and I'm sure their personalities also failed to mesh but since when did collaborators have to be best friends and musical bosom buddies?

Perhaps failing to live up to the vision Taylor had initially in mind, Hard Driving Jazz works rather well precisely because of the contrast of styles and antagonism - and this is only reinforced by the bonus tracks. Whereas Cecil Taylor left in charge of a more sympathetic group of musicians often sounds impressive but aimless, this makes it obvious that his unique talent lends itself much better alongside individuals with whom he disagreed. And so too does Coltrane. And, dare I say, so too does Dorham.

Liberation Music Orchestra: The Rennie Davis Treatment

2011-01-20T17:39:00.002+09:00

This is a makeshift incarnation of the Plastic Ono Band looking almost as if they're aware of what's going on. It's a fascinating photograph but probably not for reasons that may be initially assumed: I love the fact that I can name all of about six people in it. That's a double-chinned Eric Clapton about to whisper something slurred and incomprehensible into Lennon's ear and George Harrison standing above him, looking as cheerful as ever. Keith Moon is unaware of just what's going on and, finally, there's Billy Preston who mostly stands out due to his skin colour (it isn't just Yoko Ono's ethnicity and gender that distinguish her from the rest of these rogues, it's the fact that she appears refreshingly unconcerned with the proceedings). I suspect that's Pete Ham or another minor member of Badfinger in front of him at the far right but I can't be certain. I should acknowledge that possibly at this very moment there's a girl called Laurie or a boy called Christopher who's looking at their Grade 1 class picture and wondering just who the hell the buck-toothed bean pole is and in that respect I can fully empathize with the individuals in the back row.

Drugs and self-absorption had already curbed Lennon's remarkable talent but his politicization was probably the last nail in his creative coffin. (Upon hearing of the death of Elvis, Lennon famously remarked that the King had actually died when he began serving in the army; perhaps Lennon met his true premature passing when he began dissing the military...what, is it still too soon? Okay, fine, Lennon work tirelessly for world peace and it's only a pity he he then hit the bottle and completely lost interest. Is that better?) I'll never be so arrogant to suggest that politics has no place in popular music but it seems to inevitably affect artistic quality control. (How else did Lennon manage to convince himself to pen such uncharacteristically innocuous songs like 'All You Need is Love', 'Give Peace a Chance' and 'Power to the People'?)

Perhaps sensing this, Charlie Haden's Liberation Music Orchestra makes a game attempt to tackle issues while maintaining an admirably high standard of musical creativity - at least some of the time. The second side lags largely due to dullness on tracks 'Song for Ché' and - a particular disappointment - the otherwise outstanding Ornette Coleman composition 'War Orphans': in the case of the former, Haden's obvious admiration for Guavara probably puts him too close to its subject as the performance commences with him trudging through an over-long bass solo before finally moving on to some free-form nonsense courtesy of Don Cherry and Dewey Redman; the latter just drifts along, as if waiting for someone in this thirteen-piece orchestra to do something - a curiousity considering the foundation of this outfit was formed around Coleman offshoots. Once again, Haden's heart is probably at too close of a proximity to the subject matter to make objective creative decisions.

Haden's vision for the album is stirring but muddied and this is probably why Carla Bley was such a boon to these sessions. The Spanish Civil War medley 'El Quinto Regimento/Los Cuatro Generales/Viva la Quince Brigada' is the highlight and, as twenty-minute tracks go, is surprisingly concise. The whole thing is held together by Sam Brown's guitar and Bley on piano and they manage to keep the free-form madness from getting too out of hand. Gato Barbieri's section is especially memorable and it reminds me of some of his equally wonderful work on Cherry's minor masterpieces Complete Communion and Symphony for Improvisers. (It's possible that he knew how to best combine Haden's passion with Bley's professionalism, which seemed to have escaped the rest of the orchestra.) The shorter numbers - Bley originals 'The Introduction', 'The Ending to the First Side' and 'The Interlude (Drinking Music)', as well as shots at 'Song of the United Front' and 'We Shall Overcome' - are all great call-to-arms hum alongs with some stellar group playing: nothing gets especially out of hand but the rebel rousing isn't compromised one bit. If anything, the best case for the revolutionary spirit of Liberation Music Orchestra is in these numbers.

Similar to the way an actor or singer will coyly smile into a camera that strays into the audience at an awards ceremony, the figures in the Plastic Ono Band picture seem convinced that you know who they are - which obviously makes my ignorance as to their identities all the funnier; the Liberation Music Orchestra personnel don't appear to care whether you're able to recognize them or not. They cared about making a statement and creating some lovely music. At least they tried.

The Ellingtonian: Duke in absentia

2011-01-15T16:49:00.003+09:00

There is a persistent notion floating around - not necessarily false, mind you - that Duke Ellington's charges could never cut it on their own. Clive James notes that the very success of the marvellous Blanton-Webster period proved it's undoing: everyone became a star and they were all keen to show what they could do without the taskmaster present. While James doesn't go into it, I have to believe that Ben Webster's career path proved to be the kernel that triggered everyone else to follow suit: having worked alongside him - and in direct competition with him at the exact same time - did this light a fire under, say, Johnny Hodges, promting his departure from the Orchestra in 1951? A master manipulator, Ellington did little to difuse the friction amongst members of his Orchestra; the blow-back may have prompted everyone to emulate the success of their most renowned compatriot.

Cat Anderson wasn't a part of the early-forties peak, having joined Ellington in 1944 (possibly as a permanent replacement for Cootie Williams, who had fled to form his own orchestra, but I don't have sufficient resources at my disposal to say one way or another), but he still would have been privy to plenty of friction and ego. Much like later addition Paul Gonsalves, while he did clearly have the ambition to go off on his own, this was done much more sporadically and if this compilation is anything to go by he was out to prove just how intrinsic Duke was to his own sound.

But this is slightly less aparent earlier on. Chronologically speaking (for it doesn't come in until the second half of the disc), the first Paris session in 1958 takes a reasonable stab at 'Concerto for Cootie' before unleashing some steller solos on 'Black and Tan Fantasy' - about as individual and free of his boss as it gets. Anderson's patented trumpet plunger sound is present but not as often as one might expect. Russell Procope and Butter Jackson certainly keep pace with Anderson as well. The remainder - 'Blues for Laurence', an original, and versions of 'Ain't Misbehavin' and 'You're the Cream in My Coffee' - sound remarkably as if they were all Ellington arrangements in secret - a testament to Anderson's underrated abilities in this regard.he did have a pretty gifted mentor to show him the ropes.

The centrepiece of the collection, however, is the 1964 session and the people from the French division of EMI who put together the Americans Swinging in Paris series are right to place it first. With Gonsalves in tow but fewer members of the Orchestra over-all, Anderson plays well over some excellent blues (which is also a helpful reminder of just how soaked in the blues Ellington always was) by some of the finest sessioners baseed in France. 'C Jam Blues', for one, hasn't sounded better since the Blanton-Webster recording, the shuffling piano manuevers of US exile in Paris Joe Turner providing the perfect accompaniment to some superb soloing from Anderson, Gonsalves, Procope and Buster Cooper. On opener 'A "Chat" with Cat', we're treated to Gonsalves expertly mimicking Webster's signature heavy breathing tenor sax style and only when everyone comes together at the end to attempt to play over each other does one get the feeling that this may not meet the standards of Ellington.

Not to be confused with Ellingtonia*, another stab at honouring his boss, The Ellingtonian is in effect a Duke Ellington album with an overabundance of Cat Anderson solos. Making a virtue out of being trapped in an inescapable shadow, Anderson does an admirable job in the leader's chair, even if he's effectively acting as a proxy. Ellington may not have been there but he's very much present.

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* Cheers for adding to the confusion AllMusic.

The Big Beat: The Dust of Everyday Life

2011-01-13T13:44:00.001+09:00

It's now been five years since I fully fell for jazz. Oh, I had begun to explore it a lot earlier but it was mainly on the basis of curiosity and following the recommendations of guides such as The Virgin Encyclopedia of Sixities Music, which, thinking back on it now, placed vital works such as Kind of Blue, Giant Steps and The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady more within the context of the rock canon, thereby still keeping me at a distance from jazz itself. The figures that grabbed my attention early on even managed to fit nicely alongside the giants of rock as well - Davis was dark and fearless, a more talented, less sleazy Jim Morrison; Monk was iconoclastic and playful in the vein of Syd Barrett; Coltrane pretty much set the template for the doomed rock star, albeit one with a spiritual quest, making him a sort of love child of Johnny Cash and Kurt Cobain. These comparisons, of course, are nonsense but that's what the search for parallels can do to a guy: if we can't find actual similarities, then why not make them up?

The Big Beat brought these jazz as proto rock 'n' roll comparisons to a sudden end. Jazz was no longer operating in my mind as another kind of rock but as something altogether different and more exciting. The punk aesthetic that musical deficiencies can be made up for with attitude and desire went completely out the window. The passion that can occasionally make rock sound so vital was indeed present but so too was a musical intellectualism that I had never experienced before. It don't mean a thing if you can't play a thing...

I often blanche from discussing influences (something the bulk of rock critics hardly shy away from, as if something like Kick Out the Jams or Daydream Nation were to be justified solely on their impact on other artisits...come to think of it, they probably are) but it's worth mentioning just how important The Big Beat was for me. In the short term, it led to a huge Blue Note period that took up the bulk of 2006 and got me into Lee Morgan, Jackie McLean, Bud Powell, Tina Brooks, Don Cherry and Dexter Gordon. Soon, however, I began to rebel again the house that Rudy Van Gelder built and started exploring early swing and dixieland, a smattering of bop and onto West Coast cool which I'm currently interested in. Before Blakey, I had always figured that anything recorded prior to about 1950 sounded dated, unsophisticated, tacky and primitive. Attempts at listening to eminent figures such as Armstrong and Ellington left me disinterested; now, they're the mainstays of my entire collection. The Big Beat didn't simply open the door for everything that followed, it threw open the gates of jazz of all kinds, past, present and future. (I would never have given Lester Bowie's The Great Pretender or Wynton Marsalis' The Majesty of the Blues any kind of chance were it not for this great awakening of mine; dabbling ever so briefly into the throes of the ECM label was, however, as far into the present as I'm ever likely to go)

I had gotten into much wilder, seemingly more adventuresome works - On the Corner, Free Jazz - previously but that is beside the point. The reason A Love Supreme seems to appeal more to listeners with a rock background rather than jazz purists is that they tend to value passion and feeling above structure and proficiency and the bulk of the jazz you'll lible to find on a Rolling Stone 500 Greatest Albums list operate as surrogate rock records. Jazz appreciated as jazz begins here.

There is a famous story about how Art Blakey was out for a stroll and he happened upon a group of mourners at a local cemetry. He paid his respects to the deceased and then proceeded to tell everyone in attendance about his love for jazz. Apocryphal or not, this anecdote tells you all you need to know about what a tireless ambassador he was; listening to the Jazz Messengers turned me into one.

On Broadway: You Haven't Changed at All

2009-01-02T16:41:00.002+09:00

There was once a time when a jazz musician recording a Broadway standard was, er, standard practise. If one did not have a masterful composer like Ellington at one's disposal than where else was one going to find material? The commercial aspirations of swing's old guard meant that blues-based tunes were often spurned in favour of popular numbers culled from Broadway, jazz's only serious rival in the twenties and thirties. Even well into the fifties was there a strong affinity for the show tune, particularly after Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong recorded Porgy and Bess. But seemingly overnight this tradition seems to have been altered with the release of John Coltrane's seminal My Favorite Things. Suddenly, the thought of a serious soloist embarking on such supposedly lightweight numbers as the title track and 'But Not for Me' became a novelty, one of music's first of many grand ironic statements.* Since then, the Broadway aspect of jazz has largely disappeared. In this landscape came Coleman Hawkins' On Broadway sessions, the sound of one man refusing to admit defeat.

As is often the case, Hawkins managed to make the most of those compositions that offered him as little as possible. Opener 'I Talk to the Trees' (from Lerner and Loewe's Paint Your Wagon) is a minor but splendid recording, as delightfully light as 'Limbo Jazz' would be on Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins, recorded later that same year. Similarly, the winsome Richard Rodgers original 'Loads of Love' simply sparkles. Not that more substantive pieces don't have their charm: My Fair Lady's 'Wouldn't it Be Loverly' is probably the collection's best track, featuring some supple interaction between Hawkins and pianist Tommy Flanagan. Still, On Broadway feels far too long, the beginning scarcely remembered by the time you get to the end. There's something too anonymous about each piece (or, perhaps, a bit too typically Coleman Hawkins) and you begin to wish that the tenorist had added the same kind of inventiveness that Coltrane had injected on to 'My Favorite Things'. As two separate albums, as it was originally released, it all works much better but I can't help but wonder why he didn't just try to recreate his favourite musical in its entirety rather than cherry picking a few choice favourites.

It has to be said that Hawkins was probably growing somewhat out of touch by this point and all the better for it. While others may have taken the project lightly (considering what Coltrane was already up to in the same studio, this likely came as light relief for engineer Rudy Van Gelder), this is very much Coleman Hawkins in his element. There's also a statement of purpose here that few bothered to heed: namely, that jazz needed to regain its lost glamour and why not go back to Broadway to find it?

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* I've already argued that rather than being an example of Coltrane coasting, it was in fact the boldest creative move of his career but I'm in the minority on that one, even among fans of the album.

Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy: In Search of a Legacy

2009-01-01T17:54:00.000+09:00

While I have previously posited on the seemingly unthinkable notion that Louis Armstrong actually got progressively better with each passing decade, I have to acknowledge that his influence and fame had clearly peaked during the twenties and thirties. By the fifties, even Armstrong must have been aware of it although I wouldn't imagine that his current status in some circles for producing the Hot Fives and Sevens followed by a respectable but underwhelming subsequent forty years would never have occurred to him. Where, then, did this leave a still potent Louis Armstrong? Coming out of a so-so forties and flirting close to irrelevancy might have irreparably harmed a lesser performer but I suspect that he found it liberating rather than shackling. With nothing to prove he went out and pieced together a musical second coming that deserved to have the entire jazz world looking on in awe.

I have also pondered elsewhere about the role that the album played on old school 78 rpm figures such as Armstrong and Duke Ellington. Both seemed to find the new medium advantageous, in some respects better suited for it than their younger, supposedly more ambitious contemporaries. While Ellington used the long player as a means to stretch out his compositions into suites, Armstrong began to explore thematic approaches* of varying degrees of success (I've been assured that Louis and the Good Book is terrible but I'm perverse enough to find merit in it). But did the album rejuvenate him or was it simply his means for expressing this B-12 shot of inspiration? (It's possible that the L.P. gave him the excuse he needed to tip his hat to his own musical heroes.) Either way, it resulted in a sublime album, every bit as good anything else he ever did.

Likely inspired by their employer, the All-Stars are absolutely superb on Louis Armstrong Plays W.C. Handy. Much has already been written on Armstrong's allegedly weak groups and orchestras - sometimes justified - but it's impossible to quibble with the group assembled here - and the fact that the trumpeter kept the unit together for a little while suggests he and his charges were happy with the arrangement, a welcome change from the revolving door he had in the thirties. Barney Bigard and Trummy Young, on clarinet and trombone respectively, deliver some excellent solos that while lacking the power and authority of their boss don't manage to get completely overwhelmed either, always the most you can hope for from an Armstrong backing unit. Velma Middleton, too, is at the top her game, her comic timing and sass a more welcome addition than it would be on Satch Plays Fats two years later - curious considering there's decidedly more humour on Fats Waller's compositions than on Handy's. Although Armstrong is, as ever, the star, he is so ably assisted from all corners that it seems to be his most group-like effort. Never one to be outdone, he blows with a torrential force, as great as any of his earlier, more acclaimed recordings. (Until proven otherwise, his trumpet solo on 'St. Louis Blues' is the most thrilling of his entire career.) And nowhere else does his playing mesh so well with his vocals, making this music he was simply born to perform.

Interesting that on a tribute to W.C. Handy the biggest tribute being paid is to Armstrong himself. Never a prolific composer, his uncanny ability to breathe new life into tried and tested standards remains unmatched to this day. But these recordings didn't simply galvanize Handy's top-drawer compositions: they also brought a brand new sense of purpose and vitality to a performer who could have easily sat back in his dotage. Were that the case for more artists.

~~~~~
* Rock fans will be dismayed to discover that the so-called concept album was had been mined by jazz and Broadway long before the Beatles clued in. But I'm sure they'll happily find ways to delude themselves further.

Monk's Dream: On First Listening*

2008-12-31T18:17:00.002+09:00

All of the previous Monk albums in my collection were growers, though some of a very deceptive variety. I am still waiting for Genius of Modern Music, Vol.1, Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington and Brilliant Corners, after months (and years in one case), to finally grow on me, as I've been faithfully assured they eventually will. And because this is Thelonious Monk I am still convinced it will happen. Until then there's Genius of Modern Music, Vol.2, Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers with Thelonious Monk and, now, Monk's Dream to satisfy me. Monk seems to be one of those scant figures who you daren't defame with criticism, a luxury in the jazz world not even reserved for Louis Armstrong. I suppose people admire his singularity and status as a maverick - as do I. The problem is, he rarely translated these particular qualities into the sort of delightful, crowd pleasing ditties that an earlier character like Cab Calloway did effortlessly. I suppose it's easy to not have to be a true showman when there's no one listening.

While Monk's style had not changed a great deal, his group had and for the better. For a supposedly stellar figure of the bop era†, the pianist never seemed to get adequate support from his contemporaries. While Blakey cottoned on to the worthy idea of getting his charges to play in Monk's style, people like Sonny Rollins and Max Roach never seemed to get past that they were backing a bop demigod. On Monk's Dream, he's finally got himself a group that understood that they were playing with a figure of infinite complexity, far beyond the restrictions of one style. It helps, too, that tenorist Charlie Rouse, bassist John Ore and drummer Frankie Dunlop were well schooled in various orchestras and bands and, crucially, didn't seem the least bit awed in the presence of their boss.

Like Duke Ellington before him, Monk benefits greatly from revisiting his work - a stark contrast from Charlie Mingus who could never seem to make going back more interesting than moving forward. Today, we might see an album like Monk's Dream as little more than cheap filler or, worse still, the capitulation to a major label from an artist seeking to reap the rewards previously denied him. But the truth is Monk thrived on Columbia precisely because he was no longer given carte blanche to indulge. Commercial pressure forced him to tone down the more excessive passages on works like Brilliant Corners in favour of a lighter, more condensed sound. I may not be much of a Monk aficionado but this sell out approach does not seem to affect his work one iota. We'll have to see if it begins to shrink on me in the days and weeks and months ahead.

~~~~~
* I only bought this album yesterday and thought it might be nice to wind down 2008 with some initial thoughts on my latest purchase. I imagine these slap dash observations will be added to in the near future.

† I say supposedly because I've begun to doubt Monk's position as a full-fledged bop performer (as do many other jazz fans and critics). Just as Henry VIII is considered to a vital cog in the Protestant Reformation because his break with the church occurred at roughly the same time as Luther's, Monk just happened to arrive on the scene just as Parker, Gillespie and Powell were hitting their stride. I'd say they coincide but aren't the direct result of each other.

Walter Perkins' MJT+3/Make Everybody Happy: Slipping Through the Cracks

2008-12-30T19:57:00.001+09:00

As of late, my jazz collection has come to include artists bereft of fame. Not obscurities procured after a late night club gig, no, but individuals and groups lacking in notoriety and success nonetheless. Buddy DeFranco's conspicuous status as a minor figure is understandable considering he played the distinctly sexless clarinet but what about the MJT+3? How did a unit with such an abundance of talent manage to avoid even a cursory mention in jazz historiography?

Well, their bizarre, Modern Jazz Quartet-aping name certainly does them no favours particularly when it's impossible to figure out what it actually means.* Jazz units have never been particularly well-named and I've often wondered how much that contributes to their relative lack of success. Then, there's their label, the hapless Vee Jay who managed to flirt with some nice signings in blues, jazz and rock but ceaselessly bled money (how they went bankrupt following their fluke gold strike with The Beatles defies logic). But the biggest factor of all is the MJT+3 themselves and their inability to decide on which path to follow. Their indecision makes for frequently fascinating listening but the corollary is that they aren't even a footnote.

A brief introduction, Walter Perkins' MJT+3 acts as bonus tracks in advance to the more substantive and distinctive Make Everybody Happy. The lounge credentials of the musicians are well documented on the former but there are occasional hints that they yearn to break away from their roots and pound out some serious hard bop, particularly on the penultimate track, Harold Mabren's 'Rochelle'. Elsewhere, the playing is solid enough but largely forgettable, relieved only by some sporadically inspired playing from the quintet. But it is Willie Thomas' trumpet solo on 'Whiffenproof Song' that is the undoubted highlight of this set: his playing is at a such a high pitch that it's too much for the microphone enabling some unexpected distortion and left on the CD reissue either due to shoddy remastering or because I am not the only one who appreciates such a jarring moment.

Make Everybody Happy is, in my own opinion, named for the group's valiant attempt at merging their own creative desires with Vee Jay's desire to cash-in. The very fact that it didn't make anyone happy at the time is now beside the point but indicates that they weren't far off from attracting an audience. It's possible, however, that any potential audience may have been turned off by the reverential playing. The polar opposite of its predecessor, this is the sound of a hard bop unit exploring lounge music, though much more successfully. As it was in my Young Lions review, Frank Strozier continues to demonstrate that he was one of the most accomplished - albeit forgotten - sax stars of the era. But while Coleman, Coltrane, Rollins and the like were established leaders given lisense to go full throttle, the less renowned Strozier was stuck within the confines of a group setting. His extended solo on 'The Trolley Song' is a tour de force history of bop, cool and hard bop, distinctive only in that he managed to sound like everyone before him. On an instrument as maddeningly individual the sax, it's nice to hear someone playing with a nod to tradition. But that's probably not the way it was heard then or, as it were, not heard.

~~~~~
* So close is the MJQ connection that it's all that allmusic can bring itself to mention on the group's behalf - and this is generous considering Wikipedia doesn't even have an MJT+3 entry.

Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas: Surely Not Another Totally Unexpected Rendition

2008-12-24T17:31:00.001+09:00

We live in an era where there's just about nothing more irrelevant for an artist to release than a Christmas album. Mostly a cynical cash grab, it's easy to forget that your favourite group or singer even did one - and that's assuming they even bothered as it's a rarity particularly among artists with "integrity".* But it wasn't always this way. Much as I hate to admit it, Phil Spector's otherwise indulgent Christmas album is at least a game attempt at injecting a little of the crackpot producer's creativity. Brian Wilson, as he was wont to do, followed suit and delivered a better record than his mad mentor, one that stands up well against other pre-Pet Sounds albums. And Motown's seasonal treats were handled with the same care they put into their enviable hit factory.† But since then acts from the rock era have contributed almost nothing of interest to the venerable Christmas song tradition. Yet again we must look to jazz for more substantive efforts.

Ella Fitzgerald took recording Christmas songs just as seriously as she took any other material. This harks back to a time when singers tackled a cover version as an artistic challenge rather than as a kindly tribute or a token gesture. Rather than being a pleasant diversion, standards were intrinsic to a good vocalist. The very fact that this now seems extraordinary speaks volumes for, while Fitzgerald did it better than nearly anyone else, she was hardly alone in doing so.

Made up largely of secular material, there is much fun to be had particularly in a sublime rendition of 'Jingle Bells' and probably the still-definitive reading of 'Santa Claus is Coming to Town'. On the other hand, I've never heard such a compelling 'White Christmas': rather than being a Hollywood tycoon's whinge, Fitzgerald and Frank DeVol's orchestra turn it into an early paean to environmentalism: instead of being inflected with traces of self-pity, Fitzgerald's voice sounds sorrowful in the knowledge that she'll never see snow again. It's a side of the Irving Berlin standard I've never contemplated before, much less heard. Admittedly, the more religious-themed bonus tracks kind of detract from the original album's joie de vivre but it's nice to hear someone take on hymns without either a jokey irony nor a sickening piousness.

Ella Wishes You a Swinging Christmas is a throwback and one I wish would make it's return to popular music. Much like a white Christmas, I fear it's nothing more than a dream.

~~~~~
* Typically, pop stars over the past forty years have done far more good composing their own holiday favourite than putting together a tired cover version. In some cases (Wizzard and Slade are still the prime examples), this has even resulted in an act's most famous and renowned work.

† It's a mixed blessing that the Beatles never tried their hand at the Christmas album, especially considering their inconsequential fan club only seasonal discs. Still, it's a missing piece of their catalogue (the same way that there was never a Christmas episode of Fawlty Towers) no matter how minor and, considering their still-overwhelming influence, it might have resulted today's acts embarking on their own holiday albums.

Money Jungle: In His Solitude

2008-12-09T17:21:00.000+09:00

I used to think of 1962 as Duke Ellington's great period of collaborations. And why not? He did, after-all, complete an extraordinary late summer putting together studio works with Coleman Hawkins, Charlie Mingus and John Coltrane respectively - themselves follow-ups on his Louis Armstrong and Count Basie team-ups from '61. I formulated this nice, tidy little theory a few years ago not realising that Ellington was always working in collaboration with someone and, particularly, between his own compositions and his arrangements and his arrangements. Ironically, this period of supposedly frenzied partnerships resulted in the only true solo album of his entire career.

Listeners accustomed to the spotlight being placed on Johnny Hodges or Ben Webster or Clark Terry or Cat Anderson may find it odd to discover that the star of the show is Ellington himself. After decades of composing and arranging for his famed Orchestra - not to mention the many small groups he worked with over the years - it's nice to get the feeling that he might have had himself in mind while composing and arranging the numbers here. Charlie Mingus and Max Roach do a fine job backing Ellington but that is all they're there for: bass solos are kept to a minimum and you just about don't even notice the drumming on some tracks. Ellington plays with a supple lightness in places ('Fleurette Africaine', 'Warm Valley'), a furious, demented pounding of the ivories in others ('Caravan' on which he sounds like Cecil Taylor playing in an Old West saloon) and a wonderful mix of the two elsewhere ('Wig Wise' which also features some of the best bass playing of Mingus' career, no wonder Rhino decided to include it on their Thirteen Pictures compilation). Only on a worn though pleasant 'Solitude' do you get the feeling that he's treading water, particularly when compared to the masterful renditions on both The Great Summit and Duke Ellington Meets Coleman Hawkins. Nonetheless, I get the feeling that he chose it - as well as fellow standards 'Warm Valley' and 'Caravan' -as a tribute to himself and his rich legacy.

A vanity project in the best possible sense, Money Jungle is ample evidence that Ellington could go it alone and thrive. The fact that he spent the bulk of his life putting the solo spotlight on his employees when he could have easily put it on himself speaks volumes about his musical generosity and the fact that he waited until his mid-sixties before embarking on a solo project indicates it was a low priority. How grateful we should be, then, that for once he decided to collaborate with himself.

Nefertiti: Development in Progress

2008-12-08T15:51:00.000+09:00

I like the idea of an album acting as a way to catch up with what an artist or group has been up to. Not simply a document of what went on in the studio but of what was happening all around them. A creative ensemble without parallel, there's absolutely no way the Miles Davis Quintet wouldn't deliver an aural catch-up session with each release. Nefertiti's running order, in fact, reflects their chronological development since Sorcerer hit the shops half a year earlier. Thus, while a somewhat extreme example of what they'd been up to, the title track kicks things off practically right where 'Vonetta' had concluded Sorcerer.* Many find the repetition of Davis and Wayne Shorter's lines to be unlike anything they did before but, judging by their recordings as far back as E.S.P., it's likely they had this type of thing in mind for quite some time. Sometimes it's impossible to divorce an album from its best known track. The soothing, yet somewhat off-putting 'Nefertiti' frequently fools the listener into the delusion that the entire album is chock full of equally calm tunes. Deeper, more thorough listening, however, reveals that the title track is nothing but a blueprint for the remainder of the sessions.

Shorter's opening numbers - 'Fall' in addition to 'Nefertiti' - provide a nice introduction to what was going on but it's with Tony Williams' 'Hand Jive', however, that 'Nefertiti' really begins to take off. While a lesser composition than those by Shorter or Herbie Hancock, the performance easily compensates. Williams' drumming is positively manic throughout and, not to be upstaged, Davis rises to the occasion to deliver some superlative playing. Hancock's groovy pieces, 'Madness' and 'Riot', provide a less schizophrenic account of the Quintet's energy and, much to his credit, Shorter even responds with the far less meditative 'Pinocchio' to close things out. By this point less than forty minutes have passed but it's hard to believe that this much development has taken place in such a short amount of time. In a way, at least for some who aren't me, this burst of creative energy is the album's own undoing: it simply doesn't hang together as a unified work the way a more coherent but less fascinating record might. In this respect, and in this respect alone, it is the poor cousin to Sorcerer.

filles de Kilimanjaro, recorded a year later, is frequently described as Davis' great transitional album of the period but an equally good case could be made in this regard for Nefertiti.† Not just a showcase for how much his Quintet had developed since Sorcerer but displaying a development in progress over the course of the month or so it took to record. Not since Louis Armstrong cut the Hot Fives and Sevens had the studio been put to such good use as a creative tool and it hasn't proved as effective ever since.

~~~~~
* This is purely from the listener's perspective, mind you. It matters little that 'Vonetta' wasn't the final track cut for Sorcerer, nor that 'Nefertiti' happened to be the first tune laid down at these sessions. Album track listings create a chronology all of their own.

† Having said that, just what works of Davis' aren't transitional? This is a topic I could go off on but am saving for a future entry.

Color Changes: And I'm Certainly Aware of You

2008-12-05T17:09:00.001+09:00

1960 could well be jazz's finest year for studio albums. Sketches of Spain, My Favorite Things, Pre-Bird, Giant Steps, The Big Beat!, Nice 'n' Easy, We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite, Change of the Century: all marvellous and - and this is simply a bonus mind you - important works. But there was no better album that year than Clark Terry's Color Changes.

The name Clark Terry kept creeping up on me over the past couple of years before I fully became aware of him. A bit like seeing an actor such as Alfred Molina make one memorable film appearance after another - from Raiders of the Lost Ark to Maverick and onto his unforgettable performance in the otherwise overrated Coffee and Cigarettes - but never remembering his name or where you'd seen him before, Terry was initially an anonymous sessioner who I suddenly realised had been both a leader and sideman on some outstanding recordings. And like Molina, this once uncertain familiarity only makes me appreciate Terry all the more now.

Nevertheless, nothing could have prepared me for Color Changes, a startlingly original record that manages to assimilate just about every style and source familiar to Terry. A crossover artist like few others - one wonders if Charlie Christian might have turned out the same way had he lived to see bop and its progeny in full force- swing and bop merge so effortlessly as to become a genre in and of itself, one that fools the listener into thinking that it emerged from nowhere other than Terry himself. The lovely melodies on both 'Flutin and Fluglin' and 'la rive gauche' underscore some superb soloing courtesy of Terry on the flugelhorn, Julius Watkins on the French horn (and why isn't the French horn more prominent in jazz anyway?) and Yusef Lateef on seemingly anything he felt like picking up. Elsewhere, such on the sinister 'No Problem' and the decidedly morose 'Brother Terry', the octet meshes together to create the kind of aural atmosphere that would've impressed a peak-period Gil Evans.

In some ways this is the best album Charlie Mingus never recorded, mad, relentless waltzes and all - albeit minus the volatility. In fact, the bassist must have been listening for this is a clear forerunner for The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady. On the other hand, Terry himself probably had Mingus classics such as 'Haitian Fight Song' and 'Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting' in mind when he pieced together the awesome 'Nahstye Blues'.* After spending the bulk of his twenties and thirties in Count Basie and Duke Ellington Orchestra's it's conceivable that he learned everything he needed to know about composition and arrangement from his employers (although it's significant that he and Mingus were the only protégés of Ellington's in these areas - everyone else was a soloist) and never put these skills to better use here. A pity more people didn't take notice back in 1960: they might have seen that Giant Steps and Change of the Century were missing something.

~~~~~
* This reminds me of something which is sadly lost from modern music: the response record. Just as Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney and John Lennon and Bob Dylan would communicate with one another on their great sixties albums, jazz artists were doing the same thing only earlier. Few, if any, artists these days listen to contemporaries and become so overcome with jealousy that they become determined to deliver something of even great quality. Don't they see what a driving force competition can be?

Way Out West: I Wanna Be a Cowboy

2008-12-03T16:33:00.000+09:00

Virtually everyone comments on the album's cover and I am no exception. Most remark on how funny it is which, in light of some of the all-too serious cover photos of the age (Mile Davis' Round About Midnight being the prime example), is indisputably true. When Thelonious Monk attempted to look quirky on the cover of Brilliant Corners it looked forced; when Charlie Mingus put on face paint and a red nose for The Clown it was done only to heighten the bassist's feelings of being a serious artiste trapped in the guise of an entertainer. In the Way Out West photograph Rollins looks at ease and sincere. Yes, sincere. I suspect more than a few fans and critics think the cover is meant to be ironic, that a black jazz musician would never in all seriousness want to be a cowboy. The truth is pretty much every North American boy of Rollins' generation - egged on by the many Roy Rogers films of the thirties and forties - loved wearing a Stetson, carrying around a toy hand gun and playing Cowboys and Indians with their friends (and, indeed, so did the Baby Boomers, particularly after Gunsmoke became a hit; Generation Xer's never had an any similar cowboy idols barring the odd Yosemite Sam).

The cover, to me, also reinforces Rollins' tacit approval of West Coast jazz, which in many circles at the time had been taking a beating - despite the fact many of these very same individuals were perfectly happy recording and listening to it when it was labelled "cool". I say reinforces because the music itself is the first sign of such an attitude, so much so that the comparatively swift 'Come, Gone' sounds out of place (did Rollins and producer Lester Koenig intend to pull a reverse Blue Note?*). The relaxed drumming of Shelley Manne could not have suited Rollins’ new strolling technique better. One might be forgiven for assuming that the slick rhythm section would compromise the great tenorist's virtuosity but it seems to complement it better than a contemporary hard bop unit would have. There's something nice about the threesome being such a rag tag bunch, seemingly ill-suited to meshing with one another. At a time when Davis' famed Rhythm Section was being courted by jazz soloists on both coasts (including Rollins himself on the vaunted but less interested Tenor Madness) and with units such as the Jazz Messengers and the Modern Jazz Quartet in the picture it's refreshing to discover that perfection could come at a cost.

Far from the perfect album, Way Out West is a success precisely due to its failings. The material chosen isn't exactly first rate but allows Rollins ample space for some solo pyrotechnics. The soloing itself, however, is frequently restrained which suits the West Coast feel. And working as a trio has its obvious failings as well - how isn't a fuller sound preferable to something so sparse? - but it's never as dull as many piano trios of the day. Lighthearted yet never throwaway, funny but never corny, Rollins struck a nice balance of art and entertainment. Look once again at the cover: what really makes it so funny is that he means it. And real artists always mean it, right?

~~~~~
* Virtually every Blue Note album in my collection features one token, frequently unwanted ballad shoved in the midst of a collection of fast, catchy numbers. Way Out West seems to have taken the opposite tack.

The Young Lions: Exposing the Emptiness

2008-11-30T15:50:00.000+09:00

The trouble with having a distinct sound is that it can eventually become staid. I went through a period a couple years' ago where I became obsessed with Blue Note's classic sound, in particular the many albums recorded in the home of engineer Rudy Van Gelder. One listen to the pounding open bars of 'The Chess Players' from Art Blakey's The Big Beat were enough to get me hooked - and I still am in a way: Blakey's sessions at Van Gelder's Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey studio are all magnificent and Lee Morgan's Tom Cat and Jackie McLean's Old and New Gospel are among my all time favorite jazz recordings. The only trouble was it gave some of Blakey's proteges an unwelcome anonymity which proved to be the undoing of Blue Note in my eyes.

The Young Lions, committed to tape just six weeks after the Jazz Messengers laid down The Big Beat, captures the same sort of hot house fire of any RVG session but without the predictability that came part and parcel with the Blue Note/Van Gelder tag. All too often I find that the soloist's quota system ("make sure that Curtis Fuller gets a trombone solo that's just as lengthy as Freddie Hubbard's trumpet but be sure they don't take any attention away from Tina Brooks because he's the leader") could grow tiresome. Far too democratic for the creative process to flourish, there needs to be a competitive tension at the core to spark some truly magnificent solo duels (imagine Coleman Hawkins and Lester Young working under such a system in the thirties: their legendary all night 'anything you can do, I can do better' sax off would have turned into a dull, politically correct display of tenor sax relativism, if it would have occurred at all).

Some praise must be heaped on Frank Strozier for helping to guide this record through the wilderness. As the only Young Lion without prior experience working for Blue Note, it's no coincidence his alto sax provides a welcome layer of grit that only a Memphis-trained bar musician could provide. Wayne Shorter, for his part, seems up to the challenge for once, restraining himself on the all-too slick solos that have defined the bulk of his career and embarking on some booming tenor playing as well. I'll refrain from bowing down to Lee Morgan's alter, however; his concise, bellowing trumpet solos both suited the Blue Note sound and managed to overcome it. That's not to say there isn't some wonderful interplay as well: the three work just as well with as they do against.

I often used to wonder if Rudy Van Gelder and Alfred Lion would meet over coffee the morning of their sessions and choose the day's players the same way that Junior High phys ed students pick teams for floor hockey. I imagined their entire vaunted line-up crowding into Van Gelder's rumpus room, Lou Donaldson getting chosen ahead of Hank Mobley, Blue Mitchell over Donald Byrd. I can still imagine this scenario but I no longer think of it as complimentary to the label's virtues. Rather, it reminds me of just how restrictive Blue Note could be: by carving out a unique sound they unwittingly prevented their charges from developing one for themselves. The Big Beat, in spite of its many charms, could have been recorded by anyone on their roster; The Young Lions could have only been made by the Young Lions themselves.

Under the Jasmin Tree / Space: What You Have to Deal With

2008-11-29T16:51:00.000+09:00

It's the Modern Jazz Quartet all right. Couldn't possibly be anyone else. But listening to this period it's impossible to imagine that this is the MJQ recorded, as they usually seemed to be, in a vacuum. The connections with the times, the place, the people and the record label cannot be divorced from what they were recording. Even if it's all in my imagination.

Thus, I hear in Under the Jasmin Tree's opening track 'Blue Necklace' a merging of the MJQ's classic sound with a psychedelic underpinning, particularly when Milt Jackson's vibes collapse into themselves twenty-one seconds into the piece and then again a few seconds later, Connie Kay's drums pounding gently yet in an uncharacteristically tribal manner. John Lewis and Percy Heath remain restrained, which, far from harming the number, manages to give it a nice tension as both factions fight for control, albeit as delicately as possible. The fact that Lewis and Jackson weren't on the exact same page was nothing new to the MJQ but where else could one find such a subtle power struggle? On Django? Conchorde? Even if this battle is entirely the product of my own imagination it's an alluring proposition for such a contemplative ensemble, particularly considering the parallel struggle occurring at the same time with their bosses Lennon and McCartney.

Reigned in by Lewis, Under the Jasmin Tree nonetheless remains mostly free of sixties rock clichés (uncharitably, one could argue that they instead were happy to partake in their own clichés). 'Three Little Feelings' is a suite in the tradition of Django's 'La Ronde Suite', the sort of thing Lewis in particular excelled at. The title track which closes out the album, however, is about as raucous as you'll ever hear the MJQ sound, further proof they slice their way through a good pop song as well as anyone.

Space, from early 1969, ups the psychedelia factor a touch more and, ironically, from the unlikeliest of sources: John Lewis! Whereas the Van Heusen-Burke standard 'Here's that Rainy Day' returns the MJQ to their fetish for Gershwin and Broadway and 'Adagio from Concierto de Aranjuez' explores third wave beautifully, it is the Lewis originals, 'Visitor from Mars' and 'Visitor from Venus', that have them grasping at space rock and raga like never before. Just as warring factions Lennon and McCartney conceived a veneer of unity on Abbey Road from the same year, these tracks display a coalescence of the MJQ's wild cards and their more sedate counterparts. Jackson and Lewis no longer sound like they're battling for control over their group's direction but in complete agreement - for the time being. The remainder of the album acts to remind us that this psychedelic direction was nothing more than a passing fancy, just as it had been for the Beatles themselves.

(Interestingly enough, The Beatles' Anthology series fails to mention the premiere outfit they signed, either an indication of how little jazz music meant to the Fab Four or simply a careless oversight on the part of the producers. Or perhaps a bit of both. Nevertheless, there's something oddly appropriate in ignoring the MJQ. Whereas Badfinger and Mary Hopkin needed the Beatle association (but struggled to escape it), John Lewis and co didn't then and don't now. The mere fact they were signed to Apple seems like an afterthought - not unlike James Taylor, the only other act on the label who managed to carve out a career that didn't need the Beatles connection)

I want to think that being signed to Apple was merely incidental and that the MJQ would've delivered the same albums had they been signed to Atlantic at the time. But I cannot. Tied to the most influential act of the decade and their oh so hip record company, I can't fathom them performing without. But it's equally impossible to imagine anyone else recording these albums. This is, after-all, the MJQ.

The Complete RCA Victor Recordings: Did Pops Get Better Over Time?

2008-11-26T16:09:00.001+09:00

Since finally succumbing to the vast allure of Louis Armstrong late last year, I've begun to think of him as a box set artist - the kind of performer who needs to be digested in huge quantities. I frequently listen to my two Armstrong sets (Hot Fives and Sevens and this) back to back, making for an eight hour marathon of Satchmo. I initially assumed that the earlier set would completely overshadow what he later did but I couldn't have been more wrong on that one. The Complete RCA Victor Recordings: twenty years of never ending development.

Certainly the RCA sessions sound better: the hiss that occasionally threatens to drown out the Hot Fives is almost entirely gone and, working with an orchestra on a regular basis, it has a fuller sound. But the earliest of these sessions date from the early thirties when he may well have missed his old Hot Five cohorts. Mere advanced studio technology could not obscure just how ill-prepared Armstrong's employees were. So how does the man himself sound so fantastic? Could he simply have improved? While his solos on the Hot Five recordings are incredible still, his playing through the thirties and forties (and the remainder of his career) saw no notable drop off in quality but there's far greater authority and confidence than before. This is all the more obvious with his singing which all too often sounds tentative in the twenties. Listeners coming from a rock background (such as myself) tend to find the singing to be a distraction at best and irritating at worst but on these recordings it becomes abundantly clear that his vocals are as vital his cornet. It's nice to think, too, that he sacrificed his trumpet playing in order to sing more often but his lines simply get better and better with each passing decade (my favorite solos are on disc three from the mid-forties: 'Snafu', 'Joseph 'n' His Brudders', 'Where the Blues Were Born in New Orleans' and a definitive rendition of 'Mahogany Hall Stomp'; it's notable that the first three numbers are otherwise inconsequential, proof that Armstrong didn't need a great composition to run roughshod over a tune). Could it be that his playing and singing got better in tandem? On the final disc Armstrong revisits his some of his old Hot Fives classics, such as 'St. James Infirmary' and 'Ain't Misbehavin', to an appreciative New York audience. But it's a far cry from an aging Paul McCartney churning out 'Yesterday' or 'Hey Jude' to crowds that wanted to see the Beatles play thirty years earlier. These barely seem like classics at all: they exude creativity which manages to keep the music as contemporary as ever.

Unique among jazz musicians, Armstrong seemed to just get better and better (only until the sixties does it feel like he's riding the coattails of his former glories). Ellington tirelessly reworked his material but never quite topped the zest and exuberance of his earliest recordings. Davis spent the bulk of his career in flux but it was never about improving his technique or skills as a performer. Parker showed everyone his supreme talent in around 1942 and then spent the remainder of his life attempting to remind everyone of this fact. Only Charlie Mingus and Thelonious Monk managed a similar feat to Armstrong and even they could only sustain the self-improvement for ten to fifteen years; neither of them came close to making an entire career of it. It was never about reinventing the wheel either; he took his sound and spent the rest of his life making it better.

Neither a singles nor an albums act as we regard them to be now, Louis Armstrong is the ultimate box-set artist. And what better a complement to pay to a man whose greatest achievement was having the career he had.

Ben Webster at Ronnie Scott 1964: The Punch: über-Improvisation

2008-11-22T13:11:00.001+09:00

He travelled alone, spurning a permanent touring band for financial reasons but managing to benefit creatively from this. House bands throughout Europe awaited his arrival wondering how they could adapt themselves to suit the great Ben Webster. But they needn't have worried: Ben Webster was there to adapt to them.

The audiences, too, changed wherever he went. In some parts of Europe they'd offer up the most ghostly rounds of applause; elsewhere the commotion would be such to cause the riot police to descend upon a basement bar. Nothing could prepare him for how the crowd would react. In America, they all used to dance to jazz, now they treat it like some intellectual experience; here they do whatever they please. There's an audience.

And as for Ben himself, he never ceased improvising either. Familiarity acts as a disincentive. How can a jazz musician be expected to improvise when they're playing the same old songs with the same old people in the same old towns to the same old audiences? And whatsmore, just how can a soloist be expected to be spontaneous when his private life remains tepid and dull and predictable? How can anything less than an imrpovised life suffice to suit an improvised medium?

The Avant-Garde / My Favorite Things / Coltrane Plays the Blues: Atlantic Ocean

2008-11-19T16:56:00.001+09:00

In the John Coltrane mythology, the great saxophonist learned his trade in some wartime big bands playing blues numbers before establishing his popularity as a soloist with some pop standards and, finally, moving on to completely altering the boundaries of jazz forever. This nice, tidy little story makes Coltrane hero #1 to all the Wellsians out there.

Recorded all in 1960, The Avant-Garde, My Favorite Things and Coltrane Plays the Blues represent a time-compressed piece of Coltrane's progress. But note that they were in fact recorded in opposition to history: he began by working on an attempt at radicalism and culminated with some blues: the anti-Wells, where ECM's back catalogue progresses for the next seventy years into the Hot Fives.

Similar to contemporaneous works like Coltrane's Sound and Coltrane Jazz, there's an implication in the title that Coltrane Plays the Blues is a minor effort (unlike Miles Davis, whose punular, rather jokey albums - Miles Ahead, Milestones, Miles Smiles, Miles in the Sky - betrayed a certain monumentalism; perhaps Davis was better suited to vanity projects; even Blue Train and Soultrane seem like he was stretching it). There's something novel about it too; as if standard blues fare wasn't something his work wasn't rooted in. Still, even if you aren't convinced by the virtues of the twelve bar, just listen to the soloing: "Blues to Elvin" and "Mr. Day" are as powerful as anything on the awesome Giant Steps; "Mr. Syms" and the then-unreleased "Untitled Original (Exotica)" represent some of the loveliest playing of his career. Easily one of his most underrated albums,Coltrane Plays the Blues could well be exhibit "A" for anyone trying to make a case for the theory of less is more.

If any work can be considered minor it is The Avant-Garde, a well-intentioned but hugely flawed attempt at responding to Ornette Coleman's advances in free playing. Sharing the billing with Don Cherry is a nice gesture and an acknowledgement that the cornetist's star had risen to the extent that by 1966 he merited a co-headline but seems like nothing more than a gesture. Then you realise that it is Cherry himself who steals every solo break. Coltrane is simply in over his head, doing his utmost to prove that he was Coleman's equal but, ultimately, only pushing him further into his rival's shadow. No wonder it was buried for half-a-dozen years before it was finally released.

As for My Favorite Things, what can be said? Critics point to the title cut's brazen influence on the remainder of Coltrane's life and his desire to frequently return to it even as he moved deeper into his chaotic Impulse! era. Few, however, seem to acknowledge that this is as much due to the magnificence of Richard Rogers and Oscar Hammerstein's composition (and, by extension, Coltrane's own faltering songwriting skills) as anything else. The same goes for Cole Porter's "Everytime We Say Goodbye" and the Gershwins' "Summertime" and "But Not for Me", which, alas, he did not return to. This is now interpreted as gimmicky, that the serious artiste in Coltrane would never have taken on such a project in earnest. Indeed not. But the Coltrane who placed value on performance and swing and melody probably didn't mind. A pity he wasn't around much longer.

It seems, then, that Coltane was better off being somewhat kooky and lighthearted and focused rather than being caught up in getting too serious, a side he either failed to recognize or ignored altogether as he entered his crucial Impulse! period a couple years' after these recordings. As for the Wellsian myth, as a true artist, Coltrane used his time on Atlantic to shift, to change pace, to delve into every nook and cranny and his music was all the better for it. Isn't that progress?

Far Cry: It Takes Two

2008-04-14T04:08:00.000+09:00

Parker and Gillespie. Ellington and Hodges. Davis and Coltrane. Ellington and Strayhorn. Coleman and Cherry. Ellington and Carney. Dolphy and Little? There have been a great many marvellous duos over the course of jazz's peak period, many of whom remain indelibly linked together in the collective consciousness. Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie's solo works still seem to have each other present, as if acting as consultants to the recording. But beyond the renowned pairings, there were numerous jazz tag teams that fell through the cracks. In But Beautiful, Geoff Dyer writes of the seemingly infinite number of potential collaborations that never occurred (I've long wondered what Lester Young and Miles Davis would have been like together) but what about those superb duos that existed only fleetingly?

Far Cry is regarded as a transitional album, a work that allowed Eric Dolphy to rid himself of his long held Charlie Parker fetish at long last, thereby allowing him to move on towards becoming a leading light of the avant garde jazz movement. As such it's a tribute album: a tribute to Parker and his massive influence, a tribute to the driving spirit of hard bop, a genre on its last legs by 1960, a tribute to Dolphy himself as this represented his coming-out as a leader and a tribute to his ultimately doomed collaboration with trumpeter Booker Little.

The sixties brought forth a more solitary approach to jazz. John Coltrane began to operate within the confines of a quartet, spurning the saxophone-trumpet double team that had served - among others - he and Miles Davis so well. Pianists such as Thelonious Monk and Bill Evans rarely utilized anything beyond the piano trio format. Even Charlie Mingus took a kind of singular tack: his groups remained large but his line-ups were ever changing. (For someone who supposedly found figures like Dolphy and Roland Kirk to be musical kindred spirits, it's odd that he didn't use them more often) With jazz splintering it's probable that potential musical soul mates were often laying eggs in vastly different hen houses.

One can listen to Far Cry and lament that the duo of Dolphy and Little wasn't able to piece together a run of at least four studio recordings in tandem. Little's death less than a year later snuffed out any further collaborations but it's easy to imagine the two never working together again even if they both hadn't met with untimely ends. The heyday of the duo had passed and individualism had taken over.

Sunday at the Village Vanguard: Punctures

2008-04-11T12:25:00.000+09:00

punctum (adj.): a moment that establishes a connection - permanent or fleeting - between a piece of art and its audience. (cf. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida)

Background Noise
The clanging of cutlery and crockery conspire to remind you that this is a live album, a far more effective measure than any amount of applause ever could, taken place within a social situation. Just how many people in attendance were in fact there for the Beef Wellington? Does their conversation occasionally get interrupted by the odd bit of noise from the stage? Feeling that there may be an audience that doesn't care makes me care all the more for this recording.

Hands
His body otherwise in repose, Bill Evans' hands look primed. The piano effectively becomes not so much an instrument he plays as the most adequate use of his ever ready hands. The cigarette burns but it is never smoked: his hands are otherwise occupied.

Laugh Lines
His friend and partner Scott La Faro having recently been killed in a car accident, the laugh lines become Evans' most compelling facial feature. This is a visage that has never smiled before - how could it possibly sport laugh lines? - and never smile again. Bursts of sheer joy on the album itself appear only to magnify the sorrow.

Shirt Sleeves
Rolled up to the mid-way point of the forearm, Evans wears his shirt like a draftsman. He also plays the piano as if hunched over a drafting table, the keys his pencil, the music his t-square. Precision, accuracy and texture: the hallmarks of Evans' art and trade alike.

Silence
At most jazz gigs booming applause is the order of the day; here, occasional bursts of clapping at the conclusion of a piece seem like an intrusion, the equivalent of canned-laughter. The audience needn't applaud, their silence says far more about such a mesmerizing performance than any amount of cheers ever could.

Paris Jam Session: What Bud Did

2008-04-03T14:39:00.001+09:00

Things start tentatively. Bud Powell, mere accopanyist to no man, kicks off 'Dance of the Infidels' as though he's teaching the melody to the other musicians - or perhaps even to himself. The young Jazz Messengers, perhaps in equal doses terrified and in awe of the illustrious keyboardist sitting in with them, play some safe but unspectacular solos, their lines rushed as though trying to get them over with as quickly as possible. Art Blakey, ever the stoic, hammers his drum kit with authority, hopeful that this makeshift line-up can overcome a sluggish start.

Then, Bud begins to fly. His solo is a mantra: it captures your attention, keeps you momentarily fixated, then allows your mind to wander before it sucks you back in. At its best, jazz is not simply improvised playing: the reaction the music and the mind make while colliding ensures that it can be improvised listening as well.

Lee Morgan eventually asserts himself with brief trumpet flourish that has you convinced that five years have passed since Powell's solo began, not five minutes. He suddenly posesses all the manic drive of Dizzy Gillespie, all the power of Clifford Brown and all the control of Roy Eldridge. By the time that 'Bouncing with Bud' rolls around every player is his best, shamed into inspired soloing by the cantankerous be-bop star on the ivories. Powell wasn't about to accept anything less than number one from himself - why should he be any different with his bandmates? The tune is cleaner and more accomplished than its predecessor but far less interesting; hearing a rag tag bunch get their act together always trumps tight solo dynamics.

Powell departs - the booming applause is more an attempt to continue the music than respond to it - but his shadow hangs over the Jazz Messengers as they finish off the gig. There's a hurried precision to 'A Night in Tunisia' that is impossible to imagine without 'Dance of the Infidels' and 'Bouncing with Bud' having come before. No way were they going to give the audience a colossal let down now that Powell was gone.

Good cop, bad cop: the Jazz Messengers often lacked the element of a strict disciplinarian to keep them in line. In Blakey, they had their kindly English literature prof to nurture them but they only sporadically had a hard driving Biology instructor to push them further. Horace Silver played that roll in the early days and Bud Powell filled in ably on this particular evening. He might have done more for the Jazz Messengers had he stuck around a little longer but didn't he do enough?

Olé Coltrane: Hope Comes in Many Forms

2008-04-01T06:12:00.000+09:00

I am convinced that somewhere the real John Coltrane manages to emerge; I am just unsure where it happens. I won't condescend to claim that his true voice appears on the marvellous, rediculously catchy Blue Train nor on the devastating blow fest that is Giant Steps - long personal favourites of mine in the Coltrane catalogue - just as I would blanche from suggesting that it is revealed on the shrill A Love Supreme nor on the excruiating Ascension. Something tells me that the real John Coltrane might just appear on a comparatively mundane work - a descripive which few of his albums - be they captivating or irritating - merit - but that theory will have to wait until I've found one that qualifies; until then, we can but speculate.

Early and later works alike demonstrate Coltrane's undoubted command over the tenor saxophone during his decade as a prominent soloist and leader. But there is an often overlooked period in the middle in which his desire to craft extraordinary music superseded his virtuosity and obsession with getting every possible sound out of his instrument. This phase coincides with his period on the Atlantic label and his switch to the soprano sax.

(It's an easy instrument to scorn, particuarly since the rise of Kenny G's slick, New Age soloing. Isn't a musician better off picking up a clarinet - itself a much maligned woodwind, conjuring up corny ragtime hits - if they so desire that type of sound? Still, real men play the sax and there was no way Coltrane was going to lead a group playing the sadly outdated licorice stick. Shame.)

Restraint was never one of Coltrane's chief characteristics but the soprano sax managed to keep him in check like never before - or, indeed, again. While his trademark squeaks and honks sound almost bearable - at least some of the time - on the tenor, they would sound positively repulsive on his new reed instrument. (He would dust off his soprano sax from time to time in the subsequent months, notably during a session with Duke Ellington in the autumn of 1962; it's probable his venerable collaborator wanted to have nothing to do with the manic sounds that spewed forth from Coltrane's tenor.) As a result, Olé Coltrane is home to some the most delicate, finely woven playing of his entire career; even his turns on the tenor sax - particularly on the gorgeous McCoy Tyner composition 'Aisha' - deliver enough beauty to counteract any possible recklessness (within the first two minutes, playing a melody reminiscent of the old wartime favourite 'Over There', Coltrane even manages to alchemically turn his tenor into a soprano and back into a tenor).

The liner notes to my copy of Olé argue that this was simply the beginning of Coltrane's hugely influential period on the Impulse! label, laying a "foundation" for his evocations of rapturous spirituality that dominated the final five years of his life. But his attempts - also heard on the contemporaneous Africa/Brass volumes - at blending his virtuosity with supple textures and fragile arrangements proved a massive dead end in a career wrought with them.

Olé Coltrane: perhaps not the real John Coltrane but certainly the John Coltrane that I long to hear.

Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster: Verve's Contemporary Tradition

2008-02-16T18:12:00.000+09:00

Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges Play the Blues Back-to-Back; An Electrifying Evening with the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet; Louis Armstrong Meets Oscar Peterson; Ben Webster and Associates: no jazz label ever minted the mythos of self importance in album titles quite like the Verve Music Group. Implied in these and so many more Verve releases is something special, unlike anything that has come before, never to be repeated again - album art mirroring posters advertising gigs. How right they were to do so.

Coleman Hawkins Encounters Ben Webster: there's something decidedly confrontational to this title. I've always loved the cover especially since it's such a crude and clumsy attempt to make it look like Hawkins and Webster are posing together in a photograph. The beaming smiles on the faces of Louis Armstrong and Oscar Peterson on the cover of their eponymous Verve summit makes it all too clear they got along swimmingly; the title and cover of this, however, conspire to make me suspect the two tenors didn't exactly dig one another. Still, you'd never guess this by the music, seven exceptionally lovely pieces, their styles meshing to such a degree that it's difficult to tell them apart at times. The novice listener can get lulled into believing there's a lack of individuality to Webster's playing, that he's distinguishable only because he could sound like both Hawkins and Lester Young at the same time (not that I'm such an expert: I often come to recognize Webster when I'm certain I'm not hearing Hawkins or Young). This one is particularly puzzling and I wonder just how much the two were imitating each other: perhaps the heavier, denser playing is being provided by Webster while the lighter, breathier moments come courtesy of Hawkins.

In the piece about The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady I discuss the challenge posed by the album, particularly on jazz's old boys network. Verve took probably the simplest yet most effective approach: to allow its roster of primarily veteran players to record as though they were brief set-lists from one time only gigs.

On the Corner: A Journey

2008-02-13T19:35:00.000+09:00

...and I approach every crosswalk as if it were my last. Part of the thrill of wandering around this city is the inherent danger present. You don't walk through Bangkok's dense, humid air so much as you wade through it. A single, deep breath and your lungs are coated in the same black film that covers every building. No other major city on Earth seems to be as devoid of districts or communities as the Thai capital. Morphing itself continuously, appalling slums turn into palatial estates, modern shopping complexes become Third World government bureaus, ornate temples into shabby markets: you're never on the wrong side of the tracks in Bangkok but always on the other side. The noxious jazz-funk on my walkman is so perfectly suited to my environment that I can scarcely tell the sounds eminating from my earphones from the din on the outside; a cloud of noise surrounds me. For all I know, there could be a tabla player on the other side of the busy thoroughfare and I'm convinced that Miles Davis hired some cat to play the jackhammer on these sessions. I stroll closely past the storefronts in the hope that an opened door will greet me with a blast of welcome air conditioning on the side of my face. There is not another person around and this solitude leaves me feeling uneasy, Davis doing little to calm my nerves. I gingerly approach a stretch of oncoming traffic without a sidewalk to ease my journey, hoping my luck continues to hold out...

We Insist! Max Roach's Freedom Now Suite: Enjoy the Revolution

2008-02-10T06:59:00.000+09:00

A few years ago while teaching English in Indonesia I picked up a bootleg copy of Michael Moore's Fahrenheit 9/11, a supposed documentary masquerading as an excuse to throw immeasurable amounts of invective at Geroge W. Bush's War on Terror. I liked a lot of Moore's previous work - particularly Bowling for Columbine and the TV series The Awful Truth - but there was something missing from this latest film that had been present elsewhere: humour. I previously found Moore's films funny but this one wasn't. Saying as much to my girlfriend at the time, she replied, "you're not supposed to enjoy it". That's the crux of an awful lot of political work: entertainment is irrelevant.

Jazz has a troubled history with the concept of entertainment - particularly if their skin colour of the audience happens to have a light pigmentation. Philip Larkin's big problem with bop and its descendents was that they were allegedly less enjoyable styles than his beloved swing; you couldn't dance to Charlie Parker therefore his music was less valid than Louis Armstrong's (the mere thought of Larkin dancing to anyone is laughable). That French students snapped their fingers to Bird's playing - thereby implying that they enjoyed what they heard - seemed lost on traditionalists. Nevertheless, there seems to have been an increasing movement towards toning down the entertainment value, particularly if it appears to compromise artistry (few recognize that for an individual such as Armstrong being an entertainer was intrinsic to his art).

Though artistry is in abundance on We Insist, enjoyment is fleeting. The first two tracks, 'Driva' Man' and 'Freedom Day', are outstanding, chock-full of great solos and vocalist Abbey Lincoln's supple enunciation. Lincoln's voice reminds me of Cliff and Clair Huxtable's parents on The Cosby Show: aware of the struggle that remains ahead of them but eternally greatful that they'll never be sujected to the nightmares of slavery. Composed by Roach and Oscar J. Brown in honour of the centenary of the Emancipation Proclamation, it's as much a celebration as it is a protestation. But proceedings begin to tail off with 'Triptych: Prayer/Protest/Peace': although Roach delivers a powerful drum solo, Linclon's screams would prove grating even if she had the more modest range of Yoko Ono; coming from her it's inexcusable. From there, current affairs in Africa take precedence. Suddenly, Lincoln's authoritative tone sounds hesitant; happily, Nigerian percussion star Olatunji just about manages to rescue an otherwise inconsequential 'All Africa'. 'Tears of Johannesburg' nobly attempts to smash everything present in one handy album closer but the results are muddled - it's a nice thought but the use of Afro-Cuban polyrhythms in jazz is better suited to the more restrained hands of Art Blakey and Dizzy Gillespie.

Max Roach, Abbey Lincoln and their assemblage manage to sound convincing and in control on some of We Insist! but lost and in over their heads elsewhere. From a political standpoint I obviously have to adore everything here. But I also enjoy much of this record - even if I'm not supposed to.

Chet: Gentile Moods

2008-02-05T12:22:00.000+09:00

Like all good portraits, his gaze appears to change the more you look at it. You think he must have had it all, sandwiched between a woman - any woman, every woman - and his horn, those piercing Hollywood looks added just for good measure: I'm Chet and you're not.

But look further, look longer, and he seems to age at a shocking rate. The eyes appear to be sinking further and further into their sockets. Wrinkles sprout from his forehead, betraying less than thirty years of life with a century of living packed within them. The photograph is tinted with a yellowish haze, probably in order to mask a once-beautiful face slowly morphing into a catcher's mit. Only half done with this life but you can see every moment of the remaining twenty-nine years that await him: I'm Chet and get down on your hands and knees and thank the Lord that you're not.

Running out of last-chances with a whole life ahead of him, Chet Baker played every song as though it were his last. Everything going for him yet fully aware that it was slowly beginning to slip away, resigning himself to this ghastly fate. The women never ceased to be seduced but look at what was seducing them: every song, every note amounted to an epitaph. A life of loneliness and seclusion and abuse is upon us: I'm Chet and so are you.

Pre-Bird: Mingus Revisionism

2008-02-05T07:03:00.000+09:00

It must have been fun to try and predict just what Charlie Mingus was going to do next. While a comedy record (Oh Yeah) probably seemed inevitable and a tribute to south of the border debauchery (Tijuana Moods) would have surprised no one, what about a blues-soaked response to charges that he didn't swing enough (Blues and Roots; I'm sure Mingus being mixed-race had nothing to do with these criticisms)? Or the waltz of a newly freed slave (The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady)? Or revisiting compositions that pre-date one of his biggest influences? In a catalogue defined by erratic, unruly recordings, the decidedly traditional Pre-Bird remains one of Mingus' standouts, though not always in the best possible sense.

Probably because he was always going on about seeing his shrink (see his autobiography Beneath the Underdog as well as the liner notes to The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady), I can't help but take a pyschoanalytic approach to Mingus' actions and motivations. What could have brought on such a project? Did he feel caught in the shadow of Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell? Did he have this need to prove that he was always a noteworthy figure? Much as I want to think that Mingus' sole concern was to honour the jazz tradition, I can't help but see this album as a vanity project, one meant to soothe his notoriously fragile ego.

But what does all this say about the music? The compositions themselves are impressively old school swing, paying such an obvious debt to Duke Ellington that it would be apparent even without the two covers ('Take the "A" Train' and 'Do Nothin' Till You Hear From Me') but it often seems a little too buttoned down for such a wild band leader - though, to be fair, the more restrained pieces are among the album's highlights (the lovely 'Half-Mast Inhibition' is said to be entirely scored). Only on 'Mingus Fingus no. 2' does it feel like he managed to successfully merge his own creativity with an Ellingtonian backdrop. Elsewhere, his own touches seem tacked on, such as his Asian-derived bass flourish on 'Weird Nightmare' accompanied by the flutes of Eric Dolphy and Yusef Lateef - which seems like a nice idea if only it suited the material.

The irony is that Mingus unwittingly pays as much tribute to Parker's influence as Ellington's on Pre-Bird. His compositional talents were a given but swing failed squeeze him out of his shell. Without the rise of bop in the mid-forties it's impossible to imagine the bassist's unbroken string of first rate albums stretching from Pithecanthropus Erectus all the way to The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (and this is if, like me, you're not crazy about the latter's follow-up Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, Mingus, which many critics rate alongside his best work). Stuck in the middle of such an extraordinary discography, Pre-Bird is an unpredictable (or should we say 'Mingusonian'?) work, occasionally bogged down by the presence of one hero and the absence of another.

Get Up With It: A Fine Time to Leave

2008-02-04T07:04:00.000+09:00

By the early seventies jazz was reeling. It's convenient - not to mention tempting - to lay all the blame at the feet of fusion - something I may get to in a future review but not here - but there were other factors at play. A business shake-up at Blue Note Records led to the departures of Jackie McLean, Don Cherry and Lee Morgan from a label that had previously accorded its roster an enviable amount of creative control. The emerging Black Power movement began to thumb its nose at jazz's white following and roots as an alleged cultural Uncle Tom. And many of its greatest practitioners began to die off: John Coltrane's death in 1967 was followed by a procession of venerable casualties such as Coleman Hawkins, Louis Armstrong, Ben Webster and Duke Ellington. While Armstrong's passing meant the loss jazz's greatest improviser and entertainer, it's possible that Ellington's death proved an even more devastating blow; a father figure had been snuffed out. Most within the community took his death hard, none more so than Miles Davis.

Judged from the perspective of his recent funk-rock workouts, the Ellington-inspired funeral dirge "He Loved Him Madly" from Get Up With It sticks out like a sore thumb. Meandering and defiantly staid, it lacks the immediacy of On the Corner's opening medley nor the astonishing potency of "Spanish Key" from Bitches Brew, perhaps his most effective jazz-fusion piece. Its thirty-two minute running time combined with a maddeningly slow pace makes for difficult listening - as opposed to "In a Silent Way/It's About That Time" from In a Silent Way its build-up is little more than a tease. A first listen to Get Up With It and you're more likely to be humming the creepy organ refrains of "Calypso Frelimo". Still, it's a number that draws me back in from time to time and I've begun to appreciate it as one of Davis' finest compositions. It's frustrating, then, to consider that he never followed up on it. "Maiysha" and "Mtume", the albums's final cuts recorded four months after "He Loved Him Madly", may well represent his final forays into an Ellingtonian aesthetic. Furthermore, there wasn't even an attempt to forge the tribute into a standard, the kind of which jazz had been so desperate for that they had to make due with the comparatively slight "Birdland" by Joe Zwainul. Revisiting "He Loved Him Madly" might have firmly established the classic status of the piece, not to mention providing the composition with the kind of definitive performance which it meritted. It also would have been the ultimate tribute Davis could have paid to the man he apparently loved so madly.

Get Up With It makes me wonder if Davis' decision to withdraw from the scene for the next half-dozen years amounted to walking away just as jazz might have really needed him. With so many giants having perished and many others being squeezed out of the big labels, Miles Davis still had his faculties intact and raging, only just having honed his skills as a composer. Critics today regard Get Up With It as Davis' farewell but it needn't necessarily have been. He could have become a mentor to whole generation of performers, perhaps even shaping a very young Wynton Marsalis into an interesting figure. He could have worked in tandem with luminaries such as Lester Bowie and Charlie Haden and Keith Jarrett, maybe helping to ensure that the emerging ECM label in West Germany wouldn't spurn blues and swing from their distinctive sound. He could have become a composer of the standard of Ellington and Charlie Mingus and John Lewis. But he didn't and jazz is still reeling.

The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady: The Culmination of His Being

2008-02-01T16:53:00.000+09:00

It's interesting how the rise of the album coincides with one of the low points of jazz over the course of its fifty year peak. The departure of Johnny Hodges in the early-fifties led to the nadir of Duke Ellington's Orchestra. Miles Davis' exceptional Impressions in Modern Music project (it was only later renamed The Birth of the Cool) resulted in high praise all round and a monstrous heroin addiction that made observers wonder if he was finished at the tender age of twenty-four. Charlie Parker was nearing his expiry date. Even Louis Armstrong was at something of a loss around this time, even if he remained an unbeatable concert attraction.

Artists were compelled to adapt to the album era. It's nice to think that commercial pressure railroaded them into selling out but it was nothing of the sort. Even venerable stallwarts like Armstrong and Ellington were intrigued by the possibilities of suddenly having forty-five minutes of music to fill; the latter responded with a series of superb tributes (Fats Waller, W.C. Handy, King Oliver) while the former pursued suites and song cycles (the Shakespeare-inspired Such Sweet Thunder being one of the earliest). This approach was followed up by Davis and Gil Evans on their late-fifties trilogy (Miles Ahead, Porgy and Bess, Sketches of Spain) which makes me wonder if the LP actually helped restore jazz's faith in orchestras at a time when they appeared to be dying away.

This leads us to Charlie Mingus. While others adapted themselves to the new medium, he was probably the first major figure to be perfectly suited to it. Whereas increased length tended to work against many of his contemporaries, it seems Mingus was aware of the peaks and valleys of the LP, just as he was all-too aware of his own strengths and shortcomings. If not necessarily the instigator of the concept album - seeing as how the album was an artifact of broadway it's fair to conclude that there were concept albums from day one - then he was certainly the first to recognize that an integral part of the 12" record was the notion of it being more than the sum of its parts. Is it any wonder rock listeners take to The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady? Like A Love Supreme, it even occasionally feels like a rock and roll album.

His most grandiose statement until 1971's Let My Children Hear Music, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is a ballet score waiting to be staged and choreographed. (I'm sure a modern dance company in Bucharest or Houston has indeed put on a movement piece in tribute but it's not the same as the Bolshoi, is it?) While the trio of cuts on the first side glide about amiably, the single track second half is a twisted, ugly step-sister, managing to succeed at summing up the entire album while brilliantly undermining itself. Displaying a sophistication like never before - without sacrificing the musical audacity he had perfected a year previous on Oh Yeah - this is not simply Mingus going from strength to strength but high watermark of jazz in general. It's too bad he couldn't sustain it: no one else could.

Duke Ellington Plays Mary Poppins: You Can't Be Serious

2008-01-26T23:25:00.000+09:00

On the surface, this would seem an odd outing indeed. The thought that jazz's preeminent composer and bandleader would summon his venerable, all-too loyal band just to toss off a dozen covers from a Disney movie seems laughable. Who could take this kind of thing seriously? This was, you see, 1964 and many of the jazz elite were keen to prove just how serious they were. While Miles Davis was busy on the austere, deeply cerebral E.S.P., his old cohort John Coltrane was out-squawking himself in his paean to the lord A Love Supreme. Not content to be harbingers of bop's unofficial No Dancing policy, these records almost assured the listener that they would never snap their fingers to a jazz record again.

The 1964 that often gets forgotten, however, is that of "Hello, Dolly", Louis Armstrong's surprise chart-topping single that briefly unified the community in celebration of usurping The Beatles. Sounding just as he had thirty years earlier, it sent the clear message that old school swing was still the popular choice. One of the other big jazz hits of the time was Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder", a furious ten minutes of unbridled pleasure. You could even dance to it.

Duke Ellington Plays Mary Poppins was in its own quiet way a legitimate player in this swing revival. If one can't quite dance to all of it then at least it provokes a certain amount of swaying. "Chim Chim Cheree" is a delightful shuffle, accompanied by a delicate piano solo from Ellington, "I Love to Laugh" features some appropriately humourous back-and-forth horns and reeds and "The Life I Lead" is a welcome slice of joie-de-vivre courtesy of sax star Johnny Hodges. Fun as it is to listen to, I suspect the real joy would have been to play on these sessions: rarely has Ellington's men sounded so relaxed and in such good humour. Throughout there's very much the sense that they're treating these compositions as though Ellington himself wrote them, indicating just how first rate these tunes of Richard and Robert Sherman's are.

Ultimately, the crying shame of this work is that it merely hints at what might have been had Disney and swing conspired when they were at their respective peaks. To think of what Count Basie Plays Dumbo or Cab Calloway Plays The Reluctant Dragon or Duke Ellington Plays Fantasia would have been like makes you wonder what took everyone so long. I'm still waiting for a cerebral rendition of Wynton Marsalis Plays Song of the South.

Kind of Blue: A Once in a Lifetime Experience

2008-01-26T08:18:00.000+09:00

I'm listening to Kind of Blue for the first time in months, possibly even years. A decade ago, the idea that I could go longer than a couple of days without putting it on would have been unthinkable but now I almost never give it a spin and even when I do it's more out of a sense of curiosity with how it holds up rather than a genuine need to enjoy the soothing sounds. That's the trouble with being lured into jazz: you soon discover there's far more to sample than what piqued your interest in the first place. Go to a dinner party and try dining on nothing but the admittedly yummy crab cakes. Read and re-read Borges' extraordinary "Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius", leaving aside everything else in his oeuvre. Marry your High School sweetheart. Tempted? No, me neither.

So with jazz now having completely overtaken pop and rock in my esteem, how does it sound today? Remarkably, it sounds just as it did in the summer of 1997 when I first picked it up. Every note in exactly the same spot. This may not seem overly extraordinary considering Miles Davis and John Coltrane and their cronies haven’t exactly been back in the studio to improve the results any but very few albums seem so hermetically sealed. It's interesting that there are works out there that seem to alter - since we're discussing music perhaps the better term might be 'remix' - themselves with every listen, that manage to grow as we grow. I've noticed this quality in listening to Jackie McLean, Lester Young and the Modern Jazz Quartet – even in a few of Davis’ other works – but not in Kind of Blue. This isn’t to make the claim that it’s dated, however; whereas some albums are such period pieces that you wonder if they even sounded old when they were new, this seems caught in a curious stasis. The sound here is as much a part of 2008 just as it was a part of 1997, as it was doubtless a part of 1959, as it somehow feels like it could've been a part of 1944. So, it isn’t dated but neither is it timeless – what can we possibly say about it if two of the most popular clichés in the musical lexicon don’t apply?

Well, since it brings back that first listen, perhaps I should wax about a moment that particularly stands out. Sitting through the bulk of it, I was initially impressed but the experience was still shy of being revelatory. Then the alternate take of “Flamenco Sketches” came on and I shuddered: Davis’ opening note was so piercing it was as though he was rubbing his fingers down a blackboard or taking a knife to your best piece of china. I sat uncomfortably and geared myself up for a similarly high-pitched squeal that was doubtless right on its way. But it never came and I soon began to laugh as I realised Davis was having a joke at my expense. Nowadays, I no longer wince at this grating note, nor do I chuckle at its omitted companion but memories of that moment return forthwith. In fact, memories constitute so much about listening to it now that the album seems overwhelmed by them.

And yet Kind of Blue is frequently lauded for bringing something new to the table with every subsequent listen. Davis’ biographer Ian Carr has claimed that “the more it is listened to, the more it reveals new delights and fresh depths”. This seems to be the ultimate compliment one can dish upon an album: its ability to keep the audience interested over frequent plays. But that’s an awful lot to expect of a long player regardless of how exceptional it may be. In any case, this does not appear to be this particular album’s function. As a boy I found jazz to be irritating, music played by show offs (even to the jazz-hater there’s good reason to compare it to basketball) but Kind of Blue changed everything. With the possible exception of Louis Armstrong’s magnificent Hot Fives and Sevens, there’s probably not another major work that could spark the uninitiated into a lifelong love affair with jazz. But, once the affair is under way, it’s difficult to muster the interest to go back for more.

None of this is to deride the album: it’s a triumph in its own way, just not in the way that many people choose to see it. I've lately come to theorize that there are some albums that can't top that first listen, that never manage to better the initial feeling of awe, that manage to conspire to turn every subsequent listen into a great, big letdown. Van Morrison's Astral Weeks and Radiohead's OK Computer are two of the prime examples in pop music but Kind of Blue is in a league of its own in this regard. That first listen to OK Computer (significantly, also during the summer of 1997) was every bit as enthralling (the spontaneous triple guitar explosion at 3:14 of “Paranoid Android” stirred me just like that wayward note on “Flamenco Sketches” had) but the subsequent come down was such that it began to undermine that initial reaction. Today, it seems more like a fluke than anything else. With Kind of Blue it’s as though I’m listening to it for the first time. Only now my ears know exactly what to expect - never a boon to an improvised medium. It may be a while before I put it on again.