Larkins about

[Serial_Apologist]

Sat 19 Sept
4.00 Jazz Record Requests
Alyn Shipton's selection of requests includes music by Benny Goodman and a touching duet from Ella Fitzgerald and pianist Ellis Larkins

Alyn's blog should hopefully be up by the time the prog starts, assuming all being well.

http://www.alynshipton.co.uk/blog/

5.00 Jazz Line-Up
Performances from the BBC Introducing stage at this year's Manchester Jazz Festival featuring pianist Ashley Henry and jazz septet Nerija [with an acute accent on the "e"]. And Phil Smith reports from the continent with a profile of Slovenian musician Igor Bezget.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06bqbpc

12.00 Geoffrey Smith's Jazz
Geoffrey Smith with a profile of Earl "Fatha" Hines

Get stretching on those open left-hand tenths!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01nj74r

Mon 21 Sept
11.00 Jazz on 3
Manchester big band Beats and Pieces perform music from their latest album, All In, recorded live at London's Ronnie Scott's jazz club in July.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b06c9pfk

I didn't go...

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

The second JRR track up, Billie, Lester etc, "Me Myself and I", is one of my requests for a special birthday (not mine!). Many thanks Alyn.

BN.

For my birthday I want sixty minutes of late Coltrane.

[charles t]

For my birthday I want sixty minutes of late Coltrane.

Bluesie: Brings to mind a rumored story, that, during the opening moments of a performance in Boston, of:

Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians...

a voice clamored down from the balcony:

" ENUUUUF! I CONFESS!! "

[Serial_Apologist]

Bluesie: Brings to mind a rumored story, that, during the opening moments of a performance in Boston, of:

Steve Reich's Music For 18 Musicians...

a voice clamored down from the balcony:

" ENUUUUF! I CONFESS!! "

Reminds me of the John Cage story in his book "Silence", which he introduces by saying that nothing is ever boring, "If you think it is after five minutes, carry on listening for ten. If still boring, continue for another ten, twenty minutes. In the end you'll discover that it wasn't boring at all". As an illustration he cites having stood in for Henry Cowell at a college class on oriental music. "But I know next to nothing about oriental music", Cage tells him. "That's all right" answers Cowell, "Just go to where the records are, pick one, put in on the record player, then discuss it afterwards with the class". The recording is of a Buddhist ceremony, and consists of continuous unvarying chanting. Cage says that after twenty minutes one of the students screams "Take it off! I can't stand any more!" At which point another voice perks up, "Why did you take that off, just when it was getting interesting?"

[charles t]

...you had to bring up John Cage (exclm mark assumed)

[Serial_Apologist]

...you had to bring up John Cage (exclm mark assumed)

Exclm acknowledged charles.

God to hear Graham Collier's "Aberdeen Angus" just now - a track I recorded onto reel-to-reel from a friend's LP many years ago before actually getting it and the rest of "Down Another Road" when it was re-issued about a decade ago. To my mind this must surely have been one of the first-ever jazz crossover numbers to use those James Brown riffs and rhythms - here, or anywhere, for that matter.

The earlier Tommy Chase was as blunderbusstistic as I remember his band as being, back in the late 1980s.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Yep, the Tommy Chase passed painfully; the Collier was v. fine - I too remember Harry Beckett playing in Cardiff and I schooled with Nick Evans. The highspot for me tho was the John Taylor track, really great, and very fiery/agile alto from Stan Sultzmann.

BN.

Oh, and the Billie (obviously) and the Ella/Larkin track. Very moving for the reasons requested and those duo tracks for me are her zenith.

[Ian Thumwood]

The Billie track has always been one I've really enjoyed and the reason for this is Lester Young's tenor playing behind the singer on the final chorus. If anyone wanted to define what swing was, I think his contribution would be as good a definition as you could have asked for.

Regarding the other tracks, the Tommy Chase request seemed quite prescient as he was the subject to a recent thread. It was quite a bizarre record as the piano playing was furious whilst the drumming seemed really in debt to Elvin Jones without really sounding that connected with the rest of the quartet. I saw Tommy Chase at Edinburgh festival and felt he was a bit on an egoist and this put me off his approach to modern jazz. It is amazing to recall the cache he had at the time as he fronted a jam session after a gig and all the local musicians who fancied themselves wanted to sit in. Chase inspired many people to go to clubs to dance to Hard Bop which seems pretty hard to believe now. Rather than taking him too seriously, he falls in to the same pigeon hole as the likes of Sade and Average White Band - not a great deal to do with what was actually "happening" in jazz in the 1980's.

Agree about the Ella / Larkins track - a request that I found very touching and poignant.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

The Billie track has always been one I've really enjoyed and the reason for this is Lester Young's tenor playing behind the singer on the final chorus. If anyone wanted to define what swing was, I think his contribution would be as good a definition as you could have asked for.

Regarding the other tracks, the Tommy Chase request seemed quite prescient as he was the subject to a recent thread. It was quite a bizarre record as the piano playing was furious whilst the drumming seemed really in debt to Elvin Jones without really sounding that connected with the rest of the quartet. I saw Tommy Chase at Edinburgh festival and felt he was a bit on an egoist and this put me off his approach to modern jazz. It is amazing to recall the cache he had at the time as he fronted a jam session after a gig and all the local musicians who fancied themselves wanted to sit in. Chase inspired many people to go to clubs to dance to Hard Bop which seems pretty hard to believe now. Rather than taking him too seriously, he falls in to the same pigeon hole as the likes of Sade and Average White Band - not a great deal to do with what was actually "happening" in jazz in the 1980's.

Agree about the Ella / Larkins track - a request that I found very touching and poignant.

You are so right about the Holiday/Lester track. There's a whole something else going on as she comes back in after the (main) solos and Lester plays under and all around her. Only really noticed that today with the broadcast.

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

Should have added that I really liked the Benny Goodman track too. My Dad used to have this on an LP when I was growing up and it was one of his favourites. 1940's BG is really under-rated.

The first half an hour of Jazz Line Up was bizarre. I liked the first track by Ken Peplowski and Alan Barnes yet it sat really oddly with what follows, almost as if this "genuine jazz" had gate-crashed it's own party. It was quite demonstrative of the kind of jazz democratising thing that I have witnessed at Vienne over the years on the free stage. You can genuinely catch something interesting and even arresting however there does seem to be a homogenising effect on the music. The Scottish / Croatian band just seemed like sub-Metheny and whilst technically brilliant and polished, it lacked the snap of PMG. After listening to this, the Slovenian guitarist seemed interesting at first but quickly descended in to the self-absorbed European stuff that makes you despair. It is strange how so many countries without any sort of jazz tradition or heritage are producing technically outstanding musicians who can give their American counterparts the run when it comes to chops yet seem almost divorced from the sense of jazz. It is all a million miles away from Tommy Chase who pursued his own version of legitimacy in the 1980's but it does to show you how jazz has evolved with the "heritage" now being the kind of music which was "cutting edge" when Chase was trying to sell himself as a Blue Note wannabe. I laud these musicians for having their own vision and wanting their own identity yet can't help thinking that by adding their own "European heritage" to the mix, it sounds less and less like jazz. The resultant music is like a conservatoire approach to jazz that has somehow legitimatised the music making. An interesting fore-runner of this approach is Mario Stanchev who I have heard perform on numerous occasions and been very impressed with yet one of my friends who taught alongside him a Lyon Conservatoire was opposed to Stanchev's pursuit of playing in eccentric / Eastern European time signatures and suggested that he had completely over-looked that jazz was supposed to swing. Listening to JLU, I couldn't help thinking he had a point is this kind of jazz was the consequence.

[Ian Thumwood]

You are so right about the Holiday/Lester track. There's a whole something else going on as she comes back in after the (main) solos and Lester plays under and all around her. Only really noticed that today with the broadcast.

BN.

It is curious as the pianist is unknown to me albeit he was clearly indebted to Teddy Wilson. There is a shift in rhythm on the out chorus. As much as I love Buck Clayton, his contribution, the clarinet and piano solos are almost from another era. The tempo is increased when Billie returns but also the rhythm is more relaxed so that this track almost feels like vintage jazz to begin with before finally mutating into something modern. It was a rubbish tune but utterly transformed by Billie in to a kind of gem it really had no right to be.

[Quarky]

The highspot for me tho was the John Taylor track, really great, and very fiery/agile alto from Stan Sultzmann.

BN.
.

Agreed - Alyn must be the top Jazz DJ , world-wide.