What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Serial_Apologist]

I really like Kenny Dorham but this is not the only "live" album be made where the piano is wildly out of tune. I think the worst piano I have heard is on the live Eric Dolphy record with Booker Little. This isn't something that is limited to older albums as I have a record by trumpeter Brad Goode which is marred by the piano being totally out of tune.

The strange thing about listening to these piano trios is that they really swung whereas so many contemporary records seem to concentrate on the introspective possibilities of the music. The Chick Corea album is a really good example of how exciting a piano trio can be. I do miss this element from this format. A lot of rightly made of Bill Evans' trio giving more democracy amongst the three musicians and this does make the format more interesting. These days it seems more fashionable for trios to have the bass and drums play an ostinato pattern for the piano to improvise over. I have heard groups like Go Go Penguin and a number of others play like this over the last few years yet, whilst it might seem for fashionable, I think what groups like the Corea achieved has been totally lost. I suppose the best trio in the traditional sense is Brad Mehldau's although I find this trio to be erratic. I have been mesmerised by Mehldau both on record and live and would say that I have equally been a bit indifferent to his music. The whole role of piano, bass and drums could never be the same after Evans and I would have to say that the most compelling piano trio I have seen in recent years is Jason Moran's Bandwagon. However, the combination of Core / Vitous / Haynes was something truly special and still sounds "modern" fifty years after seeing it's debut. NHS, NHS has got to be an essential jazz album.

The Circle trio Chick Corea formed with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul in 1970 after Corea and Holland had left Miles represented for me the apex of American jazz trio playing, with the possible exception of the Paul Bley Trio; I would argue for Circle as having been improved with Anthony Braxton joining a year later - its way of doing standards and the post ESP Miles quintet materials and taking the music further and further out into free territory until the original was abstracted from all recogniseability marked my "initiation" into free jazz, with no looking back: the Paris set (when ECM was really pushing recorded boundaries) would transition from total freedom to one of Braxton's third stream serial/aleatoric pieces, taking the large audience wherever the music would go. Holland said somewhere that even he couldn't always be sure which number they were improvising on - was it Neffertiti???!!!: one wonders if today's audiences could take that level of imaginative exploration - or how pungent the air was at that concert!!!

[Ian Thumwood]

The Circle trio Chick Corea formed with Dave Holland and Barry Altschul in 1970 after Corea and Holland had left Miles represented for me the apex of American jazz trio playing, with the possible exception of the Paul Bley Trio; I would argue for Circle as having been improved with Anthony Braxton joining a year later - its way of doing standards and the post ESP Miles quintet materials and taking the music further and further out into free territory until the original was abstracted from all recogniseability marked my "initiation" into free jazz, with no looking back: the Paris set (when ECM was really pushing recorded boundaries) would transition from total freedom to one of Braxton's third stream serial/aleatoric pieces, taking the large audience wherever the music would go. Holland said somewhere that even he couldn't always be sure which number they were improvising on - was it Neffertiti???!!!: one wonders if today's audiences could take that level of imaginative exploration - or how pungent the air was at that concert!!!

I have never really listened to Circle and, to be honest, I am not a fan of Braxton. The reputation of Chick Corea now rests on his fusion work with a good number of fans and it is sometimes over-looked that he was a really creative musician in the avant garde. I agree that the audiences might have been more open to this kind of jazz in the late 60's and early 70's. Chick Corea was the first pianist I got in to after discovering Bill Evans and I snapped up a load of his ECM efforts. My entry to his music was the piano / flute duo with Steve Kujala called "Voyage" and I them snapped up a number of his earlier discs. None was as good as the live trio record with Roy Haynes and Miroslav Vitous that was recorded during a European tour. At the time I quite liked his forays in to classical music but found Return to Forever to be dated. I have never cared for his Fusion material. The next stop for me after Corea was Paul Bley and then I got in to Keith Jarrett. The latter seems to be less adventurous than either Corea or Bley but, again, the Keith Jarrett trio could swing in a fashion that I love. Since recording Corea, I feel ECM have become progressively less adventurous with their piano trios and seem to be hoping for the next Jarrett. That said, they have recorded artists like John Taylor and Bobo Stenson who are both musicians I greatly admire.

[Quarky]

Ellington / Mingus / Roach, Fleurette Africaine.

On Breakfast, of all places!

Followed by Bruno Mars - That's What I Like - can't help feeling there's a message there, somewhere.

[cloughie]

Ellington / Mingus / Roach, Fleurette Africaine.

On Breakfast, of all places!

Followed by Bruno Mars- That's What I Like - can't help feeling there's a message there, somewhere.

The name combines a bear with a chocolate bar!

[Stanfordian]

‘Soul Street’
Jimmy Forest - Quintet, Sextet and with Oliver Nelson Big Band & King Curtis
1960/62 New Jazz

[Stanfordian]

‘Bossa Nova Soul Samba’
Ike Quebec with Kenny Burrell, Wendell Marshall, Willie Bobo & Garvin Masseaux
Blue Note (1962)

[Stanfordian]

‘Such Sweet Thunder’
Plus 3 extra tracks from the session and 2 complete Ellington Suites: The Harlem Suite & The Controversial Suite
Duke Ellington and his Orchestra
Columbia (1956/57)

Oh, such glorious stuff!

[Stanfordian]

‘Clifford Brown & Max Roach at Basin Street’
Clifford Brown & Max Roach with Sonny Rollins, Richie Powell with George Marrow
EmDarcy/Verve (1956)

[Stanfordian]

‘The Kicker’
Bobby Hutcherson with Joe Henderson, Grant Green, Duke Pearson, Bob Cranshaw & Al Harewood
Blue Note (1963)

Taken out for tonight!

[Jazzrook]

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers live at Slug's N.Y. in 1968 with Billy Harper, Bill Hardman, Julian Priester, Ronnie Matthews & Larry Evans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjAL-SfTr_8

JR

[Stanfordian]

'Buhaina's Delight'
Art Blakey with Freddie Hubbard, Curtis Fuller, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton & Jymie Merritt
Blue Note (1962)

[Stanfordian]

‘Blue & Sentimental’
Ike Quebec with Grant Green, Paul Chambers & Philly Joe Jones
Blue Note (1961)

[burning dog]

Loving this... from 79

Billy Harper Quintet - Live in Europe

Not that familiar with Billy Harper's career outside the Messengers and sides with Stanley Cowell

I knew of the trumpeter from some 70's soul singles I bought in a job lot

[Stanfordian]

‘Dialogue’
Bobby Hutcherson with Sam Rivers, Freddie Hubbard, Andrew Hill , Richard Davis & Joe Chambers
Blue Note (1965)

[burning dog]

‘Dialogue’
Bobby Hutcherson with Sam Rivers, Freddie Hubbard, Andrew Hill , Richard Davis & Joe Chambers
Blue Note (1965)

That's a brilliant record and (I haven't checked) could be the one on the first post on this thread

Edit

It IS!