What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Stanfordian]

‘The Cannonball Adderley Sextet in New York’
Cannonball Adderley with Nat Adderley, Yusef Lateef, Joe Zawinul, Sam Jones & Louis Hayes
Riverside (1962)

[Stanfordian]

‘Dexter Calling…’
Dexter Gordon with Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers & Philly Joe Jones
Blue Note (1961)

[Ian Thumwood]

Nik Bartsh' "Ronin"

New album "Awase" and a UK tour in the autumn which takes in the Turner Sims:-


Discuss.....

[Stanfordian]

‘Boss Guitar’
Wes Montmomery with Melvin Rhyne & Jimmy Cobb
Riverside (1963)

[Joseph K]

Miles Davis - Nefertiti

[Joseph K]

Miles Davis - Nefertiti

"Fall" brings back wistful memories.

[Stanfordian]

‘Side by Side’ & ‘Back to Back’
Duke Ellington & Johnny Hodges with Harry ‘Sweets’ Ellison, Les Spann, Sam Jones, Al Hall & Jo Jones
Verve (1959)

[Ian Thumwood]

‘Side by Side’ & ‘Back to Back’
Duke Ellington & Johnny Hodges with Harry ‘Sweets’ Ellison, Les Spann, Sam Jones, Al Hall & Jo Jones
Verve (1959)

One of the top 10 all time, greatest small group jazz records ever.

I have been delving back in to some old favourites this last week and been playing a lot of Andy Kirk's records. My perception of this band has always been that it was hugely under-appreciated but returning to the music I am inclined to think that the music the band produced in the late 30's was quite forward thinking. Strip away the music from it's historical context and the instrumental music written by Mary Lou Williams is a starting point in a more considered, chamber-music approach to jazz. The sections are not that large and Williams was always combining the instruments in to a different palette to make up for the absence of brass. There were 3 trumpets and 2 trombones yet the reeds are the most noticeable sound with Dick Wilson's tenor providing the lead. However, Williams seems to have enjoyed mixing the sounds of reeds and brass up I have never quite understood what instruments are playing in the first chorus of "Big Jim Blues" but think it is a clarinet, trumpet plus a saxophone. (I believe that this piece is an almost unique 14-bar blues.) Listening 80 years on, the music now seems less commercial than it might have once done and more experimental insofar of it's departure away from the stereotypes of the Swing Era of the late 30's. For example, her music sounds totally unlike Fletcher Henderson. Like Basie's efforts, the Kirk recordings seem to improve with age.

The band is always cited for William's arranging skills and she is also considered the band's main soloist. I would have to say that I have always loved Dick Wilson's tenor playing, a mixture of the lushness of someone like Herschal Evans but with the lightness of Lester Young. For me, he is perhaps the most under-rated tenor player in jazz and deserves to be better known. Instantly recognisable, it is criminal that he is largely forgotten these days and, if remember at all, it is as the inspiration for the young Dexter Gordon.

I would put Kirk's late 30's recordings as just behind Basie's late 30's / early 40's recordings and the Ellington band of 40-42 in significance but at least a good 3rd in ranking of seminal big band writing in the Swing Era. The band might not have swung that hard but it offered a radical vision probably only matched by the stuff Sauter wrote for Red Norvo or the short-lived Teddy Wilson band. I really like the jivey approach of the music. Williams is probably more celebrated nowadays than in her own time when she was merely considered to the first significant female jazz musician but I think it is about time that she was seen as something beyond being a token female figure of that time to a principle player in both the evolution of jazz piano and jazz orchestration. The scores written for Kirk seem quite far-reaching and demonstrate an independent and original mind at work. If you like, she was jazz's Lili Boulanger. As good as the late 30's material is, the early recordings by the band also deserve more attention and these records simply accentuate the fact that although her piano playing was like an urbane version of Earl Hines, her writing ability was wholly unique.

[Serial_Apologist]

I'd probably agree with what you say about Mary Lou Williams's late 1930s arrangements if I'd heard them, Ian; as it is all I have of her is a trio version of Dvorak's famous "humoreske" recorded in 1946 - which is a remarkable bebop version of a tune usually known for its tweeness, for so early in its time - on an album of "Great Jazz Piano" I picked up aged 14, (cover now wrecked); a late 1970s recorded album with blues in every imaginable style from boogie to modal on Side 1 and a live performance on Side 2 where she wooed an adulatory audience with mostly standards including a version of "Tea for Two" that clearly attempted to challenge any one of Tatum's (!); and a Jazz Library (I think, I'll have to check) mostly dealing with her extraordinary late 1940s stuff for larger ensembles that predates Mingus's small big bgand albums of the late '50s/early '60s in terms of originality and as an alternative to practically everything else happening at the time, which I must dig out as my memory of details has faded. One thing that stays in the mind though is her sheer "naturalness" or perhaps "apositeness" with blues playing. Tim Richards (Spirit Level etc) has said she is his favourite blues piano exponent; another must have been the size of her hands: there must be few women pianists who can stretch the interval of a tenth in the left hand, the way Hines could, not to mention also with her right, whose span must have been larger than my own!

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Billie Holiday said that Dick Wilson was one of the most handsome men she'd ever seen. There's a good "action" picture of him on the net, a bit Dexterish in looks and pose. He died very young, 30ish? from TB/consumption. There's another really good photo on the net with him playing in front of an admiring Charlie Christian. Also sadly short lived.

[Stanfordian]

‘Sayin Something!’
Gigi Gryce with Mickey Roker, Richard Gene Williams, Richard Rylands & Reggie Workman
New Jazz (1960)

[Stanfordian]

‘Saxophone Colossus’
Sonny Rollins with Tommy Flanagan, Doug Watkins & Max Roach
Prestige (1956)

[Joseph K]

Miles Smiles.

I think this is Miles' best acoustic album, and certainly one of the greatest by anyone.

[Beef Oven!]

Miles Smiles.

I think this is Miles' best acoustic album, and certainly one of the greatest by anyone.

I think so too. I came to this album quite some time after his others. By coincidence I happen to be listening to this album on my Walkman when I clicked onto this thread!

[Serial_Apologist]

I think so too. I came to this album quite some time after his others. By coincidence I happen to be listening to this album on my Walkman when I clicked onto this thread!

That record epitomised "time-no changes", an approach where the players stretch as far as possible away from the heads while sticking to underlying tempo and metre. To me, once you got the idea, there was no going back. The Dutch jazz pianist Jasper Van t'Hof once told me he felt the single line solos there to be the best things Herbie Hancock ever did. Lennie Tristano's "Line-Up" given a contemporary makeover for 1966. Many drummers hugely admire Tony Williams's drumming, especially his rimshots. Me, I like Ron Carter's bass playing. Ian Carr: "I suppose you were the anchor in that group, really". Ron Carter: "Anchor? I don't really like that term. Anchor suggests tying a boat so as to hold it back and restrict its movement". Woops - faux pas there, Ian. If not precisely verbatim, that was at any rate the gist of an uncomfortable moment in Ian and Mike Dibb's wonderful documentary on Miles.