What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Beef Oven!]

C

http://www.amazon.co.uk/CDs-Vinyl-Co...nzon%2FMoffett

Erm... £102

but

When your order arrives, can you do a copy for me?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

C

When your order arrives, can you do a copy for me?

Ornette's trio (legendary) Croydon Concert from 1965 should still be around on reissued CD - Free factory 061. V. good sound and at least as good as the Bluenotes for me. There's also The Paris Concerts 1965-66 CD on Gambit. Sound on this is not so great.

Agree with Ian about the Wee Jamie...I've got some old tapes of the shows and where Alan Bates was feeding him stuff they were bearable, otherwise...its like having a chirpy corgi present a program.

Another product of Reading University (cough).

BN.

[Jazzrook]

The Harold McNair album , much celebrated on this site, is to be re-issued next month.

Wondered if anyone else had bothered to check out Jamie Cullum's programme on Radio 2? I had totally forgotten about it as I had never been that impressed but, catching the programme at the point the unknown singer Andrew Bird's record was being reviewed, I was really staggered by the music that he played. Apart from a five minute feature where someone called Corrie Dick was interviewed and he chose a five second except of a Larry Golding's CD with Paul Motian that sounded terrific, there wasn't any real jazz chosen. The aforementioned Mr. Dick transpired to be the musician whose jazz n' poetry was featured on JLU about three weeks ago and I was even less impressed this time. Strange to find artists like Andre Bird featured as it sounded like a crap re-tread of Prince but with even less reference to jazz. Even more bizarre was a Shabaka Hutching's record which promised avant garde tenor with techno / electric's as a jousting partner. Cullum assured his audience that he would be listening to this all summer - try as he might I doubt if he will hear any lengthy improvisation on the record.

The whole show gave me the impression of turning up at the wrong party. Ok, there was the odd familiar guest like Getz / Gilberto (who I didn't really want to meet again) but, by and large, this was a programme where little of what I heard could be classified as jazz. Granted it did have a "jazz flavour" as someone like Ed Reardon would probably point out, but there was precious little real jazz. It was a very peculiar sensation listening to the programme with references to bands called "Dinosaur" and "The comet is coming" and thinking that this is now what Radio 2 considers to be jazz.

From a production point of view, this is a snappy and zippy programme which probably fits the 30-40 something audience for Radio 2 now that it has thrown off any effort to play anything remotely pre-stereo. Cullum is a weird fellow. I admire his enthusiasm and his championing of UK musicians yet I don't think his Radio 2 programme will have any appeal whatsoever for anyone who loves jazz. He is clearly passionate about the music but the whole impression was of a condensed Jazz FM kind of programme with sound-bites replacing the kind of care an attention to detail was respected in the late, great Humphrey Lyttelton. It would deserve brickbats if it were not for the fact that it is essentially a pop music programme with the odd, inoffensive jazz record thrown in. If you consider Mr Hutching's and his cut and paste approach to jazz as being "avant garde" then the result is not a surprise. Should Cullum's selection be seen as representative of the current state of jazz in this country, it is a pretty depressing state of affairs. Shame he didn't bill the programme as pop music as it would have been far more honest and my expectations would have been much lower. Does anyone of this site actually bother to listen to this programme ? Jamie Cullum is jazz's answer to letting Robbie Savage stamp all over the Radio 5 football commentary!

I've been trying to track down that 1965 Harold McNair album 'Affectionate Fink' for years!

http://www.organissimo.org/forum/index.php?/topic/78593-harold-mcnair-affectionate-fink/

Jamie Cullum's slick and shallow Radio 2 'jazz' programme is truly awful.
Depressing to think that this was the replacement for Humph's unmissable 'The Best of Jazz'.

[Serial_Apologist]

The Harold McNair album , much celebrated on this site, is to be re-issued next month.

Wondered if anyone else had bothered to check out Jamie Cullum's programme on Radio 2? I had totally forgotten about it as I had never been that impressed but, catching the programme at the point the unknown singer Andrew Bird's record was being reviewed, I was really staggered by the music that he played. Apart from a five minute feature where someone called Corrie Dick was interviewed and he chose a five second except of a Larry Golding's CD with Paul Motian that sounded terrific, there wasn't any real jazz chosen. The aforementioned Mr. Dick transpired to be the musician whose jazz n' poetry was featured on JLU about three weeks ago and I was even less impressed this time. Strange to find artists like Andre Bird featured as it sounded like a crap re-tread of Prince but with even less reference to jazz. Even more bizarre was a Shabaka Hutching's record which promised avant garde tenor with techno / electric's as a jousting partner. Cullum assured his audience that he would be listening to this all summer - try as he might I doubt if he will hear any lengthy improvisation on the record.

The whole show gave me the impression of turning up at the wrong party. Ok, there was the odd familiar guest like Getz / Gilberto (who I didn't really want to meet again) but, by and large, this was a programme where little of what I heard could be classified as jazz. Granted it did have a "jazz flavour" as someone like Ed Reardon would probably point out, but there was precious little real jazz. It was a very peculiar sensation listening to the programme with references to bands called "Dinosaur" and "The comet is coming" and thinking that this is now what Radio 2 considers to be jazz.

From a production point of view, this is a snappy and zippy programme which probably fits the 30-40 something audience for Radio 2 now that it has thrown off any effort to play anything remotely pre-stereo. Cullum is a weird fellow. I admire his enthusiasm and his championing of UK musicians yet I don't think his Radio 2 programme will have any appeal whatsoever for anyone who loves jazz. He is clearly passionate about the music but the whole impression was of a condensed Jazz FM kind of programme with sound-bites replacing the kind of care an attention to detail was respected in the late, great Humphrey Lyttelton. It would deserve brickbats if it were not for the fact that it is essentially a pop music programme with the odd, inoffensive jazz record thrown in. If you consider Mr Hutching's and his cut and paste approach to jazz as being "avant garde" then the result is not a surprise. Should Cullum's selection be seen as representative of the current state of jazz in this country, it is a pretty depressing state of affairs. Shame he didn't bill the programme as pop music as it would have been far more honest and my expectations would have been much lower. Does anyone of this site actually bother to listen to this programme ? Jamie Cullum is jazz's answer to letting Robbie Savage stamp all over the Radio 5 football commentary!

A failing capitalism dragging us all down the plughole; Britain ruled by Etonians; America threatening the whole world with Trump. Maybe it's time for jazz to recover its sense of righteous indignation once more, and be that missing voice of resistance? We saw this lot at the Vortex last night - Shabaka Hutchings added, now making it Five Blokes - and they were joined by a very good young black trumpet player we hadn't seen before - didn't catch his name:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76nH21Muo24

[Ian Thumwood]

Jazzrook's comments about Cullum's programme being slick and shallow sum it up. If you tune in to a jazz programme on the radio, you expect to be bale to hear some jazz! It is a strange sensation whereby the selection being of a "jazz flavour" counts for more that actually being decent jazz. Admittedly SA's position that the music needs to develop and change has some validity to a degree but I don't think you should expect it to evolve in to pop music.

[Beef Oven!]

John Coltrane - 'Coltrane' (1962 Album)

My first hearing of this album - stand out tracks, on one listen: Tunji, Big Nick (sick drumming!), The Inch Worm & Out Of This World.

Edit: actually it's all great music, except the second track, 'Soul Eyes' which is not my cup of tea.

[Ian Thumwood]

John Coltrane - 'Coltrane' (1962 Album)

My first hearing of this album - stand out tracks, on one listen: Tunji, Big Nick (sick drumming!), The Inch Worm & Out Of This World.

Edit: actually it's all great music, except the second track, 'Soul Eyes' which is not my cup of tea.

This was my introduction to Coltrane. When I was 18, this record was still only 23 years old and it still had a degree of being edgy. I have always felt that "Out of this world" was the pick of the bunch but found "Tunji" a bit irritating. I haven't heard it for ages although "Soul Eyes" is ingrained in my mind as a defining Coltrane performance and easily one of his best ballads. No other version of this tune will do.

Every now and then it feels appropriate to have a Coltrane spree on my record listening and I have been listening to "Coltrane Plays" most of this week. Over the years, my perception of John Coltane's quartet has changed. Originally, I was never fussed by McCoy Tyner's playing and it wasn't until I heard him perform live with Bobby Hutcherson that I had an epiphany and fell under the spell of his playing. For me, no one swings as hard on the piano as McCoy and there is also a romantic side of his playing that I love. Basically, I went from being a sceptic to a massive fan in the course of one evening in 2001.

There are two things that I would like to propose. The first is that McCoy Tyner's best playing is more often found outside of Coltrane's quartet. I can appreciate why he was an essential ingredient to this band and his harmonic approach helped stoked the leader's most fervent solo explorations. However, did McCoy Tyner ever play better than on Joe Henderson's "Page One?" I think this is one of the great band-pianist performances and his performance on "La Mesha" ranks as a high point in 1960s jazz. I am really tempted by "Atlantis" as the samples sound terrific. I love Tyner's playing and it is a shame that he was so under-employed on records like "impressions."

The other point I want to raise is this. How on earth do you choose the best Impulse record by John Coltrane? It is peculiar but I don't think Coltrane actually had a strategy or specific project with each quartet recording other than the ballad album and the album with Johnny Hartman which has some great playing and signing but sounds incongruous insofar that Hartman seems like a singer from the 1940's and Coltrane was heading for the stratosphere! I am not too enthused by the one / two chord vamps that make up an element of Coltrane's playing yet you can continually dig out gems like "Brazilia" which are not considered "classic" and / or "essential" yet, for my money, are simply staggering piece of improvisation.

Everyone always plumps for "A love supreme" as the "essential" Coltrane album from the Impulse years with "Crescent" being given almost equal attention. Given the quality and manner in which other performances were collated from other sessions, how on earth do you choose the "must have" Coltrane discs on Impulse? You could make a case for nearly all of them.

[Beef Oven!]

Funny enough, I thought the pianist was the driver of a lot of this music.

..... Perhaps I don't care for ballads (or the saccharine jazz ones, at least).

I don't know 'Coltrane Plays', but given your enthusiasm, I'll check it out next.

On 'Love Supreme', I think I may have overdosed on it or something, because whenever I want to listen to some jazz, I rarely pick it off the shelf. Same with 'Kind Of Blue'.

[elmo]

Ian

Agree McCoy's work outside of the Trane Quartet is often as fine as anything he ever played, as you say "Page One" is wonderful but it is difficult to say that " his best playing is more often found outside the JCQ.
I think he was versatile enough to turn out great performances in any circumstance when the muse took him - When did he solo better than his solo on "Afro Blue" from " Live at Birdland" and equally when did he solo better than his solo on "Chain Reaction" from Hank Mobley's " Straight no filter".

I am inclined to agree that ALS is perhaps over praised to the detriment of the rest of the marvellous JCQ Impulse catalogue. I have a particular love for" Africa Brass" The first Coltrane impulse album I owned, Trane's solo on the title still gives me goose bumps. Love " Live at the VV" also.

elmo

[Beef Oven!]

John Coltrane - 'Crescent' (1964)

Another first listen for me, despite the fact that I've been listening to 'A Love Supreme' since the 1980s and this album was recorded only months before that album.

Is it me, or does JC owe an awful lot to Ornette Colemane's 'Shape Of Jazz To come'? Not just on this album.

Bessie's Blues? Why do jazzers ruin it all with 'standards-type' yawners?

First thoughts: better than 'Supreme', great drumming, the bassist gets a deserved spot-light, but the feel is spoilt a bit by BB.

I've ordered it off Amazon because it's clearly a 'hard-copy must'.

[Jazzrook]

A recent discovery for me was trumpeter Dusko Goykovich's marvellous 1993 quartet/quintet album 'Soul Connection'(ENJA) which he dedicated to his hero Miles Davis.

With Jimmy Heath(tenor sax); Tommy Flanagan(piano); Eddie Gomez(bass) & Mickey Roker(drums):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eQWb5qkDBTc

[Ian Thumwood]

I had forgotten about Goykovich and didn't realise that he was Serbian as I had always assumed he was Russian!
This ballad is pretty sensational too. I liked Tommy Flanagan's playing on the former and this one also features Kenny Barron-

[Ian Thumwood]

The "Africa / brass" album is unfamiliar. It seems that only "Greensleeves" gets any air time but I do recall reading somewhere that Eric Dolphy wrote the charts. The album is intriguing as I had never been appreciative of Dolphy's writing for large ensembles.

Been listening to an early Keefe Jackson disc today which dates from 2008. He sounds likes a Albert Ayler factored through Warne Marsh. Although he was the leader, it it Jeb Bishop's trombone that really grabs the ears. He is like an avant garde Jack Teagarden.

[Ian Thumwood]

Listening to the Keefe Jackson disc in the car this weekend has been intriguing and I suppose it underscore the differences that I have with SA regarding free improvisation. The music is deeply rooted in jazz even though there are moments where the whole quartet scratch and snort away with their extended techniques. Jackson seems particularly aggressive and owes a lot to Ayler even if the group is yet another which takes it's cue from Ornette's seminal quartet which seems increasingly influential. Jackson's bass clarinet is his strongest hand, in my opinion. Jason Roebke is the bassist but the Japanese drummer Norotaka Tanaka is superb - shame that visa problems prevented him from continuing as part of the Chicago scene. The music often swings but , even when it doesn't, there is a strong pulse underneath. It is also really clearly "jazz" and there are no external influences to get in the way. Granted, it isn't for everyone but the music immediately connects with the jazz tradition even of Jackson's points of reference are the mid 60's "Coltrane's angry brood" style of things. Weird that a style with it's origins dating from over 50 years ago can, in this context, still fulfil the Jez-test for "cutting edge."

However, the main reason for listening to this disc is trombonist Jeb Bishop. It is probably fair to say that the interest level in the music increases several fold when he is soloing. The disc is very much a sophomore effort for Jackson who is now beginning to establish a reputation. When this set was recorded in 2008 Bishop was already a veteran of Ken Vandermark's groups and his playing sounds like what Jack Teagarden might have sounded like had been the second horn in Ornette's group and not Don Cherry. Like Teagarden, Bishop tends to dominate ensembles and is quote accessible because of the force of his character despite sometimes going off in to the stratosphere. I really love his playing. He is rather like Gary Valente who plays with Carla Bley in the forcefulness of his playing yet I think there is more structure and coherence in Bishop's playing. It is weird how the polished style of modern jazz players like J J Johnson seems to have been increasingly pushed aside by players within the avant garde who, you might suspect, probably relate more enthusiastically to a veteran player like the great Kid Ory.

I don't think this is an essential album but , for the peanuts I paid for it, it was worthwhile. Bishop and Tanaka are the main attractions but it will be interesting to listen to Keefe Jackson's latest album with Jason Adasiewizc when this comes out in the more rarefied duo of tenor / bass clarinet with vibes. I wonder if this album will be a first for this type of duo?

[Ian Thumwood]

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