What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Joseph K]

Just to come full circle, I'm now listening to the audio of the fourth disk of the aforementioned set, which is actually a DVD, though like I say, I just have the audio on via youtube.

BTW, this boxed set is incredible … which I say because I feel it's taken a while to be in the right state of mind to appreciate it, compared to where I was when it came out...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAgvjqSl-oc

[Serial_Apologist]

… anti-fusion people will be pleased to know that Chick's on acoustic piano here.

[Joseph K]

Miles Davis - Isle of Wight

[Stanfordian]

‘The Tenor Scene’ - The Eddie ‘Lockjaw’ Davis & Johnny Griffin Quintet
with Junior Mance, Larry Gales & Ben Riley
Recorded live Minton's Playhouse, NYC
Prestige (1961)

[Joseph K]

Wayne Shorter - Night Dreamer

[Padraig]

Duet for piano and trumpet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyb_wr40pog

[Joseph K]

Duet for piano and trumpet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyb_wr40pog

Probably mentioned this before but this is my favourite Satchmo tune -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8HVG-ERJU0

[Serial_Apologist]

Duet for piano and trumpet.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hyb_wr40pog

That was the first Louis Armstrong I heard on Jazz Record Requests sometime in the early 1960s, and it still astonishes for the way they played with tempo, rhythm and harmony. My first-ever jazz record!

[Ian Thumwood]

Probably mentioned this before but this is my favourite Satchmo tune -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8HVG-ERJU0

I was playing the first volume of the JSP collection of Hot 5's and 7s last week and it reinforced my impression that, whilst the more celebrated tracks are justly famous, there are plenty of others which unjustly neglected. The track which stopped me in my tracks was ""You're next."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XB8JZqM35KY

It is quite staggering how many superlative performances there were by the Hot 5 and 7 and why particular recordings had have received more attention than others. It might be due to the fact that Armstrong's colleagues come up short yet Armstrong's work is dynamic to say the least. The two identical blues "Melancholy Blues" and "SOL Blues" ( the meaning of which has always baffled me until I read the liner notes which explained that it means "shit out of luck.") are both supreme examples of his work. The other performance I felt was unrated was "Fireworks" which is a contrafact on "Tiger Rag."

The strangest thing about the series of recordings was that "Cornet shop Suey" is held to be one of the vert greatest of these recordings but it was initially marked down for destruction by the record company as they could see no commercial value in the record.

Alternative "classic" hot 5 or 7 might be a good thread for future JRR's?

[Serial_Apologist]

The other performance I felt was unrated was "Fireworks" which is a contrafact on "Tiger Rag."

Yes, absolutely! John Stevens always used to say the Hot Fives and Hot Sevens were for him the greatest-ever jazz recordings. Apart from the Spontanous Music Ensemble's, of course.

Only joking, John, if you can hear me up there!

[Ian Thumwood]

I decided to go visit Romsey yesterday afternoon and the very last shop in the Hundred is a vinyl specialist. It was quite reassuring to find that the owner of the shop was wearing a Sun Ra t-shirt! There are so many Sun Ra LPs on sale there that it you appreciate what a market there is for his work.

In the end I decided to plump to the LP by Shelly Manne called "2-3-4" which is an old Impulse record. I first heard this record when I was about 19 and it really shocked me and I think it remains one of Impulse's most interesting records. The material is played by a floating roster of musicians including Coleman Hawkins, Hank Jones, George Duvivier and the tragic Eddie Costa on vibes and piano. The album opens up with a slow version of "Take the A train" which meanders outside of 4/4 and really sets the tone for this record's weirdness. A blistering "Avalon" and Ray Noble's "Cherokee" give the false impression of a mainstream session and the ballad "Slowly" is a Hawkins masterclass. Again, the musicians play around with the time on "Cherokee" which is given a more thoughtful and original treatment as opposed to the tune being used as a blowing vehicle. However, the two oddities are the entirely improvised pieces "The sicks of us" and "me and some drums" - the latter featuring Hawkins on piano.

I think this is an absolutely brilliant album. Hawkins is incredible and Costa's vibes reveal that he is a musician who would have made a massive impression in the 1960s had he not been killed in a car crash shortly afterwards when he was only 31. Impulse produced quite a few mainstream records by the likes of Earl Hines and Lionel Hampton in addition to the swathes of Coltrane. It makes a fabulous comparison with Coltrane's work as this 1962 session is contemporary. I think that Shelly Manne is incredible on this record. What is fascinating is that it offers a view of musicians who were not particularly associated with the cutting edge / avant garde of the time but who were coming up with something that was in the spirit of the way jazz was going. The harmonic language is very much post be-bop yet I feel the whole record demonstrates that these musicians were really thinking about the music and opening things up. Manne had associations with Ornette but this record does seem to have the same kind of vibe as Joe Harriott's work in that period.

Nice to be reacquainted with this record which deserves to be better known and is one of the more interesting experiments of the time.

[Joseph K]

Kurt Rosenwinkel - Angels Around

[Serial_Apologist]

I decided to go visit Romsey yesterday afternoon and the very last shop in the Hundred is a vinyl specialist. It was quite reassuring to find that the owner of the shop was wearing a Sun Ra t-shirt! There are so many Sun Ra LPs on sale there that it you appreciate what a market there is for his work.

In the end I decided to plump to the LP by Shelly Manne called "2-3-4" which is an old Impulse record. I first heard this record when I was about 19 and it really shocked me and I think it remains one of Impulse's most interesting records. The material is played by a floating roster of musicians including Coleman Hawkins, Hank Jones, George Duvivier and the tragic Eddie Costa on vibes and piano. The album opens up with a slow version of "Take the A train" which meanders outside of 4/4 and really sets the tone for this record's weirdness. A blistering "Avalon" and Ray Noble's "Cherokee" give the false impression of a mainstream session and the ballad "Slowly" is a Hawkins masterclass. Again, the musicians play around with the time on "Cherokee" which is given a more thoughtful and original treatment as opposed to the tune being used as a blowing vehicle. However, the two oddities are the entirely improvised pieces "The sicks of us" and "me and some drums" - the latter featuring Hawkins on piano.

I think this is an absolutely brilliant album. Hawkins is incredible and Costa's vibes reveal that he is a musician who would have made a massive impression in the 1960s had he not been killed in a car crash shortly afterwards when he was only 31. Impulse produced quite a few mainstream records by the likes of Earl Hines and Lionel Hampton in addition to the swathes of Coltrane. It makes a fabulous comparison with Coltrane's work as this 1962 session is contemporary. I think that Shelly Manne is incredible on this record. What is fascinating is that it offers a view of musicians who were not particularly associated with the cutting edge / avant garde of the time but who were coming up with something that was in the spirit of the way jazz was going. The harmonic language is very much post be-bop yet I feel the whole record demonstrates that these musicians were really thinking about the music and opening things up. Manne had associations with Ornette but this record does seem to have the same kind of vibe as Joe Harriott's work in that period.

Nice to be reacquainted with this record which deserves to be better known and is one of the more interesting experiments of the time.

I'd always been in two minds about Shelly Manne. While admitting that his drumming on Ornette's pre-free Tomorrow is the Qustion! was right up to the mark, my first ever Bill Evans recording, Empathy, bought on spec because it had a nice abstract sculpture on the front when I'd only previously heard Evans on the famous George Russell The Jazz Workshop, almost put me off Evans because of Shelly's, to me at any rate, over-fussy approach, which seemed to overwhelm the trio. I once mentioned this to John Horler, who is a huge Bill Evans fan - I think he had mentioned owning every one of his recordings - and he strongly disagreed with my assessment; but having subsequently discovered the great Evans, La Faro, Motian trio, hasn't changed my mind.

[Ian Thumwood]

I think Manne is the drummer on one of the Verve albums by Bill Evans called "A simple matter of conviction" and , from recollection, the trio on that date has a degree of snap about it which I think is often missing from some of Evans' later trios. I have not heard that album for ages yet it was Manne's interplay with the pianist which caught my attention. When I was first discovering Evans, this was one of the albums that impressed me the most. Personally, I find that Evans' trios work better when there is a degree of spikiness from the drummer he was using. Some of the later material does tend to be soporific , no doubt due to the pianist's drum dependency and the likes of Manne provided some much needed aggression to the proceedings. Therefore, I would tend to have a different perception in respect of the Bill Evans trio.

It has always struck me as strange how quickly Shelly Manne seemed to get overlooked. I grew up listening to his playing when he was alive and enjoyed a big reputation amongst jazz fans. I believe that he came from New York but ended up working in the West Coast after a period with Kenton. He did masses of TV and film work whilst carrying out some of the more hardcore sessions on the West Coast. There are a series of disc called "Shelly Manne and his men" which were always highly considered. I find Manne's playing the opposite of someone like Frank Butler whose style seemed totally relaxed and formed the perfect cushion for soloists to perform against. By contrast, Manne's work always strikes me as having a degree of snap about it and maybe a little pugnacious. The album "2-3-4" does seem to offer an opportunity to hear Manne experimenting in the studio and to really good effect. This is the freely -improvised duo with the great Coleman Hawkins. Amazing to hear Hawkins improvising like this when you think that he had first soloed with Fletcher Henderson some 36 years earlier!

In my opinion, Shelly Manne is very much akin to someone like Roy Haynes in that they just manage to make whatever group they are in that little bit better because of their presence.

[Ian Thumwood]

Picking up on Alyn's suggestions for tenor ballads, this is about as good as it gets.....