What Jazz are you listening to now?

[elmo]

Yes I had to "slide in" a hint to Mrs elmo who bought me the Curtis Mosaic set - excellent set by the way.

elmo

[elmo]

Ornette Coleman - At the Golden Circle Volume 1

Ornette at his finest - One of my first Blue Note purchases

Faces and Places - Brilliant

https://youtu.be/Sm8JPjxRCEk

elmo

[Jazzrook]

Sonny Criss with Hampton Hawes, Monty Budwig & Shelly Manne playing 'Blue Sunset' in 1969:

http://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=xBCaAL0CFxM

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

As Alyn is appealing for Latin jazz for a forthcoming program, the 1959 Ray Charles small band ("Presenting David Fathead Newman") on Atlantic with "Tin Tin Deo". I really love Ray's small band and I bought this album in Salzburg on a school trip. They had their uses...Ray and Austrian Rum Cake, can't be beat...http://youtu.be/jQ8j7jstTDg

[Jazzrook]

Jon Eardley with J.R. Monterose, George Syran, Teddy Kotick & Nick Stabulas from a 1955 Prestige 10" LP 'Hey There, Jon Eardley!':

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=uiJpLWVi8Fg

JR

[Joseph K]

John McLaughlin with Michael Brecker, Dennis Chambers, Don Alias, James Genus and Jim Beard play McLaughlin's 'Jazz Jungle' -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ179P9lQZs

[Stanfordian]

‘Jackie's Bag’ - Jackie McLean
Session with Donald Byrd, Sonny Clark, Paul Chambers & Philly Joe Jones
Session with Tina Brooks, Blue Mitchell, Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers & Art Taylor
Blue Note (1959)

[Serial_Apologist]

Gary Burton Quartet: Lofty Fake Anagram (1967)

I well remember getting this purely on spec - well, in truth I did try out the first couple of tracks in the shop, and went for it on the strength of them.

Iirc this might have been the first release by this band? Anyway, Steve Swalllow was still playing acoustic bass at that time - am I alone in preferring his acoustic to electric, on the strengths of everything one found out he'd done up to then? Anyway, I was still unsure about what was still relatively new genre-wise: would jazz meet its maker as it was either, er, swallowed by the looming commercial bandwagon, or blended into the post-Stockhausen or Cageian Fluxus movements? However I was captivated, initially by the ingenious June the15, 1967 theme's deceiiving asymetricality in relation to its 4/4 underlay, the atonality of the turn-around at the end of the bookend repeats, and how drummer Bobby Moses negotiated between this aural ambiguity and the brilliant improvising atop. One didn't realise that Fleurette Africaine was by Duke Ellington - a late-flowering gentle marriage of modality and a kind of pop bossa - it would have seemed so unlikely! Then there was the harmonic elusiveness of the second track, the ballad Feelings and Things - what was going on in there? And, of course, it was composed by our very own Mike Gibbs - not that he had anything yet out on record under his own leadership, which was two years still to come, nor did those of us not in the know appreciate his past history with Burton, and, through him, Stan Getz; but whether or not a mere trombone player in the Collier and Dankworth bands, this was a Brit, or at any rate a naturalised one, with his name on a pioneering American jazz label!

Oh, and I forgot to mention the great photo of Burton, replete with Beatlemop on the cover, with its Art Nouveau/psychedelic insignia. Mine's still in almost perfect nick!

[Richard Barrett]

the great photo of Burton

I dunno, S_A, if there were a photo of me looking like that in public circulation I'd be wanting to round up all remaining copies and destroy them.

[Serial_Apologist]

John McLaughlin with Michael Brecker, Dennis Chambers, Don Alias, James Genus and Jim Beard play McLaughlin's 'Jazz Jungle' -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJ179P9lQZs

I remember a track being performed on Impressions when it first came out, and being impressed by the tautness of it, and how it just manages to keep everything together - funk taken to a point of tenterhooks whereby it could go no further without disorientation and dissolution into free form. Personally, I wouldn't have minded!

[Serial_Apologist]

I dunno, S_A, if there were a photo of me looking like that in public circulation I'd be wanting to round up all remaining copies and destroy them.

The last time I visited a barber's it had cost me 11/6 in the old currency - which would have been around 1971 - since when I've maintained a self-inflicted régime of hirsute austerity. I kept my hair long right through to around '82, when I angrily cut off most of it in a symbolic gesture of release from the embers of a disastrous relationship: the woman in question had always messed around with those locks; now I was freed of both!

[Joseph K]

West End Blues – Bud Powell with Cootie Williams and his orchestra

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9zr7WD1BiH0

[Joseph K]

Been too long since I listened to this, it's so great, swings like a mofo

[Joseph K]

The Duke - Take the A Train https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KV8Hj_E8LJc

Recently squandered some money on an online jazz guitar course based around this tune... I figure I ought to familiarise myself with various performances of it, starting with the man himself (though it was written by Billy Strayhorn of course).

[Ian Thumwood]

Gary Burton Quartet: Lofty Fake Anagram (1967)

I well remember getting this purely on spec - well, in truth I did try out the first couple of tracks in the shop, and went for it on the strength of them.

Iirc this might have been the first release by this band? Anyway, Steve Swalllow was still playing acoustic bass at that time - am I alone in preferring his acoustic to electric, on the strengths of everything one found out he'd done up to then? Anyway, I was still unsure about what was still relatively new genre-wise: would jazz meet its maker as it was either, er, swallowed by the looming commercial bandwagon, or blended into the post-Stockhausen or Cageian Fluxus movements? However I was captivated, initially by the ingenious June the15, 1967 theme's deceiiving asymetricality in relation to its 4/4 underlay, the atonality of the turn-around at the end of the bookend repeats, and how drummer Bobby Moses negotiated between this aural ambiguity and the brilliant improvising atop. One didn't realise that Fleurette Africaine was by Duke Ellington - a late-flowering gentle marriage of modality and a kind of pop bossa - it would have seemed so unlikely! Then there was the harmonic elusiveness of the second track, the ballad Feelings and Things - what was going on in there? And, of course, it was composed by our very own Mike Gibbs - not that he had anything yet out on record under his own leadership, which was two years still to come, nor did those of us not in the know appreciate his past history with Burton, and, through him, Stan Getz; but whether or not a mere trombone player in the Collier and Dankworth bands, this was a Brit, or at any rate a naturalised one, with his name on a pioneering American jazz label!

Oh, and I forgot to mention the great photo of Burton, replete with Beatlemop on the cover, with its Art Nouveau/psychedelic insignia. Mine's still in almost perfect nick!

When I was about 17, someone gave me the cassette version of this album. My best mate was a fan of heavy metal and I recall being really nonplussed by the album. As the music was supposed to be "rock-orientated", I played him a track after building it up by cynically suggesting it was edgy. He was drinking a mug of tea at the time and he nearly spat it all out through laughing. The music, of course, almost totally lacks any momentum.

This was my first experience at hearing Gary Burton and I think I threw the cassette away as a dead loss. (The other tape I was given was by Eric Dolphy which was more interesting - "Outward bound." ) The most polite thing you can say about it is that the music is "of it's time." The cover, which makes Burton look like a firth member of The Monkees, really doesn't help either! I think that it is a really fascinating juxtaposition to reflect on how something so modish as Burton's record has seriously diminished with the passage of time (probably sounded worse in the mid 80s when the jazz revival favoured more muscular styles of jazz) as opposed to Dolphy whose music still has shock value. A lot of "difficult" jazz often takes time before it becomes absorbed in to the mainstream, whether we are talking about Monk, Herbie Nichols, Ornette or Andrew Hill. To my ears, Dolphy sounds remarkably edgy after 60 years.

At the time, Burton was very much part of a newer scene which often took it's cues from popular culture. It doesn't sound quite so "fusion" as it must have done at the time but it has aged really poorly. I quite like some of Burton's later work and the partnership with Corea was inspired. He is one of those musicians I have enjoyed more performing live although he always struck me as becoming increasingly mainstream from the 1980's onwards. There is a brilliant duet album he made with Paul Bley but I find he has a tendency to play a bit too "pretty" for my tastes. I much prefer other players like Stefon Harris, Steve Nelson and Bobby Hutcherson whose playing all have a bit more about it. The one vibes player I have loved listening to over the last few years has been Jason Adasiewicz but he seems to have totally disappeared over the last few years having previous been ubiquitous. Oddly enough, he is one player whose playing would fit in nicely wtih Dolphy's concept.