What Jazz are you listening to now?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Chet Baker -"Leaving" from 1980. European studio.
This record has been called "the best Chet Baker date that no-one has ever heard", and it is indeed very very fine. Chet committed is a splendor. This track is particularly lovely...http://youtu.be/DKVWp_Ekl44

[Jazzrook]

Chet Baker -"Leaving" from 1980. European studio.
This record has been called "the best Chet Baker date that no-one has ever heard", and it is indeed very very fine. Chet committed is a splendor. This track is particularly lovely...http://youtu.be/DKVWp_Ekl44

Many thanks, BN. An intensely moving and beautiful track which deserves an airing on JRR sometime.
Have just ordered the CD 'Crystal Bells' from which the track comes.

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Many thanks, BN. An intensely moving and beautiful track which deserves an airing on JRR sometime.
Have just ordered the CD 'Crystal Bells' from which the track comes.

JR

I didn't know if it was still available. John Claridge who took that photograph had a studio on the top floor of Scott's Frith Street club. When he had Chet there, Claridge said, "I once bought an EP of yours with "Winter Wonderland" on it". Chet said, "Yeah, the quartet date with Russ Freeman" and for a minute was transported right back there. That's when Claridge took that superb photograph. He's a very interesting guy who I had never heard of, but in the class of David Bailey etc.

[Serial_Apologist]

I didn't know if it was still available. John Claridge who took that photograph had a studio on the top floor of Scott's Frith Street club. When he had Chet there, Claridge said, "I once bought an EP of yours with "Winter Wonderland" on it". Chet said, "Yeah, the quartet date with Russ Freeman" and for a minute was transported right back there. That's when Claridge took that superb photograph. He's a very interesting guy who I had never heard of, but in the class of David Bailey etc.

I wonder if he was any relation to the original owner of the famous posh grub emporium on Piccadilly Circus, where Julie Christie and Dirk Bogarde did a bit of nifty shop lifting in "Darling" (one of my favourite movies). Must look him up tomorrow.

[Jazzrook]

I didn't know if it was still available. John Claridge who took that photograph had a studio on the top floor of Scott's Frith Street club. When he had Chet there, Claridge said, "I once bought an EP of yours with "Winter Wonderland" on it". Chet said, "Yeah, the quartet date with Russ Freeman" and for a minute was transported right back there. That's when Claridge took that superb photograph. He's a very interesting guy who I had never heard of, but in the class of David Bailey etc.

Some of John Claridge's haunting East End photography can be seen here:

https://www.corporatephotographerslondon.com/john-claridges-east-end-photography/

JR

[Ian Thumwood]

Alternative "Ten Top" of the Chet Baker's best...

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/chet-baker-an-alternative-top-ten-albums-chet-baker

Not really a fan of this stuff. Intrigued to see a CTI album in this list but the Paul Bley duo excluded. "Playboys" is decent enough yet I think Art Pepper was just at the start of his career. To my ears, a lot of the later stuff Baker produced tended towards wallpaper music or projects which now might seem misguided. I have a few albums by him yet I find a lot of his work really under-whelming and not really worthy of the attention it gets from some fans. It is strange how the journalist Chris May has a tendency to try to re-habilitate albums that pandered to the more popular tastes and over-values of the 1970s which is a marked contrast to how they were considered when I was discovering the music. I am still not convinced. Finding "good" Baker albums is a lottery as it is and I would tend to steer well clear of the CTI stuff. Like Bix, I feel a lot of the "appeal" of Baker's music is nostalgia and the interest largely due to how far these musicians now appear to be from the "mainstream" of the time. Musical development took a different route and the cries of "Miles pastiche" can no longer really been casually thrown at Baker as he was clearly something wholly different.

The interesting element for me is to consider the influence Baker's playing has had on ECM-type musicians such as Enrico Rava - in my opinion a more consistent and rewarding player than Baker but perhaps not "fashionable" enough to enjoy the same reputation amongst fans? I love Rava's playing on Aldo Romano's "Inner Smile" which is very much the kind of album someone like Baker could have made. I think this is an under-rated gem that would have had fans purring if the playing had been by Chet. To my ears, Baker's influence was probably more apparent amongst some European players of Rava's generation - maybe not so much because of the trumpet tone but more due to the esthetics. It does make you wonder what someone like Manfred Eicher could have done with Baker and maybe directed him away from the Broadway material that seems to dominate his repertoire. For me, the overreliance on "songbook" material can be off-putting when checking out an artist. Jarrett just about got away with it because his "standards" also incorporated jazz material but maybe someone like Bill Evans was a little susceptible? Again, I think Eicher could have enriched Evans' career although I think the lifestyle choices of both Baker and Evans would have been off-putting for Eicher. Still, I think both Evans and Baker probably had an influence on Eicher's conception and I just feel that had both musicians had the guidance and awareness of musical values of someone like Eicher (who was right on the money in the 70s and 80s), some very valued albums could have resulted. Rava's finest work stands up better to a lot of Baker's poor-career choice efforts. Falling in to the mitts of CTI did Baker no real favours.

I was not aware of the Orrin Keepnews story.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Chet Baker was Chet Baker, to state the obvious. His habit often conditioned his choices and needs, like Bill Evans, he was over recorded. But in amongst the routine and the "just another night", are some wonderful sessions. My favourites are the sparkling quartet sides with Russ Freeman, the Paris quartet sides immediately after DT's overdose (a very sombre Baker), the reinvigorated, near the end, Tokyo concerts, the Rome "Chet is Back" date with Bobby Jasper & Rene Thomas etc, the Paul Bley, and some of the surprising & diverse albums he cut for Steeplechase. I'm no fan of the singing although it has a kind of period charm, but he was a vastly better trumpet player than often credited, and as Bob Brookmeyer said to me, "wonderful player, a total natural" (name drop).

[Stanfordian]

‘Blowing in from Chicago’ - Clifford Jordan and John Gilmore
with Horace Silver, Curly Russell & Art Blakey
Blue Note (1957)

[Serial_Apologist]

Some of John Claridge's haunting East End photography can be seen here:

https://www.corporatephotographerslondon.com/john-claridges-east-end-photography/

JR

Thanks for posting the link to Claridge's photos of the East End, JR - reminders of that neck of the woods when I were a sprog: there were many bomb sites like the tenth photo down showing smashed up cars.

I now seem to have a different take on nostalgia from Ian's. Back in the day I might have dismissed it as looking back at times through rose-tinted specs, summoning distorted images of the imagination rather than of a past reality; now I think of it more are recollecting times and moments one felt strongly "present" in, so in a way one is recreating that sense of presence, or immediacy and hear-and-nowness, and reconstituting them in the present tense - ones thoughts and feelings being as much in the moment as one's surrounds.

Here endeth the lesson.

[Ian Thumwood]

Chet Baker was Chet Baker, to state the obvious. His habit often conditioned his choices and needs, like Bill Evans, he was over recorded. But in amongst the routine and the "just another night", are some wonderful sessions. My favourites are the sparkling quartet sides with Russ Freeman, the Paris quartet sides immediately after DT's overdose (a very sombre Baker), the reinvigorated, near the end, Tokyo concerts, the Rome "Chet is Back" date with Bobby Jasper & Rene Thomas etc, the Paul Bley, and some of the surprising & diverse albums he cut for Steeplechase. I'm no fan of the singing although it has a kind of period charm, but he was a vastly better trumpet player than often credited, and as Bob Brookmeyer said to me, "wonderful player, a total natural" (name drop).

This output is largely recorded in Europe , even where the musicians come from across the other side of the Atlantic. It does make you wonder how musicians can be perceived differently in Europe to how they might be considered in the States. Tone-wise, the sound of his trumpet was extremely pure and the polar opposite to those players who followed the tradition of Oliver through to Dizzy Gillespie. It is reminiscent of Miles at the time of BftC but a stark contrast to how Davis evolved a distinct timbre. I can appreciate the appeal of Chet Baker and the lyricism of his work. He remained an identifiable soloist and Brookmeyer's comment about being "natural" strikes me as a good description. Baker, by today's standards, seems a really homespun sort of jazz musician and I get why he would stand out. If you were being harsh, I think you could almost describe him as a naive although this would totally miss the emotional quality of his playing. Baker's later work also seems to make more "sense" in a European context. He seems to have been a player more applicable to the European scene where he spent most of his life and also totally divorced from the innovations in American jazz by the late 50s'. As you demonstrate, I think European audiences were more accepting of Baker's failings and also more open to his approach to jazz. Baker is more interesting in a European context and more rewarding to listen to as a mature soloist in contrast to some of the harder edged stuff he recorded earlier in the States. I do wonder whether Baker's work is quite so highly considered in the US or whether fans are aware of his work for labels like Steeplechase.

The "coolness" of that approach to jazz is perhaps more interesting as a concept. Even as someone who is not too enamored by Baker's work as a whole, there are players who I do like such as Johnny Coles, Palle Mikkelborg, Enrico Rava, maybe even Kenny Wheeler, etc who share something of Chet's sound on the trumpet or least the almost detached emotional feel. Baker pushed the door open for this kind of jazz. You could even include someone like Art Farmer as having the same approach. Even if you discount his failings as a person and the impediments to his playing that resulted, I still find that the generation of musicians he inspired to be that bit more interesting than Baker himself.

For half of the history of jazz, the trumpet was dominated by more combative soloists which only really was challenged by the Davis of the late 40s. The Hard Bop players of the 50s and 60s seemed to revert back to the "heroic" role models of the likes of Armstrong and the less aggressive style typified by Baker strikes me as remaining a minority approach until European jazz really started to assert it's identity. I think you have to admire Baker at least for this. The cooler sounding European soloists sound like they have picked up the baton from players such as Chet Baker. Away from the scene in the US, Baker does seem more "original" and "different" from the kind of playing in vogue throughout the late fifties and 1960s. I don't feel this is difficult to appreciate.

There has never been a "wow" factor about Chet Baker when I have listened to him as there had with say Bill Evans. In both instances, the heavy involvement with drugs could make listening to both musicians seem slightly lethargic when not at their best. As I said previously, the choice of repertoire is also slightly off-putting for me. In Baker's example, I feel that fans have cut him an awful lot of slack when they certainly would not have been so generous with other musicians. There are times when the simplicity and vocal quality of Baker's music is right on the money yet there are also too many moments when he seems to fall over musically. On top of that, I think that some of the more saccharine approaches by some record producers Baker worked with did his music a disservice too. If the art of a jazz soloist boils down to risk taking, Baker seemed more inclined to do this through his lifestyle choices whereas the generation of players who followed afterwards have tended to let the risks boil down to musical factors or challenges. Jazz can be more interesting and rewarding when musicians put themselves in musical situations where the comfort factor is absent. I don't feel that this was what Baker was all about as a musician. For me, there is so much great jazz out there that casting your net wider to explore other avenues far outweighs the benefits of ploughing through Baker's hit and miss career. I would not write his music off although I feel he has probably been more forgiven or even overpraised than any other jazz musician. With Baker, I am never convinced the effort is worth it.

[Jazzrook]

Eric Dolphy with Herbie Hancock, Eddie Khan & J.C. Moses playing 'Iron Man' on March 10, 1963 from 'The Illinois Concert':

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

JR

[Ian Thumwood]

Latest album by Lisa Simpson reviewed here.....

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/apples-and-oranges-doug-webb-posi-tone-records

[Serial_Apologist]

Latest album by Lisa Simpson reviewed here.....


https://www.allaboutjazz.com/apples-...i-tone-records

Doug Webb, innit?

[Bryn]

Doug Webb, innit?

Hmm. "Apples and Oranges", not to be confused with Oranges and Lemons by XTC on Apple Music.

[Stanfordian]

‘The Freedom Book’ - Booker Ervin
with Jaki Byard, Richard Davis & Alan Dawson
Prestige (1963)