What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Serial_Apologist]

I was listening to some early Sidney Bechet yesterday. Clarence Williams Blue Five from 1924 including Louis Armstrong on cornet. On one track Bechet plays a weird-sounding bassy rumbling sarrusophone. Not entirely surprising that the instrument never caught on. Reading sleevenotes (Proper Box) I learnt that he first came across a soprano sax in a Wardour St shop window during his stay in London in 1920.

Ironic to learn that Wardour Street should ineluctably have played so major a role in the development of jazz, then!!!

[Katzelmacher]

Once loved, now I struggle with this record ........

I was first introduced to it as ‘the Miles David album for Motörhead fans’! :)

In actual fact, it’s not (all that) confrontational, even though it’s as ‘far out there’ as MD ever got (along with the contemporaneous Agharta and Pangea). Anyone familiar with late period Coltrane won’t be frightened by it ....

[Bert]

I was first introduced to it as ‘the Miles David album for Motörhead fans’! :)

In actual fact, it’s not (all that) confrontational, even though it’s as ‘far out there’ as MD ever got (along with the contemporaneous Agharta and Pangea). Anyone familiar with late period Coltrane won’t be frightened by it ....

Oh dear, I am a Motörhead fan!

I also have Agharta and Pangea and I've gone off those albums too. Used to enjoy them very much though. Perhaps I'll give them another go .....

[Joseph K]

Oh dear, I am a Motörhead fan!

I also have Agharta and Pangea and I've gone off those albums too. Used to enjoy them very much though. Perhaps I'll give them another go .....

I think the groove playing on these records is very good - the textures created by the band. Though this only goes so far in compensating for solos that generally aren't overly arresting; moreover, there isn't the structural interest of some of the earlier fusion records of Miles.

So saying, a while ago I was won over more to this stage in Miles' music by listening and watching this, which has that infectious voodoo groove you want: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Op0sFwKRxY

I hold that Dave Liebman was generally a better saxophonist than his later replacements (he's not on Agharta or Pangaea) - at least until Miles returned in the 80s.

[Jazzrook]

Cannonball Adderley with John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers & Jimmy Cobb playing 'Limehouse Blues' in 1959 a few weeks before 'Kind Of Blue' was recorded:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=eTAjh1pjsFI

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

Cannonball Adderley with John Coltrane, Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers & Jimmy Cobb playing 'Limehouse Blues' in 1959 a few weeks before 'Kind Of Blue' was recorded:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=eTAjh1pjsFI

JR

It still seems odd in many ways to this day though - a modern day version of that particular tune.

[Stanfordian]

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

[gurnemanz]

Gershwin The Man I Love:

Anita O'Day
Billie Holiday
Ella Fitzgerald
Lee Wiley
Sarah Vaughan
Sophie Tucker

[Joseph K]

Finally I've unwrapped the Complete Kenny Dorham Albums 1953-1959 box, currently listening to his 1953 debut with his quintet.

[elmo]

Ornette's "Una Muy Bonita" as interpreted by Bobby Hutcherson, Joe Henderson, McCoy Tyner, Herbie Lewis and brilliant Billy Higgins from the Blue Note album "Stick Up"

https://youtu.be/WVubNyQmNYU

elmo

[Ian Thumwood]

Working from home yesterday, I dug out some albums from Delmark which chronicled the developments in the Chicago jazz scene in the 2000s and early 2010s. For a while, this was my "go to" record label but since Bob Koester sold it the musicians I especially liked have now disappeared. The one name which has been missing from the recent scene is Jason Adasiewicz who has gone from being ubiquitous to absent from about 2016 onwards. I really hope nothing untoward has happened to him. Cornetist Josh Berman's absence seems to have been for even longer.

One album that I had forgotten was so good was the duet between Adasiewicz and tenor saxophonist Keefe Jackson called "Rows and rows." It is a brilliant record which features a series of quite short, catchy compositions which edge towards the avant garde. Jackson reminds me a bit of Albert Ayler albeit prone to put himself in to more unusual contexts. In my opinion, this is a great album and something that it probably of most appeal to Jazzrook on this board. This record strikes me as being especially original.

Another album where Jackson crops up is Jason Stein's "Lucille !" which was his quartet's second disc which Frank Rosaly replaced on drums by Tom Rainy.I wish I had bought the first record as Rosaly is the more interesting musician and also because the front line of Jackson and Stein do not quite nail the material by Lennie Tristano / Warne Marsh that makes up a third of the disc. It is a decent enough album although not as punchy as a lot of Delmark's output at this time.

The third record is Paul Giallorenzo's "Flow" which is a piano trio not too dissimilar to Herbie Nichols in tone. I know Elmo has posted his enthusiasm for this record too but I would have to say that it is a perfect repost to the way the piano trio evolved since the mid1990s and the emergence of Brad Mehldau. Listening to the music sometimes gives you the feel of how jazz used to sound in the 1950s yet Giallorenzo was a pupil of Roscoe Mitchell and there are moments throughout the record where his playing takes odd turns which bely his avant-origins.

The fourth album i have enjoyed turning out is the trio led by cornetist Josh Berman with Jason Roebke and Frank Rosaly. This came out in 2015 and Berman seems to have vanished since then! Whenever his name was mentioned, the reference to continuing the tradition of Bobby Bradford always seemed to surface. My favourite album of his is "Here now" which was a tribute to jazz from the Chicago scene of the 1920s and Bix but refracted through a prism that owes as much to Dolphy's "Out to lunch." Berman's music can often push towards the extreme and this fleet trio will be too outside for some on here. (Something I think Joseph would hate but maybe it would appeal to SA and Jazzrook.) With the title "A dance and a hop" and probably Delmark's best album cover, the music has themes which are like fragments that Berman uses as vehicles to push the cornet to it's extremes. All in all, if you rattle off a diverse list of the names of the trumpeters / cornetists who have followed in Dave Douglas' wake such as Ambrose Akinmusire, Christian Scott or even Laura Jurd, Berman was pulling in a totally different direction. Maybe only Peter Evans and Jaimie Branch are the only other trumpeters travelling in this direction ? I love piano-less saxophone trios but the format with a cornet /bass/ drums most be even more of a challenge.

[Ian Thumwood]

Here is Josh Berman in a more "Dixieland" style. This has to be one of my favourite records....

[Ian Thumwood]

Just discovered this...

[makropulos]

Recently, the fabulous Sant Andreu youth jazz band from Barcelona, directed by Joan Chamorro. The whole project is inspiring, and the quality of the singing/playing is often astonishing. I've been getting several of their albums sent directly from Spain, but there's a lot on YouTube as well. Here are a couple of their Tom Jobim numbers:

Triste:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xiJlAE2sfQc

Àguas de março:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z9Qe6HIxPxc

[Joseph K]

Finally I've unwrapped the Complete Kenny Dorham Albums 1953-1959 box, currently listening to his 1953 debut with his quintet.

Now on the second album - Afro-Cuban. Classic Hard Bop!