What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Jazzrook]

‘The Tokyo Blues’ – Horace Silver
with Blue Mitchell, Junior Cook, Gene Taylor & John Harris Jr.
Blue Note (1962)

That's a great album.
I've read that the drummer is Joe Harris not John Harris Jr.

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Talking of (who?) drummers, here's Donald Byrd's "Chant" from the Bluenote album of the same name which was held in the vault. Donald, Pepper Adams, Doug Watkins, A YOUNG Herbie Hancock, and Teddy Robinson on drums. Who he? Well, he's on some Andrew Hill sessions. Byrd used him when they couldn't locate Lex Humphries, drummer of choice. This is a really good album btw.

http://youtu.be/AlHCuMFMNms

[Stanfordian]

‘Hi Voltage’ – Hank Mobley
with Jackie McLean, Blue Mitchell, John Hicks, Bob Cranshaw & Billy Higgins
Blue Note (1967)

[Serial_Apologist]

Ronald Shannon Jackson's Decode Yourself (1985) - and what an exhilarating experience! Have to agree with Ian when he writes of coming into jazz in an exceptionally fertile period. We were both lucky: me for the 1960s and coming back into the music at around this time, following a decade and a half of active politics pretty much ruling out anything else!

[burning dog]

Wonderful trio

[Jazzrook]

Andrew Hill with Lee Konitz, Ted Curson, Cecil McBee & Art Lewis playing 'Laverne' from the 1974/75 album 'Spiral':

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=OHKR59Y4ENE

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

Andrew Hill with Lee Konitz, Ted Curson, Cecil McBee & Art Lewis playing 'Laverne' from the 1974/75 album 'Spiral':

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=OHKR59Y4ENE

JR

Pretty unexpected line-up - I wouldn't have expected Konitz alongside Andrew Hill, or Ted Curson for that matter.

[Ian Thumwood]

Pretty unexpected line-up - I wouldn't have expected Konitz alongside Andrew Hill, or Ted Curson for that matter.

But then again, you would never have thought Andrew Hill and Jim Hall would have worked together but they did on Greg Osby's excellent "Invisible Hand" - one of the best Blue Notes from the last 30-odd years.

I bought the book of 21 Andrew Hill compositions / transciptions about 5 years ago and it fascinated me just how many albums he made in the 1970s /80s for obscure labels. When you research the albums, the line ups also seem to include a lot of unfamiliar names and the albums do look totally over-looked in favour to his work in the 1960s for Blue Note and the stuff from the mid 80s onwards. The trascriptions were written by the likes of Ron Horton, Frank Kimbrough and Jason Moran and the accompanying notes indicate just how much Hill was respected as a musician. He seems to have had a faithful fan base amongst musicians which was probably wider than might be appreciated. The combination with Lee Konitz does seem particularly interesting not only because they might seemingly appear to be opposites but more for the fact that there wee both players who served the music before anything else. The compositions are quite interesting as are the accompanying notes which seem to underscore his somewhat casual approach to composition with different tunes sharing the same name and other instances where a tune may have two names. The leadsheets are also not quite as formal as you mught have anticipated from ne of jazz's greatest composers. Ypu really get a sesne that the creative process was the driving force for him.

[cloughie]

A charity shop purchase 50p for 2cd set Very Best of Smooth Jazz - many tracks defy the definition of Jazz - however one track which sounded very good was The Hipster by Metalwood who are a Canadian band based in Toronto - any of you Jazz specialists any views on them?

[groovydavidii]

"On Green Dolphin Street" – Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cob, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, and Miles Davis – some lineup!

[Serial_Apologist]

A charity shop purchase 50p for 2cd set Very Best of Smooth Jazz - many tracks defy the definition of Jazz - however one track which sounded very good was The Hipster by Metalwood who are a Canadian band based in Toronto - any of you Jazz specialists any views on them?

Here's a sample from 2008: I leave it to others, not having heard of them before today, but from this they sounded ok in a mainstreamy contemporary fusion kinda way to me.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wm7S-hMBHJA

BTW the drummer was with Tommy Smith at one time.

[Joseph K]

Herbie Hancock - Speak Like a Child

Although I'm well past this stage of Herbie's career in his autobiog, IIRC this album was influenced by Miles's Miles Ahead, except HH considered it a challenge to try to replicate the big band textures with just three winds. Of his Mwandishi-era music I only have Sextant, which I wasn't too enamoured of, but I intend to listen to that again as well as other Mwandishi records. I'm afraid, however, that I find his forays into Disco etc. a bit hard to stomach - at least, last time I tried; in his autobiography, this era of his tends to get swallowed up in his fascination with technology - synthesizers and new keyboards etc. the music itself gets only a cursory mention (just that British audiences loved his Disco stuff but German audiences hated it!) Might have to listen to Rockit etc. since I not long passed that section in his book.

'Speak Like a Child' is very nice indeed.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Listening back to Herbie H's work with Donald Byrd, pre Miles, I had forgotten how much milage he had put in in more "conventional" circles. He joined Miles in 1963, but from 1961 he was a working member of a working group, the Donald Byrd/Pepper Adams quintet, criss crossing the States and playing record dates with Byrd and other leaders on Bluenote. Byrd lauded him as a mix of Hank Jones, Ahmad Jamal and Bill Evans, as the style wasn't fully formed then. He was still pretty impressive.

[Serial_Apologist]

Herbie Hancock - Speak Like a Child

Although I'm well past this stage of Herbie's career in his autobiog, IIRC this album was influenced by Miles's Miles Ahead, except HH considered it a challenge to try to replicate the big band textures with just three winds. Of his Mwandishi-era music I only have Sextant, which I wasn't too enamoured of, but I intend to listen to that again as well as other Mwandishi records. I'm afraid, however, that I find his forays into Disco etc. a bit hard to stomach - at least, last time I tried; in his autobiography, this era of his tends to get swallowed up in his fascination with technology - synthesizers and new keyboards etc. the music itself gets only a cursory mention (just that British audiences loved his Disco stuff but German audiences hated it!) Might have to listen to Rockit etc. since I not long passed that section in his book.

'Speak Like a Child' is very nice indeed.

That record was panned by some critics for its deadpan (pun intended) un-nuanced improvising from Herbie, but my take on it is that Herbie wanted to show the beauty of the lines as coherent unfolding shapes and patterns.

My favourite of the 3 (?) pre-Headhunters HH Sxt albums is actually Sextant - for me the two that followed over-egged the pudding with synthesisers and reverb washes.I agree about the late 70s stuff, the Vocoda - its ubiquitous influence on Neo Soul today making it sound strangely addenoidal: can't think why the youngsters who listen to this stuff in droves (and cars - drives!) don't inundate record producers with complaints about how clichéd it has become.

[Ian Thumwood]

I was working from home yesterday and dug out Jackie McLean's "Demon's Dance" which was one if his later Blue Notes which saw he return to a more straight ahead idiom which sounds like it presages Post-bop. I must admit liking Woody Shaw's trumpet and Cal Massey's compositions but it isn't an album I have played for a while . Although it was recorded in 1967, if the audio quality had been better your could have been forgiven for thinking it dated from 1987. The album cover hints towards "Bitche's Brew" too which adds to the oddness of this disc.

I have also been playing some more Kahil El Zabar, this time with trumpeter Corey Wilks, cellist Tomeka Reid and the final recording session of the late, great Hamiet Bluiett. The album is called "America the beautiful" and largely features a string orchestra albeit there is an element of "conduction" is the pieces which almost seem like field hollers created in the studio. It is a milion miles away from the approach of something like Stan Getz's "Focus" and I suppose is more groove orientated. I find El Zabar to be a hugely compelling artist , not only for the head of steam he always seems to generate but the fact that his personality seems to shine through on the recordings. The music he produces seems central of what the AACM is about yet I would suggest he remains one of their most accessible and "listener friendly" musicians amngst their roster. I would suggest it would almost be impossible not to be swept up by the eubullience of this record, despite the serious message which underscores it. There is a personality there which harks back to am earlier time when jazz could still be both creative as well as popular music.