‘The Soul of Ben Webster’ – Ben Webster
with Harold Ashby, Art Farmer, Mundell Lowe, Jimmy Jones, Milt Hinton & Dave Bailey
Verve (1958)
with Harold Ashby, Art Farmer, Mundell Lowe, Jimmy Jones, Milt Hinton & Dave Bailey
Verve (1958)
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Yeah! – Charlie Rouse
with Billy Gardner, Peck Morrison & Dave Bailey
Epic (1961)Comment
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Charles Mingus 'Prayer for passive resistance' with Yusef Lateef 1960
elmoComment
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One of the main differences between the American and European jazz scenes is the way that the former has an ability to cross over into more popular realms and establish cult followings that is largely absent in the UK in particular. A new discovery for me is the Delvon Lamarr organ trio which has a large following in the UK but is unknown over here. The current deitiona features the leader's organ, Jimmy James on guitar and drummer Daniel Wiess. I am pretty sure that someone like Standfordian will love this band as it strikes me as owing a great deal to the likes of Big John Patton and Baby Face Willette. The new album is right on the button and largely consists of originals with the exception of "Keep on Keepin' on."
This band gets some very positive reviews on American websites and the trio's ability to delivery a healthy slab of filthy funk whilst keeping the improvisation fresh does make their music really appealing. i have been listening to "Cold as Weiss" for the last few days and whilst it is retro in many respects, it does serve to remind you that organ / soul jazz is pretty much it's own oeuvre and needs to be judged on it's own terms. (i.e. How funky the music is.) In the past bands like MM&W have offered an update on this , blending elements of the almost uniquely American Jam Band scene with avant garde jazz which was really original when they first emerged in the 1990s. Here Lamarr squarely nails his colours to the mast in the image performers like Big John Patton but without making it seem like a pastiche. The music is great fun - something reflected in titles like "Pull your pants up."
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Interesting that you should put that up because I came across this on YouTube about a year ago. Delvon etc LIVE playing a warm up to a gig about four years ago. Not sure if this is jazz, funk or elements of soul, guitarist channels Steve Cropper at times, but it's very entertaining...
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That was excellent.
I think that this track is even more unlikely and a marked improvement on the original...
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‘Bluesnik’ – Jackie McLean
with Freddie Hubbard, Kenny Drew, Doug Watkins & Pete La Roca
Blue Note (1961)Comment
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Dave Bailey Quintet with Frank Haynes, Billy Gardner. Grant Green & Ben Tucker playing the title track from the 1961 album 'Reaching Out':
JRComment
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Don't tell Ian this but your description sounds very much like fusion.Originally posted by BLUESNIK'S REVOX View Post
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JosephOriginally posted by Joseph K View PostDon't tell Ian this but your description sounds very much like fusion.
It is not my description , to be honest
I think that the whole soul jazz/ organ thing predates Fusion by about 15 years. I can see where you are coming from as it is something I have thought about too but I suppose the whole point of "fusion" is that it is "fused" with another style of music.
There is a shared link with the music also sharing an inflience of more popular styles of music. I have to say I much prefer this kind of stuff to most Fusion. It is populist but somehow strikes me as being more authentic. The organ - led groups also differ from the background in which they originated and date from a time when the differences between jazz and popular music was more blurred. The influence of the church looms large in this music which takes it's cue from gospel and well as R n'B of the late 1940s. I also have the impression that these organ groups probably had more blue collar origns and would have been the kind of groups people would have listened to when they attended bars and grills. It has almost nothing to do with rock music or indeed any of the kind of innovations Miles was pushing in the late 1960s by which time it already had a long pedigree.
When I was first discovering jazz, I really liked these kinds of groups but it took me longer to recognise that artists like Big John Patton, Fred Jackson, Baby Face Willette etc were pursuing a different approach as opposed to someone like Jimmy Smith. As I said earlier, the "tradition" is something very much of it's own which stretches between more radical approaches like Larry Young through to Willette whosemusic was much less sophisticated. I love the way that they take on board popular influneces of the time so you can get albums ike Fred Jackson's "Hootin' & tootin'" which refracts popular boogaloo and soul styles of the day through the soulfulness of Coltrane. As the era moved i to the 1970s, the music owed a lot to funk. Other players like Jimmy Smith and say Prof Lonnie Smith are really on the jazz spectrum of things. I can understand why some people on here might be sniffy about this format as the music was never intended to be intellectual. I like the fact that it is a style which has it's own benchmarks agains which it is judged. A little often goes a long way yet it is a format that I always find agreeable.
For me, this music runs parallel with alot of jazzrock / fusion even it's origins were much earlier. I never felt that these musicians ever really tried to offer anything that was too sophisticated or pretentious as was often the case with fusion in the 1970s. If you like, it was often much simpler and more honest but still managed to to establish itself as its own sub-genre that successive generations have given their own spin to. It was music for small clubs and not the bigger venues associated with so much fusion in the 1970s.
Wondered if you had listened to an album like Pat Martino's "Formidable" which effectively shows just how good this style of jazz can be within the mainsreeam? The Devlon Lamarr trio strike me as being faithful to the more populist approach of the mid 1960s albeit it still sounds relevant in 2022. Done well, this music still sounds good.Comment
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‘Back to Back’ – Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges Play the Blues
with Harry ‘Sweets’ Ellison, Les Spann, Sam Jones/Al Hall & Jo Jones
Verve (1959)Comment
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Reminds me of work by the Ramsey Lewis Trio.Originally posted by BLUESNIK'S REVOX View PostComment
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Randy Weston with Frank Haynes playing 'Blues for Strayhorn':
JRComment
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‘Fearless Frank Foster’ – Frank Foster
with Virgil Jones, Al Dailey, Bob Cunningham & Alan Dawson
Prestige (1965)Comment
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Joe Zee would've been 90 today, so I've listened to 'Boogie Woogie Waltz', now this immortal classic:
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