What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Ian Thumwood]

Been playing this record today...

I have seen Rhoda Scott on numerous occasions at Vienne and have always been impressed at the way she has always pursued a straight ahead course as far as her approach to jazz in concerned. There is no real Soul Jazz element and perhaps you could consider her to be part of the tradition which came out of Larry Young. The collaboration with Thad Jones / Mel Lewis in 1976 is very good but I particularly loved this track "Mach 2."

I think Thad Jones was a fascinating writer. In my opinion, he effectively took the template of the New Testament Basie band and refracted that style through some pretty dissonant and progressive arrangements. The writing for the reeds always strikes me as being particularly stridant and I sometimes feel that the language he is using in his work offers an alternative to how Gil Evans was composing which you could very easily argue as being more progressive. Although the TK ./ ML Jazz Orchestra could get pretty outside and offer soloists like Richard Davis far more freedom than he might have been permitted in other bands around that time, the fact they swung so hard tended to mask how creative Jones was as an arranger. He also utilised other writers like Bob Brookmeyer who was similarly progressively minded. The only down side was the fact that they were often poorly served by recordng engineers. If you want some food for thought, I suppose Jones took the Basie model and ran with it just as Muhal Richard Abrams did the same with Ellington.

[Ian Thumwood]

I would apply appreciating transitional phases in musical development to any period or genre of music, or arts in general for that matter, in my own case. One is listening out for potentials, possibly wondering how things might have further evolved had this or that particular individual not been on the scene. How would classical modernism have developed without Debussy, Stravinsky, or especially Schoenberg? Or painting without Césanne or Kandinsky? Jazz without Louis Armstrong, Charlie Parker? How intrinsic to the future were people such as Duke Ellington or Ornette Coleman? Or were such new developments "necessary" - expressions of epochs? We could even start a discussion on this!

SA

Here is a review of the box set on Mosaic.

https://londonjazznews.com/2022/08/18/classic-black-white-jazz-sessions-recordings-from-1943-1949/

i think that the main appeal of this release is just how unfamiliar it is, especially with regard to how Black & White recorded the more progressive jazz elements on the West Coast which have tended to have been treated somewhat subjectively in the past. People like Wilbert Baranco and Earle Spencer are all new names to me and even the original big band led by the legendary Gerald Wilson is not exactly familiar even if some of the sideman such as Art Pepper, Charlie Mingus and Jimmy Knepper are amongst jazz's A -list. Soloists like guitarist Jack Marshall, probably best know as a studio musician with numerous big bands in the 1950s , can be seen in a more progressive light. It is not so much a box set that underscores the significant developments of the time but one which chronicals the status of the broader jazz scene from the likes of Willie the Lion and Red Nichols through to "populist" artists on the fringe of the jazz spectrum and those with more avant leanings for the time. It looks a tempting acquisition as a window to some lesser known and forgotten names in jazz - not reinforcing names we already know but fleshing out a far broader picture.

[Serial_Apologist]

SA

Here is a review of the box set on Mosaic.

https://londonjazznews.com/2022/08/18/classic-black-white-jazz-sessions-recordings-from-1943-1949/

i think that the main appeal of this release is just how unfamiliar it is, especially with regard to how Black & White recorded the more progressive jazz elements on the West Coast which have tended to have been treated somewhat subjectively in the past. People like Wilbert Baranco and Earle Spencer are all new names to me and even the original big band led by the legendary Gerald Wilson is not exactly familiar even if some of the sideman such as Art Pepper, Charlie Mingus and Jimmy Knepper are amongst jazz's A -list. Soloists like guitarist Jack Marshall, probably best know as a studio musician with numerous big bands in the 1950s , can be seen in a more progressive light. It is not so much a box set that underscores the significant developments of the time but one which chronicals the status of the broader jazz scene from the likes of Willie the Lion and Red Nichols through to "populist" artists on the fringe of the jazz spectrum and those with more avant leanings for the time. It looks a tempting acquisition as a window to some lesser known and forgotten names in jazz - not reinforcing names we already know but fleshing out a far broader picture.

OK, er thanks, Ian ( - goes and takes a lie-down to recover !)

[RichardB]

Ornette Coleman and Joachim Kühn, Colors. Highly invigorating. Almost like a completely new form of jazz that was never followed up.

[Jazzrook]

Walt Dickerson with Wilbur Ware & Andrew Cyrille playing 'Tell Us Only The Beautiful Things' in 1975:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=Mq2VlRpv1u8

JR

[Stanfordian]

‘Empyrean Isles’ – Herbie Hancock
with Freddie Hubbard, Ron Carter & Tony Williams
Blue Note (1964)

[Joseph K]

'Directions' from the sixth and final disk of The Cellar Door Sessions by Miles Davis. This formed the basis of 'Funky Tonk' from Live-Evil, though in 'Funky Tonk' all traces of the theme of 'Directions' is excised, I guess so Miles could credit composition to himself! Still, it's incredible music.

[Ian Thumwood]

OK, er thanks, Ian ( - goes and takes a lie-down to recover !)

SA

I looked up Earle Spencer on Youtube and think the results were worthwhile posting on here. Thos first track features the guitarist Jack Marshall and comes from 1946 and therefore is effectively before Dizzy Gillespie's land mark recordings. The band is really good as you would expect from a line up which also included Buddy Childers,Herb Geller. Art Pepper and Jimmy Knepper.

[Ian Thumwood]

[Ian Thumwood]

From the tracks I have discovered, the band seems really adbanced for it's time / This track almost recalls George Shearing. I am surprised that this band is so obscure. Never heard of this orchestra until the weekend but the do not deserve to be so obscure.

[Jazzrook]

Horace Silver with Tyrone Washington, Woody Shaw, Larry Ridley & Roger Humphries playing 'Mexican Hip Dance' from the 1966 album 'The Jody Dance':

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=X5e1tsP18WI

JR

[Serial_Apologist]

Thanks for those links, Ian - will listen to them later.

[Stanfordian]

‘Goin’ Up’ – Freddie Hubbard
with McCoy Tyner, Paul Chambers, Philly Joe Jones
Blue Note (1961)

[burning dog]

As someone points out on youtube, Sonny was 23 at this time

[Ian Thumwood]

BD

I was going to post something similar. Earle Spencer was 23 when he out together his big band in 1946. It is interesting to reflect that there cannot be too many twenty-somethings shaping jazz to this extent in 2022 as most careers seem to take off when musicians hit their thirties. There was an article on "All aboutjazz" many years ago about sophomore records and the issue with the record-buying public for jazz preferring to wait until musicians put out more mature records before investing in an artist. Quite intriguing because some labels seem to specialise in unsigned talent yet the music is no where near on the same plane as something like Blie Note where many of the musicians fronting sessions were of a similar age.