Originally posted by Serial_Apologist
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? Sorry, you'll have to explain, still none-the-wiser. -
I remember reading years ago (on the old Newark Jazz Corner site?) that there are hours and hours of Coltrane on tape from his gigs at the Showboat in Philadelphia, 1961 through to 1963. Not well recorded, but "out there". Some have now dribbled out. At the time it filled me with a dread of how many more versions of MFT would emerge.Comment
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The Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra playing 'Yesterdays' with a lengthy solo from the legendary trumpeter Freddie Webster, praised by Dizzy Gillespie & Miles Davis:
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Musicians should get royalties if their music is out there, no? I suppose it matters less if said musician is no longer with us, but sometimes estates have ownership over rights.Originally posted by Joseph K View PostComment
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‘Down with It!’ – Blue Mitchell
Blue Mitchell with Junior Cook, Chick Corea, Gene Taylor, Al Foster
Blue Note (1965)Comment
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I thought that this trumpet playing was incredible. Freddie Webster was pretty much ubiquitous amongst the big bands of the 1940s but is was a shame that his drug addiction took him before he could cement a long lasting reputation. He does not sound much like Miles Davis yet I do not doubt he would have gone on to be one of the stars of the late 40s.Originally posted by Jazzrook View PostThe Jimmie Lunceford Orchestra playing 'Yesterdays' with a lengthy solo from the legendary trumpeter Freddie Webster, praised by Dizzy Gillespie & Miles Davis:
JR
I was also intrigued to hear Jimmie Lunceford's band at this time. Wierd to think that Webster and Lunceford died within two months of each other, the bandleader's death being due to a heart failure. The arrangement is, unfortunately, pretty anodyne and another example of a big band from the 1930s that lost it's identity in the next decade - even if the music is well played. I find that quite a few radio broadcasts from this era can be under-whelming either due the work-a-day arrangements, the lack of band identity and the frequency of "pop" singers who automatically date the music to the war years.
There was a real sea change in the way big bands sounded after the 1930s and Lunceford was not alone in finding himself having to update his sound with mixed results. I much prefer his 1930s recordings (even if the satire / pastiche of white big bands no one ever listens to nowadays has not always stood the test of time ) but i would also say the same about Andy Kirk, Fletcher Henderson and Bob Crosby. Had Chick Webb not died in 1939, I do wonder how his band would have coped with the dominance of Count Basie's band which changed large ensemble jazz for everyone. Webb's band is so typical of the 1930s, just as is the case with Lunceford's band, I feel it would have suffered the same fate. As many bands got larger, their "sound" was often sacrificed. The most successful transition was probably made by Benny Goodman whose early 1940s band was probably the most "cutting" edge in the pre be-bop era and before the likes of Woody Herman and Dizzy Gillespie started to front more progressive bands. One of the other successful transformations was Tommy Dorsey's band which benefited from poaching Sy Oliver who had been the main arranger for Lunceford. The Lunceford band fell out out fashion by the mid forties (no doubt as the jivey, 2/4 rhythm started to sound old-fashioned) but the last band he led was supposed to have been terrific and more modern. I know Gerald Wilson was writing charts for them in the mid forties. The best Lunceford tracks are exceptional.
The two elements which fascinate me with big bands from this era are the fledgling solo performances by boppers like Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker. Howard McGhee, Wardell Gray, Charlie Christian, etc, etc and how bands had to respond to Basie's band which now sounds more crucial to the evolution of jazz than ever.Comment
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Francoise Hardy, as she's 79 today. You may say, "it's not jazz", but it's got "jazz"in the title (sort of) and it's Francoise, so there, and she is ICONICALLY MANIFIQUE (for my youth). Even though she once said Cliff's "Travelling Light" was a formative record for her. Can't have perfection...
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‘My Conception’ – Sonny Clarke
with Donald Byrd, Hank Mobley, Art Farmer, Paul Chambers & Art Blakey
Blue Note (1957/59)Comment
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Jeremy Steig with Denny Zeitlin, Ben Tucker & Ben Riley playing Sonny Rollins' 'Blue Seven' in 1963:
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Paul Chambers with John Coltrane, Donald Byrd, Kenny Burrell, Horace Silver & Philly Joe Jones playing 'Omicron' from the 1956 BLUE NOTE album 'Whims of Chambers'.
Horace Silver was one of Coltrane's favourite composers and, as far as I know, this album was their only recording together.
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Lucky Millinder - "Big Fat Mama" (1941) which is the transition/pick up phrase between Lee Morgan & Benny Golson's solos on Moaning.
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In a' Monkian Sphere' this week with the London sessions with Al McKibbon and Art Blakey. Monk and the trio in fine form, here is "Evidence" of it.
elmoComment
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From the same 1971 sessions, 'Chordially' which Monk biographer, Robin Kelley described as "not a composition, per se, but a very musical and coherent improvised warm-up exercise on solo piano."Originally posted by elmo View PostIn a' Monkian Sphere' this week with the London sessions with Al McKibbon and Art Blakey. Monk and the trio in fine form, here is "Evidence" of it.
elmo
JRComment
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I envisage Lucky Millinder as being as summing up black musical experience throughout the thirties and up until the early fifties. He sprang to attention as the front man of the criminally under-rated Mills Blue Rhyhm Band in the second half of the 1930s but his own bands had a cult following at the Apollo Theatre which makes their recorded output particularly baffling. There are some different numbers like "Apollo Jump" as well as two tracks which feature a young Dizzy Gillespie which I feel are exceptional. I had never made the connection between this track and the solos on the Art Blakey but this is , of course, correct. The band's most celebrated singer was Sister Rosetta Tharpe whose recordings with Millinder represent the purist marriage of the blues and big bands. The music with the vocals of Trevor Bacon are novelty pieces of the era and always disappointed me. The later tracks with the now forgotten Wyonnie Harris are a more successful attempt at balancing big band music with R n'B and are typical of the route taken by many big bands in the 1940s who took a more populist and alternative route to be-bop. The Basie-inspired tracks with Gillespie (complete with "Salt Peanuts" riff) represent the apogee of Millinder's work under his own name yet the later forties stuff offers a better representation of where popular Black music would go in the next decade and presaged rock n' roll. The bop or "progressive" model of big band writing was more impressive and tends to tske the column inches in jazz history. By contrast, the increasing influence of r n' b on bands as different as Lionel Hampton, Millinder, Jay McShann and Tiny Bradshaw not only offers a marked contrast as to how white big bands dealt with commercial pressures (thinking of Glenn Miller, Harry James, singers, diminution of material, etc) but also indicative of how jazz critics tended to ignore the fact the black audiences were no less enthusiastic about bands being more commercial although they were far hipper than their white counterparts. I don't think it is too much of an ask to see bands like James Brown's as too far removed from what Millinder was doing in the 1940s.Originally posted by BLUESNIK'S REVOX View PostComment
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A by Jimmy Raney
This Gershwin number is nice, and certainly the title is relevant to the sort of day we've had today:
And this is very good:
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