What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Jazzrook]

👍 There's a used copy on Amazon for £81! Japanese label. Out of my reach!

…and mine!

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

I had forgotten Steve Kuhn's 60s stint with Art Farmer, "Sing me softly of the blues" on Atlantic, the first time I'd heard a Carla Bley tune. Great "stretching" quartet with superb Kuhn, Steve Swallow and Pete LaRoca.

Here's "Ad infinitum"

http://youtu.be/b2DSS3srh3E?feature=shared

[Serial_Apologist]

I had forgotten Steve Kuhn's 60s stint with Art Farmer, "Sing me softly of the blues" on Atlantic, the first time I'd heard a Carla Bley tune. Great "stretching" quartet with superb Kuhn, Steve Swallow and Pete LaRoca.

Here's "Ad infinitum"

http://youtu.be/b2DSS3srh3E?feature=shared

Is it OK to say I preferred Steve swallow's acoustic bass to his electric? He seemed so much more inventive and flexible on the former, to my ears at least. I felt that too about Brucie's.

[Ian Thumwood]

I have been playing "Old & New Dreams'" album "Playing." I had forgotten this was a live concert recording. For my money, it has the best ever cover of an ECM record but the music enclosed inside the sleeve is terrific and not at all what yu might have expected from ECM. Listening to the record, my two immediate impressions were that Dewey Redman and Ed Blackwell were on exceptional form. It is difficult to understand why Redman's stock seems to have diminished. Of that generation that include Shepp, Ayler and Sanders, I think he was a far more accomplished musician. He absorbed Ornette and could spin of assymetric phrases with ease. He was hugely under-rated. The star of the quartet for me was Ed Blackwell whose drumming really makes this group. He sounds like an avant garde version of Ray Bauduc or maybe even Baby Dodds. his drumming is mesmerising. I love the gear shifts in and out of double time and how he manages to alter a groove. This is a brilliant album - an ECM album that Jazzrook. Elmo and Buesnik could enjoy.

[Jazzrook]

Will try to find a copy of 'Playing', Ian.
Here's 'Law Years' from Old and New Dreams 1987 live album 'Tribute To Blackwell':

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=KbCx-KJoI_A

JR

[Tenor Freak]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ucU8u95YnsM

[Roger Webb]

Kit Downes, Petter Eldh, James Maddren ECM album, Vermilion. Ideal late night ( well it is at my age!) jazz with a smoky Islay single malt.

[Jazzrook]

William Parker Quartet with Rob Brown, Lewis Barnes & Hamid Drake playing ‘Shorter For Alan’ from the marvellous 2008 album ‘Petit Oiseau’ which deserves to be better known:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=jQYhgNUVQ0I

JR

[Ian Thumwood]

I haven't played that disc for ages but the albums this group made are easily amongst the best jazz recordings of the 2000s and 2010s. William Parker and Hamid Drake are the philby Joe and Paul Chambers of our era. I discovered William Parkers music late. For my money his work is like the fulfilment of the free jazz music of the late 1960s. He has produced a body of work which is of a really high standard.

The core quintet is sometimes augmented with Eri Yamamoto's piano. I think she is seriously underrated. I have a book of her compositions which are interesting.

[Jazzrook]

Sonny Rollins "Nows the time" with Herbie Hancock, from the RCA album of the same name, a long time favourite. Also the later extended "Alternatives" double album from the RCA sessions, for which Sonny successfully sued them and won advances, a flat fee and an injunction! Don't mess with Mr R!

I've AT LAST read "Saxophone Colossus", all 720 pages plus after looking at it for a long while. It is very good, exhaustive, detailed and harrowing on the fifties and it's drug related squalor. No glib romance there. Amazing that anyone made it through all that. No wonder Sonny is "eccentric"!

http://youtu.be/5Zepi_Xid3A?feature=shared

Sonny Rollins: The 1959 European Tour Recordings with restored sound quality and the approval of Sonny.
Unmissable, I’d say.

https://www.jazzwax.com/2024/04/sonny-rollins-the-1959-european-tour-recordings.html

JR

[Jazzrook]

The Herb Robertson Brass Ensemble - ‘Shades of Bud Powell’ with Robertson(trumpet, flugelhorn); Brian Lynch(trumpet); Steve Swell(trombone); Vincent Chancey(French horn); Joe Daley(tuba) & Joey Baron(drums) live at Willisau, 1988:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=p0w4U2Ft2BE

JR

[elmo]

Sonny Criss " Sandy & Niles" from the Sonny's Dream arranged by Horace Tapscott - a favourite Criss album

https://youtu.be/TGLiHqM7qfI?feature=shared

elmo

[Ian Thumwood]

Been listening to some recordings by Curtis Counce. I really like the quintet he led but the initial record on the complication by Teddy Charles is of it's time. I would imagine this record would have seen as adventurous as the Steve Lehman does these days
it is OK but the straight ahead stuff by Counce sounds better...
a forerunner to the Shelly Manne set at the Blackhawk which Jazzrook kindly recommended.

[Ian Thumwood]

Esperanza Spalding's big band record 'Radio Music Society' which a pretty adventurous jazz record masquerading as pop music. I like this record more with each listen. It is really sophisticated whilst still having a broader appeal.

Having to share my music listening with my partner's tastes these days although she is more open to listening to jazz than early 20th century classical music which she really hates. I would have predicted it would have been the other way around. Can't see me getting into love songs from Philippines albeit they are popular amongst her community.

[Jazzrook]

Ronnie Cuber with Barry Harris, Sam Jones & Albert “Tootie” Heath playing Coleman Hawkins’ ‘Rifftide’ in 1976 from the album ‘Cuber Libre’:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=iDEg3VRFZcI

JR