What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Jazzrook]

Lee Morgan with Hank Mobley, Cedar Walton, Paul Chambers & Billy Higgins playing the title-track from ‘The Rajah’ recorded in 1966 but not issued until 1985:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=hx_UAeSen_8

JR

[Jazzrook]

Marvellous tenor ballad playing on ‘You Don’t Know What Love Is’ from Billy Harper with Art Blakey, live at Kongresshalle, Berlin on November 6, 1968:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=ThN_YyGGqf4

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Erich Kleinschuster (trombone) Sextet with John Surman (bari), "Flashpoint", I'm guessing late 1960s, Vienna?

Before Surman went "ECM" and further proof of European jazz musicianship and the quality of rhythm sections. In this case Jimmy Woode bass and Erich Bachtrugl, drums.

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

[Tenor Freak]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jw-Zmq2-3X8&t=371s

[Tenor Freak]

Suggested by the Youtube algo. It's alright.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A7QDIr2JNSI

[Ian Thumwood]

Been playing rhe Avid 4 cd set of Kenny Dorham.albums. The first CD includes his Chet Baker style vocal album which is risible. I think the ballad album is nice but the real meat is on the 2nd disc with the Quintet featuring Jackie McLean. 'Inta something ' transcends the out if tune piano. I am blown away by his feature 'It could happen to you' where the alto is completely unreserved. This music epitomises for me what jazz should be about. Shame that this unbooted style of playing is no longer en vogue.

[Jazzrook]

Sonny Rollins with Thelonious Monk, Tommy Potter & Art Taylor playing ‘More Than You Know’ in 1954:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=dd0a2bNlTOQ

JR

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Just reading some entries in Richard Williams Blue Moment blog and he featured this (which I had missed),

"Bird in Kansas City" on Verve. Apparently Parker had had a drug bust in NY in 1951 = no cabaret card, so went back to KC for a while to stay with his mother. There he played some informal sessions with just bass and drums and these are on this new album as the first seven tracks...the first a blues, sounds a bit like "twisted",

http://youtu.be/H-2hdtg9ykw?feature=shared

[Ian Thumwood]

Sorry to say that this track sounds terrible. Was it his Mum playing bass as it was pretty wretched. Could not hear any drums on that track. Even Bird sounds out of shape. This is even before you consider the poor audio quality.

I am increasingly finding Bird's playing more of a paradox. There are moments when his playing is a revelation and the early recordings have a bite about them which makes this one of the most compelling eras in jazz. However, I do think that his groups often feature less inspired soloists and have little variety. I like him most when he is playing with the likes of Jay McShann where he sounds so radical. By the mid fifties the Parker clones had been weeded out but jazz was beginning to get much more adventurous. It may be heresy to say so but I have never managed to envisage Bird facing up to the changes after say 1957.

Parker's best and most relevant work was over in a decade....a little longer than the interval between Neil Cowley 's most recent records.

Not sure what the point is in releasing material like this. It detracts more than adds to his legacy. It is a rip off. Their are some much better bootlegs of Parker playing live.

[Serial_Apologist]

Sorry to say that this track sounds terrible. Was it his Mum playing bass as it was pretty wretched. Could not hear any drums on that track. Even Bird sounds out of shape. This is even before you consider the poor audio quality.

I am increasingly finding Bird's playing more of a paradox. There are moments when his playing is a revelation and the early recordings have a bite about them which makes this one of the most compelling eras in jazz. However, I do think that his groups often feature less inspired soloists and have little variety. I like him most when he is playing with the likes of Jay McShann where he sounds so radical. By the mid fifties the Parker clones had been weeded out but jazz was beginning to get much more adventurous. It may be heresy to say so but I have never managed to envisage Bird facing up to the changes after say 1957.

Parker's best and most relevant work was over in a decade....a little longer than the interval between Neil Cowley 's most recent records.

Not sure what the point is in releasing material like this. It detracts more than adds to his legacy. It is a rip off. Their are some much better bootlegs of Parker playing live.

I think it's OK! The recording quality is of course diabolical, but maybe we're only hearing part of the track, and that is what renders it unrepresentative. Furthermore, accompanying bass players weren't expected to play other than functionally in terms of the Baroque formula other than when soloing until the likes of Mingus began making impact with more interventionism, as opposed to merely supplying the bottom line of the harmony, Nearly all the leading bass players of the next generation say this in relation to having felt restricted; this was one of the things that made the bebop revival of the 80s and 90s disappointing - the reversion of the bass players role to those earlier stages, outworn and made to seem simplistic by the Lafaros, Peacocks, Hadens, Hollands and co.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Other "weights" are available...

Richard Williams ...Blue Moment, "Parker in Kansas City"

"The first three pieces, each without a formal title, draw on various familiar bebop themes and motifs. The fourth, “Cherokee”, is jet-propelled. “Body and Soul” is taken at its usual ballad pace, slipping gracefully in and out of a double-time section as it proceeds to an ending in which a coruscating single phrase is followed by a particularly arch version of his favourite whimsical coda: a quote from “In an English Country Garden”. “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Perdido” swing at a mellow tempo, just on the bright side of medium, with eye-watering semi-quaver runs in the former leavened by some amusing quotes (“Fascinating Rhythm”, “Cheek to Cheek”).

For 24 minutes on these seven tracks we’re allowed to hear Parker as we became used to hearing Ornette Coleman and sometimes Sonny Rollins: an improvising saxophonist without the support of a chording instrument. It’s not a revelation — nothing conceptually different is happening — but it does allow an unusually clear sight of what he could do"

[Serial_Apologist]

Other "weights" are available...

Richard Williams ...Blue Moment, "Parker in Kansas City"

"The first three pieces, each without a formal title, draw on various familiar bebop themes and motifs. The fourth, “Cherokee”, is jet-propelled. “Body and Soul” is taken at its usual ballad pace, slipping gracefully in and out of a double-time section as it proceeds to an ending in which a coruscating single phrase is followed by a particularly arch version of his favourite whimsical coda: a quote from “In an English Country Garden”. “Honeysuckle Rose” and “Perdido” swing at a mellow tempo, just on the bright side of medium, with eye-watering semi-quaver runs in the former leavened by some amusing quotes (“Fascinating Rhythm”, “Cheek to Cheek”).

For 24 minutes on these seven tracks we’re allowed to hear Parker as we became used to hearing Ornette Coleman and sometimes Sonny Rollins: an improvising saxophonist without the support of a chording instrument. It’s not a revelation — nothing conceptually different is happening — but it does allow an unusually clear sight of what he could do"

Perceptions about restrictiveness amount to a very complex issue, dependent as they so much are on musical compatibility between improvisers in specific situations. It would take Ornette 30 years to find his compatible pianist in Geri Allen!

[Jazzrook]

Sonny Red with Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers & Jimmy Cobb playing ‘Crystal’ recorded in 1960 from the Blue Note album ‘Out Of The Blue’:

https://www.YouTube.com/watch?v=hGJ6QJ-kMhg

JR

[Ian Thumwood]

When I was getting into jazz as a teenager, I was a bit put off by jazz musicians with funny names as they seemed unreal. One of them.was Sonny Redd but I was also perplexed by Freddie Redd too. Even odder that Sonny Redd's group also featured Blue Mitchell. Tina Brooks was someone else I was reticent to explore. Woody Shaw was another as he seemed to be an amalgam of Herman and Artie.

[Serial_Apologist]

When I was getting into jazz as a teenager, I was a bit put off by jazz musicians with funny names as they seemed unreal. One of them.was Sonny Redd but I was also perplexed by Freddie Redd too. Even odder that Sonny Redd's group also featured Blue Mitchell. Tina Brooks was someone else I was reticent to explore. Woody Shaw was another as he seemed to be an amalgam of Herman and Artie.

Nothing as daft as The Beatles! I remember my first time hearing the band's name - from my first "proper" girlfriend, at age 17. As she got into my parents' car she suddenly said, excitedly, "Have you heard the Beatles' new single?" Me: "the Beatles?? Is that the name of a band???" Her: "you mean you haven't heard of the BEATLES???!!! - they're fab, they just SENNNNNNND me" - prolonged orgasm build-up on the "SENNNNNNND. I was always glad mass hysterical screaming never caught on with the jazz fans!