What Jazz are you listening to now?

[Stanfordian]

‘Street Singer’
Jackie McLean & Tina Brooks with Blue Mitchell, Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers & Art Taylor
Blue Note (1961)

[Tenor Freak]

Duke Pearson - The Right Touch (1967)

[Stanfordian]

Yeah!
Charlie Rouse with Billy Gardner, Peck Morrison & Dave Bailey
Epic (1961)

[Stanfordian]

'The Kicker'
Bobby Hutcherson with Joe Henderson, Grant Green, Duke Pearson, Bob Cranshaw & Al Harewood
Blue Note (1963)

I've got this out for tonight.

[Stanfordian]

‘The Artistry of Freddie Hubbard’
Freddie Hubbard with Curtis Fuller, John Gilmore, Tommy Flanagan, Art Davis & Louis Hayes
Blue Note (1962)

[Stanfordian]

‘Mosaic’
Art Blakey with Freddie Hubbard, Curtis Fuller, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton & Jymie Merritt
Blue Note (1961)

[Stanfordian]

'New and Old Gospel'
Jackie McLean with Ornette Coleman, Lamont Johnson, Scotty Holt & Billy Higgins
Blue Note (1967)


For listening tonight!

[Stanfordian]

‘Cornbread’
Lee Morgan with Billy Higgins, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Herbie Hancock & Larry Ridley
Blue Note (1967)

For tonight!

[Ian Thumwood]

This is frighteningly good. None of the musicians are reading score - this is all from memory.

[Stanfordian]

'No Room for Squares'
Hank Mobley with Lee Morgan, Andrew Hill, John Ore & Philly Joe Jones
+ Hank Mobley with Donald Byrd, Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren & Philly Joe Jones
Blue Note (1963)

For evening listening!

[Serial_Apologist]

'No Room for Squares'
Hank Mobley with Lee Morgan, Andrew Hill, John Ore & Philly Joe Jones
+ Hank Mobley with Donald Byrd, Herbie Hancock, Butch Warren & Philly Joe Jones
Blue Note (1963)

For evening listening!

Hadn't heard of that one. Is there anything from Blue Note's output from the 1960s that you don't have, Stanford?

[Stanfordian]

Hadn't heard of that one. Is there anything from Blue Note's output from the 1960s that you don't have, Stanford?

'No Room for Squares' is an excellent album.

Blue Note albums from the early to mid 1960s is my area of interest. I have the Blue Note catalogue (Richard Cook) and buy those albums that interest me after mainly auditioning them on YouTube. Almost all the Blue Note catalogue that interest me is available for free on YouTube. I never pay more than £6-£8 for a CD which will eventually appear on amazon for those prices using a 'wish list' if you are prepared to wait long enough.

With availabilty of reissued albums on labels such as 'Real Time Jazz' and 'Avid Jazz' it is easy and very, very cheap to obtain a good collection pre 1962.

[Serial_Apologist]

'No Room for Squares' is an excellent album.

Blue Note albums from the early to mid 1960s is my area of interest. I have the Blue Note catalogue (Richard Cook) and buy those albums that interest me after mainly auditioning them on YouTube. Almost all the Blue Note catalogue that interest me is available for free on YouTube. I never pay more than £6-£8 for a CD which will eventually appear on amazon for those prices using a 'wish list' if you are prepared to wait long enough.

With availabilty of reissued albums on labels such as 'Real Time Jazz' and 'Avid Jazz' it is easy and very, very cheap to obtain a good collection pre 1962.

Thanks for mentioning this, Stanford.

[Ian Thumwood]

'No Room for Squares' is an excellent album.

Blue Note albums from the early to mid 1960s is my area of interest. I have the Blue Note catalogue (Richard Cook) and buy those albums that interest me after mainly auditioning them on YouTube. Almost all the Blue Note catalogue that interest me is available for free on YouTube. I never pay more than £6-£8 for a CD which will eventually appear on amazon for those prices using a 'wish list' if you are prepared to wait long enough.

With availabilty of reissued albums on labels such as 'Real Time Jazz' and 'Avid Jazz' it is easy and very, very cheap to obtain a good collection pre 1962.

A lot of the old Blue Notes are increasingly difficult to find in CD format. There are labels like Hallmark reissuing this material but they are supposed to be markedly inferior to the original CD releases and there have been issued with missing material and edited performances.

"No room for squares" is quite a good album and the kind of thing I find intriguing because you don't normally consider Hank Mobley and Andrew Hill to have been compatible. I am more disposed to Mobley these days that when I was in the past having been put off by "Roll call" which is an inferior record only saved by Wynton Kelly's piano and even that is out of tune on this record. Andrew Hill was an amazing musician and someone who it seemed took a long while to get the recognition he deserved. "Squares" is actually comprised of two "rejected" sessions and did not see the light of day until much later in the 1980's. If there is a problem with Blue Note, I feel that it is probably best illustrated by someone like Mobley who did not always take a great deal of time with his compositions. His approach is a marked difference to someone like Horace Silver, perhaps the archetypal "Hard Bop" artist, insofar that the pianist was actively trying to produce arrangements which were almost like charts for a scaled down big band. With Mobley, the better albums are things like "Soul Station" and "Workout" which merit their reputation. Sometimes I feel he is bored with the proceedings such as on records like Donald Byrd's "New directions" which is a poor disc in my opinion - it sounds like 1950's film music. In contrast, I don't think anything Mobley recorded that I have heard is as good as on Kenny Dorham's "Whistle stop" - easily the most underrated record on that label.

The prices of CD these days are quite odd. Some recordings are selling for under £4 including postage whereas you can find astonishing prices for stuff that is now hard to get. Over the last three years I have been plugging gaps in my collection and it is fascinating to consider when they were recorded in comparison with when you might surmise they were produced. One of the best buys recently was a re-issue of the Bob Brookmeyer disc "Traditionalism Re-visited" which was played regularly during the days of Humphrey Lyttleton's "Best of Jazz." It is an amazing record which looks back to the jazz of the past yet also points to the future and artists like Bill Frisell. The band includes Jimmy Guiffre and Jim Hall. It is a record which has an immediate appeal whilst standing up to scrutiny because there is so much music going on with standards like "Honeysuckle Rose" and "Don't be that way" stretched harmonically in a manner that was hugely radical for 1957. In many ways, the approach of these musicians is more radical than anything Blue Note put out until the mid 1960's. Blue Notes are fun but I am finding there was a lot more going outside of that label during it's heyday which was more interesting.

[Stanfordian]

'Buhaina's Delight'
Art Blakey with Freddie Hubbard, Curtis Fuller, Wayne Shorter, Cedar Walton & Jymie Merritt
Blue Note (1962)

Got out for later!