What Jazz are you listening to now?

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"He's got the world on a string, string around his finger"....JRR upcoming: "My Kites gone now" - Miles High Davis and Gil Heavens. "How high the Kite c/w "Flying Home" -The Incredible String Band. Enough kitery, up up and away...

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

And...I've been listening to "Mexican Green" by El Tubbs, a record I'm proud to own but don't listen to that often. Still find it very good but maybe the title track is the weakest and the ballad, "A dedication to Joy (Marshall)", growing on me. But the sound? I had the original album and I thought it reverbed and compressed back then. Still do on the Universal reissue. It sounds like a BBC Jazz Club recording of the era. Would have been good to hear this band and material engineered by RVG. The Topic recordings (TinTin Deo etc) are a lot better.

[Stanfordian]

'Remembering Grant Green'
Grant Green with Wilbur Ware & Al Harewood
Blue Note (1961)

[Beef Oven!]

Ornette Coleman Trio - At The Golden Circle, Stockholm. Vol 1 (recorded live, 1965)

I also have Vol 2.

[Serial_Apologist]

And...I've been listening to "Mexican Green" by El Tubbs, a record I'm proud to own but don't listen to that often. Still find it very good but maybe the title track is the weakest and the ballad, "A dedication to Joy (Marshall)", growing on me. But the sound? I had the original album and I thought it reverbed and compressed back then. Still do on the Universal reissue. It sounds like a BBC Jazz Club recording of the era. Would have been good to hear this band and material engineered by RVG. The Topic recordings (TinTin Deo etc) are a lot better.

It is an oddly harsh, shouty and in-yer-face kind of recording, for all that one values having such a classic.

[Stanfordian]

‘Minor Move’
Tina Brooks with Sonny Clarke, Doug Watkins & Art Blakey
Blue Note (1961)

[Jazzrook]

Thelonious Monk's debut album for COLUMBIA, 'Monk's Dream' recorded in October/November, 1962 with Charlie Rouse, John Ore & Frankie Dunlop:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ub4V-j16lAk

JR

[Stanfordian]

‘Search for the New Land’
Lee Morgan with Wayne Shorter, Grant Green, Reggie Workman & Billy Higgins
Blue Note (1964)

Tonight's listening.

[Serial_Apologist]

Shanti Paul Jayasinha's Round Trip (2006)

Paul is one of the purest, least stylistically cluttered trumpet players on the scene. Having just checked his website I hadn't realised just how busy he keeps himself in, mainly, the world of Latin jazz, somewhat maligned on this forum, and he is married to the singer Clare Foster.

The above album is rather good, and features Patrick Clahar, a black tenor saxophonist from the Jazz Warriors' hinterland deserving of more attention; however, the cover, illustrated on the link below with a tiny fragment from one track, has to be one of the most embarrassing in all jazz history!

http://www.shantijazz.com/index.html

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Well, not the hippest! But for embarrassing try Shorty Rogers - "Shorty meets Tarzan" , Tarzan holding up Shorty plus trumpet waist high. SR wrote the music for a film remake of Tarzan the Ape Man, soon forgotten, but the music is actually OK. Tarzan goes West Coast exotica. Me Tarzan, him Frank Rosolino...

[Stanfordian]

‘Breezin’
Sonny Redd with Sonny Red, Yusef Lateef, Blue Mitchell, Barry Harris, Bob Cranshaw & Albert 'Tootie' Heath
Jazzland (1960)

Tonight's listening.

[Richard Barrett]

Cecil Taylor, Unit Structures (1966). What has always struck me about it isn't so much the "freedom" but the intricacy of the compositions, in fact how sometimes improvisation and pre-planning are so interwoven that you're constantly hearing gestures that seem to arise from one but are then revealed to arise from the other, which for me is an endlessly fascinating musical phenomenon.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

"The Seagulls of Kristiansund" (Soul Note,1986) Mal Waldron Quintet, (Mal, Woody Shaw, Charlie Rouse, Reggie Workman, Ed Blackwell), Live at the Village Vanguard.

Utterly extraordinary piece of music. Not a dirge, more a kind of melting sound landscape. With Seagulls. Wonderful.

[Ian Thumwood]

It was the second Winchester Jazz Festival this weekend but personnel circumstances made it difficult for me to get to and the free lunchtime gigs yesterday became impossible to get do because of the severe traffic getting in to town following the incident on the M3. Just got back from seeing the Belgarum Big Band perform at the Theatre Royal where they played a set largely based on charts written for Buddy Rich and Count Basie but also with an excellent Bob Florence arrangement thrown in and one of the Bob Curnow charts of a Pat Metheny tune too. I was really impressed with this band with the tenor soloist Paul Styles and altoist Lee Goodall the two standouts. This band is getting quite a bit of attention locally and play a wide range of material with the set concluding with a tune called "Discovery" by drummer Eric Harland. Shame that the incident on the M3 had an impact. The Ella tribute gig was sold out well in advance and the more contemporary stuff scattered around various pubs and restaurants around the town including the Railway Tavern which is the most well-known music venue in Winchester.

[Pianorak]

Just finished listening to 40 tracks of Ella. What an artist and actress, pitch perfect, miraculous legato lines and breath control (Jessye Norman?). Wonderful the way she improvises and negotiates key changes to simple, unobtrusive piano accompaniments.