Sonny Red ~ Out of the Blue

[Jazzrook]

Another neglected and hard to find BLUE NOTE classic from the underrated altoist Sylvester Kyner aka Sonny Red(1932-1981)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A8MRnwLado

[aka Calum Da Jazbo]

tasty album, the great Wynton K never fails us .... but the earth didn't move ...

[Ian Thumwood]

I have never heard of Sonny Red and wasn't aware of this album. Having nearly played my way through all of the Youtube album I think that this isn't a bad album by any stretch but the alto sounds like a mixture of Bird and Jackie McLean - small wonder that when I googled him these two names were mentioned as influences. There is also a lightness that recalls Lee Konitz, albeit this is very much standard Hard Bop fare.

It's funny how cultish Blue Note is and that an album like this can evoke enthusiasm on Youtube and Amazon whereas it would have been even more obscure had it been produced for another, less fashionable label. Whilst this is agreable music (with a good rhythm section) is quickly falls into the predictable kind of music that Blue Note churned out. Some of the track like "Stairways to the stars" don't sound together and the alto is not in time with the rest of the band. Some of the phrasing is stilted too. It's not a particularly good album and the alto playing is pretty mediocre although nicely recorded. I can listen to this kind of jazz very easily yet it is pretty formulaic.

Several years ago I went through a phase of acquiring a lot of Blue Note records on CD and have quite a nice collection. They are hugely addictable and are generally consistent. However, as you get older and wiser I have tended to be a little bit more critical and some groups seem interchangeable. I don't think that this style of record is quite so commercially viable nowadays. The appeal of this label is often nostalgic and fans tend to buy into the whole esthetic fad that surrounds Blue Note. This, to my thinking, often masks the fact that they did issue alot of repetitive and uninspiring records. A couple of records by artists like Hank Mobley or Horace Silver goes a long way for me and even when you listen to some old favourites such as Tina Brooks' "True Blue" I have been struck at how my perception of records was initially incorrect. (In this case, I'd forgotten just how much writing there is on this disc with the length of the melodies reducing the amount of improvisation.) More than any other jazz label, Blue Note carries a lot of nostalgic clout that I think clouds alot of people's artistic judgement.

Blue Note has produced some steallar recordings and, perhaps more than any other label, a roster of records that can rightly be considered a under-appreciated and neglected. It think it is also true that alot of the music it has issued, although whilst very fine, has perhaps been over-praised. A pleasant as the Sonny Red album is, I wouldn't swap it for any of the Jackie McLean records I have on that label.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Bluenote was a commercial record company with a core product and identity. That allowed it to innovate at the margins and in some cases, more centrally.

Look at the number of juke box 45s it put out directed at its black market...as in ethnicity! Andrew Hill floated on the surf of Freddie Roach, Jimmy Smith, Stan Turrentine, The Three Sounds et al.

Capitalism, Book 1.

BN.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

BTW, Bluenote was certainly more recently a collector cult but a cult with a now declining membership.

The final run of RVG reissues ended up with some v.good sessions selling as little as 350 copies. In America.

BN.

BUT...In S.wales, Cecil Taylor sold more units than Elvis.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

Final trust. I always thought it amusing etc. that the late Richard Cook should produce a cut and paste history of Bluenote with so little affinity and affection for its core artists and genre.

Surely not riding the cult wave?

BN.

[Ian Thumwood]

Bluesnik

I agree about Richard Cook's "Blue Note" book and wa hugely disappointed when I had finished it as it gace almost no insight into the core repertoire. Most of the attention was given to the creation of the label and to it's demise but it would have been interesting to learn about how the sessions were put together. I'm always intrigued at how representative the records were of these artists when they performed in clubs as the impression is that many of the Hard Bop sessions were not necessarily working groups. Whilst this isn't the case with the likes of Horace Silver, the Three Sounds, etc, it would have been fascinating to see if the likes of Mobley, Hubbard, etc produced the same style of jazz in a club setting. I've always had the impression that most of the line ups existed in the studio only in the fashion Armstrong's Hot 5's and 7's albeit I might be clutching at straws with this one.

[BLUESNIK'S REVOX]

What somewhat surprised me from later artist and leader interviews was their relative lack of control as to who Alfred chose to play on their dates....Hence Grant Green at one point shoved into every available opening.

BN.

And...before we attribute blame from our detached comfort, musicians taking a more popular route...I was talking to someone who knew John Patton and he was lucky to get two gigs in six months in the 70s.

They had families too.

BN.