What Jazz are you listening to now?

[SimonNZ]

Hank Mobley - Hank (1957)
Sonny Sharrock - Black Woman (1969)

[San Antone]

Favorite Sonny:



A Night at the Village Vanguard
with Wilbur Ware and Elvin Jones

This live set is contains some of my favorite jazz performances, the fact that it is piano-less is a huge plus. 

[San Antone]

King Oliver - Call Of The Freaks: The Complete Victor Recordings Vol.1

Great stuff!

[SimonNZ]

Great stuff!

It is!

Playing the second volume now:





Thomas Chapin - Ride (2006)

[San Antone]

https://www.youtube.com/v/WIE6U6Lrtrc

Louis Armstrong - Stardust

I've been watching, once again, the Ken Burns documentary series on Jazz and wanted to share one of the many amazing (imo) things brought out.  Burns usually tries to tie in cultural issues like race in all of his films, and Jazz is rife with opprotunities.  What caught my attention last was a bit about a concert Arnstrong played in Austin and a student at the University of Texas who attended, not because he was a fan of Armstrong or jazz he had not heard either but because he thought there would be girls there.

Charlie Black heard Armstrong play and was struck by the genius of what he was doing, and which caused him to question what he had heard his entire life about how Blacks were "all right, in their place".  He began to wonder where was the place for this musician who could create this kind of music, and for his people.

Charlie Black went on to become Charles L. Black, distinquished professor of constitutional law at Yale University and a member of the team that built the legal argument in the case of Brown vs. the Board of Education before the Supreme Court, a legal victory which reversed decades of Jim Crow laws and practices.

[San Antone]

Complete Sextet Studio Sessions
Ben Webster | Harry Edison

[San Antone]

Duke Ellington : Carnegie Hall Concerts 1943 - 1947 | CD2: Jan. 1943, part 2

I don't understand complaints about the sound of these recordings; in my opinion they are fine, and the performances are great.  Having one of the few complete recordings of Black, Brown and Beige, alone, is worth the price.

[San Antone]

Dizzy Gillespie : The Verve / Philips Small Group Sessions

"Recorded from May, 1954 to April, 1964, these 132 small-group sides just might not have happened—except that like so many others, Dizzy Gillespie's big band had fallen on hard times by the early '50s. This seven-disc compilation is filled with signature classics such as "Salt Peanuts and "A Night In Tunisia, documenting the evolving artistry of John Birks Gillespie, a true jazz giant. As Donald L. Maggin observes in his detailed liner notes, "As a creator of the bebop and Afro-Cuban revolutions during the 1940s, he twice fundamentally changed the way jazz improvisation was done. It was as if Monet had been in the vanguard of both Impressionism and Cubism."

[NikF]

Ed Bickert: Bye Bye Baby

[Mirror Image]

Dizzy Gillespie : The Verve / Philips Small Group Sessions

"Recorded from May, 1954 to April, 1964, these 132 small-group sides just might not have happened—except that like so many others, Dizzy Gillespie's big band had fallen on hard times by the early '50s. This seven-disc compilation is filled with signature classics such as "Salt Peanuts and "A Night In Tunisia, documenting the evolving artistry of John Birks Gillespie, a true jazz giant. As Donald L. Maggin observes in his detailed liner notes, "As a creator of the bebop and Afro-Cuban revolutions during the 1940s, he twice fundamentally changed the way jazz improvisation was done. It was as if Monet had been in the vanguard of both Impressionism and Cubism."

I bought that set at Best Buy (of all places) for $21 and the reason I got it for that price was because obviously it was priced wrong (they weren't aware of the error thankfully). That was one of the best things I bought for $21 for a long time. Those Mosaic sets are not cheap (as you probably know all too well).

[San Antone]

Duke Ellington & Ray Brown : This One's for Blanton

[San Antone]

Nicholas Payton : Gumbo Nouveau
Personnel: Nicholas Payton (trumpet); Jesse Davis (alto saxophone); Tim Warfield (tenor saxophone); Anthony Wonsey (piano); Adonis Rose (drums).

"On his second Verve release, Payton interprets and modernizes ten songs associated with his hometown and/or Louis Armstrong. Fortunately, Payton generally retains the flavor and joy of the original versions, even while he transforms much of the music into hard bop."

[SimonNZ]

Chick Corea and Bela Fleck - The Enchantment (2007)


curiously similar cover to one of my favorite albums:

[George]

[SimonNZ]

Horace Tapscott - Songs Of The Unsung (1978)
Duke Ellington - Ellington 65 (1965)


and just now learning that Horace has an autobiography with that title:

[XB-70 Valkyrie]

Abbey Lincoln--probably the best version of "you must believe in spring" I've ever heard.

[SimonNZ]

Billy Strayhorn - Cue For Saxophone (1959)

[SimonNZ]

Count Basie - Blues By Basie (1944)

[HIPster]

Nik Bartsch's Ronin - Holon

[asin]B000ZWWRXG[/asin]

Totally dig David Fricke here ~

There were moments - long, magnetic spells, actually - during a recent set by Nik Bärtsch's Ronin at Joe's Pub in New York when the Swiss instrumental quintet seemed more like a double trio: two percussionists; a bassist and one band member exhaling low, sustained drones on bass clarinet and contrabass clarinet; and Bärtsch on both acoustic and electric piano, one hand on each, playing hypnotic overlapping riffs that were more pulse than melody. The music was a subtle, accelerating excitement, a trance-fusion melting of the '71 Pink Floyd, the '68 Grateful Dead and the rhythm armies in Miles Davis' electric bands - minus guitars and trumpet. There are no song titles on Ronin's latest album, Holon (ECM) or 2006's Stoa (ECM) - the tracks are numbered - because the colors, lift and flow in this fusion speak for themselves. -- David Fricke, Rolling Stone, April 03, 2008

[Alek Hidell]

I like Bärtsch's music a great deal. I believe he has called his style "Zen funk."

Anyway, I'm a bit behind! I've been reading the Brahms thread and now need to catch up with everything else. So here's the jass I've been attending to over the last few days:

     
       

There were some others too, I think, but that's enough images for one post.