What Jazz are you listening to now?

Started by Gurn Blanston, June 12, 2015, 06:16:31 AM

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Green Destiny

Quote from: king ubu on January 20, 2016, 12:18:50 AM
"Soul Station" is one of my all-time favourites!

I can see why - im a few tracks in now and its brilliant so far! :)

king ubu

from that box, the same more or less also applies to:

Cannonball Adderley - Somethin' Else
Sonny Clark - Cool Struttin' (though I like "Leapin' and Lopin'" and "Sonny Clark Trio" even more ... and the trio album on Time is up there, too)
Art Blakey - Moanin'
Eric Dolphy - Out to Lunch
Grant Green - Idle Moments
Herbie Hancock - Maiden Voyage
Sonny Rollins - A Night at the Village Vanguard (hope it's both discs!?)
Horace Silver - Song for My Father



not far behind:

John Coltrane - Blue Train
Joe Henderson - Page One
Dexter Gordon - Go
Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder
Kenny Burrell - Midnight Blue


The Monk and Powell material (both volumes for each of 'em, and with Monk the Milt Jackson "Wizard of the Vibes" RVG disc as well!) belongs in every collection!


The Byrd is nice, and I guess a BN classic it is (and the cover's mighty cool, too!) - but not essential to my ears.
The Quebec is wonnerful indeed - but his big classic, I reckon, is "Blue and Sentimental", in a sparse setting with Grant Green on guitar and no piano.


The ones I don't mention aren't bad either ... but for Jimmy Smith and Hubbard, I'd have picked other albums, the Chambers and Donaldson ones could have been replaced by any number of real classics (or better ones by the same leaders, at least in Donaldson's case, but I'm not too big a fan of his)
Es wollt ein meydlein grasen gan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Und do die roten röslein stan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Fick mich mehr, du hast dein ehr.
Kannstu nit, ich wills dich lern.
Fick mich, lieber Peter!

http://ubus-notizen.blogspot.ch/

SimonNZ

^Once again: funny how these things work. I think the Byrd album is more essential than the Sonny Clarke one.

And Moanin' is a fine album, but I've never understood why it gets all the attention in the Blakey catalogue.

Made me want now to play one of my favorites:



Art Blakey - The Witch Doctor (1961)

king ubu

Quote from: SimonNZ on January 20, 2016, 01:16:53 AM
^Once again: funny how these things work. I think the Byrd album is more essential than the Sonny Clarke one.
obviously tastes do differ  :)

Quote from: SimonNZ on January 20, 2016, 01:16:53 AMAnd Moanin' is a fine album, but I've never understood why it gets all the attention in the Blakey catalogue.
I guess one stroing point is the line-up - Benny Golson is a wonderful musician and he hasn't made any other studio album with Blakey, plus he matches Lee Morgan perfectly well (the live recordings from Paris are great as well, I find - but I tend to like almost any classic Blakey album a lot, like 1954-1965 or so). Also, Golson has contributed a couple of true classic jazz tunes and some of them are to be heard on "Moanin'" in what might be their finest outings: "Are You Real", "Along Came Betty", and of course "Blues March". Plus you get arguably the best version of Bobby Timmons' title track.

Anyway, my top favourite Blakey album will I guess always be "Free for All"! And the Jazz Messengers at Cafe Bohemia aren't far behind! Neither are "Destructible!", "Buhaina", "Mosaic", the live albums with Morgan and Mobley ("At the Jazz Corner of the World", as opposed to the later, also fine "Meet You at the Jazz Corner of the World", which has the Morgan/Shorter line-up, which again produced several great studio albums). Blakey surely was on a roll in those years! Even the less famous years when he recorded for Columbia, RCA/VIK, Pacific Jazz, Atlantic and Bethlehem yielded some fine ones, notably the VIK "A Night in Tunisia" and the album with Thelonious Monk on Atlantic ... and of course the Columbia dedut is another stone classic, up there with the Cafe Bohemia volumes (although I prefer Kenny Dorham to Donald Byrd by quite a margin ... but he's terrific on those Columbia sessions!)
Es wollt ein meydlein grasen gan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Und do die roten röslein stan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Fick mich mehr, du hast dein ehr.
Kannstu nit, ich wills dich lern.
Fick mich, lieber Peter!

http://ubus-notizen.blogspot.ch/

NikF

Konitz meets Mulligan.

[asin]B000005H5N[/asin]

"You overestimate my power of attraction," he told her. "No, I don't," she replied sharply, "and neither do you".

SimonNZ



Donald Byrd - A New Perspective (1963)

Interesting replaying this now after making a comment about it last night. I still enjoy it, and admire Byrd here as elsewhere being ever unpredictable at a time when many other Blue Note artists were settling into a familiar format of blowing sessions. But the vocal parts which I remember being very gospel now sound one or two steps closer to something like the Swingle Singers (not that I mind that).

king ubu

Quote from: SimonNZ on January 20, 2016, 01:50:14 PM


Donald Byrd - A New Perspective (1963)

Interesting replaying this now after making a comment about it last night. I still enjoy it, and admire Byrd here as elsewhere being ever unpredictable at a time when many other Blue Note artists were settling into a familiar format of blowing sessions. But the vocal parts which I remember being very gospel now sound one or two steps closer to something like the Swingle Singers (not that I mind that).

Do you know the albums Max Roach and Andrew Hill made with voices? Both are titled "Lift Every Voice" - the Roach is on Atlantic, the Hill again on Blue Note, its Connoisseur Series reissue contained plenty of bonus material. Not generally too much of a fan of this kind of thing - guess I prefer the blowing session  ;) - but these are both interesting at least! Byrd followed up with a lesser effort, "I'm Tryin' to Get Home", I've got a recent Japanese reissue of it, it's fun but definitely inessential.

I had this on tonight:

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(actually only needed the Wood album from here, the others are on a superior release by Dutton Vocalion, though the tracklist for the Gonsalves/Ashby seems to differ a bit, but I'm too tired to investigate that right now)
Es wollt ein meydlein grasen gan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Und do die roten röslein stan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Fick mich mehr, du hast dein ehr.
Kannstu nit, ich wills dich lern.
Fick mich, lieber Peter!

http://ubus-notizen.blogspot.ch/

SimonNZ

Quote from: king ubu on January 20, 2016, 02:02:17 PM
Do you know the albums Max Roach and Andrew Hill made with voices? Both are titled "Lift Every Voice" - the Roach is on Atlantic, the Hill again on Blue Note, its Connoisseur Series reissue contained plenty of bonus material. Not generally too much of a fan of this kind of thing - guess I prefer the blowing session  ;) - but these are both interesting at least! Byrd followed up with a lesser effort, "I'm Tryin' to Get Home", I've got a recent Japanese reissue of it, it's fun but definitely inessential.


Heh. Nothing wrong with a good blowing session, of course - far from it. I recognise the Andrew Hill and must have heard it at some point, but can't remember it now. I'll try and find it for another listen. Ditto the Max Roach, which I haven't heard before. Thanks.

king ubu

Quote from: SimonNZ on January 20, 2016, 02:17:01 PM
Heh. Nothing wrong with a good blowing session, of course - far from it. I recognise the Andrew Hill and must have heard it at some point, but can't remember it now. I'll try and find it for another listen. Ditto the Max Roach, which I haven't heard before. Thanks.

Hill's best music is the earlier albums on Blue Note ... it was his own decision, initally, to hold back most of what he committed to disc for the label after 1967, and by comparison you can kind of hear why, though I'm eternally thankful to Michael Cuscuna for digging it all up and releasing it, with Hill's consent!

The w/voices sessions fall into that time period, too ... but really, I've yet to hear anything by Hill that doesn't give me anything to think about!

My commuting music last night and this morning consisted of this twofer with the unsung Baby Face Willette's two great Argo album (all four of his leader albums are great, "Face to Face" is in my organ top 3, I guess!):



Regarding "blowing sessions", of course one needs to differentiate ... there's blowing sessions (i.e. lots of what Prestige released) and there are well-planned, thought-out sessions that use the same "standard" line-up of hard bop times (t/ts frontline and three-piece rhythm, basically, sometimes as instead of ts, sometimes three horns with tb added or t/as/ts). Most Blue Note albums really couldn't be called "another blowing session".

But I have phases where I tire of hard bop, although it's my bread and butter, my musical home base, so which I keep returning.
Es wollt ein meydlein grasen gan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Und do die roten röslein stan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Fick mich mehr, du hast dein ehr.
Kannstu nit, ich wills dich lern.
Fick mich, lieber Peter!

http://ubus-notizen.blogspot.ch/

Green Destiny

Quote from: NikF on January 20, 2016, 07:31:15 AM
Konitz meets Mulligan.

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This one looks very appealing - thanks for posting it (may have to pick it up at some stage!) :)

Green Destiny


king ubu

Quote from: Green Destiny on January 21, 2016, 02:44:11 AM
This one looks very appealing - thanks for posting it (may have to pick it up at some stage!) :)

It's gorgeous! Actually all the recordings of the original Mulligan Quartet with Baker are wonderful. There was a two CD set in EMI/Capitol/Blue Note/Pacific Jazz' alas very short-lived "West Coast Classics" series, including all of Mulligan's earliest recordings (the first two sessions aren't yet starring the classic t/bari/b/d line-up). Then, there's a disc on GNP Crescendo, also including a great Mulligan tentet session (based on/inspired by the "Birth of the Cool" band, of which Mulligan had been a member of course), and there's a Fantasy disc coupling the Mulligan Quartet's sides with a Chubby Jackson album on which Mulligan is featured.

Alas, I guess all of these are OOP, but there are surely some PD reissues available - for reference, here they are (and do add the Konitz to the list, just though there's no need to mention that again as well):

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[asin]B000001OTM[/asin]
[asin]B000000YX1[/asin]
Es wollt ein meydlein grasen gan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Und do die roten röslein stan:
Fick mich, lieber Peter!
Fick mich mehr, du hast dein ehr.
Kannstu nit, ich wills dich lern.
Fick mich, lieber Peter!

http://ubus-notizen.blogspot.ch/

NikF

Our Man in Paris - Dexter Gordon.

[asin]B0000A5BSC[/asin]
"You overestimate my power of attraction," he told her. "No, I don't," she replied sharply, "and neither do you".

Green Destiny

Quote from: king ubu on January 21, 2016, 03:16:42 AM
It's gorgeous! Actually all the recordings of the original Mulligan Quartet with Baker are wonderful. There was a two CD set in EMI/Capitol/Blue Note/Pacific Jazz' alas very short-lived "West Coast Classics" series, including all of Mulligan's earliest recordings (the first two sessions aren't yet starring the classic t/bari/b/d line-up). Then, there's a disc on GNP Crescendo, also including a great Mulligan tentet session (based on/inspired by the "Birth of the Cool" band, of which Mulligan had been a member of course), and there's a Fantasy disc coupling the Mulligan Quartet's sides with a Chubby Jackson album on which Mulligan is featured.

Alas, I guess all of these are OOP, but there are surely some PD reissues available - for reference, here they are (and do add the Konitz to the list, just though there's no need to mention that again as well):

[asin]B000007TFR[/asin]
[asin]B000001OTM[/asin]
[asin]B000000YX1[/asin]

Thanks they look nice - maybe ill pick them or some other Mulligan up in future :)

Green Destiny

Now playing:



Later (just arrived today in the mail):




Green Destiny


Henk


Green Destiny


James

Action is the only truth

Henk

Quote from: Green Destiny on January 22, 2016, 11:29:07 AM
This is a good one! 8)

It sure is. A masterpiece by Mingus. Each track is a classic imo.