John Coltrane: Blue Train


John Coltrane, artwork by Michael Symonds

John Coltrane was the most influential saxophonist to follow Charlie Parker. His work in the late 1950s served as a model for most aspiring (as well as many established) hard-bop tenorists. The up-tempo blues “Blue Train,” appearing on the only album Coltrane recorded for Blue Note, epitomizes the tenorist’s fully developed, pre-modal hard-bop approach. It displays his great intensity and features the dizzying scalar passages that came to be called “sheets of sound.” In their own improvisations, Coltrane’s stellar colleagues illustrate their instruments' roles in the hard-bop style.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Ran Blake: Wende

Jazz's unaccompanied piano tradition goes back to Scott Joplin and Jelly Roll Morton. At the other end of this tradition, following such modernists as Monk and Cecil Taylor, sits Ran Blake. To appreciate Blake, however, we must also reckon with mid-20th century European composers Messiaen and Boulez, whose music, explained their colleague Stockhausen, "consists of separately formed particles." The aggressively propelled particles of "Wende" ricochet around Ran Blake's acoustical accelerator with the exuberance of subatomic bumper cars, showing how thoroughly he has internalized post-Schoenberg serialism. If you've ever wondered what jazz pointillism might sound like (and who hasn't?), here 'tis.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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David Baker: Calypso (from Sonata for Jazz Violin and String Quartet)

About the time African-Americans originated jazz, Afro-Caribbean musicians invented calypso, likewise testing the limits of free expression in a segregated society. David Baker's "Calypso" (1987) features violinist Diane Monroe, whose jazz bona fides are longstanding. More surprisingly is the jazz facility of four University of Oregon School of Music faculty members, in particular Steven Pologe, strumming his cello with the élan of a Trinidadian street guitarist at Carnival. Whether Baker—himself a cellist and former jazzman—has improved conventional notation, or classical string players have newly developed jazz chops, the result is an uplifting celebration of music as universal language.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Yusef Lateef: Transmutation

In the context of Yusef Lateef's African-American Epic Suite, "Transmutation" refers to the metamorphosis of blacks abducted to the New World. No longer Africans, never to be fully accepted as Americans, they become an uneasy hybrid: African Americans. Third Stream seems readymade for such drama, being neither European classical nor American jazz, but their amalgamation. Lateef emphasizes this cultural disparity by pitting "primitive" instruments, including drums, whistles and conch shells, against a more "sophisticated" German symphony orchestra, with stunning effect. Like the bowels of a slave ship, this music is not for the fainthearted. It is provocative, disquieting and powerfully moving.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Turtle Island String Quartet: Blue Rondo à la Turk

Merely referencing Mozart's "Rondo Alla Turca" didn't make Dave Brubeck's "Blue Rondo à la Turk" (1959) Third Stream. Instead of combining jazz and classical elements, "Blue Rondo" simply wedged 4/4 blues solos between a bravura 9/8 enclosure. Recognizing that a sandwich is not a salad, the TISQ here mixes ingredients much more tastily. The piece's overall form is unchanged, but when played by string quartet instead of jazz quartet, time-signature shifts are less abrupt, more organic. Third Stream boosters have long dreamt that string players would someday learn to swing. Turtle Island à la Turk is our dream come true.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Glenn Miller: Bluebirds in the Moonlight

Although "Bluebirds in the Moonlight" scoffs at its own title as a silly idea, some bluebirds are early risers, singing a predawn moonlight serenade. What is silly, though, is that five weeks after Nazi Germany started World War II, Americans were (judging from this recording) going about their daily lives as if nothing had changed. This track isn't great jazz, but it's a revealing snapshot. The boogie-woogie piano intro, sweet sax section, punctuating trombones, rousing trumpets and winsome female songbird trilling empty-headed lyrics to a cheerful tune at an agreeable tempo—this innocent formula was so appealing it carried us to Hiroshima in the daylight.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Frank Wess: Low Life

Six months to the day after these same musicians (except Burrell and Thigpen) recorded "Low Life" with Count Basie's big band, they reconvened for this sextet version featuring Frank Wess's flute, which had become emblematic of Basie's New Testament band. Not surprisingly, Basie's busmen on holiday remain very much in Count's bag. After all, any track on which Freddie Green plays rhythm guitar is going to sound like Basie. Hell, if Freddie had recorded Beethoven's Ninth with the New York Philharmonic, we'd expect Leonard Bernstein to exclaim "One more time!" at the finale à la Basie's "April in Paris."

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Yusef Lateef: Playful Flute

"Mohammedan leanings are shown by many bebop musicians," Life magazine reported in 1948 at the height of a short-lived bop craze. Among the first-generation boppers who embraced Islam during that period was Yusef Lateef. We mention this because, far from being the evidence of kookiness that Life implied, Lateef's spirituality has thoroughly informed his music. Exotic modes and unusual instruments reflect Lateef's unquenchable cross-cultural curiosity. Here, from opening trills to climactic passages of simultaneous humming and playing, Lateef ranges from Africa to the Amazon by way of the Middle East. A fascinating 4-minute excursion by a unique musical explorer.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Herbie Mann & Buddy Collette: Give a Little Whistle

Disney's animated morality play Pinocchio (1940) depicts a puppet's quest to become human by resisting corruption. "And if you start to slide," he's advised, "Give a little whistle! And always let your conscience be your guide." Too bad the movie wasn't required childhood viewing for future Enron, Adelphia and WorldCom executives, who might've subsequently avoided having whistles blown on them. These five jazzmen, though, must've had front-row seats. Their integrity is impeccable. As for who's who, Buddy's on the left channel; Herbie's to the right; and that little whistle you hear is Collette's peeping piccolo. Jiminy Cricket, this swings!

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Nat King Cole: The Christmas Song

Partridges, as ground-nesting seedeaters, have no business in pear trees, unless they're waiting for said fruit to fall and yield its seed. Or maybe they're hanging out for acoustical purposes, to amplify the marginal snickering that passes for partridge birdsong. Certainly they can't compete as singers with Nat King Cole—who could? As for "The Christmas Song," Rudy Reindeer prefers Nat's first recording, despite its being long shelved in favor of remakes with syrupy strings. In any form, though, it's the coolest possible yuletide greeting, with Jack Frost nipping at your nose and partridges dressed like Eskimos in pear trees.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Mose Allison: Your Mind Is on Vacation

In the culture-clash of jazz and psychiatry, shrinks have gotten short shrift. Mose Allison, however, plays Devil's advocate, enacting the role of long-suffering clinician who's endured more bellyaching than even the highly compensated can tolerate. "You're sittin' there yakkin' in my face," declares Dr. Allison at wit's end. "I guess I'm gonna have to put you in your place." Technically called counter-resistance, this can seriously impair the doctor-patient relationship. But when delivered with Mose Allison's Laid-back Sage of the Mississippi Delta aplomb and set to his funky down-home piano, such in-your-face attitude is delectably therapeutic.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Charles Mingus: All the Things You Could Be By Now If Sigmund Freud's Wife Was Your Mother

"All of us who stay sane," reflected Charles Mingus after seeking treatment at Bellevue and being locked up for his naïveté, "stay inside our own cages all the time." Mingus spent years in analysis and even had his psychotherapist write liner notes for The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady discussing client C.M.'s "recurrent themes of loneliness, separateness and tearful depression." Here, Mingus's 1960 quartet with the brilliant Ted Curson and ever-astonishing Eric Dolphy deconstructs a series of Chinese boxes devised by the leader to challenge musicians and listeners alike. Mingus could no more be caged than King Kong.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Susannah McCorkle: I Don't Think I'll End It All Today

After Billie Holliday pondered joining a dead lover in "Gloomy Sunday" (1941), an urban legend spread about melancholic listeners offing themselves. Since then, whenever other jazz singers have musically contemplated suicide, they've been more optimistic, as in this upbeat calypso first sung by Lena Horne in Broadway's Jamaica (1957), which cites "the world and its wonders" as reasons enough to stay alive. Susannah McCorkle's performance is thoroughly convincing. When she sings, "So many sweet dreams still to unfold," you hear hope in her voice. Seven years later, that hope was gone. A depressed McCorkle killed herself at 55. So many sweet dreams still to unfold.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Alberta Hunter: My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More

Ain't it just like a woman? At the peak of her 1970s comeback, 83-year-old blues doyen Alberta Hunter catalogs the virtues of her hardworking handyman, who is, by Miss Hunter's account, as dedicated as he is versatile. Up before dawn, he slaves in the kitchen, making her breakfast and cleaning up after himself. Why, he's even an accomplished musician, stroking her fiddle to the octogenarian's delight. Best of all, he never utters a word. Who says you can't find good help nowadays? Yet what does Miss Hunter conclude? "My Handy Man Ain't Handy No More." We men can't win for losing!

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Monty Alexander: The Serpent

For all their differences, one thing the world's religions share is the mythological Serpent. Here, Monty Alexander offers his take on that much-maligned creature. Growing up in Jamaica exposed Alexander to both Christian and Obeah (West Indian black magic) serpent symbolism, and this piano/drum duet is suitably slithery. Reminding us with a raking left-hand ostinato that snakes move with lightning swiftness, Alexander relentlessly pursues the elusive Serpent with his viperous right hand, until at last engaging it at Armageddon. We won't give away the ending, but it's a thrilling chase.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Brad Mehldau: Alfie

One of the curses of jazz pianists is that they are forced to share their repertoire with cocktail lounge tinklers and elevator Muzak maestros. Some jazz musicians are so dismayed by this state of affairs that they refuse to play many of the best-known standards -- especially those composed after 1960 when hip chord changes became an endangered species. Most of them would rather work through Czerny backwards or play Hanon with mittens on before tainting their fingers with Bacharach or the Beatles. But Brad Mehldau plunges bravely into the world of pop tunes, playing more Bacharach than Bird, more McCartney than Monk. But he puts these songs through an exemplary purification rite, stripping them of the vapid flourishes and empty gestures that your local bar piano man might employ. The end result is a pristine "Alfie," beautiful in its starkness, and without any excessive sentimentality. This, my friends, is harder than playing "Cherokee" in all twelve keys. Ballard's brushwork is sublime, and Grenadier's time as reliable as a Patek Phillipe watch.

November 30, 2007 · 0 comments

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Brad Mehldau: Los Angeles II

Brad Mehldau refuses to dumb it down for his audience. And I'm not talking about his references to Richard Rorty and Schopenhauer in the liner notes to this CD. Well, I am talking about them, but also about the music. "Los Angeles II" is as busy as the second runway at LAX -- perhaps that was where it was written -- but every note carries its full weight. Mehldau crafts a musical perpetual motion machine marked by rapidly evolving left-hand textures, dramatic variety in the harmonic structure, and a melody that starts out as a simple yearning motif but soon spirals into brave new patterns. Mehldau's right and left hands play a beguiling cat-and-mouse game, in which the bass always seems ready to pounce on the treble. A very intelligent composition played with the mastery we have come to expect from this extraordinary musician.

November 29, 2007 · 0 comments

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Ron Carter: My Funny Valentine

How many different ways can a bass player handle a ballad in 4/4 time? Listen to this track and you will find Ron Carter demonstrating most of them. Scott plays admirably, but Carter steals the show with his feints and jabs, and the sheer creativity of his lines. More than one thousand jazz versions of "My Funny Valentine" have been recorded over the years -- including a classic Miles Davis performance at Lincoln Center in 1964 with Ron Carter in the band. But this new-millennium ensemble ignores the weight of history, and dishes out a fresh performance that both brings the standard up to date but also respects the mood of the Richard Rodgers original.

November 29, 2007 · 1 comment

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Miles Davis: Summer Night

This is a hidden gem in the Miles Davis discography, a dark and moody ballad performance that got lost in the shuffle -- inserted as an extra track to fill up some space on Quiet Nights, the least well known of the Miles Davis - Gil Evans LPs. But "Summer Night" deserves a prominent place on any list of Davis's most emotionally charged performances. Here Miles returns to the ethos of King Oliver and Bubber Miley, pioneers who showed back in the 1920s that the quality of sound is always more important than the quantity of notes. This is also my favorite Victor Feldman performance. He makes every note, every chord, every pause count for maximum effect. "I wanted [Feldman] to join the band," Davis later wrote in his autobiography, "but he was making a fortune playing studio work in LA. I came back to New York looking for a piano player. I found him in Herbie Hancock." So Davis heads off into the sunset with his great mid-1960s band, and Feldman mixes it up with Steely Dan, James Taylor and Joni Mitchell. But this moment when their paths intersected left us this classic performance.

November 29, 2007 · 0 comments

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Ron Carter: Seven Steps to Heaven

Victor Feldman's stint with Miles Davis was little more than a one-night stand (although his ballad accompaniment on "Summer Night" serves as lasting testimony to their chemistry). Feldman preferred the security of studio work (bad decision) to the Davis school of jazz, but he left behind his most famous composition, "Seven Steps to Heaven." When Miles recorded it with his new band -- some fellas named Herbie, Ron and Tony -- he made jazz history. Forty-three years later, Ron Carter leads a new generation of jazz players on this proven seven-step program. Hot band and a smartly played arrangement full of surprises. The call-and-response between hard swing and Latin percussion is especially effective. Listeners should compare with the original version from the Age of Camelot to get the full effect.

November 29, 2007 · 0 comments

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Miles Davis: Seven Steps to Heaven


Miles Davis, artwork by Michael Symonds

When Miles Davis added Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter and Tony Williams to his band in 1963, they were far from household names, and not even widely known in the jazz world. But even on this debut recording, you can tell that Miles had found another dynamite rhythm section, one destined to influence the later evolution of jazz combo playing. Hancock plays with absolute authority from the intro to the final coda. And Carter moves this piece through the paces like a jockey heading for the finish line at Churchill Downs. And could it possibly be true that drummer Tony Williams was only seventeen years old when he made this recording? He might have been too young to register for the draft (not a bad thing in '63), but his drum breaks sound like they could lead a regiment of hipsters into hard-bop hand-to-hand combat. Where does Miles find 'em? Can't say. But where does he lead 'em? Easy, right up the seven steps to jazz heaven.

November 29, 2007 · 0 comments

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Sun Ra: Medicine for a Nightmare

During a mid-1950s concert for mental patients at a Chicago hospital, a chronic catatonic rose from the floor, made her way to the piano player and uttered her first words in years. "Do you call that music?" It was a fair question. No stranger to disbelief, pianist Sun Ra had visited Saturn as a teenager, and later renamed himself after the Egyptian sun-god, Ra of Heliopolis. (Well, why not aim high?) With a keyboard technique reminiscent of Imhotep wielding mummified fingers, Sun Ra doesn’t tickle the ivories so much as scuffle with them. His sidemen are fine, but Sun Ra is more nightmarish than medicinal.

November 29, 2007 · 5 comments

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Chet Baker: But Not For Me

The late Richard Bock, who produced this recording (and so many other classic West Coast jazz sessions) once confided to me that Chet Baker, in his opinion, played his very best trumpet on this debut session as a vocalist. It's hard to disagree. Not since Lester Young accompanied Billie Holiday had a jazz soloist managed to add such melodically succinct interludes to a vocal date. And those who have only heard Chet Baker sing on records made late in his career need to go back to this 1954 date to experience the magic of this music. One of the great moments for jazz on the dream coast.

November 29, 2007 · 0 comments

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Joshua Redman: My One and Only Love

Sinatra's 1953 recording established this song as a pop standard, and Coltrane's version with Johnny Hartman enshrined it as a much cherished tenor sax ballad. Since then, everyone from Michael Brecker to Sonny Rollins has shown off their chops on these changes. Big shoes to fill, but Redman makes his mark on this exceptional performance, captured live at the Village Vanguard in 1995. He has the audience ooh-ing and ah-ing from his very first phrase, and keeps them mesmerized until the conclusion of his tour de force coda. So many great saxophone performances have graced the Village Vanguard over the years, but this still has to be among the very best.

November 29, 2007 · 0 comments

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Chet Baker: Stella by Starlight (Tokyo 1987)

Some people will tell you Chet Baker never could do much on the trumpet. David Thomson, in one of the most wrongheaded reviews I have ever read, proclaimed "Baker, in my view, could not play jazz, and did not play it." Others will begrudgingly admit that Baker made some good records, but soon destroyed his talent with drugs and fast living. But here is a live recording made less than a year before Baker's death -- at a Tokyo date much prized by Baker-o-philes -- that finds the trumpeter improvising with unbridled creativity. Baker's preternatural ear always guided him to the right notes, the interesting phrases, the clever cadences. Here he takes an oblique pass at the melody, and then digs in deeper and deeper with each passing chorus. No trumpeter was better skilled at solving that age-old jazz problem: namely how to create new melodies for old chord changes. And this talent remained, even while Baker's good looks and health faded. Chet did not play jazz? Check out the record, and then you make the call

November 29, 2007 · 0 comments

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Woody Herman (featuring Sonny Berman): Sidewalks of Cuba

Sonny Berman was on the road as a jazz trumpeter at age sixteen and dead from a heroin overdose at 22. He worked with many of the Swing Era greats -- Benny Goodman, Harry James and Woody Herman -- but was deeply immersed in the bebop vocabulary, which he played with fluency and dramatic flair. Berman possessed tremendous expressive range on the trumpet, able to belt out big, brassy lines or coo gently with a mute in hand. He starts out his solo on "Sidewalks of Cuba" with a bravura quote from "Flight of the Bumblebee," and proceeds to show off his melodic inventiveness and full-bodied trumpet tone. Had he lived longer, Berman would have been a major figure during the 1950s and after. As it stands, only a handful of recordings testify to his greatness.

November 28, 2007 · 0 comments

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Kenny G: Summertime

No surprises in this smooth jazz version of the Gershwin standard. Kenny G keeps fairly close to the sheet music chord changes, and relies on a tinkly piano background floating in a heavenly cloud of pseudo- strings. Mr. G. gets in a few good sax licks, but his solo is little more than an embellishment of the melody. George Benson makes a very brief cameo appearance, but doesn't even stay around for a solo. If this is summertime, I can hardly wait for school to start.

November 28, 2007 · 0 comments

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Joshua Redman (featuring Brad Mehldau): Summertime

Summertime . . . and the fish are jumpin' in 5/4 time. From Sidney Bechet to Kenny G, saxophonists have delighted in rebuilding Gershwin's plaintive lullaby into various jazz configurations. But this is perhaps the most ambitious transformation I have yet heard of the popular standard. Mehldau has proven in other settings how skilled he is at unusual time signatures, and this recording is no exception. Check out the close of his solo where he quotes Gershwin's melody in the lower register, while pushing an insistent figure in the treble -- a great example of jazz multitasking. And Redman shows once again why he is considered one of the best soloists on the current scene. Grenadier and Blade also shine.

November 28, 2007 · 0 comments

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Charlie Byrd, Herb Ellis & Barney Kessel: Lover

Without resorting to the manic metronome marking of quarter note = 5280 that for "Lover" had become de rigueur, this track swings quite nicely, thank you. What makes convocations of mature jazzmen consistently joyful is how complementary, not competitive they are. Whether soloing—in order: Herb, Charlie (acoustic) and Barney—or engaging in a delightful 3-guitar ensemble, the immodestly but accurately billed Great Guitars sum up earlier "Lovers," especially Les Paul's 1948 forerunner, while making their own distinctive contribution. It may have taken 35 years of recorded jazz "Lovers" to find just the right groove, but, hey, better Great than never!

November 28, 2007 · 0 comments

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Herbie Hancock: Dolphin Dance

I marvel not just at the quality, but also at the impressive range of Hancock's work for the Blue Note label during the 1960s, which delved into everything from soul jazz to the avant-garde. And at the midpoint of the decade, Hancock offered up his now classic Maiden Voyage album, featuring a world-class band (essentially the Miles Davis Quintet with Freddie Hubbard stepping in for Miles) and some of the finest writing of his career. "Dolphin Dance" is my favorite Hancock composition, an impressionistic mood piece with very creative chord changes. He settles in at a difficult tempo, just a little too fast for a ballad, but not fast enough to swing the rhythm. Many other jazz ensembles falter at these betwixt and between tempos, but Hancock and cohorts float effortlessly like . . . well, I imagine, like dolphins at a dance. The pianist was now working with textures of sound rather than recycling the typical modern jazz harmonies. The ultimate hard-bop pianist was showing that he could move far beyond the confines of the genre. He might have spent another decade mining this rich vein of material, evolving into the Ravel or Debussy of jazz. But for Herbie Hancock this was just one more stopping point on a restless journey toward the next new thing.

November 28, 2007 · 0 comments

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Herbie Hancock: Watermelon Man (from Head Hunters, 1973)

Always dangerous to try to remake a classic. You can't just turn Citizen Kane into an story about an Internet media tycoon or make Moby Dick into a reality show. But every once in a while, an old masterpiece gets a fresh, invigorating take. Here Herbie Hancock reconfigures his 1962 hard-bop hit "Watermelon Man" into a 1973 fusion tune. Bill Summers' brilliant work on percussion (including a very cool imitation of the African hindewhu achieved by blowing into a beer bottle) is worth the price of admission alone. And Hancock gets high marks for the daring step of bringing the tempo down several notches from his Blue Note version, proving that slow-mo can be funkier than fast-forward. And when it's all done, put it on replay to hear that Summers intro one more time. Here is fusion that really fuses, drawing on African, Caribbean and jazz traditions, and mixing them into a cross-cultural gumbo.

November 28, 2007 · 0 comments

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Herbie Hancock (with Corinne Bailey Rae): River

I love jazz and I love Joni . . . but I get nervous when they are mixed together. Joni Mitchell's idiosyncratic delivery is already so jazzy, that it is hard enough just singing it straight. Trying to jazz up these songs further is like adding more cayenne pepper to grandma's prizewinning chili. As I have always said, nobody sings Joni better than the diva herself. But Corinne Bailey Rae makes me reconsider. This is the best version of "River" I've heard since that rude classmate drew a mustache on the cover of my Blue LP back in the Nixon era. Rae sings with sweet, almost girlish forthrightness, and just the right touch of melancholy. Hancock, Shorter, Holland and Colaiuta provide thoughtful accompaniment (albeit in a different studio on another continent) for a richly layered performance in which every phrase and micro-rhythm is perfectly placed.

November 28, 2007 · 1 comment

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Harry 'Sweets' Edison: Sophisticated Lady

You may associate Edison with the invention of the light bulb, but fans of the American popular song prefer to remember another Edison, namely the trumpeter whose tasty brass stylings adorned those timeless Sinatra recordings. Singers always loved Sweets, and his trumpet work weaves in and out of other classic recordings by Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Sarah Vaughan. No surprise here … Harry 'Sweets' Edison played the trumpet the way great vocalists sing. He builds his solos in breathy, conversational phrases, telling a story along the way. This intimate trumpet and piano duet on an Ellington standard gives Edison room to work his magic. Sweets is bittersweet here, and every note contributes towards creating a rich aural mood. By all means, enjoy him behind the great American singers, but also hear what he could do when he stood out as the star of the show.

November 28, 2007 · 0 comments

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Roberta Gambarini: Lover Come Back to Me

The spirit of Ella lives! Gambarini shows off her considerable vocal skills on this rapid-fire version of the Sigmund Romberg standard. And not the slightest telltale accent betrays the Italian origins of this up-and-coming vocalist, who first made her name working in Milan clubs during her late teens. A tendency to be too slick may be Gambarini’s only limitation – the mood is so upbeat that it’s hard to imagine that she is singing a lament about a lost lover here. But her scat-singing is impressive and her phrasing impeccable.

November 28, 2007 · 0 comments

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Al Cohn & Zoot Sims: Lover Come Back to Me


                  Zoot Sims at Birdland
                  Photo by Marcel Fleiss

 Al Cohn and Zoot Sims may have gone to that great tenor battle in the sky, but at least they live on at their own MySpace page. (However, I must admit that I am afraid of clicking the link on that page which sends an email message to Al and Zoot. I prefer to use a Ouija board, not cyberspace, to contact the great horn players from the golden years.) Face the facts, email and text messaging are not the way to enjoy these tenor titans. Better to mix a stiff drink, and kick back listening to the knights in shining Selmers joust over the changes to "Lover Come Back to Me." Cohn takes the first two solo choruses, and Zoot digs in for three, and of course they save some special treats for the four-bar question-and-answer period. And here's an unexpected treat: Mose Allison serves as referee on the eighty-eight keys. Who wins this duel? The listener, of course.

November 27, 2007 · 0 comments

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Herbie Hancock (featuring John Mayer): Stitched Up

Sometimes these pop-star-meets-jazzcat dream dates go bad before the appetizers are on the table. But Mayer is not your typical pop star, and Hancock knows how to cross over without losing his balance. It helps that the song is hot, with an irresistible dance beat on the refrain. Hancock deserves a lot of credit for the groove, digging in with that acoustic funk sound he pioneered back in his Blue Note days, but the rest of the band is also in the pocket. Steve Jordan may be a rock-pop drummer, but he could teach jazz snobs how to lay down a beat. And Mayer sings with the white Motown soulfulness he pioneered on that crazy Continuum release -- yeah, you know, that disk that looked like ECM on the cover but sounded like Marvin Gaye when you popped in into the CD player. Hey guys, how about a second date?

November 27, 2007 · 0 comments

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Keith Jarrett: Oleo

This trio continues to amaze. Think about all of the versions of “Oleo” out there. It would seem that all of the song's creative juice had long since dried up. The reality is that the musical lubrication is provided by the band. As usual, Gary Peacock and Jack DeJohnette fly through the changes, giving Jarrett ample room to spin off runs in all directions. These guys may have played this tune many times before, but the freshness of their ideas really shows: check out the solo measures traded back and forth as the song reaches its climax. Really fun stuff.

November 27, 2007 · 0 comments

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Stanley Clarke: The Toys of Men

Do you remember Fusion before it was tagged with the “F-word” label? Had that particular branding already occurred before Return To Forever came onto the scene? Clocking in at a little over eleven minutes, “Toys of Men” brings back all of the features that made listeners love (or hate!) the 'Fusion Era' – shifting time signatures, blistering melodic runs (including some unison insanity between Clarke and violinist Mads Tolling), wordless vocals, muscular drumming. And oh yes, it's a multipart suite. That construct seemed to raise the “pretentious flag” back in the day. In this case, Clarke's masterful weave of the composition's theme through each subsection gives a very cohesive feeling. Pretentious? Who cares?!!

November 27, 2007 · 2 comments

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Matthew Shipp: Piano Vortex

On many (most?) Thirsty Ear recordings, technology plays the part of an extra band member. This record provides a fresh counterexample to the rule. Morris and Dickey lock in to a very subtle groove that Shipp uses as fuel (or maybe fulcrum) for his launch into some very percussive and angular solo passages. I'm somehow reminded of both Chick Corea and Cecil Taylor, and yet this music sound nothing like either artist. As Shipp takes things more and more out, Dickey and Morris work hard both to reign in and add to the chaos. It's a great structural trick that deserves repeated listenings.

November 27, 2007 · 0 comments

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Jacky Terrasson: You've Got a Friend

Jacky Terrasson adds to the jazz tradition of exploring the harmonic possibilities inherent in popular music. To be honest, I didn't have high hopes for this particular Mirror entry, mostly because it seemed to my ears that James Taylor and Carole King had wrung all of the juice out of it. Wrong. Terrasson comes at it from a very different angle, the left hand alternating between simple arpeggios and two-note ostinatos while extracting every pensive and romantic subtlety lurking in that famous melody.

November 27, 2007 · 0 comments

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Groundtruther: Warsaw Radio Mast

Groundtruther takes as source material music that would be considered “modern” in the same sense that electric Miles was “modern,” and gives it the funhouse-mirror treatment. While there are some familiar remnants, such as the loping funk of Charlie Hunter's basslines and the skittish swagger of Bobby Previte's kit, the overall vibe can sink into a gauzy layer of abstraction. Hey, I mean that in a good way. Just as it's funny that you appear to be four feet wide in that wiggly mirror, it's entertaining to hear John Medeski's oddball keyboard figures slowly devolve into signals from outer space.

November 27, 2007 · 0 comments

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Dewey Redman: Thren

I fell in love with Dewey Redman's big, open sound after hearing his work on Pat Metheny's 80/81. Going back in musical time, I then discovered the Ornette connection. This track, from the recent first-time-on-CD release of The Struggle Continues, finds Redman wielding that expressive sound while being supported beautifully by the uber-swinging bass of Mark Helias and the always nuanced drumming of Ed Blackwell. Redman's history is very apparent here, with the sideways departures of melody and that bluesy sound echoing all the way back to his Ornette years.

November 27, 2007 · 0 comments

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Carla Bley: Ad Infinitum

Here we have a Carla Bley composition being given its third context. “Ad Infinitum” first appeared on her essential, large ensemble LP, Dinner Music. Years later, Bley and Steve Swallow took a far different approach on their duet record Go Together. With Italian trumpeter Paolo Fresu brought into the Lost Chords fold, it sounds like saxophone player Andy Sheppard may have discovered a long-lost jazz brother. Sheppard takes a long, dynamic solo just past the song's midpoint that leads into some incredibly nuanced phrase trading between Sheppard and Fresu. Yes, the Lost Chords have definitely found something here.

November 27, 2007 · 0 comments

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Bennie Maupin: Ensenada

For some reason, the idea of a “tone poem” has always bothered me. It seemed like one of those pretentious, reviewer phrases only used to describe formless music. Now, I've got to take it all back as that description is perfect for Bennie Maupin's “Ensenada” (from the recently reissued, long out-of-print The Jewel in the Lotus). A theme slowly unfolds via Maupin's flute, and progression is marked by the subtle fan-out of percussion, marimba, glockenspiel and piano. Of course there's plenty of form here, so I was wrong about that too.

November 27, 2007 · 0 comments

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Don Ellis: Indian Lady

Since his death in 1978 at age 45, trumpeter Don Ellis has fallen off the radar screens of most jazz listeners. But in 1967, Ellis had the most innovative big band on the planet. The liner notes called the Electric Bath LP an "aural collage made up of the Beatles, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ravi Shankar and Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz." That's a scary claim, and maybe a bit much to substantiate, but Ellis was clearly pushing at the limits of the big band vocabulary with the exotic textures and driving 5/4 beat of "Indian Lady." Ellis had immersed himself in avant-garde and mainstream jazz traditions, and dug deeply into "World Music" before it became fashionable. He published an influential article on Indian music two years before Electric Bath, and studied with Hari Har Rao while doing graduate work in ethno- musicology at UCLA. These experiences married to his strong mastery of the trumpet ensured that Ellis not only could lead a hot band, but would also stand out as its star soloist. Check out "Indian Lady" and find out why this unfairly forgotten release garnered a Grammy nomination and an "Album of the Year" award from Down Beat back in the day.

November 27, 2007 · 1 comment

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Herbie Hancock: Hidden Shadows

Before he got the fusion formula right with Headhunters, Hancock tested the crossover waters with his Mwandishi ensemble, a high-energy funk band that caused the lights to dim every time it plugged in its large arsenal of electronic equipment. But the groove on "Hidden Shadows," from the Sextant LP, is not strong enough to sustain the 10-minute performance. The multilayered sound swallows up the soloists, and the monotonous bassline needs a stronger hook if it wants to catch some fish. Hancock was funkier on his acoustic outings "Watermelon Man" and "Cantaloupe Island" and on his fusion hit "Chameleon."

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Supersax: Ko-Ko

In 1947, an awestruck fanatic named Dean Benedetti followed Charlie Parker from gig to gig, setting up amateur recording equipment to capture every note—but, since discs and tapes were costly whereas Dean was poor, only Bird's notes; Dean shut off his recorder whenever others soloed. Thirty years later, Med Flory exhibited similar demented hero worship by arranging Bird's transcribed solos for full sax section, which he and his buddies nailed to a note-for-note tee. While this may seem like the devotional excess only lunatics could love, it's actually a joy even for relatively sane jazz listeners. "Ko-Ko" is loco but magnífico.

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Duke Ellington (featuring Bubber Miley): The Mooche

Duke Ellington once described Bubber Miley as "the epitome of soul and a master of the plunger mute." In time, Miley's alcohol abuse and unreliability would lead to his departure from the Ellington band, and he was dead from tuberculosis before his thirtieth birthday. But no one, apart from Duke himself, did more than Miley to shape the early Ellington sound. His incomparable mute work helped transform "The Mooche," "East St. Louis Toodle-oo" and "Black and Tan Fantasy" into classic statements of the jazz idiom. In an era in which jazz was increasingly focusing on virtuoso soloists, Miley remained true to King Oliver's philosophy that emphasized the quality of sound rather than the multiplicity of notes. With his arsenal of bends, moans, whimpers and growls, Miley could turn even the simplest melody into a deeply personal statement. Ellington, who always knew how to write to his band members' strengths, contributes one of his finest compositions of the decade.

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Herbie Hancock: Cantaloupe Island

This is one of the funkiest acoustic jazz performances of the era, ranking with those other Blue Note classics, Lee Morgan's "The Sidewinder," Art Blakey's "Moanin'" and Hancock's own previous entry in the slam-funk competition, "Watermelon Man." The largely static harmonies impart a slight modal tinge to the composition, creating a spacey-futuristic groove that still sounds modernistic today. Hancock's piano vamp drives the band, and Hubbard contributes one of his most memorable solos. Forget about Gilligan's or Crusoe's boring beachfront property . . . the nightlife is better on "Cantaloupe Island."

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Herbie Hancock: Speak Like a Child

Every new release from Herbie Hancock during the 1960s seemed to chart an exciting step forward. On his Speak Like a Child session from 1968, Hancock experiments with the unusual front line of flugelhorn, bass trombone and alto flute. Peculiar idea, huh? Almost like a homework assignment at Berklee? Well, young student Hancock gets an A+ on this track. The horn writing is superb, and the whole track infused with a nostalgic, late night mood that makes you want to play it over and over again. This is Herbie Hancock in an Ellingtonian or Gil-Evans-ish vein, and leads one to speculate what wonders he would have worked had he dug in with a big band for a few years. But Hancock was looking forward not behind, and a few months later he was off to the Warner Bros. label working on his Fat Albert Rotunda project.

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Don Byas: Riffin' and Jivin'

Given Charlie Parker's dominance, "bebop saxophone" instantly conjures alto, not tenor sax. Even the great Coleman Hawkins, who was sympathetic to bop and had the chops to play it, remained tethered to the Swing Era. As historian Ted Gioia points out, "The idea of modernism seemed to hold more appeal for Hawkins than its execution." One tenorman who made the transition was Don Byas. Eight years Hawk's junior, and stylistically more akin to Ben Webster, Byas here leads a quintet of Swing Era veterans in a brisk and boppish original that—aside from Stewart's annoying hum-along arco-bass shtick—was cutting edge.

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Georgia White: I'll Keep Sittin' On It

"When you want something good," Georgia White advises, "you've got to spend your jack." This track illustrates how, by the mid-1930s, the risqué tradition of jazz and blues as bedfellows in bawdy houses had been commodified. Through the voyeuristic medium of a phonograph, respectable folks could peek into dens of iniquity without risk of exposure or social disease. But, as Miss White makes clear, it's still cash on the barrelhead. A shrewd businesswoman with a chair to sell, she also has an ax to grind. Evidently some no-account ne'er-do-well has suggested that she give it away. Don't hold your breath!

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Norfolk Jazz & Jubilee Quartet: Stand By The Bedside Of A Neighbor

Jubilee quartets were early 20th-century male vocal groups who sang Negro spirituals a cappella. What differentiated Virginia's NJQ, aside from superior close harmonizing, resonant bass and clear Tidewater falsetto, was their jazz-inflected phrasing. Cross-pollination has always characterized jazz, but usually it's jazz fertilizing itself from other genres, not vice versa. Here, comforting a neighbor about to cross over, the NJQ moves and mesmerizes us. It's a pity the NJQ's individual membership went uncredited, for they were exceptional artists. Yet they sang not for personal glory, but to glorify God. Maybe more of us should think that way.

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Henry 'Red' Allen & Coleman Hawkins: S'Wonderful

Henry 'Red' Allen lets loose with a boisterous version of "S'Wonderful" that lives up to the exuberant proclamation of the song title. His accomplice Coleman Hawkins had dabbled in bebop during the preceding decade, but here returns to a premodern jazz setting -- a double helping of 1930s dancehall swing with a smidgen of New Orleans counterpoint thrown in for good measure. A sense of unbridled fun permeates the performance, and all the horn players are at top form. Cozy Cole's drumming is outstanding throughout, and he almost steals the show at the end.

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Henry 'Red' Allen & Coleman Hawkins: I Cover the Waterfront

"In 1957, [Henry 'Red' Allen] made a startling recording for Victor," Whitney Balliett wrote of this session. "It included several long ballads, and Allen converted each into a massive lullaby." But don't let this lullaby put you to sleep -- you might miss one of the finest trumpet solos of the decade. Allen shows how to craft a complete musical statement on the horn, each phrase developing a story, without wasted energy or empty pyrotechnics. Allen had learned his craft on the riverboats with Fate Marable, and assimilated the Great Leap Forward signaled by Louis Armstrong in the 1920s; but he was still raising the level of his game during the Eisenhower years. One even hears faint echoes of Miles Davis and the 1950s cool school in this gently ambling improvisation. And then Allen invites Coleman Hawkins to join in on tenor. Can you get too much of a good thing? Listen to it once, and then listen to it all over again. Then -- and only then -- is it time for bed.

November 26, 2007 · 0 comments

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Mary Lou Williams: Clean Pickin'

Mary Lou Williams didn't need bass and drums to keep the dancers shaking and shimmying. With her driving, two-fisted piano playing, Mary Lou was a one-woman band. Bassist Booker Collins and drummer Ben Thigpen come along for the ride on "Clean Pickin'" but Mary Lou sets the pace from start to finish. The Kansas City scene attracted many of the hardest swinging pianists of the era -- Count Basie, Jay McShann and Pete Johnson among others -- but Mary Lou could challenge the best of them. A very hot performance from a master of pre-bop piano stylings.

November 26, 2007 · 1 comment

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Bud Powell (featuring Fats Navarro): Wail

"Wail" is one of my favorite bebop recordings. This three minute gem has it all -- a great melody by Bud Powell (why don't more musicians play his tunes, with their great heads and blowing changes?), a hot rhythm section and a glimpse at eighteen year old tenor-titan-in-the-making Sonny Rollins. But, for me, the star of the show is trumpeter Fats Navarro. His tone is big, beautiful and brassy, and each note is hit perfectly on center even at warp speed. Navarro starts out with bugle boy purity for the opening eight bars of his solo, plays around with a clever interpolation from "I Hear Music" in the second eight, and breathes fire over the bridge before sliding safely into home plate at the turnaround. Just thirty-two bars, but every one is perfect. Less than a year later, Navarro would be dead at age 26, a victim of the combined effects of tuberculosis and drug addiction. "Wail" shows how much the jazz world lost by his untimely passing.

November 25, 2007 · 0 comments

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Woody Shaw: Theme for Maxine

"Woody Shaw was the next major stylist on his instrument," Michael Cuscuna writes, "after Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard and the forgotten Booker Little." From 1977 through 1981, the CBS label agreed with this assessment, and recorded Shaw in a series of varied and smartly conceived dates. But in 1982, CBS latched onto Wynton Marsalis as the cornerstone of its jazz line, and Shaw never recorded another leader date for the label. At the time of this stellar session, Shaw was still the young lion and his reputation on the rise. "Theme for Maxine" was one of several standout tracks from the Rosewood LP which was nominated for two Grammies and selected as record of the year in the Down Beat readers' poll. Everything clicks here: the stellar rhythm section, the shimmering Shaw composition (a medium groove waltz) and the soloists who bob and weave over the changes. Shaw starts his solo in a gentle mood, moves into a more aggressive stance, before concluding with three well-aimed interval leaps like an Olympic athlete completing a triple jump. A superb track by one of the finest combos of the decade.

November 25, 2007 · 0 comments

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Eric Dolphy & Booker Little: Fire Waltz

Trumpeter Booker Little would be dead from uremia less than three months after this celebrated recording, a promising career cut off at only 23 years of age. Eric Dolphy would also soon be gone, dead three years later at the age of thirty-six. But even if this duo had only left behind the Five Spot recordings, their reputations would be secure. The piano is out-of-tune, the audience noisy, but Dolphy and Little solo as though this is the concert to end all concerts, playing with the fervor of those true believers who walk barefoot on hot coals. On this "Fire Waltz," Dolphy leads off with a speaking-in-tongues solo on the alto, proselytizing for a new world of jazz between the extremes of Bird and Ornette. Little follows, opening in a hard-bop vein, but gradually pushing harder and harder against the harmonies. "The more dissonance, the bigger the sound," Little mentioned in a rare interview. "I can't think in terms of wrong note. In fact, I don't hear any notes as being wrong. It's a matter of knowing how to integrate the notes and, if you must, how to resolve them." Little demonstrates his thesis on this track, constantly disrupting the harmonic equilibrium with a slashing, shock-and-awe solo that ranks among his finest musical moments.

November 25, 2007 · 0 comments

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Hot Lips Page: Lafayette

Hot Lips Page departed the Basie band shortly before the group left Kansas City for New York. Page hooked up with Louis Armstrong's manager Joe Glaser, who promised to make the trumpeter into a star. But Page's dreams of becoming "the next Louis Armstrong" failed to materialize, although he had all the tools for jazz success: fluid technique, a strong sense of swing, an energetic solo style, and could even (like Louis) sing a blues or popular song with aplomb. By the early 1940s Page had stepped back from fronting his own band, settling for a sideman gig with Artie Shaw. He spent most of the remaining years of his career, before his death at 46, freelancing. "Lafayette" finds Page in top form, stoking the fires of a hard-swinging band with his trumpet pyrotechnics. Though stardom eluded Page, jazz cognoscenti still prize his classic recordings.

November 25, 2007 · 0 comments

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Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Bright Moments (live)

Rahsaan Roland Kirk ranks among the finest soloists of his generation. But when you bought one of his records you never knew what you might get. First, there was that strange three-sided LP. What about those times he played three horns at once? And don't forget those bizarre instruments, the manzello and the stritch. And I loved it when he played the nose flute (but you wouldn't catch me sitting in the front row at the club when he blew it). If Kirk had just focused on tenor sax, he would have ranked with the finest, but that was just a sideline in his traveling one-man show. Where should the uninitiated start with this wide-ranging artist? The Bright Moments recording in San Francisco ranks first and foremost in my Kirk CD collection, and this wild title track is about as good as it gets. Kirk talks, sings, and grooves in high gear with his inimitable over-blowing technique on the flute. A bright moment all should enjoy.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Chu Berry & Hot Lips Page: Gee, Baby, Ain't I Good to You

This song had been recorded by McKinney’s Cotton Pickers back in 1929, and then faded from view during the Great Depression, only to resurface at Chu Berry's 1941 session for the Commodore label. The band takes the tempo at a relaxed stroll, while Page gently lofts the melody on trumpet, then follows with a soulful vocal. Berry's moody tenor solo is the high point of the song, and probably helped establish this Don Redman composition as a jazz standard. A solid combo outing by two underappreciated horn players from the Swing Era.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Duke Ellington: Black and Tan Fantasy (OKeh)

Ellington's growing musical maturity from the 1920s through the 1940s is one of the most remarkable stories in the history of jazz. At the time of "Black and Tan Fantasy," Duke was still in the early stages of this unprecedented evolution, but already we see his ability to craft a distinctive musical mood, to tell a story through the medium of his band. Here he presents a late-night dreamscape, both menacing and alluring, one that must have drawn many patrons back to the Cotton Club, where Duke had recently started his four-year stint leading the house band. Trumpeter Bubber Miley helped craft this memorable piece, both as composer and through his solo efforts. But on this date, 18-year-old Jabbo Smith -- a near-legend of 1920s jazz -- subs for Miley, and handles the trumpet chores with aplomb. One wonders what Smith might have accomplished had he accepted Ellington's offer to join the Cotton Club band. Duke completists will want to compare this track with the Brunswick and Victor versions, each featuring Miley.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Jabbo Smith: Jazz Battle

"Jabbo was as good as Louis [Armstrong] then," bassist Milt Hinton later remembered. "He was the Dizzy Gillespie of that era. He played rapid-fire passages while Louis was melodic and beautiful . . . [Jabbo] could play soft and he could play fast, but he never made it." Until the Great Depression, Smith always seemed just one step away from stardom. While still a teenager, he recorded with Ellington on a memorable version of "Black and Tan Fantasy" but turned down's Duke's offer to join the band. He went head to head against Louis Armstrong in Chicago during the late 1920s, sometimes on the same bandstand, and Jabbo could hold his own with the jazz legend. Smith's Brunswick recordings with the Rhythm Aces were supposed to make money off the audience Armstrong had built with his classic Hot Fives and Hot Sevens, but they sold poorly at the time. Yet Smith's trumpet work, as demonstrated on "Jazz Battle," was exceptional, full of fire and executed with virtuosity. A few years later, Smith had moved to Milwaukee where he worked for a car rental agency, and his sporadic attempts to return to music never made much headway. But in his prime, he was one of the greatest trumpeters of his day.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Tony Fruscella: I'll Be Seeing You

Tony Fruscella spent most of his short life in institutions of various sorts -- orphanage, army, prison, hospital. But on those rare occasions when he graced the bandstand, he was one of the finest "cool school" trumpeters in jazz. Fruscella still has a small, dedicated cult following (check out this tribute, for example), but many even knowledgeable jazz fans have never heard his music. Those who admire the 1950s work of Miles Davis and Chet Baker would do well to track down his definitive performance of "I'll Be Seeing You." Fruscella's solo is beautifully crafted from start to finish, every phrase rich in melodic invention, and the whole infused with deep emotion. A musical gem from an unfairly forgotten master of the horn.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Don Redman: Chant of the Weed

Venture past this track's K-tel campiness—As-Seen-On-TV: All-time Smokin' Reefer Songs! Act Now! Supplies Are Limited—and you find the adventurous orchestration of pioneering big band conceptualist Don Redman, among the first to separate brass and reeds into sections and exploit their contrasting timbres. One of a handful to grasp the jazz band's orchestral possibilities only recently expanded by Ellington, Redman cultivates in "Chant of the Weed" a bumper patch of cleverly camouflaged, strangely evocative tonal and atonal colorations. In particular, devotees of the late-1930s Raymond Scott Quintette will detect an ancestral pungency. Smoke 'em if you got 'em.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Mal Waldron: Fire Waltz

The fire on this, the original recording of one of the pianist’s most enduring original compositions, emanates primarily from Booker Ervin’s potently keening tenor saxophone. Waldron’s own short solo typifies his style: insistent and blues-tinged, sprinkled with note clusters inspired by Monk’s example but sounding like no one but Waldron himself. The other two soloists are Carter, whose cello playing here sounds undisciplined compared to his work on the piccolo bass in later decades, and bassist Benjamin, who turns in a competent, if not brilliant effort. There’s no Dolphy solo here, but he would make up for it the following month with his classic live rendition of the piece captured at New York’s Five Spot.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Lonnie Johnson & Eddie Lang: A Handful of Riffs

Guitarist and blues pioneer Lonnie Johnson’s most significant partnership captured on discs during the jazz age was his series of duos with jazz guitar pioneer Eddie Lang. OKeh Records billed Lang on their records under the pseudonym “Blind Willie Dunn,” masking the fact that these sides were the product of integrated record sessions. However, as this performance aptly demonstrates, these two used the blues to forge a perfect musical bond: Lang’s time is flawless, and he provides the ideal backdrop for Johnson’s three-minute stream of improvised variations.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Edmund Hall: Jammin' in Four

Hall was one of the great New Orleans clarinetists, but he was a fixture of the New York jazz club scene at the time of this recording. Don’t be fooled by the instrumentation of this drummer-less ensemble: this isn’t quiet chamber music, but a swinging romp driven by Crosby’s bass and Christian’s acoustic rhythm guitar. They back the unique sweet and sour sonic combination of Meade Lux Lewis pounding out boogie-woogie on celeste with Hall’s hard-edged clarinet blues. Christian’s four-chorus single-line solo reveals how this short-lived musician influenced generations of guitarists to come.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Ethel Waters: Stormy Weather

No other Jazz Age singer rivaled her versatility. Combining the tony diction of London's posh Mayfair salons (although she actually grew up in Philadelphia poverty) with gospel sincerity and an ever-lurking earthy inflection, Ethel Waters exercised an unmatched artistic range. With the savvy dramaturgy of a seasoned stage actress, Miss Waters didn't simply sing a song, she enacted a minidrama replete with theatrical flourishes. Here, as she concludes, we want to rush the stage crying "Brava!" and strew bouquets at her feet. In 2003, when the Grammy folks enshrined this track in their Hall of Fame, they got it right.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Jelly Roll Morton: Jungle Blues

Before becoming jazz's first great composer, Jelly Roll Morton spent years entertaining within the bizarre Black Minstrelsy tradition, where Afro-Americans (often in blackface) perpetuated the demeaning routines popularized by earlier generations of white minstrels. Thus, for Morton, associating jazz with the jungle was a familiar appeal to the basest expectations of white audiences. "Jungle Blues," with its insistent rhythm and unchanging harmony, is Roaring '20s primitivism in which the jazzman embodies the noble savage to titillate the suppressed sensuality of sophisticated whites. Dressing Uncle Tom in a tuxedo instead of plantation tatters was progress, but not much.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Frank Trumbauer & Bix Beiderbecke: Mississippi Mud

"Just as happy as a cow chewin' on her cud," regales Bing Crosby, "when the darkies beat their feet on the Mississippi mud." No track better exemplifies the diamonds-in-quicksand contradictions of Jim Crow jazz. The jewels are supplied by Bix Beiderbecke, whose cornet glitters gloriously amidst the muck of racial condescension. Instead of attacking a note head-on, Bix would sneak up on it, rolling the note delicately through his horn as if massaging a caterpillar, and finally spring it surprised from his bell, newly arrayed. Bix's laid-back lyricism redeems a track that would otherwise belong at the bottom of the swamp.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Stan Kenton: Monotony

In 1948, at the pinnacle of success, bandleader Stan Kenton—who at his wife's urging had entered psychoanalysis—announced his intention "to give up music and become a psychiatrist." Kenton soon reconsidered his projected 12-year metamorphosis, and returned to music. "Monotony" shows Kenton's fascination with the obsessive-compulsive repetition of Ravel's Boléro (1928) that led French neurologists to detect (65 years postmortem; ain't science grand?) "the influence of progressive cerebral disease on Ravel's creative process." No doubt the more original an artist, the better a target for the shrink squad. But what's crazy about repetition? What's crazy about repetition? What's crazy about repetition?

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Frank Trumbauer & Bix Beiderbecke: Krazy Kat

Hollywood's Young Man With a Horn (1950), writes film scholar David Sterritt, is "loosely based" on Bix Beiderbecke and "explicit about the trumpet as a fetish." Any suggestion that Bix was sexually fixated on his cornet is pretty sick stuff, but nobody better embodied the self-destructive Roaring Twenties. Here Bix cavorts with another Jazz Age icon—Krazy Kat, feline focus of George Herriman's long-running newspaper cartoon. Surprisingly, this track is distinguished by its orderliness. Bix's languid legato presides over a businesslike ensemble about as wild & crazy as President Calvin Coolidge soberly invoking what Chico Marx called a "sanity clause."

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Duke Ellington: Madness in Great Ones

COURTIER: My liege, our esteem'd Duke of Ellington is by madness possessed. He doth protest to all who would hear, "I love you madly." KING: O, what a noble mind is here o'erthrown! COURTIER: Pray hasten his confinement to the lair of loons, whence he may be shrink rapt. KING: Get thee to a punnery! And fetch me headphones that I may with royal ears attest his madness. (Listening) Why, this be magnificent, so gracious is the time in Duke's solo. Thence Cat Anderson's lofty trumpet awakens as cock to the morn. Let all our imperial jazzmen be thus beguiled!

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Matt Dusk: The Best Is Yet to Come

It will be a sad day when jazz singing is defined by nostalgia efforts like this one. Jazz will become like opera, an art form in which imitating the mannerisms of a previous century has mostly replaced more immediate and original expressions of creativity. But if Sinatra impersonators ever grow as popular as Elvis clones, Dusk will be in his sweet spot. This record is merely playacting, with an expensive horn and string section as backdrop. Your faithful reviewer would like to ignore such releases but, like bad money squeezing out real legal tender, they are increasingly finding their way into circulation, and fans need to be educated enough to protect themselves.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Phineas Newborn, Jr.: The Midnight Sun Will Never Set

"If I had to choose the best all-around pianist of anyone who's followed me chronologically," Oscar Peterson decided, "undoubtedly I would say Phineas Newborn, Jr." After a promising start in the mid- 1950s, Newborn's recurring mental meltdowns led to confinement in the Jazz Wing at Camarillo State Hospital and elsewhere, continuing intermittently until his death at 57. "The Midnight Sun Will Never Set" may have been a beacon of clarity in Phineas's fog, but if so we are fortunate to glimpse it. With such artists, it's better not to dwell on what might've been, and savor instead their gifts, however fleeting.

Caveat: "The Midnight Sun Will Never Set" is often misnamed "The Midnight Sun Never Sets," perhaps due to Quincy Jones having written it in the back of a cab, as recounted by Jazz.com's David Tenenholtz. Rest assured it's the same song, which in any case must not be confused with "Midnight Sun," a 1947 melody by Sonny Burke & Lionel Hampton to which, in 1955, Johnny Mercer mentally added lyrics while driving his car home from Hollywood to Newport Beach. (What is there about midnight suns and moving vehicles?) I hope all that's clear. You will be tested on this later!

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Tom Harrell: Everything Happens to Me

In a 2005 report on the $14 billion anti-schizophrenia drug market, forbes.com focused on "renowned jazz musician" and diagnosed schizophrenic Tom Harrell. "For years, he has fought not only his disease, but also the crippling side effects of the drugs used to treat it. He still cuts an otherworldly figure, a grey-shocked wraith who stands stooped until he puts his horn to his mouth to play. But many of his symptoms—at least the drug-related ones—have improved." In this light, "Everything Happens To Me" assumes singular poignancy. Tom Harrell's deeply moving performance is a victory not of medicine but of one man's indomitability. $14 billion cannot buy such courage.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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John Coltrane: Greensleeves

Coltrane’s jukebox-friendly interpretation of the show tune “My Favorite Things” has always overshadowed his overhaul of the English folk song “Greensleeves” – also known as the Christmas song “What Child Is This?” – but this is the superior performance. This wasn’t the first time he recorded it, but he really nailed it here. The first few notes out of Coltrane’s sax come crashing down more than an octave as he states the melody once and then sends it caroming all over the place, augmenting its simple beauty with squeals and phrases that seem gorgeously out of place.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Cassandra Wilson: Red River Valley

When Hollywood's The Grapes of Wrath (1940) made "Red River Valley" the anthem of Dust Bowl Okies, moviegoers assumed the Red River referenced was that marking the Texas-Oklahoma border. Folklorists, however, lean towards North Dakota's Red River Valley as a more likely namesake. Whatever its source, the song's long sufferance as country-&-western fodder renders this track an epiphany. Backed by Colin Linden's solitary slide guitar—as stark and vast as the Great Plains—Cassandra Wilson transforms "Red River Valley" into a love song as hauntingly personal as Sheila Jordan's "You Are My Sunshine" with George Russell (1962). A triumphantly original reinterpretation.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Lorez Alexandria: Show Me

Who knew? Turns out the Cockney Cinderella who morphs into a duchess for a musical set in Mayfair actually hailed from Missouri. Or so suggests this waltz from Broadway's My Fair Lady (1956). Lorez Alexandria's "Show Me" halves the tempo of Eliza Doolittle's stop-beating-about-the-bush-you-limey- blighters grievance, yet doubles its temperature. Whereas Eliza was girlishly impatient, Lorez is womanly seductive, proving there's more than one way to skin a stubborn Missouri mule. When Bill Marx's arrange- ment does break a sweat, it's only to exult Lorez's triumph, after which order is restored for a bluesy finale. Show me the way to Alexandria, Missouri.

November 24, 2007 · 16 comments

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Rahsaan Roland Kirk: Ain't No Sunshine

At his best, Rahsaan Roland Kirk was one of the most exciting instrumentalists of his generation. I still recall a night at the Lighthouse in Hermosa Beach when Kirk had the audience in a frenzy, digging in with a tenor solo to end all tenor solos. But the Atlantic release Blacknuss did a disservice to this masterful player with its sub-par accompaniment and hokey crossover arrangements. On this forgettable LP, Kirk recorded the Bread pop-schlock tune "Make It With You" (all-too-white Bread on an LP called Blacknuss?), "My Girl" and other pop drivel, and even Bill Withers' "Ain't No Sunshine," one of the grittier soul tunes of the era, collapses under the weight of an overwrought arrangement. If you want to hear Kirk in a more inspired mood, track down the dynamic Bright Moments live recording at Keystone Korner, or his tour de force performance on the Mingus at Carnegie Hall release.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Johnny Hartman: Sleepin' Bee

Sometimes the finger-snapping is figurative; here it's literal, but quiet enough to not awaken a sleepin' bee. At little more than two minutes, this track might seem miserly, except it's really all Johnny Hartman needs to convince us that despite their tinsel tackiness, Ring-a-Dings are at heart romantics. Hartman's hushed but torrid baritone, abetted by soundman Rudy Van Gelder's twist of reverb, could melt frozen daiquiris still in the freezer. Hell, it'll curdle your cream at 50 feet. Toast your muffins. Simmer your soup. Sizzle your steak. Warm your cockles. Heat your hearth. Scorch your earth. You get the idea.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Sonny Rollins: I'm an Old Cowhand

William Claxton, who took the cover photo of Sonny Rollins in cowboy attire in a desert setting, confirms that Mel Brooks got the inspiration for his film Blazing Saddles from this striking image. But this is only one of the many peculiarities of this recording. After all, who expects Sonny Rollins to cover a Roy Rogers song? But a more welcome innovation is the absence of piano on this track. Rollins would emerge as the master of the sax trio—just bass and drums, and no chords to clog up the middle. And it all started on this legendary session. Solidly swinging tenor with a dollop of good humor.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Paul Marshall: Cowboy Jazz

If your idea of cowboy jazz is Sonny Rollins's "I’m an Old Cowhand" or Stan Kenton's "Take Me Back to My Boots and Saddle," ponder agin, pardner. According to country singer Paul Marshall, cowboy jazz is yippee ki-yay giddyup sons of pioneers tumbling tumbleweeds cool water home on the range and don't fence me in. It's a campfire glowing under a silvery moon, harmonica bleating, coyotes yowling and prairie dogs yodeling in 5-part harmony. In other words, it's Wyoming, our least populated state, with half a million people scattered across 100,000 square miles. On second thought, we'll stick with Sonny.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Duke Ellington: The Tattooed Bride

Ellington was ahead of his time, and not just for preferring his brides with tattoos. This extended piece, premiered by the Ellington band at Carnegie Hall in 1948, ranks among the Duke's most daring works, with its advanced harmonic language and dramatic mood shifts from somber introspection to hard-edged swing. Ellington's first LP, Masterpieces, gave him the chance to present this 12-minute work on record without interruption -- not possible with the earlier 78 format -- and the composer delights in his newfound freedom. Three minutes into the piece, the rhythm section disappears, and the horns engage in an avant-garde dialogue that gets wilder and wilder until the band returns cooking like a McDonald's crew at lunch hour. But Ellington soon brings down the energy level, and plays around with a host of "hear-a-pin- drop" effects. Not for long . . . Ellington returns to hard and heavy swing to close out the proceedings. What a bride! Jimmy Hamilton, Cat Anderson and others solo with aplomb, but the star here is Ellington's chart, which still sounds fresh and invigorating more than a half century after it was written.

November 24, 2007 · 0 comments

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Duke Ellington: Mood Indigo (1950)

The advent of the long-playing record finally released Duke Ellington from the time constraints that had previously forced him to slice and dice his creative output into three minute installments. In truth, Ellington had grown comfortable with short forms, and even when he wrote extended suites for his late vintage LPs, he tended to fill them with short vignettes of a few minutes duration. But for his first LP, Ellington revisited some of his earlier classics and fleshed them out into longer versions. His 15-minute version of "Mood Indigo" is a breathtaking reworking of a song Ellington had first recorded twenty years earlier. Here Ellington pulls out every trick in the book, taking this song all the way from Mood Infrared up to Mood Ultraviolet, and touching on every shade between. The whole track shines, but the avant-garde waltz restatement toward the close is about as good as big band writing can get. Fans who are looking for outstanding Ellingtonia from the 1950s should start here.

November 23, 2007 · 0 comments

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Duke Ellington: A Tone Parallel To Harlem

Many fans back in the early 1950s thought that the arrival of the LP -- youngsters, that stands for "Long Playing" record -- would inspire jazz musicians to tackle extended works. No longer subject to the time limitations of a 78-rpm disk, the great minds of jazz would compose symphonies and suites, concertos and chamber works. Well, not quite. But Duke Ellington was certainly inspired by his newfound freedom, especially on his 14-minute A Tone Parallel To Harlem (The Harlem Suite). At age 52, Ellington was still at the peak of his abilities, and the bittersweet melody (entering at the nine-minute mark) that closes the piece is one of his finest. For my money, this composition and Duke's long and revamped version of "Mood Indigo" (from the Masterpieces LP) rank as his finest extended works of the decade.

November 23, 2007 · 1 comment

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Gene Harris: Uptown Sop

To soul-food connoisseurs such as your humble reviewer, sop refers not to bribe, fool or Standard Operating Procedure, but rather to what Essence magazine's Khephra Burns describes as that "all-too-fleeting moment of ultimate contentment when the last sop of gravy is wiped up with a biscuit." Similarly mouthwatering is the "Uptown Sop" tandem of Harris & Turrentine, here reunited a quarter century after their memorable Blue Note Blue Hour soul-feast. Warmed by the enthusiastic crowd attending this live recording, and further heated by a simmering rhythm section, Harris & Turrentine wipe every plate in the place cleaner than an automatic dishwasher. Ultimate contentment.

November 23, 2007 · 0 comments

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Gary Foster: The Peacocks

The alto flute is the Lauren Bacall of musical instruments. Its slightly lower pitch than the concert flute makes for a huskiness that's, as the French say, très sexy. Indeed, in To Have and Have Not (1944), Miss Bacall herself provides the best instruction on playing it: "You just put your lips together and blow." The lips here belong to Gary Foster, covering a tune best known for Stan Getz's lovely 1975 duet with its composer, Jimmy Rowles, who's also on this track. But just as a peacock's shimmering plumage varies with changes in light or position, flautist Foster fans a gorgeous, thoroughly seductive iridescence all his own.

November 23, 2007 · 0 comments

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The Mills Brothers: Rhythm Saved the World

By the mid-1930s, the Mills Brothers' vocal imitations of instrumental sounds were wearing thin. Yet 70+ years hence, this track remains timely for its depressingly topical lyrics. "Diplomats talk through their hats," writes Sammy Cahn. "They claim guns win every war … [but] guns will never bring this country glory." Coming from Tin Pan Alley, such sentiments are startling. And indeed, resorting to form, this song ultimately stops short of being antiwar, holding instead that rhythm, by instilling "new life" in warriors, ensures their victory. While that may be a discomfiting prospect to fundamentalists who deem music sinful, it's doubtful that rhythm by itself will save the world. We also need melody and harmony—lots of harmony.

November 23, 2007 · 0 comments

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The Mills Brothers: Tiger Rag

Besides singing conventionally, the teenage Mills brothers imitated musical instruments with kazoos. But, legend has it, forgetting to bring their kazoos to one gig, the youngsters cupped hands over mouths and conjured convincing instrumental sounds with voices alone. This so gassed the customers that the kazoos were trashed. With Herbert mimicking sax or trombone, Harry simulating trumpet, and deep-voiced John doing bass—all in support of Donald's lead vocals—the brothers caused a sensation. Today's listeners may equate "Tiger Rag" with Looney Tunes, but novelties were an important gateway for early jazz into pop culture, and this one's still fun.

November 23, 2007 · 0 comments

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Roy Eldridge, Coleman Hawkins & Benny Carter: Smack

This ad-hoc recording ensemble (which revived a name used for various small group record dates from the 1920s and '30s) reunited stars of the Fletcher Henderson Orchestra – Henderson (whose nickname provided the tune’s title) couldn’t make it to the date, so, unusually for the time, no piano is heard here. Also, the side has no opening theme statement, but simply goes directly into its one-two-three punch of solos by some of the most distinctive soloists in jazz: