Listenin' to Jazz and Conversation

Discussion in 'Music Corner' started by Lonson, Sep 1, 2016.

  1. rxcory

    rxcory proud jazz band/marching band parent

    Location:
    Portland, Oregon
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    Red Garland Trio - Rojo (1958)

    1993 Prestige/Fantasy/OJC OJCCD-772-2 mastered by Phil De Lancie

    Red Garland - piano
    George Joyner - double bass
    Charlie Persip - drums
    Ray Barretto - congas

    Beautiful piano with a latin vibe. Digging this rendition of "Darling Je Vous Aime Beaucoup." Getting this rainy Portland morning moving.

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  2. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues Thread Starter

    I'm with you. Music is of its kind. Louis Armstrong's "Black and Blue" could sound dated. . . but it's timeless.
     
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  3. Rob C

    Rob C Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, USA
    That's a great one. Love the opening track.
     
  4. Rob C

    Rob C Forum Resident

    Location:
    Chicago, IL, USA
    I would add at least "Live at the It Club", a favorite of mine from the (underrated) Columbia years.
     
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  5. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I dunno, when I was coming up as a kid in the '70s, Weather Report was THE jazz act -- this was in the second half of the '70s, when I was a high school student, as a grade schooler and middle schooler, while I loved music and played music and started by buy music and even started to write music of my one, and all kinds of different music not just the pop and rock of the day, I didn't really take much notice of jazz.

    And I was mostly turned off to jazz in the era because I really disliked the stuff that was kind of dominating the festival circuit and winning the magazine polls and was on the radio....and this was the stuff I was exposed to as being "jazz" (other than old records of my dad's like Armstrong hamming it up with Crosby on the High Society soundtrack, which I loved to listen to )......

    The stuff was was principally was Jaco era WR style fusion. I had a copy of Heavy Weather, everybody had a copy of Heavy Weather....and it was acts like Joe Sample and the Crusaders and the Pat Metheny Group and George Benson and fusiony impressionistic Chick Corea (this was mostly after RTF, though the band cast a long shadow over Corea in the second half of the '70s), and the Brazilian influence on RTF and Shorter's Native Dancer was a big trend (and I really don't like Brazilian jazz or bossa nova) and I was hearing these records as they were coming out and they were real turn-offs to me. And I WAS a keyboard player. I played a Rhodes, I read what was then Contemporary Keyboard magazine (it was an article there in the '70s that I think first turned me on to Sun Ra), I was keeping up with what the likes of Joe Zawinul and Herbie Hancock were doing with electronics....but then I'd hear the music and I really would find I didn't like it much. Some of it was OK. But a lot of it just seemed like a lite cocktail with a dash of R&B grooving (but nothing too fiery) here, and some coloristic washes of synthy sound there. Jazz to me was a wasteland of lite groovy R&Bish or proto-smooth jazz kinds of impressionism or just kind of instrumental AC. (And I loved R&B and funk music of the era.)

    In the decades since, every now and then, I've gone back to try to find my way into Weather Report's music. In fact, just this past year, as I was revisiting the jazz of the '70s, I again went through the first five or so Weather Report albums again. And I still really don't like 'em any more now than I ever did and you get past those first couple of albums, and it's more and more kind of electronic groove music or Shorter's moody kind of impressionistic "world" fusion, and that stuff I flat out disliked.

    The one exception for me is the Live in Tokyo album. To me it's kind of the band before it started playing more groove-heavy, stuff or moody airy stuff, it's kind of more electric jazz than the kind of fusion it would become. And the level of musical interplay is amazing. That's a record I really dig.

    But, a minority report from someone a little younger than you who was hearing some of this stuff as it came out. Everybody didn't find it thrilling.
     
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  6. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I like Live at the It Club, I have the full CD reissue on that and it's one of the few '60s Monk albums I find myself returning to with any regularity. But all those years off Monk and Rouse out playing the same dozen or so classic Monk compositions, I dunno, it gets kind of same-y to me. On Underground at least you get a couple of great late career additions to Monk's roster of composition -- Green Chimneys and Ugly Beauty and Boo Boo's Birthday
     
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  7. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues Thread Starter

    That's cool. You and I have different likes and it doesn't surprise me. I LIKE Brazilian music and bossa nova, I came into Weather Report from electric Miles Davis and was exploring Ellington and Parker and Armstrong and earlier Miles Davis at the same time, it all fit into a melting pot for me of music that was drawing me away from what was on the radio and what most of those I knew were listening to.

    And to me it didn't seem Weather Report was THE jazz act. CTI artists were more THE jazz acts to me than Weather Report, which was fusion. Weather Report may well have made a lot more money . . . I don't know. For me it was a fusion of jazz and world and R&B and exciting. I'd come back from Africa and electric Miles and Weather Report resonated for me in ways most other musics didn't. Return to Forever and Headhunters were cool but did not have the same impact for me. I kept following Weather Report as I got deeper into more traditional jazz.

    We listen to different (as well as some of the same) things now so it doesn't surprise me that we listened to different music earlier! I still enjoy all the Weather Report, though I'm not as thrilled or enthused about it as I had been before. I like this new set as it's all in one place and I can slide one out and listen now and then. There's nostalgia in doing so too, but for me the music holds up.
     
  8. Six String

    Six String Senior Member

    I feel the same way. The polyphonic synth had not been invented when WR started so there were limitations that had to be dealt with. I think it was around Heavy Weather when Zawinul began recording with the new polyphonic synths which were part of Prophet or Oberheim. I believe but I'm not 100% sure. Forty years is a long time. Or was Oberheim the parent of Prophet? It's been to long......
     
    Last edited: Jan 11, 2018
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  9. Morbius

    Morbius Forum Resident

    Location:
    Brookline, MA
    I think the original intent was for the Nina Simone recording to be folded down into mono and a stereo release was merely an afterthought.
     
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  10. dzhason

    dzhason Forum Resident

    Location:
    PA
    I think how chervokas described WR as “lite cocktail” was akin to my initial impression of them. It’s interesting, though, how he is using phrases like “impressionistic”, “coloristic washes of synthy sound”, “electronic groove music”, “Shorter’s moody kind of impressionistic ‘world’ fusion”, and “moody airy music” as terms of derision, yet I would excitedly use the same as terms of endearment, sign me up.
     
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  11. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues Thread Starter

    A beautiful piano and sax duet album.

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    Joao Paulo and Peter Epstein "Esquina"
     
  12. Noisefreq1

    Noisefreq1 Well-Known Member

    Location:
    Independence
    I've been immersing myself in funk jazz for the last few months!

    It started with Herbie Hancock's SEXTANT LP, which absolutely blew me away the first time I heard it.
    I reckoned it to Morton Subotnick jamming with "electric Miles".
    Then I ran across a copy of Crossings.
    Looking for an acceptable copy of Mwandishi.

    I also discovered Phil Woods' European Music Express during the same record shop visit.
    A little funk, a little Avant jazz, with just a sprinkling of Canterbury for good measure.

    I've also been digging "pre-Jaco" Weather Report.
    Started with Mysterious Traveler and Tail Spinnin' and just recently acquired Sweetnighter, IMO, their best.

    Of course, it all started with Miles Davis' In A Silent Way.
    I've got most of his electric stuff, my favorites being Jack Johnson, On The Corner, Get Up With It and Water Babies.

    It's funny there is such a small window of really great jazz funk, before it all descended into meandering fusion jazz.
     
  13. Yesternow

    Yesternow Forum pResident

    Location:
    Portugal
    I'm more on the Mwandishi/Headhunters team.
    Really like the first album of each band: Return T.F. and Weather R., but after those it's a difficult sound for me.

    Nevertheless I keep on enjoying this one. Guess the WR fans here also dig it.
    Self titled, 1976:
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    Bought it second hand on the street several years ago. It's literally the dirtiest CD I own :).
     
  14. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues Thread Starter

    Gregory Tardy "Abundance"

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    Gregory Tardy tenor sax, with George Colligan on piano, Sean Conly on bass, and Woody Williams, drums. Miguel Zenon guest on alto sax.
     
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  15. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    To me at the time the CTI stuff -- Grover Washington and Bob James and then the Airto and Deodado records and the Joe Farrell stuff and George Benson etc -- and other acts like The Crusaders and those first two RTF albums and Stanley Clarke solo stuff -- all seemed of a piece with the middle and later Weather Report stuff and say Shorter in his Native Dancer bag, etc. Lightly funky, often a little world ish -- sometimes maybe a little more worldish sometimes a little more r&b ish -- often with these washy kind of syth beds. And it was the stuff that was on the radio at the time. It was jazz as a 13 or 14 year old would have encountered jazz in 75, 76, 77. Jazz meant that stuff. Pretty much every Weather Report album, certainly in the '70s, was a Billboard Jazz top 10 (except of course the one that it turns out I liked I Sing the Body Electric which had some of the live in Tokyo stuff).
     
  16. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues Thread Starter

    Okay. I wasn't listening to the radio then (I rarely have listened to the radio much, it ended for me when I discovered electric Miles which was NOT played on the radio). To me CTI and Weather Report did not seem "all of one piece" at all. Weather Report was fundamentally different than the CTI and similar. I really did enjoy CTI and collected some (I still have my Weston and Hubbard and Farrell LPs) (nor did the CTI listened to have much in the way of synths or "washy synth beds"--and I wasn't listening to Deodata and Washington) but they didn't thrill me the way that Weather Report did which I considered "beyond jazz" in a Milesian "New Directions in Music" way.
     
  17. chervokas

    chervokas Senior Member

    I'm not deriding those things. I'm using them to describe the music. Those are characteristics that tend to be turn offs for me, but I get that other people like them, they're just less often characteristics that are my cup of tea. You probably like something like "Orange Lady" or "Mysterious Traveler," where I find 'em kinda tedious. I've been in a long of rehearsal bands too with really good musicians who want to play these little funk vamps with slightly off kilter sinuous lines over them and then just kind of solo over these vamps. I find it a bore to play as well as to listen to myself.
     
  18. Erik B.

    Erik B. Fight the Power

    Disc two while working from home for a bit today. Perfect music to maintain focus.

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  19. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues Thread Starter

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    Fabian Kallerdahl Galore "Maxi Music" on Caprice Records CD

    Per “The Flame” Westling on guitar, Stefan Wingefors bass and Lars “Lade” Källfelt drums, in addition to Fabian Kallerdahl on the piano.
     
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  20. Mook

    Mook Forum Resident

    I've tried & tried with Weather Report but it just isn't happening for me at all, I have their first three albums & just can't get into them.

    That's coming from a big Wayne Shorter fan & someone who loves the majority of early 70s 'fusion' stuff.
     
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  21. lschwart

    lschwart Senior Member

    Location:
    Richmond, VA
    Nice to see my friends and fellow Richmond musicians show up here! They're still going strong today.

    L.
     
  22. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues Thread Starter

    Great! This is a fun cd.
     
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  23. Six String

    Six String Senior Member

    Wow, none of those names except for Miguel Zenon mean anything to me and his name just barely. :) I'm feeling out of touch here. Back to my Ben Webster lp - Gone With The Wind (Black Lion) ORG reissue. :laugh:

    Does Tardy have a family member also in jazz? His last name is ringing a bell but my brain synapses aren't helping me come up with the first name. :help:
     
  24. Lonson

    Lonson I'm in the kitchen with the Tombstone Blues Thread Starter

    His bio says he "comes from a musical family" but not specifics:

    Bio

    This is a nice album.

    I wonder if you are thinking of Craig Handy?
     
  25. Six String

    Six String Senior Member

    Not Craig Handy but it might be a similar sounding name that is playing with my memory. :sigh:
    Edit: I see he has played with some people I listen to like Tom Harrell and Dave Douglas so maybe it is him that is familiar sounding to me.

    NP Eberhard Weber - Silent Feet (ECM) orig. German pressing.
    I played side one earlier and now I've returned for side two. I've always liked Weber's sound.
     
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