Listenin' to Jazz and Conversation

You aren't already a country music fan? I mean classic country, of course: Hank Williams, Ernest Tubb, etc.

 

Denny Zeitlin - Tidal Wave (PAJ)
A most interesting album by the pianist. It has Charlie Haden, John Abercrombie and Pete Donald (a drummer I'm not familiar with). There was s some straight ahead modern jazz and some fusion tracks so it's all jazz but not all the same style.

 

I'm playing parts of this right now, rockin. Crazy! 1970? Wow. And I'm listening to it because you had me at "San Francisco."

 

One of my favorite compilations of the Duke

 

I found this surprisingly high quality (for the time) BBC video of Billie Holliday today and played it for my students to prep them for discussing a poem by Frank O'Hara called "The Day Lady Died:"



And here's the poem in case you don't know it. It was great to see how taken some of them were with the performance and then the poem, too, so I thought I'd share both with you all, too!

The Day Lady Died
BY FRANK O'HARA

It is 12:20 in New York a Friday
three days after Bastille day, yes
it is 1959 and I go get a shoeshine
because I will get off the 4:19 in Easthampton
at 7:15 and then go straight to dinner
and I don’t know the people who will feed me
I walk up the muggy street beginning to sun
and have a hamburger and a malted and buy
an ugly NEW WORLD WRITING to see what the poets
in Ghana are doing these days

I go on to the bank​

and Miss Stillwagon (first name Linda I once heard)
doesn’t even look up my balance for once in her life
and in the GOLDEN GRIFFIN I get a little Verlaine
for Patsy with drawings by Bonnard although I do
think of Hesiod, trans. Richmond Lattimore or
Brendan Behan’s new play or Le Balcon or Les Nègres
of Genet, but I don’t, I stick with Verlaine
after practically going to sleep with quandariness
and for Mike I just stroll into the PARK LANE
Liquor Store and ask for a bottle of Strega and
then I go back where I came from to 6th Avenue
and the tobacconist in the Ziegfeld Theatre and
casually ask for a carton of Gauloises and a carton
of Picayunes, and a NEW YORK POST with her face on it
and I am sweating a lot by now and thinking of
leaning on the john door in the 5 SPOT
while she whispered a song along the keyboard
to Mal Waldron and everyone and I stopped breathing

 

New one ftom Jakob Bro

 

2-CD set from 1999, Vanguard Records. Draws from nine albums issued by the label, 1969-79, both solo & with The Eleventh House. A very mixed bag. My least favorite tracks are those with The Eleventh House. The ones I like best are from 'Spaces', with John McLaughlin, Chick Corea, Miroslav Vitous & Billy Cobham. There is also an additional fine track from the same sessions that was issued later on an album of mixed outtakes.
Another high point is two tracks from 'Lady Coryell' with Elvin Jones. Right now I am listening to my CD copy of 'Spaces'.

 

My sister sent me a cd by Laura Mvula as a Christmas present. She's a British singer and multi instrumentalist. Some interesting stuff but very difficult to pin her down stylistically. She uses a lot of electronics but the song structures tend towards 'conventional'. Pleasant at times, challenging at others but nothing I'd call memorable. Glasper is the hot ticket of late.
Is this a Glyndebourne for hipsters?

 

Haven't read it. I'm wary of bios of music 'superstars', too many hacks out there. But if it's good, well, it's good.

 

A great way to start my day. I didn't know that poem. Thank you so much.

 

Thanks for that Ischwart. Ahhh Billie and a wonderful poem.

 

Isn't it annoying when you want to run a video but you can't on copyright grounds
(re Jakob Bro Trio)

 

Couldn't find any mention of Norwegian Jazz singer Karin Krog on this thread . A brilliant version of Ode To Billie Joe featuring Dexter Gordon

 

No, I really don't listen to that stuff. Country and western swing. . . I like a bit.

 

I love Western Swing, but I also love classic Honky-Tonk & the Bakersfield Sound. Even though I came to music through The Beatles & 60s rock, I heard Country Music all my life & always liked it, even though at one point I might not have admitted it. Classic Country always had some jazz influences. Ernest Tubb, for instance, had a rather jazzy guitarist named Billy Byrd. By the way, is Don Herron still playing with Dylan? We saw him a buch of times in the 90s with Neo-Honky-Tonk band BR549.

 

Cool, I"m glad you enjoy it. I don't though. And there's so much to listen to. . . I don't bother with music that I really don't respond to.

I do like these standards done with this instrumentation by Dylan, and I'd like the same personnel and arrangements on standards instrumentally without Dylan. Yes, Herron is on the last two Dylan LPs.

 

Terrific song, great singing but....is it just me or are some of those horn lines pretty jarring? They start super sharp and then dip down a bit and then come right back. Interesting arrangement.

 

Branford's I Heard You Twice the First Time

From 1992, and #1 on the jazz charts that year. Lots of guests on this - of note BB King and John Lee Hooker - with a focus on southern blues, dixieland and all the jazz in between. The slave call Berta Berta is intense. The liner notes of Delfeayo Marsalis are superb and a must read, and I say this as someone who finds most liner notes tedious. This is my second pick up of Branford in the used bins. He's become a "must buy" for me now when I see stuff by him there.

 

Decided to listen to a few of the Bethlehem Records reissues that Solid Records in Japan put out there or so years ago. . . .



followed by

 

An interesting article on the decreasing NYT jazz coverage

Welcome to the Jazzless Age: Change in New York Times coverage spells trouble for a scene

 

Actually, Stephen Davis is a well known and respected music writer. He did a book on the roots of reggae detailing tge musical changes as well as political and economic changes that helped mold the music. He's done some other things too of course but those are books I've read. I can't speak for accuracy obviously and the bio was published in 1985 and Reggae Bloodlines in 1977. The author of The Harder They Come is quoted "Stephen Davis has written the definitive portrait of Marley."

 

Music Matters 45 RPM Session.

WP Horace Parlan - Speakin' My Piece (Blue Note)

NP Lee Morgan - Vol. 3 (Blue Note)

I avoided Vol. 3 for many years because of the lame title, basically. In my mind that's the kind of title a label would use if they had control of that aspect and was taking advantage of a situation like an artist leaving a label or a death. I compounded it by making a lame decision on my own. I owned several Lee Morgan albums at the time I came across the title of this one so it wasn't a blind stab but still..... I love the album. I respect Benny Golson and Gigi Gryce so much for their writing and arranging skills and the rhythm section is top shelf. It's sophistication makes me think of Search For A New Land, which I love also.

This has been a public service announcement/confession.

 

Lon, I've got this one on right now while finishing up my work week in the home office!
Jeff

 

Thanks for your wonderful and poignant testimony, Six String.

I am not familiar with that Vol. 3 album, but I could listen to Search for a New Land every two or three days, no problem.

Will investigate Vol. 3!

And, please, your opinion on the Parlan album, also "volume 3" for him on Blue Note? I personally think Horace + the Turrentine Bros = delightful success.

 

I agree about Mr. T X 2 + Parlan =
More about Parlan's album later I'm getting ready to go to an appointment and can't be late.....