Yellow Fields is prime Weber, but without his usual player of reed instruments, Garbarek. Instead, Charlie Mariano plays soprano and an instrument akin to an oboe in India called a hehnai, and a nagaswaram, a similar but longer double-reeded horn. This is exotic stuff with Bruninghaus doing some things with his piano and synthesizer that provide some stunning soundscapes and mood, probably my favorite performance by the pianist and up there with The Following Morning.
Gene Ammons All Stars - The Happy Blues (Prestige) black & yellow mono NJ label W/Art Farmer and Jackie McLean on the front line. One of many jams recorded by Prestige so while it's not earth shattering in content it makes for a relaxing Sunday spin.
I picked up The Original James P. Johnson (Smithsonian Folkways) today and am considering getting the Mosaic set later this month. What other CD releases of piano music that predates Thelonious Monk and (possibly) influenced him would you recommend? (I am not at home in swing era jazz.)
Mary Lou Williams was a big early influence on Monk but I’m not familiar with her recordings. Perhaps others can make recommendations. Mary Lou Williams - Wikipedia
Today my wife joined me and the dog for the 40min Sunday walk. So I had to leave the discman home. But the music is always present in my brain. My brain... I need to have it checked because I was playing these two at the same time in my head: One must be crazy to think that would be possible
LOL... if we could only take the next step and carry on two conversations at one time, oh wait, I already do that with my daughter... and it ends most times in a complete and utter epic fail. Now jazzing... what a great assemblage of talent!
It's not going to win any awards for sound quality but the 1945 Folkways recording of her Zodiac Suite is a classic. Each piece is sort of a miniature but taken as a whole it's interesting, and the styles kind of dart around from something very impressionistic to boogie woogie. She converted to Catholicism in the mid-'50s I think it was and wrote a couple of religious classics -- Mary Lou's Mass, which she recorded a version of for Folkways in the 1960s I think; and Black Christ of the Andes. They may not be for everyone but they're clearly important works for her. There's also an anthology of other Folkways recordings from the late '40s with her in various configurations -- solo, trio, small band -- but again, not gonna win any sound quality awards. I'm not familiar with her more extensive live and later recordings.
This is a very unique album. It's really a piano trio lp with horns. And by that I mean There are horns but not horn solos. They just play the melodies and some backing lines otherwise. Can anyone think of another jazz record like that? Also this lp brings up a question I have- what is the last mono blue note? I ask because inside the sleeve of speak like a child it has two cat#'s a stereo and a mono. I've never seen a mono version of this though, is there one? Musta printed the sleeve before making the decision to cease mono releases? What's the scoop!
Almost all of Mary Lou Williams' recordings are worth hearing. . . Those that Chrevokas suggest are great starts. I have all those in the Chronogical Classics series, which is an excellent way to collect. If there were one cd to recommend I'd recommend this new release for sound quality reasons as well as musical interest.
Other influences on Monk are Duke Ellington and Teddy Wilson (especially his earlier solo sides.) Try this Ellngton:
Wayne Shorter - tenor sax Frank Strozier - alto sax Lee Morgan - trumpet Bobby Timmons - piano Bob Cranshaw - bass Albert Heath (3-5, 8), Louis Hayes (1, 2, 6, 7) - drums Just got this great album in the mail. Absolutely fabulous!!
Well, Art Tatum of course, influenced everybody, pianists and non pianists (especially Charlie Parker). Piano Starts Here has his earliest recordings and then a later 1940s live solo set. Sonically a great intro to Tatum is the '50s Complete Capitol recordings. Ellington was a big influence on Monk as a pianist. If you listen to his brilliant early '40s masterpiece "Ko-Ko" -- which is at once a great dance riff tune and a modernist composition you'll hear a lot of in Ellington's cluster comping and clearly prefigures Monk. Much of the Ellington piano-featuring recordings come from later, but you can go back to the 1928 solo "Black Beauty" or the solo "Swampy River" from the same year. Earl Hines is the early jazz pianist I think who most influenced much of the jazz piano that immediately followed. You can hear him of course with Armstrong on a lot of the early Armstrong sides, but I'll have to ask someone else to guide you through his extensive recordings. Then there were the guys who were peers of Monk's. Nat Cole was an influence on everybody who played the piano and he's really in a lot of ways the bridge between swing and the pianists like Tatum and bebop, maybe in influence on Monk isn't so direct, but if you're listening to the through line from the stride pianists and early jazz/stride players like Hines through Tatum and Ellington into Monk and Bud Powell and after, you really need to hear Cole. You can't go wrong really with any of his '40s and '50s trio recordings, but the Complete Capitol Transcription Sessions from the late '40 through 1950 finds the trio in a looser, swinginger setting that some of the regular dates. Plenty of other cats could go into this mix -- Teddy Wilson, Jess Stacy with Benny Goodman, etc -- but if you go from Jelly Roll Morton and the stride players like Johnson and Willie The Lion Smith, through Hines and Ellington and Tatum into Cole and Monk and Powell, that gives you a good 30K foot overview of the development of jazz piano in the first half of the 20th century.
The Coltrane comparisons and "lack of invention" remarks that I've heard (read) miss the point - and feel - of the album. It would make a great soundtrack for the right inner city flick.
Thanks for the recommendations @chervokas and @Lonson . that's exactly what I was looking for! Now playing Art Tatum's 20th Century Piano Genius. Like most swing era musicians' stuff in my collection, it's from the fifties.