Another Alto Saxophonist World Pacifoc Records "PM-411 "The Swing's To TV" Bud Shank and Bob Cooper play Familiar TV Themes Recorded 1958 - reissue by Toshiba-EMI Limited, Japan April 1992
Yes, the same tracks on my cd are the last six tracks on disc 2 of the Connoisseur set. I have that one as well. The Japanese disc sounds better to me though.
Listening to Chet Baker "Chet" on Keepnews Collection CD. Beautiful music on this album, but man, those must be the most unfavourable liner notes ever! Mr. Keenpnews really didn't have the best opinion of Chet...
Spinning this one again: Nils Petter Molvaer: Hamada Many of these Molvaer albums just get better and better with each listen. Hamada is no exception. Aside from Khmer, this may be my favorite of his so far, but I do need to spend more time with his discography in general before giving a final opinion.
Marsalis is a fantastic trumpeter, but that’s where the positives end. I think what he lacks is a truly identifiable voice and I just can’t listen to Black Codes without wanting to cry out what a forgery of Miles' ‘Second Great Quintet’ this album is.
This album is also featured on a nice boxset (5 CD) with "Jack Johnson", "On The Corner" and "Big Fun" divided on two Cd's. It seems to me a good opportunity to have them all together.
See, I get the comparisons with the SGQ but I never saw Black Codes and some of the surrounding albums as being rip-offs of the SGQ. They sound different to me, at least relatively different enough in the context of small group 'bop' (be/hard/post/free etc) which, lets be honest, is not exactly strikingly original from artist to artist/album to album. Whether the derivativeness occurs within 6 months, one year, 5 years, 15 years or 50 years doesn't make much difference to me, in theory. It just comes down to whether I like it or not. A good example is Jeremy Pelt's albums (The Talented Mr Pelt etc) which are very similar to the SGQ, but are just so absolutely killer that I can't help but like them. And they are recorded 40 odd years after the SGQ, as opposed to the 15 odd years after the fact that Marsalis was doing it. I guess my main point is that I love original, singular artists (Bill Frisell for example), but there's plenty of room in my listening for the unoriginal, of which there is a lot of in jazz and I don't get why Marsalis gets singled out, on that point anyway. Anyway, it's all good, this is all just for the sake of discussion.
Marsalis gets singled out because he’s a know-it-all, loud mouth and believes he’s some kind of authority on what is jazz and what isn’t. Jazz isn’t confined to a four-cornered wall. It’s a living, breathing thing. When you start trying to box it in, there’s a negative, narrow mindset that usually follows along with that boxing. It would be one thing if he said “Okay, I don’t like fusion” but the fact that he’ll disown any kind of jazz that uses electronic instruments or doesn’t swing the way he thinks it should, indicates very shallow thinking. Perhaps he’s let up on some of these views nowadays? Perhaps he’s mellowed out and isn’t ardently defending a period of jazz that is long but gone?
Yeah I get the beef on all of these points. Maybe my point would have been better expressed in a nutshell as "the perceived lack of originality is the least of his problems."
Speaking of Miles’ ‘Second Great Quintet’ - NP: Miles Davis: E.S.P. (MoFi Hybrid SACD) I’m not sure what it is exactly but I have a difficult time warming up to E.S.P. There’s some very good music here, but it doesn’t quite tick all the boxes for me like Miles Smiles and Sorcerer do.
And let me make another point to what I believe your main point is, I, too, enjoy unoriginal jazz music (not unoriginal in the compositions, playing, and improvisations but something that’s not going to shake the very foundation of jazz itself). I love Art Blakey, Stan Getz, Chet Baker, etc. and I wouldn’t call any of these musicians innovators, but this doesn’t deter me away from enjoying the music. With Wynton Marsalis, I get the feeling that I’m being preached to instead of something of serious inspiration. Like I said, he’s quite the technician and can play just about anything he wants, but this doesn’t mean I want to listen to him. I’d rather listen to someone like Miles or Freddie Hubbard, because I feel their voice on the instrument and they weren’t afraid of making mistakes and taking risks. Marsalis’ approach is too studied if that makes any sense?
This 1927 Ford has a CD player and, if you like that stuff, a surround sound system. "Buy used" - the motto of record collectors everywhere.
Tom Rainey Trio With Mary Halvorson & Ingrid Laubrock Combobulated On Intakt Records First listen sounding wonderful - it will be hard to match Hotel Grief but as usual the trio is mining an area of improvisation that is difficult to pinpoint. Ingrid is really the lead voice (mostly on tenor saxophone) but it might be my favorite vehicle for Mary’s unique approach. Only quibble is I sometimes wish Ingrid would leave some duo space for the other 2. Fwiw I’ve seen the trio live 4 or 5 times and they have been great every time.
Has anybody noticed the page numbers in this thread ticking through the history of jazz? We are up to 1959, a really big year. I spend probably too much time thinking about each year, often in a month by month review of where I was, my surroundings, my feelings and the people I knew at that time. I can do this for nearly all of my childhood and younger years. I'm not sure if this is healthy or not, as I remember the bad with the good. But it keeps me from forgetting my life, as so many do. People have said that if you fall off a building, you see your entire life flashing before your eyes. I guess I do that almost every day. I have been doing this ever since my childhood, and I remember trying to burn experiences into my head of whatever I saw.