Not flat. Sharp. Very innovative player who came from more straight ahead playing but developed by the early ‘60s a somewhat... I’d say almost Eastern sounding approach to his instrument. If you only dig straight bop, best to pass on this one.
I LOVE Jackie's style, but when I was sampling this one (new release to me, was excited about the TP coming) my wife said "turn that off, it's awful" a few minutes into the first track. On other releases from Jackie she usually gets two or three tracks in before she breaks. Ha! Definitely not everyone's cup of tea, but you can't deny he was innovative/unique/pushing boundaries!
Oh really. How do you that please? I’d be happy to place another order straight away and just wait it out
I don’t know It's Time that we’ll, but blowing sharp on purpose is definitely something he did on other albums. I can’t get past it on Moncur’s Evolution. Everyone’s playing is fantastic and here he comes in sharp on every song. Ruins it for me. I have other albums by him where he doesn’t do it or not as extreme so it’s no issue.
Well, they cancelled the order at my request but instantly hiked the price up so I’ll keep a watchful eye out. With this amount of shenanigans going on, much like with MMJ I’m buggered if I’m going to pre-order anything again and certainly not jump in at retail prices.
Thank you so much!! Ordered before they notice. Both .fr and .de sites have full price so we’ll spotted and thanks again.
Just noticed that TP now have a different hype sticker for the releases with digital sources (eg Joe Henderson vol 1). Wonder if they picked up on the comments in this forum ...
My It's Time is due to drop any day now. In the meantime, I decided to spin A Fickle Sonance to wet my appetite. Billy Higgins is sublime on this album. Wonderful stuff.
Yes. His notes are flat, and this was his style. You'll often see people say that his playing is "sharp," but they mean to describe his timbre, not that his pitch is sharp of the note.
On evolution it sounds pitch sharp to me, not timbre. Like he’s aiming above the note. I’m a knuckle dragging former drummer though so maybe I’ve got it backwards
He may have varied! He definitely doesn't seem to care whether his pitch is accurate, and he overblows pretty frequently, so I imagine it goes all over the place.
I hear those Jackie notes like Monk’s in-between note bends on the piano, where he lets two notes overlap.
I love McLeans slightly twisted notes and have done a bit of digging into this aspect of it over the years. While I tend to hear the notes a hair sharp more often , sometimes I hear them a little flat but either way they seem to emphasize the direction of the sound when it happens sort of emphasizing the notes in question. One theory is that he is trying get a more blues note sound of the note in question and needs to bend up or down to get there depending on what he is playing. Im no music theorist so perhaps this is not really making sense but his music does seem to have a bent blues note sound to my ears. As a side note most references Ive come across state he is alternately sharp or flat at times. Not sharp always which I think is a common belief. i think this aspect IS his sound though and you either love it like me or it sounds like chalk on a blackboard to others.
He does work around the standard western scales very creatively and does use flats, but the slightly sharp idea is really his sonic “brand” and identities what he established as his approach in the early ‘60s. He started moving towards the slightly sharp sound about 1960 and gradually pushed it well over the edge. There are times when I get annoyed by it, but something about his sound always draws me in and I always find myself returning to albums like One Step Beyond.
Yes, I think that is exactly right. If I were to use a non-musical term to describe his playing, I would say it's very "urgent" sounding. I've always loved that quality of it myself.
This album is very good. It's a very straightahead session, but the playing is SO tasteful. The album has a relaxed, uncomplicated, late night smoky kind of vibe. I think it's a good idea for 'outside' players to do some straightahead sessions once in a while, just to show that they have the chops.
The star of this show for me is Sonny Clark—but you got me listening to it focusing on Billy Higgins so thanks for mentioning that—there are a number of great albums with Billy Higgins and Butch Warren holding down the rhythm section so now I’ll relisten to some of those from a different perspective
Vol 2 that came out in the first series also had a different sticker (doesn't say "Mastered from the original tapes") Is the hype sticker on Vol.1 different than Vol.2? I can't find a photo on line of the newest one.
Interesting topic. In undergrad and grad school, part of my assistantship was to tune the historical keyboard instruments, often to some obscure 18th century tuning, like Kirnberger 3, etc. Not pulling rank on anyone here via this resume. Just giving some background on my POV. It’s obvious to me Jackie has immense control and is not playing out of tune, but simply playing the notes in the shadings he wants, as someone above mentioned, to shape a phrase. It fails miserably for me sometimes, and it depends on who he’s playing with IMHO. But overall, I love that he was that talented, that skilled, and that “brave” to move past obvious phrasings and add another element, a pseudo pitch bend/lean, to his playing. To be honest, I often wonder how the hell he got away with it. There’s a big difference between someone playing out of tune and someone as skilled as Jackie using micro tone adjustments to create and resolve musical tensions within a melody or a piece. Having said that, I thank god for Lee Morgan and his dead on, no vibrato, parallel sixths/thirds. Just my two cents.
McLean can drive me nuts. Some days I just love his mid '60s stuff and other days I don't really get what he was trying to prove. But whatever it was, he had every right to try to prove it. He paid his dues. I think that a lot of guys in jazz were searching so hard for a sound that would identify them. The weird thing about McLean is that I think he HAD a sound that had become all his own. You listen to stuff like Jackie's Bag and he is absolutely in his own territory and far from his early, Parker-influenced sound. But when he started going slightly sharp it was one thing. Really cool, in fact. But he did push it a long ways as the years passed. By the mid '60s there were some recordings where anybody who is hearing nails on a musical chalkboard is not wrong, IMO.
Jackie McLean shouldnt appeal to me, but he does. He always sounds like he right on the edge or dancing his instrument.
