Topic: What Jazz Music Do You Enjoy?

[Johnm]

Hi all,
I recently dug out and have been listening to a Blue Note CD re-issue from 1996, of the Detroit-based alto saxophone player Sonny Red, called "Out of the Blue--Sonny Red", Blue Note 52440. The CD reissue has thirteen tracks, where the original album, a 1959 issue, had only eight, so it's like half an album has been added to the program.  Great!
Sonny Red was a boppish player with a gorgeous tone and strong bent for the blues. The program is studded with excellent blues originals, and you can tell that for Sonny Red, blues was like mother's milk.  He expressed himself so naturally and non-repetitiously in the language. The fact that he had such an expert supporting cast doesn't hurt, with the always impeccable Wynton Kelly on piano, either Sam Jones or Paul Chambers on bass, and either Roy Brooks or Jimmy Cobb on drums. This is not music that is necessarily striving for innovation or breaking new ground; rather just trying to speak in the language in a fresh and exciting way.
Sonny Red also excelled at ballad playing, and one ballad in particular, "Stay As Sweet As You Are", is worth the price of admission.  I very much enjoy this album, and in my jazz listening as much as in my country blues listening, I often find that I'm particularly drawn to the music of players who never became stars, but were simply great musicians.  This one is worth seeking out.
All best,
Johnm      

[Rivers]

I'm on a Charlie Parker discovery jag at present after working on chord melody for Ornithology / All The Things You Are. Also rediscovering Charles Mingus, similar motivation, want to be able to have a nice version of Goodbye Pork Pie Hat down for late nights and because I've always loved it.

Charlie Parker, what can I say, I realized I'm finally mature enough to understand. He was musical savant all musicians can learn from transcending genre and instrument.

Mingus, pretty mixed bag and some of it doesn't move me so much but it's always fun and interesting.

[frankie]

Also rediscovering Charles Mingus, similar motivation, want to be able to have a nice version of Goodbye Pork Pie Hat down for late nights and because I've always loved it.

hey!  you peeked!

nice to "see" you, Rivers...

[lindy]

A quick report, I just got back from spending two weeks in Lafayette and New Orleans, my first trip back there after relocating to Seattle two years ago. I am still amazed by the amount of jazz you can find in local neighborhood joints in New Orleans for $5 (maybe $10 during Jazz Fest). Relaxed atmospheres, no problems dressing down, barbecue for sale in someone?s front yard next door. The atmosphere is something you might associate more with down home blues clubs, but the music is hot and swinging jazz.

Jazz Fest was its usual over-the-top self, as was the city that hosts it. The WWOZ Jazz Tent at the Fest is always a non-stop feast. Each day starts out with college bands from the likes of Loyola and Dillard Universities and the Julliard School, followed by young lions like Brice Winston and Christian Scott, musicians who are just too young to be that talented, making wonderfully creative and sophisticated art. In the mid- and late afternoons the Fest programs the cream of today?s jazz players?Nicholas Payton, the Mingus Big Band, multiple members of the Marsalis family, and the like.

The last day of the 7-day festival is usually extra special, no exception this year, here?s what I saw and heard. First, Jesse McBride and the Next Generation; as the name implies, the band consists of a regularly rotating group of players in their early 20s making their statement that the music will keep evolving long after I leave this earth. To start out their set, they took the happy little ditty ?You Are My Sunshine? and turned it into a dark, growling blues over the drumbeat of a New Orleans funeral dirge. Massively cool. Then at the Traditional Jazz tent I saw the Treme Brass Band, which still hires out for funeral parades, followed by Gregg Stafford?s Jazz Hounds, one of the best bands doing jazz from the time of Buddy Bolden to the early 1930s. They always do a great version of ?Just a Little Walk With Thee?; Stafford has a gravelly voice that reminds you of Louis Armstrong. Next, Henry Butler, ?nuff said. Then Rebirth Brass Band, arguably the best of its kind today, though there are lots of up-and-coming brass bands wanting to challenge them; it looks like that tradition will stay strong for a while. Then back to the Traditional Jazz tent to see the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, with spontaneous second lines emerging, people carrying little umbrellas strutting and shuffling up and down the aisles.

Enough for one day, right? Uh-uh, the best is always served up last, and this year it was in the form of 80-year-old Sonny Rollins. He needs some help climbing stairs up to the stage these days, but from the diaphragm up he?s got the constitution of a much younger man. Knowing his age, and having seen other shows where old masters were basically on stage to receive the farewells and thanks of their adoring audiences, I wasn?t sure what I was in for. Turns out it was ninety minutes of full-frontal attack jazz, hard, powerful blowing from someone who was first recorded in 1949, and who worked/recorded with J.J. Johnson, Bud Powell, and Miles Davis before he turned twenty! His first piece was classic Rollins style, taking a very simple uptempo theme and just working every possible variation into it for between 20 and 25 minutes, for all but 5 he just stood in the middle of the stage, hunched over or bobbing up and down, blowin? and blowin? and blowin?. His energy level was comparable to the young lions I heard earlier in the day. He had the crowd jumpin? and shoutin?.

Don?t take my word for it, visit sonnyrollins.com and watch some of the videos of him performing in his 80th year and talking about his life. He is a direct link to Coleman Hawkins, Lester Young, and the musicians who created bebop, the equivalent of Honeyboy Edwards as the link to RJ and country blues musicians who played in the 1930s.

(Nothing to report on the blues acts at Jazz Fest or International Festival de Louisiane in Lafayette. For the first time in my experience, neither festival featured a country blues act. I did, however, have several trusted friends tell me that Cyndi Lauper and Charlie Musselwhite were a major blues highlight at Jazz Fest. Yes, you read that right, it turns out Lauper started her career fronting a blues band before receiving the message from above that Girls Want to Have Fun.)

Lindy

[Blues Vintage]

I'm into Bluesy jazz/jazzy blues piano. Listen alot to Meade Lux Lewis Cat House Piano album lately.

[Michael Cardenas]

I love Eric Dolphy. My favorite Jazz autobiography is probably Charles Mingus' Beneath the Underdog and I also enjoy the Sun Ra biography Space Is The Place.

[misterjones]

I'm on a Charlie Parker discovery jag at present after working on chord melody for Ornithology / All The Things You Are . . .

Charlie Parker, what can I say, I realized I'm finally mature enough to understand. He was musical savant all musicians can learn from transcending genre and instrument.

For someone who doesn't understand jazz much beyond what I like and don't like, I'm finding the Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings surprisingly entertaining.

[Rivers]

The new Mose Allison CD is good. It's probably worth it for the opening track My Brain which is very funny indeed, but there's a lot of depth to explore as the program unfolds. In the Amazon search box to your left put:

Mose Allison The Way Of The World

[Rivers]

mr jones, that Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings set looks real good, seems to be a lot of well-grounded material on there. I will seek out forthwith, or on Saturday, whichever comes sooner.

[misterjones]

The performances are limited to Bird solos and the quality of many of the tracks leaves much to be desired.  (Some tracks were recorded on, of all things, paper!)  The Complete Savoy Live Recordings (available on a variety of labels, it seems) is a better choice for those who like complete ensemble live recordings with very good sound.  As for me, I don't mind the scratchy stuff as long as the performances are good.  Comes from all those years listening to those pre-war blues 78s.

[Shovel]

Jelly Roll Morton (Hot Peppers version of The Pearls being my favorite Jazz recording Ive encountered to date. So packed, but loose, and New Orleansy.)

anything with Johnny Dodds, Louis Armstrong. 

And Billie Holiday is my favorite vocalist .. of all tiiimes.

[misterjones]

Morton's LOC recordings (the Rounder CDs) and his General recordings from the late 1930s are great, as well.

Also, it doesn't get much better than Potato Head Blues.  When I was first getting into jazz about 15 years ago, it made quite an impression on me.  I thought Armstrong was just some old clown on TV mugging at the audience, wiping his forehead with a handkerchief, and singing Hello Dolly.  Hearing his selections on The Smithsonian Collection of Classic Jazz floored me.

[Stuart]

There's a musical short with a dream sequence featuring Louis on the Kino "Best of Jazz and Blues" DVD that's great. It's broken up into two segments on Youtube:





Here's the link to the Kino page:

http://www.kino.com/video/item.php?film_id=597

[jflow]

Chameleon ? Herbie Hancock and the Headhunters

My all time fave.

[Stuart]

A NY Times article about Carla Bley who has been mentioned in this topic:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/11/arts/music/carla-bley-still-improvising-and-inspiring-as-she-turns-80.html