Wonderful post, overall, Max. And I weep for future generations. Betcha five bucks this woman knows who Kenny G and Herb Alpert are...

I almost spit out my coffee when I read this. When I was in high school in the late 70's I played the lead part in Herb Alpert's "Rise" in a band concert. The song itself was pretty easy but I remember being nervous as hell.

I guess, Johnny Six Pack, we must sometimes allow the unwashed heathen their notions.

Dave McKenna was a fine and underrated player. I have an album of his where he does nothing but Hoagy Carmichael songs (and when I say album, I mean vinyl), and it swings. Hard. It is also quite worn, and your post has now convinced me of the need to get a digital copy.

Nat is similar to Louis Armstrong, in that their early instrumental genius is often overshadowed by their later vocal work. His trio work is amazing.

Should be interesting. Had a chance to delve into it, yet?

My High School band's nod to such (this was late seventies-early eighties, as well) was a buncha Spyro Gyra charts. Oh, and a Steely Dan medley, which was cool.

In college, we had some big band charts of Weather Report and Return to Forever. I was a big WR buff at the time, and remember being a bit intimidated by those charts. They are still the only real "fusion" band I listen to, and then only rarely. Interestingly, I like Jaco's solo work, but I prefer pre-Jaco Weather Report.

The Joe Henderson set is terrific, and spans a lot of different styles, from the years 1967-1976.

Here is a description from CD universe.

Music includes stuff released before on "The Kicker" and "Power to the People," both excellent albums. Later cuts have some fusion, latin stuff, etc.

I am a big Joe Henderson fan and very happy with the purchase.

I am horribly Under-Hendersoned, and have seen this set for quite a bit cheaper on ebay and at used record stores, as well. I may have to snap it up next time I see it.

I know you didn't ask, Kudz, but I'm going to recommend some other albums where Joe Henderson was credited as the leader. I would unhesitantingly recommend each of these:

Big Band
Double Rainbow
In 'n out
Lush Life
Mirror, mirror
Our thing
Mode for Joe
Inner Urge
State of the Tenor
Page One
Tetragon
So near, so far (the only one on this list I haven't heard, but it looks good too)

Of course, there are countless others where he is a sideman.

The suggestions were hoped for, if not begged, sir, and your suggestions appreciated. The only things I have are Lush Life, and I like it immensely, and that Verve set he did of Jobim compositions, that I enjoyed when it first came out, but haven't listened to in a while. I used to enjoy In 'n Out, but have yet to replace my vinyl copy.

Damn, this thread is getting expensive. I wonder if I listen to them at work, I can maybe deduct the costs on my taxes?

Thanks, Wynton. Your suggestions will be used.

Edit: The Jobim album, which I am now taking with me on a sales call (along with Saxophone Colossus), is the Double Rainbow album you listed.

Yeah, these are some of the albums on your list that I'm pretty familiar with, and yeah, they're great and deserving of being on any list.

This is a real stupid aside, but the mention of Hoagy Carmichael reminds me of Bernard Darwin's (Charles's grandson and noted golf writer) introduction to the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. He mentions near the end of the intro these lines from Hoagy Carmichael's "Hong Kong Blues":

He got twenty years taken away from him,
'Cause he kicked old Buddha's Gong

And then he fails to attribute the quote. I wonder how many people reading the intro today have any clue what the hell Darwin was refering to.

Kind of Blue


Miles is blowing out some soulful notes as I am typing this out, sans his mute. There is much I could ramble on about this truly great album but on my second listening I was laying on my couch, eyes closed, relaxed, just flowing with the sounds - and it [now listening to Blue and Green, muted trumpet] - hit me. I was listening to the stars; the music brought clealy to mind a gazing at the Milky Way on a deep dark night far from city lights, when millions of stars blaze along the milky band, surrounded by lesser lights that add their own counterpoint and beauty. Perhaps that sounds goofy but I don't care. It was what came to my mind.

Anyway, it is obvious that I enjoyed Kind of Blue. The band and music is tight, it all fits together so well, and yet feels so free and easy, even at moments of more driving energy.

It is hard to pick a favorite but On Green Dolphin Street , Love for Sale, and Flamenco Sketches sure stood out for me.


Love Supreme

I consider this album Jazz in the raw. The CD I have has a studio version and a live version of the same tracks. The live version was recorded at the Antibes Jazz Festival in 1965 (Antibes is small town on the French Mediterranean coast). Coltrane is at his flaming and profusion of notes best with his band hanging on and giving him and themselves strength, evident in the studio and live takes. The track ’Psalm’ is special with a rolling continuum of sounds. On the live tack ‘Pursuance’ the bass player, Garrison, does a truly remarkable solo, eliciting a great and wonderful variety of sounds from the instrument in a dancing array of rhythms and styles. Rolling drum solos also come along for the ride.



Both are great albums and are lasting tributes to the artists that made them.


-Zeno

While running errands in the car this morning I heard a song from a new album entitled "Perfect Strangers" by Todd Coolman. Even though it was new, it felt much more in line with the style of early to mid 1960's era "straight ahead" (for lack of a better term) jazz.

Has anyone else inhabiting the thread heard this? If so, it would be great to hear your impressions as I only heard a portion of this one song.

I've never heard of him, but a quick search at allaboutjazz.com (a very good resource), provides this review of that album.

I note that the sidemen include some excellent musicians: Eric Alexander on tenor, Jim McNeely on piano and John Riley on drums.

I'm listening to this right now. I have no idea what to think of it. The odd thing is that I've listened to a lot of Coltrane's free jazzy type stuff (Ascension and the like). Although this album isn't nearly as "out there" as late Coltrane, it seems even more jarring. I think it's only the second time I've listened to it, so maybe it'll grow on me.

Are people interested in me posting videos of jazz stars celebrating birthdays, or is it tiresome?

For now, I'll note the following:

Today's celebrants are:

Dexter Gordon

and Joey Calderazzo (soloing with the Branford Marsalis quartet)


Little Joey anecdote: We went to high school together, he's two years younger. For a brief period, we were kind of piano rivals and used to talk music a lot. It was not too long, though, before he quickly overtook me.

OOps, double post

Definitely not tiresome. Pleas keep up the good work.

Wonderful review. Jazz fan Jean-Paul Sartre had a quote once likening every note as a universe in itself. Or something like that. At any rate, the fact that it had such an effect on both you and Johnny Paul (as we redneck existentialists call him) is a testament to it's impressionistic power.

I rebought the deluxe version of the album to have these live cuts (as well as the alternative cuts), and it was worth it. More adventurous, at least harmonically (Trane plays with dissonance a little more here), it's still an amazing performance.

Great feedback. I'm glad Zeno liked these after the hard to live up to recommendations we were throwing around.

Yeah, you're right. It seems more conservative, almost, but has an awfully strong impact. When I first heard it, I didn't care for it, as much for the (what I then considered) annoying use of space and silences as for the dissonance and tonal surreality. Took me a while, and I still don't consider it the same kind of casual listening affair I do most mainstream jazz. But it became an essential part of my collection later on.

I am listening right now to Dizzy Gillespie and Sonny Stitt in an amazing exchange on a song called "I Know That You Know That" on the Sunny Side Up album. Dizzy really deserves gratitude on a daily basis.

I believe that session also produced this, amazing album, which I recommend:

That I have something in common with Johnny-Paul, that café lounger, is a tweak disconcerting. That he enjoyed Jazz brings him badly needed respectability and redeems somewhat his other loathsome qualities, not the least being his French-Fantasies. Johnny once opined:
“Nothingness is not, nothingness ‘is made-to-be’…The being of which Nothingness comes to the world must be its own Nothingness.’ What a Charlatan. To bad he didn’t choke to death on a bad cup of expresso at his favorite Café.

But I wander. Thanks for the recommendations you and others have made. I have not been disappointed and plan on purchasing more Jazz CD's in the future.

-Zeno

We have yet to explore or bring up much “Latin-Jazz”. Here is an interesting quick article on wikipedia that is informative:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Cuban_jazz

From the above link:

Cuban jazz is a variety of Latin jazz, played at first in Cuba, then in New Orleans, and later still in New York and Puerto Rico.

The history of jazz in Cuba was hidden for many years by the unwillingness of record companies to make recordings available. However, in recent years, it has become clear that its history in Cuba is as long as its history in the USA. The key figure in revealing the early days of Cuban jazz is Leonardo Acosta, musician and musicologist, who has been working on this topic for many years. Others have explored the history of jazz and latin jazz more from the U.S. perspective.

The Cuban Jazz Band was founded in 1922 by Jaime Prats in Havana. The personnel included his son Rodrigo Prats on violin, the great flautist Alberto Socarrás on flute and saxophone and Pucho Jiménez on slide trombone. The line-up would probably have included double bass, kit drum, banjo, cornet at least. Earlier works cited this as the first jazz band in Cuba, but evidently there were earlier groups.

In 1924 Moisés Simons (piano) founded a group which played on the roof garden of the Plaza Hotel in Havana, and consisted of piano, violin, two saxes, banjo, double bass, drums and timbales. Its members included Virgilio Diego (violin); Alberto Soccarás (alto saz, flute); José Ramón Betancourt (tenor sax); Pablo O'Farrill (d. bass). In 1928, still at the same venue, Simons hired Julio Cueva, a famous trumpeter, and Enrique Santiesteban, a future media star, as vocalist and drummer. These were top instrumentalists, attracted by top fees of $8 a day.

All these bands no doubt played Cuban music as well as jazz, but there are few recordings of them playing jazz. There can be little doubt that these early ventures built up a stock of Cuban musicians that were at home with both genres. That led eventually to the latin jazz fusions of later years.


Some historical notes

The pre-history of Cuban jazz includes musicians like Louis Moreau Gottschalk and W.C. Handy, who visited Cuba and brought creole ideas into their music.
Since the early Cuban jazz bands were rarely recorded, it follows that we do not know the range of music that they played. Later Cuban Jazz includes a fusion of rhythmic components from Cuban music, with American jazz. Although jazz had long had what Jelly Roll Morton called the Spanish Tinge through the interchange of musicians from Havana and New Orleans during the late 19th and early 20th century, it never actually used the Afro-Cuban rhythmic components or percussion instruments. A good example of this style would be the song Caravan by Duke Ellington and Juan Tizol.


Dizzy Gillespie was one of the later influences on Cuban jazz
Modern Cuban jazz started with the meeting of the Cuban trumpet/saxophonist Mario Bauzá with Dizzy Gillespie in the late 1930s in the Cab Calloway orchestra. In due course Gillespie formed his own big band to try to broaden the appeal of bebop. He asked Bauzá to introduce him to "one of those tom-tom [sic] players" (meaning a conga player). Bauzá introduced Gillespie to the legendary Cuban conguero Chano Pozo. It was in the Gillespie band that Chano Pozo wrote the famous number Manteca.

Gillespie started a movement known as Cubop, which included American jazz greats such as Charlie Parker, who was on the original recording of Chico O'Farrill's sophisticated programatic Afro Cuban Jazz Suite. Another great Cuban conguero famous in jazz circles was Mongo Santamaria, who worked for many years with the American vibe player Cal Tjader. Other American bop players who played in the Afro Cuban genre include Billy Taylor started Afro-Cuban bands in later years also.

In the mid 1940s the mambo craze originated with the recordings of Perez Prado, who included ideas from Stravinsky and Stan Kenton in his arrangements. The giants of this era in New York were Tito Puente, Tito Rodriguez and Machito and His Afro-Cubans. In modern times the group Los Hombres Calientes carries on the tradition, led by Irvin Mayfield and Bill Summers. Mongo Santamaria, like Chano Pozo before him, utilized Afro-Cuban rhythmic structure and instruments, and moved towards his own kind of Cuban jazz. The great figure of Cuban jazz in the post-WWII era was Armando Romeu Jr, who led the Tropicana's big band for many years. Also important was the great double-bass player Cachao (Israel López), who organized a number of jam sessions in Havana and New York.

Important Albums:

Dizzy Gillespie, Afro

Kenny Dorham, Afro-Cuban

Stan Kenton, Cuban Fire!

Danilo Perez, Motherland

Michel Camilo, On Fire

Eddie Palmieri, La Verdad

Sebastian Schunke, Symbiosis

Gonzalo Rubalcaba, Mi gran pasion

************************************************** *******

Tito Puente live at the Montreux: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zxzph...eature=related


-Zeno

Seeing Tito Puente perform outdoors on a blazing July evening about 15 years ago remains a memory of a lifetime.