The Jazz Thread

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The Jazz Thread

Post by Scottie »

A fragment of the original Jazz thread is HERE.

So let's start off with some classic Miles Davis, before he went insane.

Kind Of Blue, 1959 (full album):



Miles Davis – trumpet, band leader
Julian "Cannonball" Adderley – alto saxophone
Paul Chambers – double bass
Jimmy Cobb – drums
John Coltrane – tenor saxophone
Bill Evans – piano
Wynton Kelly – piano on "Freddie Freeloader"

Yeah, not too bad, that line-up.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by DC47 »

When do you feel his insane period began?
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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Oh, I don't know. I was just being a facetious mopron. But let's say, oh, 1968.

One concert bootleg that I always wanted to hear is the Miles Davis show at the PNE in Vancouver, summer of '86, when Wynton Marsalis showed up and Miles kicked him off of the stage. ETA: I've looked and looked and looked for a copy of that show; no luck yet.

This article touches on it and here is a local TV look back at it:



(At the 2:30 mark there is a stunning photo of Miles)
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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I saw him in Concord, CA around 1981. Hard to listen to. And I was a big fan.

Great artists should do what they want to do. Perhaps that's the whole story with Miles Davis's musical development. He had a rep that allowed him to follow his muse wherever it led and still be able to make a living. Follow it he did. Around the late 60s he just went where I didn't have the musical background to hang with him.

But it's also possible that he was just nuts. Too much fame, too many drugs. As I recall, there were quite a few credible first-hand accounts of life with Miles that support this notion.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Scottie »

Buckshot LeFonque - Branford Marsalis (full album)

No, the first minute is just the first minute. There's jazz after that. I love this album; great stuff.

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Re: The Jazz Thread

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Just a little Metheny.

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Re: The Jazz Thread

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and some big band..

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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by DC47 »

One night a few years after this video was shot, I had one of the great times of my musical life with the Thad Jones - Mel Lewis band, with Dee Dee Bridgewater singing. It was like being on board a fast car, expertly driven. Power, grace, precision. I held on for dear life.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by kranepool »

DC47 wrote:I saw him in Concord, CA around 1981. Hard to listen to. And I was a big fan.
I saw him at Lincoln Center in NYC in 87. Had the same experience. Just painful.

Being in the audience was fun though; I ended up talking to Omar Hakim in the lobby for what felt like forever.

Anyway, here's Jaco Pastorius, John Scofield and Kenwood Dennard doing "The Chicken".

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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Scottie »

Errghhghjg, Fuck. That's awful.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Sabo »

Rush2112 wrote:Just a little Metheny.

That is obscene. I seriously wonder if any other human can play guitar like that.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Scottie »

Brubeck. Time Out. Full album. Youtubia. Just because. I've been trying to get my wife, who is completely tone-deaf, to appreciate some Jazz. It isn't working out. She prefers whatever the Chinese version of Celine Dion happens to be at any given era. Or some Hong Kong Rolex commercial. What's that sound like? A burlap sack of kittens tossed off of a bridge into a river. And in their dying final gasps of life, some vague ear-splitting harmony on the upper register of wailing; a baffling popularity that calls into question a fifth of the planet's sensibilities. If there is a difference between Chinese Opera and an 58-car highway collision, I've yet to uncover it.

I tried this, after countless hours of what could only be called Forcible Metheny. It was the next stage of attempt. Bear in mind, man attempted to fly unsuccessfully many times before taking wing.



If you wanna skip to Take Five, it's around 14:45. Listen to the whole album, though. Or revisit it. Best quote of the whole shebang? "[Take Five] was never supposed to be a hit. It was supposed to be a Joe Morello drum solo."

Everyone in the band wore eyeglasses. Well, except for the dude playing upright bass. And cats grooved to that 60s furniture while the stylus khhhhakkkkedddkkhhdd before settling in to smooth.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Denis »

Eugene Wright
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Scottie »

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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Rush2112 »

Scottie wrote:

Recently moved into a much bigger house, allows me to have my own space that contains a TV, my stereo, and my book collection. Also included a beer fridge and a leather recliner. Been working my way through my LP and cassette tape! collection. Time Out and Jazz Goes to College were in the first rotation of LPs played.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Scottie »

I've been spinning dozens of new-to-me jazz discs lately, library material for the most part, but this odd compilation has caught my ear this weekend. Maybe it's just a nostalgic binge. At any rate, lots of nice pieces on this:

Image

There's a very nice listing of the seventeen tracks and who does what here: http://www.discogs.com/Cole-Porter-Nigh ... ase/503865" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by kranepool »

I've been diving deep into Oscar Peterson. I knew he was great, but I never quite realized how great.

This morning's rotation:

Image
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by kranepool »

Here's Buddy Rich at the age of 65.

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Re: The Jazz Thread

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Coltrane, Love Supreme. First and only live performance.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by DC47 »

I've never seen him play this. Not sure if I've even heard a live version. It's magnificent. And what a band. Terrific sound quality. Especially given that this is likely from the early days of European TV.

It's chilling to think that in many ways this was the end for Coltrane. His band -- perhaps his greatest -- would soon fall apart as he went much farther in the free direction than they wanted to travel. At least to these ears, moving radically outside the bebop jazz mode led to his music heading downhill fast. Within two years he'd be dead, from liver cancer.

But in this performance, he's on a majestic peak, looking out over all of the jazz world, bringing the incredibly fertile line of bebop to a spectacular conclusion.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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Here's some brilliant saxophone playing from the opposite end of the jazz universe.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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Two very different ways to play the saxophone, converging with a crack band to play a classic Monk piece. I don't recall ever hearing Getz and Coltrane together, apart from this night.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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He's 10, we are all worthless.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Sabo »

I wonder how long it will take Pat Metheny to fire Lyle Mays and hire this kid.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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Did you see that ludicrous display last night?
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by DC47 »

Hey Rush, I'm really enjoying this Alice Coltrane/Pharoah Sanders album. I haven't heard them together in a long time. You have some kind of amazing musical range. That, or you are actually a collective of radical lmusical cultists who choose to use a single identity in your internet forays.

Here's my review.

When I hear Sanders play sax in this era (late 60s, early 70s), I hear where John Coltrane might have gone had he lived longer. I'm a devotee, so wherever he was going, I want to go along. In the 70s I actually attended St. John Coltrane Church (they were Episcopals) in SF, and proudly wore-out that tee shirt. How cool is it that a jazz musician inspired a legitimate, no-joke, religious entity that really integrated Coltrane's later music with Christianity? Only one, of course. There's no Church of the Kenny G. or Michael Buble Temple. They don't even have pushcarts.

Anyways, Sanders was in Coltrane's final group. Many assumed after Coltrane's death, that Sanders was carrying the mantle. They weren't happy when he began deviating. And he was all about that (as Coltrane would have advised!) But their influence was no doubt mutual. Sanders sounded a lot like the final years of Coltrane, even before he met him. He just wasn't getting heard by even most jazz types.

When I first heard Sanders play, the thing that stood out was not the Coltrane-esque playing (expected, though still loved), but that he wasn't going to just play saxophone notes. He was very much after sounds, and happened to have a sax in his hands. And the sounds didn't have to be the ones on the scale or the ones that could be written down. Sure, JC's sheets-of-sound. But also over-blowing, multi-phonics, atonality, and all kinds of stuff that would be called a mistake at your basic teen-age music lesson. He played some conventional sounds, though not very conventionally. But you got the sense that this was just the border, and that he wanted the picture to be the odd stuff. He really wanted to explore this and make it work. Not just to freak out madly, calling it free jazz to justify the mess. And there was a lot of that kind of thing in NYC in the 70s, and later.

Alice Coltrane is sometimes thought of as kind of a nepotistic addition to her husband John's last group, where she replaced McCoy Tyner. Coltrane-ites thought this was a bit like Yoko replacing Paul. But while she wasn't a major figure, Alice Coltrane had been a working jazz pianist for many years, and could really play. Her married name no doubt helped her get gigs and record deals. But she keeps up with Sanders on this disc, which is asking a lot. He was a jazz monster right about then, and he wasn't playing with her because of her name.

Some things of note about this album for me are:

- It obviously is built around Indian music. The drone of the oud and tamboura are, well, droning. They do go on. And I never really liked Indian music. I was the one who never played side one of the Concert for Bangladesh album. I found Ringo was cooler than Ravi even when there was burning incense in the room and a cheap tree of life tapestry (sure, I had one) on the living room wall at the ol' commune. But I actually like the use of the Indian themes and instruments here. The western sound of the harp is actually harder for me to get into, or even past.

- The last cut (Isis and Osiris) features the great bass player Charlie Haden and Rashied Ali, who drummed with Elvin Jones on one of the last Coltrane studio albums. Even though they are not the featured players on this album, they are given tons of space here. God bless the free jazz era recordings -- no producer could tell anyone what to do in order to please the label. That wouldn't be, like, free. Man. Listen past the harp plinking (okay, I don't get it yet), and you will hear the real deal with free jazz. The needle in that steaming dung pile. This is live not studio, and they are building something together, getting it done back there. They should have taken an axe to the harp (hey, free jazz!), but nothing's perfect.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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I have a really wide range of musical tastes probably because I've been able to build them myself. My parents basically listened to folk pop (John Denver, Simon & Garfunkel, P, P, & M and the like or classical music. While I have a soft spot for American Tune or a early Baroque Violin Sonata, I discovered the Beatles via Sgt. Peppers when I was in junior high. While I've had friends push me this way or that I have devoured things once I discovered them.

Doesn't help that I am a hoarder or books and music. Doesn't help being in the library game and having everything available via interlibrary loan, but then again I listen all the time. I'd be happiest in a big leather chair with music on the speakers, a good book or conversation, and a pint of a dark ale. I wish I had the mind for the particulars as you do in regards to this person recorded here and whatnot, but I guess that went out the window when they stopped making record sleeves.

also, I'm not the biggest fan of the harp, though I do find it a bit more enjoyable when I've had a taste of the Colorado legal.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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A million people have your musical background and only 2 or 3 have your musical reach, it seems to me. That's something unique. Most of us find our five or six grooves, and wear them deeper. When you post something musical, I pay attention. Even if at first glance it appears to be some dreary hipster thing, or a bunch of guys nodding off in a garden shed in England. And I say that with love and respect.

I know a lot about only a few of the gazillion musical grooves out there in the cosmos. You probably won't find me commenting on the Beatles, for example. Love the tunes, but I know about as much about them as the average Beatles fan of my generation. Except for the bit about their abduction by aliens that John told me about. So I've got nothing to add to most who listen.

The bop era of jazz is certainly one of my main groove things. I love it, I tried to play it, and I'm still learning about it.

So when an obscure Sanders/A. Coltrane album just shows up in front of me here, one I haven't heard since circa 1984, then I perk right up and start to cogitation. My guess is that no one else in these parts knows much about this music, so I thought it might be fun to put pen to electronic paper in case it turned out interesting. Listening certainly brought out the memories and connections.

Musically, for sure. I wasn't initially into the post-1960 Coltrane. Talk about no melody. But I came to love it. There's more than just musical connections though. For example, the whole Coltrane Church thing is actually pretty cool. It was most definitely not a joke or a tourist thing. it was a very sincere, inspired venture into basing a religious experience on the work of an artist who was expressly doing religious music (at the end). It was not even all that safe to be there. The Fillmore back then was a bit of a war zone, and the church did not discourage junkies. After all, Coltrane found god about the same time he dismissed heroin. Some would say he substituted.

I'd love to see the church again, though I'm a bit afraid of gentrification. Is there much of SF that hasn't gone this way? I suppose, worst case, I'd get a great cup of coffee and artisanal toast. Perhaps some second-rate Coltrane imitators. But you never know.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by DC47 »

Rush, scrolling down, I see above that you posted the only live video of Coltrane playing A Love Supreme last April. That's quite the coincidence, as I considered posting it just now. It's the foundational Coltrane text for the church I just discussed. If you've got to pick one piece of music to start a church on, that's a pretty good rock.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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DC47 wrote:a bunch of guys nodding off in a garden shed in England
I love me some Canterbury Scene!

Just sent Max some Steve Hillage and Gong! that's been blowing his mind. Nothing like some ambient jazz prog rock with an Aussie tinge!

Currently I am just listening to things released in 1977 with a few tidbits of other things thrown in, so basically a a college radio station with no format and unlimited resources from Slippery Rock U in late 1977.

Currently this



Released 6/17/1977 and reached 30th on the charts in the UK!
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. I've never heard of this Hillage guy, except from you. Based on this, and the nature of the music when I hit play, I wondered if it's all a prank at my expense. So I checked Wikipedia. The listing closed with this line:

"Hillage also collaborated with Ozric Tentacles on the 2004 album Spirals in Hyperspace."

Now I'm convinced. This is so improbably, fantastically pretentious. Definitely the kind of band and album names that dazed 70s prog rockers who have been working in the family grocery since then would come up with for their latest lost cause.

I'm pretty much convinced that you have created this whole Hillage thing just in order to bait gullible souls like myself. That wiki page is very true to life. The discography even. I especially like And Not Or. Some Emerson/Fripp wanna-be should definitely have used that for a title. I suggest listing an 'unplugged' album. And crediting some hypenated name with playing acoustic synth on it.

Seriously, is this like Spinal Tap, but with more meta-humor as that was a commercial success about losers and this is a non-commercial success about bigger losers?

Okay, on that basis I'm digging it. Really cool album art too. You must have been deep into the local government-approved herb when you created that.

Hey, your video just ended and YouTube is playing Hawkwind's purported live show in Glasgow where they are doing a song called Orgone Accumulator! Time to quit -- you're not going to top that for a title. And I say 'purported' because you slipped up there. The date on the fake video is ten days from now, 04.03.2015.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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Okay, the drugs -- actually the expired off-label psychiatric medications I got out of the bin behind Village Pharmacy -- are kicking in now. So I'm right there with you and Max and all three other Hawkwind/Hillage fans. Digging in deep to this brilliant exploration of the cosmic.



If some can't hang with the pros, here's a tip -- you can skip ahead to around the 31:00 mark where they really get down. My mother always told me that if you dress up a bit and you've got a light show, they'll know you're really trying.

I'm sending this to Elon Musk on the small chance that he's not already all over this at Space X HQ.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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and to bring it back around. Some Nina to cleanse and bring you down from the high

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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by DC47 »

That's not bad. But I wonder if you can find her doing that tune with some synth and ditching the piano, and of course the lightshow? Lights attached to the gown? And of course, alien harmony singers. Though I don't see them really relating on an emotional level to a song about hair.

Nina was boldy progressive in many ways, but I take it she never jammed with Hawkwind or Hillage. We have all lost something because of this. Perhaps the Brits will rectify this problem next time they swing through the 60s in their time traveling.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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I believe Nina at Town Hall was recorded in '59, so it makes sense there is no light shows or costumes.

I know this was after Elvis hypnotized people with his hips, but like any drug it takes some time to travel through the capillaries. Short ties and bowl cuts are all well and good but people saw through those right quick. Everyone knows capes and bandanas are where it's at.
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Re: The Jazz Thread

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I'll bet being in Hawkwind gets those guys out of jury duty.

"Well, sir, one of us dresses up as an alien and sings about spiral vortexes in the organome and such while the rest of us yammer on with our syths and guitars, in front of a freaky light show. Me, I wear blinking lights on me vest."

"You're excused, lad. Be well."
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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Sabo »

This song might be the soundtrack for the 70s.

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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by Sabo »

I love this tune. And I especially love it when the organist goes off.

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Re: The Jazz Thread

Post by wlu_lax6 »

I appreciate Jazz but would not call myself knowledgeable at all. So I figured I would take one of them there MOOCs on it. Hamilton College has an EDX class running right now called Music160x Jazz: The Music, The Stories, The Players (https://courses.edx.org/courses/course- ... T2016/info). Pretty good. Lots of interviews with old dead Jazz folks and links to some really great performances.
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