Mariza, Concerto em Lisboa, Silva Screen

DVD I bought of live CD I downloaded. Her concert at Purdue this spring was my entrée to fado and the thing is this, her voice is amazing. She is the modern incarnation of Amália da Piedade Rebordão Rodrigues, the most famous of fadistas.

But her voice is massively enhanced by her presence, which is equally stunning. Every emotion in the considerable emotional palette of fado music is etched in her face and body language. This is the chief value of the DVD in a concert recording that is, essentially, a best-of session. And it's magnificent, from the opener Loucura, through Meu Fado Meu and on. Henceforth, when anybody asks me about the fado jag I am on, I will loan them this.

Gianluigi Trovesi, Profumo Di Violetta, ECM

Gianluigi, who blows a mean sax, not to mention piccolo and clarinets (see Euridice and Frammenti orfici), fronts an opera band, the horn-heavy kind Verdi liked, in hommage to the city bands of his youth. An opera ensues and is converted into, at mildest, third stream music and conventional jazz that ranges from elements of Gershwin to bop and, at interludes, fusion and free jazz, if not all the way to Albert Ayler at least Ornette Coleman. It's a pretty good trick, all in all.

Although I'm left wondering whether to park it in the jazz or classical sections on my shelves, I know it would compliment either. Not the kind of thing you want to approach without being committed to appreciating its intricacies. Worth every minute if your mind is right.

Jackie McLean, One Step Beyond, Blue Note

When jazz musicians use the waltz form, I sometimes hear it right away (for instance, in Sonny Rollins' Valse Hot or Bill Evans' Waltz for Debby, two favorites). Frankenstein took me three listens but I finally could discern the relationship between it and the Blue Danube, which is, in fact, there underneath all along. Makes the cut more impressive when you do find the thread, start following it and realize how intricately modern a structure these guys have been able to build on the waltz foundation, and not illogically. Everything Jackie McLean produced from the early to late '60s was pretty much a Frank Lloyd Wright.

Grachan Moncur III produced a couple laudable sessions (Evolution and Some Other Stuff) in this period as well, so the pairing of the two, who are complementary, is a bonus. The use of a rhythm section with Bobby Hutcherson on vibes instead of a guitar or piano also makes this interesting. Teen Tony Williams, pre-Miles, is the drummer. He has a solo on Saturday and Sunday that shows why Miles would soon steal him.

A big Boilermaker hello...

...from space, no less, on the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.

Marie de Lourdes Machado, Fados do Fao 38, Movieplay

Like listening to a CD of vintage Bessie Smith recordings. Her voice isn't stunning in the mold of Amalia Rodrigues then or Mariza now, but she owns the material no less than Bessie Smith owned, say, St. Louis Blues. Or Balanca Balanca and Meu Filho in the case of Marie de Lourdes Machado. It's about the affinity, in the chemical sense of an attraction that bonds substances, between the singer's life and the material. Wonderful instrumental backing on this, too. Part of a discontinued old-timey fado series I've been able to find a few discs of used or surplus. I would happily buy more.

I can't find a lot of biography for her on the Web, but I did find this: "In 1937, the Portuguese guitarist Armando Machado and his wife fado singer Maria de Lourdes Machado opened Adega Machado, which is considered to be one of the oldest fado houses in Lisbon." Must go there.

I also found this YouTube video, slide show (embedding was disabled, although I don't see why). Pretty scenery. Boffo soundtrack. Limited time investment for the payoff.

The Fully Celebrated, Drunk on the Blood of the Holy Ones, AUM Fidelity

Perfect music for a ritual sacrifice...just kidding. Weird title aside, it's a somewhat strange jazz trio date that sounds like Ornette Coleman meets funk and Monk (nowhere more than on Moose and Grizzly Bear's Ville) with some Albert Ayler, Mingus and Eric Dolphy in the mix. Alto guy Jim Hobbs doesn't dip much below the high register. I'd swear he's playing a soprano most of the way. He brings Thomas Chapin to my mind, notably on Reptoid Alliance. The title track is surreal, which makes complete sense.

No gypsy guitar from Django Carranza, whose job instead is to lay down the beat for the proceedings, noticeably on Enemy of Both Sides, where he's really the centerpiece. Pearl's Blues (Your What Hurts?) makes me think of a twisted Tiny Bubbles, while Conotocarious is a free jazz romp and Brothers of Heliopolis has a Chinese thing happening. Dew of May begins like a quiet morning with coffee, a donut and a paper, after which you reluctantly exit the La-Z-Boy and get some stuff done. Timo Shanko on bass plays right along all along. Endearing after a few listens, over the course of which I keep hearing new things.

Mooned

A 40th anniversary of the first moon landing site from the cradle of astronauts and quarterbacks.

First and last men on the moon were Boilermakers baby, for a bit longer anyway. But we'll always have Neil "Mr. No. 1" Armstrong.

Probably a flaw in my character, but I really have very few vivid memories of childhood, despite generally having a good time. One of them is watching Armstrong step on the moon on an old black and white TV.

I also remember Drew Brees throwing that TD pass to Ike Jones to beat No. 4 Kansas State with 1:25 left in the 1998 Alamo Bowl, but that was in color. I didn't get to drink a few beers in celebration in '69 either. I think I'll just have to make up for it tonight.

God bless Neil Armstrong and Eugene Cernan. Also Drew Brees.

A baker's dozen at random...

...from my iTunes library.
1) Poinciana, Ahmad Jamal (all about space with him, which Miles so loved, and Ray Crawford on guitar plays right along); 2) The Doors, Take It As It comes (hey, pass the peyote); 3) Essaouira, Thomas Chapin (on bass flute rather than saxes, he died far, far too young, Mario Pavone on bass is stunning); 4) Need to Be, Dewey Redman (not much avant-garde about it, Dewey spinning straight hard bop with his tenor, and darn good at it, too); 5) Recuerdos, Enrico Rava (Enrico with no piano or guitar, just drums bass and Javier Girotto on saxes, leaving the trumpet master with maneuvering room, which he uses to fine advantage); 6) I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart, David "Fathead" Newman (big band Fathead, who could have done Duke proud as well as Ray Charles) 7) Can't Get Out of This Mood, Nina Simone (that voice purely her swings)

8) E Viemos Nascidos Do Mar, Ana Moura (she's singing of the sea in a lively fado fashion and it is so good); 9) Men at Work, Bill Barron (he's showing how hard bop can logically segue into the '60s New Thing with great sax playing and a superior ensemble); 10) There Shall Be No Night, Duke Ellington (and of course, his band, maybe his best band, at Fargo with Ben Webster getting more out of a short solo than most guys get out of an hour); 11) Luck Be a Lady, Frank Sinatra (as if the Chairman isn't enough, the backing band is Count Basie and his Orchestra, you could take Frank out of it and it would still delight); 12) You Turned the Tables on Me, Billy Mitchell (Dizzy dug this Detroit tenor, with good reason); 13) All Day Long, Rusty Bryant (R&B tenor legend works an alto with Grant Green, who's date this could be, on guitar and Sonny Phillips on organ, bluesy and funk-eee).

White water, white death

The raging rapids of Wildcat Creek. OK, more like noisy riffles.

What I learned on my first paddle there this morning: if you're going to be headed upstream, pack your canoe pole and some rope and expect to do a bit of walking because there are more than a few spots too shallow to move enough water to make headway.

The ride back down was a lot of fun though.

Nice scenery. I saw another heron and a possum climbing a tree and got up close to a turtle, happily not the big snapping variety.

M for Mississippi (Vol. 1), various real live blues artists, Broke & Hungry Records

I have a policy, when Broke & Hungry Records releases a CD, I buy it. These guys find and record bluesmen, primarily from Mississippi, who have, for the most part, never been touched, sadly, by attention much beyond their communities nor commercial considerations (not so sadly, although I wish they could receive the financial recompense they richly deserve without it). In short, whatever they release is "pure" blues from the state and region that's always been the major wellspring for said.

So when they did an award-winning DVD documentary about the artists with whom they have worked and subsequently released not one, but two discs of the music from it, I was on the hook. Blues you say? Try I'm a Bluesman from Terry "Harmonica" Bean. And then you have Black Mattie's Face from the Mississippi Marvel and Lightnin' Malcolm and Hip Shakin' Woman from T-Model Ford and Stud. This stuff is frigging as blue as it gets. Give It All to Me, Baby from Cadillac John Nolden and Bill Abel and The Woman I Love from Pat Thomas? Blue, blue, blue. Bring It on Home from the Robert "Bilbo" Walker Band is soul with a lot of blues flavoring it. Rosalee from L.C. Ulmer is pure Delta right out of Charlie Patton. Hey, the CD just ended. Think I'm playing it again?

Old News Borrowed Blues, Warren Smith, Engine

Mingus and Sun Ra for the 21st Century with a dollop of the Art Ensemble of Chicago. I swear I just heard Joe Daley slip a chorus or two of Young at Heart in on the suite Free Forms 1-4, on the euphonium no less. Claire Daly, a favorite, has a great baritone sax solo that doesn't sound like anything but what's coming out of her head.

Testimony to the versatility of Cecil Bridgewater that he's on this as part of Smith's Composers Workshop Ensemble big band, but then I have to think he and Smith, both Illinois guys who immigrated to New York (from Champaign and Chicago respectively) and became first-call players in a huge variety of settings have known each other for a long time. All works by Smith, Lock the Toilet door is Monkian modern bop, while Rivers State Suite has an Afrobeat, reggae thing going and One More Lick for Harold Vick gets at the nature of the late, great tenor saxophonist's playing without in any way imitating him. Magnificent.

If fado is sad...

If fado is sad, when it is sung
It only brings to tears
Those who have a heart

--Dom António de Bragança, famous fado composer

This might be the best thing ever...

Oatmeal stout and Heath Bar ice cream, I am drooling just thinking about it.

And what if you took a scoop of this ice cream and placed it in an actual pint of oatmeal stout? Screw root beer floats.

I bet a bowl of it would go good with Scotch, too.

The Art of Portuguese Fado, Celeste Rodrigues, Collectables

I know this is probably heresy, but I feel like I'm closer to real fado, at least its essense as a folk music, than with Amalia Rodrigues, her older sister and inarguably the most famous of fadistas. Celeste's singing is haunting to me rather than bringing to my mind the opera, as Amalia often does. Not to say Celeste can't make her voice soar. She can. I suspect this is more like what I will hear when I find that little hole-in-the-wall fado club of my dreams.

An informative review of the CD can be found at the wonderful All This Is Fado, a Web log about "Portuguese Fado in English."

Enrico Rava, New York Days, ECM

Another noir sound track from ECM great for a rainy day or a dark mood, although I wouldn't suggest it for the prone to depression. Better something more lively, like Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. Still, musically the guys on this rate with anybody in the Messengers pantheon, from Clifford Brown to Terence Blanchard, not to mention Wynton Marsalis, and Jackie McLean to Javon Jackson, not to mention Branford Marsalis. I mention trumpeters and saxophonists, because Enrico Rava (it's his date) and Mark Turner are the front line here. I always dig Enrico, but I bought this primarily to hear Turner, a tenor who doesn't get enough attention beyond the realm of New York clubs, it seems to me. He's every bit of Joshua Redman, who has a higher profile and a lot more CDs to his credit as the leader.

The interplay between Turner and Rava is like listening to an aural puzzle being put together. The pieces fit and make a nice picture. The solos and the seamless ensemble working wrapped around them on Outsider and Certi Angoli Segreti are typical. Not much fire (Thank You, Come Again is about as warm as it gets), but it's like having ice water douse you on a hot day. Sends a chill or three down your spine. Stefano Bollani on piano, Larry Grenadier on bass and Paul Motian on drums stick mostly to the background but are important pieces of the puzzle nonetheless.

Dawn Clement, Break, Origin

I thought it was cool when Dawn Clement ended her first CD by playing AND singing Tom Waits Midnight Lullaby, her only vocal. On piano, she has a fluidity and tone akin to Vince Guaraldi but more percussive (on Break, check out Distant Oasis) and with flashes of the approaching things from odd angles you get with a Herbie Nichols or Monk (on a breakneck Sweet and Lovely).

The roots in Monk on Break aren't as evident at the keyboard, however, as in her singing, which she does on more than one number in this outing, including positively Monkian versions of All of Me and Dream a Little Dream of Me. She may not be a great singer in the Ella Fitzgerald sense, but then neither was Billie Holiday nor is Jolie Holland (whom I like a lot) today. Nonetheless, they sure can use what they've got effectively to get the point across. Ditto Dawn Clement, with the added attraction of being able to play jazz piano on the level of just about anybody on the scene now. Matt Wilson on drums and Dean Johnson on bass are great teammates for her. That Wilson's sticks never overwhelm points to the power in Clement's playing.

Sonia Tavares, Reformacao, Sonia Tavares

From the first time I put this on, I thought of Jimmy Rushing and as I sit through a fourth listen I come up with a couple reasons. First, when she sings, you have no doubt what she's singing, her voice is powerful and you can apply the same word to her enunciation (check out Los Piconeros). Jimmy Rushing gets characterized as a "blues shouter" for similar qualities in his singing. But I always thought that was an inaccurate description because Jimmy Rushing had in reality a very classy voice.

And that's the second reason Sonia Taveres brings him to mind. Her singing on this disc is just classy, near operatic in places (Demora, Ai Mouraria and Nada P'ra Frazer, for instance), a quality in the best fado tradition of Amalia Rodrigues, which Jimmy Rushing had in a bluesy and jazzy sense as well.

The set offers lively tunes, too, like Tirana Mito. I think of Licao de Fado as being mysterious. She's a Canadian and I ordered the CD from her Web site. Sonia mailed it herself and then sent me a nice e-mail to let me know it was on the way. Like I said, classy.

Thoughts on the river

Pretty boat.

You can park yourself on an island in the stream, get on that river and let the current carry you where it will, or take a paddle in your hands, bend your back and choose your own destination.

On bad beer

I have to admit that sometimes after I drink a certain number of good beers, I switch to Miller or even, sorry, Miller Lite because once you're well lubricated why waste the prime stuff?

Then I usually pay for it the next morning by feeling like somebody has beaten me with a baseball bat.

Mass market American beer also is nice on a hot day, for example after mowing the lawn, I guess because it's like drinking ice cold water with taste, albeit not much taste. Then again, I don't mow my lawn.

Pass the Dogfish Head.

Three reasons big brand American beers suck, which the corporations that make them have the audacity to tell you is good for you.

Of course, there is no such thing as bad free beer.

Jackson's send off

As I've stated, I think the level of coverage (and its almost complete lack of context and perspective) of this whole thing has been criminal.

And not, evidently, a victimless crime either:

"Meanwhile, the city of Los Angeles said that Jackson's memorial service cost $1.4 million.

"Spokeswoman Sarah Hamilton said the costs included extra police on the streets, trash pickup, other sanitation and traffic control for the Tuesday event.

"Three thousand police officers, almost one-third of the force, were on hand to ensure that the Jackson events proceeded smoothly, Los Angeles Assistant Police Chief Jim McDonnell said.

"The city, which is $530 million in debt, set up a Web page asking Jackson fans for donations to help with the expenses.

"Los Angeles City Attorney Carmen Trutanich does not want taxpayers to pay a penny for the service, his spokesman said Wednesday.

"The city attorney does not want something like this happening again, the city paying for a private event," spokesman John Franklin said. "That's especially in a cash-strapped city, where people have been furloughed or even lost jobs."

I'm with the city attorney.

Here is a little measured perspective:

"You'd have to make a desperate effort not to know that Michael Jackson (until recently excoriated by the media) had died, and you'd have to make a similarly desperate effort to know that we've knocked off one wedding party after another these last years in Afghanistan. One of these deaths -- Jackson's -- really has little to do with us; the others are, or should be, our responsibility, part of an endless war the American people have either supported or not stopped from continuing. And yet one is a screaming global headline; the others go unnoticed."

And here is a Brit view with the subtlety of a blow from a cricket bat (a tad too heavy-handed, I think, and I especially don't like the Hitler analogy, but you have to say it gets its point across):

"The parallels between Graceland and Neverland are expected and wholly unsurprising: it is what happens when incredible fame, fortune and near-limitless power are bestowed on young men with no real education and no intellectual interests. The pleasures of the inhabitants of the two mansions are near-identical: lying in bed, attended by lackeys, while you indulge your sensory pleasures: food, small boys, whatever."

Please let it all be over soon.

Tania, Fado Inspirado, Alexcia Records

I notice more zippy fado tunes, like Alamares, Fadinho de Ti Maria Benta and Rapsodia Lisboeta (which reminds me of Brazil, the song not the country) on this disk than some others I own. Sometimes I think of it as being at "cantina" pace (Mexican or Star Wars ) and other times it brings to mind, say, Emmylou Harris' Rollin' and Ramblin' or Wheels of Love.

I may be thinking of Emmylou, too, because that's the kind of voice Tania has, higher than a Mariza or a Lizz Wright and somewhat thinner, which isn't to say they aren't fine voices. In baseball terms, they're breaking ball as opposed to power pitchers, relying on subtlety, not that they can't both throw heat in selected spots. Tania, a first generation Portuguese-American, tends to pound it more on slower, melancholy fados (and there are several, despite my earlier comment about this being noticeably zippy) like Abandono, Amor de Mel, Amor de Fel and Mar Portugues. The accompaniment is generally the traditional guitarras and bass with a drum and bowed strings slipping in at least once. Consistently captivating.

That's a lot of MP3s

This is a nifty graphical explanation of how much a petabyte, which will be the size of the average hard drive in not too many years, represents in storage capacity.

An element I found interesting was the change in the price of a gigabyte of hard drive space in just the last nine years, from $228 to 88 cents. One company claims it will have a petabyte drive on the market in 2-5 years for $750, which will likely be $500 six months later and $250 a year after that. A petabyte is a million gigabytes, by the way. Makes me nostalgic for that 10-megabyte drive I thought was so big in my late-80s Mac.

Zoot Sims, Morning Fun, Black Lion

I never knew Zoot Sims could sing...and I still don't. Just kidding, he does a credible job on I Can't Get Started, but his tenor, absolutely Cookin' on things like Count Basie's The King and Box Cars, is the attraction. Bob Brookmeyer serves as co-leader and is right there with him. Some super ensemble work by the two.

I kept noticing the pianist then finally took a look to see who it was. No wonder I noticed: Hank Jones. Bill Crow on bass and Jo Jones on drums are perfect pieces for rounding out this group. That old saying about you can't beat time? They might not have been able to beat it, but they sure could fight it to a draw.

Mostly rousing, even with a ballad such as Lullaby of the Leaves, bop yet really swinging at the same time. Might be the best I've heard from Brookmeyer's valve trombone, up there anyway.

Carla Pires, Ilha Do Meu Fado, Ocarina

If Patsy Cline sang fado, which is to say her voice may not soar like Mariza's or have the near-operatic quality of Amália Rodrigues, although she played the young Amália in a musical about the life of the most famous of fadistas.

But it's a wonderful voice nonetheless (silvery is a word I want to use) made the more so by her skillful modulation of it.

Nice selection of songs with a range of tempos and a mix of both irony and melancholy. Aprende O Meu Coracao (Learn My Heart) is the kind of song Madeleine Peyroux might sing, if she sang fado. Guitarras only on the accompaniment, and a fine job of it they do, definitely a selling point for this disc. I particularly admire the pulse laid down in Fadista Louco and Alfama, not to mention the stellar soloing between the sung choruses. A fado CD not to be missed.

The Crazy Rhythms, 2 Chucks, Savoy Jazz

The 2 Chucks are Charlies Kennedy, who passed in April, and Ventura, the former a little bit Chu and a little bit Pres, the latter by way of Hawk, Ike Quebec and Bird. C.K. makes his horn dance on the title track and he's nifty throughout. But the supporting cast really strikes me in his five selections, Al McKibbon on bass in particular. He doesn't really solo or do anything fancy yet is so solid in the foundation he lays, I can't help but marvel at it. Pianist Johnny Guanieri and guitarist Bill De Arango produce some nice solos on what is small group swing advanced enough for the time (1945) to display elements of bop. Lovely version of I Can't Get Started. De Arango has some Django in him.

Ventura's five songs are dandy, too, starting with a wailing Dark Eyes. He's likewise pyrotechnical on Charlie Comes On and Jackpot, but leavens those with a ballady Ever So Thoughtful and a swift yet less frenetic Big Deal. Specs Powell does some laudable drumming.

That's how I roll

Nice long paddle this morning under cloudly skies and with a few sprinkles. Along the way, I saw a Great Blue heron, a muskrat, a turtle and a scary catfish about two feet long.

Then I started thinking about those movies where a giant alligator shows up in some place it shouldn't be, and I paddeled faster. Hey man, I saw Lake Placid. I know how this works. OK, that was a crocodile, but same outcome.

A baker's dozen...

...randomly generated from my iTunes library.

1) Ca Mi Queria, Cristina Branco (surprisingly light-hearted fado); 2) Como Fue, Ibrahim Ferrer (melancholy big-band-backed Cuban jazz singing); 3) If It's Good (Then I want It), Louis Armstrong (Pops sings, then blows, it's good, I want it); 4) Every Time It Rains, Randy Newman (I love him when he's ironic, but he's a balladeer nonpareil as well); 5) Twisted, Wardell Gray (if Charlie Parker played tenor); 6) Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant Part 1 & 2, Return to Forever (groovin' long-form fusion); 7) Stompin at Decca, The Django Reinhardt Festival (violin and saxophone capture the gypsy's essence and a guitar in the mode of the master follows, plus ensemble)

8) Deep Blue Sea, Nat Simpkins (sax, organ and guitar, to have sex by, naturally); 9) Scrapple from the Apple, Charlie Parker (what more need be said); 10) There's a Small Hotel, J. J. Johnson (lyrical isn't a term you associate with the trombone, except maybe with this guy); 11) Lonesome Home Blues, Tommy Johnson (who's not Robert, but pretty much as good); 12) The Porch Faces Sunset. Richard Leo Johnson (who coaxes a symphony out of a piece of National Steel) 13) Go Ahead John, Miles Davis (pulse, drum, thrash, a compact funk-eee omelet)

Frank Macchia, Saxolollapalooza, Cacophony

Big band...sound, in any event. Six reeds and drummer Peter Erskine. Macchia did the arrangements for a sax sextet a long time ago and finally got to record them, and some new ones, with a bunch of pro-phuker on-call L.A. reedistas, including Eric Marienthal.

Down By the Riverside is a very New Orleans second line rendering as is Java, big time. Beautiful version of My One and Only Love with Gene Cipriano on bari carrying it. They do more interesting things with Working Day and Night than Michael Jackson ever did, I venture. Duke and Juan Tizol would have dug the version of Caravan, which just popped the word intricate into my mind. Eminently swinging Shortening Bread, thoroughly bluesy Creole Love Song (Marienthal's closing solo is just soaked in the blues), odd but intriguing Swing Low, Sweet Chariot that begins noirish and ends choir-like. This is boffo music.

Cristina Branco, Sensus, Decca

Grew on me through three listens. Initially, I thought it wasn't very fado on the front end, more Latin jazzy. My Love is like Barbara Streisand singing My Funny Valentine, only not the same words and in Portuguese. But this, and the piano accompanying her, doesn't negate the fact that it is fado at its roots. The comparison also is a commentary on her voice, which is marvelous.

The Portuguese guitar kicks in on the next track, Songs of the Mountain Women, and we are back in traditional fado territory. She makes fado of Shakespeare on If Thy Soul Check Thee, and darn good fado, too. By Sonnet Destroyed we're in proper, gut-wrenching fado mode. He Only Wanted is actually kind of hopeful.

As per Michael Jackson...

In the last hundred years, there have been many, many musicians, even limiting it to Americans, at least as, and in some cases more, significant: Joplin, Fletcher Henderson, Bessie Smith, Woody Guthrie, Gershwin, Sinatra, Ella, Armstrong, Ellington, Miles, Monk, Patsy Cline, Mingus, Coltrane, Ornette Coleman, Barbara Streisand, Philip Glass, B.B. King, Muddy Waters, Elvis, Prince and Springsteen. Make your own list.

Jackson made (some) interesting music and was, up to an obvious point, good at marketing himself. He has a measure of cultural relevance as a black man (albeit apparently not willingly) who crossed boundaries. Then again, so does Sonny Rollins (willingly, I might add) and, when Mr. Rollins, or Fred Anderson, for example, pass, the media and thus the world will scarcely notice the ripple, which I find truly sad.

The venerable New York Times on the day of Jackson's death led its Web page with five, count them five, stories about it. I guarantee that on the day Quincy Jones dies, the NYT will not lead its Web page with five stories about it and not because he lacked importance in comparison to Michael Jackson by any rational measure. What he lacks is a freak show quality to his life. Prurience is not the same thing as significance.

Helder Moutinho, Luz De Lisboa, Ocarina

"One may ask: the fado singer sings the fado, or is himself that very fado he sings?" Theme of Au Vieux Chanteur, To the Old Singer, one of 11 excellent fados from Mountinho, the first male fado singer I have encountered since I became interested in the music who really grips me.

The others haven't been bad, just not as emotive as the many women whose fado CDs I now own, which is important to me because, while I am learning more with each disc, I still understand just a little Portuguese and it's the emotion, not the words, invested in the music that really attracts me.

Someone like Mariza, Ana Moura or Cristina Branco it makes no difference that I don't understand (most of) the words she's singing, I can understand what she is singing about without knowing (most of) the words, a power that comes, perhaps, because they are the fados they sing. Ditto this guy. Also, excellent Portuguese guitar playing from Paulo Jorge Santos.

Sound familiar?

Yes, and equally absurd: "June 30, 2009--Now that the president and the Democrats in Congress have set a fall deadline for legislative action on universal police protection for all Americans, battle lines are being drawn on Capitol Hill. On the right are conservative defenders of America's system of for-profit, private mercenaries. The Democrats are divided among progressives who favor universal, publicly funded police who would protect all citizens against crime, and moderate and conservative Democrats who argue that any citizen security reform should leave America's existing system of soldiers for hire in place.

"Do we want long wait times when we call for the police, like people in countries with socialized police forces?" Sen. Russell Flack, R-Ga., asked during a floor debate yesterday. "Under our system, we can choose our own police officers, as long as we pay for protection out of our own pockets. Do we want some government bureaucrat choosing the police for us?"

The whole piece is here.

15 songs at random from my iTunes library...

...at the Facebook behest of my friend Virginia Black.

I should do this more often.

1) Barrett's Privateers, 3 Pints Gone (maybe the best band name ever, great song, too); 2) Nutty, Thelonious Monk and John Coltrane (At Carnegie Hall no less, how could you lose?); 3) Might As Well Be Spring, Sonny Stitt (how he could play the saxophone with such lyrical grace); 4) Round Midnight (and a delicious version of what is probably my favorite song, I might add), Kronos Quartet; 5) Song Of The Pharoah Kings, Return to Forever (a logical extension of Miles electric)

6) Trodin' Jah Road, Morgan Heritage (reggae didn't begin and end with Bob Marley); 7) I'll Say She Does, Six Brown Brothers (proto-jazz by a proto-World Saxophone Quartet, only a sextet); 8) Confirmation, The Modern Jazz Quartet (an elegant, naturally, reading of a Bird classic); 9) Jesus Christ, Woodie Guthrie (get over it, you conservative pigs, Jesus was, in fact, a laborer and a democratic socialist); 10) Martha Argerich and the Berlin Philharmonic, Prokofiev Piano Concerto #3 (she is one wicked piano-playing chick)

11) Crepuscule, Django Reinhardt (no one, and I mean no one, played the guitar like him before or since); 12) Work In Progress, Stephen Scott (elements of Monk and Herbie Nichols, he's one jazz pianist on the scene today who should be more appreciated, I dug him when he played with Sonny Rollins); 13) You Torture My Soul, John Lee Hooker (him and his guitar at Sugar Hill, all by their lonesome, you don't need no more); 14) Fables Of Fabus, Iswhat?! (a thoroughly worthy hip hop-inflected homage to Mingus, who I think would have appreciated it); 15) The Lamp Is Low, Booker Ervin (fitting that one of Mingus' favorite saxophonists follows)

What, Michael Jackson change?

Sad, sad, sad.

And speaking of the Allison family...

This is Luther Allison's Little Red Rooster. There are many other Little Red Roosters (kind of) like it, but this one is Luther Allison's. It is nass-tee. Followed by Evil is Going On. I need to drink whiskey and smoke cigarettes now.

Thoughts on Bad News is Coming, Motown Universal.

Pretty nasty Dust My Broom, too.

Bernard Allison, Keepin' the Blues Alive, Cannonball Records

He's an argument for the blues being genetic, because he sure musta got a bunch of Luther's genes. Rockin' Chicago-electric blues, although he'd go over big at the W.C. Handy Blues Festival in Henderson, Ky., or the Austin City Limits Music Festival. Young Boy's Blues is a corker and Walkin' would take me a long way, strollin' or drivin'. You Gave Me the Blues is a soul-inflected blues ballad with some great guitar licks, like those aren't crawling all over this. Delicious cover of Ike Turner's Rocket 88 and boffo B-3 backing from Ron Levy.

The only thing I wonder is why there is a BB rolling around in the chamber on the left side of the CD jewel case.

Ana Vinagre, Paixoes, Figueira Productions

With her husband Jose singing on some tracks, too. She's another American fadista, more experienced than Nathalie Pires but rawer, which I intend as a compliment, although I really enjoy Nathalie Pires.

Vinagre's voice is powerful and expressive. She gets right down to the emotional core at the center of fado songs. But I detect very little in the way of post-processing or effects on this CD. I have to think that if I walked into a hole-in-the-wall club in Portugal to hear "real" fado, this is pretty much what I'd get, from the opener Paixoes Diagonais on. Barco Negro slips in some sea sounds. They're endearing rather than jarring, however. The guitar playing is excellent, and unflitered, as well. I believe I'll buy her other disc.

Heat is on

Froze my butt bathing in a river in Alaska in July once. Would have
taken it today. One warm paddle up, in a head wind to boot. The breeze
was nice coming down though.

Mariza on Letterman

Note the silence of the audience. No one, it seems, dares utter a peep because this woman obviously means serious business.

For all the wonder of her voice, I think her stage presence is just as stunning. Even Dave seems to have been impressed. OK, I'm madly in love and I admit it.

Steve Reid, Nova, Universal Sound (Import)

First thought, hey Miles' On the Corner, maybe with some of the rougher edges sanded off by Weather Report. But that doesn't quite get it after a traveling through a few times. Steve Reid drummed behind a lot of people and I hear a lot of people in this.

Martha and the Vandellas as a high schooler and there is a funky Motown hum underneath, with Ornette (jammed when the two worked at Macey's), Fela Kuti, '70s and '80s Freddie Hubbard, Jacke McLean, Sam Rivers, Archie Shepp and even Horace Silver wrapped around it. These are just impressions. The band does a great job of incorporatng it all into set pieces that range from Afro-beat (Lions of Juda) to free jazz in a Coltrane's Ascension or Pharoah Sanders' Karma mode (Sixth House). I like Les Walker on electric piano and organ, Joe Rigby on saxes and the two bass array (acoustic and electric, note how the former bowed colors Free Spirits-Unknown). Ahmed Abdullah on trumpet doesn't so much stand out as round out the sound but does a fine job of it.

Folk Songs, Bill Frisell, Nonesuch

Initially, I was thinking I would start this post commenting that Folk Songs sure wasn't the Bill Frisell of, say, Unspeakable. But in relistening to the latter, as well as Nashville, I am struck by Elvis Costello's excellent liner notes, which come down to a comment Monk supposedly once made to a young Bob Dylan, who approached Monk one night between Monk's sets and told the pianist he was Bob Dylan and played folk music in The Village. Monk looked up from his piano and said: "We all play folk music."

Profound when you consider the roots of jazz and applicable to Frisell because in reality Folk Songs, Nashville, Unspeakable or The Intercontinentals for that matter are all folk music of a stripe. More avant-garde, or more like Monk's jazz, in the case of Unspeakable to be sure, country music-oriented in Nashville, tilted toward traditional European folk music in the Intercontinentals and a compilation of Frisell performances of American folk music, loosely stated, in Folk Songs, kind of a Frisell folk "best of." That covers a boffo rendition of I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry, and cool versions of Shenandoah and Sittin' On Top of the World, among other things. Fine Frisell.

Nathalie Pires, Corre-me o fado nas veias

Nathalie Pires, whose CD I bought directly from her Web site, has a voice that could make her a queen among pop divas, or a vaunted country or jazz singer for that matter, but she sings fado, despite being a 23-year-old American college student, and the world is a better place for it. (She's the daughter of Portuguese immigrants, fluent at speaking and singing Portuguese and her father composed for, played and sang in Portuguse bands in the U.S., so it comes naturally.)

Her first CD is a nice mix of lively, ironic, kind of que sera, sera, this is what is fado (fado does, after all, mean fate) like E Ou Nao E; Italianesque operatic theatrical singing-style fado like Ai Mouraria; and very traditional, painfully sad fado like Com Que Voz and Estranha Forma de Vida. There is outstanding guitar playing as well, including a wonderous solo run on Variacoes em Re, which proceeds as if there were no singer on the track. But wait for the payoff. Fado, and a young fadista, of the first order.

On H2O...

...and sent from that water, floating back toward the U.S. 52 bridge after paddling up past it.

Felt comfortable enough with the boat tonight to do an upstream ferry across the river even beating a quarter wind on the bow.

Saw a group of hawks riding that wind, a mother duck and her babies resting on a log, which probably would have interested the hawks, and a muskrat or beaver swimming along with a nice branch full of green leaf sprouts, probably dinner.

Me, I had Jimmy John's after.

Ecology 101

Whenever someone tells me drilling for oil in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, or logging or mining some other piece of what few pristine places we have left, can't possibly hurt, I think of all the stories like this one about the demise (and recovery, thankfully) of an English butterfly I've read over the years.

The crux:

"It turns out that, like many butterflies, the large blue tricks local ants into rearing its young caterpillars. But unlike other species, the large blue relies upon a specific red ant, Myrmica sabuletiI, for its nanny services. Because of that unique relationship, the butterfly's population started to crash when that ant species declined.

"The ants ran into trouble when farmers stopped grazing their livestock as they had for generations and a virus ravaged the population of wild rabbits. Grasses grew too long, causing soil temperatures to drop by a few degrees. That was just cold enough to make the area inhospitable to the ants, and that hurt the butterflies."

And industrial-scale operations won't have a negative impact on an ecosystem as tenuous and delicate as the tundra? If you buy that, Bush, Cheney, Sarah and the rest of their totally irresponsible, corporate-backed ilk have one they'd like to tell you--again--about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and the need to go to war there.

Jazz in the house...

The White House, that is. Yet another reason I dig the Pres (and not just Lester Young) and the First Lady.

I vote yeah...

Mixing jazz and beer is most definitely something I am in favor of, especially tasty jazz and beer, which all these choices appear to be.

A short-term goal in my life is now to listen to Sun Ra's Lanquidity (a Herman Blount classic) while drinking La Sancerroise au Gruyt.

Pat Metheny, One Quite Night, Nonesuch

I think Pat was screwing with us on the title because the baritone guitar he plays in a solo session is definitely not quiet. I had to turn my stereo down for fear of upsetting the neighbors. (Warm today, had the windows open.)

Maybe he means quiet as opposed to "loud" like the cream, red and yellow checked sports coat I had back in the '70s. The CD is quiet as in elegant and timeless. A nice version of Don't Know Why, an engaging take on Ferry Cross the Mersey (avant-garde jazz version) and a whole bunch of Metheny, ranging from Over on 4th Street, which practically rocks, to the intricate and melancholy I Will Find a Way. Good guitar.

Why the heck not?

So you are walking along a road and you come across Dick Cheney lying in a ditch. Maybe he had another heart attack, we can only hope, or something.

You see him and you kick him, right? I mean, it's not like you're going out of your way or anything. I'm thinking a nice boot to the head, or the nuts, assuming he has any.

Nevoa, Fado Distraido, Phantom

A pretty jazzy fado session where she even works alone with a bass at times and, when the guitars kick in, they remind me of Django Reinhardt's Selmer more than the Portuguese version.

Kind of like if Madeleine Peyroux made a fado CD. Nice though.

Marcus Strickland, Open Reel Deck, Strick Muzik

Definitely not a ballads CD. Thoroughly 2000s jazz with a hip-hop, kind of, element, via spoken word artist Malachi, but wrapped around a lot of just stellar saxophone playing. Try Subway Suite 2nd Movement on for size with Jon Cowherd's piano a bonus and Mike Moreno standing out on guitar, too.

On Prospectus, I'm thinking, Who's in there, Sonny, Trane, Wayne Shorter, Branford Marsalis? And then I think, He doesn't sound like anybody, just himself, and damn good at it, too. That he did this live is even more amazing. Look, Marcus Strickland is just an incredible sax dude. Scintillating.

Marcus Strickland, Of Song, Criss Cross

Marcus Strickland's ballad CD is good music for a Friday morning when a little peaceful ambiance is welcome. What he and pianist David Bryant do with Bob Marley's Is This Love? is worth the price of admission alone. They turn it inside out, but in eminently logical ways, never in a jarring fashion.

Strickland's saxes are great, as is to be expected. Bryant is a major part of what makes this session memorable, however. Interesting versions as well of What's New, The Party's Over and the James Brown-associated It's a Man's World, with a nice bass solo from Ben Williams. The Other Strickland brother, E.J., is perfectly complimentary on drums. Really nice stuff that reminds me of Coltrane's Ballads or Branford Marsalis' Eternal.

For the flip side, see Open Reel Deck.

A view down the river...

...sent from the river.

Sonny Rollins, Reel Life, Concord/OJC

One of the few Sonny sessions I didn't own, it may not even have been on CD until this reissue. Call it Sonny and guitars, three of them, including a young Bobby Broom, back with him in the '00s. Reel Time is from 1982, however, and all the guitar players, plus Jack DeJohnette on drums and percussion, make it one of Mr. Rollins' early '80s things where he dips a toe in Weather Report-style fusion without diving in all the way.

I like them. I treasure his sound the last decade or so, but I enjoy it in this period as well, when he had a little bit of an Eddie Harris kind of airiness going. The tunes are generally upbeat and rockish or calypso leaning with but one ballady trad number, Billy Strayhorn's My Little Brown Book, and an interesting update of Howard McGhee's McGhee, which certainly doesn't make one think "bebop." I could see myself driving all day listening to the title track. The final cut, Solo Reprise, indicates that Sonny can say more in 2:11 than most saxophonists do in three or four times that.

Meat Loaf, Bat out of Hell Live, Sanctuary

I think living a worthy life comes down to, in some measure, having a sense of humor and not taking yourself too seriously. Which is one reason I have this affinity for Australia, an entire country, nay, continent that seems to have a sense of humor and seems not to take itself too seriously.

This must be true of the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, which backs Meat on a complete rendition of his classic, albeit not classical, CD. They do Paradise by the Dashboard Light and all, performed live in 2004. They even work in a boys choir. Meat's voice isn't what it used to be, or isn't live what it is dressed up in a studio, but the symphony makes up for that and, interestingly, never sounds out of place. (It veritably soars on For Crying Out Loud.) Just plain fun and some pretty good music in the bargain. The audience must have thought so as well. It sings along in places. Bet the Melbourne Symphony doesn't get that on Beethoven's Fifth.

The height of, like, melancholy

Mariza and a bowed double bass on Duas Lagrimas De Orvalho, Transparente, that's it.

Sea song

Despite my general reservations about over-orchestrating fado, I have to say the more complex instrumentation and instrumental effects behind Dulce Pontes on Lagrimas mostly work.

Struck me during a third listen this morning, on Canção do Mar (Song of the Sea) in particular, where the musical background gave me a mental impression of Pontes on a shore singing with the waves and wind accompanying her. I don't think she really needs this stuff. She has a voice quite capable of being interesting on its own. But the accouterments on the CD tend to have a charm as well. Laurindinha and As Setes Mulheres do Minho remind me of something like Paul Simon's Graceland.

Amália Rodrigues, Raizes, Blue Moon

In many respects, the perfect fado CD. That it is Amália suggests it, of course, and then there's the traditional, spare accompaniment of just a Portuguese and two standard guitars, which compliment, but never clash with, her voice.

More than that, I enjoy the mix of tempos in the 18 songs, plenty of sad and soulful slow numbers interspersed with zippy tunes like Grao De Arroz and Lerele that I would characterize as more ironic than happy. Made me think of the first time I listened to Robert Johnson: The Complete Recordings.

Dulce Pontes, Lagrimas, Movieplay

Heavily orchestrated fado with a lot going on around her, including some '90s electronic effects, and, I have to say, it's sometimes a little distracting and subsumes her voice in a few places, which is annoying because she has a marvelous voice.

Then again, it is impressive to hear her rise above the excess in the background on tunes such as Zanguei-Me Com O Meu Amor and Os Indios Da Meia Praia and there are interludes of stripped, down more traditional fado, gripping ones at that. Estranha Forma Da Vida, for one.

Time Out (50th Anniversary Edition), Dave Brubeck, Columbia

The classic session and a bonus DVD with a mini documentary about it. The real attraction is a second CD with live Newport appearances by the Time Out quartet (including a performance of Take Five, of course) that very nearly puts Dave Brubeck in a new light for me.

Not surprised to hear a ration of Tatum, Waller and even Monk in his playing but he's, dare I say it, as gut-bucket bluesy as Champion Jack Dupree in places, like St. Louis Blues. The integration of Someone to Watch Over Me into Blue Rondo à La Turk is priceless.

Jim Hall & Bill Frisell, Hemispheres, ArtistShare

Sympathetic is the word that kept coming to mind as I listened to the two CDs in this set repeatedly. The first disk is duets with Hall and Frisell, the former of whom usually, but not always, holds the center while the latter dances around and outside it.

I really like the second disk, which is the two guitars in a quartet with Scott Colley and Joey Baron fitting in like it was meant to be on bass and drums. Includes wonderful versions of My Funny Valentine and In a Sentimental Mood and a breezy romp through Sonny Rollins' Sonnymoon for Two.

Pretty (long) boat

My new canoe on its way home.

Some more text on teens texting

I think elements of this story are interesting (the number of texts kids send for one thing), but it commits one of the journalistic sins that most annoy me: lack of perspective.

People of all ages in this day and age face constant, ubiquitous communications and the pressure to respond to them. Is it more of a problem for teens, a theme this story is built around? I doubt it.

In fact, these two short sentences in the long piece make me wonder if any basis, other than speculation by reporters and editors, exists for the notion that teens texting is a problem at all, let alone more so than for adults.

"The rise in texting is too recent to have produced any conclusive data on health effects."

"Peter W. Johnson, an associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the University of Washington, said it was too early to tell whether this kind of stress is damaging."

At least those brief qualifiers were included, although they hardly negate the overriding message of the story--teen texting, be afraid parents, school officials, lawmakers, et al, be very afraid.

Reminds me of the '50s comic book scare and any number of other historical bouts of youth problem mongering, from rock music to video games. I expect this kind of thing from People or USA Today. I'm sorry when it appears in the NYT.

Hey you kids, get off my lawn

Not sure I want to think about this too much, especially before going to sleep.

"Microbes that live in and on our bodies outnumber our own cells 10 to one." The top breeding ground, according to the researchers at the National Human Genome Research Institute in Bethesda, Maryland, who did the study?

No, not your stomach or intestinal tract. Not even your linty belly button.

Your forearms.

Back in the saddle...

... or the adjustable tractor seat anyway.

Back living in a river town for the first time in a quarter century, I'm buying my first canoe in that long as well. I had the folks at We-no-nah make me one of their solo Prisms in Kevlar and I am picking it up today after work.

So exciting.

A day late...

Should have said happy birthday to Miles yesterday and I find it interesting that Wallace Roney was born May 25 as well, albeit it in 1960 not 1926. Fate or what?

Today: Vibraphonist Lionel Hampton records Flying Home with a classic solo by tenor saxophonist Illinois Jacquet in 1942, which I'll be taking a listen to, for about the 100th time, this evening.

Trey Wright, Thinking Out Loud, Blue Canoe

Confession: Pat Metheny and Kurt Rosenwinkel, both of whom I've enjoyed live, as well as John Abercrombie, don't really interest me very much with their recordings, although I recognize their excellence as guitarists. Which is why I'm a Bill Frisell guy, I guess. Trouble with Bill is, he gets pretty out there and sometimes it would be nice to listen to some jazz guitar that is more traditional in a Grant Green or Wes Montgomery vein and yet modern and consistently interesting.

Wright's Thinking Out Loud is that kind of session. The songs are diverse, with no one sounding quite like another, and his playing reminds me of Frisell without slipping over the edge, but more in the "feel" of it than in an imitative sense. He's definitely got his own sound. It has enough facets to it that I don't miss the presence of horns, as I do on occasion in jazz guitar trio sets. Bassist Mark Miller and drummer Marlon Patton also are big reasons why this set doesn't come off as hornless. They're as tricky as Wright and the three are seamless playing together. A nice find.

Mariza, Transparente, Times Square Records

Mariza with (more) strings, particularly the bowed kind. Nonetheless, it is still very deep fado and her voice, as always, remains the commanding presence.

I am consistently amazed at the emotional effects of her singing, and the singing of fadistas in general, despite the fact that I know very little Portuguese.

This morning I had a thought. When I heard her this spring, Mariza was doing very well with her English. (She even did a boffo version of Crying during the concert, a fado for her American friends, as she put it). How I would love for someone to suggest to her a session of traditional American blues.

I want the CD when it comes out...

Music aside, the idea is nifty, too.

Lenny Breau, Five O'Clock Bells & Mo' Breau, Genes

I don't really tire of hearing My Funny Valentine, but it does, like any song after after a few hundred listens, become harder to rivet my attention unless you are doing something special. Breau does on this, taking it in a flamenco direction at one point, among other things. I rate it with the stunning Bobby Timmons version of MFV on This Here is Bobby Timmons. Fantasic guitar playing all over the Breau disk (which actually started life as 2 different LPs) in the bargain. I remember Hank (as in Williams) is about as nifty a recrafting as My Funny Valentine.

And while we're on the subject of Harry...

This is sure a CD I'm buying when it comes out

I hate reality shows and a loathe American Idol, but if you haven't looked at the clip of this gal singing in the U.K. version of AI, do yourself a favor. Unbelievable.

Puts me in mind of a favorite Harry Chapin song "Mr. Tanner" and of the story about drummer-bandleader Chick Webb, who took one look at a young Ella Fitzgerald and said there was no way he'd have an ugly girl like that fronting his band, until she opened her mouth and sang, at which point he hired her on the spot. (Chick himself was a homely fellow, and a dwarf, so he had no real business talking.)

Testing posts from my iPhone.

Resonates with me at this point in my life

"Can't we just return to the bare bones? Relaxing with the present, relaxing with the hopelessness, relaxing with death, not resisting the fact that things end, that things pass, that things have no lasting substance, that everything changes--that is the basic message."

--Pema Chodron

Wynton Marsalis, He and She, Blue Note

So I have been listening to this again and again since I bought it Friday. Why?

I am sick with a cold and it is just too much effort to change CDs? Because it is easy on my virus-addled brain? Maybe the former, but I don't think the latter particularly.

Not that it isn't easy on the ears, because Wynton Marsalis pretty much always is by nature. But there's some complex, if impeccably rendered, music here, drawing, as is also natural with Marsalis, on New Orleans, Armstrong, Ellington and the Jazz Messengers along with, in places, Mingus (who's all over The Razor Rim), Coltrane and the avant-garde. I hear something new that I like, and that surprises me, in it with each listen.

The music tracks are interspersed with Marsalis-recited poetry touching on aspects of gal-guy relations that I could take or leave, although they add up to a nifty narrative in my mind, fit like a glove with the music and are delivered in quite a soothing manner, which is good for nursing a cold.

Like Marsalis' Big Train (a favorite of mine not especially popular, the fate of He and She, too, I fear) a CD ultimately greater than the sum of its parts.

Makes me sad...

emptyboxes
Originally uploaded by mrgreg

A graveyard for unused newspaper boxes in California, which is, sadly, well populated.

Makes me think of the old graveyard joke about people (and papers) dying to get in.

Also makes my stomach churn

What took ya so long?

Now this, I think, is nifty, also surprising because I would have thought a King, Douglass, Carver, Attucks, et al, would have made it on before, although the state-themed quarter thing hasn't been around all that long.

WASHINGTON (CNN) -- Jazz legend Duke Ellington is the first African-American to appear on an American coin, the U.S. Mint says in introducing the latest in its line of state-themed quarters.

The District of Columbia commemorative quarter showing Ellington playing the piano will be introduced by U.S. Mint Director Ed Moy at a news conference Tuesday at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History.

Ellington won the honor by a vote of D.C. residents, beating out abolitionist Frederick Douglass and astronomer Benjamin Banneker.

... and David, we'll miss ya

Listening again to It's Mr. Fathead last night and this morning I was struck by two things. First, I just love hearing him play Hard Times. Second, he got impressive range out of his horn, which can sound like an alto one moment and a baritone the next and also features a lot of the kind of tenor sweetness that gives me goose bumps when I listen to Sonny Stitt. What a loss.

Happy (25th) birthday, Mac

So long Fathead...

Glad I took the opportunity to see David "Fathead" Newman when he was at the Jazz Kitchen in Indianapolis in recent years.

He was a guy, like Sonny Rollins, who seemed to get better with age. But you could always hear that Texas tenor sound (big as the open range, of course, like everything in Texas) in his playing.

While his new stuff was always good (I'm partial to Chillin' and Song for the New Man, both on High Note), my favorite David Newman CD buy remains the old 32 Jazz set It's Mr. Fathead, where you get four of his early LPs (including one with Ray Charles) for the price of one, sort of. Mr. Gentle, Mr. Cool, a set of all Ellington pieces from Kokopelli, also is another real good 'un.

Things I learned...

...that I wasn't looking out for.

Never thought about how much Bess, You Is My Woman relates to Rhapsody In Blue until I listened to Richard Twardzik render the former on Pacific Jazz Piano Trios, Mosaic. He's a big band on whatever he plays in any event. Stunning, classical rendition of Round Midnight, too, which says a bunch about Monk the composer. I'll Remember April is not like any version I've heard before, and that's a trick.

Top 10 reasons to buy Kind of Blue again...

The 50th anniversary edition, that is (so two reasons per decade).

10) So What.

9) Freddie Freeloader.

8) Blue in Green.

7) All Blues.

6) Flamenco Sketches.

5) What the hey, it might be the last version you can hold in your hand.

4) Cool blue LP in the box, even though you probably haven't had a turntable in years.

3) Nifty posters and 8x10s of Miles, Trane, Cannon and the rest of the guys.

2) The making-of DVD.

1) It's only maybe the greatest collection of American music ever.

Miles Davis, Ascenseur pour l'echafaud, Verve

One of Verve's recent Originals reissues, which I just bought for $11.99, which is a good thing since it lasts for just over 36 minutes, but it's worth it at that.

I don't know whether there's a more concentrated example of Miles working the mute than this French movie sound track he did, eventually issued as an LP. I'll import it into iTunes as a single, megamute track.

Plus you've got European jazz legends Wilen, Urtreger and Michelot in support, not to mention seminal bop drummer Kenny "Klook" Clarke. Michelot lays down an all-time bass solo on Visite du Vigile and Miles and Wilen are, like, Miles and Cannonesque on Au Bar du Petit Bac.

Oh, and it leads to Kind of Blue.

This plays behind the flick of my noir life.

Gabriel's new trumpetmate

Forget (no, don't) Freddie Hubbard's own great sessions, Ready for Freddie, Breaking Point, Red Clay, Straight Life, First Light, et al; this list struck me in reading his L.A. Times obituary today:

"Seemingly the first choice for artists of every stripe, he was present on many of the most significant jazz albums of the '60s, among them Ornette Coleman's Free Jazz, John Coltrane's Ascension, Eric Dolphy's Out To Lunch, Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth, Wayne Shorter's Speak No Evil and Herbie Hancock's Maiden Voyage." And, I would add, Sonny Rollins' East Broadway Run Down (and Coltrane's Africa/Brass as well). Now that's a list, and it doesn't even include his stellar Jazz Messengers stuff, like Caravan.

I got to see Freddie Hubbard twice this year, first at Yoshi's in San Francisco in April for his 70th birthday celebration performance. Still working on overcoming a series of health problems, he was, frankly, awful on the horn(s). But with the good soul, and the sense of humor, he exhibited and the effort he exerted despite everything, you just had to pull for him. Plus, the band he had around him, which included Bobby Hutcherson, James Spaulding and George Cables, among others, was fabulous.

In August, I thought about heading home before his appearance at the Indy Jazz Fest. I stayed and was so glad (now, even more) that I did. He was never going to be the Freddie Hubbard of the '60s and '70s again, but he sounded a lot better and seemed to me to have figured out how to cope with his limitations, judiciously employ the chops he still had and maximize them in the context of the band. It was a memorable show. I'm sorry I won't see another one like it.

Good enough to eat...

Herbie Hancock Maiden Voyage, Joe Henderson Page One, Lee Morgan the Sidewinder today.

I could probably live fulfilled on the classic Blue Notes.

But I did throw in Monk Underground and Mingus Black Saint and the Sinner Lady, the latter a classic, or classical, in any company.

Happy Holidays

Henry's 2008 Xmas card
Originally uploaded by mrgreg

The 2008 Xmas card from the great bassist, and artist extraordinaire, Henry Grimes, which appeared in my inbox yesterday.

Many thanks and happy holidays to Henry and Margaret, and the rest of you, too.

How to have a good morning...

Chester Arthur Burnett, aka Howlin' Wolf, (Cause of it All) makes me want to get nasty.

Anthony Braxton (Mosaic box) gets my neurons firing like little arc welders.

Eddie Harris blowin' the Love Theme from the Sandpiper (The In Sound) makes me glad to be alive.

Jolie Holland, The Living and the Dead, Anti

So this morning I'm reading Ted Gioia's excellent new book Delta Blues: The Life and Times if the Mississippi Masters Who Revolutionized American Music, in particular a discussion of the dark nature of some of Robert Johnson's most popular songs, which would seem to be oxymoronic. But I think people, myself included, are often attracted by raw emotion and tragedy in art, whether it is paintings, movies, plays or music (not to mention books, try Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle on for size.)

This occurred to me over breakfast and Jolie Holland's latest, The Living and the Dead, which is mostly every bit as dark as Hellhound On My Tail and might have made me think of Robert Johnson, or Son House and Skip James, even if I hadn't been reading Gioia's book when I first heard it. Holland's music isn't the blues, although it doesn't lack for blues elements, along with folk, pop, rock and a smattering of jazz.

But her lyrics are certainly emotive in the manner of the great blues songs and the way she uses vocal modulation reminds me of some of the tools employed by a James or a Johnson. (I've always loved her voice, which is kind of twangy, truth be told. Then again, Son House's was not exactly Ella Fitzgerald's, nor Louis Armstrong's for that matter. It's what he did with it that counted.)

Mexico City, and especially Corrido por Buddy, leave me feeling like I do when I walk out of the theater after seeing something like No Country for Old Men or finish a book like The Road (talk about dark, just check out Cormac McCarthy). Like I've been through an emotional wringer, sad, yet exhilarated, too.

Well dust my broom...

Woke up this morning, coffee maker wouldn't heat...

Woke up this morning, coffee maker wouldn't heat...

Woke up this morning, coffee maker wouldn't heat...

Thank the gods for my micrcrowave, and for Earl Grey hot tea.

Broken Mr. Coffee Blues.

Al Gallodoro, Out of Nowhere, Basta

With the Beau Hunks, a Dutch retro pre-swing pop jazz band in 1999. Chops like Pee Wee Russell on the clarinet and Benny Carter on the alto sax with the verve of a youngster like Anat Cohen, even though the Paul Whiteman, TV and other orchestra vet was well on at the time (he passed Oct. 4 at 95).

Great versions of Back Home Again in Indiana and Struttin' with Some Barbecue and a cool original, dedicated to his guitar-playing grandson, in Kevin's Tune. It may be rooted in before-Ellington jazz, but there's nothing "old" about it. Need more Al Gallodoro. Just sorry it took his death for me to find him.

I am woman, hear me roar...

I find it ironic and really cool that the blues musician I am almost certain is the best interpreter today of thoroughly male-dominated traditional Delta blues, both singing and most certainly guitar playing, is a 59-year-old woman who is, frankly, hot, although I'd probably be in love with Rory Block even if she looked like Son House, the legend she pays tribute to on Blues Walkin' Like a Man, Stony Plain. She was just as lovely on The Lady and Mr. Johnson, Rykodisc. If she's going home on the morning train, or driving her Terraplane, I'm in for the ride.

What's next, Wynton Marsalis hiring a woman horn player for his Lincoln Center band?

Never mind.

Jake Langley, Movin' & Groovin', Alma

Remember Wes Montgomery and Jimmy Smith on, say, Dynamic Duo? Well, this is right there. You can talk all you want about how they put a modernist touch on it, blah, blah, blah, but the fact is, it's just an old-fashioned organ, guitar, drums trio romp, and a butt-kicking one at that.

Joey DeFrancesco (and though the Jakester leads this session, this is, in fact, Joey D's working trio) plays the Hammond JS left him when he passed and I figure Jimmy must have been taking a break at Club Heaven and channeled some inspiration the way of this session. I don't think Langley was playing Wes Montgomery's old guitar, but he might as well have been. You walk away from Bobby Timmons Dis Here drenched in bluesy soul. They're flat-out symbiotic on Canadian Sunset. Great stuff.

Happy birthday to me...

For which I bought The Complete Dean Benedetti Recordings of Charlie Parker from the wonderful folks at Mosaic, which Scott Yanow on allmusic refers to as "quite unlistenable." Now, I like Scott Yanow's AMG entries and books and find them to be, generally, useful guides. But here, he's plain wrong, especially if you've delved into the accessible Charlie Parker (Yardbird Suite: The Ultimate Collection and JSP's Charlie Parker: A Studio Chronicle come to mind) and want more, more, more.

The first more, more for me was The Complete Savoy Live Performances (mostly at the Royal Roost) and more recently The Complete Savoy and Dial Studio Recordings (which is basically what you get on the JSP set, plus all the alternate takes, which, as this is Charlie Parker, inevitably are different every take and instructive, if not scintillating, which they often are).

So comes the Benedetti recordings, by a guy who was actually an accomplished musician and musicologist, not a degenerate heroin dealer, as thoroughly incorrect legend has it, who put a recorder (tape and disk, not wire, again as legend has it) to Parker live at performances in California and New York, after Bird's stint in rehab in Camarillo and his return to New York, which is to say at the height of his powers.

Dean Benedetti, more or less, turned on the recorder when CP soloed and turned it off otherwise. Would I like to hear all of every set? Sure. Does it matter that I am listening as I type this to one Charlie Parker solo (more or less) after another? No. The music is incredible. I kept waking up last night with it playing in my head after listening to it before bedding down. That's powerful. The sound is fine, even really good, if you consider where it came from. The hair on my body stands on end sometimes listening to this stuff.

An observation...

2 CDs of Best of Miles Davis on the juke at ye olde Esquire Lounge in downstate Illinois. I slip in 3 bucks and spin up 8 tunes. As they play, I notice people moving their heads to the rythm, tapping feet, mouthing it. While talking about Dwight Yocham. Somehow, I don't think Dwight will translate as well 40 or 50 years from now.
-- From Mr. Greg's Sidekick II

Melvin Jackson, Funky Soul, Limelight/Dusty Groove

Exhibit A in the anti to the notion that those guys from the Art Ensemble of Chicago only went abstract because they couldn't play (semi anyway) straight. King Curtis would have been impressed by Roscoe Mitchell here and Lester Bowie sets the pace for about any rock, soul trumpet maven. Melvin anchors it all with his double bass fed through an electronicizing device to a point where it reminds me of Michael Henderson's effect on Miles Davis' electric bands, years before Miles Davis copped Henderson from Stevie Wonder. The title track is George Clinton funk-eee and the rendition of Eddie Harris' Cold Duck time is precious. But it's all good.

Silence, David Murray and Mal Waldron, Justin Time

Gotta wonder if Mal Waldron recording Soul Eyes, his composition, one last time knew it was the last time, because he sure puts every bit of heart and soul into it.

And David Murray, on bass clarinet in this instance, is right there with him. Amazing affinity between the two on the whole CD, as a matter of fact.

Sitting here now, I can't bring up a better piano and reeds duet session, and I rate it as one of my favorite, in a long list of them, Murray disks of any sort.

What they do with the Miles Davis electric tune Jean-Pierre says a lot about their skill, and the elemental musicality of Miles' electric stuff as well.
-- From Mr. Greg's Sidekick II

Hey, it is Indiana...

Blue skies at the Indy Jazz Fest Sunday, too, until just prior to the end of Paquito D'Rivera's set, when a deluge accompanied by lightning rolled in; oh well, I wasn't staying for Fourplay anyway. D'Rivera, accompanied only by 20-year-old pianist Alex Brown, was really good, playing everything from Piazzola to Gillespie to his own tribute to the Dizzy one, A Night in Englewood. I enjoyed his clarinet as much as his saxophone, which he made sound amazingly like a bandoneon on the Piazolla piece.

I think a lot is going to be heard from Brown, by the way. He matched Paquito blow for blow from a creativity and chops perspective. Worries me that age and guile may not always, in fact, beat youth and speed.

Ramsey Lewis and his trio with first-call Chicago bassist Larry Gray were nifty as well. I like the way he mixed the Motownish, funky, soul-oriented stuff he became notable with, church music, the blues, Ellington and even classical in a wide-ranging, consistently catchy show.

The bonus for me was getting there early enough to hear the IUPUI Jazz Ensemble, which was great, and even better with guest artist Oliver Nelson, Jr., on flute and piccolo. Nature or nuture, the guy's a heck of player just like dad.

Blue skies...

Over the Indy Jazz Fest this afternoon. Freddie Hubbard was sounding better than when I heard him at Yoshi's in San Francisco in April. I think he's getting some of his stuff back, particularly on the flugelhorn. You sure couldn't beat the supporting cast he brought along, James Spaulding on alto and flute, Curtis Fuller on trombone, George Cables on piano and Joe Chambers drums. Every one a big hitter. Still, it was a younger guy who really stood out to me, Javon Jackson on tenor. Very creative blowing.

I really dug Jerry Gonzalez and the Fort Apache Band in the set prior. Amazing how he works the mute Miles style and yet doesn't come off as the least bit imitative. You just don't hear a lot about these guys outside of a small circle and they ought to be headliners. I love the way they put their own stamp on Monk's stuff. I'd like to hear them do a full show instead of one of those hour-long festival things.

Listening to their Moliendo Cafe now, which I bought at the fest. Nifty version of Stardust. Joe Ford rates right up there with James Spaulding in my book and Carter Jefferson on tenor is strong on this as well.

His-tor-eee

Willie Pickens and six young dudes, marvy singer Saalik Ziyad leading them, making surprises at Fred Anderson's Velvet Lounge. Essence of AACM. Note to self, keep and eye out of saxophonist Fred Jackson and trombonist Norman Palm IV. These guys have some chops.
-- From Mr. Greg's Sidekick II

Guessing...

Wayne Shorter doesn't much need to record anymore, but wishing he would, at least live. His current quartet is a creativity machine.
-- From Mr. Greg's Sidekick II

Thinking ahead...

Retire to the beach?
Nah!
I think I'll retire to the South Loop, get up late every day.
And spend my evenings at the Velvet Lounge.
-- From Mr. Greg's Sidekick II