Things I came across...

...looking at other things.

I had no idea the governor of Massachusetts is the son of Sun Ra saxophonist (especially baritone and alto) Pat Patrick, who also played with Coltrane and Duke Ellington. I wonder if the guv plays?

Archie Shepp, First Take, ArchieBall

Can't say what the liner notes tell me; they're in French. Merci. I do know Archie and a pianist dueting usually are worth the price of admission (see Duet with Dollar Brand and Trouble in Mind with Horace Parlan). This, with German avant-garde pianist Siegfried Kessler, is no exception. Nifty reworking of Misterioso. Plus, Archie sings the blues, well. Like Kindred Spirits, has some of the fire of Shepp's old Fire Music.

Screwing with traditional haiku

Kiss my ass now mother
In Macy's front window dude
Do it right now, punk

John Coltrane's Ascension, Rova's 1995 Live Recording, Black Saint

Bought Coltrane's Ascension, what, years and years ago. Didn't like it. Was annoyed. Gradually came to appreciate it. Then came to revere it, not as much as A Love Supreme, maybe, but in the same neighborhood. Same depth of expression, different context, same kind of emotional impact on me.

What's important about this? 1) Shows the underlying beauty of the music to start. 2) Recasts, but travels along the same path as, the freely improvised elements of the piece, graphically illustrating that none of it was just randomly issued sound.

A great tool for understanding a great piece of music, and some excellent musicianship displayed in the process to boot. Don't forget the original.

The Oscar Pettiford Orchestra, Deep Passion, Impulse

Located on the same street as Duke Ellington and Benny Carter with a somewhat more modern construction (recorded in 1956-57) than either, which is to say its foundation rests in the hard bop rather than the swing era. About a million good solos and that's not surprising. Heck of a band, Benny Golson, Gigi Gryce (whose arranging magic is all over this), Jerome Richardson, Lucky Thompson, Kenny Dorham, Art Farmer, Julius Watkins and Tommy Flanagan, among others.

That's a big clarinet you have there

In addition to David Murray, the bass clarinet player I've been listening to lately is Peter Fuglsang, who also works the relative beast of a horn like an alto saxophone, or at least a tenor, on a program ranging from "Cherokee" and Monk to Franz Schubert and several interesting originals. The CD is File Under Purple, which I bought on a lark at the Jazz Record Mart after being intrigued by the bass clarinet player (and contrabass clarinet, which is just huge) in a performance of Mingus' Epitaph.

Coltrane's quest

Nisenson's theme is that Coltrane had epiphany in the '50s driving him to shake heroin and booze (although never sweets, which is why he battled weight and rarely smiled, because his teeth were bad; pre-fluoride) and to devote his life to understanding the nature of the universe, himself and their creation using the tools he had at hand, his horn(s) and his music, requiring a constant striving to perfect his art (why he was an inveterate practicer).

Makes some sense to me. I do know I've always found Coltrane's music, at least from Cresecent on, almost painfully spiritual. A Love Supreme is like a sacred work, to me and a lot of other people, and I think Ascension, which Nisenson doesn't feel worked very well, preferring Meditations as the height of later Coltrane, can be almost scary in the boundaries it probes depending on your state of mind when listening.

Other thing I learned: Coltrane (and band) did LSD with some regularity in making his later music, according to Nisensen, who appears to have valid sources. Interesting, but not surprising, I think, given LSD's place in the '60s, a searching decade spiritually and in a lot of other ways. Beyond just getting high, acid was considered a tool for consciousness expanding after all.

Good read, nice bare-bones personal biography, excellent music biography.

Serenity song

Eric Nisenson in Ascension: John Coltrane and His Quest, says he thinks Coltrane, a student of world religions as well as music, not to mention Einstein's theories, deliberately used a chant form common in the East on a Love Supreme, so now I know why, when I started trying to clear my mind for a few minutes every morning, what passes for meditation at my place, I naturally used a love supreme, a love supreme, a love supreme to push away my tendency to plan, worry, et al instead of not thinking. Bring in the music, in my mind, behind the chant and I can pretty much take my mind off anything else.

Nisenson points out as well that Coltrane later repeats the chant on his tenor in a human voice-like fashion, which I'd noticed before, of course, but never really thought about. In New Orleans, and before, jazz and proto-jazz musicians worked to capture vocal qualities on their instruments (Morton, Bechet and Armstrong, among others). However, I think it is, in a more abstracted form, an integral quality of free, avant-garde jazz, a step on the way to the pure sound experiments that eventually resulted. Meaning A Love Supreme really does point the way to what Coltrane would be doing next, kind of like Miles and In a Silent Way.

Two Bands and A Legend, Smalltown Superjazz

Swedish garage rockers Cato Salsa Experience meet Swedish extremely avant-garde jazz group The Thing (Mats Gustafsson leader) and free jazz legend Joe McPhee (tenor, pocket trumpet) and produce one hell of a version of Louie Louie, among other things.

I have to think the jack-booted thugs at the NSA make it point to keep an eye on you if you buy this. Radical, subversive and as energetic as a triple espresso. Note to self: don't ever listen to it just before bedtime.

Shout out

Note to self: Next time you're in the mood for a blues shoutin' New Orleans-style jam fest put on Chicago the Living Legends: Alberta Hunter with Lovie Austin's Blues Serenaders. Makes me glad for the City of New Orleans, Amtrak and the Illinois Central, not to mention the dudes who set out to record these folks before they disappeared.

Sincerest form of flattery

Tolliver on Our Second Father, third disk of the Mosaic set, is positively Trane-esque on a song dedicated to the memory of Coltrane. The sax-like diversity he gets out of his trumpet in these sessions is just ear-catching.

Mosaic Select: Charles Tolliver

If I was independently wealthy I'd buy everything Mosaic puts out. This makes me giddy because 1) Tolliver is a wonderful trumpet player and composer who's playing seems to me to marry Woody Shaw and Miles; 2) you don't hear a lot of quartets with the trumpet as the only horn and Tolliver hauls these live sessions on his shoulders like he was a saxophonist: impressive; 3) it's another exhibit for my contention that jazz wasn't dead in the '70s, music companies just haven't bothered to release a lot of it on CD, probably because it didn't sell that well back when. Thank the gods for emusic, as well as Mosaic.

Archie Shepp, Kindred Spirits Vol. 1, ArchieBall

Seemed like Archie lost the fire in his Fire Music as he got older. I think he kind of found it again playing with Dar Gnawa, traditional musicians from Tanger (think a chorus of clackety thumb cymbals and a guitar-lute thingy). He's elemental in places on this. Makes me think of the first time I ever went to see live jazz at a jazz club, at New Morning in Paris, these very guys playing. So happy I bought this.

David Murray, Sacred Ground, Justin Time

I've been attracted to David Murray since the first CD of his I bought, Ming as I recall, and a reason strikes me here. He plays his tenor, and the unwieldy bass clarinet, with the dexterity of an alto.

Pairing his horn, whatever horn, and Cassandra Wilson's bluesy, boozy voice is genius.

Good line

"Jazz is sometimes seen as a history of great individual voices, instrumental soloists whose sound has the indelible singularity of a fingerprint."

From "It's About That Time: Miles Davis On and Off Record," by Richard Cook, who gets around having written yet-another Miles' biography by viewing Davis' life through the prism of Cook's picks for his seminal albums. I'm early into it at this point and not certain how well that works.

I think great jazz groups can have a fingerprint-like sound as well, whether driven by their leaders or the players in the ensemble, for instance Miles Davis' two great quintets, the Modern Jazz Quartet, Coltrane's classic quartet, any group Mingus led and the orchestras of Ellington and Basie.

George Coleman, At Yoshi's, Evidence

I've read that Tony Williams didn't think, in essence, that he played beyond his obvious technical proficiency enough. I think Tony should have stuck to drums. He's as explorative as Coltrane on this (at least before 1964). Good Morning Heartache reminds me of a Sonny Rollins exploration, same kind of probing the boundaries at the same kind of length, albeit with a different voice. Miles did fine with Wayne Shorter, but he should have kept George Coleman around longer.

Charlie Mariano, Savannah Samuari, Jazzline

What Kenny G could have been if he hadn't gone bad. Mariano's Boston All Stars, OJC, which I already owned, is a great bunch of bop from the '50s. This, from the late '90s, shows he wasn't just sitting around for 48 years. He makes me think Lee Konitz in places, Kenny Garrett, with Miles in Miles' electric period no less, in others, with a healthy nod to freely improvised jazz. Ranges from an extension of post-Miles acoustic (the Shorter-Hancock-Carter-Williams era) to an extension of fusion. Vic Juris guitar, Deter Ilg bass stand out, too.

Joey Defrancesco, Where Were You?, Columbia

Hey, don't get, me wrong, I like Joey D. But it always pisses me off when he claims to have brought the B-3 back from the dead, which I doubt Jimmy Smith or Dr. Lonnie Smith or any number of other Hammond gods not named Smith who were making the beast hum when J.D. came along would agree.

Then there's this excellent CD from 1990. First, a young Joey D. benefits greatly from side dudes like Illinois Jacquet, Jerome Richardson, Milton Hinton and John Scofield. Second, this might be as good as he's ever played on a recording. So let's not get carried away, my friend.

The big surprise on this: smooth saxman Kirk Whalum, who wails. I don't know, maybe it was being on a session with a sax legend like Jacquet.

Another jazz joke

How many jazz singers does it take to perform My Funny Valentine?

All of them.

Jazz joke

What did Kenny G say when he got off the elevator?

That place rocks.

Sorry Kenny.

Thelonious Monk Trio Complete 1951-54 Recordings, Definitive Records

Monk said he just played (and composed) what he heard in his head. Given the way he recasts Sweet and Lovely and These Foolish Things there must have been some interesting stuff going on in there. The latter comes out sounding dangerous; the word that came into my head listening to it.

What a great format to hear Monk in, not as sparse a soundscape as his solo recordings, although I like them as well, but with his piano as the only "lead" instrument you get an unobstructed view, so to speak, of his playing. I kept waiting for Charlie Rouse to come in at first, a feeling which passed about halfway through Nutty, the first cut. Excellent versions of Blue Monk and Trinkle Tinkle.

I still think of Monk and his quartets with Rouse as the heights, but I am really glad I read about this Spanish import and bought it. Doesn't lack for commodious sidemen either, Art Blakey, Max Roach and Percy Heath among them.

I'm in no hurry to set a date, but I think I'd like someone to spin up Monk playing Just a Gigolo at the end of my funeral.

Joe McPhee, Underground Railroad, Atavistic (Unheard Music Series)

If he ever hears this, Kenny G wakes up screaming. I wonder whatever happened to Ernest Bostic, Tyrone Crabb and Reggie Marks? Crabb and Bostic are central to making this work. Bostic's drums are frequently a front-line instrument. You ride Underground Railroad for a dang long time and wonder where the idea train pulls into the station. But it just keeps rolling along. Harriet winds its way through snippets from a film noir score, the blues, a dirge from an African or Middle Eastern flute and more. Crabb's bowing on the song sounds almost orchestral.

Joe McPhee should be on the front line in any discussion of freely improvised jazz from the late '60s on. He's like Ron Carter in his ubiquity on great sessions. Great saxophonist, too, in the manner of Pharoah Sanders, albeit with a sound all McPhee. But I get giddy when he pulls out his pocket trumpet, which I hear him using as a nifty tool for adding different colors to his pieces, like Message from Demark here.

A second CD in the package (and two cuts on the first CD) adds a professional quality concert recording by the core group plus two other horns. The music also is excellent and has an Art Ensemble of Chicago feel. This was a great purchase.

Kenny G, Greatest Hits, Arista

I frigging love Albert Ayler and Archie Shepp, and Sonny Rollins is my deity; why in the flip am I listening to this cowflop? Well, I wanted to see how the other half lives and I have to say the dude can blow; which he does on this, in that limited sense of his. I'd like to hear him in a real jazz combo, say Tain Watts, Christian McBride and Robert Glasper. Pisses me off mostly. The waste of talent does. Songbird probably rates right up there with Chuck Mangione's Feels So Good from a crossover pop hit standpoint, but it ain't nearly so good from an adventure standpoint. And what should jazz be if not adventurous? Havana, a Latin beat thing, is the best of the lot and there's a fairly fascinating duet with an old, croaky Sinatra. Want to own one Kenny G CD? Pervert! But you could do worse.

Cannonball Adderley, Know What I Mean?, Riverside

Julian does not make his alto sound like a tenor and I have no problem with that. His high tone is lovely (and very Benny Carter-like in snatches) and I'd like to know how he got all the speed and dexterity in his fingering. This might be my favorite Cannonball Adderley CD. Was he inspired or challenged by playing with Evans, or just really good at it since they'd played together for years when this date came along, notably in the creation maelstrom that was working for Miles Davis. Percy Heath and Connie Kay, in a break from the Modern Jazz Quartet, can back anybody well. They're perfect compliments here.

Fantastic Frank Strozier, Koch Jazz

Must have been Woody Shaw's Little Red's Fantasy that perked my ears up and made me look at the credits to see who was playing that alto saxophone. Allmusic compares Strozier to Jackie McLean. I'm thinking more of a hotter Lee Konitz, or of Bobby Watson. He often gets an almost tenor-like sound out of his horn on this. (Struck me on Off Shore, where he sounds kind of like Clifford Jordan.) Enjoyably complex hard-bop songs, mostly Strozier's, that you don't hear played constantly, too, which is refreshing.

Booker Little has some memorable trumpet solos and the rhythm section is Wynton Kelly, Paul Chambers and Jimmy Cobb, who all sound like they enjoyed playing with this guy. I wanna get some more Frank Strozier.

Frank Foster, Leo Rising, Arabesque

I certainly can't tell from this that Frank Foster made his bones playing (and composing) for Basie and later led the Basie Orchestra after Basie's death. More like a Jazz Messengers' date with elements of late '60s Miles Davis. Here, Foster reminds me more of Coltrane, Wayne Shorter and even Sam Rivers than Lester Young.

I liked Stephen Scott playing with Sonny Rollins and he does a nice job for Foster as well. Tasty Christian McBride arco interlude on When April Comes.

Listening to Monk's Misterioso...

... on Monk Big Band and Quartet in Concert, Columbia, and it made me think of this little fear of heights thing I have. I have no problem going up or looking down, whether it's the Grand Canyon, Eiffel Tower, whatever. But after awhile I always start thinking what it would be like to fall and my heart gets racy and the hairs on my arms stand up.

Waiting on the edge to see if Monk is gong to hit that next note sometimes affects me in the same way, even though I know he is. He's scary, man.

But I've always liked horror movies and Stephen King novels, too.

Great Butch Warren bass solo on Light Blue.

Cover this...

Jimmy Buffett cover band blows through town and does a passable Margaritaville. I don't have a problem with that.

Don't see any Sun Ra cover bands. I don't have a problem with that either.

Would like to see somebody try it.

Maybe James Carter.

Horace Sliver, You Gotta Take a Little Love, Blue Note

So almost anything by Horace Silver makes me happy, and what's wrong with that? This and United States of Mind drag me back to the heydays of my youth in the '70s, however, which makes them special from my perspective. Yeah, so, the '70s don't mean dick to you. The playing of Randy Brecker on trumpet and flugelhorn and Bennie Maupin on tenor sax and flute (note to self, and anybody reading this, incredible Maupin solos on It's Time and Lovely's Daughter) probably will. And then there's Silver, tickling the ivories in his always bluesy fashion and his compositional skill and his musical leadership in general. Ah crap, just buy the damn thing.

Lou Donaldson, Lush Life, Blue Note

Interesting, I think Sweet Lou sometimes gets kind of lost in his notable organ jazz sessions but here, while in a nonet, the Stitt-like beauty of his horn really stands out (see Star Dust and What Will I Tell My Heart). I think this and Blues Walk are the essential Lou Donaldson CDs.

Oh, and this one has Wayne Shorter, Pepper Adams, Freddie Hubbard, McCoy Tyner (god-like on It Might As Well Be Spring) and Ron Carter in the band. 'Nuff said.

Sun Ra, The Magic City, Evidence

Do I think there's a quintessential Arketstra CD? No. To understand Sun Ra, I think you have to listen to and contemplate his music over the course of his career, right up until his death. But the title track on this probably covers it about as well as anything in a single blow. It ranges from funereal music and traditional jazz to Art Ensemble of Chicago-like, African-influenced sections and free jazz reminiscent of Albert Ayler or Pharoah Sanders with not an unimpressive interlude from a compositional, conductorial, or musical skill perspective. If you think about it in terms of what it is, a song about Birmingham, Alabama, by a black man born in 1914 who grew up there, it is absolutely illuminating, which I think is the attraction of Sun Ra's music in general. I only wish I'd known about it when I was smoking pot lo those many years ago. (Note to Bush administration 'Net monitors, it's been, like, 25 years. So eat me!)

Junior Parker, Junior's Blues: The Duke Recordings, Vol. 1, MCA

I could easily make Jivin' Woman or Cryin' for My Baby my ramblin' songs. Lotso good horns on this, too.

Thinking about the Modern Jazz Quartet's Pyramid

I'm listening to this very sophisticated, finely wrought, almost classical music (as nearly anything in the hands of the Modern Jazz Quartet is) and it strikes me: the song is just an old blues. Still with all of its ability to tweak you in a gutbucket way, too. Masterful musicianship.

Ralph Peterson's Fo'tet, Ornettology, Blue Note

Don Byron does a great job capturing the essence of Ornette Coleman's playing, on the clarinet and bass clarinet no less. The whole group, led by drummer Peterson, gets the Coleman thing right, in fact. Even though they play only one Coleman song and Ornettize, so to speak, tunes by Monk and Wayne Shorter. The quartet consisting of Byron, Bryan Carrott on vibraphone, Peterson and bassist Melissa Slocum is an unusual instrumental mix for music in the Coleman vein that offers a different vantage point on Coleman's techniques and makes me appreciate his genius even more.

Art Ensemble of Chicago, Live, Delmark

A one-song performance from the University of Chicago in 1972 that lasts 70-plus minutes and does about everything I can think of a quintet doing with sound exploration in a jazz context heavy on the African flavor. (Don Moye's percussion is almost dominant.)

I don't know of anybody who gets more out of a penny whistle. I realize not everyone likes this stuff. To me, it is the sound of joy and ingenious.

Dimitri Vassilakis on MySpace

MySpace site for the excellent Greek saxophonist Dimitri Vassilakis (and excellent saxophonist in general), whose Candid CD "Parallel Lines" I like a lot.

Hentoff on Balliett

"Jazz has never been defined with more instant clarity than in Whitney Balliett's four-word overture: 'The sound of surprise.'"

A line I want to remember from Nat Hentoff, remembering the late jazz critic and historian in a column in today's Wall Street Journal.

Oops

Track listing references concerning Wynton Marsalis' "From the Plantation to the Penitentiary" may be askew. Some of the titles were mixed up on the label of the demo CD to which I listened. I lost the note I got about it. The point is, it's a good CD, maybe the most risky Marsalis has done since "Black Codes (from the Underground)" or "Live at Blues Alley."

Wynton Marsalis, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary, Blue Note

The title track on this begins with periodically discordant, almost avant-garde instrumentation (from pianist Dan Nimmer and drummer Ali Jackson Jr. especially) and singing (from Jennifer Sanon) and I think Marsalis' first trumpet solo has kind of a Lester Bowie thing going. (He switches to Don Cherry later.) I still hear the blues, New Orleans and Duke Ellington in sections. It is a Wynton Marsalis CD, after all. But it's got hard edges I haven't heard a lot from him since "Black Codes (From the Underground)" or "Live at Blues Alley" or maybe his Jazz Messengers days.

Also reminds me of his Pulitzer-winning opus on slavery, segregation and racism "Blood on the Fields," and the songs with lyrics generally have a political or social message; the disproportionate number of black men in prison, the homeless, the unfulfilling nature of consumerism (in the form of a frenetic Sanon scat on "Doin' (Y)Our Thing"). I think he's going to get some flak for "These Are Those Soulful Days," which takes a poke at the gangster end of hip-hop. But the message is worth considering and the music the message is wrapped around is wonderful. It's followed by "Where Y'all At?," on which Marsalis bends rap, second line style, to his own purposes.

Not every song is overtly message driven. "Find Me" is a pretty, bluesy ballad. "Supercapitalism" had me thinking of children's songs, Freddie Hubbard's '70s stuff and Gershwin. Go figure?

Some nice sax playing by Walter Blanding (tenor and soprano, where I can hear some Coltrane in his playing) as well, both solo and in the ensemble.

Maybe a tad too much singing for my tastes, but very interesting all the way through. Music writer at work loaned me a review copy of this. (Comes out in March.) I will buy it.

William Parker Bass Quartet, Requiem, Splasc(H) Records

Over the weekend a strange late-December thunderstorm rolled through and that's what "Requiem" from the William Parker Bass Quartet (Parker, Henry Grimes. Alan Silva and Sirone) makes me think of; the basses are the rumbling thunder, punctuated by cracks (screeches) of lightning, and Charles Gayle's alto saxophone is the howling wind. Moody, but excellent freely improvised jazz and a bass-lover's feast.

Thinking about Take Five

Why is this song so infectious? There's Desmond's silk-and-satin saxophone playing, which ranges from strolling on a sunny day to sipping old scotch in a smokey barroom around midnight, and Brubeck's neoclassical piano playing, which essentially morphs into a percussive part of an expanded rhythm section under the soloists in the course of the tune.

But I think the actual "rhythm" section has a whole lot to do with it, especially drummer Joe Morello, whose soling is as front line as Desmond's on the alto.

Fred Anderson, Blue Winter, Eremite

Two disks, four long, two very long, bouts of freely improvised trio jazz. Avant-garde, yes, but not too far outside to put off those who are skeptical of this kind of music I think, and sometimes pretty much inside in a conventional, if advanced, hard bop way.

Velvet Lounge owner Mr. Anderson is every bit of Ornette Coleman on tenor if you ask me, an insult to neither of them, with measures of Coltrane and Rollins. He also struck me as a real gentleman when he took my money at his club last month before playing with Henry Grimes.

I do believe William Parker and Hamid Drake could make anybody sound good and playing with someone like Anderson, a high-quality session is probably assured. This set proves my point.

Fela Kuti, Coffin for the Head of State/Unknown Soldier, Wrasse Records

Listen to all those horns and that wailing saxophone, which reminds me of both J.T. Brown and Manu Dibango. Jazzy and bluesy, but it satisfies the funk and reggae things I have going on the side as well. Mesmerizing bass and percussion beat behind the horns and singing with some sparkling keyboards that bring to my mind Horace Silver's "United States of Mind."

Unless you listen to the words, you'd hardly know it's about Nigerian government troops killing his mother and burning down his home.

Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra, MTO Vol. 1, Sunnyside

Steven Bernstein always seems to be doing something interesting, whether it's covering (kind of) James Bond movie tunes with Sex Mob or woking as an arranger and trumpeter for modernists like Mario Pavone or Bobby Previte.

I like his Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra idea and "MTO, Vol. 1" so much that I gave it to a couple people as a holiday present. The concept (and execution) is a modern updating of the pre-World War II proto-swing territory band sound, think Andy Kirk and his Clouds of Joy or Bennie Moten, which makes for an upbeat and fun session since territorty bands existed to get people's feet moving on the dance floor.

Nonetheless, some of this borders on the avant-garde, but not so much that I thought my friends who wouldn't touch avant-garde jazz with a 10-foot pole wouldn't like it. I hope for more from this group.

James Carter's Strange Fruit

When I listen to Billie Holiday sing "Strange Fruit," I concentrate on the words and, of course, her voice. Although Miche Braden does a credible job singing in James Carter's version on the CD "Gardenias for Lady Day," listening to it this week the importance of the music underlying what is one of the most gripping songs I know stood out.

In part that's because of what Carter and his mates do with it in a reading I think of as operatic, but I think it's powerful music in any event and integral to the song's impact.

This really is an excellent Carter CD overall. Even though it's maybe his most "conventional" disk, it gives a great feel for his amazing command of the saxophone, or saxophones since he plays four different types, plus bass and contrabass clarinets, over the course of the program.

Holiday greetings from Henry Grimes

Xmas e-card I received this morning from the great Henry Grimes and his friend Magaret Davis.

The CD "Henry Grimes Trio Live at the Kerava Jazz Festival," Ayler Records, with David Murray and Hamid Drake, is a great gift for your favorite jazz fan. I gave it to myself.

Thoughts on listening to Albert Ayler's Spiritual Unity

Music, I've decided, tends to affect me on either an emotional or an intellectual level. The blues, Louis Armstrong, Jimmy Smith, stuff by Harry Chapin, Springsteen, "Ride of the Valkyries", Beethoven's Ninth, even, let's face it, crap like Meat Loaf's "Bat Out of Hell," stir something in my gut ... joy, sadness, anger, outrage. They bring tears to my eyes, make me laugh, or something between.

Jazz, freely improvised jazz especially but also things like a great Sony Rollins solo, get my brain working. I'm captivated by the way a Mr. Rollins can generate idea after idea off a simple base or familiar melody ("Autumn Nocturne" on "Don't Stop the Carnival" is a classic example) and I thrill in the mental hunt for the logic inside the process.

What occurred to me in listening to Albert Ayler's "Spiritual Unity" this week is that it works on both levels for me, as does a lot of the music I've come to consider essential (including "Autumn Nocturne" on "Don't Stop the Carnival"). Ayler's use of devices such as march forms make his music as emotive as Sousa tunes while the labyrinthal path he treads from there makes for a cognitive feast.

Monk's Casino, Alexander von Schlippenbach, Intakt

I have to think Thelonious Monk would have been pleased by this rendering of his entire compositional output by pianist Alexander von Schlippenbach in an unusual group with a trumpet and bass clarinet added to the standard piano trio.

You can't fail to recognize the oft-played songs (say, "Ruby My Dear" or "In Walked Bud") if you're familiar with Monk, but the group, as might be expected from one led by von Schlippenbach, often puts its own spin on the music.

If the places where the avant-garde touches are pretty heavy don't sound too out of place, that's because Monk himself wasn't ever very far from the edge, if not a little over it, in his music. These three CDs can't help but deepen an appreciation for his genius. I get giddy when I listen to them.

New Kingdom, Roy Campbell, Delmark

Roy Campbell reminds me more of Freddie Hubbard on this than Lee Morgan (he plays with a modernist sensibility underneath as opposed to a traditional blues base), but I think he blows the trumpet about as well as either. Most of the CD is strong hard bop, which is to say Jazz Messengers-like fare, with the updated '70s sound of Hubbard disks like "Red Clay" and "Straight Life," building on the foundation laid down by Miles Davis' last great acoustic quintet.

There are avant-garde interludes as well, particularly when Campbell plays in a drums and bass trio with William Parker (great as always), as he does on three of the eight cuts. In the sextet for the rest of the program, Zane Massey and Ricardo Strobert do some memorable sax playing. A nice way to be introduced to Roy Campbell if you haven't been already. It left me wanting more.

Dr. Lonnie Smith...

plays joy
from the tip of his toes
to the top of his turban

(At the Jazz Showcase, Chicago)

At the Velvet Lounge...

the music flows
like the rivers of my youth
the rapids make me happy

So much to do...

"That is sufficient."
--Berwyn Phillips "Red" Traphagen

Up front side man

With all the saxophones playing (Johnny Griffin, Hank Mobley and Coltrane) it's funny that Wynton Kelly really caught my ear on Griffin's "A Blowin' Session," Blue Note, yesterday. Not that the saxes aren't great, they are. Could be the pianist knew he had to push it to avoid getting lost amid all those horns. (Lee Morgan on trumpet, too. Not to mention a pretty strong dummer name of Blakey.) Kelly uses about every kind of trick he likely had in his book, blues and stride, bebop and hard hard bop, and more than holds his own. Classic.

That other Sonny

My heart is pounding, I kid you not. I am shaking my head. I smile. Then laugh. I am listening to Sonny Stitt solo on "Love Walked In" from disk one of "The Complete Roost Sonny Stitt Studio Sessions," Mosaic, which arrived today.

The purest sound this side of Charlie Parker, with whom he was often compared, to his annoyance. The ballad following, "If You Could See Me Now," drenched in flawless soul, does nothing to quell my excitement. In command of the horn and flood of ideas, "Come Rain or Come Shine" could, in fact, be Bird. He might not have liked the comparison, but it was, at least at this juncture, 1955, an apt one, and no insult.

However, while he may have played like Bird, even used some of Bird's phrasing, he sounds like himself, some Parker in there, yes, and Coleman Hawkins, Johnny Hodges and Lester Young, but mostly Sonny Stitt.

And then there are the people playing with him, J.J. Johnson and Kai Winding, Joe Newman, Hank Jones, Oscar Pettiford and Charles Mingus, Papa Jo Jones ... and that's just on disk one. If all nine disks are like this I'll be one happy dude for the rest of the month. (I'm not eating this in one sitting, this is for savoring.)

Teamwork

They're as coordinated as synchronized swimmers when playing as an ensemble and on solos they hand off to each other like a finely honed championship relay team. My thoughts on Harold Land, sax, Jack Sheldon, trumpet, and Carl Perkins, piano, on the ballad "Counceltation" from "You Get More Bounce with Curtis Counce!"

The Contemporary/OJC disk culled from five 1956-57 sessions is one of those lesser-known gems from lesser-known artists that I think pervade '50s and '60s jazz.

Trane ride, Elvin Jones conducting

Walking home from work last night listening to the Nano, "India" from "Impressions," Impulse, came up and the greatness of Elvin Jones hit me like an epiphany. Here's Coltrane, plus Eric Dolphy, McCoy Tyner and two bassists, Reggie Workman in addition to Jimmy Garrison, making music without a script and Jones, to my ear, never issues an out-of-place beat.

The near-perfect way he melds his drumming with Coltrane's playing actually kind of shocked me, even though I must have played the disk a dozen times before. Most of the song's 14 minutes are just Coltrane, Jones and the basses, which also are uncannily in step with the saxophonist. Amazing stuff.

Birthday greetings

Happy birthday to Mr. Sonny Rollins, 76 years young today.

Celebrate by picking up "Our Man in Jazz," an RCA Victor/BMG CD of 1962-63 recordings, including a 25-minute remake of Mr. Rollins' "Oleo" by the saxophonist and trumpeter Don Cherry that could be used as a textbook example of how to play in the avant-garde vein but remain accessible.

Cool to hear Bob Cranshaw, who seems like he's been playing electric bass forever, playing an acoustic bass on three of the tracks as well. The great Henry Grimes handles the bass on the other three tracks and Billy Higgins drums throughout. This was a marvelous Sonny Rollins group.

Legends on the side

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers have been on my mind, and my CD player, the last couple weeks as I've been reading Alan Goldsher's "Hard Bop Academy," which I finished this week. Goldsher didn't write a book about Blakey, although there's plenty about the legendary drummer and band leader in it. He focused instead on the Messengers' sidemen over the decades, a list which, of course, reads like a who's who of jazz luminaries. (On trumpet, take your pick of Lee Morgan, Freddie Hubbard, Woody Shaw, Wynton Marsalis or Terence Blanchard, among others. Sax Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Benny Golson, Wayne Shorter, Branford Marsalis, Donald Harrison and more. Piano, Horace Silver, Keith Jarrett, Bobby Timmons, Mulgrew Miller, Cedar Walton ... you get the idea.)

Goldsher basically acted as a facilitator to get these guys to talk about each other, the Messengers legacy and playing for Blakey. It makes for a quick, enjoyable read that reminds me of "Loose Balls," Terry Pluto's fun book about the wild and crazy days of the American Basketball Association.

Among the things I found interesting, Blakey wanted talented guys young, or at least not yet big names, and when they got old enough or big enough, he booted them out, sometimes even if they wanted to stay, and brought in somebody new. Part of it was to keep salaries in line, sure, but part of it was his conception of the Messengers as a training ground for great jazz musicians, composer-arrangers and band leaders. Part of it also was that a steady infusion of new guys (and for awhile a gal, Joanne Brackeen on piano, which in my mind says a lot about Art Blakey) kept him challenged and kept the band constantly fresh.

I was listening to a couple prime examples as I wrote this, "Album of the Year," Timeless Records, and "Keystone 3," Concord. These are 1981 and '82 dates with guys like the Marsalis brothers, Blanchard, Harrison and Bobby Watson and I swear the music is just as vibrant as a classic like "Moanin'" with Morgan, Golson and Timmons in 1958. "Duck Soup" and "Soulful Mr. Timmons" on "Album of the Year" are, like so much Messenger stuff, loaded with incredible ensemble play and memorable solos and I think "In Walked Bud" and "In a Sentimental Mood" on "Keystone 3" rate with any version of either standard that I've heard. "In a Sentimental Mood," in fact, is an extremely clever recasting of the song, no less so than Archie Shepp's avant-garde version on "Live in San Francisco," Impulse, a favorite of mine. "Waterfalls" on Keystone 3 makes you understand why Wynton Marsalis created such a stir when he came on the scene.

My buddy Carl Abernathy will tell you there's no such thing as a bad Jazz Messengers album and I'm inclined to agree. Art Blakey, Abdullah Ibn Buhaina to his friends, made sure of that.

Finding Bill Evans

My buddy Carl Abernathy got me thinking about Bill Evans the other day and why he prompts an almost religious devotion from fans and students of piano (Evans, not Carl, although his fans are certainly devoted as well). Then I spied the newer (2005) "Bill Evans: The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings, 1961," Riverside, at the bookstore and sprung for it, which hasn't made me a convert (I already admired the guy, within reason) but has shifted my perspective on him some.

What strikes me, listening to these three CDs from a very famous trio session, is how cleanly Evans plays, with no hint really of the bawdy house or dance hall, the blues, rag or stride cutting contests, what some folks (not me) might consider "lower" forms of music in the jazz family tree. Now whether this means his music is jazz infused with European classicism, as many people say, I don't know. In my mind, the thing that stands out is his huge technical proficiency. I think he sounds so pristine not because of the classical elements he uses but because he was just that good.

I contrast him with Monk, no slouch as a pianist but not nearly as clean, probably intentionally so at times, and a step or three ahead in at-the-keyboard creativity (and as a composer). Evans, on the other hand, is plenty inventive, more so I'd venture to say than a lot of top-drawer jazz pianists, and that, I think, combined with his Horowitiz-like command of his instrument, is what has focused so much attention on him. I'll take Monk first, Art Tatum and maybe Bud Powell and McCoy Tyner after, but Evans would be the fifth if I were allowed disks from only five pianists on the desert island. (Actually, I would refuse to go if they let me have only five. Like I'm going anywhere without Fats Waller, Herbie Hancock and Chick Corea, or Keith Jarrett for that matter.)

The redone sound on the Evans "Vanguard" set, which has been widely available in various configurations before, including the landmark "Sunday Morning at the Village Vanguard" and "Waltz for Debby" CDs, is spiffy by the way. You hear everything super clearly right down to the occasional glass clink. One thing that does is really bring out the playing of bassist Scott LaFaro and drummer Paul Motian. LaFaro, who died two weeks later in a car crash, in particular is as proficient as Evans and often as stunning. Interesting that the liner notes say they didn't get along personally. They sure did musically.

Who dat?

Say man, is that Miles Davis rollin' with the muted trumpet on "Secret Love" from "Get the Message" on the Drive Archive record label? Nope, the guy with the sound is Chuck Mangione during his short stint with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. He wrote three of the songs on the CD as well. And then there's the pianist, who rips off some lively solos of his own and plays his piano strings like an ersatz harp at one point, which I bet had Art Blakey shaking his head. Keith Jarrett. A nifty disk.

Hard bop defined

Hard bop is one of those "know it when I hear it" kind of things for me. I don't know a good definition for it. I don't know if there even is one. If there is, I haven't seen it, yet. I think it would include bebop phrasing and flourishes (see Benny Golson's soloing on the Blue Note Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers classic "Moanin'") but feel funkier, more syncopated, with harder edges and heavier aurally, and with more prominent swing and blues elements, among other things. If a good bebop performance can amaze and delight, a good hard bop performance can awe and excite.

Like "Moanin'" the title track on the Blakey and Messengers CD, of which you get two standout versions on recent issues of the disk. Either version of the song, written by pianist Bobby Timmons and refined in this case by Golson, has to be considered a seminal jazz performance and prime example of what hard bop is. "Moanin'" probably explains it better than hanging words on it can.

Perspective would be nice

Maynard Ferguson's death turned up as one of the top stories (from CNN, as I recall) on my Google home page yesterday and it kind of annoyed me for a couple reasons.

Nothing against Maynard Ferguson. I've said in the past he deserves more props for the fine jazz he recorded and less abuse for some of his more commercial ventures. Sad then that in pretty much every obit I saw he was referred to as the guy who covered the theme from "Rocky" and had a big hit with it.

Bugs me as well that Jackie McLean or John Hicks didn't show up on my Google home page when they died earlier this year, which is a measure of the media attention their deaths received. McLean in particular was a far more significant figure in American music than Ferguson (yeah, yeah, I know he was from Canada; he didn't get famous playing in Saskatoon). That's true not only because of McLean's music and his prominent role in jazz history but his educational endeavors and the impact of his many students.

As good as sex, really

Interesting Wired interview with a guy who studies music's effect on the brain. He's found, among other things, that music activates the same parts of the brain and the same brain chemical mix as things like having an orgasm, eating chocolate and winning a big poker hand.

Heck, I could have told him that. Happens every time I put on "Root Down: Jimmy Smith Live!" from Verve and listen to Jimmy Smith play "Root Down (and Get It)."

More Sonny in London

I'm liking the "Sonny Rollins Live in London" series from British Harkit Records and covering a month's performances in 1965 by Mr. Rollins at Ronnie Scott's muy famoso jazz club in London, where he performed with pianist Stan Tracey's trio, a pretty much legendary outfit on the island. The sound isn't fantastic (the drums are a little heavy on Volume 2 as I listen to it, for instance) but it isn't terrible and you can make out everything the saxophonist is doing, which is a lot. Nothing on the second disk clocks in under 10 minutes and he goes 20 on a calypso-tinged rendition of "Night and Day."

Mr. Rollins has clearly gotten comfortable with the Tracey unit here, and the Brits with him, more than on the first volume, where they don't seem quite as together. He's particularly inventive on nearly 18 minutes built on Gershwin's "Foggy Day," which also includes a nice run by bassist Rick Laird. Monk's "Nutty" toes closer to the line of the original, but then it was pretty inventive to start with. The version of "Autumn Nocturne" is different than any of the other versions from Sonny Rollins I've heard and a classic example of his on-the-spot creating in concert. There's a third volume "Live in London" and I think it's in my future.

Swedish roots music

I bought the disk "Lars-Göran Ulander Trio Live at the Glenn Miller Cafe," on the Swedish Ayler label, after reading that Ulander (on alto here) had been kind of the Coleman Hawkins to Swedish free jazz saxophonist Mats Gustafsson's Sonny Rollins.

Gustafsson, known for his work with Ken Vandermark, has been an interest of mine since I caught him with his group The Thing and guest Joe McPhee last year. He's on the Albert Ayler end of the free jazz spectrum as opposed to early Ornette Coleman, which wasn't all that out there. But I don't think that means he's inaccessible. I might say the same about Ulander, whose trio on the Ayler CD includes drummer Palle Danielsson and bassist Paal Nilssen-Love, the former another legendary Swede and the latter himself a member of The Thing (and one of the most manic, attacking drummers I've ever seen, although he's fairly subdued in this session).

"Tabula Raasa G.M.C." has kind of a Middle Eastern motif, while "Intrinsic Structure I" feels more like European classical music with Coleman-like snatches and great interplay between Ulander and Danielsson. The songs are freely improvised, but to my ear could hardly be considered unstructured, illogical, or slapdash in any way. "What Love" starts out like a conventional ballad before venturing into territory you couldn't have anticipated from that beginning. And this, perhaps, is what I appreciate most about the disk. You never know what's around the corner, making for something of a voyage of musical discovery, which I suspect is how the musicians felt about it as well. Lots of corners to go around and a concomitant number of surprises, too, in something like "Ionizacion-Variaciones E.V.," which last nearly 23 minutes.

Hot stuff

Sonny Rollins wanted to get people thinking about a serious topic on "Global Warming," Milestone, as a read of his poetic liner notes tells you, but the disk also includes two songs by Mr. Rollins that inevitably are great tonic when I'm feeling low. "Island Lady" is another in his line of joyous calypso-style pieces with some creative exploring by the saxophonist. Likewise on the title track, one of my all-time Sonny Rollins favorites. Both feature, in addition, strong solo work by trombonist Clifton Anderson and pianist Stephen Scott.

I put Scott in the same class as Mark Soskin as far as pianists who seem to fit best with Mr. Rollins go, the two just a small step down from Tommy Flanagan at the head of the list. Scott is Monkish on "Echo-side Blue," where Mr. Rollins' playing, it seems to me, is close to being on par with his famous rendering of "Blue 7" on "Saxophone Colossus." Meanwhile, "Mother Nature's Blues" makes me think of those magic Sonny Rollins concert moments when the flow of ideas from his horn drives the guys playing with him to respond in kind. A CD comfortably ensconced in my Sonny Rollins Top 10.

Back for seconds

For another helping of the tasty combination that is tenorman Lin Halliday, multi-instrumentalist Ira Sullivan and pianist Jodie Christian, all three guys I think should be better known, try "Where or When," Delmark. On "My Shining Hour," you get strong solos from Halliday, Sullivan on a muted trumpet and Christian, who strikes me as McCoy Tyner-like in this instance. Ditto with respect to Christian and Tyner on "Dear Old Stockholm," which also features complex playing by Halliday.

He does some bluesy blowing on Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady," giving it a little different spin, and there's wonderful interplay between the saxophonist and Sullivan on "Over the Rainbow" (boffo version) and on Sonny Rollins' "Pent-up House." Excellent bassist Larry Gray worked the date as well, although he stays pretty much in the background. He does stand out a little on the title track, where Sullivan adds a second tenor sax to good effect on top of his trumpet and flugelhorn work elsewhere.

I wouldn't want to live without...

Sonny Rollins playing "Someone to Watch Over Me" on "Here's to the People," Milestone, among other things. Nice version of "Why was I Born," a song Mr. Rollins clearly has an affinity for, as well. A couple cuts with a young Roy Hargrove on trumpet also make this a CD worth having.

More Sonny Rollins with pipes

"First Moves," Jazz Door, is another place to hear Sonny Rollins and jazz bagpiper Rufus Harley working together. Better yet, I believe Mr. Rollins was in an exploratory mood for this European concert in 1974 and, as you would expect, that yields some interesting music. The sound on what I think is probably a bootleg recording is adequate, a lot better than most impromptu concert recordings.

Harley checks in with his bagpipes on "Alfie's Theme" and while I don't think it's quite as effective as "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" on the Milestone disk "The Cutting Edge" it works. If you get "Alfie's Theme" and "Alfie's Theme Differently" on the Impulse CD of the movie score by Mr. Rollins, this is "Alfie's Theme" really differently. Harley also plays some soprano sax (he was a saxophonist before picking up the pipes), as does Mr. Rollins, who waxes avant-garde on "Look for the Silver Lining." The generally rockish electric guitar playing from Yoshiaki Masuo is consistently good. Gene Perla on electric bass and David Lee round out a fusion-oriented ensemble well.

Easy listening, in a good way

"Easy Living," Milestone, is another Sonny Rollins CD I ought to play more, a modernist session from 1977, kind of Sonny Rollins meets Weather Report, not that it really sounds like the latter and unlike the former, with George Duke on keyboards and Tony Williams drumming, along with electric guitar and bass players.

Aside from the different style of accompaniment for Mr. Rollins, the cool version of Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely" elevates this disk, as does Mr. Rollins performing "My One and Only Love," as a pretty ballad, in a rare turn on the soprano sax, which he also plays apace to great effect on "Aroz Con Pollo." Back on tenor, the title track sports yet another memorable improvised solo introduction by the master, ala "Autumn Nocturne" on "Don't Stop the Carnival," Milestone.

Saxofonistas passing

I count 21 renditions of "All the Things You Are" in my iTunes music library, which is to say you better be a player if you want to get my attention with the song. Tenorman Lin Halliday, who sometimes reminds me of Sonny Rollins in his flights from melody, and pianist Jodie Christian do on Halliday's "East of the Sun," Delmark, an CD I took a flier on (didn't know a thing about Halliday) after reading about it on the Brazilian jazz Web log jazzseen, kind of.

OK, jazzseen is in Portuguese and I can read a little Spanish and French but no Portuguese. I was attracted by the cover photo, however, Halliday looking like he's seen a lot of bad road and clutching the only thing keeping him going, his horn. And if I don't read Portuguese, I recognized the names Coleman Hawkins and Anthony Braxton in the text; intriguing combination. Then there's the description of Halliday in the rough translation of the text by Google, "one of these saxofonistas strangers who pass incognitos for all, smile to the life and die without ostentation." Good enough for me.

The presence of the severely underexposed Ira Sullivan on this consistently excellent disk also suggests it, whether it's Sullivan playing bass flute (oops, alto flute as Marc Berner points out in an e-mail) on the title track, the trumpet on "I Found a New Baby," the flugelhorn on "Corcovado," or adding a second tenor sax in spots for good measure. What a talent. He, Halliday and Christian, who also should be better known, mesh with near perfection on "Corcovado." Halliday's soloing on "My Foolish Heart" is gripping. I want more.

Experience counts

A drone, as if from an organ or bagpipes, as the canvas on which to paint music from a flute and other horns, including splashes of brass, music that sounds orchestral and at the same time like a Scottish folk piece and is decorated with bells and chimes, gradually rising in pace and intensity as bass and drums kick in until it's, yes, jazz by the end. Then the band switches to a funk romp with Detroit and New Orleans as anchor points and punctuated by, among other things, a penny whistle and a police siren. Followed by a jazz waltz punched up using the judicious insertion of free jazz elements.

"Prayer for Jimbo Kwesi," "Funky Aeco" and "Walking in the Moonlight" from "The Third Decade," ECM, by the Art Ensemble of Chicago. I figure they must have decided to employ everything they learned in the first two decades because the fascinating music just keeps coming. A rare gem even for this group of diamond merchants.

Hank Williams it's not

The crew on Hank Garland's "Jazz Winds from a New Direction" is as elegantly proficient as the Modern Jazz Quartet, Garland and his guitar replacing John Lewis and the piano, and Gary Burton (all of 17 here) on vibes, bassist Joe Benjamin and Joe Morello, Dave Brubeck's drummer of choice, matching the troika of Jackson, Heath and Kay. I really get an MJQ feeling on "All the Things You Are" and the Burton-Garland song "Three-Four, the Blues."

I wish Garland had taken more solo space throughout, as he does on "Move," where his nimble fingers suggest Charlie Parker playing guitar, and the jazzy-bluesy rendering of Irving Berlin's "Always." I also wish he'd made more jazz recordings. A country music and Nashville stalwart, he was crippled in a near-fatal car accident in 1961, the same year "Jazz Winds" came out, struggled to return to form and never recorded a jazz session again.

Lindberg puts out a spread

Tenorman Allan Lunsdtröm, one of the saxophonists with Swedish pianist Nils Lindberg on "Curbits," the first cut from Lindberg's "Sax Appeal & Trisection," Dragon, plays with the sweetness of Stan Getz and it isn't the only thing that makes the cut interesting. There are solos from Lars Gullin, the Swedish baritonist who rates with Pepper Adams in my book, and the great Swedish alto saxman Rolf Billberg. Moreover, the song is based on a Swedish folk tune undoubtedly familiar to many a jazz fan. It provided the structure for "Dear Old Stockholm."

Wonderful stuff and the CD never lets up from there, presenting Swedish legend Lindberg and his music in settings ranging from a quintet to a big band, mostly with standout Swedish musicians, although Idrees Sulieman slips in on trumpet. Largely swinging bop and hard bop that shows off the technical prowess (the "Birth of the Cool" band didn't have anything over on these guys) of the Swedes and makes for a Swedish jazz smörgåsbord.

I should exit as graciously

"Yeah, but it's been a great gig."

What Dizzy Gillespie said when the 4-year-old daughter of a friend asked him if he was dying about 10 days before he did.

I love that story from "Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie" by Donald Maggin, a book I can recommend, although it could have used a discography.

Lament for Rufus of Philly

rufusharley,
originally uploaded by mrgreg.

I'm listening to my entire Sonny Rollins collection ahead of his Sept. 19 concert here. (Hey, it's going to take awhile to cover all of it.) Wednesday, it was "The Cutting Edge," Milestone, a live performance recording from Montreux in 1974 that's good, but not one of his best in my view. What strongly suggests it nonetheless is "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" featuring Mr. Rollins dueting with jazz bagpiper Rufus Harley. It's amazing how well the pairing worked and a tribute to the skill of both guys.

Sadly, I read yesterday that Rufus Harley passed away this week. I know some traditional bagpipers didn't like the attention he got at bagpipe competitions, Scottish festivals and the like. Some jazz snots didn't much like him either. But he was a legitimate musician, whether piping or playing jazz, and by all accounts a good soul.

Over lunch yesterday, I listened to "Dancing in the Dark," Milestone, a 1987 session with Mark Soskin on electric keyboards and one of those CDs I should listen to more often. Mr. Rollins is powerful on this and his improvisations, while fairly short for the most part, are quite creative. I've got a major thing for his version of the pop tune "Just Once." If you consider Tommy Flanagan the gold standard for pianists accompanying Sonny Rollins, Soskin isn't far off.

Bop lives

Dizzy Gillespie biographer Donald Maggin did an unscientific survey and decided that more than 50 percent of jazz artists playing today still use predominantly bebop forms, which seems about right to me. Modal music is harder to play and less accessible on its face, the popularity of "Kind of Blue" aside. Avant-garde, freely improvised jazz is an even tougher nut to crack on both counts. Likewise the fusion sprung from Miles Davis' electric music.

I thought about Maggin's contention listening to "Night Owls," from an octet led by tenorman (also flute and clarinet) Chris Byars and Smalls Records. "All or Nothing at All" is done as bop, Latin-tinged, complete with saxophonists quoting Charlie Parker, or Leo Parker in the case of baritonist Mark Lopeman. The group's version of Tadd Dameron's "Gnid" also is straight line from the original boppers. Byars kind of reminds me of Sonny Stitt. I swear trombonist John Mosca is channeling J.J. Johnson.

That said, parts of this ("Village Beauty" for one, "The Way You Look Tonight" for another) make me think of "Birth of the Cool" and Gerry Mulligan's concert jazz band, which were more or less modal, albeit with bop roots sunk in swing soil. These guys aren't imitating in any event. They're using traditional tools to build their own state-of-the-art house, and a nice pad to hang out in for awhile it is. Proof bebop lives on.

Greek getting his props

I was listening to "Parallel Lines," Candid, from Greek saxophonist Dimitri Vassilakis in the car yesterday and thinking again what an excellent CD it is. I'm not the only one. E-mail from Vassilakis this morning points out positive All About Jazz reviews here and here.

I caught the guy in London in March and really enjoyed it, and then had the opportunity to see him again in Chicago in April on his first trip to the U.S. Looks like he's building a following and he should be; he's good.

Free jazz, for now

Interesting new(er) Web log for discussing free jazz and posting MP3s of out-of-print and unreleased recordings. I don't know how they do it and I'm sure some music industry thug will shut them down soon, but it's fun while it lasts.

I continue to be royally honked that "licensing issues" killed Swing is in the Air, a favorite jazz podcast of mine that I'm willing to bet did nothing but create new jazz fans and generate jazz recording sales to those of us who already have religion. (You can still get a live stream of the ongoing radio show from whence Swing stemmed.)

Smalls is big

Smalls, the New York Club, has been a launching pad for some wonderful jazz musicians, as recounted in a June Downbeat piece, and Smalls Records is, thankfully, making a bunch of their music available. The article prompted me to buy the Omer Avital Group's "Asking No Permission," just one of the Smalls titles I had my eye on after experiencing the stunning Frank Hewitt CDs "We Loved You" and "Four Hundred Saturdays" from the label.

Tenor trio plus

I like pianoless saxophone trios, from Sonny Rollins at the Village Vanguard in 1957 to Donald Harrison's 2004 "Heroes." Then there's "Asking No Permission," from Smalls Records and the Omer Avital Group, with bassist Avital leading and holding things together sans piano, but not one sax, no, a veritable phalanx of saxes as the centerpiece. (Charles Owens, Gregory Tardy and Mark Turner on tenors and Myron Walden on alto. Ali Jackson drums, pretty much perfectly I might add, to round out the sextet.)

The music strikes me as hard bop with free elements and lots of clever touches that make it interesting over multiple listens. Take the nice coloring from Tardy playing flute, on which he doubles, on "Know What I Mean?!" The saxophones often sound like a choir during the ensemble interludes, not unlike the World Saxophone Quartet, but not quite as heavy or imposing either. It's more like Odean Pope's Saxophone Choir on "Locked & Loaded: Live at the Blue Note," Halfnote, a good disk my friend Carl Abernathy gave me recently, although Pope uses a piano.

"Lullaby of Leaves" is like something out of a "Pink Panther" score meets the deep blues, while "Devil Head" makes me think of classical chamber music in some places and Mingus in others. Avital, who gives himself some solo space, makes me think of Mingus as well, not in his sound necessarily but in his ability to make the bass seem not at all out of place when used as a front-line instrument. Plenty of fine solos from the saxes, too, including a series of them in "12 Tribes." Thanks Smalls, again.

All-star stars

Put a bunch of stars together and you usually don't get a disaster, but it's been my experience that often you don't get anything particularly special either.

I thought about that this afternoon listening to Charlie Parker's "Au Privave" on the Jimmy Smith Blue Note CD "House Party." The B-3 master, Lee Morgan, Lou Donaldson, Tina Brooks, Kenny Burrell and Art Blakey turn in one of the most perfect pieces of jazz music I know. (Jimmy, how I miss him, lets lose with some brilliant solo improvisation on "Just Friends" as well.)

Murderers row

You can have your '27 Yankees, make my "Murderers Row" the lineup on "Benny Carter, Dizzy Gillespie, Inc.," Pablo/OJC, which besides the saxophone and trumpet giants includes Joe Pass on guitar and pianist Tommy Flanagan, giants in their own right. Al McKibbon and Mickey Roker on bass and drums aren't Old Milwaukee Light either.

Cool call and response from Gillespie and Carter on "Sweet and Lovely" and Pass, Carter, Flanagan and Dizzy all take standout solos on "Constantinople." John Birks even raises the roof a bit with high notes during "Nobody Knows the Trouble I've Seen," showing he could still do it even in his 60s. Roker ends the cut by singing the words to the song in a way that makes you feel the blues and the church at the same time. This is rated 2.5 stars (of 5) on allmusic, which I generally like, but that rating's stupid.

Dizzy muted

Miles Davis may have owned the thing, or seemed like it, but Dizzy Gillespie could work the mute, too, as is plain on "Dizzy's Big 4," Pablo/OJC, his spiffy 1974 no-piano quartet date with Joe Pass, Ray Brown and Mickey Roker. Pass is a copacetic partner for Dizzy and the two play off each other especially well on "Birks Works." The version of Fats Waller's "Jitterbug Waltz" is one of my most beloved jazz cuts.

Dizzy later

Other than the obvious, his small groups with Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie does some of my favorite non-big band work on "Something Old, Something New," Verve, in a quintet with James Moody (who's super on this) and Kenny Barron.

As the title implies, they do a mix of bebop standards, including a wonderful medley of "I Can't Get Started" and "Round Midnight," and new (for 1963 when this was recorded) stuff. In the latter, I hear Dizzy, minus the mute, telling Miles Davis (and his second great quintet) that he ain't got nothin' over on old John Birks where sophisticated post-bop jazz is concerned. Barron cooks on "Cup Bearers." I might make "Early Mornin' Blues" my theme song for walking to work.

Dizzy early

Besides "Dizzy Gillespie at Newport" and "Birks Works: The Verve Big-Band Sessions," covering Dizzy Gillespie's stellar 1956-57 "State Department" big bands, I wouldn't be without "Dizzy Gillespie: The Complete RCA Victor Recordings," Bluebird. The two-disk set starts with four tracks (including a version of the "King Porter Stomp" like you've never heard the "King Porter Stomp") of Gillespie in Teddy Hills' and Lionel Hampton's orchestras in 1937 and '39 and then covers Dizzy's own '46 to '49 groups, before economics forced him to fold up the big band tent.

A host of bop standards, such as "52nd Street Theme" and "Anthropology," get large-group treatment and you hear him go full-bore into incorporating Afro-Cuban forms into his music, after dabbling previously, by adding legendary congero Chano Pozo for "Manteca," "Cubana Be," "Cubana Bop" and other Latin-laced tunes. The recasting of "St. Louis Blues," which author Donald Maggin says honked off W.C. Handy, is priceless, the learned Professor Handy notwithstanding. Nifty Latinized version of "That Old Black Magic" with Johnny Hartman singing. Dizzy throws down in soling on "Jumpin' with Symphony Sid," which almost skirts the avant-garde in places.

Art period

Giving a second listen this morning to Tom Harrell's "Art of Rhythm," a 1998 RCA CD I picked up through La La (it had been on my to-buy list for quite awhile) and I'm thinking this has to be one of the best jazz disks of the last decade at least.

The music, all Harrell's, is diverse, from classically tinged to hard boppy and semi bossa nova to borderline free. But what really strikes me is the diversity of musicians he employed, from Dewey Redman and David Sanchez to Regina Carter and Mike Stern, and how well they work together despite generally having what I would call very different musical personalities. Stern and Redman turn in some memorable solos.

There's a Latin feeling to many of the cuts and, besides the bigger names, an interesting collection of instrumentation under the music, including strings, bassoon, marimba, bass clarinet and a variety of percussion devices. Enjoyable from first to last.

Birks working

The two-disk "Birks Works: The Verve Big-Band Sessions" is a great companion to "Dizzy Gillespie at Newport" where Gillespie's boffo 1956-57 big bands are concerned. You get one bout of kick-butt ensemble play after another with "Whisper Not," "Tour de Force" and "Jordu" prime examples.

Dizzy raises the roof solo on the latter as well, and does some powerful soloing that I dig in particular on ballads such as "Stella by Starlight" and "I Remember Clifford." He lets loose with fine muted blues playing on "Joogie Boogie." Check out "School Days," which rocks and rolls, in large part thanks to the rhythm and blues-style sax runs by Billy Mitchell.

"Groovin' High" on this set captures the essence of Gillespie's conception of a bebop big band. A tad too many alternate takes of "Left Hand Corner" (four) on the second disk for my taste, but overall it's still plenty of unique tunes for the money.

Birks works in a big band

Dizzy Gillespie is on my mind because I'm making my way through "Dizzy: The Life and Times of John Birks Gillespie" by Donald Maggin (which my friend Carl Abernathy loaned to me) as part of my study of bebop this summer.

As I said, I have a thing for Dizzy's mid-1950s big bands and one of the points I find interesting in the book is that he had a strong preference for leading and playing in big bands in general, albeit bop and Latin jazz arrangements not traditional swing. Unlike Charlie Parker, who preferred small groups, small-group play was more of an economic necessity for Dizzy than a vocation.

We can thank the U.S. Government, which wanted a jazz big band for a State Department good-will tour and was willing to subsidize it, and Norman Granz, who just wanted to hear great music, for the existence of Gillespie's '56-57 groups, which the man himself classed as his best ever.

Dizzy in the sky

If you want to hear Dizzy Gillespie work the high notes, you can do a lot worse than "Cool Breeze" on "Dizzy Gillespie at Newport," Verve, recorded 49 years ago this month. Memorable sax playing from Benny Golson and Billy Mitchell, too.

John Birks sure should have been famous for his small-group bebop recordings with Charlie Parker, but I think I like him best leading his mid-1950s big bands. Besides Golson and Mitchell (on my all-underrated sax team), this one includes Lee Morgan and Wynton Kelly, among others, along with a guest turn by Mary Lou Williams, who does wonderful Latin-inflected soloing on "Carioca." Standout version of "A Night in Tunisia" as well, with some cool Dizzy improvising. Classic.

Sugar doesn't have to be sweet

I've seen Burnt Sugar classed as an extension of the kind of stuff Miles Davis did with his electric music, but "More than Posthuman: The Rise of the Mojosexual Cotillion" makes me think of Horace Silver's wonderful '70s set piece "The United States of Mind," for a new more angry and less hopeful millennium (so far) with an updated, harsher funk groove, interludes of hip-hop, sound theater using both instruments and voices and spiced by free jazz. Intricate and powerful and, heck, you could even dance to some of it. Maybe what this group really represents is a 21st Century big band that sounds like it. I am turned on by its music in any event.

Miles unplugged

Disk 19 of "The Complete Miles Davis at Montreux," Columbia, which I reached over the weekend, is the same as the single CD "Miles & Quincy Live at Montreux," wherein Quincy Jones assembled two big bands, including the Gil Evans Orchestra, for the occasion and convinced Miles to do what he said he wouldn't ... revisit his old stuff, from "Birth of the Cool" to "Sketches of Spain."

Less than three months from death, Miles Davis still had it, even figuring that the power trumpet parts I hear are carried by Benny Bailey and Wallace Roney, who were there to help out. The big bands conducted by Jones and playing Evans' classic arrangements for Davis are outstanding. But the guy who really stands out is saxophonist Kenny Garrett, a regular in Davis' electric groups at the time, where he also excels based on the "Montreux" disks I've listened to previously.

Miles Davis always resented the excess of attention Chet Baker received. At least he could take comfort, if cold, that he was playing a heck of a lot better than Chet at the end.

I bought the box set for the breadth of coverage it offers of live performances of Davis' constantly changing electric music over more than 20 years, but I'm happy to have this nod to his past as part of the package. In fact, I haven't been less than happy with any of the disks in the set. Songs are repeated from disk to disk, as is natural in any "complete" box. Generally, I don't think that's as big a drawback in jazz, where versions tend to differ with some significance from one to another. But in the "Montreux" box, the repeats are more or less in title only. They're like whole new songs from performance to performance. One disk to go .. then I'm listening again.

More Sonny, please

Weird, the first thing that struck me on the title track of the new Sonny Rollins' CD "Sonny, Please" was the playing of trombonist Clifton Anderson (who's got a good solo on "Remembering Tommy" as well) and Kimati Dinizulu on percussion.

Mr. Rollins gets his by the time it's over, however, on his first studio release in six years and the first release ever on his own record label Doxy. I thought his last two studio CDs, "Sonny Rollins +3" and "This is What I Do," both Milestone, were among his best. They also were his last new disks of any kind before the outstanding, Grammy-winning and live "Without a Song," also Milestone, released last year.

I think "Sonny, Please" rates with any of the three and will probably get even more interesting over time because there's a lot going on in the course of the program.

Mr. Rollins is at his lyrical best on "Someday I'll Find You" and "Stairway to the Stars," which I place up there with two of my favorites, "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" on "This is What I Do" and "What a Difference a Day Made" on "+3." (Nice supporting work from Dinizulu on "Someday I'll Find You" and Anderson and guitarist Bobby Broom on "Stairway.")

The great tenor saxophonist is on the avant-garde edge on "Nishi," with some very complex blowing, and he makes another wonderful tribute to an old friend on "Remembering Tommy" (pianist Flanagan, who played with Mr. Rollins on his masterwork "Saxophone Colossus.") He seems to get especially inspired when he pens tunes in honor of former musical mates, as he did with "Have You Seen Harold Vick?" and "Charles M." on "This is What I Do."

The highlight: Probably "Serenade," on which he engages in the kind of ultra-creative improvisational odyssey from a simple melody for which he's justly famous. He closes with another in a line of smile-creating calypso-influenced tunes, "Park Place Parade."

Here's to many more new Sonny Rollins' CDs.

Found on the road

eddiefisher,
originally uploaded by mrgreg.

I met Eddie Fisher and his wife Christina over the weekend while working on a story in East St. Louis. Christina was showing me the community theater (complete with computer lab and video studio) she and her husband use to give kids in particular something constructive and educational to do, when she mentioned that her husband is a jazz guitarist. I'm a big jazz fan, I say. Let me show you something, she says. She takes me into Eddie's office and there's a picture of Eddie and ... Herbie Hancock, she says, and another of Eddie with ... Wayne Shorter, I say. You are a jazz person, she says. Yes mam, I say.

Meanwhile, Eddie's outside fixing up some junkyard furniture for the garden patio he's building in front of the theater, even though he's played with Booker T. & the MG's, Isaac Hayes, Solomon Burke and Albert King and toured Europe 10 times and is in the Arkansas Jazz Hall of Fame (he was born in Little Rock) with Herb Ellis, Louis Jordan and Pharoah Sanders, among others, pretty good company.

When I got home, I downloaded "42nd Street," his last CD, cut in 2001, from iTunes. In his playing style, Eddie Fisher makes me think of ... Eddie Fisher. If he sounds comparable to anybody, it's George Benson or maybe Jimmy Ponder and there's a little Grant Green and Wes Montgomery in his playing, too. The music moves my feet from the opener, "Who Loves You," and has a funk, Motown, soul thing going along with the blues in the mix, as on "Ah Blues Thang." All the songs are Fisher's. "Mr. Smooth" is as driving and powerful as any jazz guitar performance I can recall and it gets balanced nicely by "For You Babe," the pretty ballad that follows. Good musician and a good guy.

Miles in the Forrest

Off to East St. Louis, which is in Illinois not Missouri, and where
Miles Davis grew up and started earning his props playing with local
guys like Jimmy Forrest, whose CD "Forrest Fire," OJC, is one blues
drenched, soulful romp.

Candy's dandy

I thought about Clifford Brown again yesterday when I received Lee Morgan's "Candy" in the mail for a buck through La La, a new Web-based used CD trading service I've been trying. (Works good so far.)

I thought about Brown because Morgan sounds like Lee Morgan playing Clifford Brown, maybe in "The Clifford Brown Story," if there had been such a movie. Which is not to say Morgan's playing isn't good, because it's downright amazing for a 19-year-old kid who's obviously on the way to finding his own voice, soon to be considerable, on this disk from early in his career.

You get to hear it plainly. Morgan is leading a quartet session and he's the only horn, although Sonny Clark on piano certainly helps carry the load. Spiffy.

When the cat's away...

"African Cowboy", which opens "Wessell 'Warmdaddy' Anderson Live at the Village Vanguard," Leaning House, starts out making me think of Sonny Rollins' "Way Out West," by way of a New Orleans dance hall, and then segues into Ornette Coleman or Archie Shepp territory. "Now's the Time" gets similar treatment, with Anderson, mostly on alto saxophone, and trumpeter Irvin Mayfield opening pseudo Bird and Diz before giving it a more avant-garde flavor. Anderson's stint with the sopranino sax, a step higher than the soprano, on his own "Snake Charmer" begins like he plans to mesmerize a cobra and turns into a heck of a jazz burner. He also flashes a bit of Cannonball Adderley on "I'll Remember April" and a touch of Johnny Hodges on "Star-crossed Lovers."

I'm thinking Anderson, a mainstay of Wynton Marsalis' Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra, enjoyed playing outside the necon confines of the big group and he took full advantage. I picked this up on a flier last week while poking around in my local used CD store, and I'm glad I did.

Big Banding, part 10

Here's another in my hunt for good one-disk samplers covering a selection of classic big bands from the '20s, '30s and '40s with decent sound, representative material and a reasonable price.

Cab Calloway, "Are You Hep to Jive?" OK, the songs on this Columbia compilation, 22 recordings by the Calloway band from 1939-47, are generally goofy. But hey, the Cabster could sing, even on novelties like "Minnie the Moocher," and the band he had behind him plain ruled. Little wonder with dudes such as Dizzy Gillespie (before he and Calloway came to blows), Chu Berry and Milt "the Judge" Hinton in it. "The Calloway Boogie" might, in fact, keep you groovy 24 hours a day. Everybody ate when they came to Cab's house. And that's all reet, hep cat.

Follow the links to my suggestions for disks featuring the bands of Jay McShann or Glenn Miller or Claude Thornhill or Chick Webb or Benny Goodman or Fletcher Henderson or Billy Eckstine or Earl Hines or Andy Kirk.

Harold in jazz land

"Harold in the Land of Jazz," Contemporary/OJC, is an enjoyable Harold Land CD that has the tenorman in a quintet with the great Swedish trumpeter Rolf Ericson and bass god Leroy Vinnegar. Land and Ericson make me think of Miles Davis and Coltrane in Davis' first great quintet, especially on the quiet song "Lydia's Lament" but also on hoppin' tunes like "Speak Low" and "Smack Up." A very high level of musicianship on this disk.

Slide's in the barn

So I've been in a Jazz Showcase, a Jazz Bakery, a Jazz Kitchen and a
Jazz Cafe. Tonight, I added a jazz barn, officially the new Music Barn
at the University of Illinois-run Allerton Park. I have to say the loft
of an old timber barn makes a pretty nice concert venue. Of course it
helped that the UI jazz profs who broke it in had trombone legend Slide
Hampton along as a guest artist for a wonderful program of their
compositions, plus one from Mr. H., who still cooks, baby. I wonder if
he's ever played a real barn before?