Jazzy Sandbox

Just talk about jazz you're listening to in here.
Listening to this Duke Ellington live at the Whitney disc right now -- so great! Lots of solo piano things.
Also listened to Footprints by Pat Martino this AM. I guess this is basically the kind of record Wes Montgomery would've made in the 70s if he had lived?

Listening to Sonny Rollins' Freelance Years box. The stuff with Kenny Dorham is sublime; Dorham was way more influential than his underratedness would suggest.

ha, thanks for chiming in! thought this thread was a bust.
i really like that freelance years box set (and it can be found for very cheap!). Dorham stuff is great, Monk stuff obviously great. Way Out West, super classic. And that's just the start of it. On amazon for $20! Best deal ever.

http://nicholaspayton.wordpress.com/2011/11/27/on-why-jazz-isnt-cool-anymore/

yeesh!

Art Ensemble of Chicago - People in Sorrow

Enjoying this album today:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNBvxHw0NpM&feature=related

hmm don't know that! sounds cool.
was listening to disc 5 of miles' second great quintet box set this morning on the bus. weird period! kind of pulling in a free jazz direction one minute and a boogaloo direction the next. something tells me the band was getting pretty high before or during a few of these sessions.

Really enjoying this Dollar Brand special on WKCR.

That Nicholas Payton blogpost is getting linked alot and discussed on facebook and elsewhere.

Read about it on A Blog Supreme http://www.npr.org/blogs/ablogsupreme/2011/12/02/143059425/someone-said-something-negative-about-jazz-as-a-whole-again which linked to the original post and then an interesting overview of the reaction in the UPDATE by a trumpet player named Ian Carey that I know nothing about, but am trying to stay way clear of the larger internet beef.

anyone heard this yet?
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41g2GMbK0TL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
looks great, don't think i've heard any of it. probably of dodgy origins?

Dodgy origin? Is it Sonny in cowboy country music mode?

just "dodgy" in that it seems to be on a sketchy european label. but I could be wrong? maybe sonny's getting paid for it.

There IS something curiously Raesque about Mexican jazzbo Tino Contreras:

http://www.descarga.com/cgi-bin/db/24589.10

Not wild and woolly Ra, but 50s/early 60s/swingin'/exotica Ra?

Sorry I should have found a better word than "jazzbo."

Or imagine some of those experiments with choral jazz (or jazz with choral elements) except the choral elements are drawn from Hispanic liturgy (which I actually learned a tiny bit about recently--very tiny).

revisting... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kqwdRBWvPs0

I've noticed that a lot of jazz from the early 60s or earlier has recently been reissued as cheap CD reprints by various small labels, even if the album itself was on a major label. Is this because there's a 50 year limit in the USA before a music recording goes into the public domain? If that's the case, do the reissue labels somehow get access to the original master tapes, or do they just copy the music from earlier CD reissues from the original labels? I've bought a few of these cheap reissues, and the sound on them is quite good, so they're clearly not vinyl rips or anything, even though some of them have included albums that (AFAIK) have not been available on CD before.

Jim Hall with Art Farmer
Jim Hall with Paul Desmond
Jim Hall with Jimmy Giuffre
Jim Hall with Sonny Rollins

he was so damned good in the 60s. Not that he wasn't good after, I just don't like his sound as much.

don't forget his bill evans duet albums! those are out of this world.

After retiring from drawing The Far Side, Gary Larson said the first thing he wanted to do was study guitar with Jim Hall.

^ people who have figured out how to live

Yea, nice.

So I listened on Spotify to the first 5 songs of the Miguel Zenon new one and I like it BUT these are supposedly Puerto Rican traditionals but it just sounds like African-American jazz to me with no rhythms or melodies or instrumentation that would make me think Puerto Rico. Maybe I do not know enough or was not listening close enough. Still nice, just not what I expected.

Some jazz on Nate Chinen of the NY Times 2011 top albums and songs list

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/18/arts/music/ambrose-akinmusire-drake-the-roots-st-vincent.html?ref=music

Is there anyone on that list who is not a New Yorker? Most of them are young New Yorkers too. I like Akinmusire, though the one live set of his I've caught didn't quite live up to (high) expectation.

Mazurek was part of the Chicago scene in the early 2000s, not sure where he is now.

They spelled tUnE-yArDs wrong.

Mazurek was part of the Chicago scene in the early 2000s, not sure where he is now.

― Another Suburbanite, Friday, December 16, 2011 5:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Permalink

Apparently he lives in Sao Paolo now, but he's put out material pretty consistently since the early 2000s, (almost?) entirely on Chicago labels and often with Chicago musicians.

ugh just saw that bob brookmeyer passed away: http://blogs.ottawacitizen.com/2011/12/16/r-i-p-bob-brookmeyer/
not an expert on him, but he's on some great records w/ clark terry, gerry mulligan, stan getz...RIP.

this one is particularly good, as you might guess from the players on it:
http://991.com/newgallery/Bob-Brookmeyer-Bob-Brookmeyer-An-442313.jpg

whoa that looks good. I've never seen it before. Although early 1980s is kind of a jazz blind spot for me.

actually from 1964. tony bennett even shows up on one track. don't know why he didn't merit a mention on the cover.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vcu6EigZrWs

pretty wildly diff from what hancock, carter and jones were doing at the time, but pretty sweet nonetheless

RIP Brookmeyer

I like the big band stuff better --

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GNkc3ot-J6Y

yeah i don't even know that stuff! sounds cool, though. he did some things with maria schneider right?

Yeah, she studied with Brookmeyer after working with Gil Evans.

I've only heard a few Brookmeyer albums, but this is the one I liked best --

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_Mx56CkP9cGg/TCrp4uWRUYI/AAAAAAAAAhQ/iwv6YRasm9A/s1600/bobbrookmeyernaonw.jpg

cool, i'll check it out!
oh and a little research shows that tony bennett is not on the cover of that & Friends record because his track wasn't actually on the original album. just a bonus track on the reish.

in other jazzy news, just got these two records. kind of random purchases, but they looked cool while i was slightly drunk and internet shopping last week.
http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/h/harris_barr_magnifice_102b.jpg
http://jazzsermon.com/wp-content/uploads//2009/02/heathbig.jpg

good brookmeyer article from a few years back here: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/05/12/arts/music/12broo.html?scp=3&sq=bob%20brookmeyer&st=cse

Love his description of Basie in that article: "Whereas other people seemed to take music and pound it into the ground — bounce it off the earth — Basie came from under the crust of the earth and through your feet."

so this Barry Harris record is pretty awesome! realizing he's on various records I already have (eg Sidewinder), but this is the first thing I've heard where he's the leader. very bud powell-y but with a little more easygoing vibe. really nice, almost psychedelic track "sun dance." recommended!

Oh yeah, that's a good album.

Listening to David Binney's Barefooted Town. He's an alto saxophonist with whom I'm not really familiar, but the album has Ambrose Akinmusire, Mark Turner and David Weiss on it, and it's on Criss Cross, so I had a pretty good idea what it would sound like (slightly adventurous, moderately swinging post-bop) before I pressed play. So far I'm liking it.

Bought this Mahavishnu Orchestra box. You have to join the site to purchase, but it's free and totally worth it, as I'll explain. I ordered the box on Thursday, free shipping; they upgraded it to UPS Next Day Air, still for free, and I got it at 10:30 AM today. I'd heard almost everything in the box before, obviously. What sold me was what should sell you - a 64-minute bonus disc of additional material from the concerts recorded for Between Nothingness and Eternity. I'm listening to that right now, and it's fucking mind-blowing shredtastic prog-skronk. Seriously, holy shit. Totally worth it. Plus Between has been remastered (the old CD didn't sound all that great compared with the studio albums) and there's a 15-minute live version of "The Noonward Race" appended to The Inner Mounting Flame.

It says $38.99

Oh wait, now I get it. joining the site is free, the shipping and the upgrade were free, but the box itself is not free.

Nearing the end of the Eric Dolphy Prestige box. Most of it is, as expected, unfuckwithable. But the live material with a European pick-up group is frustrating. Off the top of my head, I can't think of a better/worse example of the gap between the leader and the rest of the group being so massive.

(That said, Last Date was recorded with a European pick-up group, but one that includes Han Bennink and Misha Mengelberg)

i just sussed Dolphy Live in Berlin the other day and i agree about the gap, but i don't mind it when ED's playing is as godlike as it is.

listening to Johnny Griffin - Grab This!(1962), a tenor and organ (Paul Bryant)date and another great one led by the most underrated saxman imo.
next up - Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis & Johnny Griffin - Battle Station (1960)

i don't think i've heard any of those final euro dolphy recordings except for last date -- but i love last date. the band isn't amazing necessarily, but i kind of dig the way dolphy adjusts to their more straight aheadness. depressing though -- if ever a musician sounded "full of life" it'd be dolphy, no matter what the context. ridiculous that he passed away so early.

Last Date is good, but yeah, a little stiff. But I've always liked Bennink, so it's interesting to me as a document of his playing from so early in his development. What's incredible to me is that, like you said, Dolphy adjusts to the straight-aheadedness of these groups, but never sounds the least bit constrained by them.

Jazzy:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOYnzyKGGDU

Listening to the Ken Nordine 2CD set You're Getting Better: The Word Jazz Dot Masters. From 2005, long out of print. I used to hear this guy on Dr. Demento's radio show when I was in junior high; haven't heard any of his stuff since.

He did an interview on WFMU
a few years ago iirc

jeez, rough month for jazzy RIPs -- Sam Rivers just passed away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HxMIiTW59Co

RIP

there seems to be a bajillion of these kinds of things popping up for sale on amazon
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51XrZmmRBLL._SL500_AA300_.jpg
anybody gotten any? they're super cheap. just wondering if the sound is terrible, or the packaging is terrible or what. what's the catch!?

I'm assuming they're like those Proper box sets where the copyright has passed wherever they're printing them up and they just use the latest remastered cd as the baseline. Totally sketchy but I still end up buying them.

Though I haven't bought the MJQ or any post-war stuff.

yeah that's what i assumed, some kind of public domain thing going into effect in some european country. prices are ridiculously tempting. that mjq thing is going for about $10 on amazon.

Go for it and report back!

i don't know, that sounds a little bit too ~adventurous~ for me...

The Hank Mobley set looks pretty great; I already have all that stuff, but as a first purchase for a new listener it's kinda ideal.

yeah i think i have most of that...was leaning towards the Three Sounds set, because I barely ever see CDs of a few of those records.

This might be sacrilegious to mention on a proper jazz thread, but I've been listening to Michael Franks first 4 records constantly. Really love the first self titled one from 73, but all of them have really great moments.

Who is "Popsicle Toes" holding up?

Mazurek was part of the Chicago scene in the early 2000s, not sure where he is now.

― Another Suburbanite, Friday, December 16, 2011 5:27 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Permalink

Apparently he lives in Sao Paolo now, but he's put out material pretty consistently since the early 2000s, (almost?) entirely on Chicago labels and often with Chicago musicians.

― Hurting, Friday, December 16, 2011 7:09 PM (1 week ago)

the other dudes on that album listed are Chicago dudes.

I've always been sort of curious about the economics of being a jazz artist who records a lot, or especially who recorded a lot back in the day. They made these records that would sell, idk, a few thousand copies on the first run? 10K? 20K? And probably not a modern indie-label style royalty deal either. But they make dozens of them over a career just as a leader (even assuming they don't get royalties on sideman dates), and then they keep getting re-pressed, reissued, and there's always that small core group of jazz fans who keeps buying.

i wonder about that too, though i have no answers for you...like, does Hank Mobley's family get money when someone buys a copy of Soul Station on CD?

Afraid to ask about that one. I assume it doesn't add up to that much even for a Hank Mobley and that is why lots of jazz musicians these days get masters degrees so that they can teach.

yeah, i'm sure that even if they're getting some kind of royalty checks for reissues of old albums, it's not a ton of money. i assume some of those 50s records were just made for a flat fee. come in, record 5 songs, get $500 or something and sign away the rights to the recordings forever. which probably seemed like a good deal at the time, but 50 years and a dozen repackagings later, maybe not.

Other way to ramp it up would be some composer royalties if you got a song on a big soundtrack or some kind of crossover artist like Mrs. Elvis Costello covered you.

Today OTOH you have guys who probably get better deals but are not going to be seeing RVG editions of their records because the 'classic jazz' era is sort of over. Like I can't even imagine how small sales of something like a Criss Cross release must be, although perhaps I'm underestimating Europe.

Jimmy Heath was on (national network prime time) tv last night. I wondered, when was the last time that happened, if ever?

(He killed, btw)

what was he on? that jimmy heath album i posted about upthread is great btw. hard bop meets semi-big band kind of thing.

Did he talk about his book? Was is from Flushing Town Hall or somewhere else?

He was part of the group paying tribute to Sonny Rollins on the Kennedy Center Honors show. Also playing were Joe Lovano, Christian McBride, Ravi Coltrane, Jack DeJohnette, Benny Golson, Roy Hargrove, and a young unknown named Herbie Hancock. The played "Sonnymoon For Two," "St. Thomas," and I think one other tune. Everyone was great, but for me, Heath was the highlight.

cool stuff, will have to seek out clips of that show!
got the new miles 1967 "bootleg series" for xmas. amazing, essential recordings! i've heard a bunch of recordings from that tour, but it's worth it for the cleaned up sound. DVD is nice too, cool to see the band at work. major flaw, as some have noted, is that ron carter gets lost in the mix often, but them's the breaks for bassists. But it's too bad, judging from the DVD, Carter is working twice as hard as everyone else! Also, he is really tall.

in other important jazz news: http://www.firmoo.com/anthony-braxton-eyeglasses.html

That's awesome. As is the "translation".

I believe those glasses employ frameless-lens logics simultaneously with the implementation of tortoise-shell-temple sublogics.

i tried on a pari and this is all i saw
http://tricentricfoundation.org/images/homepage_banner.jpg?1283892916

a *pair* that is

Maybe check your prescription? I'm seeing this:

http://blog.wfmu.org/.a/6a00d83451c29169e20134803ca438970c-800wi

Thought it was some kind of tribute to the late great Jackie Pari*s

Tonight I have become a street team of one for this album: Count's Rock Band: Do Not Listen If You Hate Coltrane or Maggot Brain

Streaming right now: Sam Rivers Memorial Broadcast

Should have realized that would be going on. Thanks,

Can anyone tell me more about Christian Wallumrod? Really interesting style sort of on the border between jazz and modern chamber music.