Jazz for aficionados


Jazz for aficionados

I'm going to review records in my collection, and you'll be able to decide if they're worthy of your collection. These records are what I consider "must haves" for any jazz aficionado, and would be found in their collections. I wont review any record that's not on CD, nor will I review any record if the CD is markedly inferior. Fortunately, I only found 1 case where the CD was markedly inferior to the record.

Our first album is "Moanin" by Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers. We have Lee Morgan , trumpet; Benney Golson, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie merrit, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

The title tune "Moanin" is by Bobby Timmons, it conveys the emotion of the title like no other tune I've ever heard, even better than any words could ever convey. This music pictures a person whose down to his last nickel, and all he can do is "moan".

"Along Came Betty" is a tune by Benny Golson, it reminds me of a Betty I once knew. She was gorgeous with a jazzy personality, and she moved smooth and easy, just like this tune. Somebody find me a time machine! Maybe you knew a Betty.

While the rest of the music is just fine, those are my favorite tunes. Why don't you share your, "must have" jazz albums with us.

Enjoy the music.
orpheus10

Showing 50 responses by schubert

The more you study the better you play .

In current USA nobody could imagine a show like that .I remember some in the 50's , too busy soldiering.
Only thing I really remember from TV was Andre Previn , I disremember  what show .

. Andre , who could never be called  small minded , said " I've
done my best to be open-minded about rock but there is nothing there, pure garbage " . 
81563 , you should wait for frogperson , he forgot more than I know .
That said , with my limited Knowledge , they are 3 I would feel OK referring
 to anyone .
"Motion" he and Elvin Jones are great together , "Standards Live : At the  Village Vanguard ""Subconcious"   His best with Tristano and  Marsch- Classic
Along with Stitt my favorite on Vinyl is Stanley Turpentine .This is a love song he wrote for his wife . Total ALL -STAR group ,
with Ray Barretto on conga’s ,Lee Morgan,trumpet, McTyner on piano, Elvin Jones , drum, Bob Cranshaw, . bass and Rudy Van Gelder on recording machine .


IMO , this is about as good as jazz gets .https://youtu.be/0hdUPzW-CnAHard bop rules  the rest is for fools , not really but it rhymes .
Is there a man alive than can not be shaken to the deepest body of his eternal soul by this Masterpiece played by Stanley and his Lady Shirley
"Queen of the Organ’ Scott. If so he got a hole in that soul .
sohttps://youtu.be/DmIgSO6nDKkng I !
If I was going modern with Konitz I'd go with Paul Bley .I thought  the rendition of Cherokee on "Alone Together " was terrible .

https://youtu.be/Xk7aYSUI3kI
Paul Bley gave me a copy of this in his house , wish I had him sign it . A nice guy, to me at least .
One of , maybe the best of the German Radio bands ,https://youtu.be/d9xco0i1xeY?list=RDd9xco0i1xeY
 Great Brass with Warren Vache .

https://youtu.be/Q3V99patV1c?list=RDd9xco0i1xeY With Toots . RIP .
The respect and love the musicians show the old Master is heart breaking .
Beautiful 81563 , sure is that old time religion .

I don’t think you could make a bad recording behind that Roy Eldridge beat , a Jazz giant !!
There are absolutes or near absolutes in this world believe it or not mary jo , you want one in music try Bach . He said God defined him

Bringing out a one in ten million outlier is useless .

The point of my post is I am aware that you are unaware . Its not a smarts contest . I've just been around longer .
mary jo,
I did not say rock was the main factor , I said it was a factor .
But as music is instinctive in humans it becomes a sine qua non factor .Which is the only reason I talk about it .When it first came out , I thought all the Southern Baptist preachers saying what would happen were nuts .

                             To my dismay they were spot-on ..
Monster is perhaps a better title anyway .I don’t worry mary jo , gave it up for Lent years ago .
I don’t take the Bible literally, but the most used phrase in it" be not afraid"struck me as a good idea.
That love trane is nice .

P.S . Greed is the daughter of fear .Don't tell anyone , fear gets angry and her boss raises hell .


As one of the 3-4 major drives of humans it is impossible to be a miniscule impact . I know all that stuff in your post and it is so .Here we speak of music . Sex , drugs and rock and roll was a salute to rock not a insult .
5% of the worlds population doing 25% of the worlds drugs makes their task easier .
The markets rely solely on greed which is not a human instinct and weakens compassion for others which is . At its best music is  anti-dotal , at its worst flame for the fire .












5

A reach out from the bottom of my heart to the "City of Lights" for the horrific event of yesterday .
https://youtu.be/9Od4TJYxjgk

The first few seconds are shot from the roof of Notre Dame, gargoyle and all . And numerous times  after at all angles .
No one loves jazz more than the French .
Dieu benisse la France  .


I’d say Doris had a good voice , not great but she could sell anything . Ain’t easy to sell a a hundred million records

I chose Day’s " I love Paris" because the video was out standing .
In the Good Book it is said "Love thy neighbor as yourself " and at the level of the Ten Commandments .
We have a Neighbor , a good one , who has been one for centuries.

In general we don’t pay much attention to her and she is a little more shy and quite than us .

July 1st is her Birthday and she does jump around a bit then, as we do on ours.

This is a slight look at her on her Birthday singing her song , quite love is and her peoples way . Her song is sung by what all of us would know as true Hero’s. They fight their battles in one of the most beautiful places on earth .

https://youtu.be/naXSl7dOXNQ?t=3

God loves them as do I  .

No mary jo. I did not not .
I've never been to Crotia and only time It came up in my History studies was about the Ustashe .Interesting though .
Thanks mary jo .
Actually I did know all that stuff but at my advanced age need to conserve the little energy I have .Almost every country has a lot of blood on its hands , many with more than Croatia .

The actual definition of Fascism is simply a form of government where you can’t tell where the corporations end and the government begins .Mussolini, its father, said it was better called Corporatism but as
the word itself derived from the signs of power  in   Ancient Rome, it had more mass appeal .
.

Concentration Camps etc are optional .


Those were the Thornhill gang . The music is their ego .

Danny Polo getting after it , he could swing your house down or play your baby a lullaby !https://youtu.be/XM1xmxeEBvI?list=RDXM1xmxeEBvI
Danny comes in late , as usual with his band but ................



Easy Danny starts  but ...............https://youtu.be/SWZZXbJ4RQ8
The Jazz singer I was in love with as a kid . Still am . Thanks jetter.
https://youtu.be/l-nBNodBgcw


Her with the GREAT Claude Thornhill band ! The"high road " is a soldiers soul returning to Scotland .
Both my grandmothers were from Glasgow .   Was sacred in our house as my maternal grandmothers father took that road as a piper in the Black Watch in 1915 .
https://youtu.be/8_cCkKz4dsc
Claude Thornhill was writing and playing music in the 30's and 40's that would be hip today .This song , "Snowflakes " was written and arranged in 1940  by him and him alone .
 He had things like a 6 clarinet choir, Danny Polo was lead and fabulous .

https://youtu.be/VnKNiKmFpo8
If I did that post it was to show how bad not how good .
I hope who ever is Pres when Tony passes ensures all flags go half -mast .
Crow has a good voice , listening to it dawned on me that she was singing the song , but Tony was living it ! An Artist’s Artist !
On the Duo’s I have the only other artist that was on Tony’s level was Aretha.
And over 90 , a miracle .
nsp. love that En Passant .
Manne was one of first jazz records I ever bought .Unbeknown to me , I liked "locked" groups .My motto is if its good just keep on keeping straight ahead .
Thanks for that beautiful soprano 81563 . one hears it so seldom . Every time I hear Hank Jones I remember how dumb I am not having
any of his stuff . I’m lucky Jazz station in Mpls . plays him a bit .
Harrylavo , I tried to listen to SuperBass but my Sennheisers blew up half -way through !













en
Thanks  guys , may the love of God be with all .
81563, I'll be on Amazon looking for " Salt and Pepper " right after this .
To all, including me . The surest thing in the Universe is Our minds are not God’s minds .


Best to not temp him .
Ain’t this a B....word , had to go to a Danish festival to see a German Trumpeter  do  a real-deal version
of one my very favorites of the Great AMERICAN Song Book .US players from the greatest to the least tend to butcher it .
https://youtu.be/akp2CrjfRUI
Bet Satch was smiling that day .
Anyone else find this on the Monkish side ?https://youtu.be/MmBrep
A master of tempo and the space between notes .
His personal style of  melody and polyphony .
nsp, a beautiful album that I’m lucky to have .
Alexander just plays which I enjoy .



The last guy is Estonian , every musician in Estonia seems under the spell of Arvo Part , an Estonian semi-mystic
Classical composer and devout Orthodox Christian who might well have sold more recordings in last few decades
than any classical composer alive .
I would imagine some jazz lovers might like some of his stuff .https://youtu.be/z8ZScAdV8qE
Monk fans would be my first guess .


81563, you can bet your last dime that average rocker would think him a boring player .
Great as Wes is , I prefer Joe Pass and his acoustic sound myself., Which means nothing ,
Ac, that flute player is off the chart, fabulous !
Thanks 81563 , I looked at the Pass clip again and say him plug in the bottom .So, I'll just say I think Pass is a better player .
Is there a top-notch jazz guitarist that does play acoustic ?
 A bit softer but not bent Little "mirco" echoes and twitches I don’t hear with electric , of course my hears might be broken . I haven’t heard every jazz guitarist there is but, of the ones I have heard, Pass is by far the best .
He reminds me of a Mozart piece , when its done you know the notes could
be other way .
Thanks for the Humes and Byas masterpiece pjw .
I don’t recall hearing them but they did that "Stardust: as a duo" , incredible how they drew you into the song instead of hitting you over the head with it .Real artists !Checked other works and both could have sung and played anyway they wanted .
Wish I knew what arranger had to do with it , if anything . That bothers me about jazz .
VERY interesting guitar talk from Jim Mullen .It’s always been hard to live in Scotland so they are a pragmatic lot !
Watch how much music there is in  the Celtic music he goes out on , those "little ditties " have hundreds of years behind them.
https://youtu.be/TOutRlybKBs
Anyone who has the slightest interest in guitar should hear the 10 minutes of this wise man talking to" Guitarist" magazine .
Yeah , I more or less , probably less , knew that .Of course a musician can appreciate technique that means nothing to me .To me , melody is what its about and that and the means to that is it . The b3 and Martino on oleo are fabulous but they ain’t pretty . Pass and NHP are fabulous and pretty . I don’t doubt the reverse is true for a trained
musician which is fine with me .
.Why would Pass change, he already had beauty .Pass has total confidence . A lot of players look scared .

Martino looked sick in your clips . Hope he wasn't .
Amen , Don’t think there was much talk who was the head "bone when J.J
was around .
Never thought these 2 were in same time , ain’t easy being dumb .
IMO , judging by the one clip , Bernstein is an elegant player , always room for that !
There is no point other than you like what you like .And more often than not , that is what you have experienced.
I can put the Russians in their place in history , love Prokofiev melodies in particular .


When people give me the "music is the world language " bit standard smart butt answer is I've never met an American who is a fan of Chinese Opera .





In all aspects of life I really have only two that I absolutely believe are the best , God and Bach .
81563, as nobody wants to answer you question I might as well stick my big-mouth in .
You only have to listen to a few clips , whether you speak his language or not , to know that few players have as much to say as Metheny . That alone makes him top-drawer in my book  Off hand,.only jazz player that has even more to my hears is Gonzalo Rubalcaba .Sonny Still might be better as an improvisor but I don’t know enough about
Metheny’s music to be sure of that .
Well, I think that at my age and values I can smell spiritually like a hound dog smells a pork chop .Mays is certainly a fine pianist but I don’t get a whiff of the depth  which pours off  Rubalcaba .


Of course I may be a delusional old fool .And I mean that .

This is in honor of a VERY important Lady , Dame Vera Lynn on her passing at the age of 103 years .

I like to think God gave her so many years because she sang this song throughout WWII to the many millions of all the Allied Armies , Soldiers , Sailors
and Airman as well to the other millions of sweet-hearts waiting for them .

I kid you not , it meant more than the National Anthem .
I doubt if any song was ever was or ever will be sung or heard as many times over the air-waves .
A billion times would be a conservative estimate .

Several ex- Germans Soldiers I knew said they listened to her as well !
https://youtu.be/8Nzy1cfnKh4?t=1


There are a lot of excellent  players in this old folks home band .
Obviously , they don't go to College  in the commonly used way .
https://youtu.be/e6zUWugF5oA?t=3

Frogman , No, it was a clip of Sonny playing "" A Foggy Day ’"
where his swing home really shown , so natch, I was all in on that .
Can’t find it today .
The thing that years ago that was always bringing me back to Sonny was listening to a conversation and talking back , literally !


"Right , ya man . bring it on , etc etc etc etc etc . " Mingus is the only other jazz guy I talk to .