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.
But it reveal why music is about soul...Whatever the style diffrence or nevermind the genre difference....
Like in "soul music", like Otis Reading singing " the dock of the bay", when i listened to him from a small transistor radio when i was 14 years old, without knowing what is "soul" but feeling it for the first time perhaps....
@mahgister I had a 7" 45 RPM vinyl copy of "THE DOCK OF THE BAY" on the "Volt" label. I was about 10 years old at the time.
I also post music from time to time that is not jazz. Yesterday I posted a couple of Bee Gees tunes after our resident bird watcher Marija had brought up the relationship/love topic.
The "OVER THE RAINBOW" on the ukulele is cool. This ukulele (banjo) song is probably the most well known in the USA. Fast forward to 2:45.
Very different then my favorite version but on par with it because of the difference in the way emotions are communicated between the 2 but with complete truthfulness in the expression...
Combative viril moving trust in one side, vibrant fragile growing and touching hope on the feminine side...
Notice how incredibly together and tight Monk and Rouse are playing this typically Monkish disjointed and obtuse melody. Very hard to do and not heard too often:
Satchmo dont play the trumpet, he spoke with it...
It is even possible to translate the "words" in English or French...
Satchmo most of the time spoke about hope and joy most of the times ....
For me Chet Baker dont play trumpet most of the times like satchmo, especially the years before his death... He spoke with the trumpet but he spoke about sadness, solitude and despair most of the times...And we can also translate what he spoke about in words...
And the intonation related to their words or tone and chords are impossible for any other trumpet master to imitate even approach it for me...
i love them vey much...Because i love poetry and poetry is made with "words"...
This song always moved me...It is the FIRST life changing jazz music event that make me forgot separating dividing line between superior music and inferior genre... I realized music is a way musician take to reach our heart...Music dont need to be written by a genius but may be played by a genius or by any gifted musician in some magical moment... I was 15 years old listening to it at the radio.... It takes me some time after that to understand very deeply that musicians are music, not written score...I am not a musician myself and not gifted at all for music....
Like satchmo and Baker , Bechet spoke with his instrument and forgot to only play it or remember how to speak to the soul in this song ....I dont know....
I need soothing of the soul for me and the world....
And i dont think even an angel could play it better than this imperfect human being who was Sydney Bechet ...
Then perhaps even angels wait for us as imperfect as we are....
Many american Jazz players was more known in France and in some other countries around the world than in America when they were living and need money to pay the rent...
Now they are the soul of America....
The soul of Louis Armstrong is irrresistible medecine...
I think even Buddha and Christ will love him...
And Bach will borrow something from him like he did from Vivaldi mysterious spontaneous melodical gift...
Now listen to this and compare with all my other posts about Bechet, Baker, Davis, Armstrong, Green, they all spoke with their instrument and dont play only...
This man also spoke....
Listen to him...
Is it not " jazz" from someone coming from an old history some thousand years ago?
All souls sing the same divine song hidden behind all voices....
This divine call is what we long for....
Music is an algebric gesture mimicking God love but we think that we own it and called it our own possession....This only the superficial history of music....
There is many souls but one spirit....Deep music history is the history of the only one consciousness....
«God is a jazzman»-Groucho Marx 🤓
«Did you think he listen Bach but play jazz?» - Harpo Marx
I will finish my rant with this instrument which was created to reproduce the human voice, the duduk, and which will remind us the way Sydney Bechet was able to "spoke" "petite fleur" on an another instrument my first post above...
life is mysterious like is love...No other mysteries can surpass them save the mystery of the infinite which is only love forgetting himself and reminding itself .... Is it not music this forgetting and this reminding, this waving ?
Astounding choices illustrating this front matter about spoken "idiom", especially about Mingus who i know because he is a great legend but not so much in listening....
I will go for these two.... This is jazz to my liking for the reasons explained well by frogman... Thanks...
This is why this jazz thread is more than about taste when a musician like frogman explained why we must listen before confiding only in our first preferences or biases... We must educated our taste gestures so to speak....
I love Curtis Fuller’s playing. Wonderful player with a very impressive discography. One of the many impressive things about this great player is the fact that he got a very late start on his instrument. He didn’t start playing trombone until his late teens and by the time he was in his early twenties he has moved to NY and had taken the NYC Jazz scene by storm. Pretty impressive by any standard. I love his tone on the instrument, not particularly brassy, but dark and velvety instead.
I first heard Fuller on this record, when I was collecting anything and all by the great Phil Woods. This record is also a great example of what a great arranger Woods was:
There are many great Curtis Fuller records, but I would wager that if a survey were taken this record would get the most votes for being his greatest. I love the very relaxed vibe of the music on this recording:
I explored jazz for many years now and i confess that i was knowing Curtis Fuller only by name not much more...
I must than thank you for drawing my attention to this supreme craftmanship...
He does not play trombone, he voice it to speak with it.....
I just listened 3 of his albums in a row....
It remind me of Chet Baker who does not play trumpet either but voice it to speak with it which is very different for me than playing the notes so virtuosively possible it is...
Very few artist could speak with their instrument save the greatest ....
After all music and speech are linked by the same placenta in the womb of Eve....
This is one of the best jazz albums ever recorded, and like so many of the best jazz albums recorded in this time period, Curtis Fuller is on the playlist.
I go on with this suggested album, which is indeed very well recorded and very good...Thanks very much for this great album....
I love Curtis Fuller singin’g and voicin’g his trombone...
I particularly like musician able to make their instrument speak intimately more than making even magnificent sounds sessions together....
They are great musicians that plays witthout making their instrument speak like a human voice...My point is not to make some superior and other inferiors...Not at all.... But i prefer an intimate inner speaking coming from jazzmen especially....Anyway i can appreciate any great musicians for what they truly are: souls in the making and coming together...
Coming back to this intimate speech, like the one of Chet Baker or Bill evans, or Curtis Fuller, when they forget to make only music with other musicians but spoke spontaneously for themselves, i discovered this magnificent album of Grant Green with Sonny Clark....
Grant Green spoke with a guitar sound characteristical of those years imbued then for me with some nostalgia....
The style of Clark pianist and Green wed well together....They speak more than plays...They succeed speaking with one another here....
One thing is sure Grant Green is a very great musician....Not only a very great guitar player and not mostly just that...His tone extreme sensibility and his sticking to his internal speech make him an artist living in his own world....
It is less jazz then, when we listen to him, than Grant Green music....
There’s something very bracing/refreshing about Green’s relatively cool tone. Kenny Burrell is great but he and most other Jazz guitarists of that era utilized such a bass-heavy tone. To me, that somewhat dull, thick sound becomes monotonous rather quickly but I don’t find that’s true with Green-- there’s a vibrant, singing quality to every note that I find very appealing.
Of course, Green (for much of his Blue Note work, at least) played an ES330 -- which is a considerable thinner-bodied instrument than the bigger Jazz boxes commonly used by Burrell, Montgomery, J. Smith, Ellis, etc., so that’s also a factor.
You put it the way i would have wanted to say it....Thanks....
With Joe Pass speaking intimate tone, i enjoy Green simple singing qualities very much...
Among my 2 favorites in guitar jazz.... There is many more others to enjoy for sure.... But love love with reason or without....
You work with people who work or dream in automatic pilot like robot with no consciousness of their own...
In contrast you are a free human soul with a moral compass navigating seriously the reality...Not surprizingly your emotions are involved.... Theirs are not.... Save for recognizing you to be a zealot...You are not.... They are dead bodies....
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