Jazz for aficionados

This lady sold a million in the year before at 83 .

Perhaps the best backing Columbia ever made , easy to find .

You WILL beat your feet . No album on here.

And you will laugh hard and be very glad you got it . AMTRAK  BLUES

Harold Mabern

Kurt Elling

I loved Al Coln , smooth and steady , like me !

He and the Great Barry Harris could play for me all day and half the night.AL was a fine arranger as well with Woody Herman big band,

Lee Morgan (gone 50 years now).

"E.S.P.":

Gonsalves was a madman.

Al Cohn, fine composer as well as arranger.

Little known Miles record:

More to my taste than most Davis stuff . Have to tract down Sonny on the "bone" !

@frogman  Fabulous find Mr. Frog.  Miles was already Miles - flubbing some notes but supreme cool and timing.  Great arrangements!  Here too:

“supreme cool and timing”.  Exactly!  

Great Al and Zoot.  One of the great pairings in Jazz.  The two were part of the famous “Four Brothers” saxophone section in Woody Herman’s band.  Unusual in that the section consisted of three tenors and a baritone.  Hadn’t heard this one.  Thanks!

Here one of the Greatest jazz artists tells it like it IS !

One reason is what the best historians know but want to eat , America is not the

new country but the oldest .

Jazz Capital  of the World 

I'm not sure jazz rates a capital anymore. Not enough people live there.

Copenhagen is a large city and the capital of Denmark , with 20 million tourists a year.

UN says it is the best city in the world to live in , I wouldn’t argue .

I am sure  it is one of them .

Sorry, I wasn't very clear.  I didn't mean Copenhagen doesn't have enough people.  I meant jazz doesn't have enough people.  The "nation" of jazz isn't big enough to need a capital city.  Very few people play it anymore.  Very few people listen to it anymore, and most of us don't listen to the people who currently play it.  We listen to the classics.

I could not say much about the state of jazz affair in scandinavian countries (as there is lot of new jazz coming from there) but as fas as Germany or Italy is concerned (I am ofthen there, in various places) jazz is not so 'popular' among 'younger' crowd. I spend lots of time in Berlin, there are few nice clubs where jazz is played live on regular basis, but the places are not that big and not really overcrowded (if anywhere else is different)

Even in Perugia, in Italy, the town which hosts second largest jazz festival in Europe (Umbria jazz) and known as university town, there are not much jazz going on, outside the festival times.

One should look at record sales to know for sure (or perhaps not, as everyone stream these days) to be certain, but looking at department stores, the classical department is always much bigger and with more customers, at least in ones that I have been.

Here is one link, my favourite and biggest record, book and movie store in Berlin. In fact the department with classical music occupies the whole floor, in the basement, biger than all the ohers combined. (click on the photo to scroll for more photos)

https://www.kulturkaufhaus.de/de/musik/vinyl

@jim5559 

I wasn't trying to start an argument, or even disagree with you.  Just pointing out that jazz (like audiophilia) is a very, very small niche in the world, and has been for quite a long time.  It happens to have been on my mind recently, and your comment brought it to mind, again.  That's all.

In a year jazz sells a bit more recordings than Classical does in USA .

I don't disagree.  I'm just saying that's like saying more people watch field hockey than watch race-walking. Not many people watch either one. 

Gee, do they like Jazz in Amsterdam , few folks showed up.?

Lucky jazz  , it seldom gets played  in the greatest hall in the world !

I"m a bit nuts , I don’t hear solos in the great big-bands . To me they are just one instrument . My mom said I ran to the radio to hear all the big-bands at age 3 .

They got "When Johnny Comes Marching Home " in the way a long serving soldier would understand ,WAR ..

Hall isn’t as good and audience smaller . So there!    Grieg's lovely flute Sonata is on  next door .

Frogman that Thad Jones Mel Lewis video is excellent. Thanks for posting it.

Here is another of the great big bands, the Kenny Clarke Francy Boland Big Band.

Kenny Clarke and Kenny Ware play seamlessly on the drums.

Johnny Griffen plays a masterful solo on tenor and Idrees Suliman adds a short but powerful trumpet solo. I have about a dozen KCFBBB cd’s and they are all superb.

1 of 11 Kenny Clarke Francy Boland Big Band - Griff’s Groove - YouTube

Another live KCFBBB featuring Dizzy on trumpet 

Dizzy Gillespie & Kenny Clarke/Francy Boland Big Band 1970 - YouTube

 Frogman I have a question.

When you saw Dexter Gordons homecoming tour in the late 70's was Woody Shaw playing trumpet on the dates you were there?

Here is one of the dates

Dexter Gordon 1978 Exclusive Gigs Series: Strollin (ft. Woody Shaw) - YouTube

This Woody Shaw album is a classic

Woody Shaw-Moontrane Full Album - YouTube

pjw, yes, Woody Shaw was there.  Great shows and a lot of excitement in the air.  The shows I attended were at the Village Vanguard, not the Village Gate.  The recording in acman’s clip is from those shows at the Vanguard.  Nice KC/FB!

Grieg?  Huh?! 😊

Lovely sonata indeed.  I’m sure you know it was not composed as a flute sonata.  Composed as a violin sonata and transcribed/arranged for flute by others.

Thanks frog.  I've never been a major fan of big bands, but the TJ&MLBB is one I enjoy.  And it was fun watching Thad direct in that video.

And that reminded me of one of my favorite Monk albums - 

Yes, I did . I just thought that flute was something to hear !

Going over to see  about a violin sonata with one Julia Fisher.

I can’t I say I am a freak for Grieg but I have listened to "Peer Gynt" at least a Thousand times ! Soothing .......... , I sure respect him .

Norah Jones

Michael Weiss

pjw, yes, Woody Shaw was there.  Great shows and a lot of excitement in the air.  The shows I attended were at the Village Vanguard, not the Village Gate.  The recording in acman’s clip is from those shows at the Vanguard.  Nice KC/FB!

Froggy that must have been an incredible show!

Did you take any photos of LTD and Woody?

Do you remember the 3 musicians in the rhythm section?

I know it was over 4 decades ago but I bet you know!!

Here is the writer and composer of Gingerbread Boy Jimmy Heath god rest his soul. Excellent young musicians big band following Heath's direction!

UNT One O'Clock Lab Band: Jimmy Heath - Gingerbread Boy (1964) - YouTube

“over four decades ago”!!!!  I’m showing my age ☺️.  I was fresh out of HS when I went to see Dexter for the first time at the suggestion of a saxophone teacher that I had at the time.  I didn’t quite understand the significance of those performances at the time and it wasn’t until years later that I bought and listened to the “Homecoming” recording made from those dates.  That recording was made over a couple of days at The Vanguard.  The personnel when I was there was as the record states: Dexter, Shaw, Ronnie Mathews, Stanford James and Louis Hayes.  I heard Dexter twice more at The Vanguard a few years later.  These times it was just a quarter; no Shaw, George Cables, Eddie Gladden and I’m blanking on who the bass player was.

“over four decades ago”!!!!  I’m showing my age 

I graduated HS in 1981 so, froggy you are not much older than I am.

Louis Hayes is a great drummer that has appeared on hundreds of studio recording sessions with all of the great jazz musicians of lore. From Sonny Stitt to Vincent Herring.

George Cables is a great pianist and has hundreds of studio recording sessions as well. Besides his own catalog as a leader, he played with Sonny Rollins, Art Pepper (a lot), and Frank Morgan to name a few.

Both Hayes, 84, and Cables, 74 are still alive and making music!!

Ronnie Mathews and Eddie Gladden are no slouches but Stanford James is drawing a blank with me.

Spell checker strikes again!  That should have read Stafford, not “Stanford” James.
 

Btw,  funny how the mind works, yesterday I couldn’t remember who the bass player was with Dexter and when I woke up this morning one of the first things I thought of was “Rufus Reid, that’s it!” 😊

More Dexter with Stafford James:

pjw, old?  I saw Louie Armstrong and The All Stars live when I was 10 or 11.  Probably not many here in my age group!

frog, my subconscious solves many things for me overnight.  Without that I'd be even more lost. ;^)

Here's an earlier performance by Satch and Teagarden.

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"...

Who dont like Louis Armstrong anyway?

Too big a  giant to be invisible or forgotten....

Many would say that it, Jazz as we know it today, really all began with Satchmo.

pryso, what I wouldn’t give to have heard and seen Satchmo live. Lucky you! Great clip!

mahgister, and they both also sang…interesting (and so did Teagarden).

On a related note (😉) many Jazz instrumentalists make a point of learning the lyrics to a song before playing it as an instrumental. Speaking of Dexter, he was one of the very best examples of this approach to a tune. He would often begin a live performance of a tune by reciting part of the lyrics: