Jazz Library 9: Book Making with Booker Ervin

One of the joys of jazz collecting is to discover some well-documented jazzman whom one has never heard of, but whose music sounds like it should rank with the elder gods of bop. I posted a while back on Booker Ervin, when I had just heard his recording That's It! I found Ervin while thumbing through the Jazz Nerd's Bible, The Penguin Guide To Jazz Recordings. That's It! is a fine disc, very accessible, straightforward bop. Booker was a frequent sideman for Charles Mingus, who apparently thought very highly of him and compared him to Eric Dolphy. Mingus was right.

In 1963 and 64 Ervin recorded a number of superb discs that ought to be part of every serious jazz collection. He made it easy for us to spot them at this distance in time by their titles: Song Book, Blues Book, Freedom Book, and Space Book. Based on the names alone, the collector will suspect he is looking at a coherent set, and he wouldn't be wrong. All four recordings feature Richard Davis on bass, and Alan Dawson on drums. One of my personal favorites, Tommy Flanagan, plays piano on Song Book, while Jaki Byard is at the keyboard on Space Book and Freedom Book. This was a marvelous project. As you might guess, Song Book is the most accessible of the four. The rest are very adventurous jazz, of the kind that Dolphy is famous for. But everyone is worth listening to over and over.

Here is a sample from Song Book.

Booker Ervin/Come Sunday/Song Book/1964

All four of the "books" are available at eMusic for pennies. If you like this cut, by the disc.

Enjoy.

Jazz Library 8: Wayne Shorter & Art Blakey

Putting together a good collection of Wayne Shorter's work (pre-1967), was relatively easy, as most of it falls into two bodies of work: recordings issued under Shorter's name, and his work with Art Blakey and his magnificent Jazz Messengers. Shorter's own discs are:

Introducing Wayne Shorter (1959)
Second Genesis (1960)
Wayning Moments (1962)
Night Dreamer (1964)
Juju (1964)
Speak No Evil (1964)
The Soothsayer (1965)
The Collector (1965)
Etcetera (1965)
The All Seeing Eye (1965)
Adam's Apple (1966)

This is a wonderful body of work. Just look at the output for 64 and 65! The three discs recorded in 64 represent the peak of Shorter's career, as I see it. I have listed Speak No Evil as one of the ten best jazz recordings. I will have to get around to a post on these recordings, for there is a lot of compositional evolution here.

I won't list all the Jazz Messenger recordings, at least not here. Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers was, as one book title puts it, a hard bop academy. The institution is founded in 1954 and continues through the 1980's. Shorter served as musical director for Blakey, and that gives you some idea of what kind of platform Blakey maintained. For a better look, consider one of the Jazz Messenger's recordings.

I just got Mosaic (1961). Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on Trombone, Shorter on Tenor Sax, Cedar Walton on piano, Jymie Merritt on bass, and of course Blakey on drums. Hubbard and Walton alone are a lot of talent. Here is one cut, the only Shorter composition on this disc:

Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers/Mosaic/Children of the Night/1961

Enjoy, and if you do, buy the CD.

Jazz the way it should be.

The best way to experience jazz music has to be live in a New York City jazz club. It just doesn't get any better. Live, up-close and personal. The Jazz Standard is just one of those places. Get there an hour or so early, and it is easy to grab a table a few short feet from the stage. Sunday evening, June 29 we experienced the George Coleman Quintet with special guest Eric Alexander. These are two killer tenor sax players. Coleman (71 yrs), one of the all-time masters of the tenor, who has played with the greatest jazz artists of all-time, including being a member of the Miles Davis Quintet (with the dubious distinction of being replaced by Wayne Shorter), Jimmy Smith, Dizzy, Lee Morgan, Max Roach, and more. Eric Alexander is one of the great young talents and powerful players on jazz scene today.

Their contrasting styles made for an incredible evening of jazz music. Eric Alexander is a superb technician with amazing chops. He has a powerful, lush sounding horn with which he played perfect solos throughout the evening. George Coleman had a more fluid yet raw playing style, but his ideas stretched the compositions to new directions, taking his solos to places you didn't expect him to go. I won't soon forget the great piano playing of Harold Mabern, another grand master of his instrument that has graced the jazz scene for 40 years or more. His playing was simply amazing, and he has played with both these gentleman for each of their entire careers.

I even snuck-in a short video clip, though the manager came over and warned me to stop using the camera. Here it is, I hope it gives you a little feel for what the evening was like.

George Coleman ts, Eric Alexander ts, Harold Mabern p, John Webber b, George Coleman Jr. d.

John Coltrane Profiles

One of the finest podcasts that a jazz lover (or jazz student) could ever subscribe to or listen to is NPR's Jazz Profiles. A wealth of knowledge about some of the world's greatest jazz artists are contained within. What is special about Jazz Profiles is that you hear about the music from the artists themselves and their peers. They recount what went down during the recording sessions between the artists and what inspired the compositions. These are often rich, beautiful stories, being passed down from those that experienced the moments.

One of the finest of the series is John Coltrane's Jazz Profile, in two parts. An often misunderstood musician, this great artist was perhaps the most important figure in modern jazz. Starting as a be-bop player influenced primarily by Parker and Diz, he pushed the jazz art form to new heights letting his passion for his tenor saxophone and his spirituality move the music in directions never heard before. Now virtually any sax player must study and learn from Trane on his or her journey to becoming a jazz player.

Trane's later years were particularly controversial, as he introduced forms into his music void of rhythm and traditional chordal structures. However, listening to these programs on John Coltrane will surely give you a better appreciation for this man's passion in his music, and the direction it ultimately led.

Here are the links to John Coltrane - Profile in Jazz from NPR
Part 1
Part 2

Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall 1961

I first discovered Stanley Crouch back when I was in graduate school in the late eighties. Crouch was one of those jazz critics that the music demands: he cut through all the nonsense to show you what you should be looking for. I recently purchased a collection of his writings on jazz: Considering Genius. It is a treasure trove of reflections on jazz composition. When I opened it, in the bookstore, I chanced upon these words:

So much was behind him on that Manhattan night of May 19 when he walked out onto that world famous stage in 1961 and heard the applause of a full house.

That was enough to sell the book, and more than enough to sell the CD. A lot of Mile Davis live is documented. Live at the Blackhawk is marvelous, as is the more challenging Live at the Plugged Nickel. My Funny Valentine will play in my car tomorrow as I start up the engine. But the Carnegie Hall recording is special. Miles showed up with his quintet de jour: Hank Mobley on Sax, Wynton Kelly on piano, Paul Chambers on bass, and Jimmy Cobb on drums. Behind them was Gil Evans with a 21 piece orchestra. The recording alternates between Miles and the quintet, and Miles and the orchestra. Perhaps in no other recording did Miles show how thoroughly he had mastered the dimensions of the music that he had nurtured into being.

Here is the only cut where both the quintet and the orchestra are playing. Fans will recognize the number from Kind of Blue.

Mils Davis/Miles Davis at Carnegie Hall/So What?/1961

Enjoy.

Lee Konitz and the perfect poetry of bop

Jazz is to popular music what poetry is to popular writing, which is to say, unpopular. Neither the consumers of the one or the other have ever constituted more than a sliver of the public. Part of the reason is that both make great demands on the audience. U.S. Poet laureate Joseph Brodsky argued that poetry is the most perfect literary form because it says what it says in the most efficient way possible. Consider one of my favorite poems, by A.E. Houseman:

Stars,I have seen them fall,
But when they drop and die
No star is lost at all
From all the star-sown sky.
The toil of all that be
Helps not the primal fault;
It rains into the sea,
And still the sea is salt.

The reader has to see through the poem to recognize that it is about inertia, something that is perfectly beautiful precisely because it is terrible: it makes human life possible, in all its beauty and wonder, and dooms us at the same time. That truth and two unforgettable images, is a lot to squeeze into 44 words.

Brilliant jazz works simultaneously in two directions. It takes a basic melody and plays all around it, expanding the melody along any number of chordal and modal dimensions. Every drop of passion and conception is teased out. But it also works by leaving things out. What is not played is as important as what is played, and hints abound. It's easy to get carried away, and a lot of modern jazz is incomprehensible to me. But perhaps it is just too demanding.

I have been listening to Lee Konitz, an alto sax player of consummate genius. Konitz's music is not background music. You have to listen to it attentively. But if you do, the rewards are awesome. I recommend Alone Together, with pianist Brad Mehldau and bass player Charlie Haden. Slightly more demanding is his Duets, a series of encounters with jazz guitarist Jim Hall, tenor player Joe Henderson, trombonist Marshall Brown, and others. Every Konitz number is a perfect poem, efficiently mapping out previously unexplored corridors of the human soul.

For a quick taste, try this clip at Daily Motion. Konitz joins his long time collaborator, Warne Marsh.

The above post is an old one from SDP. Here is something new: a sample from Alone Together, the great Thelonious Monk standard.

Lee Konitz, Brad Mehldau, Charlie Haden/Alone Together/Round Midnight/1997

Enjoy, and if you do enjoy, buy the CD.

Jazz Library 7: Discovering Wayne Shorter

Miles Davis' second great quintet came together when Wayne Shorter was lured away from the Jazz Messengers. Miles had tried out a couple of tenor players to replace John Coltrane: Hank Mobley and Lou Donaldson. Both were brilliant, in my view, but neither were quite what Miles was looking for. It was Coltrane himself who suggested Wayne Shorter. You can hear Shorter's composition, Iris, performed by the second quintet at this previous post.

As I indicated, Shorter cut his teeth as musical director for Art Blakey. Shorter's presence and virtuosity is evident on all the Jazz Messenger discs he contributed to. His compositions surely make up the lion's share of great writing for that group in those years. Here is a sample of my personal favorites.

• Art Blakey & The Jazz Messengers/The Big Beat/The Chess Players/1960

The Big Beat includes Lee Morgan on trumpet, Bobby Timmons on piano, Jymie Merrit on Bass, and of course Blakey on drums.

But of course Shorter recorded a lot of music as leader. These are some of my favorite jazz documents. In fact I would rank Speak No Evil (1964) as one of the ten best jazz albums. It certainly ranks as one of the best jazz saxophone albums. His Adam's Apple (1966) has a similar stature, containing one of Shorter's most loved compositions: Footprints.

But I offer here a cut from Juju (1964). In many ways this disc is the best introduction to Wayne Shorter's genius. It is spooky. The album title is a variant on Voodoo. A lot of Shorter's work has a spooky, smoky, mood to it. "House of Jade" is grounded in a simple, haunting melody. All this appeals to me, as I am a great fan of the spooky story. I also share with Shorter an interest in Buddhism.

• Wayne Shorter/Juju/House of Jade/1964
  

Juju includes McCoy Tyner on piano, Reggie Workman on bass, and Elvin Jones on drums.

Wayne Shorter is my personal favorite jazzman. I am convinced that he is deeply under appreciated. Enjoy.