Showing posts with label Footprints Live. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Footprints Live. Show all posts

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

More Trane

I think that the most essential Coltrane issue is the The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings.   That collection is the heart of John Coltrane.  Less well known is Live At the Village Vanguard Again!  It's no rival to the former, but it is still full of unstable genius bursting forth in all directions.  I am playing 'Naima'.  Here is the band:
The cut features a long, leathered  solo by Sanders.  I like it, like it or not.  There is Trane enough for everyone here. 

I am also playing the same composition from the 1961 recordings.  This is the live one.  Here is a marvelously complete list of the personnel: 
  • Double BassJimmy Garrison (tracks: 1.1, 1.3, 2.3, 3.1, 3.3, 3.6, 4.1, 4.3, 4.4), Reggie Workman (tracks: 1.1, 1.2, 1.4 to 2.5, 3.2, 3.4, 3.5, 4.1 to 4.5)
  • DrumsElvin Jones (tracks: 1.1 to 2.1, 2.3 to 4.5), Roy Haynes (tracks: 2.2)
  • Oboe, Bassoon [Contra]Garvin Bushell (tracks: 2.3, 2.4, 4.4, 4.5)
  • OudAhmed Abdul-Malik (tracks: 1.1, 2.3, 4.1)
  • PianoMcCoy Tyner (tracks: 1.1, 1.3 to 1.6, 2.3 to 2.5, 3.2 to 4.5)
  • Saxophone [Alto], Clarinet [Bass]Eric Dolphy (tracks: 1.1 to 2.4, 3.3 to 3.5, 4.1, 4.3 to 4.5)
  • Saxophone [Soprano, Tenor]John Coltrane 
The cut I am playing is 1.6.  Eric Dolphy has something to say here, as does Tyner.  

Friday, April 16, 2010

Best Live Jazz: Davis & Griffin @ Minton's Playhouse

That's Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis and Johnny Griffin.  It's fun to piece together a great live jazz set published on several different albums.  Eric Dolphy and Booker Little at the Five Spot comes to mind.  On January 6th, 1961, Davis and Griffin blew Minton's Playhouse in New York City out of the water.  Most or all of the event is captured on two records: The Tenor Scene, and Live at Minton's

This is gorgeous hard bop, soulful and ebullient.  I confess, I can't tell who is playing which sax.  I have loved Johnny Griffin for a long time.  All the Lockjaw Davis stuff I have has Griffin on it, well, except for Very Saxy.  That is a gem on its own.  

There was a lot of Monk exposed to Griffin and Davis' exegesis on that January night.  Here is one sample:
Eddie Lockjaw Davis & Johnny Griffin/Well, You Needn't/Live at Minton's
Here is the rest of the band: Junior Mance (p) Larry Gales (b) Ben Riley (d).  Griffin is an under appreciated deacon in the church of Monk.  Give this one a listen, download it from eMusic, and drop me a note. 

Tuesday, February 9, 2010

Wayne Shorter's Footprints & Aung San Suu Kyi

Last Sunday I had the chance to roam around Sioux Falls, and stopped at the Last Chance CD Shop.  Or was it the Last Stop?  Anyway, it was one of those rare places trading in used pieces of circular plastic pregnant with signal: CDs, DVDs, and video games.

I didn't expect much, so I was pleasantly surprised to find cheap copies of Sam Rivers' Dimensions and Extensions, and Wayne Shorter's Footprints Live!.  I am still not sure about Rivers, a substantial figure in avant garde jazz.  

I am a little bit embarrassed to admit that I didn't already own a copy of Footprints Live!, claiming as I do the post of high priest in the cult of Shorter.  See my Guide to Wayne Shorter and Guide to Wayne Shorter 2.  The links to the samples don't work yet, as I haven't replaced them with drop.box files.  I'll try to get to that this week.  

Anyway, I drove back to Aberdeen through a nightmarish snow and the next day was a snow day.  Instead of teaching class, I found myself in my study at home, listing to Shorter's 2001 show.  The music blended perfectly with the shadows in the room and the whiteout conditions visible through my window.  It gave me the same warm feeling deep down where I live that the cup of hot tea was giving my belly (deep down where I live).  Both Wayne and his music still make that essential offer: common, he said, I'll give ya shelter from the storm.  

Footprints Live! is a wonderful recording.  Danilo Perez plays piano.  I don't know him, musically speaking.  But I know and have blogged on John Patitucci who plays bass, and I know Brian Blade.  The band is exquisite, laying down a subtle and deeply sensitive background for Wayne's playing.  The old man, meanwhile, has that heart that lives in a horn.  Every line is a meditation on some romantic and more or less supernatural landscape in his Gothic imagination.  Two of my favorite Shorter compositions are on it: 'Footprints', of course, and 'Juju'.

There is also a tribute to Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.  For anyone who doesn't know, Suu is the hero of the Burmese Democracy movement.  Burma suffers under one of the worst gangster regimes.  Suu has been under house arrest for decades, and goes for long periods without outside contacts.  She is also a Buddhist, which is probably among the reasons that Shorter and I were drawn to her.  At her website you will find the admonition: "please use your liberty to promote ours."  There are worse things than slick roads and poor visibility.  

Here is Wayne's tribute:
Aung San Suu Kyi