From Column "A"

Just added to my station are a couple of cuts from The X-Man.  The personnel are:

• Acoustic Guitar – Alix "Tit" Pascal* (tracks: 1, 3, 6, 8)
• Bass – Anthony Cox
• Drums – Andrew Cyrille
• Flute – James Newton (2) 

The cuts are 'A Simple Melody' and 'E-Squat'.   Both are haunting and evocative.  

I also added a cut from Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers: Roots and Herbs.  The cut is 'The Back Sliders,' a classic JM piece from the Wayne Shorter years.  The title sounds kinda like a Lee Morgan album, doesn't it?

• Bass – Jymie Merritt
• Drums – Art Blakey
• Piano – Bobby Timmons, Walter Davis Jr. (tracks: 2, 4)
• Saxophone [Tenor] – Wayne Shorter
• Trumpet – Lee Morgan

Lee Morgan

For some reason I am in a Lee Morgan mood tonight.  I have mentioned Morgan occasionally, but I don't think I have devoted a post to him.  High time, squire!  I got to know Morgan mostly from his work with the Jazz Messengers.  I am very fond of his most popular album, Sidewinder, but I have said that Search for the New Land was his magnum opus.  The Gigolo, an attempt to repeat the commercial success of Sidewinder, is worth a listen, as is Candy.  I can also recommend The Young Lions. 

Whenever I think of Morgan, I think of two things.  One is that he recommend Wayne Shorter as a replacement for Benny Golson when Golson left the Messengers.  That, I think, was a great contribution to modern jazz.  The second thing is that Morgan's girlfriend/wife shot him through the heart at Slugg's jazz club in NYC in 1972.  Morgan was 33.  I wonder if she ever had any idea what she was putting a bullet into the heart of?  

Morgan was a bit frustrated about his great success with Sidewinder.  He thought his best work at the time was on Grachan Moncur III's Evolution.  I concur.  I blogged about Moncur recently.  Having listened to a lot of Morgan tonight, his work on Evolution is more serious.  Here is a sample:

Grachan Moncur III/Air Raid/Evolution.

And here is a sample from Morgan's 1957 album.  

Lee Morgan/Since I For You/Candy

 Enjoy.  Purchase. 

Back to Blakey

I got interested in Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers as result of my infatuation with Wayne Shorter.  I got interested in Wayne because I saw one of his albums in a Zen Mountain Center catalog.  I practice Zen meditation, and Wayne is a Nichiren Buddhist if I am correct.  Such is the strange path of a jazz collector.

I have about twelve Messengers albums with Shorter playing his magnificent sax.  I am always astonished to note that all twelve were recorded between 1960 and 1964, when Shorter served as the Messengers musical director.  That was one very fertile period in the history of jazz. 

Blakey was a unique sort of genius.  He kept the Messengers within a narrow scope of music, but allowed an amazing number of jazz masters to mature under his guidance.  He was also a wizard on the drums.  Wayne Shorter was another kind of genius.  I identify with him more than any other jazz master because of a set of common interests.  Buddhism, science fiction, and the spooky mood, these are the things that attract me to Shorter.  But I can't play the horn and I am no brilliant composer.  Wayne's melodies are haunting and compelling.  I can't imagine life without them. 

Today I got Buhaina's Delight.  It's named after Blakey's Islamic moniker.  I don't know when Shorter found the Buddha way, but there is a lot of American spring mix in this story.  Anyway, here is a sample from the disc. 

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers/Reincarnation Blues/Buhaina's Delight

Just look at the lineup: Freddie Hubbard on trumpet, Curtis Fuller on trombone, Cedar Walton on piano, and Jymie Merritt on drums, and of course Blakey and Shorter. 

Here is another sample from a very popular album.  Here, in addition to Blakey and Shorter, Lee Morgan plays trumpet, Bobby Timmons piano, and Merritt again on bass.  I have a deep fondness for Timmons, as he wrote 'Moanin', one of my favorite compositions.  But Lee Morgan is a priceless hard bop treasure.  This one number, I think, documents the greatness of the Messengers.  Morgan's intro, and Timmons' soft solo are wonderful.  But Morgan's solo, followed by Shorter's, lay out two chambers of the human heart in a way that makes every beat worth the blood it pumps.  This, by Zeus, is jazz. 

Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers/Yama/A Night in Tunisia

Tina Brooks

Another shooting star in the Jazz sky. Harold Floyd (Tina) Brooks (pronounced sure enough Teena), killed himself off pretty quick. But before the narcotics brought the curtain down, he managed to produce some awesome jazz. I have been enjoying Minor Move for some time now. There is something about Tina's tenor that is unusual, and I can't quite pin it down. He presents that beautiful and sad face of someone who is trying to catch something. But it's more than that. Maybe you can figure it out.

Minor Move was a piece of genius. Recorded in Rudy Van Gelder's studio in Hackensack, about nine months after I was born, it was right at the temporal epicenter of modern jazz. Lee Morgan, another tragedy in the making, played trumpet. Sonny Clark played the piano, and Doug Watkins was on bass. Art Blakey played drums, putting the signature on the vintage.

Here, for a sample, is the title cut:

Tina Brooks/Minor Move/Minor Move