Miles Live @ the Blackhawk

The two most valuable Miles Davis box sets (of those that I have) are: 1) The Legendary Prestige Quintet Recordings and 2) Live at the Plugged Nickel.   If you have those two, you have big chunk of music from both of Miles' great quintets.  I would add that the former is much less important if you already have the individual albums released from those sessions.  

What comes next?  Almost certainly it would be Miles In Person Friday and Saturday Nights at the Blackhawk, Complete (Columbia, 2003).  This box contains four CDs recorded on April 21st and 22nd of 1961.  The Blackhawk was a great venue and the location of some very great jazz recordings.  This album is fine sample of Miles between his two quintets.  Here is the lineup:

• Bass – Paul Chambers (3)
• Drums – Jimmy Cobb
• Piano – Wynton Kelly
• Tenor Saxophone – Hank Mobley
• Trumpet – Miles Davis

Chambers and Cobb remain from the Kind of Blue album.  Hank Mobley fills the sax chair.  He gets some bad press for his work with Miles, but I can't hear any problems other than the fact that his name isn't John Coltrane.  Wynton Kelly is a superb hard bop piano player and he does a fine job here.  His work on the above cut is toe curling good. 

I am playing 'No Blues' from the first disc in the set.  If this doesn't recharge your smart phone, I don't know what will. 

I am also playing 'Softly As In a Morning Sunrise' from Wynton Kelly's  Kelly Blue.  This is just the rhythm section from the above album, recorded in 1959. 

Hank Mobley's Sweet Tenor

Hank Mobley is one more tenor whose blessing was also his curse: he played with Miles on a number of extraordinary recordings. That's a blessing to be sure, because any certified jazz nerd will know your name. It's a bit of a curse as well, because no one will ever quite forgive you for not being John Coltrane. Well, maybe they forgave Wayne Shorter, but that just tells you how hard the curse is to break. Anyway, Mobley plays on Miles Live at the Blackhawk, one of the finest box sets I own. I just don't see how anyone could say that his work there represents a loss.

Mobley also recorded Soul Station, his magnum opus and certainly one of the classic modern jazz documents. This week I got a hold of Workout and Another Workout. Mobley could have spent a few dollars hiring an adman to name his albums. All three recordings feature Paul Chambers on bass and Wynton Kelly on piano. That's a solid, blues based trio there. Soul Station has Art Blakey on drums. Workout has Philly Joe Jones on drums, which is one awesome rhythm section. Grant Green also plays guitar. Workout was recorded in March of 1961. The material on Another Workout was recorded the following December, minus Green's guitar.

I have a great fondness for the swinging blues bop that was Mobley's great gift. It's just plain happy music, full of the joy of life. Here is a sample:

Hank Mobley/Greasin' Easy/Workout

And dig dis sample for comparison from the great work:

Hank Mobley/Dig Dis/Soul Station

More Miles at Stockholm

What a splendid chunk of jazz the Miles Quintet at Stockholm box has turned out to be. I listened to disc 1, with Trane playing, while driving around town today. I believe it is the March 22, 1960 concert. Two of the numbers are from Kind of Blue: 'So What', and 'All Blues.' They come closer to the perfection of KOB than any live versions of these songs I have heard. I sat in my car at the supermarket tapping the steering wheel for a long time before I persuaded myself to shut it off and go in.

Here is a sample from disc 1. Miles is brilliant. Trane is transcendent. Wynton Kelly is great enough for me.

All Blues/Miles Davis with John Coltrane and Sonny Stitt/In Stockholm Complete 1960

Coltrane does this marvelous restrained squealing thing with his horn that scratches itches I didn't know I had. Kelly's solo rises to the occasion, keeping the solid shuffle solid all the way to the end. You just gotta get this one.

ps. I remain hungry for comments! I am feeding you. Feed me!

The Two Pianos on Kind of Blue

Legend has it that Wynton Kelly was irritated when he showed up at Columbia Studios on March 2nd, 1959. Bill Evans was sitting at the piano. Miles had hired Kelly to replace Evans, who didn't stand up well to touring. One can understand. But I think that Evans probably had almost as much to do with the texture of Kind of Blue as Miles did. Evans was one of the jazz giants of the era, surely in the top ten. No one played or composed with such a combination of heart and mind, softly digging into the feeling of every cord. If you look up "introspective" in the dictionary, you'll see a picture of Bill Evans bending low over the keys. As a leader, he was almost exclusively devoted to the standard piano trio. One of the things that makes Kind of Blue so wonderful is that preserves that degree of concentration and sensitivity that marks the Bill Evans trios in the context of a sextet.

Wynton Kelly was not that kind of genius, but he was a damn fine piano player. Whereas Evans was always exploring, asking and answering questions, Kelly was a muscular dancer. He appears only on one cut, "Freddie the Freeloader" on KOB. But he falls right into the goove, exploring the space with as much sensitivity as anyone could ask.

Here is a nice piece from a Kelly disc, recorded a couple of weeks earlier.

Wynton Kelly/Keep It Moving (take 4)/Kelly Blue

It's a three horn arrangement: the other Adderley, Nat, on cornet, Bobby Jaspar on flugglehorn, and Trane's highschool buddy Benny Golson on tenor. Paul Chambers plays bass and Jimmy Cobb drums. Both would appear on KOB. I've got several Kelly recordings in my collection, including Kelly Great, Kelly at Midnight, and Full View. Kelly Blue is the pick of the litter.

Here's a very nice cut with Evans leading a larger than trio group. It was recorded in 1976, and the recording is superb. The bass buzzes and the drum has depth.

Bill Evans/Sweet Dulcinea/Quintessence

Harold Land plays tenor sax and Kenny Burrell is on guitar. Ray Brown no bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. This is the kind of music they play on the elevators in Heaven.