Censored Again

Blogspot has removed another of my posts at the request of some unspecified party.  They sent me this email to announce it.  

Blogger has been notified, according to the terms of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), that certain content in your blog is alleged to infringe upon the copyrights of others. As a result, we have reset the post(s) to "draft" status. (If we did not do so, we would be subject to a claim of copyright infringement, regardless of its merits. The URL(s) of the allegedly infringing post(s) may be found at the end of this message.) This means your post - and any images, links or other content - is not gone. You may edit the post to remove the offending content and republish, at which point the post in question will be visible to your readers again.

I can't complain too much, for that is a very civilized procedure.  I wasn't able to determine who made the complaint or which of the links on the blog resulted in the complaint.  It might conceivably have been the photo image of Mingus, but probably not.  

I complied by removing all the links and the image.  Unlike the first occasion, I didn't lose my original post.  

This leads me to thinking again about the worth of this blog and its drain on my time.  I could do what I briefly experimented with last time, and post excerpts from songs, but that is a lot more time consuming.  So I don't know what I will do, but watch this space. 

Herb Ellis 1921-2010

I am sure I have told this story before.  Well, here it is again.  I fell in love with Herb Ellis when I first became interested in jazz.  I was big into guitar players back then and collected a lot of them: Barney Kessel, Kenny Burrell, Tal Farlow, Wes Montgomery.  But the guy who really got to me was Herb Ellis.  I recall he once said something like this: there may be faster players, but if they ain't got that feelin', I got 'em.  Well, Ellis had that feelin'. 

In 1984, when my brother was visiting me in Southern California, jazz guitarist Lenny Breau was murdered.  I didn't know Breau's work, and still don't.  A benefit show was held in a small jazz club for Breau's widow.  My brother can actually play the guitar, something I have never managed.  He works today making guitars for Gibson.  He was up for the benefit and we got tickets.  I have to confess that I can't remember the many fine musicians who played there.  I do remember Ellis.  I got to shake his hand as he smoked a thin cigar during a break. 

Ellis was the real thing.  He died today, of Alzheimer.  I plan to do a better post in his memory in the next few days.  Meanwhile there is this sample, from a collaboration with Monty Alexander (piano) and Ray Brown (bass). 

Monty Alexander, Herb Ellis, Ray Brown/For All We Know/Overseas Special

And here is a clip of Ellis doing what Ellis did. 

Coltrane 57.2

This continues an occasional theme: working my way through John Coltrane's sessions as leader.  I posted earlier on his May 31st session, which formed the basis of Coltrane.  On August 16th, after recording with Thelonious Monk, Trane went back into Rudy Van Gelder's studio as leader and recorded four numbers.  Three of them would form the core of the album Lush Life. 

Trane's Slow Blue
Slowtrane
Like Someone In Love
I Love You

Slowtrane was a second take of the first, and would appear on The Last Trane.  These are rather interesting as examples of a "piano-less trio",  something that would cause a stir when Gerry Mulligan tried it.  Earl May plays bass, and Art Taylor drums.  

The recording is quite good, and the trio format allows one to hear the bass pretty clearly at all times.  Trane's horn is fat and romantic.  That thing that everyone who loves Trane loves about Trane is here: an exquisitely smooth flow of notes.  No sheets of sound yet, but something quite compelling and uniquely his is already mature.  'I Love You' sounds a bit repetitive after 'Like Someone In Love,' but again the playing is fine. 

Also included on Lush Life was 'I Hear a Rhapsody', from the May session mentioned above, and 'Lush Life' from a January 10, 1958 session. Here is a sample: the one that didn't make it on Lush Life.

John Coltrane/Slowtrane/1957

 I highly recommend the Fearless Leader box set for any serious Trane traveler.  Enjoying a box set like this requires a little bit of time and effort, but it can be richly rewarding.  One disadvantage is that it is easy to become somewhat contemptuous of the actual albums.  Lush Life was probably assembled by the record people.  I have no idea what input Trane had on the mix of tunes.

I would also note that in this post and many others, I rely heavily on the Jazz Discography Project.  This is a priceless resource for anyone who wants to know who recorded what with who and when. 

The Poetry of the Jazz Trio

What distinguishes jazz from all or almost all other music genres is its poetic dimension.  I mean "poetic" in the modern sense: a form of communication that says as much by what it doesn't say as by what it does, and that condenses whole volumes of thought and experience into a few subtle hints.  I recall a very early poem by e. e. cummings: 

Oh, the pretty birdy, O,
with his little toe, toe, toe!

You can imagine that toe, toe, toe, being tapped out on a piano.  Cummings wrote that when he was three years old.  O!  

Almost all jazz does that same trick.  We don't know what kind of bird it is, or how big it is, or what color it is.  But we can get the movement of the three claws and the impression that it makes on the child's imagination.  

Here is an example of what I am talking about.  

Abdullah Ibrahim/Duke 88/Yarona

There's not much of the bird in that.  But you have the whole bird nonetheless, and you appreciate what you have.  Of course, the undisputed master of the jazz trio was Bill Evans.  Evans was better than any other jazz man I have listened to at mastering subtly.  He is always engaged in a duet with silence, and the silence says as much as he says.  Here is a taste:

Bill Evans/Blue in Green/The Complete Riverside Recordings

 The closest thing to that kind of poetry in more recent jazz, perhaps, is the work of Brad Mehldau on his marvelous "Art of the Trio" albums.  Here is Mehldau's little birdy poem. 

Brad Mehldau/Black Bird/The Art of the Trio 1

If you are trying to build a decent jazz collection, get Yarona, and all four of Mehldau's Art of the Trio albums.  Aim for everything by Bill Evans.  And drop me a line. 

Mary Lou Williams' Superb Trio

All this edgy avant garde stuff aside, here is a conventional piano trio that hammers all the way down to the mother load.  Mary Lou Williams (1910-1981) has been there and done that. 

I haven't listened to her until recently, but her1975 trio album Free Spirits is the kind of thing that reminds me of why jazz is so central to my life.  Buster Williams plays a great bass line, with Mickey Roker on drums.  Wow, but this is good.  Here is their cover of the great Miles Davis theme. 

Mary Lou Williams/All Blues/Free Spirits

Fundamental Recordings w/ Eric Dolphy

One of the reasons I make these rather ridiculous lists is one of the reasons I do this blog.  My jazz collecting became a lot more fun, and consequently accelerated, when first I began to give it some structure.  It seems more fun and  maybe more helpful to make notes in the form of a blog than just writing them down.  I, however, make a notation in the Penguin Guide (may angels sing its praises!) when I acquire something.  

Well, one micro-structure can be built on the above topic.  Eric Dolphy might have a higher density of influential recordings per year of real work than any other jazz artist I know anything about.  His career begins in earnest in 1958 at age 30 and ends with his untimely death on June 29th, 1964. What is astounding is how many of his recordings in that period, both as leader and sideman, rank as fundamental.  Here is a quick list:

1960
Oliver Nelson/Screamin' the Blues
Ken McIntyre&Eric Dolphy/Looking Ahead
Charles Mingus/Mingus at Antibes
Ornette Coleman/Free Jazz
Eric Dolphy/Far Cry

1961
Oliver Nelson/Blues and the Abstract Truth
George Russell/Ezz-Thetics
John Coltrane/Complete Africa Brass Sessions
Mal Waldron/The Quest
Eric Dolphy & Booker Little/Live at the Five Spot 1&2, Memorial Album
John Coltrane/Live at the Village Vanguard

1964
Eric Dolphy/Out to Lunch
Andrew Hill/Point of Departure
Charles Mingus/Town Hall Concert

These are just the ones that stand out (in my view) as essential items in any decent collection.   I would go further to say that most of them are immortal treasures of modern jazz.  I wouldn't advise someone new to jazz to begin with Dolphy, but anyone who can appreciate these recordings can live at the heart of jazz.  

Here is a slice from one of the cuts.  

Charles Mingus/What Love?/Mingus at Antibes/Slice

The number begins with Ted Curson's trumpet solo, backed by Mingus.  The slice above is Dolphy's solo, which features a marvelous interplay between the bass clarinet and bass. 
You can clearly hear Mingus managing his player:  "Talk to me!"  Danny Richmond plays drums.  

Mingus at Antibes is easy to come by, but eMusic has a much larger collection that includes it for a steal.  Buy the whole thing. 

Top Ten Avant Garde Recordings

For several days I have been thinking about a top ten list of avant garde recordings.  No reason, that's just the kind of thing I do.  I have in mind recordings that are in some sense "foundational" and that get a lot of attention.  It was fairly easy to get started, but I stalled after about number seven.  

One obvious problem is that avant garde is a very vaguely defined term.  Like obscenity for the Supreme Court, we have to know it when we see (or hear) it.  My classically training (philosophy) leads me to look for a definition, and that's probably out of the question.  But there might be a platonic idea at the heart of the thing.  It has to do with a fundamental abstraction from traditional melody.  AG reverses the relationship between melody and improvisation, making the reassembly of abstract bits of melody the center of the music.  Okay, but even it that's right, it isn't always easy to test.  On the other hand, there are a lot of characteristic devices that seem to mark AG music.  Squealing, clown horn sound effects would be one.  

There is also a kind of relativity at work here.  I read somewhere that a good graduate student poem is one that undergraduates can't understand.  A good faculty poem is one that graduate students can't understand.  An immortal work of genius is a poem that no one, including the author, can make sense of.  Maybe hard bop is music that people who like Louis Armstrong can't make sense of at first hearing.  Avant garde is music that fans of 1956 Miles Davis find mystifying.  

Well, here is my list-in-progress.  

Cecil Taylor/Jazz Advance/1956
Ornette Coleman/The Shape of Jazz to Come/1959
Jackie McLean/Let Freedom Ring/1962
Archie Shepp/The New York Contemporary Five/1963
Andrew Hill/Point of Departure/1964
Eric Dolphy/Out to Lunch/1964
Albert Ayler/Spiritual Unity/1964

 John Coltrane/Ascension/1965

All of the above are clearly superb and belong in any basic jazz library.  The most obvious omission is Coltrane's Ascension.  I couldn't bring myself to list it, because I just can't bring myself to like it.  It would be easy enough to find recordings by Miles Davis, or John Coltrane, or my hero Wayne Shorter that can pass as avant garde.  Shorter's The All Seeing Eye is certainly an example.  But I couldn't see any of their recordings as sticking out in the way that the above do. 

A couple of albums I was tempted to include were Sun Ra/Jazz in Silhouette, and Tony Williams/Life Time.  Williams fine album was recorded in 1964, which was obviously a critical year for AG.  Well, I invite suggestions.  Meanwhile here is a sample from the Williams recording.  

Tony Williams/Tomorrow Afternoon 

I have had a fine time tonight listening to cuts from these various albums.  If you don't own any of them, for heaven's sake get them.