Wes Montgomery
‘Chico Cuadradino’, by Duke Ellington And His Orchestra
Today’s song is from the beautiful but short album (36 minutes!) ‘Latin American Suite’, mainly recorded in 1968, the evening of the maestro’s career.
Duke Ellington always absorbed influences from the music he heard as he toured the world, and ‘Latin American Suite’ is no exception. Written during his first tour of Central and South America in 1968, Ellington premiered several of the pieces during concerts in the Southern hemisphere, though he didn’t record it until returning to the U.S.
This record was the first major work by Ellington after the death of his long time co-writer Billy Strayhorn. It’s sometimes considered half-baked (and in truth the compositions aren’t especially complex) but I love it: the band swings hard (hard!), and one can only imagine what it must have been like, seeing this band live.
‘Chico Cuadradino’ is a driving blues, co-written by his son Mercer, and features a boisterous trombone solo by Buster Cooper.
‘Straight, No Chaser’, by Thelonious Monk
For all the people who supported me yesterday, here is a song by Monk. Many thanks for your heartwarming messages.
The Thelonious Monk Quartet with Charlie Rouse lasted eleven years. October 31st and November 1st, 1964 at the It Club in Los Angeles were just two more nights out of thousands for them, except when it comes to Monk, there were no ordinary nights.
Rouse in his sixth year with Monk had hit his stride, truly becoming Monk’s musical alter ego. Remarkably, drummer Ben Riley had joined the quartet at the beginning of 1964 and bassist Larry Gales had only logged in a month at the time of this taping; yet they already show the first signs of collective greatness on these evenings.
Monk was at a particular high point pianistically during this gig; in fact, he went into a Los Angeles studio and recorded the album ‘Solo Monk’ on the afternoons preceding and following the live taping.
Thelonious Monk - Piano
Charlie Rouse - Tenor Saxophone
Larry Gales - Bass
Ben Riley - Drums
Again, after numerous threats, I’m forced to take down a video. This time ‘Straight, No Chaser’ about Thelonious Monk has to go.
I received mails like:
‘…Do you own this? I THINK NOT!’
‘…Do you own any of your uploads, especially Straight, No chaser? If not, you are violating international copyright law by uploading this and disgracing my dear departed friend Charlotte Zwerin…’
‘…I have notified Warner Brothers about you. You are committing a felony by uploading this…’
Since I already have a ‘Strike One’ on my YouTube channel, I take no chances.
UPDATE: When I took the video down, her reply was, and I quote:
Good.
You ought to be ASHAMED of yourself.
You NEVER should have uploaded it in the first place.
We do not live in a SOCIALIST society. Property rights are property rights.
Make your OWN movie and upload THAT.
You people are DELUSIONAL.
Enjoy your time in a Federal prison.
You will be “discussing” it with a Federal Judge and a District Attorney.
[end of quote]
I’m sorry to hear that some people don’t understand the power of sharing, and how sharing ultimately benefits everyone, including the heirs of Monk and the aforementioned Zwerin.
Almost 25,000 people saw this documentary.
Perhaps 25,000 new fans.
Perhaps people who might have never heard of Monk before and went out to buy his CD’s, downloaded his music via iTunes or bought the film on DVD.
All I want to do is ‘broadcast’ jazz to a young and new audience and try to fill them with enthusiasm for an underexposed genre.
I cannot see how that in any way can be disgracing.
Complaints can be sent to Carole Langer, the writer of the emails.
‘Goodbye Storyteller (For Fred Myrow)’, by Brad Mehldau
Yesterday, I ordered tickets for the upcoming concert of the Brad Mehldau Trio (Feb. 28th, 2012, here in my hometown Rotterdam).
So I thought it was time for another beautiful piece by this 41 year old American, this time from his 1999 solo album ‘Elegiac Cycle’.
Brad Mehldau explains in the liner notes his fascination for elegies:
“…I’ve always been attracted to elegiac works of art, that mourn so many kinds of loss, from the most profound to the most prosaic death of them all - what the French aptly call ‘la petite mort’. There are concrete examples that clearly mourn the loss of a person or people: Musical compositions like Charles Mingus’ ‘Goodbye Pork Pie Hat’, or John Coltrane’s ‘Alabama’. But there are so many works that aren’t elegies proper, yet are elegiac in character. Much of Brahms’ late music, for example. Often, we find an elegiac strain in the late period of any artist’s output: the poignancy of Bill Evans’ 1977 rendition of ‘You Must Believe In Spring’ or Chet Baker’s achingly ironic late take on ‘Blame It On My Youth’. Lamenting the loss of springtime and youth.
Alas, life is short, art is long. Great music packs a primordial punch. And when the wind is knocked out of you, something great takes place: You get to feel your own mortality. The role of time is crucial. Music doesn’t just represent time, it moves through time, and the listener experiences that passing. What’s the feeling? That tingling in your stomach, that sweet ache in your gut, that tickly weakness that creeps over the body when you’re pulled into the music? It’s a kind of death-feeling, in a place where ecstasy and mortality-fear overlap. Rilke told us in one of his elegies that our perception of beauty is just the beginning of terror.
Dying, being remembered, music sings an elegy to itself, beautifying the ‘everyday’ loss around us, showing us how intimate we can be with death. So an elegy can have this purpose: to celebrate those very things that make us mortal…”
‘Love Is A Many Splendored Thing’, by Clifford Brown and Max Roach
Recorded mere months before Clifford Brown died in a car crash, 1956’s ‘At Basin Street’ finds the revered trumpeter in top form, co-leading an ensemble with drummer Max Roach that included saxophonist Sonny Rollins (his only performance with this quintet) and pianist Richie Powell (Bud Powell’s brother, who was also killed in the accident). Morbid associations aside, this record is a vibrant hard-bop outing with Brown’s amazingly agile horn lines always commanding attention even when compared to Rollins’s robust sax work.
‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing’ is a popular song with music by Sammy Fain and lyrics by Paul Francis Webster. The song was publicized first in the movie, ‘Love Is a Many Splendored Thing’ (1955), winning the Academy Award for Best Original Song. The theme song is here, on my YouTube channel.
Recorded in New York, New York on January 4th and February 16th, 1956.
Clifford Brown - Trumpet
Sonny Rollins - Tenor Saxophone
Richie Powell - Piano
George Morrow - Bass
Max Roach - Drums
Art Pepper in San Quentin, 1966
‘Yes I can, No You Can’t’, by Lee Morgan
Lee Morgan, hard bop’s baddest trumpeter, may never quite have topped his iconic 1963 masterpiece ‘The Sidewinder’, but he came pretty damn close with ‘The Gigolo’ from 1965.
Jeff McMillan writes in his outstanding biography ‘Delightfulee, The Life And Music Of Lee Morgan’ (p. 144-146):
“…The tune that proved hardest to capture was Morgan’s composition ‘Yes I Can, No You Can’t’. After numerous false starts, the band made it through the head melody to Morgan’s solo in the 22nd (!) take. The trumpeter struggles through an awkward two-chorus solo where his effort to bend and sound slippery undermines both his intonation and phrasing…The band finally wraps up the (June 25th, 1965) session with a complete take, the 49th (!!) of a long, unsuccesful session focused on one tune…”
“…Lion booked Van Gelder’s studio for six days later (July 1st, 1965) so Morgan and his men could record enough material to fill an album. In this second effort, the group produced one of the great recording sessions of Morgan’s career. The trumpeter, especially, was in top form, producing a standout performance of ‘Yes I Can, No You Can’t’. Notable in Morgan’s playing are razor-sharp execution and a brilliance of tone, qualities that were not reliably there for him in the previous session. Clearly, the trumpeter had spent time practicing the material, likely supplemented with technical trumpet exercises. On the July 1st session his chops are strong and sure…”
Lee Morgan - Trumpet
Wayne Shorter - Tenor Saxophone
Harold Mabern Jr. - Piano
Bob Cranshaw - Bass
Billy Higgins - Drums
Charles Mingus, by Pieter Boersma
At the Loosdrecht Jazz Festival (The Netherlands), August 1972
‘Tijuana Gift Shop’, by Charles Mingus
‘New Tijuana Moods’ (originally released in 1962 as ‘Tijuana Moods’, and reissued in 1996 on CD with four alternate takes) is one of Charles Mingus’ most raucous and exciting sessions, an aural souvenir of his Mexican vacation with drummer Dannie Richmond. As Mingus recounts in the liner notes, his marriage had just broken up, and he was looking to drown his sorrows in as much debauchery as he could endure. That background definitely comes through in the music, which combines south-of-the-border rhythms and folk melodies with Mingus’ meaty, adventurous modernist jazz.
Recorded on August 6th, 1957 (and inexplicably shelved until 1962), at RCA Victor’s Studio A, New York City.
Charles Mingus - Bass
Shafi Hadi (Curtis Porter) - Tenor Saxophone
Clarence (Gene) Shaw - Trumpet
Jimmy Knepper - Trombone
Bill Triglia - Piano
Dannie Richmond - Drums
Chet Baker, by Pieter Boersma
At the International Jazz Festival in Laren (The Netherlands), August 1975
The Bill Evans Trio on BBC’s ‘Jazz 625’ (Complete Registration)
On the all-too-rare occasions when jazz gets an outing on television, many viewers make inevitable, and often unfavourable, comparisons with ‘Jazz 625’. A well-informed presenter, a superb sound balance and an uncluttered approach to camera work and direction all combined to set a gold standard in the televisual representation of jazz. It was also in the right place at the right time. The end of the long-standing deadlock between the Musicians’ Union and the American Federation of Musicians meant that big names from the US were coming over to Britain for the first time since the 1930’s.
Many shows of its era are ill-represented in the BBC archives, as they were either junked after transmission or, if broadcast live, not recorded at all. Happily, this is not the case with ‘Jazz 625’. With video tape recording still in its infancy, machines were in heavy demand. So, many programmes, particularly in the drama field, were ‘telerecorded’ onto 35mm film, from a feed of the studio output. This method made editing a lot easier, and has aided the survival of programmes recorded in this way.
Recorded at the BBC Studios, London, on March 19th, 1965
Bill Evans - Piano
Chuck Israels - Bass
Larry Bunker - Drums
BBC documentary: Sun Ra, Brother From Another Planet
Sun Ra was born on the planet Saturn some time ago. The best accounts agree that he emerged on Earth as Herman Blount, born in Birmingham, Alabama in 1914, although Sun Ra himself always denied that Blount was his surname. He returned to Saturn in 1993 after creating a stunningly variegated and beautiful assemblage of earthly and interplanetary music, most notably with his fervently loyal Arkestra.
Sun Ra and his Arkestra were the subject of a few documentary films, notably Robert Mugge’s ’A Joyful Noise’ (1980), which interspersed performances and rehearsals with Sun Ra’s commentary on various subjects ranging from today’s youth to his own place in the cosmos.
Today’s documentary, Don Letts’ ‘Sun Ra, Brother From Another Planet’ from 2005, reuses some of Mugge’s material and includes some additional interviews.
‘Hello To The Wind’, by Bobby Hutcherson
Bobby Hutcherson’s 1969 album ‘Now!’ was his first album with vocals, provided by Gene McDaniels, and it emotionally echoes the sentiments central to the black power movement of the day. McDaniel begins his hopeful lyrics with the clear intonation of the lead on a Broadway stage and then improvises uninhibitedly. The music is strong, passionate, sensitive, optimistic, and, like the struggle it heralded, timeless.
Bobby Hutcherson - Vibraphone, Marimba
Wally Richardson - Guitar, Electric Guitar
Gene McDaniels - Vocals
Harold Land - Tenor Saxophone
Kenny Barron - Piano
Stanley Cowell - Piano
Herbie Lewis - Bass
Joe Chambers - Drums
Candido Camero - Conga
Hilda Harris, Albertine Robinson, Christine Spencer - Chorus
