Stuff about Jazz

 

BBC 4 did one of its intermittent Jazz evenings last Friday. A repeat of the excellent Miles Davis documentary 'Birth of the Cool' and a revival of the Jazz 625 concert series featuring Sons of Kemet, Nubya Garcia and the rest of what I'm sure will be called the New Wave of British Jazz at some point (NWOBJ?). There was also a history of Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club, and the man himself. You can find the programmes here and they are all worth a watch.

Back in the summer I bought a collection of Jazz CDs, about 400 of them. I bought this on the strength of a pile of Blue Note and similar discs. I'm writing up a longer price about this collection and collecting in general, but for now one of the areas that I knew relatively little about was British Jazz of the 50s and 60s. I had always had this down as very much a copy of American music of the period, and hadn't explored names like Tubby Hayes, Peter King, Tony Kinsey, and Ronnie Scott himself. Wrong. One of the interesting things about British Jazz of the time is that it didn't reject earlier forms of the music quite as completely as the Americans did. Ronnie Scott kept the lyrical tone of Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins adding it to Be Bop rather than subtracting it in favour of a full-on Parker style note storm. So, I’ve been listening to it, and a lot more of the British Jazz has ended up on the iPod than I thought might.

To connect back to the BBC4 evening, the original creator of this collection had some clear preferences, piano trios, Stan Getz, the West Coast “cool” Jazz of the mid 50s, and trumpeters. Lee Morgan was clearly a favourite and you can’t fault him for that, Donald Byrd, Humphrey Lyttleton, and many others. One name is strikingly absent from the list, apart from one ropey compilation. Miles. Given the breadth of the dark magus’ work surely there must be something that appealed. Anything recorded after about 1970, or sounding like it had at any rate, is missing from the collection. But that leaves the Prestige albums and the early Columbia records all of which he would surely have enjoyed?

Anyway, all this will prompt a few more posts about Jazz, simply because I’m listening to a fair bit of it at present, and this is after all a blog about what I’m playing on the iPod…

  

Recent recordings and ramblings

I've suddenly come across a rash of new music that I want to get. Or in a couple of cases I did until I listened to them...

Renaissance - Novella A reissue with 2 added discs of a Royal Albert Hall concert from 1977. Their best album, slowly drifting towards actual songs and away from the excessive noodling and "poetic" lyrics. The live cd sounds like it should be good as well. They are even less improvisational than Yes, if that is possible so live CDs are about song selection. I got the download as it avoided an interminable bass solo version Ashes Are Burning of which I already have about three. No idea why this is missing from the download version.


Miles Davis - Rubberband Stitched together from Miles' pop sessions in 1985 that Warners binned in favour of him working with Marcus Miller on Tutu. There is a rather self serving documentary by the "producers", which just screams "fast buck" at me. There are a couple of moments. Mike Stern's solo on This Is It, but by and large I'm glad he was steered away from this. The vocal songs would have been better with Chaka Khan and Al Jarreau rather than the second string people here. If you think you have heard Give It Up before you have, it was used to complete a track on Doo Bop. Politely this could be called inessential. Watch the documentary here.

Sons Of Apollo - Live With The Plovdiv Psychotic Symphony The man in Action Records scoffed at the title, perhaps he should look at some of the rest of his stock.. Anyway a super group that actually lives up to the title. Good heavy/progressive rock with an interesting choice of covers. The showing off solo spots are as duff as everyone else's though.

Bat For Lashes - Lost Girls Heard in Action Records Preston on Saturday and bought shortly afterwards. Very eighties, a trick tried before by others, notably Ladyhawke. This has better songs though and in a world where music still mattered would be a huge hit.

Gene Clark - No Other: Not out until November, so ask Santa for the super extra box set or (my choice) the 2cd version. It's a shame that to get all the cd material you have to shell out for vinyl that I for one don't care about. This is one of the great albums and is where the Byrds could have gone. Psychedelic rock, folk, country and soul. Gene Clark is an interesting character and his biography is well worth a read. With the vogue for rock biopics someone should do a Byrds movie, although to do all the stories justice it would need to be a Netflix series probably.

 One of my favourite record shops, Missing in Glasgow has moved to a bigger shop round the corner from it's previous compact and bijou home. The atmosphere that made the shop something great is not there yet. Some artwork on the walls and a way of stopping the music echoing round the space will help. I doubt some of the more colourful characters who used to find their way in from Argyll Street will appear anymore. But more records to browse!

You will notice that I'm starting to link to places other than Amazon wherever I can. Support your independent retailer/record company.

Jazz Again - Where are we now?.

Jazz has evolved over the last century or so. When it stopped being a "popular" music in the early sixties it turned to blending itself with other genres and has pretty much stayed that way.

The best known blends are with Rock, Soul and Funk which created Jazz-Rock, Jazz-Funk, and the dreaded Fusion. If you can get it Stuart Nicholson's book on the evolution of these styles is excellent. I pointed you towards the Miles Davis end of Jazz Rock last time. Jazz Funk begins and almost ends with Herbie Hancock's "Headhunters" album. So much of the rest of this and the easy listening that often calls itself Fusion is bland and featureless. For me you can pretty much discard anything on the GRP label, but feel free to disagree! The best Jazz-Funk grew out of  the Hard Bop and Soul Jazz of the sixties. There are a lot of really good Jazz-Funk compilations about, pick a couple and see if it works for you.

Adding world music elements has been happening since before we knew it was called world music. If I'm honest it's an area that I don't do very well. One artist I do like is Susheela Raman who has mixed Indian music with Western styles more successfully than most others, try her.

Western classical music has been added to Jazz right from the beginning, Ravel and Stravinsky were early supporters. The Modern Jazz Quartet have been as described as Chamber Jazz and that style has evolved into much of ECM record's output. You see what I mean about "house styles" for record labels.

With the current generation of artists the blending of styles and genres has been absorbed as they learnt their instruments so there isn't the rather obvious stapling together of different musics. Electric doesn't mean fusion so much anymore and so on. Portico Quartet use ambient electronic styles. Snarky Puppy bring the attitude of that peculiarly American concept the Jam Band to Jazz with a cast of thousands. Live they are a totally different prospect than their albums. Try this.

My new favourites are a London band The Lydian Collective, they can even sound like the calmer bits of Discipline era King Crimson at times. Try their album on Bandcamp, and look at a couple of their videos. Jazz Mandolin anyone?

This post has become quite long enough already so next time I will talk about the Jazz that is actually on my iPod.

Jazz - Don't say I didn't warn you

What is Jazz? The dictionary definition is as rooted in the past as John Thompson's Fast Show character. "Jazz is a music of black American origin characterised by improvisation, syncopation, and usually a regular or forceful rhythm". Perhaps in 1928 it was, since then it has grown up a bit.

I discovered jazz during a brief, ill advised attempt to play the trumpet at school. It was a short step to Louis Armstrong and then on to Miles Davis. The trumpet disappeared but the Jazz remained. For some time I stuck with Miles, almost a genre on his own, but later on discovered all sorts of other stuff. Jazz has drifted in and out for me over the years. Currently it's in.

Jazz is as plagued by category-itis as any other music. I could go on about Hard Bop vs Mainstream vs Fusion and bore myself, and you, stupid. In the past record companies tended to have house styles, often dictated by the label owner producer or engineer.

Blue Note: The obvious place to start as it is the one label that non fans may have heard of.  Reid Miles' artwork has been influencing graphic design since the 1950s, and the music, rooted in "Hard Bop", (a mix of BeBop with R&B, soul, and blues) has been a dominant style for much of that time. This list from Apple Music covers 10 of the really essential bits of Blue Note to get you started.

 

Blue Note's sound was inspired by founders Alfred Lion & Francis Wolff. They allowed artists paid rehearsal time to develop ideas, which competing labels like Prestige didn't, so their records sounded better and bursting with ideas - because they were.

Impulse!: Starting in 1960 Impulse! was Jazz without stabilisers, it could get a bit wobbly on some of the wilder bits of the avant garde. John Coltrane was it's headline act and was followed by a raft of angry tenor sax players. There are also some real gems on Impulse the Duke Ellington/John Coltrane album has some of 'Trane's finest ballads, and there are classic albums from Gil Evans, Oliver Nelson and others that don't require a high tolerance for squalling horn solos. Set up by producer Creed Taylor the label was shepherded through the sixties by Bob Thiele. Impulse! was another label with a strong visual presence, it's orange and black spines translating well to the CD age.

CBS/Columbia:  Home to Miles Davis from 1955 until the eighties Columbia came into its own with Electric Jazz in the seventies. Many of Miles' sidemen found a home here. Tony William's Lifetime, Herbie Hancock's Headhunters, John McLaughlin's Mahavishnu Orchestra and Weather Report. While not always made from the best quality tapes, the Contemporary Jazz Masters series is worth keeping an eye out for as it is pretty much the best of 1970s Jazz Rock Fusion. Tell them by the red borders and this stamp. Columbia had many great Jazz artists before they plugged in, Erroll Garner, Ellington and Brubeck amongst others. Avoid like the plague the corresponding blue border Jazz Masterpieces series, they couldn't even get the covers right. It's a good reference list of what to buy elsewhere though.

If you are new to Jazz then checking out these labels will give you a fair range of Jazz to explore. One name to keep an eye out for is Rudy Van Gelder recording engineer extrordinaire for Blue Note, Prestige, Impulse! and CTI (Creed Taylor's 70s label). His records have a distinct feel and sound and his RVG remasters for CD are amongst the best transfers to digital. 

With some very cheap downloads available, and Fopp and secondhand shops selling Jazz CDs for £3 or £4 you can afford to experiment. There are also some great books on Jazz, Richard Cook's Biography of Blue Note, any of Ashley Kahn's books and David Rosenthal's "Hard Bop" are good places to explore. Less well served than rock for magazines, Jazzwise is the news magazine and while Jazz Journal has it's good points the semi pro feel is off putting. There were a couple of tries in the nineties at a Mojo style legacy magazine perhaps time to try again?

You may have noticed that I haven't talked about current jazz artists much. They are coming up in part two and also what Jazz is actually on my iPod.