JAZZ IS LIKE HEROIN TO ME ! ! ! ~~~~ ILM POST-1945 JAZZ ALBUMS POLL - THE RESULTS COUNTDOWN (now counting top 25!)

A while ago I started a thread where I tried to formulate that sort of change in musical genres, but it wasn't very popular:

Major musical changes and the body/brain dichotomy.

not enough of an attention-getting thread title, should've gone with IS INDIE ROCK THE NEW JAZZ???!?!!! lol

also not getting enough attention maybe because the poll ended a while ago.

i prefer shakeys title and think he should start that thread

It's gonna take me a few more weeks to absorb everything. One that stood out was Donald Byrd's A New Perspective. The choir works surprisingly well, something you don't often hear on a jazz album.

Shakey Mo reckons INDIE IS THE NEW JAZZ - What current music will be the big cultural signifier of this time?

One that stood out was Donald Byrd's A New Perspective

YESSSS I am super-stan for this album

I don't think I've heard that Donald Byrd. Choir? Really? Nice.

jazz choir? just as loathsome as jazz harp.

jk, i like that record. amazing cover photo too.

yeah the cover's how I found out about it to begin with

er rather the Tone Loc "homage" to it

glad to see love for that album.

The choir works surprisingly well, something you don't often hear on a jazz album.

On a similar note, the string quartet on the Andrew Hill Mosaic Select set works insanely well. I wouldn't expect any less from Hill, but it's really incredible how the strings are worked into the arrangements.

But exactly how popular was, say, a giant like John Coltrane...? I have no idea. And who bought these records? Middle-class black people, white "intellectuals"...? I can't really see Hank Mobley and Grant Green appealling much to teenagers, the whole Blue Note vibe is one of adult sophistication, for example.

Was just at lunch, reading an article in Wax Poetics about the 'Jamaica Kats', best known for Tom Browne's "Funkin for Jamaica". By the 60s, Jamaica, Queens had become an enclave of 'professional' blacks. Their families and parents' friends would get together on Sundays, listen to records, and debate whether or not, say, Sonny Stitt was better than Bird. One 'kat' was in 6th grade classes w/Coltrane's daughter, and awed by that connection. They knew Jackie McClean from him performing at weddings.

I made a mix for Spotify-less friends with samples from the top 40 entries. PM if ya want it.

has anyone heard this album? http://allmusic.com/album/windjammer-r141115

That is one stinker of a review.

http://allmusic.com/artist/freddie-hubbard-p85567/discography The mid to late 70s albums all get horrid reviews as does that album that somehow made it into the poll 'sing me a song of songmy'

review makes it sound intriguing tbh. never heard it.

those mid-late 70s reviews really are bad. He must have really lost it. Guess he just about killed his reputation by then.

sounds like the kind of thing jaxon would be familiar with

I'm kind of curious myself

well, it's sometimes hard to go by reviews during that period -- i think the penguin jazz guide has nothing good to say about those mid-70s donald byrd/mizell bros. records, but they're fantastic. whether they're good "jazz" is debatable, I guess, but i love the tunes.

Yeah I love that period of Donald Byrd, but they do get good reviews elsewhere, I'm not sure these Hubbard ones do.

yeah, they're beloved by funk/r&b/fusion people, but for certain types of jazz d-bags, they might be insufferable.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7qcVl6GNqE8

sounds perfectly fine to me

is freddie in a bubble on that cover? or is it shrinkwrap that he appears to be trying to burst out of?

well as a funk guy maybe i'll dig it. I'll see if its on spotify

It is on spotify -- I made it exactly 1:13 into "Dream Weaver" when the backing vocals started, and had to turn it off.

ha yeah, it's not great.

maybe instead of a jazz listening club ilm needs an underrated jazz funk album listening club ;)

agree it isn't great - it's wholly unremarkable for the most part - but it isn't TERRIBLE

Are there many completely terrible jazz albums out there by otherwise half-decent artists? Don't think I've had the misfortune to encounter any so far myself.

There are plenty of aesthetically questionable records by otherwise good players out there -- usually from the 70s or 80s by players who were at their peak in the 50s/60s, and usually in some kind of "crossover" vein and/or rock-influenced records by artists that were kind of lukewarm about the whole fusion thing. I guess you could argue that a lot of them are no worse than some run-of-the-mill jam session records.

This one is pretty bad. But i only paid 99p for it like a decade ago

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_KwgwN_ZyU6k/S96PE1yyZCI/AAAAAAAAACM/wdEwTMch3rE/s1600/05-feets-dont-fail-me-now-1979%5B1%5D.jpg

hehe

Review

by Richard S. Ginell

Herbie Hancock's electric records up until this point were marked by intelligence and adventure, even at their most earthy. But no, this one doesn't have an ounce of either. Herbie falls hook, line and sinker for the disco fad and submerges his personality underneath the plastic vocals and four-on-the-floor disco beat. Hancock's own gauzy vocals through a Sennheiser vocoder are embarrassing, and even his synthesizer work sounds coarse and gimmicky. This time, even the purists were right; this is of no interest to jazz listeners and it isn't even good disco.

Some of Secrets is quite good however.

That was a review for Feets Dont Fail Me Now bbtw

Secrets is

Having long since established his funk credentials, Herbie Hancock continues the direction of Head Hunters and its U.S. successors here, welding himself to the groove on electric keyboards while Bennie Maupin again shines sardonic beams of light on a variety of reeds. In "Doin' It," the most successful track, Hancock makes a more overt bid for the dancefloor, for the tune is basically one long irresistible groove with a very commercial-sounding bridge. Again Hancock chooses to recompose one of his standards; "Cantelope [sic] Island" is almost unrecognizable converted into a sauntering, swaggering thing. A streamlining process has set in -- the drumming has been simplified, some of the old high-voltage drive has been muted -- yet there are still enough enjoyable, intelligently musical things happening here to hold a Hancock admirer's attention.

I love Herbie's pop-funk period! Not quite as much as I love the Mwandishi albums, but probably more than I like Headhunters.

you're nuts tho ;)

Feets Don't Fail Me Now is not bad if you listen to it as a disco record and forget Herbie's jazz past. There's some pretty good disco grooves on it, especially "Tell Everybody" and "Honey from a Jar". And Secrets is one of Herbie's best funk records, I love the repetitive, hypnotic jamming on it.

For me, the biggest dud by an established jazz player that I've ever heard is this one:

http://www.progarchives.com/progressive_rock_discography_covers/3906/cover_211162022010.jpg

Not any good grooves, just pointless fusion noodling, ugly 80s soft rock sounds, Miles is backed by mediocre players, and his own soloing is hardly memorable either.

otoh its a dope cover

havent heard that album actually

Inspired by this thread, I today borrowed from the library "Headhunters", Coltrane's "Bahia", Dexter Gordon's "Go" and Jimmy Smith's "Midnight Special". What do people think of the latter three?

The Jimmy Smith is great!

Seconded. Also, just learned today that he played a B3 MIDI solo on Michael Jackson's "Bad." I don't recall that song having a solo of any kind, but wow.

Had no idea about that either

Neil what did you think of them?

I have today borrowed #63 and #21 from the library. I have compiled a list of about 20 records in the top 100 alone to check out.

to save anyone having to scroll through a million posts in this thread to see what he got i'll link you to the full list Full list of ILM post-1945 JAZZ ALBUM RESULTS + post your ballots

Btw I would like to recommend this guy http://allmusic.com/artist/tina-brooks-p6181/discography

Should have mentioned him in the noms thread but too late now. The great news is you can listen to all his output here http://open.spotify.com/artist/4JgvfZeCWGzEPGR6yVaXuX

Tina Brooks had a short-lived career during the heyday of hard bop and didn't record for the last 12 years of his life. Nonetheless, his own records and his sessions with Freddie Hubbard, Jackie McLean, Freddie Redd, Jimmy Smith, and Kenny Burrell leave the impression that he was on his way to becoming a tenor giant when he was overcome by health problems due to drug addiction. Brooks did session work with both Amos Milburn and Lionel Hampton, but the key to his own artistry is on the Blue Note label. He led only four sessions as a leader for Blue Note from 1958 through 1961 -- during his lifetime. The first two, Minor Move and True Blue, define the weighty edge in Brooks' playing and his plethora of improvisational ideas that extended the blues framework he operated out of beyond what most players were doing at the time. His reliance on minor-key signatures and open-ended harmonic figures were much-envied trademarks among his peers. Also on Blue Note is his work with McLean and Redd, both of whom played on his recordings. Perhaps Brooks' most seminal moment as an improviser, though, was on Redd's score for Jack Gelber's Beat play The Connection, performed by the Living Theater, where the musicians played themselves as characters and drug addicts, which was close to, if not spot on, the actual truth. Here he and McLean turned the hard bop blues into an aggressive, deeply emotional wail of truth and beauty winding around each other in short bursts and long lines as Redd turned the intervals inside out for the pair to blow. Brooks work on McLean's Street Singer and Jackie's Bag in 1959 and 1960 as well as Shades of Redd are stunning also.