Search: Sam Rivers

Also, check out Crystals, a free big band album from the early 1970s that'll rip the top of your head right off. That's out on CD in a nice mini-LP sleeve.

What a kwinky-dink!

I'll have to seek out Crystals. thx.

Wasn't it Sam Rivers who once duffed up Stanley Crouch, allegedly souring SC on non-orthodox jazz forever after?

I seem to remember when that Wild Flowers thing came out (the second time) and I was interested in picking it up. Now seems the time. Thx.

I'm really into this stuff, too, I know exactly what you mean about the tension. It's music that threatens to spin off the rails. I wish I was in the UK w/ that kind of price; in the states they're $11.99.

My next purchase, though, will be the Mosaic Grachan Moncur III box, which is actually a few Jackie McLean albums in addition to Moncur's sessions, all in this same kind of straddling the fence.

And I must get to the further out Sam Rivers because at this point I actually like listening to him more than Eric Dolphy. That's how sweet his phrasing and touch is, just spot on.

oh, and for those who aren't really familiar, sam's drummer in the trio, Anthony Cole, is absolutely amazing.

for instance, he had a great '70s lp on ECM Contrasts maybe, i can't really remember the name or find it, but it's great as i remember -- impulse first re-issued live trios(energy) and then much later re-issued crysals(whacky)

waves is meant to a great one (on that weird label Tomato), but i have not heard it -- winds of manhattan is a unison-playing ensemble session on Black Saint, and i just can't get my head around it -- another wacky trio is sam on reeds(two sides), flute(one) and piano(one side) with drums and _tuba_, a double lp called black africa (no idea what label), which i prefer one side at a time, yet it does hang together as an intense if slightly meandering concert -- another lp i can't locate or name right now has the piano reeds and flute compressed onto suites of a single lp, and i think i like his piano the best on that one (italian label)

his ever changing availablity on record or cd, like my record collection, it's a mess

As for the whole OOP thing I am guessing they will get around to those records eventually. They have to print more Jimmy Smith records to stay afloat... At least with the RVGs we can expect them, good or bad, to be in print for a while. The Conns. are bullshit in that I used to never know that they had existed until they were OOP (and Blue Note will provide a list of all the titles, whether on the web or by email... that kind of attitude is not going to win new fans to the music!). Does anyone here have a mint condition copy of Pete Sims' Basra? Of course not! ;-) So I will have to either pay $25 for it used or keep waiting...

Phil I am guessing you have been on for a while now (I have not really been around) but I want to say welcome and that I just finished the book a week or two ago and really appreciated it. I actually have been wanting to ask you a small question since reading it, and I hope you dont mind me bothering you now...

You (rightfully) dissed the trend of jazz artists recording beatles songs because it is a bit of a compromise. Do you feel the same way about the Bad Plus record, or the covers on Jason Moran's Modernistic? I found BP's "Smells Like..." to be a bit gimmicky.. once I got over the humor I didnt find anything interesting about the track, whereas Moran's "Planet Rock" sounded much better. What gets me is that these covers provide an easy means for the critic to say "ooh he has a lot of influences" without actually listening to an original work and studying it enough to hear where it is coming from.

Well, I haven't heard either record you mention. The last Moran disc I heard was Black Stars, with guess who on guest saxophones (and I saw them play live at Iridium, too!). And the Bad Plus, when I read reviews, sounded like sub-Scofield novelty crap, so I shied away. (Plus, I always hated Nirvana, so that particular cover certainly wouldn't entice me in.)

In general, I find that the closer jazz artists get to rock/pop, the worse the music becomes—not because jazz is innately superior to rock/pop, but because the two are so different that the attempt to blend 'em always seems to boil down to leeching out all the most interesting qualities of each and ending up with this sort of thin gray broth that's somewhere in between. And as far as incorporating a composition from rock to jazz, it hardly ever works because there's just not enough harmonic complexity in your average rock piece to sustain a jazz interpretation. They often turn out to be just as boring and pointless as rock instrumentals from the 1950s and early 1960s. Especially when folks tackle ballads—ever heard Herbie Hancock's take on Don Henley's "The End Of The Innocence"? That was a coma-inducing nightmare even with Henley's hideous bleat to keep you awake; without that, it's less than nothing.

there should be a "not" between "will" and "provide", but I should also add that if one can remember how to spell connoisseur (sp?), then you can type that after www.bluenote.com/ and get a page that lists all the titles currently in print in that series. (its just the OOP titles that you cant get a list of).

FSS just came back out a week ago, so you are not late at all.

Surprised to see this tired old chestnut sprung back to life in 2003.

1. A set of chord changes using functional harmony can look/sound complex compared to what we hear in rock/pop but often they represent only minimal variations on well worn templates. Which is why a lot of mediocre jazzers can play comfortably by ear on tunes with functional harmony but struggle to improvise on rock/pop changes. It's the unconventionality (by functional harmony criteria) of rock/pop changes - the absence of cycle of fifth or II/V/I landmarks etc - that makes some jazzers uncomfortable with rock/pop harmonic patterns.

2. Of course jazz largely abandoned functional harmony in the early '60s. Many of the harmonic structures that were used by composers in the modal period were anything but complex, but unless you are going to dismiss modal jazz out of hand (ie huge chunks of Miles, Coltrane, Shorter, Hancock yadda, yadda) jazz players did not struggle to create great music using non-complex harmonies in this period.

3. To state the obvious, jazz musicians work through re-harmonisation. Taking simple harmonic patterns and rendering them complex through reharmonisation is a key element of the modus operandi of jazz. The twelve bar blues and "I've Got Rhythm" didn't become the template for bebop because they were harmonically complex.

I don't really feel like addressing the whole 'jazz covers of rock' thing, save for that I do think it is very tricky to do well and with respect to both genres/ways of doing things. I think the Bad Plus does it extremely well and I've talked about it on other threads.

Jordan the rock/jazz crossover is more interesting than ever IMO. Musicians like Dave Douglas, John Zorn, Uri Caine, The Bad Plus (Reid Anderson in particular is a serious jazz talent whatever the snobs may think), Esbjorn Svenson are doing brilliant stuff, although their recorded output still doesn't quite have the impact of their live work.

Rhythm has always been a bigger problem than harmony in welding rock and jazz. Hip-hop, and to a lesser extent electronica have made things easier by eroding the dominance of the very square bass drum on one and three/snare drum on two and four rock rhythm. In particular rhythms that are based on triplet subdivisions have, for the first time since swing, become part of pop's vocabulary and this is natural territory for jazzers. They are now able to use drum patterns that that are hip, popular, and work in a jazz context without the kind of compromises (funk etc) that made it difficult for soloists to find space to breath.

conquistador is grebt.

(as for Sam Rivers, I still haven't gone beyond Black Stars, the Fluid Motion thing I mentioned above, and Fuschia Swing Song, but I do like the guy)

Are these guys doing straight rock or covers from a variety of other musics? (zorn has covered thrash metal I suppose - I'm not sure whether its diff, in musical terms, from 'straight' rock?)

But I guess it did turn into how to adapt into a rock style.

I guess I don't know what you're getting at Julio...are you interested in whether they are doing a lot of covers, or who is doing rock covers, or whether they are covering music other than rock?

Speaking of piano players, dying to hear this one with Don Pullen (listed many places as a Pullen date despite both names gracing the LP cover), Capricorn Rising from 1975, shortly after Crystals was released. Anybody know it?

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drd000/d059/d05952l1n0h.jpg

'contours' just has this bright lightness to it even when rivers is honking away.

you know, i haven't heard that one!

i've been listening to "contrasts" a lot lately.

usually i prefer 'dimensions and extensions', seems a little less bluenotey (67 as opposed to 65) in the songwriting/arranging, but maybe not so much as i had been used to thinking

"Dimensions & Extensions" has this weird flanging/out-of-phase recording quality to the ride cymbal throughout...very strange that Van Gelder didn't notice that

I finally picked up an LP of Conference of the Birds today. God what a great album. Record just jumps at you from the go it sounds so good.

Yup it's a classic. Braxton brilliant on it too.

Funny enough the shop had a later Holland record which I've always liked as well- 'Triplicate', with Steve Coleman & Jack DeJohnette. They do Four Winds on it and it's good of course, but not wise to A/B the two versions.

conference of the birds has absolutely amazing performances but does also seem to be recorded perfectly - the drums in particular sound incredibly good

it's amazing in that regard. Before ECM settled into a house style...

https://www.soundohm.com/product/zenith/pid/36742/

some absolute fire on this album

That link didn't work for me but here's the label website:

http://nobusinessrecords.com/zenith.html

The music is indeed fantastic, but having it as a single 53-minute track annoyed me, so I chopped it up in WaveLab, breaking it every time he switched instruments (from tenor sax to flute, from flute to piano). I wound up with three tracks of roughly 18 minutes each.

Zenith by the Sam Rivers Quartert was recorded 6th November, 1977 in Berlin, Germany, and re-mastered for this release by Arūnas Zujus at MAMAstudios. Personnel includes: Sam Rivers - tenor and soprano saxophones, flute, piano, Joe Daley - tuba, euphonium, Dave Holland - bass, cello, Barry Altschul - drums, Charlie Persip - drums.

oops dunno why the link doesn't this is what is

doesn't work

yeah, having a 53 minute track is a bit annoying, but at least some of it is awesome stuff!

More Sam Rivers is always a good thing. Has anyone heard Emanation, the live trio album released this year? Rivers, Cecil McBee and Norman Connors, which is quite the line-up.

Yeah, that's a good one, too.

For some reason, these aren't available digitally - you have to buy the CDs. They're worth it, though. The liner notes are great.

Got Rick Lopez' sessionography, my GOD it's huge.

Aslo, apropos the live series from No Business, some of them are available digitally.

Lopez sent me a PDF and the section about 1969 is definitely gonna be a big help for the Cecil Taylor book I'm writing. Lots of data, and a bunch of great quotes.

The No Business archive series now seem to be all up on Qobuz

The ever-handy Night Lights archive still has an hour and forty seconds of their '04 Rivers doc streaming:

A Brief Convergence: Miles Davis And Sam Rivers In 1964
By DAVID JOHNSON
Posted July 24, 2004

In 1964 Miles Davis had a new rhythm section in place-Herbie Hancock on piano, Ron Carter on bass, Tony Williams on drums-but he was still searching for a tenor saxophonist. Since John Coltrane's departure in 1960, Miles had gone through Sonny Stitt, Hank Mobley, Jimmy Heath, and George Coleman; he really wanted Wayne Shorter, but Shorter was still committed to Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers. In the meantime, the teenaged Tony Williams enthusiastically recommended a fellow Boston musician who was two years older than Miles-Sam Rivers, who had played everything from bebop and progressive big-band to r & b (he was working as T-Bone Walker's musical director at the time) and free jazz.

Rivers filled the tenor chair for several months in 1964, and his time with Miles is one of the more fascinating chapters in the Davis saga. One LP-Miles in Tokyo-is the only musical documentation that Columbia has ever provided of this particular ensemble. This week on "Night Lights" I'll be playing unreleased music from that same tour, featuring Rivers with Davis on "Autumn Leaves," "Oleo," and "Stella By Starlight"-tunes that were not played on Miles in Tokyo. (By the way, these unreleased dates will not be included in the forthcoming Miles Davis 1963-64 Sony box, either-not sure why!) We'll also hear selections from Fuchsia Swing Song, the album that Rivers recorded for Blue Note later that year with Davis sidemen Ron Carter and Tony Williams, as well as pianist Jaki Byard.

Weird. I just discovered that album like two weeks ago and bought it. Sam Rivers apparently did an online chat via JATLC around 2000 that's possibly lost to time, but someone saved this quote about his time with Miles from it:

Jonathan Feldman (Brooklyn, NY): On Miles Davis's "Live in Tokyo" album you stole the show. How did it feel to be so young and upstaging the most famous jazz musician in the world at that time?

Sam Rivers: Actually I was older than Miles at the time - by a year or two. I really didn't think I upstaged him. He sounded really good. He was sick at the time, but he sounded great. We were good friends, even throughout his whole life. When I played with Dizzy Gillespie, we talked all the time. I was just supposed to play with Miles until Art Blakey came back off tour with Wayne Shorter, and it was supposed to be a transfer, but I joined with Andrew Hill instead. There wasn't any animosity - that's just the way it went down. Miles had wanted Wayne for many years before that.

Thanks so much for posting about the book…one of my favorite musicians and I had no idea it was coming or exists.

he would've been 100 years old today (technically yesterday). some events happening are listed on his website:

https://samrivers.com/

and here's a brief celebration from kevin whitehead of fresh air:

https://www.npr.org/2023/09/25/1201511617/celebrating-jazz-great-sam-rivers-on-what-would-have-been-his-100th-birthday

$65 for the rick lopez sessionography. is it worth it?

$65 for the rick lopez sessionography. is it worth it?

noted

If you're a big enough fan it's definitely worth it. Rivers had such a unique life and career that it gives you a real insight into alternative pathways to creating the musical world you want to see/live in.