can of worms time re: cool / west coast jazz

i LOVE when barney kessel wears scarves

http://image.listen.com/img/170x170/4/7/7/7/487774_170x170.jpg

^^good record

I just read some story about Barney Kessel going with teenage fan-boy Phil Spector to make a record in a Record-It-Yourself booth.

Also while I'm here let me rep for Barney Kessel novelty track "TV Commercials" on Darlene Love comp So Much Love.

miles davis obviously experimented with some west coast dudes (seven steps to heaven etc.), what other nyc guys took a vacation and made a west coast record?

http://www.jazz.com/assets/2007/11/24/wayoutwest.jpg

^^^^^^ Def. one of my favorite records ...

Ha. I think Shelly Manne was one of Sonny's favorite drummers.

I forget how the lighthouse burned down but it was for a really stupid reason

argh I forget what it was but I was looking at some photography book that was just pictures of jazz dudes hanging out at the beach in LA and jazz dudes riding cable cars in sf

Yeah it is a funny contrast -- the pics from NYC are always b&w, gritty dark nightclubby things, and then Jazz dudes come out west and it's all smiles ... Looking at that pic of Cannonball and Co., I can imagine why! The beach! The ocean! Los Angeles! I guess I've read some unpleasant things about being black at the time and dealing with the LAPD, though ... Big surprise, right?

speaking of barney kessel, and shelley manne, and hampton hawes, this album is great:

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drf200/f297/f29716h03d1.jpg

I'm a big fan of Jim Hall also. All the Paul Desmond recordings with him are good. I really like the Jimmy Giuffre "elevator music" stuff (as someone called it upthread) too. The Art Farmer Quartets with him are great if you can find them. Most of all, the Sonny Rollins sessions with Hall, although I don't know if those are properly called "cool jazz."

"Scott, I only have I'm All Smiles. More Hawes recommendations?"

i'm a huge fan, so i don't think you can really go wrong. the later stuff is good, the contemporary records stuff is good. the early trio albums are outstanding. lately, i've been digging the three volume quartet records he made:

http://www.freshsoundrecords.com/cp_images/c4636.jpg

yeah a lot of dudes were up in shelly's manne-hole.

xp

OMG HAWES AND HALL. WANT.

That looks tight! I wonder if those dudes had a sort of self-deprecating thing about being white guys playing jazz? I mean, that cover ... Country Club jazz! I don't know, maybe they were playing it straight. But it looks like some kinda proto Yacht Rock thing.
xp re: that golf album cover

Oh hey, emusic has volumes 2 and 3. Is Jim Hall on all the volumes?

this is a really nice west coast record:

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1150/1407818970_45886f6232.jpg?v=0

damn that does look good ...

Fuk, I love Harold Land and Scott LaFaro. I didn't know about all these good Hampton Hawes records.

"Oh hey, emusic has volumes 2 and 3. Is Jim Hall on all the volumes?"

yeah. they played all night! hence the title.

Did Hampton Hawes ever release a record called Hems and Hawes?

i love harold land too

Harold is cool.

That Jimmy Giuffre thing at the beginning of Jazz On A Summer's Day is awesome.

YES

The Train and the River

again, the early trio records are also fab. hampton, red mitchell, and, um...i'm blanking....

http://imagecache2.allposters.com/images/pic/ACTPOD/OJCCD-316-2~Hampton-Hawes-Trio-The-Trio-v-1-Posters.jpg

Earlier Jim Hall is probably my favorite jazz guitar. His sound got kind of cheesy later though and I don't think he chose the best people to play with.

also search the late 60's black lion stuff. awesome as well. what can i say, i'm a fan.

http://lh4.google.com/MyJazzWorld/RqpoeLdJ-lI/AAAAAAAAAVc/O5sSzZmW5Sk/s288/HamptonHawes_SpanishSteps.jpg

ever hear greg osby's invisible hand record? i haven't heard it for a long time, but it has jim hall and andrew hill on it and whatever it is, it's not cheesy.

best shelley manne cover (and not a bad record either, despite my indifference to andre previn):

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2190/2071307048_42663c04f3.jpg?v=0

Hey, I recently learned that Johnny Mercer wrote those songs!

a later record by a guy from boston who headed out west, this is very cool and worth tracking down (um, cuz it's also another example of a black bandleader making a west coast kinda sound with west coast dudes):

http://farm3.static.flickr.com/2235/2064941759_c30686f3b9.jpg?v=0

Hampton Hawes' autobio, "Raise Up Off Me" is great, as is Art Pepper's "Straight Life" for depicting the LA scene of the day. I can't remember the author of "West Coast Jazz", but there's a ton of info including the perspective of the WC record label heads, ie Contemporary, Pacific Jazz etc. It's comprehensive, but the writing is less than engaging.

shelly manne and his men at the manhole is the name of an actual (good) shelly manne record fyi

charles mingus came from watts and a lot of his early recordings are 'west coast' in a sense

yeah, i mentioned mingus up top. but it's kinda like calling eric dolphy "west coast". you know? they were both from there and played there, but...

the west coast cool vibe thing was it's own thing and it could be very cool indeed. i like a lot of that stuff. not so much the desmondbrubecktjader stuff though. i have very little time for dave brubeck. blah.

skot, you wanna hate on Cal Tjader, come on over here and fite!

Would like to read Ted Gioia book, but do not want to prove his brother's theory.

i know, he was preemptive with the manhole jokes

Lot's of people seemed to have played at that club. I'm sure they are going to have five hours of Roy Haynes playing there tonight on WKCR. But wasn't it spelt the Mannhole?

Looks like it was "Shelly's Manne-hole."

love this album. sonny making the west coast dudes work for a living.

http://jazzvo.blog.ocn.ne.jp/photos/uncategorized/2008/02/01/the_contemporary_leaders.jpg

yeah a lot of dudes were up in shelly's manne-hole.

xp

― Tracy Michael Jordan Catalano (Jordan), Wednesday, January 14, 2009 1:46 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

OK, now I see what you were trying to say.

if you can find them - are they in print? - the Black California two volume anthology that savoy put out is friggin' GREAT if you like awesome and swingin' 40's/50's stuff. wardell gray, wild bill moore, slim gaillard, kenny clarke, etc. (um, not "cool" jazz, just great jazz.) (all the bands where dexter and chico and sonny criss and others cut their teeth.)

http://image.allmusic.com/00/amg/cov200/drc500/c584/c58424888is.jpg

listened to this tonight. one of my fave we're all in the same gang east coast/west coast jams:

http://www.jazz.com/assets/2008/1/4/albumcoverArtPepperMeetsTheRhythmSection.jpg

when white dudes had cool names like art pepper

that '59 album he did with Ben Webster is definitely worth investigating, not heard much else.

i don't have a ton of his stuff, but I really enjoy this one
https://img.discogs.com/-ulMF9pOhQkW1DwrTjseFjle-JQ=/fit-in/600x598/filters:strip_icc():format(jpeg):mode_rgb():quality(90)/discogs-images/R-639802-1141987385.jpeg.jpg

yeah primarily curious about the Baker stuff

he doesn't seem to get much respect these days

https://londonjazzcollector.files.wordpress.com/2015/10/mg_3476.jpg
this one is an absolute gem imo

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/mRM0IG68ycc/hqdefault.jpg

lousy album cover but a top quality work of the genre. And it is led by John Lewis (not the civil rights activist who passed yesterday obv) of modern jazz quartet who is criminally underrated imo.

Very nice, thanks!

This is a useful thread ... I wish some of the album recommendations were not obscured by broken image links

In 1961, while at a federal prison hospital in Fort Worth, Texas, Hawes was watching President Kennedy's inaugural speech on television, and became convinced that Kennedy would pardon him.[5] With help from inside and outside the prison, Hawes submitted an official request for a presidential pardon.[5] In an almost miraculous turn, in August 1963, Kennedy granted Hawes Executive Clemency, the 42nd of only 43 such pardons given in the final year of Kennedy's presidency.[5]

"cool" revive

what was he in for??

10 years just for using heroin. Arrested on his 30th birthday. They hoped he would flip on his suppliers. Even though he was eventually (miraculously) pardoned he still spent 5 years in prison. Just for using! He died 13 years later.

It was mentioned upthread but seriously, if you haven't read Hawes' autobiography, Raise Up Off Me, it's one of the greatest books on jazz (and junk) ever — half Miles's autobiography, half The Basketball Diaries.

I wrote about Hawes last year. All the albums mentioned in that piece are amazing.

ahh thank you for the link

Curtis Fuller/Hampton Hawes w/ French Horns is another good one. It seems a miracle that any black jazz musicians with heroin habits managed to survive the 50's/60's. If the habit wasn't going to kill them, the cops would be more than happy to lend a hand (or a club) to the grim reaper.

was going to post "wow the 50s were fucked" but it occurred to me there are probably ppl in california currently serving longer sentences for simple possession of crack cocaine