jazz

Tracer which "hard bop stuff" in particular leaves you cold?

not questioning your taste, just trying to understand the line btw what you like and what you don't.

Although, James, don't you find that the Jazz Canon looms larger in the appreciation of the music than it does in rock? For instance, you don't even get a shrug on here if you say you hate the Beatles but love some other type of rock music, whereas I think people would seriously question your jazz fan bona fides if you said you hated [iconic jazz artist].
Maybe this reflects the fact that I've been listening to jazz pretty steadily for 35 years, but still feel like I'm an outside to the "real fans". I have been taking my own path through the music as you suggest, but there's a background feeling of "doing it wrong".

There are certain jazz artists that you pretty much never hear any jazz fan say they don't like (Miles, Coltrane, Monk come to mind). TBH it would be pretty interesting to hear someone's case for why they didn't like one of these (but liked jazz).

I had a prof who said he went to music school with metalhead kids who liked fusion but thought Kind of Blue was really boring.

sorry man alive i probably should have said 'post bop' or 'post hard bop'

in my EXTREMELY limited sense of it i feel like once you get to the late 60s, jazz has either turned jammy/funky or cerebral. maybe i just need a big walking bassline to love it idk! i like stuff with riffs, big bold A patterns.

I think if I had to get stuck in a 20th century listening decade it would be '53 -'63.. lol I say "if"

If you want something very un-cerebral, un-post-bop, hard swinging, greasy, and not at all canon, this is probably my favorite not very well known jazz record:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ht-cXJO2biI

Nice thanks. i judge this sort of music by whether or not Bob Wills would appreciate it, is how i break it down to an extent.

ha okay i think that organ is even a little bit too on the nose even for me! yowza.

once you get to the late 60s, jazz has either turned jammy/funky or cerebral

There's tons of straight-ahead acoustic hard bop-style jazz all the way through the 70s. The only thing that really changed was the production style. If you can hack the bass sounding like it's strung with giant rubber bands, go to Discogs and look for anything on the Milestone label - albums by Sonny Rollins, McCoy Tyner, and Joe Henderson, and other folks too.

what would you say changed about the production style in the 70s?

to me most stuff sounds a bit closer mic'd. like higher fidelity on each instrument but you lose the sense of all the players being in the room together.

what would you say changed about the production style in the 70s?

A lot cleaner, a lot more isolation, the aforementioned rubber-band sound. I've never written much about 70s jazz production (though maybe I should!), but I did write a piece about Rudy Van Gelder's 1960s productions for Blue Note last year.

by whether or not Bob Wills would appreciate it
Do you know about the musician who played with Bob WIlls and Benny Goodman and Frank Sinatra?

50s and 60s jazz production is like Steve Albini vs. 70s jazz production is I dunno, like Bob Ezrin.

Don't know if he has an Erdös-Bacon-Sabbath number though.

v much dislike 70s straight ahead jazz production, esp the rubber band bass sound

Lots of people I know don’t like many current jazz production sounds even now. One time I asked a friend why his record sounded so good and he said that he gave the producer/engineer/whatever a Jeff “Tain” Watts CD and said “Make it sound like that!”

There are some good sounding jazz records now. I like the way JD Allen's albums sound. I think the worst recent (recent being relative; this is jazz, after all) production was on Telarc albums of the 90s and early 2000s, just super shiny and digital, every instrument completely separated out in a gleaming sonic vitrine. Awful.

yeah that last JD Allen album had a lovely sound

You also mentioned Oscar Peterson: have you heard his trio w Stan Getz? If you like that, and Getz, maybe try Getz albums a Kenny Baron. You mentioned Ellington, maybe check This One's For Blanton, a late album w Ray Brown, where Duke's as spare one second and as rich the next as needed: it's the elegant Ellington, no orchestra needed, for this scene (Ray Brown's bass and Ellington's left hand are very conversant, though never long-winded). Also the ones with Louis Armstrong, John Coltrane, Frank Sinatra, and, if you're in a what the hell mood, try Money Jungle, which is him w Charles Mingus and Max Roach. Mingus's own Blues & Roots has been the gateway for several friends.
Bob Wills might dig (and I think recorded some of the same tunes as) the Nat King Cole Trio, esp. w Oscar Brown Jr. on guitar (Grant Green prob liked Oscar too). Likewise Django Reinhart & Stephane Grappelli, and Willie Nelson's all-instrumental Night and Day, and his mostly-instrumental Let's Face The Music and Dance
Also check: Swing to Bop: An Oral History of the Transition in Jazz in the 1940s,by Ira Gitler, and, in that same transition/back and forth/two things at once and more, anything involving Charlie Christian---my gateway was Genius of the Electric Guitar, where for instance he's to be found in these raw-edged, tuneful and stompin' group outbursts (live on the radio) w Benny Goodman combos and so on.

JR no!

oh excellent unperson!

yeah the 50s and early 60s just feel like this incredible flowering of the form, you could spend a lifetime learning about it and listening to it. like late 90s-early-00s rap, or 90s house and techno. vast shifting archipelagos of school and subschool.

xpost whoa dow

I think jazz production has been past its nadir for years now. My only complaint about some contemporary jazz production is that some of it kind of sounds *too* good, like it has this luxuriant fullness at all times that can get tiring

money jungle is a huge favourite. have played it approximately 5 million times. i love it.

“this one’s for blanton” looks like it’s extremely my jam - thank you dow. and for all those other recs. i feel well stocked!

It took me like 17 years but Charlie Parker finally sunk in and I can't listen to any other jazz now except for him and the occasional random Monk tune for variety. Even on crummy bootlegs Bird sounds like a laser beam or something, every note perfectly clean and clear and articulated and just fucking alive. It's really something. The real thing. It's nice (a revelation, really!) to finally 'get' why Bird is Bird, why he as a solo voice dominates the entire history of jazz so singularly; he's a summing up of what came before -- the pinnacle! -- and he points towards everything that comes after. I also like more and more nowadays how Charlie Parker's jazz is formally and logically basically short pop tunes, even when his groups spread out live, only mostly pitched at like top speed and curving like corkscrews all over the sonic landscape!

I find now that I have grown, after years of listening quite a lot, to really hear and appreciate the harmonic wholeness of the form, which I think helped a lot in particular with abstracted jazz. By harmonic wholeness I don't mean the chord progressions, but the way the different instruments live in their different ranges, performing chordal functions but still living and breathing as individual voices. The stripped down instrumental combinations evolved to, by the time Bird appears, complement each other almost holographically or something -- and jazz goes from being just a music genre to being a legit classical art form. Or something! Just some random thoughts!

As far as the discussion goes, I like jazz with a couple well-placed mics in a room and no production except a good take! I like classical and opera like that, too. Transparent. Unnatural reverb in particular kills performance-oriented music dead.

how great is Pablo Records. i feel like every one of their LPs is just back room jammin with the greats.

xpost ah that’s really interesting about your journey with Parker. i also have never really clicked with him - like, i can understand intellectually why he was so electrifying. maybe it’s because i’ve had to fight through bad recordings to hear it. i fully intend to revisit but not until i’m “ready” whatever that means lol

ok "This One's For Blanton" is absolutely killing me. MY GOD.

re:'basic jazz bitch' - makes me think about how when i was younger i had a lot of friends on the punk/alt/underground rock spectrum who would mercilessly clown me for liking any jazz that didnt immediately code as difficult or subversive. basically anything that was melodic or non-spiritual-hat was the equivalent of the andrews sisters to them, basic bitch stuff for grandpas and r crumb. now all those dudes are in their 40s and 50s and paying heavy coin for 50s blue note pressings.

i get my 'told ya so' licks in sometimes, but its also a blast to finally be able to talk about non-sun ra jazz with these guys and turn them onto stuff like the ellington suites or charlie parker & machito. one aging hardcore pal flipped recently when i was playing the coltrane/johnny hartman album, had no idea that coltrane played 'stuff like that'. its fun.

xp
you should also listen to Ray Brown on Jimmy Guiffre's The Easy Way, it swings so hard even your eyes will be tapping their toes!

there were so many good bass players in jazz that there isn't really such thing as "the greatest" but Ray Brown is up there!

It's hard to tell what you've heard or not heard Tracer, but the first thing that sprang to mind reading your post was the two volumes of Monk's Genius of Modern Music on Blue Note. Chances are you're already well aware of them, but I've had success playing those for jazz newbies since they're accessible but totally distinctive

man alive as to 'post bop' stuff that i haven't found a way into - people like paul bley? steve lacy? and more recently, which is what got me thinking about this stuff, craig taborn and chris potter. i realise these are all really different people, with different styles, working within and against different traditions so it's ridiculous to lump them all together. i guess something they share in my mind is a preference for improvisation, for contemplation, for 'journeys' rather than heads/solos. but i'm eliding basically everything that people who like them find interesting about them, i realise, and i'm doing it from a place of ignorance as well, which should probably be embarrassing!

xpost i have heard them yes - but not in awhile!

re:'basic jazz bitch' - makes me think about how when i was younger i had a lot of friends on the punk/alt/underground rock spectrum who would mercilessly clown me for liking any jazz that didnt immediately code as difficult or subversive. basically anything that was melodic or non-spiritual-hat was the equivalent of the andrews sisters to them, basic bitch stuff for grandpas and r crumb. now all those dudes are in their 40s and 50s and paying heavy coin for 50s blue note pressings.

i get my 'told ya so' licks in sometimes, but its also a blast to finally be able to talk about non-sun ra jazz with these guys and turn them onto stuff like the ellington suites or charlie parker & machito. one aging hardcore pal flipped recently when i was playing the coltrane/johnny hartman album, had no idea that coltrane played 'stuff like that'. its fun.

― nobody like my rap (One Eye Open), Monday, April 12, 2021 11:22 AM (twenty-six minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

In my freshman year of college I almost swung at a guy for pontificating to me about how Charlie Parker was basic and Albert Ayler was more advanced or something. I wish I could remember the exact words he used but it was such a dumb, ignorant take confidently delivered, v much jazzsplaining to a guy who knew about 100x as much about jazz. And I like Albert Ayler. But people with that attitude are kind of doing the equivalent of saying bourbon is better than cabernet because it has more alcohol.

i actually really like a lot of albert ayler!

on an unrelated note, why are there so few UK sources for jazz vinyl on discogs?! everything costs $20 + shipping from the united states or denmark or some shit! probably for the best that i don't get tempted tbh...

What about Amazon UK, or is that too evil w the labor practices? The reason I don't order nearly as much from Amazon US anymore.
Oh, and don't wait for summer to watch the beautifully shot, recorded and edited Jazz On A Summer's Day( incl. Chuck Berry times Count Basie Orchestra, just for one highlight).

Maybe try soundsoftheuniverse.com, or their bricks-and-mortar, if you're close enough!

and seeing as Sonny Rollins has been mentioned: Saxophone Colossus, Tenor Madness, Way Out West, The Bridge, on Impulse! You can't go wrong with any of these.

yes yes and yes!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jJkyOvXM6ds

I know this may be really basic but have you thought about thumbing through old penguin guides to get a sense of what you might like? I don’t think Brian Morton or the late great RD Cook ever steered me wrong.

Heh, I used to have this Len Lyon book which I liked.

That mention of Monk on Blue Note reminds me of early 50s Miles on Blue Note---true, it's tagged as hard bop, but it's early hard bop, protean, even, bubblin' genesis porridge hard bop a little past jump bands and swirling around the zeitgeist ov proto-R&B and R&R, making me jump out of my seat like James Brown--here's a brief Voice piece I wrote about the very live Birdland 1951 (not issued 'til 04; what the hey, Blue Note?):
https://myvil.blogspot.com/2005/12/bop-loves-pop-to-death.html
And this wikipedia entry goes beyond its title, telling about various configs of Miles Davis on Blue Note Vols 1 *and*2 (even mentions 3, which I wasn't aware of), but whatever you can find should be good (I've still got late 80s or early 90s pressings of 1 & 2)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miles_Davis_Volume_2

thanks dow. i'm really liking the miles volume 1. nice and hard and no fuckin around.

in my recent archive trawl i found this great post, about what makes coltrane's solo on giant steps so good:

Search & Destroy: John Coltrane

i also unearthed this QUITE long thread with lots of QUITE LONG posts from several people who still post here. this was pre-september 11!!

'Jazz': Search and Destroy

it's mainly about the burns documentary and so it branches into a lot of territories i.e. what makes a good doc etc - but there is a lot of conversation about the music itself, what's "made it" into people's consciousness, what hasn't, etc

I am very very far from being someone who knows much about jazz, but as a complete diletente listener who mainly listens to recent British jazz, seeing Tracer mention Shabaka Hutchins compels me to recommend the following stuff:

Kaleidscope - Various artists (https://soundsoftheuniverse.com/sjr/product/kaleidoscope_2) awesome Soul Jazz compilation of London(ish) artists, that spans from quite trad stuff to things that seem to ahve little relationship to jazz and a lot to electronic / dance / dubstep / etc etc etc.

Moses Boyd - his debut album from early last year is great, also seek out Rye Lane Shuffle and the compilation that's on

Polar Bear - the band that got me into new British jazz about 15 years ago when they were Mercury Prize nominated. Several albums, all well worth checking out, but their last one (Same As You) is one of my very favourite records of the last decade, easily. There are lots of bands that share personel with Polar Bear and most of them are worth checking out: Acoustic Ladyland, Melt Yourself Down, Pulled By Magnets, Sons of Kemet, The Invisible (who are a rock band but good)

Black Focus by Yusuf Kamal - really fabulous record by keyboardist Kamaal Williams and drummer Yusuf Dayes. They've done stuff since that I've heard its of and thought was alright, but this is proeprly excellent. (I so don't have the vocabulary to write about jazz.)

The debut Empirical album was awesome, but I wasn't into anything they did after.

Portico Quartet, e.s.t., The Blessing / Get The Blessing, all good too.

Was thinking about Polar Bear just the other day, esp. Seb Rochford, and how big* he/they were 10-15 yrs ago, but rarely referenced in discussions of the current UK scene now.

*in contemp. jazz terms, obv.

Well he's bald now, so about a foot smaller than at their peak.

back in the 50's multi instrumentalist (tenor sax, flute, vibes - he was a virtuoso on all of them) Tubby Hayes was about the only UK jazz musician who had the full respect of all the top US jazzers from his stints in New York. Last year I discovered his late 60's big band album 100% Proof, it's one of the best, man.

Nick thanks. Those are great recs.

calz i don’t think i’ve ever heard of tubby hayes til now!