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Post by Rikki Nadir on Mar 23, 2024 17:00:51 GMT
I'm currently listening to the CD reissue of 'The Dynamite Brothers' by Charles Earland. It's a soundtrack album to an obscure Blaxploitation film from 1973. I have a bit of an obsession with Blaxploitation soundtracks. But it's a lot more complicated (i.e. busy) than most Blaxploitation soundtracks. It sounds like a 'normal' soul jazz/rare groove album of the jazz-funk variety. The line-up is also impressive, including Charles Earland, Eddie Henderson, Dave Hubbard, Billy Hart and Patrick Gleeson. That has to be one of best line-ups I've seen on a Blaxploitation soundtrack. Here's the YouTube link...
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Post by Rikki Nadir on Apr 4, 2024 18:08:54 GMT
I'm currently listening to the album "The Widow In The Window" by Kenny Wheeler Quintet. This is one of those impeccable recordings that one could almost take for granted during the Golden Age Of ECM, which is probably the 1970s, at least to my ears anyway. However, this one is as late as 1990, which goes to show that ECM were still turning out quality work. Kenny is on fine form, as are the other outstanding members of the quintet - John Abercrombie, John Taylor, Dave Holland and Peter Erskine. Silky smooth chamber jazz, beautifully played, beautifully recorded, but never boring. Unless, of course, you don't happen to like silky smooth chamber jazz. Actually, I went off this kind of jazz for a couple of decades while I went in search of rougher, unruly textures and found free jazz and free improv, which is seldom silky smooth... But I came back to ECM, eventually. Dug out my old ECM albums and began to enjoy, again, all that great stuff by Kenny Wheeler, Jan Garbarek, Collin Walcott, Edward Vesala, Ralph Towner, etc. YouTube...
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Post by bassman on Apr 5, 2024 8:00:24 GMT
I'm currently listening to the album "The Widow In The Window" [ ... ] Discreet reverb ... like on Miles's Mr. Pastorius ("Amandla"). Lovely.
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Post by Rikki Nadir on Apr 5, 2024 15:24:50 GMT
Yes, the legendary ECM reverb. The interview below with Jan Erik Kongshaug is revealing. I was particularly drawn to his comments about pianos and their tuning. ECM certainly knows how to record a piano - spacious, transparent, with all the nuances of resonance. Before ECM came along in the 1970s jazz pianos sounded crumby and were usually shoved in a corner of the soundfield as part of that horrid, rigid stereo separation (drums were shoved in a corner too). I've heard numerous Blue Note pianos that sound like dodgy upright pub pianos. tapeop.com/interviews/91/jan-erik-kongshaug/
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Post by Doom on Apr 5, 2024 21:06:29 GMT
Discreet reverb ... like on Miles's Mr. Pastorius ("Amandla"). Lovely. Nice observation Bassman. Incidentally, AMANDLA is available on a very inexpensive Warner/Rhino five album collection with TUTU, MUSIC FROM SIESTA, DINGO: SELECTIONS FROM THE SOUNDTRACK, and DOO BOP. There is a fair amount of wheat among the chaff!
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Post by bassman on Apr 6, 2024 7:42:23 GMT
Discreet reverb ... like on Miles's Mr. Pastorius ("Amandla"). Lovely. Nice observation Bassman. Incidentally, AMANDLA is available on a very inexpensive Warner/Rhino five album collection with TUTU, MUSIC FROM SIESTA, DINGO: SELECTIONS FROM THE SOUNDTRACK, and DOO BOP. There is a fair amount of wheat among the chaff! Thanks for the info. I have all of the original albums. "Tutu" and "Amandla" are very much on the wheat side, I should say!
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Post by Rikki Nadir on Apr 10, 2024 17:20:12 GMT
Earlier I was listening to "The Mean Machine" (1976) by Jimmy McGriff, which finds him embracing electric keyboards (lots of Fender Rhodes and what sounds like a clavinet) and getting a lot funkier in keeping with the times. Brad Baker does most of the arranging, and does a good job keeping these larger-scale pieces sounding 'neat and tidy' in a good way, without losing any textural grit and rhythmic punch. The strings add a cinematic sweep to the album, suggesting the influence of Lalo Schifrin's seminal film scores for Bullitt and Dirty Harry. Other influences like Quincy Jones, Johnny Pate and Isaac Hayes spring to mind. Stirring stuff.
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Post by bassman on Apr 11, 2024 10:37:55 GMT
[ ... ] Other influences like Quincy Jones, Johnny Pate and Isaac Hayes spring to mind. Stirring stuff. Johnny Pate! Just found out he's still alive, turned 100 last December, according to Wiki, so it's not fake news.
... (getting ready to listen to Wes Montgomery's "Caravan")
EDIT/ADD: Look here - it's both heart-warming and of historical interest.
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Post by sztiv on Apr 13, 2024 17:25:49 GMT
Courtesy of the Johnny Pate video I'm listening to a song I've always loved but which I didn't know he'd produced..
Warning this isn't jazz!
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Post by bassman on Apr 14, 2024 14:12:49 GMT
Jazz for Moderns
"I got a call from Stan Kenton who was going on the road. I was only 16 and the family, of course, was against my leaving high school. But after two days of discussion my father said if I could still reach Kenton and if they still needed someone, it would be all right to go."
(He did go back to high school when the band left Long Beach and went to New York. Later on, he would study music at the University of Southern California, spend a few years in France to continue his studies in composition with Arthur Honegger, and conducting with Jean Fournier ...)
A well-respected name in the field of movie music, Duane Tatro is little known among jazz lovers, mainly due to his limited output under his own name. His compositions, often referred to as "atonal" (which is only half true), own a genuine jazz phrasing, acquired in his surprisingly early professional life as a clarinet and tenor player.
First, a selection from my current "Saturday" listening, Tatro's "Jazz for Moderns" album. Then, a piece he wrote for Red Norvo. The drummer on both of these occasions is all-purpose vehicle Shelly Manne (whose only trick was to remain faithful to his own true self).
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Post by Rikki Nadir on Apr 15, 2024 0:27:27 GMT
bassman, many thanks for introducing me to a new name, Duane Tatro. Your introductory paragraphs raised the bar pretty high - connections to Kenton and Honegger, no less. And then the word "atonal"... I was expecting something really exploratory. Alas, I'm really sorry to say Tatro's music struck me as rather tame and, although at times pleasingly intricate, not very engaging. Actually I went and listened to the whole of that album before making this post. The connection to Kenton had me hoping this was going to be another radical jazz composer like the extraordinary Bob Graettinger whose compositions for Stan (City Of Glass album) back in the late 1940s and early 1950s were genuinely "jazz for moderns"....Take it away, Bob...
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Post by bassman on Apr 15, 2024 7:44:43 GMT
[ ... ] like the extraordinary Bob Graettinger whose compositions for Stan (City Of Glass album) back in the late 1940s and early 1950s were genuinely "jazz for moderns" [ ... ] Graettinger's music is great, though I have always found it difficult to discern the "jazz" element in it. On the other hand, I appreciate Tatro's focus on the jazz aspect. Due to its splendid execution by a stellar lineup, the music - in addition to its other qualities - swings perfectly.
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Post by Rikki Nadir on Apr 15, 2024 17:01:58 GMT
Yes, I know what you mean about Graettinger's take on jazz. I'd call his hybrid approach proto-third stream. His arrangements of the jazz ballads 'Everything Happens To Me' and 'You Go To My Head' are wonderfully weird...
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Post by bassman on Apr 16, 2024 7:52:44 GMT
Yes, I know what you mean about Graettinger's take on jazz. I'd call his hybrid approach proto-third stream. His arrangements of the jazz ballads 'Everything Happens To Me' and 'You Go To My Head' are wonderfully weird... [ ... ] They are indeed. Moreover, "New Concepts" (which in its original form did not include "You Go To My Head") is one of my favourite albums, and Kenton's best "jazz" album at the time.
"Proto third-stream" is not a bad characterization of Graettinger's music, and I find it much more challenging to both the listener and the musicians than what was subsequently labelled "third stream" (Gunther Schuller, John Lewis, J.J. Johnson ...). It's those latter achievements which, while more accessible to the general listener, I would like to call "tame". Anyway, it's quite interesting to talk about what was regarded as "progressive" between, say, 1947 and 1957.
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Post by Rikki Nadir on Apr 16, 2024 15:00:12 GMT
Yes, the young Bob Graettinger was a tough act to follow, and I suppose jazz didn't hear that level of dissonance again until the emergence of free jazz in the late 50s and 60s. But I'm rather fond of third stream and its ambition, though there would have been jazz fans at the time (and even now, perhaps) who thought combining jazz and classical music was utterly pretentious. However, I'm all in favour of expanding the soundworld of jazz whether its by classical means or by including elements of popular forms like rock, funk, soul, pop, as well as non-western traditions. I don't want jazz to become a museum piece - long may it continue to expand and grow...
Anyway, I'm currently listening to the powerful music of another Bob...
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