Tag: jazz

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(via Max Roach & Anthony Braxton – “Spirit Possession”)

Year: 1979

Album: Birth and Rebirth

Drummer Max Roach and multireedist Anthony Braxton recorded themselves jamming together in 1978 and released it as an album. They would do it again in the same year with One in Two – Two in One, but Birth and Rebirth is my favorite of the two recordings. It’s avant-garde using not so avant-garde instruments. It’s all in the presentation and performance. It’s freewheelin’ but economical; Both musicians are mindful that most jamming is indulgent and boring to the listener. Roach channels Ghanaian drumming in accordance to Braxton’s timid reed playing and both are good enough musicians to turn any sort of indulgence into engaging recording art.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

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(via Sun Ra – “That Changing Wind”)

Year: 1968

Album: Monorails and Satellites, Vol. 1

Sun Ra, a piano man not of this world. “The Changing Wind,” like most of Monorails and Satellites, sounds like honky-tonk at some Ziggy salon. With a piano that comes from Saturn, Sun Ra plays aggressively, but with care. He knows he can slay the piano, and he knows that you know that he can slay. Yet he holds back, choosing emotion over flash. Wobbly, yet oddly comforting.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

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(via Chet Baker – “I Get Along Without You Very Well”)

Year: 1956

Album: Chet Baker Sings

It starts with stardust keys. A celesta. A wink in some lonesome night. Then a whisper. It’s a man trying to sing, or a woman. Can’t tell from just listening. But it’s Chet. He didn’t write the words – that’d be Jane Brown Thompson – nor did he write the music. That’s Hoagy Carmichael. Both Hoosiers. This kid’s from Oklahoma pretending to be West Coast Cool Kid. Trying to make this Hoosier song his own. That’s his job. Rehearse, jump in, make love, get out. He already has a look and a feel. (“James Dean, Sinatra, and Bix, rolled into one,” says David Gelly). It’s all there. Almost.

Back to the song. It’s a sad song. He’s trying to tell a joke with a frown. The joke’s on him. It always is. Not a lot of time. Start slow. Stay slow. Steady. What’s this song about? Soft rain? The moon? Sure. Why not. Not bad. Steady now. There it goes.

The album is Chet Baker Sings because Chet Baker is a trumpeter, and who in jazz sings man? Baloney. Well Chet Baker does, and it’s not a question of whether or not he’s a good singer. Some think he’s trash. I think he’s lovely. Elton John thought he was trash and lovely. You can exist anywhere on the spectrum and still compel the soul. You just got to sound true and like you mean it, even if you’re faking it. Baker ain’t faking it because his well-known drug problem served as a backdrop for his entire career as the struggle to stay alive just to sing sing sing and play play play. So it goes.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

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(via Duke Ellington – “Jeep’s Blues”)

Year: 1956

Album: Ellington at Newport

For all you American Hustle fans. Also, we could all use more Duke Ellington in our lives. The song was written by Ellington and his saxophonist Johnny Hodges in 1938, but this version is off the Ellington at Newport live album, possibly his most well known record that saved him from a late-career identity crisis. What’s so powerful about this performance is how it explodes with sound right away, a rare move in the kind of jazz Ellington was known for (“Who starts a song like that?” asks Christian Bale’s character in the movie). This was a post-Charlie Parker world in which loud rock ‘n’ roll was making a name for itself, and Ellington was wise to turn up the volume of his big band and shake the dust off an aging career. At least for now, the Duke was saved.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

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(via Dizzy Gillespie – “Salt Peanuts”)

Year: 1947

Fun fact: the beginning notes of this jazz classic is a direct nod to Igor Stravinsky’s The Rite Of Spring. Gillespie was a fan of Stravinsky, and he wanted to turn jazz into a “high art” for normal Americans who were turned off by Europe’s tight control over classical music and opera. That’s why the first phrases sound so tight and strange compared to the loose feel of the rest of the piece – it’s a direct acknowledgment of where the music came from and where it wants to go.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

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(via Kamasi Washington – “Final Thought”)

Year: 2015

Album: The Epic

I heard a lot from websites/writers/friends that I had to check out Kamasi Washington immediately because he was amazing and he was doing important things in music. Whenever I feel like everyone is telling me to check out something, I usually don’t. That’s why I’m not watching “Masters Of None” or “Making A Murderer” – too much immediate hype turns me off.

Of course I’m also an idiot, so I didn’t bother listening to The Epic when it first came out. If I did, it would have been on my end-of-year albums list.

It’s the kind of album that’s just the right amount of complex and accessible, the kind of jazz album that those who aren’t as well versed in the genre can still pick up on the kind of risks and experiments Washington is doing. It’s bold yet inviting, and now I won’t sleep on any new music from Washington.

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)