Welcome to the weekly Cred Forums jazz Blindfold Test thread. Every Friday and Saturday. If you're new, the point of these threads is to have fun and encourage critical listening, discussion, and general enjoyment of jazz. All critical music listeners are welcome. The more participation we have, the more fun and successful these threads will be. In the interest of keeping the thread alive and bumped, any general jazz discussion is welcomed here as well.
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THIS WEEK'S THEME: Prestige Label COMPILED BY: Clueless
NEXT WEEK: Blue Note? COMPILED BY: Ambassador Satch?
If you missed last week's thread, DON'T WORRY. It's not too late. Here are the links for the mystery tracklist. Download the tracks, record your thoughts/guesses/evaluations for each one, and then come back and post them in the thread. Remember, people will be posting guesses and thoughts in this thread so don't read the thread until you have listened to the music and collected your thoughts in order to avoid spoilers. Track info for this week's tracks will be posted on Saturday, so if you see the thread is close to dying before then, give it a bump.
1: Very similar indian drone to Alice Coltrane's Journey to Satchidananda - so is the instrument making that the tambura here as well? Some summer of love -era psychedelic stuff. This is pretty cool - fun to listen to.
Guitarist driven based on the soloing? In spirit this reminds me of some of Gabor Szabo's more psychedelic moments from the late 60's, but the guitar playing is very different. Is there some microtonal stuff going on here? Feels a little off in a nice way. A bit of a novelty maybe, but fun. No idea who this is.
2: Ellington's In a Sentimental Mood? There is a nice sparseness to the sax playing - reminds me of Jimmy Giuffre. I can't think of any Prestige Giuffre albums. Konitz? Getz?
There's maybe a little frailty to the playing I don't associate with Getz - I quite like the sax playing, fits this tune. The Coltrane/Ellington version is what I think of when I think of this tune, but this is good too and in a different way which is nice (probably predates that version anyway).
3: A little grandiose. I thought for a moment that this was going to turn out to be Caravan. The sound is a little too big for my taste.
Some exotic percussion touches there towards the end. This was OK, but I would have certainly preferred it to be a little more subtle. Who could this be? Oliver Nelson has multiple Prestige recordings, but I think they tend to be small combo stuff. I can't say I remember any prominent Prestige big band albums off the top of my head.
Levi Morales
4: This sounds really familiar, but in the sense that the sax sounds familiar, not this particular track. Rollins? Tone feels a little light for him. There is some Sonny Rollins & Modern Jazz Quartet album on Prestige, I think, though.
I feel like the vibes playing is more Bobby Hutcherson than Milt Jackson. I don't think Hutcherson started recording before the 60's and this feels more like a late 50's release.
Pretty good, whatever it is.
5: Sous le Ciel de Paris - whatever it's called in English. Kind of a surprisingly robust sound for this tune - I like it.
With that horns only part that comes at 2 minutes I could see this being some French group. There are multiple elements here that remind me of contemporary French groups. How that would fit in with Prestige Records, I have no idea.
Is this a tuba? Tubas sound so jolly. This solo makes me smile.
Interesting how the mood switches to very typical jazz like you'd expect from Prestige when the sax solo comes on. This is like three different tracks. Interesting.
Very ending reminded me of the ending of Ornette's Lonely Woman.
6: A little bit of an odd piano sound - very tinkly. Makes me think of music from a parallel universe where Monk wasn't an iconoclast somehow.
Could this be Richard Davis on bass? I've been listening to some albums he plays on recently and he sometimes does cool and somewhat unexpected slidey stuff like in the solo bit here.
I didn't quite warm up to this, but it wasn't bad - it was "close to being interesting" for me.
Tyler Young
7: Well, Prestige certainly put out more than their fair share of soul jazz - this seems like a relatively early recording in that style. You don't get much organ sound like this in the 60's.
This is very enjoyable. Saxes blowing nicely. Pretty good one.
8: This has a more modern sound to it than most of the stuff this week. Could be from the 70's.
I mentioned Oliver Nelson earlier - this sax playing reminds me a bit of his playing on that Patterns -track I had on my Impulse! blindfold.
The trumpet solo really reminds me of some Miles Davis thing, but in general this sounds like a too recent of a thing to be any Prestige Miles album. Or does it rather remind me of Coltrane's track Impressions?
Feels a little bit like a chimera made out of various different jazz styles.
Levi Martin
>Track 1 The interlocking of all these rhythms is pretty interesting. Also I’m not quite sure what instrument I’m hearing other than guitar and flute, but there’s something else in there too. It starts to get kind of directionless in the middle. I liked the switch to a different feel when the chimes start going. But then it starts to kind of meander again. I like the tune itself but it didn’t really live up to its potential I think. I don’t have any idea what this could be.
>Track 2 In. A. Sent. I. Ment. Al. Mood. It’s really very nice. I like what the pianist is doing. Really orchestrating the piece well. The soprano player sounds like Coltrane a little bit but I’ve never heard him play the tune except on his record with Ellington. Not that many guys were playing soprano back then… Steve Lacy, Lucky Thompson and Oliver Nelson come to mind. It doesn’t sound like Lacy but I could see this being Lucky or Nelson. I’m not sure who the pianist is but he’s a magnificent accompanist. These guys know how to bring out the beauty of the original tune and this one will stick with me.
>Track 3 Wow this intro is a bit of a kick in the dick after that beautiful last track. The abrupt shifts in feel are a little off-putting but I guess in the right mood it could be kind of good. This feels maybe more like an Oliver Nelson type of thing. Very over the top. It’s a pretty good tune I guess, and the sax solo was good too.
Matthew Lewis
>Track 4 Hm. This is very nice. Definitely more of a West Coast vibe I think. The sax player has an almost Paul Desmond-ish sound but I think it’s a tenor sax. Dave Pike comes to mind. Didn’t we have a track from him in the last Prestige playlist? It also reminds me of that “Nocturne” album that Oliver Nelson did with Lem Winchester. But I guess the last three tracks can’t all be Oliver Nelson. Anyway this was a very nice West Coast sounding thing that works because of its simplicity. A bit unexpected from Prestige.
>Track 5 A nice Afro-Cuban 6/8 setup here. So there’s tenor sax and there’s a weird instrument playing the melody behind it… Oh I guess it’s tuba? It must be Ray Draper then. Oh and once the tenor solo comes in it’s obvious it’s Coltrane. That tuba solo was pretty rough. I guess there’s a reason it hasn’t been used much in jazz. The whole band just comes back to life when Coltrane’s solo comes in though. Piano solo wasn’t bad either.
>Track 6 What an unfortunate piano sound, and the choice to use electric bass with it is pretty odd too. Oh I guess it’s not electric bass. Just poorly amplified bass. I actually like the tune quite a bit and the piano playing is very nice. The bass solo wasn’t my favorite- It could be Richard Davis. It’s sort of a-melodic in that way that he usually solos. But I don’t really have a good guess as to the pianist. I would have enjoyed it a lot more with a better recording.
Connor Green
>Track 7 And here’s the inevitable organ track. Lester Leaps In. The first tenor soloist wasn’t great. He was doing a bunch of the cheesy jump jazz type stuff. The second tenor player is better. He’s doing some hipper rhythmic and melodic stuff. I especially like that quarter note triplet riff he gets into near the end of his solo. So now another tenor solo. This must be one of those tenor conclave type albums. A fourth tenor too I think? I like his solo fairly well too, it’s different than the others. Well the trading is the best bart here. I think they should have just done trading for the whole tune, first trade choruses, then trade fours, then two’s then just all go nuts. I’m not even going to attempt to guess these four tenor players though.
>Track 8 I’ve been listening to a lot of Booker Ervin lately and this tenor player sounds quite a bit like him. I like the tune quite a bit. There’s something just a little bit twisted in the way the horns are harmonized. The tenor solo is very good. It’s a pretty big band though. Ooh this trumpet solo is very nice too. It reminds me a little bit of Woody Shaw. Very bright tone and nice use of space. This seems very familiar to me and it’s killing me that I don’t know what it is.
>Track 9 Pretty laid back sound here and it’s got to be the trumpet player’s album… Could be Donald Byrd I guess, though I can’t think of any records he did as just a quartet. Might just be one track from a quintet album though. Overall it’s good playing but not really all that memorable.
>Track 10 Caravan with flute. Kind of an interesting arrangement. Hm. Well I’d say the piano playing is the most interesting thing here. The solos would all be kind of dull without the excellent piano comping. Maybe I’ll come back to this later and figure out what this could be.
David Martin
>some final thoughts Well I’ve been listening to and browsing through the Prestige catalogue a lot since the last Prestige theme and I expected to have some confident guesses at least for most of these tracks but I’m pretty in the dark on them. Maybe I’ll give some of them another listen tonight and see what I think since I was pretty unfocused on my first listen.
Jack Myers
9: Some classy trumpet playing. This is nice, but just doesn't feel particularly interesting. I don't have too much to say about this - very mediocre.
10: Now this has to be Caravan! It is!
I don't think I've heard this version before. Herbie Mann on flute? Doesn't feel cheesy enough to be a Mann-thing, though. Yusef Lateef maybe? He has recorded for Prestige.
Yeah, it was Caravan alright. Caravan with a drum solo, no less. Maybe not the most memorable rendition.
Nolan Cook
>1 so is the instrument making that the tambura here as well? Ah I bet it's from Pat Martino's "Baiyina" then. Never actually listened to it but I know of the album.
>3 Oliver Nelson has multiple Prestige recordings I thought of him too. I know he did some stuff with big bands later in the 70's but I'm not really sure if he ever did any on Prestige or not.
>4 I feel like the vibes playing is more Bobby Hutcherson than Milt Jackson. Dave Pike and Walt Dickerson both came to mind for me on this one but I've heard most of their stuff from the 60's and I think both of them recorded mostly with pianists rather than saxophonists.
>6 Could this be Richard Davis on bass? I got that impression too
>8 The trumpet solo really reminds me of some Miles Davis thing, but in general this sounds like a too recent of a thing to be any Prestige Miles album. Or does it rather remind me of Coltrane's track Impressions? The space and repetition of it reminded me a bit of Miles' solo on So What but the tone is pretty far removed from Miles'. Could be Carmell Jones maybe... I hadn't thought of him.
