/BLINDFOLD TEST/ Anniversary Edition

>Track 1
Ah so we’re starting out with something modern then. It’s Wayne Shorter and the tune is Orbits. The interplay is what makes this one. Plus they keep coming back to that melody. It’s so simple but every time they come back to it it’s played in a slightly new way. The drumming is a bit over the top. I usually like Brian Blade but I wonder what a drummer like Antonio Sanchez or Eric Harland would do in a group like this. As usual Danilo Perez’s playing here is fantastic. This is one of those melodies that I’ll be whistling the rest of the week.

>Track 2
Love the melody. Sounds like Tyner on piano. I like the alto solo a lot. James Spaulding maybe. Oh and this is Woody Shaw on trumpet. His technique is wild. I think definitely at the same level as Freddie Hubbard but he uses it in different ways. Alex Sipiagin says Shaw is his biggest influence and you can really hear it in a solo like this how he just casually throws in these crazy runs that are out of time but the rhythm section just goes with it and it works. So I think this is Jackie McLean from Demon Dance…in the piano solo you can tell the pianist is definitely not Tyner. I forget who plays on this though. Could be maybe Harold Mabern or Kenny Barron.

>Track 3
Another nice modal melody. Such nice space in the trumpet solo. Definitely influenced by Miles Davis. And I love the drumming behind the trumpet solo. I’d say it’s Donald Byrd. The tenor player sounds like Joe Henderson but at the same time he doesn’t really. I’m not sure who he is. I love the composed interlude they do in the middle. That’s the kind of thing that sets really good hard bop/modal jazz like this apart from the regular stuff. During the solos I was thinking the pianist was Tyner but in the piano solo I’d say it’s definitely not. Probably Herbie. This is a great track. I guess it’s probably from a Donald Byrd record.

>Track 4
Oh this is from the Golden Circle recordings with the Ornette Coleman trio. I like Coleman’s tone a lot here for this kind of a tune, but I’d like to see him play with more shape to his melodies. Although he plays some nice melodic stuff there’s no real sense of shape to a lot of it. The bass solo suffers from the same problem. This is almost there but it’s just not up to the same level as what a lot of other players were doing at the time.

>Track 5
Pretty sure this is a Lee Morgan thing. It definitely sounds like Morgan in the trumpet solo. The tenor solo was pretty nice but a bit short. I like the piano solo too. It starts out very simply and kind of traditional hard boppy but it goes in a little bit different direction by the end. It’s a nice hard bop track. I’m not sure what it is though.

>Track 6
This can only be Paul Chambers. His playing is very good but it’s such a strange tone from the bass. It’s really picking up a lot of the overtones. I think this would have been much better as a pizzicato solo. I think it’s Horace Silver on piano. The piano solo was my favorite part.

>Track 7
Sonnymoon for Two. Classic. He keeps coming back to those two notes. And doing very simple blues licks but then he starts to add in more bebop type stuff too. And then flashes of more modern type phrases too. That one lick that he does at around 7:10 in the trading is fucking great. A while ago I put a version of Airegin on a blindfold playlist that was by Chris Potter with trio and you can tell it’s very influenced by this. This track is very good. Occasionally it starts to come close to being meandering but they always manage to change things up just in time.

>Track 8
Something modern again I see. I can’t say that the tune really does much for me. It sounds like a cover of a pop tune in 5. The synth guitar sound or whatever that is sort of gives everything a very dulled feeling. It sounds like Johnathan Kreisberg on the guitar solo. Until he gets into the bending stuff he’s doing. Also I don’t like the way this piano was recorded and it’s bugging me how closely he’s sticking to the written 5/4 rhythm part. Very boring. The sax solo is better. There’s a little more interplay going on and I think he’s doing some interesting things. Overall I think this suffers some from overproduction and a boring pianist. Also the tune wasn’t really great to begin with.

>Track 9
This is from Unit Structures. I always wonder what exactly these sessions were like. You can hear bits emerging where they are playing together that must have been notated somehow and some of the themes get repeated and have some sort of structure. The liner notes are sort of a nonsense festival and don’t really shed much light on how this was actually recorded. I suppose that fits the music pretty well though. This is one that you can listen to over and over and still get new and interesting stuff from the music. I have to be in the right mood for it though.

>Track 10
Pretty basic hard bop. Sounds pretty uninspired really. Could be someone like Stanley Turrentine or Ike Quebec. Not much else to say about it really.

I'll give this a listen in a little bit

Won't be able to contribute before tomorrow - catching two gigs tonight, one experimental with musicians playing self-built instruments and later Verneri Pohjola playing Miles Davis as a special one-off thing coinciding with the local film festival screening Miles Ahead

>Definitely influenced by Miles Davis
Yeah I heard that too! I guess Donald Byrd makes sense.

Thanks user, I'm considering buying a proper set of mics to record, but my piano isn't anything special, just a normal Yamaha upright so I'm not sure what results I would get.

I'm probably playing for a short 20 minute set in college, and I have never improvised for more than 10 minutes so this is kind of a practice for me.

Lastly, any jazz pianists that I should listen to? I picked up jazz because I was bored 4 months ago, but I started with the guitar and listened to people like Pat Martino, Joe Pass, Wes Montgomery and Pat Methany. I don't know much about piano players, but I do like James Ridl, his work with Pat Martino on Mission Accomplished was great.

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i want to be like you
i listen to jazz but i don't think i can distinguish one player from another that easy

Well I'm not very good at it. But it's just fun to take guesses and you get better the more you do it.

Sounds pretty good really. I like the reharm of Autumn Leaves. The only advice I would say is just to simplify and always focus on melody.

If you want pianists to listen to you should listen to the solo recordings of Monk, Bill Evans, Hank Jones, and Fred Hersch.

>Track 1
Ominous. Now the sax has locked into this groove I think I know the tune, but not this version. In fact is it just the middle bit of a Wayne Shorter composition or something? One from Miles Smiles? I've never heard trading done in a free context like this, it's great. Sax and piano are all over each other in terms of responsiveness. I don't recognise the sax player, and the piano is too restrained and tied to the piece and the sax (not a bad thing) to get a handle on his personality. But this does sound really like the sort of thing Joe Chambers would be in on so I'm gonna guess it's him on the drums.

They played a bit more of the melody near the end and I think it might be Gingerbread Boy? Okay, I checked and it's Orbits - close enough.

>Track 2
These drums sound rustly and that bassline is cool. Ugh, this must be an album RVG never got round to remastering? Sounds so tinny. So I think this might actually be Wayne Shorter, but not one of the albums I know. I could see this trumpet player being Freddie Hubbard too. Piano player sounds a bit like McCoy Tyner with some of the high runs, but there's more going on overall than I'd usually expect from him. Those low pedal notes are a signature of his too though.

I looked up Wayne Shorter albums and this track is almost exactly the same length as one on Night Dreamer, so I was certain it was from that (which would make it Shorter, Lee Morgan and Tyner - sounds believable to me), but I checked it out and it's not.

And now, listening to it a second time, it doesn't sound like Shorter any more anyway...

>Track 3
Right, no more cheating. This sounds like a very typical Blue Note session of a certain era to me. The way the pianist fills in through the trumpet solo gives it extra depth, and the solo itself is sweet too - very simple melodic lines stated really confidently. I kind of want to say it's Freddie Hubbard, but I think there might not have been enough pyrotechnics for him. Think I'll kick myself when you reveal the sax player too. Sounds very Trane influenced, but it can't be Wayne Shorter again can it? VERY Trane influenced, there were a couple of downward runs just before the five minute mark where I swear he was about to go into the So What riff. Pianist was doing more of what made the trumpet solo great, really clear bold lines.

Really am stumped by that one, sounds so familiar but I can't work out exactly why, unless you're tricking us and putting loads of the same musicians as the last track.

>Track 4
I think this might be from Live at the Golden Circle. Volume 1, because that's the one I listened to last week and I remember the bass switching to arco during the intro because it makes a really nice sound combined with Ornette's wailing, and it's a nice prelude to the track where Ornette plays violin on Vol. 2. I can just imagine him and the bassist staring intently at each other's playing whilst they carefully pick out just the right notes for this piece, it's wonderful.

The bit where Ornette hits a couple of really low notes and the bass solo picks up on that with some really low bowed notes. Fucking perfect.

Right so it's Morning Song, and it's not from Vol. 1, and I imagined it when I thought I recognised it from last week. Probably the best track on Vol. 2 though.

>Track 5
Moving closer to soul jazz territory here. Sounds like it could be Horace Silver - I read somewhere that he was aiming for old big band style chord stabs with his comping, and I can hear that here. Drums are a bit too driving throughout this, gets into your head a bit. Sax solo started off not particularly inspiring but by the end he got pretty great. Not sure this is Horace Silver now he's soloing, nowhere near as distinctive as him. I like the triplet thing the horns play a couple of times whilst they trade with the bass.

>Track 6
This must be from a Paul Chambers album? Maybe Whims of Chambers - I've not heard that one. Yeah, surely no one else plays bowed solos that are this boppy? The piano solo isn't the sort I'd normally like, but I quite enjoyed it. I like how he held back with his left hand to keep the sound as thin as it had been for the bass solo, gives the piece more unity.

>Track 7
This is from the Village Vanguard album by Sonny Rollins, and I think it's the track called Sonnymoon for Two. This is one of my favourites actually - quite a simple set of chords (is it a blues?) and plenty of room for him to go crazy. Reminds me a bit of his tune Ee-Ah (from Tour de Force) in that the solo is all built around a motif of a couple of notes that he keeps drawing it back to, and the fact that he keeps finding new ways to interpret those two notes is fucking amazing. The piece could probably do without the trading he does with the bass and drums near the end, but on the other hand I love how rough and ready his trading with Elvin Jones is. For something recorded in the 50's theres even quite a bit of squealing from his sax. Wilbur Ware has a couple of nice solos on the album (especially on Softly) but these aren't his best.

>Track 8
This must be from way after the "classic" Blue Note period. This sort of fusion all sounds the same to me - no variation in the rhythm and the guitar solo is dull and soulless. Is this a new guitarist at around 3:20? It's better than the first part - he's taking more risks with his tone and rhythm which makes it more interesting. After about a minute it gets boring again though, just effects-laden for the sake of it and devoid of character. I think I see what the sax is going for now but it's missed the mark by a mile. I'm about ready to give up on this piece, and even though the sax solo improves towards the end it's just too late.

>Track 9
I think I recognise this. It's not the long track off Unit Strctures is it? I've not listened to that much... I don't even know where you'd begin to understand or describe a piece like this, but this track seems to have less going on at once than I remember from the rest of the album, allowing some nice interplay between Taylor and the individual horns.

>Track 10
I saw Iron Maiden once years ago, and after they finished playing, the first song on the sound system was Always Look on the Bright Side of Life. That's sort of the effect that this track has coming after the last one.

Tenor player seems very influenced by Bird - not sure who played in that style on Blue Note, though I'm sure there were plenty. He's also got some strong bluesy licks in there. Overall that was a really nice solo. Piano had less to sell, but it was never boring. Nothing stand out or unique about this piece, but the tenor was good enough that I'll consider seeking it out.

Happy birthday /blindfold/! Gonna read through the thread when I get home. Out at a jam sesh with my college's jazz society but I'll be posting later tonight and tomorrow.

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>It sounds like Miles Davis but I don’t think he played on any Blue note releases that would sound like this
The sax player actually played with Miles a bit a year or two before this was released. This sort of player suits him well.
>Donald Byrd or Hank Mobley comes to mind for this
Interesting guess...
>The piano solo was probably my favorite. The other solos were good but something about the piano solo was just more exciting and easy to follow.
You (and everyone else) knows this guy. This is like an early sideman gig for a really big player which is part of what drew me to getting it. He's not quite found his own voice yet but you can hear so much potential.
>Bowed bass solos usually aren’t a good sign but this is not bad.
I'm happy to say it's the best bowed solo I've ever heard. This is the sort of thing I pray to on Sundays. I'm a little bit biased as a bassist but I think the bass solo is sort of an underappreciated art. There's a lot of people who don't put enough thought into them but they can be as good as any other instrument in the right hands and this is exemplary of that.
>This one is coming across kind of smooth for my tastes
I'm surprised this is so overwhelmingly the sentiment on this one. The leader here is a fantastic musician but he does stuff like this every so often that feel like they come from the Pat Metheny school of jazz composition. I like the arrangement but man, I'll never understand how great players get sucked into playing smooth jazz.
> I’m embarrassed that I haven’t listened to this yet and I probably will sometime this week.
I'm happy at least one person is just getting turned onto this. I thought it might have been a little too big an album to include but it's damn near as good as free ever gets.

>the Pat Metheny school of jazz
Yeah Pat Metheny came to mind on that one. A lot of his stuff is hit or miss for me too.

>The interplay is what makes this one
Agreed. I'm gonna be seeing him live this November I think and I am so hyped. Never seen a jazz player as big as him or who I like as much as him before. This album is a real favourite of mine. So cool to see him still putting out great music in his 80s.
> I’m not sure who he is.
You deffinitely know him but he's a little less known for this sort of modal sound. I much prefer him when he's like this though.
>but I’d like to see him play with more shape to his melodies
That's kind of the appeal of Coleman though isn't it? Making up cool sounding melodies out of very off the wall note choices. That's why I love this in particular. It's such a weird sounding ballad but really beautiful for it to my ears.
>but it’s such a strange tone from the bass.
Yeah, I wish I knew how he got it to sound like that. It works so well with the boppy melody.
>I think this would have been much better as a pizzicato solo.
The control he gets with volume and the type of phrasing that arises with bowed playing is a big part of what I think makes this so lyrical. I've heard Paul do better pizzicato but I don't think you could have played this same solo pizzicato and gotten as nice an effect.
>but they always manage to change things up just in time.
It's pretty cray how in sync the bands are on these sessions. In a long and remarkable career, this album is a highlight.
>You can hear bits emerging where they are playing together that must have been notated somehow and some of the themes get repeated and have some sort of structure.
I agree that there's probably a few of the ideas that were worked out in advance. I like to think a lot of the stuff that sounds like it could be rehearsed is just down to Taylor and co.'s esp.

Perceptive as always though. A lot of your guesses for tunes you didn't know are on the mark.

>but there's more going on overall than I'd usually expect from him
Man, y'all can be so mean to Tyner! He's not the most technically accomplished pianist of all time but he's damn emotive which is why Coltrane kept him on at the height of his powers.This isn't him here though.
>Freddie Hubbard, but I think there might not have been enough pyrotechnics for him
Nah, not bright enough either. Hubbard sometimes plays hard bop a little like this but as you said it lacks the pyrotechnics
>Think I'll kick myself when you reveal the sax player too. Sounds very Trane influenced, but it can't be Wayne Shorter again can it?
Man, none of y'all are getting this guy. I can almost guarantee everyone knows him but he's so underrated as modal/post-bop player that nobody is twigging it.
>I can just imagine him and the bassist staring intently at each other's playing whilst they carefully pick out just the right notes for this piece, it's wonderful.
There's a lot of that lovely intimacy on these sessions when Coleman isn't trying to turn violins and trumpets into "sonic textures".
>Probably the best track on Vol. 2 though.
Took some soul searching for me to pick this one so I'm happy to hear you think so! There's more than a few class performances across those two albums.
>Tour de Force
Love this album so much. B.Quick and B.Swift are two of the most batshit insane tracks I've ever heard. I'm convinced Max and Sonny aren't human.
>I don't even know where you'd begin to understand or describe a piece like this
Yeah, it was a bit optimistic of me to expect people to tackle this behemoth.
>That's sort of the effect that this track has coming after the last one.
Hey! Someone got the joke. I was thinking of Zappa's "America Drinks and Goes Home" though. I could have put some Blakey tune on here or something to include more hard bop but I thought acknowledging some of the cheese of the blue note catalog was a nice way to finish.

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So I'm guessing that the saxophonist on track 3 is Hank Mobley then? From No Room for Squares maybe?

Got the sidemen you guessed right too. He had some pretty big names on that record. Andrew hill and Lee Morgan play on a few of the other songs too and there's not a bum track on the album.

Happy anniversary JazzGen. I listen to Jazz everyday but I have no desire to discuss it here with ya'll but I appreciate what you do. GG on the previous threads and GL on all the ones to come.

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Actually, while we're a year on, what's your guy's favourite discoveries through /blindfold/?
My top three are probs:
Stan Getz - Focus
Zhenya Strigalev's Smiling Organizm - Robin Goodie
Tomasz Stanko - Music for K

I'll have to think about that. One that comes to mind is that album of Bob Brookmeyer playing piano because I just listened to the whole album finally after jtg put it on 2 different playlists.

Hi jtg. How do you decide what albums to review on RYM? Do you take requests?

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Last bump before bed. Gonna post reveals after Jazzpossu gets a chance to post tomorrow. Hopefully the thread will survive till then.

>How do you decide what albums to review on RYM?
I just review whatever I happen to be listening to that I have an opinion about.

>Do you take requests?
Like you give me an album to review? I guess I hadn't thought about it. What do you have in mind?

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That's difficult because a lot of the time I end up not following up on a lot of the ones I want to check out. Too much else to listen to.

>Monk, Bill Evans, Hank Jones, and Fred Hersch.

Thanks for the rec, I will get to listening in a while.

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Will be listening to in a while

listening now!
also congrats on the year anniversary

1. This is from without a net, second time it shows up in a blindfold. I always enjoy jazz with some freedom in it that also keeps returning to a nice groove. Somebody might hate me for this but I prefer this side of Wayne to that of his early output.
2. Slightly sounds like a Miles' second quintet record (probably not, I haven't heard them enough) but stronger. I guess it could be Hubbard on the trumpet. The whole band's pretty good, would like to hear more of this.
3. And in here the trumpet does sound like Miles to me, but I don't think he has any blue note records. Guess it could be Herbie on keys with somebody who's trying to sound like Miles? The saxophone playing is kinda funky, I like it.
4. Good stuff. Hard to figure out where the music is going but I think it almost always sounds pretty. Bowed bass is my thing too.
5. Blue note must have put a lot of stuff like this, I really don't know who could be playing in here. It's an enjoyable track, but nothing that really amazes me.

cool picks so far

Happy anniversary everyone!

1: Sounds like a contemporary release. Blue Note flirts rather freely with other genres these days, but this seems firmly rooted in jazz. Joe Lovano or Ravi Coltrane?

This is pretty good - good intensity.

Oh, this was a live recording. I think this is from Wayne Shorter's Without a Net from a couple of years ago, actually. I didn't like it all that much when it came out, but I probably should revisit it.

2: Then to the golden age of the 60's. Maybe Tony Williams on drums? Joe Henderson or Jackie McLean on sax maybe? Hubbard on trumpet?

I like the drumming on this quite a bit - a nice slice of 60's post-bop.

3: This sounds really familiar, but in that way where I'm not sure if I've heard this particular track before but the playing style just sounds familiar.

Is *this* some Freddie Hubbard thing then? The trumpet solo seems to have a Miles influence, so is this rather Donald Byrd then? I'm more familiar with his electric/fusion -stuff, though. Could maybe bee Lee Morgan - he mad a lot of records for Blue Note.

Certainly another solid slice of great mid-60's Blue Note. Annoying how familiar it sounded, but couldn't think of who it was.

4: Ornette, I think.

Taking it very slow and easy here - too slow for my taste. It is surely Ornette, some very characteristic playing by him. This is from that At the Golden Circle -album, I guess. Definitely something I feel works better when you're there live than on a recording.

Those bowed bass parts are kind of interesting in how they sound like some rudimentary exercises.

5: With all the post-bop this week, I was surprised by this settling on to a blues/soul -style groove after that first part with the horns.

This certainly brings Lee Morgan to mind.

In the solo the trumpeter has nice confidence - kind of similar to some of Clark Terry's stuff, but I don't know if played on any Blue Note albums. Reminds me of some things that Duke Pearson plays piano on.

6: As it happens, I was just listening to this album this week after I saw it posted somewhere - maybe here on Cred Forums. This is from Paul Chambers' Whims of Chambers from the mid-50's. Horace Silver and Philly Joe Jones on piano and drums, I think.

If I didn't know that, I'd guess this is someone a bit more old school than Chambers - sounds a lot like a Major Holley bass solo to me (missing the unisono singing, though). Maybe it's because this odd, gnarly bass sound sounds a bit like Holley's hoary singing.

Fun track.

7: Classic Sonny Rollins. This is great playing for me - really gets me in to the groove.

Great track - it might be a simple 12-bar blues, but Rollins keeps it interesting and Elvin is great on drums, too. Feels much shorter than the almost 9 minutes, too. I wish I'd been there to hear this live.

8: Hmh. Relatively contemporary guitar jazz. Like a Pat Metheny track from his more sentimental end. There is a 90's Metheny/Scofield -album that I think is a Blue Note release that sounds not unlike this.

Seems like the guitarist changes to someone more blues-oriented in the solo. Is this from that album maybe?

I enjoy some music like this, but this track is lacking that something. I do like how it built towards the end, though. Things got a lot better after the sax solo began.

9: First I thought this was going to be some Art Ensemble of Chicago type 70's tribal freak out, but when the piano comes in I remember this from Cecil Taylor's Unit Structures. I rarely make it to this track when I make an effort to listen to that album - it's a pretty exhausing album.

I like the bass clarinet solo - buzzes like an angry bee. While this track gets a while to get going, it has pretty good momentum once we get to the solos.

I haven't actually noticed before that you can actually recognize Eddie Gale's trumpet playing here compared to his own Blue Note albums Ghetto Music and Black Rhythm Happening - before I'd always thought it was interesting that the guy who did those albums had played on Unit Structures before because they felt so different to me, but now I kind of realized that they are closer stylistically than I thought.

This music certainly takes some conscious effort to get through a track, but I did enjoy listening to this track this week.

10: A playful ending track - some good natured bluesy playing. I like some of the sax players phrasing, but he could afford to be a lot grittier here. Get Art Blakey on drums and put some grit into that sax and this could be great, now it's a little too precious.

No particular guesses to who these Budget Jazz Messengers are.

6. Is this bowed bass too? If so I guess what I said in track 4 about bowed bass being my thing is not always true. It has a weird sound I'd say. I've been listening to some Stephane Grappelli lately, and the way the bassist plays is somewhat similar to his, but has a different effect. I guess I'd have preferred a violin.
7. Cool track. The saxophonist playing is very engaging, and the drummer gives him nice support. Pretty cool to listen to.
8. Not sure about this. Sounds like they're trying to do lots of stuff but none of it too well. I don't like the execution but I get the feeling I don't like the ideas anyway. I suppose this is a more recent release, if not some fusion record from the 70s.
9. Unit Structures! Third track, maybe I should've expected it when I looked at a 17 minute track on the playlist. This is kind of music I find very hard to describe, I'm not sure what's in the musicians' minds when they play this, but the music amazes me.
10. This is more traditional bop that I appreciate but don't really love.

how do you guys make your tracks anonymous? you just delete the title?

>This is from without a net, second time it shows up in a blindfold
Has it? I don't remember it. I may have been missing that week.
> It has a weird sound I'd say.
Yeah, jtg mentioned that earlier too. I figure he must be playing with some unusual equipment cause I'm not sure how else you'd get that tone out of a double bass.
Yep. Any sort of album info, artist name, etc. is taken off too.
Foobar has a nice little function that gets rid of all the metadata automatically that I love. Sometimes if it's a live album where there's an announcement of who the players are or something else that gives it away can be a problem but removing that sort of thing isn't very tricky.
Some people actually pitch shift tracks too to stop audio recognition software.

>but I probably should revisit it.
You should, even if just for the Pegasus suite. It's breathtaking.
>I was just listening to this album this week after I saw it posted somewhere - maybe here on Cred Forums
Huh, wasn't me. I've been avoiding talking about albums I've been considering for a while.
>gnarly bass sound
That's the word I've been looking for! I knew there was a good way to describe that odd timbre but I kept thinking stuff like "crunchy" which didn't really feel right. If you made a bass out of an Ent, it'd sound like this.
>While this track gets a while to get going, it has pretty good momentum once we get to the solos.
I love the slow intro. Especially with how fucked the bass gets it's so ominous, I always get this feeling of something coming like booming footsteps in the distance.
>Ghetto Music and Black Rhythm Happening
I'm not familiar with them, what are they like?
>Get Art Blakey on drums
I did consider it and there were a couple of albums I had in mind. I kinda wanted something a little bit corny though. Wonderful as the best of blue note is, there are so many sub-par blowing sessions like this. I liked this one as a closer to the playlist in particular because it's a little silly and to me had this sort of "last calls for drinks, everybody drive safely" feel to it.

>Has it? I don't remember it. I may have been missing that week.
I wasn't completely sure so I looked in the archive, it was Bebob's wildcard theme, where he picked myrrh. Didn't picture Wayne doing that before the reveal so I listened to it after. Glad I listened to it, it's pretty good.

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Gonna post reveals soon unless or anyone else is planning on posting.

>Ghetto Music and Black Rhythm Happening

They are more in the spiritual jazz side of avant-garde, they sound much more like independent 70's releases from labels like Strata-East or Black Jazz than Blue Note - apparently Blue Note founder Francis Wolff personally financed the recording and release of Ghetto Music

this certainly explains why it sounded so damn familiar, I've heard No Room for Squares many times

>Track one
Wayne Shorter – Orbits
Without a Net (2013)
Bass – John Patitucci
Drums – Brian Blade
Piano – Danilo Perez
Soprano Saxophone – Wayne Shorter
I’m sure a few of ye have heard this one, I remember a lot of buzz around it when it came out and it’s well deserved. This version of the Miles Davis tune is a nice sampler of the sort of music Wayne was playing from when this was compiled. The highlight of the album is definitely Pegasus though, a 20 minute masterpiece with horn/wind arrangements and some pretty incredible group interaction. It’s well worth getting the album just for that but it wasn’t included here for time purposes.

>track two
Jackie McLean – Demon Dance
Demon Dance (1970)
Jackie McLean - alto saxophone
Woody Shaw - trumpet
LaMont Johnson - piano
Scott Holt - bass
Jack DeJohnette – drums
Jackie McLean leads an allstar band near the top of their game on this release. This was recorded around a time when McLean was making music following the 60s free jazz movement and in that sense it’s a fairly conservative date for him but I always preferred his post-bop stuff and Demon Dance is one of his best.

>track three
Hank Mobley – Up a Step
No Room for Squares (1964)
Hank Mobley – tenor saxophone
Donald Byrd – trumpet
Herbie Hancock – piano
Butch Warren – bass
Philly Joe Jones – drums

Mobley can be a pretty adventurous player when he wants to be. In essence this is still a hard-bop album and not the most daring thing he’s ever done but there’s a nice post-bop/modal flavour that is helped along by some of the best players of the time. It’s bluesy music but the band is so loose with the harmony of the tunes, it doesn’t feel like it at times.

>track four
Ornette Coleman – Morning Song
Live at the Golden Circle Stockholm Vol. 2 (1965)
Ornette Coleman — alto saxophone
David Izenzon — double bass
Charles Moffett — drums

Coleman didn’t record much for Blue note but this live album he did with them has some great performances with Coleman even picking up violin and trumpet for a few tracks. Those are interesting and I considered putting one where he’s not on sax on here but I think this is really cool because it sees Coleman’s very unusual approach to melody and timbre in the context of a ballad. His playing is very sentimental and even mournful at times but it’s coloured by his surrealist approach. People give Coleman a lot of credit as an innovator but tracks like this show that he’s someone who greatly values the feel of his playing. The bowed bass solo by Izenzon is also really lovely, it’s almost got a classical feel to it at times.

>track five
Blue Mitchel – The Thing to Do
The Thing to do (1964)
Blue Mitchell - trumpet
Junior Cook - tenor saxophone
Chick Corea - piano
Gene Taylor - bass
Al Foster - drums

I hadn’t heard of Blue Mitchell before a month or two ago but this album has been one I’ve been listening to a lot lately. Well played hard bop featuring a young Chick Corea. He hasn’t quite found his voice yet but I love his very melodic comping and the band swings pretty hard. This album also features an early composition by Chick which I’d say any of his fans here would appreciate. It’s a good track but this one is a bit more of an earworm. Had it stuck in my head for ages.

>track six
Paul Chambers – Nita
Whims of Chambers (1956)
Paul Chambers - bass
Donald Byrd - trumpet
John Coltrane - tenor saxophone
Kenny Burrell - guitar
Horace Silver - piano
Philly Joe Jones – drums

I really love that bowed bass solo. Might be the best bowed jazz solo I’ve ever heard. Originally this caught my attention because of the unusual tone of the bass but beyond that quite striking surface characteristic, Paul delivers some of the most lyrical and impassioned solos of his career and for somebody who’s much more well known as a sideman, he functions as an excellent session leader here with good song choices and some cool arrangements.

>track seven
Sonny Rollins – Sonnymoon for two
A Night at the Village Vanguard (1958)
Sonny Rollins — tenor saxophone
Wilbur Ware — double bass
Elvin Jones — drums

Some of the best jazz music of all time has been recorded on some very questionable equipment and though the sound quality isn’t great, this collection of two chordless trios playing the vanguard is consistently inspired and creative. I spent a while trying to decide what to include from these but I decided on this one because I love how much Sonny gets out of such simple themes. Reminds me of the sort of motivic playing Coltrane specialised in.

>track eight
Brian Blade – Crooked Creek
Brian Blade – Acoustic Guitar, Drums
Melvin Butler – Tenor and Soprano, Saxophone
Jon Cowherd –Piano, Pump Organ, Fender Rhodes
Dave Easley – Pedal Steel
Daniel Lanois – Acoustic Guitar, Guitar, Pedal Steel
Kurt Rosenwinkel – Acoustic and Electric Guitar
Christopher Thomas – Bass
Myron Walden – Bass Clarinet, Alto Saxophone

Brian Blade is one of the best drummers in the world at the moment. This track is a bit more of a showcase of how players like Blade can sometimes overthink compositions. It sounds almost like a prog rock piece with effects drenching the guitars and an overwrought arrangement that make the soloing feel like filler. There are better tracks on this album and much better tracks in Blade’s discog but I thought a track like this might inspire a nice critical discussion.

>track nine
Cecil Taylor – Unit Structure/As of Now/Section
Unit Structures (1966)
Eddie Gale – trumpet
Jimmy Lyons – alto sax
Ken McIntyre – alto sax, oboe, bass clarinet
Cecil Taylor – piano, bells
Henry Grimes – bass
Alan Silva – bass
Andrew Cyrille – drums

Unit Structures one of those albums that nearly every jazz fan has heard but it’s also one I think that’s worth listening to a few times. There’s a hell of a lot going on here and giving this album your full attention is exhausting work. This is one of the greatest jazz albums of all time though and hearing these incredible performances with an open mind is one of the most rewarding experiences I’ve ever had listening to music.

>Track Ten
Johnny Griffin – The Congregation
The Congregation (1958)
Johnny Griffin - tenor saxophone
Sonny Clark - piano
Paul Chambers - bass
Kenny Dennis - drums

And to finish, a blues. I have heard Griffin play much better than this and it might be a bit mean of me to cherry pick an uninspired performance but I think it’s worth acknowledging how corny a lot of blue note releases can be. Most of the tracks on this album are blues in the same key and with a lot of repeated ideas but I was recommended it by a friend under the pretense that it was a lost hard-bop masterpiece. This isn’t an unusual thing for this label and I find it odd that a label that’s put out so much high quality material wasted so much session time recording bland sound-alikes. I imagine it’s a financially viable thing to do but man does this stuff not hold up all that well.
The Andy Warhol cover is pretty cool though.

Welp, that's everything see y'all next week!

I've never heard Johnny Griffin before. I'll take your word for it that this isn't a great album, but I'll be looking up others by him...

Will have to seek out Demon Dance and No Room for Squares at some point too...

Thanks for making the playlist this week. It was a good one.

Here's the link for next week

www5.zippyshare.com/v/dAGv7Qja/file.html

The theme is The Music of Joe Henderson by jtg

If you want my recommendation, I much prefer (the ironically titled) A Blownin' Session. The line up is insane,:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Blowin'_Session
I don't know how he got all these people, literally all the sidemen are more famous than him.

Glad to! hopefully I'll get around to making another one in the near future.
I've got one or two in the works.

Oh. I'm pretty sure I just listened to this for the first time sometime within the past year. I didn't even think of it though.

Brian Blade is an amazing drummer but a lot of his releases as a leader are pretty meh. Myron Walden is great though.

Oh and just to clarify: a few of the tunes on this aren't actually composed by Henderson, they're just ones that are associated with him. Kind of like the Ellington week.

one last bump