Music for Summer
by NIH modern living editor Jason Capodimonte.For the last few weeks we've been recommending summer reading. Since you can now carry music around with you as easily as you can carry books, recommendations for summer listening seemed appropriate, too. One of the things I like about summer is you can listen to the entire choir of King's College, Cambridge, backed up by the Cambridge University Musical Society, wailing away on "Spem in Alium" (see below) while you do productive summer things like sit in the park, without having to engage the 40 members of these two organizations required to perform this mind-boggling piece to come and perform it for you in the park. Here are some pieces YOU can play to create your own summer fun!
Oscar Peterson Trio + One is one of the coolest things you're ever going to run across. The 1964 Trio with Ray Brown on bass and Ed Thigpen on drums is joined by the great Clark Terry on trumpet and flugelhorn. Mr. Terry's playing is brilliant in all senses of the word. Listen for his trademark alternation of phrases on trumpet and flugelhorn. The selection of material is catholic, ranging from the earnest "Brotherhood of Man" to the bluesy "I Want a Little Girl". Also included are three Peterson compositions and two Terry ones. Mr. Terry's contributions are fine examples of his scat singing, which is modelled on the incoherent articulation of many old blues artists. They are both witty and accomplished. Mr. Peterson as usual imaginatively interprets his material with his prodigious piano technique. Mr. Brown and Mr. Thigpen aren't just sitting around and waiting for their session fees, either. Current versions of this album have corrected the original liner notes, which were hysterical. The original notes seem to have been dictated by Mr. Peterson and then transcribed by someone who didn't know a lot about either transcription or music. For example, Mr. Peterson's discussion of Gieseking was transcribed as about someone named Geza King. [Available on EmArcy 818 840-2]
Alto saxophonist Jackie McLean is now a highly regarded and respectable figure in jazz and in music education. In 1966, however, he was an ex-convict who had long ago lost his New York City cabaret licence because he was a junkie. He made his living by recording and by travelling around performing for his many ardent admirers. The performance recorded in Dr. Jackle was for a jazz society in Baltimore in 1966, during what is known as Mr. McLean's acid period. The acid period is so called not because Mr. McLean was taking LSD but because in the three years following his one prison term in 1964 his recorded work was relentlessly intense. Some gentle souls perceived this intensity as acidic harshness. Although this album wasn't released until 1987 it has the characteristic relentless intensity. It also has some of the highest quality playing you'll ever hear on any jazz record.Mr. McLean is backed up by LaMont Johnson on piano, Billy Higgins on drums, and Scotty Holt on bass, none of whom is exactly a slouch, and all of whom were going all out on this record to blow everyone's tiny freaking little mind. For example, towards the end of the title piece the sax, piano, and drums stop entirely so Mr. Holt can take a solo which... has nothing whatever to do with the piece they're playing. And it works.
Everyone on this album is really good and trying really hard, not only to please a demanding audience but also to create a new type of music that people will feel compelled to listen to. They succeed. [SteepleChase SCCD-36005]
Back in 1965, the choir of King's College Cambridge, backed by the Cambridge University Musical Society, released its version of Thomas Tallis's 40-part motet "Spem in Alium" (a Top 40 hit back in 1575). The texture of the piece is mind-boggling, with the mix of voices manipulated in ways you've never heard before and are unlikely ever to hear again. And Tallis knew how to build a piece of music; at the end you feel as if he's grabbing you by the lapels and shaking you while he demands "Do you get it? Do you get it?" The King's College version is also probably the best recorded version of the piece (that is, the version which was recorded the best), or at least it was when it appeared on the vinyl album shown. These days it's available on Great Choral Classics from King's (London 289 452 949-2).
Bassist Dave Young has released three albums of duets with eminent pianists, and all three of them are well worth listening to. I chose volume 2 of Two By Two to display because it features the most beautiful version of "Lover Man" I've ever heard, performed by Mr. Young and Kenny Barron. This album also features Ellis Marsalis, Cyrus Chestnut, Oliver Jones, Barry Harris, and Renee Rosnes, who each perform two numbers.On the other albums you also get duets with Oscar Peterson, Cedar Walton, Tommy Flanagan, John Hicks, and Mulgrew Miller, along with additional pieces by the performers on this volume. Not a bad variety presentation, eh? [Justin Time JUST 76-2, JUST81-2, and JUST 91-2]
This album (usually known as Jazz at Massey Hall) is a jazz classic. Back in 1953 the New Jazz Society of Toronto engaged Mr. Charles Parker (alto saxophone), Mr. John "Dizzy" Gillespie (trumpet), Mr. Earl "Bud" Powell (pianoforte), Mr. Charles Mingus (bass), and Mr. Maxwell Roach (percussion) to present an evening of musical entertainment at Massey Hall. These gentlemen were to present an evening of bebop as a refreshing alternative to the swing music which was still commonly regarded as definitive jazz. Mr. Mingus had the notion of taping the concert.Imagine! Imagine a time when real jazz was played in Toronto! I gave up going to jazz performances in Toronto long ago because of the inability of the Toronto music community to furnish jazz drummers. The thump-thump-thump of the rock drummer works well in rock, but I wasn't there to hear rock. And then there was the time that just as Milt Jackson – Milt Jackson! – started his set, some yahoos at the back of the room started singing "Happy Birthday to You."
Anyway, in 1953 the New Jazz Society gave Toronto the opportunity to hear real, cutting-edge jazz, and Toronto of course failed to fill the house. But eventually Mr. Mingus's recording got issued.
The concert is stunning. Luckily, bop is nowhere near as strange to us moderns as it was to the ancients of 1953, so we can more easily appreciate the beauty and the bravura playing of this concert. For a long time I thought this album's version of "Salt Peanuts" should be honoured by being made the American national anthem.
The guys played all out, eh? And they were thinking all the time. As you will be when you listen to them. [Giants of Jazz CD 53036, also available on Fantasy]
As far as I can make out, world music is non-Western music played on Western instruments. Well, I could be wrong. Anyway, Putumayo World Music has issued a wide range of interesting selections of world music which I'm always running across outside record stores as well as in.My favourite among the Putumayo CDs I've heard is Mali to Memphis. The Memphis in the title is the one in Tennessee, not the one in Egypt. The idea is that the pentatonic scale used in the Bambara, Fulani, and Songhai music of Mali is similar to the blues scale, so let's play alternating cuts of Malian music and blues.
It's a concept, eh? Although – since even if there is some connection between the African music and the American, they were out of touch with each other for a couple of hundred years – the conclusions one can draw about the relationship between the two types of music by listening to them alternately are not exactly clear, the selection is still entertaining and interesting.
And where else can you get Boubacar Traoré's "Kar Kar Madison" and Muddy Waters' "My Home is in the Delta" on the same CD? [Putumayo PUTU 145-2]
The best live musical performance I've seen in my life was by Etta James and the second best was by Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson, and here, under the title Blues in the Night, are a couple of albums of them in live performance together. Can't lose.
Ms James (vocals) and the late Mr. Vinson (vocals and alto sax) were similar in refusing to pander to the lowest common denominator while at the same time refusing to consider any type of music beneath them. Mr. Vinson used to do things in concert like follow a straight-up twelve bar blues with "Straight No Chaser." Ms James of course can range from "Roll With Me, Henry" through "I'd Rather Go Blind" to "At Last," all the time interpreting the songs in the styles of Sarah Vaughan and Billy Holiday and other singers before blowing you away with her own interpretation. She is the best singer on the face of the earth, bar none, which is why the Three Tenors stay as far away from her as possible (really).
On these albums you get "Mr. Cleanhead" and "Kidney Stew" cheek by jowl with "At Last" and "Misty." They also provide a stunning version of "Only Women Bleed." Nothing musical is foreign to them. With Brother Jack McDuff on Hammond B-3 and Shuggie Otis on guitar. [Fantasy 9647-2 and 9655-2].
I had some reservations about including a collection of soppy love ballads among my recommendations, but only briefly. Soul Workshop, full of soppiness as it is, still features Jerry Butler's magnificent voice, his accomplished vocal technique, and his elegant taste. Who among us has not thought, as Mr. Butler sings "Woo-oo-oo" at the end of the original version of "Your Precious Love," that we are listening to one of the Great Moments in the History of Western Music?
This is a greatest hits album, and the recordings come from a time when the black and white music markets were much more distinct. Mr. Butler recorded "Moon River" for the black market while Andy Williams recorded it for the white. Mr. Williams probably sold more records, but for my money Mr. Butler did more with the song. He did much more. He did much, much, much, much, much, much more. But you don't have to believe me. You can listen to Mr. Butler's version yourself on Soul Workshop!
And Soul Workshop has two versions of "Your Precious Love." It has "I Stand Accused." It has "He Will Break Your Heart." It doesn't have "Isle of Sirens," but, you know, even I am not perfect. [Charly CD 54]
I've described Oscar Peterson Trio + One as the coolest thing you'll ever run across, and Mr. Peterson's Night Train is probably the funkiest. The Trio (again the lineup with Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen) plays Benny Moten, it plays Milt Jackson, it plays Hoagy Carmichael, it plays Duke Ellington, and it plays it all funky.
And they play "Honey Dripper." Mr. Peterson never forgets the blues, which to our mind is a Good Thing. It's when jazz musicians forget the blues that I start reacting to their music with opinions like "stale" and "academic."
The CD shown here includes half a dozen cuts not included in the original release, including versions of "Volare" and "This Could Be the Start of Something Big." As usual Mr. Peterson, Mr. Brown, and Mr. Thigpen manage through their consummate artistry to realize possibilities inherent in the pieces they play that no one else was aware of. [Verve 314 521 440-2]
And finally I recommend another CD by Jackie McLean, this one from a happier period in his life and marked by an exuberance you don't find on Dr. Jackle. He's playing with a quintet this time, with his son René on tenor and soprano sax as well as flute, Hotep Idris Galeta on piano, Nat Reeves on bass, and Carl Allen on drums. This CD was recorded 22 years after Dr. Jackle, and Mr. McLean still wasn't hiring no slouches.
This album exemplifies everything I find good about Mr. McLean's work, in particular a refusal to take it easy in the solos by playing prefab phrases. He's thinking all the time, and what he's thinking about is making the music interesting to the people who've paid to hear it. And the band is really hot. [Triloka 181-2]
Happy listening to you and yours.
Music for Summer © John FitzGerald, 2004
