October 2009

  • "Jelly Roll" Morton: A Transitional Jazz

    By cobwebsandstrange on 10/26/09 7:10pm
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    With so many of his song titles including the word ‘blues’ one would imagine nothing other than some fine, pre-war styled Americana from “Jelly Roll” Morton. That’s just not the case (and I assume you already knew that if you’re engaged in reading this.) It’s an interesting note to make, though, that Morton didn’t see a tremendous distance between the forms. And at the date of his most respected recordings – the latter part of the ‘20s – there really wasn’t a difference between jazz and blues.

    Concurrently to Morton’s work was a spate of citified singers using a blues scaffolding to work in what would eventually become vocal jazz. Ma Rainey and company even made use of the arrangements and compositions that Morton worked out – most notably “Black Bottom Stomp.”

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  • Elton Dean: Bands that Aren't the Soft Machine

    By cobwebsandstrange on 10/18/09 12:38pm
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    Having the Soft Machine legacy to live up to during most of one’s career is probably difficult. Elton Dean did well though. That yoke never brought him down. Instead, using some tenets of what the saxophonist worked out in the Soft Machine, Dean went on to a career as a date leader and sideman while maintaining a unique voice on his instrument.

    The two best (read most enjoyable and listenable) albums from the Soft Machine came after Daevid Allen left the group to found Gong. What followed - Third (1970) and Fourth (1971) released on CBS Records – was and adroit amalgam of jazz, psychedelic weirdness and aggressive rock stuffs. The band even toured with Hendrix: they were that good.

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  • Blue Mitchell - "The Thing To Do" (Video)

    By cobwebsandstrange on 10/18/09 10:20am
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    My copy of this is all jacked up, so I've taken to the innernets to listen to Blue...

  • Will Ezell: Piano Boogie and Blues

    By cobwebsandstrange on 10/13/09 7:36am
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    The career of a great many players is tied specifically to a label. Booker T and Stax or Coltrane and Impulse. Miles and Columbia. But before all of that, very frequently, musicians were contracted by labels and while not leading their own dates served as the back up band on a buncha sides.

    Will Ezell wasn’t the first pianist to function in this manner for Paramount Records, but he was one of ‘em and had a hand (supposedly) in work from Bessie Smith amongst some other lesser known names from the ‘20s and ‘30s. Beyond the session work Ezell did, he also reportedly accompanied the body of Blind Lemon Jefferson, at the behest of Paramount, back to Texas after the guitarist was murdered.

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  • Reuben Wilson: A Bus Ride of Funk

    By cobwebsandstrange on 10/4/09 8:26am
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    In listening to Blue Note recordings, it’s usually a good guess that Rudy Van Gelder engineered the session. But as the label moved towards its natural end and embraced fusion and funk, the sound that each record reports doesn’t necessarily seem to keep with what we all associate Van Gelder with. But after tossing on Reuben Wilson’s Blue Mode, listeners will be nothing more than pleased with the engineers work.

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  • Frank Lowe: A Being

    By cobwebsandstrange on 10/3/09 5:40pm
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    There’s only so much free jazz any set of ears can take in and differentiate between. And of late, it seems that the lives some of some free jazz players – while inextricable from the music – are as interesting as anything that they were able to get down onto a record. Surely, there’s always gonna be a market for music that’s more guttural than cerebral. And there should be. But there’s a point where listening to it doesn’t make too much sense. Moments crop up here and there that call for such a blatant disregard to form or function, but not everyday.

    Frank Lowe, while not strictly adhering to the free jazz thing over his entire career, should be associated in anyone’s mind with the John Coltrane corner of the genre.

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  • Lloyd McNeill: Brush, Flute, Other...

    By cobwebsandstrange on 10/2/09 11:14am
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    Time and dates are completely man made. The sun comes up, there’s some stuff in there somewhere and it gets dark. That’s what time is, not one o’clock, two o’clock, Tuesday or December. And that’s easy to loose sight, which is unfortunate, because a lot of stigmatized baggage comes along with it. And that’s all plain nonsense.

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