Duke Ellington - "Arabesque Cookie" (Arabian Dance)

It's that time of year again.

From Duke's 1960 "Nutcracker" adaptation. I don't think it's a stretch to say that this album is the most successful adaptation of classical music for the jazz world. Other contenders would be The Modern Jazz Quartet's "Blues On Bach", and various pieces recorded by Woody Herman, such as this excellent rendition of Faure's Pavane for a Dead Princess.

Contemporary jazz artists like Daniel Bennett have also successfully ventured into this realm. Here's Daniel's "Opera and American Folk" work.

Chet Baker - "She Was Too Good To Me"

Here's Chet with both the vocal and a poignant trumpet solo. From a 1974 CTI album of the same name. As with so many CTI releases there's a fair amount of electronics, and a big, Easy Listening-ish chart-here by the usually-better-than-this Don Sebesky. Creed Taylor's CTI did much to revive jazz after its 60's doldrums, and his roster of artists was impressive: George Benson, Ron Carter, Hubert laws, Freddie Hubbard, and many more.


Not only did Creed Taylor do much to bring jazz back into public consciousness in the US-recall that many US-based artists-Maynard Ferguson, Phil Woods, for instance-had moved to Europe in the 60's, but this album brought Chet back as well. He'd been off the scene for several years-reportedly after being beaten up by "agents" of a drug dealer-and so this album must've been a pleasant surprise to many.


This song-originally "He was..."-dates back to 1930.  It's a bit of a departure for Rodgers and Hart, who usually went for sophisticated urbanity, not Irving Berlin-like directness and simplicity. Yet this is arguably their best work.


Back to Baker-Chet was an interesting case. There really aren't many like him in jazz-trumpet players whose style is muted, rather than brash. There are fifty Dizzy Gillespie types, with their bravura approach to the instrument, for every Chet Baker or Art Farmer or Bix Beiderbecke. Jazz trumpet playing was essentially invented by Louis Armstrong, and he gave us virtuosity, volume, high notes. Not Chet.

Maynard Ferguson-"Red Creek"

Maynard, as jazz fans know, recorded some dicey music in the second half of the 70's. In this, he was hardly alone among jazz artists-and, having five kids, he perhaps had more justification than most! His albums in this period tended to be about half good stuff recorded with his band, and half over-produced extravaganzas with a ton of studio musicians.

In any case, there also other tunes, like this one, which are harder to categorize. It's a long way from classic MF, but the groove is irresistible. and Maynard crushes his solo.

Claire Martin/Ella Fitzgerald-"Too Darn Hot"

Martin is a British jazz singer.

I was looking for her fun version of Thomas Dolby's "The Key to Your Ferrari" . (That song is one guy's answer to women who wonder why men often like their cars better than their wives or girlfriends-but it can be sung to good effect by a woman as well). Anyway, it's nowhere to be found, but instead I came across Martin's treatment of this Cole Porter classic, written in the 40's for "Kiss Me Kate".


As I often point out here, so many songs that are performed by the hippest of jazz artists come from what is now seen as the unhippest of sources-the Broadway musical. Yes, there was a time when America's best songwriters wrote for the stage. I should also note that Porter, along with Irving Berlin, and later Stephen Sondheim, was one of the few in this genre who wrote both the words and music for their songs.

Enjoy!


UPDATE: It must be conceded, with all due respect to the many excellent artists who've recorded this song, that Ella Fitzgerald's version is the best.

Frank Sinatra-"Ebb Tide" (2018 Stereo Mix)

I see that "Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely", in its 60th Anniversary Edition, in now No. 3 on the Amazon Jazz Best Sellers list (number one is the unfortunate Tony Bennett-Diana Krall pairing "Love is Here To Stay"-Bennett's voice is now almost unrecognizable, sad to say).

Duke Ellington called Frank "the ultimate in theater", and this track, from what was very possibly FS's finest album, is a most excellent illustration. It's said that Sinatra was the first male vocalist to show vulnerability, and this track surely displays that quality. That vulnerability is consistent throughout the cut-there is no macho swagger here, even as FS's vocal ebbs and flows. Who else would dare this sort of honesty? Frank is naked here.

Frank Sinatra-"Swingin' on a Star"

Frank at his most, yes, swinging. Nelson Riddle, of course, with the chart (arrangement). Flutes, muted trombones, subtle use of strings-you know it's Nelson. And the rhythm section totally cooks.

This song might be even more associated with Bing Crosby, who  introduced this Jimmy Van Heusen-Johnny Burke work in the classic '40's movie "Going My Way". I was sure in researching this that Bing also sang the song in the Rat Pack flick "Robin and The Seven Hoods" (which BC more or less steals from under Frank, Dean, and Sammy's nose, by the way), but no, he doesn't.

You might be pleased to learn that Van Heusen's real name was Edward Chester Babcock.

Enjoy!

Nancy LaMott-"Autumn Leaves/When October Goes"

Nancy Lamott (1951-1995) was a New York based cabaret singer. You don't see much crossover between the jazz world and cabaret, with the exception of Maureen McGovern, a cabaret singer with a powerhouse voice and a swinging style. (I heartily recommend McGovern's "Out of This World-McGovern Sings [Harold] Arlen). LaMott was another exception-a sweet-voiced singer with a gift for emotionally charged yet restrained readings of standards, as well as a talent for making even light material sound like, yes, standards. Many jazz players were featured soloists on LaMott's albums, most especially trumpeter Glenn Drewes. This track features ex-Maynard Ferguson soloist Mike Migliore's wife Deborah with lovely cello work.

Here she tackles "Autumn Leaves", originally a French song ("Dead Leaves"), given English lyrics by Johnny Mercer, and "When October Goes, by Barry Manilow (of all people) and Mercer.  Beautiful as always-emotion sans overkill. This is originally from LaMott's all Mercer album, "Come Rain or Come Shine-The Songs of Johnny Mercer".

LaMott's story was a tragic one. She had done little recording till the 90's, when she was suddenly catapulted into the limelight with a series of successful albums, appearances on various TV shows, and a concert at the Clinton White House. But her health, always precarious, failed her, and she died of cancer just hours after her deathbed marriage to actor Peter Zapp. From the wikipedia article on Nancy: "According to conductor and composer David Friedman, who wrote many of the songs which she performed, LaMott's life featured two threads: her illness and her talent, and the 'two things peaked at exactly the same time'".


Nancy's imdb listing.

Stan Getz-"La Fiesta"

1972's "Captain Marvel" album featured Stan Getz with much of what was Chick Corea's first and best version of his famous "Return to Forever" group (Corea-keyboards, Stanley Clarke-bass, et al). Chick also wrote most of the material on the album, including this tune. To my ears Getz draws an eloquence and depth from the tune perhaps lacking in even the original RTF track..

This tune ended up being recorded by pretty much everybody, with noteworthy treatments by Woody Herman and Maynard Ferguson. My own favorite, other than Getz', is this one, with Corea, and Gary Burton on vibes.

Lopes Graça Piano Concerto No. I /Miguel Henriques, piano. Orq Sinf Portuguesa, Directed by Ola Rudner

Fernando Lopes-Graca (1906-1994) was a Portuguese composer and conductor. I happened to come across the CD this piece came from quite by accident-I saw it in a music store and bought it on impulse.

The piece is "genuine Iberian"-I'm not endorsing any silliness about "cultural appropriation"-but it does seem true that most works intended to be in this style, by people from outside the region, are pretty cliche'-ridden (I do like Copland's El Salon Mexico). Now, the three note Moorish motif that the first movement of this piece is built upon might itself be thought of as a cliche', but it's the only one.

The concerto features a fair amount of dissonance, but stays true to its roots in both native folk music and Romanticism. If you like this you may want to try Lopes-Graca's Second Piano Concerto, a darker work, no doubt, but equally enjoyable.

Fred Astaire, Vera-Ellen-"Mr and Mrs Hoofer at Home"

Ahh-the Hollywood/Broadway musical. Something of a joke now, and for good reason-few good ones have been produced since the mid-60's-but there was a time when they represented the peak of American movie entertainment..

That peak may have been reached in the 50's-just when Hollywood musicals were on their way out, presumably due to their expense in a time when people were becoming accustomed to watching television for free. As much as I love the Astaire/Rogers musicals of the thirties, the technical possibilities available two decades later made lavish productions like Gene Kelly's "An American in Paris" a possibility.

This cut is from what is actually not a great movie-1950's "Three Little Words", starring Fred Astaire, Vera-Ellen, and Red Skelton. The plot's pretty light, and the comedy only so-so, but this dance routine is certainly one of the best ever filmed. Sheer joie de vivre.

Not that you asked for it, but here is an informal ranking of the best 50's musicals. I'm the ultimate Fred Astaire fan, as noted, but Gene comes first.

1. "Singin' in the Rain" (1952)-Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, Debbie Reynolds. Easily the funniest of the era's musicals. O'Connor's dance scenes make you think he lacks bones.
2. "The Band Wagon" (1953)-Fred Astaire, Cyd Charisse, Oscar Levant. Director Vincente Minnelli at his best. Plot: Should we turn a light musical into an updated version of "Faust"? Nah.
3. "An American in Paris" (1951)-Gene Kelly, Leslie Caron, Oscar Levant. Kelly's climatic ballet might've been enough by itself to make this the best, but the Kelly/Caron romance is a little silly-he's a grown man (pushing 40 in real life) and Caron looks to be about 15 (she was in fact still a teenager).
4. "It's Always Fair Weather" (1955)- Gene Kelly, Dan Dailey, Cyd Charisse. Co-directed by Kelly with Stanley Donen, this somewhat cynical story (war buddies meet ten years after the war and soon realize they don't like each other) was a box office flop, but it's a delight. It's a musical comedy with a real plot.
5. "Funny Face" (1957)-Fred Astaire, Audrey Hepburn, Kay Thompson. Young intellectual (Hepburn) agrees to become a model because it means a free trip to Paris. Again, you have to overlook a big age gap between the romantic leads-Astaire is thirty years older but looks a lot more. And yes, Audrey can dance-I would've included her great solo dance but it's now gone from Youtube.
6. "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes" (1953)-Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell, Charles Coburn. Marilyn plays dumb but cagey here-she wants a rich guy and makes no bones about it. Russell, who gets a lot of great lines and knows how to deliver them, is her somewhat cynical friend. Again, I would've included my favorite scene from this one (Russell's sexy, funny "Ain't There Anyone Here for Love"), but that's also disappeared from Youtube, though other scenes from the movie are still there.

Tito Puente/Maynard Ferguson-"On Green Dolphin Street".

Tito Puente (1923-2000) occupied the jazzier end of the salsa spectrum. I have just written a sentence that would've irritated Puente, who was famous for saying "salsa is a condiment, not a musical style". In any case, the great Latin percussion master, known as "El Rey de Los Timbales", had many recorded encounters with people from the jazz world, including Woody Herman, Sonny Stitt, Quincy Jones, and here, the Canadian trumpet virtuoso Maynard Ferguson (1928-2006). 

"On Green Dolphin Street", by Bronislaw Kaper and Ned Washington for the 1944 film "Green Dolphin Street" (the "on" came later), is one of those many pop songs that emigrated into the jazz world and became the exclusive province of jazz artists such as Miles Davis and Marian McPartland. This treatment features swinging flugelhorn work by Maynard, as well as Ferguson band alum Don Menza on tenor sax.  

Enjoy!

Clifford Brown with Strings-"Laura"

There are a lot of lovely songs named after women-think of "Emily", "Waltz for Debbie", "Nancy with the Laughing Face', or, as featured here, "Laura". This one's by David Raksin and Johnny Mercer, and was heavily featured in the Gene Tierney/Dana Andrews 1944 film of the same name.


Brown's 1955 performance is a wonderful illustration of how beautiful trumpet playing can be. It's not all about screaming out high notes, though I certainly enjoy that sort of playing when appropriate.

Clifford, a Wilmington, Delaware native, died far too young-he was merely 25 when he died in a car accident, the year after this recording-but he is well-remembered by jazz fans and still heavily featured on jazz radio. There is also an annual Clifford Brown Jazz Festival held in his home town.

Maynard, Miles, Birdland, and "Oleo"

My last post, featuring some great 1959 work by Bill Evans, alluded to all the great jazz produced in that year, by the likes of Miles Davis, Ornette Coleman, Dave Brubeck, and others.


Today's JazzTrack was also recorded in 1959. It's Maynard Ferguson and his most excellent big band wailing at Birdland in June of that year. At that time Maynard and Miles led the dual house bands, if you will, at that esteemed jazz outpost. Each was featured for several weeks a year. One sign outside the club had Maynard as the headliner, another Miles, in an ingenious bit of artist ego-stroking.


Maynard and band here go toe to toe with a pretty intense reading of Sonny Rollins' "Oleo". No word on a body count. And, yes, big bands could play bop. Solos include Joe Zawinul on piano,  Jimmy Ford (called "The White Bird" for his Charlie Parker tendencies), Slide Hampton on trombone, and Jerry Tyree on trumpet.


It should be noted that this was an integrated band, at a time when not all that many jazz groups were. It featured black players such as Hampton and drummer Frankie Dunlop.


Here's a detailed and appropriately enthusiastic review of Maynard and band at the Newport Jazz Festival in July of that same year: "Ferguson debuted his big brassy well-oiled machine at the Newport Jazz Festival the following year. Ferguson's Friday afternoon set at the 1959 Newport Jazz Festival was an uncanny display of energy, chops and abandon melded with thoroughly polished charts by arrangers Don Sebesky and Slide Hampton..."

Bill Evans Trio - "Autumn Leaves"

I usually avoid seasonally appropriate music posts, but I couldn't resist this one-the brilliant Bill Evans on piano and Scott LaFaro on bass. This is from Bill's 1959 album "Portrait in Jazz". 1959-the year of my birth-was a particularly good year in jazz history. I don't assert a causal connection between my arrival and this fact.  

Somewhere along the way Evans became my favorite pianist. I probably would've named Chick Corea as such a couple years ago. People who know more about modern harmony than I do can tell you about Evans' approach to his instrument-how he often didn't play the roots of chords (leaving that to the bass player), his use of chords voiced in fourths instead of thirds, etc-and that's all very interesting-but technical analysis of music doesn't get you very far. Does it, for want of a better word, grab you, or not?

Vocalchord-"Texas Girl at the Funeral of Her Father"

Vocalchord is, or was, a Dutch group of opera singers who did some very nice close harmony vocals. Here they tackle Randy Newman's lovely "Texas Girl at the Funeral of Her Father". The song is simplicity itself, but very moving, and this treatment certainly does it justice.


Newman is, by any reckoning, one of the finest songwriters of this musical era. So good, in fact, that while Randy was still in his 20's the brilliant Harry Nilsson had already done an album composed solely of Newman material, 1970's "Nilsson Sings Newman".


Which makes me think of the CD's I've listened to recently: 1) Randy Newman-"Little Criminals" (which the above is from); 2) Frank Sinatra-"Sinatra's "Swingin' Session"; 3) Maynard Ferguson-"Maynard '61"/"Straightaway Jazz Themes" (the latter of this double set is from the early 60's ABC series "Straightaway" which Maynard did the music for); 4) Chick Corea-"Concerto" (Chick's sole recorded foray into classical music, as far as I know-he wrote a new orchestration of his "Spain", as well as a new piano concerto for himself); 5) The Beatles-"The White Album" (yes, I actually think that for a few minutes "Revolution 9" works, as a sort of sonic tour of Hell as imagined by John Lennon, that is before John starts into naming dances-"the Watusi, the Twist" and such); and 6) The London Brass-"Modern Times with The London Brass" (hyper-modern set designed to annoy people, though I like a lot of it, actually).

Nina Simone - "Here Comes The Sun"

It's nice to note that this treatment (please don't call it a "cover"-did Ray Charles "cover" songs? Did Sinatra?) of "Here Comes the Sun" by the great Nina Simone has over 17 million views on Youtube. Maybe it will introduce people to Nina. Cool little gospelly piano solo by Nina as well.

I've never been a big fan of George Harrison as a songwriter-he tended towards the preachy and pretentious-but this is a good one. The most obvious comparison is to Macca's "Good Day Sunshine"-very much an inferior song.

Rumer -"What The World Needs Now"

Rumer is a British singer (nee' Sarah Joyce).

The simple beauty of her voice, and of this arrangement of the Bacharach/David classic, need little comment-though I'll mention that Rumer has been likened to Karen Carpenter. Not hard to hear some similarities, but I don't think she's aping Carpenter. You'll note that Madeleine Peyroux sounds more than a little like Billie Holiday, and that Linda Eder sounds like Barbra Streisand. Not sure it's intentional in any of these cases.

Tony Bennett-"Emily"

In the 90's Tony did an album called "Perfectly Frank"-a tribute to you know who. Excellent album, but none of the 24 cuts was as good as the Sinatra version. That's the danger of doing a Sinatra tribute album!

In any case, here is a song that Tony may well do better than Frank. (Frank's "Emily" is here). Not sure when Sinatra did his treatment (Tony's dates from 1966), but obviously it's fairly late in the game. Frank's "Emily" is more about building a home with Emily; Tony's with passion for the girl. Tony's is also rhythmically looser-the waltz beat is much less obvious, when it's there at all.

For another case where Tony may in fact exceed Frank, here's a live 1993 version of "One for My Baby". Tony does it as a roadhouse shuffle, which the song needs. As a straight ballad it's sort of a lesser "Angel Eyes"-which, if you think about it, is basically the same song, only better.

Glen Campbell - "Try A Little Kindness" - [live]

What's Glen Campbell doing on a jazz site? Well, he was a hell of a guitar player. Listen to him rip through this one. Plus, I like the song and Glen's singing, as well. RIP.

There's a funny story, somewhat politically incorrect, about Campbell, who did a lot of session work early in his career, on a Sinatra session. Glen seemed to be enjoying himself hugely, staring at Sinatra in awe. So Frank, ever tactful, asked the producer: "Who's the queer guy on guitar?"

This cut is circa 2000.

Frank Sinatra-"I Had The Craziest Dream"

This is from "Trilogy", Frank's Past-Present-Future three album set recorded in 1979. As pretty much everybody who has heard the album has noted, only the Past record-from which this track is taken-is much worth listening to.

I've always thought of Sinatra as a great actor-he delivers the meaning of the lyrics, acts them...as he understands them, of course. It might be a hoary cliché, but this track gives me chills up the spine. This is acting, at its best.

The wonderful, Harry James-esque trumpet solo is by Charlie Turner.

Maynard Ferguson - "Rhythm Method"

The last two decades of Maynard Ferguson's life and career were a fertile period. He was finally free of the Columbia (now Sony) record contract which had led to the recording of so much questionable material. He had-re-formed his big band after a short interval with a small group. And the first few years-with the full-sized version of Big Bop Nouveau-were especially productive. His own playing was still at full strength, and the bands were loaded with top-flight soloists, such as Chip McNeill on tenor and Walter White on trumpet, as heard here. Recorded live, circa 1990.

Bernard Herrmann- "Vertigo"-theme

I'm constantly coming across new examples of wonderful music by Hermann. I watched "The Ghost and Mrs Muir" (1947-Gene Tierney, Rex Harrison) recently and marveled at the beauty of the opening theme, heard over shots of the seaside where Tierney's character would end up living. Then I noticed the credits and saw, not surprisingly, Hermann's name. Of course. Another perhaps surprising place you run into Hermann's music is Twilight Zone re-runs, many of which were scored by Hermann.

As, presumably, most people know, many of Hitchcock's movies were scored by Hermann, including this wonderful example. This strikes me as Hermann's best work for Hitchcock, though some will name "North by Northwest" as such. In any case, this is modern, in the right way.

"Chet"-a poem

Here is a poem I wrote a while ago about Chet Baker.


Found his way to Birdland-

Valhalla of the jazz men.

Played his horn like an angel whispering,

Not a warrior bearing his weapon.


All the beauty was on the stand,

Darkness all else.

But if your darkness be light-

O, how great the light!


Sought by Hollywood in his youth-

James Dean's worthy heir?

Killed himself more slowly,

But we were no less fascinated.


The standard songs with the standard changes,

Conventional to the last.

The 50's gospel-the sated man of alley and bandstand-

The perfect fix, the perfect note.


"Show me a hero and I'll write you a tragedy":

A better tale than a triumph,

In a world that lives out its woes,

One song at a time.

Chick Corea-"Leprechaun's Dream".

It's said that classical is composers' music, jazz players'. And there is a fair amount of truth to this. But what do you do with jazz people who are both brilliant soloists and equally brilliant composer/arrangers? If you're John Ephland, the critic who wrote the CD review of Corea's 1976 album "The Leprechaun", you don't know what to do, and call an album with an excellent balance of great writing and playing "almost over-arranged".


All right, I'll acknowledge my own bias here, and say that a large part of the reason jazz lost its place in the popular music hierarchy was its de-emphasis of arrangements that non-initiates can latch on to. If you listened to the Ellington band in its heyday, at first you might not have understood what the soloists were doing, but you surely could dig Duke (and Billy Strayhorn)'s great writing. That was my own route into jazz-the big bands of Count Basie and Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich and Toshiko Akiyoshi, and more. It was a while before I got what Coltrane was doing!

This particular cut is the logical culmination of Chick's whimsical journey into a Irish musical  fairyland. (Pretty good for an Italian guy from Boston). It features a clever integration of brass, string quartet,  tasteful electronics, and Gayle Moran's wordless vocals with strong solos from Chick and reedman Joe Farrell. A delight.

Count Basie - "Good Time Blues"

This is jazz. 'Nuff said. Fun and funny. I got to see some of my heroes-Basie, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Rich, and more before they left this mortal coil. So grateful.

Sonny Stitt-"Tune-Up"

Stitt took a fair amount of abuse early in his career for sounding "too much" like Charlie Parker, but that never bothered me-I always thought "that's Bird with a better sound, and recorded better too". Here he is in the 70's, on tenor, absolutely crushing it. Barry Harris on piano.

Maynard Ferguson-"Slide's Derangement"

In honor of what would've been Maynard's 90th birthday, let's hear MF and crew with the classic 1958 track, "Slide's Derangement". This is by the brilliant trombonist/composer/arranger Slide Hampton,  who along with Willie Maiden, Mike Abene, Don Sebesky, Ernie Wilkins, and others, wrote much of Maynard's book of classic charts, many of which were re-recorded decades later. The cut features one of the more exciting endings in big band history. And features the best big band of the period.


This cut is from A Message from Newport-which was not recorded live, despite the name and album cover, but was given that appellation to take advantage of the splash the band had made at that year's Newport Jazz Festival.

In style: Dionne Warwick - "Do You Know the Way to San Jose?"

Warwick's "low-emot" style stands as a refreshing contrast to what we hear all too often today. There are three modes, so to speak, in contemporary urban music (a term I use because anything else might be [even more] inflammatory).

There is rap, in which the vocalist does not sing, but rather chants often ugly (self-centered, materialistic, misogynistic) words over a crude beat. Ironically samples from real music are often pilfered and added to the "songs". Next we have songs in which young men who don't have good voices whine their way through ill-advised lyrics, which are often more than a little like bad high school poetry material. Lastly you have women, often with pretty good voices, over-emoting and "over-melismaing" the hell out of trite lyrics.


This song, a Bacharach/David work from 1968 (released on the album "Dionne Warwick in Valley of the Dolls"), does none of those things, and neither does Warwick. Instead we get an amusing look at how elusive, and maybe worthless, stardom is:


L.A. is a great big freeway
Put a hundred down and buy a car
In a week, maybe two, they'll make you a star
Weeks turn into years. How quick they pass 
And all the stars that never were 
Are parking cars and pumping gas



The Bacharach/David team, at its best, rivals Lennon/McCartney for the best songwriters of the 60's. I don't think a song better than "Affie" was written in that decade.

Maynard Ferguson-"Superbone Meets the Bad Man"

"Maynard Ferguson? He's that high note trumpet freak who played those over the top arrangements of crappy pop tunes." That's the Maynard Ferguson stereotype a lot of people, including jazz critics who really should know better, have.

Granted, Maynard did play his share of over the top arrangements of crappy-or at least mediocre-pop-pop tunes. The album this cut is from, 1974's Chameleon, includes, for instance, an unlistenable treatment of Stevie Wonder's "Livin' for the City". But Maynard did 60-some albums in his own name, and the vast bulk are at least good. Some, like the ten-CD Mosaic set of Maynard's Roulette output (late 50's-mid 60's) are justifiably seen as classics, and will run you a good $500 should you like to get it on EBay.

That Roulette era band featured players such as Joe Zawinul, Don Ellis, Jaki Byard, and Joe Farrell, and included writers Slide Hampton, Ernie Wilkins, Mike Abene, Willie Maiden, and more. As much a fan as I am of "competitors" Count Basie, Quincy Jones, Woody Herman, Terry Gibbs, etc from that period, Maynard really did have the best band, for both players and writers.

(Roulette, by the way, was very possibly a Mafia front-"roulette"-gambling, get it?), but Maynard and Count Basie both recorded there, and the sound quality was most excellent for its era. Ferguson supposedly was not paid for his output but likely was not inclined to protest vehemently.

All that said, to the track at hand. This, as noted, is from 1974's Chameleon album ("Chameleon" being the hit tune from the pen of Herbie Hancock). It was at this point that the record label (Columbia-now Sony) pushed Ferguson to go commercial in a way that was far less successful artistically than the earlier MF Horn albums. The remaining Columbia albums (Maynard allowed his contract with the label to expire around 1980) were typically half good cuts with Maynard and his band, bad ones with MF and a whole crapload of studio guys. On more than a few of these, Ferguson wasn't even mixed prominently, which he may've been thankful for.

On "Superbone..." Maynard plays his own-design valve-slide trombone opposite Bruce "Bad Man" Johnstone on baritone sax. Here Ferguson belies his high note trumpet player image and gives us some very swinging playing on that superbone. Great stuff.

One day a good biography of Ferguson will be produced, covering his whole career-teen aged bandleader in Montreal, the Kenton years, his tenure as Principal Trumpet at Paramount studios, the years in Europe, etc. One of the most important bandleaders in jazz and one of the 20th century's great multi-instrumentalists deserves no less. 

Tine Thing Helseth-"In the Bleak Midwinter"

Still nearly winter here, so I thought of this.  Heartbreakingly beautiful reading of an old hymn.  Helseth (say it "Tina Ting") is a 30 year old Norwegian who, along with Briton Alison Balsom, is one of the great young trumpeters on the classical scene.

Perfection: Miles Davis-"Seven Steps to Heaven"

Not much needs to be said about this one...although what I will say may be somewhat controversial. This is peak Miles, to me-the 50's-early 60's Miles. This is before the outish Plugged Nickel-period stuff, and well before the electric era (though I do like some of that, especially "Aura" and "In a Silent Way").

This is the "other group" from the "Seven Steps to Heaven" sessions-Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and 17-year old (!) Tony Williams piano/bass/drums respectively, rather than Victor Feldman on piano and Frank Butler on drums. George Coleman on tenor sax. Ironically Feldman wrote this tune (Miles is co-credited-you know what that's worth), but isn't on this May 1963 session.

Raymond Scott-"Space Mystery"

A fascinating cut from the great innovator in electronic music, Raymond Scott. Space, it seems, is a scary but intriguing place.  You may not have heard of Scott (nee' Harry Warnow), but his music was much imitated for cartoons and much more. Scott's official website.

Dexter Gordon - "Stairway To The Stars"

First cut here on JazzTracks-the great Dexter Gordon with the lovely ballad Stairway to the Stars. I've always thought of Dexter as the Joe DiMaggio of the tenor sax-he makes it all seem so easy. This is from the Our Man in Paris album (1963). This album got a 4 star (maximum) rating from The Penguin Guide to Jazz, and TPGTJ's people call it a "classic". No argument here.

Dexter had moved to Europe, as so many jazz guys ultimately did in the 60's, from Phil Woods to Maynard Ferguson. The Beatles, though they themselves produced good music, wrecked the market for more grown-up, sophisticated pop music and jazz. When Gordon moved back to the US in the 70's (after, somewhat ironically, jazz-rock fusion had revived the market for acoustic jazz) it was a very big deal.

Dexter often said that on ballads a jazz musician should think of the lyrics, not just the melody and the changes. Quite obviously Gordon is well aware of the lyrics of this classic standard, with words by Mitchell Parish.


This track features the great Bud Powell on piano, in his best ballad mode. You tend to think of Bud as the ultimate bebop guy, romping through changes at breakneck speed, but he's in perfect form for the romantic mood here.

Bob Perkins, America's greatest DJ, played this on WRTI yesterday, and I thought it would be a good opener for my re-configured blog.

Thoughts on recent movies seen-one "old", one "new".

Recent movies seen: 1) "East of Eden", 1955. Julie Harris, James Dean, Raymond Massey. 4 stars (out of 5). I've tended to avoid James Dean movies becuse the whole Dean phenomenon is so depressing (including the fact that the car accident that killed him wasn't his fault, despite popular belief), but I've read the book (Steinbeck) so I did want to see the flick. It's a pretty heavy melodrama. You may know it's a modern telling of the Cain and Abel story, but the best scenes in... the movie are those between Cal (Dean) and his mother (Jo Van Fleet), who he'd been told was dead. She's now running a bordello in a nearby town.
 

She's cold to him at first, but comes to see him as a like-minded rebel against Cal's father and his religious convictions. She eventually develops something close to motherly affection for him. The performance by Van Fleet is in many ways the highlight of the movie, and for once the deserving person actually got the Oscar (Best Supporting Actress). So-what would Dean's career have been like? Would he have been able to graduate to truly adult roles? Paul Newman was at his best when he played punks, such as in Hud and Cool Hand Luke. He was never quite as good again. Maybe the same for Dean. I don't know.


2) "No Country for Old Men", 2007. Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Josh Brolin. 4 1/2 stars. This is a Coen Brothers movie-screenplay/directing. Llewelyn Moss (Brolin) is shooting deer in the West Texas bush country. He misses the deer, but stumbles upon what's left of a drug deal gone gruesomely wrong. There are bodies everywhere, one guy barely alive begging for agua, and $1.5 million in cash-which Moss takes. Big mistake. (You need to overlook the fact that whoever killed most everybody left all that money behind).


Anyway, Moss later feels guilty over leaving the guy begging for water, goes back, and his truck gives him away. Javier Bardem is the psychopath who chases Moss and kills people with an ususual method best not detailed. Tommy Lee Jones is one of the old men of the title, those not prepared for a world where dozens are killed over a suitcase full of money. All the performances are fantastic, the dialogue is crisp and often funny, and despite the brutality the movie is, as they say, compulsively watchable.

What friendship is worth-the BBC's "Martin Chuzzlewit"

Just finished watching "Martin Chuzzlewit", the 1994 BBC treatment of the Dickens novel, on DVD. Highly recommended. Paul Scofield stars as Old Martin Chuzzlewit. If you've seen other BBC productions you'll recognize Pete Postlethwaite as Mr. Montague/Mr. Tigg. You might also recognize Graham Stark, who played Clouseau's underling in "A Shot in the Dark".

The story centers on Old Martin Chuzzlewit's vast fortune, his disinherited grandson of the same name, and the conniving attempts of others, including the boundlesly hypocritical Mr. Pecksniff, to win that fortune. Since it's Dickens, most of the characters are either pretty much all good or all bad. Two exceptions are Pecksniff's mostly good daughters Mercy and Charity, who are unwitting victims of their father's plot to get the loot.

Also, since it's Dickens, and since it's the 19th Century, friendship is at least as important a theme as romantic love, and this tale's focus on greed. In fact, friendship among the various male characters is more central to the story than who will marry whom. This was an era when men would write letters to each other and mention their love for each other, and nobody looked askance at it. (Actual homosexuals would've been more discreet-remember what happened to Oscar Wilde).


And so the hero of the story is Tom Pinch, who (spoiler alerts) is loyal to a fault (quite literally) to his friends, but who doesn't get the girl (Mary) he loves in the end-she marries young Martin Chuzzlewit. Who gets most of the money.


Major tear-jerker scene at the end, as Tom's sister comforts him, but he says to her that his getting Mary would have been how things work in books-the "justice", as he puts it, of real life is different.

Este u oeste?

"Este u oeste"? The first words that popped into my head, as the day began. East or west, in Spanish.

My Spanish skills are not great, but somehow certain thoughts pop into my head, from some place deep in my unconscious, in that language (I had three years of Spanish in school and have tried to maintain my "abilities" to some degree). The thoughts always seem to be especially important. It's a very strange thing. Sometimes it's bits of prayers, sometimes one-word adjectives describing how I feel about myself at a given moment.

Este u oeste. East or west. Opposites. Where will I go? What will become of me? What kind of person am I? As I thought about this earlier I realized these are all Lenten thoughts.

This is a good time for self-reflection. Do not think merely in terms of what you're "giving up" for Lent.

Dumber than thou

If you want to figure out today's political scene, keep it simple and ask yourself: Who's better at the game?

The Democrats, having drifted en masse into Cloud Cuckoo Land, are the Stupid Party now (they claimed the title when they nominated the unelectable Hillary), so Trump's screwups, large and small, don't really hurt him.

It's not Trump as the Globetrotters vs. the Dems as the Washington Generals-more like a AA minor league baseball team vs. a high school team from Alaska. The minor league team may not be the best, but they'll beat the HS team every time.

Here are some things I really don't like

I don't mean to go all Andy Rooney on my readers (ah, the conceit that I have readers!), but it's a lot easier and more entertaining to write about things you don't like than those you do. (Right, Miriam?). Nobody wants to hear about how pretty the sunrise was, or that great dessert you had at Elaine's. (Elaine's is closed now anyway).


Nope-people want to hear why you hate Trump, or the Democrats, or kids driving around with bass blasters in their cars, or those little nasty yapper dogs, or people using their cell phones on speaker, or Jehovah's Witnesses (just tell them you didn't see the accident, as my late friend Rob used to say), or people who've had too much nip and tuck work, or people smoking pot at SEPTA stops that you're forced to ingest (the smoke, not the people, which would be even worse), or people on paleo diets, or vegans, or male white wine drinkers, or beer snobs (Can you imagine anything dumber to be a snob about? "I drink craft beer". Who cares? Beer ain't exactly upscale).....


No, I don't actually hate these people. I hope I don't literally hate anyone. But most of the people above really, really annoy me. I'm a conservative, so I believe in minimal government, but legislation directed at all of the above would have my full support.


Get cracking, McConnell.