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.

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.

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).

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.

"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.

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. 

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.

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.