Something New
Reading the Eric Nisenson book The Making of Kind of Blue, I got curious about George Russell. Nisenson gives him a whole chapter in the book, even though he didn’t write, arrange or play anything on the Kind of Blue album. Russell was–more than a writer, arranger, or player–a theorist. His concept, formalized in 1953, of playing jazz around scales rather than chords influenced the approach Miles Davis used to the music of Kind of Blue. Without Russell’s influence, there would be no Kind of Blue. And no A Love Supreme.
George Russell
So how have I passed through 58 years, most of them as a music omnivore, without ever checking out George Russell? I’d heard of him, but never listened to any of his albums till today. Wonderful stuff, especially Jazz Workshop, New York, New York (not that one), and Ezz-thetics. More “new” music to explore! It’s mystifying to me sometimes that I can still hear music after all these years that I’ve never heard before–music that blows me away. Mystifying and grand. It’s why I don’t spend much time listening to oldies radio. Worn out on that. Too many other things to discover.
Yesterday, I ran across clarinetist Don Byron‘s CD You Are #6: Music for Six Musicians (2001) and had to get it. Don Byron’s 1996 album Bug Music–an exuberant homage to Raymond Scott, Duke Ellington, and John Kirby–is a one-of-a-kind delight, and a song, “Leopold…Leopold,” from Byron’s 2004 album Ivey-Divey, is my most-listened-to MP3.
Don Byron
The “music for six musicians” has a Latin feel and promises to be another Don Byron favorite.
Always something new. Always something new.
Dissin’ the Disc
The past couple of weeks I’ve seen a few articles predicting the imminent end of the compact disc. Very disturbing. While I prefer vinyl to CD, I prefer either to the inferior sound of MP3s. Those are useful for music to listen to while running, and that’s pretty much it.
Today at Half Price Books, I bought a copy of the Eric Nisenson book The Making of Kind of Blue: Miles Davis and His Masterpiece (St. Martin’s Press, 2000). I’m among the legion of music-lovers who put the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue near the top of their all-time-greatest lists. It’s an album, not a string of discrete singles. It is best listened to as an album–on vinyl. I have a CD copy of it, too, to listen to in the car. But at home I listen to the record.
I grew up in the era of the album, which followed the era of the 45 rpm single. Ever since the sixties, people have bought albums of songs to listen to as albums, as fluid pieces of music. The format used to be vinyl (or cassette or 8-track or reel-to-reel). Then came the CD. The sound was inferior, but it was still a tangible item, a collection of songs with packaging to look at, lyrics to read along to. Downloaded albums of MP3 files just ain’t the same thing.
Also today, I got a 180 gram vinyl copy of the blues collection Angola Prisoners’ Blues, the album on which then-inmate Robert Pete Williams first was recorded. Good acoustic blues, like mainstream jazz (like all music) sounds better on vinyl than on CD. But MP3 files are sterile, intangible, cold.
I’m old-school. OK, I’m just plain old. But younger folk are coming back to vinyl, too, and most still have lots of CDs. They still value the album as a collection of musical pieces. If the compact disc goes away, so be it. I’ll probably hang on to all of those I still listen to. But the album, maybe just on vinyl, will last.
Blues & the Abstract Truth
Great title–Oliver Nelson’s 1961 album that carried on with the Miles Davis Kind of Blue format. Heading to the nature trail for a run, with all of the music revue lyrics learned and my CD project performance done, I wanted to have some other music running through my head as I was running through the woods. So I put Blues and the Abstract Truth in my car CD player and listened to the absolutely perfect opening track, “Stolen Moments.” For about a half-mile, the song was lodged in there pretty well, but the last 5-and-a-half miles were cluttered with afterthoughts about my CD, the one-shot performance of it, and the quandary about where to go now.
The project began with an epiphany (hence its name, Happy Accidents) and should end or morph with a catharsis.
So, a little more about Oliver Nelson, who recorded a few other albums, with combos and with larger ensembles, but died young of a heart attack, caught up in writing and arranging music for TV shows. The All Music Guide to Jazz describes him as “a remarkable saxophonist who played with fire, speed, and creativity in a variety of styles,” but as a “good composer, though his works for larger groups were sometimes pretentious.” Blues and the Abstract Truth is a small-group work, and it shines from beginning to end–though it really is hard to top “Stolen Moments.”
I like the album almost as much as Kind of Blue, and in addition to Blue musicians Bill Evans and Paul Chambers, it features Eric Dolphy and Freddie Hubbard. Highly recommended!
So, what about the bandleader/composer? Len Lyons’ The 101 Best Jazz Albums, which includes this album in its list, says: “Oliver Nelson is a little-known tragic hero–little known by the public, a hero to many jazz musicians, and tragically swallowed up by Hollywood’s film and television industry.” Lyons even suggests that Nelson’s heart attack may have resulted from his frustrations with his music career.
“Abstract Truth”–I like the sound of that. I’ll listen to the album a few more times and try to dislodge my own musical frustrations.
Still Kind of Blue
Was reading a recent article in New York magazine (“1959: Sex, Jazz, & Datsuns”) that makes a pretty good case that 50 years ago occurred the pivotal year that changed our history–not 1964 or 1968. Well, all were big years in American history. Not gonna lobby for one in particular.
One example of the many 1959 milestones (pun intended) is the Kind of Blue album, still the best-selling jazz album of all time. It was truly something new when it came out. When I became a fan many years later (I was only six when it came out, so cut me some slack), it still seemed revolutionary to me, compared to other things I’d been listening to.
The section on Miles and his album also recounts an incident outside a New York club where Miles Davis was performing. Davis, escorting a white woman to her cab, stopped to light a cigarette. A cop told him to move along, to which Miles replied, “I work here–that’s my name up there.” Another cop rushed over and beat Miles with a billy club; then the cops handcuffed him and hauled him into jail.
Fifty years later, a very similar incident is in the news. Now, Henry Louis Gates may have provoked his own arrest by his belligerence, but it’s hard to imagine any internationally-known white Harvard prof getting caught up in the same situation. Partly because a white cop may not be so pre-conditioned to be wary of a white man trying to get into a nice, big house. Partly because white people aren’t pre-conditioned to feeling harassed by white cops.
Fifty years later, I still listen to Kind of Blue, and I also listen to another hugely popular jazz album of about the same age, Dave Brubeck’s Time Out. I’m trying to imagine white jazzer Dave Brubeck, in front of a night club in New York, being beaten and arrested for not keeping moving. Just can’t picture it.
Favorite Things: Miles & Ruth & Harry
I was reading an article in Newsweek about the Miles Davis album Kind of Blue, which turns 50 this year. The article notes that the album is the top-selling jazz album of all time, and that it was so popular in the years after it came out that Miles Davis was a pop celebrity of the era. This is one of those cliche albums that you feel funny about putting on a favorites list, because everyone else has got it on their lists. Sgt. Pepper and Pet Sounds fall into that category as well. I have no hesitation about putting any of those on any all-time favorites list. They are masterpieces and, for me, they’ve stood the test of time. Quincy Jones points out that Kind of Blue sounds like it could’ve been made yesterday. I agree, but would an album like it have been made yesterday? Was an album like it made yesterday, and released into oblivion?
On my camping vacation last week (reading and hiking, but no running, due to my knee issues), I finished the wonderful book Lark and Termite and started on A Sight for Sore Eyes, a Ruth Rendell psychological thriller written in 1998. I seldom read books in that genre, but I went through a period during which I read quite a few of Rendell’s non-Wexford books, novels that invariably feature several unrelated characters whose lives very gradually become intertwined. And one of those characters always winds up being a psychopath. I enjoy these books, and Ruth Rendell is such a careful writer that they don’t seem like guilty plesasures. I picked this one up because it was on a list I saw of Entertainment Weekly’s “most readable” books of the past quarter-century. It didn’t disappoint. I went into town and bought another Rendell, The Water’s Lovely, which isn’t nearly as tension-building or labyrinthine, but nevertheless is a page-turner.
Yesterday morning, on my last day before returning to work, I put on one of my favorite LP sides of all time (yes, children, we used to think in terms of record sides): side one of Nilsson’s Nilsson Schmilsson. It’s a concept half-album of songs that seem to represent the conflicted feelings one has in the wee hours of the night and in the morning after. The songs, in order, are: “Gotta Get Up,” “Driving Along,” Early in the Morning,” “The Moonbeam Song,” and “Down.” A great mood piece. Side two is a mishmash.
Ten Top Ten: Doubles
My last top ten albums list consists of albums by artists I’ve already chosen on other lists for other albums. This gets me pretty close to inclusion of my very favorites, between all ten lists. But there are so many runners-up.
- The Beatles, Revolver I listen to this one now more than to Sgt. Pepper. And there are four or five other Beatles albums that could go on a runner-up list. “She Said She Said” is one of my all-time favorite Beatles songs.
- Brian Wilson, Smile I put Pet Sounds on an earlier list. The long-in-hibernation Smile project was such a wonder, in so many ways, when it finally was released, that it goes right up there at the top of any list. It’s beautiful, playful, eccentric–and was great live in concert!
- Thelonious Monk, Criss Cross I enjoy every Monk album, but this one features great playing on a set of some of Monk’s best compositions, including the title track and “Hackensack.”
- Joni Mitchell, Blue Joni Mitchell’s ultimate folkie album is a rare gem, and was a great influence on many a young singer-songwriter wannabe. Songs like “Carey” and “All I Want” and “A Case of You” are modern classics that have survived a lot of happy hour performers.
- Randy Newman, Little Criminals Good Old Boys is my hands-down favorite of Randy Newman’s albums. Second place could’ve been Sail Away or 12 Songs, but Little Criminals is a slight favorite. I enjoy it more. Despite “Short People.”
- Miles Davis, Bitches Brew This eerie jazz-rock fusion trailblazer is that rare thing: a mood piece that should be played loud. It’s still very interesting at low volume, and features some great playing.
- Nina Simone, I Put a Spell on You Show tunes, blues, standards, R&B–Nina Simone takes the best of them all and makes them unmistakably hers. The song choice here is especially great, including the recently re-covered “Feeling Good.”
- Bob Dylan, Blonde on Blonde This one’s got a lot of great songs, from Dylan’s strongest phase of songwriting. The feel is so much a part of its era that it could never be imitated.
- Buffalo Springfield, Again I haven’t already chosen another Buffalo Springfield album, but since I’ve chosen a CSN and a Neil Young album, this kinda counts as a double. I think their second album was their best, with great contributions from all of the writing members.
- Duke Ellington, Time-Life Giants of Jazz In a way, I hate choosing this kind of compilation, as I said before, but there are so many “best” performances of classic Ellington songs assembled here, that it really is the Duke album I play the most.
Ten Top Ten: Jazz
Jazz albums have crept into my other lists here and there (Abbey Lincoln, Don Byron) and will no doubt make it onto other lists. But here’s a list specifically of my favorite jazz albums, on the occasion of getting the Ken Burns Jazz DVD set and re-watching it. And finishing Ross Russell’s Charlie Parker bio from 1973, Bird Lives! (which footnotes my father-in-law’s 1960 interview with Buster Smith).
- Miles Davis, Kind of Blue I know, it’s on everyone’s jazz list, but that’s because it’s so dang good.
- Dollar Brand, African Marketplace This one’s not on anyone’s list (except Robert Christgau’s top albums of 1980), but it’s been one of my very favorite records since I firts heard it years ago. I lost track of it and it was years before I located another copy. This Duke-influenced South African who is now known as Abdullah Ibrahim blends down-home American jazz with African rhythms and sensibilities. Wonderful stuff. One of the songs was played at my last wedding.
- Thelonious Monk, Brilliant Corners Monk’s another artist whose albums I’ll buy just to have them all. I enjoy every one of them, this one slightly more than the others because of the personnel and because it has the celeste version of “Pannonica,” which I’ll have played at my funeral. (Not too soon.)
- Charles Mingus, Mingus, Ah-Um Mingus is always interesting, but his albums are sometimes uneven. This one is a string of gems, start to finish.
- Duke Ellington Orchestra, …And His Mother Called Him Bill This may not truly be the best Duke album, but it’s a tribute to his sidekick Billy Strayhorn, and it features Strays’ songs, played wonderfully by the band who knew he was dying as they recorded it.
- Louis Armstrong, Louis Armstrong and His Hot Fives Historic and fun. What a combination!
- Horace Silver, Song for My Father Horace Silver’s albums were consistently good for decades. I even liked his 70s “Spiritualizing the Senses” series, which had wacky lyrics, because they were kitschy and funky at the same time. This one’s just beautiful. And funky.
- Cannonball Adderley, Something Else I love the sound of Cannonball’s horn, no matter what he’s playing. This album is slightly higher on the list than my other Cannonball favorites. Same band as Kind of Blue.
- Lester Young, Lester Young with the Oscar Peterson Trio I also am fond of Ben Webster’s album with Oscar and company. But this late Lester is gorgeous throughout.
- Charlie Parker, Charlie Parker with Strings: Master Takes There are hundreds of Charlie Parker best-of collections. Some great, some not-so. This album was not liked by some critics and jazz fans, but I think it’s consistently great, and it shows Charlie Parker’s brilliance by contrasting his improvisational beauty with the arranged beauty of the string section.
Running/Breathing 