What's in my iPod?

2011-12-23T00:21:00.000-08:00

Dear readers,
At the moment I have nothing meaningful to say on the musical subjects, but want to say I appreciate having readers whether you leave comments or not, and doubly appreciate the comments with suggestions, astute culturological analysis, or shares. Below is some of the excellent stuff posted lately throughout the blog in comments:

The Wrigglers: Sing Calypso at the Arawak (1958) with the great Ernest Ranglin on guitar at the Easy Jams blog (original vinyl rips and great commentary)

Yuko Ikoma - Moisture with Music Box (2008) - Eric Satie on a music box, very surprising and effective readings of his music, on Hypnagogic Travels

Olivier Messian - Les Corps Glorieux (Organ Works III) - "kinda cosmic stuff, very deep and unusual" - in FLAC, thanks to Symbolkid!

The trouble with jazz

2011-11-28T23:32:00.000-08:00

Prez galore

2011-11-28T11:47:00.000-08:00

Oh boy, check this out: The Complete Lester Young 1936-1951 Small Group Sessions, 6 CDs, both in 320kbps mp3 and lossless.

John Sousa, the great aphorist

2011-10-28T22:49:00.000-07:00

These talking machines are going to ruin the artistic development of music in this country. When I was a boy... in front of every house in the summer evenings, you would find young people together singing the songs of the day or old songs. Today you hear these infernal machines going night and day. We will not have a vocal cord left. The vocal cord will be eliminated by a process of evolution, as was the tail of man when he came from the ape. - A submission to a 1906 congressional hearing. @

Also, Sousa on music piracy (a letter to the editor).

I also stumbled on a lengthy article how Victor, makers of the "talking machines," created its own audience - on the social construction of listening to recorded music. Good stuff; did not finish it yet though.

2011-10-17T10:05:00.000-07:00

In the "insane far out crazy sh*t" category.

Giacinto Scelsi: Symphony de Uma Nota So

2011-10-11T10:13:00.000-07:00

Articles about Giacinto Scelsi tend to begin with accounts of his biography and for a good reason: he is a fascinating character, a colorful figure in the tradition of great eccentrics and lonely visionaries, and his life makes for a great story. I will skip it: first, there is a number of articles that tell his story better than I ever could (see Classical.net and medieval.org, as well as an extended and thorough obituary). A second, and more important, reason is that it would have been the wish of Scelsi himself. He was a recluse, granting no interviews and refusing to be photographed - not as a whim, but as a natural extension of his vision of himself and his role in composing:
"Scelsi believed to be a postman, someone who delivered a message, considering himself as a medium between different worlds. [...] Scelsi's unorthodox methods of working proved to be controversial as seemingly questioning the very notion of authorship that even someone like Cage never relinquished." @
"The method used in the pieces for which Scelsi is famous [...] was to improvise extensively on one note and record the results onto tape, this later being transcribed in score by an assistant. Scelsi did not think of these works as compositions with an author in the conventional sense but as snapshots of something more profound and of which the composer was something of an intermediary." @
This approach lead to claims that the music was not, in fact, his, but rather written by his many assistants - although there is an originality and unity of vision behind his output that has to come from one person.

So, if it's all about the music, what is the music like? A common adjective is "monotonous," and it's not derogatory, but directly descriptive. Indeed most of his compositions are based on exploration of a single tone. Yet, the music manages to be engaging, fascinating; it feels like you are hearing a great story told in a foreign language. Scelsi's musical language is completely original and unconventional: completely devoid of melody, yet infinitely rich in timbre, texture, and dynamics; there is no pulse, and rhythm is used only in the most general sense of ideas developing faster or slower; harmony is completely foreign to the classical tradition - it is based on a single note and a multitude of its overtones, so one can occasionally recognize triads and chords, but more often there are microtonal shifts or larger note clusters that may sound dissonant, but not jarringly so.
The entire impression his music makes is like that: dissonant, but not jarringly so; foreign, yet vaguely familiar. His language is not otherworldly, not alien, not futuristic like electronic bleeps and glitches tend to sound. Quite the opposite: Scelsi is reaching into the past, into the history and sometimes prehistory to connect to the deepest human musical impulses. This is how Scelsi himself saw his music: the composition titles are in Latin, Sanskrit, Sumerian; they refer to characters and concepts from Near Eastern, Mayan, or ancient Greek mythology.
My personal aural association is different; once upon a time I read an article on diddley bow - a one-string homemade instrument played with a slide - which said that in early African-American folk music there tends to be little use for pure timbre, and homemade instruments are often augmented with buzzers and rattlers attached to the string to dirty up and fuzzify the sound. The Afro-American folk tradition was completely unknown to Scelsi, yet again they seem to produce convergent results.

To connect to another previous idea, while Scelsi was not an orthodox believer like Pärt or Bach, he definitely was a mystic and saw his work in spiritual terms; music for him is something external to and something greater than a man; and I think that his attempts to remove his ego from the process of composition improve results dramatically.

See also essays on AION and Konx-Om-Pax.

Links: the source, AION / PFHAT / KNOX-OM-PAX on mediafire

A three-CD collection of his Œuvres Pour Chœur Et Orchestre (including the material on the disc above) at uaxuctum (incidentally, the blog is named after a Scelsi composition)

Kronos Quartet - Winter Was Hard

2011-10-07T22:51:00.000-07:00

I recently got me a new hard drive and went on a downloading rampage; mostly modern classical, but other stuff, as well. I'll try to go through some of it and perhaps will be posting my listening notes as I go along; possibly with the links stolen from where I got the music.

This one was an easy choice for a start - I could have written a review without even listening. What Kronos are trying to do here is to give a panorama view of the modern string quartet repertoire, and doing so admirably. They pick out samples from all the extremes of the modern string quartet tradition: the last of the American Classicists (Barber's 'Adagio') is balanced by the 'pop' people dabbling in strings (John Lurie's 'Bella by Barlight,' Piazolla); dodecaphonic Webern sits opposite melodic Salinen; Zorn's cold and clinical genre manipulation is counteracted by the earnest and direct 'Fratres' by Arvo Pärt. This album might be a good starter for a hipster trying to cover all his classical bases in one strike.
As an interesting aside, Kronos spent the rest of their career breaking out of this modern string quartet canon by collaborating with anybody and everybody, from the Tiger Lillies to Asha Bhosle.

Now, as far as specific comments after actually listening to this, I got the following:
I don't like Zorn, never have, and probably never will - despite the fact that most of the modern musicians I love, respect, and admire collaborated with him at some point. His track here is yet another reminder why. He does not play music, he plays with music. His usual genre juggling is here on full display, and, as before, it does nothing for me. There is so much attention to the form that content gets completely lost (if there ever was any content behind the form).
Arvo Pärt, on the other hand, I really dig (I only wish he was a little louder and a little faster). Interestingly, composer's faith seems to have a positive correlation with the quality of music: e.g. Bach and Pärt. I guess the difference is that they are not writing for a specific audience and not trying to impress anyone - they are writing from their very core and are only accountable to their God (or to themselves).
Lurie's track is a bit predictable; it sounds like something he could have written for the Lounge Lizards and just happens to be performed by KQ, rather than an authentic string quartet piece. The title is a play on 'Stella by Starlight,' but I don't remember it well enough to tell if there are musical references to it in the piece.
Another interesting thing is how surprisingly similar are the Riley and Piazolla pieces. I had the album on shuffle; one followed the other and the transition was completely natural. From tango one would expect the energetics that comes from it being, ultimately, dance music; Riley's piece should serve the abrasive edge of the modern experimental music; yet, both reach outside their genre confines and meet in the middle - 'Four, for Tango' with transitional dissonance, scratching and sawing; 'Half-Wolf' with truly rock'n'roll energy, a pulse that goes through the piece.
Webern stuff I did not get, period. Schnittke I think I need a few more listens to say anything meaningful about.

Another review

Kronos Quartet - Winter Was Hard (1988)
The source, the links: music, scans
1. Winter was Hard, for chorus & orchestra, Op 20 (Sallinen) 1:40
2. Half-Wolf Dances Mad In Moonlight(Riley) 8:21
3. Fratres, for string quartet (Part) 9:23
4. Six Bagatelles for string quartet, Op. 9 (Webern) 3:57
5. Forbidden Fruit for voice, string quartet & turntables (Zorn) 10:20
6. Bella by Barlight, for string quartet (Lurie) 2:47
7. Four, for Tango, for string quartet (Piazzolla) 4:41
8. String Quartet No.3 (Schnittke) 19:06
9. Adagio for strings (Barber) 7:09
10. A Door Is Ajar (Traditional) 0:03

New World Jazz

2011-09-22T10:18:00.000-07:00

We've seen indo-jazz (@ and @), Caribbean jazz (@, @, and @), Ethiopian jazz (Mulatu Astatke), North African/ Arabic jazz (Salah Ragab, Ahmed Abdul-Malik, Lloyd Miller), South African/highlife jazz (@), jazz-mugam (Armenia - Vagif Mustafa-Zadeh), Chinese jazz (@, @, @, @), a multitude of Brazilian jazz styles (choro, samba, music by Pixinguinha, Turma da Gafieira, and Meirelles - in addition to the omnipresent bossa nova), even jazz-influenced french accordion folk music (@). So I guess there would be no harm in posting a classical composers' take on jazz. For an astute musical observation of the day, I'd like to point out that the main theme in Hindemith's Ragtime is taken from Bach's famous C minor fugue, WTC book 1.

New World Jazz {Michael Tilson Thomas - New World Symphony}
143mb, 256kbps on megaupload
1. Lollapalooza, for orchestra - John Adams
2. Rhapsody in Blue, for piano & orchestra (orchestrated by F. Grofé) - George Gershwin
3. Prelude, Fugue And Riffs, for clarinet & jazz ensemble - Leonard Bernstein
4. La Création du monde, ballet for orchestra, Op. 81 - Darius Milhaud
5. Ebony Concerto, for clarinet & jazz band - Igor Stravinsky
6. Ragtime, for orchestra (or piano 4 hands), Op. 20 - Paul Hindemith
7. A Jazz Symphony, for piano & jazz orchestra (original version), W. 157a - George Antheil
8. Theme From The Bad And The Beautiful - David Raskin

Arie antiche

2011-09-13T11:27:00.000-07:00

As it might be apparent from this blog, I think the topic of musical authenticity is fascinating. What was authentic to the generation of our grandparents became fake for our parents and then is picked up and dusted off, to be discarded again with the changing fashion and interests. One example from pop music is the 50's exotica trend. For their contemporaries Martin Denny and Les Baxter were the true troubadours of faraway lands; then they became the cheese peddlers, and now they are "the authentic exotica movement of 50's."

Recently I stumbled onto another example from the classical world. Several extended quotes from Wiki and elsewhere after the jump:

Though also a composer, Alessandro Parisotti is better known today as the original editor of a collection of songs known as arie antiche (originally titled Arie antiche: ad una voce per canto e pianoforte, published 1890). The original collection comprises three volumes of songs or arias published as a primer to study classical singing, but the three volumes have since been reduced to single-volumed extracts known as the 24 Italian Songs and Arias, sometimes also the 26 Italian Songs and Arias. Parisotti collected these antique arias (arie antiche is the Italian) in what was the 19th century vogue for discovering forgotten old or antique music from the classical and baroque eras. The most famous example of this practice of reclaiming forgotten music is Mendelssohn's revival of Bach's St. Matthew Passion in Leipzig (1829). The taste for rediscovered music was de rigueur among musicians and audiences of the nineteenth century, with composers lesser than Mendelssohn and Brahms playing the field as well. Parisotti found forgotten scores and arranged their arias (or duets) for solo singer and Piano accompaniment. His textual practices were unscrupulous though, the scores for many originals being modified, or supposedly improved, from how the music had been intended by the original composers. Beyond that, Parisotti also included some of his own pieces for public performance and for publication in the Arie antiche collection, but always passing them off as rediscovered masterpieces of the ancient composers. In his collection 'Se tu m'ami' was attributed to Giovanni Pergolesi where in fact it seems Parisotti composed it himself. Another misattribution is the recitative and aria 'Il mio bel foco ... Quella fiamma' which was attributed to Alessandro Marcello, and often still is, but was in fact composed by Francesco Bartolomeo Conti. These fake masterpieces of the baroque call the integrity of the so-called Neo-Classicism in Igor Stravinsky's ballet Pulcinella into question when considering that Stravinsky had studied them to familiarize himself with baroque style and that he even re-used the music of Se tu m'ami in the ballet. (emphasis mine - LesTP) The arie antiche or Italian songs have become the staple of modern voice pedagogy, specifically for students just beginning with lessons. Teachers laud them, perhaps mistakenly, for tracing a line to the old schools of singing right back to the golden age of the castrati. In fact, where the quality of the music is concerned, these arrangements of baroque and classical arias bear a closer kinship with the 19th century parlour song.

The following is from liners to an Emma Kirkby "Arie Antiche" album:
The famous yellow books known as the Arie Antiche, compiled as the personal anthology of a single editor almost one hundred years ago, have formed and channeled the taste of generations of singers and singing enthusiasts. No blame can be attached to the original editor for the use made of his work by future generations, but what is so astonishing is that such an old-fashioned, mistranscribed, frequently truncated and textually bowdlerized collection should still be exercising such authority over so much of the singing world now, in the 1990's, despite being ill flagrant contradiction of decades of brilliant musicology, despite the yards of shelf-space in music reference libraries filled with superb 'complete' editions and even photographic facsimiles of original prints and manuscripts, and even despite some performances in our time reflecting the depth and passion revealed by the best of the 'early music' activity of the last twenty five years. The world is a different place in 1990 from what it was in 1890, and an anthology such as that contained in the yellow books now belongs firmly in the museum of music history. It is itself now part of 'early music', a curio, a product of its age, unique of its kind and not without minor interest for students of Victorian harmonic taste and the social etiquette revealed in the history of bowdlerization!

The first quote ends with a reference to "parlour song" - a dismissive label for the white popular music of late XIXth century; despite the "white men can't swing" connotations, apparently parlour music was interesting enough and influenced ragtime, jazz, and other subsequent styles in ways that are not usually acknowledged: see Peter Ecklund's most excellent article "Louis licks" and XIXth century cornet etudes (PDF) and the following from wiki:

In contrast to the chord-based classical music era, parlour music features melodies which are harmonically-independent or not determined by the harmony. This produces parlour chords, many of them added tone chords if not extended such as the dominant thirteenth, added sixth, and major dominant ninth. Rather, the melodies are organized through parlour modes, variants of the major mode with the third, sixth, and seventh emphasized through modal frames such as the mediant-octave mode, which uses the third as a floor and ceiling note, its less common variants the pseudo-phrygian, in which the seventh and often fifth are given prominence, and submediant-octave mode.

As far as music goes, I am not sure what to recommend, but there is plenty of commercial recordings of Arie Antiche out there - see, for instance, this or this. Everyone knows it's fake but I guess people still like the tunes.
Also, scans of the original collections are available on upload sites and IMSLP, and elsewhere on the web (Scribd etc).

PS. Now that I heard a few different ones, the best interpretations IMHO are by Ramon Vargas, available from this blog (note the password).

Brahms - Hungarian Dances (arr.Joachim)

2011-06-21T14:38:00.000-07:00

Earlier, I posted some music by The Bollywood Brass Band, a wonderful fruit of cross-pollination between the British and Indian cultures. Here's an excellent article that traces the ebb and flow of the brass band tradition between two countries: the British brought it with them in the early XIXth century, the locals absorbed it into the greater Indian musical fabric by playing Indian traditional tunes and Bollywood songs using the brass band medium; South Asian immigrants brought the wedding brass band tradition with them to UK and now the young Britons got together as "The Bollywood Brass Band" to play the music that went through these multiple iterations. The cultural give and take behind it is at least as interesting as the music itself.

Now, here's another example of a cultural ping-pong between two musical traditions, separated not geographically, but rather socially: the living folk tradition of gypsy music and the classical world. Brahms had a strictly classical education, but first became interested in gypsy music when he toured Europe (and particularly Hungary) as an accompanist to the virtuoso violinist Ede Reményi. Through him and street musicians Brahms became exposed to gypsy and Hungarian folk music, which were thought of as synonymous at the time. He compiled and arranged a book of compositions that were published as "Hungarian Dances" to much acclaim and financial reward for Brahms. They gave the audiences of the time a measured taste of exotica, the carefree life of noble nomads, yet filtered through and tempered with a classical sensibility enough to be acceptable in polite society.
One of Brahms's friends and colleagues was Joseph Joachim, a celebrated hungarian-jewish violinist who was both classically trained and thoroughly familiar with the oral tradition. Joachim made a violin/piano arrangement of these pieces, bringing them closer to the actual folk music of the time with authentic ornamentation and melisma - and then carefully notated them out, sending the ball back into the classical court, as it were.
The performers on this recording, Shaham and Erez, have both impeccable classical credentials and also experience playing hungarian/gypsy folk music, and so they occupy perhaps the ideal vantage point from which to approach Brahms.

What I've written above does not imply an assessment of this music as more or less "authentic" or "true" to the folk music it was supposed to represent. It would be an error to judge it by the orthodox musicological standards: the Hungarian Dances were with us for long enough to stand on their own merits and they probably have influenced a few performers of the "true" "traditional" gypsy music.

Johannes Brahms - Hungarian Dances (arr.Joachim) {Hagai Shaham - violin, Arnon Erez - piano}
VBR, 95mb on mediafire
Hungarian Dances #1-21
Variations in Emin #1-21

2011-05-26T16:43:00.000-07:00

"Google vs. everyone" - Larry Downes on information sharing and copyright law. A thoughtful and well-written article that touches on the rhetoric of online stealing and piracy.

Dinah Washington Sings Bessie Smith (1958)

2011-05-09T15:40:00.000-07:00

Great album. The first two songs are killer, better than the original Bessie Smith versions, IMHO. The band mostly stays in background, which is a pity. I wish they would step out a bit more - especially on something like "Trombone Blues".

Dinah Washington Sings Bessie Smith (1958)
VBR, 93mb on mediafire
1. After You've Gone
2. Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair
3. Jailhouse Blues
4. Trombone Blues (AKA Trombone Cholly)
5. You've Been A Good Ole Wagon
6. Careless Love
7. Backwater Blues
8. If I Could Be With You One Hour Tonight
9. Me And My Gin
10. Fine Fat Daddy
11. Trombone Butter (Alt Take)
12. Careless Love (Mono)
13. Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair (Live)
14. Me And My Gin (Live)
15. Backwater Blues (Live)

Os 3 do Nordeste - 20 Super Successos

2011-04-18T16:13:00.000-07:00

Here's a respite from all the eggheadedness overflowing here lately. I posted some forro before, and the description in that album's title is still the best: "Music for maids and taxi drivers." Many styles make up the rich, intoxicating bouquet of Brazilian music, and forro adds to it a strong sniff of glue. For an hour of primitive, repetitive, hard-driven accordion music, grab this one!
The songs are rather uneven; many of the tunes I liked turned out to be covers of songs by Antonio Barros - É proibido cochilar, Forró do poeirão, Homem com H (this was a big hit in Brazil). Da boca pra fora is a great tune, so is Pra virar Lobisomem.

Os 3 do Nordeste - 20 Super Successos
50mb on megaupload or mediafire
1. É proibido cochilar
2. Voltar Pra Bahia
3. Pra virar Lobisomem
4. Forró do Poeirão
5. A Vendinha da Feira
6. Homem com H
7. Forró de Tamanco
8. Estourei no Norte
9. Brasil Expresso
10. Por debaixo dos panos
11. Da boca pra fora
12. Forró Casamenteiro
13. Ta Faltando Alguém
14. Elas por elas
15. O Melhor do Forró
16. Forró sem frescura
17. Amor Sobrando
18. Vamos todos festejar
19. Eu era feliz
20. Minha Fogueira

Possibly the closest musical project in spirit, if not in style, from the other side of the globe:

Eric Satie

2011-04-14T11:32:00.001-07:00

Listening a lot to Eric Satie lately. For some background, here's a great article: Flabby Preludes for a Dog: An Erik Satie Primer. I've heard a few interpretations and it seems his music is most effective when played glacially slow; so, AFAIK the best ones are by Pascal Roge. Gnossienne No.1 would be the best soundtrack for a lonely eccentric high on absinthe going to his empty apartment at 4am.

FLAC
145mb on megaupload or depositfiles
94mb on megaupload or megaupload
96mb on mediafire

His music is not very conducive to a jazz approach, yet many try it; here is a discussion of Gnossiennes No.1 and No.2 from a jazz angle. Mal Waldron made an entire record of Satie's compostions. I don't know if it is better than a straight-ahead reading like Roge's, but an interesting effort nonetheless.

Mal Waldron Plays Erik Satie (1983)
70mb, on megaupload

Nicolai Gedda sings S. Rachmaninoff and A. Tcherepnine

2011-04-01T14:04:00.000-07:00

Songs by Sergei Rachmaninoff and Alexandre Tcherepnine / Сергей Рахманинов и Александр Черепнин - Романсы
Nicolai Gedda (tenor) with Alexis Weissenberg and Alexandre Tcherepnine (piano)
High VBR, 115mb on mediafire

S. Rachmaninoff
Они отвечали (They answered), Op.21 № 4
Не пой, красавица (Don't sing, my belle), Op.4 № 4
Сирень (Lilacs), Op.21 № 5
О, не грусти! (Do not be blue), op.14 № 8
Буря (Tempest), Op.34 № 3
К детям (To the children), Op.26 № 7
Христос воскрес (Christ is Risen!), Op.26 № 6
В моем саду я вижу (I see in my garden), Op.26 № 10
В молчаньи ночи тайной (In the night's silence), Op.4 № 3
Вокализ (Vocalise), Op.34 № 14
Здесь хорошо (How peaceful), Op.21 № 7
Отрывок из Альфреда Мюссе (Fragment from A. Musset), Op.21 № 6
Арион (Arion), Op.34 № 5
Сей день я помню (I remember this day), Op.34 № 10
Уж, ты нива моя (Oh my field), Op.4 № 5
Ветер перелётный (A passing breeze), Op.34 № 4
Весенние воды (Spring waters), соч.14 № 11

A. Tcherepnine
Озеро (The lake), Op.16 № 3
Три домовины (Three coffins)
Мир одиночества (The world of loneliness)
Береза (Birch tree), Op.33 № 14
Осенняя песня (The autumn song), Op.7 № 1
Свечка догорела (A candle has burned out), Op.21 № 3

This post is for Sergei Rachmaninoff, who was born exactly 138 years ago - happy birthday, Сереженька!
I used to think that classical composers only wrote orchestral symphonies, or at most string quartets - boy, was I ever wrong. A good number of them was able to appreciate the value of small-scale works, and came pretty close to pop music of the day by writing actual songs. Let me quote Hindemith:
In recent years, I have almost entirely turned away from concert music and composed nearly exclusively music with pedagogical or social tendencies; for amateurs, children, broadcast, mechanical instruments, etc. I hold this sort of composition to be more important than writing for concert uses because the latter usually serve only as a technical task for the musicians and have hardly anything to do with the advancement of music.
Songs take a good part of Rachmaninoff's output; a few became standards with at least one - the famous Vocalise - crossing over from the singer's repertoire to a multitude of other instruments; it's been covered on just about anything: violin, French horn, theremin, double bass, jazz quartet, 24 cellos, even hard rock guitar (Slash of G'n'R, I shit you not).

In all truth, art songs, and Rachmaninoff's especially, hardly sound like pop music to а modern ear; a certain effort is necessary to get them - but IMHO it's an effort well spent. A few have conventional structure, but others are small dramatic performances with lyrics driving the development and a richly textured piano part to support and echo the voice, occasionally stepping up into the spotlight. It takes a few listens to follow what is happening, but once you can, it's a whirlwind ride through the peaks of emotion.

This upload is as close to "my own work" as it is going to get - I did some remastering. The dynamics on original were entirely too extreme, I could not make it through a single song without turning the volume knob. So this is compressed from a lossless file and then ripped into high VBR. The classical nerds will murder me for it, but the truth is, I don't care much about hi-fi; and anyway, those who want hi-fi can buy a CD, or better yet, get tickets to a live concert.

Cal Tjader ethno ventures

2011-02-28T14:59:00.000-08:00

Far East / jazz hybrids were featured here before (see the far east tag), from ShiDaiQu of 40s and 50s to the modern recreations of same by John Huie under the Shanghai Jazz moniker, to the more modern chinese jazz fusion of Coco Zhao. Yet, there were some interesting attempts at cino-jazz by American musicians, as well. One worth checking out is Cal Tjader's Several Shades of Jade. He was a leading exponent of cross-cultural music as the man behind a number of excellent and influential latin jazz albums in the 50s. Here he steps away from latin jazz to explore the eastern music traditions - not just chinese, but also Near East (hear, for example, the Turkish-sounding jangly detuned reeds on The Fakir and Sahib). This 1963 LP is a joint effort between Tjader and Lalo Shifrin, who wrote half the material and did all arrangements. The authenticity here is a bit suspect, although I don't know enough to judge. Nonetheless, the music is engaging and easy on the ears; while it occasionally approaches kitch/easy listening territory, it doesn't really cross the border - which can be said about much of Tjader's work.

AllMusic review

Cal Tjader - Several Shades of Jade (1963)
at Oufar Khan, yorubajazz
1. The Fakir (2:53)
2. Cherry Blossoms (4:59)
3. Borneo (3:45)
4. Tokyo Blues (3:52)
5. Song Of The Yellow River (3:18)
6. Sahib (2:29)
7. China Nights (3:24)
8. Almond Tree (2:58)
9. Hot Sake (3:35)

As a bonus, Tjader's stab at South American music; most of the above applies.
AllMusic review

Cal Tjader Plays The Contemporary Music Of Mexico And Brazil
With Laurindo Almeida, Paul Horn. arr. by
depositfiles and megaupload via
mediafire, rapidshare pt.1 and pt.2, also in lossless: FLAC
01. Vai Querer (Hianto de Almeida-Fernando Lobo)
02. Qu Tristeza (Mario Ruiz Armengol)
03. Meditao (Antonio Carlos Jobim-Ferreira De Mendonca)
04. So (Mario Ruiz Armengol)
05. Se Tarde, Me Perdoa (Carlos Eduardo Lyra-Ronaldo Boscoli)
06. No Diga Nada (Carlita-Noacy Marcenes)
07. Silenciosa (Mario Ruiz Armengol)
08. Elizete (Clare Fischer)
09. Imagen (Mario Ruiz Armengol)
10. Tentaao do Inconveniente (Augusto Mesquita- Manoel de Conceicao)
11. Preciosa (Mario Ruiz Armengol)
12. Chro e Batuque (Laurindo Almeida)

An amusing iPod-related rant

2011-01-30T18:49:00.001-08:00

Did you know iPods are tracking devices that government uses to control the populace? Beats an implanted skull chip, 'cause iPods can also play music!

Arranger/composer special pt.2: George Russel and Oliver Nelson

2011-01-23T21:19:00.001-08:00

A second installment of the (jazz) arranger/composer special. The first one was about arrangers working to the strengths of a specific performer. These two are more about the composition; it's the performers that come to play with the mastermind.

George Russell is the mastermind behind the first album. He passed away in mid-2009; here's a well-written obituary detailing his accomplishments. While not a household name, Russell was very influential among his contemporaries. Many (including Miles Davis) point to his theoretical work as a cornerstone of the modal jazz. His book, Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization, is legendary among the jazz musicians - among other things, for being so densely written as to be nearly unreadable. The excellent Casa Valdez Studios has a discussion of his theories - see if you can make more sense of it than I did.
Russell had no trouble assembling an all-star cast for his albums; this one is the first he recorded under his own name and it has Art Farmer on trumpet (again!) and Bill Evans on piano. Don Ellis and Eric Dolphy play on his next, Ezz-thetics, possibly even more fascinating, although somewhat less accessible album.

George Russell - The Jazz Workshop [1956]
With Art Farmer, Bill Evans, Paul Motian, and others.
256kbps, 103mb on mediafire
1. Ye Hypocrite, Ye Beelzebub
2. Jack's Blues
3. Livingstone I Presume
4. Ezz-thetic
5. Night Sound
6. Round Johnny Rondo
7. Fellow Delegates
8. Witch Hunt
9. The Sad Sergeant
10. Knights Of The Steamtable
11. Ballad Of Hix Blewitt
12. Concerto For Billy The Kid
13. Ballad Of Hix Blewitt (Alternate Take)
14. Concerto For Billy The Kid (Alternate Take)

Another album that fits the arranger/composer theme is Oliver Nelson's Blues and the Abstract Truth. It is probably the best-known of all of the above, and also well-represented in the share-o-sphere, so I will leech the links instead of uploading it.
Read a review: a landmark of jazz orchestration, one of the most potent modern jazz sextets ever (Freddie Hubbard, Eric Dolphy, Bill Evans)

Oliver Nelson - The Blues and the Abstract Truth ()
Three links here or get it on rapidshare or mediafire; also available in FLAC
01. Stolen Moments
02. Hoe-Down
03. Cascades
04. Yeanin’
05. Butch and Butch
06. Teenie’s Blues
Alternative artwork:

Paul Hindemith

2011-01-13T21:04:00.000-08:00

The reason I wasn't writing here much in the past year is that my musical interests have shifted once again, going rather beyond the scope of this website. I still want some place to write down my little musical observations, so I guess the scope of this website will have to expand, as well.

I am generally more interested in what in jazz is called a combo and in the classical lingo chamber music. So in my recent explorations of classical I came across the Hindemith's sonatas for piano-and-every-orchestral-instrument-there-is; many of them staples of educational repertoire.
So I spent about a week trying to get my head around his music - specifically, the trumpet and piano sonata of 1939, and the horn sonatas. The first few times had me rather baffled. Last night I listened to it again with scores in my hands and finally found a point of reference I could grab onto. He sounds to me a lot like Ornette Coleman. Incidentally, it looks like I might be the first person ever to use the names of Ornette Coleman and Paul Hindemith in one sentence.
I think there are two main points of similarity, the very ones that made Ornette's music so distinctive and controversial. Firstly, it's the rhythm. Both Coleman and Hindemith are melodists, with their compositions hung on melodic lines that run through the pieces, giving them inner logic and consistency. However, the melodies conform neither to the 4-bar/8-bar length, nor even to a steady time signature. By ear, it sounds like a player is adding or subtracting beats at will to underscore or enhance a certain melodic point, to make it more expressive. On paper, these jumps and skips have to be notated by shifting from 4/4 to 3/2 to 12/8 and back. Ornette's themes are built on the very same logic. Strictly speaking, that approach is nothing new and is used by solo performers from just about any folk tradition - most visibly to an american listener, by Charlie Patton and Robert Johnson, or a tune like King Bee. Coleman was controversial not for inventing it, but for placing it into the context of a jazz combo.
Secondly, it's the harmony - the pliable, fluid harmonic development that follows not the conventional rules, but the melodic line. A lot of times piano accompaniment in the sonatas is primarily textural, not so much harmonic - a feature Ornette would've appreciated.

As before, it is worth noting that these are the case of the opposites converging. Hindemith is a highly schooled composer from the Western classical tradition who chose to speak through the medium of written music. Ornette Coleman comes from the aural/oral African-American folk tradition and to my knowledge he was musically illiterate. I guess the biologists would call it convergent evolution.

Here are some sounds to sample:
Sonata for Trumpet and Piano played by Thomas Stevens, on mediafire
It seems that classical music is best perceived in small amounts - preferably, is chunks intended by the composer. The CD this came from contains more stuff, none of it relevant to today's post and thus omitted.

Nonetheless, the completists might be interested in the Complete Works for Brass as performed by the Summit Brass and available on megaupload, 192mb, high VBR

Outside link:
Horn and Piano Sonatas at the most excellent Closet of Curiosities

Arranger/composer special pt.1: Johnny Richards, Gigi Gryce, Quincy Jones

2010-12-22T22:06:00.000-08:00

In the heyday of swing a lot of the bands had similar repertoire - the tunes the public wanted to hear. What made a band stand out was how they played it. It was not the star soloist that made the band, but the person who put the spotlight on the soloist: the composer and the arranger. Really? - you say, - the arranger? who cares about the arranger? Look at Ellington's orchestra. After going solo, none of his former stars - Johnny Hodges, Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams, - ever achieved artistic heights comparable to their work in the Duke's orchestra. Duke's (and Strayhorn's) writing highlighted their special talents and hid their shortcomings.
In the search for the ever-smoother, most commercial sound, a lot of swing music became completely scripted. That prompted the backlash of bop and the following styles that focused more on the improvised, spontaneous communal music creation. The pendulum swung back, and some say it went too far: the music industry found it easy to package and sell the myth of the dissipated genius (Bird), the lonely visionary (Trane), the jazz version of a rock star (Miles) - each image quite fascinating, but still incidental to the music itself. Of course, our celebrity-centered culture swallowed it hook, line, and sinker. The idea of superiority of improvisation over anything and everything else gradually spread from the recording company promos to the listening public to the musicians and jazz educators, and lead to the stagnation of the style. A million young musicians in a hundred thousand jazz classes play the same Real Book tunes in the same head-solo-solo-solo-trade fours-head format as they played forty years ago.

However, there was a time before jazz got run over by the thousand little Coltranes, a time when the pendulum stood just right, a time of bold experiments that fell through the cracks. Fifties were the time when that perfect balance between writing and improvisation was briefly found again. I would like to present today two artifacts from that era, two albums that put the improvising virtuoso's wild flights of fancy within a framework of carefully thought-out, painstakingly constructed arrangements, two collaborations between a writer and an interpreter, each greater than the sum of the parts.

The star soloist on the first one is Art Farmer, one of my favorite trumpet players. While writing this post, I realized that a lot of his best work were collaborations with master writers/arrangers - see his Jazztet LPs with Benny Golson or his Baroque Sketches album (+ +). As the name suggests, here he "Plays the Arrangements and Compositions of Gigi Gryce and Quincy Jones." From liners:
Quincy went on to fame and fortune in Hollywood while Gigi dropped out to anonymity of the Long Island education system before he died in his native Florida in 1983.

Art Farmer Plays the Arrangements and Compositions of Gigi Gryce and Quincy Jones [1954]
With Charlie Rouse, Quincy Jones, Horace Silver, Percy Heath, Art Taylor, and others.
320kbps, 84mb on megaupload or mediafire
1. Mau Mau
2. Work of Art
3. The Little Bandmaster
4. Up in Quincy's Room
5. Wildwood
6. Evening in Paris
7. Elephant Walk
8. Tiajuana
9. When Your Lover Has Gone

Another pairing of a brilliant soloist with a great writer is an album of Sonny Stitt playing Johnny Richards, profiled here before. The sound is a bit muddy, but the music is fascinating.

Sonny Stitt Playing Arrangements From The Pen Of Johnny Richards [1953]
With Kai Winding, Horace Silver, Charles Mingus, Jo Jones, Don Elliott, and others.
320kbps, 52mb on megaupload or mediafire
1. Sancho Panza
2. Sweet And Lovely
3. If I Could Be With You
4. Hooke's Tours
5. Loose Walk
6. Pink Satin
7. Shine On Harvest Moon
8. Opus 202

PS I am introducing two new tags.
composer+arranger is for albums that either are an original work of a single composer (Mary Lou Williams, Lalo Schifrin, Moacir Santos, Bob Graettinger) or bands focusing on the work of a certain composer (Pixinguinha, AR Rahman, Mancini, Carl Stalling).
I also realized I have Art Farmer on a few of the albums posted here, and a few more are coming up, so there's a label just for him.

Zé da Velha & Silvério Pontes - Só Pixinguinha (2006)

2010-12-03T11:20:00.000-08:00

Choro is one of my favorite Brazilian music styles. The stuff I posted here before (1, 2) is all original, historical choro from the early XXth century. But the style - now over a century old - is still going strong. The modern performers have the same problem as the jazz musicians in US - how do you stay true to the spirit of the music without falling into cliches? There is a modern duo that does so successfully: Zé da Velha (trombone) and Silvério Pontes (trumpet/flugelhorn). They found the right balance between respect for tradition - after all, this album is all out of Pixinguinha's songbook - and bringing jazz and samba elements to the mix.

Zé da Velha & Silvério Pontes - Só Pixinguinha (2006)
Outside links: one, two, three, four
1. Já te Digo
2. Carinhoso
3. Diplomata
4. Chorei
5. Sensível
6. Cascatinha
7. Desprezado
8. Ainda Me Recordo
9. Ingênuo
10. Trombone Atrevido
11. Os Oito Batutas
12. Sedutor

QotD - Hesse on recorded music

2010-12-02T11:40:00.000-08:00

And in fact, to my indescribable astonishment and horror, the devilish tin trumpet spat out, without more ado, a mixture of bronchial slime and chewed rubber; that noise that owners of gramophones and radios have agreed to call music. And behind the slime and the croaking there was, sure enough, like an old master beneath a layer of dirt, the noble outline of that divine music. [...] Observe how this crazy funnel apparently does the most stupid, the most useless and the most damnable thing in the world. It takes hold of some music played where you please, without distinction, stupid and coarse, lamentably distorted, to boot, and chucks it into space to land where it has no business to be; and yet after all this it cannot destroy the original spirit of the music; it can only demonstrate its own senseless mechanism, its inane meddling and marring. - Herman Hesse, Steppenwolf

Is that poetic or what? "Bronchial slime and chewed rubber," that's a great name for a music blog.

QotD - Sleazy on CDs

2010-12-02T11:38:00.000-08:00

I would have thought that CDs were things that homeless people hang on their super market shopping carts to make them look less depressing but apparently some Americans still buy them for the data they contain. - The late Sleazy of Throbbing Gristle and Coil

How come I never heard of this guy?

2010-11-29T23:02:00.001-08:00

Chung! Chung chung!

Edison Machado É Samba Novo (1964)

2010-11-29T17:24:00.001-08:00

until today the single most important Brazilian instrumental music album ever released.

This one is widely available elsewhere on the web, but it seems to only be known among brasileiros. I believe it deserves wider recognition.
Firstly, the all-star cast. Edison Machado, the drummer and bandleader, is truly a towering figure of the Brazilian musical scene; he played with everyone and then some, defined the whole bossa drumming style etc.etc. Meirelles on the winds, a composer and leader of seminal samba-jazz band Meirelles e os Copa 5; he wrote five tracks on this album. Raulzinho - trombonist, composer and future bandleader, "the Hendrix of trombone". Tenorio Jr., the legendary piano player. But the magic touch that turned this into gold came from Moacir Santos, of whom I was raving before; he was the mastermind, arranger and producer on these sessions and there are three of his tunes on here.
Secondly, the tunes are really strong - ALL of them. There's not a single weak track; not only the solos are rippin', but the writing is very melodic and catchy and the arrangements are inventive - unlike a lot of post-50s jazz.
Finally, the album came in that brief moment when the musicians were ready to make Great Art, but the record execs still wanted pop music. So while their North American contemporaries were putting out album-long epics, here the Art is pressure-packed in two-and-a-half minute bits that explode with intensity. The whole album is one second short of half an hour, which is just the right length to leave you wanting more... Whenever I put it on, I usually listen to the whole thing straight through - and it happens often! I've had it for about three years, and it's showing no signs of getting old.

Edison Machado É Samba Novo (1964)
Edison Machado - drums
Tenorio Jr - piano
Sebastião Neto - bass
Paulo Moura - alto sax
Pedro Paulo - trumpet
Edson Maciel - slide trombone
Raul de Souza - valve trombone
J. T. Meirelles - tenor sax

55mb on megaupload or rapidshare
38mb on rapidshare
37mb on 4shared
25mb on mediafire
Large back cover scan with liner notes etc.

01 - Nanã (Moacir Santos / Clóvis Mello)
02 - Só Por Amor (Baden Powell / Vinicius de Moraes)
03 - Aboio (J. T. Meirelles)
04 - Tristeza Vai Embora (Baden Powell / Mário Telles)
05 - Miragem (J. T. Meirelles)
06 - Quintessência (J. T. Meirelles)
07 - Se Você Disser Que Sim (Moacir Santos / Vinicius de Moraes)
08 - Coisa Nº 1 (Moacir Santos / Clóvis Mello)
09 - Solo (J. T. Meirelles)
10 - Você (Rildo Hora / Clóvis Mello)
11 - Menino Travesso (Moacir Santos / Vinicius de Moraes)

Lord Kitchener - Klassic Kitchener Vol.1-3

2010-11-25T02:17:00.000-08:00

Lord Kitchener - Klassic Kitchener Vol.1-3
192kbps, 242mb on megaupload

When A Man Is Poor
Nora
Trouble In Arima
Tie Tounge Mopsy
Cricket Champions
Old Lady Walk A Mile & A Half
Chinese Never Had A VJ Day
Steel Band Music
If You're Brown
Doctor Kitch
Batty Mamselle
Law And Order

My Pussin
Flag Woman
One To Hang
PP99
Panorama Night
Take Yuh Meat Out Muh Rice
No More Calypsong
Handy Man
No Melda
Love In The Cemetery
Mama Dis Is Mas
The Road
Miss Tourist
67
Magie

Jerico
Pan In A-Minor
Pan In Harmony
Fever
Sugar Bum Bum
Symphony In G
The Symptoms Of Carnival
The Bees Melody
Gimme The Ting
The Spirit
Pan In The 21st Century
Jaws
Curfew Time
Rain-O-Rama
Tribute To Spree Simon

Calypso

2010-11-25T01:39:00.000-08:00

A few albums I uploaded for a fellow calypso fan, might as well share the links here.

A Guide to the Real Calypso
A CD that came with a japanese book of the same name.
VBR, 86mb on megaupload
1. Atilla & The Huns – West Indian Rhythm
2. Gerald Clark And His Caribbean Serenaders – Flores De Trinidad
3. Atilla & The Huns – Man Man Biscoe
4. Atilla & The Huns – Women Will Rule The World
5. The Executor – Three Friend's Advice
6. Lion – Ugly Woman
7. Sam Manning – Medley Of West Indian Song
8. Wilmoth Houdini – He Had It Coming
9. King Radio – Chip Chip Water
10. The Caresser – Ah Gertie
11. Tiger – Next Door Neighbor
12. Mighty Destroyer – Mother's Love
13. Lord Invader – The Sport Pool
14. Lord Beginner – Norah The War Is Over
15. Duke Of Iron – Box Car Shorty
16. Macbeth The Great – Old Man
17. Trinidad Blues-Calypso – Lord Biginner
18. Lord Kitchener – Is Trouble
19. Mighty Terror – Calypso War
20. Wonder – Follow Me Children
21. King Fighter – The Two Old Lovers
22. Lord Melody – Mama Look A Boo-Boo
23. Mighty Sparrow – Simpson

Duke of Iron - "Calypso!" (1957) in 320kbps and "Duke of Iron Sings Calypso" (incomplete)
118mb on mediafire or megaupload
Man Smart, Woman Smarter
Music Lesson
Meringue Jenny
Creole Girl
Last Train
Coconut
Last Watch
Loving Woman Is A Waste Of Time
Man Is Easy Fish
Mambo Calypso
Clear De Road
West Indies Serenade
+
Duke of Iron Sings Calypso
I Left Her Behind For You
A Better Woman Than You
Fifty Cents
Katie
Vitalogy
The Walking Department Store
Calypsonian Invasion
It's The Rhythm We Want
Pepper Sauce Milly

Max Roach - Award-Winning Drummer (1958)

2010-11-24T22:54:00.000-08:00

I said before that I consider the Clifford Brown/Max Roach group to be the pinnacle of jazz (one of many, yes). They left behind many excellent recordings - B&R On Basin Street, Brown and Roach Inc., Study in Brown - but not enough: Brown's death in a car crash in 1956 terminated this tandem. However, Roach moved on to more great things - after Brown's passing, he again hooked up with a trumpeter who also was a prodigy, a legend in his own time, and also was to die young: Booker Little. The brass section on this album is also powered by George Coleman on tenor sax, who went on to greater fame with Miles' "Second Quintet" and Herbie Hancock group, and Ray Draper on tuba, in a league with such jazz mavericks as Julius Watkins (french horn) and Don Elliott (mellophone). Also notable is the absence of piano: a setup that seemed groundbreaking when pioneered by Mulligan in the early 50s, it was becoming accepted, and then even preferred for the harmonic freedom it allowed - especially by the new generation of the free jazz players. This group exploits the flexibility fully, with rhythmic shifts and turns and the tuba alternating between the role of the third horn and a third rhythm player.
Same lineup also recorded another excellent album, Deeds Not Words, available here (notice the password) or here.

Max Roach - Award-Winning Drummer (1958)
Max Roach (drums)
Booker Little (trumpet)
George Coleman (tenor sax)
Ray Draper (tuba)
Art Davis (bass)
320kbps, 85mb on megaupload and zshare
1. Tuba de Nod
2. Milano
3. Variations on the Scene
4. Pies of Quincy
5. Old Folks
6. Sadiga
7. Gandolfo's Bounce

Finger Poppin' And Stompin' Feet - 20 Classic Allen Toussaint Productions For Minit Records 1960-1962

2010-11-24T21:13:00.000-08:00

This blog has been semi-dormant lately. I might post a few things in the near future but the text would be brief.
Here's a compilation of Allen Toissaint's songwriting/producing work from the early 60s - that great New Orleans sound on the crossroads of blues, soul, girl-group pop, R'n'B, early funk... He is the great unknown figure behind the scene. I knew a few hours' worth of his songs before I first heard his name: "Ooh Poo Pah Doo" as covered by Ike and Tina Turner, "A Certain Girl" (Yardbirds), "Pain in My Heart" (Otis Redding), The Stones' version of "Fortune Teller," several covers of "Get Out of My Life, Woman", "Lady Marmalade" which I actually played in one of my bands, several superb tracks by Irma Thomas (It's Raining, Take a Look, Cry On) etc.etc.

AMG review: Allen Toussaint is a giant of American popular music, but his work was primarily behind the scenes as a songwriter, producer, arranger, and sessionman. Even as a leader, his songs and recordings became better-known through interpretations and assimilations from such artists as Glen Campbell, Lowell George, and Bonnie Raitt, instead of his darkly sensual, funky records of the '70s. That's why a collection like Finger Poppin' and Stompin' Feet: 20 Classic Allen Toussaint Productions is so welcome -- it shines a spotlight on Toussaint's most influential work as a producer and songwriter, all from the vaults of Minit Records. This is hardly the totality of Toussaint's contributions -- not only are his solo recordings nowhere to be seen, such brilliant work as his collaborations with Lee Dorsey are nowhere to be heard on this disc -- but it's an exuberant celebration of a musician at the top of his game. Plus, it's just a hell of a good listen, nearly a greatest-hits collection of New Orleans R&B as a whole, thanks to such classics as the Showmen's "It Will Stand"; Ernie K-Doe's "Mother-in-Law," "A Certain Girl," and "I Cried My Last Tear"; Aaron Neville's "Over You"; Jessie Hill's "Ooh Poo Pah Doo, Pt. 1"; Benny Spellman's "Fortune Teller" and "Lipstick Traces (On a Cigarette)"; and Irma Thomas' "Ruler of My Heart" and "It's Raining." In addition to those, there are lesser-known gems from the same artists, plus cult artists like the Del Royals and Allen Orange, which add seasoning to a collection already bursting with flavor. Even if you already know Allen Toussaint's work and reputation, it's a revelation and a joyous listen. And, needless to say, it's also essential to any pop or R&B collection.

Finger Poppin' And Stompin' Feet
20 Classic Allen Toussaint Productions For Minit Records 1960-1962
320kbps, 94mb on megaupload, zshare
1. The Showmen – It Will Stand
2. Ernie K-Doe – Mother-In-Law
3. Aaron Neville – Over You
4. Allen & Allen – Heavenly Baby
5. Jessie Hill – Ooh Poo Pah Doo, Pt. 1
6. Ernie K-Doe – Tain't It The Truth
7. Irma Thomas – Cry On
8. Allen Orange – True Love Never Dies
9. Aaron Neville – Let's Live
10. Ernie K-Doe – Te-Ta-Te-Ta-Ta
11. Jessie Hill – Whip It On Me
12. Benny Spellman – Fortune Teller
13. Ernie K-Doe – I Cried My Last Tear
14. Benny Spellman – Lipstick Traces (On A Cigarette)
15. The Del-Royals – Always Naggin' (Grumblin' Fussin' Nag Nag)
16. Irma Thomas – It's Raining
17. Ernie K-Doe – A Certain Girl
18. The Showmen – 39-21-46
19. Irma Thomas – Ruler Of My Heart
20. Jessie Hill – Ooh Poo Pah Doo, Pt. 2

Yiddish Songs - Traditionals 1911-1950

2010-07-10T20:21:00.000-07:00

Yiddish Songs - Traditionals 1911-1950
CDs 1+2, VBR, 198mb on megaupload or rapidshare
CDs 3+4, VBR, 176mb on rapidshare or megaupload
Tracklist in comments
The first two CDs came out separately with the following artwork:

Johnny Richards - Mosaic Select

2010-03-15T14:09:00.000-07:00

Johnny Richards is known for the wrong reasons. His main claim to posterity is writing Sinatra's "Young at Heart", but pop hit songwriting is not what he really is about. The tides of exotica movement brought ashore his album Rites of Diablo, it often shows up on the "lounge" blogs, but his best work is anything but easy listening; engaging, cerebral, complex - yes, easy - no.

Throughout 1950s and 60s Richards was the arranger/composer at the forefront of the "progressive jazz/third stream" movement. He wrote charts for Stan Kenton's Orchestra, led his own band for a while, and did movie scoring in Hollywood and in the UK. His music is an amalgam of his many influences and experiences: while jazz in spirit, it has cinematic sweep, and uses a multitude of hues in the palette. Complex structure, penchant for dissonance, and bold use of symphonic instrumentation (French horn, oboe, bassoon, tympani, tuba) come from his studies with Arnold Schoenberg; his feel for the latin rhythms, as seen on Kenton's Cuban Fire! and his own Aqui Se Habla Espanol, stems both from his Latino heritage and his travels through South America; on Kenton's Adventures in Time Richards was the first to use unusual time signatures in jazz context, predating the experiments of Don Ellis by almost a decade.

At the time, the "third stream" experiments were very influential and visible in the music of West Coast "cool school" and in a lot of Miles' work, from Birth of the Cool to his collaborations with Gil Evans. But in the long run, the highest peaks of the genre proved to be too cerebral and unaccessible - not only for the listening public, but even for the majority of musicians.

At the bottom I will include a thorough review of Annotations of the Muses taken from The Essential Jazz Records: Modernism to postmodernism; among the players on it are the great jazz guitarist Johnny Smith (who, incidentally, also played on the Arnold Schoenberg's Serenade, Op. 24), and Ray Starling, one of two jazz mellophone players in the world.

Johnny Richards - Mosaic Select
CD1: rapidshare, filefactory, megaupload: Annotations of the Muses EP 1955, Wide Range 1957 + unreleased material, 95mb
CD2: mediafire, megaupload, rapidshare - Experiments in Sound 1958, The Rites of Diablo 1958, 103mb
CD3: mediafire, megaupload, rapidshare - My Fair Lady - My Way 1964, Aqui Se Habla Espanol 1966, 118mb
Tracklist in comments

Johnny Richards
Annotations of the Muses
Legende (A) LP1401
Joe Wilder (tpt); John Barrow (ft h); Julius Baker (fl); Robert Bloom (ob); Vincent Abato (at); Harold Goltzer (bsn); Johnny Smith (g); Jack Lesberg (bs); Sol Gubin (d); Richards (comp, arr).
New York City, early 1955.

Annotations of the Muses: Calliope • Clio • Erato • Euterpe • Melpomene • Polymnia • Terpsichore • Thalia • Urania

Reputedly the only jazz musician ever to dedicate a piece to Ghengis Khan (First Heard [E] FH45), Richards was never in good odour with the pseudo-highbrows of jazz. They strongly disapproved of such things as The Rites of Diablo (Roulette [A] 52008, 1958) with its innovative placing of choral voices in the big-band context, later taken up by Don Ellis. Usually Richards's works have a particularly strong rhythmic orientation, for example the six-movement Cuban Fire for Stan Kenton (Capitol [E] CDP796 260-2, 1956), which centres on a fuller integration of Latin rhythms and big-band scoring than has often been achieved. Better still, and in fact one of the most satisfying records Kenton ever made, is Adventures in Time (tCapitol [E] CDP855 454-2), a main point of which is the fluent use of uneven time signatures such as 5/4 and 7/4.
Unlike most jazz composers, Richards was at his best in large-scale works, especially when he could plan a session or group of sessions as a whole. All too many jazz 'suites' and supposedly long 'compositions', including some by band leaden of far greater renown, are merely assemblages of random short pieces which display few essential — which is to say musical — links, if any. Probably Richards's finest single work, Annotations of the Muses, is the opposite case, though it should at once be noted that its completely unified fabric could be woven only at a cost which other jazz composers have likewise had to pay. As in such pieces as Ellington's Reminiscing in tempo or Dameron's Fontainebleau, there is very little improvisation, this amounting to no more than a couple of solos each by Wilder and Smith.
No background to the title of this work or to those of its individual movements is offered by the sleeve note so it ought to be stated here that in Greek mythology the muses were the goddesses of the arts — as they were then conceived — and were the daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne. In the order in which Richards takes them they were: Calliope, who presided over eloquence and epic poetry, Clio over history, Erato over erotic poetry and elegy, Euterpe over music, Melpomene over tragedy, Polymnia over lyric poetry, Terpsichore over choral dance and song, Thalia over comedy and Urania over astronomy. Except occasionally in the most general sense, as with the elegiac warmth that informs the Erato movement, Richards is wise enough not to attempt to portray, barely to suggest, these areas of responsibility. What is important is that this mythological subject matter led him to a quite remarkable variety of invention on melodic, rhythmic and harmonic planes, and just as much in terms of orchestration, the range of instrumental colours, textures and blendings being extraordinary. And not only blendings, for Richards invention on melodic, rhythmic and harmonic planes, and just as much in terms of orchestration, the range of instrumental colours, textures and blendings being extraordinary. And not only blendings, for Richards often writes in such a way that rather than fusing together, the instruments stand off from each other. Given the work's frequently rich counterpoint, this is crucial.
He is much aided in this by using the well-differentiated components of a classical wind quintet as his basic resource, adding to them only a trumpet and a pianoless rhythm section. An element in the music's organization is interplay between the wind quintet as a separate entity and the ensemble as a whole, though it should be stressed that this is only one of a considerable number of stratagems used. Doing without set chorus lengths or repeating chord sequences, the work is freely composed yet maintains formal lucidity throughout. Questions about the jazz or classical origins of the many techniques of writing employed never arise because this music flows with apparently unforced naturalness through its diverse moods and several climates of expression.
Each movement has a distinct character but they are linked in three larger sections. In fact these nine pieces for nine instruments are arranged in three groups of three. Smith in places acts as an intermediary, joining together movements or sections thereof, occasionally leading, often accompanying. Gubin's timpani are sometimes prominent also, but essentially Annotations is a great extension and purification of several aspects of Richards's work for Raebum, and was to a degree anticipated by specific pieces such as Cartaphilius (Hep [E] CD42). Another possible influence was Tommy Talbot's group of 1946 scores for Raeburn using woodwind, french horns and a rhythm section, and an earlier precedent was the Alec Wilder octet with flute, english horn, clarinet, bass clarinet and bassoon which supported Mildred Bailey on some of her 1939-40 recordings.
Although not inherent in the programmatic titles, it is a sign of the quality of Richards's imaginative response to them that these nine movements, rather than seeming like stages in a journey as in a true suite, appear to radiate from one central experience, their great variety notwithstanding. Indirect proof of this was given when he made a later recording of the Terpsichore movement by itself (Capitol [A] T981, 1958). Removed from its context, this made very little impression and its character was virtually destroyed by transfer to conventional big-band instrumentation. A further, if slightly paradoxical, indication of this work's unity as much as of its diversity is the frequency of its shifting into and out of tempo, the range of tempos indeed being exceptional. This draws attention to the fine performance it receives. Richards evidently chose his men well, for the playing is full of subtle nuance, and although this is music of very unusual character, its interpreters demonstrably understand it completely.
The fact that it was issued on Legende, a minor Roost subsidiary, has obviously not helped this work, but it is supposed to be pan of the task of critics and historians to find out about obscure yet valuable endeavours. In fact, the literature of jazz appears to be innocent of any reference to Annotations of the Muses. Richards's score stands as a small but absolutely distinctive monument, however, and one that will continue quietly to demand the attention it deserves. M.H.
"The Essential Jazz Records"

Louis Armstrong - Blues Accompaniments 1924-1927

2009-12-30T16:52:00.001-08:00

If I were to compile a list of my favorite jazz players, it probably won't overlap with a "jazz genius top ten" by much. I'll take Sonny over Trane any day, ditto Fats and Brownie over Miles, and I am only lately starting to warm up to Parker, and then probably because of overexposure than because of a true emotional connection - I must've heard his Savoy sides more times than I've heard Pink Floyd. But there is one guy that will probably top both lists, and that is Louis Armstrong. Satchmo does it for me every time.
I'll take his Hot Fives/Sevens to a desert island, no contest. There is no point in sharing them, though: there have been at least three different "complete" reissues, probably more, and all are easily available elsewhere. However, his sideman recordings are more obscure. After coming up to Chicago in 1922 to play with King Oliver and then Fletcher Henderson, Pops was very much in demand as a studio musician and accompanist. I am sure he did not mind making some dough on the side, either, so there is a wealth of his solos backing the famous and not-so-famous blues singers of the day, from Ma Rainey and Bessie Smith on down. In fact, the record execs noticed that the 78s with his solos - even uncredited - often sold better, and that gave them a bright idea to record Armstrong as a leader; the rest, as they say, is history.
Today's share is a collection of tracks with Armstrong's participation, recorded between 1924 and 1927. There are some sublime solos here; my favorites are two Bessie Smith tracks - I Ain't Gonna Play No Second Fiddle and You've Been a Good Ole Wagon; another great track, He Likes It Slow, features the whole Hot Five and so appeared as a part of the "Complete" box sets. I should warn the prospective listeners that some of this is pretty sonically crude. Hot Fives and Sevens were an all-star band and they got all the latest studio gizmos and extra attention from the recording engineers; also, we get to hear the Hot Fives and Sevens after they've been put through the marvels of modern remastering. These tracks, OTOH, have none of the above; what they often do have is a distinctive unrehearsed "let's cut it and go drinking" one-take feel - the balance is all over the place, there are stumbles and rough spots, and the instrumentation is sometimes rather skeletal, such as the vocal-cornet-harmonium trio on the St. Louis Blues. So, for all the historical interest and occasional brilliance of Satchmo's solos, these probably won't be going with me to any desert island unless I'll be taking my 500GB hard drive with me.
A very thorough Armstrong discography can be found here, refer to it for session dates, personnel and instrumentation.
Track list and links are in comments.

The Daily WTF

2009-12-24T18:08:00.000-08:00

For those who think they have seen everything: a german a capella metal group van Canto does Metallica.

Dennis Schunke - Lead Vocals
Inga Scharf - Lead Vocals
Stefan Schmidt – lower rakkatakka vocals, wahwah solo guitar vocals
Ross Thompson – higher rakkatakka vocals
Ingo Sterzinger – lowest dandan vocals
Dennis Strillinger - Drums

Their 2006 album A Storm To Come is available here or here

2009-12-02T22:15:00.000-08:00

There is common repertoire for every instrument. Every brass player comes across Arban's Carnival of Venus, every alto saxophonist encounters Parker's licks. For some instruments - piano, guitar - the literature is so extensive that there may not really be anything common for two musicians to share. If you're into country blues or Segovia, you can play guitar for fifty years and never get to learn Purple Haze. On the other hand, every slide guitar player can play Rollin' and Tumblin'. For many other instruments, the book is pretty thin: every banjoist can pick Black Mountain Rag, French horn's got its Mozart Third Concerto and Wagner bits, for harmonica there's My Babe, bagpipers have a handful of Scottish/Irish tunes... and how much is written for gamelan or theremin? It takes a long, long time to build a literature for an instrument - which makes the euphonium situation all the more miraculous.

Euphonium is a wonderful but obscure instrument of the brass family (it's also got a twin brother called a baritone saxhorn - the difference is like trumpet and cornet, i.e. pretty much none). Looking like a dwarf tuba, it is a tenor-pitched instrument with a range similar to that of a trombone. I blame its obscurity on the fact that there was pretty much no repertoire for it - until recently. In the last decade or so, an interesting thing happened: euphonium book spontaneously expanded and engulfed a most unlikely style - the video game music. A cursory search on youtube reveals hundreds of young euphonists (euphonimists? euphists?) bashing out this or that Mario theme, Zelda's Ocarina Of Time etc.etc. It's not like there's a music school somewhere with a particularly geeky/open-minded low brass professor - the players are from all over, Europe, UK, US, wherever. It seems like the idea of picking out a videogame tune on a euphonium or tuba is the most natural one.
Hereby, I present my case:

A one-man brass orchestra:

A one-man euphonium trio:

Final Fantasy 6

Teeeetriiissss!!!!!

Here's one for three tubas

No less than five overdubbed euphonium parts - notice it's the same guy as the first video, euphonium07, Anthony Caillet - check out his youtube channel!

And this one must be the coolest videogame music interpretation ever - not on euphonium, though.

Duško Gojković - Swinging Macedonia (1966)

2009-11-11T22:35:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the music takes its time to reach the destination. I got this album at least five years ago, gave it a cursory listen and shelved it. Just recently I put it on again, not even sure why, and discovered how great it was.
Duško Gojković, a trumpet/flugelhorn player, composer and bandleader, was born and spent his youth in former Yugoslavia. After rising to prominence as a trumpet virtuoso, he is leading a truly cosmopolitan life. He moved to Germany, spent considerable time in the US, both studying at Berklee and playing with many of the major jazz figures, and now resides in Munich and plays all over Europe.
Swinging Macedonia was recorded in Germany with american sidemen, including Mal Waldron on piano, but the focus here is on Dusko's own compositions that attempt to fuse the sensibility of Balkan music with jazz. Several elements are at play here: most obvious are, of course, the skewed rhythms of 5/4 and 9/4 that are native to the dances of southeastern Europe - Romanian, Macedonian, and gypsy music. Macedonia and The Nights of Skopje are written in 5/4. Secondly, it's the modal harmonic elements: Saga Se Karame (later recorded as Slavic Mood) is built on Phrygian; Balkan Blue and Macedonia are modal tunes. Finally, there are structural elements; very few of the tunes utilize the AABA form so ubiquitous in jazz. American jazz was already experimenting with many of these features - odd meters of Take Five and Don Ellis recordings, modal music etc., but here they are very naturally fused into a single unity, the first recording of what later became known "Balkan jazz". Another reason why this fusion sounds so organic is that brass instruments are very prominent in the real southeast European ethnic music - just look at the gypsy brass orchestras.
I truly love this album: the tunes are catchy, the playing is top-notch, the rhythm section grooves and the solos burn - I can listen to it daily for a month and never get tired.

The serbian spelling is Duško Gojković; on his american releases it is spelled at least two different ways: Gojkovic or Goykovich. He is still active both performing and recording; I have not heard his recent releases but apparently the critics love them. I did hear Belgrade Blues, which compiles his recordings made in early sixties, before this album, and they are more of a straightforward jazz - proficient, but not as impressive.

Bio and interview

Dusko Goykovich - Swinging Macedonia (1966)
Available here, here, here, and here.
1. Macedonia
2. Old Fisherman's Daughter
3. Jumbo Uganda
4. The Gypsy
5. Macedonian Fertility Dance
6. Bem-Basha
7. Saga Se Karame
8. Wedding March of Alexander the Macedonian
9. The Nights of Skopje
10. Balkan Blue

Zhou Xuan + linkage

2009-09-27T23:12:00.000-07:00

Good news for the fans of ShiDaiQu.
Mr. Fung of Bolingo answered my pleas and shared the Zhou Xuan box.

Click the cover to get to Zhou Xuan bio and mediafire links to the bilingually-tagged files. Alternatively, you can get them on rapidshare, tagged in chinese only, here: one, two, three, four, five; booklet scans included.

Secondly, our most excellent contributor of late, Remorseful Prober, has a blog now.

Ambuscade From Ten Sides

More shidaiqu and other far east musical gems, lyric transcriptions/translations, a learned culturological commentary, and all-around coolness. Most of the stuff is either out of print, unavailable from european/american retailers, or both. There is no other place to get this music unless you live in China/Taiwan. Do check it out, add to your favorite RSS reader, download the music and leave a comment.

The subsequent Pathe 100 discs would be shared there! although I will link to new posts.

VA - South Sea Wind (Pathe 100 Vol.8)

2009-09-06T13:27:00.000-07:00

An upload by Remorseful Prober.

South Sea Wind (Pathe 100 Vol.8)
Tagged in Chinese on mediafire
Tagged in English on megaupload
1. Xiu Qiong Pan - The Spark in My Heart
2. Xiu Qiong Pan - I Can’t Help But to Ask You
3. Kuang Yu Ling - This Night the Moon is Especially Beautiful
4. Kuang Yu Ling - The Merry Widow Waltz
5. Kuang Yu Ling - Smoke Gets in Your Eyes
6. Kuang Yu Ling - Shangri-la
7. Kuang Yu Ling - Mid-Autumn Moon
8. Kuang Yu Ling - I Can’t Forget You
9. Kuang Yu Ling - Don’t Look Back
10. Zhang Lai Lai - A Good Couple
11. Zhang Lai Lai - Dumb as a Baby
12. Zhang Lai Lai - The First Kiss
13. Lan Di - I Love Ballet
14. Lan Di - The Beautiful Youngest Daughter
15. Lan Di - Jealousy
16. Lan Di - Raise Your Head and Look at Me
17. Hua Yi Bao - Dreams
18. Hua Yi Bao - The Phoenix and the Raven
19. Hua Yi Bao - Eastern Mountain Rains, the Western is Clear
20. Hua Yi Bao - Live in Your Heart
21. Hua Yi Bao - Spring Flowers in Autumn

Carrie Koo Mei - Little Skylark (Pathe 100 Vol.14)

2009-09-06T10:36:00.000-07:00

An upload and bio translation by Remorseful Prober.

Gu Mei (real name: Gu Jia-Mi, In English- Carrie Ku/Koo Mei) was born in 1934. Nicknamed "Lovebird" in her youth, at the height of her career she was dubbed "Little Skylark". She hails from Suzhou, in Jiangsu province in Southeastern China. In 1949 she moved to Hong Kong and two years later began to perform, landing a role in a Cantonese film "The Second Wife". By the next year she was acting and singing in Mandarin language films; her first song being called "I Don't Want to Be Apart from You".

In the 1950s she was signed to Great World, Big China and Phillips records, and largely remained a second tier actress. 1958 she went to Thailand to promote one of her movies, and she was invited to stay and make films there, where she became fluent in Thai and gained considerable popularity as a singer and actress in Bangkok. After her return to Hong Kong her popularity continued to increase on into the early sixties, as she continued to act, and her voice became familiar through the title songs of popular films ("Mountain Song" and "Dreams" - the latter is track 4 on this disc). Considered primarily a singer with only a few uneven appearances in films, in 1965 she starred in the Shaw Brothers' movie "The Lark" to great success and acclaim for both her singing and acting.

In 1969 she found herself free of all contracts, and she moved to Taiwan. There she began to host a variety show, "Everyday a Star" on TV. In 1971 she released her final record, a collaborative album with Chen Fen-Lan, another famous singer at the time in Taiwan. Her final movie was a Taiwanese ghost film, "The Bride From Hell". From that time on, she has neither sang nor acted, but instead started to paint. She has had many exhibitions in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, America and Canada. In 1977 she received an award from the Hong Kong Museum of Fine Arts. In May 1998, having not performed in 27 years, she sang as a favor for her brother at one of his concerts. She currently lives in Vancouver, Canada.

A bit more at the Soft Film blog.

Tagged in Chinese on mediafire
Tagged in English on sharebee
1. The Lady of Mount Ali
2. The Little Skylark
3. The Wandering Eye
4. Dreams
5. Red Lychees
6. The Girl Over There
7. Old Dreams are Hard to Find
8. Light Smoke and Dense Fog
9. A Dream of Love
10. A Slow Smile
11. Remembering Our Youth
12. Goodbye, Lover
13. Because I Have You
14. A Bitter Cup
15. Don’t Waver Again
16. Innumerable Flowers (1)
17. Innumerable Flowers (2)
18. Long-Odds Love
19. Mother, Where are You?
20. Looking for Love
21. I Await You Alone

A collection of the compositions by Ornette Coleman, pdf

2009-09-04T01:09:00.000-07:00

Sheet music.

A collection of the compositions by Ornette Coleman, edited and transcribed by Gunther Schuller - 4mb .pdf file on sharebee. Includes Bird Food, Chronology, Congeniality (with a transcribed solo), Face of the Bass, Focus on Sanity, Forerunner, Free, Lonely Woman, Peace, Una Muy Bonita. These are off of The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959) or Change of the Century (1960) LPs.

Billie Holiday with Lester Young - Lady Day and Prez 1937-1941

2009-08-31T04:47:00.000-07:00

August 26th was a centennial of Lester Young's birth. I would like to honor the memory of a musician after whom I took my alias - LesTP (Lester The Prez).

Billie Holiday and Lester Young were a match made in the music writer's heaven: Lady Day, the embodiment of jazz, and The Prez, the best and the hippest of the shade-wearing, sax-toting, dope-smoking jazz cats. Their musical affinity, the tender platonic relationship, the fact that they gave each other nicknames, their brief, tragic, self-destructive lives inspired countless pages of purple proze. I quoted some of the more florid writing before: "like mating eagles, they rose higher and higher..." etc.

However, their alliance is interesting not only as a backdrop for a cliche'd romantic story, but for some very specific musical reasons. Lester Young is well-known as Charlie Parker's boyhood idol and the biggest influence on bop playing in general. The following style elements are usually listed: emphasis on the melodic rather than harmonic improvisation, fluid phrasing that goes across the bar, a loose rhythmic approach with a tendency to play behind the beat.
People who talk about his recordings with Holiday also say that their musical styles were especially close, and they list much the same elements as above. Apparently, Holiday and Young developed this approach independently, but once they started playing together, it really clicked.
Billie Holiday was never considered to be a bop forerunner or a bop singer proper, like Sarah Vaughan, Dinah Washington, or Anita O'Day - by the time bop started to take shape, she was already too invested into her extramusical/chemical pursuits to stay on the cutting edge - but at the time of these recordings she was definitely the first modernist among the jazz singers.

Second point: the music writer's fascination with the romantic couple unfortunately draws attention away from the other musicians that played on this. Sessions for a commercially and artistically successfull singer together with the best instrumentalist of the time are bound to draw a constellation of great accompanists, and they do: see the listing here (for recordings in chronological order) or here (track-by-track). Walter Page, Jo Jones, and Freddie Green are the celebrated Count Basie rhythm section, Claude Thornhill's future band became a veritable school for the cool jazz musicians, a former King Oliver/Louis Armstrong colleague Benny Morton is on clarinet, another sax is by Johnny Hodges, who really needs no introduction. As any great musician, Billie Holiday develops a special rapport with each one of them.
My favorite contributions, though, are by Buck Clayton: hear, for instance, his trumpet figures behind Billie on Easy Living. He is present on virtually every track. For bonus nerd points, Clayton is the single biggest contributor to the development of Chinese jazz/shidaiqu (wiki): he lived in Shanghai in 1934-1937, led a highly popular jazz band, and closely collaborated with Li Jinhui, the main architect of the shidaiqu sound.

But all the musical nerdery aside, these are some great pop songs from back when jazz was a good-time party music, before it got mired in the high-art pretensions. They are bouncy, catchy, groovy, melodic - and they are made by the greatest jazz singer and the greatest jazz instrumetalist of the time at the peak of their powers. Highly recommended!

Billie Holiday with Lester Young - Lady Day and Prez 1937-1941
256kbps, 125mb on megaupload
1. This Year's Kisses
2. Without Your Love
3. All Of Me
4. Me, Myself And I (Are All In Love With You)
5. I'll Get By
6. Mean To Me
7. A Sailboat In The Moonlight
8. I'll Never Be The Same
9. Getting Some Fun Out Of Life
10. The Man I Love
11. Trav'lin' All Alone
12. Time On My Hands
13. Laughing At Life
14. Back In Your Own Backyard
15. Georgia On My Mind
16. Let's Do It
17. Foolin' Myself
18. Easy Living
19. Say It With A Kiss
20. You Can't Be Mine (And Someone Else's Too)
21. I Can't Believe That You're In Love With Me
22. She's Funny That Way
23. Romance In The Dark
24. I Must Have That Man!

There are several compilations of this material out there. This one is a single-disc collection of choice picks from their legacy. There is also a double-disc Complete Billie Holiday and Lester Young at Taringa, although the bitrate is a little lower. There is also another "Complete recordings" collection on 3 CDs that includes a disc's worth of alternate takes etc., but I don't have that one.

Grace Chang - Pathe 100 Vol.15

2009-08-23T10:26:00.000-07:00

An upload and liner notes translation by Remorseful Prober.

Grace Zhang (Ge Lan, real name Zhang Yu-Fang) was born in the city of Haining in Zhejiang province, and grew up in Shanghai. She immigrated to Hong Kong with her family in 1949. In 1952 she passed a screen test for the Taishan movie company, and dropped out of school to star in the movies. Her screen name Ge Lan comes from the English name Grace, selected by a studio director. In this year she starred in her first movie, "Love in Spring" which was shown in Singapore in 1953. By 1957, after starring and co-starring in several more movies her popularity soared, and she was considered for a brief time the queen of musicals. In 1959 she was invited by NBC to sing on US television, on the Dinah Shore show. She was married to a wealthy businessman in London in 1961, and then retired in 1964, having starred in over thirty movies.
Between 1950 and 1960 she made records for the Bai-Dai label, the most popular being, "I love the Cha-Cha", "Carmen", "I Want Your Love" and "I Want to Fly in the Blue Sky." In 1973 she began to study Beijing Opera, and when the state-sponsored Beijing Opera Troupe visited Hong Kong in 1979 she was allowed to perform one song with them, a considerable honor. In 1989 she recorded an album of famous songs of the Chinese Opera. In 1994 she performed in an a-capella commerative concert for the 100th birthday of one of Beijing's most famous opera performers, Mei Lan-Fang. In retirement, she continues to make occasional appearances.

This collection by Grace Chang is doubly different from the previous Pathe 100 discs. The singers featured before started in the Shanghai nightclubs and dancehalls and moved away from the mainland after 1950. While Grace Chang grew up in Shanghai, she began her career in Hong Kong. I think this is reflected in a more pronounced Western influence in her music. Secondly, the performers so far were singers first, and except for Zhou Xuan, appeared in the movies mostly in cameo roles or solely on the soundtrack. Grace Chang was foremost an actress, although she starred in musicals. The Soft Film blog has several posts with clips from her movies, promo photos etc. Make sure to check out her version of Carmen (Habanera) - strumming (pretending to strum) a National Tricone, no less!

Tagged in Chinese on mediafire
Tagged in English on sharebee
1. I Want Your Love (I Want You to Be My Baby)
2. What Do You Want
3. Moonless Night
4. Beautiful Taiwan
5. Carmen
6. Butterfly Lovers
7. Love in the Countryside
8. Good Tidings Come to the Door
9. World of Shadows
10. How Can I be Without Him?
11. Unspoken Joy
12. Beautiful Dancing
13. Suddenly I See Him
14. The Hula Hula Twist
15. Girl Soldier
16. Love Blossoming Everywhere
17. Marriage as a Cold War
18. Barroom Angel
19. Crazy in Love (literal: Love Sounds Like “Ding-Dong”)
20. Moonlight Love
21. Can’t Deny the Heart

Pathe 100 Vol.3 - Yao Li

2009-08-11T00:46:00.000-07:00

Another share by Remorseful Prober.
A compilation of songs by Yao Li (Yao Lee) [Bio at Wiki]. She first rose to popularity in Mainland China, singing in a Shanghainese dance hall style. Her brother Yao Min was also a successfull pop singer, and they often recorded as a duo. She was a rival of Zhou Xuan, and had a stage name of "Silver Voice" in counterpart to Zhou Xuan - "Golden Voice". After the revolution she fled to Hong Kong where she continued to record, her songs featured prominently in many movies.

Yao Li’s voice changed with time. Her initial success in Shanghai was partially indebted to the techniques and vocal training of Russian diaspora court musicians. In the 1940s, Yao Min asked her to imitate black singers from Hollywood films that were easily available in Shanghai. Her voice thus became lower and thicker, full of jazz’s lyricism. In the 1950s, however, she began to fall in love with the voice of Patti Page and developed a new hybrid style based on jazz and country music. @

This disc is most notable for inclusion of the original version of "Rose, Rose, I Love You", possibly the only China-to-America crossover hit ever.

"Rose, Rose, I Love You" comes from the 1940 film A Pitiful Singing Girl. The music and words were written by Chen Gexin and Wu Cun respectively. The singer of the song, Yao Li, played a minor part as a singer in the film. It proved to be an instant hit. This very same song was also the first Chinese song to be adapted with English words, to win international fame. It was the famous American singer Frankie Laine who sang the English version, which made its way to the top of the American popular song chart in the early 1950s. As time passed, many Chinese people came to mistake the Chinese version for an adaptation from the English version. The liveliness and high spirits of the music, the clever blending of Chinese tunes into a cosmopolitan style, were probably the reasons for its popularity all over the world. @

This song is also featured on the Remixed and Restored Vol.1 CD by Shanghai Restoration Project.

Tagged in English on sharebee
Tagged in Chinese on mediafire
1. Catching Lovesickness
2. Susan
3. Rose, Rose, I Love You
4. Lovers With The Same Fate
5. Don’t Hesitate
6. Little Brother
7. Keep Silent
8. Ay-ya-ya
9. I Don’t Want You
10. Little Shepard
11. Riding a Bicycle in Spring
12. Wasting Your Youth
13. The Riverside in Suzhou
14. Long Distance Love
15. Don’t Say No
16. Looking for a Trace of You in the Moonlight
17. Happy Youth
18. What Kind of World is This?
19. What is Love?
20. Golden Oriole Flying
21. Fantasy
22. Red Lights and Green Booze

Richard Hell and the Voidoids - Destiny Street

2009-08-06T22:39:00.000-07:00

I did not mean to continue the Quine retrospective, but there are some new developments with his recorded legacy.

It is well known that Richard Hell was unhappy with the Voidoids' second LP. Destiny Street was recorded in 1982, in a difficult period for Hell. ...the record is heavily guitar-laden - when I couldn't muster the self-possession to leave the house I'd call the studio and tell them to lay down another guitar track - says Richard himself in the original liner notes.
And this is from a Quine interview:
Q: I read that sometimes Richard Hell would cancel or even no-show when you were recording, and that you would just lay down more and more guitar tracks. If this is true, did you help mix these and decide which tracks were used in the final cut?
A: When we were working on Destiny Street in early '81, Richard did totally disappear for a week (that's the only time that ever happened). We had already done the basic tracks. But the time was already booked, so Naux and I went in and did a LOT of overdubs during that week (too many!).
Then Richard reappeared and did his vocals and fixed a few bass parts. Then over a year went by before the album was mixed. I was invited to participate but declined — I was busy, and couldn't face dealing with the nightmarish number of overdubs I'd done (backwards guitars, constant feedback, etc.). So I wrote down some of my opinions on how the record could be mixed, some of which were followed.
My one basic misgiving about the final mix is that many of the guitars on the "live" basic tracks were fairly inaudible, buried under overdubs that were only meant for adding subtle textures. But over the years I got used to that mix, and it's difficult for me to imagine the album sounding any other way, for better or worse.

Recently, Richard Hell came across the original tapes for the album and decided to do it justice: Using those original rhythm tracks as the foundation, Hell recorded fresh, new vocals, did some editing, gathered new musicians of the highest caliber for the lead guitars, and re-mixed all the elements to produce Destiny Street Repaired - says the official release. The new musicians mentioned are Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell, and Ivan Julian.

In general, I would be excited to hear a "second take" like this one, especially with the star guitar players Hell picked. I recently posted Gerry Mulligan's second take on the Birth of the Cool, and I think it's a great effort, very much worth hearing. However, there is one caveat: those second takes should be an addition, not a replacement - what would you say if Mulligan's Re-Birth of the Cool was the only version available? Unfortunately, this is the case with the Destiny Street Repaired. Hell, the copyright owner, deliberately allowed the original to drop out of print and has no plans for bringing it back. A number of fans voiced their concerns: both of the original guitar players, Naux and Quine, are dead, and messing with their legacy like this is unfair. I would agree, except for the fact that it allows me to post the original officially-out-of-print album without any misgivings. Perhaps it should be titled Destiny Street DON'T FIX WHAT AIN'T BROKE.

Richard Hell and the Voidoids - Destiny Street
High VBR, 60mb on sharebee
1. The Kid with the Replaceable Head
2. You Gotta Move
3. Going Going Gone
4. Lowest Common Denominator
5. Downtown at Dawn
6. Time
7. I Can Only Give You Everything
8. Ignore That Door
9. Staring In Her Eyes
10. Destiny Street

PS See The Hound's posts with Quine's unreleased recordings from 2004, shortly before his passing: one, two. Also, a Hell ROIR bootleg, Quine plays on tracks #4-9 and did overdubs on #11 and 14.

Pathe 100 Vols. 10 & 16

2009-07-28T23:18:00.000-07:00

More shares by RP

Pathe 100 Vol.16 - Rou Yun, Jing Ting, Yu Fei
Tagged in Chinese on mediafire, pt.1 and pt.2
Tagged in English on megaupload
1. Rou Yun - Diamond Flower
2. Jing Ting - Sun Song
3. Rou Yun - Red Sails in the Sunset
4. Yu Fei - Dream of My Hometown
5. Yu Fei - Memory of the Sea Shore
6. Rou Yun - Point of the Temple
7. Jing Ting - Matchmaker
8. Rou Yun - My Faithless Lover
9. Jing Ting - The Mountain Laughs at Me
10. Yu Fei - Follow You
11. Jing Ting - Comforting Conversation
12. Yu Fei - Love Too Late
13. Yu Fei - Awaiting My Lover's Return
14. Yu Fei - Knitting Girl
15. Rou Yun - Beautiful Garden
16. Yu Fei - Pin a Flower on Your Shirt
17. Jing Ting - Reminiscing At the Riverside
18. Rou Yun - Last Night I Couldn't Sleep Because of You
19. Jing Ting - If You Love Me Just Tell Me
20. Jing Ting - Equal to Zero
21. Yu Fei - Peach Flowers Blooming

Pathe 100 Vol.10 - Xia Dan (Hsia Tan) and Liu Yun
Tagged in Chinese on mediafire pt.1 and pt.2
Tagged in English on megaupload
1. Xia Dan - Spring in the Mountains
2. Xia Dan - Voices in the Valley
3. Xia Dan - Selling the Newspaper
4. Xia Dan and Jiang Hong - Picking Water Chestnuts
5. Xia Dan - I Can't Understand
6. Xia Dan - Stunned by the Splendor
7. Xia Dan - Steel Needle Dance
8. Xia Dan and Jiang Hong - Miss Rita
9. Xia Dan - Happy Song
10. Xia Dan - Nine Out of Ten Windows Opened
11. Xia Dan - Happy Home
12. Xia Dan - Just to Talk with You
13. Xia Dan and Yang Guang - Where's My Love?
14. Liu Yun - Little White Boat (Korean Folk Song)
15. Liu Yun - Feeding Chickens
16. Liu Yun - Sunshine
17. Liu Yun and Jiang Hong - The Girl at the Bar
18. Liu Yun - Bang the Drums
19. Liu Yun - Add a Little More (Love Me A Bit More)
20. Liu Yun - Carefree Morning
21. Liu Yun - Silly Girl
22. Liu Yun - A Fortnight

Pathe 100 Vol.20 - Hong Kong At Night

2009-07-26T22:20:00.000-07:00

A share by RP.

Pathe 100 Vol.20 - Hong Kong At Night
Tagged in Chinese on mediafire pt.1 and pt.2
Tagged in English on megaupload
1. Yang Ping (Liang Ping) - Hong Kong at Night
2. Li Jing-Jie - Half as Much
3. Rou Yun - Tranquil Night's Reminiscence
4. Wei Xiu-Xian - Southern Country Night Song
5. Ye Feng - Clouds at Sunset
6. Ye Feng - Spring Night Complaint
7. Ye Feng - Street Lamps on a Winter's Night
8. Bei Lei - Happiness in the Wind and Rain
9. Liu Yun - Wishing All Day
10. Huang Ling - Deep Dark Night
11. Pan Di-Hua (Rebecca Pan) - Midnight Kiss
12. Chui Ping - Last Night's Dream
13. Fang Yi-Hua (Mona Fong) - Got Drunk Last Night
14. Gu Mei - Lonely Night
15. Gu Mei - Every Lonely Night
16. Jing Ting - Flowers in the Rainy Night
17. Jing Ting - I Won't Cry Again Tonight
18. Zhang Lu - One Little Bird Calling in the Night
19. Zhen Xiu-Yi - Cold Nights are the Most Miserable
20. Pan Xiu-Qiong and Sow Keng Poon - Midnight Guitar

Those who liked the Shanghai Lounge Divas' remixes better than the originals should check out the Shanghai Restoration Project, a neolounge/downtempo electronic project with a cross-cultural approach similar to that of Ian Widgery. A few albums can be heard at the jbums; I haven't heard Remixed and Restored Vol.1, but it seems very interesting.

Zhou Xuan (Chou Hsuan)

2009-07-25T22:18:00.000-07:00

Another excellent share by Remorseful Prober.
Zhou Xuan is truly the jewel of Shidaiqu, a singer and movie star of singular talent, who has been compared to Edit Piaf and Billie Holiday, both for her expressive singing and for tragic personal life.
For a bio I would refer you to Wiki and to an article in The Chinese Mirror. They give contradicting versions of the origin of her stage name, though. There is also a japanese fan page.

If anyone has access to the 5CD Zhou Xuan box (this one), please share!!!

Pathé 100: The Series Vol.13
130mb
Tagged in Chinese, on mediafire pt.1 and pt.2
Tagged in English, on megaupload
1. Picking Betel Nuts
2. Missing My Husband
3. A Lover's Knot
4. Sweet Love
5. Women
6. The Flowers Bloom, I Await My Love
7. Four Seasons of Heartache pt 1
8. Four Seasons of Heartache pt 2
9. Silver Flowers Flying
10. Blossoming Lotus
11. Many Things I Hate
12. Autumn Wind
13. Little Stream
14. When Will We Meet Again
15. Butterflies
16. South Wind Blowing
17. The Flavor of Yearning
18. Let Me Look at You
19. The Peach Flowers of Longhua
20. Seeing My Brother Off
21. Tell Me

Here's another one via AvaxHome:

Shanghai's "Golden Throat" Zhou Xuan (1918-1957) - Sound Treasure Collected
Rapidshare pt.1 and pt.2
01. 天涯歌女 (A wandering songstress)
02. 四季歌 (A song of four seasons)
03. 襟上一朵花 (A flower on my chest)
04. 五月的风 (Wind in May)
05. 采槟榔 (Gather bethel nuts)
06. 银花飞 (Silver flowers are flying)
07. 拷红 (Interrogating Red Maid)
08. 卖杂货 (Selling sundry goods)
09. 龙华的桃花 (Peach blossoms in LongHua)
10. 花样的年华 (One's young life like a flower)
11. 想郎 (Longing for her lover)
12. 难民歌 (Refugees' song)
13. 永远的微笑 (Smile forever)
14. 黄叶舞秋风 (Yellow leaves danced in autumn wind)
15. 葬花 (Bury fallen flowers)
16. 月圆花好 (Full moon and blooming flowers)
17. 莫负青春 (Don't fail youth)
18. 夜上海 (Shanghai's night)

P.S. Thanks to everyone who comments, I do appreciate additional info, translations etc.

Pathé 100: The Series

2009-07-21T07:47:00.000-07:00

A guest upload by Remorseful Prober, this one might be the most interesting one in the history of this blog.

The first decades of the XXth century were a time of upheaval around the world - politically, technologically, and culturally. It was the Jazz Age in the States, the era of dramatic literary experimentation in Russia, explosion of modernity in european culture... China, though walking its own historical path, did not stay behind. The opium wars and european political meddling throughout the previous century cracked the empire open, and the seeds of foreign culture that came through the cracks gave their first shoots in the 1920s. Shanghai, the most prosperous and open city of the time, saw the emergence of shidaiqu - a fusion of Chinese folk music and European jazz.
Pathé Records was the record label dominating asian market at the time. Throughout the next decades, Pathé documented the development of this new music. The revolution of 1949 effectively ended Pathé activities on mainland, so the label continued operating from Hong Kong. It's been taken over first by Columbia, and then by EMI. Recently, Pathé started a retrospective called Pathé 100: The Series and dedicated to the the glory days of shidaiqu - 30s, 40s, 50s. The Shanghai Lounge Divas albums (here) introduced the style; other discs from the series are dedicated to individual performers or are topical. The next few posts will feature several albums from the series, all shared by Remorseful Prober.

The first one is by the Loo sisters - Chang Loo (AKA Zhang Lu), a singer and a movie star, deceased earlier this year at the age of 77, and her less famous sister Xiao Loo. This disc might be a good intro to chinese pop for the wary, as it includes several covers of american songs, including Merle Travis' 16 Tons and Oh Susanna, complete with a banjo solo. I guess she had a thing for country'n'western; she also did a cover of Hank Williams' Jambalaya, hear it here.

Vol.1: Zhang Lu and Xiao Lu
135mb
Tagged in Chinese, on mediafire pt.1 and pt.2
Tagged in English, on megaupload, translation by RP.
1. Spring Flowers
2. Where the Fish Are
3. I Hear Music and See the Lover's Shadows
4. Little Mottled Dog
5. Blue Tango
6. Mambo Italiano
7. 16 Tons (the Chinese Translation is "Patiently Waiting")
8. Hu-La-La-Yi
9. Tonight
10. Little Wooden Horse
11. Chinese Mambo
12. Lover's Snare
13. Oh Susanna (A Banjo on my Knee)
14. Golden Palace Dance
15. Happiness and Tranquility
16. Evergreens
17. A Woman's Lament
18. Open the Bottle
19. Song for a Cold Night
20. Red Pomegranates
21. Raindrops
22. Sister's Sowing Her Boyfriend's Wallet
23. A Cold and Snowy Day

No info on this one.

Vol.2: Fong Jing-Yin AKA Fang Tsin Ying
127mb
Tagged in English on megaupload or mediafire
1. A Young Girl's Dream
2. Dragon Lamps and Kites
3. Wait for Me Darling
4. Asking for Trouble
5. Buying Dumpling Soup
6. It's Good to be Young
7. Wonderful Spring
8. Wake Up!
9. Strict Father
10. Crazy Fun
11. On the Mountain Road
12. Hey Mr. Guitar
13. Silver Star
14. Come quickly to See Me
15. Ya Ya Ya Cha Cha Cha
16. Phoenixes Flying
17. Ya Cha Cha
18. Round and Round
19. Dangers of the Wandering Heart
20. Life on the Installment Plan
21. A Glass of Wine
22. Carrying Goods to Market
23. My Little Lover

JDT + Bud Melvin

2009-06-25T11:34:00.000-07:00

WFMU is linking here, which is the music blog's equivalent of Time cover. I think I should put the exposure to good use by passing it on to the more deserving folks.

One of the greatest pleasures of running a music blog is meeting interesting people, albeit only virtually. Among the people who left a comment here are The Hound, Monty Stark of Stark Reality, DJ Kalil, Mikey IQ of Brown Wing Overdrive and really many more than I can think of right now. So I will use the opportunity to highlight the projects of two of my readers.

Justin David Thomas - Music From My Bedroom
Listen or download
Pop-musique concrete: JDT creates minimalistic, melodic instrumental music from everyday noises, along with more conventional instrumentation of basses, keyboards in various states of disrepair, guitars etc.etc. Some of the track titles are directly descriptive: Music For Record Player and Found Objects, Music for Piano and Bathtub. The workings of a singular musical mind are showing through the rough seams on these tunes. Recommended!

Bud Melvin - Popular Music
Listen or download
They say politics makes strange bedfellows, but nothing is more improbable than two fellows found in this bed. The albuquerquean Bud Melvin is combining 8bit/chiptune music with bluegrass on his latest release Popular Music. His banjo and steel playing blends surprizingly well with his programming into a single choppy, flickering, pulsing fountain of sound, reminding us that everything new is old again... and new again... and old again...

While you're at it, check out The GREEN ALbum, too.

Jelly Roll Morton - Birth of the Hot 1926-27

2009-06-14T00:17:00.000-07:00

Jelly Roll Morton - Birth of the Hot: The Classic Chicago "Red Hot Peppers" Sessions 1926-27
VBR, 94mb on sharebee
1. Black Bottom Stomp
2. Smoke House Blues
3. The Chant
4. Sidewalk Blues [Take 3]
5. Dead Man Blues [Take 1]
6. Steamboat Stomp
7. Someday Sweetheart
8. Grandpa's Spells [Take 3]
9. Original Jelly-Roll Blues
10. Doctor Jazz
11. Cannon Ball Blues [Take 2]
12. Hyena Stomp
13. Billy Goat Stomp
14. Wild Man Blues
15. Jungle Blues
16. Beale Street Blues
17. The Pearls
18. Wolverine Blues
19. Mr. Jelly Lord
20. Sidewalk Blues [Alt.Take 2]
21. Dead Man Blues [Alt.Take 2]
22. Grandpa's Spells [Alt.Take 2]
23. Cannon Ball Blues [Alt.Take 1]

Linkage

2009-06-11T17:40:00.000-07:00

A contribution by DayGloJoe, who correctly judged that I would find this album interesting, and so would the readers of this blog.

The actual title of this comp is Ryukyu Rare Groove: Shimauta Pops in 60's-70's, but it is also sold by the non-japanese-speaking retailers as Okinawan Groove Collection. Here's a review by Mikey IQ Jones:
A fantastic collection of wonderful, chameleonic Okinawan pop music from the 1960s & '70s, Shimauta Pops showcases brilliant early examples of the collusionist aesthetic that makes Okinawan pop so much fun while being rather forward-thinking in approach. Featuring tracks by the Hoptones, Four Sisters, Yara Family, and Aiko Yohen (though unfortunately none of the info is translated into English), this disc shows the artists fusing traditional Okinawan island melodies and instrumentation with more "modern" western styles -- R'n'B, bossa, Tin Pan Alley, even some wild banjo/fiddle hootenanies! -- though in all honesty what is achieved here proves to be rather modern in itself while maintaining that gorgeous nostalgic questing tone that I love so much in the melodies. The final product often sounds like a much less frenetic cousin to Indian "Bollywood" film music, and as testament to their true pop nature, many of the songs are as infectious as influenza. The overall sound had a BIG influence on Haroumi Hosono (fresh out of Happy End but not yet on his way to Yellow Magic Orchestra) and his excellent mid-'70s trilogy of "tropical" albums -- Tropical Dandy, Bon Voyage Co, and Paraiso -- with shamisens and shakuhachis backed at times by New Orleans or Detroit Soul rhythm sections, steel pans and vibes, and doo-wop harmonies... track 7 even features a shamisen/Moog duet with primitive drum machines plonking away in the back! Overall, this is beautiful, innovative, and best of all, totally fun. Any record that simultaneously makes your head spin and your butt shake gets top marks in my book!

224kbps, 42mb on rapidshare
~~Unfortunately, the song titles and artists' listing are only in Japanese.~~ See comments for the tracklist.

Some time ago, Solepower left a comment searching for Ernest Ranglin's album Sound and Power. The only copy circulating on the internets is a low-quality vinyl rip that's much shorter than the subsequent CD reissue. Solepower was able to find a better quality complete CD rip and posted it on his blog, here.
You can't go wrong with a Ranglin album!

1. Major Walk
2. Mix Master
3. Sound and Power
4. More Stars
5. West of the Sun
6. Black Man's Train
7. Psychedelic Rock
8. Ranglin Doddlin
9. Mama Top
10. So We Call It
11. Lee Arab
12. Jericho Rocking
13. Less Problem
14. Black Eyed Peas
15. These Eyes
16. Still Water
17. Now

The Essential Preservation Hall Jazz Band

2009-06-03T10:11:00.001-07:00

The Essential Preservation Hall Jazz Band
High VBR, 206mb CD1 and CD2 on sharebee
1. Tiger Rag
2. Mood Indigo
3. The Bucket's Got A Hole In It
4. His Eye Is On The Sparrow
5. St. Louis Blues
6. Gerorgia On My Mind
7. Careless Love
8. Precious Lord
9. Joe Avery
10. I Ain't Got Nobody
11. Shake It And Brake It
12. Just A Closer Walk With Thee, Part II
13. When The Saints Go Marchin' In
14. Petite Fleur
15. (True,) You Don't Love Me
16. Jesus On The Main Line
17. Do Lord
18. God Will Take Care Of You
19. Over In Gloryland
20. Bill Bailey (Won't You Please Come Home)
21. Somebody Else Is Taking My Place
22. Lily Of The Valley
23. Put On Your Old Grey Bonnet
24. Hindustan

Reup: Best of Cymande

2009-05-28T12:41:00.000-07:00

Amazon review: Short-lived but legendary, Cymande is oft-compiled on funk assemblages, but this CD of their first two LPs is altogether necessary, even if the music moves away from tight beats into Rasta-folk toward the end. Cymande's reputation has grown considerably over the last twenty years. Featuring a multi-national crew with a strong Caribbean influence, the band produced a few hits in the early seventies, then disappeared. But the epochal "Brothers On the Side," and the ingeniously structured "Fug" contain a subtlety and tension lacking in all but the best bands of the era.

Funky 16 Corners: Their music was a sophisticated mixture of American soul and funk, African pop, Latin sounds, rock and all of the various and sundry intersections of those sounds. A close listen to their first LP is like a drive through Harlem in the early 70’s with your car windows down, letting snatches of Curtis Mayfield, Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Stevie Wonder, Santana and a thousand lesser groups (woven securely into the fabric, but essentially lost to the ages) drift through the windows and into your ears. There are elements of early-70’s prog-cum-stoner rock guitar, hard drums, jazzy bass and horns as well as a bedrock of polyrhythmic percussion.

AMG bio

Cymande (1973)
320kbps, 180mb on megaupload
1. The Message
2. Brothers On The Slide
3. Dove
4. Bra
5. Fug
6. For Baby Woh
7. Rickshaw
8. Equitorial Forest
9. Listen
10. Getting It Back
11. Anthracite
~~12. Willy's Headache~~
13. Genevieve
14. Pon De Dungle
15. Rastafarian Folk Song
16. One More
17. Zion I

PS My bad, Willy's Headache in the archive is corrupted. Here's the good file: http://sharebee.com/4fb2fa67

John Huie and the Clear Wind Band - Shanghai Jazz 2

2009-05-27T14:50:00.000-07:00

Another excellent disc from John Huie with the Clear Wind Band, the first one is here. Great swing jazz with some chinese folk instruments. A few of the tunes appeared on this blog before: The Pretender and Waiting For You to Come Back (AKA Waiting 4 U) were on the Shanghai Lounge Divas comp, and That Rhythm Man is better known as Reefer Man, and found here.

All thanks go to the original uploader, Shean Chin!

John Huie and the Clear Wind Band - Shanghai Jazz 2
High VBR, 110mb on megaupload
1. Shan Hai Yao Bai - The Shanghai Shuffle
2. Kan Zhe Wo - Look At Me
3. Ni De Ta - Your Man
4. Jia Zheng Jing - Pretender
5. Nao Ren De Ye Yu - Rain Song
6. Qie Ting Wo Shuo - Listen to Me
7. Na Zou Jie Pai De Ren - That Rhythm Man
8. Deng Zhe Ni Hui Lai - Waiting for You to Come Back
9. Shang Hai LIL - Shanghai LIL
10. Mei Gui Mei Gui Wo Ai Ni - Mei Gui Mei Gui Wo Ai Ni
11. Zai Na Yao Yuan De Di Fang - Far in the Distance
12. Lao Cha Guan - The Old Tea House
13. Gei Wo Yi Ge Wen - Give Me A Kiss
14. Qing Ren De Yan Lei - Lovers' Tears

Una mas

2009-05-27T14:39:00.000-07:00

FM Einheit jammin' with Django

Millie Small - My Boy Lollipop
Just a good song...

The common theme here would be Finland... The Millie Small clip is off Finnish TV, and the band in the first clip are finns.

I got a vote for more youtube

2009-05-21T09:52:00.000-07:00

...so here's another one:
Sweet Emma Barrett at Preservation Hall, I Ain't Gonna Give Nobody None Of My Jellyroll, 1959

via Badger

Arthur Doyle

2009-05-20T12:01:00.001-07:00

My son tipped over one of my CD racks the other day. As I was cleaning up the mess, in the pile of "downtown" stuff along with the obligatory Zorn, Ribot, numerous Laswell projects, etc. I found two CDs with Arthur Doyle and Rudolph Grey. I remember buying them on eBay some eight years ago, but why?
Next day I was surfing the 'nets, and accidentally bumped into an album that features early Doyle playing:
For unrelenting screaming banshee saxophone, the septet includes tenor player Arthur Doyle. As the original album's liner notes have it, in words that can't be bettered, Doyle is "propelled throughout by an almost incoherent rage, a chaotic and murderous sound." This is written about Noah Howard's Black Ark, available at The Changing Same; great album, great blog, BTW.
So I figured the coincidence is an indication that I should share these.

These two LPs by Doyle are the missing link between the late 60's free jazz and NYC's No Wave scene of the late 70's (I never knew there was a link, let alone that it was missing). His collaborator on both of these releases, guitarist Rudolph Grey, is the person who introduced him to rock audience and booked their shows on the same bill as Glenn Branca, DNA, Mars, and other skronk-mongerers.

Arthur Doyle bio from AMG

Arthur Doyle Quartet - Live at the Cooler
VBR, 60mb on rapidshare, zshare, badongo, megaupload, depositfiles
1. Spiritual Healing
2. Flue Song
3. Noah Black Ark

AMG on the Blue Humans: The Blue Humans is the unit name given to any performance led by improvisational guitarist Rudolph Grey. (Members have included reedsman Arthur Doyle, guitarist Alan Licht, drummers Beaver Harris and Tom Surgal, and tenor saxophonist Jim Sauter.) Bridging the gap between free jazz and downtown art noise (and with records as likely to be released on a punk label as on a jazz imprint), Grey is far more interested in textures and sound patterns than conventional notes, chords, and melodies, but his improvisatory performances have a structural logic and grace to them that makes them more interesting than some of the aimless Strat splat that gets passed off as experimentation.
The famously taciturn Grey basically refuses to answer any questions about his past and admits to no influences. Grey first appeared on the post-punk New York art scene in the late '70s, forming the short-lived Red Transistor with maniac guitar terrorist Von LMO. Although the duo lasted barely a year, they were an important formative influence on the nascent no wave scene percolating in the East Village. (Grey participated in that short-lived scene by playing briefly in Mars, one of its most extreme practitioners.) Grey then formed the Blue Humans in 1980, initially with Harris, a veteran free jazz drummer, and Doyle. (This lineup was finally documented on disc with 1995's Live NY 1980.) A Blue Humans performance can be anything from a duo to a four-piece, but Grey seems to prefer the trio format above others. The Blue Humans' albums and EPs are primarily live recordings of single extended improvisations such as 1988's Incandescense (recorded during an opening set for Sonic Youth at CBGB) and 1990's To Higher Time, but there's also a studio album produced by Thurston Moore of Sonic Youth, 1993's Clear to Higher Time.

AMG review: This album is the earliest recording of the explosive free improvisation group led by guitarist Rudolph Grey, recorded live in New York with a lineup that featured the power of legendary free jazz drummer Beaver Harris behind Grey's corrosive feedback guitar. Free jazz saxophonist Arthur Doyle also appears through the smoke of guitar feedback, and speaker destruction is provided by Rudolph Grey, whose style is like a more aggressive and abrasive Sonny Sharrock. No wonder this post-punk free improvisation had a profound influence on Sonic Youth and later incarnations of the Blue Humans featured Thurston Moore on second guitar. Live NY 1980 is a quintessential recording of the no wave scene that abridged punk, free jazz, and noise music.

The Blue Humans - Live 1980
VBR, 104mb on depositfiles, badongo, megaupload, zshare, rapidshare
Four untitled tracks

A couple of youtube videos

2009-05-18T20:38:00.000-07:00

I was reading a review for Billie Holiday and Lester Young - A Musical Romance the other day; here's a quote:

Like any good newsworthy event of the 20th century, one of the most touching pieces of jazz history happened in front of the television cameras. On 5 December 1957, CBS aired a jazz special, The Sound of Jazz, which brought together many of the living jazz superstars. Billie Holiday was to sing the song "Fine and Mellow" in a casual group setting. Holiday was close to death, though still one of the most attractive women in the world in her ponytail and plaid slacks. She had been courting a serious love affair with heroin for many years. Accompanying Holiday was a myriad of horn-playing legends. Of particular interest was the tenor sax section, which was comprised of Ben Webster, Coleman Hawkins, and Lester Young.
[...]
Prez, who had wrecked his body with alcohol, was in such ill health he couldn't stand for the duration of the six-minute song. Holiday launched into the song and each sax man took a turn. Gerry Mulligan was first and played a solo in double-time. Webster was next, blowing a beautiful, breathy chorus. And then it was time for Prez. When it was Young's turn he wearily stood up, and locked eyes with Holiday as she sang a song with lines like "Love is like a faucet / It turns off and on". As Lady Day sang, Prez hit every note exactly in time with her and they took off like two eagles riding an air current as they rose higher and higher, way out of that studio and those television sets, circling around each other, Prez blowing the notes that sustained her as if he was the body to her soul, and then they came together in mid-air, as mating eagles will, and plummeted hundreds of feet earthward together, before breaking off and flying their separate ways. People in the control booth had tears in their eyes. It was the swan song of a bittersweet affection. After the show, the two had some brief backstage conversation and then they bid goodbye. They each had less than two years to live. Prez would die alone in a New York hotel, his body finally calling it quits. Not long after that, Holiday would be arrested on her deathbed for heroin possession.

A beautiful description, although I suspect the author was writing from memory, and a very embellished one, too. Mulligan's solo is actually fourth, after Prez, and there's maybe one bar in double time out of two choruses. The brass section riffs behind her, but none of this interlocking duo "like mating eagles" ever actually happens. The performance is great, the writing is beautiful, it's a pity they don't quite match...

Billie Holiday - Fine and Mellow (1957)

T-Bone Walker w/ Jazz At The Philharmonic - Live in UK 1966, playing Woman, You Must Be Crazy and Goin' To Chicago Blues
Dizzy Gillespie - t, Clark Terry - t, Coleman Hawkins - ts, Zoot Sims - ts, Jimmy Moody - ts, Benny Carter - as, Teddy Wilson - p, Louis Bellson - d, and Bob Cranshaw - b.
It's Clark Terry taking a solo at 3:10 and he is playing a trumpet mouthpiece.

Chet Baker

2009-04-22T20:11:00.000-07:00

Here are some 50's Chet Baker links for the Anonymous.

Chet Baker with Russ Freeman - Complete Pacific Jazz Live Recordings (1953)
Grey December (1953)
Young Chet (1954-1956)
In Paris Vol.1-4 (1955-1956)
Chet Baker And Crew (1956)
Chet Baker & Art Pepper - Picture of Heath [Playboys] (1956)
Embraceable You (1957)
Stan Meets Chet (1958)
Live in New York (1958)
Chet (1959)
Deep In A Dream - The Ultimate Chet Baker Collection (this one picks from his 1952-1965 recordings)

One LP I would personally recommend would be Chet Baker In Milan, 1959 - obscure italian sidemen, but the music is great. AMG review

VBR, 60mb on mediafire
1. Lady Bird
2. Cheryl Blues
3. Tune Up
4. Line For Lyons
5. Pent Up House
6. Look For The Silver Lining
7. Indian Summer
8. My Old Flame

Updated links:
Complete Chet Baker and Miles Davis with the Lighthouse All-Stars, 1953
Chet Baker - Ensemble, 1953

Gerry Mulligan - Re-Birth Of The Cool [1992]

2009-04-20T22:36:00.000-07:00

Lee Konitz on the Miles Davis' "Birth of the Cool":
Miles was the titular leader because he had more of a name, and I suppose he could get the gigs; big deal, so he got one week at the Royal Roost. [...] The (Birth of the Cool) nonet was an arranger's band, because they rehearsed the music. Miles made some suggestions, but very few that I recall; I thought of it as Gerry's [Mulligan] band really. The nonet was a chamber ensemble where the solos were incidental to the writing, which was the most important aspect. - Fifties Jazz Talk: An Oral Retrospective, by Gordon Jack

In the early 1990s Mulligan decided to revisit his work with the Birth of the Cool band; he felt that a lot of the arrangements were done in a haste and wanted to do them justice.
In 1992, Mr. Mulligan revisited the "cool school" that began with the Birth of the Cool recording and assembled the Gerry Mulligan Tentet. The project, entitled "Re-Birth of the Cool" began with a recording for the GRP label with Mulligan, and Wallace Roney in Miles Davis's trumpet chair.
In the summer of 1991, in Rotterdam, Gerry told Miles he was planning to play the music again. Miles was very enthusiastic and said to let him know when it was going to be. Sadly, it was not to be, as Miles passed away.
The Gerry Mulligan Tentet, the Re-Birth of the Cool touring band, featuring Art Farmer on flugelhorn/trumpet and Lee Konitz on alto sax, embarked on a highly successful concert tour. - Bio

Click to read a good review by Eric Thacker from The Essential Jazz Records: Modernism to postmodernism.

Gerry Mulligan - Re-Birth Of The Cool [1992]
VBR~230, 90mb on rapidshare or megaupload
1. Israel
2. Deception
3. Move
4. Rouge
5. Rocker
6. Godchild
7. Moon Dreams
8. Venus De Milo
9. Budo
10. Boplicity
11. Darn That Dream
12. Jeru

Muddy at Newport 1960

2009-04-02T11:15:00.000-07:00

The guests in the order of appearance: Betty Jeannette, Sammy Price, Jimmy Rushing
The band: Francis Clay - Drums; James Cotton - Harmonica; Pat Hare - Guitar; Second Guitar - ?; Otis Spann - Piano; Andrew Stephenson - Bass.
Not sure who the dancing dudes are and who are the fiddle and guitar players sitting in front (and what are they doing there?).

Reader uploads

2009-04-01T09:47:00.000-07:00

There's too much good stuff in the comments, I'll put the guest uploads in a separate post - all by the mighty Symbolkid, thanks a lot!

Howlin' Wolf's New Album, 1969
megaupload
The ElectriK Mud Kats Band with Cosey on guitar backs up Wolf. The music is crazy good, but I hate the cover.

The Muhal Richard Abrams Orchestra - Blu Blu Blu, 1990
megaupload

Muhal Richard Abrams - 1-OQA+19, 1976
megaupload

Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Bob Brookmeyer - The Salle Pleyel Concerts, 1954

Vol.1 on rapidshare: pt.1 and pt.2 (via)

Vol.2 on megaupload

Muddy Waters - Electric Mud

2009-03-30T23:09:00.000-07:00

I was looking through my Muddy Waters collection and stumbled (long live the search function on foobar!) on "Tom Cat" on a Psychedelic Jazz And Funky Grooves compilation. The song, a hypnotic stomper, really caught my ear. I tried to track down the source, and it turns out it's off the infamous Electric Mud LP with one Pete Cosey on guitar.

Guitarist Pete Cosey has a magic touch: any project he plays on, the critics seem to hate. His most famous achievements are, of course, on the electric Miles albums of the early 70s - Agharta, Pangaea, Get Up With It - the favorites of the lunatic fringe and pet peeves of the "real jazz" connoisseur. However, this one approaches the Miles LPs both in its underground popularity and in its notoriety.

Electric Mud was a brainchild of Marshall Chess, the son of Leonard Chess of the famed Chess Records, recorded and issued on the Chess subsidiary Cadet, which was an outlet for the unusual and experimental music. Electric Mud is an attempt to update the trademark Muddy Waters sound for the yound crowd by backing him with "the hottest, most avant garde rock guys in Chicago". Those "updating" attempts are not always successful, but they are often interesting. This one is nothing like the other Muddy Waters records; but if you appreciate Sonny Sharrock or Bob Quine, you should check it out. Electric Mud is not blues at all; it's a very tight and rocking psychedelic band with obvious avantgarde leanings fronted by Muddy and playing out of Muddy's book. Here's a Perfect Sound Forever review talking about "I Just Want To Make Love To You": The solo on this song is nothing short of phenomenal. The guitar starts playing some distorted melodic notes then morphs into this gigantic screeching feedback riff becoming louder and wilder then continues to morph from a tearing solo until it reaches this intense mind-bending groove that sounds on the brink of collapse.
Muddy himself seemed to have been ambivalent about this experiment at the time, but later he cooled down considerably, even calling it "dog shit" at some point. However, the record had its fans no matter what - most notably the rapper Chuck D, as well as, apparently, Miles Davis.

Muddy Waters - Electric Mud
256kbps, 74mb on sharebee (a ChrisGoesRock rip)
1. I Just Want To Make Love To You
2. I'm Your Hoochie Coochie Man
3. Let's Spend The Night Together
4. She's Alright
5. Mannish Boy
6. Herbert Harper's Free Press News
7. Tom Cat
8. The Same Thing

I would also recommend checking out Blowin Gold, a solo 1969 album by saxophonist John Klemmer, who played with Don Ellis group at the time. It's also on Cadet and with the same Cadet rhythm section as above - Cosey on lead guitar, Phil Upchurch (on bass instead of rhythm guitar), Morris Jennings on drums. Incidentally, not a critical favorite, either. Not as focused nor as exciting as his early '70s sessions, says AMG. I think it's pretty good, some of the noisier jams approach the Stooges in that demented wailing-sax-over-a-monster-riff intensity. Available at the very interesting Ile Oxumare blog.

Art Farmer and Benny Golson (The Jazztet) - Meet the Jazztet

2009-03-22T12:32:00.000-07:00

Farmer and Golson's Jazztet - one of the greatest hard bop groups of the 60s. They were easily the equals of the Jazz Messengers. If they ran for half as long as Art Blakey's group, they'd be a household name by now; unfortunately, the Jazztet disbanded only three years and six albums later.
An excellent short overview of the Jazztet and this album. Of the four Golson originals on this disc, three went on to become jazz standards - Killer Joe (learned by every aspiring jazzman), Blues March (covered by Blakey on Moanin LP), and I Remember Clifford (a Clifford Brown memorial).

Art Farmer and Benny Golson (The Jazztet) - Meet the Jazztet [1960]
High VBR, 72mb on megaupload or badongo
1. Serenata (Anderson-Parish) 3:30
2. It Ain't Necessarily So (Gershwin) 4:26
3. Avalon (Rose-DeSylva) 3:29
4. I Remember Clifford (Benny Golson) 3:10
5. Blues March (Benny Golson) 5:16
6. That's All Right With Me (Cole Porter) 3:53
7. Park Avenue Petite (Benny Golson) 3:41
8. Mox Nix (Art Farmer) 4:01
9. Easy Living (Rubin-Ranger) 3:33
10. Killer Joe (Benny Golson) 4:57

Art Farmer, trumpet
Benny Golson, tenor sax
Curtis Fuller, trombone
McCoy Tyner, piano
Addison Farmer, bass
Lex Humphries, drums

PS More Jazztet: Big City Sounds (1960) and Another Git Together (1962)
More Benny Golson - see below.

City of Glass: Stan Kenton plays Bob Graettinger

2009-03-10T01:16:00.000-07:00

As I was searching for Muhal Richard Abrams' Blu Blu Blu, I came across an interesting discussion of "heavily psychedelic big band jazz albums", whatever that means. Several of their suggestions appeared here before - Ghania with Pharoah Sanders, RRKirk's 3-sided Dream, just recently I posted Electric Bath, so I thought that other suggestions might be worth looking into. So, here's an interesting find: Bob Graettinger, a composer, arranger and sax player, and a bona fide mad genius if there ever was one. They call him the most radical arranger to ever work in jazz @.

An article about Bob Graettinger, Above the Timberline, worth reading in its entirety; and bio at AMG.

AMG review of This Modern World 10" LP:
The tragically short-lived, self-destructive Bob Graettinger could have been a matinee idol had he cared; some people who saw him on a Los Angeles bus one day mistook him for Elvis Presley. Instead, he devoted his last years to writing the most complex, atonal, uncompromising, potentially alienating music that even the iconoclastic Stan Kenton band ever played. This Modern World is Graettinger's reaction to the cold, driven, alien planet on which he lived, a natural sequel to the more famous City of Glass yet even more difficult and inward in expression. Comprised of six movements ("A Horn, Some Saxophones," "A Cello," "A Thought," "A Trumpet," and "An Orchestra"), This Modern World moves even further away from jazz into abstract contemporary classical music; undoubtedly, Mingus must have heard this music but it's almost impossible to name anything from which it derives. A jazz pulse occasionally surfaces but more often instruments drift in atonal clusters past each other in differing meters or blast dissonant fanfares, creating a feeling of unease as they converse quizzically. In our time, British composer Mark-Anthony Turnage's Blood on the Floor has picked up the torch where Graettinger left it upon his death in 1957, but it took 40 years, and it makes Kenton's decision to sponsor Graettinger's work seem all the more gutsy and courageous. The individual movements on this 10" LP can now be found on the City of Glass CD, along with the rest of Graettinger's small output.

On his personal life @ CRUD CRUD:
Born in Southern California, Graettinger played music for a while, before giving it up to write. He was in his early 20s when he gave Kenton some songs. Kenton didn't know if they were brilliant or bullshit, but he recorded them anyway... and then took Graettinger on as staff. Graettinger rarely spoke to anyone besides Kenton. Even when Kenton took him on the road, he sat by himself. His diet consisted of scrambled eggs, vitamin pills, cigarettes, and booze. He hated to sleep, saying he'd have enough time to do that in the grave. He lived by himself in a filthy apartment above a garage, which he rarely left. He was tall and skinny, had caved-in cheeks and was very very very pale. Many described him as "looking like death". He died of cancer at age 34. And he wrote some fascinatingly fucked up music.

More weird details about his life in this Bud Shank interview.

This CD collects his works that Stan Kenton Big Band recorded: suite This Modern World, City of Glass, and shorter pieces. This is from Kenton's period of flirtation with avant-garde, which Mort Sahl summed up with a joke: "A waiter accidentally dropped a tray and three couples got up to dance." @

City of Glass: Stan Kenton plays Bob Graettinger
256kbps, 117mb on megaupload

Thermopylae

Everything Happens to Me

Incident in Jazz

House of Strings

This Modern World, 1st mvt., A Horn

City of Glass, 1st mvt., part 1, Entrance into the City

City of Glass, 1st mvt., part 2, The Structures

City of Glass, 2nd mvt., Dance Before the Mirror

City of Glass, 3rd mvt., Reflections

Modern Opus

This Modern World, 3rd mvt., A Cello

You Go to My Head

This Modern World, 5th mvt., A Trumpet

This Modern World, 6th mvt., An Orchestra

This Modern World, 4th mvt., A Thought

This Modern World, 2nd mvt., Some Saxophones

After Kenton's death, more Graettinger scores were found in the archive; in the 90's a jazz/modern classical big band under Gunther Schuller's guidance named Ebony Band recorded two CDs worth of this material.

And by the way, I never found any Muhal Richard Abrams' recordings, so if anyone is willing to share, I'd appreciate!

I'd also like to remind my readers that...

2009-03-04T10:00:00.000-08:00

...heroin is a harsh mistress.

Mid-50s (~25yo)

Mid-80s (~55yo)

Gerry Mulligan Quartets with Chet Baker and Art Farmer

2009-03-03T23:08:00.000-08:00

I am listening to a lot of jazz lately.

Gerry Mulligan - baritone saxophonist, arranger and composer, the mastermind behind a good chunk of Miles' Birth of the Cool album. His most well known venture (or second-most, after the Birth of the Cool sessions) was probably his pianoless quartet - a trumpet-sax-bass-and-drums group that he led with changing members throughout the 50s. This highly unusual, minimalistic set-up initially was an accident: a gig opportunity arose to play in a space that did not have a piano. Mulligan decided to take a chance and see how this stripped-down sound would work. [See Mulligan's interview for more info]
It worked beautifully, due to a lucky choice of Chet Baker on trumpet for a second lead voice. Mulligan's cerebral, architectonic approach was yin to Baker's melodic, intuitive yang, and their proverbial telepathic rapport allowed each to anticipate and play off the other's moves. The laconic compositions group recorded were the epitome of cool, with two lead voices weaving countrapunctal lines around the Carson Smith's melodic bass lines and delicately supported by the Chico Hamilton's brush work.

The Best of the Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker (1952-1953)
320kbps, 115mb on megaupload
1. Bernie's Tune
2. Nights At The Turntable
3. Freeway
4. Soft Shoe
5. Walkin' Shoes
6. Makin' Whoopee
7. Carson City Stage
8. My Old Flame
9. Love Me Or Leave Me
10. Swinghouse
11. Jeru
12. Darn That Dream
13. I'm Beginning To See The Light
14. My Funny Valentine
15. Festive Minor

Unfortunately, this lucky alliance did not last long: in 1953 Mulligan went to the slammer on a narcotic conviction. When he emerged six months later, Baker already moved on to become a crossover solo star, combining his trumpet, good looks, and newly discovered singing talents into an unbeatably commercial combination. Mulligan found a replacement in Art Farmer, a relatively obscure (at the time) trumpet player with a cool, melodic sound. During his time with Mulligan, Farmer also started playing flugelhorn, a trumpet-like instrument with a softer, more mellow sound; he went on to become one of the best-known jazz flugelhorn players. This album is the last Mulligan Quartet LP with Farmer playing flugelhorn exclusively.

The Gerry Mulligan Quartet - What Is There To Say? (1959)
98mb on sharebee
1. What Is There To Say
2. Just In Time
3. News From Blueport
4. Festive Minor
5. As Catch Can
6. My Funny Valentine
7. Blueport
8. Utter Chaos

PS Also, a great 1959 live set from "The New" Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Art Farmer, titled Americans In Sweden, over at taringa.net.

Don Ellis Orchestra - Electric Bath

2009-01-13T00:30:00.000-08:00

An album that made headlines in its day and is virtually forgotten now. It came out in 1967, and truly stood out, even among the torrent of new, exciting, far-out music that was gushing forth in the late 60s. It earned top marks from many critics, a Grammy, and an "Album of the Year" from Down Beat magazine. It won fans both among the older jazzhead hipsters and the young rock crowd; many Amazon reviews start out with "I was fifteen in 1967, when I first heard this album".
Liner notes: Conceive, if you can, an aural collage created by the Beatles, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Ravi Shankar and Leonard Feather's Encyclopedia of Jazz. And then, imagine that creation churning through the high-powered talents of twenty-one young musicians, like a rumble before you open the door of a blast furnace.
The description may seem bloated, but is, in fact, quite true: the album combines many interests of the leader, trumpeter Don Ellis - free improv, indian music, odd time signatures, electronic effects, unusual instrumentation (like, for instance, three bass players and an array of percussion), and high-energy arena-rock-sized playing. All of these elements are fused into a coherent whole and applied to a set of tunes that, despite the avantgarde leanings and all the cerebrailty, retain enough pop edge for the radio. It's got something for everyone. The reviewers uniformly pronounce this album to be the music of the future. Now that the future is here, why is it so obscure? I don't understand.

Don Ellis Orchestra - Electric Bath
192kbps, 70mb on sharebee
1. Indian Lady
2. Alone
3. Turkish Bath
4. Open Beauty
5. New Horizons
6. Turkish Bath (Single)
7. Indian Lady (Single)

John Surman - John Surman (Anglo-Sax)

2009-01-12T23:59:00.000-08:00

A recent discovery: first album by a prominent british baritone saxophonist John Surman. Side B is a three-part suite by Surman and a large ensemble, strongly influenced by free-jazz. The reason I am posting this, though, is Side A, which is completely different: a small combo, with a pan player, is playing jazz covers of calypsos Obeah Wedding (Mighty Sparrow), My Pussin (Lord Kitch), Don't Stop The Carnival (which is here credited to Sonny Rollins, who, indeed, introduced it to jazz, but really is a traditional tune), and what I assume is an original by the piano player Russel Henderson, Good Times Will Come Again. This is calypso-jazz of the highest grade, highly recommended for the fans of caribbean music and for those interested in the jazz-ethno hybrids.
In UK this came out as John Surman, US edition was titled Anglo-Sax.

John Surman - John Surman
320kbps, 105mb on sharebee
A1. Obeah Wedding
A2. My Pussin
A3. Good Times Will Come Again
A4. Carnival
B1. Incantation
B2. Episode
B3. Dance

Rhys Chatham retrospective

2008-10-11T14:26:00.000-07:00

An Angel Moves Too Fast To See

Note: I had trouble unpacking the second archive under WinXP, but it can be unpacked with a Mac.

MC Faza Nelly, Tanzania

2008-09-22T11:48:00.000-07:00

Les Troubadours Du Roi Baudouin - Missa Luba

2008-09-15T21:52:00.000-07:00

Who would've thought there are so many different catholic masses; it just gets weirder and weirder. Here's one I read about in "Can't Find My Way Home" by Martin Torgoff, a book on the history of drugs in America. Timothy Leary speaks: "This is around the time we first started calling it acid. I remember lying flat on our backs for hours. We'd listen to Ravi Shankar and Missa Louba, from Zaire, which is the mass, partly in Latin, done entirely with drums and African chanting. That was one of our favorites, along with the late quartets of Beethoven." I mean, how much more of a recommendation do you need?
A Belgian missionary, father Guido Haazen, came to Congo in the 1950s to preach and teach. He formed a catholic school for boys, and with it a choir of about 45 kids, with percussion section - "The Troubadours of King Baudouin". The present recording is an attempt to reinvent the lithurgy using native music as a basis. Many sections of the mass are latin texts adapted to the folk melodies.
I included liner notes and a couple of articles in the archive, so I'll keep it brief. A reissue LP (1969?) had the mass on one side and some of the original folk songs on the other. The original LP (1963) also had a few more tracks ("children's songs from Baluba") that were omitted from the subsequent reissues, not sure why. I located and included three of these as a bonus; the quality is lower than the rest.

Les Troubadours Du Roi Baudouin - Missa Luba, 1963
320kbps, 76mb on sharebee
1. Dibwe Diambula Kabanda (Marriage Song)
2. Lutuku & A Bene Kanyoka (Emergence From Grief)
3. Ebu Ewale Kemai (Marriage Ballad)
4. Katunbu [Katumbo] (Dance)
5. Seya Ya Mama Ndalamba (Marital Celebration)
6. Banaha (Soldiers Song)
7. Twai Tshinaminai (Work Song)
8. Missa Luba: Kyrie
9. Missa Luba: Gloria
10. Missa Luba: Credo
11. Missa Luba: Sanctus
12. Missa Luba: Benedictus
13. Missa Luba: Agnus Dei
BONUS:
14. Kamiole [Children's songs from Baluba]
15. Kamuyambi [Children's songs from Baluba]
16. Katende [Children's songs from Baluba]

Alternative artwork

Golden Age Gospel Choirs (1954-1963)

2008-09-12T20:59:00.001-07:00

Golden Age Gospel Choirs (1954-1963)
128kbps, 62mb on sharebee
1. The Back Home Choir - He's So Mighty
2. The Back Home Choir - I Trust Him
3. The Back Home Choir - Ride On King Jesus
4. The Back Home Choir - Without God I Can Do Nothing
5. The Back Home Choir - He Knows How Much We Can Bear
6. The Back Home Choir - Climbing High Mountains
7. The Back Home Choir - Come Out The Wilderness
8. The Back Home Choir - Yes I Found Him
9. The Back Home Choir - Jesus
10. The Back Home Choir - Jordan River
11. The Pentecostal Choir Of Detroit - Prayer Wheel Turning Over
12. The Pentecostal Choir Of Detroit - How Glad Am I
13. The Helen Robinson Youth Choir - Sit Down Children
14. The Helen Robinson Youth Choir - Working On The Building
15. The Helen Robinson Youth Choir - Run And Help Us Tell
16. Voices Of Victory - Invocation (The Lord's Prayer)
17. Voices Of Victory - I'm So Glad Jesus Lifted Me
18. Voices Of Victory - The Angels Keep Watching
19. Voices Of Victory - Great Change In Me
20. Voices Of Victory - Lord, Lord, Lord
21. Voices Of Victory - I Am Somebody
22. Voices Of Victory - Blessed Assurance
23. Voices Of Victory - Benediction (The Lord's Prayer)

Benny Golson - Tune In, Turn On to the Hippest Commercials of the Sixties

2008-09-11T14:47:00.000-07:00

Not only the commercials, but also movie themes (Magnificent Seven), and contemporary pop music (No Matter What Shape) are given a chamber jazz arrangement by the jazz legend Benny Golson. Good music, I like it.

Benny Golson - Tune In, Turn On to the Hippest Commercials of the Sixties [1967]
192kbps, 46mb on sharebee
1. Music To Watch Girls By
2. Wink
3. The Disadvantages Of You
4. No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)
5. Right Any Time Of The Day
6. Music To Think By
7. The Swinger
8. The Magnificent Seven
9. Cool Whip
10. The Golden Glow
11. Fried Bananas
12. Happiness Is

PS. "No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In)", an instrumental piece that Sareceno had lifted from a then-popular Alka-Seltzer TV commercial.
From 1963 the [Magnificent Seven] theme was used in commercials in the USA for Marlboro cigarettes
So I guess all of this music really is from commercials.

Les Freres Dejean - L'Univers

2008-09-11T14:43:00.000-07:00

I never thought I will say this, but here is an album that's as good as the best of Orchestra Baobab. Must hear!

Les Freres Dejean - L'Univers
320kbps, 111mb on megaupload
1. L'Humanite
2. Conviction
3. Experience
4. Naide
5. Yoyo
6. L'Univers

Golden Age Gospel Quartets Volume Two (1954-1963)

2008-09-03T10:09:00.000-07:00

Golden Age Gospel Quartets Volume Two (1954-1963)
128kbps, 70mb on sharebee
1. The Soul Stirrers - He'll Make A Way
2. The Soul Stirrers - Be With Me Jesus
3. The Chosen Gospel Singers - Don't Worry About Me
4. The Chosen Gospel Singers - What A Wonderful Sight
5. The Chosen Gospel Singers - The Lifeboat Is Coming
6. The Pilgrim Travelers - Straight Street
7. The Pilgrim Travelers - After While
8. The Pilgrim Travelers - Did You Stop To Pray This Morning
9. The Pilgrim Jubilee Singers - What Do You Know (About Jesus)
10. The Pilgrim Jubilee Singers - Oh, Lord
11. The Pilgrim Jubilee Singers - Tell Jesus (What You Want)
12. The Pilgrim Jubilee Singers - Yesteryear
13. Original Five Blind Boys Of Alabama - Broken Heart Of Mine
14. Original Five Blind Boys Of Alabama - Goodbye Mother
15. Original Five Blind Boys Of Alabama - I've Been Born Again
16. The Soul Stirrers - Were You There
17. The Soul Stirrers - Sinner To Jesus
18. The Soul Stirrers - Out On A Hill
19. The Gate City Singers - I Thank You Jesus
20. The Gate City Singers - Peace In The Valley
21. The Capitol City Stars - Friends Talk About Me
22. The Capitol City Stars - Jesus, I Love To Call Your Name
23. The Clefs Of Calvary - Trouble Of This World
24. The Clefs Of Calvary - Miracle Temple
25. The Gable Airs - Move Upstairs
26. The Gable Airs - Miracle Temple
27. The Gable Airs - Travelin' Shoes

Golden Age Gospel Quartets Volume One (1947-1954)

2008-09-03T10:01:00.000-07:00

Golden Age Gospel Quartets Volume One (1947-1954)
128kbps, 72mb on sharebee
1. The Southern Harmonizers - These Old Bones
2. The Southern Harmonizers - What Are They Doing In Heaven Today
3. The Pilgrim Travelers - The Old Rugged Cross
4. The Pilgrim Travelers - He Will Remember Me
5. The Golden Echoes - Since I Laid My Burden Down (Glory, Glory Hallelujah)
6. The Golden Echoes - Where Shall I Be (When The First Trumpet Sounds)
7. The Paramount Singers - He Means So Much To Me
8. The Paramount Singers - Heaven In My View
9. The Soul Stirrers - Faith And Grace
10. The Soul Stirrers - By And By
11. The Pilgrim Travelers - Jesus Hits Like The Atom Bomb
12. The Pilgrim Travelers - Jesus, I'm Thankful
13. The Detroiters - Let Jesus Lead You
14. The Detroiters - Mother, I Need Your Prayer
15. The Soul Stirrers - Peace In The Valley
16. The Soul Stirrers - Christ Is All
17. The Chosen Gospel Singers - Before This Time Another Year
18. The Chosen Gospel Singers - Leaning On The Lord
19. The Swan Silvertones - I'm Coming Home
20. The Swan Silvertones - He Won't Deny Me
21. The Pilgrim Travelers - Weary Traveler
22. The Pilgrim Travelers - My Old Home
23. Original Five Blind Boys Of Alabama - There Is A Fountain
24. Original Five Blind Boys Of Alabama - Marching Up To Zion
25. The West Coast Jubilees - Since Jesus Came To My Heart (Live)
26. The West Coast Jubilees - He'll Be There (Live)

The Roots of Chicha - Psychedelic Cumbias From Peru

2008-08-31T17:49:00.000-07:00

Reviews: one, two, three, interview with the compiler.
Just wanted to bring this to your attention:

here or here
1. Los Mirios - Sonido Amazonico (2:35)
2. Juaneco Y Su Combo - Linda Nena (3:45)
3. Los Hijos Del Sola - Carinito (4:05)
4. Los Destellos - A Patricia (3:14)
5. Los Diablos Rojos - El Guapo (3:04)
6. Juaneco Y Su Combo - Ya Se Ha Muerto Mi Abuelo (4:09)
7. Los Mirios - El Milagro Verde (2:43)
8. Los Destellos - Para Elisa (2:46)
9. Los Hijos Del Sol - Linda Muсequita (4:44)
10. Los Mirios - Muchachita Del Oriente (3:19)
11. Los Destellos - Elisa (3:38)
12. Juaneco Y Su Combo - Vacilando Con Ayahuesca (3:31)
13. Los Diablos Rojos - Sacalo Sacalo (3:23)
14. Esuebio Y Su Banjo - Mi Morena Rebelde (3:21)
15. Los Hijos Del Sol - Si Me Quieres (3:09)
16. Juaneco Y Su Combo - Mi Robaron Mi Runa Mula (3:07)
17. Los Mirios - La Danza De Los Mirios (2:49)

Los Destellos

Moacir Santos - Coisas

2008-08-02T13:29:00.001-07:00

This one is probably well-known to anyone who knowns anything at all about brazilian music beyond a "Best Of Bossa" compilation, but to me it came as a wonderful discovery. A samba/jazz album of breathtaking beauty, the most likely contender to my "Discovery of the Year". People who trust my musical taste at all must go and hear it right now.
You can read an excellent overview of this album at The New York Times Essential Library of Jazz: A Critic's Guide to the 100 Most Important Recordings on GoogleBooks; I will also put three scans from the book below.

The album is available at the great SacundinBenBlog in 320kbps, or here (rapidshare), not sure what the bitrate is.

Moacir Santos - Coisas, 1965
1. Coisa n° 4 (Nanã)
2. Coisa n° 10
3. Coisa n° 5
4. Coisa n° 3
5. Coisa n° 2
6. Coisa n° 9
7. Coisa n° 6
8. Coisa n° 7 (Quem é Que Não Chora)
9. Coisa n° 1
10. Coisa n° 8 (Navegação)

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - The Case of the Three-Sided Dream in Audio Color [1975]

2008-07-30T23:22:00.000-07:00

Jazz musicians count a lot of freaks in their ranks. The most eccentric of them all might be Roland Kirk, and this could be his most far-out recording.
Three-Sided Dream is a concept album, the only true jazz concept album. In jazz, there were many album-length suites (eg. Duke's late 50's LPs) and thematic song collections (eg. Sinatra's "Songs for Swingin' Lovers"), but this is a concept album in a rock sense - united on many different levels, from the artwork and album presentation to the aural snippets joining the songs.
It is well-known that Kirk was very receptive to ideas that came to him in dreams; the most famous one is his trademark ability to play three horns at once. This LP is Kirk's tribute to his source of inspiration - his dreams. There are attempts to represent his dreams "in audio color", as the title would have it - surrealistic conversation bits, musique concrete snippets etc.
The physical presentation of the album is also a part of the concept: Three-Sided Dream is a double LP, but only three sides have music on them, the fourth is a blank 12-minute track with ~30 seconds of conversation at the very end. Each of the three sides is bookended with "Dreams". Unfortunately, digital presentation does not preserve these things.
There are two different versions for each of the tunes, The Entertainer even bearing it in the title ("done in the style of..."). I guess this is an attempt to represent transformations of the familiar pieces in dreams. BTW, Freaks For The Festival is a reworking of Kirk's signature piece "Three for the Festival", named so for the three-horns-at-once theme.
Many of the things Kirk does here would be considered gimmicks by the "real jazzmen" - like tampering with the physical format of the record. So, the aesthetic sensibility is more rock than jazz. But the music itself is pure jazz - electrified and funky, but still real jazz, not fusion or 70s-Miles-style avantgarde.
Highly recommended!

Rahsaan Roland Kirk - The Case of the Three-Sided Dream in Audio Color, 1975
95mb on megaupload or badongo
1. Conversation
2. Bye Bye Blackbird
3. Horses
4. High Heel Sneakers
5. Dream
6. Echoes Of Primitive Ohio And Chili Dogs
7. The Entertainer (Done In The Style Of The Blues)
8. Freaks For The Festival
9. Dream
10. Portrait Of Those Beautiful Ladies
11. Dream
12. The Entertainer
13. Dream
14. Dream
15. Portrait Of Those Beautiful Ladies
16. Dream
17. Freaks For The Festival
18. sesroH
19. Bye Bye Blackbird
20. Conversation

The Carl Stalling Project, Vol.1: Music from Warner Bros. Cartoons 1936-1958

2008-07-30T23:12:00.000-07:00

The Carl Stalling Project, Vol.1: Music from Warner Bros. Cartoons 1936-1958

Amazon review: For fans of Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, et al., this is the essential cartoon soundtrack as well as a monument to surrealism. During his 22 years as a composer for Warner Bros. animated shorts, Stalling invented the musical vocabulary of cartoons. Producer Hal Willner has lovingly assembled a sonic collage that showcases Stalling's compositional genius and uncanny ability to borrow a tune. It's a whirling collection of random moments, chock full of music you never knew you knew, from Bugs Bunny's theme from "Rabbit Fire" to Raymond Scott's "Powerhouse" to Stalling's own "Woo! Woo!" Also included in the mix: outtakes from recording sessions, and several complete scores.

AMG review: The first volume in The Carl Stalling Project series is a revelation; more than just an essential part of a Warner Bros. staff that generated some of the finest and most inspired productions in the history of animation, Stalling was a visionary whose work deserves consideration among the finest American avant-garde music ever recorded. As these 15 selections from WB cartoons dating between 1936 and 1958 attest, his cut and paste style — a singular collision between jazz, classical, pop, and virtually everything else in between — was unprecedented in its utter disregard for notions of time, rhythm, and compositional development; Stalling didn't just break the rules, he made them irrelevant. That in the process he created music beloved by succeeding generations of children is more impressive still — perhaps even unwittingly, Stalling introduced the avant-garde into the mainstream, and as popular music continues to diversify and hybridize, his stature as a pioneer rightfully continues to grow.

160kbps, 90mb on rapidshare, megaupload, badongo, zshare

Lord Creator - Jamaica Time

2008-07-08T19:23:00.000-07:00

Lord Creator - Jamaica Time
160kbps, 45mb at sharebee
1. Jamaica Farewell (Original)
2. Archie
3. Bad Lucky
4. Blowing In The Wind
5. Don't Go Away
6. End Of The World
7. Independent Jamaica
8. Sweet Jamaica
9. Island Woman
10. Yellow Bird
11. Queen's Canary
12. Ma And Pa

Les Freres Dejean - Pa Gain Panne

2008-06-14T15:40:00.000-07:00

More konpa. Highly recommended!
Also, you can (and should!) see them live on youtube.
History of the band

Les Freres Dejean - Pa Gain Panne, 1974
192kbps, 57mb on zshare, rapidshare, megaupload, badongo
1. Marina
2. Joyeuses Vacances
3. La Foi
4. Pa Gain Panne
5. Leogane
6. Alleluia

Buddy Emmons & Lenny Breau - Minors Aloud

2008-06-14T10:42:00.000-07:00

Another Breau collaboration.
Lenny Breau was a jazz player influenced by country music; after all, he was Chet Atkins' protege. Buddy Emmons plays the most country of all instruments - steel guitar. One would expect this session to be a country-jazz hybrid (perhaps something along the lines of jazzy Atkins albums or Jimmy Bryant). In fact, there is not much country about this disc. Some of it is straight-ahead jazz (the covers of Killer Joe and Scrapple From The Apple); Compared To What is a bar-band rocker with jazz-rock breaks, Buddy's vocals only enhance the pub atmosphere; and the originals - Minors Aloud and On A Bach Bouree - are sublime instrumentals of no particular genre affiliation. An interesting album all around.

Buddy Emmons & Lenny Breau - Minors Aloud
320kbps, 83mb on sharebee
1. Minors Aloud
2. Compared To What
3. Killer Joe
4. Long Way To Go
5. Secret Love
6. Scrapple From The Apple
7. On A Bach Bourée

See also a recent Buddy Emmons post at the great Broke Down Engine

2008-06-11T13:11:00.000-07:00

Dear all,
I've been out of circulation for some time. I might resume posting every once in a while, but probably not as often as before. Thanks to the people who comment and special thanks to people who recommend new music!

Meanwhile, check out the project of the fellow blogger Omer Saar:
THE GREEN ALBUM is... a full-length Hip-Hop remix album over all Al Green sample-made beats. Get it here

Tabou Combo - New York City (1974)

2008-05-03T18:28:00.000-07:00

Here's an album I am seriously digging lately. A prime example of Haitian konpa style, this was recorded live in New York. I think this album came out under two different names (and possibly resequenced?): as 8eme Sacrement and as New York City.

Review: The group's relentless, high-energy style knows no language barrier. Singing in English, Spanish, French or their native Creole, Tabou serves a hot mix of grooves and textures with multiple roots, including a strong dose of the Dominican Republic's national dance music, Merengue. In addition, they offer up Haiti's dance-till-you-drop carnival music, rara, the hypnotic drums of Haitian voodoo rituals. The quadrilles and contra-dances from Haiti's French colonizers join funk from the American soul era. The music includes the feel of West African Soukous topped with bright piano riff and the brassy sound of an all-American horn section. @

Tabou Combo - New York City (1974)
High VBR, 80.64mb on sharebee
1. 8th Sacrement
2. Pace Domine
3. Come Back My Love
4. Respect/Zapaton
5. New York City
6. Courai
7. Education

Pierre Henri and Spooky Tooth - Ceremony: An Electronic Mass

2008-05-03T14:14:00.000-07:00

Yet another, possibly the weirdest entry in the list of Catholic-Mass-as-pop albums. This is a brainchild of the french composer Pierre Henri, the XXth century classical/avantgarde artist, known for his experimental electronic music and musique concrete works. He enlisted a british blues-rock band Spooky Tooth as studio musicians. The end product sounds kinda like Hawkwind with Stockhausen instead of Dik Mik manning the electronics. The resulting LP was marketed as a Spooky Tooth album.

I got it at the wonderful Closet of Curiosities blog, but it is also available at the Mutant Sounds and Zappadalata.
Also, a review.

Pierre Henri and Spooky Tooth - Ceremony: An Electronic Mass
1. Confession
2. Have Mercy
3. Credo
4. Offering
5. Hosanna
6. Prayer

PS I added a tag mass

Dorothy Ashby - Afro-Harping

2008-05-02T16:04:00.000-07:00

Very pleasant soul-jazz with unusual psychedelic-sounding harp arpeggios. Those after beats'n'breaks would find them here galore. Sounds like it's been mixed by a drummer, though - the percussion tracks are a little too prominent for their own good.

Dorothy Ashby - Afro-Harping (1968)
66mb on sharebee
1. Soul Vibrations
2. Games
3. Action Line
4. Lonely Girl
5. Life Has Its Trials
6. Afro-Harping
7. Little Sunflower
8. Theme from Valley of the Dolls
9. Come Live With Me
10. The Look of Love

Johnny Seaton with Danny Gatton - Uptown + Reaction

2008-05-01T20:34:00.000-07:00

Two fantastic obscure albums from a rockabilly revivalist Johnny Seaton with the great Danny Gatton on guitar. Unfortunately, I could not find the covers.

Johnny Seaton with Danny Gatton - Reaction (1985)
192kbps, 42.5mb on sharebee
1. Reaction
2. The Wheels Start Turnin
3. Rough'n'Tough
4. Crazier Than Me
5. I Ain't Gittin Rid Of You
6. Rockin Man
7. I Wouldn't Do The Same Thing To You
8. Big City Baby
9. 59 Phantom
10. Stop Lovin All The World

Johnny Seaton with Danny Gatton - Uptown (1983)
192kbps, 36.4mb on sharebee
1. Uptown
2. I'm Gonna Set My Foot Down
3. Come On Little Mama *
4. Don't Play With Me
5. I'm Feelin Sorry
6. Get With It
7. All Messed Up With Raw Deal
8. Right Now
9. Blue Monday
10. You Can Bet Your Bottom Dollar
11. Willin And Ready *
(Gatton does not play on Come On Little Mama and Willin and Ready)

I added a tag rockabilly

Irene Schweizer - Jazz Meets India

2008-05-01T15:10:00.000-07:00

Quite an amazing fusion of indian classical and european free jazz, a live recording from two different dates. Irene Schweizer Trio, Schoof, and Wilen represent the free jazz side of the coin; Dewan Motihar Trio (sitar, tabla, tamboura) are the indian side; the two seemingly incompatible musical traditions mesh seamlessly here.

Irene Schweizer Trio + Dewan Motihar Trio with Manfred Schoof and Barney Wilen - Jazz meets India [1967]
320kbps, 81mb on sharebee
1. Sun Love
2. Yaad
3. Brigach and Ganges

Linkage

2008-05-01T01:56:00.000-07:00

Indo-Jazz Top 10 from woebot.com

Illustrations to it and then some.

Holiday!

2008-03-27T00:14:00.000-07:00

I need to ~~get a life~~ rest and recharge.
There would be no updates for a month or so.

PS The big argument is moved off the front page. I appreciate the thought-provoking comments by the readers, and all are welcome to (continue to) voice your opinions.

Jerzy Milian - Orkiestra Rozrywkowa PRiTV w Katowicach

2008-03-26T00:58:00.000-07:00

Here's one for Djalma's Soul Food
Jerzy Milian - easily one of the hippest vibes players in Europe in the 60s, and a key member of the Polish jazz scene... says DustyGroove.
Think library music, but in a good way :)

Jerzy Milian - Orkiestra Rozrywkowa PRiTV w Katowicach, 1978
320kbps, 89mb on sharebee
1. Waleczny Biedron
2. Niedzielne Popoludnie
3. Sloneczna Podroz
4. Kung To Jest To
5. Biala Magia
6. Nie Widzisz A Widzisz
7. Autostrada Pelna Slonca
8. Astrobolid
9. Nie Martw Sie O Wianek
10. Z Nuta W Herbie
11. Hop, Zdzis Dzis
12. Przyjdz Z Jesienia

Another Milian record at the great Orgy In Rhythm

Clifford Brown and Max Roach on Basin Street

2008-03-23T22:26:00.001-07:00

This could be my favorite straight-ahead jazz album ever. An impeccable line-up: two rising stars in the front line - Clifford Brown, who died in a car crash soon after this recording, and Sonny Rollins, who went on to become the greatest sax player that ever lived (my opinion, no disrespect to Coltrane or Parker intended); Bud Powell's little genius brother Richie on the keys, and of course Mr. Roach himself on the traps. Music as God intended it to be played. I give it all the endorsements there are.
This is the original album, without the bonus tracks, alternate takes, and stuff.
Review

Clifford Brown and Max Roach - Brown and Roach on Basin Street
59mb on sharebee
1. What Is This Thing Called Love
2. Love Is A Many Splendored Thing
3. I’ll Remember April
4. Powell’s Prances
5. Time
6. The Scene is Clean
7. Gertrude’s Bounce

Rabih Abou-Khalil - Blue Camel

2008-03-23T21:24:00.001-07:00

AMG review

Rabih Abou-Khalil - Blue Camel
192kbps, 84mb on sharebee
1. Sahara
2. Tsarka
3. Ziriab
4. Blue Camel
5. On Time
6. A Night in the Mountains
7. Rabou-Abou-Kabou
8. Beirut

Bembeya Jazz National - 10 Ans De Succès

2008-03-18T11:09:00.000-07:00

Review: This is something very special: A live recording from Bembeya Jazz National's 10 year jubilee concert in the "People's Palace" of Guinea's capitol, Conakry in 1971. The band stood at the pinnacle of its career, so this is a historical record in the best sense of the word. The recording is impressive: an audience of 2500, including the Politbureau(!) in Guinea's Democracy Party, are enthusiastically in place. The band performs with full accoutrements - the rhythm section consisting of several types of drums, a complete horn section, and not least the number one guitarist, Sekou Diabate. This is an incredible disk - top rate Cuban music, but performed by Africans who, of course, give it their own Afro-sound. This is on the one hand well-arranged, Latino big band music, but on the other hand the improvisation and Mandinka traditions are not repressed but regularly shine through. Sekou Diabate has by no means steered alone; he must have heard Jimi Hendrix, Peter Green, and Wes Montgomery. He plays the most incredible riffs on electric guitar to enormous jubilation at The People's Palace. A real classic!

Bembeya Jazz National - 10 Ans De Succès
High VBR, 92mb on sharebee
1. Introduction
2. Temtemba
3. Wouloukoro
4. Lefa
5. Camara Mousso
6. O.E.R.S.
7. Doni Doni
8. Bembeya
9. Festival National
10. Koule De Gbe
11. NDianamo
12. Ile Nyarabi

Roy "Bubbles" Burrowes - Reggae au go Jazz

2008-03-17T00:27:00.000-07:00

May (of 1999) saw another great album out of Studio One when Mr Dodd dusted off his vintage rhythms and invited Jamaican jazz trumpeter Roy "Bubbles" Burrowes to extemporise over them. Keeping Burrowes company on Reggae au go Jazz were US tenor sax players Clifford Jordan and Charles Davis and the entire set amounted to one of the most interesting projects to emerge out of Studio One in recent years, part of a lineage stretching back to those classic 1970s instrumental sets from Cedric Im Brooks and Roland Alphonso. @

Another music business mystery - why such a good and relatively recent album would ever be out of print and completely unavailable in any form. Ernest Ranglin on guitar and bass, Jackie Mittoo on the keys, Clifford Jordan on sax, Sir Coxsone Dodd is producing. Can't miss with a lineup like this! Sounds somewhat like Monty Alexander or Ernest Ranglin's solo albums, but more mellow.

Roy 'Bubbles' Burrowes with Clifford Jordan and Charles Davis - Reggae Au Go Jazz
192kbps, 60mb on sharebee
1. Wet Land
2. Jericho Jazz
3. Bubble's Bubble
4. My Father's Jazz
5. Thirty One Thirty Five
6. Soul Sender
7. Dont Wait Too Long
8. Mount Zion Rock
9. Jamrec Jam
10. Mr. Loving Spoon
11. Reggae Au Go Jazz
12. Jazz Ville Funk

David Axelrod - Messiah

2008-03-16T13:50:00.000-07:00

A visitor suggested this album in the comments to the Schifrin post - much thanks for the tip!
A review: Axelrod had worked in the pseudo classical crossover field before-namely the Prunes' 'Mass in F Minor' and 'Release of an Oath' but in 1971 the Axe decide to take on Handel! The opening 'Overture' is one of the high points of an excellent album-a kind of mini overview of his bag of tricks. We get Fuzz Guitar, funky drumming and oodles of strings and brass. The vocal tracks don't work quite as well apart from the rather stirring version of 'Hallelujah'. This LP has already been sampled for its beats, which surely must be a first for a classics based record.

David Axelrod's Rock Interpretations of Handel's Messiah
VBR, 39mb on mediafire: get it at the Milk Crate Breaks blog.
Milk Crate Breaks is an excellent site, worth checking out in its entirety: more Axelrod albums, Maceo Parker, the JBs and other goodies.
You can also download this album and listen to several tracks over here.

Linkage

2008-03-12T15:57:00.000-07:00

I am listening to Rio Baile Funk: Favela Booty Beats compilation: The most brutally raw music I've heard in ages is exploding from the ghettos of Rio De Janiero @.
Read a review, get it from here.

Also, two blogs to recommend:
http://sacundinbenblog.blogspot.com/
Great selection of samba/pop from 60s to modern stuff, and a lot of good music in general.
http://leclubderock.blogspot.com/
Rare and obscure funk collections and more.

Kazutoki Umezu - Pandora's Cocktail

2008-03-10T22:36:00.000-07:00

A friend of mine shared this some time ago. Three of the four sharebee links expired for the lack of attention, which is a shame. Umezu and Ribot - what more can you ask for?

Kazutoki Umezu - Pandora's Cocktail
256kbps, 93mb on megaupload
1. Wow Wow
2. Shou-Chiku-Bai
3. A Reverend Utterance
4. Chimtchack Salghum
5. They Craved the Miracles
6. Soul Makkori
7. Interlude
8. Wonbat Walk
9. Mercurial Gulf
10. Bizarre
11. Kumamoto

Kazutoki Umezu - Clarinet, Sax (Alto), Sax (Soprano)

Kenny Wollesen - Percussion, Drums

Brad Jones - Bass

Marc Ribot - Guitar

I shared Umezu's Eclecticism here before.
Also check out Kazutoki Umezu & Tom Cora - Abandon, an all-improvized live set recorded at Roulette in New York in October 1987, and available at the wonderful WFMU blog

Drummers of the Societe Absolument Guinin - Voodoo Drums

2008-03-10T18:24:00.000-07:00

Here's one that falls more in the category of weird shit than in the category of timeless music to stay with you forever.
The label says the following: "This release features the Voodoo Drums of Haiti and was recorded by Soul Jazz Records in Port-au-Prince, Haiti."
Review from allaboutjazz.com

Drummers of the Societe Absolument Guinin - Voodoo Drums
320kbps, 97mb on rapidshare