Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations

This would be my contribution:



Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations
REUP 02/15/2014: 93mb on zippyshare

My Yiddishe Momme (Billie Holiday)

Utt Da Zay (Cab Calloway)

That Old Black Magic (Johnny Hartman)

Baby Baby (Libby Holman & Josh White)

Ich Hob Dich Tzufil Lieba (Alberta Hunter)

Sholem (Eartha Kitt)

Where Can I Go? (Marlena Shaw)

Exodus (Jimmy Scott)

Sabbath Prayer (Cannonball Adderley)

Swanee (Aretha Franklin)

Now! (Lena Horne)

Dunkin Bagels (Slim Gaillard)

Eretz Zavat Chalav (Nina Simone)

Fiddler on the Roof Medley (The Temptations)

Kol Nidre (Johnny Mathis)

Prez galore

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

New World Jazz

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 4shared
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

Dinah Washington Sings Bessie Smith (1958)

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 depositfiles
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)

Cal Tjader ethno ventures

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)

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

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 depositfiles
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:

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

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 depositfiles
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 depositfiles
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.

Edison Machado É Samba Novo (1964)

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 depositfiles
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)

Max Roach - Award-Winning Drummer (1958)

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 depositfiles
1. Tuba de Nod
2. Milano
3. Variations on the Scene
4. Pies of Quincy
5. Old Folks
6. Sadiga
7. Gandolfo's Bounce

Johnny Richards - Mosaic Select

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

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.

Duško Gojković - Swinging Macedonia (1966)

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)
ul.oz or zippyshare
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

A collection of the compositions by Ornette Coleman, pdf

Sheet music.


A collection of the compositions by Ornette Coleman, edited and transcribed by Gunther Schuller - 4mb .pdf file on depositfiles. 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

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.

Jelly Roll Morton - Birth of the Hot 1926-27

Jelly Roll Morton - Birth of the Hot: The Classic Chicago "Red Hot Peppers" Sessions 1926-27
VBR, 94mb on depositfiles
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

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

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

John Huie and the Clear Wind Band - Shanghai Jazz 2

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
REUP 11/11/14: High VBR, 110mb on zippyshare or uloz.to
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

Arthur Doyle

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

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.