I’ve had a very busy penultimate week of term and am out of energy so instead of attempting a new post I thought I’d repost this “festive” classic. I posted this one during the “festive” season” in 2013 and haven’t posted it since. Until now. The band is led by none other than Miles Davis; the other members are Frank Rehak (trombone), Wayne Shorter (tenor sax), Paul Chambers (bass), Jimmy Cobb (drums), and Willie Bobo (bongos); the arrangement is unmistakably by Gil Evans. The vocalist is the legendary Bob Dorough who also wrote the lyrics.
“Bah Humbug” never sounded so cool!
P.S. I’m not particularly blue myself, just tired…
Exactly one hundred years ago today, on 12th November 1925, five musicians gathered in the Okeh studios in Chicago to create musical history. The band was Louis Armstrong and his Hot Five and they were about to embark on a series of recording sessions that would result in a rich treasury of 20th century music in the form of 33 sides recorded between November 1925 and December 1927.
The band (pictured above) consisted of Louis Armstrong (on cornet on this track, although he switched to trumpet by the time of the later sessions). Kid Ory played trombone Johnny Dodds Clarinet. Lil Hardin (who was married to Louis Armstrong at the time and credited as Lil Armstrong) played piano and Johnny St Cyr played banjo or guitar. For many people, the collective imagination and sheer drive of Armstrong, Dodds and Ory made them just about the perfect front line. The way they take this one out at the end is a great example.
I won’t even try to write a detailed analysis of this historic record. I’ll just make a couple of points about the Hot Fives.
First, this band never played together as such in live concerts; they were strictly a studio band. In fact, they always sounded like a bunch of friends getting together to have fun making music, which is no doubt because that’s what they were. Most of the records they made were done in a single take, too.
Second, the line-up was unusual because it didn’t have a full rhythm section. At least part of the reason for this was that, at the time, drums were very difficult to record. In Louis Armstrong’s recorded reminiscences he talks about the fact that drums would often make the needle jump when cutting a record if they were were positioned close to the recording equipment. On the other hand if they were too far away to avoid that happening then they often couldn’t be heard at all. The low-frequency response of old fashioned recording systems made bass lines largely inaudible too. Anyway, it was decided that the excellent combination of Lil Hardin’s piano and Johnny St Cyr’s banjo would provide a sufficient framwork. So they were, though later on, in May 1927, a brass bass and drums were added to create the Hot Seven who made a further 11 sides, including the all-time classic Potato Head Blues.
Finally I’ll just remark that according to Satchmo’s memoirs, this track Gut Bucket Blues was the first to be recorded. It does sound like it too, as he introduces the members of the band. I wonder if they knew at this first session what a sensation these records were going to create?
P.S. I know it’s a bit scratchy, but it’s 100 years old. It’s amazing to me that you can hear anything at all.
It’s been a cool autumn day so this seems appropriate. It’s from the classic 1958 albumSomethin’ Else which was Cannonball Adderley’s first as a leader, and one of Miles Davis’s last as a sideman (also a rare recording for Miles on the Blue Note label). Adderley went on to play alto sax with the great Miles Davis sextet that recorded Kind of Blue, and Miles obviously influenced this album enormously, but the rhythm section here is different from that band’s – Art Blakey on drums, Hank Jones on piano, and Sam Jones on bass. Miles Davis was also responsible for this arrangement of the standard Autumn Leaves, which he based on a version by Ahmad Jamal.
I’ve been seeing the phrase vibe coding bandied about quite a lot these days and it always makes me think of Lionel Hampton. Since it’s now September and it’s raining outside, today it made me think of this recording of Lionel Hampton playing September in the Rain. How’s that for a link?
This track was recorded in Paris in 1953, an LP of which was released in 1956. I have a later issue of it. It features members of Hamp’s band, which was ona European tour at the time, alongside a number of local musicians. For a long time it puzzled me that among the musicians present was clarinettist Mezz Mezzrow whose style didn’t seem to fit. Eventually it was explained to me that Mezzy was the man who could be relied upon to supply appropriate smoking materials. This number however is chiefly Hamp on his own, on vibes (naturally), and frequently accompanying himself on vocals (sort of).
Back in the 1940s, early in his career, trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie incorporated the theme from a tune called Be-Bop, or sometimes Dizzy’s Fingers, into a swirling big band arrangement and called the resulting piece Things to Come. It was a wild, gyrating score usually played at breakneck speed (often around 300bpm) that invariably proved a handful to perform. The Things Are Here is the eventual sequel to that composition that the Dizzy Gillespie Reunion Big Band played in the 1960s. Many concert performances of this are very long indeed, but this one (recorded in Berlin in 1968) lasts only about 8 minutes. I have this on vinyl but haven’t get got around to transferring it to digital. Here you hear the stunning power and virtuosity of this thrilling band; there must have been a tough entrance examination to get a place in it!
As you’d expect there’s a lot of solo space in this performance for Gillespie himself, but also room for solos and duets from the other musicians, including James Moody and Paul Jeffrey on tenor saxophone, Sahib Shihab on alto saxophone, Cecil Payne on baritone sax, Curtis Fuller on trombone and, right at the end, Otis Finch brings the house down with a drum solo.
It’s a wild, white-knuckle ride, so strap yourself in!
I just heard the very sad news of the death at the age of 97 of that great jazz singer, Cleo Laine. Although stylistically related to Sarah Vaughan, her voice was instantly recognisable. It always struck me that most British jazz singers would adopt an American accent when performing, but Cleo Laine always kept a very crisp diction and sounded very English…
I think it’s her musical and personal partnership with John Dankworth (who passed away in 2010) for which she will be known best. He hired Cleo Laine as a singer for his small band in 1951; they married in 1958 and remained together for over 50 years, until separated by John’s death.
I think it is appropriate to use this lovely version of George Gershwin’s great tune Lady be Good (with lyircs by his brother Ira) as a tribute. It’s always good to end on a high note. John Dankworth takes a back seat – as he often did when Cleo was singing – but the band is in great form. Unfortunately there is no personnel listing, apart from John Dankworth. The small band you see and hear here was drawn from his larger orchestra and many of the musicians therein doubled on different instruments. The vibes player, for example, could be Alan Branscombe, who also played piano. Or he could be the pianist. The trumpeter could very well be a young Kenny Wheeler.
Anyway, if you didn’t realise what a terrific vocalist Cleo Laine was, then pin back your lugholes around 2 minutes in where she demonstrates a range and level of vocal ontrol that would put many opera singers to shame.
I’ve just caught up with the news of the death last week of composer, arranger and pianist Lalo Schifrin. He was 93. Most of the media coverage of his passing concentrates on his many excellent TV and movie scores, such as Mission Impossible*, Dirty Harry and Bullitt, but he was first and foremost a Jazz musician so I thought I’d pay tribute by posting a relatively early work by him.
Lalo Schifrin was a huge fan of trumpeter Dizzy Gillespie whom he met when Gillespie toured Schifrin’s home country of Argentina in 1956. This long piece, Gillespiana was written for Gillespie’s big band in 1958. You can here in it many of the musical ideas that Schifrin was later to include in his film scores. In 1960, Lalo Schifrin moved to York and joined Gillespie’s band as a pianist after the departure of Junior Mance. He only stayed with the band for a couple of years but together they made some great records, especially Dizzy on the French Riviera (which I have blogged about here).
Anyway, Gillespiana is suite in five movements (Prelude, Blues, Panamerica, Africana, and Toccata) that takes up an entire album that was released in 1960. It’s not so well known nowadays but I think it’s great. It gives ample opportunity not only to listen to Dizzy’s trumpet and Lalo Schifrin’s piano – as well as the enormously underrated alto saxophonist and flautist Leo Wright – but also to enjoy the wonderful arrangements.
*The original theme for Mission Impossible is written in 5/4 time. Not a lot of people know that the resulting rhythmic pattern (dash dash dot dot) is Morse code for the letters M I…
Not to be confused with the former UK Prime Minister, Ted Heath was the leader of a famous big band that was especially popular in the UK during the 1950s. His orchestra also served as a kind of “day job” for up-and-coming British jazz musicians, allowing them to earn enough cash through radio work and recording sessions to subsidize their jazz ventures. Among the excellent musicians that played with Ted Heath’s band were Ronnie Scott and Don Rendell (tenor sax), pianist Stan Tracey and trumpeter Kenny Baker, all of whom were what you might call modernists. I thought I’d share this recording of St James Infirmary – a tune that the legendary trombonist Jack Teagarden famously referred to as “the oldest blues I ever heard” – not only for the fine arrangement, but because of the excellent trombone solo on it. There is no personnel listing but I’d bet my bottom dollar that the featured trombonist is Keith Christie, who played with Humphrey Lyttelton’s band for many years before leaving to join the Heath band in 1957; this track was recorded in 1959.
This just appeared on Youtube a couple of days ago and I couldn’t resist sharing it here. It is from a BBC programme in the series Jazz 625 and is presented by a chap called Humphrey Lyttelton, himself a trumpeter and bandleader. Although Humph is best known as a musician on the traditional side of jazz, he was very broadminded about music and extremely knowledgeable about more modern forms, as he demonstrated on his long-running radio show The Best of Jazz, which I listened to avidly as a teenager and which introduced open my eyes and ears to lots of new things including “hard bop“, which is the genre to which this belongs.
This programme was broadcast in 1965, at which time the BBC Television programmes were all in black-and-white so the recording has been “colourized”, and think the sound has been remastered too. It sounds great.
Anyway, the band featured here is Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. I was lucky enough to hear a couple of later incarnations of this group play live in the 1980s. There’s no need to run through the personnel or tunes because Humph does so in the recording. I will just add that the intro and outro are Thelonious Monk’s 52nd Street Theme.
Prolific jazz pianist, composer, and arranger Herbie Hancock was born on 12th April 1940, which means that today is his 85th birthday. I’ve posted quite a few pieces of music featuring Herbie Hancock over the years so I thought I’d put up something a little different to mark his birthday in the form of this unusual but very cool version of The House of the Rising Sun, featuring Donald Byrd on trumpet, Hancock on piano, Kenny Burrell on guitar, Bob Cranshaw (bass) and Grady Tate (drums) and the Donald Byrd Singers. This track appeared on the album Up With Donald Byrd which wasn’t well received when it came out in 1964, but I like it!
P.S. I did a Google search for Herbie Hancock House of the Rising Sun and found this:
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In the Dark 