We’re nearly at the end of a long week and I’ve got neither the time nor the energy for a lengthy post, so here’s a bit of a pick-me-up in the form of a classic bit of Fats Waller. Thomas Wright Waller was born in 1904 and died (of pneumonia) on a train travelling across the United States in 1943. Although he’s usually thought of as an entertainer who specialized in comic versions of popular songs, he was undoubtedly a brilliant jazz musician and an especially accomplished exponent of Harlem Stride piano. Anyway, I heard a bit of this track on a TV advert last night and it seemed both fun and topical so I thought I’d share it and see if people enjoy it as much as I did; in the famous words of Mr Waller “One never knows, do one?”….
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Spring Cleaning
Posted in Jazz with tags Fats Waller, Spring Cleaning on April 26, 2013 by telescoperLet’s call the whole thing off
Posted in Jazz with tags Ella Fitzgerald, Jazz, Let's call the whole thing off, Louis Armstrong on April 12, 2013 by telescoperI’m up early to travel up to the Big Smoke where I’ll be all day todayday today so here’s something nice while I’m away. Music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin, and vocals by Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald. Who could ask for anything more? Take it away, Ella & Louis!
Follow @telescoperDo you know what it means….?
Posted in Jazz with tags Billie Holliday, Do you know what it means to miss New Orleans?, Jazz on March 20, 2013 by telescoperOut of the office today so in lieu of a post from me here’s two minutes and twenty seconds of exquisite sadness delivered by the voice of the great Billie Holliday. No singer in history ever managed to express so much through such slender lyrics. The piano is played by Charlie Beal on this recording.
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Posted in Jazz, The Universe and Stuff with tags ALMA, Atacana Large Millimetre Array, bebop, Dizzy Gillespie on March 14, 2013 by telescoperWell, Herschel may be going blind but it seems that just as one observatory gets ready to close its eyes on the Universe, another one gets ready to open them. Yesterday saw the official opening of the Atacama Large Millimetre Array (known to its friends as ALMA). What better way to celebrate the opening of this remarkable observatory than with an appropriately-named piece of music.
Con Alma is an original composition by Dizzy Gillespie who plays it on this track made with his big band in 1954, a period when Dizzy was experimenting with various fusions of bebop with Latin-American rhythms. It’s a deceptively complicated tune, with lots of changes of key to keep everyone on their toes. It may be more Cuban than Chilean in influence, but that’s the closest I could think of!
Follow @telescoperBlack is the colour of my true love’s hair
Posted in Jazz with tags Black is the colour of my true love's hair, Emile Latimer, Nina Simone on February 20, 2013 by telescoperNina Simone. Emile Latimer. Live in 1969. Magical.
Follow @telescoperMy Funny (and very sad) Valentine
Posted in Jazz with tags Chet Baker, My Funny Valentine, St Valentine's Day on February 14, 2013 by telescoperI suppose I should make some concession to Valentine’s Day, so here’s the classic 1954 Chet Baker version of the Rodgers & Hart tune My Funny Valentine. This was a big hit during the period when jazz switched from the frenetic pace and jagged angularity of bebop to the smooth cocktail bar sounds of the Cool School; its popularity owed as much to Baker’s youthful good looks and attractive singing voice as to the trumpet solo on this recording.
But that was 1954. A lifelong addiction to heroin exacted a terrible toll on Chet Baker. Here’s a harrowing and heart-rending reprise of My Funny Valentine recorded, just a year before his death, at a concert in Tokyo in 1987.
Sic transit gloria mundi.
Tough Tenors
Posted in Jazz with tags Eddie "Lockjaw" Davis, Johnny Griffin, Tin Tin Deo, Tough Tenors on January 19, 2013 by telescoperI found this on Youtube recently and couldn’t resist posting it. I actually have a vinyl LP of the album Tough Tenors, featuring Eddie “Lockjaw” Davis and Johnny Griffin as the eponymous rugged saxophonists, but it’s one I haven’t yet transferred to digital. As the album title suggests, Messrs Davis and Griffin play their instruments in a very muscular fashion, so at teams it seems like music to lift weights by, but they play with a great deal of imagination too. Here, for example, is very original version of the Dizzy Gillespie/Chano Pozo composition Tin Tin Deo, with a particularly fabulous solo by Johnny Griffin.
P.S. The album was recorded in 1962, and the other musicians were Horace Parlan (piano), Ben Riley (drums) and Bud Catlett (bass).
Mingus – Oh Yeah!
Posted in Jazz, The Universe and Stuff with tags Charles Mingus, Dark Energy, Jazz, Mingus, Oh Yeah!, Supernova Cosmology Project on January 10, 2013 by telescoperI noticed a news item this morning which explains that the Supernova Cosmology Project have found a supernova with a redshift of 1.71, which makes it the most distant one found so far (about 10 billion light-years away). That – and hopefully others at similar distances – should prove immensely useful for working out how the expansion rate of the Universe has changed over its history and hence yield important clues about the nature of its contents, particularly the mysterious dark energy.
Of particular relevance to this blog is the name given to this supernova, Mingus, after the jazz musician and composer Charles Mingus. Both the discovery and the great choice of name are grounds for celebration, so here’s one of my favourite Mingus tracks – the delightfully carefree and exuberant Eat that Chicken, from the Album Oh Yeah. Enjoy!
Resolution
Posted in Jazz with tags A Love Supreme, Elvin Jones, Jimmy Garrison, John Coltrane, McCoy Tyner on January 1, 2013 by telescoperYesterday I happened to be listening to the classic album A Love Supreme made by the John Coltrane quartet in 1964. Since the second of the four “movements” (for what of a better word) of this work is called Resolution, I thought it would be a good thing to post on New Year’s Day to welcome everyone to 2013!
A Love Supreme is one of my favourite jazz albums, not only because it’s glorious music to listen to but also for its historical importance. Shortly after making this record Coltrane comprehensively changed his musical direction, abandoning many of the structures that underpinned his earlier work and adopting an approach heavily influenced by the free jazz of the likes of Ornette Coleman and, especially, Albert Ayler. Not everyone likes the music Coltrane made after he made that transition (in 1965) but having taken his earlier style to such a high peak as A Love Supreme he and the rest of the band no doubt felt they couldn’t go any further in that direction.
There are glimpses of the later freer approach in the third track, Pursuance, when the drum and saxophone interchanges between Elvin Jones and Coltrane threaten to break the regular tempo apart, and on this (the second) track Resolution, when McCoy Tyner abandons his usual single-note lines in favour of much more complex chordal improvisations. I think Coltrane’s solo on the last track, Psalm, is entirely improvised and , accompanied by Jones’ rising and falling drum rolls, it acquires a hauntingly solemn atmosphere which makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck every time I hear it. What a fantastic drummer Elvin Jones was.
But I haven’t got time to analyse the whole album – another’s words are in any case no substitute for listening to this masterpiece yourself – so I’ll just mention that Resolution is based on an 8-bar theme that’s very reminiscent of the theme Africa featured on Africa/Brass made a couple of years earlier. To me it sounds like Coltrane is just itching to cut loose on this track. His saxophone tone has a harder edge than usual for that period, giving the piece an anguished, pleading feel. Elvin Jones is also magnificent, his polyrhythmic accents spurring Coltrane to a climactic solo.
The intensity of Resolution ignites an even more dramatic onslaught on the next track, Pursuance, basically a blues taken at a very fast tempo, before the mood changes completely for the final part, Psalm. And all this builds from the opening track, Acknowledgement, which closes with the whole group chanting the words A Love Supreme in unison to a simple four-note figure stated at the opening of the piece.
Four tracks amounting to just over 30 minutes of music, but a masterpiece by any standards.
Happy New Year!
Swingin’ Them Jingle Bells
Posted in Jazz with tags Fats Waller and his Rythm, Swingin' Them Jingle Bells on December 23, 2012 by telescoperIt’s with some trepidation that I find myself facing the long journey to Newcastle tomorrow. There’s been heavy rain overnight (even leading to a Flood Alert along the Taff near my house) and quite a lot of disruption on the railways today as a consequence. Nevertheless I’m determined to make an attempt to get into the Christmas spirit. If Fats Waller can’t do it, nobody can. Here’s his classic version of Jingle Bells on which the general atmosphere of hilarity and inspired chaos allows his superb musicianship to shine all the more brightly. Few ever managed to play Harlem Stride piano as well as Fats Waller, and he’s on top form in the opening choruses of this record.
Will I make it home on Christmas Eve? In the immortal words of Mr Waller “One never knows, do one?”
In the Dark 