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RIP Sam Rivers

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , on December 31, 2011 by telescoper

I just read of the death, at the age of 88, of the legendary jazz musician Sam Rivers who passed away on 26th December. Sam Rivers was born in 1923 and started playing professionally during the bebop era of the early 1950s. Later he evolved a unique avant garde style that was nevertheless firmly based in the jazz traditions he had grown up with. He was probably best known as a tenor saxophonist, but could also play flute, clarinet, piano and viola.

I first heard Sam Rivers on Humphrey Lyttelton’s BBC Radio Show The Best of Jazz in 1979. Humph was clearly a great admirer of Sam Rivers, especially the superb trio he formed with the brilliant Thurman Barker (drums) and Dave Holland (bass). The energy and vitality of the track he played made a lasting impression on me. The album was called Contrasts, by the way, and the track in question called Zip. I bought the album straight away. At least almost straight away, because it wasn’t the sort of record you could buy in the shops; I had to send away for it.

The following video was made in Germany around the same time featuring the trio mentioned above. It’s in several parts so please click through if you want to see and hear Sam Rivers’ full repertoire of instruments.

It’s very sad to hear of the passing of such a wonderful musician and inspirational figure, but at least we still have the music. Rest in peace, Sam Rivers.

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Wanderlust

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , on December 29, 2011 by telescoper

I saw that someone posted this on Youtube, so couldn’t resist putting it on here. For a long time in the 70s and 80s this was used by Humphrey Lyttelton as the theme tune for his BBC Radio programme The Best of Jazz so it’s full of nostalgia for me as I used to listen to it every Monday night when I was school. Although quite a traditionalist in terms of his own music, Humph played all kinds of Jazz on his programme and in so doing introduced me to a great deal of music that I still love, thirty odd years later. The only problem with using this as his theme tune was that I never got to hear the whole thing all the way through, until I finally got around to buying the LP (which I still have).

This track, Wanderlust, is taken from the album Duke Ellington meets Coleman Hawkins and it features star performers from the Ellington Band of the early sixties, with the great Coleman Hawkins sitting in on tenor saxophone. It’s a fairly basic blues composition, of the type often played at jam sessions like this; Ellington himself doesn’t play a solo, but provides wonderful piano accompaniment throughout. The rest of the rhythm section comprises Aaron Bell (bass) and Sam Woodyard (drums). Soloists in order are: Johnny Hodges (alto sax), typically relaxed; Ray Nance on trumpet; Harry Carney (baritone sax); Lawrence Brown (trombone); and finally a longer contribution by the star of the show, Coleman Hawkins, whose climactic solo is superbly constructed around the simple blues chords, taking it into another dimension entirely, before an ensemble chorus after which Sam Woodyward whips it up in sixths and takes them home. A great record by a bunch of great musicians that manages to be simultaneously very typically Duke Ellington and very typically Coleman Hawkins.

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Out to Lunch!

Posted in Jazz with tags , , on December 19, 2011 by telescoper

Today’s the day for our infamous annual departmental Christmas Lunch, which last year started at 12.30 and carried on until 3.30 the following morning (at least for me and a few other diehards). I thought I’d mark the occasion this year with an appropriate piece of music featuring one of my favourite jazz artists, saxophonist Eric Dolphy. This is the title track of the pioneering free jazz album Out to Lunch. This album is without doubt one of the high points of 1960s avant-garde jazz, primarily because of Dolphy’s extraordinary playing but also because of the brilliance of the other musicians. It’s a virtuoso performance all round, and it’s especially hard to believe that the superb drummer Tony Williams was only 18 when this track was recorded!

Unfortunately the original track is a bit too long for Youtube so this is in two parts; you’ll have to click through for the second bit.

Anyway, this would definitely be one of my Desert Island Discs and it probably also serves as an accurate musical illustration of the state my brain will be in later today. Enjoy!

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Bye Bye Blackbird

Posted in Jazz with tags , , on December 16, 2011 by telescoper

I’ve posted about Albert Ayler before, but the excuse for posting this remarkable track is that it is preceded by a rare recording  of him talking. It dates back to January 1963 and was recorded in Copenhagen; Ayler had relocated to Sweden in 1962 in the hope that he would find a freer artistic environment than was available in the USA at the time. In the spoken segment, he comes across as a very quiet and thoughtful young man and gives little hint of his troubled character, but his life was a constant struggle against depressive illness and critical disdain for his music. Especially moving is the phrase he utters at the end “One day, everything will be as it should be”. Sadly that wasn’t to be the case for him, and in 1970 he took his own life. The track is a standard tune, Bye Bye Blackbird, on which he uses his extraordinary saxophone tone to give voice to some of the pain he obviously couldn’t express in words.

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R.I.P. Christopher Logue (1926-2011)

Posted in Jazz, Poetry with tags , , , on December 6, 2011 by telescoper

During my enforced separation from the internet I heard the sad news of the death of the poet and political activist Christopher Logue. I therefore decided to repost the following poems, which first appeared on this blog on 3rd May 2009. Logue himself performed them with a Jazz group led by the drummer Tony Kinsey and I first heard them so long ago I can’t remember when. Anyway I’m immensely proud that my blog post made it into the references on Logue’s wikipedia page – and, before you ask, no I didn’t put it there myself!

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I think these are beautiful poems made even more effective by the musical setting. In fact they are loose re-workings of some of the famous love poems of Pablo Neruda. Logue moved far away from the Neruda’s originals, but put them into impressionistic free verse, which he reads in his plummy English accent, while the band provides appropriate backing for the sentiments of the poetry as well as providing improvised passages in between the verses.

You can listen to the record Red Bird here.

Now read the lyrics:

1.

Lithe girl, brown girl
Sun that makes apples, stiffens the wheat
Made your body a joy
Tongue like a red bird dancing on ivory
To stretch your arm
Sun grabs at your hair
Like water was falling

Tantalize the sun if you dare
It will leave shadows that match you
Everywhere
Lithe girl, brown girl
Nothing draws me towards you
The heat within you beats me home
Like the sun at high noon

Knowing these things
Perhaps through
Knowing these things
I seek you out
Listening for your voice
For the brush of your arms against wheat
For your step among poppies grown underwater
Lithe girl, brown girl

2.

Steep gloom among pine trees
Waves’ surge breaking
Slow lights that interweave
A single bell

As the day’s end falls into your eyes
The earth starts singing in your body
As the waves sing in a white shell
And the rivers sing within you
And I grow outwards on them
As you direct them
Whither you make them run

I follow for you like a hare
Running reared upright to the hunter’s drum
You turn about me like a belt of clouds
the silence, though it is stupid
Mocks the hours I lay
Troubled by…… nothing

Your arms – translucent stones wherein I lie
Exhausted
And future kisses
Die
Lust
Your mysterious voice
Folds close echoes
That shift throughout the night
Much as the wind
Which moves darkly over the profitable fields
Folds down the wheat
From all its height

3.

In the hot depth of summer
The morning is close, storm-filled
Clouds shift –
White rags waving goodbye
Shaken by the frantic wind as it goes and
As it goes
The wind throbs over us
Love-making silenced

Among the trees like a tongue singing
A warning or just singing the wind throbs
And the quick sparrow’s flight is slapped by the wind
Swift thief destructive as waves
Weightless without form
Struck through and through with flame
Which breaks
Soughing its strength out
At the gates of the enormous, silent, summer wind

4.

That you may hear me
My words narrow occasionally
Like gull-tracks in the sand

Or I let them become
Tuneful beads
Mixed with the sound

Of a drunk hawk’s bell
Flick me your wrists…..
Soft as grape skin – yes

Softer than grapeskin I make them
Which is a kind of treachery against the world

Yet
You who clamber
Over all the desolations of mine
Gentle as ivy
Eat the words’ meaning

Before you came to me
Words were all that you now occupy
And now they’re no more these words
Than ever they knew of my sadness

Yet
Sometimes
Force and dead anguish still drags them
And yes

Malevolent dreams still betimes
Overwhelm them and then

In my bruised voice
You hear other bruised voices
Old agues crying out of old mouths

Do not be angry with me
Lest the wave of that anguish
Drown me again

Even as I sit
Threading a collar of beads for your hands
Softer than grape skin
Hung with a drunk hawk’s bell

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I’ve grown accustomed to your face

Posted in Jazz with tags , on December 6, 2011 by telescoper

Here’s a little treat. I’m sure I’ve mentioned on here before that there can hardly be a tune ever written that some jazz musician hasn’t taken a fancy to and done their own version that’s probably very different to what the composer intended. I came across this performance by the Brad Mehldau trio a while ago and thought I’d put it up here because I think it’s lovely. The song that forms the basis of their improvisation was originally entitled I’ve Grown Accustomed to Her Face (music by Frederick Loewe and lyrics by Alan Jay Lerner) for the musical My Fair Lady, in which it was memorably performed (if not exactly sung) by Rex Harrison.

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Yancey Stomp

Posted in Jazz with tags , , on November 29, 2011 by telescoper

A bastard of a busy day has turned into a wild and windswept night with not infrequent drenching downpours for good measure.  I’m too tired for a proper blog so I thought I’d share a little bit of classic piano jazz with you to warm the cockles of your heart, if you have any. This is by the great blues player Jimmy Yancey who had his own unique style of boogie-woogie, specialising in sort of habanera (or tango) rhythms at slow tempo  and in lop-sidedly limping, but extremely propulsive, left-hand figures on upbeat numbers like this one, called Yancey Stomp, which goes like the clappers. Stay warm!

 

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Hear Me Talking to You

Posted in Jazz on November 5, 2011 by telescoper

I feel like posting a bit of classic blues today, so here’s the inimitable Gertrude “Ma” Rainey way back in 1928. Ma Rainey was one of the very first professional blues singers. She started performing as a teenager around the turn of the last century, so by the time she started making records in the 1920s she had already developed a mature style. Owing to the limitations of recording technology the lyrics of much of her large repertoire  are virtually  inaudible on disc, but here’s a superb example of her style. She may have been no oil painting, but boy could she sing the blues…

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In my Solitude

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , on November 3, 2011 by telescoper

Here’s a little gem for you. It’s a lovely little short version of Duke Ellington’s great song (In my) Solitude as performed by the quartet that was co-led for a short time in the 1970s by guitarist George Barnes and cornettist Ruby Braff. They may not have stayed together for very long before the two leaders had a major falling out and they split up, but they certainly produced some exquisite music while the band lasted and the “Braff-Barnes Quartet” is much celebrated in Jazz histories.

Ruby Braff’s technical ability on cornet is astonishing but  his style very traditional; he was once described as “The Ivy League Louis Armstrong”. On this tune in particular he manages to produce a smooth velvet tone in the lower register, which almost merges with the arco bass of Michael Moore, as well as  brilliant quicksilver runs in the upper register. The other member of the band was Wayne Wright who played (mainly rhythm) guitar.

This particular track proves that this band not only new how to play but also when to stop;  2:38 is pretty short for a live jazz performance but I think they stopped at just the right moment – something that quite a few bands  would do well to learn from!

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Ghosts

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , , , on October 23, 2011 by telescoper

I’ve been meaning to post this pioneering piece of music for some time but never seemed to get around to it until a comment yesterday reminded me that I’m probably not posting enough about Jazz these days. Albert Ayler was one of the true originals of the free jazz movement of the 1960s, and I think the album Spiritual Unity he made with Gary Peacock on bass and Sonny Murray on drums is the first record on which his radical ideas came fully to fruition, which is why I’ve chosen to post a track from it. His saxophone style was totally unique, with a rough broad vibrato and searing hard-edged tone contrasting dramatically with a superb command of the upper register and exhilirating speed of execution. His articulation is blurred in order to give the saxophone a more personal timbre, with inflections similar to a human voice, and he’s able to accomplish dramatic changes in mood, from a wild passion bordering on violence, to a deep sense of pathos or nostalgia. As is the case with other highly independent jazz musicians, such as Miles Davis and Thelonious Monk, you only have to hear one note to know immediately who’s playing.

This tune, the shorter of two versions on Spiritual Unity of an original composition by Albert Ayler called Ghosts, is a great example how he could make coherent what at first hearing sounds like disassociated bursts of sound. It involves remarkable improvised melodies based on short thematic lines designed to evoke unsophisticated  folk music or nursery tunes. It may sound primitive on the surface, but it’s very complex underneath and creating this extraordinary sound world clearly required great technical mastery from Ayler and his supporting musicians, especially Gary Peacock, who plays wonderfully on this track.

Yet for all its brilliance, this record also hints at the dark clouds that were never far from Ayler’s horizon. Although critically acclaimed, his music never found favour with the public. He battled depression throughout the late 60s and, in 1970, at the age of only 34, he took his own life by jumping off a ferry into New York’s  East River.

 

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