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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Bye Bye Blackbird
Posted in Jazz with tags Albert Ayler, Bye Bye Blackbird, Jazz on December 16, 2011 by telescoperR.I.P. Christopher Logue (1926-2011)
Posted in Jazz, Poetry with tags Christopher Logue, Poetry, red bird, Tony Kinsey on December 6, 2011 by telescoperDuring 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!
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
I’ve grown accustomed to your face
Posted in Jazz with tags brad mehldau trio, Jazz on December 6, 2011 by telescoperHere’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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Posted in Jazz with tags boogie woogie, Jimmy Yancey, Yancey Stomp on November 29, 2011 by telescoperA 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 telescoperI 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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Posted in Jazz with tags Albert Ayler, Free Jazz, Gary Peaock, Ghosts, Jazz, Sonny Murray, Spiritual Unity on October 23, 2011 by telescoperI’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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Over the Rainbow
Posted in Jazz with tags Ben Webster, Jazz, Over the Rainbow, Stan Tracey on October 15, 2011 by telescoperNo time for a proper post today, so I’ll just offer a lovely bit of jazz from the late great Ben Webster that I bookmarked for future posting some time in the past. Webster was a big boozy brutish kind of bloke, but he played ballads with a heartwarming tenderness, as you can tell from this performance which also features the vastly underrated British pianist, Stan Tracey, who is still going strong after over 60 years in the business. Enjoy!
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Posted in Jazz with tags Benny Carter, Coleman Hawkins, Django Reinhardt, HoneySuckle Rose on October 8, 2011 by telescoperI’m in a vegetative mood today and the old energy levels aren’t high enough to post anything demanding, so I thought I’d put up a piece of music for your entertainment and edification. This was recorded in Paris, on April 28th 1937 and it revolves around a lengthy tenor saxophone solo by the great Coleman Hawkins. Inspired by his sojourn in Europe, Hawkins returned to New York to record probably the most famous tenor solo ever, on the classic ballad Body and Soul, but this shows a side to his playing that was more familiar to swing era jazz fans. Listen to the drive that he injects into this performance combined with that “heavy” tenor tone, and you’ll understand why he was regarded as the pre-eminent tenor soloist of the 30s.
Other members of the band include Benny Carter who plays the alto solo near the end and who obviously did the arrangement for the four saxophones – nobody else in jazz history has ever managed to get such a biting sound out of small saxophone section as Benny Carter. And if that weren’t enough there’s a bonus in the unmistakeable form of Django Reinhardt‘s guitar. Enjoy!
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Posted in Jazz with tags Indian Summer, Sidney Bechet on October 1, 2011 by telescoperA chance comment on Twitter concerning the origin of the phrase Indian Summer (which, contrary to popular belief, has nothing to do with India) reminded me of this lovely old recording by the late great Sidney Bechet. So since we’re currently experiencing an Indian Summer, why not bask in its glow?
“You gotta be in the Sun to feel the Sun” – Sidney Bechet.
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In the Dark 