My daughter is home from college this week. Yesterday we met
for lunch at a salad place on Madison Ave. and then went to see the wild Cai Guo-Qiang retrospective, I Want to Believe, at the Guggenheim Museum. The show is up through May 28, and if you're in town, it's a must-see (go here and click on the "view online exhibition" tab). After we left, I asked my daughter what she wanted to do next. She said, "Let's go back home and listen to music." She didn't have to ask twice.
My kid loves jazz. And Brazilian music. And vocalists from the 1950s. And David Bowie. She's an old soul who listens to anything that swings and has a beat. Since she started deejaying at her college radio station, she has been texting and IM-ing me regularly for jazz recordings that none of her hip station buddies or dormies will know.
When we got home, I flipped on my stereo system—McIntosh amp/pre-amp, ProAc monitor speakers, B&W subwoofer, Sony pro rack CD player and DAC 1
digital-analog converter that pulls every bit of information off a remastered disc and displays it through the speakers. You virtually can hear the musicians wipe their brows. My daughter urged me to play whatever I thought was great and said she'd pick favorites to burn and take back with her.
A little over an hour later, here's what she chose—and what I guess the kids at school will be hearing for the first time over the next two weeks:
Stablemates (Take 4)—Wes Montgomery and Milt Jackson: Bags Meets Wes (Riverside/Keepnews Collection)
Blues Riff—Wes Montgomery: Portrait of Wes (Riverside)
Relax Max—Dinah Washington: The Swingin' Miss D (Verve)
At Sundown—Bud Freeman: Chicago/Austin High
School Jazz in Hi-Fi (Mosaic)
My Sweeter Than Sweet—The Complete Okeh and Brunswick Bix Beiderbecke, Frank Trumbauer and Jack Teagarden Sessions, 1924-1936 (Mosaic)
Lion's Den—Kenny Drew: Undercurrent (Blue Note)
Strictly Confidential—The Complete Bud Powell on Verve
Con Alma—Hal McKusick: Triple
Exposure (Prestige)
Memories of You—Anita O'Day: Young Anita (Proper)
Peri's Scope—Bill Evans: Portrait in Jazz (Riverside/Keepnews Collection)
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