JazzWax

Weekend Wax Bits

Has the digital age robbed a generation of its memories? We all know that downloads are enormously convenient, but I can't help wondering—and worrying—that today's youth have little in the way of a cultural breadcrumb trail back to their childhood. I know that when I talk with friends from my generation, we have music in common. We remember the years in which singles and LPs were released, bought and danced to. For baby boomers, music remains the art through which we most vividly recall our parents, our old neighborhoods and where our young lives began.

Today, most kids I encounter are remarkably knowledgeable about the classic rock and soul albums their parents played during long car drives. But they don't have hits of their own because the marketplace grew too fractured in 2001. As we know, there are no unified charts, large record stores or traditional radio stations. Even young adults in their 20s have little music to remind them of growing up except, perhaps, for the Spice Girls and a couple of other 90s sensations.

The point is this: what kind of society will we be when adults have no music history? Will that society be better off, building on a clean slate? Or will there be a generation without a soul or clear memories—bereft of recordings to transport them back to times when they had no worries or responsibilities except getting to school on time. This perhaps is the saddest part of the digital age—that music won't be there to comfort kids when they are old and most want to remember what their youth was like.

Newport Jazz Festival 2012. George Wein sent along his lineup for this year's Newport Jazz Festival (presented by Natixis Global Asset Management)...

Saturday, August 4—Pat Metheny Unity Band with Chris Potter, Antonio Sanchez and Ben Williams; Dianne Reeves; Jack DeJohnette’s 70th Birthday Celebration featuring his Quintet and an All-Star group performing two sets; Bill Frisell on the John Lennon Songbook; Joe Lovano and Dave Douglas Quintet: Sound Prints; The Bad Plus with Bill Frisell; James Carter Organ Trio with Special Guests Rodney Jones and Miche Braden; Dafnis Prieto Sextet; 3 Clarinets: Ken Peplowski [pictured], Evan Christopher, Anat Cohen; Christian McBride’s Inside Straight; John Ellis & Double-Wide; Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society; and Pedrito Martinez Group.

Sunday, August 5—Tedeschi Trucks Band; Maria Schneider Orchestra; Jason Moran and the Bandwagon; Kurt Elling; Miguel Zenón’s Rayuela; Jenny Scheinman & Bill Frisell; Ambrose Akinmusire Quintet; Rudresh Mahanthappa’s Samdhi; Gretchen Parlato & Lionel Loueke with special guest Becca Stevens; John Hollenbeck’s Claudia Quintet + 1 featuring Theo Bleckmann; 3 Cohens: Yuval, Anat and Avishai Cohen; Vince Giordano & the Nighthawks; Lewis Nash [pictured] Quintet featuring Jeremy Pelt and Jimmy Greene; Ryan Truesdell’s Gil Evans Centennial Project; and Berklee Global Jazz Institute Sextet.

The Newport Jazz Festival kicks off on Friday, August 3.  Artists and ticket information for this concert will be announced at a later date.

Modern Jazz Quartet. JazzWax reader Duane Peirick sent along this video gem from What's My Line...

 

WKCR's broadcasts. Here's a schedule of WKCR's special in-depth radio broadcasts in April. Birthday broadcasts run for 24 hours:

• April 7—Billie Holiday Birthday Broadcast
• April 17-21—Han Bennink Festival, a five day long celebration of the Dutch modern jazz percussion master
• April 22—The Charles Mingus Birthday Broadcast 
• April 29—Duke Ellington Broadcast

You can tune in from anywhere in the world on your computer by going here. 


Bob Brookmeyer. A memorial for Bob Brookmeyer, who died last December, will be held in New York on April 11 at St. Peter's Lutheran Church (E. 54th St. between 3rd and Lexington Avenues) from 6:30 to 9:30 p.m. A reception will follow immediately afterward at the church. [Bob Brookmeyer performing at the Civic Opera, Chicago, Illinois, in the 1950s. Photograph: Ted Williams/Corbis]

Bob's music will be played by the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra (for which he wrote for over 40 years) and two specially assembled smaller groups. There will also be a number of distinguished speakers: (in alphabetical order) Darcy James Argue, Greg Bahora, Dave Bailey, Bill Crow, Ed Dix, Jim Hall, Bill Kirchner, Jim McNeely, Dick Oatts, Jimmy Owens, John Snyder, Michael Stephans, and Terry Teachout. In addition, there will be an audio tribute by Clark Terry, and a video presentation by Maria Schneider, Ryan Truesdell, and Marie Le Claire. Bill Kirchner is handling the event. He can be reached at kirch@mindspring.com.

CD discoveries of the week: Tommy Bolin is a rock footnote today. But back in the '70s, he had a great blues-rock sound on the electric guitar, particularly with Deep Purple. Bolin died of a drug overdose in 1976. On Great Gypsy Soul (429), 11 of his unfinished guitar-vocal tracks have been paired with contemporary artists for an unusual tribute album. For example, Peter Frampton joins on The Grind, John Scofield is on Savannah Woman and Glenn Hughes and Sonny Landreth are on Sugar Shack. Rock air-guitar at its best.

Back in 1964, songwriting team Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller founded Red Bird Records and its subsidiary Blue Cat Records. Though the labels were launched just as the market was shifting away from soulful girl groups to long-haired boy bands, superb 45s were recorded that unfortunately were drowned out by the British Invasion. On The Red Bird Girls (Real Gone Music), 20 stereo masters from the vaults have landed on one CD. Terrific pop-rock singles include Ellie Greenwich's You Don't Know, the Ad Libs' Boy From New York City, the Dixie Cups' No True Love and The Jelly Beans' magnificent I Wanna Love Him So Bad. For those who love this period of sophisticated innocence, this CD also includes 11 tracks of studio banter and production direction, which gives you a sense of how these records were made.

If you dig your back-beat served up on a rubbery surface, you'll enjoy Papa Grows Funk's Needle in the Groove (Funky Krewe). Producer Allen Toussaint assembled a snap-tight band featuring John Gros (vox, organ, keyboards), Juen Yamagishi (guitars), Marc Pero (bass), Jeffrey Alexander (drums) and Jason Mingledorff (saxes). Sparky bass and guitar riffs and licks are given kicky beats and soulful organ lines, and each track lands right in the groove. Sample Planet of Love & Hate and Rollo.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, country and pop shacked-up. Country hits in the 1960s like Ode to Billie Joe, Harper Valley PTA and Glen Campbell's singles had enormous success on the pop charts. The trend continued in the early 1970s, but both country and pop suffered as soul, disco and hard rock left little space for many country-pop artists. Among the gems of this period was Jody Miller. On Jody Miller: The Complete Epic Hits (Real Gone Music), we once again hear how the decade sounded outside of the major cities, away from the platform shoes and glitter. Miller had a warm, cozy and confidential voice that rang with clarity and sincerity. Sample If You Think I Love You Now (I've Just Started) and Darlin You Can Always Come Back Home. And don't miss countrified renditions of He's So Fine, Be My Baby, To Know Him Is to Love Him and Natural Woman, which gets a Nashville treatment and remains one of the finest non-Aretha renditions. A superb, gentle trip back to the early '70s.

Burt Bacharach tribute albums cut only two ways: disasters and knockouts. Burt, himself, is very picky when it come to such albums. When I interviewed him in L.A., he mentioned Dionne, Aretha and Luther. But he also digs what Steve Tyrell did with his and Hal David's catalog on Back to Bacharach (Koch). It's probably my favorite male treatment of Burt's songbook, primarily because Tyrell's voice is worn, vulnerable and expressive—similar in this regard to Elvis Costello's. This 2008 album also is plenty jazzy. Sample anything and everything. There really isn't a bad track on here. This truly is the perfect male-vocal interpretation, and a must for lovers of Burt's music.

Oddball album cover of the week: Mood music maestro Marty Gold was quite an easy-listening orchestrator. Think Liberace meets Sauter-Finegan. Here, thanks to some fancy superimposing, a giant (not Gold) is enthralled by a shin-sized woman singing and swaying below. Our jolly giant must have already gobbled up the percussionists and bass player.

Miles Davis: 60 Minutes

60 Minutes' producer Don Hewitt made a terrible mistake when he assigned Harry Reasoner to interview Miles Davis in 1989. Reasoner had little understanding of Davis the combative jazz artist. Reasoner also asked a large proportion of dumb questions that steadily tried to cast Davis as a rotten piece of work and a nasty, unentitled charlatan.

As a result, in the following clip, we witness an increasingly annoyed Davis going out of his way to intimidate his interviewer and make him look weak and inept. For whatever reason, Reasoner thought Davis, the musician, was just another Malibu celebrity who cared about what viewers thought about him. Big mistake. The more Reasoner turned the interview into a combative and judgmental  white-black showdown, the more Davis politely put him on and hung him out to dry. Instead of Davis seeming outrageous, one senses that Reasoner is out of his element.

By the end, Davis was ignoring Reasoner entirely, choosing to watch television instead of answering questions. Reasoner, of course, positioned the TV-watching incident as an outrageous Davis doing what he pleased. Interestingly, Reasoner seemed to have completely missed the point that Davis had tuned him out after one dopey quesiton too many, ending the interview earlier without officially asking Reasoner to leave.

Yet for reasons that have little to do with Reasoner, this 60 Minutes segment remains fascinating from the artist's perspective and how someone of Davis' artistic temperament handled gotcha-TV's attempts to trip him up and put him in the mainstream box:

 

Leon Spencer Jr. (1945-2012)

Leon Spencer Jr., one of the most melodically funky organists during Prestige's Hammond B-3 era in the early 1970s and whose voicings and guitar-like touch on the instrument provided a powdery groove behind lead horn players, died on March 11. He was 66 and lived in Houston.

Spencer's recording career began in 1968 but didn't become significant in small-group settings until Lou Donaldson's Pretty Things in June 1970. Spencer's style wasn't as bombastic as Charles Earland's nor was it as gospel-tinged as styles unleashed by Brother Jack McDuff, Richard "Groove" Holmes and Jimmy McGriff.

Instead, Spencer combined a lyrical sensibility with a rhythmic approach that thrived on hooks and riffs. He also favored lower-note pedal tones to set up his blues-groove style. Most of all, Spencer had a knack for treating blues and pop standards with the same level of respect, making the blues sound deliciously soulful and pop tunes sound hip.

Spencer was frequently teamed with guitarist Melvin Sparks and drummer Idris Muhammad, becoming the Prestige label's house trio behind tenor saxophonist Grover Washington Jr. and trumpeter Virgil Jones. His last known recording was in 1976 with Wilbert Longmire—a guitarist with whom he recorded his first album.

One of the very first jazz albums I bought as a teen was Spencer's Louisiana Slim. Perfectly produced by Bob Porter, the album featured lengthy blues and several pop tunes—Mercy, Mercy Me, Close to You and Our Love Will Never Die. It was a mix that only Porter and Spencer could pull off. I went through four copies of the album, and I loved it so much that I bought one as a backup in case the others became damaged.

My great regret, of course, is that I didn't get to interview Spencer for JazzWax. Whenever I had the time, the people I turned to for his number didn't have it or weren't sure where he lived in Houston. And then I grew steadily busy and short on time. I would have liked to have told Spencer how much his music meant to me and how much I enjoyed his albums and taste. To this day I can listen to Louisiana Slim and never tire of its joy and gentle energy.

JazzWax tracks: Here are my favorite Leon Spencer Jr. albums, in chronological order...

• Pretty Things—Lou Donaldson (1970)
• Sparks!—Melvin Sparks (1970)
• Turn It On—Lou Donaldson (1970)
• You Talk That Talk—Sonny Stitt and Gene Ammons (1971)
• Louisiana Slim—Leon Spencer (1971)
• Cosmos—Lou Donaldson (1971)
• Bad Walking Woman—Leon Spencer (1972)

JazzWax clips: Here's Leon Spencer Jr. playing Mercy, Mercy Me from Louisiana Slim. The track was used in New York by Batt Johnson of WRVR as the theme to his midnight show...

 

Here's Spencer's Down on Dowling St. from Bad Walking Woman...

 

And here's Spencer on You Talk That Talk, the title track of this Ammons and Stitt release (ignore the clip's incorrect song title)...

 

Interview: John Scofield

John Scofield has one of the most distinctive sounds of all the electric guitarists who came of age in the jazz-fusion era in the early 1970s. John is able to make his notes ring like a bell, and his lines are horn-like, living in the space just where rock meets the funky blues.

John is perhaps best known today for his period with Miles Davis, though he has recorded plenty of albums before and after. With Miles, John recorded Star People, You're Under Arrest and Decoy, as well as all of the touring dates in the U.S. and Europe between 1982 and 1985.

In my conversation with John, 60, the guitarist talks about entering the jazz space with rock exposure, and his experience with Davis:

JazzWax: Where did you grow up?
John Scofield: In Wilton, Conn. My parents had met in Washington, D.C., during World War II. My father was a market researcher for a petrochemical company. He knew a great deal about rubber. I was born in Dayton, Ohio, but we moved to Houston for a year in 1959 when he worked for a company there. Then we moved to Wilton when he took a job nearby at Mobil Chemical. [Pictured above, John Scofield in 1963 with his first guitar]


JW: Were you a prodigy, or did you take to music slowly?
JS: The latter is probably accurate. In my suburban town, everyone was into rock. Jimi Hendrix and Eric Clapton were early influences. I had heard them in concert and also began to become interested in folk music, R&B and the blues. That led me to jazz in high school and lessons with Alan Dean, a guitar teacher and frustrated bebopper who worked at Merritt Music, a local music shop. I took lessons with him starting at age 15. Before that I was a run-of-the-mill rock guitar kid. Alan helped me with jazz and the blues. [Pictured above, John Scofield with his first electric guitar in 1965]


JW: And after high school?
JS: I attended Berklee College of Music in Boston starting in 1970. At Berklee I met great players. I wasn’t a wunderkind by any means. Music was a slow, hard road for me from age 16 to 23. When I went to Berklee, it was still the Herb Pomeroy Berklee. Drummer Joe Hunt came up to teach. Vibraphonist Gary Burton and bassists John Neves and Steve Swallow were there, too. Gary was the first great jazz artist I had a chance to play with often, and he was a big help in my development. [Photo of John Scofield in 1968 by Joe Marone]


JW: By 1974, you were a big deal.
JS: I was discovered by drummer Billy Cobham just after I had recorded The Gathering with Gary Marks, a singer-songwriter and guitarist who was sort of like Michael Franks, only jazzier. I had been playing with vibraphonist Dave Samuels around Boston. We were trying to attract enough attention that we’d get booked to play in New York. [Pictured above, John Scofield with the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band]


JW: How did you catch the attention of Cobham?
JS: Dave Samuels was friends with vibist Dave Friedman and drummer Horacee Arnold. Horace wanted to record a demo and put together a band. He had already made records for Columbia and was playing at Richard’s Lounge in Lakewood, N.J. So I went in with him to make the demo, which was produced by Billy Cobham. [Pictured above, John Scofield with the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band]

JW: What happened?
JS: A month later, Billy invited me to join his band. The band was playing rock venues. Michael and Randy Brecker were in the band. I had already heard them play with Horacee Arnold.


JW: Before Cobham, you recorded with Gerry Mulligan, yes?
JS: I had played a few gigs with Gerry. He had come up to Boston to appear at the Jazz Workshop in 1974. Drummer Alan Dawson got Dave Samuels and me on the band for the week. Gerry wanted to experiment. When the gig was over, Gerry said, “That was nice. See you next time.” Then one day I got a call from Gerry asking me to come down to New York to play a concert. [Photo above of Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker in rehearsal at Carnegie Hall in 1974 by Franca R. Mulligan]

JW: What did you do?
JS: I drove down and made the job. Stan Getz was on the gig with his quartet. They did stuff with three horns. Then Chet Baker, Gerry and Stan played. Gerry was nice to us and would hang. I remember he had gigs and wanted me to be in his band.

JW: What did you do after you joined Cobham’s band?
JS: I had to call Gerry and tell him. He was nice about it.


JW: Looking back, a good move?
JS: Now when I tell people I went with Billy Cobham instead of Mulligan, they don’t know who Cob is and wonder why I did that. At the time, I admittedly was torn. But Michael and Randy Brecker were my idols. [Pictured above, John Scofield with the Billy Cobham/George Duke Band]

JW: Weren’t you also motivated by a need to play music younger people identified with?
JS: Oh sure. When you went to Paul’s Mall, a pop-rock club that was part of the Jazz Workshop, young people were lined up waiting to get in, and the club was packed. Fusion was cutting edge and hadn’t sold out yet. 


JW: How did you join Miles Davis’ band in November 1982?
JS: Through Bill Evans, the sax player. By then I had been around. I had been playing with guitarist Mike Stern at 55 Grand Street in New York. I played there weekly, and we had become friends. The club had become a happening hangout. I knew Miles’ drummer Al Foster and multi-instrumentalist Marcus Miller. [Pictured above, Miles Davis and John Scofield]

JW: Two guitars?
JS: Mike Stern was terribly strung out at the time. He’s long since cleaned up. But at the time, Miles didn’t want to fire him. But he did want another guitarist in the band in case Mike didn’t make it. Miles had just straightened up himself and was clean.


JW: After you joined, what happened?
JS: The group played with two guitarists for a year. Playing with Miles wasn’t a stretch. I started out playing the blues, and had already played in fusion groups. I had been pushing myself as far as I could go and was a huge fan of Miles’. I was 30 years old and had had enough time to sit with Miles’ records and listen to everything he had recorded.

JW: How did the band sound?
JS: At the time it seemed un-together. We would just show up and play. Miles had these vamps and heads in between vamps that he had recorded on cassette and given to Gil Evans to write out. Miles asked Gil to turn them into heads.

JW: What about Gil’s sheet music?
JS: Mike couldn’t read them because he was whacked. Miles wanted another guitarist who could read. While we read the music, Miles would come up with vamps. I learned the existing book, which happened to be other vamps. Miles was in another place.

JW: How so?
JS: He had just married Cicely Tyson in 1981 and was cleaning up his act. He was coming out of his shell of being high all the time. Cicely was helping him enjoy his celebrity. Miles was never worried. He wanted a big rocking beat to play his stuff over.


JW: What were you listening to when you first joined the band?
JS: B.B. King and John Lee Hooker. I joined the band when Miles was making Star People in 1982. After that, he was listening heavily to Prince, Madonna and Top 40.

JW: Madonna?
JS: Miles was always listening deeply for production value. He heard what most of us didn’t. His way of thinking was, “I want to incorporate that. How do I do it in my space?”


JW: I’m surprised he covered so few pop tunes. I think it’s a shame.
JS: I do too. When he recorded Time After Time, the Cyndi Lauper tune, he also was considering about 10 other pop tunes, too. I think one was by Kenny Loggins. But we never completed them.


JW: Why?
JS: He told me he could only play them once. If a pop tune worked when he ran it down, we’d record it. We had about 8 or 10 lead sheets to different songs, but only Human Nature, which Michael Jackson had recorded, and Lauper’s tune made the cut. Miles believed in first-take magic.

JW: What were the others?
JS: I think Loggins’ Footloose, a Lionel Richie tune, maybe Lady, and DeBarge's Life Begins With You.


JW: That’s so funny. I wrote a post in November saying I wished Davis had recorded DeBarge’s All This Love.
JS: That’s a great song, too. Miles played along with the DeBarge LP while he taped it. I have a tape that I made at his house of him playing Life Begins With You. What Miles did with it will give you chills. Playing with Miles was a big deal for me, but I always wondered where the It Never Entered My Mind Miles was.

JazzWax tracks: John Scofield's latest album is A Moment's Peace with Larry Goldings (p,org), Scott Colley (b) and Brian Blade (d). Tracks feature originals and standards including I Want to Talk About You and You Don't Know What Love Is.

Jazzwax clip: Here's John Scofield's Plain Song from his new album...

 

And here's John playing Steeplechase in Paris in April 2010 (it's from his DVD, New Morning)...

 

Gerry Mulligan: Germany 1977

We can quibble, but baritone saxophonist Gerry Mulligan never made a bad recording. Some LPs certainly were better than others, but Mulligan really wasn't capable of delivering a lazy, corner-cutting job. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that Mulligan is one of the greatest jazz recording artists of the post-war period in terms of longevity, productivity, consistency and sheer influence. There's no filler with Mulligan, just swinging, melodic soul. [Photo of Gerry Mulligan courtesy of JazzHaus]

Before you start with the emails, think in terms of Mulligan's work as a player, composer, arranger, leader and bar-setter over six decades. From his prolific work with Gene Krupa, Claude Thornhill and Miles Davis' Birth of the Cool to the piano-less quartet in Los Angeles, his sextet, the quartet, the Verve years, I Want to Live, the Concert Jazz Band, all of his work in the '60s (Jeru, Night Lights, etc.), Age of Steam in 1971 and beyond. There are few solo artists whose work over this much time was so consistently dynamic and moving. Mulligan, the musician's musician, was born mature.

In November 1977, Mulligan was on tour in Stuttgart, Germany, with Dave Samuels (vibes), Thomas Fay (piano), Mike Santiago (guitar), George Duvivier (bass) and Bobby Rosengarden (drums). Fortunately, Mulligan was recorded in concert at the city's Liederhalle, and the result is out today—Legends Live: Gerry Mulligan Sextet (JazzHaus). What you hear on this new release of material—some previously released, some not—is Mulligan at the top of his game, swinging away with absolute impunity and coiled belligerence.

What's also remarkable about this recording is the vivid fidelity. Everything you hear is distinct and sonically huge. Europe in the '70s was a recording beehive. Engineers there were superb and had the smarts and gear to produce classical-level recordings, mostly for radio broadcasts.

Every ounce of Mulligan's yearning tone and zig-zagging authority is captured here through superb equipment and mike placement. It's the audio equivalent of riding safely on the front grille of an 18-wheel truck. You're so close to the action that it's scary and exhilarating. [Photo above of Gerry Mulligan at the Monterey Jazz Festival in 1992 by Brian McMillen]

The label, JazzHaus, has access to the archives of Sudwestrundfunk Stuttgart, Baden-Baden and Mainz—which is quite a treasure trove, since this features all of the SWR jazz programs recorded live on the radio and TV. Except you'd never know that the material was recorded in front of an audience. The CD sounds as though it was recorded in a studio last week. Your ear doesn't have to reach for the music. The musicians are on top of you throughout.

So, what's on this CD? A leonine Line for Lyons, an edgy Idol Gossip, a pensive Night Lights, an Ellington-infused Satin Doll, a spirited K-4 Pacific and others. But the high point is the Mulligan masterpiece Song for Strayhorn, which he first recorded three years earlier at Carnegie Hall in 1974. This track alone is worth the purchase.

This album of Mulligan at age 50 is a big, thrashing outing with all the grace and melodic fervor of Mulligan's demanding baritone. As for the sidemen, they are a glorious bonus.

JazzWax tracks: Legends Live: Gerry Mulligan Sextet at Liederhalle Stuttgart (November 22, 1977) is available at Amazon. The download is just $5.99.

JazzWax clip: Here's Satin Doll from this recording. You be the judge regarding the fidelity...

 

Count Basie: Rock and Soul

The 1960s was a decade of reverse transition for Count Basie. When his Roulette contract ended in 1962, Basie signed with Reprise and began recording a series of swinging albums with Frank Sinatra. By decade's end, Basie was moving back into his commercial comfort zone, recording straight ahead swingers. But in between, there was plenty of experimentation—some successful and some not so much. Two of the most interesting albums of the period were rock and soul outings.

First the rock shot. Many people are unaware that Basie recorded not one but two Beatles albums in the '60s—Basie's Beatle Bag (1966) for Verve and a lesser-known LP called Basie on the Beatles (1969). The latter was cut for Happy Tiger, a Los Angeles label owned by the Flying Tiger Line air-freight company that lasted only three years—from 1969 to 1971. During this time, Happy Tiger released just 27 albums.

Basie's Beatle Bag was largely a dud. Arranged by Chico O'Farrill, the album was an awkward and clumsy attempt to translate the Fab Four's excitement into swing-ese. O'Farrill was a brilliant arranger and ghosted often for major arrangers during the '60s. He had much finer artistic success on Basie Meets Bond (1965) for United Artists (UA), which distributed the James Bond and Beatles films in the U.S.

Whether the creative failing of the first Basie album was a result of Norman Granz's disdain for rock and his "let's get it over with" approach to recording is unknown. Given that UA meant Bond and Beatles, one might assume there was a deal struck by Granz for a UA Bond album a Verve Beatles album.

By contrast, Basie on the Beatles is an enormous artistic triumph. Arranged by Bob Florence [pictured], the album takes on impossible, late-period Lennon-McCartney songs like Hey Jude, Penny Lane and Get Back. The results are a perfectly executed album that gracefully enters the Beatles space and lifts the songs without ever giving up the swing. It's a shame Happy Tiger didn't commission another one.

In between these two Beatles LPs, Basie recorded a marvelous, little-known album with electrifyng soul singer Jackie Wilson. Manufacturers of Soul was made in 1968 for Brunswick, Wilson's label at the time. On paper, this merger would seem like a forced fit—Wilson's growly, funky delivery with Basie's easy swing. But it works in a big way, largely thanks to Benny Carter's brilliant arrangements. [Pictured below, Count Basie with Benny Carter]

Carter fully understood the essence of soul and was able to transform soul's steamy energy into big band charts that didn't feel alien or painful. Instead, they neatly support Wilson, allowing him to do his thing and for Basie's band to swing with funky abandon.

Basie's experiments in the '60s were largely touch and go, and almost always at the mercy of the arranger hired to make sessions work. Florence and Carter were the rock and soul heroes who proved that Basie could make the scene—in the right hands. Watch me now! [Pictured: Jackie Wilson with Count Basie]

JazzWax tracks: Miraculously, both albums discussed above are available as downloads. Basie on the Beatles in available here at Amazon, while Manufacturers of Soul with Jackie Wilson is available here.

JazzWax clips: Here's Count Basie playing The Fool on the Hill from Basie on the Beatles...

 

And here's Jackie Wilson with Count Basie singing Smokey Robinson's My Girl, from Manufacturers of Soul...

 

Weekend Wax Bits

Music journalism is becoming icy. Like "downloads," "rips," "burns" and all of the other words that once meant horrible things but now are used in a positive context to describe how music is copied and transported, the music media tends to operate in spheres of reverse logic. Too often today, print and TV devote way too much time to chasing after the next hot thing or focusing on artists who have a miraculous gift for hype. In both cases, we learn little about who these people are deep down and why they are distinct. [Above, Alvin Coburn, Vortograph, 1917]

Left behind are artists who are doing interesting things that can't be measured in download sales, scandal and concert revenue. Once upon a time, the music media helped us get to know artists who were changing the direction of music. For example, CBS Sunday Morning and 60 Minutes focused on musicians who had interesting personalities and back-stories, or were special for reasons that went unnoticed. In other words, they helped us understand artists who were worthy of a closer look—for no other reason other than they were worthy and interesting. [Above, Frank Zappa and his parents, Life]

Personally, I'm lucky that the Wall Street Journal allows me to try and do just that. I pitch people who interest me, and then I'm encouraged by smart editors to provide readers with a feel for who these people are deep down—whether it's Fats Domino and Jerry Lee Lewis or Gerald Wilson, Berry Gordy and Burt Bacharach. But it's not about me. My goal, always, is to bring the reader along and let them experience artists who matter by entering their comfort zones. [Above, Martin Parr, from the series British Food, 1995]

Granted, we are more technologically advanced today than ever before, and readers may have much shorter attention spans than in the past. But at the end of the day, as a culture, the artists who are covered by the media should be those who create art that makes us aware of life's special qualities, not those who are just new or those who are outrageous. The media's job is to bring true artists to life, regardless of their bank accounts, and take us along for the ride. Only then do we learn a little bit more about life and outselves. [Above, Lydia Hearst by Elias Wessel, 2010]

Joe Byrd (1933-2012), a bassist who frequently played with his brother—guitarist Charlie Byrd—died on March 6 from injuries suffered in a car accident. He was 78. Weeks earlier, Bret Primack spoke with him about his life in music in this video clip...

 

CD discoveries of the week. I love albums that leap out of the gate and run like hell for the wire. On Taurey Butler (Justin Time), pianist Taurey Butler rips into The Lady Is a Tramp, The Preacher and Please Send Me Someone to Love. On the mellow side, he serves up Moonlight in Vermont and Emily. Each song receives a good hard spin. This, from an artist who graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in electrical engineering and has Japanese studies under his belt. Butler is joined here by Eric Lagace on bass and Wali Muhammed on drums. Even Butler's originals swing. Think Oscar Peterson meets Hampton Hawes. Sample An Afternoon Downtown.

As readers know, I have a terrible crush on C'est Si Bon. Can't get enough of it. Which makes me something of a connoisseur. A perfect rendition transports me to Paris, bad ones to the mall. The secret is how much French a singer knows and how gingerly seductive they can put it over. On Heart Felt, singer Halie Loren nails the Henri Betti and André Hornez tune. In fact, Loren is brilliant on virtually everything she touches here. Her Waiting in Vain is pure genius and takes you back to the great female singer-songwriter voices of the late '60s and early '70s. The same goes for her own A Woman's Way. Loren is plenty strong on the straight stuff, too, like My One and Only Love and All of Me. Tasteful, grown-up singers like Loren give me hope, since I'm notoriously hard on vocal albums. There's also a superb backup band here, particularly pianist Matt Treder. Sample Taking a Chance on Love. She and I both know she owns a few Jo Stafford albums.

Bill Medley had a classic blue-eyed soul voice back in the '60s. Like David Clayton-Thomas, Gary Puckett and Jay Black, Medley had a ruddy masculine sound that also was vulnerable and wistful. You know him best as half the Righteous Brothers (You've Lost That Loving Feeling, etc.). But Medley also had a formidable solo career, recording Bill Medley 100% (1968) and Soft and Soulful (1969). Both are now on one CD from Real Gone Music. Medley's appeal was a Mack truck delivery without the trembling Tom Jones-Engelbert Humperdinck vibrato. He also was best on big-build ballads that reached a roundhouse crescendo. These include Run to My Loving Arms, 100 Years and For Your Precious Love. His love for Ray Charles is evident on That's Life and Let the Good Times Roll. I love this guy! Dig Going Out of My Head and Any Day Now. Makes you want to tool around in a burnt orange AMC Javelin. 

Oddball album cover of the week. Once again, we travel back in time to an era when women were wives or sides of beef. Somehow, this album seems to be glamorizing the vocation of a private assistant who works seven days a week—two of them tending to the hotel-room needs of her boss, married or single. And there's that cellophane gift basket again—the male token of romantic appreciation. I wonder whether her boss had her order it for herself?

Documentary: Jimmy Smith

In November 1965, organist Jimmy Smith traveled to Frankfurt, Germany, to begin a multi-city concert tour with guitarist Quentin Warren and drummer Billy Hart. They were joined on the bill by the Dizzy Gillespie Quintet (Gillespie, James Moody, Kenny Barron, Chris White and Rudy Collins). Other stops on the tour included Berlin, Hamburg, Copenhagen, Stockholm, Helsinki, Stuttgart, Munich, Amsterdam, Brussels, Zurich, Ghent, Paris and London before the trio returning to New York and Philadelphia. Along for the ride was a West German TV camera crew, which wound up catching quite a bit of Smith's edgy personality. Watch for cameos by attorney Clarence Avant as well as fleeting appearances by engineer Rudy Van Gelder and producer Creed Taylor at the December 16, 1965 Got My Mojo Working recording session for Verve. Particularly fascinating are the scenes showing Smith being turned on to the Rolling Stones' Satisfaction for pragmatic inclusion on the Mojo album. There's also a brief scene in which Smith's wife explains her three choices when dealing with his temper. All in all, a fascinating look at the father of the modern organ at the dawn of the pop-rock era and the dread jazz musicians were feeling as the new music solidified its commercial hold over markets. A special thanks to Jim Eigo for sending this one along...

 

JazzSnap: Anita O'Day (c. 1945)

Here's singer Anita O'Day with the Gene Krupa Orchestra at New York's Capitol Theater, circa 1945. The trombonist is Leon Cox.

This snapshot comes from Betty's fabulous collection  of photos, sent along by her friend Chris. Betty has pinpointed the year based on the note on the back of the photo. The movie showing, she wrote, was Her Highness and The Bellboy, which was out that year.

Betty has donated all of her prints, including this one, to Rutgers University's Institute of Jazz Studies. But since she and Chris also are big JazzWax readers, they wanted you to see them, too.

Want more JazzSnaps? Go to the right-hand column of JazzWax and scroll down to "JazzSnaps" for links.

JazzWax clip: Here's Anita O'Day with Gene Krupa at the Hotel Astor in New York's Times Square on August 15, 1945, a day after V-J Day, singing I'd Do It All Over Again...

 

Count Basie and Harold Jones

When talk turns to Count Basie's drummers, the focus often is on Jo Jones and Sonny Payne. And for good reason. Both were giants. But Harold Jones also was a tremendous Basie beat-keeper. Wrecking Crew drummer Hal Blaine (who played live with Basie in New York) sent along this clip of Basie with Jones in 1968...