I'm a big fan of the new jazz style emerging that incorporates touches of '70s soul, contemporary electronica and hip-hop. Exponents of this movement include pianist Robert Glasper, bassist Esperanza Spalding and drummer Terri Lyne Carrington. Add to the list José James, a vocalist with retro smarts and a clear vision of where this jazz style is heading next.
James's new album—No Beginning, No End—is his fourth CD and a major step forward for the eclectic genre. If you've been listening to all sorts of exciting African-American music since the '60s, you'll hear their threads running throughout James's music here.
In addition to delivering rich jazz-soul vocals, James, 33, took a big risk: he conceived, produced and recorded the album independently without a recording contract. All of the varied instrumentation and ambient music that slip in and out build purposefully and with ringing textures. The result is a mighty vision that's executed beautifully—and James's ideas are consistently ambitious, from track to track.
James's coaxing vocals are framed by hypnotic grooves, trippy beats, tight horns, a Fender Rhodes, a gospel organ and layered female vocals—giving the music a late-night radio feel. What I love most about James's music is how it sifts together the spirits of Al Green, Stevie Wonder, Gil Scott-Heron, Roy Ayers and other social-message soul giants—creating an intoxicating chill-funk brew. You're reminded of the '70s, but the music is distinctly pushing forward to a new place.
James's music is cohesive, experimental and different—but that's what makes it special. If jazz hopes to survive, it cannot be content to stand still or rely solely on the past. Risks must be taken by artists, and the past must be carefully mined for valid, adaptable concepts and statements. With this album, James has proven he's on the leading edge of the new movement.
Hats off to Blue Note's president Don Was for championing the sound. Keep it coming.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find José James's No Beginning,
No End (Blue Note) here.
Pianist Al Haig is most often thought of as a bebop boilermaker—laboring shoulder-to-shoulder with Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie in the '40s with terrifying dexterity and rock-solid feel for the new music. But Haig also had a tender, romantic side in his later recordings and his solo work is still hair-raising.
One of his finest late-period albums is Al Haig Plays the Music of Jerome Kern. Recorded in 1978, the date featured Haig on solo piano or accompanied on some tracks by bassist Jamil Nasser. Hey, who needs drums when you're Al Haig? Singer Helen Merrill was featured on only one track with Haig—delivering a breathy and wonderfully geometric rendition of They Didn't Believe Me.
This is Haig at his finest—big, broad, cocky, take-charge and lush. In addition to his superlative pedal tones and grand voicings, Haig hits the keys with locomotive force and deploys the most sterling, rolling improvised runs without ever losing the darling quality of Kern's compositions.
Recorded four years away from his death in 1982, this session was his second-to-last studio date. Which is a shame, since he
should have been recorded daily at this point given his level of artistic maturity and significance. But the late '70s and early '80s weren't exactly proud years for jazz appreciation. Only a handful of U.S. labels recognized that geniuses were still among us. In fact, this album originally was recorded in New York for Japan's Trio label and produced by Helen.
As we know from Grange Rutan's Death of a Bebop Wife, Haig wasn't the nicest guy in the world. He was acquitted in 1969 of killing his third wife—though in her book, Grange (Haig's second wife) challenged his claim that the victim had died of a fall. Grange detailed Haig's long history of wife-battering and spousal abuse, and she conducted dozens of interviews.
I never met Haig and didn't know him. But I'd like to think that deep down, there was a corner of this guy that was tender and gorgeous—even if he was a marital monster. The evidence is in his recordings.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Al Haig Plays the Music of
Jerome Kernhere.
JazzWax clip: Here's Al Haig with bassist Jamil Nasser playing The Way You Look Tonight. Nearly eight minutes of bliss. Dig the command and boldness of both artists. And catch Haig's lingering ending...
I'm not sure why singer-songwriter-pianist Tania Maria has just released a CD in the States with tracks recorded in 2005 and 2008, but it really doesn't matter. Her work on Canto is superb, sensual and beckoning.
Maria remains largely unknown to many jazz fans in the U.S.—despite her powerful, robust voice, her syncopated jazz piano style and her intoxicating melodic compositions. My guess is it's the "female artist" thing. Many jazz fans still tend to view women players as a novelty rather than as serious contenders. Truth be told, there may be a whole host of reasons why a gifted artist like Maria isn't a household name here yet, including marketplace name confusion with Teena Marie, the '80s pop icon. Either way, I'm sure that will change.
The good news is now you know who she is (if you didn't already!) and why she's so special. On Canto, Maria is responsible for the music and lyrics on most tracks. She's also playing piano on all tracks. And singing on many. Quite a tall order for any artist—male or female.
Dig Intimidade—with its surfy, soft bossa build and the powdery trombone arrangement that's in sync with Maria's single piano notes (is there a whistler in there?). Or the steamy title-track ballad and the samba shuffle riff of Ca C'est Bon.
This is a gorgeous album all the way through, showing off Tania Maria's many exquisite talents and seductive gifts. Ultimately, what you hear is Maria's heart beating. For those who have had enough of the cold winter, this album is 10 tracks of summer—strolling along the beach in the late afternoon, when the evening clouds get thin and long.
An indispensable recording from a multi-talented Brazilian jazz artist who lifts you up and gets your blood going.
Les McCann is one of the fathers of soul-jazz. The pianist and vocalist pioneered a sound in the late-'60s and '70s with saxophonist Eddie Harris that provided a warmer, more soulful alternative to jazz-fusion. Albums like Swiss Movement (1969) and Layers (1973) remain landmarks.
Courtesy of Jimi Mentis in Athens, here's McCann in Stuttgart in 2004...
Only a week to go: Do you have your tickets? I will be appearing at 92Y/Tribeca New York on Monday, February 4 at noon. In one hour, I will take you through the unlikely events that caused post-war jazz styles to change, complete with my favorite tracks and big-screen photographs from the era. A multimedia presentation plus a Q&A and a book signing. You won't want to miss this. Come down and support JazzWax and 92Y—both great institutions. Go here.
Why Jazz Happened review. Robert Fulford, Canada's esteemed arts columnist for the National Post, devoted a
post to my book last week and its mission to look at why exactly jazz styles changed so often between World War II and Watergate. To read Robert's column, go here.
Why Jazz Happened interview. On Friday, Eric Banister of Music Tomes posted a superb e-interview he conducted with me on my book and my views on jazz. To read, go here.
Joe Albany. New England Public Radio blogger and radio host Tom Reney did it again. Here's his super post last week on pianist Joe Albany.
Jazz at Lincoln Center's streaming. JazzWax reader Jim Ardoin wrote to rave about Jazz at Lincoln Center's (JALC) live web streams. Jim noted that if you follow J@LC on Twitter, JALC provides a link for the live stream about an hour before a concert starts. Or you can go to the site (go here) and watch.
As Jim noted: "They had Wynton Marsalis's Louis Armstrong Hot 5s & 7s tributes streamed for both sets every night for five nights. This past weekend, they streamed the cool jazz tributes on Friday night, and Aaron Diehl's tribute to John Lewis on Saturday."
Jim closed by noting that SFJAZZ will soon be streaming concerts as well (go here).
Roy Eldridge radio. WKCR is presenting its annual Roy Eldridge Birthday Broadcast, starting on Wednesday, January 30, and airing for 24 hours. To listen on your computer to Little Jazz [pictured above] from anywhere in the world, go here.
Been to the Mosaic Records site lately? There's a lot going on. In addition to the fabulous boxed sets, Mosaic is now prosaic—the team is actively blogging, Tweeting and ramping up the e-jazz dialogue. Dig Mosaic's Daily Jazz Gazettehere. Or follow on Twitter @MosaicRecords.
Lalo Schifrin. Bret Primack, who is working on a documentary about trumpeter Pauly Cohen, sent along a terrific clip of composer-arranger Lalo Schifrin conducting the BBC Big Band in 2006. The clip features an entire performance of Street Lights, Blues for Basie, Lalo's Latin Jazz Suite and Mission Impossible. For my recent interview with Lalo, go here. Here's the concert...
Radio gold. JazzWax reader John Bailey hipped me to online station PureJazzRadio that's run by Rich Keith, a guy with great taste who knows his stuff. Go here and let it rip.
Joe Alterman, a jazz pianist with tremendous taste and touch, whom I've dug since he first came up several years ago, will be headlining for the first time at the Blue Note in New York this Monday, January 28, at 8 and 10:30 p.m. He will be joined by James Cammack on bass and Justin Chesarek on drums. Cammack, of course, has been a mainstay with Ahmad Jamal, and Chesarek is up from Atlanta. Here's the same trio with tenor saxophonist Houston Person. Any way you cut it, Joe's becoming a monster...
Hal Blaine and Brian Wilson, pictured below, horsing around with a tomato...
Hal writes: "Where do they find this stuff? It had to be the early 1960's. What great memories I should have—but I have none." LOL.
CD discovery of the week. One of the finest and most fascinating jazz orchestral albums to cross my desk this year is the Asuka Kakitani Jazz Orchestra's Bloom (Nineteen-Eight). Kakitani is a composer-arranger-
conductor who assembled an 18-piece band in 2006 to perform her works. And she's a big deal: Kakitani received a prestigious Manny Albam Commission to compose a new
work for large jazz ensemble, which was premiered at the 2007 BMI annual
showcase concert in New York. On this album, her compositions sigh, dream, rise, slip quietly into shifting moods and build toward fragrant crescendos. Kakitani and her ideas and pen are the real deal, not to mention the tremendous orchestra and vocalist Sara Serpa, who colorizes the instrumental tones.
Oddball album cover of the week.
A few months back I promised you more covers from this early Columbia LP series of mood albums. This one's with Xavier Cugat. Hard to imagine our model is relaxed with some guy's menacing arm preventing her from leaving.
If you want to know what America was like at different points in time, listen to the music. While sheet music and recordings are hardly perfect reflections of our culture—demographic and regional tastes are never unified nor do they shift in lockstep—music can offer compelling clues. After all, music's primary purpose is to appeal to listeners—challenging artists to nibble around the edges to find the soft spots while remaining true to their aesthetic.
In the years leading up to America's entry into World War II in December 1941, much of the world was already at war or on the brink. These mounting tensions weren't lost on American anxieties, which had already been stretched thin by World War I and a grueling Depression. [Photo above of Armistice Day 1937 in New York by Irwin Shaw]
Despite a series of Neutrality Acts passed by Congress in the 1930s, the national pulse was racing in anticipation of the inevitable. Nazi Germany occupied the Rhineland in 1937 and invaded Austria in 1938. Fascist Italy was tearing around Africa. And Japan was at war in China. [Pictured above: New York's Roxy Theater in 1937]
Growing fear over global events that America couldn't stop or control was the Swing Era's backdrop. With rising nationalism and militarization in the 1930s as well as rising ethnic hatred in Europe and Asia, the music here grew both hot and sweet. [Photo above of New York's Fifth Ave. in 1938 by Irwin Shaw]
Among the bands that neatly reflected the uncertainty and quest for calm was Artie Shaw's Rhythm Makers. The band recorded between March 1937 and February 1938 and is perhaps Shaw's finest orchestra. This band escapes many Shaw fans, who tend to begin their listening with the July '38 recording of Begin the Beguine. But to Shavian purists, the Rhythm Makers band has a charm and appeal all its own.
For one, the band maintained a smart, chunky Fox Trot beat throughout this period, which still keeps your feet tapping reflexively. For another, Shaw's clarinet had a measured, modern sound even then—swinging in and out of the day's melodies as if trying to settle the band's agitation. And lastly, most of the arranging was handled by Shaw and Jerry Gray, one of the swing era's finest and most overlooked penmen.
Virtually every track recorded by Shaw's Rhythm Makers opens large, with reeds taking the melodic lead and horns providing hip counterpoint. Typically, Shaw sauntered into the mix for a bit before an over-rendered vocal by Peg LaCentra, Nita Bradley or Bea Wain. Then Shaw came sailing back in, swinging gracefully with that ice-blue clarinet in the upper register. It's perfection.
To fully understand Shaw on and off the bandstand, this orchestra is as good a place as any to begin your analysis. Shaw's notorious restlessness and unhappiness with the quality of his future bands may well stem from the high bar he set with this first band...
I don't know how Shaw felt about the Rhythm Makers, but after giving all of the recordings an intensive listen, I'd bet that in Shaw's mind it was all downhill after this band. I don't think Shaw was ever able to duplicate the band's skin-tight quality. From rhythm section to reeds and trumpets, the orchestra provided Shaw with just the right level of tension and stretched elasticity, allowing him to bounce around on his clarinet. [Pictured above: Artie Shaw and Jerry Gray]
When Shaw folded and started a succession of bands in search of new sounds in the '40s, I suspect this is the sound and feel he was trying to recapture. A band wound so tight that clarinet notes would spring off the surface when dropped.
By 1941, America's pastoral days were ending. The cities—with their ports and communication centers—were becoming cerebral, rational hubs, replacing the heart found in the farmlands, the hollows and the hills. But in 1937 and the first part of '38, Shaw's band was a metro ensemble that was still in awe of America's innocent soul. [Pictured above: Port of Los Angeles in February 1942]
Three weeks after Pearl Harbor, Shaw enlisted in the Navy and when he returned after the war, Shaw and his bands took on a new purpose and role. But for a brief 12-month period in 1937 and early '38, Shaw was in an enviable groove and would spend the rest of his musical career trying to recapture that illusive something special. Fortunately for us that sound is all here.
JazzWax tracks: The only set available on this band
comes from the U.K. It's Artie Shaw: The Complete Rhythm Makers Sessions 1937-1938—three double-CD sets from Flyright Records in 2003, with liner notes by John McDonough. The sound is terrific. You'll find them here, here and here.
JazzWax clips: Here are three tracks that say it all...
Every blue moon, someone like Boyd Lee Dunlop comes along—someone who blows jazz fans' minds. In December 2011, Dunlop, a jazz pianist, was discovered in a Buffalo, N.Y. nursing home. He was profiled on NPR and in newspapers, including The New York Times (go here), and he recorded an album—Boyd's Blues.
Then everything came crashing down. The 85-year-old Boyd suffered a heart attack and was thought to be dead for about six minutes. Medics were able to get his heart beating again, and Boyd miraculously made a full recovery. So full, in fact, that he announced he wanted to leave the nursing home and record another album.
And so he did. The result is The Lake Reflections. It's one of the most penetrating solo piano albums I've heard in some time. Dunlop's sensitivity and warmth is otherworldly, and his ability to fill space with delicately ringing notes and chords will hit you squarely. [Photos above by Todd Heisler/The New York Times]
Boyd Lee Dunlop is famed drummer Frankie Dunlop's younger brother. According to Tom Lord's Jazz Discography, Boyd Dunlop appeared on just two recording sessions—one led by saxophonist Moe Koffman in 1948 and another led by Big Jay McNeely in 1953, which produced the single sides 3-D; Nervous, Man, Nervous; Rock Candy and Texas Turkey.
And that was it. Dunlop went to work at Buffalo steel mills and in the city's railyards, and he nearly ended his life in a bed. Until, that is, freelance photographer Brendan Bannon met him at the nursing home inadvertently. A connection grew and Mr. Bannon wound-up producing Dunlop's first album.
Now his second album is out and it's positively gorgeous. Dunlop carries with him a lifetime of experiences—elation, disappointment, pain, joy and patience. All are expressed here with primitive elegance. Like painter Grandma Moses, Boyd's expressions are folk-centered and wistfully improvisational.
What you learn from Dunlop's music is that the heart need not show-up dressed in tails. Sometimes you can deliver your soul in an unpolished way and still achieve the same results.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find Boyd Lee Dunlop's Lake
Reflections (B Sharp) here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Boyd Lee Dunlop's From the Creekbed:
On September 10, 1959, about a month after Dave Brubeck completed Time Out and a month before the craze began over Take Five (the single wasn't released until September 21, while the album didn't hit stores until December 14), the Brubeck quartet began to record the album Southern Scene.
By then, most people who watched TV news were all too familiar with the Southern scene. In 1959, federal courts began forcing public schools and public bus lines in the South to desegregate, while Alabama passed laws limiting black voter registration and Mack Charles Parker was lynched in Mississippi. Protest jazz was heating up. Sonny Rollins's Freedom Suite was released a year earlier and Charles Mingus's Fables of Faubus appeared on his Mingus Ah Um album for Columbia months earlier.
Southern Scene, of course, was Dave's second swing down South. Earlier in the year—before Time Out—he had recorded Gone with the Wind for Columbia. The album included Swanee River, Ol' Man River, Basin Street Blues and other songs with a Southern theme. Producer Teo Macero and Dave must have felt that the first album wasn't quite enough. On Southern Scene, Dave recorded At the Darktown Strutter's Ball, Deep in the Heart ofTexas and Oh! Susanna.
As Dave wrote in the album's liner notes:
"For years I've carried with me a list of folk songs and spirituals that I thought I would someday record. The first group of these tunes appeared in the Columbia LP Gone with the Wind. It was a ball. So we decided to continue the revival with Southern Scene."
Why would Dave have spent so much time in '59 jazzing up sentimental plantation fare, beyond what he said in his notes? I suspect there were two reasons:
First, the Columbia Record Club, which enabled at-home consumers all over the country to order LPs by mail, began to market stereo records and gear in 1959, including reel-to-reel tapes. The South was a massive market for the new, improved formats. [Pictured above: 1959 edition with Dave Brubeck on the cover in the lower right-hand corner]
Second, I suspect it was Dave's way of trying to change Southern minds—particularly those of college students. If you look at Dave's Columbia studio albums in 1959, there was Gone with the Wind, Time Out, The Riddle and Southern Scene. Time Out and The Riddle featured abstract art on their covers. Only the Southern songbook albums showed photographs of the quartet.
And while Gone with the Wind showed Gene Wright, the quartet's black bassist, far in the background with drummer Joe Morello, Southern Scene was different.
On the cover, Dave is seen standing behind Joe Morello, Gene Wright and Paul Desmond—his right hand on Morello's shoulder and his left elbow on his knee, his left hand dangling close to Wright's back.
Was his hand originally on Gene's shoulder? Was he told to remove it by the photographer? I couldn't find the name of the photographer, or the graphic artist for that matter, who added a riverboat and plantation.
Interestingly, two of the songs on the album are by Stephen Foster [pictured]. As Dave said in Doug Ramsey's book, Jazz Matters: Reflections on the Music & Some of Its Makers, "Foster tunes are well-suited to jazz, much more so than say a Broadway show tune. They're great for improvisation. I think of this as a kind of Bicentennial tribute to an important composer, even though the 100th anniversary of his death was 12 years ago."
We'll never know whether Dave originally had his hand on Gene's shoulder or if college students somewhere down South put on the album, looked at the cover and changed their minds about integration.
What I do know is that Southern Scene is one of Dave's finest and most under-appreciated recordings. You can hear his love for America in the music, his love for the countryside, and his hope that the South would come to its senses, remember its gentle qualities, change its collective mindset and become more tolerant. I suspect that was the wish of the entire quartet.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find the Dave Brubeck Quartet's
Southern Scenehere or as part of The Columbia Studio Albums Collection 1955-1966 (19 CDs) here.
Jimi Mentis in Athens has done it again. He sent along a link to this fabulous video, featuring pianist Kenny Barron at the 2010 Marciac Jazz Festival in Marciac, France. Joining him are David Sanchez (tenor sax), Darryl Hall (bass) and Johnathan Blake (drums). Here'sBody and Soul, Well You Needn't, a Duke Ellington-Billy Strayhorn medley and Theme No. 1—a Barron original...
It was gratifying last week to hear that New York's Verse Music was remastering and re-issuing the entire Bethlehem catalog. The 1950s label not only consistently released superb albums on both coasts but also pioneered the early use of glossy color-saturated covers that tapped into consumer moods. This trend was the innovation of Creed Taylor, who was the label's East Coast producer from 1954 to '56. (Which reminds me, I'm so waiting for Herbie Mann's Love and the Weather.)
Two superb but little-known
Bethlehem albums that were recorded in Los Angeles and led by facile trumpeter Stu
Williamson were Stu Williamson Plays (January 1955) and Pee Jay (January 1956). Here's the lineup for the first date: Stu Williamson (tp), Charlie Mariano (as), Claude Williamson (p), Max Bennett (b) and Stan Levey (d).
And here's the second: Stu Williamson (tp) accompanied on different tracks by Charlie Mariano (as), Bill Holman (ts) and Jimmy Giuffre (bar). The rhythm section throughout was Claude Williamson (p), Leroy Vinnegar (b) and Mel Lewis (d).
Like Pete and Conte Candoli, Stu and Claude Williamson were brothers (Claude being six years and change older than Stu). Both brothers were born in Vermont, but after Claude moved to Los Angeles in '47 to play, the family followed in 1948. [Pictured above: Stu Williamson with Jimmy Giuffre, left, and Bill Holman]
Music was in the family. The Williamsons's father was a
drummer and their sister was a singer. After the family moved to L.A.,
Stu studied with Del Staigers [pictured], a trumpet virtuoso who had
played in leading orchestras of the 1920s and '30s. Within a few years, Stu Williamson became a West Coast jazz stalwart, playing and recording in bands led by Stan Kenton, Woody Herman and Billy May before becoming a ubiquitous session musician.
During his big band and studio period in the '50s, Williamson also was a member of Shelly Manne and His Men between 1954 and '58 and recorded on Johnny Richards's Something Else in '56 and the Art Pepper Nine in '57 with Marty Paich.
In a decade of West Coast trumpet giants—the Candolis, Fagerquist, Shorty Rogers, Bernie Glow, Ernie Royal, Dick Collins, Al Porcino, Jack Sheldon, Chet Baker, Doug Mettome, Ray Triscari, Maynard Ferguson, Buddy Childers and I'm leaving out about 20 others—Williamson had a tender touch. Though he wasn't a blaster or upper-register torcher, Williamson's notes were always in perfect pitch while his lines were consistently romantic.
Listen to Darn That Dream, for example, or Talk of the Town—both from Pee Jay. Or Autumn in New York and The Things We Did Last Summer from Stu Williamson Plays. The beauty of his playing rested in his gentle attack and barrel-rolls out of formation to improvise softly while diving or climbing. [Pictured above: Stu Williamson by Ray Avery]
As evidenced on these sessions, Williamson's up-tempo work also was skilled and taut, particularly in counterpoint exchanges. He tended to hit high notes in exploration, tagging them before descending rather than building up to them for dramatic effect. And his muted horn work on songs like Stu's Dues Blues was exceptional. [Pictured above: Stu Williamson on trumpet, left, with Shelly Manne and His Men on Bobby Troup's Stars of Jazz in 1955 by Ray Avery]
For me, Williamson was at his best on ballads, where he had an opportunity to "sing" melodies on his horn. The notes he chose always lingered like the smell of fresh oranges.
Sadly, according to his Wikipedia page, Williamson battled drug addiction for years during and after his music career. Williamson died in 1991 at age 57.
JazzWax tracks: You can wait for Verse Music to
release these two albums. Or you'll find many of the tracks here and here.
JazzWax note: For my recent post on Claude Williamson, go here.
JazzWax clip: Here's Stu Williamson playing The Things We Did Last Summer in January 1956...
Marc Myers writes frequently on music and the arts for the Wall Street Journal. He is author of "Why Jazz Happened" (University of California Press). In 2012, JazzWax was named the Jazz Journalists Association's "Blog of the Year."
