Pianist Oscar Peterson had some year in 1971. He recorded Oscar Peterson in London (in March), In Tune with the Singers Unlimited (in July), Reunion Blues with the Milt Jackson Quartet (in July), In Concert (in July) and Great Connection (in October). What all of these albums have in common is they were recorded in Europe. Now we can add a sixth—On a Clear Day: Live in Zurich 1971 (Mack Avenue)—recorded on November 24, 1971 at Zurich's Kongresshaus, a complex of meeting spaces on Lake Zurich that includes the historic Tonhalle Zürich concert hall. [Photo above of Oscar Peterson]
Accompanying Peterson in Zurich and on his entire six-week European tour were bassist Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen and drummer Louis Hayes. Previously unreleased, the music on the new album was recorded originally for a single broadcast on Radio Zurich. After airing, the tape went up on a shelf where it remained until now.
The songs performed are The Lamp Is Low, Younger Than Springtime, On a Clear Day, Young and Foolish / A Time for Love, Soft Winds, Mack the Knife, Where Do I Go From Here? and On the Trail.
Peterson's playing here ranges from terrific to sensational. While the early tracks lean toward pensive and rollicking (The Lamp Is Low, Younger Than Springtime, Young and Foolish and Soft Winds), his keyboard attack virtually explodes on On a Clear Day and the last three tracks—Mack the Knife, Where Do I Go From Here? and On the Trail. The drive and speed with which Peterson plays and his cascades of flawless improvisation is hair-raising. [Poster above for a concert on the same tour three days later in Geneva, Switzerland]
Mack the Knife is perhaps the show-stopper. You won't know what he's playing until 4:05, which must have been quite a surprise for an audience wondering what his lengthy introduction was building toward. A sharp ear can pick out where it's heading, but he did a wonderful job of disguising his intention. Another high point are Peterson's chords on Younger Than Springtime. An exhilarating album and a terrific find. We have Kelly Peterson, Oscar's wife and the album's producer, to thank.
Oscar Peterson died in 2007 at age 82; Niels-Henning Ørsted Pedersen died in 2005 at age 58.
JazzWax tracks: You'll find the Oscar Peterson Trio's On a Clear Day: Live in Zurich, 1971 (Mack Avenue) here or here.
Last week in The Wall Street Journal, I interviewed AC/DC frontman Brian Johnson for my "House Call" column in the Mansion section (go here). On stage belting out songs since 1980, Brian seems like a stressed-out truck driver with a hair-trigger temper. The truth is Brian is among the sweetest rock stars I've interviewed. His father was British and his mother was Italian. His father fought in World War II for the British and helped liberate Rome and the region surrounding the city in June 1944. In a small town, his dad met the woman he was going to marry. In 1947, the couple headed to northern England to make a home, and Brian was born. But the gray English weather, cool temperatures and lard-cooked food dampened his mother's spirits. You'll never believe what helped save the marriage. His new memoir is here.
Here's Brian singing Back in Black with AC/DC at Donington Park in England in 1991...
And here's Brian with AC/DC at the Grammy Awards Ceremony in 2015...
Nine days to go. My book, Anatomy of 55 More Songs—the follow-up to my 2016 bestselling book Anatomy of a Song—will be out December 6. If you enjoy JazzWax, please show your support and buy a copy—go here. You know most or all of the songs in my book and you'll love the stories behind them from the composers who wrote the hits and the stars who recorded them. I'm so convinced, here are the 55 songs:
Walk On By — Dionne Warwick
Dancing in the Street — Martha and the Vandellas
Sunshine Superman — Donovan
Good Vibrations — Beach Boys
Up, Up and Away — The 5th Dimension
Get Together — Youngbloods
The Weight — The Band
Fire — Crazy World of Arthur Brown
Bad Moon Rising — Creedence Clearwater Revival
Crystal Blue Persuasion — Tommy James
Ain’t No Mountain High Enough — Diana Ross
Paranoid — Black Sabbath
Truckin’ — The Grateful Dead
I’m Eighteen —Alice Cooper
Band a Gong — T Rex
Roundabout — Yes
Doctor My Eyes — Jackson Browne
Long Tall Woman in a Black Dress — The Hollies
Rocket Man — Elton John
Papa Was a Rolling Stone — The Temptations
I’ll Be Around — The Spinners
Killing Me Softly — Roberta Flack
Smoke on the Water — Deep Purple
Hello It’s Me — Todd Rundgren
She’s Gone — Hall & Oates
Come and Get Your Love — Redbone
Sundown — Gordon Lightfoot
I’m Not in Love — 10CC
Love Is the Drug — Roxy Music
The Boys Are Back in Town — Thin Lizzy
Fly Like an Eagle — Steve Miller Band
Year of the Cat — Al Stewart
Barracuda — Heart
Nobody Does It Better — Carly Simon
Peg — Steely Dan
My Best Friend’s Girl — The Cars
The Gambler — Kernny Rogers
September — Earth Wind & Fire
What a Fool Believes — Doobie Bros
Accidents Will Happen — Elvis Costello
Devil Went Down to Georgia — Charlie Daniels
Good Times — Chic
Highway to Hell — AC/DC
Cars — Gary Numan
On the Radio — Donna Summer
Bad Reputation — Joan Jett
Rapture — Blondie
Don’t Stop Believing — Journey
Steppin’ Out — Joe Jackson
Burning Down the House — Talking Heads
The Power of Love — Huey Lewis
Small Town — John Mellencamp
Take It So Hard — Keith Richards
Being Boring — Pet Shop Boys
If It Makes You Happy — Sheryl Crow
Listen to the songs for free by going to my book site and playing them on my specially created Spotify playlist in the same order as the book. Go here.
Benny Golson. Producer-director Jacey Falk hopes to finish his documentary on tenor saxophonist and composer Benny Golson by July. The documentary is Benny Golson: Going Beyond the Horizon, and he needs funding to help pay the licensing fees on the songs he wants to use. His GoFundMe page can be found here. Here's the documentary's trailer...
In Paris? The restaurant Birdie Num Num in Paris is hosting an exhibit by the fabulous photographer Gilles D'Elia through December. All of the images are for sale. For more information on Gilles as well as his glorious photographs, go here.
Giacomo Gates sent along an audio clip of Thelonious Monk's Stuffy Turkey. Think of the clip as fantastic holiday leftovers. Here's Monk...
Travel playlist. Heading home on Sunday? I've got music for you. Earlier in the week, I received the following email from Kim Paris of the FM Radio Archive...
Marc, I enjoyed reading Mark Rabin's JazzWax contribution last weekend on transportation films and soundtracks. As you probably know, Mark is one of the leading contributors of broadcast recordings on FM Radio Archive, with 70 recordings so far.
What you may not know is that Mark's contribution to the FM Radio Archive coaxed Raoul van Hall to share his "Jazz From The Left" radio show broadcasts. Raoul also made some in-flight entertainment soundtracks for Air China, China Airways, Gulf Air, Oman Air & Bangkok Airlines.
Raoul was kind enough to share one called "Jazz Giants" that I posted on FM Radio Archive so JazzWax readers can enjoy.Go here.
Duduka Da Fonseca—Yes!!! (Sunnyside). Duduka is is a Brazilian jazz drummer and a founding member of Trio da Paz with Romero Lubambo and Nilson Matta. His new album, Yes!!!, features Quarteto Universal—with Vinicius Gomes on guitars, Helio Alves on piano and Gili Lopes on bass. The beauty of Duduka is his feathery ferocity on drums that not only drives the music but creates a shimmering atmosphere around it. On his new album, Duduka is accompanied by musicians who bring the rhythmic heat with flexibility and intensity. Best of all on this album, each song has a different personality and feel. Go here.
Billy Drummond—Valse Sinistre (Cellar Music). Drummer Billy Drummond has long been inspired by the edge and push of alto saxophonist Jackie McLean. So opening his new album with McLean's Little Melonae makes perfect sense. The musicians in Billy's group, Freedom of Ideas, are Dayna Stephens on saxophones, Micah Thomas on piano and Dezron Douglas on bass. What I enjoy most about this album is how the musicians go deep and create long shadows with bursts of light. Each artist in the quartet contributes extraordinary musicianship, and the approach on each song is conversational and defies convention. The thread running through all of the songs are Billy's drums, which coax, combat and challenge the other musicians as they let their personalities stand out. Go here.
Ant Law and Alex Hitchcock—Same Moon in the Same World (Oim). The British jazz composer-collagists Ant Law (guitar) and Alex Hitchcock ( saxophonist) join forces here with Micah Thomas (piano), Dezron Douglas (bass) and Dayna Stephens (saxophone) and a team of special guests—Joel Ross, Eric Harland, Jasper Høiby, Linda Oh, Kendrick Scott, Shai Maestro, Tim Garland, Ben Williams and Sun-Mi Hong. Their music is deliciously eclectic and conceptual, pushing and pulling in different imaginative directions, delivering a wide range of styles and forms. The best part about this album is how it holds your attention with a shower of jazz and acid-jazz fragments and sonic layers. For me, it's jazz that grows on me and won't let go. Go here.
Correction. Following my post on the Giants of Jazz, Nico Wilke sent along an email to let me know that the video was from October 1972, not 1971. He sent along photos of the 1971 event that he attended and the different attire by the musicians in 1972. I made the fix, and the 1972 poster is above. To read the post, go here.
And finally,here's Neil Young and Crazy Horse and their great new single Chevrolet from their new album, World Record. Neil is joined by Crazy Horse guitarist Nils Lofgren, bassist Billy Talbot and drummer Ralph Molina. That's Neil's late father, Scott Young, on the album cover above. Scott was a Canadian journalist, sportswriter and author of 45 novels and non-fiction books. Neil's still got it...
The Giants of Jazz was a bebop supergroup assembled by George Wein in 1971 after a riot at the Newport Jazz Festival in Newport, R.I., suspended the event. To recoup the losses, George sent the newly formed sextet and the festival itself out on tour. Starting in the fall, the Giants performed in Australia followed by Europe and the U.S. in 1972, where they appeared at mostly indoor venues throughout the country before heading off to Europe again that fall. I saw them in July 1972 when I was 15 at Carnegie Hall. Post-riot, the Newport Jazz Festival had relocated to New York. A jazz fan for three years and by then versed in the music recorded by the bop legends on stage, I was blown away.
On October 29, 1972, on the second European tour, the group—Dizzy Gillespie (tp), Sonny Stitt (as/ts), Kai Winding (tb), Thelonious Monk (p), Al McKibbon (b) and Art Blakey (d)—appeared at Rotterdam's De Doelen in the Netherlands. The Giants had appeared a year earlier at the concert hall, which had been rebuilt in 1965 with its main hall holding 2,200 seats.
Earlier this week, Danilo Morandi in Switzerland sent along a two-part video of the Giants of Jazz's performance there taped originally for Dutch TV. I figured since most of you are recovering from yesterday's meal, this would be perfect sofa viewing and listening.
Marc Myers writes regularly for The Wall Street Journal and is author of "Rock Concert: An Oral History" (Grove), "Anatomy of a Song" (Grove) and "Why Jazz Happened." Founded in 2007, JazzWax has won three Jazz Journalists Association awards
