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yitwail
Community Member

All That Jazz

I'm a huge jazz fan, and since there's a classical music thread, thought I'd provide an alternative. To kick things off, a storied Bill Evans trio performance at the Village Vanguard of a Cole Porter piece:

Bill Evans had many detractors, but even they would have to concede that he swings on this if they're honest, I believe.

 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
96 REPLIES 96
yitwail
Community Member

I have to include the greatest jazz musician I saw in person, though he was in poor health at the time. He was also Bill Evans’ employer at one time. Here’s a jazz standard by his first great quintet. The picture says John Coltrane, but it was Miles Davis' band featuring John Coltrane and 3 other great musicians.

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
booksist
Community Member

 

Listening to this right now.

yitwail
Community Member

Valentina, thanks for sharing. What a talent Baker was; he was quite the vocalist as well. Here's another trumpeter who could sing, and sadly, like everyone else in this thread so far, he had substance abuse issues -- alcohol in his case. The lyrics are very dated, but that's part of the charm for me.

I've been consulted by Franklin D

Greta Garbo has had me to tea...

 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

I needed this thread today - M-A-H-A-L-O    Heart

gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

A week or two before my 18th birthday, I traveled from my very small hometown in the rural Deep South to a small college in the Midwest. I may as well have landed on another planet, which was my intention. One of the first campus events I attended was a live concert by Oscar Peterson. Decades--and hundreds of hours of listening to his recordings--later, I still get chills thinking about it. In the gentlest way possible, that concert blew my doors off.

 

I can't remember that program but here's a cut I love, from a live recording.

 

 

 

 

kochubei_valeria
Community Member

Thanks for starting this thread, John! Since I lindy hop, I listen (and dance) to jazz a lot. Here is a song that I've really enjoyed dancing to and have been playing in my lindy hop lessons a lot lately:

 

~ Valeria
Upwork

Valeria, thanks for sharing. What a beautiful musician Lester 'Prez' Young was, even though he was in decline by the time of the recording. He was a huge influence on the great saxophonist Stan Getz by the way, but sadly Lester was an alcoholic & Getz had serious substance issues. Eventually, we'll feature a musician here who was substance free, but I have to play a video with both Billie Holiday and Lester Young, plus some other great players. It's sad because both Holiday and Young are so frail, in Holiday's case because of her addiction, but the music is still beautiful. Lester plays the second sax solo.

 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

Yes, sadly there are a lot of tragic destinies and lives cut short in jazz. I'm glad you brought up Billie Holiday. Here is a song by her that always gives me goose bumps.

 

 

~ Valeria
Upwork

Ok, here's one musician who never had a substance problem, to my knowledge. It's also a chance to hear something that's latin flavored, as well as an example of the modal approach to composition and improvisation, meaning melody based more on scales than chords, and somewhat similar to Gregorian chant and Indian music. We've had a run of trumpet players, so I'll be featuring other instruments very soon.

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

I don't want to monopolize the thread, but can't pass up the chance to feature 2 instruments yet to be featured, by 2 masters of their instruments. It's also interesting that another master of his instrument, Ray Barretto, is the conga player both on this track and the preceding. One more note, I just learned today that the title, O.G.D, stands for Organ Guitar Drums. Cat Surprised Hammond organ here by Jimmy Smith and guitar by Wes Montgomery

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

I'm still young though I'm really interested too in  Jazz Music. It's very sound relaxing to my ears especially during coffee break. Thanks for sharing your thoughts. 

gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

This is the best thread EVER!! Now, will someone please advise me how to post YouTube videos here? Yesterday I tracked down some favorites to share, but evidently I don't know how to do it properly. My post contained a link that you would have to follow off this site. I tried editing it to fix that, and then the post disapeared. Recess was over and I never got back to it. But I want to play, too, please!


@Phyllis G wrote:

This is the best thread EVER!! Now, will someone please advise me how to post YouTube videos here? Yesterday I tracked down some favorites to share, but evidently I don't know how to do it properly. My post contained a link that you would have to follow off this site. I tried editing it to fix that, and then the post disapeared. Recess was over and I never got back to it. But I want to play, too, please!


 Phyllis, they've made this more complicated than it use to be but first go to youtube and copy the link, then start a reply and click the Video button in the editor, then fill in Video URL in the popup and click the Preview button, then choose a size (leave it small, that's plenty big) and click Insert Video, like this: (needed an excuse to post another video, I wanted to do something with heavier latin percussion, plus something that's a vamp, rather than a written melody, a practice jam bands picked up on. Also worth noting that Hungarian guitarist Gabor Szabo was an important influence on Carlos Santana.) And glad somebody likes the thread. Cat Very Happy

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

Phyllis,

 

I pulled your post from our filter and fixed the link to the video you shared so it can be played from within your post.

 

And.. it's amazing that you saw Oscar Peterson live...

 

This is something I wish I could have seen live:

~ Valeria
Upwork

Thanks, Valeria!

renata101
Community Member

This one just makes me happy 🙂  Music you can cook to. 

I featured a vamp earlier, so here's perhaps the most celebrated use of vamps in jazz. It's also the recording that resuscitated soprano sax as a jazz instrument. One more interesting tidbit, Ray Manzarek and John Densmore of the Doors were Coltrane fans, and the solos in "Light My Fire" are played over the same vamp Coltrane uses here, except the Doors played it in 4/4 rather than 6/8. Another thing I noticed, McCoy Tyner's piano solo reminds me very much of some minimalist music, which I happen to like.

 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce


@Renata S wrote:

This one just makes me happy 🙂  Music you can cook to. 


 You just introduced me to a wonderful singer and musicians. I might have to abandon Bach. 

 


@Nichola L wrote:

 You just introduced me to a wonderful singer and musicians. I might have to abandon Bach. 

 


Oh no, Bach is eternal. And incidentally, he was renowned in his time for his improvisational skills. But jazz *is* an artform. Alhough like everything else, there's lots of mediocrity, but it tends to be less commercial than other musical genres. Here's a band that was a commercial success in its day, but still had artistic integrity IMO, with probably its greatest lineup. Weather Report had a rotating lineup, aside from the 2 founding members -- you can tell that they're older than their bandmates -- but on this one, it's the youngsters on percussion and bass who carry the tune. Incidentally, it's debatable if this is jazz, but it's well played music I enjoy. Some things are hard to label.

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce



 You just introduced me to a wonderful singer and musicians. I might have to abandon Bach. 

 


I don't want to be responsible for that. Variety is great, but don't abandon Bach! 

We don't have any Satchmo Mr. Armstrong yet? I was having a chat with someone about the line "We are such stuff as dreams are made on." It reminded me of this:

renata101
Community Member

This is a jazz standard, and the second one isn't strictly a jazz version, but I like the way vocalists can bring such different nuances to the same song.



 

 

(warning: #2 has country influences -- but jazz is supposed to be about mixing it up stylistically, so I think I can justify it)

Renata, there's very little country influence on jazz that I can think of (the closet thing I can think of is that Charlie Haden, bassist with alto saxophonist Ornette Coleman, came from a family of bluegrass musicians), but there was jazz influenced country in the form of western swing. This isn't a great performance of the song by any means, but it's hard enough locating Bob Wills videos, and it does refer to the moon. 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
gilbert-phyllis
Community Member

Here's a two-fer from a favorite album of mine, a little bluegrassy-jazz mashup. (John, you may have created a monster when you showed me how to do this!)

 


@Phyllis G wrote:

Here's a two-fer from a favorite album of mine, a little bluegrassy-jazz mashup. (John, you may have created a monster when you showed me how to do this!)

 


Not at all, that was great. And the way Fleck and Miller 'traded fours' towards the end of the second piece was very jazzy. Cat Very Happy It's also worthwhile remembering that banjo, like jazz, was an African-American invention, and it was a featured instrument in New Orleans jazz ensembles.

 

Here's one of the immortals, who had an affinity for Calypso, perhaps because his parents immigrated from the Virgin Islands. He's accompanied by genius drummer Max Roach.

 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

I think I'm going to post another female vocalist. On the theme of mixing it up stylistically, this was actually a traditional Celtic folk song that was sung in the Appalachian Mountains of the US. Nina Simone singing it turns it into something of a completely different order.

(I don't know if I'm finding the best recordings. I'm just trying to locate the ones without commercials.)





@Renata S wrote:

I think I'm going to post another female vocalist. On the theme of mixing it up stylistically, this was actually a traditional Celtic folk song that was sung in the Appalachian Mountains of the US. Nina Simone singing it turns it into something of a completely different order.

(I don't know if I'm finding the best recordings. I'm just trying to locate the ones without commercials.)


 Ms Simone is a great stylist and pianist, but stylistically she's all over the map. Ad free video is nice, as long as it's not an Upwork ad. Cat Wink

Here's a great song composed by jazz pianist Dr. BIlly Taylor, and stylistically, it's gospel if anything:

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

Stylistically all over the map? This seems to be another stylistic diversion for someone else. (You can find just about anything on YouTube.)

 

The elder Van Halen could certainly play clarinet. Since maps came up, I noticed we haven't featured anyone from Africa, so here's the great South African trumpeter-vocalist Hugh Masekela. He also happens to be the 4th trumpeter-vocalist in this thread, the others being Louis Armstrong, Bunny Berrigan, and Chet Baker. There may be others in jazz, but can't think of any right now. While Mr. B, Billy Eckstine could play, he was primarily a vocalist. And Louis Prima and Herb Alpert were mainly known as pop musicians.

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

For my first and probably last double feature in this thread, I'm featuring my second most favorite jazz artist, Thelonious Monk. Since he was renowned as much for his composing as his piano playing, I think it's appropriate he be featured twice, with 2 originals. The first was dedicated to his young son, Thelonious Jr., who liked to imitate the sound of a cartoon tugboat named Little Toot. Hence the title "Little Rootie Tootie", and I imagine the 3 note figure Monk plays repeatedly is evoking that tugboat horn. Jazz immortal Art Blakey is on drums.

It was extremely difficult choosing just 2 pieces to be honest, but with "Ruby, My Dear", we also hear John Coltrane's great feel for ballads. Monk took Coltrane under his wing after Miles Davis fired him for his drug habit, and Coltrane blossomed under Monk's tutelage.

 

 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

When I featured Monk's Little Rootie Tootie, I forgot to mention it's an I Got Rhythm contrafact, as are 100's of other jazz compositions. Here's another tune based on rhythm changes, by perhaps the most famous jazz musician/vocalist.

 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce

More piano. This is from one of my favourite albums. 

 

If that wasn't enough, this is the full two-hour concert in Japan. 

I have DVD of that concert. I wonder if they handed out ponchos to the audience, or they came prepared. Here's Keith and long time collaborator Jack DeJohnette when they were much younger and Keith still played electric keyboard. It's a long piece, but be sure to catch Jack's extraordinary drum solo at the end. Guitar whiz John McLaughlin also makes a guest appearance.

 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

It occurred to me that I've somewhat neglected one of the most important jazz instruments, bass. We've already heard the work of greats like Scott LaFaro with Bill Evans, Paul Chambers with Miles Davis, Jaco Pastorius with Weather Report, and Gary Peacock with Keith Jarrettt. To round things off, here's a track that doesn't have a bass solo, but the great Ray Brown lays down a killer bass line that goes way beyond mere time keeping.

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

Here's a jazz great with a sense of fun, Ornette Coleman. First, a well known early piece, then a short but sweet piece with sidekick Pat Metheny, who had an affinity for Ornette's music. Maybe on April 1, I'll play something with Ornette on violin.

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

Gotta keep the thread alive, so here's 2 compositions by one of the founding fathers of modern jazz, Dizzy Gillespie. He and his occasional collaborator, Charlie Parker, established an extraordinary standard of musicianship. The first track has been recorded by countless jazz musicians, but the version I chose is perhaps the definitive version, with Charlie Parker on alto, and Miles Davis rather than Gillespie on trumpet. One interesting factoid about it is that Dizzy originally titled it *Interlude*, but some unknown individual, not Dizzy, renamed it *Night In Tunisia*, and that's the name it's known by.

 

The second piece features Dizzy on trumpet, as well as some vocal, hitting some high notes, and also features the great Cuban conga player Chano Pozo. Dizzy and Pozo were *instrumental* in bringing Latin rhythms into the jazz mainstream.

 

 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

I'm going to be proactive and feature some holiday music. Jazz musicians rarely play Christmas music, but here's one of the best known examples by guitar great Kenny Burrell.

 

I'm following it up with a memorable anti-carol. It's songwriter Bob Dorough on vocal, with accompaniment by Miles Davis and cohorts.

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

New year's come & gone, but I can stilll belatedly try to revive my thread. Here's an extraordinary collection of talent on stage at the same time. 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

I'm overdue for a new selection. Here's one of the better contemporary song writers, who always had a jazz sensibility. 

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
yitwail
Community Member

Since Keith Jarrett was featured twice already on keyboard, I thought why not showcase his soprano sax playing? On this track, he also plays piano, so presumably it's overdubbed, unless he played piano one hand & soprano with the other, which would be quite a feat. While I wouldn't call him a virtuoso on soprano, he's a decent player, and way better on this instrument than saxophone great Ornette Coleman on violin, though I was never sure if he played violin as a joke.

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"No good deed goes unpunished." -- Clare Boothe Luce
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