The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Metheny v. Lincoln

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The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)

#58 "The Pat Metheny Group" (1978) v. #74 Abbey Lincoln, "Straight Ahead" (1961).

I’ve tended to dismiss Pat Metheny as veering way too close to easy listening. That still might be the case, but I’ve warmed to him a little bit recently. There’s something there. There’s enough there to beat Abby Lincoln, anyway.

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And:

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I’ve listened to this one a lot. Abby Lincoln wouldn’t here if many people didn’t consider her a great singer, and I wanted to say something more intelligent than “Her singing is, to me, a godawful racket.” Alas, I can’t.

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Pat Metheny in an easy decision over Abbey Lincoln.

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Gordon v. Smith

It's been two years since the last Jazz Thing post, and I've since declared the project dead, but what the heck.

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The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)

#37 Dexter Gordon, "Go!" (1962) v. #40 Bessie Smith, "The Collection" (recordings from 1923-1933).

Melodic saxophone bop from the early 1960s, this is a solid entry in a subgenre I find easy to like.

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And:

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This is unadulterated blues music, sung by an acknowledged master, and has plenty of historical interest. But although it’s an important wellspring of jazz, vintage blues is so formulaic that I find it pretty stultifying. I’m not a “roots” guy.

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It's hardly a fair fight, but Go! win easily against Ms. Smith.

The Free Box Tapes #14, 15, & 16, & 17: Eclectic Boogaloo

I recently spent a long afternoon clearing the dense towers of papers, notebooks, and bric-a-brac from the top of my second-string desk.  To pass the time, I turned to some of the neglected Free Box Tapes for a soundtrack. 

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Henry Threadgill, Carry the Day (1995) / Jon Jang & The Pan-Asian Arkestra, Tiananmen! (1993)

Sixty-Four Words: The project had stuck on this one; I didn’t know quite what to make of it. The Jang album is a fusion of conventional jazz with traditional Chinese music. It’s more middle-of-the-road than it sounds. The Threadgill toys with world music in a jazz format, but experiments freely with tonality. It’s more challenging than it sounds, and sometimes makes me feel a little carsick.

Disposition: I don’t think I’ll ever love these, or even ever listen to them again, but for now I will retain the tape on probation.

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Steely Dan, Greatest Hits (1978)

Sixty-Four Words: I dismissed Steely Dan pretty breezily the last time we encountered them in this project, but I wouldn't say no to having a collection of their familiar radio hits as something to play in the background of an occasional rainy afternoon. I think “Deacon Blues” is a good song. Unfortunately, it turned out that the tape was missing. It was just an empty box.

Disposition: I used the tape case to replace a broken tape case.

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GP GM Klotz: Biographies (1980) 

Sixty-Four Words: OMG! It's really Grandpa and Grandma Klotz, narrating their biographies in response to a questionnaire that their granddaughter, Karen, sent them for a school project. It is awesome. Grandpa is not nearly as into it as Grandma. They are both articulate, intelligent, and more candid than they would have been if they knew their tape would end up with a stranger. It's found gold!

Disposition: The tape broke when I tried to rewind it, but that’s easily mended. One could have a lot of fun with this treasure! There are plentiful clues that would allow someone with the interest and a modest budget track down the descendants of the Klotzes, and send them all copies of the tape. Or, one could rip the tape to their computer, and sample the narrative to have the couple make utterances that are poignant or evocative (or vulgar, I suppose) over an ambient soundscape. Whee!

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Steve Reich: Tehillim (1983) / the Desert Music (1985

Sixty-Four Words: I like the idea of Steve Reich more than Steve Reich compositions. Often I forget that I’m listening to music and think that I’m suffering a headache instead. On this tape, the sound quality is quite poor, and there are choral parts, which is not perhaps playing to Reich’s strengths. I’ll give it a few more listens and report back if there’s an epiphany.

Disposition: As noted.

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Brubeck v. Shorter

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#9 The Dave Brubeck Quartet, "Time Out" (1959) v. #119 The Wayne Shorter Quartet, "Footprints Live!" (2002).

One of the handful of jazz records I liked before I liked jazz. A bunch of highly successful experiments with unusual time signatures round out the absurdly virtuosic "Take Five" which, the more you hear it, the better it gets.

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And:

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Shorter is a saxophonist and composer from the modern jazz era, and this 2002 release captures a concert of his major compositions, 30-some years later. I like it. Maybe I’d love it if I were familiar with the original recordings.

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Time Out defeats Footprints Live!  Inevitably.

The Free Box Tapes #6: Charles Mingus, "Ah Um"

The sixth Free Box Tape, conveniently enough, was another one on The Jazz Thing list.  

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Charles Mingus: Ah Um (1959)

Sixty-Four Words: As I implied earlier, Mingus is a bit of a mystery to me. I haven’t figured out yet what constitutes his sound, or what makes him special. The album exhibits a variety of styles, all expertly performed and with some great moments. At first I listened to Side B then Side A; I liked it better when I got them in the right order.

Disposition: It's good. I'd keep it even if it wasn't a Jazz Thing record.

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Mingus v. Redman

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)

#19 Charles Mingus, "Ah Um" (1959) v. #99 Joshua Redman, "Wish" (1993).

I’m not sure yet what I’m supposed to listen for in Mingus. This album is generally considered amazing – hey, it’s #19! It has grown on me and now I like it -- but I haven’t figured out why it’s great jazz.

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And:

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Immediately likeable, with a clean, airy sound and a masterful small ensemble invoking jazz’s range of night-time moods. Thirty years younger than most of the records in the Jazz Thing, which I didn’t realize when I was doing my listening.

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Despite a feeling that I'm probably being gauche, Wish defeats Ah Um.

The Free Box Tapes #5: Joe Farrell and Randy Brecker, "Together," except actually not

Since the fifth Free Box Tape was a bona fide commercially packaged cassette tape, I didn't expect to have to do any, like, investigating.  

From the cover, you'd have to think that this was the album Together, by Joe Farrell and Randy Brecker. 

But it ain't.  I wouldn't have noticed a thing, actually, if I hadn't been planning to write that the album features funk and disco sounds that were only used for a few years in the mid-1970s, but then decided to check for a copyright date to hedge my bet.

Copyright 1985?!?  There was no guitarist alive that would have used the um-chakka-um sound in 1985.  So I looked the record up in the massive AllMusic.com database, and found that, well, it didn't exist.  That was weird.  I put in a few of the song names, and I kept getting results for somebody named Michael Longo.  That was weird, too.  

Then I looked at those liner notes.  There are five musicians listed on the cover, but a sixth -- Michael Longo -- is listed under "personnel" (we say "human resources" these days).  And then notice the song credits: M. Longo wrote all six of them.  A few more clicks confirmed it: what we have here is the 1975 Michael Longo Album 900 Shares of the Blues, doing business under not just a different title, but as the work of other artists.  There's a boring story in there, somewhere.

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"Joe Farrell/Randy Brecker: Together (1985)," which is actually Michael Longo: 900 Shares of the Blues (1975)

Sixty-Four Words: Because it features funk and disco sounds that were used widely for a few years in the mid-1970s and thereafter scrupulously avoided, you instantly recognize this album’s context. It shouldn’t matter, but it does. The music conspicuously aims at being jazz with a contemporary feel, but the moment has passed. Perhaps unfairly, it is hard not to see the music as past its sell-date.

Disposition: Unraveling the weird misattribution of this tape's packaging has somehow made me kind of fond of it. It shouldn't matter, but it does. I'll hang on to it, for now.

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Hancock v. McLean

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)

#35 Herbie Hancock, "Maiden Voyage" (1965) v. #83 Jackie McLean, "Let Freedom Ring" (1962).

This record and especially the title track are considered quite important and innovative. There are complicated harmonies. I’m not sure what people like about it, though. It seems quite lifeless. “Dolphin Dance,” the closer, is a focus for my dislike.

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And:

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Jackie McLean?  Who?  The title threatens patriotic pabulum, but the record delivers three strong hits of groove and a sultry ballad. The recurring bass riff in the final trick, “Omega,” is enough to win this contest all by itself.

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Let Freedom Ring defeats Maiden Voyage

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Oliver Nelson v. the Gil Evans Orchestra

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)

#57 Oliver Nelson, "The Blues and the Abstract Truth" (1961) v. #73 The Gil Evans Orchestra, "Out of the Cool" (1961).

Two fine jazz albums from 1961, these were not easy for a newbie to weigh against each other. These were two of the first records on the Impulse! Label, and you can see that Evans plays on Nelson’s record.

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But:

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But on balance, the Evans album has the edge for being groovier, in both senses of the word. I guess that means I perceive more dynamism in the rhythm section, and more interesting sonic action in the arrangements.

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Out of the Cool defeats The Blue and the Abstract Truth

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Basie v. Barber

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#23 Count Basie – "The Atomic Mr. Basie" (1958)  v.  #76 Patricia Barber – "Mythologies" (2003)

Virtuosic ensemble playing, like the most amazing pep band in the universe.  Makes you want to put on a suit and twirl somebody in a vintage dress, or be twirled, and probably drink a cocktail and smoke a cigarette.

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And:

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Intellectual jazz -- "too intellectual?" I wondered, then found out that it is a song cycle after Ovid.  No temptation to suits, smoking, or drinking.  It's clean.  Too clean?  Maybe, but also slightly trippy, and interesting. 

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Rather to my surprise, Mythologies beats The Atomic Mr. Basie.  I also dig its cover.

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Davis v. Frissell

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#2 Miles Davis – "Kind of Blue" (1959)  v.  #114 "Bill Frisell With Dave Holland and Elvin Jones" (2001)

Obviously, it's in my interest as a jazz explorer to respect the #2 seed.  But, this older, pre-trippy Miles Davis stuff seems extremely tight and expressive, the apotheosis of club jazz.

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And:

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Bill Frisell serves up a highly listenable cocktail of blues, new age ambient sounds, and jazz.  I'm always left feeling like his guitar setting -- big, warm, round -- is more central to the finished product then the actual music.

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Kind of Blue beats Bill Frisell with Dave Holland and Elvin Jones.

Match A3 is going to be a killer....

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Pepper v. Carter

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#60 Art Pepper – "Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section" (1957)  v.  #76 Benny Carter and His Orchestra – "Further Definitions" (1961)

Said to represent "West Coast Jazz," whatever that is or was.  Maybe that's why I'm drawn to it.  Very clean solo and ensemble playing.  A little smoky, which is bad in rooms and clothes but good in jazz.

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And:

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Extremely tight playing by a somewhat larger ensemble -- four saxophones.  Just the hint of a schmaltz factor.  Feels like it should be four years older than Art Pepper rather than the other way around.

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Art Pepper Meets the Rhythm Section beats Further Definitions.

The Jazz Thing

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#12 Miles Davis – "Bitches' Brew" (1970)  v.  #124 Darcy James Argue’s Secret Society  "Infernal Machines" (2009)

An unfortunate match-up.  I found Bitches' Brew a few years ago, and called it "one long festival of groovy sounds."  It's one of the records that sparked my interest in jazz.

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And:

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Largely driven by hard, simple beats, Infernal Machines is very eclectic, highly accomplished, and packs much of the excitement and grit of intelligent modern rock.  Excellent jazz in our time, with no whiff of retro.  Who knew?

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Very regrettably, Infernal Machines must yield to Bitches' Brew.  But there is no shame in that.

The Jazz Thing, Round One: John Coltrane v. Bill Evans

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#49 John Coltrane – "Blue Train" (1957)  v.  #66 Everybody Digs Bill Evans" (1958)

Compared to the later A Love Supreme, this set of bluesy small ensemble pieces seems downright conservative.  But then you think about what mainstream pop sounded like in 1957, and you realize that people must have been, like, whoa....

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And:

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It's not that I don't dig Bill Evans -- but nothing in his music has especially grabbed me yet.  It's very mellow, and I like playing it of a rainy afternoon.  But this is to damn with faint praise.

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Blue Train defeats Everybody Digs Bill Evans.

Keep it cool, daddies-o.

The Jazz Thing, Round One: John Coltrane v. Warren Vache and Bill Charlap

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#1 John Coltrane – "A Love Supreme."  (1964)  v.  #113 Warren Vaché/Bill Charlap  – "2gether." (2000)

Well the Vache & Charlap is a very pleasant record of what I’ve seen called “chamber jazz” – a piano and muted trumpet making music that is maybe more about invoking a mood than about commanding one’s full attention. Quite likeable.

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And:

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What did you think? I’d toss out the legendary A Love Supreme in the first round? Nah. What the Coltrane lacks in immediate accessibility, it clearly makes up for in musical depth and rigor. Love the last track/movement!

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A Love Supreme defeats 2gether.

This completes the first round for the first (out of sixteen) set of eight.  Contest "A1" is going to be a collision of great magnitude, but it will be a long time before we have to worry about that.

Stay cool, jazzcats.

The Jazz Thing, Round One: The Gerry Mulligan Quartet v. Joe Henderson

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#24 The Gerry Mulligan Quartet – "The Original Quartet with Chet Baker."  (1953)  v.  #81 Joe Henderson – "Page One." (1963).

Sharp, energetic, and sophisticated, this music is nevertheless winning for its relentless determination to entertain. Sax, trumpet, and rhythm section – no piano, which may contribute to the crisp sound. Or maybe I’m just naturally drawn to “the West Coast Sound.”

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And:

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Intelligent, lean, and introspective sax-based small-ensemble jazz. I like it, and assumed it would be a winner when I first heard it. But that was before I heard the Gerry Mulligan Quartet. Well, it’s a tournament of tough choices.

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The Original Quartet with Chet Baker defeats Page One

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Christian v. Ayler

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#87 "Charlie Christian: The Genius of the Electric Guitar" (1939-41) v. #39 the Albert Ayler Trio: "Spiritual Unity" (1964).

Conceivably a tough match. Charlie Christian is apparently a very early pioneer of the electric guitar. So, these tracks are early: close to jazz’s honky-tonk, Dixieland, and blues roots. That’s to say, not very interesting to listen to.

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And:

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This is “free jazz” ie., racket. But it grows on me. It starts with a theme like a high school fight song, and then Ayler takes it to the moon via the underworld. Crazy, noisy, passionate stuff. Not for everyone.

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Spiritual Unity defeats The Genius of the Electric Guitar

The Jazz Thing, Round 1: Powell v. Mobley

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#17 "The Genius of Bud Powell" (1956) v. #97 Hank Mobley, "Soul Station" (1960).

Very virtuosic piano playing in what I believe is called the "bop" style.  The cat could really find his way around a keyboard.  Yet the record doesn't especially move me.

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And:

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This is some pretty sweet small-ensemble playing.  Mobley's saxophone leads are smooth and, yes, soulful, and there is a pleasant upbeat swing to the whole business.  Great rhythm section.  A very easy record to like.

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Soul Station defeats The Genius of Bud Powell

The Jazz Thing Round 1: Davis v. Marsalis

The Jazz Thing, Round 1 (40 Word/Album Limit)


#50 Wynton Marsalis, "Black Codes (from the Underground)" (1985) v. #65 Miles Davis, "In a Silent Way" (1969).

One of the most “recent” major jazz records.  I tried to like it in high school, but was put off it (and jazz) by what seemed like indulgent virtuosity and denial of melody or hooks.  I like it more now.

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But:

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I have really been loving Miles Davis’ trippy grooves.  It may seem like faint praise, but he has everything good about (I’ll say it) the Grateful Dead, magnified, and none of the weaknesses.  Lush, compelling, soundscapes: cool.

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In a Silent Way defeats Black Codes (from the Underground)

The Jazz Thing

I’ve been exploring jazz for the past three or four years, ever since y’all found the good stuff for me after I put out the call. I’ve been, as they say, diggin’ it. I’ve decided it would be grand to get myself a little better versed in the essential literature of the genre. And naturally, having made such a decision, I figured the most way to approach it was with absurdly intricate methodological rigor.

I kicked off the project by finding five independent “Best 100 Jazz Albums of All Time” lists, and doing some simple collation. Well, to be honest, some complicated collation. I noticed two things: first, that there was a broad consensus on what constitutes the core jazz corpus. Here’s the top 15 according to the (absurd but methodologically rigorous) scoring system I used in blending the lists:

1. John Coltrane, A Love Supreme (1964)
2. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue (1959)
3. Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch! (1964)
4. Keith Jarrett, The Köln Concert (1975)
5. Stan Getz & João Gilberto, Getz/Gilberto (1963)
6. Ornette Coleman, The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959)
7. The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out (1959)
8. Clifford Brown & Max Roach, Study in Brown (1955)
9. Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers, Moanin' (1958)
10. Sonny Rollins, Saxophone Colossus (1956)
11. Louis Armstrong, 25 Greatest Hot Fives & Sevens (1928)
12. Miles Davis, Bitches Brew (1969)
13. Dizzy Gillespie, Collection
14. Charles Mingus, Black Saint & the Sinner Lady (1963)
15. Cannonball Adderley, Somethin' Else (1958)
16. Chick Corea, Now He Sings, Now He Sobs (1968)

The second thing is that, as you may have noticed, jazz seems to be largely something that happened between 1955 and 1969. There is of course a certain degree of truth to that, but it's not totally true, so I ventured back into the internet and came back with four different reputable-seeming “Best Jazz Albums since 2000.” These had very little overlap at all.

I managed to cull the records that looked interesting, with a little effort, to one hundred ten albums from the all-time charts plus another eighteen from the last decade or so, to yield 128 records, an excellent tournament number.  Next, I went to a website for guys who run billiards tournaments, and modified one of their 128-player double-elimination tournament brackets for my purpose. This enterprise, after all, is no Infinite Art Tournament. At only an eighth the size of our twice-weekly exploration of the fine arts, “The Jazz Thing” – which is what I’m calling it – is plainly intelligible to the human eye.

So then of course I came up with a rigorous and defensible strategy to convert my rankings into tournament seeding (I really ought to be in a profession where I can make more socially productive use of my math and logic skills, such as professional gambling). Let’s zoom up to the top brackets, which I’ve already filled in, and you can see some of the first few matchups.

Now, you are perhaps wondering what all this has to do with you. The answer is, unlike the art tournament (which all right-thinking people should be voting in), not much, really. All I’m going to do is use this elaborate set-up as a sort of listening guide, giving me a map with which to explore the world of jazz, two records at a time. A couple of times a month or thereabouts, I’ll report back. At that point, any readers who are hep jazzcats can chime in, deride my taste, try to talk me out of my decision, and so on – but you don’t have to vote! In fact, you can just skip those posts, if you want.

One more rule! I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I do sometimes have a certain tendency to… shall we say… prolixity. Verbosity. Being a great bloated windbag. So for The Jazz Thing, I’m setting some limits. For first round posts, I can only use forty words per record in my report, plus one sentence explaining which record “won.” Every time a record wins a round, it earns another 40 words. In second-round write-ups, I can use 80 words per record; in the unlikely event that I, this blog, and this project survive into the third round, I can use 120 words per record, and so on.

Rules-based creative writing is my hobby. Don’t judge. Oh, and by the way, best not to tell Mrs.5000 about this. She doesn’t know about it yet, and it might freak her out a little.

The above was written while listening to coronetist Warren Vaché and pianist Bill Charlap’s 2000 attempt to take on Number One seed “A Love Supreme” with an elegant but laid-back set of finely crafted little gems. It sounds pretty good!