Recent Record Finds

Rounding up some of the better items I've found in recent record digs, stretching back to that annual colossus of record shows, the WFMU Record Fair, and including more recent trips to the pride of St. Louis record stores, Euclid Records (sorry Vintage Vinyl, I like you too), and a worthy new discovery, Greenpoint's Co-op 87. There are also one or two finds from Gimme Gimme in the East Village and Permanent Records in Greenpoint here too, plus a couple items on the soon-to-be-obsolete compact disc format.

Grant Green - Goin' West
Grant Green's Goin' West is a somewhat lesser-known link in a tradition stretching from Louis Armstrong's collaborations with Jimmie Rodgers to Sonny Rollins to Bryan & the Haggards. (I also tend to enjoy when the jazz-to-country crossover goes the other way - Bob Wills, Willie Nelson, Jethro Burns, even Merle Haggard have ventured to varying extents into jazz territory with good results.) Though it was released in the late '60s, the early '60s recording date and inclusion of "I Can't Stop Loving You" certainly suggest the influence of Ray Charles' surprise success with Modern Sounds in Country & Western Music in the choice of this concept. Whatever the impetus, this group makes it work, turning some of the potentially hokiest material into music that sounds like golden age Blue Note, which in fact it is. I think a lot of the credit has to go to Billy Higgins, who finds creative solutions for making these tunes swing. Check out Higgins on "On Top of Old Smokey" (feels weird even typing that) - great drummers are often praised for making complex music sound natural and spontaneous, but here you have a great drummer making something fairly sophisticated out of very basic musical materials. A young Herbie Hancock also sounds quite comfortable in this territory, and as for Grant Green, all I can say is that hearing that tone coming out of my speakers is one of life's great pleasures. Oh, and the bass player is Reggie Workman!

Goin' West makes an interesting point of comparison with Bill Frisell's treatment of country and folk material. Frisell revels in the beauty and simplicity of the melodies (check out Frisell's versions of "Red River Valley" with Gary Peacock, a tune that also appears here), whereas Green & co. are more about adding layers of complexity. I could imagine both approaches ending in disaster, but these musicians are too good, too tasteful for that to happen.

Pat Matheny (w/ Charlie Haden & Billy Higgins) - Rejoicing
Although I normally much prefer Bill Frisell to Pat Matheny, I've been enjoying this record more than the Power Tools record (Strange Meeting w/ Frisell, Melvin Gibbs, and Ronald Shannon Jackson) I picked up at the same time. Rejoicing is an ideal companion piece to Song X - quieter, heavy on Ornette tunes but w/out Ornette himself. If you can manage to make a bad album with Haden and Higgins on board, shame on you, but that's certainly not the case here. Everybody sounds good, although I prefer the first side, with mostly Ornette tunes, to the second side, which gets into Pat originals and some guitar synth textures.

Julius Hemphill - Blue Boye
It's probably an unfounded bias, but I tend to steer clear of solo saxophone albums, or really most solo instrumental albums that don't feature piano or guitar. I knew Julius Hemphill would do something worthwhile with the format, though. In any case, Blue Boye is really better described as a "saxophone Conversations with Myself" or a "one-man WSQ" than a solo recital, with most tracks featuring Hemphill overdubbed on multiple instruments. I love the liner note description of Hemphill, one of the masters of writing and arranging for multiple horns, confidently building up the multiple tracks in a series of single takes while still wearing his overcoat in some half-assed, freezing basement studio.

It's often been noted that there was always a strong blues feeling in everything Hemphill did (and though I may be on shaky ground, I would argue that this stronger blues strain is one of the things that distinguished the music and musicians that came out of the St. Louis BAG scene from the closely related Chicago AACM scene), and it is certainly in evidence here, as the album title would suggest. I've been particularly enjoying the bluesy, boppish and truly solo "Kansas City Line" and the funky flute and hand clap driven "Homeboy Tootin' at the Dog/Star", which brings to mind the deep roots of Otha Turner's Mississippi fife & drum pre-blues.

Charles 'Bobo' Shaw & The Human Arts Ensemble (feat. Joseph Bowie) - P'nkJ'zz
This is a NYC loft scene edition (recorded at Sam Rivers' Studio Rivbea) of the Human Arts Ensemble, which had originated with a very different lineup in St. Louis as a racially integrated adjunct to the Black Artists Group. BAG-related figures Joe Bowie (whose punk-jazz fusion project Defunkt would've been operating at this time), Julius Hemphill and Abdul Wadud are on this record, and most of the music resembles the Hemphill-Wadud collaborations (with their blend of free, blues, and African gestures) more than it really touches on punk. The exception is the first track, the wild (and gloriously titled) "Steam Away Kool 1500". While it may be a stretch to call it "punk", it's certainly in your face, gesturing toward rock with a heavy electric bass groove that reminds me a little, but only a little, of Keith Jarrett's "Mortgage On My Soul". It's a bit of a disappointment when the album doesn't continue in this vein, although I also enjoy the Latin or Afro-Latin acoustic guitar-driven vamps of the next two tunes, and the last and shortest track, "Be Bo Bo Be", gives Wadud the chance to go off a bit with a bowed solo.

Especially since reading Point From Which Creation Begins, Benjamin Looker's history of BAG, I've been picking up records here and there from what might be called the post-BAG discography. I haven't yet found another Dogon A.D.-style lost masterpiece, but Hemphill certainly went on to make many strong records in the '70s and '80s (and not just with the WSQ - see above), and I've also enjoyed some of the records where Lester Bowie got together with his old St. Louis associates, such as Fast Last! with Hemphill, brother Joe, Philip Wilson and John Hicks. One I'm on the lookout for is Shaw's Streets of St. Louis, also recorded under the HAE moniker and featuring a monster lineup, including Hemphill and Wadud, both Bowies, and Hamiet Bluiett.

Sonny Rollins - There Will Never Be Another You
This has to be one of the greatest two-drummer albums, with Mickey Roker (who talks a bit about it in his DTM interview) and Billy Higgins (who participated in some notable two drummer recordings with Ornette and Ed Blackwell) burning live in the MOMA Sculpture Garden in 1965. There's some great Tommy Flanagan, and the 16-minute title track is a particular must-hear, with Sonny wandering off mike around the courtyard near the end.

Laura Nyro - Gonna Take a Miracle
The legendary Philly team of Gamble & Huff brought a restrained but meticulous production approach to this record, only unleashing the strings a couple times and putting all the focus on the vocals of Nyro and Labelle (just a few years before they hit big with "Lady Marmalade"). The result, especially on the more sparsely instrumented tracks, is something like street corner harmony in a gloomy cathedral. It's a very precise but hard to describe atmosphere I don't think I've heard on any other record. In retrospect, it was a smart move to do an album of remembered songs, songs that had nostalgic value to Nyro, in what was up-to-date style in 1971. She didn't go to Motown and try to replicate the sound of the original records, instead going with producers and singers who were still on their way up and would go on to help define the sound of '70s R'n'B. Another unexpected but effective move was sequencing what is in my opinion the strongest track last. That song, the title cut, is a tour-de-force heartbreaker, originally a minor 1965 hit for the Royalettes (check out this great video), and a great expression of the breakup-as-Armageddon trope that Jens Lekman was gently mocking/paying tribute to with "The End of the World (Is Bigger Than Love)".

It must be a mark of how much I like Robert Christgau's writing that I can get pissed off about a forty year-old review, but his dismissive B-minus write-up of this record, where the best he can say about Labelle is that they "don't screech once", is pretty galling. I imagine his anti-Nyroism was at least in part a contrarian reaction to her critical darling status amid the earnest atmosphere of the early-'70s singer-songwriter scare, but at least he was able to recognize the greatness of the "Monkey Time/Dancing in the Street" medley. When Labelle start repeating the line "don't forget the Motor City", I get chills.

Roger Woodward - Shostakovich - 24 Preludes & Fugues
This was a WFMU Record Fair find, one of a few 20th Century classical records I picked up, still under the sway of Alex Ross' The Rest is Noise. This is the only version I've heard of this music, and the only thing I've heard from Woodward, who came out of Australia and is apparently still active, having recorded this in his early 30s in 1974. So, I'm thoroughly unqualified to write in depth about this, but I can see where this is in some way a 20th-century response to Bach as well as a chance for the composer to try out a bunch of ideas in short pieces. Though listening to the whole thing in one sitting is a bit taxing for someone of my attention span, there is a variety that sustains interest through the set of 24, with some pieces sounding like Baroque music with a few 20th-century harmonic touches and others more like full-blown Shostakovich squeezed into the prelude-and-fugue form. There's also a Keith Jarrett recording of the Preludes & Fugues on ECM which I'm somewhat curious about. I'm not crazy about his Goldbergs on harpsichord but I'm willing to give Klassical Keith another shot.

Mstislav Rostropovich - Britten - Cello Suites
Another one from the Record Fair. I first discovered Rostropovich through his recording of Shostakovich's first cello concerto, and after hearing this record of the first two of Britten's beautiful and technically dazzling suites for solo cello, I'm on the lookout for more recordings by the great Azerbaijani cellist. There's a record of Britten (on piano) and Rostropovich together that I'd like to hear, and there's also BBC documentary that I think is available streaming online if you do a little digging. I'd also really like to hear the 3rd Britten suite, which was written for but not recorded by Rostropovich. Another win for vinyl: this record has a really cool cover which seems not to have been retained by any of the CD releases of this music.

...and last and also least:

Having Fun with Elvis on Stage
One of music history's most notorious novelty/bizarro items, this is 37 or so minutes of Elvis' stage banter from the Adderol-addled early '70s brought to the public courtesy of Col. Parker's cynical avarice. Judging by this record, Elvis spent much of his time on stage during these years dealing with requests for his sweaty scarves from female fans of all ages.

For Sale: Rembrandt Drawing, Signed by Basquiat

So, I recently signed up for Phil Schaap's jazz e-newsletter, which so far has turned out to be mostly lists of things he has for sale.  Before going further, I want to say that I'm a fan of Schaap's long-running Charlie Parker show.  He is an incredible living resource and important force in promoting and furthering appreciation of the music.  I noticed a strange thing about the items Schaap has for sale, though.  Many of them are ostensibly rare records signed by, but not featuring, Wynton Marsalis.  Now, what I said above about Schaap also applies to Marsalis.  I have nothing against him and have enjoyed his music - he's clearly an important figure.  But why would anyone want (to cite just one example of an actual item for sale) a 78 of Fats Waller playing "Carolina Shout" signed by Wynton?  Or (to cite another example) a 1927 Bix Beiderbecke 78 signed by Wynton?  At least in that case, it's one horn player signing another's record, which maybe sorta kinda makes some kind of sense - or not?  Does Marsalis' signature on somebody else's rare record make it more or less valuable to collectors?  If you were trying to sell a rare Mickey Mantle baseball card, would you get A-Rod to sign it?  I'm honestly confused.

Update:
Here's something I have no confusion or reservations about - hours and hours of archived Phil Schaap broadcasts, available for streaming.  Gold mine. Treasure trove. Cornucopia.

RJD, NSD!, H&H

Before I heard that Ronnie James Dio had died, I'd already started on this post, inspired by the Awl's as-it-turns-out eerily-timed "listicle" of lesser-known Black Sabbath members (they included Dio, even though I would consider him one of the better-known Sabbath members).  As much as I enjoyed reading the names and resumes of the various Sabbath fill-ins and replacements (it was like a peek inside the heads of Scharpling and Wurster), the post was really just going to be an excuse to post a link to one of my all-time favorite album covers, and certainly my favorite cover of an album I haven't even heard, the Hipgnosis-designed Never Say Die!

While the Heaven and Hell cover was a familiar presence in my youth and adolescence—I remember it as something that was just around, on people's lighters, t-shirts, and in record store windows—I don't remember seeing Never Say Die! anywhere.  Were H&H's smoking angels easier to relate to (and thus, co-opt and recontextualize) than NSD!'s mysterious/menacing pilots, or was it just that H&H was a more popular, well-loved album?  Probably both.

As for Dio, my only real memory of him is from my college days.  I remember sitting in the window of a bar on the main college town drag wondering at the line of black t-shirt-clad townies stretching out the door, down the block, and around the corner from the local indie (or to be historically accurate, alternative) rock club across the street, a longer line than I'd ever seen there.  I found out from one of the black t-shirt wearers who came into the bar that Dio was in town.  Being summer (I was still around taking a class), the campus was mostly deserted, and this was my first glimpse of the town's summer music scene, an alternate (but not "alternative") reality in which "college rock" was temporarily-but-forcefully shoved to the side, metal was king, and Dio was a BIG F***ING DEAL.

If You Get Hired To DJ A Tea Party, You'll Need This Record

Another gem, and an extremely timely one, from Crap Jazz Covers.  Please, somebody find this LP and do a remix project.

Really, Really Deep In The Groove

I've tried many times, unsuccessfully I now realize, to visualize what's going on in a record groove.  I've seen pictures of lathes and read about masters being cut and so on, but somehow what I imagined never looked much like this.  These photos should only encourage people who like to talk about vinyl being more "organic" and less "sterile" than digital music.

[via 33-1/3]

Bland Country

I found a small (still sealed) gem yesterday at the Brooklyn Record Riot, Get On Down With Bobby Bland, from 1975.  Bland was already well-established as one of the great blues and soul singers, but a list of some of the songwriting credits on Get On Down will give you a better idea of what he was up to on this album than the title or cover photo could: Dan Penn, Merle Haggard, Conway Twitty, Billy Sherrill.  Yes, that's right, we're in country-soul (not to be confused with country blues) territory.

It seems like a few years ago, there was a slight surge in interest in the country-soul crossovers of the late-'60s to mid-'70s - I vaguely recall some compilations and reissues appearing all around the same time. It's a particularly rich vein of music, spanning from Joe Tex and Joe Simon to Gram Parsons and Charlie Rich.  Ray Charles' Modern Sounds In Country Music records are usually cited as the inspiration/prototype for this mini-movement, but of course the process of cultural borrowing (or stealing) across racial lines is the engine that's driven American music from the beginning. 

Charles (for some reason, it seems weird referring to Ray Charles as "Charles") may have demonstrated the commercial viability of r'n'b artists recording country songs and proved that he could sing the hell out of a country song (or at least convincingly Ray-ify it), but his project was all about taking hillbilly music way uptown - Hank Williams songs with a (lightly) swingin' orchestra, etc.  The field was still open for artists who wanted to engage with country music on a closer-to-the-ground level, down in the pasture where they might get some shit on their shoes.  Bobby Bland didn't get all the way there - he definitely walked out of the Get On Down sessions with clean shoes - but if the arrangements seem a tad smooth today, they're a heckuva lot more understated and, to my ears, listenable than Ray's.  And they don't ever threaten to overshadow Bland's voice, which is smooth in an entirely different way (single malt whiskey smooth as opposed to baby food smooth).

With Bobby Bland's take on country, there's very little feeling of novelty.  The material is well-selected, or at least he makes it sound that way.  You don't hear Bland straining to fit himself into the song or distorting the song to fit his style - the tell-tale signs of an awkward crossover attempt (see Willie Nelson's Countryman). In his B+ review of the album (in which, typically, he makes the key points in minimum space), Robert Christgau hears awkwardness on one track (Conway Twitty's "You've Never Been This Far Before"), leading him to ask, "...he seems a little ill at ease reassuring a virgin with bom-bom-boms, but wouldn't you?"

One of the standout tracks for me is the last one, "You're Gonna Love Yourself (In The Morning)" by Alabama Music Hall of Famer Donnie Fritts (how's this for a resume?: Muscle Shoals session man, longtime Kristofferson sideman/sidekick, widely recorded songwriter, Peckinpah actor).  Bland seems entirely at ease with the Hag classic "Today I Started Loving You Again" and while "Someone To Give My Love To" doesn't surpass the benchmark Johnny Paycheck version, it's another highlight on an album with no real duds.

Brooklyn Record Riot - What I Found (Part One)

I'm trying to write a little something on everything I bought at the recent Brooklyn Record Riot in Greenpoint. Here's the first batch:

George Adams-Don Pullen Quartet - Live at the Village Vanguard, Vol. 2 (LP)

Released on the Italian label Soul Note, one of the many overseas and obscure labels that filled the void left by the retreat of the majors from jazz and the withering of the great independents (Blue Note, Impulse!), this music probably deserved a wider audience than it got in the mid-'80s. This purchase ($2!) is part of my recent attempt to dip into the for-me uncharted waters of '70s and '80s jazz. Some excellent posts on Destination:Out and Do The Math gave me some names and albums to look for. This also worked as a browsing strategy for the Record Riot, as the boxes of jazz records were relatively accessible in the vinyl geek scrum of Warsaw and the general lack of love for this period means that generalist dealers sell these records cheap (whereas a specialist like Downtown Music Gallery would likely price them many times higher).

I bought this album based on the quartet's connection to Mingus (3 of the 4 played on the two Changes volumes, which I like very much) and the generally high quality of Live at the Vanguard albums. I don't know what the Adams-Pullen band sounded like in the studio, but they were certainly hot live. Good mix of "out" and "in" playing with strong grooves. The closing "Big Alice" was apparently something of a signature song for Pullen and must have been a crowd pleaser. The quartet rides the tune's Bo Diddley beat for almost 18 minutes (with Adams actually quoting the "Bo Diddley" melody near the end) in a way that suggests they were capable of going much longer without running out of ideas or gas. Only four long tracks on the album - 3 compositions from Pullen and one from Adams.

A strong album that challenges some of the preconceptions about jazz in the '80's - it's not "smooth", "revivalist", "fusion", or suggestive in any way that jazz was a worn-out art form at this point. It could be considered an extension of Mingus' late work, but doesn't sound all that much like him.

I'd definitely like to track down Volume One, recorded the same night.


Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy & BSB Appendix (2CD)

Okkervil are becoming one of my favorite current bands. They've been around for a while, and I'm still catching up with them. These are the only complete albums (well, a full-length and an EP) that I've heard from them, and they date from 2005. The tracks I've heard from their two most recent albums make me want to get those next. I like Will Sheff's voice a lot. I can understand why the word "emo" was tossed around in reviews of this album. It's not totally off the mark as one adjective to apply to his singing, but in the context of his songs and the band's arrangements it's inadequate and a bit misleading. Bottom line, he's a good songwriter and the band can get into some different modes - quiet, loud, bouncy - and do interesting things within them. I'm not that worried about figuring out the "concept" of this project, but I like the idea of using Tim Hardin's "Black Sheep Boy" as a starting point/touchstone for an album. Whatever Sheff used to generate these songs, it worked for him. And the "Appendix" is more than leftovers. It's a good companion piece that extends the album with more songs well worth hearing.

[Side note: OR's Daytrotter Session is highly recommended. Besides being good listening, it shows the influence of a certain strain of late-'60s/early-'70s SoCal folk/country-rock on their sound. Also makes me want to get John Phillips' John the Wolfking of L.A.]


Henry Threadgill - Easily Slip Into Another World

So much going on in this music. I can hear New Orleans brass, funky marching band music (the cover photos conjure up some kind of Sousa-meets-Sgt. Pepper-at-the-jewelry-store scenario), blues, and a little bit of free playing, but it's not quite any of these things exactly. It's very alive and fits somewhere in the jazz and African-American music tradition. There's an Olu Dara composition and Asha Puthli (known for her work with Ornette Coleman and called an "intrepid cosmopolite" (!) on her Wikipedia page) sings on one track.

[Side note: I saw Puthli perform at Central Park Summerstage a couple years ago. Certainly the only performance in history to feature both an unaccompanied solo by Dewey Redman and a cover of Gnarls Barkley's "Crazy". And Ornette Coleman watching from the wings. Her pitch seemed a bit uncertain at times, but she got by a heavy dose of charisma.]

Threadgill is part of the Chicago AACM scene, which I'm only beginning to get familiar with. As a composer, Mingus comes to mind as one point of comparison. Both seem to have a certain sense of humor and fun, as well as a sense of history and ability to incorporate elements of early jazz and pre-jazz sounds into their compositions.


Air - Open Air Suit

Threadgill again, in a different mode. More abstract and "difficult". The little bit of Air I've heard other than this, plus descriptions I've read of some of their other albums, makes me want to continue exploring them. If this was all I knew of them or Threadgill, I might be wary of going deeper. Great album cover illustration of a mandrill showing his brightly-colored ass in some sort of celestial cloudscape.

Probably need to listen to this some more before I can say more about it.


Bill Evans - Conceptions

I've lost track of how many Bill Evans albums and compilations I have on CD and LP, but it's still a small fraction of his discography, especially since live recordings keep emerging on various labels. Despite dying too young, he recorded lots of music. This 2 LP set was released in 1981, maybe a year after his death. It's kind of a strange compilation, pairing his first album as a leader, New Jazz Conceptions, with some outtakes and solo recordings.

NJC was recorded with Paul Motian and Teddy Kotick, Evans' pre-Scott LaFaro bassist. Brisk, swinging stuff, but doesn't seem to belong among the great Bill Evans recordings, at least upon first listen. The solo recordings are a fascinating listen, most being recorded in one of Evans' first sessions after his hiatus from music after the death of Scott LaFaro. The liner notes make a lot out of his fragile state of mind at this point, and it's not too much of a stretch to hear a reflection of this in his playing. There does seem to be something heavy happening in his slow, sad take on Danny Boy, which features an odd moment where Evans seems to be bringing the tune to an end, then changes his mind and ramps back up for a few minutes more playing.

The evolution of Bill Evans' approach to solo playing is a sort of theme tying this compilation together. NJC features a few solo performances, but they are very brief, staying around the 2-minute mark, as if anything longer would have tried either the pianist's confidence or the audience's attention span. The later solo work shows him slowing down and stretching out solo, though he would take things much further later on, with the overdubbed Evans-Evans-Evans trios of Conversations with Myself and the nearly 14-minute "People" from Alone (Again).

More on Bill Evans solo here and here.

A good addition to my collection, but not an essential. Also not the greatest sound, at least on my portable record player. Some slight warping might be to blame.

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There's a great roundup of Record Riot purchases over at The Bad Plus' blog Do The Math. Found it after I started writing this piece, and realized that we probably looked at some of the same records. Took me a lot longer to write up my finds, though.