MOG - DLuebbert's Posts

Screencast: How To Publicize a Playlist on Rhapsody Playlist Central and SongTrellis

DLuebbert — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:45:29 GMT

Once you've created a Rhapsody playlist, it's actual hard to publicize it in such away that you could link to it in a MOG post or on another Blog page.

You can publicize it via Rhapsody's Playlist Central, but that system doesn't see fit to create a link to newly posted lists until it's been aged for about 10 days (go figure!).

You can get Rhapsody to share a gigantic URL that can start your Playlist, but it's enormous and ugly as sin. It's so large that MOG doesn't even think it's a link if you paste it into new post, so you see it in all of its non-functional hideousness.

As a stopgap, I've created a department on the SongTrellis website, where you can record your new Rhapsody playlists. A Play link gets stored on a SongTrellis page that will luanch your Playlist.

That page's URL is much smaller and better behaved and you can successfully make a MOG link to it. That way you can let everyone see your work as soon as you've finished it.

This screencast shows how to publicize your new playlists via Playlist Central and SongTrellis

►Play Screencast: How To Publicize Rhapsody Playlists via Playlist Central and SongTrellis

Screencast: Create and Edit Rhapsody Playlists

DLuebbert — Thu, 08 May 2008 16:24:50 GMT

I've found that when I want to create a new Playlist for MOG , it works best for me if I create the new Playlist on Rhapsody and then port the finished list to my Mog Playlists.

Folks may not have much experience creating Rhapsody playlists, so I've prepared this video screencast to show how it all works (it's very close to MOG 's system with better tools to edit the Playlist as you build it)

►Play Screencast: How to Create and Edit a Playlist on the Rhapsody Music site

Support for Playlists on the Rhapsody site

DLuebbert — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:33:32 GMT

Rhapsody's Playlist creation features work nearly identical to how Playlists are created on MOG . It seems possible that the Mog developers might have emulated this part of the Rhapsody interface when they developed the MOG playlist features.

Once a Playlist has been created, Rhapsody provides an "Edit" button for each Playlist. This provides the track reordering feature that seems to be missing from the MOG implementation.

Once you've clicked on that button you can drag track names up and down in the displayed Playlist array. Once you've begun to edit a Playlist, Save and Cancel buttons become active in the edited Playlist panel. If you press the Save button, Rhapsody permanently records the reordering operation you made to a Playlist.

The Rhapsody track listing for a Playlist takes up most of the width of a web browser window, which provides real estate for the Edit, Cancel and Save buttons which allow the reordering interface to be controlled.

The MOG development staff wanted the Playlist Play Panels to be very narrow, about an inch wide, which made it hard to find screen real estate for the Edit, Cancel and Save buttons needed to do reordering in the Rhapsody way.

Rhapsody, in both its website and standalone apllication incarnations, has very good tools to create Playlists but has a very difficient system for publicizing Playlists so that they could be found by other Rhapsody users from a central location.

A newly created Rhapsody playlist is stored in a Rhapsody user's profile. Rhapsody users cannot look into other users profiles as is possible to do on Mog.com.

Rhasody playlists can be published to Playlist Central, but it's very hard to discover newly published lists. New Playlist Central postings are initially invisible via the web version of Rhapsody. They finally show up on the Rhapsody website after 10 days or so. (WTF???)

Rhapsody provides a Playlist Central page,accessible to all members, where a user can publish a new playlist. By default this page displays highly ranked Playlists that are already recorded in Rhapsody, classified into a number of musical genres. This playlist rank page shows only the 100 highest ranked playlists for a particular genre.

A newly submitted Playlist is asigned the lowest possible ranking and never can appear in the list of the highest ranked playlists. If you scroll to the second page of ranked Playlists, on this page and those that follow you are given an option display the Most Recent submitted Playlists in a classification.

On the website, this listing is misnamed, since it most recently listed Playlists with 4 and 5 star rankings. And to make it worse, only a maximum of 99 playlists can be listed.

It's not possible to find or view a newly submitted Playlist from the Playlist Central web page.

In the stand alone Rhapsody application for Windows, there is a Most Recent playlists view which DOES show everything newly submitted in a category irrespective of ranking.

Even here, this view is limited to showing the 100 most recently published Playlists in a category. In practice this means that a new Playlist is visible in Playlist Central for a few weeks and then becomes inccesible to users unless it has acquired sufficient rank to be liited among the 100 highest ranked Playlists in a category.

After a hard to quantify incubation period (seems to be about three weeks for playlists I've submitted), Rhapsody does start to integrate playlist submitted to Playliist Central into its pages that are dedicated to work of a particular artist.

If a playlist plays a particular artists music, it may appear in a list of "Playlists featuring artist" that are referenced from an artist's Rhapsody listing.

It's not too hard to create a MOG Playlist if you can refer to an already existing Rhapsody Playlist

You just read each entry in the Rhapsody Playlist and do a MOG search and follow the artist, album, or track name results that are returned, to locate the user's tune choice in MOG . You then choose the popup menu which allows you to add this found track to the end of the MOG playlist you are creating.

It is easy to point to a Rhapsody Playlist from an external website. MOG currently bobbles these, unfortunately.

Rhapsody provides Share buttons in the diplay panels for every user defined Playlist. Pressing the Share button exposes a panel which gives you an option to generate HTML tags that can launch your Playlist on another website.

Unfortunately, if you attempt to paste Rhapsody Playlist HTML into a MOG Discussion posting, MOG misinterprets it so that it shows the ugly enormous URL text and does not create a functioning link from it.

MOG should allow users to import their own Rhapsody Playlists

Rhapsody can generate URLS that completely specify a Rhapsody playlist. That URL records the unique track numbers that Rhapsody uses to locate a particular track to play. It would seem that MOG should have no trouble looking up the track name and artist name corresponding to a particular track.

Given this information, it should be easy to build a MOG playlist which corresponds exactly to a Rhapsody playlist. Users should be able to copy a Playlist URL genrated by Rhapsody, paste that URL into a form provided by a MOG web page, and submit that to create an equivalent MOG Playlist.

We can start to use Rhapsody Playlists in discussions if we can use another website to host the Playlist Player html that launches them.

Until such a moment that MOG decides for itself that it might be a good idea to give Playlists a higher status on the site, and until Rhapsody provides a way to find out about newly published Playlists that is not so brain dead, I have added a way to publish Playlists on the SongTrellis website which I run.

Take a look at http://www.songtrellis.com/listPlaylists.

You can also reach this page by visiting the SongTrellis site and following the "Playlists" link which appears on the link bar which resides at the top of most pages on the site.

SongTrellis has a department called the Song Discussions (http://ww.songtrellis.com/discuss). We use that to publish new music that SongTrellis users have written, chord progression MIDI sequences for well-kniwn tunes, rhythm pattern MIDI sequences for world music ensemble rhythms, and now Playlists with descriptive text. There is a "Submit a New Playlist Page" link below the messages listed on this page.

If you follow this link, you'll be asked to signup as a SongTrellis member if you are not already, and then will be presented with a submission form. The form asks you to provide the Playlist name, the HTML code provided by Rhapsody to play your playlist, and any descritpive text you'd like to provide for your Playlist. Once you've pressed the "Submit" button on the bottom of the form, SongTrellis will add a new Playlist page to Song Discussions and will display that page displaying it's URL in your web browser.

You can copy this URL and paste it into a MOG discussion posting. Fortunately this URL is in a format that te MOG site understands so that it WILL create a functioning link to the SongTrellis page. If you follow on of these links you can launch the playlist so that it is played by the Rhapsody Player.

Mog's support for Playlists

DLuebbert — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:33:22 GMT

I did a Google search for "Featured Playlists" on the MOG site. The results show that so far, 131 Mogsters have published playlists for others to see.

I'm one of those 131. Since I've have had some experience creating MOG playlists (I've done 6), and would like to hear many other folks creating them, and don't see much talk of them on MOG , I figured it would be valuable to write something about MOG playlists, in the interest of improving this part of the site.

My first reaction: The MOG Playlist Player is wonderful

Every MOG user has My Playlists page that is accessible from their Profile page. That page displays a small Playlist Player Panel for each playlist a user has defined. These Player panels are small enough to be displayed in groups of 5 or 6 in each row of the page.

Each Player panel shows a graphic represntation of the album that the first playlist track is taken from, a view link which causes a popup menu of the playlist track names to be displayed when cilcked upon, a yellow Play button to start the list from the beginning, and a shadowed down arrow, which causes a popup menu item to show which allows you to add the Playlist to your Rhapsody Player's Play queue.

Each name in the track popup list is followed by an individual Play button, which allows a user to choose particular tracks from the playlist to play.

These Playlist Player panels work very well to control the playback of an entire playlist or selected tracks on the list.

Second reaction: MOG doesn't think of Playlists as individual objects you might want to share with other Mogsters or point to in a Mog post. I wish that each Playlist would have it's own link that could be pasted into a message posting's "Tags" form.

MOG doesn't provide any form that would allow you to use a Playlist as the subject of a discussion.

MOG does not notify Mogsters who trust you that you have featured a new playlist in your MOG Profile.

There is currently no way to create a link to a single Playlist in your collection of MOG Playlists. The closest you can come is to make a link to your entire collection of Playlists.

You can lgenerate a URL for your own entire collection of Playlists, by adding '/playlists' to the end of your Profile page URL . For example my own Playlist page is http://mog.com/DLuebbert/playlists.

You can Feature a Playlist on your Profile page. You can place a widget on your page to display an array of Play Panels for your Playlists that you wish to feature.

It is fairly easy to use Google to discover if a MOG user has featured playlists in their profile. Do an Advanced Search restiricted to the mog.com domain, which searches for the profile's user name plus the phrase "Featured Playlists".

Third reaction: Creating MOG Playlists is easy, but changing the order of tracks is difficult

Creating MOG Playlists is easy, once you know that the track you want to play is available on Rhapsody, and once you know the order you'd like them to play in when your playist is played

It is very easy to create a new Playlist in MOG , and add new tracks to it, provided MOG can find a playable version of your track in Rhapsody, and as long as you know the precise order that you wish tracks to play in in your playlist.

You can use MOG searches to find a playable version of a track that you want to add to your playlist. I frequently found that a track that I was searching for was listed on several different albums, the original album of release and then different Best Of or Compilation albums.

Many times a track on of the possible albums would be listed in a search result but the listing would not include an orange Play icon next to it. Such tracks could not be added to a Playlist in playable form. It would be necessary to search further until I found a result that included a Play icon.

Each search result with a Play icon also include a + button which causes a menu to popup, which gives you an option to "Add To Playlist" for the track. If you follow that you could choose to add the track to an entirely new playlist or add it to an already existing Playlist. All of your currently defined Playlist show up as possible destinations in this submenu.

If you decide that a track is in the wrong order in your playlists, it would seem useful to be able to drag them to a new slot in the playlist. So far as I can tell, this feature is not built into MOG playlists.

If you have misordered tracks, it seems that your only option is to delete tracks from the list to allow a track that is too far down to be placed higher in the list, and then re-add the deleted tracks in the correct order. This lack of a reordering feature hampered my ability to develop new playlists because I frequently wanted to try out different orderings of tracks to see how they sounded in succession.

An error report: if a track is available on Rhapsody and its title includes the wrong sort of punctuation character, MOG won't provide a Play button for it, which makes it impossible to add to your playlist.

For example, I wanted to add Ornette Coleman's tune Ramblin' to a playlist and couldn't get the job done because the track title ends in an apostrophe.

Bottom line: The available MOG playlist creation features don't currently match up very well with the process I use to develop playlists.

I continually think of new tracks to add to a playlist as I'm building it and then figure out a position to place the track, which very frequently is in the middle of the playlist I've already accumulated. MOG 's lack of track reordering features for playlists gets in my way.

Fortunately, Rhapsody provides much stronger tools for creating Playlists on the Rhapsody.com website and in the standalone Rhapsody application which runs on Windows. I've had a lot of success initially creating a Rhapsody playlist and then porting it to my MOG playlists once I've perfected it.

It does take awhile to replicate a list this way. Our MOG developers could completely eliminate this step if they provided a way to import Rhapsody playlists into MOG .

Speaking on behalf of Playlists

DLuebbert — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:33:03 GMT

What are the benefits of publishing playlists? Well, a listener can press a Play button once to start a sequence of tracks that can last several hours. Playlists can very efficiently present lots of new music to listeners for their consideration.

It's wonderful to have Mogsters writing to tell you why a track is important to listen to. But listeners have ears and will instantly know when a new piece speaks to them. (See Bartleby's recent "The Diamond and the Pen" post)

If they can find folks who are able to build playlists that match their tastes, their chances to quickly discover new music to listen to will increase.

I imagine that folks who build interesting lists would end up on many Mogster's trusted lists.

If MOG were to adopt Rhapsody's idea of providing a category for single artist mixes, it would seem natural that if you wanted to start a discussion about a particular musician, you would want to be able to include a link to a playlist of the good stuff you know that performer plays.

It also seems natural that after you've gone to the trouble to build a new nicely varied playlist, you might want to speak at some length about what you did and why you did it. A MOG posting that included a link to your playlist, would fill the bill nicely.

Remembering a great playlist

DLuebbert — Wed, 07 May 2008 06:38:15 GMT

► Andy Rowan's Great Sequence, a playlist from Rhapsody Playlist Central

I was nearly asleep one night listening to Andy Rowan's "Mainstem" broadcast on KZUM -FM, Lincoln, Nebraska. Leading up to midnight, he did a four tune set that made me sit bolt upright awake in bed , then get up to sit nearly naked in front of my stereo speakers in the other room to better hear what he was playing.

That was 30 years ago,and I can still remember what he played and in what order. It was all music that I had never heard before. It was electrifying to discover so much great music at once unexpectedly. And Rowan expertly sequenced the tracks in a dramatic, thrilling and educational order.

He started with Mahalia Jackson singing "Come Sunday" in front of the Duke Ellington Orchestra and followed that with Dinah Washington singing the "Evil Gal Blues". Mahalia, the Queen of gospel singing in all of her majesty, and Dinah, who could have easily succeeded her in church, but chose to sing the blues (evil ones at that) and jazz instead.

Both of these performances have something in them that can make the hair stand up on your back.

He followed the ladies with Coleman Hawkins playing "Cherokee" on Shelley Mann's album "1-2-3", a tenor sax and drum duet, then finished with Sonny Rollins playing an unaccompanied tenor sax solo on "Autumn Nocturne" That had just had been published in 1978 on Rollins' "Don't Stop The Carnival" album

Again, he was presenting an old master, Hawkins, demonstrating his complete mastery of his instrument, followed by one of his most accomplished disciples, Rollins, playing full out without a net to catch him. And Rollins was doing vocal things with his horn that seemed appropriate to hear after Mahalia and Dinah had had their say.

It recently became possible to replicate Andy's playlist when he Manne/Hawkins track became available on Rhapsody.

I hope this posting demonstrates that a playlist can be an interesting topic of comment and discussion on MOG .

I believe Playlists should be considered worthy objects of musical discussion on MOG , just as tracks published on Rhapsody or MOG can be, or videos published on YouTube or the other video posting services.

Have You Heard Lee Morgan?

DLuebbert — Mon, 07 Apr 2008 17:58:48 GMT

Click here to launch the Have You Heard Lee Morgan playlist on Rhapsody

Loquacious trumpeter Lee Morgan was a prodigy who played in Dizzy Gillespie's big band as a teenager and in Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers as a young man, first alongside tenor saxophonist Benny Golson and later with his friend tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter.

He developed a trumpet voice that could evoke the blues in nearly any situation. He intentionally cracked, crushed and stuttered notes for vocal effect. His modes of expression were conversational, casual, humorous, fiery, cocky, sometimes meditative or mysterious.

He frequently collaborated with Wayne Shorter, Jackie McLean, Hank Mobley, Joe Henderson, and especially drummer Billy Higgins. Morgan always had top flight pianists on his own recording dates including Herbie Hancock, McCoy Tyner, Harold Mabern, Wynton Kelley, and Barry Harris. With Art Blakey the pianists were Bobby Timmons and Cedar Walton.

Writing enough individual articles about Morgan's performances to do justice to his work seemed to me to be too daunting a prospect; it would take a book. Better to point to an enormous eight hour playlist that allows you to listen to some of his better stuff in a well paced and varied sequence or that you can sample at your leisure.

Morgan played on so many great sessions for Blue Note Records that following his career is a great survey of that label's catalog in the late 1950's and all through the 1960's.

His career came to an end when he was murdered in Slug's Tavern on the Lower East Side of Manhattan,in mid-performance as a new set started, when his band performed there on the evening of 19 February 1972. He was 33 years old.

The story that drummer Billy Hart tells about how that happened has the impact of a Greek tragedy. Listen to Hart here

The albums that are sampled by this playlist are:

Search For The New Land - Lee Morgan
The Procrastinator - Lee Morgan
Night Dreamer - Wayne Shorter
The Gigolo - Lee Morgan
Cornbread - Lee Morgan
Here's Lee Morgan - Lee Morgan
The Rumproller - Lee Morgan
The Sidewinder - Lee Morgan
The Sixth Sense - Lee Morgan
Infinity - Lee Morgan
The Last Session - Lee Morgan
No Room For Squares - Hank Mobley
Dippin' - Hank Mobley'
A Caddy For Daddy - Hank Mobley
All Or Nothing At All - Wayne Shorter
John Coltrane - Blue Train
Mode For Joe - Joe Henderson
The Freedom Rider - Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers
Indestructible! - Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers
A Night In Tunisia - Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers
The Big Beat - Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers
Moanin' - Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers'

Cecil Taylor - solo piano - from "Imagine The Sound", 1981

DLuebbert — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:53:13 GMT

Here's the kind of solo piano playing that Cecil Taylor could engage in by 1981.

He starts very meditatively, singing along with his lines. By about the third minute he's playing very wild stuff.

If you've never seen him before, he's astounding to watch.

Cecil Taylor - This Nearly Was Mine

DLuebbert — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 07:39:18 GMT

By time pianist Cecil Taylor recorded in the mid 1960's, he no longer improvised on popular tunes.

By my reckoning, this performance of Richard Rodgers' "This Nearly Was Mine" in 1960 for Nat Hentoff's Candid Records was his next to last recording of a standard tune. After he recorded "What's New" in a live recording at the Cafe Monmartre in 1962, he mostly relied on structures that he invented for himself.

You've got to hear how gently Cecil starts with a gentle ringing single note line that occasionally melts into an occasional bluesy chord. And then how bassist Buell Neidlinger joins and starts a conversation that lasts throughout the entire tune.

The recitation of the melody is very slow. During the course of it Cecil introduces a blues colored accompaniment that he will continually elaborate upon throughtout the whole performance.

Dennis Charles doesn't establish the tune's waltz time for nearly two minutes and it takes almost as much time before the tune liquefies enough for Cecil to start using some of the explosive pianisms he's known for. He's very sly how he slips out of the main channel of the tune, into his own thing, and then back into the melancholy mood of the channel.

In one episode Cecil and Neidlinger unexpectedly double time and shoot down a side rapid together before gliding back into the slower moving stream.

In another, Neidlinger and Charles hold the time and Cecil ignites and throws off musical sparks like a lit sparkler for several moments at his own independent tempo before rejoining the others.

This trio is playing all kinds of wondrous games with this tune along it's 10 minute duration. I love hearing every second of it.

Geri Allen - Drummer's Song - video from Leverkusen Jazztage, 1998

DLuebbert — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 09:10:42 GMT

Drummer Tony Williams was such a fiery, imaginative musician that sometimes it made sense to turn a jazz band inside out so that it framed and supported the drummer's invention, the better to experience the sonic fireworks that he could produce.

Usually, Williams' role was to provide a cushion of rhythm that the other soloists rode upon.

Miles Davis acted on this thought when Wayne Shorter's "Nefertiti" was first recorded. In that case, Davis and Shorter repeated the stately Nefertiti melody over and over, never soloing but subtly changing their phrasing, allowing Williams, Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter to speak loudly and clearly. They made grand use of the opportunity.

When pianist Geri Allen had the opportunity to make a trio recording with Williams and Ron Carter in 1996, she introduced her "Drummer's Song". This was a setting designed to allow Williams to produce a swirling percussion vortex during the statement of the tune's melody and during interludes during the performance.

"Drummer's Song" is also a showcase for Geri Allen's talent as a composer and as a piano soloist. She's gives her drummer full measure of the spotlight during the performance, but makes a very beautiful solo statement herself.

Tony Williams unexpectedly died in 1997, to our great loss, from complications of a fairly routine gall bladder surgery.

I didn't expect to find that there was a drummer around who could sit in William's place for "Drummer's Song".

By the evidence of the video presented below, Geri Allen found an able substitute in 1998 for a performance at the Leverkusen Jazztage.

I was very excited to find this clip and to realize that Tony had a disciple who had absorbed a lot of his drumming lore. It bothered me, though, because I didn't know who this musician was.

I could not find a record online of the 19th Leverkusen lineup, which would have satisfied my curiosity.

I did recognize that the bass player was Tony Dumas. I had for the first time seen him play with Cedar Walton last fall.

Internet searching allowed me to find out that Dumas somtimes liked to play with a drummer Ralph Penland, and that Penland and Dumas had played occasionally with Allen and with her husband Wallace Roney's band at various times.

Roney had played for many years with Tony Williams, and would likely appreciate a drummer who understood Tony's drum approach.

Penland's personal and MySpace page showed that he looked similar to the drummer in the video, although he carried more weight in the video than he does on the photos there.

The Ralph Penland Drums website included a testimonial from Tony Willams saying how much he appreciated Ralph's drumming. Penland's recordings on offer on MySpace demonstrate that he sounds like the videoed drummer.

My best guess for the identity of the drummer on the Leverkusen video is Ralph Penland.

Why isn't this man better known?

Thelonious Monk - Bolivar Blues

DLuebbert — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 08:36:03 GMT

Very interesting to see Monk at work here.

Tenor saxophonist Charlie Rouse solos very strongly after the melody is established and Monk sculpts a very amusing accompaniment behind him. At 1 minute 45 seconds, the camera work allows you to see the sculptor at work behind Rouse using wide piano intervals and jagged silences as his materials.

For the last 90 seconds of Rouse's solo Monk stands up and does a shuffle and stagger dance away from the piano and lets the band stroll, so that he can appreciate the way they are swinging.

He somehow intuits when Rouse is getting ready to finish and seats himself so he can start his own solo the instant he stops.

Lots of space, cracked intervals and body English during Monk's solo. Monk gets the piano to ring and chime.

Butch Warren is the bassist here and Frankie Dunlop is the drummer.

Frank Morgan - Well You Needn't

DLuebbert — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 07:49:33 GMT

Being able to play music started out easy for Frank Morgan, he was a teen age jazz prodigy who followed in Charlie Parker's footsteps.

Unfortunately, he followed too closely and ended up with a heroin addiction. He committed enough robberies to support his habit that he did more than 30 years in California prisons, most of it served in San Quentin. He played in prison bands during his time there.

When he was released in 1985, beyond expectation he found that folks remembered him and appreciated his music. He was easy to appreciate with his beautiful sound and never ending flow of ideas.

Prison didn't stop his music but a stroke in 1998 nearly did. His doctors predicted that he wouldn't be able to play again, but he recoverd his proficiency in six months.

As you can see, several miracles had to take place for you to be able to hear Morgan playing Monk's "Well, you Needn't" in 2006.

I would guess that he plays sitting down because of the effects of the stroke.

He's plays very freely, recasts the melody to his own taste, and then invents a lot of wonderful music to play during his solo.

Olatunji - Akiwowo

DLuebbert — Sun, 27 Jan 2008 09:10:56 GMT

Nigerian drummer Olatunji was a major carrier of African drum knowledge and tradition to America.

He came to the United States for study at Morehouse University in 1950. When he went to New York University to study public administration after graduation he started a small percussion group to earn money as he studied.

He ended up coming to the attention of John Hammond who signed him to record with Columbia Records in 1957.

He was well received by American jazz musicians. He became close friends with John Coltrane, who later wrote and performed a song "Tunji" in his honor. He performed on Max Roach's "Freedon Now Suite".

"Akiwowo" is a tune from his first record for Columbia, "Drums of Passion".

Akiwowo was a train conductor well-known across Nigeria, because he was careful to make sure everyone who caught his train didn't miss it when it was ready to leave after a stop.

The translation of the song goes:

Akiwowo conductor of the train
Akiwowo conductor of the train
Please take me home
Please take me home
To my fathers house
Akiwowo conductor of the train

The rhythms used in the piece emulate the sounds of a train barreling down the track and the sound of the train wheels clacking over the track ties.

The Meters - Cissy Strut

DLuebbert — Sat, 26 Jan 2008 09:05:17 GMT

Drummer Zig Modeliste swaggers through this with every part of his kit singing, as soon as bassist George Porter, Jr. starts the strut after the band members make a swelling shout together.

There's nothing muffled about what he's doing. His snare has that New Orleans street parade sound.

Guitarist Leo Nocentelli and organist Art Neville answer the bass and sometimes Zig with perfectly-timed simple ideas that feel so good.

It seems like it all should be too simple to work, but this adds up to create a track that's a funk juggernaut.

The Wild Tchoupitoulas - Meet The Boys On The Battlefront

DLuebbert — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 21:55:46 GMT

"Meet the boys on the battlefront
Meet the boys on the battlefront
Meet the boys on the battlefront
'cause the Wild Tchoupitoulas gonna stomp some rump!"

A reggae flavored battle song.

Tchoupitoulas is pronounced "Chop-e-too-las".

The Wild Tchoupitoulas - Brother John

DLuebbert — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 19:53:25 GMT

The Wild Tchoupitoulas is a New Orleans Indian tribe, a masqueing society, that works throughout the year on elaborate feathered costumes, and comes out for Mardi Gras to parade and perform. That's the genteel way to describe them.

They're also a street gang that battles and sings, if you listen to their lyrics.

"Brother John" laments the passing of one of the tribe members in battle and praises his bravery.

Big Chief Jolly is the leader of the tribe. Some of the other positions of responsibility are 2nd Chief, 3rd Chief, Trail Chief, Flag Boy, and Spy Boy.

The tribe is accompanied by The Meters, so this is as funky, or maybe more, than you can imagine.

Rev. Gary Davis - Death Don't Have No Mercy In This Land

DLuebbert — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:37:08 GMT

A powerful song by Reverend Gary.

Kind Of Blue Tribute Band - "Freddie The Freeloader"

DLuebbert — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 07:05:44 GMT

Daring to participate in a "Kind Of Blue" tribute band trades on the memories and reputations of the men who played on Miles Davis' "Kind Of Blue" album. It's very easy to be judged as wanting compared to Miles, Coltrane, Cannonball, Bill Evans, Wynton Kelley or Paul Chambers.

Drummer Jimmy Cobb was on the original recording and anchors this performance of "Freddie the Freeloader" and compares well with how he played 48 years ago.

Pianist Bennie Green plays very good blues but he doesn't make me forget about Wynton Kelley's "Freddie" solo.

Wallace Roney's trumpet and Mark Turner's tenor sax solos are well played, but make me wish I could hear Miles or Trane in their place. Bassist Buster Williams does a great job of walking under the band, although I don't like his solo much at the end.

Listening to alto saxophonist Vincent Herring is an entirely different thing however. He sounds like he's inherited full measures from both Cannonball Adderley AND Coltrane. I could imagine him playing on the original "Freddie The Freeloader" and making Miles a very happy man.

The rhythm section is very energized while he plays and together make a memorable sound.

Skip to halfway on the clip controller and you'll hear what Vincent can do.

Kind of Blue Tribute
Uploaded by MrDrive

Azar Lawrence - brief unaccompanied tenor sax solo

DLuebbert — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 06:07:54 GMT

Azar Lawrence was a great young tenor and soprano saxophonist who came up in the mid-1970's. He played on several great albums by McCoy Tyner, "Enlightenment", "Sama Layuca", and "Atlantis" and one, "The Moontrane", with Woody Shaw. These are all still in print.

He recorded two albums under his own name, "Bridge Into The New Age" and "Summer Solstice" that I enjoyed and listened to a lot. These have both gone out of print.

The critics at the time accused him of being a Coltrane clone, but I always thought that was BS. His solos always went in unusual directions, and had a strong impulse that didn't owe to Trane.

Truth to tell, the musician that he sounded most like was Arthur Blythe, the alto saxophonist who was his teacher in Los Angeles. We couldn't realize that at the time, because Arthur came to New York years after Azar had started to establish himself.

For reasons I never heard he fell off the scene by the early 1980's and hasn't recorded since.

I was delighted to discover this recent short unaccompanied solo by Azar, which I think is intended to demonstrate the capabilities of a saxophone label that he endorses. You can hear that he's still a very accomplished improviser.

Dexter Gordon - Tanya - Live at The Maintenance Shop, Iowa City, Iowa, 1977

DLuebbert — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 03:02:19 GMT

When he was a younger man, tenorman Dexter Gordon could swing you into ill health with the strength and energy of his playing.

By the time he returned to the United States to tour for the first time with his own permanent band after 15 years of residence in Europe, he had invested his tenor saxophone sound with a majesty that that was wholly his own. This change in Dexter's style likely was due to the influence of Ben Webster, who had his own full-throated, inimitable sound. Dexter played frequently with Ben at Cafe Monmartre in Copenhagen during his European residence.

This sequence of videos shows Dexter just a few days after he had finally settled on the personnel of his American quartet in 1977. These musicians, pianist George Cables, bassist Rufus Reid, and drummer Eddie Gladden, would travel with him for the next three years.

They're playing "Tanya", which Dexter originally played on his "One Flight Up" album in 1964. The Play button above will let you hear that.

What a difference 13 years experience and a super compatible band can make! The band in the video is playing with so much more drama. Dexter's solo on the audio clip is excellent, but the video is so much better.

The subtitle of "Tanya" is "the girl upstairs". The bluesy, rolling parts of the piece I think are meant to depict her night time life and the brighter walking interludes her daytime activities and demeanor.

Back in October 1977, I led the Lincoln Jazz Society in Lincoln, Nebraska, one state and two hundred and seventy-five miles west of Iowa City, where this video was recorded. Dexter played our first concert of that season on October 13th.

I understood that drummer Eddie Gladden was joining the band for the first time with our show.

The sets we heard during our concert included every tune recorded on the "Jazz at the Maintenance Shop" video, plus another hour of music. (We got to hear Dexter musically compliment George Cables for his piano solo on "Body And Soul" using a quote from Stevie Wonder's "Isn't She Lovely?" as he began a second solo that followed after Cables finished his.)

Dexter wore the same suit at our show that that he was videoed in here, and the other band members were dressed similarly. The "Tanya" they played on their first night together had the same spirit, used similar ideas, and followed the same routine as what we see in the video.

This video was broadcast on public television in 1978, and the packaging for the VHS I own only states that this was recorded in the late 70's.

I didn't inquire about the band's itinerary after they left us, but I believe they must have filmed this a day or two after they left Lincoln.

Click here to listen to this band's studio recording of "Tanya" in 1978 for the album "Manhattan Symphonie".

Dinah Washington - Evil Gal Blues

DLuebbert — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 23:29:55 GMT

Click here. Rhapsody lists the track I want to point you to but Mog refuses to build a Play button for it.

This is one of Dinah Washington's first recordings, done live when she was the singer for the Lionel Hampton Orchestra.

When she first sings "I'm an Evil Gal", there's a surge of approval from the audience that gives you an idea that they know what's coming.

"I've got bad news, baby, and you're the first to know"

"Now if you want to be happy, please don't hang around with me". If you love the blues, you'll hang on her every word.

Gangbe Brass Band - Oblemou

DLuebbert — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 22:59:00 GMT

I want to see a good video of this band! There are little glimpses of them that appear on the Internet, but they are all badly recorded and just last for a few seconds. I want to understand how they do what they do.

The ten members of the Gangbe Brass Band from Benin in Africa must be at least double threats: brilliant brass stylists who are also members of the band's vocal choir that responds to the two or three lead vocalists I hear in the band's recordings. They have incredible percussionists in their ranks.

And they have at least one tuba player (or euphonium, or bass trombone???) who counts as one of best in the world on his instrument. Gangbe does it's stuff atop astounding bass lines that anchor their proceedings. There's no bass player in the band, just that low brass holding down the fort.

In this tune "Oblemou", you can hear how this band finds grooves, and then in a split second shifts and goes full tilt in another direction.

There's so much these guys could teach the rest of the world!

Dinah Washington - Send Me To The 'Lectric Chair

DLuebbert — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 21:57:28 GMT

Dinah Washington is singing a song that Bessie Smith used to sing. She and Aretha Franklin are the two female singers to come after Bessie who match or surpass her talents on blues-based tunes. Early in her career, Aretha modeled herself on Dinah.

Here we have a video capture of a televion program and an audio track to compare.

The video let's you see directly the way Dinah could act a song, how wonderful and precise her diction was, how humorous she was, and how she travelled right on the edge beween singing and speaking as she interpreted a song.

The TV orchestra doesn't have great blues players like Clark Terry or Quentin Jackson who played on the audio performance, so she couldn't tear loose like she could when compatible spirits were playing with her.

She has a much larger presence in the audio performance, and sounds like she's having a great time. She's throttled back in the video. She probably would have shocked a 50's TV audience through and through if she hit them full-force with her blues singing talent.

It's worthwhile to listen to her entire "Sings Bessie Smith" album. Don't miss what she does with the "Jailhouse Blues" or "Backwater Blues".

Bobby McFerrin and Richard Bona - Dina Lam and Improvisation - 2005 Montreal Jazz Festival

DLuebbert — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 20:51:45 GMT

When a music video appears on YouTube, nearly always that means there is a DVD for sale that provided the source video for the clip.

I tried to track down the source for ths performance by Bobby McFerrin and Richard Bona, and found out it was a Bobby McFerrin DVD , "Live In Montreal" that Verve Music Group published in 2005. It seems that Verve must have already given up on it, and stopped publishing.

Here's a sign that Verve has made an awful mistake: there are three copies available on Amazon.com and they all are for sale for $300. Another sign: the clip has been posted on YouTube for 13 months and has been hit 614,000 times. That's about six times what you would expect for a top flight music posting on YouTube for that period of time.

Why the contention for this music? Check out how McFerrin and Bona improvise together.

Sonny Rollins-Niels Henning Oersted Pedersen-Alan Dawson - "St. Thomas", 1965

DLuebbert — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 07:51:18 GMT

The audio play button will let you hear Sonny Rollins' first recording of "St. Thomas" from his 1957 album "Saxophone Colossus".

The video clip will play a Rollins performance of "St. Thomas" from a 1965 European tour. This was apparently taken from a retrospective on Niels-Hennings career since there is a brief commentary by NHOP about Rollins (in Danish) in the middle.

Rollins' parents emigrated to New York City from the West Indies. He's played a number of songs (St. Thomas, Hold 'em, Joe, Don't Stop the Carnival, The Everywhere Calypso, Salvador) that use melodic ideas and harmonies similar to those he heard in calypso tunes that were played at West Indian dances when he was a child in New Youk City.

I've been able to attend one Sonny Rollins concert. He doesn't perform in my part of the country all that often.

After hearing all the great ideas he invented that night, I was giddy by time his performance ended. The high point was to hear what he did on the calypso he played.

Phil Woods and Eric Doney - Bohemia After Dark - 10/8/2005

DLuebbert — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 09:19:11 GMT

Phil Woods is playing a duet here with pianist Eric Doney.

Woods is playing with immense authority here. His alto sound is a wonder.

If you don't know Woods, his most recognizable moment in popular music is the alto saxophone solo he blew towards the end of the Billy Joel song "I Love You Just The Way You Are".

Woods does like to quote other songs as he solos on this blues that fellow altoist Cannonball Adderley liked to play. During his first solo I noticed him doing a bit of "Lulu's Back In Town" and a lick from Charlie Parker's famous "Donna Lee" solo.

He begins his second solo with the melody of Sonny Rollins' "Alfie's Theme". He later quotes from "Nature Boy" and Charlie Parker's "Scrapple From The Apple" as he trades eights and fours with Doney.

Phil Woods and David Sanborn - Willow Weep For Me - Night Music video

DLuebbert — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 08:49:18 GMT

Alto saxophonist Phil Woods, wearing the cap, is the guest on this Night Music video and is playing with altoist David Sanborn, the host of the program.

Phil Woods is one of the most brilliant of Charlie Parker's musical descendents. Starting with his love for Parker's and Johnny Hodges' alto styles, he found his own saxophone voice decades ago. He came up in the early 1950's.

David Sanborn is much younger and started to be heard on records in the 1970's, starting with more of a poppish soul and blues style. He studied with George Coleman and by the time this was recorded had become quite an estimable jazz man.

There's defintely some old master/young upstart tension happening here. Sanborn plays first and ends his solo with some very high altissimo notes. Woods starts his solo right in Sanborn's ending range and then exagerates it a bit. Maybe he was expressing a bit of irritation at what he thought of as showboating?

This arrangement of "Willow Weep For Me" uses the accompaniment that Miles Davis invented for his song "All Blues" during the A sections of the tune. (The form here is AABA , with the initial 8 bar A section repeated twice, an 8 bar bridge B section for contrast and a return to the A melody to end the cycle.)

Woods started to use this arrangement idea during the "Willow Weep For Me" performance that was recorded for his great "Musique Du Bois" album in the mid 70's, which is the audio track I'm pointing to at the top.

Woods loves to interpolate small snatches of other songs during his solos. Towards the end where he and Sanborn solo together he quotes Richard Rodgers' "It Might As Well Be Spring". Sanborn follows that by quoting the "I Feel Pretty' melody from West Side Story for a second and Woods instantly catches that and plays it also in unison with Sanborn.

Woods is an extremely inventive, witty and competetive player.

Arthur Blythe-Bob Stewart-Chris Joris - Lennox Avenue Breakdown - Concert at "de Werf" Bruges on 11/21/2005

DLuebbert — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 07:18:53 GMT

Arthur Blythe is an alto saxophonist with a huge singing sound that is instantly identifiable. In the ensembles he leads, he frequently prefers to have Bob Stewart provide a bass acompaniment using tuba instead of hiring a bass player.

In the 2005 video, Blythe and Stewart are accompanied by percussionist Chirs Joris who is playing djembe.

The audio track, which uses a bassist along with Stewart, is the title track from Blythe's first recording for Columbia Records in 1978. The musicians there include flutist James Newton, drummer Jack De Johnette, bassist Cecil McBee, guitarist James 'Blood' Ulmer, Blythe and Stewart.

John Coltrane - Blue Waltz - Juan Les Pins Jazz Festival, Antibes, France, July 27 1965

DLuebbert — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 08:28:46 GMT

"Blue Waltz" is a performance by John Coltrane's Quartet of the main theme of John Coltrane's "Ascension", a much larger work recorded six weeks before this concert.

This is extremely intense music. Even so, the "Ascension" performance which I'm pointing to on Rhapsody dwarfs this. Some who heard Ascension said it was one of the most powerful sounds ever recorded by humans.

I had to listen to "Ascension" in small measured doses turned way down before I acclimated enough so that I could start to appreciate it.

I'm very glad that this video has come to light. It presents the quartet during one of its most creative and inspired periods. The night before at this festival, they had done the first public performance of Coltrane's suite "A Love Supreme".

McCoy Tyner takes a mighty solo during on this tune. The camera work during the solo shows how Elvin Jones and McCoy locked in with one another and moved musical mountains together along with bassist Jimmy Garrison.

Andrew White, the saxophonist who has transcribed nearly all of Coltrane's solos, would probably list this as "Ridiculous" on the scale of technical difficulty that he uses to rate the solos in his catalog. (I'll have to check to see if he's done this).

John Coltrane - Blue Waltz 1965
Uploaded by Yedi

Helen Merrill - Here's That Rainy Day

DLuebbert — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:41:03 GMT

I hoped that Rhapsody would list Helen's "Deep In A Dream" album so that I could speak on behalf of her performances of "Baltimore Oriole" and "The Winter of Our Discontent" there, which she performs with a band that includes trumpeter Thad Jones, guitarist Jim Hall, and bassist Ron Carter.

Instead I get to Rhapsodize about this performance of "Here's That Rainy Day" from that album that found a home on this "When Love Goes Wrong" compilation.

And I'm very willing, because she and pianist Dick Katz take their time and let you feel every phrase. Lady can break your heart and cause you to marvel at the beauty of her singing.

This could happen to you even if all you get is the out-of-the-U.S. 30 second excerpt of the tune's beginning.

David Grisman - Neon Tetra

DLuebbert — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:42:47 GMT

David Grisman started out playing bluegrass music, a pretty conservative musical form, but was very attracted to doing jazz style improvisations using bluegrass instrumentation.

After he started performing that way with his bands, I'd heard that old timers would ask him "you still doing that dawg music?". That provided Grisman with the moniker which he uses playfully in many of his album and tune titles.

I love the intricacy of this song, and how the melody comes to a stop and then changes direction, without the band ever losing the wonderful groove they found. Do you figure they're imitating the motions and color swirls of tropical fish in a tank?

Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter - The Peacocks

DLuebbert — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 23:01:05 GMT

Pianist Jimmy Rowles was known for the excellence of his piano accompaniment for singers. Billie Holiday hired him long term in the 50's and so did Ella Fitzgerald in the 80's.

He was also a remarkable composer, given the evidence of this tune "The Peacocks" and his song "502 Blues (Drinkin' and Driven)", which Shorter played on his "Adam's Apple" album.

I'd love to hear many more Rowles compositions, but these are the only two that I know well.

He and Shorter had mutual admiration for each other. On different albums, Rowles played Shorter's "Lester Left Town", "Running Brook", and "The Chess Players".

I was actually trying to point at Rowles' album "The Peacocks" which Columbia Records issued under Stan Getz's name. Unfortunately that part of the Columbia catalog has not yet oozed into Rhapsody.

This performance, which originally appeared on the soundtrack of Bertrand Travenier's film "Round Midnight", is beautiful and shouldn't be called a consolation prize.

Shorter gets the sound of peacocks calling from the trees during his soprano sax statement that Getz got on tenor during his performance. The tune's harmonies are spooky and wonderful.

Bobby Hutcherson - "Bouquet"

DLuebbert — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 06:07:05 GMT

This is slow and quiet playing, on flower time. Imagine the time for a bouquet to fully open. Beautiful vibe and piano sounds with spare quiet cymbal accents very occasionally. The bass very gently counts one, two, three, with the three always announcing the second of a pair of chords.

Hutcherson's the vibist, Herbie Hancock, the pianist, Joe Chambers, the percussionist, and Bob Cranshaw is on contrabass.

Nothing else like this in jazz. It's probably that label that prevented you from finding out about it. Categories be damned!

Messiaen - Turangalîla Symphonie - 5th Movt ("Joy of The Blood Of The Stars")- Aimard, Davis

DLuebbert — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 05:48:42 GMT

This is a delirious piece of music by French composer Oliver Messiaen, played by a youth orchestra, the National Youth Orchestra of Great Britain.

I'm amazed seeing the size of the orchestra and by how well they play this. British education for orchestral performance must kick ass.

This is one of the few pieces of music that calls for a Theremin controlled by a keyboard, an instrument called "Ondes Martenot".

Toots Thielemans - "Sophisticated Lady" on Night Music

DLuebbert — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:48:06 GMT

I just found this. It's so beautiful it brought tears.

Starts with Toots, his chromatic harmonica, and a metronome. He does a one twelve bar chorus plus a fraction more of a slow, vocalized blues.

Then he joins the band and plays Ellington's "Sophisticated Lady". He owns this. After he's done, no one can tell you more.

If you watched "Sesame Street" as a little one, Toots did the harmonica for that show's theme song. If you grew up and watched "Midnight Cowboy" he's the harmonica there also. He's on Billy Joel's "Leave A Tender Moment Alone".

Julie Delpy - Waltz For A Night

DLuebbert — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 04:09:52 GMT

Julie Delpy is a lauded French actress who has also become a songwriter.

This excerpt ends a few seconds from the end of the film "Before Sunset" that Delpy and Ethan Hawke did with director Richard Linklater.

The backstory: French Celine, Delpy's character, had fallen in love with American Jesse, Hawke's character, during a day they spent together in Vienna as young 20 year olds. This is what's shown in the film "Before Sunrise". Just as they parted to return to their home countries, they arranged to meet again in 6 months. "Before Sunrise" ends there.

As it happens, the remeet didn't happen.

Late in an afternoon in Paris years later as "Before Sunset" begins, Celine introduces herself again to Jesse at a book reading for a novel he wrote that fictionally recounts his day with Celine. They walk about Paris, catching up with one another.

Celine sings this song to Jesse just a few minutes before he's supposed to leave for a plane that supposed to take him back to America, and his wife and kid.

What would you do?

Wayne Shorter - Night Dreamer

DLuebbert — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 03:28:13 GMT

When he wrote this, Wayne Shorter was thinking of Elvin Jones drum style and was counting on Elvin's ability to play a heavy groove that paradoxically floats in waltz time, to evoke dream time. And he gave pianist McCoy Tyner a sequence of four chords that repeats obsessively until it suspends and floats for a few breaths before the obsession returns, a kind of dream logic.

That, with Reggie Workman's bass, provides the underneath. Elvin, McCoy and Workman lock in to give Shorter and Lee Morgan a magic carpet of sound to fly with.

Shorter and Morgan both dig in and use tenor sax, trumpet and the magic available to find wonders to play for you.

I can't recommend this highly enough.

Jerry Gonzalez - Ya Yo Me Cure

DLuebbert — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 02:50:07 GMT

Jerry Gonzalez is a trumpeter and conga player who plays jazz with a Latin accent. He played with Eddie Palmieri early in his career. He led the Fort Apache Band with his brother Andy for many years and has recently found kindred spirits among Spain's flamenco performers.

On his first recording back in 1979, he started his album with a reenactment of a folkloric healing service in the studio. "Ya Yo Me Cure" as best as I can figure means "I've been healed". The whole sound of the performance is triumphant and hugely energetic.

If anyone can translate the Spanish, you'd increase my understanding of the proceedings.

Roy Haynes - excerpt from "A Life In Time" video

DLuebbert — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:50:16 GMT

Roy Haynes gigged as a young man with Lester Young and Charlie Parker and today, age 82, leads his own band. This part of the documentary features a short drum solo Roy did about 20 years ago and a current performance by his band.

He tells great stories about playing for Billie Holiday, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan, and John Coltrane. Also says that Jimi Hendrix showed up and came up on the bandstand the first time he led his own band in the late 60's.

At the end of the concert clip he stands up walks away from his drum kit and subtly accompanies the end of the tune by playing the long bell timeline pattern, well known in Latin, Haitian and African music, using only his drum sticks.

Cannonball Adderley - Work Song - Jazz Scene USA video,1962

DLuebbert — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:16:27 GMT

Cannonball Adderley will always be known for his work with Miles Davis in the late 1950s (he's the alto sax player on "Kind of Blue) and for the bands he led before and after that with his brother, trumpeter and cornetist Nat Adderley.

Nat wrote "Work Song", which they play here. This was a big hit for them, and was played by many other jazz, R&B, and pop bands. Ray Charles did a wonderful vocal version of this using lyrics that the host of this TV program, Oscar Brown Jr., wrote. Herb Alpert's Tiajuana Brass also played it and got a lot of radio play in the late 60's.

On this you can hear how alive and powerful both of the brothers sound, and how hard they could swing on a blues song. Also the liberties they could take while playing the blues.

I love seeing the grin that Cannonball flashes in the middle of Nat's solo.

This is one of the Adderley's best band, which includes pianist Joe Zawinul (he later co-led Weather Report), bassist Sam Jones, and drummer Louis Hayes.

Elvin Jones - drum solo from movie "Zacharias"

DLuebbert — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 22:38:16 GMT

RSchaut's been higlighting some of the great jazz drummers the past few days. He's pointed to videos by Buddy Rich, Max Roach and Kenny Clarke.

I'm a big champion of Elvin Jones' so I thought I would contibute another drum voice to the pantheon.

This clip is from a movie from the early 70's called "Zacharias", that billed itself as a rock n' roll western. It had the conceit that different great musicians of the time took the parts that you would find in a typical western. Elvin played the part of a bad, "Black Bart" type of character.

Jimi Hendrix also appeared in it, but i don't remember his character as vividly.

Eddie Palmieri Orchestra - Palo Pa Rumba

DLuebbert — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 07:56:29 GMT

Eddie Palmieri is a very inventive piano player. When I hear his introductions and solos, he sounds like he has listened very closely to Thelonious Monk.

His salsa band is a very intense, fiery outfit.

His percussion players are always top notch. He's had a number of on-their-way-to being-great jazz musicians in his horn sections, such as David Sanchez, Brian Lynch, Conrad Herwig, and Donald Harrison.

Press the Play button above to hear a live audio recording of their "Palo Pa Rumba". The YouTube video below shows you how they look when they play it. (They're really going for it in the video. A little over-loud for the recording setup though)

Doc Watson - Alberta

DLuebbert — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 08:34:44 GMT

Doc Watson seems to know every tune that has sounded in his part of Appalachia. I think this ballad is the most beautiful song of all that he's done.

Youssou N'Dour - In London 6

DLuebbert — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 05:33:09 GMT

Someone has posted a large number of performance video of Youssou up on YT.

I just saw this and like it very much.

Youssou N'dour - Set - In London

DLuebbert — Sat, 12 Jan 2008 03:33:42 GMT

Youssou is one Africa's best and best known singers. Here's a link to his Wikipedia article.

His style of music is called mbalax. He runs a great band called the "Super Etoile de Dakar" (Super Star of Dakar). He sings his songs in Wolof, French, and very occasionally in English.

The Persuasions - "Looking For An Echo" video

DLuebbert — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:17:33 GMT

This song tells you about this group's early days. They've been together for decades.

Rhapsody doesn't yet offer their "Chirpin'" album, which is in my own desert island collection. If they ever activate that one, you'll see a blizzard of posts from me, shakin' your sleeve to pay attention to the great work on that album.

Wayne Shorter Quartet - Joy Rider

DLuebbert — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 09:06:22 GMT

Wayne Shorter playing with his quartet live at Marciac.

Wayne has described his drummer Brian Blade as a "meganova" in interviews. I see what he means.

I've seen complaints that this band doesn't connect consistently. They're all pulling in the same direction here.

Aretha Franklin - Respect - video 1990

DLuebbert — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:35:02 GMT

This is Aretha in 1990 when she was a mature performer.

See if you can pick out Quincy Jones grooving during an audience shot.

James Brown - "Mother Popcorn" (Live Music Scene 1969)

DLuebbert — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 08:11:04 GMT

James Brown back when he was young and fresh. His band is tight beyond belief.

The highlight for me is seeing how he and tenorman Maceo Parker work together towards the end.

When they recorded the studio track, you can hear James call for Maceo but then they fade. Now we can see what we were missing.

Mother Popcorn (Live Music Scene 1969)
Uploaded by eXsistenZ1968

Barry Harris - "I Didn't Know What Time It Was" solo piano

DLuebbert — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 04:13:13 GMT

Barry Harris is one of the great bebop pianists who came out of Detroit in the 1950s. Hank Jones and Tommy Flanagan were two others.

He taught many of the musicians who came through there, and runs workshops today in New York City for those who are learning to play jazz.

He's performing "I Didn't Know What Time It Was", a tune that one of Barry's heroes, Charlie Parker, played frequently.

Phineas Newborn Jr. - "Oleo" video - Jazz Scene USA, 1962

DLuebbert — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 03:25:52 GMT

Phineas is sliding all over Sonny Rollin's tune "Oleo". Worth two minutes of your time it to see a piano wizard at work.

Sonny Criss & the LA All Stars - Memory Lane Blues

DLuebbert — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 01:29:28 GMT

Till I found this I'd never seen Sweets Edison solo on camera for more than a few moments and had never laid eyes on altoist Sonny Criss, pianist Hampton Hawes or bassist Leroy Vinnegar while they were at work.

This is an outstanding live in-club performance from 1970.

Keith Jarrett-Charlie Haden-Paul Motian - live improvised ballad

DLuebbert — Fri, 11 Jan 2008 00:24:24 GMT

In the late 70's, Keith Jarrett kept two wonderful bands alive and in play at the same time. One was a quartet that included this trio of Jerrett, Charlie Haden, and Paul Motian with saxophonist Dewey Redman added and a European Quartet with Jan Garbarek, Jon Christensen, and Palle Danielsson.

At the time, folks argued about which band was the better. Both bands had a very different feel.

I don't know the name of this piece, but this band played with such intuition they could have made it up on the spot.

John Scofield and Pat Metheny - Everybody's Party video

DLuebbert — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:53:35 GMT

Guitarists Scofield and Metheny recorded their album "I Can See Your House From Here" and toured together in 1994.

Two enormously talented friends here having a blast performing together.

Pat Metheny-Victor Bailey-Bob Moses - Turnaround video

DLuebbert — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 22:20:58 GMT

The band is playing Ornette Coleman's blues "Turnaround" here.

This performance was meant to memorialize bassist Jaco Pastorius, who had died from injuries suffered during an altercation in September, 1987. Metheny and Moses had played many gigs with Jaco, and recorded with him on Metheny's famous first recording, "Bright Size Life".

Ilu Aye - Obatala video

DLuebbert — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 21:53:30 GMT

The Ilu Aye group in this performance plays bata drums, a trio of two sided drums used in Santeria and the other ritual traditions thst had their origins among the Yoruba speakers of Africa.

They play the song dedicated to the orisha Obatala.

For comparison, I've included the audio link for Grupo Ilu Ana, another ensemble who has recorded this call.

Michel Petrucciani - One For Us- Mt. Fuji Jazz Festival, 1988

DLuebbert — Wed, 09 Jan 2008 08:51:38 GMT

I was looking for a video that Michel Petrucciani did with Wayne Shorter and Jim Hall. Instead found this performance with bassist Gary Peacock and drummer Roy Haynes via a YouTube search.

I love Michel's playing here but am especially excited to find a video that documents drummer Roy Haynes' talents so vividly.

Roy has an instantly recognizable drum sound (he snaps, crackles, and pops) and its great to see how he does it. He drums complete sentences and paragraphs when he solos. (Max Roach, his compatriot, was even better known for doing this).

After his solo, he brings a high hat cymbal up next to Michel and they have a conversation. Haynes is so inventive and plays with such clear impulse that I don't miss the absence of the rest of the drumkit that he left behind.

Roy was 63 at the time of this and looks as if he knows where the fountain of youth is stashed.

Miles Davis - Spanish Key- Antibes, 7/25/69

DLuebbert — Tue, 08 Jan 2008 07:33:26 GMT

Miles Davis piece "Spanish Key" from his "Bitches Brew" album was the first jazz performance I heard that I loved so much that I tried to memorize every phrase in it.

This video shows Miles's trumpet solo from a live performance in Antibes four weeks before "Bitches Brew" was recorded.

Miles solo is worthy of memorization but the band is playing much faster than on the sudio recording. Chick Corea is already feeding Miles electric piano comping ideas that will be important in the studio recording.

Miles was a master of using space in his solos. Miles trained in the ring with professional boxers. He seems to have transfered what he learned there to be able to pick exquisite moments and the right actions to answer what his band throws his way. He answers with powerful moves.

Abbey Lincoln - "First Song" video from Night Music

DLuebbert — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 05:21:30 GMT

I just found this.

You probably don't know Abbey Lincoln.

I'm angry on your behalf and hers. It should have been easy for you to have made her acquaintance and for her to have you as one of her supporters and partisans.

Such beauty, presence, and interpretive skill. And all that along with her talent as a composer and lyricist.

Keith Jarrett and Jan Garbarek - Spiral Dance video - Hannover 1976

DLuebbert — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 22:58:50 GMT

Jarrett starts this in a mysterious sounding harmonic area, and Garbarek joins and starts to drift with him through this foggy territory a minute later. Bassist Palle Danielsson and drummer Jon Christensen gradually and quietly join leaving the tempo afloat.

Jarrett and Garbarek both have beautiful singing sounds on their instruments. It's a wonder to hear how they meditate together.

Garbarek lays out and leaves Jarrett to let the mood evaporate over half a minute's time. Then right at the 5 minute mark, Jarrett, with a tiny gesture, sneaks through a musical keyhole to start the "Spiral Dance", which we find is built around a repeated bass figure played with unchanging pitch, which Jarrett answers with two up-jumping chords at the end of every rep. It's a very funky sound which gets animated as Jarrett, Danielsson and Christensen find their groove.

They build for two minutes until Garbarek plays the main melody of the tune which abandons the repeated figure and soars into new territory.

The melody slips back into the bass figure and the solos start, allowing the band to eventually work itself into the kinds of rolling ecstatic frenzy that John Coltrane's bands were known for.

The YouTubers who've listened to this already give this performance high marks and I do too. Here's the YouTube page for the video.

Betty Carter - Most Gentlemen Don't Like Love

DLuebbert — Sun, 06 Jan 2008 10:11:46 GMT

Betty Carter is singing very imaginatively on this in front of a jazz trio that just flies (pianist John Hicks, bassist Walter Booker, drummer Idris Muhammad).

This song has one of Cole Porter's most risque lyrics, which starts with the statement "Most Gentlemen, they don't like love, they just like to kick it around".

She sings the line "a pounce in the clover, and then when it's over, it's "Bye! What is your name baby?" with great relish.

This performance originally came from Betty's album "Now It's My Turn" on Roulette Records. As far as I know this album has never been released in its entirety on CD. Last I checked getting a vinyl copy of this will set you back $100.

It's a great loss to listeners that the entire album is not available. Every tune on it is wonderful: the Carter originals "Open The Door", "New Blues (You Purr)", and "No More Words", "Just Friends", "Star Eyes", a medley of "Music Maestro Please" and "Swing Brother Swing" tunes Billie Holiday liked to sing, "Making Dreams Come True", "Wagon Wheels", and "I Was Telling Him About You".

John Coltrane - Spiritual - Live At the Village Vanguard

DLuebbert — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 05:28:14 GMT

John Coltrane found the melody for "Spiritual" in a collection of black spirituals that he was studying. There's a well-known spiritual "No One Knows The Trouble I've Seen". This different melody from his collection shared that title.

He orchestrated it for his band before their time at the Vanguard. They recorded it three times during their stay. This "C" take went on the original "Live At the Vanguard" album.

This is one of the few pieces of music I know where I can tell you the hour and date that I first heard it.

In October, 1973 the whole world came very close to dying by a nuclear exchange when the armed forces of the U.S. and Russia both went on highest alert for a morning during Israel's Yom Kippur War, because the superpower's client states Israel and Egypt both seemed to be at risk of a massive defeat at each other's hands, since the situation was that fluid and since armaments were sluicing into the Mideast in floods from the United States and from Russia.

While this sabre rattling was taking place, I was listening to Coltrane "Spiritual" for the first time. When I was finished listening that morning and went to class, I heard that we had all escaped with our lives when the sides decided it was a good idea to stand down.

I might have been the only person who experienced it this way, and it's totally magical thinking, but for me I've thought since that Coltrane's "Spiritual" had a spirit it in that seemed like it could save the world and heal men's souls.

A Trip in San Quentin

DLuebbert — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:38:38 GMT

Art Pepper was a gifted jazz alto saxophonist and junky. The crimes he committed to support his habit were punished by incarceration in San Quentin prison.

Pepper recounted that prisoners in the yard would walk up to others there and ask a man to "take them on a trip".

They were asking him to tell a story about something in their life that could take their minds away from prison life. It could be about an exploit the storyteller had been on, a memorable romantic encounter with a woman, something that happened when they were kids, something they dreamed about.

Pepper said the men would close their eyes and try to live in their minds what the storyteller had experienced.

Those trips led Pepper to write this tune "The Trip".

The storytellers for this Trip, are Pepper, drummer Elvin Jones, who had also done prison time, pianist George Cable, who had a special musical link with Pepper and bassist David Williams. They make a floating, dreamy sound together with a deep bottom. Pepper's melody and solo bring to mind something out in eastern lands.

Double Cutting at Parchman's Farm

DLuebbert — Fri, 04 Jan 2008 04:05:43 GMT

Click here to play Alan's Lomax's prison field recording of "Early In The Mornin'"

There are four men holding axes standing around a live oak tree forming a square with their bodies. They are prisoners, inmates of Mississippi's Parchman Farm. It's 1947, and Alan Lomax is recording them with a portable recorder out in the woods.

They will chop this oak down by double cutting. Two of the men standing on opposite sides of the tree facing each other will swing and strike the tree with their axe heads at nearly the same instant, and then the two facing each other on the other axis of the square will take a lick with their axes. The sides will trade strokes till the oak comes down.

With the first axe stroke all four men begin to sing a work song of their collective invention, "Early In The Mornin'". They all have prison names. There's '22', Tangle Eye, Hard Hair, and Little Red, with '22' leading the song. Their alternating paired axe strokes give them their rhythm accompaniment, a slow, measured "whack...whack...whack...whack" sound.

The men are shout singing, "it's early in the morning, when I rise, baby". Each of their voices seem to take different ways till they come together on the sylable right before the next axe stroke.

'22' gives a sobbing gasp at the end of each line at the instant of maximum exertion where he and his partner send their axeheads flying. They repeat an idea four times, each man in their own voice, and come together at the end of the last, all singing the word "Well.." together in perfect unison where they change the idea for the next series.

The second idea is that "he has a misery on his right side". The idea for the third series is "whosoever told it, he told a dirty lie". I guess a complaint about the testimony that put them in this situation. You can hear what they think about it, with the axe strokes after each "he told a dirty lie".

This song is a safety device for these men. It keeps them together. If they take a swing out of turn, one of their neighbors could die. It also gives them the energy to give what needs to be given to do their hard work and keeps their spirits alive, active and limber.

There's such a strong rhythm in their singing, you can dance to it alone.

I've heard similar things but nothing exactly like this. It surely moves me, like the axes that shake the tree.

Sonny Rollins - Four - video (Denmark 1968)

DLuebbert — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 09:40:43 GMT

Sonny Rollins frequently played cadenzas to end tunes. Here his opening cadenza visits "The Daring Young Man on the Flying Trapeze", a calypso melody, and "I Can't Get Started" on the way to starting Miles Davis's "Four".

His idea flow is never ending, his sound is ever-varying and he plays with great good humor.

This rhythm section, pianist Kenny Drew, Niels Henning Oersted Pederson (NHOP for short) and drummer Tootie Heath was one of the best playing in Europe from the late 60's through the late 70's.

Magic Sam - "All Of Your Love" and "Magic Sam's Boogie" video

DLuebbert — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:58:55 GMT

There's a brief interview with Sam as he rides on the band bus and then he scorches two blues. He was a spooky great singer too.

Sam died in 1969 just when the rock and roll folks were getting to know the blues, so he's not well-known.

His "West Side Soul" album is essential.

Oregon - Green and Golden - Belo Horizante 2007 (live video)

DLuebbert — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 07:38:29 GMT

Oregon has been a unit long enough that Apollo astronauts carried their music around the moon, which lead to the moon craters "icarus" and "Ghost Beads" being named after two of their compositions.

Ralph Towner and Paul McCandless are multi-instrumentalists. Towner plays twelve-string and acoustic guitar, piano, the Prophet synth and trumpet. McCandless plays oboe, soprano sax, and bass clarinet. These two, plus bassist Glen Moore compose the band's music.

Their first percussionist Colin Walcott was once Ravi Shankar's road manager. He told me he got his sitar lessons from Ravi and his tabla lessons from Alla Rahka in the back seat of cars on the way to gigs. He was wonderful on these and played every kind of drum and precussion imaginable during performances besides. He performed once on a Miles Davis recording and was told to "just drone, motherf---er!"

Oregon disbanded for several years after Walcott was killed in a car crash in East Germany.

When they reformed, Indian tabla player and multi-percussionist Trilok Gurtu joined.

I don't know their newest percussionist Mark Walker very well, but he sounds good in this concert in Brazil.

Despite the excellence of their music, they're barely known. I hope y'all whisper about them to your fellow moggers.

"Green and Golden" is a Towner composition.

Their entire Belo Horizonte concert is up on YouTube spread across 14 video clips. Search for "Oregon Towner" to find those if you have eyes for more.

Oscar D'Leon - Yo Quisera

DLuebbert — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 02:31:32 GMT

I helped found a community run non-commercial radio station, KZUM , in the late 70's. My friend Carlos Siso always played Oscar D'Leon's music on his Sunday afternoon program there.

Carlos was Venezuelan and couldn't get a radio license from the FCC so I was his engineer.

Oscar's salsa band was killin' then like the band that plays for this video, and Oscar always sounded this good when he sang.

I'm very happy to find that he's retained his vitality as he's aged.

That seems to be the conceit of this video. Oscar's the bald gentleman with moustache doing all of the exercises in the video while he sings.

There's lot to love in this music: the salsa rhythm players, the interplay between the screaming trumpets and the trombones, the pianist's driving rhythm, the way the band sings a refrain over and over in the middle and Oscar improvises a response for every rep.