Yay! Music to cook by!

#2 Montmartre (Django's Jump)

This little jump was recorded in Paris with Rex Stewart and His Feetwarmers (how's that for a folksy band name? Probably a name "borrowed" from Sidney Bechet's New Orleans Feetwarmers, an earlier "hot jazz" group) on April 3, 1939, in Paris. Six months before the German invasion of Poland, even in a pre-war Paris spring, there must have been a sense of trouble coming. Still, for this session, the bright rhythms of Django Rhineheart's guitar still push along, with Rex Stewart on cornet, Barney Bigard on clarinet and drums, and Billy Taylor on bass. From the Capitol Jazz Records "django All Star Sessions" album.

#3 Handful of Keys

Fats Waller's 1929 rendition of his signature piano solo, from the 1987 BMG The Joint Is Jumpin' CD. From George Winston's liner notes for the album:

"...Listen to the power of his drive in this. His bass notes are solid, yet not brash or boomy, thus it sounds as if a bass player is playing with him. His bass lines have variety, since he wasn't locked into playing only "oompa" bass (1st and 5th of the chord) that some players overdid. He often substituted powerful 10ths or 10ths with a 5th in the middle in the bass, instead of an octave. Fats could play these 10ths as easy as most pianists play octaves. Listen to the drive as the song modulates from F to B-flat in the middle. Also wonderful are the choppy riffs up and down the keyboard toward the end."

#5 Hallelujah

Art Tatum usually preferred to play his piano solo, particularly on recordings, but here, at the suggestion of Norman Granz, he teams with Buddy Rich on drums, and Lionel Hampton on vibraphone, for a great little up tempo "standard" that has been recorded many, many times, written by Vincent Youmans, Leo Robin, and Clifford Grey.

#5 Kicking the Clouds Away

George Gershwin made a number of player piano rolls for high quality reproducing pianos like the DuoArt, feeling that the sound quality of piano music was so much better from quality pianos fitted with player mechanisms than from the phonographs of his day, that he himself is said to have owned a number of DuoArt equipped Steinways. Here he is, "live," in as straightforward a way as you could get him in a digital medium, courtesy of a DuoArt roll he made in about 1928, from a 1990 Quintessence CD.

#6 St. Louis Blues

The Dave Brubeck Quartet picked this for inclusion on their 25th Anniversary Reunion concert in 1976, which is the version in this set. That's fitting, as this 1914 W.C. Handy tune is one that the quartet had recorded a number of times, and Brubeck still frequently features it in sets with almost every group in which he plays. It's a great tune, and a good bridge for us, from the past to more modern sounds.

#7 Peace

When I lived in Boston, this Horace Silver tune, played by the late Tommy Flanagan on his "Something Borrowed, Something Blue" album was the familiar opening theme for Eric Jackson's "Eric in the Evening" jazz radio program. I liked listening to Eric over the air waves back then, and I often still tune in for his show streamed over the Internet. While I also have been a regular listener to H. Johnson's long running Saturday night jazz broadcast on Atlanta's WABE-FM, I'll say that my own tastes probably lie closer to Eric Jackson's. It's through the hands of guys like Jackson and Johnson that a lot of people get interested in jazz, and one of the "coming true promises" of the Internet is to give people with the kind of background they possess access to a much greater listening audience. That's a win for them, a win for the music, and a win for the musicians whose lives and works are connected in listener's interests.

If you listen to jazz programming on radio or Internet streams, what (or who) is your favorite source/personality?

#8 Chelsea Bridge

Here's a Billy Strayhorn tune, done by Gerry Mulligan (baritone sax) and Ben Webster (tenor sax) on the Verve album "Gerry Mulligan Meets Ben Webster" recorded November 3 and December 2, 1959. I was about 10 or 11 when I first heard this, in the early '60s, and I'm still a Strayhorn, Mulligan and Webster fan, on the strength of it.

#9 Tenderly

This Oscar Peterson rendition of the classic ballad by Walter Gross and Jack Lawrence (warning: link contains embedded audio) is from a September 13, 1952 Carnigie Hall appearance, for a Jazz At The Philharmonic concert, re-issued on the "Oscar Peterson's Finest Hour" CD. Like a lot of "live" recordings of that era, there are some mix issues at the beginning, but hey, when you recorded "live" in a JATP setting, there weren't, typically, any second takes. What happened, went on the records.

#10 All Of Me

Benny Carter, with help from Clark Terry, on fluglehorn, from the 1990 Live at Princeton album, in a sweet version of one of the most often recorded "standards" written in 1931 by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons.

#11 My Favorite Things

In the spring of 1965, The John Coltrane Quartet played some dates at the Half Note in NYC, which were live broadcast on radio, but until 2005, had never been officially "issued" by any record label, when the Coltrane estate made his personal master tapes of those dates available for issue on Impulse Records as "One Up, One Down". So, from that May 7, 1965 night, in the last year they played together as a quartet, here are four of the most influential American musicians of the 20th century (John Coltrane on tenor and soprano sax, McCoy Tyner, piano, Jimmy Garrison, bass and Elvin Jones, drums), "stretching out" on a Rogers & Hammerstein tune from "The Sound of Music."

These guys play with tremendous power and energy, to the point that the speed and complexity they create from such a simple tune is nearly overwhelming, as if they were recalling the be-bop days from 20 years before. Each of the members of The John Coltrane Quartet was/is a powerful player in his own right, and together, they make enough sound to put most amplified rock bands to shame. And yet, there's no looping, no overdub, no synths, and the only electronics you hear in this recording are the radio station's feed mixer, and the tape recorder electronics very low hum.

Y'all know the tune, so go ahead, hum along at home, if you can get a note in edgeways! The track ends with a station break from 1965, voiced over the music, as the Quartet is faded out by the radio engineer...

Lovely! Music to bead by!

#12 'Round Midnight

The Modern Jazz Quartet takes a short turn with this tune by Thelonious Monk, in their 1960 European Concert album.

#13 So What?

On May 19, 1961, Miles Davis played with a 21 piece orchestra put together by his collaborator Gil Evans at a Carnigie Hall concert that is still generally regarded as a high water mark in jazz history. "So What" (a Davis composition from the remarkable 1959 "Kind of Blue" album) was the opening number, and while it's clear that the orchestra and Davis are getting off on a rocky start, and the performance isn't a technical masterpiece in other areas, the energy and the musicianship are evident.

#14 Some Day, My Prince Will Come

This 1937 tune for the Walt Disney animated film "Snow White and the 7 Dwarfs" is one that a lot of jazz musicians have recorded. This version is from a July 2002 concert by Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette.

This one is for all you folks waiting with baited breath for the Superbowl half-time show, in a couple hours -)

Who's bettin' on Da Bears?

#15 Squeeze Me

A little quartet setting of Fats Waller's "Squeeze Me" with Paul Desmond on alto sax, Ed Bickert on guitar, Ron Carter on bass, and Connie Kay on drums. Ed Bickert is one of those guys that sneaks up on you, because of his quiet proficiency. Seriously, listen to him do all the work normally done in a quartet by the pianist, and realize, he's the guitar player here.

UGH.

I hate this college.
I can't listen to MeCha Radio here!!! :(
The stream is interrupted every five seconds, quite literally.

It's gone on and off four times while I wrote this comment.

This makes me incredibly sad.

HOW CAN I FIX THIS.

#16 A Sleeping Bee

In this June 15, 1968 cut from Bill Evans At The Montreux Jazz Festival, the longest incarnation of The Bill Evans Trio (Bill Evans (piano) with Eddie Gomez on bass, and Jack De Johnette on drums), takes on the Harold Arlen-Truman Capote standard from the House of Flowers.

"...HOW CAN I FIX THIS."
posted by CitrusFreak12 04 February

You probably need to ask your college network admins to quit throttling streams from the Mecha Radio Shoutcast server, CF12. Or show them your drop logs, and see if they can explain what might be happening. One listener in Memphis has been having some problems, today, too, but nowhere near as bad as yours.

I do not know what drop logs are.
But I will complain about this.

#17 Bye-Ya

Here's Thelonious Monk to take us out with his Quartet from the "Monk's Dream" album. Good tune for wrappin' up a set, so, "Bye-Ya!" To recap, what we heard in this set was:

1. McCoy Tyner - The Greeting (2:27)
2. Django Reinhardt - Montmartre (Django's Jump) (2:25)
3. Fats Waller - Handful of Keys (Piano Solo) (2:47)
4. Art Tatum/Buddy Rich/Lionel Hampton - Hallelujah (4:55)
5. George Gershwin - George Gershwin - Kicking the Clouds Away (3:04)
6. Dave Brubeck Quartet - St. Louis Blues (9:04)
7. Tommy Flanagan - Peace (6:13)
8. Gerry Mulligan - Chelsea Bridge (7:22)
9. Oscar Peterson - Tenderly (5:45)
10. Benny Carter - All of Me (8:20)
11. John Coltrane - My Favorite Things (22:45)
12. The Modern Jazz Quartet - 'Round Midnight (3:50)
13. Miles Davis - So What (12:01)
14. Keith Jarrett - Someday My Prince Will Come (9:18)
15. Paul Desmond - Squeeze Me (4:34)
16. Bill Evans - A Sleeping Bee (6:05)
17. Thelonious Monk - Bye-Ya (6:02)


and, uh, GO BEARS!

"I do not know what drop logs are. ..."
posted by CitrusFreak12 04 February

You can download and use a packet analyzer like Ethereal to record a log of all Ethernet activity to your machine, and this might show when packets are being dropped, and why.

Thanks, paulsc, I enjoyed that.

Glad you could come along for the ride, chrismear.

Nice list, paulsc.