#2 The Joint Is Jumpin'

Fats Waller and his Rhythm (Fats Waller, piano and vocal; Herman Autry, John Hamilton, Nathaniel Williams, trumpet; George Robinson, John Haughton, trombone; William Alsop, James Powell, Fred Skerritt, alto saxophone; Gene Sedric, Lonnie Simmons, tenor saxophone; Al Casey, guitar; Cedric Wallace, bass; Wilmore "Slick" Jones, drums) Recorded April 12, 1938. Also one of several short film bits Waller and his band did in Hollywood. The spoken voice over by Fats Waller makes this just sound like an invitation to a good time.

Ah dammit, I am so tired I can barely keep my eyes open.I have to go to bed and miss this.

Lovely! I so look forward to your sets, paulsc. :)

Too bad, essexjan. Good stuff on the way. Sweet dreams, kiddo.

# 3 Humouresque

This Art Tatum piano solo was recorded for the Decca label in Los Angeles, February 22, 1940. A video of a later filmed performance of this tune is currently available on Youtube. Unfortunately, Art Tatum didn't film much, and of that little record, a lot has been lost to time, including performances for early television, recorded to kinescope and later discarded as trash. I'm glad for Youtube, when I see things like this posted.

Glad to have you along, phoenixc!

#4 Relaxin' At Camarillo

In the last half of 1946, Charlie "Bird" Parker was recording for Dial records. A disastrous July 29, 1946 Dial Session was chronicled in Elliot Grennard's short story "Sparrow's Last Jump" included in the anthology From Blues to Jump: An Anthology of Jazz Fiction. Parker's increasing heroin habit and mental instability made him a hazard to himself and those around him. He even started a fire in his hotel room, for which he was arrested, and sent to Camarillo State Hospital for treatment, until the end of January 1947. When he got out, he returned to Dial studios for more session work on February 19 and 26, recording tunes with his old friend Erroll Garner on piano, and on the 26th with a larger band including tenor saxophonist Wardell Gray, pianist Dodo Marmarosa, and trumpeter Melvin Broiles. Parker's only original composition for the February 26, 1947 Dial date was this number, included on the compilation Yardbird Suite: The Ultimate Charlie Parker Collection.

I am at work preparing for a goddamn workshop next week :( I am panicking so maybe some jazz will help. I am all ears. Eyes and hands on the computer, tho.

Too bad for you, carmina! Workshops = no fun!

#5 Footprints

From the 1966 album Miles Smiles, this is a Wayne Shorter tune frequently played in concert by Miles from 1967 to 1968. A video clip from a performance credited as being taped (filmed?) in Europe on tour in 1967 is available on Youtube.

#6 Odds Against Tomorrow

The Modern Jazz Quartet from the "European Concert" album, doing a tune written by their pianist John Lewis, as the theme for a 1959 movie score. The film isn't bad, but the soundtrack is better.

#7 One Down, One Up

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 Down, One Up, Live at the Half Note". So, from that March 26, 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 sax, McCoy Tyner, piano, Jimmy Garrison, bass and Elvin Jones, drums), doing "One Down, One Up." This 27 minute continuous improvisation by John Coltrane on tenor sax was so much talked about from the night he played it, that bootleg recordings of the radio broadcast were circulated among musicians, for study, for nearly 40 years.

This is, no doubt, a hugely complicated chunk of music, and not something that's going to appeal to everyone. So, I can't sell it to you; you either take it for the explosion of creativity it represents, or not. I hope you'll give it a full listen. Like a seminal lecture, it's not something you listen to everyday, but it shapes your thinking, ever after. It starts out with the full quartet, and after some extended opening supporting statements from Tyner and Garrison, they leave the stage, and Coltrane plays out and turns through his musical ideas against the powerful rhythms of Elvin Jones. Once he's alone as the melodic voice, he begins sketching out new chords in melody, and then revisiting them with additional harmonic developments, and introducing entirely new themes he then develops in new directions. In doing so, he held 130+ people in the little club that night, in the palm of his hand, so amazed they didn't quite know whether to applaud at the end, or not. Finally, Tyner and Garrison return to close up the piece. Afterwards, people there went out on the street, and walked around, to breathe, before returning to the club. This is truly music of and for the mind, more than for the ear.

John Coltrane died of liver cancer 2 years after this. His final performances and recordings extend his ideas and efforts at building a harmonically free style of jazz, although even many fans of his earlier work find these later recordings filled with cacophony, and call them unmusical. But, if he hadn't died so prematurely, at only 41, I have to believe that so much about the music of the last 40 years would've been different.

I mean, can you imagine being out for pizza over in Hoboken, and tuning into this on your car radio? On a spring night, in 1965?

How cool would that have to have been?

For comparison, the next radio station on your dial over in Hoboken, was probably playing Sam the Sham and Pharohs doing Wooly Bully, in March of 1965.

#8 The Single Petal of a Rose

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra from the album, The Ellington Suites.

Finally caught you. Sounds and reads as good as I hoped.

#9 That Old Feeling

Gerry Mulligan usually played baritone sax and Stan Getz typically played tenor, but when they met for this Norman Granz suggested date for the Verve label, Mulligan suggested they trade horns for one "side" of the record, as a kind of extra interest element. So, here you hear Mulligan on tenor, and Getz on baritone! The tune is by Lew Brown and Sammy Fain.

Glad you made it, UWS. I've spent many a pleasant hour with techno and remix, thanks to you. Glad to return the favor, in some small way.

#10 Sometimes I'm Happy

Oscar Peterson from Oscar Peterson's Finest Hour on a July 29, 1961 date recorded at the London House in Chicago. Ray Brown on bass, and Ed Thigpen on drums. Originally released on the album "Oscar Peterson at the Stratford Shakespeare Festival" Verve MGV 8024.

The music actually helped clarify a lot of thoughts ive been having recently so i can cogently write a letter to a friend of mine. So, my many thanks for the programming.

#11 You Won't Let Me Go

Josh White, Jr. with Robin Batteau on this Allen/Johnson tune from their 1986 album "Jazz, Ballads, and Blues".

#12 Never Let Me Go

Bill Evans, alone, from Bill Evans Alone. Here's what he had to say about this tune, from the original liner notes for that album:

"Perhaps the hours of greatest pleasure in my life have come about as a result of the capacity of the piano to be in itself a complete expressive musical medium. In retrospect, I think that these countless hours of aloneness with music unified the directive energy of my life. At those times when I have achieved this sense of oneness while playing alone, the many technical or analytical aspects of the music happened of themselves with positive rightness which always served to remind me that to understand music most profoundly one only has to be listening well. Perhaps it is a peculiarity of mine that despite the fact that I am a professional performer, it is true that I have always preferred playing without an audience. This has nothing to do with my desire to communicate or not, but rather I think just a problem of personal self-consciousness which had to be conquered through discipline and concentration. Yet, to know one is truly alone with one's instrument and music has always been an attractive and conducive situation for me find my best playing level. Therefore, what I desired to present in a solo piano recording was especially this unique feeling. As you can readily see from the length of the tracks, I did get involved perhaps most successfully in Never Let Me Go It is difficult to make a qualitative judgement, however, since one always must be wary of falling prey to indulgence in a too subjective feeling unsupported by musical content.
My solo piano professional experience has been negligible and it is sad that this great tradition in jazz is in danger of extinction because of the prevalent public attitude relegating a single pianist to background for conversation or dinner. Therefore, I hope that my playing has sufficient merit to carry the listener without distraction to the musical feeling I have strived to accomplish in these recorded performances." -Bill Evans

What's so great about this i can come back to this thread anytime and find such amazing music. You're a great lesson for any DJ, paulsc. Beautifully researched, brillantly commented. A sincere radio show. MeCha DJs watch out.

Thank you, kindly, UWS.

Thanks paulsc, this is really great. Why doesn't the XM jazz on satellite TV sound this nice? Hubby and I were listening today and yesterday, and it seemed like one continuous song of annoying horns. I like horns, but it wan't pleasing.

#12 is especially beautiful.

#13 Forlane

Hubert Laws in a 1976 recording of a tune by Ravel for the album "Romeo and Juliet" for CTI with Garry King on bass, and Barry Finnerty on acoustic guitar.

Don't know about March of '65, but in August, after Boss Radio KHJ had premiered, here's what would have been playing in Southernly Californium...

Unfortunately, KMPC, KFI and the other 'adult' AM stations got no closer to Jazz than an occasional Mel Torme scat chorus, and you had to go to KBCA-FM for Jazz Radio, where Chuck Niles was just starting his 25 year gig while Al "Jazzbeaux" Collins kept his "Purple Grotto" in San Francisco (he brought his tragically hip for the '60s act to L.A. in '68, but it never hit it big here and he moved to N.Y.C.).

Penicillin-Resistant Nostalgia.

Anyway, I'm listening.

"... Why doesn't the XM jazz on satellite TV sound this nice? ..."

Well, LoriFLA, I, uh, don't work for XM. Don't think I'd want to, either.

But thanks for listening, here. And thanks to all those who put this service together, and keep it going, too. mudpuppie, seanyboy, taz, et al.

#14 Butch & Butch

Keith Jarrett, Gary Peacock, and Jack DeJohnette from the 2002 live recording "Up For It" in a nice old Oliver Nelson be-bop era tune titled "Butch & Butch". "Butch & Butch" was nominated for the 2004 Grammy Award for Best Jazz Instrumental Solo.

Wow! That last track with Hubert Laws was amazing. I used to play the flute in high school and had no idea at the time that it could sound as sweet and cool as that!

"...Penicillin-Resistant Nostalgia.

Anyway, I'm listening."
posted by wendell 06 February


Penicillin-Resistant Nostalgia?

Wish I'd said that. Glad you made it, wendell.

#15 Cherokee

Virtually all horn players know Ray Noble's "Cherokee" since Charlie "Bird" Parker took to playing break neck solo riffs over it years ago at Birdland. It's such an easy tune, that spraying a bajillion be-bop notes all over it became something of an institution, as if musicians needed to do that a 3:00 a.m., in order to stay awake. This little rendition from Wynton Marsalis' 2001 "Popular Songs" compilation in that tradition, and he sprays a lot of notes too. But sometimes, I wish people would just take this great old tune, simply, for what it is.

#16 Nigerian Marketplace

Ramsey Lewis and Dr. Billy Taylor on an Oscar Peterson tune from their 1989 album "We Meet Again".

#17 Gone

Miles Davis with the Gil Evans orchestra from Porgy and Bess takes us out of this set. To recap, in this set we heard:

1. McCoy Tyner - The Greeting (2:27)
2. Fats Waller - The Joint Is Jumpin' (Fats Waller and his Rhythm) (2:49)
3. Art Tatum - St. Louis Blues (2:31)
4. Charlie Parker - Relaxin' At Camarillo (3:07)
5. Miles Davis - Footprints (9:49)
6. The Modern Jazz Quartet - Odds Against Tomorrow (6:56)
7. John Coltrane - One Down, One Up (27:36)
8. Duke Ellington & His Orchestra - The Single Petal of a Rose (4:08)
9. Gerry Mulligan & Stan Getz - That Old Feeling (6:00)
10. Oscar Peterson - Sometimes I'm Happy (11:49)
11. White, Josh Jr., with Robin Batteau - You Won't Let Me Go (2:29)
12. Bill Evans - Never let Me Go (14:32)
13. Hubert Laws - Forlane (4:16)
14. Keith Jarrett - Butch & Butch (7:26)
15. Wynton Marsalis - Cherokee (2:23)
16. Ramsey Lewis/Billy Taylor - Nigerian Marketplace (7:43)
17. Miles Davis - Gone (3:40)

Next time, we're doing jazz investigative journalism, sort of...

Penicillin-Resistant Nostalgia?
Wish I'd said that.

That should've been "Penicillin-Resistant Nostalgia^TM"
It's mine, mine, all mine.