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Welcome to another 2 hours of jazz on Radio Mecha. As I generally do here on Tuesday and Thursday evenings from 7 to 9 p.m. Eastern Time (Standard or Daylight, depending on the season), or as noted on the Radio Mecha Dibs page, which also lists upcoming shows by other Mechans who enjoy sharing music, I'll be posting some links, comments and credits as the set plays, which I hope are of interest to those listening, as well as to those who come to this thread later. An index of past programs is available here.

LoudCity (the folks who handle the Radio Mecha streaming server) rules prevent taking requests, or doing some of the things you might expect of commercial broadcasters, but you can reach me with other ideas and requests, by posting in this thread, or, if you're a Metachat member (a "bunny" in common parlance), by e-mail.

In this program, we lead off with Art Tatum's famous 1933 "cut" tune, "Tiger Rag." Pure and simple, "Tiger Rag" was the means by which Tatum threw down the gauntlet to every other piano player in NYC, where he'd just moved from Ohio. The record circulated like pre-antibiotic era disease amongst pianists, who universally recognized Tatum as the technical master of the instrument. It's not the kind of thing you can listen to everyday. But it is the kind of thing you must listen to, some time. After Tatum's "Tiger Rag," anything else is going to seem pretty anti-climatic, but we do have a tune called "I Don't Know What Kind Of Blues I Got" with some great back stories, plus some music from Nina Simone. It ought to be a good couple of hours, so fill your glasses with something good to drink, and perk up your ears!

The tune that I open these sets with, "The Greeting" is from a later McCoy Tyner album, called Things Ain't What They Used To Be.

#2 Tiger Rag

Art Tatum piano solo, recorded in NYC March 21, 1933. One take, before overdubbing was even invented. One piano. Two hands, that by all contemporary accounts, never left his wrists.

For $22.95, you pianists out there can buy a transcription, and see for yourself, maybe, how the heck he fingered this. From that link:

"Probably the best authentic note-for-note transcription of Art Tatum currently in print: Advanced Piano level, plus a couple of cups of coffee for your right hand. . ."

I'm still working out the stats for myself, but by my reckoning, Tatum plays something north of 2000 notes in the 2 minutes and 21 seconds it takes him to render this tune... That's some freakish finger independence, to say nothing of musical imagination. And you can seemingly hear distinctive "four hand" parts, but really, he did it with just two hands.

#3 I'm Going Away To Wear You Off My Mind

King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band ["King" Oliver and Louie Armstrong (cornets), Honore Dufrey (trombone), Johnny Dodds (clarinet), Lil Hardin Armstrong (piano), Bill Johnson (banjo), and Baby Dodds (drums)] from an April 5, 1923 acoustic recording in Richmond, IN, with a tune by Charlie Johnson / Warren Smith / Lloyd Smith. For those interested, or coming to this thread later, the above link to redhotjazz.com contains a number of links to Real Audio streams of this and other early recordings by this great band. Or, you can find this cut on the excellent Milestones compilation CD "Louis Armstrong and King Oliver."

#4 The Blues (Pt. 1)

Sometimes LoudCity rules that cover what can be broadcast on Radio Mecha cut to the bone. In particular, this 4 part effort by Meade "Lux" Lewis, in its entirety, would seem to break the LoudCity rule regarding consecutive tracks from a single recording being played. Which is too bad, because they are only 4 seperate cuts, due to prior technical limitations of 78 RPM records! It was somewhat unprecedented for Lewis to be asked to do the original recordings, the way they were made, in the time they were made, at all. Here's the story:

In 1938, the predominant medium of mass distribution of music was the 10" 78 RPM record, which could contain about 3 minutes, or perhaps 3 minutes and 30 seconds (maximum) of music. To get longer pieces recorded, producers could move up to the larger 12" 78 RPM record, which could hold up to 5 minutes of music, but this was an expensive choice in terms of production costs, and the 12" records made of shellac were heavier and more fragile than their 10" cousins. Moreover, the 12" format wouldn't play properly on all 78 RPM turntables, because many had short tone arms from the days of steel needles and acoustic horn playback.

So when Meade "Lux" Lewis was offered a chance in 1938 by Alfred Lion, founder of the then startup jazz record label Blue Note, to record a longer set of sides on the 12" 78 RPM format, he took it as an opportunity to create what is essentially one long 16 minute improvisation, spread over 4 12" sides, of which this cut is the first side. In the studio, Lewis would get a go signal from the control room, and play his music, which a disc cutter immediately cut to a master disc, there being no tape or wire recorders employed in music recording then. When it got to a point where the 4 minute side was complete, he'd get another hand signal from the control room, and vamp the same 8 bars, until he got another hand signal letting him know the cutting table master blank had been changed, and was good to go. And then he'd take off with another 4 minutes, on the new side. The intent was to issue a 2 record set of the composition, with sides 1 & 4 on one record, and 2 & 3 on the other, so that they could be stacked and flipped on record changers of the day.

However, this recording is now packaged as a part of the 1998 Topaz compilation CD "Boogies and Blues," and under Loud City rules, I can't play all 4 sides as the one continuous improvisation they were conceived to be, since we're only allowed to play a maximum of 3 cuts from a single CD in any program. So, I'm going to break this up and play them as individual tunes in future sets.

#5 And The Angels Sing

A legendary swing era recording from 1939 by Benny Goodman and vocalist Martha Tilton that helped keep Goodman's reputation afloat as his band members slowly departed for greener pastures. From the 1999 EMI-Capitol Special Markets compilation CD "The Best of Benny Goodman."

#6 Ko Ko

This Charlie Parker composition was extensively re-worked by the digital audio magicians who did the soundtrack for Clint Eastwood's 1988 tribute film "Bird," for which, they won an audio Oscar. This version is from the soundtrack CD, which is, perhaps unsurprisingly (considering that the soundtrack production team spent millions cleaning up Charlie Parker recordings and creating new recordings around these salvaged tracks), a good listen on its own. The alto sax you hear is Charlie Parker, but the rest of the band are contemporary musicians who laid down their tracks to match Parker's reworked recording.

#7 I Don't Know What Kind Of Blues I Got

Duke Ellington and His Orchestra from the 2003 3 CD box set "Never No Lament: The Blanton-Webster Band," with an Ellington tune recorded in Hollywood December 2, 1941. For those that wonder why I often include the recording dates and venues from discography in my little blurbs, it's because the life of musicians, especially jazz musicians, is often remembered by the public in terms of tunes they recorded. Too often, possibly for lack of information (intentional or otherwise on the part of artists and record companies), the public takes music in a context far different than that of its creators, and forgets that the people who created it led eventful lives, which gave them reasons to create the tunes we later use as soundtrack elements in our own lives. So, plugging in some dates and places, along with songwriter credits, is a little benign pushback from me, to remind myself, as much as anyone, of those simple facts.

In the case of this tune and this band, December 2, 1941 was a day of unrecognizable, at the time, landmarks. For one thing, it was the last pre-war recording session for the Ellington band, and the mobilization after the December 7, 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor would immediately effect them, curtailing travel schedules and creating a shellac shortage, which cut into their record release schedules in those days before the invention of petrochemical vinyl as a record material. It was also about that time that the seriousness of bassist Jimmy Blanton's tuberculosis was being realized, and that he was leaving the band to enter treatment, which wouldn't be successful in those pre-antibiotic days, leaving him to die July 30, 1942.

And it was also a time of economic and political turmoil within the recording and radio businesses, both of which directly impacted the earnings and popularity of the band. The ASCAP radio ban of 1941 (December 31,1940 to October of 1941) had hit Duke Ellington, an ASCAP member since 1935, hard, and it had complicated the music publishing business, and the radio business forever more, by spawning rival BMI (Broadcast Music Industries). And yet, the apparent public impact of this action was already inspiring similar thoughts on the part of the American Federation of Musicians, which would shortly culminate in the AFM ban of 1942, talk of which must have already been circulating to Ellington by the date of this recording.

So, it's no wonder that Ellington might have been wondering what kind of blues he'd got, when he wrote this tune. The vocal by Herb Jeffries perhaps expresses some of that fatigue and angst:

"... There's no rest for the weary,
I'm goin' to see Snake Mary,
'Cause I don't know what kind of blues I've got."

But the most startling thing about this tune is that, after an ensemble passage in A-flat, and a vocal in C, Ellington superimposes an A-flat riff over the last part of vocal which remains in C - thereby creating a polytonality that creates previously unheard "blue notes."

#8 Out Of This World

"C'mon, Bean," Kenny Burrell called, "let's play something pretty. Think of something pretty." And with that, after some consultation with A & R man Ozzie Cadena, they decided to cut the tough "Montono Blues" which I played on this program back on June 7. But the album that resulted from those sessions, "Bluesy Burrell," (and its later CD reissue) also contained a number of fine cuts, such as this tune by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer, on which the Hawk did not play, and this, despite the freedb information appended to the .mp3 title tag fields, is one of those.

#9 It Ain't Necessarily So

From the CD re-issue of the 1958 Miles Davis-Gil Evans collaboration inspired by the Gershwin opera "Porgy and Bess," here's the advice of the character (rascal) Sportin' Life, to Bess.

#10 Perdido

Art Tatum on piano, Lionel Hampton on vibraphone, and Buddy Rich on drums with a 1955 Tatum Group recording of the standard by Juan Tizol with lyrics by H. J. Lengsfelder and Ervin Drake, first made popular by the Duke Ellington band, of whom Tizol was a member for 15 years. This cut via the compilation CD "The Tatum Group Masterpieces, Vol. 3."

evenin' paulsc :)

Good evenin', phoenixc! Glad you could join me.

#11 Hold It Right There

Joe Williams and friends from his 1983 CD "Nothin' But The Blues" with a tune by Eddie "Cleanhead" Vinson. For those dropping by this thread later, here's a YouTube link to "3guys" doing the tune.

#12 I Wish I Knew

The John Coltrane Quartet [John Coltrane (tenor sax), McCoy Tyner (piano), Elvin Jones (drums) and Jimmy Garrison (bass)] with a Harry Warren - Mack Gordon tune from the CD re-issue of their 1962 album "Ballads."

#13 Passanova

Guitarist Joe Pass with a tune of his own, from his "Virtuoso #3" CD.

#14 How Long Blues

From the 1989 compilation CD set "Soul Brothers/Soul Meeting," (of tunes originally cut in the early '60s) here are Ray Charles and Milt Jackson doing a tune by Leroy Carr.

I never am around when you're doing this... so yay! I'm happy I'm in time for the Ray Charles. 'Cuz he rocks my world ALWAYS. :) Thanks.

Good to have you join us, miss lynnster! Plenty of good stuff still comin' up, too!

#15 My Man's Gone Now

I've never been a big Nina Simone fan, primarily because both times I paid money to see her perform, she was very rude to the audience, which is never a good time. Some "artists" aren't big on the live performance side of the music business, and are never really happy on stage. Although I can't claim to know, Simone by many accounts was of this stripe increasingly in later years, if not suffering from mental illness herself. On record, she was at best eclectic, and I think she got a lot of bad A & R advice from her record companies at various points of her career, not that she would have been particularly prone to take even good advice from others. In the end, to me, she was a stylist, and sometimes a pretentious one, at that. But she could lay down a good recording, particularly in her early career, as this Gershwin tune with lyrics by DeBose Heyward, from the CD reissue of her 1966 album "Nina Simone Sings the Blues" demonstrates. So credit where credit is due, and enjoy!

#16 David's Eyes

New England pianist Deborah Franciose with a composition of her own, from her 1995 CD "Can't Stop It Now." Unfortunately, this CD is out of print, with no plans that I know of for re-issue.

Funny thing... I saw Nina Simone once and I was looking forward to being berated by her. Instead she was in a really good mood because her brother took his first plane flight (at 80 or so) to come and see her in LA. So she was smiling & giddy the whole time. Still batshitinsane, but happy.

I felt cheated.

Next time I shoot the neighbor kids with a pellet gun to get them to quit making noise in the pool, I'm gonna dedicate it to her, though. Seems only fair.

#17 A Natural Thing

Guitarist Earl Klugh with a tune of his own from his 1984 CD "Wishful Thinking."

"...I felt cheated. "

Too bad we couldn't have swapped tickets then, for a night I saw her in Providence, RI. She was on a royal rip that night, and pretty foul mouthed, to boot. "Berate" barely would've covered it...

#18 Joao Marcello

From the CD re-issue of their 1975 album "The Best of Two Worlds," here are tenor saxophonist Stan Getz and vocalist & guitarist Joao Gilberto with a tune by Gilberto.

#19 5-5-7

From their 1989 CD "Letter From Home," here is the Pat Metheny Group with a tune by Metheny and keyboard wizard Lyle Mays. I heard The Pat Metheny Group in the fall of 1989 at Chastain Park when they were touring this album, and during the introduction of a tune, he talked about the "meanings" an audience ascribes to songs and song titles, as opposed to how the musicians think of them. He said that many times, through the whole period of writing, recording and producing a tune, he and Mays and members of his band often referred to tunes by their time signatures, or by numbers that referred to their dominant chords, or repeats. As in "That 5/7 thing," or "that one with the 5-5-7 break." So, here's that one.

#20 If I Should Lose You

The Keith Jarrett Standards Trio, from their 1984 CD "Standards, Vol. 2" with a pretty tune by ex-lawyer Ralph Rainger with lyrics by Leo Robin, the songwriting team probably best known for the 1938 Oscar winning tune (that later became Bob Hope's theme song) "Thanks For The Memory."

#21 New Love

Guitarist Stanley Jordan from his 1985 CD "Magic Touch," with a tune of his own.

#22 All This Love

This tune by Eldra DeBarge was a big R&B hit in 1982 for the family group DeBarge, and is taken up here with more than their usual level of studio production by the jazz duo Tuck and Patti, from their 1998 CD "Paradise Found."

#23 Rhythm A Ning

From his 1986 CD "Double Trios," here is pianist McCoy Tyner with a tune by Thelonious Monk.

Paul, you obviously prepare and put in a lot of work. Any chance you'd let us know in advance when you've got a show coming up? I'm happy I caught part of this show, but I want MORE. MORE great Jazz, I tell you. seriously, thanks.

"...Any chance you'd let us know in advance when you've got a show coming up?..."

Glad to theora55! Twice a week, I'm here Tuesday and Thursday evenings 7 - 9 p.m. Eastern (Daylight or Standard) Time, unless otherwise not noted on the Radio Dibs page of the Metachat Wiki.

Tell all your friends!

#24 Big Foot

Diana Krall originally wanted to be a jazz pianist who might occasionally sing, but the reality of the marketplace has encouraged her to become a jazz singer who plays piano. Here she is from her 1993 debut CD "Steppin' Out," with a tune by Klaus Suonsaari, where she shines as a young pianist.

#25 There Is No Greater Love

Peggy Lee with a 1928 tune by Isham Jones and Marty Symes, from the 1995 compilation CD "The Best of Peggy Lee."

#26 I Will Say Goodbye

Once again, The Bill Evans Trio, with Eddie Gomez on bass and Eliot Zigmund on drums, takes us out with the title track from the 1977 album of the same name. To recap, in this set, we heard:

1. McCoy Tyner - The Greeting (2:27)
2. Art Tatum - Tiger Rag (2:21)
3. King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band - I'm Going Away To Wear You Off My Min (2:52)
4. Meade 'Lux' Lewis - The Blues (Pt. 1) (4:17)
5. Benny Goodman - And The Angels Sing (3:15)
6. C. Parker - Ko Ko (4:21)
7. Duke Ellington - I Don't Know What Kind Of Blues I Got (3:17)
8. Kenny Burrell (with Coleman Hawkins) - Out Of This World (4:57)
9. Miles Davis - It Ain't Necessarily So (4:25)
10. Art Tatum - Perdido (5:06)
11. Joe Williams - Hold It Right There (2:44)
12. John Coltrane Quartet - I Wish I Knew (4:54)
13. Joe Pass - Passanova (4:33)
14. Ray Charles & Milt Jackson - How Long Blues (9:15)
15. Nina Simone - My Man's Gone Now (4:16)
16. Deborah Franciose & Moonfire - David's Eyes (4:38)
17. Earl Klugh - A Natural Thing (2:56)
18. João Gilberto/Stan Getz - Joao Marcello (3:25)
19. Pat Metheny Group - 5-5-7 (7:53)
20. Keith Jarrett - Gary Peacock - Jack DeJohnette - If I Should Lose You (8:32)
21. Stanley Jordan - New Love (5:37)
22. Tuck & Patti - All This Love (5:28)
23. McCoy Tyner - Rhythm A Ning (4:32)
24. Diana Krall - Big Foot (7:06)
25. Peggy Lee - There Is No Greater Love (3:37)
26. Bill Evans Trio - I Will Say Goodbye (3:30)

"Take a music bath once or twice a week for a few seasons, and you will find that it is to the soul what the water bath is to the body."
~ Oliver Wendell Holmes

thanks paulsc!

Thanks, paulsc!

Thanks!

You're more than welcome, folks. Thanks for lending me your ears for a couple hours!

Excellent!