Jazz April: week 3 listening

Louis Armstrong: The Complete Hot Five & Hot Seven Recordings (Columbia)
It was hard to go wrong kicking off week 3 with a classic. Throughout the week I made my way through all four discs. Armstrong's breaks, stop time passages, phrasing, elasticity and tone worked their magic like they always do. Essential listening.

Jimmy Giuffre: Free Fall (Columbia)
Giuffre's trio with Steve Swallow and Paul Bley is a favorite of mine and I can still remember hearing my introduction to the trio via 1961 (the ECM reissue of Fusion and Thesis). This led to Free Fall and while it didn't grab me the way the earlier work did, I stuck with it. This week I put it on for the first time in about a year, and I was reminded again just how different this group was in the 60s avant-garde crowd. Be sure to check out the live recordings from this trio released on HatOLOGY.

Yusef Lateef: Jazz Moods (Savoy)
Recorded in 1957, this was Lateef's first release as a leader (although his second album was from a slightly earlier session). The opening notes from the argol - a double-tubed reed instrument with a drone pipe and a melody pipe - grab your attention and it is maintained throughout the album with each of the five tunes hitting a different flavor - there's blues, modal, 7/4, pedal tones and the pairing of flute and Curtis Fuller's trombone is a color you don't hear too often. This was Lateef's working band at the time and its focussed sound is an important contributing factor to the album overall.

Steve Lacy/Steve Potts: Tips (Corbett vs Dempsey)
I wrote a little about my sole Record Store Day purchase here. 

Christian Weidner: The Inward Song (Pirouet)
Seeing that Christian has a new album (along with another as a sideman) due out on Pirouet, had me reaching for this quartet album from 2010. He has a superb alto tone and melodic sensibility with the bonus that he never overplays his hand - check him out! The drumming of Samuel Rohrer really popped out to me this week. There's a bunch of music on Pirouet that I want to check out including albums by Anna Webber and Joris Roelofs in addition to the two mentioned above.

Ran Blake: Ghost Tones (A-side Records)
Released last year, this album features different line-ups - ranging from solo piano to sextet - tackling material by or associated with George Russell (plus a couple of songs by Blake). While, I gave it one spin last week and three more this week, I haven't been able to get into it just yet. I'm not afraid of letting an album grow on me though, and I have a feeling this one might sneak up on me.

Lacy - Potts - Aebi: Tips

Steve Lacy/Steve Potts: Tips (Corbett vs Dempsey)

This was my sole Record Store Day purchase. I picked it up at the Corbett vs Dempsey gallery prior to Bob Gluck speaking about his new book on the Miles Davis "Lost Quintet." Recorded in 1979 and originally released by HatHut in 1981, Tips was recently reissued by Corbett vs Dempsey.

The trio of Steve Lacy (ss) Steve Potts (as) and Irene Aebi (vocal) play 14 pieces, labeled A through N, inspired by Georges Braque's advice to artists. Lacy set these "tips" to brief melodies (two or three bars in length) creating a song cycle that I have found very engaging (on the 1st two and a half listens!).

Although the pieces tend have similar form - Aebi stating the melody with horns accompanying, improvisation by the horns (collective or solo), move to the next melody - it doesn't seem to weigh down the album. In fact, this structure combined with the brevity of the works (each clocking in around the three minute mark) are strengths of the album. The themes are short, the improvisations brief and album as a whole is very concise. Everybody stays on point, yet there is still plenty offered during the improvised passages as intensity and textures shift throughout the album to keep things moving.

A: We Will Never Have Any Peace - The Present Is Perpetual  
B: Do Not Imitate What You Wish To Create  
C: I Want To Be In Tune With Nature Rather Than Copy It  
D: I Don't Do As I'd Like, I Do As I Can  
E: Art Is Made To Trouble, Science Reassures  
F: The Only Thing Valuable In Art, Is What Cannot Be Explained  
G: One Must Achieve A Certain Temperature That Makes Things Malleable  
H: Limited Means Lead To New Forms, Invite Creation, Make Style  
I: Impregnation, Obsession, Hallucination  
J: It's The Change Happening That Reveals To Us, Day To Day Existence  
K: Echo Answers Echo, All Is Repercussion  
L: For Every Gain There Is A Corresponding Loss - That Is The Law Of Compensation  
M: Progress In Art Is Not About Extending It's Limits, But In Better Understanding Them  
N: With Age, Art And Life Become One 

Outside his work with Lacy, I only can recalling hearing one recording of Potts - an area to explore in the future perhaps. And I find similarity between Potts and Charlie Rouse - their long service to a bandleader overshadowed or blinded people to their work in other settings.

Corbett vs Dempsey have reissued a few 70s HatHut albums lately (including some from Joe McPhee and Jimmy Lyons) and it sounds like they have more on the way.

Record Store Day

As you may have heard Saturday April 20 was Record Store Day. I took it pretty easy and only went to the Jazz Record Mart. I timed my run to coincide with the in-store performance of Nick Mazzarella (as) Devin Hoff (b) & Mike Reed (d).

Nice to see a decent crowd in the store (the pics below are from after the trio's set and the crowd had thinned a bit). It was quite pleasant strolling the aisles accompanied by a live band.

I picked up two solo saxophone albums - Anthony Braxton's classic "For Alto" (Delmark 1969) - not sure why it has taken this long for me to get it - and Evan Parker's "Chicago Solo" (Okka Disc 1995) - Parker's first album dedicated to solo tenor (after many solo soprano albums).