Back from the wet west! A damp summer so far... Anyhow – the more perceptive will have noticed that I haven't been posting any mp3s for ummm – some time. Got caught up in other activities, I'm afraid and have been only blogging reviews. But I have had several requests for re-ups so here is the first batch – who knows, it might kick-start the old mp3 fandango...
I had a few problems finding a couple of tracks because I still have stuff buried in boxes from the last house move, but here we go. (All quotes taken from the original posts). First, up, John Coltrane:
'John Coltrane was starting to come into his own by 1958... listen to his long, questing solo on 'The Believer' to hear the tectonic plates of jazz moving. Modern jazz was already separating (some would say shattering) into different performative spaces by then. More so than had happened with the advent of bop. Maybe the trick is to realise how they were and are all related. Donald Byrd on fine form here, by the way... '
Then on to Gene Ammons:
'Let's spin back... to the solid raw heart of the tradition... here's some Jug – I bought this album when I was about 14-15 and the version of 'Willow weep for me,' recorded at the Black Orchid Lounge, Chicago in 1961, still stands out in my memory. (The name of the venue gives off a wonderful smoky jazz/nightclub ambiance...). Ammons gave a blues edge to everything (the son of Albert Ammons, the two fisted boogie piano stomper from the thirties, it must have been embedded in his DNA): he turns 'Willow' into an impassioned and testifyingly vulnerable lament. Holmes comes in like an icy stream trickling past the bending trees – whatever organ stops he is using rhyme perfectly with the theme and mood. Gene Edwards' guitar is bluesy and boppily fluent. Ammons restates the theme and plays an unaccompanied coda that teases out the tune to audience laughter. This live recording gives a timeless reminder of what jazz can be, beyond genre and idiomatic borders, when it cuts through straight to the heart... '
James Chance:
'... playing the wild Michael Jackson cover: 'Don't stop till you get enough.' Frenetic punk nihilism, fed by the energies of the rock scene sourced in the heady days of CBGB's etc colliding with Siegried/Chance/Black's freejazz aspirations.' Yowser.
John Coltrane
Donald Byrd (tp) John Coltrane (ts) Red Garland (p) Paul Chambers (b) Louis Hayes (d)
The Believer
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Richard 'Groove' Holmes/Gene Ammons
Gene Ammons (ts) Richard Holmes (org) Gene Edwards (g) Leroy Henderson (d)
Willow weep for me
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James Chance and the Contortions
Don't stop till you get enough
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