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Ella at Duke's Place

This is perhaps not as good as the Ella's Duke songbook. It is kind of a follow up to that. It does have a nice version of "Cottontail" and Strayhorn's "A Flower is a Lovesome Thing." I'm not crazy about the lyrics to "Brown Skin Girl in the Calico Hat' or "Imagine My Frustration." There's nothing here as good as "Prelude to a Kiss."

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Anthony Braxton. Seven Standards

Speaking of "Joy Spring," this album by Braxton begins with his take on this song. I actually knew this one before I ever heard Clifford play it. Braxton takes apart the song and puts it back together. Also check out "Old Folks" and "Background Music." I love those songs too.

There appear to be other Braxton collections with the same title. The one I'm referring to, of course, is the one with "Joy Spring." Another case of something which is avant-garde ma non troppo. On each song, Braxton begins conservatively, goes into some more adventurous playing, and them comes back again.

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Clifford Brown / Max Roach.

This album appears to be called just that. It has classics like Clifford Brown's "Joy Spring" (two takes) and "Parisian Thoroughfare." I like this a bit better than either "Brown and Roach Inc" or "Study in Brown." Clifford is my favorite player after Miles of this period (on trumpet), and I love Harold Land, the tenor sax player. Richie Powell, Bud's brother, is on piano.

I was shocked to here Alberto Sandoval reproduce the trumpet solo on "Joy Spring" note for note on a tribute album. I could sing along because I know every note on this solo. "Joy Spring" is in fact my favorite song of all time.

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Cindy Blackman. Works on Canvas (1999)

This is a drummer's album by Cindy B, known to many as Lenny Kravitz's drummer. Aside from the drumming itself, in more or less the Tony Williams vein, I appreciate here the suite-like arrangement of the album and the original takes on standard tunes. Especially Kurt Weill's "My Ship"; "Green Dolphin Street"; and "April in Paris." Some treatments seem to just get at the essence of the song's melody. That's the case here with J.D. Allen's tenor sax playing on some of these tunes.

It's always hard to compare contemporary albums with established classics, so I won't. 300 should give me room to simply list everything in my collection that I actively like.

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Cannonball Adderley. Them Dirty Blues (1960)

This is a classic swinging hard-bop quintet album with Cannonball Adderley on alto sax and his brother Nat on trumpet. I like "Work Song" and "Dat Dere," along with Gershwin's "Soon."

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Solo Monk

This was one of the original albums I owned on vinyl in High School. I remember driving my parents' station wagon to Tower Records in Sacramento to buy it. It is somewhat monotonous, but in a good way. Monk doesn't really do much to the songs he plays, in terms of improvisation. He just plays*them. To this album I owe my original knowledge of standards like "Everything Happens to Me" and "These Foolish Things." His playing of "Dinah" manages to be bouncy and very sad at the same time.

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Coltrane. Live at the Village Vanguard

I love "Softly as in a Morning Sunrise" off of this recording. I also like the contrast between Coltrane and Dolphy.

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Coltrane Plays the Blues

This can get a bit monotonous. While the blues is the basis of jazz on some level I actually think the 32 bar AABA or ABAC structure is quite a bit more interesting. Not among my favorite Coltrane albums, though I also have listened to it so much that I may have tired of it.

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Coltrane. Crescent.

While I sometimes tire of this particular style this is still a masterpiece.


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Coltrane. A Love Supreme

I feel this is a high point for Coltrane--a unified composition in four parts of great power and beauty. This and Crescent have that religious flavor that wears on me sometimes, but overall it's an important piece of jazz history.

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Ellington. And His Mother Called Him Bill (1967)

After Strayhorn's death Duke recorded this tribute album of mostly Strayhorn tunes--no Lush Life, Chelsea Bride, or Take the A Train though. I'm getting to know this music now. This is not the kind of thing that brought me to jazz in the first place, but once I'm here I'm glad it exists. There's plenty of Johnny Hodges, which is always a plus. Not all the tunes are that memorable, though, and I tire of the the wah wah mutes on the brass.

Duke was never really about pure swing or improvised solos, but about orchestral textures.

I saw all my blurbs for the first time today for this book:

“Apocryphal, American Lorca! Inviting us to consider how one culture reads another—how American poets read Spain through Lorca and Lorca through Spain—Jonathan Mayhew has given us an informative, thoughtful, fascinating, and often funny journey through translation, parody and kitsch. No one could be better qualified to study Lorca’s work as ‘generative device’ in English-language poetry and get at the mystery of how and what a poet can mean in a different cultural context.” --Christopher Maurer

“An intriguing and invaluable study of import of Spanish deep image poetry in its domestic American mode, foregrounding problems of authenticity, translation, and imitation—and the legacy of the Duende.” --Mary Ann Caws

“Jonathan Mayhew’s Lorca is less the distinctive Spanish poet, whose murder in 1936 marked the beginning of the Civil War, than he is an American invention. From the 1940s to the end of the century, our poets have invoked Lorca—in translation, of course—as a Romantic, exotic, radical, and, in many cases, gay icon—the poet of mystery and the duende. The Lorca myth, Mayhew argues persuasively, has enriched American lyric, but it has also been an obstacle to a more adequately grounded understanding of Spanish poetry in the twentieth century. Apocryphal Lorca is revisionist criticism at its most acute.” --Marjorie Perloff

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Ray Barretto. Contact 1997

Barretto, a conguero from Puerto Rico, presents some straight-ahead Latin jazz here. Check out his version of Ellington's "Caravan" and of "Poinciana," a tune associated with Ahmad Jamal.

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Sarah Vaughan. I Love Brazil

This was a Pablo record of the mid 70s. Artists like Sarah, Ella, and Oscar Peterson were signed by Norman Granz for this label and put out a lot of material during this decade. I used to own this on vinyl. Here the lush arrangements complement Sarah's lush, mature, powerful voice. It's not necessarily the most "tasteful" music. You have to be in the mood for a certain excess. Check out "Triste," my favorite cut on this album.

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Sarah Vaughan. Swingin' Easy

This has got to be one of my favorite vocal albums. Sarah sings with just a rhtythm section with Roy Haynes on drums. Check out "Polkadots and Moonbeams" and "Body and Soul."

None of the bad taste that would creep into Sarah's singing later on. I for one can't stand "Send in the Clowns" that would later be her signature song. All the songs are classic here, and the vocal mannerisms are not exaggerated.

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Ornette Coleman. In All Languages

I used to to own this on vinyl, a two record set. Now I have it on itunes. Part I is Ornette with a reunion of his original quartet, with Cherry, Haden, Higgins. Part II is a set of some of the same compositions with his funk group, electric guitars and basses and drums. Check out "Latin Genetics."

I tend to listen to the reunion quartet more than to the funk-based part, but they form a nice contrast.

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The Amazing Bud Powell, Volume 1

Bud has two styles, one bebop and the other an ornate style derivative of Art Tatum style solo piano of the previous generation. This compilation has both. I like the dates with a very young Sonny Rollins. I believe some of these have Philly Joe.

With Bud, my reaction is that I don't want him to stop. I just want the solo to go on forever, for there to be no end of invention.

I don't have volume 2, alas.