Category Archives: Jazz

Jazz, List, Live

30 Best live albums countdown: 26 – The Köln Concert by Keith Jarret

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Keith Jarret 1

1432 people in the audience, one piano player. A huge stage and a tiny piano.

When the first notes came running through his hands, everyone knew they witnessed something special, magic. Jarret was completely immersed in his music, it was more than improvisation, it was total unity between performer and music. Jarrett’s improvisation was hypnotically rhythmic, bordering on a mantra.

He doesn’t know where he is going, he has a sense of shape, but he really makes it up as he goes along. He can not play the same concert again, even if he wanted, isn’t that amazing!

He moans, he stands, he sits, he is very much giving a performance, maybe the performance of his lifetime!

Sometimes the hype is justified and The Köln Concert is one of these times. It is the best selling solo album in jazz history and the best selling piano album of all times. And it is so deserved.

Keith jarret 2

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Jazz, Music Calendar

Today: The late Dexter Gordon was born in 1923 – 90 years ago

dexter gordon

If you can’t play the blues… you might as well hang it up.
~Dexter Gordon

Jazz to me is a living music. It’s a music that since its beginning has expressed the feelings, the dreams, hopes, of the people.
~Dexter Gordon

Montmartre, Copenhagen, 1971:

Wikipedia:

Dexter Gordon (February 27, 1923 – April 25, 1990) was an American jazz tenor saxophonist. He was among the earliest tenor players to adapt the bebop musical language of people like Charlie Parker, Dizzy Gillespie, and Bud Powell to the instrument. His studio and live performance career spanned over 40 years.

Gordon’s height was 6 feet 6 inches (198 cm), so he was also known as “Long Tall Dexter” and “Sophisticated Giant”. He played a Conn 10M ‘Ladyface’ tenor until it was stolen in a Paris airport in 1961. He then switched over to a Selmer Mark VI. His saxophone was fitted with an Otto Link metal mouthpiece, which can be seen in various photos.

dexter gordon

Lady Bird (Belgium, 1964):

Dexter Gordon was named a member and Officer of the French Order of Arts and Letters in 1986 by the Ministry of Culture in France. His performance in Round Midnight (Warner Bros, 1986) was nominated for an Academy Award for Best Leading Role and he won a Grammy for Best Soundtrack. Dexter Gordon died on April 25, 1990, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

round midnight

Chan’s song (from the Round Midnight):

Album of the day:

Go (1962)

Dexter-Gordon-Go

From the first moments when Dexter Gordon sails into the opening song full of brightness and confidence, it is obvious that Go! is going to be one of those albums where everything just seems to come together magically. A stellar quartet including the stylish pianist Sonny Clark, the agile drummer Billy Higgins, and the solid yet flexible bassist Butch Warren are absolutely crucial in making this album work, but it is still Gordon who shines.
~Stacia Proefrock (allmusic.com)

Other Feb 27:

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Jazz, Music Calendar

Today the late Django Reinhardt was born in 1910 – 103 years ago

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Django Reinhardt

Jazz attracted me because in it I found a formal perfection and instrumental precision that I admire in classical music, but which popular music doesn’t have.
~Django Reinhardt

Django Reinhardt was the first hugely influential jazz figure to emerge from Europe — and he remains the most influential European to this day…
~Richard S. Ginell (allmusic.com)

a tribute video from youtube – w/ video of our man:

another one – w/ some fantastic audio clips:

From Wikipedia

Birth name Jean Reinhardt
Born 23 January 1910,
Liberchies, Pont-à-Celles, Belgium
Died 16 May 1953 (aged 43)
Fontainebleau, France
Genres Jazz, Gypsy jazz, Romani music
Occupations Guitarist, Composer
Instruments Guitar, Electric guitar
Years active 1928–1953
Associated acts Stéphane Grappelli, Quintette du Hot Club de France

Jean “Django” Reinhardt (French pronunciation: ​[dʒɑ̃ɡo ʁenɑʁt]; 23 January 1910 – 16 May 1953) was a pioneering virtuoso jazz guitarist and composer.

Reinhardt is often regarded as one of the greatest guitar players of all time and regarded as the first important European jazz musician who made major contributions to the development of the idiom. Reinhardt invented an entirely new style of jazz guitar technique (sometimes called ‘hot’ jazz guitar) that has since become a living musical tradition within French gypsy culture. With violinist Stéphane Grappelli, he co-founded the Quintette du Hot Club de France, described by critic Thom Jurek as “one of the most original bands in the history of recorded jazz.” Reinhardt’s most popular compositions have become jazz standards, including “Minor Swing”, “Daphne”, “Belleville”, “Djangology”, “Swing ’42”, and “Nuages”.

Minor Swing – Django Reinhardt & Stéphane Grappelli:

Django Reinhardt2

Belleville:

Album of the day

Peche à la Mouche (1992) – recorded 1947-53

Django Reinhardt Peche à la Mouche

 

Legend has it that guitarist Django Reinhardt was at his absolute peak in the 1930s during his recordings with violinist Stephane Grappelli and that when he switched from acoustic to electric guitar after World War II, he lost a bit of his musical personality. Wrong on both counts. This double CD documents his Blue Star recordings of 1947 and 1953 and Reinhardt (on electric guitar) takes inventive boppish solos that put him at the top of the list of jazz guitarists who were active during the era.
~Scott Yanow (allmusic.com)

Other January 23

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Jazz, Music Calendar

Today: The late Chet Baker was born in 1929 – 83 years ago

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Chet Baker

“People said I’d never make 35, then I’d never make 40, 45; now I’m almost 50, so Im beginning to think maybe they might be wrong.”
— Chet Baker

Chet Baker was a primary exponent of the West Coast school of cool jazz in the early and mid-’50s. As a trumpeter, he had a generally restrained, intimate playing style and he attracted attention beyond jazz for his photogenic looks and singing. But his career was marred by drug addiction.
~William Ruhlmann (allmusic.com)

Time after Time Live (Belgium 1964):

From Wikipedia:

Chesney Henry “Chet” Baker, Jr. (December 23, 1929 – May 13, 1988) was an American jazz trumpeter, flugelhornist and singer.

In the 1950s, Baker earned much attention and critical praise, particularly for albums featuring his vocals, such as Chet Baker Sings. Jazz historian David Gelly described the promise of Baker’s early career as seemingly representing “James Dean, Sinatra, and Bix, rolled into one.” However, his “well-publicized drug habit” also drove his notoriety and fame, as Baker was in and out of jail for much of his life, before enjoying a career resurgence in the late 1970s and ’80s.

Chet+Baker

Almost Blue:

Honors

  • In 1987 he was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
  • In 1989 he was elected to Down Beat Jazz Hall of Fame by that magazine’s Critics Poll.
  • In 1991 he was inducted into the Oklahoma Jazz Hall of Fame.
  • In 2005 Oklahoma Governor Brad Henry and the Oklahoma House of Representatives proclaimed July 2 as “Chet Baker Day”.

Chet+Baker (1)

My Funny Valentine:

Album of the day:

Chet Baker Sings (1956):

Chet Baker sings

As Gerald Heard’s liner notes point out, it’s difficult to decide whether Chet Baker was a trumpet player who sang or a singer who played trumpet. When the 24-year-old California-based trumpeter started his vocal career in 1954, his singing was revolutionary; as delicate and clear as his trumpet playing, with a similarly bright and vibrato-free tone, Baker simply didn’t sound like any previous jazz singer.
~Stewart Mason (allmusic.com)

Other December 23:

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Blues, Jazz, Music Calendar

Today: Albert Ammons passed away in 1949 – 63 years ago

Chicago in mind:

From Wikipedia:

Birth name Albert C. Ammons
Born September 23, 1907
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Died December 2, 1949 (aged 42)
Chicago, Illinois, United States
Genres Jazz, blues, boogie-woogie
Occupations Pianist
Years active 1920s–1949
Labels Vocalion, Blue Note, Delmark,Mercury

Albert Ammons (September 23, 1907 – December 2, 1949) was an American pianist. Ammons was a player of boogie-woogie, abluesy jazz style popular from the late 1930s into the mid 1940s.

 

In 1938 Ammons appeared at Carnegie Hall with Johnson and Lewis, an event that helped launch the boogie-woogie craze. Record producer Alfred Lion who had attended John H. Hammond’s From Spirituals to Swing concert on December 23, 1938, which had introduced Ammons and Lewis, two weeks later started Blue Note Records, recording nine Ammons solos including “The Blues” and “Boogie Woogie Stomp”, eight by Lewis and a pair of duets in a one-day session in a rented studio.

Shout of Joy (1938):

Ammons’s played at President Harry S. Truman’s inauguration in 1949. He died on December 2, 1949 in Chicago  and was interred at the Lincoln Cemetery, at Kedzie Avenue in Blue Island, Worth Township, Cook County, Illinois.

Album of the day:

The First Day (1992):

Other December 02:

Odetta Holmes (December 31, 1930 – December 2, 2008), known as Odetta, was an American singer, actress, guitarist, songwriter, and a civil and human rights activist, often referred to[who?] as “The Voice of the Civil Rights Movement”. Her musical repertoire consisted largely of American folk music, blues, jazz, and spirituals. An important figure in the American folk music revival of the 1950s and 1960s, she was influential to many of the key figures of the folk-revival of that time, including Bob Dylan, Joan Baez, Mavis Staples, and Janis Joplin. Time included her song “Take This Hammer” on its list of the All-Time 100 Songs, stating that “Rosa Parks was her No. 1 fan, and Martin Luther King Jr. called her the queen of American folk music.”

-Egil & Hallgeir