Max Roach - It's Time

Max Roach
It's Time

I want to like this album. I know, that Roach is a good jazz musician, arranger, composer, etc. We Insist is brilliant. I think I understand and appreciate what he was trying to do here. But as hard as I tried, I just couldn't enjoy listening to this thing.

It has its moments - Mal Waldron can play piano, he is an under-appreciated jazz musician. Clifford Jordan has several moments of brilliiance, as does Richard Williams. Roach is much more reasonable than he is on Percussion Bitter Sweet, playing as though he does actually remember there is an ensemble which is made of talented musicians who need not be covered up by the maniacal drum-pounding of an angry, angry man.

But that damn choir. Listen, I am a firm believer (at least in its application to music) of Hunter S. Thompson's dictum, "It never got weird enough for me." I own 58 Sun Ra albums. That choir is weird and distracting like, well, all I've got here is that choir is as weird and distracting as a choir on a jazz album. That is pretty much what the allmusic.com reviewer said about it, too. You really do just want to see what the instrumentalists would have done without those vocalists.

A controversial statement for your consideration: Abbey Lincoln is not good. I will once again give you We Insist as a superior musical performance. I don't even want to write anything about her, to be honest. Her voice is grating and irritating in a way that makes me think of bitter, old-maid elementary school teachers who bemoan the disappearance of penmanship skills and Murder, She Wrote. I don't like her.

Overall, you are not missing anything if you don't have this album.

I do have to say that after 20 or so listenings of It's Time I am absolutely looking forward to the next album in the catalog - Jackie Paris' The Song is Paris. For two reasons - the first is that it is a mellow album, no hard-edged, politically-motivated vocals chapping my ears. The second is that this is one that I actually own on vinyl.

Count Basie and the Kansas City 7

Count Basie and the Kansas City 7

Here is how this review is going to go: I am going to tell what is bad about this album. Then I am going to tell you what is average. I am going to finish by telling you what is good.

The bad: flute. The worse: alto flute. I repeat what I have said frequently and loudly: Eric Dolphy is the only musician who should be allowed to play the flute in jazz. Anything else with flute in it should be legally prevented from calling itself jazz. That means, since Dolphy is dead, that no new jazz should have flute in it. (On a related tangent, I am starting to get there with the organ as well. I am pretty sure that the program director at my local jazz radion station is taking kickbacks from Hammond based on how much of the playlist has an organ in it.) There is a certain something that a musician needs to play jazz flute, and unless you died of diabetic complications in Europe, you don't have it.

The average: Everything else, with one exception. The rhythm section doesn't do anything a competent high school jazz band couldn't pull off (and I include Basie in that). Jones' trumpet tone is borderline saccharine, which in combination with the afore-malinged flute is painful, if you can consider it separately, you can tolerate it.

The good, in fact the excellent, at least when considered on its merits: Foster's tenor saxophone. Great tone and interesting stuff.

My conclusion is that you shouldn't go out of your way to hear this album.

I have to finish this review by stating that while I don't actively hate this album, I am still quite frustrated by it. I am frustrated because there just isn't anything in this album to react to. Bad recordings give your something to criticize. Good albums give you something to praise. This one just sort of sits, its only defining characteristic its abundance of flute.

Milt Jackson - Statements

Milt Jackson
Statements

This is an album that you can safely let your toddler play with. There are no sharp edges, no jagged bits, nothing that might cut their delicate little selfs. You can safely listen to this record all day long and never have to worry about those pesky moments you sometimes get in music where you are drawn in, those bars that cause you to back the needle up a couple of millimeters worth of grooves to hear it again. Without worry, you can cue this up, put it on repeat, and never have to think about the music again at your next cocktail party. Your only job will be to keep the gin martinis dry.

What don't I like about this record? Very little, but my one complaint is quite significant. There is nothing on this album that makes any serious contribution to jazz as an art form. It is decent jazz. It is well-performed by a pretty solid group of musicians - nobody real famous or notable, but still professionals, not amateurs. The tracks were selected with intelligence. The production team stayed out of the way. (Not a small point considering it was Bob Thiele.)

I have to stop short of calling this ear candy, but...

I have to be fair, maybe it is due to the limitations of the vibraphone, being such a relaxed instrument in the hands of most jazz musicians.

Maybe it was Milt Jackson himself. Maybe he is just too mellow and didn't want to push it. Just do an album everyone can be comfortable with.

There is nothing wrong with this recording. It is great background music. No one will have their train of thought interrupted by this thing. You can safely play it without worry about your conversation being sidetracked by a witty run from Milt or any of the other soloists.

And that is why I have little to write about this record. There isn't much to say about it.

Benny Carter - Further Definitions

Benny Carter and His Orchestra
Further Definitions
1961

I could not decide what to write about this album. Which finally made me realize that it is just an average recording that isn't anything too special. I feel like a contrarian for holding that view since everything I have read about this record is very complimentary. But I just don't hear it.

First, too much saxophone. It pains me to write that. But all of the sax on this album just gives it the feel of a novelty. Not to the extent that the two Winding and Johnson trombone "choir" albums feel like a novelty, but enough that you wish someone would have suggested a little more restraint. Perhaps a brass instrument? Just something with a timbre that would be less saxophony, if you will forgive the expression.

Second, the charts feel constrained and stiff to me. It has that sweet (as opposed to hot) big band structure. I thought that sound had been relegated to dance halls frequented by blue-haired ladies in the Bronx by the late-40s, but apparently not. Here it is.

Third, (and this one is purely personal and not entirely fair) I don't like the sound of Collins' guitar. I am quite picky about jazz guitar, and this is a sound/tone/setup that is boring. Too many jazz guitarists blend into one another, it almost seems that being indistinguishable from others is a career goal for these guys. My problem is that whatever they play, they seem bored by it. This is quite clearly the selling point for some of these guys, and when done really well it can be brilliant. (Grant Green, "Idle Moments" which for my money is a top 10 jazz tune.) But if they  miss just a little bit, you end up with a performance that sound like it has been mailed in. That is what happens here.

Having said all that, this is a good background music sort of album.There is just enough individual instrumental brilliance to keep me lightly engaged, but it doesn't assert itself musically or creatively. You can ignore it when you need to. Which is why it has been hard to write this entry, this record was on all week and it never really grabbed my attention. Really bad music will grab it, really good music will too. This just sort of lay there, waiting for me. Good music should assert itself, and this just didn't seem assertive to me.

I am glad I own it. Nothing that I don't like about it is fatal to the album. To tell the truth there are several solos on it that are really great. But they don't really do anything new. Like a said, good background music, you don't have to worry about it actively distracting you, but if you need a couple of minutes of staring into space with a little musical accompaniment, this would work rather nicely.

Quincy Jones - The Quintessence

Quincy Jones and His Orchestra
The Quintessence

The Quintessence is a solid album, not brilliant, but solid. The reason why is simple, and will explain why this is such a short review.

By this point in Quincy Jones' career he is an arranger. So, expectations for his albums are such that you would expect the creativity to come from the compositions and arrangements. These compositions and arrangements are competent, probably more than competent considering their source, but then again, considering their source, you would expect better.

Simply stated, there is little that is original on this recording. It is quite disappointing; I have been listening lately to another Quincy Jones recording from 1969 (The Complete Jam Sessions). That is a fascinating recording, and not just because Bill Cosby was involved in it. The Quintessence falls short of being what you hope to get with a Jones' album.

It isn't a bad album. It is worth the time to listen to it. There just isn't a whole lot there to get excited about or write about.

Live at the Village Vanguard - John Coltrane

John Coltrane
Live at the Village Vanguard

There isn't much to dislike about this one. Coltrane on tenor and soprano, Dolphy on bass clarinet, Tyner on piano, Workman on bass, and Jones on drums, playing what was, in 1961, some pretty crazy stuff. I don't know that I will develop this idea at all, but, this is a good example of why fame is important in music, it lets you be extremely progressive - imagine an unknown artist recording this album. No record company is going to touch it, who wants to buy 37+ minutes of shrieking and howling from an unknown? Who will buy it if you Coltrane's name on it? Lots more, some of us in triplicate. Having an established name gives you license to be weird. All of those artists that are "being true to themselves" and whatnot - that is why you are poor, you need to establish some trust and rapport with your audience so that when you want to take them someplace that might be uncomfortably experimental, they will go along.

This is the album that introduced me to the saxophone, Coltrane, and jazz. My Dad had* this on vinyl, original pressing, in stereo. I had inherited my parent's first turntable when in the early 80s, they made the wise choice to switch to a system with an 8-track. (My first album purchase was the score to Star Trek: Wrath of Khan.) Live at the Village Vanguard was there in the hi-fi cabinet stacked uncomfortably between Ray Allen and Johnny Horton. The Streak made me laugh, so did The Battle of New Orleans (love the part about powdering the alligator's ass), but Vanguard fascinated me.

I was young, and everything about this album screamed that it was different and must be dealt with in ways that would expand my musical literacy. It would not let me ignore it. The gatefold cover that was printed on stock that was at least twice as heavy as the other album covers. The track list that only had three tunes, all of other records had at least 7 or 8. The record itself, not a lightweight affair, but impressively substantial, thick, hefty, that black expanse of uninterrupted grooves not anything like others that had many more of the blank grooves between tracks. The thing even smelled different, like the way an old library smelled different from mass market paperbacks at the airport newstand. The record was importantly sophisticated.

Listening to it was just as different. This wasn't a smooth, overproduced recording. The music was raw, with an edge like a rusty, serrated steak knife. This music drew me in, the same way punk and metal would in a very short handful of years, and for the same reasons. The music was rough and loud. It sought to agitate and anger. It wasn't pretty or mellow. This was not the music of Herb Alpert, which was written with the unstated intent that the tinkling of ice in myriad double old fashioneds would serve as an additional percussion track.

You listened to this music. You listened seriously and with conviction. To not listen with conviction gave the music the power to destroy you, to obliterate your musical sanity with ruthlessness that would make Pol Pot seem cuddly and warm. If listening to this album was to kill time, you better just go ahead an listen to the Iglesias or the Alpert, much safer. Dolphy and Coltrane played those instruments exactly the same way that brought one of my parents to my bedroom door, admonishing me to "practice right"; they honked and squealed, they played stuff that I instinctively knew would never show up in my "Level One Alto Saxophone Student: A Method for Individual Instruction".** I wanted the lesson book they learned that stuff from.

Unfortunately, I never found it. That is why today, I am a history teacher. But I did finally realize that you don't learn that kind of playing. In fact, somewhat hypocritically, I would suggest that playing like that is only possible when you have learned so much, and practiced for so many hours, that playing becomes meditation, and gives you the freedom to liberate yourself from the confines of the instrument and the tune and musical theory. You simply play. And what you play is music that grabbed a little kid's ears, confusing the living daylights out of him. That little kid is still confused, but in the most pleasant sort of way.
 

*I say had, because the past tense is correct. I have it now. Hanging on the wall in an LP frame. I don't have a turntable. Neither does he. I stole it from his record collection and it welcomed me as a liberator, happy to be freed from its perverted sandwiching between a Julio Iglesias greatest hits album and The Streak by Ray Stevens. I like to imagine that my father bought this when he was a graduate student in Chicago in the early 1970s. I want to believe that. But submitted as evidence that he might have been given this as a gift are the rest of the records in his collection. Thankfully his tastes have improved. But his Iglesias collection is something he will have to answer for to St. Peter.

**If you are interested in reading something a real writer wrote about this type of music, try "John Coltrane Lives" by Lester Bangs which can be found in Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung, pages 103-111. I can't find it online, at least not with a cursory search, but it is probably out there somewhere.

Gil Evans - Into the Hot

Gil Evans
Into the Hot

I don't think that I will bother spending much time writing about this album. It is not even a Gil Evans album - as even the most cursory of listens will reveal; Evans was fulfilling a contractual obligation to impulse! with it, and while he apparently was in the same building during its recording, the extent of his contributions was the occasional adjustment to the studio thermostat. This album is mostly interesting as an early example of Cecil Taylor on the piano - and to be quite frank, you need to be a pretty serious Taylor fan to find it interesting.

That this is not a Gil Evans album is moderately frustrating, even if you chose to be incredibly generous and incredibly kind and give him credit as a "producer", this isn't Evans' music. Compared to Out of the Blue, as was clearly intended by its title, Into the Hot has none of the characteristics that define Evans' music of the late 1950s and early 1960s. Enough has already been written about this, what I have to say about this album is in an attempt to judge it based on its merits without getting wrapped up in its rather complex and disappointing history

The point I would make about this album is that it is largely, "Angkor Wat" being the exception, a very early free jazz recording (if you consider Coleman's Something Else the beginning of the movement). Sadly, it does not contribute much to free jazz.

The problem is that the tunes are largely indistinguishable. I still, after listening to this album for the last week, can not tell you with any more confidence than that of a slightly experienced guess, tell you which song is playing. This is largely because of the lack of clear guidance and ownership of the album's putative leader. But the larger issue that is exposed is free jazz musicians' tendency to dismiss the importance of a guiding structure in their compositions and improvisations ad being too constricting to their musical freedom.

(It is a separate post that this idea is crap. The very brilliance of great music of any genre is the ability of the musician/composer to express ideas using the rules of the genre/form being employed. It is easy to be creative while disregarding the rules and then claim that what you have achieved is serious music. Since you have no objective standard of comparison, how can anyone disagree? It is much more impressive to create something new and vibrant within an existing framework. Think of Shakespeare's sonnets. They are some of the world's most impressive poetry, composed in a well-defined form. Now think of the poetry written by every goth teenager who has no idea of the rules of poetry and you will get a sense of what I am talking about. Working within the restrictions of the genre/form is where true brilliance can be demonstrated. Please note that I am not opposed to breaking rules and innovation. I am simply against artistic laziness wherein musicians and artists can claim that rules are holding them back.)

Free jazz is nothing more than taking improvisation to its ultimate extreme where the ideas of the performing musician become dominant and relegate the composer to a minor background role. (Compare this to classical, at the other extreme, where the composer is the ultimate. Consider how the two musics are marketed, jazz is marketed based on who is doing the playing, classical is marketed on the piece being performed. There are exceptions, Itzhak Perlman in classical or a recent recreation of the Kind of Blue album at a jazz club in my hometown.)

My issue is, just as you can not just throw any bum up on the stage with a violin and the sheet music for a Mozart violin concerto and expect an inspired performance, you can't give well-trained musicians the key to the studio and let them randomly fill up tape and expect anything brilliant - you might get it in either of the two scenarios, but you can not expect it. You need a central, guiding force.You need a trained musician. You need a preset piece of music. If you didn't, you could walk into any junior high band hall in the country, record the warm-ups before rehearsal and sell it as free jazz. And that, at its worst, is what free jazz sounds like, random tootings and bangings of prepubescent geeks.

But given a sophisticated leader who understands that music needs structure, even if it is the most minimal structure possible, the result can be sophisticated and sublime. It takes talent to find that little piece of structure, and most musicians lack that talent. Which is why so much free jazz sounds like the aforementioned junior high concert band warming up - there is too much concern with the "free" and not enough of the "jazz", the part that is supposed to provide the structure.

This album's major problem is a lack of that structure, both within the tunes themselves and between the tunes. Like I mentioned above, it all sounds the same, which is the ultimate sign that a free jazz album is a failure. If you can't tell if that is the band warming up or if it is the band performing, there is something wrong. It does not mean you are an unsophisticated listener, it means it is bad music.This album has no intellectually rigorous leader who imposes a central, guiding principle. It fails in providing a basic framework from which the listener can experience the ideas put forth by the musicians. At its most basic then, this album is nothing more than random rehearsals that someone was silly enough to put down on tape.

This sort of stuff reminds of Jackson Pollock, who I do not like. I hate looking at a Pollock:

I get that lots of people see great art in that kind of stuff. I do not. I do not see any structure their, either philosophical, or artistic, or technical. It is paint splatters. I finally realized that I can't consider this to be art because I can not find any guiding central principle to its creation. This does not mean I dislike all abstract art. Far from it. I just demand that it have structure, even if that structure is so minimal as to be transparent, if it is there it will exert its influence.