Blogcritics

Forgotten Series: Ike Turner - 1958-1959

Nick Deriso — Wed, 12 Dec 2007 21:03:05 EST

Ike Turner spun a very intense mixture of what would become full-bore rock 'n' roll.
Ike Turner's death on Wednesday brings to mind some fond memories of some great music.It's been more than 50 years since Stan Lewis opened Stan's Record Shop in downtown Shreveport. From his vantage point at the top of Texas Avenue (I used to sneak down there after class), he would go on to create a once-lucrative business, then see the...

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Forgotten series: Dizzy Gillespie

Nick Deriso — Mon, 16 Apr 2007 10:04:06 EDT

People told him those bullfrog cheeks would ruin his playing. The embouchure, very important.Flinty, yet funny, John Birks Gillespie was insightful enough to understand that this would be his hook. Over the next five decades, Dizzy would establish himself as the penultimate of his kind, behind only Louis Armstrong as an ambassador for the music.Like Satchmo, too, Gillespie was a revelatory trumpet player, but perhaps an even greater personality. He sold jazz, was for a time its very face. And now, like Armstrong, he seems lost to caricature. The cheeks; always, the cheeks.I come back to Gillespie's 75th birthday jubilee tour 15 years ago, as a wake of young would-bes (the then-largely unknown Claudio Roditi, Jon Faddis and Wallace Roney) joined him on stage. That tour, Gillespie's last, was occasionally ragged, and maybe even disappointing if you were used to the reliable brilliance of his "Night In Tunisia" from another day. This was history, though. We got a last, lingering look at Dizzy as the statesman genius, and mighty muse. Even old cats like Red Rodney and Doc Cheatham (since passed, too) took part.That tour said: Enough with the cheeks, already.Cheatham had met Gillespie when they were both playing in Cab Calloway's band, But Dizzy had a falling out with Cab in 1941. Calloway with 10 stitches in his backside, that's how that one ended.Hard to believe of the ditzy Dizzy we later came to see in concert posters and album covers. He was serious about the music, even if we never knew.Gillespie figured he was on to something new, something beyond the simple showband sounds of the day. Something that would be called the death of jazz, the death of music: Something he named, bebop.Things got going when he met saxophonist Charlie Parker, then just a guy from Kansas City with a horn, while on tour with Calloway. It wasn't until 1945 that they got something down on vinyl. The most celebrated versions of forgotten classics like "Salt Peanuts" and "Groovin' High" were born.Gillespie and Parker stutter-stepped and left-turned. They took the standards and they sliced, diced and julienned them. In so doing, Parker became Gillespie's countermelody. And in more ways than one.Oo-papa-da, he might scat. "He beeped, when he should have bopped," like that.Dizzy was not, even in his serious pursuit of this newfound sound, the troubled jazzman. Not the heroin-adled player, crying in song. John Birks was fizzy, at once fierce and puppy-dog playful. Like Miles Davis, many of his former bandmates became very famous. (That went on until the last, when Gillespie's final bands produced Paquito D'Rivera and Arturo Sandoval.) And, also like Davis, he couldn't have simply settled with his first innovation.Gillespie's fascination with rhythm would not only lead him to midwife bop, but then to co-parent the Afro-Cuban jazz movement in this country.For roughly two decades from the mid-1940s, Gillespie's output ranks among the most interesting in all of American music: It's seering, unwieldy, deeply moving, slack-jaw groovy. Sometimes all in one stanza.Yet we hear far more about Parker, whose myth was made through both his feiry intellect but also his quick demise. Dizzy survived, with a life-long wife, a consistent career that survived jazz's evolution into rock then pop then jazz again, and a familiar ambassador's urge to circle the world with his horn.Somehow his determination now counts against him. A constant presence, I suppose, is always a touch less intriguing than a startling flame out.Gillespie's emotional sweep, from beep to bop, from salsa-swing to rumba roll, made him a great musician. All the rest made him a great man.He remains everything Parker wouldn't -- or couldn't -- let himself be: Very serious, yet very happy.

Musical musings by Something Else! "We're not saying this is the best music ever; we're just saying...

Forgotten Series: Idris Muhammad - Power of Soul

Nick Deriso — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 12:45:32 EDT

Was grooving to a 2002 reissue of the titanic groovefest Power of Soul tonight, and got to thinking about that groover Idris Muhammad - a funk and jazz drummer of the first order, born in New Orleans as Leo Morris.He started out, of course, playing in soul bands, and some great ones - Larry Williams, the Impressions, Jerry Butler. Played on "People Get Ready," and with a group called the Hawkettes, which featured his neighbor Art Neville on piano.Was actually playing in the musical Hair, I believe, when he got a gig as a member of the house band in the early 1970s for Prestige, the famous jazz label. He's worked with everybody in the soul, bop, and groove end of things. Gene Ammons, Sonny Stitt, Grant Green, Lonnie Smith, the hard-bopping Johnny Griffin and Pharaoh Sanders, a former bandmate with John Coltrane. He was also a longtime drummer for bebop pioneer Lou Donaldson. Idris was still working with Sanders on occasion very late in his career.But, there's more. He backed Grover Washington Jr., David Sanborn, Randy Brecker, John Scofield and Eric Alexander - and returned to New Orleans as a part-time resident (he lives in Austria) where Muhammad joined Donald Harrison Jr.'s Mardi Gras Indian tribe, Congo Nation.Predictably, he was remade as a leading light of the 1990s "acid jazz" movement. Many think his best music in this vein can be found on two CTI albums, House of the Rising Sun and (of course) Power of Soul. Ah, yes the 'Power of Soul.' Indeed. There's none of the overt self-indulgence of so-called "fusion" records of the day. This thing plays today as well as it did back then. (By the way, Bob James - who would become a leader in the pop movement that followed - was the arranger.)The record features - and this is saying something - "Could Heaven Ever Be Like This," actually one of the best disco songs ever. All of it has been fodder for countless rap albums. Muhammad's work with Grant (in particular "Alive," on Blue Note) also helped cement his status among the dance- and groove-oriented jazz lovers. But Muhammad never completely got away from popular music, working with singer Roberta Flack (yes, that's him on "Killing Me Softly"), and even working with the "art-rock" band Emerson, Lake and Palmer.In the end, he can be found on countless great records, with Herbie Hancock and Horace Silver, but also with Fats Domino and Sam Cooke.Underrated, and unjustly forgotten, Muhammad moves like Forrest Gump through my record collection. I've selected a few jumping off points ...RECOMMENDED: Black Rhythm Revolution (Prestige 1971)Power Of Soul (Kudu 1975)Boogie To the Top (Fantasy 1977)Legends of Acid Jazz (Prestige 1996)The Songs Of Sonny Rollins (Milestone 1997)

Musical musings by Something Else! "We're not saying this is the best music ever; we're just saying...

Forgotten Series: Coleman Hawkins

Nick Deriso — Thu, 1 Mar 2007 08:04:39 EST

Just popped in Coleman Hawkins' smoker Rainbow Mist (Delmark), from 1944 -- a brilliant record borne out of boredom. Hawkins, the tenor saxman, had already made his splash with the song "Body and Soul," back in 1939.When he returned from living in Europe for five years, he took a chance on updating his by-then decrepit standard -- stirring in some talented unknowns that had yet to reach a mainstream audience.Hawkins caught a young trumpet player named John Birks Gillespie at the Onyx Club and, by all accounts, liked what he heard. Dizzy, of course, would call that group the first bona fide bop configuration.Coleman knew a few of the particulars: Co-leader was bassist Oscar Pettiford, who'd played on Hawkins' "The Man I Love." He was also a fan of the tenormen in Dizzy's group, Budd Johnson and Don Byas.Not hard to see what was brewing here. Hawk was out to top himself -- so he called in some young lions, even letting a kid named Max Roach sit in on drums.This new take on "Body and Soul" was notable then for two reasons. It was the debut session for Apollo Records, a label that started at the Rainbow Music Shop near the Apollo Theater in Harlem. More importantly, some call this the original bop recording. ("Rainbow Mist" includes the first recorded version of the bop standard "Salt Peanuts," for instance.)As you might imagine, "Rainbow Mist" (named for that Harlem record store) is big. Five saxes and three trumpets is how big."Woody 'n You" is a fierce example of early Gillespie. For one moment, it is ALL Dizzy and Hawk -- Gillespie with the counter melody and Coleman skidding over the top.The unstated thing here is the brilliance of this date's rhythm section. Pettiford and Roach are utterly in command of this sound of jazz to come.Later dates are included in this sterling and remastered reissue, from Chicago's Delmark Records. These feature a separate band -- spotlighted by legendary tenor player Ben Webster; this proves to be an interesting study.Hawkins must have been watching Webster closely in the days leading up to this session. His solos alternately mimic and complement Webster throughout. Charlie Shavers -- who, along with Gillespie, was a member of Frank Fairfax's large band in the 1930s -- takes the turn most associated with Dizzy on "Salt Peanuts."That dude just blows a HOLE in the second half of the album. A must-have for jazz fans.

Musical musings by Something Else! "We're not saying this is the best music ever; we're just saying...

Forgotten Series: Bill Evans - The Complete Village Vanguard Recordings

Nick Deriso — Fri, 23 Feb 2007 07:57:38 EST

The pianist, of course, got all the press. But Scott Lafaro, this tragic genius in a unique counter-melodic style, is the one who so often gets forgotten. If you care anything about bass (rock, jazz, or blues) you will find his recordings with Bill Evans at New York City's Village Vanguard... and you will study them. LaFaro performed for just six years between 1955-61, yet he moved this instrument into a whole new place. It's didn't hurt that LaFaro was working with the Jersey-born, Hammond, La.-schooled Evans -- who had attended Southeastern on a flute scholarship. Evans was, even then, famous for his delicate, yet dramatic contributions with Miles Davis (a stint that included the best-selling acoustic jazz album of all time, "Kind of Blue"), yet he ended up doing his most important work with LaFaro. And, like those previous bursts of swinging radiance, this too was recorded all in one day -- though, what was once a single concert would become the foundation of two vintage releases. First came "Sunday at the Village Vanguard" (which is more heavily weighted with bass) and then "Waltz for Debby" (a ballad album, with more piano), both made with drummer Paul Motian.Evans found, with LaFaro, an improbable relationship, one based on simultaneous composition and improv. It's both melodic and rhythmic, like two thoughts running through your mind.Just that quickly, however, it was finished. Tens days after their two-year relationship culminated with these landmark live recordings, LaFaro was killed in an auto accident -- sending a depressed and broken Evans into a tailspin. Evans didn't perform publicly for nearly a year, and didn't make make any important records for longer still. Even then, he never reached the same astounding, and artistically sympathetic, heights with a bass player again. In fact, after Lafaro died, I think I like Evans' duets with folks like saxman Cannonball Adderly and guitarist Jim Hall best of all.LaFaro passed having never fronted his own record. Still, he remains one of the most important bassists of jazz's first 50 years -- if only because LaFaro was the first to move his instrument from out back. There are -- on those albums with Evans, in particular -- the makings of a whole new sound, one based on challenge and response, from inside the larger band dynamic. LaFaro's stirring complexity was short lived, but timeless.

Musical musings by Something Else! "We're not saying this is the best music ever; we're just saying...

Forgotten Series: Leon Russell

Nick Deriso — Thu, 8 Feb 2007 09:30:48 EST

It's, of course, fitting that singer/songwriter/keyboardist Leon Russell's real last name is "bridges."Claude Russell Bridges, born April 2, 1942, would one day write a tune called "The Masquerade" that, in jazz singer and guitarist George Benson's hands, hit No. 1 simultaneously on the jazz, pop and R&B charts. It's the footnote on Russell that got a thousand feet tapping. And powerful imagery that defines his life’s work in music.A gravelly marvel of a singer, Leon Russell parlayed his Cliff's-notes rep as the rustic, yet rich swamp-popster into a terrific little rock sideshow. He's never exactly been in the spotlight, but careful liner-note readers - at least for a while - could always find Russell along its fuzzy edges.If he set a standard of playing, and of innovating, that couldn't be matched later - he also established himself as a hard-headed iconoclast, perhaps the last of the bird-flipping genre-busters. Russell started as a 14-year-old who lied about his age so he could sit in with rockabilly players like Ronnie Hawkins (who eventually led a tough group of Canadians that became Bob Dylan's backing group, the Band) and James Burton - the legendary late-period Elvis Presley guitarist from Shreveport.That led to sessions work under the tuteledge of mad-genius producer Phil Spector, where Russell played on a stunning series of hit songs. Soon, he was the hipster sideman. He could be found opening for Jerry Lee Lewis, sitting in with Glen Campbell records, making friends with Beatles.By 1970, Russell had written a hit for Joe Cocker ("Delta Lady") then helped organize and play on Cocker's Mad Dogs and Englishmen tour - as famous now for its debauchery as its shimmering soul-deep musical fury. A self-titled solo album followed, and it included the minor hit "A Song for You."Russell was at the top of his game. He appeared on the bill for George Harrison's proto-benefit concert for storm-torn Bangaladesh in 1971, performing a memorable medley of the Rolling Stones' "Jumpin' Jack Flash" and then the 1950s Coasters' hit "Young Blood."His flair for gritty, but heartfelt playing led to invites for sessions work with the Stones, as well as B.B. King, and Dylan, another star from the "Bangaladesh" show. There then followed, on 1972's Carny, one of Russell's most enduring classic-rock staples, the single "Tight Rope" - and then an only-in-the-1970s triple-LP concert set called Leon Live in 1973.But Leon being Leon, he followed those commercial successes with a country-tinged studio effort. Many fans weren't ready to cross that particular bridge. People tended to take him as a deep-fried, Southern-sounding rock act - though Russell is actually from Oklahoma - and were disappointed when he didn't play along.But Russell's was clearly a spirit forged on variety, on not just the spice of life but the entire spice rack. He made his bones working across the spectrum, from arranging Ike and Tina Turner's towering single "River Deep, Mountain High" to playing a key role in the Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man," Gary Lewis and the Playboys' "This Diamond Ring" and Herb Alpert's "A Taste of Honey."His career began to slow, and for a while it looked like 1975's Will O' the Wisp — which produced the single "Lady Blue" - would be Russell's last great side. He was silent for much of the period from 1979-92.But with Anything Can Happen (produced by the then-hot Bruce Hornsby), he finally reemerged both as a recording artist - famously collaborating later with Willie Nelson — but more particularly as a tireless touring act, even well into his '60s. His hair, and his ever-whitening beard, grew longer - but so did Leon Russell's legend as the consummate musician and never-ebbing rebel.His records, and his concerts, are a strange mixture, this gospelly get-down groove coupled with a strange and strained vocal. It's down-home, happy and bedraggled - like a middle-aged hound dog. Leon can howl like that, too, his voice and his music so unadulterated and unique.The difference now is, we accept that. Russell is the square peg finally, blessedly, crammed into the round hole.He is what he is. A guy who crosses these bridges as he comes to them.

Musical musings by Something Else! "We're not saying this is the best music ever; we're just saying...