As I type, Record Store Day is less than 24 hours away. I've always been conflicted about that day. As I say each year, every day could be Record Store Day for me. So many RSD reissues are readily available used in their original vinyl format for much less. Some new releases under utilize the available 18 to 22 minutes per side on a record, thereby blowing the package into two pricey discs.
One year for RSD, I nearly dropped $15 on a 10" 78 of the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations." I love 78s. I kind of like the Beach Boys. I don't exactly dig that song. What the hell was I thinking, I wondered, in the present tense at that time, as I put it back. Ironically, $15 for a RSD purchase seems like a steal these days, even for a single or EP.
This year, things are a little different. Zev Feldman, the man who has a knack for uncovering unreleased sessions or finding clean copies of things hitherto available only as bootlegs, has helped to release no fewer than six albums of unearthed music for Record Store Day on his own Jazz Detective label, as well as the Resonance and Elemental imprints. Like previous Feldman projects, these come with a plethora of historical liner notes and interviews with musicians involved in the projects or others who can speak with authority on these players. All are being released on vinyl tomorrow and they'll also be available in compact disc form (my source for listening here). Leave to Feldman to come up with RSD projects that might make it worth standing in line outside of a shop early in the morning, in hopes of snagging a copy. All of them will be released on CD on April 26 too, so if you can't get vinyl, you can still hear them.
Here is my flash on three of them, with more to come.
Chet Baker & Jack Sheldon
In Perfect Harmony: The Lost Album
(Jazz Detective)
www.thejazzdetective.com
The first thing that might come to mind when thinking about Chet Baker and Jack Sheldon together is a scene in
Let's Get Lost, Bruce Weber's noirish 1988 documentary about the former trumpet player. In an interview, Sheldon relates a rather salacious story about
Baker interruptus, which actually worked to his advantage. If the story itself wasn't racy enough, Sheldon's matter-of-fact delivery gives an extra sense of
zheesh.
But in the opening bars of In Perfect Harmony: The Lost Album, a different, more positive memory will come flooding back to anyone who grew up listening to the Schoolhouse Rock cartoons on Saturday mornings. The voice singing "This Can't Be Love" out of tempo with Dave Frishberg's piano is the same one that brought life to Conjunction Junction and the Bill that was sitting on the steps of Capitol Hill. That's Jack Sheldon, who sings while Chetty blows. (As an aside, he also voiced a great spoof of the Bill on The Simpsons too.)
This lost session took place in 1972 at the behest of Sheldon and guitarist Jack Marshall. Baker had been out of the business for several years, following a brawl that resulted in broken teeth and damage to his embouchure. He would launch a serious comeback a year later, but Sheldon lured him into the studio with the promise that a double trumpet/vocalist frontline meant the recovering player would only have to play half the time. Marshall, who oversaw the session at his United Audio studio and played guitar, started shopping it to labels but it was shelved when he died suddenly in 1973.
For a player who was still in recovery mode, Baker does an admirable job on his horn and his soft voice is rich with phrasing ideas. Sheldon of course is more brash in voice and horn but the way he interacts with Baker captures the camaraderie between these two. One of the 11 tracks passes five minutes, and most are way shorter, with just a few choice choruses. Marshall appears minimally, with the rhythm section of Frishberg, former Tijuana Brass drummer Nick Ceroli and especially bassist Joe Mondragon (whose feet probably got sore from all that walking) providing a steady backdrop. It might not be a revelation (though Sheldon's performance on "Historia De Un Amor" is) but it's fun.
Mal Waldron & Steve Lacy
The Mighty Warriors
Speaking of close associates, pianist Mal Waldron and soprano saxophonist Steve Lacy had a bond that began in 1958 when they played together at the Five Spot in New York. It's virtually impossible to talk about Steve Lacy without mentioning the impact that Thelonious Monk's music had on him, and Waldron likewise took the ideas of rhythmic simplicity from Monk and carved out his own sound. Both men spent most of their later years living in Europe but while Lacy's work was documented on many albums on this shore, the modest, self-deprecating Waldron (the first artist to release an album on ECM) is more of a jazz musician's musician. A set like this can inspire some rediscovery listening.
The Mighty Warriors comes from a 1995 performance at the De Singel Theater in Antwerp, Belgium at a celebration of Waldron's 70th birthday. The duo is joined by bassist Reggie Workman and drummer Andrew Cyrille. Not surprisingly, they perform two Monk compositions, "Epistrophy" and "Monk's Dream," but as good as they are, the real fire can be felt in the original compositions. Disc One (Record One to vinyl buyers) features Lacy's "Longing," where the saxophonist sticks close to the theme for three minutes, keeping the excitement at high level. Waldron's "What It Is" finds him borrowing similar ideas in a Monk-like fashion, while the rhythm section drives it along.
The two extended tracks on the second record provide the pivotal performances that make this album a must-have. Workman's "Variations III" has an almost free bop feel to it, never quite going out but definitely pushing on the walls. During a soprano/percussion duet, Lacy unleashes a extended musical soliloquy that flows with expansions on ideas. After an arco solo from Workman, Waldron plays in a blend of clusters as well as single note likes.
This is followed by a 25-minute version of Waldron's "Snake Out" that includes a solo by the pianist, subtitled "Variations On a Theme by Cecil Taylor," before returning to the theme. The track starts off with a steady flow but eventually the rhythm section gets a little jagged, although Lacy manages to interact with them gracefully. The Taylor theme doesn't quite sound like Cyrille's former bandleader, but it has a soulful direction to it.
This is the album to grab first on Record Store Day.
Sonny Rollins
Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings
Any live Sonny Rollins set is usually reason for rejoicing but Pittsburghers should really be stoked for the four-record Freedom Weaver: The 1959 European Tour Recordings set. It features Steel City native Joe Harris, who spent time in the Dizzy Gillespie band and lived in Europe, playing with Quincy Jones, before returning to his native town where he taught at the University of Pittsburgh before passing away in 2016. Harris appears on just four tracks of this massive set, but another Pittsburgh ex-pat drums on three extended pieces - Kenny Clarke.
Rollins was a few months away from the two-year musical seclusion when he took to practicing his horn on the Williamsburg Bridge. In March 1959, he headed to Europe with Henry Grimes (bass) and Pete LaRoca (drums). The pianoless trio was Rollins' preferred instrumentation, having used it on his Way Out West and A Night at the Village Vanguard albums. Grimes had yet to be aligned with the New Thing in New York (playing with Cecil Taylor and Albert Ayler) but his reputation had been sealed through stints with Thelonious Monk and Benny Goodman. LaRoca had appeared on one Village Vanguard track with the tenor saxophonist.
The openng tracks on the first disc capture a band in good fidelity and in deep communication. Although the album's notes make passive reference to "Rollins's demanding standards led to disagreements and occasional physical confrontations with both members of the band," the music reveals no such evidence. (That serves as motivation to check out Aiden Levy's Rollins bio.)
In fact the communication in tracks like "St. Thomas" sounds like a tight band, rather than merely three great players working together. In "I've Told Every Little Star," which appears four times throughout the set, Rollins uses a clever motif, playing the end of the phrase slightly off mike, to add a touch of echo the melody. If there's anything disappointing on the set, it might be the overuse of trading fours during the solos. The trades between Grimes and LaRoca go on a little too long during "How High the Moon."
Harris sits in on a radio/television set that includes a rapid-fire spin of Duke Ellington's "It Don't Mean a Thing."
Most of the tracks keep things clean and tight, with only a few longer than five minutes. However, the three tracks with Clarke in the drum chair come off more like casual club sessions where everyone is free to stretch "Woody 'n' You," "But Not For Me" and "Lady Bird" past the 15-minute mark. Each has more four trading happening, but Clarke makes it count.
As far as sound quality goes, only the tracks from Germany sound a little muddy. But hearing Rollins play "Cocktails for Two" - not like Spike Jones but in the manner closer to how it was originally written - makes up for it. A few quick interview segments confirm this writers belief that jazz musicians aren't necessarily by nature hard to interview. They simply got tired of asinine questions that either fawned over them (kind of the case here) or sounded like variations on "What is jazz?" Thankfully, these segments take up little time in this exciting document. On the other hand, Feldman's conversation with Sir Sonny in the album's booklet adds some extra insight to the music.
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