The snow is on the ground as I type and we're almost a week into 2022. It's a snow day so the kid is doing remote learning from home and I don't have to give him a ride to school. Only now do I have a free moment to look back on the previous year of music and try to look ahead and think about what's coming out.
I had big plans to head to New York City next week for Winter Jazz Fest and catch as many live performances as I could. Of course, that ain't happening. That virus that was supposed to magically go away, according to the last person who occupied the White House, isn't going anywhere and has been affecting more people. I say "affecting" because it keeps encroaching upon us. Even if it hasn't made someone like me sick yet (knock on wood), it's coming damn close. And it pisses me the hell off.
The good news is, there's no shortage of music to hear and write about. I still have albums that are several months old that I would like to cover here. My particular neurosis comes when I wrestle with the idea of writing about an album that's several months old vs. skipping it altogether, feeling too late to the party and trying to focus on something newer. I'm not one to give an album a quick half-listen before I fire off a set of paragraphs about it. (Publicists and musicians might be happy to hear that.) So it takes me a while to feel like I'm ready to write. The number of times I've been thanked for detailed reviews is enough positive reinforcement to keep that approach going.
I still have five days of work at the day job before what will now be a staycation starts, and I'm trying to be strategic about how blog posts will factor into that. If I make one resolution for the year, I hope to do more blog posts throughout the year. 2021 had the lowest count on entries in a while.
But first a look back, with some links. I was once again hit up by Francis Davis and Tom Hull to participate in their annual Jazz Critics Poll. It had a home for the last few years on the NPR website, but this year it has moved to The Arts Fuse, an online arts magazine that focuses on the Greater Boston area but also, clearly, has national coverage as well. The poll results can be found here. If you're interested in what I liked over the past year, that can be found here. Just scroll down until you see my name.
As Francis Davis points out in his opening statement, it was a year that catered to the shut-in jazz enthusiast, with a huge number of box set releases. It wasn't simply rara avis releases either. Pi Recordings released six CDs by Snark Horse, a mini orchestra lead by pianist Matt Mitchell and drummer Kate Gentile, who penned a series of one-bar compositions for various configurations of that group. (I just picked that up a week ago and made my way through the whole thing a few days ago. Intriguing stuff, though I want to revisit it to get a better handle on it. Suffice to say, it's good music to listen to while driving.)
There was more William Parker than you could shake a stick at. I didn't get to hear Migration of Silence Into and Out of the Tone World, the bassist's 10-disc set of vocal pieces. (I've come around a bit on vocals in experimental jazz, but I'm still cautious) But his dual small group albums, Mayan Space Station and Painter's Winter were both strong sets. He also released Village Mothership, a reconvening of the trio with pianist Matthew Shipp and drummer Whit Dickey. Shipp also had a fruitful year of releases on his own and with other musicians. His good pal Ivo Perelman put out a six-disc set Brass and Ivory Tales, with a series of pianists. (I wonder if he knows that Doc Severinsen and Henry Mancini did their own Brass and Ivory album once, which was quite different from Perelman's.) That one is still waiting for me to play, not due to lack of interest but lack of time.
2021 marked the first year that the jazz cognoscenti and I all agreed on the best album of the year. I'm glad they followed my lead (heh heh) on James Brandon Lewis & Red Lily Quintet's Jesup Wagon. I've spoken about that album at length here on the blog, and was lucky enough to see Lewis live (twice!) this year (not even Francis Davis can make such a claim, as he laments n his introduction). The saxophonist deserves every bit of that recognition because he's an incredible player and composer who is just getting started.
But there were plenty of significant historical releases that came in large packages. The Julius Hemphill box set, The Boyé Multi-National Crusade for Harmony hasn't hit my doorstep yet but I'm hoping to get ahold of it soon. (Incidentally, while I'm not opposed to downloads, listening to a big set like that simply as downloads detracts from the overall intent that the producers had when creating the package, in my opinion. It's like getting a cassette dub of Sgt. Pepper without ever seeing the cover art.)
It was no surprise that John Coltrane's A Love Supreme Live In Seattle took top honors in Rara Avis, because.... it's John Coltrane. Sure it was a great performance (though lacking not in fidelity but in balance of instruments), but for sheer jazz sweat equity, you can't beat Roy Brooks' Understanding. Click the link for my review.
The day I bought the Coltrane set, I also decided I couldn't live without Lee Morgan's Complete Live at the Lighthouse box set. The original two-record set has a permanent spot on my shelf but I never picked up the expanded 1996 three-disc version. All the accolades about this quintet being quite possibly the best band that Morgan ever lead in his massive career were pointing in the direction of a purchase.
Many know that Blue Note released Lighthouse in vinyl and CD formats. The former is geared towards retired jazz fans, or those so well-off, they wouldn't bat an eye at the price. Who else could sink $350 on the 12-disc set? (Apparently enough people because a current check of the Blue Note website states that the set is sold out.) $80 for an eight-disc set is relatively more reasonable, and a worthy purchase at that.
The set focuses almost exclusively on newer material that Morgan's quintet was working up, knowing that they would be recording live and didn't want to rehash music that he had already released for the label. One version of "The Sidewinder" did make it to tape, which adds some punch to what was originally a more slinky groove, giving it a fresh take. But that's a major exception.
Much of the new material was penned by Morgan's bandmates, Harold Mabern (piano), Bennie Maupin (tenor saxophone, bass clarinet, flute) and Jymie Merritt (whose electric Ampeg "Baby" bass has a smooth low end almost like a bass guitar at times). In an interview with Mabern in 2004, the late pianist told me that Morgan was a leader who was open to playing a lot of music by his sideman, which is borne out by this set.
It's often said that unlike other jazz musicians, Morgan didn't exactly evolve with the times, maintaining a more traditional, acoustic sound. However, it becomes clear in listening to Lighthouse that Morgan wasn't too far removed from Davis or Freddie Hubbard for that matter, in terms of writing. Most of the pieces on the set are built on grooves, with only a slight bit of chordal movement. Mabern's "The Beehive" had a knotty melody line with stops and starts, but harmonically it was pretty straightforward. Maupin's "Something Like This" or "416 East 10th Street" might have been a little more complex, but those tracks didn't make it onto the original album. "Neophilia" did, and Maupin's deliberate piece, with bass clarinet and flugelhorn, gathers a lot of exciting even as it moves as a slow pace.
If you compare this to Hubbard's Straight Life, which was recorded for CTI just a few months later, the only difference is electric piano, as that album's title track is also a 16-minute vamp with solos. No one will mistake Morgan's group for Miles Davis' group but Morgan clearly had an eye (or an ear) to use a simple structure and get more out of it.
In closing, the title of this entry is a bit of a hat tip to Mort Sahl, who we lost in 2021. The first album I ever bought by that wiseguy comedian was called 1960 or Look Forward In Anger. As long as there are idiots out there who disregard the safety of their neighbors in favor of their own convenience, the anger will continue. But so will the music. So keep listening.
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