Andreas Polyzogopoulos - Conciertos Consentidos, Gijon, Spain 28/10/2016

Some of my musical highlights of 2016 have been the series of jazz and soul concerts organized by Gus Zarrillo, Lidia Lopez and Miguel Uria as "Conciertos Consentidos" in Gijon. The quality of gigs has been so invariably high that it's almost a given that a good night's live music is guaranteed for all. However the best gig I've seen so far - in fact one of the best gigs I've seen this year - took place at the small Cafe Plaza Doze last Friday night and featured the young and rising Greek trumpeter Andreas Polyzogopoulos and his quartet.

He'd actually played the previous night at the larger Sala Acapulco and this show seemed to be an extra added at the last minute as kind of friendly informal follow-up and a chance for some local musicians get up and jam with him after the main set.

His style is economic and full of soulful subtlety often recalling 50s era Miles Davis. His band - Vasilis Stefanopoulos on bass, Drakos Ktistakis on drums and featuring Asturian virtuoso César Latorre sitting in on keyboards - set up relaxed but very tight jazz/funk grooves which give him plenty of space to explore and improvise.

I've not heard much of his recorded work but I get the impression his influences are pretty wide. He has even released an album of Pink Floyd cover versions which I'd love to track down. There is an ethereal spaciness in his playing which is reminiscent of some of Miles Davis early 70s work - especially In A Silent Way (one of my favourite albums ever by the way).

The gig in the Plaza Doze was packed out but the audience were hushed and reverent, aware that we were witness to one of the best displays of soulful jazz artistry we've seen in a long time.

It really was an outstanding show, the Conciertos Consentidos brand is now well on the way to becoming a trademark of quality. Let's hope there's much more to come. In fact I believe the next show is December 15th and features the Daniel Cano Quintet in the Sala Acapuco in Gijon.

Anyway, here are a couple of clips from Friday's Plaza Doze show

Andreas Polyzogopoulos, trumpet, Vasilis Stefanopoulos, bass, Drakos Ktistakis, drums, César Latorre, keyboards.

Band page http://www.andreaspolyzogopoulos.com

Conciertos Consentidos on facebook https://www.facebook.com/ConCiertosConSentidos/ 

Post main set jam with local musicians Felix Morales on drums and J.Ramon Feito on the keyboard on a fantastic version of My Funny Valentine. 

More stranger than known

Fatbeat! Powerhouse Jazz / Funk from Madrid

Asturian Jazz: The Xaime Arias Trio at the Alambique, Gijon, Spain 7/8/2014

Views of Spain - The Art of Arle Corte 

Fatbeat! Powerhouse Jazz / Funk from Madrid.

Fatbeat! are a  Jazz / Alt Rock / Funk / (whatever) band based in Madrid, Spain. I saw them play a stunning set in a small bar in Gijon, Spain on Friday night, parts of which left me, and the others there fortuitously assembled, quite breath-taken.

I guess you could call what they do a kind of jazz rock (long instrumentals played with expertise and chops) but the two sets played on Friday night were extremely varied and took in elements not only of Jazz but also Psychedelia, Folk, Funk, Alt Rock and even 20th Century classical music.

Formed in Madrid in 2009, they've released  two fine albums of self-composed material (available here on bandcamp). Their second album "Animals" .is a good solid modern jazz-rock album but sometimes the performances come over as a little too polite for me and it's really in a live setting that the material seems to come to life and breathe fire.

As a live band they really are a serious force to be reckoned with and if you get a chance, you should go see them play. All are very accomplished musicians but Miguel Benito, in particular, is a powerhouse of a drummer who lays down the,solid but frisky grooves the rest of the band - Mario Quiñones on guitar, Andrés Miranda on sax, keyboardist Alberto Morales and bassist Ander Garcia - are free to improvise over. And this is no revival of 70s noodling jazz fusion, the riffs here are catchy and lively and band play soulfully rather than excessively.

I think they are a band who deserve to be much more widely known. Spain has a thriving contemporary music scene and Fatbeat! are one of the best new bands (Spanish or otherwise) I've seen in a long time.

Check them out.

Here's the encore from Friday night's gig at the Cafe Plaza Doze in Gijon, Spain.

Here's a ferocious clip of them in Madrid in 2012. Crank it up.

Band website (in Spanish) http://fatbeatfatbeat.com/
On bandcamp https://fatbeatrecordings.bandcamp.com/




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Asturian Jazz: The Xaime Arias Trio at the Alambique, Gijon, Spain 7/8/2014

"Cool" - BBC Arena documentary

20 years of the Xixon Sound

The Cool Sound of Asturian Jazz - Carlos Pizarro...

The Return of Manta Ray - Manta Ray live

Ryley Walker - Live in Gijon, Spain 8/7/2015

Ryley Walker in Toma 3, Gijon, Spain - Photo, D.Mainwood

Ryley Walker is gigging around Spain this July and turned up at the Bar / Book shop Toma 3 in Gijon to play an informal lunchtime acoustic set.

Although he started late due to some kind of road accident / traffic hold-up on the way, Ryley played a pretty relaxed set that went down well with the mixed audience of local musicians, hardcore fans and families with kids.

He's an impressive guitarist who brings to mind Davy Graham as well as Bert Jansch, Tim Buckley and more recently, especially on the new album Primrose Green, John Martyn.

I reviewed his first album All Kinds Of You on this blog last year - it's an excellent debut debut - but the new album goes way beyond into jazz territory that Martyn only hinted at on his early 70s Island albums. With its swirling jazz rhythms and pastoral English folk ambiance, it's one of my favourite albums of the year so far - and excellent summer listening. Check it out if you haven't heard it yet.

But anyway, here is a selection of Ryley's acoustic set in a packed bar in Gijon on a cloudy, muggy afternoon in July.


If I Were A Carpenter

Cocaine Blues

The West Wind

Tour Poster

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"All Kinds Of You" - Ryley Walker's debut continues the folk tradition of Bert Jansch, Davy Graham and Tim Buckley 

Asturian Jazz: The Xaime Arias Trio at the Alambique, Gijon, Spain 7/8/2014 

Fairport Convention Bouton Rouge Sessions   

The Cool Sound of Asturian Jazz - Carlos Pizarro...

UCSC Dorm Tape 1967 - Who is the mystery singer? 

Asturian Jazz: The Xaime Arias Trio at the Alambique, Gijon, Spain 7/8/2014

Here's a heads-up for a great band I saw last night at the Cafe Alambique in Gijon in the north of Spain.

The Xaime Arias Trio (Xaime is pronounced "shymi") are a local latin jazz trio who really deserve some wider recognition. They've been gigging locally here in the northern region of Asturias, Spain for a few years now and have even recorded an album. Xaime Arias plays very melodic keyboards, broad in range and somewhat influenced by the melodies to be heard in traditional Asturian folk music. He takes the Asturian influence and adds some blues and funk to create a very home grown kind of Asturian jazz. He is aided by Oscar Santos:on bass and the excellent Leonel Duarte on drums. 

The numbers tend to build slowly and drummer Duarte builds the tension locking into Arias' solos and creating a very funkified groove. It's loose and free but with Santos' bass keeping the band on course they can really lift off into some quite intense flights of percussive and dance oriented jazz improv. A kind of Latin Jazz power trio.

The 4 year-old clip below doesn't really do the band justice now but it's the only thing I could find by them on Youtube. The band (and we) deserve more. 

Very recommended. 

 

Here are some photos of the gig that I took with my phone.

 

 

 

more stranger than known

Asturias > Eight Miles High - Roger McGuinn

Gregory Porter - The Gijon Jazz Festival

The Alambique - Jazz Finds a Home in Northern Spain...

The Cool Sound of Asturian Jazz - Carlos Pizarro

Jeff Beck at Southampton Guildhall July 3rd 2009

Jeff Beck is 70 today. In my opinion he is the greatest living British electric guitar player. In a career spanning nearly 50 years the man just seems to have gone from strength to strength. The first two Jeff Beck Group albums are rock classics and set the template for Led Zeppelin and the flood of 1970s heavy rock bands that followed. Trailblazing as those albums were the shows he played at Ronnie Scott's in 2008 showed him at the peak of his powers and with a subtlety and imagination that was still only nascent in his playing of the mid / late 60s.

Since the 70s he's pretty much kept to his own version of instrumental jazz rock but for me he is someone who is interesting not just because of his technique or "sound" but because he just seems to have more imagination than everyone else put together. You never really know what to expect from a Jeff Beck solo. His talent is unique and slightly off the wall. I think he is the only rock guitarist to get anywhere near the kind of musical artistic creativity that Jimi Hendrix had.

Here he is at a concert I saw in the cavernous and somewhat decrepit Guildhall in Southampton in July 2009. It was a sweltering hot night but Beck put in a stunning show. Here is part of the encore. It's a breathtaking solo from a man whose powers remain undiminished.

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Led Zeppelin at Southampton University 1973

Page and Plant talking about the new Led Zeppelin reissues

Peter Green - "A Mind To Give Up Living" - The Blues of despair...

Ten Years After - Swing In 1969

The Rolling Stones' finest hour - "Get Yer Leeds Lungs Out"...

"All Kinds Of You" - Ryley Walker's debut continues the folk tradition of Bert Jansch, Davy Graham and Tim Buckley

Ryley Walker is a 24 year-old singer / songwriter and guitarist from Chicago. I must confess I knew nothing about him until a few days ago when I chanced upon his excellent new debut album All Kinds Of You.

Walker has a background in Chicago’s experimental free/noise music scene but recently took his music off in a more folk-oriented direction inspired by 60s folk troubadours like Tim Hardin, Tim Buckley and Bert Jansch.

With an extremely impressive guitar picking style and a voice that does indeed recall Bert Jansch, the album is of a consistently high quality. All the songs were composed by Walker and he draws on a variety of musical styles including blues, jazz and especially the mid/late 60s crossover folk jazz of Jansch, Davy Graham, Pentangle, John Martyn and Nick Drake.


The West Wind
The album opener,The West Wind, has a gorgeous arrangement and one can hear Walker's jazz background in the lengthy instrumental coda.

The album has a number of remarkable highlights. Blessings also features viola and has some of the fragility of Nick Drake's work. Clear The Sky is a similarly outstanding ballad. I really like the album's use of viola (played by Whitney Johnson). It works well and adds a very ethereal "British folk" atmosphere, sometimes reminiscent of early Third Ear Band, to many of the songs. Instrumental Fonda recalls Davy Graham and the album closer Tanglewood Spaces features some really exquisite guitar playing. The album covers a lot of musical ground ranging from the atmospherically autumnal late 60s British folk sound to the wide open blues and jazz spaces of 20th century Americana.


Twin Oaks Pt. 1 displays Walker's impressive guitar style.




Since first hearing the album last week I haven't been listening to much else. This is an album which clearly returns to the source of classic mid 60s folk but breathes new life and reinvigorates it for a 21st Century audience. Walker has talent and is a spectacular guitarist. This album promises much for the future. He will be worth watching.


Ryley Walker - "All Kinds Of You" (Tompkins Square - April 2014)

1. The West Wind
2. Blessings
3. Twin Oaks Pt. 1
4. Great River Road
5. Clear The Sky
6. Twin Oaks Pt. 2
7. Fonda
8. On The Rise
9. Tanglewood Spaces

Stream the album and read Ryley Walker's own sleeve-notes here
http://www.self-titledmag.com/2014/04/08/stream-ryley-walkers-all-kinds-of-you-album-and-read-his-commentary/



Untitled
While I was looking for more info on Ryley I came across this song on Soundcloud apparently recorded a couple of years ago. Here we find Ryley in psychedelic folk mode sounding like early Tim Buckley. The droning quality of the guitars and the eerie atmosphere also bring Nico to mind. Impressive. This could be a taste of future musical developments as a recent session on World Cafe also showed a notable Tim Buckley and John Martyn influence (listen here).






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Fairport Convention Bouton Rouge Sessions 

Jonathan Miller's Psychedelic Alice in Wonderland

The Cool Sound of Asturian Jazz - Carlos Pizarro... 

UCSC Dorm Tape 1967 - Who is the mystery singer?  

Tony Bennett - Music "controlled by corporations who think the public are ignorant"

Tony Bennett and Judy Garland, 1963

Mind The Gap
I grew up on the crooners when I was a kid and, of course, did not appreciate them at all at the time. Their music was not rock and it was not cool. How could it be? It was my parents' music. However, with the passing of time, I have come to appreciate the grace, sensuality, lyricism and wonderful jazz timing of Tony Bennett, Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin and the other crooners who were ever present on TV. I can now see the artistry my 15-year-old self was blind to.

But then I grew up in a time when there seemed to be a massive cultural and generational gap between those of us born after the war and those born before. My parents' generation hated what I listened to and couldn't see any merit in it at all. It was all an awful racket that was always too loud and very definitely needed to be turned down.

I don't think that massive gap exists any more. After all, modern festivals have become family affairs and parents take their kids to see the Rolling Stones. However I must admit that in my advancing years I also, on occasion, take a rather jaded view of contemporary music. There does seem to have been a triumph of marketing over soul in recent years but maybe it's just me.

In fact that generation gap seems strange to me now as I can see that the golden age of American music is not just the 60s or the 70s, it's a period of unrestrained musical expansion which runs from the jazz age of the mid 20s right through to the punk / reggae / rap era of the late 70s / early 80s after which, for me, popular music became corporate, predictable and bland. The beast had been tamed. But that's half a century's wealth of music which surprises, fascinates, thrills and also seems to react with and reflect the times which created it. Blues, Folk, Jazz and Rock are the art forms which dominated 20th Century culture (along with the cinema of course) and it is no surprise that as the USA grew and found a confidence in itself the best of its popular music reflected that. It was also a time when each generation seemed to have its own soundtrack, fashion and philosophy. Beats, Hippies, Punks... Each new decade brought new heroes and new surprises. There didn't seem to be a script. If there was, it was being written as we went along.

 
Tony Bennett 

In this interview for the BBC Tony Bennett starts talking about his signature tune, his favourite song,"I left my heart in San Francisco" and then goes on to express strong views about the state of contemporary music. "The songs written today are terrible" he says. The music business is "controlled by corporations who think the public are ignorant" and just focuses on the young. I'm not sure that hasn't always been true, certainly since Elvis and the invention of the "teenager" in the 50s but then who knows... sometimes when I turn on the radio I wonder if he doesn't have a point. The surprises, once so common, now seem few and far between.


Take a listen

listen to ‘Tony Bennett: 'Modern songs are terrible'’ on Audioboo

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"Cool" - BBC Arena documentary

Gregory Porter - The Gijon Jazz Festival 

The Cool Sound of Asturian Jazz - Carlos Pizarro...

What is Bebop? - The Subject is Jazz 

The Cool Sound of Asturian Jazz - Carlos Pizarro's ethereal jazz piece "Nana pa Mama"

Gijon is a perky little city in Asturias on the northern coast of Spain. It holds a jazz festival every year and has quite a busy jazz scene based around a bar I've written about previously called the Cafe Alambique. 

Carlos Pizarro  © Alejandro Nafría

For me one of the highlights of the festival this year was this gorgeous piece by local guitarist Carlos Pizarro and his quartet. This live version of their own Nana pa Mama seems to have a spacey ethereal atmosphere which is somewhat reminiscent of Miles Davis' In A Silent Way. It is brilliant to chill-out to after a stressing day at work. I love it and I've been listening to it all week. Like Miles' best work, it seems to transcend jazz and is just good music  -  whatever you want to call it.

Take a listen.




You could put that on after In A Silent Way just to maintain the mood couldn't you? The band are Carlos Pizarro - guitar, Javier Rubio - Sax, Horacio Garcia - Bass and Felix Morales - Drums.

As I said, the above version of Nana pa Mama was recorded at the Jazz Festival but you can find the original on the quartet's new CD La voz del árbol (The Voice of the Tree). For me the album version doesn't have the same tension and therefore isn't quite as hypnotic however the album is of a consistently high quality and really shows off some the excellent original jazz on offer here in Asturias.

Carlos has put some of the album on soundcloud and here is the album's opening track Hasta Tu Ombligo Y Volver (To your navel and back).




Quite folk influenced, the above track seems to me to have a kind of late 60s Pentangle feel about it at times. The album has a kind of autumnal melancholy and some of the tracks are based around ideas of age and growing old. All band members contributed there own compositions and it is definitely worth checking out the other tracks on Soundcloud. Support the musicians and buy it if you like it of course.

Nieve (Snow)



I've written before about some of the great jazz being played in Gijon here and I've seen Carlos Pizarro play at the Cafe Alambique on a number of occasions now with a variety of line-ups. His playing is always considered and displays a precise and soulful economy. He's one of the most interesting musicians on the Asturian scene at the moment. Check out his website (in Spanish) here http://www.carlospizarro.es/ for more.

Meanwhile, replay Nana pa Mama and just chill...



Carlos Pizarro - "Que la música no muera y el arte nos salve."




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The Alambique - Jazz Finds a Home in Northern Spain

20 years of the Xixon Sound 

Gregory Porter - The Gijon Jazz Festival 

Medeski Martin and Wood - Gijon Jazz Festival 

Asturias > Eight Miles High - Roger McGuinn 

Gregory Porter - The Gijon Jazz Festival

Gregory Porter in the Jovellanos Theatre, Gijon 10/11/2013. Photo - LNE

Gregory Porter is one of those singers who could have been successful in any musical era of the last 50 or 60 years. One can imagine him as a great blues singer in the 40s, a jazz singer in the 50s or a soul star in the 70s. One hears echoes of Muddy Waters, Bill Withers, Marvin Gaye and even Nat King Cole in his rich baritone voice. He also has a mega talented band that don't just back him up but also launch off into areas of rapturous bebopified high speed jazz. Saxophonist Yosuke Sato is particularly outstanding (check out the solo around the 4.30 mark on Work Song below. Simply stunning).

The concert at the Gijon Jazz Festival on Saturday in no way disappointed. Any worries about the Jovellanos Theater being atmospherically cold and unsuitable (as per my comments on the Medeski Martin and Wood gig of the previous week) were put paid to pretty much by the second or third song into the set. This audience seemed more than ready and up for any required participatory activities and there was even a mass singalong when Porter surprisingly launched into Nat King Cole's "Quizas" in Spanish. The show built steadily to the intense blues holler / jazz bebopery of Work Song and by the encore Hey Laura, one can plainly hear an audience transported and a Gregory Porter triumphant.

We await his return.

Gregory Porter, vocals
Yosuke Sato, saxophone
Chip Crawford, piano
Aaron James, bass
Emanuel Harrold, drums


Work Song
Check out Yosuke Sato's jaw dropping solo from 4:30 on.

Quizas
A Spanish favourite

Hey Laura
Delicious 70s soul

Gregory Porter http://www.gregoryporter.com/

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Medeski Martin and Wood - Gijon Jazz Festival

"Cool" - BBC Arena documentary

The Alambique - Jazz Finds a Home in Northern Spain

Medeski Martin and Wood - Gijon Jazz Festival

Medeski Martin and Wood played the Gijon Jazz Festival on Sunday and turned in a pretty authoritative performance of keyboard led funk jazz. The somewhat up market and seated Jovellanos Theatre is perhaps not the best place to see a trio that, for the most part, specializes in dance music - OK with a few avant garde flourishes and a drum solo but most of it leans to the foot-tapping and hip-grooving heavy funk - and there was a disconnect in first half hour or so that felt like watching a movie with an overly reverential audience providing no response at all. Very odd. A stand up venue would have been much more suitable and we'll see how Gregory Porter fares in the same venue on Saturday. However, by the end of the 90 minute set MMW had broken through the ice and finished with a stomping Hammond driven Booker T and the MGs style soul groove and then a gorgeous slow blues as encore. Definitely the two highlights of the night.

There's er... very little to see in these two clips so just enjoy the music.

  

Encore

More on stranger than known

The Horace Silver Quintet - "Song for My Father" on Danish TV 1968 

 "Cool" - BBC Arena documentary

Ronnie Scott and All That Jazz 

The Alambique - Jazz Finds a Home in Northern Spain

The Alambique - Jazz Finds a Home in Northern Spain

Gijon is a perky little city on the northern coast of Spain in the Principality of Asturias. It's a city with a lot of pride, history and a very strong sense of its own identity. Read my post 20 Years of Xixon Sound for a more detailed description of the city and its place in the history of Spanish rock.

For jazz fans in Gijon, Thursday night is jazz night in the Cafe Alambique. It's not famous. It has no great history and you can probably only fit around 40 or 50 people into it at any one time (though there is a terrace outside) but it is a great place to see bands. Especially jazz bands. You can enjoy a beer standing right next to the drummer or position yourself right opposite the sax player. So it’s very face to face and the acoustics are brilliant. I particularly love the sound of the acoustic double bass. It has a really sensual quality that comes over live but never seems to record well. In the Alambique it sounds really funky. However if you prefer you can just prop up the bar or sit at one of the tables (if there is room) and still only be feet away from the band.

For me this is the way to listen to jazz. It really is a live music. It exists in and for a moment. The musicians create, develop and explore ideas and need to listen and respond to each other in an instant. CDs and vinyl LPs may record the performances but the way to really experience jazz is to have it happening live right in front of you and to see and feel how the music is created from moment to moment. For me, that’s the thrill. To see it fly when it could quite easily fall apart and crash.

And the jazz flies at the Alambique on Thursday nights. There have been occasional excursions into blues, rock and soul but what has really surprised me over the last year or so has been the exceptional quality of the jazz on offer.

For example, this last Thursday I saw a stunning set by the Cesar Latorre trio which was so extraordinary it pretty much inspired me to write this post. The week before there was a really impressive set by the Adrian Carrio Quintet. Before that we had an excellent night with the Jacobo de Miguel trio. A month ago French guitarist Wilfried Wilde's trio played... I could go on, the quality of groups and performances is so consistently high.

So this post is an homage to the Alambique and some of the fine music I have seen there. If you live in Gijon, or are just passing through on a Thursday, go and check out what's on at the Alambique this week. Entrance is free and for the price of a beer or two you can see and listen to some pretty fine music. Their facebook page is regularly updated with what's on or coming up and is here http://www.facebook.com/cafealambique

None of the clips below were filmed in the Alambique. The bands were chosen quite randomly because they have all played there in the last month or so. All the musicians featured here are from Asturias. I think you'll agree there's a lot of good jazz here.

Jazz has found a home in Asturias.

Cesar Latorre is from Gijon but is now based in Amsterdam. He has released one CD called “Fastforward of a Day". His playing is inventive, occasionally slightly berserk and full of imagination. The two sets played last Thursday night showed breathtaking virtuosity and an entertaining playfulness which was, for me anyway, occasionally reminiscent of Thelonius Monk. Check out the video below and his website here http://www.cesarlatorre.com

Adrián Carrio is from Oviedo so is another local lad. He has toured the UK, Europe, Japan and the USA in the last six or seven years. I was quite impressed by the horn section at this gig and the band really swung. Lot of soul.
Check the clip below and his page here http://adriancarrio.es/

The line-up on the clip below is Javier Rubio: alto sax
, Eladio Díaz: tenor sax, 
Adrian Carrio: Piano, 
David Casillas: double bass and 
Felix Morales: drums.

Jacobo de Miguel is another Asturian musician. I've seen him a couple of times at the Alambique now. Another excellent keyboard player with a strong melodic sense.

The 15 minute clip below, although not recorded at the Alambique, gives you an idea of the variety, skill and quality of music on offer most Thursday nights.

More
Asturias > Eight Miles High - Roger McGuinn

20 years of Xixon Sound

"Cool" - BBC Arena documentary

The Horace Silver Quintet - "Song for My Father" on Danish TV 1968

What is Bebop? - The Subject is Jazz

What is Bebop? - The Subject is Jazz

NBC's "The Subject is Jazz" was a 1958 TV show hosted by Gilbert Seldes and was the first television series to give jazz serious attention. The 13-part series was produced by the new National Educational Television Network (NET) and guests included Duke Ellington, Aaron Copland, Bill Evans, Cannonball Adderley, Jimmy Rushing and Langston Hughes. Each thirty minute episode focused on a specific genre of jazz, including swing, cool, and bebop.

The Bebop episode featured pianist and composer Billy Taylor as the Musical Director and also included Cannonball and Nat Adderley.

Billy gives detailed explanation of the bebop form which he sees as an extension of Swing and the band run through exemplary versions of "Bebop" "A NIght in Tunisia" and Round Midnight". Cannonball Adderley also discusses the "indescribable" Charlie Parker."

Interesting factoid; according to Gilbert, "Charlie Parker was said to have sustained 360 notes a minute against the usual 170 and was still swinging".

Billy Taylor - Billy Taylor talks about Bebop on MUZU.TV.

stranger than known

"Cool" - BBC Arena documentary

The Horace Silver Quintet - "Song for My Father" on Danish TV 1968

Ronnie Scott and All That Jazz

"Cool" - BBC Arena documentary

  

 

One of the best jazz films made in recent years. Even if you don't like jazz, you should watch this visually stunning 2009 BBC documentary on 1950s cool jazz. 

"The classic cool combo consisted of 3, 4 or 5 musicians, a rhythm section with the voices supplied by horns and usually a piano. They'd begin with  theme, improvise around it for several minutes and return to it. Young men with a studious air, in well cut suits and slim ties."

Cool jazz was cool for a number of reasons. It was cool music - a relaxed and poised counterpoint to the agitation of Bebop - but it also had attitude and style. It was a precursor of 1960s mod culture with its sharp suits and button down collared shirts.

"If you're good you should be wearing sharp clothes," - Charlie Davidson.

This excellent documentary, produced and directed by Anthony Wall, exudes a certain cool of its own. The narration is minimal and the pace relaxed. The written quotes, archive clips and photos set the backdrop of 1950s America but also compliment the music and let it tell its own story, in its own time.

"As always in jazz, its essence is the tension between improvisation and order, between freedom and discipline" - Time magazine November 1954 (on Dave Brubeck).

If the word "cool" is one of the most overused expressions of the 21st century, watch this and find out about when it actually meant something.

Featuring Miles Davis, Chet Baker, Gerry Mulligan, Dave Brubeck, Stan Getz, The Modern Jazz Quartet, Art Farmer, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Jack Kerouac and original incidental music by George Taylor... This is the birth of the cool. 

"I think I had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to sound like a dry Martini" - Paul Desmond.

Ronnie Scott and All That Jazz

A 1989 BBC Omnibus documentary on Ronnie Scott filmed on the 30th anniversary of the club he founded in Soho, London with tenor sax player Pete King.

The documentary features footage of Zoot Sims, Sonny Rollins, Dizzy Gillespie, Ella Fitzgerald and interviews with Pete King, Stan Tracy, Mel Brooks and also a couple of young Westminster MPs called Ken Clarke and John Prescott. Both united here in order to show how jazz brings together people of opposing political views, however both claim in the interview is this is the closest is they have ever sat together.

Ronnie Scott often acted as club MC was famous for his repertoire of jokes and one-liners. "Our next guest is one of the finest musicians in the country. In the city, he's crap". Of the club he once said, "It's easy to make a million running a jazz club. Just start with two million". "I love this place, its just like home. Filthy and full of strangers" and "it was very quiet last night, we had the bouncers chucking people IN. A guy rang up and asked 'what time does the show start?' I said, what time can you get here? No but I really love this place, its made a very happy man old."

There is even a blog dedicated to Ronnie's humourous asides here The Ronnie Scott Jokes Page

After Ronnie's death in 1996, Pete King continued to run the club for a further nine years, before selling it in 2005.

Ten Years After - Swing In 1969

I have always had a bit of a weakness for Ten Years After. The live album Undead recorded in May 1968 at Klooks Kleek in London is a classic late 60s British blues album and one of my favourites of the era. What separated TYA from Fleetwood Mac, Chicken Shack or the other late 60s British blues boomers was their ability to incorporate jazz. Count Basie's "I May Be Wrong, But I Won't Be Wrong Always"  and Woody Herman's "Woodchopper's Ball" demonstrate a band who definitely had the chops and could really swing. Alvin Lee had had an easy fluid jazz style and more than capable support from Leo Lyons on bass, Ric Lee on drums and Chick Churchill on keyboards.

The problem with TYA, I think, was their lack of song writing skills. Nothing written by the band really stands out and, after they hit massive success with their guitar boogie onslaught Going Home in the Woodstock film, the band gave up playing jazz and lapsed into boogie rock cliche. Within a few years the band had foundered artistically and were playing the same set live year after year. Alvin Lee eventually got bored and quit.

This clip, however, is from November 1969, after Woodstock, but before the boogie rot had set in. The band are still doing a jazz tinged set. There is fluidity to Lee's playing and the Lee / Lyons dual solo during Good Morning Little Schoolgirl is really quite impressive. This band could swing.



Ten Years After at WDR Studios, Cologne.
Setlist:
01 I May Be Wrong, But I Won't Be Wrong Always
02 Good Morning Little Schoolgirl
03 Spider In My Web
04 I'm Going Home

Eight Miles High on bagpipes - Rufus Harley

A few weeks back, I posted a solo acoustic performance of Asturias > Eight Miles High by Roger McGuinn, and commented about how a version of the song on bagpipes would be something to hear.

Well sure enough, such a recording exists. Jazz bigpiper Rufus Harley, who recorded for Atlantic Records in the 60s, played with Sonny Rollins in the 70s and guested on Laurie Anderson's 1982 Big Science album, recorded a version of Eight Miles High on bagpipes for his 1970 Atlantic album Kings / Queens.

Harley, who was of Cherokee descent and sometimes performed in Scottish kilts, got interested in the bagpipes when he saw the funeral of John F. Kennedy on TV and was moved by the sound of the Black Watch bagpipe band.

According to Harley's New York Times obituary, his son Messiah said “My dad was playing a lot of tenor sax then but because Coltrane and Rollins were smoking the sax, that’s why he turned to the bagpipes.”


Take a listen.
Rufus Harley, bagpipes; Richard Tee, piano; Eric Gale, guitar; Charles Rainey, bass; Jimmy Johnson, drums; Montego Joe, conga drum; Nadi Qamar, mamalukembia & Madagascar harp.

 

The Horace Silver Quintet - "Song for My Father" on Danish TV 1968

"Song for My Father" has one of the greatest opening bass lines. It was famously borrowed by Steely Dan for "Rikki Don't Lose That Number".

Not only that but Earth Wind & Fire also pinched it for the intro for "Clover" and Stevie Wonder used the opening horn riff for "Don't You Worry 'Bout a Thing".

So Horace must have been owed a bob or two.

"Song for My Father" was the title track of the Blue Note album originally released in 1965 but here is a mammoth 18 minute version recorded live for Jazz Omkring Midnat on Denmark TV in April 1968 featuring;

Horace Silver - Piano
Bill Hardman - Trumpet
Bennie Maupin - Tenor
John Williams - Bass
Billy Cobham - Drums

I'd love to know if there is any more of this show . Any ideas on precise dates and background info welcome too.