In this latest show we dived into jazz history, checking out some classic jazz tunes alongside a couple of remixes that show how jazz is moving forward.
- Charlie Parker – Relaxin’ at Camarillo from Charlie Parker on Dial
We began with one of the architects of bebop, the jazz movement that first marked the start of modern jazz. Charlie Parker was the alto saxophonist who broke the mould and took jazz forward and out of the dominant swing era. ‘Bird,’ as he was known, was an intuitive player who who based his improvisations not on the melody but rather a tune’s key chords. An early reliance on heroin and alcohol resulted in a mental breakdown and six months of confinement at the Camarillo State Hospital. Released in January 1947, Parker soon headed back to New York and engaged in some of the most rewarding playing of his career leading a group which featured Miles Davis and Max Roach. Relaxin’ at Camarillo itself was recorded in February 1947 with Howard McGhee on trumpet, Dodo Marmaroso on piano, Wardell Gray on tenor sax, Barney Kessell on guitar, Red Callander on bass and Don Lamond on drums. Parker’s importance? Simply that if he’d not existed, jazz would be very different.
2. Errol Garner – Caravan from Concert By the Sea
Next up is one of the most popular pianists of the 1950-60s, Errol Garner, with a live take on Duke Ellington’s classic tune Caravan. This comes from a celebrated album with a celebrated cover – Concert By the Sea from 1955. Erroll Garner was another intuitive musician – unable to read music but a brilliant virtuoso with a unique sound. Like Oscar Peterson, he demonstrated that you can be both popular and sophisticated and it’s his free-form introductions, the stunning runs and – yes – his grunting while playing with a huge smile across his face that were all part of the Errol Garner magic. There’s a complete 3CD set of the Concert By the Sea that’s well worth getting hold of – you can find it here on Discogs. For another take of Caravan, check out this trio version with Ellington on piano, Charles Mingus on bass and the aftermentioned Max Roach on drums. This comes from an album that should be in everyone’s jazz collection – Duke Ellington’s majestic 1962 trio record for United Artists/Blue Note, Money Jungle. If you can, find the Tone Poets version on vinyl – it has a vastly superior sound compared with either the original issue or the CD. And finally, check out two great concerts on the Jazz Icons Youtube site – guaranteed to bring a smile to your face and an astonished shake of the head at all that virtuosity.
Yes – truly a genius of modern music, pianist Thelonious Monk once said that The piano ain’t got no wrong notes – and then set out to demonstrate that jazz truth. This early album (his first for Blue Note from 1951) is bursting with classic Monk tunes – Round About Midnight, Ruby My Dear, Epistrophy, Misterioso and Well You Needn’t. Of course, it’s an essential record for your collection – and you can get it in a great Blue Note Classics release from 2024. It demonstrates that – right from the off – Monk’s angular twists and turns on the keyboard along with unexpected changes of key and that percussive attack would shape all his future compositions. We’d recommend some of his Columbia collections from the 1960s too – like Solo Monk (1964), Straight, No Chaser (1965) and Underground (1968) – all three are great listening. And we haven’t yet said anything about Monk as a jazz fashion icon – just check out those suits, hats and sunglasses…
The title was long thought to be a reference to the Chicago Transit Authority, but composer Jimmy Heath is recorded as saying that it was simply the initials of a former girlfriend. Whatever, this tune has almost become a jazz standard with recordings by Miles Davis, Lee Morgan and Chick Corea – here’s the Corea version from his 1993 album Paint the World. The Playboys album dates from 1957 and features trumpeter Chet Baker in partnership with alto saxophonist Art Pepper. It sports a notorious album cover that High Hefner didn’t approve of – and not because of the shameless use of his magazine marque, but rather that it was by two of the most noted heroin addicts in jazz. Jimmy Heath is behind much of this album with three compositions – For Minors Only and For Miles and Miles are also included here. It should be noted here that – along with Jackie McLean and Kenny Garrett – Art Pepper is one of Neil’s favourite alto players. His later drug-free years include some excellent records – try Mambo Koyama and the beautiful ballad Patricia from the 1978 album Today.
Tubby Hayes was the crown prince of British tenor sax players in the 1960s and remains a massively underrated jazz musician who was as good as any tenor player of the day. An early death at the age of 38 cut short his recording career but there’s still a good body of work to check out. Unusually, Neil recommends starting with the later albums and working backwards. If your budget can stretch to it, then an admittedly expensive starting point is the Complete Fontana Albums box set – eleven of ‘Tubbs’ best records including two of Neil’s favourites, Down in the Village and Mexican Green. The tune Down in the Village was later recorded in an excellent jazz dance version by Japanese favourites Quasimode – check it out here.
We’re back to 1957 for this unusual Miles Davis version of a Jackie McLean tune, which originally featured on McLean’s debut album from 1955. You can only find it on the 2CD Legacy version of this album – but it’s easy to track down an inexpensive copy here on Discogs. This was the first record Davis recorded for Columbia/CBS and it featured that classic first quintet – Davis on trumpet, John Coltrane on tenor saxophone, Red Garland on piano, Paul Chambers on bass and Philly Joe Jones on drums. Listen out for Paul Chambers’ superb bass playing on this one.
Charles Lloyd was one of the most popular jazz musicians on the American west coast scene in the 1960s and this tune comes from his first album for Atlantic, recorded in 1966. It includes the ambitious reworking of Autumn Leaves into a sequence bookended by two Lloyd compositions, Autumn Prelude and Autumn Echo. Here Lloyd has a stellar band – Keith Jarrett on piano, Cecil McBee on bass and Jack DeJohnette on drums. Dream Weaver was followed in 1967 by Forest Flower: Live at Monterey, a wildly successful album that became one of the first million-sellers in jazz and catapulted Lloyd to international fame. Neil s a long-time Lloyd fan and has almost all of records on either vinyl or CD, including all those late iconic ECM releases. Now recording again with Blue Note, Lloyd is just released his latest album – Figure in Blue, a tribute to Duke Ellington. You can hear Defiant, Tender Warrior on the Blue Note website right here.
And now onto those promised remixes. Bird Up is a 2003 album of Parker remixes and – as is often the way with these things – something of a mixed bag. It’s unlikely to feature in any future Penguin Jazz Guide but this take on Relaxin’ at Camarillo is a great twist on the original – probably because it features the great M’Shell Ndegeocello on bass, along with programming by Chris Dave (sometime drummer for Robert Glasper) and Hammond B3 from Ray Angry (most recently on a great project called Plumb with David Murray). Relaxin’ (thinks Neil) is the standout tune on this Hal Winer project but elsewhere Hubert Laws, Ravi Coltrane and Dr. John are can be found contributing to these radical reinterpretations. Ndegeocello was born in West Berlin but raised in Washington DC and played in the city’s go-go bands in the late 1980s before diversifying into a wide range of different genres. Now on Blue Note, her last two albums (The Omnichord Real Book and No More Water: The Gospel of James Baldwin) are well worth exploring. Apparently, her surname means free like a bird in Swahili…
The Blue Note Revisited project from 2004 is a rather more successful take on the jazz remix album. It has a host of big names hard at work trying to update the jazz experience for Generation Y (and everyone else) – LA Funk Mob, Kenny Dope, DJ Spinna, Jazzanova and 4 Hero to name just a few of those involved. As a result, it works – with Japanese remix royalty Kyoto Jazz Massive’s treatment of Kudu being a notable success. Brothers Shuya and Yoshihiro Okino, both DJs and remixers in Kyoto, have a good track record in reworking this kind of material: their 2021 album Message From a New Dawn included the excellent Revolution Evolution.
We were saddened to hear of the death in August of Latin piano supremo Eddie Palmieri, a musician who exemplified a progressive approach to the Latin genre but whose exploration was always firmly rooted in its tradition. Massively influned by jazz, it was trombonist Barry Rogers who would introduce Palmieri to the work of the then Coltrane pianist McCoy Tyner whose use of block chords became a signature of Palmieri’s own sound. He experimented by employing a jazz aesthetic both in live performance and on his recordings, based on the Cuban descarga (or jam session) concept. Arrangements were opened up with band members as soloists and Palmieri began incorporating a newly developed post-Castro revolution Cuban rhythm known as mozambique. Palmieri went on to create two versions of his hugely influential band La Perfecta, recording the classic Vamonos Pa’l Monte in 1971 – one of Neil’s favourites. In 2005, Palmieri teamed up with longtime trumpeter and band member Brian Lynch to record Simpático. The album has an all star lineup including Phil Woods, Lila Downs, Donald Harrison, Conrad Herwig, Robby Ameen and more. In 2007 it won a Grammy as the best Latin Jazz recording.Neil is listening to…
- Sonny Rollins – Softly, As In a Morning Sunrise
- Carmen McRae – Satin Doll
- Kahil El’Zabar – Trane in Mind
- Lettuce – Rising to the Top
- Eddie Palmieri – Vámonos pa’l Monte
- John Coltrane – Olé
- Da Lata – Pra Manha
- Miles Davis – Rubberband (feat. Ledisi)
- Arvo Pärt – Cantus in Memoriam Benjamin Britten
- Ezra Collective – God Gave Me Feet for Dancing (Tasty or Not Extended Remix)