Wynton Marsalis on the Daily Show

Wynton Marsalis’s appeared on the Daily Show last night.

I have not always been a fan of Wynton Marsalis’s music, but I have a great appreciation for his ardent defense of jazz. A met him one night at the Elephant Room and they had an interesting talk. (A even told him why he stopped playing.)

I don’t disagree with his opinion about rap (i.e., going from a drummer to a drum machine). From a jazz musician’s perspective, the musicality of (most commercial) rap is frankly offensive. Not for lyrical content, so much as lack of musicianship. I had high hopes a few years ago that rap, even Houston rap, could succeed with tracks based on actual music. We did a couple of experiments, which failed. Of course.

Most commercial rap is club music — the kind of songs we used to dance to until the wee hours when my friends were all single and hitting Fez regularly. Club music needs to be catchy with a propulsive beat. You can easily accomplish that with a keyboard and drum machine.

 

Shuffle Discovery – Jazz – The Brian Melvin Trio

This afternoon, I heard a band I had never heard before, from an album we’ve owned for years.

After hearing , Out of the Night, I interrupted A to ask him who the Brian Melvin Trio was, and why had he been keeping them from me.

The Brian Melvin Trio produced a single album in 1986 entitled Standards Zone, with performances by drummer Brian Melvin, pianist Jon Davis, and the incomparable bassist Jaco Pastorius, who is considered by many the greatest bassist who ever lived.

The album, which is available for $60(!) on Amazon, is filled with standards and it is really lovely. Look for it in a used cd bin near you.

 

Standards – Rodgers & Hart

My favorite music collection is The Complete Rodger & Hart Songbook. It’s a 3 cd set I bought in probably 1996.

The first two cds are a collection of Rodgers & Hart songs sung by the best singers of Standards, among them Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, Tony Bennett, Blossom Dearie, and even Cassandra Wilson.

The third cd is a collection of the same songs performed by the best jazz performers, including Miles Davis, Charley Parker, Oscar Peterson, Stan Getz, and Bill Evans.

Rodgers & Hart wrote for Broadway and wrote some of the most famous songs in “The Great American Songbook” including:

Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered
My Romance
I’ll Take Manhattan
Blue Moon
My Funny Valentine
The Lady is a Tramp

My favorite song of the collection is probably Ella Fitzgerald performing Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered.

The song appears in the score for “Pal Joey,” which debuted on Broadway in 1940. It’s a standard you have heard dozens of times. It’s a wistful, melancholy song:

Lost my heart, but what of it
He is cold I agree
He can laugh, but I love it
Although the laugh’s on me

I’ll sing to him, each spring to him
And long, for the day when I’ll cling to him
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – am I

The song often ends with this lyric.

The Ella Fitzgerald version, however, combines the reprise with the original song, which changes the song from melancholy to strong and hopeful as the singer moves past the bad relationship to a new strength:

Couldn’t eat, was dispeptic
Life was so hard to bear
Now my heart’s antiseptic
Since you moved out of there

Romance, finis. Your chance, finis.
Those ants that invaded my pants, finis.
Bewitched, bothered and bewildered – no more

 

Best Jazz Albums

I have been to some interesting jazz shows with A over the years:
McCoy Tyner
Ahmad Jamal
Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter together.
Brad Mehldau, who made my head hurt. I sat in One World Theater for an hour before I could get a handle on anything he was doing . . . until I heard the melody from “It Might As Well Be Spring.”

We have a lot of jazz. At least half of our cds are jazz, and 575 songs on my iTunes. We’ve converted only a small portion over so far. (We’re waiting until we buy a mini with a huge hard drive to rip the remainder in lossless.)

You would think that the ranking of Best Jazz Albums, therefore, would be a matter of controversy. Not so, for the top 2, at least.

1. Miles Davis, Kind of Blue. 1959

Absolutely no one could disagree with this. Not only is it the best jazz album ever, it has been rated many times by many, many critics as the best album of the 20th century. Period.

The musicians were at the top of their respective games – Miles Davis, Bill Evans, John Coltrane. Cannonball Adderly,Paul Chambers, Jimmy Cobb. Miles handed out the music as they began to record, so with no rehersals, they launched in and magic happened. The entire album is vibrant and alive.

Geeky Musette Fact: “So What” has been my ringtone for 2 years. (It replaced “Hip Hop” by Dead Prez.)

2. The Dave Brubeck Quartet, Time Out. 1959

This album is extremely technical and “tricky” in a way that would normally be inaccessible. Each song is written in a different and often unusual time signature: 9/8, etc.

The beauty of the album is that for all of its technical prowess, it’s a remarkably listenable album. It was wildly popular when it was released, and it still feels as fresh today. Paul Desmond on saxophone is superb. Each song, on its own, is excellent, and as a whole, the album is breathtaking.

My favorite songs are the classic “Time Out” and “Blue Rondo A La Turk.” A’s favorite is Kathy’s Waltz.

3. Stan Getz, Getz/Gilberto. 1964

The Brazilian samba album created an international sensation and won grammys for Album of the year and Song of the year.

It features “Girl from Ipanema” and “Desafinado,” among other classics.