Did You Know, #1

Julian 'Cannonball' Adderley's nickname derived from his large appetite.

In high school they called him 'Cannibal'.

How about that?

My Man Paul Chambers Gets No Respect

If you have been reading this blog then you know I have a fondness for the bass work of Paul Chambers. It mystifies me that he does not rank higher in the jazz world. But let's face it, bassists rarely get the respect they deserve, and I suspect this is true across all genres.

Need proof, my friends?

An album was recently released called 'Sides of Blue: The Jazz Greats Who Played on Kind of Blue'.

The album has tracks by Wynton Kelly (1 song), Cannonball Adderley (1 song) , John Coltrane (3 songs) , and Bill Evans (3 songs).

Hmmm... who is missing from that list?

 Mr. Paul Chambers, of course. Sure, he  was the sideman on one of the Bill Evans tracks (Woody'n You) as well as the Wynton Kelly (Willow Weep For Me) but why not give Paul Chambers his due? After all, Wynton Kelly didn't even play piano on every track on 'Kind of Blue' (why would he when Bill Evans was around?) yet he gets a track on 'Sides of Blue'.

If you buy 'Sides of Blue', which isn't such a bad idea as it is a pretty decent compilation (though you could buy better) and if you download it from iTunes or another similar site, I propose you also spring the 99 cents and download Chamber Mates by Paul Chambers (listen to that bass work! and the compositional skill!) as add it to the album. It is worth it for the man's bowed solo. The man could make the double bass sing and it is time the jazz world gave him the respect and status he so rightly deserves.

Okay okay, I will get off my pedestal now since my dinner is ready (a Mexican feast!) and Yusef's Mood by the multi-instrumentalist Yusef Lateef is playing.  Another delightful night!

Early morning Joe

As my wife and I were feeding our babies at 6:36am this morning, I clicked on Galaxie Jazz and who should serenade us but our old friend Joe Henderson (I admit I am surprised by how often he has been mentioned in this blog!) playing Portrait, a beautiful ballad that I believe is from the early 60's Blue Note recordings.

Next comes Vince Guaraldi's Linus & Lucy, which my wife loved, and why not? How many of us were introduced to jazz by Charlie Brown cartoons?

Grant Green on guitar

-I wish Bill Evans would have played this, I said.

She thought the original version was just fine, and she is undoubtedly correct.

Two hours later, after grandparents had fed our babies their second last bottle before the journey home, we go back downstairs and Grant Green's Sookie, Sookie is playing, another Blue Note classic.  See my friends? Blue Note is everywhere! Even our our blue-eyed babies love the label (or am I projecting?)

Learning Jazz - Where to Begin?

It may be an intimidating task to someone new to jazz to discover just who it is they like. Perhaps you don’t have the time or the inclination I did as a teen to sit through all of those mediocre/uninspiring LPs before stumbling onto Charles Mingus. Well, my friends, let me save you some time. I have already done the legwork (or earwork?) so let me share.

I will not give a list of top albums in this post (surely that will come at some point) as I am not convinced that is the best place to begin. Instead may I suggest the compilation. The benefit of a collection is that it gives you a variety of musicians to whet your appetite and then you can track down more by the artists that you liked the best.

So here is a recommendation to those who are just beginning what I hope will be a life-long love of jazz:

The Blue Box. This is a four disc set that contains the best music released by Blue Note, to me, the premiere jazz label. The tracks listing truly is a who’s who and has some of my all time favourite tracks including:

Una Mas - Kenny Dorham (with Joe Henderson of Waltz for Zweetie fame on tenor sax!)

Summertime - Sidney Bechet (the volatile master of the soprano sax. My second favourite version of this song - Billy Stewart is solidly number one)

Blue Train - John Coltrane (with my man Paul Chambers on bass and Lee Morgan on trumpet!)

Sidewinder - Lee Morgan (Joe Henderson plays on this one too!)

Blue Bossa - Joe Henderson (with Kenny Dorham on trumpet and McCoy Tyner on piano how can you go wrong??)

Song for my Father - Horace Silver (a great upbeat song that raises the bar pretty high for any son trying to write a tribute for their dad! )

Okay, if you aren’t already running out the door to pick up this set, the kicker is that it is only $20ish bucks - a real bargain. It will likely prove expensive in the long run as it will make you want to buy more and more and more. Who can have enough music by these guys?? Not me, and perhaps soon, not you.

More recommendations will come, my friends, but my cup of espresso is cooling next to me on this cold northern morning, and I should really gulp it down before it turns bitter.

Waltz for who? Zweetie??

 I was all set to write about Waltz for Debby as recorded by The Bill Evans Trio at the Village Vanguard.   As lovely a song as has ever been recorded. I have mentioned Bill Evans a couple of times already and have certainly focused a lot on bassists, so the Trio’s masterful Scott LeFaro would have given me no shortage of material.  He was massively influential, played in a very unique manner, and died a couple weeks after this seminal performance was recorded. 

I was thinking about perhaps comparing the versions (I have three on my iPod) and I could have even talked a bit about the vocal version recorded by Johnny Hartman, about a father singing about his little girl growing up and how her toys, including her ‘silly old bear’ will miss her once she grows older, as will he - a song which has all the more impact now that I have a little girl of my own.

Well, as I sat down and spun the wheel to get to Waltz For Debbie I went a little too far and ended up on Waltz For Zweetie instead and decided to stay.

Zweetie? Sure.  Sounds like an interesting woman, doesn’t she?  You must admit, the name Debbie sounds a bit dull but the same could not be same for Zweetie!

The song is by tenor sax man Joe Henderson and on the 'Tetragon' album recorded in 1967-68.  It’s a solid piece of music which is what us fans of Joe have come to expect.

The piano intro is reminiscent of McCoy Tyner (who worked with John Coltrane on his later period - who can forget those power chords on My Favorite Things?) but it is Kenny Barron doing his best impression.  There is an echo of Waltz For Debbie in that opening as well.  I need to mention the bass of course, in this case it’s Ron Carter, another master of four strings (I have already introduced you to some great bassists, haven’t I? With more to come, my friends!) who is bouncing around in my right ear at this moment along with the drums of Louis Hayes.  On the left is Kenny Barron and Joe blows his smooth tenor dead centre.  Gorgeous tone.  Gorgeous tune.  Well worth a listen, my friends! I haven’t sat and listened to this one, really listened to it with my full attention, since the title track is such a winner that it pulls me towards it.

I am sure this will not be the last time we take a look at Joe Henderson and I hope you will not mind this trip into a somewhat obscure jazz track instead of looking at an all time classic.  There are many riches to be found if you stray.  Isn’t there some poem about the road less traveled something something something?  We will likely look at jazz and poetry at some point (Mingus’ The Clown comes to mind...), but not now.

Who was Zweetie?

What would a woman named Zweetie look like?

Great hair I bet.  Gorgeous too.  And cool sunglasses. And attitude to spare. A real firecracker!

My Man, Paul Chambers

‘So What’ is playing on the Harmon/Karmon.

-Listen to that bass, I say to my wife.

-Is that your man? she asks.

It is indeed my man.  My man, or to be more precise, my jazzman of the moment, is bassist Paul Chambers. I have been collecting discs of which he played a part.

What? Never heard of him?  That may be so, but you have heard him if you have even the slightest immersion in jazz.

Surely you’ve heard the album ‘Kind of Blue’ by Miles Davis, which is playing at this moment. If you haven’t heard it, do yourself a favour and go get it. It is one of the half dozen jazz recordings that I believe every human should own. 

There are so many heavyweights on ‘Kind of Blue’ (Coltrane, Cannonball Adderley, Bill Evans, Miles himself) that it’s easy to forget about those low notes that are driving that classic album (which is, I might add, by far the best-selling jazz album of all time).

The interplay between Paul Chambers and Bill Evans that begins this album leads into his bassline (bo dee bo dee bo dee bo doo doo) which propels the song with an impeccable coolness.  The horns slowly rise up and come to the fore, then Miles begins to blow.  Even then I am drawn to Paul Chambers smooth line.  (I can refer to Miles by his first name, but Paul Chamber requires both names. I will pay this under-appreciated man this small consideration.)

It’s not just that album either.

He played on John  Coltrane’s ‘Giant Steps’ and ‘Blue Train’.

He played on some of the best albums of Lee Morgan, Hank Mobley, Herbie Hancock, Wes Montgomery, Oliver Nelson (the wonderful album called ‘Blues and the Abstract Truth’ one of the greatest jazz albums of all time, about which I will surely write about in the future), Sonny Rollins’ ‘Tenor Madness’ and on and on.

Not only was he one of the premiere sidemen of all time, but the man produced several fine albums including ‘Bass on Top’ that features some great guitar work by Kenny Burrell and is surely one of the great neglected jazz albums.

Sure, Paul Chambers is my man.

I recently made a playlist called Mr. Chambers - 160 tracks with him on bass. It’s tremendous.  Perhaps I should go through it track by track with you (a rollicking ‘His Sister’ from Lee Morgan, Vol. 2 is playing now), so you leave here completely convinced that Paul Chambers is  worthy to be my man, and your man too, he should be everyone’s man, but the babies are getting restless and my wife and I should take them for a walk on this cold late afternoon.  We will return to feed them dinner and continue listening to my man Mr. Chambers and I will have to wait for another day to continue my exploration of the man, his music, his legacy, and his premature demise.

Beginning With Mingus

For me, as a teenager in the 1980s growing up in Northwestern Ontario, jazz began with Charles Mingus and for this, he holds a special place in my personal pantheon of jazz greats. My fondness for the bassist/composer is so strong that I would take him over Miles Davis, John Coltrane, Bill Evans and (ulp!) even Thelonious Monk.

(I am thankful that in the real world I will never have to make such a heart-wrenching desert island choice.)

I began with Mingus on my parent’s cheap record player, dropping the needle on the surprisingly pristine LP (which made me think my northern city was lacking jazz aficionados, which made it appeal all the more to my youthful rebellion. Yes, the voice of my youthful rebellion was Charles Mingus, not Megadeth or Metallica) and I was forever lost in the wonder of jazz music.

I had been borrowing LPs from Waverly Library on the north side of Thunder Bay, picking them up at random in an attempt to learn more about this music that so intrigued me. I would only hear jazz in random places, on TV, in movies, occasionally on public radio, but I never knew the names of the performers or the songs that I was hearing so I would just borrow a dozen LPs at a time, picking out the albums that caught my eye for one reason or another.

It should not come as a surprise that Mingus’ tri-fold three-LP compilation ‘Passions of a Man’, with its dramatic cover design, caught my eye.

The album leveled me. I had never heard anything like it and I was instantly enthralled.

How could I not be? How many musicians could compete with this collection of songs? Check out the track listing:

• Pithecanthropus Erectus
• Profile of Jackie
• Reincarnation of a Lovebird
• Haitian Fight Song
• Wednesday Night Prayer Meeting
• Cryin' Blues
• Devil Woman
• Wham Bam Thank You Ma'am
• Passions of a Woman Loved
• Duke Ellington's Sound of Love
• Better Git Hit In Your Soul
• Sue's Changes
• Canon
• Free Cell Block F,'Tis Nazi U.S.A
• Goodbye, Porkpie Hat
• Mingus on Mingus

Are the names themselves not evocative?

Free Cell Block F,'Tis Nazi U.S.A?
Haitian Fight Song?

Are you prepared for the beauty of Goodbye, Porkpie Hat?

How can anyone listen to the first 30 seconds of Pithecanthropus Erectus and not fall in love with the man’s music? How about the honk squeaking strangeness at 1:37? I could write a 1000 words on that song, and likely will in later posts.

I will force myself to stop here as I want to keep this introduction short and sweet but let me add, in a tender note, that I look forward to the time we will spend together on this random stroll in the world of jazz.