John Lee Hooker, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, Dinu Lipatti: where else would you find these three artists together, performing back to back, besides a cyberstage?
John Lee Hooker, “Blues For Christmas” (1949)
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Rahsaan Roland Kirk (tenor saxophone, manzello, flute, stritch), “We Free Kings” (1961)
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Dinu Lipatti, “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” Johann Sebastian Bach/Hess transcription (1947)
The French Quarter: the spirit of some places is so strong you can go there, in mind if not in body, just by saying their name.
Rebirth Brass Band, live, New Orleans’ French Quarter, 2008
I first heard this guy back in the mid-1970s, after reading a review in the New York Times, by the late Robert Palmer, of his first album, The Gospel Saxophone of Vernard Johnson—and I’ve been listening to him ever since.
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Vernard Johnson
Live, Texas (Roanoke)
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“What Is This?”
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“I’ve Decided To Make Jesus My Choice” (The Gospel Saxophone of Vernard Johnson [Glori, 1974])
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lagniappe
Like Rev. Utah Smith and many other gospel greats (Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Arizona Dranes, et al.), Vernard Johnson belongs to the Church of God in Christ (COGIC), a denomination that, as Robert Palmer put it, “has never believed in letting the devil have all the good tunes, or the good instruments.”
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The saxophone is a resolutely secular icon in our culture, its gleaming curves and often voice-like sound firmly associated with both sultry, sophisticated jazz and bumptious rock-and-roll, with high-flying fancies and the red-dirt realities of the blues. But the saxophone has also been a vehicle of imagination and spirit. And although it isn’t widely known, the spirituality of storefront churches and ecstatic religion has shaped the work of some of American music’s most indelible saxophone stylists, including King Curtis, Ornette Coleman and Albert Ayler.
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King Curtis, whose solos on 50’s hits like the Coasters’ ‘Charlie Brown’ and ‘Baby That Is Rock-and-Roll’ virtually defined rock-and-roll saxophone as a distinct idiom, grew up playing the saxophone in Texas churches. Ornette Coleman, who played rocking Southern rhythm-and-blues saxophone before he revolutionized jazz in the 60’s, considers playing in Deacon Frank Lastie’s ”spirit church” in New Orleans in the 1940’s a key experience in terms of his later evolution. There was a great deal of the black church in the burning, visionary saxophone stylings of 60’s iconoclasts such as Albert Ayler and Pharoah Sanders.—Robert Palmer, The New York Times (3/6/87)
One of the through lines of Steve Lacy’s long career—whether playing with traditional (“Dixieland”) jazz bands, or Thelonious Monk, or Cecil Taylor, or his own groups—was the sound of joy.
Steve Lacy Four (Steve Lacy, soprano saxophone, with Steve Potts, alto saxophone; Jean Jacques Avenel, bass; Oliver Johnson, drums), “Prospectus,” live, Prague, 1990
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lagniappe
‘Make the drummer sound good.’—Steve Lacy (recalling something Thelonious Monk told him [in Robin D. G. Kelly, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original [2009]])
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Steve Lacy, talking and playing:
Part 1
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Part 2
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Part 3
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I have always admired Steve’s perseverance and commitment to perfecting his art . . . He is the prime example of someone who has fought for artistic integrity.—Sonny Rollins
Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Miles Davis: so many of the greatest figures in jazz weren’t just great musicians, or composers, or arrangers. They were great bandleaders. As important to their artistic success as anything else was their ability to find, and showcase, players who could make the music come alive—people like Johnny Hodges and Ben Webster and Jimmy Blanton and Lester Young and Freddie Green and Jo Jones and John Coltrane and Bill Evans and Tony Williams.
That small circle of elite bandleaders includes this man. He hired musicians who played their instruments like no one else (Eric Dolphy, Jaki Byard, et al.). He gave them a musical setting in which structure and freedom were exquisitely balanced. And together they made music that sounds (even on something familiar) like nothing else.
Charles Mingus Sextet (with Johnny Coles, trumpet; Jaki Byard, piano; Eric Dolphy, alto saxophone and bass clarinet; Clifford Jordan, tenor saxophone; Dannie Richmond, drums), “Take the A Train,” live, Norway (Oslo), 1964
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lagniappe
I nominate Charles Mingus one of America’s greatest composers—Ran Blake (in the liner notes to his recent album Driftwoods)
Wobbly and splayed, this performance of the Jobim classic sounds more like a soundtrack for my life than the silky Getz/Gilberto original ever could.
Ran Blake, “The Girl From Ipanema”
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Stan Getz/Astrud Gilberto (with a very young Gary Burton on vibes), “The Girl From Ipanema” (1964 [charted at #5 on the Billboard Hot 100]; this is from the 1964 movie “Get Yourself A College Girl”)
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lagniappe
The immediacy of the e-world never ceases to amaze. After posting yesterday’s clip, I sent Sam Newsome an email—I’d happened upon his e-address at his website—to let him know that his music was being featured here. A few hours later, this was in my e-mailbox: “Thanks, Richard. It looks like I’m in good company. Peace, S”
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reading table
On this Thanksgiving Day, here’s a favorite quote.
Three things in human life are important. The first is to be kind. The second is to be kind. And the third is to be kind.—Henry James
Yeah, the format might seem a little strange: soprano saxophone, unaccompanied. But Monk’s musical language—its tangy mix of geometric elegance and off-kilter bluesiness—is rarely spoken this eloquently.
Sam Newsome, Thelonious Monk Medley, live, 2008
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lagniappe
The clarity and logic of his [Thelonious Monk’s] work might have been compared with the craft of an architect. Each phrase, each fragment, each plump chord had its exact place in his musicial structure.—Mimi Clar (in Robin D. G. Kelley, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original [2009])
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‘All jazz musicians are mathematicians unconsciously’ was a favorite theory of Monk’s.—Randy Weston (in Deborah Kapchan, Traveling Spirit Masters: Moroccan Gnawa Trance and Music in the Global Marketplace [2007])
Here’s bassist/composer Sirone (AKA Norris Jones), who passed away last month (10/22) at the age of 69. The list of musicians he played with is long and deep—John Coltrane, Pharoah Sanders, Dewey Redman, Cecil Taylor, et al. He was a member of the Revolutionary Ensemble, the critically acclaimed trio that also included violinist Leroy Jenkins.
This quartet performance, from last year, features an unusual mix of instruments: tenor saxophone, drums, bass, cello. How deeply felt is this music? Look at the smiles Sirone and cellist Nioka Workman exchange toward the end (8:35 and following).
Project L’Afrique Garde (with Sirone [bass], Nioka Workman [cello], Michael Wimberly [drums and percussion], Abdoulaye N’Diaye [tenor saxophone]), live, New York, 2008
Here’s more from the city where concert halls are made of asphalt.
Rebirth Brass Band, live, New Orleans, 2008
With a name like this, who could resist?
Slavic Soul Party, live, Johnstown, Pennsylvania, 2007
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who could argue?
“New York’s Official #1 Brass Band For BalkanSoulGypsyFunk.”
music clip of the day 