BEST EVER JAZZ ALBUM redone(AGAIN)

WOW a lot of great albums on this list. For me, tho: Miles Davis' In A Silent Way.

― Daniel, Esq., Sunday, 4 October 2009 01:38 (17 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Krzysztof Komeda Astigmatic (1966)

the only one i don't own / haven't heard

― moonship journey to baja, Sunday, 4 October 2009 01:55 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Don't know it either.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 01:55 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

CTRL+F "basie" not found
CTRL+F "armstrong" not found
CTRL+F "billie" not found

probably voting my favorite things or far east suite but RYM users up on some bullshit imo

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:00 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I could probably go on these 50 records for quite a good while, if I had to just listen to this list. There seem to be six I haven't heard.

― earlnash, Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:01 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

There's no Charlie Parker on there either, so yeah, it isn't complete by any stretch. It is really more about when the LP took over from the 78 in the late 50s into the golden period of jazz LPs into the late 60s, which is probably what they are trying to get at I would think.

― earlnash, Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:03 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

voted Olé Coltrane for the sublime title track.

20 others tied for second :)

― nicky lo-fi, Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:03 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

billie holiday is at 68

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:08 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

http://rateyourmusic.com/customchart?page=1&chart_type=top&type=album&year=alltime&genre_include=1&genres=jazz&include=both&origin_countries=&limit=none&countries=

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:08 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

80 Charlie Parker & Dizzy Gillespie Bird and Diz (1952)

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:09 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

There's no Charlie Parker on there either, so yeah, it isn't complete by any stretch. It is really more about when the LP took over from the 78 in the late 50s into the golden period of jazz LPs into the late 60s, which is probably what they are trying to get at I would think.

I guess, but I mean...there's a strong tradition of song in jazz. An awesome tradition. Totally unrepresented on the list, you'd think from this list that no jazz vocalist had ever made a great album. Like, The Audience With Betty Carter, maybe? Or Lady in Satin, I know not everybody can get down w/those arrangements but Billie did a bunch of records on Verve that I can listen to front to back happily for weeks. Or Nat King Cole. Or Carmen McRae.

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:09 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

121 Count Basie Basie (1957)

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:10 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

herman I know you'll join me in saying that there's at least one Basie record that's better than
Cowboy Bebop by the Seatbelts (#58)

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:14 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i have never heard it, nor do i watch anime, but im sure theres a lot of albums on that list thats better than that!

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:39 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ive checked out the top 200 and theres some awesome albums in that.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:41 (16 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

herman I know you'll join me in saying that there's at least one Basie record that's better than
Cowboy Bebop by the Seatbelts (#58)

baaaaaaarf

internet users are the biggest savages imo

― moonship journey to baja, Sunday, 4 October 2009 02:54 (15 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

okay i'm a novice but i bought kind of blue about 10 years ago when i was about 14 and every single electric miles record which i've got into in the last year or so makes my head spin 10,000 more rapidly...

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Sunday, 4 October 2009 03:48 (14 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

10.000 times...

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Sunday, 4 October 2009 03:48 (14 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

stating that yr not THAT impressed by kind of blue is one of the biggest possible challops

― xhuxk mangione (deej), Sunday, 4 October 2009 04:00 (14 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It's a bit strange to me that the only Bill Evans in the top 50 is Explorations. Is this a studio-album only thing? Because I'd think Sunday at the Village Vanguard or Waltz for Debby would make more sense.

― Bay-L.A. Bar Talk (Hurting 2), Sunday, 4 October 2009 04:04 (14 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

No Weather Report, "Head Hunters" or "Future Shock" no credibility.
Voted "Kind Of Blue" though.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Sunday, 4 October 2009 12:24 (6 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Many wonderful records there, but...

No AYLER? Spiritual Unity and Live At Greenwich Village are essential surely?

No Pharoah Sanders? No Brotzmann? No William Parker? No David S Ware? No Dark Magus or Get Up With It? Only one Ornette? No Elevator Over The Hill? No Liberation Music Orchestra? No Evan Parker? No Braxton? No Bailey? No Don Cherry? No Joe McPhee? No Brotherhood of Breath?

Early jazz is poorly represented too. I guess that's due to the lack of classic totemic albums or standardised collections.

Headhunters: nowhere as good as Sextant, which is much funkier, weirder and cosmic.

― Stew, Sunday, 4 October 2009 12:53 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Headhunters has tunes. That is important. Sextant is just weird.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Sunday, 4 October 2009 13:03 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I have such crappy indie-rock taste in jazz. My favourites of these 50 are In A Silent Way and Journey In Satchidananda. I've only heard about 10 of the others though.

― Tim F, Sunday, 4 October 2009 13:12 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

stating that yr not THAT impressed by kind of blue is one of the biggest possible challops

is it? i'm not trying to be controversial...it's just what I think.

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Sunday, 4 October 2009 13:13 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Deej means it's a cliche. Or at least it's very typical for people conditioned on modern rock/pop/etc. to check out Kind of Blue, be underwhelmed, then gravitate towards electric miles.

I described my taste in jazz as "crappy indie-rock" for similar reasons.

― Tim F, Sunday, 4 October 2009 13:20 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Out to Lunch! v. Olé Coltrane v. Journey in Satchidananda v. Juju - Dunno what I am going to pick.

Kind of Blue is kind of boring, sorry.

― I'M LEGALLY A MIDGET (a hoy hoy), Sunday, 4 October 2009 13:36 (5 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ah okay right I didn't get he meant it in that way. yeah possibly. nail me to the challop cross!

― I see what this is (Local Garda), Sunday, 4 October 2009 13:49 (4 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

a love supreme. it's something of a cliche to claim that as the best jazz album of all time, but for good reason.

mingus ah um, in a silent way, ascension and shape of jazz to come just bringing up the rear.

― m the g, Sunday, 4 October 2009 15:12 (3 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's a great list, tho. i've heard maybe half of these, i think. voting for Monk '56.

― a single man owns you (Ioannis), Sunday, 4 October 2009 15:49 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"kind of blue is boring" = "i have ADD"

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Sunday, 4 October 2009 15:53 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Writing off "Kind Of Blue" is just as pointless as writing off "Sgt. Pepper".

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Sunday, 4 October 2009 16:00 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Geir Hongro telling people about jazz.

It's absolutely not like writing off Sgt. Pepper. Most people buy Kind Of Blue and if they decide they don't like it will never buy another jazz album. Other than lex, who else would write off a whole genre on account of disliking Sgt. Pepper?

Miles has done more enjoyable and more challanging records and I'm guessing the folks on here who are bringing the KofB challops know that.

― I'M LEGALLY A MIDGET (a hoy hoy), Sunday, 4 October 2009 16:07 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well, my point is that, well, "A Kind Of Blue" is obviously the most famous jazz record of all time and also generally acclaimed, not least among those of us who are not jazz fans. I know some purists tend to dislike anything that is liked by non-jazz-fans, and they may find it "boring" for that reason, just like some stupid people will write off "Sgt. Pepper" just because it's famous and, well, popular with the baby boomers.

But I still consider it pointless on both accounts. Both albums are obviously very essential.

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Sunday, 4 October 2009 16:26 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

more enjoyable

I enjoy KoB as much as any Miles record.

more challanging

not something I really look for or like in music.

― hope this helps (Granny Dainger), Sunday, 4 October 2009 16:33 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Kind Of Blue is great even if i prefer a dozen or more miles albums. Sgt Peppers, 2 great songs aside, is not very good at best.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 16:44 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I never said it was a bad album. I like it; just not enough to ever think to pull it often.

― I'M LEGALLY A MIDGET (a hoy hoy), Sunday, 4 October 2009 16:55 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

alot of jazz albums on rym are listed under subgenres of jazz (free jazz, avant-garde jazz, vocal jazz, etc) and won't show up on the list linked.

try this list instead:
http://rateyourmusic.com/customchart?page=1&chart_type=top&type=album&year=alltime&genre_include=1&genres=jazz&include_child_genres=t&include=both&origin_countries=&limit=none&countries=

― nil!, Sunday, 4 October 2009 16:57 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also, rym's ranking algorith boosts albums with more votes. vocal jazz or jazz standard records tend to be less popular on rym, and many don't garner enough votes to crack the top 100 despite a gaudy rating avg.

― nil!, Sunday, 4 October 2009 17:04 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

" Suggest Ban Permalink

Writing off "Kind Of Blue" is just as pointless as writing off "Sgt. Pepper"."

They're both wildly over-rated. The difference is that KoB is still pretty decent.

While a lot of my favorites aren't on here (which is kind of ILX kabuki to immediately mention whatever's not on the list), there's enough strong stuff that I would nominate unprompted that I don't feel particularly constrained in my voting.

I think the list also shows how much jazz kicked rock's ass in the '60s.

― Giorgio Marauder (I eat cannibals), Sunday, 4 October 2009 17:14 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ok who wants this poll to be locked and use the http://rateyourmusic.com/customchart?page=1&chart_type=top&type=album&year=alltime&genre_include=1&genres=jazz&include_child_genres=t&include=both&origin_countries=&limit=none&countries= list instead?

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 17:25 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

(without the zappa album btw)

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 17:25 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I don't mind mayne. What does 'Ascension' sound like btw? After the football I may give it a listen.

― I'M LEGALLY A MIDGET (a hoy hoy), Sunday, 4 October 2009 17:30 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

first word that comes to mind when i think of Ascension is "density". the playing is wonderful. i really need to be in the right mood, and there's no way to absorb it in one listen. but if you like free form jazz, i think it's the pinnacle

― outdoor_miner, Sunday, 4 October 2009 17:43 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe what i wrote about <a href="http://musik.antville.org/stories/1236915/";;;>ascension</a>, my fave album from 1965, a while ago in my old blog may give an idea about how it sounds:

<q>... Ascension surely is a challenging listen but it is by no means cacophony. There even is a structure in the 40 minutes piece. In between the ensembles almost everyone has got a solo and the others provide a background "carpet of sound" (Klangteppich). I get the impression that the collective lifts up the soloist who slowly emerges from the crowd, stands in the centre for two to three minutes and then returns back into the womb of the band after. Especially the overblown sax solos are outbursts of pure energy. Altogether a perfect equilibrium of the community and the individual. In this sense Ascension does not only stand for a spiritual experience but also for a shared experience. ...</q>

― alex in mainhattan, Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:08 (38 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I think the thing is with kind of blue is that on first listen, to modern ears, it's nice, somewhat unobtrusive...and almost cheesy. if what got you into jazz was wild playing and high-energy improvisation (hello!) then it's going to seem like boring dinner jazz. I can totally understand why someone wouldn't like it.

don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic album, and I love it madly...now. but not not at first. its charms are subtle, and may require a bit of historical context before they reveal themselves.

I think the list also shows how much jazz kicked rock's ass in the '60s.

absolutely.

― m the g, Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:25 (21 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

A lot of people think real jazz is boring bland dinner/coffee table jazz (sometimes with vocals) and the stuf ilm likes they would hate. Probably on some other board right now that stuff is in another poll and later coltrane/davis etc is hated.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:27 (18 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Anyone who has Spotify should find most of these albums on it easily. So enjoy!

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:31 (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

For me is between Mingus' 'Black Saint' and Yusef Lateef's 'eastern sounds'.

― Moka, Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:44 (2 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:47 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Well, now I can't vote Yusef Lateef so I guess Mingus is the one to get my vote.

― Moka, Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:47 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and sorry j0hn d for this poll still not having what you want. Maybe you want to run a vocal jazz poll?

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:48 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

ahh sorry moka.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:48 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I guess there's always going to be something missing that people like. Cant cater for everyone.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:51 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Now there's "Head Hunters" at least. :)

Including child genders is often very important at RYM. :)

― Tied Up In Geir (Geir Hongro), Sunday, 4 October 2009 18:58 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

well, it's not a site i'm familiar with really. Only ever looked at it really when its been linked to from here. I think I may have done a poll based on its lists before so thanks for the tip about child genres.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:13 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Weirded out by ppl finding KoB hard to understand/relate to/appreciate on 1st listen. Agree that Bitches Brew/Dark Magus electric Miles is much rawer, weirder, more psychedelic & rock, but I'm with Geir here: KoB is one of the most immediately and obviously appealing records I've ever heard. Up there with Sgt. Peppers, as he says, and that comparison doesn't bother me at all. It's a great list, overall, especially when you consider that it represents a blind, broad consensus formed without the intent to create such a list.

― That's not just me saying that, that's the Pentagon. (contenderizer), Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:24 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Voted Money Jungle, strictly for perversity's sake.

― That's not just me saying that, that's the Pentagon. (contenderizer), Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:25 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"if what got you into jazz was wild playing and high-energy improvisation (hello!) then it's going to seem like boring dinner jazz."

Yeah, and I definitely came at it from that point of view. I mean, it's one of those albums that I like, but it just doesn't captivate me the way that most everything that came after it does. But, by way of copping to biases, I also hate the vast majority of vocal jazz, and I don't like ballads pretty much regardless of the genre, but ballads with vocals are worse. Most of vocal jazz or (as John put it) the "song tradition" of jazz, I think is more interesting as pop than as jazz, and so it's not something that I reach for when I want jazz. Like, St. James Infirmary is one of my favorite songs in the history of ever, but while I realize it's connected to the history of jazz, it's something I think of first as itself, then as jazz, rather than jazz first.

I realize that's all convoluted, but jazz is convoluted too.

― Giorgio Marauder (I eat cannibals), Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:35 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

It was pretty easy for me to vote for Journey in Satchidananda in the previous poll, but now that Karma is on the list too, man it's difficult to choose between those two.

― Tuomas, Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:38 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I voted Karma, Tuomas (the main reason i did the repoll tbh)

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:39 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

but it was a tough choice.
Again it annoys me when so many of these albums get left off so called best album ever lists just "because its jazz".

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:40 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

"Weirded out by ppl finding KoB hard to understand/relate to/appreciate on 1st listen."

I think that's actually a mark against it for a lot of listeners—it's really easy to appreciate without thinking about it. There's a lot more going on that's worth thinking about, but it's not like, say, Sun Ship, where from the first you're like, Ok, I'm going to have to pay attention because this is not going to be easy. Which is another reason why I tend to think of KoB as a pop album—immediate, catchy, "easy listening." I'm not against pop music, and I think that KoB has a lot going on, but it's also really easy to ignore all that, and for me at least, to tune it out. Especially since it's one of the most overplayed jazz albums in history. It was playing softly at the Albertson's last weekend, and it was like, y'know, there's no way to give this the attention it deserves.

― Giorgio Marauder (I eat cannibals), Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:43 (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

People who love Karma, you gotta listen to the version of "The Creator Has a Master Plan" by Louis Armstrong. Yes, there really is a Louis Armstrong version! It's a duet between Armstrong and Leon Thomas, I think they were on the same label around the time it was recorded. It's not perfect song in any way, Armstrong sounds like he's just ad libbing through the whole song, and it ends too quickly, but it's still fun to hear Satchmo tackle "The Creator Has a Master Plan". Thomas's solo version of the tune is nice too, I think it's kinda too short as well, but you get to hear verses whose lyrics were printed on the liner notes of Karma, even though Thomas only sings the chorus on that version.

― Tuomas, Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:48 (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's really easy to appreciate without thinking about it.

well, not really... it's all about your perspective and your usual listening habits, isn't it? those who are melodically/harmonically-minded will warm to KoB immediately but might find dark magus 'challenging'. my own default setting is noise and chaos and speed and harshness, so I'm exactly the other way around.

surely 'challenging' is all a matter of what you're used to, not a quality inherent in the music itself?

― m the g, Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:48 (59 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Agree that Albertsons is not the ideal environment for deep listening.

― That's not just me saying that, that's the Pentagon. (contenderizer), Sunday, 4 October 2009 19:49 (58 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

for god's sake don't restart this poll again, man, but Herbie Hancock Empyrean Isles (1964) is in there twice (#35 & #40).

― a single man owns you (Ioannis), Sunday, 4 October 2009 20:00 (47 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Did somebody upthread sneer at this list for not including Peter fucking Brötzmann?

― That's not just me saying that, that's the Pentagon. (contenderizer), Sunday, 4 October 2009 20:04 (43 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

take it to RYM

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 20:11 (36 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Did somebody upthread sneer at this list for not including Peter fucking Brötzmann?

yes, and rightly so.

― m the g, Sunday, 4 October 2009 20:12 (35 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

as is Miles Smiles xxxp

― wit and wisdom (snrub 'n' tug remix) (The Reverend), Sunday, 4 October 2009 20:41 (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

and sorry j0hn d for this poll still not having what you want. Maybe you want to run a vocal jazz poll?

I'm not mad or nothin! really more excited for an interesting discussion, for real. Are instro jazz folks really pretty anti-vocal jazz (which is weird to me, it's not like Trane didn't love trad jazz with his whole heart & any head has to give it up for Louis Armstrong imo) or don't take it as "seriously" (all obv baggage of a word like "serious" unavoidable here I guess). To me, especially when you get into Billie or Betty Carter, we're talking about records without I would consider any jazz basics collection incomplete, not that I'm a great authority on jazz but it just seems like there's a discourse at work that privileges some things in a list that like, tryin to unpack what that discourse is about

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, 4 October 2009 20:47 (39 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol

if theres any mistakes point them out next month

Voted Out to Lunch.

and sorry j0hn d for this poll still not having what you want. Maybe you want to run a vocal jazz poll?

I'm not mad or nothin! really more excited for an interesting discussion, for real. Are instro jazz folks really pretty anti-vocal jazz (which is weird to me, it's not like Trane didn't love trad jazz with his whole heart & any head has to give it up for Louis Armstrong imo) or don't take it as "seriously" (all obv baggage of a word like "serious" unavoidable here I guess). To me, especially when you get into Billie or Betty Carter, we're talking about records without I would consider any jazz basics collection incomplete, not that I'm a great authority on jazz but it just seems like there's a discourse at work that privileges some things in a list that like, tryin to unpack what that discourse is about

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, 4 October 2009 20:47 (39 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

I have to admit it, im not keen on vocal jazz

pls to do it again with em dashes between artist and title, because it's too hard to read otherwise

lol @ machine gun

after all that I'm voting Albert Ayler I think

kidding, kidding, ouch

aye now with added brotzman and sextant

tho i feel i shouldve added an album nominated by j0hn.
I guess im not the only one who dislikes vocal jazz then? or are vocal jazz artists more interested in the SONG rather than the ALBUM?

which i suppose is what j0hn was asking

mind you it's not just jazz that i like instrumental music wise. I do dig me a lot of post-rock and krautrock and electronic instrumental music. But jazz is definitely the most instrumental preferred genre i like.

what!!?? no Fire Music!!!??? this, my good sir, is an outrage! AN OUTRAGE!!!

I voted Africa/Brass in the end, btw - Coltrane is so bedrock-level for me that he's like the alphabet, I still remember the feel of the room in which I sat and listened to the impulse reissues in the late eighties goin OH FUCK OH FUCK THIS IS AWESOME. Lady in Satin would have beat Africa/Brass for me if it was on the list, and there's some Ellington live sides especially late ones that I would rep as hard for because Duke Ellington is just THE MAN in my book, but I got no complaints.

it seems so weird to me to love jazz & not love vocal jazz! I can see how once it gets much more mannered & codified maybe but the vocal innovators, the best jazz singers, shoot I'll put 'em all up again Coltrane & Miles & Monk & whoever else

you get back to your Rotting Christ cds ;)
xpost

this cd-r of lena horne singing Non Serviam is fucking epic btw

J0hn, you should really do a vocal jazz albums poll, so that people like me can check out what is recommended. That's why polls that aren't just the same rock canon polls are useful.

Would like to nominate Mingus @ Antibes and Art Blakey's Moanin. Plus basically anything involving Spanky DeBrest. This is the nomination round, right?

I know you dont really like polls as you prefer discussion, but i hope the polls promote discussion. And by having an end result it really is a good guide to checking out albums.

iirc gear did a best jazz ever nominations thread but never got round to voting.

I will try and get to it! I gotta get outta here in 1/2 an hour so it won't be today tho

xpost yeah I am more accepting of polls now, I still hate how once they're over it's like WHELP THERE YOU GO KIND OF BLUE'S THE BEST, DID THAT but I am over it

Yeah i'll never understand why in 90% of polls there's great discussion but when the results come in no bugger wants to discuss them!
If they do it's either
A) "Predictable!"
B) "not the results i expected it must have been a troll!"

I'd like to get involved in discussion but my knowledge is pretty limited and I am not wise enough yet to talk about the music I like in terms other than say, "wow bass" or "wow trumpet" or "wow etc."

wow that's more than I know!

you don't know what bass sounds like?

the other thing though is I am guessing, and this is why I think it's a subject worth discussing as a subthread, that while there'll be big partisans for Monk or Trane or Mingus or Miles or even Bill Evans or Stan Getz (if there were some other Bill Evans records on here they would have been heavy competition for me, can't get enough Bill Evans), there wouldn't really be that much interest beyond Lady in Satin & maybe some Betty Carter, which as I say is weird to me - it's like some of the basics of the genre become this land of nope-not-that-please, and i don't know another genre in which that's true. like, most black metal lifers I know still give much respect to the trad metal that paved the way, and listen to it & enjoy it, from the 70s proto-doom & boogie down through eighties classics like Maiden or Mercyful Fate or the early Metallica stuff, plenty of Bay Area thrash that bears a relationship to black metal that might be passably analogous to vocal jazz:post-bop jazz maybe

I just mean that I never concentrate on an instrument or get trainspottery like musician friends do. Im like the anti-muso, i run away from all instrument talk. I cant play any yet i like a lot of instrumental music and if you asked me who played what on any jazz cd or anything id give you a blank look!
xpost

(my actual guess about vocals is that the ear & mind so naturally & automatically [for whatever reason] give an inordinate amount of focus to the vocals that the instruments, even without the listener's full consent, get faded into the background. take Tony Bennett and Bill Evans, a classic fucking album: you have to work to focus on the (amazing) piano work & its interaction with Bennett, because it's just impossible to ignore those vocal chops & the timbre. which, too, might be the way Evans would think of as natural: that gorgeous or not, the role of the player is to support the song, and the song rests in the melodic line. lots of stuff to think on for me in here)

i like it when ilxors use polls as an excuse to live-blog their opinions on shit they hadn't listened to previously myself. i remember Rev doing some of those in the old P&J poll threads. loads of fun.

xxxxp

When I do a poll on stuff that a lot of people aren't familiar with I like to hope they will check it all out. The main reason i started
Best 70s FUNK Album (From RYM)

Oh ok. My mate who got me listening to it - who I haven't spoken to in years, maybe I should - played tenor sax so he was always pointing out specific parts and I kind of went with it. Still don't know who does what, I'm still too busy disgesting the obvious classics to get to know what I like and dislike to focus in on individual musicians I want to explore further but I know I will in the future. (It's very much related to being a bit of a hip-hop geek always looking out for that producer or this kind of sample etc.)

xposts.

I just wish some would do polls on genres im not familiar with so I could check stuff out.

Bimble said in CHATZ once on aim he would do a best goth 50 from RYM. Sadly he isn't around now to do that. But I bet the enthusiasm he would have shown on it would have led to people checking out stuff they hadnt given the time of day to before.

I just wish some would do polls on genres im not familiar with so I could check stuff out.

Bimble said in CHATZ once on aim he would do a best goth 50 from RYM. Sadly he isn't around now to do that. But I bet the enthusiasm he would have shown on it would have led to people checking out stuff they hadnt given the time of day to before.

― pfunkboy (Herman G. Neuname), Sunday, 4 October 2009 21:17 (26 seconds ago) Bookmark

I thought about doing a whole TEACH COUNTRY MUSIC TO IGNORANT BRITISHERS thread but then remembered that there is too much music I haven't heard in genres I already know I love, let alone ones I don't yet care for.

problem there is that Ned hates polls.

xp

thats ned's loss

people who want discussion can post in poll threads. Those who dont are cutting their noses off to spite their face.

and im not having a go at Ned btw. Im pretty sure he does post in poll threads he just doesnt vote.

yeah but you gotta concede the validity of saying "what's the point, no matter where the discussion's at, once the poll closes it will be effectively dead because a lot of people posting to poll threads have this idea that the results 'settle' something" - if you want to keep discussing something after the results come in, there's bizarro "get over it, your horse didn't win" lols - polls have a kinda unhealthy way of casting a q so I can see somebody'd go "fuck it, I don't do poll threads" - I had polls hidden for a long time for just this reason, the narrative of a poll thread is uber irritating

but if those who dislike the fact everything ends once a result is in they can still keep discussing and others will then join in. It's not like the thread is locked once a poll ends. You have to make it happen.

I know I'm most probably going to come back to this thread as I make my way through the albums on the list.

but if those who dislike the fact everything ends once a result is in they can still keep discussing and others will then join in. It's not like the thread is locked once a poll ends. You have to make it happen.

feel you here but some of the best discussers are also in the "the poll settled the question and I've lost interest now" party

I gotta go, vote Coltrane in your heart you know it's the right thing to do

what the fuck is this thread

Music Pre-Will2k.

Re vocal jazz:

Like I said in the last thread, it's just not something I'm into, especially by the '60s. I'm also not into Ye Ye, or a lot of the vocal pop from the '50s and '60s, the Frank Sinatra, Pat Boone stuff. It just doesn't connect with me.

John mentioned not being able to imagine a jazz collection without it, and yeah, if I were building a collection of "jazz" to be preserved for future historians, I'd feel remiss if I didn't put some in. But it's just not something I care about or that interests me—I'm not building the platonic jazz collection, I'm building a collection of jazz that I listen to and enjoy.

I'm also not a huge fan of "smooth" as a virtue, and a lot of vocal jazz does (at least to me) seem to privilege that as the proper voicing.

If you want to hear vocal jazz that's not overtly smooth and mannered, check out these albums:

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/t/thomas_leon_spiritskn_101b.jpg

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_FXs64cnHmlc/RqtOFGVJAuI/AAAAAAAAAdI/vMjJ2TgVF-k/s400/thomas_leon_leonthoma_101b.jpg

Leon Thomas does stuff with his voice that's equal to the best instrumental improvizers in jazz.

This one's a bit smoother than Leon Thomas, but it's still rooted in the spiritual/cosmic jazz of the 60s and early 70s:

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_79B8V96zY64/RmTcUdyx7SI/AAAAAAAAAgM/U2OMVtz3uPI/s400/bey_andy+experience.jpg

Andy Bey has an incredible voice and way of phrasing, so deep and hypnotizing.

This one's my favourite vocal jazz album, it's totally smooth and mannered, but still kicks ass:

http://i27.tinypic.com/2n9ajgo.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x8cFdZyWOOs

Just listen to Vaughan's "solo" on this tune!

I'm not a fan of vocal jazz either, partially for reasons of smoothness, etc. mentioned above. however, I think it's not so much vocals that are the problem as lyrics. they bring a little too much banal concrete meaning to a very abstract and fluid form.

(i actually find lyrics problematic and superfluous in many genres...but it's particularly pronounced in jazz.)

but it's not a hard and fast rule, just a common preference -I can certainly get behind chet baker, nina simone, billie holiday, etc. so thanks for the recommendations tuomas. I shall check 'em out.

If lyrics are a problem, there are folks like Bobby McFerrin who do cool wordless improvisation:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=37DHXrFfwrE

(I know it can get a bit gimmicky, but the guy is still pretty impressive!)

i half expected a scatman john video by tuomas or noodle vague here

(ps dont post one)

a bit gimmicky,yes

vote! discuss!

Kerr, have you ever checked out any Patty Waters?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1sGHTV__Nk

49 Herbie Hancock Head Hunters (1973)

More funk than some of the albums on the funk poll, but it's between this, Miles Smiles, Shape of Jazz and all that Coltrane.

It's Giant Steps for me, which I suppose is a pretty boring choice, but this really could have been thrown to any of the Miles, Mingus or Coltrane albums on the list depending on my mood - and I'll certainly be checking out some of the other albums on the list that I haven't seen yet.

The question about vocal jazz is a good one and I don't know the definitive answer, buy yeah I lean towards instrumental as well. Maybe it is what J0hn mentioned, where having a vocalist automatically takes the focus away from the playing in many cases, where the musicians can really pull the whole thing off themselves - for example, just heard a version of "Take Five" with vocals by Carmen McRae which added nothing at all to the original instrumental, and maybe even detracted from it.

Possibly the aversion to vocal jazz is the corny factor - done right, like Sarah, Ella or Billie, it's divine, but then there's the stuff that sounds like it was designed for some Bob Hope special to appeal to the grandmas, which is death to hip, and which is potentially the type of vocal jazz that is so out front that people who might otherwise be interested in the definitively non-corny stuff are already predisposed to dismissing the genre altogether. (NB: I'm not sure where on the spectrum Lambert, Hendricks and Ross fit...I can appreciate their skill but I also find it decidedly corny.)

Kerr, have you ever checked out any Patty Waters?

I haven't, no. My vocal jazz collection consists of one Billie Holiday best of.
Playing that youtube clip though.

Further to the comment about McRae's vocal, it basically replaced Desmond's sax line on the original track, and the unfortunate thing is that while it replicated the melody of the original cut (more or less), it wound up pushing the rest of the instrumentation into the background, whether you wanted it to or not.

Another thing that occurs, while thinking about this song, is that by adding lyrics to a song, it generally becomes ABOUT something, while an instrumental generally allows the listener to infuse it with whatever meaning they want. And just thinking of how many bands I might otherwise love if it wasn't for the fact that I absolutely hate their lyrics...

(Note that this is me trying to rationalize the dislike rather than trying to prove that I hate vocal jazz - I don't. I have a bunch of it in my collection, but yes, it's true that in general I have a lesser regard for it than for my fave instrumental jazz albums.)

I almost went for one of the major-league hitters but I'm not sure even my favourite Mingus gets as many plays as Les Stances à Sophie. So Art Ensemble it is.

My computer has no sound so hopefully this is what I intend it to be: Art Ensemble of Chicago - Theme de Yoyo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=perVFDDy_xg&feature=PlayList&p=E9786A3AA5C637D7&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=24

Kerr, have you ever checked out any Patty Waters?

Suggested her because, to my ears at least, her singing explores the song in a way that owes as much to the likes of Coltrane etc as it does to Billie Holiday.

Still "Head Hunters". Exactly what are the differences from the previous poll here, because "Head Hunters" is still at #49.

"Heavy Weather" is better though, the most glaring abscence here.

I'm listening to the Herbie for the first time and wow, geir, you really like a record with drums this cool?

I'm struggling to make a choice here. I really can't choose between any of those Trane albums. Throw in Meditations, Kulu Se Mama, Sunship etc and it becomes even more complicated.
Leaving aside Trane, it's a tough choice between Black Saint, Ah Um, Karma, Journey..., Miles Smiles, Spiritual Unity, Out To Lunch and Brilliant Corners.
Ah Um was the first jazz album to really click with me, and it's amazing, but Black Saint is even more so. So it might have to be Black Saint...

geir the difference is i replaced the duplicate albums with karma and machine gun. i wasnt changing all the numbers just for that.

Live blogging teh jazz list:

Herbie Hancock Head Hunters

http://sinistersaladmusikal.files.wordpress.com/2008/02/herbie-hancock-head_hunters_album.jpg

Love the cover, love the drummer even more (especially on the first track), just can't stand the electrodribble.

The drummer is Harvey Mason, on of the best jazz drummers of the 70s, especially if you appreciate funky playing and imaginative breaks.

If you dig his drumming, you should check out this album:

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_toslU5iauJI/R_7ae-NWy8I/AAAAAAAAAVI/gjoifCBZrVA/s320/img004.jpg

A lot of Herbie-associated players appear on it (though not Herbie himself, the keyboards are by George Duke), and Mason does some wonderful things with his drum kit on it.

Head Hunters = electro-dribble!!? Gosh.

Cheers for the recommendation, it has been duly noted.

jazz-fusion, electro-dribble, all one and the same as far i'm concerned. (obviously not to be confused with indie electro-dribble, I just like the term and think it applies here.)

electrodribble? that deserves an SB!

do you just not like electric pianos? Cuz you're going to have a tough time listening to jazz in the 70s ...

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_dGSmVZ11qoo/SG-qTFAnlnI/AAAAAAAAAA4/HUh_aCveF7s/s320/headhunters_straightf_101b.jpg
http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/h/headhunters_survivalo_101b.jpg

I like them some of the time but yeah, most of the times I have stumbled into fusion territory I haven't enjoyed it. I just feel like they should be making out-and-out funk instead of the noodly shit they actually did make.

I'm listening to the Herbie for the first time and wow, geir, you really like a record with drums this cool?

I am sure I like some stuff where you find the drums cool, just it needs to have other qualities besides rhythm for me to stomach it. But, yes, the beats in that album are cool. So are the ones in "Future Shock", which is my fave Hancock album (but which would probably belong nowhere in a "jazz" list)

xpost I probably felt the same way about fusion-y stuff until a few years ago. Probably until I heard Head Hunters, as a matter of fact! So maybe it'll start sounding better to you now. There really is some great stuff to hear.

I'm sure there is, remember I'm a relative rookie to it all. Up until this week my exploration has genuinely been on account of 'what blue note cover looks coolest' pretty much.

I'm just sad that sam wont enjoy Sextant,Crossings and Mwandishi by Herbie Hancock, which are essential albums everyone must hear.

Ha. Sextant came on after Headhunters on spotify so I listened to the first track and loved it. Way less restrained in its noodley electric piano but with cooler textures and just downright odd sounds. Added the whole album to my Jazz Albums To Hear playlist for some future time because i'm all a bit jazz/funked out atm.

Headhunters is the one album from that group that I would recommend to someone who doesn't like electrodribble/jazzfunk noodling. It was the 1st one I heard and thought "oh hey, I like this stuff!", investigated some more, and realized no, I don't really like that stuff, I just like Headhunters. (Sextant is okay. Thrust I like better cause it's more focused.)

Thrust thru Manchild is real funky stuff.

"that group" being jazzfunk in general
xp

Just popping in to say this weekend I heard In A Silent Way and On The Corner for the first time in my life. On The Corner will take a couple extra plays to sink in but In A Silent Way has been absolutely perfect for this gorgeous PacNW morning.

My vocal jazz collection consists of one Billie Holiday best of.

dude you gotta get with at least the Trane & Hartman record and also a lotta Nat "King" Cole Trio, for heaven's sake the Nat "King" Cole Trio is solid amazing jazz!!! and Betty Carter, gee whiz!!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iemkYXz8UNs

this is the first time I've encountered someone saying Gee Whiz outside of The Beano!

btw, what's up with the panning in Black Satin? Is that intentionally poor or are my headphones going out?

Panning?

and don't forget classic Ella-ella-ella-ella...

xxxp

Other fusion stuff that's pretty decent (but not really explicitly jazz): First several Soft Machine albums; first several Weather Report albums. I tend to check out on Soft Machine after about Five (I just don't know as much about them as they ostensibly got more jazzy—that was the criticism, at least), and Weather Report can have some really over-rated bunk, especially by the late '70s (never understood why everyone loved Jaco Pastorius the way they did—he's a virtuoso, but also sounds pretty wanky).

pfunk, check out Black Satin on headphones. throughout there is either panning or overdubbing on the left channel that sounds terrible. probably just a limitation with studio equipment but it's pretty bush league for a Miles album.

i never noticed anything awkward sounding there, and i've played that record dozens of times (never on headphones, tho, granted).

Phil to thread!

esp. noticeable from 1:54 - 3ish

Yeah I was gonna mention Patty Waters, even if she was a one-off who did a couple of things then disappeared for 20 years.

I think it's a subject worth discussing as a subthread, that while there'll be big partisans for Monk or Trane or Mingus or Miles or even Bill Evans or Stan Getz (if there were some other Bill Evans records on here they would have been heavy competition for me, can't get enough Bill Evans), there wouldn't really be that much interest beyond Lady in Satin & maybe some Betty Carter, which as I say is weird to me - it's like some of the basics of the genre become this land of nope-not-that-please, and i don't know another genre in which that's true.

Its very true of classical. The music in these fields has had pretty radical erm historical breaks in their development. Once the split happened the participants weren't able to talk to one another, especially when the blame game started as to how the music wasn't selling much anymore.

Odd Billie Holiday album aside I always think of vocal jazz as something to be found on compilation CDs (the jazz album was a kind of slippery concept in my mind anyway), and there is no particular collection that has been canonized to any extent to appear on lists.

I look forward to j0hns vocal jazz poll

I don't make the polls, I just complain about 'em

but you could teach ilx how to make a proper poll!! Change how ilx polls work ! (apart from Geir's)

I kinda hate polls is the thing, like a lot, I only come to the threads for the discussions that sometimes happen on them

if there were interesting questions abt genres instead of "what's the best album of this genre?" I'd be over on them threads but polls are some pernicious bacteria

you had mellowed on polls yesterday :(

bring back the friendly j0hn from yesterday!

these music polls are crazy--they should be on their own board. i feel like they dilute ILM

music polls dilute i love music?

yeah. sorry.

then tick hide polls option

yep. i suppose i could do that. yep.

it's ridiculous for a board to try to cover Jazz, Funk, Girl Groups and whatever else at the same time. One huge poll at a time plz. Poll makers don't get too excited to have your name attached to creating a poll. If someone else beats you to the poll, it doesn't mean you're a lesser person. In fact, I don't think anybody gives a shit who starts a poll or thread, so don't feel like your self worth is tied up in getting to a poll first. Space these big picture polls out a bit from now on.

it would be a blank page if we hid the polls.

i mean people have hated these polls since we started polls

there are actually three polls devoted to the question of polls.

and you revived one of them scott

my favorite poll i've ever done. don't forget to vote, folks!

best Dreamboat Gorilla album

bring back the friendly j0hn from yesterday!

lol sorry I didn't sleep good and am probably a little ornery this afternoon but yeah I mean I think most polls I've started have been LOL what's better bbq sauce or prayer type things. I like to talk about music so if there's a poll thread with an interesting angle to me (such as, why do the jazz listners on ilx so overwhelmingly prefer instrumental jazz? isn't that odd, given the immense role vocalists have in the history of the genre? given this, too, there's hardly any point in a "vocal jazz poll" - on ilx, vocal jazz isn't well-liked, so the proper place for discussing that is on a "greatest jazz album" thread, not a separate thread for a subgenre people don't like) then I'll come w/that but if I were king of ilx polls wouldn't just be invisible to me, they'd be toast, I think they're lame & I only come to the threads because there can be action on em and action I like and polls I don't, and in fact I have written a jazz song about it, which I will now sing

i tend to think that they bring out the worst in people. the fantasy league worst. the historical baseball abstract worst. i rarely get caught up in any good conversations on poll threads.

I hate polls too but won't hide them in my settings because i'd miss out on some good discussion. Unfortunately, you get dipshits creating parody polls and then trying to be top banana by polling something first FIRST! before anyone else does and they fuck up the whole system. I enjoy the conversation but the actual polling is pointless and proves nothing. Too much persuasion and false votes. My idea for making polls better is to not allow any comments until the poll is over. That way, nobody gets influenced by anything other than their own opinion.

That way, nobody gets influenced by anything other than their own opinion.

getting your opinion changed by a persuasive argument is the central joy of discussing stuff, wtf!

but then there would be zero discussion!

poll is just a weirdo extension of all these music lists and top 10s and rankings and best ofs and it just gets boring. also scott otm

ok WTF
Vote for the best of the albums in positions 4951 to 5000 at RYM

see! SEE WHAT YOU HAVE DONE

SEE WHAT GEIR HAS DONE!

Best 70s FUNK Album (From RYM)

you started this one, tho

look at the list of polls and geir is usually the problem, he has to have more polls than anyone else. Then NV comes with the parody polls, then the polls about banning polls get revived then people blame all polls.

theres good discussion on the funk poll imo

dude, you start lots of polls, i'm just saying.

Herman you are like Mr. Poll & 50 options is just totally ridiculous so no pointing fingers @ Geir just bcz he's worse!

it's all love btw so don't think I'm mad or nothin I'm not OK xoxo jd

Can we get back to discussing jazz now?

Cuz i also find it interesting that i'm not the only one that doesn't seem to care for vocal jazz.

yo most polls are a bore. has anyone actually cared about the results of a poll? also there's that annoying thing where if one person starts a unique poll it sparks this unstoppable chain reaction of slight variations on the poll which just turns everything into a huge clusterfuck.

also, this otm

look at the list of polls and geir is usually the problem, he has to have more polls than anyone else

when I was trying to discuss jazz you were just telling me to go start a new poll!

sorry yes back to jazz by all means.

on jazz!

but discuss vocal jazz here then, what are we all missing out on ?

Life itself?

Seriously, anyone who can't appreciate vocal jazz, particularly the severe level of musicianship it requires to make those chords, is dead inside and probably about three steps removed from punting a baby into traffic.

the funk thread appears to have been deleted. is this one next?

i went to post a spotify link for sam and i cant see it

Nothing's been deleted; threads have been dropped off of New Answers.

and if they get bumped we get banned?

thanks HI DERE

http://dvweb.mpf.arcstarmusic.com/mdb_image5/ED/tE8TD_608328_l.jpg

is one fucking beast of a record. Everyone is at the top of their game. (That and after years of wondering why Ron Carter was treated as such a legend by Tribe Called Quest, I can hear his awesomeness as I don't think I've knowingly listened to him play bass other than on Excersions.)

i wonder if people who don't like vocal jazz also skip the ballads on instrumental records.

Talking about polls is boring. They exist, they will forever exist. Until Geir gets 51 they will plague New Answers. Just talk about music or zing each other.

i dont really.
funnily enough, i tend to hate ballads in most genres.

and if they get bumped we get banned?

You run the risk of getting yellowcarded if you bump those threads, although for that particular one it is unlikely (the more actual discussion there is on the thread, the less likely it is that a mod will yellowcard you).

This is a volume/spamming issue more than anything else; the intention is not to shut down actual discussion, otherwise they all would have been locked or deleted.

meaning that the general energy & approach of most vocal jazz is pretty different than non-vocal stuff.

xp

and when vocalists try to act more like an instrumentalist (like scatting or doing uptempo or out stuff) it can come off as corny to a lot of people.

i prefer vocal jazz actually, besides charles mingus. it's really obvious and a total non jazzbo opinion but it's basically just that most instrumental jazz i've heard doesn't have enough focus and puts too little emphasis on collaboration. i like a jazz band to sound like a well-oiled machine, and centering everything around a vocalist tends to bring that about.

well on that funk one i think there's good discussion and i was going to post a spotify link or 2 for sams benefit each day. but i dont want to bump it then get blamed for geir bumping his and so on.

Best 70s FUNK Album (From RYM) btw.

So am I trolling/pissing off everyone when I bump the TV voting poll? It is not exactly the same as these types, I'm trying to get people involved, but it is still shameless trolling to extent.

yeah but free jazz ppl are often the no-vocals ppl and the energy of free jazz is often very kinetic & really pretty vocal in spirit - saxophone as vehicle for the wordless human voice kinda stuff

If there's good discussion, keep it going! If it's a stupid "oh look, I can make yet another poll that looks like THIS" thread, don't.

no more polls til these are over. Promise.

perhaps you want to remove the rym part from the threads so it wont encourage copycats? I wouldnt mind it being removed from this or the funk poll at all.

and when vocalists try to act more like an instrumentalist (like scatting or doing uptempo or out stuff) it can come off as corny to a lot of people.

otm, there is something deeply hilarious and about scatting in some cases

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DAzt2Wc0zEE&feature=PlayList&p=B25D698B474055D9&index=4

I have actually held off with a whole lot of RYM polls because I feel ILM is a bit flooded with RYM type floods right now and it's better to wait until they calm down. But genre filtering at RYM actually provides a lot of interesting themes, just we don't need to do them all at the same time.

yeah but free jazz ppl are often the no-vocals ppl and the energy of free jazz is often very kinetic & really pretty vocal in spirit - saxophone as vehicle for the wordless human voice kinda stuff

good point, but it sounds way more ridiculous when done with an actual human voice

why?

not saying I disagree, it just seems like it might be a sort of arbitrary thing worth getting past, like I don't like the sound of German at all but I'll be fucked if I won't learn to love it when I'm listening to Bach

also I think a lot of free sax stuff is supposed to sound v. ridiculous but to jazz listeners who aren't players this aspect of free sax playing is lost or overlooked

i just think that most listeners are picky about singers in a way that they're not about horn players.

as far as free jazz w/vocals i haven't heard a ton tbh, just thinking of some things i've seen kurt elling do.

i've heard "i just don't like his/her voice" about a million times more than i've heard "i don't like his/her tone", from non-musicians anyway.

"sn't that odd, given the immense role vocalists have in the history of the genre?"

Yeah, history. But that highlights something pretty glaring, especially in terms of the free jazz bias that John noted (and I'm saying this as one of the free jazzbags)—Vocal jazz tends to be incredibly conservative jazz. There are exceptions (Art Ensemble's stuff with Fontella Bass comes to mind), but for the most part, it's yet another interpretation of "Fever." Which, fine, great song, but honestly, that's so much less exciting than hearing Peter Brotzman play machinegun fire through a saxophone. Hell, I can't think of any jazz made in the bop idiom in the last 20 years that I'd seriously rate.

To be fair, the same thing happens with blues—it takes really exceptional contemporary blues playing in order for something to stick in my head. Minute variations in tropes just tend to be lower on my scale of likely listening. I can appreciate a lot more as historical documentation than I can as entertainment, and I listen to music primarily as entertainment.

man I'm listening to kurt elling right now and feeling no pain, I think that dude is awesome xpost w/Jordan

i like kurt elling too (except for the spoken word stuff).

"why?"

Because instruments are machines for making noises, so there's no issue of self-consciousness.

And also because scat is syllabic, and we understand language. Language that's just nonsense words is pretty inherently absurd, and especially since it was once a popular mode of expression, that makes it feel more goofy to continue to do it after it was popular. I'd preempt the pop nonsense rejoinder by noting that vocal jazz puts the focus explicitly on a vocalist as a soloist with scat, whereas usually pop nonsense is either incidental or relatively brief.

but anyway vocal free jazz isn't what most people are talking about when they say "vocal jazz". they're probably talking about something pretty close to pop, and there is so much non-jazz pop out there that folks who get into jazz are looking for something else.

xp, what i eat cannibals said.

Vocal jazz tends to be incredibly conservative jazz.

but all the out-there bop dudes made records with singers and I don't think they were just goin "maybe I'll throw Sarah Vaughan a bone" - I would guess that among players the great jazz singers are ranked every bit as highly as the great players, and as forward-thinking. even a dude like Mats Gustafsson, dude is singin Tjo Och Tim on his record. obv my bias is showing, I love to sing whether I'm any good at it or not and take more pleasure from singing than from any other musical endeavor, but this sort of reading of vox as trad in the face of (say) Betty Carter or Billie Holiday or Ella or Mel Torme or Nat Cole or Johnny Hartman or some of those Lambert Hendricks & Ross sides - it's an aesthetic that deserves unpacking, because I think it's based on a false premise about vocals

Hell, I can't think of any jazz made in the bop idiom in the last 20 years that I'd seriously rate.

all the stuff i like has form and maybe swings sometimes, but i wouldn't call it "bop". dave holland, brian blade, mehldau, etc.

ALL of the great jazz players took cues from jazz vocalists. Charlie Parker, Miles, Coltrane, etc. They were all into timing/phrasing -- jazz singers are no different from soloists, in a lot of ways. And I mean, criticizing music for being conservative ... well, that's a matter of taste, but there's a lot of pleasure to be found in conservative music! xpost

free jazz orthodoxy is like way more strict than trad orthodoxy too imo - I think you get a lot more room to get free if you're trad than you do to get trad if you're free

j0hn i'd agree that all those singers are super respected among musicians (i'm pretty sure nothing was more important to richard davis, despite the fact that he played on some crazy records back in the day) and that a lot of good jazz musicians think about the vocal while they're playing, but you can't deny that bands play differently behind a singer than when no singer is involved, right?

xp

would totally agree with that. because language is so primary (second only to rhythm, which is so primary that it recedes - you take it for granted), the presence of a singer imposes a dynamic. some free jazz I've listened to attempts to correct this but yeah, your natural (lol "natural" what would that mean here) instinct is to pay the most attention to whoever's talking.

but actually when you have a vocal ensemble instead of a soloist this tendency of the ear/mind is deferred a little imo

and i mean, i have a band that plays traditional jazz (and i don't mean 50's bebop or whatever people think of as default-mode "jazz" these days, i mean new orleans jazz) and i don't think there's anything wrong with playing a song simply. however, most of the contemporary jazz that i find fresh and interesting is instrumental, and it seems like it's a very rare singer who can go all of the places than an instrumentalist can and make it work.

wtf no brown rice!

but ok fine i did say earlier today that IN A SILENT WAY is one of the best recordings of all time so ill vote for that

btw it was really interesting to see the bad plus w/wendy lewis. they played behind her really beautifully, but it was very much a respectful the-vocals-come-first situation (which i think was the right way to go), with their normal crazy instrumental interaction compartmentalized into the non-vocal sections.

Is there anywhere that gives a good& quick overview of jazz eras?

i don't know about good but it doesn't look bad: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jazz

"but all the out-there bop dudes made records with singers and I don't think they were just goin "maybe I'll throw Sarah Vaughan a bone" - I would guess that among players the great jazz singers are ranked every bit as highly as the great players, and as forward-thinking."

Back then, jazz was a popular form. It's not really one today. They weren't throwing Vaughan a bone—they were working with contemporary artists and pushing the envelope.

And no, among the jazz players I know, great jazz singers are really not ranked every bit as highly, because very few of them were band leaders or composers, and those are the folks who tend to get rated. Not only that, but there are a huge number of musicians who get the "Before them, nobody knew you could do that with a trumpet!" that I've never really heard about jazz vocalists.

Not only that, the point was more that vocal jazz now is incredibly conservative jazz. Diana Krall, Nora Jones, that's really conservative stuff. Even all the folks you keep talking about, it's like, man, did you stop listening to jazz in 1963? It's fine for what it is, but Mel Torme? He's going to sing words that I don't care about to arrangements that bore me. That he does so well is fine and good, but if I'm really curious about Torme (and that'd be after I get through the mountain of jazz that I'm really excited and looking to dive into), I'm still not going to start with anything he's made recently. I'll knock back to the beginning to see if I can hear why he was famous and popular at the time, when he was working in a popular idiom.

"free jazz orthodoxy is like way more strict than trad orthodoxy too imo - I think you get a lot more room to get free if you're trad than you do to get trad if you're free"

That's just bullshit.

man if Mel Torme's arrangements bore you I don't even know what to tell you, dude had impeccable taste in arrangements (as did Sinatra imo)

xpost really? you can see a Brotzmann album of standards being well received by his audience?

(i.e. Coltrane could both be out & make a record w/Johnny Hartman but I don't see any of the free jazz guys being able to play standards w/o people calling them regressive/conservative/other very loaded words)

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3528/3244397612_1289593d60_o.jpg

also, much earlier:
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51JE2ktqJJL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/s/shepp_archi_mymantrib_101b.jpg

I stand corrected!

"you can see a Brotzmann album of standards being well received by his audience?"

Since I've seen Brotzmann play My Favorite Things and have it be well received, yeah. Roscoe Mitchell, who's still pretty damn free, has put out more than a couple albums of standards which got a fair amount of love. And it's rare to see a free jazz performance without at least a couple obvious trad quotes—far more likely than seeing trad jazz have a freakout moment.

"dude had impeccable taste in arrangements (as did Sinatra imo)"

Impeccable taste—very polite and no risk at all. He'll have respectful brushed drums, with a bass that never threatens to pull the composition anywhere, and you can sit around saying, "Well, there's just as much in the notes he didn't play."

xpost, sorry.

I think your reasoning is sensible, but you have to remember that most free jazz dudes have an incredible & abiding love/respect for jazz as an artform, and by working with traditional material they can reassure both themselves an their audience that they're part of a larger jazz tradition/history. xp to j0hn.

see also derek bailey's 'ballads' and 'standards'...although he always rejected the jazz tag.

ayler moved a lot in trad territory. as did sun ra.

Impeccable taste—very polite and no risk at all.

yeah, to me this is a really unpackable set of aesthetic priorities - lest I get called a free jazz hater, I've really enjoyed a lot of it - got into it when ESP started putting out CDs, had an Unheard Music Series subscription @ one point, saw Vandenberg & Gustaffson & some others several times during the 6 months I lived in Chicago - but the notion that free = "advanced" and that (say) "taste" is somehow necessarily less daring is nonsense imo & a position worth getting ahem free of

"Polite" and "tasteful" are horrible qualities! Fuck the man! Punk will never die! etc

J0hn, do you mean Ken Vandermark?

lol it was 15 years ago and I'm running on no sleep, leemee alone lol

I mean Van Der Graf Generator the great free jazz improviser

Seriously, Ken Vandermark is kinda bland when compared to other free jazz

I've heard him referred to as the "Pat Boone of free jazz"

this sort of shores up my free-jazz-as-community-of-laughable-orthodoxy complaint tho imo

"has there even BEEN any jazz for the last twenty, thirty years? all sounds the same to me--white."

actually it would better shore up a complaint about the Chicago new music scene being a bitchfest

lol

also ? @ ian

eh, it's a bit of stage banter from a sun city girls gig. not trying to get all "i'm white btw." on you guys. just a bit of fun, be cool.

I gotta get off this compute anyway nice talking w/everybody see yall soon this was some fun back n forth for me thx everybody

xp J0hn: i've only heard stories, and i don't know if it's like that anymore

"but the notion that free = "advanced" and that (say) "taste" is somehow necessarily less daring is nonsense imo & a position worth getting ahem free of"

Dude, think about "tasteful" as an adjective outside of music. It's a hoity-toity way of positioning the sophisticated, refined mien of inoffensive art. Several tasteful paintings? Well, they're nudes, but they got the crotches covered. And within the language of jazz criticism, a whole lot of free jazz got dismissed as squalling savagery, as opposed to the tasteful arrangements of, say, Mel Torme. It's presupposing a mainstream, reactionary aesthetic, and one that was explicitly used to squelch innovations in jazz—and it's arguably that reactionary aesthetic that killed jazz as a popular genre.

many xposts
I mean, hell, remember that one of Christgau's biggest objections to Sabbath was that they were tasteless and stupid? Why should jazz have to be different?

it's kinda weird to me that so much of the discussion of jazz on ilx seems to privilege this "tasteful" aesthetic

It's ILX

where a black crow will be argued white

And within the language of jazz criticism, a whole lot of free jazz got dismissed as squalling savagery, as opposed to the tasteful arrangements of, say, Mel Torme. It's presupposing a mainstream, reactionary aesthetic, and one that was explicitly used to squelch innovations in jazz—and it's arguably that reactionary aesthetic that killed jazz as a popular genre.

Sure, but (and I say this knowing this is the granddaddy of all challops) it's as reactionary to say "and therefore, Mel Torme is up on some bullshit." His instrument is unique in the history of song: his tone is up there with any hornblower you can name; it's singular, gorgeous, lush, nuanced, capable of shadings that only the best instrumentalists can match. What I think you're saying sounds a lot like dismissing Bix Beiderbecke on the grounds that Philip Larkin liked him. And you're conflating terms here - "mainstream" is only necessarily bad if you're a teenager & isn't synonymous with "reactionary." If your aesthetics are on some "beauty must be convulsive or not at all," OK, I think that's deeply wrongheaded but fair enough. But to dismiss great music because the people who like it dismiss some other great music - that's just kinda lame imo. "Tasteful" means "suitable to an occasion" or "measured and restrained" - it's not "reactionary" to find these qualities enjoyable; judicious underplaying is often a virtue for musicians in their maturity who'd have considered it a crime when they were younger. Maybe "enjoyable" has to be fraught with tension for you - I can get into that, but it's deeply limiting to then use that personal preference coupled with a rightful critique of conservative jazz criticism & take it up as a (wrong imo) hammer against (say) Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans, the Nat King Cole Trio, Chet Baker, Joe Pass...I mean, the list of extremely tasteful & extremely great jazz artists is as long as my arm, and I am known to be a long-armed dude

j0hn what is your favourite type of jazz?

death metal

I mean the real answer for me is "Duke Ellington," which I guess counts as trad for most people, but I'm hard pressed to name a musician in any genre ever with a comparable breadth of vision - to call what Ellington did over the course of his long career "trad jazz" is like saying "I haven't really listened much to Duke Ellington"

"I haven't really listened much to Duke Ellington"

*hides from j0hn*

Ok, so what do I listen to next? In the mood for something kind of easy going, I have a headache and want to be distracted but not have my ears bleed (i.e. no ayler.)

brubeck brubeck brubeck brubeck

bill evans bill evans bill evans bill evans

http://open.spotify.com/album/1bayhSDRuL3oUT6QymBOIy

http://open.spotify.com/album/2vm2b8COVMLIoHqB58iN4w

Flipped a coin and went with tails (Bill Evans Explorations). You know if an album starts with a track called Israel it is going to be good. Well, unless it isn't.

great album!

Yeah, it really is a great album.

One thing is really bugging me though, and for once http://www.the-breaks.com/ can't help me - what is it that samples Nardis, about 0.25 - 0.31? This is really annoying me.

Oh wait, Madvillain! Duh. If in doubt, think it was most probably Madlib who sampled it.

Pretty sure it was by Madlib, though I can't think of which track.

xp obv

Oh man, if I hear another Ladyhawk Becks advert I may turn into some sort of psychopathic serial killer.

"Sure, but (and I say this knowing this is the granddaddy of all challops) it's as reactionary to say "and therefore, Mel Torme is up on some bullshit.""

Can I just go ahead and ignore the rest of what you wrote? Because you seem to be ignoring what I'm saying. I don't think Mel Torme is up on some bullshit, I think that he doesn't interest me to listen to, and specifically that his arrangements really don't interest me. I can't ever think of hearing him sing a standard that made me think of that standard in a totally new way. And that experience of hearing something new, of understanding compositional patterns or hearing a phrase played (or sung, I guess) in a way that was unexpected, that's something that I value in listening. Mel Torme doesn't do that for me. And for me, an important part of jazz is the feeling of improvisation, which I almost never get from folks like Mel Torme. Now, sure, you can go ahead and argue that, well, it's just too subtle for my immature taste, but fuck that. Torme excels in attributes that don't bring me pleasure to listen to. His tone is excellent within a very limited view of what excellent tone is, but by assuming that your tastes are normative, you're missing out on a huge number of tones that are just as good. Dave Douglas rarely gets lush and supple, but he can. I'd rather listen to Dave Douglas than Mel Torme.

"And you're conflating terms here - "mainstream" is only necessarily bad if you're a teenager & isn't synonymous with "reactionary.""

C'mon, John, get up offa that bullshit. I was talking specifically about the mainstream read on jazz, especially in jazz criticism. The "Moldy Figs" that recur throughout jazz-crit history routinely shouted down new developments as "not jazz," in a way that really did damage jazz as an art form. "Mainstream" was bad because "mainstream" views on jazz were bad and reactionary and, again, excluded a lot of what jazz was and what jazz evolved to be. Stop retreating to the clichés.

"If your aesthetics are on some "beauty must be convulsive or not at all," OK, I think that's deeply wrongheaded but fair enough."

That's retarded. I mean, you know, if your aesthetics are on some, "Beauty must be familiar or not at all," I think that's wrongheaded, but I'm also savvy enough to know that's not what you're saying. So could you knock it off with trying to put up some straw men for my taste?

"But to dismiss great music because the people who like it dismiss some other great music - that's just kinda lame imo."

Well, since that's not what I'm doing, you should maybe recalibrate your argument. What I am saying is that I don't feel bad about dismissing praising something as "impeccably tasteful," because that's a pretty empty statement that's been used to justify all sorts of bullshit music.

""Tasteful" means "suitable to an occasion" or "measured and restrained" - it's not "reactionary" to find these qualities enjoyable; judicious underplaying is often a virtue for musicians in their maturity who'd have considered it a crime when they were younger."

"Tasteful" also means "suitable to any occasion" and "showing good judgment or behavior." There's an explicit value judgment implied, and if you want to say "judicious underplaying," say that, because "tasteful" is loaded and stupid. But please, continue with the pearls of maturity, they're hardly condescending.

"Maybe "enjoyable" has to be fraught with tension for you - I can get into that,"

Well, no, but it does help. I do tend to enjoy tension, but a reductive view of my taste isn't making me accept your defense of boring jazz. I mean, should I start saying that maybe enjoyable for you can't be fraught with tension? That'd be fairly dumb, wouldn't it?

"but it's deeply limiting to then use that personal preference coupled with a rightful critique of conservative jazz criticism & take it up as a (wrong imo) hammer against (say) Wes Montgomery, Bill Evans, the Nat King Cole Trio, Chet Baker, Joe Pass...I mean, the list of extremely tasteful & extremely great jazz artists is as long as my arm, and I am known to be a long-armed dud"

Really? Where'd I do that? Of those musicians, I generally like Bill Evans and Chet Baker, I generally don't like Nat King Cole (find his voice totally soporific) and haven't heard enough Wes Montgomery or Joe Pass to judge. What I am doing is saying that I do and don't like certain music from the jazz tradition, and prefer others. I am combining that with a critique of jazz criticism that has specifically excluded a lot of what I do like, and pointing out that I don't have any great respect for the canon simply because it's canon or simply because some musicians I like also liked that music.

I don't tend to like music that was made just to be tasteful. Tasteful is for tablecloths, not music. Tasteful happens after the music was made—Kind of Blue is a tasteful album to put on, but that doesn't mean that Davis and his band aren't taking some real risks within their compositions, and it wasn't necessarily regarded as tasteful at the time. Mel Torme sounds like his music was made to be tasteful, to be inoffensive and to be easy to not listen actively to. Again, he sings words I don't care about with arrangements that bore me. You say "tasteful," I say, "So what?"

"I mean the real answer for me is "Duke Ellington," which I guess counts as trad for most people, but I'm hard pressed to name a musician in any genre ever with a comparable breadth of vision - to call what Ellington did over the course of his long career "trad jazz" is like saying "I haven't really listened much to Duke Ellington""

Not to keep ragging on you, John, but Duke Ellington is Duke Ellington, not really jazz, at least for me. I like a lot of Ellington—his compositions and arrangements do it for me—but a lot of his work wasn't improvised, and a lot of his work leans explicitly towards other modes. I think that Ellington could play jazz (very well), but that not everything he did was jazz. He was bigger and broader than jazz. I'd contrast this with Miles Davis, who though he did incorporate a lot of different idioms within his work, he always felt like he was working from the jazz mode, at least to me.

Finally, I'd note that Ellington was one of the first big targets for the "That's not jazz" reactionary discourse, in part because he was using written scores. At that point, it was people like Rudi Blesh arguing that ragtime and New Orleans jazz were the only real jazzes. Ellington was able to weather that because Ellington was resoundingly popular, something that a lot of free jazz musicians were unable to claim.

Herman here's one vocal jazz album you should definitely check

is Sun Ra vocal jazz? He features a lot of singing

see also Betty Carter, Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, etc.

shakey i have loads of donald byrd!

yes but do you have THAT ONE

really interesting thread! topics that i've been interested in for a while if not least b/c at various times i've shared a lot of the viewpoints expressed. i know for sure i'd fall on the j0hn d end of the spectrum now but i know at one point i've talked a pretty hard line against 'trad' jazz.

it's really interesting to think why a lot of music dorks getting into jazz don't seem to have any time for shit unless it's coltrane/ayler/miles/mingus/dolphy, maybe add some brotzmann/bailey or few other names there. but that is a really weird and narrow slice of a huge genre. basically one slice of a period from '58-'72, give or take a few years w/ some exceptions of course. like even charlie parker is like, "ehh, whatever"

like this point is completely OTM:

the other thing though is I am guessing, and this is why I think it's a subject worth discussing as a subthread, that while there'll be big partisans for Monk or Trane or Mingus or Miles or even Bill Evans or Stan Getz (if there were some other Bill Evans records on here they would have been heavy competition for me, can't get enough Bill Evans), there wouldn't really be that much interest beyond Lady in Satin & maybe some Betty Carter, which as I say is weird to me - it's like some of the basics of the genre become this land of nope-not-that-please, and i don't know another genre in which that's true. like, most black metal lifers I know still give much respect to the trad metal that paved the way, and listen to it & enjoy it, from the 70s proto-doom & boogie down through eighties classics like Maiden or Mercyful Fate or the early Metallica stuff, plenty of Bay Area thrash that bears a relationship to black metal that might be passably analogous to vocal jazz:post-bop jazz maybe

― a full circle lol (J0hn D.), Sunday, October 4, 2009 3:10 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark

like even charlie parker is like, "ehh, whatever"

to be honest bop is the subgenre of jazz that I have the hardest time with. I've never gotten much joy out of Bird and Dizzy et al. what does the emperor say in Amadeus, "too many notes" lolz

Coltrane plays a lot of notes on occasion!

like, big band, dixieland, modal, free, vocal, fusion, cool, etc. all good but when I get to bebop my ears just kinda shut down

x-post

it's really interesting to think why a lot of music dorks getting into jazz don't seem to have any time for shit unless it's coltrane/ayler/miles/mingus/dolphy, maybe add some brotzmann/bailey or few other names there. but that is a really weird and narrow slice of a huge genre. basically one slice of a period from '58-'72, give or take a few years w/ some exceptions of course. like even charlie parker is like, "ehh, whatever"

you know that Blue Note did lots of avant garde jazz in the 60s. Most of their acts did it. And many of it is shit hot.

like i even sold some of my classic blue note albums back!! why!?!?! i bought brotzmann or braxton discs instead, but now i wish i still had a lot of that left. i love the crazy free shit too but it's just like one slice (just like hard bop or fusion is or whatever) and really the shit that has actually blown my mind this past year has been louis armstrong's "complete hot five and seven recordings" + billie holiday's "complete columbia recordings"

louis armstrong's "complete hot five and seven recordings" + billie holiday's "complete columbia recordings"

well that is bedrock shit right there

(tho I admit I haven't listened to it as much as I should have - not in years and years in fact)

his compositions and arrangements do it for me—but a lot of his work wasn't improvised

serious question - is improvisation a necessary criterion for jazz? iirc stuff like jelly roll morton and lot of the absolutely essential foundations of jazz weren't entirely improvized

like, big band, dixieland, modal, free, vocal, fusion, cool, etc. all good but when I get to bebop my ears just kinda shut down

maybe because all of these are often more melody-focused? or at least not as dealing-with-the-changes focused?

speaking of which -- that's the other shit that has blown my mind - jelly roll's 1920s recordings. + lester young's group work. art tatum! all this early shit is incredible. (btw art tatum is another dude who didn't prioritize improv iirc)

Jazz is over 100 years old. Comparing it to metal doesn't really make sense unless you wanna take the Chuck Eddy expansive view of metal, in which case I guarantee you'll see plenty of folks saying, Prince Isn't Metal, The Osmonds Aren't Metal, etc.

"serious question - is improvisation a necessary criterion for jazz? iirc stuff like jelly roll morton and lot of the absolutely essential foundations of jazz weren't entirely improvized"

Depends on who you ask. But there are a lot of essential foundations of jazz that aren't jazz, and there's nothing wrong with saying, y'know, this isn't jazz as we understand it now, but it was jazz as it was understood then.

"improv" is such a loaded term. one of the surprising things about that Ayler Revenant box that came out a few years back was how a lot of the live stuff seems to have actually been pretty well-arranged. I mean, it's "free" sounding, but it's not like they were just getting up and going off in whatever direction they felt. he seems to have known where he was going and how to get there, no matter how unhinged it might sound at times.

loaded term & also a silly barometer of the worth of a piece music imo. wrt 'moldy figs' -- the funny thing about 'moldy figs' in jazz & the use of the term is that it can be used to describe all kinds of different crowds. the swing dude is a moldy fig b/c he can't hang w/ bop, the bop dude is a moldy fig b/c he can't handle the free jazz or the fusion, etc,sure....... but seriously fuck if derek bailey et al isn't some type of old rotting fruit imo

"it's really interesting to think why a lot of music dorks getting into jazz don't seem to have any time for shit unless it's coltrane/ayler/miles/mingus/dolphy, maybe add some brotzmann/bailey or few other names there."

it's because a lot of them came to jazz from rock. rock fans look for rock stars.

charlie parker & billie holiday aren't rockstars????

esp. when compared to an old fart like derek bailey?

i think coltrane took over parker's role in a young hepcat's bad-ass education.

i don't know if billie was ever a part of that education. maybe for young hepcat women.

A Young Hepcat's Bad-Ass Education - wasn't that a blaxploitation flick from the 70s?

I don't tend to like music that was made just to be tasteful.

for a guy who's finding strawmen everywhere he sees you sure are coming with a whopper here - please list the jazz musicians who are making music "just to be tasteful" and explain how you came by this insight into their motivations!

"Duke Ellington...not really jazz" is total insanity with or without a "for me" appended so I gotta assume that's get-a-rise trolling and give you a 10 on that'n, it nearly pulled a 500 word blown gasket outta me

in defense of mel torme, he was one of richard davis's top 3 singers, last i heard (the others being al green & sarah vaughan, i think).

in defense of Mel Torme he was this motherfucker's favorite singer
http://store.infinitecoolness.com/coolposters/personalities/nightcourt/nightcourttvposter001.jpg

mel was great. the troo kult hepcats listen to mark murphy though.

Voting for the all-time-best jazz *album* is kind of a strange way to consider the genre as a whole, because the most seminal music was made long before the album emerged as a format. It would be kind of like voting for the best-ever rock album - if only albums that were originally released on CD were allowed. It pretty much disqualifies the first couple of generations of the pioneers and geniuses of the music - it's like a rock poll with no Chuck Berry, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, etc. I think that's one reason why these choices seem kind of, I don't know, underpowered. Since it excludes most of the figures who inarguably invented and shaped the music, it's also harder to reach any consensus.

Wait, Nightcourt was a real show? I just thought it was 30 rock lols.

are you kidding me

am i kidding you thinking that a show about court at night seemed like it was just a joke about lame tv show ideas? is Supercomputer a real show as well?

holy shit

haha, well ... it was real! you have missed out on an important part of American culture. (not really, show sorta sucked)...

how old are you btw?

21 and british.

"Night Court" was part of the original "Must-See TV" NBC juggernaut ("The Cosby Show", "Family Ties", "Cheers", "Night Court", "Hill Street Blues"). Any American who watched TV during the mid-80s would be boggled that you didn't know it had existed.

see here: http://www.cse.psu.edu/~butler/mustsee.html

when i went looking for 30something dvd (melissafan4ever) two different clerks at the chain store on two different days asked me if i meant 30 rock. lol, i'm old.

haha!

30...something

wow nbc kinda sucked.

21 and British
that would explain it ... anyway, "Night Court" was sorta like the Duke Ellington Orchestra of 80s sitcoms. So many great talents, all coming together and creating beautiful, beautiful music.

Most of those shows have dated horribly but they were, quite reliably and with little hyperbole, far and away the best shows on television in that time period.

okay maybe not "Good Morning, Miami"

Glad I'm not holding a BEST OF 80s TELLY POLL then.

what the hell was Good Morning Miami, i have blocked that out

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_Morning,_Miami

They should have called it "Bag of Sick Masquerading As A Comedy"

But wasn't that Will & Grace's original title?

poor ireland:

After nine episodes were aired during the second season in the United States, the show was canceled and didn't get to finish airing the rest of the 18 episodes that were ordered for the season. However, all episodes of the second season were shown on TG4 in Ireland.

anyway, so jazz!

ok even by ilx standards this is a strange derail.
Can we get into a Steptoe & Son vs Sanford & Son fite please?
(actually ive always wanted to see sanford & son to see how it compares to one of the greatest ever UK sitcoms.

Giving the Brubeck a spin, does it all sound like Take Five?

sometimes it sounds like a brasilian take five.

Sounds kind of odd. I guess thats the brazil influence? I like it so far.

I feel I am not doing ILM enough service, I should start getting all challopsy and stop saying I like things. It feels wrong.

okay i am NOT a brubeck fan. he mostly puts me to sleep. and there are, like, literally 50 other jazz pianists i would rather listen to. BUT i have to give credit where credit is due. i recently enjoyed this album.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_r9BHjNdFgbI/SlCP2vxslBI/AAAAAAAABj8/JGkFubvKLSI/s400/Dave+Brubeck+1960+Quartet+Feat.+Jimmy+Rushing+-+Brubeck+&+Rushing+%5B417%5D.jpg

(mostly i think jimmy rushing woke dave up from his slumber and the results are nice.)

Dude, "Gates of Justice" is awesome, don't hate

Nothing about this album really jumps out at you, does it? Maybe it goes back to how I am kind of listening to the seperate parts and Time Out is all just about being a strong compact band. I do like it, just nowhere near as much as some of the other stuff I've been discovering. Listened to the Bill Evans and was inspired enough to go through his allmusic page and see what else to listen to. This is just nice, may return to it once i've checked out everyone else first.

better than gates of justice:

http://www.jazz.com/assets/2008/7/5/albumcoverGaryMcFarland-AmericaTheBeautiful-AnAccountOfItsDisappearance.jpg

plus, gary was way dreamier than dave.

http://991.com/newGallery/Gary-McFarland-Point-Of-Departur-362049.jpg

"Duke Ellington...not really jazz" is total insanity with or without a "for me" appended so I gotta assume that's get-a-rise trolling and give you a 10 on that'n, it nearly pulled a 500 word blown gasket outta me"

Take that up with Ellington himself: He described his corpus as "American music" rather than jazz, a distinction he made consciously. He certainly started out in and returned to the jazz idiom throughout his career, but saying that your favorite kind of jazz is Duke Ellington is a bit like saying that your favorite kind of rock and roll is Brian Eno. When I listen to Ellington's Sacred Concerts, my first thought isn't "This is jazz." Further, I think that a distinction can be drawn by noting that Ellington came up (and formed) jazz as a popular, expansive idiom, but I do think that jazz changed when it lost that focus on being a popular art form and started being regarded as "high art" by critics and musicians. Blow your gasket if you want, but I also don't think of Gershwin or Berlin as jazz, even though they did write in contemporary jazz idioms. But they're far enough afield that I think they fit in better as pop music.

I also don't think of the Beatles as a rock group. AM I BLOWING YOUR MIND?

plenty of ostensibly "jazz" musicians denied the label. Pretty sure Sun Ra did. RR Kirk preferred the term "black classical music" or something iirc

I've only got about 14 out of these 50, and I'm only passingly familiar with the rest - but of those I'll pick Monk's Music. I feel uneasy calling it the "BEST EVER JAZZ ALBUM" or anything like that - but it's my personal fave of this list.

ok pick your favourite from the list then

Voting for the all-time-best jazz *album* is kind of a strange way to consider the genre as a whole, because the most seminal music was made long before the album emerged as a format. It would be kind of like voting for the best-ever rock album - if only albums that were originally released on CD were allowed. It pretty much disqualifies the first couple of generations of the pioneers and geniuses of the music - it's like a rock poll with no Chuck Berry, Beatles, Rolling Stones, Jimi Hendrix, etc. I think that's one reason why these choices seem kind of, I don't know, underpowered. Since it excludes most of the figures who inarguably invented and shaped the music, it's also harder to reach any consensus.

It's true that Armstrong, Basie, Ellington, Parker, Gillespie, etc. put their stuff out on 78s. But the poll is about best album ever, not best artist.

I know that's what the poll's about - it just seems to me that it's too narrow a focus to get a very good grasp on jazz itself. I guess the same thing's true of rock too - best rock album polls tend to slight the early pre-LP pioneers as well as all the one-hit-wonders, singles bands, garage bands, etc, who never made a definitive album-length statement, but without whom the history of the music is incomplete.

For early rock one might make a 50s singles poll. For early jazz, many of the best musicians were probably more or less unrecorded whatsoever.

It would be nice if someone put together an "Anthology of American Jazz Music" sort of like the Harry Smith thing covering all the old 78s.

Get this:
http://cgi.ebay.com/VINYL-CLASSIC-JAZZ-THE-SMITHSONIAN-COLLECTION-6-LP-SET-_W0QQitemZ350133508139QQcmdZViewItem

cant even see what's on it.

For early jazz, many of the best musicians were probably more or less unrecorded whatsoever

why do you bother to say completely nonsensical stuff like this

who said that?

oh

because this is ilx

I don't know if I should even bother getting into why that statement is total bullshit

there are precendents for both approaches

like who are these unrecorded geniuses of early jazz that surpassed, say, Louis Armstrong and Bix Beiderbecke's bands, and why were they unrecorded, and if they were so great how would Geir of all people know about it

just say it shakey
xp

i'll 2nd the recommendation for the smithsonian set of classic jazz. so much awesome stuff going on in there.

Maybe Geir's heard of Buddy Bolden?

who?

i confuse buddy bolden and bix beiderbecke even tho they're pretty different

Clearly i should not post on jazz threads as i have never heard of buddy bolden

Don't feel too bad—he died 1931 without leaving any recordings. He's best known for Buddy Bolden's Blues, aka "Funky Butt"; Jelly Roll Morton's version became a standard (though honestly, I don't know if JRM actually wrote it or adapted it or what, but he gets writing credit when I've seen it. Duke Ellington does a bunch of versions of it, as does Air, the free jazz group from the '70s.)

One of the most famous Bolden numbers is a song called "Funky Butt" (known later as "Buddy Bolden's Blues") which represents one of the earliest references to the concept of "funk" in popular music, now a musical subgenre unto itself. Bolden's "Funky Butt" was, as Danny Barker once put it, a reference to the olfactory effect of an auditorium packed full of sweaty people "dancing close together and belly rubbing." [2] Other musicians closer to Bolden's generation explained that the famous tune actually originated as a reference to flatulence.

http://photos.igougo.com/images/p140305-New_Orleans-The_Funky_Butt.jpg

(rip)

lol don't feel bad pfunk i didn't know who buddy bolden was until lol ken burns' 'jazz'

Did the ken burns 'jazz' skip avant garde,free and fusion?

i think that was the complaint from some folk. i've only seen the first 3 volumes tho - avant/free/fusion isn't talked about until the very last vol. iirc (which may be part of the complaint - only 1 vol. for those movements vs. a ton on the others

first 3 vols. tho are really good imo

We can only imagine what it must have felt like on a hot and sweaty night at places like the Union Sons Hall on Perdido Street. As Bolden would stomp out a song’s tempo, the dancer’s seemed to suddenly come to life. Before long the whole room would be swaying along to Bolden’s hypnotic beat. One of Bolden’s musicians improvised the lyrics “Funky Butt, Funky Butt, take it away, open up the windows and let the bad air out”, apparently referencing the cramp confines in which the sweat and whiskey soaked dancers grooved to. The song which became know as Buddy Bolden’s Blues, served as a kind of theme song for King Bolden. With dances at the Union Sons Hall (informally renamed “Funky Butt Hall”) often lasting until 5 a.m. it is probable that this was the roughest place Bolden played. The same hall also ironically served as a Baptist church on Sunday Mornings.

xxxpost

never watched the Ken Burns Jazz doc, though I'm sure there's amazing footage throughout. Think there's just something slightly annoying about how they paste his name over everything he does -- KEN BURNS KEN BURNS KEN BURNS. I was given the Charlie Parker overview that came out around the same time and his name is as big as Charlie's!

Ken Burns can fuck right off imho

relying on Wynton Marsalis = bad idea

But he invented jazz, didn't he? Him and Buddy Bolden.

Wynton is the Geir of jazz

lol, he is kinda!

he still makes some great records though

Wynton? Or Geir? JK, yeah, Wynton has some awesome records, no doubt. He's just kind of a pain in the ass when he starts defining "WHAT JAZZ IS AND WHAT IT IS NOT" ...

more worrying is all those who agree with him

lol shakey have you seen any vols. of the documentary? some of them are really good! the ones on the origin of jazz were really well done imo

didn't bother - I can't stand Ken Burns' style in general

what you don't like academy award winning actress Meryl Streep reading from Billie Holiday's autobiography?

(kidding, that is probably not something that happens in the doc)

i know i link to Do the Math all the time, but this is a really great set of essays on + interviews with Wynton, done by Ethan Iverson of the Bad Plus:

http://thebadplus.typepad.com/dothemath/2008/12/readers-guide.html

haha no xp but the whole series is narrated by this guy:

http://ia.media-imdb.com/images/M/MV5BMjAzMTIyNTUxOV5BMl5BanBnXkFtZTcwNzAyNzQ2MQ@@._V1._SX271_SY400_.jpg

who has an awesome voice imo

Ken Burns' Jazz pretty much skips over free jazz and is very sniffy about fusion. Stanley Crouch is wheeled out to rant about how all this stuff isn't "real jazz". Then Marsalis appears in the 80s and is hailed as a saviour for turning back the clock to the early 60s before things got complicated. Crouch and Marsalis subscribe to the view of jazz as a blues based form. Jazz is America's music, so bringing in influences from European classical, avant-garde, African music, rock etc, dilutes this purity. It isn't necessarily bad music or an invalid approach, but it ain't jazz. So Ornette, with his blues roots, is the acceptable side of free jazz, whereas Cecil Taylor, although 'some kind of genius' to use Crouch's words, is not jazz, because his tonality has more to do with Messiaen, say, than the blues. The problem with this argument is that jazz has always used non-blues harmony and non-American influences. To me, Crouch and Marsalis are conservatives hiding behind a problematic theory. Jazz has always evolved. Of course certain directions won't appeal to everyone, but dismissing them as 'not real jazz' seems a refusal of jazz's potential.

xx-post. My previous post is a summary of what I took from the Do The Math interview with Crouch. It's an illuminating read. I was actually quite surprised to read of Crouch's admiration for Ayler and I have a better understanding of where he's coming from. I still disagree with him though!

Stanley Crouch is wheeled out to rant about how all this stuff isn't "real jazz

Crouch has his moments but when he gets on this stuff ugh so punchable.

yeah those Do the Math interviews are great. Both Crouch and Marsalis come across way less pedantic than usual. They're both kind of entertaining guys in some respects, just because they're usually so hard-headed. Was just reading Crouch's damnation of Miles' electric period, which just strikes me as the ultimate example of a critic refusing to engage with an artist's work. Fun stuff! Crouch is supposed to be working on a Charlie Parker bio, right? That should be fun too.

2nd the recommendation of the Crouch/Iverson interview. I got a ton of info from KB's Jazz doc in the form of its' audiobook adaptiation--it kept me informed and amused on long drives, especially helpful in developing a chronology for the early origins of jazz through the swing era, and was narrated by this guy:

http://api.ning.com/files/7dmZNw5kebo4pSNoSOArtYia955SvwbS*8*laTNCp2PEMWF2UnSW1VjjHBxo6y2FyzLVuY*EdDD0x-LhOE8mkMAENHG367D8/GeordiLaForge.jpg

basically Crouch and Marsalis are expounding a fairly arbitrary orthodoxy that is meant to restrict and codify the genre within a specific timeframe, which is the deathknell for any kind of music.

Was just reading Crouch's damnation of Miles' electric period,

I cracked up when Crouch appears on some DVD of Miles' electric period stuff (Isle of Wight performance maybe?) Everybody else on the disc is rhapsodizing about playing with Miles or about how ahead of its time and influential this music was and then Crouch pops up with his "I have tried - REALLY TRIED - to listen and like this music but I just don't get it" I think he even goes so far to confess that he tried to listen to it while high and still didn't enjoy it.

I wonder if there are any ilxors that are like Crouch & Marsalis.

about jazz? I don't think there are any

but see my comment about Geir upthread...

you knew what i meant..

haha, yeah, i forgot about Crouch in that electric Miles doc ... that was funny. I mean, it's cool that he doesn't like it -- I just think it's lame that he constantly uses the term "sell-out" when referring to that time. There are lots of ways Miles could've sold out in the 60s-70s -- it doesn't seem like Bitches Brew is one of them, really. And it suggests that Miles was some sort of pure, only-in-it-for-the-art kinda dude beforehand. Which is not true -- Miles loved his money!

voted "in a silent way"

but there are tons i haven't heard

Miles was always a fucking sell-out, Crouch is delusional.

his whole career is about staying slightly ahead of the curve and reaping the benefits thereof

I've always found the idea that Miles electric music represents a sell-out to a rock audience absurd. Particularly stuff like Dark Magus and Get Up With It, which is just insane (and utter genius of course). It's like that bit in the Dylan documentary where some folkie leaving an incredible gig whines about Bob making pop music and some young hep cat cuts in saying, 'Not much pop music that sounds like *that*'.

Truth bomb from that hep cat.

yep

altho there's a distinct racial component to the Miles electric period = sellout argument that isn't present in Dylan's career

what, that Miles wanted to appeal to a black audience w/ more "urban" sounding stuff like On The Corner? That was always funny to me, too ... There probably would've been easier ways to go that route than On The Corner.

Crouch's sellout cries started with Bitches Brew iirc (which was Miles' "crossover" album to young white audiences - and also his biggest seller at the time, right?) "On the Corner" was def. Miles' attempt to appeal to a young black audience tho, and why that would be a bad thing in Crouch's mind is kinda uh waht

yeah, as though Miles' audience wasn't already pretty white before Bitches Brew. If you went to see his classic quintet in NYC in the 50s, I think it'd be a pretty white crowd!

yeah but those white people wore suits and drank martinis, not like those dirty hippies

and also his biggest seller at the time, right?

It was the best selling jazz album at the time, i believe.

What is the biggest selling jazz album of all-time now?

is it Norah Jones

Geir Hongro Sings the Ringo Starr Songbook

The problem with this argument is that jazz has always used non-blues harmony and non-American influences.

true, but i think there is something to the argument that if music is completely free of or the musicians aren't really conversant with swing/blues/the history of the music/etc., then why call it jazz? not that it really matters, but obviously "jazz" is a more loaded genre term than most, and people seem to be more invested in its use than when chuck eddy calls a metal band disco or a disco band metal or whatever.

chuck's POV re: genres is completely wrong imho and also a whole different issue

Marsalis/Crouch seem to have taken "it don't mean a thing if ain't got that swing" as an aesthetic mandate. but yeah, there is a sort of weird emphasis on "jazz" as a genre that doesn't exist to my knowledge with other genres. I mean, "rock" is big enough to contain Elvis Presley and Sonic Youth (random examples), and no one's freaking out about it. Even with all the talk of "rockism," there's not a bunch of "that's not rock!" kinda arguments out there. As far as I know. In the end, who cares?

and really i'm so sick of the whole argument. wynton has his opinions but he's not the devil and he's made some pretty adventurous & creative music in his time. the jazz scene circa now is made of people who are okay acknowledging that they didn't grow up in a bubble, they like jazz, rock, hip-hop, rap, free, classical, whatever and are trying to find a way forward with the music (whether it's called jazz or not).

You take satisfaction that none of his albums are in this list ? ;)

well, not really Wynton's fault -- this list seems to suggest that jazz stopped existing circa 1973.

I was visiting my brother in Korea a couple months ago, and one of the guys that we were eating dinner with said, "You're a writer. Can you teach me to swear with slang?"

And I ran through the basic dozen or so dirty words, and he said he knew them, and so I started in with, yeah, but really, it's how you put them together. Swearing in English is like jazz, you know? And coincidentally, jazz also meant "fuck" at one point.

He starts writing this down and says, "Jazz means fuck. I will memorize this."

hey jazz you!

haha, you just started a major Korean trend. How did jazz mean "fuck"? I'd heard that too, but wasn't sure how it was used. Like, "Let's jazz, baby"?

jazz off

like "jizz" i've always though

t

They used to say "let's jass"

Before they invented z's.

When I told my girlfriend, she walked around the apartment giggling and saying, "Jazz hands, jazz hands!"

jazzy jeff

Between 1916 and 1918 the word jass used within the band name of the Original Dixieland Jass Band was changed to Jazz.

xxpost

Were they known as the Original Dixieland Ass Band at one point? And did they play Funky Butt?

hate the term "dixieland"

as a non-american could you explain?

"Dixie" has some erm problematic associations

http://www.nerve.com/CS/blogs/scanner/2008/12/23-End/civil_war_soldiers.jpg

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e7/1900sc_SM_Dixie.jpg/220px-1900sc_SM_Dixie.jpg

If memory serves, one reason Jass bands (like the ODJB) changed their name was that kids were defacing their advertisements, changing JASS to ASS.

none of the new orleans-based, predominantly black musicians that i respect would ever term their music "dixieland" (as opposed to traditional jazz or new orleans jazz). it only seems to be used by corny, predominantly white bands that maybe can play but don't have that new orleans rhythmic thing.

yeah, was just wondering whether someone like, say, Sidney Bichet, would ever refer to himself as "dixieland"... I assume it's a term left over from the minstrel days ...

Well certainly not now, but Dixieland was a commonplace term (as were 'jazz'/jass, hot music) etc and virtually interchangable during the idiom's most formative period.

lol @ this cover

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41EVCZDDPXL._SL500_AA240_.jpg

http://photos.igougo.com/images/p140305-New_Orleans-The_Funky_Butt.jpg

http://www.fb-swing-band.co.uk/

""Dixie" has some erm problematic associations"

You ain't just whistlin' Dixie.

*rimshot*

and since this is the jazz thread

*art blakey drum solo*

cue buddy rich drum battle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pNhnioNNIPI

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=erE8WTngaAY

best clip ever

I used to DJ at the Funky Butt in New Orleans back in 97 (96?).

what did you play?

http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/on_second_thought/charles-mingus-the-black-saint-and-the-sinner-lady.htm

Even with all the talk of "rockism," there's not a bunch of "that's not rock!" kinda arguments out there. As far as I know.

Tyler, the one thing that does spring to mind here is Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic, which, coincidentally or not, also takes "it don't mean a thing if ain't got that swing" as its aesthetic mandate.

I couldn't decide between #37 and #42.

Even with all the talk of "rockism," there's not a bunch of "that's not rock!" kinda arguments out there. As far as I know.

Tyler, the one thing that does spring to mind here is Carducci's Rock and the Pop Narcotic, which, coincidentally or not, also takes "it don't mean a thing if ain't got that swing" as its aesthetic mandate.

there's ilxors who dont like drummers that dont swing (in any genre)

sam you ready for more spotify?

Haven't read the Carducci book, but have heard good things about it ....

go for it mayne.

http://open.spotify.com/album/4VDXGlGAtdRymlguxaRTtB

Am I the only one who always feels a bit disappointed by "Colors" when it comes after "The Creator Has a Master Plan"? It's kind of a meandering tune.

Already own it. :) Only Sanders I have though.

http://musicangle.com/upload_images/AlbumCovers/clarkstruttin.jpg

I wish I was cool enough to strut and rich enough to pay someone to follow me out of picture with this album being played loudly wherever it is I walked to.

Sam have you heard http://open.spotify.com/album/3PIVqZzL1PnrxFZDzuT1aX ?

Voted Out to Lunch.

― I'M LEGALLY A MIDGET (a hoy hoy), Sunday, 4 October 2009 20:50 (1 week ago) Bookmark

Fucking love that shit.

hurrah

what all have you checked out from this poll then? so i can link you to something you haven't heard.

What I have heard:

1 Miles Davis Kind of Blue (1959)
2 John Coltrane A Love Supreme (1965)
3 Charles Mingus The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady (1963)
5 Charles Mingus Mingus Ah Um (1959)
6 John Coltrane Giant Steps (1960)
7 John Coltrane My Favorite Things (1961)
8 Charles Mingus Blues & Roots (1960)
9 Miles Davis Bitches Brew (1970)
10 Eric Dolphy Out to Lunch! (1964)
12 John Coltrane Blue Train (1958)
16 Dave Brubeck Quartet Time Out (1959)
17 Ornette Coleman The Shape of Jazz to Come (1959)
18 Cannonball Adderley Somethin' Else (1958)
23 Pharoah Sanders Karma (1969)
26 John Coltrane Olé Coltrane (1962)
28 Andrew Hill Point of Departure (1965)
32 Alice Coltrane Journey in Satchidananda (1971)
34 John Coltrane Africa/Brass (1961)
43 Wayne Shorter Speak No Evil (1965)
45 John Coltrane Ascension (1966)
46 Sonny Clark Cool Struttin' (1958)
47 Bill Evans Explorations (1961)
48 McCoy Tyner The Real McCoy (1967)
49 Herbie Hancock Head Hunters (1973)

Much more than the funk one.

you need to get down on the funk then

But if you haven't heard In A Silent Way then it's time you did
http://open.spotify.com/album/6iTTE1lkKdvZSpkiMYb2Xm
It's my fave Miles Davis.

"The Best Five Album Runs BEFORE TIME BEGAN" (Jazz poll voting thread VOTE HERE)

Is In a Silent Way supposed to start with the drums from 'Theme From Shaft'? Because if so, I don't know how I couldn't carry on loving this, even if I've only heard a minute so far.

Fact: Once saw John McLaughlin live, performing with Shakti*. If only I'd heard this first though, because it's fucking great.

*Pretty much up there with Redman/Eric Sermon as the best gig I've ever been to, those dudes are crazy.

In A Silent Way =

http://biopsy.files.wordpress.com/2009/02/thumbs-up.jpg

told ya

http://open.spotify.com/album/0yodD8uAkAT5UmrlF2xy97

did you play it sam?

http://open.spotify.com/album/5gWF47eGSbv4BOfxoFcQtd

If I'm not listening to 'I'd Rather Be With You' on repeat, I'll check out that Sonny Rollins next.

'speak no evil' is a good on-the-fence choice because it basically combines the miles & coltrane groups of the time.

After I become a proper jazz douchebag (and funk douchebag), I am totally going to continue to annoy ILX into teaching me metal btw.

haha did you work your way through last years poll?

I listened to about 10 records and then didn't know where to go after that. Didn't help that it happened iirc about the same time my dissertation had to be in and i was starting a new (but doomed) relationship, so had little time to listen/concentrate to/on new things.

will find it and bump it for ya

Cheers. But I am rather bogged down in the funk/jazz atm so I think metal will be a bit too much all at once. Maybe in a month or two. It's pretty much 'hear the best sabbath albums and go from there' right?

from last year? or all time?

I was listening to my Hancock folder on random today, and was really digging Mwandishi and Crossings. I'd rate them higher than Sextant and Head Hunters. It's all amazing of course. Finally got Albert Ayler - Spiritual Unity today. I've heard it before, but good to own it. It's so raw but somehow doesn't grate like some later Coltrane and Sanders.

Well I listened to like 10 records from last year but eventually I'd like to get into the whole genre. Very much a case of hearing the occasional thing, thinking I like it and then... not knowing what to listen to next. (I did grow up with a bunch of metal kids who for some reason thought dragonforce where the shit, so i also thought i'd prefer to stay ignorant for years.)

did you get the Ayler on red vinyl? that's the one i got several years back.

i forget what label it was on

pfunk, check out Black Satin on headphones. throughout there is either panning or overdubbing on the left channel that sounds terrible. probably just a limitation with studio equipment but it's pretty bush league for a Miles album.

i think this is actually referenced in the notes on the reissue.
bottom line is they wanted it to be like that.
it has been a while since i read the notes, so will have to check.
i really like the mad panning ...

yeah the crazy panning is completely intentional and completely awesome

How cool is this!

SUPER COOL!

http://www.jazz.com/assets/2008/9/3/albumcoverMilesDavis-TheCompleteBirthOfTheCoolAG275.jpg

so what have you not heard yet sam?

8 Charles Mingus Blues & Roots (1960)
9 Miles Davis Bitches Brew (1970)
13 Horace Silver Song for My Father (1965)
14 Stan Getz & João Gilberto Getz/Gilberto [featuring Antônio Carlos Jobim] (1964)
15 Miles Davis A Tribute to Jack Johnson (1970)
19 Art Blakey Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers [Moanin'] (1959)
20 Thelonious Monk Brilliant Corners (1957)
21 Duke Ellington Far East Suite (1967)
22 Krzysztof Komeda Astigmatic (1966)
24 Thelonious Monk Monk's Music (1958)
27 Thelonious Monk Monk's Dream (1963)
29 Miles Davis 'Round About Midnight (1957)
30 Miles Davis Workin' With the Miles Davis Quintet (1959)
31 Duke Ellington Money Jungle (1962)
33 John Coltrane Impressions (1963)
35 Herbie Hancock Empyrean Isles (1964)
36 Miles Davis Miles Smiles (1967)
37 Thelonious Monk Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane (1961)
38 Ella Fitzgerald Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook (1956)
39 The Art Ensemble of Chicago Les stances à Sophie (1970)
40 Herbie Hancock - Sextant
41 Peter Brötzmann Machine Gun
42 Thelonious Monk Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane (1961)
44 Lee Morgan The Sidewinder (1964)
50 Albert Ayler Spiritual Unity (1964) (not on spotify)

ok i think you better clear a few hours and get onto Sextant, Bitches Brew,Machine Gun, and albert ayler (i'll find you that somewhere)
That should sort you out for today.

:)

WTF?

Seriously, wtf?

huh?

Listening to The Complete Machine Gun Sessions instead of Machine Gun, dunno if they are different.

This is what the apocalypse is gonna sound like, right?

its all great
xp

check the year of release

I'm so glad I didn't try this yesterday when I had a headache or my mind may have literally been blown.

It is this I am listening to.

Ok I think this is great even if I still don't really know what I am hearing.

told you so

this record = http://www.allmusic.com/cg/amg.dll?p=amg&sql=10:g9foxz9gldse~T1

(i was looking for the dr3w dan1el burning church .gif but this works just as well.)

argh, it didn't load! oh well. 'tis fucking crazy and i love it.

what was the pic?

also have you recovered from Machine Gun?

i guess not hehehe

I was just about to revive this actually. Gonna get some food and then find something to listen to before the football.

Ok, Birth of the Cool it is.

its just a good band playing together? nothing really sticks out, nothing really grabs me. its just nice.

i'd say it's the arrangements, and the emphasis on mood rather than burning up the changes. i haven't spent much time with BotC though.

yeah its not something I play much at all.

Sam it's time you heard Sextant.

Okay

http://www.progreviews.com/reviews/images/HH-Sex.jpg

This sounds really odd and different. Way better than the electrodribble of Headhunters. /he-says-3minutes-in.

electrodribble of Headhunters

*punches*

it is such a perfect word to describe it though!

Wait 'til you get to "Hornets", that's one of the most awesome grooves in the history of the universe.

Ah, to be young again, and to be able to hear Sextant for the first time... It was the second jazz album I ever bought, I remember when I first put it on my CD player, and listened to it for a while, and I was like, if this is jazz, I think I love it!!

lol. i don't know if it is that good, although i haven't got to hornets yet.

Also, what was your first jazz album Tuo?

Something quite less cool:

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_-svpWXLOSM4/SU7pZfTeMuI/AAAAAAAACf0/56VUwBi3Rsc/s400/1215074musicmagic.jpg

I still like it though!

Umm... 'Hornets' is a mess.

Listen to it until you think otherwise.

You think so? Is that because it sounds so chaotic? It's supposed to sound that way, it's like a swarm of hornets attacking you.

(x-post)

Sam youre nuts

ok sam i think you need try Bitches Brew today

hey why aren't the anti-canon folk on here moaning about the jazz canon?

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51OTlLrab7L._SL500_AA280_.jpg

^ This is one of the first jazz records I bought and possibly the most laid back and accessible Sun Ra album there is. Would totally recommend it if you're just discovering this stuff.

As long as we're discussing hearing canonical stuff for the first time, how could I have missed "Circle in the round" (the track) for so long? Amazing--I mean, I know "Miles Smiles" & "ESP" etc, but this tune in particular really drove home how fantastic that group (and Tony Williams specifically) --was.

All of this is reminding me to go back and grab a lot of mid-period Miles that I no longer have access to because I don't live near enough to my parents to borrow albums.

I do wish this was a weighted poll instead of the ILX version, but hey, ya do what ya can.

(And dammit, just found a skip on my copy of Bitches Brew. I suppose I need to buy it again, then turn it into FLAC or something so that I can listen to it forever without worrying about that shit.)

37 Thelonious Monk Thelonious Monk With John Coltrane (1961)
38 Ella Fitzgerald Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook (1956)
39 The Art Ensemble of Chicago Les stances à Sophie (1970)

^^^either not on spotify or are but in different forms i couldn't be bothered to go through and check what was what. Moved on to Miles Smiles, although the artwork is this for some reason:

http://media.musictoday.com/store/bands/1973/product_medium/MUDD742.JPG

Oh and re: 'hornets'. I don't know when I'd ever actively want to hear something that sounds like I was being attacked by a swarm of bees or why you guys think that should be some sort essential jazz thing.

Oh well, try Crossings then--you might like it better.

If you haven't heard any other Art Ensemble, I wouldn't say that Stances a Sophie is a very typical album of theirs. I'd go for A Message to Our Folks, Bap-tizum or even Nice Guys.

I really enjoyed the first two tracks on Sextant!

Well, yeah, I can see why it's not everyone's piece of cake. But personally I dig the chaotic, oppressive sound of it, and the fat, nasty groove. It's weird that you dug Machine Gun but not Hornets though.

(xx-post)

Baps and Nice Guys are on spotify and have just made my (now giant) jazz playlist. :)

I dunno, Hornets just seemed as if no-one really knew what they were doing and were fucking around with it. Machine Gun, for all that is free, sounds focussed on fucking shit up. Maybe I'll give it another go.

Fair enough. If you like the first two tracks on Sextant, you should definitely check out Crossings though. It's more in that vein, and not as cacophonic as "Hornets" - at least once you get through the three minute percussion orgy that starts the album.

In the meantime, Miles Smiles is unsurprisingly great.

there is no groove on a herbie hancock record sicker than 'palm grease' (and 'actual proof' too)

35 Herbie Hancock Empyrean Isles (1964)

http://blog.roodo.com/wisconsin/334850b2.jpg

Absolutely stunning Blue Note cover? Check.
Absolutely killer line-up? Check.

Now this I know I'm going to enjoy.

i love Herbie, but Monk is the Bach of jazz. i don't have any idea what that means.

Ok this is ridiculously dope. Shame I'm turning it off to watch a racist get humiliated.

now you can tune in again

Nah, I'm watching M.A.S.H (the movie) for the first time instead.

then now its time

Nah, I'm just about to go meet my nephew for the first time. Will hum him some coltrane though. :)

you can play now!

http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content/content/images/africa%20brass%20cover.jpg

i've heard it before but it was next on the list and better than 99.9% of record music, so here i go again.

That's the jazz album I've played more than any other in the history of everything (and just found out that my cd now skips and it pains me in my soul).

I don't necessarily think that it's the best by objective measurements or anything, but it's got some fantastic playing and is one of those albums I just fixated on and can come back to again and again. Just hearing the opening whoops or that bassline is a total happy escape for me.

It's just soooooooooo warm. It's like a hug.

you have 3 days to listen to everything else

lol, am i going to die?

somehow, I'd never heard empyrean isles before... must admit, this is pretty great.

THANK YOU KIND JAZZ THREAD.

http://p.dada.net/cspv/32-85-01-10-00-MetaPreview-Cover-JPEG256x256/john-coltrane/impressions.jpg

Well that was cool. Not the best album on the list but still enjoyable. And on I go:

http://www.soundstagedirect.com/media/duke_ellington_money_jungle.jpg

So far the first track is ridiculously dope.

Ok this whole thing is perfect. PERFECT.

any of these albums you dont like yet sam?

I don't think I'm ever going to actively seek out Time Out, Birth of the Cool (i dunno if this is on the list but was mentioned a bunch of times) and Headhunters again.

While I love just about every album on this list, I had to vote A Love Supreme. For me, it has always had just that smidge more of extra depth/spirituality, while staying grounded, that makes it such a standout classic. Just listened to it again this morning walking around my neighborhood as the sun came through the fog, and it still feels as fresh, intense and as beautiful as it did when I first started listening to it nearly twenty years ago. That says a lot, I think.

Sam you are so wrong about Headhunters You gotta play it again (sam)

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/l/little_book_bookerlit_105b.jpg

do i have bad taste in jazz or is there a reason why booker little albums never show up on these lists? this album's "if i should lose you" is my favorite jazz cut.

ah crap havent posted in a while, forgot my html

http://www.dustygroove.com/images/products/l/little_book_bookerlit_105b.jpg

https://blog.so-net.ne.jp/_images/blog/_24d/gorillablog/solomonk.jpg

this too. best autumn album ever!

Money Jungle is a recent favorite of mine.

Actually a little disappointed with the Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers With Thelonious Monk LP i picked up today.

I have nothing else to say but that Money Jungle is brilliant.

Wonder which miles electric era album will win this poll (judging by the other jazz poll)

or will kind of blue win to annoy everyone? hehe

Almost there

1 day left almost

i'm voting for 'miles smiles.' i'm blown away more and more by the second quintet stuff, and 'miles smiles' imo is the best of these. have thought this for a while, and just last week checked out the book Miles Davis, Miles Smiles, and the Invention of Post Bop by jeremy yudkin from the library. just started it but so far it's really good - trying to place miles smiles alongside KoB, BB, and the other primary canon ones

agree w/ him so far - MS & milestones are prob my favorite miles albums.

looking @ my jazz collection i feel like i need to pick up a lot more bop & post-bop stuff, which i've got a decent amount of (thank u libraries for lending boxsets) but could definitely have a lot more.

i have a lot of free & avant stuff but most of the time i hardly feel like listening to it.

I've been on a Brazilian bender for about a year now so I'm gonna be a contrarian jerk and vote for the Getz/Gilberto album

What great brazilian jazz albums are there?

http://musicodobrasil.com.br/loronixcontent/capasloronix/E/EA/HermetoPascoalSlavesMass.jpg

http://img11.nnm.ru/0/d/7/2/f/0d72ff6e78401fd047dfd13b48bef6ce_full.jpg

http://img15.nnm.ru/8/5/0/5/c/7b62ae3aba448581401f02b5ec5.jpg

These are the first ones to come to mind. I'm not sure if the Baden Powell could be considered proper "jazz" though, but it has a lot of improvised (and incredibly pretty) acoustic guitar playing, and it's dope as hell.

Seeds on the Ground by Airto (Flora Purim's husband) is awesome too. Airto is the guys because of who Downbeat added a "best percussionist" category to their yearly best player poll, and he won it something like six times in a row.

It also has one of the goofiest record covers ever:

http://www.vinylrecords.ch/A/AI/Airto/Seeds/IMG_8527.jpg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZynsU8Dpro

The version of that song on Slaves Mass is even crazier: towards the end pf the song he starts playing more and more intense, until it seems the piano isn't enough to express his emotions, so he just starts screaming some weird scat gibberish to the microphone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JN9ZsDIasZU

just checked these out from the library on my lunch break today:

empyrean isles
giant steps
miles, bags groove
miles, ascenseur pour l'echafaud

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9cKLA6kFdKY

does Louis Prima count as a jazz vocalist? because he is awesome

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

http://www.classicjazzcorner.com/scans/miles_davis_round_about_midnight.jpg

This is great it's 10am and I didn't sleep properly music.

http://perso.modulonet.fr/~liballet/DonEllis/accueil/non-don/Thelonious%20Monk%20-%20Monk%27s%20dream.jpg

yea 'round about midnight is incredible. esp. the title track - miles' opening is basically perfect (his lyricism!!!), coltrane's solo that follows could be the best one of his early career imo

fyi Monk and Rouse are killing it on this.

What Monk should I get next if I have Monk's Music, Brilliant Corners and the recently unearthed one with Coltrane?

the genius of modern music albums are really good imo

both blue note albums from the late 40s/early 50s

Those are compilations right (the Genius albums)?

yea - but not like retrospective compilations in the sense of a 'greatest hits' or anything. GoMM vol. 1 compiles recordings from a few different sessions he did for blue note from 1947, was released in 1951. GoMM vol. 2 does the same for sessions done in 1951-1952, was released in '52

i love monk's dream

3 hours FEEL THE EXCITEMENT

last 50 mins to vote

Voted Money Jungle of the ones I've heard. Will definitely carry on through the list though.

okay wowwww i'm on like 5th or 6th listen for the week and 'ascenseur pour l'echafaud' is definitely one of the best miles albums. i'd rank this above 'round about midnight' and pretty damn close to KoB

seriously is there any way miles is not artist of the 20th century? ridiculous title for sure but if you're gonna try to pick anyone....

You're only saying that now Geir is SB'd for a month.

haha

gaaahhhhhhhhhhhh

27!

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

challops imo

totally okay w/ mingus topping this btw but still there is a certain kind of challops taking place

yeah it's great but wow

this poll should be redone imo

wow only 6 albums didn't get a vote

167 votes!

Would have voted Charlie Brown Christmas

Why is it a challop? It was #3 in the list; the idea that any of the top ten or so couldn't be at the top in one poll or another is rather silly.

It's one of my desert island discs; glad to see others hold it in such high esteem.

Great top 5, I wouldn't disagree with any of them, even though I voted for Alice Coltrane and not Mingus.

I voted for Mingus I think but I'm surprised it was such a runaway winner. I thought it or a miles davis electric album would win it. But Bitches Brew only got 2 votes! I expect it suffered from "everyone else will vote for it so I'll vote something else that needs it.

Ive not seen a poll on ilx where 44/50 albums all get at least 1 vote. Remarkable.

Good spread of votes, yes. Didn't vote because I don't have a "favourite jazz album"

tommy hates jazz?

No, I just don't have a favourite album, that I can think of

I've got two Alice Coltrane albums, but not the one that came in 4th. I'll have to correct that tonight!

4 Miles Davis In a Silent Way (1969) 16

Very glad to see this at No. 2. I always figure this disc gets lost in discussions about (a) Miles Davis' best work and (b) the best jazz albums, so it's nice to see the high placement.

haha wow lotta Mingus love here!

Deservedly.

I need to better understand what people hear in Albert Ayler, tho.

who else voted for Getz/Gilberto?!?

lol. I was just listening to that disc on Lala. Much love for The Girl From Ipanema.

total challops vote from me I'll admit but I'll defend it. its an amazing record. flawless performances.

yea it's basically perfect

haha wow lotta Mingus love here!

I was just now listening to BS&SL and badgering a friend to get himself some Mingus. Then I discovered this thread and I got that warm fuzzy feeling.

I hope lots of people now check out lots of artists/albums because of this poll.

Still going through them bottom up but now the numbers are all messed up, so now i'm checking

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_N_z6pEG5ky8/RbHNaUiaARI/AAAAAAAAAAY/8x3YZGA-iwo/s320/o116819.jpg

ok at times this is all a bit too big-bandy for me but it has some jams like tourist point of view and mount harissa

this album is hella fun actually.

i bet it was a blast to make, you can just feel it.

Ad Lib on Nippon! Why is none of this on youtube? Anyway I have made it to the end of this album and have to say I am v. disappointed it didn't get one vote.

who else voted for Machine Gun besides me?

Samuel, check out Afro-Eurasian Eclipse for another late, really fun, hard-groovin' Duke concept record.

I believe it was Duke's last record, released posthumously. It's alot of fun and has Digeridoo on it, which is great.

I will! Cheers! Gonna do some boring tv poll things and then check the new 50 cent but after that, the duke and a dig. :)

Holy shit you guys if you have not heard the record Jon recommended I say go find it now and jam that shit. 'Afrique' is especially ridic.

http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/d/duke-ellington/album-the-afro-eurasian-eclipse.jpg

Yeah. That record is great. There's a "rock" feel to it, but it never loses its jazz character.

Between this and Money Jungle... just wow. Duke really living up to his name, John Wayne can fuck right off.