10 albums a day #25

Jaco Pastorius - Jaco Pastorius (1976, CD)
Jaki Byard - Family Man (1978, mp3 download)
Jimmy Smith
- Jimmy Smith at the Organ, Vol. 3 (1956, CD)
- Cool Blues (1958, CD)
- The Sermon! (1958, CD)
- Home Cookin' (1959, CD)
- Back at the Chicken Shack (1960, CD)
- Rockin' the Boat (1963, CD)
- Prayer Meetin' (1964, CD)
- Christmas Cookin' (1964, CD)
- Stay Loose (1968, CD)
- Dot Com Blues (2000, CD)
- The Finest in Jazz (2007, CD)

I guess that Jaco Pastorius CD is probably everyone's first Jaco CD. It was his first solo album, or really I guess it would be more accurate to say his first leader album. He also played with Weather Report, and may have been the greatest bass player to have ever lived. He played the fretless bass. I still need to get some Weather Report stuff. Another gaping hole in the collection, there.

Family Man was downloaded from Kathleen Loves Music. Jaki Byard plays piano and alto & tenor sax and on this album is accompanied by bass, drums and vibraphone. The bass player also plays the tuba.

And then we get to Jimmy Smith. I love the sound of the organ, and Jimmy Smith may have been the greatest jazz organist ever (I say "may" only to avoid argument--I believe he was). I first heard of him in Keyboard magazine back in the 80s, so I went to Sundance Records and asked the guy there which album he'd recommend. He handed me the LP of Back at the Chicken Shack (pre-owned and sealed in their heavy plastic sleeve since it was just slightly collectible, in near-mint condition and cost me about $15). I still have that LP but I have since also purchased the CD. At that time I didn't have much of an ear for jazz, but this album really spoke to me. For a long time, however, it was the only one I had. When I signed up at yourmusic.com the first thing I noticed was that they had a lot of his CDs, so I put them all the queue and I'm still working my way through them. He actually started out as a pianist, and two of the CDs still in the queue include his early stuff when he still played piano. From what I read, one day he decided he wanted to play the organ, so he holed up with one and didn't see the light of day for a few weeks. When he came up for air, he was playing the organ, and that was that. Of course, the organ I'm talking about is the Hammond electric organ. In his combos, he usually didn't have a bass player (maybe never, but I wouldn't swear to that), because he also played the bass line with the organ foot pedals. The curious thing about Jimmy Smith and the organ is that before him, it really wasn't considered a jazz instrument, being used mainly for gospel music. But Smith had an intuition that it would make a great jazz instrument, and he was right. Because of his influence and amazing talent, the Hammond organ is now part of just about any genre of popular music you could name.

Album count: 244.

10 albums a day #24

Don Patterson - Movin' Up (1971)*
Eric Kloss - Now (1978)*
Eric Kloss & Barry Miles - Together (1976)*
Friends - Friends (1973)*
Hank Jones - 'Bop Redux (1977)*, Groovin' High (1979)*
Harold Ousley - Sweet Double Hipness (1972)*
Herbie Hancock - Dedication (1974)**, River: The Joni Letters (2008, CD)
Jackie McLean - One Step Beyond (1963, CD)

*Downloaded from Kathleen Loves Music.
**Downloaded from Amazon.com.

Most of these were downloads. Details for the record:

Don Patterson is a keyboardist who plays organ and an ARP synthesizer on this album, backed up by alto sax, drums and electric guitar.

Eric Kloss plays alto and tenor sax. On the "solo" album he is backed up by other musicians playing keyboards, bass, drums and cowbell(!). On the album with Barry Miles there are no backing musicians, just the two of them. Kloss again plays alto and tenor sax, while Miles plays piano, electric piano and synthesizer.

Friends are Marc Cohen (electric alto sax, tenor sax), Jeff Williams (drums), Clint Houston (fretted bass, acoustic bass) and John Abercrombie (6 string guitar, 12 string guitar). Interesting liner notes on this one. From the notes: "Marc Cohen is from Philadelphia, home of all good saxophonists. He has played with Chico Hamilton and was with Dreams for a short time. His alto saxophone is modified by an octave divider, two wah-wah pedals, a fuzz-tone, and a tape echo box. His tenor sax is quite ordinary." Cohen later changed his last name to Copeland and switched to piano, also according to the notes.

Hank Jones is a pianist who is backed up only by bass and drums on 'Bop Redux. On the other album, he is accompanied by bass, drums, tenor sax and cornet.

Harold Ousley plays tenor sax and is accompanied by piano, bass, drums, congas, percussion and vocals.

The Joni Letters is Herbie Hancock's tribute to Joni Mitchell. She displays certain jazz influences on a lot of her stuff (I would especially recommend Court and Spark from 1974 if you've never heard it--it's great). All of these arrangements are by Hancock with himself and numerous other musicians (including Joni Mitchell herself) performing. I intend to add quite a lot more of Hancock's stuff to the collection as time goes by. The absence of Headhunter is particularly glaring.

I got the Jackie McLean CD by mistake. It came from yourmusic.com, but the CD in the queue that I expected to get was Richard Butler's (previously of Psychedelic Furs) first solo album. I was slightly familiar with McLean, having heard some of his stuff on KRTU, so when I opened the box and saw it was the wrong CD it didn't bother me. He is an alto saxophonist.

Album count: 232.

White Russian

I'm about three weeks ahead in writing up the "10 albums a day" series, and when I finish I'm going to take a good, long break and decide if I should bother keeping at this blog.

I recently wrote a post about Marillion, so it put me in the mood to load up the whole directory in Winamp and put it on shuffle. Here is one of my favorites, which has some great lyrics, titled "White Russian," from Clutching at Straws.

Where do we go from here?
Where do we go from here, where do we go from here
Where do we go from here, where do we go from here
They boarded up the synagogues, Uzis on a street corner
You can't take a photograph of Uzis on a street corner
The DJ resigned today they wouldn't let him have his say
Surface scratched where the needles play, Uzis on a street corner

Where do we go from here

Terror in Rue de St. Denis, murder on the periphery
Someone else in someone else's pocket
Christ knows I don't know how to stop it
Poppies at the cenotaph, the cynics can't afford to laugh
I heard it on the telegraph there's Uzis on a street corner

Where do we go from here, where do we go from here

The more I see, the more I hear, the more I find fewer answers
I close my mind, I shout it out but you know it's getting harder
To calm down, to reason out, to come to terms with what it's all about
I'm uptight, can't sleep at night, I can't pretend everything's all right
My ideals, my sanity, they seem to be deserting me
But to stand up and fight I know we have six million reasons

They're burning down the synagogues, Uzis on a street corner
The heralds of the holocaust, Uzis on a street corner
The silence never louder than now, how quickly we forgot our vows
This resurrection we can't allow, Uzis on a street corner

Where do we go from here, where do we go from here

We buy fresh bagels from the corner store
Where swastikas are spat from aerosols
I sit in the bar sipping iced White Russian
Trying to score but nobody's pushing
And everyone looks at everyone's faces
Searching for signs and praying for traces of a conscience in residence
Are we sitting on a barbed wire fence
Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home

We place our faith in human rights
In the paper wars that tie the red tape tight
I know that I would rather be out of this conspiracy
In the gulags and internment camps frozen faces in nameless ranks
I know that they would rather be standing here beside me
Racing the clouds home, racing the clouds home

You can shut your eyes, you can hide it away it's gonna come back another day
Racing the clouds home, are we racing the clouds home
Racing the clouds home

10 albums a day #23

Bela Fleck and the Flecktones - Greatest Hits of the 20th Century (1999, CD)
Billie Holiday - The Complete Decca Recordings 1944-50 (1991, double CD)
Charles Mingus - The Millennium Collection: The Best of Charles Mingus (2007, CD)
Chick Corea - The Leprechaun (1975, LP)
Chuck Mangione - Feels So Good (1977, cassette)
David S. Ware - Birth of a Being (1979, mp3 download)
Dinah Washington - In Tribute (undated, LP), untitled (undated, LP)
The Dixie Dregs - Off the Record (1988, mini-CD), The Millennium Collection: The Best of the Dixie Dregs (2002, CD)

Bela Fleck may be the world's only jazz banjo player. This is really cool stuff, and I should have more of it. I got this one from yourmusic.com, and his new album recently turned up there so I put it in the queue.

The Billie Holiday set is a boxed set that includes a book with lots of information. I didn't have anything else by her (still don't), so I thought this would help round out the collection. It has pretty much everything she recorded during those years when she was with Decca Records, including alt takes and some studio chatter. I can only listen to her in small doses. I have listened to this entire set straight through, but it's not something I'd ever want to do again. Hearing her turn up in the shuffle one song at a time is great, though.

Yourmusic.com is pretty good at stocking compilations such as The Millennium Collection series, and every now and then I go through their whole jazz catalog and put stuff into the queue that looks good. That's how I got the Mingus CD. That's all I have by him, so far.

The Chuck Mangione tape is the first jazz album I ever bought, but I don't think I bought it until a few years after it had been released. I remember talking with our band director about it, so based on which band director it was, that must have been when I was in 10th grade (if I remember the band director chronology correctly). This is another tape that I would have expected to have worn out, but it never did. If the only thing you've ever heard by him is the shortened radio version of "Feels So Good," you should hear more before trying to form an opinion about his music.

The David S. Ware album was downloaded from Kathleen Loves Music. He is a tenor saxophonist. His music is a little too "free" for my tastes, but I'm still kind of going in all directions when it comes to jazz, and I'll take whatever I can find, especially if it's free.

The two Dinah Washington albums were inherited from my mother-in-law. I wasn't really familiar with her before, but I am a fan now. These two were released by Roulette (which was her record label) after she died, still trying to make money off her, I suppose. Since ripping these, I have added a couple of her CDs to my yourmusic.com queue.

The Dixie Dregs (later just The Dregs) are another "fusion" group (I am beginning to dislike that term, hence the quotes). They mix jazz with rock in general but also with some sounds of southern rock in there. Another group that I would like to get more of. The Off the Record mini-CD was a promo deal that was packaged with an issue of Keyboard magazine back then; it has two musical tracks plus an interview with the group. I think it was a promotional thing for the Ensoniq ESQ-1 synthesizer. The other CD is another of the Millenium Collection series, and is a better overall view of their whole career.

Album count: 222.

Oozies?

Oozies.

10 albums a day #22

Icehouse - Measure for Measure (1986, LP)
Iggy Pop - Blah-Blah-Blah (1986, LP)
Indigo Girls
- Indigo Girls (1989, CD)
- Nomads Indians Saints (1990, CD)
- Shaming of the Sun (1997, CD)
Jackson Browne
- For Everyman (1973, LP)
- Running On Empty (1977, cassette)
Janis Joplin - Greatest Hits (1973, CD)
The Jaye Consort - Medieval Music (1978, LP)

I was working the delivery/pickup kitchen at the Mr. Gatti's in San Marcos in 1989 and listening to KLBJ on the radio when I heard "Closer to Fine" for the first time, and I was hooked. Indigo Girls had one album before the eponymous one, but I've never heard it. That eponymous album is still one of my overall favorite albums.

Running On Empty is another of my favorite road albums. I'm surprised I was still able to get a listenable copy of that tape when I ripped it. It should have worn out a long time ago.

I already had that Janis Joplin album on LP, but I kept hearing my daughter trying to sing along with some of her pseudo-country/pop CDs (very small collection, maybe 5 or 6 all total), and I kept telling her she needed to belt it out and quit sounding like a meek little mouse. One day when I had stopped by W**-M*** to pick up a few groceries, I bought this CD, sort of a whim. When I got home I gave it to her and told her to listen to it carefully and study it. "When I told you to belt it out, this is what I meant." So far it hasn't worked. She can hit all the right notes, but she still sounds like a mouse.

The Jaye Consort album may not seem to fit into the general collection, but I like this kind of music so much that I put it there so it would have an equal chance to turn up in the random shuffle.

Next I'll start on my relatively small jazz collection.

Album count: 212.

Tulipomania

Another story is told of an English traveller, which is scarcely less ludicrous. This gentleman, an amateur botanist, happened to see a tulip-root lying in the conservatory of a wealthy Dutchman. Being ignorant of its quality, he took out his penknife, and peeled off its coats, with the view of making experiments upon it. When it was by this means reduced to half its size, he cut it into two equal sections, making all the time many learned remarks on the singular appearances of the unknown bulb. Suddenly the owner pounced upon him, and, with fury in his eyes, asked him if he knew what he had been doing? "Peeling a most extraordinary onion," replied the philosopher. "Hundert tausend duyvel!" said the Dutchman; "it's an Admiral Van der Eyck." "Thank you," replied the traveller, taking out his note-book to make a memorandum of the same; "are these admirals common in your country?" "Death and the Devil!" said the Dutchman, seizing the astonished man of science by the collar; "come before the syndic, and you shall see." In spite of his remonstrances, the traveller was led through the streets followed by a mob of persons. When brought into the presence of the magistrate, he learned, to his consternation, that the root upon which he had been experimentalising was worth four thousand florins; and, notwithstanding all he could urge in extenuation, he was lodged in prison until he found securities for the payment of this sum.

--from "The Tulipomania"
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
by Charles Mackay

Tulipomania

Another story is told of an English traveller, which is scarcely less ludicrous. This gentleman, an amateur botanist, happened to see a tulip-root lying in the conservatory of a wealthy Dutchman. Being ignorant of its quality, he took out his penknife, and peeled off its coats, with the view of making experiments upon it. When it was by this means reduced to half its size, he cut it into two equal sections, making all the time many learned remarks on the singular appearances of the unknown bulb. Suddenly the owner pounced upon him, and, with fury in his eyes, asked him if he knew what he had been doing? "Peeling a most extraordinary onion," replied the philosopher. "Hundert tausend duyvel!" said the Dutchman; "it's an Admiral Van der Eyck." "Thank you," replied the traveller, taking out his note-book to make a memorandum of the same; "are these admirals common in your country?" "Death and the Devil!" said the Dutchman, seizing the astonished man of science by the collar; "come before the syndic, and you shall see." In spite of his remonstrances, the traveller was led through the streets followed by a mob of persons. When brought into the presence of the magistrate, he learned, to his consternation, that the root upon which he had been experimentalising was worth four thousand florins; and, notwithstanding all he could urge in extenuation, he was lodged in prison until he found securities for the payment of this sum.

--from "The Tulipomania"
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
by Charles Mackay

Incunabulon Returns

This is a blog that I started a while back to focus exclusively on books and reading. I abandoned it. I am reviving it now as both a book & music blog (mostly for my Facebook friends, if any of you care to read it).

10 albums a day #21

House of Heroes - The End is Not the End (mp3 download, EP)
Helix - Long Way to Heaven (1985, LP)
Heart
- Dreamboat Annie (1976, LP)
- Dog and Butterfly (1978, cassette)
- Greatest Hits/Live (1980, double LP)
- These Dreams: Heart's Greatest Hits (1997, CD)
Hüsker Dü
- Metal Circus (1983, cassette EP)
- Zen Arcade (1984, double LP)
- New Day Rising (1985, LP)
- Flip Your Wig (1985, LP)
- Warehouse: Songs and Stories (1987, CD)

The House of Heroes EP was a free download from Amazon; hard/alt-rock, nothing too spectacular.

I never got into the hair band thing (I never gave much consideration to a genre that was named after its followers' hair rather than their musical style), except for a few select power ballads such as "Deep Cuts the Knife" by Helix. This is basically just more 80s nostalgia. I've already commented on Heart, just click the links to read if you want.

Hüsker Dü was one of the groups I retreated into in the 80s to seek refuge from all that cr*p that was being played on the radio all the time. Originally turned onto them by a co-worker, they became one of my favorite groups. I thought I also had Candy Apple Gray but I guess I never did buy that one. I bought Warehouse on my birthday in 1987, and after taking it home and listening to it, I felt a little sad, because I could tell that it was going to be the last one.

Album count: 203.