Though this is only Mr. Clayton’s second album as a leader he is a young veteran at 27, having shedded for many years alongside his dad and uncle, in the Clayton Brothers and working with many of the other gifted young cats on the scene. Bond…is a very good album; with the pianist and his trio seamlessly moving between standards and originals. It may not be enough in this field laden with transcendent names, but we’ll see.
Chick Corea, Stanley Clarke and Lenny White, the famed rhythm section of ’70’s fusion giants Return To Forever; jamming over 2 discs worth of favorites from their 2009 “RTF Unplugged” Tour. Nothing new here, but what there is, is top notch – a bunch of well known vets, doing what they do best. You would have to consider them one of the favorites to take home the trophy.
Fred Hersch was the first pianist to be asked to play a solo gig at the hallowed jazz club in 2005. He has now returned from a life threatening coma in 2009, to record and release this brilliant solo set. Again, he is a relative unknown in this field, but he would be a very deserving winner. (Note: the accompanying track is not from Alone at the Vangaurd, but features another wonderful Hersch solo performance “Valentine”.)
Another strong contender; Joe Lovano and Us Five brought the goods on this Charlie Parker tribute. It was more than a Bird regurgitation, but a reimaging of some of the tunes that Parker made famous. It was one of our Best of 2011 albums and I personally hope that Grammy rewards them as well.
You know how Grammy feels about legends. And you also know that this album was a brilliant snapshot of Mr. Rollins 80th Birthday concert in 2010 (Another of our Best of 2011). Sonny Rollins is also a name that most of the non-jazz voters have heard of…Translation – like it or not, this is Newk’s award to lose.
These cats would normally be in the “Best Contemporary Jazz Album” category, but I forgot, that doesn’t exist anymore (sarcasm). In any case, Yellowjackets have been doing it for 30 years and they sound better than ever. If there were still two separate categories, they would be hands down winners.
The nominees in this category are mostly familiar names, with the possible exception of Miguel Zenón. Two of the albums here probably ended up in this grouping because of the elimination of the Latin Jazz category.
Frankly, this nomination is a bit of a head scratcher. Randy Brecker is a gifted musician without a doubt, and the Danish Radio Big Band has done some fine work on many, many recordings. But the arrangements here border on pedestrian and the whole date feels as generic as its title. The exception is our feature track, which is first rate. Still, don’t be surprised if Mr. Brecker wins this award, based mostly on name recognition.
The finest jazz bassist under 40 has now added a big band to his impressive repertoire. The Good Feelingis a solid first effort with a number of impressive tracks and creative arrangements from Mr. McBride’s pen.
Arturo O’Farrill continues to do his father’s legacy proud, as he has created another thought-provoking album, that has as much for your mind as it does for your feet. If this album were in the Latin Jazz category, it would be a strong contender. But now, it’s a bit of a longshot.
Gerald Wilson has been arranging leading big bands since the days of Basie, Ellington and Goodman and he shows no sign of slowing down at age 93, writing arrangements that are dense, complex, brassy and swinging all at once. This album, Legacyis up to the fine standards that he has been hitting regularly for the past 15 years. A sentimental favorite.
Another album that would have likely competed in the now defunct Latin Jazz category, Alma Adentro is a stunning work of art. (A Curt’s Cafe Best of 2011) Mr. Zenón is at the top of his artistic game and it shows in the brilliance of his arrangements of these songs by some of Puerto Rico’s most celebrated composers. Because he is a relative unknown, Zenón is not considered a favorite in the voting, but this is the best album of those nominated. If there’s any justice, Alma Adentrowill win.
Okay Jazz Peeps, the Grammys do feel a bit empty this year, after the purge of many categories, including jazz.
However, there are still some fine artists, who did great work over the past year, and whose work has been nominated. These people had nothing to do with the shortsighted decision-making of the NARAS, so I want to take a few posts to recognize them, with a track from their nominated work. I’ll also include a few brief thoughts about each work.
IMO this is not Ms. Allyson’s best work, but she is still one of the best around today. It’s well sung, as always but the Only The Lonely vibe wore thin after a while.
My hands down favorite among the nominated albums, it’s a mostly vocal effort by Ms. Carrington and a number of other ladies. One of our picks for Best Jazz Albums of 2011.
Mr. Elling is a perennial nominee in this category, who finally won on his prior nomination for his strong Coltrane/Hartman tribute Dedicated To You. Though The Gate had some fine moments, I found it overall, to be just “okay”.
This album was a big favorite among the critics and it just may take home the prize on Sunday. Excellent musicianship; I just wished that it swung a little harder.
This is another personal favorite in this category. I’ve long been a fan of Randy Newman’s sardonic wit and wondered when a jazz vocalist would mine the Newman songbook to great extent. Ms. Vitro seemed at first like an unlikely choice, but she sings the songs as if they were written for her and the arrangements are first-rate. She is a longshot in this category but it would not be at all disappointing to see her win.
Even if you don’t know his name, you’ve probably heard Curtis Amy. If you listened to pop music and pop radio from the mid-’60’s through the late ’70’s, then you heard Amy’s tenor, soprano or flute backing artists from Carole King, to Ray Charles to the Doors. But as a solo artist, Curtis Amy toiled in virtual obscurity.
Born in Houston, TX, in 1927, Amy’s first instrument was the clarinet at the young age of four. He was drafted and during his stint in the Army, he started to play the tenor sax. When his time in the Army was up, Amy decided to pursue formal musical training at Kentucky State College (now University), from which he graduated in the early ’50’s. He then taught school in Tennessee and knocked around playing gigs throughout the midwest for a couple of years, before landing in Los Angeles around 1955. Once in L.A., he recorded a session with Dizzy Gillespie and continued to pay his dues on the club scene.
While playing at a club called “Dynamite Jackson’s”, in the Crenshaw District, Curtis Amy caught the ear of Dick Bock, the now legendary head of Pacific Jazz Records. Bock dug the bluesy sound of Amy’s tenor and signed him to the label. Amy’s first date for Pacific Jazz was The Blues Message, which he co-led with organist Paul Bryant, another L.A. club regular. The sound on that session is what you would expect – greasy organ and gritty tenor, augmented by Roy Brewster’s valve trombone. The music would have easily fit into any smoky joint in Crenshaw, Watts or even Harlem. Though Bock had brought Amy, Brewster, Bryant and the others in the quintet together for the recording, the cats apparently dug their sound and decided to remain together as a group for a while, taking up residence as the house band at “Dynamite Jackson’s” and cutting one more album, Meetin’ Here, in 1961.
Curtis Amy and Paul Bryant on the title track from ‘Meetin’ Here’
Between 1960 and 1963, Bock and Pacific Records kept Mr. Amy busy as he recorded a total of six albums as a leader or co-leader. All but one included Brewster as a sideman. They are also notable for containing some of the early efforts of two vibraphonists who are now anything but obscure, Bobby Hutcherson (on Groovin’ Blue) and Roy Ayers (on Way Downand Tippin’ on Through). The unquestionable standout of Amy’s Pacific Jazz Recordings (and of his overall catalog) is his final album for the label, 1963’s Katanga!. It was originally credited to the co-leadership of Amy and Dupree Bolton, a trumpet player who was as gifted as he was enigmatic. On Katanga!, the overt blues base of most of Amy’s earlier works has been replaced by a sound that is closer to hard bop. Amy, Bolton, pianist Jack Wilson, guitarist Ray Crawford, bassist Victor Gaskin and drummer Doug Sides, burst forth with a power that is still as arresting today as it was almost half a century ago. Nevertheless, Katanga! was lost in the surfeit of jazz releases at that time. It all but vanished from the scene, along with the musicians who led the session.
Curtis Amy, Dupree Bolton and Ray Crawford lead a live version of “Katanga” on the old Frankly Jazz television program
Curtis Amy would lead just three more sessions after 1963; a totally forgettable pop album Sounds of Hollywoodin 1965, a date that Amy later dismissed as “syrup”; Mustang; a Joel Dorn produced album for Verve, which drew some attention from acid jazzers in the ’90’s, due to the funky title track and Peace For Lovea very good album that marked Amy’s return to straight-ahead jazz, as well as his recorded swan song. Though Peace For Love was recorded in 1994, it was not released in the U.S. until 2004, two years after Amy’s death.
In the years between the mid-60’s and the start of this century, Amy, though invisible to the jazz scene, was anything but idle. He married Merry Clayton, a fine and extremely underrated vocalist in her own right (she is the female singer who gives Mick Jagger a run for his money on “Gimme Shelter”). Together and separately, they worked constantly in Hollywood. When Merry joined Ray Charles’ Raelettes, Curtis signed on for a three-year stint as Brother Ray’s musical director. When The Doors went for an orchestral sound on 1969’s The Soft Parade, they called on Amy as one of the saxes. It’s Mr. Amy that you hear soloing on the hit “Touch Me”. Mr. and Mrs. Amy are also heard all over Carole King’s immortal album Tapestry, Merry as a background vocalist and Curtis on reeds – that’s his soprano sax on the break on “It’s Too Late” and his flute that rides out “So Far Away”.
From The Smothers Brothers show, here’s “Touch Me” by The Doors, with Curtis Amy on tenor
Curtis Amy died of pancreatic cancer in 2002. Though he was reluctant to be called a “Texas Tenor” or a “West Coast Jazz” player, he left a fine body of work that is worth exploring by fans of any niche or genre of Black American Music. I recommend that you start with Katanga! and work your way in. You’ll find much to like.
Peace for Love(Fresh Sounds Spain) – CD available as import – hard to find
Mosaic Select 7 – Curtis Amy(Mosaic Records) [a 3-CD compilation of all of Amy’s work for Pacific Jazz, including Katanga!] – OOP but it can be found, at a price, from Amazon and eBay
John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Zoot Sims, Cannonball Adderley, Sonny Rollins, Jackie McLean, Stan Getz, Branford Marsalis, Gerry Mulligan, Charlie Parker… those are just the first ten names off the top of my head, but the list of well-known jazz saxophonists could go on for quite a while.
Because to many out there, the saxophone is jazz – its sounds and those who made them are the fuel of many a glorious legend. But for every Dexter Gordon or Johnny Hodges, there are dozens more whose names can fuel another romantic legend – that of the talented, but obscure saxophonist. Someone who had the chops to stand with those in the upper echelon, but who for some reason, was missed by the spotlight.
Our first series of 2012 will touch briefly on the music, careers and lives of some of those less-heard cats. Though you may have heard some of their names, we hope that we can whet your appetite enough to send you out in search of their art. We’ll try, wherever possible to list a few available CDs, LPs and mp3s by each artist, to start you in the right direction.
Again, our mission is not to stump the scholars but to open the eyes of the masses.
They will appear in alphabetical order, unless someone comes along after I’ve passed that letter, to totally mess up my plans.
We’ll start later this week with Curtis Amy. Who comes after that…well, you’ll just have to wait and see.
We’ve dropped in a few clips by some of the legends to whet your appetite until the series starts.
Until then, the jazz continues and the BAM flows on!
Art Blakey of course, will be forever known as “headmaster” of jazz’s greatest finishing school, the legendary Jazz Messengers. He was also for a time, the unofficial house drummer for Blue Note Records. The list of jazz legends who’ve logged time with the Messengers is stunning. Just the trumpet players alone could fill their own wing in the Jazz Hall of Fame (Brownie, Morgan, Hubbard, Wynton and even Chuck Mangione!).
Blakey and the Messengers have been well documented, so instead of repeating any more of their history, I’m going to repeat one of my favorite fables about Blakey, who was known for never missing an opportunity to be an advocate for music he loved:
“Art was driving to an out-of-town job and passed through a village where traffic was completely tied up because of a funeral procession. Since he couldn’t get past the cemetery until the service was over, he got out and listened to the eulogy. The minister spoke at length about the virtues of the deceased, and then asked if anyone had anything else to add. After a silence during which nobody spoke up, Art said, ‘If nobody has anything to say about the deceased, I’d like to say a few words about jazz!”
So here are “Bu” and the boys with a few “words” to say about jazz!
With the incredible 1961 Messengers, on “Moanin”
The same group on Bobby Timmons’ “Dat Dere”
From the ’80’s, with the Marsalis Brothers on “Ms. B.C.”
And one of the final editions of the Messengers does it right on “Along Came Betty”
Though I admit to not being a big Halloween person, our friends at NPR’s A Blog Supreme, inspired me with a great post yesterday on Halloween Jazz.
I thought of four more tracks that I’ve always had a fondness for that fit well with the season. Some have an obvious connection and some are a bit of a stretch, but I hope that you’ll dig ’em all.
Happy Halloween!!!
It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brownis number two in my book of Charlie Brown specials, behind A Charlie Brown Christmas. However Vince Guaraldi’s score for …Pumpkin is as good as his immortal work on the Christmas special, though it doesn’t get as much ink. “The Great Pumpkin Waltz” is as warm and inviting as hot cider on a chilly fall evening.
Lambert, Hendricks and Ross were making an obvious grab for a seasonal single with “Halloween Spooks”. It’s not the best of their work, but it still swings and includes some of their trademark wit. The clip created by TurnipGirl13, includes some great shots of seasonal pumpkin carving.
I was quite surprised to find that there was no clip already on YouTube for Philly Joe Jones’ “Blues for Dracula”, so I made my own. Philly Joe does a great Bela Lugosi impersonation standing in for his friend Lenny Bruce, whose standup routine inspired the monologue. Bruce was also supposed to do the monologue on the song, but schedules didn’t work out. Nice solo work by Julian Priester on trombone, Johnny Griffin on tenor and Tommy Flanagan on piano are additional highlights.
Our last track is “Spooky” by Stanley Turrentine. An instrumental version of the old pop hit for Classics IV. It was a filler track on a late ’60’s Turrentine date for Blue Note. This kind of groove was right in Stan’s wheelhouse and he is all over it.
“It was a Sunday afternoon…They were trying to get Charlie [Parker] to play at the club next door, the Lighthouse, but no one could get him to sit in. Then he came over to where I was playing, borrowed a new Selmer tenor from somebody, and said, ‘Well, what do you want to play Clora?’ And I said, ‘Now’s the Time.’ So I set the tempo… and everybody got really swinging.” – Clora Bryant recalls playing with Charlie Parker
She has played with Bird, Diz and Satchmo. She is a legend of L.A.’s Central Avenue Jazz Scene. Yet, Clora Bryant is barely known outside of Southern California.
Clora Bryant was a “trumpetiste” (her preferred term) for over half a century. Women trumpet player/leaders are still fairly rare today. In the ’40’s and ’50’s, they were virtually unheard of. But that didn’t stop Ms. Bryant.
Born in Texas in 1927, Clora Bryant’s originally played the piano and sang. She did not pick up a trumpet until her junior year in high school, after her brother was drafted and went off to serve in WWII. She wanted to be in the marching band and the trumpet was her way in. Clora was a fast learner. So fast that she earned trumpet scholarships to Bennett College and Oberlin, only a year later. She turned down both scholarships, opting instead to attend Prairie View College in Houston, which was closer to home.
When Clora’s father landed a job in Los Angeles, Clora transferred to UCLA. It was there that she heard the sound of bebop, coming from the clubs on Central Avenue, the center of African-American life in L.A. at the time. Clora was drawn to that sound like a moth to a flame. She began sitting in during late night jam sessions, where she played with other West Coast jazz players, like Howard McGhee, Frank Morgan and Teddy Edwards. She was a good enough player to get invited to sit in when some cats would come from the east, like Bird and Diz. The bond with Dizzy was so strong that he became Clora’s mentor, starting a friendship that would endure until Dizzy’s death.
Clora Bryant has always been resourceful. In addition to being a trumpet player and vocalist, she also learned to paly the drums. She was proficient enough on the skins to land a job with the Queens of Swing and tour with them for several years. In the early ’50’s Ms. Bryant returned to playing the trumpet. She backed Billie Holiday and Josephine Baker during that time. She also married and gave birth to her first two children.
In 1957 Clora Bryant recorded and released her first and only album as a leader; …Gal With a Horn, for Mode Records. It’s an infectious, mostly uptempo affair, with Clora singing as well as blowing on all eight tracks. She gets solid support from a strong group that includes veteran bassist Ben Tucker and tenor saxophonist Walter Benton.
Ms. Bryant spent most of the remainder of the fifties on the road, playing the hot spots in Chicago, Denver and Vegas. During the sixties, she teamed with her vocalist brother, Mel, to create a successful song and dance act, even hosting their own TV show in Australia for a while. Clora made international headlines in 1989, when she accepted then Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s invitation to play in U.S.S.R.; becoming the first female jazz musician to do so.
A 1996 heart attack forced Clora to put down her trumpet, but she barely skipped a beat. She continues to sing and lecture across the country about her rich life experiences and what it was like to be a pioneering woman in jazz. Within the past decade, Clora Byrant has begun to receive some long overdue recognition. She was Honored by Washington, D.C.’s Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts with its 2002 Mary Lou Williams Women in Jazz Festival Award, in 2002. And in 2007 a long-planned documentary Trumpetisically, Clora Byant, was released.
As you can see in these recent clips, Clora Bryant is still going strong. May she continue to do so for many more years!
In my book, she’s up there with Sarah, Ella, Billie, Nina and Carmen. Like those ladies, she was an original. You can recognize her within three notes. And her way of bending a long note (purportedly necessitated by a botched tonsillectomy), was pure artistry; others imitated it but they could never duplicate it.
Her life story is the stuff of a Hollywood movie. A great documentary has already been made, but man, a writer could have a field day on her without even having to bend the facts!
I asked myself, what made Anita O’Day so amazing? Then it hit me – like Wynton and Esperanza, Anita was born on October 18, which is also my birthday.
Here are a few familiar and not so familiar tracks from the great lady. Including, the unforgettable part of her set from Newport ’58 that was included in Jazz On A Summer’s Day.
He’s arguably the most well-known and controversial jazz musician to come on the scene since 1980. He’s revered by many and reviled by almost as many.
He’s Wynton Marsalis – prodigiously gifted, passionate about the music and never at a loss for words. Today he is 50 years old.
Say what you want about him, but I can remember a time when some of the greatest jazz musicians ever to walk the earth were making disco records in order make a payday.
A lot of that changed when Wynton came on the scene (with the full faith and credit of the Columbia Records publicity machine behind him). Suddenly, “real” jazz was cool and marketable again. Was it retro? Yeah; but it had heart and soul. And someone of my age was out there standing up for the jazz tradition.
Within a few short years, those who had loved Wynton passionately in 1982, had turned on him with a vengeance, but he has kept going, in spite of the haters.
He helped make straight ahead jazz relevant again, at a time when it was in danger of disappearing completely and we’re born on the same day, one year apart. Those are two reasons why I dig Wynton.
Here are a few performances from over the years, in tribute to “E. Skain Dankworth”.
Curt's Jazz Cafe 