Jazz for aficionados

Recent Acquisition:

Bobby McFerrin -- SPIRIT YOU ALL

McFerrin gives his unique take on well known spirituals. A lot of old favorites here: Everytime I feel the Spirit, Lay my burdens down, Swing Low, and others. 13 Tunes.

My favorite was 25:15. Was it a Spiritual or Blues? Sounded like The Staple Singers meeets John Lee Hooker. The harmony and guitar was pure Staples, but the band could have been Hooker's band. Great stuff.

The entire set had a Oscar Brown Jr feel to it. Without Brown's social commentary. And that is high praise.

Is it Jazz? Some won't think so, but Cannonball did say it was all the same thing!! :)

Ali Jackson is on drums. I remember him from the Dee Dee set at Yoshi's. Good to see young folks get into the Music. He wears a coat and tie also!

Cheers

****if you don't see or consider the history in music, you are missing a lot.****

Agree completely. Certainly not a prerequisite for the enjoyment and appreciation of it, but it definitely puts things in context.

The Learsfool:

Seems as if ALL box sets by Jack Teagarden are very highly rated. He was an innoavator on the trombome as The Frogman said. I guess you could say he was to swing what J.J. Johnson would later be to Bop.

His best years were pre-Bop, which is why I probably don't have any of his stuff. Sound quality issues with a lot of old stuff.

He played with Armstrong from 1947-1951. Was a good singer also. He made the mistake of signing a long term contract with Paul Whiteman, so a lot of oppourtunity to form and lead his own band passed him by.

To clarify this thingy. Politicians always try to 'use' famous people for their own purposes. Teagarden was probably a nice guy and a great musician. He never claimed to be 'King' of anything.

Sort of like the Jack Johnson mess and the Schmeling and Louis travesty. And don't forget the tragedy of the East German athletes. Politicians using people.

Cheers

Hi guys - thanks for the comments. I did not get a chance to listen to that set today after all, too busy. So I probably won't get to it until Saturday now. A friend of mine told me that he was also a good singer, and is indeed a legend on the trombone. I am really looking forward to it.

Rok, LOL - one of your comments reminded me of Peter Schickele, a musical comedian who created the famous character of PDQ Bach. He used to say "Truth is truth. You can't have opinions about truth."

O-10, about your comment "I don't approach jazz from a historical or rational context, I approach it the same way I approach "all" music; from a purely emotional context, either I like it or I don't." If you do like it, doesn't that make you curious about it's larger context? In a great many cases, in fact, you will miss key things about a specific tune if you don't know it's history - musicians very often reference each other in the jazz world. That's so not grammatically correct, but I hope the point is clear. Dang it, ya'll just ain't got no proper grammar learnin'......

But seriously, the point here is that there is so much more to music than just the emotional context. That is only the starting point, the surface, if you will. Uncovering some of the other layers would undoubtedly bring you much more appreciation and therefore listening enjoyment. Usually I say this in reference to harmony/theory or ear training, but it is equally true of history, and the history part is much easier for the musical layman to grasp. I would strongly encourage you to read up on your favorite musicians/jazz styles/periods.

Rok, after reading your review, I piped it into the big rig. (that's where I couldn't see them) The bass was truly awesome on "Senor Blues", and it sounded like one fantastic pianist as opposed to two, that's just how well they played together. The CD is on order.

Enjoy the music.