Jazz for aficionados

Today's playlist:

Beethoven -- PIANO SONATAS
"Pathetique" "Moonlight" "Appassionata" / Alfred Brendel
From a master of Beethoven.

Beethoven -- SYMPHONY NO. 9
The Deutsche Kammerphilharmondie / Paavo Jarvi
Second Movement always reminds me of the NBC nightly news with Chet Huntley and David Brinkley. Hard to believe now.
Bohm still rules.

Clarence "Gatemouth" Brown -- STANDING MY GROUND
La/Tx 'border' blues. Born in Louisiana, raised on the Texas side. Texas Blues is a distinctive style.

Clifton Chenier -- BOGALUSA BOOGIE
Le Blues De La Louisiane! Parlez-Vous ???
Like a little accordion and rubboard, and a whole lot of French in your blues? Check it out. Great cover photo.

Cheers

Awesome! Thanks. And nothing like the sound of a real horn section; not the synth crap on a lot of the "new" stuff.
BTW, check out the pool player's breaking shot as the tune ends and the camera pans away. Right with the drummer's final hit; one could not have have planned that better :)

Today's Playlist:

Fats Navarro and Tadd Dameron -- THE COMPLETE BLUE NOTE and CAPITOL RECORDINGS.
2CD set.

My first CD by Navarro. CD #1 is Dameron with Fats on three different sets / groups, and another set of Dameron with Miles Davis.

CD #2 is Fats with Howard McGhee, Fats with Bud Powell and Fats with Benny Goodman. The set with McGhee is awesome! Two great trumpet players dueling!

Fats died at age 26. This guy was in a class by himself. The most beautiful trumpet playing I have ever heard.

Some others on board include Sonny Rollins, Wardell Gray, Dexter Gordon, Milt Jackson and Kenny Clarke. And this is when they were all young!!

Excellent booklet with great photos.
Recorded 1947-49, Mono. Great sound.

Fats Navarro -- THE FATS NAVARRO STORY
4CD box

"Fats Navarro's trumpet had a clear singing quality and purity of tone that no other trumpet player could match. He was BeBop's most perfect trumpeter."

This was an uncreditied review written on the back of the Box Set. It says it all. He is now my favorite.

Outstanding Booklet with photos and notes. Includes Bird and Eckstine among others.
Mono.

I think anyone who has not heard Navarro before, will have to rearrange their Jazz Trumpet pecking order. He really is that good.

You get the impression this is BeBop being born or at least weaned.

Cheers

****You get the impression this is BeBop being born or at least weaned. ****

That's exactly what it was. Beautiful player and a great example for understanding the evolution of the harmonic language of jazz improvisation. Navarro was a kind of link between the swing players and the bebop players that he influenced (Clifford Brown), who would later play in an even more harmonically sophisticated style. It's particularly clear when one compares some of the sidemen playing along side Navarro. Many of these swing players were still locked into a harmonic concept which stayed very close to the basic building blocks of each chord. One can hear how Navarro was more adventurous by comparison and strayed farther away from those basics, but still relatively "inside" the harmony. Later, more modern players like Brown would go further outside the harmonies and, just as modern classical composers (Stravinsky) did, threw away a lot of the traditional rules of harmony. Keep that in mind as an interesting and important parallel before being too quick to judge Stravinsky's concept of a "beautiful melody". Cheers.