Jazz for aficionados


Jazz for aficionados

I'm going to review records in my collection, and you'll be able to decide if they're worthy of your collection. These records are what I consider "must haves" for any jazz aficionado, and would be found in their collections. I wont review any record that's not on CD, nor will I review any record if the CD is markedly inferior. Fortunately, I only found 1 case where the CD was markedly inferior to the record.

Our first album is "Moanin" by Art Blakey and The Jazz Messengers. We have Lee Morgan , trumpet; Benney Golson, tenor sax; Bobby Timmons, piano; Jymie merrit, bass; Art Blakey, drums.

The title tune "Moanin" is by Bobby Timmons, it conveys the emotion of the title like no other tune I've ever heard, even better than any words could ever convey. This music pictures a person whose down to his last nickel, and all he can do is "moan".

"Along Came Betty" is a tune by Benny Golson, it reminds me of a Betty I once knew. She was gorgeous with a jazzy personality, and she moved smooth and easy, just like this tune. Somebody find me a time machine! Maybe you knew a Betty.

While the rest of the music is just fine, those are my favorite tunes. Why don't you share your, "must have" jazz albums with us.

Enjoy the music.
orpheus10

Rok, another reason you may not have a lot of Chico is because he was hardly ever "mainstream jazz", he was "off center"; that's what I liked about him, his music was a change of pace from the rest of my collection.

The records I have are not on "you tube", nor are they on CD, and I'm not going to recommend that you get into analog, it's quite expensive. Presently I'm out of commission because I require tubes that cost $600 a pair for my phono pre. Whenever I have enough to justify that expense, I can listen to records again, but since I have them on computer hard-drive, I'm not suffering.

So much for Chico, enjoy what you can find on CD.

         
***** I'm not going to recommend that you get into analog, it's quite expensive.*****

We all remember where we were when big events happened.   I remember where I heard a CD player for the first time.   The PX, in Furth, Germany.   A Sony rep was demonstrating their player.

I remember saying, thank you Jesus, I lived to see this.  But, I have noticed the ridiculous price increases in all things analog.   

$600 for tubes??   No thanks.   When I worked for IBM in Atlanta, they gave us classes in tube theory.   The instructors, from Georgia Tech, thought it was a waste of time to teach this outdated tech.   Three things from the classes still stick,  1. tubes have very high distortion, 2. tubes start wearing out as soon as you turn them on and 3  they generate heat.

You can get a Marantz CD 6006 for 500.

Cheers
**** Notes:
The Handy innovation which had the most impact on popular music was the introduction of the Negro folk singer’s frequent use of the flatten third (and, though less often, the flatted seventh). Identified by by Jazz fans and commercial songwriters alike as"blue notes" .
Frogman, HELP!!!!! ****

Be careful what you ask for 😊

There are seven notes in the most common scale in music, the Major scale. For the sake of this explanation let’s look at the C Major scale which would be played on only the white keys on a keyboard. In the key of C Major the scale would start on a C and would be: C, D, E, F, G, A, B. Each ascending note of the scale corresponds to a specific frequency in Hertz with a corresponding acoustical wavelength. In a Major scale there are two notes that are referred to as leading tones; they are the third (E) and seventh (B) notes of the scale. The reason that they are referred to as leading tones is that the difference in Hertz, or distance, between each of them (the third and the seventh) and the following note in the ascending scale is much smaller than the difference between any other two notes in the scale. In the context of music this proximity to the following note of the scale creates the FEELING of the third and seventh of the scale wanting to move (resolve) to the following note of the scale. The third (E) of the Major scale wants to move to the fourth (F) and the seventh (B) wants to move to the “octave”, which would be another C. This C would have a frequency in Hertz that is ROUGHLY twice that of the lower C that the scale started on. Keep in mind that all this is a simplification.

In the Blues, what gives the music its distinctive “bluesy” sound is that the third (E) and seventh (B) notes of the scale are played a half step lower than in a Major scale. When playing the Blues, instead of playing the white keys corresponding to the third and seventh notes of the scale, you would play the black key just behind the white key corresponding to the third and seventh of the scale. You are then playing a third and seventh that are lower in pitch by ROUGHLY half the frequency in Hertz than they are in a Major scale; they then become a “flatted” third or seventh. Also referred to as “blue notes”.

Now, where the quoted liner notes go wrong, or at least are misleading, is that while it may be true that Handy “introduced” this technique to popular music (published music, as Rok points out) it was hardly an “innovation”.

While I have some ideas as to why, I don’t understand the resistance (political/personal?) on the part of some to the well documented wealth of musicological evidence that the folk music traditions of any people travel with them when they go, willingly or not, to a different land.

Just one example of many available. If you can’t hear the connection to Blues as we know it in this music which goes back centuries before the creation of American Blues, I recommend Q-Tips moistened in peroxide ☺️

Flatted thirds and sevenths:

https://youtu.be/VzqDq2R7KT0




Frogman, the blues and modern jazz are not one and the same if you are implying that African connection thing. Modern jazz has 0 connection to Africa. The Blues connection could very well be coincident.

Rok, as you already know, there's nothing new about "Analog"; it's just "high end" analog they're referring to, and somehow all analog is supposed to sounds like that, when we know that "low end" analog's not as good as that Marantz CD player.

Glad you mentioned that CD player, mine has gotten quirky.