All this trio talk made me put this on:



Waltz For Debby/Sunday... are so hyped, but man it deserves all of the praise it gets. It's the best display of mind melding between three individuals I've ever come across. These recordings represent one of the pinnacles of human achievement, IMO. It's hard not to be inspired when listening to this.

It's really cool as a headphone recording too because ambient crowd noise really immerses you into the whole scene.

EDIT: thanks for the tip on mosaicrecords.com. I was so close to ordering it for $90 on Amazon earlier today! Going to put in an order now. woot woot!

I agree, those albums are tremendous, and great for headphone listening too with the ambient clink of a glass here and there.

Mosaic sets are almost always cheaper on their website.  They do limited one time runs, then certain sellers buy them up and sell them at a markup on Amazon, eBay, and other places in the ensuing years.  If mosaic ever still has albums in stock their website is always the place to go.


One vocal jazz album I've been digging recently is Jeanne Lee and Mal Waldron's After Hours.



Both had done groundbreaking work in the 50's and 60's, (and Mal was Billie Holiday's go-to pianist before that), and are in their golden years by the time they collaborated for the album.  Mal's playing is sparse and not very complex, but it complements Jeanne's style well, giving her room to let go a bit (she was a pillar of free jazz and sound poetry, so getting her to sing standards in a pretty structured manner was quite a feat.)  The whole album is pervaded with a swirling, heady, intoxicating mood that perfectly encapsulates an after hours set at a jazz club.  It doesn't have much variety, as even typically upbeat numbers it manages to give the "After Hours" treatment.  What it manages to do with numbers like "You Go to My Head" and "Goodbye Porkpie Hat" is very cool, though I wouldn't call either artist a virtuoso - it's more about mood on this album.

I'm on a guitar kick too today, got this going right now:



I know Rosenwinkel from the Brian Blade Fellowship, although his own band may be more famous. I've seen him cite Allan Holdsworth as an inspiration, which certainly shows in his very long lyrical melodies. Eric Harland, the drummer in this band, is ridiculously good too.

Whoa -- that is cool as hell. Must be surreal to see an ex-classmate on Jimmy Fallon every night.

Was on a Phineas kick last night and ended up listening to this album twice:



Mini Rant Warning:


The knock on Newborn is similar to the one leveled against Tatum (and many pieces of audio gear as well) - that somehow the proficiency and technical brilliance take away from the "soul" of the playing.  Come to think of it this is the rub with Bach by people who don't "get" him and think knowing his Prelude in C Major somehow makes them an arbiter of his headspace.  I really don't get who these people think they are to judge the "soul" of jazz music - if you're not singing along with yourself tunelessly while your play 40 minute odes to your own self indulgence a la Jarret's middle period does that somehow make you devoid of the "soul" of the music?  Is it lacking soul because it isn't coming from the same place where Jazz was when it first coalesced in the South with uneducated technically passable people with a whole lot of heart and their own idea of "music"?


I don't proclaim to have the definition of musical "soul" either, but I'm not sure that because any particular listener can't perceive "soul" that it doesn't exist.  I can say that to me it doesn't have to be synonymous with romanticism, lack of intellect used in the music process, or lack of rhythmic and melodic structure and decently tight arrangements.


  I guess part of what it comes down to is this - is soul what the musician feels or what the listener feels?  I have jazz albums where the artists were so drugged out of their minds on heroin  at the time that any "soul" would have been unintentional - yet many listeners claim to connect on a raw emotional level.  Other albums many listeners claim is a clinical deconstruction, yet to watch Peterson playing it is to watch a man totally enveloped in the "soul' of the piece.  If it is indeed up to the listener, then who is to say that a particular piece may affect every listener the same way?


To use fallacious logic: "Soul" doesn't have to exist absolutely (ie on the part of the composer/performers) for it to be perceived - and it's perception is all that counts at the end of the day.  In other words, a musician, piece, album, whatever, has as much soul as the listener is willing to give it.  So if something lacks soul, it is the listeners fault.
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Anyway, I really like Newborn, even if sometimes he flies through ballads and gets a bit too far out from the melody.  He's one of the rare jazz pianists that really plays with both hands (you can count these pianists on one hand incidentally) and he is a wizard with the keys. Ray Brown and Elvin Jones are the perfect complement to him on this date from '68.