Miles Davis, E.S.P.

Album of the Week, June 11, 2022.

In Miles in Berlin, we heard Miles’ new quintet in action on his standard repertoire, but that’s only a part of the story of this new group. The compositions on E.S.P. , recorded less than a month after Wayne Shorter’s Speak No Evil, brought new vitality to the sound of the group and spurred higher levels of performance and contribution from all members. 

The title track, “E.S.P.,” provides a strong sound out of the gate and a sonic link to Miles’ immediately proceeding studio albums, with a memorable melody comprised of a concise downward triad that’s immediately repeated, then followed by a sketch of a different chord. It’s a memorable, simple melody but one one that provides chordal space for the group to explore. Indeed, throughout Miles’ solo, Hancock exchanges chordal fragments in response to Miles’ bursts of melody, blurring the edges of the melody and shading the performance further toward free jazz without ever losing the curve of the melody. It’s an astonishing performance, displaying the telepathic playing that famously provided Shorter with the track’s name. 

The next tune, “Eighty-One,” is credited to Ron Carter and Miles Davis, and shows one of the few hints of soul jazz crossover in the group’s repertoire. The tune is again memorable and melodic, and at first reads as an eight-bar blues — only the repeated sections are only two bars each rather than the normal four. The dramatic “hit” on the horns at the end of the second two-bar pattern shows unexpected humor, particularly in later live performances when the band would sometimes lay out an entire measure after the horns! Carter plays a loping bass line that keeps the rhythm for the group, leaving Williams free to add fills in different patterns around the soloists, including following Miles into a brisk swing partway through the trumpeter’s solo. Shorter’s solo uses sixths and ninths to stretch the harmonic series and also adds a swung section. Hancock takes a short solo of only two choruses, exploring melodic patterns and calling out the blues of the track in the second chorus. After a recapitulation of the melody, Carter and the rhythm section play a coda that brings the track to a close.

Herbie Hancock’s “Little One” follows. The slow ballad shifts in tonality through the first few chords and a melodic pattern in minor from Shorter before Miles enters with an inversion around the relative major of the key. Shorter follows with a modal gesture in a higher octave and Davis chases him around the key. The ballad then kicks into a brisker three with Davis exploring the tonality sketched out by the opening. Carter provides a consistent ground in the tonic, leaving Williams to underscore the tempo on the cymbal with both brush and stick. Shorter’s entrance finds different melodic and rhythmic paths, with Hancock following him closely throughout. Generally on this album but especially here, Shorter finds a different voice. If earlier solo works like “JuJu” could strongly bring Coltrane to mind, his playing here demonstrates a more wistful, meditative side that is quite distinct from the elder tenor. Hancock’s solo turn explores the tension between the triple meter and the more straight ahead melody, and is accompanied by some unique support from Williams, who plays brisk rolls on the snare. The track ends with a recap, with Davis and Shorter finishing each others’ musical thoughts, followed by another short outro from the rhythm section and a final recap. The overall performance runs from a tender, impressionist melody to a more articulated yearning, thanks in no small part to Shorter’s solo. The tune would remain in Hancock’s solo repertoire; we’ll hear it again.

R.J.,” which closes out the first half of the record, is another Carter composition, with Shorter and Carter jointly stating the gnarly theme over a free accompaniment by Williams, before Miles takes the first solo. Again, the playing is free, but returns to the same progression of six chords from Hancock in different inversions, rather like striking chimes in an unusually tuned carillon. Shorter’s solo follows Miles’ patterns but picks up the second half of the theme, repeating the descending motif before passing the ball to Hancock. Herbie elaborates the chordal pattern around the repeated chord clusters before Shorter and Carter jointly close the track out. It’s a bravura performance.

Miles’s “Agitation” opens the second half, beginning with a massive drum solo from Tony Williams. It’s been observed that the Second Great Quintet flirted with rock sounds long before the band electrified, and Williams’ solo provides evidence of that, with the drummer dropping in and out of meter before settling into a rapid alternating beat on the cymbals, keeping pace with Carter’s brisk bass accompaniment. Miles’ solo states the melody, sounding rather as though it’s stumbling downhill on a rocky slope before picking up velocity, dropping into a half-time restatement over a swung beat from Williams and Carter, and handing off to Shorter. Wayne’s solo chases the melody through some sheets of sound before briefly restating the melody in quarter notes, establishing a brief ground, and yielding ground to Hancock, whose solo lays bare the alternating chords under the melody in a series of arpeggios. The entire track is both playful and ominous, as the return to the melody is rendered somewhat claustrophobic.

Wayne Shorter and Miles’s “Iris” follows. A ballad that infuses the harmonic experimentation on the rest of the record with a palpable longing, it finds the band in high telepathic form, with the interplay between Hancock and Williams under Miles’ solo especially remarkable. Miles is in tender form here, though some of the agitation of the prior track persists. Shorter echoes the descending pattern that ends Miles’ solo, and steers the ballad into a more plain spoken territory. It’s worth noting that while Miles famously encouraged his sidemen to subtract unnecessary notes and embrace space in their playing, here it is Shorter whose solo seems to breathe, taking the track new places. Special attention must be paid to Carter’s bass line under the final statement of the melody by Shorter; an apparently simple ground reveals flights of countermelody on closer inspection. 

Mood,” another Carter composition, begins with the bass pattern that ended “Iris,” but finds the group more terse, slowly oscillating between F major and C minor in a slow three. Miles almost whispers as he sketches the outline of the chords, and Shorter whispers back, playing around the edges of the melody. On another record it would have been showstopping; here, coming after “Iris” and “Little One,” it feels like a recapitulation, like the band is restating the ideas throughout the album before gathering their energy for a big step forward.

It would be another year before the band returned to the studio for that step. Miles’ personal life would force a pause, as he had hip replacement surgery that had to be repeated after a fall later that summer. Also, his temper, famously erratic at the best of times, would finally spur Frances Taylor Davis, his first wife and the model on the cover of the album, to divorce him. But the members of the band weren’t idle; next time we’ll hear how E.S.P. pushed Herbie Hancock to his own mid-1960s Blue Note masterpiece.

You can listen to the album here.

Wayne Shorter, Speak No Evil

Album of the week, June 4, 2022.

Many of the musicians in this series must be described in the past tense, but Wayne Shorter is still with us. We heard his tenor voice last time as a member of Miles Davis’ band. Today we’re going to look at an album he recorded after that run of dates on the road—an album that still stands among the greatest small group jazz recordings ever.

Wayne Shorter started his career in the Army, serving for two years after graduating from New York University, and playing in a combo with Horace Silver. He was subsequently hired by Art Blakey, who made a career out of finding promising young players and giving them opportunities to shine. During the time when Shorter was in the Jazz Messengers, Blakey’s band, he played alongside trumpeter Lee Morgan, pianist Bobby Timmons, trombonist Curtis Fuller, bassist Reggie Workman, Freddie Hubbard, and pianist Cedar Walton at various times. (We’ll hear from many of these artists later.) Even among this group of young giants, Shorter stood out, eventually becoming the band’s musical director.

Shorter played a few gigs with Miles in 1962 but stayed committed to Blakey’s group, finally giving in and joining Miles for good in the summer of 1964. The group toured extensively through Europe that summer and fall; in addition to the Berlin date we wrote about last time, there are also radio sessions documenting concerts in Paris, Sindelfingen (West Germany), and Copenhagen. When the band returned, with no Davis recording sessions imminent, he hit Rudy Van Gelder’s studio in Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey. The first session, in November, yielded three takes that were rejected by Blue Note. The second session, on Christmas Eve, 1964, yielded a masterpiece.

Shorter had already recorded two albums for Blue Note in 1964, with a group consisting of Coltrane sidemen (McCoy Tyner, Reggie Workman, and Elvin Jones) that established his abilities as a leader and a composer, but cast him as a Coltrane disciple. This time around the compositional voice was more assured and also beginning to speak a different language, with modal influences from Miles. That’s not all the record borrows from his work with the Miles Davis Quintet; his bandmates Herbie Hancock and Ron Carter joined him for the recording, alongside trumpeter Freddie Hubbard and John Coltrane Quartet drummer Elvin Jones. (We’ll hear more about all these musicians.)

Shorter starts off the album with “Witch Hunt,” a modal, bluesy track that features strong playing from Hubbard over a relaxed groove courtesy of Hancock and Carter. Hancock’s time in Miles’ group is apparent in his accompaniment, which drops chords into the spaces left by the horns as he brings the band along on the changes. Elvin Jones keeps the time with a relaxed swing, but turns up the heat as the group shifts gears into the chorus and as Shorter’s solo gets hotter, finding a new rhythmic pattern. Carter keeps an implacable heartbeat below all the players. And Shorter and Hubbard trade solos over the rhythm section, finding different approaches to the loping melody that opens the track.

“Fee Fi Fo Fum” is in nearly the same tempo, but relaxes further into the groove and drops a minor third down the chord that “Witch Hunt” explores, lending the impression of continuing the thought that the opening track started. Here Hubbard opens with a brief solo before yielding the floor to Shorter, who brings several different tonalities around the melody before passing the ball back to Hancock.

“Dance Cadaverous” continues the groove in waltz time. The first side of the album, in fact, feels like a slowly unfolding exploration of the same musical idea, with different melodic ideas continuing in the same mode. The sound continues to swirl around the same tonality in a series of hypnotic melodies, but you’d be forgiven for thinking of the songs as slightly interchangeable.

That changes in a big way with the title track, which opens the second side of the album. Here the melody is both simpler, reliant on just three notes to express the statement of the core idea, and more developed, as it moves in and out of the opening tonality, then climbs chromatically up the octave topping out a ninth above, with Hancock closing the pattern with a cluster of chords that descends back to the tonic. The tune is memorable and insistent and sticks around as Jones and Carter dig into the swing underneath while Hancock sketches out the scale, exploring both the chordal patterns and different rhythms. As with other songs in this session, Hubbard’s solo goes high, but Shorter stays in the same range as the melody, persistently circling round the melodic idea.

Things get stripped back even further on “Infant Eyes,” a slow ballad where Shorter and Hancock both strip out all but the most essential notes. Carter’s bass heartbeat is the pulse that moves the ballad forward, functioning in much the same way that Paul Chambers’ bass work did on Coltrane’s “Naima.” Shorter’s solo seems suspended in mid-air above the bed of Hancock’s delicate chord work throughout (Freddie Hubbard sits this one out). It’s stunning and points the way toward a path that Shorter would walk throughout his career.

The album closes with another statement in three. “Wild Flower” is, even more than “Dance Cadaverous,” a waltz, with the two horns playing in close harmony on the opening statement, only to come into unison on the second part of the theme as though two flowers twined around each other and grew toward the sky. The soloists follow the melody into and out of minor keys, exploring around the theme above the ground held by Elvin Jones and Ron Carter, with Herbie Hancock’s slightly off-beat chords giving the impression of someone wandering onto the dance floor with one leg slightly shorter than the other. Like the entire album, it’s mysterious, moody, and more than a little joyous.

Shorter would record more albums for Blue Note (and we’ll hear some of them), but this is undeniably his best known outing for the label. A statement of his compositional and soloistic gifts, it’s a performance that’s rarely been equalled on record. Next week we’ll see what happens when three of these players return to the context of the Miles Davis Quintet not quite a month later.

My copy of the album is the Blue Note 75th Anniversary re-pressing. I’ve picked up a few Blue Note reissues in various lines and have always been pleased, perhaps no more so than with this one, which has the sound of the musicians completely present and lifelike. You can listen to the album here.

Miles Davis, Miles in Berlin

Album of the Week, May 28, 2022

Jumping forward a year from last week’s Herbie Hancock album, we find another Miles Davis quintet on tour in Berlin. Much is the same as when we last saw Miles with a small group: the format is the same, much of the repertoire is the same. But the players are completely different, and that puts this date on a different planet.

After recording Someday My Prince Will Come and the two live albums that followed, Miles’ rhythm section had split to form a piano trio. Miles spent much of 1962 trying to make an album with Gil Evans and his orchestra, but the result (Quiet Nights) was enough of a disappointment artistically and commercially that it put an end to that long collaborative string between the two men. Miles formed another quintet, this time with George Coleman on tenor, Victor Feldman on piano, Frank Butler on drums, and a young bassist named Ron Carter, who had debuted a year previously in a trio with the avant-garde Eric Dolphin and Mal Waldron. They recorded the album Seven Steps to Heaven, which stands out in Miles’ early 1960s output as a cohesive, well played recording with strong tunes (mostly written by Feldman). But Feldman and Butler didn’t want to move to the East Coast, and by May of 1963, Miles had recruited the young Tony Williams, then Herbie Hancock, to join the trio. 

The new quintet played at Philharmonic Hall (recording the live albums My Funny Valentine and Four and More), and toured widely through the end of 1963 and most of 1964, but Coleman wasn’t clicking. Miles had played in mid-1963 with another tenor player, Wayne Shorter, who had been the chief composer in a well-regarded run with Art Blakey’s Jazz Messengers. Miles finally convinced Shorter to join his group in the summer of 1964, and on September 25 they played a concert at the Berlin Philharmonic. It would be the first recording released of the new quintet.

The repertoire may have been familiar but the performances weren’t. From the opening of “Milestones,” Tony Williams signals that something is different, playing a polyrhythm under the opening cymbal ride and dropping bombs at unpredictable points under Miles’ solo. The challenge invigorates Miles, who briskly runs through modal scales until he finds a countermelody, all the while playing with bebop velocity. He finishes the solo, then hands off to Wayne Shorter, who similarly embraces Coltrane-like runs, then drops into a swinging turn for a moment only to return to the trapeze. Over Hancock’s block chords, he embraces another run, then drops back into a swinging pattern, then imitates the block chords in the piano, playing in triplet groups, breaking down the melody into bursts of sound, Williams and Carter imitating him along the way. It’s a remarkable opening, and completely transforms the standard. This would be the rule for the night.

Autumn Leaves” is opened with an atmospheric solo by Miles, with the barest sketch of chords in the piano underneath, until he suddenly locks into a swinging groove. Williams follows the groove, keeping the beat with the brushes but introducing patterns which Miles reflects in the trumpet, then Herbie picks up in the piano. It’s simultaneously the most traditional and the most free performance on the record. 

So What” opens with Carter and Hancock trading off over another Williams polyrhythmic accompaniment in the cymbals. (Much of Tony Williams’ playing on this record makes me long for a meeting between him and Stewart Copeland.) Here Herbie’s chords take the changes into unfamiliar territory around the outside fringes of the mode. Shorter bends the melody and chords further as Herbie gives him more and more space to open things up, then comes back in with clusters of sound. Shorter’s performance here underscores one of the chief differences between him and Coltrane at this stage: both embrace a reaching style that uses runs of notes as a building block, but Shorter finds patterns of silence in the middle of his performance, as well as rhythmic patterns that form countermelodies. Throughout the rhythm section plays almost telepathically with the soloists. 

Walkin’” returns as a theme and becomes another brisk workout for the soloists. Here Miles picks up on Shorter’s trick from “So What,” varying the runs with alternating rhythmic patterns before yielding to Tony Williams for a drum solo. Throughout Shorter’s solo he and Hancock trade ideas, discovering a new melody and actually falling into the tag of the melody from “Milestones” before handing off to the rhythm section. In later years, Miles and his band would play long uninterrupted sets where the tunes would telepathically flow into each other, and this moment feels like a forerunner of that. Hancock takes a breath in his solo, decelerating with Williams into something like a blues by way of Debussy before accelerating back to the breakneck tempo of the opening over 32 bars. Finally, “The Theme” provides Carter with a brief spotlight followed by the emergence of yet another new melody courtesy of Herbie Hancock.

With this quintet, Miles had found musicians who challenged him and pushed him further to innovate, even as together they found something like a group mind. And this recording was just the very beginning. Soon Shorter would bring his compositional voice to the party, lifting the band to the next level. We will hear that voice in one of his early masterpieces next time.

(Note: This review is written based on the LP version of this live recording—in this case, a 1981 reissue of the original 1967 release. The full concert, which is available on CD and in streaming and downloadable version, also included a performance of “Stella by Starlight.”)

You can hear Miles in Berlin here.

Exfiltration Radio: Shorter story

Lee Morgan’s “Search for The New Land” session, Van Gelder Studio, Englewood Cliffs, NJ, February 15, 1964. This is the cover shot for Shorter’s “The All Seeing Eye.”

I’ve been going down a rabbit hole in my listening lately, as I grow increasingly conscious that great artists live among us… but perhaps not for too much longer. One I’m thinking about right now is the great saxophonist and composer Wayne Shorter.

I started listening to Shorter over 30 years ago, thanks to a CD copy of The Best of Wayne Shorter: The Blue Note Years that I found in Plan 9. Like all single-disc anthologies (and like this mix!), it’s a sparse summary of an astonishing period of creativity and excellent performances. But it hooked me… especially the opening track, the title from Shorter’s sixth album, which manages to be both relaxed and full of tension at the same time thanks to his unshowy use of modal scales.

I think I heard this album before I came across the Second Great Quintet recordings he did with Miles, which included many of Shorter’s compositions (especially the great “Footprints,” heard here) in very different arrangements. Miles’s version of “Footprints,” on Miles Smiles, ups the anxiety in the modal scale through tempo and urgency, especially in Tony Williams’ polyrhythmic drumming. I also looked backwards in time, finding some of the great recordings that he did with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers (and recently uncovering some of the sideman work he did for some of his colleagues, including Lee Morgan here).

Thanks to early-90s bias against fusion (which, in fairness, had fallen pretty low by the late 1980s), it took me years to discover Weather Report, particularly the first album, and I only recently began to listen to some of Shorter’s mid-1970s output, which featured a more accessible side of the great composer on songs like “Ana Maria.” And his late-period works with Danilo Perez, John Pattituci and Brian Blade continue to blow my head off with the genius of the collective improvisation, even as they document Shorter’s declining physical stamina. (He retired from performance in 2019 due to mounting health issues.)

Like that first Blue Note compilation, this sixty minute set is necessarily scanty, but hopefully will convince you to seek out more of Shorter’s work as well—and to utter a silent word of thanks that we walk the earth at the same time he does.

Enjoy…

  1. Speak No EvilWayne Shorter ( Speak No Evil )
  2. Ping Pong (No. 1)Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers ( Complete Studio Recordings (with Lee Morgan, Wayne Shorter…) )
  3. EddaLee Morgan ( The Rumproller )
  4. Yes or NoWayne Shorter ( JuJu )
  5. FootprintsMiles Davis Quintet ( Miles Smiles )
  6. TearsWeather Report ( Weather Report )
  7. Ana MariaWayne Shorter ( Native Dancer )
  8. Aung San Suu KyiWayne Shorter and Herbie Hancock ( 1+1 )
  9. Adventures Aboard The Golden Mean (live)Wayne Shorter Quartet ( Emanon )
  10. PinocchioHerbie Hancock Quintet ( A Tribute To Miles )

Exfiltration Radio: jazz in inner space

It’s that time again… time for the Godfather to grace you with an hour of weird music. Today’s playlist comes from the cusp of jazz’s transition into fusion and dives into the music that came around In a Silent Way, still one of the most revolutionary recordings in jazz.

In this 1969 record, Miles had reached the end of standards, the end of modal changes, the end of the post-bop revolution he had led with his second great quintet. He was listening to other innovators, working beyond jazz, especially Jimi Hendrix. And most importantly, he was continuing to surround himself with musicians who innovated, listen to them, and push them to take their performances beyond where they could on their own. (He also sometimes claimed authorship of those songs, but that’s a different story.)

The sound at the back of this new direction in jazz was the electric piano (usually a Fender Rhodes) fed into the echoplex and joined by musicians who were playing, as Miles said on the back cover of Zawinul, “cliché-free,” not relying on changes or modes but on rhythm and vamping and atmosphere and sometimes incredibly gorgeous scraps of melody that come and go in the middle of the track like smoke.

One of the things that’s hard to appreciate just by looking at the track titles is how much of this music was made by the same handful of musicians. Let’s take a look:

Herbie Hancock (electric and acoustic piano) plays on “Doctor Honoris Causa” (which Zawinul dedicated to him for his honorary doctorate from Grinnell), “Mountain in the Clouds,” “Opus One Point Five,” “Filles de Kilimajaro,” his own “You’ll Know When You Get There,” and “In a Silent Way.” Miroslav Vitouš (bass) is on “Causa,” “Mountain,” “Orange Lady,” and “Water Babies.” John McLaughlin (electric guitar) is on “Mountain” and “In a Silent Way.”

Billy Hart is on “Causa” (percussion) and “You’ll Know” (drums). Joe Henderson (tenor sax) is on “Mountain” and his own “Opus One Point Five.” Jack DeJohnette (drums) is on “Mountain,” “Opus One Point Five,” and “Water Babies.” Chick Corea plays electric piano on “In a Silent Way” and drums and vibes on “Water Babies.”

The great Wayne Shorter (tenor sax) is on “Orange Lady,” “Filles De Kilimanjaro,” his own “Water Babies,” and “In a Silent Way.” Airto Moreira plays percussion on “Orange Lady” and “Water Babies.” Ron Carter is on “Opus One Point Five” and “Filles.” Tony Williams plays drums on “Filles” and “In a Silent Way.” And Joe Zawinul plays on “Causa,” “Orange Lady,” and his composition “In a Silent Way.”

It’s not surprising that some of the tracks seem to blend seamlessly into each other. It’s more surprising how distinctive the musical identity of each track is. Definitely worth an hour, and then many more checking out the albums these came from.

Do not adjust your set; there is nothing wrong.

  1. Doctor Honoris CausaJoe Zawinul (Zawinul)
  2. Mountain In the CloudsMiroslav Vitous (Infinite Search)
  3. Orange LadyWeather Report (Weather Report)
  4. Opus One Point FiveJoe Henderson (Power To The People [Keepnews Collection] [ Remastered ])
  5. Filles De Kilimanjaro (Girls Of Kilimanjaro)Miles Davis (Filles De Kilimanjaro)
  6. Water BabiesWayne Shorter (Super Nova)
  7. You’ll Know When You Get ThereHerbie Hancock (Warner Archives)
  8. In A Silent WayMiles Davis (The Complete In A Silent Way Sessions)

Exfiltration Radio: the Holy Ghost

It’s been a hard day for many folks, after a hard year and 259 days. But in these days you have to do what you can, and not worry about what you can’t.

For me that translates to seeking out what’s important in music. Which is why the fifth volume in my series of one-hour Exfiltration Radio shows is about spiritual jazz. 

(Why that name? The music takes some of the techniques of free jazz and infuses it with the searching, looking beyond that Coltrane brought to the table with A Love Supreme. It’s a broad banner, as the multiple volumes of the Spiritual Jazz compilation series show.)

This one mixes up a track from one of my favorite McCoy Tyner albums, his Extensions, with other tracks from Alice Coltrane, Donald Byrd, Wayne Shorter, Rahsaan Roland Kirk, the redoubtable Pharoah Sanders, and a few other goodies that I’ve found over the years on Bandcamp or other spots. It’s a good one-hour introduction if you’re feeling sinister—and it’s a good reminder that not everything that is in the world is of the world.

Enjoy…

  1. Rainbow WarriorsAlan Braufman (Valley of Search (Reissue))
  2. Journey In SatchidanandaAlice Coltrane (The Impulse Story: Alice Coltrane)
  3. Message From The NileMcCoy Tyner (Extensions)
  4. Dance! Dance, Eternal SpiritsJoe Bonner with David Friesen, Billy Harper, Virgil Jones, M (Black Saint)
  5. ElijahDonald Byrd (A New Perspective)
  6. Ja MilHastings Street Jazz Experience (Spiritual Jazz)
  7. JuJuWayne Shorter (JuJu (Rudy Van Gelder Edition))
  8. Spirits Up AboveRahsaan Roland Kirk (Volunteered Slavery)
  9. ColorsPharoah Sanders (Karma)

Exfiltration Radio

We just finished another Veracode Hackathon, and this one was rock and roll themed. One of our brilliant hackers put together an Internet radio station where you could sign up for a one-hour time slot and post a playlist. Naturally, this was catnip. I spent a few hours putting together two playlists, which I’ve embedded below—one all genres and one focusing on (mostly) 21st century jazz.

Production notes: I did some processing of individual audio files through Amadeus Pro and assembled everything in GarageBand. I’m very much still learning how to crawl with the latter tool, so I hope it doesn’t stink too much.

The playlists are below. Enjoy!

  1. Orbits (Live) – Wayne Shorter (Without a Net (Live))
  2. Tangled – Idris Rahman, Leon Brichard, Emre Ramazanoglu, Yahael Camara-Onono (Ill Considered)
  3. Love What Is Mortal – Donny McCaslin (Fast Future)
  4. Be There – Leon Gardner (Spiritual Jazz)
  5. Everybody Wants to Rule the World – The Bad Plus (Prog)
  6. El Swing – Hudson (Hudson (feat. Jack DeJohnette, Larry Grenadier, John Medeski & John Scofield))
  7. I Came to See You / You Were Not There – Ahmad Jamal (Marseille)
  8. From One Island to Another – Branford Marsalis Quartet & Kurt Elling (Upward Spiral)
  9. Lathe of Heaven – Mark Turner Quartet (Lathe of Heaven)
  10. Look at Me – Cécile McLorin Salvant (For One to Love)
  11. For Amiri Baraka – Vijay Iyer Sextet (Far from Over)

  1. Sivad – Miles Davis (The Columbia Years 1955-1985)
  2. Uncloudy Day – Mavis Staples & The Staple Singers (Gospel Brunch)
  3. Where the Sun Never Goes Down – David Byrne (Music From the Knee Plays)
  4. Rotating Head (raga version) – English Beat
  5. It’s All Too Much – The Beatles (Yellow Submarine [2009 Stereo Remaster])
  6. Damaged Goods – Gang Of Four (Entertainment!)
  7. Winter ’68 – The Black Angels (The Black Angels)
  8. Ascension Day – Talk Talk (Laughing Stock)
  9. Rebecca Sylvester – Gastr Del Sol (Upgrade & Afterlife)
  10. Hey Vegas – Bows (Cassidy)
  11. Circle – Miles Davis Quintet (Miles Smiles)
  12. &&& . . . && . &&& . . – The User (Symphony #2 For Dot Matrix Printers)
  13. Farnham – Daniel Bachman (River)
  14. Life On Mars? (2003 Ken Scott Mix) – David Bowie (Nothing Has Changed (Deluxe Edition))

Raised on radio

I’ve found myself doing more radio listening lately. Partly because it’s starting to be challenging to spend time digitizing LPs or even doing digital digging on Bandcamp (though I’m still doing both). But most of my listening has not been FM. Here’s what I’ve been turning to:

Sirius/XM Radio. Though the poor quality audio throws me off—I can’t stand listening to the classical channels for more than a few minutes—it’s great being able to turn on the First Wave channel and hear “Mad World” pretty much any day you want to. And a bunch of other tracks as well.

Iron Leg/Testify/Funky16Corners. I’m a long time listener of Larry Grogan’s expanding family of podcasts. Though I found myself fast forwarding a few of this summer’s F16C guest podcasts, I am really enjoying Larry’s posts of his WFMU radio show, “Testify.” Sample episodes: tribute to Steely Dan’s Walter Becker, heavy epics from Joni Mitchell to Nick Drake to the Temptations, and more on the show page (he also cross-posts the full sets to the Iron Leg podcast). The show graphics are great too (see above).

In the Groove. Another radio-originated podcast, Ken Laster’s WWUH radio show is jazz focused and has a special slant covering independent jazz artists. I’ve had a few discoveries from this show, including Cecile McLorin Savant (featured in Ken’s Newport Preview episode). The Wayne Shorter episode is pretty good too.

The Broadcasting System. My friend Tyler DJs this show on Monday afternoons under the nom de radio of “Tyler Broadcasting System.” WTJU doesn’t podcast but they do stream live and archive a few weeks worth of shows. I highly recommend the show from September 18 while it’s still available, which veers from Meredith Monk and Moondog to Pram and ELO and Pharoah Sanders.

“Eighty-One”

KGB at the Lilypad in Inman Square, June 1, 2016

KGB at the Lilypad in Inman Square, June 1, 2016

I met some work colleagues at Bukowski’s in Inman Square last night. Generally when I’ve been there in the past it’s been to go to Hell Night, which is a pretty all-consuming experience in itself. Last night I was able to soak in a little more of the ambience.

Like Lilypad, a jazz club that’s only about half a block away from Bukowski’s. As I walked by last night to go to the bar, there was a pretty hot sounding quartet going (Tetraptych, if their calendar is right), but by the time we got back to the club KGB was playing. This trio (Ethan K. on guitars, Patrick Gaulin on drums, Rich Greenblatt on vibes) was sounding pretty good, playing a variety of originals, some standards (a Gershwin tune floated past at one point) and some post-bop stuff.

The last tune was “Eighty-One,” the Ron Carter/Miles Davis standard that he premiered on E.S.P. Here Ethan K. played the melodic line as Greenblatt provided chordal backup, with Gaulin providing elliptical drums underneath. I loved it, but the interpretation was a little different than what I think of as the core of the song, and it got me thinking about what that means.

In the original recording, by the second great Miles quintet on their first album, the essence of the song is the strong central bassline centered on the relationship between F (the tonic) and B-flat and providing rhythmic drive, while the horns play the melody complete with the leap up the octave and into a moment of silence, followed by sustained chords. The same players, with Wallace Roney filling in for Miles on the 1991 A Tribute to Miles, begins with a minute of free playing by Herbie Hancock and Wayne Shorter before going to the melody, and plays up the pause dramatically, with everyone but Carter and Tony Williams dropping out for a whole measure before the tune continues. I’ve heard some live Herbie recordings that do the same trick, with different players spotlighted in the gap, including his V.S.O.P. quintet live recordings from the 1970s. I’ve come to love this interpretation.

Last night, the gap wasn’t there–each player drove ahead into the space, letting the groove take them. It was a great version, but I missed that pause. It clues you in to listen to what’s happening underneath—the groove, the drive, the breakneck craziness at drums and bass that was Carter and Tony Williams at their best.