Blog: wordsandmusic

These are two radical tracks â€" one by the Cecil Taylor group in 1966, the other by a sextet led by Tony Oxley in 1970. One is American, the other English/European. Two different visions â€" yet they cross and coincide as much as they divurge. Many of the musicians on these two pieces were to play with each other â€" Parker, Bailey, Oxley all played with Cecil Taylor at various later dates, for example. In fact, last year at the London Jazz Festival, Cecil, Oxley and Bill Dixon played on a memorable gig, solo and together. [...]

Here are two tracks from Ornette Coleman's seminal quartet, taken from the album 'Change of the Century,' recorded in October 1959 in Hollywood. At this distance, it is hard to see why there was so much controversy over this music - it's hard-swinging, bluesy, fast and fiery. Yet â€" there is a tangible freedom on offer â€" there is a lot of space because of the lack of piano that would rein in the directional possibilities to a certain extent by the choice of chords played underneath. Charlie Haden's bass frees up the harmonic area [...]

John Coltrane recorded 'Olé Coltrane' in May 1961 with an expanded quartet. 'My Favourite Things'was already in the bag at this stage, and Olé represents a logical move onwards from this tune and the previous modal experiments of the Miles Davis band on 'Kind of Blue', but there seems to be a darker edge here, some shade where the original 'My Favourite Things' had a lighter, bouncier ambiance. The mp3 I've put up below, the title track 'Olé ', has Eric Dolphy on board â€" and Freddie Hubbard, an adventurous player who was to participate both in Ornette Coleman's [...]

My apologies -I've been â€" as Jane Austen may have said â€" somewhat indisposed the past few days but now I'll try to get this blog back on track... In 1960 Johnny Griffin recorded 'The Big Soul Band' album. The track I've selected leads on from the previous posts with its Art Blakey-ish/Hard Bop connection. The Messengers's pianist Bobby Timmons- who plays on a couple of tracks from this session and composed the track 'So Tired' - had written several titles that defined the 'Back to the Roots' [...]

No music today - still working on a post that's going to push things out a bit further and try to link Johnny Griffin to Cecil Taylor (!)- but today is my daughter Amelia's 18th birthday and I can't be with her unfortunately -but she was online earlier - just gone to eat her late birthday dinner. I gather she had a celebration last night and I probably don't want to know the details! But I'd just like to wish her well - and thank her for being a wonderful daughter - funny, spirited, smart and someone with [...]

Monk recorded the first version of 'Rhythm a ning' I've put up below in 1958 with Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers who at that time had the front line of the fiery tenor player Johnny Griffin and the underrated trumpeter Bill Hardman. The second comes from a concert in Paris in 1965. With the other version (with Gerry Mulligan) that I posted previously, it's fascinating to compare these interpretations. The Blakey one, of course, has Art booting along on the drums which makes it sound faster although they are all in the same time frame roughly [...]

Here's two tracks linking Miles Davis to Thelonious Monk via Gerry Mulligan who plays on both. The Monk and Mulligan session is from August 1957, the Miles track from the famous Birth of the Cool recordings, April 1949 - this taken from the Rudy Van Gelder CD remaster which is brilliantly clear and bright. If you wanted to make and obvious link via the received critical wisdom, you could see Monk as the father of bebop and Mulligan as the father(or one of them) of Cool Jazz... Actually, I picked these tracks at random - then realised that [...]

I've decided to start putting up a few mp3's - some of my own stuff and for a limited time each, some from my collection for snapshots of various artists with all the usual caveats - these will be up for only a week at a time as per usual practice... The first one is a track I did recently leaving time

I was going to post on Sunday - but a combination of exhaustion -and anger - made me hang back. Anger over the anti-Americanism rampant over here - and the sheer ignorance on display in so many places... but I don't want this blog to be a political forum... that may happen elsewhere and soon. For the time being, I'll just stick to some thoughts I had when I took the photos above on my trip to NY in May with my 17-year old daughter, Amelia. We did the whole tourist trip - Staten Island Ferry, Broadway, Times Square, the [...]

I was late-night cruising the net when I came across an mp3 download and half-recognised the name so I snaffled it and when I played it back I was blown away. I followed the links and bought the album from Anticon direct - then forgot about it. (Well, I said it was late - and a certain amount of painkiller had been taken...) Ten days onwards it arrived and what a pleasant surprise... Back in the world of Odd Nosdam again, whom I knew from his work in Clouddead . But the cd I have by them has an [...]

We did it... I got home - not too late, considering everything. Murray and I would have gone for a late chill-out drink and to compare more notes - but the valve I have in my throat had been playing up all day. Which meant every time I had a drink I was spluttering and running out of the venue space for a quick cough. I wondered if anyone thought it was part of the show - we have a certain reputation at the Club Sporadic for eccentricity... But. We did it. At nine am yesterday (Saturday 10 [...]

Anyone would think I was turning into an alcoholic... but I've been sat here most of the evening dealing with stuff pertaining to the up-coming and very wonderful festival we are putting on - Saturday 10th September - SPORADICFEST - and after that I was working on a review of Odd Nosdam's album 'Burner' (scroll down a bit) which started [...]