Jazz for aficionados

Today's Listen:

Lou Rawls with Les McCann Ltd. -- STORMY MONDAY

Rawls(v), Les McCann(p), LeRoy Vinnegar(b), Ron Jefferson(d)

Lou Rawls' first recording. Recorded in 1962 on BlueNote.
13 tunes. Mostly blues. The Count Basie, Joe Williams type of blues numbers.

This is a young Lou Rawls. You can hear it in his voice. It would get better as he aged.

The Les McCann Trio provide good backing. No weak tracks. Most are well known tunes like: 'God Bless the Child', 'See See Rider' etc... My favorite is "I'd rather drink muddy water"

Willie Dixon said "blues is the truth", if that is true, and it is, then they recorded this session with one hand on the Bible, swearing to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.

Lou Rawls -- AT LAST

This is Rawls 27 years later. Still on Blue Note. Sort of like a complilation. Lou is joined by Dianne Reeves, Ray Charles, Stanley Turrentine,David 'fathead' Newman and Bobby Hutcherson.

A more sophisticated outing. Better arrangements and much larger band in support. I like the singing on this one best. He seems to be into the songs to a degree he was not in the first disc. Experience? This is the mature Lou Rawls that we all know.

11 Tracks. All good. He does a duet with Ray on, 'That's Where It's At' and with Dianne on 'At Last'. Great stuff.

For Rawls fans, both are must haves.. His first, and close to His last.

Cheers

BTW,
The avant-garde,and Free Jazz, Bullshit!?!?!! Why I never heard of such a thing!!! You can add Southwest Pakistani folk Jazz etc... to the list also.

Where were you two, when I was saying the same thing? All I got for my trouble were attacks from all sides.

You just can't keep the truth down, you just can't do it! :) Welcome to the light, and the fight.

Frogman, love your BS comment. I agree wholeheartedly that there is too much PC going on in the music world, especially in jazz, but also in classical.

Rok, my feelings about "free" jazz have not changed for quite some time. I seem to recall a couple of earlier discussions about it. But, to be clear, I don't consider ALL free jazz to be bullshit; quite the contrary. If I am not mistaken, one of those discussions was about Coltrane's "free" period. I would never consider that to be bullshit. My comments were about some players who jumped on the "free" bandwagon without having any mastery of the traditional. Occasionally, a genius comes along whose innate musical vocabulary is so different that he has something to say even without any substantive roots in the traditional vocabulary, so there is real value. Many others...; well, I think I have used up my quota of that word for a while. IMO, of course, and I am sure some more "open minded" consider that opinion to be....

Learsfool, his musical style aside, how did you feel about Jack Teagarden as an instrumentalist; as a brass player? Thanks.

Lou Rawls had a long and very successful career; he's well represented in my collection.

I just received "The 100 best jazz tunes of the 50's", and I only quit listening to go to bed. This compilation is the perfect compliment to the book "Three Wishes". Bird's photo does not appear in the book, I believe the thought of Bird and the way he died in her apartment was too painful for Nica; but all of the other musicians in this compilation, also have photos in the book.

While I already have 90% of this compilation, I still find it a great asset; my record collection is totally unorganized since I primarily rely on CD's for my listening pleasure, that makes finding an LP a really big job. At this time I'm in a jazz aficionado's heaven.

Enjoy the music.