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

Be Bop is too complex a music to be simplified in writing; it boils down to either you hear it or you don't; it has been called Chinese music by some.



    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dvdQYSWOobc



    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGXFuxKTbfY



    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ryNtmkfeJk4



Copied from "Wiki"
         
Through these musicians, a new vocabulary of musical phrases was created. With Parker, Gillespie jammed at famous jazz clubs like Minton's Playhouse and Monroe's Uptown House. Parker's system also held methods of adding chords to existing chord progressions and implying additional chords within the improvised lines



Parker was a highly influential jazz soloist and a leading figure in the development of bebop,[2] a form of jazz characterized by fast tempos, virtuosic technique and advanced harmonies. Parker was a blazingly fast virtuoso, and he introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions. His tone ranged from clean and penetrating to sweet and somber. Parker acquired the nickname "Yardbird" early in his career.[3] This, and the shortened form "Bird", continued to be used for the rest of his life, inspiring the titles of a number of Parker compositions, such as "Yardbird Suite", "Ornithology", "Bird Gets the Worm", and "Bird of Paradise". Parker was an icon for the hipster subculture and later the Beat Generation, personifying the jazz musician as an uncompromising artist and intellectual rather than just an entertainer.[4]
O-10, as always, I am sorry that a more enlightened discussion is not possible. There are two things going on here as is usual. You want to be right about an incomplete viewpoint that you hold no matter how much evidence is presented that points to the contrary. Then, you make an argument for your viewpoint with assertions that do not contradict the opposing viewpoint, but which are, in fact, part of the whole picture; as if this would make your case.  You don’t see that irony because your viewpoint is incomplete. We tend to see what we want to see. I would simply ask this question: how would it be possible for someone to understand the evolutionary process that led to bebop when that listener, by his own admission, has not listened to very much of, nor is interested in listening to, the music that preceded it? Nice clips, btw.

Frogman, this is not philosophy or psychology, this is music; it is the discussion, not what you say, or what I say. When you say Be Bop, you say "Bird"; there was no Be Bop before "Bird".

Parker was a blazingly fast virtuoso, and he introduced revolutionary harmonic ideas including rapid passing chords, new variants of altered chords, and chord substitutions.

I'm not a musician, I don't really know what that means, but I can hear it; even with "Bird With Strings".



                https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmRkZeGFONg



Here I can hear all those "Be Bop" chords over the melody in such a way that nothing is lost in the melody; "Who else can do that"?


There are imitators and duplicators, but when you say "Be Bop" there is only one "Bird".



                        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ug0K62enZ5E



We have but one option, and that is to agree to disagree.





Thanks frogman for the link on the one song from what "some consider" the "first recorded bebop album". I know you do not agree and posted the link so I could hear certain similarities in Hawkins' "improvised chords". However it is nothing like what Bird was doing during the same period.