Jazz for aficionados

"Into the misty mid region of Weir"; here is where this music takes you if you listen from beginning to end.


BY EDGAR ALLAN POE
The skies they were ashen and sober;
      The leaves they were crispéd and sere—
      The leaves they were withering and sere;
It was night in the lonesome October
      Of my most immemorial year;
It was hard by the dim lake of Auber,
      In the misty mid region of Weir—
It was down by the dank tarn of Auber,
      In the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir.


              https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wftjgLr4Yds

@orpheus10 Ah Blue Train--I have played this recording too many times to count. Trust me, my family tells me so. The whole album is wonderful and the title song itself never grows old to me.  
From the original liner notes: "The title number, Blue Train, is a moving, eerie blues. Trane rides swiftly down a lonesome track with Lee (Morgan) and Curtis (Fuller) shoveling extra coal into the boiler near the end of his solo....What is the most striking attribute (among many) about this LP is its free, but not disorganized, blowing mood that has everyone in exceptional from both individually and collectively"--Robert Levin
Levin got it right in describing the whole of this record. I too think the song Blue Train, recorded here, is close to jazz perfection.
I must say that Rudy Van Gelder listened to some of the best music ever made in real time--right there in front him.  

RVG was the man alright, I used to just buy an album on his name alone .
But more i listen a lot of his work is too "in your face" for my current taste .

I understand what you mean about RVG’s sound. It’s excellence is undeniable, but it definitely had a signature. I suppose the ultimate goal for a recording engineer recording acoustic instruments is for the music to not sound "recorded". The "in your face" quality you refer to is there; the mic is very (too?) close to the horn. Still, his technique managed to capture the soul of the performance. If I may take a small liberty here, I would say that the reason that you don’t like that kind of sound may be due to your frequent attendance at classical music performances. In general, classical music performance values and recording techniques tend to give the listener a more distant perspective than other genres. This is very important since ensemble playing benefits from a certain distance to the listener. Musical interplay, tonal and rhythmic, by the players requires that distance for the harmonic envelopes of each instrument to fully develop on their way to the listener’s ears. This gives more meaning to things like ensemble blend and interplay. When things are recorded up close some of that information gets lost, in jazz as well as classical.

Btw, no yacht on Lake George here. My idea of chillin is to dig in the dirt at my upstate NY little piece of heaven where I can be around more "unknowns, and as it should be" (like someone very wise wrote in some other thread) than in the city.

I never thought of that but I think you are right frogman.
The reason I listen to Jazz is I grew up listening to swing, and
start of bop, all day, every day on the radio .
Still pissed from when rock came along and murdered it .
And as is well known , when one gets close to departing this vale
of tears one is comforted by things from your childhood .
Few seem to realize how great the composers of the best "standards" were,
to include word-smiths like the Great Johnny Mercer .
I didn’t know great they were myself till I heard a first class Symphony
Orch., Berlin R.I.A.S., play "Stardust", Sleeply Time Girl" and many others few times a week.
In Classical I listen like a hawk for all elements which is uplifting but not relaxing .
Listening to Jazz 88.5 station here, I don’t know about the audience side of things , but on student and young player side , there is an tsunami of great young jazz talent out there .
Few days ago I heard some cuts from North Texas State Lab Band 1, they
reminded me of Artie Shaw or Charlie Barnett at their best, swinging and having a ball !
P.S . I don’t say Upstate NY is most beautiful place in the world because I was born in Syracuse, but because it is just the plain truth .