Jazz for aficionados

Hope Orpheus will not be absent for long, as somebody has to 'hold the line' with ' groovy drum CHIN-ka-CHIN’s and beautiful, bluesy melodies inside cozy and familiar structures.'...

So, this time, I will take that part....

First, album that Jafant just posted and that I have ordered yesterday.

Wes Montgomery and Wynton Kelly, 'Smokin' at Seatlle', recorded some six months after the famous gig at the Half Note...here is the link.....

https://youtu.be/aOuIZf5RXc4


Frogman mentioned Spaulding so I decided to add this album as well, where he plays with another of his favourite players, S.Turrentine, together with P.Adams, G.Green,and McCoy Tyner, but still inside the mode of above cited quote...

https://youtu.be/OXgEPBYGk-I

@frogman - Put your cursor over the album image to watch the You Tube progress line using the link below for the track, "Genesis".
Around the 3 min 30 sec mark (after the bass solo starting at 2:10/2:12), a sax solo starts. My ear might not be that great distinguishing tenor from alto, esp if tenor is being played in the upper register, but regardless, after a slow build, this solo unfolds its wings and really flies.

The subsequent transition into Freddie’s solo is striking as it is so seamless. Sax morphing into trumpet...or is that flugelhorn? :-)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5MYhg4aVOSY

I’m aware of the Varese/Zappa connection. Don’t wanna set on fire the hair of any of the orthodox faithful here but got to think Frank and Wayne were listening to similar things around this time.

Thanks to Alexatpos for those links.

I take it you didn't care for Shorter's "TASE"?  Personally, I don't like to eat dessert all the time and only dessert 😎

Great clips, Alex; thanks!  Fantastic lineup on that Turrentine record.
"Hold the line"?  I'm still working on my main course.

Whereas one knows from the very first notes of "TASE" that it's going to be something very different (and it stays that way), I find Andrew Hill's music to be unique in that it often feels like a constant tease.  It always seems to straddle that line where it feels fairly conventional and familiar, but manages to always stay on the other side of it.  He had a unique and odd time feel that creates a lot of tension but always has musical logic.  Similar to the way Monk played rhythm, but on steroids:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-LBOOWnpNXc

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mDWlZPlSdOA

Ghosthouse, after the bass solo, if one listens closely, Wayne Shorter softly creeps in and starts his solo at precisely 3:22. Definitely tenor and, as you say, it flies. The transition to Freddie’s solo is interesting. If I’m not mistaken, the first thing one hears after the tenor solo sounds to me like a single note by Moncur on muted trombone (the exact same note that Shorter ends his solo with). After that single inflected note by Moncur, as if to say "you take it, Freddie", Hubbard starts his solo. Unusual sequence, but interesting. Freddie on trumpet not flugelhorn, btw. Great stuff! And great listening on your part.

Re Zappa/Varese: no doubt those guys were listening to a lot of the same music. Most prominent jazz players took classical music very seriously and listened to all the great composers; especially the modern composers. Bird loved Stravinsky, and one of his signature "Birdsms" (some might call it a Bird "cliche") is a quote, or melodic nugget, from Stravinsky’s "The Firebird".

http://www.npr.org/sections/deceptivecadence/2013/05/26/186486269/why-jazz-musicians-love-the-rite-o...

That single note after the tenor solo had me listening to it several times as I was trying to decide whether what I was hearing was in fact on muted trombone and not Hubbard’s first note on trumpet. It’s a very low note, and while it would still be in the extreme lower range of the trumpet and possible for a great instrumentalist like Hubbard, it is unusual to have a player "hand-off" a solo to another player that way. But, given the highly interactive nature of this music it’s not out of the realm of possibility. However, final verdict (for me):

It is a single note on trombone. Listen to the vibrato at the end of that note and right before Hubbard plays his first note on trumpet. That is what is called "slide vibrato"; made by quickly moving the slide back and forth a very short distance. Not possible on trumpet since there is no slide on the trumpet and on which "lip vibrato" is used. However....why did he play that single note? My previous possible answer sounded interesting (I think), but I have to take it back. Notice Moncur solos following Hubbard at 8:43. I think he simply screwed up and started soloing after Shorter instead of waiting until Hubbard had soloed. He then realized his mistake (or was waved out) and stopped. Being the great musicians that they are, they made it all sound musical. All this goes to your question re how "scripted" it all was. In a studio situation with a finite amount of time ($) there are definite guidelines re order of solos and length of solos. To make it all sound free and unscripted is part of the art of it all. This sort of thing happens and happened a lot more often than one might think. Today in our age of easy digital editing, multi-tracking and quest for error-free performances, the producer may have simply taken that note out; a big mistake, imo.