Blue Meets Red: Baltimore 1966

For many years, the Left Bank Jazz Society of Baltimore put on an astonishing array of jazz concerts featuring the top players in the country. Many of these shows were recorded, but their subsequent fate makes up a convoluted tale that need not detain us. Happily, over the years a number of the tapes have been released by various small labels. A few months ago, I  posted on one of those releases, featuring Freddie Hubbard and Jimmy Heath. I have a number of other Left Bank releases on my pile, including Blue Mitchell and Sonny Red: Baltimore 1966, the subject of today’s post,  courtesy of Uptown Records, an outstanding reissue label that always includes copious liner notes.

One of the things I love about these releases is the enthusiasm of the audiences. They obviously were knowledgeable about the music and liked to let the musicians know how they felt. This set is especially valuable because it documents some fine work by Sonny Red (aka Sylvester Kyner), tart-toned alto player who released a relatively small number of albums in his all-too-short career. His aggressive style contrasts with Blue Mitchell’s classic hard bop trumpet sound. John Hicks, whose piano work I need to delve into more deeply, is consistently excellent, and it’s nice to hear Joe Chambers on drums in a more mainstream context. Bassist Gene Taylor, like Mitchell, was fresh from a lengthy stint in Horace Silver’s classic band.

The repertoire mostly consists of standards like If I Should Lose You, Portrait of Jenny, and I Can’t Get Started (the latter featuring Red, even though it’s often a showpiece for trumpeters), along with Mitchell’s infectious Fungi Mama, Jimmy Heath’s All Members, and Blue Spring Variation, a semi-clone of a Kenny Dorham composition. If you like mid-Sixties hard bop, you need this album!

Here are Blue Spring Variation and I Can't Get Started.

More Pleasure Than Pain: J.R. Montrose and Tommy Flanagan

This post’s origins began with the great Catalan pianist Tete Montoliu’s solo version of Theme for Ernie, the hauntingly beautiful elegy for alto saxophonist Ernie henry, who died too young of the heroin plague in 1957. I was impress enough the composition  to do a bit of research, which turned up a lot of information on the composer, Fred Lacey, and other obscure figures, courtesy of bassist-writer Steve Wallace. As is my wont, I started listening to other versions, including that of John Coltrane, which made it a jazz standard. I then tried a duo version by J.R. Montrose (tenor and soprano) and Tommy Flanagan (pno). It totally bowled me over and sent me off to locate a copy of this 1981 recording on Reservoir Records.

A Little Pleasure (derived from one of the two Montrose compositions on the album) is a really remarkable recording. According to the liner notes, Flanagan and Montrose were friends who had worked together a number of times over the years. From my limited listening, I had thought of Montrose as a hard-charging hard bop player but this recording, mostly consisting of ballads and medium-tempo tunes, shows extraordinary sensitivity and deep emotion, beautifully complemented by Tommy Flanagan’s equally elegant and thoughtful approach (I still vividly remember a great night of Flanagan’ music in the mid-70s at DC’s Harold’s Rogue and Jar).

Whether drawing on the Great American Songbook (Never let Me Go, A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square), the Modern Jazz Songbook (Con Alma, Central Park West, Twelve Tone Tune), or Montrose originals (Pain and Suffering…and a Little Pleasure, Vinnie’s Pad) these two masters produced a fine set, worthy of much ore notoriety than it apparently received over the years.

Here are Theme for Ernie and A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.

Appearance and Reality: Abdul Zahir Batin and the Notorious Ensemble

The drummer Abdul Zahir Batin is a mysterious character. Over the years, he’s recorded with Archie Shepp and Sunny Murray and worked with Kaki Byard, Howard McGhee, and others. If you look for him online, though, most references are to him selling his only recording as leader on the streets of New York. Per YouTube, he was still doing so just a couple of years ago, even though the recording was made for Cadence Jazz Records in 1986.

Live at the Jazz Cultural Theatre features His Notorious Ensemble, a floating aggregation of musicians gathered together to play Zahir Batin’s music. This edition features a 1980s all-star roster: Bobby Watson (as), Cecil Bridgewater (tpt), John Hicks (piano), Robin Eubanks (trom), and Curtis Lundy (bass). Most of the compositions are by the leader, except for a polyphonic medley of standards. In content, they’re hard driving post-bop tunes with excellent solos all around.

In Islamic thought, “zahir” represents outward reality, whereas “batin” stands for the inner meaning of things. True to his art and spirituality, Zahir Batin may still be out there, offering his music to the public in the most direct way possible. I like to think that he’s still around, and that one day—post-COVID—I’ll encounter him and buy another copy (the used one I have is inscribed and autographed by the artist, but not to me, of course). Meanwhile, think about what it takes to be true to your faith and your art, why don’t you? 

A Seventies Classic: Tales of the Exonerated Flea

When Horacee Arnold’s Tales of the Exonerated Flea came out, I was still reading Downbeat, and a positive review piqued my interest. Whenever I listen to it, I’m amazed that it’s not better known. With Jan Hammer, Rick Laird, Ralph Towner, John Abercrombie, Sonny Fortune, Dom Um Romao, David Friedman, Clint Houston, and George Mraz on board, all driven by their drummer-leader, it’s a cross-section of Seventies fusion jazz at its best. Tales is a forgotten classic that should be better known. Check out Sing Nightjar and Chinnereth II and you’ll see what I mean.  Happily, Horacee Arnold is still active in the music world, and planning a reimagining of Tales. I’m in!

Here's Sing Nightjar...

...and Chinnereth II.

Everyone Ought to Get Hip to Larry McKenna

I found out about Larry McKenna several years ago just before our annual trip to the Jersey shore. The local cultural foundation was sponsoring a jazz concert right after our schedule arrival and, even though I didn’t know anything about the leaders, Larry McKenna (tenor) and Tony Miceli (vibes), I bought tickets in advance. When we got there, most of the attendees in front of the venue were dressed in slightly swanky beach attire except for us and four slightly disheveled guys whom my sons immediately and correctly tagged as the band.

All of the members of the quartet were excellent, but I was most impressed by McKenna. Like Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, Brew Moore, and Allen Eager, he played with the relaxed sense of swing I associate with those Lester Young disciples. To me, his staying in the Philly area instead of heading for New York is the only reason he’s not as well known. His recordings have been for small labels, and I’ve managed to get a couple over time. I’ve been meaning to do a post about him, but the death of his Fellow Philadelphian Bootsie Barnes the other day made me buckle down. For one thing, McKenna and Barnes did an album together a couple of years ago; for another, they’re both in a group disproportionately vulnerable to COVID-19, which made things a bit more urgent.

Larry McKenna Plays Harold Arlen: My Shining Hour includes great songs like the title track (a favorite of mine), Let’s Fall in Love, Get Happy, and many other Arlen classics, all played with an incomparable sense of swing and melodic inventiveness. He’s ably backed by Bill Shilling on piano and guitar), Dom Mancini on bass, and Butch Reed on drums. It’s a rare opportunity to hear an exemplar of a kind of jazz that’s seldom practiced my contemporary artists, who often can’t see back past John Coltrane.  Do yourself a favor in these parlous times, and check out Larry McKenna—there are lots of great examples of his playing on YouTube, and his recordings aren’t that hard to find.

Here’s Out of this World, with a very different than the Coltrane version with which I was more familiar.

Discovery: The Nathan Davis Quartet, Live in a Swiss Monastery

In a post I did last year discussing the trumpeter Dusko Goykovich, I said that the saxophonist Nathan Davis was "seriously underrated." Because most of his recordings were made in Europe in the Sixties and Seventies, he never got much acclaim in the U.S. They're either available in vinyl only or in very pricey used CDs. Yesterday, someone posted Jazz Concert in a benedictine  Monastery, a rather obscure LP on the Edici label, on YouTube. I clicked on it and was totally blown away. Davis plays wonderfully on tenor, soprano, and flute, accompanied by the always interesting Mal Waldron on piano, Jimmy Woode on bass, and Art Taylor on drums. I didn't want to waste any time drawing it to your attention, so here it is. Enjoy!

Jazz Latin Jazz: Ray Barretto and New World Spirit

I heard Ray Barretto and New World Spirit quite a few years ago at the Kennedy Center, who at that time included Joe Magnarelli and Myron Walden—not too shabby. On Contact!, The front line is Michael Philip Mossman on trumpet (and trombone on one track) and Adam Kolker on tenor and soprano. I wasn’t familiar with Kolker, and he’s excellent. As form Mossman, I really enjoyed his concert on the Latin side of Jelly Roll Morton at the Kennedy Center a few years ago, including Paquito de Rivera and a flamenco dancer—a fine trumpeter both in and out of Latin jazz.

As the liner notes say, this album is not “Latin jazz,” but rather jazz with Latin overtones. Barretto straddled both worlds, but I suspect he leaned a bit more toward the jazzier end of the spectrum.  More up-tempo tracks like Moss Code, Liberated Spirit, and Sister Sadie are really excellent, and the band is good enough to make me like their version of Michel Legrand’s The Summer Knows—and don't miss their arrangement of Caravan.Strong work from pianist John Di Martino, Jairo Moreno and Hans Glawishnig on bass, Vince Cherico on drums, Ray Vega on percussion, and, of course, Barretto on congas, makes this a go-to  recording in the vein of Conrad Herwig’s Latin takes on Miles, Coltrane, and others.

Here's Caravan and Point of Contact.

Burning: Freddie Hubbard and Jimmy Heath "Live" at the Left Bank

Listening to Jam Gems: Freddie Hubbard and Jimmy Health “Live” at the Left Bank, with a super- enthusiastic Left Bank Jazz Society audience testifying volubly throughout is good for what ails you, COVID-19 or not. I own several albums of LBJS material and wish that more were available. Jam Gems is pretty much all Freddie and Jimmy, although Wilbur Little, Bertell Knox, and Gus Simms provide solid rhythm support. Hubbard had amazing chops and a fearless attack, out to flamboyant use on this date, and Heath is, if anything, even more impressive (in the liner notes, he says “I took some of my longest recorded solos”). I’ve included the first track (All Members) and a link to the entire album of up-tempo killer tracks. Even Lover Man is more burner than torch song. Kick back and enjoy, and thank you, Baltimore!

Freewheelin' with Claudio Roditi

The recent death of trumpeter Claudio Roditi prompted me to pull out Freewheelin,’ his Lee Morgan tribute album. I remembered it as being an excellent hard bop outing and relistening has confirmed that recollection. I do have a couple of additional thoughts, though.

Lee Morgan was a fine composer. Aside from The Sidewinder, his biggest hit (and check out Bob Cranshaw’s amusing account of how that recording session went down), tunes like The Joker and Our Man Higgins are deserving of more attention than they usually get. I especially liked the somewhat plaintive Peyote.

Andres Boiarsky. Years, ago, when he was a part of Slide Hampton’s Dizzy Gillespie big band, I heard him at James Moody’s 80^th birthday celebration at the Kennedy Center. I had never heard of him, but he played an outrageously good solo that left him and the sax section beaming. Like Roditi, Boiarsky is Argentinian, and he’s still active on the jazz scene there. His playing is great throughout this album.

Nick Brignola. He’s on only a few tracks on baritone and soprano, but he’s always a pleasure to hear. He goes after every tune with gusto.

Claudio Roditi. In his obituary, I learned that he played a rotary valve trumpet, which looks like it’s being held sideways, rather than the more common piston trumpet, as you can see on the album cover. Supposedly the rotary trumpet produces a mellower tone, but it would take better ears than mine to detect it based on this album, which finds Roditi in a definite Morgan groove. What a fine trumpeter he was! He'll be much missed.

The rhythm section. Mark Soskin on piano, the ubiquitous Buster Williams on bass (and I really want to see the new documentary about him), and Chip White on drums all contribute mightily and get some solo room, too.

Here's the inevitable The Sidewinder:

 The Joker: 

And Peyote:

No Messing Around: The Jackie Mac Attack Live

This is some of the hottest music I've listened to in quite a while. I've always loved Jackie McLean's music but I have to plead ignorance about most of his post- Blue Note output. I've read that in his later years, his teaching duties took him away from performing, and even that his playing suffered as a result. On The Jackie Mac Attack Live, recorded at a jazz club in Belgium in 1992, "attack" is the operative word. From the first notes of Cyclical, the first track, McLean is burning. No matter what the tune or tempo, he really chews up the music . Ably abetted by the wonderfully named South Africa Pianist Idris Hotep Galeta, with strong support from the fine drummer Carl Allen (I heard him a couple of years ago with the Mack Avenue All Stars) and bassist Nat Reeves, this is a no BS, hard-charging recording from start to finish. Note: The CD I bought was billed as "new," but I had serious playback issue on a couple of tracks; when I looked at the disk, it looked worse than a lot of used CDs I've seen. Just sayin...

For a taste, here's Minor March.