It was great to be back in the studio after a two-week hiatus, and I was pumped to play some brand new records, found on my travels while out of town. Some of the highlights included:
One of the coolest parts of today’s show though was spinning the original vinyl of the soundtrack to the 1988 documentary, Thelonious Monk: Straight, No Chaser. It features the stunning original recording of Monk’s ballad to his dear friend, “Pannonica,” likely recorded in the fall of 1956. The documentary is sadly, currently out of print on DVD, but as promised, I wanted to post the link here – you can watch it on YouTube for free, for now. So take some time and enjoy. It’s a thing of beauty.
The Jazz Show is saddened to learn the news that Maurice White, founder of the legendary and groundbreaking group, Earth, Wind & Fire died last night at his home in L.A. He was 74. His brother and bandmate, Verdine White, confirmed the news with the Associated Press.
Jazz fans may remember White as the one-time drummer for the Ramsey Lewis Trio around 1968, after Young and Holt were no longer in the group. Here’s a fantastic recording of that version of the band, playing live in Tokyo, and featuring White playing a solo on his famous Kalimba a year before EWF ever started.
“Singer/drummer/songwriter/producer Maurice White founded the ’70s supergroup Earth, Wind & Fire.White, a former session drummer for legendary Chicago-based labels OKeh Records and Chess Records (Etta James, Fontella Bass, Billy Stewart, Ramsey Lewis, Sonny Stitt‘s 1966 LP Soul in the Night, the Radiants, among others), aspired to form a band like no other pop music had ever known. It certainly was successful, as EWF combined high-caliber musicianship, a wide-ranging musical genre eclecticism, and ’70s multicultural spiritualism that included Biblical references.
The Chicago-born band had 46 charting R&B singles and 33 charting pop singles (including eight gold singles), won six Grammys and four American Music Awards, and earned more than 50 gold and platinum albums. Charles Stepney, a former Chess arranger, producer, session musician, multi-instrumentalist, and songwriter, was White‘s main collaborator on his EWF projects and sides created through his Kalimba Productions and released on ARC, White‘s Columbia-distributed label. ThoughEWF is White‘s best-known band, earlier he had formed the Salty Peppers with his brother, EWFbassist Verdine White, who recorded “Uh Hun Yeah” b/w “Your Love Is Life” for Capitol Records.” – AllMusic.com
EWF’s hits will be on the radio and on your mixtapes forever. Here’s some of our favorite lesser-known gems from their catalog:
This past Sunday the Jazz Show welcomed a new member to the Jazz Squad: DJ Roy M!
Roy will be pinch hitting for us as the team grows and we’re looking forward to seeing what kinda heat he has in his heavy stacks at home.
Roy, along with regular 2nd set host Achim, played a great and widespread set, featuring the likes of the great Curtis Amy on Verve Records, Yusef Lateef from his classic Live at Pep’s set, contemporary work from Adam Rudolph and even a super rare 1969 recording of the NTSU Jazz Band(!). One we are particularly excited to write about though is a trumpeter who seems to get lost in the shuffle by the general jazz public, Charles Tolliver.
A fantastically original trumpeter, Tolliver came on the scene at the end of the ’60s, getting his first major recording on Jackie McLean’s Blue Note LP “It’s Time!” He was a college student who’d earned a reputation by playing in local jam sessions and through a mutual friend, without hearing him play live, McLean offered Tolliver the studio job, where he’d play next to none other than Herbie Hancock, Cecil McBee and Roy Haynes, not to mention his already famous leader.
Tolliver would go on to play with Max Roach, Horace Silver, Roy Ayers and many others and ultimately form his own group, Music Inc. with friend and pianist Stanley Cowell. The two would create their own record label, Strata-East Records (a legendary story worthy of it’s own documentary) to distribute their own independent albums – a seemingly endless catalog of great jazz records.
Tolliver’s work with Music Inc spanned sparse quartet settings to orchestra sized big band albums. He still records today and has earned his place as one of the last in the line of great innovative trumpeters. Thanks to the internet and groups like Mosaic, his discography has been rediscovered by a new generation of jazz fans – who’ve inflated the second-hand price of his albums dramatically. Look for anything by Charles Tolliver because, it’s all good.
On Sunday Achim spun a diverse, complex and varied set of artists, and if you know the show, you’d expect nothing less. He played spiritual cuts by John Coltrane and Nat Birchall, the heavy fusion of Miles at the Fillmore East, vocal tip-toeing from the great Greg Porter and much more.
But one of the highlights of the show was when Achim spun an artist whose very name evokes rampant discussion in the jazz world and the avant-garde community as a whole, Anthony Braxton.
Millennials may simply know him better as the father of Tyondai Braxton, guitarist, keyboardist and vocalist with the rock band Battles.
“Braxton’s music is difficult to categorize, and because of this, he likes to refer to his works (and the works of his collaborators and students) as simply “creative music”. He has claimed in numerous interviews that he is not a jazz musician, though many of his works have been jazz and improvisation oriented, and he has released many albums of jazz standards. For example, in an interview Braxton explains, “even though I have been saying I’m not a jazz musician for the last 25 years; in the final analysis, an African-American with a saxophone? Ahh, he’s jazz!””
“Braxton is notorious for naming his pieces as diagrams, typically labeled with cryptic numbers and letters. Sometimes these diagrams have an obvious relation to the music – for instance, on the album For Trio the diagram-title indicates the physical positions of the performers, but in many cases the diagram-titles remain inscrutable. The titles can themselves be musical notation indicating to the performer how a piece is played. Sometimes the letters are identifiable as the initials of Braxton’s friends and musical colleagues.
Braxton has pointedly refused to explain their significance, claiming that he himself is still discovering their meaning. Braxton eventually settled on a system of opus-numbers to make referring to these pieces simpler, and earlier pieces have had opus-numbers retroactively added to them.
By the mid-to-late 1980s, Braxton’s titles had become increasingly complex. They began to incorporate drawings and illustrations, such as in the title of his four-act opera cycle, Trillium R. Others began to include lifelike images of inanimate objects, namely train cars. The latter was most notably seen after the advent of his Ghost Trance Music system.
In the twenty-first century, he still actively performs with ensembles of varying sizes, and has to date written well over 350 compositions. He has just recently finished the last batch of Ghost Trance Music compositions, and has now shown his interest in three other music systems: The Diamond Curtain Wall Trio, in which Braxton implements the aid of the computer audio programming language SuperCollider; Falling River Musics; and, most recently, Echo Echo Mirror House music, which is meant to hone in many different types of performance arts in addition to music. In addition to their own instruments, musicians playing Echo Echo Mirror House compositions incorporate amplified mp3 players loaded with Braxton’s discography to create a unique sound-space.” — Wikipedia
His body of work is staggering, and overwhelming to say the least, for any jazz fan, novice or no. But if you’re interested in dipping a toe into his universe, start with some of his earlier works with Woody Shaw, his ’72 album for the French label America or his work on SteepleChase (his later interpretation of “Donna Lee” on the contrabass clarinet, working with Tete Montoliu and NHOP, is something to be heard).
Braxton is a fascinating figure and a composer whose work will be studied and reinterpreted for years to come.
We spun some heavy jams for the first set of yesterday’s Sunday Jazz show, but none were more fun than celebrating and saying Happy Birthday to Houston’s own BILLY HARPER. Harper was born in Houston and studied at North Texas State. He moved to NYC in the mid 60s and started what would become a legendary, and still thriving, career in jazz. Working with the likes of Gil Evans, Max Roach, Art Blakey, Woody Shaw and on and on, we spun his debut as a leader for the legendary Strata-East Records, as well as a cut from his second LP, “Black Saint,” the record that launched the famed Italian jazz label of the same name, and his work with Lee Morgan on Blue Note Records. Harper is still very active on today’s scene (he just did a weekend long stint at the Smoke Club and we’re jealous of anyone who got to go). Below are some of our favorites from one of the greatest tenor players of all time:
Yesterday’s show was a winner. We payed rightful tribute to Paul Bley with some of his solo work, trio work and his work as part of the Jimmy Giuffre 3. We also sent a big ol’ HBD to the great Max Roach, spinning cuts from his days with Atlantic Records as well as his timeless work with Clifford Brown as the Brown & Roach Quintet. Perhaps the most exciting piece though was played towards the end of the four o’clock hour.
In 1976, pianist Harry Whitaker, a player of relative obscurity, recorded two long cuts, enough to make a full length album, under the name Black Renaissance. Working with him were, among others, Woody Shaw, Azar Lawrence, David Schnitter, Buster Williams & Billy Hart. That collection of talent on one record alone would be enough to earn a cult following. But there’s more to the story. Whitaker sent the tapes off to Japan to be privately pressed and sent back to him for personal sales. Someone in Japan stole the tapes and the music was eventually released on Japan’s Baystate Records, without Whitaker receiving any money for the album’s sales. Still, while not a hit record by any stretch, it’s reputation for being an epic in the spiritual jazz sub-genre grew, and over the years, record collectors began shelling out hundreds of dollars for a copy of the album, long out of print. Luckily, Luv n’ Haight Records has reissued the classic LP for new listeners at a far more affordable price, and on lush red vinyl no less. We spun the A-Side yesterday, “Black Renaissance,” and at 23-plus minutes long, to call it epic is fair. The structure is built around Buster Williams’ funky bass riff and Whitaker’s thick chords; each player given a song’s worth of time to stretch out on a solo and make the song their own. And just when you think the cut is over, Williams comes back and begins again. It’s a perfect time-capsule for jazz in 1976, with elements of the spiritual, funk, free and modal jazz all showing themselves over the course of the song. Woody Shaw’s trumpet solo alone is worth the price of admission. Luckily, you can listen to it (again and again) on youtube. Here’s THE LINK. ENJOY!
We at the Sunday Jazz Show are very saddened to learn the news this morning that legendary pianist Paul Bley has died. We highly recommend reading the official note from Bley’s daughter and the obituary as published by the Ottawa Citizen today.
Below are some of our favorite tunes from Bley throughout the years. We’ll be spinning his work in different settings throughout both sets on Sunday. Until then, press play!
On the second set Sunday, Achim started the New Year off with a heavy dose of avant-garde, and we’d expect nothing less. Over the years Achim has been a bastion for avant-garde jazz on Houston radio and as we start a new year, we’re excited to see what intergalactic, sonic journeys he’ll take us on. One standout from the middle of his evening set comes from one of saxophonist Marion Brown’s most heralded and sought-after albums, Geechi Recollections (Impulse! 1973).
“[The album] was the first in a trilogy of recordings by [Brown] that both honored the work of poet Jean Toomer and revisited his upbringing in Georgia. Together, they form arguably the most beautiful and satisfying output of Brown‘s lengthy career. The music, while remaining experimental, is grounded in Southern folk themes and blues…”
HAPPY NEW YEAR from the KTRU Sunday Jazz team! We think we started the year off strong with a good, varied playlist in the fist set. Here’s some of our favorites from the early portion of the show – click on the links to listen! And here’s the whole set list. Just in case. HNY!
The last cut of the show Sunday was taken from a legendary lost album. Lost twice really. Reissued on the Unheard Music Series as a CD in 2000, saxophonist Joe McPhee’s three-song LP Nation Time, originally released on indie label CjRecords in 1971 is a sprawling combination of free-jazz-funk-soul-righteousness. Once again out of print and fetching high prices for even the reissues, we bumped through the speakers the second cut on the CD, “Shakey Jake.”
You can listen to it here. With Joe McPhee (tenor sax), Otis Greene (alto sax), Dave Jones (electric guitar), Herbie Lehman (organ) and Bruce Thompson (drums). Recorded live at Chicago Hall at the Vassar College Urban Center for Black Studies, December, 1970.
