Satchmo's Jive Essence 42

Antonio · 06-17-2009, 10:41 AM

hey Satchmo, just posting to say i really enjoy what you're doing here and keep it up. i especially like the Leviathan mention

.

oh and good review on A Tribe Called Quest, i dl'ed the cd after reading it

SATCHMO · 06-17-2009, 11:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 333

I dug this more than the actual review itself. It reminds me of how old you really are. :P

No, really, though - if anything, it is this story that will influence me to grab the album. In fact, any album that a frantic deaf guy hands me will at least deserve 3 listens. I'm a sucker for words and even weaker in the knees for a good story teller. Well played, sir.

Yeah, its fairly easy to see that since I wrote the review immediately after I wrote the preface that most of my creative energy went into the storytelling, which is good; I wanted the story to carry the energy of what this album is to me.

P.S I replaced the album art with a youtube video of the opening song from Low End Theory to give further dimension to the impact of the experience.

333 · 06-17-2009, 12:07 PM

I checked it out along with the one that you PMed me. Very nice. I'm looking forward to more reviews.

SATCHMO · 06-22-2009, 05:09 AM

Interlude

As I intimated in the introductory post to this thread one of the major mistakes that a lot of jazz buffs make in reccomending transitional albums to jazz novices is in reccomending jazz fusion albums. The problem with this, for the most part, isn't that there's anything inherently terrible about fusion, it's just that 90% of the time there's nothing inherently "jazz" about it either.

The biggest challenge to transitioning from contemporary (rock, hip-hop, country et al.) to jazz is acclamating from one musical rhetoric (i.e. means of communicating an idea concept, in this case a musical concept) to another. Jazz fusion still largely works outside of the framework of jazz rhetoric, and is pretty much just exploratory instrumental rock. It bears association with jazz in genre name and artist association only. There are some fantastic fusion albums, and some will undoubtedly make appearances in this thread, but in reality most fusion really deserves to be classified in the prog genre, and I find that I can appreciate it much better from that perspective, but as a sub-genre of jazz.....no, it aint happenin'.

Well the obvious question then would be "what genre of music would be the closest approximation of the fusion of two very divergent ways of conveying a musical concept?", and the clear and present answer to that question in my mind is soul.

For the most part we don't make too much of a connection between jazz and soul for two reasons. First and foremost is that we are at best conditioned to immediately associate jazz with instrumental music. Truthfully the majority of jazz is instrumental, but some of the greatest jazz ever made came from singers such as Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat "King" Cole just to name a few.
The second reason why we fail to make a connection between jazz and soul is that soul has inherent in it the element of Southern gospel music, and it was the introduction of this element and it's "hymnal" structure and passionate vocals to the jazz and rhythm and blues music that were the dominant musical genres at the time of soul's inception that is really reponsible for it's distinctive sound.

Speaking of distinctive sounds. We can largely set-up 50's - 70's soul into two camps. We have The Motown Record label out of Detroit, Michigan and its legendary producer/founder Barry Gordie. This label along with its exclusive house band The Funk Brothers was responsible for such greats as Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson.
On the Southeastern end of things you have Stax Records out of Memphis, Tennessee formed by white brother and sister label owners Jim Stewart and Estelle axton. Stax too had their own exclusive dedicated house band better known to most as Booker T and the MG's. The Stax record label, compared to Motown was known for a harder hitting grittier upbeat version of soul and were most famous for producing artists such as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Isaac Hayes. Stax was also widely know for promoting racially integrated soul music and were intrinsically connected and involved with Martin Luther King and the equal rights movement of the 50's and 60's.

Before any of this however there was the label that was there during the pop music crossover from Jazz to RnB to soul and produced some of the Greatest albums in all three of those genres: Atlantic Records.
Atlantic records and their famous trinity of Chairman Ahmet Ertegun, engineer Tom Dowd, and one of the greatest, if not the greatest, record producers to ever live Jerry Wexler. The list of artists which the Atlantic records was responsible for (and is still responsible for as its still the only of the three listed still actively producing artists) is immense and covers nearly every conceivable genre, but for our immediate purposes we only need to be concerned with one in Particular:

SATCHMO · 06-22-2009, 05:16 AM

# 33 Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul

Fella's if you really want to glean some good wisdom as to the wants and needs of women my suggestion would be to get your noses out of the Sexual Experience thread and pick up this album as soon possible. Hell, PM me. I'll hook a brother up.

Everything I ever learned about the proper care and treatment of a woman I learned from Aretha , at least all the good things anyway, and upon a recent listening to this album I can only say that Aretha tells me I have so much more to learn. (in case you're wondering if you should necessarily be taking relationship advice from a recently divorced man I'll tell you without that Aretha wouldn't have liked her at all).

In the opening song Chain of Fools the first few bars of the spring reverb saturated guitar followed by a full chorus lead in barely gets you set up for Aretha soulfully droppin' the truth "For 5 long years I thought you were my man, but I found out I'm just a link in yo' chain". If that doesn't make you feel guilty for having a penis it means you ain't got one.

The album continues steady and upbeat with Money Won't Change You and then slows down with the absolutely gorgeous rendition of Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready. Of course there's the classic (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, Good to Me as I am to You (my personal favorite), the beautiful and elequently tender ballad Aint No Way, and her unique interpretation of the classic Young Rascals hit Groovin'.

This album is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Aretha's discography, but it is my favorite, and she has produced a couple of jazz albums which are good as well, but I didn't really want to reach for something so close to what we're inching toward. To say that Aretha is an icon of American music would be a gross understatement. Her voice is the perfect fusion of Jazz melody and soulful pop sensibility, and undoubtedly the music we listen to today would not be the same without her.

lucifer_sam · 06-22-2009, 12:20 PM

i think perhaps funk may be an even closer approximation of the fiber of jazz within a different context, but soul is by far an expansive genre itself. and of course, Aretha is its queen, so very fitting of you to find a spot for her.

i must say though, this list is in dire need of some Joe Baiza, whether in regards to Saccharine Trust or one of his many collaborations. i still have yet to find a more inventive and imaginative jazz guitarist to eschew the tenets of "fusion" and all its proggier aspects for something so ballsy cool.

SATCHMO · 06-22-2009, 08:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lucifer_sam

i think perhaps funk may be an even closer approximation of the fiber of jazz within a different context....

In most ways you're right. However it can be argued that their really the same genre at different points in a progressive evolution. I do think if you examine the rhetoric of both soul and funk you'll see that funk has more superficial similarites to jazz while soul really captures the rhetorical essence more evenly across the board.
I chose really not to include it at this stage in the game for two reasons. One, because of it's overt similarities to jazz (keep in mind were progressing toward a jazz rhetoric and not away from it). And two because a lot of the fusion that was popular during the 70's heyday of fusion really fell into either the prog rock genre (eg. Return to Forever's Hymn of the 7th Galaxy) or the funk genre (eg. Herbie Hancock's Headhunter) as some of my future entries will show.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lucifer_sam

i must say though, this list is in dire need of some Joe Baiza, whether in regards to Saccharine Trust or one of his many collaborations. i still have yet to find a more inventive and imaginative jazz guitarist to eschew the tenets of "fusion" and all its proggier aspects for something so ballsy cool.

I like this. why don't you bounce in and right a little review?

Kamikazi Kat · 06-25-2009, 02:59 AM

Downloaded a few albums you reviewed in this thread Satchmo. I'm really loving the Minutemen. Its jazzy and funky with the raw punk energy. The vocals are unique and strong. The lyrics are philisophical at times but are always edgy, aggresive and always retain a sense of humor and sarcasm. It suits the music perfectly. The feel of the album is kept throughout the entire album, even when they start playing the more experimental stuff. Its even got the Jackass theme on it! What a great feeling, listening to a great album then all of a sudden corona starts playing. Had no idea that the song was from the Minutemen, such a nice surprise.

I also got The Low End Theory. I unknowningly downloaded a compilation of all of the songs the group got their samples from for the album at first which I am enjoying so far. Haven't got the chance to listen to much of the actual album yet, what I've heard so far is interesting.

SATCHMO · 06-25-2009, 03:04 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamikazi Kat

Downloaded a few albums you reviewed in this thread Satchmo. I'm really loving the Minutemen. Its jazzy and funky with the raw punk energy. The vocals are unique and strong. The lyrics are philisophical at times but are always edgy, aggresive and always retain a sense of humor and sarcasm. It suits the music perfectly. The feel of the album is kept throughout the entire album, even when they start playing the more experimental stuff. Its even got the Jackass theme on it! What a great feeling, listening to a great album then all of a sudden corona starts playing. Had no idea that the song was from the Minutemen, such a nice surprise.

I also got The Low End Theory. I unknowningly downloaded a compilation of all of the songs the group got their samples from for the album at first which I am enjoying so far. Haven't got the chance to listen to much of the actual album yet, what I've heard so far is interesting.

I meant to mention something about the Jackass song in my review of the album.

It's really great to see someone actually download the albums I'm suggesting. to tell you the truth I was starting to give up on the thread again because no one was replying to it. Now I have incentive to finish the next review soon. my next entry is a must have, but you have to wait. If you need any ups for any of the albums I review just PM me.

Kamikazi Kat · 06-25-2009, 03:19 AM

If it gives you more incentive to finish this thing, I'll strap a bomb to my head and rig it to explode when you stop continuing with this thread. Or it might work better if you strap a bomb to your head. You know what, we'll do both.

Looking forward to next review.

06-22-2009, 12:20 PM	#66 (permalink)
lucifer_sam Unrepentant Ass-Mod Join Date: Jun 2008 Location: Pennsylvania Posts: 3,921	i think perhaps funk may be an even closer approximation of the fiber of jazz within a different context, but soul is by far an expansive genre itself. and of course, Aretha is its queen, so very fitting of you to find a spot for her. i must say though, this list is in dire need of some Joe Baiza, whether in regards to Saccharine Trust or one of his many collaborations. i still have yet to find a more inventive and imaginative jazz guitarist to eschew the tenets of "fusion" and all its proggier aspects for something so ballsy cool. __________________ first.am

06-17-2009, 12:07 PM	#63 (permalink)
333 Music Addict Join Date: Mar 2009 Posts: 965	I checked it out along with the one that you PMed me. Very nice. I'm looking forward to more reviews.

06-22-2009, 05:09 AM	#64 (permalink)
SATCHMO Al Dente Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Texas Posts: 4,708	Interlude As I intimated in the introductory post to this thread one of the major mistakes that a lot of jazz buffs make in reccomending transitional albums to jazz novices is in reccomending jazz fusion albums. The problem with this, for the most part, isn't that there's anything inherently terrible about fusion, it's just that 90% of the time there's nothing inherently "jazz" about it either. The biggest challenge to transitioning from contemporary (rock, hip-hop, country et al.) to jazz is acclamating from one musical rhetoric (i.e. means of communicating an idea concept, in this case a musical concept) to another. Jazz fusion still largely works outside of the framework of jazz rhetoric, and is pretty much just exploratory instrumental rock. It bears association with jazz in genre name and artist association only. There are some fantastic fusion albums, and some will undoubtedly make appearances in this thread, but in reality most fusion really deserves to be classified in the prog genre, and I find that I can appreciate it much better from that perspective, but as a sub-genre of jazz.....no, it aint happenin'. Well the obvious question then would be "what genre of music would be the closest approximation of the fusion of two very divergent ways of conveying a musical concept?", and the clear and present answer to that question in my mind is soul. For the most part we don't make too much of a connection between jazz and soul for two reasons. First and foremost is that we are at best conditioned to immediately associate jazz with instrumental music. Truthfully the majority of jazz is instrumental, but some of the greatest jazz ever made came from singers such as Sarah Vaughn, Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, and Nat "King" Cole just to name a few. The second reason why we fail to make a connection between jazz and soul is that soul has inherent in it the element of Southern gospel music, and it was the introduction of this element and it's "hymnal" structure and passionate vocals to the jazz and rhythm and blues music that were the dominant musical genres at the time of soul's inception that is really reponsible for it's distinctive sound. Speaking of distinctive sounds. We can largely set-up 50's - 70's soul into two camps. We have The Motown Record label out of Detroit, Michigan and its legendary producer/founder Barry Gordie. This label along with its exclusive house band The Funk Brothers was responsible for such greats as Diana Ross and the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, and Smokey Robinson. On the Southeastern end of things you have Stax Records out of Memphis, Tennessee formed by white brother and sister label owners Jim Stewart and Estelle axton. Stax too had their own exclusive dedicated house band better known to most as Booker T and the MG's. The Stax record label, compared to Motown was known for a harder hitting grittier upbeat version of soul and were most famous for producing artists such as Otis Redding, Wilson Pickett, and Isaac Hayes. Stax was also widely know for promoting racially integrated soul music and were intrinsically connected and involved with Martin Luther King and the equal rights movement of the 50's and 60's. Before any of this however there was the label that was there during the pop music crossover from Jazz to RnB to soul and produced some of the Greatest albums in all three of those genres: Atlantic Records. Atlantic records and their famous trinity of Chairman Ahmet Ertegun, engineer Tom Dowd, and one of the greatest, if not the greatest, record producers to ever live Jerry Wexler. The list of artists which the Atlantic records was responsible for (and is still responsible for as its still the only of the three listed still actively producing artists) is immense and covers nearly every conceivable genre, but for our immediate purposes we only need to be concerned with one in Particular:

06-22-2009, 05:16 AM	#65 (permalink)
SATCHMO Al Dente Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: Texas Posts: 4,708	# 33 Aretha Franklin - Lady Soul Fella's if you really want to glean some good wisdom as to the wants and needs of women my suggestion would be to get your noses out of the Sexual Experience thread and pick up this album as soon possible. Hell, PM me. I'll hook a brother up. Everything I ever learned about the proper care and treatment of a woman I learned from Aretha , at least all the good things anyway, and upon a recent listening to this album I can only say that Aretha tells me I have so much more to learn. (in case you're wondering if you should necessarily be taking relationship advice from a recently divorced man I'll tell you without that Aretha wouldn't have liked her at all). In the opening song Chain of Fools the first few bars of the spring reverb saturated guitar followed by a full chorus lead in barely gets you set up for Aretha soulfully droppin' the truth "For 5 long years I thought you were my man, but I found out I'm just a link in yo' chain". If that doesn't make you feel guilty for having a penis it means you ain't got one. The album continues steady and upbeat with Money Won't Change You and then slows down with the absolutely gorgeous rendition of Curtis Mayfield's People Get Ready. Of course there's the classic (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman, Good to Me as I am to You (my personal favorite), the beautiful and elequently tender ballad Aint No Way, and her unique interpretation of the classic Young Rascals hit Groovin'. This album is the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Aretha's discography, but it is my favorite, and she has produced a couple of jazz albums which are good as well, but I didn't really want to reach for something so close to what we're inching toward. To say that Aretha is an icon of American music would be a gross understatement. Her voice is the perfect fusion of Jazz melody and soulful pop sensibility, and undoubtedly the music we listen to today would not be the same without her.

06-25-2009, 02:59 AM	#68 (permalink)
Kamikazi Kat Music Addict Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Michigan Posts: 329	Downloaded a few albums you reviewed in this thread Satchmo. I'm really loving the Minutemen. Its jazzy and funky with the raw punk energy. The vocals are unique and strong. The lyrics are philisophical at times but are always edgy, aggresive and always retain a sense of humor and sarcasm. It suits the music perfectly. The feel of the album is kept throughout the entire album, even when they start playing the more experimental stuff. Its even got the Jackass theme on it! What a great feeling, listening to a great album then all of a sudden corona starts playing. Had no idea that the song was from the Minutemen, such a nice surprise. I also got The Low End Theory. I unknowningly downloaded a compilation of all of the songs the group got their samples from for the album at first which I am enjoying so far. Haven't got the chance to listen to much of the actual album yet, what I've heard so far is interesting.

06-25-2009, 03:19 AM	#70 (permalink)
Kamikazi Kat Music Addict Join Date: Dec 2008 Location: Michigan Posts: 329	If it gives you more incentive to finish this thing, I'll strap a bomb to my head and rig it to explode when you stop continuing with this thread. Or it might work better if you strap a bomb to your head. You know what, we'll do both. Looking forward to next review.