Satchmo's Jive Essence 42
 

So It's about time I had my "Top Something or other" thread so here's the pitch:
Every once in awhile a thread gets started on this forum by someone with the intention of giving themselves a proper introduction to jazz music; a very noble intention I believe. More often than not the usual suspects make their appearances: Miles Davis' Kind of Blue, John Coltrane A Love Supreme, a whole host of fusion albums, and then the thread dies.
Why? Because contrary to the popular saying, You can't get there from "there", if you could you wouldn't be puzzled by where to start in such an enormously vast genre of music. No, you gotta' get there from right where you're at right now.
You see, jazz, much more than a genre of music, is a concept, an ideal. I'm going to put forth 42 albums that I believe capture the essence of jazz, starting with very untraditional examples and albums that could in no way be considered jazz by conventional standards. Gradually I'll work my way toward more traditional, and in some instances, less accessible pieces of music, while at the same time hopefully giving y'all a decent education. OK, excuse me while I get started......

I am look forward to this very much.

#42 Massive Attack - Mezzanine
http://www.benjaminharlow.com/alloft...nine-front.jpg
This is an album with a reputation that preceded it long before it found its way into my hands. This may be a large part of the reason why I hated it the first time I listened to it. I had preconceived notions of what this album was gonna' be, and the reality of its immanent darkness didn't match up with what I was expecting. Ironically it was its reputation which coerced me into giving it another chance and simply accepting it for what it is, and not what I wanted be, and what it is is absolutely brilliant.
I would have thought it impossible before experiencing this album that an electronically produced album could be so organically expressive. If while listening to this album you only managed to focus your attention on the drums alone you would swear that someone found a way to capture the soul of Art Blakey or Elvin Jones, two of jazz' most dynamic and expressive drummers, inside of a beat machine. There are times when listening to Teardrop or Group Four that I have to remind myself that Billy Holiday is dead, but that this is indeed what it would sound like if she was born 40 years later. It's hard for me to call Mezzanine Down-tempo or Trip-hop. It's hard for me to classify it at all, but its' definitely jazz. That's for sure.

Why 42?

It's the magic number, and as good a number as any i guess. Hmm, maybe I should have gone with 43? Damn. oh well.

as an avid jazz eater and fan of music myself i will be watching this thread with hungry eyes. awesome concept for a thread, and judging by other posts of yours i've seen i'm sure this thing will leave me impressed.

keep it up dude.

#41 Medeski, Martin, and Wood - Combustication
http://www.mmw.net/images/records/6/...ication_hz.jpg
There's a specific reason why this album immediately follows Mezzanine on our journey and its not due to the progressive hierarchy of inaccessibility and convention that I designated as the working order in my original post. If that were the case this album would appear much further down the list, as it is, by most fan's definition, a jazz album.

No, the reason I've decided to put it at the coveted #41 spot is that to me this album is like a complete inversion of Mezzanine. If it stands to reason that if you could call mezzanine a dark electronica album with jazz elements, then Combustication is definitely a dark Jazz album with electronica elements.

I have owned, at one point or another, every album that this experimental acid-jazz trio- John medeski on keyboards, Billy Martin on drums, and Chris Wood on bass, has produced, and Combustication easily stands out as a masterpiece, and the key element that causes it to rise to the top of the MMW discography is DJ Logic.

DJ logic unlike most conventional DJs that have made a name for themselves did so not by spinning wild sets at random dance clubs and parties around the world, but by sitting in on gigs with jazz musicians every chance he got to set up his turntables. The man has been on a relentless crusade since day one to turn what is often seen as a musical novelty relegated strictly to hip-hop and electronica genres into a viable and expressive organic instrument in its own right. Nowhere are the fruits of his pursuit more apparent than on this record. Whether its the dark "Alice-down-the-rabbit-hole" feel of Start-stop or the surreal and brooding Nocturne. Logic doesn't just punctuate the music with ineffectual scratches, he creates soundscapes that you will get lost in. This is not the only album that MMW have collabrated with Logic on, but it is by far the most interesting and a jazz masterpiece that I believe does not get nearly the credit it deserves.

This is going to be a destructively awesome thread... It's already obvious enough with MMW. I await with bated breath, and I assume you will avoid picking too many stereotypical choices?

The challenge is getting people to listen to music they think they know from a completely different perspective, but yeah, avoiding stereotypes this early in the thread is also proving challenging. I'm gonna' take a break from this thread for the night. I hope to not let you down on your expectations.

Great thread idea Satchmo! I'm really looking forward to reading more entries.

#40 Mastodon - Leviathan
http://images.uulyrics.com/cover/m/m...-leviathan.jpg
Ok before anyone starts getting too indignant over this one let me just say that I used to be a huge metal head back in the day. The reason why I got out of the genre really wasn't because it was too heavy or I was getting too old, but because the genre itself was just becoming one worn out cliche being piled on top of another. Any and all progression in the genre seemed to be aimed at becoming harder, faster, and more br00tal, while no diversity within the genre was to be had, and I was growing tired of it. Occasionally I would go back and ask some of my still die-hard metal friends if their had surfaced anything in the metal world that was perhaps cut of a different cloth, a little experimental, only to be handed this months latest Mr. Bungle impersonation or nu-metal sensation *yawn*. When I shared my vision of a metal-jazz hybrid I was always met with the same incredulous attitude of how the melding of jazz and metal is as unnatural as the reconciliation of religion and science. Not so, not so, and my proof is in this beautiful quartet from Atlanta, Georgia.

Leviathan is the first Mastodon album I ever heard, and until the recent release of Crack the Skye it has remained my favorite. I could have easily picked Crack the Skye as my entry for this band, but I felt that for propriety's sake it would be best to allow a certain obligatory grace period to elapse after its release before putting it in any "top" list.

What was immediately evident, to me, upon first listening to Mastodon is that they were the perfect example of a jazz quartet cleverly disguising itself as a metal band (something tells me I'm supposed to insert "core" somewhere, but i won't.). Simply put, beneath the distortion pedals and veneer of metal dynamics the band just ****ing swings, and swings hard! The Melodies and respective harmonic overtones are complex without being helter skelter. The absolutely balls out drumming is dynamic, loose, and precise all at the same time, and the vocals carry the timbre, aesthetic, and rhetoric of an additional melodic instrument, a key element with vocal-centric jazz.

It's not how sickly talented this band is that blows my mind, its that their music is so cohesive that without paying enormously focused attention to what the musicians are doing it simply just comes across as sounding great. There are times when the band switches up time signatures and keys, drastically, on the head of a pin, and it's done so effortlessly that it sounds like the most natural thing in the world. There are "techy" metal bands that go out of their way to put forth the impression that they're jumping all over the place to make it seem like they're "more progressive than though" while in the process exposing their inadequacies both in performance and in songwriting. Mastodon is quite the opposite. They go beyond making it look easy and make it look like there's nothing difficult going on in the first place. I haven't taken the time to highlight any specific songs on this album, mainly because, like their other albums, Leviathan is very conceptually based and should be appreciated as a whole.

I'm looking foward to seeing more out of this thread, its a very interesting concept and the idea of moving from your current musical tastes and expanding from there greatly applies to me. I think many different bands brought me to jazz. When I got into ska, I came to appreciate things other then the "nu-metal" stuff that I only heard on the radio. Ska showed me the beauties of horns and bass guitar. I started to listen to bands such as Led Zeppelin, which introduced me to blues and folk while still keeping a familier rock influence. Bands like Dillinger Escape Plan introduced me to jazz-influenced rhythms and time-signitures but in a hardcore format. All of these bands eventually brought me not just to jazz, but to many other musical genres as well. I didn't expand my tastes by suddenly going from listening to Green Day to Louis Armstrong. My tastes expanded over time by going to the roots of the music that I loved.

It is, of course, the meaning of life as well.

Top list so far. Mezzanine is a brilliant album. MMW and Mastodon are a couple I've been meaning to try out, so it's good to know which ones I should be getting first.

By the way, you skipped #40 :D

If it's Jazz and Metal I hope to see some Kayo Dot in the list somewhere! Nice list so far.

#39 Howlin' Wolf - The Collection (Chess Records)
http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_IWqfvyO_nw.../Wolffront.jpg
If you're bored and you happen to have a cheap bottle of whiskey and a portable tape recorder try a little experiment:
Take your bottle of whiskey and unscrew the cap. Place your cassette recorder so that the microphone is aimed directly at the mouth of the bottle. Press record. Go to your garage and find a gallon of gasoline and, whichever way is most convenient, set your house on fire. Don't forget to call your neighbors and let them know that if they see smoke and flames not to be alarmed, and that you're simply having a barbeque or something. Go about your day running whatever errands that need to be done, and when you come back sift through the ashes and debris and find the tape recorder. If you're lucky and the recorder and respective audio cassette are still intact run to a friend or family member's house, preferably one that happens to have a cassette player, and listen to your tape. I'M not Sure, but something tell's me that what you'll hear will sound very much like Howlin' wolf.

Howlin' wolf was a giant of the mid-century blues world, quite literally. The man stood 6'6" weighed about 300 lbs and people who went to see his shows were reportedly torn between being captivated by the music and scared witless by his foreboding presence. His music is good for the soul not to mention the reproductive organs. His gravely gumption infused vocals scrubs away all the bullsh1t of the day that you thought was important until Mr. wolf begins unloading his problems on you.

As is the case with most blues produced before mid 20th century, compilations and greatest hits albums are about the only way to go as most early studios merely specialized in cutting 2-3 track singles and the occasional seven inch. Every song on this collection is great and a certified classic most such as Little Red Rooster, Backdoor Man, and Spoonful have been covered extensively, and I'm sure that most of you have heard one or two versions of these songs. Just to get a taste.........

Good call on howlin' wolf. I've been getting into some of his stuff lately, it's really good. I'm suprised you picked a compilation though.

Most blues music recorded prior to 1960 was done in short form - i.e. 45's, 7 inches etc. I'm assuming that most people, unless they're obsessive collectors aren't going to scour vintage music boutique's for individual original releases of an artists material when they can easily purchase or d/l a compilation of their work.
I understand the argument for say Led Zeppelin who have a substantial full-length LP discography, but early 20th century blues is a different paradigm.

Got ya.

This is going to be a fantastic thread man. I'm definitely going to keep very close track of this and most likely end-up chasing after tons of albums. =) Can't wait to see what comes next and what it all leads up to!

#38 Minutemen - Double Nickels on the Dime
http://image-4.verycd.com/5b370679c6...1183599211.jpg
One of my goals for this thread is to be inclusive of most genres of music without going too far out of the way to associate a particular album with a jazz ideology.

I confess, for a moment I did pose the question "well, what about punk rock?", after a brief flash of doubt I immediately knew the answer was obvious.

Minutemen were an integral part of the burgeoning 80's west coast punk scene, and while the band has always been directly associated with punk music, this is really more due to their DIY philosophy and association with their Cali contemporaries than any sort of stylistic comparison that one would really have a tough time making.

Double Nickels is a double length album and definitely considered by most to be their best work. For my purposes, however, I chose it because it really showcases the trio's natural tendency toward a jazz aesthetic. The majority of the 45 tracks on this album (with Mr. Robot's Holy Orders Being the only track over 3 minutes long.) are free and loose and exhibit the upbeat feel and dynamic of post bop at its finest. Think Art Blakey & the Jazz Messengers being loosely channeled through an 80's rock trio. There are huge elements of free jazz with some tracks, such as Do You Want New Wave, or Do You Want the Truth are just flat out free jazz a la Ornette Coleman with spoken word layed on top.

So much more could be said about Minutemen and this amazing album. I have really barely scratched the surface. If you have any punk rock leanings and feel any sense of obligation to get in touch with its real history get your hands on this album ASAP.

^^^

Great album there I have to say. I haven't heard it in a while though and should do really. A timely reminder.

there were certainly remarkable jazz elements to Minutemen's career. they were steeped in many genres and it's a shame that D. Boon died so young, when the band was on the verge of making it big. some of their albums are a little sparse (their debut clocks in at under seventeen minutes), but this one delivered and in great fashion.

incidentally a record i've been obsessed with lately and one of the greats to emerge out of SST's awesome (but short-lived) run.

So It's fair to assume you're a Firehose fan too. I'm a big fan of anything that Mike Watt is involved with. His solo albums largely went under the radar, but they're pretty good. What an underrated Bass player.

Jackhammer: I just replaced my copy of Double Nickles today, just after I had the idea for the thread entry. Until this evening I hadn't listened to it in years. For a 25 year old album it has certainly aged beautifully.

I'll get somemore entries tomorrow guys. for now I just wanna' give this a quick bump.

I'm loving this album at the moment. You're certainly right about the dark soundscapes therein. It's the first album that arrived in my iTunes library with the tag 'jazz funk' which, seeing as I've been trying to get into some more jazz recently, is always welcome. There's a very interesting melting pot of jazz-funk and electronica here, and it certainly seems from the first few listens like it was recorded on an improvisational limb.

Anyway, I'll be be giving this a few more spins today. My point it, god review (and cheers for sending the link alone) :) Looking forward to some more listness here.

^^^^^ I'm very glad you like it. I had a feeling you would. And, yes the trio have a very improvisational approach to everything they do, especially live performances of which I've seen several. If you ever get the chance to see a show it's an experience to say the least.

# 37 Charlie Hunter Quartet - Natty Dread

http://www.kalamu.com/bol/wp-content...atty cover.jpg

To tell you the truth I'm almost at a complete loss for where to begin with Charlie Hunter.

I could start with showing you a picture of his instrument:
http://www.novaxguitars.com/images/C...mpash_horz.jpg

I know, I know we've all seen these musicians that need to have 1, or 2, or 10 more strings than the next guy. Usually its a matter of a musician wanting to increase the tonal range of his instrument. That's not quite the case with Charlie.

You see when Charlie Hunter was a teenager he, despite the fact that he was a guitar player, had an obsession with all the great jazz organ players. Mainly he was obsessed with transposing all the cool Hammond organ licks to his guitar, but discovered early on that a conventional 6 string wasn't apt for pulling off the tonal range & timbre of a Hammond B3 organ.
A Hammond organ's bass extends deeper into the lower register than almost anything that you listen today that isn't synthetically produced. Most competent B3 players, especially jazz players, will literally play bass lines with the left hand while playing chordal structures and melodies with the right. Achieving this particular effect really wasn't a possibility for Chrlie with a conventional guitar.

So what did charlie do? Well, he did what any of us would do given the same conundrum, He designed an instrument himself that was the top 3 strings of a bass guitar and the bottom 5 of "regular" guitar, routed the bass strings through a bass amp, the guitar strings through a guitar amp, played effectively, 2 instrument parts simultaneously, and made it sound like an organ. And for any stringed instrument musicians that are putting it all together in their head. I'll give you the answer before you ask. He doesn't employ any right-hand tapping.

Confused yet? Well here comes the good part. Somewhere, a few albums into his discography, Charlie had a fantastic idea. He, it would seem at least, asked himself the question "what If I took one of Bob Marley's best records, covered it in its entirety, first song to last, instrumentally as a jazz piece?".

Such an endeavor if attempted by most contemporary electric jazz musicians would really run the risk of falling directly into the smooth jazz pit of despair, but this album is a work of interpretive art. Them Belly Full swings with the intensity and bravado of a big band orchestra. No Woman No Cry is as tender and emotional as the original and every song in between has something to lend to the overall palette of this wonderful album. Definitely a must hear for any reggae fans.

I think this is one of the reasons i enjoy your reviews. Theres an ethos of quality around how you operate. I recently read a blog review about CtS, between your ambiguous endorsement and that review, I'll certainly check it out.

Similarly, I just just got into Howlin' Wolf thanks to LastFM. One of the struggels I find with old artists who have tons of works, esp. someone like Wolf who worked in the singles era of corporate music, is that you can never find the good stuff, through a field of overmarketed GH albums. I think this is going to be one of the more fruitful threads on the board for just this reason. It seems that you're working with notable, but non-mainstream acts who have tons of things. (MMW comes to mind; btw which album has chubsub on it?)

Its a new path for a lot of us (myself included) and giving us a good point to jump off on is brilliant. Thanks, man.

Edit: I'm a man who likes to dip his toes before commitment (take that how you want), is there a way we could get some recommended tracks on an album? I know this is sacrelig but I'm tryin'. Can't blame a man for tryin'.

Great review! I saw Charlie Hunter in concert several years ago and he's absolutely amazing live. The only album of his that I own is the self-titled one, but I love it it. I wasn't aware of the whole story about him trying to transpose organ but I've always thought a lot of his guitar playing sounded very organ-like.

Thanks big3. that definitely serves as afeather in my cap and really influences me to stay on task with this thread.

P.S. Chubsub is on Friday Afternoon in the Universe, another great MMW album.


I'll try to include some highlight tracks from now on, but I also should add that there will likely be albums in this list that really can't be fully appreciated outside of the context of listening to the album in full, and in those cases that fact will be duly noted as well.

I have a love/hate relationship with ska.

When done well it's soul filling goodness, but when its done poorly it's the most campy bull**** ever. The whole third wave of American ska was the worst thing to ever happen to the genre. During the mid 90's it seemed like
I was swimming in a sea of Reel Big Fish-esque ska bands that came across as a bunch of former high school band geek frat boys that decided to start a band to help them get more pussy.

It was during this time that I was beginning to consider that cutting music education funding to public schools might actually be a good thing. There were just too many horny post pubescent boys running around with slide trombones for me to feel comfortable anymore.

I had all but given up on the genre figuring that nobody cared about true ska, Jamaican ska, anymore and I predicted that the rest of my life would be a long drawn out pathetic scene of me curled up in my bed clutching my Desmond Dekker & Don Drummond records as tightly as i could while trying to keep the Hawaii Five O theme song from playing over and over again in my brain. It was just then that I saw a bright and beautiful light shining from the west and it was coming from, of all places, Los Angeles, California.

First off Hepcat, as I'm sure some genre nazi would inevitably chime in, are technically not ska they're rocksteady, and for those of you that don't know the difference I'll gladly explain it to you just as soon as i start giving a **** about the minutiae that separate the two genres.

Hepcat as a band have done more to revitalize the roots of Jamaican ska/rock steady than any band I know. The prevalent style of this album is quite jazzy with a bit of doo-wop flair that is largely due to the glorious harmonies created by the two vocalists Greg Lee and Alex Desert. Out of Nowhere has a very contagious up-beat and positive vibe with songs like Dance Wid' Me and Earthquake and Fire find me resisting the urge to start dancing right where I stand. There is a bold and vivacious cover of early Bob Marley and the Wailers' Hooligans as well as an amazing ska interpretation of Duke Ellington's jazz classic Caravan.

This is really one of my favorite albums. I couldn't be more emphatic about recommending a piece of music, and if anyone's interested PM me and I will gleefully bust one out for you.

Beautiful choice, my friend. Great album. I, too, love Mr. Hunter. What other projects have you heard from him? I've really been into Mistico by Charlie Hunter Trio. It's got a real old school vibe. I was hooked at first listen. Also, I really loved Garage a Trois when C.H was playing with them. Heard of 'em?

Oh, I'm pretty old-school (emphasis on the old:laughing:)I remember when Charlie was playing with Michael Franti of Spearhead on Disposable heroes of hiphopracy in the late 80's early 90's, probably the first real instruments hip hop band that ever had any commercial success. His solo albums are hit or miss my favorites being his first "duo" album and Tales from the Analog Planet, and of course Natty Dread. I'd heard about his project Garaje A Trois w/ Stanton Moore a while ago, but I haven't had a chance to check it out. I'm sure its awesome and I'm a huge fan of Stanton's solo albums. Sadly I havent heard Mistico yet either, but its gaining a pretty solid reputation.
I've been lucky enough to work with Charlie a handful of times engineering shows and I will say that he is a very positive and humble human being and after seeing him live several times I have yet to see the man **** up a single note during a performance, and I get paid to pay attention.

You say old ... I'm wondering if it was a typo. Don't you mean ancient? :P Stanton Moore is also a wonderful musician, and if you dig him, then you'd definitely like G.A.T. Their earlier stuff is with Skerik, which if you haven't heard him, you need to. Amazing saxophonist! The three of them are amazing together, but Charlie left the band in '07. Though I like the later stuff with Marc Benevento and Mike Dillon, too, there's an energy about the original trio that cannot be mimicked.

So this is kind of long and a cover, but still awesome:

teehee.

btw YES. my ska collection currently consists of The Specials and 2-3 other good albums.

I would enjoy a PM also... Not really what I expecting so far list wise, but that isn't a bad thing ;)

:laughing:What, pray tell, were you expecting?

I don't know exactly :p:

Just the choices weren't in line with what I thought would capture the essence of all that jazzy vibes. But as I said, I haven't been disappointed, just surprised.

I'm not sure if this is my favourite Hepcat album (that would probably be Scientific) and I have admit to them not being one of my favourite Ska bands. Have you heard the Japonicas? very very good old school Ska from Japan. Keep this up though. Some nice eclectic choices!

Yeah, I was a little bit torn between Scientific & Out of Nowhere. I like Out of Nowhere better simply because there's a lot of sentimental value attached to this album. Objectively Scientific is a better album albeit slightly less accessible.