u/Ok-Fun-8586

The morning spin is a modern one: Sound and Color by Alabama Shakes.

I’m a big fan of these cats and Brittany’s solo stuff. This is arguably my favorite from the discography though. It’s a good mix of Brittany pushing boundaries and the band still kicking heavy blues instrumentation at you.

“Gimme All Your Love” is killer. The softer tracks are sneaky favorites this morning though. “Dunes.” The vibes in the opener. “This Feeling.”

I got to see them live in ‘15. Remember 2015? There’s a bit of nostalgia shaping my take.

Great album though.

This is a recent pick-up and a bit of a blind buy. I was familiar with most of the names on the album but not together. Now I’ve fallen in love with it. I’d be into more recommendations like it if you got them. “For Che” is the track I skip back to most.

Edit: a word; also I just read that Charlie is Jack Black’s father-in-law. I don’t know what to do with that info.

The morning spin is Charlie Haden’s *Liberation Music Orchestra*.

It’s a free-jazz, latin-infused, genre-mash-up freak-out. There are plenty of recognizable names. If you frequent jazz spaces, though. Haden is Keith Jarrett’s bassist when Jarrett wants to do free improv. Carla Bley, pianist, does most of the arranging. Gato Barbieri is on sax. Don Cherry is on trumpet. The players here are tied to Ornette Coleman. It works out.

When I’m listening to free jazz there’s a motion between order and chaos that I want. I like to start on even footing before the complete breakdown or that astral plane moment. This album does that really well for me. The double bass and the piano lead, which makes for some great, softer moments. “Song For Che” at the top of side 2 lives there. Charlie breaks out the bow on the bass. The chimes get going, there’s an honest to goodness sample, then it fades into flute improv.

Expand your horizons. Give this one a try. Read the liner notes.

Great album.

I got the itch for an old favorite so the morning spin is Black Moses.

The story behind Isaac’s career is a cool one. He was a writer and producer at Stax and spearheading a lot of psychedelic soul stuff. The label was hesitant to make that move but financial chaos hit and the move was to record as much as possible to stay afloat. They called the whole roster into the recording booth. Isaac I guess was the studio workhorse so he had some clout and said he’d record but only if he produced himself.

That album became 1969’s Hot Buttered Soul. It’s an absolute classic in the progressive soul space. It’s a work of art. Every track is brilliant. But the masterpiece would come a couple years later with this one: Black Moses.

How many tracks need to be named? “Never Can Say Goodbye” is a killer take on the classic. “Ike’s Rap II” has the iconic bass line that’s sampled everywhere. “Close To You,” “Man’s Temptation,” “Going In Circles,” “Good Love,” “Part-Time Love,” “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Don’t you understand what you’re doin’ to this man?

Great album is an understatement.

The Monday morning spin is some Chicago blues: John Lee Hooker’s Any Where, Any Time, Any Place.

This is a compilation of early stuff from what I can tell. All tracks from the late 40s and early 50s. The backing band you expect is really sparse on it, leaving that quintessential, “solo” blues sound you associate with Hooker already.

Cool little compilation.

CD Sunday comes to a close and here’s one more from the box. Last one. Promise. It’s Monk/Rollins.

This is an album Prestige cobbled together from two recording sessions in 1953 and ‘54. Art Blakey features on the drums in a September, ‘54 session that results in the tracks “Work” and “Nutty.” Percy Heath has bass duties on those and track #5, “Friday the 13th.” The opening tracks have Tommy Potter on bass and Arthur Taylor on drums. The second of the two with that lineup, “I Want To Be Happy,” might be my favorite. Sonny and Monk fill the whole room on it without breaking a sweat.

The Sonny-less tracks are also cool. Monk in the trio with Blakey and Percy Heath is a cool vibe. Blakey’s solo in “Work” is absolutely killer.

I can usually find something to complain about with this sort of label-Frankenstein’d album, but this is a good one. Great album.

Another notable pull from the bulk purchase, spinning now we got Swing Low, Sweet Cadillac.

Dizzy has a massive discography. From 1946 until about ‘65 he’s pushing out two or more albums per year and so this album feels very much like a late career effort. He’s fucking around on it. Not taking it super seriously. He shouldn’t have to. It’s his gig. But there’s some cool stuff worked out on it too. “Kush” is a great tune. So is “Mas Que Nada.”

Not the first Dizz I’d recommend. Great album all around anyway.

It’s CD Sunday and I’m still pulling first spins from a box of jazz CDs I bought recently. Next up is Waterfalls.

Klemmer is a dude I never dig too deep into but he pops up everywhere. First he was a super influential soul-jazz saxophonist in the 60s before turning to the spiritual stuff right around here. After this he goes on to invent smooth jazz as a sound. Then he gets into solo sax albums. First of their kind. Then it’s New Age. Then solo vocal. Foundational stuff we don’t talk about much.

Anyway Waterfalls is a live album from 1972. The “Prelude” and a lot of the solo work give us a funky kind of spiritual sound. Both parts of “Utopia: Man’s Dream” sink into that sound in a really cool way.

This one is worth knowing if you don’t. Great album.

CD Saturday continues! We’re still spinning from the new box and I’m on this: Money Jungle.

It’s Duke with Mingus and Max Roach. This CD is a late-80s Blue Note re-issue from the original 3-track tapes. It’s rough looking but the underside shined up nice and played smooth.

It’s such a classic album and the “deluxe version” here gives some extras. “REM Blues” is a cool, swingy number. My favorite is still “African Flower.” Such a gorgeous song.

CD Saturday continues with another dig from the new jazz CD box: *Forest Flower*.

Charles Lloyd is a multi-instrumentalist (reeds, flute mainly from what I know) and a living legend. Prior to leading his own group he played with Cannonball Adderley, but really he hit with what I see described as the “classic” quartet with drummer Jack DeJohnette, bassist Cecil McBee, and pianist Keith Jarrett. That’s a loaded rhythm section.

People went nuts for the spiritual stuff, the psychedelia of it all. At one point in “Forest Flower” Keith grabs the inside of the piano and plucks the strings with his hands. Then he grabs the note and hits the key from the outside. This album became something like the best selling jazz album of ‘66. 10 years later Jarrett would land the best selling jazz piano album of all time with *Köln.*

It’s all fire. The best though might be recognizing how Jack DeJohnette drives the rest of the crew through the closer. MVP shit.

Great album.

It’s CD Saturday and the morning spin is Out of the Afternoon. I bought a whole box of jazz CDs and I’m about to spend the weekend going through them all.

This one has Roland Kirk though. The man was known to play three horns at once. Let’s be clear. I’m not saying he played three during a song or switch quickly. No. He put three reeds in the mouth at once. Or two in the mouth and a nose flute.

There’s a lot of bop hangover on this one. It can get rough or harsh in spots. But Haynes is old school. Swingy stuff like “In Other Words” and “If I Should Leave You” fall into something more standard for the most part. It’s really Kirk punching his way out in the solos.

The opener, “Moon Ray,” and “Long Wharf” are real highlights for me.

Great album all around. Really loved stumbling on it.

The morning spin is Collector’s Items, the two-disc reissue. It’s a weird one.

Here’s the story: in 1953 Miles Davis hosted a sestet session featuring Sonny Rollins and Charlie Parker. Legendary cool-bop stuff. The music ripped but they all got high and drunk and fought each other. The album was left unfinished and Miles leaves for Columbia. In 1955, Charlie Parker dies. The old label, Prestige, then calls to tell Miles that, contractually, they’re owed a second session to finish this thing from 3 years ago.

Miles at this point is with Coltrane, so he carries pieces of that crew (not Trane) to the studio where Sonny Rollins is there to wrap it up. They lay down “No Line,” “Vierd Blues,” and “In Your Own Sweet Way.” That becomes the 1956 version of Collector’s Items. It was released with a range of material Prestige had archived when Miles departed for Columbia.

Then in 1973 Prestige went back and re-released it, adding tracks. First from a 1951 session with Rollins and Art Blakey, released in 1955 as Conception. Then from a 1955 session with Charles Mingus, released as Blue Moods that same year. This double-LP release kept the same name: Collector’s Items.

Great album? Compilation? Marketing ploy?

The morning spin is Alivemutherforya.

I picked this up as a fan of Billy Cobham and Alphonso Johnson and I’m glad I did. It’s the four names above plus keyboardist Mark Soskin, on a 1977 tour, picking these tracks up along the way. It’s all a project in fully-electronic jazz. Tom Scott’s lyricon on the opening track is an early indication of how electric it’s all gonna be.

But really the reason I picked it up and the reason I keep it near the table is because of the grooves laid down between Alphonso and Billy. Billy Cobham is Miles Davis’s funky drummer on Jack Johnson. If you don’t know his album Funky Thide of Sings, you should. Alphonso is the first bassist for Weather Report, in their funkier and more latin-infused days.

Great album.

This is the last morning spin from the binder for now and it’s Miss Calypso by Maya Angelou. For those who paid attention in English class, yes, that Maya Angelou.

This is among the weirder pieces in my collection and it’s a recent find. I had no idea Maya Angelou had a music career. It’s one she dismissed and tried to ignore later in life, but it’s there.

It’s a cool artifact of the era of “exotica” and the rise of various island musics in popularity. The cover is killer. The lyricism is story-based but now and then slips into something almost chant-like. The percussion is way more dynamic than I’ve heard most places. Maya can really, really sing. “Calypso Blues” is a serious favorite.

Everything about it is just a little weird. The voice. The genre choices. The killer blues vocals. The cover. The liner notes. The reissue liner notes.

Weird CD. Great(?) album. I don’t know. I love it.

The morning spin is Monk, live at the 1964 Monterrey Jazz festival. The CD is from 2007, when the session was officially released. I bought it when it came out and have since lost the booklet.

It’s a cool set with more variety in the solos, a lot more trading off than I’m used to hearing Monk in. It’s the only live Monk I have and I’ll need to remedy that.

“Blue Monk” is a cool track. “Think Of One” too. That one makes very cool use of the bari sax. “Straight, No Chaser” is the closer and Ben Riley, the drummer, beats the hell out of his kit on it.

Great album.

The morning spin is Explorations.

I love this album—probably my favorite of Evans—but it’s undoubtedly a little tense. A soft album with some unexpected twists. A little dreary. Good energy for a cold morning outdoors.

Pictured at the end is the little no-name travel “boombox.” It holds up for how much I beat it up.

The morning spin is… one of these? I’m hitting the road for a few days and these are the 48 coming along. The old Case Logic binder holds up!

The evening groove is Eye of the Beholder. I couldn’t settle on a morning spin. Here we are. Chick again.

This is a CD copy of the 1988 album. Recently I had a long lunch break and hit the CD shop for some blind buys. This was one. It rips. I’ll post the others this weekend.

Obviously we love Chick. Dave Weckl here is on drums and it’s quintessential late-80s smoothness. Frank Gambale is the guitarist. It’s his first with Chick I believe. He’s a cool addition to the very 80s fusion sound, almost a little lazy, slacker-y in his playing. The lone sax (so 80s) is Eric Marienthal. It’s so smooth. John Patitucci on bass holds it down. He’s a sneaky highlight. He has a little funk to his playing and I like it. I prefer Chick with funk beneath him.

I keep coming back to Chick in this jazz kick I’m on. Him and Miles specifically. The overlap in their discographies is some of my favorite albums lately. And individually they’ve gone so many directions you can get lost of weeks. Elektric Band is a cool direction.

Great album.

The morning spin is Follow The Rainbow. Classic Duke funk!

This is an incredibly fun album I haven’t spun in a while. Duke is a disco pioneer so it’s bright and it’s dancey, but it throws some curveballs too. Stuff like “Festival” comes out of left field with Latin instrumentals all the sudden. Then “May The Funk Be With You” is pure P-Funk. Ludes?!

He played with Zappa, left for Cannonball Adderley’s quintet, came back to Zappa, went to Stan Clarke, George Clinton. His start was actually with Jean-Luc Ponty. He produced for the Pointer Sisters in the 80s.

All over the place. The career. This album. And it’s a great album.

The morning spin is Jazzmatazz.

I’m a fan of jazz rap, what we used to call “conscious rap,” Arrested Development, Tribe, up to Common. This is in that vein but something I avoided giving a deep listen until I saw this in a shop yesterday.

It’s a cool album, hitting probably at the height of jazz rap. 1993 is the same year as the Arrested Development Unplugged. Midnight Marauders by tribe is 1993 too. The big experiment here, or the difference, is that those other albums sampled jazz. Guru got the actual musicians in the studio to jam.

To be honest the lyricism is sort of forgettable for me, but there’s plenty of cool tracks. “Loungin’” has Donald Byrd in trumpet, always surprisingly subtle, but still cool. “Take A Look” is a Roy Ayers collab that’s one of my favorites on here. He seems the most out of his element, not sure how to make the vibes work, then he rips a sick solo. “Sicker Than Most” is another dope one. That’s got Gary Barnacle on sax. He’s been a pop-rock session guy. He knows the assignment.

Great album. Groundbreaking album. I love the cover too.