/BLINDFOLD TEST/
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You are currently reading a thread in /mu/ - Music
You are currently reading a thread in /mu/ - Music
Thread 2
Yesterday's thread:
>>63900433
Welcome to the weekly /mu/ jazz Blindfold Test thread. Every Friday and Saturday.
If you're new, the point of these threads is to have fun and encourage critical listening, discussion, and general enjoyment of jazz. All critical music listeners are welcome. The more participation we have, the more fun and successful these threads will be. In the interest of keeping the thread alive and bumped, any general jazz discussion is welcomed here as well.
For more information about how the threads work and listening suggestions, please refer to the pastebin: http://pastebin.com/ZaFe6HUA
THIS WEEK'S THEME: Wildcard
COMPILED BY: Clueless
NEXT WEEK: ???
COMPILED BY: ???
If you missed last week's thread, DON'T WORRY. It's not too late. Here are the links for the mystery tracklist. Download the tracks, record your thoughts/guesses/evaluations for each one, and then come back and post them in the thread. Remember, people will be posting guesses and thoughts in this thread so don't read the thread until you have listened to the music and collected your thoughts in order to avoid spoilers. Track info for this week's tracks will be posted on Saturday, so if you see the thread is close to dying before then, give it a bump.
http://www9.zippyshare.com/v/XDc04nrx/file.html
https://mega.nz/#!1dkzWKLD!f70jv1pSJaPGhPe76fee8TTM2G5luyqxYK9zXc4Pt3o
Posting with names or tripcodes is encouraged as it makes discussion much easier.
>>63924249
bump
>>63924249
Are you cool to post the reveal info in a little bit or do you want me to do it?
>>63924949
I'll do it whenever. Doesn't look like we've got anyone else showing up anyway.
Monk's Blindfold Test, in the mean time:
http://www.forghieri.net/jazz/blind/Monk.html
>>63924971
Yeah I'd say go ahead and post them whenever you feel like it
it's kind of a shame how posting a second thread really kills the momentum
>1
Tubby Hayes - You for Me (1961)
From: Tubbs in N.Y.
Tenor Sax - Tubby Hayes
Piano - Horace Parlan
Bass - George Duvivier
Drums - Dave Bailey
Started with a Tubbs track - one of the greatest British jazzmen - since to my knowledge we haven't had him on /Blindfold/ before. He's perhaps slightly better known for his more out there work, and especially Mexican Green, but this hard-bop track from his first New York sessions is one of my favourites, not least for the sheer relentlessness of his blowing. Horace Parlan and Clark Terry (though the latter doesn't appear on this track) do some fantastic work on this album too.
>2
Irène Schweizer & Günter Sommer - Auf dem Feldweg zur Feldstrasse (1987)
From: Irène Schweizer & Günter Sommer
Piano - Irène Schweizer
Drums - Günter Sommer
I'm admittedly not very familiar with Irène Schweizer, but I love the way she and Sommer work together on this album, with the drum kit being used in such an atypical way. The main reason I picked this track over any of the others is length - I figured maybe twenty minutes of free jazz at track two might put people off altogether.
>>63925148
Yeah usually I can do a better job at keeping it bumped but this week I had other stuff going on
>3
Harold Land - Sims A-Plenty (1959)
From: The Fox
Trumpet - Dupree Bolton
Tenor Sax - Harold Land
Piano - Elmo Hope
Bass - Herbie Lewis
Drums - Frank Butler
Thin sounding production aside, The Fox is quickly becoming one of my favourite hard bop albums. Harold Land had been a few years out of the Brown/Roach ensemble at this point, but some of the laser precision of that group must have worn off on him, helped in part by the able drumming of Frank Butler, who shows with his solo on this track (and others on the album) just how underrated he is. The tune is by Elmo Hope, who also stands out over the course of the album. In fact I'd say Butler and Hope are the main attraction for me.
>4
Coleman Hawkins w/ Michel Warlop & His Orchestra - Avalon (1935)
From: Your compilation of choice (mine is from the Django box set on JSP)
Director - Michel Warlop
Trumpets - Art Briggs, Noel Chiboust, Pierre Allier
Trombone - Guy Paquinet
Alto Sax - Andre Ekyan, Charles Lisee
Tenor Sax - Coleman Hawkins, Alix Combelle
Piano - Stephane Grappelly
Guitar - Django Reinhardt
Bass - Eugene d'Hellemes
Drums - Maurice Chailloux
I read somewhere that this recording session was only organised as a favour to Hawk because a concert he'd played in Paris had been a financial failure. France's loss is our gain. There are four tracks from the session, two of which don't feature any soloing from Django, and one of which is a trio with the two greats plus Grappelly on piano, but this is easily the highlight for me. I'm presuming some of you will know this one, or work it out, but I hope this meeting of two giants comes as a pleasant surprise to anyone who hadn't heard it already.
>5
Bobby Hutcherson - Estaté (1986)
From: In the Vanguard
Vibes - Bobby Hutcherson
Piano - Kenny Barron
Bass - Buster Williams
Drums - Al Foster
Not much to say on this one - the quality of the playing here speaks for itself. This is probably the most laid back take on the album, though there's also a divine version of Witchcraft. I've seen Kenny Barron discussed a few times in jazz threads in the past couple of weeks, but this is all I know him from. Definitely plan to check out more of him though.
>6
Humphrey Lyttelton - Bad Penny Blues (1956)
From: Your compilation of choice (mine is the Parlophones box set on Calligraphy)
Trumpet - Humphrey Lyttelton
Piano - Johnny Parker
Bass - Jim Bray
Drums - Stan Greig
Had to have at least one track from my home country, and that Tubbs album was recorded in the States. Humphrey Lyttelton was one of the biggest names in jazz in the UK, both as a player/bandleader and as a broadcaster. This piece was, at the time it was released, the most successful jazz single the country had ever seen, in part due to the production by a yet-to-be-famous Joe Meek. It's not the most dynamically exciting of Humph's recordings from this period, but it did become a signature tune for him.
Impressed that people spotted Lady Madonna on this one. Jazzpossu mentioned that Fats Waller was one of McCartney's influences, but the story goes that his original inspiration was actually this very track.
>7
Elvin Jones - Mr. Jones (1969)
From: Poly-Currents
Tenor Sax - Joe Farrell, George Coleman
Baritone Sax - Pepper Adams
Bass - Wilbur Little
Drums - Elvin Jones
Conga - Candido Camero
Jones released several albums for Blue Note in this period, and this is one of the first. His working trio at the time consisted of Farrell and a bassist (which may or may not have been Little at this point), and it's Farrell who solos first here. This is a fairly straight ahead blues, albeit with a pretty swinging melody in the head, but that actually belies the fact that the album is really quite varied. There's a couple of great flute-led pieces, and plenty of rhythmic experimentation (as you would expect) on the other tracks.
The Blue Note trademark is of course their timelessly stylish album covers, and Elvin's waistcoat in this photo is no exception.
>8
J.J. Johnson - Old Devil Moon (1954)
From: The Eminent J.J. Johnson, Vol. 2
Trombone - J.J. Johnson
Piano - Wynton Kelly
Bass - Charles Mingus
Drums - Kenny Clarke
Conga - Sabu Martinez
Johnson recorded some of my favourite albums of the 10" period, and though this one is slightly marred by the inclusion of Sabu Martinez (whose work on this track is less intrusive than some of the others) it's still solid all the way through. Johnson's time as part of the Davis/Evans set obviously paid off because his arrangements, both of his own tunes and classic standards, are always spot on.
As far as I can tell, this is the only time Mingus recorded for Blue Note, probably because he hated what Van Gelder did with his tone on this record.
>9
Sam Rivers - Streams- flute section (1973)
From: Streams
Flute, shouts - Sam Rivers
Bass - Cecil McBee
Drums - Norman Connors
Sam Rivers is one of my favourites, so I had to have him on here. I love this approach to free jazz. This is just an extract from the album, which is one long track featuring Rivers in turn on tenor, flute, soprano and piano. This is the flute section in its entirety, and if you like it it definitely deserves to be heard in context.
>10
Davy Graham - Better Git In Your Soul (1965)
From: Folk, Blues and Beyond
Guitar - Davy Graham
Bass & Drums - no idea (the only source I can find says it's Danny Thompson (of Pentangle fame) on bass, but that's Scaruffi so it's probably not true)
I know this isn't really jazz, but I discovered Davy Graham recently and thought this arrangement of the Mingus classic was worth sharing. He was a folk/blues guitarist from the early sixties who played in a style that went on to influence the likes of Bert Jansch and John Renbourn, among others, though with much more direct jazz influence (often involving covers like this, and the version of Bobby Timmons' Moanin' from the same album) as well as an incorporation of Eastern styles into his compositions. Maybe a bit of a leftfield choice for /BF/, but hopefully some of you like it.
>>63925389
Forgot to add; as people have pointed out, Hutcherson also plays marimba on this track
>>63925415
Going to check this album out
>>63925681
I think the flute pieces are my favourite, though the final track is also great.
Check out Coalition too - similar lineup and style.
>>63925401
The piano is really quite similar to Lady Madonna, so I'll certainly believe that this is where McCartney got the piano part from.
>>63925415
This one I should have recognized then, it hasn't been long since I listened to Poly-Currents although the first long track was the one that really resonated with me.
>>63925454
Well, Rivers would have been my next guess if I would have dared go on guessing. :D
I need to check this one out.
>>63925761
Well I did say you'd probably get it...
>>63925317
Interesting. I think I've only heard one album by him before.
>>63925335
Have you heard the Cecil Taylor and Max Roach duet record?
>>63925356
I suppose I was on the right track with this one
>>63925389
Wouldn't have guessed this was Hutcherson
>>63925401
No wonder they don't swing
>>63925415
Do Farrell and Coleman both played on this track?
>>63925454
Rivers never even entered my mind
>>63925464
Cool track. I looked this guy up and it turns out he was a big use of DADGAD tuning which I was picking up on while listening to it
>>63925761
Did you end up listening to that Kenny Wheeler album? What did you think of it?
>>63925761
I also remember hearing somewhere that bad penny blues was the only jazz record that John Lennon liked so that could also explain it.
>>63926429
>Cecil Taylor and Max Roach duet record?
No but I might do - sounds interesting.
>Do Farrell and Coleman both played on this track?
According to the list on the back of the CD. It can only be Farrell who solos though, and it sounds like there's only one tenor on the head, so either Farrell lays off there (which seems unlikely) or the CD is wrong. The personnel list is pretty fiddly anyway - the lineup on each track is slightly different. The actual liner notes don't go into much detail at all.
>>63926429
>Wouldn't have guessed this was Hutcherson
He sort of did the opposite of some of the other big names on Blue Note in the early sixties - after his post-bop phase his music got more and more conventional.
>>63927794
Yeah I thought it sounded like Joe Farrell on that one
