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Jazz Dance anyone?

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Despite being incapable of doing anything more than a desultory shuffle on the dance floor nowadays, I’ve always had a thing for the niche 70s/80s Jazz Dance movement. Individual dancers and troupes like IDJ performed incredible dance routines to complex latin and funk jazz tunes, many by obscure artists on records impossible to get hold of these days without very deep pockets. I’ve spent a few days putting together a playlist based on DJ Paul Murphy’s ‘Jazzifunk’ classics from his Electric Ballroom sets in the late 70s and 80s (published in the book ‘From Jazz Funk & Fusion to Acid Jazz’ by Mark ‘Snowboy’ Cotgrove. There are 128 tracks on the Spotify playlist (see below) and I found a further 43 tracks on You Tube Music if anyone wants a link. Enjoy and don’t blame me if you twist something!

Post-War British Jazz Bargain Alert

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This is currently name your price on Bandcamp. Sounds pretty interesting, think I will chuck them a few quid but you can pay nothing if you want

A survey of the modern jazz & hard-bop scenes that emerged in the new cultural melting pot of post war London, with recordings from the end of the 1940s through to the early 1960s.

Featuring representations from players whose roots lay in the East-End’s jewish community, such as Ronnie Scott, Vic Ash & Harry Klein, alongside a wealth of talent of Caribbean and African descent playing and recording in post war London during this period, incl. Dizzy Reece, Wilton Gaynair, Joe Harriott, Shake Keane & Ginger Johnson.

Made in partnership with the Barbican to coincide with the exhibition Postwar Modern: New Art in Britain 1945-1965.

https://deathisnot.bandcamp.com/album/i-had-the-craziest-dream-modern-jazz-and-hard-bop-in-post-war-london-vol-1

Keith Jarrett: The Art of Improvisation. 2005 Film Currently on the BBC iPlayer

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Worth 81 minutes of any music-lover’s time. In my opinion. A strange, very intense and incredibly driven individual, absolutely crammed full of talent. Loads of good intelligent interview footage with Jarrett himself and his musical collaborators, plus plenty of performance footage. Best music documentary I’ve seen in ages.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m0011f4y/keith-jarrett-the-art-of-improvisation

Nala Sinephro – Space 1.8

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A review in the Guardian flagged this up to me – quite lovely. You could call it ambient, or jazz, or devotional music, maybe spiritual jazz is the closest.

From the interview – “When I produce this type of music, I have to be very open and surrender to the sound,” Sinephro says. “I reach a trance-inducing state where I might play a note for 10 minutes straight, if that’s what I’m feeling. While my hands are doing their job, I’m almost sleepwalking.”

It is on the second spin, and I think it will be a listening staple for the next while.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2021/nov/17/nala-sinephro-mystical-jazz-harp-space-1-8

Found on YouTube: 1992 programme featuring Linton Kwesi Johnson and poet/jazz saxophonist Shake Keane

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A mix of concert footage with Dennis Bovell’s dub band, interviews and chat, archive footage of St. Vincent (Shake Keane’s home island), Jamaica (Linton Kwesi Johnson’s home island), Notting Hill and Archer Street in the West End. In 6 short parts that seemed to follow on from each other when I watched on YouTube. Linton, Shake and bassist Coleridge Goode are extensively featured and there’s also a shorter chat section with English pianist/bandleader Michael Garrick. Some interesting discussion about Joe Harriott also. I missed this completely when the BBC first aired it in 1992 so it’s good to see it now.

New Simon Spillett blog launched

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The excellent Simon Spillett – jazz saxophonist, incredibly prolific and compelling writer of substantial CD booklets, generally around British jazz of the 1950s-70s, and author of the superb Tubby Hayes biography ‘The Long Shadow of the Little Giant’ – has just launched a blog.

Over the past few months, since joining Facebook, he has used it largely as a blog, posting wonderful essays about aspects of jazz history and its people. For various reasons, he has come to more fully embrace writing and ‘being a writer’ recently. In my view, that’s great news – because he’s one of the best, and the latest in a distinguished history of British jazz musicians being equally adept as essayists and long-form writers. Humphrey Lyttelton, George Melly and Dave Gelly are three others that come immediately to mind – though George was, I think, a significantly better writer than musician, per se 🙂

I hope Simon will transfer some of his long-form Facebook essays (some presented there in two or three instalments) on to the new available-to-all blog. Certainly, he will be posting new material there regularly. I take my hat off to him!

https://blog.simonspillett.com/blog/doomed-or-how-i-learned-to-stop-worrying-and-just-start-a-blog.aspx

Jazz daddios.

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This is coming up on that You Tube on the 23rd of this month. It may be of some passing interest for the resident hep cats. The You Tube channel in question is apart from this upcoming showcase of fresh new jazz well worth perusing. Some stunning music for people with functioning ears and minds.

Donny McCaslin talks about working with Bowie on Blackstar

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On the new Albumtoalbum podcast. He was great to chat with, and lots of brilliant details about being in the studio with the Dame, Visconti and the band. We talked for ages, and I invited musician, writer and manager of the Visconti Studio at Kingston Uni, Leah Kardos to join in too. It made me re-listen to Blackstar and get over the loaded associations I had with it and really appreciate the joy and verve captured in the studio as Bowie and McCaslin’s band set each other off beautifully.

This is first of three episodes and hope you might enjoy!

https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/davidbowie-albumtoalbum/id1355073030#episodeGuid=tag%3Aaudioboom.com%2C2020-06-21%3A%2Fposts%2F7612878

Jazz : A Force for Good

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I am not a jazzer. No way. Expose me to pure jazz, and I will run a mile. It just doesn’t work for me, and I have tried (as have friends). It really came home to me when I went to see Bill Bruford some years ago. There I was looking forward to this alumnus of three of my favourite bands but, No! This wasn’t right at all. It was all clarinets and marimbas.

Yet, when the music in my comfort zone gets exposed to jazz, that’s when it really gets exciting. Joni when she gets Jaco. Ravel’s Piano Concerto in G Major. My favourite folk dance thrives when Andy Cutting’s melodeon, the hurdy gurdy and the bagpipes, get cut with multiple saxes and it swings. Above all, at the recent live reincarnations of King Crimson, what has got me on the edge of my seat with delight, what has enthralled me and kept me guessing, has been the syncopations, the flights of fancy, the vaulting instrumentals setting off at tangents. I have to concede; it’s the jazz which makes it.

Given the recent expose from the Daily Mail that a love of jazz renders suspect the credibility of Scottish » Continue Reading.

The Comet Is Coming

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No, not a prediction – I’m no hunchback – just something I’m loving right now and think you might too. “The Comet Is Coming are a London-based band who incorporate elements of Jazz, Electronica, Funk and Psychedelic Rock”, and, for once, the blurb is actually spot on.

Charlie Mingus – lost concert rediscovered

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I’m not enough of a jazz aficionado to post a proper review but after last year’s discovery of the lost Coltrane tapes there’s another massive find from the vaults out there. In 1972 Charles Mingus broke a years-long musical silence, including concerts in Detroit with a quintet. Recordings from the run via a radio broadcast have emerged – clocking in at four hours of Mingus magic including interviews and announcements, from a short-lived artists space called Strata Gallery.

I don’t quite have the language to really describe these recordings but they sound absolutely brilliant. The tracks are long, long takes on Mingus classics and jazz standards. The quintet all sound at the top of their games, and it hits that spot where there’s improvisation going to the outer limits without ever losing sense of the tune at the base of it all.

Here’s the Pitchfork review which has lots of clever language and gets it right.

Charles Mingus: Jazz In Detroit/Strata Concert Gallery/46 Selden is on Spotify and emusic. Have a listen. It’s great.

» Continue Reading.

Joseph Jarman RIP

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Sad to hear of the death of Joseph Jarman from Art Ensemble of Chicago last week. This great obituary comes from Richard Williams of thebluemoment.com, a great AW friendly blog. I saw AEoC at Fairfield Halls in Croydon some time in the late 80s? with the great Lester Bowie but Joseph was the performer of the night. Sometimes he was too pharping for me but at other times he produced beautiful soulful sounds. Time for an AEoC playlist I think!

https://thebluemoment.com

Slipped Past My Radar: Duke Ellington Live @ Coventry Cathedral 1966.

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I decided to have a listen (on the Beeb’s new “Sounds” page) to BBC Radio 3’s “Jazz Now” programme from December 17th. As they played a few excerpts from this and spoke to TV historian Helen Wheatley at Warwick University, I realised I’d missed an important 2018 archival album and film. The album has been released on CD and as a set of FLAC files by the Storyville label. “Duke Ellington In Coventry 1966” is over an hour of delightful live Ellington music. The concert was originally broadcast on ITV’s midlands franchise of the day, ABC, in black and white. It was thought lost for the past 52 years but was unearthed in time to become part of the buildup for Coventry’s “City Of Culture” celebrations in 2021. The film is being screened today in the cathedral and will doubtless be released generally soon.

https://www.coventrytelegraph.net/news/coventry-news/jazz-duke-ellington-coventry-cathedral-15478366

Summer’s Gone and It’s The Gigging Season Again

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All the big stars of the northern hemisphere are back from their hols and filling up the enormodomes and their bank accounts. Lesser musical mortals are back from family jaunts to the Costa-packet and are eager to divest you of your spare spondulicks, pounds and pence, dollars and cents. My favourite Steely Dan tribute have a few pub gigs lined up, mostly free entry. Herts Jazz have their new season starting (after a Summer break) Tuesday nights at The Maltings Arts Theatre in St. Albans. Some good nights in prospect there, including Jim Mullen’s organ trio.

Looking at the upcoming schedules for local venues, I’m somewhat in a quandary. Some clashes ahead. On October 2nd it’s the second in a monthly series of open mic nights in Colindale, organised by an old mate. Also a latin jazz quintet featuring 3 local favourites are playing at Mill Hill Jazz Club. On October 7th Georgie Fame & The Blue Flames are on in Letchworth (Herts Jazz Festival) and vocalist Tina May is on in Colindale. My dance card looks pretty full for October and November.

What about youze lot?