Month: February 2013

Golly good gracious me, I’ve put together the second all-jazz show in two weeks—this would be Updoc, Friday 8PM and noon the following Tuesday, Brooklyn Approximate time—but honest, officer, I have a good excuse. I don’t know how it happened, but I’d never heard Clark Terry’s big band ballad album Clark After Dark until a couple of weeks ago on a radio station that will go nameless (WKCR) and it just bowled me over. We’re not talking Miles and Gil here: the charts sound like Nelson Riddle from 1959, and the record, Clark’s personal favorite, was made in ’77 and came out the year after. I was a full-time jazz crrritic at the time and got everything, but I didn’t get that one, and then somehow missed it for another few decades. I love Clark Terry, and we all expect him to be warm and wonderful, but the beauty of his playing on this record is profound, and a real heart-melter. Not enough for you? How about Duke Ellington’s Blues in Orbit, also featuring Terry, and Terry with Monk, plus Terry with Mingus, four cuts from the band with Bob Brookmeyer and we take it out with Mumbles? The sweetest cat in the world and sounds like it, turned 93 in December, and still the only man on earth who can simultaneously play two brass instruments using only the strength of his lapels. You have to tune in for that. Bring your own valve oil.

Opening theme: Art Enemble of Chicago: The Ninth Room; Tutankhamun (Black Lion)

Donald Byrd: Say You’re Mine; The Cat Walk (Blue Note)

John Coltrane: Black Pearls [title tune](Prestige)

Donald Byrd: Cristo Redentor; A New Perspective (Blue Note)

Walter Smith III: Working Title, Goodnight, Byus; III (Criss Cross)

Miles Davis: Directions, Spanish Key, I Fall in Love Too Easily, Masqualero, Miles Runs the Voodoo Down, No Blues, Nefertiti, Sanctuary, The Theme: Miles Davis Quintet: Live in Europe 1969, Bootleg Series Vol. 2; Disc 2, 7/26/69 (Columbia Legacy)

Out theme: Art Ensemble of Chicago: Strawberry Mango; Coming Home Jamaica (WEA)

Playlist:

Janiva Magness – I Won’t Cry; STRONGER FOR IT (Alligator Records)
Esperanza Spalding – Radio Song; RADIO MUSIC SOCIETY (Head’s Up)

Donny McCaslin – Henry; CASTING FOR GRAVITY (Green Leaf)
Rez Abbasi Trio – Rivalry; CONTINUOUS BEAT (Enja)

Chick Corea, Eddie Gomez & Paul Motian – Gloria’s Step; FURTHER EXPLORATIONS (Concord)
Chick Corea & Gary Burton – Hot House; HOT HOUSE (Concord)

The Bad Plus – In Stitches; MADE POSSIBLE (E One)
Vijay Iyer Trio – Wildflower; ACCELERANDO (ACT)

Gosh, it’s been ages since I’ve done an all-jazz show, but it happens on this week’s Updoc—Friday at 8PM and noon next Tuesday, Birdland time—and it leads off with a belated tribute to Donald Byrd, who left this town a couple of weeks ago and took his trumpet with him. It ends with his hit, Cristo Redentor, and if the choral arrangement is a bit schlocky it’s a beautiful melody and Byrd plays it well enough for heaven. Then I catch up on someone I should have been hip to for years, the young tenorist Walter Smith III, playing with a young all-star cohort. Following that, well hey, I actually got my hands on a new release, if of old music: the legal release of bootlegs from the no longer quite so “lost” Miles Davis Quintet of 1969-70, the one with Wayne, Chick, Holland, and DeJohnette, probably MIles’ scorchingest band ever. An hour and four minutes long, and get ready to have your eyebrows broiled. Bring lots of lotion and a cooling drink.