#0019: Ella Fitzgerald - Sings The George & Ira Gershwin Song Book [*****]

I like a Gershwin tune.  How about you?

This is a triple album, which I would put good money on being quite a coup in 1958.  I don't know if there were songs left out.  I'm not a Gershwin geek by any stretch but there are many of those songs in my favourites list from this genre.

Fitzgerald's voice is clear and bright, even in the low register.  It lacks the road worn crackle of Holiday or the crepuscular smokiness of Vaughan but given the arrangements on this collection, they were clearly going for shiny and pristine over character.  They are letting the songs do the talking.  Nelson Riddle's arrangements are smooth, precise and spacious allowing you to sit back and take in the panorama.

Arrangements are fine, and voices are lovely but without good writing to back it up there is only so far you can get.  There is a personality in these songs that gives them immortality in spite of the inherent antiquity of the style.  Tenuous rhymes on one line and simple truths the next, the lyrics dance with the language like nobody's watching.

Many of these songs would be popular answers in any survey of this period.  Someone To Watch Over Me, Let's Call The Whole Thing Off, They Can't Take That Away From Me, Embraceable You...I could go on. And on.  Mind you, there are some real gems on here too that haven't enjoyed as much of the spotlight - Slap That Bass, to name just one.

It's value for money.  It's a sophisticated dinner party soundtrack.  And if it's neither of those, you'll at least feel yourself wanting to watch When Harry Met Sally and that's never a bad thing.

#0018: Sarah Vaughan - At Mister Kelly's [****]

Have this in the CD player when you get home from that 3rd date and you'll only have yourself to blame if you don't get laid.  For a mostly andante collection of jazz tunes, it's remarkably upbeat in terms of mood.

The recording was made live at some club and has that trademark authentic live jazz crowd chatter.  It sounds like there's maybe not even 20 people in the room although I dare say there were a lot more.  At the very start the announcer advises the audience that the session is being recorded and that Ms Vaughan will use a lyric sheet.  I think that's cute.  It's a throwback to a simpler time when people were more easily impressed.  Mind you, they were also more easily offended, more easily conned and more easily a lot of things.  I just like the tone he sets.

Then on the 2nd track - Willow Weep For Me - having said she's using a lyric sheet, she messes the words up anyway and instead of shutting the hell up and letting the band cover it, she carries on singing in an extemporaneous commentary on the blunder and draws loud laughter from the crowd.  The atmosphere is well established now and I just felt comfortable.  Do you think if that recording were made today the producers would have included that track as is?

I think jazz should be played a certain slap dash, hap hazard irreverence.  The music is serious enough.

She lampoons Ella Fitzgerald later on as she forgets the words again.  An irony lost on me at the time but I've since read one of her early breaks was to open for Ella Fitzgerald at the Apollo (that's Harlem not Hammersmith :0)

Altogether a fine album for both listening and mood setting.  Oh and keep an eye out for the piano player on this one, jazz dorks.  Man's got chops.

#0017: Ramblin Jack Elliott - Takes The Floor [***]

This is a funny little album.  He's got one of those hillbilly voices and plays a country/bluegrass guitar with that interwoven strumming and picking technique.  It's done well.  The songs have humour and he does these spoken intros over the opening vamps.  It's quirky and it's early enough that I could believe he was one of the first to do this.  There's something reminiscent of A Boy Named Sue about the delivery and it's pretty enjoyable although I wouldn't ever put this on out of choice.  But I'll certainly makes a note of it cuz it could be useful as background music for a film or a show.

And speaking of Johnny Cash, there's a track on here called Cocaine.  The first time I heard this song was at a Swansea open mic when a guy called Ian (I think they call him the Reverend Ian) played it.  I don't recall him citing Ramblin Jack Elliot as the writer at the time but this is obviously where he got it.  Then some years later I saw Walk The Line and Joaquin Phoenix plays it near the end of the film.

While trying to identify which film I'd seen this in, I discovered this really useful site.  It doesn't just list songs on the official soundtrack, it identifies songs used anywhere in the film.

So where the Louvin Brothers left me cold, Ramblin Jack left me with a smile on my face.  Groovy.

#0016: Billie Holiday - Lady In Satin [***]

In contrast to Sinatra's In The Wee Small Hours this collection of sad and slow songs gives me what Frank could not: empathy.  Billie Holiday's extraordinary voice communicates a depth of feeling, a nonchalant despair that makes it easy to accept her sadness.  It's not needy or grandiose like Wee Small Hours.  The horns are mellow and well rounded.  The strings are controlled and stand well back from that line where the swooping and swirling starts to make you feel dizzy.

Yes, all of these songs sound the same but a good album is like a box of chocolates.  Now, before I tag that simile, I'm going to take issue with the character who most famously likened something to a box of chocolates: Forest Gump's mum.  "You never know what you gonna get."

She also said, "Stupid is as stupid does."  You know what stupid doesn't do?  Stupid doesn't read the little card you get in a box of chocolates that tells you what you're gonna get!

Anyway, a good album is like a box of chocolates.  You always want another chocolate.

#0015: Tito Puente - Dance Mania Vol. 1 [*]

I feel like I should be sat in a tapas restaurant, squinting at the menu in the dim light.  I'm not entirely sure but I'm fairly confident I have heard this before, perhaps in La Tasca.  There are too many naked flames and wooden furniture in that restaurant to be playing this sort of thing to hungry people.

The entrance of the marimba almost half way through provides long overdue reprieve from the sun-crazed, harsh trumpets but then it's back to the blaring brass.

I have been known to say that tapas is aptly named cuz it turns your ass into a tap.  But now I'm thinking it may not have been the food that turned my stomach.

#0014: Little Richard - Here's Little Richard [**]

At some point in the 50s, somebody figured out that if you sing the first couple of lines with minimal accompaniment, it disguises the fact you're playing a 12 bar blues _again_, making it sound like the progression comes in on chord IV.  Cases in point: Tutti Frutti, Long Tall Sally and every other track on this album.

It's a welcome break from all the Latin in the period but more than one track at a time of Mr Penniman's albeit splendid boogie piano chops is just dull.  Unfair?  Certainly.  I'm not arguing the merit of his inclusion in this list.  It's clearly influential but the issue here is whether I was entertained by it.  

And I wasn't.  Except for Tutti Frutti.  And even that gets old pretty quickly. 

#0013: Machita - Kenya [**]

It starts with drums.  Yes - that kind of drums.  For a minute I thought I was just going to be writing "see album #0011" and leaving it at that.  It couldn't have been more than a couple of minutes long but by the end of it I was once more praying for the sweet release of death.

But after that, the blood-pressure-tripling, excessively busy bongos are masked by some really beautiful horn work.  It's still Latin.  Don't get me wrong.  Tequila and percussion should be kept apart with the same tight regulatory system as petroleum spirit and matches.  But there are tunes and from track 2 to 12, it's almost pleasant.  And if the centrifugal power behind that positive spin is more than a little driven by gratitude that track 1 has finished, then that's fine by me.

Maybe that's the message of the album: It Could Be Worse.

#0012: Miles Davis - The Birth Of The Cool [***]

This is the first of the albums on the list that I actually own.  I bought this CD back in 1995 as part of my jazz education.  That sounds like I have some kind of formal jazz credentials.  I don't.  My jazz education is this CD, a Best Of Blue Note compilation my then girlfriend bought me and the first Sting album.  

This was a very influential album in the world of jazz.  Presumably because it did things that nobody had done before.  But I've just listened to Basie's Complete Atomic and there's nothing on BOTC that Basie hadn't already covered.  To my ears, anyway.  And I preferred Basie's stuff.

That said, I do like this album and I play it reasonably regularly so...yeah.  

#0011: Sabu - Palo Congo []

That's right: none.  Fuck all stars.  If my rating of this album was the night sky, there would be no astrology.

I get the same kind of intense irritation from listening to this random, tuneless cock munge as I do when I see people forming a drumming circle.  There's no need for that shit and there's no need for this.  

#0010: Thelonius Monk - Brilliant Corners [**]

A lot of people have sung the praises of TM to me for a lot of years but I never actually got around to sitting down and listening to any of it.  I feel obliged, due to the large of body of compliments already accrued in his favour to write something of the same ilk.  Genius.  Unprecedented.  Visionary.

But it's really not.  The clue is in the traditional melodies.  When he does take a break from, what I'm going to nomenclate as "fucking odd", the accessible melodies are dull and predictable.  Never mind the jazz.  The players play well.  It sounds good.  It's not exciting.

But I am obliged to say something positive about it.  Cuz it's him.  And the best I can muster is: mathematically justifiable.

#0009: Count Basie - The Complete Atomic Basie [****]

I don't how many horns Count Basie had in his band but it sounds like a thousand.  This is an enormous sound.  Paint yourself an aural picture of the glitzy, flamboyant overture before the likes of Sammy Davis Jr took to the stage in Vegas and you're half way there.

This instrumental collection really doesn't feel the want of vocals.  The tones, the textures, the sweeping undercurrent of horns juxtaposed with the delicate finesse of intricate piano licks, the measured, reflective slower swing numbers, it all blends beautifully.  

The saxophone solos are played often with very little piano presence, leaving ample space for the implied chords to wow and the infinitesimal note lengths of the runs, ducking and spiralling like otters swimming through red bull to amaze.

 

#0008: Buddy Holly & The Crickets - The Chirping Crickets (1957) [***]

It was, ooooh, must have been 1997.  My daughter had just been born, I'd just parted ways with the band I was in and I was working in my first ever IT contract.  In the January, the aforementioned band had pulled off one of the most impressive feats (for a bunch of fuckwits) that Basingstoke had ever seen.

We were all big fans of Pink Floyd and Robbie (our trumpet player) had one of his madcap ideas.  Let's perform the whole of The Wall at the Anvil.  The Anvil is a 1200 seater venue and way out of our league.  Robbie was not to be put off by that.  He applied in writing to Mr Waters for permission to perform his masterpiece and give all the profits to charity.  Mr Waters agreed.  The rest of the story I'll tell you when I (hopefully) encounter the album on this list.

While we were performing there, I was offered a job on the technical crew of the venue.  I was delighted and jumped at the chance to work in a theatre.  One of the shows I worked on was Buddy: the travelling company version of the West End show.  It was excellent fun and I still remember those days very fondly.  The music of the show is ingrained for all time - the songs of Buddy Holly.

Many of them are included on this album and as much as I try to listen objectively, when I hear the twangy 50s guitar strumming out That'll Be The Day and Oh Boy I am transported back to the flying gantry where over the balustrade I would look down at the performers on stage and wish it was me.  I can smell the musty cloth of the blankets we laid on while waiting for cues, the ropes we heaved on to raise and lower the gargantuan Buddy neon sign.

Without that experience I think maybe this would've hit me much the same way as the Louvin Brothers did.  Okay, maybe not that bad but this 50s light rock and roll isn't really my bag.  My memories of a special time with this as the soundtrack give the songs an immutable resonance with me.  I can now identify with the kids of the 50s, whose own unique experiences played out over this simple, innocent sound so far removed from the over produced pop of recent times.