diegodobini2

How do you like Xanadu records so far?


Xanadu Records was a jazz record label founded in 1975 by Don Schlitten. It was most active during the 1970s and 1980s and stopped recording in the 1990s

7 hours ago | [YT] | 5

diegodobini2

Dexter Gordon – True Blue (1976)
https://youtu.be/wNaFCKlsTZA
Original Liner Notes:

Surprise is the key word in a jam session—surprise at unexpected guests, unusual repertoire, and new musical associations. Jazz works best when the element of surprise is maximized, which is why jam sessions have always been renewing experiences for musicians and, often, breeding grounds for new musical ideas.

This date was a jam session in the true sense of the word. The personnel was a closely guarded secret, and as one member after another strolled in, the air warmed with excitement and anticipation. With each new arrival came laughter and greetings; some were meeting for the first time, others were old friends.

Producer Don Schlitten conceived of this session as a welcome home for Dexter Gordon, a longtime friend and associate. Dexter has made his home in Copenhagen for 14 years, making several trips back to the States. He visited the West Coast in 1975 and Chicago in 1974, but Dexter hadn't appeared in New York since the Newport/New York Jazz Festival of 1972, where he was not featured to advantage.

This time around, however (Fall, 1976), those in the New York area had abundant opportunity to hear him. His appearances at Storyville and the Village Vanguard took on near-mythic status. There was a definite electricity in the air during his visit; it was never long before the focus of any jazz conversation turned to Dexter.

For this recording, Schlitten wanted an ensemble that was large enough to provide solo variety and contrast, yet one small enough to operate without written arrangements.

thereby preserving the spontaneous quality of the jam session he had in mind. Al Cohn became the other half of the reed section. Cohn, who is roughly three years Gordon's junior, began his career in the 1940s with a variety of big-band work, including periods with the orchestras of George Auld, Buddy Rich, and Artie Shaw, and time as a member (with Stan Getz, Zoot Sims, and Serge Chaloff) of the "four brothers" sax section of Woody Herman's band of 1948-1949. In the 1950s, Al became quite active as a freelance arranger for commercial bands and orchestras, as well as carrying on his jazz activities. In 1957 he began to perform regularly in a group that he co-led with Zoot Sims. The late sixties saw the demise of their band, although they continued to make periodic appearances together.

Counterbalancing this tenor madness are two trumpeters with deep roots in the Fats Navarro/Clifford Brown tradition. Blue Mitchell was born in Miami, Florida, in 1930. He recorded extensively in the fifties and sixties, spending six years with one of Horace Silver's finest groups, along with Junior Cook. In the late sixties, he travelled to the West Coast with Ray Charles' band and found the climate, musically and physically, to his liking; he has made his base there since. In the early 1970s, Blue spent a period with John Mayall's blues band, as well as working a lot around the Los Angeles area with men like Teddy Edwards, Jack Sheldon, Dolo Coker, Bill Berry, and Harold Land. Blue had been planning to return to California when he got the call from Don Schlitten for this date; he stayed in town an extra week to make it.

Sam Noto is a brilliant player whose career has only recently begun to yield opportunities for him to be heard as the excellent soloist that he is. Born in Buffalo, New York, in 1930 (it was a good year for trumpet players), Sam went with Stan Kenton's band in 1953, staying until 1960. He had a couple of feature spots with the band, but the experience didn't lend itself to deep jazz involvement, at least as a personal voice. Something of the same thing can be said of a short period he spent with Count Basie's big band in the mid-sixties. After this, for financial reasons, Sam moved to Las Vegas to play in show bands. If Kenton and Basie were frustrating, imagine the scene at the "Golden Sahara Nugget," or wherever.

Barry Harris, Sam Jones, and Louis Hayes first joined forces in early 1960 as the rhythm section of Cannonball Adderley's quintet and recorded an excellent trio album for Riverside at the Jazz Workshop in San Francisco. Barry and Louis are both Detroiters; Harris, born in 1929, is eight years Hayes' senior. Barry was a legend in Detroit, instructing a few younger musicians in the way the music is put together. During the sixties, after coming to New York with Adderley, he led his own bands and trios and was the pianist in Coleman Hawkins' last quartet. Unquestionably, Harris, whose pianistic roots lie in Bud Powell, Art Tatum, and Thelonious Monk, is one of the most sensitive players around. Despite his resolute adherence to this lineage and musical outlook, his touch, time feel, and harmonic approach are immediately identifiable. He is also a remarkable, deep-thinking composer, a fact that gets overlooked in much of the writing about him.

Hayes is an exciting drummer whose talents are put to good use by leaders who like to burn; Horace Silver, as well as Cannonball and Oscar Peterson, come to mind.

Jones, like Blue Mitchell, a Floridian, has played with almost everyone because he is one of the best bass players in the world. It is so important for a bassist to pick notes that complement both what the soloist is doing and the voicings that the pianist is using; Sam has ears like radar. Dig the way he sings behind Blue's solo on How Deep Is The Ocean.

The first tune to be played that day was the Tadd Dameron composition Lady Bird, which, by the way, Barry recorded on his Xanadu Dameron album. As soon as everyone had arrived, the run-through began in earnest, with Dex and Al playing the surging, straight-ahead Dameron line and Sam and Blue playing Miles Davis' sinuous line on the same changes (Half Nelson). The combination works well and can be heard as a duet between Dexter and James Moody on Dexter's album More Power, recorded under Don's guidance for Prestige in the late sixties. After a couple of choruses of warm-up jamming for all, they ran over the closing melody a few times to get the ensemble harmony down. Barry, seated at the piano, ran the horns through it, suggesting alterations in the voicing, alternately frowning and laughing until it sounded right. Finally, they were ready to go.

An eight-bar intro from Barry prefaces the dual melody statement. Dexter solos first. Every phrase he plays rings with the deliberation and exhilaration that commingle in his unspeakably suave approach to the horn. He quotes from Pres' solo on Jive at Five midway through his third chorus before making way for Noto. Sam, by contrast, is a kind of highly strung player, full of overt enthusiasm, chasing ideas wherever they lead, sometimes just shouting to let off steam. His phrases are oblique and darting here. Al comes out preaching with passion and held notes. Cohn has a certain wail in his playing that is totally unique to him; the same can be said for his humor and heart. Blue flows through his two choruses. Within his fantastic swing are a relaxation and shyness that remind me of early Miles. Some of his ideas are ghostly beautiful. Barry, thoughtful and graceful as

always expounds and dances with his customary balance and eloquence. Sam has it for two, and there is a chorus of eight-bar exchanges between the glossy-deep Dameron-sounding ensemble and Hayes before the head is ridden tandem to a glowing close.

Don wanted a ballad featuring all the horns, and one of the tunes that had occurred to him was Irving Berlin's How Deep Is The Ocean. Between takes, Barry, who hadn't been told of the idea, was musing at the keyboard and started playing How Deep; in seconds, so did Dexter. In the pleasant afterglow of that unspoken understanding, the tune was decided upon, and the work of beauty we have here is the result.

Barry starts it off with a short, out-of-tempo introduction, then Sam and Louis join in for Barry's chorus, in which the melody is used as a point of departure for long thoughts. Al is next with an incredibly direct and lyrical solo; again I notice his held notes. They become broader as he holds them and more penetrating and insistent; sometimes they waver and threaten to burst like heavy-bellied clouds. Serge Chaloff had that same way of laying himself completely open. Blue blows a touching, superbly put-together solo; dig how his playing has an ironic edge to it that Al's doesn't here. Dexter plays a thoughtful late-afternoon chorus, not without its own dry humor. Sam Noto soars on wide, airy notes, sometimes introduced by downward sixteenth and thirty-second note swoops. The tune ends after a lovely cadenza from Sam.

For the third time, Don suggested that Blue come up with a blues line, something on the order of his Sir John, which he had recorded several times. True Blue was the result—a funky blues designed to be blown upon. Blue is up first, dancing behind the beat. He plays in a way that encourages a direct response from a rhythm section; his phrases are very answerable. His way with the blues, the particular way he moves from chorus to chorus, as well as his approach to swinging, often puts me in mind of Wardell Gray. Al builds his solo ingeniously, at first humorously implying more than he says, then stomping full-steam ahead. Noto has his say next. He doesn't swing as evenly as Blue, but he is a little more prone to take chances; he comes up with some exquisite ideas here. Dexter forges fourteen irreversible choruses. I remember seeing Al with his eyes closed, smiling during this. Barry is next, driving through a frothy, swaggering solo. Louis gets seven very melodic choruses before the horns return for a few rounds of fours between themselves. Back to Blue's line twice through and out.

Incredibly, this is only half of what went down at the session. Volume two is entitled Silver Blue. Sessions like these are our assurance that wonders will never cease.
-Tom Piazza (1977)

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8 hours ago | [YT] | 15

diegodobini2

Jimmy Heath – Picture Of Heath (1975)
https://youtu.be/4Cb0Y1vzWpg
Original Liner Notes:
As these words are written, Jimmy Heath, who just scraped in under the birth sign of Scorpio. is about to enter his fiftieth year A decade ago the saxophonist opined, "Life begins at forty." But as things turned out, it only started happening again for Jimmy in his late forties. Eight years drifted by without a single Fleath led the recording session. Sure, he was working steadily, as well as recording with others, and he continued composing royalty checks from his many originals recorded by some of the major figures in town, which supplemented his income. But Jimmy Heath was getting no personal exposure. The explanation was simple, as he explained to writer Valerie Wilmer. "You see, I'm not the sort of person to go uls to somebody and say. would like to record for your record company', and wrote up a whole brochure of all the things I have done for the past twenty-love years I'll never start making tapes to take along for people to hear me. I'll just continue to live like I'm living. If you come down and hear me play, you'll find the reason why I haven't been an overnight success." Heath plays his own way and rejects the idea of touting for publicity or pandering to the musical whims of the moment. Fortunately Don Schlitten needed no tapes from Jimmy to be aware of what he could do. In 1972 the producer went looking for the artist and asked him to record. The result was an album called, significantly, The Gap Sealer. Since then there have been two more Jimmy Heath sessions, and he has appeared on LPs as a sideman with brother Albert Heath, pianist Red Garland, organist Don Patterson (all incidentally produced by Don Schlinen), and singer Johnny Hartman. Now they have even started to reissue some of Jimmy's excellent sides from 15 years ago. The return of Heath to center stage in today's jazz drama has not been marked by fervid fanfares. But a lot of people who still dig good music on Planet Earth have felt happy, grateful, and rewarded by his re-emergence. The non-availability of any recordings by Jimmy in the catalogues somehow typified the mindless phase that Ian went through during the Nixon years. It is just as well that Jimmy is blessed with a philosophical outlook and an abundance of patience. His time is now, and lucky for us. he is playing better than at any period of his long and honourable career. Although he will be writing no brochures about himself, Jimmy is saying a wealth of personal things on his saxophones. I will recall, however, that his past credentials are impeccable. He worked with all the trumpet giants including Dizzy Gillespie, Moles Davis, Clark Terry, Clifford Brown. Art Farmer, Kenny Dorham, and Howard McGhee He started on alto, doubled on baritone, switched to tenor, and more recently added flute and soprano to his instrumental accomplishments. He went through the mill of problems (like legions of his contemporaries) but came out of them whole, wiser and more mature. Through the good and bad years, a steady flow of compositions was produced by this gifted man. Few individuals can compose, arrange, and play and be brilliant in all three endeavors. Mr. Heath is one of the few. He provided an interesting insight into his conception to Miss Wilmer. 'If you don't have the whole spiritual thing, I don't think jazz is complete. To me, a musician is just a transformer. It's like I receive the music from somewhere else. If I sit down to write a tune, nobody comes up and tells me what to write, it comes from somewhere else It's not really mine; I'm supposed to transform this music. In Picture of Heath, Jimmy transforms in a different way because the setting is quite unlike those of his previous records. He has played the occasional tune with only trio backing in earlier collections, but this is his first quartet date wherein Jimmy is the sole horn. He used the opportunity to approach in a new manner five of his older compositions and to tackle the high jump that every tenor player worth his salt must leap eventually—Body and Soul. To help paint this intimate portrait of Heath meant Barry Harris. Sam Jones and Billy Higgins Barry, a Xanadu regu-lar, earned Jimmy's respect long ago when they played together on a Carmell Jones recording. The empathy is

evidenced by Heath's confidence in the pianist's powers "Take as many choruses as you like on this one, Barry," was a typical instruction from the leader. That kind of remark shows Heath's regard for a peerless soloist and accompanist. Jimmy is not given to gushing praise "Sam Jones is steady," he says firmly, and you know he values highly that firm, accurate support, the big tone and bass lines that strengthen the performance and never throw the soloist. Like Sam, drummer Billy Higgins is a favorite of both Jimmy and Don. Notes Mr. Heath, "Billy is always happy and makes me happy also. He listens. "Swain Billy" was the title of a composition by Jimmy dedicated to his percussionist. He wrote it "for the love of the way Billy Higgins plays and for his love of music and of playing." So these are the four men from four cities and four states, all New Yorkers by adoption, who fuse their talents as one. Higgins and Jones pour in the sunshine from California and Flonda respectively, Harris supplies the invigorating breezes from the Michigan Lakes and stirring it all together is Heath's East Coast energy Wherever they came from originally, these artists play New York. Like the myriad aspects of that teeming metropolis they reflect multiple emotions This is life music—honest, non-flamboyant yet thrilling, as the best moments of living always are. Higgins voices Jimmy's thoughts about transforming music are in a slightly different way, but the sentiments are the same: "Music don't belong to nobody. If they could just realize that music doesn't come from you, it comes through you, and if you don't get the right vibrations, you might kill a little bit of it. You can't take music for granted." Neither can you take the playing of these four brothers for granted. It lumps out and grabs you with its sheer power and potency. While Jimmy's 50-plus compositions have been recorded by musicians as diverse as Chet Baker and Miles Davis, Groove Holmes and Milt Jackson. Eddie Harris and James Moody, Mr. Heath demonstrates live times over here that he is his own best interpreter (or transformer, if you will). The quintet of Jimmy's tunes presented in this Picture of Heath encompasses almost a decade of compositional effort. The years covered are 1953 - 1962. CTA is one of his most famous works and dates from 1953, when it was first recorded by Miles Davis for Blue Note. The initials CTA stand for the Central Trucking Agency, which happened to be situated close to the Blue Note offices. For Minors Only was waxed by Jimmy at his first date for Riverside Records in 1959. The picture of Heath is from the following year, as is All Members (first heard on a Sam Jones-led session at Riverside). "Bruh' Slim" was premiered on a 1962 Jimmy Heath Sextet album. Ira Cutler described it as a 'catchy melody' then, and so it also is 15 years later. Although Mr. Heath plays virtually the whole family of saxophones plus flute—and uses piano and guitar for composing to boot—on this album he performs on only tenor and

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21 hours ago | [YT] | 18

diegodobini2

Wayne Shorter – Speak No Evil (1966)
https://youtu.be/wbgsd-Y1mHA
Original Liner Notes:
LEGENDS, folklore and black magic the arts of mystery and darkness have long been a special source of inspiration for artists, perhaps because their symbols are drawn from the roots of the imagination. One of the best examples is the work of Edgar Allan Poe, who mercilessly exposed the forbidden fantasies that drift near the ends of dreams. Composers, too, have probed into similar areas. Sibelius Valse Triste, Dukas' The Sorcerer's Apprentice, Bartok's Bluebeard's Castle and Mussorgsky's Night On The Bare Mountain are but a few of the better-known works attributable to mogic, legends and folklore.
The collection of Wayne Shorter compositions included in Speak No Evil follows similar lines. "I was thinking, he ex-plained to me, "of misty landscapes with wild flowers and strange, dimly-seen shapes the kind of places where folklore and legends are born. And then I was thinking of things like witchburnings, too. Much of this feeling comes through in the compositions, especially in the floating harmonies, the chords filled with tonality-disturbing ambiguities, about to move in one direction but sometimes stopping to floot like the elements in Shorter's "misty landscapes." The effect is heightened by the remarkable interaction between Ron Carter and Elvin Janes. Little of what might specifically be called time-keeping occurs in what they play, rather is there a flowing, sometimes overlapping, sometimes independent pulsation that shifts back and forth between superimposed metric subdivisions.
Shorter has played his way through a variety of music and circumstances in his career, some of which as with most jazzmen must have ranged pretty far from his own musical objectives. He feels, however, that the changes wrought by his years of active playing have primarily been in the widening of his own artistic vision. "I'm getting," he said, "more stimuli from things outside of myself. Before, I was concerned with myself, with my ethnic roots, and so forth. But now, and espe cially from here on, I'm trying to fan out, to concern myself
with the universe instead of just my own small corner of it." It is, particularly at a time when the expression of interior emotions is a focal point for many young players, a particularly refreshing statement.
"Whatever change I have made so far," Shorter explained, "is there inside me, churning around in a little circle, but still not revealing itself wholly. When I was doing this date it was a struggle to get it out, to forget about the saxophone and its technical problems per se and abandon everything that I had done before." Like most of the short, painful steps that charac terize artistic growth, Shorter's struggles do not always produce successful results. But when everything works, when the saxo-phone ceases to be a mechanism and becomes instead an extension of his voice (as frequently happens in this recording), the value of Shorter's goals becomes clear.
Witch Hunt makes extensive use of fourths in its line, which is fundamental and blues-like in style, but ethereal and haunt ing enough in execution to fully justify Shorter's title. Interest-ingly, all the soloists, first Shorter, then Hubbard and Hancock, use a fourth as a constructional motive in their improvisations. The second title, Fee-Fi-Fo Fum of course, is a contraction of the famous couplet spoken by the giant in the story of Jack and the Beanstalk. I doubt, however, if that monstrous creature ever swung through his castle with quite the elemental feeling the Shorter group achieves. Hubbard, who takes the first chorus, plays with plangent lyricism, but, characteristically, he varies his phrases with exploding bursts of quick, flashing runs. Shorter plays a gutsy solo, coloring it with a fascinating range of timbres, bending and smearing his tones through the use of a flexible embouchure. The relationship between Dance Coda verous and Sibelius' Valse Triste was noted by Shorter, but he had another inspiration as well. "I was thinking," he said, "of some of these doctor pictures in which you see a classroom and they're getting ready to work on a cadaver." The most noticeable musical feature of Shorter's line is the recurring
chromatic chord change. Hancock's first chorus, gentle as a sonnet, floats above the complex planes of interlocking rhythms played by Carter and Jones. Notice too how the returning melody blossoms out of Shorter's solo.
Both Hubbard and Shorter venture into unusual improvisa-tional areas in their choruses on Speak No Evil. Shorter in par-ticular seems interested in finding rhythmic and melodic ideas that are unrestricted by traditional boundaries. Infant Eyes is the only line that departs from the ways of magic and folklore. "I was thinking of my daughter," said Shorter. The piece is constructed, in unorthodox fashion, of three consecutive nine bar phrases. Shorter plays throughout most of the track except for Hancock's introduction and brief nine-bar solo toward the end. Listen for the clear unaffected quality of Shorter's tenor sound, not unlike the velvety middle register sound of the cello, Wild Flower can be heard, according to Shorter, simply as what the title suggests an Ode to a Wild Flower. It is a 6/4 tune, with a dancing, light-hearted line that probably will stay with you long after your phonograph is turned off. The soloists Shorter, Hubbard and Hancock -play with distinction, and notice in particular the marvelous rhythmic cross-currents in Elvin Jones' accompaniment. No small part of his talent lies in the ability to adapt to a given playing situation by finding an appropriate complimentary area of his own interpretive powers.
Legends, folklore, black magic all sources of artistic in-spiration. But nothing about the work of Wayne Shorter and his group can be traced to necromantic secrets. In Speak No Evil they rely upon the stuff of all artistic achievement-talent, craftsmanship and imagination.


-DON HECKMAN
Jazz Editor, The American Record Guide


Cover Photo & Design by REID MILES
Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

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1 day ago | [YT] | 32

diegodobini2

Don Byas – Complete 1946-1951 European Small Group Master Takes
https://youtu.be/eCipGlfEP34
alternative: https://youtu.be/eCipGlfEP34

About this edition...
This set includes nearly all the small group studio sessions recorded by Don Byas in Europe up until 1951. All sessions were record-ed in Paris, except two tracks that were waxed in Barcelona in October 1947.
This edition does not include the Spanish sessions with the Bernard Hilda and Luis Rovira orchestras (a logical decision: these are big band dates), nor an obscure session recorded alongside expatriate trumpeter Bill Coleman and French jazzmen Bernard Peiffer (piano), Jean Bouchety (bass) and Roger Paraboschi (drums) for the Jazz Society label (a session that has never been reissued.) Similarly obscure are three tracks from the last session included in CD-3 (originally recorded for the Vogue label) which have also never been reissued.
Still, we have been able to include six ultra-rare numbers originally issued under the Saratoga Jazz Hounds denomination which few aficionados have been able to listen to until today. In spite of these unfortunate limitations, we feel that we are rightly entitled to name this edition "Complete 1946-1951 European Small Groups Master Takes".

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6 days ago (edited) | [YT] | 5

diegodobini2

Fred Jackson-Hootin' 'n Tootin' (1962)
https://youtu.be/wbWpCyDgP4M
Original Liner Notes:
CURRENTLY the jazz scene presents a more "earthy atmos phereatmosphere" for the aficionado. Hard bop, or the tendency to swing modern, contains certain basic jazz influences whicatmosphere"thath have added new vigor and vitality to the idiom. Soul jazz has be come a new gateway for further pursuit of freedom of expres sion. The virility of the "down home" influence combined with African roots arthatise now the basic jazz theoriistheoryes used for further exploration.

Out of this new soulful world of jazz has emerged one amus-ing paradoxtheoryamusing paradox, which is the current trend today. New faces oreamusing paradox,are cropping up from the obscure seats of rock and roll or rhythm and blues archestras. areorchestras. Orchestras that back many a blues shouter or prominent rock and roll exponent are fast becoming the nucleus for new jazz blood. This trend was introduced by a few commercially astute leaders who wisely included in their libraries a few modern tunes so the boys in the bands could let off a little steam of individuality.

It was successfully noticed by many jazz followers, whose mouths would fly open in amazement, that these bands could adequately conform with modern jazz concepts. Bands now exist, in a sense, in a sort of a schizoorchestras. schizoidid personality that appeals to both rock and roll lovers and lovers of modern jazz. Many fail to realize that bands of all phases are manned by person nel who are accredited jazz musicians who seek security in Gritsville even though, in reality, the inter orchestral main stream that pays their room and board may not be to their particular creative fastes.

In Hootin' 'N Tootin' the listener is afforded the opportunity of hearing members of a famous orchestra noted for its smart arrangements along the schizoidalong withrhythm and blues influence. Like or chestraalong withorchestrass preoccupied with many other musical phases, this band hardly affords its musicians any opportunity for personal ex pressionorchestrasexpression..

The moods expressed on Hootin' 'N Tootin' are in the "down home" and "down to earth" groove. Under the leadership of Fred Jackson, tenor sax artist, the listener is propelled into the world of the new truth. Fred, as well as the other musicians onexpression.in this session, is a stellar member of the popular Lloyd Price or chestrainorchestra.. This is the second recording venture for Fred Jackson. Many listeners will remember his tenor work on the cooking "Baby Face" Willette's Face to Face, BLP 4068. The reaction

of the vaxorchestra.vox populi of the jazz world to Fred's work on Face to Face set off a clamor for this inventive tenor saxist's return osvoxas a leader of his own group.

The listener will respond to the infectious beat that is dom inanasdominantt throughout this session. The titles of the tunes are indica tive of this era of jazz funk and soul by the usage of the colorful idiomatic language. Fred Jackson has surrounded him self with constituents who have worked together, solidifying each others' mode of creative expression through constant in timate jam sessions, thus welding a tight relationship within the group in which spontaneous ideas flow constantly.

The listener is transported musically to the land of blues and roots. There are absolutely no social problems that motivate retrospection nor is there room for controversial comparison The listener is entertained by jazz that is clean and uncomplicateddominantuncomplicated by wayoutway-outcliches. Fred Jackson and cohorts adequately prove their mettle in matters musical as messengers of sound and jazz goodwill, serving the purpose of exploiting the passion and warmth of the "new truth."

The music heard onway-outin this session was composed by Fred Jack soninJackson, who displays many variances in his approach to the minor sound. The general feeling of "swinging" prevails; every solo precludes any doubts in the listener's mind as to the ability of this group to express true jazz.

Dippin' In The Bag: This ear opener is a little reminiscent of the spiritual "This Train" Jackson,Train."Fred rides tastefully through the opening chorus with some beautiful "comping" from Earl Van dykeTrain."Dyke on organ. The guitar of Willie Jones adequately takes up the cause, displaying the dash and verve of a flamboyant artist. Fred takes over for the closing stanzo.Dykestanza.

Southern Exposure: This group obviously enjoys this low downstanza.-down blues affair. Willie Jones fingers tenderly, setting the pat ter-downpatternn on this interesting blues change. The big-toned tenor of Fred Jackson concocts a flow of fluent jazz ideas. Earl Van-dyke'spatternVan Dyke's organ appears aggressively to add musical comment. Fred closes this quaint blue opus with the aid of titillating side guitar comments by Willie Jones.

Preach Brother!: A "shouter" Van Dyke's"shouter,"or short sermon "shouter,"sermon,with Fred swing insermon,swingingg in a wide arc, aided by good drum work by Wilbert Hogan.swingingHogan.

pushing goading the group. Everything on this fast swinger is "go." The Vandyke orgoorgan grinds with some swashbuckling right handorgan-hand exercises,-handexercises; a rousing session of unbridled swing en suesexercises;ensues,, ending with greatensues,great rapport between all concerned.

Hootin' 'N Tootin': An uptempoed swinger featuring the Ho gan drumming magic. Wilbert's cymbal beat will undoubtedly keep the listener's head nodding in knowing assent. Fred's tenor is prominent in its strong, aggressive tone. The guitar and organ solos are extremely well executed, but Wilbert Hogan's drums dominate throughout.

Easin' On Down: In this ditty the "function" really rolls; this group approaches soul with many modern ideas that defy cries of traditionalism or retrogression as they modernize ideas of blues and roots. Fred opens with some marvelously executed tenatenor ideas with a dash of cute little Coletraneisms.tenorColtraneisms. Willie sec Coltraneisms. secsand solos with nice secsnice,clean finger impressions; Earl Vandyke's organ sensitivity makes one predict great future possibilitiespnice,ossibilities.

That's Where It's At. A catchy swinger that wades in hot jazz waters soulfully. A finger snapper designed to lure wayward. twispossibilities.the wayward. ters into the jazz fold. The listener will probably accede to my opinion that this group is tighter than the proverbial hat bandthe wayward. hatband.. Fred Jackson's good tenor judgment again prevails on the opening chorus,hatband., with Earl and Willie following with terse solo commentaries commentaries,with the Hogan drums an ever presentcommentaries,-present influence.

Way Down Home: Earl Vandyke opens this finale briefly, playing pretty without becoming involved with boisterous over done-present, overdone effects. Fred Jackson's solo exudes a passion and dexterity, overdonein technique that earmarks him for future stardom as a jazz voice. Willie's guitar ideas are earthy and sincere. Earl takes another chorus; this time he invents, probes,probes, and searches for expression. Needless to say, he accomplishes his mission as planned.

-DUDLEY WILLIAMS

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF

Cover Design by REID MILES Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

Users of Wide Range equipment should adjust their controls for the RIAA curve.

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1 week ago | [YT] | 36

diegodobini2

Larry Young – Into Somethin' (1965)
https://youtu.be/KtT4naJAG8U
Original Liner Notes:
"ONE thing about Larry Young," Grant Green was emphasizing as he talked about this album, "is that he's really an organist. He knows that instrument, and furthermore, unlike some other organ players in jazz, Larry never gets in your way. On the contrary, he keeps building in and around what you're doing while always listening so that his comping is always a great help. He's much more flexible than organists usually are, and that makes it possible for him to comp specifically for each different player. Man, he even comps in a particular way for drums.

"Another thing," Green continued, "is that Larry is always identifiable right away. You know it's him. It's his sound, his imagination, and the way he creates melodic lines. His sense of melody is very fresh and very much his own."

The organ skills of Larry Young, furthermore, are, in a sense, a continuation of a family tradition. As Leonard Feather points out in his notes for Talkin' About (Blue Note 4183), a Grant Green album on which Larry Young and Elvin Jones also appear, "Larry is the first important young jazz organist to claim second-generation status in this profession." Larry Young, Senior, is an organist and was the first major musical influence on his son. The father, moreover, provided an organ in the family home so that Larry Young, Junior, who had studied piano, could gravitate easily and at his own pace to the organ.

The younger Larry Young was born on October 7, 1940. His background includes the study of both classical and jazz music. (Bud Powell was a particular force in Young's early indoctrination into modern jazz.) From about 1951 to 1958, Young was relatively inactive musically, but a strongly reawakened interest in the organ, encouraged by his father, propelled Young back into music in 1958. After a rhythm and blues apprenticeship, Young gained wider experience with Lou Donaldson; worked around New York and New Jersey with Kenny Dorham, Hank Mobley, and Tommy Turrentine, among others; and then began heading his own units.

Young went to Paris in November 1964 and has since created a European following through his quartet at Le Chat Qui Peche. One reason for his decision to spend some time in Europe is Young's persistent concern with widening his experience so that he can express a greater diversity of emotions and insights in his music. But Young has no intention of becoming an expatriate. With regard to jazz, he points out, "The States are the basis of it all, and I won't stay in Europe so long that

I'll lose my roots." The strength of Young's roots in the blues and in corollary foundation blocks of the jazz language are evident throughout.

this album. Also clear is Young's variegated imagination as a composer. The opening Tyrone is named by Young after his five-year-old son. Written in 6/8, Tyrone in actual performance achieved what Young calls "a very good floating feeling." Young adds that the tune is constructed, in a way, "like a loose-leaf notebook; you can always take away from it or add to it. And it's also built so that, as here, you can stretch out on solos."

The loping theme of Young's Tyrone presages the relaxed groove that is characteristic of the album as a whole. As Young begins his solo, what is instantly characteristic of his playing is clarity of sound, nimbleness of execution, lean, pungent chording, and a resilient beat. By contrast with organists who confuse the instrument with an artillery weapon, Young is an unusually resourceful and graceful improviser on that powerful instrument. Conscious of dynamics and of the force of understatement, his is a disciplined but infectiously pulsating approach to the organ. The uncluttered lines and penetrating sound of Grant Green fuse bracingly with Young's lithe conception. Complementing both of them is the dark-toned, passionate tenor of Sam Rivers. Boston-based and long admired by jazzmen who have played in that city, Rivers has an emotional directness and rhythmic surge that presage a rising reputation. And of Elvin Jones, perhaps the most graphic assessment of his worth on a date is that of Grant Green: "All I can say about Elvin is that he lifts that beat all the way up into the air!"

Plaza De Toros is a Grant Green excursion into the terrain of Spanish musical feeling. This blending of jazz with Spanish idiomatic devices, including rhythmic shapes, is refreshingly unforced. Green's soaring, quicksilver solo swings effortlessly while sustaining melodic interest. The "cry" in Sam Rivers' succeeding improvisation, while basically jazz in inflection, also calls to ear the winding passion of a flamenco "cantador." Worth noting here, and on the other tracks, is the spring-like thrust of Young's organ accompaniment, which is never muddy nor consumed with its own capacity for smothering everyone else. And when Young breaks into a solo, there is again that clean, incisive structuring of melodic lines that bristle with Young's delight in transcending the usual murkiness of jazz organ playing as he proves how light-footed the instrument can be.

Paris Eyes, as the title might indicate, was written by Young in expectation of his trip to that city of light. The gentle theme connotes anticipation, and its execution also indicates how mellow a soloist Young can be. Sam Rivers too directs his lyricism into more luminous, softer textures without, however, losing any of the virility that is so endemic to his playing. Here

Again, Young's deft, provocative accompanying patterns provide a rich, multicolored base for the hornman, Grant Green eases into the joyful mood, and then Young constructs a kind of advance paean to the expansive way of life that he hopes to find in Paris. In the background, Elvin Jones keeps the time alive with promise.

Backup is a glowing blues with Young's particular stamp of melodic finality. His lines in retrospect have an aura of inevitability, as if their shape had always existed but simply required someone to fill in the notes for them to come into pulsating being. Grant Green's solo here animates Young's appreciation of that remarkably consistent guitarist: "Grant never lets up, never lags. He's always right in the groove." And when one is speaking of roots, there is not the slightest doubt of Green's total command of the blues idiom as he demonstrates in Backup. Rivers, too, tells a basic, personal blues story. crisply propelled by Young and Jones. And think on that word, "crisply." How often have you heard an organist to whom that term can accurately apply?

The final Young original, Ritha, is performed by a trio of Young, Green, and Jones because Young felt the song was better suited to that framework than to a quartet. A wistful, caressing tune, Ritha further underlines Larry Young's value as a writer of jazz originals. Like others of his melodies, it is the kind of tune that, if fused with the right words, could have considerable currency for singers in search of material of quality. In this version, the song's sinuous line is explored with cohesive sensitivity by Green and Young, while Elvin Jones makes the drums sound as if they were breathing.

In Larry Young, BLUE NOTE has one of the rarer contemporary phenomena in jazz: a thoroughly skilled jazz organist who recognizes the virtues of clarity and spareness as well as the need to keep attuned to the individual, expressive needs and directions of his colleagues. Into Somethin' is a notable album, both as a forum for a satisfying organist on the ascendant and also as an illustration of flowing small combo jazz in which four firm individualists are also capable of interrelating as an unusually well-integrated unit of vivid spirit and a robust but never soggy beat. It is the kind of record that is easy to revisit, and that can also be said of its leader, whose jazz future ought to be as sanguine as his musical temperament.

Cover Photo by FRANCIS WOLFF Cover Design by REID MILES Recording by RUDY VAN GELDER

-NAT HENTOFF

For a complete catalog, write to BLUE NOTE RECORDS INC., 43 West 61st St., New York 23.

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1 week ago | [YT] | 33

diegodobini2

Dexter Gordon – Landslide (1962)
https://youtu.be/1h2jAJE_pko
Original Liner Notes:
DEXTER GORDON is a weaver of spells and teller of tales. Ha begins weaving his spell even before he's played a note, with his radiant, room-lighting smile, his velvety speaking voice, and the sheer magnetism of his presence. In interviews, he's often stressed his interest in musical storytelling. He once explained his infatuation with the playing of Lester Young by asserting that "Pres was the first to tell a story on the horn," and of the trumpeter Ray Eldridge he remarked, "I used to get the same thing listening to Roy as I did listening to Lester—the same 'story' feeling."

"Telling a story" is such a cliche of "jazz talk" that one rarely thinks about what it really means. On one level, it's a survival of an attitude common in blues, in which the guitar or harmonica often "talks back to" the singer, or answers his vocal lines, and that attitude in turn is a survival of the close connections between music and speech found in many African cultures. Among the many African peoples who speak pitch-tone languages, a musical phrase may literally tell a story; it may have a verbal meaning, and most listeners can easily decipher its pitch configuration. There's a great deal of this marvelous tale-telling quality in Dexter Gordon's playing. He's an unusually expressive saxophonist, and often he quotes the lyrics to a standard before improvising on it, drawing an explicit connection between the import of the words and how he will shape and develop his musical ideas.

Jazz improvising is a "language" in another and equally interesting sense. A musician who develops his art in the way Dexter did—studying harmony and theory initially, picking up pointers from older musicians while serving an apprenticeship doing big band section work, listening to the idiom's recorded masterpieces and studying their details and construction—eventually creates his own individual style out of these diverse influences and experiences. But the original influences are never entirely subsumed in an individual's particular stylistic synthesis. A musician will retain phrases, personal timbres, and even entire solos associated with the many players he's listened to somewhere in the recesses of his memory, just as he retains the melodies and chordal layouts of a number of standard tunes and jazz compositions. In the course of an improvisation, which is a kind of spontaneous composition within a prearranged framework, the musician will draw on the information he has filed away in his memory bank. When the listener "hears the influence of another player," what he's actually hearing are either ideas found in the work of the other player or the improviser's personal but still recognizable transformation of those ideas. In this sense, a superior, seasoned jazz improviser "tells a story every time he solos, a story of the music's rich traditions and of his own encounters with the bearers of these traditions.

There's an interesting example of this aspect of Dexter's storytelling on "Love Locked Out," the second of seven previously unreleased performances on this welcome new album. Gordon has never been thought of as a Coleman Hawkins disciple. He himself says that he loved Lester Young's playing more than that of any other tenor saxophonist, and of course his style was shaped further by Charlie Parker and the advent of bebop; he was the first really authoritative bap tenor stylist. But as we've noted, a jazz musician absorbs and retains something from just about everything he hears, and like any other young saxophonist of his

are Gordon listened carefully to Coleman Hawkins, the undisputed tenor boss before Lester Young's arrival and a major architect of jazz ballad playing. Hawk's way with a ballad entailed various combinations of warm melodic exposition with arpeggiated playing; he would "spread a chord by stating its notes in sequence, almost as one might do when practicing an instrumental exercise." In his ballad performance "Love Locked Out," Dexter begins with a very straightforward melodic exposition, employing a plaintive, veiled sound, and then, as he begins to develop the melody, he works his way through a succession of arpeggiated phrases, clearly acknowledging Hawkins's contribution to ballad playing and to his own evolution.

I've emphasized this aspect of Daxter Gordon's music because Landslide, drawn from three different 1961-62 sessions, gives a particularly good account of it. When Dexter is at work, he seems to access the material in his memory bank very directly, so that his playing reflects with unusual honesty the mood he's in at the moment. I've heard him, for example, quote a single fragment, "Here Comes the Bride," two or three times in the course of a single evening, and returned the following night to find him in a very different frame of mind. For this reason, Daxter Gordon albums drawn from a single session tend to have a unity of mood and to present their own distinct perspective on the Gordon style. This album has mere variety; Gordon is caught on three different days, telling different kinds of stories.

The early sixties must have been an uneven period for Gardon emotionally. After establishing himself as a modern master in New York during the forties, he spent much of the fifties back in his native California, where he had to overcome both a drug habit and the indifference of a jazz public that was preoccupied with the so-called "cool school." He returned to New York in the early sixties to record some of the finest albums of his career for Blue Note. "Landslide," written by Dexter with fellow tenor saxophonist Harald Land in mind, is an unreleased tune cut at the session for the second of these albums, Dexter Calling. Making these albums, after having recorded very sporadically for a decade, must have been extremely satisfying, and in concert and at occasional nightclub appearances Dexter was very warmly received. But the cabaret card law, which forced entertainers working in places that served liquor to apply for cards and routinely denied cards to anyone who had been in trouble with the law, especially on drug-related charges, kept Dexter from working steadily. In the study by Gordon included in Jazz Masters of the Forties, Ira Gitler suggests that Dexter's failure to obtain a cabaret card was one of the main reasons he left for Europe later in 1962 and decided

to stay there. After the exuberant, hard-toned tenor solo on "Landslide," the saxophonists' work on the next three numbers sounds somewhat subdued. In part this difference can be ascribed to the difference in the accompanying groups. "Landslide" features the extroverted rhythm section of Kenny Drew, Paul Chambers, and Philly Joe Jones. On "Love Locked Out," "You Said It," and "Serenade in Blue," Willie Bobo, better known as a conga player, is on trap drums; Bobo also played traps on Blue Note sessions by Grant Green and the much underrated tenor saxophonist Ike Quebec during this period. Sir Charles Thompson, who

now lives and works in Switzerland, had appeared on several Blue Note sessions during the forties, and returned to the studio to record for the label on a 1959 Like Quebec date. Together with bestest Al Lucas, Bobo and Thompson provided spare backing on this date, and on the two ballads Dexter played gently and sadly, with deep feeling. "You Said It," a Tommy Turrentine composition recorded several months later by the trumpeter's brother Stanley and available on Jubilee Shouts (Blue Note BN LAB83), is more "up." Dexter's solo begins with tumbling strains that cascade downward, pulling off times against the forward push of the rhythm, and then opens out into some expansive, intelligent eighth-note patterns. The line's composer, making his only appearance of the set, solos briefly, and Thompson's solo includes reminders of both Bud Powell and Thelonious Monk.

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 38

diegodobini2

Dexter Gordon – Take The 'A' Train (1967)
https://youtu.be/MoZM9SfeAK8
Original Liner Notes:

The upstairs room of a Birmingham suburban public house was the unlikely setting for my first encounter with Dexter Gordon. That was in the autumn of 1962, when the tenor saxophonist was freshly arrived in Europe and ready to embark on one of the most productive and happy periods of his career. Clutching a glass of the local brew with no great relish, Dexter chatted affably between sets.

I remember we discussed Wardell Gray at some length, and Dexter smiled fondly as he recalled their intermittent association. He also reported having recently made some recordings with Sonny Clark, which he felt were better than his earlier comeback albums.

On the stand, the 6 ft 5 in figure, sharply togged in a houndstooth jacket, charcoal grey slacks, and a button-down shirt, galvanized that audience with some of the most potent playing any of us had heard. Dexter made a lot of lifetime fans that night.

Five years later, I caught up with Dexter again during a brief weekend gig he made in Manchester, at the behest of the Garside Brothers. Once again on those evenings, his work was electrifying, as Peter Clayton will confirm, since we both sat together spellbound by the power and majesty of Gordon's improvisations.

Just a few months earlier, Dex had been captured on several peak playing nights at his favorite Montmartre Jazzhus club in a series of sets recorded under the supervision of Alan Bates for Black Lion. The resultant performances were of outstanding quality. They caught Dexter in an expansive, relaxed mood in front of an appreciative audience. The Black Lions is undoubtedly among his finest European recordings.

This was recognized when a brace of albums from the "Montmartre Collection" was released in the early 1970s, and it was comforting to know there were more of that caliber where those came from! In this new compilation, some 15 years later, here are some of the "more" from those exciting sessions in the Copenhagen venue, which was Preacher Gordon's pulpit.

His companions were men with whom Long Tall Dexter felt secure. He had worked with pianist Kenny Drew in California during the mid-1950s, and they had later recorded together for Blue Note in New York and Paris. Close friends as well as long-standing musical associates, their partnership flourished anew on the Continent.

Nils-Henning Ørsted Pederson was only 20 at the time of these dates, but Gordon regarded him as the best bass player in Europe, an opinion he probably still holds to this day. Actually, Nils-Henning long ago became an international favorite super soloist and a rock in any rhythm section he graces. The big Dane has more than confirmed Dexter's excellent judgement.

As for Al "Tootie" Heath, drummer and youngest of the richly talented Heath brothers, his propulsive work suited Gordon and meshed perfectly with the accompaniment of Drew and NHØP. So in this quartet it was a case of "four for all."

A measure of the group's ease and unity of purpose is the fact that practically every performance is an extended workout. But such is the involvement and communicative power of Dexter and chums that the listener is barely aware of the passage of more than a quarter of an hour from start to finish of Love For Sale. But Not For Me is of similar duration, but as Dexter and Drew unfurl chorus after chorus of inspired and dramatic improvisation, who notices the march of time!

Running for a little over six minutes, I Guess I'll Hang My Tears Out To Dry is among the briefest items in the Montmartre tapes. This delightful ballad, a favorite of Gordon's, was recorded by him with Sonny Clark some years earlier. Dexter surely "cries" on this one yet isn't over-sentimental. As ever, Kenny produces an enhancing and apt keyboard interlude. In the out chorus, Dex soars confidently into the upper register.

Like so many of his contemporaries, Gordon has been consistently sparked by the melodies of the great songwriters like George Gershwin and Cole Porter. On Porter's Love For Sale, the tenorman is positively molten as he finds fresh lava from a seemingly bottomless volcano of ideas. Stand by for a majestic eruption! Drew is fleet but not flighty as he develops a solo of unerring logic, laced with a satisfying bluesy spirit. When the ample tone of Nils takes over, there is no reduction in voltage, a truly

perfect bass solo. Tootie and Dexter swap eights with not a beat missed, and there's an extended and effective vamp exit.

After Gordon's bilingual welcome and his suggestion to the audience that "of course you are an integral part of our endeavors" in the recording, the leader cuts a surging swath through But Not For Me territory. The leader's style, evolved through such carefully selected influences as Lester Young, Charlie Parker, Don Byas, and Ben Webster, also reveals that he closely listened to younger men like John Coltrane and Sonny Rollins. These ingredients were intelligently absorbed in a wholly personal framework. Tonally and rhythmically he is completely his own man, a proud, individualistic voice. But Not For Me contains archetypal Dexter with brilliant contributions from Drew and NHØP in a deep examination of Gershwin's excellent progression. The long coda includes a number of throwaway quotations from Three Blind Mice and My Kind Of Love, among others.

The other scorching item in this particular selection is an express version of Take The 'A' Train, a Duke Ellington chestnut well roasted by the saxophonist, who maintains a musical outpouring that is positively majestic for nine incredible choruses. This is an object lesson in how to build a solo. Drew, whose clever paraphrase of Duke's own intro sets the scene, lays out for the opening brace by Dexter but returns to prompt and probe. Gordon greets the pianist's resumption with a lick from And The Angels Sing.

Take the 'A' Train is an essential piece of Dexteriana, a brilliant example of his colossal talent and artistic discipline. Listen to this solo 50 times, and it will still surprise and satisfy.

Since the time of these recordings, Dexter Gordon has continued to flourish, making his mark as a sensitive actor in the movie Round Midnight and recording prolifically. He resettled in the USA during the 1970s and for the first time was signed by a major label.

However, I firmly believe that he performed at his peak in the 1960s, and it is now clear that these Black Lion sessions are among his best works, full of vibrant energy and creative consistency.

I find it difficult to believe that the lean, lanky, youthful-looking man I first met all those years ago is now a veteran in his 67th year. But with eyes closed and Take The 'A' Train playing, the years roll back as I'm once again in that smoke-filled pub lounge, and Dexter, knees shaking and fingers flying, is educating us all over again. And it was exactly the same, I'm sure, at the Montmartre as the hip Danes worshipped at the master's feet. We are privy to that experience on this invaluable set.

-

Mark Gardner
(Contributor, The New Grove Dictionary of Jazz)

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2 weeks ago | [YT] | 30

diegodobini2

Dexter Gordon – More Than You Know (1981)
https://youtu.be/O3KFTVQkuUY

Notes:


This inaugural title features an unreleased live recording by one of the true legends of jazz history—The Sophisticated Giant, tenor saxophone master Dexter Gordon, performing with his early-’80s quartet: Kirk Lightsey on piano, David Eubanks on bass, and Edward Gladden on drums.
The concert was recorded in Genoa, Italy, in 1981, at Villa Imperiale, during the Festival Estate Jazz 81.

“This recording captures more than just an exceptional performance—it documents the kind of serious artistic statement that becomes possible when musicians know their work will be heard and appreciated at its true level of sophistication.(..)The “More Than You Know” recording stands as permanent testimony to the profound relationship between Dexter Gordon and the devoted Jazz community in Italy. It preserves a moment when Jazz had achieved true international status while maintaining its essential character as an art form based on individual expression within collective interaction.” Maxine Gordon
credits
released November 7, 2025



Personnel
Dexter Gordon – tenor saxophone
Kirk Lightsey - piano
David Eubanks - bass
Edward Gladden – drums



Recording Data
Recorded on July 7th, 1981 at Estate Jazz 81 - Villa Imperiale (Genova) (Italy)
Art Direction “Ellington Club”, Genova
Lino Zero, Marco Travagli

Restoration & mastering at Sorriso Recording Studio – Bari (Italy)
Sound Engineer – Tommy Cavalieri
Art Direction - Angelo Mastronardi
Executive Producer – Angelo Mastronardi
Co-Producer – Alvearium Holding (Chris Besson)

Thanks to
Maxine Gordon, President
Woody Louis Armstrong Shaw III, CEO
The Dexter Gordon® Society, Inc.
Estate of Dexter Gordon®
www.dextergordon.com

Artwork Photo – Gloriano Odero
Illustrations – Filippo Motole
Graphics Design – Studio Clessidra

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