iTunes Piano Jazz
While the three of us are into albums (buy the album, look at it, listen to it, file it, get it out again someday, look at it, etc.), it is well known at this point how great iTunes is for nabbing the rock and pop hits of your childhood, thus saving you the cost and embarrassment of picking up The Best of Juice Newton or whatever.
In addition to being a great vendor for pop hits, iTunes is showing some interesting strength with jazz. Again, we are usually too nerdy to want anything but the whole package from a jazz album…but check out this interesting selection. The bill for everything on this list is $5.
(As a side note, the number one question TBP gets in the inbox is: “How can I get the iTunes exclusives for The Bad Plus even though I live in Europe?” Well, you can’t—at least not yet—and the rest of this post might be a tease to European readers too, sorry.)
Herbie Hancock, Ron Carter, and Billy Cobham: “Einbahnstrasse.” This little known track from 1969 is one of Herbie’s best trio performances: you really get to hear him thinking, and the interplay with Carter is fabulous. It’s sort of a shame that Tony Williams isn’t drumming, but on the other hand, Cobham’s presence makes it one of the great blindfold tests. (No one can ever guess that Cobham is the drummer...) The song is really cute, too, one of Carter’s sing-song jams like “First Trip” off of Hancock’s Speak Like a Child. iTunes has “Einbahnstrasse” under Hancock’s name on an Atlantic Jazz Piano anthology. Where is it from? (Skip to next paragraph if you don’t care…) It was first released on Carter’s 1969 album Uptown Conversation, which had only other trio tune: “Doom,” which is a bass feature--Hancock doesn’t solo. Conversation is extremely rare, and inessential, but the trio songs showed up on a mid-70’s Atlantic anthology called Chick Corea, Herbie Hancock, Keith Jarrett, McCoy Tyner, a copy of which is almost certainly lurking in your nearest dinosaur vinyl shop.
Did you know that Keith Jarrett also recorded a number with Ron Carter and Billy Cobham? It’s true: a Don Sebesky-arranged Freddie Hubbard disc on CTI called Sky Dive has Keith in one of his only recorded moments as a studio musician. The song to hear is Bix’s “In A Mist.” The duo of Hubbard and Jarrett stating the theme is the best music, but if you find Jarrett endlessly fascinating and must know everything about him, you’ve got to hear him taking a medium tempo swing solo with Carter (!) and Cobham. The rest of Sky Dive is fine, but like most those early-70’s CTI releases, Dive suffers in the digital environment: without the glamorous gatefold LP package and the appropriate “bachelor pad with cabinet Hi-Fi” setting, most CTI records seem a little pretentious. iTunes has only the partial album, but does have “In A Mist.”
McCoy Tyner has recorded a lot of albums that deserve purchase in entirely. Can we recommend putting down the 16 bucks for the recent reissue of 1967’s Time For Tyner? Well…especially if you are a Bobby Hutcherson fan, and admire McCoy’s even-eighth minor vamp compositions. But anyone who knows Time For Tyner would agree that McCoy’s trio performance of “The Surrey With A Fringe On Top” is the standout track. Jason Moran told Ethan about “Surrey” recently—somehow E hadn’t gotten to it yet. Herbie Lewis is the bassist, Freddie Waits is the drummer, but it’s really all about McCoy’s whirlwind. Incredible piano playing.
Sonny Meets Hawk is a strange record. Neither Sonny Rollins or Coleman Hawkins is at their best, and the rhythm section mostly just plods along. However, this album is required listening for Paul Bley’s solo on “All The Things You Are,” which is incredible. It might be his most influential perfomance: both Keith Jarrett and Pat Metheny have praised this solo in print. Bley's threading is liquid and serenely surreal. Skip the rest of the record. 99 cents on iTunes. (Update: it turns out that there are those who love Sonny's playing on this record, although most musicians we know are in Do The Math's corner on this one.)
Cecil Taylor’s recorded output from 1958 to ’63 has some interesting and important music. Cecil is still searching, and hasn’t found his “thing’ all the way yet, but there some moments well worth checking out. Top of the list: “Bulbs,” with Jimmy Lyons, Archie Shepp, Henry Grimes, and Sonny Murray. This is one of three tunes recorded for a 1961 Gil Evans album on Impulse! called Into The Hot. It is a very strange discographical moment, for Gil clearly had nothing to do with this music and little to do with the Johnny Carisi tracks on the other side of the original issue. Hopefully Taylor and Carisi saw the royalties, despite neither of them being listed on the cover. (Fat chance.) Anyway, the Cecil Taylor tunes are “Bulbs,” “Pots,” and “Mixed,” and they are midway between the jazzier stuff like Looking Ahead and the fully realized group texture of Conquistador! “Bulbs” has a bluesy, Mingusonian quality that is very powerful. The saxophonists and Henry Grimes sound very good here too. We love mature Cecil, but his 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s records become a little monochromatic after a while. Think about how incredible it would be if he recorded music like “Bulbs” now! iTunes offers only “Bulbs” and “Pots” as singles. For “Mixed” you need to buy whole album, which is filled out with Roswell Rudd’s 1966 Everywhere. Everywhere is a fun free-jazz period piece, but unless you are a dedicated free-jazz collector, it might be better to just taste the exotic flavor of “Bulbs” for a buck and move on. (Dedicated free-jazz collectors undoubtedly bought this Taylor-Rudd collection the week it came out a few years ago anyway—it was a sweet reissue for the cognoscenti.)
