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Another Jazz Palette

fri 24 jan 2025
Theme: Jazz

JazzNotJazz – Saturday 25 January 12:00 CET.

JazzNotJazz is a unique mixtape that is put together from 100 years of jazz recordings, with useful and sometimes not very useful facts. It also explores The Soul of Jazz, so excursions into allied styles are also made. There are irregularly recurring sections, such as “The Little-known Standards”, “Ellington Train Songs”, “Jazz Cameos”, “Keith Plays Miles”, “Jazz B4 ’44” and “More is Better”. Variety and quality guaranteed!

Sonny Rollins
Sonny Rollins and the Big Brass is a studio recording from 1958. The accompanying big band includes many big names: Nat Adderley, Clark Terry (cornet, trumpet), Jimmy Cleveland (trombone), René Thomas (guitar), Henry Grimes (bass) and Roy Haynes (drums), to name just some of them – all under the leadership of the equally well-known arranger/conductor Ernie Wilkins.
Grand Street is a composition by Rollins.
The intro immediately commands attention, with a sharp contrast between strong, cutting chords and silences. Rollins starts with a characteristic theme: melodically simple, repeated rhythmic motifs, and in terms of form, clearly arranged with four x four bars. Bass and tuba play a countermelody simultaneously, but in exactly the same rhythm as Rollins. The tuba in particular comes to the fore here. That beautiful instrument, which is not used enough by arrangers, is played by Don Butterfield. This is followed by a few choruses by the soloing Rollins with his characteristic, energetic tone, accompanied by a piano trio. And then the orchestra comes in again, with another razor-sharp chord on the 2nd half of the 1st beat. And so it continues, with increasing tension until the hard, beautifully dissonant final chord. Anyone who doesn’t enjoy this is listening to the wrong program.

Jimmy Giuffre
The trio led by reed-palyer Jimmy Giuffre – Jim Hall guitar, Ralph Peña bass – is inspired by less explosive predecessors. Relaxed chamber jazz, of the highest quality. The track Gotta Dance can be found on a record from 1957 (The Jimmy Giuffre 3). An intimate ‘West Coast’ sound from three musicians who clearly know each other well. Everyone also has an opportunity to solo, and all this within two and a half minutes! So it turns out that more time is not necessary.

The Crusaders
The musicians of the jazz-fusion-R&B-blues group The Crusaders allow themselves more time. And Then There Was the Blues (from the album Those Southern Knights from 1976) lasts almost ten minutes. And that is not a minute too many. It just goes to show…
Remarkably slow tempo, and mainly based on one keynote, a keynote that varies from soloist to soloist. The final phase contains a surprising vocal contribution.

Horace Silver
Pianist Horace Silver played with one of his top line-ups in the years 1960-1964. Junior Cook (tenor), Blue Mitchell (trumpet), Gene Taylor (bass) and Joe Harris (drums). The album The Tokyo Blues, from 1962, was said to have been inspired by a Japanese tour. Silver later recalled that tour as “one of the happiest…” The song Sayonara Blues shows striking formal similarities with the piece by The Crusaders discussed above: the duration is more than twelve minutes (!), and there are no more than two fundamental notes, which alternate per bar. Beautifully developed solos by trumpeter Mitchell and saxophonist Cook. Silver’s solo, also a long one, is accompanied by a constant figure in the left hand. Whether this becomes irritating in the long run will differ per listener.

Freddie Hubbard (photo)
The finale of this stylistically wide-ranging hour is from Freddie Hubbard. The trumpet player has an ensemble behind him with more than fifteen musicians. This includes Chick Corea on keyboards and bass guitarist Stanley Clarke. In the percussion section there is a drummer and two percussionists. All this under the strict leadership of conductor/arranger Claus Ogerman.
The many rhythmic patterns tumble over each other in the title track from the album The Love Connection  (1979).  The soloing Hubbard blares and shines!

Also in this hour: Lee Ritenour & Kurt Elling, Air, Ambrose Akinmusire, Pablo All Stars, Sun Ra & His Arkestra and Markus Roberts.

Click here for the playlist.

JazzNotJazz – Jan Pieter Overmars