Due to recent events, I decided to switch gears a bit and delve into another form of live jazz: Jazz with a learned twist. And if you want to talk about jazz at college, there's no better place to start than the granddaddy of all college jazz albums.The Music The Tune: "Perdido" Recorded: 2 March, [...]
After a series of posts about jazz records, it's high-time I get back to writing about the Dave Brubeck Quartet's music and its star saxophonist Paul Desmond. As a 'welcome back', an ordinary 'Desmond's Quotes' wouldn't do. So, without further ado, let's dive into a unique Desmondism that I'm still unsure about: The Desmond Turnaround. [...]
It's May 4th, which means it's Brubeck & Desmond Day! What does the 4th of May have to do with Dave Brubeck or Paul Desmond? 5/4, of course. Brubeck and Desmond popularized and mainstreamed this unusual time signature into jazz and popular music in 1959 with Desmond's mega hit "Take Five", opening the door for [...]
Continuing the exploration of jazz clubs via records in my collection, and after checking clubs out on the eastern side of the United States, this post marks our foray into the West Coast scene. Naturally, we start in California, and if we're in California, naturally we begin in San Francisco. And if we're in San [...]
Regular readers of my blog know that while I'm a jazz record collector as well as a jazz fan in general, I'm a huge Paul Desmond/Dave Brubeck fan. HUGE. This passion for their music has resulted in me scouring the internet for rare music, photos, information, anything pertaining to Paul Desmond and Dave Brubeck. I've [...]
After spending time in the jazz capital of the world (New York City), it's time to explore some other jazz clubs. But before we leave the East Coast, there's another spot that is worth checking out. We're headed to Massachusetts. The city? Boston. The club? Storyville. It's another exploration in 'Nightclub Jazz', the sub-genre of [...]
For the past few posts, I've been using the sub-genres of jazz to explore and rediscover my record collection. We looked at 'arranger jazz', and then moved to live jazz, specifically 'jazz club jazz'. In the last post, we stepped into the Village Vanguard, a New York City jazz club. Before leaving the state, we're [...]
After exploring the arranged side of jazz, let's move to another major sub-genre of jazz: 'Live jazz'. Live jazz is arguably the best type of jazz, the most free, most spontaneous type of jazz. The musicians feed off the energy of the audience, and the audience is in turn energized by the musicians. Everybody is [...]
These last few posts have been an exploration in the sub-genres of jazz, using these unofficial categories as fun way to rediscover my record collection (as well as provide a systematic way to decide which record to write about next). This post continues my focus on 'arranger jazz' with an interesting album from Gerry Mulligan. [...]
Continuing with the theme of 'arranger jazz', here's an album that is exactly that: an arranger's jazz album, taken to the extreme. So far, I've spotlighted albums that featured different tunes by an arranger, made for a small group of musicians. But what if different arrangers and groups made an album of one song... The [...]
