Wrapping up the Brubeck Birthday series, I thought I'd finish with what I consider to be the Brubeck Quartet's best live album and one of the best live jazz albums of the 20th century. High praise, I know. Let's jump to the music then! À la musique! The Music The Tune: "Blue Rondo a la [...]
After a momentary break, it's time to get back to some Brubeck, the reason why I began this website! This is one of those rarer bootleg albums, where the information surrounding the recording is actually pretty well-documented. It's the album pressing itself that is confusing and unclear. With that, on to the music we go! [...]
Whenever I travel, I like to find the local record store and see what's what. You never know what you'll find. On a recent trip to San Francisco, not only did I want to check out a local record store- I wanted to find records by San Francisco's native jazz sons. I succeeded, in more [...]
Taking a (momentary) break from Dave Brubeck and Paul Desmond, here's another college concert album, this time recorded on the Best Coast in California. Following the example of his one-time leader Dave Brubeck (told you it was momentary), Cal Tjader took his good vibes directly to the students via college appearances. Luckily, Fantasy had a [...]
No, this is not deja vu. Well, it is but it isn't. This may technically be the same album as the one I just wrote about, but there's a two-inch difference that is rather significant. Does size matter? To the music! The Music The Tune: "The Way You Look Tonight" Recorded: 2 March, 1953 at [...]
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, [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
It's A Raggy Waltz 