#60's jazz

[oopsl]

Both Directions At Once: The Lost Album by John Coltrane, 2018

[swedish-songs]

One of the best things about living in Sweden, are the long, light summer nights. A song that perfectly captures this is Sakta vi gå genom stan (Slowly strolling through town), a free translation by Swedish entertainer Beppe Wolgers of the jazz song "Walkin' My Baby Back Home". The Swedish version is about taking a stroll home through Stockholm on a warm summer night.

It was recorded by one of Swedens most famous jazz singers of all time, Monica Zetterlund, in 1961. Zetterlund was a vaudeville performer, a jazz performer, a stage and movie actress. She also performed with a range of world-famous jazz musicians such as Bill Evans, Louis Armstrong and Stan Getz. Together with Bill Evans, she released the album Waltz for Debbie in 1964.

Sakta vi gå genom stan became a huge hit in Sweden when it was released and has been ever since. Radio Stockholm dubbed it the no.1 song about Stockholm. I found a video of "Amerikanen reacts to svenska klassiker", a Youtube series where youtuber Jonathan Rollins reacts to Swedish hits. The song has been played so many times it almost feels cliché at this point, but watching someone else hear it for the first time made it feel brand new to me!

[thegroovyarchives]

1966 Kenny Burrell Have Yourself A Soulful Little Christmas album

[histonics]

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

The Beat Generation 1992 Beat Poetry / Jazz / Spoken Word / Vocalese / Comedy

The much publicized, ridiculed, and parodied Beat Generation, which started sometime in the late 1940s and was eventually subsumed by the hippie and countercultural movements of the 60s, did not end up producing too much music of its own, but the whole lifestyle and aesthetic that it promoted, along with its iconic literary works from the holy trinity of Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs, is integral to the history of popular music as we know it. The beatniks themselves worshipped jazz cats like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker, and plenty of musicians, such as Bob Dylan and The Beatles, drew lots of inspiration from the Beat Generation. Plus, another major figure of the movement, Neal Cassady, was also in The Merry Pranksters, a roving group of folks who ended up bridging the chronological gap between beatniks and hippies, and toured the continental US in a bus while giving out free LSD to people, which was chronicled in Tom Wolfe's famous Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test book; and members of the Grateful Dead were in those same Merry Pranksters too.

So what we have here is less a triple-disc compilation of music from the Rhino label—although there is definitely music on it—and more a full-on audio documentation of what made the Beat Generation what it was, which in addition to *some* music, includes a lot of Beat poetry, interviews, news items, and mini-audio documentaries too. Here, you get 197 minutes of Beat material, a solid chunk of which is provided by that aforementioned holy trinity themselves, plus kindred spirits like controversial comedic legend Lenny Bruce, whose righteous battle for the freedom to publicly say whatever he wanted without any repercussion made him a Beat ally, even if he was not in any way a beatnik himself.

But for the music that *is* on here, we've got some of the bebop jazz tunes that the beatniks went totally nuts for, including Charlie Parker's terrific "Cosmic Rays," which is one of many songs that demonstrate just what a deft saxophonist Parker really was. And we've got something from Tom Waits too, who arrived way too late to be a beatnik himself, but was nevertheless fond of the movement, and wound up showing his appreciation with his uniquely gravelly voice on "Jack and Neal / California, Here I Come," in which Jack is Jack Kerouac and Neal is Neal Cassady.

So if you're looking for over three hours of music, you're not gonna find it on this release, but if you want something of a definitive audio document of one of the most important and influential subcultures to have ever been formed in American history, without which where we would be now as a culture and society is completely unknowable, you should definitely check this thing out.

And by the way, there's an acid jazzy mid-90s trip hop tune by a German guy named Jazz Con Bazz called "Wayz of Life" that I've been listening to for years now that samples one of the audio documentary tracks that appears on this release. Really blew my fucking mind when I heard the sample too; like, I felt like Wee-Bey in that famous scene from The Wire that's since been turned into one of the greatest gifs of all time. Holy shit! 🤯

Highlights: CD1:

Nelson Riddle - "Route 66 Theme"

CD2:

Charlie Parker - "Cosmic Rays" Edd "Kookie" Byrnes - "Kookie's Mad Pad"

[dankalbumart]

Underground by Thelonious Monk Columbia 1968 Jazz / Bop / Hard Bop / Post-Bop / Piano Jazz

[nocentis]

If anyone likes oldies, I have a playlist to offer you.

[metalcultbrigade]

Frank Zappa / The Mothers Of Invention - Cruising With Ruben & The Jets. 02/12/1968

[thedizzyrizzler]

On this date in 1968, @vanmorrisonofficial - 'Astral Weeks' was released.

📈 #6 for 1968, #385 overall

"Astral Weeks feels like listening to literature. Like how when you're so engrossed in a novel, you do not even feel like you're reading it. The story has a hold of you and you are now in its control. Astral Weeks starts playing and you can just float - satisfied intellectually and emotionally - but still in full of surrender of Van and these amazing musicians.

If I could suggest an ideal setting for listening to it, perhaps at dawn or dusk, depending on when you're at your most vulnerable. Alone sitting on a porch, feet up, staring at an orange sky and contemplating everything and nothing in your life. It's good.

Astral Weeks is quiet and as delicate as an eyelash, but strong enough to dictate your temperament like a bag of sedatives. The light plucking double bass line throughout the album is enough to curb the crankiest insomniac amongst us. Just do not confuse Astral Weeks with dull or boring, in fact Morrison's voice alone, bends and stretches so nicely, that an a cappella version of the album would be worthy enough.

Astral Weeks is an album that needs the proper respect to be heard the right way. Background music for cleaning the house, or with the headphones on the treadmill is simply a waste of time. It rewards close inspection and can fight off any interrogation you give it." - RYM user cancon

[jasonzsongs]

Nancy Wilson - (You Don't Know) How Glad I Am (c.1964)

In April 1965 "(You Don't Know) How Glad I Am" received the Grammy Award for Best Rhythm & Blues Recording: Wilson was surprised by the categorization of "…How Glad I Am" as R&B as she would have classified it as a pop record, and the track had not been a major R&B hit peaking at No. 45 on the Cash Box R&B chart (the Billboard R&B chart was dormant throughout 1964).

[swedish-songs]

One of Swedens most famous authors is children's book author Astrid Lindgren (1907-2002). Her perhaps most famous character of all is Pippi Långstrump, Pippi Longstocking in English. The books about Pippi is one of the most translated books in the world, available in around 100 languages.

The books were released during the 40's, and in 1969 a TV-series adaption came out. In the 70's, two movies were released, with the same actors and director. The theme song Här kommer Pippi Långstrump (Here comes Pippi Longstocking) was composed by the incredibly well renowned jazz musician Jan Johansson and recorded sung by the actress playing Pippi, Inger Nilsson. Johansson died tragically in a car accident in 1968, before the series were released. Most subsequent Astrid Lindgren songs were written by Georg Riedel.

The song is sung from Pippi's perspective, describing herself and urging her friends to have a great time with her. The lyrics are also peppered with the nonsensical "tjolahopp tjolahej tjolahoppsansa". A couple of years ago, an "official music video" was published on Youtube, consisting of clips from the series and movies:

[i-am-against-being-touched]

does nina simone make any misses???? ever????

[ozkar-krapo]

JIMMY'S JAZZ QUARTET

"When the Saints go marchin' in"

(ss.7" flexi. Disques EMA. 196?) [FR]

[randomvarious]

Today's compilation:

Unrehearsed Perfection 1998 Jazz / Bop / Hard Bop / Smooth Jazz / Post-Bop

Some of you folks may find this a bit hard to believe, but as someone who never drinks any coffee themselves, I can probably count on one hand the amount of times in my life that I've actually stepped foot inside of a Starbucks. And yet, through some kind of osmosis, I was still somehow ambiently aware of just how integral music had become to their own business model and brand in the 90s, as they pumped out a constant stream of exclusively-sold CDs that matched what was in rotation over their very own speakers at the time.

And it'd all apparently started at some point in the late 80s, when they were still just a small Seattle chain, and had hired a former record store owner named Timothy Jones, who'd just decided that he needed a change in his own life and was then given the keys to manage his own favorite nearby coffee spot across the way from his old record shop. By the time Jones had arrived, each Starbucks was being sent a different four-hour cassette tape of classical music each month to play, and as someone who'd spent his entire life around music himself, he became the store's curator for those tapes. Without anyone's knowledge, though, Jones proceeded to diversify Starbucks' musical programming, and eventually expanded into jazz, reggae, and blues too. And with this change then came the inevitable question from customers, "do you guys sell any of this music that you play here?"

And at first they didn't, but by 1995, they had started to, with their first ever release, Blue Note Blend, which had initiated their original run of jazz compilations too. Within less than a month, this album had managed to sell 50,000 copies across Starbucks' 500 stores, which then naturally led to the vast expansion of their own serious music hustle that saw them releasing CDs on a consistent basis well into the 2010s.

And there were certainly bumps along the way too. At a certain point, beyond just selling nicely curated compilations of classy coffeehouse ambiance, they'd decided to take things a step or two further, and haphazardly got themselves more directly involved in the record business, which ended up resulting in a lot of anodyne, exclusive, unwanted, contemporary crap from beloved legends who should've known better. Even Sonic Youth put out a song exclusively through Starbucks once 😆.

And eventually, as the returns on CDs continued to diminish, and streaming became peoples' typical avenue for listening consumption, Starbucks dropped their CD-selling angle and their record label antics altogether and decided to partner with Spotify in the mid-2010s.

But as we now go back in time to their late 90s musical heyday, here's one of the greatest classic jazz compilations that they had apparently ever put out, Unrehearsed Perfection, which may've come off as a somewhat random assortment to the casual listener, but as its title indicates, was actually pretty uniquely thematic, as it consisted solely of recordings from the catalog of the legendary Impulse! Records that'd somehow been made in only one, single, miraculous take.

So on here, we've got a whole host of legends: Duke Ellington, John Coltrane, twice—who himself played an integral role in the early success of Impulse! with A Love Supreme—Coleman Hawkins, Benny Carter, Milt Jackson, McCoy Tyner, and Charles Mingus.

And while most of these selections seem to match that idyllically cozy, warm, and familial 90s Starbucks aesthetic, it's Mingus' own "II B.S.," off of his classic 1964 album, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus, that serves as the big exception here, as it starts from just Mingus' own lonely double-bassline, but progressively expands into a beast of its own making, with sharp, addled lead horn action among an actively large backing band that is surely to take every coffee drinker's focus off of whatever else they're doing and tune their ears to this masterpiece instead 😌.

So, you may not really think about it, but with people digging the ambiance that Starbucks had provided as they rapidly expanded all across the US throughout the 90s and 2000s, they also sort of somewhat quietly managed to become kind of a big pop cultural music staple with their varied litany of CD offerings too. And before today, I had never listened to any of the many compilations that they had put out over the years, but if this CD itself is any indication, then it's easy to see why music became such a focal point of their business, because the selection job that was done by their very own former-Seattle-record-shop-owner-turned-store-manager here, Timothy Jones, was definitely top-tier👏.

Starbucks has kind of grown into a gross, impersonal behemoth like all large, ubiquitous chains more or less inevitably seem to do, but their idea to sell more than just coffee and pastries in that pivotal mid-90s moment definitely went a long way towards endearing themselves to folks in more lasting ways than just being a dime-a-dozen coffee shop ever could. People deriving pleasure from a restaurant business in a way that doesn't actually involve food or drink is not something that seems to organically happen very often, but you have to think that Starbucks' CD venture was akin to what a business like McDonald's had managed to pull off by putting collectable toys in their very own Happy Meals. Get people to think fondly of your business beyond your main selling point, and you've got some serious loyalty!

OK, that's more than enough positive big business spin from me today 😅. Shop local whenever you can so that the money you spend can circulate within your own community for a longer period of time, but don't hate something good that a big business might incidentally end up doing, like putting out quality CDs like this one! ✌️

Highlights:

McCoy Tyner - "Caravan" Duke Ellington - "Limbo Jazz" Johnny Hartman - "Ain't Misbehavin'" Oliver Nelson - "Stolen Moments" Diana Krall - "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" John Coltrane - "Acknowledgement" J.J. Johnson & Kai Winding - "I Concentrate On You" Benny Carter & His Orchestra - "Body and Soul" Charles Mingus - "II B.S." Milt Jackson Quartet - "Paris Blues" Sonny Rollins - "Blue Room"

[jourdepluie91]

Ella Fitzgerald and Marilyn Monroe: Inside Their Surprising Friendship

The Hollywood starlet and jazz singer had a bond that defied the odds during a time of racial prejudice.

By Sara Kettler

When once asked about her favorite singers, Marilyn Monroe answered, "Well, my very favorite person, and I love her as a person as well as a singer, I think she's the greatest, and that's Ella Fitzgerald. Not only was Monroe a Fitzgerald fan, but she was also a friend who used her status as a Hollywood star to boost Fitzgerald's career. Their friendship would last until Monroe's untimely death. And even after Monroe had died, Fitzgerald remained grateful for the support the star had provided during her lifetime.

Monroe and Fitzgerald had many things in common, including traumatic childhoods

One reason for the connection between Monroe and Fitzgerald may have been the number of life experiences they had in common, beginning with their traumatic childhoods. Monroe grew up during the Great Depression unaware of who her father was and coping with a birth mother who was mentally unstable. She was moved among many different homes and was subjected to sexual abuse. Reflecting on her upbringing for a 1956 interview with Time magazine, she wondered, "How did I get through it?"

Fitzgerald was 15 when her mother's death in 1932 upended her world. Her stepfather became abusive, so she went to live with an aunt in Harlem. She left school to earn money, taking jobs, like brothel lookout, that skirted the law. Her truancy led to Fitzgerald being placed in a segregated reform school in upstate New York, where staff didn't hesitate to brutalize residents. The reformatory's last superintendent told The New York Times that during Fitzgerald's time there "she had been held in the basement of one of the cottages once and all but tortured."

Monroe was more open about her early life than Fitzgerald, who never wanted to discuss that period. Yet they each might have appreciated knowing someone who could understand some of that pain. Plus the similarities between Fitzgerald and Monroe didn't end with childhood: They'd both made early, unsuccessful marriages. And each had ultimately found success as a performer, while also encountering some of the pitfalls of stardom.

Monroe helped bring Fitzgerald's career to the next level

By the 1950s, Fitzgerald's enthralling singing voice had won her fans across the country. But the venues that hired her were often smaller clubs; some places weren't interested in having an overweight Black woman perform for them, no matter her talent. Fitzgerald reportedly once told her press agent, "I know I make a lot of money at the jazz clubs I play, but I sure wish I could play at one of those fancy places."

Movie star Monroe had spent hours listening to Fitzgerald's recordings (a music coach had recommended this to improve the star's own singing). In November 1954, she got to see Fitzgerald perform in Los Angeles. The two were soon friends, so when Monroe learned of Fitzgerald's inability to get a gig at the Mocambo, a famous L.A. nightclub, she decided to help.

Dorothy Dandridge and Eartha Kitt had already performed at the Mocambo, so Fitzgerald wouldn't have been the first African American to sing there. But the club's owner felt the heavyset Fitzgerald lacked the glamour to draw crowds. So Monroe approached him with a proposition — if he booked Fitzgerald, she promised to sit at the front of the house every night and to bring along other celebrities. Monroe made clear the amount of publicity this would garner, so the club owner agreed to hire Fitzgerald for a couple of weeks in March 1955.

During Fitzgerald's run, Monroe kept her word to sit up front, and Frank Sinatra and Judy Garland showed up on opening night. However, such celebrity firepower wasn't that necessary — Fitzgerald's shows sold out, and the owner even added a week to her contract. This successful engagement changed Fitzgerald's career trajectory. She later told Ms. magazine, "After that, I never had to play a small jazz club again."

Monroe supported Fitzgerald in battling prejudice

Following her success at the Mocambo, Fitzgerald got other jobs at big venues and also returned to the Mocambo. Yet not every location treated her equally due to the color of her skin — some expected Fitzgerald to enter through a side door or back entrance rather than the front.

When Monroe became aware of this, she again supported her friend. According to Fitzgerald biographer Geoffrey Mark, Monroe had traveled to Colorado to see Fitzgerald perform. Once there, she saw her friend ushered away from the front entrance, so Monroe refused to go inside unless both she and Fitzgerald were allowed through the front doors. The movie star got her way and soon all of Fitzgerald's performance spots were treating the singer with the respect she deserved.

Substance abuse became a barrier in Monroe and Fitzgerald's friendship

Monroe and Fitzgerald were friends for years. However, as Fitzgerald's longtime business manager revealed to Monroe biographer Lois Banner, Monroe's drug use kept the two from forging a deeper friendship.

Fitzgerald didn't drink or like cigarettes; she even shied away from songs that made reference to drugs. For her, an escape was watching soap operas when not on tour. But for Monroe, pills and alcohol were a way to cope with the stresses of her life and career. Her reliance on these substances deepened as the years went on until she died of a drug overdose at the age of 36 on August 5, 1962.

Fitzgerald never forgot how Monroe helped her career

Fitzgerald wasn't at Monroe's funeral. Joe DiMaggio, Monroe's second husband, had handled the arrangements, and he didn't want Monroe's celebrity friends and acquaintances to attend the small service.

However, Fitzgerald never forgot how Monroe had first helped her. In 1972, when she told Ms. magazine the story of Monroe's role in getting her that gig at the Mocambo, she noted, "I owe Marilyn Monroe a real debt."