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blackkudos · 5 years

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Cecil Taylor

Cecil Percival Taylor (March 25, 1929 – April 5, 2018) was an American pianist and poet.

Taylor was classically trained and was one of the pioneers of free jazz. His music is characterized by an energetic, physical approach, resulting in complex improvisation often involving tone clusters and intricate polyrhythms. His technique has been compared to percussion. Referring to the number of keys on a standard piano, Val Wilmer used the phrase "eighty-eight tuned drums" to describe Taylor's style. He has been referred to as being "like Art Tatum with contemporary-classical leanings".

Early life and education

Taylor was raised in the Corona, Queens neighborhood of New York City. As an only child to a middle-class family, Taylor's mother encouraged him to play music at an early age. He began playing piano at age six and went on to study at the New York College of Music and New England Conservatory in Boston. At the New England Conservatory, Taylor majored in composition and arranging. During his time there, he also became familiar with contemporary European art music. Bela Bartók and Karlheinz Stockhausen notably influenced his music.

In 1955, Taylor moved back to New York City from Boston. He formed a quartet with soprano saxophonist, Steve Lacy, bassist Buell Neidlinger, and drummer Dennis Charles. Taylor's first recording, Jazz Advance, featured Lacy and was released in 1956. The recording is described by Richard Cook and Brian Morton in the Penguin Guide to Jazz: "While there are still many nods to conventional post-bop form in this set, it already points to the freedoms in which the pianist would later immerse himself." Taylor's quartet featuring Lacy also appeared at the 1957 Newport Jazz Festival, which was made into the album At Newport. Taylor collaborated with saxophonist John Coltrane in 1958 on Stereo Drive, now available as Coltrane Time.

1950s and early 1960s

Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, Taylor's music grew more complex and moved away from existing jazz styles. Gigs were often hard to come by, and club owners found that Taylor's approach of playing long pieces tended to impede business. His 1959 LP record Looking Ahead! showcased his innovation as a creator as compared to the jazz mainstream. Unlike others at the time, Taylor utilized virtuosic techniques and made swift stylistic shifts from phrase to phrase. These qualities, among others, still remained notable distinctions of Taylor's music for the rest of his life.

Landmark recordings, like Unit Structures (1966), also appeared. Within the Unit, musicians were able to develop new forms of conversational interplay. In the early 1960s, an uncredited Albert Ayler worked with Taylor, jamming and appearing on at least one recording, Four, which was unreleased until appearing on the 2004 Ayler box set Holy Ghost: Rare & Unissued Recordings (1962–70).

By 1961, Taylor was working regularly with alto saxophonist Jimmy Lyons, who would become one of his most important and consistent collaborators. Taylor, Lyons, and drummer Sunny Murray (and later Andrew Cyrille) formed the core personnel of the Cecil Taylor Unit, Taylor's primary ensemble until Lyons' death in 1986. Lyons' playing, strongly influenced by jazz icon Charlie Parker, retained a strong blues sensibility and helped keep Taylor's increasingly avant garde music tethered to the jazz tradition.

Late 1960s and 1970s

Taylor began to perform solo concerts in the latter half of the 1960s. The first known recorded solo performance was "Carmen With Rings" (59 minutes) in De Doelen concert hall in Rotterdam on July 1, 1967. Two days earlier, Taylor had played the same composition in the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. Many of his later concerts were released on album and include Indent (1973), side one of Spring of Two Blue-J's (1973), Silent Tongues (1974), Garden (1982), For Olim (1987), Erzulie Maketh Scent (1989), and The Tree of Life (1998). He began to garner critical and popular acclaim, playing for Jimmy Carter on the White House Lawn, lecturing as an artist-in-residence at universities, and eventually being awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1973 and a MacArthur Fellowship in 1991.

In 1976, Taylor directed a production of Adrienne Kennedy's A Rat's Mass at La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club in the East Village of Manhattan. His production combined the original script with a chorus of orchestrated voices used as instruments. Jimmy Lyons, Rashid Bakr, Andy Bey, Karen Borca, David S. Ware, and Raphe Malik performed in the production as the Cecil Taylor Unit, among other musicians and actors.

1990s and the Feel Trio

Following Lyons' death in 1986, Taylor formed the Feel Trio in the early 1990s with William Parker on bass and Tony Oxley on drums. The group can be heard on Celebrated Blazons, Looking (Berlin Version) The Feel Trio and the 10-disc set 2 T's for a Lovely T. Compared to his prior groups with Lyons, the Feel Trio had a more abstract approach, tethered less to jazz tradition and more aligned with the ethos of European free improvisation. He also performed with larger ensembles and big band projects.

Taylor's extended residence in Berlin in 1988 was documented by the German label FMP, resulting in a box set of performances in duet and trio with a large number of European free improvisors, including Oxley, Derek Bailey, Evan Parker, Han Bennink, Tristan Honsinger, Louis Moholo, and Paul Lovens. Most of his later recordings have been released on European labels, with the exception of Momentum Space (a meeting with Dewey Redman and Elvin Jones) on Verve/Gitanes. The classical label Bridge released his 1998 Library of Congress performance Algonquin, a duet with violinist Mat Maneri.

Taylor continued to perform for capacity audiences around the world with live concerts, usually playing his favored instrument, a Bösendorfer piano featuring nine extra lower-register keys. A documentary on Taylor, entitled All the Notes, was released on DVD in 2006 by director Chris Felver. Taylor was also featured in a 1981 documentary film entitled Imagine the Sound, in which he discusses and performs his music, poetry, and dance.

2000s

Taylor recorded sparingly in the 2000s, but continued to perform with his own ensembles (the Cecil Taylor Ensemble and the Cecil Taylor Big Band) and with other musicians such as Joe Locke, Max Roach, and Amiri Baraka. In 2004, the Cecil Taylor Big Band at the Iridium Jazz Club was nominated a best performance of 2004 by All About Jazz. The Cecil Taylor Trio was nominated for the same at the Highline Ballroom in 2009. The trio consisted of Taylor, Albey Balgochian, and Jackson Krall. In 2010, Triple Point Records released a deluxe limited-edition double LP titled Ailanthus/Altissima: Bilateral Dimensions of Two Root Songs, a set of duos with Taylor's longtime collaborator Tony Oxley that was recorded live at the Village Vanguard.

In 2013, he was awarded the Kyoto Prize for Music. He was described as "An Innovative Jazz Musician Who Has Fully Explored the Possibilities of Piano Improvisation". In 2014, his career and 85th birthday were honored at the Painted Bride Art Center in Philadelphia with the tribute concert event "Celebrating Cecil". In 2016, Taylor received a retrospective at the Whitney Museum of American Art entitled "Open Plan: Cecil Taylor".

Taylor, along with dancer Min Tanaka, was the subject of Amiel Courtin-Wilson's 2016 documentary film The Silent Eye.

Ballet and dance

In addition to piano, Taylor was always interested in ballet and dance. Taylor's mother, who died while he was young, was a dancer and played the piano and violin. Taylor once said: "I try to imitate on the piano the leaps in space a dancer makes." He collaborated with dancer Dianne McIntyre in the late 1970s and early 1980s. In 1979, Taylor composed and played the music for a twelve-minute ballet "Tetra Stomp: Eatin' Rain in Space", featuring Mikhail Baryshnikov and Heather Watts.

Poetry

Taylor was a poet, and cited Robert Duncan, Charles Olson, and Amiri Baraka as major influences. He often integrated his poems into his musical performances, and they frequently appear in the liner notes of his albums. The album Chinampas, released by Leo Records in 1987, is a recording of Taylor reciting several of his poems while accompanying himself on percussion.

Musical style and legacy

According to Steven Block, free jazz originated with Taylor's performances at the Five Spot Cafe in 1957 and with Ornette Coleman in 1959. In 1964, Taylor co-founded the Jazz Composers Guild to enhance opportunities for avant-garde jazz musicians.

Taylor's style and methods have been described as "constructivist". Despite Scott Yanow's warning regarding Taylor's "forbidding music" ("Suffice it to say that Cecil Taylor's music is not for everyone"), he praises Taylor's "remarkable technique and endurance", and his "advanced", "radical", "original", and uncompromising "musical vision".

This musical vision is a large part of Taylor's legacy:

Playing with Taylor I began to be liberated from thinking about chords. I'd been imitating John Coltrane unsuccessfully and because of that I was really chord conscious.

Personal life and death

In 1982, jazz critic Stanley Crouch wrote that Taylor was gay, prompting an angry response. In 1991, Taylor told a New York Times reporter "[s]omeone once asked me if I was gay. I said, 'Do you think a three-letter word defines the complexity of my humanity?' I avoid the trap of easy definition."

Taylor moved to Fort Greene, Brooklyn in 1983. He died at his Brooklyn residence on April 5, 2018, at the age of 89. At the time of Taylor's death, he was working on an autobiography and future concerts, among other projects.

#03/25 #04/05

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bluewatsons · 5 years

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Neil O’Connor, Anti-Hero - Life, Love and Death in Gainsbourg’s L’Homme à Tête de Chou (1976), Conference: Serge G. An International Conference on Serge Gainsbourg, Sorbonne University: Paris

Abstract

This paper explores Serge Gainsbourg’s 1976 album L’Homme à Tête de Chou (1976). The concept album allowed Gainsbourg to explore, transverse and peruses the anti-hero. The albums musical imagery provides to us a collection of mini tome’s that revolves around madness, murder, sex, infidelity and ultimately, death. These themes are, and would become, central too much of Gainsbourg’s lyrical palate, but take a much sinister route on this album. The album took Gainsbourg on a deeply personal quest for expression - to the darker side of baroque pop music. This paper presents the background and setting for the album, followed by both a thematic and compositional analysis of the albums title track Flash Forward and Lunatic Asylum and ultimately examines the albums identity Gainsbourg’s use of tone and timbre to map the anti-heros adventures and mishaps in life, love and death.

I. Background - Rebellion & Modernity

Popular music is intimately embedded in mechanisms of power and ideology. In Noise, a political economy of music, Jacques Attali’s addresses, something that Adorno refuses to do, is to regard popular music vehicle for transforming society;

‘Music is a credible metaphor of the real. It is neither an autonomous activity nor an automatic indicator of the economic infrastructure... Undoubtedly music is a play of mirrors in which every activity is reflected, defined, recorded and distorted. If we look at one mirror, we see only an image of another. But at times a complex mirror game yields a vision this is rich, because unexpected and prophetic’ [1].

This ‘metaphor of the real’ lies in poplar’s music reliance mass reproduction and the stockpiling of commodities. The construction of musical identity within musical expression can be perceived as a form of ritual in that, as Simon Frith points out in Performing Rites, ‘it describes one’s place in a dramatized pattern of relationships’ [1]. In France, like elsewhere, the locale where popular music’s difference is shaped has of course been intensely variable, ranging from the ‘imagined village of tradition, through seedy café and variety hall, the cabaret of nostalgia and regret, the political theatre of national and proletarian anthem, to transatlantic images of modernization and rebellion, in jazz and hip hop’ [2]. During the 1970s, popular music expression and ideology was shaped by the changing mainstreams in American musical styles. Funk, soul and electronic music, via disco, were now becoming part of the ever-changing mainstream. Youth culture during the 1970’s was rooted between the rural-urban split, the degree of educational qualification and the socio- professional status of individuals.

Two musical forms – the copains and two auteurs within the chanson tradition, shaped part of Gainsbourg’s identity: Léo Ferré and George Brassens. Johnny Hallyday created a new cultural form that imagined their social relationship based on camaraderie and equality. This identity failed and ignored to identity the divisions in French society. Ferré and Brassens were more successful. Both expressed resistance to the bourgeois, the Catholic Church and the French state. Ferré’s Les Rupins [The well-off] (1960), examines the empty values of consumerism and questions the French republics ideals, considering them as having lost of meaning. Ultimately, they laid the foundations for future musical anarchists, establishing non-conformity identities on margins of social and cultural fringes.

II. Thematic Analysis

Conceptually, Gainsbourg had already broken the mold with Historie de Melody Nelson in 1971. Gainsbourg created an album that’s focus was narration and that of the narrator, the musical contact seems merely as a supporting act at times. Popular music expression and identity politics are inherently linked, linked to the social and cultural trends of the time. Musicologist Phillip Tagg defines this as:

In this sense, a most effective way of comprehending identity is by disconnecting it from an essence and perceiving it as a dramatic effect rather than an authentic core [2].

The sculpture, The Man with the Cabbage Head, by Claude Lalanne, sat in the courtyard of Gainsbourg’s Parisian home. Gainsbourg’s obsession with the immoral anti-hero dances and exists, in some degree, within most of his discography. It’s only on L’Homme à Tête de Chou (1976) that this obsession truly comes to life. The tail, of Marilou, is of a girl the narrator falls in love with. The ensuing album goes on to describe their love affair and untimely, the death of Marilou, a death that leads to the narrators decline into madness. Not only are the lyrical and musical elements convey this macabre love story but also so does the cover itself. It portrays the darker elements hidden within the grooves. The opening title, of the albums name, begins with Gainsbourg stating that:

‘I am the man with the cabbage head, half vegetable, half guy’ [3].

The confession begins. The opening tracks lyrical theme is almost like a police statement report; how he fell for Marilou, that fateful day in Mac’s Men’s Hairdressers, where he first met the ‘bitch of a shampoo girl’. The narrator continues to open up an inner dialogue. He is at the ‘bottom of his depths’, lost everything to her, including his mind and his job – at ‘cabbage leaf’ – slang for either money (he was a banker) or a newspaperman. It points more so towards the printed matter, as a more reveling line comes as ‘where scandals equal beefsteak’, indicating that he was indeed, a tabloid man. This job allowed him to spend his money aimlessly, for the entertainment of this femme fatale – ‘I was finished, fucked, checked mate in the eyes of Marilou’ [4]. In the end, he is ‘stuck on a beach in Malibu’ or indeed, in the within the beaches of an approaching insanity.

Flash Forward sees the protagonist reach towards the beginnings of lunacy – he catches Marilou in sexual encounter with some rock musicians. The accompanying music allows this encounter to unfold, crashing and bashing about, following the narrator as he lurks towards his lovers misbehaving:

I move forward in the black-

Out and my kodak

Impresses onto the sensitive

Plaques of my brain the vision of a bordel

I feel my cardiac rate

Go briskly to mach

Two tic tac tic tac

Like from an electroshock

He sees this and wonders, is he paranoid? Surely not as he reminds himself that all that he does, all that he sees, will be stored in memory and will come back as flashbacks, until he croaks.

Lunatic Asylum, the albums epilogue, revolves around a trance like didgeridoo motif, like call to the wild, to the insane. In the previous song, Meurtre à l’extincteur, the act of murder had been committed – Marilou’s life ends, her head beaten in with a fire extinguisher, battered under white foam.

Here in the psychiatric ward, he wonders, ponders, on the ‘scrambled messages’:

The little Playboy rabbit gnaws my plant skull

Shoe shine boy

Oh Marilou little cabbage

That rolled me between his fingers like corporal

Sucked me like a kittty

The anti-hero is born; bewildered, deluded, a misfit. His head now truly turned to cabbage, punished and exiled in mental hell. Its sense of morality is cinematic or as Sylvie Simmons in Serge Gainsbourg – A Fistful Gitanes refers to the album as:

Menacing, atmospheric and marvellously mad, part Dostoevsky, part Kafka, part film noir, quite surreal [6].

The albums song cycles are masterfully put together. For the next section of the analysis, the same three songs are discussed, compositionally. Gone is the grandeur used in Historie de Melody Nelson, instead, its musical palate is a wide and varied as the lead characters state of mind. In such, the shifting styles of the album (rock, jazz, country and Caribbean) help define the wild variations of life itself.

III. Compositional Analysis

An intra-musical framework has been implemented in this case to decompose the compositional design and musical organization of L’Homme à Tête de Chou. This process has been referenced and adapted from Stan Hawkin’s Setting the Pop Score and involves examining the following:

Formal Properties: the sections within the song’s overall structure that supports the general progression;

Recording and Production Techniques: manifested in the mix, which is responsible for shaping the compositional design;

Textures and Timbre: colors and patterns that arise from vocal and instrumental gestures within the arrangement and finally;

Rhythmic Syntax: the recurring groupings and metric patterns that communicate ‘beat and groove’ [7]. –

Formal Properties

Formally, Gainsbourg decided that a selection of genres would sufficed toward the many states of mental conditions that our anti-hero goes through; ecstasy, bliss, ignorance, remorse. The song structures are somewhat uncoordinated, stemming from somewhat shorter pop song standard duration – the titles average at 2 minutes 30 (Opening Title) while others act as narrative interludes, barely achieving time to talk or discuss out their content as in Transit a Marilou. Meurtre a L’Marilou, the albums shortest title at 47 seconds, allows Marilou’s death not to linger on; it’s short, sweet, and abrupt. Variations sur Marilou is the album longest title and structurally, the most interesting, as a motif is repeated, built upon and only develops toward its crest seven minutes in. The album concludes with Lunatic Asylum, the most diverse and experimental composition, likes its theme, its formal structure is intense and confessional but in some ways progresses towards a sense of optimism.

Recording and Production Techniques

Shifting production styles are used to map the different scenarios the anti-hero finds himself within. Perhaps not as important as structural or thematic ideas contained with the album, the recording and production techniques utilized in any album can help define its ethereal nature and ambience, what lies beyond theme and aesthetical concept. Recorded at Mercury Studios in London and Paris, English rock themes are played out of the last time, but the production sees Serge for the first time, a reggae song. The production sees an extensive use of synthesizers for the first time. Alan Hawkshaw and Serge carried out arrangements. Hawkshaw had previously worked for KPM in the UK who wrote music for television and film. His arrangements can be heard on songs like Flash Forward in that they employ similar sounds to early radiophonic electronic music. The soft rock and production touches on Aeroplanes make this a standout song. A more common production technique on the album is its little or no cymbal usage – toms and snare drums help propel, like the clock of life itself, pushing and guiding the musical ideas along. This allows the lead vocal to take center stage, as there is limited high-end frequency content to compete with.

Textures and Timbre

There are some very interesting uses of texture and timbre on the album. In Meurtre a L’Marilou, the cymbals signify the sound of the fire extinguisher while the kick drum allows for the pounding heart to bounce toward her death. Life returns and air of optimism prevails in Marilou sous la neige. Here, Serge, lyrically, paints a dark picture of her burial under the snow. In a bold venture of contrast, the music is light, upbeat. The most interesting use of textures and timbre lay within Lunatic Asylum and Première Symptoms. Here, the albums epilogue, the sounds revolves around like a trance through a didgeridoo motif, like call to the wild. The texture and tone of the female vocals at the end of the song envisage and suggests Marilou raising from the dead, coming back to life to haunt our anti-hero for one more time. Textural and rhythmical analysis is summarized here as core musical themes:

Life: L’Homme à Tête de Chou – aggravated, downbeat, strange and surreal.

Love: Marilou Reggae – upbeat and optimistic, bright synthesizers used in major key.

Death: Meurtre a L’Marilou – tense, unknowing, frantic drums.

Rhythmic Syntax

Rhythmically, the album is a rewarding experience. It spans rock, country, disco, jazz, reggae, and funk. What’s evident more so is that some rhythms are used to support themes further. In Marilou Reggae caribbean rhythms allude toward the exotic sexual worlds of far way places. The drum tracks act as bedrock for the narration. Meurtre a l’extinguisher provides the most dynamic rhythmic analysis. It begins with hi-hats suggesting the sound of foam, then is replaced by a beating heart of a kick drum beating towards death, then, ultimately, the rhythm completely falls apart, settling again in the hi-hats, the narrator lost and quiet in his remorse and or satisfaction.

IV. End Note

L’Homme à Tête de Chou demonstrates Gainsbourg’s skill at integrating contemporary influences into chanson; highlighting the fact that it could be global, more far reaching. He allowed it to connect with young generations who understood the rhythms and sounds of international pop music. Gainsbourg’s omnivorous cultural tastes allowed the album to showcase the unstable nature of chanson was during the early 1970’s, ‘illustrating the effects of globalization on so-called traditional genres’ [6].

In classical mythology, the hero tended to be confidant intelligent, with few, if any flaws. In such, a hero tends to exude idealism, courage and morality. The classical anti-hero then, as the title suggests, is a flawed and conflicted character. The anti-hero, on the other hand, is plagued with self-doubt. Our characters hindrances made him prisoner of the mind, his imperfections of thought, of ideals of life, love and death, took him on a journey, full of sensual intentions with the end goal of lust and companionship.

What Gainsbourg has masterfully laid out for us is the story and journey of an anti-hero who completely lacks the skills and capabilities to perform such a feat and ends up failing in the most spectacular and morose fashion. Gainsbourg, furthermore, uses and indeed, manipulates the power of shifting rhythms, instrumental tone and timbre to help supplement and support our anti-hero’s transition into insanity. It’s perhaps the perfect concept album, one where the musical ideas support the extensions as documented above, all swimming in harmony, in the echoes of an untamed sexuality.

References

J. Attali, Noise: The Political Economy of Music, trans. Brian Massumi, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1985.

H. Dauncey & S. Cannon, Popular Music in France from Chanson to Techno, Hants: Ashgate Publishing, 2003.

S. Frith, Performing Rites, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991.

P. Tagg, Black Music, Afro American Music and European Music, Popular Music, 8/3 pp.285-98, 1989.

S. Hawkins, Settling the Pop Score, Hants: Ashgate Publishing, 2002. [6] J. Briggs, Sounds French – Globalization, Cultural Communities & Pop Music 1958-1980, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015.

#music #art #analysis #music theory #critique #serge gainsbourg #chanson #review #anti-hero #adventure #musical composition #themes #thematic structure #lunatic asylum #popular music #1960s

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whileiamdying · 6 years

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#dalida #france #italy #egypt #in english

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ch-dld-bft-brit-omm · 7 years

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Lightnin Hopkins_It s A Sin To Be Rich, It s A Lowdown Shame To Be Poor

Lightnin Hopkins - from the album It`s A Sin To Be Rich, Gitanes Jazz Productions/Verve Records 1992.

Lightnin Hopkins - Mel Brown -Jesse Ed Davis - John Lee Hooker - Clifford Coulter - Bruce Walters / Recorded at The Village Recorder, Los Angeles 1972.

(via https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0B6zzAWADYo)

#Lightnin' Hopkins

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markjoeckel · 5 years

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May 4, 2019. East Main Arts Festival. Here is the Final Artist/Vendor/Food Line-Up! Also 38 bands on 5 stages. Pet and kid friendly. Free Admission. 31:13 Eco-friendly Accessories 817 Arts Alliance A Bit of Earth Alex's Garden Studio Amy Artwick - Artist ArlingtoN NightS Arlington Public Library Arrow M Enterprises Art By Monday Baby Creations x 2 - Blessing Bad Brain Press Bath Bombs by Alicia G Beads Beautiful Beads Blastopolis Blueberry Ragamuffin Bottle Beauties Bri-Fi Design Camp Gladiator Camyda Creations LLC Candle Ghoul Chris Wilkins Sand Art Cindy's Crafts Cowtown Preserves Crafted By Kathie Cumi's Gems Dane Shue Art Danny McMahan - Artist Dina's Creations Edith Cunningham - Artist Elegantly Crafted EPicCreations Epoch8q Faces by Chelsea Keesler Football UTA Fused Designs Gibson Design Co Gitane's Treasures Glass Blooms Gypsy Trading Company Hard Silver Heavenly Creations Hippie Notions Hope Contreraz - Artist Jackdaw Folk Art Jazz's Legacy Arts JBW Vending, LLC Jeff Lyon Studios Jonathan De La Cruz Studio Juan Guerrero - Artist Kenna Reid Knights of Columbus 8895 KW Made L&M Rocks Ladybug Botanical Soap Lisa Redd - Artist Lisa Shoemaker - Wares Maria DeBusk Art Maroches Bakery Mary's Glass Creations, LLC Meraki Moon Studio Mistura Nature's Finest Art Patricia Dudley - Artist Paydunor PixelMoon Studios Plant-Artica Pokey O's Tarrant County Polynesian Arts & Crafts Reflection Glass Art RitaWorks Art & Illustration Ruby Leon Jewelry Rush Creek Soap & More S & J Designs Metal Artwork SC Imagery Sherie Pierce - Artist Shiny Penny Sidney Henderson - Artist Simply Fabulous Foods Small Packages Jewelry Social Fiber, LLC Studio Noin Sugar Momma Scrubs Sweet Southern Art T2CParacord Taleah Mitchell - Artist TATTOO JOE Tea Punk Teas, LLC Texas Beer Bus The Barkery The Colorful World of DeAnna Tidepool Productions Tracy Lawson - Wares Tulip Tree Designs Wallace & Sons Wesley Edwards - Artist Wild Sky Studio Woodpost Home Decor Woodturners of North Texas XYSTYN ART https://www.instagram.com/p/Bw-eQe8FgJa/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=1qrmi7ayojmur

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odk-2 · 6 years

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Modern Jazz Group featuring Lucky Thompson - Tight Squeeze (1956) Lucky Thompson from: "Modern Jazz Group" (LP) "Jazz in Paris Series" (CD) (2000 Remaster Reissue) Jazz | Bop | Instrumental JukeHostUK (left click = play) (320kbps) Personnel: Lucky Thompson: Tenor Saxophone Henri Renaud: Piano Benoit Quersin: Double Bass Christian Garros: Drums Recorded: on March 7, 1956 in Paris, France Released: in 1956 Le Club Français Du Disque Jazz in Paris: Modern Jazz Group Gitanes Jazz Productions 2000 (CD)

Lucky Thompson

#Lucky Thompson #Jazz #Modern Jazz Group #50's #Le Club Français Du Disque #Bop #Tight Squeeze #1950's

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markjoeckel · 5 years

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blackkudos · 8 years

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Donald Byrd

Donaldson Toussaint L'Ouverture "Donald" Byrd II (December 9, 1932 – February 4, 2013) was an American jazz and rhythm & blues trumpeter.

A sideman for many other jazz musicians of his generation, Byrd was best known as one of the only bebop jazz musicians who successfully pioneered the funk and soul genres while simultaneously remaining a jazz artist.

As a bandleader, Byrd is also notable for his influential role in the early career of keyboard player and composer Herbie Hancock.

Biography

Early life and career

Byrd attended Cass Technical High School. He performed with Lionel Hampton before finishing high school. After playing in a military band during a term in the United States Air Force, Byrd obtained a bachelor's degree in music from Wayne State University and a master's degree from Manhattan School of Music. While still at the Manhattan School, he joined Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers, as replacement for Clifford Brown. In 1955, he recorded with Gigi Gryce Jackie McLean and Mal Waldron. After leaving the Jazz Messengers in 1956, he performed with many leading jazz musicians of the day, including John Coltrane, Sonny Rollins, Thelonious Monk, and later Herbie Hancock.

Byrd's first regular group was a quintet that he co-led from 1958 to 1961 with baritone saxophonist Pepper Adams, an ensemble whose hard-driving performances are captured "live" on At the Half Note Cafe.

Byrd's 1961 LP Royal Flush marked the Blue Note debut of Hancock, who came to wider attention with Byrd's successful 1962 album Free Form, and these albums also featured the first recordings of Hancock's original compositions. Hancock has credited Byrd as a key influence in his early career, recounting that he took the young pianist "under his wings" when he was a struggling musician newly arrived in New York, even letting him sleep on a hide-a-bed in his Bronx apartment for several years

"He was the first person to let me be a permanent member of an internationally known band. He has always nurtured and encouraged young musicians. He's a born educator, it seems to be in his blood, and he really tried to encourage the development of creativity".

Hancock also recalled that Byrd helped him in many other ways: he encouraged Hancock to make his debut album for Blue Note, connected him with Mongo Santamaria, who turned Hancock's tune "Watermelon Man" into a chart-topping hit, and that Byrd also later urged him to accept Miles Davis' offer to join his quintet.

Hancock also credits Byrd with giving him one of the most important pieces of advice of his career – not to give away his publishing. When Blue Note offered Hancock the chance to record his first solo LP, label executives tried to convince him to relinquish his publishing in exchange for being able to record the album, but he stuck to Byrd's advice and refused, so the meeting came to an impasse. At this point, he stood up to leave and when it became clear that he was about to walk out, the executives relented and allowed him to retain his publishing. Thanks to Santamaria's subsequent hit cover version of "Watermelon Man", Hancock was soon receiving substantial royalties, and he used his first royalty check of $3000 to buy his first car, a 1963 Shelby Cobra (also recommended by Byrd) which Hancock still owns, and which is now the oldest production Cobra still in its original owner's hands.

In June 1964, Byrd played with Eric Dolphy in Paris just two weeks before Dolphy's death from insulin shock.

Electric Byrd

By 1969's Fancy Free, Byrd was moving away from the hard bop jazz idiom and began to record jazz fusion and rhythm and blues. He teamed up with the Mizell Brothers (producer-writers Larry and Fonce) for Black Byrd (1973) which was, for many years, Blue Note's best-selling album. The title track climbed to No. 19 on Billboard′s R&B chart and reached the Hot 100 pop chart, peaking at No. 88. The Mizell brothers' follow-up albums for Byrd, Street Lady, Places and Spaces and Stepping into Tomorrow, were also big sellers, and have subsequently provided a rich source of samples for acid jazz artists such as Us3. Most of the material for the albums was written by Larry Mizell.

In 1973, he helped to establish and co-produce the Blackbyrds, a fusion group consisting of then-student musicians from Howard University, where Byrd taught in the music department and earned his J.D. in 1976. They scored several major hits including "Happy Music" (No. 3 R&B, No. 19 pop), "Walking in Rhythm" (No. 4 R&B, No. 6 pop) and "Rock Creek Park".

During his tenure at North Carolina Central University during the 1980s, he formed a group which included students from the college called the "125th St NYC Band". They recorded the Love Byrd album, which featured Isaac Hayes on drums. "Love Has Come Around" became a disco hit in the UK and reached No. 41 on the charts.

Beginning in the 1960s, Byrd (who eventually gained his PhD in music education from Teachers College, Columbia University in 1982) taught at a variety of postsecondary institutions, including Rutgers University, the Hampton Institute, New York University, Howard University, Queens College, Oberlin College, Cornell University, North Carolina Central University and Delaware State University. Byrd returned to somewhat straight-ahead jazz later in his career, releasing three albums for Orrin Keepnews' Landmark Records, and his final album Touchstone, a quintet.

Byrd died on February 4 2013 in Dover, Delaware. He was 80.

Discography

As leaderTransition Records

Byrd Jazz (1955) – also released as First Flight (Delmark)

Byrd's Eye View (1955)

Byrd Blows on Beacon Hill (1956)

The Transition Sessions (2002 compilation)

Prestige Records

2 Trumpets (1956) – with Art Farmer

The Young Bloods (1956) – with Phil Woods

Verve Records

At Newport (1957) – with Gigi Gryce

Up with Donald Byrd (1964)

Columbia Records

Jazz Lab (1957) – with Gigi Gryce

Modern Jazz Perspective (1957) – with Gigi Gryce and Jackie Paris

Blue Note Records

Off to the Races (1959)

Byrd in Hand (1959)

Fuego (1959)

Byrd in Flight (1960)

At the Half Note Cafe (1960)

Chant (1961)

The Cat Walk (1961)

Royal Flush (1961)

Free Form (1961)

A New Perspective (1963)

I'm Tryin' to Get Home (1964)

Mustang (1966)

Blackjack (1967)

Slow Drag (1967)

The Creeper (1967)

Fancy Free (1969)

Electric Byrd (1969–70)

Kofi (1969)

Ethiopian Knights (1971)

Black Byrd (1973)

Street Lady (1973)

Stepping into Tomorrow (1974)

Places and Spaces (1975)

Caricatures (1976)

Elektra Records

Thank You... for F.U.M.L. (Funking Up My Life) (1978)

Donald Byrd And 125th Street, N.Y.C. (1979)

Love Byrd (1981)

Words, Sounds, Colors and Shapes (1983)

Landmark Records

Harlem Blues (1987)

Getting Down to Business (1989)

A City Called Heaven (1991)

Other labels

Byrd's Word (Savoy, 1955)

Jazz Eyes (Regent, 1957) – with John Jenkins

New Formulas from the Jazz Lab (Vik, 1957) with Gigi Gryce

Jazz in Camera (Sonorama, 1958) with Barney Wilen

Jazz Lab (Jubilee, 1958) with Gigi Gryce

Live Au Chat Qui Peche (Fresh Sound, 1958),

Jazz in Paris: Parisian Thoroughfare (Gitanes, 1958)

Jazz in Paris: Byrd in Paris (Gitanes, 1958)

Motor City Scene (Bethlehem, 1960)

Out of This World (Warwick, 1961)

September Afternoon (Discovery, 1982; rec. 1957) – with Clare Fischer and Strings

Touchstone (2000) Pepper Adams, Herbie Hancock, Teddy Charles, Jimmy Cobb

As sideman

1955 George Wallington Live At The Bohemia (Progressive 1955 Prestige 1970)

1955 Kenny Clarke – Bohemia After Dark (Savoy)

1955 Cannonball Adderley – Discoveries

1955 Oscar Pettiford – Another One

1955 Hank Jones – Quartet-Quintet (Savoy)

1955 Hank Jones – Bluebird – one track only

1955 Ernie Wilkins – Top Brass (Savoy)

1956 George Wallington – Jazz for the Carriage Trade

1956 Jackie McLean – Lights Out! (Prestige)

1956 Hank Mobley – The Jazz Message of Hank Mobley (Prestige)

1956 Kenny Clarke – Klook's Clique (Savoy)

1956 Art Blakey – The Jazz Messengers (Columbia)

1956 Art Blakey – Originally

1956 Rita Reys – The Cool Voice of Rita Reys

1956 Elmo Hope – Informal Jazz (Prestige 1956, Elmo Hope The All Star Sessions - Milestone CD)

1956 Phil Woods – Pairing Off (Prestige)

1956 Jackie McLean – 4, 5 and 6 (Prestige)

1956 Gene Ammons – Jammin' with Gene (Prestige)

1956 Horace Silver – Silver's Blue (Epic)

1956 Hank Mobley – Mobley's Message (Prestige)

1956 Hank Mobley – Jazz Message No. 2 (Savoy)

1956 Art Farmer – 2 Trumpets (Prestige)

1956 Paul Chambers – Whims of Chambers (Blue Note)

1956 Phil Woods/Donald Byrd – The Young Bloods (Prestige)

1956 Horace Silver – 6 Pieces of Silver (Blue Note)

1956 Hank Mobley – Hank Mobley Sextet (Blue Note)

1956 Doug Watkins – Watkins at Large (Transition)

1956 Sonny Rollins – Sonny Rollins, Vol. 1 (Blue Note)

1956 Kenny Burrell – All Night Long (Prestige)

1957 Kenny Burrell – All Day Long (Prestige)

1957 Gigi Gryce/Donald Byrd – Jazz Lab (Jubilee)

1957 Art Farmer/Donald Byrd/Idrees Sulieman – Three Trumpets (Prestige)

1957 Lou Donaldson – Wailing with Lou (Blue Note)

1957 Jimmy Smith – A Date with Jimmy Smith Volume One (Blue Note)

1957 Jimmy Smith - A Date with Jimmy Smith Volume Two (Blue Note)

1957 Art Taylor – Taylor's Wailers (Prestige)

1957 Gigi Gryce – Gigi Gryce and the Jazz Lab Quintet (Riverside)

1957 George Wallington – The New York Scene (Prestige)

1957 Various Artists – American Jazzmen Play Andre Hodeir's Essais

1957 Kenny Burrell/Jimmy Raney – 2 Guitars (Prestige)

1957 Kenny Drew – This Is New (Riverside)

1957 Hank Mobley – Hank (Blue Note)

1957 Paul Chambers – Paul Chambers Quintet (Blue Note)

1957 The Gigi Gryce/Donald Byrd Jazz Lab – At Newport – One side of LP which also features Cecil Taylor (Verve)

1957 Gigi Gryce/Donald Byrd – New Formulas from the Jazz Lab

1957 Gigi Gryce/Donald Byrd – Modern Jazz Perspective (Columbia)

1957 Sonny Clark – Sonny's Crib (Blue Note)

1957 John Jenkins – Jazz Eyes (Savoy)

1957 Oscar Pettiford – Winner's Circle

1957 George Wallington – Jazz at Hotchkiss (Savoy)

1957 Red Garland – All Mornin' Long (Prestige)

1957 Red Garland – Soul Junction (Prestige)

1957 Red Garland – High Pressure (Prestige)

1957 Lou Donaldson – Lou Takes Off (Blue Note)

1957 Art Blakey – Art Blakey Big Band (Bethlehem)

1958 John Coltrane – Lush Life – one track only (Prestige)

1958 John Coltrane – The Believer – two tracks (Prestige)

1958 John Coltrane – The Last Trane – two tracks (Prestige)

1958 Johnny Griffin – Johnny Griffin Sextet (Riverside)

1958 Pepper Adams – 10 to 4 at the 5 Spot (Riverside)

1958 John Coltrane – Black Pearls (Prestige)

1958 Michel Legrand – Legrand Jazz

1958 Dizzy Reece – Blues in Trinity (Blue Note)

1958 Art Blakey – Holiday for Skins (Blue Note)

1958 Jim Timmens – Gilbert and Sullivan Revisited

1959 Mundell Lowe – TV Action Jazz!

1959 Jackie McLean – Jackie's Bag 3 tracks (Blue Note)

1959 Thelonious Monk – The Thelonious Monk Orchestra at Town Hall (Riverside)

1959 Chris Connor – Ballads of the Sad Cafe

1959 Sonny Clark – My Conception (Blue Note)

1959 Manny Albam/Teo Macero – Something New, Something Blue

1959 Jackie McLean – New Soil (Blue Note)

1959 Walter Davis Jr. – Davis Cup (Blue Note)

1962 Duke Pearson – Hush! (Jazztime)

1963 Hank Mobley – No Room for Squares (Blue Note)

1963 Jackie McLean Vertigo - released 1980 (Blue Note)

1963 Hank Mobley – Straight No Filter – released 1986 (Blue Note)

1963 Hank Mobley – The Turnaround (Blue Note)

1963 Jimmy Heath – Swamp Seed (Riverside)

1963 Herbie Hancock – My Point of View (Blue Note)

1964 Eric Dolphy – Naima

1964 Eric Dolphy – Last Recordings / Unrealized Tapes

1964 Dexter Gordon – One Flight Up (Blue Note)

1964 Cal Tjader – Soul Sauce (Verve)

1964 Solomon Ilori – African High Life

1964 Duke Pearson – Wahoo! (Blue Note)

1965 Dexter Gordon – Ladybird (SteepleChase)

1965 Wes Montgomery – Goin' Out of My Head

1967 Stanley Turrentine – A Bluish Bag

1967 Sam Rivers – Dimensions & Extensions

1967 Hank Mobley – Far Away Lands (Blue Note)

1977 Gene Harris – Tone Tantrum

1978 Sonny Rollins – Don't Stop the Carnival (Milestone)

1993 Guru – Jazzmatazz, Vol. 1

1994 Various – Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Cool

1995 Guru – Guru's Jazzmatazz, Vol. 2: The New Reality

1995 Ahmad Jamal – Big Byrd: The Essence Part 2

Wikipedia

#Donald Byrd

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