#post bop jazz

[oopsl]

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

[twistedsoulmusic]

‘Brand New Life’ is Brandee Younger’s second album on Impulse! Records. The album blends jazz, funk, R&B and pop and features original compositions and covers of classic songs. Younger’s unique approach to her instrument of choice, the harp, is exemplified in tracks like ‘You’re a Girl for One Man Only’, ‘Livin’ and Lovin’ in My Own Way’ and ‘Dust’.

[haveyouheardthisband]

[jazzandother-blog]

Joe Henderson, 1980

[rhapsodynew]

#On this day

Ella Fitzgerald's first concert took place 90 years ago. This is a recording of the 1968 concert

[haveyoulistenedtothisalbum-poll]

Tracklist:

It Could Happen To You • I Want To Talk About You • Early Summer • Willow Weep For Me • Autumn Leaves • Scenery

Spotify ♪ YouTube

[canmking]

E l l a F i t z g e r a l d

[midnightwind]

(DAtV)-Music Shuffle Game

tagged by @pixiedurango, this should be Funny lmao

THE RULES: You gotta shuffle your 'on repeat' playlist on Spotify then post the first 10 songs.

I barely use Spotify anymore for, uh, reasons but youtube music has a similar playlist function! it's just 100 songs long so we're Gambling on how many from the Rook/fic playlist happen, but take my hand and let's see what happens (I'll try to spin it for the companions or story if it's a true random song lol)

(hey person reading this, does it sound fun? do you wanna take part?? you're tagged now, go, thrive)

Traveler's Song - Aviators (this one is just a bop, like all his songs honestly, but you could spin it pretty easy to apply to the Veilguard... hm)

Spite the bloodstains on these cobble streets A message to the gods to see us through Ever heard, yet rarely sung So raise your voice and praise the sun I call a new rebirth to keep us strong Countless souls along the path Lost to fiends and lords of wrath But we'll return to play our final song

Just Can't Win - 10 Years (this is a fic song!! this is Rook and Solas yelling at each other lmao)

We have lost All communication When words fall On deaf ears I'm starting to Feel a transformation How did I get here I don't Recognize My own reflection It's a ghost of What once was

Curses - The Crane Wives (this is partially a Rookanis song because Crow romance is Normal and never Messy, you can trust me on this- [I fucking Love a clarinet going for a walk])

Oh, ashes, ashes, dust to dust The devil's after both of us Ooh, lay my curses out to rest Make a mercy out of me All my aching bones are trembling And I may yet fall apart Won't you stay with me, my darling When the war starts in my heart?

Even If It Kills Me - Papa Roach (OH BABY it's my baby girl's de Riva anthem heyyo, she's so normal about her loyalty to Viago [and family in general, good luck Luca])

'Cause I hope that you know when you're broken, I'm broken too If you need me, I'll bleed for you Even if it kills me inside Even if you burn me alive I'd carry that pain that you don't need I'd carry that weight that you don't see

Are You Really Okay? - Sleep Token (we're on a fic streak, this is the last song on the playlist for both Lucanis and Rook because man... going home to the messy Crow politics after All That is going to be rough!)

And are you really okay? Are you really okay? You woke me up one night Dripping crimson on the carpet I saw it in your eyes Cutting deeper than the scars could run

I Want Blood - Dance with the Dead (BANGER ALERT I like this song a normal amount, anyways this is for Lucanis while Rook is in Regret Jail) hi I can't find the lyrics so we're doing it from scratch lmao

I want blood If I can't have love It's never ever gonna be enough Blood, I want blood and to love is to die

Nightmare (The Devil) - Fame on Fire (alright somehow shuffle toggled off between songs, but funny because this is for Rook while trapped in Regret Prison)

I'm in the middle of a nightmare And it's not going away I'm buried under the broken dreams I don't know who to blame I'm in a never ending nightmare I know I'm going insane And when I'm under the curtain call There's nothing left to save

My Demons - Starset (ANOTHER BANGER this is just one of my top songs in general because I fucking love Starset a normal amount, but honestly? it's a solid Rookanis song for obvious reasons below)

I cannot stop this sickness taking over It takes control and drags me into nowhere I need your help, I can't fight this forever I know you're watching I can feel you out there Take me high and I'll sing Oh, you make everything okay, okay, okay (okay, okay, okay) We are one in the same Oh, you take all of the pain away, away, away (away, away, away) Save me if I become My demons

Don't Fight It - 10 Years (this is The Rookanis song for me, it's so good for them)

Memories stuck in my head All the things I should have said If I fall back into you Don't fight it, Don't fight it Gone are all of the days this was easy Tomorrow can't hold onto yesterday If you come right back to me I won't fight it, I won't fight it Show me what you need from me Don't hide it, Don't hide it

Pick Me Up - Saint Motel (I've only listened to the new album twice, but okay youtube lmao I think you could apply this to Rookanis where one or both of them is Having A Day tho)

And I could use a little pick me up Something that is heavy like a brick Yeah, I could use a little pick me up So, hit me with a little fire Yeah, I could use a little pick me up Something kinda stiff will do thе trick Well, I could use a little pick mе up So, pick me up a little higher

alright I tried to get artist variety in there, but it rolled two of the 10 Years songs on the playlist and I wasn't gonna skip any from the actual playlist lol... honestly impressed we got so many from the it! thank you for the tag, and I hope you guys liked the genre hopping lmao (but seriously, look into Aviators, he makes good music in all kinds of genres and does a lot of Soulsborne fan songs)

[ozkar-krapo]

SUN RA

"Haverford College - Jan.25, 1980 : Solo Rhodes Piano"

(CD. Modern Harmonic. 2023 / rec. 1980) [US]

[musicollage]

John Coltrane - Crescent. 1964 : Impulse! A 66.

! listen @ Apple Music ★ buy me a coffee !

[graph100]

jazz is so silly because you could have two recordings of the same song and they only share like one riff that they play 4 times and the rest is a completely different song in a completely different key at a completely different tempo and like. yeah. thats just how songs are.

[dankalbumart]

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

[reckonslepoisson]

Signs of the Zodiac I (1945), Signs of the Zodiac II (1946), Mary Lou Williams (1964), Zoning (1974), Mary Lou Williams

Mary Lou Williams was a prodigy, the sort of immensely skilled, incalculably influential innovator one can’t really contain in a few words. Her own records aside – technically astounding and compositionally both bold and precise – Williams taught the likes of Thelonious Monk, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and more, and arranged for Duke Ellington. How do you do justice to that?

Williams’ quality is obvious if one is well musically-educated, true, but also to any keen listener. Schoolbook-worthiness aside, Williams’ music also marvels in a very human, non-snooty way. Even on the earliest Zodiac suite, Williams’ tunes were prone to oddly destabilising wonder, small passages that move beyond the quality of play and floor a listener entirely. Throughout the likes of Mary Lou Williams and Zoning – a period of several decades – it’s that sense of wonder that persists, and remains flooring to this day. 

Pick(s): ‘Cancer’, ‘Libra’, ‘Praise the Lord’, ‘Syl-O-Gism’

[haveyouheardthisband]

[jazzandother-blog]

“I'm trying to play the truth of what I am. The reason it's difficult is because I'm changing all the time.”

Charles Mingus

"Intento interpretar la verdad de lo que soy. La razón por la que es difícil es porque estoy cambiando todo el tiempo".

Charles Mingus

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Cerco di interpretare la verità di ciò che sono. Il motivo per cui è difficile è che sto cambiando continuamente".

Charles Mingus

Source: ALL THAT JAZZ by Zbigniew Wojtysiak

[1001albumsrated]

#13: Miles Davis - Birth of the Cool (1957)

Genre(s): Jazz, Post-Bop, Cool Jazz

Welp, it only took 13 albums for me to screw up and skip an album by mistake. I went back and edited my prior posts to correct the numbering. Birth of the Cool is a pretty embarrassing one to skip too; like all self-respecting jazz listeners, I'm a big Miles fan, and had been looking forward to talking about some of his work (this is far from the last Miles album in 1001 Albums).

Despite being number 13 on the list, these are actually the earliest recordings in the whole book. Ironically, despite now being considered a classic jazz album and typically viewed as a single coherent album, Birth of the Cool is actually a compilation album comprised of 78 sides recorded by the Davis nonet for Columbia between 1949 & 1950 and later reissued together as an LP. This is more common in Miles' discography than you'd expect; many of his later albums were released a few years after the initial recording as his workflow shifted towards recording long sessions with a single band and then producing multiple albums from a few related sessions.

At the time of recording Miles was coming hot off his breakthrough success as part of Charlie Parker's band. These sessions were some of his first recordings as bandleader and established him as a pioneering voice in jazz. The cool jazz sounds on these sessions stand in stark contrast to the fast-paced technical showcases heard on most bebop albums at the time. He'd already made a name for himself as someone concerned with the aesthetics and timbral quality of sound with his unique approach to trumpet playing as part of Bird's band, focusing on playing "straight" with a pure, unembellished sound (this is a stark contrast to trumpet playing at the time, which had a strong Louis Armstrong influence with a highly embellished approach), and the Birth of the Cool sessions cemented it. The arrangement and instrumentation was highly unusual at the time (a nonet with a french horn!) but was crafted with intention to create the specific timbral textures present on the recording. This kind of thinking was mostly unheard of in jazz at the time (and arguably in music at large), with the main focus of most groups being the technical elements of the performance rather than the aesthetic ones. This approach is one of the few consistent elements in Davis' long, storied, strange career. While the aesthetic goal often changed as his sound evolved, the focus was a constant one that I personally believe is largely responsible for consistently setting his music apart from the crowd over the years.

The Birth of the Cool sessions also started to overarching trend of constant change in Miles' career. He was always trying to find the next new thing, and was never satisfied with resting on his laurels. It's as evident here as it would be throughout his career: by the time Birth of the Cool was compiled and released as an LP, Miles had already moved on to innovating hard bop, and was only a few years from pioneering modal jazz with Kind of Blue, which would turn the genre completely on its head once again. Frankly, most artists would have never left the immensely successful and influential sound of Birth of the Cool, but by the time it was released Miles was already honing in on the NEXT next big thing. To me, what's what made Miles different from the majority of his peers and earned him his legendary status today as one of jazz's finest composers and bandleaders. If you follow the careers of the other top jazz players in history you'll see similar trajectories of never being satisfied with stagnancy (artists like John Coltrane, Wayne Shorter, Herbie Hancock, and Sun Ra all come immediately to mind; incidentally 3/4 of those listed had large roles in various iterations of Miles' bands).

Another innovative element here was that the nonet was racially diverse and integrated. I need to remind you, this was in 1949. Brown v Board wouldn't come to pass for another 5 years, and the South was still steeped in segregationist Jim Crow thinking. While things were becoming more integrated in the jazz scene, racial tensions in the US were still high at the time and it was very uncommon to see a mixed group like this, both due to the tensions of the time and due to the challenging logistics of touring with such a group (particularly in the South). Miles always said that he simply picked the best players for the job when selecting band members for a session. In this case, he was heavily inspired by modern classical music and found that many white players played that style more to his liking. You could write a whole essay on the topic of racial politics in jazz at this time and I simply don't have the room in a Tumblr post to give the topic the time it deserves, but I'd be remiss not to put the band and recordings in the context they existed in.

Anyways, it probably goes without saying, but yes you MUST hear Birth of the Cool before you die. It's a spectacular listen, and a highly influential one. Also of note, it's a good starter album if you're just getting into jazz and don't know where to begin (I'd also recommend Kind of Blue, but we'll talk more about that when we get there). It has enormous music depth, but is highly accessible to a non-jazz listener.

For the nerds: I listened to this one in hi-res on Qobuz, purely because I was on a roll at the time and didn't feel like going to the other room and throwing the CD in my main system.

Next time (skipping ahead chronologically, because I fucked up and skipped this album): Jack Takes the Floor, for real this time!