JAZZ
A Selection Of The Best Jazz Albums
[as composer]
ROCK
CLASSICAL
...
Italian, Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7
Photograph: Mymusicdiscovery
A SELECTION OF THE BEST JAZZ ALBUMS
.... For The Record
Miles Davis "Kind Of Blue"
Everybody, probably including Barack Obama, seems to think this is the best album in jazz, so I begin with it! I prefer some others also, however.
Cannonball Adderley "Something Else"
This album was to a fair extent directed by Miles Davis, the trumpeter on the album. A trumpeter I know considers this the best Miles on record. The album was recorded for Blue Note in early 1958, just before the records Adderly recorded with Coltrane for Miles ("Kind Of Blue" and "Milestones"). The first two tracks (the first side of the LP version) are "Autumn Leaves" and "Love for Sale".
Lee Morgan "The Gigolo"
A mid '60s progression from "Something Else", showing the influence of the funk that had transpired since. Great party album as well a beautiful sensitive trumpet from the leader. How is this "hard" bop? It's more like "fun" bop or even "soft" bop, to me. The pianist was Harold Mabern, whom I was lucky enough to meet briefly in NY in December. He said he doesn't like labels, particularly as it is the blues that is behind everything he plays, whatever the apparent "genre" of the music. You can hear it behind the ostensibly Coltrane-like piano comping he does on the record. Wayne Shorter is the tenor saw player, providing the post Coltrane feel.
This trio of modern jazz records, well-recorded, now gives way to the older classics:
Duke Ellington
Duke Ellington live!: there are three live albums that paint the colors of the Duke very well: the double set of the famous Fargo dance gig of 1940 (featuring the classic Blanton-Webster band - see below), the "Live At Carnegie Hall" concert of three years later, and the famous "Ellington at Newport" album of 1956, with the "epic ride" of tenor player Paul Gonsalves on "Diminuendo And Crescendo in Blue", and other more modern Ellington classics such as "Satin Doll".
Amazon says of the 1943 Carnegie Hall record:
"Though the audio quality of this, the first of Ellington's annual Carnegie Hall concert presentations, is not the greatest, the music is utterly extraordinary. Beginning, appropriately enough for a wartime concert, with "The Star Spangled Banner" and moving through a cavalcade of the band's greatest arrangements and solo features (including an uncommonly brisk, virtuoso turn for Ben Webster and company on "Cotton Tail"), The Duke Ellington Carnegie Hall Concerts: January 1943 is a stunning portrait of America's greatest orchestra at the peak of its powers. As was his wont, the Duke used these concerts as a springboard for the premiere of an extended work, and what really makes this an essential item for fans and collectors is the only complete recorded document of Ellington's "Black, Brown and Beige" (Duke later recorded a very moving but incomplete version featuring Mahalia Jackson for Columbia). A sweeping, ambitious long form, "Black, Brown and Beige" traces the history of African Americans from slavery days onward, alternating between the celebratory and the reflective. It features some of Duke's most inspired writing and one magnificent solo spot after another, but none so grand as Johnny Hodges's stunning testimonial on "Come Sunday."
Duke Elllington "The Blanton-Webster Band"
Ellington gets two places here. This is his studio side. Before the "cool" jazz era of Miles and his successors, "albums" didn't exist. Artists recorded sessions of four cuts at a go, typically: two 78 rpm records. But the pinnacle of Ellington's caree was his early 1940s band. This band is represented on a triple CD set on Bluebird, The Blanton-Webster band. The set was nominated, by an authorotative book of the '90s, as the "number two best jazz album of all time", next to "Kind Of Blue".
An Amazon review states: "These 66 songs not only represent Ellington's artistic apex, but perhaps reflect the greatest creative period by any single artist in jazz history. Ellington had already made a lasting impression on jazz by 1940, but adding writer/arranger Billy Strayhorn, young bassist Jimmy Blanton, and tenor great Ben Webster brought the band to extraordinary new heights. The new blood boosted a roster already touting Johnny Hodges, Cootie Williams (replaced by Ray Nance), Rex Stewart, Juan Tizol, and Barney Bigard. The set list reveals masterpiece after masterpiece: Ellington's "Cotton Tail," "Never No Lament," "All Too Soon," "In a Mellotone," "Warm Valley," "I Got It Bad," and "Sentimental Lady" plus Strayhorn's "Chelsea Bridge" and "Take The A Train" offer a mere taste of the treasures within."
Louis Armstrong "Hot Fives and Hot Sevens"
The "Hot 5 and Hot 7" recordings. These are from when Louis was at his best and most colorful and original, the mid to late 1920s. The track that sums it all up is the oddly named "Potato Head Blues". Heard on CD, Louis' inventions sound more like classical music.
Jelly Roll Morton and his Red Hot Peppers
Contemporaneous to Louis at this time was the guy who claimed to have "invented" jazz, Jelly Roll Morton. With the Red Hot Peppers, morton recorded classics in 1928 such as "Doctor Jazz", nominated by Eric Clapton as a favorite and influential (on the young Clapton) track, for a radio interview on BBC radio in 1996.
Charlie Parker "Bird Symbols"
Again, a compilation of 78 records, this set covers some of the middle and latter half of Parker's best period (1944-48). Miles Davis was the main trumpet mate on these reocords, so Miles weighs in more than a couple of times on this list, in some form or other.
However, to really buy a Parker collection that is stunning, and includes the tracks on "Bird Symbols", buy this: "Charlie Parker A Studio Chronicle 1940-1948".
Again Amazon:
"JSP, run by an eccentric British jazz fanatic called Ted Kendall, has a habit of turning out box sets of older jazz recordings that put the big companies to shame.
Having put out the best available set of Hot Fives, Kendall turns his attention to the second most important jazz recordings of all time - the Savoy and Dial sessions of Charlie Parker.
I am totally new to bebop, having cut my teeth on Coltrane and Miles Davis. This box set is like the New Testament of jazz ...."
Swing: Fats Waller/Benny Goodman
Fats Waller (there are numerous compilations of his small group 1930s records), an effervescent talent, shares the Swing Era limelight with Benny Goodman (see the Benny Goodman/Teddy Wilson Trio and Quartet recordings on the Bluebird label), Artie Shaw and Count Basie (particularly on anything with Lester Young, or Sinatra live).
An Amazon reviewer on the Benny Goodman set: "Do yourself a favor and buy what will become one of your favorite CDs."
Stan Getz "Jazz Samba"
If samba is jazz, this album is a brilliant record to have. Segovia-taught Charlie Byrd, on guitar, adds further exoticism. Four years later (in 1966) Frank Sinatra also recorded an inventive "samba" jazz album with writer Carlos Antonio Jobim: "Sinatra And Jobim".
Any discussion of a top ten anything, which I would rarely do anyway, will be subjective. However, the ouevre of Miles Davis lends itself fairly easily to a top ten, as the best albums pretty much suggest themselves.
The Birth Of The Cool (1949)
Exceptionally interesting, with compositions by Gerry Mulligan and Lee Konitz as well as by Miles. Unusual names for tunes also help bring out the newness of it all:"Jeru", "Bopchild" (threre's a descriptive name right there, "cool" jazz was the "child of bop"), etc. Mulligan's baritone sax helped the unusual sound and arrangements. The band is a nine piece unit.
Walkin' (1954)
After serious heroin addiction following a trip to Paris (Miles said he turned to heroin to help himself get over French actress Juliet Greco), he came back with "Walkin'". The album is the earliest recording I have heard that sounds like a modern record (I heard a CD version). It sounds great, especially the bass. A good example of the latter is "Solar". The album is a sort of bebop album, but with a groove to it. As somebody wrote, "He called the cats back with Walkin'". The title track stayed in his live repertoire well into the '60s.
'Round About Midnight (1955)
This is a CBS compilation of his first great quintet (Miles, Coltrane, and rhythm section), but any album he released on the Prestige label at this time is also the same group. Miles wrote that people were queueing round the block to see them, and celebrities also came including people like Elizabeth Taylor.
Milestones (1958)
The first modal album. "Modal" means essentially, in the jazz context, that the soloists play on a series of scale changes (different modes) rather than chord progressions So instead of a trumpeter improvising over the fixed chords belonging to a tune, the solo is sustained structurally by the choice of different scales instead. A by-product is that the track can last virtually for ever, rather like "Indian music". The tantric title track is a good example.
Porgy And Bess (1958)
Miles turned from modal improvisation to the pre-composed melodies of George Gershwin's opera "PorgyAnd Bess". Yet, Davis still turned in a new way of playing the very famous "Summertime", by changing the beat ("shortening "it) and adding a hypnotic backing/introduction.
Kind Of Blue (1959)
His most universally celebrated album. One day, I heard some jazz sax from a beatbox at Los Angeles' Venice Beach market. I thought it was "Kind Of Blue", and asked the black woman who ran the stall. It sure was.
Sketches Of Spain (1960)
Miles took the famous second movement of Spanish composer Joaquin Rodrigo's Concierto d'Aranjuez, a concerto written for the guitar, and played it with brass. A lot of people like this hot Latin album. The other tracks are similarly flavoured. In his autobiography ("Miles: The Autobiography"), Miles wrote that he heard that a Spanish bullfighter, after listening to the album, simply went out and killed a bull. "Now I don't know if that's true', wrote Miles, "but that's what he said".
Nefertiti (1967)
Nefertiti was the last fully acoustic album by Miles' "second great quintet": Miles, composer/tenor saxophonist Wayne Shorter, pianist the very famous Herbie Hancock, and rhythm section. Ten years on from the first quintet with John Coltrane, Miles was about to "go electric" (Hancock turned up at a session one day the next year and was surprised to see that he had to play an electric piano). This album, however, was acoustic, and has many innovative moments. The title track, by Shorter, is a part of the jazz "standard repertoire", a classic.
Bitches Brew (1969)
From the African beach cover to the music inside, this album is a classic. It is a double album of "fusion", a combination of jazz and rock. Miles electrified his trumpet and involved electric guitar maestro John McLaughlin. Bass clarinets and so on give this album an unmistakeable flavor.
On The Corner (1972)
Miles funked out with, amongst others, John McLaughlin again. He had spoken to Jimi Hendrix a few days before Hendrix's death about recording together, and this album is an extreme example of what may eventually have resulted. A current review (on www.musthear.com) describes it as Miles playing "distorted licks through a wah wah pedal on the trumpet". Traditional jazz fans bailed; it's great!
GEORGE GERSHWIN ESSENTIAL RECORDINGS: A SELECTION
A Chestnut CD compilation from 2005 has many of the best; the company made excellent choices, though my copy has a couple of rough transfers. In any event. it's hard to beat the selections, which include the original jazz band arrangement of the "Rhapsody In Blue" performed by Paul Whiteman in 1924. Now that's history. There are also very good sleeve notes from Neil Kellas. The CD is totally worth it for the original "Rhapsody In Blue".
So, a rhapsody and a few songs ....
"Rhapsody In Blue" Parts I and II (Recorded 1924) Paul Whiteman Orchestra
The original version was arranged for the Whiteman Orchestra by Ferde Grofe, the composer of the famous "Grand Canyon Suite". As Whiteman's band was primarily a large "jazz" orchestra, the arrangement is half jazz half classical, the piano of course having centre stage. A tuba provides bass: the two 12" 78s are totally rocking. A more recent exponent of the piece was the mouth organ player Larry Adler, who first played it at 14: Gershwin told him he played it as if it had been written for him.
Myself and Larry Adler
Photograph: Copyright Simon Harper 2007
Most of Gershwin's compositions were songs. In 1924 (obviously a very good year for the Georgester), he also wrote (with his brother Ira) his first musical, "Lady Be Good" - Chuck Berry of course adapted the title: "Johnny B Goode". The musical included three of Gershwin's greatest songs: "Lady Be Good", "Fascinating Rhythm", and perhaps his best tune of all, "The Man I Love".
********
"Fascinating Rhythm" Judy Garland
This is a great piece of music, half song and half classical figures. Judy Garland sings a superb version in 1939, with (because of the year) a contemporary band sound. The recording approaches classical standards, as Garland's voice is timeless: very much a part of modern music as well as of earlier eras. There is thus an excellent match of music and artist.
Note that there is also a brilliant studio version, with a superbly slowed down passage in the bridge, by the "Velvet Fog", Mel Torme.
The cover of the complete Judy Garland on Decca
"The Man I Love" Billie Holiday with Count Basie and his Orchestra
Suggested by some as Gershwin's best tune, "The Man I Love" was loopily recorded by Billie Holiday with Count Basie in 1939. Tenor sax maestro Lester Young takes a long solo that sounds as if he just might be on drugs. It's a funny record, but also very beautiful. There are obviously many versions of the song. A quasi classical version is Benny Gooodman in a six minute live recording with the Hollywood Bowl Orchestra in the 1950s. In a TV show, Larry Adler raved about the song. When I met Adler, when he was 86, he simply said of Gershwin, looking away across the table in thought, "Oh, he was a genius".
This song is, in any event, so hot that I changed a few words to make it "The Girl I Love", so I could sing it; a bit later, Harry Connick did the same thing.
"Someone To Watch Over Me" Frank Sinatra
This version is from Sinatra's classic '50s period. The song is about the about the only song I know of where all three possible diminished chords (in the key of the song) are used. I bet he wrote it after setting himself the challenge of doing that.
"Summertime"
Everybody knows this song. It can be played as a blues, or in any other style. I have heard it played by a drunken bar band at a university college party, and of course as part of the opera from where it comes, "Porgy And Bess". A very unique, if somewhat eccentric, version is Miles Davis', from his "Porgy And Bess" album of 1959/60. Part of the pull of the song is from the move to the relative major key towards the end of the verse eg: "so don't cry little baby, mama and papa are standing by". By the time of the word "by", of course, you are back in the groove of the minor key again.
"It Ain't Necessarily So" Paul Robeson
Also from the opera "Porgy And Bess", this is just one of the hookiest tunes of all time. It also has addictive variations, really meant to be played by an orchestra. Paul Robeson made a definitve version. The religious side of the lyrics had the song being banned from airplay on a local station where I lived, the station being owned by a church. (They also banned the Sex Pistols!!).
"Our Love Is Here To Stay"
"The Rockies may tumble, Gibraltar may fall .... but our love is here to stay". So wrote Ira Gershwin. George died before this song was finished; it was only finished because he had luckily played it to , who was able to remember it and write it down.
"I'll Build A Stairway To Paradise" Paul Whiteman Orchestra
This was an early Gershwin tune, and was a tune that Paul McCartney's father used to habitually play on the piano when Paul was a teenager. The Chestnut compilation has an interesting instrumental version by the Paul Whiteman Orchestra recorded in 1922, from about the time of its writing.
"How Long Has This Been Going On?" Peggy Lee with the Benny Goodman Orchestra
There is a great version by Peggy Lee from her early days in 1941, with a superlative band arrangement as well; Goodman rocks out with a clarinet counter-melody early, then adds an astonishing piece of serious playing towards the finish. Later, in 1959 when she performed at the Copacabana in New York in her new "Fever" era, the song still rang through; a review stated: "probably the most impressive number Peggy sang was 'How Long Has This Been Going On?'" There's that song again.
Cartoon mrlucky.com
"But Not For Me" Nat King Cole
This is one of the Gershwin tunes that are really good to orchestrate. There is a version, with other tracks like "The Man I Love", on an album from the 1960s by an orchestra led by the British bandleader Frank Chacksfield (Decca). The A side has the "Rhapsody in Blue", Julian Katchen being the pianist. Elton John sang the song on the soundtrack to "Four Weddings And A Funeral". It has typical splendiferous lyrics by Ira: "They're writing songs of love , but not for me ... I've found more clouds of gray than any Russian play could guarantee". The Chestnut CD has a Sinatra style swinging live version by Nat King Cole. If this CD was released as a more expensive pressing ...!
"Embraceable You" Billie Holiday
This is one Gershwin's greatest songs. Billie Holiday recorded a compelling version ... with, for some reason, very edgy chords. Bebop pianist Bud Powell used to always play it in his 1950s trio sets. An impressionistic take is found in his trio set "prelude" to the famous Charlie Parker/Dizzy Gillespie concert at Massey Hall, Toronto in 1953 (the album "Jazz At Massey Hall").
"S'Wonderful" and "Liza" Benny Goodman Quartet
I have always thought of these tunes in the same breath, as they both have a rising figure, with a sort of a bail out at the end back to the start. Benny Goodman recorded magnificent versions on his famous RCA Bluebird series of quartet and trio recordings in the 1930s. They are very clear, and sound great on CD. In another Judy Garland connection, "Liza" was featured on a newsreel report of the birth of her daughter Liza Minelli, with the mother singing a few bars.
"Liza's" "bail out" reappears relatively unchanged in The Beatle's "And I Love Her", and in the same place. Paul McCartney's take on it then appeared in Roberta Flack's "Killing Me Softly" (in the channel to the chorus), in the 1970s. All that from George just running his hands over a few notes of two descending chords, on the way back to the beginning of the tune sometime in the 1920s.
There are also many other Gershwin classics, both written with his brother Ira as lyricist, and (mainly earlier) with other lyricists.
This is a "FOR THE RECORD" feature. The inaugural
For The Record is Jimi Hendrix Here is a list that includes what are in my view Jimi Hendrix's best tracks/recordings (in addition to the first three blinding albums, of course):
1 "Band Of Gypsies", the entire CD sets, at Fillmore East, New York, New Year's Eve 1970. Where Jimi was going.
2 "Johnny B Goode" live, from Berkeley Community Centre, May 30, 1970. For some reason, on the film/video "Jimi Plays Berkeley" the track is sometimes edited down - there is no artistic reason to jusify this: it is three minutes in total and the best thing he ever recorded/played.
3 "Little Wing" live, again from the Berkeley gig.
4 "Red House", from a concert in San Diego in 1968. This is easily the best live version of Hendrix's signature blues "Red House", very bluesy, and with a great slowed down "wah wah" effects pedal section. All of these last three tracks are on the album "Hendrix in The West", but are listed here independently as, firstly, they are so important in Jimi's ouvre, and secondly, because the album has not yet made it to CD (although the tracks are on various compilations).
5 "Jimi At Monterey (Festival)" from 1967, newly re-released (2007) eg: the immortal version of "Like A Rolling Stone", and a slashing "Hey Joe".
6 Version, probably from outer space, of "Purple Haze" (on the famous 1970s "Soundtrack" double LP, in turn from a famous Hendrix documentary film).
7 "Rainbow Bridge" album eg: "Pali Gap", "Earth Blues" (a live version also on "Band Of Gypsies") and the best version of "Hear My Train A Coming".
8 French TV from early 1967, featuring a dirty and relaxed sound for "Hey Joe" and "Wild Thing" - nothing less than a dress rehearsal for Monterey: the clip has good long distance (and slightly from above) footage of Jimi freaking out on the floor during "Wild Thing", and of drummer Mitch Mitchell belting his kit, and then kicking it all over the studio floor at the end. French
9 Hound Dog: a film of Jimi playing a blues version of the Elvis hit on acoustic guitar at a party. This is a true discovery for me; I have never ever seen this one before! Hound Dog
10 "Georgia Blues" a slow blues that shows Jimi 1966/66. Clear and therefore very useful for seeing what he did without the blast of a thousand Marshalls behind him. Listen and copy. Georgia Blues
Finally, special shout out to youtube poster and guitarist Enrique Casal, who has a great clip of himself (I assume) playing Hendrix blues-style jams. It is useful and quite authentic for a guitarist, as he shows his hands (only - no face) playing an upside down Strat, with all the authentic sound of an effects-free studio Hendrix. And his Hendrix costume is great too. Casal
The Grateful Dead in San Francisco's
famous Haight-Ashbury area at the
start of the "strange long trip" referred
to in the later song "Truckin'"
Grateful Dead sound like a sort of community because of the use of more than one vocalist for the main vocal line at the same time (sometimes in unison), the use of two drummers (one a percussionist, after their second album " "), and because their music had originally a kind of street party vibe. The group was musically innovative in another way as well: one of the founders, Phil Lesh, was a classically trained trumpeter who "thought classically" in terms of (song) form. So it all added up to community AND variety, a great recipe for success.
Their first album ("The Grateful Dead") was released in March, 1967, the Spring before the hippy summer of 1967. However, their first classic was out in the summer of 1968, "Anthem Of the Sun". 1969 saw "Aoxomoxoa", and late 1969 saw the first of many live album releases. The best year was 1970, with two albums out, "Workingman's Dead" (July) and the classic "American Beauty" (November). from then on, it waspretty much live albums only. The trick was, howevere, that the Dead played new songs on these later live albums, so new tunes were still coming.
"American Beauty" has many classic tracks: it opens with "Box Of Rain", a Grateful Dead theme tune that, amongst other journeys, provides a brief melodic hook borrowed (stolen) later by Crowded House. So the latter were not so original afterall. "Box Of Rain" is a masterpiece, from the Holly's-like first line to the acid idea of having a "box" of rain. The song was written by Lesh and the Dead's lyricist, The music for most Dead songs was written by the legendary Jerry Garcia: an example from "American Beauty" is possibly the definitive Dead song, "Trucking". "Trucking" is an extraordinary long piece about taking a long trip (it could mean both kinds!), which includes the source of Status Quo's later hit "Roll Over Lay Down"!
There are many other classics on this album: "Sugar Magnolia" and "Candyman" are just two more. And what kind of title is "Attics Of My Life"? It hardly gets better than that.
"American Beauty"
Both "American Beauty" and "Anthem of The Sun" are the subject of "classic albums" TV programs.
Of course, Garcia is now regretfully and definitely not alive; whether he is grateful for that possibly remains for a medium to reveal.
The first "Best Of The Grateful Dead" was released in 1974. A look at the tracks reveals many of the secrets of the Dead's appeal. Firstly, all the songs are in easy singalong keys, and mainly in one or two. In order, the keys of the songs on the compilation are all major and are basic play-along rock keys: D, E, E, A, E again and G (side one) and C, D, E (the fourth time), C and G (side two). Any stoned fan could grab a bass or a guitar, strum the bottom (E) string and sing something.
The interesting folky yet psychedelic chords and melodies put you into a great sense of well-being. This holds also for the many live albums that were to come. there are so many live sets available that people have issued their own special selections of the Grateful Dead's best live albums eg" "Bear's Choice".
Obviously, the lyrics are frequently drug lyrics. An example from the Best Of album is "Casey Jones":
"Driving that train, high on cocaine, Casey Jones you'd better watch your speed". They must have this was really good: they made it into what is effectively the chorus!
But the best thing about The Grateful Dead is the music. There is certainly no end of blend.
Another way to view their variety is to look at the singles that the band released over their breakthrough years:
1966 "Stealin'" (not from an album)
1967 "The Golden Road (To The Unlimited Devotion)" from their first album "The Grateful Dead"
1967 "Viola Lee Blues", also from their first album "The Grateful Dead"
1968 "Dark Star" (not from an album)
1969 "Dupree's Diamond Blues" from "Aoxomoxoa"
1969 "China Cat Sunflower", also from "Aoxomoxoa"
1970 "Uncle John's Band"/"New Speedway Boogie" from "Workingman's Dead"
1970 "Casey Jones", also from "Workingman's Dead"
1970 "Truckin'" from American Beauty
1972 "One More Saturday Night" from their "Live In Europe 1972" album.
The titles alone paint a picture.
TOP TEN ALBUMS?
Frank says "Hello!"
Frank Zappa was a composer and all-round genius who recorded A LOT of albums, in varied styles. I once saw a poster in Tower Records of a huge "list tree" of the world's composers, from about 1200 AD to now (earliest at the top, current day down the bottom of the tree): Zappa was somewhere down the right hand side. People say you can listen to any one of his records and it will be brilliant. However, there have to be some essentials, right? In any event, you have to hear these:
Freak Out! (1966)
This was the first album by Frank Zappa and The Mothers Of Invention. It is a stunning array of music that covers many areas. In keeping with Zappa's reputation for humour, a highlight is "You Didn't Call Me", a parody on doo-wop and seemingly also teenage movies.
Hot Rats (1969)
"Hot Rats", despite the name, is possibly Zappa's best album. It is almost totally instrumental, and is a combination of rock, jazz and classical, in that it is all those things together; not as in one track is this, another that. The album is one of the best "rock" era records.
Overnite Sensation (1973)
This album is Zappa's most conventional album, for rock fans, in that it has a series of medium length "songs" that are entertaing and clever, musically as well as lyrically. the album has sevral of his concertclassics, such as "Camarillo Brillo", "Dynamo Hum", "Zomby Woof" (how's that for a title?) and "Dirty Love". Several albums from around the mid '70s are classics. One thing the albums have in common is the presence of jazz pianist George Duke. With "Hot Rats", it is one of the two probably most essential Zappa albums.
Apostrophe
Has many fans. Cream's Jack Bruce played some of the bass on the album.
Roxy And Elsewhere (1974)
This is a double live album, with a lot of classics. Recorded over three nights in December, 1973 at The Roxy on Hollywood's Sunset Strip, it is a premier live example of the Mothers Of Invention.
One Size Fits All (1975)
The same time period: it was the last album to be credited to The Mothers Of Invention, and to include George Duke and other important members of that band. It is a straight-ahead rock album, and begins with a Zappa classic, "Inca Roads". The electric guitar reverb effect pioneer Johnny Guitar Watson appears on two tracks.
Sheik Yerbouti (1979)
The album title was a play on the the Middle Eastern figure Sheik Yemani and the disco craze ("shake, skake shake, shake your booty"). Zappa's most famous hit "Bobby Brown" is on the album, plus several other classics.
You Are What You Is (1981)
This album was the first Zappa album to include guitarist Steve Vai, who played with Zappa's band for a time in the 1980s.
Boulez Conducts Zappa: The Perfect Stranger (1984)
Famous French conductor and composer Pierre Boulez conducted pieces he commissioned from Zappa
An alternative orchestral Zappa album is The London Symphony Orchestra I and II, double CD version issued in 1996. The recordings were made in 1983 in London under the baton of Kent Nagano, but the orchestra made a lot of mistakes. Zappa originally used reverb to hide mistakes, but the 1996 re-issue took away the reverb so that all the melodies and other intricate parts are hearable. The mistakes don't matter, according to listeners. Full details are at here
The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life (1991)
From the 1988 world tour, this is a double live album (in total, three double albums were released from the tour) that includes Zappa hits and a number of covers: the latter are wide ranging, from Ravel's "Bolero" to Johnny Cash's "Ring Of Fire", Jimi Hendrix's "Purple Haze" and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven".
A very interesting example of a Zappa cover is his version of The Beatles' "I Am The Walrus". I once said to somebody that the Beatles should be in the classical section of a record shop: the person answered that "music is classical if other people perform it" ie: strictly as the original. Well, this clip is certainly support for my view: all the strings, etc are there, as John Lennon wrote it.
There is an interesting site called www.zappa-analysis.com, that is a Dutch fan's commentary on most of Zappa's main album music; it includes some musical excerpts, and even notated examples! For example, the site suggests that two tracks from "Hot Rats" are in (classical) sonata form.
He also echoes my point, above, on "Overnite Sensation" being an album of more standard form rock songs: "a clear example of the regular [rock song] music two theme structure is "Camarillo Brillo" from "Overnite Sensation", whereas, he says, the long theme from "Florentine Pogen" (on "One Size Fits All") "is through composed".
The site has very detailed factual information as well, on Zappa's album chronology and phases (that's "phases", not "phasers"!).
Frank Zappa Quotes:
There is a brilliant list at here
THE BEST ALBUMS OF THE ROLLING STONES
The Rolling Stones
The Stones released their first album in 1963, "The Rolling Stones": it contains the Chuck Berry and R&B template that the Stones had learnt from and would follow frequently in the future. Many Americans, such as Bruce Springsteen, learnt about Chuck Berry from this album. The Stones had discovered the music, and presented it to the future US rockers. People learnt Chuck's riffs from Keith Richards.
The majority of the tunes were covers, as the Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham had only just locked Mick and Keef in a kitchen and told them they couldn't come out until they had written a song of their own.
Tracks:
Oh Carol (Chuck Berry classic)
Down The Road Apiece (groovy fluid Keith intro)
Out Of Our Heads
This came out in 1965, and featured a song named "Satisfaction". It also has the Stone's first "real song" (as Keith described it) "The Last Time". Ted Nugent would, as a teenager, drive down the highway standing up in the car with this song blasting. Many of the tracks are soul covers eg: one of Keith's favourite songs, Otis Redding's "Pain In My Heart". The album shows theStones's emering interest in soul.
Highlight tracks:
Satisfaction
The Last Time
The Spider And The Fly (where Mick seduces a "machine operator" into his web)
This album also has a superb title, guarenteed to freak out older people of the time! The cover photo fits this perfectly, virtually (or relatively, for the time) punk in its image.
Aftermath
A long record, from 1966, showing a broadening of the Stones' sound. Color is well to the fore, and several commercial hits are on the album eg: "Out Of Time" and "Under My Thumb". The latter has extraordinarily funny lyrics that just may have started the feminist revolution: Mick sings how his girl is totally under his thumb: the romantic fourth verse begins, "Under my thumb, she keeps her eyes to herself, but I, I can still look at someone else"!
Highlight tracks:
Out Of Time
Under My Thumb
Mother's Little Helper (about valium dropping mothers)
Beggar's Banquet
The first "modern" Stones album, from 1968. Following their 1967 excesses of trying to out-psychedelic The Beatles and everyone else (bassist Bill Wyman said of their experiments, "I didn't like that music"), Keith discovered blues legend Robert Johnson and got back to basics. As true artists, the Stones realised that you couldn't go any further with the darkness of their most extreme early period single "Have You Had Another Baby, Standing In The Shadows?" (1966). The psychedelia that followed was a diversion, to set them up for the new period of 1968 and later.
Beggar's Banquet was the first of a run of four classica albums over 1968-72, the ulitiamte Stones period.
Highlight tracks:
Sympathy For The Devil (remixed a thousand times on a thousand dance floors)
Streetfighting Man
Let It Bleed
Generally regarded as their best album, and released in 1969. Nearly every track is a classic, and the Stones have regularly played most of them as staple live tracks, at varying periods of time.
Highlight tracks:
Gimme Shelter
Midnight Rambler
Let It Bleed
Love In Vain (the Robert Johnson cover)
Monkey Man (a more recent live favourite)
Sticky Fingers
Sticky Fingers, from 1971, begins with possibly the best Stones song, "Brown Sugar". It was written by Mick alone in a trailer in the outback of Australia while he wa filming the movie "Ned Kelly"; his hand had been injured by a gun going off, and was recovering when he wrote the song. Keith arranged the track. Several classica are on the record, including also "Wild Horses". Side one, in particular, is bery good: it plays like a themed album, until the last track on the side.
Highlight tracks:
Brown Sugar
Wild Horses
Sway
Bitch
Dead Flowers
Exile On Main Street
This is the Stones' peak period, and for many "Exile On Main Street" is their best album. It is a double album, was made in 1972 in the basement of a mansion rented in the South Of France by Keith (the Stones were by now in tax exile), and rocks: as Keith said ".... we were cooking up a good album in my basement."
Highlight tracks:
Either all of them, or ....
Rocks Off
Tumbling Dice
Casino Boogie (about the casino at Monte Carlo)
Happy (Keith's major solo number at every Stones gig)
Sweet Virginia
All Down The Line
Ventilator Blues
Some Girls
"Some Girls" was a "comeback" album, from 1978, after a semi-lay off when guitarist Mick Taylor was replaced by leaping Ronnie Wood and Keith nearly wound up in the can for seven years over heroin powder was found in his limo in Toronto. He kicked both heroin and his 60s model ex Anita Pallenburg.
Highlight tracks:
Miss You (the Stones go disco, and very well)
Some Girls ("black girls just want to get fucked all night long, I don't have that much jam")
Before They Make Me Run (a solo Keith number about his Toronto experience)
Respectable ("you're the easiest lay on the White House lawn")
Shattered (about the declining state of New York's finances at the time)
Tattoo You
Two albums on from "Some Girls" in 1981, and a fixture at number one, both the album and its single Start Me Up".
Highlight tracks:
Start Me Up (the Stones' first number one since "Brown Sugar")
Little T & A (Keith's love song to his new wife PattieHansen: "She's my little rock and roll. Her tits and ass have got soul, baby")
Waiting On A Friend (includes Sonny Rollins on tenor sax, as do other tracks on the album)
Neighbours
Voodoo Lounge
The Stones were niow in the '90s, and in 1994 put out "Voodoo Lounge". The band had seemingly actually split in 1986, after the last "main" Stones period album "Dirty Work". Mick and Keith had been fighting, and it was suddenly in 1989 that they were back with "Steel Wheels", their first "CD" length album. "Steel Wheels" is quite a good album, but "Voodoo Lounge" has some really high quality consistency to it. All tracks have great hooks and some are great records.
Highlight tracks:
"Love Is Strong"
"The Worst" (the first of two Keith-sung classics that continued his new breathy style begun on "Steel Wheels": slow jams with low gruff vocals)
"Thru And Thru" (another Keith solo song)
I would like to add the latest Stones album, "The Biggest Bang", which is very good (the single "Streets Of Love " is a classic and there are many other really artistic songs), but I have already listed ten albums.
Keith is coming to git 'cha
Photograph: Wikipedia
Keith Richard's solo works, with both the Rolling Stones and on his two solo albums, have a disctinctive quality not present on Stones records where Mick Jagger is the singer and/or writer.
Here are the main Keith tracks:
"You've Got The Silver"
Keith on piano provides a contrast on side two of "Let It Bleed", a strong candidate for the Rolling Stone's best album.
"Happy"
Keith's theme song, from side one of "Exile On Main Street" (I think it helps it think of albums as having sides, even if you hear it on CD, as it gives a sense of structure to the whole album, a structure that was certainly deliberately created by the makers). Keith plays this at every Stones gig, and so he should.
"Before They Make Me Run"
This track was on side two of "Some Girls" in 1978. It was written after he was arrested for heroin possession in Canada, which was nearly prosecuted as a trafficking case. It's a great rock and roll song, with the typical Keith laconic approach; at Wembly in 1989 he couldn't remember all the words to it, and when he came to play "Happy" afterwards he said, "I hope I remember the words to this one".
"All About You"
This is the first of the Stone's longstanding tradition of "the last cut on the album is a Keith song". It is great music, and the lyrics tell of someone that the singer is well sick of, someone who at a party is, amongst other things, "always the first bitch to get laid". At the time, people thought it ws about Anita Pallenberg, who he broke up with shortly before, but later wisdom has it that it was about Mick!
"Little T & A"
A classic from "Tattoo You". "She's my little rock and roll, her [T ....} and [A ....] have got soul, man " should indicate what the "T" and the "A" stand for. A great dance floor rocker.
"Sleep Tonight"
This was a restful piano ballad at the end of the "Dirty Work" album from 1986. The Stones did sleep for a while, resurfacing intact with the interesting "Steel Wheels" in 1989: belief that they had split was inaccurate.
"Talk Is Cheap"
Keith's first solo album, from 1988, and much better than the previous Stones album. The record introduced fully Keith's new "speaking voice" sound, the gnarled and gruff but cool vocals and edgy guitar grind that serve so well as a counterpart to Jagger's more mainstream rock sound. The tracks sound like a sort of Keith take on Al Green, but with 90% Keef, 10% Al. Stand out cuts are "Take It So Hard", "Neglected" and the "Make No Mistake" which was featured in a Sopranos episode in 2000. I knew a sax player who used to play "Struggle" in a duo in pubs, repeating to me Keith's gruff "neglected " line. Brilliant: a song is good if other people play it.
"Can't Be Seen" and "Slipping Away"
These two songs are from "Steel Wheels", the Stones' "comeback album" in 1989. "Can't Be Seen" is really funny: it's Keith in a relationship with a married woman, so he "can't be seen with ya, baby" .... 'cos youre married anyway". It is a different take on music too, an uptempo rocker that is nevertheless a complete departure for the Stones: Keith's voice also is not very recognisably Keith, which make it even more interesting as a recorded track. "Slipping Away" is a classic composition that was also used to close the Stones' well known late '80s video documentary, "25X5". The breathy vocals and laid-back drums are typical of his new infectuous style.
"Main Offender"
Keith's second solo album, from 1992. The record is a presentation of both Keith's down and dirty grind rock, or Keith -inflected reggae. The outstanding feature is his rhythmically-distinctive guitar chords combined with the shaded soundscape. "Wicked As It Seems" is a good example of the feel.
"Thru And Thru" and "The Worst"
Keith's two songs from "Voodoo Lounge" (1994). Both songs are classics. Brooding, or Keith's idea of a love song? The latter.
Keith now ....
The "Country" Keith
Keith's live version of "The Nearness Of You", the Hoagy Carmichael classic (he wrote "Georgia" and "Stardust") and his duet appearances with such people as Nora Jones (who also covered "The Nearness Of You" on her first album "Come Away With Me") has seen him adopt a country feel to many of his solo performances and recordings. His latest solo-sung songs on Stones albums have a country/Martin guitar touch.
See Keith's website www.keithrichards.com
A GUIDE TO THE BEATLES' ALBUMS
1 Please Please Me
The first Beatles album, and recorded in a day: it was their live act, so George Martin just added microphones to their act, in effect. Also, sex sells, and the Beatles named their first album, and the hit single of the same name, well.
Stand out tracks are
I Saw Her Standing There (track one; it follows Paul McCartney's famous 1 2 3 4 intro)
Please Please Me (their second single and first number one)
Twist And Shout (Isley Brothers soul cover rock out; six bar orgasmic climax)
2 With The Beatles
Photographs: Wikipedia
"With The Beatles" brought The Beatles fully into the spotlight. With songs like "All My Loving", it was obvious that these guys were, either collectively or one or two individually, geniuses. It was released in November 1963, and within a month there was a TV program screening on UK TV about the songs of the Beatles; they had only been banging around a year, from the point of view of record releases.
The first track, "It Won't Be Long", seems to be a grouping together of these influences: a Duke Ellington chord progression for the verse (from "Black Beauty" of 1928, showcasing Ellington's first attractive melody), a bit of Motown to continue it on, a very distinctive (# dominant to tonic) melody leap from a little known Gershwin tune of the 1920s (that I found on an album of piano rolls by Gershwin), and of course the killer riff of Lennon's that drives the song. It was "put together", but it rocks. If anything shows the depth and sophistication of the Beatles' influences, then this tune does.
The next track is another John Lennon tune, influenced by his R&B hero Arthur Alexander: the song opnes with a climbing melody over a descending chord progression, classic "contrary motion", as the classical people call it.
Track three is McCartney and his "All My Loving". You will hear the shape and indeed essentially the first half of the verse in the second movement of Mozarts's Symphony No 28! Top influence.
There is so much on this album. It expanded from the first album "Please Please Me" by light years. It appears as though all the music the Beatles had been listening to before really came through here, not what you may expect from the photography, ie: the half lit cover.
Tracks:
All My Loving
Til There Was You (show biz cover from 1950s musical "The Music Man")
Money (R&B cover)
3 A Hard Day's Night
Said by one author (Albert Goldman in his book "The Lives Of John Lennon") to be as close to a John Lennon solo album with the Beatles as you could get, "A Hard Day's Night" is the main musical representation of Beatlemania. And McCartney's three contributions are perfect also: "And I Love Her", "Can't Buy Me Love" and side two's "Things We Said Today".
Tracks:
A Hard Day's Night
I Should Have Known Better
And I Love Her
Can't Buy Me Love
4 Beatles For Sale
"Beatles For Sale" was released after "A Hard Day's Night", and for reasons of time available was filled fifty per cent with versions of OPS (other people's songs). However, there are original hidden classics, particularly from John Lennon ("No Reply" and the verse of "Every Little Thing", for example). An interesting aspect to these tracks is their sound: the album is more sonically colored than the earlier albums: rich pianos and large drum effects. In fact, Paul McCartney described one of his songs on the album ("What You're Doing") as "a bit of filler .... Maybe it's a better recording than it is a song." There are some interesting recordings on the album. Even the version of Chuck Berry's "Rock And Roll Music" has a distinctive sound.
Tracks:
Eight Days A Week
5 Help
"Help" is a more innocent-sounding album. And .... it contained "Yesterday".
Tracks:
Help
Yesterday
It's Only Love
You're Gonna Lose That Girl
You've Got To Hide Your Love Away (sixties flute solo included; Oasis-covered)
6 Rubber Soul
This was George Harrison's most listened-to Beatles album. I walked off a bus in the centre of London's South Kensington area, and heard "Norwegian Wood" playing on an FM radio on a newsstand: it sounded so brilliant, a testimony to genius, analog, a bit on the side, and four tracks.
The pad that launched "Norwegian Wood", "Help"
and all the rest: John Lennon's house "Kenwood"
in Surrey, England. Photograph: Simon Harper
Tracks:
Drive My Car
Norwegian Wood
You Won't See Me
Nowhere Man
Michelle
In My Life
The Word (yes, it's "love"; a brilliant pre-hippy psychedelic blues number)
Is "Rubber Soul" then actually The Beatles' best album? It's a strong case.
7 Revolver
Many have said that this is, really, the Beatles' best album. It's the most compact, and from the point of view of unity, variety and invention I say it is almost like a Beethoven or Mahler symphony: maybe try Berlioz' "Symphonie Fantastique". It has a lot of color, and has provided a template for intelligent and observant "indie rock" ever since .... and "Britpop". Ha. It begins with "Taxman", once described in a record by record Beatles discography book as a "minor miracle for a George Harrison composition". At the time it no doubt was: but "Something" else was still to come. The Jam recast the riff to "Taxman", and most succesfully so as a cover of the Jam's track was recently riding a TV ad in Los Angeles.
The album only goes up from there, with "Eleanor Rigby" following on. The jazz standard (!) "Here There And Everywhere" gives way to "Yellow Submarine", and then the road is left open for the world of John Lennon (and the others) to "expand your mind and let it float downstream" for the rest of the album. Many of McCartney's songs (compositions really) on the record have an especially crisp, classical touch: not just the obvious "Eleanor Rigby", but also "For No One" and its McCartney predecessor on the album, "Good Day Sunshine".
This album is so good, and has such a character, that there is even a site, www.revolverbook.co.uk, that tells the "story of the album", complete with links to maps and other resources detailing the London of the time.
The garden at John Lennon's house "Kenwood" near Weybridge, Surrey.
Paul McCartney wrote "Here There And Everywhere" sitting next to John's
pool, while waiting for him to get up one day.
Photograph: Simon Harper
Tracks:
Taxman
Eleanor Rigby
Yellow Submarine
Here There And Everywhere
I'm Only Sleeping
Dr Robert
Got To Get You Into My Life
8 Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
Side one has to be one of the greatest twenty odd minutes of music ever, seen as a continual picture. It picked up from the end of "Revolver". The side is distiguished by, amongst other things, the first use in rock music of prominent and commercial electric guitar licks to paint musical pictures, for example: "With A Little Help From My Friends", and particularly "Fixing A Hole". If the quality of recording had been as on "Abbey Road" ....
Tracks:
Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band
With A Little Help From My Friends
Lucy In The Sky With Diamonds
A Day In The Life (nominated by many as the BEST Beatles song or piece)
9 The White Album
Hey, guess what? It's here ....
There is a case to be made that "The White Album" is the best album the Beatles put together (given that an album is a snap-shot at a given time of what the musicians have written and/or recorded).
Individually, the tunes are among the best and most far reaching: many new genres emerged in the wake of some of these tracks eg: grunge/heavy metal/shock rock ("Helter Skelter"), lampoon country ("Rocky Racoon"), and overblown stadium rock ("While My Guitar Gently Weeps": the song itself and the recording are of course masterpieces, and Eric Clapton played an interesting solo, but every group of rockers from Lynyrd Skynyrd up to the 80's stadium bands seem to play only variations of the broad descending chords and bass progression, first heard here; a perfectly-blown stadium rock example of a descendant of the song, however, is Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven") .... and the beast goes on.
"Back In The USSR" is generally acknowledged as probably the best of the Beatle rockers (some of its influence crops up in Blur's "Well Respected Man" of 1996, on high rotation in British pubs through the apex of "Britpop"). And to rock out further there are "Revolution" and "Birthday". "Blackbird" is another very well-written McCartney number: is it the best acoustic rock song ever?
The Lennon vision was never so in evidence as on "Glass Onion", "Dear Prudence" and even "Cry Baby Cry". "Dear Prudence" is copied all the time today by would be acoustic "indie" warblers.
The only problem is that there are so many styles juxtaposed that at times you feel that you are in a fair-ground trying to absorb too much all at once. But did people really need to be told, "Get yourself this album?"!!
Tracks:
Back In The USSR
While My Guitar Gently Weeps
Helter Skelter
10 Abbey Road
George Martin has said he likes "Abbey Road" more than "Sergeant Pepper". As a whole experience, the album certainly takes you on a journey: more so than "Pepper" does. Also, the sound quality is better (two years was a long time in sound development in the 1960s). From a personal viewpoint, I will never forget walking down a London street and when approaching the next cross street I suddenly saw the road sign, imprinted on an old wall, whose photograph appears on the back of the album cover. But the reason this made such an impression is of course the music. The lush sounds say it all. It was the Beatles' final recording, in mid 1969.
Tracks:
Come Together
Something
Here Comes The Sun
The brilliant side two medley/collage
11 Let It Be
It was recorded before "Abbey Road" (which was therefore the Beatles' true last album) but released after it, in 1970.
Tracks:
Let It Be
The Long And Winding Road
All Across The Universe
Get Back
The Double Compilations:
The Beatles 1962-66
In 1973, two major double album Beatles compilations were issued. With nearly thirty cuts on each one, the two albums are a sort of "Beethoven Complete Symphonies" presentation. The Beatles 1962-66 is the first of them. This one was issued in red binding. It begins with "Love Me Do" and ends with "Yellow Submarine".
The Beatles 1967-70
The main text book at Beatles College, Oxford
This is the second of the two best of compilations that make up the grand overview of The Beatles. The 1967-70 album is nothing less than a great statement of modern music. When I was seventeen I spent about a whole year listening to it and nothing else (except the Hollywood Bowl album below). Noel Gallagher from Oasis has said something similar. It's the modern musical sacred text of sacred texts. A worthy inclusion is George Harrison's "Old Brown Shoe", the flipside of the "Hey Jude" single release in 1968: Harrison displays some violent electric guitar in an interesting composition, an example of what was meant when one music book said, "if you want to see how to be a guitarist in a band, listen to George Harrison with the Beatles: any record".
********
Bonus live disc!!:
The Beatles Live At The Hollywood Bowl
The flavor of live, the groupies ....
This album, produced by George Martin and released in 1977, attempted to show the Beatles live in America in 1964 and 1965. I learned a lot from this album, as it presents a sort of greatest hits of the earlier Beatles, including a covers of rock and roll classics like "Long Tall Sally" (which sounds almost like a classical orchestral piece, when you hear how they structured George's Harrison solo interlude). The album has not been released on CD yet, as the sound quality is definitely way down, "on the ground" in fact (words from "I'm Down", which is not on the record, but is on the tapes of the Shea Stadium concert).
I didn't bother to comment on the first album "Please Please Me" (1963) or the quasi albums like "Magical Mystery Tour" (1967). They are more a collection of random songs, some brilliant of course.
The poster from the White Album (airbrushed)
Photographs: Wikipedia
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