The Supper Table

I am generally ambivalent about live albums. They don't often offer enough to distinguish them from their studio antecedents, beyond audience applause, and lack the energy of being present. Nina at Newport is one of those exceptions. Little Liza Jane is infectiously energetic. I can't listen without imagining women catching the holy ghost around me, and You'd Be So Nice to Come Home To is a career making song, that almost no one has heard. I'm not sure if she ever recorded this in the studio, but her performance makes it feel like a Nina standard. I was single the first time I heard this song, it was winter, and this song made me wish I was in love and had someone for whom to play it. The long piano intro giving way to "you'd be so nice to come home to," and all I could think was, 'that's what I want.' So straight-forward, so simple, love is always so much easier in song. Nina Simone at Newport side1 Trouble in Mind Porgy Little...

I was hanging out with my niece recently, talking about music. She has a thing for what she calls 'old music' which basically means soul music from the late 80's early 90's-- which makes me feel dated since that's music from my high school and college days. There had been a time when my niece and nephews were young and I tried to influence their tastes in music and literature--mostly the graphic literary form known as comics-- and then I gave up. It's difficult to fight against the sludge tide of popular, trite top 40 pop. Although comics finally took a hold of my youngest nephew's imagination, music was always a more difficult sell. In our conversation I realized that perhaps, as one does with a beloved but slightly addled older family member, they just simply ignored my suggestions as the crap old people sometimes say. It's possible that she could listen to some of my suggestions with something like an open mind now. I remember discovering m...

Continuing in the vein of Duke albums that proved his relevance, beauty, and power to me after I had long considered him an irrelevant quaint musical relic, I present Duke and Trane. There's something about the Duke in these small band settings that makes his power immediately apparent, in ways that are somewhat masked in the big band setting. Bon provecho. Duke Ellington & John Coltrane side 2 My Little Brown Book Angelica The Feeling of Jazz

I am in the middle of an experience where I work 12+ hour days and have one day off each week. In random moments I remember my intention to post something weekly to this blog, usually late at night, looking at stars, far from a computer, and then occasionally while at a computer, just like now. It is unfortunate that I can say little more than 'why didn't I hear this sooner?' or 'why doesn't everyone know this?' I suppose it reflects on my inability to be creative while working 60 hour weeks, but mostly it's because it's a mystery how albums like Nina's 'Little Girl Blue', Roberta's 'First Take', or 'Mingus at Antibes', could be so unloved when we swim in a sea of musical crap, mostly recycled from crap that went before. This blew my mind when I first heard it. The almost out of control funkified drumming of Rufus Jones, seemed both incongruous and perfectly placed. A toast to the great collaborations of Duke Elli...

There are times when I listen to an album and all I can think is, 'see, this is what's wrong with America.' I should rename this blog 'National Treasures That Weren't,' if only because for every album I want to say this should be a friggin' national treasure. Is there anyone who doubts that it should be some kind of spiritual crime that more people have listened to Britney Spears than those who have even heard of this album. This made me reconsider Duke Ellington. This marked a period in which he returned to musical primacy, no longer just retreading past accomplishments, but moving forward to meet and challenge the young guard. There are not many in any field who have acheived his level of greatness, coasted on his laurels for so long, as to become almost irrelevant, an afterthought, only to decide to re-define himself and his work in the last 20 years of his life. This album made me reconsider Duke Ellington because I had been under the mistaken imp...

Since I served up all three tracks from side 2 of The Quest the only logical thing to do is add side 1, and I love logic the way that I love this album...close enough. Waldron's compositions are sparse and evocative, highly emotive, spacious enough to give the soloists freedom, tightly woven enough to trap them like butterflies without trapping their wings. Do you know why I say that? It's because it's true, not exactly factual, but after listening to this album for 10 years I can say it's true. This is like a hurricane in a bottle. 1. Status Seeking 2. Duquility 3. Thirteen 4. We Diddit

I can't name a favorite band, musician, or album but I can name a favorite recording Warm Canto from Mal Waldron's The Quest featuring Eric Dolphy , Ron Carter and Booker Ervin. It has been my favorite for over ten years, for longer than I have known that it was my favorite. Do you have those songs that you play over and over until you can barely stand them, then you play them again and it's almost like new again? That was my experience with Warm Canto , except I never got sick of it and for years hearing it was exactly like the first time again-- my breath would catch, I would lose my train of thought and stare, gaping at the stereo. My bride was 30 minutes late for our wedding, no biggie, I knew where she was and I had been running around to be ready in time for our wedding, it was nice to catch my breath, it was nice to hear my song 5 or 6 times. It is the perfect post-modern love march. No Here Comes the Bride, it's an homage to love, the struggle, th...