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March 3, 2007 By Doug Ramsey

Alec Wilder: American Popular Song (Oxford). I have referred to this book so often over the years in articles, reviews and my own books that it makes sense to recommend it here. Wilder, with the indispensable assistance of James T. Maher, created an essential critical guide to the greatest songs and songwriters of the classic era of popular music. His opinions are strong and occasionally wrongheaded, but his overall grasp of what makes a good song remains unequaled. The one important songwriter whose work is not evaluated in the book is Alec Wilder. As Gene Lees has suggested, this is a book to be not merely read, but studied.

03/3/07 1:02 AM | filed under: recommendations |

Doug’s Picks

CD: Felsted Mainstream

The Complete Stanley Dance Felsted “Mainstream Jazz” Recordings 1958-1959 (Fresh Sound)

This nine-CD treasure chest contains dozens of the finest mainstream artists from a golden era. Stanley Dance, who applied the term mainstream to jazz, supervised the sessions for the British Felsted label. Johnny Hodges, Earl Hines, Coleman Hawkins, Rex Stewart, Buster Bailey, Jo Jones, Budd Johnson, Dicky Wells, Billy Strayhorn; they’re all here, along with superb half-forgotten musicians like saxophonist George Kelly, guitarist Dickie Thompson and drummer Earl Watkins. Among the supporting players are young lions of the fifties Ray Bryant, Kenny Burrell and Ray Brown. The package includes Hodges in Strayhorn’s brilliant album Cue For Saxophone. The booklet has all of Dance’s notes, updated.

CD: Brad Mehldau Trio

Brad Mehldau Trio, Ode (Nonesuch)

Mehldau has recorded lately as solo pianist, in duets with classical mezzo-soprano Anne Sofie Van Otter and with a large orchestra. Bassist Larry Grenadier and drummer Jeff Ballard join him in a stimulating return to trio playing. They are attuned to the pianist as if by ESP. He describes the title tune as “an ode to odes” and dedicates other pieces to figures in his personal and musical lives. Among those who inspired them are Michael Brecker, Kurt Rosenwinkel, the Jack Nicholson character George Hanson and Aquaman, but you needn’t know that to be moved by the virtuosity and joy of this music.

CD: Mike Longo

Mike Longo, To My Surprise: Trio + 2 (CAP

The trio is pianist Longo, bassist Bob Cranshaw and drummer Lewis Nash— a formidable New York rhythm section. With the addition on half the tracks of trumpeter Jimmy Owens and tenor saxophonist Lance Bryant, Longo takes the quintet through classic bop territory and beyond into modal country. If there were Oscars for Wilde titles, “A Picture of Dorian Mode,” would win. The adventurous playing on the track awards the listener. With trio or quartet, in standards or new Longo compositions, hard-charging or pensive, this is an album full of satisfactions, not least the lovely take on “In the Wee Small Hours” that ends it.

DVD: Thelonious Monk

Thelonious Monk Live in France 1969 (Jazz Icons)

The video of Monk alone at the piano in a Paris studio is the jewel of the fifth Jazz Icons box set that many feared would not come. Taped with visual simplicity and excellent sound, he plays 12 pieces, all of them his compositions but “Don’t Blame Me” and a rollicking “Nice Work if You Can Get It.” Except for that exultant conclusion, the concert has an air of reflective, almost Brahmsian, gravity. His harmonies can be breathtaking. The bonuses—unedited documentary footage and an attempt to interview Monk—are curiosities. The music is essential.

Book: Timme Rosenkrantz

Timme Rosenkrantz, Fradley Hamilton Garner, Harlem Jazz Adventures: A European Baron’s Memoir, 1934-1969

Timme Rosenkrantz (1911–1969) had royal Danish blood, but no royal pretensions, and when he came to the US in 1934, his garrulous charm made him fit right in. What attracted him here was jazz. He became a chronicler and friend of musicians from Louis Armstrong to Art Tatum to Lennie Tristano and dozens of others. He was a rounder and a storyteller, and he could write. His memoir, artfully edited by Fradley Gardner, is a chronicle of three decades when New York was the center of the jazz universe and Rosenkrantz was swinging through it.

CD: Toots Thielemans

Toots Thielemans, Yesterday & Today (Out Of The Blue)

Two CDs with thirty-eight tracks, most previously unreleased, follow Thielemans from 1946, when he was a 23-year-old guitarist with a Belgian swing band, to a 2001 harmonica performance of “What A Wonderful World” with pianist Kenny Werner. In the late 1940s and early ‘50s, when many European musicians were struggling with the style, Thielemans had a firm grasp of bebop. Playing through the decades with George Shearing, Hank Jones, J.J. Johnson, Elis Regina, Mulgrew Miller, Shirley Horn and a few dozen others, Thielemans is astonishing on both instruments, but it’s his harmonica that brings grins of joy.

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03/3/07 1:02 AM | filed under: recommendations |

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