At a concert, Louis Armstrong almost invariably said, “And now, we’re going to lay one of those good old good ones on you.” He used variations of that introductory line during his entire career. Here’s an example, on video, from 1933. I’m borrowing Pops’s line and applying it to two albums from the mid-1950s. This fits in with Deborah Hendrick’s (she has a last name, after all) request to suggest CDs she can recommend to friends who are neophyte jazz listeners.
Concord, through its Fantasy, Inc. subsidiary, has just released another batch of RVG Remasters, named for Rudy Van Gelder, the gifted engineer who recorded them and has digitally updated his original work. It includes Walkin’: The Miles Davis All-Stars, two sessions from April, 1954 with brilliant playing by Davis, trombonist J.J. Johnson, tenor saxophonist Lucky Thompson, alto saxophonist Dave Schildkraut, pianist Horace Silver, bassist Percy Heath and drummer Kenny Clarke. Most jazz musicians and many listeners who came up in the fifties and sixties know the album’s solos by heart, particularly those on “Walkin'” and “Blue and Boogie.” The title tune has become a part of the basic repertoire. Davis had yet to make what repeater-pencil jazz writers persist in describing as his “comeback” at the Newport Jazz Festival the following year. He had never been away. He was yet to record the series of Columbia albums that brought him widespread fame, but he was a major figure in jazz. He, Johnson, Thompson and Silver were inspired in their improvisations on the sextet date. Their solos so quickly became ingrained in the minds of jazz musicians everywhere that within weeks of the album’s release, you could hear paraphrases of them in jam sessions and, before long, in other recordings. More than half a century later, they are a part of the lingua franca of jazz.
In the quintet session, the other horn was Schildkraut, whose alto playing so closely resembled Charlie Parker’s that no less a Parker intimate than Charles Mingus thought that he was hearing Parker when Leonard Feather played Schildkraut’s “Solar” solo for him in a blindfold test. Throughout both sessions, the rhythm section demonstrates that perfect accompaniment can be as satisfying as the improvisation it supports. Focusing on Heath’s bass lines alone can bring great rewards. This is a record to go back to time and again for deeper discoveries.
In 1956, Cal Tjader recorded Cal Tjader Quartet, an album that received little critical notice and sold modestly but over the decades has proved one of the most enduring of the vibraharpist’s dozens of recordings. By 1956, Tjader was becoming better known for his role in the development of Afro-Cuban jazz than as the straight-ahead musician who debuted with the Dave Brubeck Octet and later was the drummer and occasional vibist in Brubeck’s trio. In a pickup date while he and his bassist Eugene Wright were in Hollywood, Tjader brought in pianist Gerald Wiggins and drummer Bill Douglass. Everything clicked. They produced a collection notable for its consistent sensitivity and good feeling. Their “Battle Hymn of the Republic” is one of the finest jazz versions of that piece. The album has an engaging balance of swinging peformances with three slower ones that demonstrate Tjader’s seldom-recognized status as one his generation’s most effective players of ballads. His “For All We Know” solo alone proves that, and his playing on Wright’s “Miss Wiggins,” incorporating the “new blues” harmonic changes introduced by Charlie Parker, gives insights into his understanding of the blues.
Wiggins’ comping complements Tjader in quite a different manner than that of the funkier Vince Guaraldi, who was Tjader’s regular pianist at the time. Wiggins’ solos are a delight. He manages to combine harmonic and melodic delicacy with muscular swing. The sturdy, dependable Wright melds with Douglass, one of the great brush artists among drummers, into a mutual surge that floats the entire enterprise. The instrumentation inevitably brings to mind the Modern Jazz Quartet, which was riding high in 1956, but too much has been made of the comparison. This is music with its own flair and personality.
Concord deserves credit for keeping this and other valuable music available in the Fantasy Original Jazz Classics reissue program. But how long the OJC program will last is anybody’s guess. I recommend prompt action if you want to acquire these and other CDs in the OJC series.

Terry Teachout has come up with a terrific idea for his About Last Night blog. I only wish that I had thought of it first.

In recent months I’ve been posting links to interesting videos that I found on other blogs, but until a few days ago it never occurred to me to experiment with turning this blog into a one-stop portal to the wonders of YouTube. Now I’ve done just that. Take a look at the “Sites to See” module of the right-hand column and you’ll see that it ends with a brand-new roll of selected culture-oriented video links, most of them to YouTube. So far as I know, this is the first such list to appear anywhere on the Web.

Watching Hank Williams, followed by Maria Callas followed by Spike Jones, then Thelonious Monk, is a trip. Please make it a round trip; we want you back. To read Terry’s entire entry and visit his list of YouTube links, go here.

There’s nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and open a vein. ~Red Smith

You must stay drunk on writing so reality cannot destroy you. ~Ray Bradbury

Writing does for me what milking does for a cow. ~H.L. Mencken

From Washington, DC:

The other morning I was pawing through my CD collection, looking for something to accompany my pre-work meal when I came upon The Oscar Peterson Trio at the Stratford Shakespearean Festival.

I put it on and, in seconds, was reminded why that recording has stayed near the top of my all-time best list for nearly 50 years. For sheer head-long momentum, nothing I have ever heard can match it. Peterson has headed some notable trios, but the Herbie Ellis-Ray Brown edition beats ’em all.

The chemistry among those three guys bordered on the miraculous. And I defy anyone to show me how any other three people ever achieved grooves of that incredible depth.

I bought the LP in the winter of ’57-’58 while stationed with the Air Force in Fairbanks, Alaska. My roommate for part of that year was the drummer Roy McCurdy. As wonderful a drummer as he is – and as partial to his instrument as he is – he had to admit that he couldn’t imagine how the group could swing any harder with the addition of a drummer.

As I listened to the trio this week, to tunes like “Gypsy in My Soul”, “Love You Madly” and “Noreen’s Nocturne”, they produced the same reactions in me they did nearly a half-century ago–laugh-out-loud amazement and delight. That, it seems to me, is one definition of great art.

John Birchard

The DVD choice is now among the new batch of Doug’s Picks in the right-hand column. It took a while to get it there because isolating nearly two hours of viewing time during the holiday weekend turned out to be impossible. When I finally got to it, I enjoyed it so much more than I thought I would that I watched it twice.

Hey, do you want to read some nifty short stories? Go here. You may get hooked. Don’t forget to come back, please.

Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.–Benjamin Franklin

America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.–Abraham Lincoln

Jason Crane writes concerning the Doug’s Picks item about John La Barbera (right-hand column):

If I’m not mistaken, Joe is a co-owner of Jazz Compass with Clay Jenkins, Tom Warrington and Larry Koonse. The label has put out a crop of high-quality releases. It’s refreshing to see the players taking control of their musical destiny.

Mr. Crane is not mistaken. Jazz Compass is an intelligently run independent company, five years old, with a catalogue of fourteen CDs by its owners, as well as John La Barbera and drummer Steve Houghton. With major labels abandoning, downgrading or diluting jazz, companies owned and operated by musicians are helping to keep the music available. They have the laudable effect of also allowing musicians to keep more of the money they earn. Distribution is a problem, but it is one that Jazz Compass, Artist Share and other independent CD organizations are solving by way of the internet.

In the right column under Doug’s Picks, you will find three new CD entries and a timely book tip. A new DVD entry will follow before the week is out, if I can get ahead of the apricot and cherry harvesting long enough to watch the one I have in mind. The birds got most of the Royal Annes and Bings, but I spent an hour and a half picking pie cherries this morning, ending up with enough for one pie. We had it for dessert this evening. It was sensational. Last year, our one apricot tree was barren. This year, it came back like a champ, producing the biggest, sweetest cots I’ve ever known.

Deborah, who may or may not have a last name, wrote a few days ago about her encounter with “I Remember Clifford” and followed up with this message.

Thank you for helping to educate me!
Regarding the John Lewis-Wonderful World of Jazz album … I have twice given it to other jazz newbies, but new CDs of the album can no longer be bought in the US.
Please, will you suggest another jazz album I could give as an introduction to the genre for my friends who express an interest?

One place you can buy the Lewis CD in the United States is here, at prices ranging from reasonable to outrageous.
I could suggest a hundred or more introductory albums for your friends, but I like your challenge of picking just one. Tomorrow, it might be another, but today it’s The Lester Young Story, a bargain four-CD box set that contains many of the great records that Young made from his period of genius with Count Basie in the 1930s to his death in 1959.
Why Lester Young? In the development of the art of jazz soloing, he was the link between Louis Armstrong and Charlie Parker. At his best, he was sublimely lyrical, inventive, swinging and richly satisfying. No one who truly wants to be interested in jazz should fail to become intimately acquainted with Young. John Lewis, by the way, revered Lester and played piano for him in the early 1950s. Many of their recordings together are on this CD, but the comprehensive box set above is the place to start.