Great musicians of the 20th century

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ajay124 said:
moktan

Femme fatale was a wonderful song. Also Stephanie Says and Walk On The Wild Side.

The Velvet Underground - Stephanie says - YouTube
Lou Reed- Walk on the Wild Side - YouTube
Click to expand...

isn't that Lisa Says?
Because i was a great Velvet Underground fan at one point of time...some weird songs like The Gift (in which a guy parcels himself to a girl who doesn't like him. the girl cuts with a knife to open the parcel and kills the guy inside instead. macabre. but made musical by Lou Reed's dead pan vocals and grungy guitar.)
 
After the collaborative initiative River-The Joni Letters project with Joni Mitchel, but with much less jazz and even less piano (just some magic touches here and there)...Hancock (some understandably call him the most important American musician alive) has got together an eclectic and all star line up that includes Seal, Paul Simon, Pink, Chaka Khan, Sting and many others from the world music circuit ...
Jazz fans may want Herbie to get back to his Empyrean Isles groove...but mainstream listeners will find plenty of interesting and accessible songs..some foot-tapping like Tempo D'Amor and Space Captain others more cheerfully political like The Times They Are A Changin (How is that for a cover, Bobby?) and A Change is Gonna Come...

P.S. There is Jeff Beck on guitar, Marcus Miller on Bass, Wayne Shorter on sax and Anoushka Shankar on sitar in the East-West fusion The Song Goes On which also features Chaka Khan and Chitra...(in spite of the stellar line-up I thought this was the most contrived and disappointing effort- but maybe that's because I don't normally dig fusion)

Herbie Hancock Imagine Project - The Times They Are A-Changin - YouTube


Herbie Hancock's "Imagine", featuring Pink, Seal, India.Arie - YouTube
 
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the notion of the drummer just as a timekeeper in jazz is now more of an anachronism..Paul Motian did much to change it...people who dig jazz will recall Motian as being one third of the Bill Evans trio (Scot La Farro on bass completed it) whose impressionistic Sunday at the Village Vanguard and Portrait of Jazz was one of the greatest live albums ever made....Evans' introspective piano, La Farro's walking bass lines and the delicate, shimmering brush strokes of Paul Motian's drums come together in an uncanny, telepathic team work to produce a must have jazz album for new comers and old timers alike..
Paul Motian well into his late 70s was very much in the jazz scene (playing with the likes of Keith Jarret, Bill Frissel, Joe Lovano, Charlie Haden) ...his works include Lost In a Dream, On Broadway and Holiday For String with his Electric Bebop Band.....
well Motian is no more and jazz will always miss what some critics called the ultimate anti-drummer ....
 
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moktan

I am not into jazz for the time being, but it feels great to read your posts. I hope you keep up the good work :)
 
 
Some lines from a popular songs stay on in our mind. The words keep coming back to us and we keep humming them to ourself. Some of my old time favorites:

Let me forget about today until tomorrow. Bob Dylan

The sun is not yellow, its chicken. Bob Dylan

Can you tell me what we're waiting for, Senor? Bob Dylan

Let me ask you one question, Is your money that good, Will it buy you forgiveness, Do you think that it could, I think you will find, When your death takes its toll, All the money you made, Will never buy back your soul. Bob Dylan

Its better to burn out than it is to rust. Neil Young

So I got bored and left them there, they were just dead weight to me. Better down that road without that load. Neil Young

I think that maybe I'll get a maid. Find a place nearby for her to stay. Just someone to keep my house clean. Fix my meals and go away. Neil Young

You can stick your little pins into that voodoo doll, I am very sorry baby, It dosen't look like me at all. I am standing by the window where the light is strong. Leonard Cohen

Let me see your beauty when the witnesses are gone. Let me see you moving as they do in Babylon. Leonard Cohen

If you want a lover I will do anything you ask me to. And if you want another kind of love I will wear a mask for you. Leonard Cohen

Till you so f...... crazy you can't follow their rules. John Lennon

Imagine there's no heaven, I wonder if you can. John Lennon

What a dream I had, pressed in organdy, clothed in crinoline of smoky burgundy....softer than the rain....I heard cathedral bells tripping down the alleyway. Paul Simon

Fools said I you do not know. Silence like a cancer grows. Paul Simon

You can fool some people some of the time. But you can't fool all the people all the time. Bob Marley


In recent years all these great singer/songwriters have been nudged aside by someone who is relatively lesser known. The only singer I listen to now. Popular western music for me is an eight letter word.

PHIL OCHS.

Quite simply Phil's voice and words have more sincerity, poignancy, beauty and truth than that of any other troubadour. His songs are a goldmine of fabulous poetry. Some nuggets from the goldmine:

The world's spinning madly, it drifts in the dark
Swings through a hollow of haze,
A race around the stars, a journey through
The universe ablaze with changes.

And the night comes again to the circle studded sky
The stars settle slowly, in loneliness they lie
'Till the universe explodes as a falling star is raised
Planets are paralyzed, mountains are amazed
But they all glow brighter from the brilliance of the blaze
With the speed of insanity, then he dies.

So he stands on the sea and shouts to the shore,
But the louder that he screams the longer he's ignored

How did it happen? I hope his suffering was small.
Tell me every detail, for I've got to know it all,
And do you have a picture of the pain?

It's always the old to lead us to the war
It's always the young to fall
Now look at all we've won with the sabre and the gun
Tell me is it worth it all

There's no place in this world where I'll belong when I'm gone
And I won't know the right from the wrong when I'm gone
And you won't find me singin' on this song when I'm gone
So I guess I'll have to do it while I'm here

Thank You Phil! Wherever you are.

Dance Dance Dance Dance Dance. Teach us to be true.
 
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been listening to karrin allyson. there is something about this lady's singing. she can be measured without being ponderous, clear without being overtly commercial and slick. i think there is great emotional honesty in her rendition of songs that range from folk (paul simon's 'april come she will' to classic jazz 'sophisticated lady' to quote some examples).
in my experience black ladies tend to overwhelm with their intensity. the white ones are given to cerebral introspection (patricia barber comes to mind) that make listening to some of their songs an intellectual chore.
allyson somehow seems just get it right
 
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I intend to collect about 10 great Jazz LP albums of pacy Jazz music. Can you suggest few LP Jazz albums please? If the labels make difference, please mention the label and year of release also. Jazz music is something new I want to get into from the rock/pop. To avoid the impression of Jazz music to be too slow in the beginning itself, I want to start with some pacy Jazz albums to grow with the taste.

Cheers
 
AMITNOIDA said:
I intend to collect about 10 great Jazz LP albums of pacy Jazz music. Can you suggest few LP Jazz albums please? If the labels make difference, please mention the label and year of release also. Jazz music is something new I want to get into from the rock/pop. To avoid the impression of Jazz music to be too slow in the beginning itself, I want to start with some pacy Jazz albums to grow with the taste.

Cheers
Click to expand...

in that case i guess Sony Rollins' Saxophone Colossus is an excellent album to begin with. check out for the calypso inflected St Thomas that morphs into Mack the Knife...
also the Keith Jarret Trio's Standards Volume 1 with the famously funky rendition of God Bless the Child is great pacy jazz that will warm the cockles of your heart ...
for more contemporary jazz with an expansive palette ....Brad Mehldau's Highway Rider is an easy albeit exciting and rich listening experience.....
 
AMITNOIDA said:
I intend to collect about 10 great Jazz LP albums of pacy Jazz music. Can you suggest few LP Jazz albums please? If the labels make difference, please mention the label and year of release also. Jazz music is something new I want to get into from the rock/pop. To avoid the impression of Jazz music to be too slow in the beginning itself, I want to start with some pacy Jazz albums to grow with the taste.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Amit

Substitute 'pacy' for 'tried and tested' classic albums:

A Kind Of Blue, Sketches Of Spain/Miles Davis
My Favorite Things, Giant Steps/John Coltrane
Saxophone Colossus/Way Out West/Sonny Rollins
The Shape Of Jazz To Come/Ornette Coleman
The Black Saint And The Sinner Lady/Charles Mingus
Brilliant corners/Thelonious Monk
Time Out/Dave Brubeck
Night Train/Oscar Peterson
Something Else/Cannonball Adderley,Miles Davis
Breezin'/ George Benson
Moanin', A Night In Tunisia/Art Blakey And The Jazz Messengers
Charlie Parker With Strings/Jazz At Massey Hall/Charlie Parker
Birk's Works/Dizzy Gillespie
Ellington At Newport/Duke Ellington
At Basin Street, Study In Brown/Clifford Brown
With Oscar Peterson Trio/Lester Young
The Great Summit/Louis Armstrong,Duke Ellington
Ella And Louis/Ella Fitzgerald,Louis Armstrong
The Lady Sings, Lady Sings The Blues/ Billie Holiday
With Clifford Brown/Sarah Vaughan

* Single albums. No Compilations.

Confession :) Currently my favorite jazz musician is Clifford Brown. Especially when he is playing with Max Roach.

Clifford Brown - I'll remember april - YouTube
 
AMITNOIDA said:
I intend to collect about 10 great Jazz LP albums of pacy Jazz music. Can you suggest few LP Jazz albums please? If the labels make difference, please mention the label and year of release also. Jazz music is something new I want to get into from the rock/pop. To avoid the impression of Jazz music to be too slow in the beginning itself, I want to start with some pacy Jazz albums to grow with the taste.

Cheers
Click to expand...

Few that you can start of with and really good are:

Head Hunters - Herbie Hancock
The Imagine Project - Herbie Hancock
Palindrome - Billy Cobham
Louis Armstrong & His Hot Five
The 4th Dimension - John McLaughlin
The Amazing Bud Powell - Bud Powell
Foreign Object - Hartl & Gaijin
New Jersey Kings (James Taylor Quartet) - Party to the bus stop
Kora Jazz Trio
 
@ajay: Sir, hardly any posts these days? Tired of the catankerous anf garrulous bunch?

BTW, I picked up an LP of Cohen's Old Ideas. CD version included in the sleeve. His music is always cerebral and a challenge (in the good sense).

These days it is not words but a tune that stays in my head - specifically the middle movement of Tchaikovsky's Concerto in D Major for Violin and Orchestra, Op 35 - Allegro Moderato. This one is an SACD by Joshua Bell with the Berliner Harmoniker conducted by Michael Tilson Thomas, recorded during a live performance. It is one windy number at 19+ mins long. But the middle movement where the whole orchestra takes it to a crescendo stays in my head. I have been "unduly" influenced by you and have been listening predominantly to western classical. A week back I had picked up 16 Melodiya label records from the erstwhile USSR. Among them are Oistrakh and Richter playing Brahms and Franck, Richter on Rachmaninov, the Leningrad Phil Orch playing Haydn, another Oistrakh recording of Tartini and Brahms, and a Bach by Moscow Philharmonic Academy Symphonic Orch. Still trying to absorb them.

@Amit: I think after a steady diet of rock and pop, the next logical progression is jazz. It is good to begin with lighter material and then progress to the big daddies. A good starting point would be George Benson (his guitar licks are to die for and the warmth of his guitar's tone has no equal in my books). And he's a mean vocalist, too. Quite the soulful singer he is despite being a predominantly jazz guy. Breezin' is a good starter album. You should be able to pick it up on LP.

Also on heavy rotation these days is Branford Marsalis' rendition of western classical favourites on his sax. It's unfair that his more famous brother Wynton overshadows him. I will try to give more suggestions.

PS: the next logical step post jazz is western classical, imho.
 
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