Jazz programmes

Terry Gibbs once said of Alice McCloud, "There are very few true girl piano players. I like her feel, she sounds like Bud Powell sometimes. She has a real down home, pure, good feel for herself.".

Yep! That last bit may sound like a bit of Geoff Smith jazz-speak, but Alice soon moved on, stopped doing the ironing and recorded enough crap for Jazz Legends to wreak a bit more of Loxam's Revenge on R3's jazz listeners!

om

If you say so O/Fu'ya!!!

Stay Cool

Jackie and Roy are making a comeback

SOON

BN.

AGGGHHHHHHH ... Hey, this polish vodka is STRONG!!!

poLISH/POLISH....mmmm! WHATEVER!

"My favourite things"... was brilliant until the point when Pharoah Sanders joined in. Seem to recall Centrifuge giving his contribution on this disc the thumbs down

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Not me mate! A lot of people do have strong feelings about Sanders' playing in that band, but you've never heard me say anything like that.

I did recently say that Arthur Doyle fulfilled a similar role for Noah Howard (on The Black Ark, 1969) as Pharoah did for Trane - but if you somehow took that as a disparagement, you misunderstood!

Haven't listened to the prog yet, so no further comment.

Why does everyone take my writing style so seriously? With Bluesnik always waiting in the wings to pounce without contributing to the topic but taking me to task nonetheless (the 'ironing' bit was a joke, mate!) and Ian being a bit too pedantic in taking my tongue-in-cheek reference to Keith Loxam so literally, it seems I'm always on a hidin' to nutin' on this bored!

I also enjoy Terry Gibbs and, like Thumwood Senior, have a good number of his tracks though not that one - it was the dominant cosmic harpsifying that got a bit much for me. There's also a much better version of 'My Favourite Things' by Coltrane that I have, though it would not please Centrifuge I suspect.

Good selection on JRR this aft, but anyone else feel a track from "Rosemary Clooney Sings the Music of Harold Arlen" is going a bit too far? We shall see. And watch out for the return of the BBC Big Band on JLU next week - we haven't heard them for at least ten days!!

Old Fella

Have to agree totally with the Cosmic jazz stuff. Never heard this early 70's music described as such before and it was dificult not to laugh at JJ's description. Wondered if he was being ironic too !

The lengthy track was absolutely dire ! Not convinced by the harp as a jazz instrument (not "dirty" enough) and the music just seemed to hang in the air like an unwanted fart. Some of the tracks with the organ reminded me a bit of Messaien but would have to say nowhere near as good.

Afraid my judgement remains out on Pharaoh Sander, Centrifuge. I have been enjoying the compliation CD released to coincide with Ashley Khan's book about the Impulse label and the track "The creator has a master plan" always gets people talking whenever I put it on in my house. Basically, everyone hates its !! Nice to be able to be confrontational playing this stuff, though !! (My only record with jazz yodelling. I am sure that Veronika Lenz would have loved this track before she became a bloke. Shame really, as I never twigged that it was a joke until declared and had conjured up an image of a thirty-something girl with glasses, pigtails and a horrible, knitted cardigan !! Mr. Improv must be gugged to discover that he was flirting with a bloke. Shame that she has had the strapadictomy as I liked her as she was. )

Yep - I wus right! Can't agree with Geoff Smith that Rosemary Clooney turned to jazz in her later life - she just turned to jazz groups to prop up a flagging career. Might just as well been with Crosby and Kaye as she just delivered a couple of choruses as written - no personal input - hardly a suggestion of jazz phrasing and no improvisation at all. But with those few good jazz musicians behind her and a couple of minutes behind the desk, the piece made a nice 2min 16secs instrumental 'sans Clooney'!

Line for Lyons, along with Mulligan's other great hit, Walking Shoes, always takes me back to the time when 'cool' was emerging and engaging us all as a contrast to bebop, and Weekend in New York had quite a good flute. But Lorraine failed to turn me on, though I do like a lot of Ornette's stuff - sorry chaps - and I'm getting a bit tired of these solo pianists that everyone keeps requesting. I don't think it works as jazz - even Smith and Kellock, as a duo, are beginning to pall a bit - I like the bass to be in there somewhere.

And, Ian, I honestly do not believe that JJ has the facility to be ironic . . .

I think that Supermarket Sweep's final comment, "Oh well", sums up the situation pretty well. It would seem that there's always better stuff that could illustrate a musician's contribution to the jazz scene than that which finds its way onto the Jazz Legends' playlists in favour of more controversial work from their less popular periods. The programme seems almost to go out of its way to schedule some of the poorest and most unrepresentative of a jazzman's work.

So it may have been with Alice. I said, in response to a comment from Ian Thumwood, that a reference to Keith Loxam was "tongue-in-cheek", yet I feel that a producer has a responsibility for what goes out under his or her name, and the general disappointment that both JL and JLU brings to many listeners today perhaps makes my choice of words more relevant than I had at first thought and suggested.

Just 'listened agaiN' to Jl with Alice Coltrane.
I agree with some of what most people have said.
The writing for strings, I thought, was downright cheesy, Mantovani meets Debussy in a departure lounge sort of thing.
The organ playing is a different matter. A pity they didn't play an earlier trio version of 'Leo'
(don't ask me which album), which is pithier, has a better sense of dynamics, & spares us Ravi's nondescript tenor playing. I think Ian T. mentioned Messiaen in connection with this, but it's a substantially different instrument; besides he had the advantage (?) of pre-planning everything, having it down in black & white. All the same when he was resident organist at Notre-dame de Paris, Messiaen was said to have done a lot of improvising, & I haven't heard of any Dean Benedettis hanging round recording it.
She treats the harp in quite a traditional way technically, & it works as a textural addition on records like McCoy Tyner's 'Extensions', but I don't think she makes it as a soloist. Rhodri Davies is the one who has done most to rethink the harp in recent years, bowing & inserting objects, some sonorous, some muting, between the strings, making it sound more electric than Zeena Parkins' amplified playing. Jazz? Continued by other means, if you push it, but an interesting application of Klangfarbenmelodie none the less.

when he was resident organist at Notre-dame de Paris, Messiaen was said to have done a lot of improvising

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They all do... Derek Bailey devoted a chapter to the church organ in his book on improvisation. It's apparently the last remaining enclave of "orthodox" Western music in which an ability to improvise is expected of the practitioner. Hang around a church with a decent organist and you could theoretically tape all sorts of one-time-only stuff (and trade it later if he/she became famous)

Widor was crap at it, apparently