1,001 Albums [I] Must Hear before [I] Die: 17

Live at Mister Kelly's - Sarah Vaughan and Her Trio

To all of my readers - if you have never been to a jazz club (and I mean a Jazz Club, not a bistro that sometimes has a jazz quartet playing to back your dining experience), go as soon as humanly possible.

A small candle lit bar with a small stage and a really great jazz band is unlike anything else in the world, and I mean that in the best way possible. A great jazz club has an ambience that is unique, cozy, and inviting. It's a place where rarely are there people trying to conduct a conversation while the band is playing, but somehow their is a special intimacy - everyone is united, bound by the music.

If you cannot make it to a jazz club, for whatever reason, listen to this record.

Every time I closed my eyes while listening to this record, I was transported there - to Mister Kelly's in Chicago. Now, I have never been to that club - I've never even been to Chicago - but I could swear I was in the room when this was being recorded.

The audience is just as much a part of this record as the band is. In the beginning, an announcement is made, informing that the performance was being recorded, and that everyone in the audience, for the night, was a Mercury recording artist. Throughout the record, you can hear glasses clink, an occasional cough, applause, etc., and it really adds to the record - providing every tune with atmosphere.

My favorite part of this record come during the second track, "Willow Weeps for Me", when Sarah Vaughan apparently drops her lyric sheets and has to improvise, singing at one point something to the degree of, "man, I really flubbed this one", and the audience laughs. She also improvises almost all of the lyrics to"How High the Moon", reverting to scatting a short way through. I forgot which musician said this, but someone once described jazz as being, "a long string of mistakes" that you make work. This record embraces that philosophy.

There is little that needs to be said about Sarah Vaughan's voice that hasn't already been said, except to say that I agree with every positive statement. She is pretty unanimously considered one of the greatest jazz singers of all time, and her incomparable talent is on full display on this album.

On the next rainy day, curl up on your couch with a glass of whiskey and turn this one on.

P.S. - Having Jimmy Jones, Richard Davis, and Roy Hanes as your supporting trio means that you're inevitably going to make a great record - hell, I could be singing on this and it would still sound (at least) decent. Man, do they kill!

Note From the Listener: Breaking Rules

I broke a rule... big time.

I was not supposed to go more than two days without posting at least two albums - and, as you can see, I went much longer than that. It seems that in making that rule, I forgot that life happens, and sometimes things will occur that make it impossible to continue for unforeseen periods of time. Well, I have no intention of stopping this project and I am picking up where I left off.

The great thing about being the person that invented the rules, is that I get to choose appropriate punishments for my transgressions. In this case, since we're only sixteen albums in, I went back and listened to three tracks from the previous records before moving onto record number seventeen.

Hopefully this will satisfy you, the reader, and seem to you a punishment that fits the crime. If not... oh well, it's my blog.

1,001 Albums [I] Must Hear before [I] Die: 16

Jack Takes the Floor - Ramblin' Jack Elliot

Man, for an album people apparently "must" hear before they die, even with the internet being the vast expanse of media which it is, this album sure was hard to find. And, honestly, I don't think it was really worth all of the searching...

While I am still waiting anxiously for an album that I hate, I certainly don't like this one. I am not a huge fan of "American folk music" in general - it takes a lot for me to like "guy with a guitar music", and this is just that with a Southern twang - and worse than that, it's a fake one.

I had to look up Ramblin' Jack Elliot on Wikipedia, and was shocked to discover that he was a fellow Jew from Brooklyn. When he speaks on this record, he does so with a Southern drawl - the only Southern accent that exists in native Brooklynites is the Coney Island, "'Ey, How you doin' " accent. The flashing lights started going of in my head - neon signs reading, "FRAUD! FRAUD!"

I would hope that if I recorded an entire record in a British accent, people would be smart enough to call me out on my fraudulence. This doesn't come across to me as a person playing a character, it's a person denying who they are. It's disingenuous.

Is it bad, however? Well, it depends on how you define bad. It certainly isn't offensive, to my ears or otherwise - I wasn't running to shut it off or hoping mercilessly that it would just end already. If you define bad as being the absence of good, though - then, yup, it's bad. It's boring, aside from its inherent dishonesty. There's just nothing in it that I find particularly enjoyable. At most points, it's just dull.

(And, risking beating a dead horse to death again - dude, you're a Jew from Brooklyn - the cowboy hat just looks silly on you).

Don't go crazy looking for this one, like I did. It really isn't worth the effort.

1,001 Albums [I] Must Hear before [I] Die: 15

Lady in Satin - Billie Holiday

That voice - the vulnerability, the pain, the sense of unfulfilled hope, the pure humanity contained within it - it's impossible for me to listen to Lady Day without, at least, choking-up. Every word, every phrase is heartbreaking.

There is a genuineness to her melancholy which few other artists have ever been able to achieve, let alone have it come so naturally to them. Billy Holiday never had it easy, to say the very least. By the time she had achieved fame, she had already become a truly broken individual.

Raped as a child, forced into prostitution, a drug addict and alcoholic as a result, the pain and isolation in every note she delivers is real. Easily one of, if not my favorite singer of all time - you can't help but wish you never heard her voice at all. The suffering she went through that resulted in such a unique delivery... a truly moral person could never wish what she went through upon another human being, even if it provides one with hours of entertainment and joy as a result. It simply isn't worth it.

As I mentioned before, my grandmother actually knew her. I try, sometimes, to imagine meeting Billie Holiday, and I cannot see myself doing anything other than breaking down in tears. It would not be in pity for her- pity never got anyone anywhere - but she is the embodiment of the cliché, "man's inhumanity to man". She is a reminder that there is (not to use another cliché, but) always someone who has it so much worse than you. The striking realization that there are people in the world who, even in our modern day, somehow have it worse than Lady Day ever did is unfathomable.

(If often wondered about that adage - that there is always someone who has it worse than you. That statement simply cannot be true. With a finite amount of people living, there must, by definition, be one person in the world in which no one has it worse than them. I often wonder what their life could possible be like - and I am grateful for the fact that I can't even begin to imagine that sort of life.)

This is what listening to Billy Holiday does to me - makes me ponder the topics of pain and suffering - makes me think of morality, the evils which exist in the world - as well as the good. It kills me to know that the amount of pain which would cause a person to have this kind of voice exists, let alone the fact that even more pain can exist - yet it strangely makes me feel better about my own life.

My New Year's resolution was to stop complaining (as much as possible), and to remember that I have it relatively good - very good. I'm a white, middle-class American, with a roof over my head, a job I like quite a bit, a girlfriend I love tremendously, a good quantity of supportive and loving friends and family, and four wonderful kitty-cats (yes, I have four cats - don't you judge me!). Do I have problems, stresses, etc.? Yes I do - but nothing I cannot overcome. I have so much more to be grateful for than things to lament.

If you feel at like contemplating life, the goods and evils in the world, etc. - this is a great soundtrack to such meditations.

P.S. - Billie Holiday didn't live to see this album released - she died just before it came out - making it that much more gut-wrenchingly moving.

1,001 Albums [I] Must Hear before [I] Die: 14

Brilliant Corners - Thelonious Monk

I can't remember for the life of me which Jewish holiday it was - either Passover or Chanukah - but the entire Jewish side of my family came over to my house to celebrate whatever holiday it was. I was still in High School, and I had just recently gotten into jazz and had started playing jazz guitar. My grandparents on my mother's side, both being there, and being big fans of jazz, asked me to play a few tunes on my guitar. One song I decided to play was "Straight No Chaser" by Thelonious Monk. After I had finished, my grandmother said one of the coolest statements I've ever had said to me - "I knew him. I used to see him play over on 52nd street all the time and hangout with him after his sets. I was friendly with Billy Holiday too." Wow. My grandmother, a person whose blood flows through me, was friendly with Thelonious Monk and Billy Holiday!

Extremely sadly, she died a few months ago. She was as amazing of a person as possible. I miss her tremendously. Whenever I listen to Monk or Lady Day, however, I remember her - and not in a sad way - I can't help but smile. For this reason, aside from the fact that Thelonious Monk is simply awesome, I love this music - it holds a special place in my heart.

The band is like an all-star game lineup. Sonny Rollins is on sax, and, as per usual, he is, to quote Miles Davis, and pardon my mouth (or typing fingers, I guess) a "motherfucker" (if you cut that word from Miles Davis' autobiography, I swear it would be 200 pages shorter). Clark Terry is on trumpet and is as amazing as ever. The second half of the album has Paul Chambers, Mr. PC himself, on upright bass and, as a bass player myself, I am consistently floored by his playing - this album being no exception. For the second time in these reviews I have the honor of mentioning the incomparable Max Roach on drums - and he's just as outstanding, if not more, this time around than the last.

If you are into jazz at all, I recommend you listen to this album, and pretty much anything else put out by Thelonious Monk. I don't personally have a favorite Monk album, they're all great, so I won't recommend anything over this - this would be just as good of a start as any other record if you're looking to check him out for the first time. Seven stars.

1,001 Albums [I] Must Hear before [I] Die: 13

The "Chirping" Crickets - Buddy Holly and The Crickets

Is it just me, or does the lead singer of this band look just like Rivers Cuomo?

(Crowd groans).

Okay, now that that's out of my system...

I can clearly remember being a small child, rummaging through my parents record collection, turning on what ever caught my eye. This is exactly how I was introduced to, and became a fan of Buddy Holly. As a kid, for whatever reason, I was drawn to and loved this thick-rimmed-glasses-clad pop singer of the 1950s. So, the question is, having not listened to The Crickets in quite a while, does the music hold up from when I was a kid?

The answer, in short, is yes and no.

I certainly still enjoy it, and had a fantastic time listening to this album. The musicianship is over par, and the songs are great - almost every track is both memorable and fun.

However, at the same time, it's all a bit cheesy.

Music being cheesy is not a deal breaker for me, though. As a progressive rock fan, having just been playing along to Yes songs before doing this review, it would be ridiculous for me to say that I am turned off by music being cheesy, but I simply cannot ignore that The Crickets have a strong feta-esque aroma surrounding their music. Even back in the day in which rock and roll first came out, shrouded in controversy, and considered to be "the Devil's music", I can't see anyone finding this to be offensive in the slightest. It is almost the musical equivalent of a Disney movie. Everyone loves it, it's classic, there's nothing offensive about it, but it also lacks any challenge to it.

Long after the untimely death of bandleader Buddy Holly, the impact of his is still felt. The Beatles, arguably the greatest rock band ever (not my favorite rock band - although they're up there - I do recognize them as very likely being the greatest) even named their band to be a twist on 'The Crickets'. Buddy Holly and The Crickets defined and pioneered pop-rock, and every pop-rock band since, up to and including modern bands such as Maroon 5, owe more than just a bit to this band.

If you are not familiar with Buddy Holly's music, this is probably my favorite album of his and I certainly recommend it. If you are already familiar with his music, then I suppose you can skip this one, although I doubt you'd be disappointed if you don't.

P.S. - My girlfriend just noted that I reviewed my 13th of these 1,001 albums of Friday the 13th. That is pretty cool, I guess.

1,001 Albums [I] Must Hear before [I] Die: 12

Palo Congo - Sabu

Ah, a chance to redeem myself and my latin jazz credibility after the last album review. This one I actually know!

While I've only heard Sabu a few times, and don't own any of his records, if you're a jazz fan, and have even a passing knowledge of latin jazz you've probably heard at least one of his songs.

This is yet another record you can't sit still while listening to. The grooves are hypnotic and seep into your brain. I found myself at times almost in a trance, which I suppose is an intended effect of the music.

Unlike "Kenya" by Machito, which was a big-band record in essence, the instrumentation on "Palo Congo" is sparse aside from the percussion, and this one also has vocals throughout the record, while the former album was purely instrumental.

Aside from the hard-grooving syncopated percussion, another thing I find noteworthy is the guitar playing from Cuban instrumentalist/composer Arsenio Rodriguez, whose tone, note-selection, and phrasing is immaculate (something about his playing reminds me a bit of Marc Ribot - perhaps Ribot was influenced by Rodriguez?).

I found the track "Asabache" to be particularly enjoyable, as it is entirely percussion, dropping the bass, guitar and vocals that accompany the master congueros on much of the rest of the record. (Warning: the following statement is purely opinion!): I personally feel that it is particularly difficult to make drums sound musical when unaccompanied. It seems pretty easy for the final product to simply sound like banging, to me at least. These master percussionists have no problem making totally enjoyable, tasteful music simply banging on some tightly-stretched animal skins attached to wooden bowls. I think that's pretty cool.

I am certainly happy that this project has put Sabu and this record back on my radar. If you like latin jazz at all, this is required listening.