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Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3299
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, December 12, 2008 - 02:24 pm: | 
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At the Bosendorfer grand piano at the Blue Note jazz club in New York, jazz pianist McCoy Tyner is trying to remember the changes to "You Taught My Heart to Sing," a ballad he wrote 20 years ago.
"I wrote so many songs, sometimes I say, 'What did I do here?' " he says.
But if you hear Tyner play, you don't forget his sound.
"That's your identity," he says. "Your sound — it's like when you speak. You may not be able to see the person, but you recognize the voice."
Born Dec. 11, 1938, Tyner is celebrating his 70th birthday this week with a weeklong engagement at the Blue Note and a new album to boot.
He made his name as a member of the legendary John Coltrane Quartet in the 1960s. Since then, he has brought his distinctive playing style, and his compositions, to dozens of records on which he leads his own bands....
Full story: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=98095438 |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 3507
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, December 18, 2008 - 02:38 pm: |
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Very nice post Ms. Yvette. McCoy has always been one of my favorite pianists. I love his heavy left hand percussive approach. Masters of the piano like the great John Hicks and Joanne Brackeen also have the same style of playing. I saw McCoy for the first time back in the day at a club in Cleveland called the Smiling Dog Saloon. I could not get enough of his playing.
Saw him last year at the Monterey Jazz Fest. I have no idea of what is wrong with him, but he has greatly aged recently and he does not look healthy. That is not a criticism because the man can still play. I absolutely love his trio and solo performances and concerts. That is when you can see him at this best.
However, I never did care for the extra accompaniment he has had in his various groups over the years. They all seemed to drag the music down and distract from his playing. If you check out his early Impulse trio recordings (“Nights of Ballads and Blues” and "Inception") when he was young and contrast them to his later trio recordings (“Trident” and “Super Trios”), you can see a major shift in the intensity and speed in his playing.
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Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 413
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 21, 2008 - 12:27 am: |
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Hi Ntfs and Yvette,
If you check out his early Impulse trio recordings (“Nights of Ballads and Blues” and "Inception") when he was young and contrast them to his later trio recordings (“Trident” and “Super Trios”), you can see a major shift in the intensity and speed in his playing.
I agree, and I would just add that in between the early Impulse trios, recorded while he was still with Trane, and the later Milestone recordings he made beginning around 1970, there are some really exceptional recordings he made as a leader for Blue Note. The first, recorded in 1967 after he had been replaced by Alice Coltrane in the John Coltrane Quartet, is called "The Real McCoy," and it's a quartet session with Joe Henderson on tenor.
It's hard to recommend anything to anyone though because people have such different tastes.
Another good one is called "Time for Tyner," a quartet date with Bobby Hutcherson on vibes. It's more mellow because of the sound of the vibraphone, but to me it represents the apex of the pentatonic style of improvisation that he's known for, and he applies it to not only modal tunes like May Street and African Village, but standard tunes with denser harmonies like I Didn't Know What Time it Was and especially The Surrey with the Fringe on Top.
My only criticism of some of his later stuff was that it often seemed intense and heavy in comparison to these earlier recordings which have a kind of lightness and virtuosity that just kind of breathes. Which I could explain it.
Anyway, unrelated to McCoy Tyner is the fact that CNN has shown the same episode of the D.L. Hughley show two weeks in a row, and it includes a segment where he stops people on the street and asks them to sing a song about Kwanzaa. The last person he asks is a man in a green cap who hums Lift Ev'ry Voice and Sing, and although they don't let on (or maybe they don't realize it), it's jazz pianist Horace Parlan. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 414
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 21, 2008 - 12:32 am: |
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Oops! Sorry, I meant Harold Mabern, not Horace Parlan. |
Ntfs_encryption
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Ntfs_encryption
Post Number: 3509
Registered: 10-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 22, 2008 - 04:44 pm: |
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”I agree, and I would just add that in between the early Impulse trios, recorded while he was still with Trane, and the later Milestone recordings he made beginning around 1970, there are………………. called "The Real McCoy," and it's a quartet session with Joe Henderson on tenor. “
Bro Steve -as usual, you are on the money. I absolutely love those Blue Note recordings by McCoy…..ALL OF ‘EM! Those are some fine recordings with Joe Henderson and Bobby Hutcherson. In fact, the whole Blue Note catalog is mandatory for any serious listener of the music.
”It's hard to recommend anything to anyone though because people have such different tastes.”
This is true. But all hard core lovers and listeners of creative improvised music will agree on the McCoy Impulse and Blue Note recordings (IMO). I’ve never heard anyone bad mouth “Time for Tyner” or “The Real McCoy”.
”My only criticism of some of his later stuff was that it often seemed intense and heavy in comparison to these earlier recordings which have a kind of lightness and virtuosity that just kind of breathes. Which I could explain it.
“
I agree. A number of recordings he done with large ensembles and percussionists, didn’t sit very well with me. I share your opinion on this one. As I said, I like him small formats where his virtuosity can be easily heard. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 415
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Monday, December 22, 2008 - 07:19 pm: |
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Hey, What's going? I've been wondering. Are you hip to Nathaniel Mackey? I'm sure you are, but I just found out about him. Now I see that he's in a Callaloo anthology I bought a few years ago but have never read. So I've been reading "Bass Cathedral." Here's the review by David Hajdu:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/24/books/review/Hajdu-t.html
The bass player in the novel is named "Aunt Nancy," which is a pun on: a) "Anansi," the West African spider trickster, and b) the Mozambican thumb-piano known as the "nsansi," an instrument which Aunty Nancy doubles on.
B'Loon and Djbouche lay marooned on an abstract beach neither knew what to make of. They lay on the sand changing shape with every shift in the wind, no matter how slight, not unlike bubbles at the breeze's mercy, metamorphosing, blown glass in its molten state. What to make of themselves was an ancillary question.
I suspect, although I'm not sure it's what intended, that "Molten Glass" might be an allusion to the Joe Farrell CTI recording on which the tune by that name appears. Describing "what to make of themselves" as an "ancillary question" for the musicians might conceivably be read as a statement about interpersonal relations among jazz musicians in general, I don't know.
Somewhere else he uses the phrase "funk underneath," which, of course, reminds me of the Jack McDuff/Roland Kirk side on which they play the "Skaters' Waltz," of all things.
Hate to oversimplify the man's writing because it's anything but; he's very attuned to semiotics. Yeah, although I don't understand everything he's saying, I like his writing.
I hear you, all the McCoy Blue Notes are essential: Expansions," which includes the tune Peresina that I particularly love (having transcribed some of his solo lines); "Tender Moments," and all the rest of the catalog!
I really liked the quartet he had before Azar Lawrence joined, when Sonny Fortune was playing alto. That was a really great group. I heard them a couple of times at the Jazz Workshop. |
Yvettep
AALBC .com Platinum Poster
Username: Yvettep
Post Number: 3310
Registered: 01-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, December 27, 2008 - 05:17 pm: |
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GREAT info, you two. Thanks!
You know, this makes me think of another conversation we have had here recently, about the benefits of a digital music collection. Well, one of the big drawbacks of such a collection is this:
Lack of liner notes.
I realized when reading your posts that all the "new" jazz (and other) artists I have purchased albums by, I know almost nothing of the personnel who play with them, songwriting credits, and other information. Nor do I get much of a sense of the particular album's place in history. I think this is because there is no accompanying text to go with their music that I listen to.
Of course, this information is available on-line--and most every musician has his or her own website these days. But that is not the same as the snapshot in time that was the liner notes that went with a specific album. Even the "digital books" that come with some albums from iTunes is nothing more than promotional material. Not the same at all.
This--along wth traditions of album cover art--is a great loss, IMO. |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 417
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 08:34 pm: |
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I just finished "Bass Cathedral." Five pages from the end, it states that Getz/Gilberto "whitened" the samba into a formula "that can pretty easily be handled by non-Brazilian musicians." Then he claims that Archie Shepp's 1965 cover version of Jobim's "The Girl From Ipanema" was a "reblackening" of bossa nova's "whitening" of the samba.
That's a nice theory but one problem with that is that it's crass and another is that Getz is the only non-Brazilian musician on "Getz/Gilberto." Although I've never owned any of those albums, I know that it was Stan's second bossa nova album, recorded in 1963, and the personnel includes two of the originators of the bossa nova style: Antonio Carlos Jobim and João Gilberto. Bossa nova is a cultural hybrid, like jazz itself, and Getz's approach was no different than those of Dizzy, Sonny, and others at the time. In fact, I recently picked up a copy online of "Dizzy on the French Riviera," a bossa nova album I used to like.
Karrin Allyson recorded a recent album on which she sings these songs in Portuguese. It's beautiful. She also recorded one in French and I like her approach to the songs on Coltrane "Ballads" . |
Steve_s
Veteran Poster
Username: Steve_s
Post Number: 418
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Sunday, December 28, 2008 - 09:01 pm: |
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I also finished William S. McFeely's 1991 biography of Frederick Douglass, which I'd been reading since the beginning of November. It gives you a sense of how complex and individual he was, in ways that I couldn't have known just from reading The Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglass.
Also, because I jog every day, I finished listening to a 20-CD audiobook of The Given Day by Dennis Lehane, read by Michael Boatman. I don't watch much television so I had to look up who Michael Boatman is, but he does an amazing job with all the dialects, brogues, and even one foreign language (Italian) in the novel. If you're able to get ahold of it, I highly recommend it.
It's a historical novel about Boston in the early 20th century and the two main narrative threads follow the lives of a Boston Irish-American policeman and an African American munitions worker originally from Ohio by way of Greenwood, Oklahoma, who becomes involved in crime and then flees to Boston.
I've read about the Red Summer of 1919 in any number of books, including Levering Lewis's biography of W.E.B. Du Bois, Kenneth Janken's biography of Walter White, and at least two histories of the Harlem Renaissance, and I actually thought it was called the Red Summer because of its anti-black mob violence, and although some of that is described in the book, there were also labor riots and anarchist bombings that I didn't know about. So this was really interesting.
The fact that it's classified as a "mystery" novel puts the lie to that Swedish prize judge's claim that American fiction is "insular." |
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