Name some Blue Note cds you find overrated

[Scott Dolan]

So who were you AG artists of choice from that era, Clifford? Trane, Dolphy, Ornette, that kind of thing?

I do agree that particular genre wasn't a strong suit for Blue Note.

[clifford_thornton]

Of the mid-60s (cutoff say 1968) Bill Dixon and his circle, Albert Ayler, Ornette, Cecil, Frank Wright, Sunny Murray, Paul Bley, Archie Shepp, the early AACM catalog... and of course lots of European musicians who wouldn't be particularly relevant here.

The Gyllen Cirkeln recordings of Ornette's trio are fabulous; I'd somehow spaced out for a moment that those were in the BN catalog. I like the Don Cherry records but feel he did better work with the Swedish/Turkish crew (they were perhaps more under his "sway") and I also think that live recordings captured the environment of his suites better than the RvG studios, ramshackle thought they might be.

[Homefromtheforest]

Hmmm...I'd have to disagree about the Don Cherry BNs, but only because I think "complete communion" is friggin amazing and in my opinion one of his best from that mid 60s era. I wish "live in Ankara" was recorded better - for me the poor fidelity weighs down that album. The other record with Bothen, etc is better but a different phase of Cherry's output including the later double LP on Caprice.

[Homefromtheforest]

In particular in think Ed Blackwell puts on a clinic on "complete communion"

[JSngry]

I love the Ornette BN records with Dewey, JG, and Elvin. Not sure how "perfect" thay are, probably anything but, but that's love for ya'.

[Clunky]

I love the Ornette BN records with Dewey, JG, and Elvin. Not sure how "perfect" thay are, probably anything but, but that's love for ya'.

I love Love Call too. It was one of the first I heard of his so that might explain my partiality.

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

But "music primarily aimed at entertaining black adults"? Be prepared for some raised eyebrows about how lofty concert artistry can possibly be dragged down to such a "gutbucket" level.

It's soul jazz which is 'primarily aimed at entertaining black adults' and it wasn't my intention to express a view that there was lofty concert artistry in any of the live soul jazz albums I've come across, which I feel is music to accompany the party. It's a pity none of those live albums include material such as 'Happy birthday to you'. That would be more authentic (By the way, that's how Bob Porter defines - perhaps too tight a word for what he means - soul jazz. I don't disagree; I seldom disagree with Bob Porter on soul jazz issues )

MG

[Scott Dolan]

Of the mid-60s (cutoff say 1968) Bill Dixon and his circle, Albert Ayler, Ornette, Cecil, Frank Wright, Sunny Murray, Paul Bley, Archie Shepp, the early AACM catalog... and of course lots of European musicians who wouldn't be particularly relevant here.

The Gyllen Cirkeln recordings of Ornette's trio are fabulous; I'd somehow spaced out for a moment that those were in the BN catalog. I like the Don Cherry records but feel he did better work with the Swedish/Turkish crew (they were perhaps more under his "sway") and I also think that live recordings captured the environment of his suites better than the RvG studios, ramshackle thought they might be.

Ah, OK. Sounds like you and I have incredibly similar tastes when it comes to 60's AG. Though, I never have gotten into the European artists. Most of them tend to take it much further than I'm comfortable listening to. I appreciate the talent, just can't get with what they were playing.

And Spiritual Unity is arguably the best AG album to come out of that era. If not the best of any era, IMO. That's one "must hear" album that did NOT disappoint!

I love the Ornette BN records with Dewey, JG, and Elvin. Not sure how "perfect" thay are, probably anything but, but that's love for ya'.

I agree with this.

I think New York Is Now is just a fantastic album! Dewey is blowing some really nasty shit on that one.

Edited September 3, 2014 by Scott Dolan

[clifford_thornton]

I love the Ornette BN records with Dewey, JG, and Elvin. Not sure how "perfect" thay are, probably anything but, but that's love for ya'.

I love Love Call too. It was one of the first I heard of his so that might explain my partiality.

Yeah, they are very good, just not the Ornette records I - personally - grab first.

Complete Communion is a gas, though I find myself digging into the record with Berger, Jenny-Clark and Aldo Romano more regularly. Even though I don't like the mastering on those three volumes that ESP released several years ago, it must've been fun to watch the quintet (Bo Stief in for J-F Jenny-Clark) in action. Ankara is cool, though I was actually referring to material from a year or two earlier that has circulated, with Maffy Falay and Bernt Rosengren's outfits (among others). And of course the fact that the GL Unit was essentially a workshop orchestra for Don Cherry's music just makes the mouth water...

[Scott Dolan]

I love the Ornette BN records with Dewey, JG, and Elvin. Not sure how "perfect" thay are, probably anything but, but that's love for ya'.

I love Love Call too. It was one of the first I heard of his so that might explain my partiality.

Yeah, they are very good, just not the Ornette records I - personally - grab first.

Complete Communion is a gas, though I find myself digging into the record with Berger, Jenny-Clark and Aldo Romano more regularly. Even though I don't like the mastering on those three volumes that ESP released several years ago, it must've been fun to watch the quintet (Bo Stief in for J-F Jenny-Clark) in action. Ankara is cool, though I was actually referring to material from a year or two earlier that has circulated, with Maffy Falay and Bernt Rosengren's outfits (among others). And of course the fact that the GL Unit was essentially a workshop orchestra for Don Cherry's music just makes the mouth water...

How would you compare Ornette's Blue Notes with the Atlantics? While the Blue Notes may be more "interesting" (can't think of a better term), the Atlantic dates are just more cohesive.

Love Call, the Golden Circle dates, and New York Is Now really broke away from the Atlantic dates, but man, when you spin something like Twins, or This Is Our Music, or free Jazz, there's just something "there" that isn't present in the Blue Notes. What the "there" is, I'm not entirely sure.

I guess it's like comparing the classic Coltrane Quartet to his late period stuff with Sanders and Ali. The latter certainly breaks away, but the former seemed more a definitive statement. If that makes any sense.

[clifford_thornton]

It seems to me - and it's been a while since I've listened to the quartet with Dewey - that those recordings have a bit less Parkeriana in them, even compared to the Gyllen Cirkeln records or (especially) the ESP, and they feel less bright. They are a bit more diffuse, especially as I don't think Elvin and Garrison, as great as they are, necessarily lock into Ornette's compositions the way that Haden and Higgins or Blackwell do, or Izenzon and Moffett. So the rhythmic aspect seems heavier and maybe a bit more syrupy sometimes. When I think about it, the sessions with Dewey that I enjoy seem to include either Blackwell or Denardo who are part of Ornette's conception from the get-go.

[Scott Dolan]

It seems to me - and it's been a while since I've listened to the quartet with Dewey - that those recordings have a bit less Parkeriana in them, even compared to the Gyllen Cirkeln records or (especially) the ESP, and they feel less bright. They are a bit more diffuse, especially as I don't think Elvin and Garrison, as great as they are, necessarily lock into Ornette's compositions the way that Haden and Higgins or Blackwell do, or Izenzon and Moffett. So the rhythmic aspect seems heavier and maybe a bit more syrupy sometimes. When I think about it, the sessions with Dewey that I enjoy seem to include either Blackwell or Denardo who are part of Ornette's conception from the get-go.

Hmmm...

That's a really interesting thought.

Been a long time since I've really sat down with any of it, but do you think/are you saying that Jones (and Moffett, by implication, contrary to what you stated) may have been trying to push the envelope more than either Higgins or Blackwell? In other words, taking Ornette out of his realm? It seemed as though both Higgins and Blackwell (and Haden, I guess) were still employing some kind of hybrid Swing/Bebop mode that allowed Coleman and Cherry to solidify the approach they were going after, whereas Jones and Garrison had "moved past" that particularly rigid approach.

Getting a little in over my head having not revisited this material in many years, but if nothing else, I've got a ton of great music to revisit now that we've had this conversation!

[JSngry]

On CD, everything was jiggled around, but on LP, New York Is Now was mostly all about Ornette's "let's improvise on the tempo" trip and Love Call had the "swingers". As a result, the former has Elvin stepping all over his dick, out of his comfort zone, and the latter doesn't. Again, the CDs combine the material differently than the LPs, so the impression the create is a different one, perhaps, than the LPs. But the LP of Love Call...whooo-WHEEEE!

As far as Elvin stepping on his dick on NYIN, I love it, becuase I love Elvin period, and you can learn a lot about what makes a guy really tick by observing what happens when he's trying to tick but isn't quite getting there. He's trying to variate those tempos, he's really trying, but poor guy, that's just not what he did, or who he was. And when not asked to do that "thing", geez, you can feel the rhythmical sigh of relief.

Otherwise, I still can get angry about what the CD does to "We Now Interrupt For A Commercial"...that's not what that piece was. No matter what the reissue board of directors thought about it, they corrupted it in a most fundamental manner, so boo-hiss-BOOGERS on them for that. Besides, the inside photos on the NYIN cover were gorgeous, bright-colory affairs, and they have vanished in the CD incarnation. So my advise is to, if you really care enough to care enough, get those two on LPs, not for whatever sonic debate there might be to be had, but just to get the original presentational impacts. In this case, they are significantly different.

But Ornette/Dewey/Haden/Blackwell...has that Trio Paris Concert thing ever been reissued, or did Ornette put the kibosh on that? All I have is a cassette dub that I'm afraid to play any more... That's one long stretch of pure zone right there, you can drop the needle anywhere on the four sides (or since it's a cassette, two sides, and FF/REW) and it all sounds the same, and I mean that in the best possible way.

BN "avant garde"...that's a trick subject (and a subjective one too...). They were not ESP or even Impulse!, but they weren't trying to be, really. They weren't there for the guys who were "starting their journey on the other side", so to speak, so, no, that's not there. But - Unit Structures was an incredibly important record becuase it was the first real "presentation" of Cecil's cellular method of structuring his music, which he still uses today. Maybe that's not clear, or even relevant, today, but..just sayin'. You look at what he had released up until then, and whoa, quantum leap. The disagreements are only possible with the gift of retrospect. Conquistador is the Cecil Taylor Quiet Storm record, so I'm thankful for that as well, becuase me and my lady, you know, we like a little jazz between the sheets, if you know what I'm sayin'.

Otherwise..how do you make a better Dialogue-type album than Dialogue? In terms of inputs &objectives relative to outcome, I don't see how you do? Now, sure, you could make different records, but with those people, why would you? Would you wnat to hear, say, an album of Joe Chambers material on ESP? Or Marion Brown on Blue Note? Or The All-Seeing Eye on Impulse!? Not really?

Different portions of the spectrum, that's all. Terms like "avant-garde", "free jazz", etc./...useful, but only up to the point to where they clarify rather than distract. Bobby Hutcherson vs Karl Berger...two different people, two different stories, two different worlds, really, and each beautiful in their own way on their own terms. But - two different worlds existing in the same world. don't ask me to choose, becuase I won't!

On, and Andrew Hill? POD has that "stillness" that comes from its planned "formatlity", so there is that (and a lot of people will go for that, it is not an unattractive quality, see Claude Thornhill), and Black Fire is of course a serious MF, but, for me, my turntable plays Andrew!!! more than any of them. Gilmore, Hutch, Davis, and Joe Chambers...it feels like a working band, although I doubt it was. The bobbing/weaving/push-pulling is about as organic as it ever got on an Andrew Hill record, and for that, I look at Gilmore with a gaze of perpetual grinning happiness.

[Scott Dolan]

BN "avant garde"...that's a trick subject (and a subjective one too...). They were not ESP or even Impulse!, but they weren't trying to be, really.

Perhaps.

I don't disagree with your summation, but Blue Note did seem to make some last ditch efforts, did they not?

Andrew Hill, Cecil Taylor, Eric Dolphy, and most importantly, Sam Rivers.

No, they certainly weren't "trying to be" Impulse! or ESP, but they were at least trying to stay in the game at the time.

Either way, they lived to have the last laugh.

Norah Jones says hello...

[paul secor]

In particular in think Ed Blackwell puts on a clinic on "complete communion"

Total agreement here.

[JSngry]

Hill, Dolphy, and Rivers were all coming from the inside going out, not just in terms of energy, but in terms of background and training. Even Cecil had such a strong formal conception going, his was "energy music" as a result of the execution of some very definite structures. Compare that to the "New Thing" players, very few of them had the degree of "formality" in their background that the BN guys of the time did. So it was going to be a different music, at least if it was going to be honest music, which I think - in all cases - that it was.

"Last ditch" seems kind of backwards to me in terms of them opening the label up for the already running streams to flow in different directions. You don't dig a ditch for a river, a river goes where it wants to go, the question is, are you going to swim, drown, or just move to higher/drier ground. Classical tonality/primal blues...no need to abandon either ship upon the identification of the other.

You also gotta look at the label being sold when it was. After the Liberty deal, things changed a lot. You got the two Eddie Gale sides, but...different label, already, almost immediately. Even the Andrew Hill records were different. Wayne...was Wayne. Schizophrenia followed by Super Nova...hello Duke Pearson! but that was a different type of Avant-Garde, already. There's really no such thing as "the" Avant-Garde except in marketing...it's really a state of mind, not any one "style".

Ok, if you look at it like must be either/or, then, ok, that's one thing. But music doesn't really work like that. Time doesn't work like that, ya' know? Lots of things happen in the same time/space, and different speeds existing in the same space are inevitable. Hell, I'll even say that they're desireable. If everything is moving at the same speed, how can you sense motion?

[Scott Dolan]

"Inside going out".

That's an interesting way of looking at it.

Were either Eric or Sam ever "inside"? I suppose you can say the rhythm sections they played over were.

I get your overall point, I'm just not sure that I agree with it.

[JSngry]

Have you heard Eric with Roy Porter (or, even, with Chico Hamilton early on)? Sam held a gig with T-Bone Walker (and reveals it pretty strongly on that 1961 Tadd Dameron BN cut). Andrew's Warwick album?

Yes, they were all very "inside" at one point. They started playing bebop, the same as most everybody else their age!

[clifford_thornton]

Thanks for your observations Jim.

Probably too much time spent with other weird shit and not enough with the "classics" lately so I need to go back and listen to some of these albums again that I'd logged heavy listening hours with years ago.

My thoughts on Complete Communion have long been that it's a beautiful record but misses some of the rawness that I appreciate in a number of renditions of that material - that lickety-split ragged charm running through Togetherness, for example. But Blackwell sounds amazing there and yes, I need to revisit.

Unit Structures and Conquistador were very important both for Cecil and for his audience, such as it was at the time. They capture a world of improvisation and organization in concise hints that was more fully explored but rarely heard live. I'm told that Cecil also got paid more for these records than his previous dates, and they were pretty easily available to the student of his music. However, I've also been told that Cecil and other members of the group had issue with how they were recorded, and that RvG's mike placement was very "off" and could not capture the essence of what the ensemble was really trying to do. Alan Silva has said this on a number of occasions - that the dynamic range of the group was flattened out. It makes sense, though what we have is what we have - and the fidelity on 4237 and 4260 are far better than what he might've got from an ESP recording (Alderson and Scholtze both have their pluses). Not to mention the music is superb...

Certainly BN had a "brand aesthetic" that went from jackets to liners to the way in which recordings were captured. The same could be said for Impulse and ESP. Love a lot of ESP records but their creative fidelity and pressing issues didn't do anyone any real favors (charming though the inconsistencies might be).

Agreed about NYIN vs Love Call. Paris Concert is not legitimately on CD - I have the Japanese LP set, which sounds great though was completely unauthorized from what I gather.

[Scott Dolan]

Have you heard Eric with Roy Porter (or, even, with Chico Hamilton early on)? Sam held a gig with T-Bone Walker (and reveals it pretty strongly on that 1961 Tadd Dameron BN cut). Andrew's Warwick album?

Yes, they were all very "inside" at one point. They started playing bebop, the same as most everybody else their age!

I suppose, Jim.

But, isn't that like asking if I ever heard Coltrane play with Miles in '57?

Sidemen.

Leaders.

Or is that not what we're talking about here?

[JSngry]

We're talking about starting fom the inside and moving outward.

Not everybody did that.

[Scott Dolan]

Well, at the time most of them did.

Especially those you mentioned.

Hence my question.

All of those cats came from a Bebop background.

[JSngry]

Exactly.

Inside moving out.

You can't say that about, for instance, Archie Shepp. Archie had some licks, was a helluva blues palyer (still is, if he's still playing...) and was not unconversant with playing changes, but by no stretch of the imagination could you say that he was a fluent bopper. No way. And it didn't matter, he had other things going on that were more important to him at the time.

But Archie Shepp was not starting from the inside the same way that Dolphy, Rivers, Hill, etc. were, which is why he could never have made an Out To Lunch type (although in its own way, Live In San Francicso sorta-kinda comes close, but...not really) record, just as Dolphy could never have made a Magic Of Juju type record. "Could never have made" not in the sense of being incapable of, but rather in the sense of direction not headed that way.

Dolphy was referencing Gazelloni while Shepp was pointing out Rufus & Hambone. In the end, it does all come together. But only in the end.

At the time we're looking at, there were plenty of guys coming at it like Archie, and there were plenty of guys coming at it like Eric. Actually, maybe, for a quick minute, less guys coming at it like Eric, becuase the immediacy of the times led plenty of people to think that there wasn't time for all that, we gotta get it done now. But over the long haul, skills win out over urgency, at least in terms of survival. Ideally, you have and maintain both, but...

So, yeah, I don't think that BN 'avant-garde" is any more or less "real" or anything else than "anybody else's" "avant-garde". It's all honest music.

To return to the original topic...I'll not get into "overrated" becuase that's a tough call for me to make for reasons that Clifford gave earlier, but I will talk about "underappreciated", ok? And for me, the prime BN example of that is Some Other Stuff. Sure we all love Evolution because JackieLee & LeeJackie, but hello Wayne, hello crazy-ass genius Newarkian frontline, hello speaking the same language and not just reading off the same page, hello Herbie Hancock going there (although, for me, the best part of Evolution is Bobby, Bobby in those days was pretty damn open - and with skills out almost everybody's ass, although geez, what I wouldn't have given to hear Walt Dickerson afforded the Lion special attention). Both good, but one is a "cult classic" and the other...hell, you could always find an LP of Evolution if you looked, it hung in there a good long while. Some Other Stuff...where is the love, and where is the cult status?

Like the song says, that's for me!

[ep1str0phy]

I've spent the last few days listening to and reading a lot about Paul Motian, and I was really taken with an interview Chuck Braman conducted with him in '96. At one point, Braman is grilling Motian about his perspective on the latter-day conservative turn in jazz (versus the freewheeling/experimental 60's--the period in which Motian--and much of the music discussed on this thread--began to flower). Motian is being sort of catty, and at one point he just says, "in the '60s there was a lot of shit goin' on, and I wanted to be part of that."

I've spoken to a number of musicians who played roles in the musical innovations of the 60's, many of whom might not be categorized as experimental in the modern day. There's a healthy dose of respect among many of the musicians who survived that era, and it was very instructive seeing Archie Shepp at Yoshi's about a year ago--I ran into a drummer friend who had played on Pharoah Sanders's first album, and though the topic of the classic energy Shepp stuff came up, nothing about either the music that night or the aura of conversation suggested that there was some sort of "inside/out" or "either/or" divide still inherent in the music.

That being said, inside/out is still definitely a very real thing, and I think the dichotomy between these two extremes (as Jim articulates) played a pretty important role in the narrative of 60's jazz. The sense I get is both that (as Motian noted) extreme experimentalism was then, as it was not before and has not been since the 60's, really, a key part of what jazz was at that time. Even though not everyone was playing "out," it was question to be confronted, maybe engaged, and maybe willfully opposed/negated. We're talking about a time period when including terms like "freedom" and "outside" had legitimate market resonance--as opposed to the relative toxicity of marketing avant-gardness in the modern day.

I often wonder whether this environment offered more opportunities to experimental artists who might (in another time period) have been relegated to the fringe, or if the 60's simply precipitated experimentalism from otherwise conservative artists. As has been discussed in numerous threads that have touched on this topic, there's a lot of "slippage and play." With regard to current day market considerations, it's pretty insane that the key iconology of the avant-garde was getting recorded and distributed by Atlantic, ABC-Paramount, Columbia, etc. etc.

One has to imagine that Blue Note was both tapping into a commercial/spiritual zeitgeist (hence the signing of Ornette, Cecil, Cherry, etc.) and simply showcasing the logical evolution of its late-50's/early-60's roster. Many of the folks who at some point inhabited the sphere of the Jazz Messengers/Horace Silver/Miles were the guys who were making innovative inside/out music in the 60's--this is the fabric that the 2nd Miles Quintet guys, Moncur, McLean, etc. were culled from. Blue Note played a big role in facilitating the documentation of this music, but I also think that a lot of the "in house sound" has to do with music that definitely would have been made on another label and in a different context--so long as it was made at that time.

On that level, I do think it's interesting that the overrated/underrated discussion inevitably becomes one about schools and disciplines, rather than specific albums or even artists. For my part, the sheer caliber of so much of the music on that label was so high--and so much that music was so weirdly intertwined by politics, personnel, etc.--that it's hard for me to separate Point of Departure from something like Judgment or Compulsion. Now Andrew Hill on Soul Note v. Andrew Hill on Blue Note--where we're talking about two completely different eras with completely different playing styles--that's way more complicated.

[JSngry]

I've spent the last few days listening to and reading a lot about Paul Motian, and I was really taken with an interview Chuck Braman conducted with him in '96. At one point, Braman is grilling Motian about his perspective on the latter-day conservative turn in jazz (versus the freewheeling/experimental 60's--the period in which Motian--and much of the music discussed on this thread--began to flower). Motian is being sort of catty, and at one point he just says, "in the '60s there was a lot of shit goin' on, and I wanted to be part of that."

Thinking this over this evening, I've had the thought that what might be a factor in the division that the BN "avant-garde" seems to precitpitate in some quarters is the very real presence of "20th Century Classical Music" in so much of it. Maybe this was a/the "real" "Third Stream" after all?

Is "Third Stream", as a notion anyway, an inherent watering down, a weakening? Or is it simply how shit survives over the long haul?

The 20th Century brought ready access to all kinds of musics in a way that had not existed before (and it seems primative compared to how we now have access to even more things even more readily). What was supposed to happen, "jazz" keep being "jazz", "classical" keep being "classical", and hey kids, look, smile, talk, but don't touch, definitely don't fuck, and for damn sure don't have no babies, and if you do, decide up front how they will be raised, becuase you can't have it both ways? And make no mistake, "both ways" are the only ways. 1+1=2, not a new 1. The twain shall meet, but they will be banished after they do?

That, it seems to me, is not how it works in a healthy world. Paul Motian had it right afaic.

The irony of the rejection by the neo-cons of the 70s "avant-garde" for being too "European" while taxidermitizing a portion of the 60s "avant-garde" that was in much of its basic vocabulary very "European" in the service of creating a fantasy "American Jazz" is not lost. Also not lost is my deep suspisicion of "energy" as being the final determinant/sustainable of pursuable quality. But still/yet, once the rawbluesfunkspiritjuju goes away, is what you have worth keeping? For me, no. But that "thing" comes in many forms, many spirits, many places, many vocabularies. Modern Man embraces them all and proceeds accordingly, tears be damned. And shed.

Best as I can see, fusion leads to fission leads back to fusion, etc.Where one is at any given moment is ultimately irrelevant relative to what one chooses to do at any given moment.

And then there's the infamous "trainwreck of avant-garde nothingness" still residing deep within the bowels of the label under discussion here. That it was not issued in its time supports the notion that "old Blue Note" was essentially a "progressive conservative" company in terms of music (and that the "post-Lion BN was definitely that - at best - in terms of running a business...and then again, what does it say about an enterprise that did what it did so well that one feels somehow cheated that they didn't do something other than what they did?), somebody who was all for letting the river expand its banks but also of building levees so as not to encourage wholesale flooding and subsequent eradication of the town they helped build, but it's ongoing supression (ok, "supression") and the reactionary characterization of it as something it is definitely not by someboody who really, really should know better (even allowing for superorily informed opinions and such)...ladies and gentlemen, this is a world gone wrong.