Most Overrated 50's-60's Blue Notes

[Dmitry]

OVER

tina brooks as towering LEGEND unless & until i get more info about his Bronx gigs, etc. it ain't all that.

Well, why don't you take a train to da Bronx and ask for Oliver Beener. He'll clue you in.

[marcello]

Well, why don't you take a train to da Bronx and ask for Oliver Beener. He'll clue you in.

Is Oliver Beener still around?

I have a tape that I made at the Vanguard of a Dannie Richmond group that included him along with "Brooklyn" Bob Berg.

Otherwise yes, the Freddie Redd "Music from The Connection", which was the Holy Grail for collectors before is was reissued, is overrated for sure.

Tina Brooks' "True Blue" was in the same Holy Grail catagory ( I found mine still sealed at the bottom of a pile at one stop in Miami) is great music.

Edited December 4, 2006 by marcello

[Face of the Bass]

Overrated: It doesn't necessarily mean I don't like these, but I don't think they are as essential/mind-blowing as people often make them out to be:

Art Blakey - Mosaic

Dexter Gordon - Gettin' Around

Grant Green - Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark

Herbie Hancock - Empyrean Isles

Andrew Hill - Black Fire

Andrew Hill - Point of Departure

Lee Morgan - The Sidewinder

Sam Rivers - Fuchsia Swing Song

Wayne Shorter - Speak No Evil

Jimmy Smith - Groovin' at Smalls Paradise

Larry Young - Unity

[brownie]

This thread is sacrilegious

[ep1str0phy]

Killl yer idols, brownie. Kill yer idols.

[Claude]

I find Sonny Clark's "Cool struttin'" to be overrated, or overexposed. It seems like this is always one of the first Blue Note albums to be reissued in a new series (together with "Blue Train", "Maiden voyage", "Moanin'" and other inevitable albums by Blue Note legends), only because of the popular cover.

There was also a lot of hype on the BNBB about Lee Morgan's "Sonic boom" or Andrew Hill's "Dance with death", albums which had cult status only because they were so rare. In my view, "Sonic boom" is just an average later Lee Morgan session, not better than the other readily available albums.

Edited December 4, 2006 by Claude

[John L]

I'm with you on Sonic Boom and (to some degree) Dancing With Death. But there is a hell of a lot more to Cool Struttin' than the popular cover (IMO).

[michel1969]

I've always found Walking and Talking, BLP 4010, a boring one. I even sold my copy of this one.

[sal]

Pretty much every Donald Byrd album except "Royal Flush".

Pretty much every Freddie Hubbard album except "Ready for Freddie" and "Breaking Point".

These guys are excellent trumpeters but always sounded better as sideman in my opinion.

And to set myself up to get flamed, I think everything by Hank Mobley is overrated. I think that if he came along today, nobody would pay attention. He was in the right place at the right time. He sounds "nice" on alot of the dates, but never enough to think of him as a great tenor player.

Edited December 4, 2006 by sal

[The Magnificent Goldberg]

I remember having a conversation with a colleague in about '66 or '67, in which he was saying that people weren't making good jazz albums any more. I said, "come on, what about Blue Note? They're still churning out great albums." He responded by saying, "yes, they're churning them out. It's like a production line."

Now, I thought it was a pretty strange production line that could come up with "One step beyond", "Brown sugar", "Along came John" and "Song for my father". But, as I found out more about BN, I came to realise that they did, indeed, have a production line.

They made a record a week, more or less. They used mainly pickup bands consisting of a more or less standard set of players in New York who needed the money. Perhaps that didn't happen with regular working bands like Blakey's or Silver's, but I think those were the exceptions. So they preceded each session by a couple of days' rehearsals, supervised by Ike Quebec or Duke Pearson. And basically, that represented quality control.

It's that quality control that actually did make Blue Note a company which consistently achieved very high standards, and in a number of different styles of the contemporary jazz of the period, and gave the albums a fair bit of their character. There is a difference between the albums recorded before and after Ike's death - you can pick this out if you concentrate on the ones featuring Grant Green either as sideman or leader.

Given that the company was making records for several somewhat different markets, it's not surprising that, despite this quality control, there's less than unanimity about which are the classics and which are workaday albums, especially when, because of the quality control system, the workaday albums are generally almost indistinguishable from the classics.

MG

Edited December 4, 2006 by The Magnificent Goldberg

[brownie]

Killl yer idols, brownie. Kill yer idols.

I've killed all the other idols

Yet I have kept my faith in the infallibility of BN!

One has got to believe in something. It's BN for me

[Niko]

I've killed all the other idols

Yet I have kept my faith in the infallibility of BN!

even today's BN?

[brownie]

I've killed all the other idols

Yet I have kept my faith in the infallibility of BN!

even today's BN?

BN is Lion/Wolff!

Beyond that it's a different world

[Niko]

I've killed all the other idols

Yet I have kept my faith in the infallibility of BN!

even today's BN?

BN is Lion/Wolff!

Beyond that it's a different world

just had the vision that Concord start putting out Michael Bolton on Riverside

[Claude]

Why not? EMI considers "Blue Note" to be just a brand, and not a record label. From dutch singer Trijntje Oosterhuis' homepage

At the beginning of 2003 Trijntje was invited to tour with Dutch jazz-ensemble the Houdini’s, together with the Amsterdam Sinfonietta String Orchestra. Initially, recordings were made for private use only, but the end-results were so good that plans were made to release them properly. EMI, the distributor of the legendary Blue Note jazz-label, could not have been more pleased when they obtained instant approval from Blue Note president Bruce Lundvall to release these recordings on an album under the Blue Note logo.

http://www.trijntje.nl/page/bioeng.php

BTW, her album "The look of love" is No 1 in the dutch album charts, on top of the Beatles "Love" and U2 "Singles collection". Not bad for a Blue Note album

[brownie]

The Blue Note logo on that Dutch album seems to be the only item that reminds us of the good old BN days

[Parkertown]

How is that record, Claude?

[Parkertown]

Brownie,

I think the layout is a direct homage to the classic BN look...you?

[Claude]

How is that record, Claude?

I haven't heard it. I noticed it because a dutch friend asked me about it. The album seems to be available only in the Netherlands (so far).

Edited December 4, 2006 by Claude

[brownie]

Brownie,

I think the layout is a direct homage to the classic BN look...you?

The resemblance is there!

I'm not sure I'll like the sound!

[clifford_thornton]

I find Sonny Clark's "Cool struttin'" to be overrated, or overexposed. It seems like this is always one of the first Blue Note albums to be reissued in a new series (together with "Blue Train", "Maiden voyage", "Moanin'" and other inevitable albums by Blue Note legends), only because of the popular cover.

With you on the Clark and the others that you mention.

Never been hugely impressed by the Don Byrd BNs, though strangely I enjoy the Transition material (what I have of it, anyway).

Andrew Hill I find overrated in general, and the insane touting that his BNs get contributes to this. But to each their own.

The Don Cherrys are good but he's done better, often with Swedes (though I do like the Durium).

Mobley is probably overrated, but I like the sessions I have of his. Ditto Brooks - touted above and beyond, but the records are quite good in my opinion. And hell, Brooks wasn't touted enough at the time, so might as well overcompensate. This leads me to a question (maybe another thread): how highly rated were some of these guys at the time? Morgan, Mobley, etc. were obviously given a lot of due in the '60s, but what about figures like Duke Pearson?

[Guest the mommy]

oh yeah-i agree with whoever mentioned "fuschia swing song" kind of dull, all things considered.

i also find "i want to hold your hand" a boring album. "into somethin'" and "talkin about" as well....all things considered.

[J Larsen]

Inevitably, I'll add, this winds up being a "favorites/I like/don't like" thread. Someone out there thinks that too much praise is heaped on Speak No Evil.

Actually, what made me think about this for some time is that it seems like every time any 60's Blue Note album is mentioned, people are jumping on and declaring it one of the great masterpieces of all time, regardless of title. I'm trying to stimulate people, especially some of the newer/younger guys, to think/listen through some of this. I mean, I love the Blue Note sound, but not every title is among the greatest. If there are 500 of them, then 100 of those rank in the bottom 20%. (BTW, I think 'Speak No Evil' is awesome).

I disagree with this logic. In those 500, you have apples, oranges, pears, pineapples, etc. The idea that you can compare all 500 on a head-to-head basis doesn't make sense to me.

On another note, if you had a thread on over- and under-rated titles, I bet there would be a lot of overlap in the responses to each.

[Man with the Golden Arm]

oh yeah-i agree with whoever mentioned "fuschia swing song" kind of dull, all things considered.

[felser]

if you had a thread on over- and under-rated titles, I bet there would be a lot of overlap in the responses to each.

Well. that's what this is, the thread on overrated Blue Note albums. So I'll try to do a tally when the traffic stops.